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In Louisiana, the State Police claim that it is illegal to carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of a parade. As a result, we get another example of a shooting happening inside of a nominally gun free zone.

The goal of gun laws is to prevent people from breaking other laws(shooting people). If a person is intent on breaking  the law against shooting people, what does a law prohibiting them from using a gun accomplish, other than the disarmament of the intended, law abiding victim?

The 7th ward of New Orleans is a  crime ridden cesspool. New Orleans is already known as a hotspot for violent crime, with a violent crime index that is 9% higher than the average for the rest of New Orleans, and 36% higher than the rest of Louisiana. It is in the bottom quartile of safe neighborhoods in New Orleans. Your odds of being a victim of violent crime in the 7th ward is 1 in 116, and your odds of being the victim of any crime are 1 in 19.

If you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one you hit.

The government sees a problem, and takes unto itself new powers to deal with it. The power itself creates another problem, so the government takes unto itself a new power with which to deal with the problem. Ad nausea, ad infinitum.

Example:
In 1938, the US government passed the national minimum wage, even though it had previously been declared to be an unconstitutional use of the commerce clause in 1933. This was a result of Roosevelt’s threat to pack the Supreme court, as the SCOTUS now ruled it to be constitutional. (Incidentally, this was the period where the SCOTUS became corrupted and useless as a check on the powers of the Legislative and Executive branches.)
This created a demand for under the table workers. The seeds of illegal immigration were planted.
The price increases and unemployment, along with the influx of immigrants to fill the demand for workers that could be paid less than minimum wage that resulted from this law caused people to need assistance. So the government passed the Food Stamp program in 1939.
This program was expanded and illegal immigrants were permitted to qualify for benefits under the ‘indigence’ exemption of Federal law, which caused an even larger influx of low wage workers that were coming in to receive the free food and money that the government was distributing.
In 1986, the government passes a law that requires hospital emergency rooms treat people regardless of their ability to pay, effectively making health care free to anyone that enters the emergency room. This causes many immigrants to sneak in to have their babies for free in US emergency rooms. The newborn is an American citizen,or ‘anchor baby,’ and is eligible for all forms of public assistance. At the same time, illegal immigrants already in the US were granted amnesty.
The amnesty law, while granting amnesty to illegals, simply added millions to the legal workforce, making the now legal immigrants qualify for minimum wage more expensive. Enhanced penalties for illegals caused companies to begin using subcontractors, so that they could lower labor costs by hiring illegals at lower rates while absolving themselves of legal liability through plausible deniability. (I saw this happen myself at a certain large central Florida tourist attraction.)
US businesses support this, because they make LOADS of money from cheap labor.
Now to deal with all of the illegal immigration, we are establishing a National Biometric Database of all Americans. Here comes a registry of everything. People, guns, all of it. The journey to police state and dictatorship is nearly complete.

The basic flaw in Democracy is that people are stupid. Watching this video makes me weep for our future.

None of us is as stupid as all of us.

A paramedic in Texas was arrested for possession of a destructive device (a bomb) this past week. The evidence? The Feds claim he had in his possession (at his home) pipe, a canister of fuses, a lighter, a digital scale and a variety of chemical powders.

None of these items is a bomb, and they will not become a bomb unless assembled into one.

I have in my kitchen some flour, eggs, butter, milk, and sugar. That does not mean that I am in possession of a cake, unless you are the Federal government.

There are ways for people to be activists for a cause.
One way is to work within the system. Lawyers like Gura, or people like Gottlieb. This way risks little from a personal standpoint, but for a select few, they actually accomplish quite a bit.

Another is to engage in civil disobedience and put yourself out there in personal peril to be imprisoned or worse in order to change others. You do this by violating the law and showing defiance. People who have done this include Ghandi, Dr Martin Luther King, and others.

Yet another way is to undermine the law by refusing to obey. This is how many people in nations undermine the law. The quietly ignore the law, and once a critical mass is reached, the law becomes useless and changes. The 55 MPH speed limit is a good example of this. So are the people who have distributed the Liberator files on anonymous sites and torrents.

Then there are the people who are doing nothing for advancing the cause, and are simply engaged in an attempt to garner fame for themselves. They loudly proclaim themselves to be engaged in civil disobedience, get the spotlight focused on themselves, and before any serious consequences can befall them, they fold their tent and scurry away. They then spend a large amount of time patting themselves on the back, and demanding that others recognize the so-called huge ‘risk’ they took in doing absolutely nothing. They are doing nothing for the CAUSE, they are doing this for THEMSELVES and their over sized egos.

