President Obama Speaks on Reducing Gun Violence (Video/Transcript)

Remarks by the President on Reducing Gun Violence --

 Denver, Colorado Denver Police Academy Denver, Colorado

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you!  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Everybody, please have a seat.  Thank you.  Well, it is wonderful to be back in Colorado.  It is wonderful to be back in Denver.  I want to thank Chief White for that introduction.  You’ve got some outstanding elected officials who are here today, and I want to acknowledge them.  First of all, a wonderful governor -- John Hickenlooper is here.  (Applause.)  He’s here somewhere.  I know, because I just talked to him.  There he is.  Next to him an outstanding lieutenant governor, Joe Garcia.  (Applause.)  One of the finest young senators in the country -- Michael Bennet is here.  (Applause.)  Terrific members of the House of Representatives -- Ed Perlmutter -- (applause) -- and Dianna Degette.  (Applause.)  And your own mayor, Michael Hancock, is here.  (Applause.) 

I want to say thank you to the Denver Police for having me here, and more importantly, for the outstanding work that all of you do each and every day to serve your communities and protect your citizens. 

Before I came out here, I had a chance to sit down with some local law enforcement, Attorney General Holder, and some of the leaders I just mentioned, the wonderful mayor of Aurora who’s here, sportsmen, parents, loved ones of the victims of the shootings in Columbine and Aurora.  And we talked about what we can do to protect more of our citizens from gun violence. 

And from the beginning of this effort, we’ve wanted law enforcement front and center in shaping this discussion and the reforms that emerge from it -- because law enforcement lives this every day.  Law enforcement are the first to see the terrible consequences of any kind of violence, certainly gun violence -- lives lost, families broken, communities that are changed forever.  They’re very often in the line of fire.  The law enforcement knows what works and what doesn’t, and so we wanted that experience and that advice. 

And it was also important for us to hear from mayors like Steve Hogan, because he’s been on the front lines having to deal with these issues under incredibly sad circumstances.  And I’ve come to Denver today in particular because Colorado is proving a model of what’s possible.

It’s now been just over 100 days since the murder of 20 innocent children and six brave educators in Newtown, Connecticut -- an event that shocked this country and I think galvanized parents all across the country to say, we’ve got to do something more to protect our kids.  But consider this:  Over those 100 days or so, more than 100 times as many Americans have fallen victim to gun violence.  More than 2,000 of our fellow citizens, struck down, often because they were just going about their daily round.  They weren’t doing anything special.  Just doing what folks do every day -- shopping, going to school.  Every day that we wait to do something about it, even more of our fellow citizens are stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun.

Now, the good news is Colorado has already chosen to do something about it.  (Applause.) 

 Look, this is a state that has suffered the tragedy of two of the worst mass shootings in our history -- 14 years ago this month in Columbine, and just last year in Aurora.  But this is also a state that treasures its Second Amendment rights -- the state of proud hunters and sportsmen.  And, by the way, the Governor wanted me to remind everybody that there is outstanding elk hunting here in Colorado.  (Laughter.)  There’s a strong tradition of gun ownership that’s handed down from generation to generation, and it’s part of the fabric of people’s lives.  And they treat gun ownership with reverence and respect.

And so I’m here because I believe there doesn't have to be a conflict in reconciling these realities.  There doesn’t have to be a conflict between protecting our citizens and protecting our Second Amendment rights.  I’ve got stacks of letters in my office from proud gun owners, whether they’re for sport, or protection, or collection, who tell me how deeply they cherish their rights, don’t want them infringed upon, but they still want us to do something to stop the epidemic of gun violence.  And I appreciate every one of those letters.  And I’ve learned from them. 

And I think that Colorado has shown that practical progress is possible thanks to the leadership of Governor Hickenlooper and some of the state legislators who are here today.  When I was talking to Steve, he mentioned that Aurora is very much a purple city.  It’s got a majority Republican city council; a majority of the state legislators are Democrat.  But they came together understanding that out of this tragedy there had to be something that made sense.  And so we’ve seen enacted tougher background checks that won’t infringe on the rights of responsible gun owners, but will help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.  (Applause.)

Now, in January, just a few weeks after Newtown, I put forward a series of common-sense proposals along the same lines as what’s passed here in Colorado, to reduce gun violence and keep our kids safe.  In my State of the Union address, I urged Congress to give these proposals a vote.  And, by the way, before we even asked for a vote, I had already signed numerous executive orders doing what we could administratively to make sure that guns don't fall into the hands of the wrong people.

But what I said then is still true:  If we're really going to tackle this problem seriously, then we've got to get Congress to take the next step.  And as soon as next week, they will be voting.  As soon as next week, every senator will get to vote on whether or not we should require background checks for anyone who wants to purchase a gun. 

Now, some say, well, we already have background checks.  And they're right.  Over the past 20 years, those background checks have kept more than 2 million dangerous people from buying a gun.  But the loopholes that currently exist in the law have allowed way too many criminals and folks who shouldn’t be getting guns -- it has allowed them to avoid background checks entirely.  That makes it harder for law enforcement to do its job.  It's not safe.  It's not smart.  And, by the way, it's not fair to responsible gun owners who are playing by the rules.

Now, understand, nobody is talking about creating an entirely new system.  We are simply talking about plugging holes, sealing a porous system that isn't working as well as it should.  If you want to buy a gun, whether it's from a licensed dealer or a private seller, you should at least have to pass a background check to show you're not a criminal or someone legally prohibited from buying on.  And that’s just common sense.  (Applause.) 

During our roundtable discussion with Governor Hickenlooper, who I know was in the midst of this passionate debate about the legislation here in Colorado, and some people said, well, background checks aren't going to stop everybody.  And the Governor was the first one to acknowledge, yes, they won't stop everybody, but as he pointed out, statistically, there are a whole bunch of folks who have been stopped. 

As a consequence of background checks, law enforcement has been able to stop people who have been convicted of murder from getting a gun, people who are under restraining orders for having committed violent domestic abuse from getting a gun.  In a couple of cases the governor mentioned to me, law enforcement has actually been able to arrest people who came to pick up their gun -- (laughter) -- because they were criminals, wanted.

So this does work.  And, by the way, if you’re selling a gun, wouldn’t you want to know who you’re selling it to?  Wouldn’t you want to know?  Wouldn’t you want in your conscience to know that the person you’re selling to isn’t going to commit a crime?  (Applause.) 

So these enhanced background checks won’t stop all gun crimes, but they will certainly help prevent some.  This is common sense.  And, by the way, most gun owners -- more than 80 percent -- agree this makes sense.  More than 70 percent of NRA members agree.  Ninety percent of the American people agree.  So there’s no reason we can’t do this unless politics is getting in the way.  There’s no reason we can’t do this.

As soon as next week, every senator will get a chance to vote on a proposal to help strengthen school safety and help people struggling with mental health problems get the treatment that they need.

As soon as next week, every senator will get to vote on whether or not we should crack down on folks who buy guns as part of a scheme to arm criminals.  That would keep more guns off the streets and out of the hands of people who are intent on doing harm.  And it would make life a whole lot easier and safer for the people behind me -- police officers. 

Every senator will get a say on whether or not we should keep weapons of war and high-capacity ammunition magazines that facilitate mass killings off our streets.  The type of assault rifle used in Aurora, for example, when paired with a high-capacity magazine, has one purpose:  to pump out as many bullets as possible, as fast as possible.  It’s what allowed that gunman to shoot 70 people and kill 12 in a matter of a few minutes.  I don’t believe that weapons designed for theaters of war have a place in movie theaters.  Most Americans agree with that.  (Applause.) 

Most of these ideas are not controversial.  Right now, 90 percent of Americans -- 90 percent -- support background checks that will keep criminals and people who have been found to be a danger to themselves or others from buying a gun.  More than 80 percent of Republicans agree.  Most gun owners agree.  Think about it:  How often do 90 percent of Americans agree on anything?  (Laughter.)

And yet, there are already some senators back in Washington floating the idea that they might use obscure procedural stunts to prevent or delay any of these votes on reform.  Think about that.  They’re not just saying they’ll vote “no” on the proposal that most Americans support.  They’re saying they’ll do everything they can to avoid even allowing a vote on a proposal that the overwhelming majority of the American people support.  They’re saying your opinion doesn’t matter. 

We knew from the beginning that change wouldn’t be easy.  And we knew that there would be powerful voices that would do everything they could to run out the clock, change the subject, ignore the majority of the American people.  We knew they’d try to make any progress collapse under the weight of fear and frustration, or maybe people would just stop paying attention.

The only way this time will be different is if the American people demand that this time it must be different -- that this time, we must do something to protect our communities and our kids. (Applause.)

  We need parents, we need teachers, we need police officers, we need pastors, we need hunters and sportsmen, Americans of every background to say, we’ve suffered too much pain and care too much about our children to allow this to continue.  We’re not going to just wait for the next Newtown or the next Aurora before we act.  And I genuinely believe that’s what the overwhelming majority of Americans -- I don’t care what party they belong to -- that’s what they want.  They just want to see some progress. 

It was interesting, during the conversation, a number of people talked about the trust issue.  Part of the reason it's so hard to get this done is because both sides of the debate sometimes don't listen to each other.  The people who take absolute positions on these issues, on both sides, sometimes aren't willing to concede even an inch of ground. 

And so one of the questions we talked about was, how do you build trust?  How do you rebuild some trust?  And I told the story about two conversations I had.  The first conversation was when Michelle came back from doing some campaigning out in rural Iowa.  And we were sitting at dinner, and she had been to like a big county, a lot of driving out there, a lot of farmland.  And she said, if I was living out in a farm in Iowa, I'd probably want a gun, too.  If somebody just drives up into your driveway and you're not home -- you don't know who these people are and you don't know how long it's going to take for the sheriffs to respond.  I can see why you'd want some guns for protection.  That's one conversation.

I had another conversation just a couple of months ago with a mom from Chicago -- actually, Evanston, Illinois -- whose son had been killed in a random shooting.  And she said, you know, I hate it when people tell me that my son was shot because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He was in the right place.  He was on his way to school.  He wasn't in the wrong place.  He was exactly where he was supposed to be. 

Now, both those things are true.  And sometimes we're so divided between rural and urban, and folks whose hunting is part of their lives and folks whose only experience with guns is street crime.  And the two sides just talk past one another.  And more than anything, what I want to just emphasize is there are good people on both sides of this thing, but we have to be able to put ourselves in the other person's shoes.  If you're a hunter, if you're a sportsman -- if you have a gun in your house for protection -- you've got to understand what it feels like for that mom whose son was randomly shot. 

