Freedom Line Blog

In an effort to provide one-stop-checking for tonight’s election returns, the following links will take you to the respective state’s official election results website.

New York 23rd Congressional District official website for election returns.  (New York State Board of Elections)

New Jersey Governor official website for election returns.  (New Jersey Department of State – Division of Elections)

Virginia Governor official website for election returns.  (Virginia State Board of Elections)

Additionally, Foxnews.com is keeping track of the governor’s races on its home page.

For those wanting to impress others at your election returns party tonight (and if you’re reading this blog, you’ve at least thought about it), here’s the link to the New York Conservative Party website.

And below is a link to short video description of its history by the incomparable Rick Brookhiser of National Review:

Rick Brookhiser on the New York Conservative Party

Don’t be upstaged by that know-it-all acquaintance who can quote Michael Barone’s “Almanac of American Politics” from memory.  You’ll be able to counter with factoids like this:

The 1994 elections were a breakthrough for the Conservative Party as we provided the margin of victory for Governor George E. Pataki with the 326,605 votes cast on our line.  Attorney General Vacco nosed out radical Karen Burstein by 88,340 votes.  He received 305,961 votes on the Conservative Line.  In 1998, 348,272 votes for Governor George E. Pataki were cast on the Conservative line, almost 20,000 more than in 1994, an anomaly in political history.”

Enjoy!

During his closing argument for New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s re-election campaign, President Barack Obama moved back the goalposts on when elected leaders should be held accountable for their actions:

Listening to Jon’s opponent, you’d think New Jersey was the only state going through a tough time right now,” Obama told almost 19,000 gathered inside the Prudential Center in Newark. “I have something to report: We have the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. By the way, that didn’t start under Jon’s watch, that didn’t start under my watch. I wasn’t sworn in yet.”

Obama quipped there was a little revisionist history or selective memory on the part of Republicans and other critics who seek to hold Corzine responsible for New Jersey’s economic woes.

“A little amnesia about how we got into this mess,” Obama explained. “This crisis we are living . . . came about because of the same theories, the same laxed regulation, the same trickle-down economics that the other guy’s party has been peddling for years. And you know, look, we’re not interested in relitigating the past, and I’m more than happy to go and do the work that’s required to get this economy moving again. I think about it every day. Jon Corzine thinks about it every day.”

One problem with Obama’s remarks; Corzine was sworn in before the economic recession hit – by two years. And it’s not like Corzine can say he’s just a community organizer with scant business experience. As head of Goldman Sachs during part of its “master of universe” phase, Corzine – along with former colleague and successor, Hank Paulson – knows how to make money under a lax regulatory system.

In fact, Corzine apparently knows how to “spread the money around” to take care of his former corporation while serving in government.

As for the president, apparently he thinks a re-election campaign is not the right forum to “re-litigate” the past four years of the current administration. Good to know. I guess that means a politician can only be criticized when he’s termed out of office. Thank goodness for Jon Corzine!

For those worrying about the lack of legislative action in our nation’s capitol, Jonathan Weisman at the Wall Street Journal writes a nice summary of the “other” legislation racing through Congress and landing on President Obama’s desk.

Last week, Mr. Obama signed defense-policy legislation that included an unrelated measure widening federal hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and gender identification — 12 years after it was first introduced. The same legislation also tightened the rules of admissible evidence for military commissions, an issue that consumed Congress in debate in 2007 but received almost no attention this go-round.

Other new measures signed into law since the administration took office, all of which kicked up controversy in past congresses, make it easier for women to sue for equal pay, set aside land in the West from development, give the government the power to regulate tobacco and raise tobacco taxes to expand health insurance for children. Congress and the White House, in the new defense-policy bill, also killed weapons programs that have survived earlier attempts at termination, among them, the F-22 fighter jet, the VH-71 presidential helicopter and the Army’s Future Combat System.

Rob Nabors, the White House’s deputy budget director, called the series of new laws “a very, very quiet but important victory.”

But it’s not like the Republican opposition is asleep at the wheel. According to Rep. Tom Price (R. Ga.), “The administration is pushing so many things so rapidly it’s difficult to concentrate on all of them.” Hopefully, the bills they are concentrating on – health care, energy, education – can be stopped or modified before they too become unqualified Democratic victories.

