The next gun control angle – insurance scam

The tide has been turning rather quickly against the gun grabbing gang as the year draws to a close, and they’ve clearly noticed. With nearly three quarters of all Americans opposed to a ban on handguns, and a slim majority even opposing bans on so called “assault rifles,” Second Amendment opponents find themselves in need of more “creative” ways to go after your guns. The latest one being picked up from the reliable liberal arsenal and dusted off is the idea of forcing legal gun owners to purchase liability insurance for their weapons. This brainstorm is brought to you by Megan McArdle.

Novel gun control ideas continue to percolate through the commentariat. The latest idea is requiring liability insurance for gun owners, which seems to have first been suggested by John Wasik blogging at Forbes. Reihan Salam, one of my favorite thinkers, says it’s an idea seriously worth considering.

So… insurance. Well, insurance is supposed to help people, right? Maybe she’s just trying to make people’s lives better, not trample on their rights. Let’s read on.

In the end, I think it might be a fine idea to help a small number of people, but it wouldn’t do what proponents are imagining in terms of controlling criminal behavior. Mostly, it would be a way to compensate some victims of gun accidents…

The first question we have to answer is why we want to require the insurance. There are three reasons I can think of:

1) it will simply raise the cost of owning guns to the point where people aren’t willing to do it.

2) It will pay for the harm caused by guns

3) It will make insurers into de-facto regulators.

I like this article. McArdle is actually quite refreshing in her approach. Rather than trying to sneak around and disguise her intentions behind compassionate sounding paeans to save the children, protect the mentally ill and eliminate the sale of Grand Theft Auto, the author comes right out and admits what was fairly obvious to the rest of us already. It’s not going to cut down on crime, it will pose a significant barrier to law abiding citizens who wish to purchase weapons and it will convert insurance companies into a tool for doing what Congress should be constitutionally barred from enacting. This kind of brutal honesty about your intentions is to be admired.

Of course, it really is nothing but a new and less direct slant on the idea of taxing ammunition beyond affordability for most citizens. But that requires congressional action and could be subject to judicial review if it winds up being too obvious of a back door scheme to enact gun control. The insurance approach is interesting because, in the age of Obamacare, government mandated insurance can be used for all manner of social engineering under the guise of revenue enhancement.

We’ve been warning you since the news broke from Newtown… opponents of the Second Amendment have their teeth into this thing and they’re not going to give up while they think the window of opportunity remains open. And if a direct assault doesn’t work, they’ll be throwing every creative scheme they can dream up at the wall until they find something that sticks. Don’t let down your guard for a minute, because they aren’t just coming… they’re at the gates right now.

  

The Ultimate Buy (Votes) Now, Pay Later (with OPM) Presidency

America has never before had a leader who was more willing to spend other people’s money (OPM) to fund his own agenda. By invoking the “Never let a crisis go to waste” doctrine, Obama has embarked, unfettered, on a progression of non-congressionally debated programs.

Each of these programs has gone a long way towards implementing Obama’s vision for our nation. The basic principles revolve around one theme.

Details have varied but the end results point in the same direction. None of this could have happened if the media was not complicit in its adoration and deferential treatment of our newly re-empowered king.

This year’s presidential race employed class warfare as a talking point to an unprecedented extreme. Obama’s campaign hinged on refocusing America’s collective psyche away from four years of a horrible economy. Instead, Democrats directed the media and the public towards simply loathing those who were unusually productive or successful, or who just happened to be members of the ‘lucky sperm’ club.

History will show that the political strategy worked. Obama’s economic policies and a huge slug of working-age Americans didn’t. 

The Great Recession was an excuse for more than $4 trillion in new deficit spending during Obama's first term. Yet presidential candidate Obama was outraged G.W. Bush's $9 trillion national debt. President Obama is insulted by any debt limits, even after running up the national debt to north of $16 trillion!

It was easy to get the masses to agree that taxes should be much higher, as long those higher levies would be paid strictly by somebody else.

We are already starting to see the lies concerning the true costs of ObamaCare. Those with decent incomes will now be paying for their own policies plus the costs for another, anonymous family. 

College loans? In the old days, students borrowed as little as was necessary. They repaid it quickly to save on interest expense. Today's Federal student loans incentivize borrowing the maximum amount available. They also reward delaying repayment for as long as legally permissible.

Graduates who get jobs deemed ‘good for society’ (like congressional aides) might have their balances written off outright. Others will have them forgiven after 10 – 20 years. The ‘gifts’ come now from a benevolent Obama; the taxpayer burden of loan forgiveness will hit long after Obama's tenure.

The way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment insurance. Pay people to stay at home and they will. Extensions in unemployment insurance foster ‘off the books’ work. This keeps more "unemployed" voters indebted to their enablers. Disability eliminates the charade of even looking for work by making things permanent plus adding Medicaid coverage.

Housing subsidies and food stamps give working people a disincentive to earn more. Why bust your ass only to forfeit the ability to live cheaply or free?

Refi’s and Cram-downs steal money from those who made the loans while shifting default risk to those suckers who actually still pay federal income taxes.

The 2% FICA tax holiday funded consumer spending during the two-years prior to presidential election. The $120 billion yearly bill must be made up through increased non-FICA taxation. This shifts the burden further onto the ‘lucky few’ and away from ‘working people’.

