Minor Thoughts from me to you

I voted Tuesday, with most of the rest of the state of Wisconsin. I live in the People's Democratic Republic of Dane County, so I take great pride in having a losing record in each local election that I vote in. This year was no different, as I went 1 for 5 in local elections. I did have an odd feeling of satisfaction, as I went 2 for 2 in statewide voting. I finished with a 3–7 record overall. (My vote is in italics; the winning vote is bolded.)

President of the United States --- Republican

• Donald Trump, 35%
• John Kasich, 14%
• Ted Cruz, 48%

Justice of the Supreme Court

• JoAnne Kloppenburg, 48%
• Rebecca Bradley, 52%

Oregon Village Trustee (choose 3)

• Doug Brethauer, 22.7%
• Jeff Boudreau, 24.5%
• Philip Harms, 21.2%
• Jerry Bollig, 31.3%
• Write-in ("No TIFs"), 0.3%

Oregon School District Board Member --- Area 1 (choose 2)

• Dan Krause, 30%
• Krista Flanagan, 46%
• Uriah Carpenter, 24%
• Write-in ("No drug dogs"), 0.5%

I don't think I disagree with anything that J. D. Tuccille wrote for reason.com.

This year, the likely presidential candidates of the major political parties are two of the less savory individuals ever to run for office in a country whose Wikipedia entry doesn't feature periods of military rule. The Republicans seem poised to give us a crony capitalist who admires authoritarian foreign governments, views constitutional safeguards with contempt, and encourages his followers to stomp opponents. The Democrats are ready to coronate an authoritarian former secretary of state who fairly reeks of influence-peddling and is the subject of an FBI probe into the mishandling of classified information that passed through a private email server she set up to avoid freedom of information inquiries.

​And:

Whether the Republican Party–and possibly the Democratic Party—are in the process of transforming or collapsing, looking elsewhere for political options just makes good sense. At least until the wreckage has settled.

And it's not as if there are no credible options even as far up the ballot as the presidential line.

​And:

During past election cycles, most Americans accepted that aversion and let themselves be shamed out of voting for a "spoiler" who could only throw the election to the more awful major party candidate.

​Finally:

But there's no actual obligation to play into that horrible choice. The major political parties have outlived their sell-by dates and grown corrupt, unresponsive, and complacent. They've turned into hollowed-out vehicles to be hijacked by populist demagogues when not being ridden to office by sticky-fingered functionaries. The Republicans are in worse shape than the Democrats, but only in relative terms.

Which is to say, until they reform or die, the major parties are no longer serious choices. Their train-wreck presidential nomination races offer clear evidence to anybody who hasn't drunk the major party Kool-Aid that it's time to look elsewhere for real ideas and credible candidates for political office.

It's time to admit that, in 2016, so-called third parties are the serious choices in politics.

​

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Before you get too excited about "moderates" winning Iranian elections, you might want to remember how one becomes a candidate in an Iranian election.

Elections in Iran are rigged even when they aren’t rigged.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei hand-picks everybody who runs for president. Moderates are rejected routinely. Only the less-moderate of the moderates—the ones who won’t give Khamenei excessive heartburn if they win—are allowed to run at all. Liberal and leftist candidates are rejected categorically.

Imagine Dick Cheney as the overlord of America allowing us to choose which one of his friends will be in the co-pilot’s seat. That’s not democracy. That’s not even a fake democracy.

​What about the elections for the Assembly of Experts? Doesn't that give moderate reformers a chance to gain power?

Everyone who gets to run in the election for the Assembly of Expert will be hand-picked by the Supreme Leader. And every single one of them will be an Islamic theologian. That’s what the Assembly of Experts is. A theocratic institution of Islamic theologians.

None of the “experts” are atheists. None of them are secularists. None of them are agnostic. None of them are liberals under any conceivable definition of the word liberal. Certainly none of them are Christians, Jews or Baha’is. They’re all Islamic theologians or they wouldn’t even be in the Assembly of Experts.

