Liberal Forum

Gun buy backs are a joke, try going to one and see what kind of guns are being bought back. Here's a clue, gun owners use the buy backs to sell off junk we've abused, neglected and can't sellso we can use the cash to buy new guns. Thanks progressives, your program bought me a new deer rifle last year. LOL fools. Please don't ascribe your motives to everyone else. New Jersey's attorney general said some of the gun owners who showed up at two Camden churches Friday and Saturday appeared to be motivated by the mass killings Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Jeffrey S. Chiesa alluded to the possible motive at a news conference at Camden's police department, where heaps of surrendered firearms were on display. "We heard that there were a number of gun owners on Saturday who had publicly said, in light of the situation that had just occurred in Connecticut, they wanted to turn in their weapons," Paul Loriquet, a spokesman, said in an interview. Camden Police Chief Scott Thomson said most of the 533 handguns and 504 long guns, including five semiautomatics, were operable. Some residents, interviewed Friday, said they turned in guns simply because they no longer wanted them in their homes. One man said he would use the $400 he received to buy Christmas gifts. Last year, 57 guns were turned in during the city-sponsored program. http://www.officer.c...d-participation 57 firearms turned in last year and 1,137 this year. Quite a difference.

57 firearms turned in last year and 1,137 this year. Quite a difference. I expect that number to rise as more and more sportsman find out about free money for junk. Have you ever gone to a buy back? Do youself a favor and visit the next one in your area, perhaps you wouldn't support taxpayer money being used to buy scrap metal. Operable is a relative term.

Editorial title from NY Times: "National Rifle (Selling) Association" I know three people who have told me they joined for a discount at the gun store.

Operable is a relative term. It means they work.

It means they work. "Work" is a relative term.....yea they'll probably fire off a round, but will they hit what you're aiming at. A gun that won't hit, is scrap metal.

