Category Archives: Op-Eds

Op-Eds

Take a Knee. Take a Seat. Take a Chill Pill.

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English: American students pledging to the fla...
American students pledging to the flag in a former form of the salute, specifically the Bellamy salute . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners,” US president Donald Trump thundered from the stage of a September campaign rally, “when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out. He’s fired. He’s fired!'”

Many seem to agree that professional football games are no place for political statements. Well, at least they agree now. I don’t recall a peep from them for nearly a decade of the US government shelling out millions of dollars to turn professional football games into combination political statements and military recruitment rallies.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle reports, a Texas high school student has been expelled for sitting through morning prayers to the god called government, also known as “the Pledge of Allegiance.”

C’mon, people — relax!

Is it truly important that someone you don’t know didn’t assume your preferred bodily posture while a song you like was played?

Is it the end of the world that a high school student doesn’t practice the same (secular) religion as you?

I was brought up to respect the flag. The Marine Corps reinforced that tendency. A 48-star flag adorned my grandfather’s casket (he served in the navy in World War Two). A 50-star flag just may cover mine one of these days. My personal politics notwithstanding, I’m a little bit attached to its symbolism.

But at the end of the day, the flag is a piece of cloth that some people don’t attach positive, let alone reverent, feelings to. The cry that some people “died for” it is, frankly, disrespectful to those people and whatever their real reasons were for taking up arms beneath it.

The national anthem is a song that glorifies the killing of rebellious slaves, some of whose descendants are likely among those criticized for failing to stand while it’s played (ask the grandchild of an Auschwitz survivor to stand for the Deutschlandlied and see how he or she responds).

And the “Pledge of Allegiance” was written by a flag salesman to, you guessed it, boost his flagging sales numbers (sorry, couldn’t help myself there).

If it bothers you to the point of distraction that some people are, by your lights, insufficiently respectful of the Stars and Stripes, your priorities are way out of whack. And if the flag does indeed stand for freedom, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Bump Stock Ban Boogie: The Latest Silly Political Dance Craze

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Slide Fire Solutions SSAK-47-XRS-RH Bump Fire Stock mounted on a GP WASR-10/36 AK-47 (Source: Wikipedia)
Slide Fire Solutions SSAK-47-XRS-RH Bump Fire Stock mounted on a GP WASR-10/36 AK-47 (Source: Wikipedia)

Every time there’s a “public mass shooting” (defined by the Congressional Research Service as an incident in which four or more people are indiscriminately killed, not including the shooter or shooters, in a relatively public place) in America, the usual suspects climb atop of the pile of bodies before they’re even cold and start doing the funky chicken to the tune of “gun control, gun control, this wouldn’t happen if we just added one more gun control law to the hundreds of gun control laws that we already have.”

They’re always wrong, their political posturing is always ghoulish and disgusting, and any policy outcomes they achieve are stupid and pointless at best and an outrage against the rights of the people at worst.

This time, it looks like the former. US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is pushing legislation to ban “bump stocks,” devices which allow one to fire a semi-automatic weapon (which fires one shot per pull of the trigger) at rates not unlike those of an automatic weapon (hundreds of rounds per minute  for as long as the trigger is depressed, unless the gun runs out of ammo, or it jams, or its barrel melts).

“Bump firing” devices are pretty simple. They’re based on holding the trigger finger in place and using the recoil of the weapon to, you guessed it, bump the trigger against the finger repeatedly.

Because they’re so simple, anyone who really wants one will get or make one, ban or no ban. And, because they make a weapon’s fire incredibly inaccurate and difficult to control, hardly anyone DOES want one for any purpose other than impersonating Rambo in YouTube videos.

If the Vegas shooter did use a bump stock, as seems to be the case, it probably saved some lives. A reasonably proficient marksman would likely have killed more people with aimed shots from a semi-automatic, or even bolt action single shot, rifle under the circumstances (thousands of people packed together, less than 500 yards away, with a clear line of sight and no counter-sniper fire to worry about).

Republican politicians and the National Rifle Association are already jumping on the bump stock ban wagon. I’m not surprised. There’s no “there” there.  The whole idea is even dumber, and less pernicious in effect, than the 1994 ban on “assault weapons” (defined as guns that people like Dianne Feinstein think look scary).

This stump stupid idea has to be fought on principle, of course. “Shall not be infringed” means exactly that, and politicians should never be rewarded for publicly rolling around in the blood of murder victims while demanding that we sacrifice our rights to their ambitions. But I won’t personally be losing any sleep over Feinstein’s stunt.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

GOP Tax Plan: Hardly “Reform,” But Tax Cuts “Cost” Nothing

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1040 Tax Form

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans released their grandiosely titled “Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code” on September 27. The plan looks a lot more like a grab bag designed by lobbyists than like any kind of carefully considered plan for “tax reform.”

It’s full of smoke and mirrors. For example, the one-page highlight sheet brags that “the framework roughly doubles the standard deduction so that typical middle-class families will keep more of their paycheck.” I’d hoped that this might be the start of something like an Incremental Tax Exemption program (themite.org). But as I dug into the details, it turned out to be a bait and switch scam: “To simplify the tax rules, the additional standard deduction and personal exemptions for the taxpayer and spouse are consolidated into this larger standard deduction.” The plan takes as much more from you on one side of the equation as it leaves with you on the other.

When critics point out that the plan’s tax cuts are weighted heavily toward the wealthiest Americans, they’re right. It’s full-on “supply side” hokum: Cut the corporate and other business rates and wealth will “trickle down” as entrepreneurs innovate and create jobs.  But “demand side” cuts would actually convey more information to those entrepreneurs, guiding their innovation as they chase the additional dollars left in the pockets of regular consumers.

I’m all for tax cuts and not terribly particular about where they fall. But let’s be honest: Cutting the corporate and top rates isn’t about sound economics, it’s about whose lobbyists buy the most expensive lunches for, and who contributes most reliably to the campaigns of, which politicians.

Of course, the main criticism coming from opponents of tax cuts as such is that those cuts would “cost” the US government something. The New York Times claims (drawing on an analysis by the Tax Policy Center) that “the corporate tax cuts will cost nearly $7 trillion over the next two decades …. the entire package is expected to cost an estimated $5.6 trillion over the next 20 years.”

Well, no. The total “cost” of the proposed tax cuts would be a whopping zero dollars and zero cents.

If I’m mugged one night and it turns out I left my wallet at home, that fact doesn’t “cost” the mugger the $20 that was in it. The $20 wasn’t his in the first place. It was mine. If I walk past a restaurant without buying something to eat, it doesn’t “cost” the restaurateur anything. Ditto for money that government doesn’t take from you or me.

Politicians want us to believe that our money naturally belongs to government and that letting us keep any of it is generosity on their part.  But politicians don’t create wealth. They just seize it from the rest of us, or borrow it from lenders who expect them to seize it from us later.

The Republican plan looks like a combination of weak tea, scammy distractions and voodoo economics to me. But I guess we could do (and have done) worse.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY