Apologies for the dearth of original posts lately. I’ve been given a rare temporary promotion (rare mostly because of union interference, see here and here) and as such I’m on day 29 of 47 consecutive 14-hour days of work.
As the above photo of my trash bin indicates, I should have bought a few extra shares of Starbucks before I began this stretch…
Minimum Wage and Sequester Politics: Cognitive Dissonance
Those who expect employers to adjust to a 24% increase in costs for their lowest-skilled/marginally-productive workers (precluding consensual exchanges) without any adverse consequences are the same people who agitate that calamity has befallen society because of a 3% “cut” on a budget increase (facilitated on non-consensual funding).
I seldom engage in facebook debates since few are so blind as those who refuse to see, but every once in a while I suppose I waste my time…
“being a little prick and an asshole”? By… talking? By demanding accountability? By exposing tyrannical policies that put innocents at risk?
Seems the filibuster did what it was intended to do: slow down the process, raise public awareness, and push said public to agitate against encroachments of liberty. As the old simile goes, legislation is poured into the senatorial saucer to cool it.
It is about as noble an act as can be undertaken in that ignoble cesspool that is the District of Criminals (which, I grant, is not saying much). Of the many actual pricks and assholes to choose from, including the one claiming the authority to assassinate you in your home with his flying robot of death without due process, you have a problem with Paul because of his filibuster?
And you’re asking for “transparency”? Is your bar for this president so low that you only ask that he be honest about how he violates rights? If Bush had said “We’re invading Iraq for oil,” would you have given him a pass for being “transparent”? And let’s consider what transparency is supposed to do: cultivate a more-informed populace. Well guess what the biggest outcome of Paul’s marathon filibuster is? A more-informed populace. There is no doubt that far more people today know about the outrageousness of Obama’s drone program than they did yesterday.
“But there are better, and more efficient ways to do it then (sic) talk, and talk, and talk.” Certainly. And while I wait for you to name them, including those in which you have participated in, I’d offer that the filibuster did nothing to counter attempts at transparency. I understand that the leftist hive-mind has programmed you to automatically loathe the filibuster prima facie, but you’re still free to think for yourself and employ logic to reach informed conclusions. In this case, what harm has the filibuster caused to persuade you to have reached the conclusion you have (other than the aforementioned hive-mind, that is)? There are, of course, countless reasons to loathe the state itself, but the filibuster is but a tiny speck of dust in the grease of the infernal gears of government, lending it but a small bit of hesitation in turning.
In fact, if all senators ever did was filibuster, the world would be a happier, healthier, safer, and better place. It is, by far, the most productive thing a senator can do short of resigning.
…
Doesn’t this also show why you don’t need a high cap mags? Just sayin’ if you can reload small mags fast enough why spend the money on the big ones?
The point of the demonstration was to show that limiting the capacity of magazines does not really accomplish the purported aim of slowing down people who wish to do harm (not to mention the fact that someone who is perfectly willing to kill people will no doubt have no problem using an “illegal” magazine in the first place).
If you had bothered to click the link above (after “related”), you’d see that in the real world, potential victims are unlikely to have a supply of spare magazines readily available like a potential attacker would. As such, non-restricted-capacity magazines are more suited as a defensive tool, particularly since would-be victims are caught by surprise, tend to be outnumbered, and have more considerations (protecting family, for instance) than simply reloading.
(Source: youtube.com)
Louisiana Forces Homeless Shelter To Destroy $8,000 Worth Of Deer Meat →
Louisiana’s State Health Department forced a homeless shelter to destroy $8,000 worth of deer meat because it was donated from a hunter organization. …
[T]he Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission lost 1,600 pounds of venison because the state’s Health Department doesn’t recognize Hunters for the Hungry, an organization that allows hunters to donate any extra game to charity.
“We didn’t find anything wrong with it,” [said] Rev. Henry Martin. “It was processed correctly, it was packaged correctly.” …
“They threw it in the dumpster and poured Clorox on it,” said Martin.
Government in a nutshell: largely unchecked power harming peaceful, consensual exchange - including charity - under the pretense of it all being “for our own good.”
And government interfering with the feeding of the hungry isn’t only a problem in Louisiana: it happens in New York City, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.
Related: How Government Hurts the Poor.
The University of Colorado has released a list of ways to stop rapists in light of gun control bill →
“These tips are designed to help you protect yourself on campus, in town, at your home, or while you travel. These are preventative tips and are designed to instruct you in crime prevention tactics.”
- Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself.
- Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead! It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.
- Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.
- Don’t take time to look back; just get away.
- If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense.
- Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.
- Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.
- Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!
- Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.
- Remember, every emergency situation is different. Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.
Thanks to this list I can pretty comfortably say that gun control laws are sexist. Why should I have to lie, force myself to vomit, or urinate on myself? Why do I need to understand that my actions should lead to more harm? Because I don’t have a gun to immediately stop them and because [if] I fight back they will treat me worse? Or is it considered “worse harm” that I might physically harm him and then I wouldn’t be the only victim? Perhaps the most disgusting item on this list is the advice that passive resistance may be the best option for me. I could be wrong, but are you telling me to just suck it up and take it? Why, when I am already at a physical disadvantage and taken by surprise by someone with a plan, should I not be able to react in the most effective and least demeaning way? I should be able to arm and protect myself. What I also find disturbing is that NO weapons are recommended on this list. What about pepper spray on your keychain? The end of your key held between two fingers? A knife? A loud alarm keychain? You can even legally buy a hand-held taser (I have a pink one.)
It’s completely disgusting and offensive that women are expected to just deal with the fact that their best means of defense is being stripped from them and they are now expected to piss on themselves instead.
So you can either be unarmed and piss yourself and hope that makes the rapist change his mind, or carry a gun and make your would-be rapist piss himself. I know what I would want my daughters to do.
This actually does raise the legitimate question as to how direct of a democracy the founding fathers really intended to create. Joe Miller, a Tea Party candidate for the Senate in Alaska a few years back, was a proponent of this plan as well. He didn’t win; it seems that asking people to elect you to the Senate so you can take away their right to elect other people to the Senate in the future isn’t a winning campaign strategy (although Miller seems to be mulling a comeback, so what do we know). Anyway, this Georgia proposal will almost certainly go absolutely nowhere. source
Things that should happen but never will. And the people still indirectly elect the senators when they vote in the state legislature.
Will go nowhere, of course, but the 17th Amendment has been on my repeal list since I started this blog. It seems benign at first glance but what it does is allow the federal government to circumvent state sovereignty. Combined with the 16th Amendment, it’s what “allows” the federal government to assume incredible unenumerated powers. For example, it is partly, though indirectly, what “gives” the federal government the ability to prohibit drugs when it once required a Constitutional amendment to do the same with alcohol (by making Senators unaccountable to state governments, which do not have printing presses and thus must balance budgets, Senators become de facto federal politicians less beholden to the interests of his or her state’s residents - coupled with the 16th Amendment, the federal government simply asks the states to “voluntarily” participate and acquiesce to certain laws and regulations in order for them to see some of the wealth taken out of its state, via the 16th Amendment’s income tax, returned).
In this video, the TSA insists on patting down a sobbing three-year-old on her way to Disney World. Agents first took away the girl’s toy, then tried to tell her parents it was illegal for them to film the encounter despite the fact that the TSA’s own website admits filming and photography at TSA checkpoints can’t be banned.
From the video description on YouTube:
The TSA wants to touch your kids…but you’re not allowed to document it. Like your “special secret”with the “Inappropriate Uncle” division of the federal government, that you’re not allowed to share with other grown-ups (they’d just accuse you of lying and trying to get attention anyway).
This is abuse, pure and simple.
Years ago, my then-20-month old was patted down and her diaper checked for explosives. Thankfully, the experience wasn’t near as traumatic as what this poor little girl had to endure to just go to Disney.
This is security theater. It doesn’t make us safer, it only aims to make us subservient.
The problem is the state, of course. But the root of that problem is among the public at large. Those who think this nonsense is necessary… those who are willing to sacrifice essential liberty for the facade of temporary safety… those who support, and campaign for, and vote for politicians who push for a bigger role for the state and who extend cushy government contracts to favored cronies… they are who are truly to blame.
