Sleepless in Midland

By hiring Susan Rice Netflix says it's criteria for new hires is the willingness to tell huge whoopers and get away with it

Susan Rice's resume must be so padded it could replace at least a dozen of those pillows those obnoxious TV ads tout several times a day.

That resume must have impressed Netflix. Susan Rice, ex-Obama official, appointed to Netflix board of directors.

Rice's claim to fame in conservative circles is the big lie she told everyone about how a movie inspired the murders in Benghazi. Lie number two would be the one she told about unmasking Republicans which gave the Democrat Media Complex ammo with which to smear them.

But Netflix hired her in spite of that, or maybe because lies of that magnitude required quite some skill.

In any event, that tells us something about Netflix. I'm not currently a customer, but if I were I would be inclined to wonder what lies have, are, or will come out about Netflix which made them think they needed someone with Rice's skill for mendacity.

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2:48 PM 3/29/2018

Australians who want guns can still get guns

Lefties are rapidly coming to believe it's time to repeal the 2nd Amendment and begin the great disarmament of American citizens.

To try to convince those who are slow to believe in the movement, advocates for gun control point to Australia as the model. But the gun confiscation program in Australia didn't really accomplish the intended result. Not only did some gun owners decline to turn in their firearms, guns are available for purchase on the black market.

The "black market" is short hand for the means through which buyers and sellers connect, and one in particular is the dark web. Tor is probably the most well known channel in the dark web. We've talked about Tor being funded by the U.S. government previously. But just because some government agency might have the means to monitor Tor, that agency might not necessarily want to intervene and miss out on future intelligence.

This topic was suggested by the Dailymail article, Thousands of Australians are buying guns and GRENADES on the dark web - and pay black market firearms dealers to sneak them into the country. However, a much more informative research project came from the Rand Corporation. For that one, click Behind the curtain - The illicit trade of firearms, explosives and ammunition on the dark web (PDF). Here are the objectives of that study, as set forth on page 12:

General objectives
1. To understand the modus operandi of buying and selling firearms and related products on the dark web.
2. To consider the viability of dark web markets for firearms selling, and more specifically, the extent to which these sellers may engage in scamming by taking payment for products they do not deliver, or may not possess.
Market analysis
3. To estimate the size and scope of the trade in firearms and related products on cryptomarkets, including:
  a. Number of dark web markets listing firearms and related products and services for sale and number of vendors.
  b. Range and type of firearms and related products advertised and sold on cryptomarkets.
4. To estimate the value of the trade in firearms and related products on cryptomarkets.
5. To identify shipping routes and most common shipping techniques.
Analysis of implications
6. To identify the potential impact of darkweb enabled arms trafficking on the overall arms black market, with particular emphasis on market dynamics and market actors.
7. To identify the potential implications of dark web enabled arms trafficking for law enforcement agencies and policy makers, at both the national and international level, including implications for existing international legal instruments designed to tackle the issue of illegal arms trade and transnational organised crime.

Read the whole thing if you want the details. But the point is that guns are available for purchase in any gun controlled country where the subjects have access to the dark web.

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1:56 PM 3/28/2018

Consistency -- California issues voter registration to drivers license holders and doesn't want them answering census question about citizenship

The law allowing automatic voter registration was signed into law last year. The Huffingtonpost explains how it works:

The way automatic registration works is relatively simple: Eligible citizens are registered to vote when they show up at a Department of Motor Vehicles office to obtain a driver’s license or state ID. The DMV gives the eligible voter a chance to opt out if they prefer not to register. If the person does not opt out, the DMV electronically transfers their voter registration information to the Secretary of State’s office, rather than making election officials enter data by hand from paper registration forms. (The federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 already requires states to give eligible voters the opportunity to register to vote when they apply for a new or renewed driver’s license.)

The word "eligible" shows up three times in that paragraph. Although one has to wonder how vigorous that eligibility was researched given how leisurely the illegal immigrant issue is treated in the state of California.

And that hands-off attitude is even more pronounced when it comes to the census. The California Attorney General declared that the state will sue to block the citizenship question on the next census.

At first blush, it seems contradictory, but it's really very consistent, however annoying it might be to those of us in fly-over country. If illegals can get the right to vote, then the ruling party is all the stronger. And if illegals really would avoid answering the census questions for fear of deportation, then California is being very reasonable to want to avoid that question if it would result in a lower population count. Both of these could result in a higher vote count.

And it certainly does cement in the minds of many that the lefty political machine in California is dead set on maintaining power over the people who remain in that state.

