National

A number of our readers and friends are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) or have attended ALEC conferences. As the organization finds itself under significant fire, folks from Texas Public Policy Foundation take up its defense in the WSJ this week:

ALEC is under sustained attack from organizations that fundamentally disagree with its commitment to limited government and economic freedom. But instead of debating these issues, they are now accusing the 39-year-old council—a partnership of state legislators, entrepreneurs and civil-society organizations—of misdeeds ranging from voter suppression to indirect responsibility for the tragic shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida in February.

* * *

In a society where vote fraud is still a real problem, and where Americans are routinely required to show a picture ID to buy cigarettes, cash checks, or enter any major office building in New York City, ALEC dares to suggest that voters be required to show a picture ID. In the imagination of ALEC’s critics, it’s OK to require an ID to ride a train—but not to require an ID to determine the future of the greatest country in the history of the world.

There is now even an effort to link the Martin tragedy with ALEC-supported legislation, sometimes known as “stand your ground” laws, to allow people to defend themselves. Despite the disgraceful eagerness of opportunists to make political hay off a young man’s death, no actual linkage between that crime and the council exists.

ALEC’s real crime is this: For nearly four decades, it has been an effective, engaged facilitator of good governance and liberty-oriented legislation in statehouses across the country. Its critics don’t just object to one or two of the council’s programs, they object to its existence.

Read more here.

Speaking of Trayvon Martin, Florida’s George Zimmerman is bringing national attention back to an important issue: hate crimes. Reason’s Jacob Sullum explains:

WFTV, the ABC affiliate in Orlando, reports that the FBI is looking for evidence to support federal hate crime charges against George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martin on February 26. Three reasons it should stop:

1. There is very little evidence that Zimmerman hates black people, let alone that he shot Martin because he hates black people.

2. In the absence of a legal justification (such as self-defense), killing people should be a crime, but hating them because of their skin color should not be. By treating crimes more severely when they are motivated by bigotry, hate crime laws effectively punish people for their beliefs.

3. Federal hate crime laws are even worse, because they expose defendants to double jeopardy (although the courts deny this reality by calling it “dual sovereignty”). The federal investigation means that even if a Florida jury acquits Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter, he can be tried again for the same crime (killing Martin) under a different label (a possibility I noted two months ago).

Whole article here.

Walter Williams is always one to make us think, no less so today with his query, Should We Obey All Laws?

Let’s think about whether all acts of Congress deserve our respect and obedience. Suppose Congress enacted a law — and the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional — requiring American families to attend church services at least three times a month. Should we obey such a law? Suppose Congress, acting under the Constitution’s commerce clause, enacted a law requiring motorists to get eight hours of sleep before driving on interstate highways. Its justification might be that drowsy motorists risk highway accidents and accidents affect interstate commerce. Suppose you were a jury member during the 1850s and a free person were on trial for assisting a runaway slave, in clear violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Would you vote to convict and punish?

A moral person would find each one of those laws either morally repugnant or to be a clear violation of our Constitution. You say, “Williams, you’re wrong this time. In 1859, in Ableman v. Booth, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 constitutional.” That court decision, as well as some others in our past, makes my case. Moral people can’t rely solely on the courts to establish what’s right or wrong. Slavery is immoral; therefore, any laws that support slavery are also immoral. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions (is) a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”

Soon, the Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of Obamacare, euphemistically titled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. There is absolutely no constitutional authority for Congress to force any American to enter into a contract to buy any good or service. But if the court rules that Obamacare is constitutional, what should we do?

State governors and legislators ought to summon up the courage of our Founding Fathers in response to the 5th Congress’ Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Led by Jefferson and James Madison, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 were drafted where legislatures took the position that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. They said, “Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government … (and) whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” The 10th Amendment to our Constitution supports that vision: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now this one is just plain funny…and a bit sad:

The administration that brought you the worst Mother’s Day card since that one from Futurama has been finding all sorts of interesting ways to campaign through the White House’s website. In a move that is somehow both unbelievably arrogant but also completely pointless, congratulatory statements of President Barack Obama’s accomplishments have appeared in the biographies of otherpresidents.

Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation tweeted his discovery of the edits, which were then picked up by Seth Mandel at Commentary Magazine. At the bottom of the biographies of many of the presidents of the 20th Century, a “Did You Know?” bullet point attempts to tie that president to Obama’s accomplishments in office.

For examples, see more here.

Today’s video is a long one, but an interesting trip down memory lane. It is the full length of the debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan the week before the November general election in 1980 (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

Farewell from PubliusNM to Erik Ness. The Westerner has a nice write-up about Mr. Ness.

Erik Ness, a longtime champion of the state agriculture industry, friend to politicians of every stripe, husband, father, grandfather and cowboy bon vivant, is dead.

