Month: January 2010

Fundraising Bleg for Illinois 2nd Amendment Case

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I post below the contents of a message that the Illinois State Rifle Association is sending to people on its email distribution list.

ALERT – Supreme Court Case on Chicago Handgun Ban

 
 
Yesterday the City of Chicago filed their brief in response in the US Supreme Court case brought by the Illinois State Rifle Association. The case, McDonald v Chicago, seeks to overturn Chicago’s handgun ban and punitive registration process.
 
This is the most important case in U.S. history concerning the Second Amendment and it is the ISRA’s case. Can state and local governments take away your Second Amendment Rights? Or is the Right to Keep and Bear Arms so fundamental that it is protected by being incorporated against the states through the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution? Without going into a bunch of legal language, Chicago’s brief is their attempt make sure that the handgun ban lives on.
 
These are the next steps in this case:
 
1. Our reply to what Chicago just submitted is due January 29.
 
2. Oral Arguments in the case have been scheduled for March 2.
 
3. The court is expected to deliver a decision near the end of June.
 
The outcome of this case is expected to affect the status of the Second Amendment across the nation. If we win, it does not mean that the fight is over, it means that next phase of the fight has begun.
 
The City of Chicago is using tax dollars pay for the defense in this case, in order to keep preventing its residents being able to have effective self-defense at home. Of course, no tax payer monies are being used to defend your Second Amendment rights! The legal effort behind the McDonald case is paid for privately.
 
The ISRA needs your support and your contributions to keep this case, and the inevitable follow-up cases, moving forward.
 
Now is the time. If you are an ISRA member, we need your continued support. Please make a donation on-line here, or over the phone at 815-635-3198. If you would like to mail or fax a donation, we have a printable form here [pdf].
 
Now is the time. If you’re not an ISRA member, join NOW and ride with us into history. You’ll be able to say “I was an ISRA member when WE overthrew the Chicago handgun ban and forever changed the gun control debate!” You can join on-line, or over the phone at 815-635-3198. You can download a printable application form here [pdf].
 
Post this alert to all internet blogs and bulletin boards to which you belong. Also, pass this alert on to your gun owning friends and fellow sporting club members. Ask them to forward this alert to their friend far and wide. Although the suit targets the local ordinance in Chicago, the implications of incorporation of the 2nd Amendment are national in scope.

(Note that I edited some of the links in the message to make them easier to use, but the content is unchanged.)

Wikipedia Account Prep

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Whether you love Wikipedia or hate it, if you have strong opinions about just about anything you are very likely going to want to go over there at some point and give them a piece of your mind. If you don’t prepare beforehand, you’re very likely going to be ignored or called names. Here’s how to avoid that fate.

1. Register for an editor’s account.
2. Pick two or three topics you’re interested in that are a bit off the beaten path and tend not to be controversial.
3. Create some solid, boring edits in your non-controversial topics, at least 10 edits if you’re not running an anonymizer or 100 edits if you’re coming in through an anonymizer like TOR.
4. Put up a basic description of yourself on your user page that’s noncontroversial.

Once you’ve done these things and your account has a bit of longevity to it you’ve passed the participation hurdle of Wikipedia and you’ve paid your dues. The classic Wikipedia excuses that are used to not listen to new users don’t quite apply to you. If a page is semi-protected, you can still participate in the discussion and any voting.

You also might consider continuing the non-controversial edits, just for fun. Outside hot button topics such as politics and furry webcomics (really, don’t ask), Wikipedia actually does very good, neutral work on a whole host of topics. If more people were involved, especially in underrepresented groups like conservatives, it would be a better tool for everybody.

Paying Higher Taxes Can Be Very Profitable

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Chevy Chase, MD, is an affluent suburb of Washington DC. Median household income is over $200K, and a significant percentage of households have incomes that are much, much higher. Stores located in Chevy Chase include Tiffany & Co, Ralph Lauren, Christian Dior, Versace, Jimmy Choo, Nieman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Saks-Jandel.

PowerLine observes that during the election season, yards in Chevy Chase were thick with Obama signs–and wonders how these people are now feeling about the prospect of sharp tax increases for people in their income brackets.

The PowerLine guys are very astute, but I think they’re missing a key point on this one. There are substantial groups of people who stand to benefit financially from the policies of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate, and these benefits can greatly outweigh the costs of any additional taxes that these policies require them to pay. Many of the residents of Chevy Chase–a very high percentage of whom get their income directly or indirectly from government activities–fall into this category.

Consider, for starters, direct employment by the government. Most Americans still probably think of government work as low-paid, but this is much less true than it used to be. According to this, 19% of civil servants now make $100K or more. A significant number of federal employees are now making more than $170,000. And, of course, the more the role of government is expanded, the more such jobs will be created, and the better will be the prospects for further pay increases.

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Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday

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zweig World of Yesterday

I asked for one thing for Christmas, Stefan Zweig’s book The World of Yesterday. Jacques Barzun, in his book From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present spoke highly of the Zweig book, and I have wanted to read it ever since reading Barzun. My wife got the Zweig book for me, and I finished it this morning. It is the first book I finished in 2010, and the bar has been set very high for the rest of the year. It is one of the best books I have ever read.

Zweig tells his life story, growing up in an intellectual Jewish milieu in Vienna before World War I, in a golden age of peace and freedom (as only became clear after it was gone), becoming a successful writer and friend of many famous people, the ensuing destruction of European civilization in World War I and its aftermath, and ultimately his flight from Austria to escape the Nazis. He committed suicide in Brazil in 1942. He mailed this book to his publisher the day before he died.

This book now holds a noble place beside Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March and Gregor von Rezzori’s The Snows of Yesteryear as depictions of the final years of Austria Hungary, and the cosmopolitan, open, secure, lawful and liberal European world order which ended in 1914 and has never returned.