“Memory And Respect”: Sandy Hook, The Green Ribbon, And NRA Bullying
If a viewer wanted to tell who was a Democrat and who was a Republican at the State of the Union address, there was no need to match faces to facebooks or even to see where they sat in the House chamber. All that was necessary was to look for the green ribbon.
Democrats (and some guests) sported bright green ribbons on their lapels, symbolizing support for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School gun massacre. Republicans were largely ribbon-free. You can see the loop of green on the suit of Vice President Biden in photos of him standing behind President Obama at the speech. House Speaker John Boehner’s lapel is bare. It was like a live-action version of the Dr. Seuss tale about the Star-bellied Sneetches and the Plain-bellied Sneetches. But instead of being a thinly-veiled lesson on race relations, as the children’s book is, the ribbon divide displayed a force nearly as powerful in American politics: the National Rifle Association.
Now, in the plain-lapelled members’ defense, there is something a little irritating about the whole ribbon thing. There’s a ribbon for everything (if there isn’t a rubber bracelet), and not everyone wants or needs to wear a spot of color to express concern for an issue or disease. How many of us sided with Seinfeld‘s Kramer when he refused to wear the AIDS ribbon (even as he attempted to do the AIDS walk)? The social pressure to show solidarity by accessories can be a tad too much.
But congressmen and congressional politics are all about symbols. So why couldn’t the entire House and Senate just wear the damn ribbon? Sadly, the ribbon came to mean something more political than it was meant to be. It was supposed to be a symbol of memory and respect for the children gunned down in their elementary school. Instead, it became a symbol of being for gun control. And while there are indeed members who sincerely oppose any kind of gun control on Second Amendment grounds, there are others who are simply too afraid of the NRA’s power to take a stand—even a mild one—for even the tamest of gun safety proposals. Someone can be a strong Second Amendment supporter and still have compassion for the families of the Sandy Hook victims. The NRA shouldn’t frighten lawmakers from showing basic respect for innocent victims of violence.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 14, 2013
“The Tone Ain’t The Problem”: The GOP’s Woman Problem Is The GOP
Tuesday night was supposed to be another big step in the Republican rebranding, but it didn’t really turn out that way. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio proved more Aqua- than Superman. And Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the dark horse darling, turned into something of a snooze inducing sleep sheep.
But maybe GOP-ers can take solace from this: it doesn’t really matter. Because what Rubio and Paul did mere hours before their respective turns on the national stage likely did more long-term damage to the GOP brand than any speech could fix.
Our story starts all the way back in 1993. That’s when the Senate Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of then-senator Joe Biden, issued a report showing that women were disproportionately falling victim to some heinous crimes, crimes that were also less likely to be successfully prosecuted. In other words, if you robbed someone you were more likely to face punishment than if you raped them.
This, understandably, caused some pause. How could our criminal justice system be serving women so poorly? And what could be done to fix it?
One option was to continue to work at the state level to make things better, and that’s what some people did. But others looked at the years leading up to the Biden report and recognized that states had been doing the best they could to stop violent crimes against women for decades and their best wasn’t enough. That helped pave the way for federal engagement: the Violence Against Women Act, also known as VAWA. It’s been on the books for 20 years now.
Two days ago, 22 Republican senators decided that was a mistake. And it wasn’t just any group of 22—it featured many of the party’s leading lights: the presidential frontrunner, Rubio; his Tea Party rival Paul; two other Republicans who’ve occupied an increasing share of the national stage: Ted Cruz of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; and the immediate past head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, John Cornyn. They all voted against reauthorizing the law.
Why? Well, they offered all sorts of reasons, but most seemed aimed at the same place: the bill was an overreach. It made the definition of domestic violence too broad. It trampled the rights of defendants. It was doing something best left to the states.
If you think it unusual to hear some of these arguments coming out of the mouths of conservatives, you’re right. Under ordinary circumstances, it’s conservatives who prefer the sledgehammer approach to criminal justice, but here they say that’s the problem. And its conservatives who for decades have done more than anyone else to gut the due process rights of defendants. But now they rally to the cause of those accused of domestic violence? That’s quite a thing.
And sure, we hear the 10th Amendment argument raised just about every time a conservative wants the federal government to stop doing something. But here’s a news bulletin: the reason the Violence Against Women Act came into being in the first place was because the states weren’t getting it done. The 10th Amendment isn’t like putting on ruby slippers. Invoking it over and over again doesn’t make the federal government go away.
In any case, it’s hard not to see something a little less grandiose than constitutional scholarship underlying the Republican efforts. In the Heritage Foundation’s one pager urging a no vote, its authors warn that provisions of the bill will “increase fraud and false allegations [of abuse], for which there is no legal recourse”, and that “Under VAWA, men effectively lose their constitutional rights to due process, presumption of innocence, equal treatment under the law, the right to a fair trial and to confront one’s accusers, the right to bear arms, and all custody/visitation rights.” The bill is intended to protect women from deadly harm, but its pretty evident who the Heritage Foundation is preoccupied with protecting.
Think that’s an unfair characterization? Maybe. But this is a party whose right wing has found reason to oppose equal pay for women; which questioned whether Hilary Clinton was faking an emotional response at the Benghazi hearing; which raised objections to women serving equally in the military; and which seems to have developed a fetish for transvaginal ultrasound. Etc.
Now, to be sure, there were 23 Republicans in the Senate who found it within themselves to set aside whatever convoluted ideological calculations swept up their brethren, and voted yes on Tuesday. And that’s a good thing. But for the party that lost women in the last election by double digits, it’s hardly enough.
If Republicans really want to become more appealing to more of the electorate, here’s some advice: The tone ain’t great, but the tone ain’t the problem. When so many of your party leaders believe what these guys do, to mangle a phrase from James Carville, it’s the you, stupid. You’re the problem.
And you might want to try and fix that first.
By: Anson Kaye, U. S. News and World Report, February 14, 2013
“The Alliance Of Evil”: The Increasingly Ridiculous Hagel Opposition
Here it is, everyone, the absolute epitome of Lindsey Graham statements:
Sen Graham: “Unless there’s some bombshell, I’d be prepared to move on” and vote for cloture on Hagel, after 10 days.
— Todd Zwillich (@toddzwillich) February 14, 2013
Lindsey Graham on Hagel: “10 days from now I’ll feel better about it.”
— Todd Zwillich (@toddzwillich) February 14, 2013
Sen. Graham and his best friend John McCain have been blocking the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary, because they want to know whether President Obama called the president of Libya the night of the Benghazi attack. While that’s not a very good reason to filibuster a Cabinet nominee, it is at least “a reason.” The White House has complied, giving Graham and McCain what they want. Graham’s response: Now he is just going to pointlessly delay the Hagel vote, because it will make him feel good. As always, with Lindsey Graham, being a senator is all about feelings.
While Lindsey Graham says he will have changed his mind on Hagel’s suitability in 10 days’ time, lots of other Hagel opponents are definitely not going to “feel better,” because they have all convinced themselves that Hagel is basically America’s Worst Anti-Semite. Here is some “proof,” from a guy who writes for the depressing website named after Andrew Breitbart:
On Thursday, Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed that one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called “Friends of Hamas.”
Hey, guess what, that is just a totally made-up group that does not exist. Dave Weigel did this crazy thing where he actually spent some time looking into the claim and it turns out, whoops, Breitbart.com’s Ben Shapiro published a made-up, untrue thing, because Breitbart.com’s Ben Shapiro is both a liar and a moron. (Mostly moron.) Hint No. 1 should probably have been that a pro-Hamas front group would not call itself “Friends of Hamas.”
Despite (or because of) the fact that this “Friends of Hamas” thing was a not terribly convincing lie, it was repeated all over the conservative press:
It caught fire on the right in no time. “That is quite the accusation,” wrote Moe Lane at RedState. “All they have to do to debunk it is to have Hagel reveal his foreign donors.” In the National Review, Andrew Stiles reported that “rumors abound on Capitol Hill that a full disclosure of Hagel’s professional ties would reveal financial relationships with a number of ‘unsavory’ groups, including one purportedly called ‘Friends of Hamas.’” Arutz Sheva and Algemeiner, conservative pro-Israel news organizations, ran versions of the story based 100 percent on links to the Shapiro original. On February 7, radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Sen. Rand Paul about the Hagel nomination and pushed him on the “Friends of Hamas” story.
