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12
Dec 2011

Publius Daily Digest

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National

Event Alert: this one is online. Tomorrow, December 13, at 1 p.m. PST the Reagan Foundation is hosting a Lecture with Peter Hannaford to discuss his latest book, Reagan’s Roots. Go here to view the webcast live.

Atlas Shrugged Alert: rumor has it that some Red Box locations are now renting copies of Atlas Shrugged Part 1. Check here to see if you can reserve a copy at a location near you.

Big news from SCOTUS this morning as the Court announced it will review Arizona’s controversial immigration reform law, SB1070. We’ve previously covered that law here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. SCOTUSblog hosted an online symposium in July on SB1070 with input from numerous scholars. From SCOTUSblog:

Adding further to the historic rank of the Supreme Court’s current Term, the Justices on Monday took on the searing constitutional — and political — controversy over state power to strictly limit the way undocumented immigrants live their lives in the U.S.   Along with the politics-saturated but deeply consequential constitutional disputes over the new federal health care law and the role of federal courts in drawing up new election districts to protect minority voters’ rights, the Term that will run through late June is assured of being one of the Court’s most significant single years ever.  The federal government is involved in all three disputes, and its main adversary in each is the same: prominent Washington lawyer and former U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who is also battling the government in lower courts over same-sex marriage.  The marriage issue, though, has only the slimmest of chances of getting to the Court this Term in any form.

* * *

The Arizona case puts before eight of the Justices — former U.S. Solicitor General and now Justice Elena Kagan will not take part — that state’s highly controversial bill, known popularly as “S.B. 1070.”  That measure set a pattern among a number of states that have been growing increasingly impatient with what they consider to be the federal government’s lax enforcement of immigration controls, and the resulting harm that they believe illegal immigrants are doing to the quality of life for their citizens and legal residents.  The Arizona measure, and one in Alabama that goes even further, were passed by state legislatures with the specific intent of making life so difficult for undocumented aliens that they would choose to leave the state.  Other states are also passing similar measures.

Arizona’s governor, Janice Brewer, in taking the fate of S.B. 1070 on to the Supreme Court, is portraying the case as a major test of the sovereignty of the states to make their own social policies under traditional “police power” principles.  The federal government, which tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Court not to get involved in the case at this point, is treating the case as a test of whether states may adopt their own immigration policies that frustrate specific goals of federal policy.

With Justice Kagan not taking part, presumably because she had something to do with the issue in her former role in the Obama Administration Justice Department, there is the possibility that the eight participating Justices will wind up split 4-4 in the case.   That would have the effect of simply upholding a Ninth Circuit Court decision, but without opinion and without setting a nationwide precedent.  The practical effect of that would be that Arizona could not enforce four key provisions of S.B. 1070, blocked by both the Ninth Circuit and, earlier, by a federal District judge in Arizona.

Big news indeed. Speaking of the administration, last week we noted Eric Holder’s testimony on the Fast and Furious operation debacle, and WSJ’s Law Blog has a good roundup of coverage from that testimony here.

Also, Steve Chapman notes that Obama is no friend of religious freedom in a thought-provoking column:

But look far enough in this pile of chaff and you find some wheat. On two major issues cited by Perry, Obama has broken with precedent to curtail religious freedom in a way that should alarm staunch secularists (like myself) as well as the devout.

The first instance arose after passage of his health care overhaul, when the Department of Health and Human Services ordered that all insurance plans cover contraceptives and sterilization for women, with no co-payment. The mandate means many Americans would have to be complicit in something their faith forbids.

* * *

Even more extreme is its position on a dispute involving an evangelical Lutheran church and school in Michigan. The school had dismissed a teacher who taught both religious and non-religious classes, and she went to court alleging illegal discrimination.

Federal courts have generally barred such lawsuits, leery of getting tangled up in church doctrine and discipline. But an appeals court ruled in favor of the teacher, and Obama’s Justice Department took her side.

Not only that, it said churches and their schools should be treated no differently from other employers. Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean the Catholic Church could be forced to admit women to the priesthood.

When the case was argued before the Supreme Court, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia marveled at the administration’s claim: “There, black on white in the text of the Constitution, are special protections for religion. And you say it makes no difference?” Exclaimed liberal Justice Elena Kagan, whom Obama appointed, “I too find that amazing.”

more

From the 2012 primary updates:

WSJ Law blog describes how Rick Perry stumbles, again: “[W]e bring you Perry’s latest, a couple of missteps made during a sit-down with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register. In one, he blanked on the name of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In the other, he referred to the Supreme Court as consisting of ‘eight unelected and frankly unaccountable judges.’”

Reason presents a Ron Paul roundup with some interesting tidbits and videos.

George Will explains how a third-party Ron Paul run leads to a second term for Obama:

When recently asked if he might mount an independent candidacy, he said: “I’m not thinking about it because, look, I’m not doing badly right now. … So we concentrate only on one thing: Keep moving up in the polls, and see how things come out in a month or two.”

He is in the top tier in Iowa, and would alienate Republican voters if he indicated an interest in bolting the party next autumn. Nationally, his ceiling is low, but his floor is solid: His supporters are inclined to accept no substitutes because no other candidate espouses anything like his high octane blend of libertarianism and isolationism.

Furthermore, he is now nationally known (he campaigned for the 2008 Republican nomination, and was the Libertarian Party’s 1988 presidential candidate), has a large base of small donors, and his intense supporters probably could get his name on most states’ ballots. He is not seeking re-election to his House seat, so what has he got to lose?

Well, his candidacy might guarantee Barack Obama’s re-election, and this might hurt the career of his son Rand, the freshman senator from Kentucky. Other than that, however, Ron Paul may think what his ideology implies – that Obama is only marginally more mistaken than Paul’s Republican rivals, who do not wake up each day angry about the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.

Video of the Day

Today’s video comes from PA Congressman Mike Kelly and his recent House Floor rant, definitely worth five minutes of your time (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

Check out Steve Terrell’s column in Saturday’s online Santa Fe New Mexican, in which he asks whether the Tea Party activists and the Occupy activists have received unequal treatment by the Santa Fe government:

Santa Fe Republicans indisputably are in the minority. This often leads to grumbling about their treatment by the Democratic majority. Like all political beefs, from any side, sometimes the concerns are overblown. Sometimes not.

Last week a couple of local GOP activists raised a valid question about basic fairness. Jim and Sheryl Bohlander emailed that they don’t think it’s fair that they had to pay hundreds of dollars to use the Santa Fe Plaza for tea-party events while members of the Occupy Santa Fe movement camp out at the city’s Railyard Park for free.

“As two of the principal organizers of the 2009 and 2010 tea-party rallies on the Plaza, we can confirm that we had to secure a permit to use the Plaza, $400 for each event, plus we had to secure at liability insurance policy for both events, well over $300 each time,” the Bohlanders said in their email. “The permit fee for 2011 was $455. Additionally, we had to state specifically the time frame of the events.”

I realize some readers will be thinking, “What the heck? They’re Republicans. They can afford it.”

But setting political prejudices aside — if that’s ever possible — one can ask if it’s fair to make one group of citizens pay to use a city park for a political gathering while another group gets to use a park for free?

Read the whole column here and let us know what you think in the comments.

While we wait for the full results of the grand jury investigations into former Gov. Richardson’s conduct, the state’s most prominent current embarrassment is busy amassing additional assets, this time in Cape Cod, Mass.:

The couple secured a $675,000 mortgage from the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank and purchased the 2,278-square-foot house from Gerald and Stephanie Coughlan of Wellesley. The Coughlans paid $1.6 million for the property on Nickerson Neck in 2004.

Most of the property’s value — $1.5 million — is in the 36,200-square-foot pond-front lot, according to Chatham assessing records. The assessed value of the three-bedroom house with 4.5 bathrooms was $297,900.

“Gov. and Mrs. Richardson will use this home as a vacation home,” Richardson spokesman Caitlin Wakefield emailed Friday. “Their primary residence will continue to be Santa Fe, N.M. Mrs. Richardson has longstanding ties in the Cape Cod area.”

More here. Continuing the New Mexicans in the national news theme, Murphygate has now made its way into the Los Angeles Times:

It wasn’t a good day for New Mexico’s judiciary when a district judge in Las Cruces, the state’s second-largest city, was indicted last spring on bribery charges for allegedly soliciting campaign contributions in return for political favors.

Then things went from bad to worse. The special prosecutor handling the case demanded that the chief justice of the state Supreme Court recuse himself for allegedly having made prejudicial comments and rulings.

And then came the release of a secretly recorded audiotape in which the indicted judge, Michael Murphy, could be heard casually spouting barnyard profanities, racial epithets and homosexual slurs.

The scandal has reverberated statewide, with some seeing it as evidence of rampant judicial corruption. Murphy’s allies portray it as little more than an indiscretion by someone caught talking out of school, and view the criminal charges as a broad interpretation of the bribery statute.

Full article here.

 

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Categories: 2012 Election, Constitutional Rights, Economy, Gary Johnson, Health Care, NM Politics
28
Nov 2011

Publius Daily Digest

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National

Big news of the morning is Barney Frank’s retirement:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) will announce Monday that he is not seeking re-election, ending a 32-year career in the House.

Frank, 71, is the top Democrat on the Financial Services Committee and the architect, with former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), of the sweeping Wall Street regulatory reform law enacted in 2010.

He is scheduled to hold a press conference at 1 p.m. in his district, according to a spokesman, who said the congressman would announce at that time the reason for his decision. His retirement will deprive the House of one of its most colorful characters, a man known for his quick and often caustic wit.

