Category: Politics

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Your PC May Not Be So Personal Anymore

I’ve just seen something that’s left me speechless (if it’s true). It’s a news report from Russia Today about a trade agreement that the Obama administration is apparently working on. The bottom line is that it would give the government the authority to search your computer without a search warrant.  Government agents would be allowed to check your computer (or any other personal electronic devices) for unauthorized copyrighted works and arrest you if any were found.

Here’s the full video from Russia Today.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V44bYL0udQ0[/youtube]

If this is true, then the ACLU should be all over it. But since they’re in the tank for Obama, I don’t see that happening.

H/T: Gateway Pundit

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Restroom Access Act

I have Crohn’s disease. If you’ve never heard of it (and chances are, you haven’t; it’s not a glamorous disease like AIDS), it’s an inflammatory bowel disease which has as one of its symptoms diarrhea.

It’s not a fun disease to have. In my case, I’ve had to have two surgeries which removed upwards of two feet of small intestine.

With Crohn’s disease, when you have to go, YOU HAVE TO GO. You don’t get much time to figure out where the nearest restroom is.

I think I have some “authority” to say what I’m going to say here.

There’s a new law in Illinois called “Ally’s Law.” It came about because Ally Bain was in an Old Navy store with her mom when she had to go. The management of the store refused to let her use the employee restroom. The resulting law forces businesses with employee only restrooms to allow customers to use the restroom if certain conditions are met.

The part of me that suffers from Crohn’s disease says “yeah, about time”. The part of me that believes in freedom says “bad law.”

I think the freedom loving part of me wins in this situation. Here’s why: the management of that Old Navy store made a bad decision; there’s no doubt about that. They could easily have allowed Ally, who was obviously in distress, the use of the restroom. Instead, they didn’t, and now we have another law that tries to force common sense onto businesses.

Yeah, I feel for the girl in this situation; I’ve been there (I had to stop at a stranger’s house one time to use the bathroom). What they should have done was let Old Navy know how bad this decision was, not try to get a law passed to fix it. A publicity campaign would have been better than getting another law passed. Imagine how embarrassed the manager of that Old Navy would have been if his name had been in a news story that related the situation.

What needs to happen is that the public needs to be made more aware of this disease. The last thing we need is to go running to the government for a fix. I find it ironic that in the video on the page I linked to above the mother says that her daughter will overcome the disease no matter where she goes. No, now whenever her daughter feels like she’s owed something because she has this awful disease, her daughter will use government as a first resort.

I’m sorry, but part of having Crohn’s disease is having “restroom awareness”. Her mother failed her when she didn’t know where the nearest public restroom was. Sure, Old Navy could have stepped up and helped, but they weren’t obligated to (at that time).

Now a version of that law is making its way across other states, mine included. Despite the fact that it could possibly help me a some point in the future, I’m against it. Government shouldn’t be used this way.

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Daylight Savings Time Is A Joke

We “sprung forward” over the weekend, or at least most of us did. Daylight Savings Time went into effect Sunday morning, and as usual, my sleep cycle is screwed up.

Someone computed that the “opportunity” cost of changing the clocks twice a year (if you figure it takes 15 minutes to change all your clocks) was something like $1.7 billion. That’s the time it takes times an average hourly rate of $17 ish times the number of people in the US.

That’s one hidden cost. Another hidden cost is productivity. If you follow your circadian rhythm after DST goes into effect, you’ll end up going to sleep one hour later. So instead of going to sleep at 11 pm, you go to sleep at midnight. If you get up at 7 pm, you’ve lost an hour of sleep. You’re going to drive to work groggier, be less productive at work, and be more tired at the end of the day. And in this current economic situation, anything that reduces productivity should be done away with.

Ben Franklin is credited with coming up with Daylight Savings Time. But it seems he suggested it more as a joke than anything. He says that he woke up early one day in Paris, and found that the sun was already up (at 6 am). He then calculates how many pounds of candles would be saved if people used daylight instead of candlelight (kind of like the “early to bed, early to rise” saying).

No one took the idea seriously until the World War I. The Germans adopted it early in the war, and the US adopted it late. It was ultimately repealed in the US in 1919 because it was so unpopular.

I daresay it’s pretty unpopular now, especially after Congress added a few more weeks to DST. The kicker there is that they used numbers from the 1970’s that touted how much energy would be saved. The government entity that produced those numbers not only says they’re out of date, but they’re wrong. So Congress passes a law based on faulty or inaccurate information. What else is new?

We need to repeal this stupid law. Or at the very least, split the difference, and “spring ahead” a half hour one time, and be done with it.

H/T: Failed Success

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Working the Polls Again

I took today off from work. I’ve got a ton of vacation time and I’m to the point where I almost have to take a couple of days a month just to keep from going over the max.

Anyway, the reason I took today off is that I’ve been chosen (again) as a voting machine operator and today is the last day of training. They’ve also asked machine operators to cross train for the duties of application clerk and registrar. Since this will be my third election with the new machines, I don’t think machine operator training will take too long. Application clerk and registrar training is scheduled for 2.5 hours. I’ve never done those jobs, so it should be interesting.

Davidson County has a major shortage of folks to work elections. They try make sure both parties are represented with workers. I think I’m the only Republican who works at my precinct. That would make me one out of  about nine or ten who work my precinct; in Nashville, that’s about the right ratio. Republicans in Nashville are scarcer than hen’s teeth.

The job doesn’t pay much, about $95 for the day. You have to be there at 6 am and you usually leave at 9 pm. So it’s not a job you take for the money. But it’s a job I think more citizens should do. Once you do it, you won’t ever complain again about it taking so long to vote (and you really shouldn’t complain about that anyway; at least you’re getting to vote).

The Davidson County Election Commission is always looking for volunteers. Do something for the community, why don’t you?

Now, if they only had better security…

The primary is February 5. Go vote.

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Help Save Nashville Speedway

A part of Nashville history is under attack. A “grassroots” group is out to get rid of the speedway at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. Ostensibly they want to “relocate” the fairgrounds and the track. Realistically, there’s no way it can be feasible to build another race track in Davidson County. So in effect,they want to shut racing down in Nashville.

To counter one “grassroots” movement with a real one, I’ve created a web site called Save Nashville Speedway. There’s an online petition that you can sign to show your support. I’ll be updating the site often, so be sure to go and check it out. Over the next days and weeks I’ll be posting pictures and other historical data from the track.

If you’re a race fan and you don’t want to see this historic facility be pushed aside for “progress”, then I would appreciate it if you would go to Save Nashville Speedway and sign the petition.

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Save Nashville Speedway!

A few days ago, it was brought to my attention that a group (actually one guy) has started a drive to move the Tennessee State Fairgrounds and “redevelop” the property. He’s gone as far as creating a non-profit organization to raise money to this end.

Nowhere on his site does he mention anything about the Speedway. It’s obviously assumed that the “green” area that will replace the fairgrounds will also do away with the speedway (which I think is the real motive behind this movement). He also doesn’t mention that the house he owns in the neighborhood of the fairgrounds was purchased in 1999 for around $45,000, and that as of a couple of years ago, it was appraised at over $90,000, and that he’s complained about the noise from the track.

It just blows my mind how some people have the nerve to move next to an airport or race track or interstate and then complain about the noise. Uh, if you don’t like the noise, move. I live almost exactly two miles from the track (as the crow flies), and if the wind is blowing right, I can hear the cars during a race or practice. I live a lot closer to the interstate and can hear the trucks go by (despite the speed limit being lowered to 55 mph a couple of years ago, which was spearheaded by a lady who moved next to the interstate). I can also hear the trains occasionally at the CSX yard 3 miles away. Heck, I can even hear the Hillsboro High School band play on Friday nights. If these noises truly bothered me, I’d move away from them; it would never cross my mind to be one to complain about something that I knew full well was going to happen before I moved here.

To combat this, I’ve created a site that will hopefully counter this guy’s attempt at plowing under this historic site. It’s called SaveNashvilleSpeedway.com. The site just went live Sunday night with a placeholder page in order to begin getting indexed by the search engines. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be putting more info on the site, including historical information about past races there.

If Nashville put a tenth of the effort into saving this historic landmark as it did into saving the Predators NHL team, there wouldn’t be a problem.

So, take a look at SaveNashvilleSpeedway.com, and keep checking back over the next few weeks.