So, what happens when a country increases government spending, enlarges its deficit, and causes an international lender to consider stopping payments for what it sees as an abuse of discretion? No, it’s not the Chinese trying to reign in the Obama Administration. But Ukraine’s decision to raise pension payments and its minimum wage is putting pressure on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to decide whether its lending guidelines have any teeth.

At first blush, the IMF appears to be meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign country. On further reflection, though, the IMF is really just a lender of other people’s money trying to get an increasingly bad borrower to stop charging the international community’s credit card. The dilemma posed by governments that spend money as though there is no consequence for perpetual deficits is that unlike private parties, a government cannot be foreclosed, bought, and sold. At least, not yet. Ukraine isn’t yet a failed economic state, but if the IMF decides to cut off lending it could be. Who knows; perhaps the Chinese government officials holding all that American debt are taking notes on how to control a client’s spending.

There is a fascinating story in today’s Washington Post describing the events that led up to the opening of the Berlin Wall. Although there were many well-documented causes, particular events and their sequence of occurrence had much to do with making November 9, 1989, the day the most visible barrier to human freedom fell. An excerpt:

Even the exact hour mattered: The wall opened when many East German political and military leaders were sequestered in meetings, and many significant Soviet leaders — because of the time difference — were already asleep. What if they’d had time to fortify the borders before the flood of people arrived? As it was, none of them could mount an immediate response, and soon it was too late to undo the events of the evening.

We like to think that all great events have great causes, and obviously long-term political, economic and military forces shaped the Cold War — and how it ended. But momentous events are also a sort of ambush of history, when all those long-term pressures come together in an unexpected way. The opening of the Berlin Wall, largely unintentional, was such an event, an unsettling thought for those who see history as the result of strategy and planning by pivotal leaders.

If only a few things had been different, we might not have such happy memories to celebrate next week. But thanks to the mumbling of a sleep-deprived East German official, some overzealous Western reporting and the willingness of East Germans to risk a trip to the wall, the Cold War reached a swift and peaceful conclusion.”

Read the entire article here.

And so Britain continues its decades-long decline in influence. The nation’s candidate to become the first President of Europe is likely defeated, with reports out of Brussels saying that Tony Blair lost because he and his island friends wanted the job too much.

But the anti-Blair front that has developed is merely the result of months of tactical errors by his campaigners. Not only did his envoys not win over Paris and Berlin, but they also, it seems, forgot about the need to get the EU’s smaller states behind them. “To us, it seemed like the game was all about the big boys. But that’s not the way that the EU works any more,” said one diplomat from a Baltic state. “We were not consulted even though we were aware of lobbying for Blair, which had started already way back in the summer, far earlier than anyone else.” The diplomat expressed surprise at this clumsy approach. “It’s very odd, as Tony Blair had a terrific team of EU advisers when he was in power, which is how he got so much done. But clearly that’s changed.”

The campaign for Mr. Blair also suffered from a brazenness that is not in tune with the more subtle approach to diplomacy á la Européenne. Compare Mr Brown’s manoeuvrings to the quiet but effective manoeuvrings of the Dutch team, who have managed to get their man in pole position just by working the EU’s diplomatic ropes like pros.

Lastly, the Blair campaign probably started too early, giving opponents too long to attack. “This is a game about the dark horses who come up at the last minute, not about the early frontrunners,” shrugged one official.”

No bother. Now it’s time to lay the groundwork to become the next UN Secretary General!

For those concerned with the integrity of electronic ballots, the announcement by one of the leading providers of e-voting software should be welcome news. According to Wired.com, Sequoia Voting Systems plans to publicly release the source code for its new optical scan voting system.

The company’s new public source optical-scan voting system, called Frontier Election System, will be submitted for federal certification and testing in the first quarter of next year. The code will be released for public review in November, the company said, on its web site. Sequoia’s proprietary, closed systems are currently used in 16 states and the District of Columbia.”

The decision to disclose was reached after protracted negotiations and litigation with critics who charged that Sequoia’s vote tallies often counted more votes than ballots cast. Of course, as anyone familiar with elections will attest, accurately tabulating election results is a perpetual problem. But getting the “bugs” worked out of a computer system will go a long way towards avoiding the recurrence of Ballot Box 13 and other cases of deliberate fraud.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Organization of the Islamic Council (OIC) is pushing members of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to approve of a proposed treaty to limit religiously offensive language or speech. Since the United States is now a member of the UNHRC, the proposal offers President Barack Obama yet another chance to see if engagement will lead to better results than confrontation.

