Let's get Sane about Guns

I am increasingly disturbed by the gun violence that plagues our nation. Each year more and more shootings kill more and more people. The carnage piles up, the blood spills, images of body bags flood our frightened imaginations.

Every time it's the same sad story: a disturbed young white man from an affluent or middle class background could not get the mental health attention that he needed, but all too easily and too legally got his hands on military firearms, which the then proceeded to pump into innocent lives. All too quickly lives were cut short and tragedy struck again.

The unsurprising, although sickening, response from the usual suspects has been to insist on their right to bear arms. Conspiracy nuts have claimed that Obama faked the New Town shooting to seize their firearms and launch a dictatorship, the NRA have suggested arming everyone in order to have shootouts solve the problem.

ENOUGH!

It is past the time to discuss the issue. It is time to do something. Enough stupidity  Military weapons should not be allowed in civilian hands. Yes I KNOW WE HAVE A RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. I get it. I am NOT suggesting that we take away all guns from all people. But for the love of life and decency, let's legislate better background checks, make would-be gun owners pass a psychological exam every couple years, register all guns, ban assault rifles, take guns out of the hands of anyone who is mentally ill or has any kind of criminal past.

The right to bear arms has never and should not ever mean the right for any person to own any kind of gun made and get it as easily as possible. The right to life trumps the right to bear arms, and we have far too many deaths from gun violence. Too many young lives lost, to many families destroyed  too much death, loss and sorrow.

No more nonsense.

We need to do what is right here.

A Plea to My Leftist Friends: Obama is not Romney - The Vote Matters

There are some on the left of the political spectrum (the real left, not what our media and pundits call the "left") who see no important and meaningful difference betweeen Romney and Obama. Both, they argue, are corporate puppets who don't really represent the needs of poor, working, or even middle class voters. Both are stooges of the Military Industiral Complex that murders civilians abroad and imposes American Imperial Policy on nations all over the globe.

My Friends on the left are surely right to see Romney and Obama as tools of the the American Military Empire, the Corporate robber barrons, and the absurdly rich plutocrats. Neither man's campaign or debate performances mention the extreme income inequality, growing poverty, and diminshing resources of our nation's poor. Neither questions American expceptionalism and imperialism at home or abrod. Even worse, neither man seriously addresses the erosion and whole-sale decimation of the American Middle Class. With these points I agree completely.

Why, then, do I claim that Obama is not the same as Romney and that this election actually does matter?

Here's why: Obama will preserve social security and traditional medicare. Romney, on the other hand, will do away with both, turning them - slowly and carefully no doubt - into privatized and ineffective shadows of their former selves. Romney will slash taxes even more than Bush already has, diminsihing public funds, and resulting in drastic cuts to the social safety net. Far fewer food stamps, less unemployment, even more drastically underfunded schools, an infrastructure that crumbles and erodes even more so than it already has.

Romney will repeal Obamacare and pass the Ryan Budget into law. Of course, many on the left are unhappy with Obamacare, seeing it as a sell-out to the Health Insurance Industry. There is merit in that criticism. I share in that dissappointment. Despite my reserveations about Obamacare, however, I prefer a system that eliminates pre-existing conditions, expands medicaid to cover more of the working poor, allows young adults to stay on their parents insurance until they are 26, and provides free vaccines, screenings, and birth control to many who desperately need these services. Whatever Romney would put in place of Obamacare, would include none of this. It is likely in fact, that he will reinstitute the worse of the practices of the private insurance market, and perhaps even make matters worse than they were before.

I know that, for us on the left, Obama is not "our man." I know that his foreign policy has been a human rights travesty. Drones, kill lists, suspension of due process, the arrest of Bradley Manning. Yes, these are deplorable. The United States and its leadership ought to be held accountable for all of this; Obama included.

But what is to be gained by letting Mr. Romney win? Will he and his party release Bradley Manning? Stop the drones? Be rid of the kill lists? Be serious. If anything they will expand and amplify this and possibly bring back water boarding and other tortures just for good measure.

