Week Six Written Assignment - GOVT 2302 / 2306

Just below I posted on the conflict between the Canadian Corporation building the Keystone XL Pipeline and the owners of the property they want to build on. This conflict illustrates the ongoing fight over the extent of imminent domain in the state. What can be acquired by the government and why? and what cannot?

I want you to research this specific conflict and speculate on what it tells us about the extent of property rights in the state.

Week Six Written Assignment - GOVT 2301 / 2305

As of Monday, October 1st the Supreme Court is back in session. I had a separate post on this below. Already it has agreed to hear two controversial cases involving affirmative action and gay marriage. I want you to search around and find what various commentators are saying about the upcoming session and detail what it will likely decide on this term.

For bonus points, speculate on what impact the outcome of the upcoming election is likely to have on the composition of the court.

From the Chronicle: Texas' clout in Congress may erode

This isn't a new story. Texas enjoyed tremendous influence in Congress throughout the 20th Century, but not so much since then.

From the Chron:

Texans are scrambling to salvage the Lone Star State's clout in the Republican-led House of Representatives as post-election changes are expected to strip two veteran lawmakers of committee chairmanships.

Six-year term limits are ending Rep. Lamar Smith's command of the wide-ranging 39-member House Judiciary Committee, an assignment the San Antonio Republican has used to showcase immigration and law enforcement issues crucial to Texas.

And Rep. Ralph Hall is preparing to step down as chairman of the 40-member House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, where the Rockwall Republican has spotlighted issues of concern to NASA and Houston's Johnson Space Center. 

Keystone Pipeline v Texas Property Rights

The Canadian company that want to build the portion of the Keystone XL pipeline through Texas has to do so through a lot of property. It is hopeful the courts will see things its way and allow it to declare eminent domain in order to allow it to build.

But it is finding some obvious resistance. Striking the right balance between private proerty rights and the right of a company to provide "common" benefit to aquire property to do it.

StateImpact reports on the curent controversy and the difficulty that lies ahead in resolving it. Texas courts and at least one committee in the legislature are tackling the issue.

Texas Tribune weighs in as well. 

Do Bible verses on football "run-through" signs violated the establishment clause?

Looks like we will find out sometime in the near future.

This seems to be an interesting look at how schools struggle with student led attempts to promote a religious point of view in a public setting where there is a requirement that the institution itself be neutral.

Cheerleaders at Kountze High School have been using Bible quotes on signs at football games, but have been prevented from doing so by the KISD's superintendent on the legal advice of the Texas Association of School Boards. Past court decisions have maintained that school sponsored groups can be taken as sending a message that the public school - meaning the state - is endorsing a specific religious point of view at the expense of others.

Some of the cheerleader's parents filed suits and obtained a restraining order from a judge. The order mandates "the Kountze Independent School District to "cease and desist" from preventing high school cheerleaders from displaying the large paper banners, through which football players ran at the start of games." The Texas Attorney General argues that the signs do not violate First Amendment rights and has offered to help the cheerleaders.

A hearing is scheduled October 4th, so we'll keep up with this story. It could be with us a while.

Related links, stories, interested groups:
- Kountze High School Cheerleaders Fight to Use Bible Verses as Signs at Football Games.
- Judge Allows Kountze High School Cheerleaders to Use Bible Banners.
- Texas AG offers to help school district in battle over religious banners.
- First Amendment Center
- American United for the Separation of Church and State
- Liberty Institute
- Freedom from Religion Foundation.
- Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe
- Texas Association of School Boards.

SC October 2012 Term begins tomorrow

The NYT lays out what seems to lay ahead:

The coming term will probably include major decisions on affirmative action in higher education admissions, same-sex marriage and a challenge to the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those rulings could easily rival the last term’s as the most consequential in recent memory.

The theme this term is the nature of equality, and it will play out over issues that have bedeviled the nation for decades. “Last term will be remembered for one case,” said Kannon K. Shanmugam, a lawyer with Williams & Connolly. “This term will be remembered for several.”

The term will also provide signals about the repercussions of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s surprise decision in June to join the court’s four more liberal members and supply the decisive fifth vote in the landmark decision to uphold President Obama’s health care law. Every decision of the new term will be scrutinized for signs of whether Chief Justice Roberts, who had been a reliable member of the court’s conservative wing, has moved toward the ideological center of the court.

“The salient question is: Is it a little bit, or is it a lot?” said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for the 26 states on the losing side of the core of the health care decision.

The Unwritten Constitution

Much of what determines what governments do is not written down in the Constitution. A few writers have tackled what that means:

- America's Unwritten Constitution.
- The Missing Unwritten Constitution
- Political Norms and the Unwritten Constitution.
- The Presidential Selection Process.

What impact do uninformed voter have on elections?

Not much apparently.

Are polls oversampling Democrats?

We will be discussing public opinion and polling at some point in the future, and here's a controversy getting to the heart of how pollsters try to measure future events. Polls which ask respondents who they will vote for have to determine the likelihood that that respondent will in fact vote. More broadly, it means that they have to determine what the breakdown or Democratic and Republican voters will be. It varies from election to election, but generally more people identify themselves as Democrat than Republican. Pollsters are estimating that the electorate will skew slightly more (4% or so) Democrat than Republican. Some Republicans are questioning whether this assumption is warranted and whether Romney is performing better than he actually is.

Here is one of many articles written about this point. Good stuff for figuring out electoral polls actually work.

Whjat does the beer you drink say about who you vote for and how politically active you are?

I'm not afraid to bring up tough, controversial issues.

From the National Journal: Horatio Alger, RIP

Via The Dish: Evidence that upward mobility - the chance that people can rise in income from one generation to the next - is declining. Something to consider as we begin to consider social welfare policy:

Americans love to believe that anyone can get ahead, that they can build a better life than their parents had, simply by working hard enough. The evidence suggests, however, that this is less and less the case. Just working hard will no longer suffice, especially for Americans who haven’t been born with wealth or particular talents. More and more, education has become the key to moving up—from poverty into the middle class, from the middle class into affluence—or to holding onto the middle-class lifestyle in which one was raised.

There is also growing—though still nascent—evidence that from one American generation to the next, mobility is declining. It’s getting harder, that is, to work your way into a higher income level than the one into which you were born. A son’s adult income in the United States is about half dictated by how much his father made, a percentage that is nearly as high as in any country in wealth-by-birthright Europe, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. In Europe, family connections and the circumstances of one’s birth are considered crucial determinants of success, a consequence of the entrenched aristocracies in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, Italy and France.

This is far from the up-by-the-bootstraps, Horatio Algeresque self-image that most Americans hold dear. In the United States, immobility is a way of life, especially for the very rich and the very poor. Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill estimates that 40 percent of children born into the topmost or bottom income quintile won’t budge as adults from where they began. Katharine Bradbury, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, agrees. “Most of the long-term poor are stuck at the bottom; most of the long-term rich have a strong grip on the top; and each of these two groups is somewhat more entrenched than the corresponding groups 20 years earlier,” she concluded in a research paper last spring.

The Texas Budget Compact

Governor Perry wants changes made to Texas' budgeting process.

His thoughts here: Texas Budget Compact.

Support from the president of the Texas Association of Business here.

Story in the Texas Tribune:

From Balkanization: B.U. Symposium on Living Originalism and The Living Constitution

For our ongoing look at disputes about how the Constitution ought to be interpreted. Here are a variety of takes on whether it should be though of as a dynamic document that ought to evolve with the times.

