The Wall Street Journal's editorial board argues, "The AG's attack on voter ID laws may backfire legally and politically."

The Journal continues:

Eric Holder must be amazed that President Obama was elected and he could become Attorney General. That's a fair inference after the Attorney General last Friday blocked South Carolina's voter ID law on grounds that it would hurt minorities. What a political abuse of law.

In a letter to South Carolina's government, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez called the state law?which would require voters to present one of five forms of photo ID at the polls?a violation of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Overall, he noted, 8.4% of the state's registered white voters lack photo ID, compared to 10% of nonwhite voters.

This is the yawning chasm the Justice Department is now using to justify the unprecedented federal intrusion into state election law, and the first denial of a "pre-clearance" Voting Rights request since 1994.

Read the whole piece.

Television producer Norman Lear writes in the Los Angeles Times, "The Occupy Wall Street movement has unleashed patriotic outrage. If you don't want to camp out or protest in the street, find another way to let your voice be heard in the new year."

Lear continues:

Many Americans are in despair, and it has left them open to demagoguery and political manipulation.
...

A year out from the 2012 election, I am already tired of those who use the phrase "American exceptionalism" to reassert the far-right's claim that God, the Founding Fathers and any decent freedom-loving American must share their reactionary political agenda. I embrace the idea too that our nation should be a "shining city on a hill." We are the spiritual heirs to those Americans who struggled to end slavery and segregation, to end child labor and win safe conditions and living wages for workers, to enable every American to enrich his or her community and country by finding a place and a way to flourish in the world. We must make ourselves worthy of that legacy.

Call it the American dream, the American promise or the American way. Whatever term you use, it is imperiled, and worth fighting for. It is that basic, deeply patriotic emotion that I believe is finding expression -- bottom-up, small-d democratic expression -- in the Occupy movement. We can, and I would say must, fully embrace both love of country and outrage at attempts to despoil it. What better cause? What better time?

Lear's misrepresentation of the meaning of 'American exceptionalism' is a good example of the 'demagoguery and political manipulation' he decries earlier in the piece. If you read the whole piece you will see other such examples.

Frankly, not much in Lear's piece is all that new or interesting, except perhaps for the continued hypocrisy and demagoguery. This is nothing new in the Lear family, as his wife Lyn Davis Lear clearly exhibited -- in what appears to be a disturbing family tendency -- in a 2006 Huffington Post piece just before that year's midterm elections, when she advocated 'people taking to the streets' in the event the Democrats didn't retake Congress.

Mrs. Lear wrote then:

When I asked Gore Vidal at dinner why the White House seemed so serene and at ease about the [upcoming 2006 midterm elections], he replied that, this time around, the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law. He glumly noted that we are so far down the road toward totalitarianism that, even if Democrats do win back the Congress, it would take at least two generations before the last six years of damage to the nation could be reversed. Gore frankly despaired that any amount of time could ever return the country to where and what it previously was. This prediction left me reaching for some Fernet Branca.

We all know the neocons won't cede power easily. They have to be aware that if the tide of Congress turns, Bush's last two years will be mired in gridlock and perhaps even be punctuated by several embarrassing congressional investigations. Of course, Cheney did say last week that everything in Iraq is hunky dory, which leads one to believe that after James Baker's devastating report and the escalating mass destruction of the war, Dickey-boy has simply lost it. But whether it is hubris, loony tunes, or both, the White House's freakish calm about the elections makes me as nervous as the hell we seem to be headed for. Therefore we should all be on alert. If for whatever reason we don't win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets.

Tired, dried-up old lefties never quite seem to change their ways, do they?

When you pass the Fernet Branca around after New Year's Eve dinner, you might want to remember that, and toast the old lefty fools Norman and Lyn Davis Lear.

The again, when bringing up their names, maybe some bicarb would be better.

Founder of Oakcliff Capital, Bryan R. Lawrence:

In fiscal 2011, the cost of the [US government's spending] promises grew from $30.9 trillion to $33.8 trillion [net present value]. To put that in context, consider that the total value of companies traded on U.S. stock markets is $13.1 trillion, based on the Wilshire 5000 index, and the value of the equity in U.S. taxpayers' homes, according to Freddie Mac, is $6.2 trillion. Said another way, there is not enough wealth in America to meet those promises.

If the government followed corporate accounting rules [accrual-based accounting], that $2.9 trillion increase would be added to the $1.3 trillion cash deficit for fiscal 2011 that has been widely reported. And a $4.2 trillion deficit is something that Americans need to know about.
...

The cost would have been a lot worse but for two assumptions that the GAO found questionable.

First, Medicare's cost projections assume legally required decreases in reimbursement rates to doctors that Congress has ignored for years -- the so-called doc fix. For these projections to be realized, Congress would have to abide by its own cost controls and allow an immediate 27 percent cut to doctors' rates, which is very unlikely.