Finally, don't foget that Romney will get to appoint as many as 3 Supreme Court Justices during his Presidency if he wins this thing. If you care about a court that is set to consider same-sex marriage, if you are concerned that Roe V. Wade not be overturned, this is very far from a trivial matter.

To vote for Obama is not to support his dreadful - and all too American - imperial foreign policy. Nor is to vote for the clear corporate power structure that he represents.

We must vote for Obama to keep what is left of our social safety nets -  food stamps, head start programs, unemployment insurance, social security, medicare, etc - out of the hands of Mitt Romney and the right-wing party that comes with him.

We must vote for Obama in order to build on that which is good in Obamacare. We cannot return to what existed before it pasts.

We must vote for Obama to protect women's reproductive rights and the hope same-sex couples to have their love recognized with legal marriage.

Obama may not be the "change we can believe in," he is surely not the progressive champion some took him to be. Despite this, however, we know that his opponents are radical regressives who will undo what is left of the New Deal and the Great Society. On social views that will turn back the gay rights and womens movements, and plunge us backward. If we re-elect Obama we can push his party to the left, we can build up genuine progressive movements locally from the ground up and change the political climate of our nation for the better.We can do this not because Obama is wonderful, or even willing to join us, but because with Obama we can retain enough of the old liberal ideas and institutions to move forward and build.

But if we don't defeat Mitt Romney, if we don't win President Obama a second term, it may take us a generation, or even several generations, to undo the damages of the radical, right wing, regressive, and destructive social and economic agenda of Mr. Romney, Mr. Ryan, and a Republican Party now run by openly extremist regressives.

Morals, Taxes, and the Welfare State

There are two primary types of arguments offered to support the Right-Wing agenda of deregulation, cuts to social welfare programs, and tax cuts for the wealthy. The first type of argument is consequentialist. Advocates of this approach claim that cutting taxes on the wealthy, deregulating markets, and slashing social welfare programs are better for everyone. These moves will, they argue, make us all wealthier.

This is line of argument is absolutely false. The empirical data is unequivocal: the Right-Wing economic agenda benefits the very wealthy only. Wealth never trickles down, deregulation never helps main street, cuts to social welfare programs never help the unemployed and working poor. These policies have been implemented since the late 1970s, and all that has happened is that poverty has increased, middle class and working people have seen no rise in income, but have lost their pensions, their health insurance, and become buried in debt. Fewer and fewer people can own a home, send their kids to college, or pay their medical bills.

The consequentialist arguments are demonstrably, empirically, and indubitably wrong.

The second kind of argument is a moral one. The following video clip of Fox News' Stuart Varney provides a good example:

According to Varney and those who think like him, it is immoral to take more from the rich. They are entitled to what they have earned, and they are better off than the rest of us because they "worked harder" and "made themselves."

There are several problems with this type of argument:

1) The wealthy have not, as a class, worked harder than anyone else. That's just plain false. Working class people often work themselves to exhaustion and even death, and wealthy people sometimes can go years without breaking a sweat. No economic class, as a group, is divided from others on the basis of how hard they have worked.

2) There are no self-made individuals. In point of fact, there is a great deal of empirical evidence that persuasively demonstrates that, in nearly every case, the very wealthy have become so with the help of (a) being born and raised with wealth and privilege and (b) the assistance of government services and subsidies - usually more so than the rest of us. Or, as Elizabeth Warren nicely sums up in the following video:

Finally, 3), as John Rawls persuasively argues, to claim that one morally deserves X one must demonstrate that one has earned X chiefly through one's own moral or individual efforts. But this is simply not possible in the case of wealth. How much personal wealth one accrues depends on a number of arbitrary factors. First, and most importantly, wealth is often a mere accident of birth, some of us are born more or less fortunate than others. Second, often our income level is determined by our natural talents. But, although we can develop these, we cannot create them. If I do not have a talent that can earn me a great deal of money, then I will not earn a great deal of money. Third, which talents pay best is based on the arbitrary preferences of society. In our society talk show hosts and professional athletes make millions, whereas school teachers make, on average, 43,000 a year. Does a talk show host, say Oprah Winfrey, deserve to be extremely wealthy in some moral sense that a teacher does not? Hardly. The difference between her wealth and theirs depends on the arbitrary whim of society. It is, therefore, not reasonable to claim that the wealthy are morally wronged if they are taxed at higher rates than those who earn less.

