Mass Silliness

In the midst of all the back-slapping and poignant hypocrisy (coordinated stump-speeches as eulogies are pretty tasteless, culminating with the Commander-in-Chief of all people pleading that we “Stop hurting each other” and ”Peace”), the meathead mayor of Boston, Tommy Menino, opened with continued stumping for what would be an entire episode in covering the Marathon bombing, on this morning’s “This Week”.

After gross incompetence on the part of the BPD upon killing a college student in the aftermath of the Red Sox winning the 2004 ALCS, his office was sent reeling into damage-control and released a statement made by the BPD Commissioner stating the police department “accepts full responsibility” for the death of the student, Victoria Snelgrove, but went on to condemn the actions of some “punks” as deserving of partial blame. 

Let it be clear that in the immediate media-aftermath of this tragic incident, these aforementioned “punks” started lazily being lumped together with ”fans”.  Now, sports fans should never be confused with vandals who decide to seize upon any a celebration to commit destructive acts.  Cheering in the streets or observing a celebration safely and legally atop a one-story parking tier is not destructive.  The vandals are still the ones who deserve the partial blame.

One of the riot-officers I had noticed appearing on my side of Landsdowne Street was aiming his pellet-gun up at the Green Monster, as another over on the other side of the street must have as well to have fired towards said parking-tier, instead of, as required, into the ground, in order for the pellets to explode and release the gas on impact.  These officers deserve and have publically acknowledged the bulk of the blame for her death.  One fan had his nose bloodied and broken by a mounted police-officer.  One officer had a geared up expression about him.  Pepper-spray was fuming up the back of the Monster where strangers were helping others trying to safely climb down.  And the aforementioned student standing along the edge of that parking-tier somehow had one of those pellets embed itself into her eye-socket, do its damage in her brain, to prompt her to fall unconscious onto the sidewalk.

Considering how this team had won the championship, the team they had beat, and the overall historical nature with which they had won, the celebration unto the streets could have been expected not so much as cathartic but like a cosmic event!  And given the trend at the time of people in college towns and cities engaging in extreme acts of vandalism in the aftermath of those area’s teams winning championships, for the BPD to apparently not be so very well prepared for this outpouring was pretty incredulous.

And so presumably the majority now being applauded for their ‘heroism’ in the aftermath of the Marathon bombing were then presumably held partially responsible for this young woman being killed.  …Ok.  The Commissioner and some representatives of the mayor’s office, incidentally, even went as far as meeting with the parents of the deceased young woman a couple of days later, and managed to convince the family to publically blame the “fans” for her death (this, according to a banner headline in the Boston Herald: “Family Blames Fans”).

I am white, Irish, and lived in Boston for three months during the summer of ’95.  Ninety percent of my family currently live in towns south of Boston.  My parents are from Brockton.  Now, maybe it was because it was a hot summer, combined with being a big city of roughly three million residents.  Or, maybe it was the impression I had from having lived two previous years in a smaller and less crowded city out in the Midwest.  But I had spent a lot of time walking around Boston-proper, on days off from work, and literally, not a single passer-by gave a friendly smile back.  The only friend I did make was through a mutual one – a very nice person who had grown up in Ohio – whose previous roommate had moved out after only living there for a short time for the very same reason I had left. 

So, I don’t think “tough” is the word I would use to generally describe Bostonians.  Neurotic, distrusting, or over-caffeinated, perhaps as a result of a Mr. Donut or Dunkin Donuts on practically every street-corner, may be more accurate.  And there’s certainly a dose of xenophobia, like towards the “Euro-trash” who frequent Newbury Street.  I mean, I once saw a native actually get out of his car, in not-so mid-afternoon traffic on Boylston, to yell at the driver in front of him to “Go back to your fucking country!”

Cities right now in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa have to deal with the threat of bombing and random terror attacks on a daily basis.  These are cities who know fear.  I can’t understand how Boston can be on the one hand referred to as “tough” but also, as one author who grew up there referred to it, as “a city paralyzed by fear”.  In post-9/11 America, it is tough for me to believe the majority living in the city where those planes happened to take off could carry on largely immune to the threat of terror.

If anything, America has a great inclination to oversell things, for Boston was a city largely paralyzed by inconvenience in being locked-down for a day overcrowded by multi-media tourists.  Let us not do any possible, future tragic events in this country the perpetual disservice of tragically shallow coverage.

Heroes Don’t Exist

I love how the formula in the BBC series “Sherlock” is not another classic superhero versus super-villain in a league-of-their-own battle of wits. It plays up to this formula very well by way of the eponymous character’s work-ethic and supersonic observational skill – punctuated as well by his more empirical chief associate and friend, Dr. Watson. But the seemingly incredible mindsets of the show’s adversaries, Holmes and James Moriarty, dueling in the modern maze of our collective unconscious, are very tangible.

The following is a moment from the finale of the dynamic, three 90-minute episodes from season one, called “The Great Game”. Holmes and Watson had just fought the clock in order to rescue another hostage innocently associated with a case exclusively texted to them, via photograph, by a ‘fan’ (later confirmed to be Moriarty). Here now they sit engrossed by the news-footage of a slight mistake in judgment on the part of said hostage having resulted in her and a large section of her apartment-building being blown apart, killing 12 in total. After shutting the television off in disgust, as for why their bomber keeps making games out of people’s lives Holmes responds by rather cheekily, eerily believing it is because the bomber is “distracted”. This sets the doctor upright… http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=5yN5O2XG-Mk

That’s pretty ballsy for a self-proclaimed “consulting detective” to say to a veteran army doctor, yet he doesn’t get any argument. At the very least, it is safe to say it is a sharp rebuke for how the word quickly gets commercially abused.

