Coalitions

In a parliamentary form of democratic government, the party in power names the prime minister, making getting legislation passed infinitely easier. In cases where no one party wins a majority, the leader of the strongest party often negotiates with a secondary party to create a coalition between those forces to create enough votes to seat the prime minister and pass “mutually acceptable” legislation. When these coalitions collapse over disputed policies, a new election is called. Clearly, a majority will almost always form in a basic two-party system, but most parliamentary governments have more than two political parties.

In the United States, we have a very different form of democracy, a bicameral legislature that has relied for centuries on the ability of opponents in a two party system, where the nation’s chief executive does not come from the legislature, to negotiate a compromise. And while our two party system has come to loggerheads before, the last time such a sustained Congressional discord remained so bitter for so long, proponents and opponents fought out their differences on the battlefield in the Civil War. Listening to gun advocates justifying their big-magazine-assault-weapons on the grounds that the Second Amendment gives them the right to overthrow a government that “oppresses” their view of what the government can and cannot do sends chills down my back… and not in a good way.

The badly Gerrymandered Congressional redistricting – and remember each party does this when they are in power – has given the GOP strong majorities in the House and in a majority of state legislatures. But they just got slammed in the last election, and so many of their elected representatives are committed to reverse the results of that Presidential loss that the notion of compromise appears to be a mere relic of the past. Even ignoring the fiscal cliff debacle, the numbers needed to generate the kind of legislative compromise to allow the government to function in the next two years just don’t exist. The 113^th Congress is no more likely to function effectively than the 112^th.

Nate Silver looked at the numbers for the going forward House in a December 21^st New York Times: “Of the 233 Republicans, 51 will be members of the Tea Party Caucus, give or take a few depending on which first-term members of Congress join the coalition. The other 182 are what I will call Establishment Republicans… [I]t seems clear that Mr. Boehner lacks the confidence of roughly three dozen Republican members of the House, and possibly more. Erick Erickson, of the blog RedState, identified 34 Republicans who he said opposed Mr. Boehner’s bill and another 12 whom he identified as being on the fence.

“Say that Mr. Boehner cannot count on the support of 34 of his Republicans when it comes to passing major fiscal policy legislation. That means he would need to identify 18 Democrats who would vote along with the Republicans who remained with him… Here’s the problem: it might be hard to round up those 18 Democrats.” Since appropriations bills, by Constitutional mandate, must originate in the House (not the Senate), we have clear battle lines drawn between one group that has sworn never to raise taxes and are firmly committed to cut spending on social programs while increasing spending on the military, folks in the party that created the deficit by fighting wars while cutting taxes which they now believe gives them the justification to reduce the government the way they want to reduce the government, and an equally committed group dedicated to leveling the socio-economic playing field and giving Americans in the middle and at the bottom social programs that the rich don’t want to pay for.

In short, the party that won the presidency and controls the Senate cannot pass anything without the party that lost the presidency and doesn’t control the Senate because they control the House. We are only going to see more of the same, which global credit-rating agencies see as the justification to reduce our national rating even more. This impasse-driven Congress creates precisely the kind of instability that will put serious restraints on any semblance of an economic recovery. Unemployment is unlikely to improve much in this environment.

What’s worse, as the “as American as white folks eating apple pie” sectors of our economy become increasingly threatened by the minorities-becoming-the-majority demographic trends, instead of reaching out to engage and compromise, as the Congressional elections clearly demonstrate, they are digging in their heels to do anything to stop change. Until those districts fall under the new demographics themselves – a longer process because of Gerrymandering – the impasses will continue into the foreseeable future. But the writing is on the wall, and if the GOP continues to ignore their falling stature, their long term prognosis is not particularly enviable. According to a December CNN/ORC poll released on December 20^th, 53% of Americans, including 22 % of Republicans, believe the GOP’s views and policies have pushed them too far outside of the mainstream. In 2010, less than 40% thought the party was too extreme.

Nevertheless, the diehards don’t care. They will do what they can to hold the line, and with districts drawn the way they are, even in the 2014 mid-term elections, this condition is extremely likely to continue. When this “bastion of traditional America” becomes the consistently outvoted minority – a virtual certainty given that the birthrates in this part of America are below replacement levels – what will this exceptionally well-armed “minority” populace do? Will their children be the ones building the new social bridges we desperately need to continue as a viable nation… or will we fracture and polarize ourselves out of the United States of America, a land that may die for lack of a coalition.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am deeply concerned for our national future.

