This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 3, 2013 - The big news from the Left Coast last week was that the LAPD had recovered not one — but two — “rocket launchers” during a gun buy-back program in the City of Angels. The photo of a uniformed officer somberly inspecting one of the devices dominated a complete 24-hour news cycle.
The offending item appeared to be a specimen of the AT-4 series of anti-armor ordnance in use by the military. The shoulder-launched rocket-propelled grenade it discharges can enable an infantryman to destroy a tank. The idea that a weapon of this potency was readily available on city streets elicited predictable alarm among concerned onlookers.
Though the fact was generally omitted from televised reports, people who encountered the photo in print media or online — and who bothered to read the accompanying text — soon learned that the instrument was “inoperable.” That description was both technically accurate and conceptually misleading.
These things are single-use, disposable armaments. Once a soldier fires the high-explosive projectile within it, he discards the remains and continues on with his mission. The featured catch of the LA effort was two spent launchers, each with the potential lethality of the cardboard tube at the center of a roll of toilet paper.
One would presume, or at least hope, that the officer understood that he was holding a harmless souvenir and not an implement of mass destruction. But the curio looked menacing, so it led the story. On the other hand, if taxpayers in California really are paying citizens to surrender lengths of used pipe that news might help to explain why the state is going broke.
Obviously, gun violence is not a media creation and the LA buy-back did take legitimate firepower out of circulation. Misleading coverage, however, made the public face of the program an exotic piece of hardware that could be safely stored in a preschool.
Nowhere is the dissonance between perception and reality better illustrated than in media reports regarding the infamous “fiscal cliff.” Once the November elections were finally concluded, newscasts began to advise that our elected representatives were feverishly working to spare the nation financial collapse. Though the peril was real, it was seldom mentioned that the calamity from which the Congress sought to protect us was itself.
The “cliff” was actually the convergence of two related, but distinct, self-imposed deadlines. The first would raise taxes significantly for everybody who finds time to file a return. The second would enforce massive federal spending cuts. Each merits consideration.
Maybe We Owe W. An Apology
When the Bush tax cuts were first proposed, the Congressional Budget Office projected they would produce deficits that would bankrupt the government. To get around that problem, the cuts were scheduled to expire in 2010. That “sunset provision” transformed the 20-year forecast from suicidal to merely irresponsible.
In the event, the cuts produced deficits that were far worse than predicted. By the time they were set to expire, however, the nation was in the grip of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression so they were extended for an additional two years.
Heading toward the cliff, Democrats proposed making the cuts permanent for the bottom 98 percent of taxpayers; Republicans wanted to make them permanent for everyone.
Back in the day, Democrats had criticized Bush’s reductions as “tax cuts for the rich.” Q: If Bush’s tax plan was really just welfare for the wealthy, why is it now critical to keep it in place for the middle class? Related Q: Did anybody read the original CBO projection?
Let’s Make It Illegal To Be Stupid
There is no constitutional limit to how much money the government can borrow. Never has been. In 1917, however, Congress imposed one on itself. This is what we now call the debt ceiling.
Because the ceiling is routinely raised, it has done little to stem indebtedness. It does, however, provide occasion for the party out of power to call the governing party a bunch of profligate losers every time it needs to be increased.
Sen. Obama, for instance, accused President W. Bush of being fiscally irresponsible when the latter sought to raise the borrowing limit in 2006. Five years later, President Obama accused congressional Republicans of fiscal irresponsibility when they resisted his efforts to do the same thing. Interestingly, a reasonable case can be made for both of his contradictory arguments.
Ronald Reagan (2 terms) increased the limit 189 percent. His successor, H.W. Bush (1 term) lifted it 55 percent. Clinton (2 terms) raised it 37 percent, while his successor, W. Bush (also 2 terms) presided over a 115 percent increase. In is first term, Obama has raised the ceiling 16 percent.
The most recent increase took place in August 2011. At that time, Republican budget hawks demanded offsetting spending cuts as a condition for approval. Because nobody could agree on what to cut and the nation was on the brink of default, the raise was passed along with a mandate for an across-the-board 10 percent cut in federal spending should negotiations fail to produce a better plan.
Those mandatory cuts, now referred to as “sequestration,” were set to take effect Jan. 1, 2013 — the same day the Bush tax cuts expire. Welcome to the cliff of congressional design.
Luckily, in Washington you can sometimes recover after going over the brink. The nation first went off the cliff when Dec. 31 ended without a remedy, then recovered nicely when Congress finally acted on Jan. 1. Because New Year’s Day is a holiday, nobody actually got hurt; and House members who reluctantly approved the deal can now claim that they didn’t vote to raise taxes on anybody because the cuts for everybody had already expired.
Among other things, the new law makes the lower tax rates permanent for the first $400,000 of annual income for individuals, $450,000 for couples. The measure also delays sequestration (spending cuts) until further budget talks can take place, presumably when the debt ceiling must be raised again in the first quarter of the new year.
All things considered, I’d say our elected leaders have done a fine job of saving us from the menace they created. And if they’re looking for a good deal on defense spending, I think the LAPD might have a couple of rocket launchers for sale.