Sunday - November 09, 2008
Waves of EU law leave us foundering.
Generally, Christopher Booker writes every week exposing the fraud that is gorebal warming and enviro-wackos.
Waves of EU law leave us foundering
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 09/11/2008One of the mysteries of our time is the perennial reluctance of so many politicians and journalists to explain how much of the mess we are making of the business of government in this country derives from the avalanche of new laws, policies and decisions pouring out of our hidden government in Brussels. Everywhere we look, businesses and other organisations are struggling in the miasma of confusion this creates, where it is no longer clear who is responsible for the laws they must obey, or what those laws are or are meant to say.
One recent example was the row which blew up over a ruling by Ofcom that one of Britain’s most admired charities, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), must increase its annual payment for using a dedicated radio wavelength, from £38,000 to £260,000. This meant that a quarter of a million pounds of the public donations that the RNLI relies on for its lifesaving work would be siphoned off as, in effect, a tax.
This was widely reported as an outrage in Scotland, though strangely ignored in England. But what somehow did not get mentioned was why Ofcom had imposed this staggering increase. It turns out that six years ago, with directive 2002/20, control of radio wavelengths was assumed by the EU. Under its interpretation of EU law, Ofcom decided that it would have to set up a complex new system to manage the wavebands allocated to public services such as the RNLI and mountain rescue teams, necessitating a huge rise in their fees.
The ensuing protest was so great that Ofcom has backtracked on its reading of EU law, deciding that, instead of raising its charges to the RNLI, it may now actually be able to reduce them to £20,000.
Not so lucky, however, is the Post Office which, it was announced last week, may have to close another 3,000 of its branches if, in 2010, as seems likely, it loses its contract to hand out pensions and other benefits which provide sub-postmasters with 12 per cent of their income.
Some of this won’t be of much interest to American viewers of this site so please let me explain as best I can, just a fraction of one of the problems caused by this Labour (read left)_ govt.
This thing about a contract to hand out pensions works thus. Older folks who are retired and have a pension are issued a card, just like a credit card. Each week money goes into an account and they can take that card to any post office either once a week, as we must do, or just once a month. They don’t even have to draw out all that’s in there but just what they need as they need it provided the funds are there.
Last year the govt. closed 2500 local and rural post offices including ours. This village of 600 families has had a post office for well over 100 years.
Even before that but the last 100 have been continuous. You can’t begin to imagine the honest hardship for many. Not me personally, but many very much older folks. Our post office was located in a place with parking for tons of cars because it’s located next to the village hall and playground.
I call it a playground because I can’t remember what the locals call it. Anyway, tons of parking.
Some older folks do not drive or can not drive btw, and the bus into the next village goes in once or 2wice a day. For all practical purposes, we really don’t have a bus into the next village.
But the govt. now has us going into another village where parking is almost impossible and if I took a photo you’d understand.. Where our post office was self contained, this other PO is in a convenience store and the line between the store’s register and the line for mail etc. often merge. Of course the waits are longer as you may well imagine. There was a meeting last year to “consult” with the ppl of the village before making a decision.
Well what a load of lying CRAP that was. They already had the decision made long before the so called, “consultation,” which we all know is no more then tossing the dog a bone. They are now set to close another 3,000 post offices around the country.
But the bastards have enough cash to fund muslims who “can’t be deported for humanitarian reasons” and they somehow found BILLIONS of pounds (dollars) for the 2012 Olympics. I won’t even start on the lifeboat thing mentioned above. Least, not here right now.
Again, what was not reported was the reason: the requirement, under EU procurement directives, that the contract, which cost the Post Office £1 billiion to set up, must be put out to tender. It is these directives which have already lost the Post Office its contracts to supply other public services, such as the provision of TV and driving licences which earned it £168 million a year, more than the £150 million which, by agreement with Brussels, it receives in state subsidy. By continually undermining its income in this way, the EU has played a key part in that closure programme which has already inconvenienced millions of customers and now seems set to get worse.
( Right. When we get mail from the states, most often it is stamped, Deutsch Post. What does that say? And if any of you think that what happens here is not duplicated in the USA, think again. Over a year ago a new way of weighting and charging for mail in the USA and including SIZE of whatever was being mailed, went into effect some months after being introduced here, and that was AFTER being introduced in Europe, as it was explained to me.)It was also reported last week that vast quantities of packaging waste collected for recycling - paper, plastic and cans - may have to be stored in warehouses or piled up on old airfields, because of a collapse in demand for recycling waste from China and elsewhere. The hidden part of this shambles is the fact that how we collect and dispose of our rubbish is dictated by laws imposed on us by Brussels, which are supposedly intended to phase out the burying of waste in holes in the ground and encourage recycling.
A recurring theme of this column in recent years has been the colossal hypocrisy of the system thus devised to enable Britain to meet its EU “recycling” targets. The only way we have been able to pretend that we were meeting these targets was by cheaply shipping to Asia millions of tons of the waste we collect for recycling, using the same container ships that brought much of it to Britain in the first place. Much of this waste was not recycled at all, but simply consigned to unregulated dumps, But as I warned here in November 2006, “if countries such as China become less willing to take so much of our waste, we could find ourselves in serious trouble”.
With the collapse of the export trade that provided those container ships, that is precisely what has happened. Our monstrous bluff has been called. And in a year’s time, as waste piles up around Britain, we shall face fines of hundreds of millions of pounds a year from Brussels for failing to meet its targets.
Finally, a highly-enterprising British industry last week faced a crisis, thanks to a new tax introduced, so our Government insists, to comply with EU law. It turns out to be nothing of the kind.
OSS, based in Liverpool and employing 170 people, has in recent years invested heavily in the technology which enables it to collect 330,000 tons a year of used oil from 22,000 garages, factories and other workplaces round the country, and recycle it into Clean Fuel Oil, as pure as any virgin oil from a refinery.
When Brussels insisted, under its Energy Tax directive (2003/96), that recycled waste oil should be taxed, several EU countries, led by Britain, strongly objected. They protested that this would make recycled oil uncompetitive, thus losing a valuable resource and encouraging the illegal disposal of waste oil in ways that would be harnful to the environment. Brussels rejected their pleas, but allowed that the tax could be as little as 1p a litre.
Astonishingly, however, the UK Government then forgot all its earlier objections. Last week, claiming it had been forced to do so by Brussels, it imposed the same tax on recycled oil as it levies on other oil - 9.29p a litre. This raises the cost of recycled oil by 30 per cent, making it uncompetitive.
Other countries have imposed the tax at the minimum level Brussels allows. In France, recycled oil is taxed at only £12 a ton; here the tax is £105. As Andy McNair, the chief executive of OSS, puts it, this “would make it cheaper to transport our oil to France than to sell it here”. It is hardly surprising that, having been betrayed by our Government in this way over a business worth nearly £200 million a year, OSS executives were last week locked in crisis meetings wondering where to go next.
Similar crises are all too frequent these days, yet how rarely they are properly explained or reported by those whose responsibility it should be to do so. Oddly, the politicians and newspapers that fail to explain this kind of nonsense all claim to support Britain’s membership of the EU. If they are genuinely in favour of this curious form of government - and that, after all, is precisely what the EU is - should they not be rather happier to tell us how it works in practice, rather than so consistently hiding it away?
SECRET SERVICE SAYS OBAMA DEATH THREATS ARE THE FAULT OF SARAH PALIN. OH GREAT.
I suppose this is the beginning of another possible witch hunt.
What the heck is going on? Is our own Secret Service becoming as loony as the political left?
The so called “supremacists” are themselves moonbats and totally out of touch with reality. They need little excuse to commit mayhem and murder.
If Mrs. Palin called O’s patriotism into question, and I haven’t seen the exact quote which doesn’t mean she did not do that, I don’t see that as encouragement to white supremacists. They never needed encouragement before her implied remarks, and I don’t see why whatever they planned should be dropped at her feet. Unless, and here’s an idea,
IT’S ALL POLITICAL. Nah ... couldn’t be that.
Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama
Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama’s patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.
By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 4:04PM GMT 08 Nov 2008The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling “terrorist” and “kill him” until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.
Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: “Why would they try to make people hate us?”
The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are likely to further damage Mrs Palin’s credentials as a future presidential candidate. She is already a frontrunner, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, to take on Mr Obama in four years time.
Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by security and intelligence analysts Stratfor, warned that he is a high risk target for racist gunmen. It concluded: “Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues.”
Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election, claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama’s patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain.
That claim is part of a campaign of targeted leaks designed to torpedo her ambitions, with claims that she did not know that Africawas a continent rather than a country.
The advisers have branded her a “diva” and a “whack job” and claimed that she did not know which other countries are in the North American Free Trade Area, (Canada and Mexico). They say she spent more than $150,000 on designer clothes, including $40,000 on her husband Todd and that she refused to prepare for the disastrous series of interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric.