You Hate "Right To Work" Laws More Than You Know. Here's Why"From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call brother or lose their jobs." Vance Muse, founder of the "right to work" anti-labor campaign...The Michigan GOP apparently blindsided everyone with the union-busting "right to work" laws they just rammed through the state. Certainly my labor friends were caught off-guard tactically by the Republicans speed and choice of battleground.For most of the county, though, the confusion has to do with what "right to work laws" are and why theyre so bad. You can see it written on the faces of the morning cable news hosts on CNN and even MSNBC trying to pretend like they know what "right-to-work" laws actually mean, flummoxed by the brazen Orwellian neologism of the phrase and sweating over the possibility that they might have to explain it. Lucky for them, and for most of the media establishment (and for the Koch brothers), few people even know what questions to ask about "right to work laws." All they know kinda is that theyre bad for unions, and that those unions seem to know exactly how bad things are about to get.Today, in most of America, unions have it bad. And part of the reason its bad is because we no longer know how to organize. Imagine trying to organize workers in your call center or warehouse, or your software gaming firm or your human rights NGO, as theyre doing at Amnesty International. The pressures against you from worker cynicism and colleagues fear of losing their jobs, to personal relations with your boss and superiors, the bills you have to pay, and simple questions like "how do I organize" and "how do I know I wont be screwed" not to mention the inevitable appearance of company snitches, provocateurs, and just run-of-the-mill [butt openings] and idiots... Im not even talking here about your companys ability to fire you, demote you, abolish your department, slash your pay, pretty much whatever the Hell they want ever since Reagan busted the air traffic controllers union... This is the lot of American labor organizers in 2012 , except for in a few remaining pockets of America where union power and memory is still strong and tightly woven into the local cultural DNA.Michigan is one of those places, which is why crushing labor power there would be as inspiring to the rightwing oligarchs who just got creamed at the polls as, say, the rise of the Tea Party was in early 2009.So yesterday, as Michigan Republicans pushed the bill into law, labor groups converged on the capital in Lansing. According to the BBC, "police in riot gear used tear gas to control tensions among a crowd [outside the Michigan statehouse] of more than 10,000 protesters." For a lot of (once)-middle-class Americans, its hard to reconcile that level of anger with something as dull-sounding as "right to work laws.""Austerity measures" are easier to fear: "austerity" is meant to sound scary and sadomasochistic. But "right to work" sounds dreary and almost redundant, like "right to pay bills."Thats until you start to understand the history of the "right to work" movement, the racist human hagfish who brought "right to work" into our lexicon and made it happen, and the far-right fascist oligarchs who made it worth their while. Once you meet a few of these cretins specifically, Vance Muse, the Karl Rove-meets-David Duke brains behind the whole "Right-to-Work" movement whom Ill introduce you to a little later in this piece youll understand why those thousands who converged on Lansing were acting like their state legislators just invited Count Dracula into everyones homes.In terms of understanding what just happened, it would help if we were back in the 1940s and 50s, when most liberals and establishment media used and understood the antonym, "union security" a descriptive phrase for the New Deal labor laws which finally gave union organizers a fighting chance, and saw the percentage of unionized workers in the US soar from single digits in the early 1930s to around 35% of the workforce by the mid-late 1940s.The "right-to-work" movement to destroy labor unions began almost as soon as FDR passed the Wagner Act in the mid-1930s, which gave labor organizers "union security" as the old euphemism went and should still go. Again, you have to understand the historical context: Until the Wagner Act passed, when it came to workers rights, America in the 1930s was about half a century or more behind the rest of the West child labor wasnt even outlawed here until 1938.But nothing compared to the endless massacres and murders of American labor organizers, massacres that are all but censored from the official history of this country. Maybe youve heard something about the Ludlow Massacre of the families of mine workers at Rockefellers mines in Colorado in 1913 but you probably dont know many of the details, like how Rockefellers private armed goons patrolled the miners miserable tent cities in an armored car with a mounted machine gun, spraying the tents and terrorizing the strikers, who demanded such radical concessions as "enforcement of Colorados laws," the eight hour work day, and pay for time spent working. Or how the terrorized women and children in the embattled tent city dug a giant makeshift bunker pit beneath one of the larger tents to hide out from the bullets only to have Colorado National Guardsmen douse the tents with kerosene and light them on fire while the miners families were sleeping, then shoot some of those who ran out, killing over a dozen children, scores of workers and their wives, and ending with the