Pennsylvania Voter ID, will the GOP Justices give it a wink and a nod

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it could be a dragon doing a duck impersonation. Will the PA Supremes call a dragon a duck.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard arguments on the new Photo Voter ID law yesterday.  It is apparent that the three Democratic Justices (Seamus McCaffrey, Debra Todd, and Max Baer) all see the political motive behind this law. To paraphrase GOP House leader Mike Turzai, the new law will allow Romney to win Pennsylvania.

The question as we see it is whether the three GOP Justices (Ronald Castille, Michael Eakin, and Thomas Saylor) will see it that way, or will they hide behind the the technical and rigid preliminary injunction case law as Judge Robert Simpson did in the Commonwealth Court.

Buzz and I met with OVC legal expert former Judge Chamberlain Haller at his summer retreat in the Poconos. Haller had some interesting observations on the pending case before the PA Surpemes.

"I watched the argument on PCN yesterday and I saw a glimmer of hope for the opponents of this law," Haller said while enjoying an unfiltered Camel and contemplating his next chess move.  "Justice McCaffrey and Justice Todd were openly lobbying their Republican colleagues during the oral argument.  They kept saying, 'what's the rush?'  This was a clear indication that the Democratic Justices are offering a way out for their GOP colleagues."

"Generally Courts like to decide cases on the narrowest grounds possible, especially in controversial cases.  The 'what's the rush?' strategy would allow the Courts to grant a preliminary injunction without reaching the merits of the law.  They could kick the can down the road a bit and see what happens with photo ID efforts over the next six months," Haller said.

This brought a smile to our faces.  There may be a middle ground which stops the disenfranchisement of thousands of Pennsylvania voters.  Hope springs eternal.

It is undisputed that in-person voter fraud simply does not exist  in Pennsylvania, or for that matter, anywhere in the United States.  Study after study has shown that you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than someone voting in-person for someone else, and remember, that is the only thing that this new photo ID law is attempting to prevent.  

It won't stop absentee ballot fraud.  It won't stop voter registration fraud.  It won't stop election officials from tampering with election results.  And it won't stop the buying of votes.  The only thing it will stop is eligible voters without the proper ID from voting, and this includes many minority voters, many poor voters, and a whole bunch of older voters from casting ballots.

One of the major arguments that Buzz and I hear the most in support of a Photo ID requirement to vote goes like this:  "You need photo ID to buy beer, to cash a check, to buy Sudafed, or to get on an airplane."

Here's where that argument falls apart.  Underagers try to buy beer, criminals try to cash forged checks, Meth manufacturers try to buy Sudafed, and terrorists try to get on airplanes.  All of these actions have been documented time and time again.  That's why we require ID for these everyday interactions.  In-person voter fraud, on the other hand, is simply not a problem

A decision is expected within the next few weeks.  Let's hope the Court does the right thing and stops this clearly partisan and politically motivated law.

Bubba is back!

Bill Clinton stormed into Charlotte last night and brought down the house. He's back, and take it from Buzz and me, he's here to stay.

It was pure Bill Clinton --- dramatic, inspiring, persuasive, folksy, and of course, way longer than planned.  But, most importantly, it was directed to the middle of the electorate, a part of the electorate where Bill Clinton has always been effective in communicating his message.

He set the stage with one of the most memorable moments of his speech, he explained that the hyper-partisanship and personal attacks against him that plagued much of his Presidency, did not leave him bitter.  He said, "Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats."

Clinton's speech which lasted 48 minutes was the most effective defense and explanation of the Obama record.  Unlike New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's "me, me, and ME" speech at last weeks GOP convention, Clinton's speech was heavy on his party's nominee.  He brilliantly intertwined his legacy with the Presidency of Barack Obama, and then took on every major GOP argument and explained, in simple, folksy terms, why the GOP argument is wrong.

In a stern, but no means angry tone, Clinton said, "President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president— not me or any of my predecessors could have repaired all the damage in just four years."

He explained the Affordable Care Act in simple and effective terms, highlighting many of the Act's very popular parts. He explained the recovery act and how it truly helped the US avoid a Great Depression.  He explained the success of the auto bailout and the tragic consequences of letting "Detroit go bankrupt."


