Freedom Line Blog

Previously, I interviewed California Republican Assemblyman Chris Norby about the costs associated with taxpayer-funded redevelopment agencies (RDAs).  Along with liberal use – and threats – of eminent domain powers, RDAs siphon away local tax money from schools, roads and other public services to service the debt incurred to privilege certain businesses.

Writing for City Journal, Steve Greenhut of the Pacific Research Institute laments the dependency on RDA funding by local officials like the mayor of Glendora, CA.

When I spoke to Tessitor, I finally got to the heart of his redevelopment defense. The city relies on RDA funding for 15 percent of its budget, he said, and assuring the city’s financial future is “all I care about.” Individual cities have indeed become dependent on redevelopment money, but that doesn’t mean that the current system works. Nor does it change the reality of how these abusive agencies operate. I sympathize with the mayor’s budget worries, but if Glendora is an example of redevelopment done right—as he argues—then the situation is even worse than I thought.

For the all the protests to the contrary, it’s hard to shake the feeling that RDAs are crony capitalism by another name.

Columnist Michael Barone thinks that House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) may be reconsidering his decision not to run for president in 2012.  How else to explain Ryan’s recent pro-American Exceptionalism foreign policy speech?  Paraphrasing Barone, how often do committee chairmen weigh in on issues outside of their jurisdiction?

Here’s an excerpt from the concluding section of Ryan’s speech:

A more prosperous economy enables us to afford a modernized military that is properly sized for the breadth of the challenges we face. Such a military must also be an efficient and responsible steward of taxpayer dollars in order to maintain the confidence of the American people. The House-passed budget recognizes this, which is why it includes the $78 billion in defense efficiency savings identified by Secretary Gates.

By contrast, President Obama has announced $400 billion in new defense cuts, saying in effect he’ll figure out what those cuts mean for America’s security later. Indiscriminate cuts that are budget-driven and not strategy-driven are dangerous to America and America’s interests in the world. Secretary Gates put it well: “that’s math, not strategy.”

I’ll close on a final thought: Britain’s premature decline was triggered by a crisis of confidence among its political leadership. Once they concluded that they should manage Britain’s decline, it mattered little what Britain was objectively capable of achieving on the world stage. This crisis of self-perception was fatal to Britain’s global leadership.

Today, some in this country relish the idea of America’s retreat from our role in the world. They say that it’s about time for other nations to take over; that we should turn inward; that we should reduce ourselves to membership on a long list of mediocre has-beens.

This view applies moral relativism on a global scale. Western civilization and its founding moral principles might be good for the West, but who are we to suggest that other systems are any worse? – or so the thinking goes.

Instead of heeding these calls to surrender, we must renew our commitment to the idea that America is the greatest force for human freedom the world has ever seen; a country whose devotion to free enterprise has lifted more people out of poverty than any economic system ever designed; and a nation whose best days still lie ahead of us, if we make the necessary choices today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sir.  Now, how about running for president to see those choices made?

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

As he mulls jumping into the presidential race, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is corralling some big GOP fund-raisers—and even a few who helped Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s a selling point in any Republican primary.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of drifting off the highway, chances are you’ve been instantly reminded by the deep grooves on the other side of the white line.  When your car crosses over them a deep, sickening rattle shakes your vehicle.  It’s a warning that you’re about to leave the road and enter a crash zone.

Most people have to fight to urge to overcorrect.  Austan Goolsbee, President Barack Obama’s chief economist, would probably reclassify the loud death tones as just “bumps along the road” and keep driving.

That’s effectively what Goolsbee is doing by claiming that the nearly 80 percent drop in jobs created from April to May are just 200,000 or so “bumps” in the White House’s empirically indefensible road to recovery.

Like an absent-minded professor ignoring the warning signs of an impending car wreck, Goolsbee and Co. are driving the American economy off the road and into a ditch.  Unemployment is anchored at 9.1 percent.  The stock market is falling with every new round of bad economic news.  Rating agencies are downgrading America’s economic outlook because of its lack of fiscal responsibility.

