Photo courtesy carldemaio.com

Late last week the California Public Safety Voter Guide (managed by Landslide Communications) commissioned a brief survey in the 52nd Congressional District. The poll was conducted by the respected firm NSON out of Utah with calls made to 606 district voters who cast ballots in the last general election, This district includes some of downtown San Diego and takes the coast West and North before jutting inland east of La Jolla. You can see a map here.

Last year wealthy former San Diego City Councilman Scott Peters, a Democrat, defeated incumbent Congressman Brian Bilbray in this seat, by a very narrow margin. Recently former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, apparently rested up after his marathon campaign for Mayor, announced his candidacy for this seat. As of now he is the only announced GOP candidate.

The survey really only asked a few key questions, and directly tested the issues both of DeMaio being gay, and his support for same-sex marriage. I thought the responses were telling…

Q1. If the election for your next Member of Congress was held today, who would you vote for of the following three candidates?
229 (37.8%) Scott Peters, Democrat incumbent
209 (34.5%) Carl DeMaio, Republican, former San Diego Council member
32 (5.3%) Howard Kaloogian, Republican, former California State Assemblyman
136 (22.4%) Undecided / Don’t Know

Q2. Now I am going to read you some information about Carl DeMaio. According to an article that appeared in the New York Times on October 29, 2012, DeMaio is “openly gay” and has “stated his support for gay marriage.”

Having offered you this information, now I am going to ask you again who you would vote for as your next Member of Congress if the election was held today:
218 (36.0%) Scott Peters, Democrat incumbent
213 (35.1%) Carl DeMaio, Republican, former San Diego Council member
42 (6.9%) Howard Kaloogian, Republican, former California State Assemblyman
133 (21.9%) Undecided / Don’t Know

Let me first throw out here that I have never heard of former Assemblyman Kaloogian being interested in running for this seat. I believe he was placed into this survey to have an ability to test whether Republicans would move their support from DeMaio to another Republican when told about Demaio’s sexual preference and his support for same-sex marriage.

This short survey is good news for DeMaio. It would appear that these issues do not appreciate move GOP numbers. In fact after voters hear about his positions on these controversial items his support actually increased a tad!

To quote from a NSON executive summary of their survey, Being “openly gay” and having “stated his support for gay marriage” appears to have statistically a very negligible effect with district voters views overall, possibly alluding to prior knowledge of or indifference to DeMaio’s sexuality and support of marriage equality.

While these numbers are slightly lower for DeMaio than those found in a Tarrance Group poll done in April, Peters is still in big trouble.

If you are interested in this survey’s crosstabs, frequencies and data, just drop me an email.

(Jon Fleischman is the publisher of the Flash Report. Originally posted on the Flash Report.)

The recent revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers, with the complete blessing of the Obama administration, should come as no surprise to anyone who  has been paying attention over the past decade.

As I document in my new book “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,” what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched  (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations). What too many fail to realize, consumed as they are with partisan politics and blinded by their own political loyalties, is that the massive bureaucracies — now computerized — that administer governmental policy transcend which party occupies the White  House.

This explains why the civil liberties abuses carried out by the Bush administration have not been corrected by the Obama administration. Rather, they have been expanded upon. Take, for instance, the warrantless wiretapping program conducted during the Bush years, which resulted in the NSA monitoring the  private communications of millions of Americans — a program that continues unabated today, with help from private telecommunications companies such as AT&T. The program recorded 320 million phone calls a day when it first started. It is estimated that the NSA has intercepted 15 to 20 trillion communications of American citizens since 9/11.

To our misfortune, the Obama White House has proven to be even worse than the Bush White House when it comes to invading the privacy rights of Americans. As Yale law professor Jack Balkin notes, “We are witnessing the bipartisan  normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state. [Obama has] systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the Bush Administration.” Unfortunately, whereas those on the left raised a hue and cry over the Bush administration’s constant encroachments on Americans’ privacy  rights, it appears that the political leanings of those on the left have held greater sway than their principles. Consequently, the Obama administration has faced much less criticism for its blatant efforts to reinforce the surveillance  state.

