Category Archives: Commentary

All written commentary.

Boston gun control billboard updated

  By

Many folks from the greater Boston area are quite familiar with the huge anti-gun-violence billboard that’s been up in Boston for nearly two decades, outside Fenway Park along the Mass Pike. It’s reportedly the largest billboard in America.

Every so often, the Stop Handgun Violence group responsible for it, changes the specific message, though its focus is usually related to gun deaths of children. They have just updated it with a counter showing the number of gun deaths in the United States since the Sandy Hook massacre a year ago. You can read their press release here.

Credit: Anne Mostue of WGBH Boston.

Credit: Anne Mostue of WGBH Boston.

Meanwhile, even today there was another school shooting, just miles from Columbine High School. In a separate incident, a young mother was shot when she tried to take a handgun away from a 23 month old baby, who was playing it with it. Over five hundred children are killed every year in America due to gun accidents in the home and other gunshot incidents.

The Boston Globe published a front page story on Thursday, entitled:
Newtown far from a catalyst for gun control: In a year since school shootings, many states loosen their laws

President Obama […] made it his personal mission: “Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?”

Much of the politics, in the end, turned against him. Today, it is easier, not harder, to carry a gun in many parts of the nation than it was before the Newtown massacre last Dec. 14.

More than 1,500 bills were filed in state legislatures amid a chorus of grieving voices from shattered families. And while several reliably blue states enacted major reforms, far more states, more than two dozen, passed laws that weakened gun control. Many expanded the number of places where concealed weapons are permitted.

The federal effort, championed by Obama, failed in April in the face of Senate opposition to expanded background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and limits on ammunition magazines. In Colorado, two state senators were recalled by voters for supporting tougher gun restrictions in the wake of horrific killings at a movie theater in Aurora. A third state senator resigned rather than face a recall.

Yes, more states rolled back controls than those who expanded them.

Recall in Rhode Island

Just next door to both Massachusetts and Connecticut, the little town of Exeter Rhode Island has exploded in vitriol as gun advocates campaign to recall four town council members who dared to try to move concealed-carry permitting from the overwhelmed and under-resourced town clerk’s office to the state attorney general’s office, which used to handle it anyway as recently as 2011.

Under Rhode Island law, it’s much easier to get a local permit than a state permit, so many gun owners get theirs through the local authorities who are less free to refuse permits. What’s the distinction?

State law mandates that local authorities “shall” grant the permit to a qualified applicant — but the attorney general “may” issue a permit, giving that office more discretion.

In general, Rhode Island towns and cities do local licensing through their police force, but the town of Exeter is too small to have its own police force. So a few years ago, a town council member who also happens to own a gun store, insisted the town clerk had to start issuing the licenses instead, even though they were not adequately prepared to handle the task.

Shortly thereafter, the other council members decided that they should actually probably hand it off to the state attorney general’s office, which could do more thorough checks on applicants but who also had more authority to deny permits. The (now-former) town councilman who owns a gun store has led a nasty recall election campaign against the four members (out of five) who pragmatically and for safety reasons thought the matter should be referred to professionals (though it would require a state legislative act to codify the exemption and thus hasn’t even taken effect yet).

This is literally the smallest possible measure of gun control possible — restoring the situation to how it was two years ago with a one word distinction in the level of permit availability — and yet the gun advocates are trying to run everyone out of office. (In a particularly bizarre twist, the recall process there stipulates that offices recalled are filled by the losing candidate in the previous election.)

The campaign has been extremely vicious and filled with lots of big cash from the wider gun rights movement, as well as allegations that during the petition phase the pro-gun side told senior citizens the council members were secretly trying to raise their property taxes.

Voters there will head to the polls tomorrow.

US diplomacy runs into foreign politics

  By

Here’s a good read. ForeignPolicy.com: “Will India’s Next Leader Be Banned From America?”

My Summary: In 2005, the US State Department banned a state-level Indian politician, Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, from coming to the United States due to his alleged role in genocidal activities against Muslims (though investigations in India have never officially tied him to them) during the February 2002 riots in Gujarat. State figured it would be a symbolic denunciation with few likely consequences down the road.

Fast forward to present and now he is a national leader of the main opposition party (the Hindu nationalist BJP) and is widely anticipated to cruise into the office of prime minister next year. Now, the State Department is on the fence about what to do, particularly since he hasn’t been elected yet. Lifting the ban now would be seen as an endorsement or interference. Lifting it after he wins (if indeed he does) would be embarrassing and make the State Department look like it was bending the rules.

The Right to Resist

  By

revolution-of-1830Another excellent article by Ta-Nehisi Coates (aren’t his always?):
Mandela and the Question of Violence

Funny how Americans reserve the right to resist tyranny through violence — it’s one of the core premises of hardline Second Amendment fans — but they also want to reserve the right to declare when it is acceptable for others to do the same. By arming some groups and opposing the arming of others. By calling some “freedom fighters” and some “terrorists” who must renounce violence. And so on.

Who made us the arbiters anyway?

I’m not going to say I’m not sometimes guilty of some of the same double standards, but I’m also a lot more open than most to considering the legitimacy (or at least understandability) of armed resistances, even if I think it’s inadvisable in many cases.

Related Reading – The Globalist: Slavery and Guns: America’s “Peculiar Institutions” | How U.S. “gun rights” today are an extension of a right created to preserve slavery.

