Hate Crimes

This is a topic that has puzzled me since it's inception. As a brief history lesson, hate crime legislation came about after the murder of Matthew Shepard. Matthew was gay and was beaten so severely during a robbery that he later died. There was very conflicting testimony at his trial and during subsequent interviews about whether the murder was motivated by the fact that he was gay, but the legislature had already made up its mind that this crime was motivated by hatred for gay people. So, a bill by the name of the Matthew Shepard Act was proposed in 2007 which would make it a federal offense to commit a crime against a gay person if the crime was motivated by a bias against gay people. The bill was passed by both the house and the senate, but was ultimately vetoed by President Bush. Later, Senator Ted Kennedy attempted to attach the bill as an amendment to a federal defense appropriations bill in order to force President Bush to sign the law or veto necessary defense expenditures. And liberals wonder why people think the left hates the military!

I have a couple of problems with this proposed legislation. First, the Constitution expressly reserves and gives police power to the states. All people, including gay people, deserve equal protection under the law, and that constitutional right is made applicable to the states through the conduit of the 14th Amendment. Therefore, there is absolutely no need for a federal statute making this specific act a crime. That should be reserved to the states.

Secondly, the states have addressed this. Every state in the union has a law that makes it a crime to kill a person. Why are these normal murder laws not sufficient to cover "hate crimes"? Is the murder of a gay any worse than the murder of a heterosexual? If your best friend was murdered in cold blood, would you be more angry to find out it was because he/she was gay as opposed to just a botched robbery attempt? Would the end result not be the same?

The only thing this proposed law would do is give gay people more protection under the law than straight people get. It clearly treats gay people differently than others. But the biggest problem with the proposed legislation is how broadly it is worded. "Hate crime" has been defined so as to include verbal abuse or insults. That means, anytime a pastor gets in the pulpit and preaches on what the Bible says about homosexuality and someone gets offended, the pastor could be charged with a hate crime. That would clearly be a violation of the pastor's freedoms of speech and religion. This is already happening in other countries. Pastors in several countries have already been imprisoned and/or fined for preaching the Bible on this topic.

Even more scary is the fact that it's already happening in the US as well. 11 people were arrested and charged with "hate crimes" in 2004 in Philadelphia for witnessing at a gay pride event! Apparently the legal term for this is "harassment by communication." If that's not a blatant violation of the 1st Amendment, I don't know what is.

Clearly this legislation is intended to open the door to creating more and more rights for homosexuals. However, in the process, it limits the freedoms of others. The current state criminal codes are sufficient to protect homosexuals just as much as they protect heterosexuals and, therefore, "hate crime" legislation is superfluous at best and dangerous at worst.

Intolerance: A One Way Street?

I will probably never understand this concept, but it seems to me that the people who use the word "intolerance" the most, are the most intolerant people of all. I ran across this article today on the Drudge Report:

Obama defends choice of evangelical pastor

Obama has chosen Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration and the gays are furious. Never mind that Mr. Obama has the most liberal voting record of any current senator (including Ted Kennedy). Never mind that he has advocated for gay rights. Apparently all that means nothing to these people.

But, setting aside the absurdity of their protest, one clip from the article is particularly interesting:

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights organization, said Warren's opposition to gay marriage is a sign of intolerance.

What exactly is the definition of "intolerance"? Dictionary.com defines it as an unwillingness or refusal to tolerate or respect contrary opinions or beliefs, persons of different races or backgrounds, etc. In that vein, I'll agree that any true Christian would be "intolerant" of the act of homosexuality (not to be confused with intolerance of homosexuals). The Bible calls homosexuality an abomination; not exactly an ambiguous term. However, are gays any less "intolerant" of Christians than Christians are of homosexuality?

There are all kinds of special interest groups, gays likely being the most vocal, who scream "INTOLERANCE" at the top of their lungs any time someone disagrees with their view point. But I wonder if they'll ever catch on to the fact that they're living a double standard. The fact of the matter is that the world is an extremely diverse place. We all have differences of opinion based on differences of background, culture, ideology, theology, etc. There is no way we are all going to agree on everything. So, either we learn to live with a certain level of "intolerance", or we continue to scream and shout in pursuit of something that will never happen.

Racist or Not Racist: You Decide

FACT: You have one kid named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and another kid named Adolf Hitler Campbell.

QUESTION: Are you a racist?

Unfortunately, this question is based on a true story.

3-year-old Hitler can't get name on cake

The really strange thing about this article is this guy says he doesn't understand why people are so upset. If he thinks they're upset, just wait until his kids get old enough to understand what their names mean!

Protesters are Getting Dumber by the Minute

My friend Mark sent me this article today and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to publish this stupidity. I also couldn't pass up the opportunity to put a different spin on my recent "passing gas" themes.

Greek police run out of tear gas as rioting continues for a seventh day


As some of you may know, protesters have been running wild in Greece for about a week now because a policeman shot and killed a 15 year old boy. These people have been burning banks and businesses to the ground, as well as numerous other acts of unnecessary violence. However, the protesting is not really the point of this post.

After firing 4,600 tear gas canisters at the protesters, the Greek police have asked Israel and Germany to send in more canisters. Apparently the canisters the Greek police were using were from the early 1980's. The following is a direct quote from one of the protesters:

“We found tear gas canister dated from 1981,” said one demonstrator, calling himself only GK. “The old chemicals make us sick, people have fainted and have trouble breathing,” he said.

Seriously?!? In the words of my friend, Mark:

"What do you think tear gas is supposed to do, smell like cherries and make everyone feel happy? Here’s a hint… Stop rioting. Stop throwing rocks and whatever else you guys are doing. Stay at home, or better yet, go to work. Productive members of society don’t have time for protests because they are too busy at work making money."

Amen, Mark!

That's a Painful Victory

I got my verdict search update email today and the first case I pulled up was the following:

Premises Liability - Florida
Teen struck by baseball in batting cage awarded $1.16M

A teenager whose testicle was fractured when he was struck by a 60-mph baseball fired from a pitching machine at a batting cage was awarded $1.16 million. Lhyann Felipe, then 19, underwent surgery to repair his testicle. He claimed that a Sluggers of Miami employee asked him to kick balls toward the pitching machine area after a pitching cycle ended. Since the warning light was off, Felipe thought he was safe to walk throughout the cage. Plaintiff's counsel argued that Sluggers didn't have any written maintenance log, checklist, manuals or safety rules in place. Plus, Sluggers knew the machines sometimes pitched balls when the light wasn't on.

Felipe v. Sluggers of Miami Inc.

First of all, let me just say I never want to know what it's like to get hit in the testicles by a 60 mph fast ball. With that said, this news provokes a few questions from me.

1. How in the world did the young man's attorney keep a straight face while saying the word "testicle" probably a thousand times during the course of this trial?

2. How did the jury arrive at a valuation of $1.16 million for the young man's testicle? I did a quick search on eBay to try to find the true valuation, but had no luck.

3. If he had fractured the other testicle too, would he have won $2.32 million?

I guess some things will always remain a mystery.

A New Level of Absurdity

I was perusing the Drudge Report today and came across the following article:

Calling in 'gay' to work is latest form of protest

Does anyone out there still not understand why the gay and lesbian community is not taken seriously? Let's break this down a little bit.

First, the protest is modeled after the work stoppages by supporters of illegal immigration we have seen over the past year. Am I missing something--I haven't heard anyone saying gays should be deported or should not be allowed to work. The article talks about doing this because gays are still not allowed to marry in some states. Last I checked, private employers cannot hand out marriage licenses. I'm simply at a loss for how skipping work has any relation to the cause.

Second, why do they think it is so important to demonstrate their spending power, and exactly how will skipping work bolster that point? The idea was dreamed up by some guy as a way to protest California's ban on gay marriages. Are they trying to say the prevention of gay marriages somehow discourages them from participating in the economy?

Finally, is anyone else disturbed by the fact that the gay teachers who are participating in this nonsense are going to use the day to "discuss ways to introduce gay issues to their students." I don't have any kids yet, but it's things like that that make me 99.999999999% certain my kid(s) will NEVER attend a public school.

Message to the gay and lesbian community...you're not helping yourself with stupid protests that make no sense in light of your cause. Next time, spend just a little bit of time thinking about what you want to accomplish and come up with an idea that makes the point. Geez!

The Economy: My Take

Ok, here's my take on why the economy is in the state it's in. This is going to be a long one, so bear with me.

First of all, all markets cycle. The Dow Jones ran up to over 14,000 points before it came crashing down. If you look back at the 100 year history of the Dow Jones, you'll see that it has never, and will never sustain growth indefinitely without corrections. After a major run up, it must correct in order to charge itself for the next run up. So, after the run up from 7591.93 in mid-2002 to over 14,000 earlier this year, it was time for a downward correction.

Just in time for the needed correction, as one of the commenters to my last post astutely pointed out, there was something called "subprime lending" going on. This is where banks were making loans to people who couldn't possibly afford to pay such loans back. The greed that fueled the subprime lending mess is no different than the greed that fueled and sparked the dot com bust. In that case, people were pouring money into stocks of companies who had never seen a profit. When people finally started to figure out just how over-valued those companies were, it sparked a huge sell off (see Enron for further evidence of how this works).

But, before we place full and sole responsibility on the banks for causing this mess (and they do deserve a big portion of the blame), let's take a look at some other factors that were in play. In 1977 (Carter administration), Congress enacted the Community Reinvestment Act ("CRA") which "encouraged" banks to meet the credit needs of those living in the communities in which the banks took deposits. Click here for a good article explaining what happened. I put "encouraged" in parentheses because federal banking regulators could delay or prevent banks from merging, opening up new branches, and most other business-growth oriented tasks if it was found the banks were not making enough CRA loans. The reasoning behind the CRA was to prevent or discourage discriminatory practices in lending. Who else, besides me, thinks it's absurd that a bank would pass up a profitable lending opportunity simply because of race, ethnicity, etc? Banks typically pass on such "opportunities" because they are too risky.

So anyway, suddenly the world of home-ownership was opened up to millions of people who didn't have access to such large loans before,and for good reason. Banks began making the loans, but in order to protect themselves, would create loan terms that were not very favorable to the borrower, such as Adjustable Rate Mortgages ("ARM"). This allowed a borrower to borrow money at a low rate, only to see that rate fluctuate with the market. It also allowed the borrower to borrow a heck of a lot more money that he or she could afford. When the rates starting moving up, these people could no longer afford their mortgages and didn't have enough equity in their homes to refinance on more favorable terms.

Now with millions more potential homeowners out there, development and construction took off. Builders were selling homes quicker than they could build them. All the while, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bundling these subprime loans into investment packages and selling them off to investors. With essentially no obstacles to the ability to borrow money, housing prices skyrocketed creating what you hear on the news every day--a housing bubble. Any time you hear the word bubble in connection with the world of finance, it usually indicates that something's value is severely overblown. (see also "tech-bubble").

What do bubbles do when the get too big--they burst. When millions of people began defaulting on 10s of billions of dollars in home loans, banks began going out of business because the homes securing those mortgages were not worth as much as the outstanding loan principals. Investors who bought the loan packages began going out of business because their investments were worthless. Companies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) who made a large percentage of their money selling the loans found themselves without buyers, and therefore without a market in which to sell their crappy loans. So, in comes the government with $700 billion to rescue everyone...or at least the ones it wants to rescue. Can you explain to me why the government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt? Hmmm....

So, now there are lots of businesses out there that can't borrow money because the banks don't have any money to lend. Some businesses, especially small businesses, rely on lines of credit in order to maintain payroll and keep inventory rolling through their businesses. Want to venture a guess as to what type of large expense a business will cut when it needs to shore up cash flow? That's right, payroll! So all of a sudden, thousands upon thousands of people start losing their jobs.

So, if you want my opinion on who or what is responsible for this financial crisis, here you go (in no particular order):

1. The federal government forced banks to make loans to subprime borrowers based on the mantra that everyone deserves to own a home, regardless of whether you can actually afford it.

2. Banks were somewhat forced to make bad loans, but let their own greed fuel the fire, causing an explosion no one can control.

3. People agreed to loans so large that even a 5th grader would know it wouldn't be paid back. If you make $400 a week, you should know you can't afford a $200,000 loan, even if the bank agrees to lend you that much.

4. Investors who allocated large percentages of their portfolios to buying these risky loans have gone belly up.

Who is left holding the bag with no hope of being "bailed out"? All of us who are responsible with credit and are paying off our mortgages on time. We continue with the same obligations we agreed to while those who were grossly irresponsible are either bailed out by the government or by the bankruptcy process. How's that for encouraging responsibility?

The Economy: Your Take

I'm so tired of hearing people, who know absolutely nothing about economics, spout off about how President Bush has ruined our economy. I'm equally tired of no one asking these people to explain WHY they think President Bush is responsible. I'm opening this post up to the masses (or the 4 people who actually read this) to comment about what you think has caused our recent economic woes. Who do you think is to blame, and what needs to be done to fix it? I'll come back later with my take on things.