Obnoxious "celebrity" chef plays nanny.

On the left is "celebrity" chief Jamie Oliver, an English twat if ever there was one. Oliver. The photo on the left is Jamie before he started playing Nanny. The to the right is Jamie today. Notice anything?

As Nanny Oliver is using his "reality show" to harass American schools he himself is living high on the hog. I might suggest he is eating high on the hog.

Oliver has celebrityitis, that disease that causes someone who gets attention to suddenly become personally weird while pompously lecturing the world. The weird includes the typical "celebrity" trait of saddling their poor children with bizarre names. So Oliver has named his kids, in order, Poppy Honey Rosie, Daisy Boo, Petal Blossom Rainbow and Buddy Bear. The poor kids.

Oliver has a couple of gimmicks he pulls to get himself noticed. One is that the picks poorer regions to go lecture them like some "high class" missionary being sent to heathens. He did this in Rotherham, England, with TV cameras in tow, and again in Huntington, West Virginia.

Oliver's desire to make the rules for what people eat may just be revealed in the name of one of his "reality shows:" The Ministry of Food.

A lot of the Nanny State measures that ban foods from the schools started with the campaigning of chubby face Jamie. Typical of "celebrities" Oliver is gaga over expensive "organic" foods. He bragged that he buys "from specialist growers, organic suppliers and farmers" and not "supermarkets" which "are like a factory." Of course, being a millionaire makes that easy for him to do. It is much harder for the poorer folks he goes out to "save" from themselves. That didn't stop him from taking £1.2 million per year to hype the up-market food chain Sainsbury's. He then turned around attacking the store for selling items of which he doesn't approve. Sainsbury's CEO Justin King responded: "Dictating to people—or unleashing an expletive-filled tirade—is not the way to engagement." Poor Mr. King does not realize that "dictating to people" is precisely what a "Ministry of Food" is intended to do.

Oliver convinced a school in England to allow him to bring his cameras into the school and let him prepare all the meals for students. He used his time to campaign for government measures to "improve" what people eat. Tony Blair, the George Bush of England, immediately promised to spend £280 million more per year on school food. Hey, those organic foods are costly. But, it seems the main thing Oliver wants is publicity for himself, hence his confrontational style and publicity stunts, such as his slaughtering a live lamb on television.

One school in the UK allowed itself to be used as a publicity stunt for Oliver. Oliver came in and mandated what foods students would be allowed to eat for lunch and what they couldn't eat. Parents revolted by coming to the school at lunch time and handing banned food items to their kids through the fence.

While Oliver claims that only "local produce" should be used, and that all meals should be prepared from scratch, it turned out that sauces he used in his own restaurant were produced at a factory, 400 miles away.

Oliver, like many do-gooders simply became tired of people not taking his advice so he lobbied for government programs that would force his recipes down the throats of school children. Other that the extra millions that Tony Blair was happy to spend, the net result was that 400,000 British school children left the school lunch system preferring to bring bagged lunches from homes. Oliver also created a black market in the snack foods that he hates. Students started smuggling foods onto campus and selling them to classmates, which lead to kids being suspended from school. That causes me to wonder what the primary purpose of the school is: Is it to educate children or make them eat according to the dictates of Chubby Jamie? It would seem that students being thrown out of school for disobeying "The Ministry of Food," pretty much made it clear that education takes a backseat to Jamie Oliver's politics.

After his efforts in Rotherham, Oliver wrote an 8 page "manifesto"to try to pressure the British government to establish a "Ministry of Food center in every British town." Oliver's manifesto used the wedge of national health care to control everything. He argued that what people eat is a "massive social issue" because any health issues related to diet will cost the National Health Service money. This, by the way, is one hidden cost of nationalized health care, it is then used as an excuse to control over any area of life that might impact one's health—and what doesn't qualify? Oliver warned, "the government urgently needs to be putting cooking right at the top of its agenda."

Reason magazine noted that one meal Oliver suggested as a "wholesome meal" to take to school actually contained 1,183 calories and 55 grams of fat. They noted the same student could eat a Happy Meal at McDonald's and another Chicken McNugget's Happy Meal and get less calories and less fat than they would from Oliver's "wholesome" suggestion. Is it any wonder that Oliver had become a fatty eating his "healthy" food. This isn't an issue of health, but of control.

Toilets and sex.

I was listening to a paleoconservative railing against government regulations of things like shower heads, toilets and light bulbs. I'm with him on that.

On a recent trip to San Francisco I used the toilet in my hotel room, which is sort of the point to having the room, along with other things like showering and sleeping. But the low-flush toilet simply wouldn't flush things away properly. It didn't have the power it needed to flush solids away. With such commodes I find that I flush several times. Lots of people I know say they do the same thing. In the end they use more water.

But what got worse was the toilet clogged. That was making it impossible to use at all. The hotel was a small one and the time of night meant there was no one to solve the problem. I had to go to the front desk and borrow a plunger, which was needed several more times over the next two days. It really was a shitty experience.

And that brings me back to the paleoconservative. Paleoconservatives are for free markets, for a non-interventionist foreign policy, but tend to be very socially conservative. One, who even pretends to be a "libertarian," claimed that a libertarian society would have to physically remove gay people in order to survive. It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn he is anti-immigraiton—well to be precise he is against immigration by non-whites most of all.

Freedom of choice for toilet bowl power! Great, but exactly why have freedom of choice for your toilet bowl but NOT for your spouse?

Police shut down Girl Scout's cookie sale

Now, these bureaucrats and politicians know they have a PR nightmare on their hands to they try to act all nice by offering the Girl Scouts a pizza party and a tour of the police station. The police chief says he doesn't want the girls to be afraid of the police.

Why not? They terrify the hell out of me. I am fairly well informed and read dozens of news stories per day, multiple publications and watch numerous news reports. And the violent nature of American police scares the crap out of me. Girl Scouts should be terrified of the police. It's not like police violence and corruption rarely happens.

But, listen to the logic used to justify regulations to ban the sale of cookies and such without a permit. The police chief says there have been incidents of kids who ran into the street to get a dollar for something. To be quite honest, police always claims there are "incidents" even when there is no evidence of any. The chief was short on details, very short. He didn't say when it happened, to whom it happened, or what were the results. He gave nothing to indicate an actual incident took place. I'd bet a package doughnuts that he made that up to try to justify the regulation.

But, let us assume he is a truthful police officer—yes, I know it's a stretch, but work with me here. A child is alleged to have run into the street though, from what the chief said, there were no dire consequences as a result. I expect if a kid had actually been killed or crippled because of it, that fact would have been mentioned. It wasn't mentioned so I suspect nothing bad resulted from the alleged incident that justifies three pages of regulations to protect the kids.

Fine. But explain to me how does a permit in the kid's pocket protect the kid?

How does a bureaucratic piece of paper make the kid any safer? Do these people think their regulations are magic and change the reality of the situation?

If kids were really, really in enough danger to justify three extra pages of regulations, then how does a permit reduce the danger? It isn't like the permit is a seat belt, which could save a life. It offers no physical barrier to harm. It is a permission slip from Big Brother to engage in an activity, it is not a safety mechanism. Given that these are usually handed out for a fee, perhaps the real reason for the regulation is a money raiser for the police and politicians and "saving kids" is just the self-serving excuse being used here.

Should we assume the police and the politicians are lying? I do, I find it is safe to play the odds.

No one wants kids to be hurt. But, how does a peddling permit prevent that from happening? How does the permit offer more protection than what the parents, who were with the girls, could offer?

This is a microcosm of the entire problem with American politics. First, second-rate politicians pass regulations based on fear of what might happen? They propose solutions that don't actually address the problem they imagine. And they find ways to ring money out of people in order to "address" the problem. And, when questioned about their policies they piously claim they are merely protecting the children. In technical terms this is known as a load of bullshit.

Court strips man of right to have sex.

The British Nanny state has gone one step further than most by stripping a man of the right to have sex based on the court's belief that the man is unable to make this decision for himself.

The man, only known in court records as Alan, is 41 years old. The man is clearly mentally challenged and has a low IQ. He was in care with the state due to his mental state and while living in care met another man named Kieron, which whom he developed a relationship.

But state bureaucrats argued that Alan isn't able to consent because he doesn't understand enough about sex to do so. But suggestions that Alan be given some basic sex education was dismissed by the same bureaucrats who argued such information would only "confuse" him.

The judge has ordered Alan and Kieron to end their relationship and put Alan under "close supervision" to guarantee that he does not have sex.

Under a 2005 law judges have the power to declare people mentally incapable of making their own decisions and then take those powers upon themselves. This includes the power to force people to have surgery, to force them to have abortions and force them to use contraception. It also includes, apparently, the ability to force people to never have sex again.

What is particularly bizarre is that the judge said Alan is incapable of making the decision to have a relationship with Kieron because he (Alan) didn't understand how sex between a man and woman could create babies. The judge noted that Alan thought babies were brought by the stork. Even if one were to accept the argument that this lack of information means Alan could run into unwelcomed problems regarding causing women to be pregnant, his sexual relationship was NOT with a woman. This strikes me as being on par with denying a person the right to drive a car because they don't understand the mechanics of flying.

There are two aspects to this issue. One legitimate aspect is the man's ability to consent, but the second is the nature of the acts to which he is consenting. We allow individuals with little understanding of dietary needs to make decisions regarding the foods they eat, though government is trying to strip that right away as well. The consequences of eating a candy bar are relatively trivial. One doesn't need to have some high level of understanding to make that choice.

So what level of understanding is needed in this case. Given that pregnancy is clearly not a threat the only real potential problems might be health risks. But wouldn't a less intrusive—certainly less authoritarian—measure be simply checking Kieron and Alan for any diseases that might be contracted. If both are healthy in these matters, and the implications of the reports I've read indicate they are, then there is negligible risk on the part of Alan. His ability to consent should not be judged merely on the basis of his mental abilities but also as to the risks he is realistically facing. If both men have a clean bill of health then there is virtually no risk and Alan would appear to be capable to consent to something of no risk.

There might be a case to make sure that someone with Alan's mental abilities isn't wandering the streets having sex willy-nilly, with no understanding of the risks he faces. But that was not the issue the court addressed. It addressed what appears to be a monogamous relationship with one other individual.

But it appears the court has ONLY considered Alan's mental abilities and paid no attention to the actual risks involved in this specific case. Instead the judge dragged in unrelated issues, such as a woman becoming pregnant, even though Alan was not having sex with a woman.

I do not immediately dismiss the necessity of a court to make decisions in those rare cases where a person's individual mental level is so low that they are incapable of informed consent. But informed consent should not be seen in a vacuum but understood in the context of what it is that the person is wishing to consent to. That is something the court failed to do here.

Nanny comes calling.

Cub Scouts arm children with dangerous weapons.

One of the things that I worry about is that the governmental school system (which sometimes manages to educate) is run by morons. It seems that the worst, most incompetent, sorts make it to the top of the bureaucratic system called “the school system.” Competency is out, and politics is in.

I want to mention the case of Zachary Christie as an example. Zachary is a very bright six-year-old who attends the government school in Newark, Delaware. Zachary also recently joined the Cub Scouts and got one of those neat contraptions that the Scouts like to use where one utinsile can have a fork, a spoon, or a knife come out of it. Apparently the Cub Scouts are arming children with dangerous weapons—if you accept the position of the local school district.

Like most little boys Zachary wanted to show off his neat new tool from Cub Scouts so he took it to school to use at lunchtime. That is when the morons in the educational system stepped in with their “zero tolerance” bullshit, pronounced the eating utensil to be a dangerous weapon and had Zachary expelled from school. It gets worse. The morons filed charges against the child and he has to appear in court and faces a sentence of 45 days in reform school.

Zachary’s mother is currently home-schooling him while trying to get the expulsion overturned. I would urge her to reconsider. Get the expulsion overturned, but continue to home-school him. Don’t send him to an institution run by morons. The school is defending their actions saying, (shall we all say it together), that it is “for the best interests of the children.” George Evans, the head moron on the school board, turns into a little drama queen whining about how “no parent wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because they was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife.” I suggest that George “Weepy” Evans immediately confiscate all pencils and pens as well. You could poke an eye out with one of them a lot easier than the Cub Scout eating utensil.

When I was a schoolboy, admittedly before the schools went completely bonkers, we used to play mumbly peg on the school lawn. If you aren’t familiar with it, the game requires a pocketknife of one kind or another—though it can be played with larger knives as well—and we did, though that was more at the school’s summer camp.

According to the New York Times, Delaware was also the place where a school district expelled a third-grade girl for a year. Her grandmother sent a birthday cake to the school, along with a knife to cut the cake. The teacher first took the knife and cut the cake and then called the principal of the school and expelled the child. Another boy in the school system, though older, was given a pocketknife by another student and then he was suspended. His mother “has since been home-schooling him instead of sending him to reform school.” In 2007 the school also expelled a girl who used a utility knife to cut “windows out a paper house for a class project.”

I will leave the final word with Zachary, who clearly is intelligent enough to figure out the situation. He said: “I just think the other kids may tease me for being in trouble. But I think the rules are what is wrong, not me.”

If you want to sign a petition in favor of Zachary go here. I recommend it.

The rise of the light bulb fascist.

Apparently the European Union, and the bureaucratic thugs that run it, have inadvertently discovered a method of stimulating one area of the economy: prohibition.


Having learned nothing about drug and alcohol prohibition the EU has decided to ban the production and importation of conventional light bulbs. As a ritual sacrifice to the Goddess Gaia the EU technocrats have decided to phase out the conventional light bulb, in favor of the “eco friendly” but vision-unfriendly compact fluorescent bulb.

I know those bulbs are supposed to save us money, which I favor, but they don’t. I have one bulb in my room that is CFL, which is fine for watching television. But if I want to read I have to turn on the overhead light with three regular bulbs instead. In the lounge the three table lamps are CFLs as well, but all three have to be one to give any acceptable lighting in the room. I had one CFL on the back patio but dumped it entirely—dinners on the patio were impossible with the light it emitted. It was far too dark. So I’m no fan of these vision-destroying bulbs either.


But the technocrats in the EU want to “save the planet,” which usually means an assault on the property rights or freedom of individuals. And, in their wisdom they are phasing out conventional light bulbs. Der Spiegel reports on the results of the upcoming ban in Germany.

