It's only Wednesday, but we've already written more than enough about the week's top domestic stories, so we're going live today. We'll be back on Friday if there are significant updates on these stories or anything else that piques our interest.
This Week in Guns
President Obama spoke about guns on Tuesday, in front of a crowd of gun safety advocates that including friend and former Congresswoman of TWiA Gabby Giffords, her husband, and her mother (and on stage behind the president, with other survivors and family members of victims, Daniel Hernandez, the former Giffords staffer who sat and held Gabby's skull together until medical help arrived). The transcript is here.
Before he acknowledged Gabby's presence, Obama said, " Five years ago this week, a sitting member of Congress and 18 others were shot at, at a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona. It wasn’t the first time I had to talk to the nation in response to a mass shooting, nor would it be the last. Fort Hood. Binghamton. Aurora. Oak Creek. Newtown. The Navy Yard. Santa Barbara. Charleston. San Bernardino. Too many."
He felt compelled to qualify his statement, to address what he knew would be an obvious criticism. Obama said:
Now, I want to be absolutely clear at the start -- and I’ve said this over and over again, this also becomes routine, there is a ritual about this whole thing that I have to do -- I believe in the Second Amendment. It’s there written on the paper. It guarantees a right to bear arms. No matter how many times people try to twist my words around -- I taught constitutional law, I know a little about this -- (applause) -- I get it. But I also believe that we can find ways to reduce gun violence consistent with the Second Amendment.
I mean, think about it. We all believe in the First Amendment, the guarantee of free speech, but we accept that you can’t yell “fire” in a theater. We understand there are some constraints on our freedom in order to protect innocent people. We cherish our right to privacy, but we accept that you have to go through metal detectors before being allowed to board a plane. It’s not because people like doing that, but we understand that that’s part of the price of living in a civilized society.
And what’s often ignored in this debate is that a majority of gun owners actually agree. A majority of gun owners agree that we can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale.
Today, background checks are required at gun stores. If a father wants to teach his daughter how to hunt, he can walk into a gun store, get a background check, purchase his weapon safely and responsibly. This is not seen as an infringement on the Second Amendment. Contrary to the claims of what some gun rights proponents have suggested, this hasn’t been the first step in some slippery slope to mass confiscation. Contrary to claims of some presidential candidates, apparently, before this meeting, this is not a plot to take away everybody’s guns. You pass a background check; you purchase a firearm.
The problem is some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules. A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked. A recent study found that about one in 30 people looking to buy guns on one website had criminal records -- one out of 30 had a criminal record. We’re talking about individuals convicted of serious crimes -- aggravated assault, domestic violence, robbery, illegal gun possession. People with lengthy criminal histories buying deadly weapons all too easily. And this was just one website within the span of a few months.
So we’ve created a system in which dangerous people are allowed to play by a different set of rules than a responsible gun owner who buys his or her gun the right way and subjects themselves to a background check. That doesn’t make sense. Everybody should have to abide by the same rules. Most Americans and gun owners agree.
He discussed the effort to pass gun safety laws after Sandy Hook, saying:
Two United States Senators -– Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, both gun owners, both strong defenders of our Second Amendment rights, both with “A” grades from the NRA –- that’s hard to get -- worked together in good faith, consulting with folks like our Vice President, who has been a champion on this for a long time, to write a common-sense compromise bill that would have required virtually everyone who buys a gun to get a background check. That was it. Pretty common-sense stuff. Ninety percent of Americans supported that idea. Ninety percent of Democrats in the Senate voted for that idea. But it failed because 90 percent of Republicans in the Senate voted against that idea.
How did this become such a partisan issue? Republican President George W. Bush once said, “I believe in background checks at gun shows or anywhere to make sure that guns don’t get into the hands of people that shouldn’t have them.” Senator John McCain introduced a bipartisan measure to address the gun show loophole, saying, “We need this amendment because criminals and terrorists have exploited and are exploiting this very obvious loophole in our gun safety laws.” Even the NRA used to support expanded background checks. And by the way, most of its members still do. Most Republican voters still do.
