A Different Look at Gun Control Laws

Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but is it politically unwise for Democrats to unequivocally support gun control laws? Hear me out—generally, the most vociferous Second Amendment advocates are hard right, militant militia members, crazies who fear they won’t have any guns around to protect themselves from left wing nuts who may take over our government. They claim they need long guns and assault rifles to combat the demise of the republic.

Far fetched, perhaps, but what if they are onto something, only in a bizarro, reverse world? What if it’s right wing conservatives—led by an orange-tinged elected president and his intolerant-Constitution-be-damned cronies—who want to strip the populace of rights after rights and liberties after liberties, leaving just leftists who want to save America? How could the left offer resistance if their right to bear powerful arms was denied them?

I’m not saying it’s going to happen, that we should all march down to our local guns and ammo store to stock up, but you have to admit, if you’re a progressive thinker, it could. Of course, we could negate the possibility by voting the orangutan out of office November 3.

So there you have it—either mark off the Democratic candidate (whomever he or she may be) on your electronic ballot, or pull down the Democratic lever on your manual voting machine, or register for firearms instruction at your local shooting range before it’s too late. America’s future is in your hands. 

(In case some of you didn’t realize it, what you have just read is a piece of satire.)

Classified Material: I opened the Sunday New York Times to find something rarely seen over the last decade or longer: pages of classified ads. Advertisements for jobs ranging from an advisory consultant at an accounting firm to vice president of a bank. Two and a half pages in tiny agate type. 

Now, the volume was nothing like it used to be, pre-Internet. It wasn’t a separate section. The ads were tucked into the back pages of the SportsSunday section. But just as Web-based retailers are opening brick and mortar stores, perhaps we are at the dawn of a rekindled age of newspaper classified ads.

I have a soft spot for “help wanted” ads in print. Between jobs back in early 1977 I answered a classified ad in The Times. We were living in New Haven. Gilda had said she would relocate anywhere but New York, but four months into my unemployment she consented to my responding to the ad. She further agreed to return to New York after a job offer was extended during my interview in Manhattan. Thus began my 32 year career with Lebhar-Friedman, publisher of Nation’s Restaurant News (my first year’s assignment as a field editor) and Chain Store Age for the remainder of my tenure. 

Section By Section: Not everyone reads the Sunday Times page by page, section by section. I surely don’t.

So this item is for those who offhandedly toss the SundayStyles section into the discard pile. Take a moment to read how the spirit of the holiday season in Washington has become another victim of the polarized political climate in the nation’s capital. It’s a humorous if not nostalgic remembrance of better, bygone days (https://nyti.ms/2McMMiv).

Gilda’s New Nickname: I have a new nickname for Gilda—Corduroy. Not the fabric. Rather, the winsome Teddy Bear now considered a classic children’s book character. 

In the second book of the series originated by Don Sussman, Corduroy notices his green corduroy overalls lack a pocket. His escapades at a laundromat endeavoring to find a pocket is a warm-hearted adventure tale that ends with Lise, his young owner, sewing some plaid material into a pocket on his right overall leg.

Around our house Gilda often wears sweat pants. Some have pockets. The ones that don’t, however, have continually frustrated her ability to keep her cell phone nearby. Until she recalled the story “A Pocket for Corduroy.”

For several hours Friday she rummaged through leftover fabric swatches, picking out a grey plaid pattern with enough material to adorn two sweat pants with pockets deep enough to hold an iPhone. Just like Corduroy’s, the pockets are angled on the right pants leg.

Trump Pitches Gun Control. Is He Going Progressive?

With an executive order that unilaterally banned bump stocks and simultaneously earned him the wrath of the National Rifle Association, are we witnessing the emergence of Donald Trump, progressive president?

The candidate-supported-by-the-NRA-who-became-president told the group’s national conference last April, “The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end. You have a true friend and champion in the White House.”

But that was before the massacres at Parkland, FL, and Las Vegas. Trump told the NRA he was “going to come through for you,” (https://nyti.ms/2pb8wjr), but he’s a master at reading the public mood which appears to be in favor of reining in unbridled gun ownership. He seems to now favor allowing states to raise the legal age to buy assault style rifles like the ones used in Las Vegas and Parkland. His proposals on guns control may be released Sunday.

Trump knows that no matter how stiff the restrictions he would place on the sale and possession of guns, Democrats would impose tighter prohibitions, leaving him as a distasteful but still the only viable choice of the NRA. 

