Two Post Tuesday

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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It’s not often that I post twice in one day. I did the funny post earlier but there is something else that I want to say and today is the day to say it. Strap yourselves in!

I don’t remember where I was when JKF was shot. It was a bit too far back in time for me to be worrying about such things. I do remember where I was when I saw my first movie about the assassination, though. I was in a cinema. The movie was called Executive Action and starred Burt Lancaster. Some critics panned it at the time but I thought it was very good, based on a conspiracy theme naturally enough. I actually thought it was better that Stone’s acclaimed effort, ‘JFK’, made many years later.

I also remember where I was this day eleven years ago. It was the day that the world changed for ever and I was sitting in my study at home battling with a few spreadsheets for a business plan I was putting together. The TV was on in the background and the normal programs suddenly cut to what was happening in New York.

 

World Trade Center, New York City, September 11, 2001

Of course that was the end of my spreadsheets for the day. I became totally enthralled in the news coverage which was to say the least confused. By that time the first tower was belching out a steady stream of smoke. It was clearly on fire and had been very badly damaged.

The reporters were speculating as to what may have been the cause. They talked about ‘accidents’ and eyewitness reports of a small private aircraft hitting the building. But, to anyone with any wit at all, it had to have been much more than a small airplane to do that amount of damage to a building that huge.

Then, as I continued to watch, the second plane hit the other tower. Some of the reporters still could not come to grips with what was happening. The second plane was clearly a large commercial jet and, equally clearly, it had been flown deliberately into the second tower.

This was the real deal. And all of the multi-billion dollar military/intelligence defense network had been caught with their trousers down round their collective ankles.

A massive terror attack was in progress and we were able to watch it in real time on our televisions. It was at the same time mesmerizing, engrossing and, not least, horrifying.

The horrific nature of what had happened became clearer when everyone began to realize that, not only had many innocent people probably lost their lives when the airplanes had struck the buildings, but also that there was little or no hope of saving those on the floors above where the impact had occurred. It got even worse when some of the trapped people threw themselves out of the building and could been seen falling to the ground and to certain death.

Emergency services rushed to the scene. Many acts of extreme bravery followed as police and firefighters went into the burning buildings with little or no regard for their own safety. I can’t say this for sure, but I imagine at least some of them knew there was little chance they would get back out again. But they did it anyway.

Then we heard that the Pentagon had been the target of a further attack and yet another airplane, also bound we were told for the Washington DC area, had gone down somewhere en route.

In all 2,977 people were murdered as a result of the terrorist attacks that morning.

We know who was responsible for the attacks. We know that many of their terrorist comrades, including the figurehead Bin Laden, have since been killed. And we know the terrible cost in terms of lost lives and serious injuries to the various armed forces who were sent to do that job.

September 11 is now officially ‘Patriot Day’, a day of remembrance. And we should all take at least a moment in honor of the victims.

Sadly the aftermath of these terrorist attacks eleven years ago brought only knee-jerk reactions from jerk politicians. They had the audacity to call it the Patriot Act, but it attacks the freedom of innocent law-abiding citizens just as much as it does the terrorists and criminals.

Contaminated by the hellish liberal inspired ‘guilt’ that now pervades all government decisions and means that it is no longer perceived as acceptable if we take our own side in a fight, a raft of idiotic, unnecessary and unfair legislation has, and is, being enacted.

This is being done in the name of defending the homeland, but unwilling to only target the national, ethnic or religious groups who are responsible for the vast majority of the terror, poor old law-abiding Joe Public gets targeted as well.

Everyone is now guilty until they can prove their innocence. Get on an airplane at an airport and you are treated as a potential terrorist and irradiated and probed and so forth. Open a bank account and you are treated as a potential terrorist trying to launder money – despite the fact that it was the banks themselves who were doing that job.

It’s not that any of this is a great hardship. It’s just that it is completely unnecessary and unproductive. It is the typical politician’s and bureaucrat’s way of trying to con the populace by substituting activity for real progress.