​Iran is a theocratic dictatorship, wearing the trappings of democracy. Under the current system of government, there will be no moderate leaders. There cannot be.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced Wednesday that he is suspending his presidential campaign, bringing an end to a bid that began with aspirations of expanding the libertarian base that his father, Ron Paul, built into a powerful national coalition.

"It's been an incredible honor to run a principled campaign for the White House," Paul said in a statement. "Today, I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of Liberty."

The low-key, philosopher-quoting senator struggled in a year dominated by hard-line outsiders such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and businessman Donald Trump to get attention, and his non-interventionist views on foreign policy were not embraced by Republicans as terrorism and unrest raged abroad.

​Now that the candidate who most closely matches my own views is out of the race, I'll have to figure out who's left that I can support—if anyone.

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Since I live in the People's Democratic Republic of Dane County, I take great pride in having a losing record in each election that I vote in. This year was no exception. I finished with a 1-14 record. (My vote is in italics; the winning vote is bolded.)

Governor & Lieutenant Governor

• Mary Burke / John Lehman (Democratic), 47%
• Scott Walker / Rebecca Kleefisch (Republican), 52%
• Dennis Fehr / No Candidate (People's Party), 0%
• Robert Burke / Joseph M. Brost (Libertarian), 1%

Attorney General

• Susan V. Happ (Democratic), 45%
• Brad Schimel (Republican), 52%
• Thomas A. Nelson, Sr. (Libertarian), 3%

Secretary of State

• Doug La Follette (Democratic), 50%
• Julian Bradley (Republican), 46%
• Jerry Broitzman (Constitution), 1%
• Andy Craig (Libertarian), 3%

State Treasurer

• David L. Sartori - (Democratic), 45%
• Matt Adamczyk - (Republican), 49%
• Andrew Zuelke - (Constitution), 1%
• Ron Hardy - (Wisconsin Green Party), 3%
• Jerry Shidell - (Libertarian), 2%

U.S. Congress, District 2

• Mark Pocan (Democratic), 68%
• Peter Theron (Republican), 32%

State Senator, District 27

• Jon Erpenbach (Democratic)
• Write-in: [I forgot what name I wrote in]

Assembly Representative, District 80

• Sondy Pope (Democratic)
• Write-in: Tony Stark

County Sheriff

• David J. Mahoney (Democratic)
• Write-in: Capt. America

Clerk of Circuit Court

• Carlo Esqueda

State Referendum

Question 1: "Creation of a Transportation Fund. Shall section 9 (2) of article IV and section 11 of article VIII of the constitution be created to require that revenues generated by use of the state transportation system be deposited into a transportation fund administered by a department of transportation for the exclusive purpose of funding Wisconsin's transportation systems and to prohibit any transfers or lapses from this fund?"

• Yes, (80%)
• No, (20%)

County Referenda

Question 1: "Should the State of Wisconsin increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour?"

• Yes, (74%)
• No, (26%)

Question 2: "Shall the next Governor and State Legislature accept available federal funds for BadgerCare to ensure that thousands of Wisconsin citizens have access to quality and affordable health coverage?"

• Yes, (82%)
• No, (18%)

Municipal Referendum

Shall the Village of Oregon adopt the following Resolution?

RESOLVED, the people of the Village of Oregon, Wisconsin, call for reclaiming democracy from the corrupting effects of undue corporate influence by amending the U.S. Constitution to establish that:

1. Only human beings - not corporations, unions, non-profits, or similar associations - are endowed with constitutional rights; and

2. Money is not speech, and, therefore, regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we hereby instruct our state and federal representatives to enact Resolutions and legislation to advance this effort.

• Yes, (80%)
• No, (20%)

Oregon School District

Question 1: "Shall the Oregon School District, Dane, Rock and Green Counties, Wisconsin be authorized to issue pursuant to Chapter 67 of the Wisconsin Statutes, general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed $54,600,000 for the public purpose of paying the cost of a school building and improvement program consisting of the construction of additions to and renovation and improvement of Oregon High School, Oregon Middle School and Brooklyn Elementary School; renovation and improvement of Prairie View Elementary School and Netherwood Elementary School; acquisition and installation of technology improvements; roof replacement at District buildings; HVAC upgrades at the swimming pool; and construction of storm water improvements and other site improvements on the JC Park East property?"

