Another Not So Bright Texas Republican

Academic prowess is clearly not an asset in the task of becoming Governor of Texas or to becoming a GOP Presidential nominee.

First, we had George W. Bush (the GOP Presidential nominee in 2000 and 2004) who was a mediocre student at Yale in the era before admissions we are merit based as they are today (although his father, George H.W. Bush, was a quite intelligent man with real academic talent and senior civil service experience as C.I.A. director), who went on from the Texas Governorship to become President.

Arizona Senator and 2008 GOP Presidential nominee John McCain was also a mediocre college student at the U.S. Naval Academy:

McCain came into conflict with higher-ranking personnel, and he did not always obey the rules, which contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899), despite a high IQ. He did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects he struggled with, such as mathematics.

Sarah Palin, McCain's Vice Presidential nominee was also a pretty mediocre college student and known for her lack of a command of policy issues on the campaign trail as well.

Now, Rick Perry, a 2012 Presidential candidate with the same political credentials as George W. Bush, however, makes George W. Bush look like a genius by comparison to any of these other candidates, given is truly dismal performance at Texas A&M. 

…In his freshman and sophomore year, Perry struggled with core science classes, earning D’s in several organic chemistry classes and C’s in general chemistry and physics.
But after Perry switched his major at the beginning of his fall semester in 1970, his grades didn’t improve. Perry got a C in Reproduction in Farm Animals, a C in genetics, a D in Feeds & Feeding, a C in Sheep & Angora Goat Production and two C’s in animal breeding classes.
Many of Perry’s other classes involved military education. Perry has previously credited his time in the A&M Corps of Cadets with giving him the necessary discipline to complete school.
Perry got two C’s in Development of Air Power and took four levels of World Military Systems, earning two C’s, a B and an A. The A was one of only two Perry earned at college — the other was for a class called Improv. of Learning.
The future governor only took one political science class while he was in school — American National Government, for which he earned a B. Other classes outside of Perry’s major included Shakespeare and Writing for Professional Men, which earned him two D’s.
Perry took two summer sessions before his senior year but still needed two more after the rest of his class graduated to complete a degree. He graduated in August of 1972.

Like George W. Bush, Rick Perry was a cheerleader in college.

While college grades are not the be all and end all of life, I'd think we could expect a bit more of people who want to rule the free world.

READ MORE - Another Not So Bright Texas Republican

A Silly Argument And A Smart One

Mark Thoma at The Fiscal Times argues that "balanced budget rules can cause rushed decisions if the statutory deadlines for achieving balance leave little time for careful deliberation" in the course of arguing that Congress is disfunctional. This is silly.

How many times in my lifetime have state or federal legislatures gotten fiscal matters done in advance in a carefully deliberated manner, rather than right at a deadline? I can't remember a year that Congress didn't have a continuing resolution or passed all of the dozen different appropriations bills separately before the deadline came and an omnibus bill had to be pushed through, even in years when we haven't had divided government.

Colorado's joint budget committee is better, but still highly deadline driven. And, one of the key's to Colorado's deadlines - a joint set of legislative rules made necessary by a short session, amateur legislature and strong legislative services division are almost impossibly to constitutionally impose on Congress.

But, Thoma also has a worthwhile point to make:

[A]nother explanation that is often put forth to explain the change in congressional behavior is that legislators today are less patriotic than they once were. That is, nation used to come before party, but those days are long gone.

But patriotism is not the problem. What has changed is that we have become, in many respects, two separate nations living within a common border. Patriotism is as strong as ever within each nation, but there is very little recognition that the needs of the other group are legitimate or have any standing at all in policy decisions.

Thus, we are no longer indivisible. Justice for my group rather than justice for all dominates the political landscape and pollutes the policy environment. Until that is fixed–if it can be fixed–no amount of rules, triggers, ticking bombs, or other devices will set it right again.

The two nations thing isn't entirely Mark Thoma's invented rhetoric. For example, Texas Governor Perry, who has campaigned for the GOP Presidential nomination in Colorado recently, has publicly said positive things about the possibility of Texas leaving the United States of American again. The partisan divide between U.S. regions is as strong as it has been in recent memory and social class divides are also more intense in the U.S. than they have been in a very long time.

It isn't just the politicans. I frequently finding myself asking what the heck Republicans are thinking, because when I ask myself what someone who hates American would do and then compare it to what they are trying to accomplish, it very frequently seems to be the same thing. My civility instincts tell me that this is a horribly bad attitude that I should try to fight, but it is what comes to the surface emotionally whenever their latest idea comes up. Whatever agenda they are advancing, it is so profoundly distant from my reality that it makes no sense at all to me, much of the time, or violates deeply held values about the political process and policy substance of what makes our country special and uniquely American. Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't be better off if Governor Perry got his wish and rid us of the influence that he and his have on our politics.

Then again, Thoma makes one more argument that is neither here nor there. He says that the press doesn't do a good enough job of holding politicians accountable. There is merit to that. Politicans are held accountable for very little of their destructive bad behavior and mischief.

But, I'm not convinced that the press is the most guilty party. It is hard to educate the large share of the voting public that isn't interested in paying attention, and the fact that the nation feels that it can get away with indifference is mostly a testament to a fairly healthy political culture in the formative period of the average voter, rather than being a purely negative indicator. Many of us managed to earn the privilege of not paying much attention because politics has tended to be incrementalist for the last few decades in the United States. Only when elected leaders really screw up in a way that forces a radical change that is contrary to the agreed rules of the political game, as we saw this year in Wisconsin and Minnesota, does the sleeping giant that is the American public wake up and start paying attention. We can be outraged about the process because we have been taught to expect better.