Insisting that terrorists “will come after us if they can and the only thing  that we have to deter this is good intelligence to understand that a plot has been hatched and to get there before they get to us,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, is defending the NSA’s  actions, as well as the secret court order requiring Verizon to turn over its phone records to government agents. It’s a tired, overused line that preys on Americans’ fear of another terrorist attack and offers phantom promises of security while ensuring neither safety nor greater freedom. Even the vague and unsupported claim put forth by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., that the NSA surveillance program “helped thwart ‘a significant  case’ of terrorism in the United States ‘within the last few years’” fails to justify a program of this magnitude, which makes everyone a target and turns us all into a nation of suspects.

Read more here.

(John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. He also blogs daily about the emerging police state at A Government of Wolves. Retrieved from Western Journalism.)

On the anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was ambushed.  Four Americans, including Ambassador Stevens, were killed.  They say bad news travels fast, and this was no exception.  Despite the frequent reports on the details of the tragedy, no one initially knew exactly what happened on the night of September 11, 2012.

Then-UN ambassador Susan Rice was sent onto five Sunday talk shows to explain the attack and set the story straight.  Though she adamantly blamed an anti-Islamic video called “Innocence of Muslims” for inciting a spontaneous protest, recent House hearings on the Benghazi scandal revealed that Rice’s talking points were completely false.  Not only was the consulate the target of a planned, terrorist attack, this information was no secret to the State Department.  The fact is the explanations released by government officials simply weren’t true.

Though Rice wasn’t alone in propagating a scandalously false tale, her involvement in what some are calling Benghazi-gate stands out because of Wednesday’s announcement: Susan Rice has been appointed to take over for Tom Donilon as the US’ National Security Advisor.

It’s interesting because Rice’s Benghazi comments were considered so crippling that she was withdrawn from consideration for Secretary of State.  Though she carried too much baggage to even dream of the needed Senate confirmation for that position, she has assumed a job which ironically gives her even more influence.  The National Security Advisor need only be appointed by the President, and Rice’s role in the Benghazi drama has not lost her any favor with Obama.

Senator Rand Paul was one of the first to express his concern at this appointment.  This apprehension is not unfounded because Rice’s account of Benghazi was not simply a Biden-esque political gaffe.  K.T. McFarland, who held national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations, put it bluntly:

Either she knew what really happened and deliberately lied to the American people or she was a mere actress who read the script she was given and didn’t know enough to question whether the words she spoke were accurate.

This dichotomy calls into question Susan Rice’s suitability for one of the most powerful positions in the U.S. government.  At best, she was incompetent, out of touch with current events and a pawn in a political game; at worst, she actively participated in an elaborate cover-up aimed at deceiving the American people.  Either of these indictments should be enough to raise serious questions about her appointment.

With all of the criticism the NSA is facing today, Rice’s appointment serves only to add fuel to the fire.  When it was revealed that the NSA has been using a court order to obtain millions of Verizon records, criticism resounded on social media sites and Capitol Hill.  If evidence of secret surveillance has left Americans wary, Susan Rice’s promotion should heighten that anxiety.  The secrecy which has shrouded the National Security Agency can only become more ominous with a less-than-trustworthy director.

Consider the scope of the National Security Advisor’s duties, which include compiling intelligence and other information into a complete package, presenting this to the President and advising the White House on a course of action.  A 2004 White House study ascribed to the National Security Advisor the leading role in directing foreign and defense policy.  As the Heritage Foundation explains:

[Rice] will be the lead for all security policy, not merely our foreign policy. This could easily turn from failure to disaster.

Because the Advisor is responsible for compiling and presenting an accurate picture of security threats and other critical situations, it is vitally important that the person appointed to this position has credibility and integrity. I will leave the implications of misinformation up to your imagination.

