Archive for category National Politics
SEIU, not AFL-CIO
Posted by Joshua Sharf in ACORN, Colorado Politics, Labor, Media Bias, PPC on January 25th, 2011
Kudos to Shawn Mitchell and Ted Harvey for voting against Ellen Golombek to head the State Department of Labor and Employment. After all, it’s what she advocated when opposing Bill Owens’s appointment of Vicki Armstrong in 1999.
But the Denver Post story more or less missed the point. Again. Not all unions are created equal. She headed up the state AFL-CIO, sure. But that’s an organization that’s been declining in membership and importance for pretty my entire lifetime. It did damage in its day, but can do far less now, given than less than 7% of the private workforce is unionized. There’s a case to be made against unions in general, but that case has been already been won.
Golombek is far more dangerous because of her political strategizing as the SEIU’s director of government affairs, which goes completely unmentioned in the Post report. Public employees can do valuable work, but their unions are designed to use your tax dollars to pick negotiating partners willing to make you work until 70 so they can retire at 55.
Colorado WINS’s efforts to unionize state employees have thus far been a bust. Expect them to get a boost from political advocates with their hands on the levers.
We Could Start By Repealing ObamaCare
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Business, National Politics, PPC, Regulation, Stimulus, Taxes on January 18th, 2011
President Obama claims in this morning’s Wall Street Journal to want to reduce the regulatory burden on American business, and so has ordered a review:
This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth. And it orders a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive. It’s a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades.
I can remember hearing this sort of thing from every President since Jimmy Carter. You’ll note that the government is now considerably larger, more restrictive, and more intrusive than it was 35 years ago. Their failure is, in part, explainable by the nature of bureaucracy. Agencies fight interminable turf wars, and any attempt to systematically get them to play well together is doomed to failure. The FCC, for instance, insists on trying to regulate the Internet even in the face of specific Supreme Court decisions denying them the authority. Imagine how much more combative they are when the only opponents are other bureaucrats.
Philip Howard in his classic, The Death of Common Sense, notes how the USDA requires floors in certain food operations to be clean, while OSHA requires them to be dry. Good luck with that one.
The EPA has become a mini super-government unto itself, its authority reinforced by the automatic standing that many professional environmental lobbying groups have to bring suit on behalf of, “the environment.” Aside from trying to limit our breathing, ot currently is preventing the Border Patrol from patrolling parts of the border, meaning it’s exercising control not only over every aspect of manufacturing, it’s arrogating the right to regulate other federal agencies.
The FDA has tried, and will no doubt try again, to use price as a measure for approving medicine. As the president professes to be worried about medical innovation.
Of course, regulation isn’t even the major retardant of economic growth – government spending is. Obamacare amounts to a gigantic increase in the percentage of GDP explicitly devoted to government spending. The so-called stimulus hasn’t even been spent yet, largely because the same government didn’t know that there was no such thing as a “shovel-ready” project.
Coming after a miserable electoral repudiation of his policies, Obama’s comments recall President Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union Address. Realizing that he wouldn’t be able to push through large pieces of legislation, he famously declared that “the era of big government is over,” and embarked on a program of increasing regulation. Obama realizes much the same thing, but also recognizes that it will take years for bureaucracies, new and old, to absorb their new powers under Health Care reform, financial regulatory reform, and his expansive readings of executive authority.
Either Obama realizes this, and knows that he can give the appearance of understanding the problem without really giving substantive ground, or he doesn’t really understand the problem.
The subhead on his oped reads, “If the FDA deems saccharin safe enough for coffee, then the EPA should not treat it as hazardous waste.” Maybe we can get him to do the same thing with carbon dioxide.
If the FDA deems saccharin safe enough for coffee, then the EPA should not treat it as hazardous waste.
Those GAO Reports
Posted by Joshua Sharf in PPC, Privacy on November 21st, 2010
From Holly Doodruff Lyons, those GAO reports I promised:
1.) “Systematic Planning Needed to Optimize the Deployment of Checked Baggage Screening Systems”, (GAO-05-365, March 2005)
“According to TSA’s analysis, in-line EDS would reduce by 78 percent the number of TSA baggage screeners and supervisors required to screen checked baggage at these nine airports, from 6,645 to 1,477 screeners and supervisors.” (Page 42).
2.) Classified GAO Report (April 2005), GAO reviewed the TSA’s own covert screener testing data and concluded that TSA’s data indicated that passenger checkpoint screeners at airports participating in the PP5 Program performed better overall on the tests than checkpoint screeners at the totally Federalized airports. GAO concluded that differences in these test results were statistically significant.
3.) “Screener Training and Performance Measurement Strengthened, but More Work Remains”, (GAO-05-457, May 2005)
“For the two-year period reviewed, overall failure rates for covert tests (passenger and checked baggage) conducted at airports using private-sector screeners were somewhat lower than failure rates for the same tests conducted at airports using federal screeners for the airports tested during this period.” (Page 34).
4.) “Aviation Security: TSA’s Cost and Performance Study of Private-Sector Airport Screening”, (GAO-09-27R, January 2009)
“The limitations in the design of TSA’s study comparing the cost and performance of SPP and non-SPP airports were due to several key factors related to the study’s purpose and data availability. For example, TSA officials stated that they did not include some cost elements in the study because they wanted to determine the impact of the SPP on TSA’s budget, rather than to determine the impact to the federal government as a whole. In addition, for its comparison of performance, TSA analyzed measures for which information was most complete, among other things. Because of these limitations, we [GAO] believe that TSA should not use the study as sole support for major policy decisions regarding the SPP.”
DIA and TSA – What We Can Do, and What We Can’t
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics, PPC, Privacy on November 18th, 2010
I just got off the phone with Holly Woodruff Lyons, who’s a staffer with the US House Transportation Committee. She was kind enough to spend about 15 minutes with me, discussing Rep. Mica’s letter, and the opt-out program, and was extremely helpful given that she didn’t know me from Adam.
It turns out that private contractors, while quite popular in the places where they are used, still have to obey TSA screening policies, and if TSA decides to put electronic strip-searchers at DIA, there’s no mechanism for DIA to resist. TSA is responsible for security, not DIA. This also means that the private contractors almost always are contracted to TSA, not to the local airport authority. The airport applies for an opt-out, after which the Feds put out an RFP and go through the normal contracting processes. There are some other models, where the private contractors work for the airports, but they still have to operates federal processes under federal supervision.
The innovations that Mica refers to are operational, not policy, but Mrs. Lyons did note that (not surprisingly) the private companies tend to be more responsive, more willing to open new lines, and more concerned about their public perception that the TSA. For instance, the handling of heavy bags has led to a higher rate of injury for security workers, and many have subcontracted out baggage-handing to cut down on injuries. In other instances, the turnover rate at private companies is far lower, further reducing operating costs.
When the TSA tried to run through a study comparing itself to its competition, and – surprise! – found that the competition was less efficient and more expensive, the GAO called them out on it, showing that the cost savings generally resulted from not counting federal pensions, and that sort of thing. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that operationally, contractors do save money. Mrs. Lyons has promised to pass along the relevant GAO reports and the studies that validate Rep. Mica’s statements.
We need to remember that the opt-out is a program that was written into the original TSA law, but that Rep. Mica is obviously a strong supporter of it. Rep. Rogers, who currently heads the Transportation subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and it challenging earmark baron Jerry “The Minority-Maker” Lewis (R-CA) for the chairmanship of the whole committee, is also a strong supporter.
Remember, Rep. Mica’s letter was sent before these procedures starting causing a public sensation, so he’s really not referring to them in his letter. Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t use the opt-out to reduce the number of TSA employees, and thus its budget, and therefore its bureaucratic position. Bureaucrats never like to be on the defensive, never like to be in the public eye, and their employees certainly don’t like being The Enemy.
Whether or not this is enough to get them to stop treating us as The Enemy remains to be seen.
