Obanacare and the Real Numbners, sort of.

Well the White House has finally released the numbers on Obamacare. Don't get me wrong we still don't know exactly what they are, but they have been released to the public. It all depends on what the meaning of enrollment is. The total number released is a little over one hundred thousand. But as predicted they include people who did not really purchase a plan they only put one in their shopping cart and did not complete the check out. So how many of them did actually buy a plan? We don't know they didn't tell us. How many of them do they expect to buy a plan? We don't know they didn't tell us.

But we do know about one quarter or 27,000 of the enrollments came from the Fed Healthcare.gov site. Of those over 8000 were completed via paper enrollment forms, no WWW for you. Out of the 100K who enrolled less than 70,000 came from the 14 state web sites (which worked just fine) for an average of 2500 people per state. That of course is a skewed number since Alaska only had 53 people enroll, and California had 36,000. So what are the real enrollment numbers per state? We don't know they didn't tell us. Maybe they will, its early.

We do however know that almost 400,000 people have been made eligible for free medical coverage under Medicaid. So we now have 4 times as many folks will get their coverage paid for by the rest of us and the 100,000 who may or may not purchase a plan. Not bad for the first month or so. Just think how many there will be by March 2014.

So is this the end of Obamacare? Of course not, ask any Democrat not up for election and its a great thing they can't wait for. The President is feeling good about it all. "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters he had a long conversation with Obama on Tuesday night, and said he feels "very comfortable" that the website will be fixed."

So the web site will be working just fine in a couple of weeks or six months, opinions vary, and those enrollments will come pouring in. Operators are standing by for your call.

Obamacare and the Numbers

This is the week that the government will release the number of enrollments for Obamacare. There are several possibilities for what those numbers will be. They may be much higher than anticipated showing that the exchanges and the enrollment process are working well. Its possible but not likely.  We may be told that the release is being delayed for some technical reason. If so you can bet that the numbers are lower than anticipated, I'm talking much lower, like just a couple of hundred thousand or less. The enrollment figures may be massaged into a useless pile of statistics. They will be expressed as percentages of population, with portions of the population cut out of the equation to make it either difficult or  impossible to get an accurate count. The worst case for this is if they are able to create a method of getting several different totals making the whole mess open to interpretation. This of course will allow both the pro and con sides to declare a win and we won't know for sure what is happening. It is also possible that the figures will not be complete enough to make a judgment on the success or failure of the system. If it is announced that two million people have enrolled but no figure is given for how many actually completed the process and set up payment for and will be covered come 1 January 2014 it will be meaningless. The worst of the lot is if the number of people who have been enrolled in Medicaid vs the number in the private exchanges is not included. In some states the number being placed in Medicaid is running 25 to 1. The administration has said they need at least seven million people to sign up for the ACA and that 40% or more need to be young, healthy, preferably single people to make the system self sustainable. However everyone is surprised at how many are getting placed in Medicaid. The expected figure is rising to four million or more. Will the funding for those four million come out of the pockets of the 2.8 million healthy folks who sign up? Nobody is saying.  My guess is that the actual number is going to be abysmally low. The only reason for this estimate is that the left leaning press is already coming out with articles stating that the numbers don't matter and that no matter what the are the process and the goal are a good thing and a success.

