By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 1 min ago
WASHINGTON – The Democratic-controlled Congress is moving to restore a Bush administration policy that allowed loaded guns in national parks.
The Senate voted Tuesday to allow guns in national parks and wildlife refuges, and the House could follow suit as soon as Wednesday.
The measure is included in a popular bill imposing new restrictions on credit card companies. Democratic leaders have said they hope to send a final version to the White House for the president's signature by week's end
The Senate vote is a stark reversal from what many gun-control advocates expected when a federal judge blocked the Bush policy in March. The Obama administration accepted the ruling, saying that the Interior Department would conduct a full environmental review.
The review is expected to take several months at least. In the meantime, restrictions that had been in place since the Reagan administration remain in effect. The rules severely restrict guns in the national parks, generally requiring them to be locked or stored.
That timetable changed quickly last week after Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn inserted an amendment to the credit bard that would allow concealed, loaded guns in parks and refuges.
To the surprise of many, the amendment easily passed, winning support from 67 senators — including 27 Democrats. Among those who voted "yes" was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who had blocked Coburn's amendment from coming to the Senate floor for more than a year. Seven other Western Democrats voted with Reid to support the Republican senator's amendment, which allows a range of firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges as long as they are allowed by federal, state and local law.
Spokesman Jim Manley said Reid is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, adding that the guns in parks issue was a major concern for many Nevadans.
"The rules that apply to our federal lands are felt acutely in Nevada, where 87 percent of the state's land is managed by federal agencies," Manley said.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which sued to block the Bush policy, called the Senate vote reckless. The group called on President Barack Obama to demand that the gun provision be stripped from the credit card bill.
"Families should not have to stare down loaded AK-47s on nature hikes," said Brady campaign president Paul Helmke. "The president should not remain silent while Congress inserts reckless gun policies that he strongly opposes into a bill that has nothing whatsoever to do with guns."
Helmke and other critics, including environmental groups, park rangers and the Humane Society, say the Coburn amendment goes further than the Bush administration policy that briefly allowed loaded handguns in national parks and refuges. The measure would allow individuals to openly carry rifles, shotguns and even semiautomatic weapons on ranger-led hikes and campfire programs at national parks, the groups said.
Coburn said the gun measure protects every American's Second Amendment rights and also protects the rights of states to pass laws that apply to their entire state, including public lands.
"Visitors to national parks should have the right to defend themselves in accordance with the laws of their states," Coburn said.

I agree with the law, but disagree that it should get shoved into the credit card reform. Its an obvious case of buying votes for the credit card reform bill by letting the republicans tack on something they wanted....

It's a retarded addition and should be bundled with a bill that somewhat follows a gun type of baseline... I was listening to the radio where they said they believe it'll be pulled before the final vote.

wat dose havin a gun in a park have to do with cedit cards??

guns in the park is a good thing now we might get big foot

One thing that absolutely HAS to be done away with is this sleazy rider method of adding in unrelated legislation. Seriously, if you are trying to throw something in, then it's GOT to be suspicious.

Each bill should be limited to the DIRECTLY RELEVANT subject matter.

dsade, you are right on.

Should be, but that goes directly contrary to how the system actually works. You only get votes for your bill X if you compromise enough with legislators to allow their own agenda to get enacted some how. That's how you end up with these bills which are really just a morass of **** and crap. All legislation is really political opportunity cost; what had to be given to the other side to get it past their vote. If we were to limit legislation to the subject matter in question and not allow riders and dealing well, Christ, people would actually have to vote their beliefs, not their special interests. You want the system to implode or something?

Originally Posted by CDB

Should be, but that goes directly contrary to how the system actually works. You only get votes for your bill X if you compromise enough with legislators to allow their own agenda to get enacted some how. That's how you end up with these bills which are really just a morass of **** and crap. All legislation is really political opportunity cost; what had to be given to the other side to get it past their vote. If we were to limit legislation to the subject matter in question and not allow riders and dealing well, Christ, people would actually have to vote their beliefs, not their special interests. You want the system to implode or something?

give me a minute....I'm thinking

We all know how it CURRENTLY works. The point was how it SHOULD work.

