Armed ed: Should teachers be packing heat?

At Sidwell Friends school the teachers have bulletproof scurity blankets that they throw over the kids if they hear gunshots. It is a start.

Prerhaps having roving undercover secuity would be good as a deterrent as would having schools take an extra classroom or office and make it a stop off station for police officer to do his reports and be a presence. That would probably serve to humanize police and make them more community oreinted regardless. If the police car were outside it might make someone decide to wait for another day and he might choose to seek help instead of doing something crazy. This would probably be very inexpensive to get started and could be a win win.

Of course if parents actually taught their kids right from wrong and that life isn't fair than we wouldn't have so many cretins running around thinkig they were "cheated" somehow and need to make somebody pay with their life.

These "intense interpersonal conflicts" are predictably increasing with all of us, and any social environment overloaded with guns raises the fear of gun carriers. Their "training" is no good to themselves or anyone else. A reasonable waiting period and examination of the mental and emotional fitness would likely have prevented nearly all the millions of guns sold in the last couple weeks. Now we've got that many more fearful, unfit gun owners, "training" themselves,-- working over in their minds how they'd respond to "dangers," not much different than distraught, loner misfits, glued to their video games.

Until the children all have military-style semiautomatic rifles with mega-clips for maximum ammo, our schools are not safe.

Are first responders going to hesitate before rushing into a school on lockdown knowing there are marginally trained armed teachers inside? How are they going to instantly distinguish between an armed teacher in a hallway vs. an armed intruder? If a plain-clothes officer reaches the school first won't he/she have to worry about being shot by an armed teacher? This is a recipe for disaster. If teachers need defensive hardware maybe start with tasers or some other non-lethal device.

A dozen cops, with guns and vest is good enough for Obamas kids school. One should do it for the rest of us.

@downtowner - obviously you don't recall when JFK was shot. Secret Service are there because our POTUS is a target.

Root of the problem - automatic weapons, people who have no respect for guns (and there are quite a few in this community), mental health being ignored and cut for decades. We have Blue Ridge Hospital vacant and a whole lot of mentally ill homeless on the Downtown Mall and elsewhere that shouldn't be. Recall the Coal Tower shooting? The perp signed himself early from a 72 hour UVA phyc stay and killed two people. In all these mass shootings there is a common denominator - mental illness or suspected mental illness.

Anyone who needs a semiautomatic to go hunting is a pi## poor shot. You shouldn't own a gun anyway. Those guns have no business being in the hands of an average citizen. BTW - we have a "regulated militia" it is called our Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and National Guard, our State and Local Police.

And if you say you need those guns against a tyrannical government - go ahead, let me know how your Bushmaster will do against a US Tank.

The NRA is in the pocket of Smith & Wesson and all other gun manufacturers who want to make money.

Skeptic, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your first couple of sentences accurately describe about 25% to 35% of the employees in the various local law enforcement agencies where carrying a firearm is required. It comes from sitting behind a steering wheel 10 to 12 hours a day, eating fast food or dounts whenever thay have a chance during said 10 to 12 hours, and being too tired or having the time to go to the gym after the work day is over. So if we are going to start throwing rocks, we have to be real careful how we describe the ability of another profession to carry firearms.

So let me get this straight, we now need armed guards in 1) schools 2) movie theaters 3) protection for firefighters and first responders 4) fast food restaurants 5) political gatherings in Arizona. No.....an obscene amount of guns with military grade options available to the general public isn't the problem.

And if you believe that guns don't kill people, people do then you must believe that drunk drivers don't kill people - cars do and yelling "fire" as a joke in a crowded place doesn't kill people - people kill themselves by responding.

@ Percy Kution: did you really mean Bob McDonnell in your brief snarky statement? Or Delegate Bob Marshall? Or maybe Ken Cuccinelli?

Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I'm mildly surprised at some of the inane comments posted here.

