I do not know which makes a man more conservative—
to know nothing but the present,
or nothing but the past.
John Maynard Keynes
Editorial Quote of the Day
President Obama is due in Durham today for yet another expensive campaign stop. It is by now a well-worn cliche to say that if he spent half as much time on the nation’s problems as he does on the campaign trail, we would be better off. But would we? More time campaigning does mean less time harming the country. This man has been an utter disaster for America. - Joseph W. McQuaid, UnionLeader.comC'est vrai... D'accord! Or, as I might put it, Barack Obama isn't the solution to America's problems: he is one of America's problems. It's not just the fact that he's never really stopped campaigning these past 4 years in office: it's his total lack of leadership.
And I knew it before he ever got elected (but nobody asked me): I took a particular interest in terms of how Obama took part during the 2007 immigration fight. He never was really involved in the detailed negotiations; it was like he was there just long enough for the photo ops. And then in the process of making a compromise, there's a code of honor: the Republican negotiators would stand by the concessions made to Democrats, and vice-versa. The immigration bill died when Democrats, aided by Obama's votes to kick out concessions (e.g., for temporary foreign worker programs, opposed by unions), killed the compromise. Even though the liberal lion Ted Kennedy stuck by the concessions (which should have given Obama all the political cover he needed), Obama didn't. I suspect it's because he was in the process of running for President, and he didn't want to risk alienating the unions on key votes.
Some people think that Obama is a "shrewd" politician: that's bunk. A shrewd politician would have moved quickly to divide-and-conquer by giving demoralized Republicans some meaningful face-saving concessions; if I had been in Obama's position, I would have worked quickly to deal with the Bush tax cuts. I would have attempted to co-opt the GOP talking points by passing a modest deficit reduction and earmark reform initiative, and I would certainly have embraced the Bowles-Simpson plan as political cover for dealing with entitlement reform. I would have put the time and effort in arm-twisting getting a highly symbolic goal like shutting Gitmo accomplished, and I would have expedited an exit from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the same Obama, who confidently told former Congressman Marion Berry that the main reason the Democrats lost the House in 1994 was because it was Clinton, not him, in the White House, had his priorities: after criticizing the Bush Administration for deficits and raising the national debt ceiling, Obama has already added the only trillion-plus deficits in history and has already added more to the public debt than any President in US history (including Bush's two-term Presidency). He rammed two major, unpopular partisan "reform" packages down the throats of the opposition party, without a single bipartisan vote, unprecedented in American history. Obama went abroad with a highly unpopular blame America tour. Instead of taking responsibility with a Trumanesque "the buck stops here" attitude, Obama dishonorably shifted the blame for his ineffective performance in an unprecedented manner at his predecessor and a vastly outnumbered political opposition and gave pathetic excuses for anemic, jobless economic growth at roughly a third of the rate of job growth in a typical recovery, with the lowest labor force participation rate in 3 decades. His anti-war supporters are demoralized, not to mention environmental allies without their climate change legislation, Latinos without immigration reform, or labor unions with the President MIA during their latest loss, the targeted recall election of Governor Scott Walker.
So now we have a President, with all the advantages of the incumbency, left with few concrete accomplishments on his primary objective, to improve the economy, reduced to little more than promoting a progressive policy wishlist which is all but dead on arrival with a likely GOP-controlled Congress next year, and few answers other than the same old same old neo-Keynesian super-spending at a time the credit rating agencies have already downgraded US Treasury debt. With employment still down by over 5 million since early 2008 of the Bush Presidency with millions more young people graduating or otherwise entering the labor force over the past 4 years with absolutely no new jobs created, Obama has few options to engaging in a fear-mongering campaign and launching a lame attack against Romney's job creation record in Massachusetts after its high tech economy was crushed during and after the Nasdaq stock bust. Obama's resorting to a negative campaign will almost certainly be a double-edged sword.
Sunday Talk Soup, Prosecutional Discretion, and Justice Scalia
I have only recently reviewed some of the more recent Sunday morning network shows. Although the Romney campaign has had some good moments, they aren't doing the kinds of things I want to see and do, and their message is muddled at point. As someone who has been forced to endure Maryland's feckless governor Martin O'Malley, these past 6 years, and now to see him pop up like a mole on all these Sunday morning shows, I sorely want to play whack a mole, but that piece of work is not worth my time and effort. (Maryland has been a big beneficiary of federal super-spending, and O'Malley has nothing to do with that.) The Maryland libertarian/conservative bench is so weak, I'm sorely tempted to enter politics myself. These progressive empty suits reciting their latest political spin wouldn't know what hit them--these commentaries aren't ghost-written; three-quarters of politicians have all the personality of a plate of leftover grits, including O'Malley.
Anyway, Martin O'Malley was going on in one of my pet peeves: false comparisons of Obama's economic record versus Bush's. I have knocked Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her similar abuse of pick-and-choose statistics. Bush's Presidency was book-ended by recessions: two asset busts, the 2000 Nasdaq meltdown (not to mention 9/11 and the financial scandals--i.e., Enron, Tyco, etc.), and of course all but the last 5 months of the 2007-2009 recession. The fact is that Bush lost way more jobs in his last year than Obama has gained since the bottom of job numbers, well after the recession formally ended in June 2009, the same numbers O'Malley is misrepresenting as Obama's record. (After all, he's counting the job losses at both ends of Bush, but none of the long string of job losses under Obama: as the Church Lady might say, "Isn't THAT special?") O'Malley is being intellectually dishonest, but is anyone really surprised? Let's point out that Obama has had trivial (just above zero: NEGATIVE real interest rates when you factor in inflation) Fed funds rates HIS WHOLE PRESIDENCY: unprecedented in American history--not to mention TRILLIONS of additional dollars in super-spending, and this is the best Obama can do? Several million less jobs than Bush in January 2008--when the very same Obama was slamming Bush's poor economic record? So knock off the disingenuous political spin, you political hack!
I can't speak why the Romney campaign gives the absolute worst responses I've ever heard. I'm going to go after Ed Gillespie in a future commentary, but in a special preview, Chris Wallace asked Ed Gillespie about the differences between Bush and Romney on economics: one of the most PREDICTABLE questions I've ever heard. That's a fast ball down the middle of the plate: I have written several commentaries telling Romney to ATTACK the Bush/Obama record of overspending, regulation growth, military mission creep, etc. I want Romney to talk about the highest business tax marginal rates of any major country, I want him to talk about how Bush and Obama EXPANDED entitlements while their existing unfunded liabilities exceed $40T! I want to hear about streamlining redundancy government operations, while Bush was creating the largest bureaucracy (DHS) in human history. I want him to talk about how Bush expanded domestic expenditures the most since LBJ.
Instead, Gillespie starts talking about China and currency manipulation! IS HE CRAZY? If he was my campaign adviser, I would have fired him for cause on the spot. Some business models were already noncompetitive from a global standpoint; mercantilist policies only defer the day of reckoning and adversely affect consumers. Price-fixing is NEVER a good idea; if and when China undervalues its currency, it pays more for imported resources and components than it should, which adversely affects margins and creates unsustainable inflationary pressures, a particularly egregious hidden tax on the poor! But, and this is a point I've frequently made in this blog, China has been slowly raising its currency against the US dollar and Chinese imports have INCREASED over the past 5 or 6 years while American exports to China have SOARED. Got that, Romney? Not to mention if, say, China invests its dollars, say, helping to underwrite the US debt, this frees up other investment dollars for the local economy--which is GOOD for American businesses and jobs. Engaging in a trade war is a LOSE-LOSE proposition, and that's why demagoguery targeting China is especially dangerous and irresponsible. It may win votes of people whom don't understand economics, but it makes for very bad public policy. Romney needs to purge his campaign of this type of rhetoric; he doesn't need it to beat Obama. If, on the other hand, China decided to dump a trillion dollars of bonds on the market, the net effect could be soaring interest rates (i.e., plummeting bond prices), and an almost certain recession, unless the Fed intervened. But if the Fed released all that fiat money on the market, the dollar would probably steeply correct. (I don't think China would do that because they would be catching a falling knife on bond prices all the way down.)
