Workers’ comp claim waiting to happen

So Pilot came to get the damaged safe from yesterday’s post. Let me start by letting all of you know just how large of a safe we are talking about. It is 60 inches tall, 42 wide, and 25 deep. It weighs 860 pounds while mounted on the transport skids. With the size of this safe in mind, I was quite surprised when Pilot freight showed up with a trailer that was 4 feet tall and 6 feet long and looked a lot like this one:

It was being towed by an F150. The pickup crew was a pair of men in their 30’s and a teenage boy. They originally delivered this thing in a truck with a hydraulic liftgate and used a pallet jack. 
The only equipment they had for moving it was an appliance dolly like this one. Note that the safe weights 100 pounds more than the dolly is rated to carry. Not only that, but the nose plate of the dolly wasn’t long enough to lift the safe, so two of this team of rocket surgeons tips the safe over while the third member of the team stood under the tipping safe holding the dolly, so he could catch the safe with it as it tipped over. It made me nervous just watching them. 
So then they wheel this thing down my driveway, with all three of them on the downhill side of the load. I could just picture this thing getting away from them and running one of them over. Once they arrived at the back end of the trailer, they tipped the safe over until the dolly was lying on the floor, and then lifted the bottom of the safe and slid it in. 
I can only imagine how many on the job injuries these guys have, and they probably have no idea why. The good news is that the safe is out of here, I didn’t have to call 911 for the paramedics to come rescue a Pilot employee trapped under a safe like Wyle E. Coyote, and Amazon already processed the refund to my credit card. 

Amazon service problem

My gun safe was full, so I decided to order another. The one that I selected was a Winchester Big Daddy. I looked around, and my LGS had them for $2000, plus delivery and taxes. I found one on Amazon for $1735 with free delivery, plus sales tax. I ordered it on May 6.

At the time of ordering, I had to select the delivery date. Of the available times and dates, the one that worked best with my schedule was May 17 from 3-6 pm. The shipping company was listed as Pilot freight. They got it as far as Tampa, and turned it over to a subcontractor for final delivery. That was where things went sideways.

I got a call on May 15, telling me that they would not have a delivery crew available on the 17th, and offered to deliver it at noon on the 16th. I explained that I had a job, had scheduled this delivery 2 weeks in advance, and couldn’t do it on the 16th. We finally wound up rescheduling the delivery for the 20th, between 3-6. They showed up at 12:30. My wife hurried home and things got worse.

As they were delivering the safe, you can see on my security video where the dial for the lock came off. The delivery guy picked up the dial and stuck it back on. My wife, not realizing that the safe was broken, signed for the delivery. The safe is useless and will not lock. It is still on the skids.

I wound up buying the one from the LGS and paying $250 for the delivery. I called Amazon (they have a 30 day guarantee) on May 21 and arranged to have the broken safe picked up. We made an appointment for May 27th from 12-6. You guessed it- they didn’t show and stated that when they made the reservation, they didn’t realize it was a holiday. Now we have another reservation for June 1 (today) from 12-2.

If this one is a no-show, I am going to dispute the charge on my credit card. This wreck of an experience has been a month in the making.

Orlando goes ecofascist

The city of Orlando is about to ban plastic straws, bags, and containers from all city property.

“This covers … public right of way like food trucks,” Castro said.

Ironic last name aside, will this result in traffic stops if you are seen on the public right of way with a McDonald’s cup? There is also a city ordinance about scooping your dog’s poop. Maybe you can use bags made from a liberal chick’s underarm hair.

May issue guardians

Florida recently passed a law which expands the “Guardian Program” to include teachers. The program is designed to arm select school employees to receive special training. Any school district that establishes a guardian program gets additional funding and grant money in order to implement the program.

Now that the students are finished with their school year, teachers are in the midst of what is known as “post planning days” and learning about planned changes for the next school year. Thanks to the fact that the school district gets to pick who is a guardian, the system is going the way that ALL “may issue” programs go. What teachers are hearing about the Guardian Program is:

Although they can legally take part in the Guardian Program, teachers will still not be permitted to take part. Instead, administrators will be the only ones permitted to take part. Principals, superintendents, and some county level office staff will be the only ones permitted to take part. Anyone who is taking part will get a free gun, ammo, training, and a stipend for having the extra certification.

The school districts have turned this “may issue” system into a cash cow for earning grant money and redistributing some of that grant money to select, politically connected individuals. The guardian program has been corrupted to the point where it is completely useless.