He probably also feels he no longer needs the $30 million the NRA posted for his election campaign. It would be nice to have, but no longer a necessity. He does, after all, have the power of the presidency to supplement his already proven power of publicity to transmit his message to the public.

As noted in The New York Times article last April,  Trump was a “supporter of restrictions on guns before he entered politics.” Is he going back to his “natural” tendencies, his, in the words of Ted Cruz, “New York values?” Is he truly a progressive, ready to come out of the conservative closet?

Not so fast. 

If there has been one underlying tenet of the Trump Doctrine of governance it is to overturn any vestige of Barack Obama’s presidency. If it were within his power to remove Obama’s and Michelle’s portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, I am convinced he would do it. 

Rather than have beliefs grounded in thought-out principles, Trump is an opportunist. His seeming shift on gun control comes from tragedy. One wonders if it will take another Deepwater Horizon-like catastrophe to reverse his administration’s lifting of safeguards for off-shore oil and gas drilling (https://nyti.ms/2DgK2Jo).

There have been several articles on how regulations protecting people and the environment have been scaled back or eliminated under Trump. Here’s a list The Times compiled as of January 31, 2018: https://nyti.ms/2xVTnW9

Around the same time—the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration—the Intelligencer section of New York magazine published a piece on how he has tainted our country (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/trump-inaugural-address-one-year-later.html). Here are three salient paragraphs:

“The elegant simplicities of campaign rhetoric—or, in Trump’s case, the brutal simplicities—never align with the ugly and complex reality of governing. But Trump’s presidency has presented an especially jarring contrast, since the rhetoric has borne no relation whatsoever to what followed. It’s not that he overpromised but that his promises were fundamentally a con. He and his loyalists possessed not the faintest idea how to address the crises he identified, not even a theory that could lead to a detailed response. Trump’s program has instead defaulted to the preexisting desires of his party’s ideological and funding base, resulting in a regulatory and tax agenda virtually—and in some cases literally—dictated by the business lobby.

“For instance: The federal government will no longer withhold subsidies from for-profit colleges that fail to give their students meaningful skills or educations and saddle their graduates with overwhelming debt. Restaurant owners stand to legally take for themselves tips intended for their servers. Financial advisers will be able to knowingly steer their clients toward investments that benefit the adviser’s firm but not the client. Environmental Protection Agency investigators must now obtain permission (from their fanatically anti-regulation administrator’s office) before even asking companies to track the pollutants they emit. Nursing homes and banks will be allowed to force their customers to sign mandatory arbitration clauses that leave them unable to sue if they are abused or cheated. And on and on. The party’s political messaging has increasingly consisted of ignoring the costs of these measures (higher deficits, lax regulation of risky or antisocial business activity) while highlighting whatever fractional benefits trickle down to the non-business-owning public.

“Employment has grown no faster under Trump than it did at the end of his predecessor’s term. The economy produced slightly fewer new jobs in Trump’s first year than it did in Barack Obama’s last. The primary evidence of the “success” of Trump’s pro-business policies has been to rebrand the essentially continuous conditions of the recovery he inherited as dazzling prosperity rather than bleak misery.”

Progressive? No. A most emphatic, NO! 

A Party Platform Worth Considering

Here’s a party platform I could support, with some tweaks:

• Reject additional tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year, but expand breaks for low- and middle-income workers through tax credits for children, the earned-income tax credit or a new wage subsidy using tax dollars to bring low wages toward the local median level.

• Promote the benefits of global trade agreements, but help displaced workers.

• Rule out fully privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and reassure workers they will be exempt from cost-cutting.

• Acknowledge that universal health care is here to stay, but push for market-oriented changes.

• Disavow mass deportations and promote the economic benefits of legalizing longtime workers who are in the country illegally, but reduce the legal entry of less-skilled immigrants.

It might surprise you that these platform planks are part of the “Reformocon” movement of disenchanted conservative Republicans, as described in a New York Times article Friday (http://nyti.ms/2an1YbR)

It’s a long-shot that any of these more sober thoughts will become anything more than heresy to Grand Old Party poobahs (second time in a week I’ve used that mildly deprecating description of Republican leaders, but who cares, it fits). Yet it is revealing that some within the party are even thinking it is common sense to make the GOP appeal more universal.

