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…until someone gets hurt.

Say this gets tried where people carry concealed weapons. You think its funny that you chase someone down the street with a knife? You like filming them while they run in terror? How will you feel if your actor gets shot?

These sorts of pranks, where you set up a situation to place your victims  in fear for their lives for your own amusement is sick. It’s also called aggravated assault…

Doctors are concerned with the rates of pay that they are getting. In the article, Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University,
said she was not overly concerned about physicians’ compensation. “I
don’t mean to suggest that physicians don’t deserve to do well,” she
said. “But physicians are very well-compensated people, no matter what.”

Not as well  as you think. Sure, a doctor makes $200,000 or more a year, but let’s compare that to other professions.
A doctor attends college and earns an undergraduate degree. This takes four years, during which the money earned is zero, and tuition, books, and supplies are about $20,000. Room and board are extra.
Then the doctor attends medical school. The school lasts three years, and the money earned is zero. Tuition, books, and supplies are about $225,000. Room and board are extra.
Then the doctor does his residency. This lasts at least a year, during which the resident works 80 hour weeks and makes about $45,000 a year.

So this doctor is now 26 years old and has made $45,000. He now has about $400,000 in student loans that must be repaid. With interest.
So over the 47 years of his working life, he spends the first 8 in school, and ends that first 8 years $355,000 in the hole. If that doctor makes $200,000 a year on average for the remaining 39 years of his working life, the first $50,000 of that will pay for his student loans and the years he was jobless.

It was 30 years ago today: ABC aired a made for TV movie titled The Day After. I watched that movie as a teen, and frankly, it gave me nightmares. The movie was about surviving a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union. It was a real threat in those days.

For those of you that are too young to remember, growing up under the threat of nuclear holocaust was a real and ever present danger that we all learned to accept. I remember having “duck and cover” drills when I was in elementary school. On notification, we were trained to duck under our desks, cover our heads, and wait for the end.

The movie seemed very real and scary to me at the time, and I had nightmares about it for weeks.

So an Obama voter, who supports the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is upset because it turns out that she actually has to pay for it. The people who voted for President Freestuff are finding out that the things he promised are not free for everyone.
This woman is currently paying $250 a month in health care expenses for herself and her son. She originally thought that she would be able to use a tax subsidy to get a “gold” plan for only $169 a month. There was an error in computing her subsidy, and she doesn’t get one at all. It turns out that she will have to pay $324 for a “silver” plan, which has a high deductible. She claims that she cannot afford it, and blames the state exchange.
She is angry because she thought that all she needed to do to get cheap insurance is vote for it. She calls herself a “single mother who is self employed and has had no health insurance for over 50 years” according to the email that she sent to the president.
She is a freelance court reporter who makes a bit less than $50,000 a year. The reason that she cannot get cheap insurance is that her son is already on Medicaid, for which she pays only $30 a month, and is thus not counted as a tax deduction when calculating Obamacare subsidies.
The press gets one thing wrong, however. It says that the woman will elect to pay the $95 penalty. The penalty is actually the GREATER of $95 or 1% of your income. Since she makes about $50K a year, her Obamacare penalty will be closer to $500.
But hey, you voted for this, and you got it.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was an American freighter that plied the Great Lakes. It was in service for 38 years and 7 days.
It was 38 years and 7 days ago that she sank in a gale on Lake Superior.  The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the best-known disasters in the history of Great Lakes shipping. Gordon Lightfoot made it the subject of his 1976 hit song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“.

Here is an Orlando story about a woman who confessed to helping carry out a home invasion robbery of her parents’ home. During the course of the robbery, the woman’s father was severely beaten.

There are people in this state that are in a panic about Leon county’s proposed Universal Background Check ordnance. This topic comes up from time to time, and I have blogged on this before.

This is a big deal over nothing. Florida has preemption, and the only exception is found in Article VIII, Section 2(b):
(b) Each county shall have the authority to require a criminal history records check and a 3 to 5-day waiting period, excluding weekends and legal holidays, in connection with the sale of any firearm occurring within such county. For purposes of this subsection, the term “sale” means the transfer of money or other valuable consideration for any firearm when any part of the transaction is conducted on property to which the public has the right of access. Holders of a concealed weapons permit as prescribed by general law shall not be subject to the provisions of this subsection when purchasing a firearm.

Note that the only time that the county may require a background check for a transaction conducted between private parties who are not dealers (transactions at a dealer must go through a check and have a waiting period, but again, CCW holders are exempt from the waiting period) is when the transaction occurs on property to which the public has the right of access. The only place that the public has such a right is on property owned by the government. The public has no right to access on private property. This means that the background checks may only be required if you are conducting the sale on the roadway, a park, a gun show held at a civic center, etc.

Note also that there is a specific exception for people that hold a concealed weapons permit.

Even better, take a look at 790.33, which is the state’s preemption statute:
Except as expressly provided by the State Constitution or general law, the Legislature hereby declares that it is occupying the whole field of regulation of firearms and ammunition, including the purchase, sale, transfer, taxation, manufacture, ownership, possession, storage, and transportation thereof, to the exclusion of all existing and future county, city, town, or municipal ordinances or any administrative regulations or rules adopted by local or state government relating thereto. Any such existing ordinances, rules, or regulations are hereby declared null and void. 

The state went on to say this:

Any person, county, agency, municipality, district, or other entity that violates the Legislature’s occupation of the whole field of regulation of firearms and ammunition, as declared in subsection (1), by enacting or causing to be enforced any local ordinance or administrative rule or regulation impinging upon such exclusive occupation of the field shall be liable as set forth herein.

So the law is unenforceable. What happens if the law is passed anyway? What if the cops then arrest you? That is the best part:

If any county, city, town, or other local government violates this section, the court shall declare the improper ordinance, regulation, or rule invalid and issue a permanent injunction against the local government prohibiting it from enforcing such ordinance, regulation, or rule. It is no defense that in enacting the ordinance, regulation, or rule the local government was acting in good faith or upon advice of counsel. 
If the court determines that a violation was knowing and willful, the court shall assess a civil fine of up to $5,000 against the elected or appointed local government official or officials or administrative agency head under whose jurisdiction the violation occurred. 
Except as required by applicable law, public funds may not be used to defend or reimburse the unlawful conduct of any person found to have knowingly and willfully violated this section. A knowing and willful violation of any provision of this section by a person acting in an official capacity for any entity enacting or causing to be enforced a local ordinance or administrative rule or regulation
prohibited under paragraph (a) or otherwise under color of law shall be cause for termination of employment or contract or removal from office by the Governor. 

They will be fired, fined $5,000 PERSONALLY, they cannot use taxpayer funds to hire a lawyer, and you can sue them. I am sure that, should this pass, Florida Carry will be all over it. Send some money their way, they are fighting the good fight.

This story was relayed to me by a friend who works in a local emergency room:

A 28 year old woman comes into the ED. She is 19 weeks pregnant with twins: her 8th and 9th children. This particular pregnancy is from her 4th male. Her complaint is that she is possibly having a miscarriage. Upon exam, the head of one fetus is already visible in the cervix. There is nothing that can be done, the pregnancy is over.
The father begged the doctor to do all that he could. The doctor explained that there is nothing that can be done, and that he has sympathy for the couple. The doctor leaves the room, my friend is standing just outside and hears the conversation that ensues. The male complains to the female that he is upset because they were counting on the extra welfare and food stamps to buy a new car.

Think about that for a minute, and contemplate all of the implications of that.

My brother is a business owner and has a few employees. He is still a small enough company that his employees are like family. His son developed a significant health issue when he was only two years old, and needs to have surgery every 8 weeks as a result. My brother had to send this letter out to his employees today:

There has been a lot of talk about Obamacare and the changes to the law on the news lately. Here is my situation as a business owner, and as a parent of a child with a preexisting condition.

Because of the preexisting health concerns of my child, we could not get our own coverage in the past. We had to be part of a group plan, so we decided to purchase group insurance for the company, which meant that we would pay 50% of the premiums for our staff. That 50% was then a tax credit to us. So if we owed $10k in taxes each month, and paid $8k in staff insurance premiums, we now only owed $2k in taxes. My accountant has informed me that this tax credit has been eliminated under Obamacare. This means that next year, we will see an $8k per month increase in our taxes.

Now we can get our family insurance with a $0 deductible for a much lower rate than paying the monthly premiums for our employees through (I hate to say it) healthcare.gov by purchasing a “gold” plan. If we attempt to obtain coverage through the company, we will still have to maintain the 50% payment of our employees, the premiums for which will be increasing our half by an additional $2K a month. For this amount, we will have a $2K deductible, and we will lose that tax credit. This means that our insurance expenses and taxes will increase to $218,000 per year if we continue providing insurance for our staff. This level of expense is just not sustainable. For this reason, we will be dropping the insurance that we offer as a small business to our employees, will get our own  policy, and direct our staff to the healthcare.gov site.

This is just the insurance view. There is more to Obamacare that most do not realize. It has forced many in my industry to close due to the cost of compliance with the regulations put on food supply operators for calorie and nutrition infomation disclosure.

My opinion is mixed. The preexisting condition of my child is now moot. The cost to me appears to be cancelled out so far with lower deductibles. However, it is forcing my staff to now be transferred onto the health care exchanges for insurance, and they will now have to pay 100% of their premiums. Due to the added taxes and expenses associated with the compliance with this law, we are not in a position to give any of you a raise to offset the additional costs. Depending on how my taxes work out at the end of the year, there is a distinct possibility that we will have to scale back or even sell out our remaining contracts and lay off our entire staff. We will inform you as soon as we know more.