Tea Partiers Talk Spending Cuts

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/real-time-interviews-nj-tea-partiers-who-c

Well worth the read

Boy is this worth a debate.  Speaks for me.

Fouad Ajami: Ten Years Ago, an Honorable War Began With Wide Support

Now the U.S. has bailed out of Iraq leaving behind little trace. And a strongman is in charge.

Nowadays, few people step forth to speak well of the Iraq War, to own up to the support they gave that American campaign in the Arab world. Yet Operation Iraqi Freedom, launched 10 years ago this week, was once a popular war. We had struck into Afghanistan in 2001 to rout al Qaeda and the terrorists' Taliban hosts—but the 9/11 killers who brought ruin onto American soil were not Afghan. They were young Arabs, forged in the crucible of Arab society, in the dictators' prisons and torture chambers. Arab financiers and preachers gave them the means and the warrant for their horrific deeds.
America's previous venture into Iraq, a dozen years earlier, had been a lightning strike: The Iraqi dictator was evicted from Kuwait and then spared. Saddam Hussein's military machine was all rust and decay by 2003, but he swaggered and let the world believe that he had in his possession a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The Arab redeemer, as he had styled himself, lacked the guile that might have saved him. A great military expedition was being readied against him in London and Washington, but he gambled to the bitter end that George W. Bush would not pull the trigger.
On the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom—the first bombs fell on March 19—well over 70% of the American public supported upending the Saddam regime. The temptation to depict the war as George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's is convenient but utterly false. This was a war waged with congressional authorization, with the endorsement of popular acceptance, and with the sanction of more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for Iraq's disarmament.
Those unburdened by knowledge of the ways of that region would come to insist that there had been no operational links between the Iraqi despot and al Qaeda. These newborn critics would insist on a distinction between secular terrorism and religious terrorism, but it was a distinction without a difference.
The rationale for the war sustained a devastating blow in the autumn of 2004 when Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. arms inspector for Iraq, issued a definitive report confirming that Saddam had possessed no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The war now stood on its own—and many of its former supporters claimed that this wasn't what they had signed up for. Yet the "architects" of the war could not pull the plug on it. They soldiered on, offering a new aim: the reform and freedom of Iraq, and the example of a decent Iraq in the "heart of the Arab world."

 

There were very few takers for the new rationale. In the oddest of twists, American liberalism now mocked the very idea that liberty could put down roots in an Arab-Muslim setting.
Nor were there takers, among those watching from lands around Iraq, for the idea of freedom midwifed by American power. To Iraq's east lay the Iranian despotism, eager to thwart and frustrate the American project. To the west in Syria there was the Baath dictatorship of the House of Assad. And beyond there was the Sunni Arab order of power, where America was despised for giving power to Shiites. For a millennium, the Shiite Arabs had not governed, and yet now they ruled in Baghdad, a city that had been the seat of the Islamic caliphate.
A stoical George W. Bush held the line amid American disaffection and amid the resistance of a region invested in the failure of the Iraq campaign. He doubled down with the troop "surge" and remained true to the proposition that liberty could stick on Arab soil.
There is no way of writing a convincing alternative history of the region without this war. That kind of effort is inherently speculative, subject to whim and preference. Perhaps we could have let Saddam be, could have tolerated the misery he inflicted on his people, convinced ourselves that the sanctions imposed on his regime were sufficient to keep him quarantined. But a different history played out. It delivered the Iraqis from a tyranny that they would have never been able to overthrow on their own.
The American disappointment with Iraq helped propel Barack Obama to power. There were strategic gains that the war had secured in Iraq, but Mr. Obama had no interest in them. Iraq was the "war of choice" that had to be brought to a "responsible close," he said. The focus instead would be on that "war of necessity" in Afghanistan.
A skilled politician, Mr. Obama made the Iraqi government an offer meant to be turned down—a residual American force that could hardly defend itself, let alone provide meaningful protection for the fledgling new order in Baghdad. Predictably, Iraq's rulers decided to go it alone as 2011 drew to a close. They had been navigating a difficult course between Iran and the U.S. The choice was made easy for them, the Iranian supreme leader was next door, the liberal superpower was in retreat.

