Another Week, Another Public Massacre, Another Missed Opportunity to Ban Assault Weapons (September 16, 2013)

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navy-yard-shooting

“So, why did Congress decide to let that assault weapons ban expire?

Well, it was 2004. Democrats had lost control of the House, so they were starting to feel shy about pushing for the assault.”

–          Business Insider report, December 16,2012

I am going to take a break from the usual, and usually just, weekly partisanship in which I engage on this site to write about a problem that all of us own, and all of us need to fix. Now. It is the proliferation of assault weapons that are making the workplace, public spaces and even grade schools threatening venues for regular folks just trying to make it through the day.

In December of last year, NRA Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre famously said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” LaPierre recorded this bit of wisdom for posterity as an argument in favor of posting armed guards in schools across the country. The implicit subtext was that those against weapons stockpiles in the classroom are simply not in favor of protecting our children.

At the time of LaPierre’s outrageous utterance, I feared it wouldn’t be long before a case would present itself that would blow all sorts of holes in the trigger happy lobbyist’s theory. And sadly, this morning, the country turned on their television sets, car stereos and booted up their computers to learn of another instance of horrific violence brought about by the country’s absurdly lax gun policies.

The New York Times is reporting that “A gunman was dead and the police were looking for two other potential gunmen after a shooting Monday morning that left multiple people dead and injured at a naval office building not far from Capitol Hill and the White House, according to law enforcement officials.”

Our thoughts and prayers are with the injured, deceased and their families during this terrible time and collectively, I am certain that a wish for the quick apprehension of the masterminds crosses party lines. But here’s where the problem lies for me, as pertains to the NRA’s consistently rehashed argument that more guns are the answer to preventing tragedies such as this. According to reporting from Michael D. Shear, Emmarie Huetteman and Abby Goodnough, “The Navy Yard is a secure military facility, with guards posted at gates and a large wall surrounding the buildings.”

So it would seem in this instance that a number of “good guys” with guns, inside a facility that likely had emergency protocols and procedures in place and well-rehearsed, were not sufficient to undermine the will of a few crazies armed to the teeth. Janis Orlowski, the chief medical officer at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where a number of victims are receiving treatment, was characterized by journalists as being of the opinion that “the gun used in the attack was most likely a semiautomatic rifle.”

As I stated at the opening of this piece, we all own this issue. Democratic political cowardice under the Bush II administration is partially responsible for the serious public safety crisis we have today. This rising, terrifying threat has been compounded by the successful and dirty lobbying on behalf of gun manufacturers with which the NRA engages at local, state and national levels.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Declaration of Independence was written before the Constitution and no one’s right to bear arms trumps my right to life. Though I never wish to own or fire a weapon myself, I don’t begrudge anyone’s desire to maintain a small stockpile for hunting and security purposes.

But I can’t be convinced that an AR-15, which can fire up to 700 rounds per minute, is anything more advanced than a human killing machine, or that the forefathers could have envisioned such a tool when they enshrined that “right to bear arms.”

It’s time for all of us, across party lines to stand together and tell our local representatives, our Governors, the U.S. Congress and the President, “enough.” Enough of the mass public executions and the labeling of citizens who want common sense gun reform to reduce the incidence of these atrocities as “un-American.” What is unpatriotic is continuing to condone the death of innocent civilians because our elected officials are scared of disappointing the NRA.

Paul Krugman’s Stubborn Mastery of Facts Continues to Undermine G.O.P Policy (September 9, 2013)

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krugman-cnn

Every now and then a pundit publishes a piece of writing so simple, so right on, that it’s necessary to force a momentary pivot away from the gaping maw of the 24/7 news cycle to celebrate it. It’s one thing to share a link on Facebook or retweet a story, but I have to wonder if those sorts of essentially mindless activities have supplanted the demand of critical thought. And as a busy person who is as often as guilty of the “read, digest and move onto the next thing” as anyone else, I’m going to practice what I preach this week.

Because friends, Paul Krugman’s Monday morning column, “The Wonk Gap,” subtitled, “What the G.O.P. doesn’t know can hurt us,” is really what it’s all about.  I have long admired The New York Times’ Nobel Prize-winning economist for his approachable, accessible good sense. That approval went to another level in the fallout from the late 2008 financial collapse and the Great Recession that we seem unable to fully shake. While a large assortment of Krugman’s colleagues began to issue battle cries railing against the Federal deficit and debt, when it was clear that our biggest problem was the dual devastations of joblessness and demolished home value and equity, Krugman refused to throw in with popular opinion.