In a bid to salvage her reputation Mrs Palin came out firing in an interview with CNN, dismissing the anonymous leakers in unpresidential language as “jerks” who had taken “questions or comments I made in debate prep out of context.”
(Well now it might be a tad “unpresidential” but guess what? IT’S GOOD OLD PLAIN AMERICAN ENGLISH and I for one love it. She called em as she saw them. GO SARAH!)She said: “I consider it cowardly. It’s not true. That’s cruel, it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news that’s not fair and not right.”
She was not asked about her incendiary rhetoric against Mr Obama. But she did deny the spending spree claims, saying the clothes in question had been returned to the Republican National Committee. “Those are the RNC’s clothes, they’re not my clothes. I asked for anything more than maybe a diet Dr Pepper once in a while. These are false allegations.”
Speaking as she returned to her native Alaska, Mrs Palin claimed to be baffled by what she claims was sexism on the national stage. “Here in Alaska that double standard isn’t applied because these guys know that Alaskan women are pretty tough, on a par with the men in terms of being outdoors, working hard,” she said.
“They’re commercial fishermen, they’re pilots, they’re working up on the North slopein the oil fields. You see equality in Alaska. I think that was a bit of as surprise on the national level.”
TO MY DEAR FRIENDS IN BRITAIN. OBAMA CAN NOT SAVE YOU FROM THIS LUNACY. ONLY YOU CAN!
AS ONE WHO HAS LONG ADMIRED AND OFTEN BEEN MADDENED BY THINGS BRITISH, INCLUDING MY OWN DEAR WIFE,
I really can’t view this as anything but another bit of Moonbat lunacy that is eroding and bringing down this country.
The process started long ago, there hasn’t been any real public outrage or revolt save for the few letters to an editor here and there. As an outsider in a manner of speaking, maybe I shouldn’t point that out. But if many Brits have some sort of right to point out failings in my country and even get involved in our internal laws re. guns and gun control, then I figure I have a right to comment on the lunacy here.
HOW’S THIS FOR OUTRAGE:
A week ago I happened to see a short blurb with regard to just what flags a Brit could have on their car license plate. The flag of England? Wales? Scotland? Oh no,no! Do it and you will be fined.
The EU flag?
Sure thing. In fact, the Eu flag is already on all the newer plates that roll off the production line.
When (not if) you folks start seeing that back home in USA, you’ll know it’s definitely time to break out the ammo.
“Singing from the same hymn sheet” may upset atheists.
Town hall staff have been banned from using the phrase ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ because it could upset atheists.
By Chris Hastings, Public Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 7:20AM GMT 09 Nov 2008Salisbury council has told employees that the religious connotations of the saying, which has been in common parlance for centuries, can offend non-believers.
(THAT IS PURE B.S.! Where do these nuts get ideas like this? Do they have to stay up all night dreaming up this stuff? Must do I guess. They need to spend more time in their new Obama church worshiping their new messiah. And even he couldn’t think up this. Least I hope not. )
The same authority has also instructed officials not to use the phrase ‘colour blind’ but instead to refer to a person as having ‘colour visual impairment’.
Other councils have instructed staff to be careful about using the word ‘black’ as well as ‘British’, because they could upset people, while the phrase ‘West Indian’ should also be avoided.
The instructions, which have been criticised for showing excessive political correctness, come a week after The Sunday Telegraph revealed that several authorities had banned basic Latin phrases such as ‘ad hoc’, ‘etc’ and ‘status quo’ because they were too complicated for people to understand.
The advice from Salisbury council says: “Avoid office and council jargon wherever possible, including phrases such as ‘moving forward’ and ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’.
Say what you mean, so instead of ‘moving forward’ try ‘in the future’. Not everyone understand these phrases – some can actually cause offence (what would an atheist want with your hymn sheet?).”
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, last night condemned the move.
“I think it has gone far too far,” he said. “The phrase has been around for a very long time and is very common. I use it myself. Of course we should all avoid phrases which can cause unnecessary offence, but this isn’t one of them.”
Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark, last night accused the council of excessive politically correctness.
“This is complete nonsense and yet another example of political correctness being dictated by someone who doesn’t understand religious faith,” he said.
The Royal National Institute for the Blind said it avoided the term “visual impairment’; a spokesman said: “We always use the terms ‘blind’ and ‘partially sighted’ when talking to members of the public.”
Other local authorities across the country have also declared war on particular words and phrases which they consider racist, sexist, nationalistic or homophobic.