Ness, 57, died Saturday at his home in Las Cruces following a struggle with pancreatic cancer.

Ness, who grew up in Alamogordo, attended the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University from which he graduated. He briefly worked as a reporter for KOB radio in the early 1980s.

But in 1982 he was hired by the New Mexico Farm & Livestock Bureau to be its communications director. In that job, which he kept until his retirement in 2010, Ness served as a press spokesman, produced radio programs and wrote and edited magazine articles for the organization.

An article published after his retirement in 2010 in New Mexico Farm & Ranch, the official publication of the bureau, quoted Ness talking about the agricultural community.

“The people we work for are a colorful cast of characters,” he said. “They are real people with pioneer backgrounds, their ancestors came here in wagon trains, and that is interesting,”

Ness told the publication that through the years he’d been offered jobs in Albuquerque and Washington, D.C. but he turned them down saying, “… it is hard to hunt antelope in Albuquerque and D.C.”

More from The Westerner here.

Heath Haussamen updates us on the GOP primary race  to replace state Senator Clinton Harden from Clovis:

The GOP primary race to replace Clinton Harden in the N.M. Senate has been colored by controversy that includes anger over the governor’s backing of Angie Spears and Pat Woods’ shifting explanation for why he gave campaign contributions to Democrats.

The governor has offended some Republicans, and her involvement in the race led a third candidate to drop out and endorse Woods. Meanwhile, Woods’ statements about campaign contributions and lobbying raise ethical questions about his prior activities in Santa Fe.

The controversy started when Harden, R-Clovis, announced he wouldn’t seek re-election this year – and, as NMPolitics.net reported, “gave Gov. Susana Martinez her first victory of the 2012 election.”

More here.

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Romney is, for all intents and purposes, the GOP nominee. The question is, what does this strong  youth movement supporting Ron Paul suggest the future holds for the GOP (or national politics in general)?

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National

Big election news today comes out of North Carolina, which is the 30th state to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage via proposition, and Indiana, where 80-year-old incumbent and GOP moderate Dick Luger was ousted in a decisive primary.

PubliusNM readers — any thoughts on what implications–if any–these votes have for our upcoming November presidential election?

Hopefully a number of you had the pleasure of attending the RGF’s recent dinner with John Stossel, and may already be familiar with some of his arguments in this article. Either way, his explanation of Why We’re Losing is a must-read:

Most people see a world full of problems that can best be tackled via wisely applied laws. They assume it’s just the laziness, stupidity, or indifference of politicians that prevents the problems from being fixed. But government is force, and government is inefficient. The inefficient use of force creates more problems than it solves.

* * *

It is depressing that the United States, a country founded on principles more libertarian than most any other, now seems incapable of admitting that government has gotten too big. One obstacle is that we’ve had things so good for so long that most of us simply don’t believe, in our guts, that government controls can strangle the golden goose. Overseas, where people see the contrast between good and bad policies more starkly, they sometimes understand the need to make changes before we do. East Asian countries embraced markets and flourished. Sweden and Germany liberalized their labor markets and saw their economies improve.

* * *

All our potential achievements could be imperiled if we do not soon wake up to the fact that big government impedes rather than creates. The great 20th-century libertarian H. L. Mencken lamented, “A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men.…Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general…are generally obeyed as a matter of duty [and] assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.”

There is nothing that government can do that we cannot do better as free individuals—as groups of individuals, working together voluntarily, not at the point of a gun or under threat of a fine. Without big government, our possibilities are limitless.

Take the time to read the full article, available here. David Harsanyi also has a worthwhile read available, in his review of Obama’s Ridiculous “To Do List”:

Obama says passing his to-do list would help create “an economy built to last — one that creates the jobs of the future and makes things the rest of the world buys — not one built on outsourcing, loopholes, and risky financial deals.” History tells us that when government “creates” an economy, it won’t be much of an economy to speak of — but here’s the new plan:

“Reward American Jobs, Not Outsourcing.” Hey, let’s play on the genuine frustration of struggling Americans. Most politicians will latch on to this protectionist notion to some extent. But need it really be repeated that outsourcing, by generating more productivity, creates more wealth and more jobs? On this point, most economists actually agree.

But even if you believe “outsourcing” is a job killer, does anyone believe the notion that “passing legislation that gives companies a new 20 percent tax credit for the cost of moving their operations” will make a dent on employment? Liberals frequently argue that high corporate taxes aren’t chasing companies abroad, yet a one-time tax break on moving expenses is now a cornerstone of “an economy built to last”?