How did we get here? How did we get to the place where people think requiring a comprehensive background check means taking away people’s guns?
Each time this comes up, we are fed the excuse that common-sense reforms like background checks might not have stopped the last massacre, or the one before that, or the one before that, so why bother trying. I reject that thinking. (Applause.) We know we can’t stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world. But maybe we could try to stop one act of evil, one act of violence.
He outlined the steps he's taking through executive actions (more about those here, from the White House website).
The part that made all the news broadcasts was when he openly wept while talking about the child victims at Sandy Hook elementary. No president has been pressed into service so often as consoler-in-chief, and this one is plainly fed up with the obstruction that makes it necessary.
All of us should be able to work together to find a balance that declares the rest of our rights are also important -- Second Amendment rights are important, but there are other rights that we care about as well. And we have to be able to balance them. Because our right to worship freely and safely –- that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina. (Applause.) And that was denied Jews in Kansas City. And that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill, and Sikhs in Oak Creek. (Applause.) They had rights, too. (Applause.)
Our right to peaceful assembly -– that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette. Our unalienable right to life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -– those rights were stripped from college students in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high schoolers at Columbine, and from first-graders in Newtown. First-graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun.
Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.
He closed by talking about Zaevion Dobson, the 15-year-old we wrote about the other week, who shielded his friends from gunfire with his own body, giving his life to save theirs.
We are not asked to do what Zaevion Dobson did. We’re not asked to have shoulders that big; a heart that strong; reactions that quick. I’m not asking people to have that same level of courage, or sacrifice, or love. But if we love our kids and care about their prospects, and if we love this country and care about its future, then we can find the courage to vote. We can find the courage to get mobilized and organized. We can find the courage to cut through all the noise and do what a sensible country would do.
That’s what we’re doing today. And tomorrow, we should do more. And we should do more the day after that. And if we do, we’ll leave behind a nation that’s stronger than the one we inherited and worthy of the sacrifice of a young man like Zaevion.
This was not an occasion of high oratory, but a simple, frank, detailed statement about what the problem is, why it's hard to solve, and why we should solve it anyway.
The whole video is below, but it includes talks from before President Obama took the podium. To just watch that part, view the one that James Fallows cued up for us.
Note: executive actions are not the same as executive orders, which have the binding force of law. The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order, but these are not. Contrary to what many pro-gun death apologists are saying, the president is not making law in this case. He's interpreting existing law, which he's legally entitled to do (the executive branch is, by definition, the executor of the law). The Trace explains what Obama's executive actions do:
It includes a plan for the FBI to increase the number of federal gun background check examiners and staff by 50 percent; a proposal to hire an additional 200 federal agents and investigators to focus on gun offenses and regulations; and a directive to the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security to develop research agendas for firearms safety and possible procurement strategies for smart guns.
The centerpiece, however, is an action destined to draw pushback from the gun lobby, as well as questions from those new to the gun debate: a push to ensure that persons “engaged in the business” of selling firearms register as licensed dealers.
The idea is to narrow the gun-show loophole, to make it harder for people to avoid background checks by buying from "private sellers" rather than as licensed dealers, even though in many cases those private sellers move just as many guns as licensed dealers, and in some cases numerous crime guns have been linked to individual private sellers.
* * *
Ted Cruz, never one to exercise good taste or good judgment, responded with a website that comes perilously close to portraying the president as a Nazi--a website that is, in itself, a gigantic lie. None of the critics, Cruz included, offered any alternative approaches to limiting gun violence, or any evidence as to how the president was acting "illegally," though they all claimed (erroneously) that he was. To them, it's just a reflex action to oppose anything the president suggests, and to raise money off that opposition without even pretending they care about the underlying problems.
* * *
Here are the 12 reasons Americans fail background checks.
* * *
Weirdly, Fox "News" host Bill O'Reilly agrees with the president: "The FBI should background check anyone buying a firearm in America. That just makes sense. If you are paranoid and believe the government is stockpiling information so they can come to your house and take your guns, that's your problem."
* * *
Yet another brand-new study shows that the states with more gun ownership and weaker gun laws have higher rates of gun death.
