This Is The Same Logic

One Florida sheriff is touting their relationship with Flock and how it helped them find a missing child.

The thing they are missing is they are, in essence, saying that it's OK to enter every house in their jurisdiction without a warrant to catch a child pornographer.

The huge question is, "Does the good outweigh the bad?"

Considering the contents of the Bill of Rights, no.

The founders were firmly of the idea that it's better to let a few criminals get away with it than to trod on the rights of the innocent to catch them.

Something we're going to have to address is the issue of private organizations collecting information and then selling it to the government(s).

I suspect that if we decide that if the government buys something they cannot, legally, collect on their own is forbidden; the collection of such data by private entities will stop. 

I'm Getting A Little Sick Of This

One of the things you get with being a 100% service connected veteran in Florida is a property tax bill of $0.

$1 property?  $0 property taxes.

$500 million property?  $0 property taxes. 

Apparently they will be most affected by the referendum on increasing the homestead exemption. 

How?

Increased ad valorem.

Increased ad valorem that everyone will have to pay if the local politicians don't get the message about reducing their bloated budgets.

It's a scare tactic to get us to vote against our own interests in favor of these "poor" veterans.

Oh, a married 100% vet gets $4,158.17 a month ($49,898.04 a year tax free) for their service too.  So Mr Young complaining about ad valorem going from $2,000 a year to $4,000 a year can cover it with a single month's check.  Or he can space it out and hold $333.33 a month until tax time.

If he's living on that disability check exclusively, he shouldn't be living in a city with $2k ad valorem.  I'm willing to bet that he and his wife have jobs and are making decent money and this is just a "I don't wanna spend an extra $167 a month to cover the services of the municipality I've chosen to live in."  For example, the total taxes on the inlaws house, where we get no tax breaks, is less than the ad valorem Mr Young claims he's paying.

The average home value in Loxahatchee, according to Zillow, is about $860k.  Mr Young is already skipping out on approximately $10k in property taxes every year, but having to pay an extra $2k is going to break him?

I am, myself, a disabled veteran, but I am growing ever sicker of listening to people who are less fucked up than me with a much higher rating complaining about the benefits they're getting.  They're the kind of people who say, "You're welcome for my service," unironically. 

In the process of trying to find out how much Mr Young is being assessed, I discovered that I should be taking an additional $5k off my home's assessed value because of my own disability rating. 

PS: There are approximately 60,000 100% veterans in Florida.  That's 0.2% of the population.  Yes, let's design our entire tax policy around this teeny constituency. 

I'm Much Cheaper

It turns out I did more about 155mm shells than General Dynamics did last week, and I didn't spend $500 million to do it.

Ooops! 

Though it appears that GDOT did a, "we think this might work, but we won't know until we try to actually do it," deal by using older machinery to make newer rounds.

Well, we now know that the machines that made M107 rounds don't make M795 rounds.

Reading between the lines, to me, it seems that they're getting a handle on it, but the worst case scenario played out. 

Why It Wasn't A Problem

In 1868 granting birthright citizenship to anyone born on our side of the line wasn't an issue because all you got was citizenship.

If you didn't get to work, like everyone else, you'd starve.

If you worked it was, relatively, simple to become a productive member of society rather than a burden. 

It's an issue now because of the lavish, and unending, handouts and, as was pointed out in the comments, the penumbral right to bring everyone with even 1% consanguinity with you here to live.

The issue compounds.

Personally, I'm in favor of killing the handouts.  We really can't afford them.

Ideally we only let the citizen stay and send their parents packing.  I'm not sentimental about breaking up a family whose only goal is to punch out an anchor baby and start hanging from the welfare teat.

Especially now that we've seen how much fraud came with it. 

No It Doesn't Do That

The massive tax cut represented by increasing the homestead exemption will NOT make renting a house more expensive.

Cutting taxes on home owners doesn't increase the taxes on rental properties.  Those remain the same as before. 

In fact, there's language slowing down the rate they can increase the taxes on non-homestead properties from 10% to 5%.

That will help renters, not hurt them.

Right To Repair

It would appear that President Trump did us hot-rodders a solid!

 

🚨 JUST IN: President Trump signs an order to STOP people from being arrested or targeted for FIXING THEIR VEHICLE, giving the “right to fix”

Common sense!

This also breaks up a California-based monopoly on 3rd party car parts certification, per Lee Zeldin 👏🏻

TRUMP: “It came… pic.twitter.com/yOf3FiBzlu

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 29, 2026

 

I think I'm better than the dealer at fixing my car and have always felt that I should be able to access, modify or fix any system on it.

Amazing

Revenues doubled in the past five years, but a 15% cut will eliminate everything they, successfully, funded with half the money previously?

I think we're in, "pull the other one, it has bells on it," territory. 

The maths of the people crying about this tax cut aren't adding up.

BTW:  If tripling the exemption on property taxes results in a 15% drop in revenue, then you should be fine.

What these governments are going to have to do is separate the "must have" from the "nice to have."

Two things they keep bringing up to scare the normies is schools, fire and police.

Schools are already lavishly funded from the portion of property taxes that are unaffected by the homestead exemption.

