“You Can’t Make This Crap Up”: It’s Official, The NRA President Loses His Ever-Loving Mind
From the you-can’t-make-this-crap-up files, David Keene, the president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), is blaming President Obama and “the left” for death threats against him and his family and:
What this reflects are two things. One is the uncivil way in which idealogues on the left in this country go after their enemies. The second thing it shows is the reflection of the left and the President of the United States’ attempt to demonize and blame those who disagree with them for everything that he doesn’t like.
This from the group who released an ad that targeted the president’s daughters.
Oh, and about all that blaming and demonizing? Here’s what Obama said about the NRA when he announced his proposals to curb gun violence:
If you want to buy a gun — whether it’s from a licensed dealer or a private seller — you should at least have to show you are not a felon or somebody legally prohibited from buying one. This is common sense. And an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with us on the need for universal background checks — including more than 70 percent of the National Rifle Association’s members, according to one survey. So there’s no reason we can’t do this.
Yes, how dare the president blame and demonize the NRA by pointing out they’re ignoring the gun owners they claim to represent?
As for the “hundreds” of death threats Keene claims to have received? Well, there are probably police reports somewhere.
By: Barbara Morrill, Daily Kos, January 18, 2013
“A Wonderful Experiment”: Before Default, Let Republicans Bump Up Hard Against The Debt Ceiling
A prolonged confrontation over the nation’s debt ceiling — unlike the “fiscal cliff,” which provoked many scary headlines – could truly be grave for both America and the world. While press coverage often mentions the possibility of lowered credit ratings for the US Treasury (again), that might only be the mildest consequence if Republicans in Congress actually refuse to authorize borrowing and avoid default.
Last time the nation prepared to face such an impasse, during the spring and summer of 2011, the chairman of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee – a JPMorgan Chase official named Matthew Zames – laid out a disturbing scenario in a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in which he foresaw a rolling catastrophe that could inflict hundreds of billions in additional borrowing costs; spark a run on money funds, leading to a renewed financial crisis; severely disrupt financial markets and borrowing, killing fragile economic growth; and push the economy back into recession due to higher interest rates and tightened credit.
In short, the economy would contract sharply and the U.S. – along with the rest of the world – might well be plunged back into negative growth. If that was true in July 2011, it is equally true today, and there is no reason to dismiss that warning.
But the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill insists that they are willing to take these mind-boggling risks, solely for the purpose of enforcing an extreme austerity regime that has already done permanent damage in much of Europe. Between the “Boehner rule” demanded by House Speaker John Boehner, which requires a dollar in new spending cuts for every dollar increase in the debt ceiling, and the House Republican budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, congressional Republicans evidently want not only to gut Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, but to “eliminate more and more of the basic functions of government over time,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. No education aid, no food safety inspections, no environmental protection, no infrastructure repairs, no cancer research…
From immediate economic jeopardy to long-term national decline, these prospects are obviously appalling – yet many Republican elected officials sound positively pleased about the debt ceiling crisis they have created. Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, told a right-wing radio host recently that a government default would actually be a “wonderful experiment.” He assured listeners, quite falsely, that their Medicare and Social Security checks would continue to arrive every month, no matter what, and that only “stupid” spending would be cut.
If Coburn – or any Republican senator – is so eager to test the debt ceiling, perhaps he should volunteer to bump up against it first. As the Tulsa World reported in 2011, federal spending in Oklahoma amounts to three times as much as the entire state budget, with Social Security alone accounting for almost a billion dollars a month there, and Medicaid and other medical assistance amounting to another $500 million-plus. Coburn’s ultra-conservative, deep-red home state is highly dependent on federal employment and assistance, ranking 12th in retirement and disability payments and 11th in per capita federal payroll, despite its small size.
So by all means, let’s find out, as Coburn suggested, whether we can live “on the money that’s coming into the Treasury” without borrowing to finance those monthly pension checks and all those stupid federal jobs — and let’s start in Oklahoma, tomorrow. Then let’s roll out the same experiment in every state whose senators and representatives are refusing to pay the bills they have already racked up over the years – especially states, like most of those below the Mason-Dixon line, where federal spending is far higher than the tax revenues remitted to Washington.
Surely that would silence all the loud talk about this “wonderful” experiment in fiscal brinksmanship.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, January 16, 2013
“The NRA Is Not A Victim”: It’s Time For A Media Reset Of The Gun Debate
Hysterical at the prospect that at least a few elected officials might stop treating its pronouncements as political gospel, the National Rifle Association announced Tuesday that it had attracted 250,000 new members in the month since the slaying of 20 children by a gun-toting killer in Newtown, Connecticut.
The NRA’s release of the new numbers was timed to “counter” President Obama’s Wednesday announcement of legislative proposals and executive orders developed by Vice President Joe Biden’s task force on mass violence.
Most of the media, having lavished coverage on the NRA’s vitriolic response to its meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, has in recent days been dutifully reporting a series of announcements and “leaks” by the group about its self-declared appeal—just as it will now heap attention on the NRA’s vitriolic response to the reforms advanced by the Biden-led task force.
But the other side of the story is at least as compelling as the latest declarations from what former Bush administration ethics lawyer Richard Painter has decried as “the NRA protection racket.”
Since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary school shocked the nation in December, support for the gun-safety movement—and presumably for the initiatives that Biden and his task force are announcing—has grown at an exponentially greater rate than support for the NRA.
The Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign, which has opened its membership rolls to citizens who want to work with local elected officials to promote gun safety, attracted 400,000 new members in late December and early January. And more than 900,000 Americans signed a “Demand a Plan” petition seeking specific details of what will be done to dial down gun violence.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has literally been overwhelmed by calls and emails offering support, and by the response to a rapidly-expanding “We Are Better Than This” campaign featuring members of thirty-two families that have lost loved ones in deadly mass shootings.
The new “Americans For Responsible Solutions PAC,” launched last week by former Congressman Gabby Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, has, according to Forbes magazine, “gone viral,” attracting more than 35,000 “likes” on its Facebook page and—as political action committees are measured by money raised—showing signs that it will exceed its goal of raising $20 million to counter the NRA in the 2014 election cycle.
The new organization is blunt about its determination to go up against the lobbying group for gun manufacturers. “As gun owners and victims of gun violence, Gabby and Mark know preventing gun violence and protecting responsible gun ownership go hand-in-hand,” ARS says in its statements. “This country can put its divisive politics aside and come together to support commonsense measures to make us feel more secure in our communities. You can support the Second Amendment AND policies to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. 74 percent of NRA members agree—and so do Gabby and Mark.”
Beating the NRA on the campaign trail isn’t as hard as it used to be. The group’s political high-water mark came almost two decades ago, in the 1994 mid-term elections when it was a significant player in the special-interest coalition that swept former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his allies to power. In 2012, however, a Sunlight Foundation study of spending by the “National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund” found that only 0.83% of the $10,536,106 it spent in the general election “had the desired result” of backing a winner or defeating a targeted contender.
Yet, the NRA continues to be treated by much of the media as something more than it ever was, and something far greater than it now is: a definitional political player. This is a “Wizard of Oz” circumstance, where the fantasy of power actually creates the power. If it really had the power, the man it poured its resources into defeating—Barack Obama—would not be the president of the United States. And the Democratic candidates the NRA spent most of its resources seeking to defeat would not have increased its majority in the U.S. Senate and won 1.4 million more votes than were cast for Republicans in races for the U.S. House.
Of course, the NRA has been and will continue to be a political presence in the United States. It is well integrated into the networks of the political right, having recently installed former American Conservative Union chief David Keene as its new president.
But the NRA is no longer the only significant player in gun-violence and gun-safety debates.
This reality poses a challenge for major media. We’re talking here about more than just fact-checking the notoriously truth-challenged pronouncements of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre—although Media Matters for America is right when it reminds us that: “The media has a responsibility to evaluate the truthfulness of the claims made the NRA and should not merely pass along statements made (by LaPierre) as fact.”
There is a more fundamental issue, especially for broadcast media outlets. If coverage of what is going to be a long and arduous gun debate is to be even minimally “fair and balanced,” it must feature more voices. And those voices must be accorded at least a reasonable measure of the attention that is accorded the NRA’s “pronouncements from on high.”
Too much coverage since the Newtown shootings in December has been deferential to the NRA—as if the group was somehow the victim. Major media outlets have literally scheduled programming around the increasingly temperamental demands of the group, while accepting “no questions” press conferences as serious new events. So it was that Americans were treated to breathless “wall-to-wall” reporting on a press conference statement from the NRA’s LaPierre that veered into such bizarre territory international media outlets reportedly felt compelled to warn viewers that what they were watching was not a spoof. Indeed, as a columnist for Britain’s conservative Spectator magazine wrote: “Reading the transcript I thought at first that it must be a parody written by gun-control activists determined to discredit the National Rifle Association. Turns out there’s no need to attempt that, not when the NRA is prepared to do the job itself.”
