On July 20, 2017, Cregg Jerri was in a Fresno, California Starbucks sipping coffee when Ryan Florez entered the store without the intention of getting a coffee or a muffin.
Flores was there to rob the joint.
Flores was wearing a Transformers mask and brandishing a gun. He then pulled out a knife.
Jerri, by that time, had seen what was happening and used a chair to hit Flores over the head.
Jerri managed to wrestle the knife away from Flores. In the process, Jerri was stabbed in the neck while Flores was stabbed or cut 17 times. (more…)
Why is health insurance so complicated, while car insurance and life insurance are so simple? Can health insurance be more like, well, insurance? Lanhee Chen, fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains.
However, championships in major sports such as the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NCAA sports are traditionally extended an invitation to the White House to glad hand with the President, take some pictures and generally have a nice day.
Somewhere along the line, this visit became a political statement or something like that because nothing in our lives can ever be joyous or without political controversy.
So when the White House extended the traditional invitation to the Golden State Warriors, the team announced they were “thinking about it” and hadn’t had a “team vote” on it yet.
A spokesperson for the White House did not comment when reached by ESPN.
Finals MVP Kevin Durant told ESPN’s Chris Haynes last month that he does not want to celebrate the team’s title at the White House with President Trump.
“Nah, I won’t do that,” Durant said. “I don’t respect who’s in office right now. (more…)
Hans Bader has an interesting post over at Liberty Unyielding concerning an Obama regulation that was rescinded by the Trump administration. The regulation itself increased reporting requirements of companies when it came to salaries. Companies had to report salaries based on gender, length of time in job, training, educational requirements for the job, etc. The purported reason for the regulation was to insure that people – men and women – were being paid the same amount for the same job. (The so called “gender pay gap” which studies dispute.)
The problem is that the regulation really never accomplished anything as it couldn’t factor in all of the reasons a person was paid a certain amount and at the same time, the information could be used to launch legal suits against the companies. In other words, the companies were being forced to create documentation that could be used against in a lawsuit and as the basis of a lawsuit. Many lawyers found Constitutional issues with the regulation.
But the Trump administration rescinded the regulation, saving companies “8 million hours and $400 million to complete the new forms mandated by the Obama administration.” (That’s just the creation of the documents, and does not include the review of documents by government officials.)
Here’s a good portion of the post. We highly recommend that you read the rest of the post as well.
On Tuesday, the White House suspended a burdensome reporting requirement for employers that would have cost them $400 million while yielding information of questionable value. It did so in rejecting changes to the EEO-1 form made at the end of the Obama administration. (more…)
Last week Democratic Nancy Pelosi got into a bit of a spat with protesters at a press conference where she and fellow members of Congress were talking about the “Dream Act.”
Supporters of illegal immigrants basically shut down the event:
The protesters demanded “a clean bill” — meaning that the Dream Act would get an up-or-down vote on its own without any language regarding border security attached. They “demanded” that Pelosi show a commitment to protecting “all 11 million” undocumented immigrants believed to be in the country.
“We demand accountability. Democrats are not the resistance of Trump. We are!” they shouted.
One male protest leader then started a call and response with the group, addressing Pelosi directly and pointing his finger at her: “Congresswoman Pelosi! You called this press conference in our name to defend the so-called Dream Act,” they said.
“First you said you supported a clean Dream Act. And last week you announced that you had agreed and I quote you, ‘To work out a package of border security.’ Your words. Or were you misquoted? We cannot say, however, that we are surprised,” they added.
The protesters are against anything other than complete amnesty for their illegal actions in remaining in the country and the illegal actions of their parents who brought them here in the first place.
We suppose that after that disastrous press conference, Pelosi had to try and do something to regain her “status” in the illegal immigration camp, so she took to the bully pulpit again and muttered this:
Most lawmakers say they believe the children deserve special consideration because they are without blame, having been brought to the U.S. as minors without any say. Those lawmakers say the children shouldn’t be punished for their parents’ decisions.
But Mrs. Pelosi said those parents’ decision was actually a positive.
“Their families did a great thing for our country bringing these kids here,” she said. (emphasis ours.)
Let’s be clear about this. While we cannot speak for everyone in the entire country, we don’t know anyone who is against legal immigration. We don’t know anyone who is against people applying to immigrate here and being accepted. (more…)
What about using the same technology phone spammers/scammers use, and turn it against them? The results can be quite entertaining.
Roger Anderson is a tinkerer, podcaster, and founder of the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, which works to disrupt the unsolicited telemarketing
The Jolly Roger service is $6.00 a year. Which seems like a bargain to some extent to keep telemarketers and robocallers from bothering us while wasting their time.
Way back on May 17, 2017, the Cocoa Beach Board of Adjustment met to discuss a special exemption for the Cocoa Beach Tattoo Company to open a tattoo parlor / retail operation in Cocoa Beach.
After some horrific advice from the then City Attorney Marsha Segal George as well as faulty reasoning from some Board members, the Board voted to deny the special exemption. We wrote about the denial and what we expected to happen here. We noted at the time that this was a case ripe for an appeal as the City had no legal leg to stand upon and sure enough, the case was appealed.
Unfortunately for the Cocoa Beach Tattoo Company, the appeals and trying to address the issue was caught in the middle of the City trying to find new legal counsel or retain the old counsel. Eventually, the matter was scheduled to be heard by a magistrate but the new City attorney’s looked at the issue and said the legal equivalent of “whoops!” and agreed that the Board of Adjustment never should have denied the special exemption.
Thus, the lawyers agreed to revisit the issue to the Board of Adjustment again where the Board will have to vote to pass the exemption.
That “revisiting” happens tonight at 5:15 PM when the Board of Adjustment meets. You can see the agenda for the meeting here, and the item packethere (as well as an addendum found here.)
This is a win for those of us who value both freedom of expression and economic freedoms. Sadly, it took far too long to get to this point, but we can’t go back in time to change that.
We do want to make sure that people understand that one thing this case does highlight is the need for good legal representation. In 2009 the Cocoa Beach City Commission passed what they felt was a legal ordinance on tattoo parlors within the City. At they time, one of the reasons given was that they City was against the “proliferation” of tattoo parlors opening up. Many of those shops have closed which goes to show that the market is a better decider of what type of shops may survive in a city rather than people on a City Commission. The rule at the time was unnecessary but the Commission did nothing wrong in passing the ordinance. (more…)
Just a quick notice to let people know that we are back.
Our staff either lost power or internet access and so we remained “dark” for longer than we would have liked.
We guess the main thing is that we are back up and running and will have a “real” post up tomorrow on the Cocoa Beach Board of Adjustment meeting.
We do want to thank Florida Power and Light for their efforts in working to restore power. More importantly, FPL did their level best to keep customers informed of expected restoration dates.
The same cannot be said of Spectrum. For an alleged communication company, Spectrum basically told customers to go away, stop bothering them and to stop asking when service would be restored. We called several times only to be met with a message of “we’re busy” and an immediate hang up of the phone. Apparently the powers that be at Spectrum didn’t understand that they were busy because they told their agents not to tell people anything.
Spectrum wins the award this year for lousy customer service.