If the U.S. had defaulted on its debt and there had been dire consequences, the American public probably would have woken up and been determined to do something about it in 2012. But, a deal to complex and arcane and unlikely to be adhered to in the long term to make it interesting to the general public was reached, constitutional crisis was avoided, and the public will return to its slumber for a while.

I don't like the way that we are making our sausage and would like to reform it. The Republican balanced budget amendment proposal is a DOA way of addressing the problem. But, there is room for process reform and better ways of holding politicians accountable as well.

READ MORE - A Silly Argument And A Smart One

End The Debt Ceiling

The truth is that the United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one. There’s no debt limit in the Constitution. And, if Congress really wants to hold down government debt, it already has a way to do so that doesn’t risk economic chaos—namely, the annual budgeting process. The only reason we need to lift the debt ceiling, after all, is to pay for spending that Congress has already authorized.... For the U.S. to default now, when investors are happily lending it money at exceedingly reasonable rates, would be akin to shooting yourself in the head for failing to follow your diet.

From James Surowiecki at the New Yorker via Calculated Risk.

I totally agree with Surowiecki's analysis. Alas, Tea Party Republicans, rather than grown ups, are in charge in the House of Representatives and they could care less about responsible government, the nation's credit rating, or the well being of our country, and are blinded by a less taxes, less spending agenda, reality and reason be damned.

READ MORE - End The Debt Ceiling

Sizing Up The GOP Presidential Field

[Sarah] Palin, the party's vice presidential nominee in 2008, had the support of 22 percent of the Republicans surveyed. The former governor of Alaska has not said whether she will run for president next year.

Romney, who failed in a 2008 presidential bid, had 20 percent support.

Representative Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican from Texas, and former pizza executive Herman Cain were tied for third with 7 percent each. . . .

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, the other Republican contenders fared even worse than Romney's 13-point gap in a match-up with Obama. Palin trailed Obama by 23 points and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was behind by 19 points. . . . The poll, conducted Friday through Monday, surveyed 1,132 adults nationwide by telephone, including 948 registered voters. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.

From here.

The story also notes that: "Other surveys have shown Romney in a stronger position. A Washington Post-ABC News poll earlier this week gave Romney a slight lead over Obama among registered voters."

The fact that two polls in the same week have a 14 point plus gap in an identical Obama-Romney matchup each among registered voters suggests that one or both of the polls have far less accuracy than their sample size based margins of error would suggest. An average of the margins in the polls, which would give Obama an approximately six point lead over Romney in a head to head matchup with this, the most competitive of the possible Republican Presidential nominees, is probably a more realistic state of the 2012 Presidental race right now.

Historical reviews of the GOP field by pundits in recent months have noted that lack of a strong front runner this early in the 2012 field compared to other post-war Presidential primaries.

READ MORE - Sizing Up The GOP Presidential Field

Planet GOP

What motivates people like 11 Colorado State Senators (almost the entire GOP caucus in the State Senate): Kent Lambert, Bill Cadman, Scott Renfroe, Mark Scheffel, Keith and Steve King, Nancy Spence, Kevin Grantham, Ted Harvey, Mike Kopp, and Kevin Lundberg, to sponsor "Birther" legislation? (In fairness, the legislation proposed, which is prospective, does not itself on its face question the legitimacy of President Obama's current tenure in office.)

What makes Republicans like Scott Gessler, our Secretary of State, convinced that there are massive numbers of illegal immigrants voting our elections, in the absence of evidence that this is happening (or does he really believe it)?

What drives Republicans like Retired General William Boykin to forward an agenda arguing that Islam is Satanic and shouldn't be included in the freedom of religion?

Why do so many Republicans support succession? Why do so many think contrary to the historical fact, that the Founders were evangelical Christians trying to create a Christian nation?

Why do so many Republicans think it is O.K. to pass laws that are clearly unconstitutional either because they violate the Supremacy clause and assert a state right to disregard binding federal law, or because they violate well established precedents like Roe v. Wade?

Why do so many Republicans claim that President Obama is a Muslim? If one wanted to sully the President's religious credentials, surely the claim that he was a closet atheist, given his adult conversion to Christianity after a secular youth would have been more plausible and atheists are almost as despised by Americans as Muslims in public opinion polls.

How did the Republican party manage to secure a lock on the crazy absurd positions and ideas so fervantly opposed to our constitutional traditions, while claiming a banner of greater patriotism?

Really, factually incredible claims simply don't have the same political currency in the Democratic party that some factually incredible claims do in Republican circles. Really, the Democratic party is far more comfortable with the framework established by mainstream constitutional law than Republicans. Even when Democrats disagree with authoritative interpretations of the constitution in areas such as corporate free speech rights in political debates, they generally don't argue that their view is the absolute law which other parts of the political system are free to ignore. Republicans, in contrast, seem to delight in proclaiming a fantasy constitution to be the real one.

Democrats live with a world view that is bounded by a sense of legal and factual reality; an important subset of Republicans seem entirely divorced from both.

It is hard to hope for politics based on a reasoned search for the truth when a significant share seem to be delusional in many cases. How does one build common political ground with people who don't seem to be playing by the same rules?

Not all Republicans, especially among the rank and file in professional and managerial ranks in America fit this stereotype. But, a surprisingly large number do seem to be a fit for it.

What is going on? Is this really a stable ideology, or a case where a small, tightly disciplined cadre of of extremists have taken hold? For how many are these beliefs sincere and heartfelt, and for how many is this calculated hypocricy and stagemanship?

I know some of the outlines of where some of these ideas have roots in intellectual history, their political roots, and the origins of the political identity of people who now identify as the conservative Republican right wing. But, that doesn't make it seem any less bizzare when I encounter it. How did ideas from Glen Beck recycled from a John Bircher political philosopher gain such much currency with so many people? Why was the intellectual environment so fertile for these ideas? How did right wing media and mainstream media (there scarcely is any truly left wing media) become so disconnected from each other? Why has the outcome of the Civil War been so hard for so many to accept a century and a half later?

