At Home in Hespeler

…and the burning of the non-taxable book.

I’ve been pondering designs for a few weeks now for a little free library. The idea is simple, you build a little book house and post it at the front of your house. Neighbours and neighbourly-types can put in an old book, others can borrow the book. It’s a lending library with 20 or so books.

There’s a couple in my neighbourhood, and I was planning to get in on the action, share some community spirit and a few books I have lying around. Problem is, those pimply minions of bureaucracy have come up with an all new “vile, Jacobian, jumped up Jack-in-Office piece of impertinence:” a permit for your library

As The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf explains, local governments in Los Angeles, Shreveport, LA and Leawood, KS have all tried to levy fines and other sanctions against people who put up these tiny birdhouse-like lending libraries.

I’m no longer planning on putting one up, I’m getting it up as fast as I can.

For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, pimply minions of bureaucracy

a half-decade on.

“We are not out looking for people selling lemonade, but in this case, the police chief was driving around and saw them in the road and stopped due to safety concerns.”

I’ve noticed this aspect of these stories before, the Chief being the guy who makes the bust. It tells us something when the guy who’s supposed to be the voice of reason is the lunatic in the story. You get it when some overzealous rookie straight out of the academy wants to be a by the book guy. His Chief or the Sheriff should be the voice of experience, telling him to leave the seven-year olds alone!

And all those people offering a “wave of support,” you should be at the police station demanding a resignation or setting up your own lemonade stand on your own driveway. It’s alway the kids who seem to get it, disobeying the stupid law is the solution:

The Green sisters said they plan to take advantage of a loophole and set up their lemonade stand again this Saturday, only they’ll be giving their treats away for free and accept donations.

Reminds me of this.

for certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, pimply minions of bureaucracy

the sing-a-long version.

Local singer Liv Gains only got one thing wrong: the last bit of her name.

The police officer asked Liv Gains for her name.

“First name? Liv,” she said. “Last name? Free and Die hard.”

She should have went with “Free or Die.” Because Live Free or Die, the New Hampshire State motto, is a bald statement of freedom. And having some pimply minion of beaurocracy hand-cuff you for stating as much is a freedom issue. But then, so is inventing the rules, and declaring a spot were taxi’s sometimes drop people off a “taxi stand or public transit stop.”

Making matters worse, as always, is the official response, which notes, “giving a false name is an arrestable offence.” But why isn’t giving out false offences an arrestable offence? Or at least a fireable one?

Gains seems to get this is about more than just being asked to move along, and God bless her for that. She’s having a busk-in at the same spot today. Depending on schedule, I may make it down there and drop a $20 in her case.

And good too for Giant Tiger and councillor Frank Monteiro, both of whom didn’t reflexively take the cops side on this one.

pimply minions of bureaucracy

I mean, if it saves just one rock stars life.

Think I’m kidding? Any government that can examine what you do with the food you cook in your own home and who does and doesn’t eat it then calls it a crisis, that government can, and will, decide everything you do and don’t do in life.

Since I missed Reeds passing, here’s a little Sweet Jane, one of his gems.

pimply minions of bureaucracy, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin' Lou Reed

… the community outreach officer tells the conservative bitch to shut up, or the rabbi gets it

York Regional Police threatened to remove a rabbi as one of the force’s chaplains if he hosted a controversial anti-Islamist speaker at his Thornhill synagogue.

Insp. Ricky Veerappan, of the force’s diversity, equity and inclusion bureau, confirmed he and officers from the service’s hate crimes unit met with Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of the Chabad Flamingo Synagogue on Tuesday.

They expressed concern about an upcoming talk to be given by Pamela Geller, a vocal critic of radical Islam…

As noted by Mark Steyn,:

When the York Regional Police Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau show up thwacking their truncheons against their palms and saying, “Nice little multifaith advisory committee gig you got going, Rabbi. Shame if anything were to happen to it”, a prudent man gets the message

So the paramilitary arm of the Toronto Star (with apologies to Messrs. Steyn and John O’Sullivan) gets to decide what communities deserve outreach. I would have been much happier if the story ended with Rabbi Kaplan saying, “stick your multi faith advisory committee, I’ll take my freedom over your lousy sinecure every day of the week and twice on Saturday.” However, I can’t blame a guy for flinching when he’s staring down the barrel of a bully. In lieu of the right thing happening, second best is a new location for Pamela Geller’s speech:

Toronto Zionist Centre
780 Marlee Avenue
(Lawrence just west of the Allen Expswy.)

