JustOneMinute

Gun Violence And Violence To An Honest Dialogue

When a person begins an argument by palming a card or concealing an important fact it is natural to become suspicious. So what are we to make of the NY Times editorial and guest op-ed pieces about gun control today?

Here are the Times editors:

Congress Takes Up Gun Violence

Senate hearings on stronger gun controls are scheduled to begin on Wednesday before a divided Congress and a nation agonizing over how to prevent more of the carnage that killed 20 schoolchildren and six adults last month at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. The gun lobby’s opposition to reasonable controls is already fierce, and political courage is, as ever, wavering in Congress. But this singular opportunity to curb the gun violence must not be wasted in more of the posturing in Washington that tolerates 30,000 gun deaths a year.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear a raft of proposals, including a vitally needed ban on fast-firing semiautomatic weapons, like the military-style Bushmaster assault rifle the Newtown gunman used in his killing spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The measure would also ban ammunition magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets, which have facilitated battlefield-scale killing of the innocent in the Newtown school, the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and dozens of similar tragedies.

Making federal background checks universal, instead of limiting them to sales by licensed gun dealers, is no less vital, closing a loophole that lets 40 percent of firearm sales take place with no oversight. This proposal is the chief goal of many gun-control groups and has a different aim than the assault weapons ban: the proliferation of handguns that are used in most gun violence, particularly in cities.

30,000 deaths per year and we need to Act Now to prevent another Newtown!

Here are James Baker and John Dingell:

But the harsh truth is that too many Americans are dying from gun-related shootings — more than 30,000 each year and more than one million since 1960. Gun violence now rivals traffic accidents as the leading cause of death by injury in the United States. Quite simply, gun violence threatens to overwhelm us.

Americans are grappling for strategies to make sure that the horror that occurred in Newtown isn’t repeated. The White House has made suggestions, and many governors have offered theirs. The National Rifle Association has spelled out its proposals.

With the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled today to hold the first congressional hearings on gun violence since the Newtown tragedy, we offer four general guidelines for a national dialogue on sensible solutions to this deadly malady.

First, any legislation that is suggested should be broad-gauged. There is no one single cause of gun violence and no single solution. That will mean determining if there is any reason for weapons to have magazines that hold 30 rounds or more. It will mean assessing whether armor-piercing bullets — opposed by police chiefs around the country — should be legal. And it will mean considering strengthening background checks.

30,000 deaths and we should Act Now!

The concealed fact is that of those 30,000 deaths, roughly 19,000 are suicides. Every suicide is regrettable and the case can be made that access to guns increases the overall suicide rate by increasing access to a highly lethal means of acting upon what is, in many cases, a transitory suicidal impulse.

However, the case has not been made that reducing access to semiautomatic rifles with high capacity magazines or armor piercing bullets will bring down the suicide rate. Unless we have an underreported national epidemic of people committing suicide by shooting themselves fifteen times and bleeding out, I think it is fair to say that linking the suicide rate with a need to regulate magazine capacity is a bit of a misdirection play.

If the Times editors believe in their argument they ought to go ahead and make it honestly. They could explain that their 30,000 deaths includes 19,000 suicides and, per the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, about 6,000 handgun homicides, 300-400 rifle homicides, and 1,500 uncategorized firearm homicides. Will readers take away from those statistics the idea that assault rifles are the key problem facing the nation as it confronts gun violence? Raymond Kelly, NYC Police Commissioner, didn't exactly make that case. Still, the Times editors should make the argument and find out.

HYPERBOLE WATCH: The Times editors include this (my emphasis):

The measure would also ban ammunition magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets, which have facilitated battlefield-scale killing of the innocent in the Newtown school, the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and dozens of similar tragedies.

Dozens? Mother Jones, in reviewing their list of mass shootings in the US since 1980, found 31 that involved high capacity magazines (i.e., more than ten rounds).

And some of those 31 incidents would probably not have played out differently if the killer was limited to ten round magazines. The VaTech killer used ten and fifteen round magazines and the panel which investigated the incident concluded that the magazine size was not a factor. At Newtown, Adam Lanza ran out of time and targets, not bullets; he shot his victims three to eleven times each before killing himself.

Glancing at the Mother Jones list, I note that the Columbine killers used thirteen ten-round magazines. I count fourteen incidents involving semiautomatic handguns with the popular eleven-to-nineteen capacity (e.g., the Glock 19 with fifteen in the magazine). Are the Times editors confident that a semiautomatic Glock with fifteen in the magazine is capable of "battlefield-scale killing" that could be avoided if limited to ten in the magazine? Or by "dozens of similar tragedies" do they mean 'nearly two dozen in the last thirty years, maybe'?

We all await their ongoing contribution to a sensible national debate.

Immigration Plans

ABC News sneak previews Obama's expected immigration plan and compares it to the current bipartisan Senate effort.

Assault Weapons In Realityville

NY Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is all in favor of an "assault weapon" ban even though they aren't the problem facing New York City:

While assault rifles serve no legitimate hunting purpose, and their ban would be a welcome advance after the Newtown slaughter, illegal handguns remain the weapon of choice for killers and other criminals in New York City.

Ninety percent, or 2,493, of the 2,779 illegal firearms seized from suspects in arrests in the city last year were handguns.

By contrast, a total of 77 assault weapons were seized in arrests in the city, less than 3 percent of the total.

In only three of nearly 1,400 shooting incidents last year were ballistics associated with assault weapons.

Kelly favors an expansion of background checks, although he misstates an old survey here:

It’s estimated that as much as 40 percent of guns are sold through the so-called gun-show loophole. A national requirement for universal background checks, regardless of how or where the gun is sold, would help with that problem.

Well, it's estimated that up to 40 percent of transfers, including gifts and inheritances as well as some gun show sales, aren't covered by the current background check law.

This related story includes an unexpected interlude with common sense:

“Kelly is obviously right” about the background checks, said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for the Third Way, a centrist advocacy group that includes the Americans for Gun Safety coalition.

“We support an assault-weapons ban. There is no reason anyone should have these military-style weapons,” he said. “On the other hand, if you had to make a priority list, that is low on priority list.

“On the top of our list is universal background checks.”

In journo-speak, a "centrist advocacy group" means left-wing, but not delusionally so. The Third Way seems to be the heirs to the DLC.

Out Of The Closet At The Times

The Times runs some true confessions, bringing liberal gun nuts and New York area 'Preppers' out of the closet. Guns first:

Confessions of a Liberal Gun Owner

By JUSTIN CRONIN

BELLAIRE, Tex.

I AM a New England liberal, born and bred. I have lived most of my life in the Northeast — Boston, New York and Philadelphia — and my politics are devoutly Democratic. In three decades, I have voted for a Republican exactly once, holding my nose, in a mayoral election in which the Democratic candidate seemed mentally unbalanced.

I am also a Texas resident and a gun owner. I have half a dozen pistols in my safe, all semiautomatics, the largest capable of holding 20 rounds. I go to the range at least once a week, have applied for a concealed carry license and am planning to take a tactical training course in the spring. I’m currently shopping for a shotgun, either a Remington 870 Express Tactical or a Mossberg 500 Flex with a pistol grip and adjustable stock.

His motivation seems to be defense of his family in the event of a societal mini-crisis such as a hurricane in the Houston area. He provides bits of reassuring bonding with his liberal readeship, which creates some discordant moments. For example:

But in the weeks since Newtown, I’ve watched my Facebook feed, which is dominated by my coastal friends, fill up with anti-gun dispatches that seemed divorced from reality. I agree it would be nice if the world had exactly zero guns in it. But I don’t see that happening, and calling gun owners “a bunch of inbred rednecks” doesn’t do much to advance rational discussion.

In a self-defense context a world without guns would favor the hale and hearty over the older, the infirm, and women generally. Interestingly, the author reverses his field almost instantly, while describing his teen-age daughter's interest in guns:

This time, she asked to take a pistol lesson. She’s an NPR listener like me, but she’s also grown up in Texas, and the fact that one in five American women is a victim of sexual assault is not lost on her.

Grist for the liberal mill.

"Out of the Closet" weekend at the Times began with a long feature on New York area "Preppers":

New York hardly seems like a natural location for what has become known as the prepper movement, but in fact the city’s prepping community is not only large and remarkably diverse, its leaders say, it’s also growing rapidly.

To the unprepared, the very word “prepper” is likely to summon images of armed zealots hunkered down in bunkers awaiting the End of Days, but the reality, at least here in New York, is less dramatic. Local Preppers are doctors, doormen, charter school executives, subway conductors, advertising writers and happily married couples from the Bronx. They are no doubt people that you know — your acquaintances and neighbors. People, I’ll admit, like myself.

It isn’t easy being a Prepper these days. The discipline has taken blows from TV programs like “Doomsday Preppers,” which — despite its record ratings and recent episodes, like “Escape From New York” — is more or less a weekly invitation to laugh at lunatics tunneling into mountainsides to escape a Russian nuclear attack. Last month, a chill went through the movement when it turned out that the mother of Adam Lanza, the shooter in the Newtown, Conn., killings, was a Prepper. Even though prepping is increasingly visible in the culture — through meet-up groups, books, films and weekend retreats at which canning skills are learned — it continues to be thought of as a marginal and unseemly business, something on par with believing that the Bilderberg Group controls world events or that the government is hiding aliens at Area 51.

How times change. It was only a year ago that the Times was assuring its readers that Preppers are a bunch of racist rednecks eager to open fire on rioting black people. Now, a bit of preparedness prior to a "Sandy" type event doesn't seem so crazy. And as to Preppers being racist?

EARLY IN MY TRAVELS, I was told the man to see for a deeper understanding of prepping in New York was Aton Edwards, founder of the International Preparedness Network and author of the emergency survival guide “Preparedness Now!” Mr. Edwards, 51, is often called the city’s foremost expert in personal disaster preparation — he has appeared on the “Today” show, has taught his “Ready Up!” seminars to hundreds of participants with partners like the Red Cross and has set up, as part of the National Urban Self-Reliance and Preparedness Program, “incident command centers” across New York, like the one he recently created for the hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa in the Bronx.

...

It was not by chance, Mr. Edwards said, that prepping first took root in New York in the black community: he himself is black, and in the 1990s he became a frequent guest on “The Open Line,” a call-in radio show on the “urban adult” station WBLS. Around the same time, he started giving classes in disaster preparation at the National Action Network, the Rev. Al Sharpton’s civil rights group. “Obviously,” Mr. Edwards said, “because of our history, black folks know that bad things happen.”

These days, he added, the prepping movement is “the strangest mishmash of people you could ever find — black, white, men, women, everyone. It looks like America.”

The author even challenges the faith of secular liberals in their deity, 911:

I came across a news report about Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, whom Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had recently named to lead a commission investigating how ready the state was for another Hurricane Sandy-like emergency. I arranged an interview, figuring that he, if anyone, could answer my question [i.e., how much preparation is appropriate?].

...

“It’s impossible to forget that we live in a world vulnerable to hazards, man-made and natural,” he said. “So it’s legitimate to ask: What is the impact on individuals?”

His answer was squarely in line with Prepper doctrine. Dr. Redlener said it was rational — indeed, it was recommended — to have a three-day supply of food and water, a working flashlight, a first-aid kit, a radio that runs without batteries and a plan in place to rejoin one’s relatives after a disaster. He talked about situational awareness, a major Prepper mantra. “A prepared citizen is someone who understands how to take care of himself,” he said, “who has amassed the necessary items, who has a plan.”

When I asked about some of those I had met along the way — say, the geared-up 12-year-old, Leonardo Ruiz Jr., who, dropping his suspicions, later gave his name to a photographer — he gave a forbearing smile. “There’s a spectrum,” Dr. Redlener said. “On one end is mindless complacency. On the other is paranoia. The challenge is to find that place in the middle where you understand that bad things can happen, but it doesn’t consume your life.”

Then he surprised me. I had never heard even a quasi-government official admit that the authorities would not respond promptly in an emergency, but Dr. Redlener said that “gaps” existed during “mega-disasters,” hours, even days, when there might not be an official response.

“The well-being of many, many people in harm’s way will be dependent in those gaps on social networks, on community and on individual preparedness,” he said.

He added, aphoristically, “We are all first responders.”

He's from the government and he here to tell you to help yourself.

 

Obama, Secret Skeet Shooter

Obama finally lets the world in on the secret he has kept for years - not only has he fired a gun but "up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time".

Uh huh. No one can find a Presidential photo or a mention in a pool report, or any mention at all, but that doesn't mean he's just blowing smoke. Joe Biden recently claimed to be a skeet shooter, so who knows? I'll say this - I believe there is a skeet shooting range at Camp David.

Until we see more evidence this is one more for the "Who Does He Think He Is Kidding?" file.

GEEZ, I WAS OFF BY MORE THAN FOUR YEARS: Back in the 2008 campaign Obama said, apparently with a straight face, that he once considered enlisting. Yes, in the military!

To which I snarked:

Oh, well - I can't wait for October when Obama will put on a Republican-looking woodlands camo outfit and go duck hunting.

That Pesky Right To Engage In Issue Advocacy

The NY Times fulminates (yet again!) against the shadowy groups airing their views and trying to influence the rest of us.

Secret Donors Finance Fight Against Hagel

By JIM RUTENBERG

A brand new conservative group calling itself Americans for a Strong Defense and financed by anonymous donors is running advertisements urging Democratic senators in five states to vote against Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense, saying he would make the United States “a weaker country.”

...

The media campaign to scuttle Mr. Hagel’s appointment, unmatched in the annals of modern presidential cabinet appointments, reflects the continuing effects of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which loosened campaign finance restrictions and was a major reason for the record spending by outside groups in the 2012 election. All told, these independent and largely secretly financed groups spent well over $500 million in an attempt to defeat Mr. Obama and the Democrats, a failure that seemed all the greater given the huge amounts spent.

I know what you're thinking - Chuck Hagel is not a candidate for elective office, there are no elections in sight (a small favor for which we are grateful), and this is really no different from advocating a view on global warming, gun control, immigration, or any other topic of interest. So why are we reading about Citizen's United, which dealt with the McCain-Feingold restrictions on electioneering?

A good question, which the Times addresses in paragraph seven:

Groups like his would have been able to operate freely against Mr. Hagel even before Citizens United.

Oh.

But the ruling has served to erase what had been traditional fears among donors that their involvement in the fight of the day would lead to legal trouble or, for those who prefer to stay anonymous, unwanted public exposure. That confidence, in turn, has helped spur the increase in the number of political organizations that pop up to engage in the big political entanglement of the moment.

So what ought to be free, unrestricted speech is more likely to be so after Citizen's United. I understand why that troubles the Times, which would prefer that others be forced to set down their megaphones. But what about the rest of us?

Policing v. Incarceration

John Tierney of the Times looks at data from New York City suggesting that locking people up is not the best way to bring down the crime rate. Hmm, Butterfield is unbaffled. And no mention at all of the association of lead and crime.

Another ObamaCare Surprise - Smokers Can Suck It

The AP describes another ObamaCare landmine:

Penalty could keep smokers out of health overhaul

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.

The Affordable Care Act — "Obamacare" to its detractors — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.

For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.

And the government won't help help subsidize those penalties, or taxes, or whatever they are:

Several provisions in the federal health care law work together to leave older smokers with a bleak set of financial options, said Pollitz, formerly deputy director of the Office of Consumer Support in the federal Health and Human Services Department.

First, the law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times as much as their youngest customers.

Second, the law allows insurers to levy the full 50 percent penalty on older smokers while charging less to younger ones.

And finally, government tax credits that will be available to help pay premiums cannot be used to offset the cost of penalties for smokers.

As the story notes, lower income and less formal education is positively associated with more smoking. In other contexts, these are the groups to which Obama is trying to shovel more Federal money.

Well, we had to pass the bill to find out what's in it.

