Thursday, April 11, 2013
Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, April 11, 2013
Man... my back hurts!
Friggin' pulled something at the gym...
Actually, pulled something last week... last Saturday... upper right part of my back, below my shoulder... I just hope I haven't made things worse by continuing to work out this week! (Gonna take today and tomorrow off...)
Oh... what else... the friggin' car...
Those A--holes at Walmart screwed up one of Sammie's rims during a simple dismount of my snows and remount of the radials. Sealant isn't working. Hopefully I'll be able to get the rim straightened for a couple hundred bucks (or less) rather than have to spend $600 on a new friggin' rim. (Yeah... called Walmart... hope they'll assume responsibility, but how do I "prove" they did it if they won't cop to it?)
Anyway... on to newsbiting...
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* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/highway-patrol-gave-feds-missouri-weapon-permits-data/article_266b644e-a235-11e2-a8e7-0019bb30f31a.html
The Missouri State Highway Patrol has twice turned over the entire list of Missouri concealed weapon permit holders to federal authorities, most recently in January, Missouri State Senator Kurt Schaefer said Wednesday.
Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential.
(*STRUMMING MY FINGERS ON THE DESK TOP*)
Questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Testimony from Department of Revenue officials revealed that the list of 185,000 names had been put online in one instance and given to the patrol on a disc in January.
Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Schaefer has been investigating a new driver licensing system. He and the committee grilled the revenue officials for several hours in the morning and again at midday before they admitted the list had been copied. The investigation was triggered by fears that concealed weapons data was being shared with federal authorities.
* WHICH IT HAD BEEN! TWICE!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential.
* KEEP READING, FOLKS... IT GETS WORSE.
Col. Ron Replogle is the Superintendent of the Missouri State Police. Sen. Schaefer met with Col. Ron Replogle.
After the meeting, Schaefer said Replogle had given him sketchy details about turning over the list, enough to raise many more questions. Testimony from Department of Revenue officials revealed that the list of 185,000 names had been put online in one instance and given to the patrol on a disc in January.
The only place in Missouri where the names of all concealed carry permit holders is stored is among driver license records. Permit holders have a special mark on their licenses indicating they have been granted the privilege of carrying a gun. The list was given to the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, Schaefer said he was told.
* THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL...?!?!
“Apparently from what I understand, they wanted to match up anyone who had a mental diagnosis or disability with also having a concealed carry license,” Schaefer said. “What I am told is there is no written request for that information.”
* NO... WRITTEN... REQUEST...??? SOUNDS TO ME THAT ALL INVOLVED KNEW DAMN WELL THAT STATE LAW WAS BEING BROKEN!
Schaefer said he intends to ask Replogle for full details at an appropriations committee hearing on the patrol's budget on Thursday morning.
* SOUNDS TO ME LIKE REPLOGLE SHOULD BE IN JAIL! AT LEAST SUSPENDED UNTIL THIS CAN BE SORTED OUT!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
The [state police] patrol responded by confirming that it had shared the list of concealed weapons holders with federal authorities. "The information was provided to law enforcement for law enforcement investigative purposes," Capt. Tim Hull wrote in an email response to questions from the Tribune.
* HERE'S THE PROBLEM:
The only way to obtain the full list is through a special request.
* NO... WRITTEN... REQUEST!
Only law enforcement is supposed to have access to concealed carry information and then only on an individual basis.
* ONLY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS!
When a law enforcement officer looks up an individual's driving record, it shows whether they have a concealed carry endorsement.
* ON... AN... INDIVIDUAL... BASIS!
“When they turn over the entire list of concealed carry holders in the state of Missouri to the federal government, where is it going?” Schaefer asked. “I want to know who all was involved in this transaction because if this is just some phone call saying give me the list of all concealed carry holders, how did the person at the patrol who fulfilled that request know who was at the other end of the phone? How did they know where to send it? How did they know what it was being used for?”
The fact that the list had been copied two times was revealed when Sen. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, followed up on testimony that it was possible, through a batch request, to extract the list.
(Revenue Deputy Director John Mollenkamp said it had been done twice, for the highway patrol. Mollenkamp said he wasn't sure what the patrol did with it while it was in that agency's possession.)
Schaaf immediately suspected what Schaefer learned from Replogle later in the day. “Now we know two things,” he said. “We know that somebody out there, probably in the federal government, wants the list of all the concealed carry holders in Missouri. We know that now. “We know one other piece of information – we know the department is actively and purposefully concealing that information from us,” Schaaf said.
http://www.sumnerbooks.com/books/view/completely-predictable
A nation whose government spends per family more than the typical family earns is on the road to ruin.
As reported in my new book, “Completely Predictable,” the combined spending of federal, state and local governments per American household actually exceeded the median household income for 2010, which is the latest year for which all relevant government data are available.
In fiscal 2010, according to numbers published by the Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), net spending by all levels of government in the United States was $5,942,988,401,000.
That equaled $50,074 for each one of the 118,682,000 households in the country.
In that same year, according to the Census Bureau, the median household income was $49,445.
That means total net government spending per household ($50,074) exceeded median household income (49,445) by $629.
(*SIGH*)
As recently as 2000, the relationship between government spending and household income was dramatically different. Data from the Census Bureau and the OMB show that in that year net spending by all levels of government was $3,239,913,876,000.
That equaled $29,941 for each of the nation’s then 108,209,000 households.