Greed, Guns and Gumption

Christmas Eve 2012. Just another day in the lust-love of too many Americans and their weapon systems. Usual stories in the press.

Story One: “Authorities say four firefighters were shot, two of them killed while responding to a house fire in western New York… Officials in the town of Webster tell local media outlets that someone shot at firefighters around 6 a.m. Monday [December 24^th] when they arrived at the scene of the blaze just east of Rochester… CNN reports that two responding firefighters are being treated for gunshot wounds. Two other firefighters were killed, but officials wouldn’t elaborate on how they died… A Webster fire official told ABC that the firefighters were shot at when they pulled up to a house in the 100 block of Lake Road.” Huffington Post, December 24^th. It was a trap. The shooter and assumed arsonist, a convicted killer, was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Merry Christmas.

Story Two: Received: Well-more than the necessary 25,000 signatures to require White House attention to an attempt to deport CNN host, Piers Morgan, exercising First Amendment rights in expressing his support of new gun control legislation. The text of the message? “British Citizen and CNN television host Piers Morgan is engaged in a hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment. We demand that Mr. Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.” Yep, back in the late 1700s, our forefathers clearly supported the mass distribution of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, which with minor adjustment, are capable of spraying a 100 or more bullets a minute to extinguish the lives of a maximum number of people who disagree with you. Deport me!!!! Good to know that a clear misinterpretation of one Constitutional provision – one that kills – trumps another – one that defines our democracy. Free speech behind the barrel of a pointed gun!

Story Three: As Newtown, Connecticut struggles in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, state legislators are contemplating tightening restrictions on gun ownership so that such school shootings become decreasingly likely. But the local gun manufacturers are threatening to leave the state– and the jobs they represent (Connecticut is the 7^th largest gun manufacturing state) – should such limitations actually be imposed. “Colt, based in Connecticut since the 1800s, employs roughly 900 people in the state. Two other major gun companies, Sturm, Ruger & Company and Mossberg & Sons, are also based in the state. In all, the industry employs about 2,000 people in Connecticut, company officials said…

“In Connecticut, the United Automobile Workers, which represents Colt workers, has testified against restrictions. The union’s arguments were bolstered last year when Marlin Firearms, a leading manufacturer of rifles, closed a factory in Connecticut that employed more than 200 people.” New York Times, December 23^rd.

Story Four: NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, fresh from his astounding “let’s put guns into our schools” as the solution to the waves of academic gun violence that have plagued the nation, refused an invitation to join the Presidential task force (led by VP Joe Biden) charged with developing a new gun policy in light of Sandy Hook. His statement on NBC’s Meet the Press on December 23^rd: “If it’s a panel that’s just going to be made up of a bunch of people that, for the last 20 years, have been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I’m not interested in sitting on that panel… [The] N.R.A. is not going to let people lose the Second Amendment in this country, which is supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people.”

I can’t seem to shake the image of an NRA volunteer posted to an urban high school in South Central LA making eye contact with the few gangbangers who haven’t dropped out… who really want his Bushmaster assault rifle to add to their collection. Or the bored and well-armed NRA “protector of children” at a small elementary school having a bad day and getting into an altercation with someone trying to visit his or her child at the school. Always good to have lone gunmen with deep political prejudices charged with interpreting the law against those who just might disagree with them. Picture an NRA gunman-guard dealing with parents protesting against his armed presence in their child’s school. The NRA proposal may be the most colossally stupid proposal I have ever heard… and if we were to implement this idiotic policy, I wonder what the death toll of innocents would be.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is clear that blind passion does not mix well with common sense or facts.

Austerity Spanish Style

I have blogged heavily on the Euro Zone’s failed, German-mandated, austerity program. Most of the Zone is in technical recession, and among those underperforming PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) nations who have received EU rescue packages, the assumption remains that cutting national debt at all costs – reducing deficits as the super-high priority – will solve the region’s debt crisis, sooner or later. But as austerity measures drop debt, in many cases the cuts imposed have had an even greater impact on slashing the GDP growth necessary to repay what debt remains. Thus the truly more meaningful measure of the debt crisis – the ratio debt to GDP – has actually gotten worse. In the end, nobody in his or her right mind believes that it is remotely possible for Greece to repay its rescue package or remotely to service its national debt. The austerity programs have killed what limited ability Greece may have had to generate enough GDP to make a difference.