Ponce de Leon parrots the NRA call for more armed guards in schools, and then suggests it would only cost "less than $1.00 a day per student" to pull this off. So, for a 500-student school, that's $500 a day. And there are a lot of schools in the U.S (more than 132,000). And there are more than 440,000 school buses (armed guards there too?). Thus we are talking about a substantial cost to implement the Ponce de Leon-NRA plan.
Meanwhile, the NRA mostly backs conservative Republicans who detest any tax increase for any purpose. Just look at some of those who sit on the NRA Board of Directors:

• Grover Norquist (who created the pledge against any tax increase that gets forced on Republican politicians, and who said he wanted to make government so small it could be be "drowned" in a bathtub);

• former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr (who said "I am a real fan of handguns manufactured by Glock," and praised Glock's former CEO after he was convicted of racketeering and theft and sentenced to 7 years in prison);

• Kenneth Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state, who made every effort to suppress voting rights there (and who has railed against abortion, the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage, women's rights, and who routinely touts "the supremacy of God.");

• John Bolton, former UN ambassador for George W. Bush, (who promoted false intelligence about Saddam Hussein tying to buy yellowcake uranium from Nigeria);

• former Idaho Senator Larry Craig (yeah, the same guy who took the "wide stance" in that Minneapolis bathroom stall...and who said, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that the New Orleans lower 9th ward should be "turned back to what it was, wetlands.");

• former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (who left the state with ruined finances, and then lied about, claiming, "State government is in sound financial shape." It wasn't. Gilmore is now the president of the right-wing Free Congress Foundation, started by Joseph Coors and Paul Weyrich, who infamously said, "I don't want everybody to vote.");

• Ted Nugent (who said [among other stupid things] that Barack Obama "is a Mao Zedong wannabe," and "hippies and communists hate me...which means I'm a really really good person," and "Mitt Romney's 67 percent statement is statistically irrefutable.");

• Oliver North, who subverted the Constitution, lied about it, and obstructed justice during the Iran Contra scandal (anad who continues to perpetrate the lie that torture "was what allowed us to find out where bin Laden was hiding," and who says that "the prophesies in the Bible are true." ;

• Chuck Norris, a grade C movie actor who said of former right-wing Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore, "he is a true patriot." As Alabama Chief Justice, Moore installed and refused to remove a two-and-a-half ton monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama judicial building...Moore was removed from his position by unanimous vote of the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. Both Roy Moore and Norris now pen columns for the right-wing rag WorldNetDaily.

The NRA truly has a tag team of right-wing crazies on its Board of Directors. No wonder they employ Wayne LaPierrre. They all believe in the same stupid stuff. LaPierre and the NRA are calling for more government funding on behalf of an organization comprised of ideologues who both hate government and abhor tax increases of any kind. The term hypocrite does not do them justice.

Wog fancies himself a constitutional scholar, but he has little if any idea what he is talking about. Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 of the Constitution states quite specifically that "“Congress shall have the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia.” Moreover, the federal government is given the power in the Constitution to "discipline" state militias. and members of state militias (National Guard) take an oath to " support and defend the Constitution of the United States" and to " bear true faith and allegiance to the same." And the U.S. Constitution –– in Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 –– defines treason as "levying war" against the United States. So, Wog, like most conservatives it seems, is utterly clueless about the Constitution.

@Wog - why not study the gun violence patterns of other countries to prove your theory? I doubt it will hold.

Thanks, discoduck, for helping to prove my point. Conservatives not only are often clueless about the Constitution; worse, they don't really believe in it, or its core, embedded values.

They do not believe in or subscribe to the values of popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, tolerance, and promoting the general welfare of society.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution was written precisely for those values, promising " a more perfect Union" and "Justice," and "domestic Tranquility" and the "common defence" and "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." And , importantly, the Constitution was written to "promote the general Welfare" of society.

