Archive for Back Door Politics

Obama moves to silence gun groups and other political opponents

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on June 12th, 2010

by GOA staff

Fresh from his efforts to seize government control of the health services sector (ObamaCare) and the financial markets (”finance reform”), Barack Obama has a new priority:  silence his political opposition.

As satisfying as it was for Obama to seize control of one-sixth of the economy, he has had to suffer protest from the “little people” (like us).  So he is pushing the Orwellian “DISCLOSE” bill (HR 5175) to make sure gun groups and other pro-freedom forces cannot mobilize their members in the upcoming elections.

When Obama says “disclose,” what he really means is “disclose gun group membership lists”

Not surprisingly, these efforts to shut down free speech don’t apply to Obama allies, like Democratic-leaning labor unions.  They only apply to groups which are not reliable Obama allies, like Gun Owners of America.

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SAF blasts Bloomberg for sham relaxation of gun regulations

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on May 25th, 2010

by SAF staff

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “relaxation” of gun regulations to make them more streamlined in the city is “a lot of flash and very little substance,” the Second Amendment Foundation said today, after carefully studying the new guidelines.

“It is clear to us,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “that Mayor Bloomberg is trying to make it appear that his gun regulations are more user-friendly to deflect a potential lawsuit once the Supreme Court rules on our legal action to overturn the handgun ban in Chicago. This tells us that Bloomberg and his legal advisors are convinced the high court will hand down a favorable ruling in the McDonald case, striking down Chicago’s ban and incorporating the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment.’

Under Bloomberg’s program, licensing requirements will be allegedly streamlined, renewal fees will go down and the application process will be speedier.

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A Starr no more

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on May 9th, 2010

by Mary J. Ruwart

This term, LNC Treasurer Aaron Starr instigated attacks on At-Large reps that consumed more LNC time than any other single activity.  I urge delegates to say “No!” to such divisive behavior by refusing to return him to the LNC in any capacity.

It saddens me to write these words, as I once had great respect for Mr. Starr and even supported his bid for Treasurer in 2004.  However, serving with him on the last LNC has greatly changed my perspective.

In the LNC’s first full-length meeting (September, 2008), Aaron Starr accused At-Large Rep Angela Keaton of blogging confidential information from our Executive Session.  We spent almost half of our meeting time deciding whether or not violations occurred and what, if anything, should be done about it.  While such leaks can create liability for the LNC, nothing that Ms. Keaton blogged even approached that level.  Most of the LNC— including myself, I regret to say—took Mr. Starr’s concerns more seriously than they warranted.

Prior to our second meeting, “The Discipline of Angela Keaton” appeared on the draft agenda.  Ms. Keaton asked that she be given a copy of what was to be presented to the LNC; a bit wiser now, I supported her request.  When the information was not forthcoming, I moved that this item be dropped from the agenda on the grounds that Ms. Keaton had no time to prepare her defense.  However, my motion was voted down.  The LNC thus spent a great deal of its December 2008 meeting listening to Stewart Flood, Mr. Starr’s collaborator, making a number of accusations against Ms. Keaton, most of which were utterly groundless and easily seen as such.  No action was taken against her.

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American citizenship, Arizona & SB 1070

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on May 2nd, 2010

by Sheila Dean

Arizona now becomes the U.S. cultural experiment for police state practices.  While due process attempts to self-manage are scorned by the Obama Administration, it does not mean Washington will deliver a better standard by moral comparison.

In a cruel twist of irony, Arizona opted out of all national ID by way of SB 1070.

Today is a very treacherous time for the identified person in America. The identified person navigates a world which seems to take advantage of our preoccupation with basic survival. It takes an impossibly sharp individual or someone who has a uniquely comprehensive vantage point to catch all of the lines being tossed over the American giant by a ubiquitous 1%. The little cowards of Lilliput on Wall Street have somehow put bits in the mouths of the Congressional oxen and the rest is political theater. They coerce and dangle this carrot and that carrot: Immigration or Climate reform, now or later. As if it depends completely on them to do anything at all.

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Bloomberg’s aggressive stance against guns

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on April 28th, 2010

by Dave Kopel

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York City, has been funding a national advertising campaign to promote his congressional gun- control bill. Monday’s Denver Post featured a full-page ad urging Sen. Mark Udall to support the Bloomberg bill; Colorado’s other senator, Michael Bennett, is already a co-sponsor.

According to the ad, the Bloomberg bill would nationalize Colorado’s rule about background checks at gun shows. But in fact, only a small fraction of the Bloomberg bill addresses the issue of background checks. The rest of the bill has a much more aggressive agenda.

For example, gun show promoters do not sell guns. The promoters just operate the shows, renting table space to the people who do sell guns. The Bloomberg bill would give the U.S. attorney general unlimited power to impose fees and regulations on gun show operators. An anti-gun attorney general could make the fees so exorbitant that no one could operate a gun show. Extremely complex and time-consuming registration forms that would have to be filled out every week could also drive gun shows out of business. 

Or consider a licensed firearms dealer who never sets foot inside a gun show. He conducts all his sales from his store. The Bloomberg bill hugely increases various prison terms that can be imposed on licensed dealers. This has nothing to do with gun shows.

