Tag: Money Management Mishaps

For Being an Anit-Gun Paradise California Sure is a Militarized State

California is a hostile place to live if you’re a gun owner. The state is placed number one on the Brady Campaign’s State Score Card list [PDF], which is based on how many stupid gun control laws each state has on the books. You would think that a state so hostile to gun ownership would be a devoid of militarism. But that’s not the case. In fact California lays claim to the only be the only state that I’m aware of where school districts own armored personnel carriers:

News that San Diego Unified School District has acquired an MRAP, or mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, is adding a new facet to discussions about the practice of giving surplus military equipment to civilian agencies.

The six-wheel Caiman MRAP has an official value of around $733,000. But the San Diego school district paid only about $5,000 to transport it, according to inewsource.org, a website that partners with NPR member station KPBS.

$5,000 could buy a lot of text books and that price doesn’t cover the yearly upkeep fees and cost to fuel the machine. Why did the district feel it was a good use of its money to buy an armored personnel carrier instead of equipment to better enable education? Probably because schools are more closely reflecting prisons every day and to complete the image districts need a way of rounding up truant students in the same way prisons round up escaped convicts. But San Diego doesn’t have the title of most militarized school district. That title belongs to the Los Angeles Unified School District:

os Angeles Unified school police officials said Tuesday that the department will relinquish some of the military weaponry it acquired through a federal program that furnishes local law enforcement with surplus equipment. The move comes as education and civil rights groups have called on the U.S. Department of Defense to halt the practice for schools.

The Los Angeles School Police Department, which serves the nation’s second-largest school system, will return three grenade launchers but intends to keep 61 rifles and a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle it received through the program.

An armored personnel carrier and surplus military rifles (later in the story it notes that the rifles were converted to semi-automatic)? Talk about rounding up students in style! But the district did return the grenade launchers, I guess it realized that most parties sent to round up convicts don’t usually bring heavy ordinance.

The San Diego district justified its purchase of the armored personnel carrier by saying it is for search and rescue and that the behemoth will be loaded with medical supplies. I guess the district has some policy against calling an ambulance, which is loaded with medical supplies and comes equipped with trained medical personnel. The Los Angeles district didn’t beat around the bush, it went straight for the school shooting scare excuse. Of course the Los Angeles Police Department was the first department in the country to have a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team and is well known for being extremely militarized already. Why the school district believes it needs its own team when it can call in the LAPD is beyond me, especially when you look at the statistics and see how rare school shootings actually are (which isn’t to say they don’t happen but the risk doesn’t warrant the establishment of a separate SWAT team for the district).

Truthfully these school districts are just following in the footsteps of police departments throughout the country. The federal government is giving away free or near free shit to local government agencies and those agencies are snapping it up like a shopper snapping up shit they weren’t going to buy until it they say that it was marked down for the store’s going out of business sale. In other words the government, by subsidizing the purchase of military equipment, has further distorted the market by making the military equipment look more appealing than shit local agencies could actually use (like, say, deescalation training for police officers).

Betsy Hodges Puts Forward a Stupid Proposition

Betsy Hodges is the current mayor of Minneapolis. Those familiar with her probably read the title and said “No duh.” She’s a statist, which means she frequently makes stupid propositions. But her budget proposal really takes the cake. Specifically:

The most significant new spending is in the area of public safety. Hodges wants to spend nearly $2 million to hire 20 community service officers and an 18-person police cadet class, two of the most reliable feeders for the city’s police force. To drive down crime, she wants to boost the number of officers to 860, which is above last year’s budget but equal to the figure Chief Janeé Harteau has said she hopes to reach by the end of the year.

In the name of public safety she wants to add more people to the ranks of Minneapolis’s most violent gang. Talk about failing to understand the problem. The Minneapolis Police Department has a colorful history but even if you put that aside it still performs a lot of crime. For example, it guns down family pets. When it’s not performing raids on suspected drug users so it can confiscate their property (thankfully that’s slightly harder in Minnesota now). Minneapolis’s finest also find time to write a massive number of parking and traffic citations. And the department has a lot of connections with local business, which it helps drum up business for (my friend recently had his motorcycle stolen and Minneapolis Police Department made him pay to get it out of the impound yard after finding it).

