Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Aren’t Schools Gun Free Zones?

The United States Deparment of Education is in the market for some shotguns.  Specifically:

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) intends to purchase twenty-seven (27) REMINGTON BRAND MODEL 870 POLICE 12/14P MOD GRWC XS4 KXCS SF. RAMAC #24587 GAUGE: 12 BARREL: 14” - PARKERIZED CHOKE: MODIFIED SIGHTS: GHOST RING REAR WILSON COMBAT; FRONT - XS CONTOUR BEAD SIGHT STOCK: KNOXX REDUCE RECOIL ADJUSTABLE STOCK FORE-END: SPEEDFEED SPORT-SOLID - 14” LOP are designated as the only shotguns authorized for ED based on compatibility with ED existing shotgun inventory, certified armor and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.
The required date of delivery is March 22, 2010.

Glenn Reynolds states, in regards to this news, “Maybe if they just brought back paddling instead.”

No word on what type of loads they desire for the ammo.

Here’s the Federal Business Opportunity notification.

Reynolds linked to this via WeaselZippers.net.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/10 at 07:33 PM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

French, Fried?

Wendy McElroy continues her thoughtful posting in a piece titled Will a 2nd American Revolution be French?  From Wendy’s piece.

America has become a society of elites. Specifically, those in the political class who enjoy an endless economic bounty that comes from the sweat and blood of taxpayers. At the pinnacle are politicians with rich salaries, plush expense accounts (not counting bribes), platinum pensions and health insurance, etc. Then there are the millions of civil servants who are paid considerably more than their private-sector counterparts, who have greater job security due to unions, and who enjoy a pension plan that others can only dream about. The devouring appetite of these elites is fed by the ever-increasing taxes, fees and other money-grabs from the private, productive sector of society. As the level of theft increases, more productive people are being driven in poverty, homelessness and a despair that could easily turn into rage.

You’ll note, if you read Wendy’s post, that she does not state that there will be a 2nd American Revolution, but she also does not state that there will not be a 2nd American Revolution, but if you are paying attention, you’ll have noted Billy Beck’s insight from August 2009.

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war.

Stay aware.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/10 at 01:29 PM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Detroit’s Dollar Menu

Dollar menus are all the rage nowadays.  All the fast food restaurants offer a plethora of items for just a buck.  Not to be outdone by mere fast food restaurants, Detroit’s real estate market is so tanked that it is now the fast food industry’s competitor.

Houses on sale for a few dollars are something of an urban legend in the US on the back of the mortgage crisis that drove millions of people from their homes. But in Detroit it is no myth…

Joan Wilson, an estate agent in the north-west of the city, whose firm is offering a three-bedroom house on Albany street for $1…

Unfortunately, investing a dollar in Detroit’s real estate market would probably yield the same result as ingesting a dollar menu food item.  A temporary satiation followed by a troubling bout of indigestion.

Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis

Linked via Mises Economics Blog, where a commenter notes the following.

What we see in Detroit is a capital consumption symptom of a socialist economy. When it is all consumed socialism will have reached its ultimate destiny – a two class system made up of a parasitic State-connected class and the second class citizens with no incentive to be productive.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/10 at 01:05 PM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Oregon’s Proactive Rubber Room Imprisonment Policy

Concerns about an Oregon Department of Transportation employee who purchased several guns after being placed on leave prompted law enforcement across Southern Oregon to step in.

Negotiators and a SWAT team from Medford police safely took a man — whose name wasn’t released — into protective custody Monday morning in the 500 block of Effie Street, Medford police said in a news release.

He was taken to Rogue Valley Medical Center for a mental-health evaluation.

The above three paragraphs were lifted from a Southern Oregon Mail Tribune article headlined Police act swiftly after gun purchases.  The article also notes that the individual in question legally purchased the weapons, but evidently the legality of the individual’s purchases do not matter to the authorities when they have been informed by busybodies that the individual may be disgruntled, so the authorities swoop in and summarily declare the individual as a mental case and imprison the individual in a mental health facility for his own good.  The citizens of Oregon must be feeling so safe today.

Via a Sipsey Street Irregulars post with the appropriate heading of Department of Pre-Crime opens for business in Oregon.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/10 at 10:34 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Running Away is No Solution

In a blog post at Let A Thousand Nations Bloom, titled Exit From the Road to Fiscal Serfdom, Mike Gibson points to a Tim Kane post at Growthology.org under the heading Generational Shift? Fiscal Crisis Plus Global Migration Equals ..., which was inspired by a Robert J. Samuelson piece in The Washington Post titled Will Millennials become the chump generation?

Kane posits the following after reading Samuelson’s piece.

Samuelson asks the question…if young voters will punish fiscally irresponsible representatives in Washington. My alternative theory focuses on the context of immigration. Already you may have heard about the millions of illegals who departed the U.S. when the Great Recession dried up job opportunities. A lot of crass nativists might think “Good Riddance!” but I wonder what they’ll say when their own children seek greener pastures abroad in 10 or 20 years?

Consider: almost everyone younger than the Baby Boomers expects to get the short end of the fiscal stick. We were laughing about the unlikeliehood of getting Social Securiyt (sic) Checks when I was in high school in the 80s. So now that the reckoning is all but unkickable, do the Boomers think their kids and grandkids will just become fiscal serfs?  Think again…

The threat America faces is a world that competes for our greatest natural resource: it’s young. If we make the tax climate hellish, the U.S. is going to suffer outmigration as places like Canada, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile realize what an opportunity they have to cream our entrepreneurial talent. If we don’t, and let the deficit spiral out of control, the dollar will fall and workers will go elsewhere for value reasons. There’s already a migratory tension in Europe, waged primarily with favorable tax treatment for high net worth immigrants.

Kane mentions Canada, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile as possible landing places for individuals outmigrating from the United States for “favorable tax treatment.”  Let’s take a look at tax rates in these countries, which I’ve pulled from here.

Canada:      individual:  0 - 29% (federal) 0 - 24% (provincial); payroll:  4.95%
Australia:      individual:  0 - 45%; payroll:  4.75 - 6% (state)
Brazil:        individual:  0 - 27.5%; payroll:  31%
Mexico:        individual:  3 - 29%; payroll:  None at this time
Chile:        individual:  0 - 40%; payroll:  None at this time
United States: individual: 15 - 39% (federal) 0 - 12% (state); payroll: 15.3% - 2.9% regressive (federal)

In reviewing just the countries mentioned by Kane, one notes that the “favorable tax treatment” one may consider fleeing to are not necessarily so favorable.  Additionally, if a sizable outmigration from the U.S. did occur, how long do you think the countries of favorable tax treatment choice would remain favorable to their newly minted immigrant pool of potential tax revenue?

Running away is no solution.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/10 at 08:31 AM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages