Tag Archives: Rate

News

Liberal MSNBC says that more legal firearm ownership reduces crime rates

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Story here from ULTRA-leftist MSNBC. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.

Read more at CNS News and Newsbusters.

UPDATE: ECM commands me to update the post to recommend the book “More Guns, Less Crime” by John Lott, (University of Chicago Press, 2000). But a much easier book to read is “The Bias Against Guns” (Regnery, 2003).

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News

Democrats say they rescued the economy, Republicans ask where are the jobs?

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Barack Obama will announce today “We rescued the economy”. (H/T ECM, Breitbart TV, Hot Air, Gateway Pundit)

Gateway Pundit adds:

President Disaster will quadruple the US budget deficit his first year in office. He will reportedly spend $23.7 trillion to “fix” the economy… or bankrupt it by next year.

…Government Motors sales drop 22%. (H/T ECM, Gateway Pundit,

Meanwhile, 134 House Rebublicans ask “Where are the Jobs?”.

Gateway Pundit adds:

President Obama and democrats in Congress, of course, promised that their stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising about 8%. Today it is at 9.7% and House Republicans who unanimously opposed the Stimulus Bill want to know where are the jobs?

The unemployment rate during the Bush years was 5.27%.
President Disaster’s unemployment rate is averaging above 8.6%.

Jim Demint contends with the leftist media trying to get the word out.

Pundit and Pundette give him a gold star!

They’ve got the transcript, too!

Excerpt:

LAUER: . . . But over the past couple of days, I don’t have to tell you, you’ve ignited a firestorm, and people are saying that you are playing pure politics with this issue. How do you respond?

DEMINT: Well, it has nothing to do with politics or it’s certainly not personal. But, but the President’s policies have not matched up to his promises so far. We saw that in this giant stimulus, his trillion dollar stimulus that has stimulated the government, but really cost American jobs and, and, and loaded lots of debt on top of future generations.
LAUER: But, but sticking to health care reform, let, let me, you know, give you your own words here. You, you were addressing the group Conservatives for Patients Rights about the health care debate and you said quote, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Now are you rallying conservatives to the cause of health care reform? Or are you rallying conservatives to the cause of breaking a president?

DEMINT: Oh, we need to put the brakes on this President. He’s been on a spending spree since he took office. And we need health care reform. Unfortunately, when the President was in the Senate, I’ve probably offered more health care reform proposals than anyone in the Senate. And the President voted against every proposal that would have made health insurance more available and more affordable to people. His goal seems to be a government takeover, not making insurance more available. So I do think we need to stop the President on this. We need to stop his policy, because if we allow him to continue to ram things through Congress before we even get a chance to read them.

LAUER: But-

DEMINT: Matt, I just brought one of the bills this morning. I mean, if you look at this bill, it’s one of the three bills that we’re gonna have to look at.

LAUER: It’s a complicated issue. There are a lot of details in that bill.

DEMINT: Well why do we need to pass it in two weeks before we go home in August?

LAUER: Well that’s, that’s a good question. And I’m gonna get to that in a second. But, but the words you chose were very specific. “It could be his Waterloo, it could break this President.” I, I guess the obvious question is, it wouldn’t break your heart if you break this President, would it?

DEMINT: Well, again, it’s not personal, but we’ve got to stop his policies, Matt. The policies are not matching up to the promises. They’re loading trillions of dollars of debt onto the American people. And the thing is we need real health care reform. I’ve introduced proposals that would help individuals own their own health insurance policies if they don’t get it at work.

LAUER: Right.

DEMINT: There are a lot of ways to do this without a government takeover and a government plan.

LAUER: And I read, I read some of your plan. You wrote it in an op-ed, and I, and I did read that, and would encourage people to go see that. Is the deadline dead, Senator?

DEMINT: It appears to be, and I hope it is. And that’s what I mean, the Senate is supposed to be the body that deliberates and debates and actually reads bill, bills. You know, I hear that more than anything else, as I go around the country. Why don’t you guys read the bills before you pass them? There are a lot of things in these bills that are gonna alarm the American people. I’m afraid the President knows that. He wants to push it through before we’re able to take a look at what’s really in it. And that shouldn’t happen in Congress. This doesn’t take effect for four years, Matt. We don’t need to pass it in two weeks. It’s 20 percent of the American economy.

LAUER: Right.

DEMINT: It’s one of the most personal issues that we deal with as Americans. The government shouldn’t take it over and we shouldn’t pass a bill in two weeks.

LAUER: Senator Jim DeMint. Senator thanks for joining us this morning. We appreciate your time.

DEMINT: Thank you Matt.

Worst. President. Ever.

Commentary

What did Reagan do when he inherited a recession?

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Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan

Here is a piece from Bloomberg from Amity Shlaes. (H/T The Western Experience)

Excerpt:

Double-digit unemployment looms. The country is in a funk. The federal budget deficit is widening to an extent not seen in decades.

This scenario isn’t new. It also describes the U.S. in 1982. Somehow, the 1980s and the 1990s turned out to be pretty good years. So it’s worthwhile to compare current policy to the one followed then.

…Today, taxes are on their way up. Whether it will be abolishing some of the tax deductibility of health care or increasing taxes on soda, President Barack Obama and Congress are clearly signaling the direction in which they want to move. Most tax increases under discussion would make the rich, or companies, the first to pay. The justification offered for this is that the federal government needs the money and may know how to spend it better than the private sector, anyhow.

…In the early 1980s, the view on taxes was the opposite: get them down. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, enacted by Ronald Reagan, pushed tax rates down for wealthy and non-wealthy alike. The capital gains tax rate dropped to 20 percent. When Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the top marginal rate on income taxes fell to 28 percent.

Is Obama right? Or was Reagan right?

The coming tax increases

The Wall Street Journal reports on some of the new taxes Obama wants to impose.

The [health care] bill’s main financing comes from another tax increase on top of the increase already scheduled for 2011 under Mr. Obama’s budget. The surtax starts at one percentage point for adjusted gross income above $350,000 in 2011, rising to two points in 2013; a 1.5 point surtax at incomes above $500,000, rising to three in 2013; and a whopping 5.4 percentage points in 2011 and beyond on incomes above $1 million.

And what happens when you tax the rich?

House Democrats… claim that this surtax would raise $544 billion in new revenue over 10 years. America’s millionaires aren’t that stupid; far fewer of them will pay these rates for very long, if at all. They will find ways to shelter income, either by investing differently or simply working less. Small businesses that pay at the individual rate will shift to pay the 35% corporate rate. When the revenue doesn’t materialize, Democrats will move to soak the middle class with a European-style value-added tax.

It should be noted that a value-added sales tax disproportionately hurts the poor.