arrests of hundreds of miners.In the end, anywhere from several dozen to 200 were left dead. We dont know exactly and there hasnt been much effort on the part of our culture to find out. This "we dont know the death toll" marks just about all of the many killings and massacres of labor organizers and strikers in the pre-New Deal era.The same goes with the West Virginia mine wars: whether the massacre of tent city workers in 1913 by coal miner thugs firing from armored trains passing through the tent cities, or the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, when the company raised the largest private standing army in the US, and attacked strikers with gas shells fired from artillery and dropped from bombers. President Harding followed that up by sending in federal troops and the US Air Force led by Brig. General Billy Mitchell, and when it was over, the miners unionization drive was dead. Along with well over 100 workers and family members again, the exact number is "in dispute" as they say.The "Red Scare" of 1919-20 was aimed at breaking labor unions, and specifically at equating union security the "closed shop" where unionized companies and factories could require all workers to pay dues to the unions since they all benefited from union contracts with Bolshevism. In contrast stood the "open shop"where union membership was merely a "choice" strongly discouraged by employers with "Americanism." In fact thats what they called "right to work" back then: the "American Plan."The Palmer Raids of those years (where J. Edgar Hoover first distinguished himself) resulted in tens of thousands of Americans illegally rounded up, beaten, tortured, imprisoned without any due process, and deported by the thousands, citizens included. Big business coordinated their PR offensive with the Palmer Raids by labeling anti-union open shop laws "American Plan."After the 1929 crash, that euphemism became associated in peoples minds with the brutal pre-New Deal culture. So corporate America went back to their PR flaks to brand "open shop" with a new, less toxic-sounding euphemism. The phrase they came up with was "right to work," as if they were actually empowering workers with "individual liberty" by going after their unions.History shows us whats at stake here, and how far big business was willing to go to keep "right to work" or "American Plan" the national standard. Big business in America regarded the rest of the population and its labor pool much the same way colonial powers viewed the local Natives as inherently hostile, alien savages whose purpose was to enrich their masters, and who must not be given even the slightest concessions, such as child labor laws, lest it put ideas in their heads about "rights"...It was in this atmosphere that the ACLU really began as a defender of labor rights, when the ACLU equated civil liberties and Constitutional liberties with union organizing rights. Contrast that with todays ACLU, which supports Citizens United and corporate "free speech" in exchange for massive donations from tobacco firms and the Koch brothers, while focusing on high-profile culture war cases at the expense of labor.By 1930, labor unions were practically dead, considered a relic of the past by the media and academic elites. The Great Depression changed all that, in part because unlike today, back then Americans had no food stamps, no unemployment insurance, no state pensions, and of course, no child labor laws and no labor protections to speak of all the things labor unions are responsible for giving us today.From the Ford Motors massacre in Michigan in 1932, which left four workers killed and up to 50 wounded through the Chicago Memorial Day Massacre of striking Republic Steel workers in 1937, in which company thugs and cops killed 10 peaceful marchers nearly all of whom were shot in the back, and wounded 60 more, billyclubbing the wounded as they crouched in the dirt America was a savage and violent place to work if you werent rich.Hearings were held in the Senate, and the LaFollette Committee Report discovered that corporations not only operated armies of spies in the tens of thousands, but that "Republic Steel Corporation [responsible 1937 for the massacre] has a uniformed police force of nearly 400 men whom it was equipped not only with revolvers, rifles, and shotguns, but also with more tear and sickening gas and gas equipment than has been purchased...by any law-enforcement body, local, State or Federal in the country. It has loosed its guards, thus armed, to shoot down citizens on the streets and highways," the Senate report observed.That was the arsenal controlled by just a single steel company.FDR leveled the workplace playing field some with the Wagner Act, for the first time making union security (closed shop) a reality. Labor union power and membership soared, as did wages and benefits; America suddenly had Social Security and unemployment insurance, child labor laws, a minimum wage, five day/40 hour work week, and within a few years, a powerful middle class.To big business plutocrats, the New Deal labor laws represented a sort of political Holocaust that they never forgot or forgave. They lost their full spectrum political dominance over their workers and over the political and judicial direction of the country, and all that essentially because FDR brought to an end Americas "open shop" culture and empowered unions with "closed shop" union security.But business vowed that one day it would have its revenge. And that revenge would be "right to work" laws.Read More at the link in the title.