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2:10 PM 3/27/2018

WaPo notes similarities between anti-Vietnam war protests and pro-gun control protests, omits lefty organizers

It's James Hohmann at WaPo's powerpost in The Daily 202: How the marches for gun control are like the protests against Vietnam. He say the similarity is the fear engulfing the protesters. For the anti-war protests it was the fear of getting drafted. For anti-gun protesters it is the fear of getting shot, presumably at a gun free school.

To many of us on the outside getting it all on our TV screens, the anti-gun protesters seem to be missing the mark by focusing on citizen ownership of guns. It's a tiny fraction of gun owners who actually use a gun on another human being. If the students want to feel safe at school they should be asking for armed guards, door locks, and overall better protection. Instead they are asking for gun control, a subject about which they know very little.

Furthermore, those of us on the outside see a similarity Mr. Hohmann omits. While both protests may have started at a grass roots level, it was no time at all before well funded lefty groups took over the organizing efforts and redirected the movement toward the goals of a far left agenda.

We should be wary of those type movements.

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2:11 PM 3/26/2018

Brave Frenchman should put Parkland deputy to shame

There's a remarkable story of bravery coming out of France. See ‘He saved lives’: Arnaud Beltrame, police officer who traded places with a hostage, to be honored by France. Here's a capsule:

Beltrame was one of the first officers to respond, authorities said. Police negotiated with Lakdim to release the hostages, and Beltrame offered himself in place of the final one. Inside the supermarket, Beltrame tried to negotiate with Lakdim. He left his cellphone active on a table to allow authorities outside to listen in. When police heard gunshots, they stormed the building and fatally shot Lakdim.

It was just a short time ago that the media overwhelmed us with details about the mass killings at the high school in Parkland, FL. And while anti-gun movements took over the headlines, that was that nagging detail about how the sheriff's deputies took measures to insure their own safety rather than confronting the killer.

What a contrast. France has long been the object of ridicule as cowards. Boy. They sure showed us. We could learn a thing or two from Lieutenant Colonel Beltrame.

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9:38 AM 3/25/2018

Night driving with dims on is dangerous -- just ask that driverless car driver who hit the pedestrian

Most of us has seen that video of the Uber driver as his car strikes a pedestrian. If not, click here if you want to watch it.

There are two views, interior of car and exterior in the same direction the vehicle is traveling. Anyone who has driven through the Texas hill country after dark had probably had a close call with a living or dead animal on the road. Often the traffic just heavy enough that the driver can't keep the brights on for long stretches. But visibility is drastically reduced with dims only.

A deer carcass on the road can be a real hazard. Striking a large dead deer while driving a low fast car could result in a serious accident. And of course, striking a live deer will definitely do some damage.

And with dim light driving the obstacles don't appear soon enough to easily avoid them. There's no easy answer. Slow driving will never make a comeback. The solution might be some sort of dark glasses that will allow drivers to use brights all the time but avoid eye annoyance to oncoming drivers.

That or stop humans from driving in the dark and turn the nighttime over to creatures of the night.

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1:15 PM 3/24/2018

A Facebook company town

Maybe this isn't such a bad idea for Facebook employees caught up in a housing shortage. But with all the revelations about Facebook snooping into the loves, likes, and interests of Facebook users, it sounds creepy.

Anyway, here's the information source on the Facebook town: Company Town: Facebook, Google Creating Planned Communities in California with Homes, Bridges, Stores. Excerpt:

The “village” is set to feature 1,500 apartments, 225 of which will be offered “at below-market rates,” while the “most likely tenants of the full-price units are Facebook employees, who already receive a five-figure bonus if they live near the office,” according to the Times, who added that in a decade, Facebook “will have space for 35,000” employees, which is “slightly more than the city’s current population.”

“The community will have eight acres of parks, plazas and bike-pedestrian paths open to the public. Facebook wants to revitalize the railway running alongside the property and will finish next year a pedestrian bridge over the expressway,” they reported. “The bridge will provide access to the trail that rings San Francisco Bay, a boon for birders and bikers.”

Editor's Note: They should call it "Farmville." HA HA! Robo-ed | Hmm. How long will it be til Zuckerberg sees a Truman Show opportunity for the residents there. Sleepless

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1:36 PM 3/22/2018

Lefty group's 12 step program for America has some good ideas but is too reliant on government

I ran across this article in James Hohmann's PowerPost.

It's from the lefty group Third Way and is titled A New Generation of Ideas: A Social Contract for the Digital Age. It's a basically a 12 step program for improving America. Here are the bullet points:

1. American Investment Bank
A new public fund that backs small and medium business loans and investments so that risk capital is available to millions more entrepreneurs.

Comment: This American Investment Bank would pick winners and losers.

