Political Roundtable Part XVIII

[Zonkerbl]

I'm obviously no expert on this subject, and I'm not pretending to be... so pardon my ignorance. And remember, what I say does not represent anyone but me. And I don't think it's helpful to split everyone up by political parties to come up with a solution.

Getting to my ignorant question: Are you saying unaltered hunting rifles can be used like automatic or semi-automatic weapons to fire off upwards of a hundred shots per minute?

No worries - you can buy a semi-automatic weapon that will discharge hundreds of shots per minute either - both because of the clip size and you aren't allowed to sell fully automatic weapons.

You can own a fully automatic weapon as long as it was made before May 19, 1986 - date of the legislative "freeze" automatic weapons. Also, it has to be registered and there is 200 or 300 dollar registration fee (or something close).

But, a fully automatic weapon isn't really necessary. A semi-automatic weapon can be just (if not more) effective.

Either way, it isn't terribly difficult to make a weapon fully automatic. What is more effective is the magazine size. Still, a couple of semi-automatic pistols would do much the same damage in the recent events (sans Las Vegas).

Hence why I like Zonk's idea. A safety test, background check and insurance would be a HUGE deterrent, IMO.

Ok, I thought a tax was a key part of his idea - and that's what turned me off - I don't think a tax is constitutional or even a good idea regardless of whether it's consititutional. But as we discussed before, I'm 100% for saftety tests and background checks - just as long as the background checks disqualify SD20. Insurance - I wouldn't fight that to get an agreement.

Yeah I was talking about a tax at first because the one true solution that will actually work involves getting people to internalize the costs they inflict on the rest of us by purchasing a gun. But once I started thinking about it, gun negligence insurance is a 10x better idea than a tax. And is essentially revenue neutral, just shifts the costs of the damage done by guns directly on to their owners, which is fair, and acts as a market-calibrated deterrent on gun purchases.

[Zonkerbl]

How about use some of the gun buyback fund to subsidize gun ownership for poor people in rural areas?

I mean I've listened and understand that the dangers associated with guns are qualitatively different between rural and urban areas. But rural areas have a suicide problem too.

[Zonkerbl]

See, we're not bad people. We need to start listening to each other instead of pointing fingers and yelling racist racist or gun nut gun nut! Even if it's true it just doesn't get anything done.

[Pointgod]

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What a scumbag. Michael Steele is one of the few stand up Republicans these days.

[Wizardspride]

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[cammac]

It is obvious that Kushner will stay in his job even though the Trumpster has left the decision to Kelly! But at the same time made this statement.

“He has done an outstanding job,” Trump said. “I think he has been treated unfairly. He is a high-quality person. He works for nothing. Nobody ever reports that. He gets zero. He doesn't get a salary.”

Kelly has left any dignity that he once had at the doorstep of the oval office so Kushner with financial troubles and huge questions about personal interactions with Russia, China, Qatar and god knows who else plus questions about interaction on a government basis with the Russians will remain on the job.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/375325-trump-says-kelly-will-decided-on-kushner-clearance
The only person who can rid the Administration of Kushner is Mueller with a indictment.

[Zonkerbl]

https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/2013/9/regv36n3-1n.pdf

Good ol' Cato.

"There is, however, no general constitutional rule that citizens must be exempted from the obligation to internalize the costs of exercising their constitutional rights.
High-quality firearms are expensive, but that does not mean that government must subsidize their purchase by poor individuals."

They point out that even though people are often killed in car crashes, liability insurance for cars is capped at $100k or so, so they conjecture that liability insurance for guns will be about $20k, not $7.5 million like I was thinking. So that comes out to about $20/year, entirely affordable and often already covered by homeowners liability insurance.

Interesting! Anything that deviates significantly from automobile insurance, like my idea to have payouts for suicides go into a gun buyback fund, are likely to bump up against the 2nd amendment. But everything else is already more or less permitted.

I think they fall prey to the "there is a secret criminal gun factory that supplies criminals with guns" fallacy. Making law abiding citizens more careful about keeping track of their guns will help. I think the one question I have is, can you require gun owners to continue paying insurance for their gun after it has been stolen until it is recovered? If I read this correctly Cato says liability for that sort of thing is limited, but they don't say how limited.

[cammac]

The last indictment handed down Friday by Mueller is a real kick in the teeth to Manafort.

Also new to this indictment: A long list of items for which Mueller is demanding forfeiture. This includes at least four houses or apartments, bank accounts, and even a life insurance policy.

Manafort is basically crippled financially and Muellers charges are iron clad.

lot of the charges against Manafort pertain to bank fraud. The Feds were able to establish a paper trail to use against Gates, to get him to flip, because he helped Manafort when he needed to alter a genuine profit-and-loss statement for his company, to turn a loss of more than $600K into a profit of more than $2 million, so that he could use it as part of a loan application.