If you voted for Obama or Romney, or if you quietly go along with all the government’s decrees, or if you cattle yourself through the porno-scanners without protest, or if you’ve ever uttered the phrase “they’re just doing their job” at an abuse of power, or if you believe in democracy or the state - then you are ultimately to blame for this little girl’s emotionally distressing ordeal.
And I don’t mean “you” as some general catch-all phrase to mean the general public. I mean you, specifically, as an individual. Just as you have the blood of innocents on your hands for what those you put in power ultimately do with it (drones, war on drugs, etc.), so is this abuse of innocents on your conscience.
As a supporter of the state and its so-called “leaders,” you are an accomplice to heinous acts.
One of my earlier posts on my blog (from late 2010): The Case Against the TSA.
Keynesian stimulus falls out of the sky in Russia.
It may not be as good as Krugman’s false alien invasion strategy, but it’s something. After all, a broken window is a broken window.
Minimum-wage laws date to the 1930s, and supporters in Congress at the time were explicit about using them to stop blacks from displacing whites in the labor force by working for less money. Milton Friedman regarded the minimum wage as “one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.” When you artificially increase the cost of labor, you wind up with surplus labor, which takes the form of unemployment. Younger and less-experienced workers—a disproportionate number of whom are black—are more likely to be priced out of the labor force when the cost of hiring someone goes up. Prior to the passage of minimum-wage laws—and in an era of open and rampant racial discrimination in the U.S.—the unemployment rate for black men was much lower than it is now and similar to that of whites in the same age group. Today, unemployment stands at 7.9% overall but is 13.8% among blacks (versus 7% among whites), 14.5% among black men (versus 7.2% among white men) and 37.8% among black teens (versus 20.8% among white teens). Yet Mr. Obama has proposed increasing the minimum wage by 24% to $9 an hour to placate his union supporters who want less competition for their members. A higher minimum wage might lift earnings for existing workers—provided they keep their jobs—but it also reduces job opportunities for millions of people out of work. Out of political expediency, Mr. Obama is putting the interests of Big Labor ahead of the urban poor.
—
Jason Riley: Minimum Expectations
As a member of a Hollywood union, I face a sort of minimum wage hurdle of my own. The next step up in my career is a substantial one - and one in which I am more than capable of making (a position I held - with, in fact, greater pay - on a number of non-union reality shows). But because of the union, I cannot take that position without being paid the union minimum for that position. In other words, the studio and producers would have to pay me the same rate they would pay a multiple-Emmy winner with 30 years of experience. I cannot offer to work for less as an opportunity to prove myself. I have no leverage - I cannot offer any incentive - for producers to hire a [relatively] young and eager talent over a reliable veteran. And indeed, I have missed out on multiple jobs precisely because of this artificial price floor.
Related:
I think that’s very clearly an abuse of power on the judge’s part. If I cannot summarily jail a random person on the street for flipping me off and otherwise acting rudely, then why should a judge? A judge - nor any other government worker/leech - is not a higher class citizen. He is not more important or special. In fact, I’d argue the opposite.
Fair trials and free speech are not rights reserved only for the polite.
Gun magazine capacity limits could endanger victims instead of saving them. →
Measured by what people actually buy and use, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds are hardly outliers. In fact, there are tens (if not hundreds) of millions already in circulation, which is one reason new limits cannot reasonably be expected to have much of an impact on people determined to commit mass murder.
Another reason is that changing magazines takes one to three seconds, which will rarely make a difference in assaults on unarmed people. The gunman in Connecticut, for example, reportedly fired about 150 rounds, so he must have switched his 30-round magazines at least four times; he stopped only because police were closing in, which prompted him to kill himself.
Magazine size is more likely to matter for people defending against aggressors, which is why it is dangerously presumptuous for the government to declare that no one needs to fire more than X number of rounds. As self-defense experts such as firearms instructor Massad Ayoob point out, there are various scenarios, including riots, home invasions, and public attacks by multiple aggressors, in which a so-called large-capacity magazine can make a crucial difference, especially when you recognize that people firing weapons under pressure do not always hit their targets and that assailants are not always stopped by a single round.
Living in Los Angeles during the 1992 riots, I was glad that shopkeepers in Koreatown had “large-capacity” magazines to defend themselves and their property against rampaging mobs. I bet they were too. In fact, argues gun historian Clayton Cramer, those magazines may have saved rioters’ lives as well, since they allowed business owners to fire warning shots instead of shooting to injure or kill.
