A New Constitution?

At Salon, Andrew Burstein calls for replacing the Constitution.

Though they haven’t articulated it as such, Americans want a new constitution that actually does what the original Constitution was supposed to do: serve the public good.

So, what would that document ideally look like?

It would surely reject outright the decadent, cowardly impulse to fashion a body of laws with special perks designed to prop up the few and wealthy while more or less throwing crumbs to the poor and powerless. Its overall function would be to improve the quality of life across the country, in places big and small. Let’s put it in all caps, and maybe stick it in the Preamble: TO CALL ITSELF A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY, A NATION MUST BE REASONABLE AND EQUITABLE IN THE DIVISION OF POWER.

James Madison had a different take.  In Federalist 10, he explicitly said that government should protect "different and unequal faculties of acquiring property."

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

Affordable Care Act: Limited Access to Doctors

The New York Times reports:

Enrollment in Medicaid is surging as a result of the Affordable Care Act, but the Obama administration and state officials have done little to ensure that new beneficiaries have access to doctors after they get their Medicaid cards, federal investigators say in a new report.

The report, to be issued this week by the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, says state standards for access to care vary widely and are rarely enforced. As a result, it says, Medicaid patients often find that they must wait for months or travel long distances to see a doctor.

The inspector general, Daniel R. Levinson, said federal and state officials must do more to protect beneficiaries’ access to care, in view of the program’s rapid growth. Just since October, the administration says, eight million people with low incomes have enrolled. By 2016, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, one in four Americans will be on Medicaid at some time during the year.

Twenty-seven states have expanded Medicaid eligibility since the passage of the health care law in 2010, and President Obama is urging other states to do so.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Finding a doctor who takes Obamacare coverage could be just as frustrating for Californians in 2015 as the health-law expansion enters its second year.

The state's largest health insurers are sticking with their often-criticized narrow networks of doctors, and in some cases they are cutting the number of physicians even more, according to a Times analysis of company data. And the state's insurance exchange, Covered California, still has no comprehensive directory to help consumers match doctors with health plans.

This comes as insurers prepare to enroll hundreds of thousands of new patients this fall and get 1.2 million Californians to renew their policies under the Affordable Care Act.
Even as California's enrollment grows, many patients continue to complain about being offered fewer choices of doctors and having no easy way to find the ones that are available.

Some consumers have been saddled with huge medical bills after insurers refused to pay for care deemed out of network. These complaints have sparked a state investigation and consumer lawsuits against two big insurers.

Jefferson, Patriotism, and Civic Education

At The Wall Street Journal, Donald Kagan writes:

Jefferson was convinced that there needed to be an education for all citizens if they and their new kind of popular government were to flourish. He understood that schools must provide "to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts, and accounts, in writing."

For Jefferson, though, the most important goals of education were civic and moral. In his "Preamble to the 1779 Virginia Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" he addresses the need for all students to have a political education through the study of the "forms of government," political history and foreign affairs. This was not meant to be a "value free" exercise; on the contrary, its purpose was to communicate the special virtues of republican representative democracy, the dangers that threatened it, and the responsibility of its citizens to esteem and protect it. This education was to be a common experience for all citizens, rich and poor, for every one of them had natural rights and powers, and every one had to understand and esteem the institutions, laws and traditions of his country if it was to succeed.
...
Jefferson meant American education to produce a necessary patriotism. Democracy—of all political systems, because it depends on the participation of its citizens in their own government and because it depends on their own free will to risk their lives in its defense—stands in the greatest need of an education that produces patriotism.

I recognize that I have said something shocking. The past half-century has seen a sharp turn away from what had been traditional attitudes toward the purposes and functions of education. Our schools have retreated from the idea of moral education, except for some attempts at what is called "values clarification," which is generally a cloak for moral relativism verging on nihilism of the sort that asserts that whatever feels good is good.

Even more vigorously have the schools fled from the idea of encouraging patriotism. In the intellectual climate of our time, the very suggestion brings contemptuous sneers or outrage, depending on the listener's mood. There is no end of quoting Samuel Johnson's famous remark that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," but no recollection of Boswell's explanation that Johnson "did not mean a real and generous love for our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest."

Many have been the attacks on patriotism for intolerance, arrogance and bellicosity, but that is to equate it with its bloated distortion, chauvinism. My favorite dictionary defines the latter as "militant and boastful devotion to and glorification of one's country," but defines a patriot as "one who loves, supports, and defends his country."

The Holder Legacy: FAQ

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that he is stepping down.

What is his legacy?

A New York Times editorial lists several issues:

• Same-sex marriage: he refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, part of which the Supreme Court has now struck down.
• Voting rights:  he successfully fought voter-identification laws and other changes in voting procedure.
• Criminal justice:  he supported a law eliminating differences in sentences for crack v. powder cocaine, and has called for an end to mandatory minimums.

What controversies surrounded his tenure?