Manafort’s problem was that the P&L statement was in PDF format, and he didn’t know how to alter it. So he emailed it to Gates and asked him to convert it to a Word document. Gates did so and returned it to Manafort, who then doctored it. He returned it to Gates, who then converted it back to a PDF and sent it back to Manafort.

arstechnica.com/…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/23/1744249/-Manafort-and-Gates-undone-by-converting-PDFs-to-Word-files

[dckingsfan]

See, we're not bad people. We need to start listening to each other instead of pointing fingers and yelling racist racist or gun nut gun nut! Even if it's true it just doesn't get anything done.

You RWNJ you!

[dckingsfan]

Are you assuming that or have you read all the proposals? You should list out everything the Democrats have proposed and everything Republicans have proposed over the passed decade.

So, you are saying that floating a bill is good enough? Both parties have had ample opportunity to move something forward - they have both been in the majority at some point over the last 4 decades, no?. Insurance on gun owners for example - the idea has been around for a while.

And then the was the meaningless legislation like the Brady Bill - it did virtually nothing. And for the Ds (poking at you since you seem to be on that side) - there is the continual false promise of gun control - it hasn't worked and has been around for 4+ decades.

Sorry, the Ds have been bankrupt on moving good ideas forward on this issue.

Well let's be honest. You're not comparing the two on a fair plane. Republicans don't want any type of gun control legislation because they disproportionately get NRA money.

Didn't Bill Clinton pass the assault weapons ban? Democrats had a majority for 2 years under Obama and they prioritized the ACA which is fine if you want to count that against them. Why don't we look at the state level then to see what Democratic vs Republican governments have passed in regards to gun control.

Again a partial ban of weapons only appeals to a base set of voters. It isn't helpful - it didn't do anything. The Obama administration could only work on one thing at a time? No, they didn't see it as popular - they thought the ACA was going to be popular but that backfired.

Let's be honest - neither party has put forward meaningful legislation that voters from both parties would endorse.

I would think a proposal like the one Zonk is floating would be fought by the NRA. But, there are many Rs voters that would support it. It would need to be crafted in a bipartisan fashion. Maybe the common-sense coalition will take this on...

[cammac]

Is there a middle ground in gun control lets take all the noise away!
Guns are a problem even though they are inanimate objects because they get into the hands of people who have mental health issues, criminals and people with anger issues.
I believe a vast majority of Americans want some of the most egregious examples of weapons and accessories eliminated. Such as assault type weapons, high capacity clips, bump stocks, silencers and ammunition like "cop killers". I'm sure I have missed a few things and a rational list can be made up. Assault weapons that were bought legally and are registered the owners will be compensated @ 1.5 times the purchase price. Non registered weapons must be brought in without compensation.Accessories will not receive compensation but must be turned into law enforcement authorities for destruction. Exceptions could be made for certain types of collectors but the weapons would need to be deactivated by a registered armorer.

If you own a gun you must receive a training coarse like a drivers license to be to be renewed every 5 years. This testing could be done at local DMVs and fees could be modest as not to effect people on lower income. Part of the testing would also require the purchase of a insurance policy again at a rate people could afford. If a license expires or is revoked because of death, health issues, mental state, legal issues or crimes. The weapons could be sold by owners for resale to legitimate gun dealers or in some cases confiscated by law enforcement.
Mandatory Insurance gun owners must have it we can quibble about the rates but if it can equate to about $1 per month for every weapon in American that would equate to $3.6 billion a year. Tax on purchase of new guns 25% and on guns that were previously used 10% this allows lower income people to buy weapons for hunting.
Regulation of gun dealers and better inspection.

[cammac]

A condemnation of my generation!

We were full of hope and vision and certain that we were going to change the world and make it a better place, too. And the world did change with our generation. We gathered in great numbers making music that freed our souls. We ripped off the uniforms of conformity, exploded the conventions of identity, and made our religion love. We raised consciousness and liberated the oppressed.

But we did not succeed at everything.

We took to the streets to end a pointless, tragic war. But we did not win that battle. The war stretched on for too many years and 50,000 of our brothers and sisters perished and millions of innocent Vietnamese died without cause.

We became indulgent and self-absorbed. Then we fell for the lie that money would solve all of our problems. We went to school and got MBA’s where we learned that it was OK to exploit our fellow human beings to squeeze the last dollar for the almighty corporation. We lost our balance and life became less important than work.

We got older.

The politicians appealed to our prejudices and our fears, blaming the “other” while the rich and powerful picked our pockets, crushed our unions, subjugating us, exploiting us, telling us there wasn’t enough to educate us, pay us a living wage, care for us in our old age, protect us if things went bad, and it was all the fault of the poor we once tried to defend against injustice.

And in our fear and distraction and numbness, we stood idly by, buying the bull, and just watched it happen.

