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Labels: homosexuality
Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
My nephew Shippy makes very pretty ceramic items. Click here to visit his online studio. Give someone one of these, and you can be sure that they don't already have one!
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Other blogs you may enjoy:
My civilian gun defense use blog
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Pete Drum's Web Page
Gun Laws Don't Work
instapundit.com
Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
A courageous Briton arguing for relaxing Britain's gun control laws
Right Thoughts
Final Protective Fire
Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
An Iraqi dentist
Promoting children being raised by their own parents
A federal law clerk opines about the law
Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
Another sensible American
Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
Music, Politics, Motorcycles
Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
Another conservative.
Neocon Blues
Conservative Oasis
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Bubbleheads is a retired submariner
An Idaho State University student. A Democrat. Someday, she'll start paying income taxes and change.
A retired Las Vegas stagehand, of all things.
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American Family Headed to Mexico
The following arrived in my email. It is not completely fair or accurate--but it isn't too far off, either.MR. PRESIDENT, I'M HEADED TO MEXICO
Dear President Bush:
I'm about to plan a little trip with my family and extended family, and I would like to ask you to assist me. I'm going to walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and I need to make a few arrangements. I know you can help with this.
I plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas, and laws. I'm sure they handle those things the ame way you do here.
So, would you mind telling your buddy, President Vicente Fox, that I'm on my way over? Please let him know that I will be xpecting the following:
1. Free medical care for my entire family.
2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.
3. All government forms need to be printed in English.
4. I want my kids to be taught by English-speaking teachers.
5. Schools need to include classes on American culture and history.
6. I want my kids to see the American flag flying on the top of the flag pole at their school with the Mexican flag flying lower down.
7. Please plan to feed my kids at school for both breakfast and lunch.
8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.
9. I do not plan to have any car insurance, and I won't make any effort to learn local traffic laws.
10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from Pres. Fox to leave me alone, please be sure that all police officers speak English.
11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put flag decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.
12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, and don't enforce any labor laws or tax laws.
13. Please tell all the people in the country to be extremely nice and never say a critical word about me, or about the strain I might place on the economy.
I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all the people who come to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that Pres. Fox won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely.
Thank you so much for your kind help.
An American citizen and taxpayer
New Mexico's Best Known Concealed Handgun Licensee
You've seen him on television before: Legislators and lobbyists beware — Gov. Bill Richardson has just received a license to carry a concealed handgun.
Perhaps someone is trying to make himself more attractive to NRA members for the 2008 Presidential election?
Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said the governor picked up his license at Friday’s dedication of expanded facilities at the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy on the city’s south side.
The governor successfully completed all the requirements for obtaining a license, including a criminal background check and a firearms-training course, Gallegos said. “He aced the test,” the spokesman said.
Richardson owns a GLOCK pistol, Gallegos said. But Richardson’s veto pen likely will remain his most dangerous weapon around the Roundhouse because the governor says he doesn’t plan to pack heat.
Richardson, who describes himself as an avid hunter, said he applied for the license to lend his support to concealed-carry measures. “I just wanted to symbolically show my support for concealed carry,” he said. “I don’t anticipate carrying one.”
Blogging From The New House
You'll have to take my word for it. I'm sitting here (on the floor--no desk in the office yet) using an HP Pavillion running SuSE Linux 9. The 800 Kb/sec. rate is a little slower than the cable modem connection that I have down in Boise, but it's okay. If I ever get too grumpy about it, I will think back to my excitement the first time I used a terminal with a 300 baud modem. (That's 30 characters a second.)
No Whining About Your Commute
You think you have a long commute to work? NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dave Givens drives 370 miles
Having lived in San Jose many years ago, I am not surprised.
to work and back every day and considers his seven-hour commute the best answer to balancing his work with his personal life.
The winner of a nationwide contest to find the commuter with the longest trek, Givens is one of millions of people who are commuting longer and farther than ever before.
Studies show Americans spend more time than ever commuting and for a growing number, getting to work takes more than an hour. In the most recent U.S. Census Bureau study, 2.8 million people have so-called extreme commutes, topping 90 minutes.
Givens, a 46-year-old electrical engineer, has an extreme commute between home in Mariposa, California, and his job in San Jose. He leaves home before dawn and returns after dark.
His trip landed him first place among almost 3,000 entries in the search for America's longest commute, sponsored by automotive services provider Midas Inc. and announced last week. But as harrowing or tedious as Givens' trip may sound, he says it's the way to keep the home and job he loves.
