“Another Kid With An AR-15”: Yet, Washington Has Given Up On Gun Control And Doing Absolutely Nothing
The scene described by eyewitnesses and authorities is one out of a video game: Suspected shooter John Zawahri turned the beachfront Southern California community of Santa Monica into a battle zone for 15 minutes Friday afternoon, cutting a bloody swath through a mile of the city as he shoot at cars and passersby with abandon after killing two family members and burning down their house. NBC News:
As firefighters first arrived at the scene to extinguish the blaze, the gunman carjacked a vehicle being driven by an adult woman and threatened to murder her if she didn’t drive him to the nearby college campus, Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said Saturday.
The gunman demanded the woman stop at various points along the mile-long ride so he could fire indiscriminately at passing cars, police said. He shot at a woman driving past the scene of the carjacking, wounding her, and later sprayed bullets at a public bus, shattering glass and injuring three people.
As they approached the SMC campus, the shooter fired at Carlos Navarro Franco while he sat behind the wheel of his SUV, which spun out of control and careened into a wall…[he] died instantly.
And yet, the scene is all too quotidian and real. It follows a familiar script: A young man — Zawahri’s 24th birthday would have been on Saturday — who suffered from emotional and psychological problems — he was previously hospitalized for mental illness — wielding an AR-15 rifle — the same gun used at Sandy Hook and Aurora and Oregon and countless other shootings — to kill innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In this case, five dead, including the gunman, and at least four others injured.
The parallels with alleged Newtown shooter Adam Lanza go even deeper. Zawahri’s parents were divorced and he lived with his mother, whom neighbors desired as a “lovely woman…with a crazy kid.” “John had a fascination with guns,” a friend told the Los Angeles Times. “We were all worried about it.” And, like Lanza, he shot his parent before launching his rampage.
Maybe it’s because the shooting was overshadowed by blockbuster revelations about government spying, or maybe we’ve finally exhausted our ability to care about these tragedies after so many, but the shooting hasn’t earned anywhere near the attention of other mass sprees. Or maybe it’s just too difficult to dwell on — and no political leaders have an interest in drawing attention to it — since Washington has all but abandoned any attempt to reform gun safety laws.
And this case should show just how badly those laws need reform. Zawahri should have been stopped at least twice over from accumulating his stockpile, thanks to both his mental health problems and California laws that generally prohibit the purchase of assault weapons. Critics will undoubtably say the fact that he wasn’t stopped shows the opposite — strict gun laws don’t stop shootings — but both prohibitions are fraught with glaring loopholes, as this incident and too many others have shown. Guns can be lightly modified to flout legal definitions of assault weapons, or purchased online, or bought through private sales in other states to skirt all regulations. They can even be assembled from parts kits purchased online with zero government oversight, as Bryan Schatz did just a few miles from Santa Monica for a Mother Jones story.
But more importantly, background checks are supposed to stop people with mental illness from purchasing weapons, but problems with coordination between states and the FBI have meant that this often doesn’t happen. And it’s too easy to avoid a background check all together. These are exactly the kinds of loopholes that reforms want to close.
Others will say that armed bystanders could have stopped the shooting, but this argument fails basic tests of logic, history, and science. Armed civillians rarely, if ever, stop gunmen, and occasionally injure other victims in the melee by accident. And if guns laws are worthless because some people won’t follow them, as the NRA and its comrades like to say, then by that logic all laws, from speed limits to prohibitions on rape, should be thrown out because people keep finding ways to break those too.
Maybe guns don’t kill people, as the bumper sticker says, but tell me that Zawahri would have killed as many people with a knife instead of a semi-automatic assault rifle. And if it can happen in restorty Santa Monica, a community best known for being the backdrop for hundreds of movies and the subject of several hit songs (and, disclosure: this hometown of this writer), or white collar Newtown, Connecticut, it can happen anywhere.
