3 Boxes of BS

I’m very conflicted about this news story in the local rag — the StartleGram — I mean the Star-Telegram

DALLAS — A five-day operation that targeted foreign-born gang members and their associates has resulted in the arrests of nearly 40 people from the Arlington and Fort Worth area, authorities with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Monday…

Some 105 people, including gang members from Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, were arrested in the sting that ended Saturday, ICE officials said. Six are women.

The arrests include members of at least 29 gangs in the Metroplex, including several with ties to Arlington and Fort Worth. The operation ended a two-month investigation in which outstanding warrants were used to identify gang members and their associates

Some of the gang members were arrested on suspicion of various crimes, including home-invasion robberies, drive-by shootings, aggravated robbery, aggravated assaults and drug possession, officials said.

(h/t to Drudge Report and The Blast)

Today, President Obama officially made Donald Berwick his recess appointment to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

That is who is speaking in this video- listen carefully.

“Any health care funding plan that is just equitable civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”

Must redistribute wealth – at least he is being honest.

Who decides what constitutes “poorer”?
Who decides what constitutes “richer”?
Who decides how much gets ‘redistributed’ until the scales are balanced?

Who decides where the line of equality/outcome (or even band of equality) lies?
(Also a pet peeve of mine — ever notice how those advocating redistribution of wealth aren’t voluntarily giving up there money to live on what the average person — much less the average “poor person” makes?
– Why is that?)

What really gets me is that the redistribution is not based on effort, it isn’t based on opportunity but solely upon outcome.

I grew up in a lower middle class, upper lower class family. I was the son of a 20 year Air Force Technical Sergeant and a manager of a nationally known chicken fast food restaurant manager.

I joined the Air Force and spent 4 years in service to my country. For this contribution which I gladly did; I was “entitled” to education assistance in the from of  ” Veterans Education Assistance Program (VEAP) ”

To receive this college funding, you must have entered active duty in the Armed forces between January 1, 1977 and June 30, 1985, and you must have made financial contributions from your military pay, of at least $25 and up to $2,700. These contributions are matched on a basis of $2 for each $1 by the US government.

I maxed out and received $8,100 in assistance (got out in 1985)

Everyone is (who is eligible) is free to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by military service.

I worked full time and put myself through college with assistance from the companies I worked at.
I took jobs based on that assistance.

Everyone is free to find a job where the opportunity for educational assistance is offered.

I took jobs where the insurance was a factor in accepting the job or not.
Everyone is free to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by company sponsored insurance. (I’ll rant on that subject and how we can do insurance better another day).

I took advantages of the opportunities that everyone has — yet here is Mr. Berwick saying because I excelled, I have to give up money to those who haven’t.

I’m not saying those people haven’t worked hard. I’m not saying I’m better then those people. I’m not saying I deserve any more then what I’ve worked for, I’m just asking who?

Who gets to decide how to spend my money?

Who gets to decide how much medical care I can purchase?

There is a line in the video about “supply being planned”. We’ve seen the results of ‘central planning’ time and time again — it is a failure. So who in America gets to plan supply?

Who in America gets to determine who is worthy of that limited supply?

I’m not sure of the answer to the questions but I do know that the government isn’t the answer.

Please join the discussion.

Tell me again how it is all about “Gun Violence”?

A 21-year-old man called East Wenatchee police on June 6 to say his 17-year-old sister had just attacked him and tried to cut his neck with the serrated edge of the spatula, wrote Officer Carrie Knouf in a police report filed in Douglas County Superior Court.

The sister told Knouf she was making macaroni and cheese when her brother asked if she was using butter.

“They began to argue over the difference of real butter to margarine,” wrote Knouf in the report.

The verbal argument escalated into a shoving match, and then the sister is accused of trying to cut her brother, Knouf wrote.

Physical altercation over butter v. margarine — love to see how the antis are going to blame this on the “gun culture”.

VICTORVILLE • School officials placed Puesta del Sol Elementary on lockdown after a group of parents got into a fight during a kindergarten graduation ceremony Wednesday morning, officials said.

According to a witness, several mothers were involved in a verbal argument which turned physical in a field near the ceremony. At that point, several men jumped in, turning the incident into a brawl. The witness also stated someone involved in the fight possibly had a weapon.

