The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[trish]

The hyperactive youtube guy failed to mention social security pays for itself. Also failed to mention that not only do old people need a lot of medical care adding to the cost of Medicare and Medicaid but also the government is not allowed to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies for the cost of medicines and that for profit hospitals are hiking up the costs of a visit by many orders of magnitude. Anti-government nincompoops are everywhere trying to dismantle government and its programs. Another example is the post office. It always paid for itself until Congress insisted it pay ahead on pensions by ten years.

But as far as this thread goes entitlements are a digression, unless the plan is to shoot the elderly with citizen owned semi-automatic weapons before we have to pay back the money we garnered from their pay checks for their retirement security.

[redsweater]

Social Security doesn't pay for itself, so there's nothing to mention on that front. Old people do need healthcare, but that's going to need to be weighed against the expected increases in cost. It's ultimately going to come down to triage, and how best to get rich people to contribute more to the economy without toppling the whole thing.

The point of the digression is that the decision to make cuts to Medicare or Social Security has nothing at all to do with special interests, pensions, unions(my dad runs one and I've done plenty of work for them), or the military-industrial complex.

[hippifried]

The only entitlements being discussed are Social Security & Medicare. They have their own revenue stream. For all the hand wringing, there's still no money coming out of the general fund to pay for it. The incessant whining is about what might happen years down the road if nothing is done to compensate for the retiring baby boomers. The first boomers started turning 65 last year. The boom lasted for 10 years. Up to 20 by some creative figuring. Regardless, it's still a temporary problem. Even if the case can be made that longer lifespans could extend the problem another 10 or 20 years beyond expectations, so what. This is easily solvable on the revenue side by bumping the employee & employer contributions just a couple of % points & raising the contribution cap. Hell, just get rid of the cap altogether. Why's it there anyway? Somebody shouldn't pay into the system because they make too much money?

Votes equal money. Everybody is afraid of being challenged in primaries and that becomes legitimate when you know that money from guys like the Koch Brothers and the NRA is going to stop following to you and to an opponent. That goes for Dems that the NRA has historically gone light on like Harry Reid.

I don't disagree that the continued assault on entitlements so we can protect the military-industrial complex, big finance, healthcare sector special interests and reduced taxation rates for the 0.05% of Americans, is a huge issue. But gun safety is a wedge issue until someone you know is victim of the loose regulatory structure in the US.

Gun safety's an issue. There used to be this great organization that pressed the issue of firearm safety all the time. Their leadership got bought off. Most of the regulations that were in place before the NRA agenda change, that they're whining about now, were initiated by them. Now they just lobby for the industry & pander to the most extreme of the lunatic fringe. You know The nuts who want legal impunity to ignore the "No Weapons" sign on the front door & take their concealed gun into the bar, where they can start a fight over a drunken argument that private property is sacrosanct & how they should have a "right" to refuse service to anyone at their ball game hot dog stand franchise in the local public high school.

It's not just guns. We've created a monster where freedom has somehow become synonymous with impunity. Politicians are scared of the nuts & won't call them out. The last Republican to do it was President George HW Bush. The NRA would love to take credit for his loss, but they had no effect on the '92 election at all. Forget their dumb ideas, those wimps need to be called out for the cowards they are. That's how you beat the prissy chest thumpers. But what to do about the media who do nothing but search for sound bites, & never question or follow up on them? They grant impunity to nuts, but nobody holds them culpable. I haven't really checked, but I'd be willing to bet that the birthers have gotten more air time than those who debunk them. The way to dial this down is for people, & especially the press, to realize & understand that there's no such thing as impunity in a free society. The nuts challenge everything. Why can't the rest of us? Stupid shouldn't be just left hanging out there as if it's legit.

[fivekatz]

The only entitlements being discussed are Social Security & Medicare. They have their own revenue stream. For all the hand wringing, there's still no money coming out of the general fund to pay for it. The incessant whining is about what might happen years down the road if nothing is done to compensate for the retiring baby boomers. The first boomers started turning 65 last year. The boom lasted for 10 years. Up to 20 by some creative figuring. Regardless, it's still a temporary problem. Even if the case can be made that longer lifespans could extend the problem another 10 or 20 years beyond expectations, so what. This is easily solvable on the revenue side by bumping the employee & employer contributions just a couple of % points & raising the contribution cap. Hell, just get rid of the cap altogether. Why's it there anyway? Somebody shouldn't pay into the system because they make too much money?

Gun safety's an issue. There used to be this great organization that pressed the issue of firearm safety all the time. Their leadership got bought off. Most of the regulations that were in place before the NRA agenda change, that they're whining about now, were initiated by them. Now they just lobby for the industry & pander to the most extreme of the lunatic fringe. You know The nuts who want legal impunity to ignore the "No Weapons" sign on the front door & take their concealed gun into the bar, where they can start a fight over a drunken argument that private property is sacrosanct & how they should have a "right" to refuse service to anyone at their ball game hot dog stand franchise in the local public high school.

It's not just guns. We've created a monster where freedom has somehow become synonymous with impunity. Politicians are scared of the nuts & won't call them out. The last Republican to do it was President George HW Bush. The NRA would love to take credit for his loss, but they had no effect on the '92 election at all. Forget their dumb ideas, those wimps need to be called out for the cowards they are. That's how you beat the prissy chest thumpers. But what to do about the media who do nothing but search for sound bites, & never question or follow up on them? They grant impunity to nuts, but nobody holds them culpable. I haven't really checked, but I'd be willing to bet that the birthers have gotten more air time than those who debunk them. The way to dial this down is for people, & especially the press, to realize & understand that there's no such thing as impunity in a free society. The nuts challenge everything. Why can't the rest of us? Stupid shouldn't be just left hanging out there as if it's legit.

I can't and don't disagree with these takes.

Whether the media is afraid of being called "liberal bias", married to the paradigm of presenting two sides to every discussion creating the illusion at times that there are two sane sides to an issue or it is the fact that mainstream media is now owned by huge corporations they are part of the problem.

The other issues is the nuts have huge financial megaphones, from the super elite/wealthy who find that these fringe issues have historically been helpful in national elections and instrumental in controlling the House in the recently gerrymandered districts.

It isn't that the rest of us can't mount a resistance but it will take a massive effort not to dismissed like the occupy movement was. That means the 60% of the 99% are going to have to get really pissed and then we may see the kind of unrest that caused change in the face of big money, special interest opposition in the 30's.

The 30's were a almost unimaginable collation of poor, bigoted southern whites, unions, intellectual elite and the middle class. The more the capitalist elite forward their agenda at the determent of the vast majority, the more they risk that type of backlash, no matter how much stronger the elite's hold is on mass media.

IMHO the long life span issue is a anomaly that the right is selling. Well to do folks with good health care live longer, but those most in need of social security as there sole retirement income do not live much longer still.

Social Security still self funds and both SS and Medicare would remain viable for many years simply by allowing no income limit on taxation (SS) and means testing for Medicare.

This society needs to protect its people from want and disease IMHO before it worries about controlling geo-politics by a super bloated defense budget and the super wealthy from paying their fair share. We are pretty far down the other end of the rabbit hole from the days when corporate taxes were hammered by the tax code IMHO.

The elite have spent 80 plus years trying to undo the New Deal in spite of the fact that it built the platform through infrastructure, education and income equity for the greatest period of American growth ever. The decline of empire began with Reagan and was finalized by Bush-Cheney but the vast majority of Americans don't get it yet, they think it was all caused by the current President who actually has softened the decline and desperately is trying to make the government work in spite of massive GOP obstruction that risks destroying not just the US bust Western economies. And it is the wedge issues and media that allow that not to come into clear focus yet.

And if the history of the world is any indicator, regardless of the new dimensions the 21st Century brings to information and thought, the longer it takes to come into focus the more dire the consequences will be for all but most glaring will be the backlash against the elite.

Just my take

[buttslinger]

Last year about 1.2 million abortions took place, so, I figure let the rednecks have their guns, We Libs are still waaaay ahead.....
I'm only half kidding on this one. There's plenty of blame to go around, plenty of pain.

[trish]

The good Lord in all his omniscience doesn't ensoul fertilized eggs that He already knows will be aborted. Every right thinking person of faith knows that.

[fivekatz]

An interesting turn to compare sensible gun safety laws with abortion, aside from the fact that they are both wedge issues and the anti-choice folks never go away but the majority of gun safety folks drift in and out of the issues urgency based on mass murders rather than the fact that every day masses of people are injured or murdered by fire arms.

Oh, and the same states in the US that are extreme in their defense of that fetus, don't want society to help with the child's education, nutrition or health care and want every citizen to have a gun if they choose no matter how many born humans die each year.

Quite a country the US is at moments.

[buttslinger]

I guess my point is it's more than about saving lives, and if it were really just about sensible gun laws, we could have agreed on that 41 pages ago, or 41 years ago. Behind every suicide and murder and abortion there's a Human Being. Maybe they can eliminate the genes that cause pain or unfairness from the DNA code, or make people take an exam before they're allowed to have children, but until then, buckle up, bitches, because somebody is most definitely screwing you over right now. It's hard not to take it personal. Ye best steer clear of God's wrath too. He is TOTALLY unreasonable. Ever since that "EVE" incident.....

[hippifried]

I can't help but think that the craziness we see ratcheted up today is a product of all the fear mongering we're bombarded with. Not just today really. There's always something or somebody we're supposed to be scared of. It's drugs, guns, bombs, certain technologies, diseases, bugs, rodents, reptiles, pit bulls, etc... It's all those blacks, whites, reds, browns, yellows, foreigners, giants, midgets, Jews, Hindus, Catholics, Protestants of all bents, Muslims, Mormons, Pagans, theists, atheists, gnostics, agnostics, monarchists, egalitarians, libertarians, authoritarians, vegetarians, carnivores, omnivores, children, adults, teenagers, retirees, heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, asexuals, fats, thins, warriors, pacifists, every kind of economic or philosophical ist or ism you can possibly dream up, & all them smart alecs who say we come descended from monkeys!

Kinda makes ya wanna crawl under a rock & hide, don't it? What I'm really afraid of is that I might not be able to find the time or inclination to be as scared as I'm supposed to be. Wouldn't want to turn into or be accused of being one of those spooky non-conformists.

[fivekatz]

Interesting points about the culture and how it has seemed to amplify fear.

Keep the masses in debt and in fear of each other, other countries, other genders, races, sexual orientations and get them mad as hell at those issues rather than an assault on their income equity position in society and you have a winning hand.

The conservative revolution of the 1980's had been grand,give it a few more years and the plutocrats might be able to repeal child labor laws.