Yest another busy week, so here’s a very brief Texas vs. California update:
Texas vs. California Update for June 6, 2013
June 6th, 2013Dear Everyone Freaking Out Over the Precision Guided Firearms Tracking Point: Freak Out Over Something Else
June 5th, 2013I know I’m a bit late to this party, since it was on Slashdot months ago, but people are evidently still freaking out over the Precision Guided Firearms Tracking Point rifle. That’s the rifle with the integrated fire control computer that automatically adjusts/delays the shot until it’s dead on target, radically reducing human error.
A writer friend fretted over someone using this to take a out a kindergarten.
Don’t. Spree killers simply don’t use $17,000, 20 pound rifles firing .338 Lapua.
This gun would be the exact opposite of a spree-killing gun, because it slows down the rate at which you fire to make a perfect on-target shot, the opposite of the spree killer’s MO. It’s also a distance weapon that’s too heavy and bulky to easily carry around. It’s a weapon for rich big game hunters and wealthy gadget freaks.
Spree killers aren’t into cool technogadgets, they’re mentally unstable losers looking to erase the shame of their own failures in a spectacular act of bloody criminal catharsis. (Plus a few completely insane, like the Tucson and Aurora shooters, whose motives are unfathomable.)
In that hypothetical kindergarten killing spree with the Tracking Point, our nutjob is only going to get 2 or 3 shots before his victims run screaming out of his scope range. He’d rack up a much higher body count by walking in with an AK or Mac-10.
Might this type of rifle be used for other types of crimes? Maybe high-end, long-distance hits and assassinations: One shot, one kill from a mile away. But the downside is that this is way too bulky and conspicuous to carry around for that purpose, and all the Tracking point guns seem to be chambered in exotic big game calibers, so legal owners of such a monster will probably come up on a list of possible perps pretty quickly.
About the last thing people need to worry about is potential spree killers with $17,000 burning a hole in their pocket. You’re more likely to be killed by a cow.
Ted Cruz Sides with the Dissent in Maryland vs. King
June 4th, 2013Ted Cruz sides with the dissent in the recently decided Maryland vs. King DNA gathering case:
All of us should be alarmed by this significant step towards government as Big Brother. The excessive concentration of power in government is always inimical to liberty, and a national database of our DNA cannot be reconciled with the Fourth Amendment.
Accumulating DNA from arrestees—without warrant or probable cause to seize the DNA—is not designed to solve the crime for which the person has (rightly or wrongly) been arrested. Rather, it’s to test the DNA against a national database to potentially implicate them in other unsolved crimes. But the Constitution requires particularized suspicion of a specific crime; indeed, the Fourth Amendment was adopted to prohibit the British practice of “general warrants” targeting individuals absent specific evidence of wrongdoing.
The Actual Text of the Maryland vs. King Decision
June 4th, 2013Actual text of the Supreme Court’s Maryland vs. King “police can take DNA samples” decision can be found here in PDF form. Still haven’t read it yet.
Supreme Court: All Your DNA Are Belong To Us
June 3rd, 2013In a 5-4 decision on Maryland vs. King, the Supreme Court ruled that the government can indeed take your DNA sample upon arrest. It was also a decision that split across the court’s usual ideological lines: “Kennedy wrote the decision, and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Scalia was joined in his dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.” Any time Thomas and Scalia split on a decision it’s worth taking a look at the underlying issues involved, and I hope to take a closer (albeit of the IANAL variety) look at the actually decision when it’s online and I have time. I suspect the decision may hinge on the definition of “reasonable” search and seizure.
Setting aside (for now) the niceties of constitutional interpretation, I think this is a bad decision for both privacy and limited government, with some truly Orwellian (not to mention Huxleyion) implications. As a science fiction writer, I can think of three or four dozen ways this might be abused, and a National ID card is just the tip of the iceberg. In light of the IRS scandals, having your DNA stored in a federal database is tantamount to handing it over not only to Wikileaks and Anonymous, but any left-wing interest group with a grudge and a sympathetic bureaucrat on the inside (which is essentially all of them). And I can think of a lot darker possibilities…
LinkSwam for May 31, 2013
May 31st, 2013The season has switched from not Summer to Summer here in Texas, so here’s a hot, humid LinkSwarm:
Notice how countries that have kept their deficit spending relatively low (Germany and even the UK, where deficits has at least decreased under Cameron) are doing much better than the PIIGS. Again, Austerity hasn’t failed in Europe, it’s been declared difficult and left untried.