Thinking Of Bumper Stickers...

Drawn from the "Economists Do It With Models" genre and inspired by Obama's Second Inaugural, I propose:

Liberals Do It With Government Assistance

Hmm - that's putting the 'Big' in 'Big Government'.  Yeah, I'll be here all week. But the week is nearly over...

Back To Benghazi

We are back to benghazi with timeless questions and Deathless Dialogue with Hillary.

Gun Weirdness At The Times

It's not just the cold snap! The topic of guns induces brain freeze in New York, but the Times quotes their governor explaining that it's a good thing:

“I think for me, like for people all across this country, that was it,” the governor said in an interview last week. “You said, ‘Enough.’ That was it. It’s not an intellectual response; it was more emotional, visceral. Just, it was enough.”

Just Do Something! Nick Kristof decides to deploy his Metaphor Masher in a column exhorting Obama to expand poverty programs For The Children:

We don’t have any magic bullets.

Now we are shooting at the kids we are trying to help? Baffling.

But for real bafflement, try this coverage on the Algerian hostage debacle:

Algeria Gas Compound Lacked Armed Guards

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and NICHOLAS KULISH

HOUSTON — The companies operating the gas facility in the Sahara that was attacked last week had chosen not to deploy armed guards inside the sprawling compound, leading security analysts to question whether the assault by more than 30 Islamist militants might have been slowed if security had been tighter.

It was a gun free zone! Surely Pravda OTH should be celebrating that rather than catering to the bizarre notion that good guys with guns can somehow deter bad guys with guns. Or does that actually work overseas?

Pravda On The Hudson Comes Home To Reality

After two days of swooning over Obama's "We Are Proud Liberals Who Are Right About Everything" inaugural speech, the NT Times comes home to a grim reality. First, the gun ban won't be happening any time soon:

Democrats in Senate Confront Doubts at Home on Gun Laws

And Union Power is fading to black:

Share of the Work Force in a Union Falls to a 97-Year Low, 11.3%

And that includes public sector unions; in the private sector the picture is ludicrous:

The percentage of workers in unions fell to 11.3 percent, down from 11.8 percent in 2011, the bureau found in its annual report on union membership. That brought unionization to its lowest level since 1916, when it was 11.2 percent, according to a study by two Rutgers economists, Leo Troy and Neil Sheflin.

Labor specialists cited several reasons for the steep one-year decline in union membership. Among the factors were new laws that rolled back the power of unions in Wisconsin, Indiana and other states, the continued expansion by manufacturers like Boeing and Volkswagen in nonunion states and the growth of sectors like retail and restaurants, where unions have little presence.

...

Labor unions have boasted of their political successes in helping re-elect President Obama and in helping Democrats pick up seats in Congress.

But the figures announced by the bureau point to grave problems for the future of organized labor. The portion of private sector workers in unions fell to just 6.6 percent last year, from 6.9 percent in 2011, causing some labor specialists to question whether private sector unions were sinking toward irrelevance. Private sector union membership peaked at around 35 percent in the 1950s.

The BLS release is here; Pravda OTH did not highlight this fact (but I did):

In 2012, 7.3 million employees in the public sector belonged to a union, compared with 7.0 million union workers in the private sector. The union membership rate for public-sector workers (35.9 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private-sector workers (6.6 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 41.7 percent. This group includes workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

Pretty soon unions will exist only to shake down taxpayers so they can contribute to Democrats.

Ongoing 'West Wing' Fantasies

Obama gave an inaugural speech intended to rally his liberal base and annoy the rest of us, and the NY Times is still aquiver.

Their latest installment of West Wing is here:

Obama Speech Leaves G.O.P. Stark Choices

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s aggressive Inaugural Address on Monday presented Congressional Republicans with a stark choice over the next two years: accommodate the president’s agenda on immigration, guns, energy and social programs and hope to take the liberal edge off issues dictated by the White House, or dig in as the last bulwark against a re-elected Democratic president and accept the political risks of that hard-line stance.

Obama spoke and the world shifted. Just like it did with health care. And more stimulus.

Mickey Kaus takes the Times to task for their packaging of the debt-ceiling maneuvering. The Times is also amusingly hopeful with this:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, vowed Tuesday to put on the floor any gun control measures passed by the Judiciary Committee, inching closer to another showdown with the House.

A showdown with the House? As the Times editors noted last week, Reid is inching closer towards a showdown with a slew of unsympathetic Red State Democratic Senators, himself included:

The gun lobby is focused within the Republican Party, but Democratic lawmakers have also been to blame for failing to pass meaningful gun regulations. Already, some Democrats who should be strongest on gun controls are showing familiar signs of weakness.

Senator Pat Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will be needed as a leader in this effort but has been mumbling about the need to hold extensive hearings. And Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, was making ominous, cowardly remarks over the weekend about tailoring whatever the Senate does to what he thinks could get through a House dominated by the far-right fringe of the Republican Party. He has started to wriggle away from the idea of an assault weapons ban, for example.

And in other reporting the Times noted yet another plot twist in their West Wing episode - the Keystone pipeline is back and Obama needs to figure out how to duck it again:

WASHINGTON — The governor of Nebraska on Tuesday approved a revised route through the state for the Keystone XL pipeline, setting up a decision for President Obama that pipeline opponents say will be a crucial test of his intentions on climate change.

Uh huh. If we don't take the oil Canada will sell it to China, so the impact on global warming of turning away this pipeline will be roughly zero. Still, liberals progressives will howl, so what will Obama do (other than blame Boehner and Bush?). Maybe another dramatic speech? Stay tuned...

 

While Our Free Press Waits For Government Assistance...

Glenn Kessler fact-checks the very old yet new again claim that 40 percent of guns are bought without a backgroud check. He notes (as did we, John Fund and Politifact) that the figure derives from a 1997 paper based on a 1994 survey of a few hundred people.

So why hasn't anyone updated this? Mr. Kessler explains it is the evil gun nuts standing in the doorway of science:

Ludwig [One of the researchers] acknowledged that “our estimate is clearly not perfect.” He said that a larger sample size would have provided a more precise estimate of off-the-books transactions, but he and Cook were not involved in the design stage of the survey. He added that one reason why the data is so old is because the federal government has generally stopped funding such research.

“While there is no perfect estimate in social science, we’d have a better estimate for this proportion had the federal government not decided to get out of the business of supporting research on guns and gun violence several years ago,” he said.

And a bit later:

There is a bit of irony here. While the 40-percent figure appears overstated and out of date, it remains the most cited statistic on the secondary market because foes of gun control have thwarted extensive research on guns. Advocates of gun controls thus continue to rely on a flawed statistic nearly two decades old.

Oh, please. Congressional foes of gun control have discouraged Federal funding for agenda-driven pseudo-science of the sort typically produced by Elizabeth Warren. But we are talking about a survey of a few thousand people here. Wasn't it only yesterday that we were treated to a new poll every twenty minutes on the latest, latest attitude of Swing State voters on every possible topic under the sun? NO, it was last sumer and fall.

Yet now the news budget of the Washington Post, the NY Times, CBS News, ABC News, et al can't pony up for one new survey dedicated to figuring out who buys guns and where? Even though our President has promised a national conversation on this very topic?

That watchdog won't hunt.

Pravda On The Hudson Travels To The Inaugural

The NY Times provides "coverage" of Obama's latest posturing on global warming:

Speech Gives Climate Goals Center Stage

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — President Obama made addressing climate change the most prominent policy vow of his second Inaugural Address, setting in motion what Democrats say will be a deliberately paced but aggressive campaign built around the use of his executive powers to sidestep Congressional opposition.

Yeah, yeah. Pravda describes his last bellyflop on this:

After the defeat in 2010 of legislation that would have capped carbon emissions and issued tradable permits for emissions, Mr. Obama turned to regulation and financing for alternative energy.

2010? My goodness, weren't they the halcyon days of Nancy running the House and Harry marhsalling 9 Democratic Senators? Here are the Times editors describing Obama's failure in July 2010:

With A Whimper

On Thursday, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, abandoned the fight for meaningful energy and climate legislation. The Republicans — surprise — had been fiercely obstructionist. But the Democratic leaders let them get away with it, as did the White House. It has been weeks since President Obama spoke out about the need for a serious climate bill to address the very real danger of global warming and to lessen this country’s dependence on imported oil.

...

The Republicans obviously bear a good part of the responsibility for this failure. With a handful of exceptions, they have denied or played down the problem of global warming for years and did pretty much anything they could to protect industry from necessary regulation. There are, however, as many as a dozen Senate Democrats, mainly from the South, Appalachia and the Midwest, who share the blame.

The politics haven't gotten better for the Democrats. But then the Pravda science writers take over:

Beyond new policies, the administration is seeking to capitalize on the surge of natural gas production over the past few years. As a cheaper and cleaner alternative to coal, natural gas gives it a chance to argue that coal is less economically attractive.

...Despite the lack of comprehensive legislation, emissions have declined roughly 10 percent since he took office, a result both of the economic slowdown and of energy efficiency moves by government and industry.

Who the frack do they think they are kidding? Well, "Frack" is a four letter word at the Times, whose editors will always believe that more study is needed until a quasi-credible effort puts the kibosh on fracking, at which point the science will be settled.

However, this appeared in their pages (or at least, their website) last August:

Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States from January through March were the lowest of any recorded for the first quarter of the year since 1992, the federal Energy Information Administration reports.

The agency attributed the decline to a combination of three factors: a mild winter, reduced demand for gasoline and, most significant, a drop in coal-fired electricity generation because of historically low natural gas prices.

...

The extraction of large natural gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale has contributed to the rise of inexpensive natural gas, causing prices to decline in the last four years and making it a far cheaper option than burning coal. In 2005, coal accounted for half of all electricity generated in the country. But the embrace of natural gas, which now accounts for about 30 percent of electricity generation, has caused coal’s share to retreat to 34 percent, a 40-year low.

And an important reminder:

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the means by which much of the shale gas is being acquired, also raises questions about potential environmental effects like groundwater contamination, critics say.

I foresee an Orwellian New Year - Obama will attempt to lead an national conversation on energy policy without ever mentioning fracking, a process to which his big donor base is opposed. And the Times will report in this conversation in code.

And speaking of losing the future, Obama can't even talk about nuclear power because Harry Reid wants endless re-study of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. Meanwhile, China is going to find out once and for all whether thorium is the nuclear dream metal.

ERRATA: A victory lap from the Skeptical Environmentalist.

IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN - STRAWMEN DIVISION:

Classic Obama rhetoric:

For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future. Or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

No single person can make an I-Phone. Or for that matter, a PC (former TIME Thing of the Year, now on the back shelf). "Fracking" was hardly a project pushed by Big Government, although they certainly contributed.

But evidently in ObamaWorld, if I can't do it myself the only other step is a Big Goverment project. Hmm... I have a large, awkward piece of furniture I need to get up the stairs. I had been thinking of calling my neighbor for a hand (and give him a chance to blow out his other knee), but now I see I should be writing to my Congressman. Or to Barack himself!

Well, what should we expect from a guy who can't even call a plumber when the toilets are backed up?

Traditional MLK Day Open Thread

Away we go.

Out With The Strong, In With The Wrong

The NY Times discovers the dark side to the Arab Spring:

Jihadists’ Surge in North Africa Reveals Grim Side of Arab Spring

By ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON — As the uprising closed in around him, the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi warned that if he fell, chaos and holy war would overtake North Africa. “Bin Laden’s people would come to impose ransoms by land and sea,” he told reporters. “We will go back to the time of Redbeard, of pirates, of Ottomans imposing ransoms on boats.”

In recent days, that unhinged prophecy has acquired a grim new currency. In Mali, French paratroopers arrived this month to battle an advancing force of jihadi fighters who already control an area twice the size of Germany. In Algeria, a one-eyed Islamist bandit organized the brazen takeover of an international gas facility, taking hostages that included more than 40 Americans and Europeans.

Coming just four months after an American ambassador was killed by jihadists in Libya, those assaults have contributed to a sense that North Africa — long a dormant backwater for Al Qaeda — is turning into another zone of dangerous instability, much like Syria, site of an increasingly bloody civil war. The mayhem in this vast desert region has many roots, but it is also a sobering reminder that the euphoric toppling of dictators in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt has come at a price.

Interestingly, their presumably careful reporting is careful not to mention either Hillary or Barack, for either credit or blame. Late in the story we do get this suggestion of Western culpability:

The Algerians also have little patience with what they see as Western naïveté about the Arab spring, analysts say.

“Their attitude was, ‘Please don’t intervene in Libya or you will create another Iraq on our border,’ ” said Geoff D. Porter, an Algeria expert and founder of North Africa Risk Consulting, which advises investors in the region. “And then, ‘Please don’t intervene in Mali or you will create a mess on our other border.’ But they were dismissed as nervous Nellies, and now Algeria says to the West: ‘Goddamn it, we told you so.’ ”

Oh, well - a bunch of cranky Algerians who don't understand modern kinetic military actions.

While on the topic, let's revisit this Times account of America's role in the utter debacle in Mali:

For years, the United States tried to stem the spread of Islamic militancy in the region by conducting its most ambitious counterterrorism program ever across these vast, turbulent stretches of the Sahara.

But as insurgents swept through the desert last year, commanders of this nation’s elite army units, the fruit of years of careful American training, defected when they were needed most — taking troops, guns, trucks and their newfound skills to the enemy in the heat of battle, according to senior Malian military officials.

“It was a disaster,” said one of several senior Malian officers to confirm the defections.

Then an American-trained officer overthrew Mali’s elected government, setting the stage for more than half of the country to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists. American spy planes and surveillance drones have tried to make sense of the mess, but American officials and their allies are still scrambling even to get a detailed picture of who they are up against.

Now, in the face of longstanding American warnings that a Western assault on the Islamist stronghold could rally jihadists around the world and prompt terrorist attacks as far away as Europe, the French have entered the war themselves.

...

Some Defense Department officials, notably officers at the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, have pushed for a lethal campaign to kill senior operatives of two of the extremists groups holding northern Mali, Ansar Dine and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Killing the leadership, they argued, could lead to an internal collapse.

But with its attention and resources so focused on other conflicts in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, the Obama administration has rejected such strikes in favor of a more cautious, step-back strategy: helping African nations repel and contain the threat on their own.

Over the last four years, the United States has spent between $520 million and $600 million in a sweeping effort to combat Islamist militancy in the region without fighting the kind of wars it has waged in the Middle East. The program stretched from Morocco to Nigeria, and American officials heralded the Malian military as an exemplary partner. American Special Forces trained its troops in marksmanship, border patrol, ambush drills and other counterterrorism skills.

But all that deliberate planning collapsed swiftly when heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya. They teamed up with jihadists like Ansar Dine, routed poorly equipped Malian forces and demoralized them so thoroughly that it set off a mutiny against the government in the capital, Bamako.

A confidential internal review completed last July by the Pentagon’s Africa Command concluded that the coup had unfolded too quickly for American commanders or intelligence analysts to detect any clear warning signs.

FWIW they don't blame Bush. But they could! Here is a poignant December 2008 flashback to the start of our program in Mali:

U.S. Training in Africa Aims to Deter Extremists

By ERIC SCHMITT

KATI, Mali — Thousands of miles from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, another side of America’s fight against terrorism is unfolding in this remote corner of West Africa. American Green Berets are training African armies to guard their borders and patrol vast desolate expanses against infiltration by Al Qaeda’s militants, so the United States does not have to.

...

American officials say their strategy is to contain the Qaeda threat and train the African armies, a process that will take years. The nonmilitary counterterrorism programs are just starting, and it is too early to gauge results.

“This is a long-term effort,” said Colonel Connors, 45, an Africa specialist from Burlington, Vt., who speaks French and Portuguese. “This is crawl, walk, run, and right now, we’re still in the crawl phase.”