2. Innovation Trust Fund
Will finance a 10-year surge of public and private R&D by ending the offshore tax bias so that 21st-century products are invented and manufactured in America.

Comment:

3. Broadband for All
Will link every American to broadband in two years by fast-tracking construction and using public capital to create a private sector race to complete.

Comment: Free stuff.

4. Boomer Corps
Will create an entirely new category of work through national service so that seniors can earn tax-free in retirement.

Comment: More government employees, but part time.

5. Small Business Bill of Rights
Will guarantee speed, flexibility, and parity to every small business owner in America, turning government from an obstacle into an ally.

Comment: Reducing government regulations, tort reform, national licensing standards with reciprocity among states, crack down on abusive practices by large companies, and end corporate handouts. This one isn't bad.

6. Reemployment Insurance
Will replace unemployment insurance with a new system that provides not only temporary income but also grants for training or vouchers for moving.

Comment: Not a bad idea.

7. College Value Guarantee
Will create college accountability and transparency so that every student’s investment in higher education pays off.

Comment: Another good idea.

8. Apprenticeship America
Will create one million new training positions by financing Apprenticeship Hubs and equipping them with new Federal Apprenticeship Loans.

Comment: Would be better if financed with tax breaks to the employer rather than forgivable loans from the government.

9. Working Wage Break
Will eliminate all taxation on the first $15,000 of earned income to boost the return on work.

Comment: A tax break that would help low wage people -- what's not to like about that?

10. Regional minimum wage
Will increase wages nationwide but in a tailored way that’s sensitive to the micro-economies throughout the country.

Comment: Too many smart economists have found too much fault with minimum wages. Bring some of them on board with this idea before foisting it on tax payers.

11. Universal Private retirement
Will guarantee that every worker has both Social Security and a private, employer-fed retirement account.

Comment: That would be a big burden on small employers. First need to solve the pending Social Security default.

12. Paid Parental Flex Plan
Will remove the penalties imposed on working parents so that families no longer have to choose between providing for their children and caring for them.

Comment: "It would be financed in part by scaling back the child tax credit for older children and consolidating other child-related tax benefits." Might work.

As noted in this post's intro, some of these are good ideas. But there's still too much big government involvement to satisfy anyone other than Progressives and the beneficiaries of the programs advanced in the piece.

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3:00 PM 3/21/2018

Dems love Beto and he's being groomed for bigger things

Beto O'Rouke is the current darling of the Democrats, although he contends that he doesn't want that. There's a puff piece about him in Politico. Link: Beto O’Rourke Doesn’t Want to Be Democrats’ Next National Cause. Maybe he doesn't, but it appears as if he's being groomed for a national cause just like they groomed the Castro brothers (the ones from San Antonio, not Cuba).

From the aforementioned Political article:

Among O’Rourke’s friends in Washington who let themselves believe, even for a second, that he might win, their brains start tap dancing to the next step. The vice presidential shortlist for sure, they say—maybe even president, if he can take Texas with him.

Dems in Texas love him. Prior to the recent Texas primaries a lady came to my door trying to pump up support for him. She heard him speak recently and was enthralled. She gave me a card, and the first thing I noticed was that he believed health care was a right. So right off the bat Mr. O'Rourke and I had different ideas on what government should do.

In any event, he probably can't beat Ted Cruz, but it will be interesting to see what happens next.

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1:34 PM 3/20/2018

Hike your house or take a hike -- some Houston homeowners are raising their houses in prep for the next flood

The problem is frequent heavy rains and poor water drainage. And homeowners are paying the price. Texastribune.org tells us that some homeowners are paying big bucks for a house lift. See Six figures for six feet: Some Harvey victims in Houston spend huge sums to elevate their homes. Excerpt:

In Harris County, homeowners who received letters from the city stating that the cost of repairing their home would equal or exceed 50 percent of its pre-Harvey market value are also required to meet current floodplain regulations by elevating — or risk being ineligible for flood insurance and future FEMA assistance.

Jamila Johnson, Houston’s floodplain manager, said the city sent out 1,944 “substantial damage” letters to homeowners as of early February and plans to send out more.

Homeowners who receive these letters can appeal the designation.

After Harvey, Houston Public Works proposed regulations that would double the required elevation for homes in the 100-year floodplain to three feet above the base flood elevation.

Johnson said the proposed regulations are based on a changing understanding of rainfall patterns in the area.

“We’re seeing bigger rains more often,” Johnson said. “A 500-year event will probably be considered a 100-year event in the future, so the city is moving to regulate them the same way. We’ve seen that these regulations help — even in an event as disastrous as Harvey. But they don’t work on homes that aren’t compliant.”