To do: “Create Jobs By Investing In Affordable Clean Energy.” It is difficult to calculate just how many subsidies and breaks are already “invested” in unproductive clean-energy projects — many of them supported by Republicans. Whether it be morally fulfilling or good for the environment, an expansion of “the 30 percent tax credit to investments in clean energy manufacturing” could cost jobs, not create them. As one Spanish study found, 2.2 conventional jobs are destroyed for every job created in the alternative energy industry. “Investing” in inefficient energy is no way to economic growth.

Gene Healy’s consideration of whether Gary Johnson will serve as a “spoiler” in November’s election is interesting:

As a small-”l” libertarian, it’s not often I can say that National Public Radio cheers me up on my way into work. But it did the trick yesterday morning with an “All Things Considered” feature titled “Libertarians Find Their Voice in 2012 Race.”

“Somewhere on the path to the White House this year,” the announcer declared, “a powerful set of ideas began to creep into the mainstream debate over which direction the country will take ….free and open markets and extremely limited government. Those ideals are now becoming more mainstream.” Case in point, according to NPR, was the Libertarian Party’s decision Saturday to make former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico its nominee for president.

When the federally funded voice of urbane, upper-middle class liberalism says we’re on the verge of a “libertarian moment,” that’s what the lawyers call an “admission against interest,” and it’s worth paying attention.

More here. And yet another great moment (or not so much) in higher education, as described by the WSJ:

The Chronicle of Higher Education has fired our former editorial-page colleague, Naomi Schaefer Riley, for a blog posting on the Chronicle’s website that offended 6,500 professors. Well, they’re not all professors yet, but they are members of what calls itself the “higher-education community,” for which the Chronicle is its trade paper.

As best we can make out, the Chronicle’s editor, Liz McMillen, fired Naomi Riley for doing what she was hired to do—provide a conservative point of view about current events in academe alongside the paper’s roster of mostly not-conservative academic bloggers. We should point out that Naomi is married to Journal editorial-board member Jason Riley.

In a piece nearby, Naomi describes the sequence of events that led to her dismissal. After she posted an item critical of contemporary black studies on the Chronicle’s ironically named blog—Brainstorm: Ideas and Culture—a petition drive instantly demanded her dismissal. It came and quickly.

Ms. McMillen’s Note to Readers explaining the dismissal is itself worthy of note. “I sincerely apologize,” she writes, “for the distress these incidents have caused our readers and appreciate that so many of you have made your sentiments known to us. One theme many of you have sounded is that you felt betrayed by what we published.”

More here. And CATO’s Richard Rahn has a good recent piece on Obama’s corporate tax madness, check it out here.

The United States already has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, but the Obama administration is proposing to make the U.S. even less competitive internationally by reducing the corporate tax deferral on income made abroad. Most countries have a territorial system of taxation in which they only tax income made within their borders. The United States is one of the few countries that taxes individuals and companies on their worldwide income. Companies have been allowed, however, to defer taxes on income earned in other countries until it is brought back to the U.S.

And here’s more Stossel in today’s video (click here to view in YouTube):

New Mexico

I’m not particularly inspired by any local news or commentary today, but feel free to check out NMPolitics.net, ErrorsofEnchantment, or Economic Liberty for some updates.

Feel free to email us your thoughts for Publius posts or guest posts: publiusnm-at-gmail-dot-com.

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Excellent new video and study by the Institute for Justice (click here to view in YouTube):

Check out more on the study itself here. As it turns out, New Mexico licenses 52 low-income occupations, which is 51% of the 102 low-income occupations included in the study. You can check out the average burdens imposed by our state’s licensing schemes here.

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This picture and caption are a little tongue-in-cheek, but certainly point to a captivating time in American history. A time when a ragtag bunch of revolutionaries mustered everything they had to give in the fight against tyranny and oppression. They were heroes and they gave us this country we have today.

In reading the news, I am disheartened to consider today’s America — and particularly today’s governing bodies — for which these patriots fought. When they fought, they battled tyranny. Apparently, now our leaders seek to impose tyranny.

Over at the WSJ, Kim Strassel tells us of Obama’s abhorrent campaign behavior in creating an “enemies’ list comprised of Romney donors:

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for “betting against America,” and accuses you of having a “less-than-reputable” record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

* * *

This past week, one of [Obama's] campaign websites posted an item entitled “Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney’s donors.” In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having “less-than-reputable records,” the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that “quite a few” have also been “on the wrong side of the law” and profiting at “the expense of so many Americans.”

These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having “outsourced” jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a “lobbyist”) and Thomas O’Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a “bitter foe of the gay rights movement.”

These are wealthy individuals, to be sure, but private citizens nonetheless. Not one holds elected office. Not one is a criminal. Not one has the barest fraction of the position or the power of the U.S. leader who is publicly assaulting them.

Despicable.

