New IRS Revelations

At McClatchy Newspapers, David Lightman and Kevin G. Hall report:

A group of anti-abortion activists in Iowa had to promise the Internal Revenue Service it wouldn’t picket in front of Planned Parenthood.

Catherine Engelbrecht’s family and business in Texas were audited by the government after her voting-rights group sought tax-exempt status from the IRS.

Retired military veteran Mark Drabik of Nebraska became active in and donated to conservative causes, then found the IRS challenging his church donations.

While the developing scandal over the targeting of conservatives by the tax agency has largely focused to date on its scrutiny of groups with words such as “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, these examples suggest the government was looking at a broader array of conservative groups and perhaps individuals. Their collective experiences at a minimum could spread skepticism about the fairness of a powerful agency that should be above reproach and at worst could point to a secret political vendetta within the government against conservatives.

The emerging stories from real people raise questions about whether the IRS scrutiny extended beyond applicants for tax-exempt status and whether individuals who donated to these tax-exempt organizations or to conservative causes also were targeted.

The Revolving Door Keeps Revolving

A number of posts have discussed the "revolving door" between interest groups and the government, along with the phenomenon of non-lobbying lobbying.

The Washington Post reports:

The decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline is a political headache for President Obama. But to five of his former aides, it represents a business opportunity.

Four of them — Bill Burton, Stephanie Cutter, Jim Papa and Paul Tewes — work as consultants for opponents of the project, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. Another, former White House communications director Anita Dunn, counts the project’s sponsor, TransCanada, among the clients of her communications firm.

Keystone XL is just one of several upcoming administration decisions providing lucrative work for former Obama advisers on issues ranging from gun control to mining to legalized gambling. Just this week, three of Obama’s top former political advisers —Robert Gibbs, Jim Messina and David Plouffe — were given five-figure checks to deliver remarks at a forum in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, which is in the midst of a campaign to burnish its image in Washington.

Obama came into office promising that his administration would hew to higher standards than his predecessors did. He implemented rules barring former aides from directly lobbying the government for two years and frequently decries the influence of “special interests” in Washington.

But the efforts have done little to slow a tide of groups hiring former top aides as highly paid consultants, speakers and media advisers in an effort to influence the administration — part of a longtime Washington practice in which interest groups seek access to the White House by hiring people who used to work there.

Intensity, Public Opinion, and Gun Control

The Pew Research Center reports that the public favors certain forms of gun control, adding some big caveats.

Yet the overall trend on whether it is more important to control gun ownership or protect gun rights has edged back in the direction of gun rightshttp://www.bessettepitney.net/2012/07/gun-control.html. And when it comes to the importance of gun policy as a voting issue, gun rights supporters have the advantage.

In the days after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. last December, more prioritized gun control than gun rights (49% vs. 42%), the first time this had occurred since Barack Obama became president. Roughly five months later, the public is again evenly divided over whether in general it is more important to control gun ownership (50%) or to protect the rights of Americans to own guns (48%). This mirrors the close divide in opinion that existed prior to Newtown. (See Pew Research Center’s 20 years of public opinion data on gun rights and gun control.)

Among those who prioritize gun rights, 41% say they would not vote for a candidate with whom they disagreed on gun policy, even if they agreed with the candidate on most other issues. Fewer gun control supporters (31%) say gun policy is a make-or-break voting issue for them.

And while nearly as many gun control supporters as gun rights supporters report contacting a public official about gun policy in the past six months, more gun rights advocates have contributed money to organizations that take positions on gun policy (12% vs. 3% of gun control supporters).

Household Wealth Has Not Recovered

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis indicates that household wealth has not yet recovered from the Great Recession:

The Federal Reserve reported March 7, 2013, that aggregate household net worth at the end of 2012 was $66.1 trillion, nearly back to its precrisis peak of $67.4 trillion, reached at the end of the third quarter of 2007. After falling to $51.4 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2009, the subsequent increase of $14.7 trillion through the end of last year represented a recovery of 91 percent of the losses suffered. Does this mean that the financial damage of the financial crisis and economic recession largely has been repaired?

The simple metric of aggregate household net worth is misleading for at least three reasons. First, the effect of inflation is ignored. Consumer prices increased about 2 percent per year in the five and one-quarter years since the third quarter of 2007, reducing the purchasing power of a dollar by a total of about 10 percent. Therefore, a return to the previous nominal dollar peak does not mean that a given amount of wealth could buy as much as before.

Second, simple aggregate net worth does not adjust for population growth. The number of households increased by about 3.8 million between the third quarter of 2007 and the end of 2012, or about 3.4 percent. The wealth of all American households now is shared by more families than before.

Third, the recovery of wealth has not been uniform across families. Of the total recovery of $14.7 trillion between the first quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2012, $9.1 trillion, or 62 percent, of the gain was due to higher stock-market wealth. Stock wealth is unevenly held, with the vast majority of stocks owned by a relatively small number of wealthy families. Thus, most families have recovered much less than the average amount.

The figure and table provide details of three different measures of household net worth—aggregate nominal net worth, as reported in the Flow of Funds accounts; aggregate inflation-adjusted net worth; and average inflation-adjusted net worth per household, a household-level measure consistent with the data format in the Survey of Consumer Finances as discussed in this article. Clearly, the 91 percent recovery of wealth losses portrayed by the aggregate nominal measure paints a different picture than the 45 percent recovery of wealth losses indicated by the average inflation-adjusted household measure. Considering the uneven recovery of wealth across households, a conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified.

