H219: Idaho House Committee

I was listening to Kevin Miller's program on 580 KIDO this morning.  He had a couple members of the lower house on the program.  Rep. Hartgen is one of the sponsors of H219, a bill that criminalizes enforcement of any new federal gun control law, and prohibits state or local law enforcement from such enforcement.  There is a hearing tomorrow morning (9:00 AM, I gather) in the House State Affairs Committee; I gather that he wants us to fill the meeting room to show support for the bill.

I called into the program on my way to work and explained that this isn't crazy, nor is it nullification.  The U.S. Supreme Court in Printz v. U.S. (1997) held that the Tenth Amendment means that state and local officials are not obligated to enforce federal law:

We adhere to that principle today, and conclude categorically, as we concluded categorically in New York: "The Federal Government may not compel the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program." Id., at 188. The mandatory obligation imposed on CLEOs to perform background checks on prospective handgun purchasers plainly runs afoul of that rule.

Letter to Senators Risch & Crapo of Idaho

If you live in another state, you might want to adapt this material for use on your U.S. Senators.

Dear Senator Crapo:

Once again, Democrats are intent on gun control, because the alternative is to look at the root cause of these random acts of mass murder: the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, starting in the 1960s and 1970s.

Senator Feinstein's assault weapons and high capacity magazine ban is doomed to failure, for the same reason that the 1994 federal ban failed: the banned weapons are functionally equivalent to many protected weapons, and the size of the magazine doesn't much matter when the killer is shooting at unarmed victims.  This bill is a waste of time.

The national background check requirement is not as obviously wrong, but it still suffers from a fundamental set of problems.  One is that many states (including Idaho) are not turning over involuntary mental health commitment records to the national background check system.  We have read that 14 states have filed less than five such records in the entire twenty years that the national background check system has existed.

Secondly, because many people with serious mental illness problems are never involuntarily committed, even if states were filing these records, the effect would be seriously compromised.  The core problem involves mentally ill people in need of treatment.

Thirdly, during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings yesterday, both a police chief and U.S. Attorney arguing for the national background check requirement admitted that they put NO effort into prosecuting people who lie on gun purchase applications.  Why should we expect any more effort to be made on private party transfers done without a background check?  What's the point of such a law?

If necessary for political purposes, allow the current background check system to be available to private parties.  We suspect that the vast majority of law-abiding citizens would be happy to take advantage of it -- and the ones who would not be willing to do so, are likely as not going to break the new law anyway -- and they won't be prosecuted.

Remember what the Brady Law and the 1994 federal assault weapons ban did for the Democrats: it caused them to lose control of both houses of Congress.  Republicans who vote for these measures can expect to be retiring next year.


Very Truly Yours,

Clayton & Rhonda Cramer

Your U.S. Senators Need Their Phones Melted...

and their email inboxes full.  NOW.  From February 28, 2013 Politco:

The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a markup for new gun control legislation for one week, delaying action on a controversial proposal to ban assault weapons.

The postponement also allows more time for bipartisan negotiations between Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to reach a deal to expand background checks for all gun purchases. Those talks have stalled over Coburn’s objections to permanent record keeping of gun purchases becoming a part of background checks.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/gun-control-markup-delayed-88232.html#ixzz2MDnmG983

A national background check is not per se a problem; if it creates registration records, it is.  The bigger problem is that because many states are not sharing involuntary commitment records with the national background check system, this is going to be a lot of expense with little or nothing to show for it.  The gun control advocates have already admitted that they aren't bothering to prosecute people who lie on background checks; why would they bother to prosecute people who do transfers with background checks?

Who Can Afford A New Car?

There's a new study out that says the only place in America where the average household can afford to buy the average new car is...Washington, DC.

The typical new vehicle is now more expensive than ever, averaging $30,500 in 2012, according to TrueCar.com data, and heading up again as makers curb the incentives that helped make their products more affordable during the recession when they were desperate for sales.

According to the 2013 Car Affordability Study by Interest.com, only in Washington could the typical household swing the payments, the median income there running $86,680 a year. At the other extreme, Tampa, Fla., was at the bottom of the 25 large cities included in the study, with a median household income of $43,832.

