Freedom Line Blog

There’s a certain strain of thinking on the right that scoffs at the notion of “efficient government.” The skepticism of what seems to be an unobjectionable goal has a few sources.

First, many pundits point out that the nation’s constitutional design is predicated on checks and balances that make government anything but efficient — the explicit goal, after all, is to slow the lawmaking process in an attempt to ensure some measure of deliberation. They’re right about that, of course, but that’s an observation on the lawmaking process, not on implementing or enforcing the law.

Second, conservatives note (also rightly) that government by its very nature (i.e., the lack of market incentives present in the private sector) has a built-in bias towards sclerosis and waste. That’s true as far as it goes, but arguing that government can’t be administered perfectly is not the same as arguing that it can’t be done better.

For a good example of the potential of reformist public administration, one need look no further than the example that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels set with that most hated of bureaucracies, the DMV (though in Indiana it’s the BMV — The Bureau of Motor Vehicles). Consider this excerpt from Andrew Ferguson’s fabulous profile of Daniels in a 2010 issue of the Weekly Standard:

The state Bureau of Motor Vehicles, another patronage sump that was routinely ranked one of the worst in the country, was drastically reorganized. “[Daniels] likes metrics,” [Director of the Indiana OMB Ryan] Kitchell said. “He likes to measure outcomes.” Every line item in the state budget has at least one objective formula attached to it to indicate how well each service is being delivered. Regulatory agencies track the speed with which permits and variances are granted. The economic development agency has to compare the hourly wage of each new job brought to the state with the average hourly wage of existing jobs. In the case of the BMV, the two most important metrics were wait times and customer satisfaction. Now each receipt is stamped with the time the customer arrives and the time his transaction is completed. Wait times have dropped from over 40 minutes to under 10 minutes. Surveys put customer satisfaction at 97 percent.

So it can be done. And by the way, it’s also a cracker jack method for keeping government outlays under control. From Walter Russell Mead, writing at his Via Meadia blog:

… By 2025, fully 34 percent of US GDP will be eaten up by the cost of providing public services. Throw in little items [like] interest on the burgeoning national debt and pension and other liabilities, and we are looking at basic governance costs and obligations close to 40 percent of GDP—and heading inexorably higher…

There are two basic drivers behind these numbers: the first is the well known demographic problem that comes from the combination of increased longevity and falling birth rates. Programs like Medicare cost more as people live longer, and reduced population growth means that the workforce grows more slowly than the number of old people drawing on government services and transfer programs.

But the second driving force, which [an] Accenture [study] highlights very usefully, is less well understood: the catastrophically slow growth of productivity in the government workforce. Think of this as “bureaucracy drag;” while productivity in the workforce as a whole is rising by 1.7 percent per year, and in private sector service industries it is rising by 1.5 percent each year, in government productivity is rising by a miserable 0.3 percent per year.

Bureaucrats aren’t getting the job done. And the rest of us are paying the price. It’s time for public sector executives around the country to take a page out of Mitch Daniels’ playbook.

Mitt Romney will win this election, 284-254.

My columns and blog posts here and at The American Spectator show a steadily improving Mitt Romney, growing into the persona of a president.

I liked his choice of Paul Ryan, here. And here.

Here I praised Romney’s policy stances. And here I defended his criticism of the Obamites’ early statements apologizing for the video.

But Romney the candidate still had a ways to go. That’s why I damned his convention acceptance speech with faint praise. And I criticized his “messaging” too — just hours before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in Africa. But Romney then stepped up his game, and I noticed.

And here I defended his criticism of the Obamites’ early statements apologizing for the video.

Meanwhile, I continued flaying Obama. And I wrote that Romney’s image (first few graphs) did not do justice to his potential to be an excellent president:

Let there be no mistake: Gov. Romney is by all believable accounts a man of great personal decency and generosity, and there can be no doubt about his competence as an administrator and organizational leader. Mere money changers might get rich pushing financial paper, but Romney’s history is different: He put both money andexpertise into real goods and services, acting not just as a bettor on somebody else’s skills but instead as an abettor of other people’s dreams, using his own management skills as a force multiplier for sales, profits, and, yes, new jobs. His Bain Capital company did not just trade financial capital; it invested human capital in a way that allowed other human capital to flourish in abundance.

I also noted Romney’s great personal charitableness. And, just when the polls and momentum were the worst for Romney, two days before the first debate, I wrote that he still could turn it around. The next day, the day before the debate, I let a Volleyball Mom make the case for Romney. (Of course, Romney won the debate.) A week after that, Volleyball Dad channeled Tug McGraw to say that fans of Romney “gotta believe!”

We now look at Mitt Romney, and we see a man who understands the enterprising nature of American people who value just such freedom to pursue their own, self-chosen goals. We see a winning candidate who aspires to unleash the energy of the entrepreneur, and who inspires the great capabilities and patriotism of the most accomplished Olympians. We see a leader who has known tremendous success and wants to share it — to use his knowledge of how success is gained in ways that enable us to find that success for ourselves, by emulation but not by regimentation. And we see a soon-to-be president who will not — nay, never — be intent on “transforming” us into a nation of his own fevered imagination, but who will instead be determined to create the conditions where we can improve the America we already love, through our own choices, to fulfill our own visions.

I also thought Romney effectively gained ground in the second debate. (But I again criticized him for leaving some issues unmentioned, as I had done a few days earlier as well.)  And in part at least in the third debate, too, largely due to his better closing argument.

Longtime Romney foe Deroy Murdock noted all the kind things Romney has done, and I chimed in here about “Mitt the Nice.” Finally, in Pensacola, Romney absolutely soared.

Here’s how I concluded that last linked column, which is about as good a place to end this blog post as I can find:

This was a candidate not just “hitting his stride,” but rather one elevating his own game and elevating the entire campaign’s sense of what American aspirations should be. Gov. Romney suddenly has the look and feel both of a winner and, more importantly, of a true leader, worthy of the nation he would serve. Turn on the lights; the good work is just beginning.

Cross-posted at AmSpec with additional commentary, I have a column up right now at USA Today that looks into what might be the most horrid tax in ObamaCare.

Though buried at the end of an article, even the New York Times can’t hide the truth:

Still, the Republicans have had legitimate complaints, election officials say. Groups associated with the Democrats have sometimes been overly aggressive in voter registration, paying people for each voter registered or offering bonuses for larger numbers of registrations. This has led to fraud. Ms. Platten, the Democratic county elections board director, said she had seen multiple registrations for the same person whose Social Security number had been shifted by one digit.

“In the end, that hurts the Democrats,” she said, “because we throw those votes out. I’ve begged them to stop.”

Chances are they won’t, and we’ll be in for a long legal slog if the votes are close in swing states on Election Night.

I think I understand correctly that this link, right here, will not suffice for readers to watch this 48-minute documentary called “The Machine,” unless you subscribe to The Blaze TV. BUT… BUT… There IS a free two-week trial, so that helps. Anyway, what this is is a 48-minute -long indictment of the Obama/Holder Justice Department and a warning against vote fraud. It is superbly produced. It is marred only by my presence in it throughout as one of the interviewees.

In addition to interviewing me at some length, the documentarians interviewed DoJ whistleblowers J. Christian Adams and Christopher Coates (who are the heroes of the piece), columnists John Fund and Thomas Sowell, and the Rev. C.L. Bryant, among others. The documentary chronicles the corrupt and racialist (not racist, but racialist) agenda of Eric Holder and his Justice Department minions — and it is rather explosive, I do believe.

Again, it’s 48 minutes long, but you might find it well worth watching.

In an interview with CFIF, political analyst and strategist Bay Buchanan discusses the importance of women voters, young voters and the greatest concerns Americans are facing leading up to Tuesday’s elections. 

Listen to the interview here.

In my column this week, I note that the Obama Administration refused to meet its legal requirement to publish its upcoming regulatory agenda back in April.  As of today, it failed to do so again in October as required by law. 

We’ve now gone an entire year without the Obama Administration giving Americans – and the businesses that employ them – the information they need to plan for the future.  In response, the job market is frozen and expansion projects are being delayed.  The only reason that makes sense for violating two disclosure requirements is that the White House is waiting until after Election Day to flood the economy with even more regulatory burdens.

If that’s not enough to spur a change, I don’t know what is.

