Category: Born again Cynic!
U.S.—In a rash of tragedies all across the United States, every single bump stock in the nation was tragically lost in various boating accidents earlier this week.
Coincidentally, the bump stocks have just been banned by the Trump administration. Since all the bump stocks have been destroyed, it’s now impossible for the ATF to confiscate them or fine people who did not destroy them.
“Well, I guess our job is done,” an ATF representative said. “We were gonna have to make sure people complied with this unilateral executive order, but now I guess we can just harass gun owners for other stuff. Worked out pretty nicely for all of us, I think.”
It’s not clear why gun owners were taking their bump stocks boating. Some have theorized they were using them to fish, or just wanted to make sure they weren’t stolen why they were away. Whatever the case, it’s tragic that the bump stocks are now all at the bottom of lakes, rivers, and oceans from coast to coast.
Marriage
An intact marriage is a powerful preventative for public violence. You already knew that, and from several sources. It confirms your suspicions that the mass murderers in 26 of our 27 deadliest attacks came from fatherless homes. You already knew that most violent criminals are men. You noticed that most violent criminals grew up without a father.
You knew that boys are more sensitive than girls to family breakup. Boys need a nurturing mother AND a disciplinarian father so that the boys grow to become socially attached and psychologically whole.
Boys learn patience and emotional resilience from their father. You knew that boys become frustrated-and-angry outcasts when they fail to learn those lessons.
Fatherless boys and girls are delayed or depressed in dozens of social markers. However, the expression of that failure in the form of public violence is usually seen in boys rather than in girls.
I did not say that unwed moms produce mass murderers. I said that adults who lack self-control predominantly come from homes without a father.
If you want a society where people control their violent impulses, then you should support marriage.
News Media and Celebrity Violence
Our immersion in the media culture has grown enormously over time and at an accelerating rate. Today we carry video media in our pocket. Our media exposure is so pervasive that most children spend more time watching screens than interacting with real people.
Unfortunately, the news and entertainment media work hard to keep our attention. If it bleeds it leads..and the coverage of mass murder lasts for days. Add the fact that some angry and narcissistic young men will do anything for fame.
After the next mass murder, the news media will flood us with the murderer’s face and name as they turn the murderer into a celebrity. That billion dollar media blitz is an advertising campaign, a casting call, searching for the next mass murderer.
Media analysts and psychologists say we could cut the rate of mass murder by a third to as much as half. All we have to do is stop turning these murderers into celebrities.
There are media guidelines in place that stop news organizations from showing the face and saying the name of the mass murderer. Only a few US media organizations have signed on.
Yes, you can watch the news without becoming a mass murder. The same isn’t true for narcissistic psychopaths and sociopaths. We have to stop rewarding these narcissists if we want to stop mass murders.
Synthetic Violence
Killing our fellow man is unthinkable for most of us. Immersing ourselves in simulated violence makes killing easier. By the time we reach our early 20s, most of us have seen a quarter million violent acts on TV.
The murderer at Sandy Hook Elementary School who killed 20 children and seven adults immersed himself in video games as he failed in his real relationships. He played 4,901 simulated combat matches over more than 500 hours. He killed 83,496 characters. During that simulated violence, he shot 22,725 characters in the head in order to kill them. He later repeated that exercise in real life at a public school.
I’m glad that you can play video games without becoming a murderer. Some people can’t. If you want to save lives then stop teaching our kids to kill.
Failure of Mental Institutions and Government Institutions
We emptied most of our mental hospitals in the 1960s. Some of the mentally ill were successfully treated in local treatment facilities. Many were not. Our response to dealing with the mentally ill was to make all of society into a low-quality mental institution. That isn’t a sophisticated or targeted solution.
Many mass murderers have a history of violence and mental illness. Politicians tell us to say something if we see something..and we have.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives were called many times about the murderer at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. They were called before the murders at Parkland High School in Florida.
The police were called to the Parkland murderer’s home 45 times and no one asked for a mental evaluation to make the murderer prohibited from owning firearms.
Government agencies would rather look the other way than to do their job. If you want to stop mass murderers then we have to hold politicians and bureaucrats accountable for their mistakes.
Killing Zones
Prevention only takes us so far. Unfortunately, we cannot identify all of the people who will become violent just as we can not tell which people with heart conditions will suffer a heart attack tomorrow. That means we should prepare to deal with heart attacks and with school attacks in order to save lives. We have to plan our response in addition to implementing preventative measures.
