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Friday, February 28, 2014

The Web

The Pew Research Center reports:
In a new national survey to mark the 25th anniversary of the Web, Pew Research finds further confirmation of the incredible spread and impact of the internet:
Adoption: 87% of American adults now use the internet, with near-saturation usage among those living in households earning $75,000 or more (99%), young adults ages 18-29 (97%), and those with college degrees (97%). Fully 68% of adults connect to the internet with mobile devices like smartphones or tablet computers.
The adoption of related technologies has also been extraordinary: Over the course of Pew Research Center polling, adult ownership of cell phones has risen from 53% in our first survey in 2000 to 90% now. Ownership of smartphones has grown from 35% when we first asked in 2011 to 58% now.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Young Noncitizens in the United States

Many posts have discussed citizenship and noncitizenship.  The Census reports:
More than three out of five noncitizens under age 35 have been in the U.S. for five years or more, with a majority coming before they were 18 years old, according to a new brief released today from the U.S. Census Bureau. Most of these immigrants — about 80 percent — were young adults from 18 to 34.
The brief Noncitizens Under Age 35: 2010-2012 uses multiyear data from the American Community Survey to present demographic and socio-economic information about the noncitizen population under age 35. Noncitizens include legal permanent residents, temporary migrants, unauthorized immigrants and other resident statuses. The American Community Survey does not include a question on legal status of a resident; therefore, the brief compares only the characteristics of citizens with noncitizens.
"This brief gives an overview of some common characteristics of the younger noncitizen population," said Elizabeth Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau's Foreign-Born Population Branch. "The statistics provide new insight into the composition of this unique group."
School Enrollment
Almost one-third of the 2.6 million noncitizens age 18 to 24 living in the U.S. were enrolled in college. Among 18- to 24-year-old noncitizens born in Asia, 65 percent were enrolled in college, followed by those born in Europe (54 percent), Africa (54 percent) and the Latin America and Caribbean region (18 percent).
Geographic Distribution and Region of Birth
Nationwide, noncitizens under age 35 represented about one-fourth (26 percent) of the total foreign-born population. At the state level, this proportion varied from about one out of five (18 percent) to two out of five (41 percent). Traditional immigration gateway states like California, Texas, New York and Florida account for the majority of noncitizens under 35.
More than 64 percent of the 10.3 million noncitizens in the U.S. under the age of 35 were born in Latin America and the Caribbean. Asia (23 percent) made up the second highest group of under age 35 noncitizens in the U.S., followed by Europe (6 percent).

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Six Reasons Why Tax Reform Won't Pass


1.     Tax reform is always tough because every tax preference has a constituency that will fight for its survival.

2. In Showdown at Gucci Gulch, Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Alan S. Murray quote Reagan aide Richard Darman saying: “I couldn’t help thinking that if I were a lobbyist, I would stand in the hallway with a big sign saying EVERYONE INTERESTED IN KILLING THIS BILL, PLEASE MEET IN THE NEXT CORRIDOR … There would have been an enormous rush, and they would have seen the power of their collective action.” Twenty-eight years later, all the lobbyists have read that book, and they know how to build coalitions.

3. In 1985-1986, tax reform had the full weight of the Reagan Administration behind it. In his 2014 State of the Union, President Obama made a brief, vague reference to tax reform, but that was about it.

4. Consider the timeline of the 1985-86 bill. By February 1986, the House had already passed its version, and the Senate Finance Committee was holding hearings. Camp is like a college student who expects to research and write a passable senior thesis one hour before deadline. Lots of luck.


6. Congress lacks institutional memory on this point. The last major tax reform passed during the 99th Congress (1985-86). In the House, 20 current members (9 R, 11 D) of the 113th Congress (2013-14) served in the 99th. Neither Camp nor Boehner is among them. Twenty senators (8R, 12 D) served in the 99th Congress. Of this total, 8 were in the Senate at the time, while 12 were in the House.

The Green Revolving Door

A number of posts have discussed the revolving door between government and interest groups. Timothy Carney writes at The Washington Examiner:
President Obama’s Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has left the administration and joined an electric bus company he subsidized and praised while in office.
Proterra Inc. makes buses that require no gasoline or diesel – they run on electricity and fuel cells.
...
According to a 2011 DOT press release, Proterra received a “$6.5 million research grant provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Transit Administration.”
On top of all this, LaHood's department subsidized Proterra through grants to municipalities that buy electric buses. These grants to local transit authorities cover 80 percent of the cost of a battery-powered electric bus.
In September 2012, for instance, the Worcester Regional Transit Authority in Massachusetts bought three Proterra buses with $4.4 million in DOT grants.
Most of Proterra's sales are subsidized. “The majority of transit agencies buy with federal funds, which cover about 80 percent of the cost,” explained Proterra Vice President Ian Shackleton in a company publication in March 2013.
...
On Feb. 18, Proterra announced that LaHood, who left DOT last year, was joining the company's board of directors. “LaHood's government experience and leadership in transportation policy innovation make him an excellent fit for Proterra,” the company said in a news release.
...
Federal ethics rules prohibit LaHood from lobbying for the time being, but they don't stop him from taking money from Proterra, publicly advocating for the company, or providing lobbying advice.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Congressional Experience

The Pew Research Center reports:
For most of the past 60 years, the overall experience level of the House has varied within a narrow range: The average length of service was typically between five and six terms, while the median was four or five terms. Over the past few election cycles, though, the share of less-experienced representatives (those in their first through third terms) has risen significantly. In 2009, 147 representatives (33.8% of the entire body) had six years or less of House experience; by 2013 that had risen to 196, or 45%.
The shift has been even more pronounced in the Senate: 54 senators are in their first term, the most since the 97th Congress in 1981. The average length of service has fallen from 14 years in 2009 to less than 10 years in the current Congress; the median length of service in the Senate, six years, is the lowest it’s been since 1981.

Chart showing breakdown of service length in House and Senate since 1953

Monday, February 24, 2014

Euthanasia and Foreign Law

 At The Volokh Conspiracy blog, law professor Eugene Kontorovich writes:
Belgium has just passed a law allowing euthanasia for children. The Low Countries allow for suicide and doctor-assisted suicide, but Brussels is the first to open to door to dealing death to children of any age.
...
Aside from its inherent significance, Belgium’s move requires us to revisit Roper v. Simmons, the 2005 Supreme Court case that ruled it inherently unconstitutional to apply the death penalty to anyone under 18. European nations had long waged a moral campaign against America’s allowance of the death penalty for 16-18 year olds, which they called barbaric and savage. After all, minors are not really responsible for their actions. America was labelled a human rights violator, an international outlier.
... 
Belgium’s law shows the folly of basing constitutional decisions on the practice of other countries: though we all eat at McDonalds, American and Belgian notions of decency are fundamentally different. In American, an age-unlimited euthanasia law would be unthinkable, in Belgium it apparently has 75 percent popular support. American intellectual elites became uncomfortable being the only Western nation with a juvenile death penalty; the Belgians do not blush at standing out.
Roper was wrong to look across the seas, and the campaigners against the 16-18 year old death penalty were wrong to accept the conceit of European moral superiority and American ugliness. But to the extent that Roper did base its decision on a theoretically unified consensus about juvenile responsibility, Belgium’s action, which may be followed by other northern European countries, gives an occasion to overrule it.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Seeking and Renouncing Citizenship

Some American Samoans have gone to court to seek citizenship.  At CNN, Danny Cevallos explains:
The Citizenship Clause provides that "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
American Samoa is certainly "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. But residents must also be born "in the United States" for the constitutional right to attach. Unfortunately, for 14th Amendment citizenship purposes, the Territories have never been considered "in the United States."
No federal court has ever recognized birthright citizenship as a guarantee in unincorporated Territories. In fact, federal courts have held on many occasions that unincorporated Territories are not included within the "United States" for purposes of the Citizenship Clause. Because these residents have no Constitutional, automatic right to citizenship, Congress can pick and choose how they become citizens. In fact, it has done just that: granting citizenship at birth to residents of other Territories.
For example, residents of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are citizens if born there. But that citizenship does not flow from any constitutional right. Rather, Congress has chosen to pass independent legislation giving those residents citizenship.
Indeed, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court observed in one opinion that the only remaining noncitizen nationals are residents of American Samoa and Swains Island. When it comes to citizenship in the Territories, Congress can giveth or it can choose not to giveth, and the Constitution gives those residents no recourse.
At NPR, Ari Shapiro writes of the unanticipated consequences of the  Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act.
Most countries in the world don't tax their citizens living abroad. So, for example, a Spaniard living in Canada won't pay Spanish taxes. Instead, he'll pay Canadian taxes. But the U.S. taxes American citizens wherever they are in the world.
"If I can compare it to romance, I say the U.S. is like Fatal Attraction," says Suzanne Reisman, a lawyer in London who advises Americans abroad. "Once they've got you, they never let you go. You have to renounce your citizenship, or you have to die."
So today, Americans who don't like the Fatal Attraction relationship are giving up their U.S. citizenship in record numbers.
In Switzerland, so many people want to renounce their citizenship that the U.S. Embassy actually has a waiting list.
"I want to be clear: It's not about a dollar value of taxes that I don't want to pay," says Brian Dublin, a businessman who lives near Zurich. "It's about the headache associated with the regulations, filing in the U.S., and then having financial institutions in the rest of the world turn me away."
Dublin says he is ready to renounce, despite the ties he feels to the country of his birth. "I grew up in America. I love my country. But I just feel that the current regulations are onerous."
Officials from the Treasury Department, the State Department, the IRS and Congress spoke on background for this story. None would talk on tape.
They all generally agree on the facts of the situation. Even so, there is very little pressure to change it. As one Senate staffer pointed out, nobody in Congress represents overseas Americans. And government officials think this law is succeeding at catching the tax cheats. That may be worth the side effect of losing a few thousand American citizens every year.

The Daschle Loophole

Many posts have discussed "non-lobbying lobbying," "unlobbying," or "shadow lobbying."  The Nation does a deep dive on the subject, with a focus on former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD).  Insiders now refer to "the Daschle Loophole," which the article explains:
After being defeated for re-election in 2004, Daschle, like many retiring lawmakers, joined a law firm heavily engaged in lobbying and became a “policy adviser” to a number of corporate clients. He earned a salary from the firm that rose to over $2 million in the waning years of the Bush administration, in addition to $2 million in 2008 for advising a private equity firm.
While questions over Daschle’s taxes scuttled his 2008 nomination to become secretary of health and human services, he continued to play a key role, visiting the White House, participating in Obama administration meetings and working with legislators on healthcare policy. Now with the firm DLA Piper, Daschle simply refuses to register for his lobbying activities, though he counts major healthcare firms among his clients.
Daschle, like other unregistered lobbyists, could muster a legal defense for his failure to register. Designed to ensure that regular citizens petitioning their government would not be forced to register as lobbyists, the LDA has a three-pronged test to determine who must register—a test that inadvertently allows Washington’s biggest influence peddlers to ignore the disclosure law.
According to this test, a lobbyist is an individual (1) who earns at least $2,500 from lobbying over a three-month period; (2) whose services include more than one lobbying contact; and (3) who spends at least 20 percent of his time during a three-month period making “lobbying contacts.” If a lobbyist can argue that just one of these descriptions doesn’t apply to him, he is not required to register.

