Abbot and Costello updated

Some Guns Need to be Banned

When will the Federal government stop massacres? Why should the public be victim to crimes that can be reduced? When only about 15% of the population owns firearms why must the rest of us hope and pray that no one in our family is a victim when they go to a shopping mall or other public location?

We have an amendment to the constitution that provides for everyone to own a gun for their own protection and for use in a militia. That right does not say that crazy, mad, and the mentally imbalanced have a right to fire arms.

Semi-automatic weapons and assault weapons used in war appear to be the guns used to for massacres in most instances. So why aren’t these weapons banned? The AR-15 assault rifle was among the weapons banned by the federal government up until 2004, when the ban expired. It has not been renewed. The gun lobby and the NRA have done an outstanding job of preventing sensible regulations. It is obvious that our congress is subject to the will of those businesses and gun hobbyist groups that want to stop all regulation.

Both automatic and semi-automatic weapons should be banned.

The following list is not a complete listing. The lives lost and the lives permanently maimed should be sufficient motivation for new enforcements.

Place	Date	Number Killed	Number Injured	Weapon Used
Orlando Fl., nightclub	June 12, 2016	49	17	similar to an AR-15
Virginia Tech	April 16, 2007	32	53	22-caliber Walther P22 semi-automatic handgun and a 9 mm semi-automatic Glock 19 handgun.
Newtown, Conn, elementary school	Dec. 4, 2012	27	1	AR-15 assault rifle
San Bernardino, Calif., community center	Dec 4, 2015	14	21	Smith & Wesson M&P assault rifle
Binghamton, New York, outside the American Civic Association	April 3, 2009	13	4	2 hand guns
Washington Navy Yard	Sept. 3, 2013	12	3	AR-15 assault rifle
Aurora, Colo. Movie theater	July 29, 2012	12	58	AR-15 assault rifle
Charleston S.C. church	April 19, 2015	9	1	45-caliber semi-automatic Glock handgun
Stockton, Calif., elementary school playground	Jan. 17, 1989	5	30	AK-47 and a semiautomatic handgun
Ft. Hood, Texas	April 2, 2014	3	16	5.7-millimeter pistol

Stay Vigilant Against Bogus IRS Phone Calls and Emails

We were called twice today with a recorded message telling us to call a phone number to resolve our tax issues. We do not have any tax issues.

From the IRS web site:

IRS Tax Tip 2015-20, February 17, 2015

Tax scams take many different forms. Recently, the most common scams are phone calls and emails from thieves who pretend to be from the IRS. They use the IRS name, logo or a fake website to try to steal your money. They may try to steal your identity too. Here are several tips from the IRS to help you avoid being a victim of these tax scams:

The real IRS will not:

–Initiate contact with you by phone, email, text or social media to ask for your personal or financial information.

-Call you and demand immediate payment. The IRS will not call about taxes you owe without first mailing you a bill.

–Require that you pay your taxes a certain way. For example, telling you to pay with a prepaid debit card.

–Be wary if you get a phone call from someone who claims to be from the IRS and demands that you pay immediately. Here are some steps you can take to avoid and stop these scams.

If you don’t owe taxes or have no reason to think that you do:

Contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Use TIGTA’s “IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting” web page to report the incident.

You should also report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Use the “FTC Complaint Assistant” on FTC.gov. Please add “IRS Telephone Scam” to the comments of your report.

If you think you may owe taxes:

Ask for a call back number and an employee badge number.

Call the IRS at 800-829-1040. IRS employees can help you.

In most cases, an IRS phishing scam is an unsolicited, bogus email that claims to come from the IRS. They often use fake refunds, phony tax bills, or threats of an audit. Some emails link to sham websites that look real. The scammers’ goal is to lure victims to give up their personal and financial information. If they get what they’re after, they use it to steal a victim’s money and their identity.

If you get a ‘phishing’ email, the IRS offers this advice:

–Don’t reply to the message.