Funny how many American lawmakers, facing a fiscal cliff, also obsess about cutting the deficit and also ignore the true measure sustainable national debt: that debt to GDP ratio noted above. Hmmmm, maybe they don’t care, because what they really want to do is cut government programs they don’t like, and deficit reduction is one hell of an excuse. The problem with that thinking is that too much cutting can have horrible effects on economic recovery. Spain is a perfect if extreme example.

With a real estate crash that actually was a multiple of the U.S. subprime crisis, Spain succumbed to fiscal catastrophe, and went begging to the EU for a rescue package. Between its own economic crush and EU austerity demands required to get the bailout, Spain has mounted a staggering 25% unemployment rate. The seething anger of the masses of unemployed (pictured above) makes the headlines, but some of the “little stories” show exactly how far daily life in Spain has fallen… even for those who remain technically employed. Many Spaniards with jobs often go weeks or even months without getting their paychecks. They’re scared to quit because there are no employment alternatives, sometimes even scared to publicize the shortfall for fear of causing the company they work for to collapse entirely. With over 300,000 bankruptcies in recent memory, their fears are justified.

If they leave their job, they also know that unemployment insurance only extends for two years (assuming that the program remains funded), and no one believes the employment picture will be solved in that time. And sometimes, the lack of paychecks comes from government agencies that have simply run out of money. “Being paid for the work you do is no longer something that can be counted on in Spain, as this country struggles through its fourth year of an economic crisis…  With the regional and municipal governments deeply in debt, even workers like bus drivers and health care attendants, dependent on government financing for their salaries, are not always paid.” New York Times, December 16^th. This non-payment reality trickles down the economic waterfall into a vicious cycle that tanks the economy and accelerates even more unemployment.

The government doesn’t have (or won’t provide) the underlying non-payment statistics. “But one indication of their number can be seen in the courts, which have become jammed with people trying to get back pay from a government insurance fund, aimed at giving workers something when a company does not pay them… In Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city, the unemployment rate is 28.1 percent and the courts are so overwhelmed that processing claims, which used to take three to six months, now takes three to four years… Since the start of the crisis in 2008, the insurance fund has paid nearly a million workers nationally back pay or severance. In 2007, it paid 70,000 workers. It is on track to pay more than 250,000 this year, and experts say the figures would be much higher if not for the logjam in the courts.” NY Times.

We need to be sure in this country that dogmatic pursuit of an economic panacea may well be more destructive to our long-term economic survival that the damage that would occur by not dealing with the crisis at all. There is middle ground, one that embraces cuts with no sacred cows, but one that has a heart and still provides the longer-term investments in education, infrastructure and research that are the necessary fundamentals of long-term healthy economic growth. We need common sense more than ever.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we really need to understand the ramifications of taking actions based on overly-simplistic sloganeering.

Crazy About Guns

We’ve looked at piles of statistics in the last few weeks. How there is a rather direct correlation to homicides and mass killings by shooters with the availability and access to guns as a function of state law restrictions, that the vast majority of the guns used for such murders were legally obtained, that the United States blows the rest of the world away in per capita murders by gun and how deeply embedded gun ownership is in those with strong conservative leanings. We’ve noted local politicians who think more guns in schools will create the necessary deterrent/ emergency preparedness and that there are many who mistakenly believe that the Second Amendment entitles them to have the most lethal weapons to allow them to overthrow a government that defies their core beliefs.

We’ve seen states that allow concealed weapons, some without special permits and some that allow such weapons to be taken to work, others with “stand your ground” statutes that allow killings to be labeled “self-defense” that in other states would be deemed murder plus states that permit folks (who are in the category of “private sellers”) who are not registered gun dealers to sell an unlimited number of weapons at gun shows to folks without any form of background check (or even showing an ID). Since 40% of all guns sold in the U.S. come through “private sellers,” this is a huge “no ID or background check” hole in the system.

The rest of the world remains aghast that all of this free flow of lethal weapons – including assault guns and oversized magazines – is perfectly legal here and there are actually large political forces that can throw a politician out of office if he or she stands for restricting this trade. In short, we are killing each other with the rather complete government encouragement and support.

Even as the plethora of guns seeps into every nook and cranny of our society, the Sandy Hook massacre prompted this official plea, contained in NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s press conference on December 21^st, to put more weapons at the disposal of our nation’s schools: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away or from a minute away? ... Now, the National Rifle Association knows there are millions of qualified and active retired police, active, Reserve, and retired military, security professionals, certified firefighters, security professionals, rescue personnel, an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained, qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every single school.