Heading for the exits, Mr. Obama praised Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as "the elected leader of a sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq." The praise came even as Mr. Maliki was beginning to erect a dictatorship bent on marginalizing the country's Kurds and Sunni Arabs and even those among the Shiites who questioned his writ.
Two weeks ago, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, issued his final report, called "Learning from Iraq." The report was methodical and detailed, interspersed with the testimonies of American and Iraqi officials. One testimony, by an Iraqi technocrat, the acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, offered a compelling image: "With all the money the U.S. has spent, you can go into any city in Iraq and you can't find one building or project built by the U.S. government. You can fly in a helicopter around Baghdad or other cities, but you can't point a finger at a single project that was built and completed by the United States."
It was no fault of the soldiers who fought this war, or of the leaders who launched it, that their successors lacked the patience to stick around Iraq and safekeep what had been gained at an incalculable cost in blood and treasure.
Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of "The Syrian Rebellion" (Hoover Press, 2012).

NYT, WSJ

NYT

House Republicans were elated this week when their leader, John Boehner, made it clear that deep, automatic spending cuts would begin as scheduled on Friday. Incredibly, some consider the decision a victory.       

 

As the cuts take effect, they will inflict widespread hardship. How?  But some Americans will be hurt more than others, and the people who will be hurt the most are those who are already struggling. In the months ahead, an estimated 3.8 million Americans who have been unemployed for more than six months face a cut in federal jobless benefits of nearly 11 percent — or about $32 a week — all from the recent average weekly benefit of $292. And won't this incentivize them to get jobs and become, better than unemployed...employed?  And an estimated 600,000 low-income women and toddlers will be turned away from the federal nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC.

It should not be this way. Deficit reduction should not occur on the backs of the poor and vulnerable.  So is it now societies mandate to provide federal nutrition for all poor people?...sorry...but isn't it the poor peoples (gasp-he really said that!) responsibility to provide nutrition for their children?  Won't this reduction incentivize them to get off the program?  Does not the Federal program make them less likely to end their poverty?

 

WSJ

 

One reason the grind may intensify is that Mr. Obama spurned GOP offers Friday morning to grant him even more executive discretion than he already has to prioritize federal spending.

What he is trying to do instead is implement the sequester as rudely as possible so that he can extract another tax increase.

 

Mr. Obama pitches his tax increase as "tax reform" and merely cutting "tax loopholes" and "tax breaks for the well off and well connected." He also said he doesn't want to "raise tax rates." But the Senate Democratic bill he endorsed on Thursday included the "Buffett rule".  Real tax reform means reducing rates in return for closing loopholes. Mr. Obama wants to raise rates instead.

The President also stuck to his line that the sequester cuts will hurt the economy, even suggesting that any slowdown in growth in the months ahead is all the sequesters fault: "As long as the sequesters in place we'll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act." 

Sounds like the "stimulus" argument to me.


President Obama has implemented many new social programs that have satisfied many, including gay marriage, gays in the military, environmental issues and the like....some good, some debatable...(abortion certainly has two sides...you know the Mom and the Baby).


One cannot be objective, honest and pro our country without acknowledging the profound deficit of our Presidents ignoring of our deficit.

He, unlike Clinton, Bush I and II, stood up to their party placing country before..in Obama's case...him.

We have unsustainable overspending which cannot ever, ever, ever be addressed by tax increases.  We need to reform the entitlement programs.  We need to mean test them.  We need to raise the retirement age.  We need to quit making it a moral unargument, see above, that low income women need to pay for their own children's nutrition and everyone needs to get off unemployment and get a job.


And the fact that this is a "argument" remains amazing.


 

INCONVIENCE GUN OWNERS NEVER

Wow! Let's not cause any problems for gun owners in this country.
Let's not inconvience them in any way from access to their weapons!
 Let's think back to 9-11, we as a country made a decision to never again be attacked from airplanes and cause chaos and death, and as a country we decided to " inconvenience" millions of good Americans by now searching, and patting down children and grandmothers, and xraying EVERYONE who wants to fly in this country.
But God forbid the gun owners in this country are unwilling to have background checks, or limit guns that have 100 clips be inconvienced for our safety as non gun owners.
I guess those 20 kindergartner kids are just not enough for all of us to get a few to rules in place. It was just not enough the Colorado kids going to a movie to be slaughtered to get the gun owners to be inconvienced a little. Just not enough kids dead in Virginia Tech to inconvenience gun owners.
We as a country stepped up after 9-11 and said enough I will be inconvienced for the good of the country but gun owners say no we have a better plan more guns.
If we would have used that reasoning on 9-11 we would have said let's put more planes in the sky and no check points because we don't want to inconvience people.
Who are the real Americans who really care about the country I ask you?