But conservatives don't believe in those values, even as they rhetorically wrap themselves in the flag. Their policies over the last three decades have eviscerated the American standard of living. Public infrastructure has deteriorated. Deficits and debt have skyrocketed. George W. Bush and his neo-con allies lied about "weapons of mass destruction, and saddled the nation with two costly, unfunded and badly-managed wars. Most egregiously, conservative supply-side economic policies –– big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy coupled with laissez-faire regulation –– aided and abetted massive corruption and fraud on Wall Street and caused the broken economy. And then Bush bailed out the big bankers and hedge-funders who were behind it all.

Conservatives, like uber-hypocrite Antonin Scalia, pretend there is such a thing as an "original intent" to the Constitution –– even though Madison's Notes on the Constitution make clear such a position is preposterous. They rail against judicial "activism," except, of course, when they practice it. And, oh, do they ever practice it, with DC v. Keller and Citizens United the two best recent examples.

In the Citizens United case, Thanks, discoduck, for helping to prove my point. Conservatives not only are often clueless about the Constitution; worse, they don't really believe in it, or its core, embedded values.

They do not believe in or subscribe to the values of popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, tolerance, and promoting the general welfare of society.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution was written precisely for those values, promising " a more perfect Union" and "Justice," and "domestic Tranquility" and the "common defence" and "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." And , importantly, the Constitution was written to "promote the general Welfare" of society.

But conservatives don't believe in those values, even as they rhetorically wrap themselves in the flag. Their policies over the last three decades have eviscerated the American standard of living. Public infrastructure has deteriorated. Deficits and debt have skyrocketed. George W. Bush and his neo-con allies lied about "weapons of mass destruction, and saddled the nation with two costly, unfunded and badly-managed wars. Most egregiously, conservative supply-side economic policies –– big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy coupled with laissez-faire regulation –– aided and abetted massive corruption and fraud on Wall Street and caused the broken economy. And then Bush bailed out the big bankers and hedge-funders who were behind it all.

Conservatives, like uber-hypocrite Antonin Scalia, pretend there is such a thing as an "original intent" to the Constitution –– even though Madison's Notes on the Constitution make clear such a position is preposterous. They rail against judicial "activism," except, of course, when they practice it. And, oh, do they ever practice it, with DC v. Keller and Citizens United the two best recent examples.

In the Citizens United case, conservatives on the Court threw out a century of legislation and Supreme Court precedents to invoke the outcome they wanted.
 Conservative jurist Richard Posner – appointed a federal judge by Ronald Reagan – said this about the Citizens United decision: “Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions on the basis of the First Amendment.”

In the Heller v. DC gun decision, Antonin Scalia wrote for the conservative majority that interpreting the Constitution – in this particular case, the 2nd amendment – means the Court is ...”guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” Not far after, Scalia says that the term “bear arms” was most frequently used in a military context.

Then Scalia veers abruptly – and inconsistently – from his earlier statement that the Constitution was to be interpreted in light of its “normal and ordinary” meaning to say that “Of course, as we have said, the fact that the phrase was commonly used in a particular context does not show that it is limited to that context.”

In other words, the “normal and ordinary” meaning is that “bears arms” applies to a military context, not to individuals, but since that doesn’t work for Scalia’s predetermined outcome, he’ll simply ignore an avowed philosophy of “original intent, and just make it up. Richard Posner says it clear that the 2nd amendment does not have anything to do with an individual right to bear arms, but "“That didn’t slow down Scalia. He loves guns. He’s a hunter.” Posner cites Scalia's decision as an example of the “real deterioration in conservative thinking.”

The NRA and the Republican party are now the poster children for that kind of "thinking." Posner calls it "goofy." He's right.

The NRA was originally created to improve "marksmanship," not to lobby against gun control or any kind of reasonable limitations and regulations of guns. In fact, as constitutional scholar Adam Winkler notes, "In the 1920s and ’30s, the NRA was at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control." Its president, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in pistol shooting who was called “the best shot in America” helped to "draft the Uniform Firearms Act, a model of state-level gun-control legislation." As Winkler points out, "Frederick’s model law had three basic elements. The first required that no one carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit from the local police. A permit would be granted only to a “suitable” person with a “proper reason for carrying” a firearm. Second, the law required gun dealers to report to law enforcement every sale of a handgun, in essence creating a registry of small arms. Finally, the law imposed a two-day waiting period on handgun sales. The NRA today condemns every one of these provisions as a burdensome and ineffective infringement on the right to bear arms."

