Category: Government

On Mexico

The BBC, like many other new organizations, recently ran an article about the ongoing drug-related violence going on in Mexico.
In the article, a particular quote stood out to me:

Mexico’s gun laws are tight, but in the US it is far easier to get weapons. The Mexican government says lax US gun laws help arm the cartels and fuel the violence.

While US gun laws are far less strict than Mexico, I seriously doubt that the US is responsible for most of the weapons being used by the drug cartels. While I won’t say that US-sourced weapons haven’t been found in Mexico (they clearly have), I’m saying that the bad guys are getting most of their weapons from other sources. The ATF seems to agree.
First off, straw purchasing — where someone buys a gun for a prohibited person, which is illegal — doesn’t scale well. It’s one thing for a gang member to get his girlfriend to buy a gun or two, but it’s a different thing entirely for drug cartels to hire enough straw purchasers in cities all over the country to buy hundreds of thousands of guns and get them over the border without being noticed. It’s made worse when gun stores are routinely out of popular semi-auto guns like AR-15s and AK variants which, the news organizations claim, are the guns being smuggled.
Secondly, why would the cartels risk such high-level detection by straw purchasing from gun shops in the US? US gun dealers are regulated by the ATF, all retail purchasers must undergo FBI background checks, fill out forms, etc. Cars crossing the border are routinely searched for contraband. Seems like a lot of hassle for a marginal gain. It’d be far easier for the cartels to bribe Mexican military members or port authorities to overlook a container or two of smuggled arms than to buy guns — where they’re available — at retail prices in the US.
Thirdly, many of the guns being found in Mexico are machine guns, not their semi-auto lookalikes commonly available in the US. Machine guns are tightly regulated in the US and usually quite expensive. Legal, transferable M16s in the US tend to cost in excess of $12,000 and require both local and federal approval for purchase. Since the registry for privately-owned machine guns was legislatively closed in 1986, the number of legal machine guns has remained constant (or possibly declined slightly, as guns are damaged, destroyed, stolen, etc.). With actual machine guns being so expensive and uncommon, it would be incredibly unwise for the cartels to attempt to smuggle American-owned machine guns into Mexico.
With some skilled machine work, one can convert semi-auto guns into full-auto guns (doing so would be considered making a post-1986 machine gun, and it is generally illegal for private citizens to make or own such a conversion), but again this has problems scaling. Converting a gun or two is plausible, but converting enough guns to arm hundreds of thousands of cartel members? Unlikely, considering the number of machinists and equipment needed to do so.
Fourthly, Mexico has numerous porous borders, whether it’s the large amounts of relatively unpatrolled shoreline or the border with Guatemala. Why would cartels risk detection smuggling arms over the US-Mexico border when they could simply smuggle arms from other sources into the country by land or sea? Bribing a port official to let a container of guns in isn’t that hard, nor is unloading one’s own ships (whether with smaller boats onto a beach somewhere, or into a cove).
Fifthly, the cartels pay a lot more than the Mexican police or military does, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if guns were given or sold to the cartels from police or military armories. Since the US often trades, legally, in arms with Mexican government authorities, this may be why captured guns are being traced back to the US.
Sixthly, there are numerous international arms dealers and nations who would gladly exchange arms for currency. Why risk the wrath of the US government when the cartels could simply buy from a willing foreign government or dealer by the containerload?
Basically, I’m applying Occam’s Razor here: it’s far more simple and plausible that the cartels are getting their guns from the Mexican police and military, from international arms dealers, or from another state (say, Venezuela) than them buying machine guns at vastly inflated prices in the US or straw-purchasing semi-auto guns and then converting them to machine guns.
Unsurprisingly enough, the news media doesn’t consider this (or if they do, they don’t print it), preferring to parrot the same story over and over. The ATF says it isn’t happening. Border Patrol says it isn’t happening. Why, then, does it keep coming up again and again?

Musings on Need

With a map, you cant [sic] count the number of bricks in a building, or see the elevator shafts. With this level of detail (afforded by online maps,) you can. I hear the argument that, “Yeah, I want to also ban cars because cars are used in robberies.” Look, cars have other commercial uses. There are no other uses for knowing on a map where there are air shafts.

