Gun control, gun control, we need more gun controls to protect innocents. *Runs around waving hands in the air and repeats himself.*
Okay ... sorry ... I claim temporary insanity there from listening to too much news.
I would hope that anyone that used to read this already knows my stance on this issue ... but to be clear:
WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION IN THIS COUNTRY.
Actually, I would personally argue that there are currently gun control laws on the books that we should get rid of .... but that's not likely to happen any time soon. Once you allow an encroachment of liberty, it becomes harder and harder to get those liberties back.
I know that there have been several tragedies lately involving shooters, there are several such events scattered through our history. And my sympathies go out to the families of those who lost children or other loved ones in these terrible events. Gun control, however, isn't the answer to the problem, because the problem isn't guns. The problem is people that have no regard for life OR laws, and you can not write a gun control law that will fix THAT problem.
We need to protect people by banning 'Assault' weapons....
There are a couple of problems with this argument. First there technically is no weapon classification of 'assault' weapon. It was a legal definition that was created by a legislature looking at weapons and selecting aspects of weapons that they considered 'scary'. Secondly, we have, in the past, had an 'Assault' weapons ban in this country, and yet we still had innocent people killed in mass shooting, the shooting in Columbine in 1999 being a one of the more prominent incidents.
Also, let's look at some of the shootings, including Columbine. In most of these cases the shooter did not have any weapon that was (or is in the current legislation either) considered an 'assault' weapon. The exception being the shooter in the Colorado theater who I believe did have a AR-15 style rifle (plus several pistols, and a shotgun iirc). The shooters in Columbine used shotguns and pistols, the school shooting in Newtown was carried out with pistols (he had a rifle in the trunk of his car, but it was not used in the shooting) not 'assault' weapons. The shooting of Representative Giffords was done with a pistol, not an 'assault' weapon. In fact, 'assault' weapons usually aren't used because they are difficult to conceal in the first place.
The fact is simply that they are trying to ban them not because they are causing a lot of the shootings, but rather because they don't like them. Should we let them ban something just because they don't like it? Are we going to start letting them put people in jail just because they don't like them too? Wake up.
People don't need all these bullets, extended mags should be banned...
This has got to be one of the dumbest. This is the same type of idea that leads to the passing of laws that say that you can't buy a soda larger than 16 oz. Fine ... I can't buy a large, I'll but two mediums. Likewise all a shooter has to do is bring a couple more magazines. This is going to do NOTHING to stop shootings, at most you can say that it may give people a chance to escape while the shooter reloads. Except, again, in many cases these shooters have brought multiple weapons and rather than reloading they simply switch weapons ... they also tend to carry out shootings in areas that they are reasonably certain that there is not going to be any immediate armed response.
The logic is basically, shooting 6 people is okay, but 7 is too many. It's not a law designed to stop the shootings, it is a law designed for the sole purpose of limiting peoples options. A person more inclined toward conspiracy thoughts than I am might even draw the conclusion that the intent is specifically to limit the ability of law abiding citizens to defend themselves from the government. I don't believe that is the intent, consciously at least, as I don't think that the people pushing such legislation are smart enough to think that far ahead in the first place.
Every gun purchase needs to go through a background check (and all states should have to report to the federal database)....
This one looks innocent enough, and I don't specifically have an issue with reasonable background checks for buying a firearm. There are, however, many issues with the ideas about this as well. Requiring background checks for private sales is nigh on unenforceable without some means of tracking the sale of the weapon without weapon registration. So either they are going to have to institute weapon registry (we'll leave off the multitudes of problems with this for another ramble) or they are going to ultimately ban private sales by making them so much of a hassle for the average gun owner that most people won't bother - though I'm sure that gun store owners would love this aspect.
Keep in mind that the Newtown shooter failed a background check and wasn't allowed to buy firearms so he killed his mother and stole hers. The background check did it's job, and yet this failed to prevent the shooting. Many of the other shooters did go through background checks, but there was nothing in their background that prevented them from owning a firearm. If anything, THAT is the issue that needs to be looked into, but there are a lot of dangers there as well. Who can put you into the database, what definitions are they using, and what means does an individual have to appeal if they find that the information in the federal database is incorrect? Currently there is no requirement for the government to correct inaccuracies in the database even if you can PROVE that the information about you is in error.
