From the NYT: Study Questions Risk of S.E.C. Revolving Door

Maybe there are advantages to it. This is a contrarian's take on the relationship between the public and private sector.

- Click here for it.

The revolving door has long been the focus of government watchdogs here, a symbolic portal that business executives and lawyers pass through on their way to government posts and back again to the private sector. There, the thinking goes, they use their influence with former colleagues to reap benefits for themselves and their companies.

But despite plenty of anecdotal accusations of influence-peddling, there has been relatively little empirical evidence of how the practice truly affects government regulation and law enforcement.

Now, a group of accounting professors has produced a study showing that the revolving door actually toughens enforcement results at the Securities and Exchange Commission — the opposite of what government critics have long maintained.

But critics are still largely skeptical of the relationship. Here is a more common critique:

- The FDA ‘Revolving Door’ Fosters Conflicts on Advisory Panels.

Does the FDA have an unfair revolving door for some experts who serve on its advisory panels?

A consumer advocacy group charges the agency allows some experts who serve on its advisory panels to also make presentations at other meetings of these same panels on behalf of drug makers. By allowing some people to wear different hats within a short amount of time, the advocacy group charges the FDA creates the potential for bias to creep into the proceedings.

As an example, Public Citizen cites a meeting this past March 27 of the FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee, which was held to review an application for a Novartis drug called serelaxin to treat acute heart failure. And Milton Packer, who chairs the department of clinical sciences at UT Southwestern, appeared as a paid speaker on behalf of Novartis.

In his opening remarks, Packer disclosed that Novartis paid for his time and travel, according to the advocacy group. But because he is also considered to be a ‘special government employee,’ which is how advisory panel members are classified, he obtained permission from the FDA to participate as a paid speaker for Novartis (see page 31 here).

However, Packer served as a temporary voting member of the same FDA advisory committee less than two months earlier. Moreover, Public Citizen says this was the sixth time, since Packer first presided as chair of this committee in 1997, that he had “spoken on behalf of and/or served as a (presumably) paid consultant” to drug makers whose meds were being reviewed at those meetings.

About 527 organizations

Political, but not advocates for or against political candidates. Assuming that is possible.

- Findlaw: Why "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and Other "527" Organizations Can't Be Silenced.
- Cato Institute: Free Speech and the 527 Prohibition.
- Roll Call: National Section 527 Organizations Raise Over $133 Million.
- Lexology: FEC continues to apply controversial legal theories to regulate 527 organizations.

What are they again?

- Wikipedia: 527 Organization. 

From the Center for Responsive Politics: How Crossroads GPS beat the IRS and became a social welfare group

Here's how a political organization can become officially recognized as a social welfare organization.

- Click here for the article.

When a group called Crossroads GPS sent the IRS an application for tax-exempt status in September 2010, Nancy Pelosi was speaker of the House, Snapchat hadn’t started doing whatever it does, and Miley Cyrus was still Hannah Montana.

A lot has changed since then, including the political influence of 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations like GPS, a brainchild of Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie and other GOP political operatives that was an early player in the post-Citizens United landscape. For example, in the 10 years leading up to that date, the combined political spending by organizations, like GPS, that aren’t required to disclose their donors stood at about $100 million. That was about $30 million less than was ultimately spent by such groups in the last few months of the 2010 midterms alone, and less than one-third of what they spent in the 2012 presidential election cycle. In that cycle, GPS’ political outlays alone made up nearly one-fourth of all spending by nondisclosing groups, as reported to the Federal Election Commission. None of those totals include the many ads GPS has run outside of the FEC’s reporting windows.

But while Crossroads GPS was, well, the elephant in the room when it came to fueling the growth of “dark money” spending in elections, it struggled more than almost any other big political spender, liberal or conservative, to convince the IRS that it was in the business of social welfare, not politics.

But as OpenSecrets Blog first reported Tuesday, that long battle with the IRS finally ended last November, assuring prospective donors that the group is operating with the IRS’ blessing.

The decision has shocked many observers, though not Crossroads GPS itself, whose president Steven Law said the group was “pleased but not surprised.”

Whats is a 501(c)(4) organization?

It is a social welfare organization that is not primarily involved in politics. They have two features attractive to interest groups that wish to be involved in politics from the outside - that is - not directly tied into a campaign.

1 - They are tax exempt.
2 - They don't have to disclose their donors.

This makes the designation attractive to many political groups that would like to register as one, but this is a call made by the IRS, which leads to the obvious controversy.

For detail:

- Open Secrets: Outside Spending: Frequently Asked Questions About 501(c)(4) Groups.
- Washington Post: What is a 501(c)(4), anyway?

A bit on Citizens United and SpeechNOW.org

More for today's discussion.

Both are interest groups, and both used the courts to expand their ability to spend money on the political process by successfully arguing to the court the existing limits on expenditures violates free speech. Campaign spending equals speech, and speech that is funded by corporate or union sources are the same as speech that comes form humans.

We will walk through these:

- Oyez: Citizens United.
- Wikipedia: SpeechNOW.org v. FEC.

Super PACs in the news

We will be discussing these in some 2305 sections.


Here's a look at them in the wild:


- The Daily Caller: How Super PACs Are Being Used to Influence Republican Delegates.

- Portland Press Herald: Big money in politics: Super-rich donors flood super PAC coffers.- Daily Kos: 50 Mega Rich Donors give 41% of all Super PAC money.
- Huffington Post: How Super Are Super PACs?
- Open Secrets: Who’s Who in the World of Super PACs?

From the Texas Tribune: Judge Blocks Texas Immigrant Harboring Law

To kick things off in 2305 today - a look at how the decisions of a federal judge can, and cannot, impact public policy in Texas and how they in turn impact the citizens of Texas (who are also citizens of the national government).

- Click here for the article.

A federal judge has blocked part of the state’s omnibus border security bill that makes harboring undocumented immigrants a state crime.

Under a provision of House Bill 11, which went into effect in September, a person commits a crime if they “encourage or induce a person to enter or remain in this country in violation of federal law by concealing, harboring, or shielding that person from detection.”

In January the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, filed a lawsuit in Bexar County against Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw and the Texas Public Safety Commission, which oversees the DPS. The lawsuit alleges the state violated the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause because immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two San Antonio landlords, David Cruz and Valentin Reyes; and Jonathon Ryan, the director of an immigrant services agency. The plaintiffs said that under the bill’s provisions, they could be accused of the crime for providing shelter space or renting homes to undocumented immigrants.

“What the plaintiffs said was, ‘We don’t want to be prosecuted under this law, we think it’s unconstitutional,’” said Nina Perales, MALDEF’s vice president of litigation.

In an order signed on Thursday, federal District Judge David Alan Ezra said the plaintiffs would likely succeed on the Supremacy Clause claim and ruled that state and local officials had no authority to enforce the harboring provision until a final decision on the case is made.

“In this case, Plaintiffs risk subjection to criminal penalties under laws that might be pre-empted by federal law and the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,” he wrote. “Thus, the Court finds that Plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm.”

A spokeswoman for state Attorney General Ken Paxton said "we are disappointed in the ruling and evaluating our options."

Although MALDEF was victorious on one front, the judge rejected the group’s claim that the bill violates the plaintiffs' right to due process and equal protection. Perales said the equal protection argument was made because the bill did not have a “rational purpose” and was arbitrary.