• Yes, (63%)
• No, (37%)

Question 2: "Shall the Oregon School District, Dane, Rock and Green Counties, Wisconsin, for the 2015-2016 school year and thereafter be authorized to exceed the revenue limit specified in Section 121.91, Wisconsin Statutes, by $355,864 a year, for recurring purposes of paying operation and maintenance expenses associated with new or upgraded District facilities?"

• Yes, (61%)
• No, (39%)

A. Barton Hinkle, writing for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, talks about why democracy is such a lousy form of government.

A mere 43 percent of registered Virginia voters cast a ballot this year. Even if the winners received 100 percent of the votes, they still would have the support of less than half the electorate. In the governor’s race, Terry McAuliffe won only 48 percent, making him the first governor to enter office with a plurality in half a century. His 48 percent of the 43 percent who voted gives him the support of only 20 percent of the state’s electorate — and that is before you take into account the fact that, according to one poll, 64 percent of his supporters said they really were voting against Republican Ken Cuccinelli, rather than for McAuliffe. If the poll is accurate, then less than one voter in 10 cast an affirmative ballot in the Democrat’s favor.

And yet someone has to be governor, so it is on such slender reeds as these that history is built. McAuliffe might not have won the Executive Mansion were not the current occupant, Bob McDonnell, sidelined by an ethics scandal that spattered Cuccinelli as well. McDonnell himself probably would not be governor had he not beaten Creigh Deeds for attorney general eight years ago by 360 votes, or one one-hundredth of 1 percent.

I really like his conclusion.

Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities, said Jefferson, but from the Iraq war to Obamacare, they almost always are. For those who care about the consent of the governed, that is one more reason to limit government’s scope: Democracy is just about the worst way possible to run a country. Except, of course, for all the others.

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John Fund, writing in National Review:

In 2008, an investigative unit of the Milwaukee Police Department issued a 67-page report on what it called an “illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of [the 2004] election in the state of Wisconsin.” John Kerry won the state by less than 12,000 votes in the presidential race that year. The police report found that between 4,600 and 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once.

Vote fraud is a real problem. Kudos to Milwaukee for taking it seriously. And tar and feathers for anyone else who thinks that only racists could possibly want to verify voters before counting votes.

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John Fund, writing in National Review:

North Carolina’s State Board of Elections is referring evidence to prosecutors that five people appear to have voted in both North Carolina and in Florida. The information the board is passing on wasn’t gathered by government officials, but by a private watchdog group called the Voter Integrity Project.

This specific problem isn't one that would have been stopped by photo ID. But it is one that would have been stopped by taking vote fraud seriously.

As it is right now, under our current voter-registration system there is almost no chance of individuals who register and vote illegally in more than one state being caught because states do not run comparisons between their voter registration lists.

If they did try to purge their voter rolls of ineligible voters, they'd be accused of racism and of oppressing poor people.

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Romney performed significantly better in Michigan, Florida, North Dakota, Indiana, Montana, and Missouri than Pete Hoekstra (6.7), Connie Mack IV (6.9), Rick Berg (9), Richard Mourdock (9.8), Denny Rehberg (10.5), and Todd Akin (14.7). I had not noticed earlier that Berg and Rehberg underperformed Romney by about as much as Mourdock did.

I'm not positive whether this means that Romney was a better candidate than people thought or that the Republican Senate candidates were worse than people thought. But it is interesting.

∞

I've been spending all day thinking about why my election prediction was wrong. And not just slightly wrong but completely wrong. The simple answer is: I didn't want to believe that the 2012 electorate looked exactly like the 2008 electorate. (There's a whole narrative in why I didn't want to believe that, but I don't feel like writing that tonight. I'll write it soon, but not now.)

Unfortunately for me, the 2012 electorate looks almost exactly like the 2008 electorate and that completely doomed Mr. Romney's chances.

A week ago, I bet Adam that Mitt Romney would win the Presidency and that he would do it by winning Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, and New Hampshire. Events have now revealed that I was definitely overestimating Mr. Romney's standing in those states.

