Does Crime Pay?

The folks at Freakonomics seem to have determined that the cost to society of locking a criminal away is approximately the same as the cost to society of the crime he commits.

From the point of view of a properly cold-blooded actuary, this may be true, and in many cases, an insurance policy would cover the losses.

OTOH, if we cut the cost of keeping a prisoner by say eliminating his gym membership, his designer clothing, his free law degree complete with free legal tutors, perhaps prisons might look more cost effective. Sheriff Joe in Arizona comes to mind, and his methods and practices need to be documented carefully before he retires.

The Economics of Buying Guns

Joe Huffman has a chart up showing NICS checks by month for the last 27 months. It's interesting to see the cyclical nature of gun purchases. It seems you buy them for Christmas, and just before tax day, anti-government bitter clingers that you are.

He notes that the rush to buy guns that took place when O'Bama got elected is still going on, only very slightly abated.

Here's another chart that I put together from the available data provided by the FBI:
Note that the big rush on guns began in 2006 when the Dems took over congress, not in 2008 when they took over everything.

Disclaimers: A NICS check does not automatically indicate a gun sale. Also some states, mine for example, don't use NICS, preferring to keep the monies at home rather than giving it to Washington. A laudable attitude, as long as it's not abused. Not that the government would abuse its power by deciding to de-frag the disk drives or something on the weekend of a big gun show in Colorado Springs, effectively shutting down the gun show.

Memorial Day

Found this at Theo Spark, who probably found it here:
'Bout sums it up, doesn't it.

Is Your State Bankrupt?

Via Les Jones, who got it from Zero Hedge, who found it at Economic Policy Journal, so now this is 4th hand and probably worthless.

Anyway the thinking (?) goes that some 32 states have had to take loans from the federal government to cover their unexpected (!) expenses for unemployment payments, so I guess that recovery O'Bama's been telling us about isn't as robust as he'd like us to think.

Item 1: If you take a loan to cover expenses in a tight period, you are not bankrupt. There are a whole bunch of banker-speak words for that sort of thing, with varying degrees of menace attached.

Item 2: If you blow the payment on the loan, then you are, in fact bankrupt, and need to jump through either the chapter 11 or chapter 7 procedures.

Item 3. Hopefully someone in Washington is taking note of this, and warning the president that if large numbers of states can no longer meet their payrolls, the Gulf Oil Spill is going to be the least of his worries.

Having 4 million union thugs ready at the drop of a hint to give money to your friends, and beat up your enemies is all well and good, but if they find their paychecks bouncing, that loyalty will vanish without even the traditional puff of smoke.

How Dumb Do They Think We Are?

I see this question asked frequently enough, by pundits I generally respect, but every time I thing to myself; "Look at the people we have elected, and tell me how dumb you think we are."

Thanks to Tam for the pointer to this article by Mark Steyn, one of the pundits I think rather highly of. I don't think I'd call it a quote of the day, since it is simply a summary of a poll, but knowing that a significant number of our fellow voters think this, goes a long way toward explaining the election results.

According to a Fox News poll earlier this year, 65 per cent of Americans understand that the government gets its money from taxpayers, but 24 per cent think the government has “plenty of its own money without using taxpayer dollars.”

This is the sort of thing that should be pounded into the little heads in middle school civics class with the kind of certitude usually reserved for things like the direction in which the sun rises in the morning. It represents nothing less than a fundamental failure of the education system, and makes the case for the Dept of Education to be reduced to a rather modest sized committee to write a set of competence tests for the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades. Failure to get an acceptable score means you get to repeat the previous grade, or don't get your diploma.

Better yet, let's put your final score on your diploma. Think of it as the executive summary of your transcript.

When I am dictator, you will need a "C" or better to be allowed to vote.

Hi-Point 4095 Range Report 2

One more trip to the range, this time with some reloads. Using Berrys Bullets plated bullets, 155gr round nose flat point, over 5.4 gr of Hodgdon Titegroup. This combo is a low level load and is advertised to deliver 1058 fps through some mythical gun that Hodgdon uses to test such things.

This load delivered an average of 1350 fps through my chroney. Nice. Paula the neophyte tried the gun and found to her amazement and approval she was shooting 1 in groups at 25 yards. I didn't try for groups.

A friend brought his kid, a watermelon, and a couple of flats of eggs out to play with. His .45 auto punched neat holes in the melon, eventually causing it to split on the bottom. I loaned him the Hi-Point and it made the melon explode in properly photogenic fashion. Pink debris, 20 foot radius.You'll have to trust me on this, as no one had a camera.

Paula the neo tried the Hi Point on the eggs. She nailed 2 eggs in 3 shots at 25 yards. Believe me what happened to the eggs is good basic material for a special effect on Star Trek when the Klingon ship hits the antimatter space mine. If you try this on your range, put the eggs far apart. The blast radius is about 24-30 inches.

I don't have a vast supply of powder to experiment with, but Hodgdon lists a load involving HS-6 powder using about 40% more powder, that delivers close to the same performance as the Titegroup loads I was using. At a guess, I would say the performance increase in the carbine would be even greater. If someone gives me a few tablespoons full, I'll try it. Barrys does not recommend very high velocities for their plated bullets, but the relatively gentle accelerations in the longer barrel may get around this. Further experimentation is indicated. Oh yes.

Did I mention this little shooter is fun?

Sending Troops To The Border

The Obama administration plans to announce a plan to send up to 1200 National Guard troops to the Mexican border at some time to be announced at a later date. Maybe.

They also did not announce which side they might be assigned to.

At this point, President Calderon of Mexico enjoys better relations with the administration that the governors of Texas or Arizona.

The Future of Transportation, Data

At some point, maybe the notion of traveling in a machine may become obsolete.

Teleportation. We're working on it.

The first application will be to move the contents of your wallet to the government treasury.

The second application will be to move the government treasury to a bank account in a really obscure location. I recommend Burning Chrome as a good place to start.

Queries may be addressed to me at an Obscure Location. "Just leave a message, maybe I'll call."

Republican Wins Obamas Hometown Seat

Republican Charles Djou won the Hawaii seat belonging to the Dems since who knows when. I would caution against reading too much into this because, as frequently happens in three-way elections, the least popular candidate won.

Djou took 40%, and two other Dems split up 60% of the vote. Had either one of the Dems stepped aside, the seat would most likely have remained Democratic. The good news is that the Dems are about $300K poorer for having given away the seat, and Djou will have the advantages of incumbency when he has to defend the seat again this November.

Nature Runs Amok

Or at least gets a bit out of kilter. We used to have a family of foxes dening under a porch at the other end of the block. They were cute, in their own way, and cruised the neighborhood in search of food, keeping the place nicely clear of dog food in bowls on back porches, mice, and the occasional cat. They also scrupulously picked up the squirrels that ran afoul of my trap.

Now we have a coyote, who cruises the hood on Thursday evenings, since trash day is Friday. I suppose he, or she, it's hard to tell, would take the squirrel too, but it's not on his regular day. Also with the arrival of the larger predator, the foxes have departed to parts unknown.

The retired cop across the street says he has a .410 with #4s in it, and if I hear a modest pop, I should pay no attention. Fine with me, he can explain this to the local gendarmes with greater alacrity that I could. Meantime I may have to figure out how to make a coyote trap as effective as the one for the squirrels.

Economics IV - Europe

Here's a really great video, shamelessly swiped from Wizbang, who seem to have redistributed it from the BBC:



Listen carefully as the whole European fiasco is explained in quiz-show format. Note carefully the advice the contestant is giving to his off-camera colleagues at the end. He seems to be something of a fan of Richard Russel, who is himself a fan of an impending economic apocalypse.

Being an optimist myself, I like the think the economy will mostly survive the current attacks on it, but have committed to memory an easy recipe for grilled duck, which I'm pretty sure would work just fine on the Canadian geese that are currently working industriously to bury Denver in goose poop.

