by Gregory Conterio

Scandals are nothing new to Washington D.C. but the past few months have been remarkable in their number and proximity.  I don’t know that I have ever seen or heard of a similar period when so many scandals have popped-up in such a short period, and all of a legitimate character, meaning they have not just been trumped-up by the opposing party.  It’s been a veritable scandal-palooza, to the point where the public shows signs of being overwhelmed and desensitized.  But the one issue that has grabbed the most consistent attention has been the IRS admittedly targeting conservative groups applying for 501(c)(3) or (4) exemption status.  This has been accompanied by several instances where conservative individuals have also been targeted by the IRS for apparent harassment.  Even Obama expressed anger over the revelation when it was made public, although it seems unlikely in the extreme that he didn’t know about it while it was going on.  Certainly his administration’s explanation that is was “a couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati” has been quickly and completely debunked.  Why make-up a lie to explain it if you honestly didn’t know about it until you heard it on the news?

Scrutiny of the IRS has spawned a variety of legislative proposals that occasionally trend highly here on Bill Track 50, like these resolutions from New Jersey and Illinois calling for thorough investigation.  There have also been proposals to cut the IRS out of its proposed role of enforcer for Obamacare, as exemplified by HB1990.  It’s a fair question: if you can’t trust the IRS to be fair and honest in carrying out their mandated purpose, how can they be trusted to administer everyone’s healthcare?  Then there is HB2025, which calls for the termination of any IRS agent or employee found to have discriminated against any taxpayer on the basis of political affiliation or ideology.  That such a step need even be discussed out-loud is jarring.  Does this mean such discrimination was NOT a job-ending offense?  How could it NOT be?

There certainly have been accusations of abusing the IRS in the past, particularly their ability to investigate and audit taxpayers.  While audits are supposed to be random, or in response to certain “red-flags” on tax returns, like large and unusual deductions, there have often been claims of political targeting.  Nixon is often reputed to have abused the IRS in this way, although there is strong evidence that it never actually happened.  But while an IRS audit is nothing to treat lightly, past allegations could plausibly be waved-off or regarded almost as nuisances compared to current revelations.

The prospect of any administration abusing the IRS for political purposes should be alarming, but if the administration and its defenders are correct, and they were not directly responsible for singling-out and going after conservative individuals and organizations, the alternative is even more ominous.  If the illegal targeting of conservatives is simply due to arm-twisting by the administration, that after all is easy to fix: identify those within the administration responsible, remove them, and see they are appropriately punished.  If however this behavior came organically from within the IRS itself, it is a far more ominous, more difficult problem to solve.  Such a prospect undermines the fundamental trust necessary for the government to function.  How does one fix an institution whose culture has come to identify a very large cohort of the American People as “the enemy?”  How do we fix an organization with the awesome power of the IRS, which now takes an active role in politics?  Perhaps the best answer is to eliminate the organization itself.  Has the time finally come that we are better-off without the IRS?

A Bit of History

As originally written, the Constitution did not permit direct taxation, except as apportioned by state.  What this means is, the federal government could not directly tax income or property, but could only tax each state based on its population, with the state then charged with laying and collecting the necessary taxes required by the federal government.  This system is entirely understandable when one considers that a leading cause for the war of independence was England’s apparent arbitrary taxation of the colonies, which had become excessive and onerous, and did not include representation.  Essentially, England treated the colonies like a piggy-bank, and the colonists had enough of it.  In writing the constitution, the founders wanted to prevent a similar circumstance from evolving here, thus the apportionment rule.  This was upheld in the landmark case, Pollock vs. Farmers’ Loan and Trust, decided in 1895.  The sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913 changed all that, giving Congress the power to directly lay taxes on income, no matter how derived, without apportionment.  Thus was born the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which started calling itself the Internal Revenue Service on forms in 1918, formally changing its name in 1953.

Why Tax Income?

Why indeed.  One would imagine the purpose of revenue generation and collection to be to pay for the mandated functions of the government.  Building & maintaining infrastructure, defense, that sort of thing.  We have strayed far from that purpose.  Indeed one of the purposes of a progressive income tax, as cited by both Marx and Lenin is the redistribution of wealth.  Both in fact considered a heavy progressive income tax to be a necessary condition in the dialectical theory of Communism.  Progressive taxation is not by its nature a fundamentally socialistic or communistic idea, but employing it for the express purpose of wealth redistribution is, and that has become one of its key functions in America today.  Consider the persistent, heavy rhetoric about the upper economic classes “paying their fair-share” of taxes, this despite the fact that the topmost 10% of income earners already pay in excess of 50% of all income taxes.  It raises the legitimate question of how much really is fair?  Consider that when offered alternative revenue sources which more than adequately replace income taxes, the political left always balks.  Could it be that revenue generation is not the primary goal of tax policy, but rather the secondary purpose behind the ideological goal of “punishing” high-earners?  If we are going to tax the people directly, is it not more “fair” to tax them on consumption rather than income?

