Stanford law prof: Second Amendment is about restricting gun rights. As long as we’re having nutty professor day, check out John J. Donahue III who also believes legalized abortion lowers crime. Too bad his mommy and daddy didn’t believe in abortion.
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Some amendments are "more equal" than others, eh, Prof. Donahue?
Liberal journalist Michael Kinsley famously quoted a colleague as saying:
“If liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they interpret the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would be law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory.”
"...law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory.” And they'd get TU's here fer sher.
Sweet Jeebus, this peanut head moron needs to educate himself on the Constitution a bit more.
What is this guy? 12? Read his CV. He hadn't ever worked a day as a lawyer, but he is corrupting the minds of the newbies. If you look at the Constitution in historiccontext, you see the government was set up to avoid concentrating power in the hands of the few, since that worked so well for the colonists. Our current government is breaking its collective a$$ to overturn said plan so they CAN concentrate power in the hands of the few.
that was me rose, sorry mis t'd.
You are forgiven!
"Donohue explained that the Second Amendment must be interpreted in historical context."
Another stupid fucking liberal who thinks he has a read on the constitution.....Hey Professor....Interpret this!
Could it be because he's Phil Donohue's son?
I don't know if he is or not, but the brain seems to fail the same.
John J. Donahue III (how snooty does that sound) is a wanna be social engineer, & he is a threat to the USA & our way of life.
BTW, keep an eye on Teresa Ghilarducci, from The New School...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_Ghilarducci
...she is very interested in retirement pensions & would love to socialize them for the greater good of the people. Flying under the radar as of right now, but she needs to be exposed. Dangerous piece of crap.
" labor economist and nationally-recognized expert in retirement security"
nuff sed. never even heard of her, so how could I, a part of this nation, recognize her? maybe they mean nationally as in NPR. ?
You have obviously forgotten that "nationally recognized" means in someone's pocket in Washington DC, the northeast, Chicago or California. The rest of us don't count. We just sort of hold the continent together for those locations.
Don't laugh, she's been at this for over a decade...
http://archives.republicans.edlabor.house.gov/archive/hearings/107th/fc/enrontwo2702/ghilarducci.htm
Testimony of Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Department of Economics, University of Notre Dame
February 7, 2002
National Compensation Trends
It is a familiar narrative that unlike previous expansions, inequality between the nation’s rich and poor families widened considerably in the 1990s – by the end of the decade average incomes in the top one-fifth of families were ten times larger than for the poorest families (Mishel et. al. 2001). Fortunately wages at the bottom of the distribution grew in the last four years. However, wages are only a part of workers’ total compensation. What is happening to health insurance and pensions is bad news; coverage and quality in both types of insurance plans have fallen. The erosion in health insurance has created much more disparity than earnings alone (Medoff and Calabrese, 2001). In contrast, the pension coverage gap closed; but not because the bottom was raised but because the top had fallen – pension coverage for the top 40% of the wage distribution dropped significantly.
•Pension coverage rates for earners in the top 40% of the wage distribution fell significantly between 1978 and 1998. Pension coverage for the top 20% dropped from 78% in 1978 to 72% in 1998. For the next quintile the decline was a bit smaller, from 73% to 69%. The decline was all due to declines in male pension coverage rates – which are nearly twice that of women. (Medoff and Calabrese 2001: 117).
•Overall, employer expenditures for pensions, a good proxy for quality, fell by a whopping 22% between 1978 and 1998 (Medoff and Calabrese 2001: 134).
The Surprising and Unintended Effect of Tax Cuts Eroding Pensions
Pension policy is tax policy. Most pension plans exist because of the favorable tax consequences. Tax favoritism for pensions, Keogh, and 401(k) plans etc. represents the U.S.’s largest tax expenditure (taxes not collected). That means the $87 billion (in 1999) (Slemrod and Bakija 2000: 281) of tax expenditures for pension is larger than that for health insurance and mortgage deductions.
Therefore, an unintended consequence of the tax cuts is a reduction in the incentives for employers to provide pensions as a source of pay and reduce incentives for individuals to divert their earnings into tax-favored pension accounts. It is estimated that a 1% drop in the tax rate causes a .4% decline in pension coverage (Hinz and Turner 1998).
Below, I explore the connection between pension erosion and the expansion of 401(k)s. Enron’s 401(k) pension plan collapse is not idiosyncratic; it reveals the gradual erosion of the entire private pension system. The decline is especially curious because workers were aging and presumably wanting more retirement security and flush times made pensions more affordable. Pensions did not improve in the roaring 1990s when both the economic and demographic environments were most favorable for growth. If not in the 1990s, when would pensions improve?
