Freedom Line Blog

Amid the national debate over whether to amend the 14th Amendment to prohibit automatic birthright citizenship for “anchor babies” of illegal immigrants, we receive startling data from a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data.  In 2008, according to the numbers, illegal immigrant parents accounted for some 8% of births in America – one out of every twelve.

Although illegal immigrants constitute 4% of the American adult population, the Census data indicates that they account for twice that percentage of newborns.  The terms of the 14th Amendment grant citizenship to”all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” and courts have interpreted that to grant birthright citizenship.  Amendment proponents, however, argue that those terms fairly aimed to protect freed slaves from attempts to deny them equal rights under the law, not to confer automatic U.S. citizenship to illegal immigrants’ offspring.

Regardless of the legal and constitutional merits for or against the amendment, the new data adds startling new practical, real-world, objective perspective to the debate.

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.

Here’s Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) take on President Barack Obama’s Clintonian ability to triangulate:

Looking ahead, Ryan says “a lot of people speculate on whether [President Obama] will triangulate like [Bill] Clinton did” after the GOP sweep in 1994. The Wisconsin Republican isn’t holding his breath. “I don’t know whether that’s really who [Obama] is,” Ryan says. “First, the economy is not going to be like it was in 1995 or 1996. Second, the president is a liberal and Clinton was arguably a centrist. And third, I just don’t think that [Obama] is willing to admit that all the things he did during the first two years of his presidency were wrong, because I don’t think he believes that. I don’t see a big triangulation happening.”

As summer traipses towards fall, the president’s persistence in his agenda is making it more and more likely that he will force his 2012 reelection campaign to be a referendum on him and his ideas.  Hopefully, Republicans will nominate someone who can not only define those deficiencies, but also articulate a better way forward.

H/T: The Corner at National Review Online

Everyone except Paul Krugman at least acknowledges that paying for the recently extended unemployment benefits Congress just authorized is a serious issue; even if some consider it outweighed by other concerns.

In addition to increasing the national debt, extending unemployment benefits may also increase unemployment itself.  As Thomas Cooley explains in Forbes, studies show that unemployment benefits can reduce the urgency to find a new job.  However, Cooley mentions another phenomenon that bears further meditation:

Economists Lawrence Katz and Bruce Meyer, in a 1990 study, showed that an increase of one week of benefits increased the duration of unemployment by about 0.2 weeks. Note that some benefits have been extended up to 99 weeks. A back-of-the-envelope calculation means that going from 26 weeks of benefits to 99 would increase unemployment duration by about 14 weeks very close to the increase in duration shown in Figure 3. Recently, however, in a testimony to the Joint Economic Committee (April 29, 2010) the very same Katz said that the effects are small. The difference between the 1990 study and his current finding is that, according to his research, permanent job losses as opposed to temporary layoffs have played a bigger part in this recession. (Emphasis mine)

Unlike Krugman, I’m not one to quibble with logic and empirical data.  But the current unemployment situation is different from the usual circumstance of entities within a sector reshuffling the staff rosters.  Such events cause minor displacements – though not to individual workers and their families – and can be smoothed out when laid off workers find comparable employment in the same or similar industry.

This recession is different.  As the bolded text above shows there appears to be an economy-wide reduction in workforce afoot.  Employers are discovering unknown efficiencies with contingency workers.  In many cases, former full-time, full-benefit workers are being hired back as independent contractors for project work with no benefits.

Once employers get used to getting more production for less compensation, those former full-time, full-benefit jobs won’t be coming back.  That poses a serious quandary for limited government conservatives.  Should government provide a benefits supplement for those working multiple jobs, but still failing to pay the bills, even if it means adding to the deficit?  On the other hand, should benefits be cut to stop the fiscal bleeding with the hope that the former recipients find a way to make ends meet?

Whatever path is chosen, conservatives need to think hard about how to combine stopping the government spending with policies that enable sustainable private sector job creation.

Last week, CFIF’s Timothy Lee did a terrific job laying out the justification for President Harry Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 65 years ago this month to bring about the end of World War II.