And, "When Congress was considering the first significant federal gun law of the 20th century—the National Firearms Act of 1934, which imposed a steep tax and registration requirements on “gangster guns” like machine guns and sawed-off shotguns—the NRA endorsed the law."

And, "In the 1960s, the NRA once again supported the push for new federal gun laws. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald, who had bought his gun through a mail-order ad in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine, Franklin Orth, then the NRA’s executive vice president, testified in favor of banning mail-order rifle sales. 'We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States'.”

Even Scalia, at the end of the Keller decision, notes that nothing in it should "be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

Wake up, discoduck, and try and learn something. Or, go join the crazies.

'Wake up, discoduck, and try and learn something. Or, go join the crazies.'

Conjecture with a twist of bias and a side order of Bush.

You really believe that ruling proves your point? You are seriously questioning the intergrity and mental capabilites of the highest Court in the land as a whole?

I will go with the 'crazies'. Thanks anyway.

At least the NRA part was informative and contained info I was not aware of.

Man, Bill I remember this old Iroquois man that lived in my neighborhood when I was a child back in the 1920's. He said if they couldn't find Hurons to torture they'd sit around the fire and burn their own toes off. Those were some tough people, and for them running water meant a creek, know what I'm sayin' ? Tough people with no retirement plan. That's what made American great. And then it became the United States. Now another thing...oh wait the topic was school security wasn't it? Oh shoot, I mean shucks. Bill don't you have some wood to chop or water to carry or a AARP day program to walk to barefoot in the snow instead of typing misspelled rants?

Dolemeite...

You don't even need to go back as far as I referenced.... go back to 1980 or 1990 or even 2000 and simply graph out modern inventions that make life easier.

American are spoiled and need to admit it before it will get better. We are giving the government 60 cents, they are spending a dollar and giving the bill to future generations...

When they did this in the past we got the grand coulee dam, the Tennesee valley authority that provided rural electricity and a national highway system, Today we get bankrupt solar companies, fat welfare cheats and 30 BILLION in pork attatched to the Sandy Relief bill.

In Africa the only way you get a free house is if the Rebels kill your neighbor, in america you just cry loud enough and the government builds you one.

Sorry for my spelling, I was a product of the C-ville schools.

Dolemite, what Democracy offers is hardly "facts" they are his twisted interpretaions of events as he sees them .

What am I not substantiating? Was there not dam built that flooded 500 thousand acres making it productive farmland? Dd the Tennesee valley authority not help with rural electrification? Did the investment in highways not occur? Did solyndra not go bankrupt? Was there not 30 billion in pork heaped on the sandy relief bill?

Yes it is my opinion that the american middle class is spoiled. They are consumng money that is not theirs to consume and want to give someone else the bill for it without remorse.

The rich pay their way.. there is no arguing that, the only question is how much of YOUR way they should pay in addition to theirs . Democracy makes claims based on cold sterile dollars and twisted staistics. I offer a way to quantify it... Here is another one... go to the welfare homes in C-ville, occupied for the last 30 years by the same family and look at their assets and their standard of living compared to 30 years ago in the same apartment. It is unfair to try and compare them to someone in keswick and say they are worse off because their standard of living did not accelerate as fast as a rich persons. They are not "worse" off they are simply still behind a rich person.. the distance is irrelevant if they have a full belly and better access to services, than ever before.(which they do. )

The problem with giving away services without getting anything in return is sooner or later you run out of other peoples money.

