“Herein Lies The Problem”: Can Antonin Scalia Actually Read The Constitution?
“I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion,” Justice Scalia said.
“That’s a possible way to run a political system. The Europeans run it that way,” Justice Scalia said. “And if the American people want to do it, I suppose they can enact that by statute. But to say that’s what the Constitution requires is utterly absurd.”
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I suppose a very pro-religious reading might suggest that an elected official might be able to place a religious icon on public property under the argument that it’s free exercise and not technically a law establishing religion. I would disagree with that assessment, but it wouldn’t take a crazy person to make that judgment.
But Scalia is saying that the Constitution doesn’t prevent the government from favoring religion over non-religion. That’s crazy. The Constitution is actually very clear on that point. It doesn’t say that Congress can’t establish one religion over another. It says that Congress shall make no law establishing religion. Period.
A first grader could tell Scalia that. I choose not to believe that Scalia is a fool or insane. That would be too terrifying. It’s easier to simply believe that Scalia is an ideologue, a dishonest broker who is willing to say anything to serve his preconceived ideas about right and wrong.
By: David Atkins, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 5, 2014
“Self-Serving And Misguided”: Conservatives Want To Add Fantasy Thinking To The Budget
In yet another seemingly boring yet dramatic consequence of the midterm elections, Republicans and even some conservative Democrats are keen on adding “dynamic scoring” to the future budgeting process.
Top Republicans, eyeing full control of Congress next year, are considering changing the rules of the budget process so as to make tax cuts appear less harmful to the deficit.
They want to adopt a method called “dynamic scoring,” popular among conservatives since the 1970s, which scores budgets under the controversial assumption that tax cuts generate economic growth and make up for lost revenue — something critics have likened to “fairy dust.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper, does not use the method, but Republicans, and even some conservative Democrats, want it to.
“In practice, dynamic scoring is just another way for Republicans to enact tax cuts and block tax increases,” economist Bruce Bartlett argued in the New York Times in 2013. “It is not about honest revenue-estimating; it’s about using smoke and mirrors to institutionalize Republican ideology into the budget process.”
Of course, tax cuts do not, in fact, generate revenue. Tax cuts almost invariably cost revenue. The fantasy that tax cuts increase revenue is based on a back-of-a-napkin gimmick called the Laffer Curve, which states that at a certain point of unreasonably high taxes, cutting taxes will generate more revenue due to higher growth. The sleight of hand, of course, is in the inflection point of the curve. The tax rate would have to be ludicrously high for tax cuts to have enough of a stimulative effect to generate enough growth actually increase government revenue. We don’t even have to speculate about whether we’re anywhere close to that inflection point in the United States: the example of other social democracies demonstrates that higher rates do lead to higher government revenues, and the experience of the budget-busting Bush tax cuts demonstrates the inverse.
Conservatives have the problem that reality continues to be punishing to their worldview. Abstinence education doesn’t prevent teen pregnancy; tax cuts don’t generate revenue; climate change is real; supply-side economics doesn’t create sustainable growth; etc.
Their usual answer to be battered by the way the world actually works, is to spend oodles of money telling voters convenient fantasies. Dynamic scoring is just another way of inserting their self-serving and misguided wishful thinking into the reality-based budget system.
By: David Atkins, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 4, 2014
“Clever Assaults On The Right To Vote”: Restrictive Voting Laws Deserve Justice Department Scrutiny
In certain circles, it has become fashionable to believe that the Voting Rights Act is an outdated vestige of a crueler time, an unnecessary bit of bureaucracy that imposes its own injustices. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed that view when it threw out one of the act’s more powerful provisions.
Those who believe that the Voting Rights Act is an artifact of a bygone era eagerly point out that the nation has elected its first black president — proof, they say, that racism is dead. In that view, the right to vote is guaranteed and each person is equally represented in the political system of this great democracy.
Eric Holder, the outgoing attorney general, knew better. He understood that the right to vote is under assault, and he did what he could to protect it, starting with a rehabilitation of the Civil Rights Division, which had fallen into dysfunction in the administration of George W. Bush. That may be Holder’s defining accomplishment.
During the Bush era, conservative partisans launched the most insidious onslaught against minority voting rights since the 1960s: the voter ID movement. Claiming, falsely, that the ballot needs more protection against fraud, they promoted restrictive voting laws in state legislatures around the country. Those partisans had their own agents within the Civil Rights Division, where they worked to ensure that dubious voter ID laws would not undergo any scrutiny.
