Freedom Line Blog

In an interview with CFIF, Clint Bolick, Hoover Institution fellow and leading legal expert, discusses how the judiciary is up for grabs this presidential election and his latest book, “Two-Fer: Electing a President and a Supreme Court.”

Listen to the interview here.

You really had to be there to see it, but…. PLEASE read this, out today, about last week’s Netroots Nation annual convention. Condoms, recreational sex as political weapon, and more!

Look!  In the street!  Is it slow?  Is it expensive?  Then it must be a federally subsidized streetcar project!

Randal O’Toole (pdf), a transportation scholar at the Cato Institute, explains how the Obama Administration is literally rewriting the rules to make an inefficient mode of transportation easier to fund:

The Obama administration is currently rewriting the rules for Small Starts [a federal program to subsidize local mass transit projects], and the draft rules, issued January 25, 2012, effectively eliminate the cost-effectiveness requirement.  Instead, the administration proposes to judge projects by how well they promote “livability,” which Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHoood defines as, “If you don’t want an automobile, you don’t have to have one.”  In this case, it evidently also means, “If you don’t want to take a bus, taxpayers will provide an expensive rail alternative.”

Why the need to change the funding criteria?  O’Toole explains:

When the [Federal Transit Administration] applied the [cost-effectiveness] rules to the Small Starts program, however, streetcar advocates complained that the rules discriminated against streetcars because streetcars did not save time.  Instead, advocates argued, the FTA should evaluate streetcars based on their perceived contributions to livability and economic development.

Among other uses “livability” is code for “high density,” a term that translates into smaller living spaces crowded together in apartment buildings instead of single family homes with a yard.

California Governor Jerry Brown is notorious for preaching an “era of limits” that lets the state’s freeway system decay in order to force people into high density housing in the urban core.  With everybody living on top of each other, cars become unfeasible and mass transit suddenly becomes relevant.

But even in this Orwellian vision, streetcars like the ones favored by the Obama administration don’t make economic sense because buses can go faster, seat more people and cost less to operate because they don’t depend on railway lines to move.

No matter.  With the new rules in place 45 cities are lining up to qualify for streetcar subsidies.

If the Feds are paying, who cares about the costs?

Quin makes a characteristically impressive case for why either Jon Kyl or Bobby Jindal would be great vice presidential choices for Mitt Romney. As my column last week made clear, I’m a Kyl man, but I’m certainly not immune to the charms of Jindal, one of the most effective Republican governors in the nation (for proof, see my recent praise for the education reforms Jindal is implementing in Louisiana).

Still, I think Kyl is the superior choice for Team Romney. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Capitol Hill Experience — With Romney never having held elected office in Washington, having a Vice President with preexisting influence and relationships in the Beltway would go a long way towards advancing his agenda. Jindal isn’t exactly a Washington unknown — he spent just under two years as an Assistant HHS Secretary in the Bush Administration and had a two-term stint in the House — but his background pales in comparison to Kyl, who’s been a member of Congress for 25 years. And with Kyl currently serving as Republican Whip in the Senate — the position responsible for counting votes — his skill set is uniquely suited for helping Romney get legislation through Congress.

2. Foreign Policy Experience — Kyl has become a major figure on foreign policy in recent years, leading Republican opposition to both the New START Treaty and the Law of the Sea Treaty (both of which he has been right on, IMHO). Jindal has no commensurate experience. For Romney, who is also a foreign policy neophyte (and whose foreign policy pronouncements — identifying Russia as the nation’s largest security concern and threatening a trade war with China, for instance — have been dotty at times), having someone of Kyl’s stature would flesh out the ticket in the area where the presidency confers the greatest power — and requires the greatest responsibility.

3. Playing the Number Two Role — Let’s stipulate up front that neither Kyl nor Jindal are electrifying speakers. Neither is going to bring to the ticket anything as energizing as Chris Christie’s blue collar pugnaciousness or Marco Rubio’s stirring eloquence. But while Kyl is steady and workmanlike, Jindal can come across awkward and uncomfortable in public appearances. This was famously the case with his 2009 response to President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress, a speech so widely panned that it’s thought to have delayed whatever presidential ambitions Jindal may have had by at least one election cycle. And while he hasn’t had a moment that bad since, Jindal can still be halting and uncomfortable when he appears on national television.

