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Javier E

Clash of Republican Con Artists - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...of-republican-con-artists.html

gop demagogue campaign politics crisis 2016 candidates

shared by Javier E on 04 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Republicans are going to nominate a candidate who talks complete nonsense on domestic policy; who believes that foreign policy can be conducted via bullying and belligerence; who cynically exploits racial and ethnic hatred for political gain.
  • But that was always going to happen, however the primary season turned out. The only news is that the candidate in question is probably going to be Donald Trump
  • is he more fraudulent than the establishment trying to stop him? Not really.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Donald Trump is a “con artist,” says Marco Rubio — who has promised to enact giant tax cuts, undertake a huge military buildup and balance the budget without any cuts in benefits to Americans over 55.
  • “There can be no evasion and no games,” thunders Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House — whose much-hyped budgets are completely reliant on “mystery meat,” that is, it claims trillions of dollars in revenue can be collected by closing unspecified tax loopholes and trillions more saved through unspecified spending cuts.
  • Oh, and it’s Ted Cruz, not Mr. Trump, who seems eager to “carpet bomb” people, without appearing to know what that means
  • Yes, he’s a con man, but they all are. So why is this con job different from any other? The answer, I’d suggest, is that the establishment’s problem with Mr. Trump isn’t the con he brings; it’s the cons he disrupts.
  • First, there’s the con Republicans usually manage to pull off in national elections — the one where they pose as a serious, grown-up party honestly trying to grapple with America’s problems. The truth is that that party died a long time ago, that these days it’s voodoo economics and neocon fantasies all the way down.
  • Equally important, the Trump phenomenon threatens the con the G.O.P. establishment has been playing on its own base. I’m talking about the bait and switch in which white voters are induced to hate big government by dog whistles about Those People, but actual policies are all about rewarding the donor class.
  • I find the prospect of a Trump administration terrifying, and so should you. But you should also be terrified by the prospect of a President Rubio, sitting in the White House with his circle of warmongers, or a President Cruz, whom one suspects would love to bring back the Spanish Inquisition.
  • we should actually welcome Mr. Trump’s ascent. Yes, he’s a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people’s cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times.
katyshannon

Islamic State says 'Schweppes bomb' used to bring down Russian plane | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...te-photo-idUSKCN0T725Q20151119

islamic state bomb down russian plane soda can reuters crisis

shared by katyshannon on 19 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Islamic State's official magazine carried a photo on Wednesday of a Schweppes soft drink can it said was used to make an improvised bomb that brought down a Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula last month, killing all 224 people on board.
  • The photo showed a can of Schweppes Gold soft drink and what appeared to be a detonator and switch on a blue background, three simple components that if genuine are likely to cause concern for airline safety officials worldwide.
  • "The divided Crusaders of the East and West thought themselves safe in their jets as they cowardly bombarded the Muslims of the Caliphate," the English language Dabiq magazine said in reference to Russia and the West. "And so revenge was exacted upon those who felt safe in the cockpits."Western governments have said the Airbus A321 operated by Metrojet was likely brought down by a bomb and Moscow confirmed on Tuesday it had reached the same conclusion, but the Egyptian government said it has still not found evidence of criminal action.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Explosives experts said it was feasible the device shown in the photo could bring down a plane, depending on where it was located and the density of explosives in the soft drink can. The most vulnerable locations include the fuel line, the cockpit or anywhere close to the fuselage skin.
  • Experts added that the photo could also provide a key clue in tracking Islamic State as the detonator pictured was a commercial one, which could be traced back to its manufacturer.
  • State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday the U.S. government was not in a position to confirm "the veracity" of the magazine's claim.
  • activity is likely the reason," he said, referring to the crash.
  • "We do believe that terrorist
  • also published a photo of what it said were passports belonging to dead Russians "obtained by the mujahideen". It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the published photos.The group, which has seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq, said it had exploited a loophole at Sharm al-Sheikh airport, where the plane originated, in order to smuggle a bomb on board.
  • The airport is widely used by budget and charter airlines to fly tourists to the nearby resorts on the Sinai coast.
  • said it had initially planned to bring down a plane belonging to a country participating in the U.S.-led coalition bombing it in Syria and Iraq, but it changed course after Moscow started its own air strikes campaign in Syria.
  • Islamic State's Egyptian branch, Sinai Province, claimed responsibility for the attack the day it happened but Egyptian officials were quick to dismiss talk of a bomb as premature.
Megan Flanagan

White House Finalizes Proposal To Expand Background Checks On Gun Sales - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...posal_5669c2d3e4b009377b24274a

shared by Megan Flanagan on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • advisers are finalizing a proposal that would expand background checks on gun sales without congressional approval.
  • president has asked his team to complete a proposal and submit it for his review "in short order.
  • include measures to expand background checks.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • his team was looking for ways to tighten gun laws without a vote in Congress
  • exploring closing the so-called "gun show loophole"
johnsonma23

Sanders works to neutralize Clinton's assault on his gun record - LA Times - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...nders-guns-20160117-story.html

gun US history

shared by johnsonma23 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Sanders works to neutralize Clinton's assault on his gun record
  • Hillary Clinton seeks to weaken his upstart bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' is primed to quell the onslaught of criticism over his record on guns.
  • Sanders cautioned that he had concerns about the legislation, which in a Republican-controlled Congress faces an uphill battle, and said he would propose an amendment that would require the secretary of Commerce to monitor the impact of the measure on “non-negligent”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Clinton, the former secretary of State, has repeatedly castigated Sanders for voting in favor of a 2005 law that protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when their products are used to commit crimes
  • Sanders announced over the weekend that he is open to legislation being circulated in Congress that would reverse the law
  • While the two offer few major ideological differences, the Clinton campaign has sought to cast Sanders as out of touch with the party on the issue in recent days
  • Sanders has represented Vermont, a state with a strong hunting and gun-owning culture, in Congress for two and a half decades.
  • "I do want to make sure that this legislation does not negatively impact small gun stores in rural America that serve the hunting community,
  • Clinton's criticism of Sanders is more about weakening Sanders' momentum than it is about the issue, said Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina Democratic party chairman.
  • “I’m calling on him to also flip-flop in the right direction and sign onto legislation to change the Charleston loophole,” she said.
  • "There has to be some concern there that a repeat of 2008, when they underestimated Obama, could come back around," he said. 
sgardner35

