Cars, Cash, & Communication

 

JB Shurk at NOQ analyzes how communists are forcing the New World Order:

The Three Cs Preventing Total State Control

If you were a time-traveling supervillain intent on world domination, how might you change the past in order to seize total control of the present?  I’d get rid of the personal automobile, unsupervised cash transactions, and uncontrolled mass communication.  If you take away freedom of movement, freedom of commerce, and freedom of speech, then you can keep people isolated, dependent on government welfare, and ignorant of any ideas that might threaten the power of the State.  Cars, cash, and communication are tools for promoting and protecting freedom, so if your goal is total State control over the individual, the three big Cs must go.

Is it a coincidence, then, that Western governments today seem committed to following that very playbook?  They can’t go back in time and un-invent the automobile, but they can make cars so prohibitively expensive through endless regulation that only the wealthiest among us eventually own them.  They can’t surveil every market transaction, but they can make it increasingly difficult to exchange goods or services without using traceable electronic platforms.

They can’t completely shut down email, social media, or the Internet without shutting down power grids, but they can partner with ideologically-aligned tech monopolists to censor information and viewpoints, limit anonymity, and track users.  Who needs time travel when it is possible to transform freedom-enhancing technologies into systems of State control?

I know we’re all supposed to believe that carbon dioxide plant food is evil, and the only way to “save the planet” is to ban everyone (except the “elites”) from using energy, but it sure is convenient that a century after the automobile revolutionized the world, the “ruling class” wants to de-revolutionize mass mobility.  In the late nineteenth century, most people lived and died in the towns where they were born.  With highway systems and the internal combustion engine, personal freedom jumped by leaps and bounds.

And Mr. Shurk concludes:

Can you remember a time when disagreement was accepted as a vital part of a healthy and free society?  Can you remember a time when speech was not policed and people were not fired for their personal beliefs?  Can you remember a time when self-sufficiency was a virtue and government dependence was something to avoid?  Can you remember a time when freedom was not something “handed out” for good behavior?  If you can, then you know what’s already been lost.  And unless Americans demand control over their own futures once again, you know how much more there is still left to lose.

Full article is here.  Recommended.

# # #

The Melbourne Tinderbox and Why Americans Should Pay Attention

photo credit: theaustralian.com

As usual, Sundance is on the story while most of the media lag behind.  I am posting an extract from his report, and click here for the full story, with photographs.  Also, check out the comments below the report.  From Conservative Treehouse:

The Melbourne Tinderbox and Why Americans Should Pay Attention

An inflection point has been reached in Australia with the government COVID-19 lockdowns, forced vaccinations and now, vaccine passports. What is happening today in the state of Victoria, specifically the Melbourne metropolitan area, is an outcome of more than a year of heavy-handed government rules and regulations deaf to the voices of the average man, woman or family. There is a middle class & blue-collar backlash taking place, and Americans would be wise to pay attention.

Things recently came to a head when the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, began outlining the rules and regulations for opening society back up after almost a year of total lockdown. The always futile attempt to block the COVID-19 virus through a policy known as “COVID-ZERO” was abandoned. The new approach is to open up society and the economy by forcing everyone to take the vaccine, and then allowing only the vaccinated to participate in the economy as varying percentages of the population are double-vaxxed, and admittedly, later, booster-vaxxed.

Vaccination passports will be required to work, shop, attend events and essentially live in the New World Order Premier Andrews has created for the citizens of Victoria. The day after Andrews outlined the new rules – the working class, who have been locked down and compliant to this point, finally had enough.

. . .

The vaccination passport methods, processes and procedures being tested right now in Australia are soon to arrive in the United States. Electronic check-ins and QR codes deployed to track the movements of vaxxed and unvaxxed are being tested right now in almost all states in Australia. We The People in America are only a few weeks or months away from having to make the same decisions that middle-class Victorian workers are faced with right now. This is why you should pay attention to what is happening there.

The population of Australia (26 million) is small by comparison to the U.S. (350+ million), and as a result, the dynamic will be exponentially more explosive when it arrives here.

