Category: economics

Smith & Wesson NEARLY did the right thing

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, firearms, government, product complaints1 Comment

In the late ’90s, Smith & Wesson was facing a major lawsuit filed by cities and states that blamed the company for rampant gun violence. The company stood to lose millions.

So in 2000, under pressure from the Clinton administration, Smith & Wesson’s chief executive, Ed Schultz, made a fateful decision — and raised the ire of the powerful National Rifle Association and its supporters. …

Click PLAY or see what happened next on YouTube.


 

On 11 May 2001, Saf-T-Hammer Corporation acquired Smith & Wesson Corp. from Tomkins plc for US$15 million, a fraction of the US$112 million originally paid by Tomkins. Saf-T-Hammer assumed US$30 million in debt, bringing the total purchase price to US$45 million …

In December 2014, Smith & Wesson Holding announced it was paying $130.5 million for Battenfeld Technologies, a Columbia, Missouri-based designer and distributor of hunting and shooting accessories. The company made the acquisition with the eventual intent to merge all its existing Smith & Wesson, M&P and Thompson Center Arms accessories into a single division

wikipedia

NRA’s Wayne LaPierre – CHICKENS are coming for your guns!!!

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, firearms, GOP USA, government, things getting worse5 Comments

Wayne LaPierre is an extremist.

I’m pissed when he says things like this:

We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping-mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all. …

He lies. He exaggerates. 

He lies exaggerates I assume, to help increase sales of firearms. He exaggerates for money.

I can’t imagine any other reason to overstate the way he does.

Wayne LaPierre

LaPierre’s central message: Owning a gun is the solution. The world is a scary place. There are bad guys everywhere threatening you and your family, and the only thing they’re afraid of is a gun in your hands.

Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women) believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public’s confidence in firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners. …

The Myth of the Good Guy With a Gun

Politico – The Myth Behind Defensive Gun Ownership

The NRA is wrong: Owning a gun is far more likely to harm you than protect you.

I agree with LaPierre on a couple of things. He supports:

• Increasing funds for a stricter and more efficient mental health system, and reform of civil commitment laws to facilitate institutionalization of the mentally ill when necessary.

• Creating a computerized universal mental health registry of those adjudicated to be incompetent to help limit gun sales to the mentally ill.

It’s deflection, I’m assuming. Taking those positions makes no sense relative to his other positions.

He’s totally against the government regulating firearms, even though they are dangerous. (More Americans American children and youth are now killed by weapons than motor vehicle accidents.) … But totally for the government regulating mental health. Because the mentally ill are dangerous. 🙂

related

• Two Decades of Paranoid Pronouncements by the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre

• Gun Deaths Versus Car Deaths

• American Gun Deaths to Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 2015

Citizens United should be overruled

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, product complaints, things getting worseLeave a comment

Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays … far from what our democracy is supposed to be. …

New Republic

Ginsburg

Citizens United was a terrible ruling. Most people asked to think about the issue for 10 seconds conclude that it’s a bad idea.

An ABC–Washington Post poll conducted February 4–8, 2010, showed that 80% of those surveyed opposed (and 65% strongly opposed) the Citizens United ruling, which the poll described as saying “corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections“.

Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission_Poll_1

wikipedia – criticisms of Citizen’s United

So why do so many politicians, especially Republicans, support Citizens United?

Because they can only get elected with money handed them by corporate lobbyists.

I don’t see how U.S. politicians can get out of this trap. They must sell their souls to corporations in order to get elected. 😦

Presidents Koch are pissed

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, things getting worseLeave a comment

David and Charles Koch are pissed. They orchestrated the spending of a lot of money to influence the American government. Yet Romney lost.

charles_and_david_koch-620x412

Americans for Prosperity, the most prominent arm of the Koch brothers’ organization, put Republican lawmakers on notice …

Tim Phillips, president of AFP, said at a Washington press conference that congressional Republicans “failed miserably” a decade ago, especially on cutting the federal budget. “They’ve been given a second chance by the American people,” he said, “and we’re going to hold them accountable. …

NPR – Conservative Koch Brothers’ Group Puts Congressional GOP On Notice

The Presidents Koch agenda covers three areas:

1. taxes including repeal of the estate or death tax

2. energy headlined by a call to build the Keystone XL pipeline

3. health care, which includes repealing the Affordable Care Act

I’m slightly in favour of Keystone. But I’m against unelected rich guys having so much influence on legislation. In backrooms I have no doubt they discuss which politicians can be bought. And which are a bad investment.

That’s what the term “accountable” means. 😦

The Koch brothers invested $400 million because they expected to get far more than $400 million back. You cannot trust them.

___

The Koch’s “labyrinthine network of political groups — none of which reveal the names of their donors — showed that the coalition raised more than $400 million during the 2012 election.”

Utah reduced homelessness by 72%

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, good news, government, product endorsements, things getting betterLeave a comment

If you’ve traveled around the States, you know that homelessness is conspicuous in the richest nation of the World.

That’s always surprised me.

But Utah’s turned that around in a surprising way.

Republican State Gives Free Houses to Moochers, Cuts Homelessness by 74 Percent

The state is giving homeless people homes. It’s a solution that might sound too simple, but it’s working. The program, called “Housing First”, has origins in New York. Utah started its own pilot of the program in 2005 with 17 people. The state took them off the street and put them into housing for twenty-two months. After the state saw that all 17 people remained housed and stable during that time, the project was expanded. …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

VIDEO: Utah Gives Homes To The Homeless As Arctic Temperatures Bring Suffering

Housing First, which is distinct and separate from “rapid re-housing”, is a relatively recent innovation in human service programs and social policy regarding treatment of the homeless and is an alternative to a system of emergency shelter/transitional housing progressions.

Rather than moving homeless individuals through different “levels” of housing, known as the Continuum of Care, whereby each level moves them closer to “independent housing” (for example: from the streets to a public shelter, and from a public shelter to a transitional housing program, and from there to their own apartment in the community) Housing First moves the homeless individual or household immediately from the streets or homeless shelters into their own apartments.

Housing First approaches are based on the concept that a homeless individual or household’s first and primary need is to obtain stable housing, and that other issues that may affect the household can and should be addressed once housing is obtained. …

Thanks Dean.

terrorism rarely works

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, government, Islam, things getting worseLeave a comment

The right wing media in 2015 is demonizing all Muslims. Rupert #RupertsFault Murdoch, FOX News boss, for example.

It reminds me of the days when Americans demonized the Ruskies. All Russians were evil in the 1970s, you may recall. But I was a gymnast. Russian gymnasts and coaches were my heroes.

Today Muslims are the Ruskies. A few fanatics were furious with a French satirical paper. And lashed out.

How did that work out for the terrorist cause?

Huge demand for new Charlie Hebdo edition one week after attack

Here’s the cover of the next edition.

cover

I’d never heard of Charlie Hebdo. Now almost everyone has heard of the stupid publication. 😦

Muslims around the world are worse off, not better.

the world IS getting better

On By Rick McIn climate change, economics, education, ethics, firearms, food, good news, government, happiness, health & fitness, internet, things getting betterLeave a comment

More people are going to school for longer

Access to the internet is increasing

Solar power is getting cheaper

Beer consumption going up ??? 🙂

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

details on vox

(via Bill Gates)

why the USA must QUIT the Middle East

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, Islam, things getting worseLeave a comment

President Barack Obama said on Sunday the longest war in American history was coming to a responsible conclusion.

Obama was welcoming the end of US combat operations in Afghanistan, which was marked with a ceremony in Kabul. …

Obama honored the more than 2,200 Americans who have died in Afghanistan since the war started 13 years ago. Obama said those years had tested the US and its military. From a peak 140,000 troops in 2010, the US and Nato plan to leave just 13,500 behind. …

Obama heralds formal end of war in Afghanistan after 13 years

The Taliban immediately declared they’d ‘defeated’ Nato:

A Taliban statement said the US-led force had “rolled up its flag” without having achieved “anything substantial”. …

Like every other Afghan invader, the costs NATO paid far outweighed anything gained. 😦

Afghanis must decide their own fate.
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On December 12th, 2013 a wedding convoy, outside the town of Radda in the al-Baydah province of Yemen, was struck by a US drone.

