Hit & Run

Scott Walker Defends Union Reform Efforts in CPAC Address

2012-02-11T09:30:00-05:00

Washington, D.C. – Embattled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker defended his efforts to reform government employee unions while addressing the Reagan Banquet at CPAC as the keynote speaker tonight. Walker’s move to bring about reform in Wisconsin has resulted in him facing a major recall effort that could see him removed from office before the fall, making him a cause célèbre for conservatives and right-to-work activists.

Walker noted that since he started challenging the entrenched government employee unions, he has received all kinds of threats involving him and his family, but that his support is still strong in the Badger State.

“Every week when I am out visiting the factories and farms of my state and there are people that come up to me and tell me ‘Governor, we are praying for you and your family,’” he said.

When Walker took office he was staring down a major state budget deficit of approximately $3.6 billion. When this came up as an issue on the campaign trail Walker said that one of the ways he would plug the hole was by asking government employees to pay more toward their pensions. To those paying attention it was not a secret that Walker was going to change the way budget problems were addressed in Madsion. Walker felt that long term changes needed to be made instead of using short term stopgaps.

“Some states have also chosen budget gimmicks to balance the budget. We did not do this in Wisconsin because that is part of what caused the budget deficit in the first place,” he said.

Sounding like a presidential candidate, Walker explained how the collective bargaining reforms helped local communities.

“We chose long-term structural reforms that helped us balance both our state and our local governments budgets for years to come. We thought more about the next generation than we did about the next election,” he said

Walker mentioned how he has made Wisconsin more hospitable for private businesses, but the heart of his speech was about his budget reform efforts.

“Collective bargaining is not a right. In the public sector collective bargaining is an expensive entitlement,” he said.

Walker’s reform efforts severely limited the ability of unionized government employees to collectively bargain, increased the amount they pay toward benefits, and altered the way union dues were collected.

Before closing Walker made a pitch to those present to help him beat back his recall effort, saying, “This election is about making courageous and bold decisions now and in the future.”

Walker's complete prepared remarks are here. Be beware: He deviated from them frequently.

Breitbart on libertarians in 2012

2012-02-11T07:15:00-05:00

Washington, D.C. - In his speech at CPAC conservative activist and online publisher Andrew Breitbart called liberals the "the least tolerant people you will ever meet in your entire lives." When asked about libertarians in American politics and the fight with the left, Breitbart said that he thinks libertarians need to develop a free speech movement on college campuses.

"I have no problem with them entering the political fray at the highest possible levels and saying 'We want Ron Paul for the presidency,' but they seem conspicuously absent from the trenches where it really counts, where they really exist right now," he said.

Breitbart, who admits to having libertarian leanings, thinks libertarians should not be discouraged by the media's portrayal of the conservative movement. "[Libertarians] don't want to be in the same room as conservatives because it will hurt their street cred. Conservatives, especially right now, have a hell of a lot more in common with libertarianism than Barack Obama and what the progressive left stand for," he said.

There is more in the video below.

The Inside and Outside of CPAC 2012

2012-02-10T22:27:00-05:00

"The Occupy movement, if it weren't so dangerous to the American ideal, would be comical," says John Thompson, a Rick Santorum supporter who attended The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which kicked off in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, February 9th, 2012.

CPAC is the premier annual gathering of the conservative movement, but this year not all the action was inside the convention center. Occupy D.C. was joined by the AFL-CIO, SEIU, National Nurses United, Metro Labor Council, and OurDC for a demonstration right outside. The group says it was protesting a "gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians, and their 1 percent elite puppet masters."

Reason's Lucy Steigerwald was on hand to see what all the fuss was about.

Produced by Jim Epstein, with help from Joshua Swain and Julie Ershad.

Approximately 4.30 minutes.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get automatic updates when new material goes live.

Why Did the Times Switch This Solyndra-Program Headline?

2012-02-10T18:54:00-05:00

When Neela Banerjee’s summary of a Department of Energy audit went up on the Los Angeles Times site at two minutes after noon on the west coast, it seemed to imply that Energy Secretary Steven Chu had a less-than-sure hand on the DOE’s green loan guarantee program:

Then, maybe sometime before three minutes after noon, the same story shed its headline and grew a new one, which retroactively manages expectations of how damaging the audit was going to be:

In my day a switch like that might have been necessitated by another story competing for paper real estate, or to avoid butting headlines, or due to the cancelation or addition of an advertisement. I don’t miss those days, but sometimes I miss the non-malleability of paper and ink.

I don't imagine such scarcities apply at a news web site, but I did hear a while back that the FCC is in charge of the internet now. So there's that.

Otherwise, why did this headline change?

Gingrich Delivers Stump Speech at CPAC

2012-02-10T18:15:00-05:00

Washington, D.C. – Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speechified about “bold solutions” to close out the second day of CPAC. His speech was so close to what he delivers on the campaign trail that some in the media room Bloggers Lounge groaned that there was nothing new in his speech.

“This is straight from the campaign trail. I’ve heard this all before,” one grumbled.

The crowd reacted differently giving him long applause and standing ovations throughout the speech. It was a very different scene compared to Rick Santorum’s speech earlier in the day. Santorum was received warmly; Gingrich made them roar.

While Santorum’s speech zeroed in on social issues, Gingrich focused on reviving the American economy with a multipoint plan that included proposals to lower the corporate income tax to 12.5% and reform the unemployment system.

“Unemployment compensation should be changed so you sign up for a business led training program. Never again should we pay somebody for 99 weeks for doing nothing. In 99 weeks you can earn an associate’s degree,” he said.

In the remainder of his speech Gingrich did not attack the other Republican candidates including Mitt Romney, who spoke before him. Gingrich is the only candidate at CPAC with a campaign booth in the exhibit hall.

One Possible Reason There Are So Few Liberals, Starring Jonathan Chait. And Some Stuff About Tax Progressivity.

2012-02-10T17:05:00-05:00

About a month ago, New York Times' columnist David Brooks asked "Why aren't there more liberals in America?"

Leaving aside partisan politics, this is an interesting question. The Harris Poll has been surveying Americans on the topic of "political philosophy" since 1968 and the percentage calling themselves liberal had never risen above 20 percent through 2008 (the latest year for which I could find data online).