With the benefit of hindsight we think he meant "Crawl, walk, stage coup".

Raising The Roof

Republicans reorder the sequence of crises in Washington by extending the debt ceiling to May 1. In exchange, they try to hold the Senate hostage by demanding a budget.

Charles Krauthammer explains the logic - you can't run the country from the House.

While At The Gym...

While pretending to abide by my New Year's resolution at the gym I noticed a baffling story about... well, the sound was turned down, but what I gleaned is that Lance Armstrong was cheating with Manto Te'o's girlfriend. Or something...

Can anyone fill me in?

Our Dubious Stat Du Jour

As part of their ongoing effort to participate in a national debate about appropriate gun laws the NY Times editors chime in yet again with a Dubious Fact du Jour:

The States Confront Gun Violence

...

State gun laws matter. Of the 10 states with the most restrictive laws, seven also have the lowest gun death rates, according to a study by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Similarly, lax gun laws correlate to a high level of gun deaths.

Hmm, yet I happen to know (based on my kids' ski habits) that Vermont has roughly no gun laws and no crime. So without even peeking I am betting that "lax" gun laws correlate well with widespread gun ownership and a high suicide rate using guns.

No, I didn't cheat - here is the study to which the editors refer, and I will extract the cool map:

Let the barrel-fishing begin! Montana and Wyoming will have very low crime rates (FBI UCR, 2010), yet up there in Big Sky country guns are killing people like flies. Let's compare homicide rates and overall "gun violence" rates including suicides for Montana, Wyoming, and California. The data source is here.

Overall violence related firearm fatality, including suicide:

CA - 7.78 per 100,000

MT - 16.07

WY - 15.6

So far so good for the Times editors. But how about homicides?

CA - 3.60 per 100,000

MT - 1.72

WY - 00 -

Ooops.  FWIW, I say Wyoming should be 0.9 based on the UCR showing 5 homicides in a state of 560,000, but either way, it is far below California.

Well - I think preventing suicides is a laudable objective and I am sure that some impulsive suicides carried out by gun might not happen at all if the alternatives were pills, ropes, or tall buildings.

On the other hand, Obama was inspired on gun control by the Newtown school shooting, which was not a mass suicide. Nor was the Aurora movie theatre shooting, the Tucson shooting, and so on. And I can't imagine how limiting ammunition magazines to ten rounds or banning assault weapons would reduce suicides, but I try to learn something new everyday.

If the President and the NY Times want to point to a school shooting and talk about preventing gun violence, maybe they should focus on preventing homicides. Unless they are trying to dupe their readers, of course.

SINCE YOU ASK: The overall suicide rate in Montana and Wyoming is about 23 per 100,000. In California, it is about 10.5. Why the disparity? I am out of ammunition on this topic.

Obama, Media Memes, Background Checks, And Where Is Politifact When You Need Them?

There is broad public support for expanding the rules on background checks for gun purchases. However, that support may be based in part on a media myth created by Mayor Bloomberg. The press and the President toss around the figure of 40% as the number of gun sales that are not subject to a background check, but the basis for that figure is ephemeral.

As a baseline for the conventional wisdom, let's turn to President Obama. From his press conference announcing his gun control initiatives:

First:  It’s time for Congress to require a universal background check for anyone trying to buy a gun.  (Applause.)   The law already requires licensed gun dealers to run background checks, and over the last 14 years that’s kept 1.5 million of the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun.  But it’s hard to enforce that law when as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check.  That’s not safe.  That's not smart.  It’s not fair to responsible gun buyers or sellers.

And the White House website:

Right now, federally licensed firearms dealers are required to run background checks on those buying guns, but studies estimate that nearly 40 percent of all gun sales are made by private sellers who are exempt from this requirement.

It is fair to say that the 40 percent figure has been widely reported. But what is the source, and is it accurate?

John Fund challenged the claim yesterday at NRO, but PolitiFact drilled down in July of 2012 when Mayor Bloomberg made the claim on "Face The Nation":

Bloomberg’s office pointed us to a 1997 study by the National Institute of Justice on who owns guns and how they use them.The researchers estimated that about 40 percent of all firearm sales took place through people other than licensed dealers. They based their conclusion on a random survey of more than 2,500 households.

That was a 1997 study based on a telephone survey conducted in November and December of 1994; it was a time when passions ran high, following the Whackos in Waco, the 'assault weapons' ban, and the Gingrich-led Republican sweep of Congress in 1994. The study authors note the possibility of non-respondent bias, and we share their concerns - I am not sure that "Hi, I'm calling from the government and I want to ask about your guns" would have been viewed with equal equanimity across the political spectrum in 1994. As an example, the survey found that 35% of households owned guns; Gallup, covering the same time period, was around 50%.

In any case, the survey is now eighteen years old - surely the reality-based community hopes to make a stronger evidence-based claim than that? The survey asked about respondents' method of gun acquisition in 1993 and 1994; the Brady Bill with its instant background checks only went into effect in 1994 (it was a patchwork of state rules before then), so the survey does not even adress the current ground rules.

Here is Mayor Bloomberg's 2011 study, with this self-refuting commentary (my emphasis):

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Chief Policy Advisor John Feinblatt today announced the results of an investigation into internet gun sales, which found a vast and largely unregulated market for illegal guns, with 62 percent of private sellers willing to commit a felony by selling firearms to people who likely could not pass a background check. The investigation probed 10 websites that had 25,000 guns available for purchase and investigators contacted 125 private online gun sellers located in 14 states. The investigation included sellers on Craigslist, which prohibits the sale of firearms in its site according to its posted policies. The investigators clearly noted they probably could not pass a background check during each interaction with a seller. Videos of the illegal sales, including where the investigator meets the seller and the weapon and cash is exchanged, and a report on online gun sales – “Point, Click, Fire” – are available at www.nyc.gov.

So what is proposed in order to thwart these people willing to ignore the current law?

“Congress has to take action to require background checks of all sales..."

And the people willing to sell illegally to a person who couldn't pass a background check will suddenly comply with this new requirement? Why?

This suggestion makes more sense, kind of:

...the websites who profit off of this dangerous unregulated online market can clean up their acts right now.

Well, yes - public pressure might force Craigslist to rethink its approach but given the power of modern search engines I suspect buyers and sellers will figure out other ways to meet online, or in the physical world.

Here is PolitiFacts final non-ruling on Mayor Bloomberg's claim:

Our ruling

Mayor Bloomberg said 40 percent of gun sales take place through gun shows or the Internet.

The best information on the informal gun market is based on a survey and is about 15 years old. Current regulations don’t allow direct tallies of sales of this sort. An undercover investigation found a great deal of internet activity, but it was sponsored by a mayor who seeks greater regulation. Groups opposed to greater regulation were asked to rebut the mayor’s assertion and did not respond.

Yeah, it seems like the editors got ahold of that doesn't it?

Another Bum NY Times/CBS Poll

The NY Times reports on their new gun control poll. This struck me:

[J]ust over half of all respondents, 53 percent, said they would support a ban on some semiautomatic weapons.

Some semiautomatic weapons? Most pistols sold these days are semiautomatic - did the Times really find this kind of support for a handgun quasi-ban?

Let's roll the videotape! Here is the poll question:

A ban on semi-automatic weapons - including "some" pistols? I welcome assistance in finding detailed sales figures but to demonstrate the popularity of semiautomatic handguns lets start here:

Top 10 Handguns depicts nine semiautomatics and the Dirty Harry Smith & Wesson revolver.

Top 10 Handguns for Self-Defense shows one revolver, one derringer, and eight semiautomatics.

The top selling handguns mentioned here are all semiautomatic.

And eventually I will get this BATFE report to open and it will show us manufacturing and export figures. That is not final sales, but it is a useful proxy. Kind of suspenseful right now...

OK - 2.6 million pistols, which will be semiautomatic; 572,857 revolvers.

In any case, the Times managed to ask a very misleading question, which makes me wonder how much stock to put in the answer. I don't think there is broad public support for banning the most popular handguns in America.

FOX ON THE RUN: Ahh! What kind of right-wing noise machine are we running here?

From the latest Fox News poll on gun control:

Banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons: 54% Favor, 42% Oppose.

Well, that dovetails nicely with the Times response. Still a bad question though.

What Are Kids Learning In School These Days?

The NY Times runs an open letter from Heads of Schools Against Gun Violence. New York area headmasters deliver the expected liberal plea, but we wonder about their relationship to the reality-based community:

The United States leads the world in the number of guns per capita; it leads in homicides, suicides and accidental deaths involving guns; and it leads the world in the number of children killed by and with guns, every year. In these grim statistical categories, no nation comes close to our level of violence and gun-related death.

Really? So if I look up Mexico or Brazil I will see they have a lower gun homicide rate? Or are neither Brazil nor Mexico "nations"? Isn't that a bit, hmm, Euro-centric? Or First Worldy, or anyway, something that liberals would deplore if they spotted it in a righty?

The US is a violent country (although the violent crime rate is apparently higher in Britain.) These heads of school could make a perfectly plausible point relying on facts, not fantasy.

BUT DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT: PolitiFact debunked this when it was a Fecebook meme.

Mass Shootings

In the course of researching something else I noticed this NY Times blurb about a 1983 mass killing:

On Feb. 19, 1983, two Hong Kong immigrants, Kwan-Fai (Willie) Mak and Benjamin Ng, shot dead 13 Chinese-American businessmen and gambling dealers in a Seattle gambling club. They were found guilty on 13 murder counts in Seattle in 1983.

More at Wikipedia and Murderpedia.

I mention this not to prepare for a thirtieth anniversary observance but because the shooting is not included in the Mother Jones data base of mass shootings in the US since 1980. And why not? Well, here are their criteria:

The shootings occured in a public place. (Except in the case of a party in Crandon, Wisconsin, and another in Seattle.) Crimes primarily related to gang activity or armed robbery are not included.

So as an armed robbery this was excluded. Interesting. Does that mean they also dropped some banger-on-banger shootouts and executions from the 1990's drug wars? How many (if any?) and could that explain why overall crime has dropped but there is no obvious trend in mass shootings?

An issue here is that we are trying to grasp whether there is a trend in mass shootings, subject to the concern that it is much easier for people to recall (or Google!) the recent past.

And since my launching point was a NY Times article from 1987 recapping earlier mass shootings, let me add this from the same article:

On Sept. 25, 1982, George E. Banks, a prison guard, killed 13 people in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He shot four girlfriends, the five children they bore him, the mother of one of his girlfriends and one of her children, a second child of another girlfriend and a man standing on the street. He was convicted on 13 murder counts on June 21, 1983.

More at Wikipedia and Murderpedia. That is not in the MJ database and I have no idea why not, since they say this about "spree" killers:

We included six so-called "spree killings"—high-profile cases that fit closely with our above criteria for mass murder, but in which the killings occurred in more than one location over a short period of time.

They have more on their criteria here:

• We excluded crimes involving armed robbery or gang violence;
• The attack must have occurred in essentially a single incident, in a public place;
• The killer, in accordance with the FBI guideline, had to have taken the lives of at least four people.

Puzzling. Was Banks excluded because he killed people in their homes rather than in public? Whatever my previous confidence in their data base, it is now lower.

MORE: Mark Hemingway of the Weekly Standard takes issue with MJ.

Is There A Calm Explanation Of The Merits Of The Proposed Assualt Weapons Ban?

The NY Times is surprisingly fair and balanced in explaining the controversies around a proposed "assault weapons" ban. However, by the time they are done they leave us wondering just what the objective is of the folks backing a ban.

The gist:

The most basic criteria have to do with a firearm’s ability to fire multiple rounds quickly. Because of this, the firearms included under any assault weapons ban are usually semiautomatic, meaning that a new round is automatically reloaded into the chamber but is not fired until the trigger is pulled again. The weapons also have detachable magazines, allowing them to fire 10, 20, 30 rounds or more without the need to insert a new magazine.

After that, however, the definition becomes more difficult. In calling for a renewed ban, Mr. Obama on Wednesday singled out “military style” weapons.

Those could include features like a pistol grip, designed to allow a weapon to be fired from the hip; a collapsible or folding stock, which allows the weapon to be shortened and perhaps concealed; a flash suppressor, which keeps the gun’s user from being blinded by muzzle flashes; a muzzle brake, which helps decrease recoil; and a threaded barrel, which can accept a silencer or a suppressor. Bayonet lugs or grenade launchers are also sometimes included.

But there is disagreement about which features are worrisome enough to include in a ban. And existing state bans differ in how many features they allow.

Advocates for an assault weapons ban argue that the military features were intended to enhance the firearms’ ability to kill.

But many gun owners argue that they are simply “cosmetic.” The owners reel off makes and models of firearms — rifles by Saiga and Remington, for example — that are mechanically identical to the weapons singled out by bans but that do not have pistol grips or other styling features.

OK, so banners say the features are dangerous and opponents say they are cosmetic. Will the Times, or anyone else, please gather some experts who can explain to us why flash suppressors, bayonet lugs and fittings for grenade launchers are a serious public safety problem? This Times graphic is a helpful starting point.

I accept that the collapsible stock (especially a folding stock) could aid concealment. The pistol grip seems to have found popularity even in modern hunting rifles, so that may just be an ergonomic thing. Let's cut to Wikipedia:

Tools with pistol grips run the range from hand saws to pneumatic nailers. Often the word "gun" appears in the name of pistol-gripped tools such as the glue gun, caulking gun and nail gun. A number of tools, like firearms, have a forward pistol grip. Drills and grinders often include this feature for added control.

One of the reasons the pistol grip style is so common in machinery is because it is possible to ergonomically position the operating controls. For example, on the AR-15 and M16 rifle, a right handed user's index finger can control the trigger and magazine release, while the thumb can control the safety or fire mode selector switch, all without needing to remove the palm from the grip.

For an example of a hunting rifle with a pistol grip, here is the Remington Model R-15:

Overview:

We created an unrivaled combination of precision accuracy, blazing-fast follow-ups and hunt-specific features. The new R-15 VTR™ modular repeating rifle was born of the most advanced design aspects of AR-15-style rifles available today with a strong emphasis on optimizing form and functionality for the modern predator aficionado. The results are astounding – with very serious implications for every coyote, fox or bobcat that crosses its path.

...

Control comes naturally with the ergonomic pistol grip and lightweight overall design of the R-15. Its uppers and lowers are machined from aluminum forgings for featherweight durability, and the fore-end tube is drilled and tapped for accessory rails. This new family of firearms consists of three models. Each was designed with input from leading predator authorities and decked in the ultra-effective Advantage® MAX-1 HD™ camouflage to blend with sage, open country and a multitude of hunting terrains. All come with five-round magazines and are compatible with all aftermarket AR-15 magazines and other accessories.

I assume the assault weapon banners are somewhat terrified by this weapon due to the pistol grip. But would the lack of a flash suppressor, bayonet lug and grenade launcher mount give them peace of mind if a fellow were brandishing this in a movie theatre? (FWIW, yesterday we posted pics of the benign Ruger Mini 14 Ranch Rifle and the terrifying Ruger Mini 14 Tactical Rifle and we have the same question - which one would you rather see in the hands of an assailant, and why?)

For my money the issue is the detachable magazine. Quick reloading helps people in a home defense situation but it also helps crazed killers.

[Jacob Sullum of Reason has more, including this from a Banner:

An effective law will focus on one prime feature—the ability to accept a high-capacity magazine.

Mr. Sullum explains the problems with that.]

As to whether banning magazines that hold more than ten rounds will be enforceable or effective, well, I assume it will reduce ownership among law-abiding citizens. However, there are millions of larger magazines already in existence, and we are talking about metal boxes with springs - the criminal world that brings us heroin refined from opium, chrystal meth refined from Sudafed, and car parts chopped from live cars can probably make as many bootleg ammunition magazines as they can sell.

