Month: January 2013

Quickdraw McGraw syndrome

by digby

This seems obvious to me, but I guess in the cartoonland inhabited by many gun owners, they are all movie star heroes:

[T]he research on actual gunfights, the kind that happen not in a politician’s head but in fluorescent-lit stairwells and strip-mall restaurants around America, reveals something surprising. Winning a gunfight without shooting innocent people typically requires realistic, expensive training and a special kind of person, a fact that has been strangely absent in all the back-and-forth about assault-weapon bans and the Second Amendment.

In the New York City police department, for example, officers involved in gunfights typically hit their intended targets only 18% of the time, according to a Rand study. When they fired 16 times at an armed man outside the Empire State Building last summer, they hit nine bystanders and left 10 bullet holes in the suspect—a better-than-average hit ratio. In most cases, officers involved in shootings experience a kaleidoscope of sensory distortions including tunnel vision and a loss of hearing. Afterward, they are sometimes surprised to learn that they have fired their weapons at all…

Under sudden attack, the brain does not work the way we think it will. Millbern has seen grown men freeze under threat, like statues dropped onto the set of a horror movie. He has struggled to perform simple functions at shooting scenes, like unlocking a switch on a submachine gun while directing people to safety. “I have heard arguments that an armed teacher could and would respond to an active shooter in the same way a cop would. That they would hear gunshots, run toward the sound and then engage the shooter,” Millbern writes in an e-mail from Baghdad, where he now works as a bomb-detection K-9 handler. “I think this is very unrealistic.”

But hey, I’m sure that wouldn’t happen to macho NRA members. They’re very special, highly trained warriors. Like this guy:

If he happened to be sitting in a darkened movie theater watching a movie and a gunman started shooting bullets into the crowd, he would have lighting reflexes, quickly draw his weapon and shoot the gunman dead before he had a chance to shoot more than a couple of theater goers. And that would be an awesome outcome. Because only a few people would die instead of a whole bunch.

Of course, if these studies are correct, there would actually be many more deaths because more bullets would be flying in these crowded situations as a person with tunnel vision and loss of hearing is shooting blindly into the crowd.

This is such a good idea. I’m impressed that American culture and human civilization in general has come so far.

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Religious liberty for me but not for thee

by digby

Your tax dollars at work:

I first began investigating creationist school vouchers as my part of my fight against creationism in my home state of Louisiana. Over the past few months, I’ve learned creationist vouchers aren’t just a Louisiana problem—they’re an American problem. School vouchers are, as James Gill recently wrote in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “the answer to a creationist’s prayer.”

Liberty Christian School, in Anderson, Indiana, has field trips to the Creation Museum and students learn from the creationist A Beka curriculum. Kingsway Christian School, in Avon, Indiana, also has Creation Museum field trips. Mansfield Christian School, in Ohio, teaches science through the creationist Answers in Genesis website, run by the founder of the Creation Museum. The school’s Philosophy of Science page says, “the literal view of creation is foundational to a Biblical World View.” All three of these schools, and more than 300 schools like them, are receiving taxpayer money. 

So far, I have documented 310 schools, in nine states and the District of Columbia that are teaching creationism, and receiving tens of millions of dollars in public money through school voucher programs. 

There is no doubt that there are hundreds more creationist voucher schools that have yet to be identified. The more than 300 schools I have already found are those that have publicly stated on their websites that they teach creationism or use creationist curricula.

This is clearly a Christian curriculum and should be unconstitutional. Just because they are paid for by “vouchers” doesn’t mean it isn’t a government program. But perhaps that ship sailed. So perhaps the way to go about dealing with this is for some other religious group to sue on the basis that having their taxes go to pay for this drivel, their “religious liberty” is being infringed. What’s good for the goose …

I can’t help but feel sad for those kids. How are they going to compete in this modern world with educations like this?

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Winning by losing: yes it’s progress

by digby

Glenn Thrush has an interesting analysis of President Obama’s strategy on gun control and it’s one with which I agree. This truly does seem to be a different approach than anything we saw from him in the first term:

Over the years, Democrats have jokingly referred to what they call the “Obama rule,” enshrining the president’s practice of not forcing legislative action on anything, no matter how noble, that can’t pass both houses. 

