Divemedic

Show me more money

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that I think traffic tickets are a form of extortion. I talk about this enough that I have assigned the topic its own label.

The last time I got a ticket was in 2001. I paid the $184 fine. Eleven years later, I began getting letters saying that the court miscalculated the fine, and I actually owed another $32. I refused to pay it. I pointed out that the statute of limitations has passed, and they can’t do a thing about it.

So they sent me to collections. Now I get letters from a collection agency, and have been since last August. So far, I have received 22 letters. Now they are claiming that I owe $45. The letters have been increasing in frequency: from one a month last August, to one a week now. I have repeatedly told them that they can’t put it on my credit report because it is over 7 years old, they can’t do a thing about it legally, so I have no intention of paying. Since I am not going to pay it, they might as well save their money and stop contacting me.
 
Nope. Still getting the letters. Even though collection agencies are legally supposed to stop when you tell them to, in this case they are not required to, because they are collecting for the government. Another case of the government exempting themselves from the laws that the rest of us must follow.

Still not going to pay them. Still, how desperate is the government for more funding when they are reviewing cases that are a dozen years old?

By Divemedic, ago

Honest discussion

Early this morning, an Orlando police officer attempted a traffic stop on Bruton Boulevard near Chandler Street, which is near the corner of LB McLeod and John Young Parkway. He got into a gunfight with the occupants of the vehicle, and was severely injured in the exchange of gunfire. Two officers were shot, one of them fatally, on that corner 13 years ago. Some things never change.

23-year-old Demetrius Patterson was taken into custody shortly before 8
a.m. saying Patterson has been arrested 42 times prior to the shooting. Arrested 42 times by the age of 23. I looked up his arrest record at the Orange County Clerk’s office website. Some of his arrests included selling drugs, 3 arrests for burglary, brandishing a firearm, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, along with two paternity suits from two different women, and that is just his adult record in only one county.

This area is in the middle of Florida’s 5th congressional district (changed to the Tenth in 2013), a district that is staunchly Democrat (formerly Republican, before the Democrat-sponsored gerrymandering redistricting).The neighborhood where the shooting occurred is called “Richmond Heights,” and is bordered on the east by Bruton Boulevard and on the west by President Barack Obama Parkway. The area is over 80% black. It is also a high crime area. It is bordered by the Pine Hills neighborhood to the north, which locals refer to as “Crime Hills.”

Here is a youtube video that illustrates what is typical of the area:

So now you have a picture of what is going on.

The black community is filled with young males who are stealing, robbing, killing, dealing drugs, and breaking the law. The nuclear family has all but ceased to exist in the black community. These young criminals are then getting women pregnant, and the cycle starts all over.

Before accusing me or anyone else of racism and blaming us for the problem, why not start where the problem lies?

By Divemedic, ago

Who knows?

George Zimmerman is back in the news. This time, it is because he is a wannabe paramedic. Apparently, he rescued a family from their overturned vehicle on Thursday. This makes it appear to me that he is a genuinely good person, who actually wants to help people. The kind of person that I want to have as a neighbor. If Mr. Zimmerman were to move in next to me, I would invite him to dinner.
Conspicuously absent from any of the stories of this event is a description of the family he rescued, or their names. Could it be because they were not of a skin shade that supports the current narrative in the press? I have posted on this before: the press never notes race in a story, unless it makes whites look bad, then it is reported whether it needs to be or not.

By Divemedic, ago

Attitude changes

Last week, I was doing some online research for a Zimmerman post, and I ran across an interesting set of comments on an article about attempts to repeal Stand Your Ground and other self defense laws. There were commenters who were saying that they learned an important lesson from the Zimmerman case:

First commenter: Listening to tv/radio interviews, these uninformed people keep saying they want stand your ground repealed!!
Don’t
the ignorant idiots know that SYG was NOT used in this case??? It has
absolutely nothing to do with the Zimmerman trial???
And why does the
media keep reporting on this when they SHOULD know SYG has nothing to
do with the case??? Why don’t they tell these idiots that when
interviewing them???

Second Commenter: Whether the law is repealed or not I don’t intend to wind up the victim
of a thug. I’ll shoot first and take my chances in court.