With daily reminders of the threat the US faces from Al Qaeda, Iran and North Korea, now more than ever, we need strong, honest leaders.  On September 16, 2012, Susan Rice misled the American people.  Whether it was a direct attempt at deceit or the result of incompetence, we will probably never know.

One thing, however, is clear: the appointment of Susan Rice endangers U.S. national security. How can the American people trust someone who is either an inept puppet or a direct conspirator in a political game? If Rice has purposely deceived or been ignorant enough to spread lies unwittingly, what’s to keep the past from replaying itself?  Only then, who knows the consequences?

(Katie Hillery is a contributing editor for California Political Review.)

I’m not surprised that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have been waging war on the news media. They and other members of the Obama team have always struck me as elitists who don’t think really intelligent or worthwhile people would go into journalism.

Photo courtesy Joe Crimmings Photography, flickr

That’s not an uncommon view among politicians, corporate bosses, well-paid professionals and parents who fret that their daughters and sons are choosing the low-paid and scorned media business instead of law or medical school.

Understanding that helps explain the Obama administration’s efforts to catch those who leaked information to Associated Press reporters and to James Rosen, Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent. The Justice Department subpoenaed phone records and traced when Rosen entered and left the State Department headquarters.

These are extraordinary steps to take against journalists engaged in their daily work. A debate is now raging in the news business over whether the reporters and their sources threatened national security.

Walter Pincus, veteran national security reporter for The Washington Post, wrote that whoever told The Associated Press about a CIA operation that infiltrated al-Qaida and Rosen about North Korean plans for a nuclear test “were not whistleblowers exposing government misdeeds. They harmed national security and broke the law.”

That’s a minority view, counter to the strongly expressed opinions of a majority of journalists who believe, as I do, that the AP reporters and Rosen were engaged in legitimate newsgathering.

Many Obama fans are shocked and appalled at his administration’s relentless effort to punish the sources of these stories and to use police state methods against the reporters publishing them.

I’m not. Even though I have been an Obama booster, much to the disgust of some of Truthdig’s readers, I have long thought that the president and his staff hold the news media in low regard.

Obama’s tightly controlled re-election campaign showed his contempt for the press.

Jeremy W. Peters revealed in The New York Times in July how the Obama press office in Chicago insisted on veto power over what reporters quoted in interviews with campaign officials. “The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything mildly provocative,” Peters wrote. There was some of this in Mitt Romney’s campaign too, but not with the efficiency and dedication of the Obama team.

Even those covering the campaign at the lowest grass-roots level, as I did, saw the short leash the Chicago headquarters held on, for instance, a storefront office on Crenshaw Boulevard in South Los Angeles. Nobody would talk to me there unless I cleared it with the local press secretary. Once I got permission, people were more than willing to tell me what they were doing. I’ve never encountered that sort of top down control before.

The assault on the AP and Fox News’ Rosen was so egregious that even the lapdogs of the Washington press corps have been moved to indignation. Ordinarily, they submit to Obama’s contemptuous treatment and take pleasure in his witty speeches at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Obama’s attitude, I bet, is as much cultural as it is legal.

The image of the press as something scurrilous is deeply rooted in our society. University of Southern California journalism professor Joe Saltzman, who heads USC Annenberg’s Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture program, said in an interview with a faculty colleague, blogger Henry Jenkins, “When your favorite aunt asks you why would anyone go into journalism, a profession filled with arrogant, impolite reporters who invade people’s privacy, make up stories and sensationalize the news, where is she getting her information? She probably doesn’t know any journalists, has never visited a newsroom, and has no idea how reporters work. Yet she has very specific ideas about who journalists are and how they behave. And she learned this by watching journalists in the movies and on television and reading about them in novels.”

From my years in reporting about the rich and powerful, circles Obama now travels in, I have found they feel the same as Saltzman’s mythical favorite aunt. In fact, their attitude may be stronger because of class and educational biases. This doesn’t just apply to Obama. The Ivy League and big corporations and law firms have provided many Cabinet and staff members for other administrations. Having gained privilege and wealth, they don’t understand why an intelligent, talented person would take another course.

As Saltzman said, “Surveys continue to show that most Americans want a free press that is always there to protect them from authority, from Big Business and Big Government, and give them a free flow of diverse information. But those same surveys also show that most Americans harbor a deep suspicion about the media, worrying about their perceived power, their meanness and negativism, their attacks on institutions and people, their intrusiveness and callousness, their arrogance and bias.”

Americans who feel that way might ask why a decent woman or man would go into such a business. Why would journalists try to obtain material that government officials, from the president on down, consider secret? Have they no respect for authority?

I think journalists should question authority, right from the beginning, when their first tasks are digging up hidden local police reports and crooked city hall contracts. From there, those who stick with it will go on to try to open up the secrets of the highest levels of government, an unpopular but honorable task, no matter what your aunt says. 

(Bill Boyarsky is a journalist and blogs at truthdig.com where this column first appeared. Visit truthdig.org for other prominent writers like Robert Scheer, Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges. Retrieved from CityWatch.)

In the mid-1970s, when I was a law student at Pepperdine and California state chairman of a conservative volunteer group, the Young Americans for Freedom, we began to get visits at the YAF offices from a brusque older gentleman named Howard Jarvis.

I had heard Jarvis during his appearances on Ray Briem’s late-night talk show on KABC radio, on which Jarvis made the case that real property taxes were too high and that somebody damn well ought to do something about them. When he started dropping by our offices, at 1250 Wilshire Blvd, just west of downtown Los Angeles, he emphasized how important it was that our members’ “college-aged students” know all about real property taxes and help him circulate petitions to qualify a ballot proposition to lower them. When I invited Howard to speak to the University of Southern California chapter of YAF in 1977, he readily agreed — and managed to convince about 20 clueless teenagers that they should be concerned about real property taxes that none of them even needed to pay.

The story of Howard Jarvis, when it is recounted on occasions like this week’s 35th anniversary of Proposition 13, is rightly remembered as the enormous political moment it was, when California and the nation were turned upside down by the largest tax cut in state history, giving momentum to Reagan’s historic election as president two years later and changing politics and government in the Golden State forever.

What is forgotten is that Jarvis was in most ways an ordinary man and very much a person of a time and place: Los Angeles of the 1970s. He could drop by our office because he was usually around. He lived not too far away, on Crescent Heights Boulevard, and had an office in mid-Wilshire at the Apartment Association of Los Angeles.

And his story, whether you are a fan of Prop. 13 or not, is a timely reminder that, if you have a powerful idea and a willingness to reach out to people, you don’t have to be a practiced politician like Jerry Brown or Pete Wilson, a Hollywood star like Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger, or even a cunning strategist like Richard Nixon to leave a legacy.

I went to work for Jarvis and was with him in 1978 as he convinced Californians to adopt Prop. 13. I remember both the public Jarvis — a passionate man, with more than a little flair — and the private Jarvis, who lived a quiet and typical Los Angeles life. Indeed, the informality and open-mindedness of that time and place “a Los Angeles where you’d think nothing of starting a conversation with a stranger over a big idea, or dropping by an office without an appointment” helped make Prop. 13 possible.

Howard was a penny pincher who wore cheap suits he bought on sale at the Zachary All discount store at 5467 Wilshire, not too far from his home. Howard’s wife, Estelle, once told me she didn’t want Howard in expensive suits, because when giving speeches he often set them on fire by absent-mindedly sticking his lit corn-cob pipe in one of the pockets. I can attest to this, because after I graduated from law school and became a full-time aide to Jarvis, I not only watched him do this once but also discovered that more than one of his business suits from Zachary All had those familiar burn marks at the pockets. When he got excited, Howard would puff harder on his pipe, and this created a lot of excess “tobacco juice.” During one unfriendly interview with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, Howard got agitated and started puffing hard on the pipe. At one point, sitting behind his big, false desk with no drawers, Jarvis leaned forward and spit some of the excess tobacco juice into a waste can. The reporter, on the other side of the desk without benefit of a full view, filed a story noting that at one point in the interview Jarvis “opened his desk drawer and spit into it.”