It’s Time to Eliminate the IRS

There have been a number of different proposals made over the years to eliminate the IRS, most of which have been shown to easily replace the revenue generated under the income tax, and I think it is high time to seriously consider them.  Even if current revenue levels are not precisely replaced, there is ample reason to dispose of a tax code that is fundamentally unfair, and an institution that has proved it cannot be trusted.  A consumption tax would be far less unfair.  It would put people much more in charge of how much tax they choose to pay, because they will be in control of their own spending.  It will still be “progressive” because the wealthy spend more, and thus will be taxed much more than the poor.  In fact it more effectively taxes the wealthy, because you will be collecting taxes on economic activity that is NOT presently taxed for high-wealth individuals with low income levels.  We already have an infrastructure and mechanisms in place to effectively collect tax revenue, since all states and municipalities are already collecting some level of state and local consumption taxes, so no large, new bureaucracy need be erected.  In fact, we could dismantle one, and much as even the political left may like the idea of progressive income taxes, the IRS is an institution nobody loves.  It’s time to shut it down.

Alternately, you might come across a tweeted bill, see one on our home page you are interested in, seen a link in a blog post, or any of a number of other ways.

Although we hope the page is fairly self explanatory, there are a few features you might not have noticed.  Also there’s a few differences depending on how you got to the bill page, which I’ll point out.  Let’s start with a typical bill:

Summary

Once you are on this page, you’ll see basic summary information. The title of the bill is in the light blue rectangle at the top, which will stay there as you click around.  The Bill Summary is either copied from the state website, or parsed out of the bill text itself; the summaries are state data, not anything BillTrack50 has written.  Finally, notice that the sponsor names are links; if you want to know more about the legislator you can click the link and go to our legislator page.

The url to the bill (like http://www.billtrack50.com/BillDetail/373322) will always remain the same, and anyone can click through to see the bill, so feel free to share this link.  You’ll notice a small amount of social bling on this page, as well.  There is a count of how many people have looked at this bill page on our site, as well as a button to tweet the bill if you are so inclined.

The tabs across the top are organized to show you more detailed information about the bill.

Bill Text

We’ll start with the Bill Text tab.  This is where you go to read the actual text of the bill.  These are formatted the same for every state, as much as we could manage.  The enacting clause is italic at the top, section headings are bold, the actual text of the bill is plain, and any text that is quoting existing code is set off in light blue/gray

If you aren’t logged in you won’t see the export, track, or compare version choices at the top.

You can use the bill version drop down to see all the different amendments that have been introduced.  By default we show you the newest first.  You can use the compare drop down to compare different versions of the bill – additions will be highlighted in green and deletions will be highlighted in red.  The track button will allow you to add this bill to one of your bill sheets (if you have a subscription with us.)

Action History and Vote History

The Action History tab is straightforward.  This screen show all actions, as the state reported them, with the newest on top.  The Vote Hostory tab is similarly a list of votes that have been taken, committee and full floor votes.  In most states we have the list of how each individual legislator voted, too.  To access this list, click on the vote you are interested in, and then …. wait.  We have over ten million votes in the database, so it can take a couple seconds to pull up.  Once you have the list, you can click on a legislator name to get more information about that legislator.

The last tab, Associated Documents, is a collection of links to the state page.  We provide these links to make it convenient to review the bill, and the official bill text, on the state site, if you need to.  We also collect links to votes, and other interesting information.  We are constantly adding to the types of things we capture, so this tab will be evolving.

You can always reach out to us in email, on our contact form, or give us a call if you’d like some help or are have suggestions for how to make the search tools more useful.  You can also find some more hints in this quick video tutorial.

by Gregory Conterio

The tragic and horrifying shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary last year has thrust the issue of Gun Control once more into public debate.  This debate may have reached a crescendo on April 17^th with the failure of the The Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act, but proponents have promised this fight is not over, and they plan to reintroduce a version of this bill in the near future.  At the state level legislation has been passed, both strengthening and easing gun control measures.  Colorado just recently passed a bill prohibiting large capacity magazines, which interestingly prompted several manufacturers to pack-up their operations (and their jobs!) and move to a state they regarded as less-hostile to their business operations.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, several states like Alaska are considering revising laws to allow firearms on school grounds in order to better protect school children and staff.

California introduced a bill this year, SJR1, titled Firearms Control.  Listed as currently referred to committee, the bill is simply a resolution asking the Congress of the United States to pass comprehensive firearm control laws to include a new “assault weapons” ban and universal background checks, but it also forms a convenient framework for discussing gun control laws, as it lists many of the most commonly repeated claims and theories used to justify gun control.  Let’s examine some of these statements by the California Senate, and see how well they hold up.

Unregulated Access to Assault Weapons & Magazines

One of the first statements by the California Senate is that a contributing factor to the occurrence of mass shootings is “unregulated access” to assault weapons.  This of course is nonsense.  So-called “assault weapons” are regulated in exactly the same way as purchase of other firearms.  In California, you cannot legally transfer any firearm without going through a licensed dealer, and undergoing a background check.  Purchasers must also obtain a safety certificate by passing a written examination.  Far from being “unregulated,” purchasing any weapon in California, let alone “assault weapons” is one of the most heavily regulated processes in the country.  Other factors listed in the resolution, like “improvements to our mental health system,” have much more grounding in reality.  In two of the recent mass shootings, the perpetrators Jared Loughner and James Holmes had both been under psychiatric care which should have disqualified both from legally purchasing firearms.  In fact Loughner was actually denied ammunition purchase in at least one instance because his bizarre behavior made the seller suspicious of his mental state.  The failure in both these instances was an institutional one, in which duly licensed and practicing mental health professionals failed, for whatever reason to report the status of Loughner and Holmes as required.

What Exactly is an “Assault Weapon?”

According to the resolution, “Semiautomatic assault weapons designed with military features allow for the rapid fire of potentially large numbers of bullets, and are distinguishable from standard sporting firearms by features such as the ability to accept a detachable magazine, pistol grips, and folding or telescoping stocks.”

Let’s do a little comparison and consider two rifles, the first is a Marlin Camp 9, the second is a Kel-Tek Sub 2000. 

Both are semi-automatic 9mm carbine rifles.  Both fire the exact same ammunition, and have almost exactly the same range.  In fact, they perform identically in nearly every way.  The only thing that distinguishes them is their appearance.  But only the Kel-Tek is illegal in California, which bans a list of guns it considers “assault weapons.  The truth is, despite repeated claims by gun control advocates, features like pistol grips, detachable or telescoping stocks and detachable magazines do not “allow for the rapid fire of potentially large numbers of bullets.”  These features are utility and cosmetic in nature, and have no effect at all on the performance of the gun.  In fact, the very name “assault weapon” is a complete misnomer.  There is in fact not one single weapon defined under either the previous or newly proposed Assault Weapon Ban legislation that would ever be employed by any military to actually assault anything.  What gun control advocates call assault weapons are completely unsuitable for military use.  The military does not even use the term, it is entirely a concoction of the political world.  The weapons gun control advocates wish to ban do not in fact perform differently, they simply “look scary.”

Magazine Capacity

While SJR1 does not directly address the issue of magazine capacity, presumably because it’s advocates wish to ban all weapons with detachable magazines, it has been a hot topic in other states.  The state of New York for example recently made it illegal to have more than six rounds carried in a firearm magazine, and outlawed the sale of new magazines with a greater capacity.  This is yet another example of the law of unintended consequences, as the only real effect of such legislation is to make law abiding citizens more vulnerable.  Criminals are going to pay no attention to this law.  Additionally, one of the main points behind having a detachable magazine is to be able to rapidly exchange it for a full one once it is empty, a procedure that is easily mastered by anyone inclined to practice it, so that any criminal who was unable to obtain magazines with a capacity greater than six rounds can simply carry multiple magazines which can be rapidly switched out.  In the end, such legislation accomplishes nothing at all.

Are 40% of Firearm Transfers done without a Background check?

This is another common claim, and one that has even been repeated by president Obama: “It is estimated that 40 percent of firearm transfers are completed without a federal background check, including the transfer of semiautomatic firearms from a private collection.”  This is one of the most outrageously false claims made by gun control advocates.  The original claim comes from a 20 year old telephone survey of 251 individuals, which most people would likely agree is not only drastically outdated, but far too small a statistical sample to have any meaning.  The reality is any firearm transfer which goes through a licensed dealer requires a background check.  The only instances this does not happen is in the case of direct, private transfers, like selling a gun to a friend or family member, or receiving it as an inheritance or family gift.  It’s estimated that such transfers make up only about 8-15% of the total, and interestingly enough family transfers, which make up a significant portion are exempted under Obama’s universal background check proposal.

