Category: News You Need to Know

Occupy Oakland Now a Big Business Puppet

Occupy Oakland seems to be going all out in their attempt to win the title of Douchiest Occupation Ever. They’re supposedly protesting the wealthy and government corruption yet their solution is to disrupt business at ports on the West Coast:

Heady with their successful attempts to block trucks and curb business at busy ports up and down the West Coast, some Occupy Wall Street protesters plan to continue their blockades and keep staging similar protests despite requests to stop because they’re hurting wage earners.

[…]

Protesters are most upset by two West Coast companies: port operator SSA Marine and grain exporter EGT. Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc. owns a major stake in SSA Marine and has been a frequent target of protesters.

Demonstrators say they are standing up for workers against the port companies, which have had recent high-profile clashes with union workers. Longshoremen in Longview, for example, have had a longstanding dispute with EGT, which employs workers from a different union to staff its terminal. The longshoremen’s union says the jobs rightfully belong to them.

Emphasis mine. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that Occupy Oakland has been hijacked by unions. One thing I noticed numerous times at Occupy Minneapolis was the attempt by unions to co-opt the movement and turn it from a mostly aimless airing of grievances to another puppet in the machinery of the national unions. Occupy Minneapolis avoided the hijacking attempt, likely because it fizzled our pretty early, but Occupy Oakland appears to have fallen right into the union’s trap.

Many of the antics pulled by the various Occupy movements have been entertaining as they usually involve people screaming, chanting, and otherwise being politically disruptive without actually interfering with private entities. Blocking privately owned ports is not a peaceful protested but a direct violation against the port owner’s right to property. Were I the port owners I’d be demanding the local police force remove these protesters from my property and if they failed to act I would take action to exercise my right to defend my property. There is a vast supply of water at that port and high-pressure hoses are pretty effective means of making the lives of trespassers miserable enough to cause their retreat from the premises.

Unions in this country are not voluntarily cooperations of employees coming together to fight for better working conditions. Instead unions in this country are large national corporations where bigwigs at the top make six figure salaries by stirring up unnecessary trouble between employees at employers. I’m on record on this blog of brining up the fact that these national unions more often than not cause long term problems for the employees they supposedly represent. While they manage to get higher wages, pensions, and other benefits for union employees they are usually far above a sustainable level causing the company to eventually face bankruptcy or fire the union employees (because the unions will almost never accept reducing employee pay). Regardless of the direction taken by the floundering business jobs are lost. This problem heavily contributed to the destruction of auto manufacturing in this country.

The fact of the matter is national unions in this country are big businesses and by being puppets for these unions Occupy Oakland is now a puppet of big business. If you fight something too long you often risk becoming that thing you’re fighting.

Don’t Blame the Automobile Manufacturers

Once gain I ventured into the Letters to the Editor section of the Star Tribune and returned with blog fodder gold. This letter was penned by an individual wrongly blaming automobile manufacturers for the lack of available small trucks on the market:

After 190,000 miles of service, my 1998 Toyota Tacoma has come to the end of its life. A rusted frame has brought its use to an end. Concerned about liability, the Toyota Corp. has given me a rather generous sum to buy back my 13-year-old truck.

The bad news : Toyota no longer makes a small truck. If it did, I’m certain it would get well more than 30 miles per gallon.

My Tacoma averaged 27 mpg — not highway miles, mind you: 27-mpg average. I’m certain that 13 years of technology could easily push us into the 30-mpg range.

The small truck is gone; the question is: Why?

Why are we being dictated to by car companies? Why do we move backward rather than forward, and how much longer will such regression continue?

We are about to conclude one oil war; half of our trade deficit is petroleum, and winter no longer comes in November in Minnesota.

National strength comes from minimizing our liabilities, not ignoring them. All but a few suffer when the tail wags the dog, and it needs to end. Petroleum addiction and inaction challenges our future. Change should be parked in your garage.

MARK PALAS, ST. PAUL

Emphasis mine. Notice that Mark is blaming the automobile manufacturers for what is actually a fault of government policy. How so? It has to do with the method fuel efficiency is calculated by government busy bodies:

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) are regulations in the United States, first enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1975,[1] and intended to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks (trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles) sold in the US in the wake of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. Historically, it is the sales-weighted harmonic mean fuel economy, expressed in miles per US gallon (mpg), of a manufacturer’s fleet of current model year passenger cars or light trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 8,500 pounds (3,856 kg) or less, manufactured for sale in the US. If the average fuel economy of a manufacturer’s annual fleet of vehicle production falls below the defined standard, the manufacturer must pay a penalty, currently $5.50 USD per 0.1 mpg under the standard, multiplied by the manufacturer’s total production for the U.S. domestic market.

