For many years, now, I’ve lamented the conversion of local police officers into Law Enforcement Officers, aka LEOs. (Don’t you just love the acronym, how it makes them sound fierce.)
The police I remember as a youth behaved as police. They knew the difference between a crime and something stupid, between reckless endangerment and a warning. That’s not so anymore, at least not in this part of the country. Cops behave like robots — see crime, arrest and charge, regardless of circumstances. Take the case of Dennis Fleming. You might expect this to have happened in The People’s Republic of Massachusetts but you’d be wrong. LEO lunacy has spread to the Live Free or Die state of New Hampshire.
Farmington homeowner doesn’t regret firing gun: Though he might take different approach to stopping burglar in future
Farmington resident Dennis Fleming has been charged with Class B felony reckless conduct for firing his gun into the ground while apprehending a burglary suspect who is accused of breaking into his home and a neighbor's on Saturday.
FARMINGTON — While he may be facing a felony charge, Dennis Fleming said he does not regret firing his gun Saturday when he stopped and detained a burglar who had entered his home and at least one other on Ten Rod Road.
Still, the 61-year-old grandfather of 14 said he might go about stopping the burglar a little differently next time.
“I should have called police and I recommend that everyone does,” he said. “That aside, I’m glad I caught him.”
Fleming was arrested late Saturday night after turning himself into police and charged with felony reckless conduct, alleging he put others at risk of serious bodily injury when he discharged his firearm into the ground near 27-year-old Joseph Hebert in a residential area where people had gathered to watch the ordeal unfold.
Though shots were fired, no one was injured. Fleming was released on personal recognizance bail soon after his arrest.
The good news here is that the County Attorney, Tom Velardi, is making noises that indicate the charge will ultimately be dropped, unless they decide to make Fleming plead guilty to some bogus lesser charge to keep the conviction rate up.
But why was Fleming arrested in the first place?
When the cops showed up and learned he fired his weapon into the ground, that should have been the end of it. Had he fired it near the burglar or into the air, then there was reason to claim “he put others at risk of serious bodily injury” and charge him with reckless endangerment. But he did not. He did the right thing, the smart thing, the brave thing, and could be facing up to seven years in prison if the charges are not dropped.
That is complete madness.
What do the cops think he should have done? Let the burglar walk away while he called them so they could show up an hour later and take a statement? Should he have waited for the burglar to charge at him so that he’d have to actually shoot, and possibly kill the guy?
Given the circumstances, what happened was the absolute best outcome and the Farmington police say he’s a felon? Well, I say he’s a hero and I’m happy to hear that most of his neighbors think so too.
What do you think?
Was Fleming reckless?
Is he a hero or a felon or something in-between?
And are you happy with LEOs patrolling your streets or, if you are old enough to remember them, would you rather have police officers in your town?
We tend to think of the United States as an exceptionally mobile society — a society in which your future isn’t limited by your parents’ socioeconomic status. Writing in The New Republic, Timothy Noah looks at the best data on economic mobility and finds that, in reality, America isn’t an especially mobile place, and hasn’t been for almost a century. In fact, a 2007 study showed that, today, “income heritability” is greater in the United States than in Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Spain, and France; newer studies have added “Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Pakistan to the list of societies that are more mobile than the United States.”
If the United States isn’t really that mobile, then why do we make such a big deal about how mobile we are? The idea of the “American dream,” Noah points out, dates from the late 19th century, when agrarian society was giving way to industrialization, “wreaking maximum creative destruction.” It was, he writes, “an era when the loftiest rhetoric about the United States as the land of opportunity rang true.” Not so much nowadays. In fact, America hasn’t been particularly mobile among advanced countries since the early 20th century — something worth remembering next time you hear a politician wax poetic about the American dream.
Something else worth remembering is why The American Dream — economic mobility — is so much more difficult to achieve in 2012 than it was in 1812 or 1912. There may be more than one reason, but chief among them, I believe, is government at every level.
As government, particularly the Federal government grew larger, citizens found themselves with far fewer opportunities to thrive and to raise their station in life. They were, and are, kept in their place by ever-increasing numbers and levels of burdensome rules and regulations.
There was a day when, if you wanted to open a business, you bought or rented a building, stocked your shelves or whatever, and opened the door. If that can still be done anywhere in the United States, I’m not aware of it. Instead, you must ask the permission of inspectors and councils and regulators and each permission requires applications and meetings and, of course, fees.