Howard was a man of simple tastes. He used to tell me that his favorite meal was Estelle’s corn soup. While I was at Jarvis’ home one time I happened to observe the preparation of Howard’s favorite meal, which I was surprised to learn consisted of one can of Del Monte creamed corn mixed into a cup of whole milk, simmered to just below boiling and plopped into a bowl.

His taste in beverages was ordinary too. He liked vodka — “the cheaper the better” he told one of my colleagues during a liquor store stop. And he didn’t make a big deal out of when to drink it. I once carried Jarvis’ briefcase and accompanied him to an interview with a reporter in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston. The only thing in his briefcase that day was his bottle of vodka. I call that flair.

It is hard to picture California’s leaders today wearing thrifty suits, ordering “the cheapest vodka ya got” at their trendy wine bars, or getting a kick out of the simplest of meals. But trading up to premium brand cocktails doesn’t seem to have helped our politicians to accomplish anything too extraordinary.

During the Prop. 13 campaign in June 1978, just about every politician, business association and labor union warned of dire consequences to the state if it was enacted. The measure had two things going for it: the support of an over-taxed electorate, and the determination of an otherwise ordinary guy named Howard Jarvis. When the votes were counted, the measure passed by 2-to-1 statewide. It lowered the property tax burden on average Californians by about 60 percent and, according to research by the economist Dr. Arthur Laffer, unleashed an unprecedented economic expansion. Overall property tax revenues came back in six years.

I am well aware that not everyone sees Prop. 13 the same way. Californians are still arguing about it 35 years later. But the polls show that ordinary Californians still side with Jarvis. I think one reason for that is that he lived among them.

(James Lacy is an election lawyer, political consultant and frequent blogger on capoliticalreview.com and flashreport.org. Originally published on Zocalo Public Square.)

The Republican Party needs to start back at the basics –and the crux of that basis is data. We need to know what the voter thinks, wants, and will do to vote. Voters are smart. Therefore, to win public office, a political party needs to know who their voter is, where they are, and what they care about. Finally, the party needs to know all the digital ways to communicate with the voter.

Lately, it seems that Republican consultants have decided that they decide all these points either through osmosis or what they hear through groupthink. And they have been making an obscene amount of money on running bad campaigns.

Currently, it appears some light has fallen onto Republican circles. Several Republican groups are trying to develop “voter platform groups.” Voter platforms give campaigns access to massive voter data that can be digitized and put into Apps and on Twitter and other outlets.

However, notice I said groups. These groups are based on different principles striving for different goals. Too often, they are making petty arguments amongst themselves, which, it seems, is what Republicans do these days. We Republicans are better than this.

What I see is large egos and policy differences getting in the way of a great political party.

To me, corrective action is simple. Go to the Silicon Valley, pay the tech experts their enormous and well-earned fees, and get the data. We certainly have paid far more on unsuccessful campaigns these recent years.

Ask questions such as what do voters want today, for their children, for their grandchild. What are their priorities? Develop a voter platform. The Silicon Valley wizards can guide us in how do disseminate this information to lists and how we develop these lists to build a voter platform. This investment would be better than what was spent on the last two presidential campaigns combined.

My fellow Republicans, I have worked with the best Republicans in my lifetime. But now the party looks foolish. We need to join the 21st Century and have ideas for the 21st Century. We need to disseminate these ideas. Quit arguing amongst ourselves! Quit being petty. We are better than this. We need to be better to build back the party and to win again.

(Karen Spencer is the owner of Spencer-Roberts & Associates. Originally posted on Fox and Hounds.)