In the end the biggest problem with gun control legislation is ... CRIMINALS DON'T OBEY LAWS. Do you really think that someone planning on going to a theater with the INTENT of shooting people and killing them is going to CARE that the extended magazine in his assault rifle, the armor piercing rounds, and the tear gas and body armor he's wearing can not be legally owned? Is he going to see the 'gun free' zone sign and turn around foiled in his plan because it's illegal to take a gun in there?
Why are we seeing a rise in these types of incidents? Because people don't value life, they don't respect the rights of others, nor do they respect themselves. We live in a culture that promotes the victim mentality ... everyone is a victim, no one is to blame. If someone does something wrong it's not their fault. That's what we need to fix ... and until we do the only thing gun control laws are going to do is let people smile and puff out their chest and say 'we DID something'. Only to start the whole process again after the next shooting.
Things go a lot easier when you fix the right problem instead of playing politics with tragic events and rushing around trying to pass your agenda. Of course the real reason that they won't do that, is that it's a social problem, not a legal one ... it's society that needs to change.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Sunday, April 07, 2013
To use the term 'illegal immigrant' or not....
Look ... political correctness is simply a way to hide behind words and not something that I have ever subscribed to. If people get offended that's their problem. With that said I will say that the term needs to be used correctly, but if it is accurate then it is the term that should be used.
If they came into this country illegally ... then they illegally immigrated and are, by definition illegal immigrants and should be called such. They are not 'undocumented workers' they do not have 'no legal status' and are not 'non-status alians'.
But calling them 'illegal immigrants' makes it sound like they broke the law ....
Guess what ... THEY DID. There is a legal process to immigrate into this country if it is not followed then they broke the law. Not all of them do it intentionally, and the system is messed up, convoluted, and out dated I will grant you, but if I fail to pay my taxes ... even unintentionally ... I still broke the law and can be punished to the full extent of that law. I can reasonably be called a tax cheat, or tax evader.
Are we going to start calling bank robbers 'unauthorized withdrawers' to make the act seem less 'criminal'? Come on people, wake up.
I do, however, have sympathy for those that were brought into this country by their parents illegally when they were little. They did not, through any action of their own, break the law. Many were infants, or toddlers and should not (by any reasonable human being) be punished for their parents choices. Most of these grow up knowing nothing of their 'home country' and forcefully deporting them to such is not fair to them in any stretch of the imagination. These are the people that should be helped through the process and allowed a means to become citizens with all rights and responsibilities that such citizenship includes.
I know that many of those that come here illegally do so to try and get a better life for themselves and their families and either feel that the proper paths are too restrictive or cumbersome, or simply don't know how. But while 'intent' should mitigate things, it does not change the fact that they have, in fact, broken the law and continue to do so every day that they remain in this county.
But they aren't hurting anyone, we shouldn't criminalize them ....
Tell that to the people who are unable to get work because an employer has hired someone who is here illegally. Tell that to the tax payers that are often paying for benefits claimed (illegally in some cases) by these illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants do, in fact, cause harm in many ways, but it is often 'unintentional' or 'indirect' so certain groups feel it should just be over looked and ignored. And that's not even talking about the ones that do come over here and commit other crimes, sometimes violent crimes.
Also, in some cases the efforts that they go through to gain employment can cause a lot of grief to innocent people if their SSN or other identifying information is used. Even if that wasn't the intent of the illegal immigrant that did it (or in many cases they may know nothing about it because they got the information from another party who is really to blame for the theft of the identity) it is still a felony offense and can cause a completely innocent person a huge headache getting everything straightened out.
The bottom line is ... if they immigrated illegally (they aren't trying to get rid of the term illegal immigration, so they recognize that it IS illegal) then they are, by definition, illegal immigrants - people that immigrated into a country illegally.