Fortunately, rifles are rarely used in homicides, so a magazine ban probably wouldn't provide a statistical blip, effective or otherwise.

ERRATA: Obama is also hoping to remove armor piecring bullets from the market. If I routinely wore a bullet proof vest I would surely back such a move. But one might argue that, paradoxically, folks without vests are MUCH better off getting shot with armor piercing bullets that will pass right through them. Then again, if the police are safer, maybe we will all be safer...

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY... The Times tells us that the politics of the phrase "assault weapon" has changed.

Now:

The label, applied to a group of firearms sold on the civilian market, has become so politicized in recent decades that where people stand on the gun issue can often be deduced by whether they use the term.

...

But Second Amendment groups — and many firearm owners — heatedly object to the use of “assault weapon” to describe guns that they say are routinely used in target shooting and hunting. The term, they argue, should be used only for firearms capable of full automatic fire, like those employed by law enforcement and the military. They prefer the term “tactical rifle” or “modern sporting rifle” for the semiautomatic civilian versions.

And then:

Yet as Mr. Peterson noted in his buyer’s guide, it was the industry that adopted the term “assault weapon” to describe some types of semiautomatic firearms marketed to civilians.

“Assault rifle” was first used to describe a military weapon, the Sturmgewehr, produced by the Germans in World War II. The Sturmgewehr — literally “storm rifle,” a name chosen by Adolf Hitler — was capable of both semiautomatic and full-automatic fire. It was the progenitor for many modern military rifles.

But the term “assault rifle” was expanded and broadened when gun manufacturers began to sell firearms modeled after the new military rifles to civilians. In 1984, Guns & Ammo advertised a book called “Assault Firearms,” which it said was “full of the hottest hardware available today.”

“The popularly held idea that the term ‘assault weapon’ originated with antigun activists, media or politicians is wrong,” Mr. Peterson wrote. “The term was first adopted by the manufacturers, wholesalers, importers and dealers in the American firearms industry to stimulate sales of certain firearms that did not have an appearance that was familiar to many firearm owners. The manufacturers and gun writers of the day needed a catchy name to identify this new type of gun.”

So the NRA has abandoned Hitler's rhetoric but the assault banners have adopted it. Hmm, we are close to a Godwin's Law issue here.

 

Can You Say "Armed Guards In Schools"?

As part of a package of gun control proposals Obama included a nod to the NRA suggestion to put armed guards in schools. Even Rachel Maddow was able to pick up on the ironies:

Maddow then mocked leaders of the NRA for their response to Obama. Among his many proposals and executive actions, the president said the government will help schools "hire more resource officers, if they want them." Maddow pointed out how this approach to school safety was basically what NRA president Wayne LaPierre called for in the wake of the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

However, the Times just can't bring themselves to report that NRA had anything useful to contribute at all.

Here is their front page story on Obama's sweeping proposals; no mention of "school resource officers" or any hint that Obama supports more armed guards in schools. In fact, the Times runs this without rebuttal:

The N.R.A. made clear that it was ready for a fight. Even before the president’s speech, it broadcast a provocative video calling Mr. Obama an “elitist hypocrite” for opposing more armed guards in schools while his daughters had Secret Service protection.

Here is their editoral praising Obama and blasting his oppoinents; no mention of armed guards in schools.

This is from the White House fact sheet:

PUT UP TO 1,000 MORE SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS AND
COUNSELORS IN SCHOOLS AND HELP SCHOOLS IN VEST IN SAFETY

Putting school resource officers and mental health professionals in schools can help prevent school crime and student-on-student violence. School resource officers are specially trained police officers that work in schools. When equipped with proper training and supported by evidence-based school discipline policies, they can deter crime with their presence and advance community policing objectives. Their roles as teachers and counselors enable them to develop trusting relationships with students that can result in threats being detected and crises averted before they occur. School psychologists, social workers, and counselors can help create a safe and nurturing school climate by providing mental health services to students who need help. Not every school will want police officers or additional school counselors, but we should do what we can to help schools get the staff they determine they need to stay safe.

We understand that reporting on the concept of armed guards in schools is awkward for the Times ever since they declared NRA leader Wayne LaPierre delusional for suggesting it, but still - it is their President's plan.

Art To Challenge Thee But Not Me

The Ace goes Hollywood.

Sloppy (But Scary!) Gun Reporting At NY Times

[The Times has subsequently appended a correction.]

The NY Times misoverestimates the possible impact of Obama's proposal to limit ammunition magazines to ten rounds:

The officials said the president will call for a new and tougher ban on military style assault weapons and to limit the number of rounds that can be in a magazine to 10. That would eliminate the 30-round magazines that were used in Newtown as well as other mass shootings at Virginia Tech, a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and a congresswoman’s public event in Tucson, Ariz.

The Virginia Tech shooter, as documented by the commission which studied it, had two handguns and used ten and fiteen round magazines, not thirty rounders. And the panel's thoughts on smaller magazines?

The panel also considered whether the previous federal Assault Weapons Act of 1994 that banned 15-round magazines would have made a difference in the April 16 incidents. The law lapsed after 10 years, in October 2004, and had banned clips or magazines with over 10 rounds. The panel concluded that 10-round magazines that were legal would have not made much difference in the incident. Even pistols with rapid loaders could have been about as deadly in this situation.

So regardless of what the Paper of Record is telling us, the VaTech shooter had some magazines in compliance with the current proposed ban and would not, in the opinion of those who studied it, have been slowed or stopped by the continuation of that ban.

We eagerly await the Times' contributions to a calm, reality-based debate.

TO BE FAIR: Even the Times seemed to grasp that silliness of the "assault weapons" definition when they ran this grapic explaining what turns a hum-drum rifle into a scary "ASSAULT WEAPON". Grenade launcher mounts? Bayonet lugs? Are we having a crisis of mass bayonet charges, or homicidal maniacs getting ahold of grenades?

BY WAY OF EXAMPLE: Here is the Ruger Mini-14 Ranch rifle with a 20 round magazine; here is what is fundamentally the same rifle dressed up as the Ruger tactical rifle. Obama and Biden seem to think that one of these is terrifying and the other no big deal, but I can't see why. I would agree that the folding stock on the tactical rifle could aid in concealment (and the overall weapon is a bit shorter) but the flash suppressor, pistol grip, and bayonet lug won't make the bullets come out faster or hit harder. (Actually, correct me if I am wrong but the shorter barrel should reduce the power and accuracy slightly, for the same ammo.)

FWIW, the ranch rifle is not legal in California, presumably because the magazine is detachable and holds more than ten rounds.

A picture being worth a thousand words, let's check out the calm, Sunday afternoon shooting with the family rifle:

And the SCARY one we need to ban right now because children's lives are in danger:

Later we hope our President will address the incidence of traffic fatalities in this country and talk about a possible ban on rear spoilers, flame decals, and anything else suggesting it is appropriate or acceptable to drive cars in excess of the speed limit. The children!

MORE: More myths here.

NOT PROVEN: The WHite House package explaining their gun control measures includes this:

Limit ammunition magazines to 10 rounds: The case for prohibiting high-capacity magazines has been proven over and over; the shooters at Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, and Newtown all used magazines holding more than 10 rounds, which would have been prohibited under the 1994 law.

Virginia Tech doesn't make their case. I think Tucson, where the shooter was stopped while reloading, does. And Newtown? The shooter had a semiautomatic rifle, two semiautomatic pistols, and enough time to put three to eleven bullets in each victim. I think that because the school lockdown was mostly effective he ran out of targets and eventually, time.

When Life Hands You Policy Lemons...

With unexpected candor the NY Times puts a big smiley face on Obama's likely gun control proposals:

Obama Gun Proposal to Look Beyond Mass Shootings

He's a big picture guy! And we learn why in the opening paragraph:

A new federal assault weapons ban and background checks of all gun buyers, which President Obama is expected to propose on Wednesday, might have done little to prevent the massacre in Newtown, Conn., last month. The semiautomatic rifle that Adam Lanza used to shoot 20 schoolchildren and 6 adults complied with Connecticut’s assault weapons ban, the police said, and he did not buy the gun himself.

So his "solutions" to Newtown wouldn't actually solve Newtown. Well, the Connecticut assault weapon ban does focus on scary cosmetic issues like the presence of a grenade launcher fitting.

But another proposal that Mr. Obama is expected to make could well have slowed Mr. Lanza’s rampage: banning high-capacity magazines, like the 30-round magazines that the police said Mr. Lanza used, which have been factors in several other recent mass shootings.

"Slowed the rampage"? Are they kidding? Left unmentioned by the Times - Adam Lanza had two semiautomatic pistols with him as well as the SA rifle. He also put between three and eleven bullets in each victim, so he did not seem to be pressed for either time or ammunition. And the shooter at Va Tech killed thirty-two people with two handguns and ten and fifteen round magazines. So in the specific case of Adam Lanza, the problem was neither the "assault weapon" (seemingly acquired legally under the Connecticut ban on assault weapons) nor the thirty round magazines.

Well, never let a crisis go to waste! Since Obama's proposals are a bit tangential to the Newtwon shooting, what is his point?

...But some of the proposals that Mr. Obama is expected to make at the White House on Wednesday, which are likely to include a call for expanded background checks, a ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity clips, will be intended not only to prevent high-profile mass shootings, but also to curb the more commonplace gun violence that claims many thousands more lives every year.

“The president has made clear that he intends to take a comprehensive approach,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. Mr. Carney said the proposals were aimed, broadly, at what he called “the scourge of gun violence in this country.”

As Nick Gillespie notes, the scourge of gun violence has been falling for twenty years; if the crisis is random mass shootings (which have been trendless for the last thirty years), maybe the President could respond to that.

The Times dips their toe in the deep waters of reality:

While semiautomatic rifles were used in several recent mass shootings, including those in Newtown and in Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed at a movie theater in July, a vast majority of gun murders in the United States are committed with handguns.

In 2011, 6,220 people were killed by handguns, and 323 by rifles, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So while the administration is expected to try to restrict some types of assault weapons, it is also focusing on ways to keep more commonly used firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals and people with mental illness.

They segue to point/counterpoint on background checks:

The top priority of many gun control groups is to expand the background checks so that they apply to all buyers. All federally licensed firearms dealers are required to run background checks through the computerized databases that comprise the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. But the requirement does not cover guns that are sold by unlicensed sellers at gun shows and in other private sales, which account for about 40 percent of gun purchases in the country.

But...

Better background checks would have had little effect on several recent mass shootings — both Mr. Lanza, in Connecticut, and Jacob T. Roberts, who opened fire on a mall full of Christmas shoppers a few days earlier in Clackamas, Ore., were using weapons that they did not buy. But gun control groups say that expanded background checks would help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals and people with mental illness, and would go a long way toward increasing public safety and could help prevent mass shootings.

Well, it might help. The Webster shooting in upstate NY was perpetrated by a mentally ill felon who was not legally allowed to purchase weapons, so he persuaded a friend to buy some for him. She is being charged with making a false declaration on a Federal form, but how about charging her as a co-conspirator in the crimes committed with the guns she helped purchase? That might require a change in the law (which lets her off the hook) but it would surely give future would-be straw purchasers pause.

Well. For a flavor of the scourge of violence Obama is trying to turn back, let's clip this non-fatal shooting from today's paper:

Judge Rejects Victim’s Plea and Sentences Teenager to 18 Years in Shooting

By RUSS BUETTNER

A Harlem woman who was shot in the stomach by a teenager aiming at rival gang members asked a judge on Tuesday to show leniency in his sentencing.

In a letter that was read in court by the teenager’s lawyer, the victim said that while the shooting had put her and her neighbors “at severe risk,” she also believed the boy had “the potential one day to be a valuable member of the community.”

The teenager, Troy Folk, who was 16 at the time of the shooting and turned 18 on Monday, was convicted by a jury last month of assault and criminal possession of a weapon in the shooting. He faced up to 25 years in prison.

So, how did he get this gun and why was he shooting it?

During the trial last month, Andrew Warshawer, an assistant district attorney, said Mr. Folk and an accomplice, Carl Flournoy, had picked up the gun at the St. Nicholas Houses, where they lived, and set out to taunt members of a rival gang. But they were outnumbered and ran, with the rival gang members in chase.

Mr. Folk turned and fired, Mr. Warshawer told jurors. Though Mr. Folk has maintained that it was Mr. Flournoy who fired the gun, the evidence at the trial included a recorded phone call from Rikers Island in which Mr. Folk said he could escape prosecution “if the woman I shot” did not testify before the grand jury.

And the woman was shot totally by accident as a bystander on the street.

So stricter background checks, crackdowns on straw purchases, and better liason with mental health professionals will help with this sort of behavior?

I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE SECRET SERVICE WAS PROTECTION ENOUGH...

Obama plans to surround himself with children during gun control announcement

 

Mali Or Bust

French troops are on the march in Mali. This is a debacle waiting to happen ongoing debacle and I hope Obama can limit the US involvement to tangential logistic and intelligence support, since our  previous training effort has been a disaster.

Still, the good news is that even if US troops take to the ground it will be a 'kinetic military action' rather than anything like a war, so the War Powers Act won't apply and libs won't need to experience agita about our martial man in the White House.

Duty To Report

The NY Times tells us about the new gun control deal in New York State. I want to highlight the mental health angle:

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and lawmakers agreed on Monday to a broad package of changes to gun laws that would expand the state’s ban on assault weapons and would include new measures to keep guns away from the mentally ill.

...

In an acknowledgment that many people have suggested that part of the solution to gun violence is a better government response to mental illness, the legislation includes not only new restrictions on gun ownership, but also efforts to limit access to guns by the mentally ill.

The most significant new proposal would require mental health professionals to report to local mental health officials when they believe that patients are likely to harm themselves or others. Law enforcement would then be authorized to confiscate any firearm owned by a dangerous patient; therapists would not be sanctioned for a failure to report such patients if they acted “in good faith.”

“People who have mental health issues should not have guns,” Mr. Cuomo told reporters. “They could hurt themselves, they could hurt other people.”

But such a requirement “represents a major change in the presumption of confidentiality that has been inherent in mental health treatment,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, the director of the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, who said the Legislature should hold hearings on possible consequences of the proposal.

“The prospect of being reported to the local authorities, even if they do not have weapons, may be enough to discourage patients with suicidal or homicidal thoughts from seeking treatment or from being honest about their impulses,” he said.

The legislation would extend and expand Kendra’s Law, which empowers judges to order mentally ill patients to receive outpatient treatment.

And it would require gun owners to keep weapons inaccessible in homes where a resident has been involuntarily committed, convicted of a crime or is the subject of an order of protection.

Patients with suicidal or homicidal thoughts? Have they looked at the warning label for Prozac, or similar widely prescribed anti-depressants? From WebMD:

Antidepressant medications are used to treat a variety of conditions, including depression and other mental/mood disorders. These medications can help prevent suicidal thoughts/attempts and provide other important benefits. However, studies have shown that a small number of people (especially people younger than 25) who take antidepressants for any condition may experience worsening depression, other mental/mood symptoms, or suicidal thoughts/attempts.

Based on that, there will plenty of patients that ought to be reported here in Prozac Nation.

Here is a frightening 2004 journal article on the topic of SSRIs and suicidal/homicidal behavior. The author, Dr. Peter Breggin, has an impressive resume and seems to be a crusader against modern drug based psychotherapy. More here.

Maybe If They Put This In The NY Times Magazine...

Micheal Shear and Jennifer Steinhauer of the NY Times write about Obama's latest vision for gun control and drops this crumb for the amusement of gun pedants:

Lawmakers and other officials said that the president could use a public event as soon as Wednesday to signal his intention to engage in the biggest Congressional fight over guns in nearly two decades, focusing on the heightened background checks and including efforts to ban assault weapons and their high-capacity clips.

