Standard Mischief

in India, they have coinage made out of stainless steel. While not at Zimbabwe’s level of inflation, it appears that their coinage is worth more as scrap than as coins. The steel coins are being melted down and used to make things like razor blades.

We’ve got the same issue here. Check out Coinflation.com. This site shows the value of coins expressed as the spot price of the coin makeup. Zinc is down this week, but a bit ago, even the copper-plated zinc pennies made since 1982 were worth more than their face value. While I’m not yet buying penny sorting machines and hording rolls of nickels, Every good coin I posses by the end of the day is ending up in a jar.

Below that is a handy listing of all the coins that have silver in them and the value based on spot price.

What we really need to do is to drop the penny and the nickel, and start pricing things in tenths of a dollar. We could also stop trying to make dollar coins the same weight and size as a Carter Quarter, (only the government would fail to figure out by now that no one wants these coins), and instead introduce a new coin about the size of a nickel. Punching a pentagon shaped hole in the coin and adding Twin Towers on the obverse, along with withdrawing dollar bills from circulation will insure that these coins will be used.

We should also scrap those laws that prevent people from doing what they will with their property. I know that’s a radical idea, but we could pretend that people actually own the things they own every once in a while.

This is the “Second Amendment Enforcement Act“, announced by the NRA in this presser, introduced by Senators John McCain, et al.

You will note that the actual bill number is nowhere in the release. I still don’t get this, because if you read the bill itself – even with it not being inline with the actual U. S. code D.C. law – it’s still fairly easy to understand. It’s well organized and clearly was meant to be read by the public.

That’s actually the point, I’d wager. Not having the bill attached to the bill that gives D.C. residents representation in Congress by an unconstitutional method, means that this bill pretty much has a snowflake’s chance in hell of being signed by Obama. So this is a bill that’s not actually meant to be passed, its only meant to enhance the NRA cred of some critters.

ETA: good catch by Sebastian, see below in comments.

Edited to add: Despite the fact that I deep-linked to the full comment, and even added ellipses to point out the my deliberate omission, tgirsch still thinks I misquoted him. I’m leaving the post intact below the following two dashes, but I encourage you to follow my original link to read the whole comment.

Then tgirsch goes on to say, well, just damn! Read the comment below, because I don’t want to risk misquoting again.
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“Hidden” is the exact language used by CNN in this story.

While I may not be adamantly opposed to this, it’s still another tax on employers which will get passed on to consumers or paid out of possible salaries of people who don’t lactate. I’m sure no one factored that into the cost of the bill before it was introduced.

My real objection is the fact that we never got to read, discuss, or debate the behemoth before it was deemed as passed.

Back when we had a whole 72 hours to decode such standard mischief as :

…strike the first four letters on the fifth word of the second sentence in section 170(c)(2)(B) and replace them with the letters “fsck” …

…tgirsch let a little truth out. Earlier I had said something to the effect that the more people learn about the bill, the more that people of all stripes dislike it. He countered that reality was the exact other way around. Then he dropped this whopper:

You really and truly think the way to build broad support for a complex piece of legislation is to let people read it?…

Wow, just fucking wow.

I really don’t know what they’re protesting, or why. I usually find stuff like this fascinating but I really can’t spare the time right now to do the digging. But that doesn’t matter. I find the following statement highly disturbing:

“By order of the City of Pittsburgh Chief Police, I hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. You must leave the immediate vicinity. If you remain in this immediate vicinity, you will be in violation of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code. No matter what your purpose is, you must leave. If you do not disperse, you may be arrested and/or subject to other police action. Other police action may include actual physical removal, the use of riot control agents and/or less lethal munitions which could cause risk of injury to those who remain.”

Dave Rock (of Davesfarm, my guilty pleasure on youtube) had a raid recently. Well, maybe that’s the wrong term. He had an inspection of his property by an agent of the local government for unlicensed vehicles. Of course, for the inspectors personal safety, he’s allowed police protection, and he got it. Dave says the entire Lucan Ontario police force came out for a warrentless look-see. They road-blocked the entrance and apparently fanned out and searched the place. Dave made two videos of the whole over-reaction. To the officers credit, not one got threatened with arrest, no one got tasered, and no one demanded that the video equipment be shut off.

I’m unclear of the motivation from the government here. His place is out in the middle of nowhere. His neighbours don’t seen upset, and he seems to have found a productive niche producing videos that people like to watch and he gets micro-payments in ad revenue from. There’s allegedly a “hater’s club”, that allegedly have their own page where they allegedly post highly redacted stuff with the code word “alleged” all over the place, allegedly as a remedy against being sued for libel.

It’s being reported that the Bylaw enforcement officer has been flooded with so many emails from pissed-off teenagers that he’s had to shut his address down.