Third Commenter:  just make sure it’s in the dark and don’t call 911, because obviously ,
calling 911 is a mistake, just pop the thug and leave the trash on the
curb.

and after that, there were a bunch of comments agreeing with the third comment.  The Zimmerman case has done much to undermine the people’s perception of law and law enforcement on both sides of the issue. Instead of describing the law and educating people on the truth and the law, the powers that be instead jumped on the bandwagon and, together with the media, have inflamed tensions.

Now no one trusts the law as much as they did before. Law is useless without the compliance of the people.

By Divemedic, ago

Not getting involved

Two women are carjacked in Orlando. The suspects in the case are described as being in their late teens to early 20s and ranging from 5-feet-5 to 5-feet-10. The police have released sketches of two of the three men who are suspected of committing the crime and are asking people to come forward if they recognize them.

I notice a few things here: when describing the men, you will note that there is no mention of their race, even though the pictures are clearly of black males. Something that I notice is that press reports of a crime where a white person is the victim and a black the suspect, the races of the people involved is never mentioned, even when it is important to the story. When it is a black victim and a white assailant, race is always mentioned, even when it is irrelevant.

The Channel 6 story is the same– no mention of race in the story. Read the comments here, if you want to see how attitudes are shifting. The entire Zimmerman affair has done a lot of damage to race relations in this country.

If I report seeing a person that matches the description of either of these guys to law enforcement, it can be used as evidence that I am a racist. I will take no chances.

By Divemedic, ago

Liar

On Friday, the President gave a speech to the nation, where he talked about the Zimmerman/Martin shooting. Here is the video and transcript of the speech. A money quote:

…if Trayvon Martin was
of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?  And
do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr.
Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?  And
if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to
me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws…

 As a person who has supposedly graduated from Harvard Law, you would expect that Obama would have been taught that a person following another does not rise to the level of deadly force, nor does it even allow a person to use non-deadly force. In other words, just because someone is following you does not mean that you can punch or shoot him. 
Now since we can be fairly sure that a person who has graduated from Harvard Law, was the editor of the Law Review, and supposedly even taught law classes at Harvard would be knowledgeable enough to understand this concept, we must assume that he is being deliberately misleading. (In other words, lying.) The question then beomes: Why?
Now I have always been of the opinion that when a person asks the question of “Why do they?” or “Why don’t they?”, the answer is almost always: “Money.” I don’t think that is the case here. I think it is bigger than that.
It appears to me that the President is trying to stir up racial animosity and discord, but for what purpose? Is he trying to distract voters from his dismal record, and from the IRS scandal, Fast and Furious, his poor foreign policy, the NSA spying scandal, and other missteps? Possibly.

Is this just a part of his “under the radar” gun control effort? Chances are high there. Gun owners as a Democrat scapegoat is an old story.

Is he trying to stir up the black vote for the next election? Probably not. That election is too far in the future, and the American public has too short of an attention span for this to have an effect on the election a year and a half from now.
Could this discord be designed to cause a race war that will be used to cause enough strife for the President to declare martial law and suspend elections? Possibly, but HIGHLY unlikely. There are too many people, both within and without the military, that would oppose such action.
This could be a combination of the above, or there may be other reasons. There are more questions here than answers, but one thing is for sure: The President is lying.
By Divemedic, ago

They know not what they do

The people are marching. and protesting. Why? To have the ‘stand your ground’ law repealed because of the perceived racism of the Zimmerman case. The only problem is that blacks benefit from the SYG law at a rate far out of proportion to their presence in the state’s population.

Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, despite the fact that only 13% of the state’s population is black. This probably has to do with the fact that 52% of murders in the US are committed by blacks. (pdf alert)

With one third of the defendants in homicide cases who have invoked SYG being black, and 55% of those cases being successful, blacks are far more likely to suffer should this law be repealed.

One hundred thirty three people in the state of Florida have used a
“Stand Your Ground” defense. Of these claims, 73 were considered
“justified” (55 percent), while 39 resulted in criminal convictions and
21 cases are still pending.

Forty four African Americans in the state of Florida have claimed a
“Stand Your Ground” defense. Of these claims, 24 were considered
“justified” (55 percent), while 11 resulted in convictions and nine
cases are still pending.

Of the 76 white people who have used the defense, 40 were considered
“justified” (less than 53 percent), while 25 were convicted and 11 cases
are still pending.

Ten Hispanics have used the defense, seven of them successfully,
according to the database, which included George Zimmerman as a “Stand
Your Ground” defendant.

By Divemedic, ago