It’s that most wonderful time of the year when I get myself into trouble with some readers simply by pointing out a handful of the staggering number of new laws that have been foisted on Americans in general and Californians in particular as the New Year begins.
How many laws, you ask? Buckle up because there are more than 40,000 new restrictions, regulations and statutes that became law at midnight on Wednesday, January 1, 2014. So much for the so-called gridlock in Washington, DC and other seats of government. (And we know which body part sits in a seat, am I right?)
On the national front, some of the new laws (including some that were passed years ago but did not become law until this year) include one that makes it illegal to produce 40-watt and 60-watt incandescent light bulbs for sale in the USA. This comes after the banning of less frequently used 75- and 100-watt bulbs beginning in 2012. Thank you, control-freak government zealots for keeping us in the dark when it comes to choice.
The mother of all new federal laws, however, that will affect every man, woman and child (not to mention doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics and medical device manufacturers, to name just a few of those afflicted) is the legislation that dropped on January 1st like the trap door on a gallows; “Obamacare”, officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Sadly, with every passing day we’re seeing more incontrovertible evidence that this mind-numbing 10,000-plus-page swamp of legislation protects no one, is neither affordable, nor does it provide any improvements to care (quite the opposite) and everything promised to the American public in order to drum up slightest modicum of support was, indeed, just an act. “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health insurance plan, you can keep your health insurance plan. Period.” Not hardly.
On the state level, there are far too many troubling new laws to begin to cover in this space. Just here in California, for example, the chuckleheads in Sacramento have gone well above and beyond their usual social engineering and legal bullying to inflict more than 800 new laws on citizens of the Golden State. These include the wildly dangerous mandate that students as young as kindergarten must be allowed to use whichever bathroom is consistent with their self-proclaimed gender identity on any given day regardless of what’s listed on their school records or birth certificate. This self-selecting choice also applies to participation in school sports. Think of the implications of such moronic foolishness. Got a daughter in high school? Or a son who wants to visit the girls’ locker rooms unhampered? You can thank Jerry Brown and his bullying band of boneheads for one more parental nightmare to keep you up at night.
Another new law that defies any sense of logic is one that allows the licensing of “qualified” lawyers regardless of their immigration status. In other words, in California you can theoretically practice law even though you are here illegally. Hello ... is this thing on?
Finally, and in a delicious irony of timing, given the recent reports of local pets being killed and dragged from their backyards by mountain lions, the dangerous beasts have even more legal protection against elimination or even relocation thanks to a new law restriction such actions by California Fish & Wildlife wardens. Drag a beloved family pet out of its own backyard to certain death? No problem. Tranquilize and remove a killer predator from the community? Not so fast, bucko.
I can only explain these and other such legal lunacies with the possibility that California’s legislators must have spent too much time in Colorado, where as of January 1st it is okie dokie to buy and consume up to an ounce of marijuana at a time. Rocky Mountain high, indeed.
I’ll see you ‘round town.
Regular readers know that a few times each year the wonders in my noggin spill over onto my keyboard. With all the scandalous news of late – from Boston to Benghazi and the IRS to the NSA – the wonderings have become a flood. So strap on your waders and let’s dive in:
I wonder … what ever happened to coverage of North Korea’s tyrannical, bizarrely unstable dictator, Kim Jong Un? Mere weeks ago the world was poised on the brink of nuclear war with the polyp from Pyongyang. Today? Crickets.
I wonder … who is the sadistic person who designs hotel shower valves without the words “Hot” and “Cold”? I also wonder how much water is wasted trying to figure out how to get the right temperature from those infernal things?
I wonder … if anyone is concerned about the student body at Morehouse College in Atlanta. I mean, if it’s true (as we’re told repeatedly) that gender, race and social diversity are critical to the quality of higher education – does that mean the students at Morehouse College where President Obama gave the commencement address in May are being shortchanged? After all, they attend one of the most narrowly defined student bodies on the planet – all men, all black, all of the time. Hello, ACLU?
I wonder … if anyone else thinks Toyota should have named its popular Prius hybrid the “Pious” or better yet, the “Pass Us”?
I wonder … if anyone else thinks the word “fruition” gets funnier the more you say it?
I wonder … how anyone will ever again be able to walk a dog when plastic bags are banned from the face of the earth? Not to worry, at the rate government intrusion into our lives is growing, I’m sure we’ll soon have a Department of Doggie Defecation along with a library of regulations for federally-approved production, retrieval and disposal of canine emissions.
I wonder … if you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?
I wonder … how our President can say “If there’s a step we can take to save even one child, we should take that step!” to a wildly cheering audience of gun-control zealots, yet only days later be the first President ever to honor and praise the attendees at a national gathering of Planned Parenthood; an organization responsible for ending the lives of hundreds of thousands of babies since the 70s. Can you spell “hypocrite” boys and girls? Whoops, of course you can’t. You’re not alive.
I wonder … why our State Department didn’t claim that the two cowardly Boston bomber brothers were motivated by an offensive anti-Islam YouTube video that nobody on the planet has seen?
I wonder … how fast we mere citizens (aka: “sheeple”) would have our bank accounts seized and be thrown in prison if we tried the same tactic at an IRS audit as Lois Lerner (director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division) used during her congressional hearing last month? “I’ve done nothing wrong and I refuse to answer any more questions.”
I wonder … why, as the brilliant African-American economist Thomas Sowell has asked, it is considered greedy to want to keep the money you have earned but not greedy to want to take somebody else’s money through higher tax rates?
I wonder … how any politician or pundit can say with a straight face that we the people have nothing to fear from the omnipresent government monitoring (spying) on each and every one of us – all the while the disgusting IRS scandal continues to grow in scope and importance?
I wonder … speaking of the obscenely arrogant, criminally corrupt and hyper-partisan IRS, what level of financial-terrorism we will all be subjected to when the IRS bloats its staff of thugs to enforce the coming onslaught of taxes and penalties facing every single American once Obama-care is in full force next year?
I wonder … how this all ends? I’ll see you ‘round town.