I does not work, never has (USSR), never will

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address illustrated what a dead letter federalism is among Democrats. Not that further illustration was necessary.

Federalism holds that the national government should limit itself to things of truly national scope. Things that are primarily of local concern should be left to state and local governments.

Federalism was a big deal to the founders. They wanted an energetic national government, but one that was confined to enumerated national functions. The founders also envisioned a bright line between the federal and state governments, each sovereign within their own spheres.

We are a long way from that. Today, the Democratic Party sees virtually nothing as outside the purview of the federal government. The Republican Party talks a good game about federalism, but usually ends up undermining the principle when it acquires national power.

Today, the lines between the federal government and state and local governments are hopelessly blurred. The federal government spends over $600 billion a year on grants to state and local governments. Arizona state government receives more in federal funds than it raises in general-fund taxes.

Today, state governments operate principally as service delivery mechanisms for federal social-welfare programs. This means that there is no real political accountability for the programs, which is why they grow and function like a blob.

If Medicaid costs are spinning out of control, who’s to blame and who should do something about it? The federal government that provides most of the funding and sets up the basic rules, or the state governments that actually administer the program? The food stamp program has grown astronomically of late. Purely a function of a bad economy, or is there something else going on? Whose job is it to figure that out?

President Ronald Reagan wanted to sort out the blob with his new federalism initiative, clearly making some functions, such as Medicaid, fully federal, while making other functions, including most welfare programs, fully state and local. There were some Democratic governors at the time, including Arizona’s Bruce Babbitt, who were also interested in a sorting out of responsibilities.

But agreement was never reached, nothing of significance happened. So, the blob endured and grew.

Obama proposes to feed it even more. The federal government should establish manufacturing innovation institutes in economically distressed areas and provide incentive grants to states to increase the energy efficiency of homes and businesses.

The federal government should fix 70,000 bridges and create a federal fund to modernize ports and pipelines. The federal government should have a new grant program to get high-school graduates better ready for high-tech jobs. And, according to Obama, the federal government should make sure that every kid has access to high-quality preschool.

The federal government, however, does not have a greater interest in the recovery of economically distressed areas than the states in which they are located, or greater insight into how to turn them around. Every bridge in America is located in a state and local community that has a greater interest in its condition than the federal government.

Every port and pipeline in the United States is located in a state and local community. If there are gains to be had from modernizing them, local governments have a greater incentive to get it done and done right than the federal government.

Every kid in America lives in a state and local community that is more interested in his education and workplace preparedness than the federal government. What do we really have to show for the increased federal involvement in education, under George W. Bush or Obama?

The federal government is broke, and broke in a way that threatens the American economy. Proposals that it do even more are surreal, even if they are supposedly paid for. If there’s loose change to be had, the federal government should use it to reduce the deficit, not further expand its reach.

It’s nowhere on the horizon, but a revival of Reagan’s new federalism discussion is badly needed.

SUNDAY TALK SHOW BLATHER

It was a rainy day, and forced to watch the Sunday talk shows, I actually saw Jim DeMint say OUT LOUD that He doesn't believe the election WAS an indication of what Americans want.  REALLY Seriously!
Jim,  and you think we should just drug test welfare people, we need to drug test you. Here is what the election showed: They think war should not be the first option, that healthcare should not be a privilege, that poor people are not lazy, that unions are not communists, that drill baby drill is not an energy policy, that homosexuality is not a sin, that the President is really who he is, an AMERICAN WHO BELIEVES WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.
Dr. Jim before you go all nutsy, here is one of those pesky facts:  9 out of 10 of the poorest states in the nation voted for Romney. 8 of the 10 richest states voted for Obama.

Fist health care, then the economy at large. The left's master technique.

Health-insurance premiums have been rising—and consumers will experience another series of price shocks later this year when some see their premiums skyrocket thanks to the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare.

The reason: The congressional Democrats who crafted the legislation ignored virtually every actuarial principle governing rational insurance pricing. Premiums will soon reflect that disregard—indeed, premiums are already reflecting it.