Elected in 1980, Frank survived scandal early in his career and rose to become the nation’s most powerful openly-gay elected official. After coming out publicly, he became a champion for gay rights and helped campaign for an end to the military’s ban on gays serving openly, which ended this year.

More from The Hill here. Also keep up with the breaking story on Townhall.com, which is currently noting:

(1) With Frank out, the Democrat next in line to become the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee is Rep. Maxine Waters of California.  In other words, another ethically pristine,meek personality.

(2) With Frank out, both authors of the controversial 2010 Wall Street “reform” bill (which enshrined “too big to fail” and left Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unscathed) will be out of Congress — each with anethical cloud hanging over his head.

(3) With Frank out, a scramble is already underway to replace him.  Several Democrats are moving to run in Franks recently re-drawn district, and Republican Elizabeth Childs had already announced plans to challenge Frank in 2012.  Massachusetts lost one Congressional seat in reapportionment; two sitting members from the state’s 100 percent Democratic House delegation have now announced they won’t return in 2013.

PubliusNM friend John Dendahl has recently posted about the implications of Ohio’s recent election for Big Labor. On November 16, Dendahl noted:

Two ballot issues in Ohio produced the most talked-about results, at least in part on account of the appearance of voter Schizophrenia.  By a margin of 61-39 percent, about 3.5 million Ohioans voting on Issue 2 “vetoed” Senate Bill 5 enacted last March. That law placed limits on public employee unions’ bargaining rights and stepped-up employees’ financial responsibility for their health insurance and retirement contributions. (Arguments pro and con can be seen here.)

The Issue 2 vote is seen as a big victory for organized labor and for the national leader who has advocated for union interests in Ohio and Wisconsin elections, Pres. Obama.

Not so fast, though. By an even larger margin, 66-34 percent, the same voters approved Issue 3, a constitutional amendment barring that state’s citizens from being required to purchase the health insurance that is the lynchpin of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, ObamaCare in shorthand. Since ObamaCare looms as a major issue in the 2012 presidential election, this is seen as a huge loss for Obama. Hence the appearance of voter Schizophrenia.
The union side on Issue 2 spent some $30 million, perhaps three times the opposition’s spending. For perspective, John Kasich’s campaign spent under $19 million last year getting him elected governor. Remaining to be seen is whether in fact this turns out to be the win for organized labor that is superficially apparent. Gov. Kasich had said repeatedly that the changes in law are mandatory for the state and political subdivisions to finance operations without severe layoffs.
Webinar guest speaker John Fund, until recently a respected political analyst and reporter for The Wall Street Journal and now writing a book, called the union win “a Pyrrhic Victory,” suggesting that unions will now pay the price of job losses.
In a follow up post on Nov. 23, Dendahl explained further:

After I blogged the other day about who really won in the Ohio ballot fight over public employee unions, over at News21, my kids who live there sent a related piece published in Columbus by the mayor of a nearby small town, entitled “A few tweaks could improve collective bargaining.”  They commended it to me as “thoughtful.”

My reaction was that (a) the mayor had indeed written a thoughtful piece, but that (b) I still can’t share his faith in binding arbitration. A city’s elected leadership should not be barred from deciding to take a strike or instituting a lock-out. So, in that view, one might argue that the mayor is nibbling around the edges. I do understand, though, that he was writing from a position materially weakened by the election (Issue 2 on the Ohio ballot on November 8) and, perhaps, attempting to get some cheese out of the trap.

If a business executive and/or board of directors agrees to a labor contract that is economically ruinous, sooner or later the executive, the board or the entire company is gone.

John J. Pitney has an interesting piece up at the Washington Post discussing five myths about Newt Gingrich:

1.Gingrich is an academic.

He earned a PhD in history and taught college before winning a seat in Congress. He has often spoken of himself as a historian. In 1995, he told CNN’s Bob Franken: “I am the most seriously professorial politician since Woodrow Wilson.”

But whereas Wilson spent years publishing scholarly works, Gingrich was more like the professor who wins popularity awards from undergraduates but doesn’t get tenure because he doesn’t publish anything significant. He even told a college newspaper in 1977 that “I made the decision two or three years ago that I’d rather run for Congress than publish the papers or academic books necessary to get promoted.”

Since then, he has given countless lectures and written more than 20 books, but has never produced truly serious scholarship. A typical Gingrich work is full of aphorisms and historical references — and devoid of the hallmarks of academic research: rigor, nuance and consideration of alternative views. Conservative political scientist James Q. Wilson once assessed materials for a televised history course that Gingrich was teaching as a “mishmash of undefined terms .?.?. misleading claims .?.?. and unclear distinctions.”

Yet Gingrich has been quick to cite his credentials as a source of authority. In a letter to Reagan budget director David Stockman, he once wrote: “From my perspective as a historian, you don’t deal in the objective requirements of history.” And recently, he suggested that mortgage giant Freddie Mac had paid him for his historical expertise, not his Capitol Hill connections.

Read the other four myths here. Speaking of the 2012 primary, Gary Johnson is now contemplating an LP run:

Former two-term Gov. Gary Johnson (R-N.M.) tells the Santa Fe New Mexican that he feels “abandoned” by a Republican Party that shut him out of all but two of GOP presidential debates so far. As a result, he’s mulling over the idea of running for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination.

“If I’d have been included in 16 of the last debates we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” Johnson said.

Johnson said there have been “overtures made” by the Libertarian Party. While there’s no guarantee he’d win the nomination, Johnson believes he’d have a fair chance….

* * *

There’s little doubt that Johnson – who unambiguously supports an end to the drug war, a non-interventionist foreign policy, reproductive rights, liberalized immigration policy, free trade, and many other libertarian position – would be the highest-profile LP candidate at least since Ron Paul hit the hustings back in 1988. As a pol who won election twice in a Democratic-heavy state and governed to bipartisan acclaim, he’d also be the first one who could point to administrative experience and success, which would surely help with publicity for the LP’s existence and positions.

Since we’ve got some interest in voter fraud (discussed more below), here’s  a lengthy but relevant video for today. On November 11, at the Federalist Society’s annual convention, the Free Speech & Election Law group hosted a panel discussion on the issue featuring, among others, John Fund former WSJ columnist (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico
Heath Haussamen’s latest opinion piece decries Secretary of State Dianna Duran’s recent report on possible electoral fraud as “snarky” and untrustworthy:

There should be no doubt that electoral fraud can and does happen, at least occasionally, in New Mexico.

Two of the most recent examples come from Doña Ana County, where a former Sunland Park judge wassentenced to 18 months on probation in 2009 for fraudulently voting and registering as a candidate for judge, and where someone involved in the county GOP allegedly altered seven voter registration forms to change new voters’ party affiliation from “declined to state” to Republican.

There should also be no doubt that there are problems with New Mexico’s voter rolls. Secretary of StateDianna Duran knows it. County clerks from both parties know it.

There should be a bipartisan way to address these issues. Voters essentially charged Duran with leading such an effort when they elected her last year, making her the first Republican secretary of state in eight decades. Duran had the support of many Democrats, including some county clerks.

In electing Duran, voters sent a strong message that they’re tired of shenanigans in the Secretary of State’s Office and want integrity in their elections.

But instead of leading a bipartisan effort to address problems with the voter file, Duran has created division with a months-long investigation that lacked transparency and integrity. As a result, the likelihood of county clerks and legislators from both parties coming together to address issues with the voter rolls is lessened.

Read his full piece here and get back to us in the comments: is Haussamen correct? Is Duran’s report snarky and untrustworthy?

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Categories: 2012 Election, Gary Johnson, Health Care, NM Politics
17
Nov 2011

Publius Daily Digest

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National

Steve Chapman today makes The Case Against Newt Gingrich:

Republican voters’ esteem for Newt Gingrich has been rising fast. At this rate it might someday equal, though not surpass, his regard for himself. Gingrich is not a person with an ego. He’s an ego with a person.

Just listen to his explanation of why it took him a while to catch on with voters: “Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I’m such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a unique campaign that fits the way I operate and what I’m trying to do.”

Other GOP candidates sound like they are merely campaigning for office. Gingrich, however, hurls verbal thunderbolts like Zeus, as the lights flicker and the earth shakes. Hopelessly in love with the sound of his own voice, he exhibits a stern, overbearing self-assurance that gives his pronouncements weight even when he is uttering nonsense.

See also Shikha Dalmia’s op-ed: Keep Newt undercover. Meanwhile, Ann Coulter makes the case FOR Mitt Romney:

There may be better ways to stop Obamacare than Romney, but, unfortunately, they’re not available right now. (And, by the way, where were you conservative purists when Republicans were nominating Waterboarding-Is-Torture-Jerry-Falwell-Is-an-Agent-of-Intolerance-My-Good-Friend-Teddy-Kennedy-Amnesty-for-Illegals John McCain-Feingold for president?)

Among Romney’s positives is the fact that he has a demonstrated ability to trick liberals into voting for him. He was elected governor of Massachusetts — one of the most liberal states in the union — by appealing to Democrats, independents and suburban women.

* * *

Instead of sitting on our thumbs, wishing Ronald Reagan were around, or chasing the latest mechanical rabbit flashed by the media, conservatives ought to start rallying around Romney as the only Republican who has a shot at beating Obama. We’ll attack him when he’s president.

It’s fun to be a purist, but let’s put that on hold until Obama and his abominable health care plan are gone, please.

Read her full column here.

Former Supreme Court Justice weighed in on “conservative” Judge Sutton’s decision upholding the constitutionality of ObamaCare:

When Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals became the first Republican-appointed judge to uphold President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens took note. The opinion, Justice Stevens says, may be good on the law, but not so good for Judge Sutton’s own career.