What’s especially ironic about her proposal is that she knows that the city’s police officers are trouble:

Hodges wants to spend $1.1 million for police to wear body cameras, a program she trumpeted during her campaign that she hopes will reduce use-of-force complaints.

I’m all for making police departments wear cameras so long as the footage is always available to the public and cannot be tossed down the memory hole by government officials. But her proposal to make Minneapolis’s most violent gang members wear cameras is also an admittance to the fact that the department has a lot of use-of-force complaints against it. She knows the department has a history of unnecessary violence yet she still wants to provide it more funding to hire more thugs.

If Hodges really wanted to reduce crime she would either reduce the number of criminals in city’s officially sanctioned gang or, preferable, disband the department entirely and allow the market to fill the demand for protective services (something the Minneapolis Police Department doesn’t seem to focus on at all).

Why I Don’t Donate to the Red Cross

The Red Cross is a popular charity but I won’t give a dime to the organization. There are just too many red flags indicating that the Red Cross is a nothing more than a money making scam for the people at the top. But the most recent information to come to light really demonstrates how much of a scam the organization is:

The documents include “internal and proprietary methodology and procedures for fundraising, confidential information about its internal operations, and confidential financial information,” wrote Gabrielle Levin of Gibson Dunn in a letter to the attorney general’s office.

If those details were disclosed, “the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross’s business model for an increased competitive advantage,” Levin wrote.

I’m curious who the Red Cross considers its competitors. Supposedly its purpose is to help those in need. That would indicate that its competitors are other organizations whose purpose is to help those in need. In other words the Red Cross doesn’t want other organizations helping those in need. All of this indicates to me that the Red Cross is primarily worried about raking in as much money as possible.

Talk about an organization run by assholes. You have to be a special kind of dick to sucker people into giving you money under the belief you are going to use it to help people.

For $600,000 a Month You Too Can Hire a Failure as a Security Consultant

Do you have $600,000 a month to burn? Do you hate children or the homeless too much to use it to help them? Do you like to give money to former government goods? If you answered yes to all three I have a deal for you. Keith Alexander, the former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), has a cybersecurity consulting company called IronNet Cybersecurity Incorporated:

Alexander offered to provide advice to Sifma for $1 million a month, according to two people briefed on the talks. The asking price later dropped to $600,000, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiation was private.

$600,000 a month to get security advice from a man who couldn’t stop one consultant from walking off with his agency’s secrets on a thumb driver. Sounds like a good bargain to me!

But Keith’s position is an example of an all too common phenomenon among former government goons. After leaving his post with the state he returns to the private sector to use the knowledge and contacts to rake in massive amounts of cash. It’s why threats to dismiss state goons is so ineffective. They know once they are kicked out of their position they can use the contacts they made while working for the state to become wealthy.

Only Hillary’s Wealth Allowed Her to Go So Far Into Debt

Hillary Clinton has been trying to build sympathy by claiming she and Bill went broke during her stint as a war criminal in office. In all likelihood they simply shuffled their money elsewhere so they appear to be broke on paper but I digress. Assuming she has been telling the truth (I know that’s a pretty big pill to swallow but stay with me) and the Clintons are actually millions of dollars in debt. For that to even happen the Clintons needed to be both wealthy and have perceptible future value:

The story with the Clintons is that they left office millions of dollars in hock to various law firms. But this wasn’t some random financial misfortune that could have happened to anyone. If you found yourself in legal hot water, you wouldn’t possibly be able to hire the Clinton’s lawyers. No firm would let you run a multi-million dollar tab. The reason the Clintons were able to get away with it is that it was always obvious that Bill had enormous post-presidential earnings potential. This is a situation where the Clintons’ ability to go so deeply into debt is a sign of the vast economic privileges they enjoyed. Not just the ability to become millionaires after leaving office, but the ability to access certain aspects of the millionaire lifestyle even before leaving office.

To put it into social justice warrior language the Clintons’ wealth privilege (which is probably derived from their white privilege or something) is the only thing that enabled them to go millions of dollars into debt. It will be interesting to see the social justice warriors’ take on this matter. On the one hand Hillary is a woman and therefore a member of the oppressed class. On the other hand she was wealthy and has the ability to be wealthy again so she is certainly riding some serious wealth privilege. From what I’ve seen wealth privilege tends to override almost any oppression points and therefore Hillary is probably in shitlord territory.

Hosting Major Gladiatorial Events is Expensive

Minneapolis will be hosting the Super Bowl in 2018. In order to do this the city had to agree to a long confidential list of demands from the National Football League (NFL):

Free police escorts for team owners, and 35,000 free parking spaces. Presidential suites at no cost in high-end hotels. Free billboards across the Twin Cities. Guarantees to receive all revenue from the game’s ticket sales — even a requirement for NFL-preferred ATMs at the stadium.

Those requirements and many others are detailed in 153 pages of NFL specifications for the game. An official on the host committee that successfully sought the game — Minneapolis beat out Indianapolis and New Orleans — said the panel had agreed to a majority of the conditions but would not elaborate.

The document, which the Star Tribune obtained through sources, has not been released publicly but shows how the NFL will control the event and many of its public aspects. The NFL declined to comment on the document and host committee officials are declining to make it public, citing state data privacy laws.

It doesn’t appear as though the Star Tribune posted the document so I can only assume that making the lives of the homeless miserable was also stipulated somewhere in that contract.

It’s amazing what a bunch of wealthy NFL officials demand from a city in order for it to be allowed the “privilege” of hosting one year’s major game. City officials will justify paying for all of this with tax money by claiming the game will bring major economic activity. Of course there is no way for them to know that before, during, or after the event because such things are unknowable (sorry Keynesians but you can’t accurately predict such things as the continued failure of you school to accurately predict economic matters has demonstrated). And we also know that hosting these games has nothing to do with economic activity. They’re just ways for city officials to make their dicks look bigger to other cities that wanted to host the game.

Support Your Local Neighborhood War Criminal

It’s almost certain that the next presidential race will involved a wishy washy Republican candidate going head to head with an honest to God war criminal, Hillary Clinton. There’s a political action committee (PAC) by the name of Ready for Hillary that is collecting money to encourage the wicked war monger who literally laughs about killing people to run for president. Best of all, this PAC is coming to town:

A group of DFL heavyweights including Gov. Mark Dayton, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Reps. Rick Nolan and Betty McCollum and others are hosting a fundraiser for a super PAC aimed at helping Hillary Clinton’s potential run for president.

The fundraiser, held at the office of DFL donor Vance Opperman on June 18, will raise money for the Ready for Hillary PAC. The invitation obtained by MPR News also said it will launch the Minnesotans Ready for Hillary organization.

The invitation embedded at the link notes two levels of donating: $100.00 and $250.00. So if you have a minimum of $100 lying around and you really want to see a certified war criminal run for president (which is kind of rare because our presidents don’t usually become war criminals until they become president) here’s your chance. Or if you’d like to head over there and protest a war criminal’s fund raiser you can certainly do that.

The Republican Party Funding Problem

In the realm of American politics there are two go-to people to blame all of the country’s woes on. If you’re on the “left” you blame all of the country’s problems on the Koch brothers and if you’re on the “right” you blame all of the country’s problems on George Soros. Let’s consider the “left’s” go-to blame machine, the Koch brothers. Anybody who espouses neoconservative, conservative, or libertarian ideas will eventually be accused of being a paid Kochtopus shill. Apparently the Koch brothers are funding everything that isn’t neoliberalism (by the way guys, you must not have my new address since I’ve not seen a check since I moved several years ago). As it turns out, in the realm of political funding, the Koch brothers aren’t at the top of the list:

OpenSecrets.org tallied the top donors in federal elections between 1989 and 2014. Koch Industries — privately owned by the Evil Koch Bros — is on the list, to be sure, but doesn’t appear until the 59th slot, with $18 million in donations, 90 percent of which went to Republicans.

