“Everyone But Us”: The NRA Should Add Its Own Members To Its “Enemies List”
Last September, The National Rifle Association released its annual “enemies list” of organizations and individuals who endorse “anti-gun positions.” The bizarre list of 525 names includes mainstream organizations from AARP to the National Association of Police Organizations, and celebrities, national figures and journalists from Maya Angelou to Henry Winkler to E.J. Dionne Jr.
But why aren’t NRA members on the enemies list? After all, 75 percent of NRA members support universal background checks for gun sales, which the NRA opposes.
And why aren’t women on the enemies list? A majority 67 percent of women support a ban on semi-automatic weapons, which the NRA opposes.
And why aren’t gun owners on the enemies list? A majority 60 percent of gun owners favor a federal database to track gun sales, which the NRA opposes.
Lastly, why aren’t the American people on the NRA’s enemies list? The majority of Americans support an assault weapons ban, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and universal background checks… all of which the NRA opposes.
There is one group that the NRA would never add to its enemies list — gun manufacturers. One must always remember on which side one’s bread is buttered.
By: Josh Markds, The National Memo, February 1, 2013
“Its Time To Reboot”: Ronald Reagan Is The GOP’s Problem, Not Its Solution
So the Republican Party’s going through some soul searching. And after the results of the 2012 elections that seems like a sensible thing to do.
But so far most of the changes contemplated tend toward the cosmetic—we have to change our “tone,” they say, or the “face” of the party. And that’s all well and good. But one is left to wonder: Is there something going on here that requires plumbing a little deeper into the Republican depths?
I think the answer is yes.
Come back with me to 1981. It’s Ronald Reagan’s inaugural, a shining moment for conservatives and the GOP, punctuated by his famous quotation: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Those words were the apotheosis of a conservative line of argument championed by the likes of William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk for over 30 years. And here was a president not attacking this government program or that one, but instead indicting government as a whole. How satisfying that must have been for those who had long railed against programs like the New Deal and the Great Society.
Not surprisingly, Reagan’s creed became a rallying cry for conservatives and over the past three decades it has remained ever thus. It’s a great slogan that immediately communicates a distinctive set of values, and in that respect, in many cases, it has served the GOP well. But as an organizing principle for electoral success? Well, that’s a little more complicated.
For the GOP’s traditional base—the wealthy—it’s a terrific message. If you have sufficient wealth, you don’t have much need for the domestic programs you see your taxes going to fund, and maybe it offends you to see your money being redistributed by the government to folks less well off than you. If that’s the case, you might prefer a federal government that does less and, as a result, costs less, leaving more of the money you earn in your pocket. In other words, for you, government really is the problem: it diminishes the amount of money you can spend on the things you want, and it does so without offering you something that you regard as an offsetting benefit.
If the number of people who don’t need domestic programs were large enough the GOP would need go no further than Reagan’s creed to win elections. But it isn’t.
Recognizing this, clever Republicans take a step back from the broad sweep of Reaganism and instead try taking it to a more tactical scale, identifying a particular demographic group whose taxes can be said to be paying for a program that benefits someone else. By saying to Group A you are paying for the benefits of Group B some try to mine a latent vein of resentment without threatening government programs that benefit a broader swath of the electorate. See: Reagan appealing to blue color whites by talking about welfare.
Finding the sweet spot between Reagan maximized and Reagan targeted is often the key to Republican electoral prospects, as no less than Reagan himself found out. Early in his first term he managed to push through broad spending cuts. But as people learned the impact those cuts were actually having (remember ketchup as vegetable?) momentum waned. And that’s the thing: take Reagan too far, and your spending cuts start hacking away at programs that people have come to rely on. Think school lunches. Student loans. Social Security. You see, sometimes government is the solution, no matter how much conservatives don’t want to believe it.
Today, the Republican caucus seems fractured between true believers looking to cut anything that moves, and more traditional Republicans who speak Reagan boldly, but apply him more cautiously. And while the radicals have had some well-publicized victories, the long-term health of the party seems dependent upon the veterans’ ability to retake the agenda. One suspects that that is how this play will eventually unfold.
But I’d like to suggest something a little different. There’s an honorable role to be played by a party that holds government expenditure to a rigorous standard. To be sure, for every government program that works there are any number that don’t. Fashioning a government that is narrowly tailored to the problems its constituents face, and that moves efficiently to address them (whether through a program or the absence of one) ought to be everyone’s goal.
Just imagine how constructive a Republican party able to have a rational discussion about the role of government in our lives could be, a party able to contemplate not only the costs but also the benefits of government, and one that offered a principled view about how to distinguish between the two. That would be quite something. And it would offer an extraordinary service to this country.
But for that to happen, something pretty fundamental has to change. There must be a recognition that for all he did for the Republican cause, in this present crisis Ronald Reagan isn’t the solution to your problem; Ronald Reagan is the problem. And its time to reboot.
By: Anson Kaye, U. S. News and World Report, February 1, 2013
“The Straw Woman”: The NRA’s Phony Women’s Pro-Gun Argument
The latest weapon in the war against reasonable restrictions on access to guns is the straw woman. Don’t fall for her.
This formulation would have you believe gun rights are women’s rights and that limits on guns would harm women disproportionately. The insinuation is that only insensitive men, who can’t possibly identify with the vulnerable position in which women find themselves, would be foisting gun control on them.
“Guns make women safer,” Gayle Trotter of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, told the Senate Judiciary Committee at its Wednesday hearing on gun violence. “For women, the ability to arm ourselves for our protection is even more consequential than for men. Because guns are the great equalizer in a violent confrontation. As a result, we protect women by safeguarding our Second Amendment rights. Every woman deserves a fighting chance.”
This argument would be powerful, if only it were true. The facts suggest precisely the opposite.
First, women are far more likely to be the victims of gun violence than to benefit from using a gun in self-defense.
Second, the restrictions under discussion would not harm women. They would either make women safer or, at the very least, not impede their ability to use guns in self-defense.
On the threat that guns pose to women, consider: Women are far less likely to be the victims of gun violence than men. But they are far more likely than men to be killed by someone they know, generally a spouse or partner.
Women with a gun in the home were nearly three times as likely to be the victim of homicide than women living in a home without firearms, according to a 2003 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
“There’s good evidence that a gun in the home increases the likelihood that a woman in the home will die,” said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. “There is no evidence that a gun in the home is protective for the woman.”
So much for guns making women safer. Still, the Second Amendment grants women as well as men the freedom to take the risk of having one at home.
Then on to the second issue: whether various gun-control proposals — enhanced background checks, limits on magazine sizes, restrictions on assault weapons — would make it more difficult for women to defend themselves.
Trotter’s Exhibit A was Sarah McKinley, an Oklahoma widow alone with her 3-month-old son when two intruders, one armed with a foot-long knife, broke into her home. McKinley shot and killed one of them with a Remington 12-gauge shotgun.
But here’s the problem with Trotter’s example: Nothing in the restrictions under discussion would have stopped McKinley.
As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) observed, “I think it proves the point that with ordinary firearms, not hundred-magazine, peculiar types of artifacts, people are quite capable of defending themselves.”
Trotter remained impervious to Whitehouse’s logic. “How can you say that?” she asked. “You are a large man. . . . You cannot understand. You are not a woman stuck in her house having to defend her children, not able to leave her child, not able to go seek safety.”
Trotter argued that assault weapons such as the AR-15 are young women’s “weapon of choice” because they are accurate, light and, most of all, intimidating. “The peace of mind that a woman has as she’s facing three, four, five violent attackers . . . knowing that she has a scary-looking gun,” she said, “gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened violent criminals.”
You have got to be kidding. The intruder is going to be more scared off — the woman is going to feel more empowered — because the gun is scarier-looking?
If anything, women should be clamoring for gun-control measures — in particular, for expanded background checks. Individuals convicted of domestic violence are prohibited from buying guns — but, of course, the porousness of the current background check system lets abusers dodge that rule. And, according to the National Institute of Justice, abused women are six times more likely to be killed when a gun is in the home.
“I speak on behalf of millions of American women across the country who urge you to defend our Second Amendment right to choose to defend ourselves,” Trotter proclaimed.
I’d say that I speak for millions of American women who reject this phony solicitude, but there is a better representative. She spoke at the hearing, too. “Too many children are dying,” she said, painfully enunciating each syllable. “We must do something.”
Her name is Gabby Giffords. Anyone dare tell her that guns make women safer?
By: Ruth Marcus, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 31, 2013
“Looking For Mister Goodpain”: The Doctrine That Has Dominated Economic Discourse Is Wrong On All Fronts
Three years ago, a terrible thing happened to economic policy, both here and in Europe. Although the worst of the financial crisis was over, economies on both sides of the Atlantic remained deeply depressed, with very high unemployment. Yet the Western world’s policy elite somehow decided en masse that unemployment was no longer a crucial concern, and that reducing budget deficits should be the overriding priority.
In recent columns, I’ve argued that worries about the deficit are, in fact, greatly exaggerated — and have documented the increasingly desperate efforts of the deficit scolds to keep fear alive. Today, however, I’d like to talk about a different but related kind of desperation: the frantic effort to find some example, somewhere, of austerity policies that succeeded. For the advocates of fiscal austerity — the austerians — made promises as well as threats: austerity, they claimed, would both avert crisis and lead to prosperity.
And let nobody accuse the austerians of lacking a sense of romance; in fact, they’ve spent years looking for Mr. Goodpain.
