CmdrFenix.org

… and that is exactly what they did. I heard about this a few days ago. I wasn’t completely shocked by the absurdity of this (it was after all coming out of the ATF), but I was worried with how this investigation was handled.

Customs and Border Protection officers have seized a shipment of 30 guns that arrived by ocean container in Tacoma in a shipment described only as “toys and parts.”
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ATF agents determined that the rifles as shipped from Taiwan were tooled to shoot plastic balls. However ATF says a relatively quick retooling could allow them to fire live ammunition.

I have done airsoft. It’s a fun way to spend a Sun afternoon, and I have a pair of fully automatic airsoft replicas of G36ks. Does this mean with some “retooling” I could turn those into the real thing!? Is my basic level of gunsmithing enough to do this? How much would this “conversion” cost me? I would love to find out what they mean by “readily…converted.”, but none of us will see that for a while as they’ve said the owner needs to file a Freedom of Information Request to get the report. I find it VERY unlikely, knowing as much as do about firearms and airsoft guns, and if I hadn’t confirmed this was true, I’d probably be laughing right now. The ATF just reminds me of a bunch of thugs that are in need of a serious amount of reform. The swamp waters in that organization are pretty deep and slimy.

I also love the media sensationalism of this by not even mentioning the fact they were airsoft guns. They make it sound like they stopped a major shipment from Taiwan of actual machine guns. The media LOVE stories that portray guns in a negative light. They almost NEVER tell about stories where firearms have saved lives and when they do you can usually see this spin on the evens. I hardly watch main stream media anyhow as a result of this. Most of my news and information comes online. At least then I can make my own determinations.

That was the title from the drugereport.com and I think it pretty much hits the nail on the head. Well, if you hadn’t already guessed, the “turkey” that is the Health Insurance Reform bill has passed the House and is on its way to the president to be signed.

On the cusp of succeeding where numerous past congresses and administrations have failed, jubilant House Democrats voted 219-212 late Sunday to send legislation to Obama that would extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, reduce deficits and ban insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions.

This particular topic is very electrifying to many, but here are my feelings on it. Disagree with them if you want, I don’t care, but this is how *I* feel about it and I think Dr. Earl Sunderhaus says it best and many Americans agree with me.

Sunderhaus said he feels it is his responsibility as a physician to tell his patients to live healthier lives and that obesity and diabetes are costing the country millions of dollars.
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“Telling this lady that she is fat is the truth, and it’s for her own good health,” Sunderhaus said. “She should be taking better care of herself, and it will be cheaper for us as a society.”
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Because millions of Americans are secretly thinking the exact same thing as Dr. Sunderhaus and I: Why should we be forced to pay for the costs of other people’s irresponsibility?

Before I dive into the parts of the bill that I think are complete bullshit, I think the last line above speaks for me as to why I despise the concept of universal health care system. Why should I pay for other people’s indiscretions? I’m talking about things like (as shown in the link above):

• Obesity
• Cigarette smoking
• Alcohol abuse
• Reckless behavior
• Criminal activity
• Unprotected promiscuous sex
• Use of illicit drugs
• Cultural traditions
• Bad diets

All of these items are preventable by the person involved. Now I personally don’t really care if you do all these things. I don’t care if you decide to have unprotected promiscuous sex with hundreds of other partners and give yourself AIDS, but why do I need pay for it? If you want to smoke two dozen packs of cigarettes a day, have at it! Just don’t ask me to pay when you develop lung cancer. You can sit there and call me selfish, and that is fine, but the moment you start to force something like health care on people, then everyone gets turned into yentas on other people’s behavior. If Joe Blows kid is drag racing and hits a telephone pole, why should all of us pay for that? I know I’m not the only one who’s pissed off about that.

Getting off the personal beliefs about it, the CBO has shown that is does *NOT* reduce the deficit, and any person that can sit there and say we need to spend money to get ourselves out of debt is whacked. If you are short on your rent or your cable TV, you have to cut spending to pay for it, and not spend more money.

CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 3961 [the "doc fix"], by itself, would cost $210 billion over the 2010–2019 period. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation have separately estimated that enacting H.R. 3962 [the health care bill] would reduce federal budget deficits by $109 billion over that same period.