Part of the reason might be that people who publicly identify themselves as liberal often come across as smug, self-righteous jerks who, even when they swear they are not being patronizing, are in fact being patronizing.

For a recent example, consider New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, who writes:

People often ask, “Why is Jonathan Chait so mean?” It is a fair question, one that...merits a suitably thoughtful reply....

[T]his is why I am forced to be so mean. There are just a lot of people out there exerting significant influence over the political debate who are totally unqualified. The dilemma is especially acute in the political economic field, where wealthy right-wingers have pumped so much money to subsidize the field of pro-rich people polemics that the demand for competent defenders of letting rich people keep as much of their money as possible vastly outstrips the supply. Hence the intellectual marketplace for arguments that we should tax rich people less is glutted with hackery.... A similar problem exists, perhaps to an even worse extent, with climate change denial.

Most people don’t follow these issues for a living and have a hard time distinguishing legitimate arguments from garbage. I don’t mean this patronizingly: I certainly would have trouble distinguishing valid arguments from nonsense in a technical field I didn’t study professionally. But that's why there’s a value in signaling that some arguments aren’t merely expressing a difference in values or interpretation, but are made by an unqualified hack peddling demonstrable nonsense. Being so mean is a labor of love, I confess, but also one with a purpose.

This sort of thinking is about as convincing as Newt Gingrich's claim that he cheated on his wives out of surfeit of patriotism.

Chait, late of The New Republic, is no stranger to these pages, as he semi-regularly spews contempt, anger, exasperation, and Lucy Van Pelt-level psychologizing in Reason's general direction. To the extent that he exemplifies character traits associated with liberals, it's no surprise that self-described liberals are few and far between. That he quickly received an attaboy from economist-cum-insult-comic Paul Krugman only underscores the assocation of liberalism with an off-putting, holier-than-thou mentality. "Actually," wrote Krugman at his Conscience of Liberal blog, "I think [Chait']s not mean enough here; some of the hacks know that they’re being hacks, and are putting out deliberate falsehoods." This from the Nobel prize winner who just earlier this year said "I've never gone ad hominem," a demonstrably false assertion that Bloomberg Businessweek has some fun with in this infographic.

The object of Chait's ideological noblesse oblige during this particular blood-sugar spike is Veronique de Rugy, Reason columnist, Mercatus Center economist, and my frequent collaborator. Or, as Chait prefers to call her, that "ubiquitous right-wing misinformation recirculator."

De Rugy had the temerity to cite OECD data suggesting that contrary to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. federal tax system is more progressive than those in most developed countries. What do we mean by "progressive?" Chait defines it as "the degree to which a tax system increases tax rates on higher-income earners."

Which is what de Rugy is talking about. Specifically, the spread in effective tax rates (that is, the progressivity in the system) is greater over here because the U.S. gets most of its revenue from income taxes and because the U.S. gives all sorts of exemptions to lower- and middle-class citizens, many of whom pay no income tax (note: de Rugy is talking about all taxes, including payroll taxes, and not just income taxes). In contrast, the higher marginal income tax rates common to Europe kick in at much lower levels of income, large chunks of the overall revenue is raised via universal consumption taxes such as the V.A.T., and exemptions and refunds common to the American system are minimal.

So the effect is that the spread in effective tax rates in Europe is smaller than in the U.S. For more on this, check out Greg Mankiw's discussion of the OECD data (check the data out here) at the heart of things and Scott Sumner's Money Illusion blog. Sumner, a Bentley College economist, writes that "many American progressives keep insisting that we can get closer to the (egalitarian) European model by making the US tax system more progressive, by having the rich pay more."

Throughout her work on the topic, de Rugy notes that the European system is more regressive and raises more revenue as a percentage of GDP. And she's interested in calling attention to the paradoxes of such a situation. To wit,

Progressive public finance experts like Peter Lindert have shown that most European tax regimes are able to collect more revenue than ours (as a share of gross domestic product, not in total) by having a more regressive -- not progressive -- tax system.

In other words, European Union governments understand that in order to feed their welfare states, governments must collect taxes from all citizens, including those at the bottom of the income ladder.

At the same time that the U.S. revenue mechanism charges higher rates to the wealthy (that is, is more progressive), however

Government spending here is significantly less progressive than it is in Europe. According to the OECD, European countries devote a significant share of their budget to progressive social transfers.

In the United States, on the other hand, only 14 percent of the budget goes to lower-income Americans. That's because much of the budget is spent on the middle class and better-off members of our society -- among other things in the form of Social Security and Medicare payments.

If you can stand the blatant, obvious hackery and ideologizing-uber-alles embedded in such prose, read more here, here, and here.

Over at The Atlantic, Clive Crook, who stresses that he respects Chait, weighs in on the matter thus:

When Chait, with all the authority of a leading light of the intellectual world, says "Rich Americans pay a bigger share of the tax burden because they earn a bigger share of the income, not because the U.S. tax code is more progressive," he is making the same kind of sloppy bias-driven error he falsely accuses de Rugy of making. (I'll refrain from wondering whether he made the mistake deliberately.) According to the OECD, rich Americans bear a bigger share of the tax burden because they earn a bigger share of the income and because the US income tax system is more progressive....

Why, according to the OECD, is the US system so progressive? Not because the rich face unusually high average tax rates, but because middle-income US households face unusually low tax rates--an important point which de Rugy mentions and Chait ignores.

Crook concludes that "on the topic in question, De Rugy is right and Chait is wrong....I'd say he owes de Rugy an apology."

Yeah, well, here's hoping. Indeed, in his latest foray on the subject, Chait brushes aside Crook and writes:

It’s possible that, by pairing my critique of de Rugy’s error (which I would describe as an extremely elementary error) with a broader disparagement of her credentials, I have made it impossible for her to actually concede error. Or possibly she genuinely does not understand the problem here. I’m not sure. My general experience is that the conservative movement is filled with polemicists who repeat very basic statistical fallacies like this, and seem immune to correction regardless of the level of politeness that correction takes. But, she is an individual and deserves the chance to be judged on her own terms.

