Yesterday I lamented the potential banning of fire.
For those of you that don’t know, I live in a town that rivals Berkeley for nuttiness. Thanks to the progressive thinking fomented by Chico State University, Chico is often like an alternate reality in a sea of conservative rural farmers.
In today’s Chico Enterprise Record “Hits and Misses” we have another example of this.
The city of Chico is talking about raising all sorts of fees and fines in an effort to plug an enormous hole in its budget.
The council has for years approved spending millions of dollars it didn’t have, shifting money around to hide the problem. Now it’s out in the open, and citizens will pay dearly if they dare break city laws.
But there’s good news out there for nuclear bomb owners. The current fine for a first-time violation of the city’s nuclear-free ordinance is $1,064. Under a proposal to revise certain fines, a first-time offense will be reduced to $1,000.
For those of you new to town, this is not a joke.
http://www.chicoer.com/editorials/ci_23322509/editorial-hits-and-misses
No, really, it isn’t a joke.
No person shall produce, test, maintain, or store within the city a nuclear weapon, component of a nuclear weapon, nuclear weapon delivery system, or component of a nuclear weapon delivery system under penalty of Chapter 9.60.030 of the Chico Municipal Code.
Source: http://www.chico.ca.us/document_library/municode/Title9.pdf
On my Facebook page where I first mentioned this hilarity, Ric Werme had the best comment:
Ric Werme: Say what you will, but ever since the nuke ordinance law was passed, there have been no nuke ordnance explosions in town. Clearly that law has been more successful than the budget process!
Please excuse me, while I go enjoy some yellow cake while looking over my shoulder.
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“The city of Chico is talking about raising all sorts of fees and fines in an effort to plug an enormous hole in its budget.”
Hopefully they won’t decide to charge a $1 service fee per comment that appears on blogs originating in Chico. Uh, perhaps this should be deleted.
Jim said May 25, 2013 at 9:39 am:
But the pestilence has been spreading northward. A dangerously large abscess has long been known to have grown in Seattle. How much longer will you be safe?
“No person shall produce, test, maintain, or store within the city a nuclear weapon, …”
[+emphasis]
Pedantically parsing this law leads to the implication that it would be okay for a group of persons to make such a device. That sound like proper legalese?
How many years would I get if I shot off my potato launcher in the middle of Chico?
Always have all your ducks in a row if you enter California. They have raised the fines (taxations) on violations in 2011 to raise money because they’re broke. Not that the fines weren’t expensive enough. Like $1000 fine for parking in a bus loading zone or handicapped zone. Subject to additional penalties, fees and assessments of course.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/traffic/california2011.asp
Driving in California I had to swerve to avoid a box that fell off a truck in front of me. Moments later a trooper pulled me over for reckless driving. Luckily, another trooper pulled up in his patroleum car who had seen the object in the road. So they stopped traffic and retrieved the box, which turned out to contain large roofing or upholstery tacks. “I’m sorry, sir,” said the first trooper, but I’m going to have to write you a ticket after all. “For what?” I asked, surprised. He replied, “Tacks evasion.”
Patrolman writing ticket kept swatting flies. “What kind of flies are those?” he said. “Circle flies.” “Why circle flies?” “Because they only circle around ‘horses’ butts.” “Look dude. Are you referring to me as a horses rear?” “No, I’m not sir. But you sure can’t fool those flies.”
I guess all weapons are made of atoms exhibiting a nucleus, hence all weapons are nuclear. This is a masive chance for the council to fine itself out of the financial depression. (I want 10% for this suggestion).
So if there was no ordinance and I had a nuclear bomb in Chico in my house and advertised the fact – would there be now problem? Is it legal to have a nuclear bomb in your house in the USA? Federal laws? If it’s OK then God help you guys.
Is Chico governed by Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo?
We have had the same left wing lunatics running our councils for years. In the UK Newcastle Civic Centre, no one is allowed to ask for white coffee or black coffee, because it may be construed as being racist. Likewise other left wing councils have banned the term Christmas (Christmas is called The Winter Festival) in case it causes offence to non- Christians, despite the fact we have been living in a Christian country for over a 1000 years. In Newcastle we have roads full of cracks and potholes due to the last few cold winters, there is no money to repair them but there is money to put red tarmac stripes across the road to make your journey even more uncomfortable.