There are two ways to stop bumping over the warning grades.  Either get back on the highway or leave the pavement entirely.  By sticking to his present course, President Obama is steering the nation’s economy into a serious wreck.

Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times continues his excellent political commentary with an hilariously accurate take on the effect Sarah Palin’s bus tour is having on the “lamestream” media:

The media on campaigns is accustomed to being courted, even catered to with assigned airplane seats, meals, transportation to events, seats waiting, transcripts, the upcoming advance schedule, self-serving secrets confided.

But now they want/need Palin more than vice versa. They know the ratings when she’s on. And they know bosses love ratings. So, they follow along in the exhaust.

“I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media,” Palin said on Fox. “I think that it would be a mistake for me to become some kind of conventional politician and doing things the way it’s always been done with the media, in terms of relationships with them.”

Last week I wrote about California’s prison dilemma: mandatory sentencing laws combined with too few prisons.  So far, the choice has been presented as between less time for criminals or more taxes for the law-abiding.  An update by the Debra Saunders doesn’t paint a prettier picture:

Even law-and-order types understand that the system must be streamlined. Nina Salarno Ashford of Crime Victims United told me, “I understand budget constraints.” For example, parole violators should go to jail – not prison. But Salarno looks at overcrowded jails, which already have had to release inmates, and fears the consequences.

How do you pay for it?

“It is probably going to take taxes,” she answered.

No lie. There is not much point in keeping taxes low – only to have some lowlife boost your wallet.

On the other hand, there’s not much point in paying higher taxes if the state slashes the number of inmates by 40,000.

Now that the United States Supreme Court has demanded California reduce its overcrowded prison population by over 40,000, there may not be enough time to raise taxes and build adequate prison space even if Californians wanted to.

If ever there was a need for statesmanship from California’s executive and legislative leaders, this is it.  Otherwise, when tens of thousands of felons are freed, there will literally be rioting in the streets.

If you like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater you’ll love Jon Huntsman’s opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal.  Sounding themes of economic growth, fiscal responsibility, and balanced budgets as the key to a prosperous future Huntsman even borrows the Gipper’s famous “time for choosing” phrase to headline his column.  Heck, the former Republican governor of Utah and ambassador to China even praises Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget resolution.

One problem: Jon Huntsman isn’t the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan.  Rather, he’s a slicker, more polished version of John McCain.  In a word, he’s a maverick whose method of policymaking is open to whatever the political consensus of the moment requires.  As I wrote for CFIF this week, Huntsman is attracting the same kind of “progressive” Republicans that flocked to McCain’s failed presidential bids.

For all his red meat economic rhetoric in today’s column, Huntsman can’t hide from his past support for President Barack Obama’s stimulus spending, growth in (state) government, cap-and-trade, and state-run health care.

Back in 2005 as governor, Huntsman gave a summary of his approach to illegal immigration that can be used as a window into how he governs in general: “I want to be a catalyst and report good ideas that will lead to a philosophy. That’s what we need first and foremost.”

Wrong.  In the Age of Obama, conservatives aren’t looking for a presidential candidate that formulates his governing philosophy on the fly.  Think about this: If this is the way Huntsman thinks of his job as an executive, is it too much of a leap to assume that this is the kind of ad hoc philosophizing he’ll look for in judicial nominations?  Haven’t we had enough of judicial activists making up the law as they go along, rewriting the Constitution so that it fits whatever facts are in play?

Yet that is exactly what Huntsman’s “report good ideas that will lead to a philosophy” statement suggests.  We’ve seen the kind of cognitive dissonance that Republicans like John McCain truck in when their policy positions are not tethered to conservative principles.  Huntsman is right in his economic prescriptions, but what conservative isn’t these days?  The real question is whether he’ll be right dealing with future problems that require him to use his first principles, whatever those are.

Or, to use Romney’s phrasing, “I support the subsidy of ethanol.”  Forget the passive voice; Mitt Romney is actively standing on his principles!

Two weeks ago, the former Massachusetts governor has defended his version of an individual mandate in health care.  Now, he’s declaring fealty to a $5 billion program to create a source of energy the free market will not support.

