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Libertarians, Presidential race 2012

POLITICO: Gary Johnson to drop out of GOP primary to run as Libertarian

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As expected, former Gov. Johnson’s preparing  to run as a Libertarian.  If he  gets the party’s nomination, he will be the second GOP politician in a row to run as the LP nominee.  (Bob Barr was a former GOP Congressman who ran as a right-libertarian in ’08, and Johnson’s a former governor who’d run as a left-libertarian.)

It’s a good thing that the party’s able to attract former state or federal officeholders, and a sign that the LP (and not just libertarianism) is becoming more mainstream.

From POLITICO:

Gary Johnson will quit the Republican primaries and seek the Libertarian Party nomination instead, POLITICO has learned.

The former two-term New Mexico governor, whose campaign for the GOP nomination never caught fire, will make the announcement at a press conference in Santa Fe on Dec. 28. Johnson state directors will be informed of his plans on a campaign conference call Tuesday night, a Johnson campaign source told POLITICO.

The move has been expected for weeks — Johnson had run a New Hampshire-centric effort that never got him past a blip in the polls. He appeared at only two nationally televised debates, and only one in which other major candidates took part.

See, Gary Johnson to drop out of GOP primary to run as Libertarian – Reid J. Epstein and Ginger Gibson – POLITICO.com.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.21.11

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Good morning.

There’s a slight chance of rain or snow in Whitewater today, with a high of forty-degrees. In Nashville, there’s also a chance of showers, but with a high temperature of sixty-one.

In 1879, a day of particular, industrial tragedy for Wisconsin, as the Wiscosnin Historical Society recalls:

1879 – Fire Destroys Phillip Brewing Company
On this date fire destroyed the Phillip Brewing Company’s malthouse, grain elevators and office building in Milwaukee. [Source: American Breweriana Association]

We’ve managed to carry on, just fine.

Each year, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas brings a few blockbuster, big-budget films.  Fans learn of these offerings long beforehand, and eagerly await their arrival.  Perhaps Tintin is one of those films this year. It seems the perfect adventure for a holiday film:

Google’s puzzle for today is straightforward: “Which is longer, the largest cruise ship now in service or the largest aircraft carrier now in service?”

Setting aside the answer, wouldn’t one want a world where the cruise ship was larger? Wouldn’t one prefer a world where one wouldn’t need aircraft carriers at all? That’s not the world we have, but wouldn’t it be the world for which one would hope? more >>

Foreign Affairs, Religion

The Continuing Global Growth of Christianity

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There’s a distinction between separation of church & state and secularization, although the distinction isn’t always grasped. America and France both have a separation of church from state, but France is the more secular society. Religion is more visible in American civil society, compared with France (if anything, that’s a considerable understatement).

There’s much worry among the religious about secularization in America, but I’d guess it’s unnecessary worry: America is and will remain a predominantly religious country.

Beyond America, this is even more true: religion, and particularly Christianity (yes, Christianity), is flourishing. Historians and demographers have noted this trend, among them Philip Jenkins, and Walter Russell Mead writes about it today in his fine blog:

A new report from the invaluable Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the most important source for information on religion in today’s world, will make a lot of people unhappy. The report looks at religious belief worldwide and finds that Christianity in the last one hundred years grew to become the world’s most widespread and diverse religion as well as the largest. Roughly one third of the world’s almost seven billion people are (or at least say they are) Christian. The second largest religion, Islam, claims about one fourth of the world’s population.

The demographic trends favor Christian expansion in Asia and Africa, and Mead speculates on the influence that expansion may have on democratization and human rights.

See Walter Russell Mead’s Via Meadia Blog.

For the report, see Global Christianity – A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’ s Christian Population.

City, Poverty

Whitewater’s Decade of Child Poverty

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The only way to make an ill person truly and permanently better is to see her condition for what it is; genuine recovery requires an honest diagnosis. Despite my doubts about their program, I respect Roosevelt’s New Dealers’ for their willingness to call a problem a problem. If they had lived to see contemporary Whitewater, they would have been shocked and furious. (See, along these lines, On the Upcoming 2011 Whitewater, Wisconsin Municipal Budget.)

From 2003 to 2010, the Whitewater area has grown poorer, a decline in economic health that threatens personal health, and brings us yet closer to a permanent underclass.

This truth is inescapable, and has hit already-vulnerable residents hardest. In 2003, 9.2% of the children in the Whitewater area lived in poverty. In 2007, that number was 9.9%, and in 2010, the number of impoverished children had soared to 16.6%. (See, data in spreadsheet format.)

These are children, aged five to seventeen, who face hardship each day. One of every six children in the Whitewater area lives this way. This proportion might be even worse if one were to add children under five.

Far from economic gains, the actual circumstances of young residents in our community are worse than earlier in the decade.