Tickets are $20 for general admission
$36 for reserved VIP seating.
(you can purchase tickets directly from the link above).

Meanwhile, Blazing Cat Fur has an open letter from Salem Mansur:

I am a Muslim, a tenured professor in a prestigious Canadian university, the University of Western Ontario in London. I am appalled that in this day and age we continue to hear regularly how the liberal democratic tradition of Canada and the West is being systematically shredded by institutions sworn to protect it. Free speech is the most fundamental right of a free society; constrain it, strip it, shred it, and then let us not be surprised our society will be turned into a society such as one from where I fled as a young man to find freedom in the West…

Geller herself will be on The Source with Ezra Levant today.

Mark Steyn, pimply minions of bureaucracy Mark Steyn, Pamela Geller, Radical Islam

… the mother-country edition:

The head of children’s services in Rotherham(England) has defended the decision to remove three ethnic minority children from foster parents, saying that their affiliation to the UK Independence Party (Ukip) meant they opposed ‘multiculturalism.’…

She said there was no ‘quality of care’ issue with the couple – the husband is a former Navy reservist who works with disabled people and the wife is a qualified nursery nurse – only that they were Ukip members.

Quality of care, providing love, a good home &tc.? Irrelevant. Approved thought patterns are the only criteria that counts.

As we say here in the colonies: Fire Them All!

Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, pimply minions of bureaucracy

takes on the elderly:

For the past dozen years seniors at the six-floor, 50-occupant Ewart Angus House residence on Merton St., at Mount Pleasant, have congregated in the lobby that was nicely set up with four soft chairs and two wooden chairs….

And then some, not in the real world, pencil-neck inspector within the fire department comes along and says these chairs are a fire hazard.

They ordered them removed

But that’s OK. After all there’s rules, and the nice inspector…

He said the inspector refused to give her name and was not respectful.

“There has never been a problem with these chairs before,” McLean said. “There are no requirements for fire resistant furniture for anywhere else in the building so it really doesn’t make any sense.”

However should there be a good reason, he said, it has not been explained to the residents.

No, she wouldn’t be respectful when she’s telling 80-year old women with walkers that her chair, that she has been using for a dozen years, must be removed. It’s disrespectful on the surface.

But former Toronto Police officer Ross McLean has it backwards, they don’t have to respect us, we have to respect them. That’s the problem in a nutshell.

pimply minions of bureaucracy

…2-years on.

What’s in a name when it offends against the pimply minion mindset?

So you have a lovely son, and give him a not un-common name, Hunter. During his routine pediatric tests, you learn Hunter is deaf. What’s a family to do? You start by teaching him sign language, including the most basic of communications, his name.

Now three, Hunter is being told by some school administrator in Grand Island Nebraska to change how he signs his name because it looks like he’s shooting a gun. (actually, it looks to me like more like pleasing a woman 101, but no school administrator gets their knickers twisted over sexualizing 3-year olds)

Hunter’s dad, Brian Spanjer, in a classic bit of understatement, said “I feel l like it was an overreach…”

No Brian, it’s not an overreach, it’s who they are and what they do. It may have taken longer to come to Middle America, but there’s a rebellion being waged against the populace by the pimply minions of bureaucracy. This is merely a shot.

More at Adler.com.

Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, pimply minions of bureaucracy American sign language, Brian Spanjer, Grand Island Nebraska, Hunter Spanjer

The suggested “fix” to the road hockey “problem” sounds like a parody.

