While I am not ungrateful for the spring melt, three or four days of rain, sun-free sky, huge piles of filthy snow, and boot-sucking mud are beginning to irritate me. In the public market yesterday, smiles were severely rationed.
Mar 11, 2010
Mar 10, 2010
Halt! Your papers!
"The Wall Street Journal":
This is the latest incarnation of an old idea which has been implemented helter-skelter, primarily through the Social Security system and some immigrant control programs such as the "voluntary" e-Verify.
But now, led by Schumer and Graham, your senators are thinking of making it universal, something like the much-battered Real ID plan.
In the 1950s and 60, progenitors of Schumer-like statists made international reputations at the expense of a South African government which required "passes" of all black persons traveling away from their home village environs. The hysterical proto-Schumers weren't upset at the pass system as such, only that it did not apply also to whites. The Left held then, as it does now, that tyranny is acceptable if universal; only discrimination makes tyranny naughty.
(Secretly, of course, the 60s American Fabians welcomed the African diversion which permitted hours of self-righteous spewing in lieu of those politically dangerous chores of handling crucial domestic problems such as how to make Peter Paul and Mary shut up.)
You might write your senator and ask him if he'll pretty please say no. Or at least promise us the United States Internal Security and Domestic Passport Law of 2010 will not let the cops run your pass book though the health, firearms, and credit rating databases. To do that a vital government object would have to be served, such as satisfying the morbid curiosity of your demented ex-brother-in-law who owes you money and currently has a job as a Department of Homeland Security computer programmer.
The Dog bites Grandma
His Obamaness is so desperate to salvage anything from his foray into the world of socialized medicine that he's now touting bounty hunters to hound your grandma.
Dog and his tattooed offspring will make damned sure Granny didn't claim to be sick when she really was just pissed off because the cable teevee went on the futz and she had to go the hospital so as not to miss any episodes of "All My Rotten Kids" or whateverthehell soap she likes.
Look, folks, keeping people from stealing money, even government money, is something a proper society does. So is getting stolen money back to its rightful owners.
But at what cost? Medicare and Medicaid years ago hung signs along the Yellow Brick Road to the public trough: : "Come and Get It. Quacks and Thieves Welcome." Professional hypochondriacs got engraved personal invitations.
And now electronic posses are to be deputized to wade through your most intimate records. Yeah, Washington says it will be limited to health records for people using Medicaid and Medicare. This is the same Washington that told us to go a-nationbuilding in the Middle East 'cuz there were all those nukes in Iraq.
I bet uttering the word "privacy" in Washington these days draws smirks from across the spectrum of conventional political thought -- and probably gets you a looksee for the no-fly list as a dangerous radical.
Jealousy
The Broad Ripple lady and her roomie are a couple of teases, what with their tropical bicycle riding pictures and all.We have a certain amount of snow remaining, even in the sun-drenched areas -- about two feet as of Saturday when the old bridge was snapped on canal hike a few hundred yards from my quarters. There's a little less today, but getting across the field from the house to the water is still snow shoe work.
(No, you can't shoot there. It's inside the village limits and a game preserve to boot. I still carry a belt gun in deference to the cougar rumors.)
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