Monthly Archives: February 2013

Progressive Gun Control Agenda

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Here are some of their thoughts.  A more complete listing of their proposals is at The Dailey Caller:

Reinstate and strengthen a prospective federal ban on assault weapons: These weapons are designed to fire a large number of rounds in a short period of time.  They constitute a lethal threat to law enforcement and other first responders.

This is…foolish.  There is no such thing as an “assault” weapon, other than a carefully manufactured-by-legislation definition.  Not even the military has “assault weapons.”

Moreover, the threat to law enforcement and first responders from this sort of mythical weapon, or the semiautomatic rifles on which this mythology is purported to be modeled, is far less than is the threat of pistols, knives, clubs, fire (especially when responding to arson fires), drunk drivers, and so on.  This excuse fixes a nonexistent problem.

Reinstate a prospective federal ban on assault magazines: These magazines hold more than ten rounds and allow a shooter to inflict mass damage in a short period of time without reloading. Banning them will save lives.

This, too, is nonsense.  There is no such thing as an “assault magazine,” other than a carefully manufactured-by-legislation definition.  Here, too, even the military has no such things.

Moreover, the threat to lives from these artifices pales compared to the real causes of killings, some of which were enumerated just above.

Both of these, also are useful—critically so—in allowing private citizens to defend themselves.

There are these, too:

Require a background check for every gun sale, while respecting reasonable exceptions for cases such as gifts between family members and temporary loans for sporting purposes: It is estimated that four out of ten gun buyers do not go through a background check when purchasing a firearm because federal law only requires these checks when someone buys a gun from a federally licensed dealer.

The rest of this item is a red herring; I’ll ignore it here.  Four out of ten sales don’t go through a background check because they’re private sales from one citizen to another.  With the cost of a background check running to hundreds of dollars, this serves only to suppress those private sales.  On top of this, requiring a background check for a private sale represents an atrocious invasion of privacy for the purchaser by the seller—even if the seller has no intention of the invasion other than an arbitrary, superfluous law requires it.

Strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database: Immediate action is needed to ensure the information in the NICS database is up to date.  Many federal and state agencies remain deficient in transferring important records to the database.

No.  This is simply Progressives demanding government compile dossiers on honest American citizens on the off chance that a small number might prove unsavory.  This is nothing more than a presumption of guilt without due process—without even probable cause.  The United States isn’t France.

Some of their thoughts are on the right track, though.

Pass legislation aimed specifically at cracking down on illegal gun trafficking and straw-purchasing: Straw-purchasing is when a prohibited buyer has someone with no criminal history walk into a gun store, pass a background check and purchase a gun with the purpose of giving it to the prohibited buyer.

Nice idea, but it’s not necessary, and we already have too many mostly redundant laws on the books.  And the areas of non-overlap are nothing more than sources of confusion and litigation.  Moreover, this is a law honored in the breach, as DoJ’s Fast and Furious illustrates.

Prosecute those prohibited buyers who attempt to purchase firearms and others who violate federal firearm laws: Federal law bars nine categories of people—including felons and those prohibited because of mental illness—from buying guns.

Absolutely, enforce the laws on the books, including applying the sanctions the laws supply.

Close the holes in our mental-health system and make sure that care is available for those who need it: Congress must improve prevention, early intervention, and treatment of mental illness while working to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness.

This is on the right track, but government involvement must be absolutely minimal.  In the Soviet Union, the government defined disagreeing with the government as a form of mental illness.  We don’t need the USSR’s gulag reborn here.

Support responsible gun ownership: Congress should support safety training, research aimed at developing new gun safety technologies and the safe storage of firearms.

Certainly. As soon as Congress has reformed our tax code to simplify it and lower rates in parallel with greatly reduced Federal spending, so our economy can finally recover and we as a nation can afford this sort of expenditure.  At that point, Congress should begin jawboning with the States to do this sort of thing.

Given the active interference with individual freedom and responsibility represented by those first few items, though, I have to ask: what problem are the Progressives actually trying to solve—disarming the population they wish to govern, or reducing violence?

Progressives Need to Quit Complaining and Start Cooperating with the Republicans

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Sally Kohn, a Fox News contributor, offered a response to President Barack Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address.  Herewith, I offer my response to her and to Obama.

Tonight, the president of the United States of America and the leader of the party that won the Presidential election in 2012 while losing the Congressional and State House elections set forward a plan not only for the next four years but the next four decades of American decline.

It is a plan that purports to build our economy from the middle class out and not just from the top-down, while ignoring the poor and their fading opportunities for upward mobility.

It is a plan that purports to believe American workers can get the skills they need for the 21st century and American companies can compete in the global marketplace.

It is a plan that creates a false choice between helping our students and seniors and creating jobs for everyone else in between on the one hand and cuts to spending on the other.

It is a plan that ignores the lessons of American history and the traditions of our founding values of limited government and personal opportunity and choice and personal responsibility.  And it is a plan that has already failed multiple times in this President’s administration and in those of prior Presidents’—and a plan that the American do not support!

Nine in 10 Americans—and eight in 10 Republicans and independents—agree that we need to create a road to citizenship for the hardworking, aspiring Americans who are so vital to our economy and our communities.  Over 85% of voters believe we need to strengthen the manufacturing industry in America.  A majority of voters support improving our roads and schools and creating jobs primarily through private enterprise and that where taxes are necessary for public infrastructure improvement, these should be minimal and temporary.  A wide majority of gun owners—and NRA members!—support common sense violence prevention measures like keeping weapons out of the hands of felons and those convicted of domestic violence actions.  A growing majority of scientists note that human activity as a driving cause of climate change is not supported by the evidence.  More and more Americans are recognizing that singling out particular companies—even whole industries—as “winners” outside the results of free market competition is wasteful of taxpayers’ money.   And most Americans recognize that inequality in America is a major problem and that our government’s distortion of  our economy unfairly favors that government’s chosen.

Americans understand the tight linkages between our enormous deficits and exploding debt on the one hand and jobs and our economy’s health on the other.  They also recognize that the latter cannot be repaired until the former is fixed.

A strong majority of Americans recognize the straw man Obama put forward that equates reforming Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security so that they are made stronger and preserved for our children and grandchildren with cuts to these programs.  And they recognize the false choice that Obama made between reforming and strengthening our social safety net or cutting defense.

In other words, every single idea and initiative that President Obama outlined in his State of the Union Address is not only additional spending that our nation cannot afford and additional taxes that our citizens cannot afford—especially after the $600 billion tax increase passed with the fiscal cliff deal just concluded—but also directly contradicts the values and priorities of the majority of American voters: it’s the government as the solution rather than the strength and collective wisdom of Americans acting on their own priorities.  Those trying to argue otherwise are obviously intoxicated by the recycled air of their own ideological bubble.

 

In crafting his Republican response, Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) noted that he and his fellow conservatives are the defenders of working people and immigrants.  And while Rubio repeatedly suggested Republicans agree with President Obama’s assessment of the problems we face as a nation, he repeatedly made clear Progressives remain opposed to any reasonable solutions.

The Democratic Party should be less worried about demagoguery and more worried about their substance.  No party that offers “jobs” bills built on failed—repeatedly!—Keynesian spend, borrow and tax…stimulus…, sends up legislation that purports to address violence direct against women but that only increases spending without addressing causes of violence, and offers an immigration act that is nothing more than amnesty for illegal behavior can claim to represent mainstream America, let alone a governing majority.

For crying out loud, Progressives in the chamber—including Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder—couldn’t even manage to support protecting voting right protection with simple things like voter ID requirements or and helping kids go to pre-school in effective programs.  Instead of continuing to oppose everything conservatives stand for, Progressives should explain to the American people why the only thing Democrats seem to consistently stand for—higher taxes, more spending, increased borrowing, and coddled favored entities—didn’t ward off our financial crisis or create jobs with  those increases and coddlings in place.

Of course the irony in all this is had Republicans eked out a presidential victory with even a fraction of the margin President Obama enjoyed, they would be reforming and strengthening our social safety net along with repealing and replacing Obamacare and enjoying a broad and mainstream mandate to do so with strong public opinion favoring that action.  Instead, the Progressives’ present course consists of doing nothing, allowing these programs to fail, and allowing Obamacare to increase the cost of health insurance—for those who still can afford any coverage at all.