How’s Obamacare working out? On her Web site, state Senate Speaker Pro Tem Nora Campos, D-San Jose, wrote:

“Much of our focus, early in 2013, will be on health care. The legislature will work with Governor Jerry Brown to implements the federal Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] in ways that make the most sense for California.”

A May 31 Sacramento Bee editorial enthused:

“Californians can breathe a sigh of relief over a crucial first step in implementing health care reform. State officials last week unveiled the health plans and premium rates that will be available under the California health exchange. They show the market is working as intended — actually better.

“Thirty-three health plans – including some from out of state — competed to offer plans for the uninsured who don’t get insurance through an employer, through Medicare (the federal insurance program for the elderly) or Medi-Cal (the federal-state partnership providing insurance for lower-income Americans). Thirteen plans were selected….

“The competition has brought the rates lower than expected — even for so-called ‘young invincibles.’ Some experts have worried that younger people would choose to pay the penalty ($95 or 1 percent of income in 2014, and increasing in later years) rather than buy insurance.”

“Young invincibles” are healthy kids who take a chance they won’t need medical care except in an emergency. Then they’ll just pick up the tab themselves, or go on welfare to get government health care.

It’s crucial to get them into the system paying high premiums because then, as with Social Security and Medicare, they become the slaves that pay for the older folks who are less healthy and run up costs for the system when they get sick.

That means the youngsters will have less money of their own. So they’ll run up even more college debt. Or they won’t be able to save enough money to start new companies. America will continue to fall behind the rest of the world in technological growth, as such companies founded by youngsters as Facebook, Microsoft and Apple never get formed in the future.

Reality

The reality from Forbes:

“Last week, the state of California claimed that its version of Obamacare’s health insurance exchange would actually reduce premiums. ‘These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard,’ boasted Peter Lee, executive director of the California exchange. But the data that Lee released tells a different story: Obamacare, in fact, will increase individual-market premiums in California by as much as 146 percent.

“One of the most serious flaws with Obamacare is that its blizzard of regulations and mandates drives up the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own.

“This problem will be especially acute when the law’s main provisions kick in on January 1, 2014, leading many to worry about health insurance ‘rate shock.’…

“Lee’s claims that there won’t be rate shock in California were repeated uncritically in some quarters.”

Such as the Bee.

Forbes explains:

“Here’s what happened. Last week, Covered California—the name for the state’s Obamacare-compatible insurance exchange—released the rates that Californians will have to pay to enroll in the exchange.

“ ‘The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market,’ the state said in a press release, ‘ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.’

“That’s the sentence that led to all of the triumphant commentary from the left. ‘This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,’ exulted Peter Lee.

“Except that Lee was making a misleading comparison. He was comparing apples—the plans that Californians buy today for themselves in a robust individual market—and oranges—the highly regulated plans that small employers purchase for their workers as a group. The difference is critical.

“If you’re a 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (By ‘average,’ I mean the median monthly premium across California’s 19 insurance rating regions.)

“The next cheapest plan, the ‘bronze’ comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH), the median cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92.

“In other words, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.”

Despite the writings of the purblind editorialists at the Bee, Obamacare keeps being revealed as a crony capitalist scheme to enrich Big Pharma, Big Hospital, Big Insurance and Big Medicne at the expense of everyone, especially young people.

What connects the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, the Associated Press scandal, and now the Fox News scandal? The federal bureaucracy has become so large that no one appears to be able to keep it under control.

It is disturbing that the President of the United States first heard that the IRS was targeting organizations based upon their political views on the evening news. Obama claims he was completely unaware of requests for greater security at our embassies and attempts to intimidate the press – issues of significant importance.

We do not expect the president to micromanage the federal government. However, we should expect our government to be transparent enough that our highest elected official is at least aware of issues of major importance. The sheer size and scope of our federal government has led us down the path heading towards total coercion by an army of unelected bureaucrats.

