Month: May 2014

This is what legislative courage on gun control looks like. Action, not just sympathy

by David Atkins

We hear it after every mass shooting: politicians on both sides of the aisle intoning their deepest condolences to the victims and their families. We hear a lot about thoughts and prayers and sympathies. We especially hear it from politicians who kowtow to the NRA and the gun lobby, usually framed in the language of unnamed inexplicable evil that mere humans cannot control.

But the father of one of the victims of the Isla Vista shootings put it best when he said:

“I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a s— that you feel sorry for me,” Richard Martinez said during an extensive interview, his face flushed as tears rolled down. “Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.”

Damn straight.

Well, some politicians do take their jobs seriously, and have the courage to get to work and do something. And I’m very proud to say that they just so happen to represent me in the California Assembly and State Senate. Das Williams and Hannah-Beth Jackson are taking action to help keep guns out of the hands of disturbed individuals by giving family members and friends more power in preventing problem individuals from obtaining firearms:

Today, California State Assemblymembers Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) and Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara) announced legislation to help prevent mass killings like this weekend’s tragic Isla Vista rampage near UC Santa Barbara that claimed the lives of six students.

The proposed legislation would create a gun violence restraining order, establishing a system where concerned family members, intimate partners or friends can notify law enforcement of someone who is demonstrating a propensity to commit violence toward themselves or others.

“When someone is in crisis, the people closest to them are often the first to spot the warning signs but almost nothing can now be done to get back their guns or prevent them from buying more,” Skinner said. “Parents, like the mother who tried to intervene, deserve an effective tool they can act on to help prevent these tragedies.”

Under current law, therapists can notify law enforcement that their client is at risk of committing a violent act allowing authorities to investigate the individual. Law enforcement can prevent the person from buying or owning firearms.

“The tragic incident in my hometown of Isla Vista is not a result of gun laws failing. Rather, it is a horrific example of how our mental health laws and gun control laws are not working together,” said Williams.

The proposed legislation would grant this authority to concerned family members, friends and intimate partners, creating a mechanism to intervene and potentially prohibit the purchase of firearms and/or remove the firearms already in possession. Law enforcement would have the ability to investigate threats and ask a judge to grant an order prohibiting firearms purchase or possession.

In most cases involving an individual in crisis there is no mechanism to limit firearm access while the individual is seeking or receiving needed help (e.g., mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, anger management).

Family members may call law enforcement to intervene. However, as evidenced by law enforcement’s response to the mother’s call regarding her concerns about the shooter in the Santa Barbara incident, if no crime has been committed, or the individual does not meet the criteria for an involuntary civil commitment to mental health treatment, there is essentially nothing that can be done to prevent that individual from purchasing firearms or to temporarily remove firearms from their possession during the crisis.

Senator Hannah Beth Jackson will be joining Williams and Skinner as a principal co-author of the legislation.

Republican Assemblymember Jeff Gorell is running against Congresswoman Julia Brownley in Ventura County just south of Santa Barbara. He has a 92% rating from the NRA, and tweeted his condolences. I challenged him to prove his concern by doing something serious about firearms control. He and all the other Republican politicians will have a chance to prove the weight of their concern for the victims of gun violence by taking an affirmative vote on this bill.

If they fail to support this commonsense legislation, they will prove the emptiness of their hollow sympathies and betray their condolences for what they are: empty speeches by hypocrites, eager to actively deflate the righteous anger that must precede real change.

Let this also be a lesson to the cynics who think both parties are alike, that voting doesn’t matter, and that the inside game of politics is worthless. Both Das Williams and Hannah-Beth Jackson faced Democratic primaries from more centrist opponents when they came into office. Many of us worked hard to help make sure the more progressive candidates won. That work mattered, and will make a real difference to help prevent the next tragedy because we have good progressive Democrats in office who are willing to stand up for what’s right.

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by tristero

Eric Cline, professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University:

THIS month, a report issued by a prominent military advisory board concluded that climate change posed a serious threat to America’s national security.

The authors, 16 retired high-ranking officers, warned that droughts, rising seas and extreme weather events, among other environmental threats, were already causing global “instability and conflict.”

But Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a stalwart believer that global warming is a “hoax,” dismissed the report as a publicity stunt.

Perhaps the senator needs a history lesson…

Nope. Inhofe needs to be defeated, is all.

Very interesting article, aside from his gratuitously elevating Inhofe to the status of the educable. Well worth reading.

Boys and their toys

by digby

In case you were wondering, those are not actors in a dystopian post-apocalyptic science fiction movie. They’re border patrol agents. If you want to know where your tax dollars are going, look at the police agencies. They’re decked out like Robo-cop all over the country.

Since government policy, with the full consent of many elites in journalism, is to keep everything secret for our own good, the Border Patrol is refusing to release the independent review of its shooting record:

The Center for Investigative Reporting revealed last Friday that CBP denied its open records request for the PERF report eight months after it was initially filed. In denying the request, CBP personnel cited a Freedom of Information Act exemption intended to protect the “free and frank exchange of information among agency personnel.”

