July 2010

I wanted to go SCUBA diving with my wife. My wife wants to buy an IPad. I told her that I thought we didn’t need an IPad, because we already own 3 desktop Windows machines, a Windows laptop, an Apple Laptop, and 3 smartphones. (One desk top and one laptop are mine, the rest are hers).

She has this compulsive need to buy the latest gizmo every time one comes out. We cannot afford to do both, as my wife was laid off from her job last month. After this discussion, I gave in and told her that she could buy it. She is now not speaking to me, because she didn’t like my tone of voice when I caved. Not only must I give in, but apparently I have to ENJOY caving in so I can buy her something that not only is unnecessary, but that is redundant in that we already own other things that can do what the IPad can do.

Oh, and to boot- she gave me a hard time because I bought a copy of Weird Science for $10 when I ordered my text books for the semester.

OK, rant over.

When I was in high school (many, many years ago) my football coach used to explain to us the difference between involvement and commitment:

When you eat breakfast, the chicken that provided the eggs is involved, but the pig that provided the bacon is committed.

Coaches, especially in the south, have a way with words. Although it is a bit outlandish, my coach’s words reveal an important truth: it is easy to be involved with something, but it takes a lot more to be committed to it. So it is with liberty and rights.

When a company opens a location, the owners of that company risk very little. They have only risked a relatively small amount of money in the endeavor, and are insulated from any personal risk by the very nature of corporate law. If anything should go horribly wrong, the only thing that the nominal owner stands to lose is his investment cash. In other words, stockholders are chickens that are only involved with the business.

It is for that reason that companies make decisions that affect only the bottom line. After all, they are there to protect the owners’ interests, and the only interest the owner has, is to get his investment money back, with a little extra for his risk. It is this truth which allows government to use the law of unintended consequences to control a business without seeming to.

Let’s apply this to gun laws: As a government entity, I pass a law allowing people to carry concealed weapons, but I place a clause in the law allowing a business owner to opt out of the law. Many property rights people will applaud this law, and think that property rights are protected.

The problem is in the law of unintended consequences. Other laws hold a property owner liable for any act that they allow to take place on their property, but hold them harmless from those acts as long as the property owner has taken reasonable steps to prevent that act. You see the position that you have just placed a corporation in, don’t you? The business is now liable for the actions of any concealed carrier that they allow onto their property, and held harmless for the actions of armed killers, as long as they post a sign that says “no guns.”

The right of property owners has already been shredded. No property owner who wants to avoid a potential multi million dollar lawsuit would allow concealed carry.

Decision making process:

           Will I be held liable if CCW shoots someone?                                        
Yes: Post sign prohibiting carry

           If I prohibit carry, will I be held liable if a criminal kills my customers?
No: Post signs prohibiting carry

Back to our breakfast analogy: The corporate business owners, wanting to protect the only skin they have in the game, are our chickens. The business posts the signs banning CCW. The public who frequents that business is now at the mercy of the armed criminals who know that they are now safe to practice their trade, and the business is safely insulated from all liability when it happens.

Congratulations, guns are now banned in public, and you have just cheered them on as they used your rights to make bacon.

The Obama administration claims that the Republicans are obstructing his agenda. I can’t imagine how that can be the truth, since both houses of Congress are roughly 58% Democrat. It seems to me that since they are in control of two of the three branches of government, they can do as they please.

It shows a lack of leadership and reflects a President’s unpopularity when he cannot even lead his own party, much less an entire nation. Regardless of what you see in the press, a sure sign that a President is losing a grip on the electorate is when his own party makes him irrelevant.

Personally, I think a gridlocked government is best- when they can’t get anything accomplished, they do less damage.

When doing some random surfing, I discovered some facts about the Federal Government:

– There are 30,000 staffers who work on Capitol Hill, supporting 535 Congressmen.
– There are 487 staffers at the Whitehouse, but that number does not include working employees like chefs, housekeepers, gardeners, or security personnel- this number only includes management.
– The Federal Government directly employs over 3 million people in the civilian sector, plus another 1.4 million in the military branches, with another 500 thousand in the reserves (not counting the National Guard’s 350 thousand)
 Compare that to state and local government:
-There are 3.8 million people employed by all state and local governments combined.

There are about 8.2 million working directly for federal, state and local government, or about 1 in 12 American workers. That number does not include contractors.

It is worse than that. There is also a large group of people who receive government benefits, and will lose those benefits if they get jobs. In essence, they are employed by the government to NOT work.

There are 7 million who are on disability.
There are 23 million who get food stamps and another 9.5 million who receive WIC.
There are 31 million children who get free or reduced meals at school.
There are 54 million on Social Security, 41 million on Medicare, and 43 million on Medicaid.

Despite spending several trillion dollars on the problem, the poverty level has remained near 12% ever since the United States abolished the gold standard in 1973, with the current level being 12.7%. It is important to note that the method the Government is using to calculate the poverty line only takes inflation into account, instead of the more accurate model which compares the cost of living to household income. Using this method, the current cost of living has risen from 30% of individual income in 1965 to 50% of household income in 2003. Where it used to take one income to support a family, it now takes two.

This means that the effective poverty rate has more than doubled since the “War on Poverty” began, when expressed as a real percentage of household income. Despite spending trillions of dollars fighting the “war”, the “war” has been lost.

What we are left with is a bloated government that only functions to oppress.

or we could otherwise title this post: Does anyone in Congress own a calculator, and do they know how to use it?

The new law requiring businesses to issue a 1099 to everyone that they pay more than $600 a year to is expected to involve 40 million businesses. Each business will see the number of 1099s that they issue increase by about 200 per year each. That is an expected 8 billion 1099 forms. This measure is expected to bring in an extra $2 billion in tax revenues- or about 25 cents per extra form. The problem here is that, assuming it takes IRS employees 1 minute to cross reference and check each form and the math it causes, it will take over 64,000 man-years to review the forms. This will cause the IRS to hire that many new employees, and at $40K per year, will cost the government $2.6 billion to enforce, a net loss of $600 million a year.

This measure is not designed to bring more money into government coffers. If you read closely, payments made by credit card are exempt from the reporting requirement. This measure is probably designed to bring more money into the banks, who collect a 2% transaction fee for each credit card  payment, by forcing businesses to use credit cards.

I want to look at this video again. If you remember, this was video of armed Black Panthers intimidating voters.

Now this is video of one of those two men at a rally, explaining his motivation:

These videos piss me off more than you can imagine. You racist piece of shit terrorist. I have a question for you , you dipshit. You support Obama, who is half white. You say you have every last white man iota. Do Obama’s white iotas count?

Here is a reminder for you: I will not stand for intimidation in my voting precinct. If you bring weapons, so do I. My weapon will be much more effective than a nightstick. Once you bring a weapon, you have declared that the time for democratic solutions, for peaceful debate, and for cooperation have ended.

You want a revolution? You want to kill crackers? Bring it.

Say those words to a medic, and you will nearly always get a groan. In my first due, we have a set of three nursing homes located on the same block. We have nicknamed them the “Triad of Death.” I have written before about how funny the interaction can be between nursing home nurses and paramedics. The video in that post nails it, like the author was there with me (I don’t even know who made that video.)

Now before I continue, I would like to make note that this is not a slam on all nurses, and note that I slam incompetent medics as well as incompetent nurses. If you are offended by what I am about to say, maybe you should look in the mirror and decide if you are the nurse I am writing about.

I responded to one of the triad for a report of “CPR in progress.” This particular nursing home has a large central common room where with about 30 rooms that open directly into it. One of the staff members was standing at the entrance smoking a cigarette, and told me the patient’s room number, the rest of the staff was serving breakfast to the majority of the residents. When I got to the patients room, the door was closed and I entered to find a patient who was in a neatly made up bed, pulseless and apneic, and not a single staff member in the room. This patient was warm to the touch and had no lividity.

A staff member came in behind me and asked me to keep the door closed because seeing our dead patient was disturbing the other residents’ breakfast. I asked if the patient had a DNRO, and she replied that the patient did not. I was stunned that a nursing home would abandon a patient like this. We worked the asystole code, and the patient was declared dead at the hospital.

I filed a complaint. How far did it go? Nowhere. The manager of the facility said her nurse panicked, and was performing CPR when the phone rang, so she went to answer it. The manager then filed a counter complaint against us, because she claims that one of us laughed out loud during the code. We most certainly did not, because I was way too pissed off to find anything funny. That is a standard defense of the incompetent, though:

1 Lie
2 Deny
3 Demand proof
4 Make counter accusations

I cannot even contact the patient’s family to let them know why the guy is dead, because of HIPAA.They will probably never know.

