CARB Goes Bonkers October 19, 2009
Posted by Joey in Automobiles, Stupid Bureaucrats, Unintended Consequences.Tags: California, California Air Resources Board, CARB, Kalifornication
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The bureaucrats in the California Air Resources Board have come up with another doozy: “Advanced” window glazing to keep vehicles cooler, but stops radios, cell phones, GPS and other wireless devices from working.
How about just use window tinting like we do here in Texas? Works pretty darn good, no wireless devices stop working, and no bureaucratic order is required. The sun takes care of enforcement.
We need some chlorine to clean out the California gene pool.
‘Cool’ car rules could affect radios, phones | detnews.com | The Detroit News.
California’s latest requirement for the auto industry — advanced window glazing to keep vehicles cooler — could prevent drivers from making phone calls, listening to satellite radio or using garage door openers.
It also could lead Chrysler Group LLC to stop selling its soft-top convertible Jeep Wrangler in the Golden State. The standard for sunroofs is so tough that automakers warn the glass would have to be “effectively black.”
The California Air Resources Board has adopted a new “Cool Cars” regulation ordering advanced glazing of windows to block the sun’s heat and reduce the need for air conditioning. Windows must be coated with microscopic specks of metal oxide to reflect sunlight.
Advocates say the requirements will reduce the temperature inside vehicles, saving gasoline and cutting greenhouse gases.
SWAT Team Raids Grandmother — For Orchids October 6, 2009
Posted by Joey in Government, Unintended Consequences.Tags: Ayn Rand, Kathy Norris, Orchids, US Fish and Wildlife Service
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When SWAT teams are raiding grandmothers because she was missing paperwork for imported orchids, you know there are way too many laws, and way too many law enforcement agents.
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. — Ayn Rand
Criminalizing everyone – Washington Times.
“You don’t need to know. You can’t know.” That’s what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.
The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.
The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with – get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.
That’s right. Orchids.
The Wonderful Compassion of Government September 13, 2009
Posted by Joey in Government, Unintended Consequences.add a comment
Here’s a really good preview of life under socialized medicine, playing out in the Dallas suburb of Plano. Bureaucrats are just so compassionate, don’t you think?
If tragedies like this can take place in Texas, just think how nice things will be in the budding socialist utopias of California or New York.
Government has only one tool, force, and that tool is a blunt and unforgiving one. Read the whole sordid tale and then decide if you really want government bureaucrats determining how you live and die.
Elderly Couple Forced into State Custody.
They’re not criminals. They’ve broken no laws. But they’re being held against their will by the State of Texas. Why? It’s a tragic story about what can happen when you are alone in the world and lose control of your rights, your money, and your ability to complain.
Jean and Michael Kidd never imagined their retirement would play out like this. “I feel like I am not in America,” said Michael Kidd. “I can’t believe I have been hi-jacked off the street, virtually from the hospital, and imprisoned,” Kidd told FOX 4.
Michael Kidd and his wife Jean have been living out of a tiny room for months. They have lost control of their money, their home, even their car. They say they’ve been robbed of their dignity and their voice. And who do they say is responsible? The State of Texas.
Swine Flu Vaccine: Beware the Side Effects (Like Death) August 16, 2009
Posted by Joey in Economics, Medicine, Politics, Science, Unintended Consequences.Tags: H1N1, Swine Flu, Swine Flu Hysteria, Swine Flu Vaccine
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Doesn’t anyone, anywhere, remember the 1976 swine flu outbreak? That swine flu vaccine killed more people than the virus. Are we destined to repeat the same stupidity again here in 2009?
Probably.
A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter.
The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins.
It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine.
Runaway Brides June 4, 2009
Posted by Joey in Culture, Unintended Consequences.Tags: China, Population Control, Runaway Brides
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The one-child law in China is having some unintended consequences, the newest of which is the runaway bride scam.
Looks like a market is available for an escrow service.
Surplus of Bachelors Spurs Scam in China.
With no eligible women in his village, Zhou Pin, 27 years old, thought he was lucky to find a pretty bride whom he met and married within a week, following the custom in rural China.
Ten days later, Cai Niucuo vanished, leaving behind her clothes and identity papers. She did not, however, leave behind her bride price: 38,000 yuan, or about $5,500, which Mr. Zhou and his family had scrimped and borrowed to put together.