Personally, I’m inclined to give the guy a break on this. It’s obvious when you’re watching him that Jindal’s awkwardness is a function of his precociousness. This is the nice kid who’s always been the smartest in his class but has never quiet figured out social cues. That earnestness, however, will make it tough for him to play the traditional attack dog role of the number two on the ticket. Kyl, on the other hand, while hardly a demagogue, would be very effective employing the same strategy as Dick Cheney did as a vice presidential candidate — using his age and gravitas to dismiss Obama as callow and incompetent.

4. The Future — My own preference is for the vice presidency as a sort of emeritus post, reserved for senior statesmen whose presidential ambitions either (a) never existed or (b) are exhausted. That also prevents the VP’s political interests from clashing with those of the president, a situation which has caused many an unsettled White House in years past. Ideally, I’d like it to be a terminal position, which makes sense for Kyl, who is retiring from the Senate this year and has forsworn any further electoral ambitions.

Jindal, by contrast, just turned 41 and has a bright future ahead of him regardless of whether he gets tapped for the post or not. His current gubernatorial term lasts through January 2016, which would line him up well for a presidential run should Romney lose. Alternately, he could run against Democrat Mary Landrieu when her seat in the U.S. Senate comes up in 2014. In the interest of retaining Jindal as one of the party’s main leaders well into the future, these options seem preferable to me to marooning him in the vice presidency, which more often than not — barring presidential death or departure — puts an end to one’s career in elected office.

Regardless of whether you support Jindal, Kyl, or someone else, there’s one thing that has to be admitted about the veepstakes: Unlike this year’s presidential race, there’s an embarrassment of riches.

Robert VerBruggen at National Review Online today reports that DoJ official Ronald Weich, who authored a false letter regarding the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking schedule, is leaving his job. What needs to be added for the record is that his F&F gaffe (or perhaps a lie) was far from his only screw-up of absurdist proportions.

Weich also was the official who tried to excuse DoJ’s dropping of the voter-intimidation charges against New Black Panther Jerry Jackson by claiming that Jackson was allowed to be at the site because he lived in that building. Oops! The building hosting the polling place was a senior citizen center — and Jackson is anything but a senior citizen, and his actual home address, a number of blocks away, was readily accessible on other documents. To this day there is no good explanation for how Weich managed to screw up so badly as to assert that Jackson lived in that senior center. Indeed, throughout the investigation into the Black Panther matter, Weich’s responses to congressmen were riddled with assertions of dubious merit.

Therefore, the American people should wish Mr. Weich good riddance. He did not serve us well.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Creative carpooling or rogue riders?

Today, the Wall Street Journal details how commuters over the George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York are picking up passengers at bus stops near the bridge in order to pay a reduced toll.

E-ZPass customers pay $9.50, while those paying cash must cough up $12.  (Each toll will rise another $3 by 2015.)

Price of the toll for cars carrying 3 or more passengers: $6 less.

Police officers working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – the agency which owns and operates the bridge and six other crossings – are not amused.  They claim the practice of picking up strangers to pay a cheaper toll is dangerous to drivers.  To make the point, the cops hand out tickets for hundreds of dollars a pop.  (But they do not, mind you, patrol the bus stops for dangerous looking characters.)

Those on the receiving end have a different theory.

“In order to pad their pensions and lifestyle, they’re taking bread out of our children’s mouths,” says Ms. Javier.

According to the Journal, “With extensive overtime, some toll collectors make more than $100,000, while salaries for several officers working at the bridge topped $200,000 last year.”

Public employees gouging taxpayers to pad their compensation packages?

Fuggedaboutit.

Read between the lines and you’ll see that that’s the message democratic strategists are pushing on President Obama’s reelection team. Here’s how The Daily Caller‘s Stephen Elliot reports the advice being given by Democracy Corps’ James Carville and Stan Greenberg:

The current campaign is focused on success in the economic recovery, but Carville’s group says the strategy is “wrong” and “will fail.” The only reason Obama is keeping up in the campaign is because voters perceive Romney as “out of touch with ordinary people.”

The authors recommend that Obama show more empathy for the struggles of the middle class. “These voters want to know that he understands the struggle of working families and has plans to make things better,” according to the report.

… “These voters are not convinced that we are headed in the right direction…and the current narrative about progress just misses the opportunity to connect and point forward,” continues the report.

In tests done as part of the focus groups, Obama campaign ads that highlight job growth and economic recovery during the last four years did not even win over voters who already supported Obama.

That last line is telling: if even Obama’s most fervent admirers aren’t buying his pitch on the economy, just imagine how turned off all-important swing voters will be in the fall. Are we really to believe that they’ll be brought back to the fold just because Obama all of a sudden becomes “empathetic,”acting as if he stays up nights worried about people who’ve been forced to start buying generic brand breakfast cereals?

Let me register a radical sentiment: I give no more of a damn about whether the president sympathizes with my economic plight than I do whether my plumber is moved by the hardship I have to endure when there’s not enough hot water. In both cases, the sentiment is the same: fix the problem and then leave me well enough alone. My suspicion is that the rest of the country is increasingly feeling the same way. We’ll see in November.

Last week Troy had this excellent column on why Jon Kyl would be an excellent choice for Mitt Romney’s running mate. He was right. I’ve been a big Kyl fan for years, and wrote about him just a few weeks ago. Today I go all the way in the direction I was hinting at in that column, namely joining Troy in his suggestion that Kyl would be a great choice for veep. In this case, I make him choice 1b, with Bobby Jindal of Louisiana as 1a. I also linked to Troy’s piece within mine; do read his solid reasoning, please, as well as mine.

Here’s part of my case for Kyl:

Kyl also adds particular heft where Romney has no real record, namely foreign and defense policy. From Kyl’s long service on the Judiciary Committee, he also is well equipped to carry the fight to Obama on the subject of Eric Holder’s corrupt Justice Department, and also to parry attacks on the Supreme Court that Obama is expected to make if the court throws out all or part of Obamacare. With Romney having shown a bit of ineptness in describing legal issues and explaining conservative jurisprudence, Kyl’s abilities here could be tremendously important.

Finally, while few people think Republicans are seriously at risk of losing Arizona, Kyl does perhaps, at the very margins, offer an overlooked geographical advantage. In a very close election, many observers are starting to think the entire outcome could depend on a razor-thin difference, one way or another, not in Ohio but in Iowa. Well, Kyl grew up in Iowa, and his father actually was a U.S. congressman from there.

And here’s part of my case for Jindal:

Some will gripe that Jindal adds no geographical advantage to the ticket — and they are right. But that consideration pales in comparison with what he will add in one particular area. It is almost certain that, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on Obamacare, the question of “what would Republicans do to replace it” will dominate campaign coverage throughout the summer and perhaps all the way until Election Day. Romney himself, as the author of Romneycare and a once-avid advocate of an individual insurance mandate, is poorly equipped to handle this question. No high-ranking elected official in the country, however, can match Jindal for his expert knowledge on health-care policy, nor can anybody else match Jindal’s ability to explain positive, conservative alternatives to the Left’s state-controlled systems. In short, he takes a major Romney weakness and turns it into a strength, on an issue that really could sway the whole election.

It’s not just on “Fast and Furious.” Eric Holder and his politicized Justice Department, along with the Obama administration overall, has consistently evaded the law and refused to provide documents on a number of controversial fronts, all while claiming privileges that don’t even exist. Peter Kirsanow details some of the ways in a great NRO post today, here. Please do follow that link; it’s important.

I wrote on the broader topic of Obama stonewalling (at DoJ and elsewhere) at the Washington Times nearly three years ago, here. Others, too, have chimed in on this topic. It all adds up to a pattern of obstruction, prevarication, and lawlessness. That’s why U.S. Sen. John Cornyn today was moved to demand Holder’s resignation.

It is a call that surely will be echoed by others in Congress in days to come.

Following on to Tim’s excellent post earlier this week about the cost of higher education, this observation by the American Enterprise Institute’s Norman Ornstein bears noting:

Colleges have become a bit like car dealers, where the sticker price does not reflect the actual cost to most buyers. Some can afford to pay the full boat, helping the colleges maintain their budgets, while others can get deep discounts.

And colleges, under this theory, keep their prices up to match their competitors because a lower tuition would be seen by many prospective students and parents as a reflection of lower quality compared to their peers.

Many economists also point out that federal subsidies for higher education are themselves a contributing factor in increasing college costs.

The economic prescription for reforming higher ed is the same that could be applied to health care, k-12 education, or any other sector of the economy that is co-mingled with the government: greater price transparency, fewer subsidies, lower barriers to entry, and more competition. This isn’t terribly complex stuff. In fact, it should be intuitive to anyone who’s ever studied basic economics. Alas, the dismal science is about the only component of a college education that’s not getting a fair shake these days.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 (CDT)/5:00 pm (EDT):  Tim Lee, CFIF: Unions, Wisconsin and American Airlines;

4:30 (CDT)/5:30 pm (EDT):  Kevin Williamson, Editor at National Review: “The Dependency Agenda;”

5:00 (CDT)/6:00 pm (EDT):  Anthony Holm, Author: “52 Reasons Not To Vote For Obama;”  and

5:30 (CDT)/6:30 pm (EDT):  Sarah Lenti, Policy and Strategic Communications Consultant: The State Government Leadership Foundation, The Republican State Leadership Committee, and Education.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

Joel Kotkin sees the groundwork being laid for a grand political restructuring (i.e. perestroika) in California now that each branch of the state’s ruling class is fracturing.

Environmentalists are split over Governor Jerry Brown’s decision to shield the multi-billion dollar high-speed rail train from California’s tough environmental review process.  Facebook’s disastrous IPO means liberals in Sacramento can’t bank on tech industry riches to finance tax hikes.  And with serious pension reform being enacted in San Jose and San Diego last week public sector unions are no longer guaranteed to win every election.

All that’s needed now is a Democratic leader to stand up and acknowledge that California’s system is broken and needs major restructuring.

Too bad Jerry Brown is no Mikhail Gorbachev.  The latter risked a revolt from his party to save his people from economic disaster.  Brown just announced a truce with the public employee unions to raise taxes even higher than he originally envisioned.

Nevertheless, Kotkin predicts that California is fast approaching a moment where the citizenry will be poised to reward “a coherent vision – from either Independents, centrist Democrats or Republicans – that can unite business, private sector workers and taxpayers around a fiscally prudent, pro-economic growth agenda.”

If that sounds impossible, remember that the Soviet Union fell without a shot being fired.  All that’s needed is the right man with the right message at the right moment.

While the media seems to have moved on from the firestorm over religious liberty that was kicked off by Obamacare’s contraception mandate earlier this year (a fight that is now making its way through the courts), the threat to freedom of conscience only continues to grow. In today’s DC Examiner, Tim Carney looks at some of the troubling developments throughout the nation:

Last week, New Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that the state government can force a wedding photographer to shoot a gay wedding, even though she holds the view that marriage is between one man and one woman — and even though New Mexico doesn’t perform same-sex marriages.

… Is a baby sitter still free to choose which families she’ll work for? Can a doctor still choose which procedures she’ll perform? Actually, a Michigan court has already answered that one, saying an in-vitro fertilization clinic violated a woman’s rights by refusing her IVF on the grounds of her being unmarried.

… This is how the culture war generally plays out these days: The Left uses government to force religious people and cultural conservatives to violate their consciences, and then cries “theocracy” when conservatives object.

One aspect of this fight that bears highlighting: one need not share the gay marriage or IVF views of the people targeted in these cases to understand the threat to fundamental freedoms. In fact, one need not even be religious.

At the heart of all of this is that government at all levels is increasingly trying to constrain freedom of association — the right to say “get lost and leave me alone.” And when the government takes away your right to say “no”, few other freedoms have any meaning.

In a letter delivered on Friday, a coalition of 14 free market organizations, including the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”), urged the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) to approve a private deal between Verizon and cable companies that will free currently unused spectrum to help alleviate the growing “spectrum crunch” that many wireless consumers – particularly those in densely populated areas of the country – are already feeling.

The letter, which was organized by ATR’s Digital Liberty, reads in part:

Demand for wireless broadband is more than doubling annually, but vast swaths of valuable spectrum – the lifeblood of mobile communications – remain unavailable to wireless carriers. Consumers in densely populated urban areas are already suffering from inadequate wireless capacity. While meeting this robust demand will require wireless carriers to adopt an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach, increasing spectrum availability is unquestionably the most fundamental and cost-effective means to meet wireless demand.