And if you live in an urban area and you're worried about street crime, you've got to understand what it might be like if you grew out on a ranch and your dad had been taking you hunting all your life.  And we had a couple of sportsmen in our conversation today, and I thought one of them said something very important.  He said, all my experiences with guns have been positive, but I realize that for others, all their experiences about guns have been negative.  Well, that's a start, right?  If we start listening to each other, then we should be able to get something done that's constructive.  We should be able to get that done.  (Applause.) 

One last thing I’m going to mention is that during this conversation -- I hope you don't mind me quoting you, Joe.  Joe Garcia, I thought, also made an important point, and that is that the opponents of some of these common-sense laws have ginned up fears among responsible gun owners that have nothing to do with what’s being proposed and nothing to do with the facts, but feeds into this suspicion about government. 

You hear some of these quotes:  “I need a gun to protect myself from the government.”  “We can't do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away.” 

Well, the government is us.  These officials are elected by you.  (Applause.)  They are elected by you.  I am elected by you.  I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place.  It’s a government of and by and for the people.

And so, surely, we can have a debate that's not based on the notion somehow that your elected representatives are trying to do something to you other than potentially prevent another group of families from grieving the way the families of Aurora or Newtown or Columbine have grieved.  We’ve got to get past some of the rhetoric that gets perpetuated that breaks down trust and is so over the top that it just shuts down all discussion.  And it’s important for all of us when we hear that kind of talk to say, hold on a second.  If there are any folks who are out there right now who are gun owners, and you’ve been hearing that somehow somebody is taking away your guns, get the facts.  We’re not proposing a gun registration system, we’re proposing background checks for criminals.  (Applause.)

Don't just listen to what some advocates or folks who have an interest in this thing are saying.  Look at the actual legislation.  That's what happened here in Colorado.  And hopefully, if we know the facts and we’re listening to each other, then we can actually move forward. 

And that’s what members of Congress need to hear from you.  Right now, members of Congress are at home in their districts.  Many of them are holding events where they can hear from their constituents.  So I'm asking anyone out there who is listening today, find out where your member of Congress stands on these issues.  If they're not part of the 90 percent of Americans who agree on background checks, then ask them why not.  Why wouldn’t you want to make it more difficult for a dangerous criminal to get his or her hands on a gun?  Why wouldn’t you want to close the loophole that allows too many criminals to buy a gun without even the simplest of background checks?  Why on Earth wouldn’t you want to make it easier rather than harder for law enforcement to do their job?

I know that some of the officers here today know what it's like to look into the eyes of a parent or a grandparent, a brother or a sister, or a spouse who has just lost a loved one to an act of violence.  Some of those families, by the way, are here today.  And as police officers, you know as well as anybody, there is no magic solution to prevent every bad thing from happening in the world.  You still suit up, you put on your badge, put yourself at risk every single day.  

Every single day, you go to work and you try to do the best you can to protect the people you're sworn to protect and serve.  Well, how can the rest of us as citizens do anything less?

If there is just one step we can take to prevent more Americans from knowing the pain that some of the families who are here have known, don’t we have an obligation to try?  Don’t we have an obligation to try?  (Applause.)  If these reforms keep one person from murdering dozens of innocent children or worshippers or moviegoers in a span of minutes, isn't it worth fighting for?  (Applause.)  I believe it is.  That’s why I'm going to keep on working.  I'm going to keep on giving it my best efforts.  But I'm going to need your help. 

This is not easy.  And I'll be blunt -- a lot of members of Congress, this is tough for them.  Because those who are opposed to any form of legislation affecting guns, they're very well-organized and they're very well-financed.  But it can be done if enough voices are heard.

So I want to thank all the police officers who are here for giving their best efforts every single day.  (Applause.)  I want to thank Governor Hickenlooper for his outstanding leadership.  

(Applause.)  I want to thank all the families who are here for your courage in being willing to take out of this tragedy something positive.  I want to thank the people of Colorado for coming together in sensible ways.  (Applause.)  Let's see if we can get the whole country to do so.

Thank you, Denver.  God bless you.  And God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

Kind Hearted Woman Part One

Watch Kind Hearted Woman Part One on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

A Film by David Sutherland

China: A new colonial power? (Video)

We examine the BRICS, the deals, the critics and whether China can shape a new world order.

 

Source:Al Jazeera
 It was 599 years ago that Admiral Zheng - in a show of Chinese power - sailed down the east coast of Africa. The year was 1414, and he took home with him - a giraffe.

Today, China is more interested in oil and gas off the cost of Mozambique and Tanzania, and it has been welcomed with open arms as it lavishes its wealth across the continent.

China's new president, Xi Jinping, went on an eight-day visit to Africa, including the BRICS meeting of the rising powers Brazil, Russia, Indian, China, and South Africa in Durban.

Xi started in Tanzania and also went on to the Republic of Congo. In Dar es Salaam, he signed agreements to build a major port and industrial zone worth $10bn.

Trade between Africa and the BRICS combined accounted for $340 billion in 2012. That is estimated to hit $500bn by 2015, almost 60 percent of which will be solely China-Africa trade.

Together the BRICS are formidable - with combined foreign-currency reserves of $4.4tn with 43 percent of the world's population.
But what is their endgame? Can there be partnership without plundering? Is China a new colonial power, or just misunderstood?
Nigeria's Central Bank governor Lamido Sanusi said, in a Financial Times op-ed piece
"China takes from us primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was also the essence of colonialism."

