Politics Alabama

A Look At The 2012 Regular Session

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:05:00 +0000

Well, the 2012 regular session of the Legislature ended last night... not that you'd know it, because the Legislators are right back there today for the first special session of the 2012 season. Yes, the Governor has called a special session to immediately follow the regular session, and this special session will be aimed at redrawing legislative districts and amending the immigration law so schools can't ask students their immigration status and so that the DHS doesn't post on the internet the names of illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

One item that was specifically left out of the call (bills in the call can be passed with a simple majority, but bills outside it need a 2/3 majority of both Houses) was a local bill to raise taxes in Jefferson County. The bill to impose a new occupational tax for Jefferson County failed in the regular session, and faces a steep hurdle in this special session. So the idea of new revenue for the County seems to be dead for another year. Let's see what the County does now.

Generally, I think most bills introduced should not be passed, but some bills died in the regular session that should have passed. For example, SB15 (lowering ballot access requirements) made it out of the Senate by an overwhelming vote, and would likely have passed the House had it made it to the floor for a vote. It did not make it, however, and so a good bill that could have passed... didn't. I'm upset by this, but will not comment much beyond saying that this seems to be a leadership issue opposing this bill, as a large majority of both the Democrat and Republican rank and file seemed to support SB15. Next year's legislature should place a similar bill as a priority and push it through the process early in the session.

As an example of a bill that SHOULD have failed and did, I give you Montgomery's request to ban "sagging pants." They wanted to fine those who wore "sagging pants," proving once again that Montgomery will do ANYTHING to raise revenue. Apparently they don't really understand the concept of a free society, here.
http://blog.al.com/montgomery/2012/05/bill_proposing_ban_on_sagging_1.html

So the Legislative drama in Montgomery will continue for another month. Unless Bentley calls for a SECOND special session...

Could Ron Paul Win First Ballot At GOP National Convention?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:42:00 +0000

The conventional wisdom is that if Mitt Romney cannot get the majority of delegates in the first round of voting at the national convention, then the delegates become "unbound" and can vote for whomever they wish in the second and any subsequent rounds of voting. This is called a brokered convention, and that's how most people expect Ron Paul to have any chance at all of winning the primary. And it all hinges on Romney not having enough votes to win the first round of voting. But does Paul really need a brokered convention in order to win? Apparently not.

According to this article at the online Independent Voter Project (IVN), Ron Paul doesn't need a brokered convention to win... if he has the votes, he could win on the first round of voting. How? Let's look. The first thing to realize is that the "bound delegate" is a myth, and the delegates aren't bound to vote for any specific candidate on the first round of voting. Once on the floor, delegates are bound by the Republican National Committee's (RNC) rules (NOT any state laws), one of which is Rule 38.
http://tinyurl.com/6odgdxe

“No delegate or alternate delegate shall be bound by any attempt of any state or Congressional district to impose the unit rule.”

That seems to say that no delegate can be forced to vote for a specific candidate, even in the first round of voting. But does it really say that?

Rule 38 has already been interpreted by the RNC’s own legal council to mean that the national party rules do not recognize state laws or procedures that bind delegates to vote for a particular candidate, but that they are free to vote for their individual preference on the floor of the national convention. The issue came up in 2008 when a member of the Utah delegation wanted to vote for Mitt Romney instead of John McCain, to whom Utah’s delegates were bound. Several weeks before the 2008 Republican national convention, Jennifer Sheehan, Legal Council for the RNC, wrote a letter to Nancy Lord, Utah National Committee-Woman, asserting:

“The RNC does not recognize a state’s binding of national delegates, but considers each delegate a free agent who can vote for whoever they choose, and the national convention allows delegates to vote for the individual of their choice, regardless of whether the person’s name is officially placed into nomination or not.”

If this is the case, and again, this is the RNC’s own interpretation of its own rule, with an established and recent precedent (that ironically happened to benefit Mitt Romney in 2008), then Ron Paul may not need to last until the second ballot of a long-shot brokered convention to let loose his stealth delegates.

So the rule doesn't recognize state laws that bind delegates, and there's a recent precedent to that effect, when a bound delegate voted for a different candidate on the first round of voting. In fact, Rule 37, Section (b) explicitly recognizes that the vote belongs to the delegate and not the state or even the head of the state's delegation.

“In the balloting, the vote of each state shall be announced by the chairman of such state’s delegation, or his or her designee; and in case the vote of any state shall be divided, the chairman shall announce the number of votes for each candidate, or for or against any proposition; but if exception is taken by any delegate from that state to the correctness of such announcement by the chairman of that delegation, the chairman of the convention shall direct the roll of members of such delegation to be called, and the result shall be recorded in accordance with the vote of the several delegates in such delegation.”

So let's say it happens. Ron Paul delegates and delegates for other candidates who support Ron Paul take advantage of Rule 37 (b) and Rule 38 to vote for Paul during the first round of voting, and Paul actually manages to win a majority of the votes. He's the party's nominee, right? Well, what happens if Romney challenges the results in court, claiming that State law trumps RNC rules? Turns out there's already a SCOTUS precedent on that issue...

If it comes to this, the Romney camp will, no doubt, challenge the convention result. It’s a fight that could end up in the courts. Legally, which would take precedent over the other, the RNC’s rules or state laws that bind delegates to vote for certain candidates on the first ballot of the convention?

As IVN’s Kymberly Bays recently reported, this exact question has already been resolved at the US Supreme Court level: the national party’s rules take precedence over state laws because as a private organization and free association of individuals, a political party has the constitutional right to set its own rules and state laws interfering with that private process violate a political party’s First Amendment rights.

For a more specific look as the Court's ruling:

In Democratic Party of United States v. Wisconsin, the Court addressed this very issue. For background, previous DNC rules provided that only those who are willing to affiliate publicly with the Democratic Party may participate in the process of selecting delegates to the Party’s National Convention.

Wisconsin election laws allow voters to participate in its Democratic Presidential Candidate Preference Primary without regard to party affiliation and without requiring a public declaration of party preference. While Wisconsin’s open Presidential preference primary does not itself violate the National Party’s rules, the State’s mandate that primary results shall determine the allocation of votes cast by the State’s delegates at the National Convention does.

When the National Party indicated that Wisconsin delegates would not be seated at the 1980 National Convention because the Wisconsin delegate selection system violated the National Party’s rules, an action was brought in the Wisconsin Supreme Court on behalf of the State, seeking a declaration that such system was constitutional as applied to appellants (the National Party and Democratic National Committee) and that they could not lawfully refuse to seat the Wisconsin delegation.

Concluding that the State had not impermissibly impaired the National Party’s freedom of political association protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the State’s delegate selection system was constitutional and binding upon appellants and that they could not refuse to seat delegates chosen in accordance with Wisconsin law.

The United States Supreme Court reversed and held Wisconsin cannot constitutionally compel the National Party to seat a delegation chosen in a way that violates the Party’s rules. It held that the National Party and its adherents enjoy a constitutionally protected right of political association under the First Amendment, and this freedom to gather in association for the purpose of advancing shared beliefs is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment from infringement by any State, and necessarily presupposes the freedom to identify the people who constitute the association and to limit the association to those people only.

The court held that the Wisconsin laws unconstitutionally infringed on the Democrats’ freedom of association, and Wisconsin did not show a compelling state interest in such infringement. The Court rejected Wisconsin’s asserted compelling interests in preserving the overall integrity of the electoral process, providing secrecy of the ballot, increasing voter participation in primaries, and preventing harassment of voters, go to the conduct of the open Presidential preference primary, not to the imposition of voting requirements upon those who, in a separate process, are eventually selected as delegates. Therefore, such asserted interests do not justify the State’s substantial intrusion into the associational freedom of members of the Democratic National Party.

So the upshot is this: None of the supposedly "bound delegates" are required to actually vote for a specific candidate, regardless of what State law says. All are free to vote their conscience on the first round of voting... and Ron Paul has managed to put a lot of his supporters in slots that are nominally "bound" to Romney. There is no way to know how many of these he has accumulated to date, and no way to know if the delegates will, en masse, follow this path and vote for Paul during the first round of voting. It's a wait and see kind of thing at the moment.

If nothing else, it should make for an interesting convention in Florida in August.

Did You Know Obama Has Always Been President?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:43:00 +0000

Did you know that, ever since 1924, Barack Obama has been President? At least, that's the impression being given out by the White House in their latest idiotic move.

You see, the White House website has always featured biographies of past Presidents... mostly for the benefit of students. This White House, however, decided to do something that had never before been done. That is, to add text to the bottom of each biographical entry to insert Obama into their accomplishments. Here are some examples:

President Calvin Coolidge: “On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.”

Not sure what Obama's "accomplishment" is doing in old Coolidge's biography, but I guess it reflects this President's view that he can, indeed, take credit for anything. Oh, and the FCC wasn't even one of Coolidge's top ten accomplishments... until Obama needed it to be.

President Herbert Hoover: “President Herbert Hoover signed the bill founding the Department of Veterans Affairs July 21, 1930. President Obama is committed to making sure that the VA, the second-largest cabinet department, serves the needs of all veterans and provides a seamless transition from active duty to civilian life, and has directed his Administration to modernize the way health care is delivered and benefits are administered for our nation's veterans. First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden launched Joining Forces to mobilize all sectors of society to give our service members and their families the opportunities and support they have earned.”

That's gotta be a winner, doesn't it? Obama really likes veterans... Maybe that's why he likes fighting wars, to create more veterans!!

President Jimmy Carter: “In 1977, President Jimmy Carter created the Department of Energy; today the DOE works with the Obama Administration to drive towards innovation in energy and reducing reliance on foreign oil with an ‘all of the above’ approach.”

This one is pure propaganda, because the Obama administration seems focused on doing everything they can to PREVENT oil drilling.

And it goes on and on. This sounds sort of like Al Gore's infamous "I invented the Internet" claim. There are similarities... both men are so egotistical and arrogant that they can't imagine anything significant happening without them being involved.

If you'd like to get involved with this on Twitter, just use the hashtag #ObamaInHistory. You can see more of his historical edits here:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/15/President-Obama-White-House-biographies

Enjoy...

UPDATE: For some pictorial looks at Obama in history, such as guest-lecturing with Einstein, go here:
http://obamainhistory.tumblr.com/

Martha Roby's Strange Commencement Address

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:25:00 +0000

Friday was an important and memorable day in my family's life, as my beloved daughter graduated from college. She received a bachelor of science degree from Troy University, and the next day began her trek to Pennsylvania where she will begin the first new job of her post-college career. Adding to my enjoyment and pride was the fact that she graduated Magna Cum Laude. The day was about as perfect as it could possibly be.

Well, almost. You see, U.S. Representative Martha Roby gave the commencement address. That speech was more than disappointing, though I intentionally sat on my feelings at the time, determined as I was that nothing would spoil the day. And nothing did. But now that day is over, and I am free to vent my feelings about the pap-filled train wreck that she probably fondly believed was a decent commencement speech.

Let's begin with her focus. From the very beginning, it was clear that this was an "I love me" speech. She recounted her decision to enter politics and other aspects of her life. I know, that is a standard component of any such speech, but Roby's speech came across as little more than a smug recitation of her accomplishments. You see, a commencement speech is SUPPOSED to inspire and encourage the graduates, but Roby didn't even ATTEMPT to do that. In fact, at one point she stated actually that she had no wisdom or advice to offer. If that's true, and it certainly seemed to be, then why in the wide, wide world of sports was she giving the commencement address?

The other major complaint I had was the touchy-feely message she DID choose as the theme of her speech: public service. She used all of the normally-liberal code words, such as urging the newly graduated group to "give back" to the community. She actively urged all the graduates to enter public service and help make America great. I'm sorry, but government does NOT make America great... it's the millions of us working in the private sector that accomplish that.

Actually, I'm pretty certain she never actually said "make America great," but her message was clear. Entering government service, either as an employee or an elected official, was the best way that these new graduates could "give back" part of what they were given. Yes, you read that right... given. I'm sorry, but my daughter wasn't "given" anything. We paid tuition, and she worked her behind off to pass her classes and EARN her Magna Cum Laude graduation. And since she wasn't "given" anything, there's nothing to "give back." This is the kind of communal crap we normally hear from Democrats and liberals... but Roby claims to be a conservative Republican.

Roby's speech did nothing to inspire the new graduates... nothing at all. (I spoke to several people who also heard the speech, including some of the graduating Seniors, and I assure you that I am not the only one who feels this way about it.) Roby COULD have honestly inspired these erstwhile students, but she actively chose not to do so. Instead she mouthed platitudes, smugly reflected on her own successes, and then urged a life of public service as the epitome of good choices. I freely admit that she did talk about "whatever choice" they might make, meaning going into the private sector, but the rest of her speech made it crystal clear that she regarded public service as a "better way" that benefits both the graduate and the country more.

Without the private sector, America would be Cuba. Because of that simple truth, and because Roby doesn't seem to grasp that simple fact, she should scrap that speech and write a new one.

I won't tell her exactly what to write, but I will give a few suggestions and guidelines.

The job of a commencement speech is two-fold. The first is to reflect on the education just completed, remembering all the work done and their accomplishments along the way. The why of that is very simple: they worked hard to get here, so let's look back and give them the congratulations they deserve. But the second goal of a commencement speech is to encourage and inspire the new graduates for the rest of their life.

One way to help the students remember the past four years is to reminisce upon your own college experience, always opening that experience up to include the members of the graduating class. Congratulate them, build up their pride for their accomplishment.

You should also inspire them. That's a bit tricky, because of the question, "Inspire them to do what?" Roby chose to inspire them to public service. For those who don't choose to do that... good luck anyway. To me, and to others that I spoke to, that was a weak choice. Instead, encourage them to realize their own potential, whatever that may be. Emphasize that they achieved academic success through hard work, mental and physical dedication, and the desire to succeed. Those same qualities that helped them succeed in the academic world will also help them succeed in post-college life. Pick a goal and work hard to reach it... now is not the time to relax and stop trying.

Some speakers choose to talk about real-life versus academic life, and that can be a good thing, if done correctly. I think that a good commencement speech must touch on this at least a little. Mention that each person's future is determined by the choices that they make. Good choices generally lead to good results, while bad choices often lead to results that aren't so good. Hard work in pursuing a bad choice won't yield nearly as much as steady work towards a good goal.

Martha Roby, I have to grade your commencement speech an abject failure, and I recommend a rewrite. When giving commencement speeches, you have the opportunity to inspire and encourage the newly graduated class, but like anything worth accomplishing, just any old speech won't do. I hope you take this advice to heart.

And for the graduating class of 2012, of which my daughter is a part, I want to extend my congratulations for all of your hard work. You did it, you graduated. You've worked for this for so long that many of you see this as an ending, a goal in and of itself. In actuality, graduating is an intermediate goal, not a destination. It is a waypoint on your journey through life. It's one worth pursuing and achieving, but it is not an ending. To the contrary, graduation day is the beginning of a life that is full of promise. A chance to take all of that knowledge that you've hopefully been acquiring and go out into the world, striving to make it a little bit better than when you found it. Set your next goal and pursue it with the same tenacity and determination that you showed during your college career, and your life will be better for it.

I congratulate all of you new graduates, and welcome you into the real world. May you live up to the potential in your lives, and enjoy yourself in the process.

UPDATE: This is an interesting update... somebody from the US House of Representatives read this entry just before 2 pm, central time. I can't tell WHO from that location visited the page, but somebody did. Logic would indicate a Roby staffer, but that's pure speculation. Now let's what, if anything, comes from THAT.

8.1% Unemployment or 14.5% Unemployment?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Well, the April jobs report is out, and unemployment rate dropped from 8.2% to 8.1%... something the President called "good news." I am here to tell you that it is not only a BAD thing, but it is a VERY bad thing.

The unemployment rate didn't drop because of the 115,000 jobs added in April, it dropped because of the 522,000 people who gave up looking for work and dropped out of the workforce. Keep in mind, when we create a "disappointing" 115k jobs in a month and almost FIVE TIMES that many people drop out of the workforce... PresBo thinks that is good news.

If you want to read the entire report, you can find it here:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

There is a tidbit in that report I want to make sure you notice.

"The civilian labor force participation rate declined in April to 63.6 percent."

The civilian labor force participation rate is defined as the "share of the population 16 years and older working or seeking work." (You can find a good discussion of this at this site.) For the record, it hasn't been this low since 1981... and it has been dropping consistently for the past three years.

So in Obama's world, "good news" is more people giving up looking for a job than are getting hired... by an almost 5 to 1 margin.

The "official" unemployment rate is called the U-3 measure, and it is the "Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force." That number fell to 8.1%, but it ignores the large number of people who WOULD work if they felt they could find a job but have given up looking. THAT number is the U-6 measure, which is the "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force", and it stands at 14.5%.

So don't get all rosy about an 8.1% unemployment rate, as that number doesn't represent what we really think of as unemployment. The U-6 number is closer, and 14.5% is nothing to cheer about.

Julia: A Better Life

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:57:00 +0000

Yesterday I blogged about Obama's newest supporter, Julia. I could crack a joke about how Julia is typical of new Obama supporters... she's imaginary. But I won't. Instead, I'll point you over to "A Better Life for Julia," a slideshow prepared by the Heritage Foundation in rebuttal to Obama's cradle-to-grave vision of America. You can find their version here:
http://blog.heritage.org/a-better-life-for-julia/

Have fun with it...

Ron Paul's Interesting Strategy: Could It Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Ron Paul has been totally discounted in this Presidential election, and Mitt Romney has been declared the presumptive nominee, even though he doesn't have the magic 1144 delegates yet. With everyone else dropping out of the race, what is Ron Paul doing? Does he really think he has a chance to win?

The answer to the second question is yes, he thinks he could win. His hopes lie in a brokered convention... a convention where nobody gets the 1144 votes in the first round of voting. But let's start at the beginning.

While most folks have been ignoring him, Paul has been quietly racking up delegates. He's focusing on caucus states like Iowa, Minnesota, and Massachusetts. Basically, he's pushing hard not only to get his delegates sent to the convention, but also working to get his supporters elected to positions with the state GOP parties. And it's working.

In addition to totally taking over the Alaska state GOP organization, Paul has so far won a majority of delegates in Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, and Louisiana. Oh, and Massachusetts, Romney's home state. And because he has won a majority of delegates in five states, his name will be on the ballot during the Republican National Convention. Ron Paul will have a platform at the convention... under party rules he qualifies.

But can he win enough delegates to deny Romney 1144? The answer is... maybe. But even if he doesn't, even if Romney gets that magic 1144 before the convention, don't count Paul out. Why? Because many of the Romney delegates going to the convention from the caucus states are actually Paul supporters who are bound to vote for Romney ONLY in the first round of voting. Which means that they would vote for Paul in the second round. If it gets that far... how does Paul get past the first round of voting if Romney has 1144 going in to the convention?

Here's the kicker. These Romney delegates who are Paul supporters COULD, under national GOP rules, abstain from voting in the first round. In that way, even if Romney technically has 1144 delegates in the first round, if enough of them abstain AND DON'T VOTE then he doesn't get enough votes to win in the first round. The theory is then that the second round shows a more balanced race, with some of the Romney delegates going for Paul.

Oh, and rumors have it that his supporters are also approaching delegates who may be lukewarm in their support for Romney, and asking them to switch to Paul for the second round of voting.

Could it work? The best answer I can come up with is... maybe. But he's got a long row to hoe in order to get there. He's got a LOT of work to do. It could theoretically work, but it relies on everything going exactly right for the Paul campaign, not only during the remaining caucuses and primaries, but also during the convention itself. What will the delegates for the other candidates do during the second round? And the national GOP has already signaled that they are aware of this effort and are taking steps to stop it. Only time will tell how it works out. We'll have a good idea how many delegate Paul is amassing sometime next month, when the caucus states start finalizing delegates.

So now I put the question to you. Do you think it could work? More importantly, do you think the GOP primary rules should be changed to keep things like this from happening in the future, or is it a good path that keeps open possibilities that SHOULD remain open in the face of an "annointed" candidate that nobody really likes?

Have You Met Julia?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Have you met Julia? Julia is the Obama campaign's newest "supporter"... so to speak. She is, in actuality, a made-up portrait of a woman showing how she would benefit from Obama's policies and be harmed by Romney's policies. It's full of the same old class-warfare and ad hominem attacks we've been seeing for quite a while. For example, at age 17 we see the following:

Under President Obama: Julia takes the SAT and is on track to start her college applications. Her high school is part of the Race to the Top program, implemented by President Obama. Their new college- and career-ready standards mean Julia can take the classes she needs to do well.

Under Mitt Romney: The Romney/Ryan budget would cut funding for public education to pay for tax cuts for millionaires.

The slideshow starts at age 3 (with Head Start programs that Obama "improved" and Romney "could cut by 20%") and ends at age 67 (with wonderful Social Security benefits secured by Obama that allow her to volunteer at a community garden but which could be cut by 40% under Romney). Each and every entry in this slideshow is a glimpse of a life through the prism of government intervention and dependency. If you'd like, you can see it for yourself here:
http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia

In other words, this is the cradle-to-grave vision that ultra-liberals have, where every moment and aspect of our lives is connected in some way to our government. In their view, as is perfectly illustrated by this "Life of Julia" slideshow, our lives are good because of government, and without it we would suffer and die. I disagree with the message behind it, but I'm glad Obama created it. This "Life of Julia" slideshow is the barest shadow of what life would be like if we continue to go down this road. You don't honestly believe that governmental "benevolent meddling" would be restricted to those examples, do you? No, Obama supports the cradle-to-grave welfare state, and this kind of rhetoric illustrates that quite nicely.

It lays out a clear choice. Do you want a state that believes the government makes you great, or do you want one where we are responsible for our own greatness? If you don't like the vision painted by "The Life of Julia," then don't vote for Obama. If you DO like it... then don't vote at all. (grin)

GOP Opposes Ballot Access Law

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:08:00 +0000

I have been lobbying for years for lowering Alabama's "strictest-in-the-nation" ballot access requirements. It shouldn't be this hard for somebody to run for election... but it is.

Basically, current law requires an independent or third-party candidate for statewide office to collect signatures totaling 3% of the total votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election. In 2010, that would have been more than 44,000 VALIDATED signatures... which means that 55k - 60k signatures would have to be collected by the party or the independent candidate's campaign. The last time it happened was in 2000, when the Libertarian Party of Alabama (LPA) collected 65,000 signatures and gained ballot access. It took them 18 months and tens of thousands of dollars to achieve this... all that time and money just to BEGIN running for election.

And what about ballot retention? That is, once you're on the ballot, how do you STAY there for the next election without having to collect even MORE signatures? Easy enough, just have your candidate who got the most votes also get 20% of the entire number of votes cast in that race. Not so easy after all, now is it? This barrier is so high that ballot retention by a third-party has only been gained once in the history of our state... and that was by the LPA in 2000, and they lost ballot access during the next election cycle and have been unable to regain it since.

The only exception to the ballot access requirements for a statewide candidate is for a Presidential candidate, who only needs 5,000 signatures to appear on the ballot.

Alabama's ballot access and retention laws are the most stringent of any state in the nation. Many states don't require any signatures at all, and THEY don't seem to have any problems.

State Senator Cam Ward has introduced SB15, which would lower the ballot access requirements from 3% to 1.5%... and the bill is being opposed by the GOP Chairman.
http://www.gadsdentimes.com/article/20120416/news/120419827?tc=ar

First it was Democrats who killed making it easier for independent candidates to gain ballot access. Now the Republican Party has joined that chorus.

GOP Chairman Bill Armistead last week asked Republican House and Senate members to oppose a GOP senator's bill that would lower ballot access requirements for independent candidates.

Armistead sent letters to Republicans urging them to oppose the bill by Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster. He said Monday that easier ballot access would allow “various people to pop up” and potentially influence the outcomes of election in a two-party state.

As you can see, Armistead LIKES having a two-party monopoly on politicians, and is unwilling to relinquish it. Even, as is the case, if that monopoly actually hurts voters.

The stated PURPOSE of ballot access laws is to prevent ballots from becoming crowded. That is, to keep voters from having too many candidates to choose from. But Alabama has never had a problem with crowded ballots. Under our current laws, Alabama is experiencing DESERTED ballots.
http://www.politicsalabama.org/StateFactsLegislature.html

After the 2006 election, more than half of the "elected" legislators actually had no opponent in the general election, which means the voters really had no choice. I call these people "unelected legislators," because the voters had no other option to choose. But if 51.43% of the "elected" legislators had no opposition, that means that 51.43% of voters were denied a choice during the election. Far from being crowded and confusing voters, our ballots are deserted and disenfranchise voters.

During the 2006 elections, 57.14% of the House (60 people) and 34.28% (12 people) of the Senate were elected without opponents. This means that 51.43% of Alabama voters had no choice to make for their legislator. At the same time, only two independent candidates ran for office, and both of them ran in districts that already had both a Democrat and a Republican running..

The single politician who has been "unelected" for the longest period was James Buskey, who hadn't faced a general election opponent since 1982. Right behind him were Alvin Holmes, Richard Lindsey, John Rogers, and Victor Gaston.

During that 2006 election, less than half the voters in this state actually had a choice to make for Legislator. The rest were forced to accept the only candidate who ran. Independent candidacy is so difficult to obtain that only two independent candidates ran for legislature that year, both of whom were involved in three-man races.

If the Republican and Democrat parties are unwilling or unable to give us choices in all races, then they should allow independent candidates and third-parties to provide those choices to voters. Who the voters pick is up to them, but they should have that choice.

Do You Still Trust Our Federal Government?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:13:00 +0000

I believe there are still some people out there who trust our Federal Government... if not totally, then at least to carry out their core functionality. That would be roads and other infrastructure, law and order, and national defense. Are you still one who trusts them to do that?

If so, what would you say if I told you our Federal Government is responsible for hundreds of wrongfully convicted people? And on top of that, they did not take steps to help those people get exonerated?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/convicted-defendants-left-uninformed-of-forensic-flaws-found-by-justice-dept/2012/04/16/gIQAWTcgMT_print.html

Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.

Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of officials.

In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.

As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may have misidentified them as suspects.

And there you have it. People have been wrongfully convicted because of sloppy work done at the FBI forensics labs, and defendants were not notified once this was discovered.

Two cases in D.C. Superior Court show the inadequacy of the government’s response.

Santae A. Tribble, now 51, was convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978, and Kirk L. Odom, now 49, was convicted of a sexual assault in 1981.

Key evidence at each of their trials came from separate FBI experts — not Malone — who swore that their scientific analysis proved with near certainty that Tribble’s and Odom’s hair was at the respective crime scenes.

But DNA testing this year on the hair and on other old evidence virtually eliminates Tribble as a suspect and completely clears Odom. Both men have completed their sentences and are on lifelong parole. They are now seeking exoneration in the courts in the hopes of getting on with their lives.

A third D.C. case shows how the lack of Justice Department notification has forced people to stay in prison longer than they should have.

Donald E. Gates, 60, served 28 years for the rape and murder of a Georgetown University student based on Malone’s testimony that his hair was found on the victim’s body. He was exonerated by DNA testing in 2009. But for 12 years before that, prosecutors never told him about the inspector general’s report about Malone, that Malone’s work was key to his conviction or that Malone’s findings were flawed, leaving him in prison the entire time.

The FBI is not infallible... only a fool would expect that. What we WOULD expect is that, once they became aware that errors had been made, those wrongfully convicted based upon those errors would be notified so they could GET OUT OF PRISON! One would EXPECT that, but one would be wrong. The FBI informed prosecutors, who told nobody.

Our government can't even admit it in public when they make a mistake. They'd rather have innocent people remain in prison than admit that a mistake was made.

So I'll pose to you this pertinent question. Do you still trust our Federal Government? If so... WHY?

Alert: Telephone Scam In Montgomery Area

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Over the past few days, my wife and I have received a series of calls at our home phone. The first came around 3:30 in the morning, but others have come in the mid-morning, too. They feature distraught-sounding young ladies who "knew our daughter" from high school or church, asking for money to alleviate some emergency. They need $40 for a hotel to spend the night after getting kicked out of the place they were staying, or they need $40 to get prescription medication that they need, that kind of thing.

We didn't recognize the names of the young ladies, and we didn't fall for the sob stories being offered, but we DID investigate a little. The Montgomery Police Department is aware of this scam going on in the area... and it IS a scam. So if you suddenly get a call from somebody you don't remember who claims a friendship with your kid and asks for money... I'd proceed with extreme caution.

I called the detective division of the Montgomery Police Department, and they are aware of this scam, but they don't investigate things like this. You CAN call the FBI and maybe they'll do something, but that would be your call.

I just thought I'd post this little warning, in case any of you also get targeted in this scam.

Is Ron Paul Right About Everything?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:58:00 +0000

This is a video posted by Jack Hunter, part of "The Deal" series. It asks and answers the question, is Ron Paul right about everything?

I couldn't have said it better myself.

How Does Romney Compare To Ron Paul?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

When comparing two candidates, it is often helpful to put their positions side by side in a chart. So, here you go, Mitt Romney compared to Ron Paul.

Now, when you tell me you're voting for Romney, we know what you're voting for.

I choose Dr. Paul.

Congratulations, Montgomery Ranked #1

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:17:00 +0000

I don't know if you've seen this one, but Alabama (specifically Montgomery and Birmingham) was recently ranked #1 in a national study. Isn't that great? Well, considering it was a study of the highest sales taxes among US cities, not so much.

But you read that right, Montgomery and Birmingham are officially the cities in the United States with the highest sales taxes. Congratulations...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/11/us-usa-tax-statesales-idUSBRE83A1DM20120411

Two Alabama cities top a new ranking of U.S. cities with the highest combined state and local sales tax rates, a study released on Wednesday found.

Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, have sales tax rates of 10 percent, the steepest in the country, said The Tax Foundation, a conservative tax research group.

I remember when the city was debating raising the sales tax, and I remember fighting it. By that I mean an organized protest downtown, a petition urging the Council not to raise the sales tax, and repeated appearances before the Montgomery City Council begging them not to raise the sales tax. But they did it, and today we pay the highest sales tax of any city in the entire nation! Thank you, city council. Thank you, former-Mayor Bobby Bright.

And thank you to the current Mayor and the current city council. Why? Instead of trying to reduce the city's sales tax, they are busily spending every penny they take in AS WELL AS borrowing money hand over fist to pay for land purchases (among other things). These activities make it impossible to lower the tax rate...

As you can easily imagine, lowering the sales tax in Montgomery would help out every resident by lowering the cost of most items they buy just a little bit. It would help change the perception that Montgomery is hostile to retail businesses because of their high sales tax. And it would force our city government to focus on essentials and stop trying to play real-estate mogul. All of these would be good things.

But will our Council even TRY to reduce the sales tax now that we are nationally known as having the highest sales tax in the nation? I sincerely doubt it.

Has Alabama "Cut Spending" In Previous Years?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:16:00 +0000

I ran across an article in today's paper that irritated me. In the article, Governor Bentley is bemoaning and regretting the 2003 "Amendment One" attempt to raise taxes by $1.2 billion a year... not to mention his voting in favor of it. Why does he regret this?
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20120408/NEWS02/304080009/Bentley-Citizens-skeptical-funding-shortage

As a result, citizens “just don’t believe government. They don’t believe people when they say we have to have more money,” the Republican governor said in an interview Thursday with the Associated Press, The Birmingham News and WSFA-TV.

Riley claims that the reason why the doomsday scenarios they painted didn't come about was because the economy rebounded. Most voters would disagree and say it's because Riley and company would have said anything at all to get their taxes passed. But that isn't what irritated me... THIS is:

Riley said the effect of the cuts nine years ago were not as dramatic as people are likely to see now because state agencies already have been through three budget years with cuts. There had not been successive cuts leading up to 2003, and some agencies had cushions to soften the reductions, he added.

You'll notice, Riley is claiming that the state budget has been "cut" for three consecutive years already, so this year's "cuts" will have bad effects. You'd think that they'd learn about lying this way... but they haven't. So let's look at ACTUAL budget figures from the past three years. I maintain a list of this summarized data, which I pull from actual budget documents on file with the state... and links to the documents are available on my page.
http://www.politicsalabama.org/StateFactsBudget.html

The question is, has the state experienced budget cuts for the past three years? Let's look.