Hundreds of Wisconsin communities are doing better than we are.

In fact, local child poverty increased even from 2003 to 2007, a time of economic growth for America. While America was gaining, long before the Great Recession, Whitewater was already slipping behind.

There’s a way to reverse this dark trend, one that will produce greater opportunity for all our residents.

Drastically cut or eliminate restrictions and fees on businesses, cut sharply from so-called leadership posts, and return the money to taxpayers or as services in emergency poverty assistance. At a minimum, hundreds of thousands should be cut or transferred this way, each year, until government is properly limited and responsible to actual needs.

We will not be made prosperous — and for some, the problem isn’t unrealized prosperity but actual hunger — in the myriad empty ways Whitewater’s bureaucrats have tried repetitively.

We’ve grown poorer despite (often because of) big-ticket federal grants, Tech Parks, government-run renewal schemes, ersatz national and international awards, showy celebrations, dishonest and dodgy community surveys, the slanted use of statistics, special breaks and exceptions for insiders, rights violations against workers new to the community, and frequent bumbling through silly project after project.

These problems are not the fault of the many thousands of common people of the area; a few selfish and self-promoting municipal bureaucrats and their apologists have held Whitewater back, and have made her poorer than she would have otherwise been.

Yet, for it all, they will have a legacy, those who strutted about so proudly during these recent years. Prosperity will remember them as the feckless and fumbling clique that presided over a seventy-seven percent increase in child poverty — to one-in-six Whitewater-area children — in just seven years.

Law, Laws/Regulations, Wisconsin

The Journal Sentinel on Justice Gableman’s Receipt of Free Legal Services (and a bit about the story, itself)

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Over the the Journal Sentinel, there’s a story about Justice Gableman’s deciding votes on cases in which the Michael Best & Friedrich firm represented the victorious party, despite his receipt of free legal services from that firm:

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman in two cases cast the deciding vote in favor of parties represented by a law firm that gave him tens of thousands of dollars of free legal services, a review of state records shows.

One of those was a high-stakes case this June that allowed Gov. Scott Walker to implement a law that all but eliminates collective bargaining for most public workers. Gableman was in the 4-3 majority that allowed Walker to prevail. Michael Best & Friedrich – the firm that defended Gableman for free in an ethics case – worked for the state and Walker’s administration in the collective bargaining case.

In addition to the collective bargaining case, Gableman supplied the deciding vote in an opinion he wrote this March that sided with a Michael Best client against the City of Milwaukee over tax assessments.

The Wisconsin Democracy campaign has filed a complaint against Gableman with the state Judicial Commission over the receipt of these free services.

That’s the part of the story about Gableman, but there’s a funny part of the story that’s a story, itself: the use of Rick Esenberg as one of Marley’s sources on the ethics of Gableman’s acceptance of these free services:

Rick Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative public interest law firm, said that determining whether a judge must recuse after receiving legal service depends on several factors, including whether he had recused himself from some past cases, how long ago the law firm had represented him and what the work involved.

“That’s a judgment call,” Esenberg said.

Esenberg’s being evasive when he refers to recusal as a judgment call. Broadly, any decision under these circumstances is — one hopes — an exercise of judgment. If by judgment call Esenberg means that in Gableman’s circumstances there’s no ethically preferable decision between recusal and participation, he should say as much, plainly.

(Two prominent ethicists do say as much: “But two well-known legal ethics experts contacted last week – New York University law professor Stephen Gillers and Indiana University law professor Charles Geyh – said they believed Gableman should not be participating in cases involving Michael Best.”)

Unlike the two legal ethicists who question Gableman’s conduct, Esenberg’s hardly an arms-length evaluator of judicial politics in Wisconsin. He’s an advocate and polemicist. Capable, but not so much as he might think, or want others to think. (I’ve yet to see, for example, someone like the very solid Edward Fallone not get the better of Esenberg.)

Freedom of Speech

New York Civil Liberties Union: Accommodate Christmas Prayer Vigil in Zuccotti Park

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The NYCLU ( a chapter of the ACLU) is advocating on behalf of a group of religious Occupy protesters in New York.  They’re right to do so.  I have decidedly mixed feelings about the Occupy movement’s economic agenda, but speech like this in a park – whether political or religious – should be allowed in a free society.

NEW YORK — The New York Civil Liberties Union today wrote to New York City officials and Brookfield Properties asking them to accommodate a Christmas prayer vigil at Zuccotti Park.

Occupy Faith, which is composed of members of an Occupy Wall Street Christian interest group, is planning to hold a 24-prayer vigil in Zuccotti Park to begin at midnight on Christmas Eve and continue to midnight Christmas Day.