To open a restaurant today in the town where my son manages one, you’ll need to go before one or more city commissions to ask permission, which can be denied for whatever reason. Then you need to submit blueprints drawn to all the myriad codes, which likely involves hiring an architect. Then there are the permits to build followed by inspectors from building, plumbing, and electrical, the health department, and the fire department. Then you have to pay for the permits to sell food, to sell milk, to sell ice cream and so on. If you plan to serve liquor, add on another layer of meetings and permits and inspections and some hefty fees.
And if you beat the odds and are successful, and decide to open a second restaurant in the next town over, be prepared for a whole new set of rules, since each city and town gets to add their own to any federal and states laws and rules and regulations that may apply. Hmmm…looks like I forgot to mention the lawyer you’ll likely need.
It’s true that many still do manage to open businesses, but countless others are simply too busy working to pay their taxes while trying to feed their families to even think about investing the time and money necessary to open a business even if they had it.
What is it like where you live?
Is it easier or more difficult than described above?
Have you ever opened a business? If so, what was the process like?
And what advice would you offer those contemplating opening a business today?
I really look forward to John E. Sununu’s frequent Op/Ed columns. He always seems to be able to cut through the bull and the spin to get to the truth, as he did again last week.
Who loses in foreclosure settlement?
WATCHING THE country’s biggest banks, 49 states, and the federal government stumble toward a $25 billion mortgage foreclosure settlement brings back memories: Just like the 1998 Big Tobacco deal, this is a complex agreement with lots of moving parts. And just like the tobacco settlement, it’s far more than a legal matter – it’s a grand spectacle built around money, politics, and lots of heated rhetoric.
The press releases for the foreclosure deal will be thick with words like “fairness’’ and “forgiveness,’’ but don’t think for a moment that it represents a resounding victory over the big, bad banks. Sure, there are losers in this settlement. They just weren’t at the negotiating table.
If you want to understand what’s really going on, look to Rome. What did the Romans know about mortgage-backed securities? Nothing. But they knew spectacle when they saw it, and left us a timeless tool to help us see through it. “Cui bono?’’ was the question posed by the consul Lucius Cassius. More simply: “Who benefits?’’
I knew the answer to the question before reading the column, as I suspect many of you knew.
As always, in the upside-down nation America has become, it is the responsible who lose while the irresponsible benefit.
The housing crisis probably would have bottomed out two years ago had government simply done nothing and let the market adjust itself. Of course, that would have meant a lot of people and companies who made stupid financial decisions, from homeowners who bought more than they could afford to too-big-to-fail financial institutions, would have had to lose their properties or their companies or their jobs.
Instead, we find the responsible, hard-working middle class, and their children and grandchildren, footing the bill to keep everyone else afloat. But that is the way liberalism and socialism work.
Capitalism isn’t pretty. It involves risks and rewards. The rewards can be great but the risk includes failure. It seems too many of us now want to live in a nation where nobody fails, where nobody has to suffer the consequences of bad decisions, where slogans like ‘Hope and Change’ trump logic and reason.
19th century humorist Mark Twain helped popularize the now, oft heard observation, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
In 21st century America, we’ve come to expect the first two from our “leaders” to the point where if they open their mouths, we expect a lie or a damned lie, as if they are simply incapable of telling the truth about anything. The one refreshing exception to that rule has always been Congressman Ron Paul. But today, I want to focus on the third lie — statistics.
I was always very good at math, so it was not much of a surprise to me to find, as I matured and began paying attention to life, that it was not just politicians who use statistics to lie or to obfuscate the truth. Drug companies, for example, do it all the time and news outlets willingly help them.
It works like this. Drug Company runs tests on a new drug. The results are in and reports and press releases written indicate, truthfully, a 50% reduction in the death rate from whatever it is the drug is supposed to treat. Wow! Think of the lives saved and it only costs $10,000 a year per person treated!
But if you look behind the curtain, at the actual numbers, you discover that the death rate from the condition was 2 per 100,000 people per year. A 50% reduction means that if we treat 100,000 people with the condition, one less will die. 100,000 people will have to take a drug, and suffer whatever side effects accompany it, at a cost of one billion dollars to save that one life.
Do you think that is a good way to spend a billion health care dollars?
Statistics are also a favorite of those in government who are bound by law to issue reports. Take the “unemployment” statistics. Our Dear Leader and his henchmen have been touting the “good news” that the Unemployment Rate has fallen to 8.3%. But what does that mean?
It means that the number of Americans who are actively looking for work stands at 8.3%. But if you’ve given up looking for work, you are no longer considered unemployed and so you are not counted. Neat trick, eh? Of course, they have to report the number who have given up, too, but that’s easy to bury in a 448-page report, like the one issued by the White House yesterday, that most mainstream reporters and news writers will never read.