* * *
"Dozens of people," the WaPo reports, were shot on Tuesday, the day of President Obama's announcement. As they are every day in America.
* * *
The pro-gun death forces like to argue that gun safety laws don't work. Here's a piece from last year explaining why they're wrong. Gun safety laws, including background checks, do work. We'd have a worse gun violence problem if we didn't have the laws we have. The trouble is that we have weak laws that often go unenforced, and it's a patchwork of state laws, so lax laws in one state (Indiana, for instance) lead to major gun violence issues in other places (like Chicago). And of course there's our old standby argument, which is that you can't not have laws just because criminals, by definition, don't always follow them. We don't eliminate laws against robbing banks simply because every bank robber breaks those laws. We shouldn't eliminate gun laws simply because some criminals break them. Instead, we should toughen them and enforce them where they exist.
* * *
Jeb! Bush has been going around saying he received a "Statesman of the Year" award from the NRA. This week, his campaign admitted that such an award doesn't exist. Nor was he presented with an honorary rifle by Charlton Heston, as he's claimed many times. Presumably Jeb! couldn't pry Heston's cold, dead hands off the weapon.
A couple of New York state representatives, Sen. Roxanne Persaud and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, introduced legislation this week intended to place limits on ammunition purchases. The pro-gun death NRA responded by tweeting out pictures of those reps with bullets on and around them. You stay classy, NRA.
Side Note: The same day President Obama made his speech on guns, Sen. Bernie Sanders made one on Wall Street, too-big-to-fail banks, and financial regulation. He's passionate about the issue, and he's right about a lot of the problems and some of the fixes. That said, the timing suggests that he wanted to turn the conversation away from guns--at least, where he was concerned. His record on gun legislation is not as strong as Hillary Clinton's or Martin O'Malley's, and it's a point of contention within the Democratic primaries. We wish he had saved this speech for another day--even another week--rather than trying to derail the topic of the moment.
More below the fold: terrorism, the Constitution, and Fire-eaters.
This Week in Terrorists
Regular readers will know that TWiA doesn't have much patience with people who use guns and the threat of violence (or actual violence) to make a political point. Our handy American Heritage dictionary defines terrorism as "The systematic use of terror, violence, and intimidation to achieve an end."
By that definition, the far-right bunch that has occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon since the weekend can legitimately be called a terrorist group. Many media outlets are shying away from that terminology (the Washington Post sums up the various phrases--"militia," "armed protestors," etc., here), but we don't see any reason to do so. The definition doesn't say terrorists have to kill anyone to practice terror, and if a bunch of guys with guns taking over a normally peaceful place like a wildlife refuge headquarters--a place that probably is usually occupied by a ranger, maybe an elderly volunteer or two, and a couple of bird-watchers--isn't intimidation, then that word has lost all meaning.
Most sensible people--us included--don't think the FBI should launch a SWAT assault on the building to get them out. But most sensible people would also feel that way if those armed occupiers were members of the New Black Panther Party, or Muslims, or gays. People are people, and should be accorded the same rights as everyone else. Taking over government buildings with guns is not one of those rights--that's illegal, and it should be punished. But marching on the streets of Ferguson or Baltimore is also legal, and we respond to those events with massive police presences, even with National Guard units. In Oregon, everyone is holding off, trying to secure a peaceful resolution. That should be the default position in those other cases as well.
So what's really going on here? The backstory is this: a ranching family, the Hammonds, has been using public lands for grazing, which is legal if a grazing fee is paid. Public lands by definition belong to all of us, not to any particular rancher or other user. The land is officially owned by the federal government, which holds it and takes care of it for the general good, but can lease rights to certain activities (grazing, logging, etc.) if various conditions are met (particularly important because extractive uses often degrade the land to the point that it's not good for anything else). But the Hammonds decided to take it upon themselves to burn swaths of said public land, without working through the established processes by which that might be allowed. They said they were "improving" the land, preventing invasive species from spreading onto the rangeland they were using. Maybe they were. But there's a way ranchers and federal officials can collaborate to take care of public lands (the Malpai Borderlands Group in AZ/NM offers a prime example of such cooperation). What you don't do, if you're a rancher, is put the torch to land you don't own. That's what Dwight Hammond, Jr. and his son Steve did. They were busted for arson, and they served brief jail sentences. Then appellate judges determined that their sentence had been too short, and they had to serve more time.