In order to qualify for an exemption from the bylaw, a resident would not only have to canvass all the neighbours and get at least 80% of them to give the okay for junior to play ball; the resident would also have to get city staff to conduct a traffic study on his street…

because that exemption is only going to happen if the street in question sees 1,000 or fewer vehicles each day, with an average gap between the cars of at least one minute, and sightlines deemed appropriate by city staff.

pimply minions of bureaucracy, Toronto: Not in a Death Spiral Road Hockey, Toronto

Here’s a riddle. What would happen if I photoshopped my head onto that famous Lee Harvey Oswald picture of him holding his rifle (seen right). Is that a crime? What would happen to me?

Waterloo Regional Police, who are the locals here in Hespeler, arrested a dad last week because his daughter drew, on a whiteboard, a picture of him with a gun. The stated reason for arrest? Possession of an illegal weapon. The facts of the case are well known and have been rehashed ad-naseum, so I won’t dwell on them here. The pertinent details involve the “illegal weapon,” handcuffs and a strip search (“co-parent” Gregg Bereznick, Superintendent of Education with the Waterloo Region District School Board, was excluded from the procedure of arresting and strip searching).

A search of 26-year-old father of four Jessie Sansone’s home was almost certainly as illegal as the strip search, and produced one clear plastic toy gun, nowhere near the cache they would have found in my home many years ago. But, of course, my story was satire, it could never really happen &tc. Except, as it turns out, it is from my bad joke to Waterloo Regional Police’s policy manual.

The police, of course, stand by the arrest, even though no charges have been laid, and won’t be unless it is Police Board Act charges, and I wouldn’t bet against that happening. So the arrest for possession of an illegal weapon, a weapon that exists only in the imagination of a four year old, is good policing. If that is so, then surely a picture of an Hespeler area blogger standing with Lee Harvey Oswald’s Carcano, is also possession of an illegal weapon, photoshop notwithstanding. And surely as he would appear to be standing outside in a public place, rather carelessly I would say, a little dangerous to the public order could be thrown in, all the more reason for that cavity search.

pimply minions of bureaucracy Family CHildren Services, Gregg Bereznick, Jessie Sansone, Waterloo, Waterloo Regional Police

Six years ago wrote this post in response to some dumb law some dumb politician was on about. Making it harder to buy toy guns, or some such stupidity, as I recall.

This weeks stupidity by the Waterloo Region District School Board, Family and Children’s Services of the Waterloo Region and Waterloo Regional Police (especially the police), gave me a mind to repost it. It seems somehow appropriate.

*********************************************************************

Hespeler – Authorities today discovered a cache of illegal toys in the room of a local 8 year old boy. Among the toys discovered where a Chinese manufactured pump action water blaster 1000, a spider man web blaster and a Chinese made cap gun that authorities fear may have been purchased over the counter a dollar store. “The Water Blaster alone can deliver 1/2 a liter of water non-stop” said an adult at the scene “There were handcuffs too, and not the cheap plastic ones either, metal ones.” Authorities also discovered a lone ranger mask, a tire iron for bicycles, 3 hockey pucks “of the kind that is sometimes used in ‘chuck-a-puck’ competitions”, and an H2O Ammo water clip. Not shown in the picture was a Hurl, once used in an assault on a sister and a pointy stick, causing local mothers to fear that someone could lose an eye.

The 8 year old will be sent to his room to wait ’til his father gets home. Further grounding is expected, with crown prosecutors wanting two weeks without TV, while child care experts say time served waiting for Dad is sufficient punishment.

seized weapons are being tested to see if they are related to any unsolved soakings or frightenings of twitchy neighbours with loud ‘bangy’ noises.

Here is a complete inventory of the confiscated booty:

Elastic Gun
Chinese manufactured Shield Blaster 1000 water soaker.
Chinese manufactured Pump Action Water Gun
H2O AMMO Water Clip
Hot Wheels Jet Launcher, with Jet
Spider man Web Blaster with holder
Finger pointed in the classic gun position
Bicycle Tire Iron
3 “Chuck-a-Puck” style Hockey Pucks
Plastic Bullets
Plastic Holster
2 Used Elastic Bands
Irish Manufactured Hurl
24? Pointy Stick

Also found were:

Wild Planet Spy Listener with attached ear phone
Infra-pink Spy glasses/ Walkie Talkie
Lone Ranger style mask
Handcuffs and Coin Rollers and a couple of dollars in coins.