Concealed Carry and its Effect on Local Communities

We in Illinois are only a couple of weeks away from some form of concealed carry. The legislature, citing fears for our safety, will probably pass new laws which through careful wording will continue to restrict our rights and no one will be allowed to carry their gun in public, or Belleville’s leadership will do the same if home rule passes. So before this happens consider this. Thirty one years ago, in 1982 the town of Kennesaw Georgia passed the first of its kind law, requiring gun ownership by all households. Since then not one resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender. The violent crime rate for Kennesaw is 85% lower than the Georgia state average and the property crime rate was 56% lower. Wouldn’t you want those statistics here in Belleville? Georgia is a “shall issue” state with about 600,000 people carrying their gun, Illinois is a no issue state with no one carrying a gun. The Illinois government says no guns are safer. Yet crime stats say Aggravated Assault, Forcible Rape, Murder, and Robbery are all lower in Georgia than in Illinois. Since 1999 Belleville’s crime rate has increased, Kennesaw’s crime rate has decreased.
Per City Data’s web site Belleville’s danger rating is 405, Kennesaw’s is 111. Despite a population growth from about 5000 to almost 30,000 in Kennesaw both violent crime and property crime are lower now than in 2000. High crime rates affect all areas in a community, Belleville’s population growth is effectively 0%, 1990 pop, 42,785, 2010 pop. 44,478, nobody wants to move here. While Kennesaw’s (the city with the guns) growth is 600%. Kennesaw is over twice the distance to Atlanta than we are to St. Louis but people are rapidly moving there because it is safer. Are people not moving to Belleville because it isn’t safer? Belleville average home value is $140,000, while Kennesaw’s is $160,000. Belleville’s average income is $43, 000 Kennesaw’s is $59,000. Since we live in the last state to restrict concealed carry you would think Belleville is a safe place to live. But our violent crime rate is 25 points higher than the national average, and our property crime rate is 173 points higher than the rest of the nation. Let us carry for our safety and maybe one day we will match Kennesaw’s stats.

The Left's Ideas on Hitler, Gun Control and History

A recent article was pointed out by a friend on Facebook. In my opinion I found the article to be so full of twists, half-truths and spin as to be insulting. I could not help but dissect it to see what made it tick.

Titled: The Hitler gun control lie

Gun rights activists who cite the dictator as a reason against gun control have their history dangerously wrong

By Alex Seitz-Wald

The original Article  

Sorry only one way to say it, what a specious set of arguments and half-truths. To start at the top, Mr. Seitz-Wald said the Drudge headline was merely speculating that the President would proceed with executive orders. In truth Drudge was not speculating, they were quoting.  The Office of the President via the Vice President said they are going to use the power of the executive order:  "The president is going to act," Biden said. Executive order, executive action that can be taken; we haven't decided what that is yet. But we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and all the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action, we believe, is required."

Mr. Seitz-Wald then sites a Slate link that attempts to prove his argument that those on the right are wrong because as they put it “For someone who's spent so much time on gun legislation, Biden's awfully ignorant…” Wow, so we  gun owners should not be worried, because our Vice President is ignorant of the Constitution. Thanks that made me feel much better. Plus the President is tasking Eric Holder for help in limiting my ownership of firearms. That would be the same Attorney General that said he was clueless about the actions of his office and the ATF in Fast and Furious, a scheme that resulted in the deaths of many people. Not only did his people break the law directly in this but they forced law-abiding gun store owners to become accomplices under the threat of administrative and judicial harassment.  

I would add that we on the right fear the executive order and so should all Americans. In other countries the executive order is called a decree. It is issued by an all-powerful leader and cannot be overturned. 

In the history of the United States only two executive orders have ever been overturned.  Congress can change law in an attempt to override it, but the President has the power to veto the attempt and a super majority is then required to defeat him.  The power of the order is absolute, and trumps the Constitution in many ways. Presidents Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt locked up American citizens for indefinite periods without trial. President Clinton went to war in Kosovo in 1999 under an executive order. Which as a side note, since we still have troops in Kosovo makes it the longest war in American history, not as the news mistakenly points out the war in Afghanistan.

Mr. Seitz-Wald states that the NRA, Fox News and most gun owners etc. “all agree that gun control was critical to Hitler’s rise to power.” He also goes on to quote the NRA head Wayne LaPierre from his book Guns, Crime, and Freedom “In Germany, Jewish extermination began with the Nazi Weapon Law of 1938, signed by Adolf Hitler.” Since Mr. Seitz-Wald uses the term “dwelled on” in his explanation I am assuming he disagrees with this. To a certain extent so do I. The line should have been “In Germany, the ground work for Jewish extermination began with the Nazi Weapon Law of 1938.” In any case Mr. Seitz-Wald then makes a subtle misquote that he intends to use to invalidate their argument “the notion that Hitler confiscated everyone’s guns is mostly bogus.” By this he is redirecting what they said i.e. gun “control was critical to Hitler” into total confiscation was bogus.  Bluntly he is stating a falsehood and thinks you will not catch it.