CBO estimates that enacting both bills would add $89 billion to budget deficits over the 2010–2019 period, somewhat less than the sum of the effects of enacting the bills separately because of interactions between their provisions. The agency estimates that the two bills together would increase the budget deficit in 2019 by $23 billion relative to current law, an increment that would grow in subsequent years.

So we’re going to spend 940 billion dollars to save 109 billion? You have to be kidding me, and before I put anyone’s boxers in a twist, that last line makes my point, “…an increment that would grow in subsequent years”. Once you force everyone to have health insurance, you now have to pay for it and if you take MA (which has universal health care) as an example, the cost of universal health care in MA is grown every year to the point the State is horribly in debt. The CBO has also shown that 500 billion in savings from Medicare is going to be spent elsewhere, which means… guess what? It’s not a savings!

Also, premiums *will* continue to rise as they have in MA. According to the CBO premiums could increase 10 to 13 percent. Look, I am not saying there isn’t problems within our health care system (our premium increases have been obnoxious and the whole concept of preexisting condition exclusion pisses me off), but this is NOT how I feel the situation should be fixed.

So, I got a chance tonight to take part in a phone “town hall” type meeting with Mr. Hodes who is running for Sen Judd Gregg’s senate seat here in NH. I was able to listen to people ask questions and all I just to do in order to ask a question was to press *3. Well I hit that button, listened to about 25 minutes of questions and answers, and when the announcer came on to talk with me about my questions I had my outline and discussion points ready to go. It was obvious he was trying to weed out the “death panel” morons (even I can call some of the arguements ludicrious) and completely bad shit insane people, so I explained my thoughts, concerns, and questions for Mr Hodes.

Thoughts:

I explained that I *do* write my senators and representatives to speak my mind so I hope he’ll be as responsive as Mr. Gregg was. Mrs. Shaheen has only responded twice and only via email. Even if it’s a staff, it did feel good getting a letter that did directly address my points. I hope this will continue.

Concerns:

According to the CBO, they estimate 31 billion (and change) from a tobacco increase of $0.39 to $1 a pack that’ll continue to increase through 2019 to a value of 79 billion dollars. I have to ask, what crack are they smoking? (no pun intended) I know people who smoke and are paying from between $6.50 a pack now to as much as $8-9 per pack in MA. They are ALREADY at the tipping point when they will no longer be able to afford to smoke and will thus quit. How will they replace that money?

There has been talk about a meals / alcohol tax. Fine, when they do that and people like me enjoy their cigars and liquor less, who are they going to tax next? You cannot tax a behavior. It’s unsustainable. You can’t call smokers on one hand evil doers who are causing lung cancer and must be taxed to pay for health coverage of people who inhale their smoke… and then tax the smokers to quit.

If the above does happen, what additional taxes as a white, middle class, tax payer am I going to see because from where I sit, it’s going to come down my pipe at some point.

Questions:

I think everyone agrees that wall street needs a lot of reform. Mortgages and securities being shuffled around in a shell game until the table fell over was tragic, but taxing private traders to cover reform? I am new to investing, and it’s prohibitive on the costs versus the benefits. If I need to trade 500 shares of stock in order to be profitable because of a tax, I won’t trade. Quick and to the point, you cannot tax an action to such an extent that you make it unattractive to try out. Quite simply put, you won’t see your projected revenues because people won’t do it. So what do you propose as a way to keep AIG and the big players in check without completely screwing me as someone who is starting to do this?

Let me start by saying THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT FOR MR HODES. Just some of my observations. I was kind of excited about this. It was a very interesting way to get people to attend these meetings. I did some very basic research on him and I’m intrigued. I have some homework I need to do on him, but here are the important points for me:

Guns

I agree with him on:

• Maintain and strengthen the current level of enforcement of existing federal restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns.
• Allow citizens to carry concealed guns.

I disagree with him on:

• Establish a national database of ballistic “fingerprints” to track guns used in criminal activities.

There are obviously more areas, and I have only begun to stratch the surface, but it’s a start. That is just my first prelim thoughts on the matter. More research is needed, but for now I’ll leave you with this very entertaining note from Penn and Teller on Gun Control.

Not much going on this week. Been rather tied up with work, but I did manage to upgrade my Gallery install and update the main site here. The Gallery now has a “Star Trek Online” album that has been requested. I’ll be uploading new screen captures into there in the coming days. Stay Tuned!