Democrats should welcome such an overture. Perhaps the country would be able to return to what truly were “good old days” when politicians reached across the aisle to forge legislation that benefitted all, not just the rich and entitled. Back in those “good old days” the Second Amendment didn’t mean a gun, especially not an assault rifle, in every home. Nor did it mean taxes couldn’t be raised to fund infrastructure projects and other needs. Nor did it mean Roe v. Wade was the litmus test for Supreme Court appointees. Nor did it mean a presidential candidate could suggest not complying with NATO treaty defense obligations, or suggest Russia spy on an opponent, or suggest the military engage in torture. 

Yes, those were good old days. Trumpsters, however, will not go down easily in defeat. Donald Trump is seeding thoughts of a rigged election, oblivious to the facts that voter fraud has been found to be almost non existent. Federal appeals courts have repeatedly invalidated tighter voter identification laws enacted by states based on the alleged premise that voter fraud has been rampant. 

Elections at the state level are a supervised by appointees of each governor. There are 31 Republican governors, 19 Democrats. In the 11 so-called battleground states that may decide the presidential election, Democrats are governor in just four: Colorado, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Their states account for 51 Electoral College votes. Republicans are governors in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. Those states have 100 Electoral College votes. 

For Trump to claim the election is rigged, his own party’s election machinery would have to be conspiring against him. If only that were so …

The Jerk May Have the Law on His Side

Jeb Bush is right. Hard to believe I find myself agreeing with the wannabe president, but there I was, reading a New York Times article under the headline, “Still Assailing Donald Trump, Jeb Bush Calls Him ‘a Jerk’.

“Donald Trump is a jerk,” Mr. Bush said to applause (The Times reported from a New Hampshire town-hall-style event).

“You cannot insult your way to the presidency,” he said. “You can’t disparage women, Hispanics, disabled people. Who is he kidding? This country is far better than that. The idea that he’s actually running for president and insulting people is deeply discouraging, to be honest with you, and I think we should reject that out of hand. I hope you’ll reject it by voting for me, but a guy like that should not be the front-running candidate of our great party.”

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/19/jeb-bush-takes-his-anti-trump-message-on-the-road-in-new-hampshire/?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone

Jeb is right. But his problem is that the GOP has morphed into a party of “no,” of “you-can’t-have-any-or-come-here-if-you-are-different,” a party of distrust, of bait-and-switch that promises benefits to middle- and working-class people but delivers benefits just to the elite. It’s become a party of exclusion, not inclusion. A party of dogma one dares not dissent from, a party of religious extremism, a party whose foreign policy is founded on the principle of “my way or bombs away,” a party repulsed by scientific discovery, a party more comfortable with the values of the Dark Ages than of the Enlightenment.

For the moment let’s not talk about the Republican Party as a whole but rather the Trump phenomenon. His appeal has confounded “experts” within and without the GOP. It might be instructive to view this clip by Jordan Klepper from a recent Daily Show with Trevor Noah. It’s an enlightening, if not frightening, piece on why everyday, normal-looking people are supporting Trump: http://on.cc.com/1lOYpwG.

Also consider the consternation arch conservatives are feeling about the current Republican front-runner. Here’s part of a commentary from Charles C. W. Cooke, a staff writer at National Review:

“… if the current Republican front-runner is any indication of things to come, large swathes of the party have already abandoned their talk of ‘constitutional conservatism’ and ‘limited government’ and embraced a flat-out authoritarianism, at least as preached by ‘The Donald.’ Whatever else he might be, the idea of Trump as a paladin of civil liberties should make one howl with terrible laughter. Since he announced his candidacy, Trump has threatened to ignore those who are carping about free speech and shut down parts of the Internet; he has promised to summarily deport those who are suspected of being illegal immigrants, without due process of law; he has endorsed extensive campaign-finance regulations that fly directly in the face of the First Amendment; he has vowed to restrict the Second Amendment rights of those on the terror watch list, again without due process; he has praised Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens, suggested that natural-born Americans can be deported against their will, and proposed that American Muslims be barred from reentering the country; he has described as ‘wonderful’ a Supreme Court ruling that obliterated the ‘public use’ limitations on the invocation of eminent domain; and he has refused to rule out registering Americans on the basis of their faith. Worse still, he has responded to the criticism that these positions have generated by channeling his inner Nancy Pelosi: ‘Are you serious?’

