Another Data Point

There are two kinds of people who think assault weapons should be in the hands of civilians: Fools and madmen.

The fools think believe any amount of armament available to them are a) sufficient to protect them from an oppressive government and that it’s even a relevant concern in a democratic republic.

The madmen are be definition not to be trusted with instruments whose fundamental purpose is to kill human beings.

(By the way, these categories aren’t exclusive: There can be mad fools and foolish madmen.)

I, for one, think that when I go into a public place, say an airport, I shouldn’t be at risk of being shot to death by a mad fool with an assault rifle.

As this is becoming more common, I am NOT becoming more resigned to an America overwhelmed by gun violence. I am growing more and more furious at those who are promoting the ownership of these weapons, the people who are enriching themselves by the sale of these weapons, and the representatives who are enabling these outrages upon innocents.

We are hostages to a sophomoric interpretation of the second amendment, supported in large part by persons who, unhappy with the results of our political process, apparently feel compelled to arm themselves against some imagined government oppression – despite the fact that we live in a democracy.

A consequence of this view is that our society is being inundated with instruments that are specifically designed to kill human beings. We’ve seen these weapons fall into the hands of deranged persons who threaten peaceable, law-abiding citizens wherever they may be – in movie theaters, our places of worship or, most horribly, in our schools.

Greater issues may confront our nation, but none whose solution is so completely simple and obvious: Make the sale and ownership of such weapons illegal, buy the weapons back from those who are willing to comply with the law, and prosecute those who don’t.

This will only happen if Americans contact their legislators and insist that their freedom from fear trumps the fear of those foolish and/or crazy enough to own weapons whose purpose is to kill humans.

What are you waiting for? Contact your representative and say Enough!

Abraham Lincoln wisely pointed out that you can’t fool all the people all the time, which explains the impending demise of the conservative revolution.

The conservative program of activating white voters out of fear of non-whites, patriarchists out of fear of abortion, and I-don’t-know-what out of fear of gays is at last  showing signs of terminal disintegration in our national elections.

Having lost its electoral advantages, the GOP is now desperately seeking to maintain its political advantages with measures at the state level that will utterly ruin the party for a generation. Republicans are attempting to distort elections through voter restrictions,  gerrymandering and even  a program to game the electoral vote. As people come to see how fundamentally un-democratic (small D) these measures are, voters will develop an abiding distrust of the party that has promoted them.

Ironically, the Republican attempt to reapportion the electoral vote could lead to greater democracy, by making people aware of both the troublesome nature of the electoral college and an elegant way to render it obsolete.

Anyone who wants to make the electoral vote process more democratic (again, small D) should look no further than the National Popular Vote movement, whose aim is to ensure that presidential elections can only be won by candidates who win the votes of most Americans. (You can get details at nationalpopularvote.com.)

If state Republican legislators are serious about democracy, they will join this movement, which will ensure that Wisconsin’s electoral votes go the person who wins the votes of the majority of all Americans, not to the person who wins in gerrymandered districts.

Conservatives have not been able to convince Americans of their failed ideas. If they attempt to retain political power by rigging elections, they will reap the whirlwind.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from the most famous Republican of them all.

Paul Ryan: “It’s clear the stimulus didn’t work.”

Um, no.

When I was born in 1954, a Republican President was embarking on the most ambitious peacetime infrastructure in American history, the Interstate  Highway System. The top marginal tax rate was 91%.

When I was 12 years old, Voting Rights Act finally ensured that African Americans enjoyed the franchise they’d been denied for hundreds of years. CEOs were paid 24 times what their workers were paid

By the time I graduated from grade school, Medicare guaranteed a minimum level of affordable health care for the elderly. Before my 12th birthday, Americans walked on the Moon.

When I graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison my tuition accounted for 20% of the cost of my education. Public funds made up most of the difference.

But then something happened. I tend to think of it as Reaganism, but it has since metastasized into something even more grotesque.

Since the 1980s

• The top marginal tax rate has declined to 35%
• Around the country, republican-held legislatures are passing laws restricting voter access, in the name of reducing fraud — which demonstrably doesn’t exist in any important way.
•  In 2005, CEOs were paid 262 times the average worker’s pay
• Paul Ryan has proposed changes to Medicare that will mean seniors will pay $1,200 more for health insurance by 2030, and over $5,000 by 2050 — but only seniors younger than me!
• Public funding of the UW system has dwindled to 20% of the cost of education a student.

Baby-boomers have enjoyed better pay, more equal distribution of wealth, well-funded public education, ever-improving infrastructure, a more progressive tax system, and better health care than the generations before them.

Following generations are losing all these things, in large part because their elders are have been fighting for lower taxes.

Seems to me we’ve climbed a ladder to prosperity and are now pulling it up behind ourselves. Following generations be damned!

It’s shameful, really.

So now the right wing is trying to gin up the charge that Obama wants to destroy jobs with the sequestration agreed upon by all parties during the debt ceiling debate of 2011.

Leaving aside the question of whether this is just whining by people who don’t want to take their medicine, it seems fair to ask why the defense jobs — essentially public works jobs, since they’re paid for with public dollars — are more valuable than the public sectors jobs that have been lost by budget cuts at the state and federal level (and local, by virtue of the loss of shared revenue suffered by municipalities).

I would argue that, salaries being equal, they are of equal value economically, though of course politically they are not.

So, the GOP gets to cut jobs to save public dollars, but now they are trying to wriggle out of an agreement by blaming Obama for losing jobs.

And by the way, we’ve been told that government spending doesn’t create jobs, so why should government cuts cost jobs?

What do you call people who are against people collectively determining their working conditions and who are for more restrictive voting regulations?

I don’t think you call them lovers of democracy or popular will.

Re: Voter ID, we’re going to disenfranchise thousands of people to prevent voter fraud which numbers at best a few tens out of millions of ballots cast?

Those concerned about voter fraud ought to spend their energy on making sure that voting machines are above suspicion.

It seems our open season on human beings is just getting started. A shooting of a robber in Milwaukee, the killing of an unarmed  young man in Florida and  the killing of another unarmed man in West Bend are appalling and disturbing.

They are also the consequences of an unholy alliance between the NRA and ALEC.

It’s bad enough that the messengers of the GOP have constantly provoked fear and hatred among Americans. Now they are putting guns into the hands of those they’ve disturbed.

None of these shootings were in defense of human life; they were in defense of property at best, and at worst the tragic consequences of overblown, unrealistic fears.

There is a profound immorality at work here. The makers and promoters of handguns — whose true purpose is to allow humans to kill their fellows  — should be called to task for the lust for money and power that is motivating them.

We are approaching a point of no return: Either we increase taxes, or we abandon the New Deal (i.e., Social Security) and the Great Society (i.e., Medicare/Medicaid).

Make no mistake, the deficits are essentially the product of the relentless drive to reduce taxes. Every tax cut beginning with Reagan led to enormous deficits. The difference now is Tea Party intransigence (or irresponsibility) on raising taxes.

And what have we gotten from lower taxes (principally for the very wealthy)? Lousy roads and schools, stagnant wages for most Americans, and a few people getting insanely wealthy.

We would do well to recall the destitution that typically accompanied old age before Social Security. We’d do well also to recognize that, with all its faults, Medicare is the best-run, most cost-effective health insurance enterprise in the United States.

The problems of most people in this country stem not from high taxes, but low wages, not from big government, but big business.

Eventually, even the Tea Party folks (well, not all of them) will probably figure this out. The question is whether it will be too late by then.

So some Tea Party candidates got elected to Congress. Good for them. I could pretend I respect their views, but why bother? I’ll only concede their right to hold those views.

What I won’t concede is that they have such a perfect vision of the truth that they get to destroy everyone else’s economy.

The Tea Party is welcome to their irrational devotion to tax breaks for the richest Americans. But common sense and the America way of government demands that they recognize and respect the views of the majority of Americans who realize that enough is enough already.

In other words, compromise. The freshmen hardliners need to understand that their view is not the only view, and is in fact a minority view. (That is, if you’re counting voters; if you’re counting dollars I suppose you get a different result.)

Tax breaks for the wealthiest simply have not benefited most Americans. Polls show that 60% of Americans recognize this. But rather than accepting a return to historically normal rates of taxation on the wealthiest Americans, the Tea Party is willing to bring economic ruination on America and the world.

It’s a bitter disappointment to me that President Obama is not hammering on this point every hour of every day.