Central to ObamaCare are requirements that health insurers (1) accept everyone who applies (guaranteed issue), (2) cannot charge more based on serious medical conditions (modified community rating), and (3) include numerous coverage mandates that force insurance to pay for many often uncovered medical conditions.  (sounds like a good idea)

Guaranteed issue incentivizes people to forgo buying a policy until they get sick and need coverage (and then drop the policy after they get well). While ObamaCare imposes a financial penalty—or is it a tax?—to discourage people from gaming the system, it is too low to be a real disincentive. The result will be insurance pools that are smaller and sicker, and therefore more expensive.

How do we know these requirements will have such a negative impact on premiums? Eight states—New Jersey, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington, Kentucky, Vermont and Massachusetts—enacted guaranteed issue and community rating in the mid-1990s and wrecked their individual (i.e., non-group) health-insurance markets. Premiums increased so much that Kentucky largely repealed its law in 2000 and some of the other states eventually modified their community-rating provisions.

States won't experience equal increases in their premiums under ObamaCare. Ironically, citizens in states that have acted responsibly over the years by adhering to standard actuarial principles and limiting the (often politically motivated) mandates will see the biggest increases, because their premiums have typically been the lowest.

Many actuaries, such as those in the international consulting firm Oliver Wyman, are now predicting an average increase of roughly 50% in premiums for some in the individual market for the same coverage. But that is an average. Large employer groups will be less affected, at least initially, because the law grandfathers in employers that self-insure. Small employers will likely see a significant increase, though not as large as the individual market, which will be the hardest hit.

We compared the average premiums in states that already have ObamaCare-like provisions in their laws and found that consumers in New Jersey, New York and Vermont already pay well over twice what citizens in many other states pay. Consumers in Maine and Massachusetts aren't far behind. Those states will likely see a small increase.

By contrast, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and Virginia will likely see the largest increases—somewhere between 65% and 100%. Another 18 states, including Texas and Michigan, could see their rates rise between 35% and 65%.

While ObamaCare won't take full effect until 2014, health-insurance premiums in the individual market are already rising, and not just because of routine increases in medical costs. Insurers are adjusting premiums now in anticipation of the guaranteed-issue and community-rating mandates starting next year. There are newly imposed mandates, such as the coverage for children up to age 26, and what qualifies as coverage is much more comprehensive and expensive. Consolidation in the hospital system has been accelerated by ObamaCare and its push for Accountable Care Organizations. This means insurers must negotiate in a less competitive hospital market.

Although President Obama repeatedly claimed that health-insurance premiums for a family would be $2,500 lower by the end of his first term, they are actually about $3,000 higher—a spread of about $5,500 per family.

Health insurers have been understandably reluctant to discuss the coming price hikes that are driven by the Affordable Care Act. Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, the country's third-largest health insurer, broke the silence on Dec. 12. "We're going to see some markets go up by as much as 100%," he told the company's annual investor conference in New York City.

Insurers know that the Obama administration will denounce the premium increases as the result of greedy health insurers, greedy doctors, greedy somebody. The Department of Health and Human Services will likely begin to threaten, arm-twist or investigate health insurers in an effort to force them into keeping their premiums more in line with Democratic promises—just as HHS bureaucrats have already started doing when insurers want premium increases larger than 10%.

But unlike the federal government, health insurers can't run perpetual deficits. Something will have to give, which will likely open the door to making health insurance a public utility completely regulated by the government, or the left's real goal: a single-payer system.