But what we on the right are saying, that “gun control was critical to Hitler” is absolutely correct. Hitler did not take everyone’s guns. He took all the Jew’s guns. He eliminated any restrictions against gun ownership and what we now call concealed carry for those in his party, the Nazi party. He did the same for all government workers and elected officials. Private citizens, as long as they were not Jews could in a very limited fashion own guns but not carry concealed.  Oddly enough we have the same laws more or less in America now. In all states that do not allow concealed carry for its residents, all elected officials are allowed to carry. Even in Illinois where no one is allowed to carry upon punishment of prison and huge fines any official who is sworn into office may carry any time they wish. From the Governor down to the local aldermen they may all carry, you may not. If you think this would change under new federal legislation, I think you would be wrong. Even felons, if elected and sworn in will, by law be allowed to carry. No I am not making that up. Hubert Norris a convicted felon ran for Sheriff of Fayette County TN, once elected he could carry.

Once Hitler had control of who did and did not own a gun he was assured a victory in things like The Night of the Long Knives where Hitler eliminated his political opposition by killing them and Kristallnacht which is probably the real start of the Jew’s extermination. By the end of Kristallnacht the first 30,000 Jews from all over Germany were headed to the camps. What would have been the outcome of that night and what effect would it have had on world history if the Jews had been armed? There is of course no way to tell. But by the use of gun control to insure a disarmed Jewish populace there was only one outcome left.

But, back to Mr. Seitz-Wald and his article, he states “And the ancillary claim that Jews could have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than a minute.” 

Why does this not make any sense? Mr. Seitz-Wald does not offer any support for his assertion he merely states it as fact and expects you to read it and believe it. 

Does Mr. Seitz-Wald think the Jewish people would not defend themselves and their families? Does he think they would be incapable of fighting back? The history of the Jewish people in Israel does not back up that theory. Had the Jews of Germany been armed and had they used those arms there would have been a protracted period of civil war in Germany. Their attackers were not the army; they were not even the police. The Jews of Germany were attacked by the SA paramilitary and civilians.

The fictional American equivalent would be if President Truman had in his last year in office allowed the KKK and the Dixiecrats lead by Robert Byrd to kill all the blacks in the south in a movement called the Crystal Night. In this fictional situation it would be fair to say that guns were too expensive to the owned in large number by the poor blacks of Alabama or Georgia. 

So could we then change Mr. Seitz-Wald’s quote to “And the ancillary claim that blacks could have stopped the Crystal Night with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than a minute.”  When transposed into the American culture his comments show up as both ridiculous and racist. Odd, if you use that quote about blacks it is a bad thing, if you say the same about Jews he figures you will be ok with it.

Mr. Seitz-Wald then goes on to use an expert, Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt, to twist the truth around into a pretzel. He quotes from an article by Mr. Harcourt stating that the gun laws in Germany prior to 1938 were tougher. This is true. He quotes Mr. Harcourt “In 1928, the Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them.” Again this is true. 

But then Mr. Seitz-Wald puts the twist on the truth with “The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general.” So we should not consider it an argument against gun control that by disarming the people Hitler intended to send to the death camps it made it easier to do so? 

He continues to spin the truth with unrelated comparisons. He says “Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning?” These are two unrelated things. Ghettos had existed for hundreds of years thought Europe. They were by law the only places a Jew could live. Urban planning is a program where a city’s living spaces are designed to blend into the city layout in a functional manner. I can only construe that Mr. Seitz-Wald is referring to the mistaken belief that urban planning equals’ ghettos or that blacks are forced to live there and so they become ghettos.  What he also fails to understand is that the Jewish ghettos of the past were surrounded by walls and gates which the Jewish inhabitants could and did close for protection. 

More twisting is applied by his comment, “Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews?”  This is incorrect, during Kristallnacht the police did not participate in the killings. They stood by and allowed it to happen. So a better question would be, ”Should we eliminate the police if they allow an armed mob to slaughter unarmed innocents?” But if asked that way it invalidates Mr. Seitz-Wald’s argument.  