I think that covers how I feel about this.

crime and justice, Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, pimply minions of bureaucracy Family CHildren Services, Hespeler, Police, Toy Gun, Waterloo Region

It’s not often you see the Chairman and CEO of a major company looking like a deer in the headlights. If seeing that is your thing, the news conference that Gibson Guitar Company CEO Henry Juszkiewicz gave outside Gibson headquarters in Nashville is a must see. Juszkiewicz was responding to a raid by the Fish and Wildlife Service SWAT team on Gibson factories in Nashville and Memphis last week.

He can’t be too surprised, you’d think. The same SWAT team raided his factories two years ago, so it’s not like he was unaware Fish and Wildlife had a SWAT team. And when you have a SWAT team, you will use it.

In the 1980’s Gibson took a beating in the guitar market. New, hot sounding guitars were eating into the market. Their old school rival, Fender, had began making guitars in Japan, but Gibson held firm: “Gibson USA,” was their tag line, Only Gibson is Good Enough, the slogan. The message was clear: Our USA made guitars are better. But Fender guitars where half price to Gibson, and their Squire models, made in Japan, where a quarter the price. Musicians declared their loyalty: “Fender sold out, Gibson held strong. I will never buy another Fender again,” more than one walked into the store I worked at and said. But when they needed a back-up axe, and a brand new Squire telecaster could be had for $199, but a Gibson, any Gibson, was going for $600 and more, they bought Fender again.
But Gibson stayed: they were an American company making American products, in America. Put another way, get on the floor, put your hands on your head and thanks for doing business with us.

A number of years ago I built a guitar, a classical. I got all the wood from a local place that is well known for it’s lutherie woods, including the Indian Rosewood fingerboard and bridge blank. The blanks, like the illegal Gibson blanks, where partially finished, but required planing and shaping before they got put on the guitar. At the time it occurred to me making guitars might be a nice, eventually semi-profitable hobby. I kept up with a few luther chat rooms, and quickly ran across these discussions about paperwork for your wood. The guys who were making real money doing this could source their wood often back to the tree.

Making guitars, I thought, I could do. Keeping ahead of that kind of paperwork, not so much. No big deal, it was a flight of fancy more than solid idea. But watching Henry Juszkiewicz explain that they had all the paperwork, explain the wood left India with this certification, that stamp and this signature, the wood cleared customs in the USA, and Fish and Wildlife shut down production and took the wood needed for them to build guitars anyway, I knew nobody could keep ahead of the paperwork.

If your a CEO of a business, any business right now, what did you think when you watched Henry Juszkiewicz staring into the headlights? Perhaps, like me, you thought I’m glad I don’t do business with them. Or perhaps you run an American business, and you know that people like Rush Limbaugh have been saying for years that business is under attack in this country. And you see the SWAT team of the Fish and Wildlife Service running roughshod over a business known for having stayed in America when his best interests said to move on. Wouldn’t you think, maybe it’s time to move on?

If you ever wonder why your TVs are made in Korea, when they used to be made in the US, your car is from Japan, your iPod from Singapore and ask yourself, does the Korean Fish and Wildlife Service have a SWAT team, and if so, how much paperwork do you have to do to keep them on the other side of the door. Then ask yourself, where would you build a TV?

Where, in the future, will Gibson build guitars?

Guitar Greats, pimply minions of bureaucracy Fish and Wildlife Service, Gibson, Guitars, Henry Juszkiewicz, SWAT

Year 2.

First they come for your lemonade…

Seriously, do the police in city after city not realize how stupid they look?

h/t Meow

Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, pimply minions of bureaucracy Lemonade, Washington DC

Seeing as I post a semi-weekly item called Freedom of Music, it seems appropriate that I have something to say about Dire Straits, Money for Nothing being given illiberal treatment. First, there is some misconceptions to clear up.

Mark Knopfler did not write Money for Nothing as an anti-anti-gay song. He was not commenting generally, or specifically on anti-gay sentiment. Unlike Mark Twain using the word, well THE WORD, in Huckleberry Finn, there is no evidence that he was making specific social commentary on homophobia.

