Gun law results in exodus of gun related companies

Posted on April 5, 2013 by ChrisA

Magpul

via Conservative Read:

Magpul is a relatively new company founded in 1999.  Today they employ 600  people and generate close to $100 million in sales.  Their primary business  is the manufacture of 30 round clips and other accessories for assault and  assault-style weapons, most of which is purchased by the US military.

HiViz Shooting Systems (Fort Collins)

via Bluegrass Pundit:

HiViz Shooting Systems (a division of North Pass Ltd.), announces plans to  relocate operations out of the state of Colorado due to recent changes  in Colorado state gun control legislation. HiViz President and CEO,  Phillip Howe, states that talks are currently under way with officials  of a neighboring state regarding the move.

More at the Denver Business Journal.

 

Outdoor Channel

Letter to Senator Steve King

The message we will take to our viewers and listeners is that these proposed laws are so dangerous to hunters and any other person, be she a fisherman or a skier who brings a handgun into the state for self-defense, that we cannot recommend hunting, fishing or visiting Colorado. We reach millions of people, and, quite frankly, we have a credibility that Colorado government officials can no longer match. Colorado Division of Wildlife is already running ads trying to bring more out-of-state hunters to Colorado…in light of the flood of negative publicity about these proposed laws, I can assure you those ads will fail.

We estimate that as many as one-quarter to one-third of out-of-state hunters will desert Colorado in the next 18-24 months, which will quite frankly be a disaster for the hunting industry in Colorado and have a devastating effect on our western and northern communities (certainly like Grand Junction).

This is not a “boycott” in the traditional sense of a centralized, organized operation; rather, it is more of a grassroots decision on where shooters, hunters and other sportsmen are willing to spend their money. Look at the collapse of the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show in February. That venerable multimillion dollar trade show chose to ban modern sporting rifles and standard capacity magazines, and with three weeks it collapsed as all vendors and sponsors pulled out.

Colorado is going to pay a huge price for laws that will do nothing.

I hope the Democrats enjoy the “feel good” moment. The hangover may be much larger than they suspect.

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No breaks for stoopid Diana DeGette. Senior Citizens listen up

Posted on April 4, 2013 by ChrisA

Once again from Michael Brown Todays’ post: Congresswoman Diana DeGette Reveals Ignorance & Arrogance

But then, the coup de grâce comes when she tells a senior citizen, expressing his concern about his ability to protect himself from criminals, that he will probably be dead anyway.

Oh, fyi, the general response time of the Denver Police Department is over 14 minutes.

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Piling on Congresswomen Diana Degette and gun magazine ignorance

Posted on April 4, 2013 by ChrisA

If only it wasn’t so easy…

Micheal Brown Today: Congresswoman Diana DeGette Reveals Ignorance & Arrogance

I’ve come to expect most liberal, progressive politicians to not understand either the nomenclature or the principles of firearms and firearm safety. But in this case her statement is so amazingly ignorant that it shows how desperate this group of politicians are to eventually strip away any meaning to the Second Amendment.

In a meeting of the Denver Post editorial board she makes a stunning announcement about the effectiveness of magazine bans by proclaiming that once they’re “used up” and the “bullets gone” the problem will be solved:

You can’t make this stuff up.

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Congresswoman Dianna DeGette and gun magazines

Posted on April 4, 2013 by ChrisA

Megan McArdle: Congresswoman Doesn’t Know How Guns Work

I”m sorry, Dianna DeGette is stoopid and here’s why…

Asked how a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds would be effective in reducing gun violence, DeGette said:

“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”

Megan points out the obvious…

Now, there’s no particular reason that a person should have to know how a magazine works.  It is possible to lead a full, rich, and decent life without ever firing a gun.  However.  If you’re going to support a piece of legislation to ban something, you should have a basic understanding of how that thing works–particularly if you are a politician who will actually vote on the ban.  I hope that’s not a controversial statement. (emphasis added)

Tell me Boulderites, is it a controverial statement?

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Subprime, here we come again

Posted on April 4, 2013 by ChrisA

Commenting on the article, Subprime Auto Loans Too?, Glenn Reynolds opines:

BAD LOANS GOT US INTO THIS MESS, AND BAD LOANS WILL GET US OUT OF IT!

