What is often called, adoringly and affectionately, sarcastically, and with contempt dripping from your tongue, “The Nanny State,” is alive and thriving at the local County Board of Supervisors.

California Nanny Staters want you to leave your football at home when you go to the beach.

CBS Los Angeles tells us:

“In passing the 37-page ordinance on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies, while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public…According to Lucy Kim, from the LA County Department of Beaches and Harbors, a first-time offender will have to pay a $100 fine. For a second offense, beach-goers will face a $200 fine. Three or more infractions within one year will result in a $500 fine, Kim said…The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll” any object other than a beach ball or volleyball “upon or over any beach” between Memorial Day and Labor Day without the authorization of a lifeguard.”

Isn’t that special?

You can see the 37 page document HERE.

I should warn you that it’s a PDF file. And for you folks in Rush Limbaugh’s Rio Linda, that stands for: “Portable Document File.”

Thirty seven pages to keep you from playing football. On the beach. YES! In California!

Aren’t we lucky that we don’t live there. Aren’t we so fortunate that we don’t have Nanny Staters “protecting” us from all manner of dangers “for our own good!”

Aren’t we lucky that Nanny Staters do not:

*Pass laws that mandate everyone must have health insurance…

*Pat us down to the point of groping us at airports, and irradiate us with scanners to protect us from terrorists.

*Monitor our Social Networks and our on-line activities to protect us from terrorists.

*Stop the building of a pipeline and kill thousands of jobs, to protect us from the remote possibility of an oil spill.

*Shut down coal-fired plants via excessive regulation so that we can use “alternative fuels,” which they deem are better for us.

*Sell guns to narco-terrorists so that they can say that gun trafficking into Mexico is rampant, so they can pass legislation to disarm us, so that they can protect us from having to protect ourselves against their power grab.

*Tax “the rich” to protect us from them not having enough funds to “redistribute” to their friends and campaign contributors, so they can be re-elected.

These are but a few examples of just “how lucky we are.” If you can think of any more, please post them in the comments section. I can’t wait to see just “how lucky we are.”

In the meantime, if you think banning football at the beach is ridiculous, brace yourself.

At the Nanny State Liberation Front website, an article informs us that “A New Jersey democrat is using her political muscle to force citizens across the state to register their bicycles with the Division of Motor Vehicles. The ridiculous maneuver would help the state offset its $10 billion budget deficit by enforcing a $10 per license plate fee and fines up to $100 for those, including children, caught riding unregistered bikes.”

Of course there’s lots of outrage and opposition to this, and there’s a photo mocking this idea, as part of the article, that shows a policeman pulling a child over, asking to see his license and registration.

See that article HERE

Mike Opelka offers us this Nanny State nugget at “The Blaze.”

“When California’s elected officials come back from their month-long recess they face a mountain of proposed legislation (almost 900 bills are lined up and waiting), including a new law (SB432) that would require hotels to eliminate flat sheets. Not having fitted sheets on hotel beds would now be a crime in California. This is not a joke. . .California, the state trying to deal with a massive $26 BILLION dollar debt, is considering a law that some hospitality industry experts claim would add an estimated $15 to $30 million dollars in costs to an already hurting hotel industry. The low-end estimate of fifteen million is the projected cost to purchase new fitted sheets for the 550,000 hotel beds in the state. Of course the hospitality industry is claiming that these added costs will hurt their business and put jobs at risk.”

Feast your eyes on this one HERE.

Bob Unruh at World Net Daily provides another little morsel.

“A Mississippi state judge has issued an order to public school attendance officers in his judicial district to provide the names of all homeschoolers there, prompting alarm at the Home School Legal Defense Association, which fights for the rights of homeschooling worldwide.  The order apparently is because the judge himself wants the information, as there appeared to be no case, motion or dispute prompting the request.”

Just because.

Really.

 See that article HERE

Did you happen to catch Chuck Bennet’s article at the New York Post about New York Mayor Bloomberg?  Bennet says:

“Mayor Bloomberg, the mayor who declared war on tobacco, sugary drinks and trans fats, has identified a new public enemy — now he wants to protect New Yorkers from salt.  Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley launches a campaign today to cut New Yorkers’ sodium intake by one-fifth over five years.  “If we achieve our goal, we would talk about saving tens of thousands of lives,” Farley said, predicting that deaths from strokes and heart attacks will dramatically fall.  The City Health Department is spearheading the National Salt Reduction Initiative, which will cajole food manufacturers to voluntarily cut sodium content 20 to 25 percent by 2014″

Read it HERE

And Michael Becker wants you to “Guess who’s watching your dinner?” Britain’s Nanny State cameras are coming to America:

“Video surveillance has been discussed, but not really debated. In the UK, it’s a way of life, you can’t go anywhere in London or other major cities without being on camera. It hasn’t been so intrusive in the US, but you can bet it will be.”

See his report HERE

And here’s your favorite Nanny State Watch Dog, Michelle Malkin:

I began the article with sarcasm and satire, and we end with, of all things irony. It is indeed ironic that of all things the government wants to protect its “fragile,” dependent citizenry from, is its not-so-fragile citizenry… in other words, the Nanny State wants to protect you from … yourself!

Candice Lanier explains that “Homeland Security Again Labels Limited Government Activists ‘Extremists’…”

“PJ Media reports that on November 10, 2011 an “Unclassified/For Official Use Only (FOUO)” email, from the Department of Homeland Security, was distributed en masse to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The significance of this email is that its focus was on citizens who are troubled by the overreach of government, particularly in regard to the Second Amendment.”

See her report HERE…. and weep!

A large contingent of the Nanny Staters were pink slipped in the 2010 elections, and replaced with a substantial number of Constitutionalists, The Tea Party,  in the House of Representatives, and while that was a huge accomplishment, and this contingent of legislators is now driving the debate, the conversation and the agenda, there is still much to do to create the majority needed in the Senate and to elect the right Conservative for the job of President.  Across the nation there are viable Tea Party candidates that must succeed in 2012.  Only you and your efforts can pull off a win come next election. As you do your part recall this:  “Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything that you have.”  Barry Goldwater

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. is close to achieving energy independence – the closest we’ve been in approximately 20 years.  According to the Bloomberg article:

“The U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo triggered a recession and led to lines at gasoline stations.

Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years. The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal. Methanex Corp. (MX), the world’s biggest methanol maker, said it will dismantle a factory in Chile and reassemble it in Louisiana to take advantage of low natural gas prices. And higher mileage standards and federally mandated ethanol use, along with slow economic growth, have curbed demand.”

Last month, however, according to an article in National Review, was “the most expensive January ever at U.S. gasoline pumps.”  National Review points out that January is normally a month which ushers in lower gas prices, but that was not the case this year.

Historic Gas Prices Chart

For more information on gas pricing, click here.

It is also important to note that even though domestic oil and natural gas production is on the increase, the majority of that production is taking place on private land – mostly in Texas, Alaska and North Dakota.  The Heritage Foundation provides  further analysis:

• Oil and natural gas production on federal lands is down by more than 40 percent compared to 10 years ago.

• Under the Obama administration, 2010 had the lowest number of onshore leases issued since 1984.

• The Obama administration held only one offshore lease sale in 2011.

Efforts towards energy independence continue to be met, inexplicably, by some resistance.  For example, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has been a longstanding opponent of oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  And, most recently, Cantwell was part of an effort to deal a blow to a Republican strategy for energy exploration.

The Republican plan was offered by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) but was eventually withdrawn.

Cantwell and like-minded individuals, however, are outnumbered according to an American Petroleum Institute (API) poll which found that 70% of American voters support an increase in usage of U.S.  oil and natural gas resources.  Approximately the same percentage are of the view that this would be beneficial to the U.S. because of the positive impact it would have on the job market.

In order to continue moving towards greater energy independence, the Heritage Foundation recommends that three steps be taken:

• First, we need to clearly state and stick by the principle that people are our most valuable resource. Natural resources and energy policies should be judged first and foremost on how good they are for people. Meeting human needs should be paramount. This is because we value people’s well-being above other measures such as carbon emissions or the population of a rare insect and because we recognize that the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of a free people hold the keys to meeting our challenges.

Americans have always been able to meet our energy challenges, discovering ways to find, extract, develop and market energy resources. Impediments aside, Americans will continue to meet our needs today and allow for other generations to enjoy our natural resources as well.

It was a private visionary, not the Department of Energy, who combined existing technologies — horizontal drilling and fracking — to dramatically increase the amount of natural gas we may now be able to tap.      More

• Second, we need environmental policies that are site- and situation-specific. What works for the people of West Virginia or Alaska may not work elsewhere. The Environmental Protection Agency and other federal minders don’t always know best, but the regulators do hold many big sticks. Congress should require them to leave to the states as much of the processes overseeing energy resource development as is possible and right.     More

•  Third, we need to recognize that the most promising opportunities for improving our environment are not in government ownership and regulation, but in extending the protection of private property and unleashing the creative powers of the free markets.             More

The U.S. needs to employ common sense, responsible solutions in our move towards greater energy independence.  We can and should find a balance between consideration for the future of the country’s energy needs and the preservation of natural resources and wildlife.  Balance, not extremism, is what is warranted.

-Candice Lanier

Washington DC – Capitol Hill: United States Capitol (Photo credit: wallyg)

The Washington Post has proven itself useful. Earlier this week, the paper shone a bright light on almost three dozen Congressmen who have directed taxpayer money into projects that will directly impact their own property:

Thirty-three members of Congress have directed more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers’ own property, according to a Washington Post investigation.

Examples of the projects are stunning:

A U.S. senator from Alabama directed more than $100 million in federal earmarks to renovate downtown Tuscaloosa near his own commercial office building. A congressman from Georgia secured $6.3 million in taxpayer funds to replenish the beach about 900 feet from his island vacation cottage. A representative from Michigan earmarked $486,000 to add a bike lane to a bridge within walking distance of her home.

This is, we are informed, both legal and undisclosed, under the rules Congress has written for itself.

It is a basic conservative principle that no man should be judge and jury in his own cause. Rules governing one’s behavior should not be self-generated: obviously, we all have a natural bias in favor of our own interests. And when it comes to the public’s money, which belongs to no one in particular, even stalwarts like Calvin Coolidge conceded that the urge to bestow it upon someone is overwhelming.

Congressmen thus ask themselves: Why not me? With no one to hold them accountable and no rules prohibiting it, is it really any surprise that Congressmen would abuse their privileges this way? After all, these are already people who are naturally allured by the idea of power. People who desperately want to wield power — that is: most politicians — are generally not prime candidates for doing so.

Unfortunately, activity such as this is more of a symptom than a cause of our decaying political system. As the Post correctly points out:

Earmarks are a fraction of the federal budget, and the numbers uncovered by The Post are relatively small in the scheme of the overall Congress, but the behavior by lawmakers from both parties points to a larger issue at a time when confidence in Capitol Hill is at an all-time low.

The sheer audacity of the behavior of Congressmen is striking — but, earmark hawks’ outrage aside, the amount of money wasted pales in comparison to the unsustainable mountain of entitlements, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and litany of government-sector benefits lavished on its workers. Congress isn’t concerned about that, either. It doesn’t care at all about the decrepit manner in which it operates.

The entire system is an illusion: Congress passes and take credit for bills that it doesn’t write and hasn’t read, then promises us that we’ll find out what’s in them once they’re law. But while the system is illusory, the perks are not: individual members quickly find out that having the title of Congressman can be a lucrative enterprise. That Congressmen funnel funds into their personal projects can hardly be surprising, given that we already knew about the rampant insider-trading amongst them. Ex-Congressmen and senators — even just one-term losers — rake in the big bucks through lobbying and consulting after leaving the legislature. Even those who position themselves as relentlessly principled often aren’t: Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann, for instance, suck up a considerable amount of earmark money. (Given what we know, is that really so shocking? It’s a sad sign of the times when people are shocked by good behavior.)

The heart of the problem is not merely earmarks, but our utterly deteriorated civic life: our legislators no longer see themselves as citizens, but as rulers. Most would-be system-cleaners have either been assimilated or have been marginalized. The siren song of power, prestige, and riches prove too strong for most people to resist. We must dismantle the existing incentives to corruption or watch our system collapse upon itself.

-Alex Knepper

Image via Wikipedia

Consider that Congress is 535 people from around the nation with widely different backgrounds. Many are lawyers but there are teachers, doctors and other professions represented. They are young and they are old. Some are Ivy League educated and some hold degrees from state schools. Some come to their public service from the private sector and others have done little else except be a politician. The differences are there in a myriad of ways.

They are why I advocate for Limited Government. I don’t believe that 535 people from across the nation have the experience, knowledge and ability to manage and oversee vast and complicated Market segments such as Insurance, Transportation and Health Care. If they did, they’d either be multi-gazillionaires as a result of their abilities or we wouldn’t need term limits because anyone successful enough to get elected to Congress wouldn’t be able to stay there. Either the money they’d be offered or the appeal to their patriotism and sense of Community Service would pull them out of D.C. faster than they could finish picking out the decor for their new office.

I’m not trying to be ugly or disrespectful. It’s just the truth. Congress is charged with the overseeing the governing the city of Washington D.C Keep in mind that D.C. is just that – a city! Not a state or a nation and not a particulary large city at that! Then remember all the stats you’ve ever heard about Education and Washington D.C. One of the most telling stats is that they have among highest per student expenditures for education of any U.S. city and one of the lowest aggregate test scores of any U.S. city. They spend more and produce less – in one city. Yet these same folks are also the ones crafting Education Policy and procedures for an entire nation!

When it comes to actual businesses, they are no better. Normally we wouldn’t have facts to look at because the U.S. government didn’t used to own businesses we could evaluate for success. We do now. The government owns General Motors. How is it doing? Maggie over at Maggie’s Notebook brought up a good point in this regard from Super Bowl 46.

Congress voted to bailout GM and took over the operations of the auto giant because it was “too big to fail.” The cost to taxpayers was in the BILLIONS of dollars. It is true that some of that money has been paid back – sort of. However, as Maggie notes, GM still owes taxpayers around $25 billion. The odds of us getting it back are problematic at best. The government holds hundreds of millions of shares of stock in GM. Just to break even the stock would have to be sold at $54 a share. Right now it’s trading at $25 a share. That’s unlikely to change anytime soon because the knowledge that the government is waiting in the wings to unload millions of shares once the stock hits the right price is keeping the share price down. Liberals can dismiss Market forces all they like but they don’t go away just because they’re ignored!

Perhaps GM could bend the Market to its will by forcing the stock price up with performance SO brilliant investors couldn’t resist owning a piece of a company run by 535 of the finest financial minds ever to set their sights on Industry! Nothing succeeds like success and even political enemies become friendly when there’s money on the table. So how is GM doing?

Well, their big product launch and all the glitz and hoopla for GM this year is … wait for it … drum roll … the Chevy Volt! That’s GM’s vision for the future – GM as in the sarcastic renaming of the company as “Government Motors!” How successful has the Volt been? Maggie reports sales for the Volt hit 603 in January. Six. Hundred. Three. I wager I could find 603 Yugos that sold somewhere in the US in January.

And the Super Bowl thing I mentioned earlier? GM put an ad for the Volt in the Super Bowl rotation at an estimated cost of $3.5 Million for 30 seconds – plus production costs for the ad. All this while finding the cash to make charitable donations to an opera house, a youth theater and an African American history museum.

So next time the government asks you to participate in yet another heapin’ helpin’ of intervention in the Markets because they know how to do it better than anyone, please consider participating in a different sort of intervention. Because we only need a couple of more successes like GM before we go bust for good!

-Ken Marrero

Tech Editor at the Daily Caller, Josh Peterson is keeping track of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2012 push for internet regulating legislation, “this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill,” he says:

“The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet…Details about the bill remain shrouded in secrecy. Clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011. Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — to the floor during the first Senate work period of 2012.”

A huge outcry by those opposed to internet regulation led to massive opposition of the “Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but Peterson says Reid’s new measure is being disguised as “cyber security” and contains similar stipulations to SOPA and PIPA. He says the details are “shrouded in secrecy,” but that “clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011.” Said Peterson:

“A classified meeting behind closed doors in October 2011 between key Senate committee leaders with jurisdiction over cybersecurity and White House officials, took place at the request of the Obama administration. Lieberman, in an interview with The Hill in October, said that past Senate cybersecurity bills were considerably stronger than the White House proposal.”

See the Josh Peterson Article HERE

News of this effectively draws a line in the sand, and will surely result in an organized movement to thwart the legislation. Of course, the first step requires that the Reid regulatory attempt be outed broadly, along with actual copies of the proposed and final measures, so that the Bill can be effectively opposed.

Thus far Internet “Minuteman” Peterson appears to be the lone “voice crying in the wilderness.” Apparently Reid, as well as politicians of similar ilk, know full well, that when all else fails, and they still want to get their grubby little hands into something, and grab “a piece of the action,” all they have to do is “cry wolf” and howl about national security, which is what Peterson now claims will be occurring.

Who, pray tell, will be at the helm, when and if the Bill passes, as Internet Regulator in Chief? Why, Janet Napolitano and Crew, of course: the Department of Homeland Security! “…[T]here is a ‘broad consensus’ that DHS is best suited to the task, with technical and intelligence support from the military and National Security Agency,’ reported The Hill…” quoth Peterson.

You have to admit that Reid is being quite clever on this one. Michael Riley and John Walcott authored a piece for Bloomberg back in December about China based hackers hacking into Google Inc.and Intel Corp. via iBahn.

“iBahn provides broadband business and entertainment access to guests of Marriott International Inc. and other hotel chains, including multinational companies that hold meetings on site. Breaking into iBahn’s networks, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the matter, may have let hackers see millions of confidential e-mails, even encrypted ones, as executives from Dubai to New York reported back on everything from new product development to merger negotiations.”

The Bloomberg story goes on to say that:

“China has made industrial espionage an integral part of its economic policy, stealing company secrets to help it leapfrog over U.S. and other foreign competitors to further its goal of becoming the world’s largest economy, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a report released last month.”

See the BLOOMBERG article HERE

The trend unfortunately has been that unwitting, unsuspecting citizens favoring security for themselves, their families, (and now) their computers and their internet, tend to sacrifice their civil liberties for protection by big government. It brings to mind that oft over-used quote by Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

John P. Mello Jr at TECHNEWSWORLD told us in 2010, in an article titled “Pentagon: ‘Yep, We Got Hacked:’”

“U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William S. Lynn III has admitted that the Pentagon suffered a serious security breach in 2008, an incident he categorized as “the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever.” Though the breach was reported in the press at the time, the DoD has only now publicly acknowledged that it occurred — and that it took 14 months to clean up the mess left behind.”

In fact, just yesterday, a federal grand jury in San Francisco charged five individuals and five companies with economic espionage and theft of trade secrets for their roles in a long-running effort to obtain U.S. trade secrets for the benefit of companies controlled by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The Justice Department said:

“…[T]he government of the PRC identified as a priority the development of chloride-route titanium dioxide (TiO2) production capabilities.  TiO2 is a commercially valuable white pigment with numerous uses, including coloring paint, plastics and paper.  To achieve that goal, companies controlled by the PRC government, specifically the Pangang Group companies named in the superseding indictment, and employees of those companies conspired and attempted to illegally obtain TiO2 technology that had been developed over many years of research and development by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont)…”

“As today’s case demonstrates, technology developed by U.S. companies is vulnerable to concerted efforts by competitors – both at home and abroad – to steal that technology,” said U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag.  “Fighting economic espionage and trade secret theft is one of the top priorities of this Office and we will aggressively pursue anyone, anywhere who attempts to steal valuable information from the United States.”

With all that hacking going on, it’s not a huge leap to extend purported coverage to include SOPA and PIPA type legislation, especially since it’s been suggested by Peterson that Homeland Security, under that new Bill, might be working together with the Pentagon and the National Security Agency.

Involving the National Security Agency and the Pentagon is basically an internet “end game.” You can forget about internet rights, privacy and freedom of expression if that comes to fruition.

Can you say, “Warrantless Surveillance?”

“The NSA warrantless surveillance controversy (AKA “Warrantless Wiretapping”) concerns surveillance of persons within the United States during the collection of foreign intelligence by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the war on terror. Under this program, referred to by the Bush administration as the “terrorist surveillance program”,[1] part of the broader President’s Surveillance Program, the NSA is authorized by executive order to monitor, without search warrants, phone calls, Internet activity (Web, e-mail, etc.), text messaging, and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lies within the U.S. Critics, however, claimed that it was in an effort to attempt to silence critics of the Bush Administration and their handling of several hot button issues during its tenure. The Obama Administration has continued using these methods.”

See That Article HERE

Now is the time to do something about it. What’s that other quote about keeping an eye on your government? Oh, yeah:

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” – Wendell Phillips

Van Guard
Vanguard of Freedom Network