Freedom Line Blog

Led by: Ari Berman

Panelists: Sen. Ben Cardin, Rep. Keith Ellison, Keesha Gaskins, Eric Marshall, Heather Smith

Ari Berman (?) of The Nation starts panel by mocking FL Gov. Rick Scott for trying to enforce laws to remove ineligible voters from rolls.

In addition to Sen. Ben Cardin, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (Minnesota) also on panel, along with others whose names I did not get. Sorry.

Berman says 31 states have passed laws to “restrict access to ballots at every stage of the voting process.”

Only 86 convictions of vote fraud from 2002-2007. [QH: I think that number is bogus; I’ll check.]

Thirty seven times more likely to die from lightning than to commit vote fraud.

Litany of oppression continues. Cue violins.

“…. efforts to purge voter rolls….  a very scary effort.”

mantra is to fight “restrictive voting laws.”

Keesha Gaskins: “A perfect storm of events” leading to restrictive laws…. Supreme Court retrenchment on voting rights. … single party control….

Cardin: “we come here and we see the energy and it really does energize us….. This issue should not be a surprise to us. … Democrats truly believe that we are better off with more people participating in the political process.”  …. brags about making it easier for military to vote…  huh?

“These laws are the new Jim Crow laws of our time… a little more subtle today, but they are aimed at restricting the ability to vote of certain voters who are more likely to vote for [liberals].”

“The Koch brothers are financing those operations.

“These are deliberate efforts to affect the outcome of elections rather than the integrity of elections.”

Ellison: “This whole fight can be describe din one word: Power. They want power. …. This has nothing to do with fraud. …. The big issue is about power. … We can disprove their lies…. They are trying to take power away…. If they can shrink the size of the electorate and get people to vote how they want to } in vote…. 78% of Af American men of [certain age] in Milwaukee don’t have ID [according to Brennan Center].

Berman: “This isn’t new.” compares rhetoric of right on voter ID to rhetoric against civil rights in the 1960s (!!!). “Some of what is happening now is not far off from the ugly tactics that happened in the past.” (somehow comparess voter ID to “poll tax.”)

“The lack of proof is stunning [in terms of proof of actual fraud etc.].”

Panelist named Heather Smith: “To keep them [young and minority voters] away from the polls.”

Berman: “The narrative on the right was the ACORN stole the election for Barack Obama.” {REALLY???}

Official schedule online describes panel (called “The War on Voting”) thusly:

In 2011 we witnessed the most significant rollback of voting rights since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, with conservative legislators and governors passing laws in more than a dozen states to restrict access to the ballot. These laws included requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, restricting voter registration drives, curtailing early voting, disenfranchising ex-felons and mandating government-issued photo identification to cast a ballot. These tactics harken back to the days when Dixiecrats used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting. According to the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, the new laws could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012, with young, minority, low-income and disabled voters hit the hardest. This panel will look at the voter suppression tactics conservatives are employing and how to fight back to defend democracy.

Keesha: “When we talk about the attempt to retain power in the face of shifting demographics…..”    “We need to get the truth out that there really isn’t voter fraud.”

[check into legislation by Cardin and Ellison]

Cardin: “It’s a question as to whether our elections are as open as they need to be…. It really does call into question what we really believe in…. The impact this has is a stain on our democracy….. This is not entirely new. I go back to the problems we had in the Bush years when we had lax enforcement of the laws. [NOT true, by the way — QH]  …. The net impact is that this will impact the availability of millions of people…. as high as 7 million who will be denied the ability to vote…. This is an intentional effort. It is not that much more subtle than the Jim Crow laws…. This is very serious.”

Eric Marshall: Even Wisconsin law allowing same-day registration isn’t fair because it requires too much proof of residence. (!!!!!)

Heather Smith:Left keeps winning in court, but “What we’ve lost is the incredible amount of time, energy and resources fighting these laws.” “It has shifted our focus, our time and our energy.”

65% of 18 and 19 year-olds in the country do not have drivers’ licenses. (?!?!?!?!?) “They are taking public transit, they are walking, they don’t have the money to drive cars.”

“This is just another example of how this system doesn’t work for us…. It just got more confusing and more hard.”

Berman: Question for all: What can be done?

Keesha Gaskins: “Litigation.” (but we have “an exponentially heavier lift” to register people when these laws are here) Legislation. Educate voters.

