In 2022, voters in Oregon approved measure 113, which bars from reelection any member of the state legislature with ten or more unexcused absences. The measure was pressed by public sector labor unions in the state unhappy about the tactic of blocking legislation by avoiding a quorum. This year, the mousetrap snapped shut and the mice were caught. Ten of Oregon's state senators, each Republicans, have been disqualified from the ballot. Ten out of a total of twelve in the GOP caucus in that body. What strikes me is something in the NATIONAL REVIEW story on this: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/court-disqualifies-all-but-two-of-oregons-republican-state-senators-from-reelection/ NR's Dan McLaughlin wrote that measure 113 was "barely even opposed by Oregon Republicans who were focused on the Governor's race." What a case of strategic malpractice! I don't know if McLaughlin's account is true. But let us take his word for it for a second...
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Yes, I know midterm elections as supposed to go against the party with the White House. Sometimes by a large margin, at other times not. But I do believe that we are looking at an exception this year, especially in the Senate. There won't be any "red wave" in the House, either. Perhaps a marginal improvement in the GOP's position in the House, but the size of its will be a disappointment. My guess? If Pelosi is no longer Speaker a year from now it will be because she has decided to step aside in favor of a younger-generation Democrat, not because any Republican holds the post. As to the U.S. Senate -- I'm guessing the Democrats win a minimum of two seats, enough to make Manchin and Sinema figures of lessened importance. The voters of deep-red Kansas, God bless them, have revealed the depth of popular revulsion at the overreach of the U.S. Supreme Court as now constituted, and by association revulsion at Mitch McConnell and the shenanigans by which SCOTUS has reac...
No reasoning here. Just prediction, as the headline says. I'm looking into a crystal ball. Let's see if I get this one right. It won't take long. The Republicans hold their primary in the U.S. Senate race on May 3. That's only two weeks away now. The Dems hold one on May 3 too. But that campaign is a more decorous affair and the vote counting will probably be boring too. Let's look to the Republicans. My prediction is in an envelope. It has been inside a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnell's porch since noon today. Am I the only one left who remembers the talents of Carnac the Magnificent? Anyway, the prediction? The Hillbilly elegy guy wins the primary. J.D. Vance. You heard it here. Sim sala bim.
I had high hopes for Glenn Youngkin as long ago as ... well, his victory in the primary election against the other (more Trumpian) Republicans in the field. He, like Mitt Romney before him, comes from the world of private equity, and the masterminds of that world are much-maligned, their work does have a disruptive effect that draws enmity. But they do much more good than harm -- amidst those disruptions there is a lot of productive innovation and the displacement of settled inefficiencies. Like Romney's Bain, Youngkin's Carlyle is the object of lurid stories about how it throws people out of work. There is some truth to it. And I feel sympathy, drawn from personal experience, for anyone who has been laid off. During the 2012 campaign, Romney made himself seem utterly unsympathetic toward those experiencing the downside of Bain-stoked disruption. He notoriously said "I like being able to fire people." He was trying to make a point about healthcare policy but this, com...
President Biden's pick to be the new administrator of the US Agency for International Development (AID) has received Senate confirmation, by a 68 - 26 vote. I'm assuming this means 6 (Republicans) did not vote so she received the votes of all Democrats plus 18 Republicans, with 6 Republicans NV and the others No. I can assume that without looking it up because this is my blog, dammit. At any rate, if she did receive a supportive vote of 18 Republicans, roughly 1/3d of the caucus, that is a remarkable show of bipartisan support as such things go in 2021. One neat fact about the now confirmed nominee, Samantha Power: she was a reporter for US News and World Report before she was either an academic or a civil servant. She was a war correspondent covering the Yugoslavian helter-skelter in the years '93 to '96. I went to the US AID website, in search of a simple explanation for what the AID does, and accordingly for what Power will now be responsible. I ca...
... doesn't exist. It is the Big Lie. https://twitter.com/ccfaille/status/1269985796234379265 Trump regularly tweets, as if to cheer himself up, that some recent poll showed he has 96% approval rating among Republicans. Even after recent high-profile defections from the cause of trumpetry, including George F. Will, Senator Murkowski, Senator Collins, General Mattis, Ann Coulter -- Trump keeps tweeting this 96% figure. It comes from nowhere except the fantasy inside the Orange Dynast's head. It isn't a shock that he lies, but it is a kind of strange lie to tell. The number seems to have been stuck in his head for some time. He trots it out to prove that he must be doing a good job: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1252556676818968576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1252556676818968576&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2020%2F4%2F21%2F21229411%2Ftrump-tweets-coronavirus-pandemic-msnbc You're ready for your close-up, M...
The headline of this blog entry is "Preserver and Rebel." I deliberately don’t say “conservative” or “liberal” or “right” or “left.” Preserver and rebel have fairly obvious (and obviously relative) meanings, such that for example President Ford was a preserver within the Republican Party of themed 1970s, and Ronald Reagan was a rebel. Nothing very complicated or controversial so far I hope. The preserver often has a case. And when he does it is always the same case. Whatever he wants to preserve, he is willing in order to do so to lock out some interests and disdain some passions. The reasons always come down to this: those interests and passions are (a) inconsistent with the existing social equilibrium, and (b) we can not now see our way clear to a better one. But each passion has its champion, and the collective pressure of them helps make way (whether they as individuals wanted this or not is irrelevant) to a broader, more tolerant, equilibrium later. ...
If all has gone well of late, I;m on vacation as you read this. I'm posting stuff prepared well in advance, so take that into consideration if the references seem dated. Fiorina has run for public office exactly once. She ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2010 and lost, to incumbent Barbara Boxer. Now she is running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. She is most vividly known (by the portion of the non-California public to whom she isn't just "Carly who?") as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, whose one signature initiative was the company's merger with Compaq. She was fired for that, because her board thought the initiative a bungle. Yet she will argue that she was in the right, that the combined company is nowadays stronger than either or both of them would have been without her. Presumably if her campaign catches any wind under its wings at all, she'll have plenty of opportunities to make that case. But what strikes me ab...
I've written here, and in my earlier blog, about the "carried interest" tax loophole. Here is an example, for those who enjoy hyperlinks. And here is another. There is something new to say about this aging subject, involving both Messrs Camp and Norquist. And a question about idiomatic American English. Before I get to any of that, though, a two-paragraph recap. Managers working with certain private funds [including but not solely hedge funds] receive much of their compensation in the form of a share of the profits of the fund they manage. The loophole in question is the fact that our tax law charges these managers at the capital gains rate, not the ordinary income rate, for that portion of their compensation. Periodic efforts to close this loophole have failed over a period of years for a number of reasons. Largely they fail because the issue seems a technical one, discussed in technical language, and that sort of thing can get talked to d...
I've annoyed a semi-famous person. I'm stoked. Bruce Bartlett is a veteran Republican guru -- and, often, a staffer for successful Republican politicians. He was a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, and a senior policy analyst in the White House under George H.W. Bush. Since leaving the White House, he's been known largely as a pundit and scold in intra-Republican matters. He is the author for example of IMPOSTER (2006), a broadside at what he saw as the ruinous policies of Bush the younger. Bartlett since has built something of a reputation as a pundit engaged chiefly in those intra-Republican battles. He is unhappy in particular with certain libertarian institutions and websites. This is where I enter the picture. Soon after 9 AM Tuesday morning (all my times here will be eastern time), Bartlett tweeted "Ron Paul's favorite website attacks the transcontinental railroad. Way to stay relevant, guys." This was a reference to something on ...