Following the attack, Yemeni officials claimed that around ‘14 innocent civilians were killed, 22 injured and 9 were in critical condition.’

According to the US government, the attack had intended to strike a known AQ militant Shawqi Ali Ahmad al Badani. The US government denied the deaths of civilians, claiming that they had killed militants associated with al Badani.

3. The Wedding Convoy – Yemeni

drone strike

The U.S. government lied, as they do often.

Most of those killed were innocent.

This is an example of why so many people distrust and fear the U.S. military overseas. This is an example of an incident which inspires and motivates terrorists. Ultimately making the USA and the world less safe.

If the U.S., which claims the strike was clean and justified, didn’t pony up the $800,000 in cash and guns as reparations, then who did?

Nothing Says “Sorry Our Drones Hit Your Wedding Party” Like $800,000 And Some Guns

Update Dec 2014 – The Unspoken Truth Of The US War Against Terrorism in Yemen

Officially, the money awarded in Yemen came from the Yemeni government. But the human rights group Reprieve says the funds must have come from Washington …

Families of Victims of One Drone Strike in Yemen Paid more than an Entire Year’s Worth of Victims in Afghanistan

Africa – Heart of Darkness

On By Rick McIn bad news, books, economics, education, ethics, governmentLeave a comment

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a short novel (1899) about Charles Marlow’s life as an ivory transporter down the Congo …

The story is a complex exploration of the attitudes people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized society and the attitudes on colonialism and racism that were part and parcel of European imperialism …

Joseph Conrad acknowledged that Heart of Darkness was in part based on his own experiences during his travels in Africa. In 1890, at the age of 31, he was appointed by a Belgian trading company to serve as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River. …

He reportedly became disillusioned with Imperialism, after witnessing the cruelty and corruption perpetrated by the European companies in the area. …

heartofdarkness

Leopold II (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909), second King of the Belgians, was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 2 to 15 million Congolese. Yet very few remember him as one of the worst mass killers all time.

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
– Joseph Stalin

In 2014 Africans are quick to blame European imperialists for … everything.

Yet in 2014 if you see something of QUALITY in sub-Saharan Africa, you assume some foreigner is involved. Africans have been – in the main – very unsuccessful in moving themselves from tribal cultures to modern societies.

Long term, I’m not optimistic for Africa. Despite tremendous economic opportunities.

For example – Bill Gates – Can the Asian Miracle Happen in Africa?

To move forward, Africa needs clean drinking water, education of girls and good leadership.

Will that happen?

In nations like Congo Brazzaville, the richest Africans move money out of the country faster than foreign aid comes in. They steal as much as they can, moving their families to Paris or London.

With African leadership like this, what future for Congo?

Corruption is killing African potential.

The most corrupt nations in the world 2014:

Somalia
North Korea
Sudan
Afghanistan
South Sudan
Iraq
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Libya
Eritrea

One bright spot, I hear, is Rwanda. A British woman living there told me the nation is moving forward rapidly. Internet is faster than in London.

If another dozen nations make progress like Rwanda, over the next ten years, then there is hope. Those nations will thrive, draw business investment. Forcing the corrupt, less efficient nations to compete.

In the end, it’s competition that improves the world.
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related – The 10 least corrupt countries in the world:

Denmark
New Zealand
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Switzerland
Singapore
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Canada

on Obamacare …

On By Rick McIn economics, good news, government, health & fitnessLeave a comment

Here’s the good news.

Number of Uninsured Americans Near Historic Low

Just 11.3 percent of Americans were uninsured in the second quarter …

But that progress has come at great cost. Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the co-authors of the Affordable Care Act, now thinks Democrats may have been better off not passing it at all and holding out for a better bill.

ObamaCare2_2

It’s a mixed legacy.