The Inverse Relationship Between Strict Gun Laws and Gun Violence

One of the Arguments the California Senate makes is that because other states have less restrictive gun control laws, it allows banned weapons and magazines to continue to flow into California, causing gun crime in their state to remain relatively high.  This is not a new argument.  In 1998, Massachusetts passed a new, especially restrictive set of gun control measures.  Up until that year, the violent crime in that state had been declining, as it had in the rest of the country.  After passing these new measures, that trend reversed, and violent crime began to climb in Massachusetts.  Their explanation was that because guns continued to flow into their state from their neighbors, who had less-restrictive policies, this was causing a spike in gun violence.  If this was true, why was violent crime not also increasing in neighboring states?  John Lott, using FBI crime data has shown that while gun violence in Massachusetts’ neighbors has stayed roughly the same or declined since 1998, in Massachusetts it has spiked.  Lott in fact authored the most comprehensive analysis of gun control laws and violent crime back in 1996, in a landmark study that found simply that More Guns Equals Less Violent Crime.  In 1991 Gary Kleck reached a similar conclusion in Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America.  What makes Kleck’s work interesting is that he went into the project as a supporter of strong gun control laws, and expected his research to validate his viewpoint.  To his credit, he acknowledged that it did not.

For many on the left, gun control has become an article of faith.  As shown by California’s Senate, many of the justifications are based on groundless or false assumptions.  As tragic as events like Sandy Hook Elementary are, the truth remains that gun violence in general and mass shootings specifically have been steadily declining in America, and many such events can be prevented by simply enforcing and following legislation already in place, as illustrated with the failure to list Jared Loughner and James Holmes with NICS.  And with the growing body of evidence demonstrating that gun control increases violent crime, it is time to recognize this as a social experiment that has failed.

 The View from the Left

by Derek Smith

Finding rational, rather than emotional, arguments in the media in favor of gun control is not easy. Several misstatements by liberal politicians demonstrating a lack of knowledge about guns have not helped the image of the gun control movement either. Yet while the proposed federal firearms laws were not perfect, they would have been at least a symbolic step in the right direction.

“Assault Weapon” and High Capacity Magazine Bans

This is one of the most commonly voiced arguments from gun rights advocates: assault weapons bans are based on purely cosmetic distinctions between guns, not the way the guns perform, and so are ineffective. I will concede that point completely. What is interesting about this argument is that you rarely hear an objection to the spirit or intent of assault weapon bans, just the definition, yet a better definition or distinction is even more rarely proposed. This isn’t surprising, considering the Republican mantra of “if it’s broke, don’t fix it; conclude it’s impossible to fix and give up entirely.” I won’t pretend to know enough about guns to offer a better, precise definition, but how about this as a starting point—if a weapon makes it exceedingly easy to kill dozens of people in less than a minute with virtually no training, maybe we don’t want average citizens to have them. There is a reason nobody argues that the Second Amendment should apply to arms such as pipe bombs or nuclear weapons.

Both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are often inserted into the platitude, “if X are outlawed, only outlaws will have X.” This ignores that fact that legal prohibitions curtail supply—so even if some outlaws have them, they should still have fewer—and limit chains of distribution to avenues that many potential criminals (particularly mass shooters) would not have access to. So while established criminal organizations would probably still have access to high-capacity magazines (albeit likely at a higher price), your typical loner mass-shooter like Adam Lanza James Holmes or is not going to have those connections to black market arms dealers.

Opponents argue that bans on high-capacity magazines are ineffective because mass shooters can just carry more magazines, which can be rapidly exchanged, or more guns. Yet even a break of a few seconds can create opportunities to escape or for police or bystanders to intervene, as happened in the shooting of Rep. Giffords. Shooter Jared Loughner was tackled by unarmed bystanders when he paused to reload after emptying a 33-round magazine. If he had had a weapon with a 100-round magazine, there could have easily been twice as many victims before he was stopped.

Background Checks

Requiring background checks for all firearm transfers makes perfect sense, and in fact seems necessary, in the context of other restrictions we have on gun ownership—prohibitions for felons, certain domestic violence offenders,  the mentally ill. Without universal background checks, the preventative value of the prohibitions is negated, and they effectively just become additional charges to add after a weapon is used in a crime.