No, that is not the feared "high magazine clip". , nor is it the Times bug-a-boo, "high capacity ammunition". However, although we know what they meant, "clip" and "magazine" are not interchangeable (a lessson I had beaten into me a few weeks back.)

And let's be fair to the Times - they were trying to translate Obama's press conference back into recognizable English:

...we can do a much better job in terms of keeping these magazine clips with high capacity out of the hands of folks who shouldn’t have them...

Good to know the President is studying this issue and hearing from all sides. Is it too much to ask to expect the President to know what he is banning before he bans it?

Later Can Be Better

NY Times savant John Tierney writes on "The Power of Positive Procrastination".

More later. Or never.

Real Wrath of God Type Stuff...

A MoveOn founder sits down with a Tea Party leader in a quest for common ground:

Joan and I were introduced almost two years ago by a mutual friend, Ralph Benko.  Ralph concluded his introductory email between us with something like this line:  “God help the politicians if the tea party and MoveOn.org ever agree on anything.”   Well the time has come for us to find some agreement.  If you disagree, let me ask you a few questions that I’ve asked many of my friends on the left and right.

How many of you voted for trillion-dollar deficits?   I haven’t yet met the voter who did, yet representatives on both sides of the aisle continue to impose them on us.

How many of you think we have the premier education system in the world, where the dollars and are efforts are focused on our kids?  Hmmm…none of you?  Then why are so many of our politicians on both sides of the aisle wedded to the status quo, and we see so little change?

How many of you think that our criminal justice system is the best in the world, and the War on Drugs has been a tremendous success?  Hmmm…anyone…left or right?  No?  Then why are so many of our incumbent representatives on both sides of the aisle so weak when it comes to making any real criminal justice reforms?

How many of you think that we have far too much unproductive, government mandated paperwork?  Everyone?  Then why can’t we get our elected representatives at all levels to do something about this?

There is much common ground on these and many other issues.  And it is on these things Joan and I are focused, and on which our discussions focused on Saturday. 

The War on Drugs jumps off that list. This war may have made sense forty years ago but art this point my sense is that we are being carried forward by mindless momentum. Republicans want to appear tough on crime, Democrats don't want to appear soft on crime, so the Coalition of the Unwilling lumbers forward with no exit strategy or a plan for victory.

In the current political environment, a don't think a former member go the Choom Gang is the best guy to declare defeat in this war. In fact, just as Nixon, the penultimate anti-Communist, could go to China, abstemious Mitt Romney would have been the perfect guy to de-escalate the Drug War. Bygones.

 

Obama Scaring The Seniors - There He Goes Again

Until we see a transcript (Whiteouse.gov) we will rely on this AP report of the President's presser:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama demanded on Monday that lawmakers raise the nation's $16.4 trillion federal debt limit quickly, warning that "Social Security benefits and veterans' checks will be delayed" if they don't and cautioning Republicans not to insist on cuts to government spending in exchange.

Social Security again? The Social Security Trust Fund lacks the vast powers attributed to it by libs but their notional assets do count as part of Treasury debt for purposes of the debt ceiling. Consequently, if the Trust Fund needs to redeem bonds with Treasury to pay benefits the Treasury ought to have room under the debt ceiling to finance that by issuing an equal amount of bonds to the public. Debt held by the Trust fund will drop, debt held by the public will rise, but total debt for debt ceiling purposes will remain unchanged.

Or at least,that is Congressional intent and the point of the law. Glenn Kessler of the WaPo explored this during the debt ceiling debacle of 2011. His conclusion - it's complicated, it seems to be tied in to the specifics of Treasury cash flow management (payroll tax receipts are not segregated, apparently), and there may be glitches in the structuring of the Trust Fund bonds - typically a bond matures owing both interest and the final principal payment; only the principal is counted in the debt ceiling, so Treasury needs to come up with the cash for the interest portion, which may create an issue when they are out of cash. His bottom line:

The Pinocchio Test

The president obviously does not want to show all of his cards in this high-stakes game of poker. Raising the specter of not issuing Social Security checks is designed to raise pressure on Republicans, but could also cause angst among the elderly.

 At this point the answer is unclear but we become suspicious when politicians begin to use “may,” rather than speak in definitive sentences. If Treasury has the ability to keep paying Social Security benefits, even if the debt limit is reached, the Obama administration should make that clear. The Treasury Department’s new statement begins to add some clarity. We will keep watching how the president speaks about this issue.

Verdict Pending

Hmm - the same geniuses who were able to figure out that the Libyan exercise was not covered by the War Powers Act can't figure out how to follow the law and pay Social Security beneficiaries? Why do we even have Turbo Tax Timmy in Treasury if not to come up with personalized rules to fit the situation? 

 

Former Times Editor "Covers" Gun Owner Privacy

Former Times editor and now op-ed columnist Bill Keller ruminates about the press' right to publish and the public's right to privacy. He includes this tidbit in describing his thought process (my emphasis):

Which brings me back to The Journal News and its gun project. I sympathize with the paper’s effort to dramatize the commonplace reality of gun ownership at a time when the subject is so sadly on our minds. I don’t buy the gun owners’ assertion that the disclosure is an invitation to burglars in search of firearms; on the contrary, the publicity sends criminals the same message as those front-door notices of your home alarm system: Try next door.

He doesn't buy it? Oh, those daffy gun-owners! Of course, maybe he doesn't buy it because he limits his reading to the Times, which seems to have missed the story noted in their down-market rival Newsday:

Journal News gun permit map used by burglars to target White Plains home?

We do note the question mark.

A White Plains residence pinpointed on a controversial handgun permit database was burglarized Saturday, and the burglars' target was the homeowner's gun safe.

At least two burglars broke into a home on Davis Avenue at 9:30 p.m. Saturday but were unsuccessful in an attempt to open the safe, which contained legally owned weapons, according to a law enforcement source. One suspect was taken into custody, the source said.

The gun owner was not home when the burglary occurred, the source said. The victim, who is in his 70s, told Newsday on Sunday that he did not want to comment while the police investigation continues.

...

The homeowner's name and address were included recently on the controversial interactive map of gun permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties published on The Journal News' website.

A suspect is in custody, the matter is under investigation, and there may be no connection. After all, if Willie Sutton could figure out to rob banks becasue that is where the money is, home burglars ought to be capable of a similar leap of logic when they find a home safe.

That said, for Bil Keller to blithlely dismiss a possible connection his paper hasn't even reported strikes me as yet another example of their famous "All The New That Fits The Agenda" reporting.

To be fair, Keller eventually comes out against the gun-owner next door project:

But when you are going to make a sizable population of law-abiding citizens feel violated, you have to ask yourself, what is the offsetting gain? In this case, I think, not much. The information The Journal News provided its readers is so far from complete as to be misleading. The public records identify only legal handguns. They tell you nothing about the neighbor who has an equally legal and equally lethal rifle or shotgun, let alone an illegal weapon. The publication has not spurred a healthy debate; it has merely escalated a shouting match, and given the N.R.A. a new rallying cry. The outcry may even provoke state legislatures to withdraw gun databases from public records, so they will not be available when they might really be useful. It’s a close call, but I’d have found a different way to make the point.

A close call? Well, if we poo-pooh the fear of legal permit holders becoming targeted, it may seem close.

Leadership That's Working

This is a great job by Charlie out in Colorado.

No Sale On Coin. Not To Say I Told You So...

From Ezra Kelin's Wonkblog, the death jingle of the Trillion Dollar idea that never quite arrived:

The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it.

That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said.

The inclusion of the Federal Reserve is significant. For the platinum coin idea to work, the Federal Reserve would have to treat it as a legal way for the Treasury Department to create currency. If they don’t believe it’s legal and would not credit the Treasury Department’s deposit, the platinum coin would be worthless.

The notion that the Fed, as buyer, might actually be entitled to an opinion is news? From Just One Gloat a few days back:

[E]ven if the Treasury can find lawyers willing to sign an opinion blessing their sale of the coin, the Fed will not want to find lawyers blessing their purchase of it. The Fed will want to protect their turf, duck an obvious Executive-Legislative struggle, and stay away from a coin the legality of which is far from obvious. No Sale.

Ezra Klein provides a summary of the history of the coin idea but is not feeling sufficiently wonky to tackle the legal issue. We can help.

As to the legality, an informed reading of the controversial text makes it pretty clear that this idea was implausible. Here we go, my emphasis, starting with the relevant passage of the law on coins:

(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary's discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

"Bullion coin" has a specific meaning in the world of coins; here is the US Mint definition:

A bullion coin is a coin that is valued by its weight in a specific precious metal.

A bullion coin is valued by the weight of its metal, not its face amount. For example, the Gold American Eagle contains one ounce of gold, making it worth over $1,600 at current prices. But its face amount is a mere $50, so there is no seigniorage.

By this criteria, a trillion dollar platinum coin would need to contain a trillion dollar's worth of platinum (which doesn't exist) and would weigh roughly 18,000 tons.

And a proof platinum coin? Well, proof coins are simply specially produced, cosmetically enhanced strikings of conventional circulating, commemorative or bullion coins produced for the collecting market. This concise definition comes from a coin site:

Proof Coins are specially made examples of regular issue coins historically used as gifts or for presentation.

In over 200 years of operation there are many examples of coins the US Mint has struck only in conventional form. However, they have never (as best I can glean from paging through two coin guides at my local library) struck a proof coin that does not have a conventional counterpart.

So this law authorizes the Secretary to (hypothetically) strike a Proof Platinum Quarter, as a beautiful collector's piece with a face value of $0.25. Or they could strike a beautiful proof version of their one ounce Platinum Bullion coin, with a face value of $100.

But since there is no Trillion Dollar Platinum coin, an enhanced version of that coin can't be called into being without violating the conventional meaning of "proof coin" and 200 years of Mint practice.

Well - that was my sense of the legal landscape, although Laurence Tribe of Harvard disagreed. I infer that Treasury and Fed lawyers came out closer to my view.

I should note that Coiner Paul Krugman remains in denial despite the Treasury statement and his presumed ability to read a one-sentence law and consult a reference or two to pin down the meanings of "bullion coin" and "proof coin":

The thing is, the coin option sounds silly, but it clearly obeys the letter of the law. As far as I can tell, none of the other options — other than outright surrender — has the same virtue.

Krugman's critique of the Administration's negotiating strategy would stagger off in a very different direction if he took the trouble to figure out whether the Trillion Dollar coin is likely to be deemed to be legal. Oh, well, I guess even Obama-bashing is more fun than researching - Laurence Tribe didn't do the homework, and now Krugman won't pause and check Tribe's work. Did I say "Echo chamber", Echo chamber, echo chamber... Yes I did, did, did...

IN AN UNCHARACTERISTIC MOMENT OF HUMILITY... Kevin Drum has been an ardent coin skeptic from day one; his post pointed the way to the bullion and proof problem. And Edmund Moy, a former director of the Mint, buried the bullion coin concept in this guest piece at CNBC but spent less time on the 'proof' question.

Back To Gun Control Safety

Joe Biden knows "there is no silver bullet" to reduce gun violence but he is "shooting" for a proposal by next Tuesday.

File this under 'Thank Heaven for Science' (my emphasis):

Only no one really knows what video game violence does to children and adults. Studies sway between simple causation and direct correlation.

Researchers at the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have pointed to numerous reports that show a causal connection between media violence and antagonistic behavior. A study published in Developmental Psychology last year recognized increased aggression with children who play video games.

But a 2008 study by Harvard professors found that most children who played M-rated video games did not exhibit hostile behavior.

And in related news, most gun owners don't go off on murderous rampages. Problem Solved! Or maybe, if video games are tipping one person in a hundred into madness, we have a problem.

When I have more time I hope to spin the full tirade but for now, do keep in mind various points that have been abandoned as Washington and the media chase the current "crisis":

1. The Trend is Your Friend: Crimes rates have been plunging in this country for twenty years. If increased gun ownership and violent video games are the problem, why is crime down?

2. OK, Maybe The Lack Of A Trend Is Not Your Friend: Per crime expert Alan Fox, the incidence of mass shootings has been roughly trendless for the last thirty years. Why are they resisting the overall downward trend in crime?

Possible answers might include de-institutionalization of the mentally ill, increased use of psychotropic drugs, and increased popularity of desensitizing video games propping up the mass shooting rate at a time when other forces should be pushing it down.

3. Not To Be Tedious, But Just What Is The Problem? Handgun homicides account for about 10,000 deaths per year; all rifles (with "assault weapons" as a subset) account for about 400; shotguns are another 400 and "Unclassified" is about 1,200 (sorry for the no-links, that is my steel-trap wool memory reciting the FBI UCR stats.) If we are talking about reducing gun violence, surely we should be looking at handguns rather than rifles cosmetically tricked up to look like a cool Hollywood prop.

4. There Is No Trust: The NY Times had a LOL article a while back exhorting gun owners to calm down - following the 2008 Heller decision, the Supreme Court now recognizes that the Constitution protects the right to own guns. In TimesWorld, this means that with ownership secure, gun owners should stop worrying about confiscation and be constructive on topics like a national ownership database.

For heaven's sake - in the last few months the Times has also run repeated editorials reminding their readership that the election of Mitt Romney could change the Supreme Court, with Roe v. Wade hanging in the balance. Gee - Roe v. Wade is forty years old and still tenuous. Yet 'Heller', a 5-4 decision, is rock solid and won't be threatened if Obama manages to replace one of the conservative justices.

Really? Obama wouldn't 'evolve' on that topic and decide he opposes it? Justices Ginsburg and Breyer won't need to evolve, since they were on the short side in 2008, and Kagan and Sotomayor will need to find their inner liberal and vote to overturn. Tough call.

And it's not like 'stare decisis' will be a problem, as Lawrence v Texas (2003) and Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) illustrate. When the liberal winds are blowing precedent gets blown away.

As to how our government could persuade the citizenry that their rights are secure and confiscation is not an option, well, I may come back to that. But let me continue this non-tirade...

5. Nobody Will Be Shooting Any Law Officers or Tyrants. The Revolution Will Be Tweeted. This sort of talk - "I’m not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I’m going to start killing people” - is insane. And these impressive arguments about natural law lead to a daft conclusion:

To assure that no government would infringe the natural rights of anyone here, the Founders incorporated Jefferson’s thesis underlying the Declaration into the Constitution and, with respect to self-defense, into the Second Amendment.

Well, yes, 'Heller' spoke to legal self-defense, not armed insurrection.

There have been practical historical reasons for the near universal historical acceptance of the individual possession of this right. The dictators and monsters of the 20th century -- from Stalin to Hitler, from Castro to Pol Pot, from Mao to Assad -- have disarmed their people, and only because some of those people resisted the disarming were all eventually enabled to fight the dictators for freedom. Sometimes they lost. Sometimes they won.

The principal reason the colonists won the American Revolution is that they possessed weapons equivalent in power and precision to those of the British government.

Please, nobody is going to be shooting law enforcement officers or going up against tanks, helicopters, artillery and automatic weapons with a semi-automatic rifle kitted out to scare Diane Feinstein and impress Arnold.

And I recently saw folks mentioning that tyranny in the US is a real possibility, citing the Japanese internment during WWII as an example. Work with me here - worried that the Japanese civilian population in the US represented a dangerous 'enemy within' we passed a deplorable law interning the Japanese in America. Fortunately, they had not availed themselves of their gun right so they went peacefully.

But had they armed themselves and fought back, we would have... concluded that they really weren't that menacing and let the whole thing slide? Really? My guess is we would have gone to a Plan B involving severely escalated violence.

Or maybe there is a deterrent factor to the armed civilian population concept - if we had known the Japanese civilians were heavily armed we would have concluded that they really weren't so menacing, or that neutralizing the possible threat would be too painful, so we would just let them carry on. Again, really?

Look, if the majority in this country really takes into their head the notion of oppressing a minority, the minority is in dire trouble (which is essentially the situation of roughly every minority in history). We could look to the Mormons as a different example, and wonder about their odd treatment in a country founded on religious liberty.