In other words a car manufacturer is punished if the average fuel efficiency of their fleet is below a specified threshold. This threshold, measured in miles per gallon, is a moving target that has only ever increased (meaning the average miles per gallon of a company’s fleet must be higher).

Physics only allows for so much fuel efficiency to be squeezed out of a gasoline engine. Combine this, government regulations, and the fact that physics is a harsh bitch who also dictates that more fuel is required to produce more power and you have a formula that is just setting up small trucks for failure.

People who buy cars generally desire what they feel is acceptable acceleration and speed while people who buy trucks generally desire what they feel is acceptable towing capacity. Small trucks like the Ford Ranger are kind of an in between; they offer acceptable towing capacity without being gargantuan and therefore difficult to maneuver on small city streets. Unfortunately they’re not the most fuel efficient vehicles as people often will want to be able to pull their boat around with their small truck.

When the government increases the required average miles per gallon tough choices must be made. Increasing fuel efficiency requires decreasing power, which will irritate customers buying new vehicles (who generally assume their new vehicle will be equally or more power than their last). On the other hand if you eliminate one of the models that has a lower average miles per gallon your total corporate miles per gallon goes up. Thus in order to keep a majority of their customers happy and comply with the demands of government the automobile manufactures find they must make a handful of them unhappy.

You can’t rightfully blame automobile manufacturers for the lack of small trucks on the market, that blame is purely on the shoulders of government regulators.

Why I Hate Mothers Against Drunk Driving

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) may have had noble intentions when the organization was founded in 1980 but today they are nothing but a group of neo-prohibitionists. Instead of concerning themselves only with the problem of drink driving they’ve been expanding their focus to target anything related to alcohol. I stumbled across an interview with MADD California’s Executive Director Gary McDonald (how can he be a mother by the way) that demonstrates how idiotic this organization truly is:

GJEL: But you must be happy with the work California has done to prevent drunk driving.

MADD: Yes! I think the Office of Traffic Safety is doing an excellent job with the number of sobriety check points they’re holding–500 checkpoints in the last year, which far surpasses any other state. California is doing an excellent job and of course we thank and recognize our law enforcement in this effort and provide support to them with volunteer at D.U.I. checkpoints.

I will grant some leniency to Gary as checkpoints can be seen by authoritarians as a valid means of preventing drunk driving. Believing such malarkey can only be accomplished through willful ignorance though.

GJEL: What are some of the other long-term projects you’re working on?

MADD: We get involved with a lot of different legislation, some we’re for, some we’re against. For example, we were a sponsor of AB183, which requires face-to-face interaction for alcohol sales. That begins January 31, and that’s something we were behind and it passed.

Let me give a tip of the old hat to the author of this article for including links to the legislation mentioned in this interview. Now let me express my contempt of MADD’s support of this legislation. What does requiring face-to-face interaction to purchase alcohol accomplish? How will it prevent people from driving under the influence? The answer to both questions is nothing.

Let’s consider a simple fact, people often buy alcohol while sober so they can get drunk later. The chances of somebody driving to the liquor store already tanked out of their mind seems fairly low but we’ll humor that idea that it’s very common. In a case where such a scenario is common you’re basically putting the responsibility of enforcement onto the people selling liquor. How is the clerk at a liquor store supposed to determine whether or not a customer is above the legal limit? If the clerk has determined this what are they supposed to do? The answer to the first question is simple: they can’t, not legally at least. Were the clerk required to perform a breathalyzer test on everybody buying liquor then they may be able to determine such matters so long as they had the equipment and proper training on its use. Even if the clerk is able to determine a buyer is drunk they are unable to do anything more than call the purchaser’s license plate number into the police.

Requiring liquor store clerks to enforce drunk driving laws is just as idiotic as requiring gun store owners to enforce gun laws.

There’s also been some recent legislation that’s very concerning: AB353. This bill basically allows people without driver’s licenses to pass through D.U.I. checkpoints so that their car is not impounded. The car is moved over to the side until a licensed driver picks up the car and moves it.

It used to be that person could be impounded for up to 30 days, just held for safe keeping. So now they’re going to get their car back sooner and that starts January 31st.

What the hell does this have to do with drunk driving laws? Whether a person has a valid license or not holds no bearing that person’s level of intoxication. Ignoring the whole “papers please” aspect of these checkpoints we are still left with the fact that impounding vehicles because the peaceful driver being harassed lacks a valid license is nothing more than mission creep meant to increase funds for the local police department (anybody who has had to retrieve a vehicle from a police impound lot knows how much money departments make off of confiscating vehicles).