* * *

[T]oday, with every Republican presidential candidate opposed to the health law, Judge Sutton’s June opinion may have killed his chances of elevation to the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens said. The irony, he added, is that Judge Sutton probably believes the health law is bad policy, even if it isn’t unconstitutional.

More here.

So, in case you were still wondering, the Congressional Budget Office director made it clear in testimony earlier this week that the so-called stimulus spending is indeed bad for long term growth:

Testifying before the Senate Budget Committee today, Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf reiterated his initial assessment of President Obama’s $800 billion “stimulus” package — that while it may boost the country’s GDP in the short-term, in the long-term, the effect of such spending is a net negative on GDP growth.

Needless to say, Elmendorf’s assessment would also apply to the president’s most recent jobsstimulus package, which would spend $450 billion over the next year, making it larger — in annual terms — than the first stimulus package, which spent $800 billion over two years.

Go here for the video of testimony. Speaking of economics, John Mackey had a great op-ed yesterday about economic freedom:

Is the United States exceptional? Of course we are! Two hundred years ago we were one of the poorest countries in the world. We accounted for less than 1% of the world’s total GDP. Today our GDP is 23% of the world’s total and more than twice as large as the No. 2 country’s, China.

America became the wealthiest country because for most of our history we have followed the basic principles of economic freedom: property rights, freedom to trade internationally, minimal governmental regulation of business, sound money, relatively low taxes, the rule of law, entrepreneurship, freedom to fail, and voluntary exchange.

The success of economic freedom in increasing human prosperity, extending our life spans and improving the quality of our lives in countless ways is the most extraordinary global story of the past 200 years. Gross domestic product per capita has increased by a factor of 1,000% across the world and almost 2,000% in the U.S. during these last two centuries. In 1800, 85% of everyone alive lived on less than $1 per day (in 2000 dollars). Today only 17% do. If current long-term trend lines of economic growth continue, we will see abject poverty almost completely eradicated in the 21st century. Business is not a zero-sum game struggling over a fixed pie. Instead it grows and makes the total pie larger, creating value for all of its major stakeholders—customers, employees, suppliers, investors and communities.

So why is our economy barely growing and unemployment stuck at over 9%? I believe the answer is very simple: Economic freedom is declining in the U.S.

Check out Mackey’s interview with Reason on health care here. Which leads to our video of the day, involving Mackey’s long interview with Reason (click here to view the long version at Reason and here for the excerpt at YouTube):

New Mexico

If you haven’t yet, go check out Francisco d’Anconia’s latest post on Heinrich and Udall. Speaking of NM politicians that are a disgrace, check out the latest on Bill Richardson:

A federal grand jury is investigating potential “financial irregularities” related to former Gov. Bill Richardson’sunsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, the Albuquerque Journal is reporting.

From today’s Journal article:

“The grand jury has been hearing testimony in secret since at least September, and a number of witnesses have been granted immunity, according to defense attorneys familiar with the general outlines of the investigation.

“… the Journal has learned that one area under scrutiny is whether money from campaign supporters was used to settle a threatened lawsuit against Richardson in the fall of 2007 by a woman who formerly worked in state government.

“Several people familiar with some aspects of the investigation have mentioned similarities to pending criminal charges against former presidential candidate John Edwards on allegations that his campaign supporters paid to shield the candidate from a public scandal.

“The legal issue is whether the money constituted a de facto campaign contribution made in furtherance of the candidate’s bid for federal office.”

According to the Journal, the investigation “involves several other matters tied together by potential election law violations, including possible coordination between so-called ‘soft money’ from political action committees and the campaign.”

More from Heath Haussamen here.

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Categories: 2012 Election, Economy, Health Care, NM Politics
15
Nov 2011

Publius Daily Digest

By

Courtesy of Reason’s Friday Funnies.

National

ObamaCare at SCOTUS continues to draw the most headlines. In today’s WSJ, David Rivkin and Lee Casey note:

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether ObamaCare is constitutional, granting certiorari in a case brought by 26 states shortly after that law was enacted in March of last year. In so doing, it will be ruling upon the very nature of our federal union.

The Constitution limits federal power by granting Congress authority in certain defined areas, such as the regulation of interstate and foreign commerce. Those powers not specifically vested in the federal government by the Constitution or, as stated in the 10th Amendment, “prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The court will now determine whether those words still have meaning.

Read their entire column here and the WSJ Editorial on point here. For more, SCOTUSBlog has a good roundup post here with links to the extensive coverage around the web.

Yesterday’s Political Diary by WSJ notes some interesting updates in the GOP Presidential Primary race:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to surge in the polls. Last week a CBS poll had Herman Cain at 18%, with Mitt Romney and Mr. Gingrich tied at 15%. Even more impressive was the latest McClatchy-Marist poll, which had Mr. Romney at 23%, Mr. Gingrich at 19% and Mr. Cain at 17%. A little over a month ago, Mr. Gingrich was barely above 5% in any poll.

Is the former Georgia congressman simply the latest flavor of the month in the wake of the Herman Cain sexual-harassment allegations, or can he actually win? In an interview with me this weekend, he notes that “after every debate I keep rising in the polls.” He sees at least 70% of voters looking for an alternative to Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee. Mr. Gingrich says conservative voters “know I am the one who would be best to debate President Obama.”

One Gingrich strategy that seems to be paying off is to remind voters of his record as speaker. He says he was the one who was able to persuade then-President Clinton “to sign a balanced budget, welfare reform and tax cuts.” He says he inherited a 10-year forecast of $2.7 trillion in deficits, but that when he left Congress the forecast was “more than $2 trillion in surpluses” and “voters would love to see that happen again.”

Mr. Gingrich has clearly appeared presidential in the GOP debates, and he says focus groups almost always “pick me as the debate winner.” Mr. Gingrich’s campaign suffered some major setbacks earlier this year after he attacked the Paul Ryan’s budget plan and his staffers began to resign. Now Mr. Gingrich is where Michele Bachmann was in late summer and where Rick Perry sat four weeks ago. Whether he has staying power is another matter, but for now Mr. Gingrich is positioning himself to be Mitt Romney’s greatest rival. “I’m the anti-Washington-establishment candidate. That’s why so few in Washington are for me.”

* * *

Mitt Romney recorded yet another strong debate performance Saturday night in South Carolina, where the focus was on foreign policy. Nevertheless, two recent Republican presidential polls must have the former Massachusetts governor scratching his head.

A CBS News survey of likely Republican voters released Friday showed that support for Mr. Romney has slipped to 15%, which puts him even with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and behind businessman Herman Cain, who was at 18%. A McClatchy-Marist poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents released the same day showed Mr. Romney at 23%, Mr. Gingrich at 19% and Mr. Cain at 17%.

Mr. Romney has typically garnered about 25% of Republican voters but was likely expecting a bump given the recent troubles of two top rivals. Mr. Cain has been fending off sexual harassment claims from four different women over the past two weeks. And Texas Gov. Rick Perry stumbled badly in a debate last week when he couldn’t remember one of the three cabinet agencies he’s vowed to eliminate should he win the presidency.

“Mitt Romney’s support fluctuates wildly between 23 and 25 [percent],” quipped George Will Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” Mr. Will’s point is that alternatives to Mr. Romney — Michele Bachman, Mr. Perry, Mr. Cain — come and go, yet he seems to have a ceiling of support that he can’t penetrate. Polls have shown that Mr. Romney struggles especially among tea party supporters and evangelicals. Both groups continue to search for an alternative.

Mr. Gingrich looks to be the latest beneficiary of Romney dissatisfaction, and the former speaker may not have peaked. Mr. Cain’s lead in Iowa has shrunk and his overall numbers will likely drop going forward. The CBS poll showed that Mr. Cain’s support among Republican women has fallen to 15% from 28% since late October.

The good news for Mr. Romney is that 17% of voters are still undecided. The bad news is that the Iowa caucuses are just six weeks away.

In other candidate news, the latest on Herman Cain is his apparent total meltdown in a video-taped interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Go here for Guy Benson’s review of the experience, which includes a painful five-minute video of Cain’s answer on Libya. Benson’s conclusion sums the situation up nicely:

At Saturday’s debate, Cain frequently said he’d defer to the judgment of his top advisors and generals on foreign policy and national security matters.  Given his disastrous conversation today, it’s increasingly clear that Cain is using his stock, “ask the generals” response as a dodge to mask huge knowledge gaps.  Even if one remains a committed Cain loyalist, will average voters watch videos like these and conclude that Cain is prepared to be President of the United States?

Today’s video is a lengthy one, but worth your lunch or dinner break if you’re interested in the ObamaCare constitutionality debate. At the Federalist Society’s annual convention last weekend, former Solicitor General Paul Clement debated Professor Lawrence Tribe on this question (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

Paul Gessing’s latest column at NMPolitics.net takes a good look at education proposals:

Very rarely do the left wingers who continuously criticize any attempt to reform New Mexico’s foundering education system say anything that surprises me. Conspiracies abound and the term “privatization” is thrown about like a slur.

But Emanuele Corso, in his recent attack piece “Skandera takes steps to undermine public education,” argued that Hanna Skandera and the Rio Grande Foundation are teaming up (along with a host of nefarious right-wingers nationwide) to “industrialize” education.

Corso has actually flipped reality upside down with this particular accusation. The reality is that America’s educational system has been based on an outdated “industrial” model for more than a century. And, while that worked just fine when large numbers of Americans went from “industrial” schools to working in factories, the current system is not designed to spur critical thought and independence.

For a history of the industrialization of American education, I highly recommend the works of John Taylor Gatto. A long-time educator, he has written extensively on the ways government-run school systems dumb our children down.