LOL, the demmies got a taste of their old tricks. Democrats have been inserting antigun legislation into bills for years!

Originally Posted by dsade

Each bill should be limited to the DIRECTLY RELEVANT subject matter.

Absolutely agree, but it never works this way. Usually the person who sponsors the bill, allows other additions for the support of his bill.

Originally Posted by DrMorris

We all know how it CURRENTLY works. The point was how it SHOULD work.

I SHOULD have a 10 inch **** and be showered with moist women whenever I want them. No one really SHOULD have to work to live. There SHOULD be a world of plenty from which we could all take and not worry about scarcity. There SHOULD be no murder or theft, or other such crime. However there is. And it's not a matter of choice that none of these things are, it's matter of reality. The way you think government SHOULD work is a way in which it will NEVER work because people simply don't behave that way when you give them a ****load of power and money and guns and the ability to make laws, which is at base the legal right to kill anyone who disobeys them. Not everything is a matter of obedience, some **** you just have to deal with as is and minimize it if its unpleasant. Like the government.

You SHOULD get a pump to help you out with your size problems. 10 inch is average right? If not, it SHOULD be! LOL

Originally Posted by DrMorris

You SHOULD get a pump to help you out with your size problems. 10 inch is average right? If not, it SHOULD be! LOL

BWAHAHAHA!

So let me see if I've got this right...if I carry a rifle into Yellowstone I get a free c*ck pump?

Originally Posted by EasyEJL

I agree with the law, but disagree that it should get shoved into the credit card reform. Its an obvious case of buying votes for the credit card reform bill by letting the republicans tack on something they wanted....

I agree with the law. I hate gun control freaks. who is going to have to "look down an AK47" on a hike, get a life. Someone needs to shoot him...

Then again it is a good point that it is shoveled in with the CC bill...lol, like flamingo among pigeons eh.

Credit is what ruined this country....the idea of it screws over people who make mistakes, and rips off the population, as well as drives up debt and all in all lowers the value of the dollar.

hmmmmm

Originally Posted by SilentBob187

So let me see if I've got this right...if I carry a rifle into Yellowstone I get a free c*ck pump?

Actually also in the cc bill is the new **** pump control act. There's a five day flacidity period before you can buy one now.

Originally Posted by DrMorris

You SHOULD get a pump to help you out with your size problems. 10 inch is average right? If not, it SHOULD be! LOL

obama said even people with poor credit history and income should have the same access to credit as people with good credit history and income and it happened, why shouldnt yours?

We know how it works and most people would agree they'd like to see it changed.

The real question is not how it should work but how we can transition to how we want it to work.

I feel if the public was more outspoken about their disapproval and hold congressmen directly responsible and accountable for their actions then we would see the congressmen change their ways especially if the turnover rate of congressmen started increasing.

I think that with the tech age that we're in we can force our gov't into a mode of transparency and remove those gov't officials who disapprove of transparency from office we'd have a more efficient gov't and country.

Originally Posted by MoTiV

I think that with the tech age that we're in we can force our gov't into a mode of transparency and remove those gov't officials who disapprove of transparency from office we'd have a more efficient gov't and country.

And you're wrong. Sorry to be the one to break that to you, but there is no right way or efficient way for government to function because it is wrong and inefficient by nature. It's like trying to get a snail to run a marathon, it's not a matter of doing it this way or that, it just isn't going to happen by nature.

Originally Posted by CDB

And you're wrong. Sorry to be the one to break that to you, but there is no right way or efficient way for government to function because it is wrong and inefficient by nature. It's like trying to get a snail to run a marathon, it's not a matter of doing it this way or that, it just isn't going to happen by nature.

