Choking Off The Future

As the funeral services for those killed in last Friday's massacre at Sandy Hook elementary began this week, the multi-faceted problem of gun violence in America highlighted by those deaths is one that we hope won't be forgotten anytime soon.

Not every episode of gun violence focuses on the same parts of the overall problem. Some, like Friday's attack, lead us to concentrate on the issues of gun laws and mental illness. Some draw us to issues of poverty, or heroism.

We've heard many times, from many different people over the last few days, that while the teachers and school officials who died defending their students in Connecticut were heroes, many Americans wish there was a group that would defend them at their workplace, if - God forbid - anything like that would happen again. Which, given our nation's history, it most certainly will.

The shooting deaths of four other students in February of this year, reminded us that there already are multiple organizations in place trying to fight the poverty component of our national gun violence problem. The teachers in Connecticut were all members of one of those groups.

You see, they were all members of the Teachers Union.

Before you groan, and turn away, you need to remember - we've been pointing out the link between poverty and gun violence for years, including in the aftermath of the shootings in Ohio and Washington this past February. That unions are now being squeezed brutally by "right-to-work" (for less) legislation, doesn't change the fact that unions have already been fighting this societal relationship between poverty and gun violence since the beginning of the union movement.

According to an ABC/Washington Post poll this week, after the Connecticut shootings, more Americans are finally seeing those societal issues as key pieces of our gun violence issue.

When the union-backed 'OUR Walmart' group made news within the last month with their attempts to unionize retail workers, one of their key reasons for mobilizing was that as working poor people, they were aiming for better wages and for more time with their families. As crime statistics show, more properly engaged parents more often lead to more well-adjusted young people and adults. Further, if mental health issues do develop in young people, parents who are involved with their children are more likely to notice - the first step to getting treatment.

For those individuals who support efforts like anti-union "right-to-work" (for less) legislation, they are already weakening their community safety net in favor of short-term profit gain for a small group of already wealthy individuals. In effect, those who favor anti-worker policies are Scrooges of the worst kind, squeezing those who are attempting to protect our collective future in exchange for a relatively few more dollars in the short run.

If you don't believe that, think about what the holidays - and especially Christmas - may mean to your family, and how nice it is that many retailers and restaurants close at least one day a year, to allow even their poorest workers to have time with their families.

Now understand that this year, McDonald's is pushing ALL of its franchisees - all 14,000 of them - to keep their stores open on Christmas, just to goose the corporate bottom line, at the sacrifice of American families all over the nation.

If those McDonald's workers had a union working for them, we bet they'd be home with their families on Christmas, spending precious moments with their children - moments that may make the difference down the road between children who believe their parents work hard and care for them, or a young person who believes their parents don't care enough to even spend Christmas Day with their kids.

What's the real cost to America of corporations stealing time from families, that parents rightfully should have to help raise healthier, more well-adjusted children?

Ask the parents of the kids shot dead in gun violence this past year, what price they'd pay to have their children back.

We Must Do Better

As we set Friday's edition to publish, a horrible act was already happening in Newtown, Connecticut.

Twenty-eight people, including the shooter, died Friday in Newtown, the eighth major example of gun violence this year in America. Sadly, it's only one of thousands of acts of gun violence in our nation annually. Sixty-two acts of gun violence in the last thirty years have been mass shootings, killing four or more people. Fifteen of the twenty-five worst mass shootings in the world over the last fifty years took place in America, with five of them happening since 2007.

All this unnecessary death, and yet most of the time, on the topic of gun violence and gun safety, our elected officials simply stand around screaming at each other while more people die every day.

As Americans, we need to admit that our gun safety laws are garbage. The laws we have were specifically tweaked by attorneys and lobbyists to NOT work effectively. The last batch of potentially smart gun safety laws? Got shelved due to politics, that we know was influenced by one of the most powerful and feared lobbying organizations in the country. The fact is, we have too many people in America who have guns that don't respect them and don't know how to use them properly. We need better, more effective gun safety laws - something that about 85% of non-NRA gun owners agree and about 75% of NRA members agree with.

Our mental health care system also bears a great deal of responsibility of our gun violence, though thanks to ObamaCare it will be getting a great deal better over the coming years. That said, America is currently both the most heavily armed nation in the world and the most violent. Instead of pushing people to get mental health care when necessary, we still stigmatize it - and that's stupid. If you're sick, get healthy.