Caerphilly council in Wales has asked staff to be careful about using the phrase British, because “it implies a false sense of unity” and is upsetting to many people in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
The council’s written guidance to staff states: “Many would argue that one way to denote ethnic minority people in this country would be to describe them as ‘British Asians’, ‘Chinese British’ etc.
One advantage is that by referring to two ethnicities it avoids any suggestion that a person has to choose between them for identity.
However, the idea of ‘British’ implies a false sense of unity – many Scots, Welsh and Irish resist being called British and the land denoted by the term contains a wide variety of cultures, languages and religions.”
In guidance on the issue of race, the same council has asked staff to be “sensitive to the many negative connotations relating to the word ‘black’ in the English language (black leg, black list, black spot etc)”
Watford council has banned the term West Indian because “it’s inappropriate and never used in the Caribbean”. Yet the Caribbean cricket team is known as the West Indies and dozens of British organisations are proud to advertise their West Indian credentials in their names.
Andrew Roberts, the broadcaster and historian said: “The British West Indian regiment won 19 military crosses during World War One. It is a slur on their memory that the title ‘West Indian’ should be singled out by some know-nothing, politically-correct bureaucrat.”
Kathy Lette, the author and broadcaster, said: “Political correction is a vowel cancer eating away at the English language. The PC police are not just washing our mouths out with soap, they’re dipping our mother tongue in disinfectant - and the taste is terrible.
Watford council has also told staff to replace ‘able-bodied’ with ‘non-disabled’, and not to use the term ‘homosexual’. It prefers the description ‘gay man’.
Several councils including Amber Valley, Broadland, Salisbury and North Yorkshire have banned words and phrases they consider sexist and which exclude ‘members of our audience’.
Salisbury has told staff to avoid “gender-specific roles” such as ‘cleaning lady’ and ‘ten man team’. It prefers the descriptions ‘cleaner’ and ‘ten strong team’. Amber Valley has banned such terms as ‘man made’, ‘man in the street’, ‘manning’ and ‘one man show’, replacing them with ‘synthetic’, ‘people in general’, ‘staffing’ and ‘one person show’. Broadland council in Norfolk has replaced ‘housewife’ with ‘homemaker’ and substituted ‘partner’ for ‘husband’ and ‘wife’.
Many councils say they are instituting ‘plain English’ policies to make their communications easier to understand.
Poole council said it had spent an undisclosed sum on a “successful plain English day last year” and was now booking additional sessions.
The plain English message seems to be struggling to hit home however.
In reply to The Sunday Telegraph’s Freedom of Information request, Poole council stated that it was booking the extra sessions due to “strong demand from our service functions”. The council also said it had issued a better English guide “to all our communication network facilitators”.
on 11/09/2008 at 03:54 AM
Daily Life • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Stoopid-People • UK • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Secret enclaves of al-Qaeda extremists based in London, planning mass-casualty attacks in Britain
Just the thing I wanna see very first thing on a sleepy Sunday morning..
Oh btw ... can NOT deport many of these sub humans due to civil and human rights issues. I’d no idea insects or vermin had civil rights, but I guess so.
Report identifies UK terrorist enclaves
Secret enclaves of al-Qaeda extremists based in London, Birmingham and Luton are planning mass-casualty attacks in Britain, according to a leaked Government intelligence report.
By Sean Rayment, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 6:48AM GMT 09 Nov 2008The document, which was drawn up by the intelligence branch of the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and Special Branch, states that “some thousands” of extremists are active in the UK. They are predominantly UK-born and aged between 18 and 30, and many are believed to have been trained in overseas terrorist camps.
Under the heading “International Terrorism”, the report, which is marked “restricted” states: “For the foreseeable future the UK will continue to be a high-priority target for international terrorists aligned with al-Qaeda. It will face a threat from British nationals, including Muslim converts, and UK-based foreign terrorists, as well as terrorists planning attacks from abroad.”
The report states that the threat from the Islamist extremist community in the UK is “diverse and widely distributed” but adds that the numbers of terrorist in Britain is “difficult to judge”.
The document does state, however, that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which is based in MI5’s headquarters at Thames House in London, estimates that there are “some thousands of extremists in the UK committed to supporting Jihadi activities, either in the UK or abroad”.
A year ago Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, said in a speech that his organisation had identified that there were at least 2,000 individuals who posed a threat to national security and public safety.
Since 2001, over 1,200 terrorist suspect have been arrested, over 140 have been charged and more than 45 have been convicted of terrorism offences, according to Home Office figures. It is also estimated that there are some 200 terrorist networks functioning in Britain today who are involved in at least 30 plots.