To get BACK to the subject at hand it is the same mindset that Democacy takes as to why we are here, we have an entire generation that feels entitled to everything including retribution for their unhappiness, which IN MY OPINION is caused by people being falsely taught that you can legislate fairness and that equality means everyone gets the same number of apples and if you get less than you were wronged and Uncle Sam needs to make it right no matter who gets hurt in the process. That kid in Newtown killed those children because he was mad that his mother liked them best.. so he felt like it was justified to not stop with killing his mother but to also kill the kids who did nothing more than like her back. That is what we are creating by trying to legislate equla ooutcomes regardless of effort.

You will see it get worse in 2015 when all the obamacare benefits have kicked in and the bums on the mall all get free healthcare and food stamps and only need to use the money they bum for cigarettes and booze. (they will get the vicodin for free with their fake back pain)
As long as they can find a place to crash they will not work and give up that 10k worth of benefits, (which will cost the rest of us 20k to provide)

We would'nt need armed guards if parents would take the responsibility to actually raise thier kids instead of putting them n a room alone with the internet and then demanding society pay for their therapy when they start killing animals in the woods.

Ah, so both discoduck and Bill Marshall side with the "crazies." What a surprise. And yes, discoduck, the DC v. Heller decision shows just how far the "originalists" on the Supreme Court will go to implement the outcome they want, the Constitution be damned. The Citizens United case amplifies that point. The Bush v. Gore decision –– activism run amok by the Court conservatives, with serious national consequences –– nails it shut.

And yes, Bill Marshall, conservative economic policies piled up massive deficits (both budget and trade) and debt, eviscerated the middle class, transferred huge sums from public treasuries to private bank accounts (often off-shore), and broke the economy. And naturally, conservatives refuse to accept any responsibility whatsoever, and want everybody else to pay for it.

The economic mess is traceable to Ronal Reagan, who promised big tax cuts, huge increases in defense spending, and a balanced budget (wink). But early on, Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, realized that "the economic theory behind the President's program wasn't working." And while Reagan continued to promise balanced budgets (okay, he lied, and he never submitted one), "Investment analysts, looking closely at the Stockman budget figures...saw were enormous deficits ahead." They were right. The national debt exploded under Reagan (and Bush1). How did Reagan deal with it? He shifted the bill to working class Americans, while continuing big tac cuts for corporations and the wealthy. As reporter Will Bunch noted, "While wealthy Americans benefitted from Reagan's tax policies, blue-collar Americans paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes when Reagan left office than when he came in."

After the Clinton era, with tax increases on the wealthy (passed without a single Republican vote in Congress), and more than 23 million jobs created, and budget surpluses that were to be used to pay down debt and preserve Social Security and Medicare, came George W. Bush (through Bush v. Gore). Bush wanted more tax cuts, and used a reconciliation process to get them through Congress. As Lori Montgomery reported in The Post, "A chorus of skeptics warned against spending the surplus." Bush's first Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, resigned after Bush pushed for a second round of tax cuts. He said, "“I believed we needed the money to facilitate fundamental tax reform and begin working on unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare.” And this was AFTER Bush ignored dire warnings about terrorist threats, and 9/11 occurred, and the Bush administration was creating and manipulating "intelligence" to show that there were "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. There weren't. The costs of the Bush years has been staggering. As The Post detailed, "Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate."

All of this is a matter of public record. It's factual. It's real, with real-life consequences. And it continues. As respected Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote recently, "Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem." Mann and Ornstein have been covering Congress for more than forty years, and they say this: "the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

They continue: "thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented."

Former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel called his party "irresponsible...ideological and very narrow." A long-time Republican Congressional aide called the GOP more like an "apocalyptic cult" than a genuine political party.

Bruce Bartlett, former Reagan economic advisor and Bush1 Treasury deputy, wrote this summer that "tax and budget policies and economic conditions in place at the end of the Clinton administration would have led to a cumulative budget surplus of $5.6 trillion through 2011 – enough to pay off the $5.6 trillion national debt at the end of 2000." But of course, that didn't happen. Conservatives on the Court intervened and made Bush president. And we know what happened after that.