By the way this is the same city council who us labelled as having the most air polluted city in Europe, because some genius put the pollution detectors in the city centre underground bus concourse.
You really couldn’t make it up!
Smoke detectors contain Americium 241 which is nuclear material. I bet smoke detectors are required in most California buildings and homes.
F. Ross said on May 25, 2013 at 10:03 am:
Nah. A corporation is legally a person (corporal, has a body, incorporate = to make into a body/person), even though in accordance with Berkeley-esque dogma it’s established corporations have no souls.
In proper legalese though, Skynet can park all the nuclear bombs and spare parts they want in Chico. Which should please the Chico council immensely, as it would be something non-divine that’s smarter than common ignorant humans that’s making the decisions.
It was probably the conservative farmers that got on the municipal board that came up with this. They were probably worried about it being bad for business or maybe they were afraid someone would get a monopoly on nukes.
kadaka,
An Islamic terrorist group is not a legal person, is it?
Cheeky Chico’s chic chicks chew Chiclets.
(One good silliness deserves another.)
As a Chico resident myself, I never cease to be amazed at the idiocy of the city government here. The waste of taxpayer money on such things as building roundabouts and putting speed bumps on arterial streets – both of which contribute to higher accident rates, just as carpool lanes do – continues apace, not to mention this nuclear-free zone business, which is definitely unconstitutional under the supremacy clasue of the US Constitution, as well as an unconscionably stupid waste of official time and taxpayer monies.
Of course our City Council suffers from an advanced case of the CRL (criminal reactionary leftist) disease, and evidently thinks it has jurisdiction over North Korea. People here are particularly loud in their advocacy of such un-environmental things as “renewable” energy sources, which those of us with some sanity know are dirtier than fossil fuels (excepting only hydroelectric, which, however, the greenies don’t count as renewable).
The latest assault on civil liberties now pending before the City Council is the plastic grocery bag ban, which, inter alia, discriminates against handicapped people – paper bags, even with handles, are very difficult to handle for people in wheelchairs, or who must use a walker (as I do, courtesy of side effects from a bone marrow transplant) . This imbecilic proposal would force grocers to violate the Americans with Disabilities Act which requires accommodation for, not discrimination against, handicapped people. Next there is the health hazard associated with reusable bags: in San Francisco, the rate of emergency room admissions for food-borne diseases quintupled after that city adopted its ban on plastic grocery bags (and tried to hide this fact in a false report published by the San Francisco Department of Public Health). And finally, as with all other green conceptions, there is the hardship placed on lower-income people, in this instance by the added costs of paper or reusable bags. The proponents of this idiocy claim that the plastic bag looby is financing the campaign against the ordinance, but they don’t say anything about the paper bag and reusable bag makers who stand to profit from it – more crony capitalism and the usual CRL hypocrisy, of course.
There was a big fuss many years ago with a posturing anti-nuclear New Zealand government refusing port visits by even the smallest vessel in the U.S. Navy, unless each ship specifically provided verification that it had neither nuclear weapons or nuclear propulsion and be open to inspection. At the time, I was considering selling everything I owned and buying an auxiliary sailboat to cruise around the world. I had this fantasy/daydream of coming across some Kiwi high muckety-muck on a raft, and having the guy demand that I take him straight to New Zealand. My imagined reply was that I was not willing to provide assurances or allow inspections regarding the nuclear weapons/propulsion concerns, so I would not enter New Zealand waters. Then I would plot the longest course possible with the next landfall in some primitive village with no air connections and drop him off there. I seem to have a major passive-aggressive streak in me.
Oh come on folks, when it comes to silliness, this is bush league stuff.
I used to live in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan where the provincial government once adopted a law with massive fines for altering the atmosphere in any way. Yes, for a time in Saskatchewan, it was against the law to breath!
Us people in Oroville always thought so. It’s good to have on site confirmation.
Can’t wait for the spontaneous combustion of said wood chips – it does happen
So, anyone who is building a nuclear weapon will automatically ‘admit’ that their device is a nuclear bomb? More likely, they’ll deny it and the locality will have to bring in ‘nuclear’ expert witnesses who are probably forbidden to ‘acknowledge’ genuine nuclear weapon internals in order to prevent Nuke bomb construction becoming common knowledge… (Included! A free coupon for nuke bomb designs! Just four boxtops from any SUVs.)