As I mentioned in this space during President Obama’s visit to Japan back in November, the President doesn’t seem to appreciate the significance of that historical moment. At the time of his Asia trip, Obama was unwilling to close the door on attending an anniversary ceremony to commemorate the bombings — something no previous American president had even considered.

While we can be thankful that Obama himself didn’t make the trip (Michelle probably couldn’t get a connecting flight from Spain), the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John Roos, is attending as a member of the official delegation — another unprecedented display of undue deference. Translation: same groveling, less press stateside.

Writing in the Korea Times, former Scripps Howard editor Dan Thomasson gives blistering rebuke:

The military-industrial complex that brutalized much of Asia for more than a decade, killing millions, had loosed the furies that in the end brought about the horror that was visited on these two cities and their residents. The dead and dying there were victims of their own government, not the United States.

No matter what revisionists would have us believe, without that ultimate retribution, America and its allies faced the loss of up to a million men and women in the invasion of the Japanese home islands where the fanatical leaders were prepared for whatever it took to resist, including the immediate murder of prisoners of war. President Harry Truman had little choice other than to give the order that ultimately would change the world and its balance of power.

There might have been some justification for the appearance of an American official at these ceremonies had there ever been such an official presence from the Japanese at any Pearl Harbor memorial or any admission of guilt in the horrendous atrocities committed on the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos and Burmese.

The mass beheadings and rapes at Nanking are only one small example. As far as I know, no official Japanese wreath has been laid at the tomb of the U.S.S. Arizona where American sailors rest, true victims one and all.

It’s bad enough that the president is abandoning American greatness in the here and now. But it’s entirely intolerable for him to dishonor the memories of those who have secured it in the past.

After being called back to Washington, D.C. from Congress’ August recess by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House of Representatives yesterday passed a $26 billion “jobs bill” that is in large part a bailout for teachers unions. 

Prior to the vote, Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) summed up what the House was up to during a must-read floor speech:

Mr. Speaker:  Many people are asking why Congress is here today.  I think the answer’s pretty simple: we’re not bankrupting the country fast enough and so we need to come back and spend more.

In the merciful week that Congress was not in session, my constituents had one message: STOP THE SPENDING.  Obviously, Congress isn’t listening.

Over the past two years, this administration and this Congress have increased spending by nearly 18 percent and run up more debt in two years than the irresponsible Bush administration did in all of its eight years combined.  Meanwhile, unemployment has increased from 7.6 to 9.5 percent.  Yet the problem in the view of House Democrats is that we just haven’t spent enough.   So we gather here today to shovel another $26 billion at the problem. …

Mr. Speaker, with the nation now some 13.2 trillion in debt – 93 percent of the entire economy – it is time to invoke the first law of holes: when you’re in one – stop digging.  And if Congress doesn’t invoke that law now, I can all but guarantee you the American people will invoke it in November.

Read and watch Rep. McClintock’s entire floor speech here.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which seeks to impose big-government Net Neutrality upon America and its innovative Internet sector by whatever compulsory means necessary, has now offended even radio host Howard Stern to such a degree that he swears he’ll “never vote for a Democrat again.”  Stern, who in the past has supported Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry for president, said he reached his conclusion because of ‘the fact that these Democrats on the FCC are Communists – they’re for COMMUNISM.”

We don’t know that what Lyndon Johnson allegedly said about Walter Cronkite (“if I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America”) can necessarily be said about Howard Stern, but it certainly speaks volumes when even Stern begins to label the FCC “Communists” and accuses them of “gangsterism.”  We just can’t wait for MSNBC’s farcical primetime lineup to attack Stern in the same way that they targeted the Tea Party for speaking up.

As November’s elections loom increasingly dire for Democrats, their mainstream media waterboys desperately recast the American electorate as “anti-incumbent” rather than the more accurate “anti-liberal” or “anti-Democrat.”  Today’s latest example:  The Washington Post, perhaps liberals’ chief media waterboy, reacted to last night’s primary elections with their daily political newsletter headline “Senator’s Win Tests Anti-Incumbency Theory.”

