Video of Rep. Bob Etheridge (D‑N.C.) assaulting a student who asked him if he supports the Obama agenda. (HT Radley Balko)
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Government and Politics
Problems Overturning Citizens United
Congress has been trying to overturn the Citizens United decision for the past four months. (Citizens United invalidated bans on speech by groups taking a corporate form). Their effort — the DISCLOSE Act — now seems bogged down in the House of Representatives. The National Rifle Association argues that they should not have to disclose their small donors. The labor unions also have complaints:
Amaya Tune, a spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO, told Bloomberg this week that “the final bill should treat corporations different than democratic organizations such as unions. We believe the legislation should counter the excessive and disproportionate influence by big business and guarantee effective disclosure of who is paying for what.”
Here’s the problem: The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress cannot regulate campaign finance to achieve equality of influence. Ms. Tune is calling for changes in DISCLOSE to “counter the excessive and disproportionate influence by big business.” If Congress enacts those changes, how can the law be defended against the charge that Congress is seeking to legislate a greater equality of influence? Won’t the parts of the law demanded by the unions be unconstitutional?
A Look Inside the Dark Heart of the GOP
Evidence that Republican leaders and conservative pundits want to shake off their anti-gay image continues to mount. Since the 2008 election, gay marriage has become legal in four more states and the District of Columbia, yet conservatives have been virtually silent. As Congress moves to repeal the don’t ask, don’t tell policy, Republicans are almost all voting against it, but they’re not making a lot of noise about it. Jonathan Rauch cites the lack of interest in Iowa in overturning the state court’s gay marriage decision and Republican strategist Grover Norquist’s observation that the Tea Party enthusiasm is focusing Republicans and conservatives on economic rather than social issues.
Many politicians have had a long dark night of the poll. They know that public opinion on gay rights has changed. Gallup just issued a poll showing that more than half of Americans believe that “gay or lesbian relations” are “morally acceptable.” Seventy percent, including majorities of all demographic groups, favor allowing openly gay people to serve in the military. Those are big changes since 2003, much less 1993, and politicians can read polls. Indeed, one thing that gay progress shows us is that cultural change precedes political change.
But out in the real world, where real Republicans live, the picture isn’t as promising. In the Virginia suburbs of Washington this week, Patrick Murray defeated Matthew Berry in a Republican primary. Berry, formerly a lawyer for the Institute for Justice and the Department of Justice, seemed to be better funded and better organized than Murray, an Iraq war veteran. The Republican in my household received at least two mailers and three phone calls from the Berry campaign and nothing from Murray. So why did Murray win? Well, Berry is openly gay, and David Weigel at the Washington Post reports that the Murray campaign did send out flyers focusing on gay issues. They may have gone only to Republicans in the more conservative parts of the district. And Republican activist Rick Sincere tells me that “in the last few days before the election, I received numerous emails from the Murray campaign that included subtle reminders that Matthew is gay and supports an end to DADT. He also, in a Monday email, took a quotation from Matthew out of context to make it look like he supports a federally-enforced repeal of Virginia’s anti-marriage law. In other words, Murray played the anti-gay card.” Blogger RedNoVa made similar observations, adding, “If you were at the Matthew Berry party last night, you would notice that the average age in the room was about 30. Young people were everywhere. The future of our party was there. Murray’s campaign crowd was older, and full of party purists.”
But Northern Virginia is far more genteel than western Tennessee, where the Jackson Sun recently reported that two Republican congressional candidates suggested that physical violence was an appropriate response to gays who enlist in the military:
Republicans Stephen Fincher, Dr. George Flinn, Dr. Ron Kirkland and Randy Smith as well as independent Donn Janes took part in the event…
The candidates said that they think President Barack Obama and Democrats’ support for ending the military “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is “political correctness” that adds an unnecessary stress on the military.
Flinn portrayed ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as the latest in an effort by Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to weaken the military.
Kirkland, a Vietnam veteran, said of his time in the military: “I can tell you if there were any homosexuals in that group, they were taken care of in ways I can’t describe to you.”
Smith, who served in the first Iraqi war, added: “I definitely wouldn’t want to share a shower with a homosexual. We took care of that kind of stuff, just like (Kirkland) said.”
With Republicans like that, it’s no wonder that many moderates, centrists, and libertarians still aren’t sure they want to vote Republican, even with Democrats running up the deficit and extending federal control over health care, education, automobile companies, newspapers, and more.
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The Horror of It!
Today Politico Arena asks:
Will Reid be able to portray Angle as an extremist?
With an air of wonder, POLITICO reports this morning that Sharron Angle, facing Senate majority leader Harry Reid in the fall elections, “has previously made eyebrow-raising statements about withdrawing the U.S. from the United Nations, eliminating the departments of Energy and Education, and privatizing Social Security.” Eyebrow-raising? As in “who could stand for such things”?
Beyond the Beltway (and even in pockets within the Beltway), there actually are people who believe that American taxpayers should not be subsidizing the play things of such human-rights-respecting exemplars as Cuba, China, Russia, and their ilk, all of whom sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council. And for some reason, we actually did have both energy and education in this country before the Departments of Energy and Education were created, hard as it may be to believe, just as we had art, philosophy, and radio before the NEA, NEH, and NPR were created. And people retired, on their own savings, before the Social Security system was invented. Speaking of which, it might be useful to note that that Ponzi scheme is now operating in the red, six years earlier than expected. Now there’s a reason to raise one’s eyebrows.
