Mentally Ill to be Armed, Executives Get Big Pay Increases . . .

And Comments on News from the Sunday NY Times

Because it is a holiday weekend, The Dismal Political Economist will restrict his commentary on the news to stories from just one paper, The Sunday July 3 New York Times.  Not to worry, there’s plenty of news that needs commentary.

A good place to start is a story that says states are restoring the right to have firearms to persons with a history of mental illnesses.

This surge can be traced to a law passed by Congress after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech that was actually meant to make it harder for people with mental illness to get guns.

As a condition of its support for the measure, the National Rifle Association extracted a concession: the inclusion of a mechanism for restoring firearms rights to those who lost them for mental health reasons.

Sounds good, cannot see anyway a policy like that can go wrong.  And thanks NRA for looking out for the mental health for the rest of us.

In case anyone was concerned that the Great Recession was having a horrible impact on executive pay, not to worry.

The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent.

Well that seems only fair since the rest of those working at those companies and other low and middle income employees got a similar increase.  Oh wait, they didn’t, they got closer to a .23% increase (23 hundredths of one percent if the decimal is not clear).  Darn those decimal points.

There is a new candidate for the Republican nomination for President, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan who has made it official.

The 45-year-old, elected to his fifth consecutive term in Congress in November, delivered the news Saturday during a festival in Whitmore Lake, 30 miles west of Detroit.

He told the crowd Washington needs "someone who knows the future is not big government — it is self-government."

After announcing his candidacy, McCotter grabbed his guitar designed to look like an American flag and performed with his band.

Former Arkansas Governor and 2008 Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is reportedly suing for image infringement.

The McDonald’s operations in the United Arab Emirates plan to use grease from the restaurant’s operations to run their vehicles.  The news here is that McDonald’s has restaurants in the UAE!  Is there anyplace they are not present (quick, check North Korea).

Finally, in the NYT Magazine section is the full article on the writings of Newt Gingrich. The Dismal Political Economist has already commented on this, and that should be sufficient, so for those of you for whom the urge to read this article lasts longer than 4 hours, please seek immediate medical attention.