Stepping back and looking at the situation brings us to the fact that the act of impounding a vehicle at a sobriety checkpoint required the officer to first assume the innocent driver guilty of a crime. Everybody being checked at one of these checkpoints is assumed to be guilty of driving under the influence, which is the exact opposite of how our “guilty until proven innocent” justice system is supposed to work. Does MADD support officers randomly entering people’s homes without warrant or probably cause as well? If not then they shouldn’t support these checkpoints where officers interrogate drivers without warrant or probably cause.

GJEL: If the drunk person isn’t driving, why is that such a big deal?

MADD: Because people who don’t have drivers licenses are five times more likely to kill someone in a crash! It’s not just drunk driving, we’re also concerned with drugged driving and we’re also concerned with people without driver’s licenses. We don’t want people drunk on bikes or drunk pedestrians because people get killed.

In other words the name Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a deceptive name for the organization and it should be checked to something like Mothers Against Driving. Since they also have issue with drunk cyclists and drunk pedestrians they should further refine their name to Mothers Against…, and leave the reader to fill in the blank with whatever pet peeve they happen to have.

I get people’s opposition to drunk driving, it’s a valid and notable issue (one that could be better solved were the roads privatized I might add) but if you’re going to make it illegal to walk home under the influence you’re not giving people any options. I would much rather drunks walk home than drive home myself since it’s far less likely they’re going to hurt me. Sure they may hurt themselves but that’s a consequence of a choice they made and therefore isn’t my concern. Have these neo-prohibitionists ever read a history book about Prohibition in the United States? The amendment was repealed because it lead to nothing be a huge spike in violent crime rates and did nothing to combat alcohol production and consumption.

The bottom line is people are going to drink so you need to allow them options of getting from the bar back to their home. If you make driving and walking drunk illegal what do you think will happen? Drunks will most likely run risk benefits ratio through their heads and drive as they will get into trouble either way but driving gets them home sooner and therefore reduces the time they’re exposed to potential police interaction.

GJEL: That’s quite the statistic. So you guys are working on issues that go beyond drunk driving.

MADD: We’re concerned about human life. It’s important that people use common sense. Of course our mission is to stop drop drunk driving and support the victims of this violent crime and stop under-aged drinking. But it’s a broader spectrum than people realize with Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

That’s a broader spectrum than your name implies as well.

GJEL: Any special advice for the Holidays?

MADD: Well there will be more D.U.I. checkpoints during this time, which is one of the best drunk driving deterrents out there.

The previous link I posted shows this to be entirely false. Salt Lake City police reported that over 2,000 drivers were harassed at sobriety checkpoints and they managed to arrest zero, that’s right zero, drunk drivers.

We don’t really target any particular demo during this time. It’s more don’t drink and drive during the holidays. Don’t drive drunk. Make arrangements. The easiest one is to designate a driver.

So you guys are OK with designated drivers? How is a drunk person supposed to walk from the bar to the designated driver’s vehicle if it becomes illegal to walk while intoxicated? You idiots should think your ideas through more thoroughly before making statements about what you support and oppose.

MADD is so bat shit crazy that their founder, who had noble intentions, left the organization due to their movement away from fighting drunk driving to fighting alcohol consumption in general:

Candy Lightner, MADD’s founder, says she disassociated herself from the movement in 1985 because she believed the organization was headed in the wrong direction.

“It has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned,” said Mrs. Lightner, who founded MADD after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. “I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”

When you can’t convince your founder, a mother who lost her daughter in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver, to stay on board then you’ve truly lost your way.

What’s In a Name

The mercenary company everybody loves to hate has once again changed its name in the hopes of avoiding all the bad press they’ve been accumulating. Say goodbye to Blackwater Xe and say hello to ACADEMI:

Renaming the company “ACADEMI” tops a number of changes that have been made by a private equity consortium that purchased the company from former owner Erik Prince last year.

“The message here is not that we’re changing the name,” said Ted Wright, who came on as the new company CEO in June. “The message is that we’re changing the company, and the name just reflects those changes. We have new owners, a new board of directors, a new management team, new location, new attitude on governance, new openness, new strategy – it’s a whole new company.”

From the bottom of my heart I hope the new owners are serious about the mentioned changes but I’m not an optimistic man. Either way update your terminology cards to reflect the new name when the next atrocity committed by members of this company comes to light.