Lastly he asked “What about public works — Hitler loved public works projects? Of course not.”  I’m not even sure what the heck Mr. Seitz-Wald means by that statement.  It is not very well written but part of the preceding sentence starts with “Should we eliminate all police…” So I guess he is asking should we eliminate public works because Hitler liked them. Again I don’t see a connection from it to gun control but it spins his argument into a position where if you are against gun control then you are against public works. So how can you be against that? Of course if you asked the question in its historical reference you get “Hitler loved public works projects which used the slave labor of the Jews. Should you be against working thousands and thousands of slaves to death to improve the infrastructure and economy of a dictatorship?” That question should be followed up with “If you have the ability and the arms to oppose this slavery should you rise up and fight against it?” Seems we did just that about 150 years ago. I guess Mr. Seitz-Wald does not think that was a viable option since it required an armed populous. By the way it was illegal in the south for a black man free or slave to own a gun. From long before the Revolution of 1776 to long after the Civil war gun ownership was denied to blacks. The southern slave owners feared there would be an uprising against them, and rightly so. In that case gun control worked to keep an oppressed people in the yoke of slavery. Why does Mr. Seitz-Wald disapprove of a free person being able to defend themselves?

More experts are brought into the argument, he uses a historian, Omer Bartov, who notes that the Jews probably wouldn’t have had much success fighting back. Mr. Bartov justifies this with “Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7 million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and artillery.” 

Again a specious argument, in the years from 1939 to 1944 Germany had years of massive arms buildup and millions of soldiers under arms. At the onset in 1939 what effect would it have had if an armed Jewish rebellion had arisen to confront a newly elected Hitler? Would Neville Chamberlain have given in to Hitler over the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia or Poland if there was a civil war going on in Germany? 

The one historical occasion of an armed resistance to the Nazi was the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Mr. Seitz-Wald basically dismisses it as a failure, which it was as the Jews lost and were for the most part all killed. But Mr. Seitz-Wald offers no viable option to what they did, he just considers it a lost cause. What should the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto done Mr. Seitz-Wald? Peacefully surrender to their fate I guess. How noble of him to recommend they accept death by starvation over fighting back with a gun.

In my opinion the article at this point begins to dissolve into a mash of unrelated experts and references that have no bearing in the argument. An example is the reference to Robert Spitzer, a political scientist who studies gun politics who says “that the prohibition on Jewish gun ownership was merely a symptom, not the problem itself. “[It] wasn’t the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group,” he explained.”

That is pretty much the reference, what it means in relationship anything else is unknown. I don’t think however it supports Mr. Seitz-Wald’s intent. No the disarming of the Jews in Germany was not the root problem. It was however a symptom of or a warning of a tyrannical regime about to inflect a level of mass murder and oppression not seen in the modern world. And no it wasn’t the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people, but it sure helped pave the way.

Mr. Seitz-Wald cites a quote from Hitler often used by the right as being historically incorrect, probably true. But the quote does express the feeling that most gun owners have that denying a person the right to protect themselves is the first step to tyranny and ends in failure to establish peace or safety.

For some reason at this point Mr. Seitz-Wald allows Stalin to enter the conversation. “As for Stalin,” Bartov continued, “the very idea of either gun control or the freedom to bear arms would have been absurd to him.”  So the unarmed Russian people who Stalin slaughtered in numbers that make Hitler look like a pauper is used by Mr. Seitz-Wald as an example against gun ownership? What?

He continues, “Bartov added that this misreading of history is not only intellectually dishonest, but also dangerous.  “I happen to have been a combat soldier and officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and I know what these assault rifles can do,” he said in an email.” Again, What?

To try to understand him maybe, “misreading of history is not only intellectually dishonest, but also dangerous.” Ok maybe he means since all attempts to defend yourself against Stalin’s and Hitler’s type of oppression have failed we should not repeat that folly, submit and live. The submit part went well for a time. Of course the live part did not work out well for the Jews under Hitler or the people starved to death under Stalin, but they didn’t own any of those nasty guns while they died.

As for “I happen to have been a combat soldier and officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and I know what these assault rifles can do” I’m also not sure what he means by this but maybe he wants the Palestinians to agree to follow the submit and live part of his idea. But I don’t see them agreeing to the gun control side of Mr. Seitz-Wald ideas.

Finally and this one took some re-reading to follow, “Their assertion that they need these guns to protect themselves from the government — as supposedly the Jews would have done against the Hitler regime — means not only that they are innocent of any knowledge and understanding of the past, but also that they are consciously or not imbued with the type of fascist or Bolshevik thinking that they can turn against a democratically elected government, indeed turn their guns on it, just because they don’t like its policies, its ideology, or the color, race and origin of its leaders.”

Here’s what I got out of it. 

Gun owner’s belief that their guns will protect them from an evil regime like Hitler’s will fail just like it did for the Jews, so submit and live. 

Gun owners are ignorant of the history which shows that attempting to defend yourself against tyranny will fail, so submit and live.

Gun owners are either fascists (A person who believes in an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government) or a Bolshevik (normally a left-wing majority group that followed Lenin i.e. the Communist party). 

Can't have it both ways sir. Although in this case I think he means a Bolshevik is a violent radical. So a desire to live free or die and a willingness to enforce that belief with arms makes you a violent radical fascist. 

Lastly, “thinking that they can turn against a democratically elected government, indeed turn their guns on it, just because they don’t like its policies, its ideology, or the color, race and origin of its leaders.”

Means to me Mr. Seitz-Wald thinks gun owners are racists who believe Obama was born in Kenya.

Public Safety, Guns, Drinking and the Constitution

 

Recently The Journal News of New York, published the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. It has of course raised a firestorm of both support and anger.

 

One aspect of this not being addressed, in my opinion, is that this is not news. This is an attempt to support an agenda and as such would have failed the journalistic test of reporting the news. Gun ownership is both a right and a legal activity in which millions of people participate; as such merely owning a gun is not newsworthy. The article was filed under New/Local News, not as an opinion piece. They could have stated that statistically more crimes are committed by those without high school diplomas and then using a Freedom of Information request to gather the data, published the addresses of all high school dropouts in the area. But that would not have fit their belief set so of course they would never do that.

 

Again in my opinion they took the cowardly route.  Had the newspaper filed it as an opinion piece it would have had to expressed its opinion on gun ownership which would have placed them in the position of stating they believe gun ownership is bad. That would have probably negatively effected their revenue. I also don't believe they expected the repercussions they have received. Which has also had a negative effect their revenue.

 

But, to defend their actions the newspaper argues that gun ownership makes other people less safe and so is news. If you support their actions in publishing gun owners addresses, how do you feel about them publishing the addresses of other people who participate in, Danger to Society, activities? Drinking and driving is certainly dangerous to society. So the newspaper, in the interest of public safety, could stake out the bars in town, collect the license plate numbers for all who go to a bar on Friday or Saturday night and publish the customers'  addresses, maybe call it the "Drunks Report" or "DUI Dangerous List". 

 

The police could certainly use the info. Being on the list five times a month would give the police probable cause to track you down and do a spot sobriety check. Insurance companies could adjust rates up or down based on how often you show up in the list. Spouses could use the info to see if their significant other was really working late. Homeowner associations could add articles to their agreements about how many times you can go to a bar before you have to move out. Your workplace can use it to determine if they really should promote you. The list of positive things this could do for society could go on and on.

 

DUI rates would plummet, spouses would have a way to insure trust, insurance rates for those who do not drink would go down, work production would rise, and neighborhoods would be better/safer. What could be wrong with all of those?

 

Based on their argument of exposing your privacy is for the public good this would be a great public service. The community would become a much safer place and isn't that what the newspaper is advocating, for everyone to be willing to give up a just a little freedom, just some of your privacy for a little more  safety for everyone else?

 

The Journal Article is here:

Gun owner list.  

 

When Good Guns Go Bad

With all the talk about and incorrect information about what makes an Assault Rifle I thought it would be helpful to show how to modify a "good gun" into a "bad gun."

The changes do not make the original gun into an Assault Rifle. But it does change the look of the gun and so it is considered bad.

It its simplest form this is the equivalent for clipping a couple of playing cards onto the spokes your Western Flyer bicycle and calling it a motorcycle.