Texas Concealed Handgun License Backlog

Texas Concealed Handgun License Backlog

The Texas Department of Public Safety issues concealed handgun licenses--and they are getting backlogged for an interesting reason. From the May 8, 2008 Houston Chronicle:

AUSTIN — Demand for concealed handgun licenses has risen nearly 40 percent in Texas in a year, an increase being attributed to many factors, even presidential politics.
Though the exact cause may be unclear, what's certain is that the spike in applications has caught the Department of Public Safety unprepared.
The state is taking a month longer than the 60 days allowed by law to process original applications and 80 days longer on renewals, which are supposed to be handled within 45 days.
"We're trying really hard, but there have been delays because of the tremendous increase in applications," said Tela Mange, a DPS spokeswoman.
She said the department is paying overtime and hiring temporary workers to reduce the backlog. Mange said she doesn't know why applications last month were 39 percent higher than they were in April 2007.
But Ross Bransford, who trains 1,000 Texans a year to qualify for a concealed handgun license, said he believes the looming 2008 election is a big factor.
"People are not sure what's going to happen after the election," said Bransford, who owns Austin-based CHL-Texas.com. "Both Democratic candidates are anti-gun in one fashion or another."
He said Sen. Barack Obama, who is leading the race for the nomination, is a "friend of (Democratic Senator) Ted Kennedy, and that scares everybody to death."
Other instructors mentioned an increased interest from young adults after last year's Virginia Tech massacre and recent changes in Texas law about carrying concealed weapons.

It might well be that Presidential politics is driving this--although whoever wins the election won't affect CHL issuance in Texas. Perhaps young people are applying for CHLs more in awareness of how vunerable they are from incidents like Virginia Tech--and are hoping that Texas changes the law to pre-empt state college rules on the subject this year.

I keep hoping that incidents like Virginia Tech (and the Omaha mall shootings, and the church in Colorado Springs, etc.) will generate the groundswell of support for doing something about the disgraceful condition of mental illness treatment in America. To make that happen, however, requires everyone to be able to work together. Applying for a concealed weapon permit doesn't require any collective action at all.

What's With Leftists & Children?

What's With Leftists & Children?

This isn't the first time--not by a long shot. From the May 9, 2008 San Francisco Chronicle:

(05-08) 18:49 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted "God Talk," a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station's charity drives.

But his career disintegrated Dec. 6 with the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment, issued three months earlier, that charged him with two counts of distributing and one count of receiving Internet images of child pornography. KGO fired him Dec. 31.

At a 30-minute hearing in federal court in San Francisco, Ward admitted he was guilty of a single charge of distributing child pornography, saying it involved "exchanging an image of a minor engaged in sexually explicit activity" in December 2004. The plea agreement he signed, quoted in court, contained an admission that he had sent between 15 and 150 pornographic images via e-mail.

People that believe that there is nothing right or wrong (except being a Republican) not surprisingly sometimes act on it.

What Happens When You Don't Plan Things?

What Happens When You Don't Plan Things?

You get disasters like this, where a First World country can't even arrange its health care system adequately to handle its own births. Fortunately, they live next to a country where the government doesn't run things. From the May 5, 2008 Toronto Globe & Mail:

More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year – in what a doctors' group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan.
The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record number of women to U.S. neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Specifically, 80 B.C. women have been sent to U.S. hospitals since April 1, 2007; in Ontario, 28 have been sent since January of 2007, according to figures from the respective health ministries.
André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, said the problem is due to bed closings that took place almost a decade ago, the absence of a national birthing initiative and too few staff.
“Neonatologists are very stretched right now,” Dr. Lalonde said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. “We're so stretched, it's kind of dangerous.”

A national birthing initiative, he said, is urgently required to ensure services are planned, guidelines on the best way to care for these patients are implemented, and a stronger focus is placed on maternity patient safety.
Canada, once able to boast about its high rank in the world for low infant-mortality rate – sixth place in 1990 – saw its rank plummet to 25th place in 2005, according to figures published this year by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Specifically, Canada's infant mortality rate of 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births is tied with Estonia's and more than double Sweden's rate of 2.4.
The inability for Canada to care for all of its sick and premature babies has caught the attention of renowned pediatrics professor Shoo Lee, who is studying the health outcomes of infants sent abroad, in addition to those who remain here, often under stretched staffing conditions.
“If you have insufficient resources in the province, what does that mean for those kept in the system?” Dr. Lee, director of the Canadian Neonatal Network, said from Edmonton. “Are they being admitted to the NICU only when they are very sick? Are they being pushed out too early to make room for others?”
Philippe Chessex, division head of neonatology for B.C. Women's Hospital & Health Centre, said every effort is made to avoid out-of-province transfers. Even sick babies who aren't sent to the U.S. can still face several moves while at home.
“We're transferring babies across the province, in all directions, to try to find an extra bed for the next potential birth or for any baby already born,” Dr. Chessex said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. “We now have babies who have been transferred up to six times after leaving here before reaching home.”

Will someone please page Michael Moore?

Part of what makes this happen isn't just that Canada has socialized health care. It is that, unlike a number of other countries with socialized health care, it prohibits doctors treating anyone outside of that system. Some of the problem is also that when you adopt socialized health care as a way of controlling costs--one way to control costs to reduce the amount of health care provided.

That might be a legitimate collective, social decision--but prohibiting health care outside of the socialized system is what takes you from a bad collective decision to something that smacks of totalitarianism--the grave fear that someone, somewhere, might be able to buy better health care because they have more money.

