Local government – such a drag

Posted on 2017-08-10 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

The ineptness, arrogance, and corruption of local government stares at us from our computer screens and (for those that still get and read them) the pages of local newspapers.

Consider some examples.  In Moab, Utah, we read in the Sun News how (in a place where the economy of 2017 is almost completely based on tourism), the Mayor wants to stop Rally on the Rocks UTV and side-by-side off-road vehicle gathering because it is too much of a hassle – what a piece of work. This shows that he does not understand his own town’s and community’s economy.

Or go to Berkeley, where a local meat shop, according to “Berkeley Side” has been forced by an “animal-rights” and anti-meat-eating (vegan) activist group to put up an “animal rights” sign in their window to stop weekly, graphic protests in front of their store.  Protests that blocked access, threatened and drove customers away, and even invaded the store.  Where was the city government (and cops) in this?  Aiding and abetting the protesters in their acts of extortion and attacks on business and others. Continue reading →

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More troubles with flatfeet

Posted on 2017-08-10 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Say that you or I (ordinary folks, or “muggles,” “mundanes” or “peons”), were to hold a drawn pistol pointed at someone for nine minutes, locked and loaded. During that time, the person did nothing, said nothing, and was in fact in a position to be able to do nothing to resist or threaten us without giving plenty of warning. We’d be in trouble: facing a judge and trying to come up with 10% or 20% of a $100,000 or $200,000 bail and facing charges of felony menacing or some other serious crime. Even if I, in line with official duties, as a veteran Army officer, were to do that. I’d be relieved of duty and facing a court martial board.

Not so for the brave boys (and/or girls) in blue, at least not in the People’s Republic of California.

UPI reports “Video of a California police officer pointing a gun at a passenger for nine minutes during a traffic stop has gone viral, leading some to criticize the officer’s tactics. The video, taken in Campbell, Calif., in July, and posted to Facebook by a person who goes by the name of ‘Feo Mas,’ shows the officer with his gun pointed at the passenger, who repeatedly asks the officer to lower the weapon. ‘Why are you still pointing the gun at me, bro?’ the man says. ‘My hands are right here.’ The man’s hands are visible, on his lap or in the air, throughout the video.” (Fortunately, this cop did not just gun down everyone in the car. As has happened before.) Continue reading →

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Taxes and Government Waste

Posted on 2017-08-07 by MamaLiberty

By MamaLiberty

I have interesting conversations, even with liberals. A few lately have given me a lot of food for thought, but not much encouragement on the individual liberty front. Most people just don’t seem to “get it,” at least not the big picture.

A very nice lady I know lives in the tiny “city” nearby. We often talk when we meet at the grocery store and other places. Her husband hunts, and belongs to the same gun club I do, but she isn’t interested in any of that. She does garden, and is a regular customer in the greenhouse where I work in the spring, so that gives us some things in common.

Anyway, she was telling me how happy she was with all of the work the city has done the last two years, building “walking” paths, planting trees and flowers, and installing benches and various “sculpture” things around town. She’s all for government to “sponsor” and support the “arts,” and is a hard core cheerleader for anything the “schools” want to do.

On the other hand, she is furious that the state of Wyoming chose to cut amounts they usually send to the schools, and the town and counties, the cuts to the budgets of several other programs and entities the government helps to support.

And so forth… Continue reading →

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Stupid, ignorant, or both? Statists in 2017

Posted on 2017-08-03 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

One of my sons pointed out a news-tidbit about some celebrity claiming that names like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Mary are all so “white” that a “person of color” should not give their children names like that.

We had a good laugh over it, but then went on line and found out that many, MANY people apparently believe some version of this. Several atheist websites even cited the fact that the writers of the Gospels (the four books of the New Testament which record Jesus’ ministry) being given “common English names” was proof that they were fabricated, although the websites disagreed: some believed it must be King James who order the fraud, while others blamed the Catholics or others. Many other sites decried the fact that the various people in the Bible (Old and New Testaments) had all these white-people, English standard names (like Abraham and Deborah and Sarah and David and Paul and James) and not “proper” Middle-Eastern names like Kamal and Mohammed and Ali.

Even some of those commenters who pointed out the silly nature of their objectors often merely pointed out that there were lots of “non-Western” names like Bartholomew and Nebuchadnezzar and Dorcas and Sapphira. Continue reading →

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What do you call people like this?

Posted on 2017-08-02 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Liberty Viral reported what many of us already figured out. Six “conscript parents” (to use the old Roman title updated) who voted to repeal Obummercare -the Abominable Act – in 2015 voted to NOT repeal it last week.  The repeal (a “clean repeal”) only got 45 votes, instead of the 51 which would have seen it done.

These people – I can think of many things to call them – are real pieces of work.  One (McCain) would have an excuse: his brain cancer.  That is, if we didn’t already know better. His motives, as always, are self-serving.  He demonstrated years and years ago as a Navy pilot that he has no honor, no sense of morality, and is a completely despicable excuse for any number of positions he might have.

All of them: Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., Dean Heller, R-Nev., John McCain, R-Ariz., Lisa Murkowski R-Alaska, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio,” displayed incredible hypocrisy, dishonesty, evidence of double-dealing, a callous disregard for decency.  Some (Murkowski and Portman in particular) have done this sort of switch-and-bait time and time again.  All of them pretend to be whatever it takes to get a few votes, a few more dollars, and obligations for their buddies, their families, and their ego. Continue reading →

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Blood in the homes – not just the streets

Posted on 2017-07-30 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Once more, we see “American” police gunning down innocent people for no more reason than a mistaken address given by someone – or misunderstood by cops and dispatchers.