Also ... for the record ... not all illegal immigrants are Hispanic. Some are British, Canadian, German, Dutch, Australian, or any other country of the world. Regardless of their origin, if they illegally immigrated into this country they are 'illegal immigrants'.
I would, however, like to ask the AP ... if there aren't illegal immigrants then who is it that commits illegal immigration?
If they came into this country illegally ... then they illegally immigrated and are, by definition illegal immigrants and should be called such. They are not 'undocumented workers' they do not have 'no legal status' and are not 'non-status alians'.
But calling them 'illegal immigrants' makes it sound like they broke the law ....
Guess what ... THEY DID. There is a legal process to immigrate into this country if it is not followed then they broke the law. Not all of them do it intentionally, and the system is messed up, convoluted, and out dated I will grant you, but if I fail to pay my taxes ... even unintentionally ... I still broke the law and can be punished to the full extent of that law. I can reasonably be called a tax cheat, or tax evader.
Are we going to start calling bank robbers 'unauthorized withdrawers' to make the act seem less 'criminal'? Come on people, wake up.
I do, however, have sympathy for those that were brought into this country by their parents illegally when they were little. They did not, through any action of their own, break the law. Many were infants, or toddlers and should not (by any reasonable human being) be punished for their parents choices. Most of these grow up knowing nothing of their 'home country' and forcefully deporting them to such is not fair to them in any stretch of the imagination. These are the people that should be helped through the process and allowed a means to become citizens with all rights and responsibilities that such citizenship includes.
I know that many of those that come here illegally do so to try and get a better life for themselves and their families and either feel that the proper paths are too restrictive or cumbersome, or simply don't know how. But while 'intent' should mitigate things, it does not change the fact that they have, in fact, broken the law and continue to do so every day that they remain in this county.
But they aren't hurting anyone, we shouldn't criminalize them ....
Tell that to the people who are unable to get work because an employer has hired someone who is here illegally. Tell that to the tax payers that are often paying for benefits claimed (illegally in some cases) by these illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants do, in fact, cause harm in many ways, but it is often 'unintentional' or 'indirect' so certain groups feel it should just be over looked and ignored. And that's not even talking about the ones that do come over here and commit other crimes, sometimes violent crimes.
Also, in some cases the efforts that they go through to gain employment can cause a lot of grief to innocent people if their SSN or other identifying information is used. Even if that wasn't the intent of the illegal immigrant that did it (or in many cases they may know nothing about it because they got the information from another party who is really to blame for the theft of the identity) it is still a felony offense and can cause a completely innocent person a huge headache getting everything straightened out.
The bottom line is ... if they immigrated illegally (they aren't trying to get rid of the term illegal immigration, so they recognize that it IS illegal) then they are, by definition, illegal immigrants - people that immigrated into a country illegally.
Also ... for the record ... not all illegal immigrants are Hispanic. Some are British, Canadian, German, Dutch, Australian, or any other country of the world. Regardless of their origin, if they illegally immigrated into this country they are 'illegal immigrants'.
I would, however, like to ask the AP ... if there aren't illegal immigrants then who is it that commits illegal immigration?
Seriously?
I can't believe that it's really been over two years since I last posted here. Guess I've been pretty slack because there has been plenty in the news and such to rant about, and even more to ramble over for no reason other than to ramble .... I've written several in my head, I think I even typed a few out, but I guess I never got around to actually throwing them up here.
I'd like to say that I was busy with other work ... and late 2010 and through 2011 that was probably true, but 2012 was slow at best and I was unemployed for the beginning of 2013 ... and may be again if I don't manage to turn this contract into a full time position, or land another contract to extend it.
Having spent the last 3 months in the unemployment system I can see how completely screwed up that program has become.
It is a system that does little to nothing to assist an unemployed person in finding a job, and in certain respects discourages taking 'small jobs' while you're looking.
