Freedom Line Blog

Pity Peter Beinart. The former New Republic editor was once a voice of intellectual independence on the left — even going so far as to write a 2006 book arguing that it was incumbent upon liberals to aggressively prosecute the War on Terror.

A prophet is despised in his own country, however, and in the world of Washington punditry it’s more common for the prophet to change than the country. Thus, Beinart — after years of being labeled a Zionist warmonger by his colleagues on the left — has turned tail and run into the arms of his left-wing brethren. The source of his rebirth? A scathing rebuke to what he calls “the American Jewish Establishment” in the New York Review of Books and a decided retreat from his previous muscularity on foreign policy.

Having claimed sanctuary with the left, Beinart is now drifting into the realm of liberal self-parody. As his party stands on the precipice of what could be one of the largest midterm election refutations in history, he takes to the virtual pages of the Daily Beast today to confidently proclaim that Barack Obama is “a lock” for reelection in 2012. The only problem is that the self-styled intellectual’s data has been tortured until it confesses his preferred outcome. Consider:

Of course Barack Obama is likely to be reelected. For starters, American presidents usually get reelected. In the last 75 years, incumbents have lost a grand total of three times: in 1976, 1980, and 1992. And what did Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush all have in common? They had serious primary challenges within their own party (from Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, and Pat Buchanan, respectively). The last president who lost reelection without a major primary challenge was Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Beinart’s historical invocation is deeply flawed. He seems to have chosen a period of 75 years only because it yields the most favorable outcome for his thesis. But should the 1936 election really be taken with equal weight as 1992 in understanding modern American politics? Look at it this way: the same data could be used to say that three of the last six presidents have failed to be elected to a second term — that 50 % failure rate provides no room for the confidence that Beinart is peddling.

As for primary challenges, this a more subtle, but still flawed, analysis. In all likelihood, Beinart has the causation wrong. Presidents don’t lose because they have primary challenges. They have primary challenges because of the weakness that ends up leading to their loss. Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43 simply did a better job of managing their coalitions than Ford, Carter, or Bush 41. But had the latter three not been challenged for their party’s nomination, it’s still not safe to say they would have been on sure footing for reelection.

Were Beinart not imbibing Organizing for America soma, he could have produced a more thoughtful piece. The landscape for Obama in 2012 probably looks closer to that facing George W. Bush in 2004 than any of the earlier models he cites. Like Bush, Obama’s tenure has led to some (still relatively stifled) disquiet in his own party and has polarized public opinion at large — making a majority in the electoral college very tough sledding. But like Bush, he also has the benefits of incumbency and a known brand of leadership to take into an election where the opposition’s bullpen is  thus far a mile wide and an inch deep.

This is no time for triumphalism on the left. Obama certainly retains the prospects of being reelected in 2012. But if he does, it will be a street fight, not a coronation.

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.

The fusion of the Tea Party and Republican Party is underway, according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal.  Of particular interest is the headway being made in Virginia where Tea Party activists are keeping Republican politicians’ feet to the fire.

Virginia’s statewide tea-party alliance is perhaps the most advanced of any in the country, both in organization and in its own interactions with the GOP.

Its convention this weekend is expected to draw the cream of the state Republican Party and at least 3,000 participants. The state’s top three Republicans—Gov. Bob McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and Attorney Gen. Ken Cuccinelli—all agreed to attend and field questions, but as mere panelists, not keynote speakers.

“The party is trying to mollify the tea-party folks, if only as a protective measure,” says Mr. Cuccinelli, who rose to office last year with the support of thousands of tea-party activists.

Messrs. McDonnell and Bolling see it differently. “I am going because I am driven, and the tea-party members are driven, by the same ideas,” says Mr. McDonnell. Mr. Bolling says his message to the convention will be “that we stand with them and we appreciate their involvement in the political process.”

Several events have helped to push Virginia to the vanguard of a national tea-party movement. A huge sales-tax increase in 2004, passed with the help of Republican votes, stirred a rebellion among the party’s base and helped propel a new crop of conservatives to power last November, including Messrs. McDonnell, Bolling and Cuccinelli.

Accountability is coming to the political process.  Double-dealing politicos beware.

Earlier, CFIF profiled Eric Singer of Congressional Effect Management as the foremost proponent of avoiding political risk by investing in the stock market only when Congress it out of session.  In his own commentary, Singer blasts Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) do-nothing-right caucus for failing to address the budget crisis they created:

As the nation watches in horror as its debt begins to grow beyond the point of no return, the Congressional Budget Office continues statically scoring all legislation.

It assumes that if tax rates are raised, taxes received by the Treasury will go up proportionately. It disregards the impact of the extra 10 billion hours it now takes to figure out our taxes.