The generation that was born in the summer of love, with all that promise, has reached its end as millions of my generation created the presidency of Donald Trump: a crook, a con man, incompetent, small-minded, greedy, selfish, and avaricious – everything we railed against when we took to the streets all those decades ago.

And an entire political party, the Republicans, also of my generation, have so lost touch with their moral center that they have thrown away the last remaining shred of integrity to support the worst President of the United States – ever.

In a word, we blew it.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/24/1744172/-From-The-Summer-of-Love-To-Donald-Trump-We-Blew-It

I'm from that generation and when I graduated from William & Mary I got my ass out of the USA (legally was a Canadian). I've visited Washington many times saw names on the wall of people I went to school with. Visited Arlington Cemetery where my Aunt is buried. The Lakeland students give me new hope that the generation that I lived in can look for the bell bottom pants and the idealism of our youth and rid the world of the disease of Trump.

[dckingsfan]

Is there a middle ground in gun control lets take all the noise away!
Guns are a problem even though they are inanimate objects because they get into the hands of people who have mental health issues, criminals and people with anger issues.
I believe a vast majority of Americans want some of the most egregious examples of weapons and accessories eliminated. Such as assault type weapons, high capacity clips, bump stocks, silencers and ammunition like "cop killers". I'm sure I have missed a few things and a rational list can be made up. Assault weapons that were bought legally and are registered the owners will be compensated @ 1.5 times the purchase price. Non registered weapons must be brought in without compensation.Accessories will not receive compensation but must be turned into law enforcement authorities for destruction. Exceptions could be made for certain types of collectors but the weapons would need to be deactivated by a registered armorer.

If you own a gun you must receive a training coarse like a drivers license to be to be renewed every 5 years. This testing could be done at local DMVs and fees could be modest as not to effect people on lower income. Part of the testing would also require the purchase of a insurance policy again at a rate people could afford. If a license expires or is revoked because of death, health issues, mental state, legal issues or crimes. The weapons could be sold by owners for resale to legitimate gun dealers or in some cases confiscated by law enforcement.
Mandatory Insurance gun owners must have it we can quibble about the rates but if it can equate to about $1 per month for every weapon in American that would equate to $3.6 billion a year. Tax on purchase of new guns 25% and on guns that were previously used 10% this allows lower income people to buy weapons for hunting.
Regulation of gun dealers and better inspection.

I think the insurance solution is the most practical. You don't have to put the rest in place because the insurance rates for those additional add-ons would be prohibitive.

Start with insurance under the commerce clause and then move from there.

Most NRA types would welcome this... although the NRA itself and the gun manufacturers would be adamantly opposed. The notion is to dive a wedge between the gun owners and the NRA/manufacturers.

[Ruzious]

Is there a middle ground in gun control lets take all the noise away!
Guns are a problem even though they are inanimate objects because they get into the hands of people who have mental health issues, criminals and people with anger issues.
I believe a vast majority of Americans want some of the most egregious examples of weapons and accessories eliminated. Such as assault type weapons, high capacity clips, bump stocks, silencers and ammunition like "cop killers". I'm sure I have missed a few things and a rational list can be made up. Assault weapons that were bought legally and are registered the owners will be compensated @ 1.5 times the purchase price. Non registered weapons must be brought in without compensation.Accessories will not receive compensation but must be turned into law enforcement authorities for destruction. Exceptions could be made for certain types of collectors but the weapons would need to be deactivated by a registered armorer.

If you own a gun you must receive a training coarse like a drivers license to be to be renewed every 5 years. This testing could be done at local DMVs and fees could be modest as not to effect people on lower income. Part of the testing would also require the purchase of a insurance policy again at a rate people could afford. If a license expires or is revoked because of death, health issues, mental state, legal issues or crimes. The weapons could be sold by owners for resale to legitimate gun dealers or in some cases confiscated by law enforcement.
Mandatory Insurance gun owners must have it we can quibble about the rates but if it can equate to about $1 per month for every weapon in American that would equate to $3.6 billion a year. Tax on purchase of new guns 25% and on guns that were previously used 10% this allows lower income people to buy weapons for hunting.
Regulation of gun dealers and better inspection.

Amen to middle ground - there's no reason why there can't be a common sense agreement. Hell, let the NRA design the tests, grade them, keep records, etc - as long as they're willing to incur the costs. Afterall, they are a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt social welfare organization. Gun safety is part of their reason for existance.

[stilldropin20]

This is hilarious. Barack Obama had a super majority in the house and didn’t get a damn thing done on gun control.

Donald effing Trump is gonna be the only one to get anything significant done On gun control In decades.

Tax reform.
Gun control.
Should have had healthcare if not for McCain grand standing.
Economy booming.

He will likely end up signing a bill or at least spearheading a movement harden our schools.