A lot of potential terrorist attacks in America and elsewhere have been thwarted during the past eleven years, but not one of them as a result of all the overt claptrap at airports and so forth.

Will it change? Will sanity and intelligence take over?

Not a chance.

Will it get worse? Will the bureaucrats’ hunger for control and interference increase?

Of course it will, regardless of whether the regime is Republicrat or Democrican.

So who really did win?

The terrorists may well have lost, but the people certainly didn’t win! 

The Terminal Man

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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In case you were wondering, this post has nothing to do with Michael Crichton’s mind control novel with the same title. Rather it is about people with no minds trying to control the rest of us.

Strange, as well as stupid, people feature on the fasab blog.

None come stranger than Mehran Karimi Nasseri, also known as Sir, Alfred Mehran (yes, including the comma).

Nasseri is an Iranian refugee who was expelled from Iran in 1977 for protests against the Shah. After a long battle, involving applications in several countries, he was awarded refugee status by the United Nations High Commission for refugees in Belgium which permitted him residence in any European country.

He claimed to have one British parent, although he produced no evidence to support this, and decided to settle in the UK in 1986.  But en route to there, in 1988, he claimed that he was mugged and his shoulder bag stolen while waiting at the RER platform to go to Charles de Gaulle Airport to take a flight to Heathrow.

When he tried to go to the United Kingdom, Nasseri managed to board the plane, but when he arrived at Heathrow, London without the necessary documentation, immigration officials sent him back to Charles de Gaulle airport.

Unable to prove his identity, or his refugee status, to the French officials, he was initially arrested and moved to the Zone d’attente (waiting zone), a holding area for travelers who do not have papers. However, due to the fact that his entry to the airport was legal he was released, but, since he had no country of origin to be returned to, he began his residence in the departure lounge of Terminal One in Charles de Gaulle Airport on August 8, 1988.

Mr. Nasseri’s predicament was made into a movie in 1993 entitled ‘Tombes du Ciel’, starring Jean Rochefort, Ticky Holgado, and Marisa Paredes. And he was reportedly the inspiration behind the 2004 movie ‘The Terminal’, starring Tom Hanks.

However, unlike Hanks’ character in the movie, and since at least 1994, Nasseri did not live in the duty-free transit area, but simply in the departure hall, in the circular boutiques and restaurants passage on the lowest floor.

Theoretically he could leave the terminal at any moment, although, since everyone knew him, his departure might not remain unnoticed. He did not seem to speak with anyone normally.

With his cart and bags, he almost looked like a traveler, so people either did not notice him or ignored him as if he were a homeless person. Airport workers were kind enough to give him food.

In 1992, his case was taken on by French human rights lawyer Christian Bourget. However, in one of those absurd rulings that idiot bureaucrats and judges can only dream up, the French courts ruled that, having entered the country legally, he could not be expelled from the airport, but neither could it grant him permission to enter France.

Attempts were then made to have new documents issued from Belgium, but the authorities there would only do so if Nasseri presented himself in person. However, under Belgian law a refugee who voluntarily leaves a country that has accepted him cannot return.

In 1995, the Belgian authorities granted permission for him to return, but only if he agreed to live there under supervision of a social worker. Nasseri refused this on the grounds of wanting to enter the UK as originally intended.

In July 2006, eighteen years later (yes, that’s 18 years!) Nasseri’s stay at the Charles de Gaulle Airport ended when he was hospitalized and his sitting place dismantled.

Towards the end of January 2007, he left the hospital and was looked after by the airport’s branch of the French Red Cross. He was lodged for a few weeks in a hotel close to the airport.

On March 6, 2007, he transferred to an Emmaus charity reception centre in Paris’s twentieth arrondissement. As far as I know he may still be there.

And you thought US immigration took a long time!