–Don’t give out your personal or financial information.

–Forward the email to phishing@irs.gov. Then delete it.

–Don’t open any attachments or click on any links. They may have malicious code that will infect your computer.

–Stay alert to scams that use the IRS as a lure. More information on how to report phishing or phone scams is available on IRS.gov.

If you found this Tax Tip helpful, please share it through your social media platforms. A great way to get tax information is to use IRS Social Media. You can also subscribe to IRS Tax Tips or any of our e-news subscriptions.

What Price Will You Pay to See?

A Science Fiction Idea is Becoming Reality

Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge was the blind man character in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The story line was that due to a birth defect, he was born blind. He uses technological devices that enables him to see.

If only such a device could exist in the real world.

Now such progress in the real world has actually happened. Innovator Mark Greget has invented a combination of custom software and smart glasses that is designed to restore sight to people with serious vision loss. A camera on the front of the blacked-out glasses acts as eyes. Captured images are projected on the lenses.

People with significant loss of vision from macular degeneration, glaucoma, and retinitis pigmentosa can benefit from the glasses. The product became available this past April at a cost of $6,000. Called NuEyes they have been making patients “very happy.” Veterans Affairs have been placing orders for the device.

Donald Trump’s new favorite slogan was invented for Nazi sympathizers

Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Is Donald Trump the next Hitler? I am not willing to take a chance of electing him just to find out. Donald Trump is frightening.

By Eric Rauchway, The Washington Post, June 14 at 6:26 PM

Donald Trump greeted Twitter on Flag Day with two words in all caps: “AMERICA FIRST!”

He has made this slogan a theme for his campaign, and he has begun using it to contrast himself with President Obama, whose criticism of Trump’s rhetoric on Tuesday was answered with a Trump statement promising, “When I am president, it will always be America first.”

He wasn’t quite promising “America über alles,” but it comes close. “America First” was the motto of Nazi-friendly Americans in the 1930s, and Trump has more than just a catchphrase in common with them.

Trump defines the “America” he wants to put “first” by saying who does not properly belong in it. That definition does not include certain people of foreign descent born in the United States, who are to him still foreigners and whom he labels accordingly (in the past few weeks, Trump has referred to native-born Americans as “Mexican” or “Afghan”). It does not include Muslim residents, whom he would “certainly” and “absolutely” force to register their presence with the U.S. government (asked how this proposed policy differs from Nazi laws regarding Jews, Trump replied, “You tell me“).

Trump wants his exclusionary America to cower behind walls. He would erect metaphorical barriers against immigrants (excluding Muslims from entry to the United States until they can be “properly and perfectly” screened) and trade. And of course, he would build a literal wall along the Mexican border. None of which is to say Trump’s isolated America would decline to fight wars: Trump would increase bombing of the Middle East and fight “fast and … furious for a short period of time” against the terrorist enemy.

This is what Trump’s “America First” means: a white America (committed, to be sure, to “take care of our African American people”), living behind higher walls and screens, lashing out to prove its strength and then retreating again — not a government suspiciously tolerant of foreign threats.

And this is also largely what “America First” has historically meant.

During the early 1930s, as the Nazis consolidated control over Germany, the U.S. media baron William Randolph Hearst began touting the slogan “America First” against President Franklin Roosevelt, whom he saw as dangerously likely to “allow the international bankers and the other big influences that have gambled with your prosperity to gamble with your politics.” Hearst regarded Roosevelt’s New Deal as “un-American to the core” and “more communistic than the communists” — unlike Nazism, which he believed had won a great victory for “liberty-loving people” everywhere in defeating communism.

With the beginning of World War II in Europe and the Germans’ swift conquest of the continent, Roosevelt began to commit his administration more firmly to the aid of the those fighting Nazism. He incurred the ire of various anti-intervention constituencies, ranging from committed religious or principled pacifists to American communists, who supported the Nazi-Soviet pact and therefore the notion that the United States should stay out of the European war.

