Gov. Christie Smacks Down the NRA

[Beavah 205]

Yah, "stand your ground" laws are yet another example of well-intentioned legislation that stupidly ignores da unintended consequences of too much legislating.

 

It's not like we haven't had robust, fair, and well-tested legal doctrines on self defense in place for hundreds of years. Now we needed a new law?

 

These things are nightmares.

 

One of da worst consequences is that yeh can have any number of situations where both sides of a dispute are covered by "stand your ground". That was da case in Florida with the Trayvon Martin thing, eh? Trayvon would have been perfectly within his rights to "stand his ground" against Zimmerman, a creepy guy with a gun followin' him around and harassin' him on his way to the store. So what these "stand your ground" laws do is in fact give state sanction to shootouts between people who disagree with each other or don't like each other's looks.

 

It's nonsense.

 

Beavah

 

[acco40 95]

Trouble is, politicians from both sides of the aisle can claim that they "did something" about the problem - even if what they did in actuality is exacerbate the problem.

 

 

 

 

[SR540Beaver 116]

Oh my gosh, I find it humorous that so many of our big government, nanny state liberals here are suddenly wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the thought of sticking their hand in the taxpayer's pockets! LOL Sadly, very few actually addressed what I have said.

 

I am not proposing that the federal government spend $10B to put a guard in every school accross America. If you think I did, you are welcome to find the post and quote it. But for an administration that borrows 40 cents for every dollar spent, wants to increase taxes and refuses to entertain any spending cuts, I fail to see why this would be a big deal.......other than they believe guns kill people and are evil. But I digress. What I said was it is LOCAL. That means your CITY, COUNTY and/or STATE determining what solution fits you LOCALLY. Some will determine to do nothing. Some will determine to add security measures at certain grade lelels. Some will partner with their fellow civil employees, the police and use them. How to pay for it will be a LOCAL decision as well. I realize to the northeast liberal elitists, we simple folks here in Oklahoma are just knuckle dragging, backwards rednecks who like to go to church and shoot our guns. We are after all the only state where Obama didn't carry a single county. Yep, we're red. We also have some pretty good ideas and success at determining solutions and how to fund them. You see, when people find value in something and are given the opportunity to vote on taxing themselves in rder to acheive it, they respond a whole lot better than having new taxes thrust upon them because some crony somewhere has decided he knows what is best for you. We aren't perfect, but we have a few things figured out that seems to be eluding much of the rest of the nation. I ask that before you start throwing around more strawman arguments, that you think outside the box and think local instead of federal. It's kinda what our founders intended in the constitution you know.

 

I've mentioned MAPS several times and it has been largely ignored by those who chose to laugh at me. I'd ask that you please take the time to follow my links. I've lived in OKC my whole life of almost 56 years. What has happened over the last 20 years here is remarkable. If we can do it, so can others. Where there is a will, there is a way. For those cities, counties and state who WANT or feel a NEED to provide security in their children's school, they can find a way to do it without someone in Maine paying for it in Nevada.

 

Much of what you see here is directly related to MAPS over the last 20 years.

 

http://www.greateroklahomacity.com/index.php?submenu=accolades_q&src=gendocs&ref=Accolades&category=QualityofLife

 

http://www.okc.gov/maps3/mapshistory.html

[moosetracker 132]

So basically your saying, we can do what we are now doing?..

 

Like maybe a good solution for you in Oklahoma would be to follow Montpelier, Ohio.. Arm your janitors!!! Great. No extra costs involved!

 

http://rackjite.com/stephen-colbert-armed-school-janitors-ayn-rand-atlasphere-dating-and-forida-pythons/

 

I'm fine with that, if your local area wants to find silly solutions to arm people with guns, while not raising your taxes.. Go at it!! Just leave my local area out of your whacky schemes.

 

Democrats may be fine with taxes if used well, like for putting people back to work with something that would be helpful to our country.. That means "NO" to Romney's proposed 2 trillion extra taxes for military, when our wars are ending, and we should be now cutting back on military spending, and right now it is bloated with wasteful spending.. Also "NO" to tax waste putting armed guards in schools, when if we taxed for more police, they would be better served in the community, then sitting in a school waiting for a 1 in a million chance there may come a time they can do something other then the daily crossword puzzle.. But, employment added for needed road building, and in educating our children better, well these make sense.

 

Republicans are not opposed to spending money, just look at the out-of-control spend over the last Bush administration 8 years.. They just spend it on things that Democrats agree with. Democrats, don't spend on programs Republicans agree with.

