Biden: Gun measures about 'safety,' not 'control'

By Alicia M. Cohn - 01/24/13 02:53 PM ET

Vice President Biden on Thursday argued that the White House's proposal to reduce gun violence includes "nothing to violate anyone's Second Amendment rights" — and said anyone concerned about personal safety would be better off buying a shotgun than an assault weapon. 

Describing himself as a "sportsman," Biden urged "a national dialogue" on gun violence as "the single best thing we can do" to solve the problem.

"I don't view it as gun control, I view it as gun safety," Biden said, discussing the administration's plan in a live Google Plus "Hangout," his first-ever video chat on the social network.

"My interpretation of the Second Amendment is, it's an individual right ... to own a weapon for recreation, for hunting and also for your own self-protection," Biden said. 

"A shotgun will keep you a lot safer than an assault weapon," Biden added, holding up his arms as if holding a gun. "If you want to keep people away during an earthquake, buy some shotgun shells."

The vice president's event followed President Obama's announcement last week of a raft of measures aimed at reducing gun violence, including a renewal of the federal assault weapons ban, universal background checks and a limit on ammunition magazines to 10 rounds. 

Biden urged the public to get involved by finding one of the administration's proposals to agree with, and to "write your congressman."

"I don't care which side of the issue you're on. Pick those things that you think can have a positive impact," he said. "This town [Washington] listens when people rise up and speak."

Biden's Google Plus Hangout featured four participants, including several new-media experts apparently chosen in part for their experience with the technology. They asked questions chosen by PBS NewsHour Correspondent Hari Sreenivasan. Questions were not shared with Biden in advance, according to Sreenivasan.

The video chat started on a light note, with Biden joking "I wish I had your hair" to the spiky-haired Phil DeFranco, a popular YouTube video blogger.

Biden walked a fine line in the live video, at once affirming the rights of gun owners while also urging the increased restrictions on guns proposed by the White House last week.

Just as the average citizen cannot buy a tank or an automatic weapon, Biden said, "there should be rational limits on the type of weapon I can own."

Biden has been at the forefront of the administration's response to gun violence, following a series of mass shootings last year. 

The proposals announced by Obama and Biden last week were developed during a series of meetings Biden held with stakeholders, including gun owners, the National Rifle Association (NRA), educators, physicians and the entertainment industry.

Obama approved 23 directives that would, among other things, fund more research into gun violence; direct federal agencies to contribute information to the federal background check system; and reallocate funding for schools to hire police and mental health professionals.

Biden's first question in the chat addressed the effectiveness of banning assault weapons when only a small percentage of gun-related deaths in the country are attributed to assault weapons.

"It is not an answer to all the problems, but it's a rational — in my opinion, rational — limitation," Biden said. 

He defended the White House proposals as a good start, even if they might not completely solve every gun-related problem or immediately get all dangerous weapons off the street. 

He also made a strong pitch for the type of research the White House wants to fund, for example into video game violence, as important to finding out whether there is a "pathology of gun violence."

"We shouldn't be afraid of the facts," Biden said.

Kimberley Blaine, a mental health professional from Los Angeles, asked whether the White House is recommending putting armed guards in schools. The NRA, in its own response to gun violence, has called for armed guards in every school.

"We are not calling for armed guards in schools" or arming school teachers, Biden said. He explained that the White House is pushing for a flexible spending plan so individual school districts can decide whether a "school resource officer," essentially a specially trained police officer, or a psychiatrist, for example, would best suit their school's needs.

"The first and most important thing is to engage in trying to come up with ways to prevent children who are at risk from falling into a circumstance where whatever mental problems they may have, whatever emotional problems they have, before they metastasize into behavior that is antisocial," he said. 

The Obama administration wants to fund training for education professionals called Project Aware to teach teachers "to identify aberrant behavior."

Biden will continue his push to address gun violence on Friday, traveling to Richmond, Va., for a press conference with Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jim Cole, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) for what the White House is calling a "roundtable discussion" about the administration's plan to prevent gun violence.

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Kentucky Minister Arrested After Trying To Marry His Same-Sex Partner

Rev. Blanchard and Dominique James

A Kentucky Baptist minister protested on behalf of same-sex marriage by refusing to leave the county clerk’s office until he and his partner received a marriage license. Rev. Maurice “Bojangles” Blanchard and Dominique James walked in — already knowing they would be refused — and were later arrested when the office closed. Blanchard said the sit-in showed they would not be “silent accomplices to our own discrimination.”