Matt Apuzzo reports at The New York Times:

Mr. Holder approved of the National Security Agency’s authority to sweep up millions of phone records of Americans accused of no crime. He subpoenaed journalists and led a crackdown on their sources. He defended the F.B.I.’s right to track people’s cars without warrants and the president’s right to kill an American who had joined Al Qaeda.

“This is an attorney general who displayed an odd approach, an odd schism between civil rights and civil liberties,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, a group that frequently supported Mr. Holder’s civil rights policies.

Clarance Page notes:

His refusal to turn over some internal documents related to a botched gunrunning probe known as Fast and Furious, for example, resulted in a House vote in 2012 largely along party lines to hold him in contempt of Congress.

What has the AG's impact been on California? 

Bob Egelko writes at The San Francisco Chronicle:

[Law professor Rory] Little said California has also been affected by Holder’s position on immigration, in which he supported legislation to allow undocumented minors to gain legal residency if they attended college or served in the armed forces. Although Congress rejected the measure, Obama enacted a version of it by executive order, and Holder’s support gave Gov. Jerry Brown “a lot of leverage to pass a California version,” which lowered tuition and extended financial aid, Little said.

Even on medical marijuana, Little said, Holder’s policies have been “the most liberal and the most forgiving of any attorney general since marijuana was illegalized in the 1920s.”
That’s not a universal view. After Justice Department officials issued much-publicized memos declaring that prosecution of state-approved medical marijuana operations would be their lowest priority — in line with Obama’s pledge as a presidential candidate — California’s four U.S. attorneys announced a crackdown on pot suppliers in October 2011. They have since filed civil suits that have led to evictions and closures of hundreds of dispensaries.

That campaign has slowed, but the Justice Department is still seeking to shut down Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the nation’s largest licensed medical marijuana provider.

News and Social Media

At Pew, Monica Anderson and Andrea Caumont sum up some findings about social media and news:

• When you take into account both the total reach of a site (the share of Americans who use it) and the proportion of users who get news on the site,Facebook is the obviousnews powerhouse among the social media sites. Roughly two-thirds (64%) of U.S. adults use the site, and half of those users get news there — amounting to 30% of the general population.
• Half of social network site users have shared news stories, images or vidoes , and nearly as many (46%) have discussed a news issue or event. In addition to sharing news on social media, a small number are also covering the news themselves, by posting photos or videos of news events. Pew Research found that in 2014, 14% of social media users posted their own photos of news events to a social networking site, while 12% had posted videos. This practice has played a role in a number of recent breaking news events, including the riots in Ferguson, Mo.
• Our analysis of comScore data found visitors who go to a news media website directly spend roughly three times as long as those who wind up there through search or Facebook, and they view roughly five times as many pages per month.
• Unlike Twitter, where a core function is the distribution of information as news breaks, Facebook is not yet a place many turn to for learning about breaking news.
• Our recent survey revealed social media doesn’t always facilitate conversation around the important issues of the day.

Tech, Lobbying, and Transparency

Julian Hattem reports at The Hill:

Tech companies spend millions of dollars on political donations and lobbying, yet they are also some of the least transparent, according to a new report.

A new analysis from the Center for Political Accountability and the University of Pennsylvania’s Zicklin Center for Business Ethics showed that the information technology sector ranked near the bottom of industries it reviewed, with an overall score of 44 out of 100.

Two tech companies — Netflix and Salesforce — were given a score of 0 on the organization’s annual list.

Derek Willis and Claire Cain Miller write at The New York Times:

To a large extent, the index represents a political maturity list. The top ranks are occupied by companies that have extensive contacts with the political world, usually through lobbying and campaign contributions, and who understand the public relations benefits of disclosing such information.

From that perspective, the index also illustrates the tech industry’s relative lack of political savvy. “Tech is really bad at figuring out how to contribute to political causes and issues,” said Josh Mendelsohn, a tech investor and co-founder of Engine, which does policy research and advocacy to help link Silicon Valley to Washington. “I don’t think it’s anything pernicious, but it’s us not being really sophisticated.”

Up until a decade ago, the tech industry wanted little to do with Washington, mostly because it seemed to epitomize the old-fashioned way of getting things done. Regulators don’t understand technology, tech executives often said. Washington moves too slowly to keep up with fast-changing technology, and technology can solve problems more efficiently than the public sector, many of them believed.

Yet Silicon Valley’s attitude has recently evolved from dismissive to grudgingly cooperative. It has realized it has no choice but to develop a relationship with Washington. Its companies are getting so big and powerful that they are attracting the attention of regulators and surveillance agencies. The industry has realized that Washington is the route to address issues it cares about, like net neutrality and the push for more visas for highly educated immigrants. Many companies have hired executives from deep inside government, opened Washington offices and increased their lobbying and political spending.

