Internet Scofflaw

I hope you’re sitting down while you read this: ABC News has learned that most stolen guns end up with criminals.

The Weekly Standard notes that President Obama is violating his own stimulus law, which requires quarterly progress reports. By law, he should have issued 14 such reports by now. He has only issued 8, the last one for Q2 2011.

New York’s new gun-control law allows New Yorkers to keep 10-round magazines (for now), but prohibits them from loading more than seven rounds in one. If you miscount, you go to jail.

I defy anyone to name any constructive purpose served by such a rule. If you were to ban 10-round magazines outright, one might imagine — following the usual pattern of gun-controllists’ wishful thinking — that it would make them a little harder for criminals to obtain. But allowing the magazines eliminates even that highly-unlikely salutary purpose.

The sole consequence of this rule will be that law-abiding persons will have seven rounds, while having no effect on criminals whatsoever.

In other words, this law is not about stopping criminals, but about disarming innocents.

Most of the New York legislature can be partly excused for this: due to the illegal haste with which the bill was rammed through, they got no chance to read it. (Of course, they should have then voted no.) But the authors of the law — particularly Andrew Cuomo — have no such excuse. These are simply bad people.

POSTSCRIPT: Of course, there’s more. The law not only bans “high-capacity” magazines, but confiscates the ones you already have. (Oh yes, they explain the provision by saying the banned magazines must be sold out-of-state, but what do you think will happen if you don’t?) They failed to put in an exception for law enforcement. And, they have accidentally banned the biathlon (which uses an unusual 8-round magazine), which Olympic athletes train for in Lake Placid, New York.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Facebook temporarily shut down The Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh’s Facebook page, possibly in response to a campaign by anti-Israel activists who object to Abu Toameh’s views on corruption within the Palestinian Authority.

(I’m not sure why they say “possibly”, read on.)

On Monday, Abu Toameh posted a link to an Arabic report in a Jordanian newspaper about the corruption trial of former Jordanian intelligence chief. He also posted a link to an acerbic blog post slamming the PA that he wrote for the Gatestone Institute, where he is a contributor. . .

Hate mail and death threats poured into Abu Toameh’s inbox. While the veteran reporter has received hate mail before, he said the response to the last two posts was overwhelming.

Abu Toameh received a message from Facebook stating he had posted an item that violates the terms of use of Facebook. Then, without warning, his Facebook profile was terminated. A notice said that the account was temporarily closed “for security reasons.”

The account was reopened 24 hours later, but with the two posts deleted and no explanation.

If the timing weren’t convincing enough, the fact the two posts were deleted proves that they were the reason for the suspension.

So why is Facebook censoring criticism of the Palestinian Authority? It could be political bias, but it’s more likely simple cowardice. Allowing criticism of totalitarian regimes could result in their being banned from those regimes. Either way, this illustrates the folly of using Facebook as a medium for political dicourse.

Seattle says, don’t feed the hungry:

The Bread of Life Mission, which has served the homeless community in Pioneer Square for more than 70 years, said the city has directed them to stop feeding the hungry in downtown parks.

Remember, this doesn’t just happen. Some person had to decide that stopping a church from feeding the homeless was a good idea. Which brings us back to this.

The Obama administration wants doctors to question their patients about whether they have guns in their homes. (This is part of their program to denormalize gun ownership, so that they can make the political landscape more favorable for gun bans.) Doctors should not do so:

Doctors already have a professional and legal responsibility to notify the authorities if they believe patients pose an imminent threat to others or themselves. But routine inquiry about gun ownership goes far beyond this obligation. Such inquiries will instead only offend and alienate many responsible gun owners, compromising the trust essential to the doctor-patient relationship. Doctors should not put themselves in a position where patients view them as willing (or unwitting) agents of the government working against their interests.

This illustrates, yet again, how everything in this administration takes a back seat to ideology. When quality medical practice goes up against gun control, medicine will lose.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Republicans seem to adopting Charles Krauthammer’s suggestion for how they should deal with the debt limit. Rather than using the debt limit to try to force big cuts in spending, which probably won’t work and will certainly result in them being (unjustly) savaged in the media, they should instead make a demand that is small, unassailable, and nevertheless important: for the Senate to produce a budget.

