The Republicans in Congress and in state houses all across America have been putting money and their political party ahead of their constituents, ahead of Americans and for years.
After the horrible, horrific Newtown shooting/slaying of 20 school children and 6 adults at the school, the first thing out of their mouths was that this murder "shouldn't be politicized" in a clear effort to protect the NRA and the gun lobby and weapons manufacturers.
Once again, guns--and money--before people, before us Americans. They put their political party and the money they get from their "sponsors" before Americans and before American lives.
This one they just recently, rather famously did.
House GOP Blocks Measure to
Keep Guns from Mentally Ill
They ruled that people who are clinically diagnosed as being mentally ill and/or unstable should be able to have weapons, guns. In their terms, they should "be able to exercise their Second Amendment rights."
People be damned.
And now, with Republicans finally, finally creating and releasing a plan of any kind to replace "Obamacare", which is so important to them, they once again did the same thing. They put money and the deficit and the budget ahead of people, ahead of Americans, ahead of American lives.
This headline proves, shows where the Republicans' priorities are and proves my point with their health care plan is right here:
Here's another.
No Magic in How G.O.P. Plan Lowers Premiums: It Pushes Out Older People
They’ve put guns before American lives for years and now, budgets before American lives. Everything boils down to money with these people. And then they’re doing it so they can get and keep more money in their pockets, from their sponsors and overlords, in the form of “campaign contributions.”
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20 comments:
If the social security rule was intended to stand, why not establish it just a little earlier than AFTER the ELECTION RESULTS?
The answer is that the rule was only intended if Hillary lost. It won't withstand challenge. Change from "clinically diagnosed" to "adjudicated", you will remove most of the objections...and we've already got that, the GOP isn't changing that. If I'm that crazy, you should be able to prove it easily in court. These headlines make it seem as if Trump is changing long standing gun laws--why is this sort of deception necessary? Headlines don't prove anything, anybody can write a headline.
It will cost a certain amount of money to provide a certain level of care. An insurance company that doesn't collect that amount of money can't provide that level of care. It costs more money to care for older people. We don't object to charging more for auto insurance when costs will be more for the insurance company--young male drivers pay extra. People with a poor driving history pay extra. I'm over 50, drive a small, sensible car, choose to not pay for full coverage. I shouldn't pay the same rate as a teenager in a Camaro-but teens risk of expensive health conditions is much lower, he shouldn't have to pay the same rate as someone over 50. People understand that you can't wait until after a collision to buy car insurance--but the same math applies to health insurance.
And most of the things I could do to reduce my actual health risks can't be taken into account. I lost 85 pounds not long ago-I'm sure that drastically reduces my risk, but it is considered unfair to charge obese people more--so I get no insurance benefit by no longer being obese.
The PJ O'Rourke quote is odd in context--buying and selling health insurance is more and more controlled by legislation. He's speaking out against that, somehow you seem to be taking that as an endorsement.
It wasn't Trump changing the law for the mentally ill to have weapons. It was Congress. They are doing the NRA's and the weapons manufacturers' bidding, of course. It's what they're paid for, with "campaign contributions."
If you studied health care in virtually any other nation on the planet, you would know our health care system is, far and away, the most expensive one in the world. Literally. And not just by a small amount. It is also grossly, grossly over-priced and killing us, as Americans. So we have, as the study in 2014 showed us, the most expensive and least effective health care system of the top 17 industrialized nations. It's insane. But hey, it's also Capitalism. It's also indefensible but I feel certain you'll try.
Finally, you're mistaken about me and the P.J. O'Rourke quote. I put it there as proof of corporations and the already-wealthy buying our legislators and so, our laws and finally, our government.
This isn't anyone changing the laws allowing mentally ill to have weapons, it is going back to requiring judicial due process before denying rights. Dangerously mentally ill people are still denied the right to own guns even after this reversal of an extremely brief regulation. it's dishonest to claim otherwise. But repeat a lie often enough and loud enough...
If I'm wrong, what dangerous people were denied but now aren't?
Free market capitalism is a system, it requires actual free markets to work properly. I need to be free to buy from someone else. We don't have capitalist health care. We have at best mercantilist health care--the government requires that we deal with a limited number of providers from a limited menu of options, those providers have way too much influence on the government and restrict competition. Imagine if Target had to get permission from Walmart before opening a new store, or if the FCC added millions or billions in costs to license a new cellphone design...or even an otherwise legal copy of an existing one. An aside,this is yet another reason for drug legalization--Don't allow lies, require all clinical trial results to be public regardless of results...then let me and my doctor decide.
Complaining that corporations have bought government regulations...therefore we need more regulations makes no sense. Why will this batch of regulations be different than the last batch?
You and the NRA and weapons manufacturers make answering a lot of your questions easy. Very easy. This one, from you:
"...what dangerous people were denied but now aren't?"
From March 6, this year. Approximately 2 weeks ago:
"Despite a mother's plea, her mentally ill daughter was sold a firearm"
She called the police. Then ATF. After that, the FBI.
Janet Delana was desperate to stop her mentally ill adult daughter from buying another handgun.
Finally, Delana called the gun shop a few miles from her home, the one that had sold her daughter a black Hi-Point pistol a month earlier when her last disability check had arrived.
The next check was coming.
Delana pleaded.
Her daughter had been in and out of mental hospitals, she told the store manager, and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She had tried to kill herself. Her father had taken away the other gun, but Delana worried that her daughter would go back.
“I’m begging you,” Delana said through tears. “I’m begging you as a mother, if she comes in, please don’t sell her a gun.”
Colby Sue Weathers was mentally ill, but she had never been identified as a threat to herself or others by a judge or ordered to an extended mental hospital stay — which meant she could pass the background check for her gun.
At the Odessa Gun & Pawn shop, Weathers approached a manager: “Something like what I bought last time.”
She seemed nervous, the manager, Derrick Dady, would recall to police.
The Hi-Point pistol and one box of ammunition cost Weathers $257.85 at the store, on the main drag of the small town of Odessa, about 40 miles east of Kansas City.
Weathers headed back to the house that the 38-year-old shared with her parents, stopping along the way for a pack of unfiltered cigarettes at a gas station. A firefighter who was an old acquaintance saw her acting skittishly and muttering.
An hour after leaving the gun store, Weathers was back home where her father sat at a computer with his back to her.
She shot.
_________________________________
She ended up killing her father.
Nice, huh?
And please.
We absolutely have Capitalist health care.
It's directly tied to profit and profits.
It's why ours is the most expensive health care system in the world, far and away.
Is it completely unregulated?
No, certainly not.
But the UK realized that would be crazy, years ago. They made that illegal and impossible--wisely--in the 1940s.
They pay far, far less for health care than we do and their life expectancy is longer.
You'll deny all these facts, I'm sure.
The argument is due process. It appears that existing law should have been sufficient at the time to get her added to the deny list even with due process. We have criminals fall through the cracks all the time, that doesn't mean we eliminate criminal due process. There's a reason we separate jury, judge and police, why we have Miranda warnings. We need to do the same here--we can't just let the government say "this isn't criminal, so due process doesn't apply", or "The doctor has a diploma, that's enough due process". We need an impartial judge, rules of evidence, constitutional protections, individual hearings. It is important to keep guns away from dangerously ill people, but not so important that we give up the bill of rights.
...and if the regulation had been serious instead of lame duck political posturing, why wasn't it already in place in 2012 where it could have prevented this? Nobody thought of it until JUST NOW?
I trust and assume, giving you credit, that you accept and realize I'm, first, all for due process, and second, that I've never said anything against it.
The Republicans are saying---legislating--that people officially mentally ill should still be able to purchase weapons. Look what this family got from that idea.
Finally, people have "thought of it" long, long before just now.
It's just that the NRA and weapons manufacturers, through the Republicans, whom they own, have been able to block any real legislation on weapons, as you ought to know and recognize, and repeatedly, over the years.
Your due process is the same as the "equal" from separate but equal. It's a lie that anyone with half a brain can see through, denying a right to as many people you disagree with as you can get away with. A flat lie. The rule we are talking about doesn't change who can have a gun, it just reduces the paperwork to put people on the prohibited list. Repealing that misguided and unconstitutional bureaucratic overreach doesn't "let crazy people have guns", it makes the government prove they have a case before taking rights away. We give far more due process to people accused of the most heinous crimes.
What's the big problem with a fair hearing?
There was nothing more than the fear of voters to prevent the Obama administration from establishing this rule his first term in office--it didn't require a single Republican, just the willingness to accept the consequences in the next election.
'For Profit' and Capitalist aren't the same thing. To say that our current system proves capitalism is wrong would be like bussing kids from one ghetto to another, then using that to claim "school integration has no benefit". The bus isn't the key, the profit isn't the key. For capitalism, choice and competition is the key, profit is a way to get there. The current health care system minimizes both choice and competition even more than the pre-Obamacare system. Health care shouldn't be taxed less if it is tied to your job--being tied to your job should be discouraged rather than mandated.
Geez. Honestly, you're getting unbelievable.
You really know little, very little of me yet you make the statement that my "due process is the same as the 'equal' from separate but equal."
That's rich.
If anyone here, between the two of us, would be arguing against "separate but equal", it's me.
To be clear here, the very thing the Republicans just passed is specifically and intentionally designed to let even people who are officially, clinically diagnosed as mentally ill to be able to have weapons. It's direct. It's a fact. Even they don't deny it. Like you, they want anyone and everyone to either have or be able to have weapons, weapons, weapons.
Then you ask "What's the big problem with a fair hearing?"
I've not once said I had a problem with anyone having a hearing on this, let alone a fair one. You only see me as some enemy you must attack, real or imagined.
Finally, on your last paragraph, once again, you misread me completely as you are wont to do. I never once said "our current system proves Capitalism is wrong." What I have said and what I will say and what I do say is that our current system is wrong, deeply wrong and that it hurts the very people in the nation it's supposed to be helping and working for. We have Capitalism, yes, definitely. It's not unfettered Capitalism but it is far too lightly regulated and the current White House and Congress are doing everything they can to see that it is less and less regulated every day. It's why the stock market has gone crazy since the election. The already-wealthy and corporations see they can do pretty much whatever they want with their Republican legislators they have long ago bought and paid for.
As for our health care system and its outrageous, unconscionable, obscene, grossly immoral prices and costs, you need to read or watch material comparing health care in the rest of the world compared to ours. All theirs work. But then, they haven't tied theirs to profit and profits the way we have.
We're just not that bright.
And the, again, already-wealthy and corporations have, to date, won on this.
I'm tired of "you're wrong, guess again" where you won't complete a thought, won't actually say anything. You're claiming I'm unfairly stereotyping you, but with no evidence of where you deviate from the stereotype. When you call me conservative, I can say pro-choice, legalized heroin, marriage equality among other things that distinguish me from conservatives. (I'm aware it's your blog, your rules, not arguing about that)
Using separate but equal was deliberate. There was no actual separate equality, there is no actual due process--at best a thin veneer.
What's the part of this new regulation that is an improvement over existing law as written? Enforcement is a separate problem, I'm not inclined to allow government more arbitrary power because they have not been using existing law consistently. I'm not aware of a change other than dramatically reducing due process to almost nothing...Is there some specific improvement in this regulation I'm missing, that so far you've not mentioned? Or is it just that existing due process was excessive for the situation?
You say I don't complete a thought.
What nonsense.
Go back and read anything I've written here. They're always complete.
You've said this before and my response is the same. I don't say what you want so you complain it's not "a complete thought."
You need to be more honest and adult in your debating and communicating.
Then you say I give "no evidence."
I freaking quoted you. I address your answers and responses here and never once have I even said nor remotely hinted at "guess again."
You have said here in the past that Liberals are just for large government. That's not the case at all, first, and it's certainly not what I'm about. We simply need government to protect the people from and against, as I've said before, the already-wealthy and corporations.
The Republicans just took law off the books keeping weapons and weapon purchases from the mentally ill. If that's not part of a new regulation that is worse for us, the people, nothing is. They always got and always would get due process to keep the weapons away from someone clinically, officially mentally unstable. Your calling out due process now is just a smoke screen on your part. First you scream that one more person would be denied their Second Amendment rights, ignoring that we're talking about an officially mentally ill person, then you take up due process.
Oh, yeah. The first is a dodge and then 2nd is a smoke screen for you.
I was hoping for something more substantial than repeating the clickbait headline yet again. I was hoping you could point to a group of people, a category of dangerous mental illness covered by the new law that was not covered by existing law.
Longstanding existing law strips gun rights from those who are adjudicated as "mental defectives". What does the new law do beyond that, other than strip the concept of adjudicated?
First, you keep asking for examples.
The first thing I did was give you an example. As it turned out, it was extremely recent, too. A young woman went out, though officially diagnosed mentally ill, bought a gun, took it home and shot and killed her own father in their own living room. I can't imagine what more of an example you need.
Then you say "longstanding existing law strps gun right from those who are adjudicated as 'mental defectives."
