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The latest Reason-Rupe poll finds
that 52 percent of Americans disagree with President Obama’s views
on the proper size and power of the government, while 37 percent
generally agree with the president on these issues.

Sixty-eight percent of Democrats agree with the president, and
20 percent disagree with him on the size and power of government.
In contrast, a majority (59 percent) of independents disagree with
President Obama, while 31 percent agree. Less surprisingly, 86
percent of Republicans say they disagree with Obama on government’s
role while 9 percent agree.

Private sector workers are more likely to disagree with Obama on
government’s proper role by a margin of 54 to 35 percent, while
public sector workers are evenly divided.

While younger millennials are slightly more likely to agree with
Obama, older millennials are not. Among 25-34 year olds—the
millennials first energized by Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign—a
majority says they disagree with Obama by a margin of 53 to 35
percent. Younger millennials (18-24) are evenly divided with a
plurality (48 percent) who agree with the president, while 43
percent disagree.

Although only a third of older millennials say they agree with
President Obama’s view on government’s power and size, 47 percent
of them also approve of his general job performance. This suggests
that while young people tend to be more supportive than older age
cohorts of President Obama, millennials are willing to disagree
with him on critical issues.

Another difference emerges among young nonwhite and white
millennials. Nearly two-thirds of white millennials say they
generally disagree with Obama on the power of government and 25
percent agree with him. However, among nonwhite millennials 58
percent agree with the president and a third disagree.

Sixty-one percent of white Americans disagree with Obama and 68
percent of African-American disagree with him on government’s
proper size and power. Latinos, however, are evenly divided.

 Nationwide telephone poll conducted Dec 4-8 2013
interviewed 1011 adults on both mobile (506) and landline (505)
phones, with a margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research
Associates International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe
survey. Columns may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full
poll results, detailed tables, and methodology found here. Sign
up for notifications of new releases of the
Reason-Rupe poll here.

Pro-European protests centered around Kiev’s
Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square),
dubbed Euromaidan, have gripped Ukraine since November 21, when
the government
announced it would put a planned “association agreement” with
the European Union on hold.  After three weeks of protests,
punctuated by clashes with police and failed attempts to disperse
demonstrators that have only emboldened them, the Ukrainian
government says it’s ready to sign the association agreement with
the EU, but first it wants a promise of $27.5 billion
in financial assistance. That’s a more specific iteration of
the initial Ukrainian demand Europe compensate
it for perceived short-term economic losses that came with the
decision to scuttle the agreement in November. The Ukrainian
government considered the IMF’s loan conditions too harsh, and

blamed them too for the collapse of the agreement with the EU.
In the crisis of weeks of protest, the Ukrainian government found
an opportunity to try to use them to get a better deal from the
EU.

Ukraine’s November decision to suspend talks with Europe, the
Washington Post
reported then, had also been influenced by pressure from Russia
for Ukraine to join its own Customs Union (with Belarus and
Kazakhstan), and by European demands that the Ukrainian government
release former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She was targeted
for prosecution after Viktor Yanukovych was elected president
in 2010, and Tymoshenko was eventually charged and convicted for
abuse of office related to a gas deal with Russia. Currently in
prison, Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the last mass protests
in the Ukraine, the so-called “Orange Revolution” in 2004 that
contributed to Yanukovych’s eventual loss in that year’s
presidential election. Yanukovych had in fact won the original
run-off, but those results were annulled by the Supreme Court for
being fraudulent. A  Moscow
Times write up compared the current protests and the
Orange Revolution, noting the similar West vs. East contours of
both, but also that while the Ukrainian government is in a stronger
position than it was in 2004, that the path toward integration with
Europe might already be irreversible.

For their part, EU leaders stress stronger relations with the
Ukraine don’t have to come at the expense of cooperation with
Russia. Russia’s tightening of border controls and trade
restrictions in response to the Ukraine’s work on an agreement with
the EU, unfortunately, indicate Russia is not interested in what
the EU describes as a “win-win” (as the taking down of trade
barriers
always is!). Unfortunately with trade deals between
governments, taking down trade barriers is rarely all it is, hence
the
scramble by the EU to find financial aid for Ukraine if it
signs a deal in part to cover for expected trade losses from
Russia.