Look, the penalty for violating ITAR is a million bucks plus twenty years in prison. I GET it if you aren’t willing to risk that. I know I’m not, but that is no excuse to run around and brag about how much you did and how much of a risk you took. That does nothing but pull the focus away from the problem and place it on you. That is why I criticize people for this.

The people who put the Liberator files on sites like Pirate Bay, or torrents? They have my respect. They are engaged in actually undermining the law without worrying about personal accolades.

So Colorado has spent $62 million to set up their health insurance exchange under Obamacare and are asking for another $125 million. These funds are to set up and advertise the exchange. Not one person has received care or even signed up for the plan, yet. There are 350,000 people in the state who are uninsured and not eligible for Medicaid. That works out to $531 per person, and the still haven’t paid for one procedure.

They claim that the exchange will pay for itself through a $1.80 fee that will be charged to people who obtain insurance through the site. Even if every one of Colorado’s 5.1 million residents obtain their insurance through this exchange, the $9.3 million raised is less than 1/20 of what it cost so far.

Colorado residents spent $30 billion on health care last year.That works out to about $5,900 per capita. The Obamacare plan spent 10% of that already, and not one single procedure has been performed. Not one.

How is this going to make anything more affordable?

A responder to Robb’s post (Elroy) got me to thinking.

Gun control advocates have an odd view on life. They seem to believe that everyone is incapable of controlling themselves, and the only way to keep people from losing control and murdering each other is to remove the ability for them to do so. They believe that by making guns illegal, there will be no way for people to just succumb to their desire to kill. This is absurd for two reasons:

1 There are more ways for one human to kill another than with a firearm. Ever since Og struck Ech over the head with his club in order to get his shiny rocks, humans have been killing each other.

Which brings us to point 2: We aren’t neanderthals any longer. This is the crux of the problem. In modern society, man has learned that it is not proper for one person to kill another. This is why I don’t kill other people, not because it is illegal, but because it is wrong.

Yes, there are those of us in the world that are violent, and carry out violent acts. By definition, these people are sociopaths. I have pointed out the statistical fact that the 8 percent of Americans who live in cities of greater than 1 million people are twice as likely to be the victim or perpetrator of a murder. Why is this?

A breakdown of culture. The people who are doing this are mostly our inner city people, and the reason for this, in my opinion, is that they are growing up in a paternal vacuum. They are being raised by single parents, which really means that they are being left to themselves in a “Lord of the Flies” way while the mother is out doing her thing, with “her thing” being partying, hanging out with friends, or whatever. (She likely isn’t working. Having a child as a single woman is better than a job. Government benefits and freebies galore!)

So these children, left to fend for themselves, never get societal values programmed into them, and they feel free to club their neighbors in order to get their stuff.

In Central Florida, traffic can be horrendous, especially near the tourist areas. The key to avoiding this is to use one of the many toll charging expressways. The money that you spend in tolls is usually made up by less fuel consumption, and fewer frazzled nerves.

Florida has installed a statewide toll system, where you purchase a transponder to put in your car, and the toll is paid as you drive by the toll booth. This is a convenience for the driver, and a money saver for the state, as the system requires fewer toll booth operators. The system is called SunPass.

With the SunPass system, you set up an account, tell it which transponders are yours, and you prepay your tools by purchasing credits in $10 increments. You can do it with cash, or program it to place a predetermined amount of money in there, and charge it to a credit card. I have one, and it is convenient to not have to stop and wait at the toll booth every few miles.

Good idea, right? Until politics get involved. You see, Orange County figured out that they can get more cash if they cut the state out of the action, so they established the Orange County Expressway Authority. This authority has their own automated toll system, called EPass. An Epass transponder is supposed to allow you access to the SunPass system roads, and vice-versa.

Note that I said “supposed to.” Yesterday, I got a letter from the EPass with a picture of my car, and a letter telling me that they have recorded 8 instances in the last two months where I passed through, and the system failed to recognize the transponder. The letter went on to say that the authority “may” issue me a citation for EACH time I failed to pay the toll. I immediately called the number on the letter.

This is what I was told, and what makes this so incredible:
The two systems are not always good at compatibility, and if the systems fails to communicate, it fails to pay the toll correctly. However, it is still the driver’s fault that the system didn’t pay the toll, hence the ticket.

1 On what planet does a known flaw with a provider’s equipment remain the problem of the customer?
2 There is no way for the driver to know that the toll wasn’t paid at the time of the failure. My first indication was the letter.

Nice racket, government. All of the money, none of the legal responsibility.