Archive for October, 2013
28 Oct 2013

Shutdown Over

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28 Oct 2013

Big Brother on Your Dashboard

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The LA Times reports on an unlikely alliance between statist tax grabbers and some libertarians(!) to arrange for Big Brother to accompany you every mile you drive.

As America’s road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America’s major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.

The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.

And while Congress can’t agree on whether to proceed, several states are not waiting. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over. Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.

“This really is a must for our nation. It is not a matter of something we might choose to do,” said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is planning for the state to start tracking miles driven by every California motorist by 2025. “There is going to be a change in how we pay these taxes. The technology is there to do it.”

The push comes as the country’s Highway Trust Fund, financed with taxes Americans pay at the gas pump, is broke. Americans don’t buy as much gas as they used to. Cars get many more miles to the gallon. The federal tax itself, 18.4 cents per gallon, hasn’t gone up in 20 years. Politicians are loath to raise the tax even one penny when gas prices are high.

“The gas tax is just not sustainable,” said Lee Munnich, a transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota. His state recently put tracking devices on 500 cars to test out a pay-by-mile system. “This works out as the most logical alternative over the long term,” he said.

Wonks call it a mileage-based user fee. It is no surprise that the idea appeals to urban liberals, as the taxes could be rigged to change driving patterns in ways that could help reduce congestion and greenhouse gases, for example. California planners are looking to the system as they devise strategies to meet the goals laid out in the state’s ambitious global warming laws. But Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has said he, too, sees it as the most viable long-term alternative. The free marketeers at the Reason Foundation are also fond of having drivers pay per mile.

“This is not just a tax going into a black hole,” said Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at Reason. “People are paying more directly into what they are getting.”

The movement is also bolstered by two former U.S. Transportation secretaries, who in a 2011 report urged Congress to move in the pay-per-mile direction.

The U.S. Senate approved a $90-million pilot project last year that would have involved about 10,000 cars. But the House leadership killed the proposal, acting on concerns of rural lawmakers representing constituents whose daily lives often involve logging lots of miles to get to work or into town.

Several states and cities are nonetheless moving ahead on their own. The most eager is Oregon, which is enlisting 5,000 drivers in the country’s biggest experiment. Those drivers will soon pay the mileage fees instead of gas taxes to the state. Nevada has already completed a pilot. New York City is looking into one. Illinois is trying it on a limited basis with trucks. And the I-95 Coalition, which includes 17 state transportation departments along the Eastern Seaboard (including Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida), is studying how they could go about implementing the change.

The concept is not a universal hit.

In Nevada, where about 50 volunteers’ cars were equipped with the devices not long ago, drivers were uneasy about the government being able to monitor their every move.

“Concerns about Big Brother and those sorts of things were a major problem,” said Alauddin Khan, who directs strategic and performance management at the Nevada Department of Transportation. “It was not something people wanted.”

As the trial got underway, the ACLU of Nevada warned on its website: “It would be fairly easy to turn these devices into full-fledged tracking devices…. There is no need to build an enormous, unwieldy technological infrastructure that will inevitably be expanded to keep records of individuals’ everyday comings and goings.”

Read the whole thing.

27 Oct 2013

That Tea Party Conspiracy

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Hat tip to Vanderleun.

27 Oct 2013

Carl Loewe: “Heinrich der Vogler,” Opus 56, No. 1

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Karl Scheidemantel, 1902 Gramophone Concert Record 42870 (831 x).

26 Oct 2013

Star Wars Myers Briggs Chart

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Myers Briggs Type Indicator

Lord! I’m Princess Leia, but (Ha! ha!) my wife Karen is the Emperor.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

26 Oct 2013

Full-Auto 1911

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In the 1920’s and 30’s Hyman S. (Hymie) Lehman was a small time Jewish gunsmith who worked out of a leather and saddlery shop in San Antonio, Texas. At the height of his career he invented a new type of firearm based on similar concepts used in World War I; the machine pistol. Essentially Lehman took a Colt 1911, chambered for either .45 ACP or .38 Super, and converted it to fully automatic. At full auto the 7 round magazine of a 1911 would be instantly drained, so he combined his new weapon with a custom 20 or 30 round magazine. In addition, for more control when firing the weapon he attached the foregrip from a Thompson Submachine Gun, and installed a compensator on the muzzle. The result was a very small weapon that could pour out a ton of firepower.

Obviously an ingenious design, surely the military or police would be interested in such a weapon. In fact Lehman probably could have become rich if he was awarded a government contract. However, Lehman’s clientele was made up of some very seedy characters. Infamous names such as John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Roger “The Terrible” Touhy all purchased one of Lehman’s baby machine guns. Indeed, Lehman’s machine pistols became a part of the violence that was the gangster era. Baby Face Nelson even used his to kill Federal Agent W. Carter Baum and wound two others during a shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin. When questioned about the sales, Lehman simply maintained that he had no idea that the men he sold them to were dangerous criminals.