H/T: Daily Caller

Polls show great public approval for Barack Obama’s “handling” of Superstorm Sandy. I see nothing other than a president doing his job… plus a little posturing. Now, how do I know it’s posturing? Because his supposedly grave concern now is belied by his past actions when responding to disasters.

When Nashville suffered horrific flooding in 2010, where was Obama? Nowhere to be found. He certainly didn’t visit, and didn’t do much to urge the rest of the country to come to Nashville’s aid.

Where was Obama when Hurricane Isaac devastated several parishes in Louisiana?  Unfortunately, making racial issues out of hurricane response is a favorite pastime of the President’s…and despite his earlier standard of the imperative of “waiving the Stafford Act,” he still refuses to waive the Stafford Act for Isaac victims.

When the BP oil spill happened, even James Carville blasted Obama’s apparent lack of interest or energy in responding, and Obama was quickly at loggerheads with Gov. Bobby Jindal, and he proceeded to defy even Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu by putting a moratorium and then still slow-walking permits on new Gulf drilling — in defiance of a federal judge’s order, so egregiously that the Obama administration was found officially in contempt of court.

Of course, in a disaster in large part of the administration’s own making (a sin of omission of course, not commission — by repeatedly declining requests for more security), Obama or someone on his team refused to send assistance to the consulate in Benghazi, Libya even as a terrorist firefight continued there for seven hours while Americans were in danger, and then his team falsely blamed the attack on a video and otherwise tried to pretend it was anything but an Al Qaeda or terrorist effort, and continues to stonewall/engage in a horrific cover-up about what truly happened.

All of these failures in disaster response contrast with Mitt Romney’s record of immediately taking charge to find (successfully) the lost/kidnapped child of an associate — and to rescue people whose watercraft sank on Lake Winnepesaukee, and otherwise to respond forcefully and or thoughtfully and from the heart to numerous other personal tragedies suffered by both friends and strangers.

So, excuse me for being cynical about Obama’s “great” response to Sandy. When an election is on and his momentum is slowed, he does well for the cameras. Otherwise, he just can’t be bothered.

Normally I’m proud to reference Nashville — my second home of sorts — as an instructive contrast to the political and social pathologies of my native Southern California. Normally.

From my old colleagues at the Beacon Center of Tennessee (which was the Tennessee Center for Policy Research when I was there):

Nashville officials worry that the city, which people worldwide refer to as “The Music Capital of the World,” has a sudden shortage of creative talent, whether in music, art or literature — so government must intervene.

In other words, even though it is Nashville, too few of the city’s residents are members of the performing arts.

Members of one taxpayer-financed agency are taking action and offering affordable housing to people who fall below a certain income — provided that (1) they are artists and (2) their art meets a certain progressive standard.

…

Not every artist, however, will qualify.

Only seven members of a specially selected Artist Committee, in addition to the building’s property manager, can decide who may live there and who may not. Potential tenants who wish to live at the Ryman Lofts must satisfy Committee members’ standards on whether their art is “unique” and “progressive.”

I’m not sure that I can pinpoint the exact line beyond which government has become too large. I am confident, however, that taxing hard-working citizens to subsidize housing for people who spend their days rendering acrylic representations of Gaia is well beyond that line.

Read about it here.

All over the country, there are reports of problems getting ballots to military personnel and contract civilians working abroad. This has been a problem for two years, largely because the Obama administration refuses to fully enforce the law requiring a certain set of procedures to help the ballots get there on time, etctera.

Last week, I was on local WKRG-TV to talk about this.

This continues my work on this; two years ago, I was on Fox News several times to discuss these problems.

This refusal/failure on the administration’s part is an outrage.

Remember this story from Richard Rahn of the Cato Institute the next time you’re looking for an example of how ours is turning into a government of men, not laws:

Use of X-ray body scanners is an example of regulatory deception. If you work in the private sector and spend substantial time around machines or substances that emit radiation, you normally are required to wear tags that measure radiation doses. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has exempted itself from that requirement with the argument that the doses of radiation passengers and TSA employees receive from the X-ray body scanners (backscatters) at airports is so low as to cause no more than a trivial amount of extra cancers. They may well be right, but without measuring what employees and passengers actually receive from frequent and sometimes miscalibrated machines, no one knows for sure. Besides, the effect of radiation on the body is cumulative.

The European Union has prohibited backscatters, as have many countries, because of concern about health and safety. TSA has come under great criticism for the use of these machines, particularly when a safer and better technology is available. TSA has not admitted the danger but quietly has been replacing some of the backscatters with millimeter-wave scanners. These machines rely on low-energy radio waves like those in cell phones and thus are believed potentially not to damage a person’s DNA, unlike the backscatters. These new machines are faster because a computer analyzes the image, rather than a guard as with the X-ray machines. They are better at detection and provide greater personal privacy. Still, the question remains, why is TSA phasing out the X-ray machines so slowly and not providing its employees with radiation-detection tags? Private employers probably would be sued over such behavior.

Mark my words: if Barack Obama is reelected, he will be thrust into scandal perhaps before he even takes the oath of office for a second time. Though the media — with Fox as virtually the only exception — is studiously avoiding the scandal of Americans being abandoned during the terrorist attack in Benghazi, the implications are far too sweeping to be suppressed for long (particularly if, as Newt Gingrich has suggested, there is a damning paper trail floating around out there). The most concise reading of this development — and, in my judgment, the most accurate — is this one from John McCain:

This president is either engaged in a massive cover-up deceiving the American people or he is so grossly incompetent that he is not qualified to be the commander in chief of our armed forces. It’s either one of them.

Just so.

If the Electoral College deadlocks at 269-269, Vice President Biden, in his role as President of the U.S. Senate, would get to decide the rules for picking the VP.  (The House would pick the President.)

Roll Call paints the picture:

One of the foremost experts on Senate rules said he sees no evidence of expedited procedures to avert a filibuster of that process.

“I have read the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, and I don’t see anything that requires the Senate to vote without debate on choosing a vice president,” former Senate Parliamentarian Robert B. Dove said. “Therefore, I don’t see what would stop Senators from speaking about who is going to be the vice president and, in effect, forcing a cloture vote.”

While the parliamentarian advises the presiding officer on procedural questions, Dove said, the responsibility to rule rests with the occupant of the chair. In the event of an Electoral College tie, that would be Biden (in his capacity of president of the Senate, until Jan. 20). Dove notes that Democratic Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey disregarded the parliamentarian’s guidance with some regularity.

Something tells me Good Ole’ Joe isn’t the kind to let a little conflict of interest get in the way of his hold on power.

GDP grew by two percent in the third quarter of this year. That’s not a particularly impressive number, but in this economy — with its now-ubiquitous diminished expectations — it falls under the category of “We’ll take what we can get.” The Mercatus Institute’s Veronique De Rugy and Keith Hall have scratched beneath the surface of those numbers, however, and what they’ve found is even more disheartening than the rate itself:

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the economy grew by a modest 2 percent in the third quarter of 2012. While this was stronger growth than the preceding quarter, all of the increase in GDP growth came from the biggest increase in federal government spending in over two years.  Federal government spending rose 9.6% at an annual rate in the third quarter…Growth in the private sector fell by 0.1 percent to 1.3 percent in the third quarter—down from 1.4 percent in the second quarter.

But the private sector, we remind you, “is doing just fine.”

Avik Roy, an outside health care policy advisor to the Romney campaign, reminds us why you should never trust a clever lawyer or accountant:

Obamacare was cleverly designed such that its most politically toxic provisions wouldn’t go into effect until after the election. In addition, the Obama administration spent billions of unauthorized taxpayer dollars this year and last so that the impact of its cuts wouldn’t be felt until after the election.

2013: Tax increases and Medicare cuts

Over the next ten years, Obamacare cuts $716 billion from the Medicare program in order to fund its $1.9 trillion in new health spending over the same period. $156 billion of those cuts come from the market-oriented Medicare Advantage program, and those Medicare Advantage cuts start to kick in in 2013. 27 percent of all seniors are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, including 32 percent in Wisconsin and 36 percent in Ohio.

I hope the Romney campaign has been hammering home the part about the Obama Administration hiding the true cost of Obamacare from voters in swing states like Wisconsin and Ohio through aggressive direct mail and ad buys in those states because people need to know that before they decide whether to renew the incumbent’s contract.

For my part, a White House that deliberately hides the truth behind unauthorized spending and delayed implementation timelines is one that can’t be trusted; now or in the future.

Just in time for Election Day, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has released a report entitled “The Imperial Presidency,” which serves as an exhaustive chronicle of all the ways in which President Obama has undermined — or outright ignored — the rule of law. It covers everything from regulatory overreach to ignoring the traditional “advise and consent” process to abusing the waiver process, and it’s well worth a read.

As we approach November 6, it’s important to remember that these offenses aren’t just abstract violations of the constitutional order — they’re also ingredients for economic decline. As Conn Carroll notes today in the Washington Examiner:

Conservatives are not the only ones who have documented Obama’s assault on the rule of law and its impact on the U.S. economy. Every year, the World Economic Forum issues a Global Competitiveness Report, ranking more than 100 countries on a number of key economic indicators. When Obama was sworn into office, the United States was ranked as the best country in the world to do business. After just four years under Obama, the U.S. has dropped to seventh. The report specifically cites the collapse in the rule of law in explaining this decline.

Before Obama was president, the U.S. ranked 40th in “favoritism in decisions of government officials.” Today, the U.S. ranks 59th, a fall of 19 places. Before Obama was president, the U.S. ranked 50th for lowest “burden of government regulation.” Today, the U.S. ranks 76th, a fall of 26 places. Before Obama was president, the U.S. ranked 28th in “transparency of government policy making.” Today, the U.S. ranks 56th, a fall of 28 places.

Care to venture a guess as to where those rankings would be after another four years of Obama?

Well worth a quick read, from the policy director for the long-term Katrina-relief efforts.

Last week, RealClearPolicy.com graciously ran our commentary “End the USGBC Green Certification Monopoly,” in which we asserted that adopting the proposed LEEDv4 standard in its current incarnation as the new government-approved rule is unacceptable, and called for the era of the USGBC’s taxpayer-subsidized monopoly to come to an end.

Now, a damning USA Today analysis concludes that the certification regime allows thousands of “green” builders win tax breaks, exceed local restrictions and win expedited permits with meaningless, easy and low-cost steps:

Across the United States, the Green Building Council has helped thousands of developers win tax breaks and grants, charge higher rents, exceed local building restrictions and get expedited permitting by certifying them as ‘green’ under a system that often rewards minor, low-cost steps that have little or no proven environmental benefit, a USA TODAY analysis has found.

The council has certified 13,500 commercial buildings in the U.S. as green and become one of the most influential forces in building design by helping persuade public officials and private builders to follow its rating system, known as LEED.  More than 200 states, cities and federal agencies now require LEED certification for new public buildings, even though they have done little independent and meaningful research into LEED’s effectiveness. LEED can add millions to construction costs while promising to cut utility bills and other expenses.”

Importantly, the analysis also highlights the self-interest that often underlies such LEED advocacy:

There are now LEED-certified breweries, stadiums, dormitories, bus depots, parking garages, shopping malls, libraries, fire stations, warehouses, boathouses, locker rooms and prison buildings.  LEED’s growth has been driven partly by the building council itself, a 13,000-member non-profit chiefly run by architects, builders and building suppliers. Many specialize in — and profit from — the type of design the council certifies and promotes. The council collects up to $35,000 in fees for each LEED certification.  Building council members have boosted their own LEED-related businesses by helping persuade officials to require or reward LEED certification.  LEED also helps developers market buildings to tenants and investors and collect higher rents and sales prices, University of California economist Nils Kok said.

‘A lot of the fuel for LEED, to be honest, is marketing advantage,’ said Bill Walsh, executive director of the Healthy Building Network, which promotes non-toxic building materials. ‘People are interested in how they get the (LEED) credits, not in thinking deeply about it.'”

As one illustration, the study notes, “The most popular LEED option – earned in 99.7% of the buildings – has no direct environmental benefit but generates millions of dollars for the building council by giving one point if a design team has a LEED expert.”

In other words, government-facilitated, make-work cronyism at its worst.

This report merely confirms CFIF’s point:  LEEDv4 is an unacceptable government-imposed standard, the USGBC’s monopoly must end, the core mission of LEED must be reformed and the federal government must allow greater flexibility and the use of alternative green building certification systems.