Freedom Line Blog

Byron York reports that the implementation of Wisconsin’s controversial ban on collective bargaining by public employee unions is already freeing one state school district from financial hardship.  Among the benefits of the change in policy:

• Swapping a $400,000 deficit for a $1.5 million surplus thanks to increasing teachers’ health insurance cost of coverage from 10 percent to 12.6 percent, which is “still well below rates in much of the private sector”

• Being able to shop around for health insurance coverage instead of being forced under collectively bargained contracts only to purchase coverage from a union-operated provider – the demanded premium levels have already dropped to “match the lowest bidder”

• Changing work rules like upping a teacher’s hours of instruction from five out of seven periods to six, thus allowing the district to reduce student-to-teacher ratios and provide more one-on-one tutoring with troubled students

Wisconsin’s Democratic Party and its liberal lobbyists may still consider the ban on collective bargaining a “disaster,” but it’s clearly a win for parents, students, and administrators.

Well, isn’t this a hoot?  Ever since the spotted owl was listed as an endangered species in 1990, the federal government has gone out of its way to limit timber companies from diminishing its wooded living spaces.  But while the Feds were concentrating on keeping dreaded homo sapiens at bay, another creature swooped in threatening to kill-off spotted owls: barred owls.

It turns out that barred owls are bigger and meaner than their spotted cousins.  According to Reuters, barred owls “have made steady gains in displacing spotted owls, which are being disrupted during nesting and are losing out in the competition for mice and other food.”

Some questions come to mind.  Who’s protecting the mice these owls are hunting mercilessly?  Surely, the mouse “and other food” constituencies are being impacted negatively by the increase in predator supply.

Also, isn’t the barred owl vs. spotted owl contest really a matter of survival of the fittest?  If human societies always evolve toward higher, better, more progressive outcomes, why not members of the animal kingdom?

Maybe this bird-on-bird fight has another dimension that liberals don’t want to contemplate.  Perhaps the spotted owls got fat and happy with government removing competition for resources.  As it nested quietly, maybe the species forgot how to fight for food.

There’s one other point to make: The barred owls are from the East Coast.  They only began settling in the spotted owl’s Pacific Northwest territory in the 1970’s.  In only a few decades, the barred owls have multiplied faster and staked out more territory than the native spotted owls.  If the Feds let nature and demography continue there will be no spotted owls left in a few years.

Partisans for the spotted owl want the Feds to take “decisive action” against the barred owl to save the spotted owl’s way of life.  The Feds are contemplating doing just that, even though it probably means capturing and killing owls who are just trying to scratch out an existence.  The real problem here seems to be letting a situation get out of control through either ignorance or incompetence.  Now, there are no good options for getting the genie back in the bottle.

Much like mice, food for thought.

Kudos to Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) for vetoing a state version of “card-check,” a shift in policy that would replace the secret ballot with signing a card given to union organizers.  For those needing confirmation that eliminating the secret ballot is one of the last gasps of a dwindling union movement, the good folks at Western Farm Press report this little nugget:

Farmers lobbied mightily to turn back the legislation and convince Brown to veto it. The veto was a victory that ranks close to the triumph several years back when the taxes on farm equipment and agricultural fuel were rescinded due to a herculean lobbying effort. Passage of the card-check law would have created heightened union organizing efforts by a floundering United Farm Workers of America.

And how’s this for a bit of history:

The 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act gave wings to the United Farm Workers of America, which eventually reach 100,000 members. However, that number has plummeted to less than 20,000 today. The card-check rule would have breathed new life into the UFW.

Other unions like the Teamsters came in to challenge UFW, and growers simply increased wages and benefits to stave off unionization. UFW became unnecessary.

And so is card-check.  Good veto, Governor Brown.  Keep ‘em coming.

As CFIF reported earlier this month, presidential candidate Jon Huntsman (R-UT) is hiring staff that previously worked for Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in the latter’s bids for the White House.  Byron York details how many conservatives are interpreting Huntsman’s personnel hires as accurate indications of how he thinks about policy.  (Hint: Not conservative.)