His systematic attack on the GOP arguments included this:  "Now, when Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as, quote, “the biggest, coldest power play,” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry... because that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of Medicare savings that he has in his own budget!"

Then he went off script and gave perhaps the most memorable line of the speech.  "You got to give (Ryan) one thing: It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did."


Clinton hit a home run and lived up to expectations.  He is Obama's greatest surrogate, and we will see a lot of him in the next 60 days.

Hillary 2016

Clinton is not just acting altruistically, although we don't doubt that he truly believes in most, if not all of the Obama agenda.  Clinton does have a selfish motive, too  --- Hillary 2016.

I am convinced, and Buzz's Univac 3000 bears me out on this, Hillary will run in 2016 regardless of who wins in 2012.

Bill wins no matter who wins in 2012.  If Obama wins, Bill will humbly take credit for making the difference.  If Obama losses, Bill can also humbly say that he gave it the old college try.

Hillary has already said she will step down at the end of her four year tenure at the State Department.  She has been an unqualified success at State, and now she needs to start preparing for 2016.

Hillary will take it easy for a few months, and then expect to see her all over the country.  She won't be an official candidate until mid 2015, but she will be provided enthusiastic support for Democratic candidates everywhere.  Whether it's recording TV or radio spots, speaking at Jefferson-Jackson dinners, raising money, Hillary Clinton will be around every corner.  She will be the biggest cheerleader for any Democrat who wants her, and want her they will.

Stay tuned for a lot of Bill over the next few months, and then coming to political events everywhere, sometime next summer, Hillary Clinton.

Back in the 1980s

Buzz and I spent part of the Labor Day listening to historical speeches on the POTUS radio channel.  I won a 2 year subscription in a WNBA trivia contest (no purchase necessary.) We listened to a 1987 speech by President Ronald Reagan.  Reagan was touting 59 months of economic prosperity, so we decided to look back at some of the economic policies in place back in 1987 as compared to 2012.

Tax Rates

From 1982 to 1986, the highest marginal tax rate was 50 percent and 38.5 percent in 1987.  The capital gains tax rate was 20 percent from 1982 to 1985 and 28 percent from 1985 to 1990.

Republicans have fought tooth and nail to extend the Bush income tax cuts, especially when it came to the highest marginal rate.  They even went as far as voting against a bill in the United States Senate that extended all the tax cuts except the cut on the highest marginal rate.  (Bush's tax cuts reduced the highest marginal rate from 38.6 percent to 35.0 percent.)

The current highest marginal tax rate stands at 35.0 percent, and the capital gains tax rate is 15 percent and has not been about 16 percent since 2003.

Perhaps Republicans who worship everything Reagan should consider returning to the Reagan tax rates, particularly the capital gains rate, since after all, that's the tax that the job creators pay.

Welfare Queens

Reagan famously spoke of the "welfare queen."  He said, "(S)he has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

The welfare queen never really existed, a product of Reagan's speech writer's imagination, but welfare or public assistance was quite different in the Reagan years.  There was no work requirement, and there were no limits on the time a person could collect welfare.

All of this changed with the Welfare Reform Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.   As Bill Clinton said the act "ended welfare as we know it."

The new law required persons to work after receiving two years of benefits and placed a five year lifetime limit on welfare benefits.  Despite Romney claims that President Barack Obama has gutted the work requirement, he hasn't.  So welfare today does have those restrictions from 1996.

Maybe nostalgic Republicans would like to go back to the Reagan era welfare for life with no work requirement.

Investment Banks

Until 1999, there was a clear dividing line between what banks could and couldn't do when it came to investments.  As a result of the excesses of the 1920, the federal government passed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.  This Act prohibited depository banks from gambling on investments in the stock market.

Glass-Steagall survived until 1999, when Congress decided there was no need to separate these banking practices.  Republican Senator Phil Gramm (TX) and Republican Representatives Jim Leach (IA) and Thomas Bliley (VA) sponsored legislation that tore down the barrier.  There was no longer a distinction between depository and investment banks.