– California Assemblyman Joel Anderson, in this article.
Who gives a damn if you think there’s a “need” for something or not? The default state of rights in this country is “on”, so it doesn’t matter if we need something or not. There’s plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting detailed aerial imagery of locations.
In the case of air shafts, it might be useful information for an HVAC company to know how many air handlers and shafts are located at schools, churches, government buildings, and medical facilities so they could plan marketing information (perhaps those companies would need someone to maintain those air handling systems?). Perfectly legitimate and non-terroristic.
What’s so special about schools, churches, government buildings, and medical facilities that they warrant special blurring? What about blurring out banks? Airports? Monuments? Private residences? Chemical companies? Railroad switching yards? All can be sensitive locations, but they’re not on the magical “blurry” list.
The most absurd thing is that even if such legislation were applied to mapping companies in the US, it’d be useless — what’s to prevent foreign mapping services from taking satellite/aerial photos of US locations and hosting them outside of US jurisdiction? What’s to prevent someone from taking pictures from an airplane and putting them together in a huge composite map? If Google Street View has to blur out those locations, what’s to prevent people from walking around with their own digital cameras and submitting them to mapping companies?
No, restrictions based on “need” are absurd. I don’t “need” aerial photography, but it makes life easier. I don’t “need” as many guns as I have (I only have two hands, after all), but I wanted to buy them. I don’t “need” to buy the foods I do, but I want to eat them. I don’t “need” my scooter or car, but I prefer using them to walking. Anyone could come up with a reason why I shouldn’t have such things because I don’t “need” them, but that would be silly and in direct contradiction to my individual rights.
I’d like to propose a new law: anyone trying to pass new legislation that attempts to justify itself by claiming that people don’t “need” something or claiming that this law is “for the children” should be flogged in public.

Feeling Stimulated

As I used to be a Californian, I have opted-in to receive mailings from Senators Feinstein and Boxer, mostly because I find it amusing to see their spin on various political issues. I received an email from Boxer today regarding Porkulon, The Destroyer of Budgets. Here’s some excerpts with my commentary:

About 95 percent of all working families will qualify for the Making Work Pay tax cut.? Working families will receive between a $400 and $800 tax cut, with an estimated 12.5 million Californians eligible for this tax cut.

While I like tax cuts, I have to wonder if this is a good idea. The government is in financial shambles as it is, so wouldn’t cutting tax cuts while spending huge sums of money be a bad idea?

If you receive Social Security benefits, or SSI, you will likely receive a one-time payment of $250.

Do people actually think that giving Social Security recipients a one-time payment of $250 will stimulate the economy? Really, what’s the point? $250 isn’t a lot of money these days.

If you become unemployed, you can receive an additional $100 per month in unemployment insurance benefits, and your benefits will be extended if you remain unemployed.? More than 2,395,000 Californians have lost their jobs in this recession and this extra money will help boost them and our economy with their added purchasing power.

Here I was thinking that the point of unemployment insurance was to ensure that people don’t starve if they’ve been laid off. Using terms like “unemployed” and “purchasing power” in the same paragraph seems a bit…odd.? Personally, if I was collecting unemployment benefits, I’d conserve what I was getting and use it only for essentials.

If you or a family member have become unemployed and you had health insurance, you will receive assistance in continuing your employer-provided health insurance coverage for up to nine months.? The federal government will pay up to 65 percent of your health insurance premiums during this period of unemployment.

I just looked through my copy of the US Constitution, and it mentions no power of the federal government to pay any of my health insurance premiums, let alone 65%.

If your neighborhood has foreclosed and abandoned houses, funds are provided to help local governments buy up and improve homes and make them available to renters or future buyers.

My copy of the Constitution also doesn’t say anything about the federal government helping local governments buy and improve homes (read: give them free money).

If you are in the military, funds are provided to upgrade military medical facilities, housing, and childcare facilities.? Funds are also provided to upgrade veteran medical facilities and to make repairs at veterans facilities.

Ok, that’s at least a legitimate function of the federal government…but I don’t see how it has anything to do with stimulating the economy. It’s probably a good idea, but really shouldn’t be part of this law.

If you are a first-time home buyer, you may be eligible for an $8,000 tax credit toward the purchase of a home.? And if you live in a high-cost area, you will have greater access to low-interest mortgage loans.