Herbert Spencer, the 19^th century economist and political theorist, made it clear that we must establish what the proper role of government is before we embark on policy prescriptions. In the Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers said that governments are instituted to secure our unalienable rights.

Unfortunately the federal government has taken on a role much greater than this.

Today’s Washington limits the price at which you can sell your labor. It determines how many miles per gallon your car must get, whether your car has airbags, what size toilet you may have, what your children’s education must entail, what drugs your doctor can prescribe. . . the list is endless.

The vast majority of these laws and regulations reduce our freedom rather than expand it.  In The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek wrote that the role of government is to minimize the total amount of coercion in society, or to maximize your ability to act according to your own plan. For example, a law against theft.  In the absence of such a law the thief’s plan is to take your car-  and your plan is to keep your car.  Obviously both cannot act according to their own plan, so the law is there to minimize coercion and keep the strong from preying upon the weak.

Our federal government is not designed to limit coercion and maximize your freedom. Rather, the opposite is true. Much of what Washington does is to force you to act according to someone else’s plan—the plan of Congress and the bureaucrats. This has resulted in a bureaucracy so large that no one is in control of those with governmental powers.

The acknowledgement of the White House that it doesn’t know what the heck is going on in its own administration should be used as a rallying cry for those who yearn for that freedom for which the signers of the Declaration mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

(Gary Wolfram is the William E. Simon professor in economics and public policy at Hillsdale College and president of Hillsdale Policy Group, a consulting firm specializing in taxation and policy analysis. Originally published on Detroit News.)

This week’s big story is the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Who knew what and when will be the media focus. But what about the underlying principles? How intrusive have we allowed our government to become and what is the role of the tax code?

As an economist I look at the incentives of the system, and presume that people respond to incentives. This is the basis for understanding both how our economic system – and (as the late Noble Laureate James Buchanan and his colleague Gordon Tullock showed) our political system – work.

We have a tax structure that is intrusive, complicated, and unclear – one that has characteristics that Madison warned us about in Federalist 62: So voluminous that it cannot be read, so incoherent that it cannot be understood, so unpredictable that no one who knows what the law is today can know what it will be tomorrow. We should not be surprised that those who are in power will use it to interfere with our freedoms.

The solution is not going to be to replace the head of the IRS or set up more rules for the bureaucrats. The solution is to not grant your federal government so much power. The first step will be to institute tax reform, as Congressman Dave Camp is attempting. We must institute, in the name of freedom, a tax code that does not attempt to alter our behavior so it fits the wishes of those in power.

The tax code should have low marginal rates and a broad base – something any standard public finance text will point out. But this is not just for what economists call efficiency, but also for our liberty. Each of us should be understand how we are taxed. The bureaucracy should have little power to affect us.

The IRS targeting of certain groups gives us a chance to see – from a different angle – how our liberty is threatened by a massive bureaucracy enforcing a tax code designed not just to raise revenue but to affect our actions.

(Gary Wolfram is the William E. Simon professor in economics and public policy at Hillsdale College and president of Hillsdale Policy Group, a consulting firm specializing in taxation and policy analysis. Originally published on Detroit News.)

The Obama administration is looking for any good news as their culture of scandals unravels. What better economic development than a reduction in deficit finances for a breath of fiscal cheer. The essential questions that persist about a stalled economy and a suffering middle class still are unanswered. In addition, the premise that raising taxes, especially on the besieged tax payer, is a productive method to close the gap on public spending, is simply more of the same flawed policy that contributes to the increase in the national poverty level.

When the Congressional Budget Office issues their Updated Budget Projections: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023, the assumption that spending will not increase is about as plausible as a dramatic reduction in food stamps is probable.

 “If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, CBO estimates, the smallest shortfall since 2008. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit this year—at 4.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—will be less than half as large as the shortfall in 2009, which was 10.1 percent of GDP.

