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MI House Democrats seek to imprison kids for having BB guns

Michigan may have a hunting and gun culture, but legislative Democrats are doing everything in their power to change that.

The latest example comes as House Democrats have proposed HB 4184, a bill to ban those 18 and under from “using or possessing certain BB guns outside of their property,” according to the summary.

State Rep. Julie Rogers, a Democrat from crime-riddled Kalamazoo, filed the bill earlier this session.

The bill is to “regulate the possession or use of pneumatic guns,” that is, those that are designed to use air pressure to propel the projectile. The bill bans kids from having guns “that will expel a BB or pellet by spring, gas, or air.”

“An individual less than 18 years of age shall not use or possess a pneumatic gun outside the curtilage of the individual’s dwelling unless the individual is accompanied by another individual over 18 years of age,” it states.

A child who breaks the proposed law “is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 90 days or a fine of not more than $500.00, or both.”

“Please get your kids outside this summer to make some epic memories before the leftists who have never engaged in such fun ban it,” state Rep. Angela Rigas (R) said in response.

“Allowing kids to use BB guns unsupervised can have life-threatening consequences,” Rogers claimed. “All too often, these guns are treated as toys, without regard to the dangers they pose. As with all types of guns, adult supervision for children to ensure they are following safety precautions is necessary for everyone’s well-being.”

During Rogers’s first term in office (2021), Kalamazoo was one of the most dangerous cities in the state.

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Surprised? Debt Ceiling Deal Puts No Limits on Ukraine Aid

The debt ceiling agreement reached between the White House and House Republicans places no constraints on spending on the war in Ukraine, a White House official told Bloomberg.

The $113 billion that has been authorized to spend on the war in Ukraine so far was passed as supplemental emergency funds, which is exempt from the spending caps that are part of the debt ceiling deal.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, funding “designated as an emergency requirement or for overseas contingency operations would not be constrained, and certain other funding would not be subject to the caps.” The deal suspends the nation’s debt limit through January 1, 2025.

Hawks in Congress are looking to use emergency spending to increase the $886 billion military budget that was agreed to as part of the deal. The emergency funds could go beyond Ukraine and might be used to send weapons to Taiwan or for other spending that hawks favor as part of their strategy against China.

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Hunter Biden, Second Amendment Warrior?

President Joe Biden has long been an advocate for strict restrictions on guns, so his son makes something of an unlikely advocate for expanded gun rights. But Hunter Biden may soon find himself on the opposite side of his father’s gun control crusade in at least one aspect. The younger Biden is reportedly considering a challenge to a federal law that bans illegal drug users from owning guns.

The issue hits close to home for Hunter: The Department of Justice is investigating a gun purchase he made in 2018. This is a time period during which he has admitted to regularly using crack cocaine. That could put him afoul of the law against drug users having guns.

Hunter Biden’s “lawyers have already told Justice Department officials that, if their client is charged with the gun crime, they will challenge the law under the Second Amendment, according to a person familiar with the private discussions granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly,” reported Politico. “That could turn a case that is already fraught with political consequences into a high-profile showdown over the right to bear arms.”

Here’s hoping?

The provision in question—part of the Gun Control Act of 1968—is, frankly, insane, preventing any person “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from buying a gun. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has interpreted this provision to mean that anyone who has used any illegal drug in the past 12 months cannot legally purchase a gun.

And the time may be just right for challenging it. This Supreme Court has proved willing to strike down overreaching gun laws.

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Irish government proposes mass culling of cows to meet radical net zero climate targets

The Irish government would need to set aside a €600 million budget in order to cull 65,000 cows every year for three years in order to meet its climate targets, according to internal reports seen by the Irish Independent.

The newspaper reported that 10 percent of all livestock in Ireland would need to be “displaced” in the coming years in order to comply with the government’s ambitious plans of achieving net zero carbon emissions by no later than 2050 and reducing emissions by 51 percent by 2030.

A mass culling of 200,000 cows over three years could be one way to help the Irish agricultural sector “close the gap” on its emissions targets, according to the briefing paper by the Department of Agriculture.

