Fiscal talks continue in Senate with agreement far from certain

Congressional leaders and senior aides huddled on Saturday in a last-minute attempt to iron out a resolution in the so-called "fiscal cliff" crisis. But a deal -- at least for the time being -- seemed far from certain.

The rare weekend negotiations come on the heels of a meeting held at the White House on Friday as part of a last-ditch effort to resolve the looming fiscal crisis. If lawmakers do not come to an agreement in the next few days, taxpayers in all income brackets would see an increase in taxes and a slew of spending cuts would kick in.

One sticking point in the talks continues to be on taxes, according to aides. President Obama has reiterated that tax cuts should extend to the middle class, asking top earners to pay more in taxes. But Republicans have insisted that tax cuts be extended for all taxpayers.

Obama, who spent the day monitoring the talks from the White House, has indicated that he would support legislation that would raise taxes on those who earn more than $400,000. That threshold has been the subject of some discussions with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). 

But differences on other issues, including spending cuts, linger.

The Senate was expected to remain out of session on Saturday while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and McConnell, along with their senior aides, sought to strike a deal. McConnell was at the Capitol on Saturday, but Reid was not.

"Discussions are underway, but I wouldn't expect any news [or] announcements before the members are briefed," said one top Republican Senate aide.

If a deal isn't struck with McConnell, Democrats are likely to introduce a bill extending the Bush-era tax rates for income up to $250,000 a year. That legislation would also extend unemployment benefits for millions of Americans.

"I believe such a proposal could pass both houses with bipartisan majorities – as long as these leaders allow it to come to a vote," Obama said in his weekly address. "If they still want to vote no, and let this tax hike hit the middle class, that’s their prerogative – but they should let everyone vote. That’s the way this is supposed to work."

Reid has scheduled a Democratic caucus meeting for Sunday afternoon to give his colleagues a chance to weigh in on a potential deal.

McConnell has said he would do the same.

Senate Democratic aides seem confident that the legislation would pass the Senate, with Democrats supporting the bill with the help of some Republicans.

If the Senate passes the legislation, it would then force the House to take up the bill on the eve of the looming deadline.

By Amie Parnes and Daniel Strauss

Wall Street Week Ahead: Cliff may be a fear, but debt ceiling much scarier

Dec. 29, 2012 (Reuters) — Investors fearing a stock market plunge - if the United States tumbles off the "fiscal cliff" next week - may want to relax.


But they should be scared if a few weeks later, Washington fails to reach a deal to increase the nation's debt ceiling because that raises the threat of a default, another credit downgrade and a panic in the financial markets.

Market strategists say that while falling off the cliff for any lengthy period - which would lead to automatic tax hikes and stiff cuts in government spending - would badly hurt both consumer and business confidence, it would take some time for the U.S. economy to slide into recession. In the meantime, there would be plenty of chances for lawmakers to make amends by reversing some of the effects.

That has been reflected in a U.S. stock market that has still not shown signs of melting down. Instead, it has drifted lower and become more volatile.

In some ways, that has let Washington off the hook. In the past, a plunge in stock prices forced the hand of Congress, such as in the middle of the financial crisis in 2008.

"If this thing continues for a bit longer and the result is you get a U.S. debt downgrade ... the risk is not that you lose two-and-a-half percent, the risk is that you lose ten and a half," said Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. equity strategist at UBS Equity Research, in New York.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said this week that the United States will technically reach its debt limit at the end of the year.

INVESTORS WARY OF JANUARY

The White House has said it will not negotiate the debt ceiling as in 2011, when the fight over what was once a procedural matter preceded the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. But it may be forced into such a battle again. A repeat of that war is most worrisome for markets.

Markets posted several days of sharp losses in the period surrounding the debt ceiling fight in 2011. Even after a bill to increase the ceiling passed, stocks plunged in what was seen as a vote of "no confidence" in Washington's ability to function, considering how close lawmakers came to a default.

Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's lowered the U.S. sovereign rating to double-A-plus, citing Washington's legislative problems as one reason for the downgrade from triple-A status. The benchmark S&P 500 dropped 16 percent in a four-week period ending August 21, 2011.

"I think there will be a tremendous fight between Democrats and Republicans about the debt ceiling," said Jon Najarian, a co-founder of online brokerage TradeMonster.com, in Chicago.

"I think that is the biggest risk to the downside in January for the market and the U.S. economy."

There are some signs in the options market that investors are starting to eye the January period with more wariness. The CBOE Volatility Index, or the VIX, the market's preferred indicator of anxiety, has remained at relatively low levels throughout this process, though on Thursday it edged above 20 for the first time since July.
More notable is the action in VIX futures markets, which shows a sharper increase in expected volatility in January than in later-dated contracts. January VIX futures are up nearly 23 percent in the last seven trading days, compared with a 13 percent increase in March futures and an 8 percent increase in May futures. That's a sign of increasing near-term worry among market participants.

