Category Archives: Government

UPDATED: ‘See a Shrink, Lose Your Guns’ (And To Hell With HIPAA)

Government, Individual Rights, Law, Psychiatry, Regulation

“Expect a reduction in the use of counseling services among gun owners,” BAB warned on December 24, 2012. If he thinks that his doctor is likely to pass on information about his mental state to federal or state authorities, how likely is a gun owner to seek help for psychological/marital/familial problems? Not very likely.”

And indeed a troika of traitors—Senators Pat Toomey (R) and Joe Manchin (D), with Chuck Schumer working behind the scenes—are seeking “an amendment in the bill to HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act),” caution the Gun Owners of America.

“…you could have your guns taken away because your private shrink thinks you’re ‘dangerous’ and could send your name directly to the FBI Instant Check system. Did you think it was terrible that 150,000 military veterans had been added into the NICS system because they’d seen a VA shrink about their PTSD? Well guess what? Now it’s going to happen to the rest of the population … by the millions!”

As with all government regulation, there will be unintended consequences that’ll immeasurably compound the problem the proposed, new gun legislation is intended to “remedy.”

Fearing the loss of a natural right to self defense, individuals will avoid seeking help for life’s stressors.

UPDATE: TO HELL WITH HIPAA. “HIPAA Laws,” reports The Blaze, “are likely being compromised and the 4th and 5th Amendments violated,” as New York gestapo proceed to confiscate “weapons and permits where someone has been prescribed psychotropic drugs.”

Show Me The Way, Big Brother

Democrats, English, Government, Healthcare, Taxation, The State

Obama is sending the health care we have to hell in a handcart, for the ostensible benefit of less than ten percent of the population: the uninsured. Large-scale destruction in the purported service of the few.

This week came news that Big Brother will have to appoint “navigators” to show the beneficiaries of this bankrupting law the way: 21,000 navigators in California alone translates into 140,000 of them nation wide, a bureaucratic army that will swell the already swollen federal oink sector.

Navigator pay will run from $20 to $48 per hour, almost $100,000 a year for one federal oinker, for a total of between $5-10 billion, estimates Pat Buchanan.

In California alone navigators will cost between $871 million and $2 billion a year.

These navigators will likely be minorities who speak the languages of the welfariat for which the Obama Care has been designed.

Oh, and by the way, “Would you like to take the opportunity to register to vote?”

Since the chosen workers will be Obama’s pepes—community organizers, union folks and planned parenthood advisers—recruiting new Democrats will be of the essence.


Balderdash From Berkeley: Taxing Email To Fund Your Local Post Office

Free Markets, Government, Regulation, Taxation, Technology

Given a choice, why would you want to fund the United States Postal Service?

CNN: “A city councilman in Berkeley [where else?], California, floated the idea of taxing emails as part of a broader Internet tax that could be used… to fund your local post office.”

MATT WELCH, of REASON MAGAZINE:

This is like taxing, you know, horse and buggies or taxing cars to keep horse and buggies business. Why are we taxing the great new thing so that we can prop up the bad old thing? It’s completely backwards.
It’s — I mean, the fact that it’s coming in Berkeley, which is not a punch line, it’s the home of the free speech movement 50 years ago, for crying out loud. And we’re going to put a punitive tax on one of the greatest free speech instruments in our lifetime. It’s absurd and sad.
…there’s a thing called an e-mail filter. I mean, I don’t know what you use, but I haven’t seen my cousin from Nigeria e- mail for more than a year simply because there is a spam filter that works, a spam filter that no government gave me, no tax created, no bureaucrat. …
The government is not a jobs program. It just isn’t. It shouldn’t be, rightfully so. And so, the fact that Congress won’t allow a single post office to shut down is part of the problem. If you lift the mandate and open everything up to competition, it would be a much different story.

REIHAN SALAM of National Review:

We have these amazing things called private companies that have actually mostly solved this problem. These days, most of unsolicited mail you get goes into a spam folder and those services are getting better and better over time. … Already people are migrating from one technology that becomes crappy and clogged with spam to another technology. …What the post service does now, the bulk of what they send is what I like to call physical spam which is actually worse for the environment. It’s rather unpleasant and now the postal service is saying the federal government has undermined them by saying they’re saying we have to adequately fund our pension, that’s crazy talk.
And so postal employees are funding ads on my television that are visual spam that are telling us this is some grave injustice they should fund these crazy pension obligations they have built up over years. …
But I don’t see every other industry should have to subsidize postal carries, because they are struggling [and can] use those resources to provide innovative new services.