Their mischief making has largely succeeded, not only in disenfranchising legitimate voters, but also in fooling the public about their intent. Polls show overwhelming support for laws that supposedly protect against fraud.
But make no mistake about it: Voter ID laws have next to nothing to do with protecting the ballot box. Instead, they are a relatively clever assault on the right to vote. As the nation has become browner, the GOP has found that neither its politicians nor its policies are popular among voters of color. So, rather than adopt a more inclusive brand of politics, the party has decided that denying the franchise to even a few hundred Democratic-leaning voters can be useful.
How do they accomplish that? Most of the state legislatures that have enacted such laws — and most of those are dominated by Republicans — have insisted that voters use a driver’s license as proof of identity. Research has shown that poor black and Latino voters, who usually vote for Democrats, are less likely to have automobiles than white voters.
Some elderly voters don’t even have birth certificates because they were born at home in an era when such documents were not required for daily life. In Texas, for example, voting rights groups say some rural residents would have to travel 100 miles to get proper documents.
But isn’t this necessary to prevent voter fraud? In fact, research has also shown that in-person fraud of the sort that voter ID laws are designed to prevent is virtually nonexistent. No matter what you’ve heard about voter fraud, you’ve probably not heard of a case of voter impersonation. In other words, no one shows up at the polls claiming to be John Boehner except John Boehner.
With that in mind, Holder entered the fray, sending Justice Department lawyers to challenge onerous voting requirements, including provisions in some states that sought to roll back conveniences such as early voting. They mounted successful challenges in Texas, South Carolina and Florida.
Even after the Supreme Court gutted the VRA, the Justice Department has kept up the good fight. It has filed suit against a restrictive law in North Carolina and joined lawsuits in Ohio and Wisconsin. Ultimately, some of those cases will likely end up before the nation’s highest court — and many civil rights lawyers are predicting the worst. A Supreme Court that doesn’t mind showing its partisan stripes could effectively abolish the Voting Rights Act.
But that will only make the work of the Civil Rights Division more important, not less. Here’s hoping that Holder’s successor is up to the job.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, October 4, 2014
“Undue Burdens”: Voter ID Laws Are Costing Taxpayers Millions
One federal judge has allowed a voter ID law to take effect in Wisconsin. Another is now contemplating whether to do the same in Texas. Defenders of these laws, which exist in some form in 34 states, insist that requiring people to show government-issued identification at the polls will reduce fraud—and that it will do so without imposing unfair burdens or discouraging people from voting. In North Carolina, for example, Republican Governor Pat McCrory wrote an op-ed boasting that the measures fight fraud “at no cost” to voters.
It’s not surprising that McCrory and like-minded conservatives make such arguments. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has steadily weakened the Voting Rights Act and related legislation, which for generations federal officials used to make sure minority voters had equal voice in the political process. But in 2008, when the Court approved Voter ID laws, the Court left open the possibility of new challenges if plaintiffs can demonstrate the laws impose a burden on would-be voters.
There are now good reasons to think the laws do exactly that.
One reason is a report, published over the summer, from Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. Researchers there complied published articles and legal testimony, in order to calculate the cost of of obtaining a government-issued identification. They included everything from the cost of waiting to the cost of traveling and obtaining documentation. Their conclusion? The costs can range anywhere from $75 to $400 per person. The study is not a comprehensive, since it examines evidence from just three states— Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, which had its law blocked by the U.S. Justice Department but upheld by a District Court. But as many as 11 percent of voters don’t have a photo ID, according to the Brennan Center, and the study illustrates the challenge these people—many of them very poor—would face trying to get new identification documents. “The more it can be shown that is a substantial financial cost, the clearer it is that these laws are unconstitutional,” said Richard Sobel, author of the study.
Of course, some people would face higher costs than others. According to the study, people who move from another state can have a particularly hard time, because they’ll have trouble tracking down—and then paying for—the documentation they’ll need to get an identification card. Many states require that people present birth certificates in order to get Voter ID cards, but in at least two states, South Carolina and North Carolina, people who want a new birth certificate must present some other form of government identification. In other words, somebody would need a photo ID in order to obtain a voter ID.
