Sunbreaks

Breaking news from 1787

What's with the New York Times and the Constitution these days?

If only our country had not been founded upon the document, it seems, the NYT editorial board would be running the country.

It started, as far as I'm aware, with an op-ed by a Georgetown constitutional law professor exhorting us to "give up on the Constitution." In his frustration at congressional gridlock, the author wrote:

As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

He concludes:

But before abandoning our heritage of self-government, we ought to try extricating ourselves from constitutional bondage so that we can give real freedom a chance.

Naturally, the author thinks it's obvious we would continue to respect the "important" parts of the Constitution, such as freedom of speech and equal protection of the law. And he's very certain we would continue to kick a president into retirement after two terms, that we would have two houses of Congress and that it would provide a check on presidential power. "Nor, finally, should we have an all-powerful president free to do whatever he wants." Phew. What a relief. I might feel a little better about this idea if we didn't have a president running around, half-complaining that he's "not a dictator," but since I'm sure the good professor wouldn't mind if Rand Paul was the one deciding which rules to keep and which to chuck, I think we're good.

It's kind of, but not really, funny that a professor of constitutional law doesn't seem to want to explain why we have a Constitution in the first place. Read it lately? It's boring, and not at all inspirational, once you're past the preamble. It's a set of rules that the federal government needs to follow, a set of protections from federal power for the people of many states who joined together to form a nation. In other words, following the rules set out by the Constitution was basically the essence of the deal that convinced representatives of the many states to join. They didn't have to. And if the federal government doesn't take those rules seriously, why should the states be bound by it either?

A similar attitude migrated to the news page last week. Ostensibly reporting on moves by several liberal groups to challenge the rules and makeup of the Senate, as well as the electoral college system of electing a president, the story doesn't hide its sympathy for their goals. It repeatedly calls the Senate the "malapportioned upper house."

(Would be nice if the author cared to explain the fact that the Senate was not set up to represent people; it was supposed to represent each state as a whole, which is why state legislatures originally were the ones to elect senators. And this, too, was a major reason why many small states agreed to join the nation in the first place.)

Now, it's certainly true that our constitutional system kept slavery in place longer than it might have been, and unjustly stymied civil rights laws. But you'll have to excuse me if I don't see any issue of quite the magnitude of slavery and subjugation of human rights on the menu today. In the latest NYT article, for example, the issues supposedly showing that our Constitution is broken run the gamut from not-that-pressing to trivial to plain-old venal: higher gas taxes, changes to campaign spending disclosure – and more federal subsidies for big states with bankrupt budgets. All of them, of course, are mainstays on a liberal agenda frustrated by the existence of an opposition party. Could it be that the NYT is willing to trade our constitutional system for a blue-state pension bailout?

One way you can tell this is a hugely bad idea is that the folks who want to change our "malapportioned" Senate are sneaking around the federal court system, trying to convince a judge to do their dirty work, instead of doing it the right (and hard) way by amending the Constitution.

They seem awfully convinced that their points of view will never be the ones to be marginalized in the wonderful future when the feds consider the rules it lives by a mere suggestion. With overreaching crackpot ideas like this, they shouldn't be so sure.

War on Women, Olympia edition

When Janea Holmquist-Newbry, a state senator from Moses Lake, left the Senate floor to nurse her newborn, Democrats pounced on the opportunity to try to force a vote on one of their bills, according to this story in Washington State Wire. In the Senate, a coalition of Republicans and two fiscally conservative Democrats (someone call the Endangered Species officials!) have a one vote majority, a fact that has the Democrats who have become accustomed to one-party rule foaming at the mouth. With Holmquist-Newbry off the floor, a Democratic bill stood a chance to pass with the tie-breaking vote of Lt. Gov. Brad Owen.

Yes, yes. We all know politics ain't beanbag. But just a few days before, another Republican had to be excused from the floor to prepare for leukemia treatment. According to an established tradition, one Democrat cast his own vote for the Republican side while he was gone so as not to upset the expected voting results. Why are Democrats unwilling to make such concessions for an ailing man, but not a nursing mother? Well, they say they didn't know she was nursing, which assumes a general level of obliviousness that I suppose is theoretically possible coming from that side of the aisle. But given that they tried the same thing the week before, it seems just a tad unlikely.

The only thing I can possibly conclude is that Olympia Democrats hate women and want babies to starve. And, naturally, not a peep from the mainstream media, whose only excuse could possibly be that the stunt did not actually work. Holmquist-Newbry was able to get back onto the floor to cast her own vote during the roll call.

So they hate women, want babies to starve – and are incompetent to boot.

 

Right to win

In all of the news coverage of Michigan’s decision to become a right-to-work state this week, it was often noted that the birthplace of the United Auto Workers had become an unattractive place to start new auto factories.

Foreign automakers in particular avoided setting up shop in the state, largely preferring the right-to-work Southeast.

Much the same thing is going on in the aerospace industry, one held near and dear to the hearts of Evergreen staters. Boeing is one of the largest private employers in the state, but when it tried to grow its operations in right-to-work South Carolina, the labor-friendly National Labor Relations Board sued – and seems to have shot down further such moves for the near future.

So it’s effectively stuck in Washington now, but foreign aerospace companies are not. And they are not locating in Washington, in spite of the oft-repeated union claim that a concentration of skilled workers trumps a restrictive, high-cost labor environment.

New operations from Airbus and Rolls Royce have launched in the U.S. last year – in Alabama and Virginia, respectively. Two right-to-work states. An article in the Wall Street Journal credits those states’ juicy tax deals for the decisions, failing to mention that Washington does the same for aerospace companies.

Now, the impetus behind these measures may have much more to do with reining in the public-sector unions who bargain with the very politicians they use their mandatory dues money to elect. But a vibrant private sector has plenty to do with keeping the public sector in check, and is important in its own right. I have little faith Washington state will follow Michigan’s example anytime soon, but its economy would be the winner.

Ugly scene could lead to happy results

It has been an ugly scene in Michigan’s capitol city today, with the threat – and in a few cases, the reality – of violence hanging over the Legislature, which today passed two bills making it illegal to require public- and private-sector workers join a union as a condition of employment.

That’s right. The home of the UAW will be a right-to-work state, as soon as Gov. Rick Snyder signs the bills into law.

The good news is that the effect on the state’s economy is going to be a lot prettier. Right-to-work states have enjoyed far stronger job and income growth over the past few years than their forced-union compatriots. Probably because they have jobs to offer, they attract new people. Michigan, with its jobless rate well above the national average, could use some of that.

It remains to be seen how the new laws will affect the public sector. In neighboring Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial and highly successful reforms simply limited collective-bargaining to wages and ended the mandatory collection of dues; it is not a right-to-work state. Those reforms have made it possible for school districts to bid out their health-insurance contracts, rather than being required by union contracts to purchase it from the union. Those savings have helped districts weather bad economic times without layoffs.

Something I wish Washington state pols would learn, even if none wants to create a right-to-work state on the Left Coast. A bill to require districts to bid out their health insurance contracts, a smidgen of a Wisconsin-style reform, was killed last year; the value of those no-bid contracts to the Washington Education Association must simply have been too great to allow. The unions went to the mat over that sweetheart deal, and won.

A broader push against unions is not likely in Washington, a state with a similar share (about 21% in 2009) of unionized workers as Michigan. With Boeing cowed from adding to operations out of state by a union-friendly National Labor Relations Board, and an incoming governor beholden to Labor for his success at the polls, Washington is likely stuck with its current labor laws for the time being.

Michigan’s GOP had better get busy making further pro-growth economic reforms, however. Right-to-work will only stick if voters see things getting better, as Wisconsin voters did. Similar reforms in Ohio were repealed before voters could see much in the way of improvement.

But still, better a step in the right direction than stuck in the mud in Washington.

Schools replacing parents?

I spent some depressing time yesterday watching a Washington state legislative committee learn about ways that social service agencies are working with schools, with the ostensible goal of making sure at-risk kids have their families’ needs met so they can learn. You can read what happened at the hearing at my Olympia Report post.

Schools, in other words, need to provide “wraparound” services, like counseling, health care and referrals to state welfare programs. A school as a one-stop shop for all of their potential needs. It’s the logical extension of what has become the teachers’ unions battle cry against using test results to judge schools: Schools can’t be expected to meet standards until we solve poverty.

So we’ll have schools that teach kids to read….when? (Especially now, given the fact that the federal government is redefining poverty from an absolute level of not being able to afford a basic standard of living to a relative level of not being to afford as much as other people).

But I’m not blogging today to complain about the fact that no matter how much we spend on education we still have an education establishment that makes excuses for the fact that many kids are getting through elementary school lacking some pretty basic skills in the three Rs, which is something that they really ought to be able to do when kids are in school for most of their waking hours.

What struck me most watching this hearing was the extent to which we are – unsuccessfully, I might add – trying to get our governments to do the job of a family. I couldn’t help thinking of Charles Murray’s latest book, Coming Apart, arguing that the collapse of functional families with two parents and regular work lurks behind what he calls a “great divide” in our culture and economy.

Surprise! State wants to spend more than it will earn.

I had this story at the Olympia Report the other day.

Surprise! The latest economic forecast shows that the state government is planning to spend a lot more than it will collect over the next four years, in spite of what is considered healthy revenue growth (in my household, anyway) of 6.9% from the current budget through the 2013-15 biennium.

The state economy reflects all the signs of our nation’s sluggish recovery. Employment is still 17,000 below its pre-recession peak. One thing that has recovered from the recession is business taxes, reflecting the big B&O tax hikes that lawmakers put into place for the 2009-2011 budget. You know, the ones that were going to put our budget on a sustainable path?

Well, we still face a billion dollar shortfall – and plenty more, if you want to count yet-to-be-legislated spending on state employee compensation and schools. Negotiations are underway for state employee contracts, and it remains to be seen if the legislature will restore pay to what it would have been before the pay freeze. As for school spending, it is widely assumed that the state will have to cough up at least a billion more every year for schools to comply with last year’s McCleary decision that inadequate funding violates the state constitution.

Time for the blue states to help pull the wagon

My father-in-law sent me this video a few days ago:

Towards the end of the video, author Dinesh D'Souza likens our society to a big wagon. You're either helping to pull it, or you're getting a ride, in a riff on Mitt Romney's supposedly outrageous comments on the 47%:

"At some point there are more people in the wagon than are pulling," D'Souza says. "My criticism of Obama is that…he is morally demonizing the wagon pullers and championing the superior morality of the people sitting in there."

Maybe I can extend that metaphor a little farther, to the many states of our country. An American Enterprise Institute blog post by economist Mark Perry makes this point pretty clearly. I reproduced his chart below, which contrasts the job creation performance of right-to-work states with that in what he calls forced union states over the past four years.

It's pretty clear that the right-to-work states, which are largely but not entirely "red," are pulling the wagon of the economy. Sitting in the back, demanding more government but not creating the jobs and tax revenue that help pay for it, are the blue states. (Whose state finances, in general, are a disaster).

 

So how about it big blue states? Time to start pulling the wagon? Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds has long had some cheeky advice about how to do this. For one, he advocates resurrecting the 1950s era excise tax on movies. It might not keep us from falling off the fiscal cliff, but wouldn't it be fun to watch liberal film-makers try to squirm their way out of paying their "fair share?"

A more fiscally significant idea that seems to fit with the rhetoric on Capitol Hill about raising revenue by limiting deductions. Human Events' John Hayward suggests targeting blue states, with their generally higher state and local tax burdens, by limiting deductions for state and local taxes paid. That deduction makes the cost of government artificially low, causing people to demand more of it.

It wasn't until 2004 that the feds started allowing Washington state taxpayers to deduct the sales tax they pay, as the state taxpayers have no income tax to deduct. Is it a coincidence that the cost of state government spiked some 30% in the years following?

Such a move might cause me some pain, although now that I'm expecting it, I can do next year's shopping in Montana. But I'd enjoy seeing Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell and my new congresswoman Suzan delBene, who, after all, got elected partly on a platform of making the rich pay their "fair share," try to protect the blue-state deductions.

I can't speak for the East Coast, but the Left Coast elected precisely ONE Republican to statewide office this year. (That would be Washington's new Secretary of State, Kim Wyman). Which means, as Reynolds puts it, "These measures would be unpopular with a lot of voters, but they'd mostly be Democratic voters."

As California goes, so goes the nation?

That used to be something of a promise, but it sounds like more of a threat in the wake of last week’s election that saw the state’s voters impose a massive tax hike and send a supermajority of Democrats to Sacramento. No doubt about it, California is now a one-party welfare state. And just as the state’s landmark passage of Prop. 13 back in 1978 heralded a new era of growth-boosting tax cuts, Prop. 30 could portend the opposite.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s Prop. 30 is supposed to raise $6 billion next year. We’ll have to check back in on that, because tax hikes on “the rich” have a way of not delivering the revenue they promise. It raises the sales tax rate to 7.5% from 7.25%, temporarily of course. It also raises income tax rates on “the rich” by up to 3 percentage points, leaving the state with a top tax rate of 13.3% retroactively applied to the start of this year.

