Cops, Good and Bad(ish)
The differences are amazing.
A few months ago, somebody was shooting in the back forty. This caused somebody to report gun shots in the area. Must be some out of stater who has no ability to keep their nose in their own business.
Because it was a “shots heard”, the local cops, who I consider to be good guys, dispatched two officers in two squad cars.
They pull into the driveway. I go to the porch and say, “Hello! Can I help you?”
Per normal procedure, the cop doesn’t answer my question but asks his own.
“Were you shooting?”
“I don’t answer questions.”
If the police come to you, they are investigating a crime or potential crime. They are not there to “help” you, they are there to gather evidence to issue a citation, warning, or arrest somebody.
Anything you say can be used as evidence. It is a consensual encounter, which you can terminate at any time.
The next thing that will happen is the officer will repeat the original question. Most people can’t deal with the pressure of being asked the same question again and again.
My answer was again, “I don’t answer questions.”
The officer, per procedures, will then explain why they are there. They will then suggest that they are just “investigating” to find out what happened. They will then ask again. “Were you shooting?” “I don’t answer questions.”
All of this is per standard investigatory procedures.
At this point, the officer is likely to tell you what the crime was, “Did you know that you can’t shoot within 300 feet of an occupied dwelling?”
Notice the change in language, they are not asking if you did anything, they are asking for your knowledge of the law. Since they are not asking about you, it is more likely you will start talking to them. It doesn’t matter to them if you know or don’t know.
What they are doing is establishing “Mens Rea” or criminal intent. If the law you are breaking has a condition of Mens Rea, it can change what the charge is.
Alex Baldwin had no criminal intent to murder his camera girl. He had every reason to have constructive knowledge that pointing a real gun at a person, cocking the hammer, and pulling the trigger could cause death or significant injury. This is enough to establish Mens Rea for manslaughter charges. (IANAL)
At this point, the cop in question basically gave up and left. No fuss, no muss, no upset on my part.
Fast-forward to yesterday.
Somebody was out in the back forty shooting. I think I heard 16 rounds go off. So what? This is a freedom state.
I didn’t think much of it and went on with my life. This meant cleanup and then working on fixing the busted garage door and other metal working stuff, before being able to get back to wood working.
Two cop cars roll up, and an older cop gets out of his squad. I can see them through the open door of the shop.
He walks up and gets close to the shop but stops maybe twenty feet from the door.
This is intentional. He wants me to step out of the shop, which is part of my house. He cannot enter the shop without permission or a warrant. “Were you shooting?”
Wow, that sounds amazingly familiar. Almost as if it is SOP.
“I don’t answer questions.”
The cop then tries silence. Most people don’t deal well with silence. They want to fill it. So I just stood there smiling as he let the situation drag on.
He then asks again. SOP. I use my SOP, “I don’t answer questions.”
His SOP is in full display. Everything he says is according to the script. And he is getting upset that I won’t answer him.
“If I find out that you were shooting, I’m going to enjoy coming back here.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, cowards threaten, I’m promising.”
You might think that the fat old man, with a pistol on his hip, (Oh shit, I just realized that even though I didn’t have my jacket on, I had still covered my pistol with my shirt. I thought I was open carrying at that moment) had gotten under his skin.
This is when the bad cop starts to show up in full force. “Why are you refusing to answer? Why are you not cooperating?”
“Because I have a right to not answer questions.”
Another part of the discussion is where they justify asking questions because I could have “potentially done something wrong.”
Notice that they don’t say “broke the law” or “did something illegal”. That is the correct translation of “done something wrong.”
I asked him, “Have you potentially done something wrong? How about him?”
Then the long silence, he could see that this was not going according to script, and the script was running out.
At some point, he switched from asking about potential crimes to “safety.”
“If you wanted to know about safety, you should have asked.”
“I did!” “Actually, you didn’t.” “Why are you being so difficult?”
“When I shoot, I always do it safely. I am always aware of what is beyond my target. I always have a good berm or backstop. I am well aware of the laws controlling when and where I can shoot, and I never violate them.”
The chief walked away. Refused to shake hands. His backup was a bit more polite. When I asked him if he would shake my hand, his response was, “Not now.”
I don’t blame him. If he had been willing to shake hands while his chief had not, it would have looked like he was backing me, and not his boss.
Keep your head on a swivel. Stay out of stupid places. Don’t be out at stupid times. Avoid stupid people. Stay strapped.
Farm Gestures
Considering my post from yesterday and the “Nazi salute” that prompted it, I thought this was germane to the moment. 😉
A Little Humor
Every so often, it is worthwhile to just sit back and enjoy the show. Get more popcorn.
State of New York v. Donald J. Trump (S.D. New York 25-cv-01144)
Actual filing in the case:
Dear Judge Englemayer,
Currently there is an Operation of DOGE, a highly questionable Agency of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, rummaging through US Government Financial, Treasury, CFPB, DOJ Files etc looking for Messy Dirty Scandalous Materials etc.
Recent US history reveals MAMMOTH financial crimes and criminal networks at the heart of TRILLIONS of financial looting, laundering, and many other RACKETEERING ACTIVITIES. USDA, FHA, FHLB, FANNIE, FREDDIE, SALLIE, FDIC, FSLIC, USAID, Soc Sec, DOD, FERS, DOT, DOD Financial Accounts and many others have been robbed for enormous sums of money, assets and Real Property etc etc etc.