So Jimmy Buffet, who makes some of the most irritating songs ever, thinks the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is George W Bush’s fault. Let’s take a look at that claim:

The Deepwater Horizon was designed and specified in 1998, and laid down in 2000, all during the Clinton presidency. The majority of construction was during the Clinton Presidency, and the rig was delivered a month into Bush’s tenure, on February 23, 2001.

While Bush was President, the rig was considered to be a lucky rig. It held the record for deepest oil well in the world, and drilled to a depth that was 5,000 feet deeper than called for in the rig’s specifications. The rig drilled wells in at least 4 separate oil fields during the Bush Presidency.

In 2009 the agency responsible for inspecting rigs in the United States, the Minerals Management Service, applauded the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety. In February of 2010, the rig began drilling at the site of the disaster that would take place in April of that year. That site is located in the Macondo oil field, an oil field in which BP obtained the rights to drill in 2009. Every one of these events occurred during the Obama Presidency.

So explain to me how exactly this spill is Bush’s fault. This incredible attitude of blaming Bush for things that took place years after he left office has got to stop.

As a side note: Living in Florida means being exposed to Jimmy Buffet’s annoying tunes nearly everywhere you go. While I do like the food at his restaurant, his annoying music and frat boy fans really bug me. This guy was a has been nearly 20 years ago. I can’t believe he still has such a following.

I just finished Jury Duty. I was last called to serve in November of 2008. I truly believe in serving, for if you expect to receive a jury trial, one must be willing to serve on a jury. As far as I am concerned, Jury Duty and Voting are the two biggest responsibilities we have as citizens. In my opinion, his is one of the few times when the state ensures that you have a right to something that must be provided by someone else. Let me detail my experiences and thoughts:

First, they sent a jury summons to 200 people, and less than 110 actually showed up. Since Florida selects juries from Driver’s license records, anyone who is sent a summons and does not respond either doesn’t want to serve, or has an incorrect address on their license, and should have their license suspended until they contact the court. If after contacting the court, the citizen states that he or she is not willing to serve, then that citizen has voluntarily forfeited the right to jury trial for any charges or lawsuits that are brought within 24 months after he or she makes themselves willing and able to serve. There can be exceptions made for hardship cases, and asking to postpone jury duty for a period of not more than 180 days will not count as a refusal to serve. (this will allow people who have emergencies to take care of them without having to forfeit any rights). No one LIKES wasting a day on jury duty, but it must be done if you want a seat at the table.

I sat in a jury waiting room from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. We were held until the judges decided whether or not they would need a jury. I think this is inefficient and disrespectful to the jury pool. These cases are schedule months, weeks, and sometimes years in advance. There is no way to know a week (or even two days) beforehand how many jurors will be needed on a given day? (The case I went to jury selection for was 16 months in the making. Seriously- in 16 months no one knew that there would be a jury needed?) Maybe people wouldn’t complain as much if there wasn’t so much sitting around. Schedule, people. It isn’t hard. The only people who are worse at scheduling is the cable TV installer.

The next thing is: There were only two cases that day that wound up needing juries. 200 people summoned, 110 show (55%), 65 (60% of those who showed up) went to Voir Dire (jury selection), and 14 actually served on a jury.

Jury selection took 3 hours, and the questions asked  and speeches made by the two attorneys during voir dire were jury tampering, as far as I am concerned. Here is how I think it should go: pick people at random from the jury pool. As long as they are not closely related to the participants in the case (family, neighbor, or boss/coworker), then you are on the jury. No excuses from anyone. You are it. I don’t want to hear about how voir dire ensures an impartial jury. The last thing those two attorneys wanted was an impartial jury. They were looking for advantage, not impartiality.

Eliminate the waiting and the voir dire, and the length of jury duty would be reduced by 11 hours. It would also eliminate scumbags lying to get out of jury duty by telling the attorneys that they think the defendant is guilty as soon as they see him.

Illinois is broke. They have a $12 billion deficit, are $5 billion in arrears, and cannot pay for the most basic of services. (Although I bet politician payrolls are being met) So what are the politicians worried about? Passing new gun laws in the wake of McDonald, thus ensuring another expensive legal battle that they will lose in the end.

Good going, idiots.

Oh, read the linked article. The system is collapsing.