Friday, December 21, 2012

Special Late Nite Cap UPDATE 12-21-12 #SOSCHAT #EDCHAT #P2


Nite Cap UPDATE

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE





California still awash in guns despite pioneering gun regulations - by Louis Freedberg

Despite being ranked ahead of every other state on gun controls, California still faces enormous challenges in how to reduce gun violence as a result of the millions of weapons already in circulation in the state and the complexity of laws intended to regulate them. These are the stark figures: Since 1991, close to 9 million guns were sold legally in California alone. Only about 1 percent of...

On Guns, America Stands Out

and not in a good way.  I have borrowed the title of this column in tomorrow's New York Times by Charles M. Blow.
It is relatively short on Blow's words, but perhaps all you need to know is his opening paragraph:
Sometimes I think the best argument is raw data. This is one of those times.
Most of the column is taken up by a chart of data - on guns and deaths in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD.  You should look at the chart.  But BLow provides us with the only information we really need from the chart:
Among the O.E.C.D. countries that the World Bank groups as “high income,” America has the highest gun homicide rate, the highest number of guns per capita and the highest rate of deaths 

Rauner still ranting against unions

Fred Klonsky drawing.
Republican union-hater and charter school maven, Bruce Rauner is at it again. In a Sun-Times Op-Ed piece,Thursday, Rauner let loose his venom towards labor uniona and collective-bargaining rights and called for turning Illinois into a right-to-work state like Tea Party guvs did in Michigan and Indiana.

Rauner claims that busing the unions will make Illinois a more attractive place for corporate investment.
"As employers and