Texas vs. California: The Fate of Cities
May 30th, 2013There’s a lot to digest in this comparison of migration in California urban areas vs. migration in Texas urban areas. Quick take: Despite anti-sprawl laws, the cores of California cities would be emptying due to migration to the suburbs, were it not for net immigration from abroad. Texas cities, by contrast, are see growth in both the core and suburbs.
California’s political economy is based on high tax rates; rent control and growth controls; inflated housing values, but relatively low property tax rates because of Proposition 13; mandatory inclusionary housing and more jobs for teachers, tax assessors, subsidized solar power technicians, urban planners and environmentalists. Its immigration policies are mostly the symbolic “Dream Act,” anti-deportation laws and “sanctuary cities.”
Texas’ economy is based on low or no business and income taxes, no rent control, few growth controls, higher property tax rates based on lower housing values, inclusionary old inner cities by markets, and tax incentives for private sector jobs. Only El Paso and Houston have sanctuary city policies. An anti-sanctuary city bill died in the Texas legislature in 2011.
California has passed anti-sprawl legislation to try to halt the out-migration from its older big cities. The results would have been miserable if international in-migration had not stemmed the outflow of population.
Texas has accomplished balanced in-migration into its older city centers where California has failed. The Texas incentive model is performing better than the California disincentive model as far as sustaining the center of its older big cities while Texas suburbs are booming at the same time. Texas is accomplishing what 75 years of public housing and lending policies could not in California: an older city core that is attracting a “return to the city” by domestic and international migration and concurrent suburban growth.
Read the whole thing.
And while we’re on the subject, this piece on the dynamism of Houston is worth reading as well.
Susan Combs Stepping Down as Texas State Comptroller
May 29th, 2013Texas Comptroller Susan Combs won’t run for reelection in 2014. And that despite having a $7.3 million warchest.
Naturally lots of Republicans are lining up to run for the spot, though many are probably waiting to see what Rick Perry and Greg Abbott are going to do before jumping in.
Newsweek Owner Seeks New Buyer To Nail It Back To The Perch
May 29th, 2013Evidently Newsweek (or the online-only digital carcass of same) is for sale again. Gee, people don’t want to pay for an online version of a stale newsweekly turned into another carrier-medium for liberal opinion? Who knew?
Back in 2009, you may remember Newsweek‘s decision to remake itself as a liberal opinion weekly, an odd financial choice in a country where conservatives outnumber liberals nearly 2-to-1. Since then Newsweek has managed the amazing feat of hemorrhaging readers faster than other print publications. Then the Washington Post company decided to sell the venerable newsweekly to Sidney Harman for $1, screwing its shareholders but keeping the magazine’s money-losing liberal slant under Tina Brown’s editorship. Hired to steer the ship around the iceberg, Brown instead decided to teach the iceberg who’s boss by ramming it a few more times.
Vast swathes of legacy print media are in trouble in the Internet-era, but Newsweek‘s demise is more like an assisted suicide than a graceful decline. It’s like a Type II diabetic who had already lost three toes deciding to immediately go on a diet consisting entirely of ice cream.
Newsweek had a choice between being profitable and being liberal, and they chose liberal.
And remember that Newsweek‘s steep circulation decline, which happened right around the same time they decided to tack hard-left, was considerably more severe than declines at other newsweeklies.
So if Newsweek was worth $1 before Tina Brown managed to destroy all its remaining value, how much is it worth now?
Can they find someone willing to shake the cage a little longer?
PETA: People Killing Healthy Animals
May 28th, 2013Via Slashdot we now learn that PETA, the supposed animal rights group, sucks at keeping animals, you know, alive.
In 2011, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) behaved in a regrettably consistent manner: it euthanized the overwhelming majority (PDF) of dogs and cats that it accepted into its shelters. Out of 760 dogs impounded, they killed 713, arranged for 19 to be adopted, and farmed out 36 to other shelters (not necessarily “no kill” ones). As for cats, they impounded 1,211, euthanized 1,198, transferred eight, and found homes for a grand total of five. PETA also took in 58 other companion animals — including rabbits. It killed 54 of them…its adoption rate in 2011 was 2.5 percent for dogs and 0.4 for cats.
For exactly what PETA does to the animals in it’s care, see here. (Warning: Graphic photos of dead animals.)
You would do better, much much better, dumping your pet in a box on a random street corner with a “take me” sign on it.
Not only does PETA not operate “no kill” shelters, they seem to operate “all kill” shelters.
PETA Is not an “animal rights”group, they’re a radical anti-meat group. Handing over your dog or cat to them is tantamount to murdering them.