Hardware stores and home-improvement chains in Germany are seeing massive increases in the sales of the traditional bulbs. Obi reports a 27 percent growth in sales over the same period a year ago. Hornbach has seen its frosted-glass light bulb sales increase by 40-112 percent. When it comes to 100-watt bulbs, Max Bahr has seen an 80 percent jump in sales, while the figure has been 150 percent for its competitor Praktiker.
"It's unbelievable what is happening," says Werner Wiesner, the head of Megaman, a manufacturer of energy-saving bulbs. Wiesner recounts a story of how one of his field representatives recently saw a man in a hardware store with a shopping cart full of light bulbs of all types worth more than €200 ($285). "That's enough for the next 20 years."

It should be noted that Weiser favors EU action to ban his competition. No surprise there. Most large businesses are run by greedy individuals who prefer political redistribution of wealth to having to earn it in a competitive market. The problem, as they see it, with competitive markets is that consumers can’t be trusted to buy what you’re selling. Weisner thought the best way to force consumers to buy his product would be to impose a $7 tax on each regular light bulb sold in the market.

One marketing company reports that between January and April sales of regular light bulbs have jumped 20 percent. Sales of the “earth-saving” CFL bulbs shrank by 2 percent.

Spiegel notes that the normal bulbs are despised by the Greens because they give off most their energy in heat. True, that was one aspect of them I liked—at least when I was living in Berlin. Much of the year the weather is a bit cool and not only did the light bulbs allowed me to see well, but they helped heat up my apartment. (It was small enough that a few bulbs could do that.) The heat was a fringe benefit. When it was summer the benefit was less (though the last summer I spent in Berlin was rather chilly) but summer light is longer so I used the bulbs less anyway.

Bascially the EU bureaucrats have ignored the consumers completely. And the consumers are fighting back by stocking up on the bulbs. Spiegel notes that large numbers of people complain about the so-called “eco friendly” bulbs saying that the light “is colder and weaker and the high frequency flickering can cause headaches. Others have complained that the new bulbs are sold with fraudulent promises. The environmentalists promise these bulbs “las much longer than traditional bulbs” but Spiegel reports that tests found that half the bulbs “gave up the ghost after 6,000 hours of use—or much earlier than the manufacturers had promised.” (That corresponds with my experience of the CFLs I used, until now I just assumed I had a bad batch.)


Spiegel quotes lighting designer Ingo Maurer telling his custoers: “We recommend protests against the ban, civil disobedience and the timely hoarding of lighting implements.” One prominent art gallery, Hamburger Kuntshalle, has purchased 600 traditional bulbs so they can light their exhibits properly.

One MP, from my favored German political party, the Free Democrats, called the ban “light bulb socialism.” I would disagree. Socialism is state-ownership of the means of production. What many people confuse with socialism today is nothing more than raw fascism. Just ask Obama, he should know.

I suggest that when the ban is completed there will be a whole new industry created as a result: light bulb smuggling. Apparently politicians are just too damn stupid to ever learn from history, so they repeat it, over and over.

Outrage is the proper response.

I don't normally turn the blog over to others to run. And generally I do all the posting. Today I will make an exception. Lia Grippo runs a private sort of school. She is being put out of business. I will let her explain how this happened.

By Lia Grippo

My name is Lia Grippo. I am an early childhood educator with 20 years of experience. For the past 11 years, a large part of my work here in Santa Barbara has been taking young children into local wild spaces where we forage, track animals, climb trees, build forts, etc. For the last two years I have been running a small school that meets at my home 3 days a week and in the woods 2 days per week — safely.

I have two sons, age 7 and 4. My 7-year-old has been climbing to heights since he was a baby. My husband and I mentored this skill early on first by staying close while pretending to watch something else, and later by having some simple guidelines. For climbing trees, our guidelines include teaching children to know how to tell a dead branch from a living one, and then teaching them never to climb on dead branches or any limb “thinner than your arm.” We never help a child to climb up but are willing to help as much as necessary on the climb down.

A few weeks ago my school met at a local beach. The beach is sandwiched between the ocean and some steep hills and bluffs. The hills sit in the sand, not above the water. My 7-year-old and his 6-year-old friend – an equally competent as a climber and also the son of my dearest friend and school teaching assistant — climbed to the top of one of these hills. As they climbed they chatted, and moved at a steady pace, which meant to me that they were not at the edge of their abilities, which would have been evidenced by their silence or by announcements of fear, tense body language, or frequent stops in search of how to proceed next. In imitation of the older boys, the younger children began to climb the hill as well.

I stopped them by saying, “That’s high enough,” when I saw they had reached the point where they would not be able to come down by themselves if they were to continue. The three younger ones (ages 4, 5, & 5) stopped and began to climb down. By this time, a group of people had gathered to watch. My 4-year-old son slid a little down the hill on his bottom. I was right below him to catch him should he continue to slide. But with the combination of the sliding and, I believe, a frightened group of strangers staring up at him, he became too afraid to come down the rest of the way. So I climbed up and coached him down, staying just beneath him. He calmed down to the point where we were laughing and joking as we made our way down.

As we neared the bottom, I noticed there was a lifeguard beneath me on the hill about 3-4 feet off the ground. When we reached him he asked if I wanted to pass my son off to him and I did and he put him down on the ground. Then the lifeguard told me he would take the trail around the side of the hill to get the other boys down and I agreed, not because I thought those boys couldn’t make it down on their own — I was certain they could — but because of the fear of the folks watching. We went around to meet the kids as they came down the trail. The lifeguard seemed annoyed and said, “Don’t do that again,” before walking off.

During all of this the police were called. The police officer took a statement from me and left. As the parents arrived at the end of our morning, I told each one the story and each of them said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you. Why are people so afraid these days?”

A few days later the agency that licenses my school came to my door to begin an investigation. This included calling all of the parents at the school, who were all in complete support of me and thought the incident was blown completely out of proportion. Each parent called me afterward to lend support and to share their outrage at this agency.

At the end of this process, the agency has revoked my license saying that I endangered the children by “exposing them to the natural hazard of the hill and the ocean front,” and by allowing them to climb, made worse by the fact that I allowed them to climb in beach attire, and my son was naked. (As result of ditching his freezing wet pair of jeans.)

The families have surrounded me with support and outrage and are willing to help pay attorney’s fees to appeal this process.

A couple of nights ago, my 7-year-old said to me, “Mama, I know why those people were afraid. They couldn’t climb that hill themselves.”

I could use whatever support, resources, or ideas, folks might have to offer. Especially helpful would be an attorney who had had experience with this sort of situation or someone who works in California’s Community Care Licensing Division who may be able to offer advice.

Thank you, Lia

Punishing decent parenting in the name of prohibition.

I consider it a tragedy when any young person dies. And the death of 16-year-old Joseph Loudon, in Orinda, CA, is no exception. The facts are that Loudon attended a house party with other teens. There was drinking, as there often is at such things. He allegedly drank too much and collapsed unconscious. He died in hospital.

We do not yet know that alcohol played a part in his death. It may well have. But until autopsy results are released it is all conjecture. But, for the sake of this argument, let us assume that Loudon was drinking.