The search began with a passionate fling between the austerians and the Republic of Ireland, which turned to harsh spending cuts soon after its real estate bubble burst, and which for a while was held up as the ultimate exemplar of economic virtue. Ireland, said Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank, was the role model for all of Europe’s debtor nations. American conservatives went even further. For example, Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, declared that Ireland’s policies showed the way forward for the United States, too.
Mr. Trichet’s encomium was delivered in March 2010; at the time Ireland’s unemployment rate was 13.3 percent. Since then, every uptick in the Irish economy has been hailed as proof that the nation is recovering — but as of last month the unemployment rate was 14.6 percent, only slightly down from the peak it reached early last year.
After Ireland came Britain, where the Tory-led government — to the sound of hosannas from many pundits — turned to austerity in mid-2010, influenced in part by its belief that Irish policies were a smashing success. Unlike Ireland, Britain had no particular need to adopt austerity: like every other advanced country that issues debt in its own currency, it was and still is able to borrow at historically low interest rates. Nonetheless, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron insisted both that a harsh fiscal squeeze was necessary to appease creditors and that it would actually boost the economy by inspiring confidence.
What actually happened was an economic stall. Before the turn to austerity, Britain was recovering more or less in tandem with the United States. Since then, the U.S. economy has continued to grow, although more slowly than we’d like — but Britain’s economy has been dead in the water.
At this point, you might have expected austerity advocates to consider the possibility that there was something wrong with their analysis and policy prescriptions. But no. They went looking for new heroes and found them in the small Baltic nations, Latvia in particular, a nation that looms amazingly large in the austerian imagination.
At one level this is kind of funny: austerity policies have been applied all across Europe, yet the best example of success the austerians can come up with is a nation with fewer inhabitants than, say, Brooklyn. Still, the International Monetary Fund recently issued two new reports on the Latvian economy, and they really help put this story into perspective.
To be fair to the Latvians, they do have something to be proud of. After experiencing a Great-Depression-level slump, their economy has experienced two years of solid growth and falling unemployment. Despite that growth, however, they have only regained part of the lost ground in terms of either output or employment — and the unemployment rate is still 14 percent. If this is the austerians’ idea of an economic miracle, they truly are the children of a lesser god.
Oh, and if we’re going to invoke the experience of small nations as evidence about what economic policies work, let’s not forget the true economic miracle that is Iceland — a nation that was at ground zero of the financial crisis, but which, thanks to its embrace of unorthodox policies, has almost fully recovered.
So what do we learn from the rather pathetic search for austerity success stories? We learn that the doctrine that has dominated elite economic discourse for the past three years is wrong on all fronts. Not only have we been ruled by fear of nonexistent threats, we’ve been promised rewards that haven’t arrived and never will. It’s time to put the deficit obsession aside and get back to dealing with the real problem — namely, unacceptably high unemployment.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 31, 2013
“You First, Senator”: The Question John McCain Wants To Ask, But Not Answer
Chuck Hagel was not at all supportive of the 2007 Bush/Cheney troop “surge” in Iraq, and at his confirmation hearing this morning, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) seemed to characterize it as a make-or-break issue for the former senator’s confirmation. http://youtu.be/aN5_O6TJL6c
For those who can’t watch clips online, McCain noted Hagel criticizing the surge policy at the time as the “most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.” McCain demanded to know “Were you correct in your assessment?” When Hagel deferred to “the judgment of history,” McCain continued to hammer away, demanding, “I want to know if you were right or wrong.”
Watching the exchange, it might seem as if Hagel is being evasive, or at least defensive, about a misstep on his record. But the larger context is important.
For McCain, the surge worked, ergo, anyone who questioned the policy is necessarily a fool who lacks credibility on foreign policy, national security, and the use of military power. In reality, conditions in Iraq may have improved in 2008 and 2009, but there were a variety of factors — including the Sunni Awakening, which pre-dated the surge, and a ceasefire announced by Shiite militia leader Muqtada Sadr — that contributed to the decline in violence. To argue that “surge = success” demonstrates a lack of depth.
But more important in this instance is McCain pretending to have credibility. “I want to know if you were right or wrong”? That’s not a bad question, necessarily, but I’d love to hear McCain himself try to answer it.
This guy wants to launch a fight over who was correct about the war in Iraq? Seriously?
I’m reminded of this amazing Frank Rich piece from 2009.
[McCain] made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.
What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.
Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.
He takes no responsibility for any of this.
McCain now seems eager to have a conversation about who has credibility on Bush-era wars, even with the benefit of hindsight. It’s one of the more profound examples in recent memory of a politician lacking in self-awareness.
Indeed, as of this morning, McCain actually seems to believe it’s worse to get the surge question wrong than to get the entire war wrong.
“I want to know if you were right or wrong,” McCain said. You first, senator.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 31, 2013
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