But the massacre in Newtown, Conn., last month — and Obama’s pledge Wednesday to force Congress to act on an assault weapons ban, limits on high-capacity gun magazines and enhanced gun-tracking measures — is forcing the innately cautious Obama to break that rule. For one of the few instances in his presidency, he now appears willing to burn political capital by pressuring Senate Democrats to vote for a measure that is likely to die in the House, a symbolic victory that sets the stage, he hopes, for more meaningful ones. 

Along with his tough stances on the debt ceiling, it’s part of a second-term strategy of calculated confrontation: Republicans won’t negotiate with him, so he plans to marshal popular opinion to force them into action.
[…]
In his first term, the Obama rule prevailed. The White House, in tandem with a Democrat-controlled House until the 2010 midterm elections, cut complex, much-criticized deals on health care, financial regulation and the stimulus that liberals viewed as too small and too laden with tax cuts to combat the deepening recession. 

The complaint by Democrats at the time: Obama was too focused on the mechanics of compromise to maximize the persuasive power of his office. 

The push to regulate gun violence seems to be following a different script, more piecemeal on the policy but more consistent on messaging. In general, it augurs a more Reaganesque use of the office, a platform for Obama to shape the process through public opinion — employing the presidency’s unrivaled “power to persuade,” laid out by Richard Neustadt, the political scientist whose views shaped Bill Clinton’s approach to governing.

I assume this will be met with much eye-rolling on the part of those who believe that this is a big waste of time and that the presidency’s power is limited to its majority in the congress. But there is a method to the madness, even if it ends up not being enacted. The fight itself changes the way the party sees certain issues and moves the debate over the long term.

This is a new form of triangulation and one we haven’t seen in a very long time: he’s using his popularity to triangulate against the center and the right instead of the left and the right. (Of course, when it comes to the country, the left is the center on this issue.) And this is a strategy a lot of us had hoped he would use:

Obama’s liberal allies have often counseled a more confrontational approach, urging him to force up-or-down votes to emphasize the contrast with Republicans and marshal public opinion on his behalf.

“Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn’t seem to stand for anything in particular?” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asked in mid-2011 after a particularly fruitless encounter with Obama in the Oval Office.

But times and minds have changed. Obama aides credit his introduction of a going-nowhere-fast jobs bill in 2011 to clarifying the president’s agenda and creating a concrete proposal to unite Democrats. More important, Obama’s big 2012 win has convinced him, once and for all, that persuading and compromising with GOP leaders is pointless. The only way to force their hand is through public opinion — and his approval rating stands in the mid-50s following the fiscal cliff deal.

If he regarded Capitol Hill as the main arena in 2009, he sees it as a sideshow to the larger arena of public opinion in 2013.

This should be interesting.

It’s highly likely that he will suffer a legislative defeat on gun control. As sick as it is, even a school full of dead children is probably not enough to shake loose the gun lobby just yet. But it’s well worth while for the president to take this stance and give Democrats permission to put this issue back on the agenda.

I’ve been writing about this idea of “losing well” and “winning by losing” for a long time. It’s a valuable tool for making progress and it’s been too long since the Democrats even tried to use it. The Republicans have been doing it for years and it’s served them very well. It would be nice if the Obama Administration finally understood that sometimes it’s not about winning the fight, it’s about waging it. Legacies are not made by legislation alone.

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Who’s panicking?

by digby

Here’s a shock:

Employers added 155,000 jobs last month, nearly matching the average for the year. December’s steady job gain suggests employers didn’t cut back on hiring in the midst of the debate over the tax and spending changes known as the fiscal cliff. Many economists feared that the prospect of higher taxes and steep cuts in federal spending would cause a slowdown in job gains.

The whining of CEOs and Wall Street big wigs about “fiscal responsibility” and their fearmongering about “expectations” and “confidence” has been shown over and over again to be total rubbish. And yet over and over again, the Village media laps up their nonsense as if it was handed down directly from God.

As we go into the next round, the shrieking is going get much louder because the real economic ramifications of default are much higher. But the I’m going to guess that “the markets” will keep their “heads” much better than the media. They always have.

I will, however, be interested to see how the markets react to a real austerity deal if that’s how the whole thing goes down in the end. Considering how well that’s been going in Europe, I’d guess they won’t be entirely enthusiastic.

*As for the jobs number, they’re not bad. Hiring seems to be slowly but surely chugging along. It’s not enough to revive this economy but it’s enough to make the politicians refuse to do anything about it. Purrrrfect.

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It’s all Mitt’s fault

by digby

To the extent they have them, they’re searching their souls

House Republicans heard it loud and clear Wednesday: They are unpopular and need to change their ways.

Speaker John Boehner’s House Republican Conference is more disliked now than when it took the majority two years ago, lawmakers and aides here found out. After taking a bruising in the 2012 elections, the Republican Party needs an image makeover and the GOP must learn to relate better to voters.

That was the message delivered by the party’s most trusted pollsters during the first day of the House GOP’s retreat at the posh Kingsmill Resort on the edge of this colonial town, where the lobbyist-funded Congressional Institute is putting on the annual confab.
[…]
David Winston, a top GOP pollster and close adviser to Boehner, unveiled the House Republicans’ most recent favorable rating based on his own analysis: It came in at a barrel-scraping 37 percent.

House Democrats’ numbers are a full 9 points higher at 46 percent. Winston’s analysis: Neither party is popular, but the GOP is less so. The lawmakers heard that the way to turn things around is for the party to pivot squarely to the economy and jobs — the chief concerns of most voters.

After an election dominated by a steady stream of gaffes by the GOP’s presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, and some of its highest-profile candidates, some of the speakers at Wednesday’s retreat counseled the GOP on how to turn things around. Doing so will be paramount as the party enters a period of tense conflict with President Barack Obama over fiscal matters like the nation’s debt ceiling and the sequester.

It’s actually quite funny. Apparently, they dragged in the CEO of Dominos to tell them how he “remade his brand.” And then their pollsters told them to try harder to relate to voters and not act like Mitt Romney because people didn’t like him. From the sound of it they think he is the root of their troubles. Oh, what a mistake that is.

Thursday will be the busiest day at the confab. Larry Arnn, the president of conservative Hillsdale College, will speak about Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and the Constitution at breakfast. Political analyst Charlie Cook will talk about how America is changing. Govs. Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Luis Fortuño of Puerto Rico will speak at lunch.

National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, journalist Kate O’Beirne and James Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute will explore “Who speaks for middle America?” Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) will host two sessions: one that will serve as a strategy session for the first legislative quarter, which will be dominated by the debates over the debt ceiling, government funding and automatic cuts to federal spending. The other will be a broader discussion about the “113th Congress and beyond.”

I’m sure they’ll all come away from that with new insights and will work hard to correct the errors of their ways. They’re going to “relate” better to middle America. I’d expect that to translate to a surge in cornpone and yee haw. That’s how they roll.

And apropos of nothing, do you see anything unusual about that line-up of conservative luminaries? I knew that you would. What in the hell is the vaunted non-partisan Charlie Cook doing there? It’s not as if the rest of the speakers are anything but hardcore Republicans, even the pollsters. Indeed, Republicans tend not to trust anyone who is a “vaunted non-partisan” on anything. And yet they trust Cook. Interesting.

Update: Meanwhile, here’s Tom Cole begging the Republicans to take yes for an answer this time.

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Slow rolling Tea Party coup?

by digby

To those who believe that the Republicans will fold easily in the upcoming debt sequester death star showdown. Stan Collander explains why it might not be as easy as some are predicting:

To those of us who have watched Washington operate for a while, this obviously sounds like totally insane, crazy self-destructive behavior by the House GOP.

But it would be wrong to dismiss it out of hand. From the conversations I’ve had with Republicans House members and staff since the 2012 election, the threats, are real and make a great deal of political sense no matter how obnoxious and damaging it otherwise would be.

The key is the new House GOP politics of this decade.

I’ve repeatedly been told that, with redistricting in place, House Republicans are relatively certain they’ll be able to maintain the majority at least through the end of this decade if they continue to appeal to the GOP base in their congressional districts.

The GOP’s base’s two biggest economic issues are tax and spending cuts. Therefore, taking a hard line in all budget debates is what makes the most sense politically and makes it most likely that Republicans will be in power for years to come…If to a House Republican the opinion of your base in your district is far more important than the results of a poll of a representative national sample of voters, then the GOP’s or Congress’ overall approval rating is largely irrelevant.

That makes previously unthinkable moves like a default or a shutdown far more understandable…and likely than was the case in the past.

That doesn’t mean it’s inevitable, of course. It means that they are prepared to drive an exceptionally hard bargain to get what they want. And what do they want? Why they want spending cuts, and they want the Democrats to name them and then to vote for them. How do we know this?

“Report that #GOP insisting on changes to social security as part of #fiscalcliff false,” Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida posted on Twitter. “BTW those changes are supported by @barackobama.”

And in case you were wondering a good number of mainstream Dems are more than willing to go along with that one and probably the hike in the Medicare age because they really don’t think that Obama can get away with not giving up something and they figure this is better than the immediate pain of the sequester cuts to discretionary programs. It’s always something …

This should be a very interesting negotiation. The Republicans are clearly divided on the debt ceiling, but probably not so much on the Continuing Resolution (the sequester.) The Dems want to end the debt ceiling hostage tactic and mitigate the damage bequeathed by the previous disastrous negotiations. The right wingers just care about keeping their own power at all costs and who knows whether John Boehner will keep his promise or lose his job? So, in my opinion, we have one negotiation, happening on two tracks, but with different factions within both parties having different goals for each negotiation. And then there’s the damned Grand Bargain hanging out there like a malevolent spectre. Oy.

And in the meantime, isn’t it time for somebody to start thinking about ways to reach the GOP base that is supporting this lunacy? Are they all completely nuts? (Don’t answer that …)

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Villagers have no clothes

by digby

Many of us shrill, filthy hippie bloggers have been pointing this out for years, but I must say that it’s a thrill to finally see it explored in the world of legitimate journalism:

An essential and successful element of the Peterson strategy is to create an environment where it is widely if not universally believed that there is no alternative to his vision. In this view, it’s “not realistic” to believe the country can afford the same programs it once did. Those who are prepared to be “adults” will look at these “hard truths” without flinching and recognize that it is time to take citizens-have-to-do-with-less medicine.

The conceit is that those with “courage” will see past narrow, partisan concerns and embrace an ideal: a bipartisan consensus that has the strength to demand “shared sacrifice” from a childish and selfish populace.

A review of the proceedings of the Fiscal Summits of the last three years makes agonizingly clear that most of the journalists who conducted interviews or moderated panel discussions both reflected and amplified the Peterson worldview — entirely unselfconsciously, it would seem.

So, for example, Lesley Stahl, the CBS “60 Minutes” reporter, was fully a part of the Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson deficit-cutting team during her interview with both men: “You are going to have to raise taxes and cut things, big things, put restrictions on Social Security. Everybody knows that.”

Virtually none of the reporters thought to ask about or suggest an alternative path, such as preserving Social Security benefits and bolstering the system’s reserve by raising the cap of wages subject to Social Security taxes (currently annual wages above approximately $110,000 are not subject to any Social Security tax).

JOURNALISTS WORKING AT PETERSON

FISCAL SUMMITS, 2010-2012

Maria Bartiromo, 2011 (host, CNBC’s “Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo”)

Tom Brokaw, 2012 (former anchor and managing editor, NBC Nightly News)

Erin Burnett, 2012 (host of CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront”)

John F. Harris, 2012 (editor-in-chief of Politico)

Gwen Ifill, 2011, 2010 (senior correspondent of “PBS NewsHour”)

Ezra Klein, 2011 (columnist, Washington Post)

Jon Meacham, 2010 (former editor-in-chief, Newsweek)

Bob Schieffer, 2010 (host, CBS “Face the Nation”)

Lesley Stahl, 2010 (reporter, CBS “60 Minutes”)

George Stephanopoulos, 2012 (host, ABC’s “This Week”)

David Wessel, 2012, 2011 (economics editor, Wall Street Journal)

George Will, 2011 (columnist, Washington Post)

Judy Woodruff, 2012, 2011 (host, “PBS NewsHour”)

And most questioning proceeded either on the false assumption that deficits were derived from excessive spending on entitlements or as though they had mysteriously, but inevitably, come to pass.

Many journalists fairly shouted their personal desire to see greater cooperation and “compromise,” with groups realizing the importance of submerging their interests to the greater good. Who should do the submerging? In 2012, Tom Brokaw had a suggestion in the form of a question to former President Bill Clinton: after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker pushed through a bill undermining the right of union members to collectively bargain, shouldn’t those workers have just sat down and negotiated with Walker as, Brokaw said, “has been traditionally done in this country” instead of “gather[ing] outside the capitol”?

Uhm, yes. This is what we call the “Village mentality” in which all the members of the political establishment not only buy into the elite consensus, but then take their attitudes to the airwaves and the page of newspapers and magazines a presume to speak for Real Americans, for whom they insist they are the designated representatives in these elevated conclaves.

There were a couple of exceptions to the rule. In a session moderated by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post in 2011, Klein posed a number of questions that reflected an unwillingness to operate from within the Peterson framework. For example, Klein asked New York Times columnist David Brooks whether, instead of blaming Americans for simply wanting benefits without paying for them, the causes of the debt should be located in the Bush tax cuts, two unfunded wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), and the federal government’s emergency response to the financial crisis.

Judy Woodruff, of the PBS NewsHour, generally asked questions from within the Peterson frame, but, at one point in 2012, posed a question that perhaps all the journalists should have been thinking about as well. She asked Rep. Christopher Van Hollen, Jr. (D-Md.) if “Democrats like you, by participating in forums like this one that is all focused on austerity, on cutting the deficit and the debt…really become also window dressing for a conservative agenda that is anti-jobs and anti-recovery and wrongheaded economics?”

Note that Ezra is still connected to a group of scruffy hippies who pose such rude questions like that all the time. (And I don’t know where Judy Woodruff got that one, but more power to her.)Other than that, pretty much across the board this article exposes the sheer Villagosity of every single one of these people. And there’s not the tiniest bit of self-awareness among any of them. The bubble in which these rich celebrities swell is completely opaque.

Read the whole thing. It includes some lovely examples of the kind those of us see every day on the cable news channels (at which point I take to twitter with despair.) Here’s one good one:

John F. Harris

Moderating a discussion on “Finding the Political Will to Act,” between and among Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio); Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.); Kathleen Hall Jamieson, public policy professor, University of Pennsylvania; and Patricia Murphy, political journalist, Daily Beast (2012):

To Kathleen Hall Jamieson:
“Is there an answer — is it a pox on both your houses – or is one component of this more responsible for the 2011 failure to get a grand bargain? Democratic intransigence over spending or Republican intransigence over taxation — both equally to blame or would you say in the current political dynamic one of those components is more?”

To Patricia Murphy:
“We heard President Clinton here say, you know what I think that the — I’m paraphrasing here, but I think fairly — that the stars might be aligned after [the] election, perhaps in a lame duck session after the election or early in 2013, and you hear this line a lot, the argument being that enough factors are converging – the debt limit runs out, the tax cuts expire, the sequestration measures go into effect, in particularly at the Department of Defense in a big way – what is your guess? Is there a grand bargain to be had late in 2012 or early in 2013 that eluded Washington in 2011?”

Note that by taking for granted the desirability of a Grand Bargain, Harris is actually pushing the approved Democratic version of Peterson’s scheme.

Hopefully, since these Village celebs are all namechecked in an approved , they’ll read this article. And perhaps one or two of them might even stop to ponder if they aren’t being used as Court Jesters rather than the hardnosed journalists they all perceive themselves to be.

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The poor, poor rich of the Wall Street Journal

by David Atkins

So this is apparently a real thing from the Wall Street Journal.

The Onion couldn’t top this. Whether it’s the sad faces of all these put-upon dejected rich people, or the elderly minority couple who is depressed despite not paying extra taxes (or was that the point?), or the distressed single Asian lady making $230,000 who might not be able to buy that extra designer pantsuit this year, or the “single mother” making $260,000 whose kids presumably have a deadbeat, indigent dad just like any other poor family, or that struggling family of six making $650,000 including $180,000 of pure passive income and wondering how to make ends meet, mockery is almost superfluous. The thing mocks itself. That $650,000 family in particular is bizarre to the point of incredulity: those people could literally stop working entirely, live extremely well on $180,000 while doing nothing but watching television all day and staying home with their kids, and leave their high-salary jobs with their oh-so-onerous tax requirements to people who actually appreciate them.

Beyond mockery, though, that the Wall Street Journal would even dare publish such a thing without irony is indicative of the reality that the wealthy don’t live in the same country as the rest of us. Their experience of life, and therefore of public policy, is on an entirely different plane. These are people who take tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of yearly passive investment income for granted and think they earned that money, deserving to pay very low taxes on it. They’re people who see a single individual making $230,000 as struggling to get by, and severely put upon by the loss of a couple thousand dollars to help pay for decrepit infrastructure and basic healthcare for the indigent.

And then we remember that in our tax policy discussions, the only people in this little picture actually being impacted by an increase in the marginal tax rate are that final family of $650,000 paying a nearly irrelevant 4% increase only on every dollar above $400,000. And over this, we have Fox News and the right wing blaring constantly about Stalin, Mao and the advance of Communism.

These folks live in a Versailles bubble, modern day edition. But even they’re not the ones with the real money. The real plutocrats outstrip even these jokers by exponential leaps and bounds. And they’re the ones who drive public policy in this country.

(h/t Charles Pierce, TBogg and the original find by Xenos)

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No Wayne, your family is not just like the president’s

by digby

I know that most of you have probably already seen this latest NRA video already, but just in case:

I don’t even know what to say. The logic of that ad says that we all have a right to government paid for armed guards, just like the president and his family, in case some nut tries to kill us. And indeed, we do. They’re called police officers and the nation is crawling with them.

The president and his family, however, need extra protection because they are often the specific targets of random obsessive nut cases and political assassins. The threats and attempts on their lives happen a hell of a lot more often than it does to anyone else. And sometimes, they are successful. If these gun owners truly believe that they and their families are in as much danger as the president and his, then we are already in a dystopian nightmare from which there is probably no escape.

Their entire approach to our epidemic of gun violence is nonsensical. They are literally suggesting that we should all be armed and wearing body armor (and if we are husky 12 year old boys, ready to commit suicide) at all times. Their only answer to the Newtown massacre is to put more guns in schools. But more guns are not the answer and adding extra flying bullets in a situation where bullets are flying is almost always going to result in more people being shot. That is simple common sense.

Nonetheless, most Americans agree that there is some utility in having more guns on school campuses (in the hands of school cops, not teachers) and it looks like Washington is proposing to spend a lot of money to do just that so I don’t know what the NRA’s gripe is. In fact, there is something so deeply creepy about this ad that you have to wonder if the subliminal message is something much more insidious.

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Reversing the consensus on necessary cowardice

by digby

Despite the naysaying by the likes of David Gregory on TV this morning, the President’s proposal on gun violence sounds pretty good:

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

11. Nominate an ATF director.

12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies

16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.

20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

I had heard that they were going to propose funding for more police in schools, which I thought was a fairly lame idea, even though it’s popular, but I don’t see it explicitly listed there. On television they reported it as a “sweetener” to get some Republicans on board with the rest of the plan. Not likely, in my opinion, but whatever.

The rest sounds pretty much like common sense to me. The only questionable stuff is in this idea of tracking “dangerous” people. I don’t know how that’s going to be defined, but I’m guessing neither the gun rights advocates or general civil libertarians are going to feel comfortable with that unless it’s very clearly spelled out. Certainly the idea of tracking the “mentally ill” is a Pandora’s box, but the emphasis on mental illness coverage in the ACA is a very good approach.

Over all, a welcome offensive on this issue after years of retreating. I had thought that gun control had permanently gone the way of the death penalty and that it would be decades before we revisited it. But I suppose the mowing down schoolchildren does have away of focusing the mind.

Good for President Obama for taking a bold position. I don’t know where this ends up — lots of Democrats are in the thrall of the gun lobby too — but it’s an excellent use of presidential leadership to take such a hard line on such a contentious issue even if the outcome isn’t assured. Perhaps there’s a lesson in this for other fights as well.

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