Another Sandy Hook cannot be prevented by the State

It must be We the People who protect ourselves, our children, and the children of our neighbors, just as the state's giant security apparatus failed to stop the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber, and citizens succeeded.  If we are to prevent tragedies like Sandy Hook, we must be willing to act as these brave civilians did, and we must be empowered to do so.

With this in mind, I suggest a we implement a federal level Unrestricted Concealed Carry law - all handgun owners may carry concealed at any time in any public place, except police stations, courts, and jails.  This law will ban "Gun Free Zones" at all other public properties - again, excepting police stations, courts, and jails.  It will be enforced via the 2nd and 14th Amendments and the supremacy clause, and thus would preempt any and all state law with regards to the carrying of firearms.

Furthermore, this law should state explicitly that private property owners have the right to designate their property as "gun free zones," and that if they do so they are fully responsible for the protection of their visitors and patrons and are fully liable for any injury sustained during an act of violence - with no exceptions.

I'm also interested in some kind of regularly provided shooting practice for handgun owners, but not quite sure how to implement it.  Perhaps the National Guards can be reverted to state militias and all citizens can train through them.

Update:
Such an excellent letter dug up by the Smallest Minority:

Freedom takes practice...

It's not just that rights are useless if they are not exercised, not even that rights must be used or be lost. It's that exercising your rights, constantly, is what instructs you in how to be worthy of them.

Being armed goes far beyond simple self-protection against thugs or even tyrants - it's an unequivocal and unmatched lesson that you are politically and morally sovereign; that you, and not the state, are responsible for your life and your fate. This absolute personal sovereignty is the founding stone of the Republic.

"A well-regulated militia" (where the militia is "the whole people") isn't just "necessary to the security of a free state" because it provides a backup to (and defense against) the police and the army. More importantly, keeping and bearing arms trains sovereign citizens in the art of freedom, and accustoms us to our authority and duty.

Happy Birthday Voltaire!

Il est dangereux d’avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes accrédités ont tort.

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.  Simple and profound, Voltaire explains in one sentence the danger faced by dissenters in the presense of a powerful, authoritarian central government. 

Happy Birthday Voltaire, you were a true visionary.

Housing starts are bouncing back nicely!

Or so says a poster on one of the forums I frequent, referring to the news reports about same.  Captain Capitalism disagrees, pointing out that the reported "surge" in housing starts is a simple statistical manipulation of the data reported by the St. Louis Fed.  In fact all you need to do is limit the dataset and it paints a grand picture. 

Here is the surge that the oligarchs and their lackeys are proffering:

That certainly is a promising looking graph, and might make you feel good about the FED's MBS purchases (QE3 forever) and the actions of the federal government, but if you show all of the data, will you still feel that way?  What does it look like when you take off the limiter?

Owch, that sure looks like we're sitting square at the bottom, barely matching the lowest starts of the last 60 years worth of monthly starts.  When you take the same data but sum it up annually, it is even more telling.

So, is this a surge?  Or are we looking at the lowest number of housing starts since the FED started collecting the data?

The Constitution has no teeth

Without teeth the Constitution is just a piece of paper, conveniently ignored by the oligarchs and neither understood or studied by the people.  Some say the 2nd Amendment is what provides the teeth, and fundamentally I agree, but when your population has become so numb and dumb, what good are such a dull set of teeth?  We need real teeth.  Instead of relying on the vigilance of the population, the Constitution should be loaded with high-tension bear traps to catch politicians and prevent their tyranny.

As you know I've had lots of ideas for Constitutional Amendments.  Have a look, and tell me what you think.  Send me some of your own ideas too.

http://legendarykotetu.blogspot.com/2011/11/amend-constitution.html

• A Constitutional Amendment to require an annual balanced budget
• A Constitutional Amendment to clarify the Necessary and Proper Clause
• A Constitutional Amendment to define the term "General Welfare"
• A Constitutional Amendment to prohibit Line Item Vetos, Signing Statements, and to Clarify Limits on Executive Orders
• A Constitutional Amendment to clarify the terms of and to amend the Commerce Clause
• A Constitutional Amendment to strengthen the Second Amendment
• A Constitutional Amendment to strengthen the Tenth Amendment
• A Constitutional Amendment to restore sovereignty to the States

 

 

http://legendarykotetu.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-amendment-ideas.html