Your belief is severely limiting. It's obvious our gov't isn't efficient. IMO, part of the reason for the inefficiency is the lack of transparency. The public really doesn't know what our gov't spends our money on. Improving the transparency of our gov't would help the public identify some of the problems in our gov't and we'll be able to make better informed decisions and voice our opinions about such matters.

I did not say it would make gov't efficient. I said it would make it MORE efficient. Transparency is not the end all be all but it is a step in the right direction.

Originally Posted by MoTiV

Your belief is severely limiting. It's obvious our gov't isn't efficient.

So is a person's belief in gravity, yet that doesn't change the reality that he can't in fact fly. My belief is based on fact and analysis. Government can't function efficiently. It is divorced from any and all mechanisms and sources of information that could possibly make it function efficiently. It has limited, time restrained input from its customers in terms of voting cycles. It has no incentive whatsoever to do anything but deliver to them the minimum acceptable product possible while it has every means and authority to charge the maximum tolerable price for that product. There are no practical alternatives to turn to for justice, infrastructure, and to a slightly lesser extent but still applicable for many people security, education, and health care, so it is effectively a monopoly in those areas and functions as such, progressively charging more over time while delivering less and less per dollar.

It is not subject to any profit loss test. It is not subject to market pressure to change or trim wasteful spending or to reduce costs. Quite the opposite; it is incentivized, by nature not choice, to increase costs and gets budgeted for more funds not less when it has failed to accomplish specific goals. It therefore simple can't use resources efficiently because it doesn't know nor have access to any continuous source of information or feedback, like profit and loss, to determine what the hell to do with them.

The 'employees' or elected officials delegate their power and authority to unelected bureacrats, and have every authorization and legal right to do so, who then make law through regulation and who are largely unaccountable to the public. Elected officials, once more with the full support of the law, gerrymander their districts to ensure reelections and enact legislation and other institutional obstacles to make competition in the form of third or even viable main but opposite party candidates very difficult to impossible, making virtual encumbancy a fact of life for any elected official.

Concentrated benefits and diffuse costs coupled with rational ignorance make it difficulut if not impossible to head off or change any specific legislation. This leads to a situation where special interests essentially gain control of legislators at the expense of the voting public who is by and large not interested, and justifiably ignorant given their day to day routine, of how they are being ripped off a little here, a little there, etc. The public does not care nor does it have the energy to oppose every little favor asked for by: the sugar producers; the cattle ranchers; the corn farmers; the goat ranchers; the old people; the doctors; the lawyers; and/or any other concentrated specific group. Those groups on the other hand have every incentive to lobby for and gain favor from the government. The benefits to them are concentrated and significant, the costs to the public at large are diffuse and hard to spot and/or get worked up about on a case by case basis. As such, they pile up one on top of the other until a massive tsunami of cost increases from every single direction hits the public at large, and to undo it is virtually impossible.

And none of this is stoppable. This is the way the system always tends to work no matter what. Any system of governance. It all boils down to this. The only way to stop it is through mass ideological movements that mobilize enough of the voting and/or rifle weilding public to enact change. This is virtually impossible to accomplish, especially when the public by and large is not against the institution itself, just the personalities and minutia of how it operates. The best trick the government ever pulled in history was to sell itself as the solution for every problem under the sun, including the ones it itself is blatantly responsible for. Thus the modern 'conservative' movement in true newspeak fashion posits more government as the answer for too much government.

Trying to get the government, any government, to operate any different than it already does is like trying to get water to flow up hill or rocks to fall away from the center of a gravity well. It doesn't happen. It's not a matter of choice or obedience, it's a matter of institutional tendency over time. Just as the free market allocates resources toward their highest valued economic ends over time, government allocates resources to their highest valued policitcal ends. It can't be any other way. You can't take the politics out of a political system. You can't take a system that is at base just glorified organized theft and make it just and moral and efficient and anything but what it is: destructive. And there is nothing limiting to that statement other than an adherence to reality justified by millenia of experience at this point.