Wrong Amendment there, sport

Billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, one of the (seemingly) fifty 2020 Democrat Presidential Candidates, and former Hillary 2016 supporter, has a supposed “compromise” way that he would like to rewrite the Second Amendment. Here is a quote:

I would go to change the Second Amendment in ways that people probably wouldn’t expect. One, every American citizen has the right to own a gun. Two, the federal government will never be allowed to ever confiscate that gun from an individual. Next, he said states should have wide latitude to determine gun policy within their borders. States have the right to manage the ownership—the purchase, ownership, and management—of guns owned and held within their borders.

In other words, he wants to outlaw firearms at the state level by not applying the Second Amendment to the states. He is looking at the wrong Amendment. What he REALLY wants to do is get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment. That would open a HUGE can of worms for him and the rest of the Communist Democrat party. Once the Fourteenth was gone, Roe v. Wade is gone. Slavery would be up to the states. So would every other item in the Amendments: voting rights, Religion, free speech, and even jury trials.

Good luck with that. 

Not worth it

Here is a story about a philanthropist paying off the student loans of an entire graduating class. While that is nice, it isn’t the point of this post. What really stunned me was this quote:

In the weeks before graduating from Morehouse on Sunday, 22-year-old finance major Aaron Mitchum drew up a spreadsheet to calculate how long it would take him to pay back his $200,000 in student loans – 25 years at half his monthly salary, per his calculations.

Why would you go to college and select a major where your career would cost you half of your salary for the next 25 years? This proves to me that this college doesn’t teach its finance majors very well. There are a few ways that this quote can be taken, but each of them shows a lack of financial knowledge on the part of Mr. Mitchum.

A simple calculation on a student loan of $200,000 yields a payment of $1400 a month. That means his salary is expected to be about $48,000 a year. If he was hired to work at WalMart for their minimum wage of $15 an hour and started work the day that he would have started college, he would be 55 years old before the college degree put him ahead.

Instead of demanding free college, perhaps graduating high school seniors should be looking at trade school.

First Amendment

Assange is being charged with espionage for publishing information that the government deems sensitive. The government responds by insisting Assange is “not a journalist.” I disagree. The government does not get to decide who is and who is not a journalist. For the government to have such power would render the First Amendment meaningless. Imagine a President who can simply declare that some news organization or another is not the press that is entitled to First Amendment protections, and simply shuts them down. 

Teacher arrested for gun in class

A Pinellas county teacher was arrested for having a gun inside of her backpack, which was in her classroom. She had recently been told that her contract for teaching with the county would not be renewed for the coming school year.

When she was asked why she had the weapon, she replied, “Ask your Governor.” The woman has a concealed weapons permit, so she was charged with carrying a firearm in an unauthorized location, a misdemeanor. Read the comments. The readership of the anti gun Tampa Bay Times is all over this, saying that this is why the law arming teachers should never have been passed. So a woman who was breaking the law by illegally carrying a weapon somehow means that the teachers who want to do so lawfully are to blame?

It seems that, like all anti gun media, the entire story is not being told. As far as I know, this is not being reported anywhere else.

1 She is registered to vote with no party affiliation.
2 She is the membership director of a left wing, racist socialist group called the “Black is back coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations,” whose motto states: There is no peace: Africa and Africans are at war! U.S. to the world Comply or Die!” Here is a screenshot from their Facebook page:

3. This group (Soto is on the steering committee)  has a list of demands that includes:

We declare our human right to armed self-defense from the violent attacks by white citizens and the assaults and murders by the domestic military occupation forces that include various police organizations. We fully recognize that in a struggle for self-determination any act of resistance by the oppressed is an act of self-defense. (emphasis added)

This, in my opinion, is a domestic terrorist organization, and this arrest may very well have prevented a terror attack on that school.

4. The group recently had a meeting where they had this to say:

Our Coalition has concluded that elections are not the only method of struggle and we have responded to the 1963 declaration by Malcolm X of “the ballot or the bullet,” with the timely refrain that it will be the ballot and the bullet.

5. Soto has been the owner of a Florida corporation since 2012. That corporation is listed as a non profit and is doing business as USB HOOD APPRENTICESHIP ACADEMY FOR GIRLS and is apparently doing business out of Soto’s house, which is located a block from the school.

There is a lot of suspicious activity here.