754 search results for "prop 2"

Firearms, Humor in Michigan

Satire – Call To Action: Stop child predators! Pass Common Sense Cell Phone reform today!

by  •  • 2 Comments

I must credit some of this to my co-worker Mike.  He and I discussed this “solution”.  We had some laughs discussing a gun-control like approach to solving abuse of technology to pick up on young people.

I’ve seen articles about Brooke Lajiness and her predilections for young males pop up in my news feed recently.  It got me thinking, society cannot let this happen!  We must take action to stop future cougars from using these tools to prey on the young and vulnerable.  It’s time for common sense reform, and I have some ideas of how!

Step 1 – Government Licensing of Smart Phone dealers

First thing we need is the Federal Government to step in and start licensing business that sell smart phones on a retail level.  Additionally, the Federal Government should license manufacturers and importers of smart phones.  Manufacturers, importers, and retailers should be required to keep a registry of all smart phones they manufacture, import, or sell and keep  serialized records for 20 years.  Federally licensed retailers should be required to run background checks of potential smart phone buyers.  This will keep smart phones out of the hands of known predators — people that have a past of: child pornography, furnishing pornography to minors, sexual conduct with a child, and other such sex offenses.

Step 2 – Universal Background Checks for Phone Purchases

I think we can all agree ensuring there is a background check every time ownership of a smart phone changes hands is the next most common sense step we as a society can take to protect our children!  This will make sure people reselling their smart phones to others will have to first make sure the person passes the same federal background check we require retailers to run.  It’ll close the street sale loophole left by the previous proposal.  If we only implement Step 1, the criminals will be able to procure smart phones by going on to Craigslist.

Step 3 – Age Restrictions on Smart Phone ownership

People under the age of 18 should not be able to buy (or perhaps even possess) smart phones!  If we keep these devices out of the hands of the young and vulnerable then we will be making steps towards a society that is safer for our children.

Step 4 – Limit availability of certain dangerous features

Certain things are just plain dangerous to have in proximity of cell phones, I’ve included a few examples below.

4.1 Selfie Sticks

Selfie sticks are a common tool of those who provide indecent material to minors and solicit them for sex!  By making sure these devices are not available, we limit the ability of these predators to operate.  It should be a federal felony for anyone to possess (without a license) a selfie stick while also possessing a smart phone that fits on said stick.  The licensing process to possess these sticks needs to be very thorough, including fingerprinting, submissions of photos of yourself, and getting sign-off from local law-enforcement.

4.2 Phones that shoot pictures in rapid succession or record videos

This technology is simply dangerous!  It can be used to lure young people into horrific activities such as described in the new story cited in the top of the article.  Similar steps in 4.1 should be followed for controlling this technology.

4.3 Military Style Smart Phone features

These are features dangerous when combined with other features.  Phones with 2 or more of these features make them especially useful for abuse.

  • Otter Boxes and other military-style similar phone cases
  • Phones that are Black in color
  • Storage Capacity in Excess of 4 GB
  • The ability to install third party apps
  • Phones smaller than 8″ in diagonal measurement
  • Phones that can install applications that haven’t been approved by the phone manufacturer

 

I hope we can all agree to these common sense reform measures.  We must preserve the innocence of our children!

You Betcha! (11)Nuh Uh.(0)

Government Incompetence, Michigan

It Takes A Village

by  •  • 4 Comments

To Kill A Baby

We’ve all heard that term before.

It is the presumption that the collective state is better suited to raise your family than .. you, or your family.  It is also the tile of the book written by the Democrat failure who couldn’t even win the blue state of Michigan. As well, it is the only way that loving parents can lose their parental rights when it really matters.

The saga of this baby boy and his suffering parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, illuminates our own future — that is, America’s oft-demanded, much-feared, repeatedly prophesied move to single-payer medicine. Charlie’s vexing fame as a “prisoner of the National Health Service” serves as a warning about the ugly side of any government assuming the role of Doctor: it necessarily plays Judge and Executioner, too.

This is what [so-called] progressives want here.

Read the rest

And let it soak in.

