“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
“This Is Not 2009”: Democrats Have No Reason To Prematurely Throw Up Their Hands About 2014 Midterm Elections
With the scent of scandal encircling the White House, some Republicans are already licking their chops over the 2014 midterm elections, while some Democrats are pre-emptively licking their wounds.
Not so fast, folks. Retract those tongues.
While it is impossible to predict what might drive voter attitudes in an election 18 months away, there are quite a few signs that 2014 will be nothing like 2010, which produced tremendous success for Republicans.
First, the electorate is less conservative.
In May 2009, the Tea Party had just begun to flex its muscle and feel its power on a national level. Now, the movement has lost momentum.
An April 2012 Associated Press report included a finding from Theda Skocpol, a Harvard professor, that the number of Tea Party groups had fallen from about 1,000 to about 600. And a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week found that the portion of people saying they strongly support the Tea Party, just 10 percent, was the lowest they had recorded since 2011.
Furthermore, according to a Gallup poll released Friday, the shares of Americans describing themselves as economic conservatives and social conservatives are down by more than a tenth since 2009, after having risen sharply following Barack Obama’s election a year earlier.
The portion of Republicans who said their position on economic issues was conservative — the Republican Trojan Horse for a retrograde social agenda — has seen little movement since 2009, dropping just five percentage points, from 75 percent to 70 percent.
(On the other hand, the share of Democrats who describe their positions on social issues as liberal has increased, from 45 percent to 50 percent.)
Speaking of economic issues, the economy is experiencing a resurgence, at least in some quarters.
In May 2009, the United States economy was nearing the end of the Great Recession. The unemployment rate had risen to 9.4 percent from 5.5 percent the previous year. People were losing their homes to foreclosures in record numbers. The Dow Jones industrial average had fallen to about 8,500 from more than 13,000 the previous May. And the deficit tripled from the 2008 fiscal year to the 2009 fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
This had Americans rightfully worried and near-panicked about their economic prospects.
Now the economic picture couldn’t be more different.
The unemployment rate has dropped to 7.5 percent. The Dow is above 15,000 and continuing to set records. The housing sector is rebounding — “Sales of previously owned homes reached the highest level in more than three years, with the share of foreclosure purchases shrinking, as the housing market continued its rebound last month,” according to a report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.
And the deficit is shrinking faster than expected, according to a report released last week by the budget office. The report found that if current laws are unchanged, “Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit this year — at 4.0 percent of gross domestic product (G.D.P.) — will be less than half as large as the shortfall in 2009, which was 10.1 percent of G.D.P.”
This takes almost all of the air out of the Republicans’ economic argument.
Lastly, legislative unease has become about what Republicans haven’t done, rather than what Democrats have done.
By May of 2009, President Obama had already signed the huge — though many still believe not huge enough — stimulus package, Chrysler and General Motors were in need of a bailout and the ball was rolling on the president’s historic health care law.
Conservatives were railing against what they saw as an unprecedented, ominous and ultimately ruinous expansion of government, driven by the president and made possible by a Congress controlled by Democrats.
Now, the tables have turned. Two of the most glaring legislative failures this year have ostensibly been the work of obstinate Republicans: the failure to avoid the sequester and the failure to pass expanded gun background checks legislation. According to that recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, most Americans still disapprove of the sequester’s automatic spending cuts, and according to a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday, 81 percent of Americans still favor the passage of a bill expanding background checks.
The next hurdle will be immigration reform. But Republicans may find a way to derail that legislation, too.
The signs look positive for Democrats this spring. This is not to say that they should prematurely lift their glasses, only that they have no reason to prematurely throw up their hands.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 24, 2013
“Unstable Lawmakers”: Five Worst Ideas From Texas’ Tea Party Government
It’s no surprise that in the state that gave us personalities like Representative Ron Paul, Governor Rick Perry, and Senator Ted Cruz, legislators have proposed more than their fair share of outrageous laws. Nearly failing to extend Medicaid benefits to the state’s disadvantaged, moving to make English the state’s official language, and putting forward a constitutional referendum that would prohibit tax increases only scratch the surface in the Lone Star State..
Here are the 5 worst ideas to come from Texas’s right-wing government:
Suing The Obama Administration 25+ Times
Texas’ attorney general sure knows how to put taxpayers’ money to good use. Greg Abbott takes pride in the fact that he has sued the Obama administration more than 25 times since February, 2010. “In all, Abbott’s federal cases have cost the state more than $2.8 million,” according to a Texas newspaper. “That includes $1.5 million-plus in salaries for state employees working on the cases, nearly $250,000 in court costs and the travel expenses of attorney general’s office personnel, and roughly $1 million for outside counsel and expert witnesses.”
Abbott, who once insisted that Democrats are more of a threat than North Korea, sued the federal government and lost in cases of discriminatory voter-ID laws and gerrymandered district maps, costing the state well over $1 million in these two cases alone.
Making It Illegal To Introduce Or Implement Any New Federal Gun Laws
Texas lawmakers took their Second Amendment paranoia to an entirely new level in April with the proposal of HB 1076. This law “would ban state agencies from enforcing any new federal gun laws, including background checks,” according to MaddowBlog. “The bill passed the Republican-led House on a largely party-line vote Monday, but legal experts say the attempt to ‘nullify’ possible future federal laws likely wouldn’t pass the scrutiny of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Texas Republicans have given themselves full authority to ignore federal laws that place any restrictions on gun sales. The proposed law states that the American people have a right granted to them by the U.S. and Texas Constitutions to bear arms, and any law that threatens those rights—even a law instituting simple background checks—will be immediately rejected.
Placing Armed Guards In Texas Schools
While you will not see any new gun laws in Texas that limit gun purchases, Republican legislators won’t think twice about implementing laws that increase the use of guns—even in schools. Gun-loving Texas lawmakers introduced a proposal that would put “school marshals” in every one of the state’s K-12 schools.
According to the Dallas News, “Marshals will be allowed to carry a gun and their identity would only be known to the school’s head administrator and law enforcement. If working in a classroom or around children, the school marshal’s weapon will be locked away but within reach.”
Following the incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six adults were killed in a school shooting, Republican lawmakers in Texas decided the best response to this was to put more guns in the hands of citizens—and to put those citizens in our children’s schools.
Defunding Planned Parenthood
Pro-life legislators in Texas who were working to defund Planned Parenthood and close down all locations in the state suffered a minor setback when the case was taken before a Texas judge—but they overcame that obstacle when the judge ruled that the state has the authority to defund the women’s health organization simply because it advocates for abortion rights. State Republicans were even making absurd claims that Planned Parenthood was pushing teenagers to get pregnant, in an attempt to bring in steady business.
Texas lawmakers were also seeking to keep funds from the Women’s Health Program—a government program that provides low-income women with preventive care—away from Planned Parenthood. This issue was also taken to court, where the same judge voted again in their favor, despite the fact that states do not have the authority to block health providers (such as Planned Parenthood) from receiving Medicaid funds.
After a backlash from voters and a report from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission that projected a significant increase in births among low-income women, Texas Republicans have quickly worked to reverse their initial actions against Planned Parenthood and women’s health organizations statewide.
Rewarding Companies That Deny Contraception To Employees
Hobby Lobby, an arts and crafts supplier chain, recently sued the U.S. government over the health care law that requires they provide their employees coverage for contraceptives. Hobby Lobby president Steve Green cited his Christian values as his reason for standing against this women’s health law.
“When a business is being stressed nearly to the point of bankruptcy by punitive federal taxes, of course the state should give them relief,” Texas State Republican representative Jonathan Stickland stated. “The Obama administration’s mandate and their threats to bury Hobby Lobby with $1.3 million per day in tax penalties aren’t just unconstitutional, they’re unconscionable. It is simply appalling that any business owner should have to choose between violating their religious convictions and watching their business be strangled by the strong arm of Federal mandates and taxation.”
