Newtown Massacre

December 26, 2012

Newtown massacre: What do we do now?

As the nation continues to share the suffering of the Newtown, Conn., victims and their families, the debate on how to prevent recurrences of similar tragedies expands.

As usual, much of the mainstream broadcast media fan the flames of another tragedy to gain viewers, ratings and revenue. And, as usual, not having actual facts hasn’t prevented them from sharing imagined ones. This tragedy again shows many TV reporters spending excessive time expressing their personal opinions instead of reporting the facts as known. And, once again, our elected leaders pander to their loyalists instead of uniting in taking the best actions for our nation.

As expected, the gun control debate has reignited. Those favoring controls plead for limiting firearm ownership by private citizens as the only way to prevent recurrences. On the opposite side, some in the pro-gun crowd support the notion of all teachers and staff in schools being allowed to carry firearms in order to deter attacks and even possibly to fight back and reduce carnage.

This important debate, which should be held, must include a broader perspective than just controlling gun ownership if we hope to prevent this slaughter of the innocent from happening again.

We visited our grandchildren during Thanksgiving. My 10-year-old grandson was playing a game on his Xbox that involved killing as many zombies as possible. He asked me if real zombies existed. I asked why he wanted to know. Now, following Newtown, the answer he gave is chilling: “I would like to kill some real ones.”

Much of the blame for gun violence must be aimed at parents of children and society at large. Our movies too often depict mindless violence, and too many parents allow their children to see these shows because, as adults, they know it’s not real. Too many children and the mentally ill may not see it the same way.

We need to rate movies containing violence the same way we do for pornography. We must find ways of preventing our impressionable children from taking pleasure in killing other humans as the objective of video games so often used to keep them occupied.

We must provide armed security for our citizens in any venue (including schools) where we gather in sufficient numbers that could possibly attract a mass murderer. Surely using some of our military funding in this manner would make more sense than playing the role of the world’s police force.

We must find better ways to identify and treat the mentally ill and make certain they have absolutely no access to firearms. We must find ways to reduce firearms sales by anyone not licensed to sell them. Nearly half of all weapons are sold by private individuals who bypass the background checks required by licensed firearm sellers in most states.

I have had a concealed carry firearm permit for many years in order to protect my family. Here the permitting process is quite thorough. Applicants first take a gun safety course from a licensed provider. This involves viewing a video on gun laws and safety, then passing a written test, and proving the ability to hit a stationary target.

Next is a trip to the county Sheriff’s Office to be vetted. Fingerprints are sent to the FBI to verify no criminal record. Then the Sheriff’s Office staff sends letters to the applicant’s personal physician and the county mental health department to verify no record of treatment for mental illnesses.

If every gun purchaser had to go through a similar vigorous background check, we would drastically reduce gun possession by the wrong people. Why not consider using the concealed carry permit process for anyone who wants to purchase firearms and ammunition? Why wouldn’t law-abiding citizens support a gun ownership permitting system, just as we have for driving?

Government officials at all levels need to massively expand gun buyback programs in order to remove some of the millions of unneeded weapons from circulation.

What about so-called assault weapons? I don’t own this type of weapon and honestly can’t figure out a reason for anyone else to, but I’ll wait to hear others’ opinions on that issue. Frankly, many modern semi-automatic handguns can hold up to 18 rounds of powerful ammunition. The two handguns the Newtown killer had were more than sufficient to have accomplished his fiendish aims even if he didn't have access to the rifle.

I do not believe we will or ever should completely ban private citizens from owning firearms. Too many really bad people out there do have guns, and they have repeatedly proven they can and will use them against honest citizens. My wife tells me I would never get to one of my guns in time if needed. I always answer that I certainly could not if I did not own one.

Gun control supporters should remember that Connecticut has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. What good did they do? Gun control laws will never stop crazy or evil maniacs!

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower
miketower@bellsouth.net

I hope you will take time to read what a good pal of mine thinks at:  Lee's Political Opinions, and also visit the site for an organization we co-founded called:  Citizens Against Politics As Usual.

America--What if we had an extra 100 million citizens?

December 16, 2012

What if America today had 400 million-plus citizens instead of 300?

Research from the Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show American women had well over 50 million abortions in the past 40 years. If those aborted had been born and reproduced at normal birth rates, today we would have an additional 100 million citizens. Imagine our nation, facing today's economic challenges, with this many additional citizens requiring food, shelter, education and health care.

Perhaps the additional population might have provided some benefits for our nation. Some to consider: (1) Our government might have attempted to actually stop illegal immigration over the past three decades if we already had a supply of low-cost workers in this hypothetical population boom. (2) We would have had an almost endless additional supply of volunteers for our military, allowing our politicians to "build" even more nations. (3) This over-supply of labor would have drastically lowered U.S. wages, resulting in fewer jobs being shipped offshore. (4) We wouldn't have the coming shortage of FICA-paying workers to fund retiring boomers' entitlements.