The study looked at a variety of household expenses, such as food and housing, and when it comes to purchasing a new vehicle, it considered more than just the basic purchase price, down payment and monthly note, factoring in such essentials as taxes and insurance.

Of course, there are people outside of the great suction pump of wealth who can afford new cars: people with very good jobs, or buying the cheapest new cars, but unsurprisingly, the generation that elected Obama, then re-elected him, are generally the ones injured by the policies that continue to suck all the wealth of this nation up, and drop it on a favored few in the nation's capital.

I wish that I had some confidence that the under 30s would figure out that they injured themselves by how they voted, but it doesn't seem like they are going to figure it out.

UPDATE: I should explain that my concern isn't entirely abstract.  A relative has his first job out of college, working as a production assistant at a TV station.  The pay and the hours are so miserable that he is borrowing a car for the moment, but at some point, he is going to have to buy one, and even the cheapest new cars are too expensive for someone who graduated cum laude, and he has to look at cars with more than 100,000 miles to even get into the right price range.

I am also upset that there was a time when a car like this would set me to drooling because it used to be something that I could seriously consider buying.  No more.  There's no point in considering trading in the Corvette and the Jaguar to buy something like this.

How GM Will Meet The Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards For 2045

It is a 6.09 cubic inch V8, available in both standard and supercharged versions.

Horseshoe Bend School District Supplemental Levy

I mentioned a week or so ago that there was apparently a supplemental levy (a special tax increase) vote coming up in the Horseshoe Bend Unified School District.  I also mentioned that it almost seemed like a secret election because of the lack of discussion of it.

Yesterday I received a flyer in the mail from the Friends of Horseshoe Bend Schools that gave me quite a bit more information upon which to make a decision as to how I would vote. It is a reminder of the famous saying by Mark Twain that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Here's the first page of the flyer:

One of the problems is that Idaho has reduced its direct funding to local school districts. Our district is not the only one having this problem, and other districts are also requesting supplemental levees. 

Another one of the problems is a drop in student enrollment: "from 305 students in 2008 to 276 students in 2013."  I am also led to believe, by things I have been told by people who are associated with the district, that there has been a decline in Average Daily Attendance, but I'm not sure if this is based on the decline in enrollment, or a decline in the percentage of students who are actually present on any given day.  The district went to a four-day schedule since 2008; I find myself wondering if, even at the same enrolled student count, there may have been a reduction in ADA because of the shortened week. Consider what happens if a student misses one day out of five because of illness, compared to missing one day out of four because of illness. All other things being equal, a shortened number of days means a lower ADA. Perhaps state law compensates for this, but I do not know enough to be sure.

Another part of the problem of funding is because of reduced funds coming from timber sales. Something that is not widely recognized in the urban environmentalist circles is that rural districts have long been dependent on national forest timber sales to support schools as partial compensation for national forest lands not paying property taxes. The environmentalists have been getting their way on protecting spotted owls by reducing harvest on national forest lands, and I believe this is part of the problem (although probably not the entire problem, perhaps not even a big part of the problem).

However, the rest of the flyer wipes out my sympathy very quickly. The supplemental levy would cost $13.72 per month per $100,000 assessed property value.  For us, that would be more than a $400 increase in property taxes -- almost a 50% increase of our property taxes. This would hurt, even though much of that increase would bring about a reduction in federal income taxes owed. For many other property owners in this district, especially the ones with houses that are closer to the average in value, about $100,000, this might be the difference between continuing to own, or selling and moving, or even worse: foreclosure. This is an astonishing increase to request, and I cannot imagine that many property owners in this district are going to be willing to almost double their property taxes without a spectacularly compelling argument.  This flyer makes a spectacularly compelling argument, but in the opposite direction.

One of the explanations for where the money would be spent from the supplemental levy is "Fully Fund the District Athletics."  On the reverse side of the flyer is the list of actions that the district will have to take if the levy does not pass:

Note that again we are being told "No district-funded athletics."  We are not talking about eliminating physical education; we're talking about sending the football team and other sports teams on bus rides to other school districts, which in this part of Idaho is always a long drive. If a school district has plenty of money, I don't really have a big objection to an athletic program, but it is a luxury, and in some respects, a somewhat deceptive luxury. 

