Democrats Against Obama

I ask Democrats to pause a moment and think about what their support for Obama means for their party.  While everyone gets some partisan fever at this time in the election cycle, I think that Democrats have a lot to lose with Obama's re-election.  Here are a few key issues.

• ACA.  The Affordable Care Act will continue to be an albatross around the Democratic party's collective neck. Time will reveal all of the sops to big insurance and big pharma that went into the bill.  It will eat into the party's desired reputation as being against the excesses of big business.  When your party is seen as the party of both Big Business and Big Government you are toast.  Look at the 2006 Congressional elections and what happened to Republicans.  Opinion polls had shifted and found the GOP to be seen as the party of big government in polls and they got shellacked.
• ACA. Again, because you know in your heart that countless regulations embedded in the law will drive up the cost of health care and tarnish government with the same heartless image that is now enjoyed by the insurance companies.  Being tied to the eventual demise of quality health care is not in the Democratic party's best interest.  You would be better served by a repeal, after which you could propose a much simpler bill that prevented discrimination due to pre-existing conditions, guaranteed portability and subsidized insurance for those above the poverty line but still in lower income brackets.  Even though I don't agree with this platform, it is guaranteed to be more popular than the ACA.  
• Kill lists, drone hits, never ending involvement in overseas wars.  Obama has sucked all the oxygen out of your heartfelt desire to be anti-war.  But how can the Democrats do so when they have a President that is continuing huge portions of the Bush foreign policy.  In fact, the Obama National Security Strategy could almost have been written by Rumsfeld.  
• Immigration.  There is no way that Obama will get comprehensive immigration reform passed until he makes a full commitment to securing the borders. Democrats may not care much for doing so, or they might; but they should understand that comprehensive reform will get impassioned opposition until the border with Mexico is secured.  Electing Romney makes it far more likely that a deal can be cut. 
• National debt.  Obama cares nothing for solving the national debt crisis.  He has ignored the issue and failed to put forward a budget.  Four more years of failing to deal with the problem will inevitably result in a crisis for the country.  I don't know what exact form the crisis will take; but the world is too interdependent but with multiple flashpoints of instability for there not to be a crisis.  A debt crisis that puts the nation into an economic tailspin like the Great Depression will have the same effect on the Democratic party as the Crash of 1929 did for the Republicans.  In wasn't until the 1980s, that the Republican party really recovered fully from the blame it took for the Depression.  I don't think Democrats really want to look forward to that.
• National debt, again.  The national debt is also likely to wreck the cherished entitlement programs the Democrats hold sacrosanct.  The math is inexorable.  Four more years of neglect by Obama will only make the math harder.  If you want to save Social Security and Medicare, some real work on reform better start soon; and it isn't going to happen on Obama's watch.  Personally, I think these programs are outdated and out to fail, but if you care about them, better to have a President that understands the math of the budget deficit.

Democrats are playing with fire in ignoring these issues; better off regrouping after an Obama defeat than letting him ruin your party for a generation.

Brainstorming Reducing State Pension Obligations

I have been thinking for some time about legal ways to reduce state pension obligations for current retirees. This is important in California, because it is obvious that this Democrat controlled government won't do anything about the problem until the crisis is so immense as to be impossible to solve. The problem with just unilaterally reducing pension payouts and health care support for retirees is that the pension obligations are a form of contract, at least according to most legal readings I have reviewed. Further, the constitution appears to forbid action which would limit reduce pensions. There are prohibitions against bills of attainder and states may not pass a Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts. Finally, since state's have sovereignty, it is widely believed that they cannot discharge their obligations through bankruptcy. There has been some debate on Volokh on this, but this is my understanding of the consensus today. So it looks like all those pension benefits granted to state employees are a drain on the state's coffers forever, correct? Maybe not.

However, in the debate over Obamacare it became obvious to me that the federal government's power to tax is almost unlimited under the constitution. Ditto for the states. Everyone seems to agree that if the individual mandate had been passed as a tax, Obamacare wouldn't be on its way to the Supreme Court. So that got me to thinking about the state pensions. California could easily place a special tax on state pensions to reduce their burden. Further, the pensioners couldn't escape the tax because the California tax code treats retirement income earned while in the state as taxable by the state of California. State employee retirees could run but they couldn't hide, since the state could collect the tax revenue before they cut the checks.

Alternately, if this method was considered to be a bill of attainder, although I don't see how it differs from any other special taxes in the code, another approach suggests itself. The state could increase the marginal rates, but then exempt all sorts of income from the increase. Earned wages could be exempted for the purpose of job creation. Capital gains could be exempted on the basis of "encouraging investment." Social Security income on the basis of "fairness to the elderly" until all categories except state pensions were exempted from the tax increase. If necessary, the Tea Party should consider putting up such a measure on the ballot when the Governor and his Democrat cohort in the legislature fail to deal with the issue. Even if the measure were struck down by the courts, which I am hard pressed to see what reasoning they would use, it would have the salutary effect of showing that there is a limit on the capriciousness of the tax code.

Looking for input from fellow Tea Partyers or even lefties explaining how my plan might not pass constitutional muster.

Tea Party Democrat Resolutions

Temple of Mut has honored my request to post on the subject of New Year's Resolutions for Democrats, even at great personal cost to her psyche. In addition to highlighting a rational perspective for Democrats, she provides insight on the battle to rescue the Democratic party from the far left extremism represented by Nancy Pelosi.
This battle is important; as Dean has pointed out, it has mostly been Democrats fighting to free our schools from a union tyranny of mediocrity. As long as the the Democratic party is working for union bosses, not working people, such battles will be a steep uphill struggle.

Please take a moment to read Temple of Mut's post.

Getting outflanked?

Dean here again helping out B-Daddy who is busy with some course work.