A ’hero’ is anybody who undertakes a natural impulse for salvaging a greater good. S/He neither humbly acknowledges his/her actions, nor for that matter intends to portray him/herself as a valiant disconnect, for any a ‘villain’ would seek to manipulate or capitalize on the imbalance. A ‘hero’ can appear irked from having to associate with others or maybe it is the case of the ‘other’ who chooses not to measure up, according to a perceived threshold.

Many of us live in our respective immediate surroundings where obvious, direct acts of violence do not occur as frequently as in other parts of the world. This is very fortunate. Yet when something does occur, many either prefer to escape into something more comforting or feel obliged to prematurely obsess until its impact fades.

I don’t dislike politics, per say, just the superficial culture it culls to. Instead of looking to rehashed manifestations of scapegoated fears for which some heightened sense of glory never in any way intended to separate the ‘super’ amongst us to begin with, why not altogether decrease this obnoxious, in-between space for ‘heroes’ by recognizing our better capacities now?

A Left-to-Center Understanding of Guns in America

The gun-violence/control debate could be less complicated to discuss, overall, if it were not so undeniably interconnected with other big issues like education, the economy, healthcare, racism, immigration, the drug war, campaign-finance reform, to name a few. One thing is for certain, this discussion makes those pertaining to our ongoing fiscal controversies appear, well, shallow.

The history of our ‘dueling’ nature…young men in abject poverty conforming to gangs…our retro-ideological, inarticulately overlapping, posturing, and overreaching approach towards fixing our economy…films, music, and video games sensationalizing violence…and a thus far extraordinarily understated re-emphasis on secured storage of firearms in the home, among other aspects, can keep law-abiding folks on both sides of the issue awake nights. But, whenever the national discussion is impelled by a horrible gun-incident the conversation reverts to default polemics (largely, around one matter, it seems), politicians prefer to altogether avoid the issue, and the whole conversation proceeds nowhere. Obviously, things need improving, just as ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Every reasonable, responsible, law-abiding gun-owning and non-gun-owning citizen has the same goal: how to reasonably keep ourselves, as individuals, safer from violence. For, now—although, marginally—I am grateful more have decided to contribute to what is being dubbed along both sides of the aisle as ‘meaningful discussion’ [...or, ‘action’, ‘conversation’] to de-escalate future scores of gun-violence.

 

According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, since 1968, over 1,384,000 Americans have died from firearms. 1,309,000-plus Americans have died over our whole history of combat (http://www.militaryfactory.com/american_war_deaths.asp). Almost the same amount of Americans have died from firearms, than in wars, in about one-fifth the time. A study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery found that the gun-murder rate in the U.S. is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.  Studies suggest that about 80% of gun-crimes in the U.S. are committed from guns which were acquired without any federal monitoring. …The preferred weapon of choice in mass-shootings (62 in the U.S. in the last 30 years; 7 in 2012, alone) is either the semi-automatic rifle with a high-capacity detachable magazine or a semi-automatic handgun, in the hands of the mentally unstable, which points to the controversy of whether to again seek to ban ‘military-designed’ firearms and high-capacity magazines as beyond that of a mental-health matter.

Since the ratification of the 2^nd amendment, revolt and revolution had not only been stirring here but as well as in Europe, leading to our Revolutionary War, our 2^nd Revolutionary War (of 1812), ‘manifest destiny’ and the Mexican-American War, and the Civil War. After WWII and the Korean War—and for that matter, on into Vietnam and the Persian Gulf—we made the decision to globally extend our interests. In the early to mid-fifties, we assisted in the overthrow of Iran and then Guatemala, followed by the unsuccessful attempt in Cuba, followed by what many highly suspect as the successful overthrow of our own, in 1963… Throw in our most recent double-whammy in both Iraq (despite the WMDs being in North Korea), and Afghanistan—where things are as yet stabilized, drone-might is not necessarily making right, and after hundreds of billions of dollars al Qaeda is spreading across North Africa, entering Syria, as well as maintaining in Pakistan. All the while, European countries’ economies are getting thinner. Department of Justice indictments against the big bankers responsible for the lending-crisis: 0. According to the D.o.J.’s assistant attorney general, Lanny Breuer, as to whether there was enough criminal intent to prove massive fraud in the selling of and investing in outrageously bad mortgages to the public, there is still “reasonable doubt”. (And as there always seems to be a moreover in cases like this—and not to mention, separate cases involving the big banks, UBS and HSBC—in a somewhat recent speech before the New York Bar Association Breuer made reference to “losing sleep at night over worrying about what a lawsuit might result in at a large financial institution”?) What does it matter how wealthy some people get, what kind of military do you expect to have leftover to defend you and us?

So, given our exploits, and what we are still very capable of, we are not very far beyond our covetous and aggressive nature. Might it very well be far from ironic or impractical, then, to assuage citizens from believing they should one day go without being able to purchase—albeit, hopefully, more carefully and universally monitored—semi-automatic firearms for the purpose of home-protection, as a means to (goodness forbid) defend against a threat of tyranny? Perhaps this particular notion may not entirely stem from a powerful lobby’s ever-fluctuating, bottom-line, after all (even though only around 4% of the nation’s licensed gun-owners are members of the N.R.A.).

Why do some of us voters, every two to four years, campaign and argue vigilantly on behalf of those seeking to best represent our ideals and values—at times going against our better judgment, legitimately scrutinizing their sincerity and ambition, notwithstanding speaking on behalf of other’s stubborn or rather self-meritocratic disregard for honest reflection—while much of our past still has a great deal to atone for?

I think about my nieces and nephews, that little girl at the elementary school with 10 or 11 bullets in her, the young teacher at the same school who sacrificed her life on behalf of her students and the part of the argument around whether to prohibit beyond the date of a bill’s possible enactment anyone from being able to purchase a semi-automatic firearm that can accept a detachable magazine of more than ten rounds—however, continue to allow for anyone who may already own such a firearm to legally keep and use it—begins anew.

 

Let’s face it, the recurring controversy around guns largely centers around one argument: semi-automatic rifles. The perception problem with the most popular of them all, the AR-15, for example, is it looks like a machine gun. But it isn’t. By itself, it can only fire a single shot at a time, less than a second at a time, with each pull of a trigger. They are equipped to be of better quality and more convenient than say a bolt-action rifle, which requires considerable more manual action between shots.

Fully automatic rifles, which are and have largely been prohibited for civilian use, are actual machine guns. They have been outlawed since 1934, in accordance with The National Firearms Act, for civilians to own without special permission from the U.S. Treasury.

To become a registered owner of a fully automatic, a complete FBI background investigation is conducted, checking for any criminal history or tendencies toward violence, and an application must be submitted to the ATF including two sets of fingerprints, a recent photo, a sworn affidavit that transfer of the NFA firearm is of ‘reasonable necessity’, and that sale to and possession of the weapon by the applicant would be consistent with public safety. The application form also requires the signature of a chief law enforcement officer with jurisdiction in the applicant’s residence. And since the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act in May of 1986, ownership of newly manufactured machine guns has been prohibited to civilians. Machine guns which were manufactured prior to the Act’s passage are regulated under the National Firearms Act, but those manufactured after the ban cannot ordinarily be sold to or owned by civilians. (They also cost about the same as a new car.)

However, regarding semi-automatic rifles, here’s the hitch: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/how-make-your-gun-shoot-fully-automatic-one-easy-step. The Slide Fire Solutions bump fire stock is still for sale and, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, still legal. The bump-fire stock entirely changes the semi-automatic to a fully automatic, with increased accuracy and at about one-tenth the price.

Preventing and prohibiting the manufacture and/or sale of this (which Senator Feinstein’s newly proposed bill does seek), and not the semi-automatic rifle itself, would only be consistent with the full-auto ban.

 

I myself do not own nor have ever felt compelled to own a gun—which is a good sign. I am actually a vegetarian, for animal rights reasons, to show how far I have had to come in analyzing this issue. I also happen to prefer other, more creative means of tension-release than, say, the instantaneous appeal of extending one of our more powerful phallic symbols, squeezing a finger, and feeling that loud and resolute bang, at a gun-range. But that’s neither here nor there. (Hence, I suppose, this is one reason why pink guns are now being manufactured.) My sister and brother-in-law are Catholic Workers—pacifist-activists who have little problem with intervening in conflict resolution, and live a life of voluntary poverty working in solidarity with the poor. For several years they’ve lived in a three-story apartment-house in an abjectly poor, inner-city neighborhood. Would it be valid to consider either of us as ‘crazy’ for not owning a licensed firearm, for self-defense purposes? Not at all.

But I can acknowledge that carrying oneself in such ways can only protect so much. For one, any a more mentally stable, licensed gun-owner could be capable of losing their cool and fatally overreacting in an instant. Any person then ought to have the right to likewise protect, minus the compulsion to try to be a singular hero. (Although the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law, which exists in about 24 states, is too open-ended to interpret as ‘defense’).

But as mentioned, studies suggest roughly 80% of those who have used a firearm in a crime had acquired the weapon without any federal monitoring. You can be certain a criminal will not willingly relinquish such guns—an estimated half-million of which are stolen from the home, every year, because they are not pragmatically locked up. For the time being, and for a good while hereafter, there are unfortunately still millions of illegally owned guns in the U.S. Yet even further, I had easily managed to overlook an undeniable truth: how the mere presence of the second amendment serves as a major protectorate.

 

In May of 1999, in front of Congress—as well as in December 2012 episode of “Meet the Press”—Wayne Lapierre advocated on behalf of universal background checks. But, lately, not so much, instead advocating what would a criminal care about a background check? Did he mean to word this as what would a potential criminal as yet having to fear a background check care? The solution is obviously not for Americans to buy more guns, for who is to say which potential owners would be potential criminals?

But I have to disagree with Senator Durbin in declaring Lapierre had completely missed the point behind the idea of universal background checks, during his most recent argument in front of Congress. He purposely missed the point. This recent line of thinking of his, and not of most gun-owners, either reflects paranoid-delusion or drunk-with-power salesmanship. I think it is more a case of the latter. Funnily enough, when it applies to winning an election or to economic policy, over 50% can considered a “mandate”, but when polls indicate over 90% of the public supports universal background checks, word is this proposal is “likely to happen”. …Backwards logic?

The amount of illegally owned guns is certainly where the personal traverses with the political, in everyone. As many know, the so-called “straw purchaser” technique is a popular method by which guns fall into illegal hands. Criminals purchase firearms by enlisting an aforementioned type of individual, as yet lacking in a criminal background, to travel to certain states to purchase firearms from gun shops. The criminals then safely travel the interstate to transport these guns back into states which happen to have stricter state-laws, mark up the price of the gun(s), and privately resell them to anyone.