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Washington Post Cites ‘Regime Uncertainty’
I’ve been arguing for a while that “regime uncertainty” is stifling the economy’s ability to recover. Businesses are more reluctant to invest or hire when Washington pursues a policy agenda that could be detrimental to their bottom lines. The phrase was coined by economist Robert Higgs who observed that FDR’s anti-business policies prolonged the Great Depression.
Unfortunately, the media has generally ignored the possibility that uncertainty being generated by the president’s policies has been contributing to the nation’s continuing economic problems. However, an editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post could be a welcome sign that the media is beginning to take notice:
But as analysts ponder the mystery of weak private-sector hiring despite signs of economic growth, it’s worth asking what role is played by government-induced uncertainty. With the federal government promoting major changes in health care, financial regulation and energy law, it wouldn’t be surprising if some companies are more inclined to wait and see than they might otherwise be. And that’s especially true when they look at looming American indebtedness and the effect that could have on long-term interest rates.
The latest survey from the National Federation of Independent Business shows that big government remains the chief concern of the business community. When asked what their single most important problem was, 35 percent of small business owners cited “taxes” or “government regulations and red tape.” “Poor sales” was second at 30 percent.
The NFIB also cites uncertainty caused by Washington as a problem:
A huge help in moving toward a stronger economy for small business owners would be to “do no harm”. But Congress continues to pass and propose legislation that increases the cost of running a business and create huge uncertainty about future costs.
Only 3 percent of business owners cited finance as their chief problem. Yet, President Obama is pushing a $30 billion package to increase lending to small businesses. The business community doesn’t need more subsidized credit backed by taxpayers — it needs relief from the president’s agenda.
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A Public Thumb on the Election Scales
When taxpayers underwrite the campaign expenses of candidates for public office, serious questions arise: Not least, why should taxpayers subsidize candidates or ideas they oppose? But when taxpayers subsidize only one side in a campaign, there should be outrage. Perhaps there was at the Supreme Court this morning, when the Court blocked an appalling opinion out of, not surprisingly, the oft-overturned Ninth Circuit.
In McComish v. Bennett the Goldwater Institute is challenging Arizona’s Clean Elections Act, under which “candidates who run with public campaign subsidies receive an almost dollar-for-dollar match each time a privately funded opponent raises money above a certain amount,” the Goldwater press release states, “and additional matches when independent expenditures are made against the subsidized candidate.”
The problem for proponents of this Act is that the Supreme Court has said more than once that “leveling the playing field” is a forbidden rationale for campaign finance regulations. Moreover, and more precisely, in 2008, in Davis v. FEC, the Court held that the so-called Millionaires Amendment to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act of 2002 was unconstitutional. Under that amendment the contribution caps that would otherwise apply to congressional candidates were lifted if a candidate was running against a self-financed opponent — a “millionaire” who, under the First Amendment, could not be restricted in funding his own campaign. Again, leveling the playing field won’t do. (Note also that that amendment put a lie to the main rationale for campaign finance restrictions – to prohibit corruption or its appearance. The caps are needed to prevent the candidate from being corrupted, so the argument runs – unless he’s running against a millionaire, in which case he won’t be corrupted by the added contributions. Such are the lengths to which campaign finance regulators are prepared to go to justify their schemes.)
Writing for the majority in Davis, Justice Alito went to the heart of the matter: “It is a dangerous business for Congress to use the election laws to influence the voters’ choices.” That it is, and it’s not through election laws alone that Congress – or states, as here – tries to influence voters choices through the use of taxpayer dollars. Do we need any better example, on this primary election day around the country, than publicly-funded National Public Radio?
In January, U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver found Arizona’s Act unconstitutional under the First Amendment. But the state appealed, and last month a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion stating that the damage to free speech was minimal. This morning the Supreme Court issued an order to enforce the District Court’s injunction against the use of matching funds. As reported by the Goldwater Institute, the order says the injunction will remain in effect until the Court rules on the underlying appeal of the Ninth Circuit decision. The injunction also would be lifted if the Supreme Court decides not to consider the formal appeal. This is one to watch.
A Soda Tax Completely, Utterly, and Totally Unrelated to Individual Choice
An interesting article in Slate today about the social psychology of “sin taxes” and how people in general resent being told what to do. They may, in fact, react by consuming even more of the sinning item than before the nannies intervened, just to prove a point.
Unfortunately, the point of the article seems to be how to implement sin taxes — in this case, a soda tax — without annoying people to the point where the tax is counterproductive. Something about “refram[ing]” the tax so it doesn’t tip people off as to its real purpose. The author concludes with this gem:
If we want to implement a sweetened beverage tax and maximize its effectiveness, the best approach would be to dissociate it from the larger issue of individual choice and focus on its immediate practical benefits, such as the revenue it produces. Over time, we’ll get used to it. We might even wonder why we didn’t do it sooner.
To end on a positive note, many of the comments are striking a distinctly libertarian tone.