So, go ahead, discoduck and Bill Marshall. Deny the facts. Keep making things up. Refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for the reckless people and policies you've supported (and continue to support). Join the "crazies." You'll fit right in. And you're also part of the problem.

Poor Bill Marshall.

David Stockman was (and is) a Republican. Bruce Bartlett was (and is) a Republican. Richard Posner was (and is) a Republican. In the past, i've cited Kevin Phillips, who was a Reagan-era Republican, and who was a Nixon and Republican campaign strategist and consultant. Chuck Hagel was (and is) a Republican. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein can hardly be called people with a "liberal agenda" (hey Bill, did you know that the American Revolution was a "liberal" movement?). The list goes on.

Marshall doesn't even believe honest Republicans when they tell the truth about just how crazy the conservatives in the Republican party (and in the NRA) are now. The citations and quotes I provided are hardly of the "cut and paste" variety, They are from a long laundry list of articles that've detailed the failure of Republican economic policies over the last three decades (the original Stockman article, linked below, is from 1981).

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david...

But like I said, conservatives like Marshall (and discoduck, and conservative justices on the Supreme Court), just make it up as they go. Facts are not their friends. Fantasy is.

Bill, you just keep making things up to suit your narrow ideology. You can do it all you like. But that does not change anything that I've written about (1) conservative hypocrisy, (2) the evisceration of jobs and the middle class standard of living under Republican economic policies, (3) honest criticism of those policies by honest conservatives (Bruce Bartlett, Kevin Phillips, David Stockman), (4) the fact that the Republican party today is "an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

You seem to be stuck in a cognitive rut. Not surprising. At all.

You have got to love the hypocrisy of David Gregory here. Obviously of the "gun-free zone" mentality he sends his kids to Sidwell Friends school which has eleven guards -in addition to the Secret Service firepower for the Obama kids. Then he brandishes an ammunition clip on television in disregard of the DC law after being told by the DC police it was illegal to do so.

You could not make this stuff up.

hey democracy,

here is another one of your liberal "success" stories....

http://news.yahoo.com/why-cash-clunkers-hurt-environment-more-helped-024...

one more chance democracy

How has the middle class standard of living been evisorated in the last 50 years? What job does not provide a higher standard of living than 50 years ago? Do all the people in Garrett Square with cell phones, big screens, food stamps, prenatal and post natal care. Counciling services, employment training, free school, breakfast lunch and snacks for thier kids have it rougher than the folks that were living in Vinegar hill using outhouses and paying slumlords rent?

A standard of living is everything that invloves your day to day life compared to the past... we have better medicines, easier access to credit, jobs programs, 99 weeks of unemployment, internet, cel phones, microwaves, air bags, faster 911 response times, ATM machines and on and on...

You are simply mistaken on all counts. If the middle class is suffering so much than how do you explain the expolosion of cruise ships, condos at the beach being torn down to build higher ones , international travel, and on and on... cars are safer, homes are safer, the rivers are cleaner, the parks are more expansive. There uses to be disney world in Forida and California, now we have amusement parks everywhere with wilder and wilder rides. The minimim wage in1974 was 2.10 an hour and so was a movie ticket. A movie ticket is still about an hours minimim wage in most places.

Also.. in 1973 gas prices were 53 cents a gallon or so and minimum wage was 2.10 so you could buy four gallons of gas for an hours work... but the average car got 12 miles to the gallon... so you could drive 48 miles on one hours wage. Today, minimium wage buys only two gallons but the cars avearge 24 miles to the gallon so an hour still gets you 48 miles. (unless of course you drive instead of taking the public transit that the taxpayers provide at a SUBSIDIZED rate. )

The only thing we need more of in america is jobs and we know that the the only time a liberal creates a job (outside of hollywood) is to create a government job to get in the way of a person with more stones than they have who wants to start up a business with blood sweat and tears.

You are so jealous of people with gumption. You can "quote" politicians all day but at the end of they day they are all politicians and would sell thier mother for a vote.