Sen. Cardin: “What we need to do first is support the Department of Justice in their enforcement…. pass  Democracy Restoration Act (for ex-felons to vote) (ex-felons “generally less sympathetic to Republicans”…..

Rep. Ellison pushed “same-day registration act” to FORCE states to have same-day registration. … “Overturn Citizens United.”

The 1866 hour vote hot line?

I’m here in Providence, Rhode Island, for a conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, the Franklin Center, and Breitbart, and we’re just minutes away from the Net Roots Nation convention, so John Fund and I and others came on over to hear the other side. John and I just gave a panel presentation this morning at the Heritage event on combating vote fraud; now, here with the Net Roots, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md), among others, is about to give a presentation on the horrid danger that voter-ID laws pose for democracy — or something like that. Gonna be fun. I’ll try not to interrupt with questions, but instead will try to be on my best behavior. Stay tuned.

Thanks to The Daily Caller’s Nicholas Ballasy for posting an extended exchange between House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and two officials from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on what occupations count as “green jobs.”

REP. DARRELL ISSA: Well, let me — let me run you through some questions here because you’re here because we’re having a green jobs counting discussion.
Does someone who assembles turbines — is that a green job?

MS. JANE OATES: Wind turbines?

REP. ISSA: Yeah. Wind turbines.

MS. OATES: I think we would call any kind of sustainable manufacturing –

REP. ISSA: OK.

MS. OATES: — fitting the definition that was –

REP. ISSA: Does someone who sweeps — does someone who sweeps the floor in a facility that makes solar panels, is that a green job?

MS. OATES: Solar? I’ll give that to –

REP. ISSA: To Galvin?

MS. OATES: — if you don’t mind.

MR. JOHN GALVIN: We define — we have a two-part definition –

REP. ISSA: We already had the briefing on that. So just answer the question. If you’re sweeping the floor in a solar panel production facility, is that a green job?

MR. GALVIN: If you ask me for the number of health care jobs in the United States, I’ll give you the employment from the health care industry.

REP. ISSA: Look, Mr. Galvin –

MR. GALVIN: — nurses and doctors –

REP. ISSA: You did not want to come here as a witness. You are not a delighted witness. So let’s go through this. I asked you a question. You know the answer. Would you please answer it.
If you sweep the floor in a solar panel facility, is that a green job?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: Thank you. If you drive a hybrid bus — public transportation — is that a green job?

MR. GALVIN: According to our definition, yes.

REP. ISSA: Thank you. What if you’re a college professor teaching classes about environmental studies?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about just any school bus driver?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about the guy who puts gas in the school bus?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: How about employees at a bicycle shop?

MR. GALVIN: I guess I’m not sure about that.

REP. ISSA: The answer is yes, according to your definition. And you’ve got a lot of them.
What about a clerk at the bicycle repair shop?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about someone who works in an antique dealer?

MR. GALVIN: I’m not sure about that either.

REP. ISSA: The answer is yes. Those are — those are recycled goods. They’re antiques; they’re used.
What about someone who works at the Salvation Army in their clothing recycling and furniture?

MR. GALVIN: Right. Because they’re selling recycled goods.

REP. ISSA: OK. What about somebody who opened a store to sell rare manuscripts?

MR. GALVIN: What industry is that?

REP. ISSA: People sell rare books and manuscripts — but they’re rare because they’re old so they’re used.

MR. GALVIN: OK.

REP. ISSA: What about workers at a consignment shop?

MR. GALVIN: That’s a green job.

REP. ISSA: Does the teenage kid who works full time at a used record shop count?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: How about somebody who manufacturers railroads rolling stock — basically, train cars?

MR. GALVIN: I don’t think we classified the manufacture of rail cars as –

REP. ISSA: 48.8 percent of jobs in manufacturing, rail cars counted, according to your statistics. About half of the jobs that are being used to build trains.
OK. How about — just one more here. What about people who work in a trash disposal yard? Do garbage men have green jobs?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: OK. I apologize. The real last last is, how about an oil lobbyist? Wouldn’t an oil lobbyist count as having a green job if they are engaged in advocacy related to environmental issues?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

In an interview with CFIF, American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks discusses a concrete and actionable plan for defending America’s core economic values from the corrosive doctrine of wealth redistribution and his latest book, The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.

Listen to the interview here.