This is a great idea, because there is no reasonable argument that can be made against it. In fact, the Senate is required by law to produce a budget and thus has been flagrantly violating the law for the last four years. And, it’s nevertheless important because it will force Democrats to put their spending plans in the full light of day.

When Democrats attack the plan, as they will (precisely because they don’t want their spending plans debated in the full light of day), it will be an educational experience for the American people.

So your home was damaged by Hurricane Sandy, and you can’t repair it without a permit, which you can’t get? Not our problem. We’re the government.

Remember, this doesn’t just happen. Some person had to decide that hassling people just trying to repair their homes was a good idea. Which brings us back to this.

Even anti-gun zealots see the folly in posted gun-free zones, when it comes to their own homes:

(Via Michelle Malkin.)

With all the vitriolic attacks against the NRA for its supposedly crazy proposal for armed guards in schools (the NYT called it a “mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant”), one might have gotten the impression that the proposal was out of the mainstream. In fact, the proposal is supported by 55% of Americans, and now even by the Obama administration.

If such a mainstream proposal is called “almost deranged” by the media, that tells you how far out of the mainstream the media is.

POSTSCRIPT: In fact, the 55-42 split understates how mainstream the proposal is. The 42% who are opposed includes lots of people like me who oppose the notion, not because of hoplophobia, but because we cannot afford it. Instead, we ought to revoke the gun-free zones around schools, which do not deter criminals but do prevent the school staff from stopping criminals. This would put informal armed security into the schools at no cost to the taxpayer. It’s already working in some states.

Washington, D.C. is the porn-viewing capital of America. Why doesn’t that surprise me?

Bill Clinton, professional liar and sometime president:

Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.

This isn’t even close to true. Moreover, he knows it. Glenn Kessler adds:

We ran this data past a spokesman for Clinton, but he declined to comment or offer an explanation for where the former president got his facts. That always makes us suspicious.

The fact that it was Bill Clinton talking should have made him suspicious, but I suppose we must make allowances for liberal journalists.

(Via Power Line.)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) requires that employers offer their employees health insurance, but does not require that it be affordable. Awesome.

(Via Instapundit.)

The future of American health care is the UK’s present:

The largest and most detailed survey into hospital deaths has revealed that almost 12,000 patients are needlessly dying every year as a result of poor patient care.

The researchers from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine based the study on 1,000 deaths at 10 NHS trusts during 2009. The study revealed that basic errors were made in more than one in 10 cases, leading to 5.2% of deaths, which was the equivalent of nearly 12,000 preventable deaths in hospitals in England every year.

Iowahawk puts these numbers into perspective:

A Briton is 5 times more likely to die from government health care than an American is to die from a gunshot.

Timothy Geithner was hip-deep in the Libor scandal, and somehow I never heard about it:

At the hearing, Geithner stuck to a defense he expressed last week — that once he learned of the ma­nipu­la­tion, he sounded alarms to British and U.S. regulators. . .

But Republicans hammered Geithner about why he did not inform lawmakers during numerous congressional hearings or in the lengthy debate over Wall Street regulation. . . Other GOP members noted that even though Geithner knew of possible rate-fixing, the Federal Reserve still used Libor in several financial rescue programs.

Geithner defended his actions, saying that Libor was the best number available. That’s nonsense. Even if you set aside the rigging, Libor should never have been used for anything, because it doesn’t measure anything real. It never did. Libor is nothing more than the average of a set of made-up numbers.

In fact, one should have expected that Libor would be rigged. Or, put another way, what does “rigged” even mean in regard to a fictional rate? The “estimates” that make up Libor aren’t real rates that anyone can get. Their sole use is to set Libor, so of course they were chosen in such a way as to favor the estimaters own interests.

Social Security is in much more trouble than you thought. A piece in the New York Times shows the Social Security Administration’s forecast are pretty much worthless. For example, their projected death rates look like this:

First of all, the curves should not cross. But more importantly, they should certainly never go to 100%! According to the Social Security Administration, I will never collect Social Security, because there is a 100% chance that I will die by 2028.

With assumptions like this, it’s easy to see that the Administration’s estimate that it won’t run out of IOUs until 2033 is worthless.

Mike Bloomberg’s latest project is to limit supplies of painkillers to emergency rooms:

Yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city officials unveiled a new initiative to limit supplies of prescription painkillers in the city’s emergency rooms as a way to combat what they described as a growing addiction problem in the region. Some critics . . ., however, felt the move would unnecessarily hurt poor and uninsured patients who use emergency rooms as their primary care doctor.

[Bloomberg said,] “Number one, there’s no evidence of that. Number two, supposing it is really true, so you didn’t get enough painkillers and you did have to suffer a little bit. The other side of the coin is people are dying and there’s nothing perfect … There’s nothing that you can possibly do where somebody isn’t going to suffer, and it’s always the same group [claiming], ‘Everybody is heartless.’ Come on, this is a very big problem.”

If people “suffer a little bit”, Bloomberg thinks that’s a small price to pay to protect other people from themselves. That is absolutely disgusting. Quite simply, Mike Bloomberg does not believe in freedom.

And despite Bloomberg breezy dismissal of the possibility, this is exactly what is going to happen.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh writes:

I have had loved ones go to the hospital to undergo significant surgical procedures. The aftermath of those surgeries presented said loved ones with significant rehabilitation demands which were made all the more daunting because of the post-operative pain involved. . .

It would be best to leave these kinds of decisions to the doctor and his/her patient. So when an officious, meddling busybody decides that he is in the best position to decide who gets painkillers and who doesn’t, and when said officious, meddling busybody declares that it is okay if some people “suffer” as a consequence of his decision, I tend to get more than a little upset. And you should get more than a little upset too.

I am.

Dianne Feinstein is a liar:

In fact, getting the camel’s nose under the tent, as Ifill puts it, is exactly what they are trying to accomplish. As Olson and Kopel exhaustively document in All the Way Down the Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition in England and Some Lessons for Civil Liberties in America, the gun banners got Great Britain from complete gun freedom to a complete ban by taking slow, seemingly moderate steps:

Severe enforcement of the rifle and handgun licensing system would not have worked in 1922. Too many gun owners would have been outraged by the rapid move from a free society to one of repressive controls. By initially enforcing the 1920 legislation with moderation, and then with gradually increasing severity, the British government acclimated British gun owners to higher and higher levels of control. . .

The frog-cooking principle helps explain why America’s Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), and the other anti-gun lobbies are so desperate to pass any kind of gun control, even controls that most observers agree will accomplish very little. By lobbying for the enactment of, for example, the Brady Bill, HCI established the principle of a national gun licensing system. Once a lenient national handgun licensing system was established in 1993, the foundation was laid so that the licensing system can gradually be tightened.

They’re trying the same thing here, but Americans are wise to them, which is why we fight everything. The courts have held that the First Amendment protection for free speech requires “breathing room”, which means that not only must the government not ban free speech, it must not come anywhere near it. The British experience shows that we need “breathing room” for the Second Amendment as well.

UPDATE: A Washington Post editorial from 1994 admitted that the the so-called assault weapon ban served no purpose other than as a stepping stone:

No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished (by the ban). Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.

We already knew that President Obama’s cash-for-clunkers program was an economic disaster. (We literally would have been better off burning $1 billion in cash.) Liberals console themselves by saying that at least it helped the environment. But it didn’t:

Whoops—’Cash for Clunkers’ Actually Hurt the Environment

According to E Magazine, the “Clunkers” program, which is officially known as the Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), produced tons of unnecessary waste while doing little to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The program’s first mistake seems to have been its focus on car shredding, instead of car recycling. With 690,000 vehicles traded in, that’s a pretty big mistake.

Under our monetary system, the Federal Reserve (a quasi-independent body) controls the issuing of currency and other levers that influence the money supply. This is supposed to serve as a check on the government’s ability to print money unwisely. It’s a weak check, but a check nonetheless. However, it seems that federal law contains a loophole (dealing with the minting of platinum coins) that allows the Treasury to issue currency without the approval of the Federal Reserve.

Nevertheless, even if the Treasury can do it, monetizing the debt is a crackpot idea. I thought everyone knew that, so I never paid any attention to the talk of minting trillion-dollar platinum coins.

But now, Paul Krugman is advocating it:

Should President Obama be willing to print a $1 trillion platinum coin if Republicans try to force America into default? Yes, absolutely. . . By minting a $1 trillion coin, then depositing it at the Fed, the Treasury could acquire enough cash to sidestep the debt ceiling — while doing no economic harm at all.

Got that? No economic harm at all! We’re in LaRouche territory here, folks!

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, the notion that Republicans would try to “force America into default” is pure partisan bullshit. As we learned from the last go-round with the debt ceiling, Republicans wanted to ensure that the debt was paid, and proposed legislation to ensure that by giving debt service priority. It was voted down on party lines, because Democrats wanted to keep default on the table. Quite simply, Democrats preferred to risk default than to make meaningful cuts to spending. So what Krugman really means is:

Should President Obama be willing to print a $1 trillion platinum coin if Republicans try to cut spending? Yes, absolutely.

This kind of thinking leads to hyper-inflation.

(Via Power Line.)

If the charitable deductions are limited, charitable contributions will decrease. That’s just math. Suppose you can afford to give $1000 to charity, and suppose (to make the math easy) that you are in a 50% marginal tax bracket and the new limit is zero. Then you will give just the $1000. Before the limit went to zero, when you gave $1000 you saved $500 on taxes, so you could give another $500. That saved you $250, which you could give, which saved another $125, and so on. In the end, you were able to give $2000. So your charitable contribution is cut in half.

Of course, the realistic effect is smaller. In general, if your marginal income tax rate is r, discretionary giving in excess of the limit is reduced by r. Again, that’s just math.

But when Ari Fleischer tweeted about this effect, liberals went crazy. Here’s a typical comment, selected for its lack of profanity:

lol talk about being a complete jerk, admitting you donate for the tax deduction #NoSoul

I think #NoMath would be more appropriate. No one donates just for the tax deduction unless their marginal tax rate is over 100%. Even if you get some back on your taxes, you still don’t end up ahead!

Fleischer tried to explain it:

For those having a fit re my charity tweet, when gvt reduces ppl’s take home pay, ppl have less $ to donate/spend. It’s math

But the innumerate liberals still weren’t buying it, including innumerate fools like New Republic editor Alec MacGillis and Buzz Feed “reporter” Andrew Kaczynski.

Did I mention it’s just math? Sheesh.

A 16-year-old New Jersey boy has been sent to jail for absolutely nothing:

When a 16-year-old New Jersey boy doodled in his notebook on Tuesday, December 18, he probably didn’t expect to be arrested by the end of the day. However, when school officials saw the sketches, which they state appeared to be of weapons, and the boy “demonstrated behavior that caused them to be concerned,” the police were called.

A subsequent search of the boy’s home led to his arrest because they found several electronic parts and chemicals. He was charged with the possession of an explosive device and put in juvenile detention.

He doodled a superhero, and he owned a chemistry set and electronics set. For that, he went to jail. The authorities admit he did nothing wrong:

At no point in time did the boy threaten the school, school officials, or his classmates. He cooperated fully with authorities, and a search of the school itself found nothing dangerous . . .

and:

Police Chief Pat Moran stressed Tuesday night no threats were made by the student and there was no indication there was any danger posed to anyone or property at the school.

“There was no indication he was making a bomb, or using a bomb or detonating a bomb,” he said.

This is hysteria, plain and simple.

The Laffer Curve is inarguably real (no one will work at a 100% tax rate), the only question is where the peak is. Portugal is the latest country to be surprised to find itself on the wrong side of the peak.