Overall spending, which is the state's general fund and the state's education trust fund, has risen an average of 910 million (or 3.53%) over the past three years, and has not been reduced once:

Total Budget Total Expenditures 1-Year Change
FY2010 $25,595,739,147 + $1,156 (+ 4.7%)
FY2011 $26,619,808,792 + $1,024 (+ 3.8%)
FY2012 $27,169,875,026 + $ 550 (+ 2.1%)

Looking only at the General Fund, spending has increased by an average of $721.67 million (or 5.8%) over the past three years, and has also not been reduced once:

General Fund Total Expenditures 1-Year Change
FY2010 $13,120,286,438 + $1,298 (+10.9%)
FY2011 $13,869,432,452 + $ 749 (+ 5.7%)
FY2012 $13,987,492,807 + $ 118 (+ 0.8%)

Looking only at the Education Trust Fund, spending has increased by an average of $188.3 million (or 1.5%) over the past three years. The 2010 ETF budget was $142 million smaller than the previous year's budget, but the remaining two years did show increases in spending. For the record, that 2010 decrease in ETF spending was the first time ETF spending had shrunk instead of grown since at least 1997.

Ed Trust Fund Total Expenditures 1-Year Change
FY2010 $12,475,452,809 - $ 142 (- 1.1%)
FY2011 $12,750,376,340 + $ 275 (+ 2.2%)
FY2012 $13,182,382,219 + $ 432 (+ 3.4%)

So it seems as if former Governor Riley... misspoke again about the budget. It is possible, even likely, that the State government wanted to spend even MORE than they did during the previous three years, and that these figures I've provided represent "cuts" from some wish list, but spending in dollars went up each and every one of the previous three years. So, where are these spending cuts that former Governor Riley claims the state budget has suffered through for the previous three years? The truth is that overall spending has gone up each and every year since 1997, except for the 1999 fiscal year.

It really angers me when politicians try to convince us that the state is spending less money when the reality is that the state is spending MORE money. It may be true that some agencies are seeing budget cuts, but it cannot be denied that overall spending is going UP, not down. I could be charitable and call this a misstatement or a misunderstanding... or I could be brutal and call it a lie. Which would you prefer?

But whatever we call it, the sad truth is that the Alabama voter is being misled AGAIN into thinking that spending has been going down in recent years. That claim is simply not true, and I have the facts and figures to prove it.

Breaking: Unemployment Rate Drops To 8.2%

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:56:00 +0000

Good news, right? The unemployment rate continues to drop lower and lower... by the time the election rolls around, we'll be well under 8%. And that's terrific news for Obama and his chances for reelection. But for the rest of us, the dropping unemployment rate is an illusion that masks deeper problems that are not being addressed.

According to the latest jobs report, 120,000 jobs were added in March, which is not enough to maintain the current unemployment rate, much less lower it. So why did the unemployment rate drop? Let's see.

The formula to calculate the unemployment rate is simple. You take the number of people who have jobs and divide it by the number of people in the workforce (loosely defined as "looking for a job"). So if we have 100,000 in the workforce and 95,000 of them have jobs, then the EMPLOYMENT rate is 95000 / 100000 = 0.95, or 95%. That makes the UNemployment rate 5%. Simple, right?

Okay, given that, there are two ways for the unemployment rate to drop. The first is for more people to have jobs. In the example above, if 97,000 had jobs, then the unemployment rate would be 3%. The second, however, is to reduce the number of people in the workforce. Assuming we have 95,000 jobs, if we reduce the workforce by 1,000, then the unemployment rate drops from 5% to 4%. Note that we still have the same number of jobs, 95,000, but the unemployment RATE (really just the percentage of the workforce without jobs) drops because the workforce is smaller.

So what is happening here? The economy needs 150,000 jobs created just to compensate for those leaving the workforce due to retirement, deaths, and so forth. So the 120,000 we added in March is not enough to tread water, much less lower the rate. So, how else can the unemployment rate fall? Right, if the size of the workforce shrinks. That's what happened in March, 333,000 people gave up looking for work, and thus left the workforce. Because of that, the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3% to 8.2%.

And that's NOT a good thing. We lost 2.775 times more workers than we added in jobs. Sure, that lowers the unemployment rate, but it doesn't do those 333,000 people any good, now does it.

This new report is a bad one. But bad as it is, it's not an isolated event. Workforce participation is at a historic low, with more people having given up on looking for work than at any other time in history. And as I said, that is NOT good.

And keep in mind that if you consider all those people who COULD work but have given up looking for a job, the unemployment rate is REALLY 14.8%.

Does that sound good to you? Because it doesn't to me.

Is A Conservative SCOTUS A Good Thing?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:34:00 +0000

There's been a lot of talk lately about the Supreme Court, and quite a bit of it focused on the ObamaCare hearings. A lot is being made of the "conservative" justices as our heroes who may vote to rein in the latest overreach of the federal government, and the evil "liberal" justices who ignore the facts to rely on their own personal feelings. From all the chatter, people could assume that a Supreme Court with nine conservative members would be the best thing for individual freedom that could happen.

But is it?

I present to you "Florence v Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington et al." In this case, the Supreme Court issued a ruling on Monday that seems to validate strip searches of prisoners for the most minor of offences.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-945.pdf

The case involves a man who was pulled over for a traffic stop, during which the police discovered a bench warrant for his arrest, arising from a failure to appear and a hearing to enforce a fine. He was arrested and, over the period of the few days that it took the cops to realize that the warrant was still active IN ERROR because the fine had already been paid, he was fully strip searched on at least two occasions at two different jails.

He filed a 42 U. S. C. §1983 action in the Federal District Court against the government entities that ran the jails and other defendants, alleging Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment violations, and arguing that persons arrested for minor offenses cannot be subjected to invasive searches unless prison officials have reason to suspect concealment of weapons, drugs, or other contraband. The court granted him summary judgment, ruling that “strip-searching” nonindictable offenders without reasonable suspicion violates the Fourth Amendment. The Third Circuit reversed.
Held: The judgment is affirmed.

This decision was 5-4 right down party lines, with the CONSERVTIVES in the majority. The "evil liberals" dissented, holding that arrests for such minor, "nonindictable offenders" should require some reasonable suspicion to justify a strip search.

In this case, I agree with the liberal minority. Hurrah for the tough-on-crime conservatives, but do we really want the cops to strip-search people they snag for jay-walking? Because that's what this decision says the police can do... because "security concerns" trump our rights against an invasive and unwarranted strip search.

So, would a fully conservative court be an unbridled good? I honestly don't think so. The conservatives are not always right, and the liberals are not always wrong. You may agree or disagree with them on this case or that, but that doesn't make them ALWAYS wrong.

Think about it.

PresBo Ignorant Of SCOTUS History

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:08:00 +0000

I'm sure you've heard about this by now, but yesterday PresBo took some shots at the Supreme Court in advance of their ObamaCare ruling, and said the most remarkably ignorant thing. We'll look at the shots first.

According to PresBo, any ruling except upholding the law completely would be judicial activism of the worst kind.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-supreme-court-healthcare/2012/04/02/id/434583?s=al&promo_code=E93A-1

"And I'd just remind conservative commentators that, for years, what we have heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law."

Where to begin? First, his comment about judicial activism could be read two ways. The first is that he has a feel for the Court's decision, and is warning them of what his campaign for reelection will look like. The second is that he is actually trying to influence their ultimate decision by applying public pressure.

Next, note his comments about "an unelected group of people." We're not talking about just some random group of people pulled in off the street, we're talking about the United States Supreme Court, comprised of men and women who were nominated by a sitting President and confirmed by Congress. How can he get away with this kind of crud?

Now let's examine Obama's ignorance.

"Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."

Ummm... what?

If I recall correctly, PresBo graduated from Harvard Law and considers himself a Constitutional Scholar. How, then, could he possibly have missed the fact that reviewing laws passed by "a democratically elected Congress" is what the Supreme Court DOES. They've been overturning such laws for over 200 years... the first such case being Marbury v Madison in 1803. Since then, SCOTUS has overturned more than 150 acts of Congress, and also overturned more than 1,100 state statutes and city ordinances.

Given those facts, how can Obama claim that overturning ObamaCare would be "an unprecedented, extraordinary step?" Seems to me that the step, should SCOTUS take it, would be backed by ample precedent. So why did Obama make such a patently false statement? Politics.

If ObamaCare, his signature achievement and what he intended to be his legacy, is overturned, he will have to use that overturning in his campaign to get reelected. In other words, he was announcing his political strategy in such a way as to justify his future actions. I think this shows that Obama believes that complete overturn is a distinct possibility, and he's setting up a contingency plan to rescue his campaign.