Depository banks could now play the market, and play the market they did.  After 8 years of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law, banks had invested in so many toxic and risky investments that they almost brought the world to economic disaster.  The situation was so dire that even President George W. Bush, a self-professed free market lover, pushed for an $800 billion bailout of the Wall Street banks.

Most of the economic woes we are still experiencing in 2012 can be traced back to the banking debacle of 2008.  Even Ronald Reagan realized that banks gambling in the stock market was not a good idea.

Back to the Future

So the next time someone tells you about the glory years of Ronald Reagan and his great economic recovery, tell them you agree that it was a great time --- higher taxes, particularly on investments, no limits on welfare, and highly regulated banks.

Don't confuse us with the facts, our minds are made up

Buzz and I have been watching the GOP convention in Tampa, and we've been following the campaign ads.  It appears that the facts are not going to get in the way of the Romney-Ryan campaign.

"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said recently at a panel organized by ABC News.

We built it

Republicans were so excited when Obama explained that businesses in the United States used the government, by the way of infrastructure, public schools, tax policy, government grants, and the like, to create and build their businesses.  When Obama said, "You didn't build that," Republicans pounced.  They made the "you didn't build that" a cornerstone of their campaign. (See Obama "You didn't build that" speech in context.

All of a sudden, Obama's words became an attack on capitalism.  Instead of accepting the truism of Obama's words for what they were, Republicans said Obama was saying the government built businesses.

Mitt Romney and Republican Super PACs produced and aired ads with irate and angry business people explaining how they built their small businesses on their own, without the help of the damn government.  The hypocrisy of their statements became readily apparent.

The star of one of the early ads admitted that he owed a lot of his success to a public school teacher who inspired him, the government created internet, and the roads and highways built by the government.  Upon further reflection and scrutiny, other "self-made" businessmen from the slew of  the  "We Built It" commercials, it became apparent that many of this "self-made" business owners relied heavily on favorable tax policy, government contracts, government loans, and our government built infrastructure.

Of course, when asked for further clarification, many Republicans said, "well that stuff was paid for by our taxes."  Well, duh, that's obvious.  Taxes pay for government projects and people pay taxes.  That argument falls flat when it comes to government policy.

Republicans have lashed out at infrastructure spending for years.  The Republicans of today are the first in line to oppose any and all government spending, excepting defense spending, and throughout the past 75 years, Republicans have generally opposed all public works projects and any spending on things like public education.

Welfare Queens 

The other big lie being propagated by the GOP is that President Obama has gutted the welfare work requirement. Romney has put out a multimillion dollar ad campaign to hammer this allegation home. Like the Ronald Reagan "welfare queen" story, to borrow from REO Speedwagon, "talk is cheap when the story is good."

It is quite ironic that at a convention where keynote speaker and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Republicans don't rely on polls to stake out their positions and policy, that the Romney-Ryan people are doing just that.

The "Obama gutted the work requirement for welfare" line polled very well with focus groups, particularly with White working class voters.  The fact that Obama did not waive the work requirement is irrelevant to the GOP argument.  After all, talk is cheap when the story is good.

The well-respected Annenberg Public Policy Center, a non-partisan that fact checks political claims, said this about the Romney ad.

A Mitt Romney TV ad claims the Obama administration has adopted “a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” The plan does neither of those things.

• Work requirements are not simply being “dropped.” States may now change the requirements — revising, adding or eliminating them — as part of a federally approved state-specific plan to increase job placement.
• And it won’t “gut” the 1996 law to ease the requirement. Benefits still won’t be paid beyond an allotted time, whether the recipient is working or not.

Annenberg is not the only fact checking group that has determined Romney's welfare charges to be absolutely false, but none of this has stopped Romney from pushing his fictitious claim.

The Persuadables

Buzz and I have come to a saddening conclusion.  This year's Presidential election will be decided by people who really don't give a damn about Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

Unlike Buzz, me, and all of our readers, the people who will decide this election just aren't engaged in politics now or probably ever. 

Buzz begins his day by pouring over all the latest polls and punching that data into the Univac 3000, checking for subtle changes which might give him even the smallest insight into electoral trends.   He then takes this material and produces a multitude of charts, diagrams, and graphs to supplement the OVC Daily Briefing memo.  All of this is presented at the morning staff meeting.

