Go to hell whitlock.

[A Salt Weapon]

Yes I am a noob here, but after hearing that whitlock just blamed Belcher and his girlfriends death on lack of more restrictive gun laws.
You are a true classless piece of shit, using this incident to push your anti-bill of rights agenda, **** you.
Posted via Mobile Device

[Cannibal]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

Considering Alaska receives more Federal money than ANY OTHER STATE, you are welcome to kiss my liberal California ass.

[Raiderhater]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

Yeah, I think that's probably the brilliance of the Constitution. Specific where it needs to be, but vague enough in other places so that these topics will always be debatable. As long as they are debated, we are going to whittle away until we have the best possible version of the law for our place and time.

I think it's vital that we continue to argue about gun laws, gun safety, as well as all of the other topics we argue about. It keeps the constitution alive and healthy, like a well-pruned tree.

By the way, PLEASE everyone... I am not advocating a gun ban. I have tried several times to explicitly say that - not a ban on owning guns. I just want it to be more of a pain in the ass to buy them, and while that may suck for you, I don't think it's unconstitutional in any way and is, in my humble opinion, a healthy and necessary speed bump.

That and you can't BUY an assault rifle unless you're in the armed forces or law enforcement. (You can still keep and bear one if you're a regular Joe Schmoe.)

So you want to make purchasing a fire arm more difficult for a law abiding citizen than it is for criminals? WTF is the sense in that?

And I agree, continual discussion about important matters is healthy.

[Brock]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

And for the foreseeable future. No anti-gun Justice is getting confirmed to replace a pro-gun Justice any time soon.

Other than the waste of space that is Ginsburg, I don't see any of the current Justices leaving in the next 4 years.

More importantly, the American public agree...



(poll from 2008 after the Heller decision)

The vote was 5-4. Should have been 9-0. All I'm saying is it's not as assured as you seem to think it is.

[A Salt Weapon]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

Considering Alaska receives more Federal money than ANY OTHER STATE, you are welcome to kiss my liberal California ass.

I would happily see Alaska not receive it.
We also have a massive federal govt employment here, thanks to the liberals and their big government ideas.

How much of that statistic goes for the stupid shit such as forest service, etc?

If it's simply welfare rats up here, eliminate those programs and we won't have that problem either. I would gladly see that assistance stop. Would that work for you?
Posted via Mobile Device

[saphojunkie]

Originally Posted by Raiderhader

So you want to make purchasing a fire arm more difficult for a law abiding citizen than it is for criminals? WTF is the sense in that?

And I agree, continual discussion about important matters is healthy.

Well, we have to assume that all firearms were either smuggled into America or purchased legally at some point. They aren't being stolen from the factory floor - not all of them.

I would just like to see the steady stream of handguns into our cities reeruned. It's just a little crazy how many guns continue to enter the market. Why not proceed with a modicum of caution?

Of course, I'm sure it won't happen. I just wanted to show people that some of us are anti-gun but not anti-gun owner. A lot of my friends have guns (of course, they're all ex-military or law enforcement or both). I ****ing love guns. Their awesome. I'm a badass shot, too. I really am. But I don't think we should have ever become a gun culture, and it makes me sad that there's no going back.

Honestly, if it weren't for my wife, I might even own a gun. But she's from Colorado and her good friend was at Columbine. If I mention buying a gun, she loses her shit. C'est la vie, we all make sacrifices in marriage.

Doesn't change the fact that guns are legal, and they're gonna stay legal. I don't like it, though. I'd infringe the shit out of your rights to keep and bear arms, if I could. I can't. There are better fights out there, anyway.

oh, and I don't think Jovan Belcher's crime has anything to do with the gun control argument. He would have stabbed her if he didn't have a gun. That's crimes of passion. My abhorrence of gun culture is the teenager who goes into a mall and mows down 25 people before offing himself. If there's a way to legislate gun control to prevent that from happening, then I'm all for it. It's really all I care about. Not some guy who gets a boner by shooting his .44 at the range. Who gives a shit about that?

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

Considering Alaska receives more Federal money than ANY OTHER STATE, you are welcome to kiss my liberal California ass.

This is false. They receive the most PER CAPITA which makes sense when the state has a tiny population and 3 times the land mass of the next largest state.

Check the details before you post garbage like this. California receives 30 TIMES as much money as Alaska does from the Feds.

[BigMeatballDave]

Bob Costas can go **** himself.

[KCTitus]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

Well, we have to assume that all firearms were either smuggled into America or purchased legally at some point. They aren't being stolen from the factory floor - not all of them.

I would just like to see the steady stream of handguns into our cities reeruned. It's just a little crazy how many guns continue to enter the market. Why not proceed with a modicum of caution?

Of course, I'm sure it won't happen. I just wanted to show people that some of us are anti-gun but not anti-gun owner. A lot of my friends have guns (of course, they're all ex-military or law enforcement or both). I ****ing love guns. Their awesome. I'm a badass shot, too. I really am. But I don't think we should have ever become a gun culture, and it makes me sad that there's no going back.

Honestly, if it weren't for my wife, I might even own a gun. But she's from Colorado and her good friend was at Columbine. If I mention buying a gun, she loses her shit. C'est la vie, we all make sacrifices in marriage.

Doesn't change the fact that guns are legal, and they're gonna stay legal. I don't like it, though. I'd infringe the shit out of your rights to keep and bear arms, if I could. I can't. There are better fights out there, anyway.

oh, and I don't think Jovan Belcher's crime has anything to do with the gun control argument. He would have stabbed her if he didn't have a gun. That's crimes of passion. My abhorrence of gun culture is the teenager who goes into a mall and mows down 25 people before offing himself. If there's a way to legislate gun control to prevent that from happening, then I'm all for it. It's really all I care about. Not some guy who gets a boner by shooting his .44 at the range. Who gives a shit about that?

The fact you're willing to limit your liberty should have ZERO impact on the rest of us. Give up your liberty, dont even try to impact mine.

[saphojunkie]

Originally Posted by A Salt Weapon

I would happily see Alaska not receive it.
We also have a massive federal govt employment here, thanks to the liberals and their big government ideas.

How much of that statistic goes for the stupid shit such as forest service, etc?

If it's simply welfare rats up here, eliminate those programs and we won't have that problem either. I would gladly see that assistance stop. Would that work for you?
Posted via Mobile Device

No, I think we'll keep the forest service going, thanks. Besides, without the forest service, you wouldn't have your Frontierland that makes it necessary to keep your precious guns.

How about that? No more forest, no more bears, no more guns. Would that work for YOU?

And for every "welfare rat," there's someone who legitimately cannot sustain life without assistance. Like the mentally disabled adult whose parents are dead. Or the girl born with Cerebral Palsy to a family already barely able to survive.

Sometimes feeding the herd means you're sustaining the rats, too. It's an imperfect world, my man.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by A Salt Weapon

I would happily see Alaska not receive it.
We also have a massive federal govt employment here, thanks to the liberals and their big government ideas.

How much of that statistic goes for the stupid shit such as forest service, etc?

If it's simply welfare rats up here, eliminate those programs and we won't have that problem either. I would gladly see that assistance stop. Would that work for you?
Posted via Mobile Device

Don't worry, his statement was an outright lie.

California = 260-300 billion in Federal money
Alaska = 7-9 billion

California = 163,695 square miles
Alaska = 663,267 square miles

(need to really find a list of sq miles of Federal land by state)

[saphojunkie]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

This is false. They receive the most PER CAPITA which makes sense when the state has a tiny population and 3 times the land mass of the next largest state.

Check the details before you post garbage like this. California receives 30 TIMES as much money as Alaska does from the Feds.

Duly noted. Per capita.

[saphojunkie]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

Don't worry, his statement was an outright lie.
California = 260-300 billion in Federal money
Alaska = 7-9 billion

California = 163,695 square miles
Alaska = 663,267 square miles

(need to really find a list of sq miles of Federal land by state)

Yeah you need to find a link before you guestimate with a $40 BILLION margin of error.