The Terminal Man – Mehran Karimi Nasseri

 

Churchill’s Secret War – How The Pouter Was Born

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

Sir Winston Churchill

 

By and large the above statement is true. History does remember Sir Winston Churchill well. He was a remarkable war leader for Britain and indeed for the Allied nations throughout World War Two, and prior to and after the war years he had a remarkable political career.

Churchill was also an accomplished writer and historian, although he could afford a team of researchers to help him with his books. His multi-volume memoire of the war are remarkable and well worth a read for those interested in this period of history.  

Inevitably a lot of what went on during World War Two was of a top secret nature. These things covered a vast range of topics from spying and counter espionage, thru code-breaking and intelligence analysis, to developing a variety of gadgets that had the potential to be used for defense or as weapons against the enemy.

One of the groups involved in this work was given the nickname “Wheezers and Dodgers”.

They were commanded by a man named Goodeve, who was given to say to all new recruits something like, “You’ll have no set hours and no official leave. You will often be required to work all night as well as all day and seven days a week if necessary. You’ll see many secret documents. Don’t talk about what you see.”

One of their pressing tasks early in the war was to work on camouflage problems, because Goodeve had found, to his astonishment, that in spite of the increasing threat of German air power no serious attention had been paid to camouflage in the Royal Navy since the First World War.

His intervention led to a surprising incident.

One day into the department stamped an irate officer who introduced himself as Commander Pouter. Marching up to Goodeve, he said angrily, “What’s this I hear about your section meddling with camouflage?”

Goodeve told him that they were, “looking into it to see what can be done to make our ships less visible,” and that ” If no one studies these new conditions nothing will ever get done “

Pouter was one of those insufferable people who had no idea how stupid he was and who abused the positions he had been given by trying to control everything and stifle any outside input into his little empire, especially intelligent input. 

“I’ll have you know that I am entirely responsible for all Admiralty policy regarding camouflage” said pompous Pouter, “and that policy is that there shall be no camouflage . . . and no experiments either!”

Apparently startled by the outburst, it took Goodeve a few seconds to recover from this. As he got up to open the door for his visitor he turned to the others in the room saying, “Our way is now perfectly clear. You’re to go straight ahead with the experiments.”

Then addressing his remarks to Commander Pouter he said, a little brusquely, “Our report will go to the First Sea Lord. If you wish I will send you a copy.”

 

This story highlights yet again that if an idiot is put in charge very little, if anything, productive will get done. But it is interesting for a reason other than that.

This confrontation also led to the coining in the department of a new term for the measurement of the Unit of Obstruction. This unit became known as the ‘Pouter’.

However, on further reflection, this unit seemed altogether too large to have any application inside the Admiralty, since it was fervently hoped that this degree of obstruction would rarely occur.

So the term ‘micro-pouter’ was introduced and has been used ever since to assess all such absurdities. Such was its popularity that its use spread to other parts of the military and even further afield. 

Sometimes idiots get the fame they crave, but for entirely the wrong reason.

The Richest Nation The World Has Ever Known Has Become The Greatest Debtor The World Has Ever Known

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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****A Saturday rant****

One day this week, according to all reliable financial sources, the United States of America’s debt burden reaches the $16 trillion mark, or as close to it as makes no difference.

That’s $16,000,000,000,000.00

The richest nation the world has ever known has now become the greatest debtor the world has ever known.

And the problem which began to get seriously out of control under the Bush Presidency is still spiraling out of control under Obama’s regime.

go bananas

To add a little perspective to the huge numbers, it took the United States government more than two hundred years to accumulate its first trillion dollars of debt, BUT it took only two hundred and eighty-six days for the most recent trillion dollars of debt to be added. And that was under the  “Yes We Can” and “Change” administration.

So what has changed?

Nothing much.

Yes we can what?

• Borrow and borrow and borrow again?
• Let the horrific bankster’s mess run on for a few more decades?
• Dream up more and more new government programs that we cannot afford?
• Leave future generations in so much debt that they will never and can never get out from under it, (because there won’t be enough money to pay the interest on the debt let alone repay it)?
• Continue to stick our heads in the sand while other nations kick our ass?