Worh a look: The Roots of the Living Constitution.

96% of Americans receive federal assiatnce of some kind

From the Monkey Cage and the New York Times:

We have unique data from a 2008 national survey by the Cornell Survey Research Institute that asked Americans whether they had ever taken advantage of any of 21 social policies provided by the federal government, from student loans to Medicare. These policies do not include government activity that benefits everyone — national defense, the interstate highway system, food safety regulations — but only tangible benefits that accrue to specific households.

The survey asked about people’s policy usage throughout their lives, not just at a moment in time, and it included questions about social policies embedded in the tax code, which are usually overlooked.

What the data reveal is striking: nearly all Americans — 96 percent — have relied on the federal government to assist them. Young adults, who are not yet eligible for many policies, account for most of the remaining 4 percent.

In The Submerged State, the author points out the invisible ways that government provides assistance for people - may of which are deliberately made invisible.

More on the rise in local debt

This builds off a post below regarding the rising level of local debt in the state.

The Texas Comptrollers office has released a report - Your Money and Local Debt - pointing out the rising level of local debt over the past ten years. She argues that not enough information is provided people about the amount of money already owed "for roads, schools and other public projects."

The Chronicle comments on the plan, and point out that critics argue that increased local debt is a consequence of decreased state support for local services. They add this nugget from Harris County Judge Ed Emmett:

Although Harris County has no bond proposals on the ballot this fall, County Judge Ed Emmett criticized the report's use of population growth and inflation as a benchmark to compare spending and debt. The state built the University of Texas and Texas A&M University with proceeds from oil discoveries, Emmett said, and could not have done so if it had been constrained by that alone. "The Ship Channel, the highway system, all those things were built in anticipation of future growth, not waiting until you get the growth and then saying, 'OK, now you can spend the money,' " he said.
Emmett stressed the difference between debt backed by property taxes and that backed by revenues, such as tolls paid to the Harris County Toll Road Authority.
Combs acknowledged that "there is plenty of good debt" that voters approve to help finance highway and water-related projects, for example. Still, she charged that too many governmental bodies are piling up debt without regard to its impact on future generations of Texans. "Have they done all their due diligence? Have they tried as hard as they know how to be strategic, to be careful?"

She makes this recommendation for how referenda for bond approvals ought to be presented to the public:

Combs suggested several ways to make debt obligations more transparent. As new debt is presented to voters for approval, her report recommended including on the ballot the amount of outstanding debt, debt service, per capita obligation, the amount of new debt, estimated debt service and the estimated per capita burden for proposed bonds.

Democracy is different for the wealthy

Here's a table from Gilen's work referred to below. When shifts in the preferences of high income people change, policies are more likely to change than when those of low or middle incomes do.



This makes sense when we think of policy makers - especially legislators - as being self interested actors who wish to maximize their re-election chances. Back those who can help - or hurt - you.

Does this suggest we ought to consider the US to be more an oligarchy than a democracy? A good discussion question for class.

Why worry at all about the working class vote?

A few posts below some clarifying detail - regionalism - was provided about the white working class vote for Obama and Romney. Buried in some of the links provided was a more ominous note about whether their vote was even worth worrying about as a purely policy making matter, this applies to anyone in, or any group representing, the needs of the lower classes (the poor and kinda not so well off).

Policymakers tend to not pay attention to them, and shifts in their attitudes about public policy tend to have little or no impact on policy. This is not true for the wealthy. This seems like an obvious intuitive point, but some research has been published providing empirical proof.

Here's a link to work done by Martin Gilens who claims that inequity in the responsiveness of elected officials threatens the ability of the US to call itself a democracy:

In a democracy, all citizens—the rich, middle-class, poor alike—must have some ability to influence what their government does. Few people would expect that influence to be identical: those with higher incomes and better connections will always be more influential. But if influence becomes so unequal that the wishes of most citizens are ignored most of the time, a country’s claim to be a democracy is cast in doubt. And that is exactly what I found in my analyses of the link between public preferences and government policy in the U.S.
And here's a link to a recent book - the Unheavenly Chorus  - that looks at the nature of organized interest in the nation and come to the same conclusion:


The Unheavenly Chorus is the first book to look at the political participation of individual citizens alongside the political advocacy of thousands of organized interests--membership associations such as unions, professional associations, trade associations, and citizens groups, as well as organizations like corporations, hospitals, and universities. Drawing on numerous in-depth surveys of members of the public as well as the largest database of interest organizations ever created--representing more than thirty-five thousand organizations over a twenty-five-year period--this book conclusively demonstrates that American democracy is marred by deeply ingrained and persistent class-based political inequality. The well educated and affluent are active in many ways to make their voices heard, while the less advantaged are not. This book reveals how the political voices of organized interests are even less representative than those of individuals, how political advantage is handed down across generations, how recruitment to political activity perpetuates and exaggerates existing biases, how political voice on the Internet replicates these inequalities--and more.

In a true democracy, the preferences and needs of all citizens deserve equal consideration. Yet equal consideration is only possible with equal citizen voice. The Unheavenly Chorus reveals how far we really are from the democratic ideal and how hard it would be to attain it.

2301 and 2305 students who have finished reading through Fed 10 and our subsequent analysis of interest groups should not find these allegations surprising.

From the Texas Tribune: Court Finds Open Meetings Act Constitutional

The Texas Open Meetings Act requires that state and local level government meetings - especially meetings where city business might be discussed - be public. Members of the Alpine City Council who were charged with a violation of the law claimed that it violated their free speech rights.

The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. The need for transpereny in government transcends free speech.

From the story:

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed lower court rulings Tuesday that the Texas Open Meetings Act is constitutional in response to a lawsuit filed by city council members from Alpine and other municipalities.


. . . The 5th Circuit court responded to the case Tuesday by affirming a Western Texas District Court's ruling that the act is a “content-neutral time, place, or manner restriction” on speech. The court’s decision states that since the act does not regulate the content of speech, it is not unconstitutional.

William McKamie, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, said they will continue to pursue the case.

“Looking at the way the decision is written,” McKamie said, “we think we have a better-than-average chance of having a full-court review, and maybe having the Supreme Court look at it.”
For background:

- Open Meetings Act Made Easy.
- Open Meetings Handbook.
- Government Code: Open Meetings.
- The 5th Circuit Decision.

From David Brooks: The Conservative Mind

The NYT columnists provides an inside look at conflict within the conservative movement between the economic and traditional conservatives, and the consequences of the increased influence the economic conservatives (like Paul Ryan) have at the moment.

. . . there were the economic conservatives. These were people that anybody following contemporary Republican politics would be familiar with. They spent a lot of time worrying about the way government intrudes upon economic liberty. They upheld freedom as their highest political value. They admired risk-takers. They worried that excessive government would create a sclerotic nation with a dependent populace.

But there was another sort of conservative, who would be less familiar now. This was the traditional conservative, intellectual heir to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and Catholic social teaching. This sort of conservative didn’t see society as a battleground between government and the private sector. Instead, the traditionalist wanted to preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighborhood, religion, city government and national government.

Because they were conservative, they tended to believe that power should be devolved down to the lower levels of this chain. They believed that people should lead disciplined, orderly lives, but doubted that individuals have the ability to do this alone, unaided by social custom and by God. So they were intensely interested in creating the sort of social, economic and political order that would encourage people to work hard, finish school and postpone childbearing until marriage.
He's concerned that the goals of the economci conservatives make the goals of the traditionlist more difficult to accomplish.