Equality Under the Law

Libertarians believe all should be equal in the eyes of the law. That is to say if you break a law all factors involving gender, race, and religion should be entirely ignored. While governments around the world claim to subscribe to this fact, in truth they rarely act on it because doing so would be politically incorrect, politically inconvenient, or would grant arguments for political opponents to use in the next election cycle. Those who have read my site long enough know I have no problem with Islam, Christianity, Judaism, atheism, or any other religion or lack thereof. Knowing this you should know that this story would still disgust me whether the attackers were Muslim, Christian, or atheist:

The four women – three sisters and their cousin – were told the charge of actual bodily harm, which carries a maximum sentence of five years, against 22-year-old care worker Rhea Page would normally land them in custody.

However, the judge handed the women suspended sentences after hearing that they were not used to alcohol because their religion does not allow it.

Miss Page said Ambaro Maxamed, 24, Ayan Maxamed, 28, and Hibo Maxamed, 24, and their 28-year-old cousin Ifrah Nur screamed “Kill the white slag” while kicking her in the head as she lay motionless on the ground.

The support worker from Leicester was left “black and blue” with bruises and needed hospital treatment following the attack which came as she walked to a taxi rank with her boyfriend.

[…]

Sentencing, Judge Robert Brown said: “This was ugly and reflects very badly on all four of you. Those who knock someone to the floor and kick them in the head can expect to go inside, but I’m going to suspend the sentence.”

[…]

He said: “Although Miss Page’s partner used violence, it doesn’t justify their behaviour.

“They’re Somalian Muslims and alcohol or drugs isn’t something they’re used to.”

It looks like you can get away with beating somebody to the point of hospitalization in the United Kingdom (UK) so long as you are of a religion that detests the consumption of alcohol and have consumed some alcohol. I hereby declare a new religion, of which I’m a follower, called Odinism. Odinism does not support the consumption of alcohol in any way, it views such acts as being damnable. Now if I ever want to get into a fight with somebody in the UK all I need to do is drink a beer or two before starting the fight.

I’m just glad I live in a country where I can legally have a means of defending myself against four assailants.

Wasting Everybody’s Time

The Red Cross decided it would be a good idea to waste everybody’s time:

Earlier this year, game maker Activision counted up that 62 billion people had been ‘killed’ virtually in online games of Call of Duty: Black Ops – including 242 million stabbed to death at close range.

That’s just one title among hundreds of modern war games – most of which lack any kind of ‘surrender’ button bar switching the machine off.

Now, a committee of the Red Cross is debating if gamers might be violating the International Humanitarian Law as they slaughter each other online.

Way to put all that donated money to good use boys. Instead of using every available dime to help people in need the Red Cross decided it would be a great idea to create a committee to deterime if video game players, you know people partaking in an entirely fictional and therefore non-consequential universe, are violating the Geneva Convention.

I’ll save you guys a lot of debating, the answer is no. You can’t violate International Humanitarian Law if you’re not actually physically hurting people. That’s like claiming an author writing about the death of a main character is somehow equivalent to murder. Likewise what will be the ultimate extent of this debate? Will you idiots try to determine if firing a Clan extended range particle projector cannon from a 30 foot-tall BattleMech is a violation of the Geneva Convention? Let me save you some time on that future debate as well, the answer again is no because none of the Clans, nor the Inner Sphere, ever signed the Geneva Convention.

Watch the Anti-Gunners Dance in the Blood

Unfortunately I find myself reporting a shooting at Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech was the location of a mass shooting in 2007 that seemed to fill the anti-gunners with glee as it gave them a reason to proselytize for more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. As of this writing few details are available. What we do know is one officer and one student have been murdered and the suspect remains at large:

During a traffic stop on campus, the suspect shot and killed a Virginia Tech police officer and then fled on foot through a nearby parking lot, officials said.

A second person was later found dead in that parking lot, the university said.

A university alert released after the shooting described the possible shooter as a white male wearing gray sweat pants, a gray hat with a neon green brim, a maroon hoodie and backpack.

Before the anti-gunners start claiming this as a prime example of why we need more gun control I’m going to point out the obvious fact that Virginia Tech is a gun-free zone. In other words it is already illegal to carry a gun there but the law was made irrelevant by the sheer fact that laws don’t stop criminals from acting. No number of laws would have prevented this event.

What Could Go Wrong

In case you thought our police weren’t militarized enough the federal government has decided to hand out $500 million dollars of free military equipment to United States police forces:

Benjamin Carlson at The Daily reports on a little known endeavor called the “1033 Program” that gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces in 2011 alone.