Scott Brown still Scottbrowning around, in NH now

  By

scott-brownLast seen as an incumbent losing a general election by 8 points in the next state over (Massachusetts), Scott Brown is not only will-he-won’t-he shadow campaigning for Senate in New Hampshire but is already playing the ever-absurd “not-ruling-out-running-for-president” game. That has even involved going to Iowa to find out, as he put it to the local papers, “whether there’s an interest in my brand of leadership and Republicanism.” Ridiculous cart before the ridiculous horse.

Money quote:

“Scott Brown has always been in love with himself, and this is just a vanity tour,” said Matt Canter, deputy executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

I wish he would just go away quietly for a while. I’m honestly surprised the New Hampshire Republicans are even entertaining, perhaps even welcoming, such blatant carpetbagging.

Congress: Low bar, everybody down

  By

Word on the street is that we’re supposed to be excited about the not-yet-passed budget deal between Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (the 2012 VP nominee) of Wisconsin.

Not because it’s a good deal. It’s still bad on its internal merits, relative to the fiscal direction we need to take the government and the economy. It’s being hailed as a good deal more because:

  • it exists,
  • it’s relatively long-term (through fall 2015, not another short fix),
  • and it’s not quite as horrendous as the 2011 Budget Control Act, known commonly as “the sequester.”

The latter was a haphazard across-the-board slash-and-burn measure, rather than a thoughtful targeting that took into account economic conditions. This is a somewhat more considered set of cuts that partially considers economic conditions.

Or as the Washington Post WonkBlog put it: “The budget deal is good for the economy because it isn’t terrible“…

The budget deal that Sen. Patty Murray (D) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R) announced Tuesday night could be good news for the U.S. economy in 2014. Not for what it contains. Rather, for what it doesn’t contain — and for the fact that it exists at all.

[…]

In other words, at a time of high unemployment, falling deficits and low interest rates, budget-cutting is still making the economy worse than it otherwise would be. But with this deal, Washington policy will be less counterproductive than it otherwise would be.”

Congress really seems to be facing some “soft bigotry of low expectations” from the American public and media these days. But I’m not sure why we’re supposed to throw a parade when they fulfill their minimum required duties — such as passing budgets and funding the operations of our national government — like they’re supposed to (and kind of still do a bad job even when they do that).

I understand that it’s seen as “progress” that we’re close to getting an actual budget passed for the first time since 2010 — though let’s not count our chickens before they’re hatched — but it’s a dangerous path to travel too far down because it both emphasizes value in reaching any deal no matter how bad, and because it only encourages marginal cooperation rather than actually policy engagement by the Republicans.

We’re getting a deal that will continue to put a major drag on the economic recovery — just a little less of one — and we’re still making huge cuts in vital areas. Is it better than nothing or further artificial fiscal crises? Probably. But not by a lot.

NSA: The Global Warcraft on Terror

  By

The latest absurdity of national security theatrics has been revealed by the Snowden leaks:

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

I think someone at the NSA conned their bosses into letting them play World of Warcraft at work…

But for all their enthusiasm — so many C.I.A., F.B.I. and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.

It’s just one more example of how the U.S. government has ramped up an expensive and invasive façade of protection that provides no real safety. It’s pure theater, much like most of the arcane airport security rules and carry-on restrictions.

Former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate and plot operations.

Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”

Senate Republican protest is counterproductive

  By

The Senate Republican response to the Senate rules change is that they will all join together to slow everything down to a crawl, to punish Democrats for the reforms. New York Times:

The Senate slowly began working its way through a backlog of presidential nominees on Tuesday now that Republicans are virtually powerless to block confirmations, approving a once-stalled judge to a powerful appeals court and a new director for the agency that oversees federal home lending.

But Republicans, still seething over a power play last month by Democrats to curtail the filibuster significantly, have settled on a strategy for retribution: make the confirmation process as time-consuming and procedurally painful as possible for Democrats.

“There’s a price that has to be paid when people abuse the rules,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah. “And let’s face it. These guys have completely obliterated the rules.”

Setting aside the irony of Senate Republicans saying the rules are being abused — and setting aside my view that it’s probably barely possible at this point to make it go any slower than it was — let’s accept the premise for the sake of debate. My question: do they really think this is going to be a persuasive argument to American voters, to convince them that the rules change was the wrong move?

U.S. voters, broadly speaking, love bold, fast action from government if it’s going to act at all. Senate Democrats saw a logjam, got fed up with it, and finally broke it. Republicans think forming a new one will win them voters. How? It’s just going to make Senate Democrats and voters even more likely to support changing even more of the Senate’s rules.

Slowing down operations to punish the majority for trying to speed up operations is only going to harden the majority’s determination to expand efforts to speed things up. Many Senate Dems are still skeptical of further changes and held out as long as possible against this limited reform. I’m sure a lot of them wouldn’t go along with more changes if they believed it had resolved the problem.

Being conciliatory and cooperative, instead of belligerent, makes way more sense as a long-term strategy to persuade people to stop taking options away from you. If you think everyone has characterized you incorrectly, you don’t go trying to prove them right by doing the thing they accuse you of, as a means of responding. That’s just poor strategy.

On the upside, Democrats aren’t taking the new abuses of the rules lying down:

“It’s retaliatory,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. “It’s revenge,” he added, noting that Democrats had a way of making things unpleasant themselves: by forcing Republicans to be physically present on the Senate floor while they draw things out.

“They’re going to have to keep speaking for four hours or eight hours at a time,” Mr. Harkin said. “And I don’t think they’ll have the stomach to do that on Fridays and Saturdays.”