I had a student several years ago who by his own admission never really learned how to write because he could pitch a 98 mph fastball, and as a result he was allowed to graduate near the top of his high school class, in spite of never really learning the basic skills that a high school student needs.  He was a bit upset about all of this; to his credit, he blamed himself for taking the easy way out rather than blaming the school. This was actually a pretty mature response on his part; he was manning up instead of directing blame outward.  Nonetheless, when schools encourage teenagers and parents to think that athletics are a way out, a method of getting a college scholarship instead of developing the fundamental skills of composition, math, and science, they are doing not only those students, but the entire society, a disservice. I would be curious to see how much of the $60,000 deficit the district has can be eliminated by making the athletic programs entirely privately funded.

The flyer is quite proud that the schools have a 100% graduation rate for the past two years, and that 100% of the graduates were accepted into some sort of "higher education program" (which could mean quite a number of things actually). They are also proud that a current student is a National Merit Scholar. For a district with this number of graduating seniors that is actually pretty decent.  

I am not having much luck finding a detailed budget for the school, which would enable me to look a little bit more carefully at where the money is going.  The pitiful sums that are being paid to the classified staff just make me want to cry; the certified and administrative staff contracts are not quite so tragically low, but they do not seem particularly outrageous either. The only really impressive salary is the Special Ed teacher, and she's only making 53,000 a year and change.  (In rural Idaho, that is actually a decent, although not spectacular salary.)  Even the administrators are often one-half or one-third time, as is appropriate for such a small district. (There are other districts in the state that are also quite small, but which what I have read, have full-time administrative staffs.)  

I find that I have many unanswered questions as a result of trying to figure out what their problem is, and how to solve it.  I do know that the supplemental levy is simply breathtaking, and I find myself wondering if the seal of the Friends of Horseshoe Bend Schools on the second page of the flyer may be describing the real state of things: an enormous building that is about to drag all those people off the edge of the cliff.

I see that of the five trustee positions (school board for those of you outside of Idaho), position three is currently vacant.  There are rumors that most of the remaining positions will be vacant for the May 21 school trustee elections, and I have been encouraged by some people to run for the position of my district. I am beginning to think that the only way to get the level of information that I need might be to do this.

Testimony Before Senate Committee Concerning Assault Weapons Ban

From my friend David Hardy -- you will hear him discuss the mental illness part of the problem about three minutes in, and mention my work in this area:



And the testimony of another friend, Professor Nicholas Johnson, explaining why the guns protected by the assault weapon ban are even more deadly at close range than the banned weapons:

Amazing How Young The Human Brain Develops

From February 26, 2013 Medical Xpress:

A team of French researchers has discovered that the human brain is capable of distinguishing between different types of syllables as early as three months prior to full term birth. As they describe in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team found via brain scans that babies born up to three months premature are capable of some language processing.

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-human-brain-discriminate-syllables-months.html#jCp

Can they understand the syllables that form the phrase "partial-birth abortion"?

How Did That Happen?

Donna Brazile is "a veteran Democratic political strategist, adjunct professor, author, and syndicated columnist."  As you might expect, she was a big promoter of Obamacare.  Her Tweet today:

Just got off the phone with my health care provider asking them to explain why my premium jumped up. No good answer!

There is an answer...but it isn't a "good" answer because it isn't the one that she wants to hear: Obamacare, by mandating coverage (of children up to 26, of contraceptives, of pre-existing conditions) increased costs.  What a shocker!  We warned you!

There were actions that could have been taken to reduce health care costs, but the Democrats weren't interested, because those would have involved:

1. More competition: allow small businesses and individuals to form interstate pools for insurance.

2. Tax credits to make it easier for middle income and some low income workers to buy their own health insurance, funded by treating group health insurance benefits above that level as income.

3. Allow all medical expenses to be treated as deductions from income -- not just the expenses exceeding 7.5% AGI.  Allow anyone to pay the medical bills of others, and get that same deduction.  You want to see gobs of charity?  Let a rich person do good for others while reducing his own tax bill.

Anthony Who Responded To My "Check My Math" Posting

Please email me at my first name at firstnamelastname.com.  I would like to see the method that you used to compute the truss deflections.  It would appear that I might be be able to use somewhat small carbon fiber tubes and still accomplish my goals.