GOP LEADERLESS AND LOST

The GOP just spent  60.4 billion on Sandy the money they fought so hard to get in deficit reduction, so what's the point? Fight for deficit reduction and then in 24 hours spend it on storm problems. That's like my children putting 2 dollars in their piggy bank and being proud they are saving and then head to the store and buy 2 dollars on candy? Where are the adults?
With no plan every road will not get you there, to change a phrase.  The President has taken the easy road let's bash the wealthy, but their are plenty of " rich Americans" who have worked hard, taken risk and should be rewarded for  their effort. It's disappointing the President doesn't have a bold plan that takes risk  but rewards all Americans. I think he might have made one with Boehner, but we will never know what transpired way back then but reported it was 3 dollars cut for every 1 tax revenue. This cut  deal is much worse and Republicans and the Tea Party nuts only have themselves to blame for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, months ago.  While Biden may be laughed at by the right at least he was willing to enter the fray and talk some sense into getting a solution unlike Obama.
It never ceases to amaze me when we talk of cuts which are needed we never seem to cut foreign aid. It's like your children are living under a bridge buts lets send money to St. Vincents DePaul. Really your own family (Americans) are hurting but let's send Egypt money. DAH. Getting to the point which is always a problem aimless cutting without a comprehensive plan, and aimless crisis spending without a plan is both idiotic. Who can put a plan together and have the economy humming is what we need.
 I laugh when I here these TEN YEAR plans I can balance my own budget if I go out enough years. Small can kicking plans might be political safe the real deal is let these other countries defend themselves. Let them build their own armies and navys, bring our people home and start building hospitals for the mentally ill, schools for children that want to learn, trade schools for those that want trades. Collect 100 clip magazines, from these gun crazy loonies, and realize their is something called the "greater good" than your " so called right". Can you own a tank? It's that simple 2nd Amendment people. Society is best served when love and kindness is shown to all, not just who we like.

so who is resonsible?

Remember Durbin also excluded any raise in the retirement age.

First we are going broke due to over spending, yes reduced revenue collection is also an issue, but unless we want the WHOLE GDP going to entitlement spending and debt, we are over spending.

This just in...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell remained at odds on such key issues as the income threshold for higher tax rates and how to deal with inheritance taxes, among other issues. McConnell complained that Reid had yet to respond to a GOP offer made Saturday evening and reached out to Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime friend, in hopes of breaking the impasse.
One sign of progress came as Republicans withdrew a long-discussed proposal to slow future cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients as part of a compromise to avoid the cliff. Democrats said earlier Sunday that proposal had put a damper on the talks, and Republican senators emerging from a closed-door GOP meeting said it is no longer part of the equation.
“I was really gratified to hear that Republicans have taken their demand for Social Security benefit cuts off the table. The truth is they should never have been on the table to begin with,” Reid said late Sunday afternoon. “There is still significant distance between the two sides, but negotiations continue.”

And here lies the reason for our impending bankruptcy:  “I was really gratified to hear that Republicans have taken their demand for Social Security benefit cuts off the table."

Reducing the amount of increase of COLA is a cut...off to Greece we are.

What I don't REALLY get is how Obama continues to avoid responsibility.

And this idiot is a doctor.

The following is from the New England Journal of Medicine.  Doctors, unlike "global warming" scientists are usually adamant about the scientific accuracy of that which presented for review.  We can smell out BS in a second.  I am aghast this was published.

This obvious politically partisan physician writes a lead article which is published in Medicines lead journal about gun violence.  He blames, extols, and proposes limitations of liberty for something (which I placed in bold) that he admits is rare and not increasing.

As the left always does, he intertwines good ideas, background checks with whole sale limitations of gun purchasers rights.  Why does the writer think Californians go to Nevada to buy guns?  Because they want them.

I personally don't give a rat's behind about guns, I care about liberty.

********************

We are learning how to watch the news through tears. All those children, and the adults protecting them. With an assault rifle. Up close. The survivors, eyes averted, are led to safety in daisy chains. Ambulances rush to the scene, but nearly all return empty. Loved ones go home empty, too.

We pore over the details, searching for the clues that will bring order to chaos and help us predict and prevent the next one. But these catastrophes are all different. We have found to our dismay that prediction is somewhere between difficult and impossible. Tailored interventions, designed for specific circumstances, will have little effect. We need to take a broader approach.

Sandy Hook, Oak Creek, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine: “it can't happen here” places where terrible things did happen and 95 people died. Contrary to widespread perception, however, such events are uncommon. Their frequency is not increasing, and they account for only a small fraction of firearm-related deaths and injuries. On average, 88 Americans died every day from firearm violence in 2011, and another 202 were seriously injured. In 2012, for the first time, there will probably be more firearm-related homicides and suicides than motor vehicle traffic fatalities.

The United States has become an extreme example of what could well be termed “global gunning.” With less than 5% of the world's population, we own more than 40% of all the firearms that are in civilians' hands: 250 million to 300 million weapons, nearly as many as we have people, and they are not going away anytime soon. We have made social and policy decisions that, with some important exceptions, provide the widest possible array of firearms to the widest possible array of people, for use under the widest possible array of conditions.

