Guns, The Cliff, The Right, & The Left

It’s madness all around!!

In my last post "The Fiscal Cliff" I quoted The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence as reporting that more than 30,000 people are killed by guns in this nation each year. This is mostly in our cities and in our poor African-American communities, but it has not, and continues not to raise the conscience of the media or the Nation. But 20 children and six adults killed in a suburb in Connecticut get two weeks of coverage and a Nation outraged. Something is wrong with our values.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive Vice President, speaks and says that the answer to gun violence is more guns, every cable news channel covers his speech. The following Sunday all the Sunday morning news programs have a representative of the NRA on their show. Why? Why?

Who in Hell is the NRA? They have been represented by the media as the representative of gun owners, of hunters, of sportsmen. Are they? According to their own website they have four million members. The adult population of the United States is 250 million adults over the age of 18.  

Four million is a tiny percentage. The NRA speaks only for the gun manufacturing industry. The media has allowed the myth that they speak for anyone else. Annual membership in the NRA costs only $25.-  so they clearly don't get their money from their members. They get it from gun manufacturers. The NRA speaks only for the gun manufacturing industry. The media has allowed the myth that they speak for anyone else.

It is time to unmask this charade!!!

As for the Cliff, the Right claims they are worried about the deficit, but reducing it by increasing tax revenues from the income tax, or the estate tax, or the capital gains tax, or on dividends is opposed fanatically. Do they really care about the deficit? Or is that just a ruse for their true desire to, in the words of their hero, Grover Glenn Norquist, “just want to shrink it (government) down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

The Left e.g. Paul Krugman, insist that the best think for the economy is an increased deficit, at least in the short run. But they are adamant that taxes on the rich must be raised, which lowers the deficit and going over the cliff would have decreased the deficit by a hell of a lot.

They tell us that the most important thing that our government can do is increase jobs, but they seem to almost relish the idea of going over the cliff, which would cost untold jobs. They described any deal as a bad deal that reduces entitlement benefits by one iota, but this deal gave not one inch on entitlements, and they call it a bad deal.

I must admit that I find myself disappointed by the deal in that it did not raise enough revenue. But for me that makes sense, since I believe that debt does matter. But if you argue that it doesn’t, why is this important? But as I read the reports I come away with the feeling that the early estimates of how much revenue was raised are just that, early estimates. I have a feeling that these early estimates do not take into account the reductions in exemptions or other aspects. The “deal” may yet show much more revenue estimates than are now being recognized.

In the words of our self-described Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders:

This agreement preserves incentives for the development of clean energy by encouraging companies that are creating jobs in America and helping reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. That is a win-win for our economy and our environment. In Vermont and across the country, hundreds of wind manufacturing plants already are producing wind turbines, and the industry is providing jobs for 75,000 American workers. The fact that we have doubled wind generation since 2008 is an American success story. Extending the Production Tax Credit means we can continue the tremendous growth in wind and other safe, clean, renewable sources energy that must be developed if we are to reverse global warming. 

This agreement also is a major victory for Social Security recipients and for disabled veterans. Despite an eleventh-hour bid by Senate Republicans, the final bill does not include their proposed change in how cost-of-living adjustments are calculated. As the founder of the Defending Social Security Caucus and the incoming chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, I am proud that organizations representing seniors and veterans worked together to block the switch to a so-called chained CPI as a way to cut future benefits for more than 55 million Americans.

But regardless of anything else, the President is our quarterback and unlike others, I refuse to indulge in the “Monday morning quarterback” syndrome.

What is obvious is that the President is first and foremost concerned with the economy and jobs. He is not willing to let the economy tank and the progress we have made in creating jobs to be stymied. The deal caused a huge jump in the markets throughout the world, and as for jobs, quoting Reuters: “(t)he ADP National Employment Report showed the private sector added 215,000 jobs in December, comfortably above economists' expectation of a 133,000 gain.” That is something to be celebrated.

I have great difficulty understanding my friends on the Left.

When Bill Clinton “triangulated” and signed into law a devastating revision in our “Aid to Families with Dependant Children," put into place the outrageous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in our military, signed DOMA into law, acquiesced in the repeal of Glass-Steagal, and allowed an outrageous new bankruptcy law that denied bankruptcy to people with excessive credit card debt, (See here for my comments on May 5th, 2009) and famously said “The era of big government is over” the Left for the most part was quiet. Now that we have a President who fights for our values, it is never good enough, and we act like “Monday morning quarterbacks” at every turn.

I know! I heard it over and over again! “We are only trying to get him to do the right thing.” But what is “the right thing” in an age of intransient sabotage, of hostage taking of our economy, or in the words of the former Treasury Secretary in the Republican Administration of G.W. Bush, PaulO’Neill, “Those Who Won’t Raise Debt Ceiling Are Terrorists”.

When terrorists take hostages and demand a ransom, those who care about the hostage must always ask themselves, “Do we let them kill the hostage?” or do we pay ransom. How much? Do we pay a little to keep the hostage alive, or do we pay a lot to have the hostage released. These are always agonizing questions. The quarterback must call the plays. The second guessers and the “Monday Morning Quarterbacks” must stand down.

E.J. Dionne, writing in the Wahington Post said:

To be deemed a serious analyst at the moment seems to require a lot of hand-wringing and sneering over how awful Congress looked the past few days as it rushed a “fiscal cliff” deal into law.  

So permit me to burn my membership card in the League of Commentators and Pundits.

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