Huntsman’s top campaign aide is John Weaver, who was John McCain’s top campaign aide in 2000 and in the early stages of the 2008 campaign — campaigns that often raised the ire of the GOP base. (Weaver has also worked for some Democrats.) Other McCain veterans have signed on with Huntsman, as well. Still others, like Mark McKinnon — the aide who worked for McCain in the 2008 primaries but left because he did not want to campaign against Barack Obama — also favor Huntsman. (McKinnon is a co-founder of the “No Labels” movement, much derided by conservatives.)

When Huntsman took second place in the Republican Leadership Conference straw poll in New Orleans recently, Politico reported that he benefited from the vote wrangling of former Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, whom conservatives well remember as the only Republican to vote for Obamacare in the House. There’s another mark against Huntsman. And that’s before conservatives consider the fact that Huntsman spent the past two years working for the Obama administration.

The conservative base pays close attention to the people who surround a candidate. In the eyes of some, personnel can trump policy. “At both the Republican Leadership Council and at Right Online (another conservative gathering), the majority of conservative activists I spoke to said they knew nothing of Huntsman’s positions,” says conservative activist Erick Erickson, “but his campaign team had the makings of the second coming of John McCain.”

Huntsman is McCain without the war record to paper over his liberal positions on illegal immigration, cap-and-tax, and healthcare reform.  Thus, he’s a left-of-center Republican hiring left-of-center staff.  If personnel drives policy, beware of a President Huntsman.

Add Kirsten Powers to the list of political professionals who have a deeper appreciation of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) after meeting the GOP presidential candidate in person.  According to Powers, Bachmann is a much more substantive person than her critics imagine.

In person, Bachmann seems eerily disconnected from the TV caricature. She is bright, quick, charming, and thoughtful. She will civilly and gamely debate any issue.

One might expect those qualities in a person who made a living as a tax attorney, raised more than a score of children (5 of her own, 23 through foster care), snagged Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund as a co-author, and convinced several high profile campaign operatives to sign on.

As her performance at the CNN debate showed, Bachmann is a serious campaigner willing to put in the work to win.  If she continues to get out her message in person to voters in Iowa and other early voting states, she’ll quickly move past Tim Pawlenty and make this a two-horse race with Mitt Romney.

For anyone interested in whom the Texas Democratic Party will look to for leadership in the very near, consider rising twin brothers Julian and Joaquin Castro.  Both are Stanford and Harvard Law graduates.  Both represent San Antonio – Julian as mayor; Joaquin as a state representative.  Each is being groomed for higher office.

From his perch as San Antonio mayor, Julian could very likely seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2014.  By then, current Republican Governor Rick Perry will either be in the White House or in an uphill battle for election to his fourth term in office.  (Perry doesn’t have a history of landslides.  In 2006, he won a four-way race with 36% of the popular vote.  In 2010, he won just 51% in a three-way primary after more than a decade as governor.)

For his part, Joaquin just announced a primary challenge to nine-term Democratic congressman Lloyd Doggett.  A new redistricting map connects south Austin with San Antonio, making the state legislator a natural fit to represent the two cities he’s spent the most time in since being elected to office.

Texas’ demographic trend mirrors California.  Currently, no race is a majority in Texas, but by the end of the decade, Hispanics will be.  With the state and federal legislative delegations increasingly split between Anglo Republican and minority Democrats, don’t be surprised if someday Julian Castro becomes governor while his brother Joaquin serves in the U.S. Senate.

The New York Times reports of a “completely unscientific” voice-vote poll of about 100 Tea Party activists gathering at the D.C. offices of FreedomWorks.  The top vote getter for president was Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who announced her (formal) candidacy today.  Texas Republicans Governor Rick Perry and Rep. Ron Paul were close seconds.

Each of the three has a unique mix of conservatism to attract Tea Party and larger GOP support.  All agree on fundamental themes like American Exceptionalism, low taxes, the free market, and traditional values.  Each differs, though, in the formula for achieving those goals.

That is a good thing.  Conservatives can – and should – differ about means, but not ends.  Goals are a matter of principle.  How we get there should be the subject of vigorous debate.

