Committee of the Hole Anti-Gun Rant

One wishing to hide something can find no better place that a hole. Like a Committee of the Hole.

I find myself at moral loggerheads at times as a political PR professional as I am promoting as a yet another (twice now for this seldom-used-rule-and-revived-for-PR gimick) Committee of the Whole, this time on crime, which began today, Sept. 26 in the Pennsylvania state House…

The PR Session, also known as the Committee of the Hole (sic – homonym intended) is where legislative ideas can be discussed publicly without the threat of a committee vote or recorded floor vote that can be used against a candidate by the paper-craving opposition...a paper vote to place the voter at odds with someone...

You're damned if you do and darned if you don't, it's either some constituent group formed by bored stay at home jobless parents looking for a cause to occupy their minds or it goes against the way that the powers would have it go. Given the unknown variables (an intentional redundancy, a pleonas, if you will) of how a committee might vote on a bill on their voting agenda that is not sanctioned by the PTB, the safer bet is an unrecorded straw vote that gives the appearance of doing something, but is not recorded or meaningful. No bill moved today from this quasi-voting session. These days, who knows what grassroots lobby will win?

In this post-pay raise grassroots thrown even the good ones out atmosphere, a vote is no slam dunk...the horsetrading has got to be in a smoke-free room now, where the public can view the contents of the pork-free sausage...If the behind the scenes lobbyists have their input, as they are right now at the ocktoberfest fundraiser that abbreviated the busy inaction session all 1312 regular PCN viewers witnessed, most of them us, the flies on the various walls that surround us, or if in Cubeville, USA, go almost all the way to the ceiling, they will win over mom and pop

Yeah, they occasionally take time off work to come in buses as they did today with their homemade Sharpied signs and organizations named after their fallen sons and daughters, Brady Bill, Megan's Law, Insert Victim of the Moment and assign the concept a bill number.

But they don’t contribute to political campaigns in nearly the same fashion as the National Rifle Association (NRA, what was the pseudonym of their equivalent in Thank You for Smoking? Google), Glock, Inc., Remington Arms or any of their ilk, iron and steel, powder and spark merchants of death, be it a helpless bird or deer (I AM NOT AGAINST HUNTING JUST DON’T MANDATE THAT I HAVE TO CARRY A FIREARM, I MEAN WEAPON!) or the occasional human, unless you are unfortunate enough to have a non-Philadelphia or other city zip code, then, it’s on every daily newscast, supplanting the best PR efforts to remind voters that we are doing our best to prevent illegal use of guns.

Enforce our weak ass current laws with a million cops, and all will be well, goes the party line, except the bank accounts of the taxpayers, wallets drained to employ more men and women in blue or whatever color is justice after the fact.

Where are all the unsexy front-end solutions? You can’t count a crime that doesn’t happen as well as you can add yet another name to the incarcerated list, and at $30,000 a pop to warehouse the criminals, more if it to house death penalty - death by old age in PA - quite a bargain with your tax dollars, eh? Almost as good a bargain as taking the war to the terrorists in the middle east, guns and bombs paid for by you and your $250 million a day war on terror tax tab.

Frankly I have a bad taste in my mouth being a mouthpiece for a caucus which is using the crime issue for political purposes (which one is that - right, both, but the majority sets the agenda). The PTB just want to put the kibosh on ‘liberal’ legislators’ plans to enact actual legislation that will help reduce the number of gun-related murders, suicides and accidents that occur in our communities statewide…

imagine, hmm, less guns, would that mean less gun homicides? Well, it might be worth a shot, pun intended.

Knives don’t kill people, people kill (bang), sorry, my fictional blaster got the knife-wielder before he could come in close enough even to knick my fine shave, and here’s another $500 to win re-election Rep. Pro-gun. Happy Ocktoberfest. Now where were we? I didn't get a harumph out of you.

I can’t help but put on my cynic’s hat when I am involved is such PR who-hah that is really intended to pander to those interested in the issue rather than offer actual solutions to life’s gun violence problems…and gun violence, esp. in Philly, is a problem, not the spin doctors’ word challenge. The only problem is the conservative T of PA hearing the word gun and immediately running to their unlocked gun cabinets or bedside tables to grasf the shaft of their double aught of shiny Colt or the .22 rifle there behind their head in the Ford F Series pickup and in the time it takes to pee your name in the deer Monday after Thanksgiving snow, cocking their barrel and lining up to defend their rights to bear arms, or warehous a Whisky Rebellion arsenal in the potato cellar/bomb shelter where they keep the MREs and spare batteries, and petroleum-fuled generator.

Will we have any actual laws come out of this session, perhaps another back-end solution like a mandatory minimum or optiona tax reform referendum like the first Committee of the Hole? Look at the awesome measures to cut your property taxes that that session produced...seen a penny off your school property tax bill? No? Feel safe now that the windbags are talking about how to reduce crime? Turn on the evening news to see who is maimed or killed in your neighborhood and ask yourself...all this talk, is it worth what we'r paying for it.

How do you legislate to stop a gun-related death or injury on the front end? Will 10,000 cops be on the streets by 2010. Go ahead, hold your breath, the new census will be hear and ne seats will be drawn to make sure, once again, no matter what ehy do, the bums, or don't do, the legislators, they are gonna draw the seats to protologically protect themselves. Highly doubtful any bill they pass will actually make One Pennsylvanian safe.

I don't want to come to Harrisburg with my kid's name on a bill, and an obituary in my press kit.

My proposal to have all guns locked in an armory with a checkout system to enable loving arsenal owners to have visitation with their guns, so they can stroke and kiss their own barrels whenever they want so long as they return them to the safety of the state (or we can have the armories run by NRA-franchised facilities so there is separation of Arms and State) and make loud noises that scare the neighbors and any edible animals in the vicinity (even those on some endangered list)