In an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, Blanchard pointed out that religious leaders stand behind his right to marriage:

We’re here today to give nonviolence witness and let folks know that even people of faith, most definitely people of faith are going to stand up to and say this is wrong [...] We anticipate being denied and upon that denial we are going to sit down and not be moved and not leave as a sign of a method of nonviolent resistance. Because we feel if we do not resist we’re silent accomplices to our own discrimination.

Watch the interview and their arrest:
 

Same-sex couples have sought to expose discrimination in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia by applying for marriage licenses, only to be denied because of state law. Polls show that most Americans endorse marriage equality, while the movement has strong backing from the religious community.

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Key Democratic Senator Backs Universal Background Checks, And Indicates A Bipartisan Bill Is In The Works

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), once thought to be a possible roadblock to some of President Obama’s proposed gun control measures, told a West Virginia talk show host Thursday morning that he supports legislation requiring a background check for anyone who wants to buy a gun.

Manchin has long been a darling of the National Rifle Association, and has consistently earned A ratings from the organization since he assumed his Senate seat in 2010. In December, days after the mass school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school, Manchin signaled an openness towards rethinking his past resistance to new gun control regulation, but his comments to radio host Hoppy Kercheval on Thursday suggest that the blue dog Democrat is already working on a bill to introduce universal background checks:

KERCHEVAL : Do you think there should be universal background checks on anybody who wants to buy a gun? Right now it’s done only through federally licensed firearms dealers.

MANCHIN: I’m working on a bill right now with other Senators — Democrats and Republicans — we’re trying to get it, and looking at a background check that basically says that if you’re going to be a gun owner, you should be able to pass a background check, to be able to get that. With exceptions. The exceptions are: Families, immediate family members, some sporting events that you’re going to — that if you’re just going to be using them at the sporting events. So we’re looking and talking to people with expertise. I’m working with the NRA, to be honest with you, and talking to them.

Recent polling has shown that more than nine in ten Americans are in favor of universal background checks, but the NRA has thus far refused to lift its opposition to any substantial new regulations on gun ownership. But Manchin is now the second Democrat to reveal that the NRA has been party to ongoing negotiations over background checks.

Presently, as many as 40 percent of all guns sales are done with no background checks at all.

(HT Greg Sargent)

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Astroturf Gone Wrong: Fake Protesters Offered $20 To Stand At Anti-Wind Energy Rally

Most Americans like clean energy. So when conservatives wage campaigns against clean energy initiatives, they have typically resorted to fronting astroturf groups and paying fake protesters to generate noise.

Needing 100 anti-wind protesters by next week and apparently unable to find them, a mysterious firm advertised a “quick and easy $20? on Craigslist. According to the ad, the only thing the “volunteers” would need to do for their pay is “stand next to or behind the speakers and elected officials/celebrities” at a rally against a wind turbine project in the UK.

View the screenshot (the ad was quickly pulled down after Grist made the catch):

We do not know who is behind the ad, but there is at least one wealthy opponent of windmills in Scotland, since they would obstruct the view of his golf course.

There is nothing new about anti-clean energy and anti-EPA campaigns fronted by corporate interests. Last year, coal groups threw its cash at an Environmental Protection Agency hearing, paying astroturfers $50 to wear pro-coal T-shirts. Wind has faced a particularly uphill battle against corporate interests, with a leaked strategy memo showing conservative think tanks leading an astroturf strategy to take down clean energy, at the same time a lobby group linked to the Koch brothers mobilized to defeat wind credits in Congress.

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Sorry, New Orleans: The Super Bowl Won’t Bring A Major Boost To Your Economy

New Orleans is gearing up to host Super Bowl XLVII, the National Football League’s annual championship that will pit the Baltimore Ravens against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, February 3. The city and its businesses are predicting an economic boom that will result in the ultimate comeback for a city that was decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Officials expect 150,000 people to descend on the city for the Super Bowl, and economic impact studies estimate that the game will bring $434 million to the city’s economy. Hosting three mega sporting events — the 2012 NCAA men’s Final Four and this year’s Super Bowl and women’s Final Four — will boost the city’s economy by more than $1 billion, according to an estimate from the International Business Times. And business leaders and lawmakers think the media exposure involved with hosting the big game will push the boom to immeasurable levels.

Those estimates, though, are likely fool’s gold, according to an assortment of academic research into the actual economic impact of Super Bowls and other major sporting events. When professors Victor Matheson and Robert Baade studied the economic impact of Super Bowls from 1973 to 1997, they found that the games boosted city economies by about $30 million, “roughly one-tenth the figures touted by the NFL” and an even smaller fraction of what New Orleans officials predict. A later Baade and Matheson study found that the economic impact of a Super Bowl is “on average one-quarter or less the magnitude of the most recent NFL estimates.”