Politico reports that a group of Democratic and Republican senators are “quietly pushing to have a major tax and budget package ready by September so a bill can be introduced immediately after the November elections and passed by Christmas.”

In other words, during a lame duck session.  Only in the U.S. Senate could people seriously think that a multi-trillion dollar deal negotiated in secret and passed by a Congress that no longer reflects the electoral will of the people somehow counts as statesmanship.

This isn’t to say a lame duck Congress should never hold consequential votes.  A terrorist attack, a foreign military invasion, or an asteroid hitting the earth all qualify as legitimate reasons to let retiring and dethroned members decide national policy.  But the fear of falling off a “fiscal cliff” that’s been approaching for years – unsustainable deficits, exploding entitlements, budget sequesters that gut the Defense Department, expiring Bush tax cuts that raise rates on individuals – certainly does not.

It’s been said, rightly, that major reforms need bipartisan support.  But that’s only half of the equation.  Major reforms of the magnitude now being contemplated need to be road-tested on the campaign trail.  The 2012 election is one of the most important electoral moments in the modern era.  If there are good ideas brewing in the Senate, members should establish some consensus and make it part of the public debate.  Otherwise, enjoy the perks of office and let the next Congress, and the next President, decide.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses Big Labor’s destructive tactics in both the public and private sectors, including labor union efforts to undercut the bankruptcy restructuring process of American Airlines.

For a man who successfully campaigned for the presidency twice, you have to marvel at Bill Clinton’s lack of message discipline (or any discipline, for that matter). During the 2008 presidential campaign, Bill was a consistent thorn in Hillary’s side, what with his pronouncement that Barack Obama was “playing the race card” against him and his characterization of the presentation of Obama’s record as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”

Back then, the pop psychoanalysis of Clinton was that he couldn’t handle the idea of Hillary in the White House, occupying the spotlight that was rightly his, and was thus subconsciously serving up self-destructive rhetoric to dampen her prospects for beating Obama. This theory wasn’t particularly plausible given the Clintons’ joint lust for power and the fact that it violated Occam’s Razor — which would have instructed us that Clinton is simply impulsive and egotistical.

In 2012, the analysis seems to have become inverted. Last week, Clinton praised Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital on CNN, calling his record “sterling.” Then, earlier this week, he told CNBC that there is nothing much wrong with private equity, that the country is in “recession,” and that the Bush tax cuts should be extended, even for high earners (he’s walked back that latter part since). Putting Clinton back on the couch (never a safe place to be with the former president), the armchair shrinks are now speculating that Clinton’s eruptions owe to a desire to undermine Obama and set the stage for another Hillary presidential run in 2016.

Allow me to offer another, less convoluted thesis. Clinton knows that his presidency was historically inconsequential. Apart from his impeachment scandal, the only notable occurrence of his time in office was the expansion of the economy — not small ball to be sure, but also largely the product of co-opting Republican ideas on spending and deficit reduction, balanced budgets, welfare reform, tax cuts, and free trade. Still, it’s what Clinton hangs his hat on and it gives him an opportunity to sneer at Obama’s economic shortcomings, a pastime he no doubt has enjoyed ever since candidate Obama gave the Clinton Administration’s legacy short shrift during the 2008 campaign. So, if you’re Bill, why not take your affection for the business world out for a spin every once in a while just to rub it in Barack’s face?

Clinton’s habit of repeatedly undermining Obama is not evidence of a Freudian ego orchestrating a brilliant Machiavellian plot to install his wife back in the White House; It’s simply the product of an id that has broken its leash, relentlessly and uncontrollably attempting to establish Clinton as the alpha dog of the modern presidency. As we should all know by now, the former president is motivated more by desire than by reason.

This is not the work of a grand strategist. This is a sort of cry for help from a man so insecure that he needs constant validation even after eight years in the White House. He is to be pitied.

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.

We’ve all heard horror stories about how difficult it is to fire exceptionally bad public school teachers in large urban districts.  Thanks to a chart (see below) in a new lawsuit challenging California’s teacher tenure law, now we know why.

The parties behind the lawsuit, discussed by Larry Sands in City Journal California, simply ask the California judicial system to make sure “that the policies embodied in the California Code of Education place the interests of students first and promote the goal of having an effective teacher in every classroom.”

Part of achieving that goal may involve requiring every California school district to comply with the Stull Act, a forty-year-old law that mandates using some measure of student learning outcomes in every teacher’s performance evaluation.  You won’t be shocked to discover that this law currently goes unenforced.

