Good Papers, Bad Papers

Sooo.... producing an ID when asked by police: Bad
Requiring a biometric fed ID to get any job: Good

And not just any ID but a brand spanking new Fed level ID, because we
can't trust the States anymore.

And let's not even get into the argument about producing ID in order to vote.


Oh and your bank account? The feds get into that too.


Oh and look, comlpaints about part of the Az bill being unclear get results.


Not that it matters.

Nearly everyone in the immigration debate has claimed to favor enforcing the immigration laws. But if you think it is draconian to require that anyone have to show papers proving their legal status, then you're simply against enforcement. And if you really believe that, you're not going to change your mind just because the government has set up a "temporary worker" program or a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants: You're going to be against truly enforcing any conceivable set of immigration laws. Good to know.

And here's Bob Owen's take

The pro-criminal immigrant lobby is crying that Arizona's self-defense immigration law is the equivalent of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian states requiring people to carry onerous documentation everywhere they go, drudging up the ominous imagery of MP40-toting German soldiers demanding, "show us your papers."

The Democratic response?

Something even more intrusive.

...

"Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy — one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA," said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel.

It sounds crazy, right? Not hardly. You just need to understand their
agenda.

The government-loving nanny-state left wing would want more control over the
lives of our nation's legal citizens... even as the proposed law would do absolutely nothing to stop criminal immigrants that work in the underground economy, off the books, as millions of criminal aliens already do.

The simple fact of the matter is that importing as many criminal aliens as possible and converting them into voters is the long-term survival strategy of the Democratic Party, and they will never champion laws that protect the integrity of our nation's borders or strengthen our national defense if those run counter to the needs of the Party."

Owens may be a bit of a knee-jerk on Open Carry, but on this and most everything else he's spot on.

Who are the rubes again?

From Instapundit.

He quotes some interesting numbers:

Average Fed salary 2008 $119,928 + $40,785 employee benefits = $160 713
Average private sector salary $59,909 + $9,881 employee benefits = $69, 790

Anual difference, on average, being in the public sector will net you? $90,923

Let that sink in, all told a goverment worker makes 2.3 times what a person paying them makes. Oh and they have more powerful unions and more job security.

Is this sustainable?

And for extra irony guess who said this: “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

Forrest.... Trees

Here's a post on the optics and backlash against Open Carry Protests.

Normally, I really enjoy Bob Owen's work, but this one sat with me wrong. Still it gave me a lot to think about.

It's open for debate whether or not such protests are productive or counter productive on the gun rights front. It's pretty vanilla, if insulting to the wookie-suit OC crowd.

Basically, Mr. Owens thinks that the optics of Open Carry are too provocative and kooky and will turn off sympathetic people.

Quite possible.

But this rubbed me the wrong way:

As a result of these poorly executed and often dimwitted displays, open carry is now under threat precisely because of how open carry advocates have conducted themselves. A Bakersfield, CA, news story makes that fact painfully clear: "The California Assembly is moving closer to banning gun owners from being able to carry their unloaded weapons openly in public. Over the last few months there has been an increase in the number of open carry rallies and meetings in Northern California. On Tuesday a committee moved closer to ending such practices."

I have to disagree with Mr. Owens here. But his logic, if a right becomes banned due to people peacefully, if "dimwittedly", exercising it, then it is at the fault of the people exercising it.

This is like saying if the Tea Party protests were banned because of "hateful" signage that it's the Tea Party's fault it happened.


What's worse is the comment section rapidly degenerated into an open versus concealed carry tactical argument.

Which can be summarized here:

If your open carry you have a quicker draw and the very presence of you being armed may prevent a crime.
This comes at the cost of being the first target if a crime does happen, and the lesser cost of social stigma.
If you conceal carry there is no "preventative" effect, but one has surprise and privacy. Others do not know if you are armed.

These are salient points, but they are tactical and not relevant to the topic of rights.

Having the comments degenerate into "If you carry X style you'll be dead on the floor!" is disappointing but expected. That Bob Owens the article writer joined in is even worse.

This would be like having a post about a potential high capacity ban degenerating into arguments over 9mm versus 45 acp or Glock versus 1911, and then having the author jumping in and say: ("8 shots is more than enough to get the job done as long as you don't miss.").

Or like arguing whether or not someone "needs" a semi-automatic rifle for home defense when a shotgun would do, in a thread about the Assault Weapons Ban ("Most defense situations will be under 25 yards, have concerns about over penetration, and can be accommodated with a
pump's capacity").

Yet another example: It's like being sanguine towards a semi-automatic handgun ban because you prefer revolvers ("Revolvers don't ever jam and 6 shots is more than enough in most situation.").


I thought the gun rights folk were for people having the right do decide how to defend themselves, and thus would push for more choice and liberty whenever possible.


And for full disclosure: I prefer 1911 style handguns, shotguns for home defense, and concealed carry over open carry.

But that's not the point is it?

Also there's a special irony of a man that blogs as Confederate Yankee complete with the stars and bars (and old glory) built into his header talking about provocative and offputting optics.

I don't have a problem with it, given his reasoning. But I don't have a problem with OC either.

Think of the Children (Again)!

It looks like no aspect of human life is too small, too silly, to absurd to escape control of the state. In Cali, of course, they want to ban giving away toys with "unapproved meals". Anything to rearrange the deck chairs on the sinking ship of state.


Reason's pithy take away: "Government health care: Taking toys from children."

And as for the idea that the gov will justify all sorts of bans and
controls of private buisness due to healthcare costs? Told you so.
Your body is no longer your body. The goverment gets a say in what you
can and cannot do with it.

Feeling free yet?

Well at least it'll reduce costs... Opps.

Russia brings back the Q-Ships?

Well that's the "positive" view of the Morinformsistema-Agat, a Russian company, selling a cruise missle launcher that can pass as a shipping container.

Though Russian arms frims, much like most other contries including the US, can only export to approved sellers.

A Q-ship is a warship disguised as a merchantman. In WW2 subs would be enticed into attacking them and then being fired upon. Q-ships could also be used to covertly attack targets due their concealed nature.

Not sure I agree with Ace's terms here, but he does paint a bleak picture.

It's a terrorist missile system, because it is hidden in a run-of-the-mill shipping container, the sort that burdens 80% of the ships at sea. And that's a terrorist weapon, then, because a lawful military force displays its military nature openly. This is expressly designed to hide in plain sight on an ostensibly civilian ship, one our Navy would be very reluctant to fire upon... until it itself has fired first.

A ship armed with one of these could ignore warnings from an aircraft carrier and keep inching closer until it's in range -- while our boys hold fire, not wishing to attack what appears to be a civilian transport -- and then hit us.

And, of course, it could fire on an American city before being inspected at port.

As a weapons system its use is questionable. But I'm sure some more Smart Diplomacy will keep Russia from selling these things to anyone with an axe to grind.

They have met the enemy and it is you.

So Obama has a "reach out" to... well some specific groups. Irish need not apply. And Italians, and Welsh, and Germans, and people with a Y chromosome.

But what does it mean?

And on down the list. Every speech on domestic policy that the President gives paints one group of Americas as evil and tells everyone else they need the government, headed by Obama, to protect them from their evil neighbors.
By shear process of elimination, the most dangerous Americans, the ones everyone else needs Obama’s government to protect them from, must be middle to upper-middle class white people who work in business and especially those who own businesses large and small…

… which is the demographic at the heart of the Tea Party.

The apparent sincere belief by many on the left that the wide spread Tea Party members are evil, violent people springs precisely from decades of indoctrination in which leftists are progressively trained to view their fellow Americans as evil, dangerous people from whom the benevolent state must protect them. They are especially trained to view white business people as evil. When they see a collection of white, small-to-medium-size business-owners/self-employed, they automatically see a group of evil and dangerous people. They can’t help it. This is all they’ve been taught and all they say to each other.

Then add in the "delightful" projection of such folks freaking out at people questioning them and their policies. Remember dissident is patriotic, unless the Dems are in power. Then it's all sedition especially such subversive activities as "citing the U.S. Constitution and quoting Thomas Jefferson."

But what do you expect from such people that think much of the Bill of Rights is bad: Peaceful Assembly, Bearing Arms, and Limits to the Federal Gov.

Won't somebody think of the children!

So the big dumb law that's supposed to "protect" children from evil, evil lead...

Yeah, there's some loopholes. Ed Morrissey from Hotair:

So let’s get this straight. Mattel buys millions of items from China that violate American product-safety laws and standards. Congress reacts by punishing the entire industry, especially those small businesses that can’t afford independent testing, especially on products that don’t really need it. Thrift stores can’t resell merchandise without testing, making their business model impossible and threatening the charities that rely on those sales. Meanwhile, the economy of scale means that this law gives Mattel a competitive advantage from their own malfeasance — and they get the waiver on independent testing?

Yesterday, we discussed crony capitalism. This is exactly what is meant. This is a perfect example of government picking winners and losers in the marketplace through legislation written to be sympathetic to big businesses, and an enforcement mechanism that favors the big players even beyond the legislation Congress passed. Mattel can push its smaller competitors out of business, or force them into buyouts, because they broke the law in the first place.

Under big government, big companies make out better than small companies. Following regulations costs big companies less on a percentage basis. That's assuming the same enforcement requirements, which as we see in this case, can be subverted.

And the subversion happens because bigger companies can spend more on lobbying and bribes, and with the government picking winners and losers, it's in a big company's interest to make sure its competitors (especially ones that are smaller but growing, and thus a threat) are the losers.

For their part, big government prefers big companies. It's much, much easier to regulate an industry with a handful of big players, than one with a wide open field. It's like herding a couple sheep instead of herding a pack of cats.

Also big companies are more "stable" they're not as inclined to rock the boat as a smaller company. By definition they've already got a large portion of the market, so they're less destabilizing, always a plus in the eyes of big government.

Hmm... so we have an alliance of big companies and big government to control the market and reduce individual freedom.

Where have I heard that song before?