There also of course exists the so-called “gun-show loophole”. As of the “Summary of Federal Law” by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence from their website, http://smartgunlaws.org/private-sales-policy-summary/, updated in August 2012:

“Five states (California, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island) and the District of Columbia require universal background checks on some or all firearm purchasers, including purchases from unlicensed sellers. In California, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia, universal background checks are required for transfers of all classes of firearms; Maryland’s law applies only to handguns and assault weapons; the Connecticut and Pennsylvania laws are limited to handguns. Delaware, Nevada and Oregon have laws allowing voluntary background checks by unlicensed sellers.”

Thus, there just seems an obvious solution to drastically lessen gun crimes, in the future: make every firearm dealer in the country a federally licensed firearm-dealer. This would also include outlawing the private sale a gun to your neighbor (I don’t care how well you think you know him/her) and cracking down on anyone hanging in or around a gun store looking to sell in case a person claims to ‘need’ a gun right away. Federal law could also extend to what California does: prohibiting gun ownership for people convicted of any kind of violent crime, drug offenses, alcohol abuse and juvenile offenses while underage.

How the idea of making every firearm dealer a federally licensed dealer went unchecked for so long is positively beyond me.

 

So how then do we further help abate the fear induced by the millions of illegally owned guns still currently out there?

For one, targets for a large or small act of gun-violence do often seem to be ‘unsuspecting’. Doing away with signs outside of an establishment indicating guns are not permitted would be an obvious plus. But what if federal legislation were to be suggested for a responsible and licensed private citizen to be permitted to carry a concealed handgun, anywhere, apart from federal establishments currently secured under restriction? The suggestion itself can in a way sound exactly like: just hire more police. And it does sound more cost-effective than implementing walk-through metal detectors in any public establishment (one of which could cost around $3500-4000).

If one is compelled to own a gun s/he is expected to bring with it the mental, emotional, and physical preparation to be able to use it in an instance of self-defense. This expectation, of course, is generally not a given. The annual number of revoked Carrying a Concealed Weapon permits, for which there are several types and are all regulated on a state-level, under four possible policies—Unrestricted (which I am currently not wild about), Shall-Issue, May-Issue, and No-Issue—are always small, and often on the grounds of DUI, unlawful carry, and aggravated assault. Of course, next to preventive common sense there is still no threat of close bodily harm which a good can of mace or pepper-spray, or even a small, blunt object along with alert thinking to call and/or run for safety or help, still could not ward off.

Typical conceal carry requirements under a ‘Shall-Issue’ jurisdiction indicate that a granting authority literally shall issue a permit if certain permit requirements are met, as opposed to where an authority decides it ‘May Issue’ a permit, at their discretion. Thirty-seven states are currently Shall-Issue; eight are May-Issue, 4 are Unrestricted, and only Illinois (although some counties ironically have an Unrestricted policy, as the state will be required by a recent court-order to establish a better policy by May of 2013) and D.C. are the current no-issue jurisdictions, which forbid open and concealed carry for private citizens.

Allowing to conceal and carry in certain restricted yet more randomly unsuspecting targets of desperation or bigotry—hospitals and places of worship, respectively—vary from state to state. Despite some popular opinion, recent mass-shootings, at their foundation, are not just mental health-based. There are dual elements at their core (the other I will get to, very shortly). The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act under The Federal Gun Free School Zones Act grants exceptions to current and honorably retired law enforcement officers to carry a weapon within a thousand feet of a school zone, per any state that happens to disallow certain conceal carry permit-holders to legally carry a firearm anywhere in public (except, as mentioned, in all federal buildings). Schools are generally now in fact very secure. Nevertheless, implementing plans as a means to significantly decrease the impact of a future incident, in advance, certainly could not hurt.

 

An extremely important and decidedly overlooked attribute from any and all discussion on guns is one that does not call for any new regulatory intervention, at all. In any mass-shooting or gun-crime exists the potential shooter’s empowered knowledge of easy access to a gun. Now, when it comes to secured storage of guns in the home, the majority of gun-owners are deeply responsible. However, still, a great many annual gun-deaths and gun-crimes in the U.S. stem from folks who are to some greater or lesser degree tragically blind in believing their gun(s) could fall into immature, irresponsible, depressed, mentally unstable, or criminal hands. (Half of all teen suicides, for one, are from a gun.) Steel-safes with a key-coded locking system cost anywhere from only $25 to upwards around $230, depending on the size and amount of guns being stored, along with the ammunition. A small price to pay for safety.

Keeping tabs on more irresponsible gun-owners would realistically be more the responsibility of those who have an interest in guns. Rest assured, non-gun-owners could find tactful ways to address it as well. But as an altogether savory incentive, the prospect of less shooting incidents will come with less, general shouts for stronger laws.

 

As for the final and herein most prevalent aspect, there is certainly a recurring pattern to mass-shootings. They involve a male; young and/or unmarried; socially frustrated and/or possibly abused in some way, possibly into substance abuse, and/or mentally and emotionally unstable. As information regarding the recent incident at Newtown is still being analyzed, the young man responsible in this case was a mentally/emotionally unstable resident of a legally qualified gun-owner.

Violence in mental illness is rare, and thoughtfully seeking as well as maintaining faith in proper courses of action for schooling and/or treatment, is obviously a very delicate matter for the family involved. Measures in the Affordable Care Act will allow access to care and treatment of the mentally challenged to be easier, as well as for the rash of violent cases involving combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder back home, all victims of domestic abuse, random street-violence, and bullying.

