Archive for July, 2003

July 17, 2003

Glocks, Cops and The Media

The media gets a lot of gun facts wrong (like stating the Assault Weapons Ban of 94 bans automatic weapons when it doesn’t). Publicola delves into some of that in this fine piece about the LAPD going to Glocks. Most of the media disinformation comes from the cops in this article.

And the cops were badmouthing Sigs, which are the official sidearm of SayUncle. Of course the cops were either lying or ignorant:

San Fernando police officers traded in their Sig Sauers two months ago after a colleague accidentally dropped his half-cocked weapon in the parking lot and it discharged, striking him in the head and killing him.

Sigs do not have a half cock. Sigs have a firing pin block that is engaged when the pistol is decocked using the decocking lever. Sig even issued warnings (for older models) stating never to manually decock the arm (i.e., thumb on hammer, pull trigger, use thumb to ease hammer down) and to always use the decocker to ensure the firing pin block engages.

On newer models, this isn’t an issue I don’t think. I’m guessing this policeman manually decocked an older pistol and dropped it right on the hammer (that’s the only way it is physically possible). or he accidentally shot himself and that’s not something you tell people a policeman did.

Thrity Years Later

There is a bill to repeal DC’s draconian gun ban. I guess all those lawsuits are starting to have an effect.

July 16, 2003

Welcome Back

UnknownNews is back. And there was much rejoicing.

A mistake a free people get to make only once

Kevin has an outstanding essay on a variety of gun related topics. Read the whole thing!™

That’s a fine looking chart

My favorite gay gun-nut from Vermont has the new weekly gun bias chart up and it’s dedicated to little ol’ me.

Punish the deed, not the breed

This is another alarmist example of how breed specific legislation gets started:

A Murfreesboro woman wants to know why a police officer freed a pit bull terrier from a chicken coop Sunday, allowing it and another dog to kill her family’s cat.

The dogs were running loose and got in a chicken coop and killed the chicken. One dog got trapped in the coop. The policeman showed up and freed the dog. Then the two dogs killed the same lady’s cat.

The owner (regardless of how loveable his dogs are) should have his dogs in a fenced in yard and not running loose. Dogs are hunters and they naturally are inclined to kill things.

Had this been a Golden Retriever instead of a pit bull, it likely wouldn’t have made the news.

Disheartening

From WATE:

Directors across East Tennessee say they’re taking in 30 to 80 animals a day. This June, an alarming 1,400 pets were dropped off at the Knoxville center alone. “It’s up from the previous year by about 300,” Williams says.

Mostly this is due to irresponsible pet owners but the article goes on to say that people falling on hard economic times (moving to small apartments) has lead to the increase in abandoned pets.

Of the 1,400 animals that came into the Knoxville/Knox County Animal Shelter in June, nearly 1,100 had to be put down.

July 15, 2003

Good News

It seems as though that revolt I called for earlier may not be necessary. The always excellent AlphaPatriot has the scoop.

The first to suffer

My wife is an intelligent and well-qualified woman. She has a graduate degree and is, in my opinion, overqualified for her job. My wife works at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center (FSRMC). FSRMC recently announced its intent to close its in-house daycare center used by employees, on or before October 1. At a meeting, some executive announced (rather callously) that the rumors were true and that the daycare was closing. This same executive also stated that the daycare represented prime real estate and that the daycare was operating at a break even point. However, the hospital is in need of revenue and the daycare would be closing so that two new doctors could occupy the roughly 2,400 square foot area currently used by the daycare and bring in some revenue. I’m uncertain why two doctors need a space that is larger than my house. My wife states that there is plenty of space at the hospital that is not being utilized.

The daycare serves 42 families and employs 13 staff. In addition, the daycare provided quality service at a very competitive price to employees. The daycare was touted to potential employees as a benefit. It is also convenient and physically located at the hospital. It provided many benefits, such as allowing employees to visit their children while on breaks. A mother could drop in and breast feed, if needed. Since the daycare was located in the same building, it eliminated the drive that most people have to go through during their morning and evening commutes.

FSRMC is a non-profit company. Unfortunately for many employees of non-profit companies, they are not in it for the money. This leads to problems for them because their job is important because they are helping people; not because the make big money. Their pay and their benefits come second fiddle to helping out those in need. Their employers know that. Their employers take advantage of that. The employees are often the first to suffer in the name of the bottom line. This is the same company that wouldn’t give its own employee a bone marrow transplant due to insurance problems until the media got wind of the story.

The division of the hospital that my wife works for has a terrible morale problem. In fact, my home telephone rings constantly because my wife’s coworkers are calling to complain to the wife about whatever is currently happening. It’s distressing. In my wife’s division, every department head has been fired in the last one year. Every one! Now, if one or two managers get fired, that is easy to attribute to incompetence or poor job performance. Firing every department manager alludes to problems with upper management. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t worked in the corporate world. Also, many of those fired managers were later re-hired at lower paying positions.

So, why hasn’t my wife quit? One reason: the daycare. My wife has had opportunities for employment elsewhere. Some of these opportunities pay more and offer just as much opportunity to help people out. Me and the Mrs. are planning to have children. It would be convenient if our daycare was located where my wife worked and it was competitively priced, and it was. That benefit is worth money to us. The wife could work somewhere else for more money, but pay more for a less convenient daycare. So, she toughed out rounds and rounds of lay-offs; many firings of supervisors and managers; horrendous morale issues; more and more responsibility; and pathetic cost of living pay raises for a soon-to-be-non-existent daycare. The daycare was a benefit used to attract potential employees and therefore considered as part of the whole employment package. Of course, there are no plans to compensate employees for this lost benefit.

The closing was announced last week and the closing date is on or before October first. Anyone who has a child in daycare knows that three months is not ample time to find a new daycare. Most folks at FSRMC are going to be struggling to find a quality daycare in time.

What’s the Mrs. going to do? She’s not certain. But I tend to think she’ll think twice the next time an opportunity presents itself. She also asked what I thought she could do. I told her to contact the local media and that, hopefully, the media would run a heartrending story about the poor oppressed hospital workers. I contacted the News Sentinel (and there was a little blurb) and I contacted WATE, who did about a three minute news story on it. That news story mentioned that employees were afraid to speak on camera for fear of being fired and how many people the daycare served. My wife mentioned that the FSRMC Human Resources department sent out a request for a list of people who spoke up at the announcement meeting as soon as they learned that camera crews were on the premises. So, yeah, people were scared of losing their jobs. The WATE story wasn’t hard enough on the hospital, in my opinion (the link to the story appears to have disappeared).

I told her their next course of action could be to stage a protest or a walkout. Of course, I warned her, a walkout couldn’t include essential life-saving emergency employees. I doubt the employees will organize such activities as most of them genuinely fear for their jobs. I tend to think the daycare is a lost cause at this point.

Update: Link to the WATE article.

Update2: A reader offers the following fact checks:

1) The Enrichment Center is not in the same building as the hospital, but catty-cornered across the street in the Newland Professional Building. FSRMC, the professional buildings, Thompson Cancer Center, Laurel Plaza and Children’s Hospital are all connected by tunnels, however.

Apologies for the error. My info came from talking to people and I got the impression it was attached. Of course, it is still conveniently close.

2) To my knowledge doctors cannot have personal practice office space inside the hospital itself.

I suppose this implies that the daycare space will merely be rented out.

3) The lady never received a bone marrow transplant, to my knowledge, and in fact died recently.

Truly unfortunate. I wonder if her passing could have been prevented with the transplant.

4) The daycare isn’t technically an employee benefit – the hospital pays about half in subsidies and the parents pay about half in tuition. It’s not on the same line as 401(k)’s or insurance or PTO.

It’s a benefit in that employees can use it. The employees do have to pay for it. I wonder if the subsidies will continue when the daycare goes, which is not unheard of in non-profit companies.

Spiked Bracelets: Bad Fashion & Dangerous

Massachusetts classified spiked bracelets as dangerous weapons. Now the police are cracking down on them:

District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett has ordered police in Essex County to crack down on spiked bracelets, which fall under the state’s definition of a dangerous weapon.

In Danvers, the bracelets have accounted for more than 75 percent of the weapons violations last year.

By classifying something that isn’t a weapon as a weapon, crime has increased. Good job, bureaucrats.

Say It Ain’t So

Bjorn Again has called it quits.

Pour a 40 for our fallen homies, yo.

UNsurprising

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan made his strongest pitch yet to President Bush for American peacekeeping troops in Liberia, but Bush is deferring his decision until he gathers more information.

Where was this pitch during the Iraq buildup? Actually, the UN delays of Iraqi action probably allowed WMDs to be hidden (they had six months). I’m for sending troops to Liberia. So is Annan, Dean, and some others that weren’t for Iraqi Freedom. What gives?

July 14, 2003

I’m not the only one

Given my troubles with geese and my dislike for the little bastards, I’m not sad that New Jersey Hell has started gassing them.

Jane is right, geese must be liberals. Of course, instead of gas, Hell should use dogs.

Support us, or else

This is funny. A polling group found that most Palestinians do not want to return to their homes in Israel but rather want to move to homes in a permanent Palestinian state.

So, a group of Palestinians raided the polling group’s offices and rioted. Nice.

July 12, 2003

WMDs found?

Kathy links to this story that tells us:

THE US has discovered what it believes is decisive proof of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs and taken the material to the US for testing.

If nothing else, the military has learned not to call something anthrax until it knows that it’s anthrax.

July 11, 2003

Progressives won’t like this

A common conception throughout the world stipulates progressive taxation. The concept being rooted in From each according to his ability. In other words, poor folks pay less and wealthy folks pay more. At least it should work that way in theory. It doesn’t. The rich have cash at their disposal that can be used to avoid taxes. The poor do not. If you have $4,000 laying around, dump it in a Roth IRA and avoid (defer) paying taxes on it. Form an S-Corp and salary yourself. Buy an SUV. People with cash do these things and avoid taxes. And I don’t blame them one bit and I do it when I can. And people pay accountants $150 – $300 per hour to tell them how to avoid paying taxes.

Enter the flat tax. Under this method, all people pay a certain percentage. Progressive tax folks say it’s not fair because it places an undue burden on the poor (15% of $10,000 in income has a greater impact on the quality of life than 15% of $1,000,000). I thought there was some truth to that until now.

In parts of what was the Soviet Union, there has been a flat tax of 13% implemented by Putin. Some of the results:

One senior government tax official estimates that before the flat tax took effect at the beginning of 2001, Russians on average declared as little as 25% of their income. Since it was introduced, there has been a marked increase in both payment rates and revenue. Official statistics show that income tax revenue rose 28% between 2000 and 2001, and a further 21% by last year, after adjustment for inflation. Total government revenue from personal income taxes shot up from an unadjusted $6.2 billion in 2000 to almost $12 billion last year.

The government made more money while reducing the tax burden of a large number of citizens.

In the US, things are different due to our progressive tax structure:

Total tax collections in the U.S. are expected to be $2,667,000,000,000 in 1998. This represents 35.4% of the country’s total income.

In 1997, the median tax rate of a single income family was 35.9%. A dual income family paid 37.6%.

In addition, accounting fees for tax preparation and compliance fees cost Americans about $593 billion per year. And low income earners lost $1B in 2002 in loan charges and fees for rapid refund tax loans. And if you exclude the lowest incomes from paying any taxes at all, you can avoid the rapid tax refund rape that they currently go through (and, of course, they’re not taxed).

Why have a progressive tax system that doesn’t work?” asks Vladimir Redkin, an economist at Russia’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Yup.

Enumerated Powers

Robert Prather comments on the Enumerated Powers act. I find this to be a grand idea:

Requires each Act of Congress to contain a concise and definite statement of the constitutional authority relied upon for the enactment of each portion of that Act. Declares that failure to comply with this requirement shall give rise to a point of order in either House of Congress.

It has absolutely no chance of passing whatsoever, in my opinion. Why? Because it limits the power of our congress critters and they’re not keen on that idea.

The UN (Again)

Jeff does a better job of thrashing the UN than I did.

A Question I’m Asked

People have asked me, given my position on the second amendment, what would warrant a civilian uprising? Well, this definitely would. It seems the Nevada Supreme Court just decided to override the law of the land.

Update: Clayton Cramer says Nevada is just taking a lesson from the Supreme Court and applying it:

Once “ends justify the means” becomes an adequate reason for judges to make decisions, all that’s left is raw power and its abuse.

Indeed™

Update2: On second thought, maybe they should try the Supreme Court before getting all testy.

July 10, 2003

Jebus

After joining the RTB, Free Speech News was hacked. Free Speech News suspects, from its logs, that the hackers originated from the US military.

Quite frightening if true.

Update: Free Speech News apologizes to the military and states they know who did it.