Gun Control Movement & Political Fundraising

Gun Control Movement & Political Fundraising

Snowflakes in Hell has an interesting comparison of fundraising by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence's Political Action Committee and the NRA's Political Victory Fund. NRA-PVF has raised about $8.4 million, and spent about $3.7 million. The Brady Campaign's PAC has raised $73 and spent $3,161. Yes, you read that right: $73. Not $73,000. Not $73 million--but $73.

Okay, it's not exactly a fair comparison. The gun control movement gets an enormous amount of free promotion from the mainstream news media--although somewhat less than they used to get. The Democratic Party, in spite of both Obama and Clinton trying to distance themselves from gun control, is an almost wholly owned subsidiary of the gun control movement. This means that the gun control movement doesn't need to spend even close to as much money as our side does to elect its friends to office. But there does come a certain moment when the disparity becomes so large that it makes the gun control movement irrelevant.

Perhaps the more interesting point that Snowflakes in Hell makes is what this astonishingly weak fundraising tells us about the level of support that the gun control movement has in America. Traditionally, gun control financial support has come from a small number of billionaires (and not all on the left--think of Reagan's crony Justin Dart). Our support comes from rather more ordinary people:

More importantly, if you go to opensecrets.org yourself, and look at NRA-PVF’s top donors, you’ll see professions like “Machine Operator”, “Police Officer”, “Computer Technician”, “Engineer”, “Mechanic”, “Truck Driver”, “Art Teacher”. Sure, you also have your attorneys, doctors, and businessmen, but think about how much $1000 dollars means to a truck driver? Or an Art Teacher? Meanwhile the Brady’s have raised not just a little money, but nothing. Think about that, and what it says about where the passion is on this issue.

At least, that's what I hope it means. My primary election is coming up in a bit less than three weeks, and I know that NRA members will be looking at my grade and my opponent's grade--and I suspect that very few are going to vote for him.

Home Feeders (Part 2)

Home Feeders (Part 2)

I mentioned a couple of days ago how differently our society might regard people who dine at home if we had taken the same path about food that we took about public schools a century ago. A reader points out that the kibbutz movement in Israel did try to eliminate "home feeding" with everyone eating communally. More importantly, he points to this article in the Autumn 2002 City Journal about malnourished criminals in Britain--adults who grew up in such abusive homes that their mothers (what are fathers?) simply never fed them, and who seemed incapable of recognizing and preparing a healthy meal. Of course, we have such situations here too, and I mentioned that there are parents this neglectful.

I rather doubt that these British criminals are that way because of the lack of a public restaurant system, however. It is more that the completely dysfunctional family structure that means that these kids were living on potato chips and chocolate also failed to teach them healthy approaches to life.

Government Size & Efficiency

Government Size & Efficiency

A reader shared this example with me of an interesting problem with consolidating small governmental agencies and made some very useful suggestions:

You mention that many small school districts in Idaho have lots of administration, and wonder if perhaps they should consolidate. Such consolidations can, in the short run, create interesting political problems if the populations of the districts are unequal, especially if rural districts are consolidated with an "urban" district.

For example, my wife grew up just outside State Center, Iowa, population 1349 at the 2000 census. Sometime when she was a kid, they consolidated all the west Marshall County schools into one district. State Center was by far the largest community in the consolidated district. Fortunately, the area is pretty homogenous, and the schools weren't really politicized, but they renamed State Center Elementary to West Marshall Elementary, and named the new middle and high schools to "West Marshall" as a gesture to people from outlying areas who were concerned about State Center "taking over" their schools. (This is the sort of trivial issue that people will get really worked up over if everything is running ok otherwise, and even sometimes when things are really broken.)

One thing I'd suggest is looking at what demands the state (and the counties) make of school districts, and what minimum level of staffing that requires, and see if it's reasonable to reduce some of those demands instead of pushing districts to consolidate. (I'd expect in Idaho that some of those consolidated districts will be rather large geographically, which carries its own costs - how effective will a superintendent be if he has to spend 4 hours on the road to visit some of his schools?) Some of the small school districts may be inefficiently small, but sometimes inefficiency is a cost worth paying for keeping people involved and feeling like they have some control. Reducing the inefficiency while retaining the same level of local control is a better outcome than consolidation, especially if consolidation is "forced" by the state.

One problem with trying to improve efficiency of small districts without consolidation is that in some cases, there might not be enough work to keep someone working full-time at a particular position for a single district--and yet, if you make the job part-time, suddenly, you discover that many potential employees can't afford to take a job without benefits. This is one of those cases where it may make sense to consolidate several governmental agencies--or perhaps arrange for a single employee to be shared by several agencies, full-time with one agency, but with the other agencies sharing the expenses.

There's Gotta Be A Way To Do This

There's Gotta Be A Way To Do This

It turns out that the 5.5" ID aluminum tube is just a little too small to accept the CI-700 equatorial mount head. How much too small? Close enough that the calipers claim that it will fit (although the accuracy of these calipers declines as they approach the end of their 6" range)--so this is hundredths of an inch too small, and partly because the tube isn't perfectly round.

This is too big to put on the lathe, so I can only hold it under the drill press with an end mill in it, and slowly turn the tube. I've done something like this before, but it sure is inelegant.

These are the times that I wish that I had a low accuracy lathe--something that if it turned parts to an accuracy of .05", that would be just fine.