You Betcha! (8)Nuh Uh.(0)

Conservative News, Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Republicans

The Aftermath of Riots

by  •  • 7 Comments

Detroit's Decline And Bankruptcy Were Indeed Due To Its Riots - Plural!

Apologists for the 1967 Detroit rioters and the feeble responses of Mayor Cavanagh and Governor Romney to that mayhem usually start off by noting that Detroit’s population and economy peaked in the early 1950’s. The implication being that the 1967 riots were just another incident in the long running, preordained decline of Detroit. Detroit’s population did peak in the early 1950’s, but its economy continued to grow right up to the 1967 riots due to productivity increases. And Detroit’s economic decline was not preordained, it was very much the consequence of both of its two major 20th Century riots.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) also studied the aftermath of the 1960’s riots in urban America, specifically their effects upon African-American economic well being. Two key NBER Working Papers examine the effects of the 1960’s riots on African-American income, employment, and real estate holdings. Unsurprisingly, these NBER Working Papers found the effects were decisively negative. Surprisingly, these NBER Working Papers found the adverse economic effects actually accelerated over time, with the worst hits coming well into the following decade.

The deceit in the apologists’ chronology of the decline of Detroit is their failure to mention or consider the June 1943 race riot in Detroit. The 1943 Detroit riot was unequivocally a race riot and its deaths and injuries were on a scale quite comparable to the 1967 Detroit riots. During the 1943 Detroit riots, 34 people were killed and 433 were wounded. Property destruction was then estimated at $ 2 million ($28.3 million in 2017 US dollars), but this estimate is probably quite low due to lower casualty insurance coverage rates at that time. By comparison, 43 people were killed and 1,189 were wounded during the 1967 Detroit riots. Property destruction in the 1967 riots is disputed, but was somewhere around $ 50 million ($ 366.7 million in 2017 US dollars).

The different ratios of deaths and injuries to property damage in the two 20th Century Detroit riots also reflects the fundamental difference in their basic character. The 1943 riot was most certainly a race riot whose participants targeted people, but not much property. The 1967 Detroit riots were an all out economic attack on small businesses, but 1967 rioters did not target people to any particular degree.

Prior to the 1967 Detroit riots, the 1943 Detroit race riot was tied with the 1965 Watts riot for the second worst American riot death toll during the 20th Century, and probably tied with Watts for the third worst American riot death toll of all time. The 1943 Detroit race riot had only been surpassed in death toll during the 20th Century by the 1921 Tulsa race riot at the time of the 1967 Detroit riots. The 1943 Detroit race riot has not been studied by academia or covered by the media in much detail because it exposed New Deal incompetence and reflected very poorly on the American war effort underway at the time.

The 1943 race riot certainly did affect the thinking of Detroit residents and Detroit’s economic actors well into the 1950’s. Most of them lived through those 1943 race riots and were intimately familiar with the the racial tensions it revealed, even if they were not much publicized. You need to consider the causality issue underlying the decline of Detroit’s population during the 1950’s.

Were the factors usually cited for Detroit’s population decline in the 1950’s sui generis, or a response to the 1943 riots?

READ MORE ►

You Betcha! (16)Nuh Uh.(0)

Cronyism, Democrats, Detroit, Elections, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Republicans

Why Riot?

by  •  • 3 Comments

What causes a riot in urban America?

The news media, social scientists, and political scientists are eager to offer up the usual stale left wing bromides on urban riots, but at best those bromides are based upon a lot of anecdotes rather than hard data. The plural of anecdote is not data. The disingenuousness of their bromides arises from the clash of facts with their committed leftist politics.  Economists were far less political, at least 25 years ago.

A pair of economists working under the aegis of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) applied linear regression computation modeling to various community statistics from a broad range of cities to determine which underlying issues cause riots and, further, to determine their intensity. Their results are a real eye opener and run contrary to the drivel being peddled by the media and academics on this 50th anniversary of the Detroit riots.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is a private nonprofit research organization which distributes its work product to financial officials and the public around the world. NBER is best known as the official arbiter of the start and end dates of economic recessions in the United States, a not uncontroversial subject. Its economists have run the gamut from the good (Milton Friedman, Wassily Leontief), to the bad (Austan Goolsbee), to the ugly (Paul Krugman). As a fun side note, it is comforting to know that an economists’ organization as august as NBER can lose money on their financial portfolio. No crony capitalists there!

The NBER divides its research into 20 programs; one of which is ‘Labor Studies’. Denise DiPasquale and Edward L. Glaeser produced NBER Working Paper 5456, The L.A. Riot and the Economics of Urban Unrest on behalf of the NBER Labor Studies Program. This paper was written after the Los Angeles riots of 1992, but its research reaches back into the 1960’s and across the world to construct its data base.

The DiPasquale/Glaeser study has two major components: a cross-national study which covers urban rioting around the world (including the U.S.), and a cross-city study which covers urban rioting across just the U.S. They assembled data sets on a large number of cities which included dependent variables representing the frequency of riots and the intensity of riots, along with many independent variables suggested by previous studies as being responsible for the frequency and intensity of those riots – poverty, unemployment, ethnic composition, and so on.

READ MORE ►

You Betcha! (13)Nuh Uh.(0)

Conservative News, Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Republicans, Taxes

Riot, Insurrection, Rebellion, or Uprising?

by  •  • 3 Comments

A Cure Always Requires a Correct Diagnosis

All Americans alive in 1967, of all races, called Detroit’s five day long spasm of violence, arson, and looting in July 1967 a riot. Some labeled it a race riot, others just a riot. Not for long. Within a year, government and media were plying the public with a long list of racial grievances said to be responsible and an even longer list of expensive liberal programs which promised to cure them.

The Detroit riots were deceitfully recast as an insurrection, rebellion, or an uprising to drive those liberal programs, but ultimately this revisionism just glamorized base criminality, Fifty years later, billions have been doled out in Detroit through those liberal programs and Detroit is in even worse shape by every metric.

Let’s start with some definitions from Merriam-Webster:

Definition of riot

  1. archaic a : profligate behavior : debauchery b : unrestrained revelry c : noise, uproar, or disturbance made by revelers
  2. a : public violence, tumult, or disorder b : a violent public disorder; specifically : a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together and acting with a common intent
  3. a random or disorderly profusion the woods were a riot of color
  4. one that is wildly amusing the new comedy is a riot

Definition of insurrection

  1. an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government

Definition of rebellion

  1. opposition to one in authority or dominance
  2. a : open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government b : an instance of such defiance or resistance

Definition of uprising

  1. an act or instance of rising up; especially : a usually localized act of popular violence in defiance usually of an established government

Note that the definitions of insurrection, rebellion, and uprising all state that these events are a defiance of established government, while the definition riot does not.

Were the events in Detroit from 23 to 27 July 1967 a defiance of established government?

READ MORE ►

You Betcha! (14)Nuh Uh.(0)

Michigan, Michigan Politics, Opinion

Independence

by  •  • 1 Comment

Maybe it does not mean what we had always thought it should mean.

Happy Independence Day.

Celebrate!  Take the family out, and have a great time.   Wave the flag, blow off some fireworks, But proudly give the finger to big government types everywhere.  And don’t limit that last to just a single day in the middle of summer.

Kids in our public schools are not likely taught the truth of the cause of the revolution, but it was not hard to understand, and was spelled out succinctly in the declaration of independence.  Colonists had enough.  They were done with being pushed around.

The king was a schmuck, the power he claimed over the colonies was not earned, not justified, nor could it be respected. So we flipped him the bird, and wrote him a break up letter.

READ MORE ►

You Betcha! (12)Nuh Uh.(0)

Michigan, Michigan Politics, Opinion

Bill Schuette – Jack Of All Trades

by  •  • 3 Comments

Michigan's Attorney General joins the pipeline closure drum corps.

You can say one thing about Attorney General Bill Schuette, he has had a lot of different jobs.

The latest is apparently environmental expert and mechanical engineer.  Acting like those cats in the disaster movies who always seem to have the correct and dire warnings that “something really bad is about to happen,” Schuette has now called for the end to line five.  From the Detroit News:

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette on Thursday called for the development of a “specific and definite timetable” to close Enbridge Energy Inc.’s Line 5 dual pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac.