Police, of course, want to arrest someone for supplying alcohol. So the 18-year-old who threw the party was arrested. The local news report called Loudon a “victim” implying someone else was the victimizer. If alcohol had a role to play then Loudon died at his own hand. Apparently in cases like this everyone wants someone other than the person who chose to drink to be responsible.

If there were a roof party, say three floors up. And someone provided tablecloths that some moron used to form a parachute, and that someone then jumped off the roof, dying as a result, would we arrest the provider of tablecloths? Would we consider making tablecloths a crime because someone used them in an irresponsible way? Loudon chose to drink, and he chose to drink irresponsibly. He did not think he was choosing to die but he chose to drink in a manner that likely caused his death.

Some might ask where the parents of the party host were. That is a valid question. Perhaps they didn’t know a party was happening. Perhaps they did. And if they did then they had no choose but to disappear irresponsibly. The law punishes responsible parents who monitor drinking for teens. Our neo-prohibitionist view of alcohol basically says that no one under the age of 21 is legally allowed to drink, with or without parental supervision. This makes the United States relatively unique.

As I have mentioned before I attended a Beer Festival (even though I don’t drink) at a high school overseas. All the students were drinking and were drinking with their parents and teachers. The very idea of making that a crime was ludicrous to these people. But America, with its moralistic Puritanism, bans such activity. Of course, like all prohibitionist policies it doesn’t work. It doesn’t prevent drinking it just turns teens into criminals for doing so.

Worse, it turns adults who supervise such activity into criminals as well.

Consider something that happened a few days ago in Cornwall, Connecticut. Ralph Dzenutis. As the father of a high school student he wanted a small party for friends of his son after the prom. He didn’t realize that word would spread and some 200 students showed up. He tried to keep control. Some students showed up drunk. Dzenutis did his best to make sure anyone driving wasn’t drunk. But three students passed out and Dzenutis was arrested because he was an adult on the premises.

Dzenutis is considered a model parent. He is a volunteer in the local fire department. He is a Little League coach. Dzenutis said: “I am a parent who was trying to do the right thing. I don’t condone the drinking at these parties, and I didn’t buy alcohol for these kids. But I knew the kids would be drinking, so I wanted them in a safe, supervised place. ‘Just Say No’ isn’t a position, a responsible place to be. It’s just negativity and ignorance. The kids were entitled to a party in a protected place.”

Of course the local police turned this into a major police exercise. At first they seemed reasonable. They allowed Dzenutis to walk around his property telling everyone to leave. Those who had too much to drink were given phones to call their parents to come pick them up. A few who had drunk too much Dzenutis would lead up to the police who offered to help them. (When police go to help, duck and cover.)

Next thing you know bands of cops with barking, snarling sniffer dogs appear on the scene. Terrified teens ran into the woods afraid of the police—which is a wise first reaction these days. One report says that the parents of these kids “complain that the barking dogs and the beeping thermal-imaging equipment frightened many of the teenagers, causing them to run deeper into the woods, crashing into trees and knocking their knees against stone walls.”

Dzenutis says that the police “came on like storm troopers, and the dogs are really vicious until their handlers quiet them down.” He said, “a lot of kids were scared, and we were worried some would get hurt. The police rounded the kids up with their dogs.” Even teens that were not drinking were forbidden by the police to drive home. They were forced to call their parents for a ride.

The local school, a creature of the state, threatened students who attended the party with suspension from all sporting activities. One parent told the local paper something sensible—far too sensible for politicians to listen to:

"I've known Ralph Dzenutis for 13 years, and I know exactly why he held that party. He knew what he was like at the age, what I was like at that age, he knew the kids would drink, so he held the party at his house to protect them. "When I was that age and a party got out of hand, the police came and they were your friends. 'OK, kids, the party's over. Go home.' They cleared the place and everybody was happy. The cops were our friends. But now we've got state police trolling the hallways at the high school, searching for whatever. Showing up at parties with police dogs. We've completely lost the sense of allowing kids to learn by making their own mistakes. And we've made the kids afraid of the cops. Kids don't consider the police their friends anymore."

Cornwall Selectman K.C. Baird defended Dzenutis as well and said the police overreacted. “I’ve always told my kids that I know you’re going to drink, just don’t mix it with driving. Just call me any time of night, and I’ll come get you. That’s all that Ralph was trying to do at his party, and bringing the law down on him, or on the kids, isn’t going to curtail drinking.”

No, it won’t curtail drinking. What it will do is punish parents who do try to supervise and protect teens who are drinking. It pushes them away. If they can’t stop the drinking entirely their only option is to get in the car and leave the teens unsupervised, with no adult there to restrain what is happening, with no adult their to teach responsibility. And when no adults are there things get worse, as the situation with Joseph Loudon demonstrates.

Sell a pie for Jesus, go to jail.

Let us start with the petty rules of bureaucracies. The Wall Street Journal reports that various churches in Pennsylvania are finding that church suppers are illegal unless they have state inspectors approve their kitchens. More importantly, any item not prepared in that state approved kitchen is illegal. So the tradition of women backing pies and selling them at church suppers, to raise money for the church, is verboten.

The Journal reports that the attendees at such suppers were outraged that Mother Government has stepped in to protect them from, well, ultimately to protect them from themselves. Of all the rules that politicians dream up to inflict these sorts of rules strike me as the dumbest. Food prepared in a home kitchen can't be served to us. Yet, we can all eat in our own home kitchens. If home kitchens are unsafe then why the hell are we allowed to eat in them? Secondly, we've all had experiences eating "home made" food and we've all eaten food prepared by government entities. Which is better? Why is "home made" a selling point with people? Why doesn't anyone market food "just like the staff at P.S. 101 make"?

Many years ago, when at university, I remember a piece I wrote about my one experience eating at the university cafeteria. My friend Frank and I were having lunch on campus. He ate on campus most of the time but I never had. I ordered a simple hamburger and told them, "No tomato, please." I was legitimately baffled when they said, "We can't do that."

Now I understood that sometimes you request things that they can't do but requesting people not to do something is usually easy. You can order "toast, no jam" a lot easier than you can order "toast, with caviar." I know I looked confused. The staff member repeated herself. She informed me that I had no choice and that I had to take the tomato. I informed her that I don't like tomato. I informed her that I would only throw it in the garbage. I may have even invoked the image of starving people in China (I told you this was a long time ago). She stood her ground. I had no choice in the matter. It was rule. They had to put a tomato on every hamburger because it was good for us.

I asked her if she could put in on the side of the plate and she said she could. She handed me the plate, we were still in line at the time. Immediately behind was a trash can and I turned and threw the tomato in the garbage. But she was happy. The rule had been obeyed. The omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient State had been satisfied. That a perfectly good slice of tomato, which some people actually like, was thrown in the trash didn't matter. The rules had been obeyed. The gods of bureaucracy were placated. If memory serves me right maybe I should have kept the tomato, to disguise the taste of the hamburger.

The fact is that government makes lousy food. Thankfully, the Obamatrons in office haven't yet mandated that we eat in government-run cafeterias. But they haven't taken to bailing out restaurants that they put out business—well, not yet anyway.

The uproar in Pennsylvania, dubbed "piegate" by the local media, did make one person happy. Bill Chirdon, who runs the food gestapo for the local Department of Agriculture, was piratically orgasmic. He said all the publicity is letting the public know that church bake sales, etc., are illegal. Bureaucrats are thrilled when the public knows that another aspect of human existence has been outlawed by Nanny.