Lobbyists, moreover, are considered lobbyists only if they advocate on behalf of a certain position on legislation; if they’re simply gathering intelligence, they’re not considered lobbyists under the law.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Reason, Deliberation, and the Brain

We’re at our worst when it comes to politics. This helps explain why recent attacks on rationality have captured the imagination of the scientific community and the public at large. Politics forces us to confront those who disagree with us, and we’re not naturally inclined to see those on the other side of an issue as rational beings. Why, for instance, do so many Republicans think Obama’s health-care plan violates the Constitution? Writing in The New Yorker in June 2012, Ezra Klein used the research of Haidt and others to argue that Republicans despise the plan on political, not rational, grounds. Initially, he notes, they objected to what the Democrats had to offer out of a kind of tribal sense of loyalty. Only once they had established that position did they turn to reason to try to justify their views.
But notice that Klein doesn’t reach for a social-psychology journal when articulating why he and his Democratic allies are so confident that Obamacare is constitutional. He’s not inclined to understand his own perspective as the product of reflexive loyalty to the ideology of his own group. This lack of interest in the source of one’s views is typical. Because most academics are politically left of center, they generally use their theories of irrationality to explain the beliefs of the politically right of center. They like to explore how psychological biases shape the decisions people make to support Republicans, reject affirmative-action policies, and disapprove of homosexuality. But they don’t spend much time investigating how such biases might shape their own decisions to support Democrats, endorse affirmative action, and approve of gay marriage.
 ...
So, yes, if you want to see people at their worst, press them on the details of those complex political issues that correspond to political identity and that cleave the country almost perfectly in half. But if this sort of irrational dogmatism reflected how our minds generally work, we wouldn’t even make it out of bed each morning. Such scattered and selected instances of irrationality shouldn’t cloud our view of the rational foundations of our everyday life. That would be like saying the most interesting thing about medicine isn’t the discovery of antibiotics and anesthesia, or the construction of large-scale programs for the distribution of health care, but the fact that people sometimes forget to take their pills.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Corporate Rent-a-Friend

Many posts have explained that economic interest groups use charitable contributions to gain political allies. As Eric Lipton reports in The New York Times, Comcast is an example:
Only a few hours had passed after the $45 billion merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable was announced last week when an early voice emerged endorsing the giant deal.
“Win-win situation for American businesses,” said the statement from theUnited States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
It was the start of what Comcast executives acknowledge will be a carefully orchestrated campaign, as the company will seek hundreds of such expressions of support for the deal — from members of Congress, state officials and leaders of nonprofit and minority-led groups — as it tries to nudge federal authorities to approve the merger.
But what the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce did not mention in its statement praising the transaction was that it had collected at least $320,000 over the last five years from Comcast’s charitable foundation, which is run in part by David L. Cohen, the Comcast executive who oversees the corporation’s government affairs operations.
It is a hint, critics say, of just how sophisticated Comcast’s lobbying machine is, an enterprise that, like the company itself, reaches across the United States and has more than 100 registered lobbyists in Washington alone.
The story goes on to identify 54 different groups that backed the deal — by writing the Federal Communications Commission or signing agreements — that had received contributions from Comcast's charitable foundation.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Third-Party Fantasies

Many posts have discussed third parties. Ed Kilgore writes at The Washington Monthly:
Since third-party fantasies reemerge every time there is evidence Americans hold their elected officials in minimum high regard, Brendan Nyhan provides a public service with a compendium of “here comes a third party!” predictions dating back to 2005. Moreoever, only a few of them were written by Thomas Friedman.
Aside from underestimating the attachment of Americans to the two major parties, and the structural barriers to successful third parties that exist throughout our political system, the most common problem with third-party fantasies is that they stipulate some sort of common ground for widely disparate people with various grievances against the major parties. Most recently and notoriously, this has led many writers to imagine a third-party coalition focused on a deficit hawkish agenda of tax increases and entitlement “reforms” that is even more unpopular than the existing parties. And for reasons that elude me, a lot of folks impressed with the GOP’s unpopularity don’t seem to notice that about half of rank-and-file Republicans consistently think the party’s not conservative enough, a view that isn’t exactly consistent with some “centrist” third party drawing from both parties.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

"Crazy Train"

Previous posts have discussed California and its high-speed rail project.  Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari has written Governor Brown:
February 18, 2014
The Honorable Edmund G. Brown, Jr.
Governor of California
State Capitol, First Floor
Sacramento, California 95814
Dear Governor Brown,
I am writing to request that you take appropriate measures to cancel the high-speed rail program. It is an egregious example of your priorities being completely out of touch with the struggles of millions of California families.
Although you refused to acknowledge these realities in your State of the State address, the facts are: 17 percent of Californians are in need of work. Our schools are ranked 46th in America. 24 percent of Californians are living in poverty. And now, in your own words, we face “the worst drought that California has ever seen since records began being kept 100 years ago.” Given these harsh realities, the high-speed rail is a vanity project we cannot afford.
In 2008, the California people voted for the high-speed rail before the full effects of the Great Recession were felt. Since that vote, millions of California families have come under severe hardship:
• The number of Californians in need of work has increased by 29 percent.
California’s poverty rate has increased by 27 percent.
• The number of Californians living on food stamps has increased by 87 percent.
The Central Valley has been hit especially hard, suffering some of the highest unemployment in the state. With almost 40 percent of all Central Valley jobs tied to agriculture, the drought is devastating for the region. The rail is a distraction that diverts time and resources away from addressing the most pressing needs of Californians.
Even Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, has changed his mind and acknowledged the high-speed rail is a mistake. “I would take the dollars and redirect it to other, more pressing infrastructure needs … I am not the only Democrat that feels this way… I am one of the few that just said it publicly. Most are now saying it privately.”
I am sure you would agree it is far better to admit a major error than to stubbornly maintain a deeply flawed course of action – especially when so many Californians are struggling. I sincerely hope you will agree to cancel this vanity project. I look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Neel Kashkari

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Evolution, the Big Bang, and Public Knowledge

A report from the National Science Foundation adds some nuance to our understanding about public opinion on evolution:
The GSS survey includes two additional true-or-false science questions that are not included in the index calculation because Americans’ responses appear to reflect factors beyond unfamiliarity with basic elements of science. One of these questions addresses evolution, and the other addresses the origins of the universe. To better understand Americans’ responses, the 2012 GSS replicated an experiment first conducted in 2004 (NSB 2006). Half of the survey respondents were randomly assigned to receive questions focused on information about the natural world (“human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” and “the universe began with a big explosion”). The other half were asked the questions with a preface that focused on conclusions that the scientific community has drawn about the natural world (“according to the theory of evolution, human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” and “according to astronomers, the universe began with a big explosion”).

In 2012, respondents were much more likely to answer both questions correctly if the questions were framed as being about scientific theories or ideas rather than about natural world facts. For evolution, 48% of Americans answered “true” when presented with the statement that human beings evolved from earlier species with no preface, whereas 72% of those who received the preface said “true,” a 24 percentage point difference.14 These results replicate the pattern from 2004, when the percentage answering “true” went from 42% to 74%, a 32 percentage point difference (NSB 2008). For the big bang question, the pattern was very similar: in 2012, 39% of Americans answered “true” when presented with the statement about the origin of the universe without the preface, whereas 60% of those who heard the statement with the preface answered “true.” This represents a 21 percentage point difference. The 2004 experiment found that including the preface increased the percentage who answered correctly from 33% to 62%, a 29 percentage point difference (NSB 2008). Residents of other countries have been more likely than Americans to answer “true” to the evolution question.15
14. Survey items that test factual knowledge sometimes use easily comprehensible language at the cost of scientific precision. This may prompt some highly knowledgeable respondents to believe that the items blur or neglect important distinctions, and in a few cases may lead respondents to answer questions incorrectly. In addition, the items do not reflect the ways that established scientific knowledge evolves as scientists accumulate new evidence. Although the text of the factual knowledge questions may suggest a fixed body of knowledge, it is more accurate to see scientists as making continual, often subtle modifications in how they understand existing data in light of new evidence. When the answer to a factual knowledge question is categorized as “correct,” it means that the answer accords with the current consensusamong knowledgeable scientists and that the weight of scientific evidence clearly supports the answer.15. Although the data clearly show a difference in how respondents answer to different question types, these data do not provide guidance as to what caused the difference. A range of explanations are possible. 

Monday, February 17, 2014

The Secretary of Defense

Our chapter on foreign policy and national security discusses the role of the secretary of defense. Robert Gates, who held that posts under Presidents Bush and Obama, discusses it in his memoirs (p. 82):
In truth, nothing can prepare you for being secretary of defense, especially during wartime. The size of the place and its budget dwarf everything else in government. As I quickly learned from 535 members of Congress, its programs and spending reach deeply into every state and nearly every community. Vast industries and many local economies are dependent on decisions made in the Pentagon every day. The secretary of defense is second only to the president in the military chain of command (neither the vice president nor the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in the chain at all), and any order to American forces worldwide goes from the president to the secretary directly to the combatant commanders (although as a practical matter and a courtesy, I routinely asked the chairman to convey such orders). More important than any of the meetings, the secretary makes life-and-death decisions every day—and not just for American military forces. Since 9/11, the president has delegated to the secretary the authority to shoot down any commercial airliner he, the secretary, deems to be a threat to the United States. The secretary can also order missiles fired to shoot down an incoming missile. He can move bombers and aircraft carriers and troops. And every week he makes the decisions on which units will deploy to the war front and around the world. It is an unimaginably powerful position.

Presidents' Day: One President's Misquotation of Another

John Dickerson writes at Slate:
Ahead of what appears to be another tough year, Obama wants Democrats to appreciate the moral benefit of their struggle, not just the political one. He is building on the pitch he made four years ago on the eve of the ACA vote, in what is still the most emotional pitch the president has ever made for the legislation. He quoted Lincoln: “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.” Four years later he is promising that they will indeed win. It just may not be in their political lifetime.
As I noted at the time, however, the Lincoln quotation was spurious: the Great Emancipator never said anything of the kind.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Loopholes and the Revolving Door

Many posts have discussed the "revolving door" between Congress and interest groups.  The New York Times reports on regulatory loopholes that allow the door to keep spinning, especially on the House side:
The salary loophole is perhaps the most popular. House aides can avoid the one-year “cooling-off” period as long as their salaries are below a certain cap, totaling $130,500 last year.
Erik Olson’s salary fell below that cap when he stepped down in September from his job as chief of staff to Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin. Soon after, he started to lobby Congress on behalf of corporate clients like Leprino Foods of Denver, which wanted to shape the so-called Farm Bill, a topic that Mr. Kind was involved in.
Mr. Olson, when asked if he had contacted his former boss in the months since he left, said his firm’s policy was “to not publicize who we are meeting with on the Hill or administration,” and a spokesman for Mr. Kind simply said, “No comment.”
...
Dee Buchanan, a Republican who earned more than $170,000 during his last year as a senior aide to Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, benefited from a different exemption.
After departing Capitol Hill in fall 2012, Mr. Buchanan started a job with Ogilvy Government Relations. The firm’s website boasts that Mr. Buchanan — who quickly registered to lobby for the American Bankers Association and the CME Group, one of the world’s largest futures exchanges — was “the ‘go-to guy’ for the new House Financial Services Committee chairman,” Mr. Hensarling.
Despite the close ties, Mr. Buchanan was free to immediately lobby most members of Mr. Hensarling’s committee. Mr. Buchanan’s one-year ban did not apply to the committee at large because his government paycheck had come from the House Republican Conference, a leadership arm of the party that Mr. Hensarling led in 2011 and 2012. As such, Mr. Buchanan was restricted from lobbying only Mr. Hensarling and a few other committee members who also belonged to leadership.
Democratic aides have made similar moves.
...
The one-year ban also allows former aides to “interact socially“ with former bosses or Capitol Hill colleagues. Although there can be no “intent to influence” a lawmaker’s “official actions or decisions” at dinner parties and golf games, the lobbyists can work behind the scenes, using their expertise to advise clients about the inner workings of Congress. And when it comes to working on a political campaign, there are few restrictions, since such activity is considered a form of free speech.

Dubious Polling Awards

Our chapter on public opinion discusses problems with survey research and errors in polling.  At iMedia Ethics, David W. Moore gives out "dubious polling awards."  A couple of examples:
10. Goldilocks and Three Bears Award – to Pew, Gallup and Rasmussen
Like Goldilocks tasting the porridge – one that was too hot, another too cold, and the third just right – Pew, Gallup and Rasmussen have provided us with three quite different views of the public on immigration reform. Should there be a new law that would give a chance to immigrants, currently living in the United States illegally, to apply for U.S. citizenship?

Rasmussen -- Definitely not! (65%)
Gallup – Definitely yes! (65%)
Pew – Maybe yes, maybe no! (43%, 51%)
Of course, different questions provide different results. But do upwards of 80% of Americans really have a meaningful opinion on the issue as Rasmussen, Gallup and Pew indicate? An iMediaEthics poll suggests not – anywhere from a third to half the public is unengaged, with the rest either evenly divided or leaning slightly toward citizenship.

9. The Paranoia Award – to Talking Points Memo
A Fairleigh Dickinson poll last year apparently scared the daylights out of Talking Points Memo (TPM). The poll reported that 29% of voters agreed with the statement that “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary to protect our liberties.”
TPM called the results “staggering” and noted that they “serve as a reminder that Americans’ deeply held beliefs about gun rights have a tendency to cross over into outright conspiracy theories about a nefarious government seeking to trample their constitutional rights – paranoia that pro-gun groups like the National Rifle Association have at times helped stoke.”
Relax, people! Poll respondents agree to statements like that for all sorts of reasons, often because it’s a way to express frustration without having to really do anything. Besides, the question doesn’t specify who the revolution will be against – Government? Corporations? Gun owners?

Killing an American Terrorist

The American al Qaeda member who the Obama administration is considering killing through a drone strike is likely a bombmaker with little public profile who has been linked to the deaths of fellow citizens in Afghanistan, experts say.
A former U.S. security official told NBC News that the suspect is based in lawless western Pakistan, where missiles fired by American drones have slain dozens of suspected al Qaeda members since 2004.

... 
“[Obama] said that when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against the United States, and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens, and when neither the United States nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should not serve as a shield,” [press secretary Jay] Carney told reporters.
The key phrase in Carney's statement is "actively plotting," an indication that the target would be someone with military training and experience, as opposed to a spokesman or mouthpiece for the terror group.
Attorney General Eric Holder has said that since 2009, the United States had “specifically targeted and killed one U.S. citizen,” Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric who was killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. Al-Awlaki may have masterminded a plan to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.
Any U.S. military action in foreign lands risks creating more enemies and impacts public opinion overseas. Moreover, our laws constrain the power of the President, even during wartime, and I have taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.
... 
Now, this week, I authorized the declassification of this action and the deaths of three other Americans in drone strikes to facilitate transparency and debate on this issue and to dismiss some of the more outlandish claims that have been made. For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the Government to target and kill any U.S. citizen with a drone or with a shotgun, without due process; nor should any President deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.

But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team.

That's who Anwar Awlaki was; he was continuously trying to kill people. He helped oversee the 2010 plot to detonate explosive devices on two U.S.-bound cargo planes. He was involved in planning to blow up an airliner in 2009. When Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, went to Yemen in 2009, Awlaki hosted him, approved his suicide operation, helped him tape a martyrdom video to be shown after the attack, and his last instructions were to blow up the airplane when it was over American soil. I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot, but we couldn't. And as President, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized the strike that took him out.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

"President" Hamilton?

A press release from Groupon (screenshot below):


If you are reading this blog, then you probably know that Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury, but never president.  (Contrary to yet another myth, the foreign-born Hamilton was indeed eligible to be president, as he was a citizen at the time of the Constitution's ratification.) Consumerist adds:
And it gets even better! Through the magic of Twitter we came across an apparent reply from Groupon addressing the apparent confusion (thanks, Chris!):

Ah yes, “opinions.” Those are exactly like historical facts. Marketing.
If this isn’t a “crazy like a fox” stunt to get us to write about Groupon, then we’re seriously concerned. And so should you be — it’s probably not the best idea to give your banking information to someone who thinks Hamilton was a president.

Inequality: College Grads Are Pulling Away

Many posts have discussed the connection between education and inequality.  The Pew Research Center reports:
For those who question the value of college in this era of soaring student debt and high unemployment, the attitudes and experiences of today’s young adults—members of the so-called Millennial generation—provide a compelling answer. On virtually every measure of economic well-being and career attainment—from personal earnings to job satisfaction to the share employed full time—young college graduates are outperforming their peers with less education. And when today’s young adults are compared with previous generations, the disparity in economic outcomes between college graduates and those with a high school diploma or less formal schooling has never been greater in the modern era.
These assessments are based on findings from a new nationally representative Pew Research Center survey of 2,002 adults supplemented by a Pew Research analysis of economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

 Rising Earnings Disparity Between Young Adults with And Without a College Degree

Friday, February 14, 2014

American Exceptionalism in a Cadillac Commercial

Confusing the Constitution and the Declaration

NBC reports:
A federal judge declared Thursday that Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, making it the second state in the South to have restrictions on gay marriages overturned this week.

But gay couples can’t get married just yet in Virginia.

Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen, ruling in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk, immediately stayed her decision until the case, Bostic v. Rainey, can be heard by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

...