Check out the full column here. Also of note, the Rio Grande Foundation now has live county payroll information for all 33 counties in New Mexico on this page.

Stephan Helgesen, a retired foreign service officer and the current “honorary consul” for Germany in New Mexico authored a suggested re-write for the qualifications we should seek in our Commander in Chief:

We’ve had 26 lawyers, 12 generals, four small businessmen and one haberdasher who have served as president of these United States. Most were college graduates. One was unmarried. Twelve of them owned slaves during their lives and eight had slaves while they were president. Four presidents were killed while in office. Two were impeached.

Judging by the numbers, it might seem to the casual observer that America’s top job has been a bit top-heavy with lawyers and military men. That said, maybe we ought to re-write the qualifications for the job, especially in light of the precarious financial and geopolitical situation in which we find ourselves today.

Read the entire job description here.

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14
Nov 2011

Publius Daily Digest

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National

Big news of the day: ObamaCare is now officially headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. From WSJ Law Blog:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday did what it had long been expected to do, and agreed to hear arguably the most high-profile challenge to the law. Click here for Brent Kendall’s article in the WSJ; here for coverage from Scotusblog.

In a short written order, the high court agreed to hear a challenge that originated in Florida, brought by a group of Republican governors and attorneys general from 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business and two individual plaintiffs.

The case raises several issues, but chief among them is this: Did Congress exceed its constitutional powers when it required most individuals to carry health insurance or pay a penalty?

The court is expected to hear oral arguments in March, with a decision expected by the end of June. That timeline means the court will rule on President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement during the thick of the 2012 presidential campaign.

The SCOTUSBlog link above is also worth checking out by those interested in more details of the anticipated argument schedule given the unprecedented (in modern times) setting for 5 1/2 hours of argument. Tim Cavanaugh has an interesting related post up looking at Obama’s 2008 stance against a health care mandate:

Here’s something President Obama might have forgotten: In 2008, when then-Sen. Obama was fighting then-Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, he got the inside track by opposing a federal mandate requiring you and every other American to purchase health insurance.

The individual mandate, which is so totalitarian and unconstitutional that even the thoroughly unlibertarian voters of Ohio rejected it last week, went on to become the unpopular centerpiece of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the putative reform of the health care system widely known as “Obamacare.”

Definitely check out the full piece.

National Public Radio has an interesting three-part series on influential individual that started today with a look at Ayn Rand, as noted by David Boaz of Cato Institute:

They looked at Ayn Rand this morning, and there are reports that they will cover F. A. Hayek tomorrow and John Maynard Keynes Wednesday. The segment quotes Rand from a televised interview with Mike Wallace (which you can view at the link) and then comments on the prevalence of her ideas today:

“Both parties today are for socialism, in effect — for controls. And there is no party, there are no voices, to offer an actual pro-capitalist, laissez-faire, economic freedom and individualism,” she said. “That is what this country needs today.”

If Rand were alive today, she might be pleased to see that, more and more, Americans do have that choice. And her ideas are alive and well-represented in the U.S. Capitol.

If by “well-represented,” you mean “often heard in protest as Congress passes Wall Street bailouts, corporate takeovers, health care takeovers, and trillion-dollar spending bills,” then yes.

NPR’s commenters weren’t very happy to hear Ayn Rand discussed. I especially appreciated this one:

The “objectivity” of ruthless plunderers from a displaced Russian bourgoise who refused to acknowledge the punishment of her class was brought on by its crimes against the people. Objective thinking people accept responsibility for their actions and the consequences that follow.

Marxism may be dead in Russia, but not in the NPR listener community! No doubt this commenter is knitting the names of American bourgeoisie who will one day be sent to gulags.

For anyone interested in Nixon’s post-Presidency 1975 grand jury testimony about Watergate, good news:

A heads up to our legal history buffs: The government’s Nixon Presidential Library just  published online – as in five minutes ago – his 1975 grand jury testimony about Watergate.

“This is Nixon unplugged,” historian Stanley Kutler, a principal figure in the lawsuit that pried open the records,told the Associated Press.

Still, he said, “I have no illusions. Richard Nixon knew how to dodge questions with the best of them. I am sure that he danced, skipped, around a number of things.”

The interview took place near Nixon’s California home over two days. It was the first time an ex-president had testified before a grand jury.

A very interesting infographic is now available online, allowing us to “visualize[] the words used in the 2011-2012 Republican Primary debates.” Here’s one example screen shot:

Which brings us to the video of the day. While he’s not a presidential candidate, Senator Marco Rubio is one of those frequently mentioned as a potential Vice President to bolster the GOP ticket. He spoke last week at the annual Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

Interesting column last week by Michael Swickard calling for an end to Daylight Savings Time:

It is time we change the way time is changed twice a year in most of the country. Specifically, it is time to throw out Daylight Savings Time (DST) and throw it out for good. I wonder if we can get someone to sponsor a congressional bill to make this change. Most Americans would get along fine with year-round regular time.

While government does not give up power over the people willingly, we can make a case that we should change what government is doing now. The government nannies and minders say they have our best interests in mind with DST. They say that during the summer months there is more time in the evening to recreate with DST, so we should use that time rather than lose it. Still, when DST starts it is mid March, and it is November when the time changes back. There is a lot of time that is not summer.

Read the entire piece here. Also interesting is Heath Haussamen’s column calling for lawmakers to receive paychecks:

I authored a commentary in September arguing that we need to pay our state legislators; newspaper articles published this weekend may indicate that such an idea is gaining momentum.

Steven Robert Allen, executive director of Common Cause New Mexico, and State Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, were quoted as saying they support paying lawmakers in an article published by the Las Cruces Sun-News.

In addition, the Albuquerque Journal published an editorial saying voters should “be given the opportunity to decide if they want a professional, paid Legislature.”

In my September commentary, I argued that our unpaid legislators “can’t keep up with the governor or the pace of life in the 21st Century no matter how hard they work.”

Suggesting that our lawmakers are currently “unpaid” is pretty disengenuous, but it is true that they do not actually receive a salary (just massive per diem allotments that are often abused and a pension system that should not be ignored).

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09
Nov 2011

Publius Daily Digest

By

National

A lot to discuss today, so we’ll try to hit the highlights and hopefully whet your appetites for tomorrow’s lunch meeting. First up, the latest ObamaCare decision. The WSJ reviews Judge Silberman’s Strange Opinion:

In the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’s decision upholding the Obama health-care plan yesterday, Judge Laurence Silberman writes that it is merely a “sparing” opinion, since the Supreme Court will almost certainly have the final say on the law’s constitutionality. And perhaps that’s for the best, given that Judge Silberman’s reasoning for the 2-1 majority is, well, peculiar for so distinguished a jurist.

At issue in Susan Seven-Sky as everywhere is the individual mandate, the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance or else pay a penalty. The Obama Administration argues that such federal coercion is justified by the Commerce Clause. Yet expanding the longstanding authority to regulate interstate commerce to compel individuals to participate in commerce would vitiate the government of limited and enumerated powers that the framers envisioned.

Judge Silberman and concurring Judge Harry Edwards concede that such powers are without precedent. During oral arguments, he writes, the Justice Department could not cite “any doctrinal limiting principles” to this reading of the Commence Clause, and the Obama lawyers even admitted that they could extend beyond fines to criminal prosecution and imprisonment for refusing to buy a private product.

As Judge Brett Kavanaugh explains in his dissent, the next logical stops for this theory are “mandatory purchases of retirement accounts, housing accounts, college savings accounts, disaster insurance, disability insurance, and life insurance” too. Given modern political appetites, he may be right.

But the majority opinion then endorses this brave new world on the basis of what Judge Silberman calls “the closest Supreme Court precedent to our case,” Wickard v. Filburn. That’s the 1942 ruling in which the High Court held that Congress could limit wheat growing for personal consumption because in the aggregate it could affect interstate markets, presumably like health-insurance decisions.

Randy Barnett has a good post at Volokh Conspiracy looking toward the future of ObamaCare litigation:

Well, we now have the last Circuit Court of Appeals decision to digest before hearing later this week or next whether the Supreme Court will take up the challenge and what question will be presented to the Court.  Assuming it does, there will then be merits briefs and oral argument.   But first, some brief and and very preliminary reactions to today’s decision.

(1) It is another divided decision, which is now the pattern.  Whether upholding or striking down the individual mandate, the Court of Appeals judges are all over the map.  This is not indicative of a case dictated by previous decisions that has a predetermined outcome.

(2)  The decision tracked oral argument as I described it here.  Judge Kavanaugh clearly telegraphed his enchantment with the Antitax Injunction Act.  Judge Edwards clearly telegraphed his view that little needed to be said to find that the ACA is constitutional (as he said very little art argument or in his concurrence).  And, although I hoped against hope that Judge Silberman was not telegraphing his position when he strongly asserted that the “logic” of Wickard v. Filburn authorized economic mandates, sure enough he stuck to that position.  (I have already blogged here about why I think Judge Silberman is misreading the actual opinion in Wickard.)

(3) With respect, I beg to differ with my co-blogger Stuart’s post below.  Should the Affordable Care be upheld, Judge Silberman’s opinion in no way will provide a template for a majority opinion by any justice, but especially not one by Justice Scalia.  Like Judge Sutton’s concurrence in the Sixth Circuit, this opinion has all the hallmarks of a decision its author knows full well is  not the last word in the case.  Like Judge Sutton, Judge Silberman is punting to the Supreme Court.  I am not claiming that he does not believe in the correctness of his decision.  I believe that he believes.  I am merely claiming that he would never be content with this being the final word on the subject of the scope of Congress’s power.  And he knows it won’t be.

Yesterday was also election day in some places, with some interesting results. Thankfully, as Ilya Somin explains, Measure 31 dealing with eminent domain passed in Mississippi. Guy Benson at Townhall has a good roundup of all the election night results. Here are some excerpts, but I recommend checking out the whole thing:

Ohio: As expected — and lamentably — Gov. John Kasich’s landmark collective bargaining reform law has gone down in flames, thanks to a well-funded and relentless program of demagoguery by Buckeye State Democrats and public sector unions.  The margin isn’t close; as of this writing, it stands at 61-39 to overturn the law.  This is a satisfying, but unsustainable, victory for the Left.  They may have beaten back an evil conservative law, but a fiscal reckoning still awaits.  The math doesn’t go away, even if the law does.  What liberals won’t mention is that there was another significant item on the ballot today: A referendum on Obamacare’s tent-pole individual mandate.  Ohioans’ rebuke of Obamacare is shaping up to be even more overwhelming than the Issue 2 tally.  Right now the margin in favor of the anti-Obamacare measure is 66-34.  This is the second major swing-state repudiation of Obamacare since it was enacted last March.

* * *

Virginia: What a bloodbath in the House of Delegates.  Republicans will emerge from tonight with at least a 2/3 majority, having picked up a minimum of 6 seats, if not 7 or 8.  To add insult to injury, they also knocked off the Democratic Minority Leader in District 9.  The Senate is razor thin, and may come down to a recount.  Republicans held both redistricted seats (in 13 and 22), and are narrowly leading a pair of Democratic incumbents in Districts 17 and 20.  If both of those microscopic margins — we’re talking hundreds of votes — hold up, the upper chamber will be split evenly, which would be a de facto Republican majority.  A very solid night for Bob McDonnell’s muscular Republican Machine in Virginia.  This is going to be a tough state for President Obama to win again.

* * *

Arizona: Powerful State Senate leader Russell Pearce, who authored the controversial SB-1070 immigration bill, was ousted in a recall election.  He had also been dogged by a number of ethics complaints.  Pearce was replaced by a fellow Republican.

Overall Verdict: An uneven night for conservatives, across the board.  Clearly not a continuation of 2010′s wave, but not an especially good evening for Democrats, either.  Ohio’s Issue Two result is by far the biggest disappointment (leavened slightly by the Issue Three romp), and Virginia is the brightest spot.  Onward!

On the GOP 2012 race, some interesting developments. Of note, it seems more and more folks are vocally opposing Romney as the nominee.  Some highlights of a great piece by Ali Akbar, John Hawkins, and Matt Mackowiak:

After three years of European-style, social democratic, big government efforts here at home, the solutions that our nation requires are conservative in nature. Accordingly, our nominee must also be a committed fiscal conservative – that we can trust.

Say what you will about Mitt Romney, but he is not a consistent conservative.

As RedState’s Erick Erickson has pointed out, it’s “not that conservatives do not like Mitt Romney. It’s that they do not trust him.” And this is for good reason.

Consider:

• Mitt Romney pledged in 1994 to be stronger on gay rights than his opponent for U.S. Senate, Ted Kennedy. He now supports a Constitutional amendment protecting marriage as between one man and one woman.

• Mitt Romney was pro-abortion from 1957-2003. Running statewide twice in Massachusetts, opposing the pro life position had significant political benefits.

• Mitt Romney supported both the Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Bill in 1994. In 2007, after claiming he enjoyed hunting and joining the National Rifle Association, he claimed he owned a gun, but did not. He is now a strong supporter of 2nd Amendment Rights.

• Mitt Romney in 2006 said illegal immigrants should have a path to citizenship, supported the McCain-Kennedy plan, which he denied was amnesty, and now attacks other candidates for their records on immigration.

• Mitt Romney refused to support the 2004 Bush tax cuts, but it 2007 he claimed that he had always supported them.

• Mitt Romney said on NBC’s Meet the Press that his Massachusetts health care plan was a model for the nation, but now says it is not right for the other states.

• Mitt Romney says he will issue an executive order on his first day issuing a waiver to all 50 states of ObamaCare. If he believes Obamacare must be repealed, why does he not believe Romneycare should?

• Mitt Romney resisted every attempt by opponent Sen. Ted Kennedy connecting him to Ronald Reagan in the 1994 campaign for U.S. Senate and has insisted that he was an independent during the Reagan years. In 2005, Romney said that Reagan was his political hero.

Read the full piece here, and check out Jacob Sullum’s column pointing out that Romney’s proposed spending “cuts” would actually expand the federal budget:

Presenting his fiscal plan in USA Today last week, Mitt Romney said he wants to “eliminate every government program that is not absolutely essential.” That sounds good until you realize that Romney’s goal of cutting $500 billion fromprojected federal outlays in 2016 would, at best, leave the budget about 8 percent higher than it is now and only 11 percent lower than it would be without any attempt to restrain spending.

The implication: Mitt Romney thinks 89 percent of what the federal government does is “absolutely essential.” And that’s what he says when he is trying to appeal to the fiscally conservative Republicans whose votes he will need to win his party’s presidential nomination. Who knows what he really thinks, assuming he has any firm convictions at all on this crucial question.

Dorothy Rabinowitz, on the other hand, touts Gingrich’s chances in today’s WSJ:

Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls—from near zero to the third slot in several polls—should come as no surprise to people who have been watching the Republican debates, now drawing television viewers as never before. The former speaker has stood out at these forums, the debater whose audiences seem to hang on his words and on a flow of thought rich in substance, a world apart from the usual that the political season brings.

* * *

No one else’s remarks would ignite the huge response his talk did.

He began with the declaration that Americans were confronting the most important election choice since 1860. America would have the chance in 2012, Mr. Gingrich said, to repudiate decisively decades of leftward drift in our universities and colleges, our newsrooms, our judicial system and bureaucracies.

He would go on to detail the key policies he would put in place if elected, something other Republican candidates have done regularly to little effect. The Gingrich list was interrupted by thunderous applause at every turn. The difference was, as always, in the details—in the informed, scathing descriptions of the Obama policies to be dispatched and replaced, the convincing tone that suggested such a transformation was likely—even imminent.

Mike Riggs has a good look at the Occupy Movement’s Penchant for Inflicting Collateral Damage:

Last night, San Diego residents held a fundraiser for two street vendors whose carts were burglarized and vandalized, with blood and piss, by Occupy protesters. The protesters were angry that the vendors would not “donate” their wares to the movement. CBS Los Angeles reports that the vendors, one who sold hot dogs, and one who sold coffee, also received death threats for refusing to give away their goods.

At the Port of Oakland earlier this month, workers and observers could only enter—and more horrifying, leave—the port after the mob “voted” their permission. When one trucker tried to break through the blockade, his vehicle was attacked. The protester who did the attacking had this to say: “These people tried to kill us. I can’t believe they are being that aggressive over a paycheck, over your own people fighting for you.” (Savor the irony.) While people waited into the early morning hours for permission to see their families and do their jobs, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who gave the OK for Oakland Police to fire tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of Occupy Protesters, sat safely in a government building.

* * *

Show me an Occupy demand that can be met by destroying the livelihoods of people who are on the cusp of poverty (due to government regulations on food vendors), smashing the windows of a Men’s Warehouse and a coffee shop, trashing the bathroom of a Manhattan restaurant, pushing an old lady down a flight of D.C. stairs after imprisoning her and her fellow conservative conference attendees using a human chain, or “clobber[ing] a store manager with a credit-card reader.” You can’t. That’s because the government holds the strings here, not the people who Occupy is hurting. The government gives away corporate welfare, controls cops, sends perverse signals to the market, drops bombs, exposes itself to regulatory capture, deals out special favors to big interests, operates drones, prohibits drugs, and destroys immigrant families through deportation. Hot dog vendors sell hot dogs, restaurants sell food, store managers manage stores, truck drivers drive trucks.

Today’s video is a bit of a retrospective, check out Milton Friedman and Phil Donahue in 1979 discussing greed (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

Heath Haussamen looks at last night’s elections in Las Cruces, concluding residents are happy with the city’s direction:

It wasn’t even close. In a resounding manner, voters in Las Cruces endorsed the work of incumbents who were up for re-election on Tuesday.

This year’s contest was a test of what voters think about the work of progressive-backed candidates whotook over city government between 2007 and 2009. Mayor Ken Miyagishima said the large margins by which he and other incumbents won are easy to interpret.

You can check out his election night liveblog archive here. Readers: what say you? Is Haussamen’s interpretation of election results accurate?

 

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Categories: 2012 Election, Constitutional Rights, Health Care, NM Politics
26
Oct 2011

Publius Daily Digest

By

Local Event Alerts:

Nov. 8, 11am-1:30pm at UNM, “Conservatism and the U.S. Constitution: Antidote to Tyranny” more info here.

Nov. 10, 1pm, Presentation by Robert Bradley, Jr., on his book Edison to Enron more info here.

National

Walter Williams’ latest column is a great look at the Occupy Wall Street movement:

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are demanding “people before profits” — as if profit motivation were the source of mankind’s troubles — when it’s often the absence of profit motivation that’s the true villain.

First, let’s get both the definition and magnitude of profits out of the way. Profits represent the residual claim earned by entrepreneurs. They’re what are left after other production costs — such as wages, rent and interest — have been paid. Profits are the payment for risk taking, innovation and decision-making. As such, they are a cost of business just as are wages, rent and interest. If those payments are not made, labor, land and capital will not offer their services. Similarly, if profit is not paid, entrepreneurs won’t offer theirs. Historically, corporate profits range between 5 and 8 cents of each dollar, and wages range between 50 and 60 cents of each dollar.