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to force CBP to release the PERF report, arguing that its disclosure “is critical to a full and fair public debate about CBP’s use-of-force policies and practices.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, CBP officials rejected two major recommendations from the PERF report: (1) barring agents from shooting at vehicles unless the agents’ lives are at risk and (2) barring agents from shooting at people throwing objects, unless the projectiles are life-threatening.

I feel both safer and freer knowing that this agency will do everything in its power — in secret, of course — to do the right thing. Because they’re good enough, they’re smart enough and doggone it, people like them…

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Personality

by tristero

Michael Kinsley reviewing Glenn Greenwald’s book:

It’s a great yarn, which might be more entertaining if Greenwald himself didn’t come across as so unpleasant. Maybe he’s charming and generous in real life. But in “No Place to Hide,” Greenwald seems like a self-righteous sourpuss….

Good to know that Michael Kinsley spends his time in the review on such an essential issue as Greenwald’s likability. Apparently, Glenn doesn’t quite match up to Michael’s Cary Grant savoir faire. 


Me, I’d have a drink with Greenwald any day of the week. And Glenn? I’m buying.

Update by digby:

If you haven’t seen the NY Times public editor, Margaret Sullivan’s response to Kinsley it’s well worth reading.

QOTD: The IAEA

by digby

Iran has neutralized most of its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium that could be turned quickly into the core of a nuclear weapon, the U.N. nuclear agency said Friday, leaving the country with only about a fifth of what it would need for such a purpose. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a in a quarterly report that Iran now has less than 90 pounds of the material. The report also said Tehran was meeting all other obligations under an agreement reached four months ago in Geneva that serves as a prelude to a comprehensive deal now being negotiated.

Andrew Sullivan wonders why such news wouldn’t make the front pages. Good question. But then, as he points out, nobody thinks this sign of successful diplomacy will change anything. Which is just … depressing.

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Cliff Schechter nails it on gun violence

by David Atkins

Cliff Schechter has a post on gun violence at The Daily Beast that’s worth reading in full. Here’s a sample:

Of course, there is one easy case study that proves the rule: Hawaii, which is separated from every other state by quite a bit of ocean. The Aloha State, which boasts the lowest gun ownership rate and among the strongest gun laws in our country, has the lowest gun violence rate, according to The Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence. Meanwhile, in Arizona, with those ridiculously nonexistent gun laws, you’re five times more likely to die from a gun than in Hawaii.

This pattern extends throughout the country, from lax regulation states like Mississippi and Alaska (18.3 and 17.6 gun deaths, per 100,000 people, respectively) to strong regulation states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts (3.5 and 3.6 gun deaths per 100,000, respectively). This really isn’t that hard.

And for those of you about to point out that cities like Chicago have both strict gun laws and horrifying gun violence, well, you might want to do some reading about how many of those guns came from Indiana, which has much less strict gun laws, or other parts of Illinois, where laws don’t come close to matching those in the city of Chicago. Use The Google, my friends. It’s free.

If lax guns laws and more guns overall made people safer, the United States would be the safest place in the world. Instead, that designation goes to countries like Japan and England, which have actually taken on this problem with the seriousness it deserves. And then there is the special case of Australia, which was heading down the same path as us until 1996, when they had their own Newtown, known a the Port Arthur Massacre. They passed not weak-tea gun laws, but a comprehensive package (passed by their Conservative Party). The results have been stunning, as not only has there not been a mass shooting since then (there were 11 in the 10 years before they passed this legislation), but their suicides and gun-related deaths have gone way down too.

In Santa Barbara, we had a young man who had been detained or interviewed three times by the police recently, including once for domestic assault. Both a social worker and his parents warned the authorities about his fraying mental state. But all of that led to no red flags popping up to stop him from buying three semi-automatic guns and enough bullets to take on the police department.

In England, Japan, Canada and Australia, that would have been enough to stop him cold. In these places, as is common sense, requirements exist such as third-party references from family and/or friends, rigorous psychological exams and background checks. Any blemish on one’s record pointing to violence would have been a red flag during these tests. Additionally, there are waiting periods before one can receive a gun after initial purchase, making it more likely someone mentally unstable would be caught doing something else in the meantime, or perhaps even get the help he so desperately needed before obtaining a firearm.

The answer is obvious. There’s just a very well-funded group of terrified, angry violent men standing in the way of doing what’s right.

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Huckleberry’s revolution

by digby

In his quest to be seen as a True Blue Wingnut, Huckleberry Graham is waving the flag of Republican Revolution Part II:

A faction of Republicans including Sen. Lindsey Graham is agitating for party leaders to unveil a policy manifesto in the midterm elections, detailing for voters what the GOP would attempt with a Senate majority its members are increasingly confident they’ll achieve. 