Socially, Americans are more geographically spread out than Australia, as most of their major population centers circle the coastline. Factually, the population of Florida or Texas is essentially equivalent to the entire population of Australia. The economy of the U.S. is also substantially larger and more diverse than down-under. However, those points only emphasize how significantly more explosive the same scenarios may become when the Biden regime attempts to follow the oppressive process now being witnessed in the Melbourne region.

Here again is the link to the full report.  

# # #

Action Alert for Ohio

image credit: Professional Adviser 

The good news headline:

Ohio pharmacy board backs off hydroxychloroquine ban
at Gov. Mike DeWine’s urging

The bad news headline:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine proposes banning liquor sales
after 10 p.m. to stop coronavirus spread in bars

This is one smart virus that knows how to spread itself around more after 10pm.

In our neighborhood, at least half the restaurants have not re-opened since the lock-downs and the riots, and those that have opened are under onerous orders to enforce masks, distancing, etc.;  three citations and they get closed down for good.  And now comes this latest regulation to further cripple the restaurant and bar businesses.

The Ohio Liquor Control Commission is slated to hold a hearing on the rule 9 a.m. Friday. If approved, DeWine said he would sign an order that would go into effect Friday night.

Contact Gov. Mike DeWine: (614) 644-4357 or by email

Please share with your friends.

# # #

Art credit: amsimaging.com

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Gov. of New York, author, and frequent columnist and TV news guest. In the months preceding the passage of Obamacare in Congress, McCaughey was one of the critical resources for patriots across the country, who relied on her analyses to prepare for visits to their Representatives and Senators, calls to the congressional switchboard, etc. She published another analysis the other day in the New York Post about the latest document dump of ... over 1,200 pages of NEW regulations on Obamacare. Here is her complete article: 

-----------------------------------------

ObamaCare: Death by paperwork 

On July 3, with Americans preparing to celebrate freedom, the Obama administration reduced freedom by adding 1,296 pages of new regulations to ObamaCare.

It was a classic pre-holiday document dump, publishing the mind-numbing rules in the Federal Register on the eve of Independence Day, when few were likely to be watching. So much for transparency.

ObamaCare regulations compel doctors and their office staff, business owners, local officials and virtually everyone else subject to the law to spend hours filling out paperwork with no pay for their labor. It’s a colossal theft.

Now four years old, ObamaCare imposes 159 million hours of paperwork a year on the public. That’s the administration’s own estimate, undoubtedly a lowball.

Even so, it’s up by 48 million hours over last year, when fewer regulations had been rolled out. And there’s more to come.

Among the July 3 rules is one that compels doctors who take Medicare to report 18 different clinical measurements on their patients, such as whether they are overweight and have been counseled about weight control.

Doctors who fail to do it will get whacked with lower payments starting in 2015.

The regulators estimate that this single report could take as long as 108 minutes per patient and consume 5.4 million hours a year nationwide. That’s time that could be spent treating patients or calling them to remind them to take their meds.

Instead, the federal bureaucracy is confiscating those hours to serve its own ends.

Small-business owners get hit hard, too. Notably, restaurateurs face 622,000 hours of work to comply with ObamaCare’s menu-labeling rules.

The American Action Forum, a public-policy organization, notes that ObamaCare is in a class by itself, imposing almost three times as much paperwork as the notoriously complex Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and more than 10 times as much as under the Sarbanes-Oxley financial-reform law.

The Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, is the biggest culprit, responsible for 90 million hours a year of ObamaCare paperwork chores. Most are foisted on hospitals, doctors, insurers and local governments.

Because it includes the IRS, Treasury is the No. 2 culprit, with paperwork requirements up 23 percent this year. The IRS is ObamaCare’s chief enforcer; paperwork misery will continue to soar, especially if and when the employer mandate goes into effect.

ObamaCare gives the IRS 46 new functions, including collecting new taxes and exchanging information about you, your family and your income with HHS and state insurance exchanges.

For example, the IRS requires employers to report the value of insurance you get through work in a new box on your W-2, even though it’s not taxable (yet).

And dealing with the IRS is no longer a once-a-year affair. Have a baby, change jobs or get a divorce, and the IRS will be recalculating your insurance compliance and eligibility for premium subsidies.

“It’s unprecedented in recent history, the amount of responsibility the IRS is being given in an area that most people don’t think of as an IRS function,” J. Russell George, a tax official, told Congress last March.