That is, unless the lawsuits Sands discusses are successful.  If that happens, students just might start getting the level of education so many of their parents are paying for in taxes.

Remember when Obama  solemnly and repeatedly promised that “if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them?”

If not, don’t beat yourself up.  He has broken so many promises that no reasonable person can keep tally.

But score another casualty to ObamaCare specifically.  According to The Wall Street Journal, college students should expect their plans to become more expensive or disappear altogether:

“Some colleges are dropping student-health plans for the coming academic year and others are telling students to expect sharp premium increases because of a provision in the federal health law requiring plans to beef up coverage.  The demise of low-cost, low-benefit health plans for students is a consequence of the 2010 health care overhaul.  The law is intended to expand coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, but it is also eliminating some insurance options.”

Moreover, that consequence will likely be widespread:

“The new rules are likely to affect a broad swath of American colleges.  Some 60% of schools’ plans had coverage of $50,000 or less for specific conditions, and almost all of the rest have some sort of payout caps that they will have to do away with by 2014, the GAO study found.”

And the Obama Administration’s response?  They apparently couldn’t care a whole lot less.  “The Obama Administration,” the report notes, “argues that the most limited benefit plans colleges previously offered hardly counted as coverage at all.”

Yeah, that should motivate the youth vote for Obama just like those vapid, naive days of 2008.

The old saying goes that “close” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Well, last night’s Wisconsin recall election must have been a really explosive hand grenade, according to the Washington Post. Drudge has been making fun of the Post for sub-heading its story on Gov. Scott Walker’s victory a “close vote.” Well, I went the extra mile and compared this “close” election to the Post’s handling of another one with very similar results.

In reporting on Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, the text of the Post story called it a “Democratic rout.” And what was Obama’s margin over John McCain? It was 7.2 percent. What was Walker’s margin over Tom Barrett last night? A nearly identical 6.8 percent. Yet the first was a “rout,” while the second was a “close vote.”

Hmmmm….. maybe what the Post meant was that last night was “close to being a rout.”

Pity our poor friends in Europe. They just can’t seem to stomach the lesson that the faltering state of the continental monetary union has made all but impossible to ignore. Rather than making a clean break from the common currency, it now appears that the smart set wants to double down. This item, appearing earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, is nothing short of chilling in its implications:

Germany is sending strong signals that it would eventually be willing to lift its objections to ideas such as common euro-zone bonds or mutual support for European banks if other European governments were to agree to transfer further powers to Europe.

If embraced, the move would deepen in fundamental ways Europe’s political and fiscal union and represent one of the boldest steps taken by the bloc since the euro was launched. Germany has never before been willing to discuss the conditions it believes necessary to move toward assuming common risks within the euro zone. Now, although the end may be a long way off, it appears willing to discuss those conditions.

“The more that other member states get involved with this development and are prepared to give up sovereign rights to get European institutions more involved, the more we will be prepared to play an active role in developing things like a banking union,” a German official familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal. “You can’t have one without the other.”

Translation: the Europeans are seriously considering throwing the car in reverse and seeing just how far they can push the speedometer. It’s true that an economic union without a matching political consolidation was always doomed to fail (the practical effect has been Southern Europe living off the North), but the move towards a true United States of Europe brings to mind James Madison’s observation from Federalist #10 about destroying liberty in order to cure the problem of political faction: the cure is worse than the disease.

A continent-wide government will destroy all pretense of national sovereignty throughout Europe, leaving the bureaucrats of Brussels to steer a bold new course that will vanquish the national character of some of the world’s proudest nations, perpetuate a failing economic model, and cede previously democratic powers to unelected technocrats.

Let us pray that Europe doesn’t go down this road. If it does, the burden of Western leadership will fall even more disproportionately on American shoulders than it does already.

Cato expert Mark A. Calabria suggests a simple reform that would make decisions by the Federal Reserve Board more responsive to America’s different regional economies – include at least one board member from each Federal Reserve region.

Congress imposed a “geographic diversity” requirement upon the Fed for good reason. Regions of the country do not move together. Nevada’s 11.7 percent unemployment rate, for example, is significantly above South Dakota’s 4.3 percent. If the Fed lacks a wide range of voices, then its policies are not likely to reflect the economic differences across our country. An interest rate policy that might be appropriate for New York City, and its financial sector, might not be appropriate for industrial Ohio. Just the fact that only one current Fed governor, Janet Yellen from San Francisco, is from west of the Mississippi raises questions as to the legitimacy of Fed decision-making.