As a practical matter, gun owners need to ask themselves just how close they are to oppressed minority status in their area. My impression is that some of the people screaming the loudest have the least to worry about.

Did Jefferson write "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants"? Yes, but he went on to suggest it must also be refreshed from time to time with bullshit. Or could have.

Guns for lawful self-defense - fine. Guns for hunting and sporting recreation - fine. Guns as preparation against the day we rebel against our governmen? That sort of talk sounds crazy and will only energize the already-committed. Please don't expect to win many converts with it.

LEFT UNSAID: The rationale for our alcohol laws is that a ban would be ineffective, most people enjoy it responsibly, and if 80,000 deaths per year are alcohol-related, well, waddya gonna do? That logic follows a similar course to the logic of the video game manufacturers (where the death toll is obviously lower and less directly linked, if at all), violent movie makers, and gun makers. Hey, people like violent video games, gory movies, and shooting at targets, and who are we to say them nay, even if a few extra deaths are a predictable consequence? No fair asking me if I have any point here other than the absurd inconsistency of our national 'conversation'.

Before Cashing Out My Coins

Matt Yglesias is a one-man wrecking crew in an epic battle against reality. His launch point was the Trillion Dollar coin concept, and he delivers not one but two missiles of misinformation today.

His first launch:

The Platinum Coin Was Intended To Generate Seigniorage

No, not really at all. What is "seigniorage"? It is the added value that attaches to a bit of metal (or paper) when the government deems it to be legal tender. For example, a few cents worth of copper and bronze are stamped and boom - we have a quarter worth $0.25.

But platinum is part of the US bullion coin program, along with silver, gold and palladium. Using gold as an example, the Mint takes an ounce of gold worth maybe $1,600, stamps it with a face amount of $50 and boom - sells it for $50, thereby losing $1,550. NO!

They sell it for $1,600 plus a mark-up for production, marketing and administration. But that magic stamp of $50 isn't why they can sell the coin for more than $1,600 - it's the gold!

With the bullion coin program the Mint makes money by banging out their precious metal coins more cheaply than the Canadians can deliver their Maple Leafs, the Australians their Koalas, the Chinese their Pandas, and so on. How does General Motors make money? Seigniorage or great products? Yeah, this is America!

The US does make seigniorage on its circulating coins (the stuff in your pockets). Let's cut to the Mint's annual report:

The United States Mint (Mint) operates two fiscally separate programs: a circulating program and a numismatic program that includes both collectible coin products and precious metal bullion coins. The Mint enjoyed strong performance throughout fiscal year (FY) 2012 in both programs. Though revenue decreased in each program in FY 2012, as a result of our continued focus on costs, we generated positive seigniorage in our circulating program and positive net income in our bullion and collectible coin programs.

There is one bit of crossover - the Mint markets collectible editions of conventional circulating coins (such as proof sets of the new quarters.) Those coins don't circulate but they do produce seigniorage gains. However, that is not part of the bullion program.

So no, the platinum program was never intended to produce siegniorage profits.

And the next comic caper:

Fox News Doesn't Understand How Coins Work

What did those dumb bunnies say? Matt shows us a graphic in which Fox News explained that a Trillion Dollar Platinum coin would weigh 17,773.995 tons, equal to 89 blue whales or one nuclear sub. Har de har! Back to Matt:

Here's Fox News confusing the idea of a coin-shaped pile of platinum worth $1 trillion and a $1 trillion coin that happens to be made out of platinum and can be of any size. We saw earlier this week that the National Republican Campaign Committee also doesn't understand how coins work, so perhaps I can try again to explain.

You know what? Let me try to explain. The law we are looking at says that "(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins..."

And what is a "bullion coin" you might ask, although Matt has not? Let's go to the Mint for a definition (my emphasis):

A bullion coin is a coin that is valued by its weight in a specific precious metal. Unlike commemorative or numismatic coins valued by limited mintage, rarity, condition and age, bullion coins are purchased by investors seeking a simple and tangible means to own and invest in the gold, silver, and platinum markets.

"Valued by its weight"? Like the way a $50 gold coin can be worth $1,600? Gee, that means a One Trillion Dollar Platinum Bullion coin would have to weigh... as much as a nuclear sub. Har de har indeed.

Hmm. Maybe the Foxies are still wrong even though they are right about bullion coins. After all, maybe the Secretary could produce a "proof platinum coin". But what is that?

The long answer is at the bottom of this earlier post. The short answer is that 'proof' coins refer to enhanced production techniques that result in great looking coins. However, as best I can tell from looking at the product offerings at the Mint or by reading the law on coins, "proof" coins always have their conventional counterpart.

[Or let me cite this handy defintion from "The Coin Site":

Proof Coins are specially made examples of regular issue coins historically used as gifts or for presentation.]

More on the history of proof coins issued in the US here. The gist - as best I can tell (but I have only paged through two books at the library and do not claim a numismatist), there are examples of conventional coins being struck without accompanying proof versions for collectors, but there are no examples of proof coins being struck for which there is no conventional circulating, commemorative or bullion counterpart. Which is consistent with the defintion provided above.]

For example, in addition to conventional circulating quarters like the ones jinggling in your pocket the Mint makes proof quarters of conventional metal for collectors (very pretty!) and Silver Proof quarters that will knock your eyes out. The Silver Proof quarters are worth about $8 each based on the silver content, but have a face value of $0.25. No seigniorage there.

Or here is an example of how "proof" is used elsewhere in the law:

(6) Quality of coins.—The bullion coins minted under this Act shall be issued in both proof and uncirculated qualities.

There are many similar examples, and please note the pairing of "proof" with a conventional counterpart (in this example, uncirculated).

The point being, under the one-sentence law governing platinum coins, the normal meaning of "proof platinum coin" would simply be the proof version of a platinum bullion coin or the proof platinum version of some circulating coin (e.g., a platinum proof dollar).

In either case, however, we are talking about a Trillion Dollar coin that can't exist - we don't have 18,000 tons of platinum for a bullion coin, proof version or no, and we don't have a circulating trillion dollar coin we can spruce up in platinum.

In principal, the phrase "proof platinum coin" has a fairly clear meaning distinct from "platinum coin"; it is also pretty clear that Matt has no idea what that meaning might be, and I am not fully pounding the table myself. But Laurence Tribe had this to say in endorsing the Trillion Dollar coin:

Using the statute this way doesn’t entail exploiting a loophole; it entails just reading the plain language that Congress used.

"Plain language"?

...

Of course, Congress probably didn’t have trillion-dollar coins in mind, but there’s no textual or other legal basis for importing this probable intention into the statute. What 535 people might have had in their collective “mind” just can’t control the meaning of a law this clear.

How clear is it? "Proof platinum coin" surely means something different from "platinum coin". "Bullion coin" certainly does. So how do the Coiners propose that we glean the meaning of that phrase? I think history, common practice, and legislative intent would be sensible places to start if we really can't agree that proof sets of coins don't exist except alongside conventional counterparts.

AND SPEAKING OF CLEAR LANGUAGE: Elsewhere in the law there are fairly specific definitions the shape of a coin as to weight, diameter and edging. Yet in the one sentence on platinum coins we are told that the Secretary has full discretion to issue coins

"...with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary's discretion, may prescribe from time to time."

So can the Secretary exert his discretion to authorize issuance of a six-side cube with graphics of the American landscape? I say no, because even though it is not defined here, a "coin" is not a die, and we all know it. As to what the Coiners would say, I am not so sure.

CHIPS, PLEASE... We are moving on - it is all about IOUs now. But Ann Althouse thumps Matt on the eay out the door.

Coin Out, IOUs In

Bother - just as I finish my trillion-pixel demolition of the legal case for the Trillion Dollar platinum coin, a new dodge emerges. Prospective defenders of The Coin will simply move on to advocating for the IOU solution and there will be no surrender ceremony on the coin.

I note that Krugman had spoken up for Moral Obligation Coupons on Monday, so people have begun the MOCking already. As to the IOU plan, it does not at first blush grab me as illegal, but we will all learn more as time passes by.

I do have this quibble with Edward Kleinbard, a University of Southern California law professor and former chief of staff to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation who writes this:

However, there is a plausible course of action, one that the president should publicly adopt in the coming weeks as his contingency plan should debt-ceiling negotiations falter. He should threaten to issue scrip — “registered warrants” — to existing claims holders (other than those who own actual government debt) in lieu of money. Recipients of these I.O.U.’s could include federal employees, defense contractors, Medicare service providers, Social Security recipients and others.

Despite Obama's scare-mongering last summer Social Security payments ought to be covered by the interplay of the Trust Fund with the debt ceiling. Remember, Social Security assets held in the Trust Fund are counted as part of the debt ceiling. If the Trustees redeem Trust Fund assets and the Treasury pays then back by selling debt to the public then (a) debt held by the Trust Fund falls; (b) debt held by the public rises; and (c) total debt remains unchanged. (Yes, I am well aware of the lmiitations of the Trust Fund mechanism).

 

This Just In, And Thank Heaven For Science

British tax dollars at work:

High Heels Give Women More Attractive Gait

Up next, a covariate study for which they need research volunteers - does tanning make women more attractive? And why bikinis? Hit the beach!

 

How To Lose A Country In Ten Years

Frederick and Kimberly Kagan write about a lost decade in Afghanistan. And they mean the next decade, not the last one.

Especially given the reelection of Obama I stand by this 'Know When To Fold 'Em' post from the summer of 2010:

My official editorial position is that if we had Lincoln in the White House, the Afghani equivalent of George Washington in Kabul, and Generals Marshall and Eisenhower peering at maps of Kandahar, we might still lose in Afghanistan.  Gen. Petraeus is a great general and a great American, but he is not partnered with Lincoln and Washington.

Conversely, we might be lucky enough to win even without a President committed to victory, but I don't think it is worth the chance.  It's too late now, but it would have been better if Obama had never escalated the war.

 

Regulatory Capture, But So Quickly?

The foxes have taken over the henhouse before the birds could even fluff their feathers. From the Captain:

Now the CFPB [Consumer Financial Protection Board] has released its first set of mortgage rules, ostensibly to protect consumers — and conservatives may like what they see, at least conceptually if not organizationally:

Quoting the WaPo now:

The government is establishing new rules for mortgages that will make it harder for some borrowers to qualify but that are designed to prevent the kind of risky lending that nearly caused the housing market to collapse during the financial crisis.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday will roll out the first of several far-reaching changes to the nation’s mortgage market, limiting upfront fees and curtailing practices such as interest-only payments that can leave homeowners stuck with unsustainable loans. The agency also will set standards for how much income a consumer must have to obtain a mortgage.

And back to the Captain:

In other words, the government is going to force lenders to stick to rules they liked before the government forced them to stop using them.

Well, sure. Staid old-line banks will like using the goverment to force potential competitors into line. And all the banks will like the new protection against red-lining type CRA lawsuits.

That is slick marketing by the Dems. If Republicans had announced they were going to reform banking by limiting access by poorer people, Dems would have howled. But the new Dem plan is to protect consumers by shoving them out of the bank lobby and back onto the street.

And Yet, Laurence Tribe Is Wrong On The Trillion Dollar Coin

Paul Krugman is delighted to see Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe declare the Trillion Dollar coin to be legal.

It's interesting to see the left wing echo chamber in action, but since Prof. Tribe didn't do his homework he got the wrong answer.

Kevin Drum, a lonely lefty on this topic, pointed the way to the answer yesterday - the key is the meaning of "bullion coin" in the controversial language of the law:

(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary's discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

People like Prof. Tribe are focusing on the Treasury Secretary's discretion in setting denominations without worrying that the phrase "bullion coin" might actually have meaning. Here we go, from the US Mint:

A bullion coin is a coin that is valued by its weight in a specific precious metal. Unlike commemorative or numismatic coins valued by limited mintage, rarity, condition and age, bullion coins are purchased by investors seeking a simple and tangible means to own and invest in the gold, silver, and platinum markets.

Well, that is the common, widely understood definition. Do words lose their meaning when Congress puts them in a law? Probably not. And that might be why people who read the law and know what the words mean realize we are talking about one large coin.

With gold, silver and palladium coins Congress specified that the sales price must be the bullion value plus a premium to cover striking and marketing costs. That language was dropped for platinum, leaving the phrase "bullion coin" to carry the meaning. We hope it is up to the challenge!

Well. On one side is Congressional intent (as illustrated by the first draft of the bill), historic practice, and the conventional meaning of the phrase "bullion coin". On the other side is a burning desire to slide past the debt ceiling. Treasury lawyers will never sign off on the sale of this coin; even if they do, Fed lawyers will never sign off on the Fed purchase.

And lest anyone hope to hang their Trillion Dollar hat on the phrase "proof coin", that won't work either - a 'proof coin' in this context is an enhanced version of the bullion coin. From the Mint glossary:

Proof: a specially produced coin made from highly polished planchets and dies and often struck more than once to accent the design.  Proof coins receive the highest quality strike possible and can be distinguished by their sharpness of detail and brilliant, mirror-like surface.

[Or let me cite this handy defintion from "The Coin Site":

Proof Coins are specially made examples of regular issue coins historically used as gifts or for presentation.]

More on the history of proof coins issued in the US here. The gist - as best I can tell (but I have only paged through two books at the library and do not claim to be a numismatist), there are examples of conventional coins being struck without accompanying proof versions for collectors, but there are no examples of proof coins being struck for which there is no conventional circulating, commemorative or bullion counterpart. So more than two hundred years of Mint history and practice is consistent with the defintion provided above.]

My suggestion is that Prof. Tribe ask one of his students to take ten minutes to study this. Then we will get an answer that reflects the language used in the law.

LEGAL ADVICE FROM JON ADLER: Prof. Adler of the Volokh Conspiracy likes the bullion coins argument (in an update to his post) but thinks I am waving my hands on the "proof coins" concept. Well, halfway home is well begun!

At CNBC, a former mint director (Edmund Moy was the 38th director of the United States Mint, serving under Presidents Bush and Obama) makes the bullion coin argument then also waves his hands when he comes to proof coins. Troubling...

First, it may be legal to mint a platinum bullion coin with a $1 trillion face value, but it's not legal to pass it off as actually worth $1 trillion if there isn't $1 trillion of platinum in it. That's because it's a bullion coin and not a legal circulating coin.

...Third, the current law does allow the Mint to make a platinum proof coin and does not specify whether this applies to a bullion coin or a circulating coin. A proof coin refers to a mirror-like finish and is made for coin collectors. However, a proof coin must be accepted at face value. Some have argued that the law can be stretched to allow for a platinum circulating coin, but this would not be consistent with the intent of the original legislation.

I think we all agree as to intent. My question, or point, would be that normally a proof coin parallels the 'regular' version - proof quarters look like better quarters, proof gold coins look like better gold bullion coins, and so on. Are there any examples or anything at all to suggest that a fair reading of "platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins" would refer to bullion coins and distinct circulating proof coins that have no bullion or base counterpart?

In support of my position I will cite the "proof silver quarters" that were beautiful silver versions of the circulating state commemorative quarters. The silver version had a face value of $0.25, but the market value was much higher (then and now). [I continue to belabor this 'proof' question in an update below.]

WOW: Here is a very deep legal objection to the coin that reflects a lot more research than Laurence Tribe did, and which I am not qualified to evaluate in short order. The gist:

The Federal Reserve would receive a coin on which would yield a profit of $1 trillion dollars based on the concept of seigniorage, which is the difference between the cost to produce the coin and the "face value" of the money stamped on it by the U.S. Mint.  However, under the rules of both the American Eagle program and other commemorative programs, the coin does not become "legal tender" until the U.S. Mint is paid for the coin with other legal tender or an appropriately valued amount of bullion.  Until the U.S. Mint was paid, the Federal Reserve would possess a rather beautiful coin worth only about $1,700, representing the intrinsic value of the platinum contained therein.