The United States under Barack Obama recently joined the UNHRC, maligned for years as the mouthpiece for countries that are themselves flagrant human rights abusers. A “new” council formed in 2006. President Obama’s hope is that as an engaged member, the US can further reform – and its own interests. This case will test his theory.

Consider the wording put forth by Pakistan, written on behalf of the OIC. It proposes “legal prohibition of publication of material that negatively stereotypes, insults or uses offensive language” on matters regarded by religious followers as “sacred or inherent to their dignity as human beings.”

This gives broad latitude to governments to decide what’s offensive. Countries such as Pakistan already have national blasphemy laws, but a global treaty would give them international cover to suppress minority religious groups with the excuse that these groups offend mainstream beliefs.”

True, February is still a few months away. When it comes to reporting the “news” in foreign affairs, however, there are some stories that just won’t go away.  Joshua Keating over at Foreign Policy has compiled a darkly humorous compilation of the stories that never seem to get old. (Or, at least never get a new angle.) Here are some of the headlines (see if you can pick the year): “North Korea to return to negotiating table”; “Pakistan finally getting tough with the Taliban”; “Israel preparing military strike against Iran”; “Dollar to be replaced as global reserve currency”; “Fidel Castro is dying”; and of course, “Israel and Palestinians reach peace deal.”

Although the official title would be “President of the European Union”, Tony Blair’s private campaign to become the face of the European bureaucracy recalls the mid-level horsetrading and indeterminate power structure of the Holy Roman Empire. According to Newsweek, no less than 27 heads of state will meet to confer the prestige of speaking on behalf of Europe to the world. As with the Habsburgs, Blair’s Catholicism, fluency in French, and ability to please several ethnic and geographical interests at once are smoothing the path towards becoming the next in a long line of Continental potentates.

As for the actual job description, it’s still unclear what Blair would be expected to do with the post. Who knows; perhaps he could find work for that other politician of the Baby Boom Generation that refuses to go away…

In the current issue of National Affairs, William Schambra gives a thoughtful analysis of President Barack Obama’s approach to solving public policy problems:

In one policy area after another — from transportation to science, urban policy to auto policy — Obama’s formulation is virtually identical: selfishness or ideological rigidity has led us to look at the problem in isolated pieces rather than as an all-encompassing system; we must put aside parochialism to take the long systemic view; and when we finally formulate a uniform national policy supported by empirical and objective data rather than shallow, insular opinion, we will arrive at solutions that are not only more effective but less costly as well. This is the mantra of the policy presidency.”

It’s also a tune out of harmony with America’s constitutional system of checks-and-balances. In order to be successful under Obama’s Progressive-inspired notion of policy making, the creation, implementation, and administration of policies must be shielded from people with priorities that differ from the expert-determined norm.

To be successful by its own definition, each of its policies must necessarily be rational, coherent, and all-encompassing, whether the issue is health care, energy, or education. And yet, as the early Progressives knew all too well, critical elements of the constitutional system — the executive cabinet, federal decentralization, the separation of powers, and the extended commercial republic — serve to shred and fragment policy proposals as they make their way from the minds of their expert designers through departmental bureaucracy and legislative committees (not to mention their hearings in the court of public opinion). Once enacted, the execution of policy is similarly trammeled by our political system’s fragmented dispersal of administrative authority. The result is often policy that is irrational, incoherent, and partial. Policies not designed to take account of that reality usually turn to mush in practice.”

Though lengthy, this post is worth the time it takes to read. Hopefully, by the time the next presidential election rolls around, someone will have thought about how to redefine the limits of human knowledge in a way that reaffirms human dignity and encourages human flourishing. Otherwise, we may be fighting to overcome a new consensus that the elites really do know best.