The NRA must be covered, and it must be covered fairly. But honest coverage of the gun debate can and should place the NRA in perspective. And that means the NRA’s pronouncements should be balanced with coverage of the gun-safety groups that appear to be far more in touch with popular sentiment in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, January 15, 2013
“Time Is Running Out”: The GOP Needs To Figure Out Its Position On Entitlement Programs
The White House’s weekend ultimatum that Congress either lift the debt ceiling cleanly or take responsibility for default puts Republicans in a bind over their goal of reforming entitlement programs.
In ruling out all executive options, such as minting a high-value platinum coin, the White House put the onus on congressional Republicans to agree to raise the nation’s borrowing limit — without spending cuts or strings attached — or permit the first ever credit default.
President Obama has steadfastly rebuffed their calls to cut social spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, and Democratic leaders support his position.
“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” said Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney.
“The President and the American people won’t tolerate Congressional Republicans holding the American economy hostage again simply so they can force disastrous cuts to Medicare and other programs the middle class depend on while protecting the wealthy.”
That leaves Republicans in a difficult position vis-à-vis their promise not to raise the debt ceiling without improving the long-run solvency of programs like Social Security and Medicare.
If they propose safety net cuts that Democrats oppose, they risk political blowback. If they back off, conservatives will accuse them of surrender on a top priority.
The situation has left Republicans flummoxed. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) lashed out at Democratic leaders after they sent a letter Friday calling on President Obama to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally if Republicans block congressional action.
“The Democrat leadership hiding under their desks and hoping the President will find a way around the law on the nation’s maxed-out credit card is not only the height of irresponsibility, but also a guarantee that our national debt crisis will only get worse,” McConnell said in a statement. He swiped Democrats for refusing to offer “any plan to break the spending habit that’s causing the problem.”
Republican leaders understand the risks of pushing near-term entitlement cuts without Democratic buy-in. During the fiscal cliff battle, they abstractly demanded scaling back entitlements but avoided putting specifics on paper. House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) failed fallback plan didn’t touch entitlements.
As he did then, McConnell is again calling on Obama to put forth a debt ceiling plan with spending cuts, in effect suggesting that the president be the one to call for scaling back the safety net.
The other option, backing down on entitlements, is also problematic after Republicans demoralized their anti-tax base by swallowing some $620 billion in tax increases to resolve the fiscal cliff. In accepting the deal, GOP leaders assured conservatives that the debt ceiling was where they would make their stand on retirement programs.
Achieving meaningful savings requires making unpopular cuts beyond what’s been considered recently. Policies under discussion in prior negotiations included reducing future Social Security benefits via Chained CPI and gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Both amount to benefit cuts that the public opposes. And the savings they’ll produce would only address a fraction of the programs’ long-term solvency problems.
That’s the GOP’s dilemma in a nutshell: fulfilling their promise to their base requires pushing for something highly unpopular. And this time, not only are Democrats diligently refusing to provide them political cover, but forcing the issue would also require Republicans to court severe economic consequence as their price of political victory.
By: Sahil Kapur, Contributor, Business Insider, January 15, 2013
“The Militarization Of School Safety”: Race, Gun Control And Unintended Consequences
Vice President Joe Biden’s task force on gun control handed its recommendations to President Obama yesterday, who will announce them tomorrow. This is the first time in recent memory that one of our increasingly common acts of mass violence has sparked such immediate action. It may not bring solace to all of the victims’ families, but it has the potential to start preventing these horrors from happening in the first place.
But as encouraging as it is to see action to curb gun violence, an epidemic in this country compared to our peers, it is still worth pausing to ask what kind of action is being taken and what its consequences will be. Some reforms, like the “guns in every school” approach from the NRA, rightly strike many liberals as absurd. This direction is not just dangerous—it also will likely disproportionately impact the lives of young black and brown children. But other gun control measures that we might feel more comfortable with could have similar unintended consequences if we don’t pay attention to how they are implemented.