Indeed.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

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Fisker: Going down the road feelin’ bad…

Posted on April 2, 2013 by ChrisA

Bankruptcy.

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Bitcoins, an alternative to Government issued fiat currency

Posted on April 2, 2013 by ChrisA

Haven’t heard of Bitcoins? Well that’s quite likely. It’s extremely likely if you’re from Boulder and have the trust in government of the typical Boulderite. That said, there’s room for distrust in banks from both liberal/Progressives, Conservatives/Tea Partiers and of course Libertarians…

What Every Libertarian Should Know About Bitcoin

Support for Bitcoin amongst Austrian economists is growing by they day and in this interview, the highly admired and respected Tom Woods, discusses Bitcoin with Erik Voorhees of Bitinstant (a
popular, rapid way of converting fiat into BTC).  This interview very poignantly addresses many of the layperson’s concerns about it that I have heard over the  past several months.  Remember, despite the price rise, Ben Bernanke is still creating the equivalent of 75 Bitcoin markets every month with his money printing.

 

If you have even a passing interest, follow the link and watch the video.

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Easter at Google vs. Bing

Posted on March 31, 2013 by ChrisA

 

Easter at Google

 

Easter at Bing

 

More information from the Daily Caller: Google honors Cesar Chavez on Easter

President Barack Obama released a statement in 2011 proclaiming  March 31 “Cesar Chavez Day,” declaring, “I call upon all Americans to  observe this day with appropriate service, community, and educational programs  to honor Cesar Chavez’s enduring legacy.”

Whatever.

 

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Freezing in the dark

Posted on March 31, 2013 by ChrisA

So Britain: Energy gap leaves Britain freezing in the dark. Green energy fail in Britain.

Last weekend, the head of the United Kingdom’s second-largest energy supplier announced that the nation had barely 48 hours’ worth of stored natural gas left to keep the population warm. “Our generating capacity has fallen so low that we can expect power cuts to begin at any time.”

Why? Because instead of developing its vast natural gas resources to fuel gas-fired generators, Britain has been building wind turbines, which provide almost no electricity during frigid weather.

Read the whole thing.

Boulderites, any chance of this happening in a city near you? With the Boulder green energy agenda, the odds are high this WILL happen. There are only two reasons it won’t eventually happen and they are:

  1. Guilt ridden Boulder SUV drivers speak up and turn the tide of public opinion against municipalization
  2. The Boulder municipal utility is “bailed out” by Xcel or other utility with access to fossil fues generation.

 

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Dear Mr. President, please stop BS’ing us on AGW

Posted on March 30, 2013 by ChrisA

Britain, France, Germany and much of the rest of Europe have been faced with some of the most snow and cold since the 1960′s.

This week’s Economist gives another data point. Apparently, the models predicted by AGW advocates such as James Hanson, the NASA propagandist, for global warming are not working out the way they thought they would. Surface temperatures across the planet are at the low-end of the predictions and there hasn’t been any actual, you know, global warming in 10 years according to the numbers. What is emerging is that the climate change advocates really don’t know. Climatology is hard, you see. The weather in most places changes every day.

Stunned, what can I say. The GW religion is strong as ever in Boulder, I feel pretty postive about that.

h/t to Ed Driscoll guest blogging over at Instapundit.

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Fighting the last war?

Posted on March 29, 2013 by ChrisA

It’s the cold, not global warming, that we should be worried about

No one seems upset that in modern Britain, old people are freezing to death as
hidden taxes make fuel more expensive

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Hurricanes by decade

Posted on March 28, 2013 by ChrisA

Hurricane by Decade

Watch the John Stossel show tonight called Green Tyranny.

Is the Government Guilty of ‘Green Tyranny?’

 

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Worse than entitlement nation: Dependency nation

Posted on March 28, 2013 by ChrisA

A nation suckered

The jobless recovery may equal misery for millions of Americans, but it’s created a boom in Social Security disability claims, many of them no doubt sheer gold-bricking via “personality disorders” and other imaginary illnesses.

Nearly 18 million people — one in 20 Americans — are collecting some $170 billion a year in disability payments, a record high, and the government estimates that fraud and other improper payments account for $25 billion of disability spending over a recent four-year period.

Like the “barefoot beggar,” who only needs to take his shoes off to get free stuff, Dependency Nation has learned how easy it is to take the government for a ride. In many cases, it’s simply a matter of correctly — if fraudulently — filling out the right forms and sending them in

Continuing…

In 2009, the Government Accountability Office catalogued examples of waste, fraud and abuse in just about every federal do-gooder program, including school lunches ($1.4 billion), children’s health insurance ($800 million, or roughly 15 percent of the total), the Earned Income Tax Credit ($12 billion), plus housing subsidies, child-care, unemployment insurance . . . You name it, and some sizable chunk of it is a scam.

In all, the cost to the taxpayers is estimated at some $100 billion a year.And things are only likely to get worse.

Goverment waste is staggaring. What kind of governing culture allows this to take place? It’s not a Democrat or Republican problem, although I know which party I’d like to fix it. The flip side of the question is of interest as well. What type of citizenship culture allows people to want to become experts at ripping off the government?

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Border Security: Is seeing believing?

Posted on March 28, 2013 by ChrisA

I guess seeing is believing: McCain, Schumer Watch as Immigrant Hops Border Fence

John McCain tweets:

Just witnessed a woman successfully climb an 18-ft bollard fence a few yards from us in pic.twitter.com/GnMwEeQwDB

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Obamacare co-op loan amateur hour

Posted on March 27, 2013 by ChrisA

 

Federal officials gave $129 million to a Florida firm with a checkered past to establish an Obamacare cooperative in Ohio, The Washington Examiner has learned.

A health insurance company headed by an old friend from when President Obama was an Illinois state senator got a $340 million federal loan to establish Obamacare co-ops in New York, New Jersey and Oregon despite having a chronic record of consumer and regulatory complaints

Federal officials awarded $112 million to fund new Obamacare health insurance cooperatives in Iowa and Nebraska to a group whose politically connected chief financial officer recorded at least three business flops since 2009.

This video sums it up….

The Co-ops are in the very best of hands, if you want them to fail. Even more troubling is this is simply the tip of the iceberg in how cronyism and politics will further destroy our health care system. Inquiring minds want to know if it’s by design.

h/t to Mark Tapscott guest blogging over at Instapundit who remarks…

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS GIVE AWAY TAX DOLLARS FROM BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

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Bad news Boulderites: The fracking economy grows

Posted on March 26, 2013 by ChrisA

Energy Boom Ripples Through US Economy

Barring an unanticipated setback, so-called “unconventional” oil and gas production is expected to continue to grow over the next two decades. Over that period, the industry is expected to make more than $5 trillion in new capital investment that will support more than 3.5 million jobs by 2035, according to the financial analysis firm IHS Global Insight.

That economic impact of such spending already is spreading, especially to companies that rely heavily on natural gas as a raw material or energy source and investing and hiring.

Boulder better get to work on that unanticipated setback or their Municipalized electric utility will have higher rates than Xcel.

“This is not going to be a one- or two-year thing,” said Ross Eisenberg, head of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. “We’re going to see lower natural gas prices for a long, long way into the future.”

I have this sneaky suspicion that setback, if there is one, will be via “green energy politics”.

Oh, and the bad news? That’s good news for the rest of us and the US economy.

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Obamacare – There’s no cause to celebrate this overstuffed turkey

Posted on March 26, 2013 by ChrisA

The Washington Times takes on Obamacare’s 3rd birthday.

Quite the takedown, the whole editorial is a highlight reel so you’ll have to read it. The conclusion:

“Nothing succeeds like failure,” Tommy Lasorda, the wise old baseball manager,  once said. Only by the Lasorda rule can Obamacare be measured a success.  Everything about the health care law has disappointed, and it’s likely to get  only worse. Republicans must be creative if they are to shut down this  boondoggle before we lament many more birthdays.

And it really does need to be “shut down” unless of course you’re for Government controlled health care. And many Boulderites are.

The worry in my mind is that the unintended consequences of a government run system would be great but slow developing. The argument I hear most frequently from the single payer supporters is how well Medicare works. I seriously ask, does it? Here are my concerns:

  • I feel confident in stating that there is already significant cost shifting taking place where Medicare expenses are spread out among other users of the medical system
  • Obamacare is raiding Medicare for $700 billion
  • Medicare negotiated prices are covered by by “cost shifting”
  • The tip of the iceburg in cost shifting if plainly visible via the yearly “Doc Fix“

On the surface, Medicare appears to work fine. If the entire system were changed to the Medicare model there would be a significant upheaval in how medical care is provided and the quality of that care. Why, because excess Medicare costs are built into the cost of services charged to other users of the healthcare system. If you switched to a Medicare based single payer system, there would be no one to share the cost with anymore and the cracks in the system will become visible to all.

