Well, I stirred up another shitstorm on the CRBC list.  You know, the one I was quitting?  I tried, but for some reason, the removal request hasn’t been going through.

The CRBC recently penned a letter to a government official to lambaste her for declaring that federal transportation projects should not be used to fund anything friendly to bicycling.  This riled the CRBC who responded by accusing said official of changing her stance due to her close proximity to a “cadre of oilmen”.

That’s not usually the best way to convince somebody to change their mind again and another CRBC lister pointed that out.  That person was then accused of being out of touch with reality, at which point I stepped in to not only defend that person but to also add that I, too, thought the “cadre” comment was inappropriate and ineffective.  Then the mailing list exploded for a few days.

But I’ve not read any of the responses.

See, there are some times when I want to get my opinion out there but then not deal with any of the fallout.  This was one of those times.  I’ve done the same elsewhere, but not all that frequently.  I usually wait a few days, go back, and see what the responses were, but I almost never just wholesale delete the responses sitting in my inbox, destroying messages of both agreement and disagreement before even opening them to see which they are.

When I know that I might be starting a flame war, I have little desire to come back in to be burned in turn.  And that’s why I’m an internet coward.

Gizmodo had a story up today about a woman who got a $1 million bid on her late husband’s Transformers collection. Follow the link and check out the photos - it is a truly impressive cache of vintage Transformer goodness.

What struck me, however, was the mention that this woman could not legally sell the original Megatron as it resembled a Walther P38 and lacked the blaze-orange barrel tip. As a result, she is “giving” those items away with the auction.

Surely it can’t be illegal to sell vintage goods that bear a mild resemblance to a pistol? That can’t be right. Turns out though that it is. You pretty much have to read the entire chapter 76 of 15 USC to understand it, so go check that out.

If the toy gun is a replica of a firearm manufactured after 1898, it must have the orange tip. If it doesn’t, it can’t be sold after November 5, 1988 (reselling the item, even if it was manufactured before that cutoff, qualifies as “entering commerce”). It’s worth noting that this version of the restrictions implies that toys whose manufacture and initial sale predate May 5, 1989 are exempt from the requirement in perpetuity.

Interesting, then, that there are no restrictions for selling real firearms in a private sale beyond believing that the buyer is 18 or older and that the buyer claims to have no legal restrictions regarding the purchase and ownership of said firearms (eg, no prior felonies).

Let’s recap: toy gun from early 80’s that turns into robot - possibly illegal to sell to anyone; real gun from any year that can put a hole in a target at 300 yards - legal to sell to nearly anyone.

I’ve been puzzling this out a bit and here’s the only conclusion I have reached: the sale of real guns is acceptable because at least then police will know it’s a real gun and can shoot at will. The sale of unmarked toy guns is unacceptable because then police will have to think twice about shooting and that would be awful. As long as only real guns are in the hands of the public, we’ll know exactly who to shoot.

Assuming gun owners don’t paint their firearms orange. Oops.

One of the things I did once I got back into biking was look into local resources for cycling. The big kahuna group was easily the Centre Region Bicycle Coalition, so I joined their mailing list.

Before too long, I pissed off everybody in the group with my outsider perspective on an emotionally charged topic (the death of Bohdan Kulakowski and the resulting light sentence of his killer), but I stayed in there and defended my position. Eventually, things quieted down.

Then, this week, one of the group posted a note about a citybike program in Tulsa and how it was the first in the US. Well, it sounded a lot like the Yellow Bike programs, so I responded with that info along with info about a “green bikes” program in Oregon and the Free Wheelin’ program in Annapolis, MD. What followed was a response from this person basically calling me out for having not gotten the point and providing bulleted lists of why the Yellow Bikes programs are nothing like the European citybike programs, on which the Tulsa initiative is based. Ah, okay, sorry for not keeping up on European urban bicycling programs. How lax of me.

Of course, it’s tough to read intent and tone in any electronic message, but I’ve decided that I’m having too much fun actually riding bikes to want to deal with folks who are militant about them. It’s a real shame, too, because I would like to think that there are other casual riders out there like me who could really benefit from access to a centralized resource of information but who might also be scared away by the prevalent attitudes among individuals in the community.

Bike-in Movie night, while more relaxed, still carried with it a social message of the world’s reliance upon oil and how it drives men to madness (hence the movie choice of The Road Warrior). I just thought it was cool to be parked in my trike at the top of a garage watching a movie and eating popcorn out of my panniers. I didn’t really go for social commentary.

So, I removed myself from the CRBC mailing list tonight. There’s enough strife in my everyday life that it makes little sense to have to worry about who I might set off next with a well intentioned though possibly naive submission to the list.

Certainly, I respect and support the CRBC’s mission to make Centre County a more bike-able place, but I just don’t have a skin thick enough to actually walk the walk and talk the talk among those folks.

I don’t want to join an army. I just want to ride my bike.

UPDATE: The discussion has now spread to other list members and has taken a more even tone.  Still quitting the list, though.

So the big ol’ PA budget was signed into law yesterday. Building on my earlier entry regarding Bush’s vow to veto increases to child welfare/medical insurance programs, here’s a portion of what just went into the new PA budget:

The $27.2 billion budget will boost spending by 3.2 percent and includes no increases of broad-based taxes or fees. Substantial increases are included for pre-kindergarten programs in public schools, laptop computers in high schools, day care for children of low-income families and home and community services for thousands of elderly and mentally and physically disabled people. (The total excludes about $300 million that is being diverted into a special fund. Adding that would push total spending to $27.5 billion - an increase of 4.4 percent.)

