Our founding values, genocide and slavery. The tradition continues.
Requiescat in Pace: President Obama's budget proposal to be unveiled next week will include cuts to Social Security and Medicare, according to several dozen trial balloons seen floating out of the Rose Garden. The Big Deal is to do away with all of the social advances made under the New Deal, as Obama plans a bigger hit for the elderly than for the rich. John Boehner may save the day - because Obama reportedly wants to raise taxes a bit, too.
Win Some, Lose Some: The BLS reports The RecoveryTM stumbled in March, producing only 88,000 new jobs. Even so the unemployment rate dropped because 660,000 people left the jobs market and the labor force participation rate fell to 63.3%. Retailers cut 24,100 jobs last month because those no longer in the labor force are also no longer buying much.
Progress Report: Ireland has received helping after helping of austerity, leading to a country where 25% of its mortgages are distressed, 12% are 90 or more days in default, with 35% of those being “strategic” non-payments. Unemployment is now above 14%, which explains a lot. But not austerity, there's no explanation for austerity.
Do Not Hold Your Breath: A US District Judge has ruled that the FDA must make the emergency contraception pills known as "morning-after pills" available over the counter, with no age restrictions - "within 30 days." What Republican-dominated Supreme Court-free planet does Judge Korman come from?
Help Wanted: Be a target for a US drone strike, make big bucks!
The Other Guy: Over 80% of Americans want something done now to prepare for the rising seas and stronger storms that global warming is bringing. Nearly 100% of them do not want to pay for these safeguards. So, the science is getting through to them, economics not so much.
Nomination: Let's give Bradley Manning a Nobel Peace Prize – the one mistakenly given to Obama.
Crazy Like Fox: Fox on Friday explained to striking fast-food workers that “because you are a single mom or a single dad, you’ve got to get another job. You’ve got to get another job on top of that so you have two incomes.” Which, I believe, was the whole point of the strike.
Hypochondria: Republicans go on and on about the US having the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Which is true. It is also true that as a percent of the total economy, the US collects less from corporate taxes than any industrialized country except Iceland, because most of our largest corporations do not pay many taxes, and by the way, April 15th is gaining on you.
Sick? Leave! Koch-sponsored ALEC is trying to kill the whole idea of paid sick leave. So far they've passed such laws in Louisiana, Mississippi and Wisconsin and have infected Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma and Washington. Chain 'em to their oars..
Crooked, Not Stupid: The continuing exemption of private gun sales (for which read gun shows) from background checks is why the bad guys are not inconvenienced by existing background check requirements.
Quoted: “I wonder if we’ll see the day when George Bush and Dick Cheney will be prosecuted for their war crimes? I wonder if the lies and the fraud that were used to send our nation’s men and women into a pillaging war of conquest will ever be accounted for? I wonder if this generation of Americans will wake up and hold the war profiteers accountable for ransacking our nation’s treasury and wasting away all that our nation had saved?” It's a paraphrase of Ferlinghetti.
Special, Really Special: Tennessee is setting up special districts for 'failing' schools (for which read those that are nearly entirely black) which will be run by Corrections Corporation of America charter operators.
Sticks and Stones: The UN High Commission for Human Rights had declared the failure of the US to close the torture facility at Guantánamo Bay prison is a "clear breach of international law." So?
Porn O'Graph: Women's health – the red states.
The Parting Shot:
Attractive nuisance.
12 comments:
I found a link too late to post yesterday (by following a link of a link, etc.) on energy storage.
Graphene Micro Supercapacitors
Special--That's a federal/Wall Street trial balloon you're witnessing in Memphis--the state kissed Memphis off years ago. And, yes, their dream is to pass them on to CCA upon graduation.
i don't think graduation actually figures into it.
Regarding the condolence payments for collateral damage of our drone strikes, i'm hoping that other loyal readers will join me in pressing for payments to CKM's surviving family, well assuming that the blast is small enough that any family survive.
Now you sound like my wife...
universal background checks for all gun purchases has deadlocked because of one main sticking point
gun control advocate, senator charles schumer wants to retain records of all fire arms purchases (gun registry) and 2nd amendment advocate senator tom coburn of oklahoma is against this provision
in an excerpt from a report on NPR from march 21st and i quote "Schumer has been insisting on record keeping for all private gun sales, saying the files are needed to keep the system effective. That led to stalemated talks with conservative leader Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who says the data would lead to federal records on gun owners."
under the current insta chck system after a person is approved or denied the "right" to purchase a fire arm by the national criminal background check system maintained by the fbi, the record is erased unless a felon etc has falsely applied and in turn prosecution takes place
why the existing system simply expanded to include all purchases is insufficient is not clear
none the less, senator schumer is insistent that record keeping its the only way to keep the system honest
it would be ashamed to allow an all or nothing approach bring down this legislation
heres an alternative solution
all purchasers and sellers have to keep a receipt generated during the insta check review....if a gun is used in the commission of a crime and the purchaser obtained the fire arm inducing the seller to avoid the check, then the seller and purchaser would each be criminally liable
what do you think of this proposal?
best wishes
mock turtle
Re my sounding like your wife: This underlines why you and i must never be in the same place at the same time, as the opportunity to bag us both with one drone would be too tempting.
