The horrific hate crime murders by a domestic terrorist using an MCX compact fold-up semi-automatic weapon of war to kill 49 of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters at an Orlando gay club begs the question ?
Why won’t Congress stand up to the NRA and pass sensible gun control ? Why won’t these political cowards do ANYTHING to stop hate-filled, anti-American, mentally deranged terrorists, homophobes, domestic abusers, racists and bigots from getting these killing machines ?
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Bay State Stonewall Democrats
Board of Directors
Please share widely!
What should they pass?
I confess I’m not entirely clear on the terminology of automatic, semi-automatic, assault rife, etc., but legislation could be written to ban any weapon that is capable of…
Plenty of good ideas to choose from.
Support for a public option in heath insurance was 77 percent at one time, but congress went against it.
61% of Americas think that the rich ought to pay higher taxes. We know that’s not going anywhere.
Well over half of Americans want to replace Obamacare with a single-payer system but even our own Hillary is against that.
And yes, most Americans want stricter gun controls but once again, such things will not happen for the same reasons that the other things I listed will not happen despite an overwhelming number of Americans in support. And the reason is money, lots and lots of money that flows to the .1% and trickles down to the politician who depend on that money for their campaigns.
…that would likely favor stricter gun controls.
From the Boston Business Journal:
…that businesses in that specific sector benefit, but I’m talking generally about “Wall Street types”.
…Wall Street as a culture is indifferent to gun control.
More important, in a majority of Congressional Districts it is generally more dangerous to one’s incumbency to support gun control (of any type) than oppose it.
The irony is that mass shootings such as what happened in Orlando tend to strengthen opposition to gun laws, however reasonable. I don’t see that dynamic changing in the foreseeable future.
“If only I had been in that nightclub with a gun I could have shot back,” goes the thinking. Problem is, with a weapon such as was used, the perpetrator could have gotten off several rounds with the element of surprise on his side before the proverbial “good guy with a gun” even had a chance to unholster his. It might harden the opposition, but I’m not sure about expanding it.
…when the sales of the aforementioned boost stock prices and shareholder value?
The gun sector is a pretty small part of the aggregate economy, as reflected by individual portfolios.
Furthermore, individual players at the top level of financial services and financial instruments are probably reflective of their social cohorts. (For example, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Menino founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns back in 2006.)
Billionaires from, say Dallas (I presume that “Wall Street” is your synonym for the ultra wealthy) would probably think otherwise. The same applies if we restrict “Wall Street” to the financial service and financial instrument communities.
The greatest opposition to gun control is at the organized grassroots level.
As I tell people, corporations are not evil. They lack the capacity to be evil. On the same level, they lack the capacity to be kind. That’s Wall Street. That’s capitalism. The only thing that matters is money, growth, profits. It’s not immoral, it’s amoral.
Wall Street’s only interest in guns is how guns affect the market.
On a related note, the next time you hear a politician promise “Jobs and the Economy”, it’s the same thing in many ways. Give a man a job and make sure that profits increase. Nice! Except that job is producing increased profits that the man will never, ever see….because “it’s a global economy”….or ” it’s a divided congress”…..when it’s really because….the .1% are running things and while some of them have personal feelings about more gun regulations, an equal amount have feelings against and apart from a conversation at a fundraising cocktail party, they don’t talk about it much.
The NRA and their ilk are the masters of astroturfing it seems to me. Also, to clarify I’m not saying the faceless corporations have a position on gun control, but that the individuals behind them who attend all the right cocktail parties would I suspect poll overwhelmingly for control.
Linked here is a monograph analyzing NRA influence in the 1994 Congressional elections. Furthermore, the NRA was instrumental in electing Bernie Sanders to Congress and supported him in his Presidential race.
While many (I would argue most) NRA members look askance at some of the organization’s more outrageous positions, they are not about to support outlawing semiautomatic weapons, are better organized than their opponents, and have the advantage of the current political climate wherein support for gun control is soft. Per Gallup:
However insignificant in Massachusetts, the National Rifle Association is a major player in rural and suburban America, particularly in the South, Midwest, Rocky Mountain West, Southwest, and Appalachia. Regionally, the NRA is strong in Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon. In New England, the organization is strong in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.
I would hardly call that astroturf.
…as do sadly too many Dems running scared. I completely reject that they are on the ground in more places than either party. You have occasional gaps where there isn’t an active local party committee, but they are designed to have a presence in every jurisdiction nationwide. I do agree that gun-rights tends to trump gun control as a single-issue motivator, but most polls I have seen show overwhelming support for more restrictions, even among gun owners.
Iowa January 2016, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-single-payer-health-care-will-never-ever-happen/
This is a reasonable point given our current political situation. We don’t have a Congress that’ll pass single-payer, That’s not the current debate. The current debate is whether to repeal the ACA or not. Within that is the problem of improving the ACA. Republicans are happy to stonewall legislation on it so that it becomes unworkable. A debate about single-payer at this time can easily serve to undermine the ACA further which, like it or not, is the high water mark on our efforts to achieve universal healthcare coverage.
The other issue is that the transition costs to move from our current system to a single-payer one seem to require a very large shift in tax burden. Stated differently: steep increases in income tax for lots of people. Most will come out ahead by saving in premiums more than they pay in additional taxes but there will be significant losers in that transition. Getting through that transition, then, requires considerable political backing — and lots of political wrangling.
That backing doesn’t exist yet.
So while it may very nice that 51% of Americans from the idle, speculative comfort of answering a phone survey might think Medicare for All, or Single-Payer would be a great idea, that forgets the world we live in, the sea of negative advertising the insurance companies can unleash, and the practical problems involved in implementing single-payer.
I’m an empiricist who likes best practices and case studies, and the failure of Vermont, an ideal a Petri dish as you can find, really put the brakes on the idea of single payer for me. You had both legislatures and the governor support it, the business community endorse it, and the single HMO that would be put of business agree to be taken over. It doesn’t get any easier politically than that. But the policy was unworkable since costs were drastically high and it would’ve been so expensive that other priorities like education funding and infrastructure would’ve been cut. It’s still a great idea in theory, and if this were 1948 and Trumans plan was before Congress and we had a tabula rasa like the UK did at the same time, I would totally vote for it and support it.
But we don’t have that environment. We are talking about nationalizing and consolidating several major industries under government control on an unprecedented scale. And you can’t say “but Denmark did it”, since no Denmark did not do it under that scale or in that environment. It created a universal insurance program in the middle of the century when drug costs were low and most hospitals were legitimate non profits.
It would be hard and expensive to do that on a national scale today, which is why ACA was such a well designed policy program, despite what the critics say and I say that as a user of it at present and in two different states. My coverage on the exchange in either state was more affordable and better than comparable coverage offered by employers. I frankly think it’s the death knell for employer insurance which is good. It’ll be portable and not dependent on employment.
Now a public option where folks could choose to enroll in Medicare makes a lot more sense as a next step, along with expanding Medicare to cover the middle class. States should adopt MD style all rate payer plans to control costs. And reform Part D to allow for negotiating prices. This is all in Hillary’s platform, and is far more likely to pass and succeed if it did pass.
…from a position, loudly proclaimed by her lips that such things will “never ever happen”.
…I I want real health care reform and according to you, the Republicans are the decision makers that Democrats must abide by, our party is simply ineffective on such matters and lacks the will to fight.
Transition costs and the other verbiage you mention be damned. That sounds like boilerplate from the Heritage Foundation.
No, I will not leave the Democratic Party over this. I will fight to rid the party of corporate and Wall Street insiders. I will fight to bring the party back to the working families it once represented but sadly, no longer gives a hoot about except on election day.
We back all rate payer reforms and oppose hospital consolidations which are the real cost drivers for working people. Gov. Shumlin spent his whole career fighting for single layer, was elected promising to enact it and then got it passed. The states single HMO agreed to be consolidated into the single
payer program. It cost 80% more than estimated and would’ve been 50-60% of their entire states operating budget which is unsustainable. There were no insurance lobbyists, DLCers or Wall Streer tycoons stopping this policy from going forward.
There were just unsustainable costs, if we contain costs and expand the ACA pool with a robust public option we can see gradual single payer in a 20-30 year period. Doing it overnight on a national scale would be disruptive, politically impossible, and likely lead to implementation challenges on a national scale that Vermont had. This isn’t ideological opposition, just a reality based assessment of the prospects for reform.
Frankly, I’ve given myself a four year timeline to measure. If things stay they way they are, I’ll be looking for a new home.
Your commentary here during the entire primary season sounds as if you are in fact in the wrong party. You have loudly and steadfastly rejected every effort to answer your relentlessly-repeated questions, so much so that many of us have just stopped trying.
The only “boilerplate from the Heritage Foundation” I hear in these exchanges is your own use of their decades-long attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton (and everything and everyone else associated with them, including Ms. Clinton’s son-in-law, for crying out loud).
Whatever it is you think you are fighting for, I see little or nothing about working families. Mostly I see unrestrained rage targeted at all the usual right-wing scapegoats because you are suffering like the rest of America. Your pain is real. It is no worse and no more than real than the pain of hundreds of millions of other Americans.
The Democratic Party did not cause your problems. Hillary Clinton did not cause your problems. Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law did not cause your problems. Because none of these agents caused your problems, attacking them will not cure your problems.
Yes, please stop trying. Your admission that selling out to Wall Street is permissible for Democrats who lack a populist message is all I needed to hear. I do not need to hear anything more from you. That said it all. Good day sir.
Your claim is that I and a HUGE majority of Democratic voters across America are “selling out to Wall Street”. You claim that only you have true insight into “a populist message”.
Not surprisingly, you don’t want to hear any response.
Own up to it. You are willing to sell out to Wall Street and you will not hold Democrats accountable for any of the economic ills they have been a player in. I got it. I understand your position. There is no need for us to converse anymore. The gap between us is too wide.
I have never claimed that “only I have true insight” to a populist message. That’s your straw man.
Anyway, there are plenty of Democrats here in BMG who, like you, are willing to sell out to Wall Street so that your team can “win”!
Here’s a tip: hang out with them, exchange posts, pat each other on the back for your “victories”, leave me out of it. Again, the gap between you and I is far too wide to bridge.
Good day sir.
…who has plans that according to some, notably Krugman IIRC, is tougher on WS is hardly a sellout to them. My frustration is not just over your holier than thou attitude, but also that you are not accurate in your accusations.
makes me “holier then thou”, well, I’ll accept that anointing. So Hillary has plans that are tough on Wall Street? A few days before her campaign launch, John Mack, the former CEO of Morgan Stanley was asked by a host on the Fox Business channel whether her populist talk was causing him to reconsider his support for her. On the contrary: “To me, it’s all politics,” he responded, “It’s trying to get elected, to get the nomination.” …..
“None of them think she really means her populism.” Wrote a prominent business journal in 2014 about the bankers and Hillary. ….
Then there is Robert Rubin, former chairman of Citibank and former secretary of the treasury and co-head of Goldman Sachs. In his book, he tells how Hillary once helped him get what he calls “class-laden language” deleted from a presidential speech and how she helped prevent the Democrats from appealing to “class conflict” in a general election on the grounds that it is not “an effective approach” to the “swing voters in a middle of the electorate”
(All From “Listen Liberal, Thomas Frank, pages 219-219
But no, you go right ahead and have faith that this time she will stand with labor and not the banks and Wall Street. This time, it will be different…..
…which just endorsed Clinton is not standing up for labor? It’s not “this time”, but so often in the past she has sided with labor, but I’m tired of looking for the links on my slow machine so go find them yourself this time Robert Rubin was part of the last Clinton administration, the politics and policies of which WERE appropriate for the 1990s.
Throughout the discussion you’ve swayed nobody and mostly advertised how close-minded you can be.
Possibly a different hobby would be more rewarding than pretending to be Lenin.
You say I have swayed no one. Not you, granted, but who else do you speak for? If anything, my mind is wide open. I do not know about yours and frankly, that’s not the issue. You are not the issue and I am not the issue, despite your efforts to make me the focus and take away talk of the issue at hand.
You have swayed precisely no one.
One could think that the problems of income inequality and stagnant wages are problems of regulation, that better regulation would yield better results.
Or one could think that it is a problem with the morals of a certain class of people, given to rapacious greed. If one thinks the latter, one will aim, like Lenin, at the destruction of that class. Lenin called them the bourgeoisie, our modern populists the 0.1%.
Now, some degree of ad hominem is useful here as certain conservatives, especially those weaned on the prosperity gospel, think the rich are our betters. We inherited this very view from the founding of our republic. It might be wrong. It’s not un-American.
There’s also some evidence from social psychology that bankers as a class have weak ethics. Social psychology also shows that rigorous enforcement will correct this.
Finally, there is also the problem of regulatory capture. This is true of almost every aspect of government. It is why we need popular movements and not just our current, somewhat ossified Democratic Party.
You are both good progressives with good ideas and a good commitment to the movement. What I hate to see is John’s continued insistence that the primary isn’t over override his commitments on those other fronts. You’re welcome to vote for Jill Stein who likely sings similar tunes on these issue, and you can have your purity cake without handing Donald Trump an electoral vote. I respect that and will defend that decision.
What I won’t defend is denying the reality that Hillary won the nomination fairly, and many working class people of color were not persuaded by the Sanders campaign and choose to vote for her instead. Like you, I wish they have voted differently. But it’s hard to argue that majorities of working people of color wanted to sell the party out to Wall Street.
Her platform from 2016 is substantially more economically populist than her 1996 platform. I have the same reservations about her ethics and the long term drift of the party towards a meandering centrism that doesn’t stand for something, just against the increasingly nasty and vile movement once known as conservatism. I suspect working inside and outside the system in Massachusetts while hoping the Democrats take Congress and keep Trump out of the White House. These are the ways to go.
It’s over. I have said so. I took the Bernie sticker off the bumper of my Scion FR-S. I’m voting for Hillary. Okay? Please update your files. What I am not doing is trusting her to follow through with her populist plans. She might, but only if people like me keep pushing and people like the guy from Somerville don’t pay attention and just assume she will do what she said she would. This it politics. She’s spin-able. It’s nothing new in some respects. She even said so in so many words when she thought she was off camera and she was speaking to a Black Lives Matter crowd. She told them they would have to make her do it. Again, this is politics. This ain’t nothing new FDR said the same thing. “After his election in 1932, FDR met with Sidney Hillman and other labor leaders, many of them active Socialists with whom he had worked over the past decade or more. Hillman and his allies arrived with plans they wanted the new President to implement. Roosevelt told them: “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.” That’s what I am doing, and so should any progressive.
We disagree on our candidate. Fine.
Please stop lying about my stance towards what happens from here onward. I’ve written here, NUMEROUS times, that progressives must keep the pressure on — not just Ms. Clinton, but the entire government.
You are egregiously distorting my positions and I’d like you to stop.
…took to the floor today for a marathon speaking session regarding gun control, and when I checked just now it appears they are still going.
Nice to some innovation in trolling here. Longtime users are falling for a new type of troll trap — commendations to our newest purveyor of digressions and distractions.
I was starting to wonder how a thread about gun legislation became mostly about Wall Street, but yes, I took the bait too.