“We could deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer, relying on the brave men and women in America’s police forces. The budgets -- and you all know this, everyone in the country knows this -- of our local police departments are strained, and the resources are severely limited, but their dedication and courage is second to none. And, they can be deployed right now... I call on Congress today, to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. And, to do it now to make sure that blanket safety is in place when our kids return to school in January.” Great, private citizens, armed to the teeth, deciding how to implement our laws. What’s the dress code? Flak jackets, combat boots and camouflage paramilitary uniforms? Vigilantes on call? More guns as the solution to an explosion of gun violence? I think we have an entirely new category of mental illness that needs to be considered in who can have a gun!

For who worry about the economy, note that the “American culture of gun violence” is taking its toll on tourism. I spoke to a Disney executive who tells me that every time there is a highly publicized episode of gun violence, cancellations for trips from the Continent to Florida’s Disney World come in droves. Hotels in the region get 10-15% cancellations from European travelers. And if those represent cancellations, think of how many people don’t even think of traveling to the United States anymore. Every time the NRA speaks about it concept of guns in America, Europe and most of the rest of the world wince. We really need to appreciate that our posture on assault weapons is terrifying to tourists. The job-killing NRA needs to stop the inane rhetoric of “more guns” as a remotely viable solution.

And even in the tiny area where even conservative groups believe there are viable restrictions – not on the kinds of guns you can buy but on who can buy them – the focus is on those with proven mental illness, a history of drug abuse or domestic violence and convicted criminals. The central repository of this restrictive information resides with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which maintains the database for the relevant background checks. There just one tiny catch. Except for records that are generated by the federal government, the FBI is reliant on information provided by the states… and way too many states just don’t feel like cooperating.

“The database is incomplete because many states have not provided federal authorities with comprehensive records of people involuntarily committed or otherwise ruled mentally ill. Records are also spotty for several other categories of prohibited buyers, including those who have tested positive for illegal drugs or have a history of domestic violence.

“While some states, including New York, have submitted more than 100,000 names of mentally ill people to the F.B.I. database, 19 — including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Maryland and Maine — have submitted fewer than 100 records and Rhode Island has submitted none, according to federal data compiled by Mayors Against Illegal Guns. That suggests that millions of names are missing from the federal database, gun control advocates and law enforcement officials say...

“A July report by the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan Congressional watchdog, found that the total number of mental health records submitted by states to the background check system increased to 1.2 million from about 126,000 between 2004 and 2011, but that the increase largely reflected the efforts of just 12 states. And, it found, 30 states were not making noncriminal records — like positive drug test results for people on probation — available to the system.” New York Times, December 20^th.

Clearly mass killers slip through any systemic filter, but there is sufficient evidence that such a database would have saved many lives. For example, the 2007 mass shootings at Virginia Tech – which killed 32 and injured 17 – were committed by an individual who had earlier been declared mentally ill by a Virginia judge. He passed the background check.

While the FBI can clear 97% of gun inquiries within the three day waiting period, the confusion of accessing such files stored at other agencies often forces checks to exceed that time restriction. “Since 2005, 22,162 firearms — including nearly 3,000 this year — have been bought after the waiting period by people later determined to have been disqualified because of their criminal and mental histories, according to an examination of F.B.I. data...  Some of the weapons were used in violent crimes, including a fatal drive-by shooting, but it is not clear how many were linked to criminal acts, because authorities are barred by Congress from tracking such information.” NY Times. Wal*Mart – the nation’s largest gun dealer – voluntarily holds back sales to individuals unless they actually receive the FBI clearance, even after the three day period.

Because of the NRA and the fact that most gun manufacturers are also defense contractors with powerful lobbying capacity, restrictions on the gun trade are very difficult to implement. Manufacturers and compliant dealers even have a statutory exemption from any liability to victims of gun violence.

The gun registration system has only been around for twenty years, but it falls woefully short of our expectations, and there are a whole lot of guns out there. The President has directed VP Joe Biden to prepare recommendations for new federal restrictions on the trade of weapons within the U.S. “That probably will focus attention on the F.B.I.’s National Instant Criminal Background Check system, which was required by the 1993 Brady background-check law... At an office building in Clarksburg, W.Va., servers and backup drives hum in a huge basement. Upstairs, workers with headsets sit in cubicles, taking calls from gun dealers across the country. In 2012, about 17 million background checks have been done through the F.B.I.’s system.