Mock:
The problem with "self-policing" is that almost all critical cases (and they would astoundingly all become "critical") is that they would turn out like one of my very first lawsuits as an attorney. An "accidental inexplicable fire" would somehow always break out right when the records are needed. I still remember how certain critical business records were burned up in one small room where there was no explanation of how the "fire" started or managed to only destroy the records I needed to prove my client's theory of the case. Funny how those things always seem to happen.
If the government does not keep the records, they will somehow always get "lost" or "accidentally destroyed" when it matters.
okie lawyer
i appreciate your point of view but im expecting both purchaser and seller to hold the record
lets walk thru a pretend situation
gun found at crime scene
gun produced by smith and johnson gun works in millford
atf contacts s& j and says hey we found a weapon you produced, model xyz with serial number 123
s& j says yep we produced that gun and whole-saled it to bills sporting goods in huntersville
atf calls up bills sporting goods and bill says yep i sold that weapon to joe schmoe in anytown
joe gets a call from the police and he says oh i sold that gun to mickey rat and i got a receipt, we went thru the background check
micky rat gets a call and says i sold the gun , did a check but the receipt got burned up in a fire
and then mickey claims he cant remember anything about who he sold it to
mickeys got a problem... a big problem
furthermore finger prints were found on some of the shell casings and the fbi has a record of this prints in the national crime database computer
mickeys problem just got bigger because the prints match a known associate...billy bob
when billy bob is contacted he is unable to produce a receipt of any kind and claims hes never owned a gun
eye witnesses place billy bob at or near the crime scene and billy bob has motive, opportunity and the victims dan is found in a car billy bob recently sold
billy bob is convicted of a serious felony by a jury and mickey is subsequently prosecuted as an accessory to the crime
....
any law abiding citizen who is a seller of a fire arm has every reason to comply with the law...its in their own self interest to find out of the proposed purchaser is a known felon or crazy person
look , heres the point...no system is going to be perfect
the vast majority of americans support this proposed law...and are more than willing to have a would be purchaser go thru the background check system, because they believe it is a good idea
..and for their own protection an piece of mind
this is not a perfect solution..thee is no perfect solution...criminal cartels move large quantities of drugs and, no doubt weapons if they so choose across boarders
the only way to stop nearly all crime is to go to an orwellian system of government with cameras in evry room of the house, on every street corner and up in the sky
get come o think of it , thats what "they" want to do
but of course if you never break any laws you have nothing to fear...right?
even the laws (more than 100 thousand of them) that you dont even know about
best wishes
mock turtle
mock turtle - your "pretend situation" is all well and good - except it bears little if any relationship to reality. Yes, the law says the gun dealer has to get the form filled out by the customer (there is no penalty involved if the customer lies in filling out the form) and run the check (which is run against a database that is mostly incomplete and often dependent on underfunded police departments doing the data input...)
And the retailer has to enter the sale in the gun log and put the form in a file. The actual existence of these records is checked about every 3 or 4 years. And there is no real disciplinary action taken if the log is inaccurate, guns have gone missing (lost, strayed or - most often - stolen) or the forms have been misfiled, are illegible or are simply missing.
And yes, I do know where-of I speak: I spent about 15 years trying to get several hundred sorting goods outlets to keep our records in compliance with the law. Trying - but at not point did our repeated failures to abide by the ridiculously simple requirements result in any fine, punishment etc. by the government.
And that's long before the gun was sold to a neighbour at a garage sale.
The reality is that the current system of decentralized record keeping is equivalent to haphazard record keeping.
And the idea that having a question on a form (that will be misfiled anyway) that asks me if I'm crazy is going to keep me from shooting up the local day care center is ridiculous. If I'm gonna kill a bunch of kids, lying on a form isn't going to be much of a deterrent.
"sorting goods" should read "sporting goods" in the above comment
CKM you wrote , "....And the idea that having a question on a form (that will be misfiled anyway) that asks me if I'm crazy is going to keep me from shooting up the local day care center is ridiculous."
just to be clear, im advocating for universal background checks by law enforcement and using data base maintained by the fbi, and I'm not depending on the lies that a miscreant applicant (all be it such lies are felonies) may tell in the filling out of a form
as for protecting children in schools...i know of no way we can keep a monster who creates a spread sheet of the historical record of murderous rampages with room for his own name at the top, and who plans and plots mass murder for weeks an months...i have not figured out any method of preventing that horrible horrible crime
best wishes
mock turtle
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