As absurd and petty-minded as these bureaucrats are, what really surprised me about this story was precisely how nasty the churches were—to each other. You would think, that under assault from the food Nazis in government, these churches would band together and maybe fight for freedom—for a change of pace, at least. Nope. Chirdon reports, "I've gotten a lot of letters from churches that are tattletaling on churches down the street that aren't licensed and don't meet standards for food service." Ah, yes, another example of Christian charity.

Photo: Two dangerous felons attempting to poison America, worse than terrorists I say. Send them to Gitmo and torture them, damn it. Save the children! Heil Obama.

Fanaticism and the law: the persecution of Ting-Yi Oei

One of the great dangers of being involved in witch-hunts is that the hunter sometimes becomes the hunted. That apparently is the case of an assistant school principle who was asked to hunt down students who might be guilty of “sexting”—the use of telephone technology to send erotic photos of oneself to others.

Ting-Yi Oei was a teacher and administrator at the misnamed Freedom High School in South Riding, Virginia. Since there were rumors going about that “sexting” was rampant, he was asked to investigate. A year ago, one of the students that Oei asked about the rumors was a 16-year-old boy who said he had such an image on his cell phone—obviously the boy wasn’t that bright. But what was depicted was far from porn, and far from explicit. It showed a female torso, clad in underpants, her breasts covered by her arms. In other words, it showed less than an underwear ad on television.

The boy said he had no idea who it was or where it came from. Oei showed the suspect image to the principal, who instructed him to preserve a copy on his office computer. Oei found the technology involved too difficult to understand so the boy sent the image to Oei’s phone and then showed him how to forward to his email account. The boy then deleted this rather mundane image at Oei’s instruction. No other photos were discovered and no one could identify the female from what little was shown. As far as Oei was concerned the matter was over.

Unfortunately, the boy in question got himself in trouble when he pulled down a girl’s pants in class. He was rightfully suspended. But the boy’s mother was furious and wanted to take the school to task for treating her baby so badly. Her son told her about the image being confiscated and she figured she had the hook to get even. First, she demanded to know why Oei hadn’t reported the image to her. Perhaps that was because the image posed no problems to anyone. If every teenage boy in America, who possessed a photo of a scantily clad body, were reported to his parents the country would come to a standstill. But Mommy dearest was livid and called Oei very early one morning demanding her son be reinstated at school. Oei told her that wasn’t possible, given what the boy had done.

Mommy dearest got her revenge. She now went to the police and told them about the photo that Oei had copied, on orders of the principal. Once local police got involved they smelled a juicy story that would make them look good and useful to local taxpayers. They asked Oei for the image and he said they could have it but that he had no idea how to transfer it. So the police did the transfer and left. They claimed they were investigating the “sexting” issue.

Quickly the police filed charges—against Oei. They said he didn’t report “child abuse” and thus violated the law. They said Oei was obligated to report the photo to the girl’s parents. But, as Oei pointed out, no one knew who the girl was and thus it was impossible to do that. In addition, he said the photo did not indicate any abuse whatsoever. It was a slightly naughty photo that a girl took of herself, hardly indicative of a white slavery racket. In addition, Oei was required by law to report the incident to the principal only and he had done that. If the principal thought necessary, it was her job to report it further.

At this point, a zealot stepped in—conservative Republican and local prosecutor, James Plowman (pictured above). Plowman decided he could get some good publicity by going after Oei. And like most fanatical prosecutors with a moralistic agenda, Plowman was not unwilling to twist the law into any shape to get what he wanted. Plowman told Oei he wanted him to resign his position. When Oei refused, Plowman got a grand jury to prosecute Oei for “child pornography,” this in spite of the fact that the photo in question contained no nudity whatsoever, unless bare arms count. Of course, the man is a conservative Republican, any woman not covered by a burka is pornographic in his circles.


Plowman waited until the first day of school to have the police march in and arrest Oei in front of his staff and students. Consider how the media reported the incident at the time. Leesburg Today reported that Oei had been arrested for child porn charges and that the sheriff’s department “would not elaborate on the nature of the photo, only repeating that it was deemed ‘inappropriate.’” Oei was being prosecuted with only his defense attorney actually trying to explain that there was no pornography involved. What is even more bizarre, is that the same publication later referred to the photo as “a potentially nude photo.” Either the photo depicts nudity or not. The term “potentially nude photo” makes no sense whatsoever.

The Sheriff’s department eventually “said there was no crime depicted in the photograph, but county prosecutors [Plowman] moved ahead with the case” anyway. Oei was removed from his job, and his fellow staff members were told to avoid him. Suddenly he found himself in the middle of a frenzy accused of child porn with absolutely nothing but a relatively innocent photo confiscated from a student as proof. For the next year, he had to fight the zealotry of the Republican prosecutor who promised to be “tough” on crime. Plowman’s office, of course, had taxpayer funds to waste. Oei had to defend himself with his own money, an estimated $150,000 and one full year of his life, to be exact.

Oei was told that all his friends and family would now be investigated and that his home computers could be seized at any time, along with his phone records. He and his wife, a life-long schoolteacher herself, searched all their family photos to see if they had any photos of their children playing in the bath. Said Oei, “Heaven forbid that a parent might think it was cute for a baby to play in a bubble bath and there might be an inappropriate part showing. Luckily all of our rubber-ducky baby photos had the children covered in bath bubbles or something.”

Plowman wasn’t finished in his attack on the man. After all “child porn” gets lots of publicity for a prosecutor with a vision of himself in higher office. And one tactic to intimidate individuals is to overcharge them in the hopes of forcing them to admit guilt to something in order to avoid having to fight all the other charges as well. It’s a dirty trick, but Plowman is fighting for morality so ethics has no role in the game. Now Plowman added new charges, claiming that Oei had contributed to the delinquency of a minor. In Plowman’s little mind, when Oei had the teen transfer the photo to Oei’s phone and then to the computer that amounted to him encouraging the boy to commit a crime. Remember Plowman was still claiming the photo was child pornography every chance he got.

Members of the local Quaker community came to Oei’s aid. The local education association and the state education association lent him money for his defense. Students who had been out of touch for years reappeared and offered help.

Oei’s nightmare ended two days ago when a local judge threw out the charges. Remember the photo had no nudity in it at all. Judge Thomas Horne, who will no doubt be branded an “activist judge” by local Christianists allied with Plowman, said that the photo simply wasn’t child pornography. If the photo is not pornographic and depicts no nudity it can’t be “child porn” and thus Oei can’t be guilty of any of the charges that Plowman concocted. Plowman is unapologetic and insists that the photo was “lewd.” But, really, Plowman is a Republican conservative after all and these days “lewd” has very broad definitions in his circles. Plowman insisted the photo had to be “provocative” because the judge sealed it from public view. Of course, the reason for that could well be that the judge was protecting the girl in question and her privacy, not trying to protect the public from porn, as Plowman was desperately trying to insinuate.