Read “Warning: Postal Worker Coming to A Clinic Near You” for my “seven-year saga” with the local post office worker’s “sadistic displays of power, honed in a state monopoly, where captive ‘customers’ are pinned down like butterflies by ‘service providers.’ The discretion left to these petty tyrants is wide; fear of being fired minimal, if non-existent.”

Happy Days Are Here Again In … La-La Land

Britain, Debt, Economy, Government, Inflation

Across the pond, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is singing from the Bush and Obama hymn sheet. A neo- Keynesian naturally, Osborne is intent on excessive spending as a model of economic growth. What better way than a housing bubble to bring about that brief burst of spending before the bust?

Tightening credit conditions and foreclosures signal to this man (counter-intuitively, of course) that it is time for the debt-laden borrower to borrow more money he can’t repay; that it is time for those who do not spend money they don’t have, to subsidize those who do.

It’s all good, promises Bloomberg.com:

Osborne yesterday pledged 3.5 billion pounds ($5.3 billion) to help buyers of new homes with loans of as much as 20 percent of the property’s value, broadening an existing program beyond first-time purchasers. He also announced a plan to guarantee as much as 130 billion pounds of new mortgages to fuel demand from purchasers with limited cash for a deposit.

At least the chancellor delivered a 2013 budget. At a glance, here are “the key points of Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget,” via BBC News (a doff of the hat to our friend in the UK):

FUEL, ALCOHOL AND CIGARETTES
September’s 3p fuel duty rise scrapped
April’s 3p rise in beer duty scrapped. Instead, beer duty to be cut by 1p
Annual inflation +2% rise in beer duty to be ended but “duty escalator” to remain in place for wine, cider and spirits
Cigarette duties unchanged – continuing to rise by inflation +5%

INCOME TAX
Limit at which people start paying tax to be raised to £10,000 in 2014 – a year earlier than planned

HOUSING
Shared equity schemes extended, with interest-free loans for homebuyers up to 20% of value of new-build properties
Bank guarantees to underpin £130bn of new mortgage lending for three years from 2014

STATE OF THE ECONOMY
Growth forecast for 2013 halved to 0.6% from 1.2% in December
Office for Budget Responsibility watchdog predicts UK will escape recession this year
Growth predicted to be 1.8% in 2014; 2.3% in 2015; 2.7% in 2016 and 2.8% in 2017.

BORROWING
Borrowing of £114bn this year, up from previous £108bn forecast
Borrowing set to fall to £108bn, £97bn and £87bn, £61bn and £42bn in subsequent years
Borrowing as share of GDP to fall from 7.4% in 2013-14 to 5% in 2015-16
Debt as a share of GDP to increase from 75.9% in 2012-13 to 85.6% in 2016-17

SPENDING AND PAY
Most government departments to see budgets cut by 1% in each of next two years
Schools and NHS will be protected
£11.5bn in further cuts earmarked in 2015-16 Spending Review, up from £10bn
1% cap on public sector pay extended to 2015-16 and limits on “progression” pay rises in the sector
Military to be exempt from “progression” pay limits.
Proceeds of Libor banking fines to be given to good military causes, including Combat Stress charity

JOBS
600,000 more jobs expected this year than at same time last year
Claimant count to fall by 60,000

TRANSPORT AND INFRASTRUCTURE
An extra £15bn for new road, rail and construction projects by 2020, starting with £3bn in 2015-16

HELP FOR BUSINESS
Corporation tax to be cut by 1% to 20% in 2015
New employment allowance to cut National Insurance bills cut by £2,000 for every firm
450,000 small firms will pay no employer National Insurance
Government procurement from small firms to rise fivefold
Tax relief for investment in social enterprises
Stamp duty axed on shares traded on growth markets like Aim.
Tax avoidance and evasion measures, including agreements with Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, aimed at recouping £3bn in unpaid taxes

ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Tax incentives for ultra low-emission cars
Pottery industry in Midlands to be exempt from climate change levy
Tax allowances for investment in shale gas

INFLATION
2% Bank of England inflation target to stay in place
Bank remit to be changed to focus on growth as well as inflation

PENSIONERS
Single flat-rate pension of £144 a week brought forward a year to 2016
Cap on social care costs confirmed

FAMILIES
20% tax relief on childcare up to £6,000 per child from 2015
£5,000 payments for those who lost money on Equitable Life policies bought before 1992. Extra money for those on low incomes