From the Texas Tribune: GOP Candidates Walk Fine Line Between Primary, General

The following story hit on a point we will concentrate on more fully as we begin to discuss elections soon. In order to win primary elections, candidates have to earn the votes of party identifiers - which means they have to take relatively extreme ideological positions. But these positions can make them uncompetitive in the general election, where more moderate and independent voters are likely to turn out. So candidates have to moderate their tone accordingly if they want to win, but this might make them unpopular to the party base.

Its a delicate dance, the story points out that it is increasingly common in Texas elections:

In the primaries, Republican candidates in particular answer to their party’s purists and, in the general election, to everybody who votes.

The state’s political maps put most candidates in safe zones, where Republicans do not have to worry about moderate or liberal voters, and Democrats do not have to worry about moderates and conservatives. The rest have to get out of their primaries without committing to anything that will endanger them in November.

They have to walk a line, sticking with conservative colleagues on legislative votes, but doing it without imperiling their re-elections.

Members of Congress are familiar with that terrain, but on the scale that has partisanship on one end and local issues on the other, Texas legislative races used to skew toward the local.

HPD officers kill double amputee

A great example of the coercive power of government. A wheelchair bound man is killed by officers who mistook his pen for a weapon (which they are in a sense).

The Chronicle reports that the HPD chief has asked the FBI to investigate the shooting, which some are using to call for reforms in the department.

Absentee Ballots Sent

The election has officially begun in Texas. County clerks have been sending out absentee ballots to those eligible to receive them: Military and overseas voters, as well as the elderly, disabled, and those who will be out of town on voting day.

Here's a guide to absentee voting, and additional information from the Texas Secretary of State's office.

Ballots can be requested until October 30.

Ballotpedia has background on absentee ballot voter fraud, with special attention paid to Texas - of course.

The Oops Diaries

A Texas Tribune reporter has written an account of what may have been the worst presidential campaign in history.

This promises to be a good inside look at contemporary campaigning.

From The Texas Tribune: Texas House Speaker Promises Water Focus

This builds on theme, Texas' concerns with the future availability of water:


Texas House Speaker Joe Straus promised to work on water issues and protect private property rights at the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers  Association annual meeting Tuesday in Austin.

“When the 83^rd legislature convenes in January, we’re going to have a unique opportunity to address the huge growth Texas is experiencing,” Straus said. “Water will be at the center of the discussion.”

Straus remarked on the vital role of water in Texas’ economy and cited the drought and 2011’s brutal heat as reasons to focus on conservation efforts.  “I don’t want to reach a day where a Texas company announces it’s moving to Florida or Ohio because of water issues,” he said.

Here's a link to info on the interest group he spoke to: the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Its a very old group - dating to 1877. Here's their website.

The trick will be developing projects which address the general need for water in the state which doe not conflict with the property rights of large scale landowners. Anticipate conflict.

Blackboard still down

All assignments due this week will be due next Monday, and those due next Monday will be due the following week - after that, the schedule will be adjusted. Consult your syllabus for further info.

Since we have some down time suddenly, I suggest getting work done on the 1000 word report. Consider this an opportunity.

From the Congressional Research Service: Taxes and the Economy: An Economic

The Congressional Resrach Service issued a report analyzing tax rates and job growth over the past 60 years and finds no evidence that tax cuts are related to job growth.

Read the report here.

Commentary from the Atlantic, plus some handy graphics:

The unemployment rate since 1945:

The top end tax rate since 1945:

The White Working Class and Obama

The Public Religion Research Institute clarifies reports suggesting that the white working class is opposed to Obama, its the Southern white working class primarily. See more here, here and here. This reflects the ongoing realignment of the South from Democrat to Republican over the past two generations.

Should capital gains and corporate taxes rates be lower?

Some intriguing arguments that they should be:

The Tax Policy Center argues that the burden of the corporate income tax rate falls on other, notably labor.

More from Wonkblog here and here.

Week Five Written Assignment Cancelled, etc ....

We'll have a light week so we can review past material, deal with the blackboard meltdown, and do any catching up that needed.

So no written assignments this week. I'll have separate announcements for my lecture classes in class and on blackboard when it opens.

Did "We the People" apply to African- Americans at the time of the founding?

A great question.

Justice Clarence Thomas is not certain that it did:

“There was always this underlying belief that we were entitled to be a full participant in ‘we the people,’ ” Thomas told a crowd at the National Archives last week.
“That’s the way we grew up. It was the way the nuns, who were all immigrants, would explain it to us — that we were entitled, as citizens of this country, to be full participants. There was never any doubt that we were inherently equal. It said so in the Declaration of Independence.”

Click here for the video of an interview with Thomas.

Catch up on commentary here, and here.

Some critics of originalism have argued that the original Constitution was illegitimate because it excluded blacks. There is little doubt that the original Constitution tolerated severe racial injustices, most notably slavery. But there is nonetheless a difference between a Constitution that left slavery and other injustices alone (in part because abolition was politically impossible at the time), and one that categorically denied all blacks any “rights which the white man was bound to respect,” as [Roger] Taney put it.

Does "Make No Law" really mean "Make No Law?"

We just touched on the Bill of Rights in American Government, so we wrestled on whether this phrase is absolute in its restriction or if it allows some give (like with falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater).

Some brainy types go at it here:

Note that the First Amendment doesn’t say that Congress shall make no law restricting speech or press; rather, Congress can’t restrict “the freedom of speech” and “the freedom of the press.” Maybe that’s just a fancy way of saying “speech” and “press.” But maybe it suggests that “the freedom of speech” and “the freedom of the press” were references to broader legal concepts that were used to refer to limited freedom, not unlimited freedom. For instance, perhaps the freedom of speech and of the press were understood as excluding libel and slander, or possibly even obscenity, threats, and some other kinds of speech.

And here:

. . . perhaps the Founders, being politicians, enacted a broad generality that they agreed on, even though they had no consensus about exactly what it meant. I’m pretty certain that they did not mean that “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” means that all speech restrictions — or at least all federal speech restrictions — are unconstitutional, period. Which part of “make no law” don’t you understand?, some people colorfully argue. Well, I understand “make no law” just fine, as do those who support the constitutionality of some speech restrictions. The real difficulty is with “the freedom of.”

These are worth a quick read if you have the time. What is the difference between "speech" and "freedom of speech?"

Inspector General reports on Fast and Furious

The report can be found here.

The Washington Post reports on it here:

Federal agents and prosecutors in Phoenix ignored risks to the public and were primarily responsible for the botched effort to infiltrate weapons-smuggling rings in the operation dubbed “Fast and Furious,” according to a report released Wednesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The long-awaited report also criticized senior officials at the Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washington for lax oversight of the attempt to block the flow of weapons to Mexico’s violent drug cartels. Many of the weapons later turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including one where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.

The Hill reports that House Republicans want to see structural changes at the ATF:

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz pleaded with lawmakers on Thursday to make major structural reforms at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in the wake of a botched gun-tracking operation.

“There were a serious lack of controls in place in both the U.S. attorney's office and ATF operation,” Horowitz said at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.