But I have to say that this should earn Obama the Oscar for "Lying Through His Teeth With a Straight Face." Because it IS a lie, and Obama knew it when he said it. Not only is overturning laws a lot of what SCOTUS DOES, it's what they are THERE for! How, then, could his statement even possibly be remotely accurate? It couldn't, and he knew it.

The Supreme Court isn't just a group of unelected people. And it is their job to correct Congress when they pass a law that exceeds their authority... even if they pass such a law with "a strong majority of votes." To imply otherwise is to denigrate the justices on the bench and to betray his own ignorance of how our country's government really works.

Are Conservative Justices Activists?

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:54:00 +0000

Okay, there are some things being said, mostly by liberal commentators and political figures, but also in the media. This is the gist: If SCOTUS overturns ObamaCare, it will be the activist decision of an extremely politicized conservative majority on the court. No, I'm serious. Read some of it for yourself.

"It was an unusually politicized discussion, I thought." -- Former President Bill Clinton

-----

"Recall the scorn toward health reform dripping from the lips of Injustice Antonin Scalia. Or think of the tight-lipped Clarence Thomas, who could send a mannequin to sit in his place at the court's oral arguments for all the difference his brooding presence makes. Along with the more plausibly judicious Samuel Alito, he too had more than likely made his decision. And so on the nation's highest court, satire replaced stare decisis in a slightly altered version of the Red Queen's jurisprudence in Alice in Wonderland: First the verdict, then the trial.

"Now comes the historic decision on health reform — which could reach far beyond the case to fray the whole fabric of progress in modern America. To overturn the individual mandate, to throw out all or most of the rest of the law, would be an act of naked judicial activism, which conservatives profess to despise." -- Robert Shrum

-----

"Three days of Supreme Court arguments over the health-care law demonstrated for all to see that conservative justices are prepared to act as an alternative legislature, diving deeply into policy details as if they were members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee." -- WaPo opinion editor EJ Dionne, Jr.

-----

If the Affordable Care Act goes down — especially if it suffers the same schismatic 5-to-4 blow sust"ained by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law in the Citizens United case — critics will accuse the Roberts Court of rigging the game and covering their power play with constitutional doublespeak." -- Glenn Thrush, Politico

-----

The four ultra-conservative justices on the court—Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas—are in the vanguard of a movement to roll back the federal government and undermine its authority to tackle market failures. -- John Cassidy, New Yorker

The implication is, of course, that the conservative judges were politically motivated, had already made their decisions ahead of time, and that a 5-4 decision overturning ObamaCare would be "naked judicial activism." But is that even close to true?

I don't think so. If the decision were 5-4 IN FAVOR of ObamaCare, would any of these people be raving about activism, or would they be praising the bipartisan nature of the ruling? Come on, you know the answer to that.

The fact is that the four conservative justices who asked questions (justice Clarence Thomas maintained his six-year-long silence) all had doubts about the mandate AND ASKED QUESTIONS FOR THE SOLICITOR GENERAL TO ANSWER. Meanwhile, the liberal judges not only defended the law, but filled in for the Solicitor General when he stumbled in answering a question.

Now, which behavior indicates more clearly that a mind has already been made up: asking tough questions or openly advocating for one side to the other judges? Yeah, I thought that, too. The liberal judges, in defending the law and helping the government make their case, betrayed the fact that their minds were already made up. Why isn't the media attacking THEM for injecting partisan politics into the judicial process?

Here are some examples.

When asked by Justice Scalia if "that is a principled basis for distinguishing this from other situations" (referring to the uniqueness of the market and unpredictability of need), the Solicitor General didn't handle it so well.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Yes, for two reasons. First, this -- the test, as this Court has articulated it, is: Is Congress regulating economic activity with a substantial effect on interstate commerce? The way in which this statute satisfies the test is on the basis of the factors that I have identified. If -

So Justice Ginsburg stepped in to answer the question for Verrilli... advocating the government's position instead of judging it.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Mr. Verrilli, I thought that your main point is that, unlike food or any other market, when you made the choice not to buy insurance, even though you have every intent in the world to self-insure, to save for it, when disaster strikes, you may not have the money. And the tangible result of it is -- we were told there was one brief that Maryland Hospital Care bills 7 percent more because of these uncompensated costs, that families pay a thousand dollars more than they would if there were no uncompensated costs. I thought what was unique about this is it's not my choice whether I want to buy a product to keep me healthy, but the cost that I am forcing on other people if I don't buy the product sooner rather than later.

Later in the hearing, Ginsburg interrupted to make a point for the government that she felt was being overlooked.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Can we go back to -- Justice Breyer asked a question, and it kind of interrupted your answer to my question. And tell me if I'm wrong about this, but I thought a major, major point of your argument was that the people who don't participate in this market are making it much more expensive for the people who do; that is, they will get -- a goodly number of them will get services that they can't afford at the point when they need them, and the result is that everybody else's premiums get raised. So, you're not -- it's not your free choice just to do something for yourself. What you do is going to affect others, affect them in a major way.

GENERAL VERRILLI: That -- that absolutely is a justification for Congress's action here.

In that instance, we can clearly see Ginsburg taking one side and advocating that position for the other justices in the court. Why isn't she being called partisan or being chided for having her mind made up? Here's another, where Kagan breaks in to emphasize a point just made by the Solicitor General.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, right. But -- but everybody -- to live in the modern world, everybody needs a telephone. And the same thing with respect to the -- you know, the dairy price supports that -- that the Court upheld in Wrightwood Dairy and Rock Royal. You can look at those as disadvantageous contracts, as forced transfers, that -- you know, I suppose it's theoretically true that you could raise your kids without milk, but the reality is you've got to go to the store and buy milk. And the commerce power -- as a result of the exercise of the commerce power, you're subsidizing somebody else -

JUSTICE KAGAN: And this is especially true, isn't it, General

GENERAL VERRILLI: -- because that's a judgment Congress has made.

JUSTICE KAGAN: -- Verrilli, because in this context, the subsidizers eventually become the subsidized?

As you can clearly see, the ones asking the most questions were the conservative judges. The ones defending one side or the other and helping an attorney make his case were the liberal judges. I looked through the questioning of Mr. Clement, the attorney for the plaintiffs, and I couldn't find examples of the conservative judges trying to help him make his case. On the contrary, when they spoke they asked questions challenging the arguments being made by Mr. Clement! For example:

MR. CLEMENTS: But we didn't do that. We didn't say when we had problems in the automobile industry that we are not just going to give you incentives, not just cash for clunkers, we are going to actually have everybody over 100,000 dollars has to buy a new car -

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, Mr. Clement, the key to the government's argument to the contrary is that everybody is in this market. It's all right to regulate Wickard -- again, in Wickard against Filburn, because that's a particular market in which the farmer had been participating. Everybody is in this market, so that makes it very different than the market for cars or the other hypotheticals that you came up with, and all they're regulating is how you pay for it.

So the conservative justices, who asked critical questions of both sides, are partisan extremists and conservative activists who made up their minds before hearing the evidence... but the liberal justices, who at times helped the government's lawyer make his arguments, are somehow pure, clean, and impartial? Doesn't this seem backwards to you? It does to me.

The truth is that the decision MIGHT be made to uphold ObamaCare, because the conservative justices seem to be honestly weighing the arguments and their ramifications. But if ObamaCare is overturned it will be on a 5-4 vote basis, because I don't see any of the liberal justices abandoning their ideology to do something so plebian and honest as that.

Remember this when you hear or read some pundit telling you how the conservative justices are so evil, mean, and activist... based upon the hearing transcript of what actually happened, the truth is the reverse. The liberal justices seemed mired in ideology and partisanship, while the conservative justices were more focused on critically questioning ALL sides of the argument.

Friday News Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:56:00 +0000

Here are a few of the news articles I read today that I thought you might find useful.

