- “Consistent bets for higher oil prices in futures markets have not been particularly lucrative.”
- “The vast, swaying bulk of America’s military has absolutely nothing to do with effectively combating terrorism—including the large land armies that we deploy to Muslim countries in efforts to destroy and then reconstitute their states.”
- “ ‘Poking and prodding’ is what good government does to perfect strangers. And that’s what the Obama administration has been doing, with unusual zeal, for the past 2 1/2 years.”
- The Cato 2011 State Legislative Guide is designed to help state policymakers free their constituents from the burden of overextended government and addresses unfunded pension liabilities, ballooning Medicaid enrollment, massive budget gaps, failing education systems, and other important issues.
- The Kentucky v. King decision has delivered a blow to Fourth Amendment protections:
Read more here.
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If You Liked Obamacare, You’ll Love Goodwin Liu
Later today the Senate is set for a “cloture” vote — the vote to end debate, for which you need 60 votes — on the nomination of Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I’m not going to weigh in here on the issue of whether judicial nominees ought to be filibustered in general — or if the Republicans ought to be the first to foreswear the tactic even without a guarantee that Democrats would do likewise in the future — but if ever there were an “extraordinary circumstance” fitting into the Gang of 14 agreement that broke the judicial logjam under President Bush, this is it.
As I blogged last year, Liu is, without exaggeration, the most radical nominee to any position that President Obama has made. He believes in constitutional positive rights — not that the welfare state and all its accompanying entitlements (and then some) are a good idea, but that they are constitutionally required. That is, someone ought to be able to sue the government (qua the taxpayer) if they don’t have adequate health care, or food, or shelter, or… well, anything Liu envisions is part of his indeterminate Constitution whose evolving norms adapt to the times “in order to sustain its vitality in light of the changing needs, conditions, and understandings of our society.”
As Liu wrote in the Yale Law Journal in 2006:
On my account of the Constitution’s citizenship guarantee, federal responsibility logically extends to areas beyond education. Importantly, however, the duty of government cannot be reduced to simply providing the basic necessities of life….. Beyond a minimal safety net, the legislative agenda of equal citizenship should extend to systems of support and opportunity that, like education, provide a foundation for political and economic autonomy and participation. The main pillars of the agenda would include basic employment supports such as expanded health insurance, child care, transportation subsidies, job training, and a robust earned income tax credit.
Moreover, he’s opined that words like “free enterprise,” “private ownership of property,” and “limited government” are “code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections.”
As I wrote in an op-ed with Evan Turgeon last year:
We don’t expect a president of either party to appoint judges who adhere 100 percent to the Cato line — though that would be nice — so we do not object to every judicial nominee whose philosophy differs from ours.
Goodwin Liu’s nomination, however, is different. By far the most extreme of Obama’s picks to date, Liu would push the Ninth Circuit to redistribute wealth by radically expanding — and constitutionalizing — welfare “rights.”
Now, if all 53 Democratic senators vote for cloture, they will need to add seven Republicans to prevail. So the key to this vote are the 11 GOP senators who voted for cloture earlier this month on controversial Rhode Island district court nominee Jack McConnell: Alexander, Brown, Chambliss, Collins, Graham, Isakson, Kirk, McCain, Murkowski, Snowe, and Thune. This list includes some of the more “squishy” Republicans, to be sure, but there are also some wild cards — and, of course, the stakes with a circuit court nominee are higher than for a district court nominee.
The outcome of the vote is uncertain but one thing I can say for sure is that if Prof. Liu becomes Judge Liu (and later, God forbid, Justice Liu), the Obamacare litigation will seem so quaint: Can Congress force you to buy health insurance? Heck, the Constitution requires you to buy it — for yourself and a lot of others as well!
Calling a Spade a Spade
I’m having an interesting discussion with attorney Joshua Thompson of the Pacific Legal Foundation, sparked by my recent op-ed in the Philly Inquirer about vouchers and tax credits. Did the op-ed offer useful evidence and analysis, advancing educational freedom, or was it ultimately counterproductive? Feel free to chime-in in the comments if you check it out.
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One-third of College Degrees Wasted?
The most recent, comprehensive Pew higher education survey has gotten a lot of coverage for its findings on how important the public thinks college is, its financial payoff for grads, etc. For some reason, though, by far the most interesting statistic in the report has gotten roughly zero play, either from Pew itself or media coverage of the report: “Among all college graduates, 33% say they are in a job that does not require a college degree.”
Wait. One-third of all college graduates are in jobs that don’t call for a college education? So one-third of all college degrees are quite possibly total economic wastes? (To be fair, no doubt some of those grads are looking for jobs requiring a degree, mitigating this somewhat. On the flip side, many jobs probably require a degree without actually requiring college-level skills, counterbalancing that.)
