Pennsylvania Tax Amnesty TV Ad, “We Know Who You Are,” Invokes “Enemy of the State” (of PA): How about just cutting spending?

I’m a fan of tax amnesty programs and their promotion.  But this ad (which I think was produced by Mad Men’s Don Draper at Sterling, Cooper), is funny in the same way the Enviro-Nazis Audi Superbowl ad was funny.  It’s parody merging with stark realism.  I just watched Enemy of the State for the first time the other night.  Now I feel like the Will Smith character.

This is a must watch 30-second video, and is starting to go viral.

Sadly, it’s another sign that government does not get the basic point:  They work for us, not the other way around.  H/T to Radley Balko, the Editor of Reason magazine, from his blog, The Agitator.  Comments from his readers are worth checking out.  For many Americans, Orwellian threats are counterproductive.  Maybe PA can sell this ad to Canada and they can repackage it for their submissive inhabitants.  Come to think of it, Don Draper wouldn’t have been this clueless.

Update: Philadelphia Inquirer reports this is a $3 Million dollar advertising campaign and is the brainchild of Governor Ed Rendell, former head of the DNC, and big pal of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.  Why am I not surprised?  Article is nauseating, and mentions a “business-privilege” tax they have in PA.  So running a business is a “privilege” granted by the monarchy?   Progressive HuffPo is even critical of ad, and 68% of their readers agree it’s too “big brother.”  9:37 a.m. 5-6. Rendell is on Fox criticising conservative bloggers and tea partiers .  Says this ad was one of five possibles and this is the “least aggressive.”  A focus group allegedly loved it.

Dog Chews Off Cop Car Bumper in Puppycide Protest: Chattanooga Cops Cool in Funniest YouTube Video Ever

A pit bull-mix dog named Winston, apparently in protest over puppycides in Tennessee and elsewhere, chews the bumper of a Chattanooga Police car completely off. Since DAs never prosecute these puppycides, the dog took matters into his own paws–er, teeth in the funniest video ever.

The cops were cool, the judge humorless.  She’s one of the reasons we need term limits for judges.  After 10 years, they usually burn out from boredom.  As the dog’s owner commented on CNN, police have been “shooting dogs for a lot less.”  Here’s some raw police footage with more bumper chewing action.

We’ve written here before about the never-prosecuted crime of Puppycide.  The situation typically arises in no-knock raids where quasi-military squads rush into houses, usually over minor drug offenses or to serve misdemeanor warrants.  The routine practice is to shoot every dog in the house for “officer safety.”  As Radley Balko points out in links to the above article, officer safety would never be in jeopardy if they were simply to knock on the door and announce themselves when dealing with non-violent offenders or suspected offenders.  No-knock raids were intended for hostage situations, and barricades by violent suspects, and that’s what they should be reserved for in a constitutional republic.

Commerce City, Colo. police recently committed a completely unjustified puppycide incident, where police officials acted recklessly, and later arrogantly.

But hey, at least a clean head shot beats what Joe Arpaio’s lawless minions are up to in Maricopa County, Arizona.  There, in a raid that netted a guy with two misdemeanor traffic warrants, Arpaio’s SWAT goons burned down a house and crashed an armored personnel carrier (that would be a tank) into a parked vehicle on a residential street when the brakes apparently failed.

But that’s the least of it.  One SWAT sociopath saw a panicked puppy named Dre run from his burning home.  He thought it was funny and chased the puppy back into the burning building with blasts from a fire extinguisher.  The innocent puppy’s howls could be heard all over the block as Dre burned to death.  When the victim was crying and screaming as she unburied her dog from the ashes, this criminal with a badge told her to “shut the F### up”!  More on all of this is here and here.

Fortunately, this story will probably have a happy ending.  Arpaio and his enabling partner in crime, DA Andy Thomas, really overplayed their lawless and arrogant hand.  Instigating criminal prosecutions of:  two neighboring, conservative elected DAs; a respected Superior Court Judge; a newspaper editor; and the Maricopa County Manager and Budget director probably pushed the envelope.  Their crimes?  Publicly criticizing Arpaio.  Maricopa’s Mussolini is now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation and a likely lawsuit by Judge Gary Donahoe and others.

He probably won’t suffer the fate of his Italian role model, but he should wind up behind bars, out of office, and worst of all for the senile publicity-hound, off of Fox News.  Stay tuned here for much more details.

New York Legislator Felix Ortiz Urges Restaurant Salt Ban and Much, Much More: Wins Nanny State Lifetime Achievement Award

New York legislator, Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn), gained national ridicule after his absurd proposal to ban all salt in New York restaurants.   I may mince garlic but I don’t mince words, and in my opinion the proud Puerto Rican-American legislator would appear to be a product of a culture that produces some of the grossest food imaginable.

Face it, there’s a good reason Mexican cuisine is  one of the most popular in the United States and why Mexico City, in a recent Forbes survey, was ranked third, only behind Paris and Rome, by international diners.  Who goes around saying, “hey, have you heard about that great new Puerto Rican restaurant in LODO”?  Besides, though I have blood pressure concerns of my own, based on personal experience, my blood pressure suffers more when I read of nanny-state meddlers like Felix Ortiz than when I add some freshly ground sea salt to my own spicy cooking

I became aware of Puerto Rican food while watching New York’s Puerto Rican Day parade last year, which featured Supreme Court Justice in waiting Sonia Sotomayor.  Basically, the alleged cuisine consists of lots of processed meats that undoubtedly not only contain a lot of salt, but nitrates and nitrites too.  To her credit, Sotomayor, who frequently brought to-go food home from her favorite ethnic haunts when a federal appeals court judge in the Big Apple, enjoys a wide variety of cuisine.

But then again, maybe I’m wrong about Felix Ortiz’ motives stemming from cuisine-impairment syndrome, as his plethora of nanny-state legislative proposals ranges far beyond matters culinary.  Anti-nanny state American hero, Radley Balko, reports in exhaustive detail about Ortiz’s aim to control every aspect of American life.  Here’s a summary, from a Forbes piece Radley wrote on this weirdo back in 2005:

In 2004 Ortiz introduced a law that would require every car sold in New York to come equipped with an ignition interlock device. Motorists would need to blow into a tube and pass an alcohol breath test before the car would start, then perform the test again every 20 to 40 minutes.

Just to be clear (to use Obama’s favorite line), this requirement would not be limited to DUI offenders, it would apply to everybody.  Felix Ortiz may not have clued in to the distracted driving dangers–one of those “unintended consequences” such a ludicrous piece of legislation would create.

In just the first four months of 2005 Ortiz has introduced laws that would ban all cell phone use while driving (including hands-free); ban pornography from newsstands; force consumers to show two forms of identification when using a credit card; test all public school children for diabetes; ban expiration dates on retail gift certificates; ban alcohol billboard advertisements within a mile of every school and day care center; require nutritional labeling on restaurant menus; measure the fat of every public school student; and impose a “fat tax,” not just on junk food but also on “videogames, commercials and movies.”

Here’s some video from Felix Ortiz’s website, where he shows anorexia, as well as obesity, to be one of his major obsessions.

Balko notes that when he wrote about them back in 2005, these proposals justifiably seemed nutty, but finds it “scary how many of them have now either been enacted or are being given serious consideration by local, state and federal lawmakers.”

More and more reason to vote out and against candidates of both parties who either utter the cry “IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN” or “PUBLIC SAFETY” when we hear these refrains in this election cycle.