January 2011

Please Save Us Gery Chico

ArchPundit January 3, 2011 No Comments

Carol Moseley Braun?  Really? Doesn’t anyone remember that she couldn’t run her Senate office let alone the City of Chicago?  When she was leaving the Recorder of Deeds office she hired several campaign workers on the way out the door.   Admittedly, nothing compared to Daley, but Daley can run the city at least.  And of course, the Nigerian dictators or generally no sense whatsoever, she is in the final four candidates and as a sole black candidate has a shot.  Rahm appears to be Daley without the charm.  Del Valle looks interesting, but doesn’t seem to be able to compete.

Leaving us Gery Chico who appears serviceable at running large organizations, is too cozy with Daley, but given the alternatives, and is quite progressive on many issues coming out for gay marriage in his 2004 run.

This is not a good field of candidates.

Rahm Control

ArchPundit January 3, 2011 No Comments

Rahm Then:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an8Moh3xuUs[/youtube]

Rahm inbetween and now:

This spring, President Obama promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon that he would work to deter gunrunning south of the border. Behind the scenes, White House officials were putting the brakes on a proposal to require gun dealers to report bulk sales of the high-powered semiautomatic rifles favored by drug cartels.

Justice Department officials had asked for White House approval to require thousands of gun dealers along the border to report the purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF investigators expected to get leads on suspected arms traffickers.

Senior law enforcement sources said the proposal from the ATF was held up by the White House in early summer. The sources, who asked to be anonymous because they were discussing internal deliberations, said that the effort was shelved by then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a veteran of battles with the gun lobby during the Clinton administration.

Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Emanuel, who is running for mayor of Chicago, said Emanuel “did not stop the policy from being implemented.” Emanuel “has never taken a back seat to anyone when it comes to standing up to the NRA to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals,” LaBolt said.

LaBolt may have technically been correct, Rahm didn’t stop it, he just delayed it.  This is a no brainer in terms of the law in question.  Gun dealers have to do paperwork on every sale, having to report a bulk sale would be of no great burden.  The benefit of the move would be that once the ATF and other agencies know who is purchasing the guns so when they show up in the hands of cartels or other criminals, they have the tools to track down the suppliers.

What’s most disturbing is that Rahm wants to try and position himself as the next Daley, but this Daley never took a day off on gun legislation pushing it when it wasn’t popular because he was tired of the violence.  Daley went far enough where there were even some proposals I thought would be ineffective, but he never stopped pushing because it wasn’t convenient.   This was a benign rule that had an important role in both domestic gun running and foreign policy with Mexico and Rahm tried to delay it.  Nice.