Your Home? or a Government Holding Cell?

The headline caught my eye. Or, as Archie Bunker would say, it fought my eye:

Underground — And Illegal — NYC Dinner Parties

I was reeled in. What were these clandestine diners doing? Cannibalism? Eating the eyeballs out of babies? Feasting on grass-fed puppies?

According to CBS New York:

"It may look like a dinner party, but it’s really an underground supper club."

*GASP*  And there's more!!!

"Clandestine dinner parties like the one Leitner attended have become more common in New York City. And insiders told Leitner they are completely unregulated."

Unregulated dinner parties! The horror! There's probably free-lance butlering going on at these rogue events as well!

Are We still a Free People?

I don't care if they are gathering to swap spouses, build model airplanes, have farting contests, buy and consume raw milk, study the Bible or Koran, or eat unhealthy foods prepared with blowtorches. Free people gathering voluntarily on private property is no business of government so long as those people are not violating the rights of others or disturbing their tranquility.

Follow the Benjamins
 
Of course, this is really about money. Everyone has to pay tribute to the petty potentates who rule over their neighborhoods and their lives. It's for "public safety" don'tcha know.

Government bureaucracies unleash rapacious mobs of overpaid regulatory inspectors armed with clipboards and rulebooks to swarm businesses and harass them into government compliance. Stories of corruption, kick-backs and outright bribes in places like New York and Chicago are the stuff of legends.

Unsated after feasting upon business owners, the ravenous government crime syndicate now demands the right to invade people's homes.

Government Extortion

Even worse, this regulatory nightmare has turned into a grotesque "good cop, bad cop" scam that makes the mafia look like a benevolence society.

Here's how it works:

Governments at all levels churn out dense clots of regulatory toxic sludge so abstruse that no sane person can comprehend it. Imperious overlords then sick their flying bureaucratic monkeys on innocent citizens, frightening them into attempting to comply with bureaucratic nonsense only a madman could understand, all upon pain of losing all that they own. That's the "Bad Cop."

The "Good Cop" is the regulatory consultant company that businesses must hire to help them interpret and comply with the dense tangle of government decrees if they want to stay on the good side of the law and not have their livelihood stolen from them. Of course, these "consultants" are former government inspectors. See how this scam works?

Here's what one of the privateering extortionists had to say about free people hiring a chef and hosting a dinner party in a private home:

“It definitely falls into a gray area,” said Leon Lubarsky, owner of Letter Grade Consulting.

Lubarsky’s staff of retired New York City health inspectors advises restaurants on health regulations.

When asked if the underground restaurants should be regulated, Lubarsky told Leitner, “Yes, they should be regulated by the same system that regulates every restaurant in New York City.” (CBS New York)

This is government-sponsored piracy.

More government run amok: Residents fined for parking in own driveways