If any part of tax relief does not get extended this 2% temporary cut might be sacrificed as it brings in big money and there are no more big elections for two years.

Bernanke’s ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) helps debtors while killing any chance for risk-free returns for savers and investors. ZIRP rewards bad behavior (borrowing) while penalizing good behavior.

If we trained our pets and children that way, we’d get bad dogs and lazy kids. This, however, has become Washington’s standard operating procedure.

Democracy has morphed into, “Two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.” The voting results will not necessarily be moral, but they will always reflect a solid majority. Those hungry wolves can then correctly claim they had an electoral mandate.

****

gun control

Is ANYBODY taking this toilet float of an administration seriously when they’re preaching “GUN CONTROL?????”

ANYBODY??? I mean OTHER than SOCIALISTS?????

May I take you all back to late June of this year when the Department of Homeland Insecurity…AFTER ARMING THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS… instructed their ARMED BORDER AGENTS TO…

“RUN AWAY AND HIDE IF SHOOTING STARTS!!!”
Popout
According to one who took the mandatory course…“We are now taught in an ‘Active Shooter’ course that if we encounter a shooter in a public place we are to ‘run away’ and ‘hide.’ If we are cornered by such a shooter we are to (only as a last resort) become ‘aggressive’ and ‘throw things’ at him or her. We are then advised to ‘call law enforcement’ and wait for their arrival (presumably, while more innocent victims are slaughtered).”

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!!!!!

Think about it…When the shooting started in Benghazi…What exactly did this administration do???

“STAND DOWN…STAND DOWN!!!!!”

In Afghanistan…WHEN THE TALIBAN TRAINEES STARTED SHOOTING AT AND KILLING THEIR U.S. MILITARY TRAINERS…what exactly did this socialist administration do???

THEY DISARMED THE U.S. MILITARY TRAINERS!!!!!

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WANT US TO TRUST THEM TO KEEP OUR CHILDREN SAFE???

And what precisely did they do to those who actually WANTED to shoot back???

THEY SMOKED GENERAL HAM AND NOW A REAR ADMIRAL IS SOMEWHERE PLAYING WITH TOY BOATS IN A BATH TUB!!!!!!!

Call me crazy but I think we need to SHOOT AT THE BAD PEOPLE WHO ARE TRYING TO KILL US!!! DOESN’T THAT MAKE MORE SENSE THAN…THROWING THINGS AT THEM FROM A HIDING PLACE?????

WHAT THEY ARE ADVOCATING IS, TAKING THE GUNS AWAY FROM GOOD PEOPLE SO THAT ONLY THE BAD GUYS WILL HAVE THEM AND THAT…THEY CLAIM…WILL KEEP US ALL SAFE!!!!

AND WHO GETS TO ENFORCE THESE NEW LAWS???

ERIC HOLDER…THE SAME ERIC HOLDER WHO TOOK PART IN THE ARMED TAKEOVER OF AN ROTC BUILDING IN 1973!!!!!

And THEY have the NERVE to say that the NRA is INSANE?????

Seriously…

Question the competence of these yahoos and…

They always fall back on the DUMBEST retort.

“NOBODY NEEDS AR AR-15 TO HUNT DEER!!!”

Well guess what socialists…

DEER AREN’T BREAKING INTO SCHOOLS, BUSINESSES AND HOUSES AND SHOOTING AT THE PEOPLE WHO STUDY, WORK OR LIVE THERE!!!!!

We need guns to protect our lives, our families and our property FROM MANIACS AND A SOCIALIST, TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT!!!

But…I repeat myself…

THE 2^ND AMENDMENT SAYS:

“A WELL REGULATED MILITIA, BEING NECESSARY TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

But…According to Homeland Insecurity…

“A WELL REGULATED MILITIA SHOULD RUN AWAY AND HIDE AND ONLY WHEN ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY…THROW SOMETHING AT THE BAD GUYS AND YELL, NEENER, NEENER…YA MISSED ME, YA MISSED ME NOW YA GOTTA KISS ME!!!”

Consider this:

THE SAME PEOPLE WHO SAID THE BEST WAY TO BRING DEMOCRACY TO EGYPT WAS TO GIVE THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A SEAT AT THE TABLE…ARE NOW TELLING YOU THE BEST WAY TO KEEP YOU SAFE IS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR GUNS!!!!!

BREAKING NEWS for the Idiot in Chief…

The Obamas or…Obami…sent out warm holiday wishes for…

KWANZAA!!!!

“Michelle and I send our warmest wishes to all those celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season. Today marks the beginning of the week-long celebration honoring African American heritage and culture through the seven principles of Kwanzaa — unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
We celebrate Kwanzaa at a time when many African Americans and all Americans reflect on our many blessings and memories over the past year and our aspirations for the year to come. And even as there is much to be thankful for, we know that there are still too many Americans going through enormous challenges and trying to make ends meet. But we also know that in the spirit of unity, or Umoja, we can overcome those challenges together.”

Ummm…Kwanza was INVENTED by Ron Karenga, founder of a rival militant group of the BlacKKK Panthers.