Truthfully, despite the remote possibility of benefits, I could foresee mostly tragic results. Our nation already hovers on the brink of failure. Current economic conditions wouldn't be just slowly crushing our middle class; it would have already been annihilated!

To me, though, 50 million-plus abortions seem unimaginable. I can't help wondering why, during this time span, with so many other effective and relatively inexpensive birth control options readily available, so many choose abortion. The pill, for example, is 99 percent effective if taken as directed, and the cost for the two most commonly prescribed versions is between $8 and $12 per month through almost any chain pharmacy. Many county health departments (including ours) supply both the pill and condoms at no charge.

The average cost of a non-hospital, first-trimester abortion is around $500, but this does not include the costs for treating possible side-effects, the main one being infection. Nor does it include the costs for treating the inevitable increases in sexually transmitted diseases resulting from unprotected sex. Remember, we all pay higher taxes and health insurance premiums to fund these expenses.

I support the right to an abortion in cases of rape or incest. I can even understand when a woman who has tried diligently to practice birth control might choose abortion over an unwanted pregnancy. However, rape, incest, failed diligent birth control efforts, and other birth control options being too expensive cannot possibly precipitate most of these 58 million abortions. In fact, researchers only attribute about 2 percent of all abortions to the first two reasons.

The underlying demographics of those receiving abortions seem to expose the truth. These data show women under 24 receive more than half of all abortions, single women account for 75 percent, and 50 percent have had previous abortions.

Few issues have been more passionately debated than abortion since Roe v. Wade became the law of the land in 1973. The extremely passionate opposing sides of pro-choice and pro-life remain diametrically locked in battle against one another, and I doubt it will ever change.

Personally, I don't think the abortion debate should continue to be based only on morality or women's rights. Instead, society should acknowledge that the most important issue to be dealt with is the significant population of uneducated or careless couples who too often allow abortion to serve as their primary birth control method —and developing viable strategies to change this behavior.  

I do not think the government should interfere with women's rights to determine how they use their bodies. However, I do wish more of this subset of our population would make the choice to use less expensive pregnancy prevention options. While we cannot afford a population explosion, we can and should find ways to prevent abortion from being the primary birth control method for so many.

Awareness of options, education and inexpensive birth control must become much more readily available. Most developed nations sell the pill over the counter. Why not here? Surely if we could find effective ways to increase the use of other options, most on either side of this debate and society overall would be the winners.

We see a constant barrage of ads for erectile dysfunction drugs. Why not a series of ads promoting best practices for prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases? If I were the parent of younger children, I would surely prefer to have a discussion with my kids about the latter than I would about EDS drugs.

Mike Tower

Please visit the blog of a good pal of mine:  Lee's Political Opinions, and the website for an organization he and I co-founded:  Citizens Against Politics As Usual

America already over the fiscal cliff!

December 9, 2012

The fiscal cliff: How close are we?

We keep hearing we are rapidly approaching the edge of the "fiscal cliff." Most of us (and our leaders) seem to take comfort in the word "approaching," as if this means we have a chance to avert disaster.

"We're so far gone, we're over the cliff," said Ron Paul, R-Texas, who will retire this year after serving 12 terms in the House, "We cannot get enough people in Congress in the next five to 10 years who will do the wise things. We have to prepare for having already fallen off the fiscal cliff."

This D.C. insider believes we will never see actions to avert the crash. I agree and think we need gigantic cushions and parachutes — and we need them now! We need to stop deluding ourselves by thinking gradual changes in direction will work. We need immediate actions to either stop the spending madness, or to make the crash landing survivable for as many of us as possible.

A few examples of the causes and proof of our financial trouble:

First, we have overspent for our military for the past few decades. I read recently we spend more for military goods and services than the next 27 developed nations— combined. Also consider: We borrow all funds for this expense because every dollar of our nation's revenue is already committed by law to fund other expenses. Military spending is purely discretionary. How can a nation, with less than 5 percent of the

world's population, continue borrowing and spending this way, especially when we are already so deeply in debt? When we were the wealthiest nation in the world, perhaps we could reasonably police the world, but we can't afford it any longer.

Second, America spends nearly double for health care per capita than any other developed nation, and yet we rank No. 32 or worse in health outcomes. Within our ineffective and unaffordable health care system, the global pharmaceutical industry garners the vast majority of its profits — all from our tiny proportion of the global population.

How can this be? It's quite simple — all other developed nations in the world have universal health care systems with their federal governments paying for all expenses. This is often referred to as "single-payer health care." These countries all tightly control expenses, including having pharmaceuticals restricted from use unless they are absolutely unique and offer significant benefits over the lower-cost generics. In cases where the same product is available from more than one manufacturer, the low-price bidder wins all the business.