The result is that while the often-heartless austerity team has been proven wrong time and again (there’s zero examples of cutting a nation’s way to prosperity – see Greece, Spain, etc.), Krugman’s Keynesian philosophy has been vindicated over and over. He labeled the 2009 stimulus package too small and argued that a larger plan would pose no great threat to our nation’s long-term debt structure. With a U6 unemployment ratestill hovering near 14 percent, a measure that includes people seeking full-time employment, as well as those forced into part-time positions out of basic necessity, the jobs situation hasn’t improved much in the last four years.  Meanwhile factcheck.orghighlights the obfuscations of the GOP’s favorite debt policy fraud, Paul Ryan, by concluding “Ryan’s chart ignores $2 trillion in deficit reduction and compounds that exaggeration by projecting the inflated deficit figures out for many decades in the future.”

If the data fails to support the G.O.P. platform and the liberalism of economists like Paul Krugman has been proven to encompass solid policy as well as human empathy (imagine!), why then have the failed ideas of the modern Republican Party been so difficult to banish from our discourse? Let’s go to the man himself for a possible answer:

“[A sizeable portion of today’s Republican leaders] are inadvertently illustrating the widening ‘wonk gap’ — the G.O.P.’s near-complete lack of expertise on anything substantive. Health care is the most prominent example, but the dumbing down extends across the spectrum, from budget issues to national security to poll analysis. Remember, Mitt Romney and much of his party went into Election Day expecting victory.”

Moreover by tuning out any creditable sources that conflict with the party’s wish fulfillment, Krugman writes, “conservative ‘experts’ are creating false impressions about public opinion…Modern conservatism has become a sort of cult, very much given to conspiracy theorizing when confronted with inconvenient facts. Liberal policies were supposed to cause hyperinflation, so low measured inflation must reflect statistical fraud; the threat of climate change implies the need for public action, so global warming must be a gigantic scientific hoax. Oh, and Mitt Romney would have won if only he had been a real conservative.”

I experience a genuine surge of adrenaline, accompanied by an increased pulse rate, flushed cheeks and giddiness when I read truth manifestos like this one.  Whereas the majority of conservative pundits have to contort themselves to make anything resembling a logical point, Krugman’s very success is located in the simplicity of his arguments. He is unafraid to continuously point out, very respectfully, that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

I respect Krugman’s apparently genuine belief that there will be a time when facts win, when the people of this Great Union will pause to wonder why they keep getting poorer, availing themselves of less and less opportunity anytime the modern Republican party controls an arm of the government. More war, less jobs and the removal of the social safety net even as the top one percent and the corporate interests they represent gobble up remaining resources. There are certain weeks I feel almost too demoralized, too exhausted to continue raising my voice in an attempt to counter the efforts at middle and lower class suppression I see everywhere I look. It is in part the stubbornness of experts like Krugman, with too many credentials to ignore, that inspires me to continue. We can’t let today’s G.O.P. destroy this great democracy. If Krugman can find new and interesting ways to spread a staunchly consistent message, then so can I.

Republicans Stick to Their Disingenuous Script to Blame Obama for Syria Debate (September 3, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

obama-boehner

Last Sunday, as I sat listening to Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly assert “I don’t believe that my former colleagues in the United States Senate and the House will turn their backs on all of our interests, on the credibility of our country, on the norm with respect to the enforcement of the prohibition against the use of chemical weapons, which has been in place since 1925,” I pitied his position. As the discouraging parliamentary vote in the UK, the reluctance of the United Nations and the anemic support of the beleaguered American people left President Obama increasingly isolated in his intent to address the human atrocities committed by the Syrian government, it fell to Kerry to do a very awkward rhetorical dance: making a clear and impassioned case for intervention while stopping short of sending our soldiers into another unpopular, unsanctioned military action.

From a tactical standpoint, I applaud the decision to seek Congressional approval for any limited action in the war torn nation, where various estimated now place the civilian death toll at over 100,000. Back in the heady days of yore when the two parties were able to come to agreement on something, anything, this was the paradigm. I believe most of the nation agreed with Kerry, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, when he said “The United States is strongest when the Congress speaks with the president, when the American people are invested.”

At the same time, I had to wonder if Kerry had lost complete touch with reality when he left the Senate for his new role in January of this year. In declaring his belief in the legislative branch’s commitment to our interests and credibility, a highly selective memory is required to forget the doings of the 113thU.S. Congress…or the 112th, or the 111th.

