Where Is Mr. Obama's Thaddeus Stevens?

As Mr. Obama dickers with Mr. Boehner, he may well imagine himself in the position Abraham Lincoln found himself, trying to horse trade and wheel and deal to get the 13th Amendment passed into law,  but, of course, nothing Mr. Obama is looking at approaches the historic importance of the 13th amendment.  They are just talking about money, and who should pay what, not about the idea of whether or not our nation believes one man can regard another as property, not a human being, whether or not our government can regard human beings as property.

So the stakes are not as high in Mr. Obama's current dealings with Mr. Boehner.

But that should mean, Mr. Obama cannot be forgiven for giving up important principles, sacrificing less important principles for an over riding principle when the only principles here are: Can we get the Republicans to disavow their pledge to Mr. Grover Norquist and actually agree to govern?

Giving in on lowering the threshold to $250,000 for the 39.5% tax rate is caving in. Giving on on cost of living raises on Social Security is caving.
Who is playing the Thaddeus Stevens role of sitting in the kitchen with the President, looking across the table and saying, "We need a real leader. Someone who will lead. That means saying, 'No,' when you have to"--who is saying this to Mr. Obama?

Now, if you can just get Mr. Obama on the phone, Mad Dog will be happy to say it.
Maud, might say it. She's a fan of Thaddeus Stevens.
Will Joe Biden say it? Will Harry Reid? (And could you hear him if he did?) Will Tom Harkin? Will Nancy Pelosi?  Is there a Democrat, male or female on Capitol Hill or in the White House with any balls?

Second Amendment Protects Only Assault Rifles

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
--Second Amendment, United States Constitution

With Antonin Scalia and his fellow "strict constructionist" justices, the Constitution has been elevated to the status of a holy book, and all the answers are found in the writings of antiquity. So it is strange that, looking at the actual sacred text, there is little ambiguity: The only weapons our 18th century founders guaranteed to the people are military weapons, i.e., weapons needed by militiamen.

It is really remarkable how much meaning is packed into a single sentence. The purpose of guaranteeing the right of American people to keep and bear arms is clearly stated: To provide security for the state, for a free state. Not to provide security for the individual. The individual is nowhere mentioned. The right is extended to a group, "the people." And not just any people, but the people who are members of a militia, and not just any old militia, but a "well regulated militia." So the powdered whig founders precluded guns for Syrian wild type militias. You had to be a militia which is out there to protect the state, the free state. 

Do you really need 3 years of law school to read this sentence and interpret its meaning?  Do you need a black robe or a spot on the supreme court to understand this sentence? 

Once you read the various Supreme Court opinions which get you from this sentence to the idea that what this sentence means is every single individual in this nation is entitled to buy, stockpile and carry ("bear") attack rifles, grenade launchers and Sig Sauers, you have got to understand how determined the Scalia gang has been to arrive at a place which was never even dreamed in the minds of the authors of the holy scripture Justice Scalia claims as his sacred text.

So, it is clear  the concealed handgun is not protected, because you cannot use a Sig Sauer to defend a state--for that you need a rifle, or an AR-15. Cannot imagine a company of militia charging across a field firing Glock 9's at the Redcoats or the Hessians.

The AR-15 can be fitted with a grenade launcher easily, and would be a very effective part of a militia's mission.

This morning, on The Squawk Box, a Congresswoman from Connecticut debated a conservative commentator. The conservative commentator noted that with the last assault rifle ban, which lasted 10 years, the Department of Justice studied the "effectiveness" of the ban in reducing deaths  by assault rifles and found no efficacy. The law had no buy back provision--simply outlawed new sales. He suggested the solution is to allow psychologists to report potential crazy mass murderers to the police. The Congresswoman said the solution to the problem was to ban assault weapons without abridging second amendment rights, and also to place a trained expert psychologist in every school to identify potential mass murderers. 

The psychologists have been all over the idea that more money ought to be sent the way of psychologists:  Pay for a psychologist in every school  in the country.

Politicians are falling all over themselves, looking for experts who have answers, or at least places to spend money with great alacrity so they can hold up something, anything, to the TV cameras to show  how "proactive"  they can be. They are proposing spending more money to prevent the next mass murder event. Plans for this money vary.

Mad Dog is still out here listening to his neighbors, some of whom are gun enthusiasts. The gun enthusiasts say things like,  "You'll have to pry my dead cold fingers off my gun,"  and they like shooting things, making big bangs, feeling big, and their guns are a big part of their self esteem. They also like playing video shoot 'em up games and posing for photographs with their guns.

Mad Dog says:  1. The Constitution is a "living document," which means we can decide the 2nd amendment means whatever we want it to mean in the 21st century--which is exactly what the four thugs in black robes on  our Supreme Court have done.  2. We can ban all weapons, if we want to.  3. We can hire psychologists and make them report whatever they learn about potential mass murderers to the police, to the school board, to the media, to whomever we want,  if we want to. 

Mad Dog is not sure if any of this will help, but at least it may make us all a little less pickled in horse manure.

Love Your Gun More Than The Children

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
--Second Amendment, United States Constitution

One of my neighbors asked me to go out on a walk through the salt marshes on the border between Hampton and Hampton Falls, where the Seabrook Nuclear plant sits. He had planned an early morning excursion, just after sunrise, and he planned to bring his dog and his rifle. 

"You can shoot a gun there?" I asked amazed. "There're houses along the salt marshes and there's a road.
"Yeah, it's fine," he told me. "It's legal."
I declined the offer.

Now an article in today's New York Times comes the report that the Newtown police commission tried to get an ordinance passed to limit shooting of guns to 500 feet from occupied buildings. It was defeated. People in Newtown had disturbed their neighbors by firing weapons which sounded like machine guns from morning into the night. There was no ordinance to prevent it.  Mary Ann Jacob, the librarian at Sand Hook Elementary who saved many lives, had been part of the petition to enhance the ordinance. "Right now," she had testified, "If you're standing on your property and my house is 20 feet away, you can shoot." 
One of the incidents which prompted calls for the ordinance was gun fire in a wooded area on Cold Spring Road, right across from an elementary school,  A police commission member testified, "I've hunted for many years, but the police were getting complaints of shooting in the morning, in the evening and of people shooting at propane gas tanks just to see them explode."

The meetings to consider the new ordinances occurred last August and the representative of the National Shooting Sports Federation said there was greater danger of swimming accidents than shooting accidents. "This is a freedom that should never be taken away. Teach kids to hunt, you will never have to hunt your kids."

Say what? Hunt your kids? Catchy, though.

Another Newtown resident, owner of a shooting range, Scott Ostrosky, said, "Guns are why we're free in this country." 

Funny, I would have thought the Constitution is why we are free, but then again the Constitution as interpreted by Justice Antonin Scalia and his fellow "orginalists"  the "strict constructionists" may give me pause.

I have read the arguments about the history of the 2nd amendment, from its creation in the 18th century, and the origins of the concerns which led to its inclusion in the Bill of Rights. Academics  date the idea of a free society requiring an armed citizenry back to the 1600's in England, when a Catholic king tried to disarm Protestants, but all that sounds like academic masturbation to me. 

The fact is, as I read the Constitution, correct me if I'm wrong, but the 2nd amendment is the only place in the entire document where the founding fathers actually tell you the reason they grant a right--the right to keep and bear arms is there because we want to be sure militias function to preserve a free state.  They did not have a standing army, just militias and there was no defense budget then, so if you wanted a militia you had to have private citizens buy their own guns for that purpose. 

But as Antonin Scalia has it: 
Nowhere else in the Constitution does a "right" attributed to "the people" refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention "the people," the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset.

Well, that's very nifty, Mr. Scalia, but completely irrelevant and immaterial. We are talking about a unique set of sentences, one in which the authors tell you why they are providing a right and saying, quite clearly, it's for one purpose and one purpose only, and they define the right as belonging to a specific category of person--that person who would be part of a militia to protect a free state, not to protect himself personally.

Next to "obfuscation" in the dictionary, place a photograph of Mr. Scalia. Either the man is being willfully blind, or he simply has not read the relevant amendment, or if he has read it, he has not understood plain speech.

What you really have to wonder about is how many of our neighbors and citizens so adore blowing up propane tanks and firing weapons they are willing to endure a quarterly blood letting of six year olds so they can thrill to the excitement of shooting their guns.

They are correct, that simply passing a law against AR-15 guns, the attack rifle favorite of both mass killers and gun enthusiasts who simply love blowing things away, will not prevent the next maniac from getting his hands on one, on his mother's or his brother's or his friend's gun.  To clamp down on this exceptional sort of disease event you'd need to do more than just make an antibiotic available; you'd need public health measures to identify the likely perpetrators, institutions to confine them,  security cameras to watch for them approaching schools and day care centers. And even then, there will be "events." 

I do not believe, at least not yet, that passing a single law would prevent rampages by maniacs. But just looking at who is on the gun side of this debate, I'm prepared to vote with Maud--screw the bastards. Make 'em all illegal.

Meaningful Action

The news from Newtown, Connecticut is one of eleven reports of over 11 murders in  a single event by gun fire since 1984, one of 19 over the past 5 years of multiple deaths in a single shooting incident.
President Obama's statement was masterful, but, through no fault of his, incapable of ameliorating this sort of disaster; having said that, I cannot think of another President or leader who has ever done better--even Reagan addressing the Challenger explosion, was still just an actor playing the part. Mr. Obama was through and through, authentic, not milking this for anything, simply expressing what every parent is thinking.
The news media, you would think, would have figured out by now  what to cover and what not to say, but, as usual, the reporters, columnists, TV news show producers have been insufferable. (NPR's Scott Simon being my personal migraine--he seems to just love wallowing in these moments with that syrupy, unctuous voice he does, to tell you just how deeply he feels for your loss, as if nobody in the country could possibly feel as badly as Scott does about this.) Interviews with distraught witnesses, people hugging, interviews with clergymen, interviews with "trauma psychologists" and with social workers, saying things like, "This is a tragedy,"  clips from the governor and police chiefs.
As if any sort of authority figure has a clue about what to do about all this.
And then there are the men and women who are paid to swing into high gear because they work for the National Rifle Association, the Republican Party or for some gun control group.
All of the "experts" sound like imbeciles. The office holders are simply unable to say anything of value. The world will little note nor long remember what they say. 
The prize imbeciles are the NRA faithful who say we ought to arm more people, so Next Time, someone in the crowd will pull a gun and shoot the shooter, just like in old Westerns. 
Right here in New Hampshire the legislature debated and may, for all I know, have passed a law to be sure legislators could carry their guns into the statehouse.
Has there ever been a case when an armed citizen truncated a murderous spree by shooting the shooter? 
It reminds me of the days when AIDS was arising, before anyone knew much about the virus, and before there were any drugs to treat it.  It was already out there, having infected hundreds of thousands, and we heard interviews about how this was all the government's fault for not spending enough money on the problem.

 People from the National Institutes of Health were saying, "It's not money we need: It's ideas."

But AIDS turned out to be a single--albeit ever mutating--virus. While it has not been successfully eradicated, on the scale of polio, it has been managed.

We are not managing gun violence of the Newtown type.

