Government

US is Unreliable Ally

The US has a history of being an unreliable ally. Just ask Afghanistan. Or Vietnam. So it’s no surprise that South Korea is having some doubts about the commitment that the US has made to defend them. So when Biden announces that US nuclear armed submarines will be docking in South Korea is a sign that the US will extend its nuclear umbrella to that country, I’m sure they are taking it with a HUGE grain of salt.

It’s the same reason why the Philippines says that US bases in their nation can’t be used for offensive operations.

By Divemedic, ago

More Takings

This woman owed $15,000 in property taxes on her condo. The government took her home and auctioned it off for $40,000 (a fraction of what it was worth). They kept all of the money, and not just what they were owed. She is suing, claiming that the overage was an unconstitutional taking. The case has made it all the way to SCOTUS. The state claims that the woman didn’t lose out because the mortgage and her HOA fees are cancelled under state law.

I agree that the woman is the victim of an unconstitutional taking without compensation. Whether or not her mortgage and HOA fees are still payable is a different issue, and doesn’t change the fact that the state took what was never theirs to take.

The article mentions a Detroit case where a homeowner lost a home due to owed taxes, the state auctioned it off for $1, and the winning bidder subsequently sold the home for over $300,000. The article then mentions that a SCOTUS ruling may force local governments to sell properties for their fair market value, and not simply auction them off for a fraction of what they are worth. I believe that they SHOULD be forced to sell for fair market value. After all, if I sell a home to myself or to an associate, the IRS will certainly force me to pay taxes on the capital gain at fair market value.

County and local governments complain that such a system would cripple local government property tax collection, but that is horse hockey. We don’t (or at least aren’t supposed to) determine the constitutionality of a law by how much money the government will lose on the deal.

Let’s see how this plays out.

By Divemedic, ago

Pass an Amendment

Congress wants to pass a law requiring that SCOTUS adopt a code of conduct. I don’t think this is Constitutional. Any rules for SCOTUS would be in Article III of the Constitution, and there is nothing there granting Congress authority over the Supreme Court. If they want to do this, an Amendment would be required.

It will be interesting to see how SCOTUS reacts to this. The left wants badly to bring this court to heel, or even impeach a justice or two.

By Divemedic, ago

Victim of own inattention

Colorado is now the most crime ridden state in the US. A former cop complains that the police are leaving the profession because they don’t like all of the monitoring and second guessing that they are being forced to endure.

“Law enforcement in Colorado is facing a historic recruiting, retention, and morale crisis,” Evans said. “Nobody wants to be a cop. The cops that were cops are fleeing the profession in droves. And that’s the second prong of this kind of two-pronged issue that’s driving crime up in Colorado.” Specifically, according to Evans, one of the policies that “broke the back” of law enforcement was the passage of SB 217.

According to Evans, two parts of SB 217 are particularly demoralizing to law enforcement. The first was the requirement that every encounter be extensively documented, adding significant paperwork to an already demanding job, and the second was a body camera requirement.

What brought that law about was events like randomly shooting people from a moving car because you find it to be funny.

One of the officers admitted in court during the trial: “We went out that evening and concealed our presence so people wouldn’t flee and we’d be able to get close enough to shoot them… and we were actually having fun shooting them”

Or cops threatening people, simply because they can.

“You seem like an argumentative person. You need to take your hand, go like this, and pull your head out of your ass. Don’t mess with me, I am not the guy you want to mess with. You hear me??”

Even people like me, who worked with cops for decades and haven’t had so much as a traffic ticket in more than 20 years, yet get threatened with death because a cop wants to prove who is boss now see police for what they are- criminal gangs with badges.

Cops have no one to blame for this but themselves. There are loads of bad cops out there. Now we can argue as to just how many of the cops out there are bad, but they have to take responsibility for the “thin blue line” nonsense where cops are not cleaning up the problems in their own ranks because they view the very public that they are supposed to serve as being the enemy. Get rid of your own bad cops, clean up your own ranks.

The police are making enemies of both sides in this conflict.