“And yet, despite all of these transgressions, 30 percent of GOP-primary voters still list him as their top pick. This is an unmitigated disgrace.” (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428208/trump-anti-constitutional-authoritarian)

Okay, so the left and right are against Trump, particularly his anti-Mexican and anti-Islam “throw them out” or “bar them from entering” stances. But what if Trump is not constitutionally blind? What if his rants are within legal, if not ethical, bounds?

Consider, if you will, the following from the Immigration & Nationality Act of 1952 US Code 8, Section 1182, Sub-Section F:

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. 

I’m no constitutional scholar, but it appears The Donald’s plan to restrict immigration could be within the law as long as he doesn’t define class by religion. Country of origin might be a way to define the class of alien he wants to keep out. 

That being said, Jeb is still right. Trump’s a jerk.

Lox vs. Locks and Tuesday Movies Go Dark

Your faithful correspondent and his wife returned home shortly after 3 am today from a week-long trip to California, first to visit my sister Lee and her husband David in Los Angeles and then to attend a wedding in Laguna Beach where the weather couldn’t have been better—the whole weekend a balmy 71 degrees with a slight ocean breeze. That compares quite favorably to the mid 80s and high humidity in White Plains today.

My only complaint about the trip was I never got an opportunity to watch any episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. Here’s an example of why I miss those two shows:

When you’re a Jewish comedian as Stewart is, you run the risk of telling an “inside” joke your gentile guest has no idea you’re making. During his interview with actress Ellen Page Monday night, Stewart couldn’t contain his positive feelings about Canada, especially Halifax, Nova Scotia, Page’s home town. He concluded his gushing by saying, “and by the way, the lox that they make ...” To which Page immediately responded, “I know, you can’t break the locks.”

I laughed at Stewart’s ethnic culinary joke and even harder at Page’s non sequitur response. To his credit, Stewart didn’t flinch. Though he tried to salvage the joke, the conversation quickly moved to another topic. No doubt, when he reviewed the tape of the show he mused and was bemused by the shmeared exchange.

It’s Tuesday Free Movie Day: Only until the end of May. My fellow senior citizens and I have been dealt a cruel blow. In the same week The NY Times came out with its summer movies preview section, we received notice that free Tuesdays and discounted-films-all-other-times at Clearview Cinemas we qualify for as part of our Cablevision Optimum Triple Play package will terminate by the end of the month. 

Cablevision has sold Clearview Cinemas. Until the company follows through on a promise of new movie deals, this will be a looong summer. Not just for me but for many seniors who took advantage of the free movies on Tuesdays. The promotion was not restricted to those in the sunset years, but we have been the major beneficiaries of the benefit. With everyone trying to stretch their bucks as far as they can, the free movie deal was a real bonanza. Consider this: Seniors normally pay $8 per ticket. You were entitled to two free tickets per week. If you went to the movies at Cleaview just one Tuesday a month, by yourself, you’d save $96. Go more often, or with a spouse, partner or friend, and the savings really added up. 

During the winter, the first screening started around 4 pm. But during the summer it was pushed up to around noon. Over the last few years I thought I’d take more advantage of the deal but something more important always came up. Now I’m feeling kinda disappointed I didn’t see more free films. 

News Updates: Gilda’s averaging a little more than 45 miles per gallon in her Ford C-Max. She’s even logged in a 50-plus mpg drive to work (the car informs you what your mpg was each time you turn off the motor). ... A quarter of the baseball season has passed and the NY Yankees are in first place. I readily admit it, I never expected this. Nor did I expect the Yanks to be among the American League team leaders in home runs, have the best earned run average and be ranked third in team defense. All this without a laundry list of high-priced veteran stars on the disabled list. Which should make Yankee fans wonder if our pursuit of top-dollar free agents might be a mistake going forward. Perhaps all we need are hungry-to-succeed players bolstered by a Robinson Cano who is having a monster of a year. ... Did you notice that American retailers did not join in the global effort to monitor and fund work and building conditions in Bangladesh. The plan was good enough for foreign-based retailers such as H&M, Inditex (Zara) and C&A to sign on, but U.S. companies like Wal-Mart and Gap resisted, believing their individual efforts would be better. Perhaps, as well, they feared being told what to do. It’s the same mentality that scuttled U.S. approval of a proposed United Nations treaty that would regulate international weapon sales despite the treaty’s specific language guaranteeing each country the right to maintain its own internal regulations, in our case the Second Amendment right to bear arms. ... JC Penney’s new/old boss Myron “Mike” Ullman has reinstated sales and pushed an aggressive advertising campaign acknowledging mistakes and asking disillusioned customers to come back. The ads have good production quality but the problem is they don’t reflect what’s going on inside the stores. Until Penney shifts its merchandise to match its customer profile, no amount of advertising will turn the battleship around. ... Here’s another example of Target getting a pass on a practice Wal-Mart would be crucified for: A new union election has been ordered for a Long Island store after it was ruled Target  acted improperly to stifle the vote, including threats to close the store if the union won certification. Wal-Mart’s constantly being harangued for its anti-union attitude. But few if any of the “sophisticates” who prefer “Tar-zhay” to Wal-Mart reconsider their patronage of the Minneapolis-based discounter.  

