The Other Side of the Gun Control Debate

First of all, I'm not going to talk about Newtown.  It was a tragedy that resulted a year ago in the killing of twenty children, and was followed by the abomination of lobbying that has prevented -- a year later -- the gun control that the American people were calling for.

And I'm not here to talk about the "other side" of the debate that pretends to make the 2nd Amendment about a right handed down by God and our founding fathers for all of us to be able to be armed to the teeth.

The other side of the argument that all us citizens need to be armed has a great deal to do with how armed our police have become.  While we weren't looking, we went from the creation of well trained SWAT teams to be used in cases of extreme threat to small town SWAT teams with military weaponry and little training who are very excited about using their new toys.

We're not talking about breaking into houses that hold caches of weapons, nor are we talking about busting large drug cartels, although we hear plenty about it on the rare occasion that it happens.  The invasions into private homes today are nearly always about finding small amounts of drugs, often for private use, or breaking up friendly poker games.  Damage is done to homes, pets are shot.  The terror is coming, today, from our own police forces.

And far too often, those SWAT raids happen at the wrong address, or with misinformation that has not been adequately corroborated.

We hear about our police on the front lines risking their lives as though our neighborhoods were war zones.  We have come to accept that innocents can be harassed, homes broken into, without warrants, without warning, because otherwise drugs might be flushed, guns might be used against the police in the time it takes to assure citizens their rights.

Community policing should be, and once was, intended to be a friendly police presence in the community.  Today it has become an "us against them" mentality, wherein the police in the community need to be on the lookout for all of us citizens, who may be breaking the law.  The crimes we are suspected of range from carrying dope to looking like an illegal immigrant.

We may be thinking that "stop and frisk" is on its way out in New York, but that remains to be seen.  Despite the polite phraseology, Arizona's "papers, please" law has resulted in increased harassment by and fear of the local police.

A few years ago, my daughter, then an undergraduate at a university in another state, commented that while there were unsolved rapes in the college community, police presence was high but more often associated with random stops for suspicion of driving under the influence than for preventing dangerous criminal activity.  And where the police force has a SWAT team, while bulletproof vests and military weaponry might allow some police to feel safer, they are likely to use that force against small or questionable crimes.  If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.  

Radley Balko has written quite a bit about the militarization of our police.  His book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces,  is extensively researched and an essential component in understanding America's fixation on fire power.  We may all believe that the police need that weaponry to protect themselves from criminals, but what if the criminals are perceived to be us?  What is the cost, in lives, in quality of life, in dollars, to protect police whose primary duty once was to protect us?

As the police escalate their war against those suspected criminals among us, the pressure is on to defend ourselves, isn't it?  Maybe the solution to all this obsession with guns and defense is a de-escalation on both sides.

What?  You think I'm being paranoid?  Overreacting?  How about a $658,000 armored vehicle designed to "protect SWAT team officers... from dangerous confrontations?"  You may think we don't need one here, but now that Columbia has one, maybe Charleston is next in line.  After all, here in South Carolina we may not want those federal Medicaid dollars, but you never know when you might need a tank to break up one of those illegal poker games.
     

What's New on April 1

Here are some news items for South Carolina:

A bill has been introduced in the state legislature banning nuclear weapons strikes within the state, but it does allow individuals to carry rocket launchers.

Jim DeMint has been forced to resign from his position as president of a national think tank, due to the fact that he has run out of thoughts.

And lastly, Mark Sanford is reported missing.  He is thought to be campaigning on the Appalachian Trail.

Isn't it a great day in South Carolina?!

Nikki Cuddles Up While We Pay Up

So who among us is surprised that Governor Haley wants to appoint an insurance industry lobbyist to run the state insurance agency?

Scandal is no stranger to Governor Haley, and no more so than in her relationship with the insurance industry.

In 2011, after less than one year, David Black resigned the post.  With no official statement it was nonetheless not hard to jump to the conclusion that he was reluctant to be the fall guy on Haley's Health Planning Committee, which spent a million dollars in federal health care reform grant money for the purpose of determining that South Carolina would not participate in the health exchange.  In Nikki's own words, the directive to the committee was:

"the whole point of this commission should be to figure out how to opt out and how to avoid a federal takeover, NOT create a state exchange."


Not hard to understand why Mr. Black was unable to stomach the workings of the Haley administration.  Also easy to understand Haley's move in nominating Ray Farmer this time around.  AIA is absolutely tickled that this 32 year insurance insider is now going to the government side.

Fortunately, there has been a bit closer scrutiny of this nominee, but who among us will be surprised when Mr. Farmer gets the green light?

Meanwhile, if you spend much of your free time reeling from the high cost of all kinds of insurance premiums, too many of which are higher than claims and conditions in the state would warrant, our state government is hard at work to get you to stop griping.

No, they are NOT going to challenge the insurance industry.  What they WILL do is give you a tax credit to offset those too large premiums.  That's right folks, instead of getting the wealthy and powerful insurance industry to lower their premiums (and hence, their profit), our state is going to give us back some of our tax dollars.  That's less money for schools and teachers, roads and bridges, police officers, libraries, hospitals, colleges.

So check out the Excess Insurance Premium Credit, brought to you by Governor Nikki Haley, who loves nothing better than using your tax dollars to keep industry fat and happy. 

When It Gets Close to Home

I can get outraged over hearing that Arizona, always first in fearmongering, keeps trying to make more guns legal in more places, including schools, but when I heard that North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey had plans to put police in all the city's elementary schools, I realized that it was not just about guns.

Here in South Carolina we love our guns.  I'm hearing now that banning semi-automatics would cause harm to hunters. I imagine before semi-automatics all those deer and wild turkeys just about thumbed their noses at their stalkers.  And when it comes to our government spending money on its citizens, you can forget about it unless we're talking weaponry.

Because this is the situation:


We have schools where we are unwilling to spend tax dollars to improve curricula, to pay teachers a living wage, to repair buildings.  We have a state that cuts services to residents and cuts taxes to the point where its public employees are unable to earn a living wage and care for their families.  We are at the top of the list of states for unemployment, teen pregnancies, school dropouts.  We gift corporations with tax breaks and cut mental health services to the bone.  Parents work two jobs, fearsome hours, and still struggle to make ends meet, while often unavailable for their children.

Yet our leaders jump at the chance of arming our schools.  Guns is good.  Cost is no problem.

The priorities of our leaders here in South Carolina have led us to where tax dollars go to prisons over schools, and now to school patrols rather than education.

Our elected officials value their weapons over our children, and their futures will reflect that in increased fear and danger.

If you haven't ever lived a life where you felt secure, it's harder to believe in yourself, to take risks, to go out into the world and live a happy, successful life.

And here in South Carolina we're not going to pay for a good school in a safe community where parents are confident they can take care of their children.

But we will pay our police to patrol the halls of your children's schools.

Turning Blood into Dollars

I didn't think for a minute that the NRA silence last week meant that they were worried.  True to form, they came out from under their rock with balls blazing.

As you've probably heard, NRA's evil spokesperson, Wayne LaPierre, stunned us all on Friday by taking absolutely no responsibility for the shooting of 20 children by assault weapon one week earlier.  Rather, he suggested we keep files on the mentally ill, and arm everybody else.

This is only clever in the sense that it worked.  The NRA was able to not only take back the debate with a vengeance, but round up in support every single paranoid gun wacko in the country.  AND, most important, provide a huge new market for the gun manufacturers that are the NRA's true constituency:  arming the schools.

Gun shops are doing a booming business, and the media isn't waiting to get on board.  The NBC Nightly News was happy to present a segment on how several schools are arming themselves and feeling relieved that their children are now being protected.

The NRA has stated that -- as a public service -- they will be more than happy to advise us on how best to arm our teachers and children.  Yes, they will help us find training programs for our children.

The saddest things about all this is that, the wackos may be far fewer than those of us who want to keep our children safe by outlawing weapons that might kill them, but the wacko faction is far louder.  They will be heard, and, as with the nuts that fell off the trees to attend the Health Care Town Halls a couple of summers ago, they will be showing up to fight for the right to bear arms.  The media will report it back to us, and they will drown out the moderate voices that are trying to find reasonable solutions.

My own local gun store:

is usually a quiet place, but over the past week, the parking lot has been full.  Folks out here aren't even going to wait for the next tax-free gun holiday.

And the NRA?  They're about as tickled as Chick-Fil-A last summer when all the gay bashers lined up to show their support for this good Christian organization.

Me, I just hope there are enough people that can hold onto their rage over our children and their teachers risking their lives so that Bubba can carry his erectile extender around.

All we have is words, BUT WE NEED TO SHOUT THEM OUT.

South Carolina's Idiot of the Month

I found election night depressing.  I thought everybody in the country would be depressed, until I watched the national news the next day.  It seems I had forgotten that I now live in South Carolina.

Here in South Carolina, we are proud that our relationship with God means that we can be ignorant.  And the poster child for that philosophy is re-elected US Representative Jeff Duncan.

He is a proud Tea Party member and fondly helped along by the ever-so-radical FreedomWorks, so right-wing he arm-wrestles Jim DeMint for the title of biggest right-wing-nut in Congress.

His claim to fame nationally was just about a year ago, when he asserted that allowing "illegals" to stay in this country was like letting vagrants and animals into your house, maybe looking for food, or maybe just wanting to do your dishes.

Closer to home, in 2007 Duncan sponsored a bill to allow guns to be carried concealed into any public school.  This was his empathic, God-directed response to the mass killing at Virginia Tech.  His logic of course was that had there been  some good ole' boy carryin' his weapon, that shooter would have been taken down, pronto.  Even in South Carolina, that bill was quietly put to sleep.

Jeff doesn't think up things like that all on his own.  He will tell you ad nauseum that he does pray for God's help in making decisions in Congress.  Amazingly, God has never disagreed with Duncan's view on any proposed legislation.

Jeff Duncan was disappointed in the presidential election outcome.  I doubt that Mitt would have tickled his fancy either -- far too left-wing for our Jeff.

So Congressman Duncan has decided that it's going to just be up to the House of Representatives to carry on the fight for democracy.  That means things like drilling closer to shore, a national sales tax, ridding us of that "job killing and socialistic" Obamacare, and of course getting those nasty illegals out of this great Christian land of ours.

It was with some pleasure, then, that I found five minutes from Duncan on You-Tube from last November:

Our representative was horrified, just horrified, that our President had failed to give thanks to God during his Thanksgiving address to the nation.

The thing that most tickled me about this, and reminded me that South Carolina does not a country make, is that there were about four times as many "dislike" ratings than "likes."  Having lived here for some thirteen years now, I sometimes lose my perspective.  So thank you, the rest of the country, for reaffirming that Jeff Duncan is a jackass.

Also, though, keep an eye on him this month, because November seems to be when his stupidity and arrogance busts out all over, kind of like a reverse spring.  I guarantee he will have lots more to say about what's wrong with everybody but him and those other crazies in Congress, and I for one, will not want to miss it.

So, Jeff Duncan, congratulations on being November's South Carolina's Idiot of the Month. 

Wasting Breath

I just opened yet another email today asking me to contact my representative.  This time, yet another excellent group wants me to plead with Tim Scott to vote no to taking funds away from poor women and children.


Again?


How often do you expect me to call or email Representative Scott's office only to get an email back telling me once again why it is so critical to our nation's well-being that he keep those poor women and children from sucking the country dry?  I understand that these poor folk are not job creators, unless you think that spending every penny of government assistance on goods and services which in turn will require more goods and services to be created....  But obviously, Tim Scott disagrees.  He believes that the only way to create jobs is to free up big industries to pollute, pay lower wages, and charge whatever they want for needed goods.


This, you see, is the problem.  There is no reasoning with Mr. Scott.  He has never been in the position of having to decide whether to take a child to the doctor or buy groceries.  He is, however, able to do basic math, and understands that giving $1 to a mother to buy a loaf of bread (store brand, on sale), is a dollar out of one of his constituent's pockets.  Of course, not my pocket, because I, too, am not a job creator.  I, on the other hand, would waste any dollar offered me by spending it on bread and medical care.  And unfortunately, for Mr. Scott, that is higher math.

What's the Matter with SC?

I don't think it's the children that are slow....

Lemonade Out of Lemons

With our own Nikki Haley in the forefront of the national voter suppression movement, we Democrats have been handed a golden opportunity.


This is our chance to organize a very special Get Out the Vote campaign.


We can spend the rest of 2011 organizing and fundraising on all levels, local, county, state.  In January of 2012, we will be ready.


Ready to move out into the community, knocking on doors, doing interviews on the radio, running television ads.  We will be ready to arm angry and disenfranchised voters -- or voters who are not even yet aware that their ability to vote in 2012 has been snatched from them.  We can arm them with their right to vote.