In too many cases, we’ve deliberately prohibited a defensive response to public violence. Mass murderers look for crowds of defenseless victims. We are 30 times more likely to be attacked in a “gun-free” zone. Stop creating hunting grounds for sociopaths by disarming the victims.Summary
Our divorce rate here in the US doubled since the 1930. Reversing that trend and saving your marriage may save your children. Our news and entertainment media is violent and voracious. Stopping “celebrity violence” will clearly save lives.
Stop teaching our kids to kill. Eliminating “gun-free” zones reduces the times and places where mass murderers will strike. All of those solutions are simple and easily achievable compared to making bureaucrats do their job. All are worth it because each one saves lives.
References-
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/14/guess-which-mass-murderers-came-from-a-fatherless-home/
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/markmeckler/2018/02/27-deadliest-mass-shooters-26-one-thing-common/
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-desperate-cry-of-americas-boys
https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2018/03/06/dr-warren-farrell-explains-the-boy-crisis-n2457856
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/08/media-contagion.aspx
http://jpfo.org/d.i.e/die-partners.htm
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/124/5/1495
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bin.84
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-mass-shooters-russia-public-shootings-thousand-oaks-mercy-hospital-chicago-1121-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1aeWbewgcl8ihvia8RLmDO6onfFVTm-adSxwW4-2LC02GeJWHnu1JcGcU
https://crimeresearch.org/2018/06/more-misleading-information-from-bloombergs-everytown-for-gun-safety-on-guns-analysis-of-recent-mass-shootings/
~_~_
Categories
Well I thought it was funny!
If you are married or have a woman in your life. Then you will understand this one!
Least-Educated State: California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School Graduates
California Gov. Jerry Brown and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) outside the U.S. Capitol, March 22, 2017. (Getty Images/Alex Wong)
(CNSNews.com) – California ranks No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have graduated from high school, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
Texas ranks No. 2 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 49th for the percentage who have graduated from high school.
9.7 percent of California residents 25 and older, the Census Bureau says, never completed ninth grade. Only 82.5 percent graduated from high school.
8.7 percent of Texas residents 25 and older never completed ninth grade, and only 82.8 percent graduated from high school.
California and Texas—while having the highest percentages of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade and the lowest percentages who graduated from high school—are the nation’s two most populous states.
In fact, the 2,510,370 California residents 25 and older who, according to the Census Bureau, never finished ninth grade outnumber the entire populations of 15 other states.
In California, children are required to attend school from six years of age until they are 18. “California’s compulsory education laws require children between six and eighteen years of age to attend school, with a limited number of exceptions,” says the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, an agency of the California state government.
(The National Center for Education Statistics also indicates that children in California are compelled by law to attend school from 6 to 18 years of age.)
Massachusetts ranks No. 1 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older—42.1 percent–who have earned at least a bachelor’s degree.
These rankings are based on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 5-year estimates, which were released this month.
In the survey, the Census Bureau asks respondents to specify the level of educational attainment for each individual in their household. The question is: “What is the highest degree or level of school this person has COMPLETED. Mark (X) ONE box. If currently enrolled, mark the previous grade or highest degree received.”
The survey form then offers the respondent multiple options ranging from “no schooling completed” to “professional degree” or “doctorate degree.” If an individual has not earned a high school degree, the respondent is asked to specify the highest grade the individual actually completed—ranging from “nursery school” through “12th grade—NO DIPLOMA.”
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey queries a random sample of more than 3.5 million U.S. households each year and publishes a one-year estimate for each year. The five-year estimate, the bureau says, “is a weighted average of the five one-year estimates.” The newly released five-year estimates are for the period from 2013 through 2017.
Nationwide, 5.4 percent of residents 25 and older have never finished ninth grade, according to the latest five-year estimates.
Ten states exceeded the nationwide level of residents 25 and older who have never finished ninth grade. These include: California (9.7 percent), Texas (8.7 percent), New York (6.5 percent), New Mexico (6.5 percent), Kentucky (6.1 percent), Nevada (5.9 percent), Arizona (5.9 percent), Mississippi (5.6 percent), Rhode Island (5.5 percent), and Louisiana (5.4 percent).
Wyoming—with 1.8 percent—had nation’s smallest percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade.
In seventeen states, the percentage of residents 25 and older who at least graduated from high school was less than the nationwide percentage of 87.3 percent.
These seventeen states included: California (82.5 percent), Texas (82.8 percent), Mississippi (83.4 percent), Louisiana (84.3 percent), New Mexico (85 percent), Kentucky (85.2 percent), Alabama (85.3 percent), Arkansas (85.6 percent), Nevada (85.8 percent), West Virginia (85.9 percent), New York (86.1 percent), Georgia (86.3 percent), Tennessee (86.5 percent), South Carolina (86.5 percent), Arizona (86.5 percent), North Carolina (86.9 percent), and Rhode Island (87.3 percent).
Nationwide, 30.9 percent of residents 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
In nineteen states, the percentage with a bachelor’s degree or higher exceeds the national percentage. These nineteen states include both No. 14 California (32.6) and No. 9 New York (35.3), which respectively ranked No.1 and No. 3 for the percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade.
The ten states with the highest percentage of residents 25 and older who earned a bachelor’s degree or higher are: Massachusetts (42.1 percent), Colorado (39.4 percent), Maryland (39 percent), Connecticut (38.4 percent), New Jersey (38.1 percent), Virginia (37.6 percent), Vermont (36.8 percent), New Hampshire (36 percent), New York (35.3 percent), and Minnesota (34.8 percent).
West Virginia—at 19.9 percent—has the lowest percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
In another seven states, the percentage of residents who have a bachelor’s degree or higher is less than 25 percent. They are: Mississippi (21.3 percent), Arkansas (22 percent), Kentucky (23.2 percent), Louisiana (23.4 percent), Nevada (23.7 percent), Alabama (24.5 percent) and Oklahoma (24.8 percent).
In California, according to the Census Bureau’s five-year estimates, the resident population 25 and older was 25,950,818. Of those individuals, 2,510,370—or 9.7 percent–never completed ninth grade.
Another 2,033,160 California residents 25 and older completed the ninth, tenth, eleventh or twelfth grade—but did not earn a high school diploma. Thus, a total of 4,543,530 California residents 25 and older—or a nation-leading 17.5 percent–have never graduated from high school.
Those 2,510,370 individuals 25 and older in California who never finished 9th grade outnumber the entire populations of 15 other states, according to the Census Bureau’s latest population estimates. These include: Alaska (737,438), Delaware (967,171), Hawaii (1,420,491), Idaho (1,754,208), Maine (1,338,404), Montana (1,062,305), Nebraska (1,929,268), New Hampshire (1,356,458), New Mexico (2,095,428), North Dakota (760,077), Rhode Island (1,057,315), South Dakota (882,235), Vermont (626,299), West Virginia (1,805,832), and Wyoming (577,737).
In Texas, the resident population 25 and older was 17,454,431. Of those individuals, 1,513,995—or 8.7 percent—never completed ninth grade. That outnumbers the populations of 11 states.
PG&E broke laws in 12 NorCal wildfires, Cal Fire found. Prosecutors may not file charges
BY TONY BIZJAK AND
The Camp Fire began on Nov. 8, 2018, and has since become the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. Drone footage shows the fire destruction, with home after home lost, in Paradise, California.
By Alyssa Hodenfield | Hector Amezcua
PG&E has already been convicted in criminal court for a recent deadly tragedy. Could the utility soon find itself as the defendant in a dozen more cases, charged with breaking state laws?
In the wake of massive utility-caused Northern California wildfires, a handful of district attorneys in flame-scarred counties are pondering whether to charge the utility company in criminal court for misconduct.
Cal Fire, the state’s fire protection agency, sent investigative reports to seven counties this summer saying it believes PG&E likely violated state public resources and health and safety laws in 12 blazes.
Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean said it is up to local prosecutors in Sonoma, Napa, Yuba, Nevada, Lake, Humboldt and Butte counties to make independent decisions on whether to use the fire agency’s investigative conclusions to file criminal charges.
“We saw cause, and we gave it to the DAs to figure out,” McLean said. “Whether they are going to prosecute, that is up to them.”
The decisions on whether to charge Pacific Gas and Electric Co. could have a major impact on the company. The utility currently is subject to court-ordered federal monitoring stemming from a criminal conviction for the 2010 San Bruno gas-line explosion that killed eight.
A violation of PG&E’s probation in the San Bruno case — such as a criminal act — could lead to what one former prosecutor said would be an added layer of “onerous” controls. And, arguably even more troublesome, new criminal charges could give the utility giant a public black eye that would exacerbate its mounting financial woes.
Prosecutors pass
So far, none of the counties has filed charges. Cal Fire is still investigating last month’s Camp Fire, which killed 86 people in Butte County, mainly in the towns of Paradise and Magalia. That report is due next year.
In Sonoma and Napa — where Cal Fire alleges five wildfires were the result of PG&E law violations — attorneys said they are waiting for the state to come to a conclusion on the the biggest fire of all in 2017, the Tubbs Fire, which burned part of Santa Rosa and killed 22 people.
They and a few other counties recently asked the state attorney general to review the cases as well for potential state prosecution.
One county district attorney already has taken an alternate tack.
Butte District Attorney Mike Ramsey recently worked a deal with PG&E. He agreed not to file criminal charges for a small wildfire last year near Paradise. In exchange, PG&E pledged $1.5 million to pay for four new fire safety inspectors, and to allow those inspectors to look at PG&E’s power lines. If the inspectors find a fire safety hazard, PG&E agrees to correct it within 24 hours.
The fire that prompted the deal, the 2017 Honey Fire, was ignited by a tree limb hitting PG&E power lines and burning 150 acres of brush a half-mile from Paradise. Cal Fire determined that PG&E had failed to follow state public resources code that required it to trim a decaying limb close to the power line.
The Butte safety inspectors had not yet been hired when the devastating Camp Fire hit Butte County last month. If the program had been in place, could it have averted the Camp Fire? “That is the old, ‘What if?’ ” Ramsey said. “We can do that all day.”
Ramsey declined to say whether he would file criminal charges if Cal Fire determines PG&E broke laws in the Camp Fire. “It’s a little premature,” he said. Besides, “we don’t want to show our cards.”
Play Video
Duration 2:03
A memorial of crosses has been erected in Paradise in honor of the victims who died in the wildfire in Butte County. A family who lost their home and belongings stopped to visit on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018.
By Renée C. Byer | David Caraccio
Beyond reasonable doubt
Some residents, such as Christina Taft of Paradise, said a criminal prosecution would carry emotional resonance.
Taft has been struggling with guilt since the fire, wondering how much she is to blame for her mother’s death. Victoria Taft refused to leave their apartment that morning, despite her daughter’s pleadings. So Taft left without her mom, not realizing how dire the situation was. “I feel like I didn’t do enough,” she laments. “I didn’t wait long enough.”
Taft said she had a nightmare the other day about it: In the dream, it was early morning, and her mom was looking out a window at a light and was confused about what it meant.
Taft says she knows PG&E has a history of failing to maintain its infrastructure, but she is more angry with the county for not alerting her and her mom to the level of danger they faced. “It was not just our choice, it was a lot of factors. It wasn’t all my fault.”
In Napa County, where officials await the state’s Tubbs Fire report, Mike Rippey, son of Charles and Sara Rippey, the two oldest victims of the Atlas Fire, said he would like to see a criminal prosecution, if warranted.
“If someone does something criminal, then they should be punished,” he said. “But it’s not going to bring my parents back. It’s not going to make me feel any better.”
One county already has decided not to file criminal charges. Yuba County, where a pair sagging utility lines slapped together in high winds last fall, sparking the Cascade Fire which killed four people in the Loma Rica area, won’t take PG&E to court.
The criminal charge in that case likely would have been involuntary manslaughter, which carries a fine of up to $10,000 in each instance. County District Attorney Pat McGrath published a four-page paper in October detailing the fire investigation and explaining his conclusion that the burden of proof is too high to convict.
“This office has concluded that a criminal jury would be unable to unanimously agree beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence is sufficient to establish criminal negligence, as opposed to ordinary negligence, on the part of PG&E,” he wrote.
McGrath said he will reconsider, however, if new information comes out that would make a conviction more likely.
That doesn’t sit well with Marjorie David, who lost her daughter Roseann Hannah, 53, in that fire. David, who lives in Florida, first heard about her daughter’s possible death when a niece posted a prayer on Facebook. Another daughter called her minutes later with the bad news.
“(PG&E) should be held accountable,” she said. “I’m not looking for anything financially out of it. I don’t know a lot about what went on up there. I just don’t think people should get away with things like that, particularly the electric company, due to their neglect.”
In Nevada County, where the McCourtney Fire destroyed 13 buildings last year, District Attorney Clifford Newell said the decision to prosecute is complicated.
His county famously set a legal landmark in the 1990s, winning a wildfire criminal conviction against PG&E on hundreds of charges. But the utility’s actions were egregious back then, he said. In recent years, he’s seen utility crews out doing maintenance leading up to fire season.
Given that PG&E is making payouts in individual civil lawsuits stemming from the fire, and that his county already is pursuing a civil case against PG&E, Newell said he is asking himself: “Is it right for me to file criminal action? I don’t know yet. Criminal negligence is one of the toughest standards to meet. It has to be super-egregious activity.”
The potential for criminal charges is only a part of a morass of legal issues PG&E faces as a result of several years of fires involving utility lines in drought-plagued California. The company has been hit with numerous individual civil suits from residents who lost homes, businesses and loved ones.
A group of nine counties also has filed a joint civil action against PG&E, called the North Bay Fire case. That includes several counties also pondering criminal charges.
Those counties are following a trail blazed by Calaveras County in 2015 when it civilly sued PG&E for causing a fire called the Butte Fire, which killed two people. The fire was named for the road closest to the ignition point, Butte Mountain Road in Amador County.
Calaveras recently extracted a $25 million settlement from PG&E. The county will use the money to replace damaged infrastructure and to compensate itself for lost tax base.
Calaveras chose not to file criminal charges, though Cal Fire said PG&E had violated several state codes by improper tree cutting, allowing a weak tree to hit the lines.
Deputy District Attorney Jeff Stone said his office decided a jury may not view PG&E as criminally responsible for the two deaths, given how far away they were in time and distance from the fire’s origin. One of the victims reportedly refused to leave his property, instead staying to clear brush around his home.
“In both cases, it was at least the second day of the fire,” Stone said. “We saw that as a little far removed. We had to evaluate: Did these people perhaps choose to remain at their home and protect their home. We didn’t see PG&E as being criminally responsible for that.”
Payouts vs. punishment
Civil lawsuits are more popular because they typically lead to much higher fines than criminal charges, and have a lower legal bar of proof. In many cases, criminal liability for starting a fire is just a misdemeanor and the fines are small, often $1,000 per incident.
Civil litigation attorney Gary Danko, part of a legal team representing several hundred Camp Fire victims, said a criminal fine is like “a gnat on the backside of an elephant” compared to multimillion dollar civil payouts.
After the 2010 natural gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno, PG&E was fined $1.6 billion by state regulators. When the company was found guilty of six felony counts for violating federal pipeline safety laws, it was fined $3 million — the maximum allowed by law. PG&E was also ordered to spend up to $3 million publicizing the convictions and had to commit to 10,000 hours of community service.
But some legal experts say PG&E has good reason to fear criminal convictions. The San Bruno criminal case also left the company on probation for five years, starting in 2017, during which it’s had to submit to outside monitoring of a corporate “compliance and ethics program.”
A federal judge last month demanded that PG&E explain to him by the end of the year why the Camp Fire is not a violation of the probation terms. (The cause of the Camp Fire has not been officially determined, but PG&E acknowledged equipment malfunctions on the day the fire started at the location where it started.)
Several fire lawyers said the judge could choose to tighten federal court monitoring of the utility, or even appoint someone to run the company if he determines PG&E violated its probation.
Beyond that, though, PG&E likely has a general concern about looking like a bad guy in the public’s eye.
“Companies do not want to be prosecuted criminally. Reputational harm is huge and companies don’t want that,” said Stacey Geis, a former assistant U.S. attorney who helped bring the San Bruno charges against PG&E. “Most companies would ask me to prosecute them civilly and not criminally.”
PG&E declined to comment about potential criminal charges. Spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo said the company is focused on safety.
Play Video
Duration 1:51
Flyover shows the destruction from the Camp Fire, California’s deadliest wildfire, in Paradise, CA., on November 13, 2018.
By Hector Amezcua
DEAR ______ : Please accept with no implied or implicit obligation on your part, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted in the calendar year 2011, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.
Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only America in the Western Hemisphere and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes.
By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.
This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.