Who knew? Well, I can't confirm that. Apparently there are court cases:

In the recent case of the government confiscation of 1933 Saint-Gauden Double Eagle gold coins from the heirs of Israel Swift, the court ruling confirmed the validity of the legal tender concept.  In the court ruling, Judge Davis cites precedents, including the government's original case against Israel Swift in 1934, and confirmed that until a U.S. Mint coin is bought and paid for, the coin is not considered to be legal tender.  The concept of a coin not becoming legal tender until it was paid for was further confirmed in the sale of the Fenton-Farouk 1933 Double Eagle gold coin.  When the Double Eagle was sold on July 30, 2002, for $7.6 million, an additional $20 was required to be paid to "monetize" the face value of the coin in order for it to become legal currency.

More on the Farouk-Fenton Double Eagle at Wikipedia, including this:

On July 30, 2002, the 1933 double eagle was sold to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby's auction held in New York for $6.6 million, plus a 15-percent buyer's premium, and an additional $20 needed to “monetize” the face value of the coin so it would become legal currency, bringing the final sale price to $7,590,020.00, almost twice the previous record for a coin [link to CNN].

Moving on, one wonders how the Treasury could pay the mint for a Trillion Dollar coin?

To offset the liability to the U.S. Mint, the U.S. Treasury would have sell $1 trillion in bonds which can’t legally be done due to the limits placed on its borrowing capacity by the debt ceiling limit.  The idea of a $1 trillion platinum coin becomes a fatally flawed solution that solves nothing.

Hmm, could the Fed buy it direct from the Mint? I think that any change in the standard rules and procedures for moving coins and money would invalidate the whole concept, but I am not by any means up to speed on just what the standard practice and bookkeeping looks like when moving coins from the Mint to the Treasury to the Fed. Some law starts here.

Fascinating.

ERRATA: The statutory sale price for First Spouse gold coins includes this detail, which jibes with the notion of paying the face value as part of the sale price:

(4) Sale of bullion coins.—Each bullion coin issued under this subsection shall be sold by the Secretary at a price that is equal to or greater than the sum of—

(A) the face value of the coins; and

(B) the cost of designing and issuing the coins (including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, overhead expenses, marketing, and shipping).

DO REMEMBER THE GROUND RULES: The Coiners carry the legal day if they can demonstrate that the text of the law is clear as read. The Intentionalists (my side) win if we can muddy the waters as to the meaning of the text sufficiently to oblige a judge (or opining attorney) to open the door to Congressional intent to resolve the language dispute. Let me quote Laurence Tribe:

Of course, Congress probably didn’t have trillion-dollar coins in mind, but there’s no textual or other legal basis for importing this probable intention into the statute. What 535 people might have had in their collective “mind” just can’t control the meaning of a law this clear.

Well, the textual basis for arguing that "bullion coins" means something important has been established. As to "proof platinum coins", the Intentionalists don't need to show that "proof coins" must mean something more than "coins" and that the distinction disqualifies the Trillion Dollar coin; we only need to show that such a construction is reasonable, and that Congressional intent and past practice must be referenced to clarify the meaning.

So, a definition: at About.com we learn that:

Definition: A proof coin is a coin struck using a special, high-quality minting process, and made especially for collectors...

You should never see proof coins in circulation, because they are made for collectors, and sold by the mint for more than face value.

That helps the Intentionalists.

Here is the US Mint describing their 'proof' gold coins:

The term "proof" refers to a specialized minting process that begins by manually feeding burnished coin blanks into presses fitted with special dies. Each coin is struck multiple times so the softly frosted, yet detailed images seem to float above a mirror-like field.

Nothing to suggest that some coins are struck only in 'proof' condition. In fact, the clear suggestion is that proof coins are a subset of a larger coin group. That helps the Intentionalists, since the Trillion Dollar plan seems to be to strike one (or more) 'proof' platinum coins that have no circulating or bullion counterpart. Very unusual practice, and surely not what 'proof' means.

Here is the US Mint describing their platinum proof coins (and you can't make this up):

In 2009, the United States Mint introduced a new six-year platinum coin program. This new series explores the core concepts of American democracy by highlighting the preamble of the U. S. Constitution.  It will examine the six principles found in the preamble beginning with "To Form a More Perfect Union" in 2009, followed by "To Establish Justice" in 2010, "To Insure Domestic Tranquility" in 2011, "To Provide for the Common Defence" in 2012, "To Promote the General Welfare" in 2013...

Cool - a trillion dollar coin to "promote the general welfare". And to compound the ironies, the 2012 coin was totally not PC:

The 2012 reverse (tails) design is emblematic of the principle "To Provide for the Common Defence," the fourth of six principles of American democracy found in the Preamble to the United States Constitution....it features a vigilant minuteman from the Revolutionary War representing the protection and defense of the country during its early days.  The minuteman carries a rifle and a book, which symbolizes the importance of knowledge in defending our Nation.

I am pretty sure the rifle signifies the importance of an armed citizenry. Awkward messaging. But I digress. None of these proof coins exist independently of underlying bullion coins, so again, score one for the Intentionalists.

Finally, let's turn to the law on coins. The phrase "proof" appears a few times, and I think we can reasonably attempt to infer its meaning from its other uses. Here we go, the first of many cites:

(C) The Secretary may continue to mint and issue coins in accordance with the specifications contained in paragraphs (7), (8), (9), and (10) of subsection (a) and paragraph (1)(A) of this subsection at the same time the Secretary in minting and issuing other bullion and proof gold coins

The next cite contemplates proof and conventional versions of a coin:

(j) General Waiver of Procurement Regulations.—

(1) In general.—Except as provided in paragraph (2), no provision of law governing procurement or public contracts shall be applicable to the procurement of goods or services necessary for minting, marketing, or issuing any coin authorized under paragraph (7), (8), (9), or (10) of subsection (a) or subsection (e), including any proof version of any such coin.

Next, our headliner:

(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins...

The next cite contemplates proof and conventional issuance:

(6) Issuance.—

(A) Quality of coins.—The Secretary may mint and issue such number of quarter dollars of each design selected under paragraph (4) in uncirculated and proof qualities as the Secretary determines to be appropriate.

So far, so good for the Intentionalists. The next is another pairing of proof and conventional coins:

(7) Issuance of numismatic coins.—The Secretary may mint and issue such number of $1 coins of each design selected under this subsection in uncirculated and proof qualities as the Secretary determines to be appropriate.

The next cite is another pairing of proof and conventional coins:

(6) Quality of coins.—The bullion coins minted under this Act shall be issued in both proof and uncirculated qualities.

Yet another pairing of proof and conventional coins:

(q) Gold Bullion Coins.—

(1) In general.—Not later than 6 months after the date of enactment of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, the Secretary shall commence striking and issuing for sale such number of $50 gold bullion and proof coins as the Secretary may determine to be appropriate...

More - this is a bit of nuts and bolts:

(B) Design.—The protective covering required under subparagraph (A) shall be readily distinguishable from any coin packaging that may be used to protect proof coins minted and issued under this subsection.

Yet another pairing of proof and conventional coins:

(4) Issuance of numismatic coins.—The Secretary may mint and issue such number of $1 coins of each design selected under this subsection in uncirculated and proof qualities as the Secretary determines to be appropriate.

The next cite addresses the Washington DC coin with another pairing of proof and conventional coins:

(5) Quality.—The Secretary may issue the coins described in paragraph (1) in both proof and uncirculated versions...

Where's the proof? West Point:

(7) Mint facility.—Any United States mint, other than the United States Mint at West Point, New York, may be used to strike coins minted under this subsection other than any proof version of any such coin. If the Secretary determines that it is appropriate to issue any proof version of such coin, coins of such version shall be struck only at the United States Mint at West Point, New York.

Here is a finding in the 1997 amendments that brought us to this unhappy place; the context is the proposal to do a silver proof version (at a nice premium) of the conventional quarter:

(3) a circulating commemorative 25-cent coin program could produce earnings of $110,000,000 from the sale of silver proof coins and sets over the 10-year period of issuance, and would produce indirect earnings of an estimated $2,600,000,000 to $5,100,000,000 to the United States Treasury, money that will replace borrowing to fund the national debt to at least that extent.

Finally, a comment on the 50 States program, again keyed off of conventional quarters:

(A) Quality of coins.—The Secretary may mint and issue such number of quarter dollars of each design selected under paragraph (4) of this subsection in uncirculated and proof qualities...

I think it is more than fair to argue that "proof coins" meant something to Congress when it was written, and if we respect the meaning of those words the Trillion Dollar coin is out of bounds. In virtually every other usage "proof" is taken to mean an enhanced subset of a larger coin series. Yet there is no way this law allows a trillion dollar bullion coin (absent a trillion dollars worth of platinum) and there are no circulating trillion dollar coins awaiting their proof partners, as we have with the silver poof editions of conventional quarters.

 

He's Ready For The Clown Suit

[Kevin Drum suggests and I strongly concur that the language seemingly enabling the Trillion Dollar Coin does no such thing - briefly, "bullion coin" has a meaning upon which Congress relied in drafting the law. See "BEFORE THEY STRIKE THAT COIN THEY BETTER GET THE US MINT ON BOARD", after the opening frivolity.]

Paul Krugman explained that as long as we can get comfortable with the idea of our Treasury Secretary briefly donning a clown suit to save the country, we should be ducky with the idea of the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin.

Well, the reported new Treasury Secretary will be Obama's chief of staff, Jack Lew. Ryan Lizza has a pic of the signature that will soon grace our currency, and I think we can all agree that the clown suit will fit him well.

At this point I think you have to say, why not?

BEFORE THEY STRIKE THAT COIN THEY BETTER GET THE US MINT ON BOARD: Kevin Drum delivers a breakthrough insight in this post:

In a way, though, I wonder if this is yet another reason to think that the trillion dollar coin wouldn't be legal. Remember that its authorization comes in a sentence devoted to the minting of bullion coins. But as a lawyer friend emailed to me this morning, "bullion coins are generally understood by other statutes within the US Code to be coins with a value effectively equal to the market value of the precious metal bullion in them. The trillion dollar coin is not that."

Excellent point! As I peer through this section of the law on coinage I can't find a specific definition of "bullion coins". However, as I argued earlier, it was clear that in the cases of gold, silver, and later palladium Congress intended the value of the coin to be determined by the value of the metal, not the nominal value stamped on it. For example, the one ounce gold coin is struck at $50, with gold over $1,600 an ounce.

For the meaning of "bullion coin" we can turn to the US Mint for guidance:

Congressionally authorized American Eagle Bullion coins provide investors with a convenient and cost effective way to add a small amount of physical platinum, gold, or silver to their investment portfolios. The American Eagle Bullion program was launched in 1986 with the sale of gold and silver bullion coins. Platinum was added to the American Eagle Bullion family in 1997.

A bullion coin is a coin that is valued by its weight in a specific precious metal. Unlike commemorative or numismatic coins valued by limited mintage, rarity, condition and age, bullion coins are purchased by investors seeking a simple and tangible means to own and invest in the gold, silver, and platinum markets.

They don't seem to be in much doubt as to the meaning of "bullion coin". Nor will a judge, or a Treasury lawyer, or a Fed lawyer when asked to opine on the legality of the Trillion Dollar Dodge. A quick reprise of the text authorizing platinum coins (my emphasis):

(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary's discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

Proof platinum coins won't provide wiggle room for the Coiners - they are a subset of bullion coins. Back to the Mint:

Aside from the proof version, the United States Mint does not sell American Eagle Bullion coins directly to the public. Instead, the Mint distributes uncirculated Bullion coins through a network of wholesalers, brokerage companies, precious metal firms, coin dealers, and participating banks, a network known as Authorized Purchasers.

The minimum impact of the "bullion coins" language will be to give any Treasury lawyer opining on the legality of the Trillion Dollar coin very serious pause, since the issuance would be defying Congressional intent, customary practice, and the conventional meaning of "bullion coin". The maximum impact would be to persuade Treasury that the Trillion Dollar coin is clearly out of bounds.

SINCE YOU ASKED MY OPINION: As to the legality of the Trillion Dollar Coin, Congress routinely has limited the Treasury Secretary's authority to print money or issue gold and silver coins. The platinum glitch was at worst a drafting error which violates history and past practice. Issuance of the Big Coin would be an institutional power grab moving the creation of money from the Federal Reserve back to Treasury, so the Fed may want to protect its turf.

My call - even if the Treasury can find lawyers willing to sign an opinion blessing their sale of the coin, the Fed will not want to find lawyers blessing their purchase of it. The Fed will want to protect their turf, duck an obvious Executive-Legislative struggle, and stay away from a coin the legality of which is far from obvious. No Sale.

ONE WORD: Sale-leaseback. 'Nuff said.

...Or is that two words? Fine. Sell the Seventh Fleet, or ANWR, or Yellowstone National Park to the Japanese for $500 billion and lease it back at $25 billion a year for twenty years (plus a bit more to reflect the time value of money, but not "interest" since this isn't debt). Include a cancellation/payback option for the US.

The Treasury nets $475 billion the first year and then bleeds out over time. But in the interim the debt ceiling problem ought to be resolved, in which case new debt can be issued and the cancellation option of the lease can be exercised. As long as we have friends in Japan willing to play ball it should work fine. We do have friends there, yes? They better be friends, becasue we aren't really going to deliver the Seventh Fleet, or ANWR, or Yellowstone in the event of default, so it is a bit of sham security.

Is this legal? HTFWIK? But it has to be legaler than a trillion dollar platinum coin.

CLEAR INTENT: The original 1995 version of this coinage bill died in Congress, but the language and intent were clear:

(6) SALE PRICE-

• ‘(A) BULLION- The bullion versions of the coins issued under this Act shall be sold by the Secretary at a price equal to the sum of--
• (i) the market value of the bullion at the time of the sale; and 
• (ii) the cost of minting, marketing, and distributing the coins (including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and promotional and overhead expenses).
• (B) PROOF VERSIONS- Proof versions of the coins issued under this Act may be sold by the Secretary at a price equal to the sum of--
• (i) the cost of designing and issuing the coins (including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, overhead expenses, marketing, and shipping); and
• (ii) a reasonable profit.

Why that language disappeared in the final version adopted a few years later is a legislative mystery. Coiners can insist that dropping the language shows Congress intended to open the door to the Trillion Dollar Dodge. Others will say that "bullion coins" is a phrase with a well-known meaning in numismatic circles.

Well - there is a glaring drafting error in ObamaCare relating to state-run exchanges, so mindless literalism might not be the best path for Dems to take.

KEVIN DRUM, ALCHEMIST: Platinum, lead - everything he touches turns to gold.

Now This Is Crazy

Testimony at the Aurora movie shooter trial confirms the shooter was crazy:

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — If all had gone according to James E. Holmes’s plan, someone would have tripped the labyrinthine nest of explosives he had woven around his apartment, luring the police from the Aurora movie theater where he is accused of opening fire last July, an F.B.I. agent testified Tuesday.

During a second day of testimony in a preliminary hearing for Mr. Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 people and wounding more than 50, Special Agent Garrett Gumbinner recounted how Mr. Holmes, a former neuroscience student, detailed to investigators his meticulous plot to blow up his apartment as a diversion.

That is devious (and follows the playbook established by the Norway killer) - blow up the apartment, draw police and fireman there, then attack the theatre.

But only Rube Goldberg could have come up with this ploy for triggering the explosives in Holmes' apartment:

According to testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Holmes told the police he had timed his computer to blare music, hoping to draw someone inside his home, thereby detonating the explosives.

A second triggering device was set up near a trash bin outside his apartment, Mr. Holmes reportedly told the police. As Agent Gumbinner described it, Mr. Holmes explained that he had placed the device in a garbage bag, along with a boom box and a remote-control car.