Anyway, federal prosecutors say the first illegal burn was done to hide evidence of illegal deer slaughter. The second time, they set fire to a butte during a countywide burn ban, and knowing that "young, part-time firefighters" were camped higher up (flames climb hills). The fire was set at night. Fortunately, the firefighters' supervisor saw the flames and moved his team in time.
Enter Ammon Bundy and two of his brothers, sons of deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy, who has refused for years to pay the grazing fees he had contracted for. Back in 2014, the federal government decided Cliven had taken advantage of the American taxpayers' generosity for long enough and moved to take his cattle off the public land he wasn't paying for. A bunch of gun-wielding yahoos showed up and pointed their weapons at law enforcement personnel, and the government backed down rather than risk a bloodbath. Which probably seemed prudent at the time, but was really a way of letting people (white ones, anyway--if you're 12-year-old Tamir Rice's family, you probably haven't internalized this message) know that they could threaten to shoot cops and not be punished for it. Bundy still owes the government (i.e., you and me) $1 million in back grazing fees.
So when it looked like the Hammonds might go back to prison, the Bundys and some of their pals decided to go to Harney County, OR (where none of them actually live) and find an excuse to play with guns again. The Hammond men are perfectly willing to serve their time; they turned themselves in on Monday. The Oregonian further says of them:
The Hammonds, who built a solid reputation and a prosperous ranching outfit in Oregon's most remote corner over the past 50 years, are keeping quiet. They declined an interview request and didn't answer written questions about their ranching, their crimes, and their new protectors.
Instead, just before Christmas, they issued a family statement:
"Our family appreciates the support of our local community. We have lived here, raised our families here, invested our time here, and grown our ranching business here because of the shared values of community, land stewardship, and family. We hope to see those values continue for many generations to come."
That all sounds very nice, but the Hammonds themselves don't sound like such nice folks when you dig into the weeds a little, and they have a long history of criminal activity regarding the Malheur Refuge, including threatening the safety of refuge workers. Regardless, the Bundy boys decided that to keep the Hammonds from serving prison terms they're not even trying to avoid, they would stage a protest in nearby Burns, OR. Somehow--without most of the people involved in the demonstration knowing the plan--some unidentified number of them decided to also take over the refuge headquarters. Locals, and even militia leaders who joined the protest, denounced that tactic.
Nobody seems to know how many people are inside the headquarters, though it might be as few as 10-15. The Oregonian reports:
Militia members at the refuge claimed they had as many as 100 supporters with them. The refuge, federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend, but these brave men needed guns to take over an empty building.
In phone interviews from inside the occupied building Saturday night, Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy, said they are not looking to hurt anyone. But they would not rule out violence if police tried to remove them, they said.
"The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds," Ammon Bundy said.
"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he added. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."
Ryan Bundy, according to an Oregonian reporter, said they were willing to "kill and be killed if necessary."
Another of the terrorists occupying a building we all own is Phoenix, AZ anti-Islam extremist Jon Ritzheimer, who posted a video that appears to be a farewell message to his family--as jihadist suicide bombers often do--indicating that he doesn't expect to survive the confrontation. Ritzheimer held a heavily promoted, heavily armed protest outside a Phoenix-area mosque earlier this year, and runs a website dedicated to selling anti-Islam merchandise. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, after that protest, he tried to raise $10 million on GoFundMe because he was afraid for his family's safety, but the fundraiser was canceled after it could only raise around $300. At Esquire, LTC Robert Bateman, who's a genuine Soldier, describes Ritzheimer thusly:
Meet Jon Ritzheimer. The one on the left in the image above. He is a nut case of the first order, a self-professed "three percenter" (a reference to the 3% of the population in the colonies who actively fought against the British in the American Revolution), and now apparently an anti-government "Patriot" with a death wish. He is part of the current psycho-anti-Constitutional takeover of a teeny-tiny bit of US Government property in the State of Oregon. You may've heard of it.