His sentiment clearly resonated with other leaders on the continent, like Pravin Gordhan, South Africa's finance minister.
"Ultimately it's about saying that if we are true partners in this process let's help each other to get onto an even footing, let's ensure that we aren't in a position where some of us are commodity exporters and others are value adders to those commodities. I think over the last three or four years those voices are becoming louder."

Lynette Chen, the CEO of the African Union's development agency (NEPAD) is joining us from Johannesburg to discuss China's and BRICS' role in Africa.

It is no suprise that two of the world's fastest growing economies, India and China, are vying and in some cases working together on buying up oil and gas reserves.
From Uganda to Mozambique, the search for oil and gas has accelerated, with some massive finds.
Mozambique is estimated to have 150 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, which is - according to Reuters - enough to supply the world's number one gas importer Japan for more than 30 years.

In Tanzania, there is an estimated 33 trillion cubic feet of gas; and in Kenya, there was a recent find by oil company Tullow of 23 billion barrels of oil - about $2.6tn worth.
Is there a huge windfall coming East Africa's way? Why has it taken such a long time to find these deposits? Is it just a case of old sources running dry, so the exploration has to increase?
Counting the Cost discusses with Aaron D'este, the CEO of Vanoil Energy, a Canadian company that operates in places like Kenya and Rwanda.

Also on CTC: Vodafone - we speak to the man who runs the world's second-biggest mobile phone company to ask what he makes of the euro crisis. Is Vodafone on the path to a windfall from the sale of Verizon?
Plus, Nepal, noodles, and a billionaire. Perhaps not the most expected of combinations, but it is for real, and it has been enough to get one Nepalese man onto the Forbes magazine rich list!

President Barack Obama Weekly Address March 30, 2013 (Video/Transcript)

Weekly Address: President Obama Offers Easter and Passover Greetings

Hi, everybody. For millions of Americans, this is a special and sacred time of year.

This week, Jewish families gathered around the Seder table, commemorating the Exodus from Egypt and the triumph of faith over oppression. And this weekend, Michelle, Malia, Sasha and I will join Christians around the world to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the hopeful promise of Easter.

In the midst of all of our busy and noisy lives, these holy days afford us the precious opportunity to slow down and spend some quiet moments in prayer and reflection.
As Christians, my family and I remember the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for each and every one of us – how He took on the sins of the world and extended the gift of salvation. And we recommit ourselves to following His example here on Earth. To loving our Lord and Savior. To loving our neighbors. And to seeing in everyone, especially “the least of these,” as a child of God.

Of course, those values are at the heart not just of the Christian faith; but of all faiths. From Judaism to Islam; Hinduism to Sikhism; there echoes a powerful call to serve our brothers and sisters. To keep in our hearts a deep and abiding compassion for all. And to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

That’s the common humanity that binds us together. And as Americans, we’re united by something else, too: faith in the ideals that lie at the heart of our founding; and the belief that, as part of something bigger than ourselves, we have a shared responsibility to look out for our fellow citizens.

So this weekend, I hope we’re all able to take a moment to pause and reflect. To embrace our loved ones. To give thanks for our blessings. To rededicate ourselves to interests larger than our own.

And to all the Christian families who are celebrating the Resurrection, Michelle and I wish you a blessed and joyful Easter.

God bless you. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

President Obama Speaks on Protecting Our Children from Gun Violence (video/transcript)

 

Remarks by the President on Gun Safety

East Room

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you, everybody.  Thank you, Katerina, for sharing your story.  Reema was lucky to have you as a teacher, and all of us are fortunate to have you here today.  And I’m glad we had a chance to remember her.

Katerina, as you just heard, lost one of her most promising students in Virginia Tech, the shootings there that took place six years ago.  And she and dozens of other moms and dads, all victims of gun violence, have come here today from across the country -- united not only in grief and loss, but also in resolve, and in courage, and in a deep determination to do whatever they can, as parents and as citizens to protect other kids and spare other families from the awful pain that they have endured.

As any of the families and friends who are here today can tell you, the grief doesn’t ever go away.  That loss, that pain sticks with you.  It lingers on in places like Blacksburg and Tucson and Aurora.  That anguish is still fresh in Newtown.  It’s been barely 100 days since 20 innocent children and six brave educators were taken from us by gun violence -- including Grace McDonnell and Lauren Rousseau and Jesse Lewis, whose families are here today.
That agony burns deep in the families of thousands -- thousands of Americans who have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun over these last 100 days -- including Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed on her way to school less than two months ago, and whose mom is also here today.  Everything they lived for and hoped for, taken away in an instant.  We have moms on this stage whose children were killed as recently as 35 days ago.

I don’t think any of us who are parents can hear their stories and not think about our own daughters and our own sons and our own grandchildren.  We all feel that it is our first impulse, as parents, to do everything we can to protect our children from harm; to make any sacrifice to keep them safe; to do what we have to do to give them a future where they can grow up and learn and explore, and become the amazing people they’re destined to be. 
That’s why, in January, Joe Biden, leading a task force, came up with, and I put forward, a series of common-sense proposals to reduce the epidemic of gun violence and keep our kids safe.  In my State of the Union address, I called on Congress to give these proposals a vote.  And in just a couple of weeks, they will.

Earlier this month, the Senate advanced some of the most important reforms designed to reduce gun violence.  All of them are consistent with the Second Amendment.  None of them will infringe on the rights of responsible gun owners.  What they will do is keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people who put others at risk.  And this is our best chance in more than a decade to take common-sense steps that will save lives.

As I said when I visited Newtown just over three months ago, if there is a step we can take that will save just one child, just one parent, just another town from experiencing the same grief that some of the moms and dads who are here have endured, then we should be doing it.  We have an obligation to try.

Now, in the coming weeks, members of Congress will vote on whether we should require universal background checks for anyone who wants to buy a gun so that criminals or people with severe mental illnesses can’t get their hands on one.  They’ll vote on tough new penalties for anyone who buys guns only to turn around and sell them to criminals.  They’ll vote on a measure that would keep weapons of war and high-capacity ammunition magazines that facilitate these mass killings off our streets.  They’ll get to vote on legislation that would help schools become safer and help people struggling with mental health problems to get the treatment that they need.
None of these ideas should be controversial.  Why wouldn’t we want to make it more difficult for a dangerous person to get his or her hand on a gun?  Why wouldn’t we want to close the loophole that allows as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases to take place without a background check?  Why wouldn’t we do that?

And if you ask most Americans outside of Washington -- including many gun owners -- some of these ideas, they don't consider them controversial.  Right now, 90 percent of Americans -- 90 percent -- support background checks that will keep criminals and people who have been found to be a danger to themselves or others from buying a gun.  More than 80 percent of Republicans agree.  More than 80 percent of gun owners agree.  Think about that.  How often do 90 percent of Americans agree on anything?  (Laughter.)  It never happens.

Many other reforms are supported by clear majorities of Americans.  And I ask every American to find out where your member of Congress stands on these ideas.  If they're not part of that 90 percent who agree that we should make it harder for a criminal or somebody with a severe mental illness to buy a gun, then you should ask them, why not?  Why are you part of the 10 percent?

There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t get this done.  But the reason we're talking about here today is because it's not done until it’s done.  And there are some powerful voices on the other side that are interested in running out the clock or changing the subject or drowning out the majority of the American people to prevent any of these reforms from happening at all.  They’re doing everything they can to make all our progress collapse under the weight of fear and frustration, or their assumption is that people will just forget about it.

I read an article in the news just the other day wondering is Washington -- has Washington missed its opportunity, because as time goes on after Newtown, somehow people start moving on and forgetting.  Let me tell you, the people here, they don't forget.  Grace's dad is not forgetting.  Hadiya's mom hasn't forgotten.  The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens and we've moved on to other things, that's not who we are.  That's not who we are.

And I want to make sure every American is listening today.  Less than 100 days ago that happened, and the entire country was shocked.  And the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different.  Shame on us if we've forgotten.  I haven't forgotten those kids.  Shame on us if we've forgotten. 

If there's one thing I’ve said consistently since I first ran for this office:  Nothing is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change.  And that’s why it’s so important that all these moms and dads are here today.  But that's also why it’s important that we've got grassroots groups out there that got started and are out there mobilizing and organizing and keeping up the fight.  That's what it’s going to take to make this country safer.  It’s going to take moms and dads, and hunters and sportsmen, and clergy and local officials like the mayors who are here today standing up and saying, this time really is different -- that we’re not just going to sit back and wait until the next Newtown or the next Blacksburg or the next innocent, beautiful child who is gunned down in a playground in Chicago or Philadelphia or Los Angeles before we summon the will to act.

Right now, members of Congress are back home in their districts, and many of them are holding events where they can hear from their constituents.  So I want everybody who is listening to make yourself heard right now.

If you think that checking someone’s criminal record before he can check out a gun show is common sense, you've got to make yourself heard.  If you’re a responsible, law-abiding gun owner who wants to keep irresponsible, law-breaking individuals from abusing the right to bear arms by inflicting harm on a massive scale, speak up.  We need your voices in this debate.  If you’re a mom like Katerina who wants to make this country safer, a stronger place for our children to learn and grow up, get together with other moms like the ones here today and raise your voices and make yourselves unmistakably heard.

We need everybody to remember how we felt 100 days ago and make sure that what we said at that time wasn't just a bunch of platitudes -- that we meant it.

The desire to make a difference is what brought Corey Thornblad here today.  Corey grew up in Oklahoma, where her dad sold firearms at gun shows.  And today, she’s a mom and a teacher.  And Corey said that after Newtown, she cried for days -- for the students who could have been her students; for the parents she could have known; for the teachers like her who go to work every single day and love their kids and want them to succeed.  And Corey says, “My heart was broken.  And I decided now was the time to act, to march, the time to petition, the time to make phone calls, because tears were no longer enough.”  And that’s my attitude.

Tears aren't enough.  Expressions of sympathy aren't enough.  Speeches aren't enough.  We've cried enough.  We've known enough heartbreak.  What we're proposing is not radical, it's not taking away anybody's gun rights.  It's something that if we are serious, we will do.
Now is the time to turn that heartbreak into something real.  It won't solve every problem.

 There will still be gun deaths.  There will still be tragedies.  There will still be violence.  There will still be evil.  But we can make a difference if not just the activists here on this stage but the general public -- including responsible gun owners -- say, you know what, we can do better than this.  We can do better to make sure that fewer parents have to endure the pain of losing a child to an act of violence.

That’s what this is about.  And if enough people like Katerina and Corey and the rest of the parents who are here today get involved, and if enough members of Congress take a stand for cooperation and common sense, and lead, and don’t get squishy because time has passed and maybe it’s not on the news every single day -- if that’s who we are, if that’s our character that we’re willing to follow through on commitments that we say are important -- commitments to each other and to our kids -- then I’m confident we can make this country a safer place for all of them.