“There has to be a serious review and vetting of operations like this … and how to prevent that going forward, is watching carefully to make sure, in fact, the reforms we're all talking about aren't lost once the headlines of the report go away — that there is oversight.”

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) have pledged to work on reforming the ATF and the U.S. attorney’s office to avoid repeating the mistakes that led to Operation Fast and Furious.

File this under congressional oversight and checks and balances.

Election 2012 Polls

I'll start throwing these out regularly since the election is less than 50 days away.

Nate Silver has gained a reputation as being one of the better election forecasters. He also adds great insight into polling methodology, so he has a lot to teach us about how polls work - and don't work.

Here he argues that Obama's convention bounce - of about 3% - may not be receding. He also points out that polls that reach out to cellphone user show greater support for Obama than those that do not.

From the Texas Tribune: Dallas Aims to Recycle Almost All Garbage by 2040

For out discussion of federalism in general and local governments specifically, the Texas Tribune reports that Dallas wants to be a be a zero waste city within 30 years. Being a Houstonian, I'm resisting adding a punchline. Austin declared a similar goal in 2008:

Houston has not passed a zero-waste plan, but city officials are also re-evaluating how to deal with its trash. Laura Spanjian, the director of Houston’s Office of Sustainability, said the city has already taken steps similar to those in the Dallas plan, including expanding recycling services and implementing mandatory yard waste composting and pilot programs for business and multi-family unit recycling. It is also exploring other green initiatives.

Waste disposal is just one of the exciting "many and undefined" powers of state and local governments.

Just to add to the multiple links I'm throwing your way here one to Houston’s Office of Sustainability. Being green is one of the incentives cities like Houston - with low hip quotients among the creative classes - use to make themselves more attractive.

From HC: Houston poverty up, but so is income across the city

The Houston Chronicle reports that while the economy is improving in the city, it isn't improving life for everyone in the city. This tells something significant about the nature of the post recession economy:

"It reminds us that macro-economic indicators used to measure general well-being are no longer reliable," said Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociology professor who closely follows the city's economic and demographic trends through his annual surveys. "It's a new kind of economy that produces good jobs for the highly skilled and low-pay jobs, no-benefits jobs, for the unskilled. And there are few jobs in between."

. . . The gap . . . is driven by disparities in education and skills. Many jobs in Houston are concentrated in the engineering, health care and oil and gas industries that pay well and require education.

Houston's job increase helped lower the uninsured rate, but so did a provision in the Affordable Care Act. More people ages 19 to 25 have insurance because the law allows families to keep dependents on their plan until age 26, experts said.

From the Texas Tribune: Wainwright to Resign From Texas Supreme Court

This gives the Texas Governor the opportunity to fill the vacated seat. As we will discuss in Texas government, while judges are elected in Texas, it is customary for them to resign early, which gives the governor the opportunity to handpick the successor, who then gets to run for re-election as an incumbent. They are rarely denied re-election. This is an example about how constitutional processes in the state can be avoided.

From the story: Texas Supreme Court Justice Dale Wainwright is resigning at the end of the month to join an Austin law firm, the court announced Wednesday. Wainwright joined the court in January 2003 and ranks third in seniority among the nine justices. Gov. Rick Perry will appoint a replacement who'll be on the ballot in 2014; it's apparently too close to the November election to name a replacement in time to get on this year's ballot.

Conflict over purging voter rolls continues

A recent controversy between the state of Texas and individual counties in the state has emerged over whether the state can force counties to purge voter registration rolls of the names of people who may be dead, or have moved out of the county.

Counties - especially large ones - are concerned that doing so this close to an election might result in legitimate voters being removed from the rolls - and open themselves up to whatever legal consequences follow. They prefer doing this after the election, but the state in insisting they go forward now.

Here are a few stories related to this. It a good potential future written assignment for GOVT 2306.

- NPR: Many Texans Bereaved Over "Dead" Voter Purge: In Houston, high school nurse Terry Collins got a letter informing her that after 34 years of voting she was off the Harris County rolls. Sorry. "Friday of last week, I got a letter saying that my voting registration would be revoked because I'm deceased, I'm dead. I was like, 'Oh, no I'm not!' " Collins says. In order to stay on the rolls, the 52-year-old nurse had to call and inform the registrar of her status among the living. She tried, but it didn't go so well. "When I tried to call I was on hold for an hour, never got anyone," she says. "I called three days in a row and was on hold for an hour or more."

- HC: Harris County cancels 'dead' voter purge: Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Don Sumners said Monday that he would not purge from the voter roll before the November election any of the 9,018 citizens who received letters from his office in recent days notifying them that they may be dead and are at risk of having their registrations canceled.

However, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, the office that generated the statewide list of about 80,000 voters, said Sumners' move contradicts legislative directives.

"Our office has federal and state requirements to maintain an accurate and secure voter registration list. If any of those people are deceased, the law requires that they be removed from the voter registration list ," Rich Parsons said. "Mr. Sumners' decision would prevent that."

- HC: Who's afraid of zombie voters?: Voter purges are a common event, but usually not this controversial. The difference? In the search for ghost voters, Texas has replaced a scalpel with a proton pack. Changes to the system have turned a reasonable process into a broad swipe that risks kicking out proper voters and undermining the legitimacy of our elections.

While the state previously used data from the Bureau of Vital Statistics, a bill passed last year now requires it to use data from the Social Security Administration. This new list appears to be less accurate, perhaps explaining why people who had been voting for years suddenly found notices of their own ineligibility in their mailboxes.

And rather than taking the burden on itself to check whether the information was accurate, the Texas Secretary of State's office mailed out notices for both strong and weak matches, and burdened citizens with sorting it out. Sending an unverified mass mailing that asks people to confirm their own deaths seems an inefficient and risky way of maintaining voter rolls, especially so close to a major election. And given the problems with voter registration in Harris County over the past few years, and the continuing debate over the discriminatory effect of statewide voter ID laws, we would hope that Texas would be more careful not to risk disenfranchising voters.

- Businessweek: Texas Court Halts Attempt to Purge Voters as Dead: Texas officials were temporarily barred by a state judge from ordering county election officials to purge presumably dead voters from registration rolls because the initiative may violate the election code.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed yesterday by four Texas voters who were told they would be purged from voter- registration lists as deceased. They asked state court Judge Tim Sulak in Austin to stop the state from striking about 77,000 names from the rolls, arguing the plan violates the Texas election code and the U.S. Voting Rights Act.

The secretary of state is “restrained from further instructing the counties to remove any other names from the voter rolls,” Sulak said in his order. “Plaintiffs are entitled to temporary injunctive relief.”

Lawyers for the voters contended the state was required to get pre-approval for rules changes under the federal Voting Rights Act. The law mandates that Texas and other jurisdictions subject to the act get pre-clearance from the U.S. Justice Department or a special three-judge panel to alter electoral procedures.

“There is no statutory authority for this purge,” civil rights lawyer David Richards, who represents the plaintiffs, said in a phone interview while waiting for the judge to rule.

Local debt increases in Texas

Here's a story from Quorum Report about the rising debt in local governments (local jurisdictions they're called in the story) in Texas. It amount to an increase of 36% to a total level of almost $193 billion.

The details are contained in a report issued by the Texas Bond Review Board, as presented to the Pensions, Investments and Financial Services Committee. Part of the problem is that the state has shifted financial burdens to local governments and still uses "antiquated state funding formulas" to determine what level of funding is required by the state to local jurisdictions.