It ignores the fact that in the face of 1,400 new regulations from health care and financial overhauls (Sarbanes-Oxley had only 16), virtually all businesses will slow down and hoard cash as they try to understand what the new rules might be.

Static scoring assumes that the uncertainty created by the presence of new laws and new regulations does not affect behavior or taxes collected. Static scoring assumes some sucker will always be available to buy our debt no matter how much we waste. Worst of all, it assumes no one will change behavior to reduce taxes.

Every assumption of the static scoring model is demonstrably false. Higher tax rates usually result in lower revenues as people change their actions to reduce their tax burden. This will certainly happen if some or all of the Bush tax cuts expire and the economy continues to sag as a result. The time, cost and restraints of new regulations can choke businesses.

The kind of rampant uncertainty caused by the explosion in federal regulations will continue to slow America’s economic recovery.  Riffing on Singer, maybe after passing CFIF’s ‘One More Vote’ initiative, the country can pass a constitutional amendment to limit the amount of congressional work days.

H/T: Investor’s Business Daily

Not a good sign … but a nice moment of levity with the President:

In a revealing analysis the researchers at Rasmussen Reports found that although voter anger at the political class is at record highs, campaign contributions from individuals are drying up.  Why would people fed up with the political system not be pouring money into contested races?  Probably because the memory of Republican free-spending is still so fresh in the public’s mind.

The Rasmussen telephone survey found that while most of the respondents thought campaign contributions are important to winning, they think a candidate’s political positions is the ultimate deciding factor.

So there you have it.  For candidates running this year it sounds like voters are expecting ideological purity to trump fundraising prowess.  Hopefully, they’re right.

First, a disclosure: I am very partial to interesting (and inconsequential) number combinations, such as 12:34 on a digital clock.  Silly?  Yes.  Unusual?  Well…

The Tenth Amendment Center (TAC) launched a multi-city tour called “Nullify Now!” that encourages state governments to ignore federal laws they deem unconstitutional.  The second stop on the tour occurs on October 10, 2010, or as TAC enthusiasts prefer, 10-10-10.

Here’s a blurb about the headliners participating in the tour:

Speaking at the event will be a number of national and local personalities. Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico who many think will be running for president as a republican in 2012, will be joined by New York Times best-selling author Thomas E. Woods Jr., who received his master’s from Harvard and Ph.D. from Columbia, as keynote speakers for the event. Also speaking will be Jim Babka, president of DownsizeDC, Tampa-based author and activist Tom Mullen, and Trevor Lyman, best-known as the architect of the 2007 “Ron Paul money bombs” which resulted in the largest single-day fundraising efforts in election history.

Launched in September, 2010, the Nullify Now! tour is currently scheduled to visit six cities around the country (Ft. Worth, Orlando, Chattanooga, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Minneapolis), with ten more locations being planned for 2011, said event organizers. The tour focuses efforts on educating people that whatever their political persuasion is, they can affect far more change on a state, rather than a federal, level.

For those interested in the history and use of nullification, tour speaker Thomas Woods’ Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21^st Century is one of the best arguments for using the controversial idea first conceived by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.  (Spoiler Alert: Abolitionists in antebellum America found it particularly useful when refusing to enforce the ‘runaway slave’ laws.)

H/T: Forbes.com

Arthur Laffer brought us the famed Laffer Curve, which plotted how higher tax rates can paradoxically reduce incoming revenues by inhibiting economic growth.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Laffer adds to his legacy by showing how state income taxes lead to lower economic growth, personal income and population growth.  The impetus for Laffer’s analysis is ballot Initiative 1098 in the state of Washington, which would impose a new 5% income tax on individuals earning over $200,000 or couples over $400,000 per year.  An additional 4% would be heaped upon individuals earning over $500,000 or couples earning over $1 million.  Laffer crunches the real-world economic numbers, which clearly demonstrate that this is a destructive idea.  He shows that the nine states without a personal income tax enjoy 26.5% higher economic growth, 13.1% higher personal income growth and 9.4% higher population growth than the nine staes with the highest personal income tax rates. The highest-tax states also suffer 22% lower tax revenue growth and underperform in standard of living.

As Laffer neatly summarizes, “Each and every state that introduced an income tax saw its share of total U.S. output decline.”  He can’t stop states from descending into economic self-destruction, but he provides a great service by providing this warning beacon.

The Los Angeles Times — that bastion of journalistic daring do — has discovered that recessions cause job losses. Don’t laugh — they will probably submit this to the Pulitzer people.

What really steams the Times’ clams, however, is that manual labor is being replaced by mechanical automation. Writing in this morning’s edition of the paper, reporter Alana Semuels notes:

Forced to cut costs during the recession, employers across the country are looking at ways to avoid hiring. They’ve accelerated use of computers and technology, replacing administrative assistants with software, cashiers with self-service kiosks and laborers with machines.