So thank you very much, everybody.
God bless you.  God bless America.  (Applause.)

Is capitalism hazardous to mankind?

This piece originally appeared on The Walrus. 
The pursuit of economic growth has made us addicted to risk -- and left us vulnerable to catastrophic disasters
By Bryne Purchase

CAN OUR SOCIETY take pre-emptive action to forestall devastating climate change? Can it act now to avoid wars over oil and natural gas? Can it take steps today to avoid economic crises stemming from spiking oil prices? The answer, unfortunately, is no, no, and no. Our institutions, public and private, are not designed for prudent action. They are designed to facilitate risk taking and to address negative consequences, if they arise, later on. Only in the face of disaster, when there is a clear and present danger, are we capable of mobilizing an appropriate response.

The problem is not ignorance; it is not that we are unaware of the risks we take. Nor do we lack the instruments to deal with them. The problem, deeply embedded in the architecture of our decision making, is that in the pursuit of economic growth we privatize reward and socialize downside risk. To describe this tendency, economists borrow a term, “moral hazard,” from the insurance industry. A moral hazard exists whenever decision makers in risky situations reap the rewards from their decisions without bearing all of the costs. The ability to pass downside costs on to others encourages imprudent decision making.

Our society is ridden with moral hazard. Limited liability is built in to our most important programs and institutions, and it has clear advantages. It makes our society dynamic; we dare the future, and that dare has paid handsome dividends. In a mere 200 to 250 years, it has made us wildly rich. Modern market capitalism is how we engineered our escape from the Malthusian trap, the subsistence living that has characterized human history, enforced by periodic outbreaks of war, famine, and disease.

But modern market capitalism has also exposed us to new orders of potentially catastrophic failure. Catastrophic, because by the time a potential problem becomes recognized as a clear and present danger, no action may be sufficient to prevent social and economic breakdown or, worse, war. In complex systems, tipping points may produce viral effects. Consider the violence in countries caught up in the Arab Spring. Think about the riots in southern Europe after the global economic crisis. Once set in motion, such events often acquire a momentum of their own and can lead anywhere.

The financial crisis in the United States illustrates how both private and public institutions can proceed into an icefield, full steam ahead, with full knowledge of the risk. Here is what Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve Board, wrote about sub-prime mortgages in his memoir, The Age of Turbulence : “A difficult problem is that much of the dubious financial-market behavior that emerges during the expansion phase is the result not of ignorance that risk is badly underpriced, but of the concern that unless firms participate in a current euphoria, they will irretrievably lose market share.”

Of course, private companies, and banks in particular, are not supposed to make reckless bets just because their competitors do, which is why Greenspan resisted further regulation. But they did, and later it became obvious why: moral hazard. When the masters of the universe who control decision making on Wall Street are confronted with enormous short-term personal rewards and minimal long-term downside risk, then disaster awaits.

But if you think imprudent decision making is a private sector phenomenon, think again. Here is Alan Greenspan on the public sector response before the sub-prime mortgage crisis: “I am also increasingly persuaded that governments and central banks could not have importantly altered the course of the boom either. To do so, they would have had to induce a degree of economic contraction sufficient to nip the budding euphoria. I have seen no evidence, however, that electorates in modern democratic societies would tolerate such severity in macroeconomic policy to combat a prospective problem that might not even materialize.”

As the ultimate Washington insider, he knew how governments actually function, as distinct from how we think they do. Americans at all income levels were benefiting from the housing boom—although some more than others, to be sure. The very rich were getting richer, but unemployment was low, inflation was down, and homeowners everywhere were enjoying increases in their personal net worth, or spending sprees bankrolled by mortgage refinancing. Woe to any government that proposed to take away that punch bowl, especially on the strength of forecasts by the few observers who warned that something might go wrong.

When it did, governments stepped in to rescue the banks, because, according to conventional wisdom, they were “too big to fail.” The collateral social and economic costs were considered too massive to contemplate. Then, realizing that they were creating a further moral hazard, proponents of the bailouts felt compelled to increase regulation. But rules do not facilitate innovation. Nor do they necessarily make society safer. Aggressive innovators are always ahead of their regulators, who often succumb to groupthink, coming to share the perspectives of those they govern. And sometimes the authorities are suborned, turning a blind eye to malfeasance. Indeed, one could argue that more regulation is a bad idea, because it encourages the belief that the powers that be are standing guard when in truth they may not be.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis exposed a deep ideological fault line in society. On one side are people who quite logically oppose regulation as both counterproductive to the economy and a violation of individual rights. On the other side, an almost equal number who, again quite logically, believe bailouts and other forms of social insurance are necessary, both to contain collateral damage and to show compassion. What to do? The answer is obvious: split the difference. Forgo regulation to get the party going; and then, when it comes crashing down, bail out and otherwise pump up the most important partygoers. In such a society, however, there is only one gear: fast forward.

One can make the case that finance is an exception. It is, in the sense that it can rip apart the socio-economic and political order of things—witness southern Europe. While debt serves as the lubricant of market capitalism, using other people’s money to pursue one’s own purposes carries an implicit moral hazard. The buildup of debt relative to income in society is like the buildup of methane in a mine: all it needs is a spark to set it off. Alas, higher debt levels are an almost inevitable outcome of greater income inequality. The very rich, who cannot possibly consume all of their wealth, must lend an ever-increasing share of it to finance not only capital investment but also consumption. Without mass consumption, the awesome productive capacity of capitalism falters, leading to economic recession, even depression. That was the enduring lesson of the Depression of the 1930s.