I begin my day by checking the latest WNBA news and setting my lineup for my WNBA Fantasy Basketball team.  I don't mean to brag, but I've won the league seven years in a row, but I digress.

Poll after poll in the last few months have consistently shown two things - each candidate has a floor percentage of which they seldom, if ever drop below, and a ceiling, of which they never rise above.  Most changes in the individual polls can be attributed to statistical sampling variations.  In other words, poll results vary greatly depending on who you sample.

The trick to good polling is to tailor your sample to represent the voting public as a whole.  If you have too many Democrats in your sample, your poll win inflate Democratic numbers, and vice versa if you include too many Republicans.  So what the pollsters do is massage the numbers to reflect past voting trends and put forth a calculated guess as to how the raw data collected translates into the numbers they release in the poll.

Some polling outfits are run by Democrats or liberal leaning folks, and some are run by Republican or conservative folks.  These polls may favor the political leanings of the folks conducting them, or contrary to what would seem to be common sense, may tend to overcompensate for the pollsters' biases and lean in the opposite direction of the pollster. 

After all, pollsters do not make money from the general public on their polling, they make money by the candidates or organizations who commission the polls.  The more accurate the polling results are, the more chance the pollster has of getting work.

With all of this said, Buzz tells me that if we averaged out all of the polls, a sort of poll of the polls, we'd be able to minimize the individual prejudices and biases of the pollsters.  I told Buzz that RealClearPolitics has already done this.

The RCP average of polls is an excellent source of information, and believe it or not, it has been a very accurate predictor of election results over the past ten years.  RCP does include what the pollsters refer to as an outlier (a poll that seems to be out of whack with all the others,) but do to the averaging of all the recent polls, an outlier won't throw the numbers off that much.

Over the past few months, there has been very little variation in the numbers.  Obama's numbers have ebbed and flowed, as have Romney's. Neither has dropped below the middle to low forties, and neither has jumped above the mid to high forties. 

What this means is that both of the major party candidates are guaranteed to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 percent of the vote come November. The trick is getting at least 51 percent of the remainder.

These undecideds are what this election is all about.  They are referred to as the swing voters, but Buzz and I like to call them the Persuadables.  Whoever wins the majority of these voters will win the election.

This presents two issues as Buzz and I see it.  First, you gotta identify these voters, and number two, you gotta convince them that you deserve their vote. 

We'll talk more about how this works later.  Gotta get to the morning meeting.

Leash Laws for Unicorns and the PA Voter ID law

May we suggest that the Pennsylvania legislature now tackle unicorn leash laws, since they have so adequately addressed non-existent voter impersonation in the Commonwealth. And, perhaps they can spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money looking for unicorns to leash.

The lack of empirical evidence of in person voter fraud didn't stop the Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature from passing a voter ID bill in March, so why should the lack of empirical proof of the existence of unicorns stop them from passing unicorn leash laws.

The Loch Ness Monster

Some may say this is an unfair comparison, but cases of in person voter fraud in Pennsylvania are just as rare as unicorns.  Study after study has shown that in-person voter fraud simply does not exist, but like the existence of unicorns and the Loch Ness monster, there are people out there who will swear on a stack of bibles that it does exist

All of this would be quite humorous if it didn't infringe on the right of over a million of Pennsylvania to vote, including almost 500,000 senior citizens, and one third of members of Pennsylvania's Voter Hall of Fame (those who have cast ballots in 50 consecutive general elections.) It is also quite disheartening that Judge Robert Simpson has failed to throw out this misguided law.

Voter Suppression

The PA voter ID law was passed for one reason and one reason only:  It was passed in an attempt to suppress Democratic votes.  Republican controlled legislatures across the country have been passing voter ID laws for the very same reason.  It is pure fantasy and illusion to believe that millions, thousands, hundreds, or even one illegal alien is or are trudging down to polling places to vote, of course that doesn't stop Buzz and I hearing that from our conservative friends.

Since when did it become acceptable and even fashionable to stop legal voters from voting.  If we turn one legitimate voter away from the polls because of some imagined in-person voter fraud, that is a tragedy.