Calabria points out that another benefit of diversifying board membership is that doing so follows the law.  The Federal Reserve Act requires that, regarding members of the board, “not more than one of whom shall be selected from any one Federal Reserve district,” so that those making monetary policy decisions “shall have due regard to a fair representation of… geographical divisions of the country.”

Unsurprisingly, this easy to apply standard was recently violated when President Barack Obama nominated and the liberal Senate confirmed new members from Massachusetts and Maryland, even though two current members also hail from those states.  Combine this with the New York Fed’s distinction as the only district with a permanent vote, and there is a regional – and arguably illegal – bias in favor of the Northeast.

Every region of the country should be represented equally when the Fed Governors decide how much money to print and where to peg the interest rate.  To be sure, it would be better if the free market was deciding these issues, but that’s not the reality of the 21st century’s administrative state.  With that in mind, perhaps the cry could be, “No manipulation without representation!”

Those who believe that it’s in the best interest of the nation for Barack Obama’s presidency to terminate next January have been feeling their oats a bit lately. As Jennifer Rubin noted yesterday at the Washington Post’s “Right Turn” blog:

Whatever you think is the cause of the economic doldrums, it has now dawned on the Democrats and the press that Obama could lose this thing.

Quite so. But even if one indulges in the most optimistic projections for November, there’s a danger in getting too comfortable. There could be mischief brewing for the lame duck congressional session following the presidential election. As Conn Carroll reports in the Washington Examiner:

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Wednesday, [Senator John] Kerry announced that he would not be submitting the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea [LOST] for a vote before the November election. Instead, Kerry intends to hold a series of hearings before the election, building the case for passage, before pushing the treaty in a lame-duck session. This is the exact same game plan Kerry executed to pass the New START treaty during the 2010 lame duck…

…If the Senate approves LOST this December, any country that believes itself harmed by global warming could force the U.S. into binding arbitration, most likely in front of the Annex VII Arbitral Tribunal, LOST’s default dispute resolution forum.

Any judgment from that tribunal would be final, unappealable, and immediately enforceable in U.S. federal court. In 1982, a similar arbitration body forced Canada to set hourly caps on their sulfur dioxide emissions, causing industry to spend millions on mitigation efforts. A LOST tribunal could set similar caps on U.S. carbon emissions, triggering trillions in economic damage.

Cap and trade, of course, was Obama’s other major first-term initiative besides Obamacare, but when the politics surrounding the former issue became toxic — and congressional Republicans hit back hard on the cap and trade plan — the administration backed off. But is anyone willing to bet that Obama’s sense of fair play will prevent him from backdooring through the policy in the dying days of his administration?

If so, you’d have to believe that a president who has no compunctions about stripping fundamental religious freedoms through administrative fiat, who’s already busy promising the Russian government that he’ll “have more flexibility” on missile defense when he doesn’t have to face the American electorate again, and who has already flirted with extralegal methods for enacting international carbon reduction would suddenly be stricken by conscience after facing the sting of rejection from the voters.

Those odds don’t look good. Which is why conservatives need to remain on guard until the day Obama departs for Chicago.

Technically, the pricey new ship in the U.S. Navy’s fleet as of 2014 is a destroyer named DDG-1000.  It comes equipped with electromagnetic “railguns,” a “wave-piercing” hull that doesn’t leave a wake, and “advanced sonar and missiles.”

But before you get too excited, the DDG-1000 program might get terminated before too long for two reasons.

The first is that like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the DDG-1000 is threatening to set records with cost overruns.  According to Fox News, at $3.1 billion per ship a DDG-1000 costs about twice as much as current destroyers.  (The total price tag hits $7 billion each “when research and development is added in…”)

The second is perhaps even more problematic.  Chinese Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong issued a warning about the alleged capabilities of the ‘super-stealth’ DDG-1000.  All he would need to overcome the ship’s technological advantages would be to swarm the vessel with several fishing boats laden with explosives.  If one gets through – on a suicide mission, of course – it could literally blow up US taxpayers’ investment.

Nice things cost money, and even the best technology can be laid to waste by comparatively low-tech responses.  Still, public and private watch dog groups need to keep an eye on how the DDG-1000 develops.  We can’t afford not to.

