When the City of Seattle passed a tax on all sales of guns and ammunition, the measure was hailed as a way to defray the rising costs of gun violence.
But since the tax took effect, those costs have only risen as gun violence in the city has surged. And the tax has apparently brought in much less than city leaders projected it would.
"How much data do you need?" asked Dave Workman, senior editor of TheGunMag.com and member of the Second Amendment Foundation. "The data says the law has failed to prevent what they promised it would prevent." More at link
Posted by: Seeking cure for ignorance ||
06/16/2017 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/16/2017 7:24 Comments ||
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#3
It's all about flashing their social virtue. Never about solving problems because in the end, that would require really messy and sometimes stomach turning results.
#4
When they say it was "unexpected", they're saying they're idiots. So, either they're idiots, or they did what they did expecting what happened but prefer to be known as "idiots".
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
06/16/2017 8:38 Comments ||
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#5
Are these politicians idiots? Perhaps. Are they liars? Of course. This is what government regulation (at all levels) has become. At least give them credit for pretending the revenue is funding a good cause. They could've been straight up and just said...'We're gonna tax your gun selling asses right the hell out of our city.
#6
and hot onthe heels of this wildly successful program comes a "soda tax" of 1.75 cent per ounce on the syrup used to make it. but not on the syrups used in starbux and other flavored drinks.
expect to see a massive calloff in general tax revenue as more seattleites take more shopping out of town.
but no pity: they keep voting these bozos in.
and these bozos give clowns a bad name
#7
since the tax took effect, those costs have only risen as gun violence in the city has surged.
The objective was to reduce the sale of firearms. That's been accomplished. The violence is an 'unfortunate side effect' and (currently) restricted to the less-desirable parts of the population.
#8
While Seattle is a fairly large city, you don't have to travel far to get out of Seattle. Anyone who wants to purchase guns and ammo can just drive across the city line and buy them.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/16/2017 10:59 Comments ||
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[The Hill] Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday offered to give political asylum to former FBI Director James Comey, poking at tensions between Comey and President Trump.
"If Comey will be under the threat of political persecution, we are ready to accept him here," Putin said at a press conference, according to Russian state media outlet TASS.
Comey testified last week that Trump pressured him to "let go" of the FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn before Trump fired him. Comey acknowledged leaking his personal memos about his conversations with Trump to the media, which the White House has seized on to attack the former FBI head's credibility.
Putin compared Comey's decision to leak details of conversations with Trump to the actions of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker who was granted asylum by Russia.
"This is strange. How then is the director of the FBI any different from Snowden? He is not a head of the special services, but a human rights activist," Putin said.
The U.S. intelligence community concluded last year that Russia interfered in the presidential election specifically to help Trump win. The Justice Department, the FBI and the Senate and House Intelligence committees are all investigating Russian meddling int he 2016 presidential election as well as potential links between Trump's campaign and the Kremlin.
Putin has denied any interference in the U.S. election.
#1
I'm trying to figure out how Trump arranged this, and how he will benefit. Maybe he's trying to discredit Comey with the 'Eddie Snowden paintbrush'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/16/2017 7:55 Comments ||
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#2
Looks like the work of Mike Flynn and Sergey Kislyak. If Comey turns down the offer, Flynn's money is totally refunded. Comey is negotiating a separate 'sign on' bonus with Kislyak. We should know something very soon. Putin is reportedly ambivalent, claims Comey is a небрежный лжец (sloppy story teller).
[The Hill] Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) said President Trump is "partially" to blame for the hostility in the nation that led to the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and others at a congressional baseball practice.
"I would argue the president has unleashed, partially, again not in anyway totally, but partially to blame for the demons that have been unleashed," Sanford said Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
He referenced Trump's remarks during the campaign that he'd like to punch a protester in the face, saying the comments were "bizarre" and "we’ve ought to call it as such."
"They’ll say, ’If the guy at the top can say anything to anybody any time, why can’t I?' " Sanford said.
He said he believes many on Capitol Hill are taking the time for some "heavy soul-searching" after Wednesday's shooting, which left Scalise in critical condition and four others injured.
#3
Perhaps Rep. Sanford should spare himself any further embarrassment from the President and simply resign from the congress. The quiet life and Gullah pace of low country plantation living would probably agree with him much more.
#4
Trump supporters were being brutally attacked on the street long before Trump told someone to pinch the guy. Fighting back was what stopped the attacks at Berkeley when the police did nothing. Leadership.
#5
His website requires a zip code plus four to keep out all the riff-raff, leaving us with a letter of phone call to express one's own opinion:
Congressman Mark Stanford
2211 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-4001.
Phone: (202) 225-3176
Please try not to unleash any more demons.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/16/2017 8:07 Comments ||
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#6
He referenced Trump's remarks during the campaign that he'd like to punch a protester in the face, saying the comments were “bizarre” and “we’ve ought to call it as such.”
Rep. Sanford, there is a great difference between saying something and actually doing it.
#8
The complete moral cowardness of these idiots is staggering. I swear, they would praise Hitler if it mean they might look better for the enemy press.
#13
This guy Sanford is a tool of the Old Boy network that tried to slime Nikki Haley when she was running for Gov of SC and if still fighting to keep a grip on power and preserve the slimeball old way of doing things. This is the face of the GOP establishment in SC.
It seems he was elected to the House of Representatives in 2013 by beating the terribly unserious sister of liberal "comedian" Steven Colbert. And also that while a dreadful husband and ex-husband, he is a good libertarian Republican politician with solid endorsements.
#20
1. Find out his official mailing address.
2. Find an opponent to primary him out of the next election.
3. Write a check to his opponent's campaign.
4. Xerox check.
5. Send check to opponent.
6. Mark out account number and signature on check, but leave bank number and logo visible.
7. Send xerox to Mark Sanford's re-election campaign.
[Family Research Council] There may be privates in the Army, but there's no privacy. That may be the biggest takeaway from the mandatory "transgender soldiers training," which took place on bases across the country Tuesday. In a major break from precedent, the military's largest branch is warning female soldiers to expect biological men in their showers. That's just one of the mind-blowing changes the Army is bracing for on July 1st, along with "male pregnancies" and taxpayer-funded gender reassignment. Unfortunately, this will be the new normal for the U.S. military until the Trump administration steps in and frees the Pentagon from the grip of the Obama years.
As most service members will tell you, Obama's radicalism didn't end when his term did. The social extremism that characterized the last eight years still haunts the Defense Department at a time when the military can least afford it. With ISIS torching its way across the Middle East, our troops shouldn't be torn between its role securing America and securing the Left's radical social agenda. The administration needs to decide: does it want an army of cultural guinea pigs or a lethal force defending America? Because the latest crises prove that our military can't -- and shouldn't have to -- do both. Unfortunately there is much more at the link.
[NYPost] Just a week after the US Senate failed to stop the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran launched a major cyberattack on the State Department -- and the Obama administration kept it secret.
The Washington Free Beacon broke the story last week, revealing that Team Obama was even more craven than we’d thought.
The two sides were then still negotiating the "side deals" to finalize the accord; it wasn’t too late to stop it. And the attack showed that Iran wouldn’t remotely begin to moderate its ways, as the Obamaites had hoped.
Indeed, the hacking seemed to target the State personnel involved in those negotiations -- the better to wring a last few concessions, no doubt.
It’s obvious why Iran thought it could get away with it: Washington had proved willing to cede every point in order to reach a deal.
President Trump has yet to junk the deal, and understandably so: President Barack Obama gave away so much up front (billions in cash as well as hundreds of billions in sanctions relief) that America may be better off trying to make the rest of it stick.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Obama’s chief foreign-policy achievement was in fact a shameful defeat for the nation and the world.
[American Thinker] The New York Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar has once again thrust the works of William Shakespeare into the headlines. The current iteration features a Donald Trump look-a-like in the title role of a modern-day Julius Caesar who is brutally assassinated in the opening scene of Act III. The overt political message is not subtle. Other than being a head of state there is little or no similarity between Shakespeare’s depiction of the last days of Julius Caesar and the life and career of Donald Trump. However, there is another player on the national scene whose career does appear to perhaps mirror a number of Shakespearean characters who rose and ultimately fell as a result of their overriding ambition. That person is James Comey.
Shakespeare was influenced by the writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, whose seminal work, The Prince (1532), laid out his ideas on how the prince of a country could achieve power and, more importantly, retain it, utilizing devious and at times evil means if necessary. These underlying principles would apply not just to princes but to political schemers out to solidify their own positions within a ruling hierarchy.
While not directly comparing James Comey with any of English literature’s most notorious villains, there appears to be some very striking similarities insofar as a single-minded pursuit of power and influence.
Early in his career James Comey was never shy in prosecuting high profile cases in order to burnish his reputation. His determination to achieve a conviction, however specious, and at any cost would have made Javert of Les Miserables proud.
#1
Comey, another f&^king narcissist. There were a large number of them in the previous admin. starting at the top. They were all about themselves and what they could get and few were about America.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