Sounds like a horrible dilemma. Arkitektura Development, Inc., is a company that will lift a house. Click on Portfolio of Recent Elevation Projects for some photos of what a lifted house looks like.

It's not cheap. Some homeowners have opted to demolish their houses, move, and try to sell the land where the houses once sat.

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1:57 PM 3/19/2018

Do police have a no legal obligation to run into an active shooter situation? No.

That deputy who stood around while a killer blasted away at students inside a school in Parkland, FL, has been roundly criticized for his inaction. But did he have a legal duty to enter the building? Unless there was a Florida statute demanding that he do so, then he was not required to anything other than what he did.

I use nighttime talk radio as a sleep aid, and here in Midland, TX, a local AM station plays a delayed broadcast of The Joe Pags Show. The other night a caller tried to discuss that absence of legal duty, and Joe Pags insisted that the caller cite the law. The caller couldn't.

Actually, it's a Supreme Court case which ruled in 2005 on civil liability for police inaction. The holding was in favor of the police. Without a state statute demanding action, then the plaintiff had no cause of action against the police. The facts of the case in Castle Rock v. Gonzales were horrendous. The plaintiff's estranged husband kidnapped her children and ultimately murdered them. The wife called the police several times after the kidnapping, but the police did nothing for several hours.

A moral duty can't be enforced. And without a statute that demanded action, the Parkland deputy really had no obligation to run into the gun fight. That said, police departments in many jurisdictions train the officers to go toward the gunfire in an active shooter situation.

Meanwhile, there's that nagging old saying, "When seconds count, police are minutes away." No wonder so many citizens are obtaining concealed carry permits. As of about a year ago, 6.6% of the adult population in the U.S. had a carry permit. However, only about 1.2% carry on a daily basis. That percentage probably ebbs and flows in proportion to the number of high profile shootings in the headlines.

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11:28 AM 3/18/2018

Graffiti at Russian Embassy in London -- poisonous pen makes a funny point

In most cases graffiti is simple vandalism by people who can't really create anything. There are certainly some exceptions, though. Some of them are quite creative. And some make point: And here's an example of graffiti that makes a point and gets a laugh:

One would guess that the customer is expected to pay before the food arrives.

This comes to us by way of Dailystar.com in Novichokolate from Putin? Graffiti irony near Russian embassy tackles nerve attack.

Yum!

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5:33 AM 3/17/2018

Tesla -- note to Democrats, conservatives don't hate Tesla, it's the tax subsidies they hate

A few years ago a Democrat relative sent a screen shot and a link to Consumer Reports calls latest Tesla best vehicle they've ever tested, right wing goes nuts along with a note that one of her friends was buying one. I questioned why conservatives would go nuts. But without reading the article, I assumed it was because Elon Musk and Teslas were so highly subsidized with tax dollars.

I, as a conservative, love to see entrepreneurs succeed. And I would love to see Tesla succeed AND wean itself off subsidies. I would also like to see more established companies, like Toyota, make an electric vehicle with the high quality Toyota buyers expect from that company.

Because Tesla is having some problems. For example, Tesla employees report flawed parts are causing Model 3 delays.

Not long ago I watched a TV show with a title something like, "How They are Made," which featured in that episode about how the Tesla automobile was made. It was a very slow building process with a very high "hand made" aspect to it. Sometime later when Elon Musk announced a very ambitious production rate for the cars, I didn't go nuts, but I did question whether he could pull it off with so much hands-on work involved. Turns out he couldn't.

In any event, good luck Musk. But please quit clamoring for tax dollars.

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12:45 PM 3/16/2018

The absurdity of an atheist Navy Chaplain

Atheism isn't really a belief, it's a disbelief.

I attended a lecture on religions around the world in the context of hospice service a few years ago. The speaker made a casual remark that atheists made the decision to be atheists, and that was their choice. That stuck with me, because I don't think atheists actually make a decision about. The theory of the "God gene" is out there, and that makes more sense. Some have it, and others don't. Those who have it are more prone to believe in a supreme being.

When people are admitted to hospice care they are asked about religion, and if they are religious, chaplains are assigned to them. The chaplain could pray with them, discuss the afterlife, or talk about whatever they wish to talk about. Patients who are non-religious would not get any of that. So I guess the aforementioned decision would occur when they answered the admission questions.

I don't believe there's an anti-God gene, but for some reason or other, there are atheists who seem to despise religious people. That, I believe, explains why an atheist is suing to become a Navy Chaplain. It isn't that he wants to preach to atheists as much as he wants to thumb his nose at traditional religion.

Anyway, here's the inspiration for this discussion:
Navy Moves Closer to Approving Atheist ‘Chaplain’ -- Secular humanist Jason Heap sued in; and
Should a 'secular humanist' serve as Navy chaplain? Absolutely not.

