Libertarian Leanings

Democrats Charge Voter Fraud in Wisconsin

The latest turn of events in the seesaw election battle between Justice David Prosser and JoAnne Kloppenburg over a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat has Justice Prosser surging back into the lead.  Earlier, Kathy Nickolaus, the Republican Waukesha County Clerk had failed to include the town of Brookfield in the unofficial totals she released after Tuesday's election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  This had Kloppenburg in the lead at the end of the unofficial counting.  In the official canvassing that followed the discrepancy was discovered.  Democrats cried foul.

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) raised the possibility of an independent investigation over the recovery of the votes.

"This is a serious breach of election procedure," he said. "We're going to look further. She waited 24 hours to work this. And she waited until after she verified the results, making it that much more difficult to challenge and verify the results."

'We went over everything'

But at the news conference with Nickolaus, Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers, said: "We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up, and we're satisfied they're correct."

As a Democrat, she said, "I'm not going to stand here and tell you something that's not true."

Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, who sat in on Nickolaus' news conference, said voters can be confident in the results because "all the votes are in that office. If anyone wants to look at them and verify, they can."

The latest revised vote totals put the incumbent Republican far enough ahead of Democratic challenger that an automatic recount may not be triggered.

The election is significant because of a pair of decisions by Democratic Judge Maryann Sumi who ruled that a law stripping Wisconsin public employee unions of some of their bargaining powers was not properly passed by the Wisconsin legislature.  The issue is destined for the Wisconsin Supreme Court which currently has a 4-3 Republican majority.  If Democrat JoAnne Kloppenburg wins the court swings to a 4-3 Democratic majority.

It has been a contentious issue that first came to national attention when Wisconsin's minority Democrats fled the state rather than vote on an earlier version of the aforementioned bill.  Governor Scott Walker included the curtailment of union entitlements as part of a effort to close a $3-plus billion state budget deficit.  By fleeing the state, Democrats prevented a vote by preventing the assembly of the three-fifths quorum required by Wisconsin law for the passage of fiscal bills.

The Wisconsin legislature, in turn, passed the union related provisions separately.  Since they were unattached to a fiscal bill the three-fifths quorum, and the missing Democrats, were not needed for passage.  Governor Scott Walker signed the bill into law.

In rode Judge Sumi to the rescue.  She ruled that Wisconsin's open meeting law was violated because insufficient public notice was provided.  Her remedy was to rule the new law is not and cannot be in effect.  Legal minds will ponder the validity of that ruling at the next stop which is the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Prior to Judge Sumi's rulings Kloppenburg's chances for victory stood somewhere between slim and none.   In a February four way primary Prosser garnered 55-percent of the vote to Kloppenburg's 25-percent.  Not even close.

Incumbent David Prosser and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg have advanced to the April election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Prosser, a justice for 12 years, received 55-percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary. Kloppenburg had 25-percent. Marla Stephens, head of the public defender’s appellate division, was eliminated with 11-percent of the vote. Madison attorney Joel Winnig placed fourth with nine-percent. Just over 400-thousand total votes were cast in a primary that was expected to get a 10-percent statewide turnout.

Once Judge Sumi ruled union money poured into the Kloppenburg campaign.  Union money for Kloppenburg was countered by Republican and Tea Party money for the Prosser campaign.  For both sides a considerable share came from outside Wisconsin, but the decision was ultimately made by Wisconsin voters.  The election day voter turnout of 1.4 million where the primary turnout was around 400,000.

The outcome will reverberate as federal and state governments try to reign in out of control budgets.  Unions provide impetus for government spending by the pressure they bring to bear in favor of higher wages and benefits for public employees, as well as pressure to expand government payrolls and thus union membership.  

A key provision, maybe the key provision, in the new Wisconsin law is elimination of mandatory union dues which are automatically collected from employee paychecks.  Union dues are largely put to work on political initiatives almost exclusively on behalf of the Democratic party.  With the legally mandated levy and collection of union dues, what you have in effect is the weight of government brought to bear on behalf of a political party -- the Democrats.  It's no wonder they're fighting so hard.

Judge Sumi Rules Again

Wisconsin Judge Maryann Sumi issued another order to block the collective bargaining law.

"Further implementation of the act is enjoined," Sumi said.

"Apparently that language was either misunderstood or ignored, but what I said was the further implementation of Act 10 was enjoined. That is what I now want to make crystal clear."

She warned that those who violate her order could face court sanctions.

In response to Attorney General Steven Means, a Republican who said the law was already published and in effect, Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, a Democrat from Kenosha, expressed shock.

"It's just startling that the attorney general believes you should not follow court orders anymore," he said.

But according to one Marquette University law professor, that may not be the real issue.

Richard Esenberg said he was not surprised by the ruling but criticized the judge.

"There is applicable Supreme Court precedent that a court has no authority to enjoin the publication of a law," he said. "The state has repeatedly cited that law to her and as far as I know she has not only failed to explain herself about why she feels she has the authority, she hasn't even acknowledged there is an issue. That just leaves me speechless."

Esenberg was referring to a 1943 state Supreme Court opinion that said courts could not interfere with legislation until it is published and becomes law.

Unless there is some later Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, Judge Sumi would seem to be the one ignoring the courts.

The European Model

It's been obvious since Day One of the Obama presidency that Barack Obama wants America to be more like Europe.

Is a European future truly so terrible?

Yes. I have been an elected member of the European Parliament for 11 years. I have seen firsthand what the European political model means.

Daniel Hannan is the member the member who thinks it's a bad idea and he says why.

We can now see where that road leads: to burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment. But an entire political class has grown up believing not just in the economic superiority of euro-corporatism but in its moral superiority. After all, if the American system were better—if people could thrive without government supervision—there would be less need for politicians. As Upton Sinclair once observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

And so many jobs, it seems, depend on not understanding, and not all of them are government jobs.  Most of mainstream media, for example.

Time To Cut The Dramatics

As I watched the videos below, both of which I grabbed from the Belmont Club, I couldn't help thinking that when you get right down to it, public sector unions and the politics of patronage that they represent are a luxury we just can't afford anymore.

The scene that plays out looks like more of a party than a demonstration. They make a a lot of noise, they get in the way, and it looks like they all have great fun being protesters.  And nobody gets hurt, which is something we can be thankful for. Toward the end of the first video you can here someone chanting, "Do the right thing!  Do the right thing!" I think they did that, the Wisconsin legislature.  And they did the right thing in Idaho as well, it turns out.  But don't we have the melodrama being played out on both sides.  The video below showing events leading up to the invasion of the Wisconsin capitol is billed as "MacIver Reporter Surrounded, Confronted by Mob."  What a polite, well behaved mob.  I couldn't help but be impressed.

But it's time to face reality.  It's time to cut the dramatics and balance some budgets.  Let's get on with it.

Progressive Power At Any Cost

In November of 2003 John W. Dean wrote a Salon article entitled, Three cheers for the Democrats' filibuster. "It's time to depoliticize the judicial appointment process," he said. 

In truth, the successful use of the filibuster to block extremist judicial appointees is one of the healthiest developments since our founding fathers required presidents to get the Senate's "advice and consent" to fill judicial seats. Federal judges are given lifetime appointments; thus their influence extends long past the term of the president who selects them. To require a super-majority discourages either party from engaging in politicalization of the judiciary.

During the past four decades, selecting judges and getting them confirmed has become far more contentious. According to a report of the Congressional Reference Service, filibusters and clotures have been involved in 35 nominations, most of them since the late 1980s.

Politicizing judicial appointments is apparently what happens when a Republican president makes one.  Times and presidents have changed.  There is a Democrat in the White House and Democrat majority in the Senate, but come January the majority will be a smaller one than the one they have now.  The filibuster is not so good anymore.

All Democratic senators returning next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging him to consider action to change long-sacrosanct filibuster rules.

The letter, delivered this week, expresses general frustration with what Democrats consider unprecedented obstruction and asks Reid to take steps to end those abuses. While it does not urge a specific solution, Democrats said it demonstrates increased backing in the majority for a proposal, championed by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and others, weaken the minority’s ability to tie the Senate calendar into parliamentary knots.

