Borrowing these wonderful graphics from the Sunlight Foundation.

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Credit: Here

via TwitLonger

I’d like to preface this long tweet by saying that my passion comes from my deepest sympathy and shared sorrow with yesterday’s victims and with the utmost respect for the people and the police/fire/medical/political forces of Aurora and all who seek to comfort and aid these victims.

This morning, I made a comment about how I do not understand people who support public ownership of assault style weapons like the AR-15 used in the Colorado massacre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15

That comment, has of course, inspired a lot of feedback. There have been many tweets of agreement and sympathy but many, many more that have been challenging at the least, hostile and vitriolic at the worst.

Clearly, the angry, threatened and threatening, hostile comments are coming from gun owners and gun advocates. Despite these massacres recurring and despite the 100,000 Americans that die every year due to domestic gun violence – these people see no value to even considering some kind of control as to what kinds of weapons are put in civilian hands.

Many of them cite patriotism as their reason – true patriots support the Constitution adamantly and wholly. Constitution says citizens have the right to bear arms in order to maintain organized militias. I’m no constitutional scholar so here it is from the document itself:

As passed by the Congress:
“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.”
As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:
“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.”

So the patriots are correct, gun ownership is in the constitution – if you’re in a well-regulated militia. Let’s see what no less a statesman than Alexander Hamilton had to say about a militia:

“A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss.”

Or from Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Definition of MILITIA
1
a : a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency
b : a body of citizens organized for military service
2
: the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service

The advocates of guns who claim patriotism and the rights of the 2nd Amendment – are they in well-regulated militias? For the vast majority – the answer is no.  [click to continue…]

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I don’t want no ice cream love, it is too cold for me, girl.

…My love is warmer than a chocolate fudge.

– Johnny Osbourne

Johnny Osbourne. Credit: Here

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An excerpt from Antonio Machado’s poem:

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

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Interesting documentary, and impressively structured given the vastness of the topic. HBO should produce an 8-part series.

My favorite quote comes from Sheela Patel, speaking about the slums in Mumbai. Apparently the toilets:people ratio is 1:600, and public officials (out of ignorance or some undefined motive) argue that building more toilets would encourage in-migration–to which Patel snarks,

“As if people come to shit.”

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Open Gate Farm

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My personal scratch pad for the 2012 Farm Bill hoopla. What’s going on…?

I’ll outline how the final product might look once some of the mess is cleaned up in Congress. Right now we await House debate on its 600-page bill. Politico says that might not happen any time soon:

The House Agriculture Committee has given birth to a 600-page farm bill that Republican leaders seem to want nothing to do with. And just months from Election Day, it could prove to be a headache for House GOP leadership.

Republicans are likely to try to extend the current farm policy that they’ve consistently decried as broken. And they won’t even do it this month, GOP aides say — they’ll likely wait until September.

The reality is that GOP leaders are worried about a messy floor fight over divisive regional policies months before voters head to the ballot boxes. Odd couples could abound: The far left and far right would likely vote against the bill on the floor, the former thinking the bill cuts too much from food stamps, the latter insisting cuts aren’t deep enough. There’s also division over how much the government should be subsidizing the farm industry and whether it should control commodity prices. Arguing complex farm policy on the House floor in this political climate gives many Republican members pause.

If the House can’t pass a bill, then it would go into negotiations with the Senate with a weak negotiating stance.

What do experts think about what they’ve seen so far? (I don’t care to read the (predictable) positions of the Big Ag lobby. Any honest insight they might have into the economic implications of the bill will also be captured by more objective sources that I have come to respect and trust.)

Michael Pollan doesn’t like it:

The good news in the House’s otherwise horrible farm bill: Most of Pingree’s provisions are in it.pingree.house.gov/index.php?opti… [more on this below]

— Michael Pollan (@michaelpollan) July 12, 2012

Others have called it “simply the worst piece of farm and food legislation in decades” and “unconscionable.”

The Environmental Working Group lists some specific problems. I paraphrase and comment:

• Cuts nutrition assistance ($16 billion in SNAP funding) during hard economic times. Nearly half who will lose out are kids.
• The Lucas-Peterson farm bill will give mega-farms even more tax dollars (in the form of income support, not price support, as explained below by Iowa farmer George Naylor) to drive out small family farmers.
• Expands crop insurance by $9.5 billion without consideration of reforms such as payment limits, means testing and administrative reforms–all of which are applied to SNAP.
• Cuts conservation programs by $6 billion. (This one is close to the heart, and I’m looking forward to expert analysis on the likely impact of these cuts on wetland and prairie ecosystems, in particular.)
• Includes anti-environmental riders–gutting rules that protect water quality and wildlife from agricultural pesticides; as well as environmental protections on logging.
• Has few incentives for healthy diets (health care cost inflation be damned).
• Exempts GMO crops from environmental reviews and sets arbitrary deadlines on FDA regulators.
• Guts state food and farm standards: a last-minute amendment to prevent states from setting their own standards for farm and food production. This one reeeeeeks of Monsanto, ADM, Cargill, Tyson…chemicals and sewage.
• Repeals organic certification support program. Problems abound with this system.  It needs to be revamped.

• 87% of SNAP beneficiaries are children, senior citizens on fixed incomes, or single parents (including veterans)
• On O’Reilly, Charles Krauthammer on why the program is now at $75B/year:

We have a political ideology of liberalism in Washington which believes that a measure of success of government is how many people it ‘helps.’ For them this is a great success – they want to see the natural American aversion to taking a handout whittled down. The conservative view is that if you’re truly destitute, of course society has an obligation to help you, but the liberal idea is that the role of government is to sustain as many people as possible and to make sure there are no risks in life. That’s why you get the growth of these programs.

The CBO says it’s because many people became eligible after the bank bailouts:

Almost two-thirds of the growth in spending on SNAP benefits between 2007 and 2011 stemmed from the increase in the number of participants. Labor market conditions deteriorated dramatically between 2007 and 2009 and have been slow to recover; since 2007, both the number of people eligible for the program and the share of those who are eligible and who participate in the program have risen.

Other memorable moments include:  [click to continue…]

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Each Sunday, I eagerly await your Bobblespeak Translations.

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