5 years after inventing Kwanzaa…Karenga was CONVICTED of ASSAULT in the BEATING AND TORTURE OF 2 WOMEN!!!!!

Here’s a little clip from the 1971 trial testimony:

“Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said. They also were hit on the heads with toasters.”

I have BREAKING NEWS for the Idiot in Chief…

KWANZA IS NOT A CELEBRATION OF AFRICAN CULTURE AND HERITAGE…IT’S A CELEBRATION OF SOCIALISM WHIPPED UP FROM CALIFORNIA IN 1966 BY A FUTURE CRIMINAL WHO NEARLY KILLED 2 WOMEN!!!

And for THAT…HE and MOOCHELLE SEND THEIR WARMEST WISHES?????

What’s NEXT…A JEFFERY DAHMER PROGRESSIVE DINNER PARTY???????

Well…What can we expect from a doofus who hangs MAO ornaments on his HOLIDAY tree in the WHITE HOUSE???

Guns pour in at L.A. buyback events

Thousands of people line up to exchange guns for supermarket gift cards at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and the Van Nuys Masonic Temple.

By Joe Mozingo and Wesley Lowery, Los Angeles Times

December 26, 2012, 10:34 p.m.

Mall parking lots were packed with after-Christmas shoppers. But nowhere were the lines longer than at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and the Van Nuys Masonic Temple, where thousands of people came to exchange their guns for Ralphs gift cards.

Cars queued up for blocks at the drive-through events, with the city giving cards worth up to $100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles, and up to $200 for assault weapons. There was a bit of haggling involved, but the guns were all taken.

"What do you got?" an officer in Van Nuys asked a man in his late twenties as he pulled up in a green Mazda.

"Just one handgun, I've had it since high school," the man replied.

"Will you take $50 for this?"

"Sure."

Many came bearing more than one gun. They pulled 22 pistols from the trunk of one white Honda, a haul that earned the driver $1,000.

Two men in a pickup truck with two children in the back seat handed over a rifle, a pistol and a MAC-12, altered with a silencer.

Organizers and some participants credited collective outrage and anguish over the gun rampage in Newtown, Conn., for the turnout. But motivations were often a bit more complicated.

"That young guy shot up all the kids and they blamed the mama because the mama had the weapons in the house," Valerie Butler said, in explaining why she was waiting in line two hours in South Los Angeles to get rid of an old handgun.

Yet Butler, 50, said she was not getting rid of both of her guns.

"Just one," she said, and laughed. "There's a bunch of nuts out here, and they're coming in when you're sleeping. You got to protect yourself."

Cities across the nation, grasping for ways to react to a series of mass shootings this year, have organized gun buybacks to get weapons off the street.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pushed the city's annual event from Mother's Day to Wednesday in reaction to the killing Dec. 14 of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. By the afternoon, the event had already surpassed the 1,673 guns collected last year, and officials were scrambling to get more gift cards, which were donated by Ralphs.

Many of the drivers said they were turning in their guns because they rarely used them and were eager to snag grocery cards.

"If I could get $100 of free groceries, it's worth it," said Charles Edwards, 60, waiting in line next to his old .22 revolver after driving to Los Angeles from Fontana. "I wouldn't do it for $40. That's why people are here. They feel bad about all that's happening, but times are tough."

He still has a shotgun at home. "That's all I need," he said.

Edwards said authorities needed to better organize the buyback so the lines weren't so long. He watched numerous people sit in line for a spell, then just drive away, he said. "I thought I could just drop this thing off. They need to have this move faster."

Most of the weapons recovered were "mom and pop guns," police said — hunting rifles, shotguns — but they got a few dozen assault weapons as well.

They checked to make sure the guns were empty, and double-checked by pulling the triggers in clearing barrels — metal rubbish containers filled with sand. Then they put them into trash containers like bundles of sticks after a windstorm.

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Generation Y Wakes Up From The American Dream, Faces An American Nightmare

Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last. We have noted a number of times that these divides are growing and warned of the social tension this could create and, as Bloomberg notes, it does not appear to be getting any better, Generation Y professionals entering the workforce are finding careers that once were gateways to high pay and upwardly mobile lives turning into detours and dead ends. "This generation will be permanently depressed and will be on a lower path of income for probably all of their life - and at least the next 10 years," as middle-income jobs are disappearing. A 2009 law school graduate sums it up rather succinctly: "I had a lot of faith in the system, the mythology that if you work really hard you can achieve anything, and the stock market always goes up. It was pretty naïve on my part."

Via Bloomberg:

Generation Y professionals entering the workforce are finding careers that once were gateways to high pay and upwardly mobile lives turning into detours and dead ends. Average incomes for individuals ages 25 to 34 have fallen 8 percent, double the adult population’s total drop, since the recession began in December 2007. Their unemployment rate remains stuck one-half to 1 percentage point above the national figure.

Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last. The nation’s younger workers have benefited least from an economic recovery that has been the most uneven in recent history.

which is leading to an increasingly disenfranchised generation:

“This generation will be permanently depressed and will be on a lower path of income for probably all of their life -- and at least the next 10 years,” says Rutgers professor Cliff Zukin, a senior research fellow at the university’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Professionals who start out in jobs other than their first choice tend to stay on the alternative path, earning less than they would have otherwise while becoming less likely to start over again later in preferred fields, Zukin says.

...

Only one-fifth of those who graduated college since 2006 expect greater success than their parents, a Rutgers survey found earlier this year. Little more than half were working full time. Just one in five said their job put them on a career path.

As the dream fades:

“I had a lot of faith in the system, the mythology that if you work really hard you can achieve anything, and the stock market always goes up,” says 2009 law school graduate Elizabeth Hallock, 33. “It was pretty naïve on my part.”

And fingers are pointed:

Hallock is the named plaintiff in one of 14 lawsuits against some of the nation’s best-known law schools, including her alma mater, the University of San Francisco School of Law. The civil complaints, filed in 2011 and 2012, accuse the institutions of overstating graduates’ job-placement results and incomes.

Young Americans are struggling to reconcile their lack of economic rewards with their relatively privileged upbringings by Baby Boomer parents and the material success of their older peers, Generation X, born in the late 1960s and 1970s...

But whose fault is it?

“It’s a generation that had really high expectations, in some part driven by the way they were raised by their boomer parents,” she says. “Yet in the past five years they have had reality slammed in their face by the employment situation.”

As...

The same housing crash that hammered young architects and loan officers also slammed lawyers.Law schools are turning out about 45,000 degree holders a year for about 25,000 full-time positions available to them, according to the National Association for Law Placement Inc. in Washington. The class of 2011 had the lowest placement with law firms, 49.5 percent, in 36 years.

“It is not the perfect path to wealth and success that people may have envisioned,” says Robin Sparkman, editor in chief of The American Lawyer magazine in New York.

Which is leading to lawsuits - by the new lawyers against their schools...

“It’s hard to look at the information the schools were putting out and say it’s not misleading,” says Derek Tokaz, research director of the nonprofit Law School Transparency initiative. It published research showing that the chance of recent graduates getting permanent full-time work in law was far lower than the 80-95 percent total employment rates the schools typically boasted.

But for some - a new different life is peeking through...

“As it is, all of my possessions still fit in the back of my truck,” she says. “I can pack it in a couple hours, pick up the trailer and horses and move anywhere the gas tank will take me at the drop of a hat. What can the system take away from you when you have that kind of freedom?”

More Cliffs Than Fiscal

The fiscal cliff is not the only cliff we're racing toward; there are others.

 

The fiscal cliff dominates the mainstream news, but it is more like a bump on the pathway to the real cliff. In essence, the path has turned down and we're picking up momentum, gaining speed as we head for the cliff.

 

The real cliff is the gap between what has been promised and what can plausibly be collected in tax revenues: $86 trillion but one recent estimate, over $120 trillion by other guestimates. The difference is caused by the relative rosiness of the projections to control Medicare and Medicaid spending. Lower estimates assume we can stop the growth of these programs in the long-term, something that has not yet happened for the reason that the system lacks any controls to do so.

 

This gap widens by $7 trillion a year. That is, the promises to present and future retirees and beneficiaries goes up if we count the promises made not just for 2013 but for the future.

 

This $7 trillion is twice the entire Federal budget and roughly 50% of the nation's GDP. 

 

Understood in this way, we can see that raising taxes by $200 billion or cutting expenditures by $200 billion is not going to keep us from hurtling off the real fiscal cliff in a few years.

 

The fiscal cliff is only one edge we're racing toward; there are others. One is a Constitutional Crisis cliff that is just beyond the fiscal cliff, because the Constitution has failed to limit the power of concentrated wealth (the financial Aristocracy) and failed to resolve the Tyranny of the Majority: 50+% of the voters are now dependent on Federal transfers, while 25% pay 90% of the Federal income taxes. Those collecting benefits will naturally vote for what they perceive as their immediate self-interest, which is raising taxes on the minority until the minority rebels.

 

The only other option is to print the needed $100 trillion, which will destroy the nation's currency and economy. Either way, the 50+% will find the promises made are empty. Either the oppressed 25% opt out ("when belief in the system fades") and tax revenues collapse or everyone's $1,500 transfer from the Federal government will buy a single loaf of bread. Either way, we will face a political crisis.

 

We have been trained to ridicule any suggestions that technology won't/can't save us, but the one undeniable truth about technology is that it destroys 90% of the jobs in the industries it revolutionizes. Agriculture, for example. Music stores. Travel agencies. Some other employment sectors are only cut in half, for example admin assistants. The range of job losses triggered by advances in technology is between 98% and 50%, depending on the rigidity and inefficiency of the industry being transformed.

 

For forty years we have counterbalanced this loss of employment by borrowing and spending money on labor-intensive consumption: more healthcare, more retail, more tourism / hospitality, more government. But even these sectors are starting to come under technological pressure, despite the political moats that have been dug around healthcare, education, defense, housing, etc.

 

The pressure is not just technological, it is financial: the game of borrowing ever-more money to fund all this labor-intensive consumption is almost over. Right now we have a structural deficit of $1.3 trillion, and simply keeping it at this level will require politically impossible limits on the growth of government spending. Meanwhile, tax revenues have topped out. As tax rates go up, people change their behavior to pay less taxes. As a result, tax increases always raise far less money than static, linear projections estimate.