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2:19 PM 3/15/2018

Larry Kudlow -- Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity

Proponents of free markets are opposed to Trump's threat to put tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. And Gary Cohn, Trump's chief economic adviser reportedly resigned because of that threat. The man chosen to replace him in that job is Larry Kudlow.

Kudlow is a very smart fellow who isn't afraid of the camera. He would be a good choice, but what about those tariffs? Kudlow's mantra is this:

Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity!

(Sources here and here.)

We don't know all the details about the proposed tariff. It could be a big bluff by the artist of the deal. But if they come to pass, they will probably be targeted like a smart bomb against those countries who are using tariffs themselves to hurt U.S. businesses. One for one, tit for tat. Take that. It might work.

Meanwhile, Trump's two main criteria for his hires seem to be smarts and loyalty. They have to have both. Kudlow has the smarts, but he would have to prove his loyalty. He may be out before he's in. We'll see.

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10:51 AM 3/14/2018

Do you believe a dog could smell meth sealed in containers concealed in a pickup truck gas tank?

It's possible, if the meth containers weren't sealed and cleaned and the gas tank was otherwise empty.

See the story at Border agents find $4M worth of liquid meth in car's gas tank and CBP stops methamphetamine load.

The story invites the reader to imagine the containers submerged in gasoline in a gas tank. In that case, a dog couldn't have smelled it. Odor is actually cells of a substance that enter the olfactory system. So there would have to be cells of the substance floating around in the air before a dog could smell it.

It's conceivable that agents had been tipped off about the meth haul either by a tipster or some form of surveillance, and the dog story was concocted as a way to avoid identifying the source.

It's also conceivable that the meth was hidden in an empty auxiliary tank and the smugglers did a sloppy job of eradicating the smell.

But if the meth canisters were sealed and submerged in gasoline then the dog sniffing dog couldn't smell it.

Here's an experiment for anyone wanting to conduct a test. Buy nine cans of peas and one can of dog food. Peel off the labels and thoroughly clean the cans. Then try to get the dog to pick the one with the dog food. Odds of picking the dog food can are one in ten.

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3:29 PM 3/13/2018

Illegal immigrant poster kids for Dems are student scholars. Illegal immigrant poster kids for Repubs are criminals

Watch Fox News for a couple of days and you'll see news about an illegal alien committing a horrific crime and maybe even gaining early release because of sanctuary city policies. But the Democrat Media complex ignore those stories and focus on stories that put Dreamers in a positive light. They feature, for example, DACA kids graduating with honors or illegal alien valedictorians. It's quite a contrast.

But that's what we get when identity politics is the dominant political driver.

Meanwhile, here's Mickey Kause's famous quote from Don’t buy all the PR-style hooey about ‘dreamers’:

The dreamers you read about have typically been carefully selected for their appeal. They’re valedictorians. They’re first responders. They’re curing diseases. They root for the Yankees. They want to serve in the Army. If dreamers are the poster children for the much larger undocumented population, these are the poster children for the poster children.

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1:09 PM 3/12/2018

Although touted as a way to avoid surveillance, TOR is funded by U.S. gov

A recent address by Yasha Levine's was broadcast on C-Span 2 (Link) in which he talked about his book, "Surveillance Valley." And in it he made a revelation which may be widely known but was news to me. The famous TOR, which is touted as a network by which one can avoid surveillance, is actually funded by U.S. government agencies. Here's an excerpt from Mr. Levine's website, Fact-checking the Tor Project's government ties, to wit:

The Tor Project, a private non-profit that underpins the dark web and enjoys cult status among privacy activists, is almost 100% funded by the US government. In the process of writing my book Surveillance Valley, I was able to obtain via FOIA roughly 2,500 pages of correspondence — including strategy sessions and contracts and budgets and status updates — between the Tor Project and its main funder, a CIA spinoff now known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an agency that oversees America's foreign broadcasting operations like Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe.

I obtained the documents in 2015. By then I had already spent a couple of years doing extensive reporting on Tor's deeply conflicted ties to the regime change wing of the U.S. government. By following the money, I discovered that Tor was not grassroots. I was able to show that despite its radical anti-government cred, Tor was almost 100% funded by three U.S. national security agencies: the Navy, the State Department and the BBG. Tor was military contractor with its own government contractor number — a privatized extension of the very same government that it claimed to be fighting.

