Sunset Review -- 82nd Legislature

Once every twelve years, each executive agency in the state is reviewed in order to determine whether the agency's functions are still necessary.

This year the following 28 agencies are to be reviewed:

*Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Coastal Coordination Council
*Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)
Electronic Government Program Management Office of the Department of Information Resources
Emergency Communications, Commission on State
Environmental Quality, Texas Commission on
*Equine Research Account Advisory Committee
Forest Service, Texas
Hearing Instruments, State Committee of Examiners in the Fitting and Dispensing of
Housing and Community Affairs, Texas Department of
*Housing Corporation, Texas State Affordable
Information Resources, Department of
Injured Employee Counsel, Office of
*Insurance Counsel, Office of Public
*Insurance, Texas Department of
*Juvenile Probation Commission, Texas
On-site Wastewater Treatment Research Council
Public Finance Authority, Texas
Public Utility Commission of Texas
Public Utility Counsel, Office of
*Racing Commission, Texas
Railroad Commission of Texas
Soil and Water Conservation Board, State
Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, State Board of Examiners for
*Transportation, Texas Department of
Water Development Board, Texas
Workers' Compensation, Texas Department of Insurance Division of
*Youth Commission, Texas

*Subject to a focused, limited scope, or special purpose review

- Sunset Advisory Commission
- Guide to the Sunset Process.

Chubbing and Sunset Bills

Again from Burka Blog, background on two rules changes members of the Texas House are looking to change

Oil Spill Commission Issues Report

From the NYT:

The presidential panel investigating the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico recommended on Tuesday that Congress approve substantial new spending and sweeping new regulations for offshore oil operations at a time when the appetite for both is low.

Releasing its final report, the commission found that the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill arose from a preventable series of corporate and regulatory failures. It warned that unless industry practices and government regulation improved, another such accident was inevitable.

“If dramatic steps are not taken,” said Bob Graham, a former Democratic senator from Florida and a co-chairman of the commission, “I’m afraid at some point in the coming years another failure will occur, and we will wonder why did the Congress, why did the administration, why did the industry allow this to happen again.”

- Wikipedia: Oil Commission
- The Report

Notes on the Texas Speaker's Race

From Burka Blog, some background on Joe Straus' Reelection as Texas Speaker. Straus faced a fierce Tea Party inspired challenge, but held on. This is being taken by some that the Tea Party Caucus' influence in the legislature may not be quite as strong as once predicted.

Congressional Legitimacy

In 2301 we discussed the concept of legitimacy and how the legislative branch -- specifically the House of Representatives -- is designed to lend legitimacy to government. Recent low approval ratings can be attributed partly to the fact that Republicans were in the minority and therefore didn't approve of much of what Democrats were doing in the institution. I suggested that perhaps attitudes would change now that the Republicans are in charge, and that one of the positive consequences of periodic elections is that it allows those not in power to increase their influence, and perhaps their assessments of the institution.

Here's proof, albeit limited, from the Gallup Poll. Republican approval ratings of Congress have increased from 7% to 22% since the election. Still low, but it suggests an obvious connection between elections and attitudes about the institution.

Very Conservatives vs. Everyone Else

The Gallup Poll discovers that self identified "very conservatives" prefer members of Congress vote belief over compromise, while everyone else prefers the opposite.

Gun Control is Back on the Agenda

Who could have predicted this? The issue seemed dead and buried, but the Tucson shooters mental state seem to have caused some to wonder whether we make it too easy for the mentally disturbed to purchase guns.

- Commentary in the NYT.
- Shooting Sets Own Agenda.
- Republican Congressman Introduces Gun Control Legislation.

Regarding Originalism

The NYT has a terrific piece on the various issues associated with originalism and highlights Antonin Scalia's pragmatic approach to using the doctrine in deciding how to rule on cases before him. Best quote: "I am an originalist. I am a textualist. I am not a nut.”

In both 2301 and 2302 we will dig into controversies associated with how the constitution ought to be interpreted. Consider this required reading.

Update: Linda Greehouse adds to the discussion.

Ogden V Perry

Paul Burka summarizes the opening day speeches in the Legislature:

Today’s Senate session cast in stark relief two different leadership styles: those of Governor Rick Perry and of Senator Steve Ogden, who was elected Senate president pro tempore today. Perry expressed his belief that the Legislature could produce a balanced budget with no additional revenues, noting that the public had spoken loudly on Election Day in favor of a conservative budget. “I am confident we are going to heed their message.” Then, he announced he was giving emergency designation to two items of legislation, one regarding eminent domain and one abolishing sanctuary cities in Texas. The latter earned Perry applause from the Senate gallery.

Then, Ogden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, laid out in direct and unvarnished terms the perilous condition of the state’s fiscal house. Medicaid, the program for providing health care to the poor, will cost the state billions more this biennium because the federal match will drop from 70/30 to 60/40. In real dollars, that will bring in $4.5 billion fewer dollars than the more generous previous match. He decried the complicated formulas used by the federal government for reimbursing hospitals for various procedures and said that a managed care system could save the state $4 billion. “Our first job is to figure out how to save Medicaid. We have got to reform it,” he said.

Jared Loughner and Conspiracy Theories

He was a big fan of them apparently.

The Texas Legislature Convenes; Joe Straus Relected Speaker

From the Austin American Statesman.

A Hungarian Tyranny?

We've discussed separated powers in some of our introductory lecture and mentioned that a major concern of the framers of the constitution was that these separated powers would become concentrated, generally at the hands of an ambitious office holder. The internal design of each institution is, according to Madison, designed to ensure that the ambitions in one institution would be checked by those in another.

Apparently Hungary lacks such a design. The current government has embarked on a series of institutional changes that grant it control over all governing institutions, in addition to the media. Critics see this as a step towards autocratic rule.

The Budget's Impact in Higher Education

From a recent article in the Austin American Statesmen:

The state's higher education agency, the governor's office and business-oriented groups are sending an increasingly clear message to faculty members at public colleges and universities in Texas: Step it up.

The state Legislature is expected to consider various suggestions intended to increase faculty teaching loads, raise graduation and course completion rates, and otherwise boost the productivity of the academic enterprise. 

Many of these changes are driven by the Higher Education Coordinating Board, which over sees higher education policy in the state. Since Governor Perry has been in office so long, he has been able to appoint all of the members of the board.

On Political Violence and Violent Speech

The Tucson shooting has kicked up a firestorm over incendiary political speech -- especially speech with violent undertones (if not overtones) -- and whether it is responsible for pushing the Arizona shooter over the edge. If so, is there culpability on the part of the speakers, or are they shielded by the First Amendment to say whatever they choose.

This is not a new controversy, just the latest iteration. It almost always lies at the heart of the speech disputes that wind their way up to the Supreme Court. Fall 2010 students studied the Westboro Baptist Church case (they are very pleased with the shooting by the way) as an example. We should be prepared to discuss whether there ought to be limits to political speech, but also if there are to be limits, how one determines what they are and how they are to implemented in a way that does not make the solution worse than the disease.

Here's some worthwhile debate on the subject.
Should we blame technology?

Has the Tucson Shooting Derailed the Republican Agenda?

Aside from post-poning the planned vote on the bill to repeal health care, the Tucson shooting has focused attention again on gun control - or at least the sale of extended gun clips - and the quality of mental health services. 

The vote for repeal will certainly get back on track, but the national agenda will certainly be impacted by this for more than a little while. It's not inconceivable that it can have an impact on the 2012 election, though that is still far in the future. It will be the Republican leadership's job to make sure this doesn't happen. We will track what they do to make sure this doesn't happen. As with everything else in politics, the question will be how independent voters process these events, and how it affects their opinions of the two parties.

- Public opinion background, Gallup.

$15 Billion? $27 Billion?

State Comptroller Susan Combs, as required, released the Biennial Revenue estimate, but there's confusion over how much the shortfall actually is, and what the consequences of the short fall will be.

- Story in the Chron.

Update 1/11/11

Grits for Breakfast has a good summary of how we get to the two separate figures:

Comptroller Susan Combs issued her proclamation today regarding how much money Texas legislators have to spend in the next biennial budget: $72.2 billion, down from $87 billion in the last budget. But the real budget gap is bigger than the $14.8 billion difference between those numbers, because population growth and inflation means the state must spend more to provide services - particularly for education and healthcare. Also, smoke-and-mirrors tricks from past budgets eventually must be paid for (e.g., the $61 million owed to UTMB for prison healthcare services already provided). Bottom line, according to those who estimate such things, if Texas continued spending at current levels, adjusted upward to pay for those (not really optional) services, the budget would reach $99 billion.

So we're basically $15 billion short (with a big, fat, capital "B") if you consider the baseline what was spent in the last budget; $27 billion short if you account for population growth and inflation. (Ross Ramsey at the Texas Tribune walks through all this in more detail, for those interested.)

The $15 billion figure refers to the shortfall between what revenue was projected by the Comptroller in 2009 to be generated by the Texas Economy in 2010 and 2011, and they are projecting will be generated in 2012 and 2013. The $27 billion figure refers to what woudl be necessary to maintain the existing level of services, especially considering that the state has grown considerably in the past few years, and demands on public services have increased as well. You can take you pick for whichever figure serves your purpose.

- Commentary from the liberal leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities.
- Commentary from the conservative leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation.
- Story in the Texas Tribune.

Looking Ahead

For 2301 and 2302, Here’s a preview of some of the points you will be asked about in the upcoming assessment for week one:


2301
- sovereignty
- keeping the republic / self government
- popular sovereignty
- coercion and consent
- definitions of “government” and “politics.”
- functions of government
- ideology
- definition of conservatism, liberalism
- autocracy, oligarchy, democracy
- tyranny
- totalitarian, authoritarian, Constitutional
- components of democracy

2302

- checks and balances
- implied/reserved/delegated powers
- federalism
- the Bill of Rights
- the 14th Amendment
- the First Amendment
- definition of “constitution,” “government,” “politics.”
- the argument in Declaration of Independence
- democracy, definition, problems
- natural rights
- political parties
- sedition
- tyranny
- autocracy, oligarchy, democracy
- ideology

Anchor Babies and the 14th Amendment

From Slate, an argument that addressing the problem will require a constitutional amendment:

"Anchor babies" are back in the news: Be prepared for another round of railing against the granting of automatic citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. There was a burst of this last summer, when Sen. Lindsey Graham rumbled about pregnant Mexican women crossing the border to give birth and win American citizenship for their babies—which he inelegantly called "drop and leave"—and how it was necessary to change the Constitution to stop them. Now Rep. Steve King of Iowa promises to end automatic birthright citizenship through legislation, and conservative legislators from five states are talking about excluding kids from a new thing called state citizenship, and also creating distinct (second-class) birth certificates for these kids.
Legally speaking, this is all pretty confusing.

Filibuster Reform . . .

. . . just might happen.

Jobs Wont be Coming Back Any Time Soon

Here's cheery news for college students. Given the vast number of jobs lost in the last 3 years, and the relatively slow rate of jobs created in the 1990s and 2000s, we may not be able to expect a full recovery from the recession for a decade or more.

Not to worry. A "new global elite" is doing just fine.

Update: 1/11/11

Those jobs may never come back.

From Foreign Policy:

As time passes, it is harder to avoid the notion that a lot of those old jobs simply weren't adding much to the economy. Except for the height of the housing boom -- October 2007 through June 2008 -- real GDP is now higher than it has been in the entirety of U.S. history. The fact that the United States has pre-crisis levels of output with fewer workers raises doubts as to whether those additional workers were producing very much in the first place. If a business owner fires 10 people and a year later output is almost back to normal, it's pretty hard to make the argument that they were doing much in the first place.

The story runs as follows. Before the financial crash, there were lots of not-so-useful workers holding not-so-useful jobs. Employers didn't so much bother to figure out who they were. Demand was high and revenue was booming, so rooting out the less productive workers would have involved a lot of time and trouble -- plus it would have involved some morale costs with the more productive workers, who don't like being measured and spied on. So firms simply let the problem lie.

Then came the 2008 recession, and it was no longer possible to keep so many people on payroll. A lot of businesses were then forced to face the music: Bosses had to make tough calls about who could be let go and who was worth saving. (Note that unemployment is low for workers with a college degree, only 5 percent compared with 16 percent for less educated workers with no high school degree. This is consistent with the reality that less-productive individuals, who tend to have less education, have been laid off.)

In essence, we have seen the rise of a large class of "zero marginal product workers," to coin a term.

Debating Texas' Budget

Paul Krugman kicked up a storm in an editorial pointing out Texas' upcoming deficit shortfall (one of the reason's you can expect to pay higher tuition) which led to backlash. It's proving to be a test of conservative theories on budgetting.

Catch it all here.

Assassination Attempt in Arizona

Details from the NYT.

Summary of commentary from Andrew Sullivan.

Arizona Tea Party members are worried fingers will be pointed at them. A federal judge and a nine year old child were killed in the attack.

Whites Realign From the Democrats to the Republicans

From the Atlantic:

Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats, according to the National Election Poll exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Not even in Republicans' 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote.

Moreover, those results may understate the extent of the white flight from the Democratic Party, according to a National Journal analysis of previously unpublished exit-poll data provided by Edison Research.

The new data show that white voters not only strongly preferred Republican House and Senate candidates but also registered deep disappointment with President Obama's performance, hostility toward the cornerstones of the current Democratic agenda, and widespread skepticism about the expansive role for Washington embedded in the party's priorities. On each of those questions, minority voters expressed almost exactly the opposite view from whites.

Warrantless Cell Phone Searches OK'ed in California

From Law and Disorder:

The contents of your cell phone can reveal a lot more about you than the naked eye can: who your friends are, what you've been saying and when, which websites you've visited, and more. There has long been debate over user privacy when it comes to various data found on a cell phone, but according to the California Supreme Court, police don't need a warrant to start digging through your phone's contents.

The ruling comes as a result of the conviction of one Gregory Diaz, who was arrested for trying to sell ecstasy to a police informant in 2007 and had his phone confiscated when he arrived at the police station. The police eventually went through Diaz's text message folder and found one that read "6 4 80." Such a message means nothing to most of us, but it was apparently enough to be used as evidence against Diaz (for those curious, it means six pills will cost $80).

Obama's New Chief of Staff

Meet William Daley. One of many new members of Obama's Administration that had extensive experience in the Clinton Administration, and helped him get reelected after his party lost control of Congress during his first term. Sounds familiar.

Liberals think the administration is tacking too far to the middle.

Health Care Repeal and the CBO

The House moved towards a mostly symbolic vote in favor of repealing health care. The real dispute seems to be about the costs of repeal and whether House Republicans want to accept -- which they don't -- the Congressional Budget Offices' analysis that repeal will increase the deficit. 

Bruce Bartlett warns against undermining the CBO.

The Constitution Read on the Floor of the House

From the NYT. Apparently there was a dispute regarding whether the original text should have been read -- including its references to slavery:

In consultation with the Congressional Research Service and others, the leaders of the House had decided to read a version of the Constitution that was edited to exclude those portions superseded by amendments — including amendments themselves — preventing lawmakers from having to make references to slaves, referred to in Article I, Section 2 as “three fifths of all other Persons” or to failed experiments like Prohibition. Members were not provided with the version before the reading began.

Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois, registered a complaint he expanded on later in a prepared statement, essentially arguing that the House was whitewashing history and ignoring the blood, sweat and tears paid to achieve the amendments.

The wrangling over parliamentary procedure went on for several minutes with the arguments of Democrats and Republicans perhaps presaging future partisan battles over the meaning, purpose and application of the Constitution.

The NYT has an annotated Constitution complete with liberal/conservative battle lines.

The U.S. House Convenes with Republican Majority

And begin by setting House rules, as they are charged to do in the Constitution.

From the NYT:

Jubilant Republicans took control of the House on Wednesday and installed Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio as the new speaker before pushing through an overhaul of House rules intended to expedite their drive to dismantle the new health care law, cut federal spending and provide the tax cuts they see as a way to jump-start the economy. ...


Here's a link to the bill with the proposed changes, which we will detail later this semester. Here you can find detail regarding the process and the vote.

Would the Constitution's Framers have Supported the Filibuster?

Here's an academic paper arguing that they would not have.

Two other academic types argue that the filibuster is actually unconstitutional.

Debating the Meaning of the Constitution ...

Ezra Klein has a post today on the ongoing dispute regarding the proper interpretation of the Constitution. It's a point we hit repeatedly in class.

FCC Passes Net Neutrality Rules for the Internet

From the NYT.

Robert Morris: America's Founding Capitalist

A great story in NPR about a neglected founder. And a newly released book about the man:

The Revolving Door -- Peter Orszag and Citibank

From Deal Book:

Wall Street has long stacked its ranks with Washington types.

It is the elephant in the room of White House grand bargains: after building a reputation and Rolodex in politics, the wise man moves on — or in many cases, back — to the financial industry to make a killing.

A decade ago, a former Treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin, left the Clinton administration to become a senior adviser and board member at Citigroup — collecting a $10 million a year paycheck with no management responsibility.

On Thursday, Peter R. Orszag, President Obama’s first budget director and a protégé of Mr. Rubin, followed in his mentor’s footsteps and joined Citi’s investment banking group as a vice chairman. Mr. Orszag, 41, is the second cabinet official to join Citi this month, and his appointment comes days after the Treasury Department’s $10.5 billion stock offering helped further extricate the bailed out bank from Washington.

- Commentary from James Fallows.
- A response.

House Judiciary Committee Hearings on Wikileaks

C-Span video here. Is legislation adjusting the Espionage Act necessary to deal with the ease at which secrets can be made public?

- ReadWriteWeb.

The Future of the Commerce Clause

This is a very big deal and I'll integrate it into my discussion of federalism in 2301. It involves potential of challenges to the commerce clause and its impact on federalism. Linda Greenhouse kicked up a discussion of the consequence of the recent Virginia Court ruling on the individual mandate component of the health care law. Will it lead to the narrowing of the commerce clause that New Deal critics have been pursuing for decades?

It has been 15 years since the Rehnquist court began applying the constitutional brakes to assertions of federal power that had seemed unassailable since the New Deal. Its first target was modest, a five-year-old federal statute called the Gun-Free School Zones Act that most people had never heard of, which made it a federal crime to possess a gun within 1,000 feet of a school.

The vote in United States v. Lopez was 5 to 4. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote the court’s opinion, observing that the Constitution’s commerce clause did not confer on Congress a general police power disconnected from the regulation of economic activity. To uphold this statute, he said, would be to blur the “distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local.” For the first time since 1936, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law as exceeding Congress’s commerce power. In dissent, Justice David H. Souter warned that “it seems fair to ask whether the step taken by the court today does anything but portend a return to the untenable jurisprudence from which the court extricated itself almost 60 years ago.”

Thus began the Rehnquist court’s federalism revolution, a 5-to-4 forced march through the various sources and attributes of Congressional power. The targets included, most notably, Congress’s authority under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to enact into law its own vision of the guarantees of equal protection and due process when that vision was broader than the court’s own. William Rehnquist had waited a judicial lifetime to assemble a majority that would follow him on such a course. Eleven federal statutes would eventually fall, in whole or part, on federalism grounds in less than a decade before the court, including the chief justice himself, began to blink and the revolution petered out.

Ever since, it has been quite easy to get a good debate going, among people who spend time thinking about such matters, about whether the federalism revolution really had amounted to much beyond the symbolic. True, the court did strike down a provision of one fairly high-profile law, the Violence Against Women Act, under which women could sue their attackers for damages. But no major federal program felt the ax. I had been an early proponent of the view that something big was happening. But in recent years, while still finding the subject of great interest, I was beginning to have my own doubts about what it all had meant.

Until now. In his opinion on Monday striking down the individual mandate of the new health care law, Judge Henry E. Hudson of federal district court in Virginia cited the Lopez case and United States v. Morrison, the Violence Against Women Act decision (also a 5-to-4 Rehnquist majority opinion), more than a dozen times. Judge Hudson deployed the two cases as the major building blocks for his argument that Congress lacked constitutional authority to require individuals either to purchase health insurance or pay a fine to the Internal Revenue Service, a provision the judge said was “neither within the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution.”
She then adds her criticism of the decision which itself has been criticized:

- Ilya Solim.
- Conor Friedersdorf.

On Obama's Judicial Appointees

From the Huffington Post:

As the first congressional session of Obama's presidency draws to a close, what began as a slow process of confirmation has ballooned into a full-blown judicial crisis. The Senate has overseen the slowest pace of judicial staffing in at least a generation, with a paltry 39.8 percent of Obama's judges having been confirmed, according to numbers compiled by Senate Democrats. Of the 103 district and circuit court nominees, only 41 have been confirmed.
By this time in George W. Bush's presidency, the Senate had confirmed 76 percent of his nominees. President Clinton was working at a rate of 89 percent at this point in his tenure.
More:

- Jonathan Chait.
- Jonathan Bernstein.

What is Triangulation?

Nothing really, other than political bargaining. In his takedown of the phrase Jonathan Bernstein has some succinct things to say about the bill making process:

With unified government, the best course for a president is usually to pass legislation by mobilizing his party. That's pretty much what Barack Obama did during the 111th Congress. The trick is going to be, always, to keep the handful at the extreme left (for a Democrat) happy while also appealing to the 218th most liberal Member of the House and the 60th most liberal Senator. Barack Obama may have, in some sense, wanted to be bipartisan or postpartisan or whatever, but the easiest coalition for almost everything he wanted to get done was going to be highly partisan.

When there's divided government, the calculus changes. While it's still possible that there will be issues in which the easiest winning coalition is constructed beginning with the left and moving to the center, there are other potential available coalitions that involve finding things that both sides really want that the other side doesn't mind that much. That's obviously the case with the tax cut deal: liberals don't care nearly as much about tax rates for the rich as do conservatives (yes, they care a lot -- but not nearly as much). Conservatives do not, it seems likely, oppose UI extension nearly as much as liberals favor it. What this all boils down to is that in the next Congress, there are going to be things that pass with the support of both John Boehner and Barack Obama, and perhaps without the support of some Democrats. Or else, nothing is going to pass at all.

Now, what's "triangulation" in that context? Nothing. Triangulation is an advertising slogan coined by Dick Morris to advertise himself -- to give him as large a share of the credit for Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election as possible. That's all.

Evangelicals and Environmentalism

Slate reports on how attitudes towards the environment and global warming have created (at least a minor) rift within the evangelical movement.

Virginia Federal Judge Rules Individual Mandate Unconstitutional

From the NYT:

A federal district judge in Virginia ruled on Monday that the keystone provision in the Obama health care law is unconstitutional, becoming the first court in the country to invalidate any part of the sprawling act and ensuring that appellate courts will receive contradictory opinions from below.

Judge Henry E. Hudson, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, declined the plaintiff’s request to freeze implementation of the law pending appeal, meaning that there should be no immediate effect on the ongoing rollout of the law. But the ruling is likely to create confusion among the public and further destabilize political support for legislation that is under fierce attack from Republicans in Congress and in many statehouses.

Standing, Class Action Lawsuits and Wal-Mart v. Dukes

A case involving accusations of gender discrimination at Wal-Mart is also allowing the court to question the very practice of bringing class action lawsuits forward. Once again the court is flirting with the idea of limiting standing, the right of people to demonstrate to the court that they have a legitimate reason to take a case to the court.

- ScotusBlog: Walmart v. Dukes.
- ScotuBlog: This Week at the Court.
- Wikipedia: Walmart v. Dukes.
- ClassActionBlawg.
- Wikipedia: Class Action.
- Findlaw: Gender Discrimination

A Czar is Born

The Claremont Institute takes on Cass Sunstein.

Predictions: What Can the 112th Congress Do?

Some folks go at it over at Politico.

The World Post-Wikileaks

A discussion in the NYT:

In the tempest that has followed the release of a trove of secret government files by WikiLeaks, officials and security experts are trying to figure out how to stop such a large-scale breach from happening again.

While Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, defended publication of the documents as a victory for openness, national security officials see a dangerous precedent.

Even if WikiLeaks itself can be controlled, have the gates opened to a flood of similar enterprises and even more damaging disclosures?
Perhaps it was inevitable that once the web was developed it would be impossible to keep secrets anymore.

- Wikileak's War on Secrecy.

Is Growing Inequality a Problem?

A ten part series.

Tax Reform on the Horizon

A topic we will discuss next semester. According to Ezra Klein:

On Tuesday, I asked Glenn Hubbard, one of the architects of the Bush tax cuts, how he'd reform the tax code. That was the wrong question to start with, he said. "First, you need to figure out the size of government."
Easy enough

Tax Bill and DADT Blocked

An example of how legislation can be stopped -- even though majorities support them -- by blocking bill form reaching the floor.

- The Senate and DADT.
- The Senate and Aid for 9/11 Workers.
- The House and the Tax Bill.

The Tribe Memo

A great insider's analysis of the personalities and dynamics on the Supreme Court.

House Republican Announcements

- Committee Chairs have been announced. (more from The Hill)
- House Calendar Released.

Will Obama's Compromise With Republicans Drive a Wedge in the Democratic Party?

Greg Sargeant thinks not:

. . . there may be a gap between what high profile liberal commentators -- the so-called "professional left" -- think of Obama, and what self-described rank-and-file liberals think of him. The impression of liberal wrath is also perhaps exaggerated by media organizations that seem eager to feed that storyline.

The question now, however, is whether GOP gains in Congress will induce the Obama team to undertake a strategy that risks genuine alienation of liberals. Obama advisers have reportedly concluded that the key to winning back independents in advance of 2012 is to demonstrate compromise with Republicans in order to recapture his post-partisan appeal.

The Upcoming DADT Vote

Updates:

- Jonathan Caperhart.
- Greg Sargeant.

The Tax Cut Deal

CNN breaks down what was cut:

The Tax Deal as Stimulus

From the NYT:

A year ago, President Obama and the Democrats made the mistake of assuming that an economic recovery was under way. This week’s deal to extend the Bush tax cuts shows that the White House’s top priority is avoiding the same mistake again — even if it has to upset many fellow Democrats in the process. |

Mr. Obama effectively traded tax cuts for the affluent, which Republicans were demanding, for a second stimulus bill that seemed improbable a few weeks ago. Mr. Obama yielded to Republicans on extending the high-end Bush tax cuts and on cutting the estate tax below its scheduled level. In exchange, Republicans agreed to extend unemployment benefits, cut payroll taxes and business taxes, and extend a grab bag of tax credits for college tuition and other items.

Posner Wants More Stimulus

From the New Republic:

The bursting of the housing bubble, which brought down the banking industry because banks were so heavily invested in financing residential real estate, had three effects that relate to the paradox of thrift, each amplified by the accompanying implosion of the stock market bubble. First, the decline in house and stock values reduced household wealth without reducing people’s debt burdens, because debt is a fixed expense rather than a percentage of the value of the assets that secure it. (That’s why so many mortgages are “under water”: the unpaid balance of the mortgage exceeds the market value of the property that secures it because the value has fallen but not the debt.) So people felt poorer and therefore more vulnerable to economic adversity, and they reacted by reducing their consumption, thus saving more.


Back and forth from the Becker - Posner Blog
What is the Paradox of Thrift?

An Impeachment Trial in the Senate

From the NYT:

The proceedings in the Senate on Tuesday were as remarkable as the charges that lawmakers there were asked to weigh. As tax policy debates swirled around the Capitol, the Senate on Tuesday began pondering the fate of Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. of Federal District Court in Louisiana, whom the House of Representatives impeached in March on four articles of “high crimes and misdemeanors” stemming from charges that he received cash and favors from those with business in his court.