It is now perfectly essential to improve the accuracy and availability of information in order to get every state to adhere to the law already in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (or, NICS), prohibiting the violently/mentally unstable from being able to buy a gun. Every state must be able to have the financial resources available to report dangerously, mentally imbalanced people to the NICS.

The very first thing which tends to come to my mind upon hearing of a shooting incident is the missed warning-signs. There always has to be some. Within hours after Newtown, I could not help but think back on something I had read regarding the Virginia Tech incident. Here was a case where the future shooter, among other ignored signs, was in a college English class seriously scaring the crap out of his fellow students with his writings. The professor took this upon herself to consult with the Dean. …Good job, right? However, the professor was then instructed to dismiss the matter as not too serious and to then privately tutor the student back in his dorm-room. (…?!) She followed through on this, but under the condition she herself would set up a code-word with an assistant standing outside the dorm-room in case she was to suddenly feel threatened. The assistant would then immediately call for help. Although, eventually, as we all well know the student ended up killing 32 on campus, injuring several more, had sparked a national incident, and then killed himself.

There is a recall to do our best to listen for, be cognizant of, recognize, acknowledge, and utilize whatever our powers of peaceful persuasion to intervene and mediate more obvious warning signs. It is always heart-rendering to hear examples of obvious bullying in schools still treated by any and all of the powers-that-be as some matter-of-course; as something a teen or pre-teen needs to endure on his/her own.

It takes a number of things to go wrong for a plane to go down, or for a nuclear meltdown to occur, and thus multiple precautions have been put in place to prevent these things from occurring. So, I don’t think it is too much to ask to have the same approach when it comes to observing and initiating our own more amicable threat assessments. Over 120 school shooting and/or bombing threats have been stopped across the country by some form of intervention since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School (http://www.reporternews.com/news/2012/dec/18/many-school-shootings-prevented-according-list/).

The Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness sums up quite nicely the whole matter of gun-violence in the final paragraph of his following August, 2012 post: http://blog.nami.org/2012/08/gun-laws-and-mental-health.html.

 

Finally, and just very briefly, a New York Times op-ed published the day after 2012 Election Day (appropriately titled, maybe, “We Need a Little Fear”), included an alarming stat: in 1960, 5% of American children were born to single mothers; as of 2010, that percentage grew to over 40%. Of course, most single mothers are not necessarily single by choice. Some are because of irreconcilable differences with a former spouse or partner. And many cases involve the father-to-be deciding to split upon hearing news of the pregnancy. Then, the anti-abortion/pro-choice woman—oftentimes, of low-income—is left to decide whether to have the child and possibly piece together a support-system. I don’t wish to get into that debate because the ultimate decision should be left up to her. I only dare, frankly mention this particular scenario because raising a possibly male child without a father, on a small income, takes more energy. And with the help of family, friends, and a community—and/or the option to find a more palatable place to live, if available—is not always a given. Love, love, love, communicate with, and guide that child to no end, should she decide to have him or her.

 

If there is a middle ground on reducing gun-violence it is responsible control through reasonable means of protection. (Slide action stocks: unreasonable.) The ultimate social and political goal would be to significantly pacify the threat of violence, in general, as well as come to a better understanding of ourselves. The usual catalyst of a mass-shooting is primarily related to a call for easier access to mental health care and support in every way. And the best annihilator of any gun-crime is all-around, damn-near impossible access to any firearm.

I have never liked the idea ingrained in our culture of a singular hero. And whether we ought to do less with the word or think upon anyone who plays a helpful role as one would be of the exact same difference. But this issue, among others, is in need of serious, practical re-examination and requires a group-effort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvWokFcD22E

Footbull

Today, in America, is Groundhog’s Day. It is an American rural-holiday-weekend, this 2013, as some consider Super Bowl Sunday, the day of professional football’s championship game, an unofficial holiday. The only thing I find interesting about the latter is that two siblings (brothers) happen to actually be competing against one another as the two teams opposing head coaches—which I don’t know has ever happened in the history of professional sports.

I still like playing virtually any sport, but not so much following much of any of them anymore. Basically, the deal-breaker is getting tired of hearing the competing hype. I am largely referring is the number of former players, how they can appear brawny in business attire yet woeful when trying to carry over the hype from the action on or around the field into their analysis. The two factions feed off of one another in order to stimulate competition, in general, but it is really more often than not sheer, ahistorical crap being spun by these ‘analysts’. (Personally, hearing the name of the sport I am watching persistently being used as an adjective, as if I would forget what I am watching, I wish could stop.) Not to mention, I can never forget the time whether ESPN still airs their Sunday morning show, “The Sports Reporters”, seeing an episode where Bob Ryan literally, vehemently stood from his chair to pointedly denounce fellow sportswriter, Mike Lupica, as to how aging Bernie Kosar is still worthy of being a starting quarterback in Dallas! The fact that these guys appeared in suits instead of regular clothes was pompous, apart from these two almost appearing to nearly come to blows over something which nobody really cared about.

Having been a longtime Sox-Yankees and Carolina-Duke fan, (favoring the side listed first, here, of course) I still sneak a peek at whatever the standings are every now and again. But I have come to understand that life goes on and a game is just a game. A team wins any game, for the day, so that they and their fan-base can have bragging rights for the day. Tomorrow, and everything that comes with it, always begins anew.

Yet with football, now: wow. What a mess. Tickets to see a game for a group of four, including the price of parking, in some stadiums, the home-team better not only win but I would insist on a LOT more entertainment for my buck, to boot. Who is or is not using performance-enhancing drugs, determining whether the physical body can be built to endure the current level of punishment courtesy of the physical demands being placed on the players, the commissioner of the NFL addressed these among other concerns in his state of the league address, yesterday, ahead of tomorrow’s Super Bowl game. Commenting on what has become a part of the national conversation, on the subject of concussions—which specifically includes CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) as well as what is tentatively being called second-impact syndrome which affects people under the age of 25, and PCS (post-concussion syndrome)—I think he was more or less thinking of sales when responding, at one point, when it comes to tackling, “to take the head out of the game”. Is this not monstrously unrealistic? I mean, the head is not just involved in tackling. For one, we might as well consider taking the run out of the game as lineman’s heads in particular are constantly colliding in order to block. Considering the overall context, we are probably years and millions of dollars away from medical research developing a drug or hormone to reduce the effects of concussions, developing scanners for physicians to detect poison-tau in the deep-brain folds in advance, and to better understand the genetic variability of concussions from athlete to athlete. Teenagers are dying, or their overall potential is being hindered in some way as a result of how every hit matters from their youth on up. Better cushioned helmets don’t matter so much as kids are getting bigger and faster yet lack mature muscle in and around their necks to withstand the whiplash of the brain hitting against the skull, even if they can see the hit coming. “The best helmets in the world don’t stop rotational forces, where the brain whips around and snaps back,” says Dr. Robert Cantu, co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (from “This is Your Brain on Football”, Rolling Stone, January 31, 2013).

Most brains heal themselves after prolonged physical and cognitive rest, but when it comes to parents seeking the grail of scholarship for their children, this is the most serious concern, altogether. CTE, SIS, and PCS are not of course exclusively related to football, as it naturally impacts soldiers in combat, as well as hockey, field-hockey, boxing, even soccer, and what is statistically ranked second to football in sport head-injuries: cheerleading. If you want to teach or learn strategy, learn chess, play cards, consider learning the value of competitive sports where physical contact is not nearly as severe. Yet, Americans have vicariously invested a lot of time in a ‘game’ that underpins that which culturally prides sacrifice.

The Animal Planet channel continues to stage, every year, what they call the Puppy Bowl: just a bunch of puppies, really, romping around a small, made-up field. It is time to upgrade to cats against puppies, I think, for it is a dog-eat-dog world out there, won by cats.

Pre-Inaugural Address…

…(among other things) courtesy of D&D.

 

Less is Better

I am so tired of living amongst shallow people, with shallow wants and needs or hopes and dreams; who in one way or another fall somewhere along the ideological spectrum on any given thing, yet seem afraid to think or express too deeply out of fear of what their better natures might uncover.  …At least it certainly feels this way, for the most part.

For it to become too common-place for both chambers of Congress to consistently average an approval-rating roughly in the teens reflects upon the citizenry as much as it does Congress.  The next person ’hates’ polarized politics just as much as you — all the more reason then to break the status-quo by writing, calling, or in some way better contributing to any given national conversation.

Composite Letter to the Speaker of the House

Mr. Speaker,

Thank you for responding. Forgive the delayed response. Norton security updates had tripped up my ability to connect to the internet for a while, as so I had been utilizing public library computers, and I had also been more than unusually busy during this time of year. Not nearly as much yourself, it seems…

I am not sure whether your office will get to read this before a deal on the so-called fiscal cliff will be reached, but I felt compelled to respond nonetheless…

Mr. Speaker, we live in the Information Age. Yet, one concern I keep having regarding our lack of compromise these days is how some Republican constituents in particular choose not to fact-check their representatives or listen to more impartial sources of information. For instance: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=165186992&m=165186957

As you may have listened here, as stated from my previous message, there are still quite a few oversights in citing this Ernst & Young study, as cited in your response regarding tax cuts amongst the very wealthy costing the country roughly 700,000 jobs over ten years. The Congressional Budget Office indicated the around 200,000 jobs which would initially be lost towards the beginning of 2013 would quickly be regained, and also indicated a strong chance of about 12 million jobs being created over ten years as a result of the increase in the tax-revenue among the top 2% income earners.

Anytime a member of the GOP starts with doomsday talk at the prospect of higher tax revenue, on account of the very rich, I have come to hear this as a sign of promise. Please tell me you are not afraid of losing the small percentage on the far-right who unfairly deem the President as a ‘socialist’, for there are many on the left as you may happen to know who view his first four years in office as that of a moderate Republican. (Some of them claim to be conservatives—pundits, business owners—who again claimed to have voted for Mr. Obama in hopes the Republican Party might reach some sense of normalcy again.)

Now, just hear me out, if you will, for I sincerely do not wish to come across as an ideologue. Of your citing Ernst & Young in your radio message and Governor Romney citing the National Federation of Independent Businesses in the first of the 2012 Presidential debates, both organizations happen to be right-of-center organizations funded by opponents of the President. And the CBO is non-partisan. (Also, I still cannot help find it coincidental how Mr. Romney towards the end of his campaign boasted that he would create 12 million new jobs, in just his four years as President.)

One of my favorite bits of banter throughout this last campaign was how the President had two years, with a Democratic House and Senate, to ‘fix things’.[1] Well, Republicans have had about 32 years to prove their rugged-individualist/survival-of-the-fittest socio-economic interpretation of the American Dream—supply-side, or ‘trickle-down’, economics—could work.