Never Married

Many posts have discussed marriage and family structure. At Pew, Wendy Wang and Kim Parker write:

After decades of declining marriage rates and changes in family structure, the share of American adults who have never been married is at an historic high. In 2012, one-in-five adults ages 25 and older (about 42 million people) had never been married,according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of census data. In 1960, only about one-in-ten adults (9%) in that age range had never been married.1 Men are more likely than women to have never been married (23% vs. 17% in 2012). And this gender gap has widened since 1960, when 10% of men ages 25 and older and 8% of women of the same age had never married.

The dramatic rise in the share of never-married adults and the emerging gender gap are related to a variety of factors. Adults are marrying later in life, and the shares of adults cohabiting and raising children outside of marriage have increased significantly. The median age at first marriage is now 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 20 for women and 23 for men in 1960.2 About a quarter (24%) of never-married young adults ages 25 to 34 are living with a partner, according to Pew Research analysis of Current Population Survey data.3

In addition, shifting public attitudes, hard economic times and changing demographic patterns may all be contributing to the rising share of never-married adults.

This trend cuts across all major racial and ethnic groups but has been more pronounced among blacks. Fully 36% of blacks ages 25 and older had never been married in 2012, up from 9% in 1960. For whites and Hispanics, the share of never-married adults has roughly doubled over that same period. In 2012, 16% of whites and 26% of Hispanics had never been married.

Derek Thompson put it simply:

This is the marriage crisis behind our inequality crisis. It is not complicated. It requires no regressions. It is the simplest math equation is the world. It says: Two is more than one.

Interest Groups and the Republican Governors Association

Jonathan Weisman reports at The New York Times:

In politics, it is sometimes better to be lucky than good. Republicans and Democrats, and groups sympathetic to both, spend millions on sophisticated technology to gain an advantage.

They do it to exploit vulnerabilities and to make their own information secure. But sometimes a simple coding mistake can lay bare documents and data that were supposed to be concealed from the prying eyes of the public.

Such an error by the Republican Governors Association recently resulted in the disclosure of exactly the kind of information that political committees given tax-exempt status normally keep secret, namely their corporate donors and the size of their checks. That set off something of an online search war between the association and a Washington watchdog group that spilled other documents, Democratic and Republican, into the open.

The documents, many of which the Republican officials have since removed from their website, showed that an A-to-Z of America’s most prominent companies, from Aetna to Walmart, had poured millions of dollars into the campaigns of Republican governors since 2008. One document listed 17 corporate “members” of the governors association’s secretive 501(c)(4), the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee, which is allowed to shield its supporters from the public.

Documents here. 

IRS and Constitutional Education

At The Washington Post's Vokokh Consiracy blog, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz writes:

It is now well known that the IRS targeted tea party organizations. What is less well known, but perhaps even more scandalous, is that the IRS also targeted those who would educate their fellow citizens about the United States Constitution.

According to the inspector general’s report (pp. 30 & 38), this particular IRS targeting commenced on Jan. 25, 2012 — the beginning of the election year for President Obama’s second campaign. On that date: “the BOLO [‘be on the lookout’] criteria were again updated.” The revised criteria included “political action type organizations involved in … educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”'

Grass-roots organizations around the country, such as the Linchpins of Liberty (Tennessee), the Spirit of Freedom Institute (Wyoming), and the Constitutional Organization of Liberty (Pennsylvania), allege that they were singled out for special scrutiny at least in part for their work in constitutional education. There may have been many more.

The tea party is viewed with general suspicion in some quarters, and it is not difficult, alas, to imagine the mindset of the officials who decided to target tea party organizations for special scrutiny. But federal officers swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” It is chilling to think that these same officials who are suspicious of the tea party are equally suspicious of the Constitution itself.

What is most corrosive about this IRS tripwire is that it is triggered by a particular point of view; it is not, as First Amendment scholars say, viewpoint-neutral. It does not include obfuscating or denigrating the Constitution; only those “involved in … educating on the Constitution” are captured by this criterion. This viewpoint targeting potentially skews every national debate about politics or government. And the skew is not strictly liberal; indeed, it should trouble liberals as much as conservatives. The ultimate checks on executive power are to be found in the United States Constitution. Insidiously, then, suppressing those “involved in … educating on the Constitution” actually skews national debate in favor of unchecked executive power

Survey: Religion and Public Life

Many posts have discussed opinion about religion in public life. Pew reports:

Nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) now thinks religion is losing influence in American life, up 5 percentage points from 2010 to the highest level in Pew Research polling over the past decade. Andmost people who say religion's influence is waning see this as a bad thing.

Perhaps as a consequence, a growing share of the American public wants religion to play a role in U.S. politics. The share of Americans who say churches and other houses of worship should express their views on social and political issues is up 6 points since the 2010 midterm elections (from 43% to 49%). The share who say there has been “too little” expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders is up modestly over the same period (from 37% to 41%). And a growing minority of Americans (32%) think churches should endorse candidates for political office, though most continue to oppose such direct involvement by churches in electoral politics.

Middle-Class Wealth is Declining

Richard Fry writes at Pew:

The nation’s aggregate wealth continued to show signs of recovery, ascending to $81.5 trillion as of June 30, after bottoming out at $55 trillion in 2009, according to a new Federal Reserve report released Thursday.

...

But as other economic reports and indicators suggest, that wealth recovery has been concentrated on the wealthiest Americans. Although there is some evidence that those at the bottom are also seeing an economic lift, the aggregate net worth for America’s economic middle is actually declining. In August, the Census Bureau released detailed wealth tabulations that imply that the minimum wealth level needed to qualify for the wealthiest 1% of American households increased from $2.3 million in 2009 to $2.4 million in 2011. That in itself indicates there were wealth gains at the very top of the wealth distribution. On the other hand, the minimum wealth level needed to be in the wealthiest 4% of households fell from 2009 to 2011, from which one infers that wealth declined for households at the wealthiest 4% level.

The Census figures also indicate that there were small gains in wealth among the nation’s least wealthy households—the bottom 30% (in 2011 households with a net worth of $7,500 or less). But for the broad middle up to the most wealthy 4% of American households, wealth declined from 2009 to 2011.

How to Spin a Shooting

Judd Legum reports at ThinkProgress:

The deadly police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, in Ferguson prompted nationwide outrage and weeks of protests. But police in the area apparently still have a lot to learn.

The St. Louis County And Municipal Police Academy, which encompasses Ferguson, is offering a “Continuing Education” course in October entitled “OFFICER-INVOLVED SHOOTING — YOU CAN WIN WITH THE MEDIA.” The class is billed as “fast-paced class is jam-packed with the essential strategies and tactics, skills and techniques” and includes a “detailed case study of Ferguson.”

The announcement:

 

Growing Sentiment for "Staying Out of World Affairs"

A new report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs finds a majority of Americans still in favor international engagement, but a growing sentiment for "staying out."

Limiting Access to Information

At AP, Erin Madigan White reports on AP Washington Bureau Chief’s list of 8 ways in which the administration is limiting access to information:

1) As the United States ramps up its fight against Islamic militants, the public can’t see any of it. News organizations can’t shoot photos or video of bombers as they take off — there are no embeds. In fact, the administration won’t even say what country the S. bombers fly from.
2) The White House once fought to get cameramen, photographers and reporters into meetings the president had with foreign leaders overseas. That access has become much rarer. …
3) Guantanamo: The big important 9/11 trial is finally coming up. But we aren’t allowed to see most court filings in real time — even of nonclassified material. …
4) Information about Guantanamo that was routinely released under President George W. Bush is now kept secret. The military won’t release the number of prisoners on hunger strike or the number of assaults on guards. Photo and video coverage is virtually nonexistent.
5) Day-to-day intimidation of sources is chilling. AP’s transportation reporter’s sources say that if they are caught talking to her, they will be fired. …
6) …Requests for information under FOIA have become slow and expensive. …
7) The administration uses FOIAs as a tip service to uncover what news organizations are pursuing. Requests are now routinely forwarded to political appointees. At the agency that oversees the new health care law, for example, political appointees now handlethe FOIA requests.
8) The administration is trying to control the information that state and local officials can give out. The FBI has directed local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology the police departments use to sweep up cellphone data. In some cases, federal officials have formally intervened in state open records cases, arguing for secrecy.

Inequality and Poverty in California

Jonathan Lansner reports in The Orange County Register:

California has an income inequality problem – and that wealth gap may be a byproduct of an awkward resurgence.

By one measure, at least, the state had the fifth-highest level of inequality in the nation last year – exceeded by only the District of Columbia, New York, Connecticut and Louisiana.

The U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday released a study that attempts to quantify the income gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” with the “Gini” index. It’s an economic yardstick that dices income variations into a measurement that runs from 0 (no inequality) to 1 (full inequality.) California came in at 0.49 for 2013 – up a tad from 0.482 the year before, one of 15 states to have an inequality uptick in 2013. Overall, the nation scored 0.481 last year, up from 0.476 in 2012.

The Census also had some grim news on poverty.  Of the 25 metropolitan areas in the United States, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario  had the highest poverty rate at 18.2 percent.  Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim was in a tie for third place, at 17.6 percent. KPCC reports:

But that’s based upon a national poverty line of $23,550 for a family of four; When you take into account how much it really costs to live here, L.A. fares even worse.

“We find that Los Angeles stands out even more, unfortunately," said Sarah Bohn, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California. "Housing costs are really playing a big role in family budgets and being able to make ends meet."

American Government and History for International Students

American history is a lot more interesting than you might think.