Duo of Tyranny

Seven weeks ago we voted in a new Congress and re-elected a president, but two of the most powerful and influential men in the land rule despite a majority of Americans disagreeing with their stands. Grover Norquist and Wayne LaPierre hold such sway over elected officials that they stymie any attempts to impose rational thought on issues affecting national priorities.

President Obama ran a successful campaign based on higher taxes for the wealthy. Democrats narrowed their minority position in the House of Representatives. They increased their majority in the Senate. Opinion polls repeatedly show some 60% of Republican voters believe higher taxes on the rich should be part of any negotiated settlement of our budget crisis.

Yet Republicans are so cowed by Norquist’s anti-tax pledge that they fear voting for any bill that includes any marginal tax rate increase, even if it affects just millionaires (could it be that since many GOP congressmen and senators are millionaires they are in no mood to pass anything that would up their own taxes?). 

Norquist also is a board member of the National Rifle Association, of which Lapierre is the vocal executive vice president who, one week after the Sandy Hook massacre, refused to soften the NRA’s position on any form of gun control. Again, polls show most Americans favor background checks and assault rifle bans. Instead of acknowledging the prevalence of guns contributes to mass killings, LaPierre blames our culture for breeding a climate of violence. His and the NRA’s solution is more guns in the hands of good guys will stop guns in the hands of bad guys. 

I’ve never owned a gun. Heck, I’ve never even pulled the trigger of a real gun. But am I now a candidate for NRA membership because, like LaPierre, I believe schools should be protected by armed security?

Gilda vehemently disagrees with me. She sees no benefit from introducing guns into school settings. After all, she points out, an armed guard didn’t stop the killings at Columbine. Gilda favors doing away with assault rifles and semi-automatic hand guns, And large capacity ammunition clips. So do I. Unlike LaPierre, I don’t believe solving our epidemic of violence can be achieved by arming as many people as possible. I prefer a country where semi-automatic guns are not protected by Second Amendment rights. But I’m also a realist. Until we resolve our self-inflicted crisis of too many guns and too many bullets available to too many unstable people, we need to establish at least minimal safeguards. 

Yes, it will cost lots of money to staff, train and deploy security personnel, not just at schools but also at other public facilities, such as hospitals and houses of worship. Some might think I am extending the killing zone. But evil will look for weakness, as it did at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. 

Our culture somehow has devolved into a dark video game. I’ve never played video games, never comprehended the fascination with mock killing and dismembering. I cannot fathom the depths of any mind that would exult in the deaths of innocents, especially the young. But as the troubled mind seeks greater and greater proportionality of fame and havoc, I cannot help but envision scenarios that undermine the very humanity of our culture. We claim to be better than other countries, but no other nation not at war with itself (as in Congo, Syria or Afghanistan) inflicts so much brutality on its fellow citizens.

Our national dialogue must include recognition that mass violence will not be contained overnight. So we must protect in the near term what we cherish. From where will we get the manpower to staff security at schools, hospitals, churches, synagogues and mosques? We have, regrettably, on top of his tax relief for the wealthy, another Bush-era legacy—a sizeable supply of personnel trained in the art of war. Thousands of qualified, stable military veterans need jobs. They could be hired to protect the vulnerable.

It’s not a solution without challenges. I’m embarrassed to have to put it forward. But deterrence may work in the short term until we regain our senses and devise a sensible gun control plan as well as a workable mental health plan and a rational tax plan and stop letting two myopic men set national policy.

Good News: Gun Sales Are Up

For all you Obama fans, or reluctant fans, out there, here’s a portent of good news—guns sales hit record numbers on Black Friday (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-12-01/gun-sales-up-black-friday/51554972/1).