But this latest security assessment appears to suggest that the number of individuals who now pose a threat to the UK is even higher.
The report continues: “The majority of extremists are British nationals of south Asian, mainly Pakistani origin but there are also extremists from north and east Africa, Iraq and the Middle East, and a number of converts. The overwhelming majority of extremists are male, typically in the 18-30 age range.
“The main extremist concentrations are in London, Birmingham, with significant extremist networks in the South East, notably Luton. Extremist networks are principally engaged in spreading their extremist message, training, fund raising and procuring non-lethal military equipment to support the Jihads in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, and sending recruits to the conflicts.
“UK-based extremists, either under the direction of al-Qaeda, or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology of global Jihad, have also engaged in attack planning in the UK.”
Although the document specifically names London, Birmingham and south east England as areas of extremist activity, MI5 believe that the threat posed by Islamist extremists comes from across the UK. In an attempt to deal with the growing number of terrorists, MI5 now has nine regional offices and has almost doubled its staff numbers from 1,800 in 2001 to 3,500 today.
There are around 1.5 million Muslims in Britain, a million of whom live in London. There are 150,000 Muslims in Birmingham and a further 27,000 in Luton. There are also an estimated 10,000 Afro-Caribbean Muslims or white converts.
Some of the terrorists involved in the plot to bring down airliners using liquid bombs came from London, where a bomb factory had been established.
Birmingham, one of the centres of Islamic radicalisation in Britain, was where a plot was formed to kidnap and behead a British soldier.
The plot was lead by Parviz Khan, an unemployed charity worker who formed a terrorist cell in the city. The extremists planned to video the execution and release the film on the internet.
Luton has a growing Muslim population and has been a hot-bed of radical activity. The extremist group al-Muhajiroun has also been very active in the town. The 7/7 bombers assembled in Luton, before travelling to London to carry out their attacks.
The document also reveals that many of the terror networks operating in the UK include extremists who have been trained in terrorist camps overseas and have “some ability to construct improvised explosive devices, incorporating home-made explosives”.
It adds: “The availability of training/guidance and the necessary components to build improvised explosive devices (IED), allied with extremists’ known targeting preferences, mean that IED attacks against crowded places, intended to cause mass casualties, are the most likely form of attack in the UK.”
It is also made clear in the report that al-Qaeda cells are planning further attacks in UK with the so-called Government Security Zone (GSZ), an area which covers the Houses of Parliament, Whitehall, Buckingham and St James’ Palaces, as a possible target. The threat level in the GSZ is described in the report as “severe”.
Security officials are convinced that UK-based al-Qaeda cells will attempt to carry out another “spectacular” inside the UK with major transport termini, such as airports and train stations, being the most likely targets.
Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP for Newark, said al-Qaeda now had support in large parts of the country, especially around Luton which was the spot where the 7/7 terrorists assembled before travelling to London to mount the Tube bombings.
He added: “We know that subversion and support for al-Qaeda is taking place in campuses and prisons all over the UK. The fact that we have not been attacked for over two years should not be taken by anyone as evidence that the threat has gone away, in fact it is just the contrary.”
on 11/09/2008 at 03:34 AM
RoPMA • Terrorists • UK • War On Terror • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Saturday - November 08, 2008
Are we there yet?
thanks Carol.
“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
Norman Thomas
U.S. Socialist Party
Presidential candidate 1940
“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
- Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
Too True!
thank you Carol!
(with apologies to Parker and Hart)
The Audacity
I’m a day late and a dollar short on this one. What else is new? I can’t spend my life on the internet or watching TV news. But I saw this last night and again this afternoon.
Sure, as Michelle’s reader’s point out, the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 actually creates this. It’s just never been done is such an In Your Face way before. And as another of her readers points out, said office doesn’t actually exist until the Electoral College has met and cast their votes. He’s also moved his web site onto the government domain; change.gov. So Obama is jumping the gun a little. Pure audacity. Unbelievable amounts of it.
bye bizzy backson
Very busy weekend for me. I’ve got a lot of things to do today, and bowling league tonight. Tomorrow I’ve got more of that repair carpentry work to do, fixing another 14 drawers on a massive file cabinet. Each drawer takes about 45 minutes to empty, remove, replace the sliders, re-glue the drawer bottom, reinforce the sides, reinstall, and fill. It’s good money, but it’s going to eat up just about my entire day. And that’s after I spend nearly 2 hours cleaning the place.