We’ll probably never be able to stop all gun crimes, but throwing up our hands and doing nothing to at least try isn’t the answer.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, June 10, 2013
“Memo On IRS Scandal”: Putting A Damper On “Exceptionalism”
To all state and regional IRS managers:
As a result of the critical government report about our agency’s 2010 convention in Anaheim, Calif., the following changes are being implemented immediately.
1. Funds are hereby terminated for all future training videos, including but not limited to “Cupid Shuffle” line-dancing and “Star Trek” parodies.
This rule is retroactive, which means that, sadly, we are cancelling the Game of Thrones parody that is now in production at our Cincinnati office.
(I screened the rough cut of the video and it was impressive. The costuming was authentic, and I thought Herm from our 401(c) Task Force totally nailed it as Tyrion Lannister — especially that British accent! Unfortunately, building a medieval castle on the set cost way more than all those puny Tea Party returns could ever bring in.)
Another casualty of the new spending rules is the multimedia dance video that was to be featured during our coming convention this August. The entire Birmingham office has been working out some smooth moves every afternoon (between audits) for nearly a year.
I’m told the choreography and exotic stagecraft put the Cupid Shufflers to shame. Unfortunately, because of the recent controversy, we won’t get to see “Big Ira and the Itemizers” show off their Gangnam Style groove.
2. Funds are hereby terminated for the hiring of event planners for IRS conferences.
As the inspector general noted, the agency spent more than $133,000 on three outside planners to secure our hotels and catering arrangements in Anaheim. The inspector general’s view is that taxpayer money could be more prudently spent, and I agree.
From now on, all convention planning will be done in-house by IRS personnel utilizing Web sites such as “Google” and “Bing,” which I am told will actually provide current information about hotel pricing in almost any city.
Apparently even the phone numbers of hotels are available online, thereby eliminating the need for our agency to pay an outside contractor to find the numbers and dial them. Who knew?
3. Funds are hereby eliminated for so-called “scouting trips” to IRS conference sites in advance of the event.
Back in 2010, we dispatched 25 employees in the months before the big annual convention, at a cost of about $36,000. The harsh criticism now being heaped upon our agency overlooks the steep logistical challenges in a city as cosmopolitan and confusing as Anaheim.
To simulate the tourist experience, a squad of our designated convention scouts went to Disneyland to navigate the intimidating labyrinths of Mickey’s Toontown and Splash Mountain.
Others ventured to an Angels baseball game, where it’s not uncommon for zestful visitors to become disoriented and require police escorts from the ballpark.
All scouting exercises were conducted in order to steer convention attendees away from local pitfalls. From now on, however, agency guidance will be limited to providing detailed street maps and portable Breathalyzers.
4. Funds are hereby eliminated for hiring outside speakers to address IRS conferences.
In Anaheim the agency paid more than $135,000 in fees to 15 different speakers. The well-meaning effort, meant to motivate and inspire our managers, has become part of the nasty media controversy.
One speaker who received $27,000 got up and told us that “seemingly random combinations of ideas can drive radical innovations.”
Maybe it wasn’t the most penetrating or original idea, but many of our attendees remained totally alert during his presentation.
Another paid guest speed-painted portraits of six famous persons to dramatize the value of creative thinking. For the record, not one of the Kardashians was featured as a portrait subject, yet still the backlash has been intense.
The total cost of the Anaheim shindig was $4.1 million, part of $37.5 million spent by the IRS in 2010 on conferences, meetings and conventions. Those days are over, as you are all aware, because the Obama administration cracked down the following year.
In 2012 the agency spent only $4.8 million on conventions, and we’re committed to reducing our partying budget even more. This year all our speakers will be unpaid.
Linda in our east Portland office has volunteered to present the keynote (“Re-Thinking Form 8949 — Whither Short-Term Capital Assets?”). Afterward she’ll be doing pencil sketches of your favorite family pet, so don’t forget to bring snapshots!
