- Jun 6, 2007
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The following commentary is based on religious faith so if you're a person that does not put much stock in such things you probably don't want to read this posting. This Wednesday shooting at the Republican Party's baseball team practice was no doubt an event that was horrible and should never have happened and yet it was probably an occasion where God was sending humanity a message specifically to the political leadership of America which is stop your bad behavior where you work to advance ideologies that aren't good you don't base your policies on the merits of the issues and consider everyones interest and then pursue what is good.
The natural question one might have is how does one draw the conclusion that God is at work in this evil act God who is by his nature all good doesn't ordain evil acts. True but there is an important difference between God ordaining something and allowing it to happen and the latter I am positing here. Obviously one can't prove such a thing but many people that live by religious faith often believe things they cannot prove but believe them on a leap of faith. People that live this way sometimes use the strangeness of the facts in a matter as a basis for this belief.
There is a lot of strangeness in the facts of this shooting that could lead one to conclude that God was somewhat involved in this matter. The shooter, James Hodgkinson, was a "sixty-six" year old guy that did not have a history of real violence; how strange is that mass shooters are generally people in their teens, twenties or thirties by the time a person reaches their sixties they ordinarily have experienced numerous trials and tribulations in life and they have developed a strong enough hold on civilized behavior where they never cross the line into going on a shooting rampage. Plus, this shooter had functioning social interacting skills he interacted reasonably well with people in and around the gym in Alexandria where he was known to frequent why didn't one or more of those interactions pull him back from the brink of crossing this line it shouldn't have taken much obviously he had a long history of being a civilized person; with his abilities he should have been able to find a job and/or an apartment which probably would have kept him as a functioning human being, why didn't one of these intervening events take place? What is also strange is that the only Congressperson shot was Steve Scalise one could fairly say Congressman Scalise is the poster person for what is wrong with Congress and this includes both parties specifically that many Congresspersons of both parties largely sell their soul to their party their party comes up with a policy agenda based on bad ideology and they don't resist at all but become whole-hearted advocates for that agenda; doing the right thing isn't their North star but doing what their party wants is. A perfect example was Congressman Scalise defense of the Republican healthcare bill in the House debate; Congressman Scalise like many of the Republican top lieutenants argued on the House floor that the Democrats weren't being truthful about the bill when just the opposite was true the Republican bill would raise the healthcare bill for many Americans because it changed the basis for the federal subsidy from income to age and of course many states would trigger the waivers which would cause a nightmare for many Americans with pre-existing conditions in their effort to find affordable good health insurance and would cause the clock to be turned back to pre-2010 where many people's health insurance was not sufficient to enable them to successfully treat serious illnesses because the federal law did not have a good essential benefit mandate!
What Republican policies are really bad one might ask, the following is a list of some of the major ones. The Republican legislative initiative on taxes is bad. Leave the personal income tax code alone any change you implement will undoubtedly be weighted in favor of the wealthy and that would be bad in these times where low and middle income Americans are struggling so. Stick with just implementing reform of the corporate tax code both parties have long proclaimed this needs to be done and doing so will significantly improve the economy. On this same topic scrap the border adjustment tax idea, it violates good tax policy which calls for taxing profits not revenue and this border adjustment tax is taking a big gamble with our economy the American people don't need this it is predicated on the U.S. dollar rising what if that doesn't happen a lot of American consumers and businesses will be hurt as a result. The Republican legislative initiative on healthcare reform is bad. What Americans want and need on healthcare is lower costs and more choice, the core of the Republican plan to take approximately a trillion dollars out of the system through tax repeals and the like is indefensible it doesn't pass the common sense test on reaching the American people's goals. The Republican party legislative initiative on infrastructure is bad. Their plan consisting of the Federal gov't putting $200 billion in the pot and having this leverage $800 billion from the state and local governments and the private sector is idiotic; many state and local governments are barely keeping their economic head above water they aren't able to really participate in such a plan. Why don't you just implement the commonly spoken about option amongst both Democrats and Republican of giving a tax holiday of sorts (where the tax rate is dramatically lowered) of all the foreign profits of American companies parked off shore brought back into America and earmark the tax revenue generated for infrastructure spending!
