Just keep on spendin’!
The White House is threatening a presidential veto of a Senate Republican measure that would give President Barack Obama more authority and flexibility to find $85 billion in spending cuts this year. The measure is intended to replace the automatic across-the-board cuts scheduled to kick in Friday.The White House says it instead backs a Democratic measure to replace the cuts with tax hikes on millionaires and spending reductions over 10 years.
Kennesaw’s 1982 gun mandate was a direct response to a gun -ban- enacted a year earlier in Morton Grove, Illinois. That was later deemed unconstitutional, but Kennesaw’s law is still on the books.
Added Lt. Graydon, “It was not meant to be an enforceable law. The police department has never searched homes to make sure you had a gun. It was meant more or less as a political statement to support citizens’ second amendment rights to own firearms.”
After the law went into effect in 1982, city leaders say they witnessed a 29% drop in crime. Over the last 30 years, the crime rate has remained low with just four gun-related homicides.
“Our crime rate is generally less than half the national average,” added Lt. Graydon.
via Kennesaw, Georgia’s 1982 Gun Mandate Still On The Books, Every Home Owns A Gun | wusa9.com.
Why does this make me think of Michael Bloomberg?
Back in 2005, North Korean state TV launched a five part series entitled ‘Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle’ with the aim of promoting short back and sides for its male population.
At the same time, a number of reports appeared in North Korean press and radio urging tidy hairstyles and appropriate clothing.
The TV show sent out teams with hidden cameras to catch ‘rebel’ North Koreans who were breaking the North Korean strict hairstyle code.
The makers of the program went so far as to name and shame those who had the audacity to get their hair cut differently.
The program even claimed there were health reasons not to grow long hair including the bizarre claim that long hair would rob the brain of energy.
Men should keep their hair shorter than five centimeters and have it cut every 15 days.
Under the new system, complaints will prompt an Internet service provider — such as Verizon or AT&T — to notify a customer whose Internet address has been detected sharing files illegally. A person will be given up to six opportunities to stop before the Internet provider will take more drastic steps, such as temporarily slowing their connection, or redirecting Internet traffic until they acknowledge they received a notice or review educational materials about copyright law.
Consumers who maintain they have been wrongly accused would be forced to pay $35 to appeal the decision. The fee would be reimbursed if they prevail.
Proponents say the focus is on deterring the average consumer rather than chronic violators. The director of the organization behind the system, Jill Lesser of the Center for Copyright Infringement, said in a blog post Monday that the program is “meant to educate rather than punish, and direct (users) to legal alternatives.”
via Net providers begin warning of illegal downloads – New York News | NYC Breaking News.
Back in 2000, the FAA handled 23% more air traffic with fewer flight controllers than it employs today, according to the Department of Transportation’s own inspector general, who added this raises “questions about the efficiency of FAA’s current controller workforce.”
Either air traffic controllers have gotten far less efficient over the past 13 years, or the FAA could get by with about 3,400 fewer of them — without affecting the quality of air travel one bit. Cutting out those excess controllers would get LaHood more than halfway to the $600 million he has to cut from the FAA’s budget.
And while LaHood ominously talks about closing 100 control towers, what he doesn’t say is that these towers should have been closed long ago.
In fact, Bloomberg News reports the FAA itself identified more than 100 “zombie towers” that handle so few flights they should be cut back or closed.
Then there’s the fact the administration has more flexibility in dealing with the sequester cuts than LaHood, or anyone else working for Obama, is willing to admit.
As the fact-checking site PolitiFact.com points out, “within the specific programs targeted for cuts, federal managers have a fair amount of discretion about what to reduce.”
via Debunking Obama’s Phony Claim That Sequester Cuts Will Cause Flight Delays – Investors.com.
“I could not be more frustrated than I am right now,” Haley told reporters after the meeting. She said that when she asked Obama if he would consider a last-minute plan to shave about 2 percent from the annual federal budget without increasing taxes, the answer was “no.”
“My kids could go and find $83 billion out of a $4 trillion budget,” Haley said. “This is not rocket science.”
via Nikki Haley slams Washington after meeting with Obama | The Ticket – Yahoo! News.
The way boys are treated in K-12 also impacts how they do with regard to college. According to a recent study of male college enrollment, it’s not academic performance, but discipline that holds boys back. “Controlling for these non-cognitive behavioral factors can explain virtually the entire female advantage in college attendance for the high school graduating class of 1992, after adjusting for family background, test scores and high school achievement.” Boys are disciplined more because teachers — overwhelmingly female — find stereotypically male behavior objectionable. Girls are quieter, more orderly, and have better handwriting. The boys get disciplined more, suspended more and are turned off of education earlier.
Female teachers also give boys lower grades, according to research in Britain. Female teachers grade boys more harshly than girls, though, interestingly, male teachers are seen by girls as treating everyone the same regardless of gender. More and more, it’s looking like schools are a hostile environment for boys.
Fight back with what? They tried this during the Sandy Hook shooting. Civilians need to be able to match force with force.
Law enforcement agencies have begun adopting a new policy on so-called “active shooters,” encouraging civilians to take safety into their own hands and take down gunmen who threaten them at work or school.
This approach is gaining momentum in the wake of tragic incidents in Newtown, Connecticut and the Oikos University shooting in Oakland.
At San Jose Evergreen Community College, police have trained teachers, staff and students to follow specific guidelines during this kind of emergency.
via Bay Area Law Enforcement Encourages Fighting Back Against Active Shooters « CBS San Francisco.
This anecdote is similar to what I saw every day when I lived in Camden, NJ. I’m no bleeding heart, but prison is doing more harm than good in many cases.
For most of their daughters’ childhood, Mr. Harris didn’t come close to making the minimum wage. His most lucrative job, as a crack dealer, ended at the age of 24, when he left Washington to serve two decades in prison, leaving his wife to raise their two young girls while trying to hold their long-distance marriage together.
His $1.15-per-hour prison wages didn’t even cover the bills for the phone calls and marathon bus trips to visit him. Struggling to pay rent and buy food, Ms. Hamilton ended up homeless a couple of times.
“Basically, I was locked up with him,” she said. “My mind was locked up. My life was locked up. Our daughters grew up without their father.”
The shift to tougher penal policies three decades ago was originally credited with helping people in poor neighborhoods by reducing crime. But now that America’s incarceration rate has risen to be the world’s highest, many social scientists find the social benefits to be far outweighed by the costs to those communities.
“Prison has become the new poverty trap,” said Bruce Western, a Harvard sociologist. “It has become a routine event for poor African-American men and their families, creating an enduring disadvantage at the very bottom of American society.”
Among African-Americans who have grown up during the era of mass incarceration, one in four has had a parent locked up at some point during childhood. For black men in their 20s and early 30s without a high school diploma, the incarceration rate is so high — nearly 40 percent nationwide — that they’re more likely to be behind bars than to have a job.
via Long Prison Terms Eyed as Contributing to Poverty – NYTimes.com.
Keep in mind this is a father protecting his 2-year-old child. There was another incident this weekend where an unarmed father trying to protect his daughter was killed.
This situation began unfolding at about 4:30 a.m. in the 5000 block of Prince Edward Highway, or Route 460. Investigators told NBC12’s Kelly Avellino three unknown men forced their way in the front door of the home, where a man was alone with a 2-year-old child.
According to a press release issued by Sheriff Wesley W. Reed, that man called 911 to report a home invasion and said the suspects were armed. Reed also said gunfire was exchanged between the suspects and the caller.
Authorities said two suspects were pronounced dead at the scene, while the third managed to escape on foot.
We’re told the homeowner and the child were not harmed.