The Obama Administration's 'Limiting Principles' Seem More Like Expansionary Principles
SCOTUS asked the government's lawyers to succinctly express the government's limiting principles they were advocating. When y ou look at their reply, their idea of "limiting principles" are actually designed to EXPAND the power and scope of government. Good article that explains things pretty well.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/03/28/the-obama-administrations-limiting-princ

Supreme Court likely to vote on health care law Friday
This article gives us a peek into how and when the Supreme Court justices will make their decisions, sort of a nuts-and-bolts look at how things work.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/story/2012-03-29/health-care-court-vote/53873778/1

HURT: Brutal week for Obama, the worst of his presidency
This is one man's analysis of the last week... it was a bad one. As he puts it: "So, in one week, Mr. Obama got caught whispering promises to our enemy, incited a race war, raised serious questions about his understanding of the Constitution, and then got smacked down over his proposed budget that was so wildly reckless that even Democrats in Congress could not support it."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/29/hurt-was-week-was-obama-style/

Not-So-Smooth Operator
This article in the Wall Street Journal makes the case that Obama, especially recently, is coming across a devious and dishonest in his dealings with his political foes and the American people.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577312043447691520.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

WOLF: Obamacare’s inescapable death march
This opinion piece makes the argument that ObamaCare is doomed. If SCOTUS doesn't overturn the law and if it isn't repealed by Congress, then it will die an economic death... and take America down with it.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/28/obamacares-inescapable-death-march/

Reeling White House Steps Into Health Care Breach
So after a bad three days in front of the Supreme Court, how does the Obama administration deal with this constitutional challenge to their signature achievement? Politically, of course, by blaming the Republicans.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/reeling-white-house-steps-into-health-care-breach-20120328?mrefid=freehplead_3

O's Lame Excuse
This article makes the case that Obama IS responsible for the weak recovery.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/lame_excuse_15jqc1xL9eJRTNwywqEJbJ

How Obamacare Derailed the Economic Recovery
This article makes the case that the recovery was derailed by... wait for it... ObamaCare.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/03/28/How-Obamacare-Derailed-the-Economic-Recovery.aspx#page1

I hope you found these articles as informative and entertaining as I did.

Justice Scalia Taking Heat

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:19:00 +0000

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is taking heat, mostly from Democrats, about comments he made during the ObamaCare hearings. Let's start with what Scalia said that is riling some Dems.
http://tinyurl.com/7bufq6b

"You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” he quipped. “Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one.”

Now let's look at the criticisms.

The comments did not sit well with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), a member of the Gang of 14, which in 2005 established guidelines for considering judicial nominees.

“I am concerned that Justice Scalia’s comments call into question his impartiality and instead suggest judicial activism,” Nelson said.

Nelson was taken aback by Scalia’s suggestion that reading the law was too much to expect of justices ruling on its constitutionality.

So the criticism is that Scalia's comments indicated he wasn't impartial, and that he didn't want to read the whole law.

On the first point, why aren't the Democrats jumping on liberal justices for their obvious bias? Several times, when the Solicitor General (who was having a very bad day) was rambling or hemming and hawing, trying to answer a question, one of the liberal justices would jump in and MAKE HIS ARGUMENT FOR HIM. In other words, some of the justices actually acted as an advocate for the law... which is the role played by the attorney presenting the case. If Scalia deserves reprimand and possible forced recusal because of a lack of impartiality, then do not these liberal justices deserve the same?

On the second point, the criticism is that Scalia said he didn't want to read the entire bill... but that's NOT what he said. What DID he say? He asked if it wasn't unrealistic to expect the justices to go through the entire 2,700 pages, RULING UP OR DOWN ON EACH ITEM TO DECIDE IF IT STAYS OR GOES. In other words, Scalia was raising a similar point (though poorly phrased) to one raised by other justices: that it is not their job to write laws, which is basically what expecting them to selectively cut provisions would have them doing.

Look, guys, criticism is good. But it helps if you criticize what the person ACTUALLY said, instead of what you imagine he said.

Final Opinion: SCOTUS Review Of ObamaCare

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:40:00 +0000

So the Supreme Court has finished their public hearings, and it's time to make a prediction on what the ultimate ruling will be. Keep in mind, this is based upon the questions that the justices asked, and I fully realize that this is the START of their decision-making process, not the end. However, it's the best we have, so here is my prediction of what the ultimate ruling will be.

I think that SCOTUS will decide that the individual mandate isn't a tax, and so therefore court challenges against it right now are okay. They will then decide the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and strike down the entire law as a result.

Now, WHY do I say this?

Individual Mandate is a tax and you can't challenge a tax until somebody has paid it
During the first day of hearings, none of the justices, liberal or conservative, seemed to pay much respect to the "you can't challenge a tax until it has been levied" argument. Or rather, they didn't respect the argument that the mandate is a tax. Based upon the fact that they at times, during the first day, skirmished over the individual mandate question, I think none of them will try and dodge the issue in this way.

Is the individual mandate Constitutional?
I think the court will come down 5-4 and decide that the mandate does, in fact, exceed Congress' authority and is therefore unconstitutional. During the second day of arguments, all four of the liberal judges not only defended the law, but also helped out the Solicitor General when he stammered and was failing to make coherent arguments. So I think four votes in favor of the law is a lock.

That said, all of the conservative judges were highly skeptical of the mandate, with justices Kennedy and Scalia (widely viewed as the two most likely to vote in favor of the mandate) sounding the most skeptical and questioning it the hardest. And the questions were hard-hitting, including one of my favorite from Chief Justice Roberts (Pg 39 of the complete transcript):

But once we say that there is a market and Congress can require people to participate in it... it seems to me that we can't say there are limitations on what Congress can do under its commerce power, just like in any other area, all bets are off, and you could regulate that market in any rational way.

This is a recognition that, under the government's claim, we could be required to participate in any existing market, and that participation could be regulated in any way Congress chooses. In other words, there would be no limit to the extent of power Congress could execute. Forcing us to buy a Chevy Volt or broccoli would be just the tip of this particular iceberg.

So I think that, when all is said and done, all five of the remaining justices will come down against the individual mandate.

If the mandate is unconstitutional, what goes with it?
I think that the court will ultimately decide that the entire law should be stricken. "Why" is a tricky answer, and strictly my own opinion.

First, the liberal judges seemed happy to either strike only the individual mandate or strike the mandate plus the two provisions recommended by the government. We heard a lot about "judicial restraint" on this subject... the court not exerting too much interference into legislative acts.

But I think Justice Kennedy had the best response to this argument.

MR. KNEEDLER (Deputy Solicitor General): We think, as a matter of judicial restraint, limits on equitable remedial power limit this Court to addressing the provision that has been challenged as unconstitutional and anything else that the plaintiff seeks as relief. Here the only -

JUSTICE KENNEDY: But when you say "judicial restraint"... you are echoing the earlier premise that it increases the judicial power if the judiciary strikes down other provisions of the Act. I suggest to you it might be quite the opposite. We would be exercising the judicial power if one Act was -- one provision was stricken and the others remained to impose a risk on insurance companies that Congress had never intended. By reason of this Court, we would have a new regime that Congress did not provide for, did not consider. That, it seems to me, can be argued at least to be a more extreme exercise of judicial power than to strike - than striking the whole.

What Kennedy is saying is that if the Court picks and chooses which portions of the Act remain and which are invalidated, this infringes more on the Legislative than would simply invalidating the entire act. It's a good argument... send the whole package back to Congress and let them decide if they want to pass it again and with what changes. From other comments made by Scalia and Alito, they seem to agree with that argument.

JUSTICE SCALIA: My approach would say if you take the heart out of the statute, the statute's gone. That enables Congress to -- to do what it wants in -- in the usual fashion. And it doesn't inject us into the process of saying: This is good, this is bad, this is good, this is bad.

Justice Roberts wasn't so clear, but he did hint that he was leaning towards striking the whole thing with comments like this one, in response to the government arguing that severing just the mandate and the two provisions they specified is consistent with “the legislative intent embodied in the law Congress has actually passed.”

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: But the problem is, straight from the title, we have two complementary purposes, patient protection and affordable care. And you can't look at something and say this promotes affordable care, therefore, it's consistent with Congress's intent. Because Congress had a balanced intent. You can't look at another provision and say this promotes patient protection without asking if it's affordable.

So, it seems to me if you ask what is going to promote Congress's purpose, that's just an inquiry that you can't carry out.

So we have four possible votes for cutting nothing but the mandate or going with the government's limited severability request. And we seem to have four votes for invalidating the entire act. The only justice who didn't ask questions was Clarence Thomas, so if my reading of the court is correct, then he becomes the deciding vote.

Conclusion
Those are my predictions. The court will render a decision that the individual mandate is unconstitutional and that this invalidates the entire act. The decision will be 5-4, right down party lines.