Spiking energy prices, which provided the spark that touched off the global financial market meltdown, are highly destructive. As we have seen so often in the past forty years, rising energy prices depress consumption among low- and moderate-income households. The result, exacerbated by high personal debt levels, is a severe negative impact on national income and employment. Technological innovation gets more attention, but growth in per capita income also depends on access to energy. Without it, tools are useless. Imagine yourself in the world’s most sophisticated city with no electricity. Nothing works. GDP measures our ability to use tools to alter our environment to suit our tastes. An individual’s income is simply a reflection of his or her control over energy (including food, which is just energy fit for human consumption), meaning the poor are virtually powerless.

More than 80 percent of the world’s primary energy comes from fossil fuels, which are already priced in global markets, in the case of oil, or soon will be in the case of natural gas and coal. So fossil fuels bring with them the potential for repeated and dramatic price spikes related to resource depletion and war on the one hand, and on the other the issue of climate change, with its promise of increasingly intense natural disasters. No one thinks consumers or private corporations will deal with these issues. They will continue to do what consumers and corporations do, which is to take whatever actions are necessary to ensure their own short-term benefit or survival. Most of us will proceed on the assumption that if a problem arises in the future, our governments will deal with it.

And we will be wrong, because political decision making processes are also fundamentally flawed. The political marketplace is a study in dysfunction, starting with the incentive structure confronting electorates. Voters are for the most part ignorant about the complex details of public policy; in a representative democracy, it is the leaders they elect who make the important choices about competing public policies. So instead of focusing on policy, the public focuses on character. A politician’s character is thought to be important in decision making, and character, in this case, goes not just to what is known of a politician’s personal behaviour, but to his or her avowed political beliefs, or ideology.

It is no surprise, then, that competition in the political marketplace emphasizes character assassination and branding. Character assassination discredits everyone in the process, and branding requires huge expenditures on advertising, which is increasingly paid for by private interests with political and economic agendas. This undermines the public trust. In the US, which has a rigid system of checks and balances, it also produces political paralysis—except in times of crisis. These negative outcomes are only exacerbated by the fact that political rhetoric today is designed to appeal to voters’ emotions rather than their intellects. Modern psychology and neuroscience may be even more influential in political versus consumer marketing, because the purpose of political speech is simply to persuade the voter to take a small personal risk—not, as in the consumer marketplace, to override his or her vested interest in getting a product that actually works as advertised.

All of this emboldens candidates to act opportunistically in the pursuit of what matters most to them: winning the next election, which tends to loom in the immediate future. The greatest risk in this dysfunctional process is to policies that impose an immediate cost in return for a long-term benefit. Case in point: the run-up to the global financial crisis, in which electorates were disinclined to support restraint as a means of avoiding something that might or might not go wrong at some unknowable time in the future. There are always politicians willing to offer the policy option with the least short-term cost or the greatest short-term benefit, because once they leave office they are no longer accountable. In this context, all political competitors have a powerful incentive to punt tough choices into the future. And they are often abetted by public accounting processes that would make Enron look virtuous. The net result of these factors is to make governments incapable of taking action unless and until they face a widely recognized, clear and present danger—although by then there is always a chance that it may be too late.

Our inability to consider the long-term consequences of our public policy decisions is compounded by the growth in income and wealth inequality. Economists debate the appropriate social discount to be applied for damages done to future societies by climate change thirty, fifty, and 100 years from now. But for the growing numbers of poor and near-poor who live paycheque to paycheque in today’s societies, thinking about the future is a luxury. Burdened with debt and highly vulnerable to such adverse contingencies as job loss, illness, divorce, and unplanned pregnancies, they cannot afford to contemplate the idea of deliberately raising the price of carbon energy now to avoid some future cost or problem. Energy, including food, already takes up far too large a portion of their household budgets, which is what makes the economy so vulnerable to rising energy prices.

Every politician knows this: that when it comes to energy, we are all trapped, because the poor and near-poor are trapped. Some will argue that revenue raised from a carbon tax could be used to reduce income inequality and thus mitigate the net negative impact on employment and economic growth. However, this ignores the fact that, while North America is second only to China in fossil energy output, its production is concentrated in just a few provinces and states—and the voters in those provinces and states are unlikely to stand by as central governments redistribute their income and wealth, no matter the merits. In Canada, regional differences have made a national energy policy based on carbon pricing a political non-starter; the federal government does what it has to do anyway, which is follow the US.

If America were to adopt an aggressive policy on climate change, Canada would have to follow. But that is not going to happen. The power of regional interests in the US is nowhere more apparent than in the Senate, in which two seats are allotted to each state, regardless of population. To prevent minority interests from delaying or even killing legislation by prolonging debate, three-fifths of the sitting senators (usually sixty out of 100) can force closure. Even more problematic is the rule that requires two-thirds of senators to allow ratification of an international treaty; in the absence of such an agreement, no real progress will be made in addressing global warming. In the recent US elections, climate change was seldom mentioned, even though the man who was re-elected president is on record as saying he believes it is an issue.

Sadly, we have no capacity to change our institutions from within, because our willingness to privatize reward and socialize downside risk is protected by powerful constituencies on both sides of the political spectrum. A fully insured society should also be a heavily regulated society. We have chosen social insurance with only light regulation. It may be a fatally flawed predisposition, but it has made us rich, and so we will stick with it until it is overridden by events, and evident to the vast majority. At that point, we might be open to a new social architecture.