[Donald Trump is America’s Silvio Berlusconi]

But the most prominent of his opponents were the founders of the America First Committee, formed in September 1940. The committee opposed fighting Nazism and proposed a well-armed America confined largely to the Western hemisphere. It soon afterward adopted the noted aviator and enthusiast of fascism, Charles Lindbergh, as their favored speaker. Lindbergh accepted a medal from Herman Goering “in the name of the Fuehrer” during a visit to Germany in 1938, and “proudly wore the decoration.” He thought democracy was finished in Europe, that the western powers could not effectively resist the Nazi war machine and that the United States had better make terms with Adolf Hitler.

Lindbergh wasn’t against wars per se; he could support fighting if it came to “a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion.” His definition of the white race apparently had little room for Jewish people, about whom he thought Hitler had a point: “We are all disturbed about the effect of the Jewish influence in our press, radio, and motion pictures,” Lindbergh believed, though he allowed the country could benefit from “a few Jews of the right type” — just as Trump would presumably allow Muslims who could pass a perfect and proper screen.

The famed automaker and celebrity anti-Semite Henry Ford also joined America First. Like many others, they fought against the “groups” who, Lindbergh said, were pushing the country into war: “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.”

As with the Trump campaign, not all America First Committee supporters in 1940 were so egregious as their most visible spokesmen. But also as with the Trump campaign, neither did the moderate anti-Roosevelt anti-interventionists quite repudiate their fascist-friendly leaders.

The subsidiary labels may have shifted, but the general idea of “America First” remains the same: The United States should arm itself against foreign threats and stay within carefully defined borders, using the might of the state only to defend a very specific, rather white idea of “America” that excludes certain racial and religious minorities. Then, as now, the phrase offered strength through cowardice. Defeating this defeatism was essential to victory over dictatorships in the 20th century, and it is essential to preserving the institutions of democracy today.

A Hot Springs Death Reminds Park Visitors that they are in a Wilderness Area

I worked in Yellowstone National Park when I was a college student. That was a long time ago. The place is gorgeous. It’s the scenery and wildlife that cannot be found in many other places in the United States.

I remember the issues related to feeding the bears who stood in the middle of the roads begging for food. Traffic would be lined up for a mile of more as cars drove slowly past the bears. About every third or fourth car would stop and the passengers would lower their windows just an inch or two to give a begging bear some food. Employees at the park called these events “bear jams.” Every once in while a bear became angry and ripped open a window. There were lots of frightened tourists.

Abyss Pool, Yellowstone National Park, Water temperature 192 degrees

Taken with a Kodak Pony 35MM Camera.

The board walks in the geyser areas all had signs warning visitors not to leave the walks. You could see the water in those pools and geysers was boiling hot. Steam was emitting from them. Some pools had signs by them indicating the temperature of the water.

Mammoth Hot Springs. A dirty old slide taken with a Kodak Pony 35MM Camera.

Similarly there were signs warning visitors to stay away from close encounters with wild life. So when a Black Bear approached our patio dining area in Sequoia National Park we quickly went into the cabin. The bear broke open a can of tomato sauce and ate the contents as we watched through a window.

There have been deaths as a result of exiting trails and climbing on rocks in the Merced River near Yosemite Falls.

So when someone is killed as a result of not following the posted instructions who is to blame?

Twenty three year old Colin Nathaniel Scott thought he was wiser than park rangers.

Donald Trump is a Racist

June 10, 2016

Since posting The New York Times editorial numerous Republicans have spoken out against Donald Trump’s racist remarks. The best was said on June 7, 2016 by Paul Ryan. “I disavow these comments. I regret those comments that he made. Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

The following New York Times editorial reflects my views in words that I cannot construct in a better way.

