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Daily Archives: December 28th, 2012

Firearms Control Again


Anyone with common sense and a moral compass can deduce that “gun control” works only for “rational” people. Putting armed guards in schools will not and does not work. We have more “on the edge” people who have access to firearms through purchase, inheritance or personal ownership (while rational) than we can count. It seems that no one can see the potential for reducing or erasing the use of firearms by mentally compromised individuals through a more comprehensive screening process. This is an expensive proposition but what is a life worth? How to do it is better left to experts but I see in the eyes of the few perpetrators shown in the media a quality that would tell me that there is something wrong with this person. This is very unscientific but it is certainly better than allowing access to deadly weapons capable of murdering masses of people. I am in agreement that high capacity magazines (defined as more than 8 rounds) and the weapons that use them should be restricted to law enforcement and the military. It may be cool to own and shoot them but in the wrong hands we have tragedies such as “Aurora and Newtown. These events along with the ensuing one in Upstate New York  should be enough to create reasonable legislation to control access and ownership of high capacity weapons

Wasted Millions


Of  all of the millions of dollars spent by big money donors to defeat the President how much could have been spent to assist the poorest Americans instead?  This appears to indicate the self serving nature of  these “donors”. The ability to spend these huge amounts of money to preserve their political power is seemingly more important than using that same money to help the folks who have lost jobs due to the outsourcing done by some of these folks. Although I can appreciate idea of not paying more taxes than necessary, I understand that the country runs on taxes from all of us except the very poor and the unemployed. So paying your share of taxes would potentially move some of the unemployed and possibly some of the poor from those positions and into a taxpaying role.

No Call Registry


The National no Call Registry used to cover only 800 numbers but now  that phone solicitors use local area codes and other number other than the original 800 series. These  too can be registered. Imagine how much time you could spend registering the multitude of numbers received for solicitations and surveys? The National no call registry requires you to register along with your phone numbers and it takes at least 30 days before it takes effect. You can submit complaints against phone solicitors after that and only if you request that the soliciting company or their agent remove your name from their call list. If this does not occur, you can then submit a complaint with the national no call registry. Does this work?, I cannot be sure but it is certainly worth the effort.

Everyone Is A Detective


We  are all detectives in some form. While we exalt in the TV detectives of all sorts, we each discover things in our way. The real detection occurs each time we read more than one source for information, listen to several news or pseudo news outlets. The one defect in this discovery is our own personal biases. Our learned and acquired biases form a basis for many of our actions and beliefs. With this basis we often accept as fact the skewed information issued by our Congress. The Congress has been in free fall for many years and we have not fully realized it. With this idea in play we vote and keep the failures in office to continue the almost evolutionary progress in government downward spiral. The clues are:  the economic crisis AKA “fiscal cliff”, pursuit of Susan Rice on misinformation she was given and the pursuit of the Presidency by any means possible. Of the 500 plus members many are millionaires or nearly, so the raising of tax rates would affect them. Keep in mind that this tax does not raise the rates on investments by much, it has more impact on the earned income. One line that is quoted regularly is the effect on small businesses. Most small businesses will not be affected yet the notion that it will is out there and living large while the real information lies undetected.

2%


Several of the top 2 percenters are literally screaming to be taxed. The CEO’s of well known companies have stated “the loss of jobs due to tax hikes is a myth”. They have urged the GOP (many of them are members of that party) to stop the games and let the taxes rise. The Congress apparently is willing to play the same games and punish the American people who they claim to represent. I believe these so called  representatives of the people are more concerned about keeping their own taxes low rather than other “2 percenters”. This is certainly an indication that the voters need to begin the process of removing ineffective Congressional members and those who have served too long to be effective. What would it be like to have an actual working Congress? The framers of the Constitution never had Congressional seats in mind as a fulltime position yet here we are with 535 fulltime people who have forgotten why they were elected  or have they? The unfortunate part of this is, we have some who could be better but their high intentions have been undermined by the older and self serving members. It seems that greed is the watchword as the Congress has enacted laws that serve them and not us, the 98%.