Maybe the cleaning will go a bit faster though. I picked up a new vacuum cleaner, a Eureka Smart Boss 4870HZ. I’ve been using a Hoover Wind Tunnel, the Mach 6.9 model that was their top of the line about 8 years ago. But it’s wearing out, even with all the maintenance I’ve done for it, and parts are hard to come by these days. The Eureka isn’t self-propelled like the Hoover, but on the rock hard short nap office carpet the Hoover’s brush roller grabs so well I think the thing is rocket powered. And it seems to have lot better suction, and this thing is nearly quiet. The Hoover roars; it’s always been very loud. So maybe the new vac will save me a bit of time. We’ll see.
So anyway, I’ve got a very full plate this weekend. I’ll post when I can.
Friday - November 07, 2008
More News That’s No Surprise
Toldja so! The rich and the connected are above the law. The rest of us dumb schmucks pay the price. Good old “law and order” former
Disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer escaped prosecution yesterday for a sensational hooker scandal that forced him to resign, despite admitting to investigators - and for the first time publicly - that he was a john of the Emperors Club VIP.
...
US Attorney Michael Garcia said Spitzer “has acknowledged to this office that he was a client of, and made payments to, the Emperors Club VIP,” an international prostitution ring busted in March.After the bust of the high-end brothel, it was disclosed that Spitzer was the person identified in the criminal complaint as “Client 9,” who arranged multiple high-priced trysts while in Washington, DC, and Florida.
Spitzer - who resigned on March 12 after 14 turbulent months in office - was spared the added humiliation of trial after a “thorough investigation” by the IRS and FBI found no evidence he misused public or campaign cash, the feds said.
No doubt Obama will give him a cabinet level position as Director of Public Morals or some such nonsense. What a crock.
NYC Suburban Tax Bite
Back in Sept. the U. S. Census bureau data from last year shows the highest property taxes paid by property owners in the country. The 2007 American Community Survey put together a list of the twenty counties with the highest property taxes. The data is online at The Tax Foundation..
| The 20 counties with the highest property taxes in America, and their median tax bill. | |
| 1 ) Westchester County, NY: $8,422. | 11) Putnam county, NY: $6,860 |
| 2 ) Hunterdon County, NJ: $8,224. | 12) Suffolk County, NY: $6,763
|
| 3 ) Nassau County, NY: $8,153. | 13) Monmouth, NJ: $6,494 |
| 4 ) Bergen County, NJ: $7,797. | 14) Lake county, IL,: $6,089.
|
| 5 ) Somerset County, NJ: $7,597. | 15) Hudson county, NJ: $6,007. |
| 6 ) Rockland County, NY: $7,535. | 16) Fairfield County, CT: $5,962. |
| 7 ) Essex County, NJ: $7,281. | 18) Sussex county, NJ: $5,803. |
| 9 ) Union county, NJ: $7,007 | 19) Mercer county, NJ: $5,734. |
| 10) Passaic County, NJ: $6,928 | 20) Warren County, NJ: $5,673. |
Nationwide, the median tax bill is $1838.
This little map outlines those counties in red. 19 of the highest taxed counties in the country are in the Tri-State counties outside of New York City. The counties outlined in blue are in the Top 50 counties with the highest property taxes. A similar situation exists around Chicago.
Interesting that it the suburban areas outside the cities, the bedroom communities of New York City, Chicago and perhaps Philadelphia, that pay the highest property taxes, but not the cities themselves. Looks to me like the Wealth is already well Spread Around.
Are you sure you don’t work for the school system?
It was career day at the local school. All the little kids submitted a crayon sketch of what their parents did for a living, or one of what their dream job would be. Little Jenny turned in this one:
Be honest with yourself. Exactly what are you thinking about this?
the ugly truth is exposed below the fold:
I hope you didn’t overreact, just like our Zero Tolerance school teachers so often do.
It turns out that Jenny’s mom works at Home Depot, and was selling the last snow shovel in the store after a big storm.
(more great graphics, courtesy of Rancino)
Fundamentally Flawed
Wonder why you just can’t get liberals to understand? Maybe it’s because their beliefs are different, right down to the bone. This quote was in my daily email from those A Word A Day people:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for. -Laurence J. Peter, educator and author (1919-1990)
Think about it for a second and you’ll see that this quote about sums it all up. And it’s from some famous educator as well, which only makes it worse.
on 11/07/2008 at 10:42 AM
Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Obama should turn his back on the EU, Will he have the freedom to do that?
My guess is no and most likely he may not want to. While not ALL Democrats are super left, it seems it’s the far left wing that controls that party. I think they love Europe and the Eu AND, if they can they’ll want to come together in a love fest.