The fact sheet over at the PA Budget web site breaks things out a little bit more:

Cover All Kids – Second-year funding to provide access to affordable, comprehensive health care coverage for all uninsured children in Pennsylvania. Includes $99 million in state funds and $212.5 million in federal funds to provide access to affordable, comprehensive health care coverage for 75,000 children, an enrollment increase of 10 percent. Since Governor Rendell’s plan for universal health care for children was adopted last fall, 7,900 additional children have been signed up for health insurance.

Early Intervention – $292.8 million in state funds, an increase of $48.8 million or 20 percent, to serve 6,325 eligible at-risk infants, toddlers and children up to age five with developmental delays. Early intervention services minimize the need for special education and related services and assist families in meeting the special needs of their children.

Autism – $23 million in state and federal funds, an $18.2 million increase, for autism programs for adults, including prepaid inpatient health care, statewide training and technical assistance, information outreach, assessment procedures and program monitoring.

Note the $215.2 million coming from the federal government. That’s a majority chunk of the Cover All Kids initiative. Congress would like to increase that amount. Bush would like to dump it for tax incentives to prod families to buy their own health insurance. Reducing the allocation of state funds would have a negative impact on PA’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and leave some kids in the lurch.

Fearing that putting more money into state health care programs for children will make the idea of universal health care too palatable, our esteemed President has vowed to veto any substantial increase in federal funds for state child insurance programs.

No, that’s not the reason given. What’s stated is that increasing the budget for such programs will lead to increased taxes while reducing campaign contributions from the private insurance industry. Ack, no, that second part wasn’t in there, but that industry did get a nod even though it has done an incredibly poor job of covering uninsured children throughout its entire existence. Rest assured that they’ll get around to it… eventually… when they can figure out either how to make a profit from it or how to get enough substantial breaks from the government to cover the losses.

So why is this of any interest to me? I’m not poor. My family benefits from two incomes and fantastic insurance coverage through my employer. Well, it’s because those state health care programs work to my benefit for Gareth’s care. Were it not for state assistance, Gareth would likely not have the nursing coverage he needs to attend school (and, admittedly, to allow Brandy and I to sleep a few hours each night). He would not have access to his speech computer, mobility equipment, and life-enabling surgeries. Let’s not forget the maintenance equipment like suction pumps and canisters, syringes (3cc, 5cc, and 60cc), liquid diet ($300/month in PediaSure), traches, trache ties, mist tubing and masks, et cetera.

I guess you could say I’ve been spoiled by the great health programs available here in PA. If a lack of federal funding made them disappear, we would probably go bankrupt. As it is, we can live with a degree of comfort and spend our energy and money on making sure Gareth has the most fulfilling life possible.

I’m not usually a fan of “for the children” rhetoric, but in this case, I’m all for it.

Of course, we’re not out of the woods even if this program is expanded. One of the goals in drafting new legislation is to close loopholes that allow families above the poverty level to benefit from such services. Ours is exactly that. If the holes are closed too tightly without exclusions for disabled children, we’d be out of luck.

My dear wife is out of town today for training on the pre-school components of No Child Left Behind. Yes, kids from age 2-5 will now be tested to make sure they’re progressing during their time playing with blocks, taking naps, and pasting construction paper.

Something about this strikes me as ridiculous, partially because of the juxtaposition of the philosophy that we should let kids be kids with this new approach of making sure they’re tested and trained for the future! That future being when they have to learn how to count to 100.

I was not a pre-school child. My parents certainly didn’t have the money for it, and I’m certain that it wasn’t quite as much of an issue between 1973 and 1978 as it is today. Still, I entered kindergarten and was able to be graduated to the first grade without so much as a single federally mandated test.

What has happened to our poor children that they must now endure entrance and exit exams just to make it to real school? Too much Power Rangers, not enough Electric Company? Are our children destined to be failures because two adults never approached them in silhouette to assemble monosyllabic words against an empty landscape?

Oh well, I guess it’s only fair that we start stressing out these kids as early as possible. Get them used to the whole routine of regular evaluation. I just wish there was an actual reward for the kids in doing all of this testing. Some countries reward you with a college education for that stuff. The only people rewarded in our country are the politicians.

Yeah, I bet you weren’t expecting that from the guy who posts dead fish photos.

To what is this quote referring:

“There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is an emotionally charged issue,” he said. “But passion, when left unchecked, can have negative consequences. That’s exactly the situation we find ourselves in today. The consequences of this legislation are far-reaching and stand to jeopardize the welfare of America’s [fill in the blank].”

A. Soldiers
B. Citizens
C. Children
D. Freedoms
E. Horses

If you chose E, you chose correctly! Yes, in a nation that’ll kill just about anything for use in a Happy Meal, we’re making sure to push through legislation to ban the slaughter of horses. Now, if you’re a vegetarian, an equestrian, or a Republican, I’m sure that killing horses for chow is a morally reprehensible act. Making them chew constantly on TV (Mr. Ed), stuffing them for display (Trigger), or running them until they break a leg (Kentucky Derby) - that’s all cool. But eat them? No way! They’re too cute, have big sad eyes, and share a mystical bond with young women. And Republicans.

Just think… If the guys on Bonanza rode cows, if Gene Autry crooned to his pig, if young girls spent hours grooming their toy pet chickens, we might all be vegetarians by way of legislation!

Of course, there’s always fish. Nobody loves fish that don’t look like Nemo or Dory. Heck, even casual vegetarians will eat fish because fish can’t give the illusion of a soul. Oh… ha… fish pun.

Note: This legislation does have Republican backing. I just like using them as punchlines for everything.

That’s my favorite response from people when I bring up things like the PATRIOT Act, domestic spying, et cetera.

Well, now there is a concrete example of how doing nothing wrong can still land you in trouble. It doesn’t matter if you’re innocent, there’s a quota to fill.