These structural changes mean some jobs that disappeared during the recession may never come back. Productivity gains are good for company profits and help the economy grow over the long run. But in the short term, the shift is exacerbating America’s jobless recovery.

Kudos to Semuels for at least noting the importance of productivity gains, but there’s a still something of a misdirect here. It’s probably an overstatement to say that employers “are looking at ways to avoid hiring” (my money is on the fact that most employers would love to be in a financial position to consider new employees). While there are many instances where shifting to automation is inherently superior to relying on labor, the scales are tilted by government intervention. Consider this passage from elsewhere in the article:

“Labor is so expensive,” said [farmer Mike] Young, whose great-grandfather started farming row crops in Kern County in 1910. “There’s their wages, truck, insurance, workers’ comp and the safety regulations. We went to a high-value crop that needed less labor input.”

Notice a trend? With the single exemption of trucks (and even that’s debatable given California’s automotive taxes), these are all factors created or exacerbated by government. California has one of the highest minimum wages in the nation, a heavily regulated insurance sector, and excessive workers’ comp and safety regulations. Technology may have an inherent economic appeal, but the challenge it presents to labor is only compounded by state government’s attempts to “help” the working man.

Apart from government distortions of the market, however, there is a bigger point to be made here. Technology’s displacements of the labor force may be jarring, but they lead to a stronger economy (the capital savings can be directed towards more productive investments) and an infinitely better life for all Americans. After all, we could have attempted to protect the horse-drawn carriage industry by suppressing the development of the automobile, subsidized makers of candlesticks and gas lamps by impeding the development of the light bulb, and employed many more bank tellers by standing athwart the ATM. But we’d live in a society that had made decisively less progress from 100 years ago than the one we currently inhabit.

This principle was captured brilliantly by the French political economist Frederic Bastiat in a satirical letter that he wrote to the French Parliament under the aegis of seeking “protection” for his nation’s candlestick makers:

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us.

When you’re 150 years behind the French on economics, you know you’re in trouble. Or that you work for the Los Angeles Times.

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.

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

4:00 p.m. CDT:    Megan Brown, Senior Litigation Associate at Wiley Rein LLP re: the United States Supreme Court’s 2010 Term

4:30 p.m. CDT:    Sonja Eddings Brown, The Kitchen Cabinet re: Tea Party Influence over Republican Party

5:00 p.m. CDT:    Cindy Sarver, Crime Prevention Specialist, Santa Rosa County (FL) re: Violence Prevention

5:30 p.m. CDT:    Dr. Scott Barbour, Docs4PatientCare re: Repealing Obamacare

Please share your comments, thoughts and questions at (850) 623-1330, or listen via the Internet by clicking here.  You won’t want to miss this!

Who says Congressional Democrats don’t have a death wish for their party’s future?  Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is openly stating his intent to pass an amnesty bill during the lame duck session between the November 2010 midterm elections and swearing in the new Congress in January.

And get this for his rationale:

“A lot of senators are retiring and might be willing to look at the issue,” Menendez said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We need something to jump off from if we’re going to go into it in the early part of the next Congress.”

What Menendez should have said is that a lot of senators will be nursing grudges during their four eight weeks notice of being fired, and might be willing to stick it to voters on a controversial issue.

If the liberals running the Democrat Party go through with threats like this to ram through unpopular agenda items during a lame duck session they will ensure minority status for their party for several election cycles to come.

H/T: Politico

It’s the first Monday in October which means that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is back in session.  Uber-liberal constitutional law expert Erwin Chemerinsky is not celebrating the occasion.  Instead, he bemoans the conservative ‘take-over’ of the court and sites as evidence the fact that Republican presidents from Nixon to Bush II made a total of 12 appointments to SCOTUS while only two Democrat nominees made it onto the bench.  (Bill Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, while Jimmy Carter was faced with no vacancies during his term.)

Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Irvine’s law school, singles out 4 of the 12 appointments (John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) as proof of the conservative ascendency.  But for conservatives a success rate of 33% is hardly a victory; especially when considering that both of President Barack Obama’s SCOTUS appointments replaced Republican nominees, yet didn’t alter the conservative-liberal voting patterns.  Gerald Ford appointed John Paul Stevens, a man who ended his tenure as the leader o the court’s liberal bloc.  Bush I appointed David Souter, a justice who voted in lock-step with Stevens and the court’s other liberals.

True, Bush I gave us Thomas, and Reagan hit a home run with Scalia, but Reagan also put soul-crushing moderates like Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy on the bench; two people who repeatedly frustrated conservatives on issues across the political spectrum.  Ironically, at least to some, is the SCOTUS legacy of Bush II who made solid conservative appointments with Roberts and Alito.  That these two often team with Thomas and Scalia (and manage to cajole Kennedy to heed his better angels) is more the result of a historical accident than a carefully executed strategy.

