My verizon email is now promoting pro gun control ads.  I think I'll start using my gmail account exclusively.  They picture persons who have had relatives or friends, wives etc killed in Columbine, V-Tech massacres etc.  Simply shameful.

Don't blame me; I didn't vote for the radical, socialist tyrant.

BAN ALL BANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We now see the results of groupthink in the largest cities of the republic formerly known as the greatest country in the world.

ted_200 wrote:

Gov Cuomo's proposed regs are right in line with what I expected although I'm unclear if the registration process includes current firearms, if so I will have a problem with that.

 

Based on the media reporting I've heard so far, registration is retroactive to include current firearms and clips over 7 rounds capacity are now illegal.  But since that's media reporting, I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of it.

The newspaper today says only registering currently owned semiautos, which I don't own, bolt and lever actions are exempt. Those of us who live on Long Island and hunt in upstate NY have always broken NY City laws by virtue of having to drive thru the city with our rifles, totally illegal. NY State is an interesting political dichotomy with NYC carrying the mostly left wing agenda while the rest of the state is heavily republican so I doubt Cuomo's popularity will go up with this bill, be interesting to see since his name keeps coming up for 2016.

They have planned this draconian attack on America's constitution for years. They now have the proper puppet inplace to carry out the evil wishes of the elite

US Postal Service Faces Ruin Without Rescue from Congress

By Heidi Moore, Guardian UK

16 January 13

Inspector general David Williams says cash-strapped service, saddled with debt and low revenues, is in 'very serious trouble'.

he chief postal watchdog has warned that the troubled US Postal Service will go out of business this year unless Congress acts to rescue it.

David Williams, the inspector general of the USPS, says the service is in "very serious trouble", after five years lumbered with heavy debt and falling revenues.

In an interview with the Guardian, Williams warns that Congress, which has been distracted by November's elections and the fiscal cliff crisis, must act this year to save the service.

The USPS lost over $16bn last year, and has lost about $41bn over the past five years, according to Robert Taub, a vice-chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission.

Since 2006, the postal service has been required - unlike any federal agency - to pre-fund its retirement and healthcare benefits to workers. This costs it about $5.5bn a year. Currently, the post office has paid in $330bn for benefits, but the Office of Personnel Management recently told Williams that it will need $394bn to satisfy the legal requirement.

At the same time, it has been unable to raise postal rates enough, because they are pegged to inflation, and inflation is low. (A long-awaited rise is coming on January 27, moving postal rates up by 2.75%).

The economic downturn in 2007 hit the postal service hard, as people sent less mail; it has also seen a steep decline in its most profitable product, first-class mail.

Richard Geddes, an assistant policy professor at Cornell and an American Enterprise Institute scholar who has studied the postal service, says first class mail has fallen from 103bn pieces in 2000 to just around 74bn pieces in 2011.

Even though it has shrunk from nearly 900,000 thousand employees in 1998 to about 530,000 now, many regulators and lawmakers see the US Postal Service's infrastructure as inefficient, and have talked about areas they would like to cut - the number of facilities that the USPS uses to process mail, for instance.

Williams, whose organisation audits the USPS, described the set of financial constraints on the service as "murder - it wasn't premeditated, but it was murder."

The postal service has reached its $15bn credit limit with the US Treasury, and has in effect run out of money."This is the year that they borrowed so much that they can't borrow any more," Williams said.

Asked whether the USPS will need a bailout this year, Williams replied: "Yes. The choices are that it would cease to exist or it would need a bailout." Williams said he did not expect the USPS to require taxpayer dollars, but instead that it would require congressional intervention, perhaps to reduce the pension payments.

The US Postal Service, which missed its last two payments into the benefit funds, has never made a single payment without having to borrow from the US Treasury. Ruth Goldway, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, notes the irony: the USPS pension payment goes to the US Treasury, so for the past five years it has been borrowing from the Treasury to pay the Treasury.

There are many possible solutions to the problem, but, as a start, Williams, Goldway and Taub believe that the pension payments should be reduced. "I favor a post office that is not burdened by this unrealistic pension obligation," Goldway said.

Goldway says the main reason for the dire financial state of the USPS is the debt it took on to meet its pension payments. "They wouldn't be in the situation they're in without having borrowed all this money," she said.

California congressman Darrell Issa, a Republican who has taken the lead on postal service reform along with congressman Dennis Ross, suggested last year that USPS employees should be required to pay into their health and life insurance benefits, like all federal workers.

Another school of thought holds that the postal service could shrink further, cutting staff and facilities. Williams suggests that if the post office took steps to reduce its size that it could save $12bn a year: "Which is more than enough to get them out of the trouble they're in."

baddog6911 wrote:

US Postal Service Faces Ruin Without Rescue from Congress

By Heidi Moore, Guardian UK

16 January 13

The USPS lost over $16bn last year, and has lost about $41bn over the past five years, according to Robert Taub, a vice-chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission.

[snip]

Goldway [chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission] says the main reason for the dire financial state of the USPS is the debt it took on to meet its pension payments. "They wouldn't be in the situation they're in without having borrowed all this money," she said.

Looks to me like the chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission needs a lesson in math.

The current pension payment of $5.5 billion is only about 1/3 of last years $16+ billion loss.

So simple math shows that the major cause "for the dire financial state of the USPS" is actually their inability to cut operating expenses to meet the reduced demand for their services.

Apparently the pension issue simply provides a convenient scapegoat, particularly when $12 billion a year cut from operating costs would be "more than enough to get them out of the trouble they're in".