I understand that an authorization of military action would normally seem like the proverbial shooting of fish in the barrel when it comes to the strong war hawk arm of the GOP, but these are not conventional times. Indeed, as our own Sarah Jonespoints out “Republicans are once again unable to govern seriously due to their Obama Opposition Disorder and their inner party destruction.” Thus we are dealing with a party that, once upon a time, couldn’t rush to war and the securing of pork-laden security contracts fast enough under a Republican President, a group that lauded the expanded powers of the Executive Branch to make fairly unilateral decisions regarding the deployment of armed forces. Substitute a Democratic Chief Executive with a brown face and suddenly we have several days of “Will they or won’t they?” suspense. It’s ludicrous.

Fortunately for Syria’s destroyed and injured families, it appears that the most inept Speaker of the House in modern history (I might have just left it at “history,” but I confess myself ignorant of those of the 18th and 19th centuries), might just be able to herd the screeching, disagreeable cats that make up his caucus. The New York Times reported that “Speaker John A. Boehner said on Tuesday that he would ‘support the president’s call to action’ in Syria after meeting with President Obama, giving the president a crucial ally in the quest for votes in the House.”

But of course since no Republican can ever be allowed to risk offering the POTUS unqualified support for a just action, here’s number two House Republican Eric Cantor right on cue: “Understanding that there are differing opinions on both sides of the aisle, it is up to President Obama to make the case to Congress and to the American people that this is the right course of action, and I hope he is successful in that endeavor.”

So if the vote fails, it’s not, Cantor repeats, not another act of GOP cynicism and blame shifting. It is simply that President Obama will have failed to make a compelling case that our intervention in the region will save lives and buttress American interests. Apparently iron clad proof of chemical attacks seen on news stations across the globe, Syria’s importance in managing ongoing tensions with Iran and the larger Middle East and the support of tried and true Obama enemies like Arizona John McCain, may still not be enough to get this group behind anything at all that the President wishes to do.

I must admit that I am not entirely sure where I stand on the Syria question. I believe with all my heart that someone has to stop the killing, but at the same time, I’m well aware of the lessons recent history offers with regard to American-advocated regime change (Iraq, Libya, Egypt, etc). I’ve become fairly convinced that reinvention and democratization must be the will of the people in order to become sustainable. But limited efforts to divest Assad of his chemical weapons stock should be a no-brainer, especially on the part of the “we’ll be greeted as liberators” right.

American Women Still Have a Dream That the GOP Can’t Silence (August 28, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

women-dream

During this historically important week, the nation marks the half century anniversary of the March on Washington, punctuated by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s eternally inspirational “I Have a Dream” speech. This lofty, idealistic piece of rhetoric dared to imagine a future of peace and equality for all, no longer an exclusive privilege of white male ideology reproducers. The message was simple but stirring: let’s pretend that when the Founding Fathers asserted the equal creation of all men, they meant men of all races and means. Then let’s make it a reality.

But what about women? Where does this more than 50 percent of the American population stand in 2013? While it’s undeniable that female voters have made great strides in education and earning potential, with women having accrued an astonishing 10 million more college degrees than men since 1982, and a number of surveys reporting that women are now the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of American households, as Rodney Dangerfield might have quipped, in certain sociopolitical circles, the ladies still “get no respect.”

This is not simple argument or conjecture. Sadly, evidence abounds that 2013 looks an awful lot like 1950 when it comes to female reproductive rights, rape culture and other issues critical to our survival. I logged onto Politicus USA this morning and two of the first five stories in the newsfeed related to the continued discrimination against and subjugation of women. Writer Keith Brekus examines the case of a 50 year-old man sentenced to a mere month in jail after repeatedly raping a 14 year-old girl. Adalia Woodbury takes a chilling look at North Carolina’s female voter suppression tactics.

I love being a woman, and society’s oppressive attitudes notwithstanding, I wouldn’t trade genders for the world. But sometimes it’s hard to account for modern peonage imposed upon my sex, to myself as well as my young nieces. 15 years ago, the Spice Girls played a role in teaching my generation to celebrate “Girl Power,” but those messages are increasingly harder to filter against an appalling tide of backward looking policy and discourse.

The conservative media, as usual, plays its role. A disgusting July 2012 piece published by The Blaze illustrates my point. The forum quotes reactionary radio talk show host and frequent enemy of women, Rush Limbaugh, as saying: “I can do one better than that. When women got the right to vote’s when it all went downhill…Because that’s when votes started being cast with emotion and maternal instincts that government ought to reflect.” It is at this point you would respect any responsible, modern news outlet to repudiate these comments in an unqualified way. And you’d be wrong.

Uttered on the heels of Limbaugh’s now-infamous tirade against Sandra Fluke, and the resulting loss of sponsorship that accompanied it, The Blaze actually applauds the shock jock for his resilience and frames his continued hate speech as humorous liberal chum. Writer Mytheos Holt observes, “In fact, so great has Limbaugh’s recovery been that he is now openly taunting his former critics on his show by making obviously joking, but still highly controversial statements about gender politics, with the express intent of seeing which liberal critics will take the bait.”

