So, You Want To Bear Arms?

If you want to bear arms like our Constitution written in the 18th Century says you can, then go out and  buy yourself a musket.  Our forefathers didn't know about atom bombs, or assault-type weapons capable of spitting out dozens of rounds in a fraction of a minute.

We once had a ban on assault-type weapons.  It expired.  Why?

The massacre of little children in a Connecticut school is instructive.  It puts to rest many of the NRA's contentions the foremost being that guns don't kill, people do.  And, maybe the NRA has a point.

Adam Lanza's gun might be acquitted of murder, but not Adam Lanza.  But, if Lanza's gun were not an automatic type weapon, how many people could he have killed?  One?  Maybe two?  But, that's about it.  It was the automatic nature of his weapon, that allowed him to massacre so many little children.

The NRA likes to deflect away from the weapon by citing other factors such as the mental state of the killer, parental guidance, the lack of armed guards at the school, violent TV shows and movies.  It's all nonsense.  As a kid, I played cops and robbers in a neighborhood that had no gangs and whose kids, when they got older, entered no gangs.  Ditto, violent forms of entertainment.  What segment of the population doesn't love a James Bond movie?  Sure, there are people that don't, but they form a rather small minority.  Then we come to parental guidance.  Adams mother took him to the range and taught him to respect guns.  Should she have noticed that her kid had Aspergers?  No doubt, she did.  But, does it matter?  Aspergers people are not, repeat "not", a violent subset of the general population.

I'm not for murder of any sort ( did I really have to make that statement), but murder will regrettably always be with us.  Some will occur through bludgeoning, some with a knife, some with poison, and so on.  And, some, regrettably, with a gun.  And, we've got to try to stop it.  But, we've got to start somewhere, and I think mass killings are as good a place to start as any.  Not only that, but it's relatively easy.  Ban automatic weapons.

Why There Can't Be A Israeli-Palestinian Peace Treaty

Abbas claims he want peace.  Netanyahu claims he wants peace.  But, it won't happen.  The train has already left the station.

Had the Palestinians really wanted peace, they would have grabbed any number of offers made in the past; the latest being what was discussed by Ehud Olmert.  Now they say they want talks but those talks must continue from where they were with Olmert.  What is Abbas smoking?  The Olmert discussions are off the table.  (The world only learned of them through the information leaked through Wikileaks.)

And, it's not that Abbas is a foolish person.  He couldn't make peace if he wanted to.  The Arab street, and by that I mean the Salafist elements among the Muslims would kill him.  Also, the Arab children in their classrooms have for years been taught the Arab narrative wherein Palestinian land was stolen from them by the Europeans and given to Jews.  Nothing Abbas could hope to get from Israel would be enough.

Also as time passes and the Israeli's see what they got for departing from land south of the Litani River in Lebanon, and what they got when they left Gaza, the Israelis see that nothing good will come from a treaty with the Palestinians.  Twice burnt is once too often.  And, what would peace look like anyway?  In Egypt, only American money keeps the former head of the Muslim Brotherhood faithful to earlier treaties with Egypt.  In Jordan the king's thrown sits on a knife's edge.

No, the Israelis are not going to commit suicide.  There will be no right of return to Israel for Palestinians.  (We haven't even mentioned Arab compensation for the equal number of Jews expelled from their homes in Islamic countries in '48.)  There will be no giving any land to the Palestinians than what they already have.  And, if some land were yielded, it would be an amount unacceptable to the Palestinians.  And, for sure, the Jews are not about to divide Jerusalem.  So what are we talking about?

A Switzerland-like Palestine is as remote as the land of Oz.

Republicans: Great Technocrats, Lousy Politicians

Explaining to the electorate why the American fiscal situation is so fraught with peril should have been the Republican's great mission.  And, one of the major reasons they failed is that they got hung up on the "taxing of the millionaires" nonsense.

Taxing the millionaires and billionaires is the typical Democratic ploy and the Republicans fell for it.  What the Republicans should have said was, "fine, let's increase the tax on the top 1% of the public."  And, now, that we've agreed on that, let's sit down and solve our problem, because if you think that our agreement on that matter solves our fiscal mess, you're living in an alternate universe.

Let's get to the nub of the problem; namely, an unsustainable federal debt.  What is an unsustainable federal debt?  It's a debt to GDP ratio that puts you in the danger zone.  It's like driving a car that shows it's low on gas.  You're not exactly sure as to how many more miles you're still going to be able to drive.  But, you do know that if you don't get gas soon, at some point in the not too distant future the car will stop running.

This is not an easy message to deliver.  First, it involves a ratio.  For many Americans that's higher math.  Second, it involves GDP (gross domestic product), an economic term very likely unfamiliar to most of the electorate.

But, if you get past those two hurdles in explaining our fiscal nightmare, you face even more problems.  These can be summarized in three words; revenue, spending, and growth.  You'd think these would be easy words.  Revenue is the money that government takes in and there are two ways it can take in more of it; namely, through higher taxes and, secondly, through reforming the tax code.  Ah, the tax code!  At this point you will have lost most of your audience.

Taxes require tax laws.  These laws are called our tax code; it's the laws telling the government how it can assess taxes.  If you would write into the law that people with only four fingers on one hand can get a deduction of 50% on their assessed taxes, youd be making a percentage of the population very happy indeed.  This example, is, of course, made up.  There is no deduction for having only four fingers on one hand that I know of.  But, there are lots of deductions that are even more frivolous than our hypothetical four- finger deduction, and these actual exemptions allow the upper 1% to avoid a lot more in taxes than the increase in the tax rate being promoted by Obama.

Now let's get into what is, for the Democrats, the third-rail of fiscal policy; namely, spending.  Indeed, it's actually proven to be the third rail of fiscal policy for a great many democracies.  It's what brought Greece to its knees and promises to do much the same for Italy, Spain and France.  Consider this: if spending $5 million a day to extend the life of a terminally ill patient for one day is considered good medical practice, can a nation afford to provide such coverage.

But, let's take this issue one step further.  If the $5 million a day for our hypothetical terminally ill patient is judged excessive for a governmental healthcare coverage policy, it follows that a truly rich (top 1% in wealth) patient might live a few days, or even a few weeks, longer than a poorer patient.  Depending on how you view this situation, this might seem unfair.  But, can a government establish perfect fairness for its population.

And, finally, we come to growth.  It's an amorphous kind of word but it has very direct and specific consequences.  Growth means more jobs.  It means the creation of more tax payers.  It will therefore result in a government gaining greater revenues.  In general, higher taxes retard growth.  So getting back to the top 1%:  how do we factor in the issue of fairness versus greater economic opportunity for all.

There's a lot more to fiscal policy than what's been just covered.  Educating the electorate is not easy.  But, this was the assignment for the Republicans.  And, they failed.  Instead they got hung up on women's rights, on immigration policy, and a number of other extraneous issues.  Let's hope they do better in 2016.