Jay Bookman

The United States suffers more gun deaths and mass shootings than any other major industrialized country. It’s not even close. And of the dozen most deadly mass killings in U.S. history, half have occurred within the past five years. In other words, if you believe that these things are happening more and more often, the numbers validate that belief.

The question is why.

The NRA and its supporters say the problem is not easy access to guns. To the contrary, they often argue that the problem is a shortage of guns. If only we had more guns in circulation, fewer would die. The day before the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Michigan Legislature embraced that theory in passing a law allowing those with concealed carry permits to possess weapons in schools, churches and other formerly gun-free areas. Michigan’s governor has yet to say whether he intends to sign such a bill.

However, there is no evidence to support the NRA’s contention. Those countries with much lower …

Continue reading Newtown massacre reawakens question of gun control »

Watching the Hurricane Sandy relief concert this week, I was reminded again that a rock band that survives more or less intact for 50 years, as the Rolling Stones have now done, is simply outrageous.

Their record becomes more remarkable still when you consider that for much of that time, surviving just one year as a hard-partying Stone was like living 10 years in most other bands. Brian Jones didn’t make it through alive, but somehow the indestructible Keef Richards did. And they really don’t show many signs of slowing down.

Here’s Mick and the boys doing one of my favorites, “Paint It, Black.” Jones plays the sitar on this song, an instrument that he first saw played by George Harrison, who of course learned it from the great Ravi Shankar, who died Tuesday at the age of 92, and who was the father of Nora Jones.

– Jay Bookman

Continue reading On a melancholy Friday, ‘Paint It, Black’ »

It’s hard to know what to say about the horror that took place this morning in a Connecticut elementary school. The combination of a madman, children and guns has left a reported 27 dead, including 20 children, most of them apparently executed in a single kindergarten classroom.

Again, 27 dead, and hundreds and hundreds directly connected to them have had their lives forever diminished. Even the millions of us who knew nobody in Newtown have been left chilled to the bone on this early winter day.

The 24-year-old gunman, dressed in paramilitary garb, is among those dead. His mother, a teacher at the school, is dead as well. Three weapons were reportedly found at the scene — a .223-caliber assault rifle and two semi-automatic handguns.

As always, the trauma inflicted on those families and that community is difficult to comprehend, and it is compounded by the brutal senselessness of the crime. Tragedies such as this always create questions — “How?” and “Why?” just the …

Continue reading Horror in a Connecticut elementary school »

If serious ethics reform passes the Georgia Legislature this year, House Speaker David Ralston will have played a major role from beginning to end.

His biggest contribution probably came in helping to inspire the public crusade that has pushed the issue to such prominence in the first place. If he had not taken his family on a $17,000 holiday trip to Europe at lobbyist expense, and if he had not responded to criticism by shrugging it off as unimportant, it is unlikely that the ethics issue would have gained so much traction. The speaker is a smart guy who is widely respected, but that trip and his handling of its aftermath was a major blunder. He turned himself into a symbol of the type of political entitlement that angers voters and leads them to distrust government.

That distrust has become a major problem, as evidenced by an AJC poll published last week. It found that a major reason for metro Atlanta’s rejection of last summer’s T-SPLOST was lack of faith in the …

Continue reading Time for Legislature to get serious about ethics reform »

I wonder if John McCain feels even the slightest twinge of shame over his McCarthyesque campaign to torpedo Susan Rice. Probably not. The McCain who might once have been capable of such decency hasn’t been seen in Washington in many a moon.

It’s important to make it clear that Rice wasn’t targeted because she’s a woman or because she’s black; those defenders who make such claims do her a disservice. Instead, she was targeted because she could be. McCain and his merry little band haven’t been able to lay a glove on Barack Obama, the man who denied McCain the presidency four years ago, and their increasing irrelevance has made them frustrated. But Rice? Rice was somebody they could handle.

That’s because, as U.S. senators, they had something that Rice wanted. She needed their permission to become the next secretary of state, should Obama decide to nominate her to that post, and that made her vulnerable. Through deception and ginned-up righteousness, McCain and his pals at Fox …

Continue reading McCain’s ugly campaign against Susan Rice pays off »

It’s an uncomfortable question, which means that it’s right in Barbara Walters’ wheelhouse. As she put it to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie:

For those who can’t watch video, here’s how the exchange goes:

WALTERS: “There are people who say that you couldn’t be president because you are so heavy. What do you say to that?”