California Opinion on Direct Democracy

A number of posts have discussed direct democracy.  A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California casts light on attitudes in the state:

Democratic legislators are also discussing reforms to the 102-year-old citizens’ initiative process. Californians’ strong support for the initiative process is reflected in their perceptions of its overall public policy consequences. About six in 10 adults (57%) and likely voters (60%) say that the public policy decisions made by California voters are probably better than those made by the governor and state legislature. Pluralities across political, regional, racial/ethnic, and other demographic groups hold this view. Similarly positive perceptions have been evident since we began asking this question in 2000.

However, many Californians do find it challenging to make public policy at the ballot box. About seven in 10 adults (70%) and likely voters (67%) say they agree that there are too many propositions on the state ballot. By comparison, 59 percent of adults held this view in September 2008. An even more widely held complaint involves the wording of ballot initiatives. Today, 78 percent of adults and 83 percent of likely voters agree that initiative wording is often too complicated and confusing for voters to understand what would happen if an initiative passed. A similar 78 percent of adults held this view in September 2008. Today, solid majorities across parties, regions, and demographic groups are in agreement that there are too many ballot propositions and that initiative wording is often too confusing.

The influence of special interests, which has been a major area of voter discontent in recent candidate campaigns, is also an issue in initiative campaigns. Most Californians say that the initiative process is controlled a lot (55%) or some (35%) by special interests, and very few say that special interests are not at all in control of the initiative process. Likely voters (63%) are somewhat more likely than all adults to say that special interests have a lot of control of the initiative process today. Partisans hold similarly negative views, with majorities of Democrats (57%), Republicans (65%), and independents (54%) saying a lot. In previous surveys, similar majorities of Californians have said that the initiative process is controlled a lot by special interests (52% Jan 2001, 56% Sep 2005, 54% Sep 2011, 56% Sep 2012, 55% today).

While Californians are generally positive about the initiative system, they also favor changing it. One way to increase public engagement has strong support: Nearly seven in 10 adults (68%) and likely voters (69%) favor an independent citizens’ initiative commission that would hold public hearings and make recommendations in the official voter guide. Democrats (68%), Republicans (65%), and independents (73%) express support, as do solid majorities across regional, racial/ethnic, and demographic groups.

Deliberative Democracy and Civic Engagement

Deliberation is a distinctive theme of our book, and many posts have examined ways in which officials try to engage citizens in the deliberative process.

At Governing, Mark Funkhouser writes:

The most fundamental problem in our civic life is the disengagement of citizens from their governments. The vast gulf between ordinary people and the elites who dominate our politics is well documented. Less often explained and articulated is that without restoration of at least a little public trust in government, we cannot manage any of the mounting crises we face. "Bringing Citizen Voices to the Table: a Guide for Public Managers," a recently published book by Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, is a detailed instruction manual for public officials who understand the importance of this challenge and want to take it on.

Lukensmeyer, executive director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, is a pioneer in the deliberative-democracy movement who has spent her career working to rebuild the public's ability to govern themselves. She has a doctorate in organizational behavior, ran her own organizational-consulting firm for a dozen years, and served as chief of staff for Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, as a deputy project manager on Vice President Al Gore's reinventing-government task force, and as a consultant to the White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration.
...

In her book, Lukensmeyer devotes a chapter to each of seven strategies for bringing citizen voices into governance, explaining why each specific tactic it is important and what will go wrong if it isn't attended to. Using these strategies, Lukensmeyer and her team have tackled some of the wickedest problems in public policy, from how to rebuild Ground Zero after 9/11 to reforming health care in California to rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

In New Orleans, for example, more than 4,000 people participated in two "community congresses" that Andy Kopplin, who was then the executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, credits in Lukensmeyer's book with turning the rebuilding efforts around. "There's no doubt that the Unified New Orleans Plan developed by citizens was the foundation for the city's final recovery plan and that it has had a significant, lasting impact on governance ever since," says Kopplin, who now is the city's chief administrative officer and a deputy mayor.

Is Religion Losing Influence?

Gallup reports:

Over three-quarters of Americans (77%) say religion is losing its influence on American life, while 20% say religion's influence is increasing. These represent Americans' most negative evaluations of the impact of religion since 1970, although similar to the views measured in recent years.
...
A separate question found much more positive views of the potential for religion to have an impact on the country, with 75% of Americans saying they think it would be positive for American society if more Americans were religious.

A Big Public Relations Problem for Labor

Previous posts have indicated public concern about the political influence of unions. The New York Post reports:

Union fat cat Mark Rosenthal spends more time sleeping at his desk than organizing labor, a series of damning photos reveals.

The 400-pound president of Local 983 of District Council 37 — the city’s largest blue-collar municipal-workers union — often downs a huge meal, then drops into dreamland in the early afternoon, members of the union’s executive board told The Post.

“He eats lunch when he arrives at work at 2 p.m. Then, like clockwork, he goes to sleep with a cup of soda on the table and the straw in it,” said Marvin Robbins, a union vice president.

“Then he wakes up, looks at his watch and says, ‘I have to get out before the traffic gets bad.’ He’s usually out by 4 p.m. after being at the office two hours.”

Rosenthal is a former Parks Department employee who rose to power campaigning to rid the union of corruption in the late 1990s.

He last made embarrassing headlines in 2009, when he inspired a City Council bill requiring jumbo-size ambulances for morbidly obese patients after he had a stroke at City Hall.

Since then, he hasn’t been making much of an effort to give the city’s ambulances a break and slim down. Union officials say he racks up $1,400 in monthly food bills on the union dime.

Much of the 5-foot-7, 400-plus-pound Rosenthal’s food tabs are for catered union events and meals he writes off as “union business,” board members claim.

 

Intelligence and Deliberation

"The first rule in decisionmaking," wrote Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive,  "is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement."

At Associated Press, Lara Jakes reports that the intelligence system used to discourage disagreement.

The system was still in place in 2002, when the White House was weighing whether to invade Iraq. Intelligence officials widely — and wrongly — believed that then-dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. By December 2002, the White House had decided to invade and was trying to outline its reasoning for doing so when then-CIA Director George Tenet described it as "a slam-dunk case."

The consequences were disastrous. There were no WMDs, but the U.S. wound up in a nearly nine-year war that killed nearly 5,000 American soldiers, left more than 117,000 Iraqis dead, and cost taxpayers at least $767 billion. The war also damaged U.S. credibility throughout the Mideast and, to a lesser extent, the world. Tenet later described his "slam-dunk" comment as "the two dumbest words I ever said."

Two years later, Congress signed sweeping reforms requiring intelligence officials to make clear when the spy agencies don't agree. Retired Ambassador John Negroponte, who became the first U.S. national intelligence director in 2005, said if it hadn't been for the faulty WMD assessment "we wouldn't have had intelligence reform."
...
To prevent that from happening again, senior intelligence officials now encourage each of the spy agencies to debate information, and if they don't agree, to object to their peers' conclusions. Intelligence assessments spell out the view of the majority of the agencies, and highlight any opposing opinions in a process similar to a Supreme Court ruling with a majority and minority opinion.

The result, officials say, is an intelligence community that makes assessments by majority vote instead of group-think, and where each agency is supposed to have an equal voice. In effect, officials say, the CIA has had to lean back over the last decade as officials have given greater credence to formerly marginalized agencies. Among them is the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which warned before the 2003 Iraq invasion that the CIA had overestimated Saddam's prospects to develop nuclear weapons.

IRS, ACA, and Public Opinion

CNN reports:

 A majority of Americans still oppose the nation's new health care measure, three years after it became law, according to a new survey.

But a CNN/ORC International poll released Monday also indicates that more than a quarter of those who oppose the law, known by many as Obamacare, say they don't support the measure because it doesn't go far enough.

According to the poll, 43% of the public says it supports the health care law, a figure that's mostly unchanged in CNN polling since the measure was passed in 2010 by a Congress then controlled by Democrats and signed into law by President Barack Obama. Fifty-four percent of those questioned say they oppose the law, also relatively unchanged since 2010.

The survey indicates that 35% oppose the health care law because it's too liberal, with 16% saying they oppose the measure because it isn't liberal enough.

The wide partisan divide over the law remains. Nearly three quarters of Democrats say they favor the Affordable Care Act. That number drops to 16% among Republicans.

CNN also reports:

This much is known for sure: The IRS is charged with playing a key role in implementing health reform.

"Tax provisions included in the Affordable Care Act represent the largest set of tax law changes the IRS has had to implement in more than 20 years," the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration noted in a recent report.

The ACA has some 500 provisions, and more than 40 amend or add provisions to the tax code, according to the report. It also adds considerably to the agency's administrative workload.

Among the IRS' biggest tasks will be to:

• Collect information from employers and insurers ...
• Figure out who qualifies for subsidies or Medicaid ...
• Determine who must pay a penalty ...
•  Penalize employers that don't provide affordable coverage.

 The IRS role in carrying out the law does not bode well for its popularity. Gallup reports:

A new Gallup poll finds Americans' views of the job the Internal Revenue Service is doing skewing much more negative than in the past, with 42% saying the IRS is doing a poor job, up from 20% in 2009 and 15% in 2003. Meanwhile, positive ratings of the IRS have declined 14 points since 2009, from 40% to 27%.

These results are part of a May 20-21 update of a Gallup trend on Americans' ratings of nine major federal government agencies. The poll was conducted at a time that the IRS has received harsh criticism for allegedly singling out conservative-leaning groups for greater scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. The decline in the IRS' image has left it as the only agency of the nine receiving a net negative rating.

The Gap Between the American Military and American Civilians

Previous posts have discussed the gap between the military and the rest of American society. At The New York Times, Karl W. Eikenberry and David M. Kennedy write:

For nearly two generations, no American has been obligated to join up, and few do. Less than 0.5 percent of the population serves in the armed forces, compared with more than 12 percent during World War II. Even fewer of the privileged and powerful shoulder arms. In 1975, 70 percent of members of Congress had some military service; today, just 20 percent do, and only a handful of their children are in uniform.
...
The Congressional Research Service has documented 144 military deployments in the 40 years since adoption of the all-voluntary force in 1973, compared with 19 in the 27-year period of the Selective Service draft following World War II — an increase in reliance on military force traceable in no small part to the distance that has come to separate the civil and military sectors. The modern force presents presidents with a moral hazard, making it easier for them to resort to arms with little concern for the economic consequences or political accountability. Meanwhile, Americans are happy to thank the volunteer soldiers who make it possible for them not to serve, and deem it is somehow unpatriotic to call their armed forces to task when things go awry.

THE all-volunteer force may be the most lethal and professional force in history, but it makes a mockery of George Washington’s maxim: “When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.” Somehow, soldier and citizen must once again be brought to stand side by side.

Americans Still Think That Government Is Too Powerful

Gallup reports:

Fifty-four percent of Americans say the federal government today has too much power. Despite the recent controversies facing federal agencies such as the IRS, these views are only marginally higher than in 2012, and slightly lower than in 2010 and 2011. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the federal government has too much power, whereas in the three years prior to that, Americans were more inclined to believe federal power was "about right."

Americans' views of federal power have become a renewed focal point in recent weeks with allegations that the IRS used its power to selectively audit certain types of organizations, and news reports of Justice Department investigations into Associated Press and Fox News records and emails. It does not appear, however, that these news stories have dramatically altered Americans' views of the federal government's power. The 54% who now say the federal government has "too much power" is in the same general range as it has been since 2005.

Only 8% of Americans say the federal government has "too little" power, while 36% say the government has about the right amount of power.

As would be expected, there is a major gulf between Republicans' and Democrats' views on this issue. More than twice as many Republicans (76%) as Democrats (32%) say the government has too much power, with a majority of independents coming down on the same side as Republicans.

Memorial Day 2013

Civic Duties

At The Atlantic, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson writes:

Every spring, commencement speeches echo across college campuses, calling upon students to engage the world. Speakers will invariably haul out terms like "civic engagement" and "global citizenship." Lost in the inspiring rhetoric are the less glamorous, yet arguably more vital, daily forms of civic participation. Such soaring words often obscure the fact that our basic civic duties, voting, jury service, electoral office - the three core constitutional requirements of citizenship - are being ignored in favor of grand plans to "follow your passion" and "change the world."
...

Civic responsibility is the rub of citizenship. As President Obama candidly acknowledged in his commencement address to Ohio State University this month, borrowing themes from John F. Kennedy's famous inaugural, "As citizens, we understand that it's not about what America can do for us. It's about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government." It is not about changing the world in a boundless future, but engaging constitutional responsibilities in the grounded present.

The political responsibilities of voting, jury service, and participating in elective office are the basics of our constitutional order. If we are inspired by anything at graduations, we should be inspired to participate in these fundamental, if ordinary, constitutional duties.

Inequality in Higher Education

A report from The Century Foundation:

Paradoxically, as Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl have observed, increasing college access is increasing inequality within the higher education universe. In 2011, more than half (53.9 percent) of  Americans aged 25 years or older had at either a four-year degree or more (32.1 percent) or one to three  years of college (21.8 percent), almost four times the share in the early 1950s—making issues of who goes where far more important. 

 Figure 1 vividly illustrates the socioeconomic breakdown of students in community colleges compared with four-year institutions of varying levels of selectivity. In 2006, high-SES students outnumbered low-SES students by 14 to 1 in the most competitive four-year institutions, yet  low-SES students outnumbered high-SES students in community colleges by nearly 2 to 1.

Jordan Weissmann writes at The Atlantic:

If you think higher education should be a ladder for upward mobility, then you should regard these numbers as a disgrace. As we've written before at The Atlantic, elite colleges do a consistently poor job recruiting the intelligent but low-income high school students who could benefit most from a top-notch education. Part of their problem, as Josh Freedman explained for us recently, is that it's expensive. Low-income undergrads need financial aid, and many institutions either don't have the resources, or would simply prefer to deploy them elsewhere. Others have the money and are willing to use it, but aren't sufficiently aggressive about reaching out to a population of students who often don't realize they have the academic skills to attend a great school or that aid would cover most of their expenses.

The Administrative State

Our textbook has a chapter on bureaucracy and the administrative state.  At The Washington Post, legal scholar Jonathan Turley writes:

The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.
This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 ruleshttp://www.bessettepitney.net/2013/04/red-tape-lives.html, including 61 major regulations.
...
The autonomy was magnified when the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

What Lobbyists Do

Lobbyists write bills, kill them quietly, and pick their targets carefully.

Thomas Edsall writes at The New York Times:

According to [Lee] Drutman, with whom I exchanged a number of e-mails, a study in The Journal of Law and Politics, “Measuring Rates of Return for Lobbying Expenditures,” estimated that “companies that lobbied on the [jobs] bill got a return of 22,000 percent on their investment, $220 in benefits for every $1 spent on lobbying.”
...

Some of the most detailed research on what lobbyists do has been conducted by the Collaborative Research Project on Lobbying and Policy Advocacy, financed by the National Science Foundation. This is a major, multiyear academic study of the process of lobbying and policy making in Washington. In a 2009 book based on data generated by the project, “Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why,” Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina and four colleagues found that the side with more lobbyists who previously served in government prevailed 63 percent of the time.

I asked a prominent Democratic lobbyist with just over $3 million in annual billings — who requested anonymity to avoid alienating his clients — about the difference between trying to win legislation and trying to block it.

“It’s significantly easier to block and impede,” he said. [emphasis added]

Congress is built to have multiple decision makers — members, leadership, differing committees, scores of staff — involved in the process, and it is a bicameral legislature, with two bites at the apple. So, the opportunities to raise questions, point out problems and flaws and essentially deter forward movement are numerous.

The New York Times reports:

Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to lawmakers to draft legislation that softens financial regulations. Instead, the lobbyists are helping to write it themselves.

One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month — over the objections of the Treasury Department — was essentially Citigroup’s, according to e-mails reviewed by The New York Times. The bill would exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.

In a sign of Wall Street’s resurgent influence in Washington, Citigroup’s recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee’s 85-line bill. Two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word. (Lawmakers changed two words to make them plural.)

Reuters reports that Apple has chosen to take the lead on tax reform.  CEO Tim Cook used his testimony before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations -- the topic was the company's tax avoidance --  to advocate an overhaul corporate taxes. Previously, Apple had let other tech companies get in front.

"They are very, very tactical," said a former Apple lobbyist who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. "They only join issues they really care about."

...
Apple has spent far less than other corporate titans on Washington lobbying over the past decade, records show, and the company has often declined to work with other technology companies on issues affecting the industry as a whole. It dropped out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009 after it disagreed with the business lobby's stance on climate change.

The company spent about $2 million on lobbying last year, up from $180,000 in 1999, records show. This year it is on pace to nearly double last year's figure.

Apple's lobbying expenditures still pale in comparison with those of Microsoft Corp., which spent $8.1 million in 2012, and Google, which spent $16.5 million, records show.

And unlike other businesses such as AT&T and Exxon Mobil, Apple has not set up a political action fund to distribute employee contributions to congressional allies - a common tool for wielding influence in Washington.

Democrats Move Left on Social Issues

Gallup reports: 

 While the nation may be a house divided on social issues, self-identified or "leaning" Democrats appear to be moving toward consensus. Half now say their social views are liberal or very liberal; this figure was 35% in 2001 and 37% as recently as 2010. Fewer Democrats say they are socially moderate -- down nine percentage points since 2001 -- or socially conservative, down six points. 

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have remained fairly consistent in terms of their social ideology -- six in 10 consider themselves social conservatives, hardly moved from 57% in 2001. Few Republicans identify as socially liberal.

Civil Service and Chester Arthur

At Time, Joe Klein writes:

It can, and will, be argued that the President is to blame for lousy management. I've argued that in the past. Some in the Administration are saying that civil-service rules prevent Obama from firing the midlevel bozos. But what about the higher-ups? Why haven't the Democrats proposed a full-scale review of civil-service laws, which were concocted by President Chester Alan Arthur 130 years ago, when there was only a fraction of the federal workforce that we have now? Such laws certainly hinder effective governance, which the Democrats are supposedly selling. The failure of Democrats to govern well inevitably leads to a conservative reaction. That reaction will dominate our political life to the exclusion of almost everything else between now and 2014, and perhaps beyond.

Klein may be right about mismanagement in the executive branch, but his account of the law is inaccurate.  Congress passed an overhaul of the civil-service law in 1978, so blame for any shortcomings should fall upon that statute.  As for the earlier law, the phrase "concocted by Chester Alan Arthur" is wide of the mark.  Concocted connotes a slapdash effort, when in fact the original law was a carefully-written document that worked well for many years. And although Arthur backed its enactment, he did not write it.

At About.com., Robert McNamara explains:

The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was named for its primary sponsor, Senator George Pendleton, a Democrat from Ohio. But it was primarily written by a noted attorney and crusader for civil service reform, Dorman Bridgman Eaton (1823-1899).

During the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, Eaton had been the head of the first civil service commission, which was intended to curb abuses and regulate the civil service. But the commission was not very effective, and when Congress cut off its funds in 1875, after only a few years of operation, its purpose was thwarted.

In the 1870s Eaton had visited Britain and studied its civil service system. He returned to America and published a book on the British system which advocated that Americans adopt many of the same practices.

...

Under Eaton’s proposals, the civil service would award jobs based on merit examinations, and a civil service commission would oversee the process.

The new law, essentially as drafted by Eaton, passed the Congress and was signed by President Chester Alan Arthur on January 16, 1883. Arthur appointed Eaton as the first chairman of the three-man Civil Service Commission, and he served in that post until he resigned in 1886.

The role played by Dorman Bridgman Eaton was highly unusual: he was an advocate for civil service reform, drafted the law pertaining to it, and was ultimately given the job of seeing to its enforcement.

Education Finances

From the Census Bureau:

Fiscal year 2011 marked the first decrease in per student public education spending since the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting data on an annual basis in 1977, according to new statistics released today (dollars not adjusted for inflation). The 50 states and the District of Columbia spent $10,560 per student in 2011, down 0.4 percent from 2010. The top spenders were New York ($19,076), the District of Columbia ($18,475), Alaska ($16,674), New Jersey ($15,968) and Vermont ($15,925). 

Total expenditures by public elementary and secondary school systems totaled $595.1 billion in 2011, down 1.1 percent from 2010. This is the second time total expenditures have shown a year-to-year decrease, the first time being 2010.

Today's findings come from Public Education Finances: 2011. These statistics provide figures on revenues, expenditures, debt and assets (cash and security holdings) of the nation's elementary and secondary public school systems for the 2011 fiscal year. The release includes detailed statistics on spending — such as instruction, student transportation, salaries and employee benefits — at the national, state and school district levels.
...

On the revenue side, public schools received $599.1 billion in total revenue for 2011, an increase of 1.1 percent from 2010. The largest source of revenue is from state governments at $265.9 billion (44.4 percent of total revenue), followed by local governments at $259.5 billion (43.3 percent) and the federal government providing $73.7 billion (12.3 percent).

...
Other highlights:

• Property taxes accounted for 65.6 percent of revenue from local sources for public school systems.
• Of the 100 largest school systems by enrollment in the U.S., New York City School District ($19,770) in New York had the highest current spending per student in 2011, followed by Baltimore City Public Schools in Maryland ($15,483), Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland ($15,421), Milwaukee Public School in Wisconsin ($14,244) and Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland ($13,775).
• States spending the least per student were Mississippi ($7,928), Arizona ($7,666), Oklahoma ($7,587), Idaho ($6,824) and Utah ($6,212).
• Eight out of nine states in the Northeast region of the U.S. were ranked among the top 15 in current spending per student in 2011. The remaining state in the northeast, Maine, was ranked 17th. Out of the 16 states with the lowest per student spending, 15 were in the South and West regions. The remaining state, South Dakota, was in the Midwest.

Coburn and Coolidge

The Washington Post reports:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) will insist that any federal aid to deal with the tornado in his home state must be offset by budget cuts.

“He will ask his colleagues to sacrifice lower priority areas of the budget to help Oklahoma,” spokesman John Hart said. Should other Republicans join Coburn, it could set up a fight similar to the January tug-of-war over Hurricane Sandy funding. That aid package was delayed by GOP opposition and ultimately passed with mostly Democratic support.

In a statement, Coburn said that “as the ranking member of Senate committee that oversees FEMA, I can assure Oklahomans that any and all available aid will be delivered without delay.”

Coburn was against the Sandy relief package, as well as 2011 legislation to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund. His office has noted that the 1995 aid for victims of the Oklahoma City bombing was balanced by cuts to unspent appropriations. However, he did ask for expedited FEMA aid in 2007, when an ice storm hit his state.

His position recalls that of President Coolidge.  Amity Shlaes writes:

The Hurricane Katrina of the Coolidge years, the great Mississippi River flood of 1927, wiped out many areas of the South. Yet Coolidge pointedly chose not to visit the devastated areas—sending Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover in his place—out of concern that a presidential visit might encourage the idea of federal spending on disaster relief, for which there were already advocates in Congress. This triggered resentment, which Senator Thaddeus Caraway of Arkansas expressed in personal terms: “I venture to say that if a similar disaster had affected New England the President would have had no hesitation in calling an extra session. Unfortunately he was unable to visualize the situation.” But soon thereafter floods tore across Vermont, the state where Coolidge had spent his childhood, and calls for him to visit grew loud—to no avail. “He can’t do for his own, you see, more than he did for the others,” as one Vermonter explained. Vermont, like Arkansas, would have to recover without federal intervention.

Difficulties in Voting: Poll Shows No Racial Difference

As the Supreme Court considers the Voting Rights Act, Andrew Kohut writes:

In the past three presidential elections, very few Americans reported having problems or difficulties voting according to Pew Research Center surveys. In its Nov. 8-12 poll in 2012, just 4% of whites answered yes to the question: “Did you have any problems or difficulties voting this year, or not.” Only 2% of African-Americans responded affirmatively.

Four years earlier, the comparable figures were 3% for whites and 4% for blacks, and in 2004, 5% and 3% respectively.

There were accusations leveled during the 2012 presidential campaign that black turnout was being discouraged in Florida and other key states by voter ID laws or attempts at deception or intimidation. Given these charges, Pew went a step further in the 2012 post-election survey than in previous surveys by asking voters if they knew anyone who tried to vote but could not. Blacks more often said they did than whites—14% versus 9%. But a follow-up question, “Why were those people not able to vote?” revealed that this difference was entirely accounted for by the fact that unlike whites, 6% of blacks reported knowing felons who tried to vote but could not.

A Leak Investigation

In The Washington Post, Ann E. Marimow writes about a Justice Department investigation into leaks of classified information about North Korea:

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

Associated Press CEO Gary Pruitt called the Justice Department's seizure of some AP telephone records "unconstitutional," saying "I really don't know what their motive was, I know what the message they are sending was — if you talk to the press we are going to go after you."

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.

At a time when President Obama’s administration is under renewed scrutiny for an unprecedented number of leak investigations, the Kim case provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of one such probe.

Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources.

IRS and ACA

At National Journal, Michael Catalini asks rhetorically:  what is the connection between the IRS and the Affordable Care Act?

The short answer is: a substantial one. In his ruling on the constitutionality of Obama's health care law, Chief Justice John Roberts that Congress can regulate health care under its ability to tax. That set up the agency to take a lead in implementing the law, along with the Health and Human Services Department. (The Labor Department will also play a role.) There are 47 tax provisions -- including the small business health care credit and the medical device tax -- that will go into effect. The agency will have to administer those provisions and collect taxes where they're due.

The agency will also have to determine whether people qualify for a health insurance premium tax credit as part of the minimum coverage requirement. Americans will also have to report their insurance status on their taxes each year, and the agency will have to review that and collect a $95 penalty on those not carrying insurance. Businesses will be required to provide health care to their employees or face a penalty if they do not. The agency will set these rules and collect the penalties when businesses aren't in compliance.

And what is the connection between the IRS scandal and the health law?  CBS explains:

Sarah Hall Ingram was the head of the IRS office overseeing tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012, during which time the agency initiated a practice of paying additional - and often burdensome - scrutiny to conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status. While there is no evidence that Ingram sanctioned or was even aware of the targeting practices, conservatives have cried foul about her new role as head of the IRS' Affordable Care Act office.

Defenders of the administration say that IRS targeting of conservative groups resulted from incompetence, not political malice.  But if IRS employees in general --and Ms. Ingram in particular -- are so incompetent, then prospects for successful implementation of the law are pretty grim.

A Planted Question

Many posts have examined the relationship between reporters and political figures.  It is common for officials to plant questions at events that journalists cover. (Sometimes they plant questions with the journalists themselves.)  At The Huffington Post, Jon Ward writes of an example involving the IRS scandal:

A senior IRS official, Lois G. Lerner, was speaking on a panel at an American Bar Association conference in a ballroom at the Grand Hyatt in Washington. She was asked a question by a member of the audience, and disclosed then that IRS agents had "used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title."

A few days ago, Kevin Williamson at National Review reported that the person who asked the question of Lerner, Celia Roady, was a tax lawyer who had served on IRS-formed advisory committees that dealt with issues of organizations applying for nonprofit status.

Williamson wrote that sources on Capitol Hill said the question was "planted" and that "the IRS has informally admitted as much."

On Friday, the acting commissioner of the IRS admitted publicly that the question was planted.
"I did talk to Lois about the possibility of ... did it make sense for us to start talking about this in public," Steven Miller, acting commissioner of the IRS, told the House Ways and Means Committee during sworn testimony.

Miller said he and Lerner discussed volunteering the information publicly "now that the [IRS inspector general's] report was finalized, now that we knew all the facts, now that we had responded in writing and everything was done."

"We talked about what would be said and how we might do it," Miller said of his conversation with Lerner.

At USA Today, Gregory Korte provides some background:

It was an unusual way to deliver bad news, even in a town known for its selective leaks, Friday night news dumps and wag-the-dog distractions.

The Internal Revenue Service, apparently determined to get out ahead of an inspector general report critical of its handling of tax exemptions for Tea Party groups, came up with a plan: Lois Lerner, the official responsible for the tax-exempt division, would publicly apologize in response to a question at the American Bar Association conference in Washington.

...
Communications professionals said it was a puzzling move that backfired and alienated members of Congress.

"It violates the golden rule of political crisis management — disclosing critical facts early," said Nu Wexler, a former Democratic Hill staffer and vice president of Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications.

Lerner "had an opportunity to explain the full story in the May 8th hearing, and she passed. Members of Congress don't like being misled, and that's why two key House Democrats are now calling for her resignation," Wexler said.

Migration, Religion, and a Changing America

The Census Bureau reports:

International migration is projected to surpass natural increase (births minus deaths) as the principal driver of U.S. population growth by the middle of this century, according to three new series of population projections released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. This scenario would mark the first time that natural increase was not the leading cause of population increase since at least 1850, when the census began collecting information about residents' country of birth. The shift in what drives U.S. population growth is projected to occur between 2027 and 2038, depending on the future level of international migration.

The Pew Research Center reports:

Over the past 20 years, the United States has granted permanent residency status to an average of about 1 million immigrants each year. These new “green card” recipients qualify for residency in a wide variety of ways – as family members of current U.S. residents, recipients of employment visas, refugees and asylum seekers, or winners of a visa lottery – and they include people from nearly every country in the world. But their geographic origins gradually have been shifting. U.S. government statistics show that a smaller percentage come from Europe and the Americas than did so 20 years ago, and a growing share now come from Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region.

With this geographic shift, it is likely that the religious makeup of legal immigrants also has been changing. The U.S. government, however, does not keep track of the religion of new permanent residents. As a result, the figures on religious affiliation in this report are estimates produced by combining government statistics on the birthplaces of new green card recipients over the period between 1992 and 2012 with the best available U.S. survey data on the religious self-identification of new immigrants from each major country of origin.

While Christians continue to make up a majority of legal immigrants to the U.S., the estimated share of new legal permanent residents who are Christian declined from 68% in 1992 to 61% in 2012. Over the same period, the estimated share of green card recipients who belong to religious minorities rose from approximately one-in-five (19%) to one-in-four (25%). This includes growing shares of Muslims (5% in 1992, 10% in 2012) and Hindus (3% in 1992, 7% in 2012). The share of Buddhists, however, is slightly smaller (7% in 1992, 6% in 2012), while the portion of legal immigrants who are religiously unaffiliated (atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular) has remained relatively stable, at about 14% per year.1
Unauthorized immigrants, by contrast, come primarily from Latin America and the Caribbean, and the overwhelming majority of them – an estimated 83% – are Christian. That share is slightly higher than the percentage of Christians in the U.S. population as a whole (estimated at just under 80% of U.S. residents of all ages, as of 2010).2

Did Black Turnout Exceed White Turnout in 2012?

Previous posts have discussed the composition of the 2012 electorate.  At the Pew Research Center, Paul Taylor and Mark Hugo Lopez write:

The Census Bureau made big news last week when it reported that the black voter turnout rate (66.2%) exceeded the white voter turnout rate (64.1%) for the first time ever in 2012. But a closer look at the numbers raises some intriguing questions.

It’s possible that the lines may have first crossed in 2008. But it’s also possible they may not have crossed at all.

Let’s start with the second scenario. It’s based on data that suggest that last year, blacks may have been more inclined than whites to report that they voted when in fact they didn’t. This is known as a “social desirability bias,” a familiar concern among survey researchers.

The Census Bureau bases its estimates of voter turnout on self-reports from a survey of a nationally representative sample of about 55,000 households. The survey is conducted in the two weeks after each federal election and is considered the best source of information on the demographics of the nation’s electorate. However, this self-report method typically produces a modest over-estimate of turnout, and 2012 was no exception. According to the Census Bureau’s estimates, 133 million Americans voted last year, but according to the official state-by-state tallies, just 129 million did.

Moreover, if you analyze the discrepancies by state, as the Pew Research Center has (download our Election Turnout Rates by State data in Excel), you find a pattern that casts some doubt on the Census Bureau’s announcement. It turns out that the phenomenon of over reporting tended to be most pronounced in states that have the highest share of blacks in their citizen-age electorate.

Political Abuse of the IRS: Excerpts from the 1976 Report

Previous posts have discussed the growing scandal at the IRS.  It has precedents.

In 1976, the Senate's Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities reported on abuse of the Internal Revenue Service. (Click here for the full report).  Excerpts are below.

Pages 53-54:

The IRS program that came to be used against the domestic dissidents of the 1960s was first used against Communists in the 1950s. As part of its COINTELPRO against the Communist Party, the FBI arranged for IRS investigations of Party members, and obtained their tax returns. In its efforts against the Communist Party, the FBI had unlimited access to tax returns: it never told the IRS why it wanted them, and IRS never attempted to find out. In 1961, responding to White House and congressional interest in right-wing organizations, the IRS began comprehensive investigations of right-wing groups to identify contributors and ascertain whether or not some of them were entitled to their tax exempt status.  Left-wing groups were later added, in an effort to avoid charges that such IRS activities were all aimed at one part of the political spectrum. Both right- and left-wing groups were selected for review and investigation because of their political activity and not because of any information that they had violated the tax laws.

While the IRS efforts begun in 1961 to investigate the political activities of tax exempt organizations were not as extensive as later programs in 1969-1973, they were a significant departure by'the IRS from normal enforcement criteria for investigating persons or groups on the basis of information indicating noncompliance. By directing tax audits at individuals and groups solely because of their political beliefs, the Ideological Organizations Audit Project (as the 1961 program was known) established a precedent for a far more elaborate program of targeting "dissidents." 

Page 94-95:

The Special Service Staff: IRS Targeting of Ideological Groups. In 1969, the IRS established a Special Service Staff to gather intelligence on a category of taxpayers defined essentially by political criteria. The SSS attempted to develop tax cases against the targeted taxpayers and initiated tax fraud investigations against some who would otherwise never have been investigated.

The SSS originated as a result of pressure from the permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and from President Nixon, acting through White House assistants Tom Charles Huston and Dr. Arthur Burns.According to the IRS Commissioner's memorandum, Dr. Burns expressed to him the President's concern 

        over the fact that tax-exempt funds may be supporting activist groups engaged in stimulating riots both on the campus and within our inner cities.

The administration did not supply any facts to support the assertion that such groups were violating tax laws.

After the SSS was established, the FBI and the Justice Department's Interdivisional Information Unit (IDIU) became its largest sources of names. An Assistant IRS Commissioner requested the FBI to provide information regarding "various organizations of predominantly dissident or extremist nature and/or people prominently identified within those organizations."  The FBI agreed, believing, as one intelligence official put it, that SSS would "deal a blow" to "dissident elements." 

Among the material received by SSS from the FBI was a list of 2,300 organizations categorized as "Old Left," "New Left," and "Right Wing." The SSS also received about 10,000 names on IDIU computer printouts. SSS opened files on all these taxpayers, many of whom were later subjected to tax audits and some to tax fraud investigations. There is no reason to believe that the names listed by the FBI or the IDIU were selected on the basis of any probable noncompliance with the tax laws. Rather, these groups and individuals were targeted because of their political and ideological beliefs and activities. 

A Very Bad Day for the President

What's the one thing that the Obama administration could do that would alienate the entire press corps?  Brendan Sasso and Jordy Yager write at The Hill:

Federal prosecutors secretly obtained two months' worth of telephone records of Associated Press journalists in what the news agency described Monday as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.”

The Justice Department notified the AP on Friday that it had subpoenaed the records, which included more than 20 office, cellphone and home phone lines. The lines include the general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery.

Juliet Eilperin and Zachary Goldfarb write at The Washington Post:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
...
Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

 Pro Publica discloses:

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.

The IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica.

In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

The Washington Post gives the president four Pinocchios for his statement on Benghazi:

During the campaign, the president could just get away with claiming he said “act of terror,” since he did use those words — though not in the way he often claimed. It seemed like a bit of after-the-fact spin, but those were his actual words — to the surprise of Mitt Romney in the debate.

But the president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.

Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time--and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.

Targeting Criteria

ABC News has released a portion of the IRS Inspector General's report on the agency's targeting of political groups.  One table lists the evolving criteria for flagging requests:

Lobbyists and Think Tanks

Previous posts have discussed the links between think tanks and economic interests. At The New Republic, Brooke Williams and Ken Silverstein write:

Washington lobbyists are required by law to disclose who they work for, how much they get paid and what issues they advocate for. But they’re not obliged to mention it when they do other work—like, say, appear as a policy expert at a think-tank event. [Ian] Brzezinski’s Atlantic Council bio, for instance, says he “leads the Brzezinski Group, which provides strategic insight and advice to government and commercial clients,” but it doesn’t disclose that he’s a registered lobbyist or identify his clients. The Rice University conference agenda listed Brzezinski as a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council without mentioning that he was lobbying for the company that wanted to build the project—or that another panelist was paying him. (Reached by phone, Brzezinski said he was unavailable and referred questions to the Atlantic Council; the Council did not return phone calls or emails requesting comment.)

Brzezinski’s role is hardly anomalous. We found at least 49 people who have simultaneously worked as lobbyists for outside entities while serving as top staff, directors or trustees of 20 of the 25 most influential think tanks in the United States, as ranked by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Small Business and the Affordable Care Act

Gallup reports:

Forty-eight percent of U.S. small-business owners say the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) is going to be bad for their business, compared with 9% who say it is going to be good, and 39% who expect no impact.

These findings are from a Gallup survey of 603 small-business owners, conducted April 1-5.

Similarly, 52% of owners say the ACA is going to reduce the quality of healthcare they and their employees receive. This contrasts with 13% who feel it will improve the quality of care their employees get, and 30% who see no impact.

In a separate question, 55% of small-business owners expect the money they pay for healthcare to increase. Five percent expect their healthcare costs to decline, while 37% say the health law will have no impact on what they pay for healthcare.

When asked if they had taken any of five specific actions in response to the ACA, 41% of small-business owners say they have held off on hiring new employees and 38% have pulled back on plans to grow their business. One in five (19%) have reduced their number of employees and essentially the same number (18%) have cut employee hours in response to the healthcare law. One in four owners (24%) have thought about eliminating healthcare coverage for their employees