I am appalled at the utter waste of US tax dollars. – William Shatner
Like a runner exhausted after a race, the internet was much quieter this week after last week’s link frenzy. That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of “tweets”, links and blog posts flying about, but most of them seemed to be concentrated on a smaller number of subjects and few were noteworthy enough to inspire me to grant them space in this column. In keeping with last week’s Star Trek theme, we heard about how the IRS blew $60,000 on a terrible parody of the classic show, but it was “terrible” in the sense of “jejune” rather than in the sense of “ludicrous”; I couldn’t get through a third of it, so there’s no way I’ll feature it here. Instead, I present a “bath salts” scare video produced by the US Navy, which I found in a Reason feature entitled “5 Government Videos Every Bit as Terrible as the IRS Star Trek Parody“; if you haven’t seen the Star Trek abortion yet and you’re feeling masochistic, you can watch it there. In contrast, I’ve also included a good didactic video, a 1974 PSA on carpooling which I enjoyed so much as a child I used the word “kalaka” for decades afterward. Radley Balko was our champ this week, providing everything down to the first video and the second half of “fascism” (the first half was supplied by Wendy Lyon). The second and third links between the videos were contributed by Jesse Walker, and the fourth and fifth by Gideon’s Trumpet.
- De-extinction?
- Fast track to cop promotion: murder someone.
- Surgeon falsely jailed for over a year in order to seize his property.
- Beating someone for filming you? Make sure he’s the only one doing it.
- Cops used black neighborhood for SWAT training because it’s “realistic”.
- Welcome to our world, punks.
- The Muslim foot bath that wasn’t.
- The United States of Autocomplete.
- Prosecutor files 141 charges for one murder.
- Congress is planning to make the CFAA much worse.
- Counselors at Scientology drug rehab traded inmates drugs for sex.
- Under fascism, every institution or large company is an arm of the State.
From the Archives
- An inability to tell fantasy from reality would normally be considered evidence of psychosis, but in law enforcement it’s a job requirement.
- Once you win your rights it’s OK to join in with stigmatizing other groups who haven’t yet, just to show you’re part of the gang.
- Book reviews: All or Nothing, Freakonomics, Harmful To Minors, Tickle My Tush and A Vindication of the Rights of Whores.
- Were many hookers molested as children? Are many drug addicts? And are most lesbians?
- It’s only OK to grope people if one puts on a uniform and does it without their permission.
- Neofeminism is rooted in a deep-seated hatred of one’s own femininity.
- The drive toward increasingly vicious anti-whore and anti-client tactics.
- How do you expose a man pretending to be a woman on a chat site?
- The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld two-thirds of the Himel decision.
- Why do mature escorts want sex when many mature women don’t?
- Helping legal workers to conduct legal business is a crime in France.
- Even when the Feds botch an extortion scheme, they win anyway.
- The predictable failure of the first legal male prostitute in Nevada.
- Activism, backward Satanic messages and my target audience.
- Canadian neofeminists sneak over to Israel to poison the well.
- How South Africa and the US changed places on human rights.
- Police reports are more useful when they contain information.
- Natalia Fabia loves hookers…as a promotional gimmick.
- What’s the best way to perform oral sex on a woman?
- Another criticism of Nick Kristof’s anti-whore crusade.
- Acknowledging the ape does no harm to the angel.
- La Belle Otero, the last of the Grandes Horizontales.
- The chief con man of a group of scammers resigns.
- The weird cognitive impairment of prohibitionists.
- Another day, another politician, another whore.
- “The healthiest sex industry ever documented.”
- The truth about the birth control “controversy”.
- Would an HIV-positive escort quit working?
- A short glossary of prohibitionism.
- New Orleans, Cthulhu and Fear.
- How do Kegels exercises work?
- Modern-day Lysistrata.
- Karayuki and japayuki.
- Timing is everything.
In the 1970’s, I believe HM Treasury made a public service video and disguised it as a Doctor Who episode:
The clip I wanted to show began at 7:59 but the whole thing is funny if you think of it as something the British equivalent of the IRS might use as a “promotion.”
Brilliant! And do I detect shades of 1984?
I quite liked cracked.com’s take on that star trek video scandal. Did the IRS save money thanks to saving money on employee training costs? Probably. Could a dedicated sketch comedy trope or any experienced director knock out both videos for less than half that? Definitely.
In 1992 I was in the White House and a guy interrupted a meeting I was in to tell me … “Hey Krulac, you have ONE MILLION DOLLARS in “fallout money” to spend for this fiscal year.” “Fallout money” is money that didn’t belong to me – I didn’t budget it – it belonged to some other organization but they weren’t spending it fast enough so … the powers that be shoveled some of that money to me and a bunch of others to spend it.
I was shocked – one million? So I said … “Yeah, okay – give me three days and I’ll tell you how to spend that money.”
He said … “Three days? Try ten minutes … I need a list in ten minutes.”
I spent the money – I gave him a list – but I think I could have found much better ways to spend that money. I gave him a list of things we really didn’t need – just WANTED. That’s the nature of the system though and I have complained about it for over 30 years. William Shatner don’t know shit about government waste – talk to Krulac about that.
The waste is deeper than just taxpayer dollars – it also involves MANPOWER (at least in the Department of Defense). The great United States of America … and you wouldn’t believe the infantile ways that Congress monitors troop “readiness”.
– “End Strength” is still the primary yardstick Congress uses to determine military readiness. Essentially – each service is given a “number” and, on October 1st of each year, you better have that number of people in your service (or Flag Officers start getting fired). Doesn’t matter what job they do – or if you have the “right mix” of skills. Doesn’t matter if they are FUCKING PRISONERS – they still count. I once was ordered to keep 1,000 prisoners on active duty past October 1st in order that they could be counted for “end strength”. I once witnessed Navy recruiting FLOOD the Navy with twice as many Hospital Corpsman recruits as we needed in order for those bodies to be counted as “end strength”.
– Sometime around 2003 the Chief of Naval Operations decided that he wanted more enlisted Sailors to have “Batchelor’s Degrees”. The solution? I started getting COLLEGE GRADUATES reporting to my ship for chipping and painting and “cleaning” duties. These kids were attracted by the promise of paying off college debt, even at the cost of doing manual labor to work it off – and we put them cleaning toilets. You tell me … how exactly did the CNO improve the status of the enlisted force by recruiting a bunch of toilet cleaners who have bachelor’s degrees? I tried to bust some of these guys out of deck duties and put them to work in technically complex jobs. Wouldn’t work – most of them had such substantial college debt that they were unable to get a security clearance to perform any other duty than painting and cleaning the ship!
This nation is GOING DOWN people. There will be NO stopping it. The U.S. government is WASTE REACTOR in complete meltdown. Enjoy the show as we sink into the abyss.
I always loved the Kalaka video.
Catching up. Skipping but will come back to LINKS later. The standard message by now.