Is that extreme thinking on my part?
Barack Obama should turn his back on the EU
Barack Obama has a lot to do. He should ignore siren voices from the European Union hailing a “new deal” for the world.
The Democrat President Elect has got the EU all excited, hot and bothered - see here. But, politely, gently and firmly, President Obama should turn his back on the EU.
The EU represents the politics of respectable consensus and embodies the low expectations of tarnished European political establishments, which are characterised by their estrangement from voters.
Contrast the high expectations that Mr Obama represents for American voters to the low, positively depressed, expectations surrounding Gordon Brown, or any other EU leader you care to mention.
Mr Obama’s victory, the high turnout and messianic support, represents one of those truly political moments when voters reject the establishment and express an incoherent, but real enough, desire for a new direction.
The new Democrat President Elect needs to focus on the domestic, real politics, real debate about what his America should mean not the comfort blanket of bureaucratic, consensoid governmental structures - especially those on the “multilateral” foreign stage.
Internationalism does not mean going through the official channels.
Both the American and European political establishments hope (in a vampire like way) that the hopes surrounding President Obama will confer some badly needed legitimacy on them.
But democracy is not and should not be about providing an infusion of legitimacy to confirm and reinvigorate the status quo and the living dead politics of the establishment.
Spiked has some interesting reflections on the meaning of the Obama effect. “The election of Obama brings to an end an important chapter in America’s culture wars. But will it create the space for a new political debate?,” asks Frank Furedi.
The US election shows that people, the voters, want something new - a sentiment in Europe too. Mr Obama will not deliver on those expectations if he listens to a tired old EU.
By: Bruno Waterfield in Brussels at Nov 5, 2008 at 14:42:31
Zo Responds to the Election
I’m sure you’ve seen his other videos, and this one is one of the best (I think I shed a little tear of joy while watching it)
100 TONS OF RUBBISH AND SKELETONS FROM 6 DOGS, STORED INSIDE HOME. GAK! RATS TOO.
HoleeeeeCOW! How can anyone live like this? This has to take a Moonbat prize for sure. And I thought the MIL was a pack rat. Although she was working her way up to this when she got too sick to continue to collect and store treasure.
Workmen clear 100 TONS of rubbish from elderly man’s home.
By Chris Brooke
Last updated at 10:12 AM on 07th November 2008It’s been a while since pensioner Merv Jones tidied up or vacuumed.
In fact, it’s been so long that he might never have been able to find the Hoover amid the astonishing 100 tons of rubbish and bric-a-brac in his home - assuming he ever looked for it.
Every room in the terraced house was filled from floor to ceiling with mouldering junk. It was even piled up in the hall. Both front and back gardens were also a mess.
Officials clear pensioner Merv Jones’s house, filled from floor to ceiling with 100-tons of rubbish, which made it almost impossible to get inside.After years of complaints from neighbours, council officials finally moved in to empty the building in Grimsby, filling skip after skip.
The extraordinary array of bric-a-brac had been collected over decades by the 73-year-old, including old rifles, ammunition and swords, along with hundreds of more ordinary items, such as dolls, electrical equipment, toys, pictures, books and ornaments.
As well as all the junk, there was a great deal of household rubbish. Windows were broken, pigeons had moved into the loft and bait traps had to be laid for the rats.
Mr Jones claimed: ‘I wanted to clear it myself. I was trying to get it done.’
The pensioner was put up in a hotel while his house was emptied over three weeks. North-East Lincolnshire Council intends to reclaim the cost of the operation from him.
Filled to the brim: The bric-a-brac was piled so high it nearly touched the ceiling.Residents regarded the property as a blight on their neighbourhood. Alyson Thomson, 58, a sales manager, said: ‘It is hard to imagine how he did it, but I believe he was living in the house. It has been complete hell being next door to him.’
She said that, as well as the weapons, council officials found propane gas and chemicals and had to stop work while the fire brigade was called in to deal with them. She also claimed six dog skeletons were found in the rubbish. ‘On the day they started clearing he challenged me in the street, saying “what have you been saying about me?”.
‘I told him what I honestly thought and the police cautioned me,’ Mrs Thomson added.
Council officials are believed to be investigating other addresses owned by Mr Jones.
A warrant for the house clearance was granted at Grimsby Magistrates’ Court under the 1936 Public Health Act, which allows authorities to take control of ‘filthy and verminous properties’.
story and a couple more photos at the link.
on 11/07/2008 at 09:01 AM
Miscellaneous • Stoopid-People • UK • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
NEW RULES FOR FAT DOG OWNERS CAN RESULT IN HUGE FINES AND POSSIBLY JAIL.