The reporters conducting their poll may think the results were “completely unscientific,” but they needn’t worry.  The boos for Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Jon Huntsman (R-UT), and the indifference toward Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), show that the media’s favorites are in real trouble with the people who will decide the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

After California Governor Jerry Brown (D) vetoed the legislature’s budget bill, many questioned the definition of a “budget gimmick” since both Brown and the legislature accused the other of using accounting tricks and unrealistic assumptions to balance the state’s budget.

Thankfully, the Arizona Capitol Times has an answer.  Actually, it has five.  Here are the most commonly used gimmicks states employ to meet the technical (i.e. constitutional) requirement to balance their budgets.  (Note: Examples of states doing these are indicated by their two letter abbreviation.)

(1)   Putting off payments – can include delaying or skipping payments to schools and pensions (Ex: IL, MN, NJ)

(2)   Accelerating revenue – this gimmick collects taxes like those on sales early (TX)

(3)   Using temporary money for recurring expenses – spending ‘rainy day’ funds to cut the grass (HI)

(4)   Counting on savings that aren’t likely to materialize – one example is mandating less spending without enacting a specific policy change (CA, CT)

(5)   Counting on revenue that isn’t likely to materialize – such as counting on a federal bailout or stimulus funding that does not appear (NY, CA)

So, there you have it: A five-point B.S. meter for judging the seriousness of your state’s “balanced” budget.

I wonder if the Tea Party is readying state constitutional amendment drives to ban these practices and give their balanced budgets more credibility…

Hats off to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) for putting together a string of impressive wins in her just-begun presidential campaign.  Hiring veteran campaign consultant Ed Rollins elevated her profile with the Beltway set, and announcing her candidacy live at Monday’s debate was the perfect complement to her strong performance.

Today, Bachmann’s campaign announced that Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund will be assisting with her biography set to be released in the fall.  Fund’s attachment to the project means that the book has substance, and with his addition it is guaranteed to have style.

One more bright spot for Team Bachmann: A new Rasmussen poll finds her approval ratings second only to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

And she’s only been a candidate for four days.

Glenn Beck’s The Blaze has compiled the findings of two different analyses on Sarah Palin’s recently released emails from her time as Alaska’s governor.   Key finding: Palin’s emails indicate she has writing skills equal to an 8^th grader.

If that doesn’t sound necessarily impressive, consider that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is scored as 9^th grade level, while Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” is between 8^th and 9^th grade level.

And let’s not forget Palin’s sample came from emails she was dashing off to staff.  According to the analysts, Palin’s writing abilities exceed those of most Americans and most American CEOs.

Not bad for a Grizzly Mama unilaterally disdained for her lack of intellect.

Politico’s Ben Smith reports that Jeffrey Bell of American Principles in Action is engaged in a 19-stop bus tour of Iowa to drum up support for returning U.S. monetary policy to the gold standard.  According to Bell, focus groups of Tea Party activists in the Midwest were “astonishing” in their support for the issue.

Bell’s goal is to get the Republican presidential field to incorporate the gold standard into their platforms.  Politico’s Smith explains the issue’s allure:

Arguments over the gold standard date back more than a century, and their ideological charge is linked in part to the fact that making dollars convertible to gold would in theory limit the government’s capacity to act in the economy.

For that reason alone, putting a spotlight on the gold standard would be a good investment of time for American voters.

Former DNC Chairman Tim Kaine (D-VA) is having to face reality and run from his party in hi quest to be the next U.S. Senator from Virginia.  Kaine, a former governor, agreed during an interview that the Democratic-controlled Senate’s complete failure to pass a budget for over a year is a “major problem” for the party.

It’s also a major problem for candidates like Kaine trying to convince voters that the party of profligate spending, special favors for unions and – yes – crony capitalism – is serious about fiscal matters when it can’t muster the courage to pass a budget.  The failure to pass a budget is to fail at the most basic aspect of governing.  Either Senate Democrats need to get serious about passing a budget – and the debate that goes with it – or they should adjourn until further notice.  At least that would save taxpayers money for keeping a spate of non-working buildings running.

If last week’s column about the cluelessness of General Motors’ management got you in the mood for some “how did we get here” info, former GM and Chrysler executive Bob Lutz has an app…er, book for that.