White House economic report hides sharp drop in number of working Americans
White House officials are trying to downplay the growing political damage caused by a shrinking federal statistic: the percentage of working-age Americans who actually have jobs.
The increasingly visible statistic shows that roughly 11 million working-age Americans are being excluded from the nation’s formal tally of 13.75 million unemployed Americans.
A security guard allows groups of people waiting in long lines into the unemployment office on Summit Ave. in Jersey City in November 2009. Two-plus years later, are the lines any shorter?
Today’s 2012 Economic Report of the President attempts to bury the statistic in a 448-page blizzard of statistics, jargon and reassuring comparisons. “In the last 23 months, businesses have created 3.7 million jobs,” says the upbeat report, released at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Democrats are touting downward ticks of the formal unemployment rate to 8.3 percent, but Republicans are making an increased effort to highlight the painfully low employment participation rate.
A new chart produced by the Republican Study Committee shows the downward jumps of that job-participation rate, even after President Barack Obama deployed his trillion-dollar stimulus in February 2009, and after Obama declared the summer of 2010 a “Recovery Summer.”
So what is the real rate of unemployment, the “out of work” rate? Let’s do some math.
13.75 million unemployed + 11 million ‘given ups’ = 24.75 million out of work.
A quick ratio will give us the out-of-work rate.
8.3% unemployed / 13.75 million = X% not working / 24.75 million
Do the math and solve for X and we find that 14.94% of Americans are out of work. No wonder the White House doesn’t want Americans to know that number. Nearly one out of every six American workers isn’t working! Some say the number could be even higher.
And all that is despite the trillions of dollars that have been wasted on “stimulus” programs many of us said from the beginning would not work any better for Obama than it did for Franklin Roosevelt or for Japan last century.
If the math didn’t make your eyes glaze over and you’re still reading, please share with your Obot friends the real numbers, the numbers The Smartest President Ever® doesn’t want them to know about.
So, did you already know the truth about the out-of-work rate?
How many folks do you know who have given up looking?
And what do you think we, as a nation, can do to make a real difference and get folks back to work at meaningful, private sector jobs?
Late last month, in response to an online Op/Ed he wrote, BHM Publisher Dave Duffy received this email:
From: etcurrie@xxxxxx.ca Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 3:55 PM To: editor@backwoodshome.com Subject: Ron Paul is a disaster for Republicans
Dave,
I have been a long time fan of yours but you are wrong viz a viz Ron Paul. He has, IMHO, the best chance among the Repugs to beat Obama. Too bad you can’t see that.
Love your mag and website. Been going there for years.
Eldridge Currie Burnaby, BC
Didn’t that sound like Eldridge is a nice guy who likes the magazine, the website, and Ron Paul?
Two days ago, he sent this follow-up:
From: etcurrie@xxxxxx.ca Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 3:09 PM To: editor@backwoodshome.com Subject: Fw: Ron Paul is a disaster for Republicans
Hey Duffy, you right wing asshole, don’t answer your email. Head up your ass like most repug americans?
If you or your readers want REAL freedom, move to Canada. Our Charter of Rights has your lame Constitution beat. Open your fucking mind and get real.
Eldridge
Quite a difference in tone, eh?
Dave typically ignores posts like that second one, but I asked him if I could respond in his stead.
We don’t know if Mr. Currie is bipolar but if so, the difference in the tone of the posts certainly suggests he’s been skipping his meds. If he is not, Eldridge apparently belongs to that group of self-important folk who believe the world revolves directly around them and that everything they write should prompt the recipient to drop everything and dash off an immediate reply.
It never occurs to such folks that others may have jobs to do that limit their time to engage in email debates or even to respond to every email or blog comment. Sadly, many of us work long hours, Dave included, and while we all do our best to read every email, responding to them all would preclude doing anything else — like publishing the magazine or keeping the website updated.
As to his contention that “Our Charter of Rights has your lame Constitution beat,” may I point out the Charter of Rights of which he speaks defines rights granted to him by his government. The Charter says, right at the beginning:
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Sounds nice, but rights granted by governments can be easily altered or taken away by governments. And who gets to define the “reasonable limits”?
The U.S. Constitution grants no rights because the Founders understood there was no need to do so. This was made clear in our Declaration of Independence:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
Rights flow from the Creator, not from government. Here in America, Eldridge, we citizens grant our government certain rights to do certain things, not the other way around. And while it is true that the Federal Government has, of late, far over-reached by assuming powers never granted to it, it is also true that Ron Paul, the Tea Party Movement, and millions of others are working to rectify that problem.