Here's the full story:

Jurisdictions across Texas now carry debt on the books of almost $193 billion, an increase of a third over the last five years and a total that keeps the state pegged as having the second heaviest local debt load in the country.

The Texas Bond Review Board, bowing to public interest, has published its first report on that debt. Executive Director Bob Kline told the Pensions, Investments and Financial Services Committee the increasing debt load is the results of local jurisdictions that moved forward with debt at the height of economy.

“Local debt has increased by 36 percent over the last five years, to $193 billion,” Kline said. “That’s a lot of local debt issuance.”

According to a report issued by the Texas Bond Review Board in May, debt issues by local jurisdictions breaks down as roughly a third to school districts, a third to municipalities and the balance to various other jurisdictions. The total debt per capita has risen from $4,359 in 2002 to $7,507 in 2011.

No jurisdiction has teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in Texas, as they have in other states, but Kline still sees the stressors on local jurisdictions. On the other hand, cities and school districts have steeply increased bond re-fundings. In most cases, the re-fundings bring down interest costs on outstanding bonds.

“That’s a positive out of this,” Kline said. “I think the concern is that the erosion of the tax base and the ability for the debt service to occur.”

Former Superintendent Joe Smith, who tracks school bond and tax rate elections over at the website Texas ISD, agreed that school districts are under additional stress to repay bonds out of current revenue. Despite those limits, many school districts strapped for cash have turned to bonds to pay for items that once came out of operating expenses, such as district-wide technology upgrades.

“I see the stress on funding, even on the operating side,” Smith said. “School districts oftentimes are funding things off of bonds that they once funded off of maintenance and operations.”

The state also has failed to keep up its end of the bargain when it comes to sharing the cost of bond issues, Smith said. The rate for equalizing debt hasn’t been changed in more than a decade, and because it’s equalized to 1999 levels of property wealth, fewer districts qualify for the state subsidies.

“That rate hasn’t changed since 1999, and so more of it is falling on the districts, and the districts don’t have any avenues for meeting the need except for bond issues and tax increases,” said Smith.

Growth hasn’t stopped in Texas, Smith said, but the number of bond issues that have been called in recent years has declined steeply. Putting together a plan to pay off bonds is tough, especially for property poor districts, which typically have much longer bond terms than their property wealthy counterparts, Smith said.

From Citizens for Tax Justice: Who Pays Taxes in America?

This adds to the post below. Citizens for Tax Justice, among other things, point out the total tax burden of people in America. This goes beyond income taxes and bring in state and local taxes, in addition to the various federal taxes on things like gasoline.

Notice that state and local taxes are regressive.

Who does pay taxes anyway?

Romney's comments do raise a question that surfaces from time to time: who pays taxes? and what type of taxes do different people pay? Romney's point was about the income tax. Everyone lays some type of tax. Since we will be discussing budgeting and fiscal policy soon enough, I'll post a few items on this topic starting with this one.

Some smart guys at the Hamilton Project (you should know a few things about Alexander Hamilton by now) posted information about this in April of 2012. I'd recommend at least a glance at it.

A couple points made in the article, the number of people who pay income taxes corresponds to the state of the economy. In 2007, 13% more people paid income taxes than do so now. And the percentage increases when payroll taxes (the money drawn from your check to pay for Social Security and Medicare) is included.
And the percentage of people who pay income taxes varies depending on age. If you are young, you have deductions based on child care - and your income might be low enough to qualify for the earned income tax credit. If you are old - you aren't working most likely. Here's a graph charting this. So one of the factors determining how much someone pays in income taxes is how old one is, meaning how much someone is likely to be earning.

Cameras in phones matter

Since cameras have become ubiquitous, stories like this - Governor Romney's comments before a group of contributors - don't even surprise us anymore.

Its interesting to consider what impact the inability to keep things secret has on politics, and how it alters the nature of governing. We just covered the Constitutional Convention and mentioned that it was done in secret. Since its often considered to have been a well crafted document, one wonders if such a thing might be possible today.

In a broader sense, cell phone cameras ought to be considered when we discuss the media, since they are effective ways to publicize information we might not otherwise get.

Update: BuzzFeed claims to know how the video got leaked.

Internal strife in the Romney campaign?

That's a building theme among political commentators.

Here's Monday's article from Politico detailing the internal conflict, including disputes over who would write Romney's acceptance speech at the RNC. Its a good look inside a presidential campaign.

Interview with Paul Volcker

Volcker was chair of the Federal Reserve from 1979 - 1987 and is credited with bringing down high rates of inflation during that time.

In this Daily Beast interview he discusses the transformation of the banking sector and the increased difficulty of regulating the financial sector in a dynamic environment.

A choice bit: :

- I am struck by the number of not just friends but other observers who share the belief that there has been a real change in the mental approach of people in markets. They used to be more customer-oriented, with some sense of fiduciary responsibility that’s been very much reduced into an impersonal, “you’re a counterparty, you’re not a customer” caveat emptor.

That attitude lies behind a lot of these difficulties and has been spurred by enormous changes in compensation practices that have tempted people to cut corners. I’m afraid that the temptation now becomes greater—that if I can, as they say, cut some corners, maybe I’ll get some of this magic dust myself in proportions that seemed unimaginable a few years ago.

Texas AG wins court decision on registration rules

After a couple significant loses, the Texas AG won a court ruling allowing the state to proceed with a rule regulating third party voter registration activities.

From the FWST:

Texas can enforce its law regulating third-party voter registration activities while a court ruling blocking the measure is on appeal.


The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Thursday granted a request by Texas to put on hold last month's court order barring enforcement of several provisions of the 2011 law. U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa determined that the law probably conflicted with federal rules and the U.S. Constitution.

The stay will allow enforcement of the 2011 law pending the appeal, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said.
A Federal District court had previously granted an infunction against enforcing the law:

U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa of Galveston ruled that a law that prohibits third-party voter registrars from working in more than one county and another that mandates registrars in Texas be residents of the state violate the First Amendment.

“During the 2011 legislative session, the Governor signed two bills that imposed a number of additional requirements,” Costa wrote in his 94-page opinion. “The result is that Texas now imposes more burdensome regulations on those engaging in third-party voter registration than the vast majority of, if not all, other states.”

The judge also struck down provisions that required deputy voter registrars be paid hourly, that prevented registration certificates from being photocopied and that prohibited completed forms from being mailed in to elections officials. A final judgment must still be rendered, Costa declared. Until then, the laws cannot be enforced.

The suit was filed in February against Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade’s office by Voting for America Inc., the voter registration affiliate of Project Vote, a national nonprofit voter education and advocacy organization.
Click here for the opinion.

The Texas AG had been seeking to overturn the injunction for sometime. The story points out that this change in voting rules had been precleared.

Groups opposed to the law are now seeking to take their complaint to the Supreme Court.

Obama drinks beer, Romney doesn't.

Does that matter?

Week four written assignment for all my classes

Its time to give me an idea about what you plan to write on for your 1000 word report.

Write me an introductory paragraph on the specific subject you've chosen - or will desperately chose this week. You aren't committed to the topic, but this should help you get a move on the assignment.

I want you to give special attention to your introductory sentence. Make it a good one.

Can a machine do what I do better than I can?

I suppose this is a question we all have to face at some point. This one seems geared to me.

Does money make a difference in politics, and if so how?

