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Issues
Gary Pearce posted on December 20, 2012 10:51
A TAPster offers a creative solution to gun violence:
“The eventual outcome of the approaching debate about gun control – regardless of that outcome – is unlikely to satisfy anybody. Gun owners will chafe at new restrictions, control advocates will cry that more should be done, and people will continue to be shot.
“So, let’s try another idea: Tax the hell out of bullets.
“The tax on every bullet should be at least triple the tax on every cigarette since death by bullet is quicker than death by deliberately and joyfully inhaling toxic smoke. We’ll never outlaw guns, so we might as well stuff the government coffers with easy money.
“A bullet tax won’t hurt folks who want a weapon for self-defense and need only a few dozen bullets to do that job.
“Who needs thousands of rounds of ammo unless you're invading a small country or fighting off an invasion of your own?
“And, seriously, who will suffer from a bullet tax? Only hunters who are so inept they need an automatic weapon and a 100-bullet magazine to gun down unarmed wildlife. It also might hurt the folks who enjoy mindless target practice at a shooting range.
“And yeah, it might slow down crazy people with murder on their minds.”
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Posted in: General, Issues
Carter Wrenn posted on December 18, 2012 12:39
Back in the old days there was a breed of Congressman, rugged individualists, who, whenever he (or she) had to cast an unpopular vote, would shrug and say, Let the chips fall where they may.
That political animal is now all but extinct.
In the place of a troublesome conscience (when it comes to unpopular votes) our average modern Congressman has a finely tuned set of political antennae so sensitive he can detect a political threat from miles away and take evasive action.
But, now, the ‘fiscal cliff’ is giving our archetypical Congressman fits.
According to a poll last week, 78% of the voters don’t like the idea of going over the cliff one bit – a political bombshell our Congressman's antennae clearly have in focus. He also has in focus voters agree with President Obama about raising taxes – but from there his life gets more complex.
Because voters also oppose cutting Medicare spending.
Oppose cutting Medicaid.
Oppose cutting Social Security.
Oppose raising the Medicare or Social Security retirement age.
And oppose increasing debt.
That leaves our Congressman in a fix – suddenly his antennae are sending a hurricane of storm warnings to his frazzled brain and he can’t see a single vote he can cast to reduce the deficit (unless he’s a Democrat voting to raise taxes) that won’t blow him to smithereens.
And to ‘pile Pelion on Ossa’ he faces one more threat: If he votes the way his constituents want today and the economy tanks in two years, when he's stumping for re-election, voters will be asking, Where were you when we needed a Congressman who had the guts to cast the tough votes?
Nature has played a cruel trick on him. He’s trapped.
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Gary Pearce posted on December 18, 2012 10:02
Don’t underestimate how much the Newtown killings can change politics. It has happened before.
In 1995, President Clinton was struggling to be relevant in a Washington dominated by Newt Gingrich and his newly triumphant Republican majority. Then came the Oklahoma City bombing. Seizing the moment, Clinton spoke for the nation’s grief and anger. The tone of politics shifted. Gingrich and the Republicans began a long, slow slide. Clinton cruised to reelection. Gingrich never recovered.
Even the horror of that bombing doesn’t compare to this. Nothing compares to the cold-blooded, face-to-face murder of little children in schoolrooms.
Americans are united in grief. But we’re divided in our anger. Many of us are angry about guns. Many are angry because their guns are threatened.
You can watch the divide play out on social media. Friends and relatives argue on-line – or unfriend each other.
President Obama spoke eloquently to the grief of all and to the anger about guns.
He clearly is planning something. And he has to act. While passions inevitably will cool and the NRA will bide its time, there is too much political pressure on the President and congressional Democrats.
This is going to be a bitter and divisive battle. Like the slavery debate in “Lincoln,” there can be no compromise – one winner and one loser.
And the battle could change politics dramatically.
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Gary Pearce posted on December 17, 2012 11:19
After news broke about the cold-blooded murder of six- and seven-year-old children, some people said, “Now is not the time to debate gun control – it’s time to grieve.”
Now it’s time to debate gun control.
On Friday, President Obama led the grieving. Often mocked for his Spock-like demeanor, he showed more emotion than we’ve ever seen from a President.
He clearly knows where he’s going on this. His powerful speech Sunday night was a statement of resolve. He never said “guns;” he talked about protecting children.
Now comes the hard part: What to do about guns? How do we balance a clear constitutional right to own guns with a clear and present danger to too many Americans – like the children who were shot repeatedly by a military-style assault weapon?
Negotiating the fiscal cliff is tough. It will be far tougher to negotiate Americans’ divide over guns.
Then maybe we can talk about why it’s easier to buy a gun that get mental-health treatment for disturbed and sometimes dangerous people.
Let’s get on with it.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 12, 2012 11:29
At breakfast the other morning Tom, who’s liberal, folded back the page of his newspaper and slid it across the table to Mike, who’s conservative, rapped the headline with his finger, and said, ‘Now, that’s what I call progress.’
Mike glanced down at the headline – West Point Chapel Hosts Gay Wedding. And laughed. ‘I reckon a battalion of ghosts all the way back to Winfield Scott are turning over in their graves.’
Last week an army chaplain conducted the first same-sex marriage in the Cadet Chapel at West Point for a lady who graduated from West Point in the first class to include women thirty years ago.
From Tom’s point of view that wedding is another small step toward enlightenment – following the three milestones of Minnesota, Maryland, and Maine voting in favor of gay marriage on Election Day.
But, if you think about it, Tom may have it backwards.
Because the Army is more than a collection of men and women in uniform – it’s an institution. It may well be the oldest institution in America – after all, the Continental Army was created before the Presidency, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court or the public schools.
After we got drubbed by the British in the War of 1812, years ago, old General Winfield ‘Fuss and Feathers’ Scott, a sort of institution in his own right, decided a military academy was the cure to avoid future drubbings – so he founded West Point, and it gave birth to ‘the long gray line’ of cadets stretching from Robert E. Lee to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
West Point rests at the heart of one of the oldest and most respected American institutions – and if you share Mike’s point of view – the wedding last week in Cadet Chapel may be the real milestone.
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Posted in: General, Issues
Carter Wrenn posted on December 06, 2012 17:09
It was like watching the rerun of a bad old black and white movie: Obama won reelection then, the next day, at a press conference in Washington John Boehner stood up and announced he was ready to compromise and accept new taxes – but only on one condition. Obama had to accept big spending cuts.
Then Obama departed Washington to give a speech at a toy factory in Pennsylvania and, the same day, his Treasury Secretary traipsed over to Capitol Hill and plopped a counter-proposal on the table in front of Boehner: The President wanted a $1.6 trillion dollar tax increase, more spending, eliminating debt ceiling votes, and proposed kicking the can down the road on spending cuts by deferring the sequestration for a year.
Boehner grimaced and said, We’re getting nowhere.
And Obama fired a broadside at Boehner, saying Boehner was against a tax cut for middle class families because he (Obama) wouldn’t give one to millionaires too.
A couple of days passed and Boehner came back with his own proposal: A ‘compromise’ that also included a big tax increase – which started a conflagration among conservatives. By sundown Boehner was catching it from Obama on one side and Jim DeMint to Rand Paul on the other.
So with the ‘fiscal cliff’ days away here’s where our political leaders in Washington stand:
The Democrats won’t cut spending because they’re afraid their supporters will go berserk.
The Republicans are for raising taxes and their supporters are going berserk.
So there’s only one way to escape the briar patch: More debt.
It’s like déjà vu all over again.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 05, 2012 16:19
Back in 2005, Governor Mike Easley pulled strings and got his wife a job at North Carolina State University running what he called a ‘speakers series;’ then the Governor pulled more strings and got his wife a new job paying more, $170,000 a year; then the Governor’s string-pulling landed on the front page of the News & Observer, a scandal erupted, the chancellor at NCSU resigned, and the Board of Trustees fired Mrs. Easley.
Mrs. Easley ‘retired,’ began drawing a $37,000 per year state pension, then sued the university for a million dollars for breach of contract (because they fired her a year into her five year contract).
Last August, the university quietly settled with Mrs. Easley. Last week the settlement landed on the front page of the News & Observer. Here’s how it worked: The university agreed to ‘unretire’ Mrs. Easley (for the last three years), recalculated her pension as if she’d actually been earning $170,000 a year, and, voila, Mrs. Easley’s pension doubled to $80,000 per year.