Neither our gun safety laws or our mental health care system have been helped by our lobbying and political finance laws. As we already noted, three quarters of NRA members want more effective gun safety laws. The NRA obviously doesn't care what their membership wants, though. As a lobbying organization, they've made it clear that their primary goal is to make millions of dollars a year to spend on political campaigns - not to make gun safety laws. We must reform the lobbying and political contribution laws, and get the money out of its prominent role.

Our media ethics are also garbage - both on the entertainment side and on the news side. We glorify violence in our entertainment media, and run like cowards in dealing with it responsibly in our news media.

Much of the time, things that are labeled as "news" aren't news at all. They're designed to look & sound like news, but at the same time not upset viewers, listeners, and advertisers. We are ashamed of how some of our news media colleagues have handled this disaster - and how they handle themselves daily. As members of the media, we must put getting it right above getting it first. If advertisers don't like that...? They can take their money and find someone else who will reach the same audiences we do. We know they won't be able to do that.

As for our entertainment colleagues, they also share responsibility in many of these shootings. According to the coroners' reports in Connecticut, the shooter shot the kids accurately from a distance. Other reports make it clear the shooter had significantly less training than is considered necessary to be as chillingly effective as he was. How did he attain those skills? Likely, video games. It's how we improve our professionals in the military. But we'll let anyone - even the mentally ill - play the same training games at home.

Finally, while our economy is improving, we can't ignore the the toll the recession has take on families over the past few years. We have parents who work three jobs, who can barely keep a roof above the heads of their families, let alone parent well. Being able to earn a living wage - and give parents the time to guide their children properly - should be an American right, not an unreachable goal.

As we've said in these pages before, and as President Obama himself reiterated last night during his address in Newtown, America can and must do better. To throw up our hands and say "This is just the price we pay for having lots of guns," is a cowardly and ignorant way of living.

America can do better.

Friday Funday: All We Want Is A Brand New Death Star

About this time of year every year, even though our staff members are all fully-grown adults, we usually begin to notice that special holiday spark in ourselves. It's like our inner children coming out to play, as we begin to think about the toys and games of our past. This annual change of mindset seems to be a common effect that crosses borders, languages, and religions too.

Call it the spirit of the season, or the Santa effect.

That's not to say that all of humankind is suddenly acting like happy, well-behaved cherubs this month. There are still plenty of people playing politics right now, just in Washington, DC. The fiscal curb talks remain at a standstill, as the GOP continues their farcical attempts at looking like Santa, while acting like Scrooge.

There was also what we believe was an amazingly wise and unselfish act on Thursday, as Ambassador Susan Rice withdrew her own name from consideration for Secretary of State. She clearly chose to put the best interests of the nation above her own ambitions - something we're pretty sure earns her a spot on Santa's "good" list.

As Jonathan Bernstein noted almost immediately after Rice's announcement, "Absolutely everyone who voiced any objection (conservative lawmakers and media, for instance) will have an interest in claiming that he or she was the one who derailed the nomination. Doesn’t make it true." Last night's sad and disgusting cable news coverage of Rice's actions proved this true.

Ambassador Rice remains strong-willed and determined, and more than qualified for the position of Secretary of State. She was certainly not scared away by the propagandists on Fox or the blowhards on right-wing radio.

She may have been a bit concerned about Americans, however, who made it clear this week, in a legitimate official national petition, that they know exactly what they want for the holidays, for America: A brand new, real-life, moon-sized Death Star, just like in the Star Wars movies.

While we may be kidding about the Ambassador's motives, we are not kidding about the Death Star.

An official petition, created on the White House's official "We The People" petition website, has now gained more than 25,000 signatures, urging the Obama Administration and Congress to begin construction of a real-life, planetary-sized weapon by 2016.

Unlike the GOP's proposals on the fiscal cliff, the real-life Death Star proposal by a semi-anonymous "John D." from Longmont, Colorado has more than a few details, facts and numbers, thanks in large part to the economics blog Centives.

Earlier this year, the folks at Centives sat down to figure out exactly how much it would cost to build a real "Death Star," in current dollars, and what kind of a timetable it would take for humankind to accomplish such a massive engineering feat.

You can check out the details yourself, both on the wacky proposal, and the exact proposed specifications of the man-made planetoid. While our inner children giggled at the thought of actually being able to visit a real-life Death Star - like a space theme park, filled with lightsabers and R2D2s - we were all taken aback by the estimated completion time for such a project.

As Michael Binkley might say, a Jedi knight doesn't wait 15 years for a sequel, let alone 833,315 years for a Death Star.

Maybe we'll just have to set our holiday expectations a bit lower this year. Like gift cards for the staff to Bed, Bath, and Beyond - or Toys R Us.

Lego Death Star anyone?