Pension Erosion and 401(k)s
Pension erosion took the form of 401(k) – type retirement plans out-shadowing traditional defined benefit pensions. The new plans are worth less (especially on a risk-adjusted basis) which will force people to stay longer in the work force. Working longer is not compensated for in longer lives. To maintain the same standard of living as retirees had in the late 1970s workers will have to work over 4 years longer. But, on average, we live only one year longer. The life expectancy improvement for those who are 65 years old does not outweigh the decline in private sector pension benefits.
401(k)s and Pension Erosion
Most analysts examine how many workers are covered by 401(k)s and, perhaps, average account size. I, however, examine 401(k)s from the point of view of employer costs. The stark and surprising finding was that the menu of plan types offered by the firm did not explain the level of employers’ pension contributions; it was how their pension options changed over the 1980s and mid 1990s that determined if employers improved pensions or not. We find that 401(k)s allowed employers to reduce pension costs by almost one third. And, if a firm adopted a DC or 401(k) plan between 1981 and 1995 lowered their pension costs per person by about 20%.
(Statistical analysis shows that a firm’s pension contributions are lower than average when it sponsors a 401(k) after controlling for other factors that would affect pension costs [Ghilarducci, Nyce, and Sun, 2001]). The 827 firms in our sample dramatically reduced their tendency to provide only a DB plan for their workers over the 14-year period. See Appendix Table 1. In 1981, 45% of firms in the sample sponsored only DB plans and that share dropped to 11% in 1995. The share of firms that sponsored both DC and DB plans increased from 41% in 1981, to a whopping 73%, in 1995. The share of firms that provide only DC plans increased slightly from 14% to 16%. This is superficial evidence firms did not substitute DCs for DBs.
Furthermore, it may be surprising that the overall percentage of firms that are just offering 401(k)s plans has not changed much in recent years: firms with only 401(k) plans in 1988 was 30.2% of the sample and, in 1996, was 35.7% (see Appendix Table 2). However, firms that sponsored 401(k) plans as the sole pension plan had the lowest contribution per participant, $1,192 in 1996 compared to firms that never sponsored a 401(k) or sponsored a 401(k) and other plans (see Appendix Table 3).
In sum, there are many reasons for the shift in DC plans (though it is not the rapid decline in job turnover – for minorities and women job tenure has actually increased); however, I find support for the hypothesis that a primary and plausible reason for the shift to individual based plans is that they are cheaper..
Workers’ desire for DC and 401(k) plans certainly contribute to their growth especially in the face of job insecurity. The markets can look more secure than jobs. Human psychology and spectacular equity growth work together to cause people to "over value" the equity market and expect returns to keep growing. 401(k)s also give employees desired some control. But, 401(k)-type plans have fatal flaws and high costs; some Congress can fix, others Congress cannot.
Congress can’t fix the inherent flaw that in individual – based plans workers risk they were born in the wrong year. Financial markets cycle and if the low cycle is during your later working years you will do worse than if you were older or younger. Employers smooth out payments over a large group and birth date effects become irrelevant.
Congress also can’t change human nature. Good humans are notoriously bad investors. Human charming traits include overconfidence (we rank our appearance higher than those around us), saliency (to think what just happened with happen with a higher probability) and we want instant gratification (Shiller 2000). Increasingly, middle-class workers are using their so-called retirement accounts as liquid savings to buy housings, finance periods of unemployment and fund children’s education. In short, human nature is such that we buy high, sell low, and trade too often.
Several Pension Reform Ideas
I emphasize four pension reforms below: The first two are designed to increase transparency and accountability, as well as secure more pension adequacy. The second two recommendations focus on reducing risks workers face in owning a 401(k) and thereby increasing the risk-adjusted rate of return.
Increase Transparency which enhances the Ability to improve Benefits
•I urge Congress to require employers to pay administrative fees for 401(k)s so employers are induced to find the most the efficient provider. At the very least Congress should require employers to reveal the pension administrative costs borne by workers in a uniform and understandable way.
Employers obtain a tax break for providing pensions (more later) and thereby a duty to fiduciary principles and public interest are implied. Employers who serve as quasi- fiduciaries should assess whether the "bells and whistles" of a high profile, high service 401(k) plan are worth the high fees. Also, of course, there could be a great deal of self-dealing in the choice of vendors that would be mitigated if these transactions were exposed.
Fees are terribly important – they are a hidden source of pension erosion in 401(k)s because the 401(k) structure allows employers to shift administrative costs to workers without detection. The Department of Labor, alarmed about the shift, has stepped up efforts to prosecute employers who charge unreasonable fees and has a proactive public education campaign -- the web site is impressive (http://www.dol.gov/dol/pwba/public/pubs/401kfe~1.htm ). High service fees in individual accounts can lower lifetime accumulations by 20 – 40%. The average annual fee was over $144 per participant (retired and active) for the largest companies that report fees in 1996 (see Appendix Table 4.)
•I urge Congress to increase the transparency of 401(k) and pension administration by requiring worker representation on pension boards.
Employee representation and access to information can mitigate self-dealing problems and conflict of interests inherent when a firm must both manage a trust fund and maximize profit – sometimes the goals are not mutually compatible. The over fifty years of successful joint labor-management administration of union-negotiated multi-employer plans (covering 20% of defined benefit participants) provides support for the proposal. In addition, the United States stands apart from most industrialized nations by not requiring worker representation on pension boards. There is also evidence that when trustees represent labor and management constituencies they scrutinize each other, which results in the plans more likely being actuarially balanced and for excess pension fund earnings to be paid in the form of benefits, not in profits. (Ghilarducci 2000).
Reduce Risk
•I urge Congress to restrict the amount of sponsor equities in individual, tax-favored retirement accounts. (This is a non-controversial recommendation among academic pension economists.)
Professional investors are already prohibited by professional standards to invest more than two - ten percent of a plan’s assets in any one financial vehicle (EBRI, 2002). However, employees seem to have considerable loyalty or faith in their own employer’s success. Even when employees are not required to invest in company stock, they hold about 22% of their assets in their company’s stock (EBRI, 2002). Also, among some of the largest U.S. company’s 401(k) plans, Enron’s was more diversified than that of others, such as Coca-Cola, for instance, which holds about 85% of assets in company stock compared to 64% at Enron (Chen 2002). Also, Appendix Table 5 displays the weighted average of sponsor holdings as a percentage of a companies total pension assets for some of some companies in 1996
•As an Advisory Board Member of the PBGC I urge Congress to in turn urge or require the PBGC to investigate ways to reduce the risk in defined contribution plans.
How would the PBGC go about reducing risk? Currently, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) insures payment of defined benefit payments in the case of employer bankruptcy. The derivative and underlying work of the PBGC is that because they are exposed to the expense of having to pay pensions they do monitor and minimize exposure just like sophisticated insurance companies do. In 1998, the PBGC began using a sophisticated (and award winning) model to assess the probability a weak firm will present claims to the PBGC. The PBGC also has a sophisticated staff of lawyers and financial analysts who identify corporate mergers, acquisitions, borrowing, and other financial transactions that might put pension funds at risk. The PBGC could use the same kind of early warning system for DC plans.
Boosting Coverage
Other reforms to improve coverage for workers include:
•Require immediate vesting, or nearly immediate, for newly hired employees to help them develop the habit of retirement saving and to accumulate funds and require "reverse matching" – employers contribute to all employees 401(k) plans regardless of employees’ match behavior.
401(k)s have a fatal flaw that will prevent them from ever being a good retirement income security device they require the employee to contribute before the employer’s contribution is forthcoming. Research shows that lower income workers do not participate in voluntary pension plans or they withdraw the funds before retirement because their tax rates are lower and they are more often to perceive they do not earn enough. (In surveys 30 – 60% of people underestimate how much they need to save for retirement.) A full 20% of workers who could contribute to the DC plan offered at work don’t and the median 401(k) balance is less than $5,000 for women and less than $11,000 for men (EBRI,1997). In fact, in 1998 for the first time, the rate of increase in assets in DB plans was greater that in DC plans. Federal Reserve officials suspect that workers are drawing down their DC accounts before retirement (Anad, 1999).
•Mandate a defined contribution, individual account supplement to Social Security and subsidize the supplement for low and lower middle income workers with tax credits deposited directly into their account.
Besides raising tax rates, an effective way to boost coverage would be to mandate individual accounts and fund it with tax credits – e.g. the earned income tax credit – for lower income workers. Mandating coverage with government seed money is analogous to the existing tax carrot though it is updated and more effective for low and middle-income employees. Also, to reiterate the point above, a different tax carrot is needed when tax rates are low.
Conclusion
The idea of individual responsibility in all areas of social insurance has momentum in the employer and employee relationship; therefore, new forms of regulation are needed. Some fear that regulating 401(k)s will induce employers to not provide pensions. However, pensions are not merely agreements between employers and employees. Taxpayer subsidies are important reasons retirement plans exist and government has a role in making them serve a public interest.
ERISA reform must address the coverage, protection, and adequacy gaps in the growing voluntary individual pensions sectors. ERISA regulators should construct clever and employer-responsive ways to reverse the erosion in pension coverage. Individual control of pension accounts comes at a high probability of failure—professionals make better investment decisions than individuals and the risk is minimized when distributed over a large group plan. In addition, much of the administrative expense for individual accounts are not subsidized by the employer (as they are in traditional plans) and they are higher because workers lose economies of scale, smoothing possibilities, and the advice of professionals.