What a big, big man with a heart as big as all outdoors. I think that Chait is flatly wrong in his analysis in this situation, but even if that weren't the case, his reflexive belligerence and quickness to cry hack, misinformation recirculator, and what have you - along with his grandiosity and sense of being embattled despite a perch at a high-profile establishment outlet - undermines his persuasiveness. I'm not making a plea for civility here; I'm simply observing that people who comport themselves like Chait make it excrutiatingly hard for anyone to agree with them. Even on the rare occasion when they're right.

Which returns us to the question with which this post starts: "Why aren't there more liberals in America?"

Certainly, there's no shortage of big-spending politicians (Democratic and Republican) who see the federal government as an instrument of social and economic transformation, which accords with one contemporary definition of liberal. But if the Harris numbers are even vaguely right that only about one-fifth of Americans are willing to call themselves liberal and Jon Chait is a liberal, then the question pretty much answers itself, doesn't it?

And suggests the next question: Why are there so many conservatives in America?

Update: De Rugy responds for a last time.

Buffett Makes Bank on Foreclosure Deal, Not All Catholics Feel Exactly the Same About Obama's Birth Control Concession, Kim Jong-Un Possibly Dead: P.M. Links

2012-02-10T16:47:00-05:00

Warren Buffett made $154 million off Obama's foreclosure fraud settlement.
Catholics do not all feel exactly the same about Obama's concession on birth control mandate.
Kim Jong-Un may have been assassinated, but nobody knows for sure.
A Sioux Tribe in South Dakota is suing beer manufacturers and sellers for making them alcoholics.
L.A. school paid alleged teacher-molester $40,000 not to appeal his firing.

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Sheldon Richman on the Debate Over Obama’s Contraceptive Mandate

2012-02-10T16:30:00-05:00

Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s proposed (and then modified) mandate that all employers—including Catholic hospitals and universities—include free contraception in their employee health insurance policies. Catholic officials object that since their church forbids contraception, the decree violates the First Amendment’ s protection of religious freedom. Others have joined in the protest, prudently anticipating that this violation of freedom of conscience could spread to other matters and other faiths. As Sheldon Richman argues, the principle that no one should be forced to finance that which he or she finds abhorrent is sound. In fact, it should be generally applied.

View this article.

Mitt Romney’s Tea Party CPAC Speech

2012-02-10T15:31:00-05:00

Today Romney spoke before a large and applauding audience at the American Conservative Union’s CPAC 2012. Careful attention to his speech’s underlying themes revealed a core focus on upward economic mobility being the crux of the American Dream. While some speakers focused on societal virtue, foreign policy, and Democrats ruining America, Romney strategically re-weaved many of the same rhetorical phrases used by other CPAC speakers to focus specifically on upward economic mobility. I would argue he did so with good reason.

My research of the Tea Party movement and interviews with dozen of Tea Party leaders across the country have revealed Tea Partiers are most concerned over losing what they like best about America: upward economic mobility. Certainly other issues play a role, but concern that government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis would hinder the American Dream is what fundamentally brought libertarian and conservative Tea Partiers together and drove their mobilization. (I’ve written about this here and here). In speaking to concerns over upward economic mobility and the American Dream, Romney reveals he's done his homework for how to resonate with Tea Party voters.

For instance, he began by talking about how his father was born in Mexico, moved to the U.S. when he was five, and—although he never earned a college degree—went on to own a successful car company and eventually become governor of Michigan. Just one generation later, Mitt Romney attended the country’s top business and law schools and then embarked on a very successful private sector career. He spoke about how he turned around failing business, a troubled 2002 Winter Olympics, and a struggling state. He explained that he believes in the American Dream because he’s lived the American Dream and understands what makes it possible: founding principles that secure peoples’ freedom to “achieve success in their own way, propelling themselves forward.” Because of this, Romney said, “one’s birth is not prohibitive for one’s ability to achieve their dreams.”

Theda Skocpol, writing in a recent Washington Post op-ed, agrees with me to an extent that Mitt Romney is angling himself (maybe successfully) to be a Tea Party candidate. Skocpol writes, “Romney has become the stealth tea party candidate, endorsing the essence of the movement while remaining unburdened by its public label.” Where Skocpol and I disagree is that the essence is less about immigration fears and more about the American Dream of upward economic mobility.

Although Romney is surely not the “Tea Party Candidate” he appears to be taking conscious measures to connect with Tea Party voters, but discreetly enough to continue resonating with non-Tea Party voters as well.

Source: CNN Exit Polls

Montana Supreme Court Ignores Citizens United. Will the U.S. Supreme Court Set It Straight?

2012-02-10T15:14:00-05:00

Last December the Montana Supreme Court decided to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. F.E.C. and instead allow Montana’s 99-year-old ban on corporate spending in political campaigns to remain on the books. It’s not everyday that you see a state court dodging applicable Supreme Court precedent with such gusto, so it comes as no surprise that the losing side in that decision has now asked the Supreme Court to step in and set things straight. As Lyle Denniston reports at SCOTUSblog:

The application and motion were filed with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is the Circuit Justice for the part of the country that includes Montana — the Ninth Circuit. It will be up to Kennedy to decide whether to act alone on the controversy, or to share it with his eight colleagues.

The Montana law at issue — the Corrupt Practices Act enacted by the states’ voters in 1912 — was interpreted by the state court as a flat ban on independent spending of corporations’ internal funds to support or oppose specific candidates for state office (independnet in the sense that the financial effort was not coordinated with a candidate). The measure thus was nearly identical to the ban in federal law that was struck down by the Citizens United ruling....

In suggesting that the full Court reach out and overturn the state decision without delay, the new filing argued that the state court’s “refusal to follow Citizens United” is such an obvious, blatant disregard of its duty to follow this Court’s decision that summary reversal is proper.”

Read the whole story here. Read Reason on Citizens United here.

Chef Geoff Tracy vs DC Speed Cameras

2012-02-10T15:00:00-05:00

Over a three day period in January, Washington, D.C. celebrity chef Geoff Tracy received three $150 tickets from a single newly installed traffic camera. In an attempt to alert other motorists of the speed trap, Tracy hired a sign spinner for a full week to caution passing drivers. But helping people avoid costly tickets doesn't sit well with at least one fan of D.C.'s $43 million revenue generating traffic cameras .