 

Many claims for technological revolutions are overblown and unrealistic. High school physics, chemistry and biology, bolstered by an interest in keeping up with scientific advances (via mainstream science magazines such as Scientific American), is more than enough to analyze claims of "scientific revolution" with a grounded skepticism. To take but one example: all those stories about nano-robots being introduced into our bloodstream to chomp away at our clogged arteries. What will fuel these little machines? Some recent work suggests they can use glucose as a fuel, but even this ignores the reality that the clogged arteries are a symptom/result of lifestyle choices, not the cause per se of heart disease. In one field after another, horrendously costly "cures" are actually being directed at symptoms, not causes.

 

With even a modest foundation of scientific understanding, many of the claims for "revolutionary" technological advances founder on basic limits of the real world or the cost and difficulty of scaling up a technology to the point that it is both affordable and broadly applicable.

 

I recently saw an article hyping an advance that could eliminate batteries in pacemakers--the aforementioned glucose-fueled electronics. But given that perhaps 1% of the global populace can afford a pacemaker, how "revolutionary" is this advance? It seems extremely marginal compared to indoor plumbing, clean water, eliminating malaria, etc.

 

What technology reliably accomplishes is a wholesale reduction of human labor and jobs.  What it no longer does is create new labor-intensive industries. 

 

We thus face an inequality cliff that is (unsurprisingly) connected to the fiscal and constitutional cliffs: how do we transfer wealth from the productively employed few to the many unemployed/ under-employed without creating a society of dependents? We have "fixed" this problem by borrowing or printing trillions of dollars. That "solution" has now entered the marginal-return death spiral.

 

We will have to come up with a new social contract built on community rather than a debt-dependent Central State and its cartel/fiefdom partners. Hoping that technology will solve that knotty problem for us is delusional, as technology only further reduces human employment.

 

This essay was drawn from Musings Report 49. The Musings are sent weekly to subscribers and major financial contributors (those who contribute $50 or more annually).

My new book Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It is now available in print and Kindle editions--10% to 20% discounts.

Once Again "Outrage" Misses The Mark--the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

If you're wondering why I've given up on so-called "organized" political activity, left the Libertarian Party (formally and informally) and have zero interest in either the Republican or Democrat parties as they currently exist, you need only look at the "controversy" over a local NY Newspaper that published the names and addresses of gun permit holders.

The article, in explaining the decision to publish the information, pointed to the school massacre in nearby Newtown, Conn., and the concerns of some residents about which of their neighbors might have firearms.
But readers swiftly condemned the move. They pointed out that the interactive map could make the gun owners a target, but also make clear to would-be robbers which homes do not contain a gun.
"Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves?" one reader wrote on Facebook.
"You have just destroyed the privacy of these law abiding citizens and by releasing this list, you have equated them to that of sex offenders and murders," wrote another. "These are law abiding gun owners, they are no danger to anyone except for criminals. And with this information you have made them targets for both criminals and anti gun lobbyist who i am sure are going to treat them like monsters."

Destroyed the privacy?  Made a map?

I got an email with a pithy comment this morning from a local Libertarian leader that was essentially one of those "coming to a newspaper box near you" sort of comment.

As if the problem is the First Amendment!

Gee, you think so eh?  I know, I know!  The newspaper was able to do this all nice and neat because of innovation in publishing.  Interactive maps are now pretty easy; not long ago they were hard, and not long before that they didn't exist.

So I'm going to do what I usually do -- I'm going to shine the light where it belongs.

At the Second Amendment.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Yeah, that's hard to understand.

Those who believe that the bolded part of the sentence is limited by the un-bolded failed English class.  Go back to school and until you pass please surrender any and all professional "credentials", most-particularly those related to teaching or otherwise pontificating on the meaning of words.

Shall I quote what gave rise to the Constitution and Bill of Rights?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Yeah.

If you have an unalienable right to life then you have the right to defend that life against all who would take it from you, irrespective of who they are.  If you have an unalienable right to liberty, then you have a right to defend that liberty against all who would take it from you.

So what's this "permit" crap?

For a gun?

For a driver license?

Let me guess -- you needed a license to ride a horse in colonial America?  To exercise your right to liberty, that is, to change your physical location from one place to another, using the common tools and devices of the day?  What would Jefferson, Hamilton or Madison have said to such a notion?

So is the problem that some newspaper published data?  No, it is that you first demanded that your neighbor seek permission to defend his own life or exercise his liberty, and then once he did, you got pissed that someone else used their right to liberty to publish information that you gave up due to an unlawfuldemand that you voluntarily complied with?

Who's the idiot here and why is your outrage directed at a newspaper?

Why aren't you surrounding the NY State House and demanding an immediate repeal of all infringement of the 2nd Amendment, and openly proclaiming (and backing up your demand, if necessary) that you will not comply with what is clearly an unlawful demand by that governmental body?

It's easier to bitch about some other party that's exercising its constitutional rights (in this case the First Amendment), yes?

Of course it's easier.  The latter course of action -- the correct one -- would involve both personal responsibility and personal risk.  You might get arrested. 

There are those who claim that "sacking the State House", which of course is the extreme outcome, would be blatantly and outrageously unlawful.

Those folks forget that such a remedy is highly unlikely to be necessary to actually impose upon the state; after all, there are about 350-400 of you (citizens) to every one of them (instruments of the government "machine".)

The real reason all this happens is because you're a toper; you are drunk on the falsehood that government can do whatever the hell it wants and worse, you're not only consenting to it you're demanding it!

There is a lawful method available to amend The Constitution.  Not all that long ago, on January 17th of 1920, to be exact, the people amended The Constitution to restrict liberty. 

Specifically, on that date it became illegal to exercise the right of the people to intake intoxicating liquors.  The people followed the process set forth in the Constitution to lawfully amend it to specifically bar this action -- to constrain all of the rights not explicitly delegated to government in one instance that the people felt was justified.

On December 5th 1933 the people changed their collective mind and restored the former liberty interest of consumption of intoxicating liquors.

No amendment has ever been passed to constrain the right of the people to keep and bear arms; indeed, the Second Amendment explicitly says the opposite.

Nor has any amendment ever been passed to constrain the right of the people to personal Liberty, which inherently involves the right to change one's location using the common tools and items of the day, for other than commercial purpose.

Nor has any amendment ever been passed to constrain the right of the people to intake intoxicating substancesother than alcohol.  Yet we have "drug laws", all of which are blatantly unconstitutional except as they apply to the movement of such substances for commercial purpose across state boundaries.

The problem is not that some newspaper published a list.

It's that the people permitted such a list to exist in the first place, that they refused to demand their God-given right to life and liberty be respected and that they be left alone in the exercise of both in the first instance.

And finally, there are no political parties, not even so-called "third parties", that are worthy of your support in this regard today, as exactly none of them stand on and will defend your unalienable rights.

Until you, your neighbor, and the rest of your town changes its mind in this regard, and actually pays attention to what Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and others believed and were willing to pledge their lives, wealth and sacred honor to defend and protect, there is no resolution to these problems -- nor any political body that gives a damn about any of it.

And that, my friends, is a fact.

Flight of the U.S.A.

Have reached the point of no return on our journey aboard the aircraft known as the United States of America

Imagine the United States as one big jumbo jet on a lengthy journey to what our travel brochures described as the land of “milk and honey.” We are all passengers aboard this marvelous airbus of state-of-the art comfort along with a litany of well-trained pilots, crew members and support personnel, each taking their respective shifts on this multi-generational journey. The flight is complete with in-flight movies, food service, all of the latest technology, along with a flight staff seemingly dedicated to our comfort.

As Americans, we boarded this aircraft long ago as we were promised a destination to the promised land of peace and prosperity by the flightplanners and smiling and most accommodating crew. We were impressed by the amenities of the aircraft, complete with logos of the stars and stripes on the plane’s exterior and patriotic songs playing in a loop in the boarding area. Oh how proud we were!

As passengers excited and enthusiastic about our future, we paid little or no attention to the backgrounds, bona-fides or intentions of the pilots or crew. Seeing them clothed in their dress flight uniforms, standing aboard the aircraft to warmly greet us as the patriotic music faded quietly behind us,  they instilled confidence in our flight experience.

We boarded, settled in and took off, leaving the airport in “every town,” U.S.A. behind us as a memory of what once was. Upon reaching cruising altitude, drinks were served, the in-flight movie began, and passengers removed their various vices anddevices from their carry-on bags to pass the time during this long flight.

As time passed, however, some passengers began looking out of the windows, seeing a different and unexpected landscape below. Alandscape that was not advertised in the travel brochures. Questions among a few passengers began slowly at first, but then the curiosity of many passengers began to grow. Some began to ask, just what is this destination of milk and honey? By then, however, the hour grew late as the aircraft approached the point of no return.

Point of no return

The phrase “point of no return,” abbreviated “PNR,” originated as a navigational phrase that basically means what it says. Pilots flying aircraft experience a point in their flightwhen their fuel situation is such that they cannot return to their point of departure and barring any other possibility, must continue to their destination. Metaphorically, I believe America has reached the point of no return on our long journey to tyranny and totalitarianism disguised on the travel brochures as the land of “milk and honey.”

I also believe that we, as Americans, must contemplate our PNR as it means that we’ve been on our metaphorical journey for quite some time. We’ve switched pilots and flightcrew during our journey, our pre-selected elected leaders, but never once changed ourflight path. Please think carefully about this, as it serves as a serious indictment of our elected leaders and those who put them in office. As passengers, most of us watched our unchanging flight path, doing nothing more than complain to the flight crew while dutifully remaining in our seats. Others remained transfixed with the in-flight movie designed from the start to divert our attention from the events around us. That tactic alone served the ever-changing pilots and crew well.

Of conspiracy theories and racism

Throughout our flight, some passengers attempted to warn others of our flight path, leading to a change of pilots and crew. This window dressing calmed the fears of a number of passengers who failed to realize that merely changing pilots and crew would not change our destination. Some passengers attempted to warn all of us of the flightplan and that the pilots and crew were complicit. For the first part of our flight, those astute passengers were rebuffed by accusations of “McCarthyism,” followed by the label of conspiracy theorists, and now, with the current pilot, racists.