In 2008, Romney was tagged as being inauthentic because he tried to remake himself into a social conservative when he’s really more a country club Republican.  With his background in big business, Romney’s 2012 dalliances with corporate welfare may be more authentic, but they risk being out-of-step with free market tea partiers.

Mitt Romney seems like a genuinely nice, earnest guy.  Too bad he’s just not a conservative.

Mercury News opinion writers David Houston and Jot Condie give a sense of the near impossibility of doing business in California.  Andy Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurant, the parent company of Carl’s Jr., a popular hamburger eatery in California.

Even after businesses have gotten off the ground, California’s regulations continue to pigeonhole business owners in how they operate. For example, California’s strict work rules classify general managers as employees, requiring that they take breaks at specified times, harming their ability to manage the business effectively. Puzder said he has had to fire managers who insisted on working more hours than the state allows.

The reason managers would have to be fired for working hard is that it makes businesses vulnerable to litigation. With more than 1 million lawsuits filed every year, California is one of the most litigious states in the country, and its countless regulations make business owners a magnet for abusive lawsuits. No matter what type of business you are in, it seems like there is a lawsuit waiting for you.

If you own a restaurant and your bartender chooses to forgo a break to collect extra tips, you can be sued for wage-and-hour violations. If your trash can is moved by someone else in your store, you can be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If you try to bring renewable energy to the desert, you can be sued by environmentalists and unions. Is it any wonder that many owners are deciding doing business in California is not worth it?

Firing managers who want to work more hours for more money because the law makes litigation almost mandatory?  Now that’s Progressivism!

Yesterday, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post listed five hardball questions he’d like to hear answered by President Barack Obama:

1. You have repeatedly lauded the economy of the Clinton years, yet in a time of high and mounting deficits, you want to make most of the Bush tax cuts permanent. Economically speaking, what makes you believe the Clinton-era tax rates are too high?

2. During the 2008 campaign, you pledged never to raise taxes on any families making less than $250,000 a year. The excise tax on high-value health insurance plans, which you supported as part of health-care reform, did raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year. If you’re going to raise almost a trillion dollars by cutting and capping expenditures, as your budget proposes, that will also affect families making less than $250,000. When will you admit that fiscal responsibility requires tax increases on families who aren’t rich?

3. Your budget empowers the Independent Payment Advisory Board to push Medicare toward value-based purchasing designs. But it doesn’t empower the board to experiment with benefit design more broadly, or any form of cost sharing. The committee’s powers remain mostly restricted to payment reforms. Why?

4. The main differences between your budget and the Simpson-Bowles report is that your budget raises less in taxes and cuts less in defense spending. Why were those decisions made?

5. You’ve talked frequently about the need to “win the future” through new investments and initiatives. But unlike the budgets proposed by the House Progressives or Andy Stern or EPI, Demos and the Century Foundation, there’s nothing in your budget that specifically commits to any such investments, nor any particular funding source dedicated to them. If these investments are so important, why not build them into your budget? Why accept the framework that this discussion should be entirely about cuts?

The day before, Klein listed eight thoughtful questions to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan about the latter’s health care reform.

Responses to each set of queries would be greatly beneficial to Americans trying to sort out whether each man’s plan passes the logic and laugh tests.  After hosting several town hall meetings about his budget reforms, Ryan seems eager to go point-by-point.  The president and his entourage; not so much.

A new Haaratz poll finds that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is enjoying a sizeable uptick in Israeli public opinion after he stood his ground against President Barack Obama’s proposal for Israel to give up land.

Netanyahu’s approval rating in Israel is 51 percent favorable, 36 percent unfavorable.  Five weeks ago it was almost reversed: 38 percent favorable, 53 percent unfavorable.

The newfound popularity puts Netanyahu in a much more powerful position to defend Israel’s interests at home and abroad.  The next time his numbers go south, maybe Netanyahu can ask Obama to create another opportunity to flex his muscles.

H/T: Political Wire

Writing for The Atlantic, veteran Florida political reporter S.V. Date says don’t rule out former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) as the go-to vice presidential pick for whomever wins the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.  With the son and brother of former presidents wary of topping a ticket so close to the last Bush era, Date speculates that Bush would probably say yes to second billing because of how it would position him as an eventual frontrunner.