The pharmaceutical industry certainly doesn't favor one-payer systems, but for decades it has been able to rely on the American health care system to subsidize global profits. This industry has continually and successfully lobbied lawmakers to prevent them from implementing a single-payer system here. America has been the "golden goose" for this industry for decades as the dramatically higher prices we pay for prescription drugs ends up subsidizing the costs of drugs for all other

developed nations.

This is why I disagree with Obamacare. A noble idea for sure, but all it does is expand an already too expensive and ineffective health care system. Our leaders allowed the lobbyists for the pharmaceutical, insurance and legal industries to write the laws. The exact same thing happened under President George W. Bush when he and the Republicans led the fight for the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan.

Finally, and most importantly, our nation now has more than $121 trillion in promised but unfunded future health care benefits for boomers over the next several decades. Think about this number! We worry about a $16 trillion national debt but see our leaders continually unable to reach agreement on how to reduce this growing debt by a paltry $1.6 trillion — over the next decade. Clearly Mr. Paul believes they will never find the courage to confront the many times more significant unfunded entitlements coming due.

As the rational head of any business or family knows, you cannot continue to massively borrow and spend forever without grave consequences. Our nation is way past the edge of the cliff, and we now face a financial crash that will affect every citizen in our nation beginning sooner than we might think. Our leaders and citizens deny these facts at our nation's peril.

Don't bother putting helmets or elbow and knee protection on you or your kids —the height from which we fall will result in a catastrophic crash. 

Maybe the best advice is the old line about preparing for an airplane crash by placing your head between your knees — and kissing your a-- goodbye!

What will our last thought be? I hope it won't be "Why didn't somebody warn us?"— because Ron Paul certainly tried.

Mike Tower 

Please visit a good pal's blog:  Lee's Political Opinions  Citizens Against Politics As Usual, and the site for an organization we co-founded:  Citizen's Against Politics As Usual

                     

Obama Mandate...or not?

December 4, 2012

Post-election debate has quieted down

It has been interesting, post-election, to watch the pundits trying to explain why Barack Obama won and Mitt Romney lost.

The two most common words being used in the aftermath have been “demographics,” as in Romney lost because he couldn't get the votes from blacks, Hispanics, single women, gays and Jews. And “mandate,” as in Obama and his administration now have a clear mandate from the voters to move on with his Democratic Party policies, which include raising taxes on the wealthier Americans.

The third most frequently uttered thought is how those currently receiving entitlements overwhelmingly voted to keep Obama in office in order to keep the troughs filled with their necessities.

It’s all a lot of utter nonsense.

Nearly 75 percent of eligible voters who bothered to vote were white. Romney was never going to gain the majority of black, Hispanic, single female or gay votes. However, even without them, he still could have won if he had been able to appeal to the larger white majority. He did not and he lost.

I hear many say the poorer among us who are partaking from the welfare systems voted for the party most likely to continue to supply their needs. However, the poorer actually have the lowest voting participation in national elections. Among the poorer who did vote, most voted for Obama, but they still had the lowest voter participation rate.

We know 95 percent of all African-Americans voted for Mr. Obama. I ask you: If you were a black American, who would you likely have voted for? If you were Hispanic and one party had repeatedly stated it was going to deport all illegal immigrants, who would you have voted for? If you were a woman who strongly believed in women’s rights, and one party had taken a strong anti-abortion stand, who would you have voted for? If you were gay, it’s pretty clear who you would most likely vote for.

Even with all of these constituencies going against him, Romney still could have won if only he had not made so many dumb mistakes. The editorial in the Wall Street Journal in which he stated he would have allowed the auto industry go under cost him dearly. His 47 percent remarks were beyond dumb and he paid for them dearly. Even at the end of the race, his claims about Jeep production all moving to China proved false, but his campaign kept repeating this lie until the very end.

Perhaps the most important issue surrounding the election was the fact that only about 50 percent of eligible voters even bothered to vote. Think about this for a moment. Many Americans considered this to be the most important election in recent history, and half of us who could have voted didn’t bother.

If you analyze the voter breakdown for president, you will see that Obama received about 51 percent and Romney 49 percent. However, that translates into each of them only getting about a quarter of all eligible votes. This translates into Obama at 25.5 percent and Romney at 24.5 percent, with half of all eligible voters not bothering to support either candidate.

This is incontrovertible proof that Obama did not receive any kind of mandate from the majority of Americans. The real question about this election is why so many Americans couldn’t be bothered to vote. Or do these nonvoters actually get it — neither party is actually any different in its actions? Maybe these nonvoters understand that both parties work for the same lobbyists. If low voter participation in national elections is our reality for the future, why are we spending such outrageous amounts of money for campaigns. Let’s apply the money to pay down our debt and just flip a coin to determine our next president.

Maybe the nonvoters have it right. Think about how much less stress you would have in your life if you felt the same way. Think about how much less dough the TV network news shows would make as their viewership dwindled. Think about how much more enjoyable life would be if you tuned in to more reality TV and learned to play video games. Think about how much life would be improved if you never, ever received another robo/opinion poll phone call again.

A few things are clear: Romney did not lose because of demographics. Most of the poorest Americans did not leap on the Obama bandwagon to seek more from the wealthy. And Obama certainly does not have a mandate from the majority of Americans — not by any measure!

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower

Please visit a good pal's blog:  Lee's Political Opinions, and the site for an organization we co-founded:  Citizen's Against Politics As Usual

American jobs gone forever

December 2, 2012

Evidence shows job losses are permanent

Twice in the past five years, my wife and I drove to Southern California for a winter retreat. Each time we traveled on I-10 out west, we saw trainload after trainload of cargo containers bearing Asian names headed east and west for hundreds of miles.

Most of the eastbound trains were obviously loaded with imported Asian-made goods. I wondered what was in the containers heading west. Remembering the huge losses of American manufacturing jobs over the past few decades, I thought maybe they were empty.

Recently two television documentaries on Netflix answered this question, and provided chilling implications about a job-creating economic recovery anytime soon in the U.S.

The first show featured the port of Savannah, Ga. The video showed a steady stream of huge cargo ships arriving, laden with goods manufactured in Asian countries. Giant warehouses surround the dock and serve as temporary holding sites for these goods awaiting shipment throughout America.

The documentary next highlighted one of the area's largest warehouses and said it was full of the only American products to be loaded onto the cargo ships for their return voyage to Asia. The products being exported back to Asia — the only American-made product, mind you — were giant rolls of paper. When the paper gets there, most of it would be converted into cardboard for use as packaging for additional goods to be exported to America!

The second show described the operations of the huge port of Los Angeles, which accounts for one-quarter of all Asian imports. It, too, showed a steady stream of arriving and departing super-cargo carriers. The docks operate 24/7 unloading containers to be shipped via road or rail to other parts of America. The narrator asked the dock manager about return cargo. He replied that every cargo ship left the port loaded with recyclables and food grains.

We all know America has lost millions of manufacturing jobs to automation and nations with lower labor costs over the past few decades, but when we see the actual evidence of these massive trade imbalances, all of our guts should twist into knots. In just a few generations, our nation has gone from the world's dominant manufacturing economy to one trading our recyclables, trees, grains, dollars — and jobs — in exchange for lower-cost goods. This trade disparity proves these millions of jobs have disappeared forever.

Newly employed foreign workers now often work for American companies which have strategically outsourced jobs in order to increase profits and improve financial performance for their shareholders. I wonder how many of our lawmakers understand that we will soon have insufficient American consumer dollars from our collapsing middle class to support this one-sided trade situation.

Both political parties continually promise job-creating changes right around the corner. Our president keeps touting the millions of private-sector jobs created under his watch; he fails to add that these new jobs have barely kept up with population growth.

My question is: What new economic miracle will cause the massive job creation needed to adequately employ our expanding population? Is it even possible to reverse the twin forces of automation and lower foreign labor costs that have killed so many American jobs and caused so much wage stagnation?

Have our elected leaders taken every action needed to protect our nation's citizens from this tragedy? The evidence is pretty clear — they have not! Instead, they primarily serve their personal need to retain power by partnering with the special interests instead of those they were elected to serve — our people.

American auto companies like General Motors brag about Chinese demand for their cars, especially the Buick brand. They fail to add Chinese laws require that these Buicks must also be made in China. Why don't our lawmakers demand that foreign goods be made here in order to be sold here? Why don't they wage war against useless regulations at all levels of government that delay and prevent businesses here from expanding or starting up — and creating new jobs?

Leaders from both parties remain frozen in a phony war against each other instead of joining to take viable actions to foster a job-creating environment in America. As the green-energy fiascos demonstrated, government cannot create jobs, but its past actions, or lack thereof, have contributed to the massive loss of employment opportunities in our nation today.

Our elected officials could, if they wanted, take desperately needed actions to get us out of this terrible mess. It only requires them to unite and actually place the best interests of American citizens first. Maybe instead of our leaders and citizens uniting to fight this common enemy, we should divide further and escalate the war against all those in the dreaded opposite party. Just because it hasn't worked doesn't mean it never will — does it?

During World War II, if we had acted the way we do today, we would all be speaking German or Japanese. Is our coming economic collapse any less of an emergency than the war? Our people have always magnificently confronted any national emergency. However, until our leaders publicly and collectively acknowledge our present awful danger, our fear will never escalate enough to unite our nation's people.

These are my opinions. What about yours?

Mike Tower

Please visit the blog of a good pal:  Lee's Political Opinion, also the website for an organization we co-founded:  Citizens Against Politics As Usual