[KCTitus]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

No, I think we'll keep the forest service going, thanks. Besides, without the forest service, you wouldn't have your Frontierland that makes it necessary to keep your precious guns.

How about that? No more forest, no more bears, no more guns. Would that work for YOU?

And for every "welfare rat," there's someone who legitimately cannot sustain life without assistance. Like the mentally disabled adult whose parents are dead. Or the girl born with Cerebral Palsy to a family already barely able to survive.

Sometimes feeding the herd means you're sustaining the rats, too. It's an imperfect world, my man.

Dont worry, the UN's CRPD will register those disabled people...Im sure to care for them as much as you would.

[saphojunkie]

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...al-aid-magnet/

How Alaska Became a Federal Aid Magnet
By MICHAEL POWELL

When considering Alaska and its share of federal aid, you might more profitably look at the state’s bottom line than listen to the words of the state’s politicians.

I have just written an article examining the paradox that is Alaska, a nation-size state of about 700,000 souls where many seem to revile the federal government even as their politicians excel at reeling in and spending its money. Alaska is the top recipient of federal stimulus dollars per capita — with no close second.

You might argue that this is ever so. Alaska, as a new state with vast needs, required ports and airports and highways and so on. But then you must account for the fact that Alaska’s share of federal spending has spiked sharply in the last 15 years, even as North Slope oil revenue has filled its coffers (oil revenue accounts for 88 percent of the state’s general fund).

Some large part of the answer probably owes to two words: Ted Stevens.

A late Republican senator, he was chief of the Senate Appropriations Committee for many years, and “to earmark” became Alaska’s favorite new verb. (The Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska has much good research on the state’s economy and dependence on the federal government.)

“We’ve got this schizophrenic thing where we now claim to hate pork but love what’s coming to us,” says Anne Kilkenny, a resident of Wasilla, a suburb of Anchorage and the home of Sarah Palin. “We are by any definition a net beneficiary of the federal government.”

More provocatively, Alaskan scholars note that Alaska has benefited economically from disaster — the devastating earthquake of 1964, which all but leveled Anchorage and Valdez and other towns, persuaded President Lyndon B. Johnson to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into ports, highways and railways in Alaska. Then came the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, after which the company and the federal government also spent hundreds of millions of dollars.

“It was a tremendous boost,” noted Victor Fischer, who helped write the state’s constitution. “We built the state with that money.”

This is not, of itself, unusual. Louisiana and Mississippi have seen an enormous influx of federal dollars, and Mississippi in particular has used that money to reshape sections of its coast. (That state officials have done this by clearing out many of the poor and working-class residents who used to live along that coast is another matter for another day.)

And of course New York City received many billions to help it recover from 9/11 — purely in economic terms, this may have accounted for the shallowness of the last two recessions in New York.

Finally, there is a revisionist and, intentionally, deeply provocative school of thought about Alaska, which argues that for all the state’s overpowering beauty and the oil extracted from the North Slope, the United States would have been better off ceding it to Canada, or the British. David Barker, an economist who teaches at the University of Iowa, frames the question this way: “Was the Alaska Purchase a Good Deal?”

His answer: Not really.

He notes that the American West, more than any region, has been historically dependent on the federal government, and he says that Alaska fits this pattern. (The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million. Mr. Barker notes that in 2007 dollars that’s $144 million. But then he adds another adjustment, for the relative size of the national economy, then and now, and comes up with a price tag in today’s dollars of $16.5 billion.)

Mr. Barker notes that the United States let Alaskans, as a condition of statehood, keep 90 percent of the profits from the oil fields and has drawn very little in taxes. “Total revenue from onshore oil rents and royalties from Alaska peaked in 1982 at $24 million, a small fraction of the $1.3 billion collected in internal revenue in Alaska that year,” he noted.

By contrast, he writes, Alaska is very expensive to govern. Highways, railroads, ports: All are terrifically expensive. In sum, he seems to suggest, he might give it back to Russia — in which case, former Governor Palin might find herself hunting moose with Vladimir Putin.

[saphojunkie]

Here's the article he references about Alaska being a paradox:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/bu...ulus.html?_r=0