I think I heard Romney or one of his surrogates questioned about the Obama "jobs plan", as in paying for teachers, police, and firefighters. Schieffer (Face the Nation) was probing into that. I have frequently commented on this issue: I've pointed out that money is fungible, there's an issue of moral hazard, and there are also dysfunctional public policies at play. (I'll give a couple of examples: teacher budgets have vastly expanded beyond school attendance increases since the 1970's, without zero to show for it in terms of improved student achievement. There are excessive overhead costs. Benefit costs (e.g., retirement pension and health systems) are unsustainable. All of these issues have to be confronted head on, sooner than later. Now in terms of police officers, a lot has to do with laws. For example, we could be spending a lot of time cracking down on victimless crimes like prostitution and marijuana busts. (Note that I am not an advocate of victimless crimes; I don't partake of either.)) I think the stock response has been, look, the President did the same thing in 2009, under the massive stimulus bill, and it didn't work (to juice the economy). That's correct, but if I was Romney, I would frame it in bigger picture terms: the opportunity costs of spending the same money much more effectively and efficiently in the private sector than in the public sector.
But I especially want to criticize Romney on what I thought was a weak, evasive question regard Obama's unlawful abuse of prosecutional discretion regarding unauthorized aliens. Schieffer (I believe in the June 10 FTN) repeatedly tried to pin Romney down on what he would do with Obama's directive if he became President. Romney immediately pointed out this was a blatantly political move (of course), since Obama could have done the Dream Act or immigration reform on favorable terms early in his Presidency if he had wanted to spend the political capital. This is, of course, true enough.
But my response would have been like this: "No, Bob: the President's directive is unconstitutional. He cannot pick and choose to enforce the law in ways that benefit his interest groups. I believe in the rule of law. I would administer and enforce the law as it is written, not how I think it should be written. I think that discretion is a tactical decision, not a strategic one: the President is trying to provide a sham rationalization to create his own laws: as Charles Krauthammer pointed out, it's lawlessness. I will work with Congress to come up with a fair, balanced approach to immigration reform, but I will not abuse my powers as President as this President has."
According to Politico (see SB1070 decision below):
Scalia asked whether states would have entered into the union had the Constitution included a clause enacting immigration laws but stipulating that the president had a choice on whether to enforce them.
“To say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing immigration law that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind,” Scalia said.
“The husbanding of scarce enforcement resources can hardly be the justification for this,” he said of the new Department of Homeland Security directives, “since those resources will be eaten up by the considerable administrative cost of conducting the non-enforcement program, which will require as many as 1.4 million background checks and biennial rulings on requests for dispensation.”
I'm more curious by the nature of Justice Scalia's discussion here. I would have thought that he would have questioned the rule of law under a situation where the public administrators arbitrarily decide in advance what laws to enforce or which suspects they are going to process. There's a real question about the rule of law and equal protection under the law when discretion is raised to the point of policy. It becomes more like dereliction of duty and abuse of power. It's one thing if a police chief in a small town had to dedicate resources to investigate a rare murder, versus, say, writing tickets for jaywalking. But you don't know, as a matter of policy, you will have any murders but decide you aren't going to enforce jaywalking, even if you have police officers on the street at the time.
Then there's the issue of whether, because the federal government arbitrarily decides that it doesn't want to bother processing unauthorized aliens even if they've broken Arizona's laws. Arizona is unfairly having to pay costs for people that are here because of ineffectual border enforcement, the federal government's responsibility. The federal government should be required to reimburse Arizona for all costs associated with unauthorized immigrants or visitors. Arizona shouldn't have to being paying immigration costs, period. I personally think Arizona is engaging in moral hazard by requiring its officers to do what the federal government is failing to do.
SCOTUS Decision on Arizona SB1070: Thumbs UP!
This dispute reminds me in a way of a controversial topic in Christianity: the sacrament of the Eucharist. Jesus is recorded in the Synoptic (non-John) Gospels and Pauline writings as instituting this memorial ritual at the Last Supper, taking bread and saying "This is my body" and then taking a cup of wine and saying "This is my blood". There is little doubt where how the early Christians understood the sacrament: Romans used it to accuse them of cannibalism.
I won't go into the doctrinal disputes over the celebration of the Eucharist here, except to note that Martin Luther and other early Protestants, after their schism from Roman Catholicism, disputed whether the Eucharistic was the Real Presence of Christ or merely symbolic. Luther, a former priest, had this to say: "[S]ince we are confronted by God’s words, “This is my body” – distinct, clear, common, definite words, which certainly are no trope, either in Scripture or in any language – we must embrace them with faith . . . not as hairsplitting sophistry dictates but as God says them for us, we must repeat these words after him and hold to them."
In a similar way, as a conservative, I believe in federalism, including traditional policing powers of states, against a subordination of states to a stealth increasingly powerful federal government. I also believe in the US Constitution. I argue, just like Luther might, Article 1 specifies "distinct, clear, common, definite words, which certainly are no trope, not as hairsplitting sophistry dictates."
And the US Constitution unambiguously establishes the primacy of the federal government when it comes to border protection and immigration (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4): "The Congress shall have Power To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization." I think this is also clearly implied from Section 10, Clause 3: "No State shall enter into any Agreement or Compact with a foreign Power." Although the Constitution doesn't flesh out the details, e.g., of the regulation of foreign visitors and immigration, it's clearly implied: if, say, Arizona did have an immigration policy, it would imply that Arizona had the authority to engage in diplomacy with foreign powers or that its immigration policy could differ from and/or trump the plain-word Congressional "uniform rule of naturalization".
SCOTUS reviewed 4 provisions
The District Court issued a preliminary injunction preventing four of its provisions from taking effect. Section 3 makes failure to comply with federal alien-registration requirements a state misdemeanor; §5(C) makes it a misdemeanor for an unauthorized alien to seek or engageThe Supreme Court upheld the district court judgment in the first 3 provisions: it held that Section 3 is a federal, not state-shared process; Section 5C imposes a criminal penalty versus a federal civil violation; and Section 6 preempts the federal government's discretion on how to handle any relevant arrest of an unauthorized person (e.g., directly or with the assistance of local/state police).
in work in the State; §6 authorizes state and local officers to arrest without a warrant a person “the officer has probable cause to believe . . . has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States”; and §2(B) requires officers conducting a stop, detention, or arrest to make efforts, in some circumstances, to verify the person’s immigration status with the Federal Government. The Ninth Circuit affirmed.
On the other hand, the Court reversed the lower court judgments on Section 2B. Local/state law enforcement can check for immigration status provided it's in the context of the performance of duty checking a person's identify and no state drivers license and/or ID is available. This was controversial since Obama and Holder presumptuously regard the law as a rationalization for "racial profiling", e.g., stopping a motorist for no apparent reason other than the fact he looks Latino. The justices correctly point out that this is merely part of the information gathering process of how state/local authorities augment federal personnel (e.g., the Border Patrol).
DHS Suspends Immigration Agreements with Arizona:
Thumbs DOWN!
In the wake of SCOTUS' mixed ruling on Arizona SB1070, DHS is not only enforcing Obama's lawless abuse of prosecutional discretion but essentially thumbing its nose at SCOTUS, which confirmed that Arizona did have the right to improve internal procedures in gathering information about possible unauthorized aliens as a subordinate partner to federal enforcement endeavors. DHS says even if gets a higher volume because of tightened procedures in Arizona, it has no plans to add to its own Arizona staff:
The Obama administration said Monday it is suspending existing agreements with Arizona police over enforcement of federal immigration laws, and said it has issued a directive telling federal authorities to decline many of the calls reporting illegal immigrants that the Homeland Security Department may get from Arizona police.
Administration officials, speaking on condition they not be named, told reporters they expect to see an increase in the number of calls they get from Arizona police — but that won’t change President Obama’s decision to limit whom the government actually tries to detain and deport.
“We will not be issuing detainers on individuals unless they clearly meet our defined priorities,” one official said in a telephone briefing.Follow-Up Odds and Ends
- Miscellany: 6/17/12: Citizens United vs. FEC: Another Commentary. I referenced a George Will column noting that Montana's Supreme Court defiantly upheld state restrictions on political speech (campaign finance). Political speech is an enumerated right and manifestly applicable to states under the Fourteenth Amendment; it was inevitable that SCOTUS would reject this. Thumbs UP! I read this more as a desperate 'Hail Mary' pass, trying to get the same majority of SCOTUS to reverse itself. The political left is conceptually muddled with their conspiracy theories: crony capitalists are politically agnostic. They want to cuddle up to anyone whom is in power and if anything they will hedge their bets. However, it is possible that individuals and businesses could support the political right, not because they want special privileges, but because more government intervention makes it difficult to operate and grow.
From the CNN News Blog this morning: "[Updated at 10:08 a.m. ET] The court has thrown out a Montana state ruling on limiting spending in state elections, by saying it believes the historic Citizens United case applies to state elections as well. The court will not hear oral arguments on the case."Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, "Runnin' Down a Dream"
