Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Just the Facts

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My friends Jon and Pamela Friar were holding forth over dinner about how much safer we would be if we didn’t have “automatic assault weapons.”

“I don’t know much about guns,” Jon said, “but we need to control automatic weapons better.” Jon is a science guy, pro-choice, and very data driven in the rest of his life, so I wondered why he isn’t fact driven in this discussion.

“Oh, but we are. Everything I’ve ever read shows how dangerous the choices we’ve made are.”

Huh.

And yet, with everything they’ve read, they don’t know any facts.

“I don’t know much about guns,” he said.

AR-15 and AK-47 RiflesThe AR-15 was designed by Armalite to meet the US Army requirement for a new rifle, chambered for a new intermediate cartridge. It was adopted by the US Army as the M16 and became a standard issue infantry weapon. It cycles by “direct gas impingement” that it differs from earlier gas systems and initially fired a .223 Remington/5.56×45mm slug. AR-15 offerings for the civilian market are different. The civilian AR-15 started with Colt’s original semi-automatic “Sporter” rifles, manufactured since 1963. All the current clones are still simply semi-automatic rifles that look like the original AR-15. Semi-automatic rifles are not select fire / burst or full automatic capable.

The legendary AK-47 is also a selective-fire, military rifle. It was developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the last year of World War II. It is gas-operated and fires a 7.62×39mm slug. The Kalashnikov and its variants are the most widely used military rifles in the world. Civilian models are available from China, (East) Germany, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and even Russia in semiauto only. Century International Arms, founded in St. Albans, Vermont, is a major importer and remanufacturer AK-style rifles for the civilian market.

Unless those rifles are illegally altered, they are not full automatics. Full auto weapons have been regulated since the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Hughes Amendment in 1986.

Jon and Pam don’t know that a 5.56mm NATO round (or the similar .223 Remington) for the AR-15 has a muzzle velocity around 3,200 fps, and energy of 1,282 ft-lbs at the muzzle but only half that at 200 yards. The AK-47’s 7.62mm is a more powerful slug with a lower muzzle velocity around 2,300 fps, and energy of 1,507 ft-lbs at the muzzle with a drop to half that at 200 yards.

They don’t know the .223 is one of the most common cartridges in use here for varmint rifles as well as semi-automatic rifles such as Ruger Mini-14/5P.

They don’t know the popular 30-30 hunting rifle is very similar to the AK-47 with a muzzle velocity around 2,389 fps, and energy of 1,901 ft-lbs at the muzzle.

They don’t know the .308 tops that with a muzzle velocity of 2,820 fps, and energy of 2,648 ft-lbs. Likewise, the .30-06 hunting rifle has a muzzle velocity around 2,800 fps, and energy of 2,872 ft-lbs at the muzzle. It keeps most of that at 200 yards with muzzle velocity still at 2,403 fps, and energy of 2,115 ft-lbs at that distance, more powerful at that distance than the AK-47 up close.

Every one of those rifles has plenty of killing power. The “assault rifles” just look fiercer. So do modern pickup trucks (which kill more people).

The real question here is this: since the “assault weapon” you abhor is similar (and in many ways less capable than many popular hunting-style rifles, don’t you really just want to ban all American citizens from owning all guns?

Jon and Pam spent most of his working in the middle east where ISIS is now a government. I’m not sure how they feel about taking away the weapons from “rebels” in Syria, Iraq, and other countries there who are fighting that “government” for their freedom and very lives.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
–Thomas Jefferson in a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith

Jon and Pam believe a few citizens cannot defeat a modern army or secret police force. They didn’t know that the history of rebellions against tyranny has always featured a ragtag bunch of citizens going up against a superior government force. The British host, f’rex, was undefeated until they met the fighting farmers of the Colonies and we know how that turned out. The ragtag rebels may not always win but, if they didn’t try, we surely lose.

I wonder how Jon and Pam figure it’s good for the citizens there with sticks and stones to go up against the well-armed, well trained ISIS fighters but bad to take that right away from citizens here.

Oh. I understand. They know our government will protect us from … oh wait.