By Divemedic, ago

Triad? No. Spear? Maybe

It has long been said that the US has a “nuclear triad” made up of nuclear weapons that could be delivered by three different means- bombers, ground based missiles, and submarine launched missiles. Is that even accurate any longer? The short answer is no, it isn’t.

Our ground based bombers are no longer available as a part of the triad. Sure, we still have deliverable warheads, but there is no alert force, no SIOP, and no organized plan for delivering them. In fact, the US only has 66 nuclear capable strategic bombers remaining in our inventory. The B-1 bomber used to be able to deliver nuclear weapons. Nope. Not anymore. The B-52 can, but those bombers are older than the grandfathers of the pilots who now fly them. The B-2 Spirit can, but there are only a handful of those. At best, we could drop a few weapons, but the truth is that there just isn’t a way to deliver enough warheads by bombers to make that a credible deterrent. Don’t believe me, ask the Air Force, who has said:

You’re going to need more aviators, you’re going to need more Security Forces [personnel],  more maintainers … more bombers … infrastructure improvements at the [alert] facilities, and you’re going to need more tankers.

What about the Air Force’s ground based ICBMs? You mean the LGM-30 that was designed with a 10 year lifespan, but has been in service for over 50 years? The Minuteman III began development in 1964 and entered service in 1970 with a force of 550 missiles. There are 440 of them left, and 400 of them are on alert. The missiles originally carried a total of 1,500 warheads- most had three warheads each. As of June 16, 2014, on Obama’s orders, the U.S. Minuteman III missiles have only a single warhead. Now they carry only 400- a 75% reduction in deliverable warheads by this leg of the triad.

What about from the sea? When I was in the Navy, we had the capability to launch nuclear strikes from aircraft carriers. That capability was completely taken from the Navy by George HW Bush. That capability is gone, and cannot be replaced. The training and knowledge was lost when we eliminated the personnel whose job it was to make that happen.

The Navy also had the ability to use Tomahawk cruise missiles to deliver nuclear warheads. That’s gone as well.

Then there are the much advertised SLBMs. There are 18 of the Ohio class submarines, but 4 of them have been rendered incapable of carrying SLBMs, leaving 14 nuclear capable submarines in the Navy. Scheduling means that only 4 of them are on station at any given time, for a total of 80 SLBMs on alert at any given moment. As for the missiles themselves, they can carry up to 14 warheads each, but in practice they each carry four warheads, on average. So the Navy can deliver 320 warheads at any given time.

In total, adding them up, the US is capable of delivering less than 750 warheads in response to an enemy surprise attack. In October of 2022, US intelligence estimated that the Chinese had 450 land based ICBMs. They also estimate that the Chinese will have more than 1500 warheads by 2035.

By Divemedic, ago

Attacking Teachers

I was attacked in my classroom by a student once. I feel sorry for this teacher because his career, at least with that school district, is over.

While legally a child, this student is large. Larger than the teacher, yet there are many who will say that the teacher can’t defend himself because teachers can’t hit children. There are those who say that the teacher can’t take a student’s property. Still others say that the teacher should have let him use the phone. I disagree with all of those.

No matter what, the school district will likely fire or force the teacher to resign. He is now a liability, because if there is a future incident, the parents will point to this one and claim there is a pattern of violence on the part of the teacher.

In my case, I found a new job. When I got there, I resolved to not ever take anything from a student. Ever. If a kid is on the phone, whatever. Not my circus, not my monkeys. The problem with this is that the kids learn that quickly, and many of them simply don’t learn. This causes a larger issue, because kids are not allowed to fail. So they haven’t learned anything, but they eventually graduate. That’s why we have a mostly “educated” but unlearned nation.

Our schools are out of control.  

By Divemedic, ago

Actions have consequences

People didn’t get their way under the rules of the legislative body, so they joined protestors on the floor of the chambers and began shouting with bullhorns. This prevented the legislature from being able to carry out its job. We were told that this was an insurrection, and was thus treason. It is a threat to Democracy, they claim.

Only this wasn’t DC, it was Tennessee. The perpetrators were Democrats. The Republicans have grown a spine and are voting to remove the offenders from the Tennessee legislature. Now the Democrats are angry that they are being held to their own standards.

By Divemedic, ago