Few can forget the absurd news conference held by the NRA in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre called for putting “armed police officers in every school in this nation.” But it’s not as out-of-box as many of us might assume. Some lawmakers have echoed this call; Senator Barbara Boxer introduced legislation that would let governors use federal funds to have the National Guard secure schools and increase the money spent annually on things like metal detectors and security cameras at schools. But many schools already have armed policemen patrolling the halls and using these law enforcement gadgets. As Julianne Hing of Colorlines reports:
As of 2011, 68 percent of U.S. schoolchildren said police officers patrolled their school campuses… In 1999, that number was 54 percent. Last year, 70 percent of schoolkids went to schools where surveillance cameras were used, and more than half of students reported that locker checks were used as a security tactic. More than one in 10 U.S. students goes to a school with metal detectors on campus.
The militarization of school safety and orderliness most heavily impacts children of color. It effectively feeds the school-to-prison pipeline. Hing notes, “The rise of police officers and militarized security tactics in schools runs parallel with the rise of zero-tolerance school discipline policies in the 1980s and 1990s.” Those zero tolerance laws entail cracking down on behavior infractions with a heavy fist. As Jim Eichner of the Advancement Project told Hing, “What we know is that when you put police in school they arrest kids,” which means students going to jail for things like fist fights, talking back to teachers or even showing up late or wearing the wrong color socks.
The heavy fist doesn’t fall evenly. One study showed that black boys are three times more likely to be suspended than white boys and black girls were four times more likely than white girls. Studies have shown that if young children come into contact with the criminal justice system, that’s likely only the first time.
But the misguided idea that good teachers with guns will stop bad guys with guns is not the only possible gun control measure that could negatively impact people of color. The more restrictive gun control laws about to be passed in New York, for example, expand the number of assault weapons that will be banned in the state. Biden’s task force is likely to also push for an assault weapon ban. The evidence does seem pretty clear that fewer guns lead to less violence. But we can’t forget about the impact expanded criminalization could have as it’s implemented. The founder of Prison Culture, a blog focused on eradicating youth incarceration, took to Twitter shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting to warn against this problem. “I live in a city where black and brown kids some of whom I work with are currently locked up on ‘gun charges.’ These laws disproportionately impact and target the ‘usual suspects’ which happen to be the archetype ‘criminalblackman.’ As long our criminal legal system is racist and classist and heterosexist, it will be the marginalized who will be locked up,” the user said over a number of tweets. After all, as my Nation colleague Rick Perlstein explained last week, it was fear of gun-toting Black Panthers that led to some of the first strict gun control laws.
To understand the racist underbelly of our justice system, look no further than the extreme example of the War on Drugs. As Michelle Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow, despite similar drug use rates, “African Americans constitute 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison. In at least fifteen states, blacks are admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than that of white men.” Meanwhile, the majority of dealers and sellers are white. (Everyone should read the whole book to get the full picture.) What may look like a colorblind law on the books can be interpreted and implemented in incredibly racist ways. So while it’s absolutely necessary that we pass laws that restrict the number and types of guns that are lawfully available, we also have to pay attention to whether those rules are fairly and evenly enforced.
We’ve seen the ways that gun control gets tied up in a ramped up police state before. The last time there was a significant push on gun control (also helmed by Joe Biden), back in 1994, an assault weapon ban was included in a comprehensive crime package. That package also included an expansion of the death penalty, the building of more prisons and the authorization of 100,000 more police officers. These are all policies that target people of color. African-Americans make up 12 percent of the population but 40 percent of death row inmates and one in three of those executed since 1977. African-Americans and Hispanics make up about a quarter of the population but nearly 60 percent of all prisoners.
As we continue to debate guns in this country, it’s also worth remembering who is the victim of this violence and who is the face of rising mass murders. As David Cole writes in The New York Times, “young black men die of gun homicide at a rate eight times that of young white men.” He gives the examples of Chicago, where African-Americans are 33 percent of the population yet 70 percent of the murder victims, and Philadelphia, where three quarters of the victims of gun violence were black. Meanwhile, the faces of those who go on shooting rampages are almost all white and male. Forty-four of the killers in the sixty-two mass shootings since 1982 were white males, according to Mother Jones. This entire issue, from causes to consequences, is steeped in race. To pretend otherwise is farce. To ignore how our actions play out in this context risks disproportionately harming those who are already affected by violence.
By: Bryce Covert, The Nation, January 15, 2013
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