In Greece, the Germans have told the Greek government that they can't have any more German euros to pay for largess to Greek citizens, The Greek government told this to the citizens, and the citizens took to the streets. The details are hazy, but if they stay true to form, the first think to be burned to the ground will be the local MacDonalds.

Over here, the government is taking notes, and doing what it can to make sure the peasants don't figure out who actually caused all their problems. To this end, they put together and manage their own riots, with union rioters, on government buses, with a police escort to riot on a private bankers front lawn. From the governments point of view, this is infinately preferrable to angry peasants with pitchforks and torches outside the capitol building.

When things start going South, the governments first priority is to hold on to power, the alternative being "chaos", to quote most of them over the last 3000 years. The usual procedure is to find a scapegoat to which to transfer the blame. There are 3 levels of approach:

Level 1: Unruly elements undermining the peaceful law and order of the current regime. This is dealt with using the local police.
Level 2: An organized conspiracy of easily identifiable elements who are preventing life from getting better for everyone else, to their own benefit is identified. This is frequently the more successful business elements in a society. The owners are replaced, sometimes violently, and the new owners, the government or cronies of the government, then give the workers a modest raise, from the national treasury, and everyone is happy, briefly.
Level 3: Shoddy foreign goods produced by underpaid foreign labor. This is powerful since it lets the peasants insert their own favorite whipping boy here. This is dealt with by protective tarrifs against the foreign goods, which results in a trade war, which frequently results in a shooting war. Frequently the winner is the side with the least managed economy, and the bozos in the offending government are finally replaced. It's a slow and expensive process.

IDPA Match

Disclaimer: Our club is not connected officially to the IDPA, or anyone else for that matter, but we have IDPA-style matches because they're fun. Today was the first really warm day of the year, with temps in the low 80s and the wind in the same range. I mean you know it's going to be at least distractive when the carpet mats for the prone position station had to be nailed to the ground with 4 inch gutter spikes.

Distractive, yes. We used the round steel popper, conveniently set up in front of a no-shoot. Let me pass on a bit of advice; if you ever find yourself in a shoot-out, and aren't one of the shooters, standing behind one of the active participants is a really bad idea. At least it certainly was today.

We also came up with a more reasonable way to score the unfortunate circumstance of shooting a no-shoot. Instead of the usual 5 or 10 points off, we establish a scale. If you hit the no-shoot in the "A" zones, you lose one point. A "B" zone hit costs you 3, and a "C" zone hit drops your score 5 points. This is based on the probability of the unlucky bystander of filing a lawsuit after the smoke has cleared, which we figure in inversely proportionate to his metabolism at that point.

The final oddity was that I had a malfunction, and was completely flummoxed by it. On shot 3 of the final stage, the slide failed to go all the way foreword into battery. Working the slide simply brought the next round up into the chamber area behind the first one. The correct action would have been to simply tap the slide foreword to fully engage the stubborn round, but folks, this is the first malfunction I have ever had with this gun, and I was at a loss as to what the correct drill was. Like Dillinger said: "Never trust a D.A.s deal or an automatic pistol."

Gun Law - Wishful Thinking Dept.

Mayor Daley is anticipating a big loss in the McDonald lawsuit, and is frantically thinking of ways to preserve his gun ban. One suggestion is to require gun owners to carry an insurance policy. I'm sure the required amount will be sky-high, and the conditions will be such as to force the insurance companies to charge exhorbitant rates.

I think I could almost go for the insurance requirement if it came with a literacy and civics knowledge requirement for voting.

That and a photo I.D.

If you're going to turn the Bill of Rights into a Bill of Privileges, why settle for half measures?

Newspeak - Countering Violent Extremism

"Countering Violent Extremism".

And who, exactly does the administration consider to be "violent extremists"? Ask Janet the Napoleonic.

Stifling Dissent

Shanghai has, in the past, cracked down on Dow Jones & Co. publishers of the Wall St. Journal, but now it's pajamas.

Steve Green seems unworried.