"I have the balance right now," Givens told Reuters. "I could do similar jobs closer, but not with the work reward and job satisfaction I have. And I could live closer, but I wouldn't have the lifestyle that I desire.
"To me, this is not that long a commute," he added. "It's just something I do to go to work."
Judge Reinhardt: Speech That Offends Homosexuals Isn't Constitutionally Protected
This is an astonishing decision by the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals--one of those reminders why liberalism is a dirty word to most Americans: Because of these conflicts in 2003, when the Gay-Straight Alliance sought to hold another “Day of Silence” in 2004, the School required the organization to consult with the Principal to “problem solve” and find ways to reduce tensions and potential altercations. On April 21, 2004, the date of the 2004 “Day of Silence,” appellant Tyler Chase Harper wore a T-shirt to school on which “I WILL NOT ACCEPT WHAT GOD HAS CONDEMNED,” was handwritten on the front and “HOMOSEXUALITY IS SHAMEFUL ‘Romans 1:27’” was handwritten on the back. There is no evidence in the record that any school staff saw Harper’s T-shirt on that day.
So how did Judge Reinhardt, a well-known First Amendment absolutist, who is married to the chair of the Southern California chapter of the ACLU, deal with this question?
The next day, April 22, 2004, Harper wore the same T-shirt to school, except that the front of the shirt read “BE ASHAMED, OUR SCHOOL EMBRACED WHAT GOD HAS CONDEMNED,” while the back retained the same message as before, “HOMOSEXUALITY IS SHAMEFUL ‘Romans 1:27.’”4 LeMaster, Harper’s second period teacher, noticed Harper’s shirt and observed “several students off-task talking about” the shirt. LeMaster, recalling the altercations that erupted as a result of “anti-homosexual speech” during the previous year’s “Day of Silence,” explained to Harper that he believed that the shirt was “inflammatory,” that it violated the School’s dress code, and that it “created a negative and hostile
working environment for others.” When Harper refused to remove his shirt and asked to speak to an administrator, LeMaster gave him a dress code violation card to take to the front office.
When Harper arrived at the front office, he met Assistant Principal Antrim. She told Harper that the “Day of Silence” was “not about the school promoting homosexuality but rather it was a student activity trying to raise other students’ awareness regarding tolerance in their judgement [sic] of others.” Antrim believed that Harper’s shirt “was inflammatory under the circumstances and could cause disruption in the educational setting.” Like LeMaster, she also recalled the altercations that had arisen as a result of anti-homosexual speech one year prior. According to her affidavit, she “discussed [with Harper] ways that he and students of his faith could bring a positive light onto this issue without the condemnation that he displayed on his shirt.” Harper was informed that if he removed the shirt he could return to class.We conclude that Harper’s wearing of his T-shirt “colli[des] with the rights of other students” in the most fundamental way. Tinker, 393 U.S. at 508. Public school students who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion, or sexual orientation, have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses. As Tinker clearly states, students have the right to “be secure and to be let alone.” Id. Being secure involves not only freedom from physical assaults but from psychological attacks that cause young people to question their self-worth and their rightful place in society.18 The “right to be let alone” has been recognized by the Supreme Court, of course, as “‘the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.’”
Except, of course, if you wear a T-shirt to school that offends homosexuals. Reinhardt goes on and makes explicit that freedom of speech stops when it offends homosexuals in school: Speech that attacks high school students who are members of minority groups that have historically been oppressed, subjected to verbal and physical abuse, and made to feel inferior, serves to injure and intimidate them, as well as to damage their sense of security and interfere with their opportunity to learn.19 The demeaning of young gay and lesbian students in a school environment is detrimental not only to their psychological health and well-being, but also to their educational development. Indeed, studies demonstrate that “academic underachievement, truancy, and dropout are prevalent among homosexual youth and are the probable consequences of violence and verbal and physical abuse at school.”
Wait a minute: you don't have to be homosexual to be subject to demeaning treatment and violence in school. (Believe me, I know, first-hand.) But Reinhardt, good liberal that he is, believes that freedom of speech only goes in one direction.