A document I got in the mail today says the $8,000 tax credit is actually a sort of bizzaro government loan that you have to pay off over 15 years. WTF? Also, I don’t see how the government has the authority to provide “greater access to low-interest mortage loans”.

If you are concerned about increasing crime in these hard economic times, the bill provides federal funding to hire more police officers through the COPS program.

I don’t see why local police departments should receive even a dime in funding from the feds…isn’t policing an entirely local service? Shouldn’t the local governments be handling this entirely by themselves? If not, then the local governments need to seriously reconsider their budgets or pool resources with other nearby communities. I fail to see how such a provision would stimulate the economy at all.

If you have a health problem, or even if you just regularly visit your doctor, your medical records will be computerized, enabling faster access to medical records and saving billions of dollars in health care costs.

Again, this is not a proper function of government, nor is it stimulating to the economy. If my doctor wishes to computerize records, that should be entirely their choice.

If you travel on America?s roads, freeways, bridges, or transit, you are likely to see improvements, upgrades and modernization including freeway construction, modernization of infrastructure that includes energy savings, and rail and transit construction to reduce traffic and gas consumption.

Granted, this is a legitimate function of the federal government,? it might employ a few thousand to build stuff, and our infrastructure is in need of repair, I don’t think this belongs in this particular law.

These are just examples of the good programs included in this historic legislation.? And while it is just a step in a long road to economic recovery, it is a crucial one.

Wait a second…those are the good parts of the bill? What the hell are the bad ones?
Is there any historical precedent for government stimulus leading to economic recovery?
I’m no economist, but my understanding is that the economy of the last few years (decades, even) has been driven by inexpensive credit, deficit spending by households and government, and people living beyond their means. Add in shady things like “securitized mortgages” and “credit default swaps” and you’re asking for trouble. Even if the “stimulus” were to work exactly as planned, we’d simply be restoring the status quo where people use debt to live beyond their means. Is that a good idea?
I’d much rather that people realize “Hey, spending money I don’t have isn’t sustainable! I should cut my budget, be more responsible with my money, save and invest it intelligently, and live not only within my means, but well within it to be on the safe side.” That goes double for the government. I doubt it’ll happen, though.

ATF sending out CD-ROMs

I’m a C&R 03 FFL holder, and have occasionally used it for acquiring various C&R firearms. For the most part, though, I don’t use it for anything except discounts at the occasional online retailer.
The ATF, however, must not have any sort of internal differentiation between 01 (normal “gun shops”) and 03 FFLs, and so sends C&R holders all the same material that they send to dealers. In the past, this has included an annual copy of all the federal and state laws relating to the purchase and ownership of firearms, published in book form. These books are Not Small: combined thickness is about 2″.
Well, I guess the ATF realized that sending out big, heavy books is a pain in the butt, so they’re now mailing out CD-ROMs.
I suppose this could be a useful point in gun policy debates: “There are so many federal and state laws regulating firearms in the US that it became too expensive for the government to print them and mail them to gun dealers and licensed collectors, so they’re putting them on CD-ROM now. You say we need more?”
That said, I rather like the CD-ROM — it’s considerably smaller than the gigantic books.

Scary Quote of the Day

From WorldNetDaily:

If you had gone into business on the day Jesus was born, and your business lost a million dollars a day, 365 days a year, it would take you until October 2737 to lose $1 trillion.
If you spent $1 million a day, every day since Jesus was born, you would still be only slightly more that three-quarters of the way to spending $1 trillion.
One trillion dollars divided by 300 million Americans comes out to $3,333 per person.
One trillion one-dollar bills stacked one on top of the other would reach nearly 68,000 miles into the sky, about a third of the way from the Earth to the moon.
Earth’s home galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to contain about 200 billion stars. So, if each star cost one dollar, one trillion dollars would buy five Milky Way galaxies full of stars.
One trillion seconds of ordinary clock time equals 31,546 years. So, spending money at the rate of one dollar every second, or $86,400 every day, would still take nearly 32,000 years to spend $1 trillion.
If someone were to build city blocks that contained 10 homes valued at $100,000 per home, you would end up with ten houses to a block, ten blocks to a mile and a hundred blocks per square mile. It would take 10,000 square miles to reach $1 trillion in value. This would be more than the size of six U.S. states: Vermont, 9,615 square miles; New Hampshire, 9,351 square miles; New Jersey, 8,722 square miles; Connecticut, 5,544 square miles; Delaware, 1,954 square miles; and Rhode Island, 1,545 square miles
Craig Smith, founder and CEO of Swiss America, estimates it would take approximately four generations of Americans to pay off the interest of the U.S. Treasury bonds sold as debt to create the $1 trillion stimulus package, factoring in a 3 percent growth rate in the economy throughout that time.
The U.S. national debt now exceeds $10 trillion according to the according to the U.S. National Debt Clock, at Times Square in New York City.
With the estimated population of the United States at 305,556,415 people, each citizen’s share of the national debt is $34,769.40.