Yours in service,
Acting IRS Commissioner (for now) Danny Werfel
By: Carl Hiaasen, The National Memo, June 11, 2013
“Obamacare Is Killing The GOP”: Republicans’ Opiate Obsession With The Law Will Be The Party’s Undoing
It’s not an exaggeration to say Republicans have bet their future on the disaster they expect from Obamacare. “The implementation of the law over the next year is going to reveal a lot of kinks, a lot of red tape, a lot of taxes, a lot of price increases,” RNC spokesman Brad Dayspring told The New York Times last month. “It’s going to be an issue that’s front and center [in 2014].” GOP intellectuals see Obamacare as the centerpiece of the party’s strategy even well beyond then. “Republicans are likely to seize on every sad [implementation] story as justification for dramatic changes—and in 2016, mount campaigns designed to replace the system in whole or in part with plenty of material to use in their cause,” the conservative wonk Ben Domenech wrote approvingly in March.
And, of course, the party’s base is completely, unremittingly, obsessed with the issue. The mere anticipation of an implementation quagmire is “reinvigorating the movement,” Jenny Beth Martin, a national Tea Party official, told The Hill in early May. “We’re doing street rallies and protests over the next month to three months, initially. We’re working to recruit candidates that can talk about this.”
I happen to be agnostic about whether health care implementation will help the GOP in 2014. On the one hand, anything that energizes conservatives in a low-turnout election should benefit Republicans, much as it did on 2010. On the other hand, as The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent points out, much of the public antipathy toward Obamacare is already baked into the polls. The people who disapprove haven’t liked it from the get-go; similarly for the people who approve. It’s possible that a series of implementation snafus will move those numbers at the margins—a new poll suggests public opinion has soured a bit lately, perhaps as a result of all the “train wreck” chatter. On the other hand, it’s also possible that implementation will go relatively smoothly and people will embrace the program, netting Democrats a few more votes.
What I do know is that the GOP’s health care preoccupation is absolutely destroying its long-term prospects. However well the issue may work in the midterms, when an uptick in conservative turnout can flip a few dozen House seats, 2012 proved that it’s at best a wash in a presidential election, when Democrats can swamp that turnout with their demographic edge, and when the GOP’s challenge is to win moderates and independents as a result. Conservatives argue that the only reason health care didn’t work in 2012 is that Romney was a flawed messenger, given his patrimonial link to Obamacare. But with the Supreme Court largely blessing the law last June, the issue was mostly settled in the public mind, making it at best a non-factor among swing voters.
Even if implementation goes terribly, it isn’t likely to rekindle widespread angst. Most people will be untouched by implementation—even a disastrous implementation—for the simple reason that they won’t be relying on Obamacare. As Bloomberg’s Josh Barro has explained, 78 percent of us get coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, or our employers, a figure isn’t likely to change very much, or at least very quickly. Meanwhile, my colleague Jonathan Cohn points out that life for many people who do end up on Obamacare will improve, however flawed the program is, because it translates into insurance they didn’t have before.
Having said all that, the real problem with conservatives’ Obamacare strategy isn’t that it won’t work. It’s that the Obamacare obsession is actively sabotaging the GOP. Earlier this week The Washington Post ran an article about the ongoing dysfunction among House Republicans. Easily the most telling anecdote had to do with a largely symbolic measure called the Helping Sick Americans Now Act, concocted by Majority Leader Eric Cantor to help Republicans look like they care about the problems of ordinary people. (The bill feinted at easing the lot of the uninsured.) That, apparently, is where Cantor erred. As the Post explains:
A few dozen Republicans opposed the modest Helping Sick Americans legislation because they said it came from nowhere. Instead, Cantor pulled the bill and held another vote to repeal Obamacare — their 37th attempt to repeal part or all of the landmark health-care law — to appease conservatives.
To put the problem in Marxian terms, Obamacare has become the opiate of the GOP. By its own admission, the party must broaden its appeal to Latinos, gays, and young voters. It needs an economic agenda that encompasses more than tax cuts for the rich and brutal spending cuts. It has to persuade voters it’s more than just a nihilistic force bent on triggering global financial apocalypse if it doesn’t get its way in Washington. And yet, when party leaders so much as broach these liabilities, conservatives revolt and the leadership caves, appeasing them with an issue whose political utility peaked two-and-a-half years ago. (Suffice it to say, after the last few years, the words “reinvigorating the Tea Party movement” won’t exactly help Cantor and Boehner sleep at night.)
If you want to appreciate how truly incorrigible conservatives are on the subject, I recommend watching them grapple with the early news about Obamacare implementation, which has suggested the program could work better than anticipated. It’s a bit like watching a speculator learn he’s bet his life savings on a failing company—which is to say, chock full of denial and elaborate self-delusion.
For example, in late May, when the head of California’s insurance exchange announced that insurers were submitting cheaper bids than the state expected (and cheaper than many critics predicted), the conservative columnist Avik Roy tried to disprove the claims by visiting an online clearinghouse for private insurance plans. Roy solicited bids for a healthy 25-year-old male and a healthy 40-year old male, then pointed out that they came in far below what coverage would cost through the Obamacare exchange. All fine and good, except that Roy’s hypothetical bids were neither here nor there. The point of Obamacare is to provide affordable insurance to people who may be sick or older.
Alas, the fact that Roy basically affirmed the rationale for a program he set out to discredit—healthy, affluent young people are the one group that will do worse under Obamacare; everyone else will do better; no one has ever disputed this—didn’t stop every conservative outlet on the Internet from trumpeting his analysis. “Obamacare drives up insurance premiums by up to 146 percent in California,” screamed The Daily Caller. Even after a succession of wonks highlighted the glaring flaws, the editorialists at The Wall Street Journal leaned on Roy to declare an “ObamaCare Bait and Switch.”
The desperation here is palpable, but also understandable. If, instead of trying to fix your party’s deepest pathologies you wagered its entire future on a high-risk strategy that was starting to turn bad, you’d be a little desperate, too. Perhaps it’s a subset of Obama Derangement Syndrome that afflicts conservatives when they talk about health care—call it Obamacare Derangement Syndrome. Maybe one day, once the dust has settled, it’ll be covered under Obamacare, too.
By: Norm Scheiber, Senior Editor, The New Republic, June 7, 2013
“Bottom Of The Barrel”: The Tea Party Still Less Popular Than The Not-At-All-Popular GOP
President Obama’s approval rating is up slightly and his popularity steady, but both the Republican Party and the Tea Party still have negative perception with voters, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey released Wednesday.
Only 32 percent of Americans have a positive perception of the GOP, with 41 percent negative, a net of -9. The Tea Party’s perception is up slightly since January of 2013 but only 26 percent report having a positive perception of the right-wing movement while 38 percent feel negatively, a net of -12. The number of Americans identifying with the Tea Party is up 4 percent to 24 but the share that says they’re not — 65 percent — has increased by one percent.
The IRS’s singling out of Tea Party groups that applied for non-profit “social welfare” status has renewed interest in the Tea Party movement. Earlier this year Republican strategist and fundraiser Karl Rove had created a new organization designed especially to hedge against Tea Partiers who could threaten safe seats by defeating establishment candidates in primaries. Since then, Republicans seem to have re-embraced the movement, using the IRS investigation to raise money and attack the president.
President Obama has a net positive of +7, which is unchanged since April, and his approval rating is slightly above water at 48/47, up from 47/48 a month ago.
The swirling accusations of scandal have slightly lowered the president’s reputation for truthfulness. Majorities say that the State Department’s handling of Benghazi, the Department of Justice’s handling of investigations of reports and the IRS’s focus on Tea Party groups raise doubts about the Obama administration.
The public supports investigations into these matters, saying they’re legitimate, not partisan, by a margin of 8 percent
But the public doesn’t seem to think the president is facing an unusually troubling time. In August of 2011, during the debt limit crisis, a majority said that the president was facing a “longer-term setback” that would be difficult to recover from. Now only 43 percent say the same in this poll. A total of 55 percent say that things are likely to get better or that the president is “not facing a setback.”
The share of Americans who identify with the Republican Party continues to decline with only 21 percent identifying with the GOP.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, June 5, 2013
“Traitor Or Hero”: He May Think So, But It Seems A Bit Early To Call Edward Snowden A Hero
The fact that former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden decided to go public with his grievances against the U.S. government is certainly brave and bold.
People can and will accuse Snowden of many things. But no one will ever accuse him of not having the guts to stand up for what he believes.
Whether or not Snowden should be regarded as a “hero” for exposing what he believes is horrible intelligence gathering abuse by the U.S. government, however–as some are already suggesting he should be–remains to be seen.
Snowden has certainly made some startling claims about the scope of the U.S. intelligence and surveillance programs.
Most notably, Snowden claims that, as a 29 year-old security contractor, he had both the legal authority and the technological ability to “wiretap anyone — from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President.”
If that’s true, that is indeed very startling.
Snowden also claims that the National Security Agency now intercepts and records almost all global communications, and that these recorded communications can be easily accessed:
“…the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested [by the NSA] without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.”
Now, the NSA–or FBI, DOJ, or even your local police department–have always been able to get access to all of this information for U.S. citizens, provided they have a warrant from a judge allowing them to do so and provided you or your service providers have retained these records. But what seems new, based on Snowden’s description, is that the government is now maintaining its own records of all this information and, if I understand Snowden correctly, can now access and use any of it without a warrant.
If that’s true, it’s certainly worth asking whether we really want the government to be able to do that. It’s also worth asking whether the the government really does have the legal authority to do that–or whether it has gone way beyond what the lawmakers intended.
But, I, for one, would like some confirmation that what Snowden is saying is true before I denounce the government.
And some of the other things that Snowden has said have certainly made me wonder whether he isn’t just viewing all this from a perspective that mainstream Americans might consider, well, extreme.
Asked why he decided to leak classified information to the media, for example, Snowden said the following:
“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.”
Asked whether surveillance might help deter or prevent terrorism, Snowden appeared to suggest that we shouldn’t pay so much attention to terrorism:
“We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism. Boston was a criminal act. It was not about surveillance but good, old-fashioned police work. The police are very good at what they do.”
Asked whether he sees himself as “another Bradley Manning,” the U.S. Army private who sent a boatload of classified U.S. documents to Wikileaks, Snowden expressed nothing but admiration for Manning:
“Manning was a classic whistleblower. He was inspired by the public good.”
To address these statements in reverse order…
Bradley Manning may have been “inspired by” his own personal view of the “public good.” But, personally, I’m not convinced that what Bradley Manning did was actually good for the public. I don’t think it was terrible for the public. And it was certainly interesting to read some of those diplomatic communications. But I didn’t see anything in them that made me think they were so important that they were worth Manning breaking the law and risking a lifetime in jail to make them public.
(And, for what it’s worth, I do think that some things should be classified.)
I also confess that I am happy that there has not been another 9/11 since 9/11, and I wish the FBI had stopped the deranged Tsarnaev brothers before they allegedly killed four innocent people in Boston and maimed a few dozen others. I understand that the authorities will never be able to eliminate terrorism entirely, but I am glad that they’ve limited it as much as they have.
And, lastly, although I don’t relish the thought of having the government intercept and record all of my communications, I want to find out whether it’s actually true that the government is doing this before I freak out about it. Also, because I am not a terrorist, because this country has a well-developed legal system, and because I do not instinctively regard all government employees as evil power-hungry scumbags, I would also like to believe that, even if the government is recording all of my communications, this won’t necessarily wreck my life.
All of which is to say…
I’m not yet ready to pronounce Edward Snowden a “hero.”
I understand that he means well.
And I understand that he may think he’s a hero.
But he hasn’t persuaded me of that yet.
By: Henry Blodget, Business Insider, June 9, 2013
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