This is only the 12th impeachment trial of a judge in Senate history.
Update: The Senate voted to convict.

The EPA Turns 40

Photo Essay: Why Nixon Created the EPA.

This is all you need to know about what drives political decisionmaking ...

From Ezra Klein via Andrew Sullivan.

Drawing the Line Between Free Speech and Bullying

Wendy Kaminer is not a fan of legislation introduced in the Senate that addresses bullyign on school campuses:

There's no dearth of important issues for Congress to address in the lame-duck session, but New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg has introduced an entirely gratuitously anti-harassment bill anyway--The Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act of 2010. (Congressman Rush Holt introduced the same bill in the House.) Federal civil rights law has long prohibited harassment in schools receiving federal funds; Tyler Clementi was not the victim of harassment or any absence of rules against it: his suicide followed a gross and apparently criminal violation of privacy--the secret taping and broadcast of his sexual encounter with another male. So, there's no need for this bill and no sense in naming it after Clementi--unless you're intent on emotionally blackmailing people into supporting it. Naming legislation after a victim cuts off debate, daring opponents to risk appearing insensitive to the sufferings of survivors.

But this bill is not simply redundant; it's repressive, proposing a subjective definition of harassment that's more restrictive of speech and more likely to be applied arbitrarily than the definition formulated by the Supreme Court some 10 years ago. You can find a concise critique of the bill at thefire.org, which stresses that "the bill removes the requirement that the (alleged harassment) be objectively offensive... The bill also fails to define what constitutes a "hostile or abusive" educational environment, leaving that determination to college administrators"--administrators who have proven themselves oblivious or hostile to free speech, as a lamentably long list of FIRE's cases show.

Starve the Beast

A few comments from Bruce Bartlett on the effectiveness of the "starve the beast" strategy towards reducing the size of the federal government.

-- The Idiocy of Starve the Beast Theory.
-- 'Starve the Beast' - Origins and Development of a Budgetary Metaphor.
-- To Starve or Not To Starve the Beast.

In Kevin Drum's comment we get an interesting observation:

If you raise taxes to pay for government programs, you're essentially making them expensive. Conversely, if you cut taxes, you're making government spending cheaper. So what does Econ 101 say happens when you reduce the price of something? Answer: demand for it goes up.

Cutting taxes makes government spending less expensive for taxpayers, which makes them want more of it. And politicians, obliging creatures that they are, are eager to give the people what they want. Result: lots of spending and lots of deficits.

If you want to reduce spending, the best way to do it is to raise taxes so that registered voters actually have to pay for the services they get. I don't have a cute name for this theory, but it's true nonetheless. Even for Republicans.

This suggests that it is rational for people to want more government programs if they do not know the true costs of those programs. If you want to cut government, raise taxes.

Some Takes on the Vote on the Fiscal Commission Vote

From the Brookings Institution.

In class yesterday as we were reviewing the bicameral system and how it was intended to tie the House closely to the immediate preferences of the public and detach the Senate from the same I suggested that the Senate was more likely to support the plan since the longer terms of office shield them from the immediate anger (short-term) that could follow their support. This despite the fact that the proposals serve the long term needs of the country.

Well, I was right.

5 out of 6 Senators voted for it.
5 out of 6 Representatives voted against it.

Will Ron Paul Chair the SubCommittee That Oversees the Fed?

Maybe:

One important indicator will be who is chosen to lead the House subcommittee that oversees the Fed when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January. First in line for the job is Representative Ron Paul of Texas, the libertarian renegade Republican, frequent presidential candidate, and outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve who wrote the best-selling polemic, "End the Fed.''

Were he to assume the chairmanship, Paul would represent an altogether different type of critic: he really means what he says. But he's no lock for the job. His views on monetary policy, and his disinclination to defer to the GOP leadership, have twice before led his own party to ignore his seniority and deny him control of this subcommittee, in 2003 and 2005. One acid test of whether the Republican Party is serious about trying to aggressively influence monetary policy and thwart QE2 is if it finally lets Paul loose on the chairmanship.

Paul expects it will. "I'm assuming that I'll get it,'' he said. "I've had no indication at all that I won't.''

Representative Barney Frank, the outgoing chairman of the Financial Services Committee, agrees. "I think the GOP is afraid to deny him that chairmanship. The Tea Party would revolt."
- The Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee.

Wikileaks and Espionage

Some musings.

Investment v Consumption

Two conservatives debate the role of government.

Institutions Matter

This is the most clear headed comment I've yet seen about the (potential) problem posed by wikileaks and other organizations that seek to subvert established institutions:

. . . could we please pause for a moment amidst all of our technological triumphalism to reflect on the potential downside to all of this antinomian empowerment of the individual? The libertarian imagination, amply furnished with metaphors of invisible hands and spontaneously generated order, is thrilled by such technological empowerment. What could be better than giving every human being on the planet the capacity to subvert all established authorities and institutions, private or public, tyrannical or meritocratic? What would be better, I submit, is lucid self-awareness about how much our liberty depends on the existence of stable, functioning institutions to protect it against those who long to extinguish it in the name of sundry anti-liberal theological and ideological projects.


The framers of the Constitution would agree with this sentiment. It is the very point made in Federalist #10 and helps us understand, in a contemporary context, the dangers that passionate majorities angry at existing institutions, can pose to free societies. Not that stable societies always respect or maintain individual freedom -- they don't always -- or that occasional challenges to the status quo are not worthwhile -- they are in fact necessary in order for societies to evolve and for freedom to expand. But the chaos that inevitably results when stable institutions are gleefully undermined is perhaps the greatest threat to individual freedom. Madison would certainly agree with that sentiment.

That said, institutions must be subject to challenge from time to time in order to determine whether they are in fact preserving freedom or merely maintaining existing privileges. Early efforts to expand suffrage, for example, were opposed for much the same reason. It took time for the expansion of political participation to demonstrate that it would not undermine existing institutions and lead to chaos. This was demonstrated empirically, and the same will have to be demonstrated in this case. Can free societies survive the transparency and instability that unlimited information will force on its institutions? We will see.

For educators, charged with preserving the republic, the trick will be to ensure that students will be made aware of the historical role that properly designed governing institutions and systems have played in securing liberty and not make capricious choices that can undermine them.   

Filibuster Reform Proposal

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley would like to see us return to the old fashioned filibusters of yesterday, the one's that actually involved an endless floor debate.

- The Plum Line.
- The Senator's Memo.
- Congress 101.
- Kevin Drum.

Ron Paul Profile

From the Atlantic, a profile on our own Rep. Ron Paul. The comments are probably more interesting than the article.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Cheese

They both promote and oppose it:

Domino’s Pizza was hurting early last year. Domestic sales had fallen, and a survey of big pizza chain customers left the company tied for the worst tasting pies.

From marketing campaigns, to restaurant menus to your own dinner plate, what evidence are you seeing of more cheese in the American diet? Share your experiences.

Then help arrived from an organization called Dairy Management. It teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign.

Consumers devoured the cheesier pizza, and sales soared by double digits. “This partnership is clearly working,” Brandon Solano, the Domino’s vice president for brand innovation, said in a statement to The New York Times.