Stickland’s efforts through House Bill 649 to grant tax breaks to Hobby Lobby so they can cover the cost of contraception for employees would actually keep them from paying any state taxes at all. The state of Texas would lose over a million dollars in tax revenue from Hobby Lobby alone.
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, May 15, 2013
“Facing Republican Intransigent Extremism”: How President Obama Can Still Win In Washington
The Washington pundits of the moment – a group that includes such blinding lights as Maureen Dowd and Ron Fournier – seem to believe that if only President Obama would provide adequate “leadership,” the partisan polarization on Capitol Hill would evaporate and America’s problems could be solved at last. While the president rightly mocked this notion as a fantasy worthy of Hollywood’s Aaron Sorkin, it does raise the vital question, however obtusely, of what Obama might do as he confronts an oppositional Republican-led Congress.
Whatever the punditocracy may imagine, there is no way for Obama to force his agenda on the Republicans in the House and the Senate, who range from scheming partisans like Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor to Tea Party zealots like Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann. Unlike Abraham Lincoln or Lyndon Johnson, the two brilliant manipulators with whom he is sometimes compared and found wanting, the president is not equipped to bribe, blackmail, or herd in the style of those Machiavellian chief executives. If he were so equipped — and indeed used his power as ruthlessly as Lincoln or Johnson — the same pundits who now complain that he isn’t controlling the agenda would shriek about his misuse of power.
In this journalistic mindset, the president (especially a Democratic president) is always wrong; using power is bad/unethical/cynical, while failing to use power is weak/aloof/naïve. Both ends of this stick have been repeatedly applied to Obama, of course, just as they were constantly used to punish Bill Clinton.
Alternatively, those calling for presidential “leadership” — especially the oh-so-serious Beltway types — want Obama to prove his bona fides by abandoning Democratic programs and principles, even though the Republicans have showed no willingness to cross their redline on taxes. In fact, the president has offered an excess of compromise already, while failing to elicit any fresh initiative from the opposition. Yet somehow, in the pundit mindset, Obama and the Republican leadership are equally at fault.
The president understands that critics who play such jejune Beltway games don’t deserve much of his time or attention, unless they can serve as absurdist foils for a funny dinner speech. The most salient fact in American political life is (and for some time has been) the intransigent extremism of the Republican Party. Any columnist who tries to ignore or excuse that extremism has nothing useful to tell any president.
What Obama evidently doesn’t understand, despite years of bitter experience, is the significance of that right-wing extremism for someone like him, whose nature is to accept differences and seek compromise. Unable to negotiate with a reasonable counterpart on either side of the Hill, he too frequently negotiates with himself – whether over Obamacare, the debt ceiling, the budget, deficit reduction, taxes, or “reforming” Social Security.
Yet whenever he discards a progressive position, such as the public option in health care, or adopts a conservative position, such as reducing Social Security cost-of-living increases, he only succeeds in demoralizing his base. Meanwhile, rejection by the Republicans is preordained.
So what is left for President Obama to do if he wishes to see any of his second-term agenda enacted? By now he ought to have noticed that when he speaks out firmly on behalf of progressive principles, in support of working families, his polling numbers improve and his power increases. (And whenever he vacillates, his numbers diminish and his authority weakens.)
The recent battle over gun background checks indicates that even some of the most reactionary Republicans – like Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey, formerly of the Club for Growth – can be pushed into supporting sensible reform. But that doesn’t mean seeking a “grand bargain” with politicians who want no bargain at all. It does mean mobilizing citizens on the largest possible scale, every day; it means making sure they know that the president is on their side, shares their values, and will uphold his promises to them. It means explaining to the American people, with fearless candor, that the Republican Party is unfit to participate in national governance – and unless that party is defeated decisively next year, no important objective can be achieved.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, May 3, 2013
“A Word On Obamabot-ism”: The Republican Party Is A Radical Oppositionist Party
I don’t mind being called an Obamabot. I mean, I’ve written a few columns about the guy that were brutal, tougher than anything Dowd’s written, especially at the time of the debt ceiling fiasco. But I understand the game, and it doesn’t bother me.
I have something I wish to make crystal clear, however. If it seems to you (I mean you, pumpkinface!) that I’m always excusing Obama, you’re misreading me. I am instead seeking to cast blame where it properly belongs. And that is almost always the Republican Party. I’ve said all this a jillion times before, but it is simply not a mainstream political party in the traditional American sense. It is a radical oppositionalist faction, way beyond the normal American parameters both in terms of ideology and tactics. And that needs to be pointed out, unfortunately, again and again and again.
Just today, Pat Toomey said of the background-check bill:
“In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.”
A helpful admission on his part, and a rare piece of Republican candor. But this is the case time after time after time. It’s not normal. It’s not–and I mean not remotely–“the same thing” the Democrats did under Bush. Today’s GOP is a complete historical outlier.
Yes, I’m sure there were many Democrats who didn’t want to hand Reagan or either Bush a political victory. But historically, that is one of a handful of legislative considerations, and not even the first. Probably more like the fourth, after votes and money and what’s right for the country. But today’s GOP has turned it into iron law. It is relentlessly destructive.
On the subject of Gitmo, which I wrote about yesterday: In normal America, when a presidential candidate says he wants to do X once in office and then wins the election by a significant margin, Congress usually does X. The opposition party always attaches strings and conditions and so forth, but they obey the will of the people. Democrats, enough of them, led by Tip O’Neill, put Reagan’s programs through. Same thing with Bush’s tax cuts. (Republicans did not grant Clinton the same courtesy, but as bad as they were then, they’re worse now.)
So in normal America, a deal would have been worked out whereby Gitmo would close. After all, remember, the Republican candidate in 2008 supported closing Gitmo too. It was the GOP’s position! And yet, once Obama as president wanted to do it, they killed it cold in 2009.
They have been blocking it ever since. Here’s a vote on the question of use of funds to transfer Gitmo detainees from last November, after Obama had been handily reelected. Every Republican present voted no. Every one.
That was on an amendment to the defense reauthorization. That passed, and Obama signed it. But he issued a statement to accompany the signing explaining that he was dead-set against the provisions I referred to in this morning’s post. Under the Constitution, of course, there is no line-item veto; a president either signs or vetoes an entire bill. This was a defense authorization, so he signed. But he made his position crystal clear. Here’s the letter for you to see.
I’m sure there’s more he could have done or could now be doing. But wouldn’t you get a little discouraged? Oh, fucking hell, he thinks to himself at 3 am. Yes, I want to keep this promise I made. But why should I bang my head against that particular wall again? If I’m for it, they’re against it. I won’t get one Republican vote.
He is, obviously, a flawed human being; aloof, a little superior, not especially warm (so it seems), and no, he doesn’t scare anybody. He has all of these flaws and more. Maybe a different human being could get Susan Collins or Rob Portman or Lamar Alexander to vote his way once in a while.
But I don’t really think so. Collins and Portman and Alexander and others are, I’m certain, a little ashamed of their party today, and of themselves. But they are afraid of the right-wing agitprop media and their hard-shell base (and of course the threat of a primary from the right). So they don’t have the guts to the right thing, and they likely never will.
So it’s not that I’m always straining to defend Obama, although I can understand how it ends up looking that way. I am trying to tell as many people as I can that this Republican Party is extreme and wholly against American norms and traditions. And I think any opinion writer who isn’t saying this over and over is, in ascending order of likelihood, lying, dense, or deceiving him or herself.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 1, 2013
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