Mimi & Eunice: Let’s Make More Regulations!

Corporatism, Mimi & Eunice on IP
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[Here’s another departure from our usual syndicated Mimi & Eunice content. It’s not strictly IP-related, but it was too good to pass up, dramatizing as it does the simultaneously comical and frustrating disconnect that most people have with regard to problems and solutions involving government. — GAP]

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This is post originally appeared at Mimi and Eunice. View original post.

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Grading the Pledge to America

Corporatism, Democracy, Health Care, Imperialism, The Right, Vulgar Politics, War
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So….the Republicans have put out their Pledge to America. Is it any good?

Jeffrey Tucker sums it up pithily by juxtaposing short quotes from it and the Declaration of Independence:

Declaration of Independence (1776): “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

A Pledge to America (GOP, 2010): “Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course.”

If this goes on, related fellow TLS blogger Daniel Coleman to me, in another 100 years it will be “Whenever a subpoint of policy within a government agenda becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to organize a committee to change those subpoints of policy and replace them with better subpoints.”

Liberty Central, the Establishment’s attempt to co-opt the Tea Party, has a poll asking us to grade the Pledge. Head on over there and tell them what you think of it. Fellow TLS blogger Jacob Huebert has a couple of good posts on LewRockwell.com about Liberty Central, the Tea Party, the Pledge, and Glenn Beck.

The Liberty Central poll only lets you grade the Pledge as a whole. Here is a quick graded breakdown of important aspects of the Pledge, with short reactions by me in parentheses:

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A Reprieve from Bureaucrats

Nanny Statism
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Our friend Fester writes:

The other day a friend on Facebook commented on the show “Hoarders”. In this show they have a psychologist and a junk clean up crew come into a house and clean it up. She was upset because she did not feel as if the crew helped the people they cleaned up because they only spend about a week at the house and she didn’t feel like this was enough time to address the deep psychological issues these people have.

While I agree that these people probably have mental issues that are not being addressed by the show, if you watch the show you will notice that almost all of the people who ask to go on the show have a legal issue surrounding the hoarding. These people are being pursued by code enforcement officers, by child protective services, by fire marshals, etc. They may not be getting the psychological help they need, but they are getting a reprieve from the evil government officials who would kick these people out of their homes, or steal their children away from them, etc. It may only be temporary, but if it gives them another year of peace from the bureaucrats then the show is doing a good service to these people.

You can watch Hoarders on A&E.

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Separate Oil and State, says Greenpeace

Anti-Statism, Environment, Imperialism, Mercantilism, Taxation, The Left, War
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From the Edmonton Journal comes news that some Greenpeace members rappelled off the top of Calgary Tower to hang a banner that read “Separate Oil and State.”

Scott Blasken got this shot from his office window Tuesday morning after Greenpeace unfurled a banner from the Calgary Tower.

Hey, I’m all in favor of separating oil and state. But that means no strategic oil reserves; no taxes, including carbon taxes; no cap-and-trade; no regulations; no moratoriums or bans on offshore or other drilling; no special protections of any kind, including caps on liability for actual damages to private property caused by oil companies;1 no eminent domain (ab)use; and no mercantilistic and imperialistic wars to make the world safe for domestic consumption of foreign oil. But somehow I don’t expect all of this is what the Greenpeace activists confusedly mean by “separate oil and state.” Alas and alack.

Cross-posted at Is-Ought GAP.

  1. I’m not talking about limited liability for shareholders here. I’m referring to caps like the $75 million liability cap that has received so much attention in the wake of the BP oil spill, enacted in 1990 as part of the Oil Pollution Act following the Exxon Valdez spill. ↩

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We are not amused at your nanny-state prank. Now pull your weeds or ELSE.

Humor, Nanny Statism
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april fool's!Given that Boulder is home to the University of Colorado — a former “top party school” — you’d think April Fool’s pranks would be more common than bong pipes and mountain bikes.  But the city seems less than amused at this inspired stunt that parodied municipal property codes:

Person or persons unknown have created a hoax door hanger declaring that homeowners who don’t remove the dust and insect larvae from their sidewalk cracks by noon tomorrow will receive a fine of up to $4,620.

“This is the only warning that this household will receive this spring!” the door hanger exclaims. “Please be sure your crack stays clean for the rest of the year!”

The “ticket” then goes on to suggest that if homeowners need help they can look up “Crack Removal Services” in the Yellow Pages.

Pretty funny, right?  But city officials were quick to point out that it wasn’t real:

[Boulder spokeswoman Judy Jacobson] knew right away that the door hanger wasn’t legit.

“It’s definitely a joke,” she says. “There’s no such code as the one it references. So it’s making fun of the City of Boulder — which is fine. But we just want to make sure nobody takes it seriously and sends us a check, or gets upset because we gave them a ticket. Because we didn’t leave this for them.”

It’s ironic that the city wants to reassure residents that they have no code mandating clean cracks, but don’t think twice about all of the other ordinances that require property owners to maintain their abodes and land in city-approved fashion.  Because they’re a joke as well, just not a very funny one.

We are not amused at your nanny-state prank. Now pull your weeds or ELSE. Read Post »

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