The Wired article says Plowman blames Oei for the entire court case. “Plowman insists he never intended to seek prison time for Oei. He would have been satisfied with a fine, probation and Oei’s resignation. The case would never have gone this far, he says, if Oei had resigned when asked.” Clearly this man lacks all human decency. He is worried about looking good and it doesn’t look good when he prosecutes people for non-existent crimes. So he pushes the man with more charges hoping to intimidate him into pleading guilty to something just so Plowman can say that his office is exonerated by the guilty plea. And when no guilty plea is forthcoming, since no crime had been committed, Plowman then blames his victim for what Plowman did to him. Amazing.

Plowman has a female assistant prosecutor, Nicolle Wittmann, who said even more absurd things when the judge threw the case out. She said they prosecuted because: “This is the issue of possession of this photograph. There is no exception to the possession of child pornography.” Either this woman is brain-dead or a bald-faced liar. Whether there is an exception to possession of child porn. [Clearly there is. Otherwise, the prosecutor’s wouldn’t be able to possess said photos] is not the question since there was NO child porn to possess.

What is more amazing, is that Plowman and Wittmann never filed any charges against the student who possessed the photo, the girl [who was later identified] or the person who took the photo. If, as Plowman and Wittmann, so unconvincingly contend, the photo was “child porn” why were those who created and disseminated the photo free of any charges?

I sincerely doubt that even Plowman and Wittmann actually think that there was any “child porn” involved. Plowman stupidly laid charges without evidence and then tried to cover up by laying new, more serious charges, in the hopes of intimidating Oei to plead guilty to something. Plowman was trying to cover his ass. And, for the same reason, he and Wittmann are clearly lying to the public when they continue to refer to this as a “child porn” case. And Plowman knew that since he was wasting tax funds, he had no financial limitations to prevent him from continuing with the prosecution until he wore Oei down.

Nor do I doubt that Plowman has justified his behavior to himself, as despicable as it clearly has been. I imagine he sees himself as a defender of people from crime. As such, he needs to be tough. Sometimes he makes mistakes, but if he admits that he fucked up big time he could lose office. So best to plow doggedly ahead, admit no error, and blame the victim. After all, he has to think of the public. And, if the public falls for it, he might be rewarded with higher office someday. Plowman may even believe he is helping the public with his antics, but then many “law and order” types are just like him. If you want another example just look at the antics of prosecutor Andrew Thomas and his “assistant” Rachel Alexander.

For those who wish to politely suggest that Mr. Plowman resign, he may be emailed here: jeplowman@aol.com.

New porn law includes older adults as "child porn."

Even an old cynic like myself has to be astounded by the utter stupidity of government now and then. And this is one of those times.

I have argued that America is really screwed up when it comes to sex. Due to the influence of fundamentalists, Catholics and Mormons our society seems to live in continually panic about sex. The specific form that hysteria takes may vary from time to time but antisexualism is endemic in American culture. In the civilized world this attitude is pretty much exclusive to the United States. It isn’t that other cultures don’t’ exhibit such raw antisexualism, certainly Islamic cultures do so, but then I don’t consider them part of the civilized world.

Of course, the problem in Islamic nations is the same problem that infests the United States: that a significant portion of the population takes religious mythology seriously and literally. I like to remind people that when you can’t find a rational explanation for something, such as this hysteria, the next best thing to look for is an irrational explanation and that is where religion comes in.

Precisely what astounding act has government done to warrant my attention today? In Massachusetts a couple of political morons are attempting to introduce new legislation to ban erotic images of anyone over the age of 60! I am not making this up. In my wildest imagination I couldn’t make up something as ridiculous and absurd if I tried. Truly this sort of stupidity is only possible to those who have spent a lifetime inside the halls of government—there even the most absurd and ridiculous ideas sound sane after awhile.

The Boston Herald said the new law “would add seniors and the handicapped to kiddie porn laws.” A rather scary woman, in a Janet-Reno-burn-down-the-damn-building-even-if-there-are-children-in-the-building sort of way, Elizabeth Scheibel is pushing for the law. As this sex Nazi puts it, she wants “to protect our two must vulnerable populations.” That would be, I assume, children and older adults. Apparently this imbecile thinks that older people are just like children with all the rights of children. But let’s be truthful here, it is likely that Herr Scheibel believes that of everyone. She is Big Mother here to regulate our sex lives for our own good. Perhaps she is just jealous that other people have sex lives.

Scheibel, who is a district attorney helped craft the legislation. Of course, Herr Scheibel points to cases where an elderly person, or a handicapped person, was actually abused against their will. But, as one attorney pointed out, those acts are already illegal.

Law professor Eugene Volokh has looked at the legislation and says that it is so broadly written that what it really does is make it illegal for older adults or the handicapped from consenting to a sexual activity they may enjoy: erotic photos. He says the law “is not limited to people who are mentally handicapped and thus unable to consent, or who are photographed against their will by their caretakers… The operative provisions cover people over 60 and the disabled whether or not they are incompetent.” Volokh says:

Note that the law isn't limited to making pornography for commercial purposes (since the child pornography law that it builds on covers noncommercial child pornography, too). That means that if 60-year-old spouses or lovers — or spouses or lovers of someone who is disabled — decide to photograph each other naked with "lascivious intent," they would be committing a crime.

Under the law a person can “punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of not less than ten nor more than twenty years, or by a fine of not less than ten thousand nor more than fifty thousand dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”

Political creeps, like Herr Scheibel, engage in political creep: that is where they constantly work to expand laws, in small increments, to cover more and more territory. Eventually the law is distorted beyond all recognition and people sit around, their jaws dropped open, wondering what the hell happened. That is what they did with child porn laws. No one is opposed to protecting children from exploitation but now we are imprisoning teenagers as "child pornographers" for taking nude photos of themselves. Laws meant to protect children from molestation are now defined so broadly that teens making out in car, on a date, can be charged with molesting each other. And they can all be forced to join the government’s favorite list of pariahs: the sex offenders list.

I’m not aesthetically anxious to see granny porn, but if grandpa does, then I don’t see how that is any business of Herr Scheibel. Clearly the law already protects anyone who is incapable of consenting to erotic acts. So there is no justification for this new law. The string of stories that Scheibel belts out are mere excuses, they are the raison d'être or perhaps I should say, raison d’état.

At every turn the political process is a war on the liberties of the people. Politics, and thus politicians, are inherently imperialistic. They are constantly searching for excuses to expand their powers, their privileges and their perks. And each expansion must come at a price to your liberty and your welfare. Certainly, before democratic elections, the political class was explicit in their desire to rape, pillage and plunder the populace. Such honesty today would be a PR problem, so they couch their expansionary moves in terms of “protecting” the public from some danger, usually an imaginary danger. And in those cases, where the danger does exist, they magnify it all out of proportion. Today’s politicians are as predatory as those that were thrown off the backs of the people in the past. But they have learned to hide their predatory nature under a cloak of concern and care.

The most dangerous predators, the ones who threaten all of us, are those who hold elected office. The Founders attempted to limit the ability of these predators to do harm by "chaining" them down with the restraints of enumerated powers. Unfortunately, the predators have broken through those chains long ago. Now, no one is safe, the politicians are lose.

Photos: Apparently our first photo, of an older woman who apparently likes to dress up and pose, would be illegal. The second photo, of Herr Scheibel, is far more disturbing and scary, but would remain legal though beastiality provisions may apply. (No, I'm not nice to people like her, so don't whine about it.)

What the fuck!

It's been a while since we have featured the moralistic antics that tend to go on in the Theocratic State of Texas. It is time to make up that short-coming with this bizarre story.

Kathryn Fridge, 29, of La Marque, Texas was shopping at Wal-Mart with her mother. In a conversation between the two women Kathryn said "fuck." Her sentiments were understandable. A tropical storm warning had been issued and she and her mother were looking to buy batteries. But they found that the shelves had already been picked clean. In response to this unfortunate turn of events, Ms. Fridge expressed dismay by saying that the batteries were "fucking gone."

Now Capt. Alfred Decker, moralistic buttwipe and La Marque assistant fire marshal, steps in and decides that because he gets to wear a uniform that he can issue a citation to Ms. Fridge for "disorderly conduct." Keep in mind that Capt. Asshole was issuing a citation, and arresting the woman, while a Tropical Storm was bearing down on the city. Apparently this moronic twat had nothing better to do in the realm of public safety than arrest women for saying "fuck" in his sainted presence. Decker appears to be one of those thugs who likes throwing his weight around and bossing people. The Galveston News says he has "fallen upon people for such things as playing music too loudly in their cars." Decker got in a fight with one man, who is now charged with assault, when Decker started lecturing him about the loudness of his music.

In fact, it appears that Decker arrested Fridge because she stood up for herself. Decker's fire chief, Todd Zacheri said, "If she would have said, 'yes, sir,' there would have been no problem and she would have been able to walk off." But the Galveston Daily News notes: "One of the great things about being an American is that we don't have to say 'yes sir' everytime a government employee speaks to us: we can talk back to authority." In principle true, In practice cops have assaulted a lot of people for questioning their "authorita."

It also appears that like many moralistic busybodies Decker is a hypocrite, actually I should say, fucking hypocrite. It appears that Decker himself once got in trouble for screaming foul language at a man in front of the man's little girl. Fridge's remarks were not said int he presence of a child unless you count the childish antics of Mr. Decker.

In a previous incident Capt. Asshole Decker was on fireworks patrol on New Year's Eve when he ordered Damien Hill out of his car. "[Hill] accused Decker of failing to identify himself, ordering him from his car, placing him in a headlock and forcing his head on the hood." Mr Hill said, "He was chocking the shit out of me, and I wasn't fixing to die that night." According to Hill, "I didn't have my music on, and my windows were rolled up."

Fire Chief Zacheri claims that "Decker is the city's code enforcement officer, who routinely encounters rude residents who refuse to cut their grass and remove trash from their property and generally object to Decker's dedication to neighborhood preservation." God, this Decker sounds like one big twat who really does get his rocks off by ordering people about on the great inconsequentials of life. No doubt he has illusions that he is some great protector of the law but what he is is a meddling, petty-minded bureaucrat that would do the world a favor if he chocked on his breakfast. Consider what he does for a living: he arrests people for swearing, hassles people who he says are playing their music, in their car, too loud, and orders people to cut their grass. I'm surprised this jerk hasn't been shot yet.

Decker threatened Stephen Taylor and screamed obscenities at him and said he would assault the man, in front of the man's child. This had nothing to do with Decker's normally annoying, petty duties at all. Decker was, in fact, dating the man's ex-wife. And the dispute was over that. Decker approached the man's vehicle, while the man's daughter was in the front seat.

In an aapparent domestic dispute, Stephen Taylor complained to Dickinson police and a League City justice of the peace, accusing Decker of threatening him with profane language within earshot of Taylor’s frightened 9-year-old daughter.

According to the affidavit, Decker and Taylor’s ex-wife were dating at the time. Taylor had no comment. A message left for Decker at his office wasn’t returned. Decker has no public telephone listing. A judge on Aug. 29, 2007, issued an arrest warrant for Decker on a Class B misdemeanor terroristic threat charge. Bond for Decker was set at $1,000. In the affidavit, Decker is accused of placing his head and arms inside Taylor’s truck, while his daughter, a passenger, had her head between her knees, crying and shaking. Taylor’s affidavit states: “(Decker) was calling me a ‘chicken s—, mother f---. Get out and I will beat your ass.”

Apparently Decker was guilty. He paid $263, was put on 180 days probation "and was ordered to have no contact with Taylor." After Decker paid his fine and finished the probation the charges were dismissed because he "abided by the court's guidelines." The Galveston paper says that at least a dozen people called the paper complaining about Decker and his heavy-handed tactics but most were afraid to allow their identity to be revealed.

Throughout the articles I've read Fire Chief Zacheri seems to have a real crush on Decker. All he has to say about the man is loving, wonderful things. He completely defends the moron's actions even for arresting the woman who said "fucking." Zacheri argues: "You just can't go off swearing and hollering. You just can't do it." Actually moron, read the First Amendment. It gives everyone the fucking right to say fucking even to fucking assholes like Decker who can be reached at a.decke@la-marque.tx.us. Don't expect an answer, he's refusing to speak to the media. Apparently he doesn't like to speak to anyone he can't arrest and threaten.

It sounds to me like Mr. Decker is just a bully who needs to be taken down several notches. Actually he needs to be laid off.

Minors and Medicinal Marijuana

The War on Drugs is not about protecting people from the dire effects about drugs. That may have been the original reason for it, but that is not what keeps this ill-conceived, tyrannical program going. Two things inspired this violent assault on peaceful Americans. One is the pure greed and self-interest of the drug control industry: that is cops, prosecutors, prison guards, and other officials who earn their living busting down people's doors and shooting up their homes. Some do it for the benefits of a paycheck, others because they get their kicks hurting people. And some do it because they believe they have the right to run the lives of others. About 10 minutes long.

Check out the 160+ videos on liberty at TvLiberty.

Bridge officials want suicide barrier: but at what cost?

Officials for the agency that manages San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to build a suicide barrier. The bridge has long been a magnet attracting those who wish to end their lives.

But a poll of San Franciscans found that about three quarters of them think there should be no barrier at all. Of course public opinion will be ignored. The most popular plan is to but a net made of steel cables to catch the jumpers. The cables will be coated with plastic but will still hurt like hell when someone hits it, hitting steel cable after falling 20 feet is not exactly pleasant.

The main proponents of the idea are mental health professionals, who at the very least, have a conflict of interest here. I presume that any jumper so snagged would then be forced into the mental health system where these professionals will be paid to “help” them.

The net, of course, will not be fool proof. An unknown number of people will still be able to climb out of the net and complete their journey.

The other problem they are grappling with is that the net may actually attract jumpers just not those who wish to die. Thrill-seekers can be tempted to leap into the net. To prevent this the authorities are planning to impose stiff fines on jumpers. I assume this will be across the board. Somehow I can’t see a heavy fine giving the suicidal another reason to live.

The cost for the netting is estimated to be $40 to $50 million. Typical with any government project one should at least double the original estimate since government officials always lie through their eye teeth when it comes to cost estimates --- much as they always overstate the benefits of any new project they propose.

The bridge, which is now 71-years-old, has been the location of approximately 1,300 known suicides. If, over the next 71 years, the net prevents the same number of suicides as have taken place since its erection, then the cost per suicide prevented, would be approximately $38,500. That is provided the cost is not higher than the original projections. If the costs are double what they project then figure about $77,000 per prevention.