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD of The New York Times JUNE 6, 2016

Donald Trump’s Contempt for the Rule of Law

Federal judges have repeatedly and emphatically refused to recuse themselves from cases because of their race or ethnicity. These rulings were driven by two realizations: Ethnically based challenges would reduce every judge to a racial category, which would be racist in itself. And such challenges would make judges vulnerable to recusal motions — for reasons of race, ethnicity, gender or religion — in every case that came before them.

In other words, once these challenges were allowed, there would be no end to them.

The gravity of this matter has clearly eluded Donald Trump, who has cast aside the Constitution and decades of jurisprudence by suggesting both ethnic and religious litmus tests for federal judges. These pronouncements illustrate that Mr. Trump holds the rule of law in contempt.

Mr. Trump started down this road months ago, attacking a federal judge in California who is hearing a lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University. Last week, he asserted that the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, had an “inherent conflict of interest” because he was “of Mexican heritage.” Mr. Trump implied that Judge Curiel — an American, born in Indiana — was biased against him because he intended to build a wall along the border to stop illegal immigration.

Republican leaders repudiated the remarks and hoped that the issue would disappear. But Mr. Trump went further on Sunday, when he said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation” that a Muslim judge might be similarly biased against him because he has proposed a ban on Muslim immigrants entering the United States.

When the interviewer, John Dickerson, reminded Mr. Trump that this country has a tradition of not judging people based on heritage, the presumptive Republican nominee responded, “I’m not talking about tradition, I’m talking about common sense.”

Republicans who say they disagree with Mr. Trump’s racialist statements have tried to assuage the public by arguing that he doesn’t really believe those views. But if that’s the case, it is pretty cold comfort. Cynically choosing to equate ethnicity with bias is hardly more appealing than simply being ignorant or bigoted.

Can a Racist be Elected President of the United States?

The answer to this question, sadly, is yes!

Who is that racist? Donald Trump.

Why would I believe that?

You can’t make this stuff up.

June 3, 2016 Redding, California (CNN) Donald Trump sought to tout his support among African-Americans on Friday by pointing out a black man in the crowd and calling him “my African-American.”

“Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him,” Trump said. “Are you the greatest?”

The remark didn’t generate a noticeable response from Trump’s audience.

June 3, 2016 Washington (CNN) Donald Trump on Friday vociferously defended his claims that a judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University is biased because of his Mexican heritage — pushing back against criticism that his objections are racist.

Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead,” Trump repeatedly referenced his plans to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and renegotiate trade agreements between the two countries.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, escalated his unprecedented verbal attacks on Federal District Judge Gonzalo Curiel on Thursday night. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump claimed the judge could not fairly preside over the Trump University cases because of Curiel’s “Mexican heritage.” (Curiel is from Indiana; his parents are Mexican immigrants.) “I’m building a wall, it’s an inherent conflict of interest,” he added.

From the American Heritage Dictionary

Racist

Believes that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

According to Real Clear Politics the last poll was completed June 1 shows Clinton with a lead of 1.5. The previous poll completed May 30 shows Clinton with a lead of 1. In other words a win now is a 50/50 proposition. A bigot could be elected president.

Report predicts LA County will add 346,000 jobs by 2020

This is both good and bad news. Metropolitan Los Angeles is experiencing growth while many other large cities are shrinking. Chicago come to mind as a city that has lost 1/3 of its population. The key sentence in the following article is “Unfortunately, many of those jobs are low paying positions that would make it tough for someone to support a family.” The median price of a home in LA County is $526,000 according to Zillow. They have gone up 6.5% over the past year and Zillow predicts they will rise 1.6% within the next year. The solution for low paid workers is to commute to work. That could mean a one and half hour travel time. Many people are doing exactly that. Outbound freeways are jammed with cars every evening.