In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell

As for automobiles, posters who have commented on that are probably aware that over many years the death rates (traffic fatalities per million vehicle miles) have been reduced enormously, in part due to regulations which at their onset were also seen as a curtailment of personal liberty, and which are now seen to have saved tens of thousands of lives per decade.  I was too young to remember, but I don't think automobile drivers had an advocacy group like the NRA to lobby against seat belts.   

Those numbers have gone down because cars are being built safer-no one to my knowledge has ever said or thought safety glass, energy absorbing subframes and airbags were an infringement on anyone's liberty... and the controversy over seat belts has never been about about the belts themselves; it's been about government forcing mandatory use of them. If you're not wearing a seat belt, you are not potentially hurting anyone but yourself. Your not wearing one impacts no one else adversely. No one's arguing that it isn't a good idea; they were arguing against being forced to do so, and to a larger extent about big brother trying to save people from themselves. That's where the 'infringement on liberty' argument came in.

As to the lobby group part of the comment... the Constitution doesn't have a "seat belt" amendment. It does however have the 2nd Amendment, which endows the citizenry with the right to bear arms. 

Blaming guns for murder is like blaming forks for obesity.

telephoto1 wrote:

As for automobiles, posters who have commented on that are probably aware that over many years the death rates (traffic fatalities per million vehicle miles) have been reduced enormously, in part due to regulations which at their onset were also seen as a curtailment of personal liberty, and which are now seen to have saved tens of thousands of lives per decade.  I was too young to remember, but I don't think automobile drivers had an advocacy group like the NRA to lobby against seat belts.   

 

Those numbers have gone down because cars are being built safer-no one to my knowledge has ever said or thought safety glass, energy absorbing subframes and airbags were an infringement on anyone's liberty... and the controversy over seat belts has never been about about the belts themselves; it's been about government forcing mandatory use of them. If you're not wearing a seat belt, you are not potentially hurting anyone but yourself. Your not wearing one impacts no one else adversely. No one's arguing that it isn't a good idea; they were arguing against being forced to do so, and to a larger extent about big brother trying to save people from themselves. That's where the 'infringement on liberty' argument came in.

 

As to the lobby group part of the comment... the Constitution doesn't have a "seat belt" amendment. It does however have the 2nd Amendment, which endows the citizenry with the right to bear arms. 

Not true. When a driver who is stupidly not wearing a seatbelt impacts the windshield and steering wheel, he is now part of the system paid for by taxpayers and insurance company policy holders. The non seatbelt wearing idiot may not be physically hurting anyone else but they certainly are financially.

also, if there are other passengers in the car, an unbelted occupant can bounce around the interior of the car like a ping pong ball, slamming into others...

the idiots who say they'd rather be thrown clear in a collision have obviously never seen someone thrown from a vehicle... NOT pretty...

We now see the results of groupthink in the largest cities of the republic formerly known as the greatest country in the world.

Very pretty on payday, I made a ton of OT dough scraping unseatbelted idiots off the road. 

baddog6911 wrote:

telephoto1 wrote:

As for automobiles, posters who have commented on that are probably aware that over many years the death rates (traffic fatalities per million vehicle miles) have been reduced enormously, in part due to regulations which at their onset were also seen as a curtailment of personal liberty, and which are now seen to have saved tens of thousands of lives per decade.  I was too young to remember, but I don't think automobile drivers had an advocacy group like the NRA to lobby against seat belts.   

 

Those numbers have gone down because cars are being built safer-no one to my knowledge has ever said or thought safety glass, energy absorbing subframes and airbags were an infringement on anyone's liberty... and the controversy over seat belts has never been about about the belts themselves; it's been about government forcing mandatory use of them. If you're not wearing a seat belt, you are not potentially hurting anyone but yourself. Your not wearing one impacts no one else adversely. No one's arguing that it isn't a good idea; they were arguing against being forced to do so, and to a larger extent about big brother trying to save people from themselves. That's where the 'infringement on liberty' argument came in.

 

As to the lobby group part of the comment... the Constitution doesn't have a "seat belt" amendment. It does however have the 2nd Amendment, which endows the citizenry with the right to bear arms. 

Not true. When a driver who is stupidly not wearing a seatbelt impacts the windshield and steering wheel, he is now part of the system paid for by taxpayers and insurance company policy holders. The non seatbelt wearing idiot may not be physically hurting anyone else but they certainly are financially.

That's a different argument. I was speaking more to the idea of governmental mandates over personal choice. I agree that not wearing a seat belt is stupid, but even stupid people have rights... correct? Like I said, I was just restating their primary rationale at the time, which was not about seat belts or the wisdom of using them, but more about being forced to do so...  I was also trying to respond to the attempt by TDZ to associate that with the Second Amendment somehow.

Blaming guns for murder is like blaming forks for obesity.

baddog6911 wrote:

ted_200 wrote:

Gov Cuomo's proposed regs are right in line with what I expected although I'm unclear if the registration process includes current firearms, if so I will have a problem with that.

 

Based on the media reporting I've heard so far, registration is retroactive to include current firearms and clips over 7 rounds capacity are now illegal.  But since that's media reporting, I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of it.

The newspaper today says only registering currently owned semiautos, which I don't own, bolt and lever actions are exempt. Those of us who live on Long Island and hunt in upstate NY have always broken NY City laws by virtue of having to drive thru the city with our rifles, totally illegal. NY State is an interesting political dichotomy with NYC carrying the mostly left wing agenda while the rest of the state is heavily republican so I doubt Cuomo's popularity will go up with this bill, be interesting to see since his name keeps coming up for 2016.

You might want to check that again... there's apparently a long list of stuff that qualifies as "assault weapon", and it only need have one from the list.  Among those, is "removable magazine".  Apparently my .22 Mag bolt action rabbit rifle is considered an "assault weapon" in NY today...