Democracy in Decline

16.1% of registered voters in Los Angeles actually participated in yesterday’s city election. It is a sad commentary on the belief that democracy works. The message from the voters is that whoever they vote for the results will not change anything in city management. We were all taught that elections mattered. Apparently we have learned it just isn’t so. Why vote if the outcome makes no difference?

This may not signal the end of democracy in the next few years. However when I watch the Congress not doing its job it reinforces my suspicion that even at the highest levels of our society democracy is stumbling.

Those of you in other nations reading about the United States and believing that we have the answers to making government work should consider our current performance. Think twice or perhaps three or four times before joining this madness.

Politicians Use Fear to Get Their Way

Politicians use fear to motivate each other and the general public.

The President is wrong to use fear to motivate Congress!

In California the governor, Jerry Brown, used fear to motivate voters to vote for a .25% sales tax increase and an income tax increase on the wealthy. It worked! Now there are indications that the state may be able to restore many programs that had been canceled and save others that were scheduled for major reductions. The problem is that the additional state income may be spent on unnecessary new programs.

The city of Los Angeles wants voters to approve another .5% sales tax increase to bail out their shortfall. Their fear motivation is that the city will go bankrupt without the higher tax. That will be decided in a March 5 election.

President Obama is using the same tactic in his campaign to stop sequestration. The threat is long lines at airports, reduced food inspection, criminal illegal aliens will be let out onto our streets, companies doing business with the government may have to layoff half of their employees, we can’t send patrol ships to the Persian Gulf, etc. All of this the result of a 2.4% reduction in this year’s budget that must be absorbed in the next seven month.

The stock market is not panicked and we can only hope that it doesn’t panic. There are no demonstrations in the streets. Mr. President, you are alienating the public when you use fear as a tactic to get your way!

Sequestration to Make You Feel Guilty

Barack Obama is a master politician!

President Barack Obama wants to shock Congress into not implementing sequestration. To motivate Congress he has directed cut backs in employment of workers and critical military support just to get your attention.

Federal spending for both 2012 and 2013 is planned at $3.8 Trillion for each year. Ten percent of that number is $380 Billion. The Budget Control Act (called sequestration) of 2011 imposed caps on discretionary programs that will reduce their funding by more than $1 trillion over the ten years from 2012 through 2021. That does not mean $1 trillion in 2013. It means one tenth of that amount each year or $100 Billion a year.

Somehow Congress decided the first year’s reduction must be $109.3 Billion. That works out to 2.8763% of $3.8 Trillion budget. Is this a big deal? NO. However to make it a big deal the administration has decided to do as much damage as possible by layoffs and furloughs that will make everyone in Congress feel guilty. This is all in the hope that Congress will enact laws that will defer the cuts to some date in the distant future.

When hundreds of thousands of people receive their reduced paychecks in March, thanks to a four day work week, the anguished crying heard at congressional offices will receive immediate attention. Congress will cave into the Obama idea of finding another way to reduce spending. Then again perhaps his objective is no reduced spending. Either way he is likely to get his way.

President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Speech

It’s easy to listen to a one hour speech and believe you understand every word. Reading the president’s words at your own pace might provide further more complete comprehension of his meaning. He said, “nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime.” You should read his proposals and try to understand how that is possible.

The complete transcript is here.

Liberals must be thrilled. Moderates are less enthralled and conservatives are most likely appalled. I am in the less than thrilled category. Obama appears to be a replica of LBJ. Remember the “war on poverty?” Lyndon Johnson also brought us the Vietnam War. Obama appears to be bringing us the Drone Wars.

The State of the Union – 2013

Sorry Mr. President. Very few of your ideas will become law.

President Obama told us of his dreams to enhance American life. For the most part they are dreams that are unlikely to become reality. He offered ideas that “will not cost government a dime.” How does he propose to provide early childhood education for every child that is four years old? Where will the money come from to provide high school tech training?

His answer is take the money out of defense spending, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Tell that to AARP and the defense contractors.

We are in for four very difficult years in Washington.

The Playbook

“keep secret its legal justification for killing without a trial”

Barack Obama is the enhanced George W. Bush!

Newsweek’s latest edition (February 1, 2013) on iPad, Android, and PC only, offers an article that describes the protocol for the targeted killings conducted by drones. According to this article the U.S. administration has been developing “explicit rules and procedures for when lethal force is justified.” Justification includes the legal right to conduct such killings of bad guys even if they are American citizens. This set of rules is referred to as “the playbook.” Newsweek reports that the playbook has evolved from the targeted killings that have been conducted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. Playbook killings could be conducted, according to Newsweek, wherever the United States detected terrorists that are a threat to the American homeland. The playbook goes into detail about who the targeted individuals might be and does exclude drivers, cooks and others who are part of a support staff within a terrorist group. Thus Somalia, Mali, or any other place on Earth could be part of the playbook’s rules and procedures.

Not addressed in the Newsweek article is the legal justification for killing Americans who appear to be traitors, such as Anwar al-Awlaki, without a trial. The administration, I believe is skating on thin ice. The Huffington Post reported January 2, 2013 “The Obama administration will be able to keep secret its legal justification for killing without a trial an American suspected of joining al Qaeda after a federal judge on Wednesday dismissed most of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times. Both the ACLU and The New York Times plan to appeal the decision.”

Wow! If the government can keep the justification secret then what else can the government do to its own citizens? al-Awlaki was clearly a traitor to the United States but killing him without due process is a stretch.

Is it any wonder that there are people in the United States who want to have all weapons at their disposal?

Fiscal Cliff Soap Opera Episode 2 – Standby

Just like “As the World Turns,” The Fiscal Cliff is a soap opera and it’s never over. With that thought in mind a television network ought to provide daily updates with clips of the latest foolish words from the president and the congressional leaders of both parties. This is evident by the news items that the next fiscal events to be confronted are sequestration and the debt ceiling with a backdrop of over spending. However, we know that the settling of those issues will not be the end of the story. Our elected officials seem to take a delight in providing the rolls of the devious, the treacherous, and the good guys. Like a good soap opera you never know what the next installment will bring.

“We are here for you. And we will not forget. We will follow up to make sure that you get all the help you need until you’ve rebuilt,” Obama said at an afternoon news conference.

Sixty Billion Dollars was the proposed federal aid for Sandy Super storm victims. Somehow the Speaker of the House overlooked that spending bill on New Year’s day. N.J.’s governor Chris Christie went on the attack against Speaker John Boehner and the G.O.P. After hugs and hand holding with the president and now this attack is Gov. Christie about to change political parties? To me he seems more like a moderate Democrat than a Republican.

The facts:

Sequestration is $110 Billion out of a Federal budget spending plan of $3.8 Trillion. That would be 110/3800 and that equals less that 3%. The 2013 United States federal budget is the budget to fund government operations for the fiscal year 2013, which is October 2012–September 2013. The sequestration is scheduled to take effect March 1.
The debt limit ceiling will be reached at about the same time as the sequestration. The Federal government borrows approximately 31¢ of every dollar spent. The fiscally responsible are asking how long can America continue this borrowing pattern. I am one of them.
The political parties fight each other even when they know the other group is correct. When the speaker of the House tells the leader of the Senate “Go f*** yourself” you know the political system is in failure mode.

Democrats Have the Upper Hand

Tonight John Boehner, Speaker of the House, was unable to obtain a vote in favor of his “Plan B” to avoid the fiscal cliff. This is surprising to me as the only people who would experience a raise in their marginal tax rates would be those with annual taxable incomes of over $1 million.

So Mr. Boehner confirmed to everyone that he does not speak for the Republican Party caucus when it comes to tax and budget legislation. This leaves one slim chance for the Democrats to prevent falling of the cliff. To accomplish this will require some Republican congressmen along with some Democratic congressmen that would result in a majority. It is the opportunity for the President to push through legislation that would be more favorable to him with some compromise.

This can only happen with GOP participation. That is the big “IF.” The consequence of failure will be some sad days in January.