A new report from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. reveals that L.A. County will add 346,00 jobs between 2015 and 2020, including 20,900 in the construction industry. Leo Jarzomb — Staff photographer

By Kevin Smith, San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Posted: 06/01/16, 12:41 AM PDT | Updated: 14 hrs ago

Los Angeles County is expected to add 346,000 jobs between 2015 and 2020 across a broad range of industries, according to a report released today.

The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.’s annual “People, Industries and Jobs” report shows that 123,000 of those jobs will be in the city of Los Angeles.

Construction, professional and business services, education and health services and leisure and hospitality will see the biggest growth rates in percentage terms. But the lion’s share of new jobs will come from administrative and support services (57,560), Food services and drinking places (39,510), social assistance (34,30) and professional and technical services (33,300).

Unfortunately, many of those jobs are low paying positions that would make it tough for someone to support a family.

On the plus side, construction is expected to add 20,900 jobs, which bodes well for both housing activity and commercial expansion.

Southern California’s construction industry took a heavy hit during and after the Great Recession, which began in late 2007 and ended in June 2009, as developers pulled back on building housing projects and commercial developments — sometimes curtailing activity altogether.

“We’ve been waiting for that industry to rebound,” said economist Christine Cooper, the LAEDC’s senior vice president and lead author of the report. “It has just been really hard.”

But the industry is rebounding and Southland developers have a variety of residential projects in the works.

KB Home, for example, has 10 housing developments underway in Los Angeles County in such communities as Santa Clarita, Van Nuys, Palmdale, Pomona, West Covina and Los Angeles.

An annual report on the company’s website shows that KB delivered 8,196 homes throughout its various U.S. markets last year compared with 7,215 the previous year and 7,145 in 2013. KB’s revenues have likewise risen, topping out at more than $3 billion last year compared with the $2.4 billion the company generated in 2014.

“As the housing market recovers, construction industries are expected to make a robust recovery,” the LAEDC report said. “Housing starts are showing signs of life after a dismal few years, and will be needed to meet pent-up demand.”

The report notes, however, that L.A. County’s economic recovery has been generally disappointing and that the region didn’t recover all of the jobs that were lost during the recession until last year. Moreover, the recovery that has taken place doesn’t take into account the job growth needed to accommodate the county’s ongoing population and labor force growth.

The report also shows a clear correlation between educational attainment and unemployment.

In 2014, the jobless rate for L.A. County residents with a high school education or the equivalent was 9.4 percent, nearly double the 5 percent rate for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. That same kind of disparity played out in the city of L.A.

The median annual earnings for an L.A. County resident with a high school education or the equivalent was $26,049 in 2014. That figure is dismal when compared with the yearly median income of someone with a bachelor’s degree ($50,976) or someone with a graduate or professional degree ($71,596).

The largest share of working residents in the county (33.3 percent) earn $15,000 to $35,000, and nearly 8 percent earn just $15,000 or less. Still, Cooper said progress is being made on the education front.

“We’ve been doing these reports for a number of years and we’re seeing that more young people are gaining higher levels of educational attainment,” she said. “We see that as a really bright spot.”

That may be bright. But a not-so-bright portion of the study shows that nearly 323,300 of the 2.19 million families who were living in Los Angeles County in 2014 had their incomes fall below the poverty level in the previous 12 months. A large portion of that number included children and young working age adults.

Single mothers with children under 18 accounted for nearly 40 percent of those living below the poverty line.

“The good news is that our region is adding jobs across most industries, and is expected to continue its expansion,” Cooper said. “However, although we are seeing some job growth in high-paying industries, it is clear that not enough of our projected job gains are skilled, well-paying jobs that will support middle class incomes. We need to work together to change this trajectory, by fostering job creation in our leading export-oriented industries, which tend to pay higher wages and strengthen regional prosperity overall.”

Cooper said California’s new minimum wage requirements, which will boost the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022, will likely have some negative effects.

“Some businesses will choose to replace lower skilled workers will people who have higher skills,” she said. “And it will also lead to an increase in automation.”