Don’t know what you guys will make of this. On the one hand it’s more govt. intrusion, right?
BUT ... there are a lot of very irresponsible dog owners who might be doing harm by their lack of care.
I had a cousin once who was so totally irresponsible she had some pets die on her. Not because she did anything to em. But what she didn’t do.
But really, a fine of almost $40,000?
Then too, there are folks who should never own pets.
Fat dog regulations aim to trim animal obesity
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 07/11/2008
New rules on animal cruelty leave dog owner Jasper Gerard scratching his head
Is this political correctness gone, well, barking mad? Ministers have just published a veritable table-thumper of a report telling us how to look after our pets.
Those who stray from the guidelines could face six months in jail or a £20,000 fine for cruelty to animals. For, just as children are developing the looks of Teletubbies, it is feared our canine population now resembles sucking pigs.
The internet is yapping louder than Battersea Dogs Home to the sound of animal lovers fighting with freedom lovers over whether the nannying ghost of Barbara Woodhouse is haunting Whitehall. “Has Britain,” demanded one site, “gone to the dogs?”
Not only does the code, issued by Hilary Benn’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, contain strict admonishments about diet ("chocolate is poisonous"), we are ordered to buy dog toothpaste; not to walk mutts “in the hot part of the day” (such a hazard in November); and to provide “somewhere to go to the toilet”, though, in a rare oversight, Defra fails to stipulate whether it should be en suite.
We are even told to provide “entertainment” and “mental stimulation”. So I sat Wyndham, my springer spaniel, in front of Newsnight; alas, the presidential election left him snoring.
What to try? Jane Fonda workout videos? Morgan Spurlock’s dog starring in Supersize Me II? Or Jamie Oliver’s follow-up to School Dinners - Dog Dinners?
Yesterday, I took Wyndham to Tunbridge Wells, Kent, to sniff out lardy Labradors and outraged owners. There was not a mutt in sight, let alone an obese one. I began to fear that Whitehall is on to something and that owners are failing to exercise their charges.
Visions of couch-potato pooches snoozing in front of daytime TV came to mind. Then I came upon my first dogs, tethered to a post. Their owner, IT analyst Brian Inman, was sipping coffee in a café.
“So, Mr Inman,” I started tentatively, mindful that a dog owner would take comments about their own weight more kindly than those about their beloved pets, “you clearly don’t starve your dogs.”
“One is a show dog,” he said, a tad defensively, pointing to his well-padded beast. “I only feed them twice a day, and very little.” Hmm: before I could warn him that I might have to pass his details to the man from the ministry, he added: “This smacks of government interference: shouldn’t it concentrate on children before dogs?”
Others disagreed. I accosted Tim Cosens walking his well-fed cocker, Holly. “She’s just had puppies,” he insisted. I don’t like to break it to him that Benn will soon be out here, shaking his head wearily while saying: “Save it, please, we’ve heard all the excuses...” Anyway, Cosens backs the report as “there are too many fat dogs”.
Next I found two dog walkers barking from the libertarian wing of the kennel. “It seems very Draconian,” said Barbour-clad Steve Budden, who had heard nothing of the regulations. Ditto Ian Marshall: “The nanny state is getting silly.” He has fed his dog fresh food ever since visiting a dog food factory: “It was all chicken beaks and claws,” he said. “Horrific.”
Next stop was Pets in Town. This shop has pioneered healthy dog living with dance classes, weight watchers lessons, even prescription diets. I place Wyndham on the scales. “Perfect,” said Lydia Anderson, who is Head of Fish but is helping out in Dogs today, “18.7kg.” Wyndham is rewarded for his labours with a (healthy) treat. “We have dogs in here weighing 70kg. They look more like polar bears.”
Lydia has strict views: “Bad owners should be prosecuted. Over-feeding is a form of neglect, leading to diseases such as diabetes.” Bad behaviour is often caused by poor diet. “Some dog food contains just four per cent meat: it’s like junk food for children,” she says. Perhaps ministers should target manufacturers more than owners. Pets in Town sells healthy feed that lists its ingredients.
“There are lots of healthy food ranges now,” explained its owner, Steve Ball. “It’s changed massively. Humans could learn a lot about healthy diets
from dogs.” As, it seems, could Hilary Benn. As far as Tunbridge Wells is concerned, he’s in the dog house.
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