Gun Free Zone

A new policy from Elizabeth Warren announced on Twitter.

A lot of giant companies refer to themselves as “American.” But let’s face it, they only have one real loyalty: Their shareholders. A Warren administration will halt the hollowing out of American cities and create good American jobs. Here’s how. pic.twitter.com/pX0VpRXqqR

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) August 25, 2019

I’m an economic patriot.  I agree with her, more American companies should do more hiring and manufacturing in America.

So what is Warren going to do to encourage companies to do that?

Will she abolish the corporate income tax?

How about abolishing the NLRB?

Will she deregulate the healthcare industry to reduce the cost of insurance on employers?

One thought that I have had to encourage companies to hire in areas of the country that have suffered from a loss of jobs is to defer payroll taxes on employees hired in economically depressed areas.  So if a company buys a shuttered factory in rural Indiana or Ohio or Michigan, a typical rust belt town, and puts locals back to work, they will not have to pay payroll tax on those employees for some period of years proportional to the level of economic depression of that area, i.e., the poorer it is, the longer they can defer payroll tax.

Will she invest in infrastructure, such as roads, to help economically depressed areas attract companies.

Will she reduce the burden of environmental regulations on manufacturing?

Will she make it easier to drill, mine, refine, and build?

Nope.

She endorses the Green New Deal.  She wants to force companies to comply with more restrictive environmental regulations.  She wants to mandate the use of more expensive 100%  renewable energy sources.  She wants to tax companies that make over $100 Million to pay for green energy subsidies.  She wants to increase taxes for healthcare spending.

Pretty much every one of her economic proposals will make is more economically disadvantageous to manufacture and hire in the United States.

So without any carrots to encourage American companies to hire Americans, all she has is sticks.

So what we have here is a bunch of business destroying economic policies wrapped up in something that sounds good.

I agree with Warren that American companies should offshore less and hire Americans more.

I just don’t believe that a business hating, high tax, regulation loving, Left-wing Democrat is the person who can make that happen.

A friend had found a document from 2012 regarding the prosecutions (or lack thereof) for violations of the Brady Act and Federal laws regarding felons trying to buy guns. I covered that in a post 4 years ago and I guess with all the renewed talk of Universal Background Checks being the ointment to heal all Gun Violence crimes, I figure we can revisit its effectiveness:

It is simple: Two million violations of the Brady Act represent two million investigations and prosecutions, right? You have a prohibited person dead to rights by walking into a gun store or gun show (forbidden), very possibly manipulating a gun (also forbidden) and then filling the ATF form 4473 in which they have to lie or if truthful, they are signing the evidence of breaking the law with their own hand. And if a Federal Prosecutor was to save him/herself time, only one count would be issued for the multiple violations and that would entail 10 year in Fed Pen and $200,000 in fines.

So where are the two million prosecutions? Nowhere. Maybe a Million? Five Hundred thousand perhaps and that would be prosecuting only 25% of the violations? So what are the numbers?

I bumped into the info for 5 years: 2006 to 2010. I knew it was bad, but the reality is absolutely absurd. Here is a summary:

2006: Total denials: 77,233. Referred for prosecution: 172. Guilty Plea or Conviction: 73.

2007: Total denials: 66,817. Referred for prosecution: 196. Guilty Plea or Conviction: 48.

2008: Total denials: 78,906. Referred for prosecution: 147. Guilty Plea or Conviction: 43.

2009: Total denials: 67,324. Referred for prosecution: 140. Guilty Plea or Conviction: 32.

2010: Total denials: 76,142. Referred for prosecution: 62. Guilty Plea or Conviction: 13.

Of the 366,422 denials issued with pride in those five years, they only managed to get 209 convictions. That is 0.05%, half a twentieth of one percent of all denials that ended up with a conviction or a plea of guilty.

We need more background checks, and the statistics prove it! (or not)
September 12, 2015

Let me put it this way: If you a re a felon and try buy a gun in a gun shop, you have a 99.98% probability to get away without repercussions. I think it is more dangerous for them to try to get a gun from a black market dealer selling  from the trunk of his car.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America

You should know by now the case of Mr. Strange (no doctor) who had his concealed weapons license suspended because he happened to have the same name as a convicted wife beater. His license is now restored.

Hank Strange, who brought the story to AmmoLand, started advocating for Carpenter on his show. A sympathetic Captain in the police department decided to help out the Marine veteran. He took it upon himself to take a picture of Carpenter and had another officer bring it to the woman who took out the restraining order.

The woman confirmed to the police that they had the wrong Jonathan Edward Carpenter. The Sheriff’s Department quickly was able to get the restraining order removed from the father and husband.

Man Falsely Stripped Of Gun Rights Gets Them Restored

And as glad as I am about his license’s restoration, it only happened because a honcho in the PD decided to help him out of the goodness of his heart. But what about those that now or in the future will be caught in this idiotic Red Flag  mess and do not have the backing of a high police officer to clear their names and restore rights?

Although there has to be a process to keep people safe from those who represent  a clear danger, watering down the definition of dangerous and lowering the minimum standards for intervention to basically unchecked gossip only create  system ripe for abuse and mistakes. Cases like the one above will happen again and again and we will be asked to bear with them Because Of The Children™.

Hat Tip to Adam L.

I don’t know if you herd that San Francisco will no longer address criminals with sentences over a year as “convicted felons.” Nope, the new name is “justice-involved person.” A juvenile “delinquent” will now be called a “young person with justice system involvement” and the dumb goes on.

I am guessing that Facebook is doing something stupider than that. A friend of mine got a FB Jail sentence and I was trying to figure out what was the trigger for the Zucker bots…. and I found it.

It does not matter that crossing the border without the proper paperwork is a crime codified in our laws, but Facebook simply does not like it and will screw you because of it and I should used “undocumented traveler” or some hores crap like that.

