Yesterday's tragic shootings were a heartbreaking moment for all of us. My thoughts are certainly with the victims, and I hope all of yours are as well.
What makes this attack disgraceful as well as tragic is that it was thoroughly preventable. The gunman purchased his stockpile legally and carried his weapons legally. Only in America is the right of a madman to arm himself against the big, bad "gummint" more important than the right of the security of the residents of a free state. Can you imagine this happening... ANYWHERE else (with a functioning government)? Madmen like this one do not constitute a well-regulated militia, and certainly contribute nothing to the security of a free state. The ultra-tight background checks proposed by Senator Gillibrand are a good first step, but broader action is needed to keep guns out of criminal hands.
My thoughts are as follows-
rifles and shotguns, and other hunting weapons: I'm not a hunter, and it doesn't hold terribly much appeal for me. That said, my stepbrother, John, does hunt, and after living with him for eight years, I really see no great harm in them, however distasteful I find firearms of any type. Especially considering the volume of shootings conducted with handguns and assault weapons, I don't think we need to deal with these just yet.
Handguns- these are clearly designed for person-person use, and therefore deserve greater scrutiny than hunting weapons. I think monthly psych evaluation for hand-gun owners would be a good starting point, but I would like to see broader action moving towards their ban.
Assault weapons and military grade hardware- totally outlawed. The body count here would have been cut in half had the madman not had a 6000 round automatic weapon. For those nuts who insist that these weapons are for "hunting purposes only", I say that if you need a machine gun to hit something the size of a deer, you have no business holding a firearm of any kind! In short, anyone who wants one of these obviously anticipates having to kill a great many people, quickly. We have the Texas state government, and Obama's predator drones for that. The civilians who want these tend to be right-wing, sovereign citizen-types who pose more of a threat to our security than any foreign agent.
Obviously, criminals will try to acquire guns whatever the laws. But modern technology has reached the point at which we can have our self-defensive cake and eat it too, with non lethal dart-tasers, pepper spray, and so on. To all those who think they can beat the 40-1 odds and use a gun to apprehend or kill a criminal with no harm to themselves, I say to get a taser. As to criminals acquiring guns, no matter if they were bought illegally, at some point those guns were legal, and therefore, standards can be tightened. As a side note, if the government can spy on all of us by the locations of our cellphones, why not install similar tracking devices in the guns of the nutjobs who won't be happy until they get to lead a lynch mob?
This tragedy should leave us griefstricken, but more than that, it should inspire us to declare: Never Again. I hope you join me in calling your representatives, the White House switchboard, (at 202-456-1111), your senators, mayors, anyone at all in a position of power, to ask: what are their plans to control gun violence and get guns off the streets of America? Why should the safety of the citizenry be held hostage to the so-called "right" of a radical fringe to feel secure against the power of the community?
In solidarity
Genosse Graham
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Health Care ruling and Jimmy Carter article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html?_r=1
The first thing I wanted to do is link to that article- it's President Carter's view on Obama's foreign policy/human rights record, and I think it's exactly what needs to be said. Wish McGovern had taken a similar tack in his last book, the more elder statesmen that come out and declare that the Democratic Party's rightward shift is shameful and untenable the better.
Well, happy fourth to all. I think it time to comment on the upholding of the Health Care Reform bill. Many of you know my sentiments, but I will restate the crux of the matter here: Health Care is too important to be determined by the market. It is a right, not a commodity, and no so-called reform bill that allows private profit margins to influence health care decisions will have my support. The Affordable Care act does not meet my standards of even s step in the right direction, as it keeps public health insurance off the table for the vast majority of Americans. I know the mandate is lenient and difficult to enforce, but the fact remains that the government has once again agreed that the profit of the insurance companies is a legitimate consideration, yea even at the expense of the people's health. Obliging the government to foot part of the bill for poor people's treatment with the new subsidies is correct in principle, but as the industry remains profit-driven the offered subsidies will either soon prove inadequate, or bankrupt the government as it strives to keep pace with the rocketing cost of insurance, driven by speculation, inefficiency, and above all the drive for profit.
That said, there are a number of useful regulations in the bill, and had the thing been struck down in its entirety, it would have been a loss. I am personally benefiting from the policy enabling parents' health insurance to cover children until age 26, and once the prohibition of refusing coverage to those with preexisting conditions kicks in, it will be somewhat helpful too. Furthermore, insurance companies are now barred from charging women more than men for the same health care, so that's a positive too.
Of course, none of this changes the underlying problem: capitalism's disregard for humanity. My fears now are twofold- that the government will be weakened by the loss of the sums it must now hemorrhage to feed the insurance companies whose profit motive as recently as 2009 was responsible for the deaths of 45000 people a year, according to Reuters, and that having applied the palliative of "Hope and Change", the nation will fail to undertake serious action to address the root of the problem for a long time to come.
To solve this problem, the first step would be to expand Medicare to all those who want it. This could be paid for by charging reparations from the insurance companies for the damage they have wrought upon us, but I would much prefer a more sustainable solution: namely Socialized medicine. Health care providers should be employed by the government, funded by taxation, and able to help patients without answering to anyone's bottom line but that of their conscience. You can't put a price on the priceless, like good health, but we can certainly learn the cost of the status quo as the quality of care keeps deteriorating to better profit the private companies who now as before have the full support of the government.
Nationalize the lot of them.
In Solidatität
Genosse Graham
The first thing I wanted to do is link to that article- it's President Carter's view on Obama's foreign policy/human rights record, and I think it's exactly what needs to be said. Wish McGovern had taken a similar tack in his last book, the more elder statesmen that come out and declare that the Democratic Party's rightward shift is shameful and untenable the better.
Well, happy fourth to all. I think it time to comment on the upholding of the Health Care Reform bill. Many of you know my sentiments, but I will restate the crux of the matter here: Health Care is too important to be determined by the market. It is a right, not a commodity, and no so-called reform bill that allows private profit margins to influence health care decisions will have my support. The Affordable Care act does not meet my standards of even s step in the right direction, as it keeps public health insurance off the table for the vast majority of Americans. I know the mandate is lenient and difficult to enforce, but the fact remains that the government has once again agreed that the profit of the insurance companies is a legitimate consideration, yea even at the expense of the people's health. Obliging the government to foot part of the bill for poor people's treatment with the new subsidies is correct in principle, but as the industry remains profit-driven the offered subsidies will either soon prove inadequate, or bankrupt the government as it strives to keep pace with the rocketing cost of insurance, driven by speculation, inefficiency, and above all the drive for profit.
That said, there are a number of useful regulations in the bill, and had the thing been struck down in its entirety, it would have been a loss. I am personally benefiting from the policy enabling parents' health insurance to cover children until age 26, and once the prohibition of refusing coverage to those with preexisting conditions kicks in, it will be somewhat helpful too. Furthermore, insurance companies are now barred from charging women more than men for the same health care, so that's a positive too.
Of course, none of this changes the underlying problem: capitalism's disregard for humanity. My fears now are twofold- that the government will be weakened by the loss of the sums it must now hemorrhage to feed the insurance companies whose profit motive as recently as 2009 was responsible for the deaths of 45000 people a year, according to Reuters, and that having applied the palliative of "Hope and Change", the nation will fail to undertake serious action to address the root of the problem for a long time to come.
To solve this problem, the first step would be to expand Medicare to all those who want it. This could be paid for by charging reparations from the insurance companies for the damage they have wrought upon us, but I would much prefer a more sustainable solution: namely Socialized medicine. Health care providers should be employed by the government, funded by taxation, and able to help patients without answering to anyone's bottom line but that of their conscience. You can't put a price on the priceless, like good health, but we can certainly learn the cost of the status quo as the quality of care keeps deteriorating to better profit the private companies who now as before have the full support of the government.
Nationalize the lot of them.
In Solidatität
Genosse Graham
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)