As I write this I can hear the Fed’s printing presses clunking away producing more new dollars out of thin air, which they will distribute through the banks  -  who will keep most of the money instead of releasing it to individuals and businesses to stimulate the economy and create employment.

Sadly, not only is the nation bankrupt, but the politicians who govern it are too  –  bankrupt of good ideas, intelligence and common sense. Their mentality is, ‘if something isn’t working, don’t change it, just do more of it’.  (Aaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!!!)

Their ultimate solution will be, as it inevitably always is – more taxes and more control! Just wait for those shoes to drop.

In the US, Hawaii and Florida are the only states that grow bananas. I suggest that they start looking for ways to up production because that is the type of republic the politicians seem hell bent turning us into!

****End rant****

naked banana

 

When Your Bank Gives You A Load Of Sh1t, Just Give It Right Back To Them!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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It isn’t often that there is the opportunity to report a victory of the common man over the banksters. But a few years ago one did happen when a 71-year-old British farmer, from Northumberland, won a £300,000 settlement from his bank after what he described as years of frustration and pain.

Although the bank settled, shortly before the case went to the British High Court, the farmer, Mr David Cannon, said he still felt as though he had not got justice. “They could give me every penny on the planet, but it still couldn’t put it right. It’s taken 10 years away from me. To them it’s monopoly money, but to me it’s all I’ll get.”

His problem was with the National Westminster Bank plc, and began in May 1990. It centered on £70,000 which Mr Cannon claimed went missing somewhere between his own account, his son’s personal and business accounts and an account belonging to his son’s business partner.

He is convinced the money had disappeared gradually during “dozens and dozens” of transfers between the accounts. Naturally the NatWest Bank always strongly denied that the money went astray.

The legal proceedings started way back in 1991, and the Cannons were forced to sell their 300-strong herd of prize-winning Ayrshire cows to fund their case. Mr Cannon said: “It was heart-breaking having to sell the herd, and soon I, and especially my wife, had problems with our health.”

After four-and-a-half years of deadlock with the legal proceedings Mr Cannon decided enough was enough. He borrowed a muck-spreader and chugged into Newcastle-upon-Tyne on his tractor.

In a little over two minutes, he blasted four tons of slurry over NatWest’s Mosley Street branch.

Phew!!!

Stonemasons spent two weeks clearing up and Mr Cannon was fined £2,000. But undeterred, a year later, he subjected the bank’s Ponteland branch to the same exterior decoration.

He really was giving them shit!

Still the dispute dragged on, until December 1998, by which time Mr Cannon had lost patience once again. This time he blocked the door of the Grey Street branch of the bank with his tractor.

Ten months later he returned to the Ponteland branch, baffling staff by measuring the entrance. The next day he forced the doors open with his tractor and barricaded himself inside, nailing fence rails across the doorway. This bank job cost him another £600.

His final fling occurred the following June 12, when he dumped a five-ton load of shit on the doorstep of the Ponteland branch and returned to his farm – pursued by police. Amazingly, he managed to reload and chugged back to the bank, where he made a second five-ton deposit. A low-speed chase ensued, the police puncturing the 10mph tractor’s tyres with a ‘stinger’.

Mr Cannon was charged with criminal damage, dangerous driving, driving without an excise licence and failing to stop for a police officer. He was given a 60-day suspended sentence and ordered to pay £845.60 compensation plus £250 costs.

Mr Cannon, a former bare-knuckle boxer, said: “But fortunately it was in my nature to fight them. Breeding cattle was my life.”

The bank, NatWest issued a token 63-word statement which denied any admission of liability. They refused to add to it when questioned by reporters.

Simon Pitkeathley of the British Bankers’ Association, says angry customers would do better to follow the conventional complaints procedure or move your account elsewhere, said: “Mr Cannon’s behaviour obviously can’t be condoned.”

But I liked it. Good one Mr C.