In light of this, can someone please tell me why President Obama wants the United States to lead the world in the precentage of its population with a college degree by 2020? And please, explain why Washington furnished over $113 billion in student aid in the 2009-10 academic year? I’d really like to know.
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Wednesday Links
- Next up for marriage equality: Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Please join us at 12:00 p.m. Eastern today as co-counsels for the plaintiffs Theodore Olson and John Boies join Center for American Progress president John Podesta and Cato chairman Robert A. Levy for a panel discussion on marriage equality, exploring legal and moral questions dating back to the landmark 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision that ended state bans on interracial marriage. If you cannot join us here at Cato, please tune in to watch a live stream of the event.
- “Republicans have an opportunity for a much more important debate, which will frame the election campaign next year.”
- In President Obama’s next speech, Cato director of foreign policy studies Christopher Preble hopes “that the president reaffirms the importance of peaceful regime change from within, not American-sponsored regime change from without.”
- What will former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s next position on health care be?
- Like cleanliness next to godliness, so is democracy next to tyranny.
- The U.S. hit the debt limit–what’s next?
Willie Nelson Endorses Gary Johnson for President
Politico reported earlier today that iconic crooner Willie Nelson has endorsed former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson for president. Johnson came to be known as “Governor Veto” for axing nearly half of all the bills sent to him by the legislature, and I am starting the rumor rumors are already circulating that Nelson will record a new song, to the tune of his hit “To all the girls I’ve loved before,” celebrating that fact.
We cannot confirm that the lyrics will go something like this:
To all the bills I’ve axed before
That traveled in and out my door
I’m mad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the bills I’ve axed before
To all the bills that made me laugh
I kept the wheat and axed the chaff
Inane legislation
Explains my great frustration
With all the bills I’ve axed before
Walking dogs just ain’t a proper thing
For government to regulate
Legislators to their powers cling
But that ain’t no role for the state
To all the bills I’ve slashed and burned
The dumb laws that I’ve dissed and spurned
I’m mad they came along
They were profoundly wrong
And that’s why I showed them the door
To all the bills I’ve axed before
We can’t afford dumb laws no more
We need fiscal restraint
That was my main complaint
With all the bills I’ve axed before
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Michigan State Policymakers Push to Keep Federal Gas Taxes
Last week I discussed the Obama administration’s decision to redistribute federal high-speed rail money rejected by Florida Gov. Rick Scott. I noted that “Florida taxpayers were spared their state’s share of maintaining the line, but they’re still going to be forced to help foot the bill for passenger-rail projects in other states.” My underlying point was that the states should be allowed to make their own transportation decisions with their own money.
Two Michigan state policymakers — both Republican — want to send the same message to Washington. State representatives Paul Opsommer and Tom McMillin have introduced resolutions that call on the federal government to allow the states to keep the federal gasoline taxes that they send to Washington. (Opsommer’s resolution would have to pass both state chambers, whereas McMillin’s resolution would only need to pass in the Michigan House.)
Michigan would no longer send its money to Washington so that it can be washed through Congress and the federal bureaucracy and sent back to Michigan (and the other states) with costly federal strings attached. Instead, highway financing and control would be left to the states. As a Cato essay on federal highway funding argues, re-empowering the states is clearly preferable to the current top-down approach:
With the devolution of highway financing and control to the states, successful innovations in one state would be copied in other states. And without federal subsidies, state governments would have stronger incentives to ensure that funds were spent efficiently. An additional advantage is that highway financing would be more transparent without the complex federal trust fund. Citizens could better understand how their transportation dollars were being spent.
The time is ripe for repeal of the current central planning approach to highway financing. Given more autonomy, state governments and the private sector would have the power and flexibility to meet the huge challenges ahead that America faces in highway infrastructure.
Some people, particularly those with an interest in the current convoluted arrangement, argue that it’s necessary for the enlightened beings in Washington to provide us with a national “vision” or “plan.” But the redirection of Florida’s high-speed rail allotment to other states shows that decision-making in Washington usually has more to do with politics than economics.
Conspicuously left out of the Obama administration’s re-spreading of high-speed cheese was Wisconsin, which tried to grab some of the Florida money for an intercity rail line that connects the state to Chicago. Reason’s Sam Staley points out that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also said “no thanks” to the administration’s high-speed rail money. Staley says “the snubbing of the State of Wisconsin smells a lot like political payback,” and links to a piece from a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist who doesn’t have any doubts.
If either or both of the Michigan resolutions pass, Congress can simply choose to ignore the message. Hopefully, more states will take a cue from Michigan, which could make it harder for the folks in Washington to simply look the other way. Regardless, Opsommer and McMillan deserve a round of applause for trying to score one for fiscal federalism.