The Post’s Dan Balz bizarrely claims that a Democratic incumbent beating a Democrat challenger endorsed by Bill Clinton somehow alters our assessment of America’s mood:

Senator Michael Bennet (D) of Colorado turned back a sharp challenge from former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff on Tuesday night on a busy day of primaries that offered fresh clues about the anti-establishment mood of voters…  Bennet’s challenge was seen as the latest test of anti-incumbent sentiment in a year in which two Senators and four House members have been defeated.  His victory proved that the benefits and resources of incumbency can offset the liabilities that many officeholders are carrying this year.”

Earth to The Washington Post, MSNBC and other liberal media sirens:  American voters aren’t simply “anti-incumbent,” they’re anti-liberal.  They’re not simply looking to replace incumbent liberals with other liberals, so one Democrat beating an alternative Democrat doesn’t rebut that fact.  After all, you don’t tend to see trusted conservative incumbents like Senators Jim DeMint (R – South Carolina) or Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) needing national political figures to parachute in to rescue them as Senator Benet did.  Americans’ revulsion toward the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda is threatening liberal incumbents, not incumbents generically.  You’re not fooling anyone other than yourselves.

In letters sent today to the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”), the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) joined with more than 150 other organizations, state legislators and bloggers in urging the FCC to abandon its plans to regulate the Internet.

The letters were organized by Americans for Tax Reform.  One of the letters reads in part:

Despite universal acknowledgement that Americans enjoy a free, open, and vibrant Internet, the FCC is relentlessly pursuing a massive regulatory regime that would stifle broadband expansion, create congestion, slow Internet speeds, jeopardize job retention and growth, and lead to higher prices for consumers.

We oppose the FCC’s effort to regulate the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, which was written during the depression era to regulate telephone monopolies – 60 years before the Internet was ever conceived. … This regulatory ‘reclassification’ would effectively turn innovative private Internet services into a public utility.

“The already free and open Internet has sparked unprecedented growth and innovation over the last decade precisely because it hasn’t been burdened with unnecessary regulation and taxation,” said CFIF President Jeffrey Mazzella.  “The reckless desires of three unelected FCC commissioners and a few radical fringe groups on the left that wish to turn the Internet into a government-controlled public utility now threaten to grind those wheels of Internet growth and innovation to a halt.

“The Courts have spoken.  A rare bipartisan majority in Congress opposes the FCC’s plans.  And, the American people reject this unnecessary and job-killing regulatory regime sought by the FCC,” Mazzella continued.  “It’s past time for the FCC to listen and abandon its plans for a government takeover the Internet.”

To read the letters send to the FCC, click here and here.

The Hill’s popular Hillicon Valley blog mentions the letters here.

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.

Over at the American Conservative, Associate Editor W. James Antle III (apparently they pay by the number of letters in the byline over at the AC) has an insightful piece up today about the shift in foreign policy thinking on the right.

Antle’s key insight is that, as the war in Afghanistan increasingly comes to be defined as a creature of the Obama Administration, many conservative foreign policy hawks are managing to stay aggressive on national defense while divorcing themselves from the nation-building pretensions of the Bush Administration (this author is among that group, which Antle — taking a page from Rich Lowry — calls the “to hell with them hawks”).

As Antle notes:

There have long been three main foreign-policy tendencies on the American Right: old-style conservatives who agree with Randolph Bourne that war is the health of the state and therefore favor less military intervention abroad; neoconservatives who want to preserve the United States’ global hegemony and engage in armed proselytizing for democracy; and defense-minded conservatives who believe the U.S. should strike forcefully at its enemies whenever it perceives itself, its interests, or its allies to be threatened.

Roughly speaking, these groups can be described as the Jeffersonians, the Wilsonians, and the Jacksonians. Among rank-and-file conservatives, the Jacksonians are by far the largest group. In the postwar era, the Jacksonians have tended to align with the Wilsonians. But there is no reason why that conjunction is inevitable.