But in his order, Ezra said that although HB 11 might be pre-empted, the harboring provision fits in with the state’s intended goal of securing its borders.

“HB 11’s harboring provisions are rationally related to their stated purpose of ‘strengthen[ing] the state’s border security measures and help[ing to] stem the rising tide of human smuggling and human trafficking in Texas,’” he wrote.

From Slate: How the GOP Is Losing Its Grip on Working-Class Republicans 409 87 447 The Tea Party was a red herring. The real revolt of the Republican rank-and-file is upon us.

The author does a better job describing the historical context of the shift that seems to be going on within the Republican Party than I've been able to so far. We will look this over in 2305.

- Click here for it.

A brief history of white working-class voters in America: Between 1932 and 1964, they were diehard Democrats, core constituents of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Lyndon B. Johnson severed that bond when he committed his noblest deed in signing the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. “I think we’ve just delivered the South to the Republican Party for the rest of my life and yours,” Johnson told his aide Bill Moyers.

George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, began fulfilling Johnson’s prophecy when he led Southern whites out of the Democratic Party. Wallace formed the American Independent Party, which took five Southern states and helped deliver the White House to Richard Nixon in 1968—incidentally, the last time a third party carried any state in a U.S. presidential election. Wallace’s Southern voters and their Northern brethren increasingly supported Republicans thereafter, becoming a pillar of the Reagan coalition in the 1980s.

Now a version of that old split has emerged on the right. The Reagan Democrats have become the Trump Republicans, and signs point once again to a breach with the party they have reflexively supported for decades. At one level, the cause is the same as in 1964: reaction against social change that has eroded the value of white privilege. But at another level, this is a revolt by Republican voters who no longer believe that their party supports their basic economic interests.

For more:

- Factions in the Democratic Party.
- Factions in the Republican Party.

From the NYT: 2016 Delegate Count and Primary Results

let's spend a little time in class catching up with this.

- Click here for it.

From ScotusBlog: Google’s book-copying project survives challenge

The court had to define what the phrase "fair use" means. A majority on the court agreed that it applied to Google's book copying project. The case is Authors Guild v Google.

- Click here for background on the case.

And click here for Campbell v Acuff-Rose Music, Inc, the precedence for it - it involves a rap group's use of "Oh Pretty Woman."

Here is the commentary from ScotusBlog:

- Click here for the post.

A massive book-copying project by Google, giving its customers a chance to search the texts of more than twenty million volumes, survived a broad copyright challenge in the Supreme Court on Monday. With no noted dissents, the Justices voted to leave intact lower courts’ conclusion that what Google is doing with the project amounts to legal “fair use,” even of the volumes protected by exclusive rights.

Justice Elena Kagan, without explaining why, did not take part in the Court’s consideration of an appeal by the Authors Guild, a professional society of writers, joined by three authors whose books were copied: Jim Bouton, Joseph Goulden, and Betty Miles. The case is Authors Guild v. Google, Inc.

The challengers, in their appeal, argued that the lower court decisions awarding Google a summary victory deviated sharply from the traditional view that one who copies a protected creative work can only claim the legal defense of “fair use” if the copying satisfies the four factors that Congress spelled out in federal law.

What happened in this case, the challengers argued, was that lower courts permitted Google to rely upon its claim of “fair use” by inventing a new legal concept — that is, so long as the one who makes copies “transforms” the work into another, culturally useful mode, then it is legal. That, the guild and the authors asserted, “empowers judges to approve any re-use of copyrighted works that those judges deem socially beneficial.”

For more on the subject:

- What is Fair Use?
- U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index.

From the NYT: Focus on Chief Justice as Supreme Court Hears Immigration Challenge

A look inside what might motivating the Chief Justice. Aside from deciding on cases - as all justices do - he has to consider the viability of the institution. This raises repeated questions about how he might decide various cases, including the one at hand.

- Click here for the article.

The case, to be argued on Monday at the Supreme Court, presents fundamental questions about executive power against the backdrop of a wrenching national debate over Mr. Obama’s plan to spare millions of immigrants from deportation. But Chief Justice Roberts’s record suggests that he may avoid taking a position on such a divisive and partisan issue, focusing instead on the more technical question of whether the states challenging the Obama administration’s immigration plan have suffered the sort of direct and concrete injury that gives them standing to sue.

That jurisprudential off-ramp would avoid a deadlock or a grand pronouncement from a short-handed court on a politically charged issue in a presidential election year. And that may prove attractive to a chief justice who has said he does not want the Supreme Court to be viewed as a forum where “partisan matters would be worked out.”

A narrow ruling would in some ways echo Chief Justice Roberts’s 2012 opinion sustaining the central feature of the health care law on grounds so carefully calibrated that no other justice joined all of his opinion. And it would be consistent with his stated preference for achieving consensus by defining the legal question at issue in a case as narrowly as possible.

What does "lawful presence" mean?

The meaning of the phrase seems to lie at the heart of the dispute over the legality of the president's deferred action policies regarding two classes of undocumented immigrants. The case - United States v Texas - was argued today before the court. One of the arguments opponents to the executive actions made was that the use of the phrase in the regulations was the same as a creating a whole new immigration law. Supporters seemed to suggest that was not the case and that the policy would be effectively the same whether or not the phrase existed in the original memorandum setting out the policy.

- Click here for it.

Here's language form the brief submitted by the state of Texas detailing their complaint. which ultimately boils down to the president usurping legislative power which properly belongs to Congress:

- Click here for the brief.

The Executive Branch unilaterally created a program—known as DAPA—that will grant “lawful presence” and eligibility for work permits to over four million aliens who are present in this country unlawfully. “Lawful presence,” an immigration classification established by Congress, allows aliens to receive numerous benefits—such as Medicare, Social Security, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and unemployment insurance. And Congress has created a detailed, complex statutory scheme for determining when an alien may lawfully enter and be present in this country. 

The Executive claims the power to ignore these statutes and unilaterally deem lawful the presence of any unauthorized alien it chooses not to remove. Moreover, the Executive asserts that it may do so for mil- 2 lions of aliens without even using conventional noticeand-comment procedures. But the Executive does not dispute that DAPA would be one of the largest changes in immigration policy in our Nation’s history. The President himself described DAPA as “an action to change the law.” Pet. App. 384a; R.69.1 There is no statutory or constitutional authority for such a change. 

- The adminstration's response is here.

ScotusBlog adds the following:

- Click here for it.

At repeated points during the argument, it appeared that the Obama administration might actually be able to salvage its policy as both legal and enforceable (if the lawsuit were allowed to go forward) by simply deleting from the regulations in dispute a two-word phrase: “lawful presence.” It was very clear during the challengers’ argument — by lawyers for the twenty-six states and for the U.S. House of Representatives — that the phrase carries enormous meaning for them, that they see it as the equivalent of a whole new immigration law enacted by the White House, not Congress.

At one point, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who could wind up holding a decisive vote, appeared to hint that he agreed that this is what happened, that in this instance, the normal order of government policymaking had been turned “upside down,” as he put it.
The Obama administration’s lawyer sought to defuse that complaint by telling the Court, in response to several questions about the phrase, that it stands for nothing whatsoever, and could simply be deleted without affecting the policy in any way. But, if that is the solution, would it be enough to generate five votes in favor of the policy.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: Legal Matters Could Temporarily Expand Abbott’s Power

The plural executive might be - temporarily - a bit singular based on recent events.

- Click here for the story.

Texas doesn’t have a cabinet form of government, but in Gov. Greg Abbott’s case, it might soon have the next best thing.

Two of the state’s relatively new elected officials — Attorney GeneralKen Paxton and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller — are in deep political trouble at the moment. If worst comes to worst for either or both of those fine gentlemen, Abbott would appoint their replacements.

That’s a lot more say than he had when they won the positions in 2014.

State officials in Texas don’t run on tickets of their own choosing. What looks to the voters like a team — with candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and so on — is really just a collection of unrelated candidates who happen to belong to the same political party.

. . . In other states, governors and lieutenant governors get elected together, like presidents and vice presidents. Many states have cabinet governments where, as in the federal government, the chief executive chooses the state’s top lawyers, finance officials and other high officials. The governor runs the government, gets the credit and takes the blame.

Texas governors get some of the credit, most of the blame and none of that power: The 18 judges who sit on the state’s highest civil and criminal courts and the eight officials who run other executive departments are elected in their own right — sometimes from opposing political parties or factions. Photo ops are the only Kumbayah moments.

Abbott can’t control the comptroller, steer oil and gas regulators, decide whether and how the state jumps into lawsuits, or run the Senate, the agriculture or land offices. He didn’t hire them. He can’t fire them. And replacing them is left to the voters.
Usually.

But if the wheels of justice turn against Paxton or Miller or both, forcing or prompting one or both of them to leave office, the governor would have vacancies to fill — just as he would in a cabinet form of government.

The new occupants wouldn’t be under his control, but they would probably remember how they got those great jobs. It’s a subtle difference, but a real one: Are they going to check in with the governor’s office on big decisions and announcements or follow their own political stars?

For background on the problems the AG and Ag Commissioner are facing:

- SEC Charges Ken Paxton With Securities Fraud.
- Timeline: Attorney General Ken Paxton's Legal Saga.
- Sid Miller Criminal Case Would Stay in Travis County.
- Texas Rangers Investigating Sid Miller's State-Paid Trips.












https://www.texastribune.org/2016/04/11/sec-charges-paxton-securities-fraud/

A variety of graphs about taxes

A hodge-podge really:

||

From the Tax Foundation: 2016 Tax Brackets

FYI - again, in honor of tax day.

- Click here for it.

From Vox: The new era of great power competition Defense Secretary Ash Carter sees a world of heightened tension and even higher stakes.

The Secretary of Defense tries to make sense of the current geo-political landscape.

- Click here for it.

When Ashton Carter began his career at the Pentagon, in 1993, geopolitics was changing more rapidly than it had at any point since the Second World War. As the Cold War ended, a new world was taking its place, one dominated by American power.

Carter, at the time, expected that America's greatest challenge in that world — and, by extension, the focus of his own career — would be limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, he told me in a recent interview at the Pentagon. And the greatest threat, he thought, would be political instability within nuclear-armed Russia.

"That was the riveting challenge of that time. We look back now, and I remember how fearful that was," he said. "But it worked out extraordinarily well."

Twenty-some years later, Carter now runs the Pentagon as defense secretary. The world, and the challenges it presents for the United States, turned out somewhat differently than he, or anyone else, had expected.

What Carter has seen over the past two decades, and has often overseen, is the long and difficult process whereby the United States has tried, and at times struggled, to navigate those unexpected turns in the grand experiment that is the post–Cold War world.

The challenges of this era have only recently become clear: the failure and collapse of weak states, which can bring terrorism, civil war, and refugee influxes; rogue states that resist the American-led order and proliferate dangerous weapons; and now, according to Carter, a return to "great power competition."

In a lengthy and wide-ranging conversation, Carter expounded at length on those challenges: how they've changed, what the US has learned in its successes and stumbles with them, and what he sees coming. You can read the interview in full here.

From the Atlantic: The Obama Doctrine The U.S. president talks through his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world.

For our look in 2305 about foreign policy. Presidents tend to have their own unique approaches to foreign policy - Obama is no different.

- Click here for it.

Obama believes that the Manichaeanism, and eloquently rendered bellicosity, commonly associated with Churchill were justified by Hitler’s rise, and were at times defensible in the struggle against the Soviet Union. But he also thinks rhetoric should be weaponized sparingly, if at all, in today’s more ambiguous and complicated international arena. The president believes that Churchillian rhetoric and, more to the point, Churchillian habits of thought, helped bring his predecessor, George W. Bush, to ruinous war in Iraq. Obama entered the White House bent on getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan; he was not seeking new dragons to slay. And he was particularly mindful of promising victory in conflicts he believed to be unwinnable. “If you were to say, for instance, that we’re going to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and build a prosperous democracy instead, the president is aware that someone, seven years later, is going to hold you to that promise,”

From the Atlantic: What Caused the Great Crime Decline in the U.S.?

For out look at the public policy process - in this case policy evaluation. Did the "tough on crime" approach have anything to do with it?

- Click here for the article.

In the early 1990s, U.S. crime rates had been on a steep upward climb since the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency. The crack-cocaine epidemic in the mid-1980s added fuel to the fire, and handgun-related homicides more than doubled between 1985 and 1990. That year, murders peaked in New York City with 2,245 killings. Politicians embraced tough-on-crime platforms and enacted harshly punitive policies. Experts warned the worst could be yet to come.

Then crime rates went down. And then they kept going down.

By decade’s end, the homicide rate plunged 42 percent nationwide. Violent crime decreased by one-third. What turned into a precipitous decline started later in some areas and took longer in others. But it happened everywhere: in each region of the country, in cities large and small, in rural and urban areas alike. In the Northeast, which reaped the largest benefits, the homicide rate was halved. Murders plummeted by 75 percent in New York City alone as the city entered the new millennium.

The trend kept ticking downward from there, more slowly and with some fluctuations, to the present day. By virtually any metric, Americans now live in one of the least violent times in the nation’s history.

But the forces that drove the Great American Crime Decline remain a mystery. Theories abound among sociologists, economists, and political scientists about the causes, with some hypotheses stronger than others. But there’s no real consensus among scholars about what caused one of the largest social shifts in modern American history.
So, what happened?

A variety of possibilities are explored - none explains everything.

Two items from from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In honor of tax day.

1 - Policy Basics: Where Do Federal Tax Revenues Come From?





2 - Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?

From the Pew Research Center: 5 facts about Social Security

We will be looking at social welfare policy soon enough - this is a key partof it.

- Click here for the post.

Here are the 5 facts:

1- Social Security touches more people than just about any other federal program.
2 - Social Security is, and always has been, an inter-generational transfer of wealth
3 - Right now, Social Security has plenty of assets.
4 - But since 2010, Social Security’s cash expenses have exceeded its cash receipts.
5 - Social Security’s combined reserves likely will be fully depleted by 2034

For more:

- CBO: Social Security.
- CBO: The Long-Term Outlook for Social Security.

From the Pew Research Center: Budget Deficit Slips as Public Priority

For out look at public policy in 2305.

- Click here for it.

This chart will be worth pouring over.



Differences among age groups - useful for when we discuss interest groups:

Regarding week 11's written assignment

For students want to rewrite for a higher grade, here's some detail missing from the original graph.

- Click here for the original assignment.

And on these for detail.

- Here is the original article: Testing Theories of American Politics:Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.

And some commentary:

- Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy.
- Is America an Oligarchy?
- Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy.
- Scholar Behind Viral 'Oligarchy' Study Tells You What It Means.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: No Middle Ground in Race to Lead Texas GOP

There is a fight underway for control of the direction of the Republican Party in Texas.

- Click here for the article.

Houston’s Jared Woodfill is trying to win control of the Republican Party of Texas, challenging the current management and saying it has been too quiet in the face of legislative defeats in a state government dominated by Republican officeholders and appointees.

The contest between Tom Mechler of Amarillo, the party’s current chairman, and Woodfill, who once led the Harris County GOP, is a fight about purity, about which kinds of conservatives the Texas GOP represents and about what the party is supposed to be doing. They don’t run as combined tickets, but former state party Chairman Cathie Adams is running for vice chair in tandem with Woodfill while current vice chair Amy Clark is seeking re-election, along with Mechler.

The outcome of the elections, to be held at the GOP’s state convention in Dallas next month, probably isn’t going to change your life, but it’s interesting. Mechler wants the party to bring in more voters — he’s talking about minorities and millennials, among others — who have generally eluded the charms of the GOP. He doesn’t think it’s his job to tell the state’s Republican officeholders what to do.

“Every Republican should be comfortable within the party,” he says. “My vision is and will be that is that this party is welcoming and embracing all conservatives from all over the state of Texas.”

Woodfill is a bully-pulpit guy, a political figure whose effectiveness depends on everything from actual microphones on actual podiums to social media, news media and advertising.

He is appealing for the support of others who, like him, think the state political party should be whipping the Legislature to keep it in line with the GOP platform and the beliefs of Texans in its voting base.

His pitch against the current party leadership seems aimed more at the House than at anyone else. An example from the Facebook page promoting his candidacy: “Friends, we are engaged in a cultural war and our Republican Party of Texas leadership is running from the fight! One need only look at the 2015 legislative sessions to find evidence of the RPT surrendering our values.”

Woodfill focuses on a list of issues that met their demise, he contends, in the Texas House, including bills outlawing references to Sharia in courts, requiring Texas cities to enforce federal immigration laws, allowing the use or diversion of tax dollars for private school tuition, repealing in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants/noncitizens who graduate from Texas high schools, and enacting new ethics legislation.

That plays into existing divisions among the Republicans in government, however they are characterized: establishment against insurgents, social conservatives against social moderates, chamber of commerce against grassroots.

From the Texas Tribune: Abbott Names New Leaders at Embattled Child Welfare Agency

Another item likely to be on the agenda of the next legislative session.

- Click here for the article.

At a time of heightened public scrutiny of Texas’ embattled child welfare agency, Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday appointed new leadership of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Hank Whitman, a former chief of the Texas Rangers, a state law enforcement agency, will be the department’s new commissioner. One of his top lieutenants will be Kristene Blackstone, a former caseworker with experience in Child Protective Services and the attorney general’s child support division, who will serve as Assistant Commissioner of Child Protective Services. Both will start at the agency on May 1.

Abbott said Monday that the new appointments marked the beginning of reforms for Child Protective Services.

"The status quo at CPS is unacceptable," he said in a prepared statement. "I’ve insisted on overhauling a broken system, and I applaud the leadership changes that will provide a new direction and focus that puts protecting children first."

From CNN: Latino vote: Will the sleeping giant finally choose the next president?

This has been predicted - incorrectly - for several elections. Will it be true this year?


- Click here for the article.

Will Latinos -- now the nation's largest minority -- choose the next president and make history, too?

The answer may boil down to Nevada and eight other states, all places where Latinos could determine who becomes the next president -- if they vote in sufficient numbers, according to a new study by City University of New York in partnership with CNN en Español. 

The signs are optimistic.

Latinos are already voting in higher numbers: In 1992, they cast only 3.9% of all votes at the national level, but their share is projected to approach 10% in November, the study said.

The study identifies nine small and big states where Latinos could flex their growing muscle and actually swing the vote for the White House: Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as the delegate-rich states of Florida and Ohio.

"States with relatively small percentages of the total national Latino electorate will probably determine who will be the next president of the United States," the study said.

From the Atlantic: Millennials' Political Views Don't Make Any Sense

Something to chew on in class today. Younger folks are full of paradoxes and conflicting viewpoints it seems. Aren't we all?

- Click here for the article.

Three major take-aways from the article:

1. Millennials are more liberal than the rest of the country, particularly on social issues, but they get more economically conservative when they make more money.

2. Millennials don't know what they're talking about when it comes to economics.

3. Far less important, but entertaining nonetheless: Millennials don't know what socialism is, but they think it sounds nice.

From Vox: Americans don't have a constitutional right to vote — it's time for that to change

This is somewhat surprising. Despite the fact that the phrase "the right to vote" exists several times in the Constitution, the right itself is not clearly spelled out - at least in the direct manner in which the rights of speech and free exercise are. The question whether the right exists within the broader interpretation of constitutional language remains controversial - click here for past posts on the subject. Some argue it exists, I'm on the other side.

So is this author - and he argues that there ought to be language inserted in the constitution recognizing that right.

- Click here for the article.

The United States has had the good fortune in our history to have avoided conquest by foreign powers or military coups, which has left us with a constitutional architecture that substantially predates modern democratic norms.

When the Constitution was enacted, it did not include a right to vote for the simple reason that the Founders didn't think most people should vote. Voting laws, at the time, mostly favored white, male property-holders, and the rules varied sharply from state to state. But in the first half of the nineteenth century, the idea of popular democracy took root across the land. Property qualifications were universally abolished and the franchise became the key marker of white male political equality. Subsequent activists sought to further expand the franchise by barring discrimination on the basis of race (the 15th Amendment) and gender (the 19th Amendment) — establishing the norm that all citizens should have the right to vote.

But this norm is just a norm. There is no actual constitutional provision stating that all citizens have the right to vote, only that voting rights cannot be dispensed on the basis of race or gender discrimination. A law requiring you to cut your hair short before voting, or to dye it blue, or to say "pretty please let me vote," all might pass muster. And so might a voter ID requirement.

The legality of these kinds of laws hinge on whether they violate the Constitution's protections against race and gender discrimination, not on whether they prevent citizens from voting. As Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier has written, this "leaves one of the fundamental elements of democratic citizenship tethered to the whims of local officials."

The solution, both to America's voting access problem and to alleviating public concerns about fraud, is to establish an affirmative right to vote.

An argument against compulsory voting

It comes from a libertarian commentator - no surprise in that. He sees little benefit, nor impact, if voting was compulsory - but he doesn't seem to worked up about it either.

- President Obama endorses mandatory voting.

In his speech, President Obama claimed that mandatory voting would diminish the significance of money in politics. The opposite effect is more likely. Most campaign spending represents expenditures on televised ads. For fairly obvious reasons, relatively ignorant voters are more likely to be influenced by simplistic 30 second ads than relatively well-informed ones (who, among other things, tend to have stronger preexisting views). Thus, a more ignorant electorate is likely to be one where campaign spending on television ads exercises more influence. I don’t think the influence of money on politics is either as great or as harmful as President Obama and many other liberals do. But if you disagree with me on that, you may have even more reason to oppose mandatory voting than I do.

