Starving the Beast...

 "I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them..." -- Thomas Jefferson

It has begun.

The Master Plan for the complete and total takeover of the galaxy has commenced.

Phase One starts today.

I have often told you, Minions, that the best way to beat the government -- any government -- is to defund it.

I have often been told this is an impossibility, mostly by people who have no imagination, no sense of responsibility, the sort that on the one hand meekly submits to his torture, and on the other, is oblivious to the fact that submitting is tantamount to begging for more.

"There's nothing we can do!", they cry.

"The odds are stacked against us!", they shriek.

"The fix is always in!", they stupidly protest.

Yet, there is a way. You have a method of keeping the beast at bay. Several, in fact. But the most effective is to deprive it of it's sustenance.

I'm talking about avoiding taxes, identifiable as such, or otherwise. The ones you can legally avoid. The ones that have been established to fund stupidity and inconsistency, that fuels inefficiency and waste, that is the lifeblood of idiot, hare-brained schemes of dreamers detached from reality, and scoundrels who exist solely to live off the fat of the land.

Phase One involves the Overlord, voluntarily deciding to opt out of some of the more pernicious and misunderstood (by the greater public) transfers of wealth to government, and the plethora of parasites who feed on the scraps.

I have undertaken three small, yet important, steps towards starving the Managerialist Beast of it's ill-gotten gains.

The first step is that I have quit smoking.

This may not seem very impressive to many, but let me explain how I'm shafting The Man by not lighting up any more Marlboros.

A pack of cigarettes costs $16.00 here in The Big Apple.

Yes, you've read that right. SIXTEEN.

Of this outrageous mugging, roughly $12.00 consists of taxes upon tobacco.

The Overlord smoked roughly 10 packs a week. That's $160.00 every seven days, a total of roughly $120.00 PER WEEK paid in taxes.

And what, pray, did all this tax money go to pay for?

Ostensibly, it was to fund The Public Healthcare System. You know, the one that miserably and spectacularly FAILED because some Chinese dude fucked a bat and then came here and coughed on someone.

You know, the one that having been funded for two decades with billions in anti-terrorism funding that was, in part, supposed to help us survive a theoretical pandemic and did no such thing.

I'm sure you remember, the Public Healthcare System that didn't have anything it needed just when it needed it, or, alternately HAD what it needed, but then someone in government auctioned it off just before we needed it. So that Doctor Eichmann Governor Cuomo went on television begging, pleading, crying that we needed basically everything to fight this pandemic, only to discover we actually had all of that shit, it was just stashed in a warehouse in New Jersey, and someone forgot.

And after two weeks to flatten the curve nigh on two years of this nonsense, the very same Public Healthcare System alternately tells us a) it has COVID under control and b) COVID infection rates are skyrocketing, or c) we've vaccinated 6 million people, but its still not enough, and we're running out of Greek letters.

Very soon, our "variants" will start coming in Sanskrit.

These hospitals didn't fail because of a lack of funding; they failed because the ridiculously-named "Health and Hospitals Corporation" is an appendage of government, their usual clientele are mainly clients of government -- the poor, the elderly, the illegal immigrant (1 in 6 New Yorkers is receiving some form of "public assistance", which seems to be a multi-generational thing), and because their unionized employees, are likewise, clients of government.

Getting so much as a band-aid changed in a City-run hospital is sort of like getting a lightbulb changed in an office building when unions are involved. If you need a lightbulb changed in New York, it requires six union electricians be there -- one to take the bulb out, one to put the new bulb in, one to hold the ladder, one to make sure the paperwork is filled in and OSHA guidelines are followed, one to supervise, one who is drunk and just standing around collecting overtime, because seniority.

The difference, though, is that the lightbulb eventually gets changed...usually just in time for the next one to fail.

The similarity, though, is that both the lightbulb and the band-aid eventually cost several tens times more than they're worth, because...well...it's not like the people who do these things are paying for it.

These were the hospitals (16 of them closed in January of 2020) that were so poorly-staffed, so poorly-run, so bereft of what they needed, that Doctor Mengele Governor Cuomo took the extraordinary step of sending the State Police into the functioning for-profit hospitals to take their supplies and equipment to give to the failing government-run murder mills.

But, rest assured -- while the city hospitals were failing left, right and center, they were still meeting their Diversity goals, working on that Transgendered Outreach, and distributing clean needles to drug addicts (not treating them, of course). The paperwork -- domain of a small army of (unionized) administrators (who often outnumber doctors in these hospitals) -- was all completed, eventually, after the fifth or sixth try.

