Stir The Pot

A reporter named Penny Starr wrote an article titled “Obama’s Paycheck Exempted from ‘Sequester’” on February 25.  In it, she referenced a report published by the Congressional Research Service called “Budget Sequestration and Selected Program Exemptions and Special Rules." The report identifies programs that are exempt from sequestration and lays out special rules that govern the sequestration of others.  

Among them are such important programs such as the “Compact of Free Association” and the “San Joaquin Restoration Fund.”  These programs are so critically important to the survival of the nation that we need to borrow more Chinese money to fund them, while cutting national defense programs with the meat axe of sequestration.

Section 255 of the Budget Control Act includes “Compensation for the President” (page 19) as one of those programs that are exempt from sequestration.  Ms Starr’s article expands on this by citing Article 2, Section 1, Clause 7 of the Constitution, which says that the president's compensation shall not be increased or decreased during the time for which he is elected.  The amount, authorized by legislation signed by President Clinton, is currently $400,000 annually.

In its entirety, Article 2 Section 1, Clause 7 states that "The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them."

I have an English Dictionary published in 1794, which would have been current with the writing and adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  In it, the term “compensation” is defined as “a recompense, amends.”  Its root verb “compensate” is defined as “to make amends, to counterbalance,” and finally, “to pay.”  Therefore, during his term of office, the president’s “pay” may not be increased or decreased.  The purpose of this was based on the Founding Fathers checks-and-balances approach to governing so that Congress could not use withholding of pay as leverage or revenge.

But the same Article also states that “. . . he shall not receive within that period any other Emolument from the United States . . . .” which is defined by the 1794 dictionary as “profit, advantage, benefit.”    

Since the CRS report only mentions compensation as being exempt, and makes no mention of emoluments, doesn’t it follow that he is not entitled to continue to receive benefits or advantages not available to the rest of us, especially during the harsh economic times brought on by sequestration?

Bye, bye, taxpayer-funded trips to Florida on Air Force One and its retinue to play exclusive golf with Tiger Woods!!  Bye, bye, $20 million Christmas break trips to Hawaii!!  Bye, bye, campaign-style trips to Las Vegas to make a speech!!  Bye, bye, First Lady cameo appearances at the Oscars!!  Hello, home schooling for the girls (who then won’t need 14 additional Secret Service agents at their private school)!!

Let me take some liberties with some very recent quotes from the president published in Politico the other day.

“At some point, we've I’ve got to do some governing. And, certainly, we can't keep careening from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. These cuts emoluments do not have to happen. Congress can turn them off anytime."

"Democrats -- like me -- need to acknowledge that we're going to have to make modest substantial reforms  cuts elsewhere [and I’m going to have to stay in the Capitol and actually do some work.]”

If he’s unwilling to do that, Congress needs to de-fund “emoluments” in any future budget resolution.

The tactics being used by the progressives to push for gun control haven’t changed much in 100 years, yet Republicans continue to be surprised by them.  Democrats introduce a flurry of extreme measures and Republicans agree to a few more chips being whittled away from our rights, hoping to be liked for it.  Within a few months, Democrats are back with even more extreme measures, expecting to make a little more progress toward imposing total control.  And the Republicans will be right there to accommodate them with a few more chips.

Take for instance the call for “universal” background checks for gun purchases by law-abiding citizens.  The initial calls for bans, registration and confiscation seem a little extreme, but background checks might be palatable – and, oh, it’s just an extension of what they’re already doing (to infringe on the rights of the law-abiding).

The Brady Background Check law was introduced with great fanfare by the Clinton administration in 1993 when it was enacted during the two years the Democrats controlled the presidency and both chambers of Congress.   At the end of the first month, the White House announced huge initial success – 100,000 “convicted felons” had been stopped from buying handguns!  At the end of the second month, they announced 200,000 “convicted felons” had been stopped!  And so it went – third month, 300,000; fourth month, 400,000.  At the end of the fifth month (the last time they made an announcement), it was a triumphant 500,000 “convicted felons” stopped by the Brady Background Check!  America was safe!!