 

 

[Beavah 205]

Yah, SR540, we're not ignorin' yeh.

 

Lest yeh missed it before, let me reiterate that MAPS is not a valid example. Da reason for that is that MAPS is funding capital projects, not operating costs.

 

An operating cost like payin' for guards in schools is fundamentally different. Yeh don't "buy" it just once and stretch da payments over time to keep 'em small. Yeh are purchasing that service every year in training and salaries and insurance. On a dollar basis, puttin' your guards in da schools in your area would have wiped out the entire MAPS for kids fund, and when it expired yeh would have to lay off all those guards (and see your unemployment insurance costs go up).

 

Da second issue is that OKC is a relatively well-off community, eh? To achieve da same thing in more rural parts of your state would require a much larger sales tax, because there is less dollar value of commerce goin' on. And because they aren't as well off, they could less afford that larger sales tax. So what yeh propose won't work for everybody everywhere.

 

So we're still waitin' for you to propose a tax to fund all those school guards, eh? $270M for the state of Oklahoma, per year. Yeh can do it as a 6% sales tax or an 8% increase of da state income tax. Keep in mind, based on da NRA ad which started this thread, if your local community or state doesn't agree to provide armed guards all over da place through a hefty taxpayer expense, it means you don't value your children.

 

Beavah

[RememberSchiff 3655]

Just some ideas...

 

Maybe we need to be smarter with the dollars in our pocket or mend the holes in our pockets

 

Maybe instead of spending billions each month and American lives to insure the security of Afghanistan school children, we did it first here with our own.

 

Maybe instead of wasting $24 billion in student (Pell and federal) loans at questionable for profit colleges we spent it on school security and mental health institutions. Oh and we allow forcible institutionalization, the kind the CT ACLU killed in December which might have prevented the Newtown shooting.

 

Maybe we can tax the Entertainment industry. Any tv program, film, game having violent content is taxed. More than an hour per night on X-box Live and you are taxed.

 

Maybe Zuckerberg with all his billions can hire can professional investigators to watch over his Facebook and notify police of suspected criminal activity (Columbine). Ditto with every other social-media provider.

 

My $0.02(This message has been edited by RememberSchiff)

[moosetracker 132]

RS.. You forgot taxing the weapon industry.. Why, tax entertainment industry (which I won't argue plays a part in it) and not the weapon industry (WHICH PLAYS A PART IN IT)..

 

Why bring down Federally funded School loans? That makes no sense.. You can default on other loans through claiming bankruptcy, but you can not default on federally funded school loans.(Although you can put off paying them if you have yet to find a job..) Grant it, some people try to hide, to get out of a loan. About six months back I heard they tracked some school teacher down, who had skipped paying her loan.. They garnished her wages, like a deadbeat parent. She was complaining she had very little to live on... I didn't feel much pity for her.. Really these tend to be pretty safe loans.. And they do pay interest.. I was surprised the how high they now charge in interest, when I went to school, the intrest rate was very low.. You paid your loan, but it wasn't worth it to pay it off early.

 

But, if LOAN is a dirty word to you, lets stop giving out Federally funded business loans..

 

Still I could find a better use for those tax dollars then hiring a person for every school in the country, to play solitare and do crossword puzzles all day as he is bored out of his skull sitting around a school all day with nothing to do..(This message has been edited by moosetracker)

[RememberSchiff 3655]

I wrote (Pell and federal) loans at questionable for profit colleges

 

The past two companies that I worked would NOT approve tuition reimbursement for employees who enrolled in for-profit schools like Univ of Phoenix, Capella, Wossamotta U. and other internet-based colleges nor would they interview job applicants with online degrees from such schools. There are other issues of high cost and high drop-out rate with those schools very though they are supposedly accredited. Yeah, Univ of Phoenix got a sweetheart deal from Congress. Still seems a bad idea.

 

Loans to students attending non-profit schools with a better graduation rate like UNH, Dartmouth no problem.(This message has been edited by RememberSchiff)

[moosetracker 132]

I could live with that.. I think these loans are only for accredited colleges. Therefore the question is, who is accrediting the questionable colleges, and more structure is needed as to what you need to be accredited, and turn down those who don't make the grade.

 

I just did not understand the republican position that removing student loans would help the economy.. And Romneys position to just "borrow from your parents.", meaning higher education was only for the wealthy..

 

I would also be against our future generations giving up their dreams, so someone else could play with their guns.