The UK’s David Cameron, while hitting the bulls eye on the topic of multiculturalism, has plans for something called “The Big Society”. This plan would take tax money and give it to state-run “charities”.
I think you can see where this is going
A charity that relies in the main part on taxes is no more a charity than a prostitute is your girlfriend.
Guido Fawkes
Found via Samizdata UK
A masterful roundup over at RedState you might have missed. Clicky and keep scrolling for the gems like this one:
Weather Man Disagrees With Theory of Paul Painleve — Says Radio Cannot Control Elements — Sun Spots Responsible
The New York Times, June 1926
AMERICAN radio men and weather forecasters do not agree with Paul Painleve, the French Minister of War, that radio waves are responsible for the rainy, chilly weather that has persisted this Spring. The Minister of War called attention to the fact that the introduction of radio waves into a tightly closed room where the air is absolutely transparent cause little drops of water to form on the faces of those in the room.
We don’t yet own any vehicles new enough to have “black boxes,” although they all do have onboard computers of one sort or another. I’d always figured the privacy geek in me would want to do some shade-tree surgery on any newer car we acquired with a black box latched to its innards somewhere like a tumor. Never did enough research to know if that would mess with other computerized settings or not, etc., etc.
But now, a California appellate court has ruled that onboard computer / “black box” data from your vehicle is protected by the 4th Amendment.Hooray!
Held: The data was protected by the Fourth Amendment, the retrieval of the data was unconstitutional, and the conviction had to be overturned. From the opinion:
“We do not accept the Attorney General’s argument that defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the data contained in his vehicle’s SDM. The precision data recorded by the SDM was generated by his own vehicle for its systems operations. While a person’s driving on public roads is observable, that highly precise, digital data is not being exposed to public view or being conveyed to anyone else. . . . We conclude that a motorist’s subjective and reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to her or his own vehicle encompasses the digital data held in the vehicle’s SDM.”
That’s my data, dammit!
Our daughter, after the dental cleaning we paid for yesterday: “Mom, I have no cavities!”
Mom: “That’s good, because you have no insurance!”
Yet another reason I love my wife….
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
To Be the One by Dash Berlin, featuring Idaho. Initially I disliked the vocalist on this one intensely, but the overall track’s grown on me.
And a compare-and-contrast for you. Compare Dash Berlin’s “The End of Silence” with Motorcycle’s “When the Rush Comes” from a few years earlier. The similarities are enough to remind me of some hypotheticals from law-school intellectual-property exams.
In general I can’t get enough of The New Daylight album by Dash Berlin. You want it too. Hear more at the Dash Berlin channel.
…in my estimation. I did not know that the Oregon Constitution specifically protects jury nullification. From a comment to the Radley Balko story linked in MadRock’s post below:
#22 | Kyle | February 8th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Irving,That depends on where you are. The Oregon Constitution, for example, protects jury nullification (in article 1 section 16):
“In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law, and the facts under the direction of the Court as to the law, and the right of new trial, as in civil cases.â€
The jury has the right to determine the law and is not required to accept the law “as given†by the court.
You’d think that judges would be OK with juries knowing their rights & responsibilities.
Herewith, a rant:
One of our employees, a young single mother pregnant with her third child, floored her supervisor the other day by mentioning she’d bought a house in Oakland.
“How,” he asked incredulously, “did you manage that when I know you take home only $1500/month? For example, how did you manage the 30% or more down payment that everybody’s requiring in these days of tight credit? I know you have no savings.”
“Oh, it’s easy,” says she. “When the bank found out what my expenses were, they said I qualified for only 4% down because my only expense each month is my $450 car payment and gas for the car. The rest of my paycheck can go to the mortgage.”
Leave aside the specter of this woman, like most of our employees at this wage level, driving very nice brand new cars while our managers and execs grit our teeth and economize with well-used vehicles. How is it her only expense each month is her car payment and gas?
Here’s how, as she explained:
Food stamp “debit card” takes care of all her and her kids’ food needs.
State-subsidized daycare for her two kids: $4/month.
Home insurance and property taxes rolled into the mortgage.
Presumably she’s choosing to drive while uninsured, or has REALLY cheap insurance she’s not told us about. (Do auto dealers sell insurance they roll into the car payment?)
Health care subsidized by us (her employer) — we deduct $40/month from her paycheck for a basic Kaiser plan that costs us several hundred for her part alone. She doesn’t include her kids on her employer plan, because:
Kaiser has free child health care services for the first year or so, and there are state child health care programs after that.
Not to mention the CalWorks, WIC and TANF programs, at least one of which she receives benefits from.
Oh, did I mention that she CHOSE to get pregnant three times as a single parent because a) she wanted kids, and b) it wouldn’t add to her expenses.
The sad thing is, if you look at it that way, she’s actually a better risk for a mortgage company than a lot of the wealthier folks who were being pitched mortgages just a few years ago.
UPDATE: I should add that I’ve seen a pic of the house, it’s a nice 900-square-foot bungalow, and in a decent part of Oakland, which isn’t saying much, but hey, she’s a homeowner!
Met with the health insurance agent the other day. Our business premiums went up 33% over last year. Of that, all of 5% was due to the increase in our RAF (“Risk Adjustment Factor”) which is unusually high for a company our size, but hey, I’d have jumped for joy at a 5% increase. The remaining 28% was Kaiser Permanente raising rates across the board. Larger businesses than ours got hit with even higher premium increases.
I’ve carefully kept each of the various corporations we oversee at the magic fewer-than-50-employees number, primarily to avoid several California statutes that come into play at that level. It also exempts one from much of ObamaCare, so theoretically we could just not offer health care to our employees and be on our merry way. But the boss doesn’t want to do that; he doesn’t ever want an employee’s work suffering due to stress about health issues, so we’re wrestling with what to do.
On another note, our daughter is without dental insurance at the moment and a couple years too old to be on our plan, so I accompanied her to our dentist this morning to pay or her to get an x-ray and cleaning. Cost for that was $201.00 cash out the door. Seemed a fair price to me.