Similarly, a 1999 paper from professor Philip Porter found that the Super Bowl had virtually no effect on a city’s economy. Research on other events New Orleans has hosted, including the men’s Final Four, is similar. When Baade and Matheson studied Final Fours, they found that the events tend “not to translate into any measurable benefits to the host cities.”

There are multiple reasons the estimates are often overstated. Impact estimates usually take into account how much money will be spent in the city during an event like the Super Bowl without examining how much potential spending will be lost because people don’t visit or leave the city to avoid the crowd — that is, the impact studies account for gross spending, but not net spending. And the estimates rarely include the additional cost of putting on the event, further distorting the disparity between gross and net spending figures.

Another factor is the possibility of leakages, whereby money spent doesn’t remain in the local economy. Much of the spent money will be at hotels, which often raise prices three-fold for events like the Super Bowl. But as Matheson notes in one study, those price increases don’t translate into three-fold increases for hotel employees, so much of the increased spending never makes it back into the local economy. And many Super Bowl services are outsourced to outside contractors, who don’t return all of their earnings back to the local economy either.

But even if the Super Bowl creates activity to match the most generous estimates, that wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal as it seems. Total economic activity for the New Orleans metro area totaled $80.3 billion in 2011, meaning a $434 million boost would amount to about 0.5 percent of the city’s yearly economic activity.

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Rubio Places Limits On Immigration Reform When Speaking To Conservatives

GOP Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) agrees that Congress needs to pass immigration reform and has given numerous media interviews outlining his proposal to offer legal status to immigrants here illegally. “We just have to get this thing done for once and for all,” Rubio told the New York Times.

The potential 2016 presidential candidate has been meeting with conservative lawmakers to build support for his proposal. But in selling the plan to right-wing voters, Rubio places strict pre-conditions to providing legal status to undocumented immigrants and significantly downplays the component. On Wednesday, for instance, Rubio reiterated to conservative radio host and reform opponent Mark Levin that Congress must adopt stronger immigration enforcement — including border security — before offering work permits to undocumented immigrants:

LEVIN: I want to make it clear. You want operational security of the border, and you want enforcement in the workplace of existing law.

RUBIO: Let me tell you the problem with that. In the past, people say that, but then what happens is they go ahead and do the process of legalization, but they don’t do the security. One of the things is…the security component is a trigger. In essence, none of that other stuff with regard to getting in line and applying, none of that happens until we’ve been able to certify that indeed the workplace security thing is place, the visa tracking is in place, and there’s some level of significant operational control at the border.

While the Obama administration also has offered stronger checks to verify a worker’s citizenship or legal status, Rubio’s suggestion that the border needs to be more secure before immigration reform can be implemented is ridiculous. The U.S. spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement in the 2012 fiscal year, which is more than every other federal law enforcement agency combined, according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute. A record number of people continue to be deported under Obama, and net undocumented migration is at or below zero.

Instead of wanting to focus more money and resources on the border, it is time for Rubio and Congress to consider a permanent fix to the nation’s immigration system, including a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here.

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Fly proves buzzkill for Obama at White House event

Call it President Obama versus the fly, Part 2. 

Only this time, the fly won. 

When Obama appeared in the East Room for a personnel announcement on Thursday, a fly landed right smack in the middle of his forehead, taking some attention away from his photo-op and drawing the clicks of the photographers in the room. 

Obama paused to take a few swats at the fly. 

"This guy is bothering me here," he said, as the fly circled him and then seemingly flew away for less presidential pastures. 

It wasn't Obama's first run in with a pesky pest. He paused during a 2009 interview with CNBC to take a whack at another fly, using his right hand to kill a fly that landed on his left hand. 

"Now where were we?" he asked, before proudly adding, "That was pretty impressive. I got the sucker." 

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Lousiana Governor Changes His Mind, Won’t Eliminate End-Of-Life Care For The Poor And Disabled

In a victory for disabled, terminally ill, and poor Louisianans, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has reversed course and decided not to go through with his plan to eliminate hospice care benefits for low-income residents through the state’s Medicaid program, the Associated Press reports.

The Jindal Administration’s reversal comes in the wake of public outrage and candlelight vigils over a budget “austerity” proposal that one hospice care provider equated to “throwing away poor people.” If enacted, Jindal’s plan would have thrown as many as 5,000 terminally ill and disabled Americans receiving hospice care benefits off of public insurance rolls, raising health care costs by forcing sick patients into expensive emergency room care while saving the state a meager $8 million in 2014.

