Filming things for views. In this case, the range should never have allowed it. It’s this sort of attention seeking behavior that gets people hurt. They are lucky in this case that no one was.
Self Defense
Defense of Others?
Aaron Carbo began speaking to me about the incident, where he informed me that he was approached by [REDACTED] in an aggressive manner, being asked to hurry up as he was holding other golfers up.
A “heated” argument ensued, causing Carbo to push the other person to the ground.
Carbo stated he then stood over [REDACTED] and called him a ‘pussy,’ at which time Carbo’s girlfriend pulled him away.
As Carbo was being pulled away by his girlfriend, Scott Throne ran over and punched Carbo in the face, which caused Carbo’s mouth to bleed.
Throne was arrested for battery for striking Carbo, and Carbo was arrested for battery on a person 65 years or older for striking [REDACTED]
I did a bit of editing on the original story to make it more readable, but the details are the same. Now let’s discuss my logic here:
- In Florida, battery on a person aged 65 or older is a felony of the third degree.
- Since it is a felony involving the use of force against a person, it is a forcible felony.
- Florida law permits someone to use force to stop an unlawful use of force against another, or to prevent a forcible felony.
So to me, this all comes down to the timing of the above events. If Cabo’s girlfriend had already pulled Cabo away from the altercation, and the altercation was over, then Throne was not justified in using force. If Cabo was still engaged in fighting with the elderly victim, or was attempting to do so then the altercation was not over, and Throne was legally justified in using force to stop his felonious attack on [REDACTED}.
No matter what, this case is a mess and is going to cost Throne a lot of money in legal bills.
EDITED TO ADD: So I pulled the case file from the court record, and the elderly victim was a 79 year old man. The report also reads:
Had [Scott] Throne punched him before the fight was over, then Throne would not have been arrested. As it is, getting involved is going to result in some trouble with the law. Again, better to mind your own business, especially if you aren’t sure of the law or the situation.
On a side note, Cabo is listed with the state as being a habitual felony offender.
Me
No Posting for Now
Came down with something. Didn’t know what it was, but didn’t feel well enough to go to work on Friday. Then my sense of smell disappeared.
COVID. Again. This is the fourth time I have caught it. I will be sleeping the day away. This couldn’t come at a worse time, I am taking my board exam in the morning. Hopefully, I will feel better tomorrow.
Crime
Amish Canadian Priesthood Again
Check out this video:
You will note that the person posting the video (and the one filming) believe that the cops were wrong in “attacking” the innocent children. If you listen closely to the video, you hear the male cop tell them that they have already been asked to leave the property. One of the girls tells him to fuck off. He then tells her that she is going to be arrested, to which she replies, “No, I am not.” Some more words are exchanged, and the cops move to take one of them into custody, presumably for trespassing.
The other girls go into attack mode, with at least one of them punching the male cop in the face.
I don’t have a problem with the police actions here. If they were indeed attempting to have the girls leave because they were trespassing, the cops were not being the bad guys here. The women attacked two cops, they were obstructing the cops, and they are rightfully going to jail.
In this case, we have black criminals doing what black criminals do. Since they are adults (again, listening to the audio) they are going down for battery on a LEO. In most places, that’s a serious crime, but this is California, so I am not sure.
economics
Real Minimum Wage
Last year, Sam’s Club bowed to pressure and increased their minimum wage to $16 per hour. Proving that the minimum wage is actually zero, the company announced this week that they will be eliminating all cashier and cash register positions.
The system will have customers scan items as they put them in their shopping cart, with the charges going to the customer’s credit card as they exit the store. An employee spot checks the cart of each customer as they exit. The system was rolled out in 2016, and it has been relatively popular with customers.
Other positions to be automated are automated forklifts and a pizza robot in the café.
Unskilled labor is pricing itself out of the market.
economics
Useless College Degrees
Seen on Twitter:
I freaking HATE the discourse around “useless degrees” that I’ve been seeing all day. Our society needs historians, philosophers, and English majors. Frankly, their decline is a huge reason our society lacks understanding of pol issues + the ability to scrutinize information
A useless degree is one that will likely result in its recipient not ever earning enough money to repay the costs associated with earning it. Here is a helpful guide of majors for four year degrees that are offered at University of Florida that are likely useless:
- African American Studies
- American Indian and Indigenous Studies
- Art
- Business Administration (unless you get an MA)
- Classical Studies
- Most Education Degrees
- Environmental Science
- Golf and Sports Turf Management (This one is a minor, but seriously?)
- Music
- Political Science
- Nearly every language based Bachelor’s
- Psychology (unless you go on to receive a Graduate level degree)
- Sports Management
- Women’s Studies (oddly enough, there is no Men’s Studies degree. This makes this major into Lesbian/Feminist studies)
These degrees may well have value to the person taking the classes. There may even be people making a living in those fields. However, most people with these degrees won’t make enough to repay their loans, and that is the problem.
A four year degree from UF will cost you about $100,000. To repay a student loan for that amount within ten years, you would have to pay $1300 a month.
This problem is even worse when you stop talking about state colleges and look at private ones. Not only are there even more useless degrees, the cost of those degrees becomes even higher. Rollins College would cost you $340,000 for a four year degree. University of Miami, about $380,000. Imagine earning a degree in elementary education, only to graduate and find out that your teacher’s salary isn’t enough to pay your $4600 per month student loan payments. Even consolidating your loans to a 30 year repayment is a $2600 per month loan payment. A starting teacher makes $4200 per month before taxes.
Student loans should not be granted to people that will result in this kind of situation.
Gaming the Courts
Due Process
There are a lot of Democrats running around and bleating about the Constitutional right to due process and illegal immigrants. Where does the right to due process appear in the Constitution? The Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an illegal immigrant who was deported to El Salvador and is being held there in prison. A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release, an order affirmed by the Supreme Court, and to provide evidence of the actions it has taken to get him back.