The administration plainly doesn’t want to tell the truth about these burdens.

For example, it claims that people who are uninsured or lose coverage will spend 12.6 minutes a year to comply with the individual mandate. Preposterous: Even when the Web sites work, it takes far longer to shop for insurance and report to the IRS that you’re compliant.

On July 4, 1776, when American patriots signed their Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, they recounted the crimes of the tyrannical British king: “He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

Nearly 2½ centuries later, our own government is eating out our substance with mandatory paperwork.

Not to mention the drag on our economy.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, America is the only country to have lost economic freedom for seven straight years, now ranking 12th behind Hong Kong,
Singapore, Australia, Canada and seven other nations.

“Burdensome and redundant regulations are the most common barriers to the free conduct of entrepreneurial activity,” Heritage cautions.

But some benefit from this out-of-control regulatory state.

“Government bureaucracies like complexity because it keeps them busy and funded,” warns Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard. She laments that “as a result of these regulations on steroids, innovation, business creation and job growth are being stifled.”

Government bureaucrats are stealing our time, our economic growth and our liberty. Don’t count on Washington to fix the problem.

In the end, only an outraged public can put a stop to this regulatory oppression.

Betsy McCaughey is the author of “Beating ObamaCare 2014.”

Cut the red tape!

Rep. Kelly’s Rousing Floor Speech Receives Standing Ovation and Chants of “USA!”

Kelly's Speech on the floor of the House (via Canada Free Press)

The War on Prosperity

It's not just President Obama's infamous "You didn't build that" speech that reveals his hostility to entrepreneurship and old-fashioned American initiative. This chart from National Review Online illustrates just how much of a drag chain this Administration is on businesses, large and small - and on us, the consumers and taxpayers:

With devastating clarity, it illustrates the miles and miles of red tape that bind the hands of entrepreneurs and CEOs like those of hijacked jet passengers. Regulation is a major and mounting cost that consumes scare resources — namely growth capital, management time, and basic patience….

There has now been a 52 percent increase in major regulations or red tape in [Obama's] administration and more regulations on the books than in any time in the history of America.

These regulations are the tentacles that the Administration is using to strangle the economy, push through Agenda 21 policies, wage the "War on Coal," etc., all of which will hit you in the pocketbook. Get ready for your utility bills to skyrocket. And stay tuned for more local action alerts to fight the "War on Coal" in Ohio.

Obama’s War Against Coal: coming soon to YOUR electricity provider

The Obama administration’s EPA regulations (read: strangulations) will essentially destroy the coal industry, and that will hit YOU in the pocketbook. Just six weeks ago came this bad news [emphasis added]:

One of the country’s largest regional power grid operators, PJM Interconnection, today announced the results of its annual auction that locks in electricity capacity prices three years in advance. Today’s auction established capacity prices for 2015-2016, the first year electric generators will be required to comply with EPA’s costly Utility MACT rule. The results of the auction confirmed the predictions of Republican lawmakers who warned that EPA’s new power rules would drive up electricity costs for American consumers.

The auction set capacity prices at $136 per megawatt (MW) across the PJM footprint, which includes the Mid-Atlantic region and parts of the Midwest. This price is 8 times higher than the $16 per MW price that was set for 2012-2013. Electricity customers in parts of Ohio will be hit the hardest, with the auction setting the price for capacity resources in northern Ohio at $357 per MW, nearly triple the 2014-2015 price set last year. As explained by PJM, the “auction was impacted by an unprecedented amount of planned generation retirements (more than 14,000 MW) driven largely by environmental regulations, which drove prices higher than last year’s auction.”

President Obama’s EPA has issued and proposed a suite of costly new rules on America’s power sector that have already resulted in the premature closure of power plants across the country. Today’s auction shows how these plant closures will affect how much American families and businesses pay for electricity.

“The PJM auction forecasts a dim future where Americans will be paying more to keep the lights on. We are seeing more and more coal plants fall victim to EPA’s destructive regulatory agenda, and as a result, we are seeing more job losses and higher electricity prices,” said Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY). “The Obama administration continues to wage a war on affordable energy, and it is the American people who will suffer the consequences.”