Thankfully, Joe Klein (almost) proves the adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day. As recently documented, Klein has an inability to set aside his partisan pom-poms and see the real issue in a news story. But not when it comes to the White House’s war on Fox News:

The problem with war is that it diverts attention from the actual news. The Administration has tried to pursue a sophisticated, difficult domestic and foreign policy. It doesn’t offer the quick-fix irresponsibility of a tax cut or an invasion. It needs space, time and patience to explain. This is an enervating, midstream moment. It’s not certain that the President’s efforts from health care to Afghanistan will succeed. We’ll know a lot more in a month, but I really hope the White House hasn’t launched this attack to fill the public space while the other issues are being sorted out. The long-term costs of stooping to Fox’s level are not just bad posture; they are diminution of the office and its primary occupant.”

Now, Klein has a few more hours to be right again.  The clock is ticking…

In the growing rift between the Obama Administration and its military advisors, reports are surfacing that Vice President Joe Biden is upset with General Stanley McChrystal for making a closed door presentation to NATO defense ministers. In the briefing McChrystal explained his rationale for increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. Apparently, the defense ministers liked what they heard.

Here was Biden’s reaction:

Diplomatic sources say NATO endorsement of General McChrystal has led to anger in the Biden camp. They had criticized the commander for promoting his strategy, including a visit to London, while President Barack Obama is still weighing up the options.”

In short, Biden thinks the best way to win in Afghanistan is to reduce the number of troops there while implementing a counter-terrorism plan that expands the war into neighboring Pakistan, since that is where some members of al-Qaeda are based. McChrystal, on the other hand, wants to introduce 20,000 to 40,000 new troops and pursue a counter-insurgency strategy that would focus on eliminating the security threat inside Afghanistan. And yet, Biden is seen as the White House official most in favor of de-escalating America’s military involvement in the region.

If Joe Biden was Dick Cheney, would the Vice President’s aggressive push to expand the theater of war while reducing the number of ground troops be reported on as a moderate approach?  Well, at least the White House can’t be faulted for ignoring the advice of their military experts and applying its own ideological notions of sound war planning…

Peter Feaver writes a wonderful post today for Foreign Affairs where he recounts the growing mistrust between the Obama White House and the military establishment. The problem is what to do about Afghanistan, how soon, and at what price. There is evidence that National Security Advisor Jim Jones was dispatched to tell war planners to tailor their advice to fit the President’s political calculations. Feaver also hypothesizes about the involvement of the ever-present Bob Woodward in shaping the increasingly tense interactions between military commanders and their civilian bosses. This does not bode well for the troops on the ground.

For those perturbed by the federal government’s lack of responsiveness to the will of the people, California’s voter initiative process shows the danger of the opposite extreme. Recently, Ronald George, Chief Justice of California’s Supreme Court, questioned the wisdom of the state’s constitutional-amendment-by-initiative process. In a speech to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, George criticized the ease with which voters can change the fundamental law of California, a practice that has yielded 500 amendments since 1879. To compare, the United States Constitution contains 17 amendments, plus the 10 known as the Bill of Rights, over a time period spanning twice as long.

George’s lament is that frequent and easy changes to the primary source of law are not the criteria for sustained, peaceful government. Instead, the continuous use of such measures (and the threat of more in the future) renders government dysfunctional by making the legislative process merely the starting point of a policy debate, not its conclusion. Moreover, legal challenges to popularly passed initiatives put judges in the unenviable position of trying to discern the voters’ intent without the benefit of the usual contextual sources (e.g. legislative history, factual findings, committee reports, etc.). If California goes forward with calls for a constitutional convention, one hopes that the delegates remember the virtue of constraining lawmaking to a system governed by checks and balances, the separation of powers, and representative democracy. As we see with the current White House, though, hope alone won’t ensure a better government.

The last sentence on Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter’s entry on The Huffington Post says it all:

We could all take a lesson from FDR.”

And what, pray tell, might that lesson be? Apparently, that it is the government’s job to put people back to work when the private sector can’t. The key to the Specter Plan is creating an indirect subsidy to out-of-work people via cash incentives to employers for hiring more workers. For example:

A tax credit to encourage employers to create new jobs or extend hours worked is just the kind of direct subsidy that worked so well with the cash-for-clunkers program. That was about cars. This is about jobs and people, an unquestionable priority. The moral imperative to act is aggressively clear.”