According to news reports the jumpers will be extracted by a specially utilized truck with a “scooper” that will lower two workers down to the jumper. It is unclear whether the cost of the truck in included in the $50 million cost. And there is the question of how much money it will cost per call out. Both should be added to the costs. None of this includes the $2 million being spent just to study the project!

Of course, if the net actually encourages thrill-seekers to leap then the number of jumpers will increase and so will the costs of extraction. In other words there is no idea what the costs may be per life saved. Assuming the numbers jumping over the next 71 years are similar to the last, assuming that the net actually saves every single one of those jumpers from death, and assuming typical cost overruns and labor costs to scoop out the jumpers, the cost per suicide prevented could be around $100,000. And that is assuming that no thrill-seekers are attracted to jump because the net is there to save them.

In one recent year the Bay Area had a total of 622 suicides. Of those 23 were people who jumped off the bridge. That means the barrier will do nothing to prevent 96% of the suicides. Less than 4% of suicidal individuals in the Bay Area use the bridge to off themselves. And officials admit that some unknown number of them will still climb out of the net anyway. In addition it is safe to say that a barrier on the bridge, if successful, may only change the method of suicide. Someone wishing to end their life has many options to pick from. Removing one option still leaves all the rest. Then there is the question as to whether it is a proper function of government to prevent people from killing themselves but I won't delve into that here. I’m with the 75% of the public who think the officials should just scrap the project.

For the record, I did have one friend who jumped from the bridge. Yes, I was shocked he did it. But not surprised. He was an immensely unhappy individual plagued by fears about his life. I have little doubt that had the bridge option been closed to him he would have found another method to end it all.

Boy suspended from school and punished for candy.

It was just after lunch on February 26th when Michael Sheridan was approached in the school hallway by another boy. The other boy had his lunch box with him and he opened it to show Michael the little plastic bags of illicit substances. From the amount of cash in the lunch basket it was clear this dealer had an easy time selling to the other kids.

Michael handed over the cash and held the precious bag in his hand. One of the school administrators noticed the transaction and the heavy hand of the administration came down. Such things simply won’t be tolerated. These days very little is tolerated in the little fascist states that the public school administrators have established, their own personal fiefdoms where they can be the supreme social engineer manipulating the minds and lives of others to meet their authoritarian agendas.

Michael was approached by the Reichminister and told to empty his pockets for inspection. He complied and showed them the plastic bag filled with candy. It was a bag of Skittles, a legal candy sold everywhere except in those zones controlled by the health Nazis.

For his crime Michael was suspended from school for three days. (Personally I think he should have gone for a 365 day per year suspension myself, the less contact he has with the people who run the government schools the better.) He was supposed to attend a honors student dinner as well, clearly he is a felon in the making, but he was banned from that. And he stripped of being class vice president. All because some stupid woman got her bun in knot over him buying Skittles.

Reichfuhrer for health, Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo, spoke on behalf of the government controlled school system. She said: “There are no candy sales allowed in schools, period.” Doesn’t she sound like the little dictators that infest the educational system today.

According to this Reichfuhrer the school principal, Eleanor “Benito” Turner “made it clear for months this was not to happen.” It’s hard to tell if they are more upset that he violated a stupid rule or because he didn’t pay them the deference they were demanding. The New Haven newspaper said:

Turner had repeatedly warned students that she would not allow any candy to be sold in schools, nor did she want money changing hands in school, said Sullivan-DeCarlo. She said it was her understanding that the student was suspended for insubordination, which is what the district considered the candy exchange.

So Principal Mussolini has also banned any exchange of money. Apparently she hates free markets as well -- no surprise considering the sad quality of unionized teachers in America today. The school also says that the candy violates their “wellness” regulations forced on all students because Nanny knows best. Turner herself refused to speak to the press, obviously she has a George Bush complex and doesn’t believe anyone has the right to question her.

It is a sad day for America’s kids when a student can be suspended, kept from a honor’s dinner and stripped of class office because he bought some candy. Parents who continued to let their children be moulded by government educationalists are only asking for trouble. Do everything and anything you can to send your kids to sane, private schools if you can find one. If you can’t then homeschool them. But get them out of the hands of little tyrants like Turner.

A note to libertarians in the New Haven area. Here is a chance to make a point. Buys lots and lots of candy and put together a day where you gather outside the school, on public sidewalks of course so they can’t say you are trespassing. Make sure you videotape everything lest some “official” from the school come to harass you. Have big signs protesting the tyrants who run the school. And have one sign saying “free candy”. Give out free candy to all the kids as they go into the school. A flyer protesting the absurdity of a school system regulating candy while failing to provide a decent education might be appropriate. It can also encourage parents to investigate private alternatives including home schooling. And you might as well demand the removal of Benito Turner from her office as well. Don’t forget to let the media know when you will be there

That isn’t asking too much, especially if you were one of these people who wasted time standing on street corners with those “Ron Paul rEVOLution” signs.

Meanwhile the rest of you who aren’t in the New Haven area shouldn’t be thankful you don’t have to deal with someone as absurd as Turner. Trust me, the local school district where you live has more than its share of little dictators. If you wish to express your disapproval then write to Turner directly: eleanor.turner@new-haven.k12.ct.us. Keep your protests polite and non abusive but firm. Suggest she repeal her attempt to control the diets of children who are not her own. Demand that she reinstate Mr. Sheridan to his office as vice president of his class and that she apologize but being such a twit.

Drama group told to register toy gun with police.

If you want an idea of how England is being regulated to death by morons at all levels of government all you have to do is see what recently happened to the Carnon Downs drama group.

The group puts on pantomimes and sometimes they use a toy gun which shoots out a flag that says “bang”. And other times they use plastic swords.

The bureaucrats that run the Health and Safety Executive have detailed rules about what one is allowed to do with fake weapons on stage. Linda Barker, of the drama group, said: “The cutlasses count as weapons even though they are replicas and made of plastic and apparently they could be mistaken for real ones.”

And one of the rules is that these faux weapons have to be registered with the police. Barker noted, “It gets a bit farcical when you are dealing with plastic swords. It is not as if anyone is likely to be scared by them.”

The group was told that when the toys are not being used on stage that they are required to keep them under lock and key. The plastic stage props have to be kept in a secured case, in a locked room with only restricted access. Elaine Gummow, co-director of the drama group said this “is perhaps a sign of the times that health and safety is everywhere.”

One of the bureaucrats said: “We do not want to stop people putting on pantos or having fun as long as the risks are sensibly managed.” Of course, when they say “managed” what they mean is managed by them.

After the police were informed they told the drama group that they were also required to inform the fire brigade.

Not long ago actor Ewan McGregor said that the “ludicrous nanny state” in England may drive him out of England. “If anything drives me out of the country it will be that...” McGregor said, “Today, health and safety are out of control.”

The bureaucrat who said they don’t want to stop fun didn’t explain how towns in England had to actually cancel traditional Christmas lighting displays as a result of the micromanagement of the unelected bureaucrats. In Clevedon the local businesses canceled their display after they were told that attaching lights to either buildings or to light poles was too risky. One trader said: “The rules and regulations regarding Christmas lights have changed to such an extent that to put the illuminations we have used is near impossible.” A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses said that “exhaustive safety concerns are ruining the festive spirit.”