Here is a video, posted on New Year's Eve, that might be described as his suicide note. He says goodbye to his children, ages 3 and 5, and wife because he has to "defend the Constitution" against, well, the constitutionally elected government of the United States of America. In case there is any doubt about his resolve, check out his Facebook.
Ritzheimer claims to have "served honorably" as a staff sergeant in the United States Marine Corps from 2003-2014. I am still waiting to hear from Public Affairs on this, but there is a curious lack of commentary from peers who would have known him in the Marine Corps validating his service. And this is not he first time he's in the news. In May 2015 he organized an armed demonstration outside a mosque in his home state of Arizona. In September he said he was going from Arizona to Michigan to place a Citizen's Arrest on a U.S. Congressperson for what he said was "treason." (She, um, voted in Congress. Here is that impeccable news source Glen Beck on the topic.) Then in November he said he was driving from Arizona to New York to do, well, something, in upstate against a small community of Muslims (25 families) there. The video stating his intent was pretty clear.
Another participant is Ryan Payne, who may be certifiably insane and is at best incredibly gullible (and who actual Army Rangers wish would stop claiming to have been one of them, since he wasn't.
Payne came to believe the latter, that the government uses regulations to deliberately undermine the average American, "that they are purposely destroying industry, they are purposely taking this land from people." The more he looked, the more he saw a deliberate and nefarious plan being orchestrated by a small number of people wielding enormous power. He saw a pervasive conspiracy to control all aspects of the media, the financial system, the entertainment industry, the military and the government.
More specifically, he came to believe that slavery never really existed in the United States and that African Americans in the antebellum South "didn't view themselves as slaves." He came to believe in "an effort by some Jews to control the world." He came to believe the founders of the United States intended for the states to act as sovereign countries. He came to believe taxes are a form of "legal plunder." He came to believe names are spelled in all-caps on driver's licenses because U.S. citizens are actually "corporate entities." He came to believe U.S. courts are actually foreign admiralty courts. He came to believe that "in most states you have the lawful authority to kill a police officer that is unlawfully trying to arrest you." He came to believe when a newborn child's footprint is made on a birth certificate, that child is effectively entering a life of servitude to the U.S. government, which borrows money from China based on that child's estimated lifetime earning potential.
He came to see all aspects of government, culture and society as mechanisms of control. "And they've set everything up so they can maintain that control," Payne says, "because they believe they are God."
Ritzheimer and others say their effort in Oregon is intended to defend the Constitution. It's hard for us to find anything in the Constitution saying that if you're unhappy with a decision of the courts, the prescription is to take over a federal building with guns. Maybe we need new glasses.
Or maybe Ritzheimer, the Bundys, and their pals, are nothing more than domestic terrorists, wannabe Timothy McVeighs, and we're lucky they haven't actually killed anybody yet or been killed themselves. That's the explanation we're leaning toward. They want a standoff, and nobody's giving it to them, so they're stuck in remote Oregon accomplishing nothing except making themselves look pathetic and foolish.
* * *
Republican presidential candidates are fond of claiming that Islamic terrorism can't be defeated unless the magic words "Radical Islam" are intoned. Why aren't they talking about "Radical Christianity" now? Are they afraid to use the magic words? In fact, as of early Monday, only the campaign of John Kasich had commented on the issue. The WaPo reports: “'I know a good federal compound for Bundy and his gang: a U.S. penitentiary,' tweeted John Weaver, a senior strategist for the campaign of Ohio Gov. John Kasich." We have to agree. But later that day, asked about it by a reporter after an Iowa appearance, Kasich pretended not to have heard about the whole situation. Also later, Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul both suggested that using threats of violence was wrong, and called for a peaceful resolution. Sen. Marco Rubio said "You've got to follow the law. You can't be lawless."