His plan was for a CD from the boom box to blast music, attracting a passer-by, who would then fidget with the remote-control car and inadvertently set off the triggering mechanism, Agent Gumbinner said.

I haven't given this two minutes thought but I have no doubt that a person as crafty and motivated as this psycho could have devised a more direct triggering mechanism. Just offhand, Matt Damon (as Jason Bourne) used an oscillating fan to distract his pursuers - why not put one one a remote timer and blow debris around the room to set off the motion detector?

Or put something flammable in the microwave and heat it up (on a timer). Just be careful!

On a related note, this very interesting WND article (linked yesterday by Drudge) left me wondering whether it was written by (a) a right-wing gun nut; (b) a left-wing anti Big Pharma nut; or (c) a shrewd observer of the American scene. His gist - although the media is happy to blather on about guns and mass shootings, they go silent on the link between psychiatric medication and mass violence. And why might that be?

Some critics suggest these official omissions are motivated by a desire to protect the drug companies from ruinous product liability claims. Indeed, pharmaceutical manufacturers are nervous about lawsuits over the “rare adverse effects” of their mood-altering medications. To avoid costly settlements and public relations catastrophes – such as when GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay $6.4 million to the family of 60-year-old Donald Schnell who murdered his wife, daughter and granddaughter in a fit of rage shortly after starting on Paxil – drug companies’ legal teams have quietly and skillfully settled hundreds of cases out-of-court, shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to plaintiffs. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly fought scores of legal claims against Prozac in this way, settling for cash before the complaint could go to court while stipulating that the settlement remain secret – and then claiming it had never lost a Prozac lawsuit.

All of which is, once again, to respectfully but urgently ask the question: When on earth are we going to find out if the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook school massacre, like so many other mass shooters, had been taking psychiatric drugs?

I can't object to Big Pharma conspiracy theories. But a simpler explanation as to why the mainstream media is all guns all the time on this topic is that here in Prozac Nation, big-city reporters know plenty of people on anti-depressants and very few people with guns. In their world, a person with a gun is an outlier, and maybe a bit off; a person on Prozac is normal. Now, that doesn't exactly logically cohere to a tired right-wing mind like mind, but I have never claimed sufficient intelligence and intellectual flexibility to be a liberal.

As to the link between psychiatric drugs and mass violence, here is another link on that topic. Thay have all sorts of links regarding warning labels on medications and other examples of medicated shooters, but... the publisher is a Scientology front group, so their 'facts', even if accurate, are chosen selectively. Distrust but verify. We await the alliance of the NRA with the Church of Scientology in a pushback against gun control. Tom Cruise and Wayne LaPierre, and does it get any better?

Folks interested in swimming back to the mainstream can look to this Psychology Today article:

There has been an enduring controversy over whether psychiatric medications can trigger violent actions toward others. A review of the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System  by Thomas Moore, Joseph Glenmullen and Curt Furberg, which was published by PLoS One on December 15, found that such "adverse events" are indeed associated with antidepressants and several other types of psychotropic medications.

...

In light of this finding, the many past shootings at school campuses and other public venues should perhaps be investigated anew by government officials, with an eye toward ascertaining whether psychotropic use may have, in the manner of an adverse event, triggered that violence.

Moore and his collaborators concluded: "These data provide new evidence that acts of violence towards others are a genuine and serious adverse drug event that is associated with a relatively small group of drugs. Varenicline, which increases the availability of dopamine, and serotonin reuptake inhibitors were the most strongly and consistently implicated drugs."

I would note that, like alcohol, automobiles and guns, psychotropic drugs can bring enhancement to many and occasional tragedy to some. An obvious difference is that the dangers of alcohol, autos and guns are widely understood.

ANOTHER DOCTOR HEARD FROM: The Huffington Post offers an article by Dr. Peter Breggin describing his book "Medication Madness, the Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime". Let's flip to the Amazon synopsis:

In Medication Madness, psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D., describes how people taking psychiatric medication can experience abnormal behavioral reactions, including suicide, violence, emotional breakdowns, and criminal acts. Dr. Breggin explains his concept of “medication spellbinding”: individuals taking psychiatric drugs may have no idea whatsoever that their mental conditions are deteriorating and that their actions are no longer under control. He proves his argument by documenting dozens of cases from his practice and his consultations in legal cases. Reading like a thriller, the book also examines how the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical establishment continue to oversell the value of these drugs, and he provides information on how to safely stop taking psychiatric medications. Medication Madness is a compelling and frightening read as well as a cautionary tale about our reliance on medicine to fix what ails us.

From an old lurker in the comments we also have this journal article from Dr. Breggin terrifying us about the perils of Prozac. I will say this - if Congress really feels an urge to Do Something following the Newtown shooting, banning high capacity magazines will be an ineffective headline grabber. Congressional hearings delving into these pscychotropic drugs might actually be useful. But I say that not having checked the role of Big Pharma in contributing to campaigns.

Interesting But VERY Misleading

Joe Wiesenthal of Business Insider combines some interesting points with a bit of misdirection in discussing the ramifications of the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin.

First, the good idea:

But contrary to all these people who say that this is a childish, non-adult proposal put forth by impish trolls, it's actually quite the opposite. It may be the most important fiscal policy debate you'll ever seen in your lifetime, because it gets right to the nature of what is money.

This question is central to any discussion about a country's monetary and fiscal policy, and yet it's almost never discussed, and virtually nobody understands it.

People's understanding of money may be murkier by the end of the Wiesenthal contribution. His explanation of money is accurate but misleading. He is correct that the Federal government can create money without limitation; he slides past the point that normally this would take the cooperation of both the Legislative and Executive branches:

Almost everyone talking about fiscal policy imagines money to be a commodity of sorts that we can "run out" of if we don't spend it carefully. In this sense, although we've long gotten rid of the gold standard, we're still shackled with a gold standard mentality, where we think of money as a scarce natural resource that we need to husband carefully, lest one day the bond vigilantes show up at our door, causing us to go broke.

...

Creating money is exactly what government does. What's absurd for a private business is not absurd for the government.

As John Maynard Keynes simply put it a long time ago: "Money is the creation of the state."

That the state creates the money we use is actually known to just about everyone, but people have a hard time making the key leap, which is that once the state is in the business of creating money, then the old gold standard notions of monetary scarcity don't apply in the same way.

And he tackles the concept of 'seignorage", quoting Philip Diehl, the former head of the US Mint:

What is seigniorage?  Seigniorage is the difference between the face value of a coin and its cost of production. Say a quarter costs 11 cents to produce; banks pay 25 cents for the coin and the government books 14 cents in seigniorage. When (more often, if) the coin is returned to the Mint damaged or worn out, the seigniorage is reversed on the books and the coin melted.  In this way seigniorage is like an interest-free loan for the life of the coin, and if the coin is never returned to the Mint, it is an interest-free loan in perpetuity.

His conclusion:

In order to have a "serious" debate about fiscal policy, as so many pundits claim to want, we must first understand what money is, and how governments get it.

The answer is that they have always created it, and any notion of the government "running out" are illogical.

Remember, money is a fiction. Real wealth is capital assets, our infrastructure, our cars, our houses, and most importantly the potential human ingenuity and cooperation. Money is just something that the government creates to facilitate the trade in all of those things.

To which I say, yes, but! In principal, Treasury could solve their funding problem by issuing more bonds, but of course, the debt ceiling (a creation of our own government) prevents that. Similarly, seignorage involving either coins or paper currency (does anyone think a $100 bill costs $100 to produce) could solve our problem.  But wait! We can't use paper currency, gold coins or silver coins because our government has legislated a constraint onto itself.

Here is 31 USC § 5115 - United States currency notes:

(a) The Secretary of the Treasury may issue United States currency notes. The notes—

(1) are payable to bearer; and

(2) shall be in a form and in denominations of at least one dollar that the Secretary prescribes.

(b) The amount of United States currency notes outstanding and in circulation—

(1) may not be more than $300,000,000; and

(2) may not be held or used for a reserve.

That closes the paper trail out of this mess. What about gold and silver? Well, the reason the Platinum option works (as discussed yesterday) is that Congress gave very specific authority for gold and silver coins, then tossed in a "Oh, yeah, and platinum, too" clause without repeating every relevant constraint. The key bits for silver and gold are these (my emphasis):

(f) Silver Coins.—

(1) Sale price.—The Secretary shall sell the coins minted under subsection (e) to the public at a price equal to the market value of the bullion at the time of sale, plus the cost of minting, marketing, and distributing such coins (including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and promotional and overhead expenses).

and for gold coins:

...

(2)(A) The Secretary shall sell the coins minted under this subsection to the public at a price equal to the market value of the bullion at the time of sale, plus the cost of minting, marketing, and distributing such coins (including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and promotional and overhead expenses).

Setting the sale price at roughly the bullion value means the Treasury can't legally stamp "$1 Trillion" on a ten ounce gold coin (at current gold prices, but hyperinflation may be around the corner!).

And what went wrong on platinum? In a hasty supplementation of Treasuries authority to sell platinum coins to collectors, this language was added (my emphasis again):

(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary's discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

I argue that Treasury lawyers reviewing the legality of the proposed sale and Federal Reserve lawyers reviewing the leagality of the proposed purchase will stall on the limits of "the Secretary's discretion". Congressional intent is obvious, since the Secretary's discretion to create seignorage has been limited with paper, gold and silver. And obviously, Congress limits the Treasury ability to issue debt by way of the debt ceiling. Presumably these constraints are partly meant to reassure America and the world that we won't debase our currency, but of course, they also protect Congress' power of the purse from an creative Executive.

At the governmental level Mr. Wiesenthal is correct - there is no legal limit to the seignorage opportunities available to the US government. But within the Executive Branch, limits exist. Obviously, the key unresolved questions are whether Federal Reserve lawyers would ever embrace the Fed's role in buying the Trillion Dollar Platinum coin, and whether a judge would ultimately uphold such a sale.

As a political matter I can't imagine Obama going this way, but even if Treasury makes the coin I don't think they can force the Fed to buy it absent a court ruling. And neither the Fed nor the Judiciary will want to step into a clear Legislative-Executive tussle. So getting this done in a timely manner looks impossible.

MORE: Coiner Paul Krugman has the right spirit:

There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that: we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to walk into a crowded room and threaten to blow up a bomb he’s holding. It turns out, however, that the Secret Service has figured out a way to disarm this maniac — a way that for some reason will require that the Secretary of the Treasury briefly wear a clown suit. (My fictional plotting skills have let me down, but there has to be some way to work this in). And the response of the nervous Nellies is, “My god, we can’t dress the secretary up as a clown!” Even when it will make him a hero who saves the day?

Turbo-Tax Tim in a clown suit is not hard to imagine. And some pundits have noted that Obama giving a national address while wearing a clown suit (and blaming Bush) will probably be a win for the Republicans. Hero or clown? Tough call.

A Cautionary Tale

It is the new year and many folks have made fitness resolutions. But please, if you are a bit on in years check with your doctor before engaging in any unusual activity:

Man Dies Getting Lap Dances At El Paso Strip Club

EL PASO, Texas - El Paso County sheriff's officials said a 67-year-old man died at an El Paso County strip club Friday night.

The manager at the Red Parrot strip club said that the man, identified by sheriff's officials as Robert Gene White, was getting lap dances, but when it came time to pay the dancers, he was unresponsive.

Employees tried to perform CPR on White and when that didn't work they called emergency responders. White was transported to an area hospital and appears to have died from natural causes, according to sheriff's officials.

 

The Trillion Dollar Question

The Trillion Dollar platinum coin is riding a wave of coverage today, demonstrating yet again that stupidity can circle the world three times before common sense can put its boots on.

Two of the sillier arguments: Joe Wiesenthal of Business Insider declares that the new bill by Congressman Walden to bar this ploy implicitly legitimizes the current interpretation:

We've posted his full press release below, but the key thing here is that the idea is now legitimized, as a GOP Congressman implicitly acknowledges that the coin idea is currently legal.

We have not seen the language of the bill yet but it will probably amount to a clarification of the existing Treasury authority to mint platinum coins subject to the same framework that already applies to silver and gold coins.

The key constraint is that Treasury must sell coins for their bullion value (plus a reasonable premium to cover striking, marketing and administrative costs). Language asserting that Congress always intended just that hardly equates to an admission that Congress meant something else. It does admit the possibility that the current law is subject to misinterpretation, but that is still a long way from declaring the misinterpretation to be "currently legal".

The second failure of common sense is the notion that Obama can proceed safely here because literal interpretations of the law will only blow up in Republican faces. Really? As we speak, a court fight over a glaring drafting error in ObamaCare is percolating:

Critics say the law allows subsidies only for people who obtain coverage through state-run exchanges. The White House says the law can be read to allow subsidies for people who get coverage in federal exchanges as well.

The law says that “each state shall” establish an exchange. But Washington could be running the exchanges in one-third to half of states, where local officials have been moving slowly or openly resisting the idea.

Can we hear from an Obama supporter? Yes We Can!

Prof. Timothy S. Jost, an expert on health law at Washington and Lee University, said Congress had made “a drafting error” that should be obvious to anyone who understands the new health care law.

“There is no coherent policy reason why Congress would have refused premium tax credits to the citizens of states that end up with a federal exchange,” said Mr. Jost, who supports the law.

A drafting error! It's almost analogous to the Trillion Dollar Coin situation, except totally different because liberals progressives are on the other side. Well, and Congressional intent is probably a lot more ambiguous, since Federal benefits such as block grants administered by the states (welfare, Medicaid) have a real history and fan base in Congress.

Kevin Drum continues with his 'Do The Right Thing' approach in which he exhorts his fellow travelers to embrace the rule of law, not men. Good luck - next he will want the War Powers Act to be enforced, or something.

Josh Barro, nobody's fool, makes the lesser of two stupidities argument in favor of the coin. I offered that same "least awful" argument last summer, so I can't hoot it down now.

Lots more links at Memeorandum. I will offer this free legal advice from a non-lawyer:

Congressional intent in adding the language about platinum was crystal clear - they wanted Treasury to have authority to sell collectible coins for their bullion value, as was being done with silver and gold. So where this Trillion Dollar coin idea fails will be in the matter of the Secretary's discretion:

(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary's discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

What, a court may reasonably inquire, does "the Secretary's discretion" actually mean? Can the coin include obscenities? Political slogans? "Bush 2004!"? "Platinum Change You Can Believe In"? I suspect a court would find that the Secretary's discretion in terms of design would be viewed as limited by factors outside of paragraph (k) quoted above.

More importantly, with other coins the Secretary has discretion to set denominations for gold and silver coins subject to the rule about selling the coin at its bullion value, and subject to overall limitations on the stock of coins and currency in circulation. Maybe a court will decide that since the Congress does not re-specify the exact nature of the Secretary's discretion each time they use the phrase, that discretion is unlimited. Maybe! But I doubt it.

As a practical matter, if (IF!) Obama wanted to proceed with this, Turbo-Tax Tim Geithner would sit down with some Treasury lawyers and try to get them to opine that the Trillion Doillar coin was within his discretion. After the laughter died down maybe an Administration lawyer would agree to fall on his word processor and deliver the necessary blessing. But that wouldn't end the drama.

Over at the Fed, their lawyers would be asked to opine on whether Treasury can really do this, because if not, the Fed obviously cannot be writing Trillion dollar checks for $1000 worth of platinum. Pushing those lawyers to compromise the Fed's independence won't be easy, and playing along with this sort of potentially inflationary gambit that is beyond the control of the Fed is hardly something the Board of Governors will be eager to get behind.

So - this scheme has legal obstacles and a legal foundation that will collapse the first time a judge gets a look at it. There is no way it can be done quickly, and almost surely not secretly either (unhappy opponents will leak word of the discussions).

But keep thinking...