The real question on gun control - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by sgardner35 on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The President reminded the audience that Americans have different relationships with gun ownership because we live in "different realities." A black high-schooler in Chicago, where 55 people were shot in the past seven days, for example, has a very "different reality" from the high-schooler in a rural area who grew up shooting a rifle for sport.
  • The room was split between people who are willing to try, even if there's no guarantee, and those who need a guarantee -- proof -- before they will try. Between optimism and resignation.The majority of Americans, Republicans and gun owners support universal background checks and closing the so-called "gun show loophole." In fact, one objection that came up repeatedly pointed up a grim irony: Obama's step forward is so small that "it won't work."
  • He said that there were 30,000 American's who were killed by gun violence. What if we could just lower it to 28,000? What if we could spare 2,000 families from the heartbreak of that kind of loss? Shouldn't we try?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Over and over, the President explained that his proposal will not affect most people's ability to buy a gun and it will not eliminate all gun violence. He repeatedly stated it will eliminate current channels that criminals do take advantage of to purchase guns. If one of every 30 guns sold online is purchased by a felon, as the President suggested, why wouldn't we try and stop that from happening?Tonight, the President wa
  • modest, respectful and reasonable. He was there to listen and to have a conversation. It was a conversation about gun control yes, but it was wrapped inside a bigger theme -- the nature of change.
johnsonma23

6 takeaways from the Democratic debate - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

debate US politics

shared by johnsonma23 on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Bernie Sanders is mad as hell -- and he's hoping Democratic voters are, too.
  • Hillary Clinton tied herself tightly with President Barack Obama and argued she'd build on his legacy, as the Democratic presidential contenders clashed Sunday night in Charleston.
  • Sanders = Trump
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Clinton promised continuity. She highlighted her record. She touted her ability to get results within the limitations of the modern political climate.
  • We have the pharmaceutical industry pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaign contributions and lobbying and the private insurance companies as well."
  • When the debate shifted to foreign policy in its second hour, Clinton displayed a command that was in sharp contrast to Sanders' quiet.
  • She accused Sanders of calling Obama "weak" and "ineffective" when it came to perhaps Clinton's most vulnerable subject
  • Sanders' shoot-for-the-moon liberalism and Clinton's embrace of Obama were clearest in their biggest fight of the evening: health care
  • Just two hours before the debate, Sanders had rolled out a tax plan that would fund his Medicare-for-all proposal to scrap private health insurance entirely and replace it with a government-run program.
  • Clinton = Obama
  • 6 takeaways from the Democratic debate
  • On gun control, health care, financial regulation, her "many hours in the Situation Room advising President Obama" and more, Clinton cast herself as the defender of Obama's legacy
  • Sanders had said many Democrats are "deeply disappointed" in Obama's shifts rightward, and a primary opponent could "begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing."
  • Purity vs. pragmatism on health care
  • "He has voted with the NRA, with the gun lobby, numerous times. He voted against the Brady Bill five times. He voted for what we call the Charleston loophole. He voted for immunity for gun makers and sellers," she said.
  • Nobody's hitting the Republicans
  • Health care and gun control, in particular, have emerged as key splits in the Democratic race where Clinton believes she can win liberal voters from Sanders.
  • But as the primaries draw near, voters often spend time thinking about the commander-in-chief test -- and Sanders has a long way to go in convincing voters of his readiness to handle foreign affairs.
  • Sanders willing to throw punches
  • "You've received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year," he said, later turning his focus to criminal justice and noting that "not one of their executives is prosecuted" for actions during the 2008 economic crisis.
Javier E

The Poverty of "Data Journalism" and the Irony of Gun Control - Talking Points Memo - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...m-and-the-irony-of-gun-control

guns debate 2nd amendment culture crisis

shared by Javier E on 05 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • the biggest victory of the NRA over the last generation isn’t so much making even the slightest and most modest gun control measures a political impossibility. The bigger win is the strategic victory of focusing the ‘debate’ on to such small-bore measures.
  • what we might call extreme gun ownership – individuals owning large numbers of often quasi-military firearms – is quite new. The mass casualty shooting is no longer a random freak out by a troubled person: it’s an established American idiom of violence, a way certain people choose to make a statement to the society at large.
  • 78% of Americans own no guns.3% own fully 50% of the firearms in the country.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Would a ban on “assault weapons” prevent a depressed man from killing himself with the handgun he’s owned for twenty years? Of course, not
  • the fact that we have vastly more gun suicides in the US is obviously due to the fact that guns are easy to buy, almost totally unregulated and pervasive, familiar and embedded in our culture. The idea of firearms is deeply embedded in many Americans understanding of their own identity, their sense of their safety and even the way they face or contemplate their own deaths. All of those are true.
  • In most parts of America, it doesn’t seem odd that one person is collecting a small arsenal of dozens of guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition or that the guns are capable of firing huge amounts of rounds quickly. It’s not just legal. It doesn’t raise any questions or need for scrutiny about a person’s mental state, or about what they plan to do with the weapons. Guns and now extreme gun ownership are deeply embedded in our culture in a way that laws alone, certainly not marginal measures, cannot easily change. This cultural component of the gun problem undergirded and structured by laws, but existing as a reality beyond it is the undiscussed factor in America’s mass violence problem.
  • step back from the small-bore specifics. The clearest factor separating the US from comparable, wealthy industrialized countries is the sheer number of guns we have, the almost total absence of regulation of those guns and the high rates of violence which has been a key component of American culture outside the Northeast for centuries.
  • the problem isn’t the NRA. It’s that support for unfettered rights to guns has grown tremendously over the last generation and politicians in most parts of the country don’t want to go up against that
  • the first step to creating change is to understand and think about – even if only in the minds of those who wish it – what change would actually look like, what it would mean, what would be ideal.
  • We’re now actively debating things that no civilized country has ever even contemplated – the right to take a semi-automatic weapon into a family restaurant or shopping mall. Meanwhile, mass ownership of guns has become and is becoming more and more deeply embedded into the political culture of a vast segment of the population.
  • Those of us who see the current situation as not just non-ideal but actually a sort of societal sickness need to start thinking way beyond things like closing the gun show loophole.In other words, yes, we really do want to take your guns. Maybe not all of them. But a lot of them.
  • that fact out into the open. More than thirty thousand Americans die every year from firearms injuries because we find that an acceptable price to pay for unregulated, mass gun ownership
  • It is also important to accept that to really change the prevalence of firearms deaths in the United States and the scourge of mass casualty shootings would require many fewer guns, a culture of regulation of gun ownership and less prevalence and less social acceptance of people who find their identity and sense of well-being intrinsically tied to the free and mass ownership of firearms
  • Do I think this is likely anytime soon? No, I don’t. But the US has undergone numerous revolutions of values, social acceptability, and laws before. So is it possible? Absolutely. The first step to creating a different, better future is understanding what it would look like and what it would take to get there. For now, we just choose not to do it. We need to accept that.
Javier E

How Should We Talk About the Israel Lobby's Power? - 0 views

nymag.com/...t-the-israel-lobbys-power.html

tolerance partisan polarization liberal immigrants fraud israel lobbying

shared by Javier E on 09 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • Is it possible to write honestly about the Israel lobby’s power in D.C. without using any anti-Semitic “tropes” at all?
  • A very powerful lobby deploys the money and passions of its members to ensure that a foreign country gets very, very special treatment from the U.S.
  • defending Israel is a core interest of not only Jews but all of us in what’s left of the West.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • The question, it seems to me, is one of proportion.
  • The average aid for high-income countries like Israel, according to USAID, is $79 million a year. Israel gets 48 times more.
  • In return for giving Israel $3.8 billion a year … the U.S. is expected to consent to anything and everything Israel wants. When you look at this from a distance, it is really quite amazing.
  • And, of course, Israel won in the end. Under Trump, Israel has achieved almost every goal it aimed for: the scrapping of the Iran deal, the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, a surge in settlements, and an intensification of the abuse of the Palestinians
  • Again you might ask: What did the U.S. get in return for all this from Israel? And again the answer is: Nothing.
  • Actually, worse than nothing. The U.S. suffers internationally from this alliance. Don’t take it from me. Here’s General James Mattis: “I paid a military price every day as the commander at CentCom because the Americans were perceived as biased toward Israel and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us.” Or David Petraeus: “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of American favoritism toward Israel.”
  • Now observe the public discourse in Washington. Here is Nancy Pelosi last year: “If this capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to aid — I won’t even call it aid — our cooperation with Israel.” Chew on that a minute. If the United States were to collapse, its one objective would be to aid a foreign country
  • The first bill introduced into the Senate in this Congress was one that made it illegal for any American to boycott goods from the West Bank, without suffering real economic consequences from their own government. It’s a federal bill designed to buttress several state bans on Americans’ right to boycott Israeli goods. Now here’s a clear case of conflict between the free speech rights of Americans and Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank. And the Senate voted for Israel’s occupation over the rights of its own citizens by a margin of 77– 23
  • It seems to me that it is simply a fact that the Israel lobby uses money, passion, and persuasion to warp this country’s foreign policy in favor of another country — out of all proportion to what Israel can do for the U.S.
  • The reason seems quite simple: Migrants now know that the U.S. border system is overwhelmed. More to the point, they now know that if they bring their children with them, they will not be abruptly sent back, and cannot be detained for longer than 20 days, after which they will be free to go and work anywhere in the country. That incentive is much stronger now than it was a year ago
  • The one-way street has also corrupted Israel, wrecked its moral standing, and enabled the country to keep ratcheting toward the far right in self-destructive ways.
  • History matters. But it’s not a rational way for a great power to conduct foreign polic
  • What has happened in Guatemala to produce such a growing mass of asylum seekers? The truth appears to be some food insecurity after a failed harvest — but mostly the news that the U.S. border is effectively open, and if you bring your kids and show up, you’re home free
  • The Democrats for their part keep saying that there is no crisis at all, berate the administration for insufficient care or tougher enforcement at ports of entry, and actually attempted to restrict the number of beds assigned for detention in their last negotiation with the president (it didn’t happen). At some point, they’re going to have to grapple with this genuine emergency.
  • But how do we stop this? Congress has to act to change the law that enables this. Asylum, traditionally understood, was once for those fleeing political or ethnic persecution. It wasn’t a catch-all for any economic migrant, who can be coached to say the right words to the right official. It’s a vast loophole in the immigration system — and if it isn’t fixed legislatively soon, the current massive wave will keep building
  • If you think that won’t empower more nativist demagogues and help reelect Trump, you’re dreaming.
  • “among white liberals … 79.2 percent agreed that ‘racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.’ 18.8 percent agreed that ‘blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition. … Among blacks, 59.9 percent identified discrimination as the main deterrent to upward mobility for African-Americans, and 32.0 percent said blacks were responsible for their condition.”
  • These white super-liberals are also, according to a fascinating survey featured in The Atlantic, the most blinkered. Money quote: “The most politically intolerant Americans, according to the analysis, tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, more urban, and more partisan themselves
  • The survey found that the city most intolerant of other people’s views was Boston, specifically around Cambridge
  • This most tolerant town is in a county that voted for Trump by a 20-point margin. Let’s absorb that fact for a while, shall we?
  • the results suggest a damning verdict on American higher education. My alma mater Harvard, a university where free speech, ideological differences, and competing arguments should flourish is, in fact, a nest of smug intolerance. Our elite colleges may be the most “diverse” ever. But they have also become machines for closing students’ minds.
Javier E

The most shocking part of Donald Trump's tax records isn't the $916 million loss everyone's talking about - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...n-loss-everyones-talking-about

trump tax

shared by Javier E on 03 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • If Trump were truly smart — and wanted to lead by example — he would have disclosed his tax returns, showed the loopholes he used, and vowed to close them.
  • I have plenty of problems with the Clintons’ financial behavior, as I wrote. But at least Hillary Clinton is proposing tax code changes that would cost her and her family money.
  • Trump, by contrast, is proposing tax changes that would greatly benefit the commercial real estate business, which is his primary field, and would greatly benefit his own family. And when I asked his campaign last week whether he was proposing any tax changes that would cost him and/or his family any money, I got no reply.
knudsenlu

Why CNN's Parkland Town Hall Mattered - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...553949

town hall gun control florida

shared by knudsenlu on 26 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • I was 10 years old when, in 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students at Columbine High School, in what was then the most-deadly school shooting in American history. What I can recall most from my childhood mind from the time aren’t the gruesome details in the news reports or even the sense of dread that gripped students and teachers across the country, but the feeling that something central about the country had changed. Something about America had shifted, and it was significant enough that even a child’s understanding could grasp it.
  • Almost two decades later, after multiple mass shootings and dozens of slain children, it’s clear that what changed wasn’t the mobilization of a country to stop events like Columbine, but the beginning of the normalization of those events.
  • The theme of most of the night was criticism of Rubio, who often appeared hesitant in the face of withering boos and tough questions. As the New Yorker writer Evan Osnos put it: “The pummelling of Rubio felt like an expression of collective rage at the falseness of so much that happens in Washington.” The usual rhetorical feints and misdirections employed by politicians in more milquetoast town halls only seemed to anger the crowd more.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “The issue is not the loopholes,” the senator said, “it’s the problem that once you start looking at how easy it is to get around it, you would literally have to ban every semi-automatic rifle that’s sold.” But the crowd cheered loudly at the suggestion of such a ban, a response that caught Rubio off guard.
  • “I want you to know that we will support your two children in the way that you will not,” Gonzalez said. She also asked Loesch if the NRA supported any restrictions on the purchase of semiautomatic weapons and modifications like bump stocks.
  • It’s unclear if those kinds of restrictions would actually reduce the rate of gun violence or incidence of mass shootings, but the town hall did show that the power of people—especially young people—is still important even in this age of big money.
  • That power only seems to be growing. Students across Florida and other places in the country are marching, and there appears to be an ongoing political awakening among youth about the issue of gun violence. Students from Stoneman Douglas are finding their footing as political leaders in their own right, forced into the fire by tragedy, and have now proven effective in meeting the strongest arguments of their policy opponents, and in wielding the power of public opinion on their side. If there is significant movement on gun-control reforms in the future, it’s possible, perhaps even probable, that the country will look back on Wednesday’s town hall as a paradigm-shifting moment that might have finally moved the debate.
Javier E

There is no Trumpism, only Republicanism - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...no-trumpism-only-republicanism

trump gop conservatism pollicies

shared by Javier E on 17 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • In policy terms, the president has been entirely a conventional Republican. Anti-Trumpers have struggled because year one of President Trump has proved there is no Trumpism, only Republicanism.
  • In rhetoric and behavior, President Trump has acted as he did as a candidate.
  • His supporters wanted their bull in the china shop, destroying everything the liberal snowflakes and Beltway elites held dear. In that sense, they’ve gotten what they voted for.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • On policy, however, Trump the president has differed from Trump the candidate. The candidate pledged to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He suggested spending billions on infrastructure. And he promised to “eliminate the carried interest deduction and other special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors.”
  • None of these have come to pass.
  • Underneath the extra-obvious demagoguery and incompetence, one year of Trump has been largely the same as one year of President Rubio or Bush or Cruz would have been. Where candidate Trump’s views on key issues differed from the GOP, President Trump has gotten on board.
  • And, crucially, Trump’s so-called foes in Congress reflect this gap between rhetoric and reality. Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have sparred publicly with the president, yet they have remained reliable votes for the White House’s initiatives.
  • In policy terms, though, on what major issue would Romney oppose the president? They agree on taxes, health care, immigration and so on. A Sen. Romney would be a reliable vote for the Trump agenda — because it is the Republican agenda.
  • Republicans will nonetheless struggle to distance themselves because the past year has proved that Trumpism and Republicanism are fundamentally the same. A vote for one is a vote for both.
bluekoenig

One policy that changes the coronavirus math - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

politics us history trump crisis culture policy health medicine covid19 coronavirus

shared by bluekoenig on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • bluekoenig on 27 Mar 20
     
    This video details the one policy held by most developed countries across the world except for the United States, paid sick leave for all employees, that may further determine how bad Covid-19's impact will be on the US. Most other developed countries, including Italy and Germany, have a policy where every employee must receive paid sick leave from either their employer, the government or both. This ensures that any disease an employee may have, not just Covid-19, doesn't spread to the company or anyone it serves. The US doesn't have a policy like this and many Americans make the choice every day to go to work sick in order to have enough money to live. This can prove to be detrimental in this outbreak as people continue to go to work and continue to get others sick or don't go to work and lose their job, house, and all their savings. Contingency plans have been in the works since the government started acting on this virus, but most if not all bills requiring paid sick leave have been edited to contain loopholes or become vague in order to appease republican lawmakers.
brookegoodman

US coronavirus stimulus checks: are you eligible and how much will you get? | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-stimulus-all-you-need-to-know

crisis us

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The US has agreed on a $2tn stimulus package, the largest economic stimulus in US history, in response to the economic impacts of Covid-19. While corporations will be the biggest recipients of the bailout, some of that money will be paid directly to Americans hit by the pandemic.
  • Congress will spend about $250bn for checks up to $1,200 per person that will go directly to taxpayers.
  • To be eligible for the full amount, a person’s most recently filed tax return must show that they made $75,000 or under. For couples, who can receive a maximum of $2,400, the cutoff is $150,000.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • If a person makes above $99,000, or a couple makes above $198,000, no check will be given.
  • This is not the first time the government has sent checks to Americans. The federal government gave up to $300 in 2001 and $600 in 2008 to taxpayers who met a certain income bracket to similarly stimulate the economy.
  • The length and amount of compensation varies from state to state. A majority of states providing a maximum of 26 weeks of compensation, while average weekly compensation ranges from 20% of a person’s wage to just over 50%.
  • Not in this bill. Earlier last week, Donald Trump signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, a bill worth about $100bn meant to expand paid sick leave and emergency paid leave, but it came with major loopholes. Companies with over 500 employees were not mentioned in the bill, while companies with under 50 employees can apply for exemptions.
  • Again, not in this bill. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act included a measure that mandated all Covid-19 testing is free, but treatment for any symptoms (there is currently no cure for the illness) still comes at a cost. A few states have reopened enrollment for their health insurance programs to allow those concerned about costs to enroll, but there are still stories of people getting bills for as much as $34,000 to cover treatment of the virus’ symptoms.
Javier E

Italy, Pandemic's New Epicenter, Has Lessons for the World - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...oronavirus-center-lessons.html

politics pandemic italy

shared by Javier E on 22 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Governments beyond Italy are now in danger of following the same path, repeating familiar mistakes and inviting similar calamity. And unlike Italy, which navigated uncharted territory for a Western democracy, other governments have less room for excuses.
  • But tracing the record of their actions shows missed opportunities and critical missteps.
  • In the critical early days of the outbreak, Mr. Conte and other top officials sought to down play the threat, creating confusion and a false sense of security that allowed the virus to spread.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • They blamed Italy’s high number of infections on aggressive testing of people without symptoms in the north, which they argued only created hysteria and tarnished the country’s image abroad.
  • Even once the Italian government considered a universal lockdown necessary to defeat the virus, it failed to communicate the threat powerfully enough to persuade Italians to abide by the rules, which seemed riddled with loopholes.
  • Still, he acknowledged that the health minister had struggled to persuade his government colleagues to move more quickly and that the difficulties of navigating Italy’s division of powers between Rome and the regions resulted in a fragmented chain of command and inconsistent messages.
  • For the coronavirus, 10 days can be a lifetime.
  • Politicians across the spectrum worried about the economy and feeding the country, and found it difficult to accept their impotence in the face of the virus.
  • Most importantly, Italy looked at the example of China, Ms. Zampa said, not as a practical warning, but as a “science fiction movie that had nothing to do with us.” And when the virus exploded, Europe, she said, “looked at us the same way we looked at China.”
  • A day later, on March 9, when the positive cases reached 9,172 and the death toll climbed to 463, Mr. Conte toughened the restrictions and extended them nationally.
  • But he also had not had any direct contacts with China, and experts suspect he contracted the virus from another European, meaning Italy did not have an identifiable patient zero or a traceable source of contagion that could help it contain the virus.
  • Mr. Ricciardi said Italy had the bad luck of having a super spreader in a densely populated and dynamic area who went to the hospital not once, but twice, infecting hundreds of people, including doctors and nurses.“He was incredibly active,” Mr. Ricciardi said.
  • “Who we call ‘Patient One’ was probably ‘Patient 200,’ ” said Fabrizio Pregliasco, an epidemiologist.
  • Mr. Fontana, who had been pressing the central government for tougher action, agreed. He said that the mixed messages from Rome and the easing of restrictions had led Italians to believe “that everything was a joke, and they kept living as they used to.”
  • “They were convinced that the situation was less serious and they did not want to hurt our economy too much,”
  • the nation became divided between those who saw the threat and those who didn’t.
  • some regional governors independently ordered people coming from the newly locked-down area to self quarantine. Others didn’t.
  • The virus had already been active in Italy for weeks by that time, experts now say, passed by people without symptoms and often mistaken for a flu
  • Italy is still paying the price of those early mixed messages by scientists and politicians. The people who have died in staggering numbers recently — more than 2,300 in the last four days — were mostly infected during the confusion of a week or two ago.
  • Roberto Burioni, a prominent virologist at the San Raffaele University in Milan, said that people had felt safe to go about their usual routines and he attributed the spike in cases last week to “that behavior.”
  • Leaders in the north are desperate for the government to crack down harder.
  • On Friday, Mr. Fontana complained that the 114 troops the government deployed were insignificant, and that at least 1,000 should be sent. On Saturday, he closed public offices, work sites and banned jogging. He said in an interview that the government needed to stop messing around and “apply rigid measures.”
  • “At least this slows down the virus’ speed,’’ Mr. Zaia said, arguing that testing helped identify potentially contagious people without symptoms. ‘‘And slowing down the virus’ speed allows the hospitals to breathe.’’
Javier E

C.E.O. Deficit Fears Dissolve With the Prospect of Corporate Tax Cuts - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...orate-taxes-national-debt.html

deficit tax cuts debt politics

shared by Javier E on 24 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Mr. Dimon, along with dozens of other executives, took up the challenge. “The inability to face our fiscal reality is a concern,” he wrote in his annual letter to investors that year, lamenting the failure to adopt the Simpson-Bowles plan to reduce the debt by $4 trillion, in part by increasing taxes, closing loopholes and reducing entitlements. “I believe that if we had adopted some form of the Simpson-Bowles plan to fix the debt, it would have been extremely beneficial to the economy.”
  • Fast forward to this month: With a few exceptions, the community of chief executives that once championed reducing the debt as the nation’s top priority is taking up a position on the other side of the issue. They are advocating an overhaul package that will reduce corporate taxes, even though both the House and Senate plans will increase the national debt by an estimated $1.5 trillion over the next decade.
  • You’ve heard nary a peep from the business community about that. The silence is deafening.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Steven Rattner, the former auto czar under President Obama who now oversees Michael R. Bloomberg’s wealth and was on the steering committee of the Fix the Debt campaign, said he was no fan of the current tax plan. But he said he understood why some executives who once placed so much emphasis on the mounting debt problem would now focus on tax cuts — and how many of them feel that the two positions did not contradict each other.
  • In fairness, the position of Mr. Dimon and others may not be completely at odds with their previous views. Despite the stated goal of the Fix the Debt campaign five years ago, insiders say it was as much a rallying cry for Washington to come together on financial policy as it was about immediately addressing the debt. And much of the campaign was predicated on meaningful corporate tax reform and spending.
  • Chief executives like Mr. Dimon and Mr. Cote offered to pay higher individual tax rates — which the Simpson-Bowles plan called for — but significantly cutting corporate taxes was always a central tenet of the “fix the debt” effort. And with the current tax plan, Mr. Dimon and others have not taken a public position on anything but the corporate tax reduction element; they have not spoken out about the individual rate or other elements.
anonymous

The GOP tax plan, explained in simplest possible terms - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ned-in-simplest-possible-terms

US tax plan trump senate

shared by anonymous on 11 Dec 17 - No Cached
  • The plan will likely add to America's $20 trillion deb
  • The plan will likely add to America's $20 trillion debt.
  • There are almost no loopholes eliminated.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • White House vows poor people won't have to pay more than they do now,
  • Businesses (both small and large) get major tax cuts.
  • Most people will pay lower taxes
  • wealthy get a tax cut. They will pay only 35 percent on their income taxes (down from 39.6 percent). At the moment, this rate applies to any income above about $418,000.
  • tax break for the rich is the elimination of the estate tax
  • America will have just three tax rates: 35, 25 and 12 percent
  • a married couple earning $24,000 or less or an individual earning $12,000 or less won't pay any taxes.
  • The poor should not end up paying more than they do now.
  • currently applies mainly to individuals earning more than $130,000 and married couples earning more than $160,00.
  • The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) would go away under the plan.
  • at the moment is 35 percent
  • America's large corporations will get a big tax cut.
  • The Trump plan slashes the rate to 20 percent
  • this plan will unleash growth of 3 percent — or more
  • anonymous on 11 Dec 17
     
    In simpler terms, the new tax plan explained. Relates to the French Revolution taxes?
Javier E