And then promptly lost.

You can sleep better at night knowing that thousands of impromptu hospital beds and contract nurses getting five times the going rate, were all ready (a month after the initial outbreak), in ersatz medical facilities set up in parking lots, stadiums, public parks, convention centers...and never a patient did the threshold cross.

The US Navy sent their most-up-to-date hospital ship...and they treated no COVID cases.

A fantastical waste of taxpayer money that helped no one, and for which, I'm betting no one is ever held accountable for.

Fortunately, the Overlords will NEVER have to suffer a government-run "hospital". We aren't wards of the state or tethered to the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party and so a slave to their ineptness, incompetence, and ignorance.

The hospitals did not fail for a lack of funding -- they failed because the people who run them, and who get paid exceedingly well -- aren't very good at their jobs.

So, you don't get $12.00 at a time from me, anymore, because I don't get any benefit from, it, and my fellow citizens who could have gotten a benefit from it, didn't. Where I come from, if you've proven yourself incapable you get to walk the unemployment line; you certainly don't get more money for fucking up.

And then these idiots threw themselves a parade for being so "brave".

Second step:

I have ordered a SodaStream machine.

My second-worst addiction after cigarettes is soda. The Overlord, on average, drinks roughly three 24-ounce bottles of Pepsi a day. Sometimes more: I have been known to polish off a 64-ounce bottle within hours.

It is disgusting.

Buying said soft drinks involves a fee, as well. There is a 5-cent deposit on every bottle or aluminum can. The deposit is supposed to encourage people to recycle -- instead of tossing the bottle away, you return it to place of purchase and get your nickel back, and the store owner ensures the bottle gets recycled. That is the theory.

In practice, I have NEVER seen anyone enter a store demanding his nickel back.

What happens is the bottle is either scavenged by the homeless or by organized-bands of (illegal) immigrants, who pick through your trash looking for recyclables to turn in at a redemption center for that nickel, leaving all the trash they dug through in order to find them laying in the street.

That nickel was a scheme devised by environMENTALists who are more-annoying than an invasion of bedbugs, and more-difficult to kill.

And the Food Nazis as well, who viscerally and psychotically hate the idea that someone, anywhere, may be enjoying the deadly poison of "a sugary drink". The very idea keeps them up at night, so that the law on the recycling of plastic and aluminum is a very tricky thing. For example, a Pepsi (can or bottle) has a nickel deposit on it; bottled water does not. Your Orange Crush comes with a 5-cent fee stuck to it; your "All-Natural Fruit Juice" doesn't.

The "Mexican" Coke (that is Coca-Cola made with real cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, and it still comes in the famous wasp-waisted bottle) is not subject to the deposit, but the "Passover Coke" (made Kosher specifically for Passover, when it's available in non-Kosher stores, also real cane sugar) is, so that your choice in beverage essentially results in someone having deliberately tried to influence your choices....and it's racist and anti-Semitic, to boot!

Now, the money collected on all these deposits is never returned in full to the public that paid them. Even the homeless and weekly Chinese Bottle Raids on garbage night don't consume every last nickel, which means all those unredeemed nickels end up in government coffers, where it either goes to pay the (unnecessary) salaries of the bureaucrats who enforce the Bottle Law, or into some sort of Government Slush Fund.

It certainly does not go to "save the environment" because there are areas of this City where the streets are liberally coated in broken glass, empty beer cans, bottle tops, and the other flotsam and jetsam that come with soft drinks. Assuming you can see any of it underneath the four-to-six inches of human feces on those streets.

Because the Sanitation Department (more unionized government) doesn't actually do much of anything, either. 

I will no longer fund a government ripoff. I will not support a law that is selectively enforced. I will not support a racist policy. I will not support a policy that clearly does not work to judge from all the fucking trash in the street.

Ergo, a SodaStream. I don't care if it ultimately costs more to get my sugar rush, at least the government will not get anymore nickels from me!

Step Three:

The Plastic Bag and Straw Bans. Off all the stupidest laws that truly-deranged-and-mentally-ill people could invent, this one rankles. Perhaps more than it should, but there is a principle at stake.

Yet another in a long line of ineffective and burdensome diktats to come from the Juicebox Marxists of the City Government, stores are no longer permitted to provide plastic bags for customers to take their goods home in. This is yet another itch the environMENATLists manage to have government scratch. 

Of course, you can still get all the plastic utensils you want when buying food, which makes the whole thing a goddamned farce. Not to bang on a constant theme, but every Chinese restaurant in these parts essentially puts your food into the equivalent of Tupperware, and aluminum food tins are ubiquitous.

