Tag: nanny state

Biden Infrastructure Bill Includes Passive Monitoring Vehicle “Kill Switch” Mandates For Automakers

As if the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to infringe on your civil liberties with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, media reports over the last several days are suggesting that Biden’s new infrastructure bill will also include a mandate for auto manufacturers to install “kill switches” into vehicles.

Former Rep. Bob Barr, writing for The Daily Caller, calls the measure “disturbingly short on details”, but for the fact that the proposed device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”

Which, of course, is code for some kind of device that is constantly on and monitoring your vehicle – and will likely have the power to shut down your vehicle anytime it wants.

“This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents,” The Daily Caller writes.

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Unvaccinated Nevada state workers to pay insurance surcharge

Nevada will be the first state to charge state workers enrolled in public employee health insurance plans a surcharge if they aren’t vaccinated.

The state Public Employees’ Benefit Program Board voted on Thursday to charge unvaccinated workers up to $55 per month to offset the costs of testing those who haven’t gotten shots are required to undergo in certain workplaces.

“This is pandemic has been shouldered on the burden of everyone. And now this particular burden — the testing — should be shouldered on the burden of those who refuse to (be vaccinated),” said DuAne Young, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak’s policy director.

Surcharges for state workers and adult dependents on their plans will go into effect in July 2022.

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As Gov’t Demands Our Trust, Here Are Multiple Examples of The State Endangering Public Health

Despite some of the tireless coverage from those of us in the independent media over the years, there still seems to be a contingent of holdouts clung to the idea that their own government would not intentionally put the well being of its citizens at risk. Particularly with regard to the closing out of 2020, it seemed no better a time to provide some historical context to the contrary.

We will begin with example from the prohibition era of the previous century, in 1928. The United States government in an attempt to act as the sole arbiter of morality took it upon themselves to defy the basic human right of self ownership and prohibited the consumption of alcohol nationally. Naturally, this was not received well by millions of individuals who believed it was their inherent right to decide what they could and could not ingest in their own bodies.

As prohibition often does, this led to a boon in black market industry of speakeasies and bootleg alcohol manufacturing and distribution. Of course the all powerful government, ever influenced by its messiah complex did not respond well to this act of defiance. How dare the peasantry exercise their rights as free thinking individuals? Thusly the government took the only next reasonable step it could think of — to poison its own citizens.

That’s right, rather than come to the logical conclusion that people should be allowed to decide what’s best for them, the federal government decided in an ill-fated attempt to enforce compliance of state-mandated moral guidelines to “save people from themselves”, to contaminate millions of barrels of alcohol with poison to dissuade people from drinking it.

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The Church of State: Taxonomy of a New Religion

Darkness descends over civilization and freedom. It flows not from any external threat but from within the human heart. We are beings capable of happiness and flourishing, but sometimes we push our fears and anxieties into the shadows. There they fester. And from those deep psychological bowers, fear and anxiety reemerge transformed. 

To live right now, then, is to live in paradox. Despite conditions of relative peace and abundance, a psychosocial pathology has taken hold. It manifests itself as something like a replacement religion. Where people once turned to their temples and communities for reassurance, more turn now to political authority. Merchants of fear magnify the significance of certain human problems, which obscures complicated truths and feeds the dogmas of this new faith. Adherents believe they are on the side of the angels, but their faith threatens to bring about a new Dark Age. Why? Because more and more people in the grip of this religion are willing to use illiberal means.

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How Many Zombie Agencies Does Government Need?

How many federal agencies do we pay for?  I bet you think, as I once did, that a quick internet search would tell.  But researching for an essay a couple of years ago, I found numbers varying from 78 to 158, and websites saying the exact number was impossible to determine. 

Looking at the USA.gov website recently, I discovered a tab for Federal Agencies A to Z (actually there are none past W).  Scrolling around the list for two days, subtracting duplicate listings, like Useless Policy, Office of and Office of Useless Policy, I counted 456 (and a few more as I checked some links while drafting this essay). 

The large number of agencies was my first, but not my only surprise.  Each agency’s listing had a field for government branch, mostly filled with Executive, some Legislative, some Judicial.  But sometimes that field contained: Independent, Quasi, or None.  How can we have parts of government that are not part of a branch of our government?

It amused me that some agency names made it easy to guess when they were created.  Delinquency was a focus in the 1930s; nuclear threats, 1950s; civil rights, 1960s; cyberterrorism, after 2001.