lol. pretty funny. a race-baiting article praising a man who locked US citizens up for reasons based solely on their race.

I would love to see where that gun buyback money went. Most people probably used it to upgrade their real guns or purchase ammunition.

I would love to see where that gun buyback money went. Most people probably used it to upgrade their real guns or purchase ammunition.Or maybe to buy food.

Twinkie CEO Admits Company Took Employees Pensions and Put It Toward Executive PayHostess company continues to screw over its workers.Twinkie-maker Hostess continues to screw over its workers. The company is in the process of complete liquidation and 18,000 unionized workers are set to lose their jobs. More troubling they could lose their pensions.According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Hostess CEO, Gregory Rayburn, essentially admitted that his company stole employee pension money and put it toward CEO and senior executive pay (aka operations). While this isn't technically illegal, it's another sleazy theft by Hostess executives - who've paid themselves handsomely while running their company into the ground. Just last month, a judge agreed to let Hostess executives suck another $1.8 million out of the bankrupt company to pay bonuses to CEOs.If there's no way to recover the money for the Hostess pension plans for workers, then the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. will have to foot the bill to make sure workers get at least some of the retirement money they paid in.Hostess shows us clearly what Bain-style predatory capitalism is all about: big bucks for the very few rich executives, layoffs and poverty for the workers and their communities.And dont mourn the loss of Hostess brands theyll be back, as the company is currently negotiating with over 100 potential buyers right now to bring Twinkies, Wonder Bread, and Ding Dongs back into the marketplace.The Hostess story has nothing to do with unions, and everything to do with the Enron-ization and Bain-ization of the American economy.In classic Enron style, back in 2005 Hostess sent out a letter saying theyd just had a very, very profitable quarter. Their stock jumped up. The CEO, Charles Sullivan, and many of the senior executives sold chunks of their stock. The CEO and senior executives were making out big, and the workers were making a decent living.At that time, one of the hostess workers Mike Hummel, blogging as bluebarnstormer over at Daily Kos noted that he was making $48,000 a year, a bit over the US median household income, and had insurance and a pension.Then, a few weeks later in 2005, came the letter saying that, oops, all of that profit had really been just an accounting error the company was actually in trouble. Although the CEO and the top guys had all made a nice killing selling the stock when it was high, and paying a maximum income tax on it of 15 percent because they used the Capital Gains loophole that Mitt Romney used to become a multimillionaire, they now wanted the workers to take a big pay cut.Hummel notes that the oops letter became the justification for asking the workers to take a pay cut, which they agreed to, and his pay dropped from $48,000 a year in 2005 to $38,000 a year last year. But every year, $3 an hour of his compensation showed up in the workers pension fund instead of his paycheck. Year after year. With 18,000-plus workers, it was millions and millions of dollars. Dollars that the workers had paid in, at the rate of $3 per hour.Then came the Bain-style takedown. In order to strip the company down to its individual brands and sell them off, piece by piece, the company needed to bust the union. The union said, No, so the company went to bankruptcy court a method Bain and other vulture capitalists often use to kill off unions.In the meantime, the CEO and senior executives were paying themselves handsome salaries and big bonuses. And where was that money coming from?Read More At The Link In The Title

Americans For Prosperity Fake an Attack On Their Tent at Michigan Right to Work RallyPrepare to be confronted with yet another example of right wing deliberate deception. Today (12/11) at the Right to Work protest in Michigan, an Americans for Prosperity tent came down with people inside of it. Naturally, Fox was there to capture the scene and AFP were quick to blame it on violent union supporters. Also, Breitbart was there to blame the tent falling on violent union supporters, with a video that doesn’t start until well after the melee (of course).As you have learned by now (you’re quicker than the media), all is not always what it seems in Right Wing world.A protester of the anti-union law passed today, Tom Duckworth, saw a man he'd spoken to earlier in the tent, wearing NRA garb, kick the AFP tent poles from the inside of the tent. Duckworth thought they must be getting ready to leave, until he realized there were people inside the tent. So, basically, a person described by Duckworth as “clearly a member of Americans for Propserty” kicked the tent down and then AFP blamed it on the unions.December 11, 2012: Tom Duckworth explains what he saw at the Americans for Prosperity tent earlier today. Watch here via ProgressMichigan:Duckworth says that when the tent came down, people cheered, but nobody “rushed the tent” for about 30 seconds. Sure, they cheered – AFP are the people funding the death of a globally recognized human right. After about 30 seconds, the protesters did trample the fallen tent in their pleasure, cheering its demise.However, tragically, there were people inside the tent, which the protesters didn’t realize right away. Duckworth says as soon as they realized that, they chased people off of the tent. He says he backed away to make room, and was told it was cut open and they got people out of the tent. Five minutes later, the mounted police showed up to clear the area. (Question: Would the AFP people have cut the union members out of a tent if the situation had been reversed?)A commenter (av8tor17b ) concurs with Duckworth, writing, “I was physically there this morning and talked to the AFP people before the tents came down. This gentleman is correct- it was a guy with a “freedomworks” button, who was standing IN the AFP tent this morning, who caused the tent to fall.”Duckworth agreed that it was an attempt by AFP to provoke violence or take advantage of the situation in order to blame the protesters for the tent going down, since AFP were clearly outnumbered (that happens when your cause is not a real grassroots movement).AFP tried everything to get pro-right to work people to come out to the rally including using their Koch dollars to bribe the unwashed and deluded Fox News masses with free food, drink, and $25 gift cards.Of course the press was there before the mounted police (who needs the mounted police by the paid instigators of the law that’s causing the ruckus, eh?), and so another meme is created and fulfilled for the plutocrats and their PR outlet at Fox News.This has all of the usual shades of the secret Walker audio tape in which he discussed planting disruptors to blame on unions in Wisconsin.No one is claiming the protesters are perfect, but this has all of the eerily familiar hallmarks of right wing propaganda. AFP kicked their own tent in on their own supporters.Then they blamed the fallout on the unions. A Breitbart video was there just in time to capture the resulting melee and suggest it all started with the unions. For some reason, their videos never start off at the beginning or proceed without edits.So typical.