Far more important than simple statistics about the magnitude of profits is the role played by profits, namely that of forcing producers to cater to the wants and desires of the common man. When’s the last time we’ve heard widespread complaints about our clothing stores, supermarkets, computer stores or appliance stores? We are far likelier to hear people complaining about services they receive from the post office, motor vehicle and police departments, boards of education and other government agencies. The fundamental difference between the areas of general satisfaction and dissatisfaction is the pursuit of profits is present in one and not the other.

The pursuit of profits forces producers to be attentive to the will of their customers, simply because the customer of, say, a supermarket can fire it on the spot by taking his business elsewhere. If a state motor vehicle department or post office provides unsatisfactory services, it’s not so easy for dissatisfied customers to take action against it. If a private business had as many dissatisfied customers as our government schools have, it would have long ago been out of business.

Read the full column here. The Week has a great compilation of the Occupy Wall Street demographics, summarized here by Reason:

  • 64 percent of those in the Occupy Wall Street movement who are under the age of 35, according to a survey of 1,619 people that visited OccupyWallSt.org. The survey was conducted by Baruch College professor Hector R. Cordero-Guzman and business analyst Harrison Schultz.
  • 20 percent over the age of 45, according to the same survey
  • 26.7 percent who are enrolled in school
  • More than $75,000 annual salary that 13 percent of the survey-takers take home, according to Cordero-Guzman and Schultz.
  • More than $150,000 annual salary reported by nearly 2 percent of the survey-takers ($343,927 adjusted gross income needed to be in the “extolled and excoriated 1 percent of richest Americans”)
  • 15 percent of the demonstrators who are unemployed, according to a different survey, this one conducted by veteran pollster Douglas Schoen via in-person interviews with 198 people at Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park
  • 18 percent of demonstrators who call themselves “part-time employed/underemployed.”
  • 53 percent of demonstrators who say they have previously participated in a political movement, according to Schoen’s survey
  • 98 percent who say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their aims
  • 31 percent who say they would support violence
  • 8 percent who say they are unsure of what they would like to see the movement accomplish
  • 44 percent who say they want to “influence the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party has influenced the GOP”
  • 32 percent who consider themselves Democrats; nearly the same amount (33 percent) say they don’t affiliate themselves with any political party.
  • 56 percent of demonstrators who say they voted in 2008
  • 74 percent of those who voted that say they cast a ballot for Obama in 2008
  • 51 percent of demonstrators who now say they now disapprove of Obama
  • At least 25 percent who says they will not vote in 2012

More details here by the Week.

Yesterday’s Political Diary notes the current administration’s big legal gamble (or the latest one, anyway) related to ObamaCare:

Cert petitions asking the Supreme Court to hear the various constitutional challenges to the Affordable Care Act could be distributed to chambers for consideration as early as this week. If they are, we’ll know by mid-November if and when the justices will rule on the individual mandate. In the meantime, though, let’s note the extremely big bet that the Justice Department — and presumably, the White House — is making.

At issue is the legal principle known as severability: Laws usually contain clauses holding that if one provision is invalidated on constitutional grounds, the rest stands. But ObamaCare doesn’t contain such a provision, either because it was forgotten in the rush to pass the bill or perhaps in the liberal overconfidence that the constitutional critics were cranks.

For this reason, when a Florida court rejected the individual mandate in February, it also struck down the entire statute. Other courts have found legal arguments for invalidating the mandate while preserving the rest (while of course others have found the whole thing constitutional).

In a brief filed late last week, Justice argues that the individual mandate is not severable from the Affordable Care Act’s core insurance regulation and subsidy scheme. In other words, the mandate is so important that the rest of the law may need to be erased if it goes overboard.

The safer legal strategy would have been to hedge on severability in the event the court overturns the mandate, since ObamaCare could never pass again in anything like its current form. But Justice’s all-in gambit may be to raise the stakes — daring the court not merely to overturn one unpopular provision but to quash President Obama’s major policy achievement and open itself to politicalblowback a la Citizens United. The Justice Department may think that will encourage the justices to be more careful, but such a risk may turn out to be a huge legal error in retrospect.

Good read at the WSJ today in The Flat-Tax Sweepstakes:

Rick Perry joined the GOP’s tax reform sweepstakes on Tuesday, proposing an optional flat income tax of 20%, among other fiscal and economic reforms. We’ll get to the details, but the larger story is how the drive for a flatter, simpler, more pro-growth tax code is taking center stage in the Republican Presidential contest.

Mr. Perry joins Newt Gingrich, who has proposed a 15% optional flat tax; Jon Huntsman, whose reform proposal would cut the top individual rate to 23%; and Herman Cain and his now famous 9-9-9 plan. House Republicans included a reform with a 25% top rate in their budget earlier this year. All of this ferment shows that whatever one thinks of the candidates as potential Presidents, most of them are trying to meet the political moment with reforms to address our major economic challenges.

Speaking of candidates, Jacob Sullum notes the “reckless disregard” candidates Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have for the importance of judicial review:

Although Gingrich’s plan for confronting the judiciary is especially aggressive, it reflects familiar conservative complaints about “activist judges who tell us what is right and wrong and deny us the right to live as we see fit,” as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, another Republican presidential contender, puts it in his 2010 book Fed Up! Critics like Gingrich and Perry recklessly disregard the importance of court-enforced constitutional limits, seeking to undermine judicial review in ways they themselves would come to regret.

Gingrich and Perry surely are right that judges can be wrong. It is difficult, for example, to reconcile the original understanding of the Constitution with the Supreme Court’s decisions concerning abortion and the separation of church and state.

* * *

ingrich and Perry, like many conservatives, expect the federal courts to enforce constitutional restrictions on legislative power. But how well can they do that job if, as Gingrich recommends, Congress responds by defunding them or simply by declaring its legislative acts unreviewable? How strong a bulwark of liberty will the judicial branch be if, as Perry suggests, a two-thirds majority of Congress can override the Supreme Court’s decisions?

Despite all the dire warnings about judicial activism, the Court’s recent record suggests it does not have much strength to spare. According to an Institute for Justice report released last month, the Court struck down just 0.65 percent of federal laws and just 0.045 percent of state laws enacted between 1954 and 2002. “We suffer not from rampant judicial activism,” authors Clark Neily and Dick M. Carpenter conclude, “but rather from too little judicial engagement.”

Which leads into today’s video, a lengthy one you should check out over lunch. Institute for Justice attorney and founder of the Center for Judicial Engagement Clark Neily recently debated Ed Whelan, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and National Review Online contributor, on the issue of judicial engagement versus judicial activism. This is a must-watch for anyone who has an interest in the role of the judiciary (hint: that should be ALL PubliusNM readers) (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

Paul Gessing at Errors of Enchantment notes an opportunity to bring “Sick and Sicker” the movie to New Mexico:

ObamaCare continues to be a dead weight holding the economy back. Worse, if it is not overturned, it will cause major, negative changes for America’s health care system. Rather than merely predicting how Americans will be hurt by increased government involvement in their health care, film maker Logan Darrow Clements went to Canada to see how their health care system works (or fails to work) for himself. The result was the film “Sick and Sicker.”

The Rio Grande Foundation is working to bring this informative movie to Albuquerque (and eventually other parts of the state). If you want to help us out, go to this page and pledge to purchase a few DVD’s. If we hit $700, we’ll show the movie in Albuquerque this fall. If we don’t hit $700, you won’t pay a dime. Thank you in advance for your support!

Apparently the Las Cruces Mayoral race is a hot one with a fair amount of coverage at NMPolitics.net for those interested.

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Categories: 2012 Election, Economy, Health Care, National Politics, NM Politics
12
Sep 2011

Publius Daily Digest

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National

If you have not already, check out Ken Danagger’s latest post and let us know what you think of Krugman’s op-ed. There was, of course, a substantial amount of worthy coverage relating to yesterday’s 10 year anniversary of 9/11/01. For some particularly good pieces, check out Reason’s collection of articles here, a piece from the Volokh Conspiracy here, from the NYT here.

Last week, the Fourth Circuit rejected a challenge to ObamaCare, as explained by the WSJ Law Blog:

The Fourth Circuit today rejected a pair of challenges to last year’s federal health-care overhaul, providing a boost to the Obama administration.

Here’s a report from WSJ’s Brent Kendall.

In one ruling, the Fourth Circuit threw out a December 2010 trial-court decision that struck down the health law’s requirement that individuals carry health insurance or pay a penalty. That case involved a challenge brought by Virginia Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. The Fourth Circuit ruled that Cuccinelli didn’t have a legal right to bring his lawsuit, WSJ reports. (Click here to read the opinion.)

In a second case, the Fourth Circuit ruled that the insurance-mandate penalties amounted to taxes, which meant the court had no jurisdiction over the case. The appeals court said it wasn’t permitted to consider a legal challenge that sought to restrain the government’s assessment of taxes, according to WSJ.

More analysis on the decision are available from the Volokh Conspiracy here and here, from Walshslaw, and from SCOTUSblog. Here is a roundup post of news coverage of the decision.

From Friday’s Political Diary, some reviews of the President’s speech:

President Obama avoided the term “stimulus” last night in his speech before Congress. This is a “jobs bill,” he said repeatedly, and it’s a little more than half the size ($447 billion) of the $830 billion stimulus package passed in 2009.

The plan includes $100 billion for an infrastructure bank, job retraining and aid to states and localities. In addition, there’s as much as $150 billion for a one-year extension of the payroll tax cut and another roughly $100 billion for tax credits to businesses who hire unemployed workers. Other provisions would extend unemployment insurance and help homeowners refinance mortgages to prevent foreclosures.

