Month: January 2013

Don’t mess with Sheriff Mitch


by digby

It’s going to be very hard for any primary challenger to get to the right of Mitch McConnell on guns. He sent out this email today:

The gun-grabbers are in full battle mode. And they are serious.

What’s at stake?

There are almost too many schemes to list. But President Obama’s worst center around:

-The Feinstein Gun Ban, which will criminalize firearms by how they look.

-A thinly-veiled national gun registration scheme hidden under the guise of “background checks” to ensure federal government minders gain every bureaucratic tool they need for full-scale confiscation.

-An outright BAN on magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

-And that’s not even close to the end of it.

23 new Executive Orders.

It is almost hard to believe the sheer breadth and brazenness of this attempt to gut our Constitution.

Well, Mitch McConnell is not going to stand aside.

To be honest, I can see this sort of thing coming from the left on certain issues. In fact, I did, during the Bush years. Where we were upset about indefinite detention and habeas corpus and torture, they’re upset about curbs on gun ownership. I guess we all have our own constitutions.

I think am just going to start parroting back to them what they said to me during that time: “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” And I will just point out that domestic gun violence amounts to many, many more deaths than those that happened on 9/11. See for me, this is as scary as terrorism and a lot more common — and I honestly do not believe that having more guns at the ready will fix it:

Just after seven-thirty on the morning of February 27th, a seventeen-year-old boy named T. J. Lane walked into the cafeteria at Chardon High School, about thirty miles outside Cleveland. It was a Monday, and the cafeteria was filled with kids, some eating breakfast, some waiting for buses to drive them to programs at other schools, some packing up for gym class. Lane sat down at an empty table, reached into a bag, and pulled out a .22-calibre pistol. He stood up, raised the gun, and fired. He said not a word.

Russell King, a seventeen-year-old junior, was sitting at a table with another junior, Nate Mueller. King, shot in the head, fell face first onto the table, a pool of blood forming. A bullet grazed Mueller’s ear. “I could see the flame at the end of the gun,” Mueller said later. Daniel Parmertor, a sixteen-year-old snowboarder, was shot in the head. Someone screamed “Duck!” Demetrius Hewlin, sixteen, was also shot in the head, and slid under the table. Joy Rickers, a senior, tried to run; Lane shot her as she fled. Nickolas Walczak, shot in his neck, arm, back, and face, fell to the floor. He began crawling toward the door.

Ever since the shootings at Columbine High School, in a Denver suburb, in 1999, American schools have been preparing for gunmen. Chardon started holding drills in 2007, after the Virginia Tech massacre, when twenty-three-year-old Seung-Hui Cho, a college senior, shot fifty-seven people in Blacksburg.

At Chardon High School, kids ran through the halls screaming “Lockdown!” Some of them hid in the teachers’ lounge; they barricaded the door with a piano. Someone got on the school’s public-address system and gave instructions, but everyone knew what to do. Students ran into classrooms and dived under desks; teachers locked the doors and shut off the lights. Joseph Ricci, a math teacher, heard Walczak, who was still crawling, groaning in the hallway. Ricci opened the door and pulled the boy inside. No one knew if the shooter had more guns, or more rounds. Huddled under desks, students called 911 and texted their parents. One tapped out, “Prayforus.”

I realize that we won’t stop all these events by tightening up the gun laws. We are a gun culture and there are a lot of disturbed and angry people out there.   But I think it only makes sense to try to shut down the pump  (or, at least, get people to drink from a different well.)

The latest tragedy.
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On the speech

by digby

James Fallows says:

This was the most sustainedly “progressive” statement Barack Obama has made in his decade in the national eye.

There was a time when I paid close attention to President Obama’s speeches and searched for clues as to how he would tie his policies in with the values stated within it.  I have since been schooled by all the smart people of all political and ideological stripes that nothing the president says matters and that the presidency is a largely ceremonial post so I no longer take much time to parse the words.

I will say this: Inaugural speeches are often legacy speeches and based on this speech I’m going to guess that whatever his policies actually were and are, he told us today that he would like to be remembered by most people as a progressive president, not a centrist technocrat.   Certainly, it won’t be centrists or the conservatives who bestow it on him — positive legacies are sustained by the members of your own party and ideology.  If he wants to be in the liberal pantheon beyond the obvious (and very real) accomplishment of becoming the first African American president and some movement on gay rights, the second term will have to be different from the first.   From the sound of today’s address, it would seem that he wants it to be. And if that’s true, progressives have some leverage.

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The Inaugural Address

by digby

MLK, Jr. was about much more than just anti-discrimination

by David Atkins

As the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., increasingly fades into the gauze of history and legend, politicians on both sides of the aisle have taken to celebrating him and his cause as one of their one. Most of those who will quote and celebrate Martin Luther King today will quote him on the issue of racial equality, especially snippets from his “I have a dream” speech. This was controversial stuff back in King’s day, but it’s fairly anodyne today.

But to make anti-discrimination the sum total of Dr. King’s legacy would be to do a profound disservice to the man and his cause. For Dr. King has much to say that remains controversial and quite painful to conservative ears today.

It was about much more than simple discrimination when Dr. King reminded us that

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

To the wealthy who insisted that fair taxation to help pay for the common good should be eschewed in favor of the charity of their choosing, Dr. King responded:

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

To those contented with economic inequality who called him a rabble-rouser, Dr. King responded:

“There are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted…I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.”

And of democracy , the bugaboo of socialism, and income inequality, Dr. King said:

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”

This is the Dr. King that many who would like to claim him, would yet prefer not to speak of. But it was the Dr. King who actually lived, worked and breathed not only to end discrimination, but to end the social injustice that bred and exacerbated discrimination of all kinds. It was the Dr. King who said that we must move from being a “thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society,” and that “when profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
The 2nd inauguration of the first African-American President is a joyous blow against racial discrimination to be sure. But we’ve just barely gotten started on righting the wrongs Dr. King made his life’s mission to correct.

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Your moment of zen: Colbert Pron


by digby

Enjoy:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Beauregard Crotchpounder.  That is all.

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A lot has changed since 1994, Mr. Clinton

by David Atkins

Bill Clinton:

“Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them,” Clinton said.

“A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things,” Clinton said. “I know because I come from this world.”

“A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing,” he told the Democratic financiers. “Or they’re living in a place where they don’t have much police presence. Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all.”

Clinton closed his remarks with a warning to big Democratic donors that ultimately many Democratic lawmakers will be defeated if they choose to stand with the president.

“Do not be self-congratulatory about how brave you for being for this” gun control push, he said. “The only brave people are the people who are going to lose their jobs if they vote with you.”

Bill Clinton is a gifted politician, no doubt, but he overestimates the NRA’s power, even in creating the 1994 midterm debacle. Also, even most NRA members don’t oppose the most basic gun control measures under discussion.

Most candidates endorsed by the NRA win reelection; but most candidates endorsed by the group are safe Republicans in safe Republican seats.

Conventional wisdom has it that NRA members could be mobilized to vote against any politician who backs gun control.

But Republican pollster Frank Luntz is out with a new survey suggesting that the reforms being discussed lately are fine with most NRA members.

Luntz, working on behalf of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, found that large majorities of NRA members support background checks for all gun purchases, gun safety training for concealed-carry permits and the denial of permits for people with records of violent misdemeanors.

But the historical record and NRA member feelings aside, Mr. Clinton is still living in a different politically. The data isn’t all compiled yet on presidential vote by Congressional district, but a preliminary skim of votes by congressional district shows that only three House Democrats are in a districts won by Mitt Romney, while ten House Republicans are in districts won by Barack Obama. There are precious few Democratic Congressmembers left whose electoral fortunes would be significantly impacted by a pro-gun control vote–partly because of Republican gerrymandering, but also partly because the 1994 and 2010 midterms had the effect of cleansing out most of the Blue Dogs and Dixiecrats who would be in a position to be affected.

The precious few in districts who have cause to fear an NRA backlash can be permitted to vote against gun control measures beyond the mental health provisions and gun registries supported even by at least half of Republicans. Besides, it’s not as if any significant gun control is going to get through both the House and a Senate filibuster (presuming Reid caves on the filibuster as he is expected to.)

So in answer to Bill Clinton, it’s not 1994 anymore. Congressional Democrats have been mostly routed out of places like Arkansas. True, it’s a different world there, one in which a great many people have bought the rightwing rhetoric hook, line and sinker. But the doing the right thing is more important than votes, and politically speaking the Democratic Party no longer needs that old coalition anymore. There’s no need to placate those folks anymore. All we need to do is outnumber them and defeat them.

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When there were no hostages

by digby

People keep telling me that President Obama “pivoted” to deficit reduction only after the 2010 “shellacking” as a way of making the case for re-election.  But that’s not how I remember it.  And in the course of doing some research today, I was reminded of this:

At bottom, entitlement reform means one of two things: less spending on things voters like, such as medical treatment or retirement checks, or unpopular higher taxes to pay for those things — and quite possibly it means both. Blocking each of those routes are powerful lobbies ready to whip supple members of Congress: antitax ideologues, liberal New Deal defenders, retiree groups, patient advocates, pharmaceutical companies and medical providers, to name a few. To make matters worse, while the financial crisis is both real and terrifying, it is not always apparent. Even as our fiscal position deteriorates, the world continues to buy U.S. government debt, allowing for magically low interest rates in spite of enormous deficit spending.

It is on this inhospitable terrain that President Barack Obama now plans to accomplish the impossible: reverse the trajectory of the political universe and make real progress on reforming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. […] 

The effort to reform Social Security, which is generally seen as a less complex problem, is likely to take a backseat over the coming months to health-care efforts. This is partly because of resistance by many House liberals to the idea of reducing Social Security benefits. This group includes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was able to take over the reins in Congress in part because of the resentment caused by Bush’s failed reform effort. Although Administration officials don’t like discussing the problem on the record, the White House has not yet ruled out the idea of establishing an independent commission (outside the congressional committee structure) to look at creating a specific reform plan, an approach supported by many experts as the best way to break the political deadlock. 

Perhaps the biggest advantage that Obama has as he prepares to tackle entitlement is the financial crisis, which has forced everyone in Washington to focus on the nation’s long-term fiscal problems. The recent explosion of government spending to handle the banking collapse and housing crisis has concerned nations like China, which buy government debt. A drop in international interest in U.S. debt could lead to a spike in interest rates, which would have a damaging impact on the U.S. economy. On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Chinese leaders to continue their investments in U.S. debt. “We are truly going to rise and fall together,” she warned. 

None of this, however, means that Obama’s task will be much easier than the one that has bedeviled his predecessors. “This is not walking and chewing gum,” joked Robert Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “It’s doing open-heart surgery and particle physics at the same time.” But the difficulty has not dissuaded Obama. As he pivots to confront the nation’s fiscal problems, his aides say he knows exactly what he is getting into.

The date of that Time magazine article?  That was written on February 23, 2009, a month after the president was inaugurated the first time. It was on the heels of these reports the week before:

With a $787 billion stimulus package in hand, President Barack Obama will pivot quickly to address a budget deficit that could now approach $2 trillion this year.

He has scheduled a “fiscal-responsibility summit” on Feb. 23 and will unveil a budget blueprint three days later, crafted to put pressure on politicians to address the country’s surging long-term debt crisis.

Speaking Friday to business leaders at the White House, the president defended the surge of spending in the stimulus plan, but he made sure to add: “It’s important for us to think in the midterm and long term. And over that midterm and long term, we’re going to have to have fiscal discipline. We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying.”

Along those lines, White House budget director Peter R. Orszag has committed to instituting tougher budget-discipline rules — once the economy turns around. Those include a mandate that any “nonemergency” spending increases be offset by equal spending cuts or tax increases[…]

The president met with 44 fiscally conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats this week and gave a nod to legislation that would set up commissions to deal with long-term deficit strains. The commissions would then present plans to Congress for an up-or-down vote.

“We feel like we’ve found a partner in the White House,” said Rep. Charlie Melancon (D., La.), a Blue Dog co-chairman.

I can understand why it’s important for some people to believe that the president was “forced” to pivot by the results of a major electoral setback.  But this pivot happened in the midst of a delirious honeymoon, long before the Republicans had regrouped from their shellacking. It was the purpose of the “Fiscal Summit” (in which the White House very nearly had Pete Peterson himself as the keynote speaker.)

I was reminded of all this when I read this interesting piece by Josh Marshall today on whether or not Obama is a bad manager (in response to today’s op-ed on the subject in the NY Times.  Josh wrote this:

[N]ot that I don’t think Obama’s management or approach to the presidency was flawless. My critique is simply different. I think the biggest single flaw in Obama’s approach to the presidency in his first term was the focus on the inside game, both in policy and legislative terms — an inherent peril of technocrats. For much of his first term, Obama simply did not focus on the public and political dimensions of the work he was trying to get done. To give but one example, the health care edifice was getting built up largely in private while public support for it cratered in the midst of catastrophic levels of unemployment. Yes, it was always going to be hard and there was the biggest economic crisis in 70 years. But there was a failure to grasp a dimension of the job.

I don’t disagree with this. I think it’s been a problem. But I think that on the greatest challenge of his administration — the economy — he’s been wrong on a political and a policy level from the beginning.
Obviously, I think  deficit reduction is and was completely daft at a time like this. But I would suggest that by “pivoting” to talking about deficit reduction in the middle of the crisis, as he did, made it so that even the stimulus and all the other government actions to try to spur the economy sputtered as people didn’t spend in anticipation of more austerity.

And when you read those articles, it sure sounds as though they were using the bad economy an excuse to “fix” the “entitlements.” Michael Sherer talked about the motivation in the first article I excerpted above:

As sure as the sun rises, the sitting President of the United States will promise to save our fiscal future by reforming entitlement spending. And as sure as the sun sets, each attempt at delivering on that pledge will end in failure.
[…]
At bottom, entitlement reform means one of two things: less spending on things voters like, such as medical treatment or retirement checks, or unpopular higher taxes to pay for those things — and quite possibly it means both. Blocking each of those routes are powerful lobbies ready to whip supple members of Congress: antitax ideologues, liberal New Deal defenders, retiree groups, patient advocates, pharmaceutical companies and medical providers, to name a few. To make matters worse, while the financial crisis is both real and terrifying, it is not always apparent. Even as our fiscal position deteriorates, the world continues to buy U.S. government debt, allowing for magically low interest rates in spite of enormous deficit spending. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.)

It is on this inhospitable terrain that President Barack Obama now plans to accomplish the impossible: reverse the trajectory of the political universe and make real progress on reforming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Why in the world were they thinking this way in the midst of what they themselves called the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?  This was the hubristic attitude of the Obama administration in the beginning — the belief that they alone would be able to solve all the problems that had eluded their predecessors, despite the fact that the world economy was melting down. (Or was it because the world economy was melting down?) They were just that special (aka Best and Brightest Syndrome, which does relate to Josh Marshall’s point.)  And on health care, they even have made some progress. After all, if there is a long term debt problem it is almost entirely driven by health care costs. Unfortunately, by flogging the deficit boogeyman from the very beginning they perpetuated a whole bunch of economic myths that have hamstrung the recovery (and may wind up hurting the chances for the health care reforms to work by giving the deficit fetishists the weapon they need to cut it before it gets the chance.)

This was, in my opinion, the major error of the first term. And it’s why I have trouble trusting that the administration isn’t going to use whatever “cliff” or crisis to accomplish it in the second term. I hope they have seen the error of their ways, but these trial balloons about raising the Medicare age or the Chained CPI, don’t bode well. After all, the history shows that this does not come from being cornered or in “hostage” negotiations — it comes from a desire to do it. There were no hostages in February of 2009.

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Chris Hayes and his panel talk common sense (and Village heresy)

by digby

Why in the hell are we obsessing about deficits when unemployment is still high?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I still can’t get over liberals talking like liberals. On TV!

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Accidental discharge

by digby

Ok, this is just sad:

In Raleigh, N.C., authorities said three people were wounded when a loaded shotgun accidentally discharged at the Dixie Gun and Knife Show at the N.C. State Fairgrounds.

Officials say Gary Lynn Wilson, 36, was having his shotgun checked before entering the show when the incident happened. He was unzipping his 12-gauge shotgun’s case when it accidentally fired birdshot pellets, hitting three people, The News & Observer in Raleigh reported. Wilson was planning on privately selling the gun at the show, according to NBC affiliate WNCN.

The three victims, Janet Hoover, Linwood Hester and Jake Alderman, were hit, respectively, in the right torso, left hand and right hand, WNCN reported. They were taken to the hospital for non-life threatening injuries.

Witness Daniel Peadan told WNCN he was about to enter the building, when he heard a loud pop: “The people right there at the door, a lot of them ran … They scattered because it was chaotic.”

There were a bunch of these incidents around the country on Gun Appreciation Day. But you have to love the irony of this:

The show closed early Saturday because of the shooting, according to The News & Observer. When the show reopens Sunday private gun sales will not be permitted, but only sales by licensed dealers at the show are allowed, Long said. By Saturday evening, the event’s website clearly stipulated: “No personal firearms are to be brought into the show.”

I have a couple of friends who have been telling me that the proposed AW ban has made even responsible gun owners very upset and they are buying these weapons in large numbers. I think this is natural in the face of a possible ban of anything, not just guns. And there is a lot of dissonance among the gun owning community right now, as many decent folk are feeling a lot of pressure coming from different directions. We haven’t chosen to think about this for a while so it’s a bit of a shock to expose all these fault lines.

But I still maintain that it’s good to do it, even if there is a backlash. In a country where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the constitution and the Supreme Court has held that it is an “individual” right, one of the only ways we can keep this shooting gallery from getting completely out of hand is through legal and social pressure. It’s uncomfortable, but necessary.

It’s not just the mass shootings, as horrible as they are, or the fact that semi-automatic weapons are easily available to just about anyone. It’s that they are insisting on legalizing carrying guns in public places like bars. (What could go worng?) It’s these “stand your ground” laws and “castle doctrine” extremism. They are just going too far for even a gun loving society to tolerate and they are going to have to dial it back.

And at some point responsible gun owners are going to have to take some … responsibility. But as this is playing out in the wake of a terrible massacre of little children and emotions are running high, they are defensive. That’s human. When things calm down, I think they will.

Meanwhile, the irresponsible continue to make the case for gun safety advocates:

MARIETTA – A Parkersburg man was accidentally shot in the ankle Sunday at a gun show at the Comfort Inn in Marietta, according to the Marietta Police Department.

William Shawver, 46, of 418 Avery St., Parkersburg, was taken to Marietta Memorial Hospital to receive treatment for a gunshot wound to his right ankle, police said.

The incident is under investigation and is being regarded as an accident, said Capt. Jeff Waite.

“It definitely was not done in malice. The two men are very good friends,” said Waite.

Though the department has not released the name of the gun owner, Waite said the man was in the process of trading his gun, a 1911-style automatic handgun, with another individual at the gun show.

“He went to remove the gun from its holster and unload the ammunition I believe and the gun somehow misfired,” said Waite.

It’s pure luck that somebody hasn’t gotten killed in one of the gun show accidents.

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Getting away with murder

by digby

Shoplifting is a capital offense?

Surveillance footage capturing a homeless man’s death in the alley behind a CVS pharmacy in Chicago in 2010 was released today, showing several minutes of the attack in which store manager Pedro Villarosa held down and strangled 35-year-old Anthony Kyser while six passersby helped hold him down.

Kyser had reportedly stolen a tube of toothpaste from the store and was followed out into the street by Villarosa. From DNAInfo, which also released the original video:

It shows Kyser’s final minutes on May 8, 2010, and the beginning of the police investigation into the case. No charges were filed in Kyser’s death, which police ruled an accident. CVS has said the manager acted in self-defense after being attacked by Kyser.

The video appears to capture Kyser fleeing to the alley with the store manager close behind him. There’s a brief struggle before Kyser hits the pavement, with the store manager on top of him.

Another man appears to punch and kick Kyser, at one point stepping down on his hand while the store manager remains atop Kyser. More bystanders join in, helping to hold Kyser down. Eventually, Kyser stops flailing his legs, the video shows.

The store manager admits that the victim said “I can’t breathe” before he died, but claims he was acting in “self-defense.”

So:

According to Salon, the police department decided not to press criminal charges even after the Medical Examiner’s Office “ruled the death a homicide.” No criminal charges are currently pending.

One of the great advantages of living in a paranoid society is that you can easily get away with murder.

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