...Ghilarducci basically wants to do with the 4o1k is socialize it so it can be controlled like social security. They will then raid it for spending on more gov't BS. The "My R A" crap Obama was promoting is in this general area as well.
I started reading this and after a few paragraphs my eyes rolled back in my head and I kept hearing "War on the rich" and "We're going to take away your IRA and 401k".
Yet another reason to keep your cash out of the banks and in physical commodities. My plan is to eventually own 30+ acres of land which will support food growth and livestock, therefore becoming self sufficient. The last thing I need is to become beholden to the Socialist mindset of this government.
Remember, there will be 2.5% taken out of what you make to fund her BS. Whether you know it or not, progressivism is so good, it has to be made mandatory.
Don't forget the .22 LR ;-)
or, at the very least grow summadese:
http://www.jantoo.com/cartoons/lowres/012/01232643_low.jpg
Obviously forgotten? Heck, I never knew that. That explains so very much. Tanky kindly.
Any time, Amigo, any time!
No asshole, the second amendment is to help the people restrict power hungry Tyrants like your pal and fellow (supposedly) alumni like Quagmire.
Seems like the phase "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" would be an obstacle to such thinking.
But no. . .
Exactly. That is what I find so dangerous is that they say that it is either outdated or doesn't mean what it says it means. If laws mean anything that they want, that is a dangerous precedent. Between that and not enforcing the laws that they can't wish away and add in a POTUS willing to circumvent the Congress, you are getting to banana republic at best and Kafka-esque at the worst.
I just can't wait till we (eventually) get a conservative president and he uses the same games of interpretation, selective enforcement and imperial powers. Then the Progressives will find Jesus, so to speak.
I love it when they say that guys with rifles can't stop the US military, then why the problems in A-stan. The second thing is, who do you think is in the US military??? Have you ever met someone from a special operations unit from Rangers to DEVGRU? They make the TEA Party look like Che wanna-b's.
Progressives are crazy and hold insane theories like Human Induced GW, gun 'control', economic theories that would make Keynes slap them and they get reinforced listening to NPR, CNN-MS-NotBWatched and TED presentations on YouTube. These psuedolectuals then think that they can run our lives better than we can. It is the definition of crazy.
So the 2A is out of date because of the greater capacity of current weapons? What about the 1A? Does twitter not have 1A protection? Would the founders have given Islam the protections? I know, I know- Jefferson's Koran, so that's one vote for them.... And for fricks sake, while we are on the topic of the 1A, it is the freedom of religion, not the freedom FROM religion. When you can quote MAO or CHE in a commencement speech, but not Jesus.... I wonder if God looks down and says,--- "soon, not quite there, but soon... Start packing your bags, son!"
Ahem, is that a Big Gulp soda and the remains of some trans-fat prepared so-called "freedom fries" I see beside your keyboard in this screen grab from the notsoNSA?
♫♪ Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1984..♪♫
I like your remark on A-stan. (And your entire post, actually!) Also: If people with guns can't stop the government, then why are drug cartels able to keep existing? In fact, drug dealers are so easily able to fend off the government that we have to legalize their product because "the war is lost."
Bring this up with the government and they'll have to admit one of two things: 1.) "Yeah, I guess people with guns DO stop the government," or 2.) "Well, really, the war on drugs was lost because we were never actually fighting it in the first place; we were RUNNING the drugs!"
Exactly. Guns are illegal for the most part in Mexico. So the drug cArtels run the country, not the government.
Ah! The ol' "Roe Effect" of legal abortion and lower crime rates. Well, gee, I guess if it was abortion that lowered crime rates, then rehabilitation procedures had no effect at all and we can stop trying that road, huh?
The "Roe Effect" is such cause 'n' effect junk science that it makes Global Warming look like warp drive!
Add to this: The FBI's so-called stats are "massaged." (ANd that's putting it nicely.) When a crowd of blacks has a "beat whitey" event, it doesn't make the violent crime stats. There are a lot of local sheriffs who spit angrily when you mention the FBI's "stats."
He's just trying to reinforce the idea that all crime is based in black culture, and allowing the blacks to abort will lower crime.
It's typical racism from the left.
It's amazing how much the left profiles people who are still in the womb. "Well, we can look at the fetus's parents, parents' finances, neighborhood, etc. and we know what its entire future is going to be. So we're going to do it a favor and kill it now."
How is that NOT profiling?
http://sphotos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/67785_441896332539681_1296079668_n.jpg