A Nation of Too Many Laws

Posted on 16/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

I often proudly proclaim that we are a nation of laws. The United States has been writing, passing, and enforcing laws since its inception in 1776, and even before that. In thinking about laws I often come to the conclusion that laws inhibit our freedoms. I also proudly declare that we have a Constitution that guides our thinking on how to proceed when writing laws. Does the Constitution really help us decide whether a law is necessary? I think in most cases the Constitution does not come to mind when lawmakers get busy to formulate a new law. At this point of history the United States has so many laws in so many jurisdictions that we need an army of lawyers to assist us with the interpretation, and to help protect us from harm caused by the wrongful application of same. We need a reset in law making. How can we be free to say, write, or do what we want freely when we are being guided by the Constitution, Federal, State, County, Township, and Municipal laws? For instance, my home town has a law on conducting garage sales. I’m sure your town does too? Why are such laws necessary? Most likely because somebody’s neighbor decided to hold a garage sale every Saturday of the year. A simple thing such as a sale intended to reduce the clutter going into a landfill turns into something ugly. The law is written to control our behavior.

The more laws we have the more opportunity there is for us to become law breakers. Therefore, more need exists to employ law keepers known as policemen to keep our behaviors in check. One of the most frequently broken laws in America is called the Speed Limit. Speed Limits are laws intended to regulate our need for speed, but under the guise of safety to the general population. Speed kills they cite, therefore we must limit your needs with signage that tells you what is safe. If every municipality that is responsible for posting the limits were to arrest every driver who broke the limit we would be able to pay for every highway in America with improvements too. Thankfully, the cops arrest speeders using statistics, placing speed traps at random around the area and being seen writing citations every where. The penalty’s for repeated speeding violations are severe, and one can lose his driving privilege, another loss of freedom.

A Speed Limit That Is Hard to Keep On A Bicycle

Another law that is frequently broken is driving while under the influence of an intoxicating beverage or alcohol. Again, in the name of safety, you place yourself into jeopardy by drinking and driving. No mater, even if you are driving like a sober judge, if you are pulled over you put your driving privilege on the line. Most of these laws are the result of a group called Mothers Against Drunk Driving or MADD. These moms are upset over losing a child in an accident caused by someone who drove drunk. Alcohol impairs your ability to think clearly, and your body to react more slowly, therefore, you must be apprehended and incarcerated for your own protection. In this case it is not your own safety the law protects it is the safety of others.

As an attempt to learn how large the law problem is in America, I asked Google to tell me. The answer, is there are too many laws on the books to know just how many there are. One fact that I did learn is that there are over 23,000 laws on guns and gun ownership. We have a body of politicians whose job it is to write new laws. We have gotten so stupid about this that we refer them as “do-nothings” if they don’t pass new laws every year. The average is about two hundred new federal laws every year. Multiply that by 244 years and we have over forty-eight thousand Federal laws on the books. If you have ever looked at how the laws are written by reading one you will know that within every law are numerous other laws that control every scenario possible. I think the number I cited is way too low. Of course the problem is magnified when we move down to the states and municipalities.

Just this week, I learned that A friend of mine was being punished by my hometown of Frankfort for trying to live his life the way he wanted to. The friend lives in the country just outside of town. He has a huge barn on his property, and thought how neat it would be to cater to the latest hot trend of barn weddings. For some reason, he thought it would be wise to have his farm incorporated into the Village limits. WRONG!!!!! The Village got wind of his business and decided to teach him a lesson. First, the land he was on is zoned for Agriculture. I know the Village would not have let him build a barn on a residential plot. But, my friend thought since the barn existed before the land was part of the Village he was okay. WRONG!!!!! The Village sent out a fire inspector to determine if there were any fire hazards in the barn. Come on folks, barns are usually built of wood and have hay strewn around. The Fire Marshall wrote him up and decided he needed to install a sprinkler system, he did. They also insisted his county approved electrical system was not up to code, so they had him install a new electrical box to replace the new one he had. He did that too. Then the Village asked if he had a Village business license. Out of curiosity, I read the ordinance on Village Business licenses. It doesn’t cover offering your barn as a venue for a wedding, but they have a line labeled “other” to cover the known listed business types. One reason for the license is to flush out if alcohol will be served, sold, or stored in the building? If there is, then a new law kicks in namely a the need for a liquor license. I know Frankfort is not a teetotaling town there are numerous taverns and bars within the town limits, but they want to control what goes on to insure my safety. Sooo, we have a law to guarantee that; another loss of freedom.

When my friend thought he was near the finish line the COVID-19 pandemic hit and shut down all activities. Several weddings had to be cancelled or rescheduled due to the virus. Six months have passed and the virus numbers are reduced to allow some wedding party activity to occur, except that the Village slapped an injunction against his business to stop.

I guess my point in this post is that too many laws can be a detriment to liberty. We seem to lose common sense and apply stupid laws to new and wild business ideas like barn weddings. Too many laws also give our leaders too much power and inflate their ability to control others. Liberty requires fewer laws and less control. We will never again get back to the liberty we had two hundred and forty-four years ago unless we start reversing the trend to define every breath, and every move we take with a law.

A good start in reversing the trend is to return to the original ten commandments issued to Moses by God.

Filed under: Conservative, Government, Society | Tagged: , , | 6 Comments »

Iris Cove

Posted on 10/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Just another day in paradise, this morning was glorious. I say was because it is already after noon. When one finishes breakfast at ten o’clock noon comes quickly. Thankfully, I haven’t kicked myself out of KETO this week, God knows I have tried. On Thursday I thoroughly enjoyed a sub sandwich from Jersey Mike’s bread included, then washed down with a sugar cookie. This morning I feasted on a mushroom-spinach omelet with thick sliced bacon.

Last evening I went for a bike ride with a friend and as usual I was way ahead and stopped to let us catch up with each other. I did something stupid on the start-up and wound up prone on the street. The last time I dumped on a bike was fifteen years ago when I hit a patch of wet leaves on the trail and found myself skidding on my side for twenty feet. It just goes to prove that if you ride long enough, you will have an ass dumping accident. At one block from home I stopped again to allow us to even up, and a white haired man stopped at the same corner. He shouted out “how are you doing?” “Fine” I relied. “God bless you,” he answered then drove off. Strange.

I was determined to find a new series on TV to watch and tuned into one called “Red Oaks.” The story revolves around a country club called of course “Red Oaks.” It takes place in the eighties and resembles “Mrs. Robinson.” Of course all the characters are filthy rich except the kids who work there parking cars, life-guarding, teaching tennis, or carrying golf bags. It is funny how all the staff sucks up to the rich membership. I would never do anything like that. I found it amusing and will continue to watch.

I spent another afternoon in the garden cleaning the other half of my pond which took a lot longer than I wanted to spend, but it was worth it. I cut back a huge bed of irises and the cattails for the first time in twelve years. I learned that one of the things drawing the pond water level is the irises. Another culprit is the cattail. I pulled a root that turned out to be two feet long and the diameter of a garden hose. If ever there was a pipe pulling water out it was that root.

Cattail Root–One Inch In diameter by two feet long
Iris Cove

The water level in the pond was down by six inches and I started the water to fill it. After half an hour the level was where it should be. It’ll be interesting to learn how the level changes now that two of the main culprits have been cut-off. At the end of the day I came in exhausted and sat at my computer staring at a screen fighting off sleep. I vowed that if I am still at this house next year that my garden will be as magnificent as it has been up until two years ago. The garden must be in my blood, just like bike riding is.

Filed under: Garden, Garden,pond,, Movie Review | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Sdrawkcab Gniog

Posted on 09/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Americans are up to their neck in computer technology, but we are drifting backwards. One would think that voting has been figured out after so many years of doing it. Between Federal, State, and Local voting for 244 years we have probably voted 122 times. In my state, we must register to vote. It was a painless process when I did it, and today it is even more painless. The bottom line is that we are required to produce a signature which is kept on file by the County Clerk and when we vote we must sign again. Today’s signature is compared to the one on file. In order to get that far I had to produce a birth certificate to prove my citizenship. Those of foreign birth had to produce Naturalization papers. One of the new ways to register is to answer yes to the question “would you like to register to vote?” when applying or renewing your driver’s license. Citizenship is assumed during that process. In my mind this is an avenue for corruption. Since no proof is needed to renew your driver’s license it is up to the individual to be honest about citizenship. Since the Muslim attack on New York in 2001 the Department of Homeland security has tightened the rules a bit, but not for voting, for traveling. A person’s driver’s license is now accepted as proof of identity. The driver’s license has to be a Real ID license. To get a Real ID one must show a birth certificate, or passport, and proofs of residency. But one can still get his license renewed without making it a Real ID. He can then answer the question “do you want to register to vote?” Regardless, In Illinois one has to be registered to vote, but he can do it at the polling place on election day. I’m not sure what documentation one must bring to do that.