The moral arguments for the Right-Wing agenda fail, just as the consequentialist arguments did.

Now turning from the Right-Wing agenda to the Progressive one, can a good case be made for the Progressive agenda of high taxes on the wealthy, strong social safety nets, and powerful government spending on the public good? Yes they can.

On consequentialist grounds the Progressive agenda is clearly a good idea. Imagine the reduction in crime if far fewer Americans lived in poverty, were well-educated, had good jobs, nice retirement plans, and access to affordable quality health care! Imagine how much better the United States would compete in the world if our schools were properly funded - not to mention the moral satisfaction in being sure that our society provides for those who are suffering, who are down and out.

Furthermore, the most prosperous time in our nation's history was the period after WWII into the mid to late 70s. During that time our income inequality was at it's lowest, unions were at their strongest, regulations at their most intense, and taxes on the wealthiest 1% of income earners was never below 70%. Coincidence? If so, then explain the fact that this boom did not exist before these policies, and failed to exist afterward. Explain the occurrence of the same trends in Europe.

More importantly, however, is the moral case for a strong welfare state. As a society we need food stamps and unemployment insurance for those who are poor, health care for all, good public schools, good public roads, parks, libraries, and community centers. We need all of these because our society is a healthier, happier, safer, and much better place when we have them in all their strength. Even those who are wealthy enough to get by with their private schools, gated communities, and personal Islands, are safer and more secure in a society where those around them benefit from good social services and programs.

Consider an analogy: Vaccines prevent deadly diseases. Not everyone, however, can be vaccinated for every disease. The elderly, the very young, some people with chronic illness or disabilities, cannot take certain vaccines. In a population where the vast majority of people are vaccinated, this is not a problem. Those who cannot be vaccinated are protected by what is known as herd immunity. Because so many people are vaccinated, the feared disease cannot enter the population and the unvaccinated persons are safe. Having myself or my child vaccinated, in other words, is not merely of benefit to me and my child, but is a public good, from which we all benefit. A community without measles or polio is much better off than a community with these dangers.

Unfortunately an increasing number of parents refuse to vaccinate their children. These parents fear that vaccines are dangerous and may even cause autism. Science has conclusively refuted these fears. Many parents, however, refuse to believe the scientific community and don't vaccinate any way. The result is that diseases like whooping cough and measles have returned. The unvaccinated have suffered because of this, often even dying as a result.

The Right-Wing agenda for economics is as irrational and as dangerous as parents who won't vaccinate their children. Because an increasing number of Americans have come to believe over the last 35 years or so - in spite of the empirical facts! - that the wealthy both morally deserve all their wealth and will benefit the rest of us by keeping it (and getting more), we have seen our social welfare programs slashed, our public services eviscerated, our social contract torn to shreds.

The result is a less educated, less secure, less healthy, more impoverished, and increasingly divided society. This is a recipe for total disaster that can, in the end, finish only with widespread rebellion, despair, and disaster.

We must now either wake up to the failure of the Right-Wing economic agenda, or watch things get much worse.

Feminism is not a dirty word

The victories of the women's movement have caused many to question whether it is still needed. So great is the skepticism for its continued role that "feminism" has become a dirty word. Feminist are generally portrayed and ridiculed as "man haters," "feminazis," and "ideologues." This is an unfortunate and inaccurate caricature.

A feminist is committed to the following three claims: 1) women and men ought to be moral, political, social, and economic equals, 2) societal perspectives, institutions, and power structures have and continue to prevent full equality of men and women, at the expense of women (patriarchy), and, 3) justice requires that we work to change the patriarchal systems that place women in a position below men. Other than a broad commitment to justice for all people and activism to ensure it, one need believe nothing in addition to these three claims to be a feminist. When that is understood, can anyone not say that feminism is correct? Bell Hooks is right "feminism is for everybody."

