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Sunday, March 31, 2013

Easter and Passover

The President devoted his weekly address to Easter and Passover.  He spoke very directly of his own faith:
As Christians, my family and I remember the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for each and every one of us – how He took on the sins of the world and extended the gift of salvation. And we recommit ourselves to following His example here on Earth. To loving our Lord and Savior. To loving our neighbors. And to seeing in everyone, especially “the least of these,” as a child of God.
Note that, as in past administrations, the transcript follows the Christian practice of capitalizing nouns and pronouns referring to Jesus.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Vietnam Veterans Day

Yesterday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who served in Vietnam as an Army noncommissioned officer, issued a statement commemorating Vietnam Veterans Day.
“Today and this weekend, communities across the country commemorate Vietnam Veterans Day.
“This year we also mark forty years since the end of U.S. combat operations in Vietnam. On March 29, 1973, the last of our combat forces departed the country and the final release of American prisoners of war drew to a close.
“When Vietnam veterans reached their hometowns, many were not greeted with the appreciation and respect they very much deserved. In our time we must take every opportunity to thank all veterans and their families for their service and sacrifice.
“More than 1,600 service members remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Their families still seek answers. Today, the Department of Defense reaffirms its commitment to take all steps to account for our missing personnel and bring closure to their families. And we salute and thank our Vietnam veterans and their families.”
In California, yesterday was Cesar Chavez Day.  Governor Jerry Brown proclaimed today as the day for Vietnam veterans:
Over two million Americans served in the Vietnam War and related conflicts in Southeast Asia between 1959 and 1975. More than 58,000 did not return. Of those who survived, over 300,000 suffered physical injuries in combat, and an even greater number developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric ailments as a result of their service.
Our treatment of the veterans of Vietnam and other wars reflects profoundly on our character as a nation. Too many of our veterans suffer from unemployment, poverty, homelessness, substance abuse and disability. For this reason I signed Executive Order B-9-11, creating the Interagency Council on Veterans to coordinate the state’s efforts in providing assistance to veterans in need. While the Council continues to explore every possible improvement in policies and programs related to veterans’ issues, I urge all citizens to act in the same spirit by welcoming home our veterans, thanking them for their service and assisting them in every conceivable way.
NOW THEREFORE I, EDMUND G. BROWN JR., Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim March 30, 2013, as “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day.”
IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 29th day of March 2013. 
KRCG report on Missouri's observance:



In Knoxville, Tennnessee, WVLT reports:
Our country celebrates Vietnam Veterans day for the first time. President Barack Obama declared the holiday last year to mark the 50th anniversary of the war.

We spoke to a Vietnam vet who says veterans from this war were mistreated when they returned home. Lloyd Pitney [no relation] says many have largely been forgotten, left to deal quietly with the scars you don't see like PTSD and depression. Pitney explains what having a day to honor Vietnam veterans means to him.

Lloyd Pitney says, "It's a rememberance of friends. Those I didn't know that didn't come back and thinking about those who defected our country. It's nice to see the country recognizing those who came back."

Pitney says he entered the Navy to put his life on the line for his country, and got no appreciation for it until recently as more people thank him for his service.

Religion in Metro Areas

Gallup reports that American metro areas differ a great deal in their religiosity:
Provo-Orem, Utah, is the most religious of 189 U.S. metropolitan areas Gallup surveyed in 2012, with 77% of its residents classified as very religious. Burlington, Vt., and Boulder, Colo., are the least religious, with 17% meeting that threshold. Most of the top religious cities are in the South -- the exceptions are Provo; Ogden-Clearfield, Utah; and Holland-Grand Haven, Mich. The least religious cities are clustered in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast, with the exception of Boulder and Madison, Wis.
The cities referred to in this article are based on the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In many cases, more than one city is included in the same MSA, and some MSAs cross state borders. All reported MSAs encompass at least 300 completed surveys, and Gallup has weighted each of these MSA samples to ensure it is demographically representative of that MSA. 
Throughout the country in 2012, 40% of Americans were classified as very religious -- based on saying religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week. Thirty-one percent of Americans were nonreligious, saying religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services. The remaining 29% of Americans were moderately religious, saying religion is important in their lives but that they do not attend services regularly, or that religion is not important but that they still attend services.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Immigration: Public Opinion and the Foreign-Born Population

The Pew Research Center reports:
A new survey finds that seven-in-ten Americans (71%) say there should be a way for people in the United States illegally to remain in this country if they meet certain requirements, while 27% say they should not be allowed to stay legally. Most who favor providing illegal immigrants with some form of legal status –43% of the public – say they should be allowed to apply for citizenship, but 24% of the public says they should only be allowed to apply for legal residency.
Majorities across all demographic and political groups say there should be a way for illegal immigrants who meet certain requirements to stay in the U.S. legally. Among those who favor providing legal status, the balance of opinion is in favor of allowing those here illegally who meet the requirements to apply for citizenship. However, no more than about half in any demographic group supports permitting illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.
In 2011, there were about 40 million immigrants in the United States. Of that total, 11.1 million, or 28%, were in this country illegally. (For more see “Recent Trends in Naturalization, 2000-2011” Feb. 4, 2013.)
The national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 13-17 among 1,501 adults, finds that overall attitudes about immigrants in the United States are more positive than negative, despite the nation’s struggling economy.
Forty million people in the United States are foreign-bornAn infographic from the Census Bureau:

 Foreign Born infographic image

Thursday, March 28, 2013

High-Speed Rail: Not So Fast

The federal government has spent billions on high-speed rail. CNN reports that the money has not had the 
intended effects:

 

California's troubled project confirms Tocqueville's observation:  "There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one."  The San Jose Mercury News reports:
The state of California has filed a civil case against everyone -- literally, the whole world -- seeking to validate $8.6 billion in voter-approved bonds for its $69 billion high-speed rail project.
The lawsuit, titled "High-Speed Rail Authority v. All Persons Interested," is meant as a pre-emptive strike so the state can confirm that it's definitely legal to issue some of the bonds needed to begin bullet train construction this summer. By citing a somewhat obscure California civil code, the state can use the "sue now or forever hold your peace" strategy to prevent a string of future lawsuits and, instead, deal with the legal issues in one fell swoop.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Among those raising objections is a Bay Area high-speed rail trailblazer who for decades played a pivotal role in building public and political support for the system. Quentin Kopp chaired the state Senate transportation committee for years and co-wrote legislation that launched the bullet-train project. He later served as board chairman of the state agency overseeing construction of the system.

But in a recent legal declaration, filed in a civil suit seeking to halt the project, Kopp, a retired judge, said the project as now planned violates the law underpinning $9.95 billion in state financing approved by voters in 2008. The declaration puts Kopp in the improbable position of supporting a suit by key rail antagonists: officials in Kings County and two farmers supported by powerful agriculture interests.

"They have just mangled this project," Kopp said. "They distorted it. We don't get a high-speed rail system. It is the great train robbery."

Lynn Schenk, a former congresswoman from San Diego and current board member of the state rail authority, is another leading high-speed rail advocate. She stunned a room full of bullet-train supporters this month when she opposed a critical deal with a Northern California transit agency. Without the agreement, the political coalition supporting the project could unravel.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The Same-Sex Marriage Cases

At SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein has some shrewd observations on the same-sex marriage cases before the US Supreme Court, US v. Windsor (a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act) and Hollingsworth v. Perry (involving California's Proposition 8).
Students of Windsor and Hollingsworth have always recognized a basic tension between the theories of gay-rights advocates in the cases. The challenge to DOMA is undergirded by a sense that marriage is a matter for state rather than federal regulation. The challenge to Proposition 8 is a direct challenge to just such a decision by a state.
Yesterday and today, the irresolvable depth of that tension in this Court became obvious. The arguments would be easier for the public to understand if they had occurred in reverse.

A majority of the Court seems poised in Windsor to invalidate DOMA Section 3 on the theory that the federal government has no interest in adopting a definition of marriage applicable to 1100 statutory provisions that as a practical matter alters the very nature of what it is to be “married.” That role, the Court will rule, is historically reserved to the states. So DOMA is a federalism case.
Some thought that Justice Kennedy would want to carry forward the project of Romer and Lawrence and be remembered eternally as the hero of gay rights. But they appear not to have fully grasped the concerns of a mainstream conservative Justice with taking so fundamental a step as finding a constitutional obligation to redefine so basic a social institution based on social science that to some appears quite new.
But if DOMA is going to be decided as a federalism case, Hollingsworth becomes a much harder case for the plaintiffs. That ruling in Windsor implies that California should have a parallel right to decide the definition of marriage for itself – i.e., that Proposition 8 should be upheld

Spending on Students, Prisoners, and Medicaid Beneficiaries


Inside Higher Ed reports on a new study of higher education finance by the National Association of State Budget Officers.  One chart compares per-student expenditures with per-prisoner corrections funding and per-beneficiary Medicaid spending.





Tuesday, March 26, 2013

The Scopes Trial

Many people know of the "Scopes Monkey Trial" through the play and movie "Inherit the Wind," which portrayed it as a battle between enlightenment and ignorance.  The trial involved A Civic Biology, a textbook by biologist George William Hunter.  In a profile of Hunter, who later taught at Pomona College, The Foothills Reader makes an important point:
One of the great misconceptions of the trial is that it simply pitted creationism against evolution, yet the actual trial forged an alliance of creationists and opponents of a then-popular and now discredited pseudo-scientific theory called eugenics, which bolstered white supremacy theories embraced by racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
That distinction was omitted from the play and subsequent film. Playwright Jerome Lawrence said he and writer Robert E. Lee fictionalized the events to mount a parable against McCarthyism. Many historians later suggested that the section on eugenics had been inserted by Hunter's editors.
Eugenics was a pet cause of the Progressive movement and was quite popular at the time. So was racism, and the book's discussion of evolution was explicitly racist:

At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.
And in light of subsequent events, its discussion of eugenics sounds chilling:
Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.

Obama and Nixon

At USA Today, liberal legal scholar Jonathan Turley contends that President Obama has established the kind of "imperial presidency" that President Nixon wanted and that many liberals have supported him for it.  Unilateral military action and "kill lists" are two of his examples.  Others include:
Nixon's use of warrantless surveillance led to the creation of a special court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). But the reform turned out to be more form than substance. The secret court turned "probable cause" into a meaningless standard, virtually guaranteeing any surveillance the government wanted. After hundreds of thousands of applications over decades, only a couple have ever been denied.

Last month, the Supreme Court crushed any remaining illusions regarding FISA when it sided with the Obama administration in ruling that potential targets of such spying had to have proof they were spied upon before filing lawsuits, even if the government has declared such evidence to be secret. That's only the latest among dozens of lawsuits the administration has blocked while surveillance expands exponentially.
...

Nixon was known for his attacks on whistle-blowers. He used the Espionage Act of 1917 to bring a rare criminal case against Ellsberg. Nixon was vilified for the abuse of the law. Obama has brought twice as many such prosecutions as all prior presidents combined. While refusing to prosecute anyone for actual torture, the Obama administration has prosecuted former CIA employee John Kiriakou for disclosing the torture program.

Other Nixonesque areas include Obama's overuse of classification laws and withholding material from Congress. There are even missing tapes. In the torture scandal, CIA officials admitted to destroying tapes that they feared could be used against them in criminal cases. Of course, Nixon had missing tapes, but Rose Mary Woods claimed to have erased them by mistake, as opposed to current officials who openly admit to intentional destruction.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Political Science Lobbying

Previous posts have discussed a successful Senate move to de-fund some political science research, and the unsuccessful effort to rally political scientists against it.  Inside Higher Ed reports:
Many critics point to the success that they see for other research areas in fending off attacks. Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver, wrote: "Go after physics or history, and beloved scholars like Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Doris Kearns Goodwin will take to the airwaves and make you look bad, explaining how under-funding scientific exploration or failing to understand our past weakens our country. Who rushes to the defense of political science? Notably, a large chunk of former political science majors are now lawyers and politicians — not exactly up there with nuns and baby seals in terms of likability. There’s really not much downside to attacking us."
While some focus on recruiting prominent allies, others say it is time for political scientists to turn to politics. In 2012, after a failed attempt to cut off federal funding of political science, the National Capital Area Political Science Association sent a letter to the APSA's leaders calling for the association to add to its own government relations staff and to increase its lobbying.
One problem for political scientists is that Republicans control the House and maintain considerable power as a Senate minority.  Most GOP politicians think that political scientists are biased against them.  Although  scholars in the discipline usually try to be fair-minded in their work, it is easy to see how this belief could arise. Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans in the discipline. Moreover, some prominent works in political science do indeed cross the line separating tough analysis from partisan advocacy.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Coming to America

Gallup reports:
About 13% of the world's adults -- or about 630 million people -- say they would like to leave their country and move somewhere else permanently. For roughly 138 million people, that somewhere else would be the U.S. -- the No. 1 desired destination for potential migrants. The U.K., Canada, and France also rank among the top choices for potential migrants.

Our Tax Dollars at Work: IRS Star Trek Parody

Previous posts have discussed "humorous" videos that got government employees into trouble. AP reports: 
Nobody's going to win an Emmy for a parody of the TV show "Star Trek" filmed by Internal Revenue Service employees at an agency studio in Maryland.
Instead, the IRS got a rebuke from Congress for wasting taxpayer dollars.
The agency says the video, along with a training video that parodied the TV show "Gilligan's Island," cost about $60,000. The "Star Trek" video accounted for most of the money, the agency said.
The IRS said Friday it was a mistake for employees to make the six-minute video. It was shown at the opening of a 2010 training and leadership conference but does not appear to have any training value.

 

Lobbying on the Decline? More Data Suggest Otherwise.

Previous posts have noted that officially-reported spending on lobbying is on the decline.  But there's a catch, as the Center for Responsive Politics explains:
Many observers theorize that a lot of lobbying has simply gone underground and is being done by individuals who are able to avoid the federal threshold for disclosure. To test this theory, CRP looked at lobbyists who were active in 2011 but not in 2012 and determined where they worked as of early 2013. Our research found 1,732 lobbyists who “deactivated” in 2012. This drop is considerably smaller than the recent peak of deactivated lobbyists in 2008. That year, following the passage of HLOGA in 2007, more than 3,400 lobbyists stopped reporting activity. Many argue that this decline is actually just an artifact of the new law's implementation: these lobbyists were likely not active before 2007, but the new requirements made reporting more onerous and so they were therefore disinclined to register.
...
In the first analysis of this kind, CRP finds that 46 percent of the active 2011 lobbyists who did not report any activity in 2012 are still working for the same employers for whom they lobbied in 2011 -- supporting the theory that many previously registered lobbyists are not meeting the technical requirement to report or have altered their activities just enough to escape filing. It's possible that some individuals are being less than candid about how much time they spend lobbying, which is difficult to judge from the outside, as it is hard to determine the degree to which an employee’s duties have changed. But the fact that a near majority of deactivated lobbyists are still with the same organizations suggests that many of the changes we see in the filings may be due to technicalities or minor tweaks in their responsibilities, with the result being decreased reporting.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Zuckerberg Super PAC

Previous posts have explained that Silicon Valley has deep stakes in federal policy -- even though Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has a spotty voting record. Carla Marinucci writes at the San Francisco Chronicle:
The newest start-up to watch in Silicon Valley involves a crowd of top tech stars –led by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who are seriously exploring the formation of a new independent expenditure group focused on a range of issues, including education and immigration reform, sources tell the Chronicle.
Word is the IE move was organized by Joe Green, Zuckerberg’s old Harvard roommate. And we’ve heard the Facebook CEO has pledged millions to the cause — one source says as much as $20 million — and has gotten others to pledge as much as $2 million to $5 million each.
Some people are raising their eyebrows over the choice of a hard-right Republican consultant — one who produced a famed spot deriding liberals as a “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” freak show — to handle the Silicon Valley SuperPAC’s work.
Sources say the group is bringing on Jon Lerner, the Republican strategist who founded Maryland-based Red Sea LLC and who is behind Grover Norquist and his Club for Growth. Joining him will be ultra-conservative GOP consultant Rob Jesmer, a former strategist with Texas Sen. John Cornyn and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Lincoln-Douglas Debates? Not Exactly


Robert Costa writes at National Review Online:
Newt Gingrich may have run in the wrong cycle.

The former House speaker, long a proponent of Lincoln-Douglas debates, should be a fan of the Republican National Committee’s latest idea for the 2016 presidential primary: Lincoln-Douglas debates, which would enable candidates to make lengthy policy points without an over-intrusive moderator.

Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman, told reporters today at a National Review briefing that he is considering “Lincoln-Douglas-type debates.”

“Everything’s on the table, but the most important thing is that we have a reasonable amount of debates — allow our candidates to be featured, allow everyone plenty of time to make their case,” Priebus said. “I mean, what happened last time was a free-for-all, and it just shouldn’t happen again.”
 Priebus might not literally mean "Lincoln-Douglas-type debates."  The first candidate would speak for sixty minutes.  The second would speak for ninety minutes.  And the first would then have thirty minutes for a reply.  Click here to see complete reenactments, courtesy of C-SPAN.

Marriage, Deliberation, and Changing Minds

At The Wall Street Journal, legal scholar Michael McConnell writes:
We learned from Roe v. Wade that the Supreme Court endangers its own legitimacy and exacerbates social conflict when it seeks to resolve moral-legal questions on which the country is deeply divided without a strong basis in the text of the Constitution. The court sometimes intervenes when the legislatures of the 50 states are approaching a consensus. When it jumps into a live political controversy, the justices look like they are acting like legislators.
The system today, without the Supreme Court's intervention, is working as it should. Representatives of the people are deliberating. "We the People" are thinking. So far, nine states have extended marriage to same-sex couples; many others chosen to explicitly endorse traditional marriage. Those choices distress advocates on either side of the matter when their wishes have been disappointed.
But when all of us have an equal right to be heard on an issue, and to participate through our representatives in making the decision, it is easier to accept the outcome than when unelected judges make moral pronouncements from the bench. Change that comes through the political process has greater democratic legitimacy.
One element of deliberation is a willingness for participants to change their minds. Pew reports:
The rise in support for same-sex marriage over the past decade is among the largest changes in opinion on any policy issue over this time period. A new national survey finds that much of the shift is attributable to the arrival of a large cohort of young adults – the Millennial generation – who are far more open to gay rights than previous generations. Equally important, however, is that 14% of all Americans – and 28% of gay marriage supporters – say they have changed their minds on this issue in favor of gay marriage.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Public Opinion, Immigration, and Citizenship

A new report from Brookings finds:


  • More than 6-in-10 (63%) Americans agree that the immigration system should deal with immigrants who are currently living in the U.S. illegally by allowing them a way to become citizens, provided they meet certain requirements. Less than 1-in-5 (14%) say they should be permitted to become permanent legal residents but not citizens, while approximately 1-in-5 (21%) agree that they should be identified and deported. 
  • More than 7-in-10 (71%) Democrats, nearly two-thirds (64%) of independents, and a majority (53%) of Republicans favor an earned path to citizenship
  • Majorities of all religious groups, including Hispanic Catholics (74%), Hispanic Protestants (71%), black Protestants (70%), Jewish Americans (67%), Mormons (63%), white Catholics (62%), white mainline Protestants (61%), and white evan­gelical Protestants (56%), agree that the immigration system should allow immi­grants currently living in the U.S. illegally to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements. 
  • Americans rank immigration reform sixth out of seven issues, far behind economic issues, as the highest political priority for the president and Congress. 
  • Nearly half (45%) of Americans say the Republican Party’s position on immigration has hurt the party in recent elections. 
  • Americans are more likely to say they trust the Democratic Party, rather than the Republican Party, to do a better job handling the issues of immigration (39% vs. 29%) and illegal immigration (43% vs. 30%). However, nearly 1-in-4 (23%) Americans say they do not trust either party to handle the issue of immigration. 
  • Views about immigrants’ impact on American society are strongly associated with political ideology. Conservatives (36%) and liberals (31%) are nearly equally as likely to say that immigrants are changing their own communities a lot. How­ever, conservatives (53%) are significantly more likely than liberals (38%) to say that immigrants are changing American society a lot. 
  • Overall, Americans are more likely to have positive rather than negative views about immigrants. A majority (54%) of Americans believe that the growing number of newcomers from other countries helps strengthen American society, while a significant minor­ity (40%) say that newcomers threaten traditional American customs and values.

Ping-Pong and Vote-A-Rama


Chad Pergram reports at Fox News about a procedure that does not represent the height of deliberative democracy:
“Why can't we debate the budget? They won't let us. We're in a senseless, senseless, senseless 60 hours of doing nothing,” protested [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid.

That’s partly because several Republican senators – most-notably Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) - stalled matters in an effort to force votes on amendments important to them. Moran wanted funding for air traffic controllers who work at small airports. Ayotte tried to strike dollars for a defense program she characterized as the “missile to nowhere.”

Finally, the Senate broke the logjam and crafted an agreement to finish the CR and ping-pong the spending bill back to the House so it could get about the budget.

Which it did. The Senate debated the budget deep into the night Wednesday. Special budget rules require hours of debate when considering such a resolution. And when the Senate adjourned around 10:45 pm ET,  it still had a hefty 34 hours of debate ahead. That was to be followed by a nearly-as-onerous “vote-a-rama.”

Think of a “vote-a-rama” as the parliamentary equivalent of a weekend marathon on TLC or Lifetime. It’s where the Senate spends an entire day, taking roll call vote after roll call vote on amendments to the budget. But for the Senate, this marathon is like watching a string of Sister Wives, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Criminal Minds and Hoarding: Buried Alive blended together…with a dose of The Twilight Zone on Syfy.

Ben & Jerry’s and Haagen-Dazs might help a depressed soul endure the TV marathons.
But they don’t churn out a vat of ice cream big enough to dull the monotony of the Senate vote-a-rama. Reid had hoped to boil off the mandatory debate time earlier in the week to get to the “vote-a-rama” sooner. But such is life in the U.S. Senate. It’s now possible the Senate could endure several very late sessions or even bleed into the weekend. That may delay a pending two-week break for Easter and Passover.

The “vote-a-rama” usually drives senators and staff to the point of exhaustion. It’s a war of attrition. A March Madness play-in team like LIU-Brooklyn would have a better chance of hanging around the Big Dance than some of the amendments in the Senate budget brackets. But it’s just the way the Senate does things. 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Senate Curbs Money for Poli Sci

The American Political Science Association has failed in its lobbying effort to stop an amendment to curb federal spending on political science. From an APSA release:
This afternoon, the United States Senate delivered a devastating blow to the integrity of the scientific process at the National Science Foundation (NSF) by voting for the Coburn Amendment to the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013.

Senator Coburn (R-OK) submitted an amendment (SA 65, as modified) to the Mikulski-Shelby Amendment (SA 26) to H.R. 933 (Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013). The amendment places unprecedented restriction on the national research agenda by declaring the political science study of democracy and public policy out of bounds. The amendment allows only political science research that promotes "national security or the economic interests of the United States."

Adoption of this amendment is a gross intrusion into the widely-respected, independent scholarly agenda setting process at NSF that has supported our world-class national science enterprise for over sixty years.
Below are comments by Senator Coburn, as well as the voice vote by which the amendment passed.  No senator came to the floor to defend political science, but apparently at least one senator voted no.

State Taxes

Many posts have discussed an important element of federalism, state tax policy. On Monday, Richard Morrison wrote at The Tax Foundation:
Today the Tax Foundation is releasing the 2013 edition of Facts and Figures: How Does Your State Compare?, a pocket-sized guide ranking all fifty states on forty different measures of tax and fiscal policy. Topics include income tax rates, business tax climates, and excise taxes on products like beer, wine, cigarettes, and gasoline. Facts & Figures is edited by Tax Foundation economist Scott Drenkard.
...
Each of the forty measures has its best and worst performers. Most favorably ranked states include Alaska, with the lowest combined state and local tax burden; Wyoming, with the most attractive state business climate; and Tennessee, with the lowest state debt per capita. Least favorably ranked states include California, with the highest marginal income tax rate; Kentucky, with the highest excise tax on wine; and New York, with the highest gasoline tax.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The RNC Report, the Hispanic Vote, and the 2004 Election


Recents posts have discussed the RNC report on the state of the Republican Party.  At one point, the report makes a claim about the 2004 election:
President George W. Bush used to say, "Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande and a hungry mother is going to try to feed her child." When Hispanics heard that, they knew he cared and were willing to listen to his policies on education, jobs, spending, etc. Because his first sentence struck a chord, Hispanic Americans were willing to listen to his second sentence. We heard this from other demographic groups as well. President Bush got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, a modern-day record for a Republican presidential candidate.
The 44 percent figures comes from a national exit poll. But there is reason to think that this poll overstated Bush's Hispanic support.  In 2005, the Pew Hispanic Center reported:
The controversy grew more complex when Ana Maria Arumi, a polling specialist then of NBC, which was a member of the NEP consortium, offered fresh insight on the exit poll at an event hosted by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) on December 2, 2004, and in a brief news item about the event on MSNBC.COM. Arumi said that the selection of sample precincts in the NEP produced an overrepresentation of Cuban respondents in Miami-Dade County, a population that is typically the most pro-Republican segment of the Hispanic electorate. A better assessment of the Hispanic vote, she said, could be developed by aggregating exit polls conducted individually in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. That analysis showed that Bush had drawn 40 percent of the Hispanic votes, she said. Arumi’s comments appear to be the most extensive analysis of the state exit poll findings regarding the Hispanic vote that have been made public by members of the NEP consortium. Full data from both the national and the 51 state polls has become publicly available, and in conjunction with data from the CPS it is now possible to assess these findings.

The national exit poll was based on a sample of 250 precincts designed to be representative of the nation as a whole, and 1,037 respondents at those precincts identified themselves as Hispanics. At the same time as the national poll was being conducted on election day, the NEP was also conducting 51 individual polls designed to produce results representative in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. These polls were taken at 1,469 precincts at which 4,469 Hispanics were interviewed. The Pew Hispanic Center has aggregated data from the 51 state polls and weighted the results to produce results for the nation as a whole. As Arumi noted, the 51 state polls show that Bush drew 40 percent of the Hispanic vote rather than the 44 percent in the national poll.
David Leal and colleagues wrote in "The Latino Vote in the 2004 Election" (PS:  Political Science and Politics 38 (January 2005): 41-49):

We conclude that the pre-election data provide little evidence that President Bush received the 44% level of support from Latinos estimated by the 2004 exit polls. We examined 10 such surveys and found Latino support averaging 60% for Kerry and 32 percent for Bush—which is the traditional two-to-one ratio of support enjoyed by the Democratic Party. Support for Kerry and Bush was large and found within almost every standard Latino demographic. Equally problematic is the lack of movement over time for Bush in these surveys. In addition, two surveys by the Washington Post/Univision/TRPI in both July and October found a 60–30 split, and Latinos were generally more likely to identify as Democrats (66%) than Republicans (24%).
...
Evidence from Texas counties and urban precincts also calls into question the exit poll claim that Bush achieved 59% of the Latino vote in his home state, which in turn suggests there may be problems with the national Latino exit poll data. Given these consistent patterns, it seems more logical to conclude that the exit polls mistakenly depicted the Latino vote than to accept that Latino preferences could have changed so substantially in such a short period.
Moreover, National Annenberg Election Survey put the Bush figure at 41 percent.

Clearly, Bush's 2004 showing among Hispanics surely was much higher than Romney's 27 percent. So why hype it by citing an inaccurate number?




Monday, March 18, 2013

Grim News About the News Media

Our chapter on mass media explains how news outlets and social media can foster active citizenship and deliberation on public issues.  The State of the News Media 2013, a report from the Pew Research Center's Project on Excellence in Journalism, provides troubling new data:
In 2012, a continued erosion of news reporting resources converged with growing opportunities for those in politics, government agencies, companies and others to take their messages directly to the public.
Signs of the shrinking reporting power are documented throughout this year’s report. Estimates for newspaper newsroom cutbacks in 2012 put the industry down 30% since its peak in 2000 and below 40,000 full-time professional employees for the first time since 1978. In local TV, our special content report reveals, sports, weather and traffic now account on average for 40% of the content produced on the newscasts studied while story lengths shrink. On CNN, the cable channel that has branded itself around deep reporting, produced story packages were cut nearly in half from 2007 to 2012. Across the three cable channels, coverage of live events during the day, which often require a crew and correspondent, fell 30% from 2007 to 2012 while interview segments, which tend to take fewer resources and can be scheduled in advance, were up 31%. Time magazine, the only major print news weekly left standing, cut roughly 5% of its staff in early 2013 as a part of broader company layoffs. And in African-American news media, the Chicago Defender has winnowed its editorial staff to just four while The Afro cut back the number of pages in its papers from 28-32 in 2008 to 16-20 in 2012. A growing list of media outlets, such as Forbes magazine, use technology by a company called Narrative Science to produce content by way of algorithm, no human reporting necessary. And some of the newer nonprofit entrants into the industry, such as the Chicago News Cooperative, have, after launching with much fanfare, shut their doors.
This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands. And findings from our new public opinion survey released in this report reveal that the public is taking notice. Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.
At the same time, newsmakers and others with information they want to put into the public arena have become more adept at using digital technology and social media to do so on their own, without any filter by the traditional media. They are also seeing more success in getting their message into the traditional media narrative.

So far, this trend has emerged most clearly in the political sphere, particularly with the biggest story of 2012—the presidential election. A Pew Research Center analysis revealed that campaign reporters were acting primarily as megaphones, rather than as investigators, of the assertions put forward by the candidates and other political partisans. That meant more direct relaying of assertions made by the campaigns and less reporting by journalists to interpret and contextualize them. This is summarized in our special video report on our Election Research, only about a quarter of statements in the media about the character and records of the presidential candidates originated with journalists in the 2012 race, while twice that many came from political partisans. That is a reversal from a dozen years earlier when half the statements originated with journalists and a third came from partisans. The campaigns also found more ways than ever to connect directly with citizens.

Party Limits

Previous posts have discussed the Republican National Committee's long and frustrating history of minority outreach.  One problem that has always confronted RNC -- as well as its Democratic counterpart -- is that its actual authority is very limited.

In its "Growth and Opportunity Project" report (another site here) RNC candidly studies the party's setbacks  in 2012 and offers recommendations for the future.  But at Politico, Maggie Haberman notes its treatment of policy issues:
The report is long on lists of ailments, but shorter on specific fixes. There are recommendations for better outreach and more focused efforts, but little discussion about the policies and specifics that the party would sell while reaching out to different types of voters.

Beyond immigration, it barely touches on policy. That was by design, according to the report, because it’s not the RNC’s purview. Still, policy is no small part of the GOP’s internal debate now, which underscores the limitations of what a party committee can do.
As Josh Putnam points out, the reports proposals for earlier primaries and regional primaries could require action by state legislatures and the cooperation of the Democratic National Committee.  Moving primary dates is tricky because it forces states either to move primary dates for other offices or have separate presidential primaries, which is expensive.


Sunday, March 17, 2013

GOP Outreach: A History

Reeling from back-to-back presidential losses and struggling to cope with the country’s changing racial and ethnic makeup, the Republican National Committee plans to spend $10 million this year to send hundreds of party workers into Hispanic, black and Asian communities to promote its brand among voters who overwhelmingly supported Democrats in 2012.
As noted earlier, RNC has made repeatedly made similar efforts for more than thirty years.

On December 25, 2003, Darryl Fears wrote in The Washington Post:
Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said increasing his party's share of the black vote is "a top, top priority."
The party is looking into establishing chapters at historically black colleges and universities, he said. Gillespie recalled Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R) telling him that the GOP should target black voters between 18 and 35 "because they are most likely to not identify as Democrats."
During a trip to Pittsburgh in July, Gillespie said, he met with Marc H. Morial, the new president of the National Urban League. While in Detroit last month, Gillespie said, he talked for two hours with editors at the Michigan Chronicle, one of the nation's few black daily newspapers. The party has arranged with American Urban Radio to broadcast a weekly message to the huge African American audience the network reaches.
Gillespie declined to specify how much the party will spend, saying he did not want the Democratic leadership to know. "But we're budgeting for it," he said.
On January 14, 2000, Mary Anne Ostrom wrote in The San Jose Mercury News:
Saying they want to bring "two-party democracy" to the Latino community, Republican leaders at their winter meeting in San Jose on Thursday announced a $10 million nationwide ad campaign to boost the GOP's image with the fast-growing, but largely Democratic, electorate.
To tailor its effort -- which will include extensive advertising in English and Spanish in California -- the Republican National Committee released a few results from a 1,000-person nationwide poll that they say shows about a quarter of likely Latino voters have no deep ties to Republicans or Democrats.
"They are up for grabs," RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson said at a press conference, surrounded by Latino politicians, state party leaders and media consultants.
On September 12, 1997, Scott Shepard wrote at the Cox News Service:
On Tuesday (9/16), for instance, the party will announce its latest minority outreach program, the first serious effort at attracting minorities to the GOP since the short chairmanship of the late Lee Atwater.
''We've got a lot to overcome,'' Michael Levy, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, acknowledged in an interview Friday. ''But we know that we're reaching out to people who share our beliefs ... and it's time to connect all the dots.''
The GOP with an obvious eye toward the 1998, and even 2000 election campaigns plans to spend $ 1.2 million over the next year to promote its ''New Majority Council,'' which will be charged not only with recruiting minority candidates but also with getting the GOP message out to minority groups.
More importantly, and in contrast to Atwater's largely rhetorical ''Big Tent'' efforts, the ''New Majority Council'' will become an institution within the Republican National Committee (RNC) under the direction of party co-chair Pat Harrison.
''We're going to take this a step beyond anything that Lee tried to do,'' said Levy.
On September 11, 1997, Rachel Van Dongen wrote in Roll Call:
On Tuesday night, an all-star cast - including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (Miss), House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga), Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson, and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman John Linder (Ga) - turned out for a fundraiser sponsored by Americans for a Brighter Future, a PAC aimed at recruiting minority Republican candidates.
Our goals are very simple," said Raynard Jackson, the founder and head of the group who has long been active in GOP circles, working for Sen. Kit Bond (Mo) and ex-Sen. John Danforth (Mo), with whom he helped push the nomination of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. "To get more minorities elected and interested in the Republican party."
...
"The party has demonstrated that they are very serious about minority outreach and I am convinced that we're going to take that message into 1998 and 2000," Jackson added. "I guarantee you that we'll see a browning of the Republican party."
...
Besides the turnout at the event on Tuesday, NRCC Chairman Linder said the committee, with the help of Hispanic Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla (Texas) and Watts, is paying greater attention to minority recruitment this cycle.
"We're emphasizing minority outreach more than we ever have before," said Linder.
And on a national level, RNC chair Nicholson and co-chair Pat Harrison are also intent on expanding minority participation in the "big tent" party. "We both share the strong goal (that) we want to make this party more inclusive," said Nicholson in a recent interview, adding that the RNC will soon be sending out newsletters in Spanish.
On March 12, 1995, A.L. May wrote in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"Republicans don't have to abandon our principles to reach out to minorities. We have only to rediscover them," [Rep. J.C.] Watts told "Project Pioneer," a candidate seminar sponsored by the Republican National Committee.

The event's name denotes a new frontier for a party that has either ignored or been rejected by the black community for 30 years. It also reflects a renewed strategy by RNC Chairman Haley Barbour to follow the "big tent" game plan started by the late Lee Atwater in the late 1980s.

"We Republicans have made a terrible mistake over the years in not aggressively seeking the millions of black voters who agree with us on the issues," said Barbour, who argues that there is now a pool of conservative blacks willing to consider the GOP.
On May 21, 1991, RNC chair Clayton Yeutter told the National Federation of Republican women:
We're also going to work outreach very hard, the minority votes, in 1992. My personal impression is that -- and there are a good number of minority folks represented in the room here today. My personal impression is that minorities are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Democrats who simply promise them things and never ever come through with anything in the real world. It is apparent that the jobs that have been generated for minorities in the last decade or so come because of Republican administrations and Republican policies, not Democratic administrations -- because there weren't any -- and not Democratic policies. And we need to make sure that's understood.
On April 24, 1989, Richard Benedetto wrote in USA Today:
Republican efforts to attract more minority voters have shifted into higher gear heading toward the 1990 elections.
GOP National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater has been wooing Asians, Hispanics and blacks in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.
Atwater met with state Republican leaders Friday in Newport Beach, Calif., urging them to make reaching out to minorities a priority.

President Bush, encouraged by polls that show his support among blacks higher than predecessor Ronald Reagan's, will speak at the May 13 commencement of predominantly black Alcorn State University in Mississippi. Alcorn State President Walter Washington said he's invited every president since Lyndon Johnson; Bush is the first to accept.
''Even a small increase in minority votes (for Republicans) will make the difference between victory and defeat in many elections,'' Atwater told the GOP officials.
On January 22, 1989, David Broder wrote in The Washington Post:
[RNC Chairman Lee] Atwater's mentor, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), was a symbol and beneficiary of the white backlash that drove millions, including Thurmond, out of the Democratic Party and into the GOP. But now, Atwater said in an interview, "minority outreach is my command focus, and I'm going to insist it drive my daily schedule." 
Through appointments to administration jobs and party posts, Atwater hopes to spur the creation of "an alternative leadership structure" in black communities. "Affirmative action has worked, and there's now a much larger black middle class," he said. Pointing to surveys showing weaker Democratic identification among young, better-educated blacks, Atwater said, "The time is right for us to reach out to them."
Unstated by Atwater but acknowledged by other GOP operatives is the fact that the "outreach" strategy could not have worked with Ronald Reagan in the White House and the Justice Department leading the battle against civil rights rulings obtained under previous Democratic administrations.
On June 28, 1986, Clay F. Richards wrote at UPI:
The Republican Party embarked on a new program Saturday to enlist minority participation because, GOP Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf said, Republicans ''do not intend to turn our backs on black Americans.''
''No subject is more critical to the future of our party than minority participation,'' Fahrenkopf told the summer meeting of the Republican National Committee.
The RNC created an advisory commission on minority participation to study the problem. Historically, the Republican Party has done poorly among black voters. President Reagan got only 9 percent of the black vote in 1984.
Fahrenkopf named Edward Lujan, chairman of the Republican Party in New Mexico, to head the commission.
''The purpose of the commission is to make recommendations to the RNC chairman with the goal of taking steps to attract more minority commmunities into our party's activities,'' Faharenkopf said.
On May 15, 1982, Richard E. Cohen wrote in National Journal:
It appears to be the Mission Impossible of the 1982 campaign, but Richard N. Richards, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is pulling no punches. "It's very important we elect one or more black Republicans to the House this year," he said in an interview. "I'm very confident we will."
In light of the Reagan Administration's repeated gaffes on civil rights issues and the high unemployment rate among blacks, Richards's goal may seem especially improbable. But the GOP already has two apparently strong candidates for November, and several others are possible. "We have to be concerned," said a Democratic political aide.
No black Republican has served in the House since 1928. In recent years, the national party has trumpeted its "outreach" efforts to expand the party's racial base. But Richards concedes those efforts have failed and says the way to succeed is to elect some black Republicans who can symbolize efforts to expand black trust in the GOP "I can't do that on my own," Richards said, adding, however, that things could change once Republicans make blacks feel comfortable within the party.
On July 13, 1980, Martin Tolchin wrote in The New York Times:
With black unemployment rising at a rate about double the national average, inner cities eroding and President Carter cutting social programs, Republican Party leaders hope this year to make inroads into the traditionally Democratic black vote.
''There's a lot of opportunity there,'' said Bill Brock, the Republican national chairman.
Detroit was selected as a convention site, at Mr. Brock's behest, at least in part because the
Republicans hoped to make it a symbol of a new commitment to older cities, to blue-collar workers and minority groups.
In their preconvention deliberations, the Republicans unanimously adopted a new platform plank on black Americans for the first time in modern history. The plank urged Federal programs for the inner cities, strong enforcement of civil rights statutes, and a nondiscriminatory system of Federal appointments.
The plank said: ''For millions of black Americans, the past four years have been a long trail of broken promises and broken dreams. The Carter Administration entered office with a pledge to all minorities of a brighter economic future. Today there are more black Americans unemployed than the day Mr. Carter became President.''
The plank was the work of Ronald Reagan's political strategists, who say that he will address the concerns of black Americans from a conservative viewpoint.

On August 8, 1977Newsweek reported:
Bob Dole meant to win black friends with his conciliatory speech to the National Urban League last week, but he committed a gaffe that undid his mea culpas. "We may have gotten what we deserved in terms of the black vote in 1976," the Republican Vice Presidential candidate began. ". . . I'll confess we haven't done enough. I promise we'll do more. We can't run with Lincoln any more." Unfortunately, Dole's speech didn't end there. "Vernon [Jordon] said he was sending a warning to both parties," the Kansas senator declared. "We got ours. We got ours in spades." There was an audible ripple of groans. "That's not offensive to me," Dole said later. "In the Midwest that means we were clobbered . . . I don't think it's anything at all unless somebody makes something of it."


RNC Outreach

RNC chairman Reince Priebus has announced a big new effort to appeal to minority voters.  It is the latest in a long series of such efforts. From Black Enterprise, July 1980:
It hit Bill Brock squarely in the face Tuesday, November 2, 1976. He was a Republican senator from Tennessee, but on that day more than 130,000 black voters sent him to the unemployment line and gave Democrat James Sasser a new career. Later, when Brock became chairman of the Republican National Committee, one of his top priorities was to break the Democratic party's death grip on black Americans. 
It was not Brock's defeat alone (he lost by 77,949 votes) that triggered the Republican party's rediscovery of the black vote. On that same day in 1976, President Gerald Ford narrowly lost the White House to political novice Jimmy Carter. The black vote made the difference. Ford made no real effort to secure it, while Carter had. 
In January 1978, when some political pundits were talking seriously about the extinction of the Republican Party, Brock invited Rev. Jesse Jackson, a die-hard Democrat, to speak before the Republican National Committee. The invitation itself was a radical step to bridge the gap between the GOP and black voters. "Black people need the Republican party to compete for our votes, so that we can have real alternatives.  The Republican Party needs black people if it is ever to compete for national office or, in fact, to keep it from becoming an extinct national party," Jackson said.
His challenge to black America was equally pragmatic: "We [blacks] must pursue a strategy that prohibits one party from taking us for granted and another party from writing us off."
Jackson got a standing ovation from the white, over-30 audience gathered to hear him, and the GOP campaign to woo black votes was off in a wave of bravado. Now, in the midst of a presidential election, there are a few signs that the Republican party has gotten down to some particulars.
  • The RepublicanNational Committee has a full-time staff to recruit blacks and to help local and national candidates campaign in the black community. 
  • Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush have at least one black campaign staffer responsible for linking the candidates's platforms to issues of concern to black.
In 1980, Reagan got 11 percent of the black vote.  In 1984, even while he was winning a huge popular margin and carrying 49 states, he got 9 percent.

The Irish and America

34.5 million Number of U.S. residents who claimed Irish ancestry in 2011. This number was more than seven times the population of Ireland itself (4.68 million). Irish was the nation's second most frequently reported ancestry, trailing only German.
Source: 2011 American Community SurveyIreland Central Statistics Office
150,990 Number of Irish-born naturalized U.S. residents in 2011.
Source: 2011 American Community Survey

39.3 years old Median age of U.S. residents who claim Irish ancestry is higher than the U.S. residents median age as a whole (37.3 years).
Source: 2011 American Community Survey

12.9% Percent of New York state residents who were of Irish ancestry in 2011. This compares with a rate of 11.1 percent for the nation as a whole.
Source: 2011 American Community Survey

33.3% Percentage of people of Irish ancestry, 25 or older, who had a bachelor's degree or higher. In addition, 92.9 percent of Irish-Americans in this age group had at least a high school diploma. For the nation as a whole, the corresponding rates were 28.5 percent and 85.9 percent, respectively.
Source: 2011 American Community Survey

$57,319 Median income for households headed by an Irish-American, higher than the $50,502 for all households. In addition, 7.3 percent of families of Irish ancestry were in poverty, lower than the rate of 11.7 percent for all Americans families.
Source: 2011 American Community Survey
At The Huffington Post, Jed Kolko writes:
Irish-Americans are strongly concentrated in the Northeast. The percentage of people with primary Irish ancestry tops out at 20% in the Boston metro area, followed by Middlesex County, MA (west of Boston) and Peabody, MA (north of Boston). The top six metros are all in Massachusetts or upstate New York:

America's Most Irish Metros
# U.S. Metro % Irish ancestry
1 Boston, MA 20.4%
2 Middlesex County, MA 16.9%
3 Peabody, MA 15.8%
4 Albany, NY 15.6%
5 Syracuse, NY 15.0%
6 Worcester, MA 14.8%
7 Camden, NJ 14.8%
8 Philadelphia, PA 14.2%
9 Long Island, NY 13.1%
10 Wilmington, DE-MD-NJ 13.0%
Among 100 largest metros. Primary Irish ancestry only.
Last fall, the Irish Times polled the island about the US presidential race:
THE VAST majority of Irish voters want Barack Obama to win the US presidential election in less than three weeks time, according to the latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll. It shows a tiny level of support among the electorate for Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

When asked who they would support if they had a vote in the US election, 79 per cent of respondents said Obama while just 5 per cent opted for Romney and 16 per cent had no opinion.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Americans on Israel and Egypt

Our chapter on national security and foreign policy discusses the role of public opinion.  When it comes to the Middle East, Americans have definite preferences.

Gallup reports on opinion toward Israel:
President Barack Obama prepares to visit Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, and Jordan next week -- his first trip to the region as president -- Americans' sympathies lean heavily toward the Israelis over the Palestinians, 64% vs. 12%. Americans' partiality for Israel has consistently exceeded 60% since 2010; however, today's 64% ties the highest Gallup has recorded in a quarter century, last seen in 1991 during the Gulf War. At that time, slightly fewer than today, 7%, sympathized more with the Palestinians.
...
Consistent with prior years, Republicans are substantially more likely than Democrats to favor the Israelis, 78% vs. 55%, with the preferences of independents -- currently 63% -- more closely matching those of Democrats.
Gallup reports on opinion toward Egypt:
The slight majority of Americans, 53%, now hold an unfavorable view of Egypt and 40% a favorable view. That is the most negative tilt in Americans' views of Egypt since Gallup began measuring favorability toward the country in this format in 1991.

Open States and Transparency

Previous posts have discussed transparency in government. Brian Joseph writes at The Orange County Register:
Two new reports released in conjunction with Sunshine Week, a national initiative to promote open government, have found that it ain't exactly sunny in California.
The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Sunlight Foundation gives the California State Legislaturea "D" grade for its efforts to make bill and vote data available online. Meanwhile, the Golden State reform group California Forward is sharply critical of both state and local governments in its report "The State of Transparency in California: 2013."
Both groups have found that the public sector is lagging behind the private sector in information practices.
Sunlight developers recently launched an innovative Web application called Open States, which allows users to track pending legislation in every state legislature. While they were building the site, the developers found themselves "struggling with the often inadequate information made available. Impossibly difficult to navigate sites, information going missing and gnarly PDFs of tabular data have become daily occurrences for those of us working on Open States. People are always curious to know how their state stacked up compared to others – in fact one of the most frequent questions we have been asked has been 'so which state was the worst?' That question got us thinking: How could we derive a measure of how 'open' a state's legislative data was?"
The result was Sunlight's Open Legislative Data Report Card, which gave a letter grade to each state legislature for efforts made to post information online. Sunlight says "each state was evaluated in six categories based largely on the Ten Principles for Opening Up Government Information," standards based on an October 2007 meeting of 30 open government advocates and expanded by Sunlight itself.
More on Open States:

Friday, March 15, 2013

Lobbying for Political Science

Inside Higher Ed reports:
As has become common in recent years, some Republicans in Congress are trying to kill the National Science Foundation's support for political science research. Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, has proposed that the $10 million a year spent by the NSF on political science research be shifted to the National Cancer Institute. "NSF’s political science program siphons valuable resources away from higher priority research that will yield greater applied benefits and potential to stir further innovation," said a fact sheet released by the senator. "This amendment does not aim to hinder science, but rather to allocate more support for research that will save lives."
Hunter R. Rawlings III, president of the Association of American Universities, sent a letter to senators, opposing the proposal. "The amendment sets up a false dichotomy between medical research and research in the social sciences that we emphatically reject," Rawlings wrote. "The arguments for providing additional funds for NIH and specifically for NCI are obviously strong, and we wish Congress were providing more funding in FY13. However, such funding should not and need not come at the expense of political science research."
The American Political Science Association, a 501(c)(3) group, is lobbying against the move.  Is that legal? The Center for Association Leadership explains:
Nonprofit organizations that qualify for federal income tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (the "Code") have the most favorable tax status, but they also have the most restrictions on government affairs activities. To maintain their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, these organizations must avoid all political campaign activities and must keep lobbying within permissible limits. While there is an absolute prohibition on 501(c)(3) organizations participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office, 501(c)(3) organizations can engage in a relatively significant amount of lobbying activity if carefully conceived and managed.


Thursday, March 14, 2013

Deliberative Poll and the Initiative Process

At Fox and Hounds, Pete Peterson writes of current proposals for initiative reform in California, citing a 2011 deliberative poll.
PBS taped the proceedings, producing an hour-long documentary of the event. Here’s what the public discussions on initiative reform looked like. Some of the Deliberative Poll’s results should hearten Senator Steinberg and his colleagues as they push reform ideas, but he might tread lightly with others:
Indirect Initiative: Allowing the Legislature to amend an initiative after it has passed subject to the agreement of the initiative’s proponents.
Beginning of “What’s Next California?”: 43% Support vs. 44% Against
By the end of deliberations: 37% Support vs. 51% Against
(Note: While the publicized Steinberg proposal would involve the Legislature prior to ballot placement, on this and other questions, attendees were very skeptical of Legislative engagement in the initiative-writing process.)
Allowing initiative’s supporters to withdraw it after it qualifies for the ballot.
Beginning of “What’s Next California?”: 88% Support vs. 5% Against
By the end of deliberations: 84% Support vs. 9% Against
But a couple of the most popular initiative reforms to this “California in One Room”, do not appear on any slate of the current proposals:
Create a public review process of an initiative after it has been filed with the AG to “clarify the proponents’ intent”. This might look something similar to the Citizens’ Initiative Review currently employed by the State of Oregon, which I reviewed here. This proposal saw the largest positive jump from pre- to post-deliberation:
Beginning of “What’s Next California?”: 60% Support vs. 21% Against
By the end of deliberations: 76% Support vs. 16% Against
(See this post about the Oregon process.)

At the same site, however, Joe Mathews questions the value of the poll results:
You can safely ignore that deliberative poll. It has nothing to say about initiative reform today.
That’s not to say the What’s Next CA poll didn’t have value. It did, as I recounted here back in June 2011. Stanford Professor Jim Fishkin did a terrific job putting it together. There were some fairly clear and informed findings on representation. And there was no ideological bias that I could detect.
But the initiative piece of the polling effort was very weak – the weakest piece of the poll. The information provided about the initiative process was poor, both in quality and quantity, and there were barely 45 minutes in groups for deliberation. And in a panel discussion to inform the deliberation, the panelists often avoided the question in favor of broad, generalized (and somewhat inaccurate) statements about the process.