The agitprop press dutifully reported the figures without question.  Nobody asked if there were really 500,000 hardened criminals so stupid to think that, even though they were in the system as “convicted felons,” they could walk into a gun store, plop down their money, and buy a gun.  Nobody asked how the prison grapevine could have broken down so completely that the word wasn’t getting out.  Nobody even asked why a “convicted felon” would buy a gun when it was so much easier and more in character to steal one than to buy one! 

The government and the agitprop press were also playing on the unstated assumption that “convicted felons” must mean murderers, rapists, domestic abusers, armed robbers, and other violent criminal assailants who had gotten out of prison and went directly to a gun store to re-acquire their tools.

Nobody asked if any of those “convicted felons” were bad-check writers, con artists, pedophiles, serial drunk drivers, former Congressmen, or other associated non-violent offenders who were nonetheless “convicted felons.”  Nobody mentioned that at least some of the names in the NICS database were convicted of certain misdemeanors that were later added for inclusion.  Nobody asked how accurate the database of “convicted felons” was, or whether John K. Smith or Francis X. Kelly was denied because of criminal activity of another person with the same name.

Nobody asked why serving General officers in the military were being denied gun purchases!  This occurred on several occasions because the system “flagged” anybody on whom another background check was being conducted, including officers who were candidates for higher-level security clearances.

Nobody asked how many citizens who were initially denied, then approved when the error was discovered.  That was because, since they had already claimed that 500,000 “convicted felons” had been stopped, they would then have to explain that not all of them really were “convicted felons,” or even violent convicted felons.  America might not be as safe as everybody had been led to believe!

There are a total of 8,323,931 criminal records in the FBI NICS database.  Of those, a total of 987,578 “convicted felons” were stopped from buying a gun over a period of 14 years.   That translates to 7,345,353 “convicted felons,” or 88.25%, with no record of attempting to buy a gun from a dealer.

FBI statistics from 1998 to 2012 claim that the total number of background checks made were 160,474,702.  The 987,578 “convicted felons” stopped equates to 0.6154 per cent (987,578 / 160,474,702 = .006154104), or slightly more than six one-thousandths of all the checks made.  In other words, a mere 159,487,124 law-abiding citizens, or 99.38%, were treated with suspicion by the government for having the temerity to exercise their 2^nd Amendment rights at a gun store!

On average, then, over 14 years, 70,541 per year were denied.  Not quite the 500,000 claimed for the first five months of operation!   Still, that’s a significant number -- until one learns that between 92% and 99% are initial false positives.  Finding out how many of these lawbreakers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted isn’t as easily discovered.  Quite frankly, it must be a little embarrassing. 

According to the “Report to the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, and the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives” in 1996 on the implementation of the Brady Act, prosecution and conviction of violators is extremely rare.  In the first year of the Act, 250 cases were referred for prosecution. 217 of those were rejected.  Only 33 violators were prosecuted in the first year!  That “500,000 convicted felons” figure doesn’t seem so impressive now.  During the first 17 months of the Act, only seven – SEVEN -- individuals were actually convicted of violating the Brady Act!  According to studies submitted to the Department of Justice (DOJ), in 2008, 92 violators were charged with 147 violations, with 43 convictions.  In 2010, according to other studies, the number of convictions had dropped to 32.  

Yet there’s reason to be concerned with this administration’s stated intention of expanding the current system to a “universal” background check to include ALL legal purchases. 