Mr. Obama insisted that it’s all “paid for,” but with unspecified future entitlement cuts and tax hikes on small business owners and the energy industry. Republicans are right to be highly skeptical that any of this will work. With $4 trillion in debt in three years, it is hard to see how another $400 billion in debt will lead to more economic growth and job creation. We’ve already had the biggest Keynesian stimulus in 60 years, and the result has been more than a million job losses since January 2009.

Vice President Joe Biden promised in May 2009 that we would have a “summer of recovery.” We’ve had two summers since then of no recovery. The administration also said that the payroll tax cut would create about 400,000 jobs this year, but the job growth has been close to zero now for three months.

Economist David Malpass notes that the U.S. economy is still deleveraging from the debt binge of the past decade. In August the government borrowed another $132 billion, up from the same period a year ago. The Obama plan could send the annual deficit to almost $2 trillion over the next 12 months, which is exactly what an already overleveraged economy doesn’t need

* * *

President Obama’s speech last night laid out a new list of ways to “jolt” the economy and reduce unemployment. But the event was shadowed by the public implosion of one of his last big ideas for creating jobs.

Yesterday morning, solar company Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy last week, was raided by the FBI at their Fremont, Calif., factory. The raid, which came at the behest of the Department of Energy’s Inspector General, is the latest embarrassment for a company that received $535 million in federal loan guarantees as part of a green energy program.

The raid is part of a criminal investigation into whether the company had been duping the government all along — or at least knowingly stringing it along as business cratered. As recently as last year, President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden touted the company as a future powerhouse and said it would create 1,000 new green jobs, just for starters.

The boosterism has since raised eyebrows because the company’s biggest investor was billionaire George Kaiser, a major fundraising bundler for Mr. Obama’s last campaign. While the Energy Department has said the Solyndra loans weren’t a case of political favoritism, the raid renews questions about whether there is more to be learned. ABC News reported that the company also got unusually favorable financing terms on a loan from the Federal Financing Bank.

Whether the White House looks better for having been hoodwinked than for extending an extra hand to a billionaire political friend is a matter of debate. Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from Los Angeles, released a July letter from the company claiming that it was on solid financial footing (when it was actually hanging on by a thread), and many in Washington took their word for it. The administration’s defenders have pointed out that plenty of sophisticated venture capitalists made the same mistake as the rubes in Washington, investing close to a billion dollars in the company. But much of that money was piggybacking on the power of the federal investment and all that the government guarantee was supposed to mean.

Today’s Political Diary previewed a special election in New York and discussed a possible Senate run by Elizabeth Warren:

The special election tomorrow to replace former Rep. Anthony Weiner in New York’s 9th U.S. District should have been a lock for Democrats. The last time a Republican was elected to the seat, which covers parts of Brooklyn and Queens, was nearly a century ago.

Mr. Weiner, who resigned in June after sending lewd photos over the Internet, won re-election last year by 30 points. Barack Obama won the district by 11 points in 2008. However, disillusionment among independents with President Obama’s economic policies may help flip the seat to Republicans.

A new Siena College poll shows that Republican Bob Turner has leapt to a six-point lead over Democrat state Assemblyman David Weprin. Last month the GOP businessman was trailing Mr. Weprin by the same margin. Liberals argue that their candidate is struggling in the heavily Jewish district because Mr. Turner and former New York City Mayor Ed Koch have tagged Mr. Obama as anti-Israel. But Jews, who make up about 30% of the district, favor Mr. Weprin by a larger margin than any other specified demographic group, and only 16% of them say the candidate’s position on Israel will significantly influence their vote.

Mr. Weprin’s bigger problem is that the election may hinge on the district’s 20% or so independent voters. The Siena poll shows independents favoring Mr. Turner by 38 points — and it’s not because of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy. Siena reports that 44% of independents say the candidate’s position on economic recovery is the most important factor in determining their vote. Only 6% of independents say the candidate’s position on Israel is important. Voter confidence in Democrats’ ability to revive the economy has surely diminished in light of recent labor reports that showed no net new jobs in August and a recovery that has lost steam. Fifty-four percent of the 9th District’s voters view the president unfavorably.

Mr. Weprin has raised three-times as much money as Mr. Turner and is pouring a lot of it into turning out Democrats tomorrow. The United Federation of Teachers has also pledged its support and sent out mailers to union members in the district encouraging them to vote. Outside Republican and conservative groups, however, have been reluctant to put much money into the race since the seat will likely be erased during redistricting. But if Mr. Turner manages to win against all these odds, Democrats might start preparing for another spanking next year.

* * *

Elizabeth Warren hasn’t announced whether she will challenge incumbent GOP Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts next year, but the Harvard law professor can take some encouragement from a new survey by the MassINC Polling Group and WBUR.

Ms. Warren, who recently returned to Massachusetts after being passed over by the president to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she helped to create, is expected to enter the race soon. She has already launched an exploratory committee, hired key Democratic operatives in the state and embarked on a so-called “listening tour” to gauge the political climate.

While the Democratic primary field is crowded, Ms. Warren is thought to be the most viable challenger to Mr. Brown, a popular Republican who has raised nearly $10 million for the race. When paired in a head-to-head matchup, Mr. Brown attracts 44% of the support, while Ms. Warren takes 35%. In that pairing, 18% are undecided. Mr. Brown leads each of the other Democratic candidates — Newton Mayor Setti Warren, activist Bob Massie and City Year founder Alan Khazei — by at least 15 points.

Mr. Brown, who surprised the nation last year by winning the seat held for decades by the late Ted Kennedy, enjoys a higher net favorability rating (positive 25 percent) than do his Democratic challengers. Ms. Warren attracts of net of positive 4%, while the remaining candidate’s receive slightly negative ratings. However, the Democrats struggle with name recognition. Some 44% of those polled said they’ve never heard of Ms. Warren, compared to just 5% of respondents who don’t know Mr. Brown.

Last week, Michael Boskin wrote in the WSJ providing The Obama Presidency by the Numbers:


When it comes to the economy, presidents, like quarterbacks, often get more credit or blame than they deserve. They inherit problems and policies that affect the economy well into their presidencies and beyond. Reagan inherited Carter’s stagflation, George H.W. Bush twin financial crises (savings & loan and Third World debt), and their fixes certainly benefitted the Clinton economy.

President Obama inherited a deep recession and financial crisis resulting from problems that had been building for years. Those responsible include borrowers and lenders on Wall Street and Main Street, the Federal Reserve, regulatory agencies, ratings agencies, presidents and Congress.

Mr. Obama’s successor will inherit his deficits and debt (i.e., pressure for higher taxes), inflation and dollar decline. But fairly or not, historians document what occurred on your watch and how you dealt with your in-box. Nearly three years since his election and more than two years since the economic recovery began, Mr. Obama has enacted myriad policies at great expense to American taxpayers and amid political rancor. An interim evaluation is in order.

And there’s plenty to evaluate: an $825 billion stimulus package; the Public-Private Investment Partnership to buy toxic assets from the banks; “cash for clunkers”; the home-buyers credit; record spending and budget deficits and exploding debt; the auto bailouts; five versions of foreclosure relief; numerous lifelines to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; financial regulation and health-care reform; energy subsidies, mandates and moratoria; and constant demands for higher tax rates on “the rich” and businesses.

Read the entire article here. The previous night, GOPers had a debate and Ben Smith of Politico now contends Ron Paul won that debate:

Politico’s Ben Smith says Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s showdown with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) at this week’s presidential debate shows that the Paul campaign has mastered retail politics. He credits lessons learned during the successful Senate run of Paul’s son Rand Paul last year.

Interesting case out of Ohio, in which Gov. John Kasich stepped in:

The case of Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Akron, Ohio mom who faked her home address to get her kids into a desired public school, serves as a useful proxy for where one rests on the criminal justice spectrum.

Was her admitted fakery a minor misstep by a conscientious parent or a felony?

For those unaware of the case, Williams-Bolar (pictured) claimed her father’s address and misrepresented other information on school documents in order to enroll her two daughters in a Copley, Ohio school district, according to this AP account of the case.

She was convicted this year of two felony counts for records tampering and served nine days in jail.

But on Wednesday, Ohio Governor John Kasich reduced the charges against Williams-Bolar to misdemeanors, though he did still require her to report for probation, serve 80 hours of community service, not consume drugs or alcohol and to pay the cost of her prosecution, according to AP.

More here.

In honor of 9/11, here is the tribute anthem from the NFL featuring Robert DeNiro (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

Errors of Enchantment today tells us that New Mexico is (not too surprisingly) the worst in the west in how strongly the state favors Big Labor:

According to a new, interactive report, New Mexico’s laws and policies favor big labor in a big way. Notably, no western state is as favorable to big labor (and unfavorable to taxpayers) as the Land of Enchantment. Even “Rust Belt” and traditionally-unionized states like Michigan and Ohio perform better on the index than does New Mexico.

See the map and read the full report here.

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Categories: 2012 Election, Health Care, National Politics, NM Politics
30
Aug 2011

Publius Daily Digest

By

National

It’s a busy week, but there’s a lot of good material out there so here are a few quick hits:

YouTube of the day, part 1: an excellent interview with John Allison (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

Comments invited — what say you, PubliusNM readers, to O’Donnell’s claims? Give us your feedback in the comments!