The latest is in Southaven, Mississippi, as reported by The Free Thought Project, where a man responded to cop cars and pounding on his door by opening the door only to be killed in a hail of bullets from cops.  The cops claim he pointed a gun at them: no gun was recovered at the scene and the man’s wife said he did not have a gun with him when he went to the door.

I don’t know the total death toll due to cops killing people – especially not innocent people with no record of anything, no warrant, and no reason to be killed, like Mr. Lopez, for this year.  Previously, I’ve found information that it amounts to about three killings a day – and who knows how many wounded, beaten, tortured, or terrorized by men in dark blue, black, brown, and khaki, wearing badges that are – more and more – licenses to kill issued by their masters in federal, state, and especially local-level government agencies. Continue reading →

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Oh my stars and garters!

Posted on 2017-07-27 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Every once in a while, some startling revelation shows up on the television or computer screen.

It happened again.  A major understanding of the laws of the universe has been revealed – and get this: by a British think tank.  Full of (be warned, it is staggering) economists.

This revelation:  Work REDUCES Poverty.  In other words, the more you work, the less likely you (and your children and the rest of your family) are to be living in poverty!

As reported in the Acton Institute’s newletter, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has issued a report with the dry, boring title “Living standards, poverty and inequality: 2017 – summary” (which you can find here). Continue reading →

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Give ’em up – or else; Murder most foul

Posted on 2017-07-26 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

A man in Michigan is challenging the petty and not-so-petty tyrants, according to a story in the Washington Free Beacon.  A grandfather (54-year-old disabled Marine) has been told by the Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and by a county judge that he must give up his guns and his concealed carry permit to be allowed to foster his own grandchild.  So he is suing in federal court for his constitutional, God-give rights, responding to the black-robed Nazgul who told him bluntly, “If you want to care for your grandson you will have to give up some of your constitutional rights.”

The bluntness is new – the concept is not.

For decades we have seen the courts, the executive branch, and Congress – and the legislatures of all fifty states and every territory – steal away not just the constitutional rights, but virtually every God-given right which can be defined and is known to man.  “In return,” they have created a whole host of “rights” or “freedoms” that are usually both meaningless and in essence are simply ways in which a person can enslave (through and with government help) some other person – forcing them to work to provide everything from medical care to entertainment. Continue reading →

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Should we be surprised?

Posted on 2017-07-24 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Society?  What is that?  A suicide pact?

In a nation with events like this, it is clear that we are in no way a “civilized” society – except in the minds of the political leaders and other elite who like it this way.

Consider Minneapolis, where a 40-year-old Australian woman was killed by a police officer who “was startled” and shot out the window of his patrol car at the very woman who had called 9-1-1 to report a disturbance and suspected rape, as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  And on Friday, the Minneapolis police chief was fired by the city’s mayor, apparently for the chief’s statement that the woman didn’t have to die.  Of course, the police officer (not yet charged, of course, in the suspected murder) is the first Somali (Muslim) police officer in the city.  And was upheld (despite several other charges against him on various non-fatal incidents) as an example of how progressive Minneapolis is.  To show how progressive the city is, she was the first female, openly-lesbian, divorced from her lesbian “wife,” police chief in the nation – and now she has another “first” in being fired. And no doubt (assuming he actually goes to trial), this cop will use his early years in the bloody battlefields of Somalia to explain why he offed this unarmed woman in her pajamas.

Mama’s Note: I have to say that this incident was more shocking to me than a great many others that have happened in the last year or so. Not only the completely unjustified killing, but the official response in the current climate of backlash against such police misconduct. The fact that the “cop” is a Muslim is certainly not unrelated, but of course the “news” does not help us understand that any more than anything else. WAS he reacting to her being there in her pajamas? How could we possibly know? Continue reading →

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You can’t win, you can’t break even … but can you get out of the game?

Posted on 2017-07-24 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

The Casper Star Tribune reports that the Cheyenne Regional hospital has lost its Medicare and Medicaid certification from the FedGov (and the Wyoming Department of Health) because the hospital – in very simple terms – has been found guilty of abusing an adult, but blind, elderly human (they won’t even identify what sex this person is) by discharging the person (who wanted to be discharged) and going beyond what should be the natural role of a hospital and arranging for the person to be accepted by a shelter, after the family refused to help.

It is a topic that Mama Liberty knows a lot more about than I do.  She comments: “Talk about a no win situation for the hospital. They likely had zero option not to admit the person to start with. [Cops brought the person to the hospital.] Since there was no family willing to accept responsibility, and the patient was not really competent to care for him/herself, evidently… I’d like to know what the hospital was supposed to do about it. [Debby speculates that the person might have dementia or some similar, basically untreatable condition.] The hospital is ALWAYS under pressure from Medicare to discharge people as soon as possible (and often when they should not be)… always that pressure both coming and going… I expect there was NO viable option at all for the hospital. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t… whatever you do. What the heck were they supposed to do with this person, especially since it doesn’t sound as if the patient was cooperative? I’ve done discharge planning, and it is a nasty, thankless job because you can’t seem to please anyone much of the time. The terror of having “Medicare” inspectors involved [the Wyoming state employees are nothing more than shills for the FedGov, as is the case in every state] – no matter how hard you work – is the killer. I am sure that the nurse or social worker who did this discharge planning is now looking for another job. Possibly at Burger King… “ Continue reading →

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