So why are we going backwards in the process? Well, we have added too many ways to vote. Number one is to show up at the polling place, number two, if you are out of town you may request an absentee ballot, number three, you may vote early at designated polling places within you precinct, and finally, we can now vote by mail. Voting by mail means you get a ballot in the mail, mark it and send it back in the mail. What is questionable is who gets a ballot? Often I receive multiple requests for questionnaires through the mail. Most likely because I am on several mailing lists. How will they control that if the sender does not know you, does not know if you are a resident of the state, or if you are qualified to vote. My dog could get a ballot and I could help him mark it and return it. The Board of Elections will have absolutely no knowledge of whether it is a valid ballot or not. A lot of other questions arise also. What do they do with ballots that are past the postmark requirement? What do they do with multiple votes from the same individual? How will they know that I have not used a mail in ballot for myself, my first wife, and my second wife, mother, father, my kids, my friends etc?

Too many times I have heard of a precinct reporting late and turning the election result because someone found a box of uncounted ballots in the trunk of his car. Which election judge would not remember he had ballots in his car on election day? With the mail in ballots, it will be too easy to manufacture votes behind the scenes to turn results.

The technology sector wants to modernize voting by using computers. Many experiments have been tried only to learn that computers can be rigged to vote the opposite, to mis-count or to not count. In other words they are only as honest as the people managing them.

I am certain that counting votes has been a problem since the very first election, and that is why each precinct has to certify that they are reporting an honest count, and the county does the same, and finally, the state certifies the count in the National election. With all these certifications there is less opportunity for fraud, yet it still occurs.

The number of ways to cheat on an election are endless, and the arguments against voter fraud are always beaten back statistically arguing that with so many votes to count, it would have to be massive to be effective. I’ve only heard the argument that even if fraud existed it would be in such a minute number that it wouldn’t affect the outcome. What these arguers don’t take into account is that if there are enough different ways to cheat, and all of them are used, that collectively it can matter.

In this moderne world we have become accustomed to knowing the outcomes of elections on the same day as the vote. In order to do that all votes have to be counted after the polls close. What will happen if the votes from the military arrive from battlefields late? What about mail in ballots that arrive past the postmark date? How much time is allowed for the mail to arrive and is there any grace for excusable lateness? Given all these variables, when will we know what the final count is? If an election is won by a landslide, there is no need to wait for all the counts to come in, however, if the election is close like it has been for the past twenty years, all lost ballots must be found and included. There is a good chance that we will not know the outcome of any future election for weeks after the election.

Given that the winner is not known what happens to the country and its administration? The new winner can not be forming his government until the outcome is known. If that candidate does form a new government and finally winds up losing what has been achieved? Thankfully, the Constitution dictates the new president be sworn into office on a specified date, and the count has to be certified by then which gives us fifteen weeks to straighten the mess out.

What ever the problems it is our constitutional right to vote. Voting is the one thing that allows us to make a difference in how the country is run. You can write letters to Congressmen, and Senators and even the President, but they don’t mean as much as your vote, so vote for the candidate you think will do what is right for our country. Voting is the one thing we can do as citizens to change the way things work in Washington.

Filed under: Election, Government, politics | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Some of the Adjectives

Posted on 08/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Condescending, arrogant, elitist, are some of the adjectives I will use to describe yesterday’s VP debate participant Kamala Harris. She reminded me of Obama at his most arrogant peak of power just after winning the presidency. The way he treated John McCain was atrocious. His reminding comment that elections have consequences rings in my mind with contempt. Yes they do, but why rub it in? In this case the election is not yet been held and the candidate is showing off her tendencies to be a bitch. Kamala Harris is not one whom I want running this country, or any country for that matter.

Somehow I can’t picture her standing up to Vladimir Putin with her attitude that she is better than he. I truly believe Putin would put her in place accordingly. Her comment that she will not be lectured by the Vice President of the United States about her pissy poor record as Attorney General of a district that made her position only one notch lower than that of the Attorney General of the United States is a powerful chest expansion that is only exceeded by the expansion of her head on the matter of her importance. Like I said, she is as arrogant as Obama was maybe even worse. I would not want her to become president only because I don’t want Obama to lose his title of the worst president we ever had.