When Mr. Zhou reported his missing spouse to authorities, he found his situation wasn’t unique. In the first two months of this year, Hanzhong town saw a record number of scams designed to extract high bride prices in a region with an oversupply of bachelors.
The fleeing Mrs. Zhou was one of 11 runaway brides — hardly the isolated case or two that the town had seen in years past. The local phenomenon has fueled broader speculation among officials that the fast-footed wives may be part of a larger criminal ring.
UK: Big Brother Becomes Real May 24, 2009
Posted by Joey in Unintended Consequences, War on Terror.Tags: ANPR, Big Brother, UK
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The ubiquitous license plate surveillance camera system in the UK, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), was set up, say the politicians, to track terrorists. But we all know that once watching terrorists is deemed legal, that precedent is then used to watch everyone else.
In Great Britain, the country that invented the concentration camp, Big Brother really is watching you.
Who’s Watching You? | Camera grid to log number plates.
John Catt found himself on the wrong side of the ANPR system. He regularly attends anti-war demonstrations outside a factory in Brighton, his home town.
It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a “marker” on his car. That meant he was added to a “hotlist”.
This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit.
“I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?”
Take Your Kids To Work (Prison Edition) May 16, 2009
Posted by Joey in Government, Oops!, Unintended Consequences.Tags: Florida Department of Corrections, Take Your Kids To Work Day
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Consider me stunned by my new knowledge that prisons in Florida have a “Take Your Kids To Work Day”. Consider me flabbergasted that the prison guards would shock the kids and give them a taste of tear gas.
Via Instapundit, 43 stun-gunned at prisons’ Take Your Kids to Work Day.
A total of 43 children were directly and indirectly shocked by electric stun guns during simultaneous ”Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day” events gone wrong at three state prisons, according to new information provided Friday by the Florida Department of Corrections.
Also, a group of kids was exposed to tear gas during a demonstration at another lockup.
Three prison guards have been fired, two have resigned and 16 more employees — from corrections officers to a warden — will be disciplined due to the incidents that unfolded April 23, said DOC Secretary Walt McNeil. An investigation is ongoing.
None of the children in any of the incidents required medical attention or was notably harmed, McNeil said. He said the children, who ranged in age from 5 to 17, were all children of prison officials.
Germany to Ban Paintball May 9, 2009
Posted by Joey in Culture, Government, Unintended Consequences.Tags: Germany, Paintball
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Under stupid government tricks, add the German government’s plan to ban paintball, because a high school kid went on a shooting spree.
Germany to ban paintball in wake of high school shooting.
Experts from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners have agreed to outlaw all games in which players shoot at each other with pellets.
The governing parties say paintball trivialises violence and risks lowering the threshold for committing violent acts.
Infringements to the new rules, which the cabinet hopes to pass before a general election in September, could incur fines of up to 5,000 euros (£4,400).
A 17-year-old shot dead 15 people in the southwestern town of Winnenden, before killing himself in March, stunning many Germans and leading politicians to call for tighter gun rules.
NASA: We’re Out of Plutonium May 7, 2009
Posted by Joey in Oops!, Science, Technology, Unintended Consequences.Tags: NASA, North Korea, Plutonium
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Perhaps North Korea will sell NASA some plutonium. It’s either that or make fission bombs out of it.
Better yet, just pop a few warheads off those nuclear missiles gathering dust in silos and give NASA some fuel. Certainly better than blowing up the planet.
Fuel for deep space exploration running low.
NASA is running out of nuclear fuel needed for its deep space exploration.
The end of the Cold War’s nuclear weapons buildup means that the U.S. space agency does not have enough plutonium for future faraway space probes — except for a few missions already scheduled — according to a new study released Thursday by the National Academy of Sciences.
Deep space probes beyond Jupiter can’t use solar power because they’re too far from the sun. So they rely on a certain type of plutonium, plutonium-238. It powers these spacecraft with the heat of its natural decay. But plutonium-238 isn’t found in nature; it’s a byproduct of nuclear weaponry.
The United States stopped making it about 20 years ago and NASA has been relying on the Russians. But now the Russian supply is running dry because they stopped making it, too.