The Geography of Trumpism - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-geography-of-trumpism.html

crisis culture politics US demagogue economics social class demographics

shared by Javier E on 13 Mar 16 - No Cached
oliviaodon liked it
  • We examined what factors predict a high level of Trump support relative to the total number of registered voters.The analysis shows that Trump counties are places where white identity mixes with long-simmering economic dysfunctions.
  • What they have in common is that they have largely missed the generation-long transition of the United States away from manufacturing and into a diverse, information-driven economy deeply intertwined with the rest of the world.
  • “It’s a nonurban, blue-collar and now apparently quite angry population,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “They’re not people who have moved around a lot, and things have been changing away from them, but they live in areas that feel stagnant in a lot of ways.”
  • ...41 more annotations...
  • in the places where support for Mr. Trump runs the strongest, the proportion of the white population that didn’t finish high school is relatively high. So is the proportion of working-age adults who neither have a job nor are looking for one. The third-strongest correlation among hundreds of variables tested: the preponderance of mobile homes.
  • Trump counties include places that have voted for both Republicans and Democrats, and the strongest predictors of Trump support include how a county responded to two very different third-party candidates: Trump territory showed stronger support for the segregationist George Wallace in the 1968 election than the rest of the country, and substantially weaker support for the centrist former Republican John B. Anderson in 1980.
  • the economic problems that line up with strong Trump support have long been in the making, and defy simple fixes.
  • have any of the individuals commenting ever met or talked to the uneducated trailer dwellers referred to in this article. I think not. This poor pitiful underclass that we must now fix as true liberals has been making poor decisions for decades. Serial children withe serial mothers and resulting large child support payments. Job hopping and laying around the house all winter when laid off while waiting for the Wife to get home from work and make dinner. Gun purchases for thousands of dollars and 45,000 dollar trucks on an annual income of 35,000. Cashing in 401ks. To buy the latest 4 Wheeler. Oh and don't forget the biannual trips to Disney world or to hunt out west on credit cards. I sprang from uneducated people of another generation and the men by and large did not engage in self destructive behavior like this. sorry you make your bed and don't expect me to cry about it.
  • I think at least half of the American political class, the republican half, wants Americans to be ignorant. The ignorant are easily duped and manipulated. The GOP establishment clearly knows that, but they never expected someone like Trump to beat them at their own game. That explains why the GOP is generally unwilling to adequately fund public education and is content to punish the non-rich who seek higher education by burying them in debt.
  • Until now I had deceived myself into believing that I am a college educated hard working East coast Caucasian with moderate views and a penchant for reading a multi-faceted world class newspaper. However, the continued biased reports concerning Mr. Trump and his campaign are quite distasteful and have completely lost objectivity.Now, the journalistic attacks have moved toward his supporters and potential voters. Well, as with many of my fellow unintelligent white trash friends this only cements my unwavering support for the Trump campaign.
  • I have seen technology take jobs from people more than immigrants. It is a terrible feeling. Most of my peers and I are now working freelance jobs. Sometimes its voluntary but often times it is because we can't find full time jobs with benefits. For those of us over 60 it is the only work available. If you have never been independent you are in for a shock at how hard it can be to run a small sole proprietor business from scratch.
  • Enormous advances in technology have made the trans-oceanic distances disappear. Foreign-based administrative jobs are now transparent, meaning that "back-room" corporate jobs such as payroll, accounting and corporate management can be off-shored. Jobs in this category also include computer software development and computer system help-line support. The concept of the "virtual corporation", which maintains low levels of "project managers" can scale up or down, and only a small "corporate core" needs to be physically in the USA.
  • Trump has said that he hires people from other countries over American citizens and thinks Americans are already overpaid. So, why is he so popular with the angry voters who are living from paycheck to paycheck or were forced to retire? Trump is part of the problem, not the solution. The working class voters need wage insurance or a living wage solution and they need the government to step in and help them. Remember the WPA programs from the 30s? My guess is that Trump's supporters don't want to be the takers after years of thinking they were above that and were the makers. Surprise, we are all in the same boat.
  • there is a much bigger issue than creating jobs for these people. It is figuring out why so many are incapable of learning at a college level and beyond. I refuse to believe that it is nature dictating such a limitation. My money is on nurture; therefore, my money is on being able to solve that problem too.
  • Until we as a country stop treating intelligence as a disease and take steps to improve education across the board, this is what the fall-out will be. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out they could get to the White House by courting the angry white people vote.
  • among high school or less, 40% some college, but 33% among college graduates, and 19% among the post-graduates. In no election did Trump get the vote of the majority of college graduates or postgraduates. The education gap is consistent and steady. The gender gap is equally consistent.
  • The jobs engine the drove the US to its post war boom was the manufacturing sector. That has been gutted - by US consumer decisions.FDR did not practice racial identity politics.
  • Racism lurks - always - near the surface for ALL human beings. Don't believe me? Go take Harvard's Project Implicit tests (free) and learn about your own racist proclivities!By nature, all human beings tend toward tribalism; we are *wired* to notice and react to "difference". Civilization is the mass awareness of that proclivity towards shunning or rejecting "the other" and creating laws to stop it from becoming reality.When people become stressed, the veneer of civilization starts to break down - our more primitive, wired behaviors take over. That's what is happening now.We also have a huge propensity - as a species - towards cooperation. We have to somehow keep pursuing that "Better Angel of Our Nature" to keep the tide from turning permanently ugly.
  • As I read this article I began to confront an uncomfortable reality. We, as a society are to blame for Mr. Trump's support. Apparently we have ignored or overlooked the tragic plight faced by a sizable minority. Imagine the unemployed coal minor in West Virgina. His financial life is probably a shambles and he has no realistic prospect of recovering. He feels hopeless and abandoned. He sees publicized efforts to address problems of ethnic minorities and immigrants, yet he sits cold and jobless without anyone clamoring to address his situation. He starts getting angry and frustrated.Then, out of nowhere someone comes who appears to want to fight for him. Finally, someone who might champion his cause. Bring back jobs. Stop cheap labor from coming in.
  • Nationally, 23 percent of the 25-to-54-year-old population was not working in March, up from 18 percent in 2000. The areas where Trump is most popular appear to be at the forefront of that trend.
  • Don't people realize that technology, computers, automation and especially robots have replaced more manufacturing and more factories than all the illegal immigrants ever have? On many factory floors you hardly see any human beings at all. Every product is whisked along conveyor belts and assembled (or cooked), and then inspected, labeled, packaged and shipped with a minimum of human intervention. That's today's world. What are we to do? Protest against computers and robots.Also, American corporations have zero loyalty to the USA. Their loyalty is to their bottom line. They take advantage of every tax loophole they can; and if their product is labor intensive they would much rather pay 5000 workers a dollar a day with no benefits rather than stay in America and have to pay someone $18 an hour will vacation time, holiday time off, Soc Sec taxes and Medicare taxes.
  • This is the Party of Stupid the Republican carefully constructed through painstaking racism, defunding of public education, defunding of infrastructure, hate radio, Fox-Henhouse News and trickle-down poverty.Donald Trump's supporters are the direct result of the Republican's decades-long efforts at dumbing down a large swath of Americans.The Republican Party needs to take a giant proud bow as their electorate walks down the runway of nationally-assisted-suicide.
  • The irony of all this is that, yes, the world is shifting out from under the feet of the less-educated poor, but none of us face a really BIG or YUGE problem like slavery, Civil War, total war, a Great Depression, or even a gold/silver conflict. Yet Ken Lay and others can seriously muse over the possibility of secession from the union.The goals that so many of T's supporters are crying for are already in the process of being achieved -- the debt is too high but the national deficit has been cut in half under Obama. Millions now have health care that they didn't have before. "Taxed Enough Already" couldn't be more of an inept slogan.I wonder sometimes if the collapse of the USSR was such a good thing. Having a common enemy provided a kind of glue that held us together. Now some of us seem -- recklessly., hysterically, feverishly -- anxious to find an equally powerful enemy in our own ranks.
  • I can't count the number of my husband's uneducated white southern relations who have taken extensive advantage, repeatedly, of both state and federal programs, including unemployment, food stamps, occasional welfare, and (sometimes specious) "disability." (My husband's mother was one of 11 born to poor sharecroppers, and the only one to leave her subculture
  • Oh, and about the "myth" that opposition to Islam is only is by simplistic Islamophobes. Let me suggest for those who didn't get to it, this article about about the premier public intellectual of France: "Once Hopeful for Harmony, a Philosopher Voices Discord in France" It said that he has concluded that Islam is not comparable with 'Western enlightenment values."
  • It's obvious that the changing economy has structurally disadvantaged many less educated people across America. But, it is also true that economically distressed whites enjoy access to exactly the same programs that assist minorities. They just don't "feel" like this is true.
  • Truth be told, Trump is supported by numerous highly educated people who choose not to support known liars and/or socialists. These same people are tired of candidates who are bought and paid for by secret and evil Super PACs-- Trump is not controlled by these groups. Rubio, Kasich, Cruz and C;inton are.
  • The counties where Trump is most popular also have the lowest employment participation rates. Ordinarily, those folks would be expected to vote Democratic, which is more likely to continue the government spending that sustains them. Trump followers are willing to support him even though it is probably against their economic interest.So how to explain this? The strong correlation to previous support for George Wallace suggests it's about identity. A certain segment of the population does not accept diversity and change. They cling to white supremacy. The irony, as the article notes, is that these are the same folks who self-identify their heritage as "American," rather than, say "English" or "German." However, to me, they seem very un-American.
  • If policy hadn't been influenced by campaign funding, perhaps we would be in a better situation. Maybe congress would have paid more attention to improving the education system. It's a shame that most people don't understand that their only true weapon is voting for someone that isn't in debt to an industry. If we don't change our campaign finance system, nothing will change. Our voices will never be heard, our needs will never be met and policy will continue to favor profit, not people.
  • You are misinterpreting the analysis. This is a correlation analysis and what it says is that there is a moderately strong positive correlation between the % of people in a county that are white and have no high school and the % of people that support Trump. The 61 number is the correlation coefficient. The analysis does NOT show that folks in mobile homes vote for Trump.
  • There is only one interesting question regarding Trump: can he win Ohio and Florida in the national elections? Otherwise his campaign will turn into a footnote in American history like the campaign of many other unsuccessful candidates (Dukakis someone?). His voters, then, will be forgotten, as they usually are, until the next elections. That's the only time America's, winner takes it all culture, remembers those people exist.
  • However crude his message, on trade Trump has a legitimate point, which is that the US (not US companies, which don't care about international boundaries, but US workers) has got the short end of trade deals for decades. Whatever benefits the US has gleaned from these deals, they are minuscule compared to their utterly transformative effects on India, Mexico and especially China, which begs the question of why we couldn't have negotiated a better deal, one less devastating to old-line manufacturing. It often seems US negotiators are driven more by a religious belief in and devotion to free-trade principles, than by national self-interest. Trump may be unfit to be president, but I don't doubt he would have driven a harder bargain and come out with a better deal, if only because, unlike US negotiators, he'd be fully prepared to walk away from a deal he didn't like.
  • It's high time we re-engage in our communities with love and empathy. We need less talk of the theoretical economics underpinning trade deals and the credibility of climate science. It's not because these things are unimportant or irrelevant to governing in a complex world, but because our neighbors are afraid we've forgotten them in all our sophistication. They need to hear and see that we care about them. Our ideas about common efforts to improve their lives need to be less about class and more about community. We need to be clear that even the least among us are important to our common future
  • So many of the comments on this piece seem to fall into the category of subliminal rationales for long held prejudices that many of us have but don't understand.
  • this analysis didn’t show a particularly powerful relationship between the racial breakdown of a county and its likelihood of voting for Trump. There are Trump-supporting counties where very high proportions of the population are African-American and others where it was very low, for example.
  • There's a very powerful stigma associated with being poor in this country. Frankly, it makes it nearly impossible for an elite institution like the Times to write about poor populations without those same people perceiving a condescending tone. At the first mention of trailer parks--even if that is an apt descriptor for a type of housing--the words begin to cut and defenses rise. When spoken by a rich person, those words demean, even if they're not meant to by the speaker
  • The problem is that "Thug Trump," just so happens to touch on some truths, and existing bi-partisan defects that we ignore. Funny, as different as they are, Ralph Nader made the same point, that the major defects of our country are supported by both parties and thus untouchable. I guess the nature of a revolutionary is part misfit but also sensing the time is ripe for a drastic change. It may be better to look less at the person, and more that the endemic defects that he promises to change. From Huey Long to Norman Thomas, outsiders have had positive effects.
  • These relatives, who are very pleasant to talk to on a one-to-one basis, are the same people who send us rabid chain emails about how Obama hates America, how we need to "take back our country," etc. "The blacks" are "parasites and takers" and the real reason they invariably vote Republican. They see no relationship between their own "taking" and the "taking" by blacks and Hispanics.
  • Whether Trump can appeal to enough independent or even blue collar Democrats is problematic absent some sensational catastrophe in the economy or in government. But you never know. Recall the charge of "Rum, Romanism, and rebellion" late in the 1884 election. It changed history
  • I bought into that "it's the fault of freeloaders" shtick for years, until i was laid off at age 50. Suddenly, I was one of those "freeloaders" with a 30 year impeccable work history and it changed my mind drastically. I've run into people like me from all walks of life; people with degrees and skills who lost jobs and are cut out of returning to the world of employment. I found something eventually, but at half the pay with no benefits. I don't support Trump but he's tapped into the lives of people like me. Globalization has showed us that for those at the very top, the elites, our country and it's workers don't matter much as long as the money keeps flowing. Unfortunately, I can't see that Trump would do much to change that
  • racism in the US is complicated. Some people who say the right things do the worst things, and vice versa. What gets you in trouble is saying blue-collar stuff like "nappy-headed ho's" White liberals are the most politically correct and the most critical of crude speech. But white liberals often have less contact with blacks than any other whites. Bigotry is not easily identified.
  • One of the strongest predictors of Trump support is the proportion of the population that is native-born. Relatively few people in the places where Trump is strong are immigrants — and, as their answers on their ancestry reveal, they very much wear Americanness on their sleeve.
  • The point is that now, the entire middle class and working class have been fleeced by the Repubs AND the Dems, elected representatives who have shirked their duties and spent their time helping their billionaire puppetmasters.
  • Bernie supporters and Trump supporters have something big in common: their basic grievance, which is that the economy is rigged for the 1%. It's helpful to understand our differences, but then we should be finding common ground, not calling each other names. We're all people; we all deserve dignity and respect.
  • We are in the early throes of another revolution now, and this one will even more dramatically favor those with superior cognitive abilities and education over those with average or below average cognitive abilities and education. Yet all people at all levels need to eat, have shelter, and pursue lives of dignity and meaning. It remains unclear what kind of society will emerge from the current disruptions, but it is increasingly obvious that the transition will not be pretty.
katherineharron