For an illustration of just how dire our public education system is in parts of our country, consider this: Democratic mayors from traditional machine-politics cities of the Midwest, Rust Belt and the Northeast are standing up to the teachers' unions in an attempt to implement pragmatic results-oriented solutions to their towns' school districts.

During the last weeks of the term, third graders at School 58-World of Inquiry School created an oil spill in a bowl. Under the guidance of teacher Alyson Ricci, they tried to clean it up. Cotton swabs worked.

The school last year won the national Excellence in Urban Education Award, with all students meeting state proficiency rates in science and social studies. It's an exception, though, in a Rochester system where fewer than half of the 32,000 public-school students graduate on time.

Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy wants to set up more schools that produce results like World of Inquiry's. But he says the superintendent's efforts to close failing schools and open new ones have been hobbled by a school board mired in minutia. He is pushing to dissolve the elected board in favor of one appointed by the mayor and city council for a five-year test period. New York's state legislature is considering the bid.



As cities come under increasing pressure to fix failing schools, more are, like Rochester, trying to take matters into their own hands—or at least those of their mayors.

"People are desperately seeking a model that can be duplicated and used in different communities," said Jim Ardis, the mayor of Peoria, Ill., who is considering such a move. He argues that a Peoria model—yet to be developed—is more likely to fit smaller cities across the Midwest than existing systems in larger urban areas.

The school district of Boston, where mayoral control was first pioneered back in '92 has been joined by New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago, Cleveland, New Haven, Conn., and Providence, Rhode Island which are now all under mayoral control.

Of course, giving the mayor more autonomy at the expense of school boards is not going unchallenged by the school boards themselves and their allies, lawmakers at the state and municipal levels and, of course, the teachers' unions (it has been declared unconstitutional by the courts here in California, natch).

Unions say mayoral control often ushers in policies counter to teachers' interests. Cities with mayoral control often seek to award pay or decide layoffs based on performance rather than seniority. Mayors have also pushed for the opening of charter schools, which are more difficult for unions to organize than public schools.

Once again, no where do we ever see the union concede that they may not have all the answers and how they might possibly be open to trying something different that just might be in the better interests of the children. Somehow the battle cry of "it's for the children!" is strangely absent in matters that actually effect the children.

Please read the article where they go to extents to explain that there is no cut and dry nor any black and white plan to reforming the district hierarchy but only a willingness to mix it up and try something different apart a culture and mindset that is failing the children of lower and working-class families.

Side note: We have taken the Republican Party to task at every opportunity for not doing enough to get out in front of education reform, particularly in way of vouchers, school choice and charter schools. Here is a situation, though, not of their making whereby the Democrats have a simple structural advantage in that the most significant education reform battles are being waged within the ranks of the Democratic Party itself and thus, the biggest proponents of education reform will be Democrats.

No matter... all the more reason for the Republicans to get off their sorry asses and engage the opposition in the education reform debate. It's doing right by the children, it's electorally-favorable with minorities and it cheezes-off the unions. Tell us again what we're missing here?

Congress and Civilian Personnel Systems

I've got a crossover post at B-Daddy's Other Blog, that concerns the practical effect of Congress dismantling the National Security Personnel System, the pay for performance system for the Defense Department. Crossover in the sense that the political affects my managerial professional life. You can read my personal take on the effort here. If you're not into management or the details of federal employment, you can safely skip. But my personal opinion is that the public employees unions are behind the repeal. They hated this system from the start and on numerous occasions sued in federal court to overturn its provisions. That they mostly failed is proof that the system was not inherently unjust as they claimed.

However, with the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House, burying a provision for the system's repeal in the defense appropriations bill was a way too easy way to pay back their union backers. That it was also a slap in the face for something Donald Rumsfeld had worked so hard to implement was only froth on that frappe.

There May be Hope and Little Change for us yet

Will Rogers famously said, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." The opening agenda of the Democrats seems to confirm the quote and I happy to see them tackling issues that will waste their political capital.

Obama's supposed first act will be to close the Guantanamo Bay holding facility. I commented on this previously, but now I say, great, chew up political spin cycles on how you are going to deal with moving the prisoners to the U.S., the embarrassment of no other countries taking them and a big fight over what constitutional rights they should be afforded. Ultimately, this is a small issue. If the Democrats start to look weak in the fight against jihadis, I think that will be self correcting. Meanwhile, I look forward to them wasting time and political capital on this issue.

Second, in a shocker, Nancy Pelosi says she is open to prosecution of former Bush administration officials. I say, go for it. Hold hearings. Televise them. Get conservatives worked up over the injustice of it all. Embarass yourselves with comparisions to Clinton, Blagojevich, Tim Mahoney, Bill Richardson, the mayors of Detroit and Baltimore, etc. Criminalize participation in the Executive Branch and see how many capable folks on your own side decline nominations.

Third, the Democrats are signalling that they are going to run against Bush in 2010 and 2012 as well. They are trotting out talking points about how this "deep recession" might last that long, and why they should be forgiven if they don't have it fixed by then. Good luck. Even though the shenanigans at Fannie Mae could be fairly blamed on the Democrats in Congress and the previous Clinton administration, see how far that got the Republican party in the last election. And desrvedly so, I might add. Because, it was Bush's watch, and he could have used the investigative power of the Justice Department to clean up Fannie and Freddie if he had the will to do so. My point is that blaming the previous administration will only buy you about a year. Then, tough, it's your problem. Meanwhile, the Democrats will have given conservatives some time to re-group to challenge what I consider the biggest menace, the proposal to slowly nationalize health care.

See Carpe Diem and Beers With Demo for some excellent discussion on why more free market competition would be good for health care costs, not less. More from Professor Perry here and here.