Both Republicans and Democrats will be making a big mistake if the only lesson they take from this shooting is that the political rhetoric and discourse in America needs to be ratcheted way down. The other lesson they desperately need to learn is that America's political system is dysfunctional and has been for a very long time and to a large degree it is because the policy agendas of both parties are bad and this needs to change they need to start doing what is good because otherwise America will see more instances of America's society breaking down with possibly really fearful consequences for the country!
The natural question one might have is how does one draw the conclusion that God is at work in this evil act God who is by his nature all good doesn't ordain evil acts. True but there is an important difference between God ordaining something and allowing it to happen and the latter I am positing here. Obviously one can't prove such a thing but many people that live by religious faith often believe things they cannot prove but believe them on a leap of faith. People that live this way sometimes use the strangeness of the facts in a matter as a basis for this belief.
There is a lot of strangeness in the facts of this shooting that could lead one to conclude that God was somewhat involved in this matter. The shooter, James Hodgkinson, was a "sixty-six" year old guy that did not have a history of real violence; how strange is that mass shooters are generally people in their teens, twenties or thirties by the time a person reaches their sixties they ordinarily have experienced numerous trials and tribulations in life and they have developed a strong enough hold on civilized behavior where they never cross the line into going on a shooting rampage. Plus, this shooter had functioning social interacting skills he interacted reasonably well with people in and around the gym in Alexandria where he was known to frequent why didn't one or more of those interactions pull him back from the brink of crossing this line it shouldn't have taken much obviously he had a long history of being a civilized person; with his abilities he should have been able to find a job and/or an apartment which probably would have kept him as a functioning human being, why didn't one of these intervening events take place? What is also strange is that the only Congressperson shot was Steve Scalise one could fairly say Congressman Scalise is the poster person for what is wrong with Congress and this includes both parties specifically that many Congresspersons of both parties largely sell their soul to their party their party comes up with a policy agenda based on bad ideology and they don't resist at all but become whole-hearted advocates for that agenda; doing the right thing isn't their North star but doing what their party wants is. A perfect example was Congressman Scalise defense of the Republican healthcare bill in the House debate; Congressman Scalise like many of the Republican top lieutenants argued on the House floor that the Democrats weren't being truthful about the bill when just the opposite was true the Republican bill would raise the healthcare bill for many Americans because it changed the basis for the federal subsidy from income to age and of course many states would trigger the waivers which would cause a nightmare for many Americans with pre-existing conditions in their effort to find affordable good health insurance and would cause the clock to be turned back to pre-2010 where many people's health insurance was not sufficient to enable them to successfully treat serious illnesses because the federal law did not have a good essential benefit mandate!
What Republican policies are really bad one might ask, the following is a list of some of the major ones. The Republican legislative initiative on taxes is bad. Leave the personal income tax code alone any change you implement will undoubtedly be weighted in favor of the wealthy and that would be bad in these times where low and middle income Americans are struggling so. Stick with just implementing reform of the corporate tax code both parties have long proclaimed this needs to be done and doing so will significantly improve the economy. On this same topic scrap the border adjustment tax idea, it violates good tax policy which calls for taxing profits not revenue and this border adjustment tax is taking a big gamble with our economy the American people don't need this it is predicated on the U.S. dollar rising what if that doesn't happen a lot of American consumers and businesses will be hurt as a result. The Republican legislative initiative on healthcare reform is bad. What Americans want and need on healthcare is lower costs and more choice, the core of the Republican plan to take approximately a trillion dollars out of the system through tax repeals and the like is indefensible it doesn't pass the common sense test on reaching the American people's goals. The Republican party legislative initiative on infrastructure is bad. Their plan consisting of the Federal gov't putting $200 billion in the pot and having this leverage $800 billion from the state and local governments and the private sector is idiotic; many state and local governments are barely keeping their economic head above water they aren't able to really participate in such a plan. Why don't you just implement the commonly spoken about option amongst both Democrats and Republican of giving a tax holiday of sorts (where the tax rate is dramatically lowered) of all the foreign profits of American companies parked off shore brought back into America and earmark the tax revenue generated for infrastructure spending!
Both Republicans and Democrats will be making a big mistake if the only lesson they take from this shooting is that the political rhetoric and discourse in America needs to be ratcheted way down. The other lesson they desperately need to learn is that America's political system is dysfunctional and has been for a very long time and to a large degree it is because the policy agendas of both parties are bad and this needs to change they need to start doing what is good because otherwise America will see more instances of America's society breaking down with possibly really fearful consequences for the country!