That probably caught a lot of TOR proponents off guard. More:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation held up Tor as the digital equivalent of the First Amendment. The ACLU backed it. Fight for the Future, the hip Silicon Valley activist group, declared Tor to be “NSA-proof.” Edward Snowden held it up as an example of the kind of grassroots privacy technology that could defeat government surveillance online, and told his followers to use it. Prominent award-winning journalists from Wired, Vice, The Intercept, The Guardian and Rolling Stone — including Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Andy Greenberg — all helped pump up Tor's mythical anti-state rebel status.

Even Daniel Ellsberg, the legendary whistleblower, was convinced that Tor was vital to the future of democracy. Anyone who questioned this narrative and pointed to Tor's lavish government support was attacked, ridiculed, smeared and hounded into silence. I know because that's what Tor supporters tried to do to me.

But the facts wouldn't go away.

The initial evidence that I had gathered in my reporting left little room for doubt about Tor's true nature as foreign policy weapon of the U.S. government. But the box of FOIA documents I received from the BBG took that evidence to a whole new level.

Looks like anyone thinking TOR would help avoid government surveillance is out of luck.

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1:08 PM 3/11/2018

Spring forward, Fall back -- Hell, just pick one and stick with it

Twice each year we disrupt our circadian rhythms to accommodate this government mandated ritual. Daylight Saving Time by itself isn't so bad. The problem is the switch. There's really no rational reason for it other than the inertia in place from having endured it for half a century.

Floridians are so focused on gun control that they may not hold the governor accountable if he ignores recent legislation. The legislature submitted a bill that, if signed into law, would submit a request to the U.S. Congress for permission to go on permanent Daylight Saving Time.

The state of California is trying to exempt itself from federal immigration law, but that's probably not going to set any binding legal precedent. But if it did, then maybe states could ditch the time change on their own.

Here are some sites with related news:

Florida wants to tinker with time. Will it be the end of the clock as we know it?;
#LockTheClock - Stop Changing Clocks for Daylight Saving Time;
Florida passes daylight saving time bill, but what does it mean?.

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12:28 PM 3/10/2018

Walking can be bad for your health -- if you get struck by a vehicle

An eye opening statistic was revealed in a news release from the Governors Highway Safety Association. Nearly 6,000 pedestrians killed in 2017 crashes, new report says. Yikes!

As for a possible cause, Rising Trend in Pedestrian Deaths May Be Linked to Pot, Phone Use. Not sure whether it's the driver or the walker who was distracted. But it could be either, or both.

In any event, best keep ones eyes on the road whether driving or walking.

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2:41 PM 3/9/2018

So is this OK? FBI paying Best Buy repair guys to report kiddie porn on customers' computers

From time to time we see news about some perv getting busted on a tip from a computer repair shop where he had taken his computer for repair. The prospect of someone hired to repair a computer searching through the hard drive for something illicit is bad enough. But if this is true, they have a financial incentive to do it.

My own hard drive has several thousand photos stored in it -- all perfectly legal. That hypothetical snooping repair person would get bored fairly quickly before all those photos got a look-see. And one has to wonder where the breakeven point would be for anyone hoping to cash in on the financial reward. Nevertheless, it's troublesome that there would be an incentive for someone to actually conduct such a search. And is the reward simply for searching? Or does it depend on results?

Anyway, here's the source of that revelation: FBI's Use of Paid Best Buy Informants Goes Deeper Than We Knew. Excerpt:

The existence of the Geek Squad informants was first revealed via the prosecution of a California doctor named Mark Rettenmaier. After Rettenmaier sent his computer to Geek Squad for repair in 2011, technicians working out of a massive Kentucky repair shop discovered thousands of images depicting child abuse on Rettenmaier’s device. Court filings later revealed that there were “eight FBI informants at Geek Squad City,” and a number had received $500 to $1,000 payments in exchange for acting as confidential sources.

Here's the downside:

Moreover, the bounty the employees have been paid for locating illegal content may incentivize them to conduct searches that aren’t necessary to complete repairs. (As the EFF points out: “The image found on Rettenmaier’s hard drive was in an unallocated space, which typically requires forensic software to find.”)

Dang. Now that's intrusive.

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10:58 AM 3/8/2018

hmm, ooh, mm-hmm -- believe it or not Merriam-Webster declared these to be new words

Words and grammar are constantly evolving. And various word collectors try to keep up. The other day Merriam-Webster issued a list of 850 new words to their dictionary, and those three words in the title of this post are among them. They tell us that in The Dictionary Just Got a Whole Lot Bigger which contains a few of them. Oddly, M-W doesn't bother to provide the entire list in its article. Hmm.

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2:16 PM 3/7/2018

Probably fat geeks and butt dialing -- Apple repair shop making 20 911 calls a day

I envision the fat gamer from the "South Park" episode who thwarted the boys in a medieval online war game. He grabs a snack and sits on one of the phones strewn around a cluttered shop.