Recent events make it all the more necessary for those of us who truly believe in working for a world in which men and women are really equal. The time has come to proudly reclaim the feminist label.

Some extremists on the right wing of the political divide are waging a kind of war on the rights and dignity of women. Angry Catholic Bishops shout out that they will not pay for birth control. All male panels testify to congress about their "religious freedom" - the freedom to refuse to cover women's family planning!. Republicans in a number of states attempt to force pregnant women to undergo a transvaginal ultra-sound if they want an abortion; even if the woman was raped!

If all this were not bad enough, when women and those of us who love them protest these draconian measures as disregarding women's rights, we have people respond that women should just put aspirin between their knees like the good old days! Meaning, sadly, that if women don't want to get pregnant they should just never have sex. Even worse, some clueless pundits, with more contempt for women than brains, claim that transvaginal ultra-sounds cannot be invasive since "they had no problem having similar to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy."

This is all familiar right wing moral fanaticism. It's nothing more than a way of attempting to control women by implying that they are "sluts" and "deserve it" if they have an unwanted pregnancy. It's nonsense. But the fact that so many still think and speak this way is proof that feminism is very much still needed.

But what of those who reject the puritanical moralism of the right? What of those who fancy themselves free, open, and non-censorious about sexual mores? Unfortunately many of these types are no better. Not only is there a massive market for Internet porn that overwhelming portrays women as violently dominated by men but "shock jocks" like Howard Stern, whose entire career is almost nothing but demeaning and insulting women, are more popular than ever.

To take a very recent example, Stern spent a large segment of an interview with Adam Levine, trying to figure out why Christina Aguilera has gained weight. He lamented the fact that she was no longer "hot" and called her "plus sized," clearly repulsed by the Cuvier-than-before pop star. Aguilera is a beautiful and talented woman, and it serves Stern's misogynistic purposes to try and put her down so crudely ... not to mention the ongoing image problems and eating disorders among women that he and his brood revel in.

The moral of the story is simple. We do not live in a world where women are fully equal with men. We should, but we don't. Patriarchy is working, much more overtly recently, not only to keep women down, but to push them back.

The women's movement must fight on!

Angry White Voters: The Truth about the Tea Party

I have long thought that the tea party was nothing more than a group of far-right extremists that have long spewed their uninformed, bigoted, and angry opinions toward all things they perceive - with fear and trembling racking their frightened forms - as "liberal," "progressive," "humanistic," and "secular."

The only difference between them now and over the past 50 years is that obscenely rich and self-interested charlatans like Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers - feel free to snicker at the thought of a "Dick" and the couple of "Koch's" funding the "tea-baggers" - have given them odd signs and banners, and bankrolled their crank rallies.

It appears, unsurprisingly, that I was correct. Hard data now demonstrates that the so-called tea-party is, in Joan Walsh's words:

Scholar Robert Putnam, best known for his study of American atomization in "Bowling Alone," has produced new data on the Tea Party and it's being billed as a shocker. Sit down before you read this: They are older, white conservative Christians "who were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born."

Putnam's article is available at the New York Times. According to his research:

Beginning in 2006 we interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 Americans as part of our continuing research into national political attitudes, and we returned to interview many of the same people again this summer. As a result, we can look at what people told us, long before there was a Tea Party, to predict who would become a Tea Party supporter five years later. We can also account for multiple influences simultaneously — isolating the impact of one factor while holding others constant.

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.

What’s more, contrary to some accounts, the Tea Party is not a creature of the Great Recession. Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party. And while the public image of the Tea Party focuses on a desire to shrink government, concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters.

So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

This inclination among the Tea Party faithful to mix religion and politics explains their support for Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. Their appeal to Tea Partiers lies less in what they say about the budget or taxes, and more in their overt use of religious language and imagery, including Mrs. Bachmann’s lengthy prayers at campaign stops and Mr. Perry’s prayer rally in Houston.

In short, the tea-party is nothing but a new name for the same old right-wing bigots who have opposed every socially progressive policy since the Civil Rights act! The same bigots who wanted to make sure black people could not vote, live in their neighborhoods, or attend their schools, now oppose a black president. The same right-wing religious extremists who want Genesis taught in their kids' biology courses and think America should be a nation for Christians only, now want Michelle Bachmann to lead their country.