My guess is that if we allow this travesty to occur that the United States will become the United Socialist States of America in her first month in office. How anyone can call themselves a person of faith, and allow innocent babies to be slaughtered in lawful abortions is clueless to the meaning of a person of faith. How anyone can accuse us of being racist when her record of prosecuting blacks was much higher in percentage than her prosecution of whites for the same crimes? Her support for Joe Biden’s plan to eliminate COVID-19 is merely a repeat of what Trump and Pence have already done, What makes their plan better than the one that was followed? Her proposal to implement the Green New Deal is based on taking away the people’s liberty. There have been multiple global warming cycles throughout the ages and still our scientists make their most educated guesses that we the people are causing this one to occur. Why? Because they learned that CO2 causes air to become warmer. How long will it take for all the CO2 being generated by our fossil fuel burning is a matter of pulling the answer out of the crystal ball. Does it really matter if we speed up the process and make it happen a hundred years sooner when the cycle is a half million years? Does she and her scientist friends really believe that if the USA converted all of our energy needs to wind, solar, and democrat gastric out put in one day that we would not be impacted by China, India, Europe, and every other continent of this world? Does she think that by China building all electric cars only that the Chinese would then magically develop electric charging stations that will be powered by the sun? Even if they did, the pollution caused by making the batteries would be more damaging than that of conventional cars. Politicians should never get into arguments involving science because the scientists also have political leanings. Scientists can be just as stupid as politicians when it comes to defending their livelihood and fortunes.

Taxing the hell out of Americans to reduce their carbon footprint is merely a political scheme to control the masses. As I have stated before my vote won’t make one bit of difference in a state whose population has been politically manipulated and brainwashed to believe that voting democrat is the best thing they can do for themselves. Just ask them what they will do with the money they keep by defunding the police?

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Talk-over Debate?

Posted on 07/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Thank you Lord! The weather is kick ass beautiful, and the temperature is downright civilized. I took advantage by a attending the funeral mass of a friend’s mother Josephine. She is eighty-four years and old mother of seven children all still talking to each other, six boys and one girl. The family attending took up a third of the available seats.

Upon landing at home, I dressed into my garden clothes and headed for the pond. One of the filters is clogging and the water level is down four inches. With the temperature in the seventies I decided to take the pump out for the winter and to clean both filters. That took about a half an hour. With so much beauty left in the day I kept rolling and began raking muck out of the water while the level is low. That took me an extra hour and a half. I used two kinds of rakes this time, first a leaf rake to skim out the decaying leaf matter, and then the garden rake to yank out the surviving water lily foliage. I had never used that rake before and expected it to do some serious damage, it did. The result is a bucket full of water lily roots which I now have to deal with over the winter. Oh well, I thought about thinning the lilies out a bit since they covered ninety-five percent of the pond surface. To keep a pond healthy there only has to be seventy percent coverage. At that coverage the alga bloom is in control. Less than that and the algae takes over. Frankly, I would rather look at out of control lilies than at algae.

After cleaning the muck and depositing it into the blue barrel for recycling I was done petered out, and hungry. I had a keto friendly snack of cheese and ham roll ups and a tall glass of berry flavored ice-water. Now this body has rebelled and is stuck in surf the internet mode on the internet.

The Vice presidential candidates debate this evening and I intend to watch the fight to the bitter end. I only hope my candidate destroys the opponent. Hopefully, it won’t be a talk-over type of debate. I’d really like to hear both side’s points of view. I hate when the candidate speaking gets talked over by his opponent or worse by the moderator.

I finished reading The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and I was not disappointed. The author managed to get the expedition out of the pre-historic valley in a believable, but exciting way. The grand finale was the report to all the cynics who were anxious to dispute any and all claims the expedition made about their findings. Not having photographic evidence did’t help the expedition, in lieu of pictures they chose to bring back living proof. They unboxed one of the creatures they found living in the valley, a pterodactyl. The proof seemed to shut up the disbelievers and excite the supporters. I recommend this story to anyone who likes adventure. * * * * * and surprise endings.

Filed under: Book Review, family, Garden, Garden,pond,, politics, Science | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

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