Monthly Archives: August 2013

More Thoughts On Treyvon

Posted on August 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

The more I think through the Treyvon Martin case, the more convinced I am that any profiling that Zimmerman did was appropriate.  We all profile everyday.

If we see something out of the ordinary that we feel poses a potential threat to our safety, we have a right to notice and take action.  That action might only be to take metal note.  It might be to take literal notes.

It might be to call 9-1-1.

It might be to follow while on the phone with 9-1-1.

I’m here to tell you that if my neighborhood begins to experience heightened levels of crime and I’m driving through my neighborhood, watching or just going to get a quart of milk, and I see someone that I find suspect – I’m following them.

Period.

And living in a free society with laws based on liberty of the individual, I get to do that without having to answer to questions of motive or prejudice.

More and more as I talk to people I know and meet I find myself swayed by only one argument as it pertains to the Treyvon Martin case:

Shooting an individual over simple assault is unacceptable.

That is, if one white guy were the victim of another white guy beating him, firing a gun to kill would be inappropriate.  Or, if a woman were being beaten by a man, that woman would be wrong to draw a gun and shoot to kill.

This argument is simple: deadly force to avoid further bodily harm is wrong.

I think that reasonable people can disagree with the conclusion, but it is the one argument I find valid.

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Posted in Crime, Liberty, Politics: National, Race

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Very Cool Technology

Posted on August 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

Wanna get the Internet to folks in remote parts of the world?

Rather than relying on cell towers, phone lines, or fiber optics, Google plans to beam 3G-speed Internet to the world’s most inaccessible corners using helium balloons. The experiment is called “Project Loon.”

…

FLATOW: And where – would those – those are under-covered places around the world. Where are the prime places for that?

CASSIDY: There’s lots of places. In the Southern Hemisphere alone, two-thirds of the countries, the cost of Internet access is higher than the average monthly income for people in those countries. Even in China and India, there’s over a billion people that don’t have good Internet coverage. So I think there’s lots of places around the world where there’s sort of remote and rural areas that don’t have coverage, or it’s unaffordable.

Go world!

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Posted in Technology

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Laffer’s Curve

Posted on August 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

The Laffer Curve

The Laffer Curve.  It’s the idea that as tax rates rise beyond a certain point, tax revenue declines.  It makes sense at the extremes; a tax of 0% raises zero dollars.  A tax of 100% also raises zero dollars.  No one works for free.

An example of this concept was displayed in Washington DC last month:

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) no longer plans to build three stores in the nation’s capitol, after the city’s council voted to force large retailers to pay starting wages that are 50% higher than the minimum wage there.

The world’s largest retailer also said it will consider its options related to three other Washington, D.C., stores that are still under construction.

D.C., a wildly successful example of a city that lifts its poor and most fragile citizens out of poverty:

/sarcasm

has once again created a law that really proves who is waging a “war on the poor.”

It isn’t the conservative whole embraces the free market that “hates” the poor, no.  Rather, it’s the intellectual liberal that “hates” the poor.  How else to describe the mentality of a people who vote to force job creators out of the market?

You’ll probably never get rich at Wal-Mart, but a job there is better than not a job anywhere.

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Posted in Economics, Economy, Government, Politics: State, States Behaving Badly

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Those In Charge Of Obamacare Want Nothing To Do With Obama Care

Posted on August 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

Can’t blame them really:

“Mr. Werfel, last week your employees who are a member of the National Treasury Employee’s Union sent a form letter for union members to send in to ask they be exempt from the exchanges,” a congressman asked. “Why are your employees trying to exempt themselves from the very law that you’re tasked to enforce?”

“I don’t want to speak for the NTEU, but I’ll offer a perspective as a federal employee myself and a federal employee at the IRS,” said the IRS chief. “And that is, we have right now as employees of the government, of the IRS, affordable health care coverage. I think the ACA was designed to provide an option or an alternative for individuals that do not. And all else being equal, I think if you’re an individual who is satisfied with your health care coverage, you’re probably in a better position to stick with that coverage than go through the change of moving into a different environment and going through that process. So I think for a federal employee, I think more likely, and I would — can speak for myself, I would prefer to stay with the current policy that I’m pleased with rather than go through a change if I don’t need to go through that change.”

Awesome.

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Posted in Health Care, Politics: National

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Watch How They Defend ‘Em

Posted on August 7, 2013 | 6 comments

Fan and Fred

In a move so surprising I had to check THREE times that I wasn’t reading The Onion.  Obama is proposing to kaput Fanny and Freddie:

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama will propose overhauling the U.S. mortgage finance system in a speech on Tuesday, weighing in on a tangled and polarizing problem that was central to the devastating financial crisis in 2007-2009 and that continues to slow the economic recovery, the White House said.

Just another big government program in the waiting, right?  Hardly:

Obama will propose eliminating mortgage finance entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over time, replacing them with a system in which the private market buys home loans from lenders and repackages them as securities for investors, senior administration officials said.

Huh?

Obama is suggesting that we demolish the government agencies and replace them with private market systems?  But I thought that the practice of repackaging mortgages was immoral and the root of all evil?

The mortgage securitization process is deemed essential to the smooth flow of capital to housing markets and the availability of credit.

What has happened?  I thought that it was evil Wall Street that brought down fire and brimstone upon us all?  It was Wall Street bankers that took mortgages, packaged them and the resold them.  Right?

The two enterprises don’t directly make loans, but buy mortgages from lenders, package them as bonds, guarantee them against default and sell them to investors.

But how much influence do they really have?

Fannie and Freddie currently own or guarantee half of all U.S. mortgages and back nearly 90 percent of new ones.

Blink.  Blink.

Holy shit that’s a lot of loans.

It’s long overdue, to be sure, that Fannie and Freddie are shut down and the government stop its subsidizing of loans to folks who have no hope of paying them back.  For me, this just reinforces the fact that the government policies and agencies were the primary driving force behind the housing collapse.

Now, to see who may or may not be right, watch who approves of this approach and watch who does not approve of it.  The first democrat that defends Fannie and Freddie is the first to be guilty of those policies I have been criticizing this whole time.  And the first republican who opposes the President is the most guilty of simply opposing every idea he has.

 

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Posted in Economics, Politics: National

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On Not Reading Bill

Posted on August 6, 2013 | Leave a comment

I resonate with the frustration expressed by opponents of specific legislation when that bill is signed into law, or voted for, without having been read.

Here in the only TRUE Carolina, our Governor responded to specific question on a bill handed to him that he had yet to read that bill or that aspect of the bill.

Here, Moral Monday is taking him to task:

For the record, here I agree with the folks who are moral on Mondays.  However, I do not respect their outrage or cries of injustice.  They were no where to be heard as elected official after elected official admitted to not having read Obamacare.

Who can forget, “We have to pass this bill to see what’s in it.”

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Posted in Politics: North Carolina

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Mountain Moral Monday

Posted on August 6, 2013 | Leave a comment

And they said the Tea Party lacked color:

All KINDS of brown skinned people at the Moral Monday rally.

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Posted in Politics: North Carolina

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More Thinking On IQ

Posted on August 6, 2013 | 4 comments

IQ

I was in conversation with a friend the other day when IQ came up.  And I used my road construction worker /Harvard grad example again.  Which got me to thinking.

Is there anyone alive right now that really believes the mean intelligence of 1,000 road construction workers is anywhere near the mean intelligence of 1,000 Harvard law graduates?

With that being true, we have to accept that given a random mate selection process that filters on intelligence, the children of the Harvard Law grads would have higher levels of intelligence than the children of the construction workers.  EXCEPT the gap would be smaller.  With a similar random mate selection occurring in the second generation, the grandchildren of the Harvard Law grads would be much more equal to the grandchildren of the construction workers.

Which means that it is okay to say that one group of people has elevated levels of intelligence without implying that another group is somehow genetically limited in their ability to attain those same levels.

It very well may be true that immigrants to America are less intelligent than the domestic population.  This shouldn’t be controversial.

Moving away from the immigration debate, consider what happens to the first and then second generation Harvard Law grads vs construction worker if mate selection is NOT randomized.  That is, we filter ourselves via homogamy.

Now the Harvard Law graduates are not marrying random mates, rather, they are marrying people much like themselves.  Almost certainly a college graduate and likely a member of the same social class.  And if the same phenomenon is occurring at the lower range of intelligence, the opposite expected results will take place – perhaps with consequences that are startling.

Poverty tracks with lower cognitive ability.  Likewise, lower cognitive ability predicts more children sooner with more of those children being illegitimate, which further drives poverty and risk.

I’m not sure what it all means, but it’s a rather scary proposition.

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Posted in Economics, Life, Politics: National

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Another Reason To Hate Unions

Posted on August 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

Unions

As if I needed another reason to continue to hold unions in disrepute:

A judge ordered one of Chicago’s most politically powerful labor unions to suspend picketing against 16 funeral homes last week after receiving reports that striking Teamsters had, among other things, disturbed a child’s funeral.

SCI Illinois Services, Inc., one of the nation’s largest funeral home chains, asked a district court to intervene after striking funeral directors and drivers with Teamsters Local 727 allegedly harassed grieving families.

“We are grateful that the court agreed to issue this temporary restraining order, and we are hopeful that it will help protect grieving families who are experiencing the most difficult times of their lives,” Larry Michael, managing director for SCI Illinois Services, Inc., said in a release. “While we recognize and respect the Teamsters’ right to lawfully picket, we have been shocked and saddened by their attempts to make grieving families the target of the cruel and outrageous attacks.”

The company testified in its filing that union members blocked grieving family members from leaving its parking lot, used bullhorns to shout obscenities at workers and mourners, and unleashed a German Shepard on a dead woman’s daughter and husband.

Stay classy buys – stay classy.

 

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Posted in Idiots on Parade, Lobby/PAC

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On The Basis Of Race

Posted on August 5, 2013 | 10 comments

Together

It was only a matter of time before someone realized that being white was to be a numerical minority in the United States.  And since we have minority organizations in every corner of our society, it only makes sense that this was to happen:

Georgia State University officials say that six students have complained after seeing fliers around campus advertising a new student club known as the White Student Union.

Freshman Patrick Sharp says he started the club so that students of European and Euro-American descent can celebrate their shared history and culture. He said members can also discuss issues that affect white people, such as immigration and affirmative action.

This brings me to one of my main points in racial conversations.  If we want to eradicate the differences among the races, perhaps we should listen to Chief Justice:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Hardly controversial.

The other point I make when discussing culture and history is that I have no sense of German or Swedish history, culture or roots.  I have no idea from which region of either country my family is from.  I have no idea how the governments of either are formed.  I do not know anything regarding either of these places.

My mother, whose father stepped off the boat at Ellis Island, knows that she is German but only has a sense of America as her home and native country.  She grew up speaking English, reading American history and when the Olympics were on, pulled for the Americans.  It’s the American National Anthem that stirs her, not the German Anthem.

If it sounds silly that Mr. Sharp wants to celebrate his European culture, then why would it not be as equally silly to celebrate an individuals Mexican culture, or Arab or African?

But think on these words:

“If we are already minorities on campus and are soon to be minorities in this country why wouldn’t we have the right to advocate for ourselves and have a club just like every other minority?” Sharp, 18, said “Why is it when a white person say he is proud to be white he’s shunned as a racist?”

Indeed.

 

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Posted in Politics: National, Race

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