True, the 40% figure for firearm transfers conducted without a background check cited by Bloomberg and Obama is dubious; however, there also aren’t any more recent figures disproving this—other rough estimates exist ranging from 10% to 25%, but they are all quite cautious in their certainty, and pro-gun criminologist Gary Kleck has suggested the 40% figure is “probably still reasonably valid.”

Using a very conservative estimate of only 10%, that would still mean between one and two million gun transfers per year are done without background checks. In addition, a study of online firearms sellers commissioned by the city of New York found an alarming 62% of private gun sellers would sell a firearm to a buyer who informed the seller that he probably couldn’t pass a background check. Since it is only illegal to knowingly transfer a firearm to somebody prohibited by law from owning one, private sellers and others covered by the loophole actually have an incentive to keep themselves as ignorant as possible about their buyers. This creates a mostly legal marketplace for those barred from gun ownership to conveniently skirt our more sensible restrictions. While background checks would not eliminate the possibility of straw purchases, they would probably reduce them—people will be less inclined to help out a criminal friend if they have to divulge more information about themselves. Of course, there will still be black market gun sales, allowing some criminals to circumvent background checks, but your typical mass-shooter would have a much harder time accessing these markets.

Correlations Between Crime and Gun Control

One of the biggest quagmires in the gun control debate is the lack of strong empirical evidence for either side. Some studies provide very weak support for gun control, some provide weak evidence against it, but more are quite inconclusive. It is too difficult to control for the myriad factors that are also correlated with violent crime rates—population density, average education level, income inequality, unemployment rates, even slight variations in gender and age distribution of a given population. Other factors such as substitution (i.e., will people just opt for another deadly weapon?) further complicate matters. And most studies examine one type of gun regulation, such as assault weapons bans or concealed carry laws, in isolation without examining the effect of overlapping laws.

For example, a quick comparison of states’ murder rates with Guns and Ammo’s ranking of states’ gun-friendliness support gun control (not exactly scientific, but it factors in different types of gun restrictions; using the Brady Campaign’s rankings show similar results). Of the ten states with the lowest murder rates, three—Vermont, New Hampshire, and Utah—are among the ten most gun-friendly states, while only two, Hawaii and Rhode Island, are in the ten most restrictive states. Yet all of the remaining five least murderous states are ranked in the bottom half of gun-friendliness, some much lower. At the other end of the spectrum, of the ten states with the highest murder rates, two, Arizona and Louisiana, are among the ten gun-friendliest states, while only Maryland is in the bottom fifteen. And five of the remainder are in the top half of gun-friendly states.

Of course this doesn’t prove anything, but it illustrates that the “gun control increases crime” argument doesn’t really hold up. In fact, crime rates correlate more strongly to income inequality than to anything related to guns, or any other factor for that matter. But you’d have to be a real socialist to bring that up.

Is There a Future for Gun Control?

In spite of the words of some Democratic lawmakers, it looks like gun control is dead for the session—the public doesn’t have the fortitude for the debate, and the Senate will be too tied up with immigration reform.

Regardless, it is difficult to get too worked up on the side of gun control, knowing that the amount of regulation necessary to be truly effective is politically infeasible for the foreseeable future. There is a huge enthusiasm gap between gun control and gun rights advocates, as evidenced by polls surrounding the proposed federal gun regulations—although substantial majorities were in favor of many of the provisions, after their defeat, a strong majority of Americans also said they wanted Congress to move on to other issues, despite continuing high support for the laws themselves.

One problem is that gun control isn’t really about guns anymore – the NRA has done an amazing job of making it a symbolic topic, as Grover Norquist has done with taxes. Because gun rights advocates view any amount of gun regulation as an affront to the values of individual liberty and personal responsibility, even moderate steps in the right direction are immediately rejected and shrilly decried.

It’s hard to tell whether Americans’ enduring fixation on guns is a symptom of, or contributor to, our fairly high murder rate. Walking around with a paranoid need to feel protected with firepower, from state or fellow citizen, does not seem conducive to a high degree social harmony. Rather than try to prevent violence with fear of more violence, perhaps we should start to refocus our societal norms away from violence.

Establishing an Account

If you received an invitation, you’ll need to make an account to be able to use the page. Don’t worry, it’s quick and painless, and free. If you clicked through and found yourself on a public stakeholder page, then you can skip to the next section about using the grid.

Your invitation email will have a link to the Stakeholder Page, when you click through you’ll be greeted with the login screen.  You can log in and continue to your account page, or if you don’t have an account yet, click the link to create one – we just ask for your name and email.