We don't need to wait for candidates.  This is a campaign that will write itself.  We can educate people throughout South Carolina six months before the primaries.  We can go door to door, not for a candidate, but with voter registration forms in hand, as well as information about how to get the requisite voter ID.  "Don't let the South Carolina legislature and Nikki Haley keep you from voting."  We can offer volunteers to take potential voters to the DMV.


This is the way to do voter outreach like it hasn't been done in forty years.  The people are ready -- is the Democratic Party?

In the News -- April 1, 2011

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that amounts of radiation found in the water on the East and West Coasts of the U.S. coming from Japan could actually be beneficial.  Unfortunately, since budget cuts have reduced the staff of the EPA to three graduate students and a retired tobacco CEO, this is merely a "best guess" scenario.  On their recommendation, however, President Obama vows to redouble efforts to increase the number of nuclear power plants under construction.  Asked for comment, John Boehner responded, "Jobs, jobs, jobs."

The Central Intelligence Agency is searching for some sleazoid to put in power in Libya after Gaddafi goes into exile.  While there are no apparent hard and fast requirements, the candidate should pretend to like the United States, and if not an all-out supporter of capitalism, at least be willing to accept large amounts of  cash.

Representative Eric Cantor admits to failing his required college government course repeatedly.  "I don't know what it was about U.S. Government," he confided, "probably all those complicated checks and balances."  He confirmed in a news conference yesterday that he has been using John Boehner's old cheatsheets as guidelines for determining House rules.

Also, in a remarkably cynical turn of events, President Barack Obama has announced that he will run in 2012 as a Republican.  "It seems that I only get respect from folk like Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn.  I try to explain to those people on the left that voted for me in '08 that it's all about compromise, well, let this just be proof of that.  There is no greater compromise than complete surrender," he said to new friend Bill O'Reilly.

In local South Carolina news on this April 1:

An audit of Governor Nikki Haley concluded that Governor Haley has in fact paid all federal taxes that were due.

And The Lord came to Senator Jim DeMint today, explaining that in fact, it is His will that those who have should help those with less. 

The Biggest Bargain in The Country -- Or Is It?

When I looked at my property tax bill in December, I was flummoxed.  With funding cuts to important services like libraries, and essential services like police and schools, my property taxes had gone down.


South Carolina does it again.  If there's a problem here, goes the common wisdom, it can be solved by cutting taxes.  And if taxes go down for the poor and middle class, you can be sure there are even bigger bargains for the wealthy -- corporate and individuals alike.


There is an eye-opening article on the SC Progressive Network website, written by Dr. Holley Ulbrich, which details the immoral aspects of our tax code here in South Carolina.  Now, the wealthy are indeed pillaging and plundering our government services throughout the country, but there is a special place for us here in SC:  our taxation rate ranks 47th out of 51 (including the District of Columbia) as percent of income, and an impressive 51st in taxes per capita.


Governor Nikki Haley would have us think that the pitifully low taxes would attract business to South Carolina, but in actual fact, many firms take their business to states where there is a better educated work force, better transportation, better government services in general.


Whether or not businesses locate here, the fact is that our legislators' philosophy of government in general is immoral.  Governor Haley does not believe it is the responsibility of government (read, taxpayer) to fund schools.  Let the churches pay for educating the poor; the wealthy, well, the wealthy can take care of themselves, although Haley et al. are happy to help out with government assistance whenever possible.  And if education gets bad enough and joblessness, crime and illness are on the rise, we can turn to our corporate bedfellows and just privatize.


The geniuses that own this philosophy, from DeMint to Haley,  just don't have to think past privatizing, but if they did they would come up against the fact that it takes government -- taxes -- to pay corporations to run prisons and hospitals.  And when corporations take over government services, the cost skyrockets, and services plummet.  Call this the Blackwater/Halliburton syndrome.


And that, folks, leaves us with the kind of debt that our country inherited from the Bush years, where tax cutting and privatizing ruled the land, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq.


It may be that corporations are the way to go for goods, but when it comes to services, our government is the best bargain in town.  And that means taxation.


There are protests here in South Carolina, demanding that Governor Haley adopt a "moral budget".





We need to step up and be heard.  South Carolina can do better, but it will take the people of this state to stand up and make the legislators accountable.