Can We Spare Denver Passengers TSA?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Denver, PPC, Privacy on November 17th, 2010
By now, pretty much everyone has heard about John Tyner, the Oceanside, CA man who reasserted his individual dignity by refusing to submit to either the option of groping or self-pornification in the service of what Reason‘s Matt Welch (and now, Rep. John Mica (R-FL) calls, “security theater.” You know, the fellow that TSA has decided to make an example of for us all.
In addition to being large, impersonal, and top-heavy, what really worries critics is that the TSA has become dangerously ineffective. Its specialty is what those critics call “security theater” — that is, a show of what appear to be stringent security measures designed to make passengers feel more secure without providing real security. “That’s exactly what it is,” says Mica. “It’s a big Kabuki dance.”
It’s good to see that someone – one of the authors of the original TSA legislation, no less – is telling us that yes, indeed, all this stuff is to make us feel better, not actually to make us safer. I’ll grant that there is something to the operational theory that ever-changing rules and oddly intrusive regulations keep the bad guys off-balance and force them to take risks that make failure and detection more likely. Except that the underwear bombers and the ink toner bomber weren’t really stopped because the system worked, were they?
It’s not often I disagree with Dennis Prager outright, but this morning, he and guest Michael Fumento were seeking to defuse the panic over the scanners. Now, Fumento has a creditable history of taking on irrational public fear – see last year’s swine flu plague that swept away civilization, for instance. But in this case, they’re not taking into account that the TSA has dealt with us in bad faith over these scanners from the beginning. We were assured, for instance, that pictures could not be stored or shared. Which is why they’re all over the Net.
The fact is that these options are insulting, intrusive, humiliating, and demeaning, and the sort of thing that a free people should never have to put up with simply to get from point A to point B. The argument from Big Sis that they’re absolutely necessary, that nothing else will do, that no other solution short of Amtrak or Greyhound is possible, is pretty rich coming from a Lilliputian government that routinely ties down its citizens and businesses with regulations, and then excuses the extra cost on the grounds that they can always find a work-around.
It’s time for Big Sis to find a work-around. And not the current SPOT program.
In a May 2010 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Mica noted that the GAO “discovered that since the program’s inception, at least 17 known terrorists … have flown on 24 different occasions, passing through security at eight SPOT airports.” One of those known terrorists was Faisal Shahzad, who made it past SPOT monitors onto a Dubai-bound plane at New York’s JFK International Airport not long after trying to set off a car bomb in Times Square. Federal agents nabbed him just before departure.
Now, Mica has written another letter to over 150 airport administrators reminding them that they can opt out of TSA, and hire private contractors for screening instead. At one point, this seemed to be an attractive option for many airports. In 2004, Mica tried to remind them of the option, but Peter DiFazio (D-Public Employees Unions) suspected a nefarious Bush plot to continue reducing the size of government.
Since the rules actually state that security screeners have the right to use their judgment in determining which screening methods to use, presumably passengers at private security wouldn’t feel it necessary bring a wad of one-dollar bills to get them through security.
In most places, citizens lack the means to force their local airports to do this. The good news is that we do. DIA is owned and operated by the City and County of Denver. With Denver’s municipal elections coming up in May, there’s no reason we couldn’t place a ballot measure requiring DIA to transition to private, non-union, security contractors within a year.
How Bad Was the West, Really?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics, PPC on November 9th, 2010
Conventional wisdom right now is that the West was excluded from the Republicans’ big gains in the rest of the country. And by a certain standard, that’s true. Not too many people would have guessed that the state legislatures in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan would go Republican, with the latter two also electing Republican governors. The West didn’t see any such seismic shift (apologies to those living in rift valleys and on fault lines). But the Republican gains, outside of California, were still pretty substantial.
Consider that in the 10 non-California western states (Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona), the count in the US Congress went from 27-15 Democrat to 23-19 Republican, a net gain of 8 seats out of 42. The Republicans also picked up two governorships (Wyoming and New Mexico).