Our simple solution

Here's a simple solution.  Get inexpensive digital cameras and issue them to every judge of election.  When a voter comes in to vote, take their picture and have them sign a simple affidavit attesting that they are who they say they are.  And for all those Draconian Republicans out there, make the penalty for falsifying the affidavit punishable by a mandatory ten years in jail.  Now you won't suppress any voter and you truly will solve non-existent in person voter ID fraud.

After all, think about it.  If someone really wanted to commit in person voter ID fraud, don't you think they'd have the ability to make a fake ID

You don't need no stinkin' tax returns

GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's tax return problem will be his downfall. His refusal to release no more than two years of tax returns is a politically unsustainable position, but his release of anything more will be political suicide.  He truly is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

This has become an issue, because Romney has made it an issue.  Republicans who jump to his defense and say this is not an important issue may be right, but it is an issue which could cost Romney millions of votes come November.  Democrats win either way.


The Democrats won't let this issue go gently into that sweet night

If Romney lasts through the election with only releasing two years of tax returns (actually one, for 2011, he released an estimate only) the Democrats won't let this issue die.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he has it on good authority that Romney didn't pay any taxes for 10 years.  This isn't the first speculation, and it won't be the last.

Democrats will continue to ask "what's Romney hiding?"  Romney already has a transparency problem and questions about off-shore investments and over-seas bank accounts.  Not releasing tax returns only feeds the speculation.

The Democrats have a point.  What exactly is Mitt hiding?  Did he have years where he paid little or no federal income through liberal use which deductions?  Did he take advantage of over-seas' tax havens? Did he give millions to the Mormon church?  The list goes on and on and will continue to go on and on until he releases more returns.

 The Persuadables will be persuaded

The release or non release will never switch votes of those who have already made up their minds.  The hardcore Romney supporters are not going to jump ship in large numbers regardless of whether he releases or not.  The same goes for the hardcore Obama supporters.  The place where this makes a difference is among the still persuadable voters - that ten percent or so who have yet to make up their minds.

This ten percent can be swayed by a number of issues or non-issues, but Romney will never get the support of a decent percentage of these voters, because they will know Romney only as the guy who's hiding something.  Many of these unpersuadables already have a negative predisposition towards politicians.  They just don't trust any politician, and Romney's reluctance towards transparency only reinforces their distrust.

Romney and his people are well aware of this, but have made a calculation that whatever those tax returns show is far more damaging than not releasing them.  This brings up another issue, which does go to a more troubling concern. 

The tax issue has been raised before

Romney had to know that his tax returns would be an issue.  The tax return question was not first raised in the primaries, but it has been a bone of contention for his opponents since at least his 2002 run for Governor of Massachusetts. And, this isn't the first time Romney sought the Presidency.  He ran in 2008.

How does a guy who's been running for President for at least the last five years fail to clean up his tax returns and make them look really good?  If he had done this, he would be showcasing his tax returns and touting how he made a lot of money but gave a lot to non- controversial charities and paid his fair share of taxes.

If you are wealthy and take advantage of every tax deduction and tax loophole known to man, nobody cares and nobody will ever know.  But, if you are running for President in a major political party, even the most naive politician would have to know that the voters want to see your tax returns, especially if you are worth $250 million.

Romney's father released 12 years of returns when he ran in 1968

It is particularly ironic that Romney wouldn't have been keenly aware that wealthy candidates for President routinely release their tax returns for multiple years.  After all, Romney's father, the late George Romney, voluntarily released 12 years of tax returns when he ran for President in 1968.

The elder Romney, who was the former head of American Motors, said he released 12 years of tax returns, because one year could be a "fluke."  It is also ironic that the elder Romney's effective tax rate was over 30 percent, while Mitt's effective rate in the 2010 return and the 2011 estimate was under 15 percent.

All in all, as Buzz and I see it, those unpersuadables may not know how Romney stands on Russo/United States relations or job creation, but they will know that Romney is a rich guy who refuses to tell them how much he pays in taxes.  This alone is enough to persuade the unpersuadables that Romney is not their guy.