[...]

The fact that every returning Democrat signed the letter circulated by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Mark Warner, D-Va., urging changes underscores growing determination on the part of the Senate’s majority to raise the bars for filibusters.

Adding to the momentum for change, say proponents, is a push by Udall to seek a simple majority vote on changing Senate rules at the start of the session, rather than a two-thirds majority, that is gaining steam. Such a move could come at the start of next Congress, shortly after the Senate returns on January 5th.

Although Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa., has long backed filibuster reform, Senate rules changes have primarily been pushed this year by newer members, including Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Udall; and McCaskill.

Retiring Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd was the only Democrat who would not sign the letter, no doubt anticipating that Democrats would regret any alteration of rules when they find themselves in the minority again, which they most assuredly will.

 

Richard C. Holbrooke

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Envoy to Afghanistan, passed away yesterday.  He was admitted to the hospital on Friday, and on Saturday he underwent emergency heart surgery for a torn aorta.  He was 69.

Holbrooke began his career in public service as a provincial representative for the U.S. Agency for International Development in South Vietnam.  While at the Johnson White House he wrote one volume of the Pentagon Papers.  He held a variety of government posts until 1981 when he joined Lehman Brothers.

A lifelong Democrat, he returned to public service when Bill Clinton took the White House in 1993. Holbrooke was U.S. ambassador to Germany from 1993 to 1994 and then assistant secretary of state for European affairs.

One of his signature achievements was brokering the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. He detailed the experience of negotiating the deal at an Air Force base near the Ohio city in his 1998 memoir, "To End a War."

James Dobbins, former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan who worked closely with Holbrooke early in their careers, called him a brilliant diplomat and said his success at the Dayton peace talks "was the turning point in the Clinton administration's foreign policy."

Holbrooke's efforts surrounding Dayton would later lead to controversy when wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic told a war crimes tribunal in 2009 that Holbrooke had promised him immunity in return for leaving politics. Holbrooke denied the claim.

The Mark of a True Politician -- Not a Statesman

So we're hearing that Bill Clinton is one of the most popular politicians around. 

One of the most popular politicians in the country right now isn’t even running in this election year. Former President Bill Clinton had by far the highest positive rating when Americans were asked in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll to rate their feelings on political figures.

Fully 55% of respondents had positive feelings about Clinton, compared with 23% with negative feelings. That’s up from a low in March 2001, just after he left office, of 34% positive and 52% negative.

And since he is so much more popular than Obama, Clinton has taken to the campaign trail in his place, recently stumping for Barney Frank.   

TAUNTON, Mass. — A newcomer, Republican Sean Bielat, is waging a strong campaign against Rep. Barney Frank.  Frank is taking the challenge seriously enough that he brought former President Clinton in.

In a roundabout way, Clinton acknowledged that Frank has a tougher race this year than he’s had in a long time. Clinton told the crowd in the Taunton High School gym Sunday that if Republicans succeed in making the election about how Americans feel about the economy, Democrats are in trouble.

Bill Clinton is the first ex-president to my knowledge who has ever gone out on the campaign trail like this.  With Obama and Clinton both, partisan politics trumps all.  A politician not a statesman.

Beinart's Problem

It's the same problem most progressives seem to have.  He doesn't believe in people.  I don't mean to say he doesn't have faith in people, though I suspect that would be true.  I mean in his world people don't actually exist.  There are only these warm, squishy, two-legged things all over the place, but what they are and what they think are a puzzle to Beinart.

Beinart predicts that 2012 will be a disaster for Republicans, and he backs it up with a recitation of American political history, circa 1970.

The process works something like this. When parties lose power, activists ascribe the loss to the ideological impurity of their incumbent president. In so doing, they vent the frustrations they kept bottled up while their side was in power. Since defeat frees them from the messy business of governing, ideological purity suddenly becomes easier. And since defeat usually hits party moderates disproportionately hard, the opponents of purity usually hold less sway.