American liberals need to be thinking abut 1975. That was the year that President Gerald Ford denied Russian dissident and staunch anti-communist Alexander Solzhenitsyn an audience at the White House, a snub to all those who defended freedom against the depredations of the Soviet Union throughout the world.

Despite the fact that Ford was a Republican president (albeit an unelected one), the conservative movement (to its credit) disowned him on the issue. By the following year, the indignity that Ford forced upon the author of The Gulag Archipelago was one of the many reasons that conservatives were looking to deny the incumbent president renomination. So why is this germane to liberals? Because of this passage, courtesy of Matthew Kaminski at the Wall Street Journal, which Tim also highlighted in his column last week:

Among this year’s 13 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Mr. Obama posthumously honored Jan Karski. As a member of the Polish underground during World War II, Karski was the first to provide eyewitness evidence of the Nazi extermination of Jews in occupied Europe…

The Poles wanted Lech Walesa to receive the medal on Karski’s behalf, but the White House nixed the choice. Last year, during Mr. Obama’s visit to Poland, the hero of Solidarity refused to attend a large gathering to meet the younger leader. Mr. Walesa felt entitled to a tete-a-tete. Administration officials told Polish journalists that Mr. Walesa’s presence was too “political” for this week’s occasion. Poles read something else into it: Mr. Obama holds grudges.

Lech Walesa was leading the fight for the freedom of  the Polish people back when Barack Obama was still sashaying around his New York apartment in a sarong, scribbling pretentious, adolescent musings to one of his composite girlfriends. Walesa deserved the one-on-one in Poland. And he deserved the stage in the East Room of the White House last week for the Medal of Freedom Ceremony.

As for Barack Obama, he deserves the rebuke of all those who esteem freedom, but especially his fellow liberals. If they can’t bring themselves to have a moment similar to the one conservatives had in 1975 — one in which principle trumps partisanship — they will have revealed their supposed affection for human rights to be little more than election year pablum.

Byron York explains why President Barack Obama is not campaigning on behalf of Tom Barrett, the Democrat running against Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin’s recall election on Tuesday:

The latest poll on the recall battle shows why Obama is staying away. It’s not just that he doesn’t want to appear with a loser. Perhaps just as importantly, there is no advantage for Obama to risk his own popularity by making a high-profile visit to oppose policies that are finding increasing favor with voters.

The new poll, from Marquette University Law School, shows Walker leading Barrett 52 percent to 45 percent. Beyond the horse race, the Marquette pollsters also asked about specific elements of Walker’s reforms. It turns out some of the key elements of those policies — reforms Obama strongly opposed — are now winning the day.

Those policies include:

• 75% of voters in favor of “requiring public employees to contribute to their own pensions and pay more for health insurance.”

• 55% of voters in favor of “limiting collective bargaining for most public employees.”

• 54% of voters thinking Wisconsin is better off in the long run because of the changes in state government

With these numbers and 52% of voters preferring him, Scott Walker appears likely to keep his job.  If Wisconsin voters start to apply the same poll questions to Obama’s failed economic policies – forty months of 8% unemployment, doubling the national debt in just one term in office – they’ll come to the opposite conclusion about the President.

No wonder he doesn’t want to be seen in Wisconsin.

The Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) this week joined a coalition of leading free market organizations opposing the federal Black Box Mandate, a provision included in the Senate version of the Highway Bill (SEC. 31406 of S. 1813) that would require all passenger motor vehicles in the United States, beginning with model year 2015, to be fitted with event data recorders (EDRs) that would collect all driving habits of consumers. 

The provision, which is currently being contemplated in a House-Senate conference committee on the Highway Bill, threatens to violate the privacy rights of consumers and burdens manufactures and small businesses with yet another costly, misguided and unnecessary federal mandate.

CFIF is encouraging all of our supporters and activists to visit the coalition website and sign the pledge to their Members of Congress and President Obama “to oppose any federal action to mandate the use of black box data recorders in personal vehicles.”  The pledge goes on to state that the Black Box Mandate:

1. Is an infringement on personal privacy and freedoms. 
2. Would be a slippery slope for Government to track citizen’s transportation habits and location. 
3. Is both an unnecessary expansion of government police power and an undue mandate on consumers and business.

Visit http://www.blackboxmandate.org to sign the pledge now.