Leaving aside the benefit calculation and length of the benefit as both a confusing mess and for professional workers like myself, a grossly inadequate level of compensation ... if I take a job that earns less than my benefit ... my benefit is reduced by my pre-tax earnings .... so if I were to take a job where I earned less per week than my benefit ... I would be working for free. (Example the max benefit is $330 / Week (pre-tax) ... so if I were to take a temp job that earned me $230 (pre-tax) ... my benefit for the week would only be $100 to bring me to a total of $330 for the week. Since I could have earned $330 for the week without so much as getting out of bed(1), I worked the week for free.)
[(1) - Okay, not technically true as you have to be 'actively looking for a job' and turn in a work search report every week with at least 3 new job contacts ... but since emailing resumes or calling employers counts ... in this day that CAN be done from bed.]
The DoL (Department of Labor) does at least have a website that helps you find contacts .. kind of ... but I got better results using standard job search engines and good ole fashioned networking. And in fact it was networking that landed me the contract I have now. Going into the office, however, is less fruitful ... unless your goal was to waste most of your day to talk to someone that will a) give you a pamphlet that essentially tells you to do what you have already been doing, b) tell you to go to the website, c) give you paperwork that, when processed, will tell you what you already knew if you've gone to the website, and d) smile insincerely and encourage you to keep plugging away at it.
I could cut the DoL budget in about half by getting rid of most of the 'councelors' that don't do anything productive and just stop pretending to offer that at all. They already have a room full of computers so that people that don't have Internet access at home can use the website, and every time I went 60% of those weren't being used, and half of the ones that were were surfing facebook, not job hunting(2).
[(2) - I recognize that I didn't really do a count of the computers that were being used, or how they were being used. This was just the impression glancing around the room while sitting there with nothing else to do while waiting for the counselor to call me.]
The problem is, like so many other government handled programs, it has become a bureaucracy that is heavy on personnel and light on actual service. A bunch of people, pushing papers around, sending letters, emails, and the like. Many of whom may have even gone into the job with the desire to help people only to find themselves ground down by the bureaucratic machine and sheer number of people. Trust me ... for the most part it is not the individuals that I think are the problem.
Inefficiency is the nature of a bureaucracy as you tend to end up with a large number of people doing little more than overseeing people. The government school system is a great example of this often being very administration heavy with some districts having as many as 2 administrators for each teacher in the system. And those overseers are often pulling down hefty government salaries and benefits while having limited impact on the actual goal of the department. This in turn strangles the department budget leaving less and less money to actually go toward achieving the department's goal.
The governmental answer to this problem is usually to create more regulations and hire more administration to determine what the problem is and suggest a course of action to the committee in charge of the department that usually amounts to 'give us more money.'
Which brings us to the current problems with the Federal budget .... much of the problems of our budget could be solved by increasing the EFFICIENCY of the programs involved. Remember folks, it takes roughly 2 tax payers making the same salary (plus the taxes payed by the government employee) to pay the salary of each government employee ... it should be relatively obvious that the larger government grows the more and more impossible it becomes to maintain. This is why only $0.05 to $0.10 of every tax dollar collected actually makes it back out of the government in terms of benefits. Salaries and operational expenses are the biggest expenses that face our government ... and they aren't talking about any REAL long term cuts in those ... in fact they aren't really talking about cuts in anything ... they aren't cutting they're reducing planned increases ... so a department that got 100 million this year is only going to get 105 million next year instead of the 110 million that they were going to get under the previous budget projection. .... mind you we don't have enough money to pay for the 100 million they got THIS year and if we FROZE their budget at 100 million we wouldn't have that next year either so giving them 105 million is 5 more million dollars we have to borrow...
But let's just keep spending ... somewhere down the line I'm sure that money will just fall from the sky and solve our debt problems. Oh ... I know ... we'll find it collectively in between our sofa cushions. I'm sure that planning will work out very well for us in the future....
I'd like to say that I was busy with other work ... and late 2010 and through 2011 that was probably true, but 2012 was slow at best and I was unemployed for the beginning of 2013 ... and may be again if I don't manage to turn this contract into a full time position, or land another contract to extend it.
Having spent the last 3 months in the unemployment system I can see how completely screwed up that program has become.
It is a system that does little to nothing to assist an unemployed person in finding a job, and in certain respects discourages taking 'small jobs' while you're looking.
Leaving aside the benefit calculation and length of the benefit as both a confusing mess and for professional workers like myself, a grossly inadequate level of compensation ... if I take a job that earns less than my benefit ... my benefit is reduced by my pre-tax earnings .... so if I were to take a job where I earned less per week than my benefit ... I would be working for free. (Example the max benefit is $330 / Week (pre-tax) ... so if I were to take a temp job that earned me $230 (pre-tax) ... my benefit for the week would only be $100 to bring me to a total of $330 for the week. Since I could have earned $330 for the week without so much as getting out of bed(1), I worked the week for free.)
[(1) - Okay, not technically true as you have to be 'actively looking for a job' and turn in a work search report every week with at least 3 new job contacts ... but since emailing resumes or calling employers counts ... in this day that CAN be done from bed.]
The DoL (Department of Labor) does at least have a website that helps you find contacts .. kind of ... but I got better results using standard job search engines and good ole fashioned networking. And in fact it was networking that landed me the contract I have now. Going into the office, however, is less fruitful ... unless your goal was to waste most of your day to talk to someone that will a) give you a pamphlet that essentially tells you to do what you have already been doing, b) tell you to go to the website, c) give you paperwork that, when processed, will tell you what you already knew if you've gone to the website, and d) smile insincerely and encourage you to keep plugging away at it.
I could cut the DoL budget in about half by getting rid of most of the 'councelors' that don't do anything productive and just stop pretending to offer that at all. They already have a room full of computers so that people that don't have Internet access at home can use the website, and every time I went 60% of those weren't being used, and half of the ones that were were surfing facebook, not job hunting(2).
[(2) - I recognize that I didn't really do a count of the computers that were being used, or how they were being used. This was just the impression glancing around the room while sitting there with nothing else to do while waiting for the counselor to call me.]
The problem is, like so many other government handled programs, it has become a bureaucracy that is heavy on personnel and light on actual service. A bunch of people, pushing papers around, sending letters, emails, and the like. Many of whom may have even gone into the job with the desire to help people only to find themselves ground down by the bureaucratic machine and sheer number of people. Trust me ... for the most part it is not the individuals that I think are the problem.
Inefficiency is the nature of a bureaucracy as you tend to end up with a large number of people doing little more than overseeing people. The government school system is a great example of this often being very administration heavy with some districts having as many as 2 administrators for each teacher in the system. And those overseers are often pulling down hefty government salaries and benefits while having limited impact on the actual goal of the department. This in turn strangles the department budget leaving less and less money to actually go toward achieving the department's goal.
The governmental answer to this problem is usually to create more regulations and hire more administration to determine what the problem is and suggest a course of action to the committee in charge of the department that usually amounts to 'give us more money.'
Which brings us to the current problems with the Federal budget .... much of the problems of our budget could be solved by increasing the EFFICIENCY of the programs involved. Remember folks, it takes roughly 2 tax payers making the same salary (plus the taxes payed by the government employee) to pay the salary of each government employee ... it should be relatively obvious that the larger government grows the more and more impossible it becomes to maintain. This is why only $0.05 to $0.10 of every tax dollar collected actually makes it back out of the government in terms of benefits. Salaries and operational expenses are the biggest expenses that face our government ... and they aren't talking about any REAL long term cuts in those ... in fact they aren't really talking about cuts in anything ... they aren't cutting they're reducing planned increases ... so a department that got 100 million this year is only going to get 105 million next year instead of the 110 million that they were going to get under the previous budget projection. .... mind you we don't have enough money to pay for the 100 million they got THIS year and if we FROZE their budget at 100 million we wouldn't have that next year either so giving them 105 million is 5 more million dollars we have to borrow...
But let's just keep spending ... somewhere down the line I'm sure that money will just fall from the sky and solve our debt problems. Oh ... I know ... we'll find it collectively in between our sofa cushions. I'm sure that planning will work out very well for us in the future....
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