For the record, Antle and the folks over the AC (the foreign policy followers of Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul) consider themselves Jeffersonians, a term that deserves some criticism (this is, after all, the man who aggressively promoted the French Revolution and went after the Barbary Pirates). But on the broader point, Antle is right. The grand nation-building associated with counterinsurgency theory is basically liberal domestic policy extrapolated abroad. And as George Will has perceptively noted, the very idea of “nation building” makes about as much sense as “orchid building”.

In an age of microwavable punditry, Antle has done a great job of thinking long and hard about the foreign policy divisions on the right. Anyone who cares about the future of the conservative movement and international relations would do well to read his piece in its entirety.

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.

After observing the 2008 death-match between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, you would think that any political mandarin in his right mind would want to avoid a similar war of intraparty attrition. But since the Republican National Committee is in the business of failing to meet even the lowest of expectations these days, you’d be wrong.

Hotline profiles the RNC’s recent resolution to change the way the party of Lincoln picks its presidential candidates. The gist:

The proposal will move the earliest nominating contests — in IA, NH, SC and NV — back from early Jan. to Feb. It will also require states that hold nominating contests in March to award delegates based on the proportion of votes candidates win, eliminating the prospect of an early winner-take-all state that would effectively end the nominating process.

Proponents said the measure would avoid the calamity of a national primary. Already, nearly 40 states have primaries scheduled for the first possible day in the nominating calendar.

Let’s stipulate that there’s no such thing as perfect primary process (a point that New Hampshire GOP chairman — and former White House Chief of Staff — John Sununu makes in the Hotline piece). This is a political Rubik’s Cube to rival Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.

That being said, proportional allocation of delegates is one of the worst of many bad ideas. One of the reasons that Republicans had a presidential nominee three months prior to Democrats in 2008 was because the winner-take-all system is centripetal. The proportional model used by Democrats is centrifugal, creating a party that can be just as fractured coming out of a primary season as going in. This is a road to a long and divisive primary season.

2008 should have permanently killed proportional allocation for both parties. But in professional politics, an idea’s worth is ofter inversely proportioned to its recurrence.

During a television appearance over the weekend former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin stumbled onto a hard truth for liberals when it comes to proving they can be trusted to reduce the deficit.

“If you could do it and it was credible and people believed it and it was real, I think that could do a lot for confidence.”

Let’s reword that a bit: If a deficit reduction plan was credible – meaning people believe it can work based on its assumptions and terms – and real – meaning the people proposing it are committed to implementing it – then the public would have confidence that the government could reduce the deficit.

Put another way: Credibility + Reality = Confidence

Applying that formula to ObamaCare and the Recovery Act shows just how much liberals fail to make the grade.

• Credibility: For months President Obama and Congressional Democrats swore that the individual mandate was not a tax, before claiming it was an excise tax so it can survive charges of being unconstitutional.
• Reality: A key argument for passing the Recovery Act was to keep unemployment below 8%.  Nearly $800 billion later, the number is 9.5%.
• Confidence: The latest RealClearPolitics average shows 60% of Americans agreeing that the country is on the wrong track.

So far, the liberals running Washington, D.C. have shown themselves anything but credible and based in reality.  No wonder nearly two-thirds of Americans have no confidence in them.

Here they go again.  After a week’s worth of media beatings for taking an expensive vacation to Spain that is costing American taxpayers $75,000 a day (for the security detail), the folks running the Obama Administration still haven’t learned how to avoid self-inflicted PR nightmares.

Here’s a brief reminder:

• Gifts of incompatible DVDs given to the British Prime Minister
• Gift of an IPOD to the Queen of England filled with President Obama’s speeches
• Conflicting directives from the White House Social Secretary that enabled the Salahis to gate crash a state dinner
• Excruciatingly slow response to the Gulf Oil Disaster that made the president look impotent
• Haphazard action plan thereafter that made him look incompetent
• Continuing to host a series of expensive private parties at the White House during a severe economic downturn

All of these can be chalked up to a group of people who were not – and so far, are not – ready for prime time.  According to columnist Kirsten Powers, if this keeps up the limelight may not be shining much longer:

Some argue that Michelle should be able to travel wherever she wants if she’s paying for it herself. This is naive. She is the first lady at a time when Americans are experiencing great economic pain. There are endless great locations here at home that she could put on the map with a visit — American hotels and restaurants that would be grateful for the business generated by such a high-profile visitor.

If it’s a huge sacrifice for her, so be it. Sacrifice is actually a noble trait, last I checked.

Plus, if she keeps this up, she will be able to vacation anywhere she wants in about two years.

If union representatives treat each other thuggishly, just imagine how they’d behave outside the homes of skeptical employees under card-check legislation.  Consider the words of Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers co-founder, as reported in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal commentary entitled “California’s Union Shakedown”:

Dolores Huerta, a co-founder of United Farm Workers and a historic labor figure in California, published an ‘open letter’ to [SEIU leader Mary Kay] Henry on the Huffington Post that accuses the SEIU of intimidating Kaiser workers.  Saying that she visited four Kaiser hospitals to talk to workers about the NUHW, Ms. Huerta wrote that at each, ‘SEIU staff surrounded them and began chanting and yelling insults, refusing to let workers talk.’  Ms. Huerta called on the SEIU to put ‘an end to a mistaken campaign of aggression.'”

Under the so-called Employee Free Choice Act – which remains on the legislative wish list of Big Labor, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama – union campaign reps would have access to employees at their homes, supermarkets and elsewhere.  If union agents treated Ms. Huerta, one of their own, that way, just imagine how thuggish they might behave at the home addresses of reluctant employees.  Yet another illustration of the need to maintain the democratic secret ballot during union elections, rather than allow union leaders to eliminate it via card-check.

Courtesy of Gary North’s website, here’s a video on Canada’s best – and at 11 terms, longest-serving – mayor, Hazel McCallion.

The recession is not getting better.  In a “snap” analysis by Reuters the following lowlights from the jobs front is not encouraging.

* Temporary jobs dropped by 5,600, reversing a streak of strong gains that economists had viewed as a hopeful sign that hiring would pick up.

* Normally, companies load up on temps at the beginning of a recovery when they are waiting for confirmation that growth is gaining momentum. This recovery has been unusual in that temporary hiring did not herald a jump in private hiring.

* Private hiring totaled a lackluster 71,000 in July, below expectations for 90,000 in a Reuters poll. June’s tally was revised down to just 31,000 from an initially reported 83,000.

* Government hiring was another worrisome sign. The loss of 202,000 positions reflected the loss of 143,000 temporary Census jobs.

* The total also included 38,000 jobs lost in local government. For most municipalities, the fiscal year began on July 1, and government associations have been warning that huge budget gaps would force aggressive job and spending cuts. July’s report suggests local governments got a quick start.

With the evidence mounting of a prolonged economic downturn, it’s time for someone – Republicans, Tea Parties, etc. – to start making the moral case against the liberal approach to (mis)managing the economy.  People are losing their ability to support themselves independently, making welfare a more attractive – and necessary – option for increasing numbers of middle class workers.  Not only is expanding the welfare state unsustainable, it harms the entrepreneurial spirit that makes economic recovery possible.

In order for America to get back to work, the incoming wave of office holders this November needs to remove the barriers to productivity that are killing employment growth.

CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik today reviews the most recent fix-it guide for California state politics in the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal.  According to Senik the book, California Crackup, does a great job detailing the problems; especially the unintended consequences of pro-taxpayer measures like Proposition 13.  However, the “solutions” section leaves too much off the table – like taking on the mounting pension crisis spurred by public employee unions.

Read the entire column here.

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

Lee:  ObamaCare Loses in Two Courts, not Just One
Senik:  2010: A Time for Choosing
Ellis:  Happy Birthday, Mr. President – The Nation Is in Shambles

Freedom Minute Video:  Obama’s Top 10 Birthday Wishes
Podcast:  The Media and DOJ’s Bias in the Black Panther Case
Jester’s Courtroom:  Robber Sues Victim

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.