About 2:25 minutes. Written and produced by Rob Raffety

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Mitt Romney, Super-Duper Conservative

2012-02-10T14:29:00-05:00

Mitt Romney knows how to sell a client on his services. He did it countless times as a business consultant and the head of the private equity firm Bain. Romney’s business partners have told me that one of Romney’s greatest strengths was delivering delicate messages to potentially difficult partners and clients. As his Bain colleage Eric Kriss told The New York Times in 2007, “Mitt ran a private equity firm, not a cement company…He was not a businessman in the sense of running a company. He was a great presenter, a great spokesman, and a great salesman.”

Today, his job was to sell his conservative credentials to wary activists and attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. And although he wasn’t great, he was pretty good. His over-capacity main stage speech this afternoon probably didn’t seal the deal with conservatives, but I doubt it scared anyone away: Romney portrayed the coming election as a “fight for America” and said that now is “a time to reaffirm what it means to be conservative.” He insisted on the inherent conservatism of his career and family background, touted selected elements of his record, and made vague promises to cut government spending, and declared his willingness to get rid of ObamaCare—without once mentioning the near-replica health care law he signed as governor of Massachusetts. “I know conservatism,” he said, “because I have lived conservatism.” In other words, he told the audience more or less what it wanted to hear.

Will that be enough? Romney still has the most plausible path to the nomination, but it remains hard to make any prediction with great confidence. A new survey from Public Policy Polling shows that Santorum has taken a lead nationally. Here at CPAC, people started lining for a small-space Santorum meet-and-greet at least two hours early; by the time it was scheduled to start it stretched hundreds deep. Nearly every person in line had skipped Romney’s speech to wait in a long line for a chance to hear Santorum.

Read my cover feature on Romney from Reason's March issue.

Santorum Talks Contraception and Obamacare at CPAC

2012-02-10T14:06:00-05:00

Washington, D.C. - After being introduced by SuperPAC benefactor Foster Friess, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum took the podium here surrounded by his family and delievered a speech that went after both his nearest rival for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney, and President Obama. Santorum, coming off three major-but-delegate-free victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, talked briefly about fiscal matters, but eventually returned to his bread and butter: social issues. He really drove things home with his red meat comments about Obamacare.

"We've seen the president of the United States tell what insurance coverage you should have, how much you are going to pay, how much you will be fined if you don't. He's now telling the Catholic Church that they are forced to pay for things that are against their basic tennants and teachings," Santorum said after comparing Obamacare to the National Health Service of Great Britian.

Santorum excited the crowd but it was not at the rock star level you would expect from somebody with so much momentum at his back. His only standing ovation during the entire speech came when he talked about social issues, in particular the Obama administration's moves on contraception.

"Ladies and gentleman, this is the type of coercion we can expect. It's not about contraception. It's about economic liberty, it's about freedom of speech, it's about freedom of religion, it's about government control of your lives and it's got to stop," he said, bringing the crowd to its feet.

Last night Public Policy Polling tweeted that they have a new poll in the field and it shows Rick Santorum is, again, the front-runner nationally for the Republican nomination.

Mike Riggs on Sheriff Mack, the Oath Keeper Running Against Lamar Smith

2012-02-10T13:30:00-05:00

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), authored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) at the behest of Hollywood and the recording industry, inspired one of the largest and most organic opposition campaigns in recent memory. Twitter users put "STOP SOPA" banners on their user avatars; numerous sites—including Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit—"blacked out" in protest; and Congress eventually tabled the bill. While Smith bore the brunt of the backlash, writes Associate Editor Mike Riggs, his primary opponent, Oath Keeper Richard Mack, has ridden the outrage like a wave.

View this article.

Reason Writers at the Movies: Peter Suderman Reviews Safe House

2012-02-10T13:15:00-05:00

Associate Editor Peter Suderman reviews the new Denzel Washington action thriller Safe House in today's Washington Times:

The producers of “Safe House” have done potential viewers exactly one favor: They’ve turned the movie’s title into a hint as to where it’s best viewed — in the safety and comfort of one’s own home.

“Safe House” is the sort of mostly competent but entirely skippable cinematic trifle that’s better enjoyed as a cable-matinee complement to an afternoon nap: You probably won’t be sorry if you see it, but you won’t be missing anything if you don’t.

Those who do venture out of their own domains will be treated to a ho-hum mashup of “Training Day” and the Bourne series that’s not as tough or engaging as either.

Whole thing here.

Ron Paul Roundup: Ahead to Maine, Back to Nevada, and vs. Obama (in T-Shirt Sales)

2012-02-10T12:31:00-05:00

Maine has been caucusing for a week now and will announce the results tomorrow. Turnout tends to be very, very low, and Paul was third there in 2008 with 18 percent, one of his best states when it was still a three-way race then.

The Washington Post speculates on yet another defeat for frontrunner Romney:

Neither former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) nor former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has made a play for Maine, meaning that Saturday’s contest will essentially be a battle between Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman whose enthusiastic supporters have made caucus states a focus of their efforts.

In an interview Thursday with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Paul – who has not held a campaign-trail event since Tuesday night – said that he believes he has a shot at winning in Maine.

“Are you going to win the Maine caucuses Saturday?” Blitzer asked.

”I think we have a chance to do that,” Paul responded. “And I’ll be up there and struggling up to the last minute. But every time I’ve been up there so far, it has been wonderful. And I’m so pleased that they’re very receptive to the ideas of liberty, and I’m cautiously optimistic about Saturday.”....

In 2008, only about 5,500 voters participated in the Maine GOP caucuses -- a turnout of just over 2 percent of the state’s roughly 253,000 registered Republicans.

Paul held six town hall meetings in the state over two days at the end of January. Meanwhile, Romney’s town hall in Portland Friday night will be his first visit to the state this cycle, although he held a tele-town hall and has sent surrogates – including his son, Tagg – to campaign on his behalf....

