Pret-ty snea-ky, Senator: GOP tries to conceal weapons in credit-card reform bill
Filed under: Credit
In a move that has drawn criticism, confusion, and more than a few comments about strange bedfellows, the Senate recently voted 67-29 to add a gun-rights amendment to a consumer credit-card bill. The provision, which was authored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla), requires national parks to abide by state gun laws and would allow park visitors to carry concealed weapons.Drawing a connection between credit-card reform and pistol-packing park visitors is nearly impossible. "I would have preferred that matter to be left to another bill," said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the bill's primary sponsor. Dodd added: "I hate to see us lose this opportunity to make a difference with credit-card reform."
Even the amendment's supporters had a hard time justifying its inclusion. "Why is this [gun amendment] being included in this [credit bill]?" mused Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo). "The answer is, this is the Senate, where everything is germane."
This justification seems bizarrely open-ended, yet surprisingly honest. After all, Udall's explanation ultimately boils down to a suggestion that the Senate is a wild, wacky place where any two things can be connected by nothing more than back-room deals and creative legislation. Agricultural regulation and air-traffic control? Ethics reform and defense expenditures? Educational standards and hot-dog ingredients? In the bizarro world of the Senate, anything can be linked by a need for votes.
Some analysts have suggested that the Coburn amendment is an attempt to derail the passage of the bill. The idea is that, by including a controversial proviso, the Senate has made it possible to stall the legislation more-or-less indefinitely. Coburn claims that this was not his intention: "I don't want to see [the bill] fail on this [...] nor do I want to see the Second Amendment trampled on."
Political analyst (and Walletpop contributor) Lita Epstein argues that, given the Obama administration's clear opposition to guns in national parks, this amendment will probably be stripped as part of a House/Senate conference. The bill originally passed in the House without Coburn's proviso, so this seems to be a likely conclusion. Then again, with political necessity calling the shots, who knows what amendments will ultimately be attached to the final product? Maybe, one day, Alaska will finally get its Bridge to Nowhere.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-15-2009 @ 6:07PM
ross said...
This is the reason why we are in deep sh t, Were does gun control need to work with credit cards. The only thing I can fiqure is we take the gun and shoot the credit card company CEO.
See what a bunch of lawers can do when they think.
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5-15-2009 @ 6:07PM
ross said...
Did you here about the plane crash off the coast of Fl the airplane was filled with lawers, you know what the bad thing is that there was empty seats.
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5-16-2009 @ 7:20AM
rielly said...
When the things goes wrong the person leave a comment on the matter to make it worst.
rielly
full time part time jobs
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5-16-2009 @ 7:16PM
birdogx said...
This is brilliant! Guns can be purchased with credit cards. There is a correlation. I good way to tie the 10th amendment into the credit card law. If Obama wants it so bad, will he sign this one now that it has a pro gun adder? Ha Ha Ha if it passes, I'll celebrate by purchasing a gun with my credit card!
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5-17-2009 @ 6:28AM
Henry Bowman said...
Wow, that's pretty sneaky, huh? Nobody has ever done anything like THAT before. Not even when Frank Lautenberg buried his amendment that removed gun rights from MISDEMEANOR convicts in an Omnibus Spending bill. The "Lautenberg Amendment" was never subjected to debate in the House, and many members of Congress who voted for the bill didn't even know it had been inserted.
Seems liberals can dish it out with no shame, but boy, do they whine and carry on about how "unfair" things are when somebody dishes it back.
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5-18-2009 @ 11:15AM
B said...
As though you Leninist-Marxist heathens don't slip through your agenda. You brood of vipors! What's that whole North American Forum on Integration, if not a marxist operation, openly holding annual "mock parliaments" in Canada with the intention of creating a "model" for a supranational North American Legislative body... without being challenged by the media? You guys can't breath without manipulating!
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5-18-2009 @ 11:18AM
Bruce Watson said...
"Marxist-Leninist heathens," huh? Big words for someone who doesn't know how to spell the words "viper" and "breathe."
Take a deep BREATH, B, try reading a book, and ask yourself if there might not be a middle ground between Sean Hannity and Karl Marx.
5-19-2009 @ 4:19PM
B said...
Since when has it mattered that the truth was spelled correctly? You are expecting me to believe that you have never made a mistake in spelling? Awful lot of nerve for a constant blogger to point out my flaws. And ask myself if there might not be any "middle ground"? Why don't you just ask if I try some of your Hegelian-dialectic subversion? Sorry, there's no "middle ground" between myself and a rat.
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5-20-2009 @ 10:45AM
Bruce Watson said...
B-
Yes, spelling matters, particularly if you are going to put yourself on a moral and intellectual pedestal. And when, precisely, did working as a blogger become an automatic admission of one's moral and/or grammatical failings?
For all that, I have to give you credit for picking up on my Hegelian leanings. Like Hegel, I believe in progress through history and in the ultimate improvement of the human species. If we aren't moving forward, then what, exactly, are we doing?
Of course, our definitions of progress and movement may vary greatly. For that matter, your apparent inability to see the gray areas between yourself and a rat (in your words) suggest an inability to deal with the idea of incremental advancement. For you, it seems to be all or nothing; personally, I tend to avoid such absolutes because I believe that they are solely the purview of God, or fate, or the Weltgeist, or whatever term you choose to apply.
While we're at it, there's a lot of distance between Hegel and Marx (or even Marx and Lenin, for that matter). Personally, I don't believe that human progress will end with Communism, but I do believe that it involves the enacting of laws that protect the individual from the corporation.
5-19-2009 @ 11:34PM
Papa said...
What is the difference? The Democrats did the same thing repetedly to President Bush in order to force him to veto bills that he would have rather passed otherwise. They attached defunding the troops to nearly every bill they passed in the last two years of President Bush's term just to give him a black eye for vetoing what would have otherwise have been good bills. Of course no one talks about Liberal dirty tricks, only that we learn the rules and play the game far better than they do.
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5-19-2009 @ 11:43PM
Papa said...
Oh and did I miss something? Don't the Democrats have a majority in the senate? How does 67 to 29 equate to a GOP driven amendment? I guess it is the new Liberal math.
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5-20-2009 @ 9:52PM
b said...
I never placed myself on a moral and intellectual pedestal–you did. You condemn yourself by your own testimony.
Marx married Hegel and Feuerbach and called it Dialectical Materialism.
A collectivist who is paid by corporations, who talks of protecting individuals. Unbelievable. Well, we have legislation that protects our individual rights and freedoms. It's called the U.S. Constitution.
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5-20-2009 @ 10:05PM
Bruce Watson said...
B-
I've got to hand it to you: you manage to pair impressive knowledge with logical fallacies in a manner that is truly mind blowing. Let's begin with blaming Hegel for the materialist direction that Marx applied to his philosophy. Can you name the fallacy?
Next, you somehow label me a collectivist simply because I believe that laws should protect consumers from predatory credit companies. Can you name that fallacy?
Then, of course, you somehow intimate that I am hypocritical for espousing a law that helps consumers while drawing a paycheck from a major corporation. Beyond a certain ignorance about what AOL does, this also demonstrates a third fallacy. Can you name it?
Finally, you suggest that, because the Constitution (more particularly the Bill of Rights, but that's nitpicking) protects individual freedoms, we shouldn't worry about helping consumers. Once again, another great fallacy. Care to guess what it is?
5-21-2009 @ 9:54AM
b said...
I blame Hegel for the spiritual direction Marx applied materialism.
My guess is your only concern in helping "consumers" is to alter public opinion using the Hegelian-Dialectic process to further the goals of working groups and international corporations who are working to create supranational regulation.
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5-21-2009 @ 10:01AM
b said...
My guess is your only concern in helping "consumers" is to alter public opinion using the Hegelian-Dialectic process to further the goals of working groups and international corporations who are working to create supranational regulation.
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5-21-2009 @ 10:02AM
Bruce Watson said...
B-
On the other hand, maybe when you've got a hammer, every problem is a nail.
5-22-2009 @ 11:14AM
b said...
No one is forced to do business with a corporation. By creating the perception that some wrong exists in the relations between corporation and the individual, what you really do is legitimize the notion that the relationship is indispensable. In other words, you create the false premise that people cannot survive without corporations, by pointing fingers saying that laws must be made to protect, etc. In a hyperinflationary event, the most likely to endure unscathed would be the Amish farmer.
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5-22-2009 @ 11:45AM
Bruce Watson said...
B-
Good to see you back; I'm enjoying this.
In many ways, you make a really solid point. After all, one of the key marks of our economy is that consumers can spend their money where they see the highest perceived benefit. What's more, there is no legal compulsion to use credit.
And yet, one of the key elements of the current economy is that it encourages companies to outsource jobs to countries with labor laws that are, by our standards, immoral. In doing so, large corporations support political and social structures that, publicly at least, America abhors. I have to ask if supporting China's totalitarianism, repression, and horrible labor standards is really in our best interests. If it isn't, then perhaps we need to work on laws that discourage outsourcing.
While this is a massive jump in corporate regulation, I think it's worth asking if the ends justify the means. I'm not entirely sure that moving manufacturing overseas is a good thing, and I'm completely convinced that supporting repressive regimes is a very, very bad thing.
So why not completely avoid corporations?
Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that contemporary people can survive without corporations. Having squeezed out or purchased so many small businesses, corporations have, in many ways, made themselves indispensable. Most of the money spent on food, transportation, gas, clothing, and other necessities finds its way to major corporations.
Bottom line, an agrarian lifestyle is unsustainable for most Americans; moreover, turning our backs on a few hundred years of scientific progress would be idiotic. For better or worse, it seems like corporations are inextricably tied to industrialized life in 21st century America.
Given the intimacy of this relationship, many have argued that consumers aren't in a position to fight corporations. In other words, corporations are too big to fail and too big to be regulated.
I would argue the opposite. If they occupy a central place in American life, then corporations must be treated like vital organs. They need to be observed and regulated. While their failure must be protected against, so must their excessive engorgement. After all, a hyperactive organ can be as dangerous as a non-functional one.
Or, to put it another way, the recent economic meltdown has convinced me that corporations don't always know what's best for themselves. If it takes regulation to ensure that they follow sustainable business practices, then so be it.
5-23-2009 @ 11:08AM
b said...
The recent economic meltdown created by easy credit has convinced you to support measures which lower the fees credit card corporations are charging as a result of the fallout from easy credit?
Moses didn't say to Pharaoh: what my people need is for you to be more regulated. No, he said "let my people go!"
I have to ask why you would question U.S. support of China's "totalitarianism, repression, and horrible labor standards" when Joseph Stalin stated in the 1930's that “Dictatorship can be established only by a victory of socialism in different countries or groups of countries, after which there would be federal unions of the various groupings of these socialist countries, and the third stage would be an amalgamation of these regional federal unions into a world union of socialist nations.”
When "a victory of socialism in different countries" then followed in Europe.
When those countries, under the guise of "free trade" or a "common" market, eventually became a European Union.
Followed by an African Union, a South American Union and a Mediterranean Union.
Consider this quote from Foreign Affairs on how to "educate" our children for "globalization and integration"--
"America is still preparing our children for life in a unipolar world, and as described by Richard Haass[1] and Fareed Zakaria[2] in separate essays which appeared in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, we are living in an emerging nonpolar world. The ability of the United States to adjust, survive, and prosper in this new world order will depend upon successful preparation of the next generation for the evolution of the international power structure already happening."
"In ways both formal and informal we are teaching our youth how we became a superpower, instead of teaching them the skills necessary to function when we are not. As a society we must accept that our reign of world-domination is coming to a close, and as Americans we should take some measure of pride in how we have contributed to the “rise of the rest” (Zakaria). Next, we must be willing to change our perspective and shift our paradigms to reflect this realization and acceptance of nonpolarity. Finally, we must evaluate how to reconstruct our educational institutions to properly prepare our children for a new age marked by globalization and integration."
Pret-ty snea-ky.
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