Alexander Hamilton:



Ranking Presidents

God, Patriotism, and Morality: International Data

• An international values gap
• Survey on patriotism
• Belief in God
• Belief in Evolution
• Religion and Economic Prosperity: International Perspectives
• Wealth and attitudes toward morality

The Separation of Powers:

Congress and Bicameralism:



Federalism:



Federalism:  about 89,000 governments and about 513,000 elected officials

Federalism and ballot complexity

Partisan Polarization

Parties and Campaigns:



"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters." --Frederick Douglass

Free Speech:  the Unusual First Amendment

Media: Trust and Bias

Gallup reports:

After registering slightly higher trust last year, Americans' confidence in the media's ability to report "the news fully, accurately, and fairly" has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. Americans' trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

...
As has been the case historically, Americans are most likely to feel the news media are "too liberal" (44%) rather than "too conservative," though this perceived liberal bias is now on the lower side of the trend. One in three (34%) say the media are "just about right" in terms of their coverage -- down slightly from 37% last year.

Nearly one in five Americans (19%) say the media are too conservative, which is still relatively low, but the highest such percentage since 2006. This is up six points from 2013 -- the sharpest increase in the percentage of Americans who feel the news skews too far right since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.

As has been the case historically, Americans are most likely to feel the news media are "too liberal" (44%) rather than "too conservative," though this perceived liberal bias is now on the lower side of the trend. One in three (34%) say the media are "just about right" in terms of their coverage -- down slightly from 37% last year.

Nearly one in five Americans (19%) say the media are too conservative, which is still relatively low, but the highest such percentage since 2006. This is up six points from 2013 -- the sharpest increase in the percentage of Americans who feel the news skews too far right since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.

Knowledge of US Government and Crime

Many posts have discussed the public's limited knowledge of government and public issues. From the Annenberg Public Policy Center:

Americans show great uncertainty when it comes to answering basic questions about how their government works, a national survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has found.

The survey of 1,416 adults, released for Constitution Day (Sept. 17) in conjunction with the launch of the Civics Renewal Network, found that:

• While little more than a third of respondents (36 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government, just as many (35 percent) could not name a single one.

• Just over a quarter of Americans (27 percent) know it takes a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to override a presidential veto.

• One in five Americans (21 percent) incorrectly thinks that a 5-4 Supreme Court decision is sent back to Congress for reconsideration....

The study also found that more than half of Americans do not know which party controls the House and Senate:

• Asked which party has the most members in the House of Representatives, 38 percent said they knew the Republicans are the majority, but 17 percent responded the Democrats, and 44 percent reported that they did not know (up from 27 percent who said they did not know in 2011).

• Asked which party controls the Senate, 38 percent correctly said the Democrats, 20 percent said the Republicans, and 42 percent said they did not know (also up from 27 percent who said they did not know in 2011).

For the complete release on the survey, click here. For additional information on methodology and data, click here.

From YouGov:

Compared to most of the developed world, the United States has an unusually high violent crime rate. Nevertheless, over the past twenty years the US has seen a huge drop in crime. Most violent crime rates, including for murder, have halved in the past twenty years. ...

Most Americans, however, don't recognize that violent crime has dropped so significantly over the past twenty years. Over that time frame the national murder rate has halved, along with non-lethal violent crime, yet half the country (50%) say that violent crime has increased since 1994, and only 22% know that it has decreased. Younger Americans are less likely to say that crime has increased since the mid-90s, while people with a household income of over $80,000 are the only group that tends to know that violent crime has dropped.

Americans also think that New York remains dangerous, even though it is the safest big city in the country.

Opinion on Government Waste

Gallup reports:

Americans estimate that the federal government wastes 51 cents of each tax dollar. This matches their prior estimate in 2011, which was the highest Gallup had measured since 1979. Americans are less harsh about their state and local governments, viewing them as wasting 42 cents and 37 cents, respectively.

When Gallup first asked the question in 1979, Americans estimated that the federal government wasted 40 cents of every dollar, their state government wasted 31 cents, and their local government wasted 25 cents. Those are the lowest figures for state and local levels of government in any year since, while the lowest waste estimate for federal spending was a slightly lower 38 cents in a 1986 survey.

Gallup didn't ask these questions during the next decade, but when it next asked them in 2001, the "wasted cents" estimates were roughly in line with those in the 1980s. Since 2001, however, the proportion of the tax dollar Americans say the federal and state governments waste has increased, while the estimate for local governments has remained roughly the same.

Americans historically have always seen local governments as wasting the lowest proportion of each dollar, while seeing the federal government as wasting the most. This is consistent with Gallup research showing that Americans' trust in state and local governments is significantly higher than their trust in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

Poverty and Health Insurance

From the Census:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that in 2013, the poverty rate declined from the previous year for the first time since 2006, while there was no statistically significant change in either the number of people living in poverty or real median household income. In addition, the poverty rate for children under 18 declined from the previous year for the first time since 2000. The following results for the nation were compiled from information collected in the 2014 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2013 was 14.5 percent, down from 15.0 percent in 2012. The 45.3 million people living at or below the poverty line in 2013, for the third consecutive year, did not represent a statistically significant change from the previous year’s estimate.