The News & Observer says given Mrs. Easley’s life expectancy she just won a million dollar settlement. The new chancellor at NCSU says that’s a good deal. And here’s how politics works: The Governor pulls strings, his wife gets a $170,000 a year job, a scandal erupts, she gets fired, the old chancellor resigns, three years later Mrs. Easley comes out of retirement, doesn’t work another day, retires again, doubles her pension, and the new chancellor says that’s a good deal.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 21, 2012 10:51
Years ago when I enrolled at the University of North Carolina, I arrived on the campus and to my delight I found I had been assigned to the first ever co-ed dormitory. Then, my first night on campus, at orientation the powers that be introduced us to the wonders of birth control. We were all summoned to the lobby of the dormitory where they set up rows of tables lined with exhibits of every kind of birth control imaginable along with how-to manuals and free samples.
In a second room off the lobby, in case anyone had missed the practical benefits of birth control, they had set up rows of tables with exhibits depicting the horrors of abortion – they’d lined the tables with old, grainy black and white photographs of abortion mills in garages and blood-soaked sheets and, on a final table, a pair of black metal forceps that looked like they’d been used in a blacksmith shop to forge horseshoes.
As I left the room my roommate glanced back at the rows of tables and said, They included everything but a mouse on a string.
Last week, continuing its tradition of progress, the university proudly announced that this fall for the first time students will be able to live in ‘gender-neutral’ housing – which means girls and boys can now live together in on-campus apartments and suites.
The reason for this latest advancement is straightforward: A group of students convinced the powers that be that gay students would be more comfortable living with female friends and that transgender students would be happier if they could choose their roommates based on the gender they identify with.
Chancellor Holden Thorpe says it all makes sense to him and, looking back, I can’t help but wonder why we never figured out telling the fussy ole’ Chancellor Carlyle Sitterson that, to be fair to gay and transgender students, he ought to let us room with the co-eds. I guess we never dreamed any Chancellor – or at least any Chancellor raised in North Carolina – would be crazy enough to believe us.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 20, 2012 09:56
Pat McCrory’s just captured the biggest tarbaby in North Carolina.
State government has never been a paragon of efficiency but after twelve years of Mike Easley and Beverly Perdue and pay-to-play politics it’s become an unusually broad and deep quagmire.
The state’s Medicaid claims processing contract is an example: Years ago when Mike Easley was governor his administration decided to put the contract – the biggest contract in state government – out to ‘bid.’ After mountains of lobbying it was awarded to the ACS corporation and then, almost immediately, one of the contract awarders (a former legislator and under secretary in the Easley administration) left the government to work for the company that won that contract.
Two years later the new data processing system was such a mess the state cancelled the contract, paid ACS millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to go away, and started all over.
This time the former legislator and under secretary changed hats and went to work as a lobbyist for another firm and, on the eve of Governor Perdue’s inauguration, his new client was awarded the $287 million contract. And a few days later, Governor Perdue appointed him Secretary of the department that awarded the contract.
Three years passed and, for the second time, the new data processing system was the cyber equivalent of a hole in the ground, years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The Secretary-lobbyist-legislator solved the problem by extending his former client’s contract and agreeing to pay another $200 million dollars of taxpayers’ money.
That’s one example of what Pat McCrory is about to inherit. There’re dozens more. And Pat McCrory ought to throw them over the side. And get rid of the tarbabies. Otherwise, in four years, they’ll be his tarbabies.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 13, 2012 17:46
The day after the election House Republican Leader John Boehner faced a tough question: Would he compromise with Obama or not? It was a Hobson’s Choice. Either way he was walking into a political minefield.
In the end Speaker Boehner threw what looked like a compromise on the table – in effect, saying to Obama, Okay, here it is: We’ll go along with raising revenues (meaning taxes) but you have to go along with tax reform and spending cuts – then the Speaker explained what he had in mind was like the 1986 tax reform compromise between Reagan and Tip O’Neal (that raised taxes).
In a way that did sound like a wind change – as if Boehner was saying to Obama, We Republicans can’t go along with outright repeal of the Bush tax cuts – which is what you want – but if we can dress tax increases up a bit and call it loophole closing then there’s an agreement to be had providing you offer us a big spending cut in return.
Of course, we can’t be sure that’s what Speaker Boehner had in mind at all. After all, this is politics and things are not always what they seem – it could be the cloud floating down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capital to the White House isn’t a compromise at all – it’s a political two-step, with John Boehner trying to put Obama in a corner so Obama’s the one to say, No deal.
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