Like other defenders of compulsory voting, the president touts the example of Australia, which is indeed a generally well-governed nation that has a compulsory voting law. But the full list of nations with compulsory voting is not one that inspires confidence. It includes such paragons of civic virtue as Argentina, Egypt, Congo, and Lebanon. By contrast, one of the few democracies with lower turnout rates than the United States is Switzerland, which is often considered one of the best-governed nations in the world. I don’t claim that Argentina and Egypt have bad governments and Switzerland a good one because of their respective voting laws. My point is merely that there is no clear correlation between turnout and good governance.

In addition to its potentially harmful consequences, mandatory voting is also an unjust infringement on individual liberty. Some people choose not to vote because they find the available options so distasteful that they don’t want to be in the position of supporting any of them. Even if the ballot includes some sort of “none of the above” option, choosing to vote might still be viewed as at least a partial endorsement of the status quo political system, and some citizens might prefer not to signal any such endorsement. It is debatable whether this is the correct approach to an election with terrible options. I personally believe that is still usually best to vote for the lesser of the available evils. But the opposing view is not unreasonable, and those who act on it don’t deserve to be punished by the government for doing so.

Others can reasonably choose to abstain from voting because they lack the knowledge to make a well-informed choice and (quite rightly) don’t want to harm the rest of society by making ignorant decisions. Given the vast size and complexity of modern government, even intelligent and conscientious people will sometimes find themselves in that position. Finally, many people might prefer not to vote simply because they have better uses for their time, including in some cases uses that create more benefit for society, as well as themselves. Jason Brennan discusses this latter scenario in greater detail in The Ethics of Voting.

Liberal Democratic advocates of compulsory voting are in part motivated by the hope that it will generate increased turnout among young people and racial minorities, thereby securing more electoral victories for their party. But Democratic strategists’ hopes for a bonanza of extra votes in that quarter are matched by GOP hopes for higher turnout among working class whites, who in recent elections have tended to back Republicans, but also have relatively low turnout rates. In addition, as Brennan emphasizes, lower-class and less-educated voters tend to be more socially conservative as well as more economically left-wing. Thus, even if increased turnout within this group gave the Democrats more victories, the resulting Democratic Party would likely be more socially conservative.

Barack Obama praises Australia's mandatory voting rules

We will discuss voting turnout in some sections soon enough - and look at the low levels of turnout in the US as compared to other nations. The high turnout in some nations is due to the fact that voting is mandatory. Australia is an example...


- Click here for the article.

President Barack Obama says if the US followed Australia and introduced mandatory voting at elections it would have a transformative impact on America.

The president, speaking to students at the University of Chicago Law School, said the US has some of the lowest voting rates of any advanced democracy in the world.

“Australia has got mandatory voting,” Mr Obama said on Friday.

“You start getting 70-80 per cent voting rates, that’s transformative.”

In the 2013 federal election in Australia voter turnout for the lower house of parliament was 93.34% and 94% in the Senate, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. In the 2010 election the figures were 93.22% and 93.83% respectively.

This compares with just 36% of America’s voting-eligible population casting ballots at the crucial mid-term elections in 2014 –the lowest turnout in more than 70 years, despite control of Congress being up for grabs and state governor races contested.

Just 53.6% of voting-age Americans voted at the 2012 presidential election.

“We really are the only advanced democracy on earth that systematically and purposely makes it really hard for people to vote,” Mr Obama said

Remembering Justice Scalia

From Scotusblog: Argument preview: Justices to consider whether a car dealer’s service advisor is a “salesman,” exempt from overtime rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act

More on how the Supreme Court defines words. The case at issue is Encino Motorcars v. Navarro.

Here is what's at issue:

Whether “service advisors” at car dealerships are exempt under 29 U.S.C. §213(b)(10)(A) from the Fair Labor Standards Act's overtime-pay requirements.

- It involves something called the Chevron Deference, as well as how statutory language should be interpreted.

- Click here for the article.

The Justices should have a relaxing moment with Encino Motorcars v. Navarro, next week’s dispute under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), one of the simplest cases of the entire Term. The FLSA, as presumably all of you know, obligates employers to pay overtime pay to qualifying employees who work more than forty hours in a week, but has exceptions that take large swaths of the workforce out of its protection. Several of those exceptions govern salesmen of various kinds – no references to “salespersons” in this FDR-era statute! The relevant exception here covers any “salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles.” The subject employees are service advisors at car dealers – who neither sell cars nor service automobiles, but sell the servicing of automobiles.

. . . Against that history, the employee (respondent Hector Navarro) naturally contends that the language is sufficiently ambiguous to warrant Chevron deference to the DOL reading; the employer (petitioner Encino Motorcars) contends just as vigorously that the language is so plain that the courts owe no deference to the shifting views DOL has adopted through the years. In the end, then, the case centers on the statute’s simple reference to any “salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles.”

The arguments on that point are carefully drawn. The employer emphasizes the strange line-drawing that flows from the DOL view: all agree that employees selling cars are covered and that employees servicing cars are covered; it is strange to exclude those who sell the servicing of cars. As Paul Clement (counsel for the employer) quips, “it would be nonsensical to suggest that a salesman primarily engaged in the selling of automobile servicing is engaged in neither selling nor servicing automobiles.” Parsing the language, Clement contends that service advisors are covered because they are “primarily engaged in . . . servicing automobiles.”

On the other side, Stephanos Bibas and the Supreme Court Clinic at the University of PennsylvaniaLaw School’s Supreme Court Clinic, representing Hector Navarro and his fellow employees, tender a tour de force of close linguistic analysis. Rife with citations to Strunk & White, Black’s Law Dictionary, and of course Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner’s Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, they rest on the obscure interpretive canon “reddendo singula singulis” – literally “applying separate words to separate subjects.”

Are there more federal laws than the president can enforce?

That seems to be the point in one of the links I followed in one of the articles I linked to in the previous post. We are all - he claims - federal criminals. We just don't know it, and fortunately for us, the federal government lacks the resources to nail us.

- Click here for it.

Here are some of what we have done that might make us federal criminals:

1. Used any of the hundreds of substances banned by federal law

2. Underpaid federal taxes

3. Cut corners in your business dealings.

4. Mishandled supposedly dangerous substances or did a poor job of supervising workers who handled them.

5. Violated a wide range of miscellaneous federal regulations.

For more:


- Everyone Is a Criminal: On the Over-policing of America.
- Are You a Criminal? Maybe You Are and Don’t Know It.

From the New Republic: Even Conservatives Agree on Obama’s Immigration Powers. Will the Supreme Court?

Conservatives tend to like expanded executive power, and have supported it in the past in regards to immigration policy. The article's author points out that many are on the side of the Obama Administration, and against the state of Texas, regarding the constitutionality of the deferred action program for some classes of illegal immigrants.

- Click here for the article.

. . . on June 25, 2012, en route to striking down draconian anti-immigrant restrictions enacted in Arizona, Reagan appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by George W. Bush appointee Chief Justice John Roberts and four colleagues, spelled out a solid foundation for DAPA. “A principal feature of the removal system,” the Court held, “is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials. Federal officials, as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all.” The opinion went on to note that DHS must consider many factors in deciding when removal is appropriate, including both “immediate human concerns” and “foreign policy.”