No one uses paper cartons, anymore, because the Millennial Generation doesn't know how to get them opened and closed, or what that bendy piece of metal is for. Is it a cradle for my smartphone? Is it a Wi-Fi antenna? Can I fuck it?

The point is supposed to be that plastic bags are "bad"; they get stuck in storm drains, they don't biodegrade, stupid animals get themselves trapped in them and suffocate.

Like Nature intended.

It's called "Evolution", dickheads, and while you all profess to believe in it, you keep trying to interfere with it. We have enough feral cats, seagulls and wild turkeys running around, and none of them serve any useful purpose. I, for one, would perfectly happy to see every blasted and unnecessary deer on this island die from mistakenly-ingested plastic.

We didn't have them for 200 years, now there's too many of them. They've become so used to human contact (because you shitheads keep feeding them), that many of them will simply walk right up to you and start headbutting you looking for food.

Panhandlers don't even do that.

Anyway, you can't get plastic bags. Instead, you can get paper bags which are constructed out of the same grade stuff as toilet paper, and which tear easily with even the slightest weight in them, at 5- or 10-cents, apiece (the stores decided what they will charge), or, you can buy "re-usable bags" (wait...weren't the original plastic ones re-useable, too?) of some kind of vinyl (wait? Isn't vinyl...plastic?) or really cheap Third World cloth ones at about $1.99 each.

And since most people have been conditioned to expect a bag whenever they enter a store, they invariably forget to take those re-useable vinyl bags with them, they wind up buying them every time they go to the supermarket.

I know I do.

And the "re-useable" part is something of a misnomer. The vinyl bags have to be cleaned out fairly often, particularly if you're using them to carry home groceries like meat, fish or uncovered vegetables, otherwise, they start to get a bacteria and germ buildup and pollute everything you put in them. Doing this requires using some form of disinfectant...

...which eats away at the vinyl. So that after maybe two or three uses, the bag disintegrates into...a pile of plastic.

The cloth bags are even worse, particularly the hemp ones. These, too, need to be frequently washed, and the washing machines generally destroy them, too, if the cheap stitching doesn't cause them to fall apart all on their own.

And the hemp ones, in particular, leave everything you put into them with a greasy, smelly film, no matter how many washings you put them through.

Straws are now something on the order of either steel-reinforced cardboard tubes or, alternately, something worm-like in appearance, but with no rigid structure, so that everything you try to suck through it is sort of like drinking through a very skinny condom.

But you can buy all the plastic bendy straws you want. They're still on the shelves because disabled people need them. So, we have another instance of a law that is selectively enforced, adds expense (of which government gets a cut, because all those cheap paper and vinyl bags generate revenue), fails to address the problem that it was intended to, and which simply makes certain aspects of life an exercise in futility.

Looking over the amazing number of store-bought vinyl bags I seem to have collected for never remembering to take them with me and having to buy more of them, I came upon a solution.

I bought he largest, thickest Rubbermaid tubs -- you know the ones with lids that people use to store clothing or as a toolbox? -- I could find. When I have completed my grocery shopping, I transfer the canned goods, the meat, the ten pound bag of potatoes and whatnot, to the tubs in the trunk of my car. When I get them home, I transfer the tubs to a skid I keep near my parking space in the garage and simply roll them through the front door and right to the kitchen/pantry.

I can clean them forever.  I can use them forever. No more bags. No more cost. No more money that eventually finds it's way to government.

So, let's do some math:

Cigarette taxes not paid: $6,240 per year.

No more nickel deposits (assuming three bottles a day): $163.80 per year.

No more Bag Fees (assuming four bags per trip, twice monthly): $191.04 per year.

I will have deprived the City and State of New York of $6,594.84 in the next year, alone.

Which leaves me more money for booze.

I'm certain that the more I think of even better ways to do this, the more I can keep out of their grubby, greedy, ineffectual, shambolic hands.

Of course, I'm a single individual, and 6k a year is but a drop in the bucket to the elected bandits of the City and State of New Yorkistan. Bill DeBlasio's wife wasted more than that on gilded, monogrammed, divested-of-Israel toilet paper just this week.

But imagine if thousands of us did it? Millions? 

Some will say, "But, Lord, the politicians will just raise other taxes to make up the shortfall" and so believe that my Master Plan has a great, big gaping hole in it. Perhaps this is true, but imagine the colossal purple hemorrhoid the assholes in Albany or City Hall would have to contend with? 

I will no longer fund this stupendously retarded state of affairs.