"Our Constitution declares that 'all men' are created equal. Surely this means all of us," Allen said in her decision. "While ever-vigilant for the wisdom that can come from the voices of our voting public, our courts have never long tolerated the perpetuation of laws rooted in unlawful prejudice."
Like so many people before her, the judge erred.  The Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, asserts that all men are created equal.

In 2011, PolitiFact ridiculed presidential candidate Herman Cain for making a similar mistake.









"Tony (London) and I just want to get married like everyone else can," Tim Bostic said in a statement posted on the website of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, whose lawyers are representing him and the other plaintiffs. "Today’s decision gets us one step closer to making that dream a reality."

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Soft Lobbying

Previous posts have discussed the sometimes-murky relationship between economic interest groups and nonprofits such as think tanks.  Tom Hamburger reports at The Washington Post:
A group called Citizens for Health recently began a campaign to encourage consumers to reduce high-fructose corn syrup in their diets, filing a petition with the Food and Drug Administration demanding stricter labeling on food items containing the sweetener.
Yet the petition did not disclose that the organization, which bills itself as the “voice of the natural-health consumer,” received the bulk of its money at the time from sugar companies, which view corn syrup as a threat to their profits. Since 2011, the organization has received at least $500,000 from the industry.

Sugar companies’ investments in this nonprofit group, detailed in newly released internal documents, are part of a growing strategy used by corporate interests seeking to influence Washington policymaking.
No longer content to rely on traditional lobbyists, companies are investing in other messengers, such as nonprofit groups or academicians, that can provide expert testimony, shape news media coverage and change public opinion in ways that ultimately affect decisions in the nation’s capital.
The new approach lacks the transparency that comes from traditional lobbyist registration rules that provide a visible trail of corporate contact with lawmakers and regulators. Nonprofit organizations, now playing an increasing role in lobbying and electoral politics, are not required to publicly reveal their donors.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Tocqueville and the Presidents

Neil Munro writes at The Daily Caller:
White House officials have quietly changed an official transcript to hide President Barack Obama’s embarrassing historical error during his international press conference with French President Francois Hollande.
Obama’s error came when he misnamed Alexis de Tocqueville, a clear-eyed Frenchman who explained the subtle miracle of American culture and democracy in the 1830s. His book is a classic, partly because his insights about Americans’ social equality and civic society have become commonplace among centrists and conservatives.
But Obama called him “Alex” in front of the French and U.S. press, and while facing banks of TV cameras.
White House’s official transcript, however, hides the presidential error by using the correct name. It now says that Obama declared: “Alexis de Tocqueville — that great son of France who chronicled our American democracy.”


President Hollande said:
I was referring to history earlier on. It unites us. Tocqueville is suddenly a reference. Always a reference that is current in France: How far can you go when it comes to equality and how far can you go when it comes to freedom? And the revolutionaries who wanted the independence of America, those who wanted a republic in France had this thing in common -- they wanted to be as bold as possible when it comes to freedom and liberty, and they wanted to be as respectful as possible when it comes to equality. This is precisely what the American Dream is made of -- and it is also what the French Dream is made of. Even though many have their own little dream, but the ambition remains exactly the same. We want to be together again.
The comments are noteworthy in a couple of respects. Hollande glossed over the Reign of Terror.  And it was odd to assert that "the French Dream" (a phrase that practically nobody uses on either side of the Atlantic) is the same as the American Dream.  Democracy in America is an extended treatise on the differences between the two countries.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

All the President's Ambassadors

Depression-era child star Shirley Temple just died.  Despite lacking a diplomatic background -- or even a college education -- she would go on to serve as ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia.  She was one of many nonprofessional American ambassadors.  Psycho star John Gavin served in Mexico, though the appointment was not odd as it may sound at first:  he had studied Latin American history at Stanford and was (and is) fluent in Spanish.

In January 2009, President-elect Obama suggested that his practice would be different.  At ABC, Jake Tapper writes:
"I want to recruit young people into the State Department to feel that this is a career track that they can be on for the long term. And so, you know, my expectation is that high quality civil servants are going to be rewarded," Obama said then.
But Obama has passed over qualified career professionals in favor of political friends and fundraisers more than any president in the modern era, according to the American Foreign Service Association.
"You know, are there going to be political appointees to ambassadorships? There probably will be some," Obama said in 2009.
Some? Actually, the majority of Obama's second-term ambassadorial nominations have been political.
The Center for Public Integrity says Obama has nominated 23 major fundraisers who have collectively raised at least $16.1 million for Obama since 2007.
At The Washington Post, Professor Henri Barkey writes about a recent nomination:
Two Norwegian lawmakers have nominated Edward Snowden, the bĂŞte noire of U.S. intelligence, for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is quite possible that this is the Norwegians’ way of showing their displeasure and shame at having the Obama administration nominate a completely unqualified person to be its ambassador to Oslo.
The nominee, a Long Island campaign bundler named George Tsunis, made a fool of himself during his Senate confirmation hearings last month. He was unaware of some of the most basic facts about Norway. He admitted never having set foot in the country, and he seemed to think that Norway, a monarchy, has a president. He also had no idea which political parties constituted Norway’s governing coalition, even though, as ambassador, he would be dealing with them. It seemed, as some later tweeted, that Tsunis had not even bothered to read the Wikipedia page for Norway.
The Huffington Post reports:
Political consultant Noah Bryson Mamet, whom President Barack Obama has nominated to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, admitted that he has never actually been to that country during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing Thursday.
In response to a question from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Mamet framed visiting the country as an "opportunity" he has not yet taken advantage of.
"I haven't had the opportunity yet to be there. I've traveled pretty extensively around the world, but I haven't yet had the chance [to visit Argentina]," said Mamet, who was nominated to the post in July 2013.
"I think this is a very significant post," Rubio said in response.
Mamet bundled at least $500,000 for Obama's reelection campaign, according to the Center for Public Integrity. He served on the Obama-Biden National Finance Committee for the 2012 campaign.
At ABC, Abby Phillip reports:
Being a Hollywood producer doesn’t disqualify someone from being an ambassador, but from the combative nature of his questioning, McCain wasn’t very impressed with the resume of Colleen Bell, who has been nominated to be ambassador to Hungary.
This exchange probably best encapsulates most of McCain’s question and answer session with Bell:
SEN. MCCAIN: So what would you be doing differently from your predecessor, who obviously had very rocky relations with the present government?
MS. BELL: If confirmed, I look forward to working with the broad range of society –
SEN. MCCAIN: My question was, what would you do differently?
MS. BELL: Senator, in terms of what I would do differently from my predecessor, Kounalakis –
SEN. MCCAIN: That’s the question.
MS. BELL: Well, what I would like to do when — if confirmed, I would like to work towards engaging civil society in a deeper — in a deeper –
SEN. MCCAIN: Obviously, you don’t want to answer my question.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Not Really Very Good Budget News