Then we look to news out of Obama’s Transportation Department and Congress, and I begin to really shudder learning that Big Brother is coming to our cars:

One of the most far-reaching and frightening pieces of legislation to come down the pike in quite some time has passed the Senate and is being readied for quick action by the Republican-controlled House. Lurking within its many pages, divisions, titles, parts and subparts is a host of restrictions and federal mandates that would make George Orwell’s head spin.

The misnamed “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act,” commonly referred to inside the Washington Beltway as “MAP-21,” is so laden with federal highway and transportation funds that most House members probably will be inclined to vote for it without even reading the fine print. But it is that fine print that feeds steroids to the Washington Leviathan like few past pieces of legislation.

MAP-21 clearly bears the fingerprints of our nanny-in-chief, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, but it passed the Senate last month by a strong bipartisan vote, 74 to 22. The massive bill federalizes everything within sight of the feds’ roving eye. So-called “open-container laws” would become uniform under federal guidelines, as would heretofore state-enforced laws regulating treatment of repeat DUI offenders. Interlock ignition devices would fall within Uncle Sam’s grasp. The availability of electronic charging stations — to launch all those electronic cars no one is buying — would be expanded.

Perhaps most troubling, at least for anyone who harbors even the remotest interest in privacy, MAP-21 mandates that within three years every single passenger vehicle in the country must be outfitted with a “vehicle event data recorder” — the proverbial “black box.”

The secretary of transportation, of course, is empowered to determine what will be recorded by these black boxes and the manner in which information can be retrieved, so as to ensure “uniformity.” Notwithstanding the legislation’s lip service to the “privacy” of the information contained in the black boxes, the list of reasons that authorize government access is long and vague. “Investigations” by law enforcement, as well as directives in any “legal proceeding” (such as, for example, a divorce or other civil or criminal case), would justify piercing the thin “privacy” shield nominally provided by MAP-21.

Read the full article here.

You may have considered the title of this post overly dramatic when you began. What do you think now?

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Stossel’s latest book and special explores why individuals succeed where government fails. As the website for the tv special notes:

Government grows, despite its repeated failure.

Politicians are wrong when they say, “Yes, we can,” but the fact that government can’t doesn’t mean that we can’t. Free people accomplish wonderful things. While government wastes billions on boondoggles like Solyndra, X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis explains how private investors have created cars that get 100 mpg, space ships and much faster ways to clean up oil spills, all without charging taxpayers a penny.

Without big government, life can be great.

If you’re unfamiliar with Stossel’s work, you may want to check out this upload of his classic “Stupid in America” (click here to view in YouTube):

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As of the 2010 Census, the county’s population is over the 200,000 threshold that triggers a state law that requires magistrate judges to be attorneys. Doña Ana County’s official population in 2010 was 209,233.

The Legislature passed a bill in 2011, sponsored by Rep. Andy Nuñez, an independent from Hatch, that would have raised the threshold to 250,000, but Gov. Susana Martinez vetoed it.

Interestingly, there are three current magistrates in Dona Ana who do not meet the new requirement as none are lawyers. But, hey, they are incumbents so apparently the Court, which declined to comment on the inequities left in place by its decision, is fine with incumbent non-lawyers.

There are some decent arguments to be made as to why magistrate judges should be lawyers, and perhaps even why that requirement should only be applied in counties of sufficient population to ensure a pool of bar members from which to draw. But the issue here is the incongruity of this decision from our high court when taken up with another recent issue: whether folks who fail to read instructions should be thrown off the ballot. In that case, the Court kept candidates on the ballot despite their failure to read basic instructions, and the Court’s apparent concern was erring on the side of allowing the voters to choose. Apparently the clearly-worded law contained an “ambiguity” conveniently seen by the Supreme Court in time to save the skin of of a number of incumbent legislators.

So there you have it: the lawyers and the incumbents win, but does that mean the people of New Mexico win?

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Now comes your part.

We want to hear from our readers. What do you value in PubliusNM? In the past we’ve had a variety of post types:

1. Commentary on local issues and commentary on national issues;
2. “Round up” posts seeking to provide a substantial cross-section of news and commentary sources from elsewhere on topics of significant interest;
3. “Digest” posts providing general news and commentary updates;
4. Satirical commentary pieces;
5. Interesting and notable quotes;
6. Posts highlighting brief stories of interest; and
7. Polls

This doesn’t capture precisely all types of posts, but it does highlight most of them.

So, dear PubliusNM reader or subscriber, what types of posts bring you back to PubliusNM the most? Where do your interests lie?

Also, are you interested in assisting PubliusNM by contributing — either contributing guest posts, or submitting post topic ideas?

Let us know in the comments section or by email to publiusnm-at-gmail-dot-com.

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If you exist only because society permits you to exist—you have no right to your own life. A permission can be revoked at any time.

If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society—you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.

- “Textbook of Americanism,” The Ayn Rand Column, 83

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