Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Former Senator Ted Stevens Dead in Plane Crash

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Major media outlets including CNN and CBS are now confirming that former Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), who represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1968 to 2009, has died in a plane crash near Dillingham, Alaska. He was 86. Also in the aircraft were former NASA chief and current CEO of EADS North America Sean O’Keefe and seven others. According to reports from rescuers, at least five people on the plane were killed. Details about the cause of the crash and the disposition of the other passengers are currently unavailable.

Stevens, who survived a plane crash in December 1978 that took the life of his first wife Ann, was the longest-serving Republican Senator and held several leadership positions during his tenure, including president pro-tempore and Majority Whip. In 2008, he was charged with making false statements on Senate disclosure forms for failing to disclose gifts received from VECO, an Alaskan oil services company. Stevens, amid the controversy, narrowly lost his 2008 bid for reelection to Senator Mark Begich (D-AK).

In early 2009, President Barack Obama’s (D) administration requested that Stevens’s charges be dismissed and his conviction vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct; the request was granted by the court in April 2009.

Editorial Note: My wife Melissa is an employee of CH2M Hill, which acquired VECO in September 2007. The alleged incidents occurred before the acquisition, and Melissa works in a different operating division of the company.

Look Behind Chrysler’s Curtain Too!

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In May, I asked you to look behind GM’s curtain. The rosy reports coming out of General Motor’s (GM) were lies stacked upon half-truths and, since the people of the United States are unwitting 61 percent owners of the automotive behemoth, we ought to dig into the realities that lie beneath. The truth is that GM hadn’t really repaid any loans to the government (repaying a government loan with a government-funded escrow account is more like paying off one credit card with another). Also, any talk of a GM profit quietly omitted the fact that the profitable company was a new corporation formed out of thin air, and the original GM—renamed Motors Liquidation Company—was [and still is] mired in bankruptcy.

Now, Chrysler is trying to get in on the lies and half-truth game by announcing its own quarterly profit. The story is basically the same one we’ve heard before. The company now known as Chrysler Group LLC is another new corporation formed out of thin air, and the Chrysler LLC that existed before is now called Old Carco LLC. Old Carco, like Motors Liquidation Company, is still in bankruptcy. If we are honest shareholders—and you and I own about 10 percent of Chrysler—we should consider both Chrysler Group LLC and Old Carco LLC when computing whether bailing out this failed corporation is ‘working.’

Keep digging into the funny math that politicians will be feeding us over the next several months as we approach the November elections. You’re going to hear a lot of stuff about how all this mad government spending has averted a crisis, and how great the bailed-out banks and car companies are doing. Most of it is untrue and you, the taxpayer and voter, need to do some honest research before coming to conclusions. The truth is that the Bush/Obama bailouts have been a giant, pointless waste of money that did nothing but balloon the federal deficit.

LTE: Courtland Milloy Challenged on Anti-Gun View

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In response to a column by Courtland Milloy in the Washington Post this past week, I submitted a letter to the editor. The Post published my letter this morning. Here it is:

Columnist Courtland Milloy’s anti-gun screed was as inaccurate as it was unfair [“This gun safety stuff is a piece of cake,” Metro, Aug. 4].

Perhaps if he had paid attention in his safety class instead of nitpicking about the crime examples or lambasting his instructor for once innocuously dropping a part of a gun, he might have learned some useful facts.

Like, for example, step two in getting a concealed-carry permit is not to move to Virginia, since Virginia will issue permits to nonresidents. Or that violent crime can occur in restaurants just as easily as it can occur on the street or in a bank. Or that almost every mass shooting in the United States over the past 20 years happened in places where guns are prohibited (i.e., where the law-abiding victims had no means of defense).

Or that his home state of Maryland, with its draconian gun laws, has a violent crime rate about 245 percent higher than Virginia’s [note: I calculated this with data from the FBI’s 2008 ‘Crime in the United States‘ report; the Post cited it differently]. Perhaps Mr. Milloy really should consider moving across the river, where the government still trusts the people to secure their own safety. As the old saying goes, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”

Who Watches the Watchers?

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In our free societies, we must always ask ourselves: “Who watches the watchers?”

Of course we need governments and authorities. We need police, investigators, and courts. In some cases, we need wiretaps and video cameras. When used properly, all of these things increase the security and stability of our society—reducing crime and enforcing laws. Unfortunately, however, these things are powerful weapons in the hands of the unscrupulous. That’s why we need some mechanism of ‘watching the watchers’ and being sure that the authorities are not abusing their powers.

When it comes our law enforcement officials, I have the utmost of respect for them and their work. However, there are a certain percentage of police officers who chose their profession merely to lord power over the rest of us . . . folks like Ofc. Graham Buck, Det. Mike Baylor (who was not fired for waving his gun around during a snowball fight), or the officers who arrested a man for trespassing on his own property, or the officers who invaded a mayor’s home and shot his dogs.

And folks like Maryland State Trooper Joseph D. Uhler who, after pulling Anthony Graber over for speeding on a motorcycle, waved his gun around like a madman. And folks like the members of Uhler’s department who then had Graber arrested and charged with wiretapping violations for posting a video of the encounter on YouTube. Adam Cohen, writing for Time, asks the obvious question: Should Videotaping the Police Really Be a Crime?

Read more . . .

D.C. Area: Grow Up About Weather!

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So, we had some thunderstorms today . . . normal, D.C.-area summer thunderstorms. Yeah, maybe they were a little on the rough side of the scale, but they were really pretty normal. We have storms like this many times every year. It’s part of our local climate and it shouldn’t take any of us by surprise. By the breathless blathering of the local media, the number of power outages, and the flurry of major road closures for downed trees, however, you might be forgiven for thinking we were just hit with the storm of the century (just like the last storm of the century we had . . . last week).

This area has always been a bit on the wimpy side. We get an inch of snow and all the schools close. We get a minor tropical depression blowing through and the government shuts down for a week. We have an earthquake that barely registers—a hiccup by California standards—and it’s the talk of the town for a week. Come on people, grow up.

The madness is exacerbated this year since, after a couple years of economic instability, our governments and utility companies have failed to do any preventive maintenance. Power companies are supposed to try and keep large limbs and unstable trees away from power lines, thus minimizing power outages. Our local and state governments are supposed to be doing the same kind of work along our thoroughfares. This kind of maintenance can never completely eliminate weather-related power outages and road closures, but it can certainly help if they bother to do it.

It’s obvious they’ve been asleep on the job though. Today’s thoroughly normal storms knocked out power for 80,000 D.C. area customers and closed (wholly or partially) the George Washington Memorial Parkway, U.S. 50 in Loudoun County, I-295, and a ton of smaller highways. The storms did come with some high winds, so it’s unsurprising that there were some trees down . . . but seriously, since when do our standard summer storms shut down multiple major highways.

What’s worse though is how, at the first sign of storms, drivers around here turn into blithering morons who think they need to get in a line across the highway and match each others’ speed 30 miles-per-hour below the limit. Come on people, act like adults when you’re driving and act like adults when faced with bad weather or other natural events.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.