Where do you live? In what nation? Heck, in what parallel universe? Because in this nation, in our reality, nearly anyone can get a weapon. Statistically. Factually.
And the Republicans and Right Wing and the NRA and weapons manufacturers like it that way.
By your logic, OJ Simpson proves it is legal to kill your wife, and we shouldn't let murderers get away just because they weren't adjudicated.
I wasn't asking for an anecdote, I'm asking for conditions you think the Obama rule would cover that aren't already covered. Borderline personality disorder? Depression? PTSD? Schizophrenia? I don't expect an answer from you, it would require investigation and sources other than Bloomberg-approved ones.
Statistically, factually nearly anyone can get recreational drugs. Factually it is illegal to buy heroin, or for those adjudicated mentally defective to buy guns even if they aren't caught.
Adjudicated before being stripped of constitutional rights, proven by at least a preponderance of the evidence before an impartial judge or jury. Not much to ask before losing any enumerated right...in fact, it should be the bare minimum. Someone who is really a danger, like the example you gave? It shouldn't be hard to convince a judge.
By my logic, OJ Simpson proves it is legal to kill one's wife?
Dude.
You are really, really stretching this. You LOVE to extrapolate. You love to exaggerate. You can't stay on message. You can't take what someone says for just what it is. You have to exaggerate it to absurd extremes.
It's sad, really. It's desperate, too.
Stay on a topic. Stay on guns or drugs or something. Pick one and then stick on it, okay? And then, when I say something, don't take it to wild, emotional, absurd--and untrue, inapplicable--conclusions.
Please.
Again, I don't do that to you.
Don't do it to me.
You avoid having a nuanced opinion of anything, or a specific view. Nothing more detailed than Guns and Republicans are bad. You obviously don't know what actually changed beyond making it easier to strip gun rights from people labeled mentally ill--but republicans and guns, must be bad.
This is why we don't trust "gun safety" groups. All most of us want in this case is for the government to convince a judge that someone is dangerously mentally ill before stripping their rights. This currently happens in some states, Pennsylvania as an example. A teen breaks up with his girlfriend, acts out. Mom gets mental health help for him...he's now banned from ever owning a gun for the rest of his life. One drunk and disorderly gets belligerent, sent to detox by friends, sobers up forever, banned for life. No judge, just a regular family doctor. Actual cases in court right now.
I'll say that probably most of the people this will affect should be banned...but most of the people could be banned under existing law, with a proper hearing before a judge. The only change that I see is in not requiring a hearing with a judge.
Have the hearing with a judge.
That's been my point--have the hearing with a judge. I was hoping you would either explain why having a judge sign off is too big a burden, or where I'm wrong on my interpretation of the changes because of this rule.
I'll follow up on comments to this post if I see something that deserves it, otherwise it is time for another vacation from posting here until at least next fall.
And you're back to your stereotypes and stereotyping of me:
"You avoid having a nuanced opinion of anything, or a specific view. Nothing more detailed than Guns and Republicans are bad."
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
It is in no way "all guns are bad", and/or "all Republicans are bad." Not in the least.
Having too many--far too many, in the case of America--guns and weapons is patently bad and there are loads of statistics to prove it.
As for Republicans, I only emphasize what they do as being not good for America and Americans as being bad. I honestly can't think of one issue or effort they've pushed in the last 40 years, at least, that was good for America and Americans. As one fantastic example, it was only yesterday Republican Senators just passed a law giving the 4 big ISPs (internet service providers) the ability to sell your and my data on and from the internet to other companies.
Because you're "all guns, all the time" and gung-ho Republican and Right Wing and even Libertarian and finally, so very much deeply closed-minded, Mr. Second Amendment Before All Else, I wish I could say you'll be missed. I've no idea your age but you seem like you're probably middle-aged. Tragic that you're so committed to weapons. And all that other Right Wing hoo-hah. My opinions are based on statistics and scientific data that's been tested and proven and for which, I can cite sources. Your stances seem clearly based on opinions and emotionalism. And even tiresome bravado and machismo and testosterone.
Since you say I won't be missed, I won't be back.
You would be missed if you were an honest communicator.
You would be missed if you didn't exaggerate statements into things they are not.
You would be missed if you had, even remotely, an open mind.
You would be missed if you could and would and did put human, fellow American life ahead of guns and weapons.
Finally, more than anything, you would be missed if you respected the person, and their positions, with whom you were discussing.
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