The gains in state legislatures were also significant, although in some cases, merely amounted to pushing the Democrats closer to extinction:
- In Washington, the state Senate went from 31-18 Democrat to 24-22 Democrat, with 3 seats undecided
- In Oregon, the House went from 36-24 Democrat to 30-30, and the Senate went from 18-12 Democrat to 15-13 with 2 undecided. Imagine a state legislature not merely split, but with both houses evenly divided.
- David Sirota, phone home. Montana went from 50-50 to 68-32 Republican, although the State Senate saw only modest gains, from 27-23 Republican to 28-22.
- In Arizona, the State House went from 35-25 to 40-20 and the State Senate from 18-11 to 21-9
- In Colorado, as we know, the Republicans recaptured the State House
- In New Mexico, the Republicans cut into the Democrats’ lead, moving it from 45-25 to 37-33, and putting pressure on the Democrat majority to negotiate with the newly-elected Republican governor. The State Senate remains firmly in Democrat hands, 27-15.
- And in Idaho, where Labrador retrieved CD-1 for the Republicans, the State House went from a lopsided 52-18 to an even-more lopsided 57-13; the State Senate stands at 28-7
This is hardly the stuff of Democrat strangleholds, or even strongholds.
And a look at the ballot initiatives gives even more hope.
- In Nevada, a proposal to weaken eminent domain protections went down by better than 2-1
- In Washington, the initiative losses of 2009 were redeemed, as voters rejected a state income tax (34.6% in favor), repealed a series of state sales tax increases (62.4%), and restated existing law (suspended by the state legislature) requiring 2/3 legislative majorities or voter approval for tax increases
- Both Utah and Arizona passed laws requiring secret ballots for union elections
- Arizona passed a law similar to one that it had narrowly rejected two years ago, and similar to our own Amendment 63 (55-45)
- Arizona also eliminated affirmative action in public hiring or contracting (60-40)
California, as always, with its 46% Democrat registration, remains problematic. But unless you expect it to become a net exporter of political ideas, along with jobs and population, the biggest threat from California isn’t contamination so much as default.
The Role of Parties (Tea and Not) and Chairmen
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, National Politics, PPC on November 8th, 2010
So, I’ve finished winding down the campaign, collecting all the signs I could still find, sending out thank-yous to volunteers and contributors, and wrapping up the accounting. Time for a few thoughts on where were are and where we go.
First, on a national level, it’s heartening to see the Tea Party caucus standing firm on substantive issues so far. I think everyone is realistic about what a Republican House, in the absence of the Senate or the Presidency, can actually accomplish. It can block, and it can force the Senate Democrats to take deeply unpopular votes, in effect making them take legislative bullets for the White House. Or not. A series of simple, punchy, one-subject bills should do the trick. They can also defund Obamacare, investigate the White House’s abuses of power in the Black Panther case and Gerald Walpin’s firing. People don’t really expect them to do much more than that, and it appears that both the Tea Parties and the electorate at large are mature enough to understand this.
If the establishment Republicans (I’m lookin’ at you, Lindsay Graham) persist in defending a business-as-usual approach, this thing has the potential to turn into the French Revolution. If we follow Michael Barone’s comparison of the Tea Parties to the New Left of the late 1960s, with the entry of a large number of activists into one party’s politics, increasingly lofty heads will roll, handing governance over to the opposition for a long, long time. If, as it seems can happen in Colorado, the Red Queen-type voices are marginalized while the Tea Party learns to play the general election game a little better, there’s considerable hope. Look for the ProgressNow-types to try to find the wedge issues to undermine that comity.
Which brings us to a discussion of new Republican Party leadership. For the purposes of discussion, let’s assume that Dick Wadhams decides to move on. I’m not going to use this spot to defend or attack Dick. His performance was what it was, and I’d rather focus on the role of the party in modern electoral politics, and more specifically the role that party chairmen – at all levels – play.
It used to be that the Party Chairman was the biggest of bosses, the guy in the smoke-filled room with the biggest cigar. Not anymore. Not since the campaign finance changes essentially knee-capped the parties, creating the era of the 527 and the candidate. The party simply cannot brand itself any more through spending, it can only do so through the candidates that it chooses as its standard-bearers. What made “Democrat” cool in 2008 wasn’t any spending by the party, or even by the 527s, but Obama.
It’s also true that, in Denver at least, we have probably maxed out what we can get through sheer hard work. We’ll still have to work as hard, but we’ll have to start thinking strategically about how to engage more people, expand our base, and our influence.
Candidates aside, the party needs chairmen who understand that aside from the organizing of the regular party activities – districts, Lincoln Day Dinners, candidate recruiting and vetting, and so on – their role is to help coordinate friendly groups, and help reach out to unaffiliated voters who can be on our side. We need to do this strategically, not merely jumping off on whatever seems like a good idea. While the term “social networking” is just a little over-used, I believe that the Left has been using that far more effectively to identify, mobilize, and treat friendly unaffiliated voters as a normal part of the process. We can do that, too.
Ultimately, the goal of these groups is to see certain policies implemented, and in order to do that, we’ll need to elect Republicans, or at least, defeat Democrats. (I’m not going to engage in speculation about the ultimate demise of the Republican party. Take that to another post.) That means that the Republican party will continue to play a central role in partisan politics. And it means that the party chairman’s role, while infinitely more complex in balancing groups and getting them to play well together, is no less central to the success of the ideals we all care about.
Western Conservative Summit Post Mortem
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, National Politics on July 12th, 2010
This weekend marked the inaugural Western Conservative Summit. Given the lineup, it would have been a major event under any circumstances. It also marked the successful public branding of John Andrews’s second Colorado think tank, the Centennial Institute. Andrews, of course, was one of the founders of the Independence Institute way back when. That group has tended towards small-l libertarianism over the years, and while there’s probably little there that actually conflicts with most conservatives, II focuses on economic, budgetary, and regulatory issues, largely to the exclusion of social and foreign policy discussion.
The Centennial Institute is clearly intended to be something a little different, perhaps the seeds of a Rocky Mountain Claremont Institute, with which Andrews was associated with some years back. Rather than seeing the Founding as a great Libertarian (large-L) experiment, the Centennial Institute will attempt to promote the growing assertion of individual liberty as a logical destination of, rather than a deviation from, the country’s religious beginnings. It will also not contain itself to state or economic issues, but will take on the war on Islamism, immigration, and, one assumes eventually, social issues.
If so, this weekend’s summit set the tone. The highlights of the weekend for me were Rep. Michelle Bachman, Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, Dennis Prager, and Dick Morris.
Rep. Bachman spoke of specific programs she wants to roll back or reform, and of the need to insist that new Congressional Republican leadership actually be what they’re all talking about being – committed to free-market ideas that work, and to rolling back so-called “progressive” legislation, followed by a detailed description of what such an agenda would look like. Her re-telling of the story of the Four Chaplains left me fighting back tears (Tom Tancredo later told me, “I don’t even try to fight them back.”) She’s a remarkably confident and engaging speaker, and to see her live is to see what all the fuss is about.
Arthur Brooks‘s talk was almost certainly the most content-laden, discussing how the debate over free enterprise vs. statism isn’t really an economic debate, but a cultural one. As long as we’re talking about the money, we lose. Free enterprise is a maintream value, one that maximizes not only wealth but also happiness, and the system that is, ultimately, the fairest. Conservatives need to make the moral case, not merely the economic case, for free markets. He backed that up with data, most of which I remember even without taking notes and without the benefit of power points. Brooks makes wonkishness accessible, and AEI is in for a long run of intellectual success under his leadership.
Prager’s talk was also somewhat unfocused and a bit more rambling than his usual fare. But he discussed his American Trinity with his usual entertaining aplomb. And Morris presented both the political landscape, and the governing as well as electoral challenges with conciseness and clarity.