Barack Obama calls for stricter gun laws following Colorado shooting to prevent more 'random, senseless acts' of gun violence - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

obama

shared by katherineharron on 23 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Former President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for stricter gun laws following the mass shooting in Colorado, bemoaning what he called a national tolerance for "these kinds of random, senseless acts."
  • they "are also feeling a deep, familiar outrage" for these types of tragedies.
  • "It is long past time for those with the power to fight this epidemic of gun violence to do so. It will take time to root out the disaffection, racism and misogyny that fuels so many of these senseless acts of violence," Obama said. "But we can make it harder for those with hate in their hearts to buy weapons of war."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The statement by the former president came shortly before President Joe Biden publicly commented on the shooting
  • The attack, which came days after another shooting rampage in Georgia that left eight dead, has renewed calls from lawmakers for federal gun control reform. close dialogSign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.bx-row bx-row-image bx-row-image-d
  • During his time in the White House, Obama urged Congress to take up gun control legislation following several mass shootings around the country, though no significant congressional action was ever taken.
  • Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday called the shooting "absolutely tragic," but ignored a question about the future of gun control during a swearing-in ceremony for William Burns as CIA director.
  • Earlier this month, the House passed H.R. 8 that would expand background checks on all commercial gun sales and H.R. 1146 to try and close what's known as the "Charleston Loophole," which allows some firearms to be transferred by licensed gun dealers before the required background checks are completed.
anonymous

Biden On Boulder Shooting: Senate Must Pass Gun Bills : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-bills-after-colorado-shooting

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • resident Biden said Tuesday that he and first lady Jill Biden were "devastated" by Monday's shooting in Boulder, Colo., and called on the Senate to pass to gun bills passed by the House earlier this month that would tighten gun laws. Acknowledging there is more to confirm about the shooter's weapons and motivation, Biden said, "I don't need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save lives in the future and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act."
  • Biden said assault weapons and high-capacity magazines should once again be banned and that loopholes in background checks should be closed.
  • Biden's remarks come a day after 10 people, including a police officer, died in a shooting in a grocery store in Boulder. Police identified the victims on Tuesday, ranging in age from 20 to 65. They also said suspect Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, of Arvada, Colo., is in custody. The president has been receiving regular updates on the shooting, the White House said, and has directed that flags be flown at half-staff through Saturday.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The violence follows shootings last week in the Atlanta area, where a gunman opened fire at three spa and massage businesses. Eight people died, including six women of Asian descent, prompting an amplified outcry against rising violence and discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans.
  • Earlier this month, the House passed a pair of bills to strengthen gun laws, including expanding background checks. Lawmakers are holding a hearing Tuesday as the country enters a new cycle of debate over gun control. Still, a narrowly divided Senate is a major roadblock to passage in that chamber. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that in addition to pushing legislation, Biden was considering executive actions "not just on gun safety measures but violence in communities," adding that discussions are ongoing about what the administration plans to do. During the campaign, Biden endorsed a $900 million program to curb gun violence in urban communities.
  • As vice president, Biden led the Obama administration's failed push for stronger gun control measures after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. They pushed to expand background checks for gun sales and ban more types of guns, but the measures failed to pass Congress.
  • Former President Barack Obama released a statement of his own Tuesday, saying, "It is long past time for those with the power to fight this epidemic of gun violence to do so.
anonymous

Gun reform laws eluded Biden in 2013. Could this showdown with the NRA be different? | US gun control | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...form-laws-joe-biden-nra-senate

shared by anonymous on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Within hours of 10 people being gunned down at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado on Monday – the second such bloody rampage in seven days – the calls had begun for Congress to tighten up America’s notoriously slack firearms laws.
  • at the time of the Aurora cinema shooting that killed 12 people in 2012, opined that “our country has a horrific problem with gun violence. We need federal action. Now.”
  • The most prescient comment came from Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was one of 20 six- and seven-year-olds shot dead at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in December 2012. His heart was with the grieving families of Boulder, he said, adding that he hoped this year the country would “finally expand access to background checks”.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • It was a low point in America’s bleak history of political failure in the face of ongoing gun violence. If you can’t get Congress to pass such a rudimentary regulation as security checks on the purchasers of weapons just months after 20 young children have been shot at point-blank range with a military-style rifle, then when is possible?
  • The mission was custom-made for the then-vice-president. As a father who had lost his daughter Naomi and first wife, Neilia, in a car crash in 1972, he had no dearth of empathy for the Sandy Hook families.
  • He also had an impressive record on gun reform in the US Senate, having played a leading role in passing the Brady Bill in 1993, which required partial background checks, and having drafted a ban on assault weapons enacted the following year (it expired in 2004).
  • The question is pertinent now, eight years later, when Biden has vowed yet again to take on the gun lobby. On Tuesday the president called on Congress to “immediately pass” legislation that would close loopholes in the background check system and reimpose the ban on assault weapons – almost exactly the reforms he failed to push through Congress in 2013.
  • At the time the NRA, with more than 4m members and an iron grip on lawmakers whom it ranked according to their voting records, was widely feared as the most powerful gun lobby in the world.
  • By all accounts, Biden’s head-to-head with the NRA did not go well. The White House, the lobby group hissed, had “an agenda to attack the second amendment … We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen.”
  • “If, by some chance, there could have been some reasonable bill on the floor [of the Senate] by January,” a Senate aide told Politico, there would have been “less time for people to sort of become ambivalent”.
  • Eight years on, Washington appears stuck in a scene out of Groundhog Day. Universal background checks are being talked about again in the wake of mass shootings, and all eyes are on Biden and the US Senate.
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