Europeans aren't rushing to talk radio stations proclaiming that the monarchies deposed in the 1870s are still the legitimate governments of their countries today and winning majority support in polls of members of major political parties. Why are an important subset of Americans engaged in the same exercise?

Why are Tea Party members so angry at government's existence and operations? Does it make any sense for what is at its roots, as the name suggests, an anti-tax party, to be thriving at a point when taxes are already at sixty year lows?

Why is the public so succeptible to mass political hysteria? Is there something in the political process that is encouraging this kind of sentiment? Or, is this kind of sentiment inextricably intertwined with democracy itself? What does it take to make the masses see crazy talk for what it is?

READ MORE - Planet GOP

Mississippi Republicans Still Racist

Public Policy Polling surveyed 400 usual Mississippi Republican primary voters from March 24th to 27th [2011]. The survey’s margin of error is +/-4.9%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify.

[They asked and were told:]

Do you think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal?

Legal............................................................... 40%

Illegal .............................................................. 46%

Not sure .......................................................... 14%

From here.

Keep in mind that this is not some highly technical question about which ordinary, well socialized, non-racist people would have to contemplate a "not sure" answer.  Also, keep in mind that this sample excludes not only Democrats and people with no political affiliation, but also Republicans who are not "usual primary voters."  Primary voters typically make up something on the order of half of all voters and tend to be more extreme in their political beliefs than general election voters or politically affiliated non-voters.

As Razib notes, this is not implausible.  I agree with Razib that the poll is not as far from expectations as one might think.

Nationally, according to the General Social Survey, about 37% of people favored banning interracial marriage in 1972, a few years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this was not constitutional in Loving v. Virginia. By 2002 the percentage favoring a ban on interracial marriage nationally had dropped to 10%. But, Republicans from the region that includes Mississippi were the strongest supporters of prohibiting interracial marriage.

Presumably, the Republicans who want to ban interracial marriage are also the ones who are birthers, favor secession, think President Obama is a Muslim, are young earth creationists, and generally have beliefs that embarrass everyone else in the country, even serious mainstream Republicans.

Clearly, some subcultures manage to very completely insulate themselves from the overall social and intellectual trends of the nation. The hard questions are how one can break through that bubble, and failing that, how one can reduce their disproportionate political influence.

READ MORE - Mississippi Republicans Still Racist

Jefferson Davis On The Cause of The Civil War

Jefferson Davis unequivocally stated in 1861 that the cause of his state’s secession was that “she had heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.” Other Confederate leaders also emphasized that slavery was the reason for secession.

From here, with links to multiple sources.

Jefferson Davis's inauguration as President of the Confederate State of America was re-enacted on its 150th anniversary on February 19th in Alabama in an event organized by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group of men, mostly in the American South, who have wide political support, who are proud that their ancestors were traitors who fought to defend slavery.

Ironically, most of them now favor the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln.

READ MORE - Jefferson Davis On The Cause of The Civil War

The Showdown In Wisconsin

Republican Governor [of Wisconsin] Scott Walker . . . is pushing a proposal that would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers and make them pay half the costs of their pensions and at least 12.6 percent of their health care coverage. The changes amount to about a seven percent salary cut.

From here.

The budget shortfall that is being used to justify the step cuts to state employee pay and denying unions their collective bargaining rights, of course, is a crisis of Governor Walker's own making created by tax cuts that he backed. Unions are willing to discuss compensation custs, but not the loss of their collective bargaining rights.

A core principle of American political conservatives is that unions are bad and should be busted at every available opportunity. As I've noted before at this blog, one of the key points in the Republican playbook at the moment is that public employees, particularly unionized ones, are overpaid relative to private sector workers (despite evidence to the contrary) and that they employees should bear a large share of the public spending cuts that Republicans campaigned on in the 2012 election.

In Wisconsin, where the 2012 election left Republicans in charge of both houses of the state legislature and the Governor's office, they have the votes to put that ideology into action. While private sector union-management relations are governed by the federal government's National Labor Relations Board, states have considerable freedom to adopt laws concerning the rights of their public sector unions.

Since they don't have the votes to win this battle in the legislative process, Wisconsin union members have marched in force (25,000 strong) on the state capital as the legislature considers the bill and state senate Democrats have removed themselves to an undisclosed location to deny Republicans in the state senate the quorum they need to pass the bill, echoing a similar tactic used in Texas redistricting battles within the last few years. Wisconsin also lacks the citizen's initiative process present in states like California and Colorado, that might have given public sector union members in Wisconsin an end run around the normal legislative process. The unions have President Obama's support, but he has little power when it comes to labor relations in state and local government, an area where even the expansive commerce clause power of Congress probably does not extend.

America's private sector union movement in the United States is close to moribund. Maybe this is due to legislative changes, like labor laws that permit the permanent replacement of striking workers and tolerate significant management misconduct in organizing elections. Maybe it is due to the changing character of the economy that has reduced employment in traditionally unionized industries. Maybe labor is a victim of its own success. The causes are a matter of great debate and controversy. The result, however, is not. American private sector unions haven't been so impotent in numbers or as disinclined to cause work stoppages since long before the United States passed its first national labor laws during the Great Depression.

But, public sector unionization has soared and continues to grow in most states. (Colorado is an exception to the trend.) In part, this is because public sector unions, unlike private sector unions, have employees who can't easily be offshored and employers who can't convincing argue that their wages must be kept low in order to prevent them from losing their business to the competition. Civil service protections that public employees hold to protect them from politically motivated corrupt patronage systems have also made it safer to public employees to organize without fear of losing their jobs than comparable private sector employees. Recall that:

In 1950 . . .the unionized workforce of 14.3 million workers . . . made up 31.5% of the total work force.

In 2008 . . . the unionized workforce of 16.1 million workers who made up 12.4% of the total workforce. The public sector which is 36.8% unionized, is as unionized as the private sector was at its peak. The private sector, which is 7.2% unionized, has the lowest level of unionization in the private sector since the 1920s, if not earlier.

This is a huge deal. As I've noted before, policy more often changes through widespread imitation at historic moments than it does through isolated case by case rational analysis. If Wisconsin is successful in breaking its public employees unions and slashing public employee compensation, the trend will almost surely spread to almost every Republican controlled state in the United States. If public unions lose big in Wisconsin it could mean the end of organized labor unions as a potent force in the American economy and political system entirely for much of the United States.

While looming labor-management disputes in the NFL have attracted lots of attention, public sector unions at the state and local government level in places like Wisconsin are the bread and butter of the labor movement in the United States today. This dispute alone involves hundreds of thousands of middle class workers and their families losing three and a half weeks of pay a year.

Public sector unionization is a different animal than private sector unionization. Protection from unfair unemployment termination has generally been a secondary issue for them because they already have civil service protections. Some public sector unions are legally prohibited from going on strike. While private sector unions can organize politically for labor laws and other laws favorable to their members, public sector unions can organize politically to put union friendly politicians in direct control of their employer.

But, the potential for strikes by public employees to rise to the level of general strikes and to bring vital government services to a halt, whether or not it is legal for them to do so, has always loomed in the background, and covert "sick outs" and work to rule slowdowns remind negotiators of that fact. Denver's police (who publicly deny that this was the case) recently carried out just such a slowdown last year over dissatisfaction with the vigor with which the City of Denver had finally decided to apply to cracking down on instances of police misconduct. Wisconsin is experiencing its own sick outs right now.

Assuming that the political process will eventually prevail in Wisconsin and result in public sector union crushing legislation being passed there, the question is how Democrats and labor unions will respond. With the next election almost two years away, working through the normal political process may not seem like a sufficient response to a powerful political player that is facing deep pay cuts for every single one of its members without any opportunity to collectively bargain the matter and is also facing something close to their very extermination as a means by which the economic cause of state workers can be advanced.

If anything can produce a high profile showdown that could shut down the government of the State of Wisconsin entirely through a work stoppage, legal or otherwise, this frontal assault on public employees unions seems to be a good candidate for it. If public employees' unions in Wisconsin lose this fight, they may be gone for good, and may see much of the rest of the public sector labor movement follow them.

Can they win? There is really no way to know until it happens. The last general strike in the United States outside Puerto Rico was in 1934. But, if public sector unions in Wisconsin manage to inflict decisive political pain on the Republican party in the state, even if they lose on the legislative front for the time being, they may have a real shot at remaining a relevant force in American politics.

READ MORE - The Showdown In Wisconsin

Questioning Patriotism For Fun and Profit

Liberals already control many aspects of American life, and they have undue influence on the Internet. . . . people who use e-mail or other services from companies such as Google, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple are unwittingly helping the liberals. These companies are, and will continue to be, huge supporters of those who are damaging our country.

The influence of these companies also extends internationally, where the liberal grip on the Internet has been demonstrated anew in the turmoil in Egypt. There, according to media reports, it is playing a key role in stirring up the mass protests that are clogging the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities such as Alexandria and fueling demands for the immediate ouster of President Hosni Mubarak . . . the movement is being manipulated by those who favor a hard-line, Iranian-style, Islamic theocracy. . . . Google executive Wael Ghonim, just released from 12 days of Egyptian detention, confirmed that he was responsible for the Facebook page that ignited "the revolution of the youth of the Internet."

This is the same Google where CEO Eric Schmidt is a personal friend of President Barack Obama. . .

Is that where you want your money to go? I didn't think so, so I started the very first conservative e-mail service provider. . . . Your purchase will help me promote true Reagan values to win back our country in 2012.

Liberals have gone too far to influence the Internet and the political process.

- Michael Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan, professional pundit, and newspaper columnist (Source: Aurora Sentinel, February 9, 2011, page 9.)

Who knew that it was unpatriotic to financially support Internet companies by having a free gmail, hotmail, or yahoo e-mail account?

Who knew that there was a Democratic and a Republican way to provide e-mail accounts?

Who knew that preventing traffic jams was more important then ending dictatorships?

Who knew that it was unpatriotic for a private American corporation to support democracy in a totalitarian state?

Who knew that you could get paid for writing a newspaper column that is an infomerical for your own business?

Who knew that liberals control American life and the Internet too?

What Did Reagan Say?

What are "true Reagan values" anyway? What did Ronald Reagan had to say on the subject of religious people taking the streets to secure democracy with the help of shared information from Internet that his son is so wary of?

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Then again, some of Reagan's messages on the issue can be interpreted in more than one way:

The greatest security for Israel is to create new Egypts.

READ MORE - Questioning Patriotism For Fun and Profit

Hungry Kids Not Fair Game, Who Knew?

Hungry Colorado Kids Make Poor Political Targets

Republican State Representatives Cheri Gerou of Evergreen and Jon Becker of Fort Morgan, two of the three Republicans in the Colorado General Assembly's Joint Budget Committee, have thought better of their decision to follow the mean spirited lead of Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, who really does think that hungry poor kids should be denied free school breakfasts.

Apparently, Gerou and Becker lacked the common sense on their own to know that picking on hungry little children who benefit from the free breakfast program should not suffer because an anonymous state bureaucrat made an accounting error that left the program overbudget. But, they did have the political sense to realize that almost everyone else in the State of Colorado, even in conservative strongholds like Grand Junction, Colorado did realize this point and retreated from their hardline stance.