Enough nonsense! There is no such thing as the tea-party; it's just the same far right cranks and loons we've had to deal with for a very long time. So let's do what you ought to do with such quacks: let them rant and rave like the madmen they are, and ignore their wild chants when we actually sit down as rational people to attempt policy.

It's time to throw the tea-bag in the trash.

They are guilty for their violent words!

Rep. John Dingell today read out a list of quotes of violent rhetoric from the right wing:



This is not at all new and has been brewing for some time. Bill Moyers, a couple of years ago, did a whole segment on it:



I know what those who would defended the far right - Note: we should distinguish between a right-winger and a conservative, they are not identical - will say. They will say that words don't kill people, that no real violence was actually intended by those who used violent language, and that you can't blame pundits and politicians for the actions of a few wackos.

This argument is too stupid to take seriously. When Glen Beck tells us that he wants to strangle Michael Moore, and kill Charlie Rangel with a shovel, when Sarah Palin tells us to reload because Obama and his people are dangerous socialists who will kill off grandma with their death panels, when tea-baggers bellow that they must "take their country back," "water the tree of liberty," and that Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist who is going to ruin our country from within, can we honestly say this does not lead to a violent political climate? Can so many violent and fearful comments really never lead "some wacko" to kill? That is nearly impossible to believe.

But if you are still in doubt that this does lead to such disasters, I quote Robert Wright from yesterday' New York Times

People on the left and right have been wrestling over the legacy of Jared Loughner, arguing about whether his shooting spree proves that the Sarah Palins and Glenn Becks of the world are fomenting violence. But it’s not as if this is the only data point we have. Here’s another one:

Six months ago, police in California pulled over a truck that turned out to contain a rifle, a handgun, a shotgun and body armor. Police learned from the driver — sometime after he opened fire on them — that he was heading for San Francisco, where he planned to kill people at the Tides Foundation. You’ve probably never heard of the Tides Foundation — unless you watch Glenn Beck, who had mentioned it more than two dozen times in the preceding six months, depicting it as part of a communist plot to “infiltrate” our society and seize control of big business.

Predictably the right-wing hate mongers have responded to the recent violent attacks in Arizona by whining and playing the victim. Sarah Palin, who has taken much heat because of rifle targets she put on a map over several democratic congress districts (including the poor woman who was shot!), responded by crying that we demean and offend her by saying her words could of led to this, and saying that we commit "blood libel" if we hold her in any way accountable.

Palin's response is, of course, shameful. Even worse are the many pundits who rushed to her defense, as if the real tragedy of the Arizona shootings is that some people thought Palin should tone down her violent rhetoric!

When some idiot like Palin runs around saying that the President of the United states "pals around with terrorists," wants to create "death panels" to kill grandma, puts bull eyes over districts of the opposing parties representatives, tells people that Obama wants to take away their guns and Bibles, can anyone honestly tell me that she is not contributing to a climate of violence?

Enough nonsense. Let us please be honest the words of these hate-mongers are violent and they must be held accountable for that.

Sarah Palin's words are not likely responsible for the shootings in Arizona. But the violence in her words and the words of many like her are creating a climate of fear, hostility, and anger. Those who speak like her must be held accountable for their words.

Bill Maher rightly chastises Jon Stewart

I'm no fan of Bill Maher, but he's right about this. Please Watch:



Let us please keep in mind here (as I don't think Maher does), that there is a difference - often a large difference - between a conservative and a right-winger. The one should not be confused with the other. Nor does being Republican mean that one is on "the right" either.

The right-wing, as I understand the term, applies to militia groups, people who think that Obama was born in Kenya, Fred Phelps, the late Jerry Falwell, people who think Climate Change is a liberal conspiracy, and other such radical loonies.

The right-wing has become absurdly extreme and very dangerous. There are, however, a great many thoughtful conservatives and moderates, many of whom are Republicans, I want to stress that, at least for me, the right-wing is the danger, not all Republicans are all conservatives.