Tag Archives: freedom

Hotel Maryland

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You can check in, but you can’t check out.

Netflix’ show, House of Cards, is about cut-throat politics at its worst, it’s hugely successful, and it’s filmed in Maryland.  And therein lies the rub.

The show’s producers, Media Rights Capital, now want a larger set of tax credits, given that success.  If they can’t get an increase, MRC says it’ll move its filming location to another state where it can get a better deal for its proven product.  Fair enough.  The filming produces income for the state’s economy and for the state, even with the current credit structure, and that success is expected to continue.

The state demurs.  That government wants to keep the credit levels where they are.  Also fair enough.  Those credits are their cost (regardless of what we might think about whose money those credits really is), and the state would like to minimize the cost of its own business-doing.

Such matters should be the stuff of negotiation between the two parties, and if they can’t agree on terms, the two parties should be able simple to part ways.

But the State of Maryland now has gone off the rails.

The House of Delegates now is threatening to seize MRC’s production studios under government’s eminent domain powers if they attempt to go somewhere else.  Never mind that there’s no public use—or even public purpose—to such a seizure; the taking would be nothing more than government-sanctioned theft of private property.

Folks might want to think twice about moving a business to Maryland, or keeping one there.  It’s a short step to a neighboring state, none of which seems inclined to keep businesses prisoner.

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door.
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before.
“Relax,” said the Delegate,
“We are programmed to receive.
“You can check out any time you like,
“But you can never leave.”

 

With apologies to the Eagles.

Another 2nd Amendment Threat from DoJ

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All for the very best of intentions, of course.

This time Attorney General Eric Holder wants to use bracelets that must be worn by lawful gun users as a means of electronically tying the firearm to its lawful owner.

I think that one of the things that we learned when we were trying to get passed those common sense reforms last year, Vice President Biden and I had a meeting with a group of technology people and we talked about how guns can be made more safe.

By making them either through finger print identification, the gun talks to a bracelet or something that you might wear, how guns can be used only by the person who is lawfully in possession of the weapon.

(“Common sense”—they stayed up all night memorizing that phrase a few years ago, and now they’re doing their best to wear it out, including in places where their sense plainly is lacking.)

And he wants to spend $2 million of our hard-earned tax dollars on this…idea.

Such a mechanism is just one more point of failure in an American’s exercise of his fundamental right.  Any such linkage can be hacked, either to enable a criminal to use a stolen weapon or to enable a criminal to disable a weapon in the hands of its lawful owner trying to defend himself.

More importantly, though, such a mechanism is just another tool in the hands of an intrusive government to identify who owns firearms, and thus to get sub rosa registration; to track that owner as he legally uses his firearms; and—that hack—to disable the firearm whenever a legal owner/operator becomes inconvenient to that intrusive government.

In fact, such technology would be highly useful to us legal owner/operators.  It must, however, be a voluntary addition to our weapons, with the choice made solely by us.

Ukrainian Independence

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Ukraine’s overwhelming vote for independence from Russia in 1991, including those oblasts in the southeast where Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity live and the Crimea oblast, whose population is majority Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity, has been confirmed by a March 2014 Gallup poll, a poll that covered all of Ukraine, including occupied Crimea.

Ukrainians of all backgrounds and from every corner of the country reject Vladimir Putin’s decision to send Russian troops to Ukraine to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians, with 81% of those surveyed expressing opposition to the move and 13% in favor.

And note especially:

85% of Ukrainians said that Russian-speaking citizens are not threatened, an opinion shared by 66% of ethnic Russians themselves.  74% of Ukrainians living in both the south and the east, regions where Russians claim protection is most needed, responded that Russian-speaking Ukrainians were not under threat because of their language.

And this:

a majority of Ukrainians…believed Crimea should remain part of Ukraine, with 57% in the south and 52% in the east supporting the status quo ante.

So much for the legitimacy of the Russian Anschluss or for the legitimacy of the Kerry-Obama timidity and moral equivalence equivocation in the face of Putin’s aggression.

Talk About Paranoia

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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) has committed the dastardly deed of posting on his Facebook and Twitter feeds, references to a Biblical verse: Philippians 4:13.  The meaning of this verse, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” is less important than Scott’s purpose in posting it and the hue and cry raised over it by the atheists of the Left.  Walker’s Press Secretary Laurel Patrick, had this to say of that purpose:

While [Governor Walker] frequently uses his social media to engage with Wisconsinites on matters of public policy, he also uses it to give them a sense of who he is.  This does just that—it was a reflection of his thoughts for the day.

On the other hand, Freedom From Religion Foundation really has its collective knickers in a twist.

This braggadocio verse coming from a public official is rather disturbing.  To say, “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me,” seems more like a threat, or the utterance of a theocratic dictator, than a duly elected civil servant.

A threat?  Really!?  And where is the diktat involved here?  In what way is Walker ordering anyone else to do anything?

In what way is a man required to check his ethos—or his religion—at the door when he goes to work?  Should Walker also check his Judeo-Christian requirement to help the least among us at the door, too?

Come to that, where is the FFRF on government welfare—that use of taxpayer dollars, that use of FFRF members’ tax dollars—to support this Christian effort by government?

This would be bad parody, except that the FFRF and other If-It-Offends-Me-It-Must-Be-Unconstitutional crowd are deadly serious.  Instead, it’s just a disturbing level of paranoia.

What is it

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…with Liberals and uniformity?  I mentioned here a Liberal Justice’s fear of “the noisiness of republican democracy.”  Following is an example from near the other end of the jurisdictional spectrum.

It seems a grade schooler at the Caprock Academy in Grand Junction, CO, shaved her head in solidarity for a classmate and friend who was undergoing cancer treatment and in the process losing her own hair.  This got the grade schooler expelled from Caprock: such a thing violated the school’s precious dress code.

Never mind that shaving heads is a widespread and well-known act for the purpose: solidarity and emotional support for someone who is losing their own hair from a cancer treatment régime.  Never mind that the Caprock administrators knew the purpose of this girl’s head-shaving.  No: Get outta here.

The school’s excuse?  Unbelievably, it’s this.  Caprock’s President and Board of Directors Chairman, Catherine Norton Breman, said the school’s dress code

was created to promote safety, uniformity, and a non-distracting environment for the school’s students.  Under this policy, shaved heads are not permitted.

Uniformity.  No exceptions.  In what way, exactly, is supporting a friend in her extended hour of need in any way unsafe or distracting to other students?

In what way, exactly, is non-uniformity such a fearful thing?  Especially in an environment where students are supposed to be learning to think—and to think for themselves—is non-uniformity such a terrifying thing?

Of whom, or of what philosophy, are Liberals trying to make all of us—all of our children—unthinking, carbon copy acolytes?

I should note that, in the end, the girl’s expulsion from school only lasted one day, and she was allowed back to school the following Tuesday.  The school’s directors also were to meet—behind closed doors, of course—to “discuss” this thing.  The questions above remain though: of what is this bunch of Liberals, and all Liberals, apparently—so terrified of people, or children, not being all alike?