Beyond Red & Blue

Will the Senate kill health care reform? Will it let anything live?

Matt Yglesias thinks that the US Senate will stymie President Obama in any attempt to enact health care reform because -- well, because that's what the US Senate does:

The fact of the matter is that the Senate is what it is—to wit, an institution with an enormous status quo bias, that’s also biased in favor of conservative areas. On top of that, the entire structure of the US Congress with its bicameralism and multiple overlapping committees is biased toward making it easy for concentrated interests to block reform. Between them, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, Kristen Gillibrand, Bill Nelson, Dick Durbin, Roland Burris, Arlen Specter, Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown, Carl Levin, Amy Klobuchar, Kay Hagan, Bob Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Mark Warner, Jim Webb, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Evan Bayh represent 50 percent of the country’s population. But that only adds up to 22 Senators—you need thirty-eight more to pass a bill.

There's a codfish hanging in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Maybe there should be a scorpion watching over the US Senate.

House member lets own house go to hell

I didn't think I'd ever see a fresh, new illustration of the "all politics is local" dictum, but a congresswoman from California has come up with an interesting twist by pissing off everyone on her street. From "Congresswoman's abandoned house angers neighbors," in the Los Angeles Times:

"I wouldn't want anyone that irresponsible to represent me," said Bailey, like Richardson a liberal Democrat. "What I don't get is how she has the time to visit with Fidel Castro but doesn't have time for her own house. If you can't manage your own household, you probably shouldn't get involved in international affairs."

Virginia Democratic primary results: No Clinton coattails for McAuliffe

The Electoral Map has a great map, with analysis, of this week's Democratic gubernatorial primary in Virginia. Former Clinton advisor Terry McAuliffe was trounced in the counties where Hillary Clinton did best against Barack Obama in last year's presidential primary.

Spare the rod, spoil your local park

Several states are trying to save money by shutting down prisons. This may mean consolidating inmates into fewer facilities, but it's also the case that crime rates have dropped over the past couple of decades, and there's a movement away from prison sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses. But a Stateline.org story on the trend points out that some cities and towns aren't happy to lose a source of cheap labor:

In Kansas, local officials have opposed the closing of a minimum-security prison in El Dorado, about 30 miles east of Wichita, saying they don’t know how they will keep up with park maintenance and other community jobs that the inmates perform. A Republican state representative from the region is working to get the state corrections department to change its mind and keep the prison open.

Here in New York, work crews from the Sullivan Annex have stocked trout in local rivers, shoveled around fire hydrants after snowstorms, worked at a nearby food bank and cleaned up campgrounds, said Dahlman, the prison officer. Now that the state has announced it is closing the prison, he said, crews are accepting fewer requests from churches and other community groups in case they won’t be able to finish the jobs.

Look on the bright side: If parks go untended, perhaps the "broken windows" theory will kick in and crime rates will shoot upward, thereby justifying the reopening of the prisons and restoring the means to clean up parks without taxing the citizens who enjoy them.

Are Southern whites conservative because of their religion or their geography?

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire links to a Quinnipac poll showing a big difference in how Catholics and white Protestants view Barack Obama:

There is a big religious split as white Catholics approve of the President 57 - 33 percent while white Protestants split 44 - 42 percent, the ... poll of 2,041 registered voters nationwide finds. Jews back Obama 76 - 12 percent.

There are a lot of polls that compare white Catholics and white Protestants, but they have differences beyond religion, as white Protestants are more likely to live in Southern rural areas and white Catholics are more likely to live in Northeastern urban areas. I would love to see the numbers for Southern Catholics and Northern Protestants to see whether there still is big difference in religious groups when geography is removed from the equation.

In a similar vein, this CNN story got a lot of play this week:

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

A lot of commentators have tried to make sense of these results in a purely religious light (or have said they don't make sense). But, again, I wonder whether the "Southern culture of honor," which arguably includes a greater tolerance of violence and isn't an explicitly religious code, explains the differences. Do white evangelicals in Maine or Michigan feel that torture is justifiable? Do atheists in Georgia and Texas  support torture to an even greater degree than their churchgoing neighbors?

The case for a dynastic US Senate

Matthew Yglesias is pretty brutal on the senators who voted for a parliamentary procedure, sponsored by Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns, that makes it more difficult to pass "climate change legislation involving a cap and trade system":

This is good for Republicans, since it helps them achieve their goal of destroying the planet. And it’s good for Democrats, since it helps them achieve their goal of pretending to try to avoid the destruction of the planet while ensuring that, in practice, the planet is destroyed. And Senators Johanns was born in 1950, so he’ll almost surely be dead by 2050 (along with countless residents of flood-prone areas of the developing world) so it’s basically all good.

The solution is obvious: Allow all current senators to pass their seats on to their children, and then to their children, etc. but only as long as the US -- and their particular states -- continue to exist. That gives the current crew an incentive to make sure they're actually bequeathing something of value. In particular, the senators from low sea-level states like Florida and Louisiana would suddenly become much more worried about climate change.

Under this system, an inherited Senate seat would not be subject to the estate tax, even if it is an "[indubitably] valuable thing."

73 maps that explain what happened last year in politics

The Electoral Map blog's Patrick Ottenhoff has posted an informative and amusing 73-image slideshow of some of the "greatest hits" in political geography from last year. See Rudy Guiliani's map ostensibly demonstrating his general election appeal, Dick Morris "flexing his idiocy" with an Electoral College prediction, a map of foreclosure hotspots, and a rundown of which congressmen voted against the bank bailout bill at a crucial point in last year's campaign. Of course, there are also color-coded and "bubble" maps of results in key presidential primaries and in the November race.

Worth checking out. Massachusetts, predictably, does not play much of a role in the cartographic fun.

An Obama backlash among rural political scientists?

Barack Obama is the most urban president in US history (no horseback riding or clearing brush on his vacations), so it's inevitable that Jeffersonians are trying to shore up their forever-disproportionate power in American politics. Exhibit A: An article by a University of Iowa professor and a University of Missouri professor defending Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. Here's the concluding paragraph of "Iowa: The Most Representative State?" in the January issue of PS: Political Science & Politics:

Is Iowa representative? Yes, at least reasonably so. And when it is not, that is often because it boasts a superior performance socially (e.g., educational attainment) or politically (e.g., voting turnout). Further, with respect to other social goods, it might be mentioned that the politics of Iowa is well known to be corruption free. If indicators on corruption had been included in our analysis, they would be expected to boost its ranking higher. With respect to the leading dimension of economic conditions, which we did measure, Iowa is unambiguously the most representative state in the country. In addition, its geographic and historic centrality, commented on initially, should not be forgotten. All things considered, there seems no cause to take away Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential selection status. If one state must hold this position then it is hard to make a better pick. Although of course not impossible, if one accepts the first-place ranking of Kansas.

What this supposedly representative state does not have is any of the 109 largest cities in America -- or a population that is less than 91 percent non-Hispanic white. (Kansas is indeed more cosmopolitan: Wichita is the nation's 51st biggest city, and the state has a population that is 81 percent non-Hispanic white.)

The Catholic Church and the 9-year-old rape victim

The family of a 9-year-old rape victim in Brazil was excommunicated by the Catholic Church for allowing her to get an abortion. This is prompting a lot of outrage on the Web, with Dana Goldstein calling it "disgusting" and Steve Benen remarking that "A lot of phrases come to mind when describing all of this, but 'pro-life' isn't one of them."

I'm pro-choice (not just for rape victims but for anybody old enough to become pregnant), but I can identify with Church officials in this situation. I'm also against the death penalty, and I've encountered a lot of people who think they can change my mind on the issue if they can just come up with a horrific enough example of murder. They're completely missing the point.

In the same vein, the Catholic Church believes that it's not truly against abortion unless it's against abortion even when faced with this kind of extreme situation -- a situation that, if you believe in the devil, might have been devised expressly to break the Church's will on a moral principle. The Catholic Church's stance on abortion is similar to the ACLU's stance on the First Amendment and its protection of hateful or "disgusting" speech. I happen to think the Catholic Church is on the wrong side and the ACLU is on the right side in this analogy, but they are both behaving similarly.

"Pork" on Capitol Hill, perks on Beacon Hill

Cross-posted on CW Unbound.

Both the federal government and the Massachusetts government are facing huge budget shortfalls, but they apparently offer radically different examples of supposedly wasteful spending. In Washington, the devil is in "earmarks"; in Massachusetts, generous pensions for state employees elicit the loudest catcalls. 

Conservative opponents of President Obama's stimulus bill and proposed federal budget have focused almost exclusively on earmarked programs, particularly those with a scientific bent. (Well, the Manhattan Institute is floating the idea of scrapping Head Start, but it's an outlier.) Most of the outrages seem quite defensible upon closer inspection, which makes Republicans such as Sen. John McCain seem indistinguishable from the Bay State's own Carla "Small Government Is Beautiful" Howell. In McCain's Twitter remarks from the floor of the Senate, he repeatedly admits that he doesn't know or care what a program does -- as in "$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi - how does one manage a beaver?" The logic is that if government does it, it's inherently wasteful, so the details don't matter.

(BTW, it seems like an eternity ago that Bill Weld, running as a Republican for governor of Massachusetts mocked his Democratic opponent as insufficiently interventionist in the preservation of open space: ''Would you tell us what plans, if any, you have for the preservation of open space in Massachusetts other than leave it to beavers?'')

Burrito shop saves Downtown Crossing!

I guess you work with the downtown development that you have, not the downtown development that you wish you had. From today's Boston Globe:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino strolled part of the Downtown Crossing district of Boston yesterday, shaking hands with enthusiastic shop owners and celebrating the grand opening of a burrito shop....

"It's important to have people walking there," Menino said after cutting the ribbon at Boloco, a chain restaurant that has large windows that open onto Province Street.

The next time you walk past the section of Washington Street that used to be Filene's, remind yourself: No, this isn't Berlin circa 1945, for I'm within walking distance of a Cajun burrito with organic tofu!

What you need to know about Karl Rove

I have no comment on the substance of this Karl Rove column in the Wall Street Journal, but I have to note that he has one of the longest author IDs I've ever seen:

About Karl Rove

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.

Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.

I'll put a lot more stock into what Karl Rove writes now that I know that his PR firm did work for the Moderate Party of Sweden!

If Rove follows the lead of Roland Burris, he may need a zoning variance to accommodate the height of his gravestone.

Obama's excellent trip to the science museum

The Boston Globe's Foon Rhee finds it "curious" that President Obama jetted out to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to sign the federal stimulus bill. (Many Globe readers instead call it "hypocritical" to use so much fuel on the way to sign a bill aimed at increasing "green" jobs.) Rhee wonders if the setting is "something of an in-your-face move to opponents of funding for the arts."

I prefer to think it has something to do with this:

"While we were working to eliminate these pork barrel earmarks, he voted for nearly $1 billion in pork barrel earmark projects including $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago," [John] McCain said during the second of three presidential debates, blasting what became an unsuccessful effort to rebuild the 40-year-old Zeiss Optical Skyshow projector at the Adler Planetarium.

I'm IN Tucson but not OF Tucson, says state rep.

The Arizona Daily Star has an item on a state representative from Tucson who objects to having that city associated with his name, as in the ID "state Rep. Frank Antenori, R-Tucson." (Hat tip to Alan Ehrenhalt at The Ballot Box.)

Antenori prefers the more generic “Southern Arizona,” because he rightly points out that his legislative district, No. 30, reaches far past the city limits.

But nevertheless, Antenori does live in Tucson, in East side Mesquite Ranch, to be exact. “I don’t represent Tucson as a whole,” said Antenori. “I live in Tucson, but on the very edge of it — 400 feet from the border.”

Not that Antenori's attitude is so surprising. Expressing disdain toward big cities has long been considered a prerequisite to winning suburban votes. This is even true in densely populated Massachusetts. See, for example, this account by Jon Keller of a 2001 special election in a district that was mostly suburban but also included a big chunk of Boston:

In a mass mailing and print ad campaign targeted at suburban voters during the final days before the special primary preceding the election, [state Sen. Brian] Joyce argued for changes in a state formula for distributing public-school aid that favored Boston at the expense of the suburbs. "THEY WANT TO KEEP TAKING OUR MONEY AND GIVING IT TO THEIR NEIGHBORHOODS!" screamed the ad. "DON'T LET THEM DO IT!" His opponents, Joyce wrote - both Boston city councillors - opposed a change to the education funding formula that would benefit suburban schools and taxpayers.

Better know a district, through Google Maps

See my post on CW Unbound about using Google Maps to see where your congressman (actually, his or her staff) hangs out in the district.