Another group that can face extra costs and difficulty getting ID cards is women—specifically, women who have changed their names after marriage. A study by the Brennan Center from 2006 showed that just 48 percent of women with access to a birth certificate have access to identification with their legal name. “It’s clear the costs are much much greater largely because we change our names,” Elisabeth Macnamara, president of the League of Women Voters, told me. The League of Women Voters in Wisconsin has challenged Wisconsin’s voter ID law, partly on this basis. “We are seeing courts considering the Photo ID and see how much it takes to get one.”
A separate issue is the hassle people face when they try to get Voter ID cards. “We’ve experienced people being treated differently depending which DMV they go to or which examiner they talk to as to whether which document is sufficient,” Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, said in an interview. These difficulties should strengthen legal challenges to the requirement, he said: “It does bolster the argument that it amounts to a poll tax.”
Individual voters aren’t the only ones who face extra costs because of Voter ID laws. State governments’ do, too. The report from Harvard’s Houston Center showed the laws could cost Pennsylvania between $15.75 million and $47.26 million; South Carolina’s law would cost the state between $5.9 million and $17.70 million; and in Texas, could see the costs for its law go between $26.07 million and $78.22 million. “This is a huge amount of money to get a free ID, especially when the right to vote is a right that should be exercised freely and these resources could be used to getting people out to vote,” Sobel said.
By: Eric Garcia, The New Republic, October 3, 2014
“A Little Hard To Swallow”: The ‘Pressing’ Need For More Tax Breaks For The Rich?
President Obama delivered a pretty interesting speech on the economy yesterday, but towards the end, he completely abandoned his prepared text, ignoring the teleprompter to reflect on something that clearly bothered him on a personal level.
“[J]ust last month, at least one top Republican in Congress said that tax cuts for those at the top are – and I’m quoting here – ‘even more pressing now’ than they were 30 years ago. More pressing. When nearly all the gains of the recovery have gone to the top 1 percent, when income inequality is at as high a rate as we’ve seen in decades, I find that a little hard to swallow that they really desperately need a tax cut right now, it’s ‘urgent.’
“Why? What are the facts? What is the empirical data that would justify that position? Kellogg Business School, you guys are all smart. You do all this analysis. You run the numbers. Has anybody here seen a credible argument that that is what our economy needs right now?”
Almost every word of this was ad libbed. Presented with the Republican argument that the wealthy really need yet another tax cut, the president seemed genuinely gobsmacked. To appreciate the degree to which Obama was amazed, watch the video – go here and forward to the 48:02 mark.
Of course, the president wasn’t making up any of the allegations themselves – a leading congressional Republican really did argue last month that tax breaks for the very wealthy are “even more pressing now” than a generation ago.
The congressman is none other than House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who recently suggested combating poverty is one of his top priorities.
Here’s the interview the far-right Wisconsinite did with the conservative Weekly Standard.
“I’m a classic growth conservative. I believe that the best way to help families, the best way to help the economy is to reduce rates across the board,” Ryan said when asked about Utah senator Mike Lee’s plan to increase the child tax credit and create two income tax brackets of 15 percent and 35 percent. “Growth occurs on the margin, which is a wonky way of saying, if you want faster economic growth, more upward mobility, and faster job creation, lower tax rates across the board is the key-it’s the secret sauce.
“Some conservatives have argued that reducing the top rate is less urgent now than it was during the Reagan administration, when the top rate was cut from 70 percent to 50 percent and then cut again from 50 percent to 28 percent. But Ryan says that cutting the top rate is “even more pressing now” than it was back then “because the American economy was so dominant in the global economy and capital was not nearly as mobile as it is today.”
As a substantive matter, this serves as a reminder of why it’s tough to take Paul Ryan seriously as an alleged wonk. As Matt Yglesias explained after the Ryan interview was published, “The idea that globalization, which tends to increase the overall size of the economy while also increasing inequality, makes tax cuts for the rich even more urgent strikes me as a little bit hard to defend intellectually.”
But as a political matter, let’s not lose sight of the larger context. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has floated a tax cut plan that focuses primarily on the middle class. Paul Ryan is drawing a distinct between Lee’s approach and his own – Ryan wants the tax cuts focused on the rich.
In light of everything we’ve seen, in light of the enormous class gap, in light of the already low U.S. tax rates as compared to most of the world, Ryan’s ideas about tax breaks for the wealthy just won’t budge.
Is it any wonder the president is astonished?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 3, 2014
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