This just started with to know how many federal agencies we have.  But discovering there are agencies decades past their freshness date, begs to be explored. This essay is a just cursory view.

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If The Left Ends Parent Rights, You Might Need A License To Raise Your Own Child

Parents are now more aware than ever that their right to raise their own children is in danger. Recent election results in Virginia and elsewhere testify to that awakening. A lot of the news focused on the public school curriculum of critical race theory, which pits children against one another based on their race. Parents never signed on to that.

But they’re also waking up to a host of other disturbing trends in public education. An extremist sex education curriculum includes pornography and pushes transgenderism. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) instruction tells kids exactly how they should feel and relate to others while using invasive data-mining to collect psycho-social information on them.

COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates are another point of contention. All of these directives hijack the role of parents as the emotional and moral guides of their children.

Parents ought to be asking: What next? If those trends are left unchecked, I think the answer could be the state licensing of parents.

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Infrastructure Bill to Require ‘Breathalyzer’-Style Systems in All Cars by 2026

Automakers will be required to install ‘breathalyzer’-style systems in all new cars starting in 2026 as part of the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill.

The Transportation Department will be tasked with developing the new technology automakers will be forced to install on vehicles.

The system must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired,” according to the broadly-written legislation.

It may not entail blowing into a tube, but the system could involve something even more Orwellian: infrared cameras that track and monitor driver behavior.

“That technology is already being installed by automakers such as General Motors, BMW, and Nissan to track driver attentiveness while using partially automated driver-assist systems,” according to the AP. “The cameras make sure a driver is watching the road, and they look for signs of drowsiness, loss of consciousness, or impairment.”

Ostensibly, the “driver behavior” monitoring system could expanded later on for “carbon tax” enforcement, such as charging drivers who drive too fast, for example.

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Dr. Fauci: A tyrant from out of The Twilight Zone

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. —Plato

Observing Doctor Fauci’s behavior since the start of this COVID-19 pandemic, I am reminded of an episode of the original Twilight Zone series written by Rod Serling: “On Thursday We Leave for Home.”  According to The Twilight Zone Companion, by Marc Scott Zicree, Serling considered it the best episode of the fourth season.  It is an excellent example of tyrants — how they are made and how they behave.  It’s also consistent with Plato’s succinct definition.

James Whitmore plays William Benteen, the leader of a colony of Earth people who have been living on a colony planet.  They left Earth because of the conditions there and went in search of their own paradise.  The colony planet was anything but a paradise.  In order to keep up their spirits, Benteen tells the people stories of how wonderful Earth was when he lived there.  Many of the people are too young to remember or were born on the colony planet.

Benteen learns that a rescue ship is coming to take everyone home on Thursday.  When the people learn of this rescue mission, Benteen changes his stories about Earth.  When they remind Benteen of the fact that he told them stories of how wonderful Earth was, his response is, “I lied to you to make you feel better.  Now I’m telling you the truth for your own good.”

This is consistent with the flip-flops that Doctor Fauci has given us from the beginning.  He said masks don’t protect you.  In fact, years earlier, he said that very thing.  At the time, he called them a paranoid tool.  Then he changed his tune and said everyone should wear a mask.  Next, he suggested a mask mandate.  When he was confronted with his own words, he echoed Benteen’s response: I lied to you so there wouldn’t be a rush on masks.  Now I’m telling you the truth for your own good.

It’s troubling that he didn’t concern himself with the hoarding and shortages of toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, or food.  That’s exactly what happened when he called for a home quarantine for fourteen days to “flatten the curve.”

Benteen begins to respond in such a way that it becomes apparent that he is afraid of losing his power over the colony’s people.  He changes from the great protector to the authoritarian.  He insists that if they return home, the colonists must remain isolated from the rest of Earth for their own good.  Doctor Fauci refers to this same mandate as “social distancing,” which he said may be necessary until 2022.  He has stated that he wasn’t sure if we should cancel Christmas this year again, like his Grinch-like mandate of 2020.

Think back to how Doctor Fauci was portrayed by the media at the beginning of this pandemic versus now.  In the beginning, he was the great protector, just as Plato describes in his definition.  A baker in my hometown made a Doctor Fauci donut to honor the great doctor.  There was other fawning over him, including a disastrous first pitch at a baseball game.  The accuracy of that pitch parallels his medical advice.

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