Some scattered links of special interest. Caught most of them today, which shows it isn't all that hard to find trouble these days:
Joe Conason: Protecting the 'Second Amendment Rights' of Thugs and Terrorists: The NRA used to push the mantra, "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." Now they seem to be saying, if criminals are denied guns, no one will be permitted them.
As Will Saletan pointed out in Slate last January, the NRA has consistently (and successfully) sought to kill the most basic efforts to keep guns away from convicted criminals and other dangerous characters -- including abusive spouses under court protection orders, drug dealers and even individuals listed on the Justice Department's terrorist watch list.
In the wake of the Boston bombing, as the nation ponders how to bolster its security, the gun lobby's tender concern for the Second Amendment"rights" of terrorists and thugs ought to permanently discredit them and their political servants.
Background checks and registration should not prevent people who have legitimate reason for owning guns from doing so, nor establish a "slippery slope" leading to gun confiscation (as is routinely asserted). They would, however, do much to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them, and they would help law enforcement track gun violence. There is, after all, enough gun violence in America to warrant precautions, and it should be clear that there are people who should not be entitled to own or use guns. Reasonable people should be able to find some common ground here, but the NRA has taken a position far beyond reason, and it's time to start calling it what it is: their main purpose is to safeguard the gun-owning rights of criminals, because if criminals can't own guns, no one can.
As near as I can tell, the NRA is mostly a front for gun manufacturers, and their business is booming because they're able to promote fear -- of crime, of terrorists, and of the government -- into ever more gun sales. For an example of his this works, here's a Wichita Eagle letter from Hank Price, of Goddard, KS:
I need an AR-15. Furthermore, I need several 30-round magazines to go with it.
Why, you ask? Well, let's put aside the fact that it is none of your business or, for that matter, none of government's business to ask. (The Second Amendment affirms my right to keep and bear arms.)
I need an AR-15 because the bad guys have them. I need an AR-15 because the police, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have them. If someone is attempting a home invasion with semi-automatic or even automatic weapons, I don't want to wait the 15 to 20 minutes it takes for the police to arrive with their semi-automatic weapons.
I need an AR-15 because as long as I and other law-abiding citizens have them, the government will think twice before infringing on the other rights affirmed by the Constitution. That is the real reason we have the Second Amendment. Not so we can hunt. Not so we can target practice. Not so we can defend our home and family until the police come to file their reports. But to protect our rights.
This is a good example of the NRA business plan: let the "bad guys" have X and "good guys" like Price will have to buy the same thing -- an arms race, which certainly won't stop with AR-15s. Moreover, if the "bad guys" include the US government, Price is already way down the technology curve: they already have helicopters, tanks, snipers, noxious gas, and enough firepower to obliterate your house -- no need to merely "invade" it. Also, that bit about using guns to protect your rights, how's that worked out over time? From the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791 up until any recent example you can cite, not very well. To pick one relatively recent example, Leonard Peltier is in jail for life for allegedly defending himself against federal agents. Why should Price expect to fare better? The fact is that the only way to defend yourself against the government is through the courts -- your best friend there, by the way, is the ACLU. Better still, elect a government that will respect your rights -- shouldn't be that big of a problem, if you really are one of the "good guys." If not, at least you have the NRA working for you.
By the way, here's today's Crowson:
![]()
David Graeber: There's No Need for All This Economic Sadomasochism: More on austerity politics, piling on the Reinhart-Rogoff debacle:
The morality of debt has proved spectacularly good politics. It appears to work just as well whatever form it takes: fiscal sadism (Dutch and German voters really do believe that Greek, Spanish and Irish citizens are all, collectively, as they put it, "debt sinners," and vow support for politicians willing to punish them) or fiscal masochism (middle-class Britons really will dutifully vote for candidates who tell them that government has been on a binge, that they must tighten their belts, it'll be hard, but it's something we can all do for the sake of our grandchildren). Politicians locate economic theories that provide flashy equations to justify the politics; their authors, like Rogoff, are celebrated as oracles; no one bothers to check if the numbers actually add up.
Also on Reinhart-Rogoff: New Tools for Reproducible Results.
Glenn Greenwald: What Rights Should Dzokhar Tsarnaev Get and Why Does It Matter?: When I heard Sen. Lindsey Graham insisting that the Boston Marathon bomber should be declared an "enemy combatant" I thought that was the dumbest thing I've heard him say in, well, weeks. As I understand it, the main purpose of the "enemy combatant" designation is to allow the Feds to hold people indefinitely they suspect but don't have any evidence against, at least that wouldn't hold up in court. Assuming they got the right person, the odds that they wouldn't be able to secure a conviction are vanishingly small -- unless they did something really stupid, like waterboarding him in Guantanamo. Tsarnaev is a US citizen, captured in the US after (allegedly) committing a major crime on US territory. Isn't that what the US justice system is about? Then I read that Obama's DOJ decided not to "Mirandize" him, as if not reminding him that he has rights under the constitution strips him of those rights. To get on top of this, I consulted Glenn Greenwald, and he explains it all here.
Now, the cheers for this erosion of Miranda are led not by right-wing Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist (who wrote the opinion in Quarles), but by MSNBC pundits like former Obama campaign media aide Joy Reid, who -- immediately upon the DOJ's announcement -- instantly became a newly minted Miranda expert in order to loudly defend the DOJ's actions. MSNBC's featured "terrorism expert" Roger Cressey -- who, unbeknownst to MSNBC viewers, is actually an executive with the intelligence contractor Booz Allen -- also praised the DOJ's decision not to Mirandize the accused bomber (if you want instant, reflexive support for the US government's police and military powers, MSNBC is the place to turn these days). [ . . . ]
Just 30 years ago, Quarles was viewed as William Rehnquist's pernicious first blow against Miranda; now, it's heralded by MSNBC Democrats as good, just and necessary for our safety, even in its new extremist rendition. That's the process by which long-standing liberal views of basic civil liberties, as well core Constitutional guarantees, continue to be diluted under President Obama in the name of terrorism. [ . . . ]
Needless to say, Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a result, as Bazelon noted, not many people will care what is done to him, just like few people care what happens to the accused terrorists at Guantanamo, or Bagram, or in Yemen and Pakistan. But that's always how rights are abridged: by targeting the most marginalized group or most hated individual in the first instance, based on the expectation that nobody will object because of how marginalized or hated they are. Once those rights violations are acquiesced to in the first instance, then they become institutionalized forever, and there is no basis for objecting once they are applied to others, as they inevitably will be (in the case of the War on Terror powers: as they already are being applied to others).
Also see Greenwald's earlier post, The Boston Bombing Produces Familiar and Revealing Reactions. Greenwald also links to an interesting piece by Ali Abuninah: Was the Boston Bombing Really a "Terrorist" Act? Aside from the specialized legal aspects, I have no problem describing any bombing as an act of terror (including those bombs released by US drones in Pakistan and elsewhere), just because of its intrinsically indiscriminate nature. But at this point there is very little that can be said about the motivations and intentions of the perpetrators. But somewhere I read that this was the first "terrorist attack" on US soil since the November 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hasan -- a statement that overlooks dozens of mass shootings since, many (e.g., the recent murder of schoolchildren in Newtown, CT) truly terrorful. At the very least, we've managed to muddle up the language here: the 9/11 attack were both terrorizing and a radical affront to the image of US power as projected across the world. The Boston bombing and the Newtown shootings were both terrorizing, but what they have to do with US power is still mostly confined to the fevered imaginations of US politicians, who, as always, are happy to use whatever tragedy is at hand to further their own interests.
Glenn Greenwald: Margaret Thatcher and Misapplied Death Etiquette: Missed this post from April 8, but still timely. The fact is, when you hear that someone has died, you remember what they did. If what you say then usually seems positive, that may be because we are predisposed to forget or forgive the bad and cherish the good. Or perhaps one feels a tinge of relief that the threat of the bad has passed. But the threat of someone like Thatcher hasn't passed with her, and it would be grossly unresponsible to gloss over much of what she actually did. As Greenwald says:
This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts. I made this argument at length last year when Christopher Hitchens died and a speak-no-ill rule about him was instantly imposed (a rule he, more than anyone, viciously violated), and I won't repeat that argument today; those interested can read my reasoning here.
But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms.
Ed Kilgore: Fertilizer Explosion Update: Weak Inspections and Strong Kolaches: While the nation's media was fixated on the bombings in Boston, a far larger (and deadlier) explosion occurred in the place where you might most expect it, a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, but nobody was looking there:
The explosion shone a harsh light on the US fertilizer industry and the weak, toothless regulation thereof. One problem Plumer notes is that, "the Occupational Safety and Health Administration tends to be understaffed and inspections are relatively infrequent. The Texas fertilizer industry has only seen six inspections in the past five years -- and the West Texas Fertilizer Co. facility was not one of them." This was despite the West facility receiving a $2,300 fine from the EPA in 2006 for poor risk-management planning. The last time the facility had been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was in 1985. Think Progress reports that the plant had been inspected in 2011 by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which resulted in a $10,100 fine for missing placards and lack of security plans. The fine was reduced in 2012 after improvements were made at the plant.
Fertilizer explosions are relatively common in history. There have been 17 unintended explosions of ammonium nitrate causing casualties since 1921. The worst of these was the explosion of a cargo ship in the Port of Texas City that killed 581 people and injured 3500.
Mike Konczal: Mapping Out the Arguments Against Chained CPI: Konczal has been linked to by everyone commenting on Reinhart-Rogoff recently (see Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff and There Are Serious Problems, followed up by Andrindrajit Dube: Reinhart/Rogoff and Growth in a Time Before Debt). Here he analyzes another real bad idea: Obama's budget proposal to cut Social Security by fudging the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). (If you were really paying attention, you'll recall that this has already been done once before, by Clinton as a favor for Greenspan: in the 1990s, the government changed how the consumer price index (CPI) was calculated, nominally lowering inflation and thereby reducing Social Security COLA increases.) With "friends" like Obama (and Clinton) you enemies are already halfway home.
If you look into the data, the elderly spend a lot more of their limited money on housing, utilities, and medical care. Health care costs have been rising rapidly over the past several decades, and it is difficult to substitute on other necessary, fixed-price goods like utilities. With the notable exception of college costs, the things urban wage earners spend money on haven't increased in price as quickly as what the elderly purchase. As a result, the CPI-E (the index tailored to the elderly) has increased 3.3 percent a year from 1982 to 2007, while the CPI-W (tailored to wage earners) has only increased 3 percent a year. [ . . . ]
You'll hear arguments that a Grand Bargain is necessary, so it's better to bring Social Security into long-term balance now, with Democrats at the helm, than in the future, when there will be less time and an uncertain governance coalition. You can get fewer cuts and more revenue than you would otherwise and take the issue off the table for the foreseeable future to concentrate on other priorities.
But if that's your idea, then this is a terrible deal and sets a terrible precedent, because this deal would accomplish none of your goals. You'd cut Social Security without putting in any new revenue. And it wouldn't be sufficient to close the long-term gap, so the issue would stay on the table. Indeed, the deficit hawks would probably be emboldened, viewing this as a "downpayment" on future cuts, and require any future attempts to get more revenue for Social Security, say by raising the payroll tax cap, to involve significant additional cuts.
Konczal also points out that the longer you live, the more "chained CPI" eats into your check; also the more likely you are to have exhausted your savings. The net result is to plunge the very elderly into poverty. One thing he didn't mention is that some big expenses, like nursing home care, are means-tested. The effect of this is to first confiscate all of your savings before making you a ward of a state that has never been known for generous welfare policies. Over the last twenty-some years, we've done a lot to lighten estate taxes for the rich, never noticing that for the poor the effective tax rate is 100%.
Matthew Yglesias: Banning Late-Term Abortions Reduces the Quality of Late-Term Abortion Providers: Same for extra-legal bans, like murder. Talks about the Kermit Gosnell case in Philadelphia, but he starts with a more commonplace example:
I used to buy illegal drugs sometimes and in addition to me, personally, not being a huge fan of said substances I really didn't enjoy the purchasing process. The quality of customer service was just deplorable. And the problem, roughly speaking, was that even though it was not in practice all that difficult to obtain marijuana you still had to get it from a drug dealer rather than, say, a highly efficient global retailer operating with industry best practices and huge economies of scale. And for better or for worse, that's one of the goals of drug prohibition in the United States. It's not simply that making something illegal deters some people from use. It inhibits the emergence of above-board providers with strong franchises and brand value and robust competition between multiple high quality providers.
It also opens up opportunities for police to profit through bribes or other favors, and it makes it easier for criminals to rob drug dealers, and it opens up drug dealers to further crime, etc. But back to medicine: any operation is more likely to be performed competently by someone who does it often, thereby developing skill and experience. One reason universal health care is better even for the people who can afford whatever you call our health care system is that doctors learn from experience.