In too many cases the city fire and police services are a duplication of effort and the county, with it's more diverse funding, could take over the task.

But the giant, huge, thing they're missing is the voters have been demanding relief from the taxation of their property and, by extension, they are saying they want the cities and counties of Florida to figure out how to live more cheaply. 

The voters are painfully aware that these same governments managed to provide all the services they threaten with half the money when there was just 45% inflation while the revenue increased 100%.

That means that the previous level of funding could survive a 28% cut in revenue.

The problem is the funding levels went up as the revenue did.

The voters get another chance to remind them in November by endorsing or rejecting the tax cut. 

Progressive

The road from high-trust to low-trust societies follows a predictable path.

One of the first steps is the entities that have been entrusted with keeping order, refusing to do so or being selective about what order they keep.

Anarchotyranny is the result.

The classic example is a homeowner who has suffered through repeated thefts and burglaries and receiving no justice who decides enough is enough and administers some on their own.

The people who are supposed to be investigating the crimes that led to this, enforcing the law and meting out punishment...  Come down hard on the homeowner.

The homeowner did, assuredly, break the law; but the motives matter.

What was the government doing to keep them from losing their property?

Had they arrested anyone?

Had they secured a conviction?

Did they even bother to actually investigate past taking a vague description or logging the video of the crime?

The government and police have failed in their duties and since they are given powers delegated from The People, it is the right of The People to reclaim those powers from the government and police.

But there's a simple solution:  Just make it legal to shoot burglars and thieves in the act of stealing AND/OR running from the scene of the crime.

Fuck 'em.

Because if the cops don't start arresting people and the district attorney doesn't start getting convictions:  People are going to start killing criminals on their own and will shortly thereafter start shooting the police who try to stop them.

It's a place we, as a society, do not want to be; but the first step back from the brink is the hardest and it's on Leviathan to make it. 

Mixed Feelings

First off, she's lying, they are not banning classic cars with this bill.  Bad way to start.

What they are changing is the issuance and usage of cars with the special classic car license plate.

Near as I can tell, if you register your hot-rod normal like, you are not constrained by the new rules.

At the moment you pay $13.50 for a rear plate or, optionally, $15.50 for front and rear plates; plus $150 for sales tax and $25 one-time registration.  It's always been the law that you can't use it for "general transportation purposes."  So $178.50 and your car is registered forever in Minnesota.

General transportation purposes is not actually defined.

The proposed bill really defines, and limits, what you can do with your special, lifetime, registered car.

I am not that shocked that they went very restricted.

But you takes the tax break, you takes what restrictions come with it.

This is not going to destroy the hobby and most people who actually qualify for the plate as it was originally intended have the money to register and insure their cars with normal plates and can drive as much as they like, anywhere they like.

Betcha that there's a lot of shitboxes that are 2006 and older that have a "Collector's Vehicle, collector plate" who are doing it to avoid the 10% of original MSRP plus 1.575% of current value.

For reference a '69 Chevelle's MSRP is in the $2,600 ballpark.  Current value is VERY subjective, so let's say $50k because that's what Autotempest says.  So $1,047.50 a year to register your '69 Chevelle in Minnesota.  That's steep.

A 2006 Toyota Corolla ran $14,725 sticker price and is worth $6,500 today.  $1,574.88 a year.

See the incentive to call your shitbox a collector car?

The Rat Rod people have also made it difficult to make a, "is this a collector car?" decision on condition.

Club memberships don't really help either, there's scads of Ricer clubs that will include that Corolla.

Considering that I paid $250 total for three cars in Florida, I can see that the real problem isn't the definition of "Hot Rod" but a rapacious and greedy Democrat controlled government.

Angus McThag And The Mystery Of The Missing Title

The reason we couldn't find the title for Noxious was we never had it.

We bought Noxious from a local car dealer and they filed the purchase as "release of lien" instead of "paid in full" and the system expects the lein holder to then request a title for the purchaser.

Because the car was paid for in full, the fine folks at the dealer didn't realize they'd checked the wrong box and our title has been electronically held for the past 8 years.

So, instead of $76 or so for a replacement title, I paid just under $13 for a first title.  Plus I took it home the same day.

Even more fun!

If you use one of the third party title services you pay between $150 and $180 depending how you want it shipped and wait one to three weeks for it.  Regardless of whether it's an initial title or a replacement.

Glad I spent the 45 minutes at the motor vehicle office today.

Surf And Turf

I only got lobster once while I was in the Army.  On Columbus Day in basic.

We got steak fairly regularly, especially on Federal holidays.

It was, generally, great for morale and let the cooks demonstrate they could actually cook if allowed.

That's a bit of undeserved snark.

The mess hall never had anything actively disgusting.  Occasionally they'd serve something I was too picky to eat, but it wasn't unwholesome, and there was normally a second choice.

But I notice the same people who hate the military all the time are the ones complaining about how much getting surf and turf to the troops costs.

It's probably no coincidence that these people are also ignoring the fraud in Minnesota and other places.

A Little Nervous

 Tampa is the home of MacDill Air Force Base.

MacDill is the home of CENTCOM, which is the command that's responsible for the Middle East and, therefore, Iran.

