Goodbye Barry - Welcome Home AMERICA!

Saturday, December 15, 2012

We Definitely Have A "Gun Problem" In This Country!

And, the problem is that not everybody in the country owns guns! I have had enough time to calm down after yesterday's murder of 20 children and 8 adults at Newtown, Connecticut... and plenty of time to recover from the Aurora, Colorado shootings, and Tennessee State and Columbine. Despite the fact that they were all conducted by young men, there is one other common condition that they all share - there were no armed staff members!

In almost all things, I tend toward believing Friar William of Ockham - a 14th century English logician - who said, "When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better."

The overly-simplistic theory of the left is essentially, "If we pass more laws eliminating private ownership of firearms there will be fewer murders." However, the flaw in that kind of logic is that laws are written for, and adhered to, only by the law abiding. In this country, crimes are defined by law. A criminal is a person whose general behavior is composed primarily of ignoring and/or breaking laws. New York City, has one of - if not THE - toughest gun-control law in the country - The Sullivan Act - a "law" which has been in effect for over 100 years. Yet between 2003 and 2011 there were 4,161 homicides in NYC, of which 69% had firearms listed as the weapon of choice. I say ""weapon of choice", because anybody with sufficient dedicated intent to take the life of another person will find the means to do so. If a gun is not available, weapon of choice #2 is a knife (23%), with "other" (poison, golf club, baseball bat, large rock, suffocation, garrotte, etc.) coming in a distant 3rd with a combined total of 8%.

"Gun Free Zones" - such as schools - are not "gun free" once a gun is introduced from outside that zone. At that point, the zone should be renamed the Victim Abundant Zone..., because the "rule followers" (that's us) are all unarmed. The premise that "eliminating private ownership of firearms" will result in "fewer murders" sounds (at least superficially) theoretically reasonable. If 69% of all murders are committed with the use of firearms, then we should reasonably expect to see a 69% reduction in murders. Right? However, the part of that statistic that is fallacious is the assumption that guns are committing those murders. Guns are inanimate objects - they possess neither will nor motivation. Guns are tools. The true statistic is that 100% of all murders are committed by murderers! Their choice of tool with which to commit murder is irrelevant.

In China yesterday, December 14th, 2012, "... a knife-wielding man slashed 29 children, two teachers and a security guard Thursday in the second such school attack in China in two days. Initially officials had reported that 28 children had been hurt but they later realized they had miscounted.
Experts called it a copycat rampage triggered by similar incidents Wednesday and last month. They said the wave of school attacks falls amid poor care for the mentally unstable and growing feelings of social injustice in the fast-changing country.
Thursday's attack at the Zhongxin Kindergarten left five students hospitalized in critical condition in the eastern city of Taixing, said Zhu Guiming, an official with the municipal propaganda department. Two teachers and the security guard were also hurt.

We cannot legislate sanity, or even a sense of morality. The knee-jerk reaction to violence is to create more laws - laws to be ignored - while the more logical reaction would be to create fewer victims. If protecting our children in school is the only goal, then arm and train at least 50% of the school staff in student protection, situational awareness, use of deadly force, marksmanship, and threat recognition and elimination. If protecting the public at large is the goal, then recognize our Constitution's Second Amendment as being the law of the land, and deprive no law abiding citizen of the right to keep and bear arms - within his/her property or publicly. There has never been a murder at an NRA Convention or at a Gun Show. Nobody attacks a "Gun Friendly Zone"... think about that.
Over 65 Million guns in the U.S.A. killed nobody today!

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The Obama Administration's Good News-Bad News Plan...

Excerpts from today's WND article, Obama's Next Targets: Walmart & Best Buy?(with my added emphasis):
"A far-left think tank founded with input from President Obama is pushing a plan for private retail stores such as Walmart to create a “new wage floor” that hikes workers’ wages by at least 27 percent to $12.25 per hour."
"The scheme is outlined in a new study published by Demos, a longtime partner of the disgraced ACORN activist group."

"According to Demos’ own website, while Obama was a state senator in 1999, he served on the working group that founded Demos."

"Last month, Demos released a 15-page research paper titled “Retail’s Hidden Potential: How Raising Wages Would Benefit Workers, the Industry and the Overall Economy.” "

"The study provides a chart listing the country’s biggest retailers, including Walmart, Target, Kroger, Home Depot, Walgreens, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Safeway and Macy’s.
The plan urges the enactment of a “new wage floor” for the lowest-paid private retail workers equivalent to $25,000 per year – or $12.25 per hour – for a full-time, year-round retail worker at the nation’s largest retail companies, identified as those employing at least 1,000 workers.
The think tank posits the pay hike would create 100,000 or more new jobs, thus stimulating the economy. It surmises the pay increase would cost consumers “just cents more per shopping trip on average.”The study, however, does not mention that the template for the “new wage floor” is a failed Demos plan urging a “living wage.

Now let's look at this seemingly "altruistic", but highly impractical scheme, from a more practical standpoint.
  1. This plan has been tried before in the 1990s, and was an abysmal failure for the businesses involved.
  2. Does nobody in the Obama administration understand that the cost of living is directly tied to the minimum wage? The retailers are not going to "take one for the team"! As their operating expenses go up (such as the mandatory Obamacare costs, and this harebrained scheme), they will pass those costs along to the consumer!
  3. The plan (as explained today) would apply to "full-time, year-round retail workers". And who would be surprised when Walmart, Target, Kroger, Home Depot, Walgreens, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Safeway and Macy’s suddenly has upper-level management (who are already making more than the proposed minimum wage) as their only "full-time, year-round workers"? The floor personnel, shipping and receiving, stockers, etc., would be immediately converted - and employed as - "part-time, seasonal workers" in order to obviate that unnecessary payroll expense.
  4. The "100,000 or more new jobs" they claim it would create would be 100,000 new part-time, seasonal jobs to take up the slack created by these retail giants converting their original staff to part-time, seasonal! 
  5. Every product and service we pay for would be increased by approximately the same percentage as the minimum wage hike. A can of Pork & Beans that was $1.69 the day before, is now $2.15, and that's not counting any increase for Obamacare. And that increase would be seen in every item we buy, or service we use!
Such a plan is nothing more than another dangerous psychological "warm & fuzzy" for those earning minimum wage. Any benefit they might see from an "increase" would be immediately offset by the increase in their cost of living, and (and this is most-likely the real driving force behind the wage "increase") moving them into a higher tax bracket! The more they make, the bigger cut the government gets!

This is just one more example of the liberal left's "Voodoo Economics", and "Smoke and mirrors" math, guiding us blithely down the path toward the fiscal cliff. We pay more, while Congress and the Obama Administration steals more from us... all the while disguising that theft as a "wage hike" for those on the bottom rung of the earnings ladder.

Details of the above referenced article may be found at: 
http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/obamas-next-targets-walmart-best-buy/