Once you are in your account you’ll see a list of the Stakeholder Pages you’ve been invited to view.

Click on view in the action column of the stakeholder page you’d like to see and you’ll be taken to the grid.

Using the Grid

The top part of the stakeholder page is what we call the bill sheet grid.  The grid is simply a listing of the bills someone wanted to share with you, along with whatever bill data and extra information they have chosen to add.

Sorting Bills

You can sort any column in the grid by simply clicking on the column heading.  Sorting can be particularly useful for the action date column, so you can see which bills have had activity most recently.  You can also use it when you are trying to find a specific bill number, but you aren’t quite sure of the format.  Filtering (see below) can also be a good way to find a specific bill.

Filtering Bills

You can filter bills using the filter button at the bottom of the grid.  The filter button opens up a blank row at the top of the bill sheet.  In the blank field enter the text you want to filter on – a state code, for example, or a bill number, or a word to filter by in the name or keyword columns.  This will narrow the bills to just those containing the text you entered.  To undo the filter, erase the text you entered.

Reading a Bill

If a bill has caught your interest, and you would like to read more about it, click the bill icon in the first column.  This will open a new tab in your browser, with all of the bill details.  Notice the tabs that let you see the Summary, Bill Text, Action History, and Associated Documents.

Researching a Legislator

If you would like to know more about the sponsor of the bill, you can click on their name on the bill summary tab.  You can also click on any legislator name from the vote history tab.  The names will lead to a summary of the contact information, list of other sponsored bills (which you can click on), committees, staff, and bio.  In the committee tab you can click on a committee to see who else is on that committee — and then click on those names too.

Leaving Comments

The creator of the Stakeholder Page decides who can see the comments section, and who can create topics and threads.  If you have the appropriate permissions, you’ll a list of discussions below the bill grid.

Topics

This is a listing of comments that have been started. You can see the threads people have started, and some basic information, like the most recent post, to help keep you up to date.  If the person who started the topic attached bills, you’ll also be able to see (and click on) the related bills.  If there are a lot of comments, and you have something in mind you are looking for, you can use the search box to find what you are looking for.

If you have permission you’ll see a new thread button to start a new thread.  The tools to create a post are normal. One thing I want to point out is the box to add associated bills.  This box works the same way as the search by bill number box on the query tab.  Type the two letter state abbreviation (US for federal), and then a space, and then pause and let the drop down box populate. Choose the bill you would like to attach to this topic.  You can repeat the process and add as many bills as  you like.

Posts

 After you click on a topic you’ll be redirected to the forum page for that topic. This is a typical internet forum. You can choose if you want to see the posts in chronological order (newest on top) or threaded.   Also at the top will be a list of bills associated with this topic.  Just click the bill number to read the bill.

If you have permission, you’ll see a new post button at the top of the screen to post to this topic, and reply option when you hover over a post to reply to someone else’s comment.

You can always reach out to us in email, on our contact form, or give us a call if you’d like some help or are have suggestions for how to make the Stakeholder Page more useful.  There’s also more information in this instructional video about all of the pay features.

Or, barring that, you can see how far the bill has gotten in the process so far.  In general the process a bill goes through to get passed is: a bill is introduced, is read on the floor, goes to a committee or two, maybe is amended, is read on the floor again and voted on, crosses to the other chamber, rinse, repeat.  But different states have different rules, and report differing amounts of information, so the path from a bill to a law can be really short or incredibly long.

Here’s a look at the minimum number of actions it takes to pass a bill, and also how many actions, on average, it takes to pass a bill.  I also added with the average actions of an unpassed bill for comparison.  You’ll see the states vary widely, but usually there’s a big gap between the average number of actions for a bill that passed vs one that didn’t.  Except in New Mexico, which is an oddity.

For most states there’s a threshold, a number of actions, above which a bill will most likely pass.  Of course it’s still better to actually know the politics of the situation, but barring that, the action count can let you know if the bill has the momentum it needs.  Keep in mind having a small number of actions doesn’t mean a bill *won’t* pass, since things may still happen.  But having a large number of actions can be a good indicator a bill *will* pass.  What’s a large number?  Of course that’s different for every state.  See the table below for details:

Here is an example search for us to discuss:

All of, Any of, None of

Most searches are built by putting words or phrases into the search boxes. The key idea is to enter words that would actually appear in the bill you are searching for. So if you are looking for drug bills, “medical marijuana” is a