If there is a silver lining to the Wuhan virus crisis, it is that it may stop California’s insane and astonishingly tyrannical law against working freelance from spreading nationwide, as many Democrats want it to.

Laws like this could throw literally tens of millions of people out of work, including yours truly. If they try banning freelancers on behalf of union thugs while countless people are already becoming unemployed thanks to the Wuhan virus, liberal tyrants may finally get appropriate pushback.

Anti-choice Democrats don’t mind denying children a quality education on behalf of unions; why should they mind denying tens of millions of people their right to earn an honest living? California has declared it illegal to work as a freelancer. Congressional Democrats want to take this malicious tyranny nationwide:

Congress is set to hear House Bill 2474, or Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2019, this week. Of the 232 Democrats currently serving in the House, 215 signed on as original co-sponsors.

The bill redefines the word “employee” to apply to independent contractors. This would throw most freelancers out of work, as the people who pay them cannot afford the vast array of pricey benefits liberals in Washington have decreed are their “right.”

The similar AB5 has been a catastrophe in California. It deliberately threw a monkey wrench into the gears of the gig economy, imposing unemployment on otherwise productive workers. See here, here, here, here, here, and here for details. Workers in any number of industries — including publishing, catering, entertainment, media, construction, and trucking — are no longer allowed to ply their trade in California.

Another benefit of HR2474, from the left-wing union point of view, is that it would prevent employers from staying in business during union strikes.

The damage this would cause to the economy and to the lives of America’s 57 million freelancers is so severe that pandering to unions cannot completely explain Democrats’ motives.

Freelance workers are free. They personify American capitalism with their willingness to take risks and sometimes suffer hardships for the sake of independence. This is pure anathema to progressives, who loathe free enterprise.

Much better that workers should be forbidden to work and reliant on government handouts to survive. That will keep them voting for Democrats.

This explains why Democrat congresscritters would hiss like snakes when Trump mentioned during the State of the Union last night the 7 million people who have been able to work their way off food stamps thanks to the healthy economy.

If modern Democrats were merely wrong, they could be talked around to a more sensible point of view. But they are not so much wrong as malevolent.

Hat tips: Maggie’s Farm, Frontpage Mag.

A recent arrival from Kansas learns what it is like to run a business in the People’s Republic of California:

You can see why the pathologically despotic Michael Bloomberg sees hyper-regulated California as a model to emulate. You can also see why moving vans tend to be full when they leave California and empty when they return. But the Third World still keeps the state’s population growing, if slowly.

On a tip from Kate P.

Aspiring cosmetologist Courtney Haveman demonstrates how Big Government keeps people down through excessive regulations:

It’s almost as if bureaucrats would prefer to have people out of work, on welfare, and consequently dependent on the government than let them become productive members of society.

The self-indulgent softness that characterizes moonbattery has been reducing the British people to a race of flabby hamsters. No worries; more regulations from the totalitarian nanny state regime that is both a cause and an effect of the general pudginess will solve everything. Master of Trinity College Prof Dame Sally Davies, who was the UK’s Chief Medical Officer until the beginning of the month, has called for “bold action.” This of course means further draconian restrictions on basic liberties like the right to eat what you please without interference from domineering bureaucrats.

Her key proposals, via the Telegraph:

• Ban eating or drinking anything but plain water on all urban public transport

• Extend sugar tax on drinks to cover milkshake and flavoured coffees

• Consider new taxes on all unhealthy foods, if action is not taken to cut their sugar content

• Alternatively, put snacks in plain packaging, as has happened for cigarettes

• Overhaul VAT so all unhealthy fare is consistently covered, and healthy foods exempt

• Place a calorie cap on all meals sold in cafes and restaurants

• End any advertising or marketing of unhealthy products at sports or concerts

• Only sell low calorie food as such events

Barks Dame Sally:

“It is about changing the culture so snacking is no longer normalised. We need to make the bus, the train and the tube a safe place for children,” she said.

If the British government really wants to make public transport safe for children, maybe it should stop importing rampant knife crime from the Third World on such a massive scale.

Dame Sally continues:

“It is a mindless way to eat and seeing other people eating does prompt you to think about eating.”

Eating in front of other people must be forbidden. It might give them ideas.

Her review also says only low calorie food, and snacks low in salt, fat and sugar, should be offered at major sports events and concerts.

Incidentally, other experts are starting to admit that fatty foods are not necessarily bad for you after all. Who knows what else they have been wrong about?

Here’s the really scary part:

On Thursday Dame Sally said Government had a “moral responsibility” to act, instead of putting the food industry’s profits first.

Profit (i.e., running a functioning business by offering people what they want at a price they can afford) is immoral. Bureaucrats bossing us around moral.

The immortal words of C.S. Lewis come to mind once again:

On a tip from Steve T.

In the end, no one is safe from progressive hyperregulation, not even those who may expect to be championed at everyone else’s expense — like bike riders, who are normally smiled upon by authoritarian moonbats for shunning hated cars.

The Daily Snooze reports from the moonbat dystopia of New York:

Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday said he was considering requiring bike riders to be licensed, and even pitched the idea of forcing Citi Bike renters to wear helmets.

Also, de Blasio says he will crack down on bike riders who violate traffic laws.