Eldridge may also want to consider why it is that so many of his countrymen continue to cross the border in order to obtain health care they either cannot get or would have to wait great lengths of time to receive in Canada. Of course, if Obamacare is allowed to fully kick in, that will put a stop to such crossings. Why pay to wait here when you can wait there for free.
I suppose, having grown up in a socialist nation, Eldridge must be excused his ignorance of things like absolute rights and true freedom. But I can’t excuse ignorant rudeness, which is why I asked Dave to let me use the letters for this blog post so I could ask you kind readers…
What do you make of Mr. Currie’s two emails?
As regards rights and freedom, which do you think is the better document — Canada’s Charter of Rights or the U.S. Constitution?
And if you were Dave and received these emails, how would you respond to Eldridge?
So, like a good parent, you pack a lunch for your picky eater. Into her lunchbox go a turkey and cheese sandwich, some potato chips, a banana for dessert, and some apple juice to wash it all down. Sounds like a darn good lunch to me. And it’s all stuff you know your daughter will actually eat.
But wait! You forgot to call the state food police to make sure it meets with their approval so when your child gets to school and her lunch is “inspected,” she’s told it’s not nutritious enough and is made to eat chicken nuggets from the cafeteria.
Seriously.
That is not a joke. Here’s the story out of North Carolina:
Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets”
State agent inspects sack lunches, forces preschoolers to purchase cafeteria food instead
RAEFORD — A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs – including in-home day care centers – to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
Have the folks in North Carolina caught the insanity that reigns in the Federal government?
A child can’t eat a fine, home-packed meal and is forced to eat nasty, reheated crap from the lunch line?
I’m desperately trying to make sense of this story but there simply is no sense to be found.
Why is the Federal government or the State of North Carolina mandating what kind of food anyone can eat, especially in a private business?
Did I miss that clause in the Constitution that gives the USDA or the Department of Health and Human Services power to tell kids, or anyone, what to eat?
When did we, the people, cede to government the power to override the ability of parents to feed their kids healthy food, or even junk food?
I’d very much like to know the name of the government moron who thinks chicken nuggets are healthier than a turkey and cheese sandwich and a banana. That way, I could mock him her her personally. But as you’ll note at the end of the story, the government is stonewalling on the requests to identify the idiot.
What would the food cop have done if the child refused to eat the nuggets, force fed her? Arrested her? Fined her parents?
Is it better for a child to eat nothing than to eat a turkey and cheese sandwich?
Does this lunacy go on where you live?
What would your reaction be if you were the parent in this case?
They are oft-heard laments — that there is too much money in politics and that money has too great an influence, effectively placing the power to influence in the hands of the wealthiest people and businesses.
Periodically, state and federal legislatures address the problem and then do their best to craft a solution that sounds good but keeps the gravy train well oiled and on track.
Although federal Representatives and Senators are supposed to represent the interests of their respective in-state constituencies, fundraising realities often mean they end up representing the interests of people and corporations from outside their state. Outside money can often make the difference between victory and defeat in an election.
A fine example of outsiders and their money attempting to influence an election can be seen here in my home state of Massachusetts, where leftist money from outside the state is pouring in to aid first-time Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren in her campaign to unseat moderate Republican Scott Brown.
Brown, too, has been receiving donations from out-of-state, but only half as much while at the same time, he has receive more money than Warren from in-state donations.
Donors from afar buoying Warren
Elizabeth Warren’s campaign to reclaim a US Senate seat for the Democrats is drawing on deep out-of-state support, with 61.3 percent of her itemized donations coming from beyond Massachusetts’ borders during the last quarter of 2011.
Click To Enlarge
The Cambridge Democrat, who outraised Republican incumbent Scott Brown $5.7 million to $3.2 million in the fourth quarter, received nearly 20 percent of her listed contributions from California and more than 13 percent from residents of the state of New York, according to a Globe analysis of a campaign finance database released yesterday.
By contrast, Brown received about two-thirds of his support from Massachusetts, which accounted for about 66 percent of his itemized donations. The second biggest source of Brown donations Brown was Texas, at 6.4 percent, followed by New York at 6.2 percent.
Only contributions of $200 or more must be detailed in reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Reports filed to date with the commission show that the Bay State Senate battle is shaping up as one of the most expensive in the country. Candidates for the Senate in Massachusetts had raised $18.8 million, the most in the country, through Dec. 31, according to a Globe analysis of data in 29 contests. Massachusetts Senate candidates, including some Democrats who have dropped out, had spent $7.1 million, second only to Texas at $7.4 million.