The CBOE Volatility Index closed on Friday at 22.72, gaining nearly 17 percent to end at its highest level since June as details emerged of a meeting on Friday afternoon of President Barack Obama with Senate and House leaders from both parties where the president offered proposals similar to those already rejected by Republicans. Stocks slid in late trading and equity futures continued that slide after cash markets closed.
"I was stunned Obama didn't have another plan, and that's absolutely why we sold off," said Mike Shea, a managing partner and trader at Direct Access Partners LLC, in New York.

Obama offered hope for a last-minute agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff after a meeting with congressional leaders, although he scolded Congress for leaving the problem unresolved until the 11th hour.

"The hour for immediate action is here," he told reporters at a White House briefing. "I'm modestly optimistic that an agreement can be achieved."

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to convene on Sunday and continue working through the New Year's Day holiday. Obama has proposed maintaining current tax rates for all but the highest earners.

Consumers don't appear at all traumatized by the fiscal cliff talks, as yet. Helping to bolster consumer confidence has been a continued recovery in the housing market and growth in the labor market, albeit slow.
The latest take on employment will be out next Friday, when the U.S. Labor Department's non-farm payrolls report is expected to show jobs growth of 145,000 for December, in line with recent growth.

Consumers will see their paychecks affected if lawmakers cannot broker a deal and tax rates rise, but the effect on spending is likely to be gradual.

PLAYING DEFENSE

Options strategists have noted an increase in positions to guard against weakness in defense stocks such as General Dynamics because those stocks would be affected by spending cuts set for that sector. Notably, though, the PHLX Defense Index is less than 1 percent away from an all-time high reached on December 20.

This underscores the view taken by most investors and strategists: One way or another, Washington will come to an agreement to offset some effects of the cliff. The result will not be entirely satisfying, but it will be enough to satisfy investors.

"Expectations are pretty low at this point, and yet the equity market hasn't reacted," said Carmine Grigoli, chief U.S. investment strategist at Mizuho Securities USA, in New York. "You're not going to see the markets react to anything with more than a 5 (percent) to 7 percent correction."

Save for a brief 3.6 percent drop in equity futures late on Thursday evening last week after House Speaker John Boehner had to cancel a scheduled vote on a tax-hike bill due to lack of Republican support, markets have not shown the same kind of volatility as in 2008 or 2011.

A gradual decline remains possible, Golub said, if business and consumer confidence continues to take a hit on the back of fiscal cliff worries. The Conference Board's measure of consumer confidence fell sharply in December, a drop blamed in part on the fiscal issues.

"If Congress came out and said that everything is off the table, yeah, that would be a short-term shock to the market, but that's not likely," said Richard Weiss, a Mountain View, California-based senior money manager at American Century Investments.

"Things will be resolved, just maybe not on a good time table. All else being equal, we see any further decline as a buying opportunity."

(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: david.gaffen(at)thomsonreuters.com)

(Reporting by Edward Krudy and Ryan Vlastelica in New York and Doris Frankel in Chicago; Writing by David Gaffen; Editing by Martin Howell, Steve Orlofsky and Jan Paschal)

Remembering Lives Lost In 2012

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Debate Over Gun Control Heats Up

States are looking to shore up gun laws or ban assault weapons as Washington debates what to do about federal gun control.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BILL WECHTER/U-T SAN DIEGO/AP

Kerin Sovern, center, who is from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, but now lives in San Diego, attends a candlelight vigil honoring victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. California is one of many states looking at gun laws after the shooting.

ATLANTA  — As President Barack Obama urges tighter federal gun laws, state legislators around the country have responded to the Connecticut school shooting with a flurry of their own ideas that are likely to produce fights over gun control in their upcoming sessions.

There is momentum in two strongly Democratic states to tighten already-strict gun laws, while some Republicans in four other states want to make it easier for teachers to have weapons in schools. One Republican governor, however, used his power this week to block the loosening of restrictions.

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The question is whether public outrage after the slayings of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., will produce a meaningful difference in the rules for how Americans buy and use guns. Or will emotions and grassroots energy subside without action?

"I've been doing this for 17 years, and I've never seen something like this in terms of response," said Brian Malte, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, based in Washington, D.C. "The whole dynamic depends on whether the American public and people in certain states have had enough. No matter if it's Congress or in the states, their voices will be heard. That's what will make the difference."

POLL SHOWS RISE IN SUPPORT FOR GUN CONTROL

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report Thursday showing that the school shooting in Connecticut has led to more discussion about gun policy on social media than previous rampages. The report says users advocating for gun control were more numerous than those defending current gun laws.

The National Rifle Association, a powerful organization that has successfully lobbied for expanded gun rights, has remained largely silent since the shootings, aside from a brief statement mourning the victims and promising that the group "is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again." A spokesman did not respond to a request for comment this week. NRA leaders planned to hold a news conference Friday.

Some of the legislative proposals reflect renewed conviction in the long-held beliefs of lawmakers. Legislators, mostly Democrats, in California and New York plan a push to tighten what are already some of the most stringent state gun-control laws. Many Democrats in presidential swing states are pushing for tighter restrictions, while others take a wait-and-see approach. Meanwhile, rank-and-file Republicans in Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida have called for making it easier for teachers and other adults to have weapons in schools.