Prominent conservative legal scholars and experts know that, as George Mason scholar and Obama critic Ilya Somin wrote at Volokh Conspiracy, “Obama’s decision to defer deportation is in line with those of past presidents, and well within the scope of his authority.” In Washington Examiner, Shikha Dalmia reminded “conservatives outraged” at the administration’s initiative that “whether they like it or not, existing immigration laws give the president vast discretion to temporarily legalize an unlimited number of foreigners.” University of Virginia professor Saikrishna Prakash, a former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas and a prominent specialist on separation of powers and presidential authority, has unequivocally stated that “President Obama has not suspended or dispensed any law” and “not violated his faithful execution duty.”

Here's more:

- Obama Reply Raises The Stakes For SCOTUS:Texas is Flat Out Wrong on Immigration Law.
- The “Lawfully Present” Confusion in the DAPA Case.
- Obama, immigration, and the rule of law.
- On immigration, Obama may be cynical, but he's not breaking the law.
- Response: The Statutory Nonenforcement Power.

A few items on the Trump campaign

He's been argued not to have much of one - at least in the conventional sense. At one point it seemed like that was unnecessary anymore in this age of social media. That no longer seems the case.

I don't cover campaigning as much as I should, so these are meant to redress that deficiency.

- Donald Trump Campaign Hires Rick Wiley, an R.N.C. Veteran.
- Trump takes new steps to reset his campaign.
- Meet the Man Tasked With Getting Trump the Republican Nomination.
- Trump Seeks to Reshape Campaign After Wisconsin Loss.
- Trump campaign in disarray.

From Campaigns and Elections: Organization and Analytics Help Take Down Trump in Iowa.

A nice inside look at how data driven campaigns are run. Obama started it all - at least in the digital age - but here is how things have progressed since then. This focuses on the recent fight between Rubio and Cruz.

- Click here for the article.

“The conventional wisdom has been destroyed. What you can do is rely on data,” Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager told the Washington Post at the time. In fact, Cruz’s camp had statisticians and behavioral psychologists from the firm embedded in order to help with what it called psychographic targeting, “which categorizes supporters into personality groups in order to target them with specially tailored messaging,” according to the company.

Rubio, meanwhile, was helped by hiring veteran hands from Mitt Romney’s successful 2012 bid for the GOP presidential nomination. Stuart Stevens, Romney’s top strategist in 2012, credited Rubio consultant Rich Beeson with forming data models that helped shape the Romney strategy four years ago.

“Every primary, Rich predicted the result before and was always right,” Stevens said. “His in-depth analytics then was tremendously important for us.” Beeson, a partner at FLS Connect, declined to comment for this piece.

Stevens also praised Roe, who has a reputation as an aggressive strategist.

“Data analytics helped them know where their vote is. I think Jeff Roe did a superb job,” said Stevens. “But Cruz really worked it. He did it the old fashioned way and voters rewarded him for it.”

Other consultants credited Cruz’s traditional campaign structure and put less emphasis on his data analytics for propelling him to victory.

“It was quite a concerted campaign, it wasn’t just data analytics,” said Bob Haus, an Iowa-based GOP consultant. “He traveled. He did all 99 counties and his message was consistent. There are some things data can tell you, but technology only gets you so far.”

Here's more on the topic:

- Cruz campaign credits psychological data and analytics for its rising success.

As Cecil Stinemetz walked up to a gray clapboard house in suburban Des Moines last week wearing his “Cruz 2016” cap, a program on his iPhone was determining what kind of person would answer the door.

Would she be a “relaxed leader”? A “temperamental conservative”? Maybe even a “true believer”?

Nope. It turned out that Birdie Harms, a 64-year-old grandmother, part-time real estate agent and longtime Republican, was, by the Ted Cruz campaign’s calculations, a “stoic traditionalist” — a conservative whose top concerns included President Obama’s use of executive orders on immigration.

Which meant that Stinemetz was instructed to talk to her in a tone that was “confident and warm and straight to the point” and ask about her concerns regarding the Obama administration’s positions on immigration, guns and other topics.

The outreach to Harms and others like her is part of a months-long effort by the Cruz campaign to profile and target potential supporters, an approach that campaign officials believe has helped propel the senator from Texas to the top tier among Republican presidential candidates in many states, including Iowa, where he is in first place, according to two recent polls. It’s also a multimillion-dollar bet that such efforts still matter in an age of pop-culture personalities and ­social-media messaging.

Random items on the - mostly Republican - delegate selection process

We will review some of these in class.

- Everything you need to know about delegate math in the presidential primary.
- 2016 Republican Delegate Allocation Rules by State.
- These 54 People Could Determine the Republican Nomination.
- Trump blasts 'rigged' rules on picking Republican delegates.
- A State-By-State Roadmap For The Rest Of The Republican Primary.

These focus mostly on the Republican battle in order to determine whether Trump can still win the nomination. I'll have more on the Democratic fight later.

Washington Post: Cruz likely to block Trump on a second ballot at the GOP convention

Trump's lack of a ground game has caught up with him. I'll add more on the subject separately. Trump seems to have won the votes in many states so far, but Cruz has done a better job selecting the delegates. They are only committed to Trump on the first ballot.

- Click here for the article.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is close to ensuring that Donald Trump cannot win the GOP nomination on a second ballot at the party’s July convention in Cleveland, scooping up scores of delegates who have pledged to vote for him instead of the front-runner if given the chance.

The push by Cruz means that it is more essential than ever for Trump to clinch the nomination by winning a majority of delegates to avoid a contested and drawn-out convention fight, which Trump seems almost certain to lose.

The GOP race now rests on two cliffhangers: Can Trump lock up the nomination before Cleveland? And if not, can Cruz cobble together enough delegates to win a second convention vote if Trump fails in the first?

Trump’s path to amassing the 1,237 delegates he needs to win outright has only gotten narrower after losing to Cruz in Wisconsin and other recent contests, and would require him to perform better in the remaining states than he has to this point.

In addition, based on the delegate selections made by states and territories, Cruz is poised to pick up at least 130 more votes on a second ballot, according to a Washington Post analysis. That tally surpasses 170 delegates under less conservative assumptions — a number that could make it impossible for Trump to emerge victorious.

And here is a warning about what might happen should Trump lose:


- Donald Trump’s campaign just acknowledged something very important about his convention chances.

. . . If you follow the Trump logic, there are only two options: (1) He wins on the first ballot and is the party's nominee, or (2) he loses on the first ballot and does everything he can to cast the process as fixed and non-democratic. Option 1 is a problem because Trump runs badly behind Hillary Clinton, not only in the head-to-head polling matchups but also among key subgroups such as married women. Option 2 may be an even bigger problem because it opens the door to some sort of third-party bid for Trump. Even if Trump doesn't or can't mount a serious independent bid, he would almost certainly be an unhelpful agitator against the Republican nominee (presumably Cruz).
Here's what we know today: Trump is about to have a very good few weeks beginning next Tuesday in New York. He will go into the convention with both the most delegates and the most raw votes. He and his campaign see the first ballot as his one shot to be the nominee. If he doesn't win it on the first ballot, his prospects beyond that are dim. If he doesn't win it on the first ballot, he is laying the groundwork to declare the whole process a fraud.

That paragraph is an absolute nightmare for the Republican establishment. It leaves Trump as either the party's nominee or the disgruntled loser who is already threatening to take his ball (and all of his supporters) and go home if the rules don't work in his favor.

The Take Care Clause of the Constitution and the Administrative Procurement Act.

Apart from politics - these lie at heart of the dispute in the immigration case discussed in the previous post.

