Only The Rich Have Political Power in America Today

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Jeffrey Sachs, whom Mano Singham describes as an "establishment liberal," has come out of a long silence to write for the Huffington Post.  His article tries to put a high-tech economics analysis on the present situation.  He deplores the fact that "in America today, only the rich have political power," something that Robert Reich says in less than two minutes and fifteen seconds.  It didn't use to be this way; until Ronald Reagan straightened things out for the affluent minority, it used to be one citizen, one vote, rather than one dollar, one vote.

I took a Facebook Quiz this afternoon.  I had to decide whether I agreed with a statement to the effect that The Wealthy are inclined to think that they made it on their own, whereas in actual fact, Society helps them a great deal to amass their fortunes.  In fact, the Government helps them a great deal, by providing roads and education and the infrastructure that they use far more than the average dude, and for which they are not willing to pay proportionally more in taxes.  Lobbyists, Jeffrey says, have far too much influence in Washington.  Everyone knows this, but no one can stop it.  In fact, it appears that the Constitution itself facilitates the means whereby powerful interests can heap support on Congressmen (and Congresswomen) in exchange for political patronage and favors that do not benefit the ordinary citizen.

I'm probably preaching to the choir, but let's not lose sight of the problem.  (Jeffrey Sachs suggests that a third party may help solve the problem.  At least it might make things a little complicated for lobbyists.  But it will probably complicate the lives of the ordinary citizen just as much.)

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Deficit Ceiling Kabuki Theater

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Mano Singham, in his blog, clarifies some of the strangeness around the whole debt ceiling debate, and what is really going on.  He points out that though the matter is presented sometimes as "Obama vs. Congress", or "Democrats vs. Republicans", etc, etc, it is really Big Business vs. Everybody Else.

Mano quotes several authors.

The first of these is Ralph Nader.  Nader has some hard remarks to make about taxes and corporations.  The most surprising thing he says is that big corporations are sitting on about 2 Trillion in profits that they are not sharing with shareholders.  If they did, the economy would absorb it gratefully, and it would alleviate some of the hardship we see around us.

The next is Matt Taibbi [Rolling Stone], who discusses the style of the Obama presidency, and reports on the opinions of many economic experts who say that the President, wanting not to appear to be an "angry black man," has taken the advice of too many clever white guys (I paraphrase), who do not want to alienate Wall Street.  Obama, Mano Singham has always written, is too concerned with not burning his bridges with Big Business.  One would not think this, given the rhetoric of the Republicans.

Mano then links to Paul Krugman [New York Times], whose brief post I am not smart enough to understand, but suffice it to say that it is critical of Obama.  This is not the time, he says, for Government to tighten its belt, just because the rest of the country is suffering, something I completely agree with.  Tragically for liberals, President Obama seems intent on establishing his credentials as one who stands up to the Democratic Party, in order to gain the support of the so-called independents in the coming election, which is what Glenn Greenwald says, in addition to agreeing with Mr Krugman on most points.

Here is my take on this.

Nobody wants enormous deficits.  But ...

Until the debt is reduced ---in a responsible, considered way--- the country must continue to stand by its debt, especially since the automatic steps that follow on refusal to raise the debt ceiling are very serious and repugnant.  The analogous situation for private individuals is like keeping onto your debt and continuing to make payments, or going into bankruptcy.  For individuals, though bankruptcy practically destroys your credit rating, it can be an opportunity for restructuring your finances under the supervision of the courts.  For a country, there is no higher power to which it can appeal for guidance and supervision.  (In any case, the USA will reject any attempts at benign supervision, and resort to drastic and puerile acts that will make matters worse.)

Everybody, therefore, needs to have Congress raise the debt ceiling.  But it suits the Republicans to pretend that they are doing it for the President, and to levy favors in exchange for cooperation.  One need hardly mention that these favors are all intended to help Big Business and big businessmen: lower taxes, smaller Government spending on the poor.  (Wars are OK, because they help arms manufacturers, who are a stealth component of Big Business.)

It appears that either the President is unable to see through this pretense, or continues to play along with this fairy-tale for his own purposes.

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Gun Control Yet Again: How could we miss?

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It turns out that I have been a little naive about gun control.

A hostile comment on Comedy Central points out that fully automatic assault weapons have been outlawed since 1934, and Wikipedia corroborates this.  It appears that to follow the progress and the failures of gun control one has to be an expert on guns.

In 1994, a ban on a certain category of assault weapon was enacted and passed under the presidency of Bill Clinton, but the law had a 10-year sunset provision, and thus expired (presumably in 2004).  Evidently weapon manufacturers were able to circumvent the law by making very minor alterations in the features of their weapons, this making them fall technically under the category of allowed weapons.  It was argued that weapons manufacturers could not reasonably be held to a standard higher than the law itself.

So, to be effective, a law has to anticipate all measures that gun manufacturers might take to circumvent its application.  This is like having to spell out what it means to kill somebody.  Reading the gun laws in Wikipedia (look under Federal Assault Weapons Ban, Gun Laws, and Gun Politics) was a painfully difficult undertaking, since the amount of technical detail was oppressive, especially to one who is uninterested in guns except to get rid of the bloody things.

As is typical with Wikipedia articles on contentious subjects, the articles mentioned above have been written by multiple authors with evidently conflicting viewpoints, and, in many cases, limited language skills, resulting in convoluted grammar that is often difficult to follow, and occasionally positively misleading.  One thing is clear: writing skill and interest in firearms do not go together.  A clear, uncluttered article on the present state of gun control from the National perspective, with a clear definition of gun categories, would be very useful.  It is useless to include the interested parties, since pro-gun groups have proliferated over the years (the NRA, the GOA, the Pink Pistols), and some have supported some measures, and opposed others, and become merely an additional layer of confusion on top of everything else.  The delight that gun fanciers have in talking about stocks and spent cartridges and tumbling projectiles would be amusing, if the issues were not so horrific.  It is a dirty business, jealously protected by many dangerous people, but sane people must get into it, or gun violence will continue to escalate.