There is one thing we know. This entire situation was caused by our broken political system. Not just American but the rest of the world is wondering, what has happened to the United States?

This Has to Be the Time for Gun Control

Author Robert Shrum in the Daily Beast

How many children have to die, how many innocents have to be lost in a mall or a theater or on a neighborhood street, how many presidents or political leaders or prophets like Dr. King have to be shot down in a fusillade that wounds history itself, before America protects the first of our founding inalienable rights—to “life”—which surely comes before the “liberty” of carrying a cache of weapons. And that demands gun control—and I’m not using a politically convenient phrase like “gun safety legislation.” Some guns are outright unsafe—assault weapons—and all guns are unsafe in the hands of some people.

We as a society are hostage to the thugs of the NRA—which actually stands for the National Rampage Association.

Republicans who claim to defend the “right to life” profit politically by defending the moral wrong of a wholesale arsenal of death inflicted on the already living. The religious right that has allied itself with the gun lobby defies Christ’s warning that those who harm the children would be better off thrown into the sea with a millstone around their necks. Shouldn’t the protection of life begin not with a fertilized egg, but with human beings who are truly and fully alive?

And on the other side, politicians who know better, including most Democrats, cower before the threat of electoral retaliation—and invoke the rationalization that it is too hard to pass anything in Congress, even a ban on assault weapons or closing the gun-show loophole that lets criminals and the deranged shop for firearms without any background check. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today is “not the time” to talk about policies that at least in theory President Obama supports. Oh yes it is. If not now, when? If not the president, who? As he spoke in stricken terms, he seemed to comprehend that—and that he holds the office Franklin Roosevelt described as “pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”

No measure short of banning all firearms could prevent all shootings. But we can take practical measures that would save many lives. Who among us, who among our children, could be the next to be killed in an unexpected moment of unspeakable horror? So now we will shed a tear again. And in the phrase of Robert Kennedy, who himself would soon be a casualty instead of a president, we should “say a prayer for ourselves and for our country.” And we should have the courage to do something for our country, too. We should look into the anguished faces of parents outside that Connecticut elementary school—faces now tragically incised on our national consciousness. We should recall events from that darkness at noon in Dallas nearly 60 years ago to the carnage at Columbine and Aurora. Those faces and events matter more than the scorecard of the National Rampage Association.

Let us resolve that half a century and more of this country as a killing field is more than enough. Let us refuse to let this day of dying fade into memory and the malaise of resignation to things as they are. Let us stand against the odds so that countless others who otherwise would never even know the cause of their slaying or the name of their executioner may instead live, laugh, and find love and not hate.

Today Barack Obama spoke his heart and the nation’s—and called on us to take “meaningful action regardless of the politics.” Maybe at last, this is the time; it must be the time. The massacre has come too many times.

90 Guns for every 100 Citizens

Re-posted November 5, 2013

Shooting in New Jersey Mall and at LAX

Gunman kills himself after terrorizing New Jersey shopping mall

Three dead, including gunman, in Oregon mall shooting in December 2012. Killings like this happen so often that few even pay attention.

I have written about this situation before. The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world. This has been reported by news agencies repeatedly.

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

So is it any wonder that when Americans become angry they grab a gun, go to the mall or their church, and start shooting at everyone in sight. It is a society of frustrated people who want their way in everything.

Argument with your spouse, kill her/him. Argument with your boss, kill him/her. You look suspicious as you walk through my neighborhood I will kill you and ask questions later.

Well it’s all about Second amendment rights. The NRA (National Rifleman’s Association) says, Defend Your 2nd Amendment Rights, Help Protect Hunters’ Rights. There is nothing in the Second amendment that says you have the right to bear arms for your protection or to hunt. It does say, “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.”

The problem is the people of the United States. They really believe that their freedom hinges on their right to own weapons. Sales have dramatically increased in the past four years because many believe that the Obama administration has plans to enforce new gun controls. No laws have been suggested or proposed. Still, there are those who continue to believe that their weapons will be confiscated. The gun manufacturers are happy with this situation.

It is a puzzle to me that a nation of so many wise and smart people believes that owning a gun is a necessity of life.