What are they?

- Administrative Procedure Act.
- Take Care Clause.

From ScotusBlog: Argument preview: A big, or not so big, ruling due on immigration

Lyle Denniston preview next week's oral arguments in a case where Texas is challenging the president's delayed deportation policy. The case in United States v Texas.

- Click here for ScotusBlog's page on it.

Here's what's at issue:

(1) Whether a state that voluntarily provides a subsidy to all aliens with deferred action has Article III standing and a justiciable cause of action under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to challenge the Secretary of Homeland Security’s guidance seeking to establish a process for considering deferred action for certain aliens because it will lead to more aliens having deferred action; (2) whether the guidance is arbitrary and capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law; (3) whether the guidance was subject to the APA’s notice-and-comment procedures; and (4) whether the guidance violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, Article II, section 3.

Here's Denniston's preview:

In many ways, the case of United States v. Texas illustrates much about the current political climate in America and in the nation’s capital, in particular. It reflects gridlock, partisan polarization, and the use of sometimes imaginative lawsuits to pursue political or policy agendas. It is a modern echo of what the Founders debated with great intensity: how to divide up the powers of national and state governments. But this dispute’s pure political content is a product of the modern era’s partisan warfare, the stubborn refusal to compromise in order to get something done, even in very important fields of policy.

President Obama and Congress have not been able to put together a comprehensive new immigration policy, and so the president has opted to make unusual uses of claimed executive authority. His government’s November 2014 orders would put off, for three years and perhaps longer, the compelled deportation of upwards of four million undocumented immigrants, some of whom came to the country illegally and others who had permission to enter but overstayed and lost that status. Most of them are parents of children who have a legal right to remain. The parents would not gain U.S. citizenship, but would be allowed to remain in the country without legal status and could get a job and access to public benefits, such as driver’s licenses.

The legal fight was brought on by states where Republicans dominate the governments, and where the idea of suing the national government over policy disputes has grown more and more popular. United States v. Texas is as much a part of those efforts as have been the repeated courthouse challenges to Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), with states playing major roles in those cases, too.

From the Washington Post: Obama can appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court if the Senate does nothing

An interesting take on the Garland nomination - one from a previous Supreme Court Clerk that includes a look at ambiguity within the Constitution.

- Click here for the article.

. . . the Senate has simply refused to consider President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, dozens of nominations to federal judgeships and executive offices are pending before the Senate, many for more than a year. Our system prides itself on its checks and balances, but there seems to be no balance to the Senate’s refusal to perform its constitutional duty.

The Constitution glories in its ambiguities, however, and it is possible to read its language to deny the Senate the right to pocket veto the president’s nominations. Start with the appointments clause of the Constitution. It provides that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States.” Note that the president has two powers: the power to “nominate” and the separate power to “appoint.” In between the nomination and the appointment, the president must seek the “Advice and Consent of the Senate.” What does that mean, and what happens when the Senate does nothing?

In most respects, the meaning of the “Advice and Consent” clause is obvious. The Senate can always grant or withhold consent by voting on the nominee. The narrower question, starkly presented by the Garland nomination, is what to make of things when the Senate simply fails to perform its constitutional duty.

It is altogether proper to view a decision by the Senate not to act as a waiver of its right to provide advice and consent. A waiver is an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. As the Supreme Court has said, “ ‘No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right,’ or a right of any other sort, ‘may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.’ ”

It is in full accord with traditional notions of waiver to say that the Senate, having been given a reasonable opportunity to provide advice and consent to the president with respect to the nomination of Garland, and having failed to do so, can fairly be deemed to have waived its right.

From the Austin American Statesman: Grusendorf: School finance should value each student the same

A subject we've been covering in several 2306 sections. Texas' method of financing public school continues to be a - constitutional - mess.

- Click here for the article.

Any day now the Texas Supreme Court will likely rule on the pending school-finance case. Four issues are before the justices:

Efficiency: Is the system productive of results with little waste?
Equity: Is money equitably allocated?
Adequacy: Do schools have enough money?
State property tax: Is the state in violation of the prohibition against a state property tax. Texas taxpayers, legislators, and school officials anxiously await this pending decision.

The efficiency issue is before the court for the first time and was plead by the Texas Association of Business and five families. The other three issues have been litigated multiple times in the past and have consistently been brought to the courts by public schools and their various associations. Historically the focus of school-finance litigation has been money and how that money is allocated. However, the court has continued to indicate that money is only one issue and that the school-finance system needs systemic change.

For more than three decades, the Texas Legislature has been wrestling with the thorny issue of school finance and school finance litigation. Time and again the legislature has tweaked the system only to find the state back at the courthouse defending the latest legislative action. Although the Texas Supreme Court has consistently called for “structural” change, the legislative solution has always been more patches to the existing structure.

Clearly, a different approach is required if the seemingly endless cycle of litigation is to ever end. On the first day of the trial in 2012 the lead attorney for the school districts indicated that litigation was just part of the school finance system. That should not be the case.

The way education is funded today consists of a hodgepodge of highly complex outdated formulas that would make a nuclear physicist’s head spin, formulas which the trial court found have little relation to what is required to educate a child. The current formula system has evolved over time based primarily on political considerations. In other words, politicians tweak the school funding formulas to deliver additional funding to whichever school districts politicians wish to favor in order to harvest sufficient votes for passage of their preferred legislation. School finance has become a way to earmark funds for political purposes.

From the Austin American - Statesman: Wear: Don’t mess up your vote: Here’s what Uber, Lyft ballot question means

For our look at municipal elections. Ballot wording is often confusing.

- Click here for the article.

Perhaps I shouldn’t worry so much about a confusion factor with the ballot language that Austin voters will encounter on Proposition 1 in the May 7 election.

After all, as last week’s campaign finance reports made clear, Uber and Lyft have already spent more than $2 million to make sure most voters know whether to vote for or against the ballot question. But already, Statesman columnist Ken Herman and I have heard from readers who are befuddled by the wording they see posted on the Travis County clerk’s sample ballot. One of them, who told me her intention was to oppose Uber and Lyft, said she would have inadvertently voted the other way based on what she had read in the ballot language.

It is not hard to see why. Here’s what each of you Austin voters will encounter when you go to the polls during early voting (April 25 to May 3) or on May 7:

From the Houston Chronicle: Now the hard part Mayor Turner's first 100 days have been a sprint, but real challenges await.it

Some background for out look at the strong mayor form of government.

- Click here for the article.

Today marks Mayor Sylvester Turner's 100th day as mayor, and during his short stretch in office one thing has become perfectly clear: There are a lot fewer potholes on Houston streets.

Turner rushed from day one to fill the teeth-shatterers and suspension-killers that had become a hallmark of the daily commute and a chorus on the campaign.

Houston's new mayor also tore up potentially corrupt airport expansion contracts, saved curbside recycling, let a police chief retire and appointed an education czar and new leaders at Metro, the city attorney office and the Department of Neighborhoods.

We're still waiting for him to fill out the rest of his roster.

Beyond those mayoral duties that make headlines, there's a palpable change in tone at City Hall. Once icy relations between City Council and mayor have warmed, and could even be described as friendly. Fears that a partisan election season would seep into the daily work of running our city haven't come to fruition.

However, it is still too early to give anything but an incomplete on the mayoral report card - the real hurdles sit further down the line.