But as healthy as this pizza has been for Domino’s, one slice contains as much as two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease and is high in calories.

And Dairy Management, which has made cheese its cause, is not a private business consultant. It is a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture — the same agency at the center of a federal anti-obesity drive that discourages over-consumption of some of the very foods Dairy Management is vigorously promoting ....
There are three separate links to entities that call themselves Dairy Management Inc
- www.dairyinfo.com/
- www.innovatewithdairy.com/
- www.dairycheckoff.com/

Earmarks

Given Republican opposition to earmarks, its worth considering their actual impact on the communities that receive them. Here's a bit of background from TNR, and a map showing the distribution of earmarks from a 2005 bill:

The TSA's Pat Down Policy

Slate outlines the process by which the pat down policy was developed, announced and implemented, as well as the campaign its now waging to defend it. It creates and interesting dilemma for both the TSA and the Obama Administration. Which woudl you rather have to explain? Why travelers were groped, or why you let an explosive on a plane, especially if it goes off?

While we're at it, here's something to relax about: cavity bombs. Current technonoly cannot detect them.

The Decline and Fall of the American Republic

Fitting subject matter, considering our recent class discussions. Ackerman wonders if the republic can survive the growing powers of the presidency. He isn't the first to worry about this. A review.

Scorpions

Another extra credit option. A book detailing the personalities FDR placed on the court. A review from Slate.

The Scanner Lobby

The makers of the body scanners have lobbied Congress heavily to promote their products.

The companies with multimillion-dollar contracts to supply American airports with body-scanning machines more than doubled their spending on lobbying in the last five years and hired several high-profile former government officials to advance their causes in Washington, records show.

L-3 Communications, which has sold $39.7 million worth of the machines to the federal government, spent $4.3 million to influence Congress and federal agencies during the first nine months of this year, up from $2.1 million in 2005, lobbying data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show. Last year, the company spent $5.5 million on lobbying.

Its lobbyists include Linda Daschle, a prominent Democratic figure in Washington, who is a former Federal Aviation Administration official.

Rapiscan Systems, meanwhile, has spent $271,500 on lobbying so far this year, compared with $80,000 five years earlier. It has faced criticism for hiring Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary, who has been a prominent proponent of using scanners to foil terrorism. Officials with Chertoff's firm and Rapiscan say Chertoff was not paid to promote scanner technology. It spent $440,000 on lobbying in 2009.

For those unaware, Linda Daschle is the wife of ex-Senate majority leader Tom Daschle.

A visit to Rapiscan.

Despite All the Fuss ....

... nearly two thirds of Americans support full body scanners at airports.

Judicial Independence Under Attack?

From USA Today:

Marsha Ternus, David Baker and Michael Streit are three of the incumbents tossed out of office Tuesday by angry voters. They aren't corrupt or incompetent. They aren't even politicians. They're state Supreme Court justices, and the circumstances of their eviction should be deeply troubling to anyone who believes in the rule of law.

The judges' sin was that they did their jobs. They read the state constitution and interpreted its meaning without regard to politics, public opinion or the passions of the moment. That reading led them to invalidate an Iowa law limiting marriage to a man and woman. ...

Quantitative Easing

Before too much time passes, for 2302, some background on the concept of "quantitative easing" which is a technique used by the Federal Reserve Board to inject cash into the U.S. economy. The technique is being considered in part because while some argue additional stimulus is needed to continue priming the economy, Congress has no intention to do so, so the Fed has the means to do it independently. Normally the Fed would simply lower interest rates, but they are set close to zero, so that's not an option.

- Wikipedia: Quantitative Easing.
- Support from US News.
- 9 Reasons why it is bad for the economy.
- Kicking the Fed.

Is Philly’s ‘Stop and Frisk’ Racial Profiling?

From Findlaw:

Stop and frisk sounds more like a trendy dance move or a board game than a form of racial profiling. But that is exactly what some critics are claiming the real purpose behind Philly’s stop and frisk approach to law enforcement is. The Philadelphia stop and frisk policy has now become the center of a civil rights lawsuit, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The suit claims that in 2009, 72% of pedestrians that were stopped under the policy were African American. “Implicitly, the message is to make as many stops as you can and hopefully you will find something,” said one attorney working on the case. The purpose behind the Philly stop and frisk policy was to decrease the rising crime rate on the streets. Although officers were trained, the suit alleges that the behavior of the force seems to ignore the training.

- Stop and Frisk: Legal Definition.
- Wikipedia: Frisking.
- Wikipedia: Racial Profiling.

The Ghailani Trial

The recent acquital on all but one count of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani raises at least two constitutional issues for us. First, and this applies to many in the court system, given the amount of time it took for him to reach trial, was he denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial? Slate touches on this question and reminds readers something we covered in 2302, that the right dates at least back to Magna Carta: "to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice."

. . . at no time in the last 800 years has anyone been able to quantify exactly how speedy is speedy. The American Bar Association insists that six months should be the upward limit unless there's a really good reason for extending the deadline. But no one has managed to bring a judge or state legislature around to that point of view. The Supreme Court, for its part, has offered a vague balancing test of harm against justification: That is, if a lengthy pretrial prison stay harms the defendant unjustifiably, the judge may consider dropping the indictment. In the absence of any firm rules, judges usually find a way to explain away delays, since they hate the idea of releasing dangerous criminals just because of dawdling prosecutors. The most common justification is so-called "lack of prejudice"—that is, the accused fails to show that the holdup could undermine his defense.
More seriously is the blowback against the decision to hold a trial in a civilian court -- this was argued to be a crime after all -- rather than a military tribunal. Critics of the decision to hold a trial at all seem upset that a civilian trial even allowed the possibility that a jury might determine a lack of evidence existed to convict the defendant. Legislative critics of the administration want future trials to be handled in military tribunals. Daily Kos wonders if these critics really want summary judgement and execution. Are these critics really challenging the concept of judicial independence? Perhaps they are upset that they cannot control the courts and choose to send the suspects to courts they think likely to render guilty verdicts.

This also raises an issue related to our discussion of abstract and concrete opinions. We probably all agree on the need for fair trials, but do we want them for terrorist suspects? Or is the very fact that they are accused of being terrorists enough to convince us that they are guilty.

- Guilty Until Proven Guilty?

New Felonies

Texas has 2,383 felonies on record -- things the legislature has decided you can be imprisoned for. Grits for Breakfast tells us the last legislative session created 59 and wonders how many more will be created this tim around.

86% of Incumbents Were Relected This Year

So much for throwing the bums out. Although the figure is generally higher -- in the upper 90s -- a high percentage of members of the House of Representatives were keep in office by their constituents. It could be, of course, that the mood was there and more should have been defeated, but incumbents were protected by representing gerrymandered districts that are so heavily skewed toward either party that incumbents can hardly ever be defeated. We discussed this in class -- see the post below -- when we noted that none of our area House members were defeated.

Do Tax Cuts Stimulate Economic Growth?