Interspersed among the passengers and quietly assisting the pilots and flight crew have been representatives of the media, who have done much to quell the complaints from the cabin. Working in exquisite synchronicity, the pilots, crew and media were well trained by the Marxist ideology through the likes of Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, the Fabian Socialists and even the Communist Party U.S.A. They were in on the flight planfrom the start, and most of the pilots, crew, media and even some of the passengers graduated magna cum laude from these contemptible institutions of ideological Gomorrah.

Sadly, many passengers simply could not be bothered as they remained engrossed in the movie or their own devices, even becoming annoyed despite the ominous and obvious signs of trouble aboard the aircraft. The enlightened minority was rebuffed over and over. Complicity and complacency always work well in tandem.

We are still aboard this aircraft, and the commotion within the cabin has been increasing as we continue to travel at just below mach speed toward the critical point of no return. A number of previously complacent passengers changed from being complacent to inquisitive, and others from inquisitive to plotting the retaking of the aircraft. Yet, the spirit among many of the travelers en route to this unsavory destination continued to be split. In fact, a few of the spiritually renegade among us are still determined to join the mile high club, and have even been cheered on by both the complicit and complacent. After all, why not enjoy the flight while you still can, they reasoned.

Meanwhile, as the true flight plan of the aircraft began to become more well known among the passengers in the cabin, the accusations of conspiracy, lunacy, and the mother of all conversation stoppers, racism were shouted with greater tenor and more effective frequency. Some of the more vocal passengers, mentally and emotional bloodied by the accusations, chose silence. Others rebuffed the accusations but did little to inform or educate the other passengers of the greater picture, hoping that at the very least, their partial acquiescence would keep their frequent flier miles safe and intact. Sadly, no one will emerge with such benefits of this one-way flight.

The point of no return?

As I see it, the question today is whether we have reached the point of no return on our journey aboard the aircraft known as the United States of America. I believe we have, and as such, our options have become extremely limited, and are diminishing with every mile we travel.

We can chose to retake the aircraft, but in so doing, will have to fight a gauntlet of other passengers and flight crew. It will be ugly. We can choose to do nothing and simply hope for the best, in which case we deserve the welcome we receive upon landing at our ultimate destination.

Despite the obvious and adhering to their own normalcy bias, an overwhelmingly large number of passengers will continue to demand a change of pilots and crew, believing that will change the destination. Yet others will continue to be mesmerized by the in-flightmovie, opting to listen to lies of the crew and other passengers in on the flight plan from the beginning.

In any case, we are about to learn the fate of the “Maiden of the World,” Flight U.S.A.

Copyright © Douglas Hagmann
Douglas J. Hagmann and his son, Joe Hagmann host The Hagmann & Hagmann Report, a live Internet radio program broadcast each weeknight from 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET.
Douglas Hagmann, founder & director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and a multi-state licensed private investigative agency. Doug began using his investigative skills and training to fight terrorism and increase public awareness through his website.
Doug can be reached at: director@homelandsecurityus.comOlder articles by Doug Hagmann

John Kerry: Obama’s “Perfect Choice” For Secretary of State

When Barack Obama nominated John Kerry to be America’s next Secretary of State Friday afternoon, he called Kerry the “perfect choice” to replace Hillary Clinton. Stating that “few individuals … grasp our foreign policies as firmly as John Kerry,” Obama said the Senator will not “need a lot of on-the-job training.” He then praised Mr. Kerry’s combat service in the Vietnam War and his subsequent tenure of service in the Senate, where Kerry has been intimately involved in “every major foreign policy debate for the past 30 years.”

Notably, President Obama made no mention of what occurred after Kerry’s military service and before his political career. Perhaps this is because what Kerry did during that time would be difficult even for an adroit wordsmith like Obama to summarize with just a pithy phrase or two of adulation.

The historical record informs us that not only has John Kerry been on the wrong side of every major foreign policy issue for most of his adult life, including Iraq, Nicaragua and most recently in Syria, but he has routinely engaged in deception to conceal his folly. What’s worse, Kerry has a clear record of giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies, all the while never missing an opportunity to viciously trash our brave forces fighting against them.

With Obama’s nomination of Kerry to head the State Department, therefore, a look back at Kerry’s “service” to this country becomes more pertinent than ever:

After being discharged from the Navy in early 1970, Kerry joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and became a major figure in the so-called “peace” movement, whose hallmarks were a deep wellspring of hatred for the United States coupled with sympathy for America’s Communist enemy. In May 1970, Kerry, without government authorization, met personally with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations in Paris to discuss a list of “peace” proposals enumerated by Nguyen Thi Madame Binh, the top Viet Cong delegate to the Paris Peace talks. In the aftermath of that illegal meeting, Kerry strongly advised the U.S. Senate to accept Binh’s proposals.

At that time, Kerry himself acknowledged that his visit to Paris was “on the borderline” of legality. Actually, it extended far beyond that “borderline.” A federal law known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice prescribed severe punishment (including, in some cases, the death penalty) for any person who “without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly.”

During the ensuing months, Kerry, with increasing stridency, continued to exhort the U.S. to accept the Viet Cong peace proposals. His radical VVAW comrades went so far as to sign a “People’s Peace Treaty,” whose nine points were all extracted from a list of Viet Cong conditions for ending the war. Kerry fully supported this treaty.