The most egregious policies have been enacted at the state level — “Stand Your Ground” laws, for instance, which have been used to legitimize what many people still call murder. Justice Louis Brandeis rightly praised the states as the laboratories of our democracy, but in some of them, experimentation with firearm policy has taken a frightening turn.

We are paying the price of those decisions. Too often, our children and grandchildren are paying it for us. Payments will continue. Can we do anything to reduce them? I believe the answer is yes.


An argument could be made for a complete rethinking of the role that firearms play in the United States. That is the work of generations, however, and we can accomplish much without it. In the near term, harm reduction is the best approach. We can make specific changes to our firearms laws, on the basis of existing evidence, that will produce measurable benefits.

We should start by requiring background checks for all firearm purchases. When a licensed retailer — gun dealer or pawnbroker — sells a firearm, a background check is performed and a permanent record is kept. But perhaps 40% of all firearms transactions involve private-party sellers, who need not keep records and cannot obtain a background check. I have observed hundreds of these anonymous, undocumented sales; they can be completed in less than a minute.

Not surprisingly, private-party sales are the most important source of firearms for criminal buyers and specifically for persons prohibited by law from purchasing firearms. Such buyers do not volunteer their stories, and savvy sellers know not to ask. Private-party sales are also probably the main reason that the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which requires background checks for sales by licensed retailers, did not reduce firearm-related homicides.1

Second, on at least two fronts, we should broaden our criteria for denying someone the purchase or possession of firearms. Among persons who purchase firearms legally, those with a previous conviction for a misdemeanor violent crime (e.g., assault and battery) are roughly nine times as likely as those with no criminal history to be subsequently arrested for a violent crime.2 With two or more such prior convictions, the risk increases by a factor of 10 to 15. Alcohol abuse is a leading risk factor for both interpersonal and self-directed violence, and firearm owners who abuse alcohol are more likely than other owners to engage in violence-related behaviors with firearms.3

What about purchases by the mentally ill? The current lifelong federal prohibition applies to anyone “adjudicated as a mental defective” — language that is offensive and ambiguous. For many reasons, including the ambiguity, the databases on which background checks rely are incomplete. More than one mentally ill mass shooter, including Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech, 2007) and Russell Weston (U.S. Capitol, 1998), passed a background check and purchased firearms from a licensed retailer because their eligibility was uncertain or records were unavailable. We need better data and criteria that take account of the evidence that mental illness is treatable and that risk for violence is not increased substantially unless there is a history or threat of violence or a history of substance abuse.

We know that comprehensive background checks and expanded denial criteria are feasible and effective, because they are in place in many states and have been evaluated. California, for example, requires a background check on all firearm purchases and denies purchases by persons who have committed violent misdemeanors. Yet some 600,000 firearms were sold there in 2011, and the firearms industry continues to consider California a “lucrative” market. The denial policy reduced the risk of violent and firearm-related crime by 23% among those whose purchases were denied.4

We also know that state-level regulation is insufficient by itself, because firearms simply flow from states where laws are lax to states where laws are stricter. Some pathways even have names, such as the Iron Pipeline from the Southeast to New England. At gun shows in California, where direct private-party sales are illegal, such sales are almost nonexistent. At shows just across the border in Reno, Nevada, where private-party sales are legal, dozens occur, and a third of the cars in the parking lot are from California.

These proposals enjoy broad support. In fact, public-opinion polls have shown that 75 to 85% of firearm owners, including specifically members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in some cases, endorse comprehensive background checks and denial for misdemeanor violence; 60 to 70% support denial for alcohol abuse. (It is deeply ironic that our current firearm policies omit regulations that are endorsed by firearm owners, let alone by the general public.)

And the icy hands of the firearm lobby may be losing their grip on the political process. The NRA is simply not able to drive election results as it has been thought to do.5 The Sunlight Foundation reports that less than 5% of the NRA's campaign spending in 2012 went to races that ended with the result it was seeking. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York has repeatedly declared his intention to establish a well-funded electoral counterweight to the NRA to advance a “mainstream agenda” on firearm policy. President Barack Obama has appointed Vice President Joe Biden to chair a new task force that will develop “specific proposals” for policy reform legislation no later than January.