If we stopped the manufacture and sale of another gun of any sort tomorrow, we would still be pickled in guns--over 300 million by some estimates, extant in this nation as we speak.
How do you control access to guns by deranged people, when there are more guns than McDonald's restaurants, when guns are like automobiles--ubiquitous, and the only reason there are not even more deaths is the self interest and will of the operators in possession of these instruments of destruction?
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ever the fresh minded thinker, suggested we give up on restricting access to guns, but attempt to restrict access to bullets. Even Chris Rock picked up on that idea as a way to restrict gun violence in the ghetto, saying, "Can you imagine if a bullet cost $5000? Ain't no way no brother going to shoot more than one round, and only at close range. Then he'd go dig it out." 
Somehow, though, I cannot imagine the well planned shootings at schools would be much deterred by expensive bullets.  And you can steal bullets as easily as stealing guns. 
I need ideas. I agree with the President, we ought to take meaningful action, if only I had a clue what form that might take.

What's Eating Labor Unions?

Howard Zinn, One of Mad Dog's Heroes

I should begin by telling you where I am going with this:  I think labor unions are essential, healthy, a very positive social force. Without them or with their power substantially diminished all but the upper 1% are less free.

But...
Like liberals and Democrats, labor unions have been negligent about marketing their message. Labor leaders have been guilty of a certain arrogance in believing their arguments are self evident, that they do not have to convince anybody their cause is just.

Consider some examples from Mad Dog's own family album--and this is a family, which whether or not  its members know it , owes a great deal to labor unions.  Let us consider some items...

1. Mad Dog has a son who worked as a medical student at two hospitals:  One had a union, which negotiated for an hour for its workers to clean up operating rooms between cases; the other hospital's maintenance crews were not unionized,  and cleaned up between cases in 30 minutes. The non unionized hospital could schedule 8 cases per OR per day; the unionized hospital could only do half as many. That, multiplied by twenty OR's, 5 days a week,  meant the difference in millions of dollars a year, the difference between a robust hospital balance sheet and red ink. And beyond that, the sight of cleaning crews standing around after 20 minutes, doing nothing,  made Mad Dog's son's blood boil and destroyed, in this gestating surgeon, all  sympathy. And Mad Dog, would have to echo his father: "I'm all for the workers--but these are not workers."

2.  In a movie about Marilyn Monroe, she is shown on set, and she moves a chair from one place to another, only to incur the wrath of the stage workers' union chief, who places the chair back in it's original spot, until a union stage hand can pick it up and carry it five feet to where Marilyn had placed it.  This may be fiction, but it is a scene which resonated with most Brits.
4.  State police officers in Massachusetts have filed grievances to be sure a unionized state trooper is paid to park his car at road construction sites to observe traffic go by, at union wages, when an entry level lower paid worker, non unionized or unionized, could stand out with his or her fluorescent yellow jacket and flag to wave at approaching cars.
5.  National Football League football players make millions of dollars a year and they are represented by a union. Are these millionaires really "workers?"  Or are we watching, now and then, millionaires argue with billionaires--in which case, who cares?
Most of  these instances are examples of  enforced inefficiency, stupidity and pissing contests, and they alienate the American public from labor unions. 
But then there is another type of problem, one of middle class people thinking they have been denied what they want because union workers have got cushy deals for their own workers. Middle class workers may feel offended to learn a teacher who has been identified/accused of being incompetent can be sent to a lounge and get paid for not teaching classes for a year.
A great town for a national nurses' convention is Chicago, but owing to union wages, prices for hotel rooms, convention space makes  Chicago unaffordable for nurses's conventions; these nurses are middle class workers who resent not being able to get what they want because a union got for other workers what those hotel workers wanted.

In these instances, the man in the street, who is not directly involved,  sees a union fighting with bosses and managers as an inconvenience to himself, rather than as a group of underdogs standing up for themselves, demanding their contribution to a productive nation be recognized and fairly compensated.

Arrayed against the unions is a powerful set of controlling forces, including the Koch brothers who congenitally loath anyone who is not rich, the Republican party, which is compromised of elected officials who are bought and paid for by those who hate unions--the bosses, the owners and the corporate CEO's,  who act as if paying fair wages is a threat to their stockholders rather than a benefit. And union wages should be seen as a benefit to all--a way of keeping an well trained work force happy and well fed.