So the fact that President Obama continues to advance the plan for the nation that he does is evidence of either a deep and unyielding disdain for free markets and the power of the collective action of individual Americans without government involvement or a fundamental failure to grasp reality.  Or maybe both.

In every sense imaginable, America is stagnating, if not in decline.  Our economy is not recovering and we are in retreat from world.  Our demographics are evolving; our politics must keep up.

President Obama articulated a plan that is rich in spending and taxes, which any sensible Republican true to his principles and to the mandates of his constituency over the last two elections must be highly inclined to prevent.  The American people chose their path and elected—and reelected—a Republican House, with losses in the Senate smaller than is normal for a Presidential reelection.  Democrats would be wise to stop with the blanket criticisms and start finding a way to work with Republicans on real economic plans and social safety net reform.

Odd, isn’t it, how completely the Progressive plaint applies to openly, proudly “my way, or else” Progressives?

Obama’s Minimum Wage

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In his Tuesday State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama, among other spending demands, called for a boost to the Federal minimum wage from the current $7.25/hr to $9/hr.

Obama insists such a wage boost will “take millions of Americans out of poverty.”  However, this 24% increase in hourly wage represents a 24% increase in the cost of labor to an employer or potential employer.  This hinders employment; it doesn’t help it: that 24% is money with which an employer could do a number of other things: more product development, more advertising, more capital plant improvement, all of which lead to more hiring, or more hiring directly.

Worse, a government-mandated minimum wage increase is a permanent drag on employment and on our economy.  The ones who are the most hurt by this thing—the ones who will be laid off because the value of an hour of their work doesn’t reach $9 or those who won’t be hired in the first place, because the job available isn’t worth $9—are those who can least afford the damage.  Our youth, teens and early-20-yr-olds, already are suffering 20%-plus unemployment (almost 38% among black teens, a sharp increase during Obama’s administration), and have done for a number of years.  This is experience and job skills these people are not accumulating, and so future wage gains—even future jobs—they’re denied for that lack of experience/skill.  They’ll always be behind where they could have been had they been employable at a wage an employer could afford (which is based not just on a company’s top line, but also on those alternative uses for the money).

That lack of experience, with its concomitant loss of income potential, virtually locks those folks into their poverty condition—which represents an additional drain on our nation’s resources in the form of higher welfare support costs.

It also represents lost opportunities for our society, our nation, in the form of foregone creativity, productivity, innovation that these folks might have been able to provide had they only been employable early enough in their lives that they could have developed the knowledge base and the skills to generate these.

No, instead, we don’t have enough people employed, so we’ll raise the price of employment.  Yeah.  That’s the ticket.  We’ll go with that.  And we’ll ignore the inherently racist nature of minimum wages (or don’t disparate outcomes apply here?).

Washington, DC

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Washington[.] It’s a wonderful world, a place where every problem of life can be reduced to just two words.  Gun control.  Immigration reform.  Climate control.  The deficit, which of course can be solved in two words: a “balanced approach.”  Things so hard haven’t been so simple since Tinker Bell taught children to fly in “Peter Pan,” also with two words—pixie dust.

I was tempted to file this under my Humor key word.  But Daniel Henninger is as deadly serious as the disconnect this quote describes.

The Coming Elections and Electoral Struggle

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I’ve written a few times about how Republicans and Conservatives can attract voters to their party and cause, and how conservative principles will draw Americans of every stripe—that demographics do not threaten us, they aid us—if only we would talk to folks.  Those are principle arguments, though.

David Horowitz has a pamphlet out, “Go For the Heart: How Republicans Can Win,” that goes into far more detail.  Horowitz makes the principle arguments more cogently, and he has some things to say specifically about what to say.

Below are a couple of excerpts.

In the 2012 election, Democrats attacked Republicans as defenders of the wealthy who are not paying their “fair share.”  Republicans responded by deploring “class warfare rhetoric,” which does not answer the charge that Republicans are defending the wealthy and are uncaring.