Professor Volokh properly recognizes the absurdity of this decision--that freedom of speech only protects some viewpoints. The comments on his blog posting about this are a reminder of how many liberals there are out there who are prepared to make an exception to the glorious freedom of speech if it involves criticism of homosexuality: 1. Meh, it's one thing to say homosexuality is wrong, but it's another thing to say it's shameful. Saying it's shameful, I think, is fairly equivalent to saying that members of an ethnic group are depraved. I don't think school children need a right to call each other depraved, really for any reason. Nor do I think that's what the First Amendment requires.
Or this one:
As long as it's in school, and it's targeting comments which directly insult other people (which I think this comment does), then I don't see the problem. In this case, there's a reasonable argument that the text of the shirt was "plainly offensive" and could be regulated by the school under Fraser.
I suppose that we could have made the same comment about Cohen v. California (1971), in which the defendant wore a jacket with a four letter word expressing his opinion about the draft. I suppose that the Supreme Court could have suggested that Mr. Cohen "elevate the level of his discourse" in the future, but let Cohen's conviction stand. I suppose that we could make similar requests concerning virtual child pornography--an issue so important that the ACLU went to the Supreme Court over in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002).
Perhaps Mr. Harper would be better off elevating the level of his discourse.
The mistake was Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969). Children are not adults, and there are a lot of situations where children lack the rights of adults. A public school is certainly one of them. The nearly unlimited freedom of speech that an adult enjoys in the public square, if applied to a student in a school, would preclude a teacher from telling little Johnny to stop talking and work on his assignment; prohibit a teacher from asking Melissa to stop talking why the teacher is talking; and prohibit a school from adopting a dress code that banned T-shirts that said, "Every woman is a ho'."
Tinker reflected the strong antiwar sentiments held by liberals at the time, and rather than admit that public schools and students are not equivalent--or even close--to an adult standing in a public park, the Supreme Court decided to create this situation where the First Amendment somewhat applies--but not entirely. Tinker was wrongly decided; if the students wanted to wear black armbands to protest the war in Vietnam, they could just as easily have done that outside of school.
A public school should not have unlimited discretion as to what constitutes a disruptive message. The remarks of some commenters here justifying why this particular T-shirt should not have been allowed are a reminder that many liberals only believe in free speech when they agree with it. Reinhardt's decision--making a distinction based on minority status and oppression--is one of the reasons that I think so little of the organization that Reinhardt sleeps with--they are constantly prepared to twist the law to suit their political ends, with no concern for consistency.
There needs to be either a consistent policy that says, "Nothing controversial or commercial on T-shirts" (and then, a detailed list of what constitutes these categories), or no restrictions at all. If gay students want to wear T-shirts that make them feel good with pro-gay messages, then T-shirts that express disapproval of homosexuality need to be allowed as well--or homosexuals should just admit that they have so little confidence in the strength of their position that they can't tolerate any debate about it.
Spring in the Mountains; Getting Stuck in the Mud
I have updated my previous posting about installation of the wireless internet service with some photographs. The hills are beginning to green up as warmer weather and more sunlight wakes up the chloroplasts in plant cells.
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We are also getting volunteer shoots of grass in the areas where we intend to plant a lawn.
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We had a lovely evening up at the new house, moving some stuff in, and trying to get a router installed because I couldn't figure out how to tell the Linux box to use fixed IP addresses--and the router has a DHCP server in it.
On the way home, my wife decided that she wanted to see the new subdivision that the Loomises are doing up the hill from us. They have requested Boise County Planning Commission authority to divide a 40 acre parcel into two parcels of about 7 and 33 acres. The Loomises have a goat trail up to the new properties, so I figured that there wasn't much problem getting the Equinox up there.
Well, part way up, we came around a corner, and before we knew it, we were in a several day old mudslide. My wife calls it the Piguinox for what happens when she gases it up, but it lived up to its name, and wallowed in the mud. We not only could not back it out, but it took a tow truck about 25 minutes of effort to pull us free.
One of the problems is that some parts of our area have a mud with large amounts of montmorillionite. As a geological report about the problems with the old highway described it, this mud takes serious off-road vehicles and makes them completely inoperable. This stuff is simultaneously sticky (so it doesn't come off the wheels, even when you spin them), soupy (so you can't traction, even with lots of cardboard under the tires), and yet still thick enough that you can't ever sink to something upon which you could get traction. While the rear wheels were on reasonably solid material, the Equinox won't send power to the rear wheels if both of the front wheels are spinning. (I'm sure that there's a good reason for this, but it sure didn't make sense last night.)