They are talking about banning a specific type of weapon and a specific type of ammo clip.And what fu(kin good is that gonna do?Feel good legislation, eh? Appearances. Perception.{quote]Libs on the internet can spout off all they want.So I guess all the libs on MSNBC don't count? Including a whole bunch from congress?Are you ignorant or are you lying? It's always so hard to tell with you liberals.We will NEVER ban all guns in this country, nor should we.Better get off that slippery slope before you fall down and break your ***. Yea, hilarious. Problem here is there are a bunch of dead kids and liberals are trying to make hay out of this politically. Whatever stupid ban you can come up with to make your selves feel betterer, and when I say "make your selves feel betterer" I really mean "put Mother governemnt in a stronger position so one day you true commies can have it your way" it ain't gonna do a mutha fu(kin thing to stop this kinda of school shooting incident from happening again. A guy with one revolver and a few speed loads could have done the same thing.

Joe Scarborough: Newtown Shooting Made 'Ideologies Of My Past' On Guns Irrelevant Joe Scarborough said on Monday that the massacre in Newtown had forced him to rethink his "long-held" belief about gun rights. In a lengthy monologue, Scarborough talked about how shaken up he had been by the killing of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday. He noted that his children's ages averaged that of some of the murdered victims. "From this day forward, nothing can ever be the same again," he said. "... Let this be our true landmark ... politicians can no longer be allowed to defend the status quo." He said that he was a "conservative Republican" who had been solidly aligned with the NRA during his time in Congress, and had previously held libertarian views on the Second Amendment. But he added that Friday "changed everything. VIDEO Scarborough's been too long in the MSNBC saddle. He going menopausal and estrogenic all at the same time. bla bla bla ... and when I say "make your selves feel betterer" I really mean "put Mother governemnt in a stronger position My God. One would almost forget how you cheered for torture, you unintentionally ironic chimpanzee.

Problem here is there are a bunch of dead kids and liberals are trying to make hay out of this politically. Whatever stupid ban you can come up with to make your selves feel betterer, and when I say "make your selves feel betterer" I really mean "put Mother governemnt in a stronger position so one day you true commies can have it your way" it ain't gonna do a mutha fu(kin thing to stop this kinda of school shooting incident from happening again. A guy with one revolver and a few speed loads could have done the same thing.So we just throw up our hands and do nothing?Or maybe we take Wayne LaPierre's advice and put an armed guard at the entrance to every school.A few problems with that.There was a deputy sheriff stationed at Columbine on the day of the shooting.Virginia Tech also had armed police on campus.Of course Mr. LaPierre did not say that we should also have armed guards in movie theaters, shopping malls, supermarket parking lots or houses of worship, where shootings like this have also occurred.I guess people in those places are on their own.Oh, I know, if only someone had had a gun, they could have stopped those shootings.Can you imagine someone trying to take down the shooter (in full body armor) in a dark crowded movie theater in Aurora?BTW, there was an armed citizen in the parking lot where Gabby Giffords was shot.He was coming out of a store and saw a man with a gun, and almost shot him.The man with the gun turned out to be the man that had wrested the gun away from the shooter.If we did have an armed guard stationed at every school, they would likely be the first one shot.Remember the Holocaust Museum shooting in 2009, where a security guard was shot and killed, or the shooting at the Capitol in 1998 when two United States Capitol Police officers were also shot and killed?I'm sick of the pinheads who think that the solution is so simple as to just arm everyone.Nevermind the confusion that takes place when a shooting like this occurs, even when trained law enforcement officials are on the scene.Let's have a bunch of people without any law enforcement training running around shooting wildly.That'll work.