What the hell is funny about blaming today’s deadlocked, hyperpartisan dialogue on hard-earned female suffrage?

Although corporate media can no longer be counted upon to keep the GOP honest, Rachel Maddow and others of her breed aside, things have gotten so bad that Sunday morning stalwarts like NBC’s Meet the Press feel compelled to interject questions of gender into a focused August 25 discussion of the 1963 march. Toward the end of the show’s roundtable segment, host David Gregory makes an astute observation to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin: “I don’t have to tell you, you look at that chasm among women, it’s also horrible 50 years later. And the feeling that there’s not as much opportunity to move out of that state of affairs.”

I do not mean to diminish the remembrance of the March on Washington as an important tool in taking the current temperature of race relations. As the Trayvon Martin case and the ongoing debate over New York City’s “Stop and Frisk” policy attest, there is much road left to travel before full racial equality is reached. But we must not become complacent toward a powerful and dogged section of conservative leaders that seems unable to accept women as full partners in society, government and the home.

I still remember a little girl in the 1980s, the denizen of a major metropolitan area, relegated to playing outfield on her otherwise all-male t-ball team, despite being one of its most capable members. The sneering, arrogant coach told this girl that she would best serve the team by “staying out of the way.” That young lady had a dream too. She was certain by the time she reached 35 years of age in 2013, the sort of blatant sexism that society tacitly accepted would be a relic of the past, just like Jim Crow laws.

We cannot and must not stay out of the way.

Federal Judge Finally Orders Changes to NYC’s Racially Biased Stop-and-Frisk Policy (August 13, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

stop-frisk

It’s been a tough summer to be a minority entangled in the dispiriting web of the criminal justice system. Florida’s NRA advocated, vigilante-promoting Stand Your Ground law degenerated into inevitable ugliness with the 2012 shooting death of 17 year-old, unarmed teen Trayvon Martin. In the trial that followed, a jury of women upheld shooter George Zimmerman’s contention that he was not a racist, overreaching cop wannabe, just a regular neighborhood watchman protecting his property.  Unfortunately, despite the uproar, pain and public demonstrations which followed the verdict, the jury’s decision was well-founded according to strict application of the horrendous law. Zimmerman need only have felt the appearance of imminent danger to warrant a discharge of his weapon.

The badly needed public discourse that accompanied the case forced American citizens of all stripes to ask themselves and their neighbors the tough questions: Just how far has race equality actually advanced in the post-Civil Rights era? Is our justice system really as blind as our stated ideals desire? Where is the middle ground located between protection of public safety and respect for individual freedom and liberty?

In the local and national conversations which ensued, New York City’s controversial Stop-and-Frisk policy figured prominently. The public data warehouse, Wikipedia, defines the program as “a practice of the New York City Police Department by which a police officer who reasonably suspects a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a felony or a penal law misdemeanor, stops and questions that person, and, if the officer reasonably suspects he or she is in danger of physical injury, frisks the person stopped for weapons.”

The rightfully suspicious regarded this expansion of street level police authority as rife with racial profiling possibilities. New York City’s outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg has found his seat of defense perpetually hot as he weathered public and private demonstrations against the law. Arguing that the policy has reduced crime and saved lives, the Mayor has repeatedly refused calls to abolish or at least amend the statute. The Supreme Court of the United States previously ruled that such practices were constitutional under the vaguely worded, “certain conditions.”

Opponents of the law have long argued that Stop-and-Frisk searches have been unevenly directed at young minority men, particularly African Americans. And this week, that constituency found a powerful ally in the form of federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin. In a decision rendered Monday morning, the judge had strong words of rebuke for Bloomberg and the NYPD. According to a story published in the New York Times, the judge “found that the city ‘adopted a policy of indirect racial profiling by targeting racially defined groups for stops based on local crime suspect data.’ She rejected the city’s arguments that more stops happened in minority neighborhoods solely because those happened to have high-crime rates.” Writer Joseph Goldstein further reports, “To fix the constitutional violations, the judge designated an outside lawyer, Peter L. Zimroth, to monitor the Police Department’s compliance with the Constitution.”

Mr. Zimroth has yeoman’s work ahead in the attempt to fix a law that has displayed “a widespread disregard for the [protections of the] Fourth Amendment,” but the rewards will be well worth the effort. Let this week’s ruling serve as a warning to other municipal locations across the nation who may have been inspired by the Big Apple’s example. Public safety concerns do not equate to free rein to harass “the other.”