Imagine the kind of country we could be enjoying had Republican presidents from Nixon to Bush I had a conservative justice success rate of 66% rather than 33%.  As it is, since at least the Eisenhower Administration (Earl Warren, William Brennan) liberals like Chemerinsky have benefited handsomely from liberal appointments by supposedly conservative GOP presidents.

With the numerous negative consequences of ObamaCare starting to materialize, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses efforts by the administration and the Left to muzzle the bill’s opponents and victims.

Throughout the ObamaCare debate, President Obama promised that, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan.”  Nearly every single day, however, it seems that yet another healthcare plan becomes a casualty of ObamaCare.

Last week, McDonald’s made headlines when it revealed that a low-cost “mini-med” healthcare plan for 30,000 employees may now be “economically prohibitive” due to ObamaCare.  Now, we receive news that 3M will discontinue a group healthcare plan for retirees not old enough to receive Medicare by 2015.  The reason?  “Health care reform has made it more difficult for employers like 3M to provide a plan that will remain competitive.”

The White House continues to wage a Soviet-style campaign against private enterprises that dare deliver the inconvenient news that ObamaCare is already destroying the healthcare marketplace, but killing messenger after messenger won’t change simple reality.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Release:  CFIF’s “One More Vote” Campaign Launches Ad in Support of a Balanced Federal Budget with No New Taxes
Lee:  Spend, Then Tax: Like Killing One’s Parents, Then Pleading for Mercy as an Orphan
Senik:  Obama’s New Stimulus – Bailing Out the Classified Section
Ellis:  Conservative Latinos Launch Bus Tour for Carly Fiorina

Freedom Minute Video:  The Duty to Remain Silent – Liberals Stifle Free Speech on ObamaCare
Podcast:  Campaign to Force Washington to Stop the Excessive Spending
Jester’s Courtroom:  Sweet Dreams Are Not Made of This

Editorial Cartoons: Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz: Question of the Week
Notable Quotes: Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

Interview with CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik on CFIF’s “One More Vote” grassroots campaign to force Washington to balance the federal budget annually without leaving a back door open to tax increases.

Listen to the interview here.

One week ago, we were treated to the pathetic spectacle of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert “testifying” before Congress in character.  Colbert was invited by Representative Zoe Lofgren (D – California), but even House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D – Maryland) called it “an embarrassment” and “not appropriate.”  Now this week, President Obama labeled Comedy Central host Jon Stewart’s farcical October 30 rally in Washington, D.C. “really important.”  With all of the domestic and international issues pressing the White House and our nation generally, not to mention a pivotal election just days later, Obama considers Stewart’s inanity “really important?”

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, coming from a man who was elected largely on the basis of a cartoon “Hope” poster.

How’s this for drive-by media bias?  Today’s Washington Post runs the deceptive headline “Report Gives Stimulus Package High Marks.” Hmmm.  That sounds like a counterintuitive “Man Bites Dog” story worth reading.  So who issued the report?  The Post’s first paragraph admits that it comes from White House itself.  Worse, it was overseen by that respected rock of good judgment and common sense, Vice President Joe Biden.

Even with that baked-in bias, the White House report doesn’t seem to focus on how the $814 billion “stimulus” supposedly succeeded.  Rather, it emphasizes how the effort has already distributed 70% of the allocated funds, and managed to avoid “the fraud charges that plague more routine government spending programs.”  That’s it?  That’s the best that even Joe Biden can claim?  That should actually come as discouraging news, not encouraging news, to “stimulus” proponents.  After all, if 70% of its funds have already been spent, but we still haven’t experienced its promised results, what remains other than $814 billion added to our nation’s debt?  The White House promised that unemployment would top out twelve months ago at 8% if the bill passed, but we remain stuck at 9.6%.  Instead of igniting our economic furnace, it has merely clouded growth and undermined the business and hiring climate.

The White House and its apologists speculatively claim that the “stimulus” averted another great depression, but today’s Wall Street Journal carries an analysis by former Senator Phil Gramm devastating that assertion.  Gramm compares U.S. growth and employment figures to other developed countries that didn’t engage in the irresponsible “stimulus” profligacy we did, and shows that we lag far behind.  As the Post story notes, Obama’s “stimulus” was “the largest effort in U.S. history to counteract the effects of a recession.”  All it has done is prove once again that government doesn’t create jobs or growth, but economic uncertainty and debt.

While it keeps the entertainment industry’s wheels greased, that’s the conclusion that Reason has come to. And it’s hard to dispute their conclusion: