It becomes abundantly clear that local Alaskan outdoor writer Howard Delo subscribes the notion that “Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean somebody’s not out to get you.” Central to two of Howard’s missives, (“2nd Amendment is very clear,” 3/3/09, and his latest, “I just don’t believe it”, 3/10/09) is the idea that President Obama, the jackbooted ATF and the Democrat controlled Congress is going to kick down his door and haul off all of his guns, presumably to the recycling center, where they’ll be melted down, presumably into the next generation of energy-efficient GM vehicles.
First, for 230 years the 2nd Amendment was not “clear” in a legal sense, until last year’s 5-4 Supreme Court decision that struck down the D.C. handgun ban. In this decision, the majority held that there was indeed an “individual right” to keep and bear arms. But even Justice Scalia (on the majority side) wrote: “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited,” meaning that reasonable restrictions to gun ownership can be applied, and do not constitute an ”infringement” of rights under the 2nd Amendment.
In his Spectrum of March 3rd, Delo says: “Just try passing a law restricting free speech in the print media…” In fact, there are plenty of laws restricting the “free speech” clause of the 1st Amendment. Laws regarding: incitement to riot, so called “fighting words,” libel and slander, national security, obscenity – the list goes on.
For that matter, there are laws restricting the “free exercise” of religion clause of the 1st Amendment. Same thing for the 4th (privacy rights) and the, 5th and 6th (rights of the accused) Amendments. And U.S. Supreme Courts through the years have found all of these legal restrictions constitutional. This is why neither I nor Mr. Delo can own a operational bazooka, or a claymore mine, or a howitzer, at least not without a really expensive license.
On the same day as Delo’s Spectrum, Erik Heiker wrote in to give us the old slippery slope argument that: “Gun restriction is always a precursor to gun confiscation.” I moved from Alaska to Illinois for a couple of years back in the ‘80s. According to long-standing state law, I was legally bound to register my guns with the county sheriff. Two years later I moved back to Alaska, and who’d believe it, but my guns weren’t confiscated at all. In fact, I hear that gun registration that does not lead to confiscation has been going on in Illinois for decades – who’d a thunk it? And that’s in Confiscator-in Chief Obama’s home state.
But back to Howard Delo. In his March 10th “OUTDOORS” column, he claims that Obama will do anything - short of making us choose between our 1st born child and our guns (and/or bibles) – to trash the 2nd Amendment. Yet a cursory investigation at FactCheck.org or other non-partisan websites will disabuse the more thoughtful among us of these idiotic NRA Kool-Aid-induced accusations.
As an Alaskan gun owner, I don’t particularly want restrictions on my 2nd Amendment rights. I don’t hunt, but I want the right to keep a handgun for personal protection, and the protection of my family. Living in Alaska, we view registration as anathema. Were I back in Illinois, I’d do as Illinoisans do and register my guns. It’s part of the beauty of the concept of federalism.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
A comment or two...
From some pithy thinkers of late.
One is a recent reader's comment from Paul Krugman's NYT blog regarding Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party. It reflects my thoughts as well as any author thus far in this early Obama presidency:
"Rush Limbaugh openly states that he hopes for the failure of this presidency and its policies — and clearly states that any honest Republican shares his view. But isn’t wishing that the policies fail the same as wishing that the country fails? If one disagrees with the policy decisions, it’s legitimate to say so. But if the policies work, the intellectually honest thing to do is to reevaluate one’s own belief system. Wishing for their failure though is patently ideological, and ultimately an act of metaphorical suicide bombing. 'I’ll go down with the whole country just to make sure they’re never proven right'".— A. Devero
Another is from Ed Phillips, an old friend and retired real-life economist from Alaska, now from beautiful Kalama, WA. I get the big point but not the finer ones, really:
"There are real reasons to criticize the Obama fiscal policy. It's too bad the conservatives have chosen to retreat to a 1920's pre-Keynesian argument. They have adopted what is know as "The Treasury View".,promoted by the British Treasury in the interwar (WW1/WW2) and held by very few economists otherwise, even then.
This view holds that any increase in government expenditure must come at the expense of private expenditure. Public expenditures financed by taxes or deficits (future taxes) are held to "crowd our" private expenditures. This argument is plausible if the economy is at full employment and/or government borrowing increases interest rates, thereby reducing private investment and consumption. It seems that in periods of recession and/or depression the full employment constraint is not operative and it is possible to increase government expenditures financed by deficits and not crowd out private expenditures. This was recognized before Keynes and public works projects as a means of reducing unemployment was recognized by the economics profession by the early 20th century. A British commission in 1912 or so explicitly advocated such a policy.
In 1932 members of the University of Chicago Economics Faculty including Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, Henry Simons and Paul Douglas( Yes, the Paul Douglas that became a US Senator) sent a letter to Congress advocating public works projects financed by deficit spending and monetary expansion. Sounds very Keynesian.
In fact the efficacy of deficit spending and public works projects was orthodox nostrum before Keynes. His major contribution was to give it a theoretical underpinning. Had the Roosevelt Administration been willing to become Keynesian (follow the advice of Chicago) before WW2 the Great Depression may not have been "Great".'
Fox News "Analysts" claims FDR prolonged the Depression. If he did, it's because he spent too little, tried to balance the budget after 1936, and needed WW II to get us out of the "Great" depression. Here's to Obama not making the same mistake.
One is a recent reader's comment from Paul Krugman's NYT blog regarding Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party. It reflects my thoughts as well as any author thus far in this early Obama presidency:
"Rush Limbaugh openly states that he hopes for the failure of this presidency and its policies — and clearly states that any honest Republican shares his view. But isn’t wishing that the policies fail the same as wishing that the country fails? If one disagrees with the policy decisions, it’s legitimate to say so. But if the policies work, the intellectually honest thing to do is to reevaluate one’s own belief system. Wishing for their failure though is patently ideological, and ultimately an act of metaphorical suicide bombing. 'I’ll go down with the whole country just to make sure they’re never proven right'".— A. Devero
Another is from Ed Phillips, an old friend and retired real-life economist from Alaska, now from beautiful Kalama, WA. I get the big point but not the finer ones, really:
"There are real reasons to criticize the Obama fiscal policy. It's too bad the conservatives have chosen to retreat to a 1920's pre-Keynesian argument. They have adopted what is know as "The Treasury View".,promoted by the British Treasury in the interwar (WW1/WW2) and held by very few economists otherwise, even then.
This view holds that any increase in government expenditure must come at the expense of private expenditure. Public expenditures financed by taxes or deficits (future taxes) are held to "crowd our" private expenditures. This argument is plausible if the economy is at full employment and/or government borrowing increases interest rates, thereby reducing private investment and consumption. It seems that in periods of recession and/or depression the full employment constraint is not operative and it is possible to increase government expenditures financed by deficits and not crowd out private expenditures. This was recognized before Keynes and public works projects as a means of reducing unemployment was recognized by the economics profession by the early 20th century. A British commission in 1912 or so explicitly advocated such a policy.
In 1932 members of the University of Chicago Economics Faculty including Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, Henry Simons and Paul Douglas( Yes, the Paul Douglas that became a US Senator) sent a letter to Congress advocating public works projects financed by deficit spending and monetary expansion. Sounds very Keynesian.
In fact the efficacy of deficit spending and public works projects was orthodox nostrum before Keynes. His major contribution was to give it a theoretical underpinning. Had the Roosevelt Administration been willing to become Keynesian (follow the advice of Chicago) before WW2 the Great Depression may not have been "Great".'
Fox News "Analysts" claims FDR prolonged the Depression. If he did, it's because he spent too little, tried to balance the budget after 1936, and needed WW II to get us out of the "Great" depression. Here's to Obama not making the same mistake.
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