California to Gun Manufacturers: We’ll See Your Innovation and Raise You a Law

Posted on May 21, 2012 by steve

Firearm manufacturers work overtime to overcome California’s draconian gun laws. Manufacturers even had to create a different type of magazine release to comply with California regulation, they created the bullet button.

The Bullet Button is a product that allows the shooter to drop a magazine with the use of a tool. It prevents finger manipulation of the mag release, and creates a condition allowable under current individual interpretations of California law.

This does not create a detachable mag situation, but creates an attachable-fixed magazine condition. A bullet tip can be used as the tool, as can any small object such as Allen wrench, or small screwdriver.

This button can not be used with magazines greater than 10 rounds in capacity. To do so in the state of California on an unregistered assault weapon, would be a felony.

The Bullet Button installs in less than a minute, requires no gunsmithing, or cutting on any part of the rifle. The installation is not permanent, and can be reversed just as quickly.

Or you can simply use the business end of a bullet to change a magazine.

Of course, when California State Senator Leland Yee Ph.D.found out that gun owners can change out magazines fairly easily, the State Senator from San Francisco sprang into action. Via The Truth About Guns:

Reacting to the shocking news that gunmakers actually read the laws the California churns out and design guns around them, all State Senator Leland Yee could manage to sputter was, “When I saw the news I was absolutely horrified.” The gaping loophole that has the poor Senator all aflutter means rifles with bullet buttons – which actually allow a shooter to change out a magazine – are legal in the Golden State. Yes, that sounds pretty basic and magazine releases are legal just about everywhere else in these fifty-seven states. But what works so well for the rest of us doesn’t cut it on the left coast . . .
As the good Senator recently told sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com:

“It is extremely important that individuals in the state of California do not own assault weapons. I mean that is just so crystal clear, there is no debate, no discussion,” said Yee.
That’s why the Senator is introducing a bill to ban the bullet button.

As the father of modern political theory astutely points out:

”You are bound to meet misfortune if you are unarmed because, among other reasons, people despise you….There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not. It is unreasonable to expect that an armed man should obey one who is unarmed, or that an unarmed man should remain safe and secure when his servants are armed. In the latter case, there will be suspicion on the one hand and contempt on the other, making cooperation impossible.”
~Niccolo Machiavelli

Leftists in California want to ban all guns, this way only criminals will own them.

Scary Chart: Taxmageddon

Posted on May 21, 2012 by steve

Via Heritage:

The bulk of Taxmageddon comes from expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, but also means the child tax credit will be cut in half, the Alternative Minimum Tax patches end, the Death Tax returns to its 2001 level, and a handful of new Obamacare tax hikes take effect.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Way to go Congress…

Video sharing will be the next big thing according to MIT Tech Review

Posted on May 19, 2012 by steve

Via MIT Tech Review:

Ever since Facebook announced its $1 billion acquisition of the company behind the popular photo-sharing app Instagram last month, the question on every nerd’s lips has been: What will be the next big thing in mobile apps?

For many, the answer is video. Apps like Viddy and Socialcam have picked up steam, gaining users—including pop stars Justin Bieber and Britney Spears—who are shooting and sharing videos with others within the apps and on social networks. Like Instagram, many of these apps also include a number of effects you can use to give your videos an edge, such as filters and background music.

Could be.

However, this is from the same MIT, who’s Economics Department that foisted Ph. D. Paul Krugman upon the world. And, it goes without saying, any institution giving Paul Krugman a degree, of any kind, will do serious damage to your reputation.

A mistake like that is difficult to overcome.

Plus, having Ben Bernanke and Christina Romer on MIT Economics Department alumni roster is not going to help repair their reputation either.

Family Friendly Program in UK to give “advice” on changing nappies, breastfeeding and “baby talk”

Posted on May 18, 2012 by steve

Remember, most bad ideas that start in Europe have a tendency to find their way here.

Via the Telegraph (UK):

David Cameron said it was “ludicrous” that parents received more training in how to drive a car than in how to raise children.
A £3.4million digital information service, which begins today, will provide free email alerts and text messages with NHS advice “on everything from teething to tantrums”, Mr Cameron said.