Median household income in the United States in 2013 was $51,939; the change in real terms from the 2012 median of $51,759 was not statistically significant. This is the second consecutive year that the annual change was not statistically significant, following two consecutive annual declines.

The percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire 2013 calendar year was 13.4 percent; this amounted to 42.0 million people.

These findings are contained in two reports: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013 and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2013. 

Robert Doar writes at AEI:

Over five years since the end of the recession, it would seem reasonable to expect that poverty would have dropped further from the peak hit in 2010. At 14.5% in 2013, the poverty rate has dropped from the peak of 15.1% hit in 2010. That’s progress. But it is still very far from a low of 11.3% in 2000.

Back then—with a strong economy and aggressive work-first welfare policies—we had experienced seven straight years of reductions in the poverty rate. African American child poverty reached an all-time low in 2001 also due to the winning combination of strong economic growth, work requirements in welfare, and well-targeted work supports that made work pay for those working at low wages.

We have gotten away from all three. Our economy remains stalled. Work requirements effectively do not exist in many of our welfare programs: food stamp benefits intended to support low-wage work seem to be replacing it instead, with 10 million non-elderly and non-disabled SNAP recipients not reporting any earnings. The work disincentives embedded in the Affordable Care Act are not helping either.

Inland Empire Economic Forecast Conference

Opinion on Regulation

Gallup reports:

Less than one quarter of Americans (22%) say there is too little government regulation of business and industry, while about half (49%) say there is too much regulation. An additional 27% say the level of regulation is about right. These attitudes have been consistent over the past five years. Prior to that, the percentage who said there was too much regulation rose between 2008 and 2010.

The latest data are from Gallup's annual Governance survey, conducted Sept. 4-7. The Governance poll this year shows general declines in Americans' trust in all three branches of government, and a dip in Americans' trust in the federal government to handle domestic and international problems.
...
As is the case with most attitudes about government and government use of power, Republicans and Democrats have sharply differing views on government regulation of business. About three-quarters of Republicans (76%) say there is too much regulation, compared with less than one-quarter (22%) of Democrats.

US Education Spending in Comparative Perspective

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranks high among developed nations in per-student education spending:

Secret Senate Handbook

Donovan Slack and Paul Singer report at USA Today:

USA TODAY has obtained and is making available on our website a copy of the 380-page U.S. Senate Handbook, which describes itself as "a compilation of the policies and regulations governing office administration, equipment and services, security and financial management."

U.S. Senate Handbook:

• Table of Contents (PDF)
• Part I: Administration (PDF)
• Part I: Appendices (PDF)
• Part II: Equipment and Services (PDF)
• Part IV: Financial Management (PDF)
• Part IV: Appendices (PDF)

The handbook reads something like an employee manual, explaining how new senators and staff members can get ID cards and how many parking passes each senator will be issued. But it also contains detailed rules on how each senator can spend their official, multi-million-dollar, taxpayer-funded budget on things like meals and travel.

Yet, because it has not been released, it's been impossible for the public to know whether a senator has violated the rules — for example by charging taxpayers for an improper charter flight.

The handbook is referenced in rules published by the Senate Ethics Committee, Congressional Research Service reports and history books. But the Rules Committee, which produces the handbook, does not release it. The Library of Congress does not even have a copy.

Atheists and the Military Oath of Service

In our book, we place a good deal of emphasis on religion, military service, and oaths.  Here is a story that involves all three. YouGov reports:

The latest research from YouGov shows that the vast majority of Americans (75%) say that atheists should be allowed to serve in the US military. Only 7% of Americans say that they shouldn't, while 17% aren't sure either way. Even among people who say that religion is 'very important' to them, only 15% say that atheists should not be allowed to serve in the military.

The recent dispute in the Air Force centres on whether or not servicemembers should be allowed to drop 'so help me God' from the oath of service. Asked how the military should handle this, the most popular response (43%) was to say that the phrase should remain a part of the oath, but that if someone enlisting or reenlisting wished they should be allowed to omit it. 11% say that the phrase should be dropped from the oath altogether, while 34% of Americans want all servicemembers to be required to say it, no exceptions.

There is a distinct partisan divide on this issue. Democrats and independents tend to agree, with over 40% of both saying that it is OK to skip saying 'so help me God'. Most Republicans (52%), however, say that all members of the military should be required to say 'so help me God' as part of the oath of service.

Symmetric Polarization?

Some studies have used DW-Nominate scores to blame Republicans for congressional polarization.  At The Washington Post, L.J. Zigerell writes:

However, this pattern of asymmetric polarization is not present in other estimates of ideology. Data from Adam Bonica‘s CFscores (“campaign finance” scores), which provide ideology estimates for members of congress based on donations to and from each member, indicate that since 1980 congressional Democrats have moved left slightly more than congressional Republicans have moved right...

And estimates developed by Michael Bailey also do not show that Republicans have polarized more than Democrats.