IMO, part of the reason for the inefficiency is the lack of transparency. The public really doesn't know what our gov't spends our money on. Improving the transparency of our gov't would help the public identify some of the problems in our gov't and we'll be able to make better informed decisions and voice our opinions about such matters.

It is in the interest of no one in government to increase such transparency. Therefore it will never happen unless so many people rise up and demand it that it legitimately endangers enough government employees' jobs, at which point they will devise a Goverment Transparency Act of whatever the hell the year might be, and the act will make everyone feel good but will do little to nothing to actually increase transparency, and what little it does do will be circumvented because it's in no one's interest to let you know what they are doing.

I did not say it would make gov't efficient. I said it would make it MORE efficient. Transparency is not the end all be all but it is a step in the right direction.

You can't make that which is inefficient by nature more efficient. It's not like there's some efficient version of government out there, it is the embodiment of inefficiency. That is its nature. You may as well ask fire to be ice.

Originally Posted by MoTiV

The public really doesn't know what our gov't spends our money on. Improving the transparency of our gov't would help the public identify some of the problems in our gov't and we'll be able to make better informed decisions and voice our opinions about such matters....

not really. look at Obama voters, 55% of the people who voted for him didn't know what party had a majority in congress, many didn't know other public facts about Obama and Biden, yet voted for them. Overall most people dont care, or have the brain cells to process any more input than they already get.

Originally Posted by EasyEJL

not really. look at Obama voters, 55% of the people who voted for him didn't know what party had a majority in congress, many didn't know other public facts about Obama and Biden, yet voted for them. Overall most people dont care, or have the brain cells to process any more input than they already get.

There's the other problem. Even if you get transparency, who honestly gives a **** enough to use it in any particularly productive or government limiting way? Almost no one. Christ, prime time news numbers spike in the hundreds of thousands to a few million, and the are damn near 300 million people in this country, many of which could stand to be a bit more informed. I think OReilly has the highest rated news commentary program during prime time and he's barely scratching 1% of the population, with most other news casts falling well below that and most newspapers failing and circulation falling.

The sad truth: nobody really gives a ****. Meanwhile the government employs what, well more than 10% of the workforce now? The collective incentive to maintain those paychecks alone is enough to out balance the efforts of civic minded people to actually change anything about the way things are run. There real clash in any society is between tax payers and tax consumers, and the latter group has the power right now because the former is too numb or dumb to care.

Well as you so eloquently stated the public doesn't care, doesn't take the time to care, is too ignorant, and/or doesn't have the time to care.

The point of your post was to show that no matter what gov't is inefficient and thats not going to change. That's fine. My point was there are ways to make it more efficient part of it is making it more transparent. Obviously, there are other ways to make it more efficient, we haven't always been a nation in debt (1 example).

Now since it's already established that gov't is inefficient how can a society minimize the damage caused by the inefficiency. Yea sure people can sit around all day and complain which most people do and some don't care so yea it's going to take a huge societal change in order to see any major changes. It's not going to be easy nothing ever really is when your dealing with millions of people. There's no way to just start over, so how can we better the political construct that we have today? Surely if we can make advances in other fields we can surely make changes in the political field. It starts with those who get involved in politics and the public being educated. All of that takes time. A lot of time and it will be met with resistance the whole way. Doesn't mean it can't happen.

To say there won't be enough people to care about transparency so don't waste the time to do it isn't going to help this country in any way. If it's public apathy towards gov't that's the problem then surely there are ways to change that.

Originally Posted by MoTiV

Well as you so eloquently stated the public doesn't care, doesn't take the time to care, is too ignorant, and/or doesn't have the time to care.

My second post. Miss the first one, did you?

The point of your post was to show that no matter what gov't is inefficient and thats not going to change. That's fine. My point was there are ways to make it more efficient part of it is making it more transparent. Obviously, there are other ways to make it more efficient, we haven't always been a nation in debt (1 example).

