The difficulties of doing business in the socialist state of Berkeley

The difficulties of doing business in the socialist state of Berkeley. Key quote:

When a planner working in design review looked at Dalrympleโ€™s plans, she told her she didnโ€™t think a black and white awning would fit in with the neighborhood, said Dalrymple. The planner didnโ€™t give her any specific recommendations for a different color, but just nixed her idea. . . . “Rules arenโ€™t written down anywhere,โ€ said [Dan Marks, director of the Planning and Development Department]. โ€œBut the planner has worked in the neighborhood a long time and she knows what the neighborhood likes.” [emphasis mine]

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Congressman says that Congress has the right to force people to buy insurance

Behind the curtain, a dictator: Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) said yesterday that he not only thinks that Congress has the power to make people buy insurance according to the Constitution, it is his obligation to force them to do so. In his own words:

โ€œI think people should be required to get health insurance. We require people to get insurance for their automobile state by state but the federal government has an obligation to encourage by law, moral persuasion, to get people to get health insurance,โ€

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Nearly 3000 doctors surveyed believe ObamaCare will hurt care quality and doctor pay

Repeal the damn bill! By large majorities, surveyed doctors believe that ObamaCare will hurt care quality and doctor pay. Key quote:

During the next 5 years, the quality of health care in this country will improve (18%) stay same (17%) deteriorate (65%).

The Affordable Care Act will result in physician reimbursement becoming more fair (9%) neither fair nor unfair (17%) less fair (74%).

Overall, the impact of the Affordable Care Act for patients will be positive (27%) neutral (15%) negative (57%).

Overall, the impact of the Affordable Care Act for physicians will be positive (8%) neutral (14%) negative (78%).

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Confessions of a Greenpeace founder

The confessions of a Greenpeace founder. Key quote:

The truth is Greenpeace and I had divergent evolutions. I became a sensible environmentalist; Greenpeace became increasingly senseless as it adopted an agenda that is anti-science, anti-business, and downright anti-human.

Other quotes of interest:

The collapse of world communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall during the 1980s added to the trend toward extremism. The Cold War was over and the peace movement was largely disbanded. The peace movement had been mainly Western-based and anti-American in its leanings. Many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology.

And:

There is no cause for alarm about climate change. The climate is always changing. Some of the proposed “solutions” would be far worse than any imaginable consequence of global warming, which will likely be mostly positive. Cooling is what we should fear.

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New TSA Scanner Procedure Is Dumb in a New Way

The new TSA scanner procedure: Dumb in a new way. The quote below actually isn’t the point of the article (which notes other idiotic things about TSA procedures), but I found it telling nonetheless:

For the most part, it has been possible to avoid the scanners just by picking the right line to stand in, which I assume means that the government has determined that terrorists have poor line-picking skills.

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TSA: Living on Borrowed Time?

TSA: Living on borrowed time? Key quote:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year. At TSA headquarters alone, there are 3,526 staff whose average salary tops $106,000. And while the TSA has gotten very good at groping airline passengers and undressing them with full body scans, the organization has yet to prevent a single terrorist attack. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation released last spring revealed that at least 17 known terrorists have been able to pass through TSA security totally unhindered. [emphasis mine]

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