Oh, if you have any files or info regarding the track’s history, please feel free to send them to me at the email address on the site. I hope to make this an archive of race results, photos, and other mementos of the track.

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Fairgrounds Race Track Future in Doubt

A few years ago, when the politicians were lobbying the public to approve the stadium, you’d have thought that Nashville had never been home to professional sports. As usual, motorsports in this city didn’t get any respect. NASCAR held one or two races at the Speedway at the fairgrounds every year from 1957 to 1984. Then in 1984, the Fair Board told NASCAR to shove it.

It wasn’t until 1995 when Bob Harmon got the lease to the track that NASCAR came back, with a Busch Series race and a Truck Series race. The track was a victim of its success; Dover Downs Motorsports bought the lease to the track, and once they had the superspeedway built in Wilson County, they took the races with them.

Now the future of the Fairgrounds track is in doubt. The Fair Board, in their infinite wisdom, asked the public what to do with the property. Apparently, some folks who live near the track actually don’t like the noise. These aren’t folks who’ve been at the site longer than the track; they’ve moved there within the last few years.

They’re also going to hire a consultant to get his recommendation of what to do with the acreage. The ideas run the gamut: build a baseball park, have an art colony, and others too idiotic to mention.

The Fair Board has pretty much created a self-fulfilling prophecy with the track. They don’t give the promoter a long lease, so he has no incentive to improve the facilities. The place gets run down, people stop going, cars stop coming. The one time they did give a promoter a long lease (a 13-year lease broken into two five-year and a three-year lease), he (Bob Harmon) paved the track, installed new, ADA compliant rest rooms, and made other improvements to the facility.

But as I said above, he did too good a job, and once the lease was transferred to Dover, they used the track as a placeholder for their races that were to be moved to the big track. The leaseholder who came after Dover didn’t know what he was doing. The current leaseholder at least has a history of running tracks, and is trying to undo the damage the last one did.

I don’t know what influence the mayor’s office has over the Fair Board; sometimes it seems as if the Fair Board does what it wants, even to the detriment of the Fairgrounds. I’ll be basing a large part of my decision on who to vote for for Mayor based on what I can find out about their plans for the Fairgrounds.

The Tennessean has a good article on this situation, as well as the Nashville Blotter. Maybe we can get enough Nashville residents involved to make a difference.

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Jury Duty

According to a report by the National Center for State Courts, more than one-third of Americans will serve on a jury at some point. They say that’s an increase from 30 years ago, when that number was only 6%. (Hat tip: Ben Cunningham at Taxing Tennessee).

I’m still amazed at why someone would want to avoid jury duty. In the summer of 2001, I received a subpoena for jury duty here in Nashville. Everyone I told pretty much asked me what excuse I was going to use to get out of it or commented that they were glad they’d never been subpoenaed. Continue reading “Jury Duty”

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Implied Consent

I started riding a motorcycle in 1974. I rode a Honda XL250, a street legal dirt bike (nowadays they’re called dual sport bikes). I rode that bike until 1981 (when it got stolen). In 2002, I got the itch again to start riding. I bought a Kawasaki KLR650, a 650 cc dual sport bike. Since there’s no dirt around Nashville, I ended up trading it in for a Yamaha V-Star 650 Silverado cruiser. I’ve been riding that bike now for almost 4 years.I’ve only had one incident where I actually needed the helmet. This must have been in 1976 or ’77 during the summer when I was on vacation from college. In the area of East Tennessee where I’m from, there are a lot of hilly areas. I was on a road near my parents’ house when I saw a little hill that looked like it’d be fun to climb.

The top of the hill couldn’t have been more than 20 feet, so it wasn’t a big one (I’d already had experience climbing bigger hills in strip mines that had yet to be reclaimed). I got a run at the hill and too late noticed it had a little hump in the middle. When the front tire hit that hump, the front end came off the ground. Next thing I knew, I was flying over the back end of the bike, like I’d been bucked off a bull. I landed on my butt and my head went backwards into the ground… right onto a big rock. If I hadn’t been wearing the helmet, I’m not sure what would have happened. At the very least, I’d have been knocked out. Worst case scenario is that I would have died.

You could say then that I know a little bit about motorcycles and helmets. Continue reading “Implied Consent”