I'm Back

      I know I have been gone for a long time and for that please accept my most sincere apologizes. A few of the reasons why I have been away for so long is I recently decided to leave my job of 16 years and I have been placing most of my energy in finishing up my master’s degree, and developing new skill sets.

But boy have I missed a lot of things in the news lately; we missed the entire fiasco with the government shutdown. Did the Repubs, and the TEA Party shut down the government or was it due to the fact that the President refused to negotiate on any of his policies.  We are now having record cold snaps here in the United States and I know that this has renewed the talk of global warming and that no matter how cold it is it is because the earth is warming by man made carbon usage, this is one topic that I do not want to get into on this blog.

I chose today to come back, and I have been debating it for a very long time, I needed to find a good point in which to come back. The State of the Union seems to me to be the most logical spot to start writing again; a new political year and a new year on the blog.

Things that I am looking for tonight:

1.     Will the president tout the withdraw of troops from Afghanistan as a victory or is he just sticking with his own timeline. Are we abandoning the citizens of Afghanistan and improving the conditions for the Taliban to take back control of the country? How is the state of the female in Afghanistan?

2.     As we have seen in the last few weeks, there is going to be a big push to talk about income inequality and how everyone should all get the same results from the same amount of efforts. This is what he calls “leveling the playing filed.”

3.     The third big issue he will cover is his actions that he took today, because that is the only reason he would sign and executive order on the day of the SOTU, the raising of the federal minimum wage for federal employees. I believe he will try to explain why he took this action and blaming it on the Republicans in the House. ( I will have much more to say about this in the future.)

So please watch and enjoy the SOTU address and it will surely bring about many new topics of discussion for the year to come.

Confiscation Coming to a California City Near You.

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California governor Jerry Brown signed a new law yesterday that “aims” to help protect the people of California. According to LA Times writer Patrick McGreevy, SB 140 is designed to help the state remove guns from the homes of people who have committed felonies, have been deemed mentally unstable, and/or some one who has a restraining order issued against them. The weapons in question are not weapons that the person may have obtained illegally but are weapons that were purchased and properly registered before the crime was committed, or the person was deemed to be a harm to himself or others.

On the surface I really don’t have any problems with this law, the state is taking a proactive stance on removing weapons from people who are not legally allowed to own them. The Supreme Court has in the past confirmed the rights of the state to prevent the mentally ill person or the felon from purchasing or owning firearms. So California exercising this right seems perfectly reasonably.

I do have several problems with this bill however, first is how the bill is to be funded. 24 million dollars will be taken from the background check fees of people who are purchasing a new weapon. The attorney general has been authorized to raise the background check fee by 10% to help raise the money required to fund this bill. In short, law abiding gun owners will carry the sole burden of funding SB 140.  This small portion of the population is now responsible to protect all of California. In my opinion this is just one more tax on the purchase of firearms. The funding of SB 140 should have been from the General Fund that all taxpayers pay into. If we add 10% here and 10% there to the background fee or five cents here and there on ammo then gun ownership will eventually get to a point of being cost prohibitive. 

My second concern is the mental illness restriction, currently the mental illness section only covers persons who have been institutionalized or have been found not guilty by reason of insanity to a crime, not to mention there is also a section that allows a person to get his gun owning rights back by petitioning the courts. Even the most pro gun person would certainly have to agree that this is not too unreasonable.  Where my concern comes to play is what happens when the mental health section is changed, will PTSD, ADHD, ADD, and the myriad of anti-social disorders be included in the “harm to self or others” category.

Again, while I agree with most of the bill, I have a hard time believing that this is not the first in a series of laws making gun ownership more and more difficult. We are raising the overall cost of guns. What happens when the word household is added to the mental illness restriction, now you are denied owning a gun because someone else may have been mentally ill?

Justice or Vengeance

This Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman issue gets more ridiculous by the day.
 
The story as I know it is this, Zimmerman followed Martin ,who was on his way to the store, because he fit the profile of kids that have been conducting illegal activities in the neighborhood (young and black, yes there was some profiling involved). There was a confrontation, my guess is that Zimmerman started the confrontation, at some point the verbal confrontation turned into a fight where Martin got the upper hand and was on top of Zimmerman beating him. At this point, Zimmerman pulled his weapon and shot Martin. A very tragic and all together preventable ending to a young life.

There was an initial investigation where Zimmerman was cleared of all charges by the local police force. This is when the media got involved,(my guess is because it was good for ratings) and a national outrage caused a second investigation that quickly turned in a charge of second degree murder. Leaders of the black community have taken a tragic event and have used it to divide the country along racial lines, again. 20 years after the Rodney King verdict and the LA riots, leaders of the black community are stoking the fires of racism yet again. Enter AL Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and the New Black Panther Party.

The New Black Panthers have put a bounty on Zimmerman worth $10,000. (I want to ask the DOJ where this investigation is at?) A simple search on Twitter shows how many people are bent on getting revenge not on getting justice. @YunSav919 posted “FUCK GEORGE ZIMMERMAN!!! SOMEBODY BOUND TO MURK THAT ASS CUHH,” I’m not up on the twitter slang but I’m pretty sure this is not an invitation to dinner. @thekenmarigroup posted “Twitter lynch mob: George Zimmerman is out on bail? Let’s kill him…”, @KushAndCharlie posted, “Imma Kill George Zimmerman Bruh.. And See How His FaMily like It. #Tizzle”, and @Its_Trenee_o07 posted “So If I Go Kill George Zimmerman & Say he Attacked Me I Only fet About 4 Days Of Jail..?? Welp Whoo Tryna Go To Florida Eith Mee..??” Some of this I would imagine is hyperbole but there have already been revenge attacks and there will be more with people inciting this type of hate and violence.

Hate, not justice, is the overwhelming response to George Zimmerman getting out on bail. Someone getting out on bail on a second-degree murder charge in not an uncommon event at all and it is not just because he shot a black guy. It is part of the system get over it.

My biggest problem is that the public forced the hand of the investigators to file charges. What do people really believe the outcome is going to be? Will Zimmerman get a fair trial or will it will be another Casey Anthony verdict, not guilty because of lack of evidence and a prosecutor over charging. Then will there be another LA Riot?

Don’t get me wrong if Zimmerman acted recklessly, and it can be proved in court, he needs to be punished and punished at the max extent of the law. However, so do the people who are putting up bounties and threatening to kill him. Assault, murder for hire, and inciting riots are serious charges and people who commit these crimes should be charged.

We as a nation should be worried about Justice and not Vengeance.