Here is the problem with that- the Supreme Court doesn’t have the authority or the jurisdiction to order that. He is a foreign citizen who is in prison in his home country. The US government in general, and the US Supreme Court in particular, doesn’t have the authority to order the Salvadoran government to do a thing.
It doesn’t matter whether or not he is a gang member, an illegal, or a criminal in the US. The Supreme court cannot order the executive to invade another country, it just isn’t within the SCOTUS’ enumerated powers. The rest of the argument is moot.
Still, I will list the reasons why he wasn’t entitled to due process during deportation. Refer to the Fifth Amendment.
- He isn’t being held by the US to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime,
- He isn’t subject in jeopardy of life or limb twice for the same offense,
- nor is he being compelled to be a witness against himself,
- nor did the US government deprive him of life, liberty, or property, all they did was return him to his home country.
According to court filings, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was born in July 1995 in the neighborhood of Los Nogales in El Salvador, where he helped his family run a business making pupusas, a local cuisine.
He crossed the border illegally near McAllen, Texas, in March 2012 when he was 16 years old. From the border, Abrego Garcia made his way to Maryland to live with his brother. The Trump administration sent him back to his home country. No due process was required, because the Fifth Amendment doesn’t say he is entitled to it.
Criminals
Law Goes Too Far
A bill in the Florida legislature is going too far, and I think that I know why. The proposed law says that a property owner that is being photographed by a drone in an area of his property where he has an expectation of privacy may use reasonable force to prevent that spying. The law is being sold as a boon for the privacy of a homeowner being photographed in their backyard pool:
If I’m at a park and I’m playing baseball with my kids, and somebody takes up a drone just to show what’s going on in the park, do I really have an expectation of privacy? But if my daughters are sunbathing in the pool behind my house, I have an expectation of privacy.
Picture that a drone has been flying over your house. You believe that it is taking pictures of your family as they sunbathe in your backyard. You know that this looks just like the drone owned by your neighbor, so you go to his house. Sure enough, he is standing on the porch, flying his drone. You happen to know that the law also says this:
2. A person who has a reasonable expectation of privacy on his or her privately owned real property may use reasonable force to prohibit a drone from conducting surveillance in violation of this paragraph, if such drone is operating under 500 feet over such property.
To stop him, you wind up and punch him square in his stupid face. That was reasonable force, right? The problem here is that there is no way for you to know if he is conducting what the law says is surveillance or if he was simply flying by your house on the way to another location.
In your case, it turns out that he wasn’t taking pictures of your house, he was taking pictures of your other neighbor’s house because that neighbor wanted to sell his house and was looking for some drone shots for the listing’s Zillow page.
This is going to create a mess. The law is vague and isn’t really intended to protect homeowners. The law requires that the person using force know the intent of the person operating the drone. Let me explain:
A person, a state agency, or a political subdivision as defined in s. 11.45 may not use a drone equipped with an imaging device to record an image of privately owned real property or of the owner, tenant, occupant, invitee, or licensee of such property with the intent to conduct surveillance on the individual or property captured in the image in violation of such person’s reasonable expectation of privacy without his or her written consent. -emphasis added
So why is this law being proposed? The real reason for this law has absolutely nothing to do with homeowners or their families at the pool. No, it has to do with the state’s powerful developers, like the developers of The Villages. That developer is engaged in a legal battle with local journalists who have been filming and selling video of the construction projects in the area. It seems that there is quite a market for this sort of thing, and people have been making money by selling drone footage. That particular developer owns their own newspaper and has been trying to make money by selling their own footage of the area, and is upset that others are trying to horn in on the action. This is purely a big company trying to use the law to create their own monopoly.
Developers in Florida have been trying to do this for over a decade. Back in 2011, there was a failed attempt to make it a felony to take pictures of a farm. It wasn’t about farms- developers will often claim that their property is a farm because property tax rates on farms are low. The developer will place a cow or two, or perhaps a couple of orange trees, on a property that they have bought in order to develop the land, and they claim it to be a farm so that they can avoid paying taxes on the land until the last minute.
They don’t want people photographing their land because the construction crews are frequently breaking all sorts of laws- most of the construction crews are illegal immigrants, there are frequent environmental and OSHA violations, along with other illegalities, and this is how they get the official protection from the government.
When my own house was under construction, I took pictures of the entire house. I have hundreds of photos of the house as it was being built. I did it to have a record of where each wire, pipe, and stud was located, just in case I needed to do repairs or renovations. The developer found out and had a fit. He told me that I couldn’t take any pictures unless there were no construction workers on site, or he would prosecute. It is a felony in Florida to be on a construction site without permission.
Officials know that they are breaking the law, but can’t ignore it unless there is no evidence staring them in the face.
A few decades ago, children of the large farmers in Florida decided that they didn’t want to be farmers, and realized that you could make a lot more money per acre by growing houses on the land and selling them to gullible retirees than you could by growing oranges or raising cattle on that land. They became developers. The Villages is one of those developers, but there is no shortage of them in this state.
Illegal immigration is the modern day equivalent of slavery. Too many people, Democrat or Republican, are making money from this. That is why so many entrenched politicians hate DJT. They are all, D and R, making millions in the graft and corruption, and can’t have him upsetting their golden goose.
A note on developers:
You can take an 80 acre farm, develop it into a housing neighborhood with about 250 houses. If you get cheap enough labor to build the houses, those homes will sell for more than $25 million in profit. Do you have any idea how long you have to operate an 80 acre farm to sell $25 million in oranges?
Do the math- an orange orchard grosses about $2500 per acre each year. It would take an 80 acre orchard more than a century to bring in that kind of cash.