Unions, unions, unions

So who occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are … wait for it … unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most of it going to Democrats.

These are familiar names: AFSCME ($60.6 million), NEA ($53.5 million), IBEW ($44.4 million), UAW ($41.6 million), Carpenters & Joiners ($39.2 million) and SEIU ($38.3 million).

Obviously the author is trying to point out that the Koch brothers aren’t really evil and that unions are the secret political string pullers. What I got out of the article is that the Republican Party has a funding problem. This doesn’t surprise me considering the fact that the Republican Party is becoming more political irrelevant as the years go on. Who is going to invest major money into a party that can’t deliver?

This country is slowly turning into a true one party system (at the moment it’s two party in name only since there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties). The reason for this is almost entirely because of the stupidity of the faltering party. And stupidity is a self-feeding monster. As the Republic Party continues to be more stupid it’s going to attract more stupid people that will ensure it keeps acting stupidly and so on. Needless to say the stupidity cycle will also ensure big money donors go elsewhere to get their psychopathic desires fulfilled.

The USDA Has To Stop Those Raw Milk Criminals

At least that’s what I’m assuming the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is planning on using .40 caliber submachineguns for.

It amazes me how every government agency has a armed teams. Hell, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a webpage featuring their armed response team. At least NASA can claim to need such a team to fight aliens. I’m not sure what the USDA does with armed teams. Is the department now tasked with enforcing Monsanto’s patents? Do raw milk sellers really need to be raided by dudes in riot gear? Maybe farmer Smith is using fertilizer with too much potassium.

Congress is Making the Big Sacrifices

The United States is faced with a several trillion dollar deficit. Truth be told this isn’t a big deal because this country’s debt is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, which is a euphemism for aircraft carriers, drones equipped with Hellfire missiles, and tanks. But Congress needs something to quibble about between their daily circlejerks so the deficit is brought up from time to time.

Every time the issue of the deficit is brought up Congress introduces some meaningless bill that is, at most, a symbolic gesture meant to make it appear as though they’re making major sacrifices. This time around the bill would prevent members of Congress from using tax victim money to buy first class airliner tickets:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation aimed at preventing members of Congress from flying first class using taxpayer funds.

The bill, titled, “If Our Military Has to Fly Coach Then so Should Congress Act,” was introduced by Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; Raul Ruiz, D-Calif.; John Barrow, D-Ga.; and Walter Jones, R-N.C., in a bid to end the purchase of first-class flight seats with taxpayer money.

“All it does is prohibit members of Congress from using taxpayer funds to purchase first class airfare,” Gosar said in a statement. “At a time of massive deficits and with a national debt in excess of $17 trillion, members of Congress should not be using taxpayers’ hard-earned money to buy luxury airline seats.”

You have to love how the authors were able to tied a bill restricting the flight arrangements of Congress to the military. Nothing gets people fired up quite like patriotism!

Much like the title the idea behind the bill is absurd for two reasons. First of all making members of Congress fly coach instead of first class isn’t going to put a noticeable dent in the deficit. We’re talking about a bill that could potentially save a couple of hundred dollars per flight per member of Congress. That amount of money isn’t even a blip on the radar when we’re talking about $17 trillion dollars.

But there’s another reason this bill is absurd. It doesn’t prevent members of Congress from utilize its fleet of private jets:

Congress plans to spend $550 million to buy eight jets, a substantial upgrade to the fleet used by federal officials at a time when lawmakers have criticized the use of corporate jets by companies receiving taxpayer funds.

The purchases will help accommodate growing travel demand by congressional officials. The planes augment a fleet of about two dozen passenger jets maintained by the Air Force for lawmakers, administration officials and military chiefs to fly on government trips in the U.S. and abroad.

Who gives a damn about first class when you have a fleet of private jets? I’d much rather fly on a private jet than a public one anyways and I’m sure members of Congress feel the same way.