On April 22, 1971, Kerry famously testified to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that many U.S. servicemen in Vietnam had “personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war …” “We learned the meaning of free fire zones,” added Kerry. “Shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of Orientals.” Moreover, Kerry emphasized that America’s “war crimes” in Southeast Asia were “not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”

Army reports that were unearthed decades later resoundingly discredited the claims of Kerry and his fellow VVAW members, proving those claims to be essentially a pack of lies. When Kerry was running for U.S. President in 2004, the publication U.S. Veteran Dispatch noted that Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony had “occurred while some of his fellow Vietnam veterans were known by the world to be enduring terrible suffering as prisoners of war in North Vietnamese prisons.” Similarly, retired General George S. Patton III charged that Kerry’s actions had given “aid and comfort to the enemy.” And the organization Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry stated:

“As a national leader of VVAW, Kerry campaigned against the effort of the United States to contain the spread of Communism. He used the blood of servicemen still in the field for his own political advancement by claiming that their blood was being shed unnecessarily or in vain…. Under Kerry’s leadership, VVAW members mocked the uniform of United States soldiers by wearing tattered fatigues marked with pro-communist graffiti. They dishonored America by marching in demonstrations under the flag of the Viet Cong enemy.”

Yet today, this same John Kerry has been nominated to serve as Secretary of State for the same nation he trashed so relentlessly in the ’70s. Only in America.

After graduating law school, working in a district attorney’s office, and serving a brief stint as Massachusetts’ lieutenant governor, Kerry was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984. Just a few months later—on April 18, 1985—Kerry and fellow Democratic Senator Tom Harkin traveled to Nicaragua to meet with President Daniel Ortega, whose Communist Sandinista government had strong ties to the Soviet Union and Cuba. Through Kerry and Harkin, President Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement on the condition that the Reagan Administration stop aiding the rebel Contras who were then at war with the Sandinistas. Reagan rejected the offer as a transparent “propaganda initiative” designed to influence an upcoming House vote on a $14 million Contra-aid package, but Kerry said: “I am willing … to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.” The House of Representatives ultimately voted against the Contra aid. The following day, Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200 million loan from the Soviets. Presumably this was one of the many “major foreign policy debates” in which, by President Obama’s reckoning, Kerry had so impressively distinguished himself.

Unchastened by the evidence of his own poor judgment, Kerry in 1986 supported a “fast for life” initiative by four U.S. military veterans protesting President Reagan’s “illegal and extraordinarily vicious wars against the poor of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.” Also in the 1980s, Senator Kerry hired Gareth Porter, a former fellow of the consistently pro-Soviet Institute for Policy Studies, as a legislative aide. And in 2002, Kerry sent his warmgreetings to a major gathering of the Democratic Socialists of America‘s Boston chapter.

Kerry’s next opportunity to distinguish himself as a man of exceedingly poor character was furnished by the conflict in Iraq. Initially, Kerry voted to authorize the use of military force against Saddam Hussein, a position the Senator based on his firm conviction—which he publicly articulated on numerous occasions—that Saddam was aggressively seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction. During the weeks and months leading up to the March 2003 U.S. invasion, for example, Kerry made the following statements:

• “It would be naive to the point of great danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will misjudge, provoke and stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it.”
• “If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community’s already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement …”
• “Without question we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal and murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. And we all know the litany of his offenses.”
• “People have forgotten that for seven and a half years, we found weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq]. We were destroying weapons of mass destruction.”

But as the political winds shifted, Kerry and his fellow congressional Democrats began to portray, with ever-growing frequency, the Iraq War as a foreign-policy debacle that had been launched hastily and without justifiable cause.

In 2004, for instance, Kerry charged that President Bush had not only “misled the American people” about the threat posed by Saddam, but also had “arbitrarily” decided that the “time for diplomacy is over” and “rushed our nation to war.” During a presidential debate that October, Kerry said: “Saddam Hussein didn’t attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaeda attacked us.”

Not content to smear only the Commander-in-Chief, Senator Kerry also accused U.S. servicemen of “terrorizing” the Iraqi people. On December 4, 2005, he told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation: “And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women …”

For John Kerry, it was 1971 all over again.

In recent years, as columnist Arnold Ahlert has so aptly written, Kerry “has been the federal government’s highest-ranking apologist for Syrian President Bashar Assad.” Indeed it was Kerry who repeatedly tried to undermine the Bush administration’s efforts to isolate the dictator. Under Obama, Kerry has pursued with renewed vigor his impulse to engage Assad. During a January 2009 visit to Damascus, for instance, the Senator listened attentively to Assad’s admonition that Washington must “move away from a policy based on dictating decisions” to Syria. Kerry, in turn, said: “Unlike the Bush administration that believed you could simply tell people what to do and walk away and wait for them to do it, we believe you have to engage in a discussion.” In April 2010, Kerry again metwith Assad and called Syria “an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region.”

Forty-thousand dead bodies later, one tries vainly to reconcile John Kerry’s track record with President Obama’s glowing description of him as the “perfect choice” for Secretary of State. One can only ponder with trepidation what dark days lay ahead for America with this hate-America veteran taking the reins at the State Department.