This administration plays fast and loose with what laws they will enforce and what they won’t.  Their Department of Justice won’t enforce the “Defense of Marriage Act” passed by Congress and signed into law by the previous administration because they (not the Courts) have decided it’s “unconstitutional!”  Their DOJ and DHS agencies violated the Brady Act and several other federal gun laws when they forced law-abiding gun dealers to look the other way when 2,000 “assault” rifles were bought and allowed to “walk” across the Mexican border – guns that were later used in the murders of more than 5 American citizens and more than 300 Mexican citizens! This administration pretends that Congress is not in session so that it can make recess appointments.  This Department of Homeland Security decides not to prosecute illegals caught in this country, yet takes State governments to court for stepping up to defend their borders.  This Attorney General called for the names on the secret “No-Fly” list – despite being reported last year by the GAO as having a 38% error rate for misidentification – to be added to the FBI’s NICS criminal background database!  Democrat Senators in this Congress demand that “assault” rifles be banned, claiming they are useless for personal or home defense, while this administration orders 7,000 “assault” rifles as “Personal Defense Weapons (PDW’s)” for non-military government employees!  This administration orders 1.65 billion cartridges (of a design outlawed for war because of its tissue destructiveness) for non-military domestic use, while demanding that citizens who purchase ammunition in bulk be investigated and restricted.

This DOJ’s legal opinion that it’s not unconstitutional for this government to kill its citizens without recourse to due process or even being charged with a crime has recently been leaked to the public.  This Attorney General even stated public that the "due process" clause of the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that American citizens will have the opportunity of a public trial in a court -- something that he pushed hard to accord foreign terrorists.   Even North Korea, the most totalitarian state in the world, puts on sham trials to give at least an outward appearance of legality!

Long before the Brady background check law passed, Congress has been very specific that any information about gun purchases could not be retained or collated into any form of national gun registration.  Yet BATFE and FBI agents have been caught doing just that on several occasions, including photocopying dealer records.  They also continue to press for longer periods of holding the information before being required to destroy it. There is no reason to assume that this administration will abide by the will of Congress, especially if the background checks become “universal.”  And if there is any doubt that the endgame of registration is confiscation, one need look no further than New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s comments and actions following the Sandy Hook elementary school tragedy.

Furthermore, since the 1970’s, attitudes toward the distinction between criminal activity and mistakes made without criminal intent have blurred with startling consequences.  In fact, the Supreme Court has held on multiple occasions that the Constitution does not require proof of criminal intent to support a conviction.  In 2004, federal authorities charged a resident of Alaska with improperly marking a form for shipping a hazardous substance.  He was aware that the substance could not be shipped by air, so he marked it to be shipped via ground.  What he did not know was that due to the distances involved, the carrier made all shipments from his location by air.   The fact that he had no intent to ship the substance by air made no difference to the prosecutor.

Convictions for errors made on federal forms carry greater punishments than those for domestic abuse.  “Crimes” that used to carry fines and/or public service now earn the title “convicted felon” and carry long prison terms.  Witness the lying and perjury counts against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, which could have earned him 25 years in federal prison.  Witness the recent suicide of internet activist Aaron Swartz.  He faced federal charges carrying a potential prison term of 35 years for downloading academic journals from an online storage site so that the authors, not the publishers, could be compensated.

There are also far more opportunities to unintentionally violate the law.  The American Bar Association reported in 1998 that there were over 3,000 federal criminal offenses contained in the United States Code.  Six years later, that was reported to have expanded to 4,000.  Columbia University Professor John Coffee estimates that the federal government could use criminal law to enforce as many as 300,000 federal regulations.  A technical or unintentional violation of any one of them could now become a felony conviction, making the unfortunate victim of an overzealous prosecutor eligible to be added to the NICS database for a "crime" completely unrelated to gun possession or violence.

This administration could probably, and is likely to, reverse past policy regarding prosecution of Brady Act violations, even without “universal” background checks.  These are “easy kills” for prosecutors who need no longer prove that a mistake on a BATFE Form 4473 wasn’t an intentional lie.  That probably won’t keep guns out of the hands of the 7 to 43 “convicted felons” who were stupid enough to get caught this time – but it has tremendous potential for grabbing guns out of the hands of thousands of law-abiding citizens.   It is also a powerful tool for intimidation.  One visit from squad of heavily armed federal agents breaking down one’s front door for an incorrectly filled-out form is likely sufficient to deter making a legal firearm purchase again!

After all, that’s what gun control by whatever the progressive nom du jour is all about.