In 1934 the National Firearms Act was passed into law, outlawing the manufacture or possession of fully automatic firearms without a special government tax stamp. Early Texas had passed a similar state law. In 1935 Lehman was arrested for violating that law. Despite two trials he was never convicted. He died due to complications caused by Alzheimer’s Disease in 1990.

Wikipedia

Via Ratak Monodosico.

26 Oct 2013

CNN: Team Obama “Nasty to Deal With” & “Not Afraid to Threaten Reporters’ Jobs”

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Newsbusters:

CNN’s Carol Costello admitted on Wednesday that President Obama’s staff “can be quite nasty” to deal with. Given Costello’s propensity to be a bleeding-heart liberal, her admission is all the more striking.

“I felt it first hand when I was, you know, reporting on the presidential race,” Costello noted. “I mean President Obama’s people can be quite nasty. They don’t like you to say anything bad about their boss, and they’re not afraid to use whatever means they have at hand to stop you from doing that, including threatening your job.

25 Oct 2013

Kyūdō

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Kyūdō: 弓道 is the Japanese style of Archery.

Via Ratak Monodosico.

25 Oct 2013

Seattle Taking 103-Year-Old Woman’s Parking Lot (Because They Can)

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Statism on the left coast takes the most colorful forms, as this eminent domain taking by the city of Seattle proves.

q13Fox:

The city is forcing a 103-year-old Spokane woman to sell her parking lot in Seattle to make way for, well, a parking lot.

The Seattle City Council voted Monday to take the lot near the waterfront by eminent domain, using a portion of the $30 million provided by the state to take care of parking issues around the waterfront. Hundreds of public parking spaces will be lost when the state begins dismantling the Alaskan Way Viaduct for the digging of the tunnel. The construction will last until 2020.

The lot is owned by Spokane resident Myrtle Woldson. She doesn’t want to sell, so the City Council voted unanimously to use its power of eminent domain to take it after paying Woldson “fair market value.”

None of the City Council members would speak about their vote, but property rights advocates call it ridiculous.

”In this case, the city of Seattle is using eminent domain to seize a parking lot, so they can use it as a parking lot,” said Glen Morgan of the Freedom Foundation, which is an Olympia-based, conservative, free-market think tank. “There’s no public good in that at all.”

Morgan said there are several bills in the Legislature that would revamp eminent domain and give Washington property owners more rights.

“Eminent domain was originally intended for stuff like roadways, expanding roads, schools,” said Morgan. “Situations that are for the public good.”

Hat tip to Scott Drum.

25 Oct 2013

The Palestine Ownership Question Elucidated

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25 Oct 2013

Unisex Marine Headgear Proposed

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Traditional Marine white barracks covers left, Obama-proposed new white barracks covers right.

The blood of Marines everywhere must be boiling over the administration’s idea of spending $8 million to change the iconic Marines’ male white barracks cover to a reduced unisex version.

NY Post
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Thanks to a plan by President Obama to create a “unisex” look for the Corps, officials are on the verge of swapping out the Marines’ iconic caps – known as “covers” — with a new version that some have derided as so “girly” that they would make the French blush.

“We don’t even have enough funding to buy bullets, and the DoD is pushing to spend $8 million on covers that look like women’s hats!” one senior Marine source fumed to The Post. “The Marines deserve better. It makes them look ridiculous.”

The thin new covers have a feminine line that some officials think would make them look just as good on female marines as on males — in keeping with the Obama directive.

“The Marine Corps is being ‘encouraged’ by DoD to standardize on a unisex/universal dress and service cap,” Marine brass noted in an internal memo obtained by The Post.

Male and female Marines currently wear gender-specific caps.

The controversial covers have been dubbed the “Dan Daly” hat, after a World War I sergeant from Long Island who twice won the Medal of Honor.

But some Marines love the old hat, which has been in use since 1922 and think the new hat is a glorified “porter’s cap.” The new Daly model is based on a style the Marines used from 1904 to 1918 – and then jettisoned.

“The Dan Daly cap looks too French, and the last people we want to associate our Marines with would be the French military,” wrote one commenter on the Marine Times Web site.

As of now, the new covers are only in the proposal stage.

Marines have until Friday to cast their votes on whether to adopt them or keep the old hat with modifications. Marine Corps head Gen. James Amos will make the final decision.

According to the memo obtained by The Post, requiring all troops to use the Daly cover will cost $8,221,958. Going with the traditional cap will save $284,043, because the current female caps are more expensive.

“Why are we even focused on this while we are laying troops off for no budget?” another Marine Times commenter asked.

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Some images of Marines in 1900s China, wearing the old-style cover, which was blue, not white.

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I think my father’s 1942 model looks better.

24 Oct 2013

She Was Texting While Flying

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Hat tip to Jacqueline Osterrieth.

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