Doing #1 and #2
 

Shack Attack

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Another Random Fancy from the “You Just Won’t Believe This” Department:

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) signed 20 new laws in April including a bill that immediately repealed Florida’s 148-year-old ban on cohabitation. The Pillow Police are bereft.

§ 798.02 Lewd and lascivious behavior. — If any man and woman, not being married to each other, lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit together, or if any man or woman, married or unmarried, engages in open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior, they shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

Unmarried couples, polyamorists, and RWBs1 shacking up in Florida can now rest easy that their living arrangement is not breaking the law, thanks to the state’s Republican governor and co-sponsor Rep. Rick Stark (D-Weston).

Couple in BedThe law made it a second-degree misdemeanor for an unmarried man and woman to “lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit together.” It has been on the books since 1868.

Because of its wording, §798.02 never applied to same-sex couples. Or goats.

The offense could be punished by up to 60 days in jail or a $500 fine.

Rep. Stark reported that police rarely, if ever, enforced the statute but that’s not true. Nearly 700 people were charged under the Florida law between 2005 and 2011 and 104 people faced charges in 2011 alone. (In 2005, Michigan’s cohabitation law was used to restrict visitation rights for a divorced father. The Virginia law was used to revoke a woman’s daycare license because she was cohabitating in the 1990s.)

I’ve always been proud that nearly 10% of Florida’s 46,105 sworn officers and state’s attorney investigators were part of the famed Panther’s Pillow Police.

Five conservative Republicans opposed repeal. Obviously conservative Republicans have a vested interest in continuing the Pillow Police. I haven’t quite figured out why, when eleven of this country’s 100 most dangerous cities are in Florida. Maybe they need the $500 fines to balance the budget.

Ironically “Virginia is for Lovers” waited until 2013 to repeal its cohabitation ban. 25 Virginia legislators — 21 Republicans, three Democrats and one independent — voted against the repeal. They needed the fines, too. Yeah, that’s it.

The unbelievable part of this story is that Florida was still one of three states with laws to prohibit unmarried cohabitation; Michigan and Mississippi remain.

1 Roomie With Benefits

 

Mayday! Mayday!

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The NYTimes reports that, after Rep. Pete Gallego (R-TX) lost the election for his Congressional district in 2014, “researchers from the Baker Institute and the University of Houston’s Hobby Center for Public Policy polled 400 registered voters in the district who sat out the election. All were asked why they did not vote, rating on a scale of 1 to 5 from a list of seven explanations — being ill, having transportation problems, being too busy, being out of town, lacking interest, disliking the candidates and lacking a required photo identification.

“The vast majority of those who claimed not to have voted because they lacked a proper ID actually possessed one, but did not know it.”

“Nearly 26% said the main reason was that they were too busy. At the other end, 5.8% said the main reason was lacking a proper photo ID, with another 7% citing it as one reason. Most surprising, however, was what researchers found when they double-checked that response: The vast majority of those who claimed not to have voted because they lacked a proper ID actually possessed one, but did not know it.”

I’m thinking that if you are so spectacularly uninformed that you don’t know you have ID, you don’t know enough to vote.

 

Hypocrisy, Writ in Yellow in the Snow

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Companies are pulling out of North Carolina for that new segregation law, HB2. Social media is atwitter with peeps calling out those companies for not pulling out of countries with human rights violations.

An 'All Genders' bathroom in Kentucky

Pot. Kettle.

If you want to stop doing business with those countries, folks, go right ahead. Don’t buy from Walmart. Or Target. Or the Dollar Store. Or Peebles or Nordstrum or Costco. Don’t buy a new television or a new sound system or an Apple iPhone. Don’t buy a lithium battery. Every store on the list buys from countries with human rights violations. Every one. All your electronics gear has components from countries with human rights violations. Every one. Don’t buy a new car. Every new car has castings made in China. Every one.

North Carolina’s HB2, passed in minutes by the General Assembly and signed that same night by Gov. Pat McCrory, nullifies local ordinances around the state. The new “Public Facilities Segregation Act” makes it illegal for cities to pass ordinances that regulate discrimination and more.