The big question is, by awarding £300,000 to a man who has taken direct action, has the bank set a dangerous precedent for those distressed customers contemplating direct action? Wouldn’t it be great if they were in for loads more shi……I mean, bother?

 

Farmer David Cannon giving his bank some shit

London 2012, Proof That When You Give Bureaucrats An Olympian Sized Task, They Will Make An Olympian Sized Mess Of It!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The London Olympic Games 2012 will finish later today. I’m interested to see what they have in store for the closing ceremony, bearing in mind that the opening ceremony was good in parts, but confusing in others. 

As for the games themselves, after a shaky start I think you could say they were successful and very enjoyable for the public at large. I certainly enjoyed what I saw of them. 

But what the whole show did illustrate very well was the sheer stupidity and incompetence of the politicians and the bureaucrats. They took a large, but relatively simple event, and made a laughing stock out of themselves.

Why?

Simply because the politicians and bureaucrats thought they could run everything better than people who know about staging events like these. They can’t!

 

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Right from the start the inefficiency was evident in the vast rows of empty seats at the various venues.

It got a little better as the Games went on, but a friend of mine who was there on Thursday evening told me that even for the much heralded Men’s 200 meters showdown featuring the extremely popular Jamaican runner Usain Bolt, there were at least 500 vacant seats in the stadium.

 

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The problem was twofold.

First, a lot of tickets had been allocated to the corporate sector, far more than was necessary.

Second, for the rest of the people there was only one practical way to buy Olympic tickets, and that was through the ‘official’ government/bureaucrat controlled office.

These morons even tried to destroy normal commercial activity by making it a criminal offense for individuals to resell Olympic tickets.

But when you logged on to the government’s official website to try to buy tickets legally, bewildered visitors quickly found out that they had to jump through all sorts of ridiculous hoops to get them.

A bit like an airport arrivals lounge, UK residents were directed to follow one set of procedures; residents of the EU, but not of the UK, had another set of rules; and residents of other countries, yet another set.

Of course, you couldn’t just buy the tickets. First you had to set up an online profile, revealing all sorts of details about yourself that had not the slightest relevance to buying a ticket for the Games.

And when you’d finished all that you could print out your ticket, just like an electronic airline ticket or boarding pass.

Don’t be daft, of course you couldn’t. That would be far too efficient and sensible.

The bureaucrat way, despite the fact that they were directing everyone to use the online system, was to mail your tickets to you  -  hold on, let me repeat that  -  mail as in M-A-I-L, as in snail-mail NOT email – and they could only do that to the legal residency address you gave them in your profile.

Tough luck on “Johnny Foreigner” whose legal residency could have been on the other side of the world, in China, Australia, or New Zealand for example.

There was an alternative, if you could call it that. You could waste a few hours of your life going to one of the ticket offices, the locations of which the bureaucrats had ensured were in the most inconvenient places possible.

And when you eventually made it to the front of the queue you were confronted by a poorly trained and ever more poorly informed individual who had little idea what tickets were available at any given time.

The inefficiency of the availability of information was so staggering that an event that had been deemed ‘sold out’ at 10am, could turn out to have hundreds of seats available an hour or two later.

That was why there were thousands of empty seats. The bungling bureaucrats hadn’t even the wit to assign them to the soldiers who had been drafted in at the last minute because of another foul-up in employing a private security firm who had not the manpower to do the job.

So could you get tickets by other “illegal” means?

Well, of course you could. The bureaucrats desire for total control is as inefficient as everything else they do. The ticket touts were doing business as usual, but as usual they were charging two or three times the face value of the tickets. Whether that practice is right or wrong is a question for another time. But they couldn’t have done it had the idiots in charge not made such a hash of the whole thing.

I’m looking forward to see how they cope in Rio in 2016. My feeling is they should study what happened in London and do the complete opposite!

 

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One Lump, Or Two With Your Coffee?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I’ve discussed before in other blog posts that part of the reason for the problems we suffer these days is the direct result of the staggering number of stupid lawyers who are being allowed to qualify from our universities in spite of the fact that they are clearly unfit to hold down a proper job in the legal profession.

Thus we have many of them turning into ambulance chasers to try to eek out a living, whilst others encourage equally dumb people into taking spurious law suits against decent people and  businesses.

The judiciary does not help by their tolerance of junk law suits and by some of their decisions, the stupidity of which take one’s breath away.

We’ve had the morons who sue people like McDonalds because they say they didn’t know their hot coffee was hot or their iced coffee was cold.

But just when you thought you’d heard it all, in one recent case a man claimed caffeine drove him to molest women.

Kenneth Sands was convicted July 3 for groping two women and three teenage girls after a volleyball game in Onalaska, Oregon, on Oct. 18, 2011.

His sorry-assed defense?

Blame it on the caffeine.

Sands, a school bus driver for the Rainier School District, attempted to argue in court that caffeine “caused a psychotic episode,” reported KOMO News. “My son-in-law and daughter have never seen that kind of behavior from myself,” Sands, 51, told the court.

This “behavior” that Sands claims caffeine induced includes grabbing a 46-year-old woman’s breasts several times during the game and later trying to grab her butt as she tried to get away; grabbing a 15-year-old’s butt outside of a bus after the game, and then slapping a 16-year-old’s butt as she was getting on the bus. Sands climbed aboard the bus and touched yet another volleyball player before he was kicked off, the Lewis County sheriff’s office told KOMO.

Thankfully some sanity prevailed on this occasion and the court ruled that caffeine was not, in fact, the reason behind Sands’ aggressive and lewd behavior. He was sentenced to 30 days for each of the five counts of fourth-degree assault.

Sands’ caffeine defense might have been inspired by the “Twinkie defense,” ABC News suggests. San Francisco supervisor Dan White successfully avoided a first-degree murder conviction for the 1978 assassination of San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, claiming his sugary diet caused depression.

Dr. Martin Blinder, the psychiatrist who presented the “Twinkie defense” during the 1979 trial, told ABC News that caffeine could not hold up as a defense because it is made from coffee beans, which are all-natural. “We have no evidence that coffee is harmful,” Blinder told ABC.

Rest assured: drinking too much coffee will not turn you into a serial groper.

One lump, or two?

 

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Synchronized Grinning Is NOT A Sport, Olympic Or Otherwise

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I was making a comment on a post by AFrankAngle yesterday concerning the Olympic Games  -  the ones that  open tomorrow, but started yesterday. Confused? You should be.

 

synchronized grins

 

My contention was that synchronized grinning (okay, okay, swimming, but it was too good a line to waste) was not a sport, let alone an Olympic Sport. That’s not to say that it isn’t competitive, it is. Just that it is not a sport.

So why has it been included in the Olympics?

Simply because we have morons in charge of the Olympic Committees who decide such things.

Before anyone decides to hop, skip and jump to their defense, particularly over the synchronized swimming lark, think about this.

A few years ago, specifically in the Olympic Games held between 1984 and 1992, they also had the bright idea of including Solo Synchronized Swimming  -  which wasn’t a sport either.

It doesn’t take a giant intellect to realize that it is a challenge (i.e. not flipping possible) for a person swimming alone to be synchronized with someone else who is not there. The average person could figure that one out in under three minutes.

Yet it took the organizing idiots of the Olympic Committees three Games worth of years to figure it out.

I think solo synchronized swimming is what they call an oxymoron  -  and how very appropriate a name that is!

It wasn’t an isolated faux-pas either. They also tried underwater swimming in one Olympic games, but that was in the days before all-sorts-of-angle-tv coverage. They eventually figured out that it would be very unpopular with spectators coz no one could see anything! Maybe now with underwater cameras it could make a comeback, but let’s not encourage them.

And for a while other non-sport sports included Olympic Club Swinging, where the crazy participants swung a club around for a while. They didn’t let go of these things, which looked like bowling pins, or juggle with them which would have required an element of skill, just swung them around their head and body in various patterns.

That was probably the precursor to the modern Olympic Rhythmic Gymnastics discipline, i.e. running around with hoop, ball, ribbon and clubs. It also is not a sport.

But the problem is bigger than the Olympics, or getting the flags of North and South Korea mixed up (can you believe it!). It is a symptom of a much bigger malaise in our society, because we let the very same type of morons make other much more important decisions.

When morons are elevated to positions of power and influence they don’t get brains handed to them as part of their appointment, they are still morons. And morons make moronic decisions.

And when they do we suffer, not them. 

 

Flags of North and South Korea, so similar, er…NOT!

Stupid Bureaucrats Make Stupid Rules, And Get Even Stupider People to Enforce Them

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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One of the things that this blog is supposed to do is highlight the stupidity of needlessly meddling bureaucracy.

I recently read a reprint of an article by New York Times writer Anand Giridharadas about  governmental meddling. It went like this:

“Say you want to start a home catering business in New York city. According to the city government, you’d need, among other things,

• a food protection certificate,
• a food service establishment permit,
• a gas authorization, 
• professionally installed range hoods,
• a licensed carting company for waste,
• registration as a sales tax vendor
• compliance with portable fire extinguisher rules
• and the unincorporated business tax.”

That’s a pretty formidable list; and it doesn’t even include state and federal registrations and compliance.

It’s just one small example. There are a similar host of needless rules and regulations in every industry whether it be construction, catering, or whatever. The stupid rules are enforced by equally stupid people. And it is crushing the life out of businesses.

Although a lot of the regulations you read about on the internet are not for real, nevertheless the European Union is notorious for passing idiotic and unnecessary legislation. And to be quite candid the US government is no better. It now has an “alphabet agency” for just about everything for no other reason in many cases other than to watch, track and tightly control virtually everything that we do.  In 1936, the Federal Register, which is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies consisted of about 2,600 pages; today, it is over 80,000 pages long and growing.

A recent article on a web site called businessinsider.com went on…

But it is not just the federal government that is ramming thousands of ridiculous regulations down our throats.  The truth is that in many cases state and local governments are far worse.  We have become a nation that is run and dominated by bureaucrats.  Yes, there always must be rules in a society, but we have gotten to the point where there are so many millions of rules that the game has become unplayable.

Here are a few examples. While you are reading them, just think about the warped minds that think up this stuff, but then also think about why we (the normal people) continue to tolerate this nonsense. And it is getting worse at an alarmingly accelerating rate.

They are more absurd than funny, but the last one might even throw a scare into you!

 

 

The state of Louisiana says that monks must be fully licensed as funeral directors and actually convert their monasteries into licensed funeral homes before they will be allowed to sell their handmade wooden caskets.

 

In the state of Massachusetts, all children in daycare centers are mandated by state law to brush their teeth after lunch.  In fact, the state even provides the fluoride toothpaste for the children.

 

Federal agents recently raided an Amish farm at 5am in the morning because they were selling “unauthorized” raw milk.

 

In Lake Elmo, Minnesota farmers can be fined $1000 and put in jail for 90 days for selling pumpkins or Christmas trees that are grown outside city limits.

 

A U.S. District Court judge slapped a $500 fine on Massachusetts fisherman Robert J. Eldridge for untangling a giant whale from his nets and setting it free.  So what was his crime?  Well, according to the court, Eldridge was supposed to call state authorities and wait for them do it.

 

In the state of Texas, it doesn’t matter how much formal interior design education you have – only individuals with government licenses may refer to themselves as “interior designers” or use the term “interior design” to describe their work.

 

Deeply hidden in the 2,409-page health reform bill passed by Congress was a new regulation that will require U.S. businesses to file millions more 1099s each year.  In fact, it is estimated that the average small business will now have to file 200 additional 1099s every single year.  Talk about a nightmare of red tape!  But don’t try to avoid this rule – it is being reported that the IRS has hired approximately 2,000 new auditors to audit as many of these 1099s as possible.

 

The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin makes it incredibly difficult to go out of business. In order to close down a business, Milwaukee requires you to purchase an expensive license, you must submit a huge pile of paperwork to the city regarding the inventory you wish to sell off, and you must pay a fee based on the length of your “going out of business sale” plus a two dollar charge for every $1,000 worth of inventory that you are attempting to sell off.

 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer.

 

The city of Philadelphia now requires all bloggers to purchase a $300 business privilege license.  The city even went after one poor woman who had earned only $11 from her blog over the past two years.

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Are The Banksters Guilty Of Treason Against The Nation?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?

Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” 

Ovid / Sir John Harrington

 

When I first though about this subject for a post on my blog, I had America mainly in my mind, I suppose because that is where the rot started to show. But when I though about it a little more I quickly realized that the same charge could equally be brought against the banksters in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, France and in fact the entire European Union.

They took money that was not theirs, that was placed in trust with them for safe and responsible stewardship, and they gambled it and lost it. 

Then they used their influence on stupid politicians to steal the honest taxpayer’s money to fill up their coffers again. They were apparently too big to fail – what an utter load of nonsense!

They promised when they were stealing OUR money that they would use it to make loans to businesses and thereby stimulate and reactivate the economy that they themselves had brought to a standstill when they lost OUR original cash in stupid and foolhardy deals that no one with any brains or any sense of responsibility to their clients would have dared to go near.

They lied.

 

The banksters lied to us

 

They took OUR money for the second time and kept it for themselves. A lot of it went on bonuses, sometimes in the tens of millions of dollars. A reward to themselves for staggering incompetence.

In any other industry, if you were so bad at your job as to bankrupt your company, you would not only be fired but stand a good chance of being charged with fraud or negligence or something. But if you are a bankster and have successfully sold the lie that you are “too big to fail”, then you get away with it. It doesn’t hurt if you have a few politicians in your pocket either! 

And, apart from paying yourself huge bonuses for losing OUR money the first time, what do you do with the proceeds of stealing OUR money the second time? Well, of course, first you give yourself another big pay rise, and then you gamble again and lose even more of OUR money.

Remember the J P Morgan $2billion loss – er, make that a $9billion loss would you. Just as Hillary Clinton “mis-spoke” when she lied to the public, J P Morgan “mis-counted” the first time they declared the extent of their incompetence! We probably have not heard the truth yet.

Banksters – the best we have???

And President Obama has the gall to tell the world that these morons and liars are “the best we have”! Seriously? Do you really expect the people to believe that? I don’t think so. I certainly hope not.

But the J P Morgan $2billion loss turning out to be a $9billion loss is just the tip of a colossal  iceberg. This one is a hell of a lot bigger than the one that sank the Titanic  -  it’s threatening to sink entire countries.

 

Banksters Motto: Greed Before Country

The public and even the various governments have not been made aware of the full extent of the catastrophic losses these idiots (remember the best we have) have made. All the big banks, whether in the US, or Britain, or Spain or France or wherever are furiously cooking their books and have been for the last five years. Their companies are insolvent, they are bankrupt, but they are hiding the truth from everyone.  

This is fraud.

In fact, because of the power that they have, and the impact their stupidity inevitably has on the entire national economy, what they have done and are continuing to do is commit treason.

In a country run by Joe Stalin or Saddam Hussein (perhaps proving that not everyone is all bad all of the time) these treacherous banksters would have been put up against a wall and shot. That may be a bit extreme for us, but at the very least they should lose their jobs, have their stashes of personal wealth confiscated, and be thrown into jail. If it was good enough for a thief like ponzi king, Madoff, it should be good enough for thieves like them.

End rant, cue a few videos on the subject.

Enjoy!

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A view from Britain

 

A view from Ireland

 

 The best government money can buy

 

Understanding The Financial Crisis–For Kids and Grownups