Easily could have done immigration. Still might.

80% likely he gets the border secured.

All while under constant attack from the entire main stream media and every liberal off shoot. and 5 full blown investigations into his election and whether or not he colluded.

He won the election when “the fix” of all fixes was in. No human being on planet earth could have pulled this off.

In a word?

goat.



Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[cammac]

This is hilarious. Barack Obama had a super majority in the house and didn’t get a damn thing done on gun control.

Donald effing Trump is gonna be the only one to get anything significant done On gun control In decades.

Tax reform.
Gun control.
Should have had healthcare if not for McCain grand standing.
Economy booming.

He will likely end up signing a bill or at least spearheading a movement harden our schools.

Easily could have done immigration. Still might.

80% likely he gets the border secured.

All while under constant attack from the entire main stream media and every liberal off shoot. and 5 full blown investigations into his election and whether or not he colluded.

He won the election when “the fix” of all fixes was in. No human being on planet earth could have pulled this off.

In a word?

goat.



Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

Well the posts today were extremely logical about a number of topics making #92 one of the least controversial in the Political Forum! Then along came Twiddle Dumb and his pent up rage about anything normal.The man who who can slip communism, capitalism, fascism and conspiracy theories into one post in believe in its logic.

I was having a nice day then .

[closg00]

The last indictment handed down Friday by Mueller is a real kick in the teeth to Manafort.

Also new to this indictment: A long list of items for which Mueller is demanding forfeiture. This includes at least four houses or apartments, bank accounts, and even a life insurance policy.

Manafort is basically crippled financially and Muellers charges are iron clad.

lot of the charges against Manafort pertain to bank fraud. The Feds were able to establish a paper trail to use against Gates, to get him to flip, because he helped Manafort when he needed to alter a genuine profit-and-loss statement for his company, to turn a loss of more than $600K into a profit of more than $2 million, so that he could use it as part of a loan application.

Manafort’s problem was that the P&L statement was in PDF format, and he didn’t know how to alter it. So he emailed it to Gates and asked him to convert it to a Word document. Gates did so and returned it to Manafort, who then doctored it. He returned it to Gates, who then converted it back to a PDF and sent it back to Manafort.

arstechnica.com/…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/23/1744249/-Manafort-and-Gates-undone-by-converting-PDFs-to-Word-files

Manafort is playing the long-game here, he is still anticipating being pardoned by Trump otherwise he would be cooperating by-now.

[cammac]

The last indictment handed down Friday by Mueller is a real kick in the teeth to Manafort.

Also new to this indictment: A long list of items for which Mueller is demanding forfeiture. This includes at least four houses or apartments, bank accounts, and even a life insurance policy.

Manafort is basically crippled financially and Muellers charges are iron clad.

lot of the charges against Manafort pertain to bank fraud. The Feds were able to establish a paper trail to use against Gates, to get him to flip, because he helped Manafort when he needed to alter a genuine profit-and-loss statement for his company, to turn a loss of more than $600K into a profit of more than $2 million, so that he could use it as part of a loan application.

Manafort’s problem was that the P&L statement was in PDF format, and he didn’t know how to alter it. So he emailed it to Gates and asked him to convert it to a Word document. Gates did so and returned it to Manafort, who then doctored it. He returned it to Gates, who then converted it back to a PDF and sent it back to Manafort.

He may be thinking that but you can rest assured the day he receives a pardon from the Trumpster the AG of NY will lay charges that can't be pardoned. The one who is looking at the long game is Mueller!

arstechnica.com/…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/23/1744249/-Manafort-and-Gates-undone-by-converting-PDFs-to-Word-files

Manafort is playing the long-game here, he is still anticipating being pardoned by Trump otherwise he would be cooperating by-now.

[Wizardspride]

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[cammac]

The tax legislation passed by the Republicans are making the corporate world more profits!
Note that 29 Billion could have paid a hefty portion of the ever expanding Defense Budget!

“A large portion of our gain did not come from anything we accomplished at Berkshire,” Buffett, 87, wrote. Of the $65 billion the company made last year, $36 billion was from its operations. The rest was thanks to the GOP tax cut, passed in December, which dropped the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent.

Buffett, who supported Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, was critical of the Republican tax plan before it was passed, even though he acknowledged it would be good for him and for his company. “We have a lot of businesses... I don’t think any of them are non-competitive in the world because of the corporate tax rate,” Buffett told CNBC in October. Of the personal benefit the tax cut would give to him, he said, “I don’t think I need a tax cut.”

So not only does Berkshire get millions times more what Julia does in tax savings, but it also gets a bit of that Costco card — the cheapest one, that is. Julia’s $78-a-year raise only covers the basic $60 Costco Gold Star card. Berkshire’s $29 billion goes a lot further.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/24/17048378/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-tax-cuts