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“There is enough money in President Obama’s post sequester FY 2013 federal budget to provide Secret Service protection for his daughters vacationing outside the country, Flynn noted, but not enough to keep the White House open for tours for the children of average American taxpayers.”

Posted on March 26, 2013 by ChrisA

Michael Patrick Leahy: Obama Pursues Royal Prerogative as MSM Remains Silent

Throughout the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, President Obama promised to transform America into something better, a land filled with hope and change. It appears, however, that the man who vacations in Martha’s Vineyard, golfs with Tiger Woods, and sends the Secret Service to accompany his wife and daughters on international vacations to Spain, Mexico, and now the Bahamas has another agenda in mind. He seeks to transform constitutional presidential authority into royal prerogative. Judging by the failure of any media source other than Breitbart, Drudge, and Instapundit to cover this story, it is also quite clear that the mainstream media has decided to play the role of dutiful courtiers to this expansion of presidential powers. (emphasis added)

No surpise the editorial page of the local paper, The Daily Camera, has been noticeably quiet on President Obama’s golf game, the debt and deficit, lack of a serious budget and a myriad of other issues that would have resulted in a plethora of snarky comments snuck into editorials if George Bush or most any other Republican were President. It appears to me that Erika Stutzman won’t lift her pen against Obama as long as he follows the Progressive agenda when it comes to

  • Healthcare
  • gun control
  • gay/lesbian rights
  • green energy…

If healthcare, in all of its forms, and green energy  bankrupt the nation, no big deal. No cost is too high for the Progressive entitlement agenda. The $16 trillion dollar debt and over $1 trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see is apparently not a problem.  As long as the government provides 99 weeks of unemployment and social security disability to more than cushion the fall, no worries. It doesn’t matter if we’re borrowing 40 cents of every dollar the government spends.

I have news for you, when the financial system comes under stress again, as it most assuridly will, all of a sudden green energy subsidies and healthcare for everyone with all of it’s “freebies” won’t be so important or the system will simply “break”.

One has to wonder where Progressives think money comes from? Do we just print it? If we print too much, will it effect the value as in rising prices? No problem, the cost of living adjustment will make up for it.

The Progressvie trust in Government simply boggles my imagination. Good luck with that.

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Boulderites: Winter news you can use…

Posted on March 25, 2013 by ChrisA

A slideshow: Winter refuses to let go across the Northern Hemisphere

 

A pile of snow is seen in Red Square during a snowfall in central Moscow

Moscow’s Red Square

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How to make the Boulder Muni cost competitive with Xcel

Posted on March 25, 2013 by ChrisA

In a post earlier today, I mentioned conditions under which Boulder’s municipalized utility would be cost competitive with Xcel. Well here’s the plan to make it happen…

Jamie Wearing Fools: Obama Energy Nominee: We Need a Carbon Tax to Triple the Cost of Energy or Something

President Obama’s Energy secretary nominee regards a carbon  tax as one of the simplest ways to move the energy industry towards clean technologies, though he notes that government would have to come up with a plan to mitigate the burden this tax places on poor people, who would pay the most.

“Ultimately, it has to be cheaper to capture and store it than to release it and pay a price,” MIT professor and Energy nominee Ernest Moniz told the Switch Energy Project in an interview last year. “If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few decades, well, that could double; it could eventually triple. I think inevitably if we squeeze down on carbon, we squeeze up on the cost, it brings along with it a push toward efficiency; it brings along with it a push towards clean technologies in a conventional pollution sense; it brings along with it a push towards security. Because after all, the security issues revolve around carbon bearing fuels.”

I say Ernest Moniz is the City of Boulder’s favorite nominee. With Moniz as energy secretary, there’s a chance that a Boulder Muni would be competitive.

JWF remarks…

You ever notice Obama deliberately goes out of his way to nominate the looniest extremists possible? What other reason could this be except for the fact he’s also a far-left extremist?

No doubt, President Obama, nominee Ernest Moniz and the City of Boulder are all marching lockstep towards the expensive energy goal. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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