• A Constitutional Amendment to strengthen the Ninth Amendment
• A Constitutional Amendment to clarify the Supremacy Clause
• A Constitutional Amendment to bind Senators and Representatives to the Rule of Law
• A Constitutional Amendment to expand the definition of Treason
• A Constitutional Amendment to Codify Jury Nullification
• A Constitutional Amendment to Strengthen Habeas Corpus

 

 

http://legendarykotetu.blogspot.com/2012/06/another-amendment-that-will-never-get.html

• A Constitutional Amendment to restrict growth of government

 

 

http://legendarykotetu.blogspot.com/2012/05/national-debt-and-generational.html

• A Constitutional Amendment to tie borrowing to tax increases

 

http://legendarykotetu.blogspot.com/2012/06/sunshine-and-term-limits.html

• A Constitutional Amendment to Prevent Unread bills from becoming Law
• A Constitutional Amendment to Limit the terms of elected officials

 

 

http://legendarykotetu.blogspot.com/2012/05/cuts-cuts-cuts.html

• Ideas for budget reforms.  About $1 trillion in cuts.

Remember to vote!

If you haven't already, go out and vote, now!  Don't fall for "the lesser of two evils," or some other pressure sale.  Vote on the issues.

Here's my number one issue:

Please support Detective Ali Perez and his family

Update:
The bake sale was a great success, pulling in a little over $500 in half an afternoon.  Thank you to everyone who participated, and thanks again to anyone who has donated. :)

***

My cousin Ali is a Detective with the San Diego Sheriffs.  Unfortunately, last month while arresting a child molestor he was shot in the shoulder and abdomen.  He's recovering well, but the family needs some help, as he's lost his overtime and his wife stopped working to stay with him in the hospital.  You can read about it here, here, and here.  This is the Deputy Sheriff's Association press release.

What we're going to do hold a bake sale to support the family. It's going to be held at Ali's and Gracie's Church, The Rock Church 2277 Rosecrans Street, San Diego, CA 92106 Room 232 from 12 PM to 3 PM on Saturday, November 10th.

If you're in the neighborhood, please come!  If you don't live nearby, please consider donating. The Deputy Sheriffs’ Association has set up an account for his family through San Diego County Credit Union, under “Detective Ali Perez Support Fund.” You can call the DSA Office at (858) 486-9009 x 100 to make a donation with a credit card.

Entitlements

In an earlier post I talked about cutting spending to reduce the deficit.  I put together a list of suggestions that would reduce the deficit by at least eight hundred billion dollars.

• End all wars and military operations in the Middle East, Asia (Korea, Japan, etc), Europe (Germany, France, Poland, Italy, etc), Africa, and South America. Permanently shutter all bases in same countries - return equipment to the USL48, and sell bases to those countries. Cancel all contracts for new weapons programs. Replace them with maintenance programs for existing equipment. (Save $500-600B+/yr)
• End all foreign aid. (Save $50-60B/yr)
• End all energy, agriculture (sugar, corn, etc), military-industrial, prison-industrial and big-pharma subsidies. (Save $37-40B/yr)
• Abolish the TSA, FDA, ATF, DEA, EPA, FCC, FTC, DOE (edu), HUD, FHA, Fannie and Freddie and all rules and regulations created by those departments or by the executive branch in the name of those departments. (Save $190.5-200B/yr)
• Abolish the US Postal service - or spin it off completely. No subsidies. (Save $12-15B/yr)
• End the drug war. (Save $15-20B/yr)
• Leave the UN and NATO. (Save $0.5-1B/yr)

Minimum savings: $804.5 Billion

While this would be a great way to reduce the size of our government, in reality it will not be able to solve the spending problems we are facing.  Note that I specifically limited my cuts to discretionary spending.  These expenditures exclude mandatory programs such as social security, medicare, etc, and the interest on the national debt.  The problem is, the mandatory expenditures now exceed the total revenue of the United States government, as you can see by reviewing the annual budget.  In 2012 total federal revenues stood at $2,469 billion.  Mandatory expenditures were $2,252 billion and interest was $225 billion.

So though my suggestions would "halve the size" of the government, we cannot balance the budget by cutting discretionary spending.  Even if we eliminated all such spending, and just paid for social insurance programs and interest, we'd still have to borrow eight billion dollars.  And this number will grow over time.  This is the uncomfortable fact that social security defenders don't want to confront.  The programs are not even sustainable right now, let alone out into the future.

The consequences of this unsustainable debt load are going to hit this country like a freight train, and the rest of the world will follow our collapse.