Bill,

The idea that cutting taxes on the top tier has somehow sparked innovation and we all suddenly got iphones and ice makers is just complete rubbish. Tons of stuff was being developed and innovated before Reagan, and the boom of the Clinton years where the internet and technology exploded was hardly slowed down by tax policy.

In fact, there is a reverse correlation between entrepreneurship and low tax rates on these so called investors. It's just so much easier to spin crap on wall street and skim than actually make something.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are encouraged when it's more profitable to do so and there is someone to sell it to. I realize that you like your low tax status and think because you benefit from it, the whole country does, but it's just not true. If it were, millions of jobs would have been created in the last 12 years. They haven't. And real income - yes, that thing determined by a basket of iphones and garbage disposals - is in decline. We won't add the cost of fuel and housing.

Bush's policy was just plain stupid, and the Republicans who supported it were stupid. They were also dishonest if fiscal policy was the goal. Imagine had we stuck on that course how much better we would be right now? Old scholl REAL republicans know it.

Poor Ponce de Leon doesn't even read the articles from the rags that he posts. He cites the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which is known not only for its "sensationalist headlines" and tabloid journalism" but also for slanting its "reporting" to fit Murdoch's political and business interests. It is considered to be the least credible of New York's media publications.

And even at that, the article Ponce de Leon cites says only that the Post reviews "A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records." It never reports how much money was fraudulently obtained. I think it's more than safe to say it's not very much or the Post would sensationalized it even more.

In his other "article," Ponce de Leon cites Yahoo news (and Ponce is quite a yahoo, isn't he?). The "article" on the "cash for clunkers" program was written by a woman who was " previously worked as a fashion industry journalist." I guess this is about as good as it gets for conservatives like Ponce de Leon (and by the way Ponce, the clunkers program was passed overwhelmingly in the House and 91-5 in the Senate in a bipartisan effort to help stimulate the economy on the heels of Bush's Great Depression. And Bush bailed out the bankers and hedge-funders who caused that economic collapse with $700 billion taxpayer dollars.) The Department of Transportation reported that ""the average gas mileage of cars being bought was 28.3 miles per gallon," much higher than the vehicles that were replaced. Susan Collins, Republican Senator from Maine, said that "vehicles being purchased under the program would go an average of 9.6 more miles per gallon than those being turned in," a huge increase (61 percent) in fuel mileage.

And poor Bill Marshall, who is giving me "one last chance" to explain his crankiness and Ideological obsession with change that has occurred over the last sixty years. Bill seems to think that because a house on Locust Avenue now has a dishwasher and a microwave when it didn't sixty years ago, that there are now no poor in the U.S. because, well, life has changed and gotten better. It's a perverse logic. It's sort of like saying that now that we no longer depend on the horse-and-buggy and have interstate highways, air travel, and cable TV that somehow poverty has been eliminated in the U.S., the middle class is large and prosperous, and the nation is in good fiscal health. Sorry, Bill. That just doesn't wash.

Bill cannot seem to escape his conservative dogmatism. He's insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the root cause of the mortgage and financial crises. Untrue. In fact, "Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis."

The truth is that "Federal Reserve Board data show that:

• More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

• Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

• Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."

In fact, the laissez-faire regulatory policies of the Bush administration led to the big banks "encouraging lower-income Americans to become homeowners" and they gave "unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers more chances to turn dreams of homeownership in nightmares." Millions of lower-middle class citizens and middle class investors are much the worse off for it.

As the New York Times reported "for much of Mr. Bush’s tenure, government statistics show, incomes for most families remained relatively stagnant while housing prices skyrocketed. That put homeownership increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers...So Mr. Bush had to, in his words, 'use the mighty muscle of the federal government' to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending...he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for federally insured mortgages with no money down...The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations."

The results were that "millions of Americans are facing foreclosure, homeownership rates are virtually no higher than when Mr. Bush took office, Fannie and Freddie are in a government conservatorship, and the bailout cost to taxpayers could run in the trillions." Trillions. All of us – and mostly middle class taxpayers – will get the bill for that. Bill Marshall seems not to understand or to care about this. After all, now a house on Locust Avenue has a dishwasher and a microwave.

Bruce Bartlett –– Reagan and Bush1 economic consultant, advisor, and Treasury official –– wrote in June of 2012 that "continuation of tax and budget policies and economic conditions in place at the end of the Clinton administration would have led to a cumulative budget surplus of $5.6 trillion through 2011 – enough to pay off the $5.6 trillion national debt at the end of 2000." However, due to the Bush years and policies, "Tax cuts and slower-than-expected growth reduced revenues by $6.1 trillion and spending was $5.6 trillion higher, a turnaround of $11.7 trillion." That's money that can never be spent on education, or health care, or infrastructure improvements, or cancer research or anything else that promotes the general welfare of society.

What conservative policies have given us over the years are massive budget and trade deficits, a huge national debt, millions of job losses, stagnant wages and declining hourly rates, reduced and gutted pension plans, a financial and economic meltdown, and increased poverty. And Bill Marshall – who simply fails to see the forest for the acorns –– whines that the problem is "we give someone with a 10th grade education enough pay to 'chill' in the trailer park working at Wendys."

Sorry, Bill. I've failed you. I cannot explain such obtuseness.

But I do know that it is detrimental –– even dangerous –– to the future health and prosperity of the nation.

A free and open society will have this

Caesonia. If you will take a few minutes and read this you will see how the Community reinevestment act DID play a major role in the mortgage meltdown. Remenber the private interests need to compete in a real world marketplace and if the Bank of America lowers its standards and JP morgan doesnt JP morgan sells no loans... no diferrent than lowes competing with Home Depot. It is not one sided or conservative based but is prety well balanced and referenced well.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-06-27/wall_street/30009234_1_mo...

Also, spending did not slow down with a Democratic congress, in fact the only year in modern history where spending decreased was 2010 because of the trillion dollar spending in 2009 wasn't repeate. d. here is a chart...

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/charts

there is plenty of pork on both sides and the democrats are as bad as the republicans about securing defense spending... remember Va went for obama even though we have the worlds largest naval base and NOVA has multi billion dollar defense contracts that this state relies on... there are no politicians with clean hands.

Recently I took a lot of flack on this forum in a different thread over some less generous comments on a few hale looking panhandlers. Rest assured, Mr Marshall, I do not have a soft spot for welfare chumps, be they of the 1% or the bottom 10%.

But, notice how you instantly excuse Reagan about deficits because it was spending on the military? That's my point, and my problem about Republicans. I don't agree that military spending should be sacrosanct from spending cuts, especially if you are about fiscal responsibility. I don't agree all military spending keeps us safe, and I don't think national security rests purely in the number of bombs and war ships we have from bloated private contractors.

Having a healthy population with good hygiene and a mouth full of teeth, combined with the ability to the think critically is paramount. So you know, a reasonable education that doesn't rely on government funded private school vouchers for religious madras or pats someone on the back just for learning to write at the 6th grade level. Then require 2 years mandatory civil service male for female.

Just think, with our for profit private fraudulent mandatory healthcare system - brought to you by the GOP 20 years ago - we spend 7% more of our GDP on healthcare than any other industrialized nation. Imagine how many carriers we could by with that? How many shipping containers could we inspect?

Bismark had this figured out 150 years ago, and little Germany was able to beat the tar out of Western and most of Eastern Europe by itself twice. Only old man winter got them in WWII while Stalin cowered in bunker.

But no, Republicans keep you focused only how many cell phones some Cadillac welfare mom has, because they harbor a grudge from 40 years ago, or their buddies are profiting too much from the poor administration healthcare. Along with some Democrats.

Yes, we need to cut spending, and use what we spend much better, but that requires looking at the big picture and letting go of some Shiboleths. Republicans are the worst about it, and they never let facts get in the way of their ideology.