Other proposals predate the Newtown massacre. Lawmakers in the GOP-led states of Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Pennsylvania had been considering before the shootings loosening restrictions on employees having guns in their vehicles on work property.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, offered Thursday what appears to be a growing theme among GOP leaders: that the shooting should prompt discussions about mental health treatment, not anti-gun laws.

"Anybody can get a gun, and when bad people get guns, they're going to do what they want to do. No amount of gun control can stop someone from getting a gun when they want to get it," she said. "What we can do is control mental health in a way we treat people who don't know how to treat themselves."

Yet Republican Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan this week vetoed a law that would have allowed certain gun owners to carry concealed weapons in public places, including schools, though he attributed his action to the details of the law, not Newtown. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin this week declined to rule out proposed gun restrictions Democratic lawmakers are pushing in Madison, though he echoed Haley's emphasis on mental health.

The Democrats assuming control of the Minnesota Legislature plan to evaluate the state's gun laws, though no concrete proposals have emerged yet.

"I don't have an answer today," said the state's Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. "There's a limit to what society can do to protect people from their own folly."

In San Francisco, Ben Van Houten of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said, "Keeping public pressure on legislators is critical here. Legislators have been able to duck their responsibility to keep us safe."

A Pew Research Center survey taken Dec. 17-19, after the shooting, registered an increase in the percentage of Americans who prioritize gun control (49 percent) over gun owner rights (42 percent).

Those figures were statistically even in July. But 58 percent opted for control over individual rights in 2008, before Obama took office. The December telephone survey included 1,219 adults in all 50 states. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Van Houten, whose organization provides model legislation to lawmakers, noted Snyder's veto in Michigan. Less important than the details of the proposed conceal-and-carry law, he said, is that a Republican nixed a relaxation of existing law.

Also noteworthy is a California Republican who previously opposed more gun restrictions. State Sen. Ted Gaines, who represents Sacramento suburbs, said this week that he'll introduce a bill to permanently disallow gun ownership for anyone deemed by the courts to be a danger to others because of a mental diagnosis. Current California law allows those individuals to recover gun rights after treatment.

Of course, those examples don't involve new restrictions for the general population, which the NRA has successfully blocked in most states in the past.

In recent years, NRA's statehouse efforts have centered on expanding the right to carry guns in public places and adopting "stand your ground" laws that expand self-defense rights beyond a person's home. Just four states — Alaska, Arizona, Vermont and Wyoming — allow concealed weapons without a permit. But the NRA has over many years chipped away at the burdens to get a license in the remaining states and, more recently, shifted to eliminating exceptions that allow churches, schools, universities and businesses to ban weapons on their property.

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have jointly rejected the ideas of increasing gun presence on campus. The proposals generally take two forms: eliminating the exceptions so gun owners can choose to carry on campus or specifically requiring that school personnel be trained and armed.

"We don't believe the solution is to put more guns in the building, but keep them from getting in," said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. But he argued that prevention goes beyond gun control. He said NEA wants more money to finance school counselors and psychologists, better public mental health access generally, and state laws that crack down on bullying.

"It's time to emphasize how all of those services and that comprehensive approach play a role in keeping kids safe," he said.

As advocates talk to lawmakers, Van Roekel added, they should demand more than just a yes or no. "Don't just tell me what you won't do. Tell me what you are willing to do to try to fix this problem. If you vote no, come with an alternative."

 

 

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Next Move Is Obama’s After Boehner’s Tax Plan Fails

By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — With House Republicans’ revolt over their leader’s tax plan the evening before, President Obama on Friday faced the challenge of finding a new tax-and-spending solution — perhaps working now with Senate Republicans — to prevent a looming fiscal crisis in January.

Yet as the day dawned, officials at the White House remained as incredulous and bewildered as the rest of Washington after Speaker John A. Boehner, short of votes from his Republican majority, was forced to cancel Thursday’s vote on what he called his “Plan B.” It would have extended the soon-to-expire Bush-era tax cuts for all income up to $1 million to avert a tax increase for more than 99 percent of Americans but also, to the anger of the anti-tax conservative mutineers, would have raised the top tax rate for higher income to the level of the Clinton years.

Now Mr. Obama is looking for his own Plan B, just four days before Christmas and 10 days before a deadline for a deal to avoid the tax increases and deep, across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs scheduled after Dec. 31.

Officials in the administration and Congress, and in both parties, suggested the likeliest route was for Mr. Obama to seek a bipartisan accord with Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is the Senate majority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican minority leader, and hope that it could get through the House under deadline pressure. Last year, when the president and Mr. Boehner were at an impasse over getting Congress to approve the essential increase in the nation’s borrowing limit, it was the wily Mr. McConnell who first suggested the legislative way out of the mess. But Mr. McConnell faces re-election in 2014 and will be very reluctant to engage in any deal-making that could draw him a primary challenge in his conservative state.

Mr. McConnell has given no indication of his next move, but a spokesman, Don Stewart, offered no hint on Friday morning of an immediate helping hand. “I sure hope they have a plan of their own,” said Mr. Stewart, referring to Democrats Mr. Obama, Mr. Reid and the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi.

A number of Senate Republicans, unlike most party colleagues in the House, say they could support a deficit-reduction plan raising tax rates on high incomes, if Democrats agree to significant reductions in the growth of Medicare and Social Security. But both Republicans and Democrats are being assailed by party allies – groups on the right against any tax increases and on the left against cuts in entitlement-program spending.

If Mr. Obama were to reach some agreement that passes in the Senate, it still must get through the House. That, people in both parties say, could confront Mr. Boehner – who controls the Republican Party’s one lever of power -- with a decision about whether to allow a vote on a measure that presumably could not pass with Republican votes, but would have to be carried over the line with Democrats’ votes.

That prospect in turn gives rise to the question of whether Mr. Boehner can survive the House vote for speaker on Jan. 3, when the new Congress will include fewer Republicans given party losses last November.

Adam Jentleson, spokesman for the Senate Democratic leader, Mr. Reid, said in a statement, “It is now clear that to protect the middle class from the fiscal cliff, Speaker Boehner must allow a bill to pass with a combination of Democratic and Republican votes.”

The House, at Mr. Boehner’s direction, closed down until after Christmas and members dispersed. The president, who once had planned to leave on Friday with his family for its traditional Christmas vacation in Hawaii, would stay at the White House pending “the next moves,” said a senior administration official, who, like most others interviewed, would not be identified given the uncertainty about the next step. “If there is action this weekend, he will be here.”

On Thursday night, White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement, “The president’s main priority is to ensure that taxes don’t go up on 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses in just a few short days. The President will work with Congress to get this done and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy.”

Events on Friday morning added to the drama. First, Mr. Obama observed a moment of silence for the victims of the school massacre one week ago in Newtown, Conn., a slaughter of innocents that people in both parties had suggested might melt some partisan divisions; last weekend it had seemed to foster negotiating progress between Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner.

Then he was to speak at the funeral of longtime Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, where he would be thrown together with Mr. Reid and Mr. McConnell, leading the bipartisan Senate delegation.

While Mr. Obama had threatened a veto of the Boehner bill, and called the speaker’s pursuit of it a waste of time, the administration had hoped that once the House passed it – as Mr. Boehner had forcefully predicted on Wednesday – the speaker would return to the negotiating table. But now people in both parties express pessimism. Given Mr. Boehner’s inability to pass his own bill, which Republicans say he pursued only after he realized he did not have support in his caucus for the last offer he had made to the president a week ago, the speaker is a much-weakened figure, his own future in his job under a cloud.

The events in some ways could enhance Mr. Obama’s position politically. They force critics to rethink the widespread criticism of his negotiating skills in the 2011 debt-reduction talks, at least against evidence now that his negotiating partner, Mr. Boehner, indeed could not deliver enough Republican votes for a deal with tax increases. And with polls already showing most Americans would blame Republicans for failure of the fiscal talks, House Republicans’ meltdown ensures that.

But from the White House’s view, the repercussions for the economy of a dysfunctional power structure in Washington – and for Mr. Obama’s larger agenda of gun control, immigration and more – are too dire for any gloating.

For now, people in both parties say it is hard to imagine that the two sides can go beyond some fallback measure extending the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans and some other pending measures, to also achieve the hoped-for framework to limit entitlement spending and raise revenues enough to stabilize the mounting federal debt as the population ages and medical costs rise.

The outcome also casts doubt on Mr. Obama’s hopes for help from the business community in swaying Republicans.

Despite its much-publicized mobilization for a deal along the lines he favors, a coalition of well-known corporate leaders apparently had little influence in a Republican Party that has grown increasing populist and small-business oriented as the party base has shifted South and West. Working against it are conservative groups like Club for Growth with a record of defeating Republicans who support taxes in party primaries.

Why Dems shouldn’t fear politics of gun control

I noted this morning that gun control may not hold the political peril for Democrats that it once did, mainly because of the Democratic Party’s waning reliance on culturally conservative white voters. Ron Brownstein did a deep dive into older polling data and moved the ball further, establishing that the groups Obama relied upon for reelection — the emerging coalition of the Democratic Party’s future — are all behind gun control.
Now we have a brand new Washington Post/ABC News poll that really drives this home. What’s really striking is that opposition to stricter gun control is largely driven by white men — blue collar white men in particular.

By contrast, college educated whites, white women, moderates, and minorities all show majority support for stricter gun laws. These are the emerging pillars of the Democratic coalition.

First, the toplines. The Post poll finds that Americans favor stricter gun laws by 54-43. The Post polling team tells me that whites oppose them by 48-50. But this is driven by opposition among white men (42-56) and non-college whites (44-53). By contrast, college educated whites favor stricter laws (54-43), as do white women (53-44).

The same pattern is evident on semi-automatic weapons. Overall, Americans favor a nationwide ban on them by 52-44. Whites narrowly oppose this (48-49), but here again this is driven by opposition among white men (40-58) and non-college whites (42-54). By contrast, white women favor a ban by 56-40 and college educated whites favor one by 58-40.