Some of us who were looking for a little more wonkishness and a little less repeatition of the conference’s broad themes were disappointed by some of the presentations. Frank Gaffney, a A-lister on the subject of Islamism if ever there was one, misplayed his time by taking too long to introduce Lt. Gen. Boykin, leaving himself less time to discuss his own subject area. Michelle Malkin’s lunchtime talk was engaging, but lacked a theme. Foster Friess, who could have delivered a free market health-care talk to rival Brooks’s speech, wandered too much to be effective. These shouldn’t take away from what was achieved, but neither are they minor defects, and in future summits, one hopes that speakers can be persuaded to resist the temptation.
Judging from the turnout – over 600 people when 300 had been planned for – and the parade of candidates seeking to make their pitches to the crowd, it’s hard to call this anything but a major success for Colorado’s latest think-tank.
Union, er, No
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on June 8th, 2010
Much is being made of Big Labor’s stinging defeat in Arkansas, where Blanche Lincoln defeated the union’s hand-picked candidate, Bill Halter, to win re-nomination. Arkansas isn’t exactly a big Big Labor state, but still, this was about $10 million spent in an effort to send a message to Democrats about supporting card check and forced arbitration, and it failed.
What isn’t remembered is that this is the third major defeat for Big Labor Politics this year. The SEIU was a leader in efforts to defeat Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and we saw how that turned out. What slipped between the editorial cracks during the Turkish Flotilla (or as it’s known in the eastern Mediterranean, Fleet Week), was that the SEIU failed in its attempt to launch a third party candidate in North Carolina in several Congressional districts.
If I’m a union member with a defined benefit plan, I’m filing Beck paperwork yesterday, and putting that money into my retirement.
Can You Hear Us Now?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on May 25th, 2010
In 1994, there was the Contract for America. Earlier this year, there was the Contract From America. The first was top-down, the second, bottom-up.
In the spirit of the latter, and of the Tea Party movement, this morning the House Republican Leadership has launched a new “listening” site, America Speaking Out, designed to solicit and aggregate ideas directly from voters–most likely in advance of the House GOP’s new version of Contract for America, (which they expect to release around Labor Day, as in 1994).
Sensitive to the fact that the Republican Party owes the Tea Party, rather than the other way around, the site itself is very low-key. Instead of hitting people over the head with the fact that the red-white-and-blue reminder that the Republican leadership is running this new site (although it includes all the appropriate disclaimers), the intent is clearly to create a site where people who have conservative and libertarian ideas can feel comfortable and contribute. In my estimation this simple, yet powerful, website has hit the mark in that regard (Twitter hashtag: #speakingout).
I’ve had a chance to tool around the site a little but, and it’s striving to be the garageband.com of conservative political ideas. Essentially, it’s entirely up to the public (with reporting and refereeing guardrails) to suggest, comment on, and vote on ideas, with the cream rising to the top. The risks inherent in such a site are obvious, but it appears that the House Republicans are banking that over time, the adults will sieze control of the conversation, while the trolls and wingnuts will lose interest. It’s an experiment worth watching.
There’s one essential difference between americaspeakingout.com and garageband.com, and it’s the cost of entry. There’s no cost to vote, share, or comment on either, but on garageband.com, the cost of entering a song is the cost of producing the song, which tends to weed out those who aren’t serious. There’s no cost at all to coming up with ideas, and there’s a fine line between putting the wackos out at the curb and appearing to put your thumb too heavily on the scale. This dynamic tends to exaggerate the risks of the trolls taking over the site. One possible alternative might be to charge a small fee to submit an idea, and to reward the winners with cash.
Eventually, of course, the Party will be judged on whether it walks the walk once it is returned to the majority. But right now it’s important that it listens sincerely while courting its natural, yet skeptical, allies who are providing the energy this election cycle–something House GOP Leadership clearly understands.
California Congressman, Kevin McCarthy, is leading the effort to produce the new contract and seems to have correctly decided that this year, top-down is a ticket out of, rather than back into, the majority. I’m currently pursuing him for an interview and hope to gain a little more insight into the project, how it will maintain quality control, or whether it’s really intended to be as free-wheeling as it seems. I hope to have more for you here later this week, but for now be sure to check out the site.
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