Vin Suprynowicz

A group of homeless people and housing activists broke into and occupied a privately owned duplex in the Mission District of San Francisco on Easter Sunday “in what served as the climax of a protest designed to promote use of San Francisco’s vacant buildings as shelters for the needy,” reports James Temple of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The owner of the property — who was targeted over his eviction of a tenant who had remained on the property illegally after being given more than a year’s notice and relocation fees — said the demonstration was nothing more than breaking and entering.

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At the local mutiplex, the tightly edited “coming attractions” are often better than the real movies they advertise.

Unfortunately, when today’s real-world “coming attractions” feature a fast-devaluating dollar, means-testing of “entitlements” (come back and let us know when you’ve sold your house and you’re living under the bridge), making it a crime to “hoard” wealth or move it offshore, and a probable de facto default on federal government debt, leading to an 18 percent national sales tax to try and pay for all that great vote-buying “free stuff” … retirement planning may start to feature more slam-bang action than we’d really like.

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Last week, we detailed the Prussian brand of “state socialism” which is the true goal of Obamacare.

But the Republicans, swept back into power next January — only with not quite enough votes to override an Obama veto — are going to repeal all this! Right?

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The short version of the controversy over the state of Nevada seeking federal “Race to the Top” schooling dollars goes like this:

The weak economy has left Nevada schools short of cash. “Race to the Top” participation would provide more federal dollars, but the program requires states to use student test scores to track how well students have advanced under INDIVIDUAL teachers, whereupon those INDIVIDUAL teachers are to be rewarded or dismissed based on those results.

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(No, unfortunately, this one is not an “April Fools” joke.)

Some 35 years ago, Americans first became generally aware that there could be a “gasoline crisis” — that our dependence on imported oil could combine with taxation, price controls, and other “well-meaning” government interventions to create fuel shortages, lines, all kinds of chaos.

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During the week following the Democratic enactment of “Part One” of Barack Obama’s federal takeover of American medicine (“Part Two” will come after “Part One” has bankrupted or nationalized most private health insurance providers — the Democrats will blame the failures on “greed”), “numerous companies have announced that they expect their taxes to increase, earnings to suffer, and health insurance offerings to change as a result of the Democrats’ health care bill becoming law,” reports Georgia GOP Congressman (and medical doctor) Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee.

“Isn’t that outrageous?!” Rep. Price asked in a Monday e-mail release. “What gives these companies the right to disagree with the Democrats’ assurances that ObamaCare won’t hurt employers or push Americans off their current insurance?”

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The modern Prussian police state was built by Bismarck and others in the 19th century on a Spartan model, giving the central government vastly greater control over the individual than had ever been considered possible before.

From government control of the schools to health care, the whole idea was to create an obedient populace that would man the factories and produce large and obedient broods for the armies without every questioning the orders of the central authority.

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I grew up in a different country.

In the suburbs in the 1950s, kids I grew up with can remember their moms putting greenback dollars in plain white envelopes, writing on those envelopes “Insurance man” or “Milkman,” and sticking the envelopes to the refrigerator door with little magnets.

Later in the day, when no one was home, those men would enter the house through the unlocked kitchen door and take the moneys owed them. No one ever worried that they, or anyone in the neighborhood, would steal anything from the unlocked house.

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The phone rings at 7 in the morning. The phone rings at midnight. If we don’t answer the phone, letting the machine screen the calls, the patients leave interminable messages, explaining that the insurance company already paid, that the second test on their sexual plumbing wasn’t really necessary. It’s amazing the detail about their very personal medical histories these people will pour out to the message machine of a total stranger.

If we’re at home and it’s within normal business hours, we answer.

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For decades, according to deathbed testimony, the IRS made engineer Andrew Stack’s life a living hell, repeatedly seizing so much of his accrued assets as to leave him with virtually nothing for his retirement.

On Feb. 18, Stack, 53, set fire to his own house and then flew his single-engine plane into an office building that houses Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin, Texas.

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