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Gloating over court ruling in ‘Heller II’ reveals Brady Campaign’s gun ban philosophy

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on April 17th, 2010

by Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman

Following the dismissal of a second lawsuit against the District of Columbia by Dick Anthony Heller in U.S. District Court (his first lawsuit resulted in the 2008 Heller ruling), the Brady Campaign for the Prevention of Gun Violence was a little too quick on the trigger in its press release applauding Judge Ricardo M. Urbina’s decision.

Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke, who has garnered quite a bit of self-created publicity lately in his war against Starbucks Coffee, admitted quite by accident that his organization still believes in banning entire classes of firearms, despite the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that such bans would not pass constitutional muster.

But that doesn’t matter to the Brady Bunch. Their agenda has always been one of gun prohibition, not control. The kinds of controls they consider “common sense” are so Draconian in nature that they actually discourage firearms ownership, and lower the civil right to keep and bear arms to the level of a highly-regulated privilege.

Helmke admonished politicians and legislatures “at all levels” to “stop using the Second Amendment as an excuse for inaction” against what the anti-gun lobby has cleverly dubbed “gun violence.” (After all, what is the difference between “gun violence” and any other kind of criminal violence that results in someone being injured or killed? Is someone any less dead if they are stabbed, strangled, burned or bludgeoned? Helmke’s crew has never explained that, but evidently they think there is a difference.)

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Census confidentiality? The check is in the mail

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on February 25th, 2010

by Dave Kopel

Some promises shouldn’t be taken seriously. “The check is in the mail,” or “Of course I’ll respect you in the morning,” or “I won’t raise taxes.” To that list should be added, “Your answers to census questions will remain completely confidential.”

Already this census season, many of homeless people have refused to divulge personal information to census takers. Some of the homeless have fears that their personal plight will be revealed to far-away relatives. That intuitive distrust of the Census Bureau may be valid.

During the 1940 census, American citizens of Japanese descent dutifully noted their forebears’ ethnicity on the census form. Those Japanese-Americans believed the Census Bureau assurance that their answers would remain secret. But in 1942 the federal government began rounding up citizens who were of Japanese descent and imprisoning them in concentration camps. How did the Justice Department know where to find Japanese-Americans? The Census Bureau told them.

The bureau kept its promise of confidentiality, it never disclosed any individual’s name and address. Instead, the bureau told the Justice Department’s concentration camp office when census tracts (small neighborhoods) had high proportions of citizens with Japanese ancestry. Knowing which neighborhoods to concentrate on, the concentration camp officials descended for house-to-house searches.

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The mother of all unfunded mandates

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on January 20th, 2010

by Barry Poulson

Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee has expressed the fear that Congress is about to impose the “mother of all unfunded mandates” with health care reform. If there ever was a time for the states to challenge federal unfunded mandates, it is now.

The pending health reform legislation enacted by Congress will negate two decades of Medicaid reform, and will increase Medicaid spending by $438 billion over the next decade. The federal government will pick up much of the cost in the initial years; but, the states will have to eventually pay their share. On average states pay for 43% of total Medicaid costs. This means that down the road states must pick up $188 billion in higher Medicaid costs tied to increased eligibility and coverage mandated by Congress. This is the largest increase in Medicaid costs since the program began.

Governor Bredesen has good reason to worry. In Tennessee, the expanded Medicaid plan is estimated to cost the state $1.4 billion per year.

States have been using federal stimulus dollars to shore up deficits already incurred in their Medicaid budgets. When the federal stimulus dollars disappear the states will be expected to pick up their share of a greatly expanded Medicaid program.

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Proposed WA semi-auto ban blames law-abiding gun owners

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on December 26th, 2009

by CCRKBA staff

A proposal to ban so-called “assault weapons” in Washington State shifts the blame for recent violent crimes from the perpetrators to every law-abiding gun owner in the state, holding them and their firearms responsible for crimes they did not commit, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“This is a proposal by three vehemently anti-gun rights state lawmakers who are exploiting two recent murders in an effort to push a political agenda they have had for several years,’ said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “One of those slayings, the murder of Seattle Police Officer Timothy Brenton, didn’t even involve the specific kind of firearm they want banned.”

State Senators Adam Kline (D-37th District) and Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36th District), and State Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48th District) will sponsor the legislation. They held a press conference this morning to announce their plans. The plan is supported by Washington CeaseFire, a small but radical gun prohibitionist group.

“Tens of thousands of Evergreen State citizens own the kind of semiautomatic sport-utility rifles and shotguns that these Democrat lawmakers want banned,” Gottlieb observed. “Those citizens have committed no crimes. They utilize their rifles for hunting, target shooting and competition, recreational shooting, predator control and even home defense. For Kline, Kohl-Welles and Hunter to demonize them and their firearms smacks of hysteria and social bigotry.

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Slimy politics help advance ObamaCare in the Senate

Posted in Back Door Politics by R Lee Wrights on November 25th, 2009

by GOA staff

By now, you have probably heard the bad news regarding Saturday night’s vote on the anti-gun ObamaCare bill.

Sixty Senators voted to bring the legislation to the Senate floor for discussion and debate, which means that rather than killing the bill outright, we must fight to defeat it another day.

Saturday’s vote was very, very important.  And every Senator who supported the legislation should be taken to the woodshed for casting an all-important vote in favor of the bill, at a time when we had the best chance to kill ObamaCare.

The good news is that we still hope to win our battle against ObamaCare, and we can do that because Saturday’s vote was not the only opportunity to filibuster the bill.  At least four Senators — who voted for ObamaCare on Saturday — have said they will support a filibuster if the bill stays in its current form.

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