The Constitution and Contemporary Politics

Tenth Annual Constitution Day Conference

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Simi Valley, California 

September 13, 2014

Resources on the Constitution and the Courts

The War Power

Powers of Congress (Article I, section 8):

• To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
• To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
• To provide and maintain a Navy;
• To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces...

Powers of the President (Article II, section 2):

•  The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; 

Declared and Undeclared Wars

• The list of declared wars
• Legal implications of a declaration of war
• Use of military force abroad
• The War Powers Resolution
• President Obama, ISIS and the war power
• Senator Obama's comments in 2007

Executive Power 

Powers of the President (Article II, sections 1 and 4)

• The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America ...
• [H]e shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States. 

Uses of Power

• Signing statements
• Executive orders

Impeachment

Powers of Congress (Article I, sections 2 and 3):

• The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment. 
• The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
• Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law

History

• Background on the impeachment process.
• There is an entire site on the Johnson impeachment.
• Another impeachment

The Affordable Care Act

Powers of Congress (Article I, section 8)

• The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises..
• To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes...

Issues

• The individual mandate
• Contraceptives and Hobby Lobby
• Subsidies and Halbig

Frank Underwood and the Courts

Sahil Kapur reports at Talking Points Memo:

A federal judge quoted fictional "House of Cards" character Frank Underwood in an opinion released Thursday for aptly articulating a "longstanding and fundamental principle of American law."

U.S. District Court Judge Timothy S. Black struck down an Ohio law banning false statements about political candidates, decreeing it unconstitutional. The judge argued that although "[l]ies have no place in the political arena," it's not the role of the government to police the accuracy of statements.

The judge went on to quote Underwood — the calculating, murderous politician portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the popular Netflix drama — in his 25-page opinion:

What then is the alternative? The United States Supreme Court has clearly signaled the answer. For starters, the Supreme Court held flatly in 2012 that: "The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth." United States v. Alvarez ... The more modern recitation of this longstanding and fundamental principle of American law was recently articulated by Frank Underwood in House of Cards: "There’s no better way to overpower a trickle of doubt than with a flood of naked truth."

The President, ISIS, and War Powers

President Obama says that he has authority to act against ISIS because of the War Powers Act and the congressional authorization for the Iraq War. Andrew Rudelevige writes at The Washington Post  that neither rationale holds up.

First, the Obama administration has not actually filed any reports under the War Powers Act (or rather Resolution — thus, the “WPR”). The president has indeed sent a number of letters to Congress about the Islamic State and Iraq since June — the latest such is dated September 8 — but these are simply to keep Congress “fully informed.” Doing so is “consistent with the War Powers Resolution” (my emphasis) — but the president never says he is reporting “pursuant to” the WPR, as a consequence of that statute, as required by section 4(a)(1). The “consistent with” is boilerplate language that far predates Obama — presidents have rarely admitted that the WPR is binding or even constitutional — but the letters do not concede that the WPR limits his authority in any way. Indeed, in each letter Obama claims that he is acting “pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct U.S. foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.”

...
How about the authorization to use force in Iraq (P.L. 107-243), passed nearly 12 years ago? Is that a “specific statutory authorization” for the present circumstance? Had the Bush administration’s preferred text been adopted in 2002, Congress would have given the president power “to use all means” to “restore international peace and security in the region,” i.e., the entire Middle East, and Obama would have a great case. But the actual resolution states:

The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to -- (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

Thus the authorization is for the use of force against (the state of) Iraq, rather than in Iraq. The Security Council resolutions referred to deal with weapons of mass destruction; with “repression of its civilian population”; and with “threatening its neighbors.” The Islamic State may be doing some of these things, but Iraq itself is not; indeed, the threat to the United States from Iraq’s government seems to be from the latter’s incompetence. Potential attacks within Syria’s borders seem even more removed from the authorization’s intent.

Declining Trust: International and National Problems

Gallup reports:

Americans' trust in the federal government to handle international problems has fallen to a record-low 43% as President Barack Obama prepares to address the nation on Wednesday to outline his plan to deal with ISIS. Separately, 40% of Americans say they have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in the federal government to handle domestic problems, also the lowest Gallup has measured to date.

The results are based on Gallup's annual Governance poll, conducted Sept. 4-7. This year's poll was conducted at a time when the government is faced with instability in many parts of the world, including Iraq and Syria, the Middle East, and Ukraine. President Obama, who recently said he had "no strategy" for dealing with ISIS -- the Islamic extremists who have taken control of parts of Iraq and Syria and recently captured and beheaded two American journalists -- is set to present his plan for dealing with the group Wednesday.

Americans' confidence in the government to handle international problems slid 17 percentage points last year, when the Obama administration was planning military action against Syria. Russia later brokered an agreement to avert that action. Last year's poll marked the first time that fewer than half of Americans trusted the federal government's ability to deal with international threats. With the world stage seemingly more unstable now, the public's trust has dipped an additional six percentage points this year.