In 2000, the median household income was $41,990.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Thus, between 2000 and 2010, government in this country went from spending $12,049 less than the median household income to spending $629 more.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/revealed-obama-to-collect-record-taxes-in-2013/article/2526886
The federal Treasury expects to collect a record $2.712 trillion in taxes on Americans and U.S. business this year, shattering the 2007 high of $2.5 trillion in taxes.
* ONE... MORE... TIME: IT'S THE SPENDING, STUPID!
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/292989-irs-claims-it-can-read-emails-without-a-warrant
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has claimed that agents do not need warrants to read people's emails, text messages and other private electronic communications, according to internal agency documents.
* AMERICA 2013... THE AGE OF OBAMA...
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request, released the information on Wednesday. In a 2009 handbook, the IRS said the Fourth Amendment does not protect emails because Internet users "do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications." A 2010 presentation by the IRS Office of General Counsel reiterated the policy.
* WHO WAS PRESIDENT IN 2009... AND IN 2010? INDEED, WHO WAS SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE IN 2009... AND IN 2010? WHO WAS MAJORITY LEADER OF THE SENATE IN 2009... AND 2010?
* FOLKS... (*SHRUG*)
Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, government officials only need a subpoena, issued without a judge's approval, to read emails that have been opened or that are more than 180 days old.
* EVEN UNDER REAGAN... (*SIGH*) BUT, STILL, NOW THEY'RE GOING BEYOND THE 1986 ACT... NOW THEY'RE TALKING NO WARRANTS...
* AND BTW... I WONDER IF THE 1986 LAW SPECIFIED WHICH "GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS." DID THAT LAW APPLY TO IRS BUREACRATS...???
Privacy groups such as the ACLU argue that the Fourth Amendment provides greater privacy protections than the ECPA, and that officials should need a warrant to access all emails and other private messages.
* SEEMS LIKE THE ACLU AND WRB ARE ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH!
[I]n 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that police violated a man's constitutional rights when they read his emails without a warrant. Despite the court decision, U.S. v. Warshak, the IRS kept its email search policy unchanged in a March 2011 update to its employee manual...
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Lawmakers in both chambers are working on legislation that would update the ECPA to require a warrant for emails and other private online messages.
At a hearing last month, Elana Tyrangiel, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, agreed that there is "no principled basis" for treating emails differently depending on how old they are.
* THE RIGHT WORDS... NOW LET'S SEE WHAT ACTIONS ARE TAKEN!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324695104578414753882626118.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The real [federal budget] news is that President Obama's budget ratifies much of the spending increase of the first term and tries to lock it in.
(*NOD*)
He wants the feds to spend $3.78 trillion next year ($11,944 per American), which would still be 22.2% of national output nearly four years into an economic recovery.
Before the financial panic in 2008, the government was spending about $1 trillion less, or closer to $2.7 trillion a year and an average of 20% of GDP — and President Bush was no slouch as a spender himself.
* TRUE! (AND AGAIN... TO REMIND FOLKS... DEMOCRATS CONTROLLED BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS OVER THE ENTIRETY OF PRESIDENT BUSH'S LAST TWO YEARS IN OFFICE... A QUARTER OF HIS TOTAL TERM IN OFFICE!)
* AND BTW... 20% IS HISTORICALLY BLOATED. 20TH CENTURY AVERAGES WERE 14%-17%.
Mr. Obama wants federal spending to grow to $4.45 trillion by 2018 fueled mostly by the exploding costs of his Affordable Care Act.
* YEP...
This spending surge appears smaller than it is only because the government will bank large reductions in military spending as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars wind down. But unlike in the 1990s, this peace dividend will be spent.
* YEP...!!! (MORE THAN SPENT...!!!)
The budget's supposed bow to Republicans is Mr. Obama's proposal for a modest change in annual cost of living adjustments for Social Security. "Chain CPI," as the change is called, would cut spending by about $130 billion and raises taxes by about $100 billion over ten years. We support the concept, but the White House also slips a mickey into that proposal: Even with this inflation change, federal spending would grow by more than if Mr. Obama simply let current law continue. This is because the President wants to eliminate the current caps on discretionary spending under the budget sequester that are set to save close to $1 trillion over the next decade. He wants to repeal the sequester that is providing the only spending cuts in at least a decade.
(*SHRUG*)
His new spending ambitions include $50 billion for public works, more college aid, high-speed rail (the fiscal version of "The Walking Dead"), green energy giveways, $2 billion more for battery-operated cars even as the companies fail, manufacturing subsidies, full funding of ObamaCare, job training (on top of the current 47 federal programs), and more.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
In return for the Social Security savings, Mr. Obama is still insisting that Republicans accept most of his tax increases totaling $1.1 trillion over 10 years. This budget is said to be a "balanced approach" with $2 of spending cuts for every $1 of new taxes, but over the next five years federal spending would actually rise by $680 billion.
* "...BUT OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS FEDERAL SPENDING WOULD ACTUALLY RISE BY $680 BILLION."
So he is really referring to imaginary "cuts" off of anticipated future spending increases.
(*SNORT*)
He also isn't counting the estimated $1 trillion in tax increases over the next decade that are already part of ObamaCare.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
[D]ebt held by the public as a share of the economy will continue to climb — to what the White House predicts will be a peak of 78.2% of GDP in 2014. Mr. Obama has nearly doubled it.
(As recently as 2008, U.S. debt was 40.5% of the economy.)
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