[...]

Historically, it is only after a party loses two or three times that its activists come to terms with the reality that retaking power will require not ideological purity, but ideological compromise of the most wrenching kind. After McGovern lost 49 states, the Democrats nominated Jimmy Carter, who on economic policy was not merely to McGovern’s right, but to Humphrey’s. And after Mondale lost 49 states in 1984, they nominated Bill Clinton, who was even further to the right.

It may seem odd to talk of a blowout Republican defeat in 2012, when the GOP is headed for a blowout victory in 2010. But it is precisely the over-interpretation of the latter that could produce the former. When the dust from this massive recession settles, it will be clear that America is not moving right; it is moving left because America’s fastest-growing demographic groups reside on the center-left. Hold on, Republican moderates; you may be poised for a big comeback in 2016.

Political fortunes swing back and forth.  Like the tides coming in and going out, congressional control swings from left to right without rhyme or reason.  It just is.  In Beinart's book there are no underlying ideas.  He seems to imagine some mysterious hunger in people to be governed, and he wonders why at this particular moment they don't want to be governed by the "good people" – the progressives. No matter, thinks Mr. Beinart.  The pendulum will swing back.

He shouldn't count on that.  He's not paying attention to real people.

It's Official...

American policy is dictated by ignoramuses.  That is the conclusion we draw from Daniel Klein's analysis of a recent Zogby International survey.  Mr. Klein is a professor of economics at George Mason University. The ignoramuses to whom I refer are the progressive geniuses, currently in charge in in Washington and in America's newsrooms.

Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.

It comes as no surprise that lefties are economic illiterates.  The surprising part is that somebody has gotten around to documenting it.

Rather than focusing on whether respondents answered a question correctly, we instead looked at whether they answered incorrectly. A response was counted as incorrect only if it was flatly unenlightened.

Consider one of the economic propositions in the December 2008 poll: "Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable." People were asked if they: 1) strongly agree; 2) somewhat agree; 3) somewhat disagree; 4) strongly disagree; 5) are not sure.

[...]

In this case, percentage of conservatives answering incorrectly was 22.3%, very conservatives 17.6% and libertarians 15.7%. But the percentage of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly was 67.6% and liberals 60.1%. The pattern was not an anomaly.

The other questions were: 1) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree). 2) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree). 3) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree). 4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree). 5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree). 6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree). 7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

If anybody is still wondering why the economy is in the toilet, just remember.  We have a leftists majority in both houses of congress and a leftist in the White House.

Bipartisan Myth - Centrist Compromise

Liberal lament over Washington's partisan polarization has always been an amusing spectacle.  It approached hilarity after the Democrats lost their super majority, but when veteran Utah Republican Senator Robert Bennett lost in his primary fight because he joined them in pushing the stimulus, Democrats went very nearly hysterical over it.  What became of those centrist Republicans, the ones courageous enough to reach out for compromise?  Well, where did compromise get them, those centrist Republicans?

But the greater weakness in the liberal cant about meeting somewhere in the middle is this: The great domestic question of our time is whether we can restrain and even reverse the catastrophic expansion of government debt before it is too late. And until just yesterday, Republicans were AWOL. Or, to put it another way, they were just where the great conciliators of the Washington Post claim they should be. They had abandoned limited government and were reconciled to tinkering with huge federal entitlements to make them slightly less bankrupting than they otherwise would be.

The advent of the Obama administration, with its pell mell rush to transform us into Greece, is transforming the Republican Party as well.

Another of those damned unintended consequences.  Obama intended to transform us into Utopia, not Greece!  How could that have gone wrong?

It's an odd but familiar definition of bipartisanship.  According to progressives and their media allies, to be bipartisan means to meekly accept progressive, socialist policies.  But to get a flavor of a real bipartisanship, look at the opposition to Obama's health care takeover legislation.  The media loved to say that no Republican voted for it, but the more important point is that they were joined by Democrats who voted against it.  That's bipartisanship.  Polarization is driven by the left, which is ultimately driving that Republican transformation.  Let's see how well that goes.