The Gessler Drama

Newly sworn in Secretary of State Scott Gessler, meanwhile, who outrageously announced last week that he is can't survive on the pay of the office he campaigned to win and secured, and wants to work part-time at his old election law firm, despite the obvious conflicts of interest and appearance of impropriety this creates, hasn't backed down, despite strong editorials from both the Denver Post's right wing editorial board and its token liberal commentator today, explaining just how off base he is for trying to do so. The fact that he can't see why this is a problem is itself troubling.

Equally amusing is his fall back position. He has know made clear that he will look to the Attorney General's office for ethical guidance on the issue. And, who in the Attorney General's office has been appointed to handle that task? Bernie Buescher, the Democrat whom he defeated for the Secretary of State post this past November. It has been a long time since Bernie Buescher actively practiced law, but his four years of experience as Colorado's Secretary of State, many years representing a conservative Grand Junction district as a Democrat in the State House, and abundant common sense, make him well qualified for the task.

Equally disturbing, Gessler claims to have raise the part-time job issue during the campaign, even though no one anywhere can be produced to say that he actually did. Making shit up is a standard part of the Republcan play book, but this blantant instance of it by Gessler is particularly galling, because everyone who is listening knows that it isn't true.

The Denver Post, to give it credit, endorsed Buescher, who was clearly the better man, and to anyone familiar with the two candidates, the choice was clear. But, of course, most people know little about candidates for the Secretary of State's post, which only involves real power when close call election issues come up, and voted based on party labels rather than individual qualifications in a year when Red rather than Blue was the hot political color.

What Next?

It took less than two weeks for the new Republican majority in the state house, and the new Republican Secretary of State to thoroughly embarass themselves by taking stances that even died in wool conservatives can't stomach. Walker Stapleton, our new Republican State Treasurer, hasn't made a miscue yet, but still has plenty of time to allow voters to regret their choices last November.

READ MORE - Hungry Kids Not Fair Game, Who Knew?

Republicans and Math Still Don't Mix

Republican Senator Pat Toomey writes in the Wall Street Journal defending the irresponsible stance of Republicans to oppose an increase in the national debt limit: "With roughly 10 times more income than needed to honor our debt obligations, why would we ever default?”

Consider:

Total National Debt: $14.0 trillion
Annual Principal Payment: $2.5 trillion
Annual Interest Payment: $360 billion
Ten Times Annual Interest Payment: $3.6 trillion
Annual Federal Tax Revenues: $2.5 trillion

The annual cost of running the government is about $3.75 trillion.

As Maule explains, if the debt ceiling isn't increased, people stop loaning the United States money:

The entirety of all federal receipts would be required to pay off the investors holding the obligations that have come due. I’m not sure where the government would find $360 billion to pay interest.

Not only would nothing be put into the social security and Medicare trust funds, those funds would not be able to make any payments, because their “assets” are tied up in Treasury debt which would not be convertible into cash because the Treasury would not have the resources to redeem that debt. There would be no money to finance the military, to staff and operate Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the Center for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration. Taxes would be paid, but all federal government services would stop. Perhaps the Federal Reserve could churn out dollar bills, but the resulting inflation would dwarf that of the late 1970s and inject hyperinflation into the economy.

Realistically, someone would let us refinance our maturing national debt, but at a higher interest rate that would greatly increase the cost of the national debt. Even if investors think that there is only a one in twenty-five chance of default in the next year, this would cost American taxpayers $520 billion a year, plus $140 billion a year per percentage point of anticipated inflation, all of which would have to come out of spending since we couldn't borrow any more money.

READ MORE - Republicans and Math Still Don't Mix

Quotes of the Day

I have the lowest regard for intelligent people who are clearly using their intelligence to forward weak arguments through clever and adroit use of rhetoric. In my book that’s immoral, at least if you don’t have a professional interest in the obfuscation.

- Razib Khan

[T]his year's Legislative Ebenezer Scrooge Award will go to the Republican members of the Joint Budget Committee for refusing to spend already designated state funds to provide school breakfast for poor children.

"As a family guy myself with children and grandchildren, I take a very strong responsibility to earn money to feed my own family," Lambert, one of the three naysaying Republicans, told the Post.

Lambert earns money the old fashioned way: from your tax dollars. He was a lifetime member of the military, now on pension, and he now collects tax dollars as a state lawmaker.

- Dave Perry of the Aurora Sentinel

READ MORE - Quotes of the Day

Colorado GOP Oblivious To Budget Reality

The dominant problem facing the Colorado General Assembly as it begins its 2011 legislative session is that the state needs to close a $1 billion gap in its $7 billion general fund budget.

So, what legislative proposals are GOP state legislators, who campaigned on fiscal responsibility offering at this critical juncture?

* Income tax cuts for parents who send their children to private schools.
* A repeal of hospital fees.
* Sales tax cuts for agricultural products producers.

What part of "we're broke" did they not see in the memo on the state budget? Cutting revenue is a wonderful thing, unless you can't pay your bills.

Bills to make it harder to register to vote are also on the Republican agenda.

READ MORE - Colorado GOP Oblivious To Budget Reality

Make It Official

The Tea Party faction is the reason that the Republican party made as much progress as it did in the 2010 midterm elections at both the state and federal levels. Their candidates are putting their stamp on the GOP at the legislative party level.

It would be an opportune time for Republicans to officially change their party's name. After all, this is no longer the party of Lincoln. The strongholds of the modern Republican party are overwhelmingly places that shunned the GOP for a century because it was the party of the North in the Civil War and Reconstruction. They are the direct political descendants of the Dixiecrats and the segregationists. A significant share of Republicans still think secession is a good idea, and many would like to repeal all or most of the Civil Rights Act. The Republican party was invented as a party in favor of a strong federal government, yet the modern Republican party is the party of state's rights. Lincoln and other early Republicans were in favor of constitutionally questionable taxes.

Why should Republicans continue to carry all that historical baggage that causes them such cognitive dissonance? Why not admit that there is nothing "Grand Old" about their party and that they have nothing whatsoever in common with the pro-tax, anti-states rights, socially liberal, culturally Yankee party that the Republicans were for their first couple of generations? Why not cast that all aside and replace it with the mantle of the Tea Party.

This would leave the people who put them in power, who happen to care a lot about symbolism, tickled pink. And, rebranding every once and a while is often a good thing for just about any organization. It would also be more honest, and crazy as it seems, a little honesty in politics, even once in a while, is appreciated by just about everyone. So, make it official. For 2011, the major political party that is not the Democratic party in the United States should cast aside the "Republican" and "GOP" names and become the "Tea Party".

Then, maybe the Democrats could follow suit and rename itself, honestly and in a way that reclaims a label that many in the base would like to rehabilitate, the "Liberal Party."

READ MORE - Make It Official

Census Shifts Power To Mountain West and South

The final 2010 census figures (giving the United States a 2010 population overall of 308.7 million people) have shifted eleven seats in Congress from the Northeast and Midwest to the Mountain West and the South. All nine states in the Northeast and Midwest whose allotment of Congressional seats changed saw that allotment decline. In the West and South, eight states increased the size of their Congressional delegations, while Louisiana, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, lost one seat in Congress. Colorado's Congressional delegation, as expected, stayed constant at seven seats in the House of Representatives.

Advantage GOP

The shift relative to the 2000 apportionment favors Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the electoral college used to elect the President.

Of the states that will get greater representation in the 2012 election, five states that gains eight seats in Congress are red states that voted for McCain in 2008 and Bush in 2004, two states that gained three seats in Congress voted for Obama in 2008 but Bush in 2004, and one state that gained one seat in Congress is a blue state that voted for Obama in 2008 and Kerry in 2004.

Of the states that will lose seats in Congress in the 2012 election, six states that lost seven seats in Congress are blue states that voted for Obama in 2008 and Kerry in 2004, two states that lost three seat in Congress voted for Obama in 2008 but Bush in 2004, and two states that lost two seats in Congress are red states that voted for McCain in 2008 and Bush in 2004.

Thus, red states have gained a net six seats in Congress, blue states have lost a net six seats in Congress, and states that voted for Obama in 2008 and Bush in 2004 have the same number of net seats in Congress.

While the strong growth of Democratic party leaning demographic groups like minorities and younger voters, and the increasing secularization of the American public tends to favor the Democrats, the low levels of voter registration and diffuse nature of the growing demographics that favor Democrats growth have prevented the intra-electorate trends from being important as the geographic shifts in population in influencing the balance of political power in the United States.

Long Term Trends

The shift continues and reflects trends over the last forty years largely associated with a shift of the American economy from an industrial one to a post-industrial one (a bland description that reflect the fact that even the best informed observers lack a simple heuristic explanation of what our economy is based upon these days), and secondarily a shift from rural areas to urban ones.

Since 1970, states have gained or lost representatives in Congress as follows (with the parenthetical number indicating the number of Congressional seats in the 2012 election):

South (+27)
Texas +12 (36)
Florida +12 (27)
Georgia +4 (14)
North Carolina +2 (13)
South Carolina +1 (7)
Tennessee +1 (9)
Virginia +1 (11)

No change: Maryland (8), Alabama (7), Arkansas (4), Delaware (1)

Kentucky -1 (6)
Oklahoma -1 (5)
Mississippi -1 (4)
West Virginia -1 (3)
Louisiana -2 (6)

Mountain West and Pacific (+26)
California +10 (53)
Arizona +5 (9)
Nevada +3 (4)
Washington +3 (10)
Utah +2 (4)
Colorado +2 (7)
New Mexico +1 (3)
Oregon +1 (5)

No change: Hawaii (2), Idaho (2), Alaska (1), Wyoming (1)

Montana -1 (1)

Midwest and Great Plains (-27)
Ohio -7 (16)
Illinois -6 (18)
Michigan -5 (14)
Iowa -2 (4)
Missouri -2 (8)
Indiana -2 (9)
South Dakota -1 (1)
Kansas -1 (4)
Wisconsin -1 (8)

No change: Minnesota (8), Nebraska (3), North Dakota (1)

Northeast (-26)
New York -12 (27)
Pennsylvania -7 (18)
Massachusetts -3 (9)
New Jersey -3 (12)
Connecticut -1 (5)

No change: Maine (2), New Hampshire (2), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (1)

Reapportionment's Interaction With Realignment

The shift of political power to the South and Mountain West has coincided with a period in which conservative Democrats in Congress, mostly in the South, have been replaced by Republicans, and moderate Republicans in Congress, mostly in the Northeast and Pacific States, have been replaced by Democrats in Congress.

In the Republican party, the trends reinforce each other, by shifting the central of gravity of the Republican party further towards white Southern Evangelical Christians and Mormons. The electoral importance of "Reagan Democrat" blue collar union members and farmers to the Republican coalition has been reduced, and fossil fuel extraction interests have taken at least as many hits as they have made gains.

The realignment together with demographic trends tend to favor a shift to the right in the Republican party on social issues, but may undermine the strength of big money financial interests, the so called Rockefeller Republicans who live in coastal areas where Democrats are dominant in politics and a cosmopolitan identity is necessary to do business, in the Republican party. It may also undermine the ability of Republicans to draw support in any part of the mainstream entertainment industry that provided it with notable leaders like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. There will be pressure for economic conservatives outside socially conservative Republican strongholds and young conservatives to dissociate themselves from the Republican party's red state strongholds if they have any desire to remain relevant in state and local politics, a tendency that the electoral success of the Tea Party movement which publicly focused on economic rather than social issues, despite having a very culturally conservative composition, may encourage.