“…this Article and other applicable provisions of the General Statutes supersede and preempt any ordinance, regulation, resolution, or policy adopted or imposed by a unit of local government or other political subdivision of the State…”

North Carolina’s new law sets a statewide definition of the classes of people who are protected against discrimination: race, religion, color, national origin, age, handicap or biological sex. Sexual orientation is not protected under state law despite recent the legalization of same-sex marriage.

All Conservatives and Libertarians should boycott North Carolina, too. After all, HB2 is, more than anything else, another law in the Conservative arsenal to wrest local control away from the local voters.

The photo is from a building in Kentucky.

 

Taxed. Again and Again and Again

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We the Overtaxed People dread most April fifteenths but that terrible day has been delayed to April 18 or even April 19 this year.

Form 1040Emancipation Day, a little-known holiday beyond the Beltway, is the primary reason the tax deadline changed this year. Slavery was formally abolished in the United States December 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment was ratified, but it occurred much earlier in the District of Columbia: President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862, freeing the thousands of slaves who lived in the district. Now a legal holiday in Washington, government offices and other public services do not operate on Emancipation Day, usually celebrated April 16. Emancipation Day falls back to April 15 or ahead to April 17 when it falls on a weekend because we couldn’t deprive civil servants in that city of a holiday.

In other tax news, Schedule HI-144, Vermont’s “Household Income Schedule” has a couple of unique features. By “unique” I mean “criminal.”

Here’s the first.

Definition:
Household Income means modified adjusted gross income, but not less than zero (0), received in a calendar year by:
all persons of a household while members of that household;
AND
the spouse of the claimant who is not a member of that household no matter where that spouse lives and who is not legally separated from the claimant, unless the spouse is at least 62 years of age and has moved to a nursing home or other care facility with no reasonable prospect of returning to the homestead.

So. Imagine that you live in North Puffin in the People’s Republic of Vermont but your spouse lives in Florida or South Dakota or Pago Pago, the territorial capital of American Samoa. You go to work, come home, feed your rabbit, put your feet up, watch TV. Tomorrow, lather, rinse, repeat. Meanwhile, your spouse works extraordinarily hard in that other place. He or she walks down to the beach, sniffs the fine odor of fish, and counts the boats in the harbor, until it is time to go home, feed his or her koi, put the old feet up, and watch TV. Tomorrow, lather, rinse, repeat.

That spouse never, ever comes to Vermont and has no Vermont income. Vermont grabs on to the Household Income of the spouse of the claimant who is not a member of that household no matter where that spouse lives.

It gets better.

Line e Interest and dividends
Enter the income required to be reported on Lines 8a and 9a of Federal returns 1040 or 1040A; or on Line 2 of Federal return 1040EZ plus the nontaxable interest not required to be reported on Federal return 1040EZ.
Line t
Add columns 1, 2, and 3 and enter sum. Entry cannot be less than zero (0).
Line u
For claimants under the age of 65 as of Dec. 31, 2015, enter the total of interest and dividends for all household members reported on Lines e and f in each column.
Line v
Add the three columns on Line u.
Line w
For purposes of calculating the property tax adjustment or renter rebate, household income is increased by the household total of interest and dividend income greater than $10,000.
Line x
Subtract Line w from Line v. If Line w is more than Line v, enter zero (0).
Line y Household Income.
Add Line t and Line x.

Didya notice?

Line e: enter the interest and dividend income required to be reported on your Federal return even if it’s nontaxable. Line u: enter the interest and dividends reported on Lines e and f. Now add it all up.

Didya notice? Vermont makes you add in your interest and dividend income twice.

Wet Lubes Wet Uranus SiliconeWhat have we learned today?

If the People’s Republic of Vermont knows your name, they will tax you even if you live off planet. If you have a homestead in the People’s Republic of Vermont, they will tax twice for interest and dividends.

And there is no deduction under tax preparation expenses for Wet Lubes Wet Uranus Silicone.

Now does anyone wonder why I support (a) the flat income tax and (b) elimination of all other tax methods including corporate taxes? People have the right to be taxed fairly, the right to know how much is coming out of their pockets, and the right not to be taxed two or three times on the same income.