And Counting

HADIYA PENDLETON, a 15 year old high school girl, performed at the Inaugural with her school’s band. Hadiya was an honors student, a volleyball player and a majorette at King College Prep.  She and a dozen other students had taken shelter from a rain storm under a Park’s canopy. An unidentified gun man started shooting into the crowd. Hadiya, although not the target, died of her wounds.

Since the massacre at Sandy Hook, Newtown, CT, 1400 more people have died in gun violence.

One hopes that the Congressional Committees meeting this week to deliberate as to whether to take some sort of action to alleviate gun deaths think a moment about Hadiya.

 

A Well Regulated Militia Being Necessary to the Security of a Free State

Lawrence A Winans

I am a gun-owner and have been for years. I’ve been a member of the local Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP). The CMP was established by the Defense Department to promote the training of civilians in the proper use of firearms in case of a national emergency. Although not a hunter I enjoy the sport of marksmanship. I’ve also read case law developing the meaning and application of the Second Amendment.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) does not represent me.

President Obama and Vice President Biden have developed a reasonable set of proposals which do not violate the rights of gunowners but do make an effort to reduce the sort of violence we repeatedly see on the news. The NRA’s irrational rejection of anything in the nature of gun regulation does not protect the constitutional rights of lawful gunowners but rather violates the rights to life and liberty held by schoolchildren and the other victims of gun violence.

The key word here is “regulation”. The Second Amendment* does not grant an absolute right to own and use firearms. It recognizes the need to maintain an armed populace which may be assembled as a militia for the defense of the country. The Amendment states clearly that there is a need for a “well regulated militia” and the right of gunownership is predicated upon that need.

The Constitution does not protect any would-be right to kill people, to buy guns secretly and without recordation, to maintain firepower exceeding that of many small nations, to load “cop-killing” bullets, or to possess weaponry of mass destruction.

We here at the DISSENTING DEMOCRAT are not in the tank for Obama but on this issue he speaks for the Nation. This is not a conservative or liberal issue, it is sanity versus insanity. We hope Congress chooses sanity.

______________________________________________

* The Second Amendment reads as follows:

“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.”

How the Rich REALLY Get All That Money

The rationale for the Rich having eversomuch more than the rest of us is frequently two-fold, (1) the rich make their money starting and building businesses and thus producing jobs; and, (2) the rich use their money as venture capital to grow these businesses.

This is a myth. Probably manufactured by some PR flack.

Actually, ONLY 3.6% of the taxpayers in the highest brackets were entrepreneurs making their money in enterprise. And even among this very small group only 1 out of a 1000 entrepreneurs come from the moneied aristocracy, 999 of every 1000 entrepreneurs originate in the middle-classes. In the main, the rich aren’t makers, they are takers. So do the parasitical rich, who themselves aren’t entrepreneurs, invest their money in job-creation? No, less than 10% of rich folk money gets put into venture capital or angel-investing. The lion’s (or pig’s) share is plunked down into low-risk soft investments, into financial playthings and not working capital.

SOURCES:

— Edward Wolff, “Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze—an Update to 2007″ (March 2010) Monograph

— “Where the rich are keeping their money”, Marketwatch (June 24, 2011), Wall Street Journal

— “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur”, Kaufman Foundation Report (July 2009)

Follow Up

A reader chided us for our ignorance of how Capitalism works, he wrote that when the wealthy plunk down their cash into financial platyhings they are financing new enterprise and creating jobs.

Yes, this is the story, this is the hype but it is not the reality. “Soft investments” are not made into new enterprise, they are made into existing business and low-risk activities. Building something new is risky, it takes guts as well as money. Soft investments include corporate bonds for longstanding industry that has already reached its peak and plateaued and which are not generating new hires. Soft investments include buying sure things, for example, buying up factories in the U.S. and then dismantling them while shedding workers. The American economy was once huge and now in its decline there is a large business making money selling off what earlier entrepreneurs had built. The Capitalists of today are the equivalent of vultures feasting on the carcasses of a once healthy economy.

How Rich Are They?

We’ve posted some of this info earlier but thought the full poster to be impressive. It was produced by UNITED for a FAIR ECONOMY which can be found at faireconomy.org

 

Fact du Jour

There are about 28 MILLION slaves in the world today.

There are about 220 MILLION who work in sweat shops worldwide.

A “slave” is someone who is not compensated for their labor and who may be bought and sold.

A “sweatshop worker” receives monetary compensation albeit extremely low compensation and may quit.

The Inquisition Rears Its Ugly Head in Minnesota

Lennon Cihak, 17, was preparing for confirmation. His family are devoted Catholics and supportive of their local church in Barnesville, Minnesota. Sometime before Lennon’s confirmation during Minnesota’s debate on same-sex marriage as placed on the State ballot, Lennon took an interest in the debate and posted his support for same-sex marriage on his Facebook page. His priest threatened him that he would be denied confirmation unless he publicly recanted this political opinion. He refused, was denied confirmation and was banned from communion as was his entire family.

The sacrament, in Christian theology, is a gift of God, and not a weapon for political conformity. Shame on the priest and the bishop of Crookston, Minnesota.

The DISSENTING DEMOCRAT generally avoids religious discussion but when the realm of the sacred profanes itself in political pollution, all right thinking people should object. It has been said before but deserves repetition that the monsters who have molested children while serving as priests continue to participate in communion.

 

How Hot Is That?

No, seriously, how hot is the fact that ARIZONA has elected the nation’s very first Bisexual Congressperson to the U.S. House of Representatives.

KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-ARIZONA)

Arizona did its best to keep its Latino, African-American and Native American communities from voting on November 6. Many were forced to cast “provisional ballots” which then the authorities proposed to discard. Nevertheless, the votes came in and their disposal avoided resulting in piles of uncounted votes left over. The State is now in the process of counting these ballots. One of the beneficiaries has been Kyrsten Sinema who came from behind to win. Sinema had previously served in the Arizona Legislature, worked with her MSW as a social worker, and then as a defense attorney with her JD and then tied it up with a PhD. Good looking and smart . . . how hot is that!

Election Milestones

The UNITED STATES of AMERICA in 2008 achieved a double-milestone by electing its first person of African-American ancestry who also was named Barack Hussein. A man whose biological father was a Kenyan civil servant and whose stepfather was an Indonesian businessman. Truly remarkable.

The election of 2012 besides returning that man to office should be properly acknowledged for its milestones as well:

— The first Buddhist was elected to the U.S. Senate

— The first Hindu was elected to the U.S. House

—  The U.S. Congress saw its two Muslims re-elected

— Twenty women are now members of the U.S. Senate

— The first openly gay (lesbian) was elected to the U.S. Senate

— And, for the first time in history as the result of popular ballot initiatives in Colorado and Washington State marijuana has been legalized for recreational use

All in all, a memorable election.

Lindsay Lohan Endorses Romney

 

Lindsay Lohan, pictured above, has endorsed Mitt Romney for the Presidency.

Political psephologists opine that such an endorsement augurs poorly for President Obama. Ms Lohan is typical of what is politely known as a “low information voter” and generally such dumb, er, low information, voters tend to decide close elections. Low information voters (LIVs) don’t follow debates or have any informed opinions on the issues and float with whatever trends may be prominent at the time. The LIVs were enthusiastic Obama-drones in 2008 and if Lohan is representative of the class, Mr Romney will be taking the oath in January 2013.

It may be that Lindsay Lohan has good advice for the rest of us, with the Election Night shaping up to be a Romney rout, perhaps we should all just get drunk and pass the evening outside of consciousness.

Romney Lifts His Leg on Us Then Tries to Tell Us It’s Raining

 

So you worked all your life paying into the Social Security fund? Now you collect a small pension. MITT ROMNEY thinks you’re a welfare moocher and not as good as he is.

So your brother went off to war, while the Romney boys had better things to do, had his leg blown off and now collects a VA pension? MITT ROMNEY scorns him as a non-producer, a social parasite.

Your Dad died after a lifetime of work leaving your Mom with a small pension. Mom worked her life raising you and your brothers and sisters and then as Dad got ill nursed him. As a result she doesn’t make enough now to even pay income taxes. MITT ROMNEY thinks she should pay taxes anyway.

You see, the class of people to which Mitt belongs, disdains the rest of us. We are their servants, their workers and not really one of the beautiful people. Whatever we do to get by, work, collect social security or whatever, isn’t as respectable as playing the stock market, or shipping off industries to China. Mitt is physically pained because he has to associate with the hoi-polloi to get votes, you can see it in his face and his grimace.

They aren’t us, they would, if they could, exterminate us like insects. As it is they have no compunction against starving us, poisoning us, polluting our water or adulterating our food, or working us until we die. We have to get away from the deference we give the rich, they aren’t to be admired, they are the enemy.