A mic drop moment on Voter ID laws

 This man blows away any argument against voter photo ID laws, and it's brilliant.

America - asinine preponderance of regulation, and Powerball

I'd love to play the Powerball lottery and win over a billion dollars.  Being Canadian I can play, I just could not collect the prize if I won it.  Why? Stupid regulation in a country that's top heavy with regulation and lawyers (no offense to William A. Jacobson intended) prevent it.

Here's the problem.  The Powerball lottery, which I completely understand I have no chance of winning, is not restricted to Americans.  Anyone can buy a ticket, and anyone in fact, can win it.  The problem is that while you can buy a ticket, and you can return to Canada with the ticket (or any other country for that matter), you are not legally allowed to bring the ticket back into the United States to collect your winnings.  The ticket can be confiscated at the border.

An obscure law prevents you from bringing the ticket back in.  It's immoral. Lottery tickets are specifically mentioned.  It's quite ironic since the ticket originated in the United States.

Border guards have been "nit-picky" about it;

At least one B.C. man has run into problems in the past for trying to take lottery tickets into the U.S.

Conda Reddy says he had nine B.C. lottery tickets confiscated while trying to cross the border in December. The agency has since returned the tickets, as well as his Nexus card, which was taken during the incident.

"...if (border crossing guards) want to be nitpicky, they could enforce that obscure law and take them," he said. "They have the right to."

Lottery officials are scrambling to  try and ensure Canadians can buy the tickets and not have to worry about confiscation if they return to collect winnings with the tickets.  Good on them.  They're seeing the bigger picture - free revenue from foreign suckers players.  They're also seeing more.

What some Americans don't realize is that the Powerball lottery is a big story outside of the United States too.  And the rules allowing foreigners to play but preventing them from winning - after having spent money in America to participate - makes America look petty and bureaucratic.  It's been allover the news up here. 

And it all comes down too to much overly intrusive regulation.  A rule that is overly specific and while perhaps even good intentioned, clearly unworkable identifies a gap.  A multi-state lottery that generates revenue for states at odds with border security which is with the idea of free commerce, and just being neighborly is a sign of over-regulation or at least poorly thought out regulation.

Fix it.  I want to give you a little bit of my money for a chance to dream, America.  It's free money for you.  True, the lotteries here are not taxed at all, but they don't ever get north of $60 million.  Plus, I can guarantee you that if I won a billion dollars (or more), I'd try my hardest to repatriate the money with America.  I'm sure with that kind of money your broken immigration system would let me in to become a citizen very quickly. I'd be totally happy with being an American. I bet I'm not alone in any of that thinking.

One other thought - if you want to sell more, particularly outside of America, consider making it possible to purchase tickets  online.  I get it, the buyers could be from ISIS, but all you have to do is add just one more law that lottery winners must be vetted by Homeland Security prior to collecting their winnings.... (see what I did there?)

Meanwhile - good luck to everyone with Powerball tickets for tonight, sincerely.

Thought for the day - freedom

People take their freedom for granted and they assume the freedom they have today is the same as it was yesterday.  When regulation piles upon regulation and people ignore it they are in the same predicament as a frog in a pot of water that is slowly being brought to a boil.  They don't notice what is happening until it becomes too late.

I saw this image on Facebook today and it captures the thought quite well.

Yes, laws are needed, but too many laws are a more insidious danger than too few.

Aristotle in action II

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. 

~Aristotle

Or alternately, I would suggest, 'they ought not always remain.' Aristotle is right.  Liberals love to add new laws and mandates but are phobic about revisiting stuff that doesn't work.  That's not progressive like they claim to be, it's just blind.

Exhibit A: The Obamacare train wreck has started. The unintended consequences have started to spill out into the press conferences.

Exhibit B: It also seems like any new law has a natural tendency to exponentially grow into more rules as the law reaches the application stage.

Go figure - a poorly conceived, poorly drafted law is turning into a train wreck before our eyes.  Who saw that coming?  Oh yeah, more than half the country.

Axelrod email crimes

That's right Mr. Axelrod, and everyone else at the White House, crimes. Direct Marketing is an interesting business. It basically consists of the effort of creating a message and sending that message to a targeted group of people, through any number of channels - telemarketing, direct mail or email for example. There's a lot of complexity underlying how that's done, particularly if it's done well.

If it's not done well, it goes to the wrong target, or a mass untargeted group, or includes people who don't want to be included, or worse. And there are a lot of ways it can go wrong. And I know that personally, since it's my day job to manage direct marketing campaigns.

One of the touchiest areas around direct marketing involves privacy. People who have asked to not be solicited and are solicited are having their privacy violated. It's something to take seriously, so much so that there are laws against violating privacy, specifically related to telemarketing, and email spam.

With that in mind, recently the White house sent out what appeared to be a spam type message, regarding health care. The issue was brought to the nation's attention in an at length exchange between Fox News' Major Garrett and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the matter.

The problem was serious enough, that as Politico reports the White House followed up on the issue by making changes to it's email rules.

“We are implementing measures to make subscribing to e-mails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual’s behalf,” spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement Sunday night.

...

“The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House website. The White House doesn't purchase, upload or merge from any other list. … [A]ll e-mails come from the White House website as we have no interest in emailing anyone who does not want to receive an email.

“If an individual received the e-mail because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the email , we hope they were not too inconvenienced. Further, we suggest that they unsubscribe from the list by clicking the link at the bottom of the e-mail or tell whomever forwarded it to them not to forward such information anymore.”

The complaints concerned a 1,500-word e-mail sent Thursday in the name of White House senior adviser David Axelrod, including “8 common myths about health insurance reform.” The e-mail mimicked the style of chain e-mails attacking President Barack Obama’s health-reform plan. The subject line: “Something worth forwarding.”

The White House had sent other e-mails to the list without complaint.

The email even sounds like spam in the title. Despite Politico's attempt in the last line to run interference for the White House, serious questions remain unanswered. It doesn't matter if 500 lists went out without complaint, this one is the one where the problems exist. The question is why did it happen?

The White House is clearly trying to deflect blame by indicating some organizations mass enrolled others without their consent. Maybe that's the case, but maybe it isn't. If this were a private company, no doubt the Federal Trade Commission would be all over it wanting to see the database, and understand what the company has done to be compliant with the CAN-SPAM act of 2003 and the changes of 2008.

Regardless of the spam aspect of the situation there are some real ethical concerns with these unintended recipients.

1) How did the White House get their email addresses?

2) Why did they not have any sort of gatekeeper mechanism (for example a verification step) in place to prevent this from happening?

3) Did the White House willing accept these mass lists without any sort of screening process or at least questioning the list sources and contents?

4) What other private data might the White House have, just because they think the target of the data might be someone 'fishy'?

These are legitimate questions and the answers might, if not prove criminal activity, at least provide some difficult to explain away ethical shortcomings of the White House, Mr. Axelrod or, more likely the scapegoat they decide to blame the whole issue on if it ever gets that far.