The plan would see Irish farmers compensated for the loss of their dairy herd, with the report suggesting a budget of €600 million would be required.

Farmers, however, aren’t convinced of the need to resort to such drastic measures and believe that other polluting industries aren’t being required to suffer the same fate.

Pat McCormack, the president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, told Newsweek on Tuesday that the Irish dairy herd isn’t any bigger than it was at the turn of the century.

“Our herd isn’t any larger than it was 25, 30 years ago. Can the same be said for the transport industry, can the same be said for the aviation industry?” he asked.

When asked whether farmers consider the cull of its dairy herd to be reasonable, McCormack replied: “If there is a scheme, it needs to be a voluntary scheme. That’s absolutely critical because there’s no point in culling numbers from an individual who has borrowed on the back of a huge financial commitment on the back of achieving a certain target that’s taken from under him.”

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Despite Animal Rescuers Being at the Scene, Cops Shoot 2 Family Dogs, Claiming They Held Up Traffic

In yet another terrible display of state authority over compassion, police carried out a despicable act of puppycide this past Saturday. A pair of dogs found wandering loose on Interstate 84 near Heyburn became the latest victims in the alarmingly frequent incidents of law enforcement officers discharging their firearms on man’s best friend. This act of thoughtless violence occurred near exit 211 just before 6 p.m., a news release from the Heyburn Police Department revealed.

Cops on scene alleged that the animals were causing traffic to grind to a halt and posed a safety hazard. According to the release, “The speed limit of this section of interstate is 80 miles per hour and traffic cannot stop abruptly.” The dogs, according to the police, were said to be large and unresponsive to the officers’ calls and whistles, and were reportedly causing a traffic backlog.

According to the official police account, the safety of the ‘motoring public’ at the expense of two lives was the trade-off they were willing to make. With heavy Memorial Day traffic, the officers claimed they had no other option but to gun down these two creatures at 6:03 p.m. — just 3 minutes after arriving on the scene. Each dog was shot once and removed from the highway.

Stephanie Carsner, an individual working for an animal rescue shelter and an eyewitness to the event, tells a much different story, however. Carsner had reportedly obtained permission from the Idaho State Police to attempt to corral the dogs. In a now-viral Facebook post, she described the animals as thirsty but “not at all aggressive.”

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California Lawmakers Want To Make Tech Companies Subsidize News Media

California lawmakers are moving ahead with plans to make Google and Facebook subsidize traditional media. Legislation from state Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D–Oakland) would require some digital platforms “to remit a journalism usage fee payment…equal to a percentage…of the covered platform’s advertising revenue generated during that month multiplied by the eligible digital journalism provider’s allocation share.”

Essentially, A.B. 886—dubbed the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA)—would make entities like Google and Facebook pay to link and send traffic to media websites, despite the fact that media outlets get as much if not more out of this arrangement.

This sort of “link tax” not only makes no sense but is “actively harmful to the open web” and “based on a ridiculously confused understanding of basically everything,” writes Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick. More:

In short form: if any website does not want to get traffic from Google or Facebook, they have the power to control that by using robots.txt or redirects. It’s easy.

The problem is that they want the traffic. They want it so bad that they hire “search engine optimization” experts to help them get more traffic.

The problem is that they don’t just want the traffic, they also want to get paid for that traffic.

This is backwards in so many ways. It’s basically saying that they should get paid to have other companies send them traffic.

It also breaks the most fundamental concept of the open web — the link — by saying that the government can force some websites to pay for linking to other websites (and, on top of that, force the paying websites to have to host those links, even if they don’t want to).

Everything about this is filthy and corrupt. It’s literally Rep. Buffy Wicks and others in the California legislature saying “we’re forcing companies we dislike to give money to companies we like.”

Under the CJPA’s terms, online platforms would be subject to the link tax if they have at least 50,000,000 monthly active users or subscribers in the U.S. or are owned or controlled “by a person with either…United States net annual sales or a market capitalization greater than five hundred fifty billion dollars ($550,000,000,000), adjusted annually for inflation” or “at least 1,000,000,000 worldwide monthly active users on the online platform.”

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FBI Reopens Assange Investigation

Three years after indicting him on espionage and computer intrusion charges, the Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to be still seeking more evidence against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.  

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported in its Thursday edition that the F.B.I. last week sought an interview in London with Andrew O’Hagan, who worked as a ghostwriter on Assange’s autobiography in 2011.  

The London Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism command sent the letter to O’Hagan, which said: “The FBI would like to discuss your experiences with Assange/WikiLeaks …”  

O’Hagan told the Herald: “I would not give a witness statement against a fellow journalist being pursued for telling the truth. I would happily go to jail before agreeing in any way to support the American security establishment in this cynical effort.”  

The news comes amid growing optimism among Assange supporters that a deal may be in the works to free Assange from London’s Belmarsh prison, where he has been kept since 2019 awaiting the outcome of a U.S. extradition request.  

Assange’s Australian lawyer, Stephen Kenny, told the Herald:

“It appears they are continuing to try to investigate, which I find unusual given the amount of time that has passed since the investigation began.

I would think it is of some concern because we have been working to try to secure an arrangement that would see Julian come home. It would be very unusual if the FBI was trying to gather evidence that could help clear his name.”

Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, told the newspaper: “It shows they understand how weak the charges against Julian are and are trying to strengthen them.”

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Childproofing the Internet

For the past several years, lawmakers and bureaucrats around the country have been trying to solve a problem. They wanted to regulate the internet, and in particular, they wanted to censor content and undermine a variety of systems that allow for privacy and anonymity online—the systems, in other words, that allow for online individuals to conduct themselves freely and outside of the purview of politicians.

There was something like a bipartisan agreement on the necessity of these rules and regulations. Lawmakers and regulators test-drove a number of potential arguments for online speech rules, including political bias, political extremism, drug crime, or the fact some tech companies are just really big. But it turned out to be quite difficult to drum up support for wonky causes like antitrust reform or amending the internet liability law Section 230, and even harder to make the case that the sheer size of companies like Amazon was really the problem.

Their efforts tended to falter because they lacked a consensus justification. Those in power knew what they wanted to do. They just didn’t know why, or how.

But in statehouses and in Congress today, that problem appears to have been solved. Politicians looking to censor online content and more tightly regulate digital life have found their reason: child safety.

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Govt. Nudge Units Find the “BEST” Ways to Manipulate the Public

Freedom of speech means a lot to us at the OP.  However, that’s been fading fast, as Daisy has documented, and as though speech restrictions aren’t bad enough, most of us have been lab rats for central planners’ behavioral experiments longer than we probably care to realize.  And now there are Nudge Units.

Huge amounts of money have been poured into “nudge research,” determining the best ways to get populations to change their behaviors without passing laws or using force.

What are Nudge Units?

Let’s look at how these “Nudge Units” got started, what they’ve been used for most recently, and what they’re likely to focus on next.

The concept of “nudging” people into making better choices became popular with the book Nudge—Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, authored by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and published in 2008. Their book defines a nudge as:

. . .any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.  To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid.  Nudges are not mandates.  Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge.  Banning junk food does not.  (p.6)

(You may be interested to note that author Sunstein is married to Samantha Power, the administrator of Biden’s US Agency for International Development and previously Obama’s ambassador to the UN. Forbes listed Ms. Power as the 63rd most powerful woman in the world in 2014. Do you think she’s Nudging? ~ Daisy )

Individuals in government and industry quickly realized that the authors’ insights into the decision-making process could be used to manipulate that process in the minds of the general public, many of whom don’t have the time or mental energy for NYT bestsellers.

The British government established its first Behavioural Insights Team in 2010.  It began as a seven-person team within a Cabinet Office nicknamed the “Nudge Unit” then became an independent social purpose company in 2014 before being purchased by Nesta, a larger social purpose company, in 2021.

These social purpose companies employ experts in promoting desirable behaviors.  So in Britain, for example, they want to cut obesity rates in half and reduce household carbon emissions by 28% by 2030.

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