Instead, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals will continue funding the benefits through federal grant money, giving sick, low-income Louisianans some much-needed peace of mind. “The good Lord took care of us today, so we got a fix,” said state Sen. Fred Mills, a Breaux Bridge Republican who vice chairs the Louisiana state Senate Health and Welfare Committee.

But while the Jindal Administration’s decision today is an uncontested victory for Americans at risk of falling through the safety net, Louisiana’s poor are not out of harm’s way just yet. Jindal has proposed one of the country’s most regressive tax proposals, and has slated massive budget cuts to public education and health care program funding.

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POLL: Growing Plurality Of Minnesotans Support Marriage Equality

Gov. Mark Dayton (D-MN)

A new PPP poll of Minnesotans shows a plurality now supports marriage equality, by a 47 to 45 margin. Fully 75 percent of Minnesotans (including 65 percent of Republicans) back at least allowing civil unions. PPP estimates that given the trend and the age demographics, a majority Minnesotans will likely support marriage equality by the next election.

In November, Minnesotans defeated a marriage inequality constitutional amendment, proposed by the then-Republican majorities in the state’s House and Senate, by a 51-47 margin. At the same time, voters elected new Democratic Farm Labor (Minnesota’s Democratic Party) majorities in both chambers.

Armed with the popular mandate from November’s elections, supporters of marriage equality plan to push a bill to grant same-sex couples the right to marry in Minnesota in the next few months. Gov. Mark Dayton (D) has pledged to sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

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STUDY: Americans Just Can’t Afford Mental Health Treatment

The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) has just released its annual report on drug use and mental health disorders in America, and its findings confirm: Americans cannot afford the cost of their mental health treatment — even if they have insurance.

The report estimates that 45.6 million American adults suffered from Any Mental Illness (AMI) in 2011, comprising 19.6 percent of the adult population. Of that 45.6 million, a meager 38.2 percent received any sort of mental health services — and this graph breaks down why:

While 15 percent of Americans suffering from AMI cited inadequate insurance coverage as their main obstacle to seeking care, a staggering 50 percent said that mental treatment costs are simply too high. And that number includes both insured and uninsured Americans, illustrating how expensive out-of-pocket costs for mental health care are relative to the available coverage.

The data also highlights the damage done by the cultural stigma associated with such care. Over 37 percent of Americans who should have received treatment didn’t believe that they needed any or that treatment wouldn’t help — a dangerous assumption that is likely to exacerbate mental illness — and an additional 35 percent were afraid of negative social consequences or being institutionalized.

That last statistic should weigh heavily on lawmakers’ minds as they craft comprehensive gun safety legislation that also addresses mental health services. Mental health professionals have already expressed concerns that New York’s sweeping new gun laws may end up reinforcing stigmas about mental health care and dissuade Americans from seeking the care they need.

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Watson buys women's health company Uteron Pharma

PARSIPPANY, N.J. -- Drugmaker Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Wednesday that it has completed a deal to expand its women's health business, buying Belgian drug developer Uteron Pharma SA for $150 million in up-front cash.

Watson, which makes generic, brand-name and biosimilar medicines, said Uteron could receive up to $155 million more in future milestone payments, depending on whether products it is testing are approved for sale.

Uteron, based in Liège, Belgium, is a spinoff of the University of Liège. It has several female healthcare products in development.

Those include a contraceptive device, a next-generation birth control pill containing the natural hormone estrogen and tests to increase the success rate of in-vitro fertilization. That's a technique to help infertile couples by combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish and then transferring the resulting embryo into the woman's uterus.

Uteron's first product could be an intrauterine device called Levosert, for long-term contraception and treating heavy menstrual bleeding. The device is awaiting approval in several European Union countries and could go on sale there this year. It's in late-stage testing for the U.S. market, where it could be launched in 2014 if approved.

Watson, based in Parsippany, N.J., has the rights to market Levosert in Western Europe and, in partnership with two other companies, in the U.S. and some Eastern European countries.

Another Uteron product, Diafert, a test kit for determining the quality of a woman's eggs for in-vitro fertilization, could increase the success rate for implanting embryos. That could help couples achieve a pregnancy with fewer cycles of costly in-vitro fertilization.

Watson, which is the world's third-largest maker of generic prescription drugs, said Diafert is expected to receive approval in the European Union in the second half of this year and launch after that. It could be approved in the U.S. in 2014. Watson has exclusive global marketing rights to Diafert.

Uteron has another product in mid-stage patient testing, Estelle birth control pills. They contain a new natural estrogen called estetrol believed to be safer than other oral contraceptives. Estelle could be launched worldwide in 2018.

In addition, Uteron has potential products in early development, including Colvir, a treatment for vaginal infections.

In afternoon trading Watson shares rose 43 cents as $85.69.

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