July 2011 – Page 9 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Great Article About Lobbying

Kudos to the Arizona Republic for taking time to actually understand the issue of lobbying, and write a pretty good article on it. It details the kind of work that goes into passing legislation. This is the kind of attitude you gain from victories, and confidence:

He said he doesn’t consider this year’s legislative defeats as failures.

“We are perfectly willing to encounter a defeat and learn from it and learn who our friends are and aren’t and what we need to change to make the bill go through,” Heller said. “We’re willing to be defeated if it moves us forward.”

Rathner said they learned from Brewer’s vetoes, saying the groups will try to craft bills next session that are more specific. He said the lobbyists will work closely with Brewer’s staff to develop something she can sign.

It’s not a defeat, just a temporary setback. The other side used to speak in this manner, but you don’t hear them singing that tune any longer. They can even get their bills heard, let alone far enough along to actually be defeated or vetoed.

Bear Advice

Chris from Alaska talks about recent bear encounters in National Parks, and steps you can take to mitigate that risk. I’ve been to Yellowstone, and there are few places I think you can go on earth to see more people doing more stupid things with wildlife. A lot of folks seem to come pretty close to treating some of our National Parks like petting zoos.

Phone Interview

Have a phone interview today. If this plays out I’ll be making a move from pharmaceuticals to finance/economics. I’m reading up on some of the statistical software and programming interfaces used in that field. They were looking for someone who knows all this stuff. I knew about half of what they were looking for. But I knew nothing of pharma’s complex software tools upon starting my previous job, and understood their programming interfaces pretty well by the end. What intrigues me about this lead is that I would learn a lot of new and valuable skills, and it would get me doing work pretty similar to what I had previously done, just in a different context.

At least I think. Part of the interview is to understand the job better, and see if there’s a fit.

UPDATE: Phone interview went pretty well. The job is different than I thought but still interesting. It’s a pay cut, but I was taking a risk premium from the previous company, because they needed to keep me through periods of great uncertainty. I kind of knew I’d have a tough time maintaining my salary in the kind of environment I’d like to work.

Threats to Local Public Officials

One thing I learned, from my parents being relatively active in the town I grew up in, is that state and local politicians, and particularly town or borough council meetings, are like flypaper for the mentally unstable. It’s unfortunate that one of our local reps is finding himself in this situation. I first noticed this article at MSNBC yesterday, which spoke of the guy’s demands:

â€œI want my name cleared,â€ he said. â€œ Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt (famous race car drivers) can vouch for me. I may run for president,â€ said a rambling Buehl.

This looks to me like yet another failure of our mental health system. This guy should probably be in a mental hospital, or, at least monitored to ensure he’s taking his prescribed medication.

Fast & Furious and the Arms Export Control Act

Dave Hardy has an analysis. It looks like this statute may have indeed been violated in Fast and Furious, but I doubt you’re going to see charges unless a special prosecutor is appointed in this investigation.

Bozo

Just because she votes the right way doesn’t make her any less of one. These are people I’d rather not have on my side. The media seems to keep harping on the gun not having a safety. I don’t care whether it has a safety or not, you don’t point it at people. I also don’t care whether the the reporter, as Klein claims, sat in front of her line of sight. If someone walks in front of the muzzle, you point it in a safe direction immediately. It’s hard for me to imagine a scenario where I let someone walk in front of my muzzle. It’s also, equally hard, to imagine a scenario where I agree to show off my loaded pistol to a reporter, or anyone. If someone asks to see the gun you’re carrying, the responsible answer should be “NO,” and the next question is how the person knew you were carrying in the first place.

UPDATE: SayUncle notes that her side of the story is different, namely that she cleared the pistol first.

Some Confusion Over Who Elects Officials

Miguel does the math. I hate to always pick on CSGV, but, unfortunately for them, they are the group that really fails to heed at all the advice of one of our great Presidents.

CSGV Continues to Deteriorate

The form 990s for Coalition to Stop Gun Violence are now available for the year 2009, so that presents some opportunity to do some comparisons. For those of you following along at home, here are the relevant IRS documents:

The good news is that the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is continuing to hemorrhage money. The bad news is that CSGV has shifted almost all of their operations into their 501(c)(3), the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. This trend is following all gun control organizations that we’ve been tracking. I say bad news only because I’d prefer all of them having to file for unemployment, but when it comes to political reality, it’s good news. So what are the trends?

CSGV continues to lose money. In 2008, they took in $224,887, and in 2009, they took in $207,066. At the same time, CSGV increased their program expenses from $94,426 in 2008, to $110,061 in 2010. As a result of that, CSGV’s net assets dropped from $21,706 in 2008 to $14,335. Â No one has technically been on payroll at CSGV since 2007, and that was when they were paying Michael Beard $35,306 to act as Secretary of the organization. In fact, even going back to 2004, Beard has essentially been the only person making any money off CSGV.

But the story of CSGV is not the entire story of this anti-constitutional rats nest. You also have to consider the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, which is the 501(c)(3) organization of the same bunch of rats. If you look at EFSGV, it paints a different picture. EFSGV has actually managed to boost revenue, to $372,600 in 2009, from $346,139 in 2008. Despite this boost in revenue, they have cut program expenses from $413,381 in 2008, to $319,321 in 2009. This had the effect of taking their 2008 net assets of $33,128 in 2008 to $86,407 in 2009. In my analysis, this was out of utter necessity. Despite the increase in revenue, they needed to squirrel away money to avoid complete ruin.

CSGV’s public support percentage dropped from 90.6% in 2008 to 87.2% in 2009. Why? Because 2009 was the year the Joyce gravy train started to deliver. In 2009, the Joyce grant was $85,274.00. Â You can see that the Joyce grant more than made up for EFSGV’s shortfall. Had it not been for that money, they would have reduced their revenue an additional $26,461 that same year. In 2010, and 2011, Joyce upped their grant to $125,000. I suspect this grant is largely what is going to keep EFSGV afloat at all since then. In short, the Joyce Foundation has the gun control movement on life support.

So what can we use as a proxy to figure out how the size, in terms of number of employees, of the organization is faring? Leasing expenses are a good proxy for that. So how is what’s left of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns doing in that arena?Â In 2009, CSGV reduced its leasing expense to $9,465 from $20,149 the previous year. Looking at EFSGV, it’s leasing expense in 2004 was $63,141. In 2008, leasing expense was $45,783. In 2009, it was $43,267. This is an organization that has been shrinking, not growing, since I doubt it’s getting a break on D.C. office space leasing rates.

The picture painted is an organization shifting a great deal of its expenses over to its 501(c)(3). Think of the 501(c)(3), in this case, as a leaking lifeboat, that’s only staying above the waves because someone is expending effort to continuously bail water. At some point, the Joyce people might just get tired of bailing, and decide it was a good effort, but that it’s time to go down with the ship. We’ll continue to track their finances, and report how they are doing, along with all the other gun control organizations.

Issa and Grassley to Holder

Burgers and Boomsticks as a copy of the letter. Worth a read.

Morning Posts

Sorry about the lack of posts this morning. A friend from NRA was in town, so we got together for lunch at a local BYOB BBQ establishment. For those of you not familiar with Pennsylvania’s twisted liquor laws, the Liquor Control Board had a fixed number of liquor licenses, so up until fairly recently, if you wanted to get one, someone else had to go out of business, give it up, or have their license permanently revoked. As a result, a lot of restaurants couldn’t get them, so it created a pretty lively Bring Your Own Bottle restaurant culture. There is even a Mexican restaurant I know in the area that gives out margaritas as a scheme for filling tables. If you do not have a liquor license as a restaurant, it’s perfectly lawful in Pennsylvania to give liquor away. You only need a license to sell it. The Mexican place in question closed for a number of days a year with a sign on the door that said “Gone to Mexico for vacation.” I always figured they were buying the tequila cheap, and smuggling it over the border.