CHRISTIE: “It’s ridiculous. I mean, that’s ridiculous. I think people have watched me for a number of weeks in Hurricane Sandy doing 18-hour days, so I don’t really think that would be a problem.”

I’m not so sure that’s true. As Christie acknowledged to Walters, he isn’t merely overweight, he’s seriously overweight. That struck home during last night’s broadcast of the Hurricane Sandy charity concert in New York, which Christie attended. When the camera panned to Christie, standing in a crowd surrounded by other people, the size differential between the governor and those around him was startling.

Some have raised the question of whether Christie’s weight …

Continue reading Is Christie’s weight a problem? Unfortunately, it probably is »

One of the key selling points for Mitt Romney as president was his competence. This was a guy who knew how to run things. As a successful business leader, he had demonstrated the ability to transform an organization to make it operate faster, more efficiently and more effectively, and if given the chance he could do the same in government. That argument was extended to the overall Republican “brand’ as well, with the party selling itself as the party of business, run by people in business suits whose skills and work ethic were honed by free-market competition.

And of course, the primary way in which such claims are tested in the political arena is through the operation of a campaign. So it’s been interesting to see a string of post-election stories along the lines of this piece from The Washington Post:

Senior Republican campaign operatives who gathered over beer last week in Alexandria for a post-election briefing were taken aback by what they were told. A nonpartisan …

Continue reading In campaign, GOP was simply less competent, efficient »

Ben Bernanke (AP)

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee has voted 11-1 to continue and even accelerate its infusion of cash into the national economy. More importantly, perhaps, it announced that it will continue that policy as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5 percent and projected inflation remains below 2.5 percent.

That represents a new, even historic level of commitment on the Fed’s part. In effect, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the committee have re-committed themselves to an analysis that joblessness, not inflation, remains by far the biggest challenge to the economy, and that the Fed is obligated to address that challenge aggressively.

With unemployment still at 7.7 percent, well above historic averages, and inflation at roughly 2 percent, well below historic averages, that’s hardly a controversial conclusion. It’s also important to note that in making this decision, Bernanke and the committee are merely carrying out the responsibilities given them …

Continue reading Fed sends reinforcements into battle against unemployment »

As owner of the Atlanta Falcons, Arthur Blank runs a class operation that represents the city well. And as such arrangements go, the proposal to build a $1 billion Falcons stadium downtown with $300 million in taxpayer subsidies is reasonable and probably fiscally sound.

But still ….

The NFL is easily the most profitable sports league on the planet. All 32 of its teams are included in Forbes’ magazine’s list of the 50 most valuable sports franchises on the planet. (The Falcons are listed at 35th with a value of $831 million, up from $545 million when Blank bought the team in 2002.) And because live sports programming is becoming more and more valuable to advertisers, lucrative new contracts will bring more the league more than $6 billion a year in TV revenue beginning in 2014. That represents a 50 to 60 percent increase.

Now contrast that prosperity with the fiscal plight of state and local government. Thousands of workers have been laid off in Georgia, including police …

Continue reading The taxpayer, the Falcons and the question of priorities »

Poll after poll is reporting the same basic finding: the American people are worried about the deficit, but they do not support cutting Medicare or Medicaid, nor do they back raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67.

The latest survey to confirm that finding comes from McClatchy/Marist. As you can see, the voters in the chart above oppose cutting Medicare by a 42-point margin and oppose Medicaid cuts by a similar margin. By an almost 2-1 margin, they also say it is more important to compromise than to stand on principle.

But here’s the twist: The numbers in the chart above are all from voters who self-identified as Republicans. There’s not an independent or Democrat among ‘em. And overall, the level of support or opposition among GOP voters is not that different from voters in general. On the issue of Medicare cuts, for example, just 26 percent of Republican voters support the idea, compared to 23 percent of voters in general.

So again, if Republicans in Washington want to …

Continue reading GOP leading a crusade with very few followers »