Despite her fund-raising surge at the end of the year, Warren – who entered the race relatively late – remained well behind Brown in terms of the cash on hand as of Dec. 31, reporting $6.1 million compared with his $12.9 million.
So far, it’s clear the people of Massachusetts want to return Scott Brown to the Senate. Two-thirds of his donations have been from in-state sources while nearly two-thirds of Warren’s donation came from elsewhere, with California accounting for 20% of her donations. Add the money from New York, and the two account for nearly one-third of her total raised.
One has to wonder what it is about Elizabeth Warren that makes donors in two of the most liberal/socialist states in the nation so anxious to see her elected. Is it reasonable to anticipate that, should Warren win the seat, her primary allegiance will be to the people who paid the most to elect her rather than to the people of Massachusetts? I think so. But maybe I have a solution.
What if we change election laws so that candidates can only raise money from people and businesses in their district?
If Warren and Brown were limited to raising money in Massachusetts, the people of Massachusetts would be the only ones influencing the outcome of the election. Yes, the state political parties could contribute but they, too, can only accept money from in-state donors, not from any out-of-state person or group, including their national committees.
U.S. Representatives could only get money from those in their congressional district.
Governors are limited to statewide donations but state representatives can accept only from their local districts. Likewise, mayors can raise funds only from their city or town, and so on.
Dollar limits per donation? I’m not sure. Maybe $500 or $1000 or $10,000 or many no limit per person or business. Maybe each state, city, and town can set their own limits.
As for president, let’s get rid of the popularity contest and return to local congressional districts voting not for president but for electors whose job it will be to meet and choose a President by 50%+1 or more.
This plan would eliminate the power of corporations to contribute to and influence local elections nationwide since the corporation could only donate in its home state and district. It would stop Hollywood money from flowing to the Bible Belt and elsewhere. It would go a long way toward making politicians really and truly accountable to their constituents.
I know this is somewhat of a fantasy, but what do you folks think?
Congratulations to this week’s Comment Contest winner – Storm, our fourth repeat winner!
Ahhh…Massachusetts, that bastion of liberalism, home to Harvard University, John Kerry, and all of Barack Obama’s illegal alien relatives (that we know about). And home to the stupidest talk show host in the world, at least according to Bill, a recent caller to the Michael Graham Show.
Many of us wonder exactly where logic and reason vacation while liberals attempt to think. We wonder this because of folks like Bill, who provide a never-ending source of amusement and horror to those of us who do our best to rely on facts to form our opinions.
In his defense, Bill sounds like he is a student, and allowances do have to be made for those not yet educated in the only school that really matters, The University of Real Life.
When you’ve finished listening to the eight minute exchange, please tell me who you think “won” the “debate.”
And if you have any Bills where you live.
And if they manage to make as large an ass of themselves as did our Bill here in The People’s Republic.
And now, without further ado, may I present Michael Graham talking to Bill.
A Facebook post went viral Wednesday after the father of a 15-year-old girl decided her online activity was disrespectful, but it’s bringing her a kind of fame she probably never imagined. Her punishment? Eight exploding, hollow-point rounds from a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, straight into her laptop.
The girl’s Facebook rant, which she never thought her dad would see? It began: “To my parents: I’m not your damn slave. It’s not my responsibility to clean up your shit.”
The father, who reads the post on camera, rattles off a modest list of chores he expects from his teenage daughter, calling her lazy, unmotivated, and ungrateful.
After explaining how disrespectful she was, he dished out some tough love: a shot-up laptop, no new computer until she can pay to replace the bullet-riddled one herself, and a bill for $8 — one buck for the cost of each bullet.
He said he wants all her friends to see the video — which he posted on his daughter’s Facebook wall — “so all those kids who thought it was cool to see how rebellious you were can see what happens.”
“Hope you’ve enjoyed your little fiasco on Facebook,” he said.
I’m not sure I would have reacted as did the father in the video, below, but then, my kids were not dumb enough to to be so disrespectful in such a public forum. They both did their share of dumb things, of course, and there was much grumbling and groaning and frequent displays of teenage angst, but they knew where the line was drawn and did not cross it.
Too bad for her, this fellow’s daughter wasn’t that bright.
Please watch the eight-minute video of the father reading and reacting to what his daughter posted on her Facebook wall.
Then, let me know what you thought of his response, including the video and what he did to her laptop.
And what do you think the daughter might be thinking today?
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