“The background check requirements apply only to licensed dealers, not the private sellers who account for an estimated 40 percent of sales. Restrictions imposed by Congress on government tracking of firearms make it hard to know exactly how many weapons are sold each year, but according to the A.T.F., more than five million firearms are manufactured each year for sale in the United States, and about three million more such weapons are imported. Those numbers do not account for the sale of used guns.” NY Times.  

What is clearly missing in the analysis of so many gun-ownership proponents is a complete failure to understand statistics, hard facts and then apply the most basic level of common sense. The mantra that “guns don’t kill, people do” and references to a Chinese maniac who killed 22 people with a knife simply defy the tsunami of irrefutable evidence that our massive availability of guns – including assault weapons and high capacity magazines – absolutely result in a vastly higher related murder rate than anywhere else on earth.

I’m Peter Dekom, and once again, relying on slogans and mythology has too long dominated the American approach to gun control... with unsurprisingly massive lethal consequences.

Too Big to Jail

As governmental bodies impose big fines on big institutions for doing big crimes, one has to wonder why big folks aren’t going to prison as well. After all, even after these seemingly massive fines, the financial institutions remain profitable in the year of the payment, have the ability to build expected criminal fines in their service and interest pricing structures (called: passing the cost on to their business clients and individual consumers) and truly have no major disincentive to stop their illegal practices. Remember that the big bonuses for bringing the malignant business have long-since been paid, and the few folks who are resigning or being prosecuted are either sacrificial lambs or were near retirement anyway.

Let’s start with HSBC and their recent brush with U.S. regulators: “Britain’s biggest bank was forced to pay $1.9bn (£1.17bn) fine to settle allegations by US regulators that it allowed itself to be used to launder billions of dollars for drug barons and potential terrorists for nearly a decade until 2010... The US department of justice said HSBC had moved $881m for two drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia and accepted $15bn in unexplained ‘bulk cash,’ across the bank’s counters in Mexico, Russia and other countries. In some branches the boxes of cash being deposited were so big the tellers’ windows had to be enlarged.

“Chief executive Stuart Gulliver insists the bank is now under new management and will not make the same mistakes again – although both he and chairman Douglas Flint were in top roles while the money laundering activities were still going on. Gulliver and Flint are now giving more responsibility to group business heads – ending the policy that country heads of the bank's outposts around the world should be ‘kings’ of their businesses...The US authorities said HSBC did not face criminal charges because the bank was too big to prosecute and no individuals were implicated. So where are the bosses who presided over HSBC’s years as banker to drug lords, terrorists and rogue states ?” Guardian.uk.co, December 14^th.  Hint: they’re not in jail, and they are still rich beyond all reason. They’ve just left HSBC.

And now we begin the spate of governmental sanctions on financial institutions who engaged in interest-rate manipulation –lying about their actual transactional rates to impact the overall London Interbank Offer Rate (Libor) to their financial benefit. Libor rates impact us all in almost everything we do that involves interest calculations. After Barclays was recently fined $450 million for indulging in this scheme and granted limited criminal antitrust immunity by the Department of Justice, mega-Swiss bank UBS figured that it was only about negotiating the level of fine that it would have to pay.

But the DOJ was under scathing criticism for letting big banks just buy their way out of criminal activities. On December 19^th, “UBS announced it would plead guilty to one count of felony wire fraud as part of a broader settlement. With federal prosecutors, British, Swiss and American regulators secured about $1.5 billion in fines, more than triple the only other rate-rigging case, against Barclays. The Justice Department also filed criminal charges against two former UBS traders.” New York Times, December 19^th. Traders? Lower-tiered folks who resigned? Sounds like they’ve upped the penalties but still relegated punishment to sacrificial lambs.

UBS officials argued that the bank “had overhauled its management ranks, bolstered internal controls and generally tried to clean up its act” (NY Times), cooperated with the investigation and that most of the foul play was conducted in a Japanese subsidiary. Nope. Not enough, and the fraud count, fine and prosecution of the traders were implemented. And trust me, there will lots more banks singing this song, since you cannot lie about interbank transactions without the cooperation of all the banks involved.

But my issues with this remain. The global financial sector – even after the 2008 crash that they were the principal fomenters of – remains unrepentant, unwilling (unable?) to stop manipulating their systems for internal gain regardless of the social consequences and seemingly immune from any meaningful criminal prosecution for their illegal acts. The fines are easily absorbed within their corporate balance sheets and upset the apple cart for a very short time period… not to mention that they simply pass the costs on to their customers.

We need tighter and more constant regulations, greater oversight and transparency, consistent global legal restraints among participant nations and real solid criminal penalties for those on top. Put a few chairpersons and presidents in orange jumpsuits for a decade or two each and watch the system reform. It’s time to make penalties on financial institutions more than simply “a cost of doing business.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and this notion of too much regulation as a job-killer is nothing more than condoning illegal and anti-social behavior of immense destructive power.

Not Enough Nukes

They call it a system upgrade, and the notion is to have a new arsenal of nuclear warheads and modern delivery systems – bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles as well as strategic submarines and aircraft carriers (with the surrounding, ultra-modern, vessels to protect the carriers) – that will find value into the next half century. Old vessels, warheads and missiles are increasingly obsolete or simply past their functional usefulness. We need more. And given our rather massive store of older planes, rockets/missiles, ships and warheads, if we really want to continue to replace it all, Americans should ignore former President Dwight David Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex and invest heavily in it. Even with cutbacks, the expected expenditures in this sector, to maintain a military force that equals the combined expenditures of the next ten largest military budgets on earth, will make many an investor’s heart beat fast.

Do you think it is by accident that virtually every major congressional district in the United States has a local defense contractor or subcontractor? And in a period of severe unemployment and under-employment, how hard do you think those representatives work to keep those jobs intact?  I’ll point out some nasty specifics below, but there are hard realities we just aren’t facing today.

We currently have a massive deficit and enough weapons to blow up the rest of the earth. Yeah, but they’re getting old. But we haven’t used a nuclear weapon since World War II. Yeah, but our massive strike force has been the deterrent from anyone else using one. Never know when we will need to nuke someone, and better and newer weapons are an even better deterrent. But we are bankrupting the country we are trying to protect when we need that money to build infrastructure, education our young and conduct job-creating research so we will have a future worth protecting. Yeah, but think of all those jobs the military will create and the supporting research that might not cure cancer, but they sure come in handy when we want to sell weapons overseas and make even more money for the contractors. But by having all those military assets flaunted in the world, we become the natural king of the hill that terrorists need to take down to build their reputations… making us spend even more on Homeland Security. Yeah, but how else are military officers going to get enough combat experience to rise through the ranks?

Writing for the December 17^th Washington Post, Walter Pincus addressed just the tactical submarine thang: “Start with the Navy’s plan for 12 new SSBN-X strategic submarines to replace the 14 Ohio-class subs now in service. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the program, released Dec. 10, asks whether the Navy can stay within the cost targets for their procurement ($4.9 billion each) and whether each sub should carry 16 or 20 missiles... But shouldn’t the questions be more basic, such as who is the enemy and how many subs would be needed to deter that enemy?...There will be at least four or five warheads on each of the 16 ICBMs carried on each of the new subs. Their destructive power will be eight to more than 20 times that of the atomic bomb that all but destroyed Hiroshima in 1945...

“The Cold War created a mindless U.S.-Soviet Union nuclear arms race in which both sides forgot the power of the weapons they were building and believed that whoever had the largest number was the strongest. Numbers on both sides went close to 20,000 bombs and warheads. It took just two to end World War II in the Pacific, and the threat of using one ended the 1962 Cuban missile crisis... Since 1991, when the Iron Curtain fell, both the United States and Russia have sharply reduced not just their overall stockpiles but their deployed weapons. According to a study released last week by Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, both sides are down to roughly 4,500 strategic warheads and bombs apiece, and by 2018 will have just 1,550 operationally deployed as required by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which took effect Feb. 5, 2011...Ironically, after signing the treaty, the two countries began modernizing their nuclear forces.

“By the end of the decade, the deployed U.S. force may be 400 single-warhead, land-based ICBMs; 240 submarine-launched ballistic missiles with three to five warheads each; and 60 strategic bombers, which each count for only one warhead though they carry more than one bomb. Beyond that, there are to be some 1,600 stockpiled warheads or bombs, Kristensen says... Why do we need that size of a nuclear arsenal for the next 50 years?... Why 12 and not 10 subs, for example? Under construction plans, the Navy will go down to 10 operational boats between 2029 and 2041, as old Ohio-class submarines are retired before new ones are finished, according to the CRS study. What new threat requiring another 90 sub-launched warheads will be arising after 2041?”

