Saturday, July 12, 2008

Fighting Small Scams To Protect The Big One

The August, 2008, issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance features the following article at page 61:
Taking Aim At Military Scams: The men and women who protect our country are getting ripped off.

The unquestioned assumption, and the scam it promotes and protects, is that being in the military involves protecting the United States. Unless you truly believe that the United States is or ever has been threatened by Iraqis, Serbs, Somalis, Haitians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Panamanians, Grenadans, Dominicans, Filipinos, Spaniards, etc., then you must admit that the military is a tool of imperial force projection, not self-defense.

I'll give the final word on this to Marine Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler:

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

Here we go again

Butler Shaffer on the death of another Big Government shill.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Shoot! The Day

The gang at Photoshelter are on a mission to revitalize stock photography. One day, five categories, prizes. So, register for the event and, wherever you are on 20 July, Shoot! The Day.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Ammo Prices

Like everything else, ammo prices are dramatically up. They've doubled in the last two years.

Some reasons are obvious. Ammunition is heavy and expensive to ship. Transportation costs are up due to high oil prices.

Copper, used to make bullet jackets and brass cartridge cases, is also high due to increased global demand.

Less obvious is the market distortion introduced by the ultimate Big Government program (and that's all it is): War. The Boy Emperor's legions are burning through an incredible amount of the stuff in the Global War For A Legacy: about 5.5 million rounds per month, according to this House Armed Services Committee report.

Thanks, Dubya, and God Bless America!
AB 2062 Idiocy

The reliably anti-gun San Jose Mercury News today editorialized in favor of California Assembly Bill 2062, by Kevin De Leon (D - Los Angeles).

AB 2062 would introduce a complex, cumbersome, expensive and needless series of restrictions on vendors and buyers of ammunition in California, as well as prohibit Internet sales of ammunition.

There is nothing new in De Leon's bill. We had almost 20 years of this very thing, nationwide, between the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the McClure-Volkmer reforms of 1986. It was repealed because everyone -- law enforcement, ATF, everyone -- admitted what the "gun lobby" said all along: it was an expensive, intrusive waste of time.

18 years of ammo dealer licensing, record-keeping, warrantless surveillance, no mail-order sales, etc., could not produce a single crime either solved or prevented. Yet, the advocates of "reasonable regulation" screamed like babies when it was repealed. Now they want to bring it back. Isn't it time the SJMN editors come clean and tell us what they really want?