We walked down the hill to Summit Ridge Road, and tried to decide which ask to go to ask to call AAA. The closer house has two very aggressive dogs that have actually tried to jump into my Corvette while I was driving down the road--and they were on top of the embankment, growling.
So we walked down the entrance to our subdivision, and knocked on the neighbor we actually have met, who is the police chief (and entire paid police department) of a nearby town. Nice family, and we got to spend some time in a warm house while waiting or the tow truck to arrive.
The tow truck driver's speech became rather....colorful, as he tried to wrestle the Piguinox out of its mud wallow. He managed to remain in good humor in spite of the struggles--the only that prevented a miserable evening from becoming much worse.
UPDATE: Driving down the hill, the Piguinox was shaking up a storm starting at about 50 mph--almost like a tire balance problem, but much, much worse. We cleaned as much of the underbody mud as we could, but it didn't help. On the off chance that something had been mechanically damaged by either the mud or the strain required to pull the Piguinox out of the mud, my wife took it to the dealer.
The dealer rotated the tires (they needed it anyway), and then started removing vast quantities of mud from the drivetrain and underbody. They reported that they removed forty pounds of mud from one wheel alone. Hence the vibration problem. Wheel weights to balance a tire usually a few ounces; imagine having forty pounds of mud in an unbalanced form. They filled up a trash can with mud--apparently, had to bring a rather large party together in the shop with hammers, chisels, screwdrivers, and a powerwash. The Piguinox is now again behaving.
The Fruitcake Stasis Field
If you've read much of Larry Niven's science fiction, you are probably familiar with the "stasis field." A number of Niven's story involve technology invented by a now long-dead alien species called the Slavers. The Slavers are long gone, but some of their inventions have survived--at least partly because one of them is called a "stasis field"--a device that, when activated, causes time to cease elapsing within a particular space--until someone on the outside presses a button that turns the stasis field off.
Now, it has long been known that there must be something rather similar to a Slaver stasis field that explains fruitcakes, as this article demonstrates: Lance Nesta did what many people do when receiving a fruitcake _ he set it aside, only to rediscover it more than 40 years later in his mother's attic. Nesta couldn't resist taking a peek at the cake, still in its original tin and wrapped in paper.
"I was amazed that it hadn't changed at all," he said.
Nesta's two aunts sent him the fruitcake in November 1962 while he was stationed in Alaska with the Army.
"I opened it up and didn't know what to do with it," Nesta said. "I sure wasn't going to eat it, and I liked my fellow soldiers too much to share it with them."
As best he can remember, he packed the cake with the rest of his belongings and shipped it home to Waukesha when he left the military a few years later. He recently rediscovered the boxed fruitcake in the attic of his mother's home in Waukesha.
His mom had given him advance warning of the fruitcake back in 1962.
"She knew I hated the damn things, but she said she didn't have the heart to tell my aunts, who had already mailed it," he said.
The cake arrived wrapped in brown paper with a red "fragile, handle with care" sticker on it. The cake itself was contained in a round blue tin printed with the words "Old Fashioned Fruitcake."
"Now it's just old," Nesta said.
I Wish I Could Get This Problem For A Couple of Weeks
I'm sure it is a serious and expensive problem for this guy--but don't you wish that you could suffer from this for just a little while? A 5-foot-9, 22-year-old man who eats 6,500 calories a day _ two and a half times the average intake for an adult male _ has earned a special reward for breaking the 100-pound mark:
Dinner out from his mom.
"I'm a medical mystery," said Matt Chaffee, who weighed in at 101 pounds on Saturday. "I've accepted it."
Chaffee, who has a 26-inch waist, had several health problems as a newborn. One of them, pyloric stenosis, prevents food from emptying out of the stomach. The condition and ulcers he developed in his esophagus reduced his ability to gain weight.
...
Since turning 18 his goal has been to go over 100 pounds. He achieved that on a diet that included 5,000 calories a day in protein shakes.
"He was so happy," Kelley Chaffee said.
Sandi Birch, a registered dietitian at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, said most of the people she deals with are not trying to put on weight.
When Will The Last Japanese Soldier of World War II Be Found?
There were many Japanese soldiers at the end of World War II who simply refused to believe that Japan had surrendered--and right into the 1970s, there were still Japanese soldiers who had to be persuaded to come in out of the jungle. These were usually in the Philipines and various small Pacific islands--but just when I thought that we had reached the point where no more stories like this could take place, we get this weird news story: TOKYO (Reuters) - A former Japanese World War Two soldier who recently turned up living in Ukraine set foot in his motherland Wednesday for the first time in more than six decades for emotional reunions with surviving relatives.