YouTube of the day, part 2: Susana Re-qualifies for Concealed Carry (click here on YouTube):

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Categories: 2012 Election, Economy, Gary Johnson, Health Care, National Politics, NM Politics
25
Aug 2011

Publius Daily Digest

By

National

Jeffrey Toobin has a lengthy piece up at the New Yorker asking the question Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan:

The implications of Thomas’s leadership for the Court, and for the country, are profound. Thomas is probably the most conservative Justice to serve on the Court since the nineteen-thirties. More than virtually any of his colleagues, he has a fully wrought judicial philosophy that, if realized, would transform much of American government and society. Thomas’s views both reflect and inspire the Tea Party movement, which his wife has helped lead almost since its inception. The Tea Party is a diffuse operation, and it can be difficult to pin down its stand on any given issue. Still, the Tea Party is unusual among American political movements in its commitment to a specific view of the Constitution—one that accords, with great precision, with Thomas’s own approach. For decades, various branches of the conservative movement have called for a reduction in the size of the federal government, but for the Tea Party, and for Thomas, small government is a constitutional command.

* * *

In recent weeks, two federal courts of appeals have reached opposing conclusions about the constitutionality of the 2010 health-care law; the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, upheld it, while the Eleventh Circuit, in Atlanta, struck down its requirement that all Americans buy health insurance. This conflict means that the Supreme Court will almost certainly agree to review the case this fall, with a decision expected by June of next year. It is likely to be the most important case for the Justices since Bush v. Gore, and it will certainly be the clearest test yet of Thomas’s ascendancy at the Court. Thomas’s entire career as a judge has been building toward the moment when he would be able to declare that law unconstitutional. It would be not only a victory for his approach to the Constitution but also, it seems, a defeat for the enemies who have pursued him for so long: liberals, law professors, journalists—the group that Thomas refers to collectively as “the élites.” Thomas’s triumph over the health-care law and its supporters is by no means assured, but it is now tantalizingly within reach.

The full piece, though fairly long, is worth a read. Speaking of SCOTUS, a couple days ago Damon Root highlighted an upcoming case that has some interesting implications:

The New York Times’ Adam Liptak previews the upcoming Supreme Court case of Perry v. New Hampshire, which will consider the role of eyewitness testimony in the American legal system. As Liptak writes:

Every year, more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify suspects in criminal investigations. Those identifications are wrong about a third of the time, a pile of studies suggest….

In November, the Supreme Court will return to the question of what the Constitution has to say about the use of eyewitness evidence. The last time the court took a hard look at the question was in 1977. Since then, the scientific understanding of human memory has been transformed.

Indeed, there is no area in which social science research has done more to illuminate a legal issue. More than 2,000 studies on the topic have been published in professional journals in the past 30 years.

What they collectively show is that it is perilous to base a conviction on a witness’s identification of a stranger. Memory is not a videotape. It is fragile at best, worse under stress and subject to distortion and contamination.

Read the whole story here. Read Radley Balko’s 2009 Reason report on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony here.

Over at CATO, Chris Edwards takes a closer look at Rick Perry’s Spending Record:

I awarded Mr. Perry grades of “B” in the last two Cato governor report cards. My analyses revealed a pretty good tax and spending record, but Perry certainly fell short of the reform-minded zeal shown by former “A” governor, Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Recent articles by Shikha Dalmia of Reason and Aman Batheja of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram suggest that Perry’s fiscal record is a mixed bag.

Let’s look at the numbers. Rick Perry came into office in December 2000, which was in the middle of Texas fiscal year 2001. Texas general fund spending has risen from $29 billion that first Perry year to $41 billion by fiscal 2011, which works out to an average annual increase of 3.5 percent. (Data from NASBO).

* * *

Thus, Mr. Perry has been Mr. Average on state spending. Over the past decade, per capita state general fund spending rose the same amount in Texas as the nation as a whole.

Note that total Texas state spending has risen substantially faster than just the general fund part of the Texas budget over the last decade (see Figure 16 in here). However, governors have more control over the general fund part of their budgets, so that is probably the best measure of a governors’ spending performance. (Still, Mr. Perry might want to explain to primary voters why the overall Texas budget has grown so quickly).

In yesterday’s Political Diary, Carl Kelm discussed a new poll showing a tightening of the GOP race:

A new poll out of Iowa shows the Republican contest tightening. The survey, conducted by PPP, puts newcomer Rick Perry in first place at 22%, with Mitt Romney at 19%, Michele Bachmann at 18% and Ron Paul at 16%. Given the margin of error, that amounts to a four-way tie.

In context, though, the poll is a win for Mr. Perry. The Texas governor has been mocked in the press as a George W. Bush clone with kooky views on evolution and global warming. But his message on job creation and economic growth appears to be resonating with the Republican base.

The poll is bad news for Ms. Bachmann and Mr. Romney. The Minnesota congresswoman, whose path to the nomination depends heavily on a victory in Iowa, has seen virtually no bounce from her Ames straw poll win earlier this month. To the contrary, her numbers have trended downwards. According to PPP, her favorables have gone from 53%-16% in June to 47%-35% now, leading the pollsters to conclude, “No one is sinking faster than Bachmann.” Mr. Perry’s numbers, meanwhile, have shot up to 56%-24%. And although his favorables will probably tighten up as voters get to know him better, the Texan begins his one-on-one with Ms. Bachmann in a superior position.

Mr. Romney finds himself in something of a dilemma. On one hand, Iowa has never been particularly important to his strategy, and he can absorb a loss there relatively easily. On the other hand, with Mr. Perry and Ms. Bachmann splitting the social conservatives and tea party affiliates, there’s an opportunity for Mr. Romney to cobble together a winning coalition of his own. And a win in Iowa, coupled with an expected victory in New Hampshire, could end the contest early.

Mr. Romney probably won’t go that route — his campaign has thus far shown a strong aversion to risk — but if he feels Mr. Perry is gaining too much momentum, it might make sense to opt for a three-way Iowa contest rather than face Mr. Perry one-on-one down the stretch.

George Will, one of our favorites, has some great insights in his latest column, Liberals’ Wisconsin Waterloo:

The residues of liberalism’s Wisconsin Woodstock — 1960s radicalism redux: operatic lamentations, theatrical demonstrations and electoral futilities — are words of plaintive defiance painted on sidewalks around the state capitol. “Solidarity forever” was perhaps painted by a graduate student forever at the University of Wisconsin. “Repubs steal elections” is an odd accusation from people who, seeking to overturn the 2010 elections, cheeredDemocratic lawmakers who fled to Illinois — a congenial refuge for labor-subservient Democrats — in order to paralyze the duly elected legislature. The authors of the sidewalk graffiti have at least read Jefferson: “The tree of liberty is watered by the blood of tyrants.” The tyrant is “$cott Walker American Fa$ci$t.”

Who, on a recent morning, was enjoying the view and the turn of events. From the governor’s mansion on the shore of sparkling Lake Mendota you can see on the far shore the famously liberal university, from which came many of those who protested his “budget repair” bill that already seems to have repaired many communities’ budgets, in addition to the state’s.

* * *

Progressives want to recall Walker next year. Republicans hope they try. Wisconsin seems weary of attempts to overturn elections, and surely Obama does not want his allies squandering political money and the public’s patience. Since 1960, no Democrat has been elected president without carrying Wisconsin.

Speaking of election year politics, Jonathan Adler asks a provocative question, Can the GOP be Anti-EPA and Pro-Environment:

Most of the GOP’s Presidential hopefuls have been savage in their criticism of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Indeed, some have called for the agency to be dismantled.  Could this possibly be a good idea?  I’m all for criticizing the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of federal environmental regulation — I’ve certainly done my share — but the agency is not about to disappear, no matter who is elected President, nor would simply closing the agency down be a good idea.

The NYT’s latest “Room for Debate” poses the question: “What if Republicans Closed the EPA.” Here’s my contribution.

It’s worth following the “my contribution” link for more. Also on the policy front, check out Richard Epstein’s latest contribution How is Warren Buffett Like the Pope?

A successful and sustainable political order requires stable legal and economic policies that reward innovation, spur growth, and maximize the ability of rich and poor alike to enter into voluntary arrangements. Limited government, low rates of taxation, and strong property rights are the guiding principles.

Unfortunately, many spiritual and economic leaders are working overtime to push social policy in the exact opposite direction. At the top of the list are two prominent figures: Pope Benedict XVI and financier Warren Buffett.

* * *

Denouncing those who put ‘profits before people’ may stir the masses, but it is a wickedly deformed foundation for social policy. Profits, like losses, do not exist in the abstract. Corporations, as such, do not experience gains or losses. Those gains and losses are passed on to real people, like shareholders, consumers, workers, and suppliers. It is possible to imagine a world without profits. Yet the disappearance of profits means that investors will be unable to realize a return on either their capital or labor. Structure a system that puts people before profits, and both capital and labor will dry up. The scarcity of private investment capital will force the public sector to first raise and allocate capital and labor, though it has no idea how these resources should be deployed to help the people, writ large. A set of ill-conceived public investments will not provide useful goods and services for consumers (who are, after all, people), nor will it provide sustainable wages for workers (who are also people). Poor investment decisions will lead to a massive constriction in social output that harms all people equally.

The proper response to these difficulties is to treat profits as an accurate measure of the cost of capital, rewarded to those individuals and firms who supply some desirable mix of goods, services, and jobs that people, acting individually and not collectively, want for themselves. The genius of Adam Smith, whose musings on the invisible hand are too often derided, was to realize that private markets (supported, to be sure, by suitable public infrastructure) will do better than a command and control system in satisfying the individual’s wants and needs.

Reason.TV’s latest offering will make your blood boil if you have any respect for private property rights (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Ellis Wyatt’s post earlier this week explaining Why We Hate Lawyers. Errors of Enchantment, as always, has analysis worth checking out.

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