What Mad Dog would argue:  Organized labor, believe me, we love you. But you are not making it easy to defend you. 
Go find yourself some phrase makers, some office on K street with an auditorium and an oval desk at the front.  
Do us all a favor:  Zip up your fly and shave, stop dragging your knuckles on the floor, and spend some time thinking about how you look and sound.

Jill Lepore Taxes Patriotism Fairness Courage

Jill Lepore, is a professor of history at Harvard, but Mad Dog does not hold that against her, considering the edifying article she has written in The New Yorker about our nation's attitudes about taxes. Below is a link to this article, which given Mad Dog's record, affords no better than an even chance of working:

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2012-11-26#folio=024


As New Yorker articles are wont to do, this one does go on for some pages (5) and as professors are wont to do, Professor Lepore strays into some pretty distant and currently less than relevant epochs of Amercian history, but what she does manage to do is to place our own confused, frothy and irrational attitudes toward taxes in perspective.

Her main messages, as far as Mad Dog is concerned, can be broken down as such:
1. Those who rail against taxes see only the tax and not the benefit. As Oscar Wilde once observed: The cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Or, to put it another way, the tax hater is a government services taker who is not willing to become a giver.  The most ardent New Hampshire anti tax man is very willing to accept his Medicare, his Social Security check, his free currency system courtesy of the federal government, the roads he drives on, the bridges he crosses, the internet he uses, the clean air he breathes, the fluoridated water he drinks, the vaccines he receives, the public health he enjoys, the university he went to on a GI bill and the mortgage assistance for his first home, all while complaining bitterly that the income tax is a socialist plot to confiscate his property and to redistribute his wealth.

2. Liberals have failed to vigorously defend taxation, particularly the income tax for not just decades, but for generations.

3.  Conservatives, whose patron saint is Ronald Reagan, howl about the dreaded deficit and national debt, conveniently forgetting that when Mr. Reagan lowered income tax rates for the upper 1%, the national debt rose from $930 billion to$ 2,600 billion. 

Those of you who are particularly masochistic, can browse through past blogs from Mad Dog about people like John Hunter of Greenland, who wrote the Portsmouth Herald complaining that he sees no justice in his having to pay more income tax than his poorer neighbor, who, after all, breathes the same air, uses the same roads and benefits just a much (in his mind, at least)  from the government as he does. 
This is the old argument about the "fairness" of a progressive vs a regressive tax, and Professor Lepore explores this with great clarity.
As Mad Dog has insisted, and still insists, we ought not argue for the virtues of progressive taxation on the basis of "fairness."  Tax discussion bursts into flames when such emotional arguments are allowed. We should only say, it is most practical to place the burden on those who are least injured and who can carry the load most easily. 
Dr. Lepore cites the study of Thomas Hungerford, which showed raising tax rates on the richest top percentages did not inhibit economic growth, but cutting those rates on the rich does correlate with concentrating the wealth in smaller in smaller percentages at the top of the food chain.  This study raised howls of protest from Mitch McConnell and other Republicans in the pocket of the rich Republican masters, understandably.
It is reassuring to see this argument has been with us since the founding of the country. 
It was thus ever so, and will continue to be. 
We just have to be sure we win the argument by facing it head on.
Here In New Hampshire, Jackie Ciley attempted to win the Democratic nomination for governor, and she refused to take "The Pledge" to never sign into law an income tax. Mad Dog, on reflection, thinks she might have been more successful had she been more willing to explore this issue more head on. At virtual every venue she appeared, the first and last questions were about whether or not she was for an income tax. She said she thought the option ought to be there, if only to use a leverage in discussions with the Republicans, but her phrase was "all options should be on the table," which meant to the old codger who seemed to show up at all her appearances, "Then, what you are saying, is you're for an income tax."
Mad Dog would then stand up and shout, "I think we do not pay enough in total taxes in New Hampshire! All we do is pay property tax, which hurts the elderly, who have paid off their homes, and we whine about how we pay too many taxes and too much. Well, if we paid more, maybe we could build more roads, improve our schools and hospitals and emerge from the 19th century in this backward state!"
Mad Dog is the most un-electable citizen in the Granite State.
Mad Dog has often recounted how his own father paid his income tax bill every April 15th, with a smile on his face, saying, "I never dreamed I'd make enough money to get me into the top brackets. I'm a closet patriotic. I served in the Army  during WWII, and I vote every four years, but this is real patriotism. This hurts. Real patriotism always does."