Schuette’s comments came as his office, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Natural Resources and Agency for Energy released a long-awaited Line 5 alternatives assessment conducted by an independent contractor.

The 337-page report states the 64-year-old Line 5 could operate indefinitely, but Schuette said he “strongly” disagreed. One viable alternative, he said, would be to construct a tunnel under the straits that could serve a similar function but allow for continuous visual inspection while creating infrastructure and construction jobs.

I suppose we could add “Tunnel Builder” to the resume as well?

READ MORE ►

You Betcha! (13)Nuh Uh.(0)

Liberty, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Opinion, Part Time Legislature, Philosophy, Republicans

Ad Hoc Ad Interim

by  •  • 7 Comments

As badly as we need this done, do we care why he’s doing it, or even whether he gets the credit?

“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” (Winston Churchill, to his private secretary, Jock Colville, on June 21st, 1941, the evening before Operation Barbarossa)

Churchill was well known for being a consistent and vociferous opponent of communism, and had often spoken quite unfavorably about the Soviet Union, and particularly of Joseph Stalin (who was well-known even then as the brutal monster that honest history records). However, in seeking to stop the menace of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Churchill was willing to adopt an ad hoc “enemy of my enemy” approach, and initiated the Anglo-Soviet Agreement for joint action against Germany.

Given much of the recent hullabaloo regarding a badly-needed grassroots initiative having been likely co-opted, by a moderate opportunist apparently seeking a means to advance his political ambitions, and given that I have personally stood directly in the path of those ambitions at least twice in the past seven years, what I’m about to say is going to sound exceedingly strange, but I’m going to say it anyway.

READ MORE ►

You Betcha! (20)Nuh Uh.(1)

Cronyism, Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Rent Seeking, Sports, Taxes

Battles of the Lower Depths in Detroit

by  •  • 4 Comments

Davis et al v. Detroit Downtown Development Authority et al; U.S Eastern District of Michigan Case Number: 2:17-cv-11742

Eastern District of Michigan U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith ruled on June 19th that Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority can issue $34.5 million in bonds to pay for the relocation of the Detroit Pistons basketball team to the new Little Caesar’s Arena. The Judge’s ruling rejected arguments that the eventual use of school tax money to repay these tax increment finance bonds violates Detroit residents’ constitutional and statutory right to vote on a school tax money diversions.

Judge Goldsmith’s ruling denied Robert Davis‘ and D. Etta Wilcoxon’s motion for a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order in their lawsuit against the Detroit Downtown Development Authority. The Judge said the plaintiffs did not establish the need for an emergency injunction. The Judge politely neglected to mention that Robert Davis was sentenced in the very same Eastern District U.S. District Court to an 18 month Club Fed vacation for stealing $ 200,000 from the Highland Park School District in 2014. Mr. Davis should still be on probation for this minor peccadillo.

One complication here is that the tax monies being diverted are not those of the current Detroit Community Public School District, but rather those of the legacy Detroit Public School District which was reduced to zombie status last year in the DPS bailout. Is the old DPS really a school district today, or just a financial entity? The Detroit Community Public School District is a near bankrupt ward of the State of Michigan that won’t receive any Detroit property tax revenues until the legacy DPS district debts are paid off. No one alive today will live to see that.

READ MORE ►

You Betcha! (13)Nuh Uh.(0)

Conservative News, Cronyism, Elections, Fees, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Part Time Legislature

Political Self Perpetuation

by  •  • 2 Comments

Making The Democratic Process In Michigan Just A Little Bit Less Democratic With A 21st Century Poll Tax

Representatives Steve Marino, Tommy Brann, Julie Calley, Kimberly LaSata, and Jim Lilly have just introduced six bills, HB 4745 to HB 4750, to increase filing fees for various down ballot political offices across the State of Michigan by 50% to 300%.  These are the fees prospective candidates can pay to get on the ballot in lieu of filing nominating petitions.

As you might expect, the highest (300%) filing fee increase proposed applies to candidates for State Representative (and Senator).

The kicker here? The filing fee is also no longer refunded to the runner up.  So running for political office in Michigan just became more expensive exclusive.

READ MORE ►

You Betcha! (13)Nuh Uh.(0)