From Kevin D. Williamson’s “They Are Coming for Your Children:
“(Connecticut Governor Dannel) Malloy’s committee on the Newtown shootings is recommending that Connecticut require home-schooling families to present their children to the local authorities periodically for inspection, to see to it that their psychological and social growth is proceeding in the desired direction.
That would be the bureaucrats‘ desired direction, of course, not that of the parents.
Read the whole thing.
Breakenridge says the Alberta Health Minister is partaking in a knee-jerk reaction to electronic nicotine delivery.
Related, via via John Galt, which I don’t have an issue with. Kids shouldn’t use electronic nicotine delivery or smoke.
Like all bureaucracies the response is over the top.
The only thing to fear, is fear itself;
In common with Three Mile Island, Fukushima doesn’t seem to have caused any deaths from radiation; even at Chernobyl the demonstrable death toll which resulted from radiation exposure was small compared to events like Bhopal or the Banqiao dam failure.
What created the human misery at Fukushima was the response – not the immediate precautionary evacuation but what followed and ironically what preceded. The only other area currently excluded because of human activity is Chernobyl. It follows, to the rational non-expert, that the levels of radiation throughout these exclusion zones must represent a higher risk than any other man-made threat on the planet.
h/t Eric A.
Is paved with nanny state intervention.
On Monday, by a vote of 36 to 2, Toronto City Council voted in favour of a Board of Health recommendation which would prohibit e-cigarette use in all City of Toronto workplaces. The Board also called on the provincial government to amend the Smoke-Free Ontario Act to ban e-cigarette use wherever cigarettes are banned and to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.
I have no problem explicitly banning the sale to minors. Any retailer I’ve used does that already.
I can guarantee you that if Saskatchewan jurisdictions start along the same road I’ll probably be back on cigarettes when I work in those areas. You don’t get anywhere near the nicotine dose from electronic nicotine delivery as you do from smoking. When working on-site it’s more efficient to puff a cigarette for 5 minutes than to vape for 30.
No cigarette since February, thanks to electronic devices, at risk because people say it looks like smoking and have absolutely no facts supporting any serious health issue.
Photo credit: Brick60
University! College newspaper can’t be called ‘The Bullet’ anymore because it’s too dangerous
In a story that sounds almost too ridiculous to be true, both La Presse and the Toronto Star are reporting that John Baird’s Twitter account is being investigated by Graham Fraser, Canada’s language watchdog – after someone complained that the foreign affairs minister’s tweets were mostly in English.
Actually, that’s not quite accurate.
I think the world is being run by aliens. Because only someone who has never been a child could think like this.
Related*
I used to have trouble understanding why “civilized” European countries were so often at war.
Today, I just want my own B-29.
It’s increasingly ridiculous to use the word “liberal” to describe the modern American collectivist. There’s nothing liberal about them at all. They’re shooting for the ultimate subversion of liberty, by re-defining “liberty” as a form of compulsion. In other words, they’re saying you are being oppressed unless a wise and virtuous dictatorial authority can force other people to give you what the authoritarians have decided you “deserve.” You aren’t “free” as long as you must provide for yourself. Liberty becomes a term used to describe its exact opposite: a set of active obligations placed upon other people. It’s right up there with any perversion of language and thought described by George Orwell in “1984.” Actually, it is one of the perversions he laid at Big Brother’s feet: “Freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”
h/t EBD
The Allison Redford, nanny-land of Alberta strikes again. Red Deer bans e-cigs in public places.
They’re calling it smoking and I imagine this will be challenged at some point, as it isn’t smoking. The basis for banning smoking from public places was always sold as a safety move, second-hand smoke is a danger. Vaping doesn’t hold that danger. No one even knows if it’s dangerous for the primary user.
So, Red Deer is banning something they know nothing about except that it’s a nicotine delivery system, that hurts no one. Banning it on the basis that when I exhale, it looks like smoke…for about two seconds.
I still haven’t smoked since I started vaping in February, and I’m down to an 8mg nicotine blend from 24mg when I started.
When I first saw this, I thought it was going to be about cross province barriers.
Try, Try, Try and Try again.
So, 2005, 2009, 2012*, and now 2014. I noted 2012 because while along the same lines as the others, C-51 didn’t really allow warrant-less search and seizure.
h/t, Spinal Tap
In a humour related theme, the 2005 thread contains this nugget.
Let me put it like this, to give some perspective. If anyone down here in the U.S. (land of the much-maligned Patriot Act) proposed this type of legislation, they would never be elected to any political office again. As we say down here, “He couldn’t be elected dog catcher.”
Umm, yeah….
Being in the forty-fifty bracket that Coyne identifies as ‘troubled’ I can relate.
We all just did our taxes. Being a self-employed small business owner I like doing taxes. They help me develop my annual plan and budget. I know I’m going to have to bump up my capital costs next year and that means I have to budget for new hardware and software. I know power costs are killing me as running four computers and a NAS 24/7 grossly inflates my power bill. So the percentage I declared as a business expense was more than the 12h/40% sq ft. function that I used with other utilities.
I also know what I put in retirement funds. You should know exactly how much CPP cost you last year. Now whether you think that’s a good investment or not is totally subjective. I know I’d very much prefer to have that money go into my self-directed retirement savings, and honestly, if I still lived in Ontario then having an even less trust-worthy gov’t handling my pension would scare the be-jesus out of me.
Thomas Sowell on the “mascots of the self-congratulatory elites.“
Alberta’s premiere CINO has resigned!
Update: Interesting, insightful comments from Gord Tulk and Frances are well worth a read.
White House pastry chef resigns: “I don’t want to demonize cream, butter, sugar and eggs,”
On November 28th, James Moore, Minister of Industry, issued a Parliamentary Determination that the Federal Government considers any portion of Provincial law which contains CSA developed text as illegitimate and unenforceable as Provincial law.
Specifically, the Minister stated that CSA developed materials are merely “voluntary standards” whose character as independent of the law is unchanged by inclusion within the law. Or more simply, CSA standards are not enforceable as laws.
By stripping the CEC of its legal legitimacy, the Minister has invalidated all of Canada’s electrical laws with a single Parliamentary determination.
In response, on December 4th RestoreCSA sent letters to the Provincial Authorities to inquire if they will “accept and comply” with the Minister’s determination by “discontinuing enforcement of Provincial electrical law.”
A majority of Provinces have now responded. All of these Provincial Governments are in open defiance of Minister Moore and have clearly stated that they intend to continue defying the Industry Minister.
But, that’s not where the story ends.