After all, the government maintains that the basic nuclear bomb concept is easy, but the internal specifics and details are not; and the government does seek to shut off any potential release of ‘specifics’.
So, if it is a bomb (unlikely admitted) there is a first time fine that definitely will frighten terrorists from trying.
If it isn’t an admitted bomb, where is the proof that the device really is a bomb? Perhaps the device should be tested?
Anyone if the jury or court room care to test the device so we’ll know if it is a bomb; Gleick? Mann? Gavin? Hansen?
I think there’s more silliness in the comments when someone claims a screw or bolt is a “component”.
I’m ready to go but there aren’t many areas of the country with as large a concentration of jobs in my line of work as Silicon Valley.
Despite the lowered fine, I will continue to avoid Chico while transporting my nuclear device components up & down I-5.
What has the city done to cleanse its soil of 10Be, a critical material in nuclear weaponry, without which the neutron-producing, energy-releasing chain reaction can’t be initiated in a controlled manner. Would you want to leave the detonation of your nuclear arms, built at such cost & with so much hard work, to a stray passing cosmic ray? I think not.
” nuclear weapon delivery system, or component of a nuclear weapon delivery system under penalty of Chapter 9.60.030 of the Chico Municipal Code.”
Um, since nukes can be “delivered” by car, boat, train, or truck: Anyone who “maintain”s or “store”s a vehicle in Chico is in violation of that law.
Teller, during the early development of the H-Bomb, had a diagram on his chalkboard showing the needed delivery system for each size of nuke. For the largest one, he had no entry. Someone inquired “why no entry”? His reply was that, for that size, it would destroy all life on the planet, so simply setting it in the yard was sufficient. As Teller is clearly a nuclear bomb expert, per his expert opinion, anyone mowing their yard is doing maintenance on a nuclear weapon delivery system…
I think that law “needs work”… (like, oh, nuking it 😉
OH, and while I’m thinking about it, would making a bullet out of Uranium make it a ‘nuclear weapon’? What about a knife coated with radium? Or even just with some cobalt in the alloy and exposed to radiation for a while?
As NMR “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance” (since re-christened MRI to help the clueless squeamish) is nuclear, and can kill you if dropped on you; is the transport of NMR / MRI equipment forbidden by law?
Cobalt 60 based irradiation equipment is used to sterilized foods (fruits , etc.) and is lethal if you enter it. So it is nuclear, and lethal… Does that mean I’m safe from nuclear processed foods in Chico?
Wonder how the Chico State U. Chemistry Department and Geology Departments managed to function. No Uranium, Radium, or Thorium chemistry allowed and no U or Th containing minerals allowed in the Geology department (like, oh, Monzanite sand…) Yes, despite all the folks claiming Thorium reactors are not usable for bombs, India and the USA have both detonated bombs using U233 bread from Thorium… So “dirt” from places like Mojave (that has both Uranium and Thorium) must be banned in Chico…
http://minerals.usgs.gov/dockets/ca.htm
lists many counties with registered Uranium dockets, but luckily, none are in Butte County; though some are just up slope, so need to impound any rivers at the entry to the city and assure no U or Th are in them…
Way to go, Chico, banning dirt and water… (since water has deuterium and tritium in it, it’s already a triple threat…)
How does that go? “The stupid, it burns”…
Jeff Alberts says:
“I think there’s more silliness in the comments when someone claims a screw or bolt is a “component”.”
And pray, what are they if not components? I have no personal experience of nuclear weapon construction, but a great deal of experience of “delivery systems” (aircraft and missiles), and I can assure you that standard parts are used as far as practicable, both for logistics and cost reasons. So, yes, there will be a lot of commonality between a nuclear-capable aircraft and almost any reasonably complex technical system, at the nut and bolt level (not to mention washers, O-rings, screws and a vast number of electrical and electronic components).
I thought the American constitution gave all citizens a right to bear arms. Why then has Chico banned nuclear weapons? Is it because I (as a Brit) have misunderstood your constitution and it refers to dress codes and merely gives a right to “bare arms”? Or does the phrase “bear arms” mean they can only own weapons that they are capable of carrying? If so, perhaps the next “World’s Strongest Man” competition should include an event in which the competitors have to attempt to carry a tactical nuclear weapon a certain distance.