 Public support for a nationwide ban on high capacity magazines is even stronger among the constituencies making up the emerging Democratic coalition. Americans overall support one by 59-48, as do big majorities of college educated whites and white women. Indeed, this is a case where even groups Dems are losing support a ban — non-college whites back one by 52-45, and white men back one by 54-45 — further underscoring that Dems are probably on safe ground with this route.

On all the above three questions, solid majorities of moderates support stricter laws, as do big majorities of non-whites. HuffPo reports that Senator Frank Lautenberg is set to introduce such a ban on high capacity magazines — which were used in recent mass shootings, including in Newtown — in the new Congress.

 ”Gun control is now overwhelmingly unpopular among the portions of the white electorate Obama is least likely to win anyway — and maintains solid majority support among the Americans most likely to actually vote for him,” Brownstein writes. “Gun control, in fact, remains a majority position with the same groups generally most enthusiastic about Obama’s recent embrace of gay marriage, free access to contraception in health insurance, and an administration version of the Dream Act for young illegal immigrants.”

The demographic shifts that Obama and the Democratic Party appear to be profiting from may also mean Dems no longer need to tip-toe around the “God, guns, and gays” cultural issues (with God excepted, of course) that inflame the voters they are less and less reliant upon.

Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant. He joined the Post in early 2009, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer. He lives in Maryland with his wife, son and daughter.

I understand the pro-gun and anti-gun people

By: Doron Fletcher

 I understand the pro-gun and anti-gun people. So, to make everyone one happy, let's ban ammunition. People can keep their guns, and others won't have to worry as much about being shot. In addition, I am on the fence regarding this debate. Economically speaking, a gun ban won't stop these killings. There are so many guns already out there, that getting one on the black market wouldn't be hard. Marijuana anyone? On the other hand, I don't understand why people need an AK or an AR. Have a handgun to protect your family in your house, or a shotgun and rifle for hunting, but not an AK or AR. And for those who carry a gun on a daily basis claiming to be ready for the crazy guy who wants to kill you. We non-carry people think you are the crazy person wanting to kill.

The 2nd Amendment and Killing Kids

Exclusive: As Americans reel in shock over the slaughter of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, defenders of “gun rights” insist, in effect, that such deaths are part of the price of “liberty” enshrined by the Framers in the Second Amendment. But this was not what James Madison had in mind, argues Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The American Right is fond of putting itself inside the minds of America’s Founders and intuiting what was their “original intent” in writing the U.S. Constitution and its early additions, like the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms.” But, surely, James Madison and the others weren’t envisioning people with modern weapons mowing down children in a movie theater or a shopping mall or now a kindergarten.

Indeed, when the Second Amendment was passed in the First Congress as part of the Bill of Rights, firearms were single-shot mechanisms that took time to load and reload. It was also clear that Madison and the others viewed the “right to bear arms” in the context of “a well-regulated militia” to defend communities from massacres, not as a means to enable such massacres.

James Madison, architect of the U.S. Constitution and author of the Bill of Rights.

The Second Amendment reads: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Thus, the point of the Second Amendment is to ensure “security,” not undermine it.

The massacre of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, on Friday, which followed other gun massacres in towns and cities across the country, represents the opposite of “security.” And it is time that Americans of all political persuasions recognize that protecting this kind of mass killing was not what the Founders had in mind.

However, over the past several decades, self-interested right-wing “scholarship” has sought to reinvent the Framers as free-market, government-hating ideologues, though the key authors of the U.S. Constitution – people like James Madison and George Washington – could best be described as pragmatic nationalists who favored effective governance.

In 1787, led by Madison and Washington, the Constitutional Convention scrapped the Articles of Confederation, which had enshrined the states as “sovereign” and had made the federal government a “league of friendship” with few powers.

What happened behind closed doors in Philadelphia was a reversal of the system that governed the United States from 1777 to 1787. The laws of the federal government were made supreme and its powers were dramatically strengthened, so much so that a movement of Anti-Federalists fought bitterly to block ratification.

In the political maneuvering to assure approval of the new system, Madison and other Federalists agreed to add a Bill of Rights to ease some of the fears about what Anti-Federalists regarded as the unbridled powers of the central government. [For details, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]

Madison had considered a Bill of Rights unnecessary because the Constitution, like all constitutions, set limits on the government’s power and it contained no provisions allowing the government to infringe on basic liberties of the people. But he assented to spell out those rights in the first 10 amendments, which were passed by the First Congress and ratified in 1791.

The intent of the Second Amendment was clarified during the Second Congress when the U.S. government enacted the Militia Acts, which mandated that all white males of military age obtain a musket, shot and other equipment for service in militias.

The idea was to enable the young country to resist aggression from European powers, to confront Native American tribes on the frontier and to put down internal rebellions, including slave revolts. There was nothing particularly idealistic in this provision; the goal was the “security” of the young nation.

However, the modern American Right and today’s arms industry have devoted enormous resources to twisting the Framers into extremist ideologues who put “liberties” like individual gun ownership ahead of all practical concerns about “security.”

This propaganda has proved so successful that many politicians who favor common-sense gun control are deemed violators of the Framers’ original intent, as essentially un-American, and face defeat in elections. The current right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has even overturned longstanding precedents and reinterpreted the Second Amendment as granting rights of individual gun ownership.

But does anyone really believe that Madison and like-minded Framers would have stood by and let deranged killers mow down civilians, including children, by using guns vastly more lethal than any that existed in the Revolutionary era? If someone had wielded a single-shot musket or pistol in 1791, the person might get off one volley but would then have to reload. No one had repeat-firing revolvers, let alone assault rifles with large magazines of bullets.

Any serious scholarship on the Framers would conclude that they were, first and foremost, pragmatists determined to protect the hard-won independence of the United States. When the states’-rights Articles of Confederation wasn’t doing the job, they scrapped it. When compromises were needed – even on the vile practice of slavery – the Framers cut the deals.

While the Framers cared about liberty (at least for white men), they focused in the Constitution on practicality, creating a flexible system that would advance the “general Welfare” of “We the People.”

It is madness to think that the Framers would have mutely accepted the slaughter of kindergarteners and grade-school kids (or the thousands of other American victims of gun violence). Such bloody insecurity was definitely not their “original intent.”

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

Will Connecticut Massacre Give Politicians the Guts to Take on the Gun Lobby?

By John Horgan | December 14, 2012

It’s happened again: a lone gunman has carried out a massacre, this time in an elementary school in Newtown, CT. A young man killed 18 children and eight adults, reportedly including his mother, a teacher at the school, before taking his own life.

And so once again I’m dragging out my plea for gun control, just as I did last summer, after James Holmes shot 12 people to death in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and in January 2011, after Jared Laughner killed six people and wounded 14 others, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson, Arizona.

Every time a deranged American male goes on a rampage, shooting down dozens of people, gun lovers trot out the familiar excuses: Guns don’t kill people, people do. If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. If some of the victims had been packing heat, they could have shot the bad guy before he shot them.

The journalist Jeffrey Goldberg floats this argument in this month’s The Atlantic. “Guns are with us, whether we like it or not,” Goldberg writes, so maybe good guys should arm themselves so they can take out the bad guys. After quoting a gun-control advocate asking whether we want to live in a country in which “the answer to violence is more violence,” Goldberg responds that “in a nation of nearly 300 million guns, his question is irrelevant.”

I reject this defeatism. I blame our recurrent mass shootings not only on despicable pro-gun groups such as the National Rifle Association—which feed off and fuel Americans’ childish obsession with firearms—but also on the cowardice of politicians.

In 2008 the NRA warned that Barack Obama would be the most anti-gun president ever. Actually, Obama, although he supported gun controls when he was an Illinois state senator, switched his stance during his presidential campaign. “I believe in the Second Amendment,” he said. “I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

He was true to his word: “Fears aside, gun rights thrive under Obama,” The Washington Independent reported in July, 2010. President Obama signed a law permitting people to carry guns into National Parks. He did not protest when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states and local governments could not overrule citizens’ federal right to bear arms or when legislators in Louisiana and Arizona passed laws allowing people to carry weapons into churches and bars, respectively. After a year in office, Obama received an “F” rating from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Here are some facts from the Brady Campaign: About 100,000 Americans are wounded or killed by firearms each year in the U.S.—which has the highest levels of gun ownership in the world—and more than a million Americans have been shot to death since 1968. Although gun supporters tout the benefits of self-defense, a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a suicide attempt; criminal assault or homicide; or unintentional shooting death or injury than for self-defense. Higher household gun ownership correlates with higher rates of homicide, suicide and unintentional shootings.

The American fetish for guns hurts non-Americans, too. The U.S. is the world’s leading source for small arms—defined as weapons that can be carried and operated by a single person—as it is for larger, more expensive weapons, such as tanks and jet fighters. Small arms, which range from pistols and rifles to rocket-launched grenades and shoulder-fired missiles, are the biggest killers in wars around the world. The International Action Network on Small Arms estimates that more than 600 million are in circulation.

The Action Network lobbies for tighter national and international controls on the manufacture and trade of small arms; urges a system of marking all firearms (perhaps with embedded computer chips, to allow easy tracking by law-enforcement officials); and promotes programs for collecting and destroying small arms. But the NRA has successfully blocked international as well as domestic gun control.

Mexican drug thugs, who have killed more than 30,000 people in recent years, rely on guns from the U.S. “Drug cartels have aggressively turned to the U.S. because Mexico severely restricts gun ownership,” The Washington Post reported in December, 2010. U.S. attempts to crack down on American dealers of arms to Mexico, the Post noted, are thwarted by “laws backed by the gun lobby that make it difficult to prove cases.”

President Barack Obama said in a brief, emotional appearance today: “We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in these past few years.” Indeed. So what are he and other politicians going to do about it?

Photo: Newtown Bee.

About the Author: Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). Follow on Twitter@Horganism.

Rice withdraws as secretary of state candidate, citing tough Senate battle

(Reuters) — Susan Rice withdrew her name from consideration as U.S. secretary of state on Thursday in the face of what promised to be a difficult Senate confirmation battle.


Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a close confidante of President Barack Obama, said she was withdrawing from the process to avoid a lengthy, costly and disruptive confirmation battle.

"That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country," she wrote in a letter to Obama.

Rice has faced questions about comments she made days after the September 11 assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, when the Obama administration said the attack was a result of a spontaneous demonstration over a film made in the United States that was insulting to the Prophet Mohammad.

Obama issued a statement saying he had accepted her decision and is grateful she will continue as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Hillary Clinton is planning to step down as secretary of state.

(Reporting By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Editing by Will Dunham)

Republicans must wise up

The biggest problem the Republican Party faces is not uninspiring candidates or unsound tactics. It is unpopular ideas.

This reality was brought home in last month’s election. It’s playing out in the struggle over how to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” And we’ll see it again in coming fights over immigration, entitlements, inequality and a host of other issues. Here’s the sad thing: Republicans get this stuff so wrong that Democrats aren’t even forced to go to the trouble of getting it right.

There will be those who doubt the sincerity of my advice to the GOP, since my standing as a conservative is — justifiably — less than zero. But I’ve always believed in competition, if only to prevent liberals from becoming lazy and unimaginative. One could argue that this is already happening.

Take the question of what to do about undocumented immigrants. The Republican Party takes an uncompromising line against anything that could be construed as amnesty — any solution that provides “illegal” immigrants with a path to citizenship. Much has been made of the impact the immigration issue had in the election, as Latinos voted for President Obama over Mitt Romney by nearly 3-1.

It is obvious to sentient Republicans why the party cannot afford to so thoroughly alienate the nation’s largest minority group. What the GOP seems not to grasp is that the party’s “send ’em all home” stance is way out of line with much of the rest of the electorate as well.

A Politico-George Washington University poll released Monday asked voters whether they favored “an immigration reform proposal that allows illegal or undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship over a period of several years.” That would be amnesty, pure and simple — and a whopping 62 percent said they were in favor, compared to 35 percent who said they were opposed.

You might expect Democrats, then, to be pushing hard for a straightforward amnesty bill. But they don’t have to. Because Republicans are so far out in right field on the issue, Democrats haven’t actually had to do anything to reap substantial political benefits. They’ve just had to sound more reasonable, and less hostile, than Republicans, which has not required breaking a sweat.

On the central fiscal-cliff question, the GOP is similarly out of step. The Politico poll found that 60 percent of respondents favor raising income taxes on households that earn more than $250,000 a year. The Republican Party says no — and thus allows itself to be portrayed as willing to sink the economic recovery, if necessary, to ensure that tycoons can keep their pantries stocked with caviar.

Where is the incentive for Democrats to get serious about fiscal matters? As long as the GOP remains adamant on what many Americans see as a no-brainer question of basic fairness, those who believe in progressive solutions get a pass.

The truth is that raising top marginal rates for the wealthy is probably as far as we should go on the tax front right now, given the fragility of the recovery. The best thing we could do for the country’s long-term fiscal health is spur the economy into faster growth, which will shrink deficits and the debt as a percentage of gross domestic product.

That said, it’s hard to imagine long-term solutions that don’t eventually require more tax revenue from the middle class as well as the rich. But why should Democrats mention this inconvenient fact when Republicans, out of ideological stubbornness, are keeping the focus on the upper crust?

The same basic dynamic plays out in the question of reforming entitlements. Republicans proposed turning Medicare into a voucher program; polls show that voters disagree. The GOP seems to be falling back to the position that the eligibility age for the program should be raised. Trust me, voters aren’t going to like that, either.

Nor, for that matter, do voters like the GOP’s solution for the millions of Americans who lack health insurance, which Romney summarized as, essentially, go to the emergency room. A smart Republican Party would stop focusing exclusively on how government can pay less for health care and, instead, begin to seriously explore ways to reduce health-care costs. A smart GOP would acknowledge the fact that Americans simply don’t want to privatize everything, which means we need new ideas about how to pay for what we want.

Faced with an opposition that verges on self-parody, progressive thinkers are mostly just phoning it in. This won’t change until somebody defibrillates the GOP, and we detect a pulse.

By Eugene Robinson, 

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

Obama says he's ready to work with Republicans to avoid "fiscal cliff"

(Reuters) — President Barack Obama, accused by Republican House Speaker John Boehner of pushing the country toward the "fiscal cliff," said on Saturday he was ready to work with congressional Republicans on a comprehensive plan to cut budget deficits as long it included higher taxes on the wealthy.

Obama is battling Republican lawmakers over how to avoid the combination of sharp tax hikes and spending cuts set to kick in early next year that could plunge the economy back into recession.

In his weekly radio address, the president renewed his call for Republicans to extend middle-class tax cuts while letting tax rates go up for the wealthy. He also said he would be willing to find ways to bring down healthcare costs and make additional cuts to government social safety-net programs.

"We can and should do more than just extend middle-class tax cuts," he said. "I stand ready to work with Republicans on a plan that spurs economic growth, creates jobs and reduces our deficit - a plan that gives both sides some of what they want."

Republicans have balked at tax rate increases, which they say would hurt small businesses and brake economic growth.

With three weeks left to avert the fiscal crunch, Boehner said on Friday the administration had adopted a "my way or the highway" approach and was engaging in reckless talk about going over the "fiscal cliff.

But Obama said his re-election last month and Democratic gains in both houses of Congress showed decisive support for his approach.

"After all, this was a central question in the election," he said. "A clear majority of Americans - Democrats, Republicans and Independents - agreed with a balanced approach that asks something from everyone, but a little more from those who can.

Boehner and the House leadership submitted their terms for a deal to the White House on Monday, after Obama offered his opening proposal last week.

The plans from both sides would cut deficits by more than $4 trillion over the next 10 years but differ on how to get there. Republicans want more drastic spending cuts in "entitlement programs" like the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly, while Obama wants to raise more revenue with tax increases and to boost some spending to spur the sluggish economy.

 By Mark Felsenthal

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

Worshipping Materialism at Christmas

The prevailing view on Fox News is that everyone in America, regardless of his or her religious beliefs, must join in the lavish and lengthy celebration of the birth of Jesus – or be accused of warring on Christmas. But the real assault on Jesus’s teaching comes from gross materialism, says Lawrence S. Wittner.

By Lawrence S. Wittner

Although fundamentalist fanatics have been working for decades to turn the United States into a “Christian nation,” they have not had much success along these lines.

One reason for their failure is that religious minorities and non-believers have resisted. And another is probably that a large number of Americans want to preserve religious tolerance and avoid theocracy. But it might also reflect the fact that the United States is now firmly in the grip of a different religion: shopping.

A Christmas tree surrounding by presents.

After all, in this “holiday season” the dominant activity does not seem to be traditional religious worship or prayer. The recently-concluded Black Friday provided the occasion not only for an orgy of consumer spending, but for ferocious action by screaming mobs of shoppers who engaged in mass riots in their desperate attempts to obtain a variety of products.

The frenzied participants were not starving, impoverished peasants or product-deprived refugees from communist nations but reasonably comfortable, middle-class Americans. Their desperation was not driven by hunger. They simply wanted … more!

And now that the nation enters its Christmas shopping spree — conveniently begun in November, to allow plenty of time for the practice — there will undoubtedly be lots more commodity fetishism. The shopping malls are already alive with the Christmas music designed to encourage purchases, while visions of rising sales figures dance through the heads of happy store managers.

All of this, of course, leads to complaints by traditional religious believers about the commercialization of Christmas. Of course, the bloviators on Fox News seek to blame the decline of religious feeling during the Christmas season upon liberal thought. But the hard reality is that Jesus in the manger or bleeding on the cross has less appeal to many Americans that do the latest cellphones and other commercial gadgetry.

Actually, despite the emphasis on purchases during the holidays, shopping is a year-round phenomenon in the United States. Children might not be able to read, write, add, or subtract, but they know a great deal about the latest consumer products.

Their parents and grandparents are thoroughly familiar with them as well. And why wouldn’t they be? A vast array of products is regularly featured on TV and radio programs, on roadside billboards, and in their newspapers and magazines.

In fact, commercial advertising is ubiquitous in the United States, with few Americans able to escape it. Even when people are not in their homes, commercial television programs — those shoddy, thought-free commodities developed to keep the ads from bumping together — run continuously in doctors’ waiting rooms, auto repair shops, elevators, train stations, hospitals, restaurants, airports, school cafeterias, bars, and taxis.

Furthermore, advertising is not designed to merely alert people to the availability of a product, but to make them want it. Commercial enterprises understand that, thanks to the influence of advertising, purchases will not be based upon need, but upon desire.

Advertising will stir dissatisfaction with what people already have and create a craving for something else. And this is a very promising route to sales. Naturally, then, U.S. corporations engulf Americans in advertising. It’s an excellent investment, and produces legions of eager, even desperate shoppers.

Only a very rare American politician would be willing to stand up against the resulting steamroller of consumerism. Imagine the political future of a candidate for public office who said:

“There has been enough talk of economic growth and competition as the solutions to our problems. Our real challenges as Americans are to limit our consumption to what we genuinely need, to share with others who are less fortunate than we are, and to halt the plunder of our planet’s resources and the destruction of our environment.”

I suspect that she or he would not get very far. Nor, despite the similarity of this approach to the core values of religious faiths, is it popular among the mainstream U.S. churches. Yes, they encourage small-scale charitable ventures. But they do little to challenge the consumerist ethos.

Indeed, the most active and rapidly growing among the churches — the fundamentalist and evangelical denominations — have rallied behind political candidates championing unbridled capitalism and the prerogatives of wealth. “Drill baby, drill” seems far more popular among them than the Golden Rule.

Ironically, then, by not opposing the corporate cultivation of untrammeled greed among Americans, the churches have left the door open to the triumph of America’s new religion — not liberal secularism, but shopping.

Lawrence S. Wittner is professor of history emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual (University of Tennessee Press).