Unsaid in Date’s blog but equally true is the huge amount of reassurance putting Jeb on the ticket would create.  So far, the Republican field is filled with candidates who lack the other Bush’s combination of executive experience, Hispanic ties and intimacy with presidential politics.  The only problem with putting Bush on the ticket might be getting overshadowed.  But if it increases the chances of winning, it’s a chance any nominee should be willing to take.

Huffington Post reports that even though a Wisconsin state judge invalidated Republican Governor Scott Walker’s bill to remove collective bargaining from public union members, nothing is stopping Republican lawmakers from re-passing the stalled legislation.

Democrats widely expect Republicans in the state legislature to simply attempt to re-pass the measure as law, and this time, the Democratic state senators won’t be leaving the state to slow down the process.

“There’s nothing that we can do,” said state Sen. Jim Holperin (D-Conover). “Republicans have the votes to do this, and if they choose to do it, they can and they will.”

My guess is that if given the chance to follow normal procedures, Republicans will easily re-pass Governor Walker’s bill.  When that happens, Wisconsin’s Democrats should stop wasting taxpayers’ time and money on frivolous lawsuits created by irresponsible lawmakers fleeing the democratic process.

An editorial in today’s Stockton Record crystallizes one of the reasons California is facing a $20 billion deficit: it has no master list of state-funded commissions and boards.

Per the Record:

…apparently no one really knows how many are out there although 300 is the number most often cited. A 1989 report by the Little Hoover Commission put it at 400. More recently, the California Performance Review evaluated 339 state boards and commissions. Others have put the number as high as 1,000.

How much they’re costing also is unknown, although getting rid of the 37 panels Brown has targeted would save about $10 million. Admittedly, that’s a drop in the proverbial state budget bucket, but do the math, and if 37 panels are costing us $10 million, what are all of them costing?

And lest anyone think this scandal isn’t bipartisan:

When he swept into office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to dismantle the forest of boards and commissions that had grown like weeds in state government. That led to the creation of another panel to review government operations.

Among the panel’s findings: “These entities are so scattered and numerous across government that arriving at a firm number is nearly impossible. In our search, there was no single source we could turn to find out which commissions existed and why. In fact, state government has no master list of all boards and commissions and the thousands of political appointees that populate them.”

Incredible.

Indeed.

Roll Call speculates that with governors Mitch Daniels (R-IN) and Mike Huckabee (R-AR) not running for president in 2012, the possibility of Tim Pawlenty winning the Iowa caucuses is diminished.  With T-Paw’s operation making him look like an earlier frontrunner in Iowa, maybe he’ll get no steam heading into the New Hampshire primary.

That seems unlikely for one important reason.  As of today, the New Hampshire primary is expected to be on February 14^th – eight days after Iowa’s caucuses.  If that holds, the media won’t be able to stop talking about Pawlenty’s immediate frontrunner status.  The media will crave a news story and a T-Paw win will put his campaign front and center.

If Pawlenty wins Iowa, all eyes will be on him.  If he loses, he may be one more loss away from irrelevance.

Actor John Lithgow, courtesy of The Colbert Report, performs Newt Gingrich’s now-(in)famous press release defending his campaign after the former speaker knocked Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal.

Gingrich’s press release has been called “epic” and “florid.”  Lithgow’s reading is priceless.

In an email regarding yesterday’s post, reader Eric Coykendall sent this helpful article from Foreign Policy explaining why a European traditionally heads the International Monetary Fund (IMF): a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” brokered by economist John Maynard Keynes.

The origins of the gentlemen’s agreement date back to shortly after the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, which established both the IMF and World Bank. According to Miles Kahler’s history, Leadership Selection in the Major Multilaterals, Bretton Woods architect John Maynard Keynes had assumed that his main collaborator at the conference, Treasury Department official Harry Dexter White, would run the IMF. U.S. President Harry Truman also supported White’s choice. However, Treasury Secretary Frederick Vinson, with strong backing from Wall Street, argued that an American should run the World Bank — Washington Post publisher Eugene Meyer got that job in 1946 — and that it wouldn’t be proper for the United States to run both of the world’s major financial institutions. White’s possible communist sympathies — he’s widely suspected today of having been a Soviet agent — may also have played a role in the decision. In the end, Belgium’s Camille Gutt was eventually appointed to run the IMF.

In the wake of scandal engulfing the recently resigned Dominique Strauss-Kahn from France, developing nations like Brazil and South Africa are pushing for a non-European to manage the world’s leading investment/bailout bank.  In the article sent by Coykendall,  FP makes this keen observation about the European double-standard likely to decide the outcome.

The question of nationality is sure to come up again if Strauss-Kahn steps down, but Europeans will not be eager to part with the position. Some, such as German government spokesman Christoph Steegmans, argue that owing to the IMF’s critical role in stemming Europe’s current financial crisis, the managing director should be someone who is familiar with “Europe’s particularities, the currency questions and also the political circumstances here.” Strangely, when the IMF was primarily giving loans to countries in Africa and Latin America, local knowledge didn’t seem to be quite as much of a factor.

Byron York relays why nominating Mitt Romney for president is so distasteful for Republican voters.

“With a little assist from the former governor of Massachusetts, we said that health care should no longer be a privilege in this country,” Obama said.  “It should be affordable and available for every American.”

A short time later, at a smaller fundraiser in a private home in Brookline, Obama said, “Our work isn’t done.  Yes, we passed health care, with an assist from a former Massachusetts governor.”  The crowd, which had paid $35,800 per couple to attend, broke into laughter and applause.  “Great idea,” Obama added.  “But we still have to implement it.”

For some reason, the French are trying to maintain a death grip on leading the International Monetary Fund, newly headless after Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned over an alleged sexual assault scandal.  Though Deputy Director John Lipsky, an American, is now serving as the interim head of the IMF, a move is already underway to install France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde as quickly as possible.

But not so fast, say a panel of French judges.  They are weighing whether to investigate Lagarde for allegedly intervening in a lawsuit against the government on behalf of a political donor to her party.  The announcement is clouding her candidacy.

First, the French had to endure the hypocrisy of the Socialist Strauss-Kahn staying in a $3,000 a night hotel suite.  (So far, the alleged attack is a lesser blemish in French circles with a majority believing Strauss-Kahn was set up.)  Now, his potential replacement is under fire for crony capitalism.

Is French disdain for America so great that the most obvious replacement is deemed unacceptable for the long-term because he happens to be from the United States?

Yesterday, RealClearPolitics broke a story about Texas Governor Rick Perry being a sleeper candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.  Today, RCP says that Perry’s Tuesday speech to Republican National Committee members in Dallas is raising his profile significantly.

Republican strategists in Washington told RealClearPolitics that GOP operatives who attended Perry’s speech Tuesday afternoon called them with reactions ranging from “This guy should be our nominee” to “He wowed the crowd.” They said he ditched his notes and spoke extemporaneously, firing away.

The Washington Times went so far as to report that the reaction to Perry was so unusually good from a wide array of attendees at the meeting that there is already discussion of a draft movement under way.

Having worked in Texas state politics while Perry was governor in 2003 and 2005, I can say that his approach to governing is decidedly hands-off.  That works in culturally conservative, constitutionally limited Texas.  It’s easy to talk about the 10^th Amendment when you’re a governor, and it’s not that hard to keep the status quo of low taxes and rugged individualism in a state that pioneered the ethos.  With all this, Perry looks and sounds Texan.

But it’s a different ballgame going to Washington, D.C. as the elected head of Leviathan armed with a Tea Party mandate to repeal ObamaCare.  Moreover, any Republican elected president next year will have to be able to put the federal government on a different fiscal and cultural trajectory; one that moves away from government dependency, and toward economic growth and personal opportunity within a traditional American framework.

I’m not saying Perry can’t be the conservative savior many in the GOP are waiting for.  It’s just that so far, his record indicates little more than a politician who knows how to get elected and leave things as they are.  After Obama, that won’t be enough.