It was also repeated by the National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy, appearing on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show. And by Mike Huckabee. And Frank Gaffney.
So, in case you were wondering, if you want to viciously smear someone, all you have to do is send a stupid lie to a Breitbart guy and he will publish it and then everyone in the conservative movement will repeat it. Just type, “Dear Ben Shapiro I heard Chuck Hagel cashed a check for ten million Soviet rubles from a group called ‘THE ALLIANCE OF EVIL’” into your AOL mail program and I guarantee Sen. Ted Cruz will be demanding answers within a week.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin, who is an employee of the Washington Post, is just lazily tweeting McCarthyite guilt-by-association nonsense about how Hagel once gave a speech to a group that, on a different occasion, defended a person who said a bad thing about Israel. “#extreme,” she adds, in case you were unsure whether or not she thought Chuck Hagel was extreme.
Chuck Hagel somehow made all of these people even stupider.
UPDATE: Democrats failed to garner the 60 votes needed (by a margin of 58-40-1) to move Hagel’s confirmation to the floor. A date for a new vote will be set later in the month.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, February 14, 2013
“Wayne LaPierre Is Very Afraid”: A Worldview Of Nightmares, Fears And Paralyzing Paranoia
It must be terrifying to be Wayne LaPierre, the man who has led the NRA for the past two decades. For years he has shared his nightmares and fears of daily living with us — a worldview of paralyzing paranoia, where terrorists, bad weather and Latin American gangsters lurk behind every corner, ready to prey on unarmed citizens.
“Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States. Phoenix is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world,” he explains in his latest expression of anguish, an Op-Ed published in the Daily Caller yesterday. “And though the states on the U.S./Mexico border may be the first places in the nation to suffer from cartel violence, by no means are they the last.”
“Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals,” he continues. “These are perils we are sure to face — not just maybe. It’s not paranoia to buy a gun. It’s survival.”
While the world has always been an impossibly forbidding place, LaPierre continues, our socialist president has made it worse, naturally: “When the next terrorist attack comes, the Obama administration won’t accept responsibility. Instead, it will do what it does every time: blame a scapegoat and count on Obama’s ‘mainstream’ media enablers to go along.”
And finally, the solution: “No wonder Americans are buying guns in record numbers right now, while they still can and before their choice about which firearm is right for their family is taken away forever.”
(What LaPierre should really be worried about is a faulty “shift” button on his keyboard, as he inexplicably failed to capitalize the name of his organization here: “Now, an even stronger nra is the only chance gun owners have to withstand the coming siege.”)
This frightful fretting is nothing new for LaPierre.
When the NRA head appeared on Fox News Sunday earlier this month, he told host Chris Wallace, “My gosh, in the shadow of where we are sitting now, gangs are out there in Washington, D.C. You can buy drugs. You can buy guns. They are trafficking in 13-year-old girls. And our government is letting them!”
At his much-lampooned press conference after the Newtown massacre he said, “The truth is, that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters. People that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons, that no sane person can ever possibly comprehend them. They walk among us every single day, and does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school, he’s already identified at this very moment?”
This is bread and butter LaPierre, seeded in the paranoid high crime days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when politicians feared the rise of a generation of crack-addicted “superpredators” and when anyone aspiring to have a voice in the national public policy debate had to be “tough on crime.”
And if it wasn’t criminals, it was government you should fear, LaPierre has repeatedly warned over the past 25 years. Three months after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, when more than 160 federal employees were murdered, LaPierre went on “Meet the Press” and warned that federal law enforcement agents, in “Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms,” were out to “attack law-abiding citizens.”
That prompted former President George H.W. Bush to publicly revoke his lifetime membership to the NRA in a sharply worded letter published in the New York Times.