Advocates of the strategy, which has triggered a closed-door debate in recent weeks among the party’s current 45 senators, say it would serve as a firm rejoinder to Democrats casting the GOP as the “party of no.” They say voters should know what they’d be getting by pulling the lever for Republicans in November.
[…]
The policy agenda would be modeled after the “Contract with America,” the 10-bill document that Republicans campaigned on en route to a historic takeover of the House in 1994. 

“I think it’s a strategic mistake for our party leadership not to come up with a document that has four or five action items,” Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the House class of 1994, said in an interview. “I’ve tried to allow those in leadership to do this. If they don’t move forward soon, there will be a rebellion among the rank and file.”

I’m going to guess this is really just a way of standardizing the language of the far right agenda so that the Tea Partiers and “establishment” have something to rally around together. Not hat they aren’t already on the same page. It’s that they need to nip the “internal fighting” theme that’s developing in the bus so that the rubes don’t get it in their heads that they aren’t really running things.

It’s actually quite a good idea for them.  The Contract on America was an exceptional political document that failed to produce anything at all once the Republicans took power.  If that’s not a shining example for the Party of No, I don’t know what is.

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Angry protectors

by digby

The responses to the painful outburst by the father of Christopher Michael-Martinez have been pretty predictable. An awful lot of gun owners get very, very angry when victims get upset about gun violence. (Or, hey, even when people say anything the disagree with …) So this, from Charlie Pierce, isn’t a shock. But it is pretty sickening:

[H]ere’s brave Todd Kincannon, chairman of the Election Commission of Simpsonville, South Carolina, stepping up in 140 characters, to defend his freedom against the onslaught of grieving parents.

Fuck him. He is a piece of shit. His tragedy sucks, but he blamed me for it and wants to take away my rights. The guy is trying to take away my rights to protect my family. Fuck him every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

And Todd is raising a little Viking who, I am sure, one day will conquer and pillage on behalf of some brokerage house or real estate company.

No idea how my son will die, but I know it won’t be cowering like a bitch at UC Santa Barbara. Any son of mine would have been shooting back.

Pierce goes on to note that this brave, manly man who’s raising a brave manly son didn’t serve in the military. I guess he was busy defending the homeland.

Does anyone feel safer knowing someone like this is armed to the teeth?

For a thorough refutation of the worst of the gun proliferation zealots’ arguments in the wake of Isla Vista, read this by Cliff Schecter.

Update: Oh lordy

Joe The Plumber to father of shooting victim: “your dead kids don’t trump my gun rights” http://t.co/1PxyV8vL5s #ThankYouJohnMcCain
— Michael Kapp (@michaelkapp) May 27, 2014

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The bush of freedom won’t be refreshed

by digby

I wrote about more dumb pot prohibition in my piece at Salon this morning:

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

It’s funny how right-wingers always leave out the manure line, isn’t it? But that’s the real quote.

Unfortunately, unlike the tree of liberty, the marijuana bush of freedom will not be allowed refreshment of any kind if the federal government has its way. The Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that manages federal water distribution from its network of waterways and dams, announced last week that no water under their purview could be used for marijuana cultivation. Yes, a state may have foolishly allowed its deluded population into voting to legalize the growing of a plant but there is no reason the federal government has to agree to water it. And they won’t.  read on …

It’s more incoherent federal policy on pot. Apparently various agencies are just going about making policies ad hoc without any guidance from the DOJ.

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Who deserves health care?

by digby

Ezra Klein makes a good point in this piece in which he acknowledges the VA revelations for the scandal they are — nobody should be denied needed health care — by showing the vast numbers of people affected by Republican governors’ cynical decision to refuse the Medicaid expansion. It encompasses millions of people, many of whom will suffer and die as a result of this craven political act.

But Ezra leaves out the salient issue for Republicans: they revere the military for all its traditional masculine virtues so veterans deserve health care. Poor people (who are not veterans or elderly white people) do not. This is the simple equation that guides their philosophy:

If you don’t have health care through gainful employment or fail to buy it yourself from an insurance company, you are obviously being irresponsible. (And no, the government shouldn’t help you with those premiums — no Obamacare for you!) Therefore, you deserve what you get. Life is black and white to these people, at least in the abstract. When it comes to their own lives or people they know, it’s obviously a different story. The extenuating circumstances, life’s harsh blows, bad timing and bad luck explain why a particular person might need some help. But they are also very harsh with people who develop bad habits or fail to live up to their behavioral standards. And they assume laziness and sloth among most people of color so unless they have ascended to the highest levels of society, like Condi Rice or Marco Rubio, they assume they also deserve what they get.

The bottom line is that conservatives can’t exercise empathy, by which I mean that while they can see themselves in an unfortunate circumstance, they are unable to extrapolate from that possibility the fact that others in those unfortunate circumstances deserve the same compassion and assistance. I guess that would mean these people aren’t “special” and that’s something they really cannot live with.

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