A Freaking Kindergarten graduation (don’t get me started on that idiocy right now) and parents can’t even behave properly?

The problems in our country don’t have to do with firearms — that is just a tool — but with the fact that some people feel that violence is an acceptable answer to petty little problems.

VICTORVILLE • Officials arrested a possibly drunken man after he caused a hit-and-run collision and threatened a witness with a knife Wednesday afternoon, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Victorville station officials said.

A witness and the victim followed Cardona while on the phone with Sheriff’s Dispatch relaying information to officials about the vehicle, Karen Hunt, spokeswoman for the Victorville station said.

The two followed Cardona to an apartment in the 15100 block of Kimberly Drive and watched him go into his apartment, according to a sheriff’s press release.

Wow, so much to this tidbit it almost deserves its own post. Let’s start with the fact that it was 1.6 to 2.2 miles from the intersection to the apartment according to the online map that I used. 4 to 6 minutes in which the police  didn’t stop a drunk person from driving, 4 to 6 minutes in which he could have done more then threaten people.

Then let’s move on to what to blame -

He was driving- should we ban cars?

He was drunk – should we ban alcohol (just ignore the fact that we have tried that in the past and failed miserably, we just didn’t have the right people in charge then)?

He used a knife or knives to threaten someone -should we following Merry Ole England down the Rabbit Hole and ban knives?

Or should we focus on the culture that makes it acceptable for a person to believe it is okay to drive drunk, to harm others, to threaten others?

This is what I don’t understand about the anti-gun crowd — the nearly obsessive focus on firearms — not the underlying culture of predatory violence some people have.

In 2008 —

• An offender was armed with a gun, knife, or other object used as a weapon in an estimated 20% of all incidents of violent crime.
• Offenders used firearms to commit 7% of violent crime incidents in 2008.
• Robberies (40%) were the most likely crime to involve an armed offender.
• Firearms (24%) were the most common weapons used in robberies.
• Most rapes and assaults did not involve the use of a weapon.
• Of serious nonfatal violent victimizations, 28% were committed with a firearm, 4% were committed with a firearm and resulted in injury, and less than 1% resulted in gunshot wounds

Why focus on the firearm when only 7% of the violent crimes incidents — according to the Federal Government–  used a firearm?

Why not focus on the fact that 4,900,000 people were the victims of non-fatal violent crimes?

Make a 50% reduction in “gun crime” and you’ve stopped 172,000 crimes.
Make a 10% reduction in all violent crime and you’ve stopped 490,000 crimes

This is only common sense folks!

It doesn’t matter if the thug uses a car (before or after drinking), a knife or a serrated spatula or even their fists — it matters that they felt it acceptable to use violence not to protect themselves but to simply get their way.

Please join the discussion.

Gun Owner Rights Advocates are often accused of playing games with statistics; Today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegrams gives a great example of how it is done using a piece on the homeless.

Fort Worth’s homeless plan has made “dramatic progress” in getting people off the streets but may have to depend more on private funding to remain effective, according to an independent evaluation of the program’s first year.

Three hundred twenty-two homeless people have been housed through the plan, Directions Home, since April 2009, with many clients participating in counseling and substance abuse treatment, the University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work found.

Notice the lack of reference numbers? 322 people sounds like quite a few people, doesn’t it. The paper fails, deliberately?, to inform the reader that

• At any given point in time in 2009, there were 2,181 people considered homeless in Tarrant County.²
• Over the course of a year, 5,012 persons will experience homelessness in Tarrant County.²

Kind of changes the complexion of the equation when we learn that the program is providing housing vouchers to less then 6.5% of the people who will experience homelessness, eh?

By the end of the first year, nearly 9 of 10 people who got permanent supportive housing vouchers had maintained their housing, one step toward self-sufficiency.

Of the 322 homeless people who got housing, 181 received city-funded vouchers, which was short of the plan’s goal of 200 during the first year. The remaining 141 were housed through emergency and day shelter programs that received money from Directions Home to hire caseworkers. That’s the figure that Thornton said impressed him.

A community court program for the homeless helped 202 people complete probation and community service as well as dismiss 1,665 citations.

Programs tend to boost clients’ self-sufficiency immediately upon their entry into housing because basic needs like shelter, food and safety are being met. But larger barriers like employment, income, mental health issues and substance abuse are overcome less dramatically.