But even when the Defense Department wants to make cuts in military systems, the political pressure and horse-trading to keep military programs alive “in my district and I’ll take care of yours too” pushes unnecessary expenditures through the roof. The military industrial complex has our Congress “by the balls.” Examples? On December 19^th, addressing the National Press Club, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta outlined discussions with Congress to cut defense spending. He noted, nevertheless, that political realities “had diverted about $74 billion of what we asked for in savings in our proposed budget to the Congress, and they diverted them to other areas that, frankly, we don’t need.”

More? Walter Pincus again (Washington Post, December 19^th): “For example, the conferees approved more than $500 million to continue the Global Hawk Block 30, high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft that have integrated imagery, radar and intelligence sensors. The Pentagon had decided to risk terminating this version of Global Hawk (there are others in use and being built) and noted that it would save $800 million in fiscal 2013 and $2.5 billion over the next five years.

“Two other congressional add-ons illustrate members’ desire to keep plant production lines open — and jobs filled. They were $136 million to upgrade the M1 Abrams tank and $140 million to modify the M2 Bradley armored vehicle. And $45 million was added to funds to purchase F-18s to hold open ‘the option of buying more’ in fiscal 2014. In the nuclear area, Congress added $70 million toward construction of a $3.7 billion building for research on plutonium at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that the administration wanted to delay for two more years.

“Two other congressional favorites got boosts beyond what the Pentagon approved. One was an added $152 million for missile defense; the other, for $143 million, went to Special Operations Command for an imagery intelligence program its commander wanted but higher-level officials vetoed. The conferees’ message: What Special Ops wants, it gets... One compromise reached over the past month involved the administration’s controversial plan to reorganize military air transport assets that affected Air National Guard bases around the country, a step that mobilized opposition not just from Congress but from governors of the states involved. The solution was to halt the retirement of 26 C-5A aircraft, ‘holding the strategic airlift total at 301 aircraft, until the Defense Department completes a comprehensive study of air mobility requirements,” according to the House committee. In addition, the Air Force will maintain an additional 32 C-130 or C-27J tactical airlift aircraft, some of which were going to be retired.’

We are looking at hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade to build and maintain the new delivery systems on the boards. Is this really how we need to spend that money? Do we really need that much to deter? Do these bigger delivery systems really accommodate the explosion of smaller conflicts in the world? And will we be protecting a nation of under-educated food service and hotel workers, impoverished farmers living in the new dust bowl and construction workers repairing massive damage that could have been prevented with a sufficient commitment to building and repairing infrastructure? Oh and the defense workers and the folks who invested in them?

This proves beyond the slightest doubt that all this talk about deficit reduction and the fiscal cliff is just that – talk. It is nothing more than ideologues eliminating the government programs they don’t like and pushing the ones they do. As I have said before, if you cut taxes long enough and vote for wars in the interim without funding them, the national borrowings you know you are absolutely going to create will eventually give you the “gift of a deficit so big” that you can argue for the reduction of the programs you have always wanted to get removed. Yeah, as far as I can throw them...

I’m Peter Dekom, and exactly how much is “enough”?

Guns and Polls

The General Social Survey (GSS) has been operating since 1972 to identify macro-trends in the United States, both to track domestic changes over time as well as to provide a basis for comparison with other countries. Their website notes: “The GSS is widely regarded as the single best source of data on societal trends. The 1972-2010 GSS has 5,416 variables, time-trends for 2,072 variables, and 268 trends having 20+ data points.” Whew! But what is really interesting in the post-Sandy Hook massacre era is the correlation between political beliefs and gun ownership, something GSS has been following for a very long time.

As you hear defenders of high-capacity magazines and assault weapons speak of the Second Amendment “intent” to give citizens the ability to overthrow the tyranny of their own government – hence the right to owning these killing machines cannot be abridged – you understand how this twisted assumption creates this self-righteous belief that owning military weapons trumps preventing an increasing litany of mass killings. Forget that this weaponry didn’t even exist in the late 1700s, so it hard to imbue our forefathers with an intent for us to be allowed to have them. These extreme views clearly represent a fairly severe, rightist perspective, and as American demographics change, this perspective is definitely on the wrong side of history.

Back to the issue of gun ownership and political beliefs. “Whether someone owns a gun is a more powerful predictor of a person’s political party than her gender, whether she identifies as gay or lesbian, whether she is Hispanic, whether she lives in the South or a number of other demographic characteristics.