Anyway, here's the headline: Since October, Apple Has Made Around 1,600 False Alarm 911 Calls From Elk Grove Facility.

It's an Apple repair and refurbishing center shop in Elk Grove, California, and the calls originated from Apple devices starting about four months ago. And nobody know why.

OMG! It's poltergeists! This isn't a job for the local police. Call Sculley! Call Mulder!

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3:14 PM 3/6/2018

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is a rarity, thank goodness

Sheriff Israel probably had sheriff's around the nation cringing after his deputies stood around guarding the great outdoors while an armed teen shot up the inside of a school in Parkland, FL.

Fortunately, Sheriff Israel is unique. Other sheriffs have taken it on themselves to distinguish themselves from him. One is Denton County, Texas, Sheriff Tracy Murphree. He sent a memo to his deputies last week reminding them what there job entails. Source: Denton County Sheriff reminds deputies: In an active shooter situation, 'we go in and do our duty'. To wit:

"We do not stage and wait for SWAT, we do not take cover in a parking lot, and we do not wait for any other agency," he wrote. "We go in and do our duty."

"All commissioned Deputies if you respond to an active shooter, you are expected to take immediate action," Murphree wrote. 

"We go in to engage and stop the shooter and save lives, ...

Any deputy who can't follow that directive should let their supervisor know so they can be reassigned, he said.

Our own sheriff in Midland County, Texas, hasn't issued a press release on this, but we do have his mission statement: "We will seek out and prosecute those who disobey the laws of our land." So we've got that going for us.

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2:14 PM 3/5/2018

Lock up the crazy people? That's not the easy solution to the mass shooter problem

Walter Williams make a strong case against the movement some years ago that closed mental hospitals and put the inmates on the street. See WILLIAMS: Another Liberal-Created Failure. Excerpt:

Starting in the 1970s, advocates for closing mental hospitals argued that because of the availability of new psychotropic drugs, people with mental illness could live among the rest of the population in an unrestrained natural setting. According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal article by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, titled "Fifty Years of Failing America's Mentally Ill," shutting down mental hospitals didn't turn out the way advocates promised. Several studies summarized by the Treatment Advocacy Center show that untreated mentally ill are responsible for 10 percent of homicides (and a higher percentage of the mass killings). They are 20 percent of jail and prison inmates and more than 30 percent of the homeless.

The harm some of those people did to others was a phenomenon proponents of the plan either overlooked or knowingly downplayed. But the problem of separating the potentially dangerous from the casual crazy is a difficult one.

A guest on Sunday morning's C-Span's Washington Journal discussed this. Watch the video at Jonathan Metzl on Mental Health and Gun Violence.

He addressed this in print last year. See I’m a Psychiatrist. Making Gun Violence About Mental Health Is a Crazy Idea. Here's the key paragraph:

If there were a Propensity to Mass Violence disease, perhaps it would make a little more sense to involve psychiatrists in identifying potential mass murderers. But absent a formal means of assessing predictive violence, such as a diagnosis, mental health practitioners are often left to trust the power of their observations when asked to gauge which one of the thousands of patients they see might go on to commit a violent act such as a mass shooting. And, unfortunately, we’re not that great at it. As gun expert Jeffrey Swanson succinctly puts it when summarizing a great deal of research, “psychiatrists using clinical judgment are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.” Tragically, such knowledge is often gained only after the fact. And programs that attempt to force psychiatrists to report potential shooters—such as the one supported by Governor Cuomo in New York and similar programs in other states—often result in dramatic over-reporting of psychiatric patients, who are then added to government surveillance lists.

Dr. Metzl's article drifted into the gun control arena which included an interesting tidbit on why Americans want to own guns:

As such, I believe there are more meaningful ways for psychiatrists to help in the effort against gun violence and mass shootings: by also addressing shifting American beliefs and attitudes around guns, and about our increasingly polarized reactions to mass shootings. As but one example, in 1999, far more gun owners cited hunting, rather than self-protection, as the main reason they owned guns. By 2013, those attitudes had shifted: 48 percent said protection was the main reason to own a gun, while 32 percent pointed to hunting. The question of why Americans feel so unsafe around, and mistrustful of each other seems like a pressing one for mental health experts. Mental health expertise might also help us step back from the highly polarized conversations that emerge after mass shootings, and allow people of differing ideologies to find common ground.

(Emphasis added by me.) The non-stop media coverage of the mass shootings probably plays a large part in making Americans feel unsafe.

There's no easy answer. Attempting to disarm law abiding citizens certainly isn't one. And expecting shrinks to identify killers in advance doesn't look workable either. About the only thing left is to harden soft targets.