Second, the Medicare projections assume that the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) will reduce health-care cost growth by 1.1 percent per year, despite doubts voiced by the GAO and a panel appointed by the Medicare board of trustees.

The panel and the GAO recommended including an alternate scenario in the year-end figures, in which the doc fix continues and the ACA cost reductions do not materialize. The result is a $12.4 trillion increase in the cost of the promises, to more than $46 trillion. Given Congress's history with the doc fix, and the general paralysis in Washington, it's hard to argue with the GAO's lack of confidence in Congress's ability to honor its own cost controls.

USA Today's Dennis Cauchon reports:

Newly hired federal workers are starting at much higher salaries than those who did the same jobs in the past, a lift that has elevated the salaries of scientists and custodians alike.

The pay hikes have made the federal government a go-to place for many young people.
...

The government is classifying more new hires -- secretaries, mail clerks, chaplains, laundry workers, electrical engineers and wildlife biologists -- as taking more demanding versions of their jobs and deserving more pay.
...

Workers are 13 times more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off from the federal government. ... The portion of federal workers earning $100,000 or more grew from 12% in 2006 to 22% in 2011.

Also, compiled by USA Today: Federal workforce: Pay for 100 occupations.

The federal government has added a net 277,500 employees since September 2006 and raised average salaries 17.3% -- or 5.3% after adjusting for inflation.

Update: The increase in the number of employees to the federal workforce since September 2006 is larger than the populations of all but about the 70 largest cities in the US. The number of federal employees added during this period is also larger than the entire populations of the cities where 37 state capitals are located.

(This has been changed to note that the correct number is 37, not 36, as originally written. -- ed)

Forbes magazine's Paul Gregory fact checks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

From a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Democrats have spent years arguing that private lenders created the housing boom and bust, and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac merely came along for the ride. This was always a politically convenient fiction, and now thanks to the unlikely source of the Securities and Exchange Commission we have a trail of evidence showing how the failed mortgage giants turbocharged the crisis.
...

The Beltway story of the crisis claims that Congress's affordable housing mandates had nothing to do with it. But the SEC's lawsuit shows that Fannie degraded its underwriting standards to increase its market share in subprime loans.
...

Far from being peripheral to the housing crisis, the SEC lawsuit shows that Fan and Fred were at the very heart of it. Private lenders made many mistakes, but they could never have done as much harm if Fan and Fred weren't providing tens of billions in taxpayer-subsidized liquidity to lend on easy terms to borrowers who couldn't pay it back.

Congress created the two mortgage giants as well as their "affordable housing" mandates, and neither the financial system nor taxpayers will be safe until Congress shrinks the toxic twins and ultimately puts them out of business.

From the free-market Mackinac Center for Public Policy:

Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it -- a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors' plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.

Read the whole piece.

Svetlana Kunin, in Business Investor's Daily:

So what is it that drove American progress if, in the words of Obama, the free market "doesn't work. It's never worked"? Was America's standard of living achieved due to individuals using their own capacities, in their own pursuits for happiness or success, unhindered by government control? Or was it thanks to government bureaucrats drawing up plans and managing the economy?

American progressives remind me of the top echelon of Soviet Communists: so confident in their condescension to people outside their circle, so in love with their rhetoric about fairness and the welfare of the masses, and so indifferent to the real fate of individual human beings.

'We must do something to save democracy! Let's tax inequality with an automatic, extra tax! It will protect the future! It's make or break time for the middle class!'

Because government cost controls of any kind always work, why not cap income in an arbitrary fashion?

Yale law professor Ian Ayres and University of California professor of law and of economics Aaron S. Edlin advocate an 'inequality tax' in the New York Times:

Enough is enough. Congress should reform our tax law to put the brakes on further inequality. Specifically, we propose an automatic extra tax on the income of the top 1 percent of earners -- a tax that would limit the after-tax incomes of this club to 36 times the median household income.
...

Here's how the tax would work. Once a year, the Internal Revenue Service would calculate the Brandeis ratio of the previous year. If the average 1-percenter made more than 36 times the income of the median American household, then the I.R.S. would create a new tax bracket for the highest 1 percent of income and calculate a marginal income tax rate for that bracket sufficient to reduce the after-tax Brandeis ratio to 36.

This new tax, if triggered, would apply only to income in excess of the poorest 1-percenter -- currently about $330,000 per year.
...

A key aspect of our proposal is the tax's automatic nature. Congress need only act once to protect our future. Just as our tax brackets automatically adjust with the inflation rate, Congress could specify nondiscretionary conditions under which the Brandeis tax would automatically go into effect.
...

The Occupy Wall Street movement is right to decry the increasing power of the 1 percent as a threat to democracy. President Obama is right to characterize the present as a "make-or-break moment" for the middle class. As 1-percenters ourselves, we call on Congress, for the sake of democracy, to end the continued erosion of economic equality in our nation.

Why stop at taxing 'unequal income'? Let's also tax other 'unequal things' too! I think these professors are on to something!

From a preposterously titled New York Times opinion piece, "War Really Is Going Out of Style," American University professor emeritus of international relations Joshua S. Goldstein and Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker write, in part:

Perhaps the deepest cause of the waning of war is a growing repugnance toward institutionalized violence. Brutal customs that were commonplace for millennia have been largely abolished: cannibalism, human sacrifice, heretic-burning, chattel slavery, punitive mutilation, sadistic executions. Could war really be going the way of slave auctions? Nothing in our nature rules it out. True, we still harbor demons like greed, dominance, revenge and self-deception. But we also have faculties that inhibit them, like self-control, empathy, reason and a sense of fairness. We will always have the capacity to kill one another in large numbers, but with effort we can safeguard the norms and institutions that have made war increasingly repugnant.

What is it, 1928?

The New Republic's William Galston:

[Out of three recent Gallup polls, a] third Gallup survey asked Americans to state whether they saw big business, big government, or big labor as the biggest threat to the country in the future. In March of 2009, 55 percent felt most threatened by big government, and 32 percent by big business. As of December 2011, a near-record 64 percent saw big government as the greatest threat, versus on 26 percent for big business. As Obama nears the end of his third year in office, the people are more likely to fear government, and less likely to fear business, than they were at the beginning of his administration.

The source of the change is surprising. Republican fear of government, already sky-high in 2009, hasn't budged, while fear of government among independents has risen only modestly. The big change has occurred among Democrats. In 2009, only 32 percent feared big government the most, compared to 52 percent who feared big business. Today, fully 48 percent of Democrats (up 16 percentage points) cite government as their principal fear, while only 44 percent give business pride of place. In short, a 2008 election widely regarded as heralding a shift toward the more government-friendly public sentiment of the New Deal and Great Society eras seems to have yielded just the reverse.

None of this is to say that Obama can't win next year. Indeed, if the economy grows a bit more quickly and unemployment falls farther than the standard forecasts predict, he may well prevail. It is to say that a campaign emphasizing growth and opportunity is more likely to yield a Democratic victory than is a campaign focused on inequality. While the latter will thrill the party's base, only the former can forge a majority.

(via Hot Air)

A common refrain used in American political rhetoric today is that 'the middle class is disappearing in the US and that the rich are taking a larger share of the economic pie at the expense of the lower and middle classes.'

This line of argument has been repeated so often, it now part of the Conventional Wisdom, and therefore, say those repeating it, a problem the government needs to address.

However, these accepted facts seems to be contradicted by national exit-polling data collected in the election cycles from 2000-2010 (there was no exit-poll data for 2002; also, the data does not total to 100% in every year due to rounding):

Percentage of Vote by Income (Less than $50k)

2000 47%
2002 ND
2004 45%
2006 40%
2008 37%
2010 36%

Percentage of Vote by Income ($50-100k)

2000 38%
2002 ND
2004 37%
2006 38%
2008 36%
2010 36%

Percentage of Vote by Income (More than $100k)

2000 15%
2002 ND
2004 18%
2006 23%
2008 26%
2010 27%

While the exit-poll data on household income has not been adjusted for inflation for the period from 2000-2010, note that it shows the percentage of voters coming from households making less than $50k per year has decreased by more than 20% over that time span, that the group making between $50k-$100k has shrunk by about 5%, and that the group making more than $100k has grown by 80% from 2000-2010.

So on a percentage-point basis, almost all of the shrinkage in the 'less-than $50k' income group of voters during the past decade has been mirrored by the growth in the 'over $100k' income group, with the $50k-$100k income group of voters remaining roughly stable to slightly smaller.

That certainly doesn't appear to fit the narrative very neatly, at least when using the voting public as the sample group.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board notes, "Congress mandated purchase of 250 million gallons in 2011. Actual production: 6.6 million."

The Wall Street Journal editorial continues:

Congress subsidized a product that didn't exist, mandated its purchase though it still didn't exist, is punishing oil companies for not buying the product that doesn't exist, and is now doubling down on the subsidies in the hope that someday it might exist. We'd call this the march of folly, but that's unfair to fools.

President Obama's political strategist David Axelrod practices the 'new civility.'

Time magazine's Mark Helprin reports: (via Hot Air)

At briefing for reporters, Chicagoan [David Axelrod] says of the Georgian [Newt Gingrich]: "The higher a monkey climbs on the pole the more you can see his butt."

So said the cocky, overrated Chicago Democrat.

But wait! There's more -- of Mitt Romney, the Chicago Democrat says:

"Generally his practice has been to bet other people's money, not his own."

The projection of the cocky, overrated Chicago Democrat in this quote is delicious.

In keeping with this 'new civility,' it will be a pleasure knocking the mustache off the face of this cocky, overrated Chicago Democrat come November 2012...