The Monkey Cage comments on a recent article in the NYT which points out how money influences elections, government and public policy in general. They are each worth readings in full, the NYT article for its detail.

The former lists these four specifics influences which may be worth commiting to memory.

Money influences politics by:

■ Affecting who wins a general election;

■ Affecting who wins the nomination, and which candidates are taken seriously (for example, parties are always on the lookout for self-funded candidates, rich people who happen to share the political views of party activists and would like to run for office);

■ Affecting particular bills (estate tax, health care, etc);

■ Affecting officeholders’ priorities (congressmembers are always talking about how much time they feel they need to spend on the phone, begging for money).

From the Atlantic: This Is What Freedom Looks Like

This a very brief note in the Atlantic, but it touches on a theme we covered in the classes where we read through Fed 10. Democracies tend to be disruptive. One way to look at the recent violence in Middle Eastern countries - the ones transformed by the "Arab Spring" - is that its a consequence of the demise of authoritarian rule. Not only are people increasingly free, they are free to express themselves in ways that might seem - excessive.

It probably worth comparing what's going on in the Middle East with our own episodes of violence to see if there's much difference between the two. Remember that the complaint against democracy was its tendency towards violence.

From Jeffery Sachs: Economic Policy Beyond Gimmicks

A noted economist takes the president and Congress to task for pursuing short terms fixes to the economy when the problems we face - in his mind - are structural. Part of his criticism should sound familiar to students who just finished reading Fed 10. Interests who are now benefiting from existing policies are resistant to any change that might undermine those benefits. This is what Jonathan Rauch referred to as Demosclerosis. He calls for policies that focus on investments, not temporary boosts to consumer spending:

The big mistake of Obama and his economic team from the start was to treat the downturn as a temporary recession, albeit a very big one. A temporary recession requires a temporary fix. A structural crisis requires long-term strategies. Here we are in 2012 without any long-term strategies except to wait out the crisis.

Real solutions require fresh strategies to break free of vested interests in energy, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. In other words, in today's political environment, real solutions won't happen any time soon. We are stuck.

.... The question for America is how we are going to break free of this low-level trap. First, we will need a government that is not subservient to the status-quo corporate interests blocking innovation in key sectors such as health, transport, and energy. Second, we need a government that can strategize, not just improvise. Third, we need to end the nonsensical bluster against government. Our specialist scientific agencies are still doing amazing things right before our eyes this year: exploring Mars and unlocking the complex mysteries of the human genome. We could be doing a lot more to solve our social and economic problems and to re-establish our prosperity if we put our confidence back into science, technology, advanced training, and public-private partnerships.

From the Atlantic: That Anti-Muhammad Film: It's Totally Protected by the 1st Amendment

A constitutional scholar argues that the film that seems to have sparked the unrest in the Middle East is constitutinally protected under the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause.

Here's an exerpt from an interview with him, his comments go hand in hand with general points we will be making about the court rules in cases involving uses of First Amendment freedoms that are judged offensive by some and lead to violent retaliation:

As people try to puzzle out whether there is any legal action possible against either the filmmaker or Terry Jones, two ideas keep coming up. One is that the film and the promotion of the film are protected speech, and one is that this has somehow crossed a line, and that either the film itself or Jones's promotion of it constitute something akin to that famous example of "yelling fire in a crowded theater." What's the line between protected speech, even hate speech, and speech that's not protected?


The relevant question is whether or not speech is an incitement to riot, or to produce any other imminent lawless action. Whether it incites violence is the central question -- and that means not just that the speech produces violence, but that the speaker intends it to.

Generally speaking, the rule is you can't be held liable for speech that moves other people to violence unless your speech is intended to producing violence and is likely to almost immediately produce it. That's the point of the familiar example of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater -- you're trying to cause a ruckus. But you can also see why this is not the best example. Sometimes there actually is a fire.

So intent is critical.
Yes. Imagine if somebody digs up a film, made in 1950, that portrays Arabs or Islam in a bad light. I'm sure there are a lot of them. Someone releases it online, and people see it and say it's insulting to Islam and then they riot. Even if someone released the film knowing that it would be likely to produce a riot, that doesn't mean the film was made with the intent of producing a riot.

Given that, it seems like the filmmaker is pretty clearly within his rights in making and releasing the film. But what about Terry Jones? He screened and publicized the trailer as part of a so-called "International Judge Muhammad Day."
The question is still whether Terry Jones is deliberately trying to incite a riot by promoting the speech at issue - and were his actions almost certain to have produced any resulting riot? The case is further complicated by the fact that the riots occur outside the United States. But let's assume that where the riots occur makes no difference. The question would be, are his actions directed to causing the riots?

From the MWJS: Judge throws out Walker's union bargaining law

An illustration of federalism, civil liberties, and the nature of home rule authority. A federal court threw out part, but not all, of Wisconsin's recently passed laws limiting collective bargaining rights for city and state employees:

Gov. Scott Walker's law repealing most collective bargaining for local and school employees was struck down by a Dane County judge Friday, yet another dramatic twist in a year and a half saga that likely sets up another showdown in the Supreme Court.

The law remains largely in force for state workers, but for city, county and school workers the decision by Dane County Judge Juan Colas returns the law to its status before Walker signed the legislation in March 2011.

Colas ruled that the law violated workers' constitutional rights to free speech, free association and equal representation under the law by capping union workers' raises but not those of their nonunion counterparts. The judge also ruled that the law violated the "home rule" clause of the state constitution by setting the contribution for City of Milwaukee employees to the city pension system rather than leaving it to the city and workers. 
- The laws in question: Wisconson Act 10 and Act 32.
- Click here for the judge's ruling, and here for excerpts.

State races v national races

Republicans are focusing more on state races than national races. The following article points out the advantage of doing so:

Of all election outcomes, state legislative races are the likeliest to have a direct impact on the lives of voters. But you wouldn’t know it from the national press. The morning after the 2010 elections, Americans woke up to headlines about a Republican landslide; most of those stories focused on Congress, where a new GOP House majority promised to fight President Barack Obama tooth and nail. What didn’t make so many front pages were Republicans’ historic victories at the state level, as the party wrested control of 21 house and senate chambers from the Democrats. North Carolina had its first Republican senate since 1870; Alabama hadn’t seen a Republican legislature since Reconstruction. Twenty states now had Republicans in charge of the senate, the house, and the governor’s office concurrently. 

While Republican members of Congress were focused on blocking the Democratic agenda, Republican state lawmakers began to drive the national policy debate. They wasted no time slashing social programs, weakening women’s reproductive rights and collective bargaining, and creating new barriers to voting rights. Taking their cues—and often the wording of their bills—from right-wing groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Republicans in the so-called laboratories of democracy began adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to issues from health care to labor to immigration.

Even if the media hasn’t figured out how much state races matter, it’s old news to conservative fundraisers. The sea change of 2010 didn’t happen by accident or Tea Party enthusiasm alone. The election served as an experiment in what big money can do in low-budget state races.

Some random links regarding QE3

For various points of view about the feds recent decision (see post below):

- Wonkbook: Everything you need to know about the Fed's big move.
- The Dish: Bernanke Goes Big, Bernanke Goes Big, Ctd.

From the Pew Center: A Third of Americans Now Say They Are in the Lower Classes

Since the financial crash, people have downgraded their perceived status, and view life as tougher for members of the lower class.

Click for the study here.

