If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people
under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy. - Thomas Jefferson


Monday, March 29, 2010

Police lineup

I don't have the back story. You really don't need one to see a small mountain of tax dollars at work.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Roadkill revival

Today's Everyday Hero comes from Brookville, Pennsylvania, near Punxsutawney. It was in this area that Donald "Raisin' the Dead" Wolfe tried to save a poor helpless animal deciding mouth to mouth resuscitation was the only way to save a possum that had been roadkill for days. I'm not sure if the mouth to mouth was before or after he held a one man seance to bring the poor rotting critter back to life, but he certainly tried everything he could.

Of course, you can't just leave dumb ass drunks making out with dead animals hang out by a highway and the police had to get involved. Rather than do whatever it is the police do in the Punxsutawney area on an average Thursday night, they spent this one arresting Don, gathering eye witness reports and talking to the media. Thankfully, I'm sure Donnie will also get his day in court. Because, you know, they didn't have anything better to do either...

THIS is whyPENNSYLVANIANSpaytaxes.

Read more: Police: Drunk Pa. man tried to revive dead opossum(ap)

Friday, March 19, 2010

Say you're sorry with cheescake

A visit and apology from the New York Police Commissioner, a cheesecake, and countless man hours harassing an elderly couple are just some of the unexpected costs of an IT glitch.

Rose and Walter Martin were visited by the police 50 times in the last eight years because their address had been randomly entered during the testing phase of a new 'crime tracking' system. Having never correctly purged the information, the police were fed the same bad information each time and blindly followed their orders.

Rather than investing the money in better paid and well-trained officers and investigators, the city has found it much easier to just buy a computer that randomly spits out addresses for them to bust in on. I'll bet they call this system The Judge and it automatically prints out a signed search warrant with each address it provides.

Screaming "Police! Open Up!" at 80 year old folks rather than investigating crime...

THIS is whyNEWYORKERSpaytaxes.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Fruitful use of prisons

Dubai has sentenced two people to 3 months in jail for sexting. They were planning on having an affair, which is illegal there. Had there been evidence of an actual affair, they would have been in jail a lot longer...

I wondered how the morality police got ahold of these text messages. Turns out they were used as evidence in the woman's divorce proceedings.

A nice court case and some room and board for those audacious enough to send lusty text messages...

THIS is whyDUBIANSpaytaxes

read more: Dubai jails Indian pair for 'sexy texts' (bbc)

Friday, March 12, 2010

Alaska v The Environment

You'll remember Bush's bittersweet move to simultaneously point out that even though polar bears are a threatened species because they are losing their natural habitat to global warming there is nothing can be done to save them because no one can sue the mega polluters to deal with the problem. Good times...

Since then, the State of Alaska has been suing to strip the polar bears of their protected status. I'm not sure what their logic is, but apparently having the bears as a protected species is a matter of State interest that deserves a significant amount of its attorneys' attention.

But that is not why I am writing. As it turns out, environmentalists have been more successful at eliminating the special 'no one's fault' rule than Alaska has been at eliminating the threatened species status of the bears. Soon a judge will be making the ruling and it appears that the unique protection against lawsuits will be eliminated and this pisses Alaska off.

So, last month, the State of Alaska approved $1.5 MILLION to develop a campaign to gain broad support from the rest of the country to let the bears perish unchecked.

It must be nice to be the most federally supported state in the Union because it leaves a lot of money lying around to fight the federal government!

THIS is whyALASKANSpaytaxes.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Xe Blackwater

The folks at Blackwater, who changed their name to Xe to help their PR situation after their guards opened fire on a bunch of defenseless Iraqis in 2007, killing 17, are under review again.

Apparently, changing their name to Xe did not teach their guards that they are not above the law. Which is, of course, contrary to their training, so I'm not sure why they would see it any other way.

Now, due to a host of complaints coming out of Afghanistan our senate has to yet again review and deal with Xe.

Worry not, Xe fans, as they are well protected by the Pentagon. A spokesman for the Pentagon decided he knew better than our senators and any investigation they might conduct. He explained that Xe cannot be cut off from receiving our taxpayer dollars because they are one of the few firms willing to work in Afghanistan. Why even bother to look into the complaints? What would you rather have, dead civilians or unemployed bodyguards? I certainly don't think we want these guys in the unemployment lines, people could get hurt!

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Somethings fishy here

And it ain't just Antoine Goetschel's clients.

Seriously. The guy defended a dead Pike in court. And dogs, cats, guinea pigs, cows, horses and sheep. (I don't suspect the sheep was involved in a rape case, but I have no evidence either way...)

No big deal, right? Some hippy lawyer has decided to enjoy his wealth by taking on animal cruelty cases pro bono, right? Sure, he's clogging Switzerland's court system with cases that ought to be handled in other ways, but at least he's not government funded, right?

The hell you say.

Nope. Funded entirely by the government, this guy sued a fisherman because it was reported that the fisherman took 10 minutes to bring the fish in and kill it. To no one's surprise, he had his ass handed to him on this case. However, not only is he wasting a shit ton of a citizens and several government employees time with this nonsense, but he is taking a salary and a pension for this nonsense too. Not to count the allowance he surely has for staffing his office.

And this is all brought up because he thinks that he can't work alone. Oh no. He thinks the Swiss need a fucking mountain of these guys. Sort of a new D.A.s office. Eventually, they'll probably be bringing about involuntary manslaughter charges against everyone who hits a deer with their car. You better hope the deer is resuscitated or you're spending time behind bars.

I'll bet the Swiss even paid for a public defendant for the fisherman.

Just think... A story about overpaid and under worked lawyers milking the system for all its worth that didn't originate in the U.S. Yay!

THIS is whytheSWISSpaytaxes

read more: Swiss ask whether animals need lawyers (bbc)

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Peeling back the Band Aid

Get ready to have your stomach turned. But at least yours is full...

You all (30s and older) will remember the 1985 Band Aid and other relief efforts pursued by governments and other organizations around the globe to help alleviate the 1984-85 droughts in Ethiopia that left most Ethiopians malnourished if they weren't one of the 1 MILLION who starved to death. A host of jokes about sandwiches and Ethiopians followed, but many Ethiopians were saved by these individual and government donations.

What you won't remember:
At the direction of the CIA (they deny it, of course) hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars from these efforts were siphoned off into rebel groups who bought weapons to fight the Russian backed Ethiopian government of the time.

Here's some key information that will set your stomach to turning:

In one instance, a member of Christian Aid bought sacks of grain inside of Ethiopia worth $500 MILLION. Underneath the handful of grain sacks that Christian Aid inspected were many more sacks of fine Ethiopian sand. Yum!

The man who swindled Christian Aid into spending all this money on sand, Meles Zenawi, went on to become Ethiopia's prime minister in 1991.

He remains the PM to this very day in spite of having used money intended to help his fellow citizens to kill them with guns instead.

The deputy head of the CIA at the time sought to "impose ever stiffer costs on the Soviet Union for its Third World adventurism." What better way to do this than sell bags of sand to aid groups in order to use the money to buy guns? (I'll bet many of those guns were bought from the U.S.)

The deputy head of the CIA at the time was none other than our very own Secratary of Defense, Robert Gates. He's no Prime Minister of a third world country, but he has certainly been well rewarded for his career choices.


I can't even sum this one up in a quick snide sentence. As an American citizen, I apologize to the world...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Ethiopia famine aid 'spent on weapons'(bbc)