What do you suppose the chances are that the Soviet Union refused to repatriate this guy, along with a lot of other prisoners of war?
Ishinosuke Uwano, 83, was officially registered as dead by the Japanese government in 2000, as he had not been heard from since 1958 when he was last reported seen on Russia's Sakhalin Island.
It was unclear why and how Uwano, who served in the Japanese Imperial Army on Sakhalin until the war's end in 1945, ended up in Ukraine.
"I have never spoken Japanese for 60 years, and first of all I would like to say to you 'konnichiwa' (good afternoon)," Uwano told reporters in Russian shortly after arriving at Tokyo's Narita international airport.
"I'm looking forward to seeing and talking with my brothers and cousins."
He was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army in 1943 to join other soldiers on Sakhalin Island.
Japanese media said Uwano moved to Ukraine in 1965 and married a Ukrainian woman. Uwano, who has three children, lives in Zhitomyr west of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.
No, This Wasn't In Utah
It reads like some of the polygamous sects in Utah, but it wasn't: SINGAPORE: A Singaporean Muslim man with 10 wives and 64 children was sentenced to 32 years in jail and a caning for raping five of his under-age daughters, court documents showed.
I'm a bit confused by the ten wives. Islam apparently sets the limit at four. I would think that this creep was not only violating secular law by raping his daughters, but Muslim law by having too many wives--and by raping his daughters.
The 45-year-old man, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of his daughters, was sentenced after he pleaded guilty to five charges of rape and admitted to another 34 charges, including rape and attempted aggravated rape.
"The numerous rapes in this case were systematic and sickening," said High Court Judge Tay Yong Kwang in the judgment.
"The mothers of the young girls had somehow been persuaded by the accused that what he was doing was right. That deprived the daughters of one escape route that they could have taken – that of approaching some adults whom they trusted to confide in them their predicament."
I don't why it is, but it seems like an awful lot of men who decide that they need lots wives don't even find that sufficient--and have to go after their daughters.
Wireless Internet Service At The New House
BitSmart Internet Services showed up today. It was a rather longer process than either the installer Pete or myself expected--and it was a reminder that you have to be able to trust your testing tools!
I'll have pictures this evening, but essentially, they put an antenna on the roof pointing to the water tower at Horseshoe Bend High School, where BitSmart's transmitter sits. Then Pete ran CAT5 cable down the side of the house, and did a very nice job of making it not stand out. Then he drilled a hole through the wall into my office, and hooked up the cable.
Then it got interesting. There are eight conductors in a CAT5 cable--some of which BitSmart uses to run power back up to the radio in the antenna. The signal kept going in and out, so Pete put a transmitter test box at the antenna end, and a receiver test box in my office. Conductors 5 and 7 were not conducting. Hmmm. Bad Ethernet connector in the office, maybe? So he replaced that. Still broken.
So Pete went back to the roof, and replaced the Ethernet connector on that end. Conductors 5 and 7 were now working--but conductor 6 (required for transmitting data) was not. We've replaced conductors at both ends--and I suddenly said, "Pete, how sure are you that the test boxes are working?"
Sure enough, when I hooked the test transmitter and receiver together, conductor 6 was never lighting up.
At this point, we went ahead and hooked up a router to the Ethernet connector in my office, and to the Linux box that I have sitting there. The first download I did was from my website, and Firefox claimed that the download was about 60,000 bytes per second. We tried doing a download from another website on Pete's laptop, and it clocked it as 89,000 bytes per second.
BitSmart had promised me 800,000 bits per second, upstream and downstream, so 89,000 bytes per second would be about 712,000 bits per second. Because of overhead in data transmission through the Internet and likely performance bottlenecks at the server providing the download data stream, that 712,000 bits per second is probably the 800,000 bits per second promised.
The other piece of good news is that when Pete checked the SNR (signal to noise ratio), it was far higher than they consider necessary to deliver these sort of data rates--suggesting that bad weather may not cause much degradation in actual data rates delivered.
UPDATE: Some pictures of the blessed event.
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The builder still has some touchup work on the exterior paint, so we'll have him paint over this. (Pete put some silicone sealant on this after I took the picture.)