Separate pilot schemes will offer couples with young children free parenting classes and subsidised relationship counselling to help cope with “tiredness” and “mess”.

As part of a series of “family friendly” initiatives unveiled this week, the Prime Minister yesterday gave his strongest signal yet that tax breaks may be offered to families who hire nannies or childminders.

Speaking at a business event in Manchester, he said he was “hugely attracted to the idea of making child care tax allowable”.

Really? How have we been getting along all this time without any official government training to raise children.

Think about all licensed drivers who received more training in how to drive a car than raise children driving on the road today.

Keeping the government out of the child raising business is best.

Video: Michigan education official testifies that educators, not parents, know what’s best for kids’ education

Posted on May 15, 2012 by steve

The left’s dream on display, rule by the credentialed:

Because, they know more about our children than we do…

Medicare, Medicaid and USPS losses are orders of magnitude larger than JP Morgan Chase

Posted on May 14, 2012 by steve

JP Morgan Chase lost nearly $2 billion on bad investments. Like clockwork, Washington politicians began their grandstanding, calling for additional regulations. Michigan’s very own Democrat Senator, Carl Levin is leading the charge.

The language of the Dodd-Frank law clearly intended to prohibit a bank from engaging in the kind of overly broad hedging at play in J.P. Morgan’s loss, Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said in a conference call with reporters on Friday. Merkley and Levin wrote the provision of Dodd-Frank that implemented the Volcker Rule, aimed at stopping traditional banks from conducting proprietary trading.

A draft proposal of the Volcker rule permitting overly broad hedging bets should be tightened, they said.

Democrat Tom Harkin is going a step further, calling for the break up of JP Morgan Chase.

“Last night’s announcement is a sign that large financial institutions continue to pose significant risk to the economy,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) said in a statement to Dow Jones Newswires on Friday. “These ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks need to be broken up because of their inherent risk.”

Because destroying one bank is not enough, avowed Socialist Bernie Sanders calls for the break up of America’s six largest banks.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) also said in a statement Friday that the country’s six largest banks, including J.P. Morgan, should be broken up to prevent the need for any future taxpayer bailouts.

While politicians point and grandstand about one large loss at a major U.S. bank, our intrepid Senators are overseeing chronic losses several orders of magnitude larger than JP Morgan Chase.

If you want to know why these are market successes, consider: Medicare and Medicaid lose at least 35 times as much per year to fraud and other improper payments, and Medicare wastes even more on medical care that does nothing to make patients healthier or happier. This happens year after year after year.

Now ask yourself: when was the last time someone got fired over those losses? And yet the politicians’ first reaction to the J.P. Morgan trade was greater oversight by the political system, which tolerates much greater losses than the market system that is currently disciplining J.P. Morgan.

And even the USPS loses more in one quarter than JP Morgan Chase did in their headline grabbing loss.

JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion trading loss is top news nationwide. But over at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), such losses are business as usual. USPS reported a typical (for it) $3.2 billion loss for the most recent quarter. Try that comparison on for size.

JPMorgan Chase incurred a “whale” of a loss because, as explained by the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon to his investors, this is an example of a “flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored” betting strategy. Despite the loss, it by no means spells doom for the bank. The bank has more than enough capital to stomach these losses, as painful as they are. JPMorgan Chase’s actions led to the loss, and JPMorgan Chase’s actions will fix it. You can bet it is already doing just that.

With their less than stellar record, Washington politicians have no business meddling in the private sector.

Africa experiencing economic growth and improvement in child mortality rates

Posted on May 12, 2012 by steve

Via my favorite economics writer, Tim Worstall:

That is the annual change in child mortality in those selected countries. No country, no group of countries, has ever seen anything like this, it simply has not happened so quickly anywhere else at all. Something, blessedly, is going very right indeed in this world. My suggestion is that we keep doing exactly what it is that we are currently doing: we might call it globalisation, foreign direct investment, openness to trade or as Madsen puts it, buying things made by poor people in poor countries. But it’s working, isn’t it?

The left says free markets and capitalism are evil. However, investment and engaging in trade with Africa by “the rich” has led to economic growth. And, with economic growth, peoples lives improve indicated by the improvement child mortality rates.