Astute readers will notice a disagreement between this author and the Gentleman from Pennsylvania about whether paying one party in order to benefit third party is a “direct” or “indirect” subsidy. Logic would seem to dictate that if one wants to help someone pay his bills, the most efficient way to do so is to skip the go-between and give the man some money. If people need help now – and many do – why not send them a check that covers the cost of bills and requires the recipient to get relevant job training? In today’s credential-crazed economy, the time and money spent earning a Microsoft Office certificate or sales license would go a lot further in landing a job than bribing employers to hire people they can’t otherwise afford.

And what about the alleged success of the cash-for clunkers program? The long-term effects of the program reduced the number of used cars thus driving up the price of those that remained. This FDR-style intrusion into the market decreased the sales of used car dealers and put car purchases out of reach for the poorest families. Now, Specter wants to spend more taxpayer money on jobs that cannot be sustained without subsidies. There may be a moral imperative to act. But like health care reform and the bank bailouts, the only worthwhile government acts are those that get the private sector moving away from the public’s money as fast as possible.

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal posted a great piece comparing (or rather, contrasting) President Barack Obama’s words and record on human rights. From President Obama’s recent decision to cancel an appearance at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall to his extending money-laden olive branches to Sudan and Burma, the candidate of hope and change is summing up to be depressingly less than foreign democracy advocates anticipated.

Remember the White House’s timidity during the riots and retaliations in Iran earlier this year? There were people agitating for freedom while an American president worried what world opinion would think. Apparently, President Obama made the “right” decision, since his version of “engagement” garnered him a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s too bad that – so far – he’s more interested in securing peace with governments than peace for the people they allegedly serve.

Talk about mixed messages. Yesterday, top White House advisor David Axelrod warned Goldman Sachs for having the audacity to link pay for performance during a recession. The end-of-year compensation is apparently “offensive” in a time of recession. Moreover, Wall Street needs to “stand down” its opposition to further regulation of the financial industry because the government needs to “move forward” on “reforms.”

Today, President Barack Obama announces a “shift” in policy towards the government of Sudan. In the past, the President described Omar al-Bashir’s administration as genocidal. Now, in an effort to ransom better treatment for the millions terrorized by al-Bashir’s partisans, Obama offers “incentives” (i.e. money) hoping it will spur a change of behavior.

How curious. On the one hand, the Obama foreign policy team thinks money is a better motivator than economic coercion or military force. On the other hand, the Obama domestic policy team thinks coercive regulatory policies and voluntary denial of bonuses are better ways to incentivize performance than offering big pay-days to top flight financial talent. Hmmm…

One searches for the critical distinction to make sense of these seemingly contradictory approaches. Could the best explanation be that with Sudan the White House determines the who, what, when, where, and why of using money as an incentive, while in the case of Goldman Sachs someone other than the government is making the decisions?  If you could pick only one instance to use money as an enticement, should it be for the people that systematically rape, maim, and murder their neighbors?

Eliot Spitzer doesn’t know when to quit. Laboring on the sidelines of political combat, the former New York Governor is out today with a plan to destroy the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Why? Because the corporate executives in its ranks disagree with Spitzer’s views on deregulation, tax and fiscal policy, global warming and environmental enforcement, consumer protection, health care reform, and probably just about everything else.

Of course, it would be one thing if Spitzer was just vying for a hyperlink to The Huffington Post with a screed against Wall Street. Unfortunately, he’s a got a plan to silence corporate America’s voice in Washington. Spitzer’s litigation strategy runs like this. The members of the Chamber are corporations (usually) owned by the public. Some of the most influential public stockholders are state government pension funds controlled by a state’s comptroller. In an effort to get publicly owned companies “out of politics,” Spitzer advises that when a state comptroller concludes that “the Chamber of Commerce has a distorted view of both economic and political policy” the comptroller should demand that every company in which the pension fund owns stock drop its membership in the Chamber. And if the CEO doesn’t agree? Pressure the board to drop the Chamber membership.

Just one problem. With the economy in a recession, and state pension funds trying to deliver on outrageous union contracts, does Spitzer really believe that an elected official like a comptroller would “demand” a series of actions specifically designed to weaken a corporation’s ability to make money? Surely Spitzer realizes that the primary motivation for most of the Chamber of Commerce’s policy positions is a desire to increase profits, and thereby dividends? No doubt there is at least one state elected official willing to apply Spitzer’s litigation strategy to grab headlines and perhaps a higher political perch. As usual, though, the people worst effected by such a move would be the same folks for whom Spitzer claims he’s suing to empower.