Oh, I know: how do I know what Mark Knopfler was thinking when he wrote Money for Nothing? Well, I don’t. And neither do all the boring blow-hards trying to justify their anger at this decision by citing artistic merit and “context.” Context be dammed. It is bad when apparatchiks start telling you what you can and cannot hear on radio. Even if Money for Nothing was blatantly homophobic, it would be wrong for some government appointee to tell you you can’t hear it, full stop.

Which brings us to point two: the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) is not a government agency. However, it was set up under the guidance of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which is definitely a government agency. Lose you CRTC license, and you are out of business: lose your good standing with CBSC, and you lose your CRTC license. Radio stations that play the unedited version of Money for Nothing stand to lose their license. It may not be a government agency that censored the radio stations, but it has the full force of government behind it, so it may as well be: would, in fact, be better if it were, then you could phone you MP and demand correction.

Some people have speculated that the ruling could affect more than just this one song. What about the Pogues Christmas song, Fairytale of New York? for example. Couldn’t they now ban that? Not could, did. In an interview with Charles Adler last week, Ron Cohen head of the CBSC said, “we didn’t ban the song, we banned the word.” With that a whole slew of songs are off the radio, including the song voted number #1 Christmas song by the stodgy old BBC listeners. Guns ‘N’ Roses song One in a Million is out too. Gone. Never to be played in it’s complete version on the radio.

The offence, however, some say, only applies to the word faggot. Fag is in, so Charlie Daniels Uneasy Rider is good to go:

…he’s a friend of them long haired, hippy-type, pinko fags! I betchya he’s even got a commie flag. Tacked up on the wall inside of his garage…

Here’s a game. You run a radio station, and somebody wants to play Uneasy Rider. “It doesn’t say faggot,” argues the DJ, “just fag.” Do you let him play it? Do you take the chance that your going to be hauled before the CBSC? Or do you take the easy route and say, play something else. I know what I’d do, and it wouldn’t have anything to do with one of the rock worlds funniest songs playing on my radio station. Ban one word, and it turns into a de-facto ban of how many others? In one fell ruling you can wipe dozens of songs off the radio.

And all of that doesn’t matter one whit. This is an issue of freedom, and in Canada we are less free today than we were at this time last week. Free countries don’t protect people by banning speech and songs: free countries protect people from from having their speech, or songs, banned.

That is what is wrong with this decision. It has nothing to do with the fact the song has been played thousands of times over twenty five years, no harm done. It doesn’t matter whether it’s pro or anti-gay song. When you argue those points, you concede that limits are appropriate. And once you have conceded that, then the argument is a drawing of the lines. Don’t want your favourite song banned from the airwaves, then don’t agree to lines, any lines being drawn. That is the way free countries act.

pimply minions of bureaucracy, The Freedom of Music Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, CBSC, Charlie Daniels, CRTC, Dire Straits, Fairytale of New York, Guns 'n' roses, Mark Knopfler, Money for Nothing, One in a Million, Pogues, Uneasy Rider

Christmas Edition:

I’ve lost a cat before, and putting up notices around the neighbourhood is the best way to notify the area that the cat is likely lost in of the whereabouts of the cat’s owner.

A couple of years ago we found a dog, put up notices, and returned the dog to a dad and his crying child within two hours of finding him (he was a sweet dog, too: we kind of hoped we didn’t find an owner).  The mother in that family is now our mail person: we get excellent service from Canada Post. It all comes from living in a neighbourhood:

Desperate to find his missing cat Wookie, Mike Harding put up posters throughout the neighbourhood offering a reward for its safe return.

And it was not long before he received a phone call.

Not from someone who had found the pet, however, but from the council saying he was breaking the law.

Take the posters down by Christmas Eve, the Dec 23rd letter proclaimed from on high, or face a £1,000 fine.  “You would think the council would have some compassion,” Harding said. No actually Mike, you wouldn’t: they never do. That’s the mistake people constantly make.

Have you ever noticed “bureaucrats” sounds a lot like  “bastards”?

cats, pimply minions of bureaucracy