“Caring” is not one among many issues in an election.  It is the central one. Since most policy issues are complicated, voters want to know above everything else just whom they can trust to sort out the complexities and represent them.  Before voters cast their ballots for policies or values they want a candidate or party that cares about them. …

… In the 2012 election, 70% of Asian Americans cast their ballots for Obama, even though Asians share Republican values, are family oriented, entrepreneurial, and traditional.  Asian Americans voted for Obama because they were persuaded that he cared for minorities—for them, and Romney didn’t.

The Republican response to the Democrats’ attack (that’s “class warfare rhetoric”) doesn’t work because it’s an abstraction.  “Class warfare rhetoric” has no human face; it’s about a political style.  Criticizing the wealthy for “not paying their fair share” is a direct attack on an easily identified target, which is why so many wealthy taxpayers—including entertainment figures who are normally Democrats—were outraged by the slander.  More importantly, the Democrats’ attack on the rich is an emotional appeal to those who are not rich.  It tells them that someone cares about them.

And

Elections are necessarily about “us” and “them.”  Democrats are as adept at framing “them,” as Republicans are not.  Democrats know how to incite envy and resentment, distrust and fear, and to direct these volatile emotions towards their Republican opponents.  Meanwhile, Republicans are busy complaining about the style of the Democrats’ argument.

I’m reminded of the mouse remonstrating with the owl.  The mouse thinks the owl’s ways are wrong; the owl thinks the mouse is lunch.

An answer:

The only way to confront the emotional campaign that Democrats wage in every election is through an equally emotional campaign that puts the aggressors on the defensive; that attacks them in the same moral language, identifying them as the bad guys, the oppressors of women, children, minorities and the middle class, that takes away from them the moral high ground which they now occupy.  You can’t confront an emotionally based moral argument with an intellectual analysis.

Horowitz goes on, then he summarizes.  Essentially, Republicans need to stop playing small ball, need to stop reacting (piecemeal as it is) to the…Democrats’…initiative: Republicans—and Conservatives, say I—need to seize the initiative, to go on the offensive:

  1. Put the aggressors on the defensive.
  2. Put their victims—women, minorities, the poor and working Americans—in front of every argument and every policy in the same way they [Democrats] do.
  3. Start the campaign now (because the Democrats already have).

For instance:

Throughout the Republican campaign, there was a lot of talk about “job creators.”  There were a lot of defenses of “job creators,” whom Democrats quickly redefined as rich people who don’t pay their fair share.  That’s the problem with playing a “prevent defense.”  Most Americans see job creators—employers—as rich people. … If you’re fighting for the underdogs, you have to go on the attack.

What about job destroyers?  What about Democrats who are killing the jobs of ordinary Americans—not just failing to create them…?
…
Why are Republicans so reluctant to name the victims of Democrat policies, particularly the victims among America’s minority communities and working classes?  Why don’t Republicans identify Democrats as a threat to those communities as Cuomo declared Republicans a threat to women?

Thus,

The bottom line is this: If Republicans want to persuade minorities they care about them, they have to stand up for them; they have to defend them; and they have to show them that Democrats are playing them for suckers, exploiting them, oppressing them, and profiting from their suffering.
…
The way for Republicans to show they care about minorities is to defend them against their oppressors and exploiters, which in every major inner city in America without exception are Democrats. Democrats run the welfare and public education systems; they have created the policies that ruin the lives of the recipients of their handouts. It’s time that Republicans started to hold Democrats to account; to put them on the defensive and take away the moral high ground, which they now occupy illegitimately. Government welfare is not just wasteful; it is destructive. The public school system in America’s inner cities is not merely ineffective; it is racist and criminal.

Horowitz’ pamphlet contains much more than just those items, though, and it’s well worth reading in its entirety.  One place it can be read is at Power Line.

There’s one more thing Conservatives–including Tea Partiers–should do, that Horowitz doesn’t mention.  We should put up candidates in Democratic primaries, forcing a primary contest if necessary, to make Democrat Senate and House incumbents actively defend their in-office records.  In public.