Market Research

I’m a huge proponent of free speech (I’m a blogger, duh), and encourage people to voice their opinions on a wide variety of subjects. That’s part of what makes this country great.
Of course, I always encourage people to think before they speak, particularly when interacting with people of differing opinions. Indeed, it would make sense to do a bit of research to see how well people react to your message prior to publishing it, particularly if you’re trying to convince people to come around to yoru point of view.
Why do I mention this?
Dead babies.
[readers look puzzled]
Yes, dead babies. There’s an anti-abortion-rights group on the university mall today (the same group was here last year, and were here for a week; I expect them to be here the same amount of time). Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with this. Free speech and all.
However, I do have a problem with these guys: they’ve setup 30′ tall graphic pictures of aborted fetuses and a variety of equally gruesome photos.
While I certainly see where they’re coming from, the fact that they’re displaying gigantic photos of dead babies is a wee bit of a turn-off for me and doesn’t convince me to adopt their viewpoint. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I suspect that a bit of market research would have helped them out a bit. It probably would have told them that people don’t react well to huge pictures of dead babies, particularly in the middle of a university right next to the student union where everyone goes to eat food. I’m curious what their overall responses were in the years past, and if they expected anything different this year.
Moral of the story: think before you speak, and try not to gross out people you’re trying to convert.

Obama says “don’t stock up on guns”

From the Chicago Sun-Tribune:

As gun sales shoot up around the country, President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday that gun-owning Americans do not need to rush out and stock up before he is sworn in next month.
“I believe in common-sense gun safety laws, and I believe in the second amendment,” Obama said at a news conference. “Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I said that throughout the campaign. I haven’t indicated anything different during the transition. I think people can take me at my word.”

Why don’t I believe him? Oh, that’s right, his own words say otherwise:

Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment… support closing the gun show loophole…[and] support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

I’m a lawful gun owner. A new “assault weapons ban” would likely affect the majority of the guns I own and use on a regular basis. The Tiahrt Amendment keeps ATF trace data from being misused for misleading politicial purposes (even the ATF supports the Tiahrt Amendment). The “gun show loophole” has nothing to do with gun shows or loopholes — it’d be a ban on private person-to-person sales.
Does this mean I do have something to fear?

Nerdy Thoughts on Government

I wish that government policies could be based on the scientific method: gather information, present a hypothesis, test it in a well-defined manner, analyze the results, and see if the hypothesis is true or not. If not, discard the hypothesis and, if needed, formulate a new one. Progress is made by implementing policies based on confirmed hypotheses, and repealing policies based on failed ones.
I’m a student of science, and so believe that things should be tested by experiment. However, the consequences of a failed experiment in the lab are very different than those in the real world: in the lab, you might lose your eyebrows, your funding, or maybe your reputation. At the very worst, you might be killed or seriously injured by a spectacular failure, but this is extremely rare. Even if a theory is shown to be incorrect, useful data is generated, a better theory can be crafted, and a new experiment with the same starting conditions can be conducted.
The real world is much less forgiving: a policy mistake can cost trillions of dollars and many lives. The realities of bureaucracy and government can take a good idea, implement it poorly, and make things worse. Due to the inertia of society and bureaucracy, some flawed policies can be essentially impossible to undo.
Thus, it is extremely important to learn from the past, recognize which policies failed and which worked, make informed decisions, and make policy decisions based on fact and a realistic worldview.
Unfortunately, things rarely work this way, and the same mistakes are made over and over again. As a student of science, this annoys me to no end.