Of course, the #OWS crazies and Democrats (aren’t they really the same) would rather engage in demagoguery rather than face, you know, actual data.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme: Eurozone vs. Japan

Posted on May 12, 2012 by steve

Today’s Eurozone looks remarkably like Japan of the 1990′s.

Via The Big Picture:

As Mark Twain reportedly quipped: “History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.” ECB economists, in their analysis of the Japanese experience in the central bank’s monthly bulletin for May, published yesterday, wrote: “As banks struggled with bad debt for years, they curtailed lending to new firms, which led to distortions in the allocation of credit and ultimately exacerbated the financial crisis and postponed a sustainable recovery.” That description would fit the euro-area situation if the words “bad debt” were replaced with “raising capital”.

European policy makers have failed to implement some of the reforms that also proved elusive in Japan. The staff economists stated: “The strong emphasis traditionally placed on job security in Japan may have reduced flexibility by hampering sectoral adjustments in the economy.” This time, only one word needs to be changed to describe the euro area. That is “Japan”.

The American left idolizes Europe and want’s to recreate this mess here.

Flop: Citizens of Allen Park, Michigan asked to foot bill for failed film studio

Posted on May 8, 2012 by steve

Ahh… April 14th, 2009 seems like yesterday:

Governor Jennifer M. Granholm today announced that Michigan’s aggressive film production attraction efforts have helped land Burbank, California-based Unity Studios to launch a $146-million state-of-the-art production studio in Allen Park. The project is expected to initially create up to 121 new jobs, including 83 directly by the company. At full operation, Unity Studios, factoring in related business and film and television productions, expects to employ up to 3,000.

“We are working hard to build a diversified economy and create good-paying jobs for our talented workforce,” Granholm said. “As a result of our aggressive film incentives enacted just a year ago, we are not only bringing new investment to the burgeoning film production community in Michigan, we are putting in place the infrastructure for an industry that will support long-term job growth and opportunity in new, creative sectors.”

And a scant 3 years later:

Allen Park City Manager John Zech says if a tax increase isn’t approved by voters today, the city will likely have to get an emergency manager.

Zech says a 4-mill, 2-year tax increase to pay for $28 million it borrowed to buy land for a failed movie studio is much needed. The city also borrowed $2 million against next year’s tax revenue and is asking for another $2 million from the state of Michigan in an emergency loan, Zech said.

Not like anyone could see this coming.

Shocker: Liberal Researcher Concludes Liberals Are Smarter That Conservatives

Posted on May 7, 2012 by steve

Via William M. Briggs:

Regular readers will be long familiar with the parade of faulty papers which claim that Republicans, conservatives, and Christians are stupid, unthinking, easily led, uncompassionate, and set off on their sad road by delusional beliefs in God or because they once attended a Fourth of July parade (yes, really).

Apparently Mooney, who also wrote The Republican War on Science, has compiled these studies and come to the conclusion that the sheer number of them proves that he and his fellow leftists are just better creatures. As in wired better, genetically superior, purer souls by birth—made of the Right Stuff, worthy of what comes to them, more worthy, perhaps, of life.

Doubt me? From the blurb: “A significant chunk of the electorate, it seems, will never accept the facts as they are, no matter how strong the evidence.” Just you ponder what this sentence implies.

Here is the blurb W.M.B. references:

Being a good liberal, Mooney also has to explore the implications of these findings for Democrats as well. Are they really wishy-washy flip-floppers? Well, sometimes. Can’t they be just as dogmatic about issues close to their hearts, like autism and vaccines, or nuclear power? His research leads to some surprising conclusions.

While the evolutionary advantages of both liberal and conservative psychologies seem obvious, clashes between them in modern life have led to a crisis in our politics. A significant chunk of the electorate, it seems, will never accept the facts as they are, no matter how strong the evidence. Understanding the psychology of the left and the right, Mooney argues, should therefore fundamentally alter the way we approach the he-said-he-said of public debates.

Be sure to visit WMB’s post where he decimates Chris Mooney and his book.

This type of leftist propaganda thinly disguised as “research” reminds me of this great movie scene:

Ha!

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