I think that helping the homeless is a great thing to do. I think that the city should get out of that business though and let others step up.

There is a 77 million dollar budget shortage that needs to be addressed. To me, it doesn’t make sense to cut services like police or fire and keep these types of programs in place.

The cost is extremely high for the limited success. It serves an incredibly small percentage of the population — less then 0.8%.

What do you think? Do programs like these enable people, do they help people?

Are they worth the city’s money, time and energy?

Please join the discussion.

From Huffington Post, of all places, comes this little bit of a killjoy over the recent drop in crime.

The Wall Street Journal reported that violent crime is down in the big cities in the U.S., saying this breaks the pattern between economic downturns and an increase in crime. Supposedly this is because policing has advanced, not because human nature has changed. I do not believe the article is plausible.

If Chicago is any indication, it is much more likely the statistics are being doctored and that the public is being lied to in a profound way. Many cities and states are strapped for cash and the public doesn’t want to hear that crime is up while police budgets are being cut.

This certainly jives with what we’ve seen in the past. I think there is some manipulation of the statistics going on to reduce crime and I also think there is a geniune reduction in crime.

We’ve seen hijnks with the numbers in a variety of places

More than a hundred retired New York Police Department captains and higher-ranking officers said in a survey that the intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics, according to two criminologists studying the department.

and

Accusations of tampering have accompanied the CompStat franchise’s spread to places like Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, New Orleans and Washington.

Ms. Tavakoli hits an important note here:

I don’t believe that Chicago is alone in having a recession-related escalating crime problem. High unemployment combined with under-funded shorthanded police forces make for a toxic brew. No matter how “advanced” the police force, men cannot outrun bullets.

During a recession, the police force requires a larger budget, not budget cuts. Since the money has been spent, I suspect the public will be fed cooked statistics instead of being given the facts.

Yet locally how are the Dallas and Fort Worth trying to address their budget short falls?

As the Dallas City Council tries to figure out how to deal with a $130 million budget gap, its members are considering what was once all but unthinkable: making cuts in the police and fire departments.

and

A third scenario features no additional revenue in the budget. Instead, more severe cuts in service would be made, including 5 percent cuts to police and fire budgets and 10 percent cuts to all other city departments.

Many major cities are considering budget cuts and I am sure that many smaller cities are doing without also.

This escalation and geographical spread of violence is new, and I believe it is related to our Great Recession and budget issues. I don’t believe that Chicago is alone in its budget problems. If new patterns in Recession-related-violence have not yet affected other major cities in the U.S. the way they have affected Chicago, they may affect them soon. It is also likely that crime is being underreported as crime-fighting budgets are cut.

And don’t think that your area is safe just because it is a “good neighborhood.

Don’t stop carrying yet and if you aren’t carrying consider helping out the city and state by getting your license.

While I disagree with the need to get a permit to exercise a fundamental right — rub it in the noses of the antis by doing your part in this time of crisis.

Don’t put off the purchase of that home defense shotgun…consider carefully how the numbers are dropping in your areas and if they will continue to drop.

Consider what could happen if there are blackouts due to high demand of electricity (always a possibility in Texas and other hot climes), consider what could happen if the economic situation doesn’t improve or if there is a stock market crash due to war. (Have you seen the reports on North & South Korea?)

Please don’t let your guard down yet and please do join the discussion.

Saw the sad story on the news yesterday morning but chose to blog about the Baby Throwing Mama instead.

The story started off as your typical senseless act of violence but unlike some people I don’t jump to conclusions.

Edgar Eduardovich Azaryan was walking his pit bull just after midnight when he was shot in the parking lot of his apartment complex in the 5900 block of Arapaho Road.

As usual, it turns on that there is more to the story.

So I present you decide – is this another example of the “gun culture” or the “thug culture”:

Within hours, Dallas police arrested two suspects in the shooting, Hasan G. Yigit 17, and Jason Holder, 20.

Police said the three men were believed to have taken part together in home burglaries.

“They were involved in criminal enterprises,” said Lt. Craig Miller, commander of the Dallas police homicide unit.

So….is the cause of the murder the firearm or the previous criminal acts?

This is just another anecdote, I –unlike other (Can you say Sparky?) realize that.

But I also match up the illustrative crimes like this with the statistics and see if they correlate.

