New Years Absurdities.

It's time once again for my Annual list of more...

        "New Years Absurdities."  

A courtesy of your friend and mine, your Scribe Without Portfolio, me.  Here it comes.  Saddle up and let's ride...

     -  Our own BoyGuv Newsom just rolled out his January 1st list of new, and ever more stringent laws.  Like we need more laws.  Presumably successful people run for our Senate and Assembly to go to Sacramento and what?  Make some new laws.  We don't need no more stinkin' laws!  Can't they get a job doing something constructive?  Like be a Greeter at Wal-Mart, maybe?

As I've reported before, Taxifornia has 366,443 laws, codes, rules, regulations, restrictions, and wet dreams.  That's almost exactly double New York's count.  They only have 177,258 laws on their books.  Illinois comes in third at 111,342 of them.  There's a couple of "Red" states with fewer than 25,000 laws by way of which to try and hem up their citizens.  Don't you sometimes feel like the walls are closing in?  Don't you sometimes wonder if living in this zoo is worth the price you continually have to pay?

A price which keeps going up, and up, and up...

     -  A yuuuge bunch of people will make a resolution to lose weight in the New Year.  Excess fat is weight, doncha' know.  We don't want to lose muscle or sinew, we want to lose weight!  Just spare calories for when you go for a stroll in the forest and get lost.  Got no food, but you got fat!  Us chubbies are carrying around a lunch bucket good for at least a couple of weeks.  

But I've always wondered where that weight goes once we lose it?  Does it magically go to some deserving soul in China or India or Bangladesh whose ribs are sticking out?  It can't just disappear, as fat is energy.  You have to burn energy in order for it to disappear.  Like on a treadmill.  I'm thinking this might be a subject for some brainiac to pursue.  I see a Peace Prize in their future.*

     -  Don't you find it funny that our newly-retired Richie Rich's are just dying to buy Muscle Cars from way back when?  The SS Chevys and the GTO's and the Corvettes?  The Hemis and the Dodge Magnums and the Cobras.  The cars I bought new when I was a tad younger.  And then I beat them to sh*t and swapped them for a new one.  Because they were cheap.  Built cheap, looked cheap, acted cheap.  Example:  My fully-loaded Honduras Maroon 1962 Chevrolet Super Sport 409, 4-speed, Posi-trac, bucket seats and all, went out the door at $3,812.10.  I wrote a check for it and drove it away.  The same car would now cross the auction block at more than $100,000.  

That's okay.  My 409 was a hoot ("Giddyup, giddyup 409!")!  But I see Big Money being shed for cars we wouldn't have owned.  Plymouth Road Runners, AMC Pacers, Ford Mustang II's.  Dummmass cars.  And many of these cars are completely restored.  At $50.00 an hour and up in some rehab shop somewhere over a year-long period.  Figure at least $60,000 and maybe $100,000 to some restoration shop to fix up a car that might bring half that at auction.  Yet, New Money is chasing these and other worthless cars because they wanted one when they were a teenager, but couldn't afford.  And I'm pretty sure it has to stop.  Real soon.

     -  The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution clearly states, "...the Right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  I'm guessing Democrats don't know the definition of the word, "infringed," because they've been infringing on it for decades.  BoyGuv has proudly issued 125 Executive Orders, so far, infringing on our Rights to keep and bear arms.  He gets away with it because Taxifornia is a fiefdom, owned and operated by Democrats.  And "Hairgod" is Sheriff John.  If he had his way he'd send the National Guard to our homes and confiscate our firearms.  That effort might be fun to watch.  If it's gonna' happen, I sure hope happens while I'm still around.  I'd like to participate...

     -  It seems that the Democrats finally realized there might be some profit in the businesses over which they hold sway.  They figured out that chain restaurants might actually make some money.  Money which they could attack, in their never-ending quest to find fuel to keep the engine of socialism huffing and puffing.  I mean, what's better, owning a franchise, or being able to tell it what to do and steal all its profit?

BTW, that's the very definition of socialism.

Our BoyGuv instituted $20.00 an hour wages for those of us who ask, "Would you like fries with that?"  The 500,000 min-wage folks who make the Mickey D's and BK's, and Wendy's, keep humming along.  

As an example, the average McDonald's produces about $250,000 a year in pre-tax profit.  After a franchisee's investment of up to $1,200,000.  The new MinWage bump, a 25% overnight increase for the 55 employees in the average Mickey D's, takes just about $250,000 from the pockets of the owners.  As in, all of their profits.  

Others of the chain franchises are similar in their operations.  Rendering their stores virtually worthless.  As businesses are only worth what they can produce in profits.  And rendering their franchisors, those on the Big Board, virtually worthless as well.  And since 97% of all Mickey's stores are owned by Moms and Pops, "Hairgod" may well have bankrupted an entire swath of California's semi-retired citizens.  Store closings are now rampant, but BoyGuv doesn't care.  He's too busy running for POTUS in 2028.  

And trying to extract his head from his a*s after having been found out.  He removed more than $100,000,000 from California's fire fighting budget.  Money that might have helped prevent the six fires now burning brightly throughout Southern California.

     -  And speaking of tipping (we were, weren't we?), I hereby suggest we stop all tipping, right now.  All of it. Tipping has gotten soooo out of control I think we need to stop it all until we get some sanity back into the whole deal.  

Tipping first started back in Olde England when those in the pubs granted the serving wench a tuppence "To insure promptness."  Now?  Everybody in the supply chain between your order and its delivery apparently deserves a tip.  Starting at 20%.  I call foul!  This has become a not-so-subtle shifting of the responsibility to pay our servers from their employers to their customers.  And it is not appreciated.  

I have personally ceased all activity that might demand a tip.  I've discovered how much you can save by resurrecting that long-lost pasttime of home cooking. 

If employers can't or won't adequately compensate their employees, I can't help them.  Just shut down your businesses and give BoyGuv the finger on the way out the door.  A nice lady in Seattle was shown crying after having to shut down her coffee shop last week due to their new 20% MinWage.  Apparently doing business in Taxifornia, and maybe all the Big Blue States, is no longer profitable.  Too bad, so sad.  Perhaps they will all gravitate to Bright Red States.  Then I'd say, will the last person out the door please turn off the lights?

     -  And lastly, the single most absurd thing I believe I've ever seen in my storied life is being warned of an impending disaster, as L. A. Mayor Karen Bass was, in plenty of time to prepare for it.  And being seen as Mayorly.  But then she chose to fly to Ghana, of all places, to preen in front of poor Black folks.  To prance in front of those who have no idea who she is.  Then quickly flying back to L. A. to explain to her constituents that the $17.1 Million Dollars she took from their fire fund, didn't really negatively affect Departmental staffing or response capabilities.  After being told by her Fire Chief that it would.  And Bass then ignoring it.  

And now she reaps the whirlwind.  

So if $Multi-Zillionaires with $Multi-Million Dollar homes can't get their bought-and-paid-for elected officials to see that the fire hydrants in their neighborhoods are ready to provide water, which they weren't; and making sure that the Palisades Reservoir actually had some water in it, which it didn't; how are we "Little People" to presume we'd get help in an emergency?

God, that was a long sentence.  But a nice one, I think you'll agree.    

These things are truly absurd, right?  If you know that, and I know that, why isn't anyone ever doing anything about it?

*    Brought to you by the guy who invented Dynamite.  You knew that, didn't you?