This time, the circumstances are different. The outcome will be different only if we make it so. The interventions proposed here will not end firearm violence in the United States, but they will reduce it, and that's a goal worth fighting for. If Sandy Hook, Aurora, and the others are what it takes for us finally to confront this challenge, they will still be terrible beyond description. We will still share responsibility for them. But it will be of some comfort to know that all those students, educators, moviegoers, and temple-goers did not die in vain.

Let's be clear

Sure, we can talk about revenue, both growth and rates, however make no mistake, just increasing rates without spending (entitlement) reform is throwing good money after bad.

Our PRESIDENT bears responsibility for the lack of leadership on the defining issue of our time.  There is no Senate budget, there is no willingness to tackle entitlement reform, there is just "tax increases on the rich".


He could have:


     Raised the retirement age.
     Pressured tort reform.
     Reformed the tax system.
          Split the difference with the Republicans regarding the upper rates.
          Reduced deductions.
          Broadened the base.

But he did not, he just demagogue.
The coming re recession is his.

*****************

Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia is a lonely voice: He’s a House Republican conservative who argues that the government simply has to raise more revenue.


U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell, center In a week when Washington makes one, final effort to get to some kind of deficit-cutting deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, Mr. Rigell’s message stands out amid all the noise because of its startlingly unexpected nature.
Mr. Rigell, a businessman first elected to the House in 2010, says he has arrived at his position not by ideological calculation but by mathematical calculation; it represents what he calls in an interview a “data-driven conclusion.” And the data, he says, are simple:

The tax regime put in place by the George W. Bush tax cuts a dozen years ago has produced government revenue at an average of 16.9% of gross domestic product, through good times and bad, across the years since it was enacted. Only twice in those 12 years—in the relatively strong economic years of 2006 and 2007–has it produced revenues amounting to 18% or more of GDP.

Meanwhile, Mr. Rigell argues, even Republicans in Congress are unwilling to pass a budget that actually holds spending down to 17% or less of GDP. In sum, he says, Republicans have a position that locks in a permanent deficit by sticking with tax rates that will always produce less revenue than required for the government programs they are voting to support.

Their grandstanding about taxing rich people has allowed Democrats to avoid any real discussion about reform of the entitlements that are sinking the country. Neither the White House nor the Senate has put forward a coherent plan or a proposal worth voting on that addresses this issue, without which any talk of a long-term solution to the problem is impossible.
Republicans may have hit bottom last week when they sandbagged Boehner and effectively undermined any chance that he could force a more favorable compromise out of Obama. But Democrats are foolish to believe that no blame will ever attach to them just because the GOP has failed. Public cynicism about Congress and the political system is, at its heart, a bipartisan consensus about the governing class, not just anger about Tea Party intransigence. Unless Reid and the Senate Democrats do something this week to put the ball back into the House’s court, they, too, will shoulder plenty of the responsibility for what follows.

The problem with the Republican Party is the quality of the people who vote in their primaries and caucuses.

Republican politicians today have a choice: either change your base by educating and leading G.O.P. voters back to the center-right from the far right, or start a new party that is more inclusive, focused on smaller but smarter government and market-based, fact-based solutions to our biggest problems.

But if Republicans continue to be led around by, and live in fear of, a base that denies global warming after Hurricane Sandy and refuses to ban assault weapons after Sandy Hook — a base that would rather see every American’s taxes rise rather than increase taxes on millionaires — the party has no future. It can’t win with a base that is at war with math, physics, human biology, economics and common-sense gun laws all at the same time.

       

Because they control the House, this radical Republican base is now holding us all back. President Obama was moving to the center in these budget negotiations. He reduced his demand for higher tax revenues to $1.2 trillion from $1.6 trillion; he upped the level at which Americans who would be hit with higher taxes to those earning $400,000 a year from $250,000; and he made his own base holler by offering to cut long-term spending by lowering the inflation adjustment index for Social Security. It seemed that with a little more Republican compromise, Obama would have met them in the middle, and we could have had a grand bargain that would put the country on a sounder fiscal trajectory and signal to the markets, the world and ourselves that we can still do big hard things together. That will have to wait. Now the best hope is some mini-, crisis-averting, Band-Aid.

 

But...

 

Was 2012 the year when the democratic world lost its grip on reality? Must we assume now that no party that speaks the truth about the economic future has a chance of winning power in a national election? With the results of presidential contests in the United States and France as evidence, this would seem to be the only possible conclusion. Any political leader prepared to deceive the electorate into believing that government spending, and the vast system of services that it provides, can go on as before – or that they will be able to resume as soon as this momentary emergency is over – was propelled into office virtually by acclamation.

So universal has this rule turned out to be that parties and leaders who know better – whose economic literacy is beyond question – are now afraid even to hint at the fact which must eventually be faced. The promises that governments are making to their electorates are not just misleading: they are unforgivably dishonest. It will not be possible to go on as we are, or to return to the expectations that we once had. The immediate emergency created by the crash of 2008 was not some temporary blip in the infinitely expanding growth of the beneficent state. It was, in fact, almost irrelevant to the larger truth which it happened, by coincidence, to bring into view. Government on the scale established in most modern western countries is simply unaffordable. In Britain, the disagreement between Labour and the Conservatives over how to reduce the deficit (cut spending or increase borrowing?) is ridiculously insignificant and out of touch with the actual proportions of the problem. In the UK, the US, and (above all) the countries of the EU, democratic politics is being conducted on false premises.

Of course, once in power all governments must deal with reality – even if they have been elected on a systematic lie. As one ex-minister famously put it when he was released from the burden of office: “There’s no money left.” So that challenge must be met. How do you propose to go on providing the entitlements that you have sworn never to end, without any money? The victorious political parties of the Left have a ready answer to that one. They will raise taxes on the “rich”. In France and the United States, this is the formula that is being presented not only as an economic solution but also as a just social settlement, since the “rich” are inherently wicked and must have acquired their wealth by confiscating it from the poor.

Of course, the moral logic of this principle is absurd. The amount of wealth in an economy is not fixed so that one person having more means that somebody else must have less. But, for the purposes of our problem, it is the fault in the economic logic that is more important. The amount of money that is required to fund government entitlement programmes is now so enormous that it could not be procured by even very large increases in taxation on the “rich”. Assuming that you could get all of the rich members of your population to stand still and be fleeced (rather than leaving the country, as Gérard Depardieu and a vast army of his French brethren are doing), there are simply not enough of them to provide the revenue that a universal, comprehensive benefits system requires. And if all the French rich did stay put, and submit to President Hollande’s quixotic 75 per cent income tax, they would soon be too impoverished to invest in the supply side of the economy, which would undermine any possibility of growth.

Barack Obama knows that a tax rise of those proportions in the US would be politically suicidal, so he proposes a much more modest increase – an income tax rate of around 40 per cent on the highest earners sounds very modest indeed to British ears. But that is precisely the problem. If a tax rise is modest enough to be politically acceptable to much of the electorate, it will not produce anything like enough to finance the universal American entitlement programmes, social security and Medicare, into a future with an ageing population. There is no way that “taxing the rich” – that irresistibly glib Left-wing solution to everything – can make present and projected levels of government spending affordable. That is why Britain and almost all the countries of the EU have redefined the word “rich” to mean those who are earning scarcely twice the average wage, and pulled more and more middle-income people into high tax bands. Not only are there vastly more of them but they are far more likely to stand still and be fleeced, because they do not have the mobility of the truly rich.

NRA and small government ??????

It should now be basically obvious to everyone that the NRA, for all of its pious genuflecting in the direction of the Second Amendment, is not a civil liberties organization. Civil liberties organizations support neither preemptive surveillance on the sick nor perpetual pseudo-paramilitary lockdown in elementary schools. While the NRA and its allies may oppose gun control on the grounds that it inhibits liberty, their “solution” requires far greater government intrusion and coercion.
Such is the case with much “small government” anti-regulationism. The minimal state which the right so often fetishizes is, in fact, anything but. Any government which sees its essential function as security will inevitably have to continually escalate security in order to enforce its anti-regulatory position. To put it another way: the only way the so-called night-watchman state can function is with ever-increasing numbers of night-watchmen, armed with ever-larger guns.

"I think one of the most threatening places to be in politics is a black conservative," Mr. Scott says, "because there are so many liberals who want to continue to reinforce a stereotype that doesn't exist about America." What stereotype is that? "That somehow, some way, if you're a Republican you're a racist and if you're black, there's no chance for you in society.
"We have serious challenges in this nation. Some are racial. But in my life, the vast majority of people that have really afforded me the opportunity to succeed were white folks. Is there a better way to say that?"