Volunteer Tailgate Party

Kevin has the latest on what Tennesseans are yakking about.

RTB Announcement

The RTB welcomes Free Speech News and Team Rock.

Good Elephant Stuff

Justin links to this story in which the UN claims America has nearly one gun for every American. And the problem is? Money shot:

“This is enough guns to perpetuate fighting in many countries and raise the danger of criminal violence in many others, but it is not enough to render the situation totally beyond hope,” the survey said.

And

“Contrary to the common assumption that Europeans are virtually unarmed, the 15 countries of the European Union have an estimated 84 million firearms. Of that 67 million (80 percent) are in civilian hands,” the survey said. With a total population of 375 million people, this amounts to 17.4 guns for every 100 people.

Also, Justin tells that the PFC Lynch story is problematic because he’s unaware of any military issued revolvers.

Liar, liar pants on fire

Turns out the Bush Lied, People Died folks need a new slogan. The story about the President lying about Nigerian uranium was, well, a lie.

Update: I have the slogan: A source lied, and liberals cried.

Update2: The original story says the Whitehouse acknowledged and doesn’t state who at the whitehouse. Further reading states that the supposed CIA source used was this liar. And the story at sfgate was pretty much identical to the original capitol blue story.

The sole relevant source for the entire story has been discredited.

One Word

Moron.

It’s about time

Knoxville’s downtown has sucked for a long time. One reason was there was no free parking. That’s changing:

Starting Thursday, the 2,300 parking spaces in the Civic Coliseum garage will be free. Motorists can a free shuttle from the coliseum to most areas of downtown. The wait should be no longer than 10 minutes. It’s part of the city’s “Unparalleled Parking” program, lasting through the end of September.

Now, if they could make the parking convenient, they might be on to something.

Disappointed, I’ll say

President George W Bush disappointed millions of Zimbabweans yesterday when he said America would defer to South Africa’s quiet diplomacy on changing the behaviour of President Robert Mugabe’s regime.

July 09, 2003

That Didn’t Take Long

Brady Campaign Release:

To: National Desk

Contact: Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence United with the Million Mom March, 202-898-0792

WASHINGTON, July 8 /U.S. Newswire/ — Mike Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence United with the Million Mom March, released the following statement today:

“This morning, a tragic shooting occurred at a Lockheed Martin plant near Meridian, Mississippi. As of now, six are dead including the gunman, and at least eight others are injured. Our thoughts go out to the families of those lost, as well as the injured people and their families.

“We need to do everything in our power to support law enforcement as they sort out the terrible details of his horrible crime. In the wake of yet another horrible mass shooting, Congress and President Bush need no more reminders of why they should work to reauthorize and strengthen the federal ban on assault weapons. While we don’t yet know what weapon was used in this tragedy, we do know that rapid-fire assault weapons are designed for this type of terrible assault.”

Emphasis added for you people that need to be told that. Of course, it’s semi-automatics that they’re referring to and not assault weapons. But these anti-gun zealots are not known for being truthful.

Call Mr. Hamm at 202-898-0792 and inform him that his use of rhetoric is both misleading and intellectually dishonest. Also, inform him that the AW Ban did not deter this incident (it is still in effect, you know) and that the AW Ban has had zero effect on crime.

Maryland Update

An update to this case in Maryland where a guy was building guns (which isn’t illegal in Maryland):

Wheeler is charged with several misdemeanors that are all related to the gunpowder police found in the home. Miller reported that police will not disclose the other locations they’ve searched and call their investigation “very active.”

. . . all of the search warrants in this case remain sealed

So, having gunpowder is apparently illegal in Maryland? And the warrants remained sealed? Sealed search warrants scare the crap out of me. This info should be made available.

Don’t get me wrong, this alleged white supremacist likely should be locked up but people need to know why. Several misdemeanors, which aren’t disclosed, doesn’t seem to warrant (no pun intended) $2M dollars in bail and closed search warrants.

New to the blogroll

Tobacco Road Fogey. He rolled me and I started reading. Great site, give it a read!

One note on the blogroll, if it’s in my blogroll then I read it daily. I don’t like to do that link trading stuff. Of course, if you roll me then I’ll see that and read your site. Odds are, if you’re linking to me that you fit a certain political mentality comparable to mine; or you’re just screwed up. So, I’ll likely wind up linking to you anyway.

Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.

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