Now, could I be wrong on this? Absolutely. I don't claim to be any better at reading this particular set of tea leaves than anybody else out there. I'm simply giving you my opinions and best guess as to what will happen. And my opinion and best guess is based upon the questions and statements the justices made during the hearings... which are the BEGINNING of the deliberation process, not the end. So I could easily be wrong, here. But the fact that reading tea leaves is risky doesn't change what I see in this particular cup of tea.

What do you think?

UPDATE: And I'm not alone...
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/obamacare-argument-post-mortem/

Day 2 Review: ObamaCare Hearings By SCOTUS

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:46:00 +0000

Let's look at how the SCOTUS hearings on ObamaCare are going. Before I start, I want to make this point: Don't try to predict how the court will rule based upon the questions asked during the hearing. I know that's the only set of clues we have to go by, but it doesn't work.

That said, let's look at Day 1. Yesterday, the Court looked at the question of whether or not they could even hear the case. There's an old law that says no tax can be challenged in court until it has been collected. Since the penalty for not buying insurance won't get levied until 2015, if this law applies then it isn't possible to challenge it until then. If SCOTUS doesn't want to issue a ruling right now, they could agree with that interpretation and dismiss the challenge. But during the 90 minutes of debate, none of the justices seemed to be in love with the argument. At least one justice, Stephen Breyer, argued that the tax penalty for not buying insurance is not a tax, but rather a penalty. Going by the hearing, (see above warning) it looks like SCOTUS is unlikely to refuse to issue a ruling. Another indicator is that, towards the end, the justices began preliminary skirmishing on the issues that were discussed today... the constitutionality of the individual mandate.

Today, SCOTUS took aim at the individual mandate. Most speculation to date has been that the four conservative judges will rule against, the four liberal judges will rule for, and justice Kennedy will be the critical swing vote. Most pundits view him as likely to swing to the liberal side on this case. The tenor of the questions seemed to confirm the idea of a 5-4 split, but with this surprise. Based upon the questions that justice Kennedy asked (again, see the warning in the first paragraph), it appears as if he may be poised to come down against the individual mandate.

Early in the hearing, Kennedy asked a series of questions that seem to indicate he has deep reservations about the mandate.

"Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?"

"Do you not have a heavy burden to show authorization under the Constitution?"

"Can you identify for us some limits on the Commerce Clause?"

Kennedy's doubts about the law were backed up by Alito, Scalia, and Roberts. The final conservative on the court, Clarence Thomas, asked no questions... for the second day in a row. One caveat. Towards the end, Kennedy did say that he thought a refusal to buy insurance did impact the market, which is the crux of the argument for upholding the mandate. That said, one statement probably doesn't mean much when stacked against quite a lot of rigorous questioning.

The liberal justices seemed willing to defend the law, even going so far early on as to help the Solicitor General with his arguments.

If we can draw any conclusions from the questions and behavior of the justices during the hearing, always a risky thing to do, it would seem clear that the decision will be 5-4 and could well hold that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Most of the reviews I've seen so far, even those on liberal sites like the Huffington Post, are reporting the hearing similarly.

Tomorrow, the court looks at the question that, if they hold the mandate unconstitutional, what happens to the rest of the law? Is the rest of it struck down, left alone, or are pieces of it struck down? It should be an interesting day.

If you'd like to hear the audio or read a transcript from today, you can find both of those here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/supreme-court-health-care_n_1382946.html

SCOTUS Begins ObamaCare Review Today

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Today is the day that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) begins the process of hearings on the Constitutionality, or lack thereof, of ObamaCare. A very good artice on this subject was posted in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, and I'd like to share it with you now. Would you like to know what the basic argument is against the individual mandate?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577291762007718228.html

The Supreme Court will not be ruling about matters of partisan conviction, or the President's re-election campaign, or even about health care at all. The lawsuit filed by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business is about the outer boundaries of federal power and the architecture of the U.S. political system.

The argument against the individual mandate—the requirement that everyone buy health insurance or pay a penalty—is carefully anchored in constitutional precedent and American history. The Commerce Clause that the government invokes to defend such regulation has always applied to commercial and economic transactions, not to individuals as members of society.

This distinction is crucial. The health-care and health-insurance markets are classic interstate commerce. The federal government can regulate broadly—though not without limit—and it has. It could even mandate that people use insurance to purchase the services of doctors and hospitals, because then it would be regulating market participation. But with ObamaCare the government is asserting for the first time that it can compel people to enter those markets, and only then to regulate how they consume health care and health insurance. In a word, the government is claiming it can create commerce so it has something to regulate.

Remember that the federal government was originally created to have limited powers.

The Commerce Clause was initially seen as a modest power, meant to eliminate the interstate tariffs that prevailed under the Articles of Confederation. James Madison noted in Federalist No. 45 that it was "an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained." The Father of the Constitution also noted that the powers of the states are "numerous and infinite" while the federal government's are "few and defined."

In this context, what we worry about is that the individual mandate, if ruled Constitutional, has no limiting principle. Nothing except political will would keep the Federal government from mandating that we buy any one of a hundred products... like the government-sponsored and subsidized Chevy Volt, for example.

The Court, however, has never held that the Commerce Clause is an ad hoc license for anything the government wants to do. In 1995, in Lopez, it gave the clause more definition by striking down a Congressional ban on carrying guns near schools, which didn't rise to the level of influencing interstate commerce. It did the same in 2000, in Morrison, about a federal violence against women statute.

A thread that runs through all these cases is that the Court has always required some limiting principle that is meaningful and can be enforced by the legal system. As the Affordable Care Act suits have ascended through the courts, the Justice Department has been repeatedly asked to articulate some benchmark that distinguishes this specific individual mandate from some other purchase mandate that would be unconstitutional. Justice has tried and failed, because a limiting principle does not exist.

The article goes into a great deal more detail, and is a very good read. In fact, I recommend that you read the entire thing. But what I've included here is enough to show you the very heart of the argument. If the individual mandate is upheld, there will be no limits to what Congress can force you and I to do. The Chevy Volt in the above paragraph is my version of the "broccoli" example raised by one of the lower-court judges, but there are many more such options. For example, could the government require students to take out loans for college? Under such a precedent, yes. Could they force us to open retirement accounts? Yes. Could they mandate what foods we MUST purchase for our consumption? Yes.

With such a precedent on the books, would we really be able to claim the mantle of freedom for ourselves? No, we couldn't. Because what freedom we would still possess would be at the fickle mercy of those in Congress at any given point. When freedom can be taken away with the stroke of a pen, you were never really free to begin with.

The deliberations held by SCOTUS over the next few days are very important for the future of this nation. We can only pray that the nine members of the Supreme Court find the wisdom they need to rule correctly on this issue.

Twitter Game: #ILikeObamaCareBecause

noreply@blogger.com (Politics Alabama) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:43:00 +0000

In case you didn't know it, Obama wants you (yes, YOU) to tweet your thoughts on his signature legislative achievement, ObamaCare. All you have to do is tweet with the hashtag #ILikeObamaCareBecause. I have already made several such tweets, including:

#ILikeObamaCareBecause new limits on government overreach will be realized when the Supreme Court rules against the individual mandate.

#ILikeObamaCareBecause it brought together those who oppose overly large and intrusive government.

#ILikeObamaCareBecause repeal next year is not only likely, but also would be good for the entire nation.

#ILikeObamaCareBecause it proves the Constitution doesn't mean anything and can be ignored with impunity. (Sarcasm alert)

So come on, join in the fun. Tweet YOUR thoughts on ObamaCare just like I did. It's a great game on a Friday night!!

UPDATE: And here's another:

#ILikeObamaCareBecause it caused Obama's popular support to plummet from more than 60% to well under 50%

UPDATE: So far, it seems like more people are using the hashtag to lampoon the effort than to support it. I've re-tweeted several of them.

And it appears as if I've been targeted for my efforts... ain't that a hoot?

A twitter account called @PaulFreid has decided that opponents of ObamaCare are mentally deficient. Here's the tweet he posted in reply to my posts on this subject:

@PoliticsAlabama < Should support #ILikeObamacare because he could get his missing teeth replaced #p2 #tcot #teaparty #IMBECILES #MORONS

Really? Is this the best he can come up with? Far from debating the merits, he decides that expressing political dissent is the same as being mentally defective.

It's still not too late to play the #ILikeObamaCareBecause twitter game, though... chime in and annoy a liberal!