I am guessing that “murder” will also be changed to “unwanted cessation of life signs by a second party’s intervention”

Doctor Allen Frances is a real psychiatrist.  He was the Chair of Duke University Dept of Psychiatry the DSM-IV task force.

You would think that a man with such credentials would be a consummate professional who would not let politics sully his reputation.

It turns out politics and TDS can destroy the best of men.

This is him talking about Donald Trump on CNN:

.@AllenFrancesMD, a psychiatrist, tells @Brianstelter: Trump "may be responsible for many more million deaths" than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.https://t.co/cBUZVQjhNU pic.twitter.com/RVARyeVnVh

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) August 25, 2019

Stalin killed 20 million people.  He started the Holodomor to punish the Ukrainian people for resisting joining the Soviet Union.  He had Soviet soldiers take every morsel of food, every kernel of grain, until between six and eight million Ukrainians starved to death.

Another 10 million Soviet citizens were worked or froze or starved to death in Gulags or prison camps or building roads in Siberia.  Millions more were just shot.

Hitler killed 12 million people.  Six million Jews in an ethnic genocide and six million other undesirables or political dissidents.

Mao killed 50 million Chinese.  Staving some 30 million to death with agricultural policies that directly caused the greatest famine in human history.  Tens of millions more were executed or worked to death.

Pol Pot had one million Cambodians shot and another one million worked to death in the killing fields.

Notice a trend here of far-Leftist socialists shooting, starving, or working to death millions of people.

Tell me exactly where are the labor camps, death camps, gas chambers, gulags, and crematoriums of the Trump administration?

Where are the rail cars full of human beings headed for their deaths at gunpoint?

Where are the mass graves?

Nowhere.

The idea that I’ve seen online that he’s talking about the deaths from weather or floods related to climate change is bullshit.  Millions have not died from the weather during the Trump administration and it’s scientifically fallacious horseshit to point to any death or natural disaster and say “had Trump done X, this would not have happened and these people would not have died.”

On top of that, for a psychiatrist to throw around the word “crazy” the way he did when he was clearly brought onto the show with the authority of a psychiatrist, and to declare that everyone who voted for Trump to be crazy is beyond irresponsible.

Nothing that this man said was within the bounds of reason or the canon of professional ethics.

He has a free speech right to say what he does but as a licensed professional he has to obey the canon of professional ethics, which he violated.  Doctor Allen Frances needs to have his licenses revoked and be censured by the APA.

If he is not, this will get worse.  The Left will start violating the Goldwater rule in every election and judicial confirmation, with board-certified psychiatrists and psychologists using their clout to declare the candidate they don’t like to be mentally unstable in election ads.

This must be stopped and hard before fall down the rabbit hole of the Soviet system where psychiatry was abused for political purposes.

I am a believer of car batteries as a power source to charge the many small electronics we have today. In the last post, Boris recommended a solar charger and that is perfectly fine, but I don’t trust the suckers, call me old fart.

Here is my idea that I am finally getting together. It come out to under $85 and it will last you a long time.

One cheap car battery.  Walmart is selling one for under $50, with 650 amps of cold cranking. If it is fully charged, you’d probably charge every phone in your particular Zip Code.

Top Post Battery Terminals, because you will be needing where to connect cables for the next thing.

A Battery Box. Always nice to keep your battery in one, specially if you need to mount an important accessory later.

And here is the accessory: Automotive DC Power Outlet Extension: How many 12 V USB chargers do you have around in drawers? Or if you don’t (weirdo) they are cheap as heck.

Next is to make the appropriate holes to thread the wires inside. Attach the outlet to the top of the box and make the necessary connections.

What’s left is the election of DC-USB charger and that is up you whatever you want to use. My only tip is do not use the “flush to the dashboard” types because they are a pain to remove. Make sure the ones you use are compatible with your phone. I think the new phones require something called USB 3… anybody knows better, drop a line in the comments so I can update here. There are some that display voltage which is good if you use the battery also for other  more energy-sucking devices.

If you have a generator that is somewhat modern, there should be a 12 DC port to recharge. If not, you can use the  battery charger you should have already. And if not, you can use your vehicle to charge the battery while taking a drive around the neighborhood and enjoying a few minutes of air conditioning.

Anyway, that is my idea. You can improve and adapt at your convenience.

UPDATE: I want to apologize to you readers because I could not understand why was everybody going with cutesy Li Ion battery stuff and not POWER (insert grunts here) till I re-read the post and realized I had left at least one paragraph of explanations.

I have used the battery before and with success. But it was not only for recharging phones and iPods, but also ran a portable TV/Radio (easily 6 hours  day) and rigged car lights for perimeter illumination.  Last year after Hurricane Michael I even ran a table fan using an inverter so mom could sleep in somewhat comfort. But I had everything running on clamps or the wire wrapped around the poles which is not safe or presentable.  The battery will be used and a lot by different items drawing different loads, but I spectacularly failed to mention so.

To Ratus: I understand the selection of a Deep Cycle battery. In fact, the battery  that we initially had was a good quality deep cycle marine which went to waste because it did not get used in 5 years. The “problem” is that if you are very lucky, you don’t get hit by a hurricane and lose power for many years. A Deep Cycle battery is wasting money IMHO.

Back to everybody: We don’t have a whole house generator, but a small portable Coleman and it is an exercise of proper usage. Priority of generator power goes to the fridge and the freezer. I have not tried yet, but probably I could run the water heater which would forgive many sins with the missus.  I don’t have to point out the silliness of running the generator for watching TV or play with a gaming console or any unnecessary crap.  If the generator is running, the battery charger is plugged and the battery gets a recharge if needed.

Again, my apologies. I was not clear and the message was lost.