In the Democratic party, the demographic trends weaken the importance of blue collar private sector labor unions in the coalition, while increasing the relative importance of ethnic minorities including Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans in the Democratic coalition. It reduces the electoral contribution of Jews to the Democratic party coalition (as gains in Florida are outweighed by losses in the Northeast), while increasing the importance of snowbird seniors who have relocated to warmer climes from blue states.

Large minority populations in growing red states mean that Republicans there will continue to need to be the near consensus party of Anglos in the South to win elections there. Outside the South, non-Hispanic whites are deeply split between the two major political parties, although the GOP has an edge with them.

The Republicans seem more unified politically at the moment, than the Democrats. But, the strongly geographic dimension of the divide between the Republican party's Christian right and its economic conservatives, and the large differences in political strategy between the "tribal" politics of Anglo ethnic identity in the South and the political strategy of issue driven intra-ethnic political contests elsewhere may ironically leave the GOP with more potential for schism into two different parties of the right, one dominant in each respective part of the country.

In contrast, the current big tent of the Democrats (which has shrunk somewhat by the defeat of many Blue Dogs), leaves the Democratic party seemingly more ideologically diffuse at the moment, the various factions within the Democratic party can't be decomposed nearly so easily on a regional basis. Democrats are more divided on tactics than they are on their political goals.

The American single member district plurality system can support more than two parties, so long as they are regional parties and there are no more than two strong political parties in any given area. But, the American electoral system strongly disfavors political party schism for geographically diffuse factions within a political party, even if that faction is substantial and ideologically coherent.

Third parties like the Green Party or the Libertarians are doomed in the absence of proportional representation elections. But, our system could support, for example, both a "21st century Whig Party" as a leading party of the right outside the South and areas of Mormon or Evangelical Christian religious dominance, centered on the economic establishment, and a "Christian Republican Party" that was strongly socially conservative but might have a more populist economic agenda than the existing Republican party, as a leading party of the right in current Republican strongholds.

READ MORE - Census Shifts Power To Mountain West and South

Ideas Interrupted

Every once and a while, I start to make a blog post, get interrupted, and it ends up with some links and some half finished analysis in my blogs collection of draft posts. The analysis is often unsalvagable, either because it was too fragmented, or because it was topical and now untimely, but the links are often worthwhile references, so I don't delete the draft posts. In an effort to clear my backlog of draft posts, here are some interesting links that I collected and might have blogged about over the last few years, that didn't make it to the front page. Think of it as a director's cut.

* A Gallup Survey looks at who identifies as a Republican and looks at eight year trends as of May 2009. At that low point, the Republican party was older, more conservative and more religious than it had been in the past. The young, liberals, moderates, the less affluent and more secular voters left it in droves.

* The removal of the President of Hondorus in 2009 may have had sound legal justification.

*"The U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday released a ruling in favor of a group of zombies who say they were wrongfully arrested while protesting consumerism during the 2006 Aquatennial." From here (ruling here).

* Tampa cops apparently don't like clowns any more than Minneapolis cops like zombies.

* "Leading theories of the Eleventh Amendment start from the premise that its text makes no sense." From here.

If you have been taught that the United States Constitution was a document of near perfection, you haven't studied enough constitutional law. The Eleventh Amendment is a good example of both this truth, and of the limits of a "plain text" understanding of the document.

Leading theories of the Eleventh Amendment start from the premise that its text makes no sense.

From here.

The text of the Eleventh Amendment reads:

The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extent to any suit in law or equity commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.

It amends the following language of Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution (language naiively modified by the Eleventh Amendment emphasized):

The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and counsuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more states; between a state and citizens of another state; between citizens of different states; between citizens of the same state, claiming lands under grants of different states; and between a state or citizens thereof and foreign states, citizens and subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the supreme court shall have original jurisdiction.

The Eleventh Amendment has been read by prevailing constitutional law to include not just the edits to Article III that its plain text encompasses (shown above), but also to establish a substantive doctrine of sovereign immunity for state governments, with selected exceptions, and embellished with permissible strategies to avoid the limitation.

For example, while local government are treated as part of the state government for most purposes, many local governments and independent governmental agencies as distinct from the state government for Eleventh Amendment purposes. Also, the case law permits suits against governmental officials for actions that they have taken in their official capacity, rather than seeing them as benefiting fully from sovereign immunity from suits against states in federal trial courts. State permission is inferred when states are parties to bankruptcy cases (or alternately, state sovereign immunity is abrogated in those cases). In practice, the exceptions swallow the rule, which has been narrowed to prohibiting in practice only suits for money damages against the parts of state governments which are financed with tax money.

More particularly, going beyond the express terms of the Eleventh Amendment, the Eleventh Amendment has been held to prohibit citizens of a state from suing their own state on a federal question theory in federal court, despite the fact that this isn't clearly prohibited by the terms of the U.S. Constitution, if the suit is commenced in the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Eleventh Amendment is routinely applied in this way.

The Eleventh Amendment is, in fact, applied to limit the authority of the federal government to sue states, since allowing citizens of a state, but not non-citizens of a state to sue a state in federal court on a federal question seems absurd, even though this is not expressly banned by the Eleventh Amendment.

The Eleventh Amendment, by its terms, also does not apply to admiralty suits, as opposed to those arising "in law and equity," although the case law does not draw such a clear line, as the U.S. Supreme Court explained in California v. Deep Sea Research, Inc., 118 S.Ct. 1464 (1998).

The article linked explains this situation:

Anti-federalists threatened to undermine this case for the Constitution by arguing that the state-citizen diversity provisions of Article III — authorizing suits "between" states and out-of-state citizens — could be construed to permit suits against states (and thus imply federal power to enforce any resulting judgments against states). Although Federalists denied this construction, the Supreme Court proceeded to read Article III to permit out-of-state citizens to sue states. Federalists and Anti-federalists quickly joined forces to restore their preferred construction of Article III.

In adopting the Eleventh Amendment, they saw no anomaly in prohibiting “any suit” against a state by out-of-state citizens because they did not understand the Constitution to authorize any suits against states by in-state citizens. Federal question jurisdiction did not expressly authorize such suits, and the Founders likely would not have perceived any real need for such jurisdiction given their understanding that the Constitution conferred neither legislative nor coercive power over states. Because the Eleventh Amendment, as written, made sense in light of the nature of the Union, the absurdity doctrine cannot justify departing from the terms of the Amendment.

In other words, this author too finds that the Founders didn't really believe that Article III really meant what it actually says.

Since suits against states in federal courts other than the U.S. Supreme Court are prohibited by the clear language of Article III, it would have been possible, and probably more desirable from the point of view of matching case law to the actual language of the U.S. Connstitution, for the U.S. Supreme Court to simply adopt of refusing to exercise its power to hear suits between private parties and states in non-admiralty cases on forum non conveniens grounds, rather than jurisdictional grounds, rather than creating the expansive concept of state sovereign immunity. But, this isn't how the doctrine has evolved.

READ MORE - Ideas Interrupted

The Republican Line On The Economy

I don't agree with Mike Rosen's policy prescriptions for our nation's economy and even his factual assertions are wrong, but his column today is a succinct summary of the Republican party line on the matter from an advocate for the position rather than a straw man argument that I have created myself, so I'm noting it for future reference. I quote some highlights from the narrative below to convey the gist of the message:

[T]he heart of the problem [of state budget shortfalls] is the unsustainable level of government spending and indebtedness driven by a cornucopia of entitlement, health care and welfare programs, along with overly generous government employee payrolls and lavish pension plans that have dwarfed growth in private-sector compensation in recent years. Our federal government is also upside down financially, only with more zeroes at the end of the numbers. . . .

Overseas governments are in a similar pickle, and their citizens are doing something about it: They're revolting (double entendre intended). In France, labor unions and students have staged protests and general strikes, outraged over the government's perfectly reasonable proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. . . .[Western European countries] nations spend a much smaller share of their gross domestic product on defense than we do, and they're still going broke. This is about the inevitable collapse of the democratic socialist welfare state. In the name of "social justice," compassion knows no economic bounds. Well, the bounds are there whether or not democratic socialists know or care about them. In the prophetic words of Margaret Thatcher, "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

Our current spending levels exceed our practical tax capacity. No nation can tax itself rich. It can only produce itself rich. Excessive tax rates are the enemy of production and a barrier to the creation of societal wealth. You can soak the rich . . . and you still won't come up with nearly enough revenue to close this runaway spending gap. . . . The economic solution is obvious: Government must spend less — much less — on all kinds of things at the federal and state levels.

He closes by identifying his position with those of the Revolutionary War Americans.

Shorter version: Stop spending money to help poor people, stop taxing rich people, and pay civil servants less.

What's wrong with this analysis?

1. The federal deficit is mostly due to unfunded increases in defense spending and tax cuts, with rising health care costs as a secondary cost. Other welfare state spending has not increased and the American welfare state is one of the most miserly in the developed world.

2. The biggest culprits in state budget deficits are cyclical drops in revenue caused by an unprecedentedly deep recession and rising prison spending. Colorado is very close to the bottom nationally in its spending on P-12 education, higher education and other social programs. Medicaid doctors are getting paid far less than market rates. Both the state and federal government are underfunding our roads and bridges. We do not have a $1 billion shortfall in Colorado because Colorado is overspending on social services. We have a $1 billion shortfall because we have no rainy day fund (as TABOR basically insisted), and because we made permanent tax cuts during a temporary economic boom that inflated tax revenues.

3. The empirical evidence makes its unequivocally clear that low tax rates and tax cuts do not spur economic development. While correlation is not causation, you can't have causation without correlation and there is no correlation between low taxes or tax cuts and economic growth, indeed, to the extent that there is a relationship, higher taxes are associated empirically with stronger economic growth. The truth of the matter is that not buying enough government services is bad for the economy too. Goods and services aren't worthless to the economy just because the government writes the check, and the people who get government spending inject it into the economy again faster than the rich who get tax cuts.

4. The payroll cost of government pensions in Colorado is very close to the cost of Social Security (which they replace) and a typical private sector 401(k) plan. The benefits are generous compared to typical private sector retirement plans and Social Security combined, but only because the state treasurer has managed PERA funds better than the private sector alternative. More generally, the benefits at government jobs aren't nearly as sweet as Republicans would have you believe. The health insurance deal, for example, is typically about the same.

5. Government, in general, pays top executives and the senior managers who work for them far less than comparable private businesses do. Michael Bennet did not leave his job as a corporate lawyer to become Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools because the pay for the job was so good. The guy who is in charge of running the entire immigrations and customs enforcement office for the United States makes about the same amount of money as a typical owner of a single McDonald's franchise store, or a junior associate attorney at a Wall Street law firm. Midlevel government workers earn salaries similar to those of midlevel private sector workers. Workers at the bottom in government come out a bit better than their private sector counterparts in job security and compensation, but also perform consistently with quality work, and the differential isn't what is breaking the nation's government sector budgets.

But, Rosen has given you the GOP line, such as it is.

READ MORE - The Republican Line On The Economy