* * *
More Republicans see the US government as an "enemy" than as a "friend." The Washington Post looks at some of the ways people who think of the world's most successful representative government--"of the people, by the people, and for the people"--benefit from the government they so despise:
In the case of the Bundy family -- the folks leading the Oregon occupation -- they've been benefiting from federal cattle grazing fees that are just a fraction of what they'd pay in an open marketplace. The Bundys argue that the federal government has taken control of too much land and that they shouldn't owe any grazing fees at all. Still, those federal fees are so low that they don't even cover the cost to the federal government of maintaining those lands, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit environmental goup. In essence, the Bundys are benefiting from taxpayer-subsidized cattle feed.
Mother Jones is also reporting that Ammon Bundy's truck repair business benefited from a $500,000 federal small business loan with an estimated cost to taxpayers of $22,000. That's enough money to put seven families on food stamps for a whole year.
* * *
Data consistently show that the most conservative states--the ones most likely to complain about federal "interference"--are also the ones most dependent on federal dollars. We guess that makes them and the federal government "frenemies."
* * *
This op-ed explains how, before the federal government took over the land on which the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is situated, "after four decades of overgrazing, irrigation withdrawals, grain agriculture, dredging and channelization, followed by several years of drought, Malheur had become a dust bowl. Ranches failed, livestock starved, homesteaders went bust and the primary occupation in the valley became suing one’s neighbor over water rights."
Then the government the occupiers love to hate stepped in. "Conservationists won a major victory in 1934 when French’s former cattle empire was sold to the refuge, ensuring it had the water needed to flourish. John Scharff, the refuge manager from 1935 to 1971, worked closely with ranchers to establish grazing leases that funded the restoration of former wetlands and won public support for the effort. By 1968, cattle use was nearly as intense as during the days of the cattle barons. Ranchers still imagined themselves as the rugged individualists of their romantic past, though they had become heavily subsidized, grazing their herds on refuge meadows for fees that were often lower than those on private lands."
* * *
And this op-ed, by a birder, addresses the contradiction of an armed bunch of thugs claiming they want to take land "for the people" that already belongs to all the people. "And that, I think, is where Mr. Bundy and his followers miss the point: When land is held by the federal government they so despise, that land belongs to us all. You cannot “reclaim” territory for the “people” if they already own it. The seizure of Malheur is an attempt to claim the land, at the point of a gun, for unnamed individuals, all while taking it away from every other American. Whatever this action may be, it is not patriotism."
* * *
The Southern Poverty Law Center published a timeline of "patriot" groups, which in the modern era just happen to largely coincide with Democratic presidents.
This Week in the Constitution
This actually happened last week, but after our self-imposed coverage deadline. Sen. Marco Rubio endorsed one of the dumbest ideas of his career, a new Constitutional Convention to try to institute two foolish proposals--term limits for members of Congress, and a balanced budget amendment.
It's curious to see conservatives--who swear that they love the Constitution even as they constantly twist and misinterpret it--trying to rewrite it (and through a convention, because they know the standard way of passing an amendment requires support from the American people, not just a group of hand-picked representatives, and their ideas would never pass muster that way).
But more than that, those two ideas are entirely backwards.
We don't need term limits on members of Congress. The Tea Party wave of 2010 showed us what happens when a bunch of incumbents are thrown out of office and replaced by flavor-of-the-moment candidates who have no idea how Congress works or any willingness to learn. Ever since, we've had a Congress barely able to function at all. As only a single example of this, note the Senate's miserable record at confirming federal judges:
The Senate only confirmed 11 federal judges this year -- the lowest number in more than half a century. At the same time, court vacancies jumped from 42 to 66, and the number of courts with "judicial emergencies," where judges face staggering, unmanageable caseloads, more than doubled.
"I think it really is one of the worst records ever," said Carl Tobias, a scholar of federal judicial selection at the University of Richmond School of Law. "Especially because there were available people on the [Senate] floor."
It's all part of a broader effort by Senate Republicans to prevent President Barack Obama from putting his picks on the federal bench. They've delayed votes on judicial confirmations for years, but when they took control of the Senate in January, they starting slowing things down even more, in hopes of holding up the process until a Republican is elected president.
The Senate adjourned in December without confirming 19 judicial nominees who were ready for a vote. None are controversial; they all cleared the Judiciary Committee without opposition. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pushed them into next year to drag out the process.