A U.S.
military official has said that the military is expecting to begin
transporting Burundian troops to the Central African Republic
today. The troops are to take part in an African Union-led
intervention supported by the French which aims to stop sectarian
violence in the former French colony.

From
CNN:

(CNN) — The U.S. military expects on Thursday to begin
flying Burundi forces into the Central African Republic to help
stop the violence in that war-torn country, according to a U.S.
military official.

The United States has two C-17 aircraft in Uganda that will pick
up the forces in Burundi and unload them in Bangui, the capital.
The official emphasized the U.S. planes will remain on the ground
in Bangui for a very short period due to the violence there.

The official also said the United States believes its planes and
crews will be safe, because French forces control the airport
there. The airlift of Burundi forces is expected to last about a
week. Discussions about what additional assistance the United State
may provide continue.

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December 14 is the anniversary
of the
horrendous Newtown shooting, but despite the best
efforts of opportunistic politicians, Americans show little
sympathy for proposals to tighten restrictions on guns. In fact,
firearms don’t even appear on their list of concerns when asked
what worries them by Reason-Rupe
pollsters, although big government and politicians do.
And when asked directly about tightening gun laws, people say that
would have no impact on criminals’ access to guns—a logical
position to take, since nothing that’s been proposed so far would
have prevented Newtown shooter Adam Lanza from doing what he
did.

Americans worry about a lot of things in an age of sluggish
economic “recovery” and government incompetence put on display like
an object lesson in stupid policy, poorly enacted. Asked an
open-ended question about the “biggest problem facing the country
today,” people volunteered jobs/wages, worries about Congress, and
social disunity, and nervousness over big government and the Obama
administration. Two percent each even said that immigration and
Republicans under the bed keep them awake at night. Any
volunteeered concerns about guns in their neighbors’ closets came
in at too low a level to be recorded.

Which is not shocking at a time when homicides committed with
firearms have been on a
long-term downward trend, despite all-too-terrible incidents
like Newtown.

Maybe that’s because people understand that restrictive laws
aren’t the answer to every horrible headline.
Sixty-three percent of poll respondents told us that tighter
gun restrictions aren’t going to stand between criminals and access
to firearms. They certainly wouldn’t have stopped Lanza, who used
guns purchased by his mother, a squeaky clean citizen who bought
her guns legally after
passing background checks. And in case there are any questions
about the past year’s most popular gun to hate, Greg Ridgeway, the
Deputy Director of the National Institute of Justice, says that
bans on “assault weapon” and “high-capacity magazines” are
totally pointless. Add in the fact that 80 percent of criminals
get their guns from “family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal
source” according to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, and it’s clear that Americans display more wisdom
than the average politican.

It’s not just the pool of folks answering Reason-Rupe’s
questions, either. An
AP poll also conducted as the Newtown anniversary approaches
found declining support for tightened gun restrictions, with half
of respondents flat-out saying “laws limiting gun ownership
infringe on the public’s right to bear arms.”

What might have helped prevent the Newtown shooting? A plurality
(27 percent) favors better “mental
health services,” which has evolved into something of a default
policy go-to in recent months for people looking for solutions.
Mental health services might or might not help, depending on what
people mean by “better” (pre-emptive
detention for folks with the blues?). And while Adam Lanza had
known mental health problems,
nobody saw any warning signs to indicate he was about to go off
the deep end.

Still, people do want to “do something,” which might explain why
Americans tell Reason-Rupe they’re even willing to attempt the
objectively unwise (arm TSA agents so they have something to wave
around while they’re groping you) and the overtly impossible (ban
the 3D printing of guns). Anybody concerned that air travel is too
popular might find giving TSA agents the arms to back their attitudes is an
excellent way to trim the number of trips. And 3D printing of
firearms was
explicitly designed to be beyond the reach of goverment
officials.

The Newtown shooting was a horrible crime. It was also a
thankfully rare incident in an era of declining gun-related
homicides, despite the headlines. One year later, Americans seem to
understand that, and to largely reject authoritarian, knee-jerk
responses.

In the aftermath of the deadly Metro-North
train wreck in New York, there was ample fuel for outrage. The
anger was directed at the driver for apparently taking a turn way
too fast—and at the federal government for not mandating technology
to make that impossible. It may seem criminal that the nation’s
railroads haven’t already adopted the technology, but Steve Chapman
says the case for this option is surprisingly weak.

View this article.