Category Archives: National Issues

The Negative Impacts Of Positive Laws

When I took my con­cealed carry license course here in Dal­las, my class was made up of 30–40 mostly well inten­tioned, atten­tive folks. Demo­graph­i­cally, it ran the gamut from young adult males to elderly women, white, black, his­panic, you name it. Most of the class was inter­ested in what the instruc­tor had to say and …

March 21, 2012 – 8:42 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in National Issues, Second Amendment | Comments (0)

The State Of Health Care Reporting Is Sad

The front page arti­cle on CNN right now, if read uncrit­i­cally, would have the dear reader to believe that if you are unin­sured in Amer­ica, you are “at mor­tal risk” of dying pre­ma­turely and that 45,000 peo­ple die every year for the sole rea­son that they don’t have health insur­ance. Read more closely and you …

September 18, 2009 – 2:12 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in National Issues | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Suing People To Solve Your Problems

The story: A pri­vate swim club kicks out a day care group pos­si­bly because of over­crowd­ing, pos­si­bly because of racism. Media fire storm brews. Said pri­vate swim club rein­vites day care group. Day care group refuses say­ing “chil­dren are scarred” and “The children’s best inter­ests are not being served.” Day care intends to sue within …

July 14, 2009 – 10:27 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Culture, National Issues | Comments (18)

Unintended Consequences of Roe v. Wade

Conor at The Amer­i­can Scene has a post up try­ing to clar­ify this Ross Douthat edi­to­r­ial. They are both inter­est­ing reads. I find that any dis­cus­sion of abor­tion, much like that of text edi­tors (VIM Roolz!) and of reli­gion, is dom­i­nated in large part by two very vir­u­lent, angry con­stituen­cies who typ­i­cally try to yell …

June 11, 2009 – 6:42 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Culture, National Issues | Comments (3)

Tax Day Tea Party Protests

If you’ve been read­ing any­thing about pol­i­tics lately, you’ve surely seen at least cur­sory cov­er­age of local tea par­ties around the coun­try where peo­ple are com­ing together to protest the unbe­liev­able spend­ing that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is doing in an attempt to get us out of the eco­nomic mess we’re in. These peo­ple are start­ing …

April 14, 2009 – 10:04 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in National Issues, Politics | Tagged | Comments (1)

Taxes Are For The Little People

Seri­ously, do none of these peo­ple pay taxes? If this many of Bush’s appointees would have had tax prob­lems, the media would have been in a damn uproar. And don’t think for one minute that if you or I screwed up 3 years of our taxes, that we’d just get to file amended returns and …

March 2, 2009 – 11:55 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in National Issues | Tagged | Comments (2)

A New Tax Deduction

Quote of the Week Now that those of us who have been mak­ing steady, on-time pay­ments on our mort­gages for years will be pay­ing off oth­ers’ mort­gages through our taxes, can we claim a tax-deduction for our neigh­bors’ mort­gage inter­est too? Love it. Peo­ple are angry over this and they are only get­ting angrier. This is not …

February 20, 2009 – 12:33 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged | Comments (1)

Maybe America Will Be OK After All

There are some rea­son­ably seri­ous rum­blings about peo­ple get­ting sick of our new Pres­i­dent spend­ing all their money. And some of the rum­blings are get­ting loud. If a mod­ern day Boston Tea Party hap­pened to get orga­nized in Chicago, I’d be on the first plane to Chicago I could find. Here’s hop­ing we still have …

February 19, 2009 – 11:46 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged | Comments (0)

Advice We Don’t Need

There’s noth­ing like hav­ing the Euro­peans tell us how to han­dle our hous­ing cri­sis. “But as the hous­ing bub­ble deflates, it also drags inno­cent vic­tims into a wave of fore­clo­sures” they crow! Please. What inno­cent vic­tims are being dragged into a wave of fore­clo­sures? Either you can afford the house you live in or you …

February 19, 2009 – 5:03 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged , | Comments (0)

When A Billion Isn’t Big Anymore

Not so long ago, a bil­lion dol­lars was a lot of money. Now? Not so much. This morn­ing, news on the wire says Obama is set­ting aside $75 bil­lion to slow fore­clo­sures. First of all, where did that $75 bil­lion come from that he’s set­ting aside? Oh yeah: “com­mit­ting $75 bil­lion of tax­payer money to …

February 18, 2009 – 11:10 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged , | Comments (0)