The counterintuitive omen signifies the initial evidence the conservative crowd may have realized the goal of giving the president his walking papers will be harder than getting Congress to pass compromise budget legislation. On Black Friday, the FBI received a record number of requests (129,166) from gun dealers for background checks on prospective buyers. Requests exceeded by 32% the previous high, set on Black Friday 2008.

In case you fail to see the significance of that prior record date, it was the first Black Friday after the election of Barack Obama. Gun toters and Second Amendment advocates feared Obama and his Democratic Congressional majority would push through more restrictive firearms laws (which they didn’t), so they rushed out to fill their gun chests with all manner of revolvers, assault rifles and semi-automatics.

Prognosticators often look for outlier signs to aid them in forecasting the future. For example, to predict manufacturing output they check the level of corrugated box shipments. To audit retail inventory levels and divine sales, analysts scour container shipment availability months before the holiday season.

Though gun enthusiasts explain the surge in purchases to more women wanting protection, as well as those who have newly discovered the sport of shooting and hunting, my money is on the political explanation. Crime statistics also don’t corroborate another reason advanced, that the sour economy has fostered a more dangerous environment. As the NY Times reported last May, “The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession.

“In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html)

Yes, the reason for higher guns sales seems obvious. Given the antipathy even Republican voters have to their slate of potential presidential nominees, and the outright disdain the public has for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, fear of Obama’s re-election and Democratic ascendancy in the House appear to be driving gun purchases. It might not be a rational response, but no one ever accused gun purchasers of acting rationally.

(P)Raising Arizona

Finally, something from Arizona I agree with (at least at first blush). Now, I don’t know all the intricacies of Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposal, but on the surface it seems worthy of discussion.

Essentially, Gov. Brewer wants to impose a $50 annual fee on Medicaid recipients who are obese or smokers if they fail to follow their doctor’s regimens that presumably would help them lose weight or kick the habit. The fee would apply to non-disabled adults who are either childless or whose children are at least 19.

For sure the proposal would need refinement, so, for example, a person overweight because of a thyroid condition would not be hit with the fee. But as a practical matter, getting smokers and the obese to pay their fair share of the burgeoning health care cost is a plus. We’re all paying higher medical premiums because we are carrying some of the burden smokers and heavyweights impose on the medical system. Private enterprise has recognized this—insurance companies charge different rates if you’re a non-smoker. Some private employers carry a separate medical coverage option for non-smokers.

It’s no secret Gov. Brewer is not the most friendly person when it comes to entitlement programs. She’d prefer to do away completely with Medicaid. But if the $50 fee prompts people to stop smoking or lose weight, it might produce a positive outcome.

Of course, an objective look at her proposal might also raise an interesting question—since Republicans always trumpet the need to take government out of our personal lives, how could a GOP governor be in favor of imposing a fee based on personal behavior? I guess it’s not hypocritical when the GOP does it.

Just when I was about to give Arizona a favorable, though not passing grade, it reinforced the stereotype that its elected officials are just plain crazy. And back to their keep-government-out-of-our-lives mode. The Republican-controlled Arizona House has passed legislation allowing guns, even concealed guns, to be carried on university and college campuses, all in the name of providing a means of defense in the case of a shooting. The governor has not indicated whether she will sign the bill. I’m betting she will.

Making guns permissible on campus is catching on like wild fire across GOP territory. Similar legislation is being considered in Texas, Tennessee, Michigan, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nebraska, Mississippi and Florida. Utah already permits it. Given the degree of drinking college students do, I am not thrilled with the mixture of alcohol and gunpowder. It’s a recipe for disaster, sooner or later.

It also gives parents another factor to consider when evaluating higher education options. Will the right to bear arms on campus be a positive or negative influence on their choice? There are some really good schools in those states. I’m glad I’m the father of college graduates and don’t have to confront this issue.


While we’re on the subject of guns, two groups, The Second Amendment Foundation and the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, filed a federal lawsuit against New York City this week because they say the cost to own a firearm in Gotham is too high, an “arbitrary financial constraint” to gun ownership. It costs $340 for an application and $94.25 to obtain a fingerprint check.

The fees seem reasonable to me, but to be honest, I think Chris Rock has a better suggestion. To cut down on random shootings, Rock proposes that each bullet cost $5,000. Too bad he’s a comedian so his idea won’t be seriously considered.