Back in the days when there were moderates in both houses of Congress, the basics of governing got done. Term limits increase the likelihood of dysfunction, because it takes a while in Congress to learn how the institution works. Term limits also increase turnover, and therefore escalate the need for constant fundraising and campaigning. They make politicians more beholden to special interests, not less. The term limits we need are the ones we have--they're called voters. What we need are not artificially imposed term limits, but an effort to undo decades of gerrymandering, and more important still, a strong, dedicated effort to increase voter participation. If we can persuade more people to join in the process of electing their representatives to the halls of power--which includes making them feel like their votes matter, and making sure they're counted--then the voters can term-limit the people who aren't doing their jobs and keep in place the ones who are. Instead, the same Republicans who are advocating this idea are also doing their best to prevent minority and young voter participation.
And a balanced budget amendment is really a dangerous way of tying government's hands. The government needs spending flexibility so it can react in the event of emergencies--a Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy, say, or a Bush Recession that nearly craters the whole economy. Had a balanced budget amendment been in place, the spending necessary to deal with those situations would have been impossible. We've seen how it works in the states. In TWiA's home state of Arizona, the legislature cut taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, and then when the economy went south, had to sell off public buildings (then pay to rent them back); close parks, libraries, and schools; and slash basic services, including mental health services, all to stay within the required balanced budget.
This is what conservatives want. They're still looking for ways to satisfy Grover Norquist's pledge to shrink government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
To them, less government is better government. We disagree. They see government as a force that meddles in people's affairs. We see government as the only force that protects the rights of the less powerful. Or as Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne put it in his year-end column, "I might see a government program (student loans, for example) as promoting personal responsibility while you might see it as encouraging dependency on government. You might see liberty as being entirely about freedom from interference by government. I might speak of using government to protect the liberty of people in relation to large and powerful private organizations. My laws to protect people’s rights in their workplaces might, for you, be nothing but big government run wild. I think that the New Deal and the Great Society made us more free, not less. You probably don’t."
Friend of TWiA Jason Zibart made a good point last week (we're not going to try to quote him directly, since we weren't taking notes at the time) when he pointed out that some people see a free college education as a 4-year government handout, while others see it as an investment in a person's ability to contribute to society and the economy and to pay taxes for the next 40 years. By any reasonable measure, that's a solid return on investment.
We think it's crazy to tie government's hands into the future, when nobody knows what next month will bring, let alone next year or ten years from now. Those ideas may be ideologically satisfying to some, but they're impractical at best. Let's leave it up to the American people to term-limit their representatives, and in so doing, to keep an eye on government spending. And let's not pretend that government spending is necessarily bad. It's not. It is, however, often necessary.
This Week in Fire-Eaters
Politico argues that Donald Trump is a continuation of a rhetorical tradition hearkening back to pre-Civil War days. "The true pioneers of what might be called the American political tradition of demagoguery were a cadre of Southern orators from the decades leading up to the Civil War, men adept at arousing and manipulating the fears and anxieties of their target audience in the service of their cherished cause—to prod the South into leaving the Union in order to save the institution of slavery and protect Southern 'rights' generally." Sounds about right.
This Week in Pointlessness
After years of Affordable Care Act repeal votes in Congress, the Republicans have finally hit on a method that works--to a point. Using the budget reconciliation process, which doesn't require a 60-vote threshold, they got a bill through the Senate. The House has never had trouble passing the 50 or 60 repeal votes it's already wasted your tax dollars and ours on, so this time, the bill is going to the White House. Where everybody knows the president will veto it. So why go through the theater and throw more tax dollars down the toilet? Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R/CA), the Man Who Will Never Be Speaker, explained. "With this bill, we will force President Obama to show the American people where he stands."
Because there was any question? Has McCarthy not been paying attention?
The real significance of this is the test of using the budget reconciliation process. If a Republican wins the White House this year, a GOP Congress could send up a similar bill, which could get signed, causing tens of millions of Americans to lose their health insurance. Somehow, to the twisted mind of the modern conservative, that's supposed to be a good thing.
Comments