Crazy Americans

Thanks to the intermixed biennial pattern of both the Summer and Winter Olympics, every couple of years Americans are forced to stop our near-constant introspection, and take a look at the way the rest of the world perceives us.

This year, because that pause is happening right as the dog days of summer begin, we've also got some time to look take a wide look at America right now - and we can see why the world might think we're crazy.

Take, for example, the issue of gun control.

In America, we have one of the highest rates of gun-related deaths and accidents than almost anywhere else on the planet. Yet we're also the nation with the greatest number of guns per person on the planet. That said, states with more strict gun control laws actually have fewer deaths from gun-related violence. All of these are facts which would make any sane, logical person conclude, "If Americans want less gun-related deaths, then the logical action would be to enact stricter, more effective gun laws."

Yet every time another incident like the horror in Colorado occurs, some legislators will attempt to pass sensible, stricter, more effective gun regulations - and are most often turned down.

How about the issue of health care?

The Congressional Budget Office released its latest look at the Affordable Care Act yesterday. Their report confirmed that repealing the ACA - ObamaCare to its detractors - would actually increase the federal budget deficit by more than $100 billion in the next decade. Yet Republicans - who nominally say they care deeply about getting rid of budget deficits - continue to say they're going to try and get rid of the health care law any way they can.

Even the way some of our politicians campaign is in conflict with itself.

When President Obama spoke to the VFW this week, he didn't mention his opponent, not once in 33 minutes. He told the veterans what he'd done as our Commander in Chief, and what he's been doing for our troops once they get home. He was positive, strong, and resolute.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, condemned President Obama's approach to ending our nation's involvement in Afghanistan as a timeline. Then Romney promised he'd withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by 2014 if elected. Mr. Romney also told the VFW members that, "if you do not want America to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your president. You have that president today."

Of course, that comment begged the question journalist Steve Benen asked later: If the title of 'strongest nation on Earth' no longer belongs to the U.S.A., who took it from us and when?

Don't even ask about Mitt Romney's job counting hypocrisy.

We understand that America is a large country, and - in general - our diverse views make us better, not weaker. That said, we also understand the confusion of others from around the world.

There are those of us who operate from the facts, and deal with the realities of the world. Then there are those Americans who let their emotions override what the hard data is telling them on virtually every decision they make.

If you're cheering for the U.S. in the Olympics this summer, and you find a foreigner staring at you askance, just remember - it's not like 'Smart American' or 'American Idiot' is tattooed on your forehead.

Maybe it should be.

Thieves And Idiots

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."               – H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956

As we look out at both the financial landscape and the political landscape in America, there are times we seriously doubt the wisdom of editor, writer, and satirist H.L. Mencken.

Right now, Americans appear to be collectively dumber than ever before. We've got a major party candidate for President who has a record of near constant lying, American job destruction, and benefiting from corporate welfare. We're also dealing with the continuation of the U.S. banking scandals on Wall Street, and a worldwide scandal in the Libor rate-fixing controversy. Americans seem to have no idea of who has really been screwing them, economically. What's worse, they don't seem to care.

It's not as though Americans trust bankers or really trust anyone on Wall Street these days. A recent Gallup poll found Americans' faith in banks and Wall Street is at a record low right now. In short, Americans just want to toss all the bankers in jail, and throw away the keys - something we frankly can't disagree with.

The problem with that - outside of the pure unethical nature of it - is that until the people wake up to what's been done to them, and who did it, they can't possibly begin to fix the system.

Mitt Romney's issues with releasing his tax returns are a perfect example. Mr. Romney is statistically likely to be one of the people tagged by the Tax Justice Network's study released last weekend. That study said that the wealthiest people in the world have likely hidden away between $21 and $32 Trillion in untaxed global assets. To put it bluntly, the richest people in the world are stealing tax revenue from the rest of us in ways that are unprecedented.

Yet, in a different USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Monday, nearly two-thirds of Americans currently think Mitt Romney's experience as the head of vulture turnover firm Bain Capital would cause him to make good economic decisions, not bad ones. So… stealing from Americans and giving to one's self is now good fiscal policy, according to the majority of Americans in that poll.

In another banking scandal that originated on Wall Street, the municipal bond-rigging scandal that Matt Taibbi reported recently outlines how private banks have been ripping off municipalities for trillions of dollars that taxpayers will likely never see again. As Taibbi noted, while there may be a lot of complicated words and math, the bank actions boil down to little more than mafia-style thuggery.

Finally, the Libor rate-fixing scandal that so few people seem to actually understand involves - you guessed it - banks from all over the world, lying and stealing from each other. Since they've all lied and stolen so much, and then built our world economies on the backs of those lies, our entire world economy has - once again - been put on the brink of collapse.

There has been some minor pressure to arrest the bankers and corporate criminals responsible for these disasters. However, the fact that little more than four years after Wall Street criminals almost destroyed the world economy, one of them is now running for President - competitively - seems to prove that Americans may indeed be far more stupid than H.L. Mencken ever imagined.

Maybe a better strategy would be to throw the American public in jail, and let the bankers wipe each other out.

Aftermath... Again.

For the last three days, the topic of conversation that dominated the media was not what it should have been.

Yes, the act of terror that killed twelve and wounded seventy last Friday in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, was intensely painful to our country. We are deeply sympathetic to those affected, and overwhelmingly glad that nobody our staff members knew was killed or injured in the attack in Aurora.

Still, the discussion in the media hasn't been what it should be.

There have been stories about the booby traps the shooter left behind, stories of the President's visit with the families, and of the life stories of the victims. There was the seemingly obligatory call to not politicize the horrific event - and the failure by members of both the legitimate and not-so-legitimate media to do so.

What hasn't been seen or heard almost anywhere this weekend was what many in politics on the left - and even Rupert Murdoch on the right - agreed there needs to be: a truly adult conversation about sane gun control in America.

Few Americans want to admit that the lack of conversation in that vein is because lobbying organizations like the National Rifle Association effectively own our elected representatives. As Rep. Carolyn McCarthy - whose husband and son were killed in a senseless 1993 shooting − has noted too many times, due to the power of the NRA's pocketbook, most politicians simply don't have the backbone to do what needs to be done.

What's made it worse is that the NRA has also invested billions of dollars in propaganda to convince Americans that gun control and the violence in our society are unrelated - even though stacks of data higher than you can imagine say otherwise.

That combination of actions by the gun lobby means that even though New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg plans to reintroduce gun control legislation, it's almost certain to die on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The cowardice of our elected officials does not change the facts.

One of those facts is that the Assault Weapons Ban, that the Republican Congress and the Bush Administration let die in 2004, might have saved some of those victims in Colorado. While it's true that the semi-automatic assault rifle of the shooter jammed, if he had not had the rifle, it's likely he would have been able to shoot fewer people.

Another fact is that concealed weapons would not have helped those in the theatre, as yet another shooting in New York over the weekend proved, where a police officer shot and killed his own son in a dark hotel room.

The conversation Americans need to be having - MUST have, if they're going to have any credibility on this issue - is the following.

Why are guns in America - especially assault weapons designed to kill human beings - easier to get access to than mental health care? Restricting the worst weapons - and making it more difficult to acquire all other weapons - won't stop every act of terror. Vastly improving mental health care also won't prevent every outbreak of mass violence.

Both, however, would significantly lessen the body count. So why do we allow a lobbying organization to prevent us from doing either?

That's the discussion we need to have.