The book is titled “Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business.” Lutz’s experiences have been the subject of superb interviews in The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal.  In both, Lutz describes how an overreliance on metrics – in particular, counting the wrong things like volume instead of profit – over time destroyed the creativity and dominance of the American auto industry.

All of the hyperlinks are worth reading, but here is the funniest – and saddest – story I’ve read so far:

The Outside Speaker Effective Analysis Group

A revealing window into GM’s misfiring “culture of excellence” in the second half of the 20th century came by way of my late friend David E. Davis Jr., dean of automotive writers, lecturer, author, pioneering writer at Car and Driver, and founder of Automobile magazine. A sought-after speaker highly knowledgeable about our industry, David told this anecdote in the mid-1980s when speaking about GM.

Sometime in the early ’80s, he’d accepted a gig as speaker to a large group of GM executives. The speech appeared to go well, and the applause felt genuine. David went home pleased and thought no more about it until he received the following letter:

Dear David:
You asked for feedback on your remarks at our recent conference. The data is just now available.

The rating scale was zero to ten with ten being “best.” The five non-GM speakers had scores ranging from zero to ten. Yours ranged from three to ten. The five “outside speakers'” average scores ranged from 5.25 to 8.25.

Your average was 7.35.

Two speakers had higher scores than yours. Your standard deviation from the mean was 1.719 and ranked second among the variances, showing that most people had a similar opinion about your remarks.

I personally enjoyed your remarks very much. Your refreshing candor, coupled with your broad understanding of people, product, and the market, gave us exactly what we asked you for—”widened competitive awareness.”

Thank you for your participation.
Signed:
Outside Speaker Effective Analysis Group

An “outside speaker effective analysis group”? This was the result of too much money and too many overly educated, almost academically oriented people focusing their ray guns of unbridled excellence on targets of complete irrelevance.

That last paragraph almost sounds like a gaggle of bureaucrats, doesn’t it?  Of course, nobody in D.C. could be accused of wasting time and money on inappropriate expenditures, right?

Those wacky California bureaucrats are at it again!  Reporting by the Wall Street Journal says that Golden State regulators “moved ahead Thursday with an investigation into AT&T Inc.’s $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA, raising a fresh hurdle for the U.S. wireless giant as it seeks the government’s blessing to acquire its third-largest competitor.”

The report goes on to explain that AT&T doesn’t need California’s blessing, only a green light from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Nonetheless, California’s objection could “carry weight” with the FCC’s board of governors, potentially scuttling the merger.  Not bad for a group of regulators with zero jurisdiction over the matter.

With California staring at a multi-billion dollar deficit, perhaps this is the kind of government agency whose funding should be cut – or eliminated.

Well, that didn’t take long.  On the day after Rick Perry for President speculation gained new momentum with two of his longtime political aides bolting Newt Gingrich’s campaign, the liberal media is attacking the Texas Republican governor for coordinating a “day of prayer and fasting” for national healing in Houston on August 6.

Putting aside the arguments for and against Perry’s event, the more the media explains Perry’s commitment to an evangelical Christian worldview, the more social conservative primary voters in Iowa are sure to perk up.  Moreover, Perry is already considered the first-in-the-nation-governor to pick up the Tea Party mantle of limited government, so perhaps those flinty New Englanders in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation-primary might take a look at a guy who takes the 10th Amendment seriously.

But what about foreign policy?  Let’s just say that as a former Air Force fighter pilot from Texas, Perry should have no trouble articulating something pleasing to pro-military Republican voters.

As with Sarah Palin, the mainstream media doesn’t seem to realize that highlighting Perry’s conservatism actually makes him more attractive to Republican voters.  So go ahead, journos!  Keep knocking Perry for being a social, fiscal, and national security conservative.  It only helps grow the brand.

Wow.  With the news that Newt Gingrich’s entire senior campaign staff resigned en masse this morning, some are speculating that the fallout – and newly freed staff – will benefit the rumored Rick Perry for President campaign.

Prognostications about the future aside, Gingrich’s present is spectacularly unclear.  Where does he go from here?  So far, the most memorable moments from Newt’s 2012 odyssey are calling a sensible Medicare reform “right wing social engineering,” an epic press release, a half-a-million-dollar credit line at Tiffany’s, and now this.  Amazing.

One thing’s for sure: Newt needs to find some way to bounce back, if only for his personal future as a pundit, speaker, and idea factory.  If this mass resignation is the final entry of his presidential campaign, it will be awhile before anyone wants to pony up big bucks to get advice from a guy who couldn’t manage a single week of sustained success.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that a raid of an arsenal in Mexico identified at least five guns traced back to a controversial program allowing guns to “walk” across the border into the hands of drug cartels.  The guns were part of the “Fast and Furious” program run out of the Phoenix, AZ office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to catch higher level criminals.

CFIF and others have reported on the presence of another ATF-tracked gun at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.  The confirmation of five more guns linked to illegal activity will heighten pressure by House Government Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to break through Justice Department stonewalling on an operation that went predictably out of control.

Unsurprisingly, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on Issa’s committee, is not joining the growing bipartisan chorus for more answers from Attorney General Eric Holder, whose administrative portfolio includes oversight of ATF.

One American is already dead because of ATF’s misguided sting operation.  With more than 1,000 “Fast and Furious” guns still unaccounted for, let’s hope it doesn’t take more deaths to convince Holder that political considerations should take a back seat to our Border Patrol Agents’ personal saftey.

For the one or two Republican voters waiting for New York GOPers to run for president, good news!  Former Governor George Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani are sending signals they want to waste millions of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to win a crowded New Hampshire primary.

My guess is that neither man is the one the Tea Party is waiting for…

Salon’s Steve Kornacki details how embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) won his first election as a city councilman by linking a primary opponent to an infamous race riot.  Though the entire article is worth reading, Kornacki’s conclusion sums up what many are feeling about the justice of removing Weiner from office:

…he parlayed his Council spot into a seat in Congress, and you know the story from there. But who knows where Weiner would be today if he hadn’t made such a dark appeal to racial hostility days after a notorious riot?

It’s something worth keeping in mind now, as Weiner’s career hangs in the balance. Is it unfair if he loses his political future because of a scandal as dumb as this one? Sure. But it’s also not exactly fair that he ever made it this far.

A blog post last Friday by Loren Kaye at Fox and Hounds Daily provides another variation on the theme of California’s broken governing structure.

Two budget-related developments yesterday bring a small amount of clarity to the political positioning on achieving a deal. But their long-term effect is to re-allocate political power.

Controller John Chiang released a legal opinion interpreting the section of Proposition 25 that would halt salary and expense payments to the Legislature if it fails to transmit a budget to the Governor by June 15. His lawyers concluded that even if the budget is timely passed and sent to the Governor, if it is not a balanced budget, then legislators would forfeit their pay until they pass one that is balanced. This twist arises from an earlier measure, Proposition 58 in 2004, which requires that the Legislature may not send to the Governor, nor may the Governor sign, a budget that would spend more than the revenues estimated for the year. Until the Controller’s memo, this constitutional provision had no teeth. Now that provision has been given real force, and the arbiter of whether a budget is balanced – and therefore whether the Legislature will be paid – will be Controller John Chiang.

Within several hours of this disclosure, Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg announced that his SB 653 would be folded into a budget trailer bill. His proposal would provide broad local taxing authority (contingent on existing voter approval requirements) to counties and school districts, which would substantially increase the level of uncertainty surrounding economic development. The significance of including the language into a budget trailer bill is that those bills are granted immunity from referendum, even if passed by a simple majority vote. This was another consequence of Proposition 25 that was warned against, but pooh-poohed by proponents. This maneuver has ramifications that extend well beyond today’s budget controversy, and could presage the demise of the people’s cherished referendum power, 100 years after it was first granted.

The consequences of Proposition 25 on the power dynamics in California government go far beyond just passing the state budget. And we’re only beginning to see their boundaries tested.

So, as of last Friday, California’s Controller claimed the power to determine the state’s budget process.  Maybe next week the state’s Attorney General can find a way to trump him.  After that, why doesn’t the Treasurer figure out how to get in on the fun?  In Golden State government, everyone wants power, but none claim responsibility.