The evidence is not conclusive. The last decade had the slowest growth rate since the 1960s, and this was after the Bush tax cuts.

Potential Victims of Redistricting

The National Journal points out ten members of the House who could suffer from redistricting.

Legislative Leadership Battles 2010 - pt1

I'll begin linking to a variety of stories covering the current leadership battles in the U.S. Congress and Texas Legislature.

- Hoyer and Clyburn battle to be Minority Whip: House Dems #2.
- Senate Democrats fill leadership spots.
- Pelosi becomes minority leader, but may be weakened.
- Kucinich fights for ranking position on the House Oversight Committee.

The Power of the President

In light of the midterm elections, some notable Democrats have written recommendations to Obama outlining how he can advance his agenda without Congress. Depending on one's ideology, this can be a good or bad thing, but it does highlight how the powers -- and tools -- of the office have expanded over American history.

The report mentioned the following mechanisms:

- executive orders
- rulemaking
- agency management
- convening and creating public-private relationships
- commanding the armed forces
- diplomacy

Their recommendations amount to a blueprint for action over the heads of Congress.

The Perils of Broadening Your Base

The GOP sees opportunity reaching out to the gay and lesbian community, but only at the risk of losing evangelicals.

The Death of Real News

Ted Koppel cares for neither Keith Olbermann nor Bill O'Reilly and sees them as symptoms of the death of "real" news. He blames the profit motive which has led to more sensational news which panders to segment of the population rather provide neutral objective information useful to everyone:

To the degree that broadcast news was a more virtuous operation 40 years ago, it was a function of both fear and innocence. Network executives were afraid that a failure to work in the "public interest, convenience and necessity," as set forth in the Radio Act of 1927, might cause the Federal Communications Commission to suspend or even revoke their licenses. The three major broadcast networks pointed to their news divisions (which operated at a loss or barely broke even) as evidence that they were fulfilling the FCC's mandate. News was, in a manner of speaking, the loss leader that permitted NBC, CBS and ABC to justify the enormous profits made by their entertainment divisions.

On the innocence side of the ledger, meanwhile, it never occurred to the network brass that news programming could be profitable.

Until, that is, CBS News unveiled its "60 Minutes" news magazine in 1968. When, after three years or so, "60 Minutes" turned a profit (something no television news program had previously achieved), a light went on, and the news divisions of all three networks came to be seen as profit centers, with all the expectations that entailed.

Divisive, pandering news sells. Objectivity doesn't.

Although Crime Rates are Down, Most People Think it is Going Up

For 2301, and our coverage of public opinion.

From the Gallup Poll:

Two-thirds of Americans say there is more crime in the United States than there was a year ago, reflecting Americans' general tendency to perceive crime as increasing. Still, the percentage perceiving an increase in crime is below what Gallup measured in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but is higher than the levels from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

These trends, based on Gallup's annual Crime survey, come at a time when both the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics recently reported drops in property and violent crime from 2008 to 2009 in separate studies, as well as documenting longer-term declines in both types of crime. Though the latest Gallup estimates, from an Oct. 7-10, 2010, survey, would reflect a more up-to-date assessment of the crime situation than those reports do, Americans were also likely to perceive crime as increasing both locally and nationally in the 2009 Gallup Crime survey.

2301: The Last Written Question: Flores-Villar v United States

I'm putting together the final written question for 2301, and I'd like to share it -- or the topic -- prior to posting it.

We're covering civil rights and the equal protection clause. Quite often the nature of civil rights policy comes down to whatever the Supreme Court (or more precisely its members at a given moment in time) interprets the phrase "equal protection of the laws" to mean. In what context can equal protection be mandated, and  what criteria can government (the executive branch generally though not exclusively) use to treat people differently.

In that context, the Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a case which highlighted the different ways that Congress has mandated how citizen mothers as opposed to citizen fathers can transfer citizenship to any child of theirs born out of wedlock and out of the country. The bar is lower for citizen mothers than citizen fathers. The case involves a citizen father who, due to the language of the law, could never have transferred citizenship to his child. The question presented to the court was whether this violated his right to the equal protection of the laws.

I want my 2301s to read through the links below and address how the Supreme Court treats cases involving claims of unequal protection due to gender (sex/gender discrimination). What issues are raised in this case and what is the likely outcome (a decision is unlikely to be reached until next year).

- ScotusBlog: Flores-Villar v. United States.
- Immigration Prof Blog.
- NYT Story.
- Oral Argument Audio.
- Oral Argument Transcript.

Charles Rangel and the House Ethics Committee

From the NYT:

The House ethics committee ruled on Monday that there was evidence to support 13 counts of misconduct by Representative Charles B. Rangel, and began considering whether to formally convict and recommend punishment against him.

With Mr. Rangel absent, the panel listened to its chief counsel as he methodically presented the evidence against Mr. Rangel, which was based on 549 exhibits, dozens of witness interviews and thousands of pages of financial documents. Members then met in executive session and later announced they had found the facts in the charges against Mr. Rangel to be “uncontested.”

Those charges included accusations that Mr. Rangel had accepted rent-stabilized apartments from a Manhattan developer, failed to pay income taxes on rent from a Dominican villa and solicited charitable donations from individuals with business before Congress.

- House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
- Wikpedia: House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
- Source Watch: House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct
- Time Topics: Ethics.

Bad Jurors

From Texas Watchdog:

A list of bad jurors kept by prosecutors is not a public record, according to the state attorney general's office, a ruling that “flies in the face of open government,” according to Fort Worth Defense lawyer William Ray in the Star-Telegram.

Ray sought a list the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office keeps of jurors who have previously served and notes on why they would be unfit to serve again. Presumably, these jurors did not deliver a verdict favorable to the state.
Is this an encroachment by the executive on the independence of the judiciary?

For further reading: Juror Intimidation in Russia.

DeMint 1 McConnell 0

The fight to control the Republican Party in the U.S. Senate is getting testier.

From Wonkbook:

Mitch McConnell announces he will reluctantly support a Republican moratorium on earmarks: "Make no mistake. I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state. I don’t apologize for them. But there is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight. And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government."

"With Republican leaders in Congress united, the attention now turns to the President. We have said we are willing to give up discretion; now we’ll see how he handles spending decisions. And if the president ends up with total discretion over spending, we will see even more clearly where his priorities lie. We already saw the administration’s priorities in a Stimulus bill that’s become synonymous with wasteful spending, that borrowed nearly $1 trillion for administration earmarks like turtle tunnels, a sidewalk that lead to a ditch, and research on voter perceptions of the bill."

- WaPo story.
- Wikipedia: Earmarks.
- SourceWatch: Earmarks.

Fix the Deficit Yourself

Ezra Klein links to four separate debt calculators. See what you can do.

Bernacke Explains the Financial Crisis

From a couple months back:
- the transcript.

Filibuster Reform

From WonkBook:

Junior Democrats in the Senate are pushing ahead with filibuster reform, reports J. Taylor Rushing: "Sen. Tom Udall said he will force a motion on the first day of the next Congress to have Vice President Joe Biden adopt new rules for the two-year session. Then, Udall said, he will seek consensus among senators from both parties to lower the 60-vote threshold for procedural motions. Only a simple majority of 51 votes would be necessary for such a move, and Udall said he expects support from some Republicans...Tom Udall is correct there will be some GOP support for the effort. Sen.-elect Dan Coats (Indiana), who knows the Senate well from his 10-year tenure from 1989 to 1999, said in a Fox News interview this month that he endorses filibuster reform."

The CRA and the Housing Bubble

For our discussion of civil rights: Conservatives argue that Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (and other simlar laws), which outlawed practices that discriminated against middle class and poor people who wanted to purchase homes are partially, if not wholly, responsible for the housing bubble and the resulting financial crisis. Others argue that it did not. We will discuss.

Jobs? Yes / Health Care? Yes / The Deficit? No

Only 4% of respondents to a CBS Poll want Congress to focus first on the deficit.

111th Congress' Civil Rights Scorecard

For this week's discussion on civil rights, the Leadership Conference on Civil Right's scorecard for the 111th Congress.

The Gerrymandered Texas Senate and the Threats to the Senate's 2/3rds Rule

Rick Casey comments on what he calls the most stable job in Texas politics: Texas State Senator.

There is one Texas elected body that is so stable that it offered a safe harbor for Democrats even in the political monsoon that blew on Tuesday.

Is this good news for the Democrats? Not hardly, as we shall see. The body is the state Senate.

Consider this: While Democrats lost 21 seats in the 150-member Texas House of Representatives and most likely three veteran congressmen, the 31-member Texas Senate had 12 Democrats and 19 Republicans before the election and will have exactly the same margin after the new Legislature is sworn in next January. And only two are newcomers, one Democrat and one Republican having stepped down voluntarily.
But while Democrats are safe in body, its districts have been designed so that they underrepresent Democrats in the state -- as is the case with most other offices in the state. Republicans, who control the districting process, accomplish this feat by packing Democrats into fewer seats than they might otherwise occupy, but Democratic incumbents are hardly likely to complain because this makes their seats more secure.

Even with this small number of seats, Democrats -- and the minority party in general -- has been able to leverage this small number of seats into a type of veto power since as long as they are at least one-third of the Senate, they can block legislation from going through the floor. From the Legislative Refrence Library:

For almost half a century, blocker bills have routinely been placed at the top of the Senate's Daily Calendar, which in effect forces a suspension of the regular order of business on every bill. Blocker bills are bills that are introduced and passed out of committee as early as possible in a legislative session in order that they may occupy the first positions on the calendar. They are not intended to be worthy of serious consideration or passage. The sole purpose of a blocker bill is to ensure that at least two-thirds of the membership have an interest in debating a measure before it can come to the floor. Bills that do not enjoy substantial support cannot make it past the blocker bill.

Though it has been set aside on rare occasions, this practice -- known as the "two-thirds rule" -- has been an honored tradition in the Senate. Among other things, it is generally acknowledged that the Senate's two-thirds rule fosters civility, a willingness to compromise, and a spirit of bipartisanship.

Republican Senators have argued that this rule undermines democracy -- and certainly their agenda -- and have made efforts to remove it in the past. Similar efforts are underway currently.

- In Defense of the Two Thirds Rule.
- Bill Hobby comments on the rule.

One and Done by Design?

Again from Slatest, this time a story from the Washington Post, should Obama declare that he will not run for reelection and instead focus on the economy:

For the good of the country, Barack Obama should declare himself a one-term president , argue Carter- and Clinton-era presidential advisers Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen in the Washington Post. That act of political suppuku would disarm Republicans, the pair assert, allowing them to support Obama without worrying about bolstering his re-election bid. "Quite simply, given our political divisions and economic problems, governing and campaigning have become incompatible," the pair write. "If he is to bring Democrats and Republicans together, the president cannot be seen as an advocate of a particular party." The proposals met with a skeptical response from both sides of the aisle, with liberal bloggers dismissing the pair as "pretend Democrats" and conservatives questioning the proposal's practicality. "The symbolism of Obama's withdrawal from the race to focus on fiscal solvency would, admittedly, be huge in communicating the gravity of the challenge," writes one conservative blogger . "But that doesn't mean Congress would act on it."
- The Opinion Piece itself.
- Pretend Democrats ...
- Hot Air.

Party Cohesion

From Politico, via Slatest, an example of a key point we cover separately in 2301 and 2302. Our two large decentralized parties have to becoem cohesive in order to have any chance to pursue an agenda -- or stop the agenda of the opposition:

South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn will serve as "assistant leader," the No. 3 spot among the Democratic Party's minority leadership in the next Congress. Outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi created the position to avoid internal party conflict that would have resulted from the pending contest between Clyburn and current House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., for the minority whip position. In a letter to her colleagues on Saturday, Pelosi announced her plans to create the position and appoint Clyburn to it if elected House Democratic leader. Politico sees the Democrats as keeping peace among their ranks by maintaining the status quo in a leadership lineup that mirrors the current majority leadership of Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, and Majority Whip Clyburn.

Meanwhile, Tea Partiers are trying to resolve dueling internal orientation agendas for the Republican Party's incoming freshman Congress members, who will be learning their way around Washington this week. After the Tea Party Patriots and conservative California think tank the Claremont Institute scheduled dueling orientation events for new members of Congress, Tea Partiers began bombarding their new representatives with phone calls to express their disapproval. In an e-mail on Thursday, the Tea Party Patriots warned against the think tank's actions: "They are apparently trying to make sure that instead of sitting with grass-roots tea party leaders from around the country, the lobbyists and consultants can sink their claws into the freshmen, and begin to 'teach them' the ways of D.C." The deluge of phone calls that resulted prompted a second e-mail the next day, asking members to lay off the new Congress members for the moment. The Claremont Institute said it was merely hosting an event the freshman members had planned for themselves.


For further reading:

- The Democrat's New Change.
- Right Wing Groups Scuffle Over Freshmen.
- Freshmen Arrive in Washington With Many Questions.

Governor Perry will Head the Republican Governor's Association

From Politico:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry will be tapped as the new chairman of the Republican Governors Association when the organization meets next week in San Diego, GOP sources tell POLITICO.

Perry recently released a book taking aim at the federal government and both the subject of the tome, “Fed Up!,” and his promotion of it have fueled speculation that he is eyeing a presidential bid.

But his appointment to helm the RGA heading into 2011 — when three states will hold governors’ races — amounts to the first concrete evidence that the Texan is serious when he says he has no interest in pursuing the White House. It would be nearly impossible to raise money for the committee and help direct the gubernatorial contests in Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky while running for president.
- Wikipedia: Republican Governors' Association.

Debt Commission Spending Cut Recommendations

Click here for the actual recommendations made by the Debt Commission. These are only the expenditures. They propose $100 billion each in defense and non-defense spending.

Also worth reading:

- Disappointment in the reactions to the plan.
- Warts and all, it may be the best we can do.

A nice line, and a word of warning, from one of the links above: There is no magic pot of money out there that does not come attached to some angry interest group.