Even as Big Government takes a hammer to your knee with one hand, it hands you a crutch paid for by someone else with the other:

De Blasio in July announced a $58.4 million plan to rapidly expand the city’s network of protected bike lanes — the city Department of Transportation will hire 80 new staffers to help implement the plan.

Maybe another 80 overpaid bureaucrats will help counter the effect of licensing and registration requirements. More like likely, they will have no effect other than to sink the city deeper into debt.

On tips from Sean C and Artfldgr.

The immigration floodgates remain wide open, with disastrous consequences now that the sheer numbers have made assimilation infeasible. Government spending continues to explode, even as the national debt skyrockets toward $23 trillion. But there is some countermoonbattery to be grateful for; excessive regulation — the cost of which is almost incalculable — has been reduced. John Stossel tips his hat to Trump deregulation:

On a tip from KirklesWorth.

If Big Government had been around in caveman days, the conquest of fire never would have been permitted. Fire results in people getting burned. Unequal access to flammable material results in inequality. Fire produces CO2 emissions, and even warms the air directly, possibly worsening the plight of the sacred man-eating polar bears. Maybe it is not too late to ban fire. A California writer wants to start with campfires, and provides a variety of arguments for forbidding them:

Pollution

Wood smoke contains fine particles of unburnt wood.

Unburnt wood is toxic.

Health Problems

Alleged effects of wood smoke include:

irritated eyes, throat, sinus, and lungs; headaches; reduced lung function; lung inflammation and swelling; increased risk of respiratory disease; more severe and frequent symptoms from existing lung diseases; increased risk of heart attack and stroke; chronic bronchitis and emphysema; cancer.

Surprisingly, halitosis, epilepsy, and rectal prolapse did not make the list.

Litter

Campfires leave behind charred wood, piles of ash, and blackened rocks.

No doubt this often requires that a hazmat team be dispatched. Too bad charred wood and ash are not biodegradable.

Tree Damage

Just because a tree is dead doesn’t mean you are not causing damage to living things:

Dead logs and other wood may be essential habitat for insects, birds, reptiles, and small mammals.

Never mind that refusal by moonbats to allow dead wood to be cleared is a major cause of wildfires getting out of control.

Invasive Species

Firewood that you harvest or buy can be home to invasive species…

Yet you have to bring firewood into the forest from elsewhere, lest you destroy critical habitat for termites.

Injury

There’s no national tally of campfire-related injuries, but a study in Oklahoma found that 57 people were injured and one person was killed due to campfires in a ten-year period.

Practically a holocaust.

Moonbats have already cracked down on beach bonfires on behalf of the climate and piping plovers.

Why not cut to the chase and ban fire altogether? Then we can move on to banning the wheel.

On a tip from Fabio J.

It has been a year and a half since the FCC horrified moonbats by repealing Obama-era net neutrality regulations. We were told that the sky would fall if not held up by the heavy hand of Big Government. Let’s see how it turned out.

[Federal Communications Commission Chairman] Ajit Pai maintains that repealing net neutrality has been “the right thing to do.” …

“Fast forward a year and a half, speeds are up 40 percent, 40 percent year-over-year after we made that decision,” he explained. “More fiber was deployed in 2018 in homes and businesses than any year since they’ve been keeping records. Network investment was up $3 billion year-over-year following declines in 2015 and 2016.”

The most important benefit of the decision is that “more and more people are able to access the internet for the first time,” he said. …

The chairman is referring to the latest FCC report, which claims that in 2018, “fiber was deployed to more new homes in the United States than any year in history, and small cell deployment more than quadrupled.”

Looks like the sky is still up there, sunnier than ever thanks to less intrusive government.

On a tip from 1-Bodhisattva.

Patriotism appears to be a crime in Statesville, North Carolina, where an RV dealership is getting fined because bureauweenies disapprove of the size of the US flag it flies:

Camping World posted a message to its Facebook page on Saturday saying the city has filed an injunction against Camping World, fining the company $50 per day going back to Oct. 15, 2018. That totals nearly $11,000.

The flag is 40′ × 80′. Bureaucrats forbid it on the grounds that flags within 100 feet of a highway can be no larger than 25′ × 40′.

Camping World flies its full-sized flags at over 200 locations throughout the country including elsewhere in North Carolina. Apparently only Statesville has a problem with it. An attempt to amend the ordinance failed.

“I don’t care if it goes to $500 a day. It’s not coming down,” Marcus Lemonis, CEO and chairman of Camping World and Gander RV, said.

That’s the spirit.

On tips from Blackjack and 1-Bodhisattva.

Not even Joseph Stalin would ban sales of puppies and kittens. But do-gooder moonbats would:

Britain is forbidding puppies and kittens from being sold by pet shops in a bid to crack down on animal exploitation and abuse.

The question is never if progressives ban something, but when.

The government said it will roll out the legislation next year after holding public consultations that showed 95-percent support for the ban.

For authoritarianism to go this far, the public has to support it.

[The Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs] is now looking at legislation requiring all non-commercial rescue and re-homing centres to have a licence.

When it comes to regulations, too much is never enough.

The next step is to require a license to pet sit while an owner is on vacation. This has already been imposed in New York City.

On tips from Stormfax and 1-Bodhisattva.