Click here for comments on an additional study regarding attitudes about the rich.

From the Atlantic: Moondoggle: The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program

A few days back was the 50th anniversary of JFK's speech in Rice Stadium announcing his goal of sending a man to the moon (and bringing him back alive).

Apparently not everyone was in favor of doing so, a majority was actually against it. Beyond that a great deal of mythology has been built up regarding what was and was not accomplished as a result of the program:


Polls both by USA Today and Gallup have shown support for the moon landing has increased the farther we've gotten away from it. 77 percent of people in 1989 thought the moon landing was worth it; only 47 percent felt that way in 1979.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, a process began that has all but eradicated any reference to the substantial opposition by scientists, scholars, and regular old people to spending money on sending humans to the moon. Part jobs program, part science cash cow, the American space program in the 1960s placed the funding halo of military action on the heads of civilians. It bent the whole research apparatus of the United States to a symbolic goal in the Cold War.

Funny how perceptions of historical events change over time.

QE3 announced

Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernacke announced that the Fed will begin a third round of "quantitative easing." This means that they will purchase bonds (mortgage bonds specifically) in the open market in order to keep interest rates low - the theory being that doing so boosts the economy by making it cheaper for people to borrow money.

They also announced a change in priorities. Among the goals of the Fed is to maintain stable inflation rates and help attain maximum employment. These goals can conflict, so a choice generally has to be made, and usually the Fed has looked primarily at maintaining law interest rates. In their announcement they suggested that they will now begin to also look at the unemployment rate and try to reduce it.

From the NYT:

The Federal Reserve opened a new chapter Thursday in its efforts to stimulate the economy, saying that it intends to buy large quantities of mortgage bonds, and potentially other assets, until the job market improves substantially.

This is the first time that the Fed has tied the duration of an aid program to its economic objectives. And, in announcing the change, the central bank made clear that its primary reason was not a deterioration in its economic outlook, but a determination to respond more forcefully — in effect, an acknowledgment that its incremental approach until now had been flawed.

The concern about unemployment also reflects a significant shift in the priorities of the nation’s central bank, which has long focused on inflation. Inflation is now running below the Fed’s 2 percent annual target. But with the unemployment rate above 8 percent, the Fed’s policy-making committee suggested Thursday that it might tolerate a period of somewhat higher inflation, promising to maintain stimulus efforts “for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens.”
Click here for:

- The press release announcing the decision.
- Story from Bloomberg.
- Quantitative Easing and Bank Lending.
- QE1: financial crisis timeline.
- QE2 was a bust.

Christopher Stevens and the US Foreign Service

We will be discussing the federal bureaucracy soon, and the recent attack on the Libyan Consulate in Benghazi gives us an opportunity to look at who these people are and what they do.

Some scattered links:

- Wikipedia: Christopher Stevens.
- At consulate in Libya, a model diplomat is lost.
- Embassy of the US - Tripoli Libya.

- Wikipedia: Sean Smith.
- Wikipedia: United States Foreign Service.

Fisher v. University of Texas

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear another case involving affirmative action at the University of Texas. The case is Fisher v. University of Texas and concerns the factors the school takes into consideration in admitting the 19% of students who are not enrolled because they graduated in the top 10% of their class.

We will likely discuss this when we hit both civil rights and education policy.

- Wikipedia: Fisher v. University of Texas
- ScotusBlog: Fisher v. University of Texas
- The Other Big Supreme Court Case.

Presidential advice prior to 9/11

An ongoing question since 9/11 has been why wasn't information about the attacks available? A commentator in the NYT argues that the CIA and the Defense Department had different positions on whether Bin Laden was an imminent threat. The CIA said yes, the Defense Department said no. The question became, who had the president's ear?

Should the national government promote scientific research?

Jim Cooper - a member of Congress from Tennessee says yes:

The United States may now risk falling behind in scientific discoveries as other countries increase their science funding. We need to get serious about science. In fact, maybe it’s time for researchers to fight back, to return a comeback for every punch line.

Toward that end, we are announcing this week the winners of the first Golden Goose Awards, which recognize the often-surprising benefits of science to society. Charles H. Townes, for example, is hailed as a primary architect of laser technology. Early in his career, though, he was reportedly warned not to waste resources on an obscure technique for amplifying radiation waves into an intense, continuous stream. In 1964, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov.

Similarly, research on jellyfish nervous systems by Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien unexpectedly led to advances in cancer diagnosis and treatment, increased understanding of brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and improved detection of poisons in drinking water.
Its worth pointing out that there is no "scientific research clause" in the Constitution, so justifying this activity requires a loose reading of constitutional language.

From the Houston Chronicle: Texas spends big bucks suing federal government

Texas Attorney General has been racking up bills suing the national government:

The Texas attorney general's office has filed 24 lawsuits against the federal government since Obama took office — litigation that has cost the state $2.58 million and more than 14,113 hours spent by staff and state lawyers working those cases.

Many of those have resulted in defeats, including the recent high-profile lawsuits defending Texas' strict law requiring voters to show picture ID at the polls and the new state-approved voting districts that a federal appeals court ruled were discriminatory toward minorities. Those two cases alone cost more than $2 million, according to records obtained by The Associated Press using the Freedom of Information Act.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the costs are worth it, calling the litigation "a fight against the unprecedented ideology coming from the Obama administration." In an interview, he said the legal battles he wages are meant to promote industry and protect Texas jobs.

Week Three Written Assignment - GOVT 2302 / 2306

Last week I asked you to look at the relationship between the national government and Texas, specifically the conflict over the Voting Rights Act and its impact on recent changes in Texas' election laws.

This week I want you to look at an interesting conflict between the national government - specifically the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) -  and a nearby local government: the one in Galveston.

Among the things destroyed by Hurricane Ike was public housing on the island. None of it has been rebuilt because of conflicts over how it was to be rebuilt. HUD wants the 569 units destroyed by Ike rebuilt, but a majority in city government want vouchers to be issued which eligible residents can use to get apartments.

The controversy has engulfed the island, and led to a mayor being voted out of office, so its quite the big deal. It also tells us something about the nature of conflict between the national and local governments. I want you to do some research and detail the nature of the conflict. What relevant laws are driving it? What political disputes fuel it? Feel free to take your won approach to the question.

Here are some recent links that might help get you going:

- Galveston Housing Authority.
- Galveston moves toward compliance with HUD ultimatum.
- GHA chairman resigns but decides to stay on.

- Isle voucher advocates may have had their last win.

There's much more.

Week Three Written Assignment - GOVT 2301 / 2305

So the Republicans and Democrats had their conventions, and each produced a platform -  which is a collection of policies and positions that the party delegates agree on. The platform is held out to be the official position the party takes on a number of issues. The terms for each specific position is "plank." Get it? The platform is made up of planks.

Clever I know.

The nasty truth is that there is no mechanism in place to force the party's nominees to run on these positions. Some might in fact make them less competitive than they would otherwise be to the independents that often make the real decisions about who will win the general election. Party nominees also tend to have their own sources of funding, so the party has nothing to force their candidate's hands on this.

Nevertheless, party platforms provide interesting insight into the state of each party at a particular moment in time, and allow for contrasts with each other. In that spirit. I want you to review the platforms of the two major parties and point out any similarities and differences between the two. Based on what you know about public opinion on each plank - which platform might be more or less competitive come November.

Click here for the platforms:

- The 2012 Democratic Platform.
- The 2012 Republican Platform.