I worry that, thanks to some idiots on the blue side of the aisle, we've let in cells of sappers and saboteurs who will attack the base and its surrounds.

Controlling the border is important.

Getting Mexico to stop being a sieve for every foreign national on the planet looking to get into America would be good too. 

Good!

Trump removed a keystone item in preventing life at TL7+ by eliminating the regulations that measured some gas emissions.

Good!

Now, do refrigerants!

The only thing "wrong" with R-134 and R-410 is Dupont's patents have expired.

Governing Least

"The government isn't best which governs least -- it's the best government that needs to govern least."

From Slovotsky's laws via Joel Rosenberg (RIP).

America, as designed, is supposed to be self governing.

The people of America did self govern for most of a century and a half.

But something changed.

It wasn't really that long ago, but it's approaching a century.

The urge to make other people do what we wanted them to do instead of doing what they wanted to do.

As designed, we shouldn't be able to do that as long as what they're wanting to do isn't doing us any harm.

Even if they are harming themselves.

But we got busybodied about it.

Once you start down the path of being a busybody, nothing is off limits.  Plus you get the moral righteousness of saving the benighted souls for their own good.

THEN!

You get an "industry" of people who grift off of saving their fellow man from themselves.

Suddenly you no longer have a government that governs least because you have a people that need governed more.

Found On Facebook

 

Neither A Hawk Nor A Dove Be

On the topic of war I'm different from a lot of the people I'm reading.

I don't think one should wait until it's too late to start one, but I also don't think it should be the first step of "diplomacy."

I think that if we're going to have a war, we should to it right, follow the rules and have Congress pass a declaration of war.

I also think that the president should have the flexibility to reply to casus belli without waiting for Congress to convene and vote.

But I'm conflicted on the president being able to initiate hostilities.

"But, McThag," I hear some say, "what if a quick, surprise, attack is what's needed?"

I dunno.  That's why I am conflicted.

Considering how often the people who are on the receiving end of those quick, surprise, attacks are not national actors, then I think the old hostis humani generis rules apply.

Wanna drop a JDAM on pirates, slavers or terrorists?  That's executive power and doesn't need Congress to further authorize the force because it's long accepted that such are enemies of humanity.

I'm getting to the point of thinking that non-assimilating, illegal aliens should be added to the list.

It'd be a Hell of an incentive for them to get to be becoming 'Merican.

But if you want to make war on a nation-state, you have to get Congress involved before you start shooting if they aren't actually shooting at you first.

I get conflicted because I can easily see lots of practical problems with following the rules.

However, if war is declared, then WARRE it is!

You get us to the point where we feel the need to get that declaration, your nation becomes an entry in the history books.  Your language, culture and history will be, effectively, erased and you will be replaced by US.  Your nation becomes a territory.  Your people become territorial residents who will now have to assimilate to being Americans; like it or not.  Your grandchildren will not know how to speak your foreign tongue and will not be able conceive of a time where their home state was ever a nation-state.

I'd rather we were a lot friendlier and happier nation than that though.  I prefer mutually beneficial treaties, trade and cultural exchange.

Wiping you off the face of the Earth is the last thing I want us to do... but it IS on the list.

Just sayin'.

Supply And Demand That's It

If something is too expensive you have two choices to make it cheaper:  Increase the supply or reduce the demand.

Considering that an increasing price is the invisible hand pushing on demand... you really only have one choice.

It's super simple in theory and ultimately, everything in practice will boil down to supply and demand.

Another part of this bedrock is "scarcity" which is Econ 101 for "finite" or "there's only so much of something to go around at any given time."

And we keep talking about "affordable" housing.

How do you make it cheaper?

Make more houses seems the obvious answer.

Well, you cannot build a house like mine in my county any more.

The minimum lot size is now 10,000 sq ft.

Mines just under 5,500.

So we already have decided to have fewer houses in the same area.

The max footprint of the house cannot exceed 40% of the lot's, and my little place is just 30%.

There's not a damn thing wrong with my old house for a single family.  I know this because we ARE a single family and we're doing fine.

My county appears to be addressing the housing "shortage" not by making smaller lots with smaller houses, but by making much bigger buildings and MUCH smaller dwellings.

Apartment complexes.

It's like they don't want people to own a home.

But It's Legal Here

Something that just hit me about the injustice of banning felons from owning guns is all of the states have different laws.

Something that's a felony in California could be perfectly legal in Florida.

Catch a felony conviction in California, and you can't own a gun in Florida for doing something that wouldn't have gotten you a stern look from a cop.

That seems very unjust to me.

I've never seen it suggested that we even try to fix it.

But I think it's worth trying to fix!

No Material Effect

I am sitting here looking at 41 days of the government being shut down and except for the ATC slow-down...

I'm not seeing any ill effects.

And the ATC slow down doesn't really affect my non-flying ass.

It's really making me scream, "If we don't need it, why do we have it?!"

I Just Realized

I got a flu shot at my local VA clinic on the way down for my last neuro appointment at the VA hospital.

It's interesting that they're open.

I remember when Obama shut down the government in 2013 and having to rearrange appointments.