See
BING search link
The enormous FISHING EXPEDITION and HUNT for SARS information and DIRT on Political Opposition is being directed by Donald Drumpft Trump who is an ACTIVE AGENT OF CIA and the SECRETIVE GROUP KNOWN AS “Trump January 6th MAGA Mobsters”.
It gets worse from here.
We Can’t Help Winning
Being a little short of ideas today, I went to the well again. X never fails to deliver.
I have seen so many lists of Republican wins that when this showed up in my feed, I just read it.
And what I read sounded like a win to me. I went to see which of the people I was following posted this wonderful list.
It was David Hogg. He posted this thinking it was a win. He is the gift that just keeps on giving.
Yes, the feature image is AI generated. Grok made it for me.
Somehow, they managed to talk for 30 hours straight in a 24-hour day.
It is unconstitutional to create a law targeting a person.
The acting secretary of Education will give the letter all the attention it is worth. About nothing.
They admit it is just a delay tactic.
Good, let’s find out if they should be receiving funds, if they are supposed to receive funds, let’s get the money flowing again. If they aren’t supposed to be receiving funds, great! We’re done.
We win.
The Network Fails, Silently
In the shadowed depths of night, where silence reigns,
A network, once vibrant, now fades in gloom,
Its circuits, dead, like spectral, ghostly chains,
No longer does it herald or consume.
Oh, how the whispers of the web did cease,
The humming ceased, the lights went dark, then cold,
In digital demise, there found no peace,
But tales of loss and legends yet untold.
The servers, once alive with fervent quest,
Now rest in mute, an eerie, silent crypt,
Where bytes and bits, in deathly dirge, do rest,
And all connection to the world is stripped.
Thus, in this void, where once the data flowed,
The network fails, and in its death, is silent.
— Grok 2
Big Mac Index
One of the most difficult tasks economists have is to judge the cost of things. If I’m paying $3/dozen for eggs and you are paying $1/dozen, do your eggs or mine cost more?
This gets even more complex when you start to consider currency differences.
When I’m discussing past prices, I like to convert the cost at that time to hours of labor. How many hours of labor does it take to purchase this item.
In 1976-77 A brand new Apple II would run you around $900. Today, I can put together a similar class of computer for around $1000. CPU, Memory, Disk, Motherboard, and case. In 1976, that $900 was somewhere around 150 hours of my labor, call it 4 weeks of full-time labor.
Except that I was only working part-time. This means that my actual cost, saving everything, was going to be around 10 weeks.
Today, that $1000 computer is going to cost me less than a week of labor, ignoring taxes.
The problem with using hours of labor to compare costs is that the value of your labor varies greatly. At the time, I was working in a computer store, the first in the state. My friends were flipping burgers. I was making twice as much per hour as they were, sitting in front of a monitor typing.
Whose labor value do we use? When comparing my grandfathers’ salary, I used historical records for machinists, which he was. As a skilled laborer, he was paid much more than the average.
In 1986, to try to give people a more innate sense of how much the cost of living varied from location to location, and from time to time, The Economist published the “Big Mac Index.”
Why would an index based on a fast food restaurants’ menu item be of any use?
The answer is one of consistency and inclusion. If you were to compare a generic “hamburger” from location to location, you would get wildly changing values. That could be because of the cost of the burger to the restaurant, or the hamburgers could be different. Does one have a slice of American cheese on it and the other premium Swiss? Is one made from grass fed organic ground beef and the other from Sysco’s finest? Is one burger 4oz pre cook weight and the other 2oz?
It makes a difference.
A Big Mac is standardized everywhere. That stupid jingle is correct for every Big Mac ever made. McDonalds even standardizes the amount of sauce that goes on each sandwich.
This means we are comparing apples to apples. Or, in this case, burger to burger.
The second part is inclusion. We know what goes into each sandwich. Those base ingredients are source relatively locally.
While the restaurant might be buying their meat from McDonalds, they are buying it from a location nearby. This means that the transportation expenses are in the price of the burger. This means that the cost of meat is in the price of the burger.
The cost of each item that goes into the burger is included in the price it sells for.
There is a cost of doing business, insurance, property tax, rental costs, undocumented payments to government organizations and NGOs (bribes), heating, cooling, building maintenance. These costs are all rolled into the final price of the sandwich.
The final cost is that of labor. If the labor market is strong, workers will be making more, if it is weak, labor will be paid less.
This also accounts for the cost of living in a particular area. In a location where it costs more to live, the workers will want more money per hour. While people in lower cost of living areas might want the extra pay, they are not going to get it.
I interviewed for a job in California once. As part of the interview process, they flew me to San Diego for a week. I spent the week house shopping and interviewing. I finally found a home that I was willing to live in.
Even though they were going to almost double my current salary, I would not have been able to afford a house in San Diego. I turned the job down.
Using a Big Mac equivalent, we can get a better idea of what the true cost is for different locations.
In Hawaii, the price of a Big Mac is $5.31 while in Mississippi, it is $3.91. This implies that it costs more to live in Hawaii than it does in Mississippi.
As a final thought on the Big Mac index, I remember McDonalds advertising that you could buy dinner for a family of four for $5.00 and have change.
That isn’t the case, anymore.
Dank Brandon addresses the nation
Sound up 😩 pic.twitter.com/HeVE74uvGh
— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) November 6, 2024