Under this economic philosophy, under every Republican administrator over this time-period, the national deficit has managed to significantly increase partially due to tax-cuts along with an inability to lessen government spending in order to help offset the lack of tax-revenue. This last Republican Presidential nominee was very close to winning the election with a palpably near mad-scientist interpretation, proposing to cut everyone’s tax-rate (including the very rich) by 20%. But, he fell very short in teaching leadership-by-example without so much as intending, for example, to offer specific adjustments to a tax-code that further benefit the uppermost income-earners. This left a lot of faith in the private sector to create jobs, generate revenue, and pay down the deficit.

Republicans threw everything they could at President Obama in this past election so to prevent him from obtaining a re-election-free, second-term agenda, and then some: obstructionism courtesy of this “silent” filibuster in the Senate (not of your particular concern, but just as a matter of principle, I believe, in need of reform), desperate disinformation, attempts at voter suppression in Florida as well as in other swing-states, shallow media coverage, knucklehead distractions like the 24% of white evangelicals who still believe him to be a Muslim (in other words, closet-extremist) or that he was not born in this country. All of this, yet the President still managed to win.

The Tea Party’s beginning was not so much a grass-roots combustion but something considerably funded and advanced along by the hugely billionaire, long-armed triumvirate of the Koch brothers. George Will fashionably cited “journalistic malpractice” in “underestimating” the Tea Party on an episode of ABC’s “This Week”, close to Election Day. Apparently he meant overestimating. Going back to their beginning in 2009-10, apart from predictable wins in red states, so-called Tea Partiers have now lost Republicans at least four Senate seats, ultimately to Democrats, and arguably played a considerable role in helping Republicans lose the White House. Seeing them predominantly win nothing more than Congressional districts is understandable, from this point forward, as well as not worth politically fighting too much for.

After a brief coming-up for air, post-Election Day, as an unnecessary epilogue to a campaign that felt like watching two parents argue over money, every day, for about six months, again we came face-to-face with the looming repercussions of the 2011 Budget Control Act, aka, the ‘fiscal cliff’: a procrastination of federal budget challenges drawn up by leaders as a motivational tool to reach a compromise.

I am writing to you because this matter is clearly now more in the hands of Republican leadership, based upon impartial sources of information as well as consistent polling numbers. Mr. Speaker, it is time to focus together on seeking to address many another big challenge facing our present and future rather than impose personal or ahistorical political will at such an inopportune time. Challenges, such as: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/07/166713194/world-bank-issues-alarming-climate-report.

As stated in my previous message, I have never known the Republican Party to be more the symbol of regular folk. I am told that it once had been. I find it morally imperative to work for a living and as well put a high premium on personal responsibility. But it is certainly more than on an intellectual level that I find the Republican Party to be the party that favors the rich. Under the current White House proposal, people making $400,001 per year, would probably get the worst of the whole fiscal deal. But, $400,000 is still a lot of money, no matter where in the country a person may live. It is the one percent of the one percent—the multi-billionaires in charge of energy and hedge-fund management, among other ventures—like David, Charles, and William Koch, Steve Schwarzman, and Harold Simmons, to name a few—who have been able to get away with selling the rugged-individualist message yet not so much working harder than many amongst the working-poor but by virtue of buying ginormous amounts of political influence.

The interpretation of the American Dream I hear every so often, that every person deep-down aspires to be rich, always makes me quite uncomfortable. This has never been my interpretation. Don’t get me wrong, I can be a fervent competitor and am definitely a better person as a result of being challenged in ways I would have probably never sought to on my own. But even winning the lottery (which I generally don’t participate in) comes from a pool of hard-earned participant’s earnings. Opportunity creates itself, but I certainly do not believe it is considered equal from birth. I just feel that personal growth is not necessarily measured by individual wealth. And the hard-bitten reality in our culture is that tax-cuts as well as tax-breaks for the very top still tend to cater to the dark dalliances of accumulating more in terms of greed—not quite so much towards opportunism, as recent history evidences.

There is nothing wrong with being rich, so long as one does not use their money to buy, influence, control, or manipulate power. If one makes $25 billion per year in oil and spends roughly $60 million on just trying to unseat the President during a campaign, while having his foundation-people speak around the country as to the value of free-enterprise, there are simply no wind and solar CEOs who can compete with this level of clout. David Koch, alone, seems clearly out to bury the competition and to stifle these growing trends which recognize the reality of climate-change as well as new and growing sources of cleaner energy.

With technology continuing to make access to information faster and more portable, I try to insist that more Republican constituents fact-check their representatives. For instance:

• Lloyd Blankfein recently lobbied on Capitol Hill on behalf of privatizing Social Security and Medicare. He had taken in between $16-17 million in personal earnings last year, while Goldman Sachs appeared to have lost money. I find this level of placating on his part as a clear representation of short-sighted values.
• Senator Chambliss of Georgia expressed more care for his country than for a twenty-year tax pledge and then said pledge’s author responded with a veiled threat that the Senator is at risk of losing his job? …How telling is this? Like the Ambassador Rice-Benghazi matter, this is simply bizarre. We are not talking about breaking from a treaty or a doctrine or a law of any sort, but from something that simply has no greater clout than a pinky-swear. I wonder if the Senator is thinking of a warm place for his foot to join the lobbyist’s head and would thus rather not wish losing his job over allowing taxes to go up on everyone, come January 1, 2013.
• You mentioned as one of your goals here in your response, that “repealing the president’s health care law – which is raising costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire new workers – must be on the table as well.” Now just for the sake of clarity, you did not mention negotiating to repeal aspects of the Affordable Care Act, but to repeal the whole law which happens to be nicknamed after the very person you are sitting across from. This is very unrealistic from an initial negotiating stance.

The repercussions of going over the cliff would not really kick in until the end of January 2013, yet some postulate how over the very long haul it might be the hard medicine this country would need towards reducing our deficit. However, even temporarily sinking back into recession is too great a risk.

We are $16 trillion in the hole. The visceral trust-issue the right has with the left is with alleged, wasteful spending and/or a need for entitlement-reform—people getting a bargain for how much government spends on each individual’s behalf. For one, the amount in Medicare benefits received is a little over three times the amount for which a taxpayer making $40,000/year puts in, in Medicare taxes. Regarding healthcare spending, in general, I am insured, and always conscientious of agreeing to more than what I need. But, of course, I cannot speak for everyone on this.

I recently asked my father what exactly is considered ‘wasteful spending?’, and he was quick to reply: it is whatever a particular congressperson says is wasteful. I also have to admit that I just didn’t think it was possible for a Democrat to be referred to as a ‘bully’, but I guess it is. It was not made perfectly clear to me until this past week how the birth of the Tea Party was not only a more cynical result of President Obama’s initial, first-term spending but also to the W. Bush years’ spending and general inability to lessen it. A catalyst for President Obama’s spending was the stimulus package. The original amount, if I can recall, was tapered down for the sake of Republican interests. Yet, the final, lessened amount was still passed on a Democrat-party-line vote and as predicted by more Keynesian economists, in the end, did not spend enough to make enough. Also, some economist’s outlook of the recession was worse than they had initially imagined, when the package was drawn up.

 

It is my understanding that in a time of economic crisis, the federal government is pretty well expected to be the tide that lifts all boats? Yes? No? We all know we had a surplus going at the beginning of the 21st century that was virtually flipped on its head. We entered into two wars—one, without proper evidence—without knowing fully how we were going to pay for them. And, accountability for the lending/banking crisis has been practically non-existent.

But here we are, in the here and now. We need to cite and examine the mistakes both ideologies have made over the past twelve years from an honest philosophical perspective. It stinks, but I am willing—no, I am in fact eager—to make the reasonably hard as well as assuredly not-so difficult sacrifices in order to help get us out of this hole and contemporaneously maintain a balanced budget and responsibly create jobs, provided we STOP with the presumptive, overreaching ambition, political posturing, or half-implementations of what worked in the recent past. We cannot cut or raise taxes if we cannot be expected to lessen spending.

There has been enough quarreling to prove we should now move on with a clean slate. Enough information is there for every adult to—provided we are properly treated as such—be self-sufficient and responsible.

Also, on a side-note, based upon this President’s first-term record, I doubt fear of a financial increase in regulations would be any more drastic than past Presidential second-terms.

The visceral trust-issue the left has with the right is with the disparity of wealth. We just went through the housing and banking crisis to reaffirm that. I firmly doubt those who significantly helped bring our economy to its knees—and then some who had the nerve to shamelessly, personally incentivize their public bailout money—are registered Democrats. Not to mention, the average worker salary, adjusted to inflation, has not changed since just before 1980 while the CEO-to-average-worker ratio has risen from 20:1 in 1965, 383:1 in 2000, and 231:1 in 2011 (all numbers according to a May 2012 report by the Economic Policy Institute, “CEO pay and the top 1%”).

Nowadays, when people seem to go onto any political talk show and are asked questions about the economy, they’ll make a good case for the first part of their answer. But then the second part will veer off into blaming the other side and political posturing. Maybe this is done out of habit; whether it reflects genuine fear (which I kind of doubt), insecurity, or general uncertainty, but it defeats the whole purpose of the first part of the answer. It’s just completely redundant. And so then it’s: stay tuned next week for the same set of answers in our ongoing economic saga. …Make a strong case, and either own up to either of one’s own party’s faults or just zip it!

Our national conversation cannot continue to remain so default-polarized, on this or any issue, but certainly one that seems quite shallow compared to others, in order to reach common ground. Congress’ overall approval rating, as well, cannot remain averaging in the teens as a representation of the new normal.

If anything, the corporate tax-rate is too high and significantly lowering it might be worth discussing in order to boost job creation, to go with discussion of entitlement reform. Revisiting some of the President’s jobs bills from his previous term might be worth reconsidering. (The Veteran’s Jobs Bill, for instance, which the Senate voted in favor of 58-40 [not enough to break the filibuster-proof 60], was a proposed bill to be funded with $1 billion in imposing penalties on Medicare providers delinquent on their taxes against an $800 billion aforementioned, as-yet-to-be-funded war.)

How we determine how government should or should not spend our money reflects—as with practically everything else—personal responsibility. Look around, see what opportunities do and do not exist, and ask how exactly certain opportunities are going to surmise. Perhaps we can break apart the big banks? How can we get private investment and entrepreneurship interested in neighborhoods that have always been relatively desolate? How can we get people left under their own, individual devices to realistically operate under a similar moral and civic code?

Give in to popular opinion now and in the future we can all learn to be better teachers through open, honest, and civilized discussion and debate.

There just seems to be very little established, fundamental decency between either party, towards policy, right now, for which this ‘cliff’ matter is a direct result.

Thank you very much again for your time.

Sincerely,

Douglas Conroy

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[1] One other bit was the omnipresent political weasel Newt Gingrich contending, among other voices, the amount of times Congressman Ryan was interrupted during the Vice Presidential debate—the operative word, of course, being ‘debate’. But, anytime Congressman Ryan speaks in front of a camera, his coolness tends to shift into a sort of frustrated rock-star conviction and it is almost imperative someone be there to ‘interrupt’ him.