Because revenues, under current law, are projected to rise more rapidly than spending in the next two years, deficits in CBO’s baseline projections continue to shrink, falling to 2.1 percent of GDP by 2015. However, budget shortfalls are projected to increase later in the coming decade, reaching 3.5 percent of GDP in 2023, because of the pressures of an aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, and growing interest payments on federal debt. By comparison, the deficit averaged 3.1 percent of GDP over the past 40 years and 2.4 percent in the 40 years before fiscal year 2008, when the most recent recession began. During the next 10 years, both revenues and outlays are projected to be above their 40-year averages as a percentage of GDP.”

To the extent that borrowing less is real, not everyone believes it is desirable. From the Christian Science Monitor, Federal deficit falling fast: Is that a good thing … or a bad thing?

“The federal government is on track to spend $82 billion less this year than last year, while pulling $363 billion more in tax revenue out of consumer wallets.

“The [deficit] is coming down too fast given the still weak economy,” says Jared Bernstein, an economist and former Obama administration adviser, in his blog.”

Pray tell, the Keynesians are coming back out of the closet once again now that sequester-related spending cuts start going into effect. When will big government proponents celebrate the first positive reduction in the growth of federal spending?

A more balanced assessment follows:

“A USA Today poll of economists in February found that many see long-term deficit reduction as a plus for the economy in the short run. Fully 9 in 10 said that, if a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction is reached, it would make the economy at least somewhat stronger next year.”

The quest for a “grand bargain” on a total revamping of the federal tax code that rejects the failed record of social engineering and corporate welfare would be the most productive development in monetary sanity since the FDR era.

As starved as the taxpayer is for a semblance of optimism in the financial health of the economy, the money-spinning drag coming out of a federal government godfather, is a fundamental reason why private enterprise is unwilling to take the risk of business expansion. As long as the consumer is unemployed or fearful of losing their part time job, how is it possible to ramp up the productive side of the equation, when higher taxes are expected from Obamacare?

The wild card that will scuttle any relief from a reduced deficit squarely comes from the inevitable rise in interest rates. The CBO attempts to provide an answer in the analysis, How Different Future Interest Rates Would Affect Budget Deficits. Now get ready to increase your dosage of hypertension medicine.

“Not only was inflation higher in the 1980s and 1990s than is currently projected for the next decade, real interest rates (nominal rates adjusted for inflation) were also higher during those periods than in CBO’s baseline projections for the coming decade. If real interest rates over the next decade ended up matching those historical values, it might be because the economy (and thus demand for credit) was stronger than in CBO’s projections. In that case, revenues would be greater than the amounts projected in the baseline, offsetting some of the increase in interest costs.”

What kind of distorted world do the bureaucratic inbreeds populate? Any consumer who visits a supermarket knows all too well that inflation is dramatically higher than that reported in government projections. Nevertheless, assuming CBO estimates, the Wall Street Journal in, If Rates Rise, Larger Deficit Follows, offers a fateful warning.

“If interest rates rise to the averages seen between 1991 and 2000 — that is, 4.9% on the 3-month Treasury bill and 6.7% on the 10-year Treasury note in 2023 — then the deficit would be $274 billion bigger in that year than it would otherwise be — and $1.44 trillion bigger over 10 years.

Or, in a slightly different scenario, if interest rates rise as the highest 10 predictions of the private-sector economists surveyed by the Blue Chip Economic Indicators — that is, 4.5% on the 3-month Treasury and 5.8% on the 10-year in 2023 — then the federal deficit will be $157 billion bigger in that year then it would otherwise be, and $1.14 trillion bigger over ten years.”

The WSJ conclusion: “But the point is clear: A government that borrows a lot will spend a lot more on interest when rates return to normal.”

Even if you want to believe in the official projections, events have a way of going from bad to worse. La La Land has a talent of fostering “good government” for the political class. The rest of us are left to pay the interest on their deficit spending.

(James Hall is the publisher of Breaking All the Rules, a site committed to defending genuine “paleo” conservative populism.)