“It will come as no surprise to those with a passing interest in American politics that Republicans are more likely to own guns than Democrats. But the differences have become much more stark in recent years, with gun ownership having become one of the clearest examples of the partisan polarization in the country over the last two decades… In 1973, about 55 percent of Republicans reported having a gun in their household against 45 percent of Democrats, according to the General Social Survey, a biennial poll of American adults… Gun ownership has declined over the past 40 years — but almost all of the decrease has come from Democrats. By 2010, according to the General Social Survey, the gun ownership rate among adults that identified as Democrats had fallen to 22 percent. It remained at about 50 percent among Republican adults.” New York Times, December 18^th.

Overall, what does American gun ownership look like? “Currently, there are an estimated 310 million privately held guns in the U.S., and 47 percent of Americans claim to own at least one firearm. There are 8.8 guns for every 10 people in the U.S. -- a higher level than in any other country in the world. The next closest is Yemen, which has 5.5 guns for every 10 people; then again, large swaths of Yemen are controlled by armed rebel groups, a factor that makes gun ownership especially necessary.

"The NRA and its corporate partners have more at stake in their fight for looser gun laws than the mere protection of a constitutional right. With an estimated $4 billion in annual sales, firearms are very big business… That big business, of course, means big money: Through its lobbying and campaign efforts, the NRA is generous with its largesse. In addition to its 4 million members -- a sizable voting bloc -- the NRA also has a lot of money to offer friendly candidates. In the 2012 election cycle, it contributed almost $19 million to political campaigns.” DailyFinance.com, December 19^th.

Want more numbers? Let’s look at some of the results of a 2008 poll (the last GSS poll to focus on gun ownership). Take education. As folks get more educated, they own fewer guns (Democrats: 41% with high school or less; 32-33% if they graduated college or went to grad school), but regardless of education, Republican gun ownership is higher at every level (59% with high school or less; 48% if they graduated college or went to grad school). Or race: White (37% Dems; 55% GOP), Black (17%/41%), Hispanic (28%/32%), Asian (5%/22%). Household income: Under $30K (20%/46%), $30K-$50k (29%/58%), $50K-$100K (30%/62%), Over $100K (27%/46%). Republican gun owners outnumber Democrats in urban areas two to one (40% to 20%). Gun ownership in rural areas is high in both parties (57%/65%). At younger legal ages – 18 to 29 – again gun ownership among Republicans is more than double than that among Democrats (24% to 53%), but the trend loses that multiple by ages 45-65 (34%/57%). Will Newtown change America’s perspective on gun control?

After recent mass shootings, guns sales immediately shot up. Sandy Hook is no exception: “In places like Colorado, Texas, Ohio and Oregon, local reports have noted a surge in gun purchases occurring immediately after the Sandy Hook tragedy…  The Sandy Hook shooting has ‘created a national shortage’ of firearms and ammunition, one Texas gun shop owner told CNBC, who asked not to be identified for fear of a backlash. ‘All of our suppliers are almost sold out of items across the board.’

“The person added that he expects gun sales in his establishment to see a jump of anywhere between 200 and 400 percent. ‘At a minimum we’ll double our sales from last year,’ he added… A representative for Colorado's Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) InstaCheck Unit told CNBC that firearms background check requests was in the throes of ‘record setting volume.’ The day following the Sandy Hook shooting the CBI received a one-day total of 4,154 requests — a new historical peak.” CNBC.com, December 18^th. People fear that gun control will take their guns away.

It is interesting to note how the “solutions” offered by conservative gun owners, who don’t want to give up their weapons, include focusing on arming teachers (yeah! More guns in schools!). “I wish to God she [a Sandy Hook teacher] had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). “Tennessee has emerged this week as a center of the ‘the answer is more guns in schools’ sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting…. A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during its upcoming session to introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms so, the sponsor told TPM, potential shooters don’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t.” TPM.com, December 18^th. Like teachers are always safe and sane, and no student would attempt to steal one of these weapons?

Or preventing those with mental illness from getting guns? Given the proclivity of more liberal folks to seek routine counseling from psychological professionals versus the path of deeply religious followers to seek religious counseling instead, I am seeing a big disconnect in the debate that will rage over the coming months. Does this include folks who went through marital counseling?

How long will it take Americans to forget about their outrage after the Sandy Hook killings? As long as it took to get over the Gifford shooting? Aurora? Virginia Tech? Etc. Etc. Until the next outrage? Hey, but we need those weapons if pro-gun conservatives – who still control the majority of governorships and seats in state legislatures – lose the voting power to an increasing liberal and ethnically diverse and need those weapons to overthrow the government?! 

I‘m Peter Dekom, and I am wondering whatever happened to “Thou shalt not kill”?