But what would it look like? In my mind, it would restore individual responsibility in both our private and public lives. No politician, for example, would be deemed successful just because he or she had won a few elections; the new metric for political success would be a demonstrated concern for the future of society, notwithstanding the near-term costs. Our politics would be less about marketing and more about facts and reason. There would be greater recognition of the roles randomness and chance play in individual achievement. Equal opportunity, in all of its deep complexity, would be a social priority. There would also be less debt and, it follows, less income inequality. As for energy, a prudent society would spend vastly more on research and development to help prepare us for a future that, in every eventuality, requires a reliable energy supply that is not a Trojan Horse.

Obama’s Real Political Program

Source: Harper’s Magazine
 Vague talk about the middle class, and plenty for big business
By John R. MacArthur

You have to hand it to Barack Obama when it comes to having it both ways: He never stops serving the ruling class, yet the mainstream media, from right to left, continues to pretend that he’s some sort of reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully committed to the downtrodden and deeply hostile to the privileged and the rich.

The president’s double game was never more adroit than during his most recent State of the Union address. Reacting to the speech, the right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer spoke on Fox News of Obama’s “activist government” beliefs and his penchant for “painting the Republicans as the party of the rich” while portraying himself as the defender of the “middle class, Medicare and all this other stuff.” Meanwhile, the “liberal” New York Times praised his “broad second-term agenda” as “impressive” and blamed the G.O.P. for “standing in the way” of the many liberal reforms that the president supposedly wants to enact to help the poor and the middle class.

Yet the address contained hardly anything progressive: On the contrary, Obama’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to only $9 an hour — and not for two years — was a populist parody. Under the president’s proposal, a minimum-wage worker supporting a family of three (two parents, one child) would make $18,720 a year in 2015 — barely above today’s federal poverty line of $18,480 and well short of the 1968 peak, inflation-adjusted, of $21,840 a year, or $10.50 an hour. Combined with Obama’s mosquito bite of an increase in the top marginal income-tax rate to 39.6 percent — restoring Bill Clinton’s top rate would still put it at way less than the Eisenhower-era top rate of 91 percent — the minimum-wage bill insults the many millions of less fortunate people who voted for the incumbent. So much for “activist government” and an “impressive” agenda.

Of course, I don’t take this sort of hyperbolic commentary seriously anymore. If Obama ever had a “philosophy,” it’s about power sharing — that is, sharing parts of his plastic personality with the powers that be — from the Daley brothers in Chicago who advanced his career, to the bankers and hedge-fund mangers who financed his campaigns, to the lobbyists and party barons in Washington who write his legislative proposals. Never has a leading American Democrat (including the dean of “New Democrats,” Bill Clinton) done less to promote “activist government” in support of less-privileged people while getting so much undeserved credit for “trying” to help them.

But as a student of propaganda and politics, I can’t help but remark on how effective Obama has been at muzzling criticism, or even intelligent analysis, from the liberals who should be revolting against him. The other week I was reading the very pro-Obama Nation magazine when I happened upon “Defeatist Democrats.” It was uncharacteristically critical of the Democratic Party and the president. With no byline at the top of the article, I found myself wondering who (now that Alexander Cockburn is dead) in the left-wing weekly’s regular stable would write something as tough as this: “The decay of the Democratic Party can’t be better confirmed than by the actions of its leader.”

Noting that in the 2008 campaign Obama “championed” an increase in the minimum wage to $9.50 “but after winning fell silent” (even though the Democrats had solid majorities back then in both houses of Congress), the article went on to point out that after the 2012 election “Democrats privately blamed Obama for not running with the Congressional Democrats and refusing to share campaign money from the President’s $1 billion stash.” It quoted former Colorado senator Gary Hart as saying that “Democrats don’t know what the party stands for,” and predicted losses in the 2014 midterm elections if the Democrats pursued their strategy of “raising the money and taking care not to offend business interests by talking vaguely about the middle class and ignoring the growing poorer classes that are the Democratic Party’s natural constituency.”

Who was this mystery writer and why wasn’t his name on the magazine’s cover? At the end of the piece I found the answer, and the byline: Ralph Nader, who is among the last national political figures who will call something what it really is. His name wasn’t on the cover because for liberals the Obama dream dies hard.

Lately, besides talking up “deficit reduction” and creating a “thriving middle class,” Obama is pushing an even more ambitious and destructive “free trade” agenda certain to weaken the middle class even more. The ultra-realistic Financial Times reported last month that Obama had put “trade at the heart of” his agenda. This means we will no doubt see lovely bipartisan cooperation between the two enemy parties when there’s real money on the table for their big donors.

Of the proposed deals, the most damaging for American manufacturing and decent factory wages would be the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which if signed would follow on Obama’s 2011 job-killing trifecta — the “free-trade” agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. More Japanese and other Asian imports would result, but Obama’s cheerleaders in the media blur the debate by touting a supposed manufacturing revival they cutely call “insourcing.” The insourcing “boom” is another administration fraud (see anything written by Alan Tonelson), but it neatly distracts people from the ever-increasing foreign-trade deficit.

Preposterous though it may seem, Republican leaders in Congress, despite their simple-minded obsession with spending cuts, come off like straight shooters by comparison with Obama. As for Obama, well, as one of the president’s former supporters put it to me, “He’s one of them!” But if liberals like the odds for 2014, by all means, they should stay the course. They might well wind up with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.