Since Texas doesn’t have Open Carry and doesn’t have registration, we can look at Concealed Handgun Licenses as a proxy for the behavior of gun owners. Isn’t one for one and it isn’t definitive but again it is illustrative.
Year……….Percent …………..#
2007……….0.2612%……….160
2006……….0.2340%……….144
2005……….0.2530%……….154
2004……….0.1648%……….105
2003……….0.1422%……….  85
2002……….0.1597%………. 88
2001……….0.2437%………. 99
2000……….0.2718%……….109
1999……….0.3792%……….142
1998……….0.4112%……….142
1997……….0.4584%……….163
1996……….0.4655%……….153

Never more then 0.5%  — One Half Of One Percent — of all the convictions were people legally licensed to carry a firearm.

Compare that with this:

* Thirty-six percent of violent felons had an active
criminal justice status at the time of their arrest.
This included 18% on probation, 12% on release
pending disposition of a prior case, and 7% on
parole.

* Seventy percent of violent felons had a prior arrest
record, and 57% had at least one prior arrest for a
felony. Sixty-seven percent of murderers and 73% of
those convicted of robbery or assault had an arrest
record.

Criminals like the thugs who shot that “Choir Boy” are the problems – not the firearms.

Focus on the problem, not the tool.

Want to reduce “gun crime” or “gun violence” — Reduce crime.

Please join the discussion.

Like my friend Pistolero, I don’t always agree with Mr. Pitts but today I do and also want to thank him.

First the thanks, it is for letting me know even a little about a remarkable man.

It concerned a piece I recently did that mentioned Henry Johnson, who was awarded the French Croix de Guerre in World War I for single-handedly fighting off a company of Germans (some accounts say there were 14, some say almost 30; the ones I find most authoritative say there were about two dozen) who threatened to overrun his post. Johnson managed this despite the fact that he was only 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds, despite the fact that his gun had jammed, despite the fact that he was wounded 21 times.

I could send him more proof, I suppose. Johnson is lauded in history books ( Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett Jr., The Dictionary of American Negro Biography by Rayford Logan and Michael Winston) and in contemporaneous accounts ( The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times). I could also point out that blacks have fought in every war in American history, though before Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1948, they did so in Jim Crow units. Also, there were no Nazis in World War I.

I’ll have to look up Henry Johnson when I have time but that is a remarkable story.

Mr. Pitts discusses an email from someone who doesn’t agree with him. Here is where I agree with Mr. Pitts.

She is probably somewhere drinking right now. You see, like me, she can remember a time when facts settled arguments.

This is back before everything became a partisan shouting match, back before it was permissible to ignore or deride as “biased” anything that didn’t support your worldview.

If you and I had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back me up, you couldn’t just blow that off. You might try to undermine my facts, might counter with facts of your own, but you couldn’t just pretend my facts had no weight or meaning. (emphasis mine)

Now, for some reason this reminded me of Weer’d Beard’s quote of the day from yesterday

“I say, reasonable people can indeed have honest dialogue with no evidence at all. They can easily talk about controversial issues, especially ones in which conflicting “proof” is offered on both sides.

Sometimes it’s less honest to insist upon proof instead of admitting obvious conclusions.” -MikeB302000

As Weer’d said ” You see, MikeB302000 is sick of people using facts to counter arguments he simply makes up out of whole cloth. He’d rather we give up our facts so he can actually have a chance at winning.”

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper’s online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.

I submit that any people thus handicapped sow the seeds of their own decline; they respond to the world as they wish it were rather than to the world as it is. That’s the story of the Iraq war.

But objective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it’s a wall.

I’ll ignore the Iraqi War attack for now, there is plenty to argue there and plenty of facts.

Many of us on the pro-rights side of the argument have repeatedly asked for evidence, for facts, for supporting statistics.

Many of us on the pro-rights side of the argument have repeatedly stated that if the evidence supports gun control we will give up our firearms.

So far there hasn’t be evidence  presented to even make me begin to doubt.

We look at the evidence, the facts, the information and draw appropriate conclusions, others look at the evidence and say “ Sometimes it’s less honest to insist upon proof instead of admitting obvious conclusions.”

Who do you think Mr. Pitts is referring to in this situation? Facts are a stubborn thing as Mr. Pitts says and in this case, the facts are on the side of the Pro-rights argument.

Please join the discussion.