Right To Work States

Senator from Kentucky, which is, strangely, not a right to work state.

The following states are "right-to-work" states:

• Alabama
• Arizona †
• Arkansas †
• Florida †
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Indiana^[29]
• Iowa
• Kansas †
• Louisiana
• Mississippi †
• Nebraska ††
• Nevada
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma †
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Virginia
• Wyoming

Anything strike you about this list?

Well, one thing it doesn't yet have Michigan on it, but it soon may.

A "right to work" state has a law or constitutional provision which says that a worker whose wages have been negotiated by a union does not have to pay union dues.  The unions, of course, say that worker has benefited from their services without paying for them. The workers say, we never asked for them. You negotiated for yourself, and if I benefited, well how does that hurt you?  The unions say, if you don't have to pay union dues, why should anyone else? Pretty soon, without our being able to collect for our services, we are out of business.

Actually, as sympathetic as I am to unions, and as important as unions are, I can see the argument that a person should not be forced to join any organization to work. On the other than, that same person is forced to sign a contract with an employer, often a very one sided contract, if he wants work. Why should the employer be the only force holding trump cards? Why not allow a countervailing force have some play?

But setting aside the fairness, the right or wrong--and I do not think for a moment this a matter of right and wrong--it is a simply matter of power and who is allowed to have power, employers, unions, individuals who want to work but who don't like feeling they are not in control.

Setting aside all those considerations, it is interesting how tightly these states match another map of the country: Virginia is the only state on this list which voted for Obama, and Virginia voted for Obama in the Washington, DC suburbs, mostly.  So the folks who are voting against union power are the Confederacy, the far West, mountain cowboy states.  They are the states with the poorest people, the most ignorant populations (or, to put it more gently, the least educated people) and the most reactionary politics. 

There is, of course, Florida, but that state is even more schizophrenic than Virginia, and is a Confederate state, at least until January and February, so we can forget about Florida. They don't even know how to count votes in Florida. I'm not sure who they really voted for in the last election.

But it is curious that these downtrodden, poor, low earning people should reject unions.  One would think they would have the most to gain. Why would these bottom feeders reject unions?

Perhaps it is because these people have an inferiority complex. They, on some level, know they are uneducated, un competitive and they are grateful for any job on any terms and they do not feel worthy. Instead of demeaning them, and calling them bottom feeders and saying they are all  ignorant and inbred and stupid, we should ask them why they reject unions. 

Maybe we'd learn something.

Maybe we'd hear something intelligent, like, well Honda would not have built their plant here, Boeing would not have built their plant here if they saw we had unions. So what they are saying is, we are so down trodden, we are just happy to have any job, on any terms,  and we do not want to seem too pushy, because we are selling humility, tractability and we are willing to take the jobs those pushy Blue state workers are arrogant enough to spurn. 

Of course, they are playing the game of not paying their union dues but reaping the benefit of union action. Let the unions fight the fight and we'll sit down here and look oh so attractive because we are not them.

I don't know. I'm not an economist or political scientist. I just look at that list and try to imagine what makes the workers in the Confederacy and those cowboy states look different from the workers in the Blue states.

Do you have an answer?