After Aurora: SolvingThe Wrong Problem

First, before I speak further let say that my heart & prayers go out to the lives that have been lost or harmed by one deranged individual. I do not seek to exploit this horrific event with an axe to grind. I am simply joining a discussion already in progress at this point. I will add that whatever decision is to be made must be made in the light of reason & not in the heat of the moment.
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Our first instinct in times such as these are off predetermined by our biases. When we first heard that a gunmen had shot up a theater in Aurora, Colorado our individual reactions were varied. Some asked "why?". Others instead asked "how?".

Many followed that initial reaction with "See, I told you so". A few probably thought of their own idealogical group & prayed, "please don't let him be one of us".

Soon the discussion turned from hospitals to politics. While one friend said that it's time for the public to say "Enough!", I couldn't help but think "Tread carefully".

Hidden from view behind our petty disagreements & fear mongering is this truth - sick & disturbed people sometimes do bad things.

The guns weren't the cause, they were only the tool. While they were purchased legally, they could have just as easily been acquired illegally. The cannisters of irritants & the booby-trapped apartment show that he had the ability to use other means to accomplish his goal.

The argument goes that access to such deadly weapons caused the heavy loss of life. But that's not really true either. Think of other mass murderers of recent memory. Truck bombs & airplanes come to mind as quickly as guns, killing thousands in the process.

In 2011, there were 8,775 deaths from firearms (of that, the majority are suicides). As a comparison, there were over 32,000 motor vehicle deaths last year. Firearm deaths reached their high point of 17,075 in 1993.  Background checks were instituted that same year.

Since 1993, deadly firearm encounters have decreased even as gun ownership & gun control laws have eased. In 1999 gun deaths began a small uptick through 2004 & have decreased since then. The assault gun ban expired in 2004 after seeing a decrease & increase while in effect. During that same time, concealed carry laws have expanded nationwide.

I've spent the past couple days looking at the statistics & the best conclusion that I can make based on the available data is that concealed carry & quality background checks have had the greatest effect on gun violence in America. I believe that its because of these two policies that firearm fatalities have dropped nearly 50% since 1993. (Read that again - a 50% decrease over the last 20 years).

As for our current debate, all I can really say is that James Holmes was a disturbed individual, possibly mentally ill. If society has dropped the ball, it is not on guns, but on how we treat the mentally ill.

Guns don't shoot 71 innocent people, crazed minds do. Arguing for greater gun control at this time goes against all the statistics & implies that shooting only 7 instead of 71 is more acceptable. Far better to learn the greater lesson of Aurora's pain & suffering by disarming the next James Holmes before he acts & let today's successful gun laws continue their good work.

Taking the emotion out of it & examining the issue in the light of reason shows me one thing. Keeping guns out of criminal & unbalanced hands while allowing greater access for law-abiding citizens is still the better path forward.

RIP - George Jefferson

In honor of the passing of Sherman Helmsley & to celebrate the terrific character that was George Jefferson, I offer this rerun of a post from March 2011.  Fortuitously, my take on George & his 7 area dry cleaning stores stands in contrast to how President Obama feels about small business owners such as him.

May Sherman rest in peace, but let him live on in perpetuity as the small (statured) businessman who got his piece of the pie in the days before politicians tried to stake a claim on his success.

http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-republicans-love-george-jefferson.html

BACK TO SCHOOL BARACK

Barack Obama, noted Constitutional Scholar, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, US Senator and current President of the United States of America needs to go back to school.  

He needs to take a basic freshman year American Civics course similar to what I took when I was 14.  If he were to attend that class, he would learn that roads, police and firefighters are predominantly local matters.  Instead he is out on the campaign trail attempting to justify higher federal income tax rates by arguing that small businessman can't succeed without roads, police and firefighters.  

I agree that successful businessman should be accountable for that success; and they are.  The top 10 percent pay well over half of all Federal income tax while the bottom half pays none.  But the President won't ever tell you that.  Instead he claims jurisdiction over local community issues in an attempt to blame his poor economic record on the wealthy.

The president should be sure to stop by an Intro to Economics class while he's passing through the halls.  Perhaps, he might come to understand the laws of supply and demand.  Investing sizeable amounts of our Federal revenues into Solyndra and other green investments only to watch job losses and bankruptcy ensue holds a lesson if he were willing to learn.  The government cannot create demand for a product no one wants by simply funding it into supply.

Instead he would learn that when you tax something, you get less of it and when you subsidize something, you get more of it.  Raising taxes on income means less income.  Subsidizing and extending unemployment benefits and other temporary aid gets you more unemployment and needy citizens.

BUT THEY CAN'T DO THAT!

I posted this picture on my Facebook page this week in response to the Supreme Court Obamacare ruling and specifically to Chief Justice Robert's opinion.  Following a very heated debate in this nation on the constitutionality of the health care reform law and intense debate in court, we have awaken to a world where we must face the fact that for all parties in this debate, we've been both right and wrong at the same time.

Congress and President Obama were right and wrong, often simultaneously since they tended to speak from both sides of their mouth.  I said it at the time, that no matter how you looked at their tax penalty, it was simply a tax.  Despite all the rhetoric from the president that he would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000, this was a tax.  Penalizing inactivity is the converse of rewarding activity.  All they had to do was raise rates across the board for all and then offer a deduction or credit to those who had health insurance.  The end result is the same; it's just a different process to achieve that end.

The Supreme Court got it both right and wrong.  Despite my argument, the Chief Justice was wrong in ruling that the mandate was allowable as a tax.  It would have been if they had wrote it in some way similar to what I wrote.  They have the power to give preferential tax treatment to health insurance consumers; but only by raising the income tax for all and offering a deduction or credit to some.  That is most definitely not what the law does and no matter how the court twists and turns it, the law can't be read that way.

Even after the ruling, Obama and the Dems are running from the 'mandate as a tax' line as quickly as possible.  They point out that they voted for a penalty, not a tax.  But Congress did not have the authority to assess such a penalty and can only have their cake as a tax.  So either eat it or get rid of it and stop trying to shove it down our throats.  If I was in Congress, I would offer a bill to change the health care law's language to reflect the Court's opinion and read as a functional tax raise/deduction mechanism, then watch the supporters of Obamacare decide their fate.  Tax or penalty - which is it?

Robert's and the de facto majority at least did get it right when they found that the Commerce Clause was not broad enough to grant Congress the ability to regulate that which does not currently exist, even if it one day may exist.  To have allowed the law to stand under the Commerce Clause would have made possible for Congress to begin regulating entire markets that don't exist at this time, but that may exist in the future.

Under such a broad reading of the Commerce Clause, Time Travel could find itself under heavy regulation, even though it is scientifically impossible provided you don't consider trans-multiverse travel.  Congress in it's limited faculties could easily weigh down the potential for trans-dimensional travel in it's attempt to eliminate the still theoretically impossible trans-temporal trip.

And what about regulating non-living apparitions.  Say what you will, but I think we all long for the days like 1985 when Time Travel was a wide open field for Marty and the Doc and being a Ghostbuster was a legitimate capitalistic venture.  In fact, I believe it was the government regulator who caused all the trouble in New York City for Dr. Peter Venkman and his co-workers.  Maybe Mayor Bloomberg might one day ban astral projections in the city's eateries and hotels in his further attempts to kill the free market.

As for the picture above, as well as those who have said similar things, they are correct.  No founding father ever imagined such a thing as coercive commerce, apart from public goods (police, roads, gov't expenditures, etc), or taxing/penalizing such economic inactivity.

But we are quite wrong to believe that it's unconstitutional.  In fact, it's already been happening for decades.  Buy a house? You get a mortgage interest deduction.  Rent a home? Sorry, but no deduction.  Have a child? $1000 tax credit.  No children?  No tax credit.  Buy a Chevy Volt?  $7500 tax credit.  Buy a Chevy Suburban?  Not only no credit, but the more gas you buy the more taxes you are paying on that fuel.  Those are all either taxes or penalties on your choice of consumption and/ or lack of activity.

We're right to think it's wrong.  But we're wrong to think that argument matters at this point. The system is so bogged down in this nonsense that only a total reform of our tax system can fix it.  And that's a worthy reform - when government reforms itself to make it more efficient.  But government attempting to reform industry?  Katy bar the doors.

The truth is that we are right to be mad that the health care industry is dysfunctional and that so many fall through the cracks, but we're wrong to think that government planning can fix those structural problems.  Innovation and competition will always build something better if we just get out of the way.  A marketplace that can put into the hands of the poorest Americans, a $600 hand held computer that also serves as a phone, camera, video recorder, alarm clock, calendar and music playing device, something completely inconceivable in 1985 when Marty and the Doc traveled to the future year of 2015 - that type of marketplace can produce a health care system that works.  

Trying to regulate the Health Care Insurance today is like trying to regulate land-line telephones in 1985.  In the future, the type of all-compassing insurance plans of today will probably be as few and far between as land line phones are becoming today.  It's a fools game and I'm tired of feeling like we're all fools.  To my friends who want to help, I say, "Just stop!"  Help is on the way, if we would just get out of the way and let it pass.

Instead, we will attempt to coerce people into one-size fits all, minimum coverage plans rather than letting the consumer buy products that meet their specific needs.  Just watch a car insurance commercial and wonder how such regulation would help there.  

"I want to buy car insurance."

"Well you also need to have boat, home, and property insurance."

"I don't have any of those things and I don't need that."

"Well that doesn't matter.  You might one day."

"But I just need car insurance so I can drive to work.  I can't afford anymore than that."

"Look, I can't sell a car-only insurance plan.  The government says we must sell plans that cover everything -- hey, where you going?"

(somewhere off in the distance, one small gekko runs away)