No nation ever started as a nation of debt. However all nations have moved toward being nations of debt. All governments go through three stages. First they seize the mint. Then they seize the authority to produce money substitutes. Then they suspend specie redemption, usually at the same time as centralizing all reserves in a central banking system of some kind. In so doing they gain control of the money supply and gain the ability to monetize debt. All governments do this because it is in their interest to bring more debt onto the country's back, either directly or through monetization. How do you propose to reverse that trend? The only way it has ever happened in history is through bloody revolution or by competing states with an interest in curbing inflationary policy having/gaining authority over others, such as when British Parliment still controlled the colonies and outlawed paper money issues.

Hans Herman Hoppe has done a lot of work documenting this trend in all nations throughout history. It is a move from sound money, which is in the population's interest, to unsound money, which is in the state's interest. How do you propose to change this trend which has dominated nations and history since the discovery of paper and its use as a money substitute?

Now since it's already established that gov't is inefficient how can a society minimize the damage caused by the inefficiency.

Only one way: limit the scope and power of the government. Period.

Surely if we can make advances in other fields we can surely make changes in the political field.

Why? Politics is not physics. Nor is it possible to remove politics from politics. There is nothing the state does that is substantively different than any other band of organized criminals. That is in fact what the state is and a perfect analogy for how it functions; a mafia family running a protection racket of which some people want in and others merely tolerate for lack of other options. How is it supposed to be run better? You talk of reforms, what reforms? For once I want someone who is in favor of the state to explain to me how in fact they intend to make it work like it's 'supposed' to for any length of time before it degenerates into what we have now, a group of slippery, slithering snake ****ers who intend to line their own pockets and those of their campaign contributors for as long as possible, period. How do you plan to change it? What functions would you allow it? What laws would you pass? Other than outright shrinking the damn thing, explain to me how you intend to actually control it?

To say there won't be enough people to care about transparency so don't waste the time to do it isn't going to help this country in any way. If it's public apathy towards gov't that's the problem then surely there are ways to change that.

That's a vast simplification of what I said, you're quite purposefully I believe, ignoring the portion where I also point out that it is in no one's interest within the state to give transparency. How then do you propose to get a substantial portion of the population many of whom draw their power and paychecks from the state's assumed authority to take or endure any action to limit that authority? You're asking them to kill their goose when it's no where near done laying golden eggs for them.

Good luck.

Blind, wide eyed optimism about what the state is and can actually do are just as useless as apathy. Apathy at least is informed. It's the naive person who thinks the state can actually do good if it just has the right people in charge or the right laws in place or the right regulatory bodies appointed who enables the state's endless growth and failure. Rather, accept the fact that a worm cannot be a bird, a rock cannot be cotton ball. Some things have a nature to them that is unchangable. It is better to accept that before you break your heart trying to train your dog to be an accountant and find out he's hoarding the kibble and took a **** on the calculator.

I find it odd that all of a sudden I can't access this website nor nutraplanet from my home computer. Pretty weird. Now I'm all paranoid. Anyway I guess I'll respond later, if the powers that be let me.

Originally Posted by CDB

Meanwhile the government employs what, well more than 10% of the workforce now? The collective incentive to maintain those paychecks alone is enough to out balance the efforts of civic minded people to actually change anything about the way things are run. There real clash in any society is between tax payers and tax consumers, and the latter group has the power right now because the former is too numb or dumb to care.

I believe its closer to 18%, total government taxation is over 20% of GDP now

this is the brand new obama admin transparency. looks alot like the same old $hit to me, with a good solid media that adds a spoon of sugar. oops, sugar is on the about to be taxed list too now. did you guys see the speed reader that read the new cap & trade bill so they could say it got read? people should be angry as hell. hard to believe folks will allow a breathing tax...

Cap and trade is necessary because it doesn't work and gives some corportations extreme profit potential. Hence, it's perfect for government. The idea itself is blatantly moronic, the built in incentive is to expand the base of carbon permits until the whole market collapses which is indeed what happens when it's tried. It's the prisoner's dilema. It's what should be expected after generations of economic enstupidation in the schools.