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Once Again: Gun Control

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The issue of gun control has polarized the nation ---and the world--- so much that each side has largely given up trying to engage the other in any sort of meaningful dialog, which makes it difficult for politicians running for office.

The data and statistics of the issue have been studied at length, and there is little argument that guns are dangerous, etc, etc.  Let's look at the issue from a slightly different angle.  I'm sure that this approach must have been tried before, but ignorance gives me courage.  What is the psychology of the whole business?

The other day I saw (a video of) the fabled Charleton Heston speaking on the subject, and he was calmly deploring the fact that the anti-gun lobby (as the NRA characterizes it) tries to demonize gun ownership, and cast doubts on the morals and the civic-mindedness of gun owners.  I thought hard about the matter, and tried to put myself in the position of a gun-owner, brought up in a gun culture, whose parents and uncles and aunts have all owned guns, the proud descendents of pioneers, who "tamed the West" by the use of guns.

Some of these folks simply consider guns to be tools.  It is something you use to defend yourself, and when necessary, your neighbors, some of which are idiots who refuse to take up arms themselves, and always call on their (more responsible, gun-owning, courageous) neighbors to protect them.  Owning the guns is, in the mind of gun owners, a cherished privilege, but also a duty; sometimes a burdensome one.

Other gun owners think of them as a precious piece of equipment for hunting.  If all else fails, and prices of groceries rise out of control (which will happen, they think, if the price of oil continues to rise!) they can at least feed their families with game.  When the time comes, they feel, they can force the states to give up this foolishness of setting limits on hunting seasons.

Yet other gun owners probably don't think about their guns very clearly at all, but nurse deep suspicions about the constitution of the society in which they find themselves: in contrast to the simple world of Ozzie and Harriet and the TV series of the fifties, society is full of immigrants and riff-raff, people of dubious motives and doubtful values.  Subconsciously ---or quite consciously--- these people probably feel that it is the gun in the gun closet in the hall that keeps the creeps from invading the sanctity of their homes, and making outrageous demands on them (such as a cup of sugar, for instance).

The question is not whether these people would be willing to compromise on their ownership of guns, but how they would feel if gun ownership were to be curtailed in any way.  A whole generation of men has grown up not needing to have very hairy chests simply because owning a gun is sufficient evidence of their testosterone levels.  Unfortunately, I truly can identify with gun owners, and I can easily imagine how threatened they would feel if gun ownership were to be circumscribed.

Another sort of objection comes from a still more reasonable source, namely logic.  To see this, we have to see parallels between the sort of disasters that flow from unrestricted gun ownership, and the sorts of disasters that arise from reckless driving.

We are all familiar with the stories of the drunken revels that take place during hunting season, occasionally resulting in one of the members of the hunting party being ---sometimes fatally--- shot.  I know for a fact that these incidents fill responsible hunters with fury, and rightly so.  Many gun-owning families are scrupulously careful about gun education and training.  When a gun accident occasionally takes place in such a family, they are utterly humiliated, and no doubt shunned by their fellow gun-owners.

The same happens when a member of a responsible family of car-owners happens to be drunk while driving, and accidentally kills somebody.

Meanwhile, of course, all sorts of people are manufacturing slogans to defend one law or another: Guns Don't Kill People; People Do.

It might be a bit unfair to suggest an analogous slogan: Cars don't kill people, People Do.

But one can easily imagine how that slogan would be quickly altered to read: Cars Don't Kill People; Alcohol Does.  It's hard to avoid the observation that the auto manufacturing industry is larger than the alcohol manufacturing industry and the beer brewing industry combined.  Still, the link with alcohol does muddy the water in the case of driving under the influence, and vehicular homicide.  We can't ban the sale of cars just because a small minority of car owners choose to drink and drive.

In that case, the Gun Lobby can argue, is it reasonable to restrict gun sales just because a small ... well, anyway, a large minority of gun owners choose to shoot people dead, for whatever reason?

This is all very well, but no objections by the Gun Lobby can excuse their opposition to a ban on assault weapons.  Clearly a responsible citizen anxious to protect his wife and his neighbors is not about to buy an assault weapon for his gun cabinet.  Clearly a hunter eager to bring home an eight-point buck is not going to hunt him with an assault rifle.  An assault rifle is bought solely for the purpose of violent crime, or possibly, defense against violent crime.

Is the line between an assault weapon and a traditional firearm so vague that gun owners fear some sort of "ban creep" that would gradually ban all guns?  The opinion of this non-expert is that this is most certainly not the case; assault weapons are a clear category whose strict control makes perfect sense to me.  Such guns are only useful to gangsters and militia.

Finally, just from personal observation, I seem to notice that even simply arguing against gun control seems to give some individuals a certain amount of sexual satisfaction!  Even men who do not now, and have never in the past, owned guns become flushed and excited when they defend the right of their more heavily armed buddies to own their guns.  Guns are sexy even at a distance.

So, to sum up, taking these dangerous toys away is too hard, since they are so tightly bound with American concepts of manhood and virility, and even their defense is a matter of pride for a certain sector of the population.  Even female lawyers, politicians and gun-owners get excited over the issue of gun control, which seems to suggest that testosterone is not something that inspires the male sex exclusively.

I hope none of my readers were hoping to find a solution here; I'm merely saying that the problem is complex, and is complicated by motives that are some of them very emotional, some very cynical, and some very mercenary.

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