The city faces a $160 million budget gap that has to be closed by July 1 - Turner's 182nd day. He also needs to have a pension plan in hand before the next legislative session is gaveled in on his 375th day.

Tick-tock.

But even with those challenges months away, Turner still appears to be sprinting toward his goal. Council has been told to expect a preliminary budget plan by April 15 and a finished budget on May 10, with a vote on May 25.

The truncated timeline is supposed to send a sign of good faith to the credit rating agencies that recently downgraded Houston's debt. This rush also signals to voters that their elected officials are prioritizing the right issues.

As for that second big challenge - pensions - Turner has said that he'll have reform plans ready by the end of the year. That's an improvement on Mayor Annise Parker's strategy of going to Austin and unilaterally asking for local control. Parker was right when it came to identifying the problem of pension obligations growing faster than the city's ability to pay them, but sometimes it isn't enough merely to be right. Politics requires cooperation, as well.

From the Financial Times: America’s Middle-class Meltdown: Core shrinks to half of US homes Society splinters as bedrock of postwar economy is ‘hollowed out’

Perhaps this is related to the previous story.

- Click here for the article.

America’s middle class has shrunk to just half the population for the first time in at least four decades as the forces of technological change and globalisation drive a wedge between the winners and losers in a splintering US society.

The ranks of the middle class are now narrowly outnumbered by those in lower and upper income strata combined for the first time since at least the early 1970s, according to the definitions by the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think-tank in research shared with the Financial Times.

The findings come amid an intensifying debate leading up to next year’s presidential election over how to revive the fortunes of the US middle class.

The prevailing view that the middle class is being crushed is helping to feed some of the popular anger that has boosted the populist politics personified by Donald Trump’s candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. “The middle class is disappearing,” says Alison Fuller, a 25-year-old university graduate working for a medical start-up in Smyrna, Georgia, who sees herself voting for Mr Trump.

Pew used one of the broadest income classifications of the middle class, in a new analysis detailing the “hollowing out” of a group that has formed the bedrock of America’s postwar success.

The core of American society now represents 50 per cent or less of the adult population, compared with 61 per cent at the end of the 1960s. Strikingly, the change has been driven at least as much by rapid growth in the ranks of prosperous Americans above the level of the middle class as it has by expansion in the numbers of poorer citizens.

From the Washington Post: ‘We don’t know why it came to this’ As white women between 25 and 55 die at spiking rates, a close look at one tragedy

Might this be an agenda setting event - increased suicides among Anglo men have been noted previsouly.

- Click here for the article.

“Anna Marrie Jones: Born 1961 — Died 2016.”

Fifty-four years old. Raised on three rural acres. High school-educated. A mother of three. Loyal employee of Kmart, Walls Bargain Center and Dollar Store. These were the facts of her life as printed in the funeral program, and now they had also become clues in an American crisis with implications far beyond the burnt grass and red dirt of central Oklahoma.

White women between 25 and 55 have been dying at accelerating rates over the past decade, a spike in mortality not seen since the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. According to recent studies of death certificates, the trend is worse for women in the center of the United States, worse still in rural areas, and worst of all for those in the lower middle class. Drug and alcohol overdose rates for working-age white women have quadrupled. Suicides are up by as much as 50 percent.

What killed Jones was cirrhosis of the liver brought on by heavy drinking. The exact culprit was vodka, whatever brand was on sale, poured into a pint glass eight ounces at a time. But, as Anna’s family gathered at the gravesite for a final memorial, they wondered instead about the root causes, which were harder to diagnose and more difficult to solve.

“Life didn’t always break her way. She dealt with that sadness,” said Candy Payne, the funeral officiant. “She tried her best. She loved her family. But she dabbled in the drinking, and when things got tough the drinking made it harder.”

For 2306 today

A couple blog tags worth reviewing.

- Participation in Texas.
- Suffrage.

What's with Citizens United? What's with Speechnow?

For 2305 tomorrow - a look at Citizens United v FEC.

- Oyez.
- ScotusBlog.

Here's a bit on Speechnow v FEC.

- Ballotpedia.

What is a Super PAC anyway?

Here's a definition from Open Secrets.

- Click here for it.

Super PACs are a relatively new type of committee that arose following the July 2010 federal court decision in a case known as SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission.

Technically known as independent expenditure-only committees, super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates. Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs are prohibited from donating money directly to political candidates, and their spending must not be coordinated with that of the candidates they benefit. Super PACs are required to report their donors to the Federal Election Commission on a monthly or semiannual basis – the super PAC's choice – in off-years, and monthly in the year of an election.

For more:

- Super PACs Exaplained.
- When Super PACs Attack.
- Are Super PACs Harming U.S. Politics?

From Quorum Report: Former RPT Chairman Munisteri hired by RNC to help prepare for a possible contested convention

It's looking increasingly like the Republican Party will have a contested convention and they are laying the groundwork necessary to make it happen. Presumably defeating Donald Trump will be a key goal of the convention's leadership:

- Click here for the story.

RNC Chairman Priebus: "As we lay the groundwork for a fair and transparent Convention, ensuring our delegates are fully informed and prepared is one of our highest priorities.”

The Republican National Committee has announced the launch of what the party is calling the "Grassroots Assistance Project.” The point of the project is to "welcome, educate, and engage delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention."

Former Republican Party of Texas Chairman Steve Munisteri, who was succeeded by Chairman Tom Mechler after stepping down, will help with the project alongside former Oklahoma GOP Chairman Matt Pinnell and others.

“We are dedicated to making sure everyone has a full and proper understanding of the convention process and the Grassroots Assistance Project is another step in making that happen,” said RNC Chair Reince Priebus. “As we lay the groundwork for a fair and transparent Convention, ensuring our delegates are fully informed and prepared is one of our highest priorities.”

The party also launched this website to help delegates and others understand the convention process.

For info on the participants so far:

- Steve Munisteri.
- Reince Priebus.
- Tom Mechler.

Also:

- RNC Launches Grassroots Assistance Project.
- Your Guide to the Republican National Convention.

From Ballotpedia: Ballot access requirements for political parties in Texas

For more detail on how to create a party in Texas - the state recognizes only four.

- Click here for the post.

The Texas Secretary of State's office offers the following advice:

- Starting a Party and Nominating Candidates.

For their fuller look at ballot access for major and minor party candidates across the nation click here.

Here's a total list of minor parties and the number of ballots each is on across the nation - this includes DC - which is why it adds to 51.

America First Party	1
America's Party	1
American Constitutional Party	1
American Independent Party	1
American Party	1
Americans Elect Party	3
Conservative Party	1
Constitution Party	12
D.C. Statehood Green Party	1
Democratic Party	51
Ecology Party	1
Grassroots Party	1
Green Independent Party	1
Green Party	18
Independence Party	5
Independent American Party	3
Independent Party	5
Justice Party	2
Labor Party	1
Legal Marijuana Now Party	1
Libertarian Party	34
Liberty Union Party	1
Moderate Party	1
Mountain Party	1
Natural Law Party	2
Pacific Green Party	1
Party for Socialism and Liberation	1
Peace and Freedom Party	2
Progressive Party	2
Reform Party	3
Republican Party	51
Socialist Party	1
Socialist Workers Party	1
Tea Party	1
U.S. Taxpayers Party	1
United Citizens Party	1
United Independent Party	1
Veterans Party	1
Working Families Party	4
TOTAL	221