Brown has provided a handy blueprint for governors around the country eager to avoid tackling their long-term budget problems. If the hike didn’t pass, he threatened, the public-school-year could have been slashed by a week and incoming college students might have had to pay 20% more in tuition.

In reality, the joke’s going to be on California taxpayers, although it’s not funny. Even if the tax hikes raise as much as they promise, those funds are going straight into the general fund where they will simply contribute some of what’s needed next year to make up the state’s unfunded liabilities for state-employee pensions and retiree health care, which are in the neighborhood of $200 billion.

One intelligent school board president pointed out that this measure will do nothing but paper over the decade-long financial strategy of borrowing to pay for ongoing expenses: “It's just going to keep us from getting deeper into this financial black hole, but it won't get us out of the hole,” he told the San Jose Mercury News. (Would be nice if he asked the state to stop digging).

A editorial in the Wall Street Journal last week noted that the legislature held hearings last year on undoing Prop. 13 as it applies to commercial property that launched the Reagan Revolution. With their supermajority, I’m guessing it’s a done deal. The end of the Prop. 13 era.

Up here in Washington, we can hope that some of the tax refugees from the Golden State come contribute to our economy, much as they’ve been invited to by Texas. But sadly, they tend to bring their voting habits with them.

Looking at the election returns from last week, it’s safe to say that Seattle’s King County is hard at work replicating California’s political system up north. Attorney General Rob McKenna’s loss to Democrat Jay Inslee is a devastating blow to the health of the GOP here, although it has kept a toehold on the state Senate thanks to the renewal of the state’s supermajority requirement to raise taxes.

I’m not sure that supermajority matters much, now that Jerry Brown has shown the way. The other way to raise taxes in Washington is by a simple majority referendum, so make sure to have your wallets handy. Get ready for a ballot measure that raises taxes “on the rich” – I’d bet on a capital gains tax – in order to “save our schools.” As in California, unions will pour money into political advertising in a way that opponents who do not have government-mandated dues collection simply cannot match.

Unraveling Prohibition once again?

The successful move to legalize marijuana under Washington state law with I-502 has much in common with the movement that eventually unraveled Prohibition. Could our state’s initiative be the one that prods the feds to raise the white flag in the War on Marijuana?

I-502 will legalize marijuana possession and consumption by adults over the age of 21. It will also create a state-licensed system of growing and distributing marijuana, which would be subject to heavy excise taxes. How this will work in practice is not so clear. All of these things are still illegal under federal law, and it remains to be seen how federal officials will react to this kind of stick in the eye.

Still, the parallels are striking. The national movement to repeal the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution started in the states. Both New York and Massachusetts – home to two heavy drinking cities – repealed their state laws enforcing Prohibition well before anyone believed it possible to undo the constitutional amendment. New York, for example, repealed its laws in 1923 – a full decade before the Constitution was changed and the federal Volstead Act repealed.

Some of the trends underlying today’s marijuana initiative were also at work in the 1920s.

Think we have a budget crunch now? Try the Depression. Between 1930 and 1932, federal revenues from the income tax dropped about 60%, according to Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, an entertaining and thorough history of the movement. Even though Prohibition enforcement was a revenue gainer for the feds -- in its first nine years, the feds spent $141 million on enforcement, but collected $460 million in fines – the need for spending on relief and job programs simply outweighed the demands of enforcers. James Doran began his term as federal Prohibition commissioner asking for $300 million in 1929. He got just $12 million.

The missing $5 trillion tax cut

The more I’m thinking about it, the more I’m remembering the early moments of that first presidential debate. You know, the one that was going to make Romney president. No question he won that one, appearing more presidential than the actual president.

But what I’m remembering now is what he said at the beginning of the debate, when Obama accused him of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Romney responded with outrage that anyone would ever accuse him of such a dastardly act. “I am not proposing a $5 trillion tax cut,” he said. Or something very close; I’d look up the actual quote if Romney wasn’t finished from the political scene.

And I’m sitting in the living room thinking, “Why the heck not?! It would work!” I wish I had said it where some swing voters could have heard me.

Here’s a great article arguing Romney’s economic advisers cost him the election.