Adam has won the bet and I'm now waiting to find out which book I must purchase, read, and review.

Five days ago, I predicted that Mr. Romney would win the presidency. Adam, who's long though I'm daft on Mitt's chances, was quick to challenge me to a bet. I'm betting that Mr. Romney will be elected President, Adam's betting that President Obama will be re-elected. The stakes are simple: the loser has to purchase, read, and review an e-book of the winner's choice. The e-book can be on any topic but can't be a multi-volume work.

When I win, I'll post Adam's assignment here.

Garrett Jones has some good insights into why the Electoral College matters.

We rarely hear too much about regional issues in the U.S. other than farmers vs. everyone else. But if the presidency was decided by majority rule, I'm sure we'd hear a lot more about regional differences. Could a presidential candidate get 75% of the votes in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida by promising broad-based Gulf Coast subsidies and a few other goodies? Could a candidate get 85% of California's and New York's votes partly by offering housing subsidies for people facing high housing costs?

I don't know: But if we got rid of the electoral college and had a popularly elected president we'd sure have a chance to find out.

As it stands, presidential candidates are trying to appeal to the median voter in each state across a large number of states. That's how you get to be president. This reduces regional tensions because candidates are never trying to get 90% of the votes in a state. When you're pitting 90% of one region of the country against 90% of another region of the country, you're substantially raising the probability of social conflict.

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The most recent CBS/NYTimes and Washington Post polls have Republicans at levels not seen in Florida since the 1960's. How can Romney win the coming media polls with fewer Republicans represented than when Barry Goldwater ran for President?

... Again the most recent CBS/NYTimes, Washington Post and NBC/WSJ polls have Republicans again under 30% at levels not seen in Ohio since before the Civil War

... Once again the most recent CBS/NYTimes and Washington Post polls have Republicans well under 30% as did the NBC/WSJ poll - at levels not seen in decades.

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This is why I keep saying that I have no idea what will happen on election day. Everything depends on turnout and, right now, we have absolutely no idea whether more Democrats or Republicans will turn out. The 2008 election was a massive year for Democrats, while the 2010 election was a massive year for Republicans. What will the 2012 election be?

Here is what people should know is bothering pollsters, and if you’re a Republican you can feel comfortable that what you are reading is based on guess work assumptions:

In 2010, we saw the country move back to 2004 levels, but we also saw a bubbling of the Tea Party, who are among the most enthusiastic of voters. Also 2010 was a midterm, where the overall turnout of registered voters is considerably lower, and the GOP base turns out better in non-presidential years than the Democrats’ base. So we process this data.

We saw in 1994 the GOP do very well, but in 1996 Clinton won easily. But sometimes a party’s momentum from the midterms carries on to the following year; we saw the Democrats add to their 2006 gains in 2008. So will 2012 be a receding of the tide of the midterms (like 1996) or an acceleration (like 2008)?

Of course in 1996, the economy was soaring and right now, we’re crawling… so you make the judgment on where this should be.

Even using logical deductions, it is difficult to get a read on what the 2012 partisan divide will be because we’ve seen it change so quickly. From 1994 through 2004, the partisan divide was fairly stable, moving no more than 2 points from cycle to cycle.

Personally I think its safe to say that 2008 is not going to happen in 2012, any pollster hanging their hat on 2008 sampling cannot be reasonably relied on…

∞

Economist Veronique de Rugy.

I have written a few times in the past about the growing evidence that, contrary to common belief, a political party that implements ambitious reforms or spending cuts won’t be punished by voters in the next election. In fact, it may even be rewarded.

Among other studies, there is a Goldman Sachs Global Economics study by Ben Broadbent called “Fiscal tightening need not be electorally costly, but it will test government unity.” It shows that spending cuts can actually be a good thing politically. “It is commonly assumed that cuts in government spending will be both economically painful and electorally costly,” he writes. And:

Neither is borne out in the data. We’ve written before about the limited (and sometimes positive) effects of spending cuts on economic growth, at least in open economies. Here we add some simple analysis on the electoral consequences and, like others, find no evidence that spending cuts reduce support for the incumbent government. If anything the opposite tends to be true.