Unfortunately, spectrum auctions that will enable wireless carriers to bid on additional spectrum remain years away. Verizon Wireless’s proposed transfer presents a rare and crucial opportunity to deploy currently unused spectrum for wireless broadband. The spectrum at issue is ideally situated in the 1700/2100 MHz AWS bands, covering over 80 percent of the U.S. population (259 million POPs). Consumers will see substantial net benefits from expanded coverage enabled by additional spectrum, especially compared to more costly and time-consuming undertakings such as cell splitting.

With demand for wireless broadband more than doubling annually, the FCC’s own estimates predict that demand for wireless spectrum will exceed supply in 2013.  Yet Obama’s FCC has done little if anything at all to make additional and much-needed spectrum available to wireless network operators. 

In fact, under the Obama Administration the FCC has worked to delay and outright block private-sector deals to alleviate the growing spectrum crunch.  Last year, the FCC took unprecedented steps to block the then-pending AT&T-T-Mobile merger, going so far as to publicly release a biased draft staff report in opposition to the merger that the commissioners themselves never approved and quite  possibly didn’t even read.  Had that merger been approved, AT&T was promising to deploy high-speed mobile broadband to 95 percent of all Americans.  And the FCC has been over-scrutinizing and slow-walking approval of the Verizon-SpectrumCo deal since December.

Read the full coalition letter to the FCC here.

I have a long blog post at The American Spectator about why conservative are rallying around Obama’s nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a guy named Andrew Hurwitz. This is important. Please read.

Kudos to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) for putting politics aside and directly challenging the Obama administration to investigate what she calls “an avalanche of leaks” harming national security.

Feinstein’s public offensive began last week with a press release where she acknowledged sending “a classified letter to the president outlining my deep concerns about the release” of information “regarding alleged cyber efforts targeting Iran’s nuclear program.”

On Sunday, Feinstein said on CBS’ Face the Nation that the effectiveness of two recently appointed federal prosecutors to investigate the leaks about covert U.S. efforts to combat threats from Iran and terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda would be judged on whether it was “nonpartisan,” “vigorous,” and able to “move ahead rapidly.”

But if Attorney General Eric Holder has proved anything during his tenure – as the face of the Fast and Furious scandal, non-enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act, and refusing to prosecute voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers – it’s that he is incapable of being nonpartisan in the administration of justice.

Feinstein isn’t waiting on Holder to change his spots.  In her press release last week she promised to include new disclosure requirements to her Select Committee on Intelligence so that administration officials can be held accountable for leaks that put at risk the lives of Americans and American allies – even if it might help President Obama look tough on foreign policy.

Feinstein’s reaction thus far is pure commonsense.  Conservatives should support her push back against the Obama administration, and open up avenues for her to do more.

Under the headline “New Course in College Costs,” today’s Wall Street Journal meditates on something that should be obvious:  “As Student Debt Grows, Possible Link Seen Between Federal Aid and Rising Tuition.”

A “Possible Link?”

Apparently, it’s news to academia that federal subsidies lead to higher prices:

Rising student debt levels and fresh academic research have brought greater scrutiny to the question of whether the federal government’s expanding student-aid programs are driving up college tuition.”

But don’t try telling that to the Obama Administration, famously callous toward anything that includes the concept of “profit” or “private”:

A spokesman for Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the administration believes there is a link between federal aid and tuition increases at for-profit schools, but that it sees no such tie with public and nonprofit schools. “

The real-world data contained in the report, however, contravenes the Obama Administration’s party line:

Tuition and fees at four-year public schools have risen 150% since 1990, to an average of $8,244 per student this past academic year, according to the College Board, an advocacy group made up of universities.  Over the same period, federal grants and tax benefits rose 242%, to an average of $4,292 per student, said educations consultants Kathy Payea and Sandy Baum, who conduct the College Board’s annual research on college prices.  Federal loans per student tripled.”

Unsurprisingly, George Will cogently captures the phenomenon in his latest column entitled “Subprime College Educations”:

This bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did.  The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust.  Tuitions and fees have risen more than 440 percent in 30 years as schools happily raised prices – and lowered standards – to siphon up federal money.”

It’s just unfortunate that George Will remains too scarce on the syllabi of government and academia.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.