1033 was passed by Congress in 1997 to help law-enforcement fight terrorism and drugs, but despite a 40-year low in violent crime, police are snapping up hardware like never before. While this year’s staggering take topped the charts, next year’s orders are up 400 percent over the same period.

A bunch of people given authority and practically blanket immunity receiving a bunch of free military weapons, what could go wrong? I love how the federal government will take money they stole from the public, use it to buy weapons of war, and then give away those weapons to police agencies but won’t let me have one authentic M-14 for my collection. Unlike many police officers I’ve proven to be trustworthy with weaponry and certainly am not going to use an M-14 for anything devious.

Seriously there is something messed up in this country when the civilian police forces are getting access to fancy wizbang weaponry while other civilians aren’t allowed to even own a machine gun unless it was manufactured before 1986 (or in Minnesota unless it’s on the curio and relics list).

Great Work Now Try Entering the Building

The enviro-nazis at Greenpeace are bragging about the fact they were able to hand signs on a reactor containment building in France. They claim this demonstrates a weakness of national security and, of course, demonstrates the dangers of nuclear power. Let’s take a look at what they actually accomplished:

Greenpeace activists secretly entered a French nuclear site before dawn and draped a banner reading “Coucou” and “Facile”, (meaning “Hey” and “Easy”) on its reactor containment building, to expose the vulnerability of atomic sites in the country.

Police, whom the environmental activist group immediately told of the publicity stunt, took several hours to round up nine intruders who had broken into the power plant in Nogent-sur-Seine, about 95km southeast of Paris, on Monday.

[…]

Activists who tried to enter three other French nuclear sites, in a co-ordinated action on the same day, were prevented from doing so, but Greenpeace said other invaders were still holed up inside other, unspecified, nuclear sites.

They had a 25% success rate, which isn’t terrible. Then again when you look at it all the activists accomplished was getting inside the fence surrounding the plant, they didn’t managed to enter the actual reactor containment building. Now the question is, what did they really accomplish? Not a heck of a lot honestly. Reactor containment buildings are heavily reinforced structures that are literally hardened against high explosives. You could probably stick 10 pounds of C4 onto a reactor containment building and accomplish little more than gouge the overly thick concrete that ensures a meltdown doesn’t end up being Chernobyl II (although if you do like the Japanese and try to prevent a properly melting down reactor form melting down containment will fail and you’ll have a radioactive mess on your hands).

Perhaps you could breech the containment building with a nuclear weapon but at that point I think the entire scenario is a giant moot point. Either way I doubt there is any man portable means of breeching containment of a reactor without gaining entry into the containment building so this entire stunt really proves nothing. If Greenpeace members could have gained entry into the reactor containment building then they would have a point to make.

Crunching the Numbers of the Chevrolet Volt

Jay crunches the numbers on the Chevrolet Volt and discovers an interesting fact:

Got that? 35 freakin’ miles on a charge. The rest of your trip takes place courtesy of a tiny gasoline motor that gets less-than-fantastic mileage, mainly because it’s trying to power a vehicle that’s too large for it. You’ll save $7,600 in fuel costs over five years! It’s right there on the sticker! Too bad it costs about $25,000 more than any other comparably sized vehicle, so it will take you more than 15 years TO BREAK EVEN.

Let me state this as clearly as I can: If you buy this car expecting to save money, you are a fucking moron.

You’re not saving any money whatsoever – at $46,000, the difference between the Volt and a Civic/Corolla/Sentra/any other comparably sized gasoline engine car in gas mileage is negligible. Even with gas at $4 a gallon and and an annual commute of 20,000 miles, the gasoline-only car getting 25 MPG would cost you $3200 for the year. Even if the Volt were 100% free, it would still take almost 10 years of driving to offset the cost differential.

People generally have a hard time calculating cost-benefit ratios. That is to say people will look at the initial numbers as see that buying a car will save them some $7,600 in fuel over five years but will then fail to crunch the numbers of the cost difference in fuel between the expensive vehicle that uses less gas and the cheaper vehicle that uses more gas.

I purchased my Ranger before fuel costs started going up and when I saw the prices jumping I calculated out how long it would take me to break even if I traded in the truck for something more fuel economical. My Ranger has a 4.0L engine and gets roughly 17.5 mpg. I compared it to something that go 30 mpg at $4.00 a gallon gas and found out I wouldn’t break even until I had driven the car about 100,000 miles. In other words the cost-benefits ratio was piss poor and therefore buying a more economical vehicle was pointless as it would take ages for me to recover my costs.

Also I wouldn’t be able to piss off the enviro-nazis if I drove an economical car and somethings are worth the additional cost.