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11:43 AM 3/4/2018

Tariff's are not always a bad thing

Ben Stein was on the Fox Business Network the other day getting a reminder of the scene in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" in which his character attempted to lecture students about how the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act worsened the great depression. So wouldn't the same theory apply today with President Trump's tariff threats?

Not quite. Watch his response in this Youtube video.

In summary, the cold war may be over, but there is real danger of conflict. In certain categories we do need to protect our own industries. Steel and aluminum are vital materials to the United States. And we shouldn't cede them to countries that could be enemies. Furthermore, the cost to American consumers won't be that much. Listen to it at the link above.

Meanwhile, Tim Carney points out that while the grand view that the theory that free trade "improves the welfare of all nations involved in the trading" is likely true, it ignores the hardship inflicted on those involved in the industries that shut down. For many of the individuals affected, there's no recovery. He made the case in Free-traders oversimplify their case against tariffs, to no-one's benefit.

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1:50 PM 3/3/2018

Lifting age limit on rifle purchases would do little if anything to reduce mass killings

Gun controllers and gun rights people seem close to an agreement that might raise the age limit for buying a rifle. But it's doubtful that it would do anything.

Look at Chicago for guidance, if you dare. Chicago has some of the tightest gun control laws in the nation, and that hasn't made a difference. Most of the guns used in crimes there were bought through a straw man, obtained from a friend, or stolen. The difference between the Chicago shootings and the school shootings might be that there are probably networks of people in Chicago who participate in the transfer of stolen or illegally obtained guns. Whereas the lone crazy school shooter might not be able to participate in such a network. One would hope, anyway.

In any event, there's still a lot of doubt about whether an age limit would make any difference. In a short search for stats I ran across this from Reason.com: Can Congress Save Lives by Raising the Rifle Purchase Age? Here's a short excerpt:

Of the 23 deadliest shootings in modern U.S. history, three (Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Columbine) were perpetrated by killers younger than 21 who used rifles. The Sandy Hook shooter, who was 20, used a Bushmaster XM-15 bought by his mother, so a higher purchase age clearly would not have thwarted him. The Columbine killers, who were both younger than 18 when they started collecting weapons, obtained two shotguns and a Hi-Point 995 carbine through a straw purchase by an acquaintance who was 18. If the purchase age had been 21, they might have found an older straw buyer, or they might have obtained the long guns through an illegal private sale, which is how they acquired an Intratec TEC-DC9 pistol.

It is by no means clear that a higher purchase age for long guns would have made a difference in any of these cases. But it would make it harder for adults younger than 21 to obtain firearms for legitimate purposes. "Federal law prohibits adults under the age of 21 from purchasing a handgun from a licensed firearm dealer," notes Jennifer Baker, the NRA's public affairs director. "Legislative proposals that prevent law-abiding adults aged 18-20 years old from acquiring rifles and shotguns effectively prohibits them for purchasing any firearm, thus depriving them of their constitutional right to self-protection."

Lifting the age limit might create a "feel good" moment. But it's unlikely to accomplish what proponents intend, unless the intent is to put a foot in the door for more serious gun control.

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8:53 AM 3/1/2018

U.S. could use one of these -- Swiss Debt Break

There's been talk for quite some time of an amendment to the constitution that would require some fiscal responsibility. For example, Heartland.org has proposed a balanced budget amendment.

Whether we could ever get to the point of a possible amendment is another issue. But a pretty good guideline would be the Debt Break that the Swiss adopted. It seems to be working. Here's a quick and easy explanation of that from Michael Tanner in Economic Lessons from Europe:

For example, we could well benefit from adopting a Swiss-style “debt break.” By law, the Swiss government cannot run a budget deficit over an economic cycle. This is not, strictly speaking, a requirement for an annual balanced budget, but rather it limits the growth in government spending to no more than the average of revenue increases over a multiyear period, after adjusting for the cyclical position of the economy (as calculated by Switzerland’s Federal Department of Finance). This allows the government to smooth budgets during economic slowdowns, when revenues decline and expenditures rise, but prevents ongoing deficit spending. Nor can the Swiss easily raise federal taxes to finance more spending. Maximum tax rates at the national level — an 11.5 percent income tax, an 8 percent value-added tax, and an 8.5 percent corporate tax — are set by the constitution. They can be raised only through a referendum, in which the proposed increase would have to win both a majority of the national vote and a majority of the vote in more than half the Swiss cantons. The equivalent in the United States would be that every tax hike had to be approved by a majority of all American voters and a majority of voters in at least 26 states.

Instead of trying to recreate European welfare and immigration programs here, maybe we should look to the Swiss model for debt reform.

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1:58 PM 2/28/2018