Eventually, everyone else moved past the heady ’90s paranoia of inner-city crime and black helicopters — LaPierre did not.
Violent crime is now at a two-decade low and urban centers are seeing a revival unlike any time in the past 100 years. But LaPierre chooses to ignore that. And he chooses to ignore the fact that most gun violence is suicide, while most homicide is inflicted by people who know each other (usually scorned lovers, angry relatives and criminals in dispute) — hardened criminals preying on innocents is relatively rare.
For instance, in his Daily Caller Op-Ed, LaPierre writes hyperbolically: “After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.”
In fact, crime dropped in New York City during Hurricane Sandy, with murders plummeting a whopping 86 percent over the same period in 2011 and overall crime down 27 percent. There was a single homicide on the Monday before the storm hit, then none for the next five days.
“After a natural disaster or large-scale catastrophe like 9/11, we see conventional crime come down,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne explained. “A lot of people are indoors. Taverns are closed. You have less people out late at night and getting into disputes.”
While conditions after storm were hellish in places, there were also plenty of beautiful stories of cooperation and altruism and small acts of random kindness: Sandwich shop owners staying open 24 hours a day to serve people with no food, some giving it away for free; a hotel manager turning away marathoners to give shelter to victims; people running extension cords out their window so strangers could charge their cellphones for free; a doctor giving free healthcare to victims, etc.
LaPierre chooses to ignore all of this and see the world as nothing but a cold and scary place where you can’t trust anyone and only lethal force can protect you. Too bad for him.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, February 14, 2013
“A Nonpartisan No-Brainer”: Raising The Minimum Wage Is Beneficial For Individuals And Businesses
In Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, President Obama called on members of Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour, something Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) supported during the 2012 election. The president said, “This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank; rent or eviction; scraping by or finally getting ahead.”
Who could argue with that?
Two Republican leaders have voiced their opposition to the president’s proposal. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) agree that raising the minimum wage hurts businesses, claiming that increasing the cost of employment makes it difficult for businesses to sustain themselves and deters them from hiring employees.
A study released yesterday by the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggests otherwise. John Schmitt, who authored Why Does The Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?, argues that raising wages actually has little to no effect on employment. Schmitt offers 11 “channels of adjustment,” ways in which businesses could respond to a raise in minimum wage. These include raising prices on goods and services (offset by higher demand), increase in worker efficiency and effort, and less difficulty in recruiting and retaining employees which “may compensate some or all of the increased wage costs, allowing employers to maintain employment levels.”
Based on the results of this study, small businesses have everything to gain in paying their employees a wage they can live on. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman addressed the myth behind cutting minimum wage during a time of recession back in 2009. “In reality, reducing wages would at best do nothing for employment; more likely it would actually be contractionary,” Krugman said. “Proposing wage cuts as a solution to unemployment is a totally counterproductive idea.”
Larger corporations such as Walmart and McDonald’s that employ 66% of low-wage workers are rewarding their top executives in profitable years with raises, while their low-wage employees are still making minimum wage — a pay level that is not sustainable for many American families. In fact, if minimum wage matched inflation, it would be $10.58 per hour.
As stated in a Huffington Post article, “This would guarantee that workers on the lowest rung of the economic ladder don’t lose purchasing power, but it would also mean fast-food companies and other low-wage employers would have to pay higher wages just about every year, except in rare cases of deflation.”
This type of proposal was already favored in 2010, when the Public Religion Research Institute conducted a poll and found that 67 percent of respondents were in favor of increasing the minimum wage to $10.00 an hour—that includes a majority of respondents who identified as Republicans.
In 2007, President Bush signed the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which easily passed in the House 315-116, including bipartisan support from 82 Republicans. It passed the Senate — with the help of Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — by a 94-3 vote before making it to the president’s desk.
Studies clearly point to the profitable effects on individuals and businesses if earnings per hour are raised to a level where low-wage workers are actually able to support themselves and their families. If Republicans like Boehner and Rubio are truly advocating for their middle-class constituents, then supporting the president in ensuring that workers earn what they deserve — and can live on — ought to be a nonpartisan no-brainer.
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, February 14, 2013
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