When you depend upon another person to defend your life, you're putting your life in their hands. Why create more gun-free zones when those obviously don't work? Sure, you can make the attempt to ban some of the guns, but you won't ban them all. They'll still be available and gun free zones will still exist and all it takes is someone with even a tube fed rifle to wreak havoc, mayhem and death. You can lock the doors, they'll go through the windows. There are still going to violent, antisocial, misanthropic, **** crazy people out there quite willing to engage in murder. And you're back right where you started. Dead kids and teachers. Or dead movie-goers. Or dead mall shoppers. Or dead co-employees. Your laws and confiscatory measures didn't do a bit of good. I don't necessarily agree with having a cop in every school. I've read the reports of molestation and violence perpertrated by School Resource Officers. I do think it's quite acceptable to arm the teachers. They are the first point of contact with any shooter and will be able to respond faster, if need be, than any law enforcement out on patrol in the streets. Think on this. This doesn't mean if a shooting occurs the teacher goes out and confronts the shooter(s). The teacher's first job is to secure the safety of the children. So of course that means going through the standard emergency protocals. Locking the doors, turning off lights, looking for the means to escape. But those are not always successful. The gun is the last resort. If the shooter gets into the room, the teacher is at the ready to defend her andtheir charges and prepared to unleash hell. I mean, hell, there could be better escape and safety protocals within the schools. Like inter-connecting doors to other classrooms to provide escape routes. Hell, make the investment and make the doors all steel. If there is a want for windows in thedoor, make the windows small enough to look through, bullet-resistant and if broken, the lock out ofarm reach. The walls are usually cinderblock and that's pretty secure. In other words, you're creating somewhat of a panic room with each classroom. You could even have windows leading outside that are similar to what you find in schoolbuses or motorhomes. They pop out in case of emergency. Of course, these safety mechanisms are never guaranteed to work, but allowing the teacher the means of self-defense and escape is much more feasible than having a lone officer in the school or what is currently being done now, which isn't working.

Sure, you can make the attempt to ban some of the guns, but you won't ban them all.I don't want to ban them ALL.But for the life of me, I don't understand why anyone needs the type of weapons and extended magazines that have been used in these last few shootings.And I haven't seen anyone articulate one logical reason why ordinary citizens need this type of weapon, or these high capacity magazines.Their only purpose seems to be to inflict a lot of carnage, very quickly.

Their only purpose seems to be to inflict a lot of carnage, very quickly. What about to overthrow our tyrannical government? If that argument doesn't convince you, I suspect nothing will.I do think it's quite acceptable to arm the teachers. They are the first point of contact with any shooter and will be able to respond faster, if need be, than any law enforcement out on patrol in the streets. Wait a minute: didn't this tragedy occur as a result of a teacher not taking proper care of her weapons? Might the presence of more guns in schools just result in more shootings?

And I haven't seen anyone articulate one logical reason why ordinary citizens need this type of weapon, or these high capacity magazines.http://liberalforum....n-on/?p=2913623

http://liberalforum....n-on/?p=2913623 Just as I said.

I don't want to ban them ALL.Then weapons are still available and gun free zones are still targets. Is it your position youdesire to still have defenseless victims of school shootings and will refer to them as collateral damage because only "assault" weapons were banned? The mere banning of so-called assault weapons does not lessen the risk of danger.But for the life of me, I don't understand why anyone needs the type of weapons and extended magazines that have been used in these last few shootings.Who are you todetermine what any person needs?And I haven't seen anyone articulate one logical reason why ordinary citizens need this type of weapon, or these high capacity magazines.teacher supplied an articulable statement within his thread.Are some citizens somehow more exceptional or special deserving of more rights than others?Would you prohibit law enforcement from using these weapons?Their only purpose seems to be to inflict a lot of carnage, very quickly.And how is that a bad thing? Isn't superior firepower beneficial when dealing with bad people?Look around, the photos of SWAT and the like that surrounded the school after the shooting. They had better weapons than the shooter but were nowhere to be found when it came to saving the victims. The shooter could have used a .22 and killed as many people.Law enforcement wasn't available even though they possessed weapons most "ordinary" citizens are denied.Teachers were unarmed.Point.