Billionaires

At Brookings, Darrell West lists the most politically powerful billionaires in the US:

1 Charles & David Koch
2 Michael Bloomberg
3 Tom Steyer
4 Sheldon Adelson
5 George Soros
6 Rupert Murdoch
7 Bill and Melinda Gates
8 John and Laura Arnold
9 Penny Pritzker
10 Warren Buffett
11 Peter Thiel
12 Mark Zuckerberg
13 Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos
14 Pierre and Pamela Omidyar
15 Paul Singer
16 Peter G. Peterson
17 Marc Andreessen
18 Donald Trump
19 Alice Walton

Failure, Dissatisfaction, Anger

Aaron Blake reports at The Washington Post:

A majority of Americans and even many Democrats consider President Obama's tenure to be a "failure," according to a new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News.

The poll shows Americans say 52-42 that Obama has been more of a failure than a success. Among registered voters, the gap is even bigger -- at 55-39 -- with four in 10 (41 percent) saying they "strongly" believe Obama has been a failure.

Those saying Obama has been a failure include one in four Democrats (25 percent), nearly three in 10 liberals (29 percent) and the vast, vast majority of conservative Republicans (92 percent). Nearly one in five liberals (18 percent) say they feel "strongly" that Obama has been a failure.

Adam O'Neal writes at RealClearPolitics:

Only 1 percent of Americans are "enthusiastic" about how the federal government works, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News survey. Seventy-four percent of voters indicated that they are either dissatisfied or angry, and 23 percent are "satisfied but not enthusiastic."

The discontent appears to stem from deep disillusionment with the president and Congress.

Forty-two percent of Americans approve of the way President Obama is handling his job, and he receives low marks on key issues. Clear majorities disapprove of his handling of the economy, international affairs, immigration, and implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

About one out of three Americans think the country is “generally going in the right direction.” Two-thirds say it has “gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track” -- an ominous sign for a president in power for nearly six years.

Economic Disparities

The Federal Reserve Board’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) shows disparities in the evolution of income and net worth since 2010.  From the report:

• Between 2010 and 2013, mean (overall average) family income rose 4 percent in real terms, but median income fell 5 percent, consistent with increasing income concentration during this period (figure 1).
•  Some of the 2010 to 2013 growth differential reflected a return to trend, after the cyclical narrowing of the income distribution between 2007 and 2010, when large decreases in top incomes associated with the recent financial crisis reduced mean family income more than median family income.
•  Families at the bottom of the income distribution saw continued substantial declines in average real incomes between 2010 and 2013, continuing the trend observed between the 2007 and 2010 surveys.
• Families in the middle to upper middle parts (between the 40th and 90th percentiles) of the income distribution saw little change in average real incomes between 2010 and 2013 and thus have failed to recover the losses experienced between 2007 and 2010.
• Only families at the very top of the income distribution saw widespread income gains between 2010 and 2013, although mean and median incomes were still below 2007 levels.
• The differentials in average income growth between 2010 and 2013 are also observed for other family groupings in which large differences in income levels are observed, notably across education groups, by race and ethnicity, homeownership status, and levels of net worth.

Foreign Influence on US Think Tanks

Previous posts have described foreign lobbying and the strengthening ties between think tanks and interest groups. The New York Times reports have more than a dozen DC think tanks have taken millions from foreign governments while advocating policies that serve the interests of those countries.

The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research. 

The think tanks do not disclose the terms of the agreements they have reached with foreign governments. And they have not registered with the United States government as representatives of the donor countries, an omission that appears, in some cases, to be a violation of federal law, according to several legal specialists who examined the agreements at the request of The Times.
...
Some scholars say the donations have led to implicit agreements that the research groups would refrain from criticizing the donor governments. 

“If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware — they are not getting the full story,” said Saleem Ali, who served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar and who said he had been told during his job interview that he could not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers. “They may not be getting a false story, but they are not getting the full story.”

False Friends of the Court

At The New York Times, Adam Liptak writes that the Supreme Court is increasingly reliant on facts from amicus briefs.

But this is a perilous trend, said Allison Orr Larsen, a law professor at the College of William and Mary.

“The court is inundated with 11th-hour, untested, advocacy-motivated claims of factual expertise,” she wrote in an article to be published in The Virginia Law Review.

Some of the factual assertions in recent amicus briefs would not pass muster in a high school research paper. But that has not stopped the Supreme Court from relying on them. Recent opinions have cited “facts” from amicus briefs that were backed up by blog posts, emails or nothing at all.

Some amicus briefs are careful and valuable, of course, citing peer-reviewed studies and noting contrary evidence. Others cite more questionable materials.

Some “studies” presented in amicus briefs were paid for or conducted by the group that submitted the brief and published only on the Internet. Some studies seem to have been created for the purpose of influencing the Supreme Court.

Yet the justices are quite receptive to this dodgy data. Over the five terms from 2008 to 2013, the court’s opinions cited factual assertions from amicus briefs 124 times, Professor Larsen found.