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How The Bureaucracy Works
There is a tendency in some circles to assume that government works as poorly as it does because government workers are lazy or stupid. I wish it were that simple--you could solve the problem by hiring industrious and intelligent workers. My friend Dave Hardy has a sad and amusing memoir of working as an attorney for the Department of the Interior. It is worth reading in full, but here's a taste to get you interested: When people wrote in to the Secretary, he never saw it. The mail room skimmed everything off and sent it to the office they thought handled it. The office (i.e., if you were complaining, the people you complained about) then wrote a letter for the Secretary and it went up the chain of command. In every case I can recall, he signed it -- being quite busy, and knowing only that everyone below him, who knew more of it than he did, said this was what happened.
You were in little risk of getting dinged for giving stupid advice, but were always dinged if there was a typo. If you had typos in more than 10% of documents, it cost you at evaluation. The typists were making typos constantly, but you were held accountable. You'd make corrections, and they'd make new typos. Many attorneys read their documents with a ruler on them, carefully going down one line at a time and concentrating on each word. Try that with a 20-30 litigation report... one typo and you'll be dinged. It took 2-3 days to get a one page document together on average (only late in my time did individual attys have their own computers and word processors. I once had an emergency matter bounced back because on page two I had said "indian tribe" when protocol was "Indian tribe." Another document get bounced back because it had one space between the period ending one sentence and the first letter of the next and the Govt Style Manual said use two spaces. Then when you were done the document was set up in a package (including seven copies for various files. If you were smart you made one for yourself, since nobody could ever find documents in those files. If anyone above you made a change or caught a typo, start the process again, make seven more copies....
We worked as hard as anyone else, no laziness there. But the bureaucracy was such that we were lucky to get done in a week what one energetic person could do in a day.
What's Driving This Insane Housing Market?
Interest rates, obviously, were driving the housing market. But even as interest rates rise, the Boise housing market remains surprisingly hot. (Some other areas of the country that were insanely overheated have since cooled off.) I found an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that explains that there was (and is) more going on than just low interest rates and "irrational exuberance": The annual number of second homes purchased in the United States doubled between 2000 and 2004, according to new research. The boom is being driven in part by demographics -- mainly a flood tide of equity-laden Baby Boomers -- and in part by a largely unexpected ricochet effect of tax law changes in the late 1990s.
Now, according to Chung, some of this was being driven by a desire to get a better return in real estate than was available in the stock market after the market slumped in April of 2000--but that was only part of it, and even though the stock market has recovered, there's still a lot of second home buying going on--and in rather specific places:
The latter factor was explained by Keunwon Chung, a statistical economist at the National Association of Realtors, who recently studied a vast pool of federal data on hundreds of thousands of second-home mortgage closings.
When Congress amended the federal tax code in 1997 to permit up to $500,000 (for married couples) and $250,000 (for singles) of gain on the sale of a primary home to be spared from taxation, observed Chung, "homeowners did not have to buy expensive (replacement) homes anymore."
Under prior law, the only way to avoid capital gains taxes was to "roll over" sales gains to progressively larger and costlier homes. The amended tax code, by contrast, allows primary home sellers to buy "a smaller, less expensive primary (replacement) residence," while using a portion of the $500,000 or $250,000 tax-sheltered gain to buy or make a down payment on a second home -- for use either as a recreational property or as an investment vehicle.
For example, a married couple pocketing $500,000 tax-free from the sale of their longtime family home might use part of the proceeds to downsize into a condominium unit in the center city, and then use the balance to purchase a vacation retreat an hour or two away.
Call it the downsize-and-add-a-second-home strategy -- sort of a real estate billiards shot propelled by tax-free money. Whatever you call it, Chung's study suggests that the trend is hot, and likely to stay that way for years.
According to Chung, second homes represented just 8.6 percent of all residential mortgages, 405,000 individual purchases nationwide, that were closed in 2000. By 2004, the number of second-home purchasers had more than doubled to 881,000 and the market share had increased to 14.2 percent.
Who's selling and buying? Primarily Baby Boomers, according to Chung, and especially Boomers with above-average incomes. Whereas the average household purchasing a primary home in 2004 had an annual income of around $61,000, the average second-home buyer had an income of about $102,000, nearly 70 percent higher.Where are Boomers and others investing their second-home dollars? Chung's study found that a dozen states have attracted exceptionally high rates of purchases and cumulative growth during the past four years, whether for recreational use or investment.