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My favorite Wisconsin political blogger comments on Tuesday's election results.

1. The Democrats have no bench.  Hey Democrats, who are your frontrunners for the 2014 gubernatorial election?  You just killed off Tom Barrett and Kathy Falk.  You have nobody in the Congressional delegation.  If Ron Kind wouldn't do it now, at a time when you really needed him, why's he going to do it later when he has to give up his House seat to do it?  And what else?  Your Young Screamers contingent?  Supertwitterer Chris Larson?  Gordon Hintz, lover of the happy ending?  The ever-sanctimonious Kelda Helen Roys?  That'd be like the GOP hanging its hat on Andre Jacque and Tyler August.

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George Will offers a strong defense of campaign funding and points out that spending doesn't buy elections.

The Post, dismayed about super PACs, reports “a rarefied group of millionaires and billionaires acting as kingmakers in the GOP contest, often helping to decide, with a simple transfer of money, which candidate might survive another day.” Kingmakers? Where’s the king?

If kingmaking refers to, say, Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino owner, keeping Newt Gingrich’s candidacy afloat with large infusions to the super PAC supporting Gingrich, then kingmaking isn’t what it used to be.

He also defends the constitutionality of campaign funding.

... The court’s unremarkable logic was that individuals do not forfeit their First Amendment speech rights when they come together in corporate entities or unions to speak collectively. What is the constitutional basis for saying otherwise?

... Actually, Citizens United has nothing to do with Adelson and others who are spending their own money, not any corporation’s. People have done this throughout the nation’s life, and doing so was affirmed as a constitutional right in the court’s 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision.

And he defends the right of relative outsiders to influence the political process.

Critics of super PACs — critics who were remarkably reticent in 2004 when George Soros was lavishing his own money on liberal advocacy — often refer to them as “outside groups,” much as Southern sheriffs used to denounce civil rights workers as “outside agitators.”

Pray tell: Super PACs are outside of what? Is the political process a private club with the parties and candidates controlling membership?

It might be more wholesome for the speech-financing money that is flowing to super PACs to go instead to the parties and candidates’ campaigns. But the very liberals who are horrified by super PACs (other than Barack Obama’s) have celebrated the laws that place unreasonable restrictions on such giving.

The whole thing is worth reading and pondering.

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The Democratic Senate has not adopted a budget in three years. This is not only flagrantly irresponsible, it is a violation of federal law. Outgoing Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, who is retiring at the end of the year, apparently felt pangs of conscience, because he decided it was finally time for his committee to mark up a budget. He announced that the committee would do so, starting tomorrow.

A standard markup process begins with the committee chairman laying out a proposal, with the chairman and the ranking minority member giving opening statements. This is followed by an amendment process, in which amendments to the proposed legislation (here, the budget resolution) are offered and voted on. The markup process concludes with a committee vote on the bill or resolution as amended. In this case, Conrad assured ranking Republican Jeff Sessions that amendments would be allowed, and as recently as a few hours ago, Conrad’s and Sessions’s staffs were working out details of the amendment process.

Then, earlier this afternoon, Conrad gave a press conference in which he made the stunning announcement that there will be no budget markup after all. Instead, he will present a budget to the Budget Committee tomorrow. There will be no amendments and there will be no votes; not, at least, until after the election. Apparently Conrad had been proceeding on his own initiative, and at the 11th hour Harry Reid–supported by members of his caucus who do not want to have to go on record in favor of any budget–shut down the process.

Even though Republicans are more than happy to vote "on the record about" budgets, never fear. It's Republican obstructionism and a "do nothing" Republican Congress that's keeping Washington paralyzed.

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Arnold Kling offers some perceptive words Congressional budgeting and campaign rhetoric.

Because the budget is so far from being sustainable, budget rhetoric needs to be re-interpreted.

When their side refuses to cut spending because it would be "cruel," they are ensuring that future spending cuts will be even crueler.

When our side refuses to raise taxes, we are ensuring that future tax increases will be higher.

Until the baseline is a sustainable budget, the rhetoric will be the opposite of reality.

∞