If magazines holding more than 10 rounds are not useful for self-defense and defense of others, shouldn’t the same limit be imposed on police officers and bodyguards (including the Secret Service agents who protect the president)? And if the additional rounds do provide more protection against armed assailants, it hardly makes sense to cite the threat of such attacks as a reason to deny law-abiding citizens that extra measure of safety.
I’ve made this argument before: an assailant that has prepared to commit a crime can have all the extra magazines - and even extra firearms - he needs at his ready (and, since he’s willing to commit the greater crime of murder, will be unlikely to be in compliance with the law regarding lower-capacity magazines). He will also have only his own life to concern himself about.
Compare that with an innocent victim who is caught unaware. The victim would have to arm herself quickly and likely be unable to grab extra magazines. In the case of an attack away from home, if the victim is fortunate enough to be carrying a firearm, he or she will probably not have any extra magazines. Either way, that single magazine has to count. Also, in the case of a home invasion, the victim will likely be abruptly awoken and disoriented, have to determine where the break-in is coming from and if there are more than one attacker, the victim will likely be barefoot, also be concerned with protecting others in the house, tending to their injuries, finding a phone to call the police, etc. The victim, in this case, is much less capable of reloading a magazine as quickly as his attacker (who, again, would be using a high-capacity magazine anyway).
And this scenario is far more probable than the random and senseless mass murders that usually make the headlines.
In short: a so-called “high-capacity” magazine is more useful to a potential victim than an attacker.
This cartoon failed to note that the captions were written by a potential home intruder, who is increasingly safer the more difficult it is for his victims to protect themselves.
Calif. authoritarians seek to adopt nation’s toughest gun laws
When New York passed its outrageous gun control laws a few weeks ago, I told a friend that the leftist/statist morons in California would quickly compete to enact even stronger laws.
Among the measures [being pushed by democrats who control the state Legislature, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa] is one that would outlaw the future sale of semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines. The restriction would prevent quick reloading by requiring bullets to be loaded one at a time.
What?! Let’s call this the “Excuse me, group of home invaders, would you mind not shooting me and my family with your illegal firearms equipped with extended magazines and give me a moment to reload my firearm one round at a time, please?” provision.
Lawmakers also want to make some prohibitions apply to current gun owners, not just to people who buy weapons in the future.
Because criminals are just the type of “current gun owners” who would concern themselves about this lack of a “grandfather exemption.”
Like New York, California also would require background checks for buying ammunition and would add to the list of prohibited weapons.
Those buying ammunition would have to pay a fee and undergo an initial background check by the state Department of Justice, similar to what is required now before buyers can purchase a weapon. Subsequent background checks would be done instantly by an ammunition seller checking the Justice Department’s records.
Because criminals buy their guns and ammo from Wal-Mart and Bass Pro Shops.
The legislation also would ban possession of magazines holding more than 10 bullets, even by those who now own them legally. All weapons would have to be registered.
And criminals will no doubt rush to comply.
Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, promised that gun proponents will fight the measures in court if they become law.
“It strikes me as if these folks are playing some sort of game of one-upsmanship with New York at the expense of law-abiding citizens, and that’s just unconscionable,” he said about lawmakers. …
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said he is confident Democrats can use their majorities in the Assembly and Senate to send the measures to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown this year. …
In other words, statists will once again cram their dangerous ideology down our collective throats.
Steinberg said the measures are designed to close numerous loopholes that gun manufacturers have exploited to get around California’s existing restrictions. …
It’s not a “loophole.” It’s not “getting around existing restrictions.” It’s, definitionally, complying with the law.
Other proposed measures in California would ban so-called “bullet buttons” that can be used to quickly detach and reload magazines in semi-automatic rifles, and update the legal definition of shotguns to prohibit a new version that can rapidly fire shotgun shells and .45-caliber ammunition.
A “bullet button,” for those fortunate enough to live in a freer state, is a mechanism that replaces the magazine release on a center-fire rifle which makes the magazine unremovable without a tool. This is what we already have to deal with in California. Does anyone truly believe that a person who is committed to killing will bother with a bullet button in the first place, much less blocking magazines to only 10 rounds (another California law already in the books)? No, only law-abiding citizens would have to deal with these restrictions. But now, even that is too much for the non-thinkers in Sacramento.
All these new laws will do nothing to prevent crime.
Those of you who have followed me through the years know that I try to maintain a certain level of decorum. I understand that the message can be lost if it is not presented properly.
(Incidentally, in one notable angry rant from 2010 - the only other angry rant I can remember right now - I predicted that the “brain-dead, nanny-statist, liberty-hating, government-dependent morons” of California would need to soon raise taxes due to what I called the “economic carpet-bombing the left’s policies have continued to defecate on the people.” The tax increases were voted on this last November. It only took two years.)
So, happily and by design, it is rare for me to lose my composure (for a dispassionate response to the gun control nonsense, I kindly ask that you click here).
But this… this just makes me angry. These idiots - these assholes - are pushing for laws that will make my family less safe. Forget about my liberty for a moment, my inherent right as a human being to do anything that’s peaceful - the actions of these benighted politicians will place my children in greater danger for the sake of their disgusting power-play. And let’s be clear, here: the more ignorant and naïve ones may earnestly believe they are pursuing good policy and hoping to make our communities safer, but the slightly less dumb ones understand that this is about power.
In any case, I note again: like all gun control, these laws will not curb crime. To the contrary, criminals will be empowered in the face of a less-armed populace. You see, there’s a “free rider benefit” disbursed amongst a population when a significant enough portion is able to defend itself. To borrow Penn Jillette’s thought experiment: if half the women in the world were given guns, even the half without guns would be less likely to be attacked. The same logic applies in reverse: even if some of us find ways to stay legally armed, there will be fewer of us and most of us will be not as sufficiently armed as we could be. As such, the balance shifts in favor of the criminals who now are countered with a weaker populace - and the result will be a higher incidence of crime. This is why Washington D.C. was the murder capital of the United States for many years when its gun laws were particularly severe, and things have gotten better since laws have become less controlling. Now, the leftist petrie dish that is Chicago is the murder capital of the U.S. - where the gun laws are among the strictest in the country.
Trust in authorities as an alternative to self-defense is grossly misplaced, an opinion borne of ignorance and naïveté. The police simply cannot be trusted for protection. Warren v. District of Columbia held that the police are under absolutely no obligation to provide police services to individuals, even if a dispatcher promises help to be on the way. But even if we assume some hypothetical police angel who is not corrupt or lazy and is completely selfless and respectful and concerned only about protecting innocents - even this mythical creature can’t stop a crime in progress faster than the victim who is already at the scene. The Newton police took twenty minutes to arrive to a shooting in (naturally) a gun-free zone filled with the most precious among us. If it took twenty minutes for police to come to the aid of countless innocent and defenseless children in a small town, how long will it take for them to get to you?
I don’t have to wonder what it’s like to face criminals. As I’ve recounted, I’ve had two attempted late-night break-ins in the last year. I’ve had a gun pointed at me three times. Two of those times I was on the phone with the police and the police never showed - even when one of those times ended with the gun being fired at me while on the phone!
And these laws won’t stop crime. A criminal won’t decide to forgo committing a crime because he’s concerned about committing the much lesser non-violent crime of owning an inanimate object.
So to the politicians in California and around the country who are pushing for ways to make my life less free and my family less safe - and to all of the statists who ignorantly support them - I say: fuck you.
How dare you claim authority over my life and the lives of my wife and children? And how dare you use your illegitimate authority to endanger my family?
I’ll sum up this argument the way I have many times before:
Prohibition has never succeeded in eradicating that which was prohibited. The more difficult it is for peaceful, law-abiding individuals to acquire a good, the more the supply of that good falls into the hands of criminals. And someone who is willing to murder is not afraid of committing the much less grievous crime of acquiring an illegal firearm.
The way to mitigate senseless violence like that of Newtown is not to tip the scales in favor of criminals by disarming their victims.
I’d possibly consider giving up the firearms that would protect me, my wife, and my daughters as soon as someone figures out a way to eradicate the earth of rapists, muggers, murderers, and tyrants.
When statist impulses are used to disarm the sane and peaceful, only the insane and violent will be armed - and fewer will be safe.