With 17 days between tomorrow’s caucuses and the next nominating contests in Arizona and Michigan, the caucus results in the Pine Tree State could resonate on the campaign trail well past Saturday night — particularly if Paul ekes out his first-ever win in a nominating contest.

*A Nevadan writes about his caucus experiences with a positive spin, though he believes the campaign overemphasizes phone calling far too much over door-to-door interaction with voters. (I have heard the same from other locals in both Iowa and New Hampshire, that the weeks of advanced phone work aren't as optimal as the Paul campaign's strategy and tactics seem to believe.)

*Good magazine reports on the phenomenon of former Obama folk turning in their grief to Ron Paul. Meantime, Cafe Press notes that for the first time, in the wake of his highly publicized State of the Union address, that Obama merch is now outselling Ron Paul's. In a press release received via email from MBooth communications that I was not able to find online, they note:

CafePress, an e-commerce platform that powers user-designed merchandise, has been tracking 2012 election presidential candidate support via the 2012 Meter graph. With an average of over 137,000 new designs uploaded every week, it’s no surprise many of them are political in nature.... The Meter graphs track merchandise sales trends for each presidential candidate and, through such trends, successfully predicted Barack Obama’s victory in 2008......

Since The Meter poll launched in November, Ron Paul has held the top spot in product sales (e.g., t-shirts, etc.) each week in a commanding fashion—a testament to his loyal supporters, as they’ve been able to counter surges from the rest of the Republican field, as well as the incumbent, President Barack Obama...

However, since Obama’s SOTU speech, Paul has fallen to 2^nd place for the first time ever, demonstrating a sudden and significant surge in Obama support. Last week, Obama edged out Paul 46% to 33% and now, this week, we see that Paul is still runner-up. His numbers rose slightly, from 33% to 36%, but so did Obama’s—from 46% to 47%...

In total, Paul still dominates Obama 57 to 27 in the Cafepress T-Shirt metric.

Reason's Paul archives. My forthcoming book, Ron Paul's Revolution.

Steven Greenhut on Making State Officials More Accountable in California

2012-02-10T12:00:00-05:00

One of the most frustrating things about California, writes Steven Greenhut, is seeing how every serious public policy issue is driven by what’s best for government employees, not what’s best for the public. Thankfully, Greenhut reports, one California judge is introducing a new level of transparency that will bring some much-needed scrutiny to government officials working in the children and family services system.

View this article.

15 Tons and What Do You Get?

2012-02-10T11:58:00-05:00

This week Mexican drug warriors are bragging about a record seizure of methamphetamine. The New York Times describes it as "15 tons, found in pure powder form at a ranch outside Guadalajara." That supposedly amounts to "13 million doses worth $4 billion—more than double the size of all meth seizures at the Mexican border in 2011." Progress? Not really:

While the authorities proudly showed off the seizure to local reporters, the sheer size of the find set off alarm among experts and officials from the United States and the United Nations. It was a sign, they said, of just how organized, efficient at manufacturing and brazen Mexico’s traffickers had become even after expanded efforts to dismantle their industry.

"The big thing it shows is the sheer capacity that these superlabs have in Mexico," said Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "When we see one lab with the capability to produce such a mass tonnage of meth, it begs a question: What else is out there?”...

"It's important to keep the seizure in perspective," said Eric Olson, a security expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "It's huge. Eye-popping. But seizures, even huge ones, don’t generally change the demand for the drug in the long run. If a seizure of this magnitude raises the street price, consumption may go down for a time, but it is only a matter of time until the market adjusts and the supply comes back up."

Those Mexican superlabs got a boost from the U.S. government's restrictions on retail sales of cold and allergy medications containing pseudoephedrine, a meth precursor. That policy inconvenienced people with colds and allergies, hurt domestic mom-and-pop labs, shipped meth jobs across the border, and encouraged a shift to a more dangerous production method here in the U.S. But it had no discernible impact on meth consumption. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, meth use by Americans 12 or older has been flat or falling since 2002, with the exception of a spike in 2006, the year the federal restrictions took effect. Numbers for high school seniors from the Monitoring the Future Study show a similar pattern, but with no uptick in 2006. Yet back in 2008 Bush administration drug czar John Walters was claiming (per A.P.'s paraphrase) that "laws restricting the sale of cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine...and efforts to thwart drug trafficking from Mexico have disrupted the market for meth."

No matter. Ever-bigger seizures, indicating utter failure, only mean drug warriors must redouble their efforts.

Contraception Coverage and the Stupid "War On Religion" Redux

2012-02-10T11:24:00-05:00

My colleague Nick Gillespie made the excellent point two days ago that if health insurance coverage were de-linked from government funding and mandates, then the current "war on religion" nonsense that some politicians are peddling with regard to the requirement that organizations run by the Roman Catholic Church buy health insurance the covers contraceptives would never have occurred. People could use their own money or (as Nick suggested) vouchers to buy whatever kind of health insurance they wanted.

One more issue: health insurance is just a form of compensation offered by an employer. It's not the employer's money; it belongs to the employees. Since that is so, why should the employer's views on the morality of health insurance coverage trump that of their employees?

University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan has posed an interesting hypothetical in his latest MSNBC column:

Imagine that the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, which is based in Brooklyn, NY, creates a printing company that happily employs people from many faiths and cultural backgrounds. The company’s sole task is to print all the Witness literature that its followers distribute door-to-door all over the world. That literature clearly states the Jehovah’s Witnesses adamant opposition to blood transfusion. Then the federal government then issues a national set of minimal standards which all companies operating as public entities must provide as part of the health insurance coverage they offer.

The Governing Body is outraged because on that list are blood transfusions. They issue a statement accusing the President of trying to crush religious liberty by forcing their printing company, which employs many non-Jehovah’s witnesses, to cover transfusions.

In that instance, would politicians be rushing to slam the health care plan on the basis of religious freedom? Would anyone in the media be sympathetic if the entire leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses said they would not budge an inch in including coverage of blood transfusions at their printing company no matter what government, doctors or even their own employees believe that ought to have covered? I doubt it.

And yet, this is exactly the reaction that has greeted the pronouncement by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that they feel persecuted by the inclusion of birth control in the list of covered benefits that they need to provide when they operate institutions in the public arena.

Get employers out of the business of buying health insurance and the whole stupid issue goes away. But as far as I know none of the members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy nor any of the grandstanding politicians on either side is making that sensible suggestion.

Massachusetts Licensing Board Punishes Embalmer for Keeping It Real

2012-02-10T11:20:00-05:00

Unless things have changed dramatically since the last time I attended an open-casket funeral, the process for preparing a body for burial still involves injecting a corpse with preservatives, draping it in an ill-fitting suit or dress, and smearing its face with clown makeup. Which is to say, whatever dignity there is in being dead is still derived solely from the imaginations of the living.

If you have ever seen a body that’s been cold for more than a day, you probably know this. (If you haven’t, I both envy you and advise you to find a less visceral way to pay respects to your deceased Pep Pep.)

In Massachusetts, acknowledging the reality of death is apparently a no-no, at least for embalmers. Troy Schoeller, frontman for punk band Razors in the Night and a licensed embalmer, got real on the topic with the Boston Phoenix, telling the alternative weekly that he does not enjoy embalming fat people and that a dead baby is like a "bearskin rug.”

God love Schoeller for inhaling the stink of mortality on a daily basis, and for his honesty. Unfortunately no one will ever have to pretend to like his handiwork ever again, as the Massachusetts board that gives licenses to embalmers has revoked Schoeller’s:

After his comments were published in The Boston Phoenix, the state board that licenses funeral directors and embalmers revoked his license. Now Schoeller is challenging that punishment before the highest court in Massachusetts, arguing the revocation violates his constitutional right to free speech.

"I didn't lie about anything," he said. "I didn't say anything that was wrong."

Schoeller argues that state regulators chose to enforce a vague and overly broad provision of the code of conduct that prohibits funeral directors and embalmers from commenting on the condition of a body entrusted to their care.

Funeral directors and embalmers routinely talk about their work in trade journals and other publications to inform a curious public, and the provision should not be interpreted as barring them from ever talking publicly about what they do, said his lawyer, Jason Benzaken. Schoeller is the first embalmer in Massachusetts to be disciplined on those grounds, the lawyer said.

Schoeller's statements were truthful, did not disclose confidential information and pertained to a matter of "legitimate public concern," and were therefore protected by the First Amendment and the state constitution, Benzaken said.

"People are interested in it; people have a right to know what happens to their deceased family members when they are brought into a funeral home," he said.

But the state Board of Registration of Funeral Directors and Embalmers found that Schoeller violated the code of conduct by talking about bodies in his care in an "unprofessional" manner.

"Sensitivity, dignity, respect are at the very heart of this profession," Assistant Attorney General Sookyoung Shin said.

The dignity claim is a lark. Shortly after the soul evacuates the body, shit and urine follow. Rigor mortis sets in, blood pools in the ass, and the flesh turns sheet white. These are not secrets. That dead bodies are less pleasant to look at than live ones is not a secret either. Surely the same imaginative powers that allow us to see remnants of joy in a powdered and waxy visage can provide folks who don’t work in the embalming business with a sense of how unpleasant it might be to inject a corpulent husk with formaldehyde; of the psychological distance required to handle a dead infant.

If the funeral home that employs Schoeller canned him after reading the Phoenix story, that would have been unfortunate for Schoeller (these are hard times we’re living in!), but perfectly acceptable. It would also be perfectly acceptable for Boston families to rebuke Schoeller by taking their dead loved ones to a different mortuary.

Not only is this an obvious First Amendment violation, it's a perfect example of mission creep in occupational licensing regulations. If there's a role for the government in the embalming business (and I'm not sure there is), it's (perhaps) overseeing the use of chemicals, protecting records, and responding to allegations of necrophilia and the like. Policing the speech of embalmers is a ridiculous overreach.

Can You Pass the Beverly Hillbillies Test? Virginia Postrel on Charles Murray

2012-02-10T11:16:00-05:00

Charles Murray has a new book out: Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but it's very much of an update of basic themes in The Bell Curve (read Reason's review by future Nobel Prize-winner James J. Heckman). For a taste of Coming Apart, read Murray's recent Wall Street Journal piece.

Former Reason editor Virginia Postrel writes up Murray's latest in her Bloomberg column. Anything she writes is worth a read, especially when it relates to how elites interface with the hoi polloi. At the heart of Murray's take is the belief that America's "new upper class" is pulling away from the rest of the culture (a theme that pervades The Bell Curve as well). Postrel argues that the notion that elites are somehow more alienated from the masses than they used to be is wrong.

Snippets:

“Instead of feeling sorry for the exceptionally able student who has no one to talk to,” Murray writes, “we need to worry about what happens when exceptionally able students hang out only with one another.”

As someone known for writing defenses of chain stores and explaining Plano, Texas, to puzzled pundits, I agree that way too many smart people, particularly on the coasts, are quick to condemn middle-American culture without understanding why people value one or another aspect of it. But they were even worse in 1963.

That’s the second problem with Murray’s fable: The cultural consensus was not just an illusion. It was an unhealthy one. Instead of promoting understanding, it fed contempt.

One piece of evidence is right on page 2 of the book: “The Beverly Hillbillies,” the highest-rated TV show the week Kennedy was killed. As Murray points out, nearly a third of American households watched it on CBS every week -- astounding numbers by today’s standards. “The Beverly Hillbillies” was not just popular. It was, by most measures, the biggest hit in sitcom history. By its fourth week on the air, it had knocked Lucille Ball out of her top spot, and it only fell from the top 10 in its ninth and final season. It even saved “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” a flop in its original slot, by providing a big lead-in audience in an era when it was hard to change the channel. In a true consensus culture, everyone would have loved it....

With five decades’ distance it’s clear that books as seemingly different as “The Organization Man,” “The Lonely Crowd,” “The Feminine Mystique” and “Atlas Shrugged” were really all about the same thing: the alienation and discomfort of gifted, independent-minded individuals in a society in which the “normal” ruled. The “cognitive elite” felt left out of or oppressed by the country’s culture and, as a result, scorned it.

Now these people have one another. “People like to be around other people who understand them and to whom they can talk,” Murray writes. “Cognitive segregation was bound to start developing as soon as unusually smart people began to have the opportunity to hang out with other unusually smart people.” If you care about happiness, that seems like a good thing.

Interestingly, when smart people feel less alienated, they seem to buy different sorts of books. Instead of condemning American society for not honoring the author’s personality or tastes, the new bestsellers explore the mysteries of human behavior. Think of Malcolm Gladwell’s various books or Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” Perhaps once you accept that people really are different -- that nobody’s normal and, at least when it comes to food or entertainment or vacations, there’s no one best way to live -- you can, paradoxically enough, start to think about the commonalities known as human nature.

More here.

The title of Postrel's piece comes from a quiz that Murray includes in the book (take it here). The goal of the quiz is to ascertain just how thick your "bubble" is - how hived off from mass culture you are. It's worth taking, especially if you fancy yourself either close to the masses or oh-so-alienated from them.

As something of a public service, I include below a full episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. It's the one where Granny mistakes an escaped kangaroo for a giant-sized jackrabbit. I read somewhere that when it aired, it became the highest-rated episode of TV (discounting specials, finales, etc) for many years. Certainly it showcases that The Beverly Hillbillies was a pretty smart and funny show, Newton Minow be damned.

Tribe Sues Beer Companies for Supplying Too Much Beer

2012-02-10T11:15:00-05:00

Yesterday the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota sued five big beer companies—Anheuser-Busch InBev, SAB Miller, Molson Coors , MillerCoors, and Pabst—for making crappy beer. Just kidding. The tribe actually blames the brewers for making too much beer, enough to supply Oglala Sioux on the officially dry Pine Ridge Reservation. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska, also names four beer stores in Whiteclay, a tiny Nebraska town near the reservation where nearly 5 million cans of beer were sold in 2010. "You cannot sell 4.9 million 12-ounce cans of beer," says the tribe's attorney, "and wash your hands like Pontius Pilate, and say, 'We've got nothing to do with it being smuggled.'"

If you think the tribe's demands that people outside the reservation help enforce its ban on alcohol are unreasonable, consider how the U.S. treats "source countries" that provide the illegal drugs Americans want. Its efforts to destroy and intercept those drugs go well beyond filing lawsuits. If the Oglala Sioux had the resources to wage a War on Alcohol that involved bombing breweries and raiding liquor stores, on what moral grounds could the U.S. government object?

A. Barton Hinkle on the State College Ripoff

2012-02-10T10:30:00-05:00

“You can observe a lot just by watching,” said Yogi Berra. A national group has been watching Virginia’s colleges and universities, and much that it has observed is not flattering. Grumpy old skinflints and youthful Occupy protesters alike should take note. A new report by ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, notes research indicating nearly half of all college students make no learning gains in their first two years, and 36 percent show no significant intellectual growth even after four years. Yet, writes A. Barton Hinkle, GPAs have been trending upward.

View this article.

Saudi Writer Could Be Executed for Blasphemous Tweets

2012-02-10T10:05:00-05:00

After tweeting about the Prophet Muhammad, 23-year old Saudi writer Hamza Kashgari could face the death penalty for blasphemy. His tweets ignited a firestorm of controversy in Saudi Arabia, leading to over 30,000 tweets in less than 24 hours. In response, Kashgari lost his job as a columnist for the Jeddah-based al-Bilad, while the Saudi Information Minister has censored reprinting and carrying Kashgari's writings. Meanwhile, Saudi Sheikh Nasser al Omar pulled a Ed Muskie as he asked the Saudi King Abdullah to execute Kashgari for his "apostasy."

Al-Jazeera has translated a few of Kashgari's tweets:

On your birthday I find you in front of me wherever I go, I love many things about you and hate others, and there are many things about you I don't understand.

On your birthday I won't bow in front of you, I won't kiss your hand. Instead, I will shake it as an equal, I will smile at you and you will smile back and I will talk to you as a friend, no more.
All the great gods that we worship, all the great fears that we dread, all the desires that we wait for impatiently are but figments of our imagination.
No Saudi women will go to hell, because it's impossible to go there twice.

Kashgari has since deleted the tweets and has recanted:

I deleted my previous tweets because after I consulted with a few brothers, I realized that they may have been offensive to the Prophet (PBUH) and I don't want anyone to misunderstand.

I swear to God, I wrote what I wrote because I love the Prophet, but I made a mistake and I hope that God forgives me and all those who were insulted forgive me as well.

After receiving death threats and finding his home address leaked to the public, Kashgari fled the country and sought asylum. However, he was just arrested in Malaysia. His extradition is currently being coordinated with the Saudi government. If he returns to Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Fatwa Committee is calling for Kashgari to be punished in accordance with Sharia law, which could be execution.

Reason on Islam and censorship. Human Rights First on blasphemy laws worldwide.

America's Unsung Industrial Might; Or, Take a Half-Bow, Bob Dylan!

2012-02-10T09:29:00-05:00

For a while now, John Merline at Investors Business Daily has been putting out always-interesting charts and data.

His latest is over there on the right. Despite claims by politicians ranging from Barack Obama to Rick Santorum that U.S. manufacturing is dead and buried, Merline shows that sector is alive and kicking.

"By all relevant measures of economic performance — growth in profits, output gains, employment growth, and unemployment rates — American manufacturing remains the shining star of the U.S. economy," said Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who closely tracks this industry.

Others have noted that, even without Obama's tax code inducements, manufacturers are starting to bring some jobs back from overseas, known as "on-shoring."

And while Santorum is right that fewer people work in manufacturing — the industry lost more than 7 million jobs since its peak in 1979 — and the industry accounts for less of the nation's GDP than it once did (less than 13% today compared with nearly 25% in 1970) — these aren't necessarily bad indicators.

More here.

Indeed, for those of us who have worked in factories, it most certainly is not a bad thing that fewer of us work in such places. A lot of industrial work is necessary and not awful, but getting off an assembly line is rarely a bad thing. Even in terms of wages. As this Cafe Hayek post from a couple of years back notes, service-sector jobs, which typically have easier conditions, also typically pay better.

It's always the right time to listen to Bob Dylan's incredibly non-prescient "Union Sundown" which proclaimed circa 1983,

Well, you know, lots of people complainin' that there is no work.
I say, "Why you say that for
When nothin' you got is U.S.-made?"

(click to listen)

If the Maestro was as wrong about American manufacturing as he was about the spelling of John Wesley Hardin, he was dead-on in another fevered premonition from "Union Sundown":

They used to grow food in Kansas
Now they want to grow it on the moon and eat it raw.
I can see the day coming when even your home garden
Is gonna be against the law.

Reason's Nanny of the Month for September 2010 covered the travails of a DeKalb, Georgia man who got busted for growing...vegetables.

A.M. Links: Banks to Resume Foreclosing, Congress Critter Bachus Under Investigation for Insider Trading, Romney Downplays Losses to Santorum

2012-02-10T08:58:00-05:00

With a foreclosure fraud settlement all but done, U.S. banks will resume foreclosing on delinquent properties.
The chair of the House Financial Services Committee is under investigation for insider trading.
Mitt Romney is only mildly worried about Rick Santorum.
White House to water down birth control mandate.
Rand Paul gave a rousing speech at CPAC yesterday.
The LAPD has a "war room." Because, says Chief Charlie Beck, "We are targets on our own soil."

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New at Reason.tv: "Halftime in America: Remy Chrysler Ad Parody"

Take a Look at Frontline's Nuclear Afterschocks

2012-02-10T08:38:00-05:00

I meant to blog this when it first aired in January (go here for Frontline's page). It's an interesting documentary about the Fukushima, Japan nuclear plant wipeout and what lessons might be drawn for a U.S. audience.

From a Boing Boing review of the documentary:

[We] need a better grid that can store electricity for later or transport it far more efficiently than is currently possible. Until we get that, we'll need to rely on some source of power that is completely controllable, that can produce exactly as much electricity as we need. No more. No less. There are four options for that: Coal, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear power. Hydroelectric power can't operate everywhere. And the other three all come with serious risks, to local health and to the planet**.

Yet we will still need them for decades to come. So how do we decide which risks we're willing to live with? The only way to do that is to set aside reactionary fear and anger and start having conversations that account for all the risks in an honest way. We have to talk about mitigating risks as best we can—because, as Nuclear Aftershocks points out, we aren't currently doing that in relation to nuclear power, at least not consistently. We have to prioritize our fears. And we have to recognize that, for right now, there is no such thing as a right decision. No such thing as eliminating risk. No matter what we choose, someone will get hurt.

HT: Boing Boing's Xeni (who didn't write the review quoted above).

Reason on Fukushima.

Could Ron Paul Win Maine?

2012-02-10T07:09:00-05:00

Washington, D.C. – Before trekking down to CPAC I asked Ron Paul's national campaign chair why the Texas congressman was skipping out on a convention that the other candidates are attending. His quick one sentence response:

Too much campaigning to do across the country.

Paul's absence is notable at this CPAC because in previous years he has packed the place with supporters to assure that he would win the meaningless straw poll, often paying their way. His campaign website calendar does not list any events through Sunday but in a follow up email Benton said that Paul will be in Maine this weekend.

Meanwhile, in Vacationland, speculation is running rampant that Paul could win the caucuses on Saturday. In 2008 Paul finished third in Maine, just three points behind eventual nominee John McCain. Romney won Maine with 52% of the vote. Paul won the northernmost county, Arostook.

If Paul wins Maine it will validate his caucus strategy and likely lead to a surge in campaign donations. It does not mean that Paul is suddenly a serious contender for the GOP nomination as Paul has styled his run more as a movement-building campaign. It would be Paul's first time winning a state in any of his presidential runs.

While a Paul victory brings him closer to his goal of having some serious leverage at the nominating convention in Tampa, it also helps his rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich by creating another problem for Romney. On paper Maine is a state that Romney should win easily and not have to campaign or spend resources in. Paul's strong grassroots operation has forced him to campaign there when he could be spending time and money in states where his support, historically, is not as strong.

Chip Bok on Obama's Super Pac

2012-02-10T07:00:00-05:00

When it comes to groups with "super" in their name, Obama only likes to listen to the one that ends in PAC, jokes Chip Bok.

View this article.

"America deserves a choice."

2012-02-09T22:27:00-05:00

Here's a snippet of what GOP House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said in tonight's big speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Via the Washington Examiner:

Everybody knows this is politically risky territory. Republicans have their battle scars on entitlement reform. That’s why some argue that we should downplay bold agendas and simply wage a campaign focused solely on the President and his party.

I firmly disagree. Boldness and clarity offer the greatest opportunity to create a winning coalition. We will not only win the next election – we have a unique opportunity to sweep and remake the political landscape.

Of course we will highlight the President’s failed agenda. But Americans deserve to choose an alternative agenda – one that aligns with our needs. One we can rally behind.

...My friends, America deserves a choice – and if it is an honest choice between these two visions, well, then we win, they lose.

Yes, the challenge before us is daunting. The President and his allies will do all in their power to try to make our philosophy of freedom seem radical.

But I believe the President and his party’s leaders are profoundly mistaken.

They are growing increasingly isolated from the American mainstream. They just don’t understand that Americans are seeking political leaders whose solutions are reassuring precisely because they are bold.

The President’s partisans are underestimating the ability of Americans to do basic math. They don’t realize that the sheer magnitude of our challenges has shifted the center of gravity under their feet, putting them at a disadvantage. The history of our own movement shows that we can win these fights – if we are willing to fight them.

As constitutional conservatives, let’s offer Americans the choice they deserve. This is the moment we were made for. It is time to prove that the Founders got it right, both for centuries past and for centuries to come.

Let’s contrast the President’s path to decline with our own path that lifts the debt, promotes prosperity, and restores the greatness of the American Idea.

Ryan has been delivering similar messages—be specific, be bold, take risks—for a while. But it's hard to avoid seeing this speech as a challenge, and perhaps a warning, to all of the potential Republican presidential nominees, and to Mitt Romney in particular.

Read my 2010 feature, "Paul Ryan: Radical or Sellout?"