If you are feeling ambitious, here's the Libertarian Party Platform, and here's the Green Party Platform.

The New New Deal

This looks like a good read - a detailed account of the stimulus bill.

From the Atlantic: Amid Partisan Bickering, Everyone Agrees: ARPA-E Is a Fascinating Experiment

ARPA-E is an attempt by the Energy Department to replicate for renewable energy what DARPA did for computing and digital technologies:

In previous decades, the Department of Energy drove basic research by operating giant government-funded labs, but under the leadership of Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, the agency has transformed itself into something different: the biggest, greenest venture capital firm in the world.

After receiving an unprecedented surge in funding for renewable energy courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Chu set to work hiring big names from the nation's top research laboratories, in order to staff a new agency called ARPA-E, modeled after DARPA, the R&D wing of the Pentagon. In just three years, ARPA-E has made more than 180 investments in basic research projects in renewable energy, and that's in addition to grants issued by the Department of Energy proper, like the one that funded the Ocean Power Technologies project in Oregon.

What is killing judicial restraint?

The New Republic reviews a book critical of the various theories of constitutional interpretation. The author blames them for the judiciary being less deferential to the legislative branch, which he argues undermines democracy.

Data mining for votes and funds

Data mining is being increasingly used this election, which makes sense since huge databases exist describing more about our lives than we'd really like to know, and increasingly sophisticated data processing techniques are used to obtain desired information from those data bases.

Here are a couple stories about the use of data mining in the current election:

The Washington Post describes how data mining being used to target unregistered voters, and the Huntington Post describes how the Romney Campaign is using it to target potential wealthy donors.

If you are looking for classes to take that could provide you lucrative skills, I'd suggest statistics.

The limits of party power

ABC13 reports on the tension between party candidates and party officials. It'll help us come to terms with the ongoing conflict over control of political parties.

The Harris County Democratic Party has been denied the right to remove a Democratic candidate for Harris County District Attorney. Lloyd Oliver is a perennial candidate whose allegiance seems loose. There's little evidence he's a committed member of the party, and there are some who question his fitness for office should he win.

All together, the party would like to remove him from the ticket, but he won the Democratic primary election, so he has the approval of the Democratic electorate. Party officials sued to get him thrown off the ballot, alleging that comments he made that supported a Republican disqualified him.

They sued to get him off the ballot, but Judge Bill Burke of the 189th District Court disagreed. There's no reason to overrule the decision of the electorate - even if doing so may in fact be in the best interest of the party. Missouri Republicans are dealing with a similar issue with Todd Akin.

The story contains an interesting exchange between the lawyer representing the Democrats and the reporter covering the story:

Ted Oberg: So why do you even have elections?
Dion Ramos, Democratic party lawyer: I can't answer that for you.
Oberg: Time out. You represent the Texas Democratic Party. Please tell me why they have elections if the executive committee can overrule them?
Ramos: Well, I think that that's something that is inherent in the power of a private political party.
 The courts long ago decided that though parties are private organizations, they serve public functions so they cannot make arbitrary decisions over matters - like elections - that have public consequences.

Animal trials

Apparently there's a long history of putting animals on trial for violating laws - including killing people. Here's a look at it. It's a fun read if you're up to it.

From the Houston Chronicle: Taxpayer-funded incentives to be doled out by downtown group

For our discussion of single purpose governments, a look at the power of Houston's Downtown Management District. Houston's city council voted to grant them additional authority over how funds collected from downtown property owners will be used to provide incentives to build homes in east downtown. The purpose of the initiative is to make the city more attractive for conventions.

From HC's story:

Until Wednesday, the City Council made all the decisions on who gets a tax break to build. By a 13-1 vote, the council handed over that power to the Downtown Management District for residential projects between Fannin and Highway 59 for the next four years.

The Downtown Living Initiative approved by the council grants a blanket $15,000-per-unit tax rebate to developers of the next 2,500 residential units close to the George R. Brown Convention Center, Minute Maid Park and the Toyota Center. The incentive is designed to lure developers that currently balk at the high land costs and parking shortages in the area. If it works as hoped, the initiative would help nearly double the number of residences downtown.

Those condos, apartments and lofts would fill with property- and sales-tax-paying residents on what are now vacant lots, prompt retailers to locate nearby and engineer a vibrant 24/7 street life near the convention center that would make the city more competitive in attracting conventions.
Opponents are concerned about what seems to be an abdication of the power of elected officials to make decisions and granted it to board members appointed by the mayor and approved by the council.

Here's a description of the Downtown Management District - which is a Municipal Management District - from their website.

The 2016 Beloit College Mindset List

This is always depressing for us elderly.

File it under generational politics.

Looks matter ....

... and here is scientific proof that Romney is good looking.

That can make a difference in an image saturated environment.

The US Secretary of State cannot attend a political convention

This is news to me I have to admit.

Federal law -- the Hatch Act of 1939, amended by Congress in 1993 -- specifically prohibits secretaries of state from attending political conventions, and the State Department's own ethics guidelines also rule out political activity.

A senior administration official, speaking on background because the official is not authorized to speak on the record, told CNN, "The law carved out the State Department as having a unique position in the government in that foreign policy, by its nature, must remain nonpartisan/apolitical."

"So State Department officials -- specifically those who are presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate (i.e. the secretary) -- are far more restricted than, say, someone who works at the Education Department."

The Hatch Act was designed to restrict the ability of executive branch officials from engaging in political activities - which is difficult if you consider that top level executive branch personnel are political by nature - not so lower level personnel though. Its one of many laws passed over history dealing with, and attempting to curtail, political corruption

We'll discuss these further in various parts of each class.

- Wikipedia: Hatch Act.
- From the Office of Special Counsel: List of Permitted and Prohibited Activities.
- National Archives: Hatch Act and Political Activities.

The Texas Tribune interviews the new head of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department

This adds to the section on criminal justice in Texas - and due process in general.

The newly formed Texas Juvenile Justice Department was created to replace the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission and the Texas Youth Commission following years of physical abuse.

Michael Griffiths provides useful insight into the agency and the problems of juvenile justice in the state. It's a helpful look inside the Texas bureaucracy.

Texas Senate Committee holds hearings on solitary confinment

This Texas Tribune story builds off a post below - maybe its a trend? In the section on public policy we discuss agenda setting, and how certain events can cause items to come on the public agenda. Perhaps this has happened to whether solitary confinement is appropriate punishment, or is cruel and unusual.

The story highlights hearings held by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and its chairman John Whitmire, who represents a district in Houston, note the spin he's putting on the issue - how he's defining it:


While solitary confinement in prisons is rising as a national issue because of concerns about its psychological effect on individual inmates, Texas lawmakers are worried in particular that inmates are released with no transition between solitary confinement and the free world.

"The longer you leave someone in there without rehabilitation, there is a possibility they will come out more dangerous,” Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, said Tuesday at a committee hearing.

Though the U.S. still leads the world in its rate of solitary confinement, Texas has seen a slight decline in its number of inmates held in administrative segregation. There are 8,144 inmates (including roughly 80 women) under the classification in Texas, down from 8,701 in 2010 and 9,752 in 2005. The average stay in administrative segregation is 3.2 years, but some inmates have been there for more than two decades.

So we are less worried about the effect solitary confinement has on the prisoner, but the effect it can have on society once these people finish their terms.