“The city has enabled religious events in parks in the past, including a 1995 mass in Central Park led by Pope John Paul II ,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “It is entirely appropriate for the city to allow these folks to pray together in the park. It should do so without restricting any items the group believes are necessary to express its faith.”

Via NYCLU press release.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.20.11

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Good morning.

If you were in Whitewater today, you’d be in a small Midwestern town with a high temperature of thirty-seven, and partly sunny skies.  In New Orleans, you’d walk through a city during a day of scattered showers and mid-seventies temperatures.

There’s an Urban Forestry Commission meeting at 4:15 PM, and a  Common Council session at 6:30 PM, in Whitewater today.

I see that the Occupy movement has found its heroine.  In this, they’ve done a better job than the Tea Party, Move On, etc.  Although Sarah Palin is a Tea Party favorite, Occupy has an advocate, it seems, who’s as famous and even more captivating.

For those who wondered how Anne Hathaway would play Catwoman, now you know. For those who doubted that Christopher Nolan would keep the next (and final) installment of the Batman series relevant, doubt no more. more >>

Politics, Recall

The WISGOP Ad: Your Money

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In the prior post, The WisDems’ New Ad: I recall, one sees the Democrats’ recall approach. In the ad below, from the Walker campaign, one sees Lt. Gov. Kleefisch answering those who wonder whether the Walker Admin has achieved what it promised. Here’s Your Money:

Watching the two ads, there’s a different presentation of the recall and retention efforts. Despite the stylistic differences, these ads are directed at a similar audience.

For recall proponents, the intended message is one of broad dissatisfaction with Gov. Walker, that he’s out-of-step with ordinary people. To convey this message, the I recall ad uses crowd shots and remarks from frustrated, but ordinary-looking, people.

Although the ad seemingly reminds residents of why they might already be upset at Walker (that they should ‘recall’ their doubts of him), that’s not its only audience. It’s those who might not have a strong opinion who comprise a target just as important: they’re the uncommitted voters whose participation might swing a recall election. Seeing shots of ordinary people expressing dissatisfaction with Gov. Walker is meant to sway them join a supposed majority against him.

The Kleefisch ad (Your Money) is different, but it has a similar target audience: independents or weakly-committed Republicans who may be having doubts about whether Walker has achieved enough to justify the turbulence his policies have brought to the state.

Rebecca Kleefisch isn’t speaking to diehards in this ad; she’s speaking to wavering or hesitant voters, and of those voters, to an audience of women. (Kleefisch sits cross-legged in the ad, as though she were speaking to women in a book club or coffee klatch. The ad’s certainly not intended, and would be useless, in persuading men: men don’t talk to women in this kind of setting. Women talk to other women — at least some suburban women do — in this kind of setting.)

There’s your field of battle, and the different ways by which the parties seek to persuade a common target audience.

Recall

The WisDems’ New Ad: I recall

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The Wisconsin Democrats have a new, 1:45-long ad advocating Gov. Walker’s recall. The ad has two targets: Democrats sure to support a recall, and independents and moderates who may be frustrated or embarrassed by Walker’s supposed stridency (or supposed economic ineffectiveness despite legislative victories). Democrats are the sure votes; it’s persuading moderates that Walker’s more trouble than he’s worth that’s the more important political goal. I think this ad will be effective with those moderate voters.

See what you think:

Via I recall – YouTube.

Uncategorized

Gingrich Collapses in Iowa, as Ron Paul Surges to the Front

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A new poll from Public Policy Polling shows that Ron Paul has taken the lead in the Iowa caucus race, while Newt Gingrich’s support is fading fast. A different Gallup poll shows Grinrich still holding the lead, but slipping, while The New York Times has Paul in the lead as well.

Surprising?  Not at all, and here’s why:

Perhaps the most telling secondary question was, “Do you think Newt Gingrich has strong principles?” Only 36 percent say that he does, but for Paul that number was 73 percent.

Via Politics – The Atlantic Wire.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.19.11

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Good morning.

It’s an increasingly cloudy day with  a high temperature of thirty-nine ahead for Whitewater.  In Austin, TX, they’ll have a day of thunderstorms and a high temperature of sixty-eight.

The housing committee of Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets today at 4 PM.

Amazing, but true: a comet survives a close encounter with the sun.

NASA explains its video of the comet’s path:

Comet Lovejoy survived its encounter with the sun. The second clip shows the comet exiting from behind the right side of the sun, after an hour of travel through its closest approach to the sun. By tracking how the comet interacts with the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, and how material from the tail moves along the sun’s magnetic field lines, solar scientists hope to learn more about the corona. This movie was filmed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in 171 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically shown in yellow.

Google’s puzzle for today is, I think, the oddest they’ve crafted: “You’ve bet a friend you could live longer without water than a cockroach could live without its head. Will you win the bet?”