Chung also thinks that this is going to continue a bit longer:
In Hawaii, nearly 1 of every 3 purchases made between 2000 and 2004 was for a second- home getaway or investment unit. In Florida, the ratio was nearly 1 in 5. Arizona (18 percent) and Nevada (17 percent) also saw significant activity, as did other prime recreational getaway states such as Idaho (13 percent), New Mexico (12 percent) and Utah (10 percent).
The District of Columbia -- where 1 of 10 home mortgage closings between 2000 and 2004 was for a second home, almost certainly in the form of rental condos or townhouse units -- was a surprise contender on the national list. The number of such units financed in Washington grew by a stunning 187 percent during the four-year period studied by Chung. How long can the second-home boom continue? Chung says as long as "Boomers are still in their peak earning years and they can afford some homes for vacation purposes or investment" -- at least another decade -- they will "continue to drive housing markets," especially for second-home units.
Jamaica: Through The Looking Class Politics
Dave Hardy over at Arms And The Law pointed me to this article about the bizarre upside politics of gun control in Jamaica: The controversial call by Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) senator, Prudence Kidd-Deans for the arming of the society in the face of the prevailing high murder rate, has not found favour with the Jamaica Rifle Association (JRA), popularly known as the gun club.
Senator Kidd-Deans makes an argument that sounds like a position that I would make, or that the NRA would argue:
"First of all, it's not a right of every Jamaican to bear arms, like in the United States where their constitution states so explicitly," said Andrew Chin, acting president of the JRA. "There must be strict conditionalities. In some cases it can put the person at more risk."Chin is also a member of the recently established Firearm Licensing Authority that has replaced police commanders as the persons responsible for granting gun licences.
And it gets weirder and weirder, with a former police commissioner agreeing that there needs to be fewer restrictions on gun ownership, and the spokesman for the Jamaica Rifle Association making classic gun control arguments:
"In certain areas, if you have a gun you become a target," Chin cautioned. "I would like to think that you would want more people having firearm licences, but I wouldn't go as far as to say make it easier. What you want is to level the playing field so that those who qualify can get access," he said.
The JRA has a membership of between 800 and 1,000 persons, but estimates of licensed firearm holders in Jamaica range from 28,000 to 30,000. Figures on illegal firearm holders are, not unexpectedly, harder to come by.
Kidd-Deans set off the controversy when she argued in the Senate recently that all members of the public who qualified for firearm licences, and who wanted and could afford the weapons, should have easier access to them. She also called for the removal of bureaucratic impediments to granting gun licences.
The senator was willing to take a guess that 75 per cent of Jamaica's legislators on both sides of the political divide were licensed firearm holders, and she noted that those who qualified were provided with security personnel, in contrast with other Jamaicans who "must abide by the rules of the state and, at the same time, tremble with fear at the possibility of the gunman's bullet".
MacMillan. placing more guns in the hands of responsible citizens will deter crimes
"Every level of bureaucracy should be removed to facilitate the application of every decent, law-abiding Jamaican who has applied, and who fit the criteria for a firearm licence (and that such a person) be granted one unhesitatingly and expeditiously (so) that such a person can become a front-line soldier in his or her defence," Kidd-Deans told the Senate.
She afterwards told the Sunday Observer in an interview that criminals would at least be forced to think twice before pouncing on people if they thought there was a chance that they would fire back.But Chin, who has owned a firearm for some 20 years, saying he had only used it in practice, insisted that more guns might not be the solution to the country's crime problem. Furthermore, he pointed to a lack of quantifiable evidence or data to show that owning a gun actually made one safer.
Do cats chase dogs in Jamaica? Do horses ride men in Jamaica? This is just mind boggling in its strangeness.
"There's no 'yes and no' statistics," he said. "We don't know, for example, how many licensed guns have been lost, how many licensed firearms have figured in foiling robberies or other crimes, nothing tangible. We need to study it carefully."
He said that in his experience, some individuals tended to undergo a personality change once the gun was in their hands.
"Some people get an itch to use it once they have it. They feel invincible and sometimes it makes them more confrontational because the gun is the great equaliser," he observed.
Chin also noted the effect of having an illegal gun on groups such as inner-city youths among whom the outlook was "once I have a gun I have power of earning".
"Guns are not the solution to Jamaica's crime problem," Chin said. "Better education and social programmes will have a more positive effect."