From the Congressional Budget Office:
Assuming no legislative action that would significantly affect revenues or spending, CBO projects that the federal budget deficit will fall from 4.1 percent of GDP last year to 2.6 percent in 2015—and then rise again, equaling about 4 percent of GDP between 2022 and 2024. That pattern of lower deficits initially and higher deficits for the rest of the coming decade would cause federal debt to follow a similar path. Relative to the nation’s output, debt held by the public is projected to decline slightly between 2014 and 2017, to 72 percent of GDP, but then to rise in later years, reaching 79 percent of GDP at the end of 2024. By comparison, as recently as the end of 2007, such debt equaled 35 percent of GDP (see the figure below).

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Expatriation 2013

Many posts have discussed expatriation.  On Thursday, attorney Andrew Mitchel wrote:
Today the Treasury Department published the names of individuals who renounced their U.S. citizenship or terminated their long-term U.S. residency (“expatriated”) during the fourth quarter of 2013.

The number of published expatriates for the quarter was 630, bringing the total number of published expatriates in 2013 to 2,999. The total for the year shatters the previous record high of 1,781 set in 2011 and is a 221% increase over the 2012 total of 932. 
 
We do not believe that the primary reason for the increase in expatriations is for political purposes or for individuals to reduce taxes. Instead, we believe that there are likely three principal reasons for the recent increases in the number of expatriations:
Increased awareness of the obligation to file U.S. tax returns by U.S. citizens and U.S. tax residents living outside the U.S.;
The ever-increasing burden of complying with U.S. tax laws; and
 The fear generated by the potentially bankrupting penalties for failure to file U.S. tax returns when an individual holds substantial non-U.S. assets.
The increase in expatriations may also be partly due to a 2008 change in the expatriation rules.

Gilded Silicon

At The Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin writes of the Gang of Four -- Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft:
Ironically, the very entrepreneurial form that defeated Japan’s bid for global technological dominance is morphing into an American version of the famed keiretsu that have long dominated the Japanese economy. The keiretsu,epitomized by such sprawling groups as Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and even Toyota,spread across a vast field of activities, leveraging their access to finance as a means to expand into an ever-increasing number of fields. The can best be understood, notes veteran Japan-based journalist Karel van Wolferen, as a series of “intertwined hierarchies.”
Increasingly, American technology is dominated by a handful of companies allied to a small but powerful group of investors and serial entrepreneurs. These firms and individuals certainly compete but largely only with other members of their elite club. And while top executives and investors move from one firm to another, the big companies have constrained competition for those below the executive tier with gentleman’s agreements not to recruit each other’s top employees.
At the top of the American keiretsu system stands a remarkably small group whose fortunes depend in part on monetizing invasions of privacy to use the Internet as a vehicle for advertising. These are not warm and cuddly competitors. Both Google and Microsoft have been accused of using anti-competitive practices to keep out rivals, in part by refusing to license technology acquiring of potential competitors.
Open Secrets reports:
Facebook just turned 10. The little social media site that could, started by Harvard undergrads as a platform for college classmates to connect, has now expanded into a publicly traded global empire with new features and app updates debuting all the time, giving founder Mark Zuckerberg a net worth of over $3.7 billion.
Though it only recently jumped into the Washington game, Facebook has made a huge splash in the past few years - and it shows no sign of stopping. In 2012, political contributions from Facebook to candidates increased more than eightfold over their 2008 level, fueled in part by the political action committee the company established in 2011 (prior to that, its giving came only from employees). Moreover, while overall spending on lobbying has been steadily declining for years now, Facebook has gone in the opposite direction, ramping up its lobbying expenditures every year since it entered the Beltway in 2009.

Computer and Internet Use

Several chapters of our textbook, including those on mass media and political participation, discuss the impact of Internet usage.  The Census Bureau has a new set of tables and an infographic on the subject. Here is a portion:




Saturday, February 8, 2014

Educational Attainment

The Census Bureau has released Educational Attainment in the United States: 2013.
This report, based on the Current Population Survey, provides a portrait of academic achievement by demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, average earnings, and Hispanic origin. The number of adults who have completed some graduate school, increased 24 percent from 2008 to 2013, from 29 million to 36 million, according to the Educational Attainment in the United Sates 2012 data release. The report also includes detailed information on years of school completed, showing how many years of education adults have completed for each level of attainment. A variety of historical time series tables going back to 1940 are also provided, as are graphs illustrating historical data. Internet address:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/index.html.
The report shows growing share of American adults with bachelor degrees, and a shrinking share of without high school diplomas:

Friday, February 7, 2014

Health Care: Coming Apart

At The Wall Street Journal, Michael Barone points to evidence undermining three assumptions behind Obamacare:  that the uninsured will get insurance once it's available, that insurance leads to better health, and that people with  Medicaid are less likely to seek primary care from emergency rooms.
[The] apparent discrepancies between what policy makers expected and how many of the intended beneficiaries of ObamaCare seem to be behaving reminds me of the divide described in Charles Murray's 2012 book "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010." Mr. Murray, my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, documents the sharp differences in behavior between the upper (in education and income) 20% and the bottom 30% of white Americans.

The upper group has low rates of divorce and single parenthood and high rates of what Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam calls social connectedness. They belong to voluntary associations and churches; they vote and follow public-policy debates. They tend to be connected, engaged and conscientious. The lower (income and education) group has high rates of divorce and single parenthood and low rates of social connectedness. They tend to be disconnected and disengaged, and sometimes heedless. It should not be surprising that they may not respond to the same health-care mandates, incentives and nudges that policy makers and others in the upper group do.

Liberal policy makers have long regarded Scandinavian policies as a model. If a welfare state can work there, they have long argued, it can work here. But the Scandinavian countries have homogeneous populations with high levels of trust, conscientiousness and social connectedness. It is not a coincidence that in the two states with the highest levels of the social connectedness Mr. Putnam described, North Dakota and Minnesota, most people are of Scandinavian or German descent. But policies that work well in Scandinavia or Minnesota and North Dakota won't necessarily work well in a wider United States, where a much larger proportion of people are socially disconnected.

California Contradiction on Conservation

Students of public policy have long understood that different policy areas may have conflicting goals. At Reason, Scott Shackford notes that California's plastic bag ban clashes with water conservation during drought.

Governor Jerry Brown is telling Californians "don't flush more than you have to" and is urging them to cut water use by 20 percent.

Meanwhile, the California Department of Public Health is advising them to use more water. Reusable bags may pick up bacteria from meat, raw produce and other foods, so the Department urges the following steps:

  • Reusable grocery bags should be machine or hand-washed frequently! Dry the bags in a clothes dryer or allow them to air dry.
  • After putting groceries away, clean the areas where the bags were placed while un-bagging your groceries, especially the kitchen counter and the kitchen table where food items may later be prepared or served.
  • If food residues from any food products have leaked into the bag, make sure to wash and dry the bag thoroughly before reuse.
  • If reusable grocery bags have been used to transport non-food items, such as detergents, household cleaners, and other chemicals, wash and dry the bags before using them to transport food items. Alternatively, you may wish to use bags of one color for food items and bags of a different color for non-food items.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

President Obama and the 2014 National Prayer Breakfast

Many posts have discussed religion in politics, particularly religious references by presidents.  As noted earlier, President Obama has been vocal about his Christian faith, as he was today at the National Prayer Breakfast:
And here we give thanks for His guidance in our own individual faith journeys. In my life, He directed my path to Chicago and my work with churches who were intent on breaking the cycle of poverty in hard-hit communities there. And I’m grateful not only because I was broke and the church fed me, but because it led to everything else. It led me to embrace Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. It led me to Michelle -- the love of my life -- and it blessed us with two extraordinary daughters. It led me to public service. And the longer I serve, especially in moments of trial or doubt, the more thankful I am of God’s guiding hand.

Now, here, as Americans, we affirm the freedoms endowed by our Creator, among them freedom of religion. And, yes, this freedom safeguards religion, allowing us to flourish as one of the most religious countries on Earth, but it works the other way, too -- because religion strengthens America. Brave men and women of faith have challenged our conscience and brought us closer to our founding ideals, from the abolition of slavery to civil rights, workers’ rights.

Obama on Work Disincentives

Yesterday, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf testified about the Affordable Care Act:
By providing heavily subsidized health-insurance to people with very low income and withdrawing those subsidies as income rises, creates a disincentive for people to work, relative to what would have been the case in the absence of that act.
On December 4, 2013, President Obama said:
And it’s also true that some programs in the past, like welfare before it was reformed, were sometimes poorly designed, created disincentives to work.


Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Conservative Media

Jim Geraghty writes at National Review Online:
There's an outdated complaint that the Right has too many commentators and columnists and not enough reporters. Perhaps that was once true, but the ranks of those doing original reporting have expanded greatly once you add up everybody at NR/NRO, The Weekly Standard, the Washington Examiner, the Washington Free Beacon, Townhall, Reason, James O'Keefe's videos, the Daily Caller, Breitbart, and a host of others I'm forgetting. We're getting better at amplification and linking and promoting and tweeting each others' work.
But for some reason, there are a lot of days it feels like we're not quite there in terms of actual real-world impact. I know everybody's had at least one story that they feel like was nitroglycerin, and should have made a big, lasting impact, that just hit the web or print pages and . . . pppppht. Nothing. The world reads it, shakes their head and goes tsk-tsk, and goes on. We have a surplus of things to be outraged about and a dearth of attention and energy to focus upon it, and the public's attention span seems to be shrinking every year. Obamacare's messes, ludicrous contracts, Benghazi, embarrassing wastes of money, embarrassing wastes of space in Congress . . . they all just pile up without much of a consequence.
At one of our last gatherings, we noted how quickly everyone was able to turn a Post reporter's dismissal of the horrific abortionist/ghoul Kermit Gosnell as a "local crime story" into a rallying cry; the media was dragged, kicking and screaming, into covering Gosnell nationally. We scrappy little Pajamahadeen can really get a story out to a wider audience when we're all pulling in the same direction. Of course, it's tough to get us all pulling in the same direction, and it's got to be organic.

The Left has Journo-List; we have our mailing lists where a grassroots activist will dismiss all congressional staffers as useless selfish parasites sucking on the public teat . . . the congressional staffers for conservative lawmakers will take offense at the comment and call the activist an ill-informed rabble-rouser, and before we know it, it's turned into a flame war. It's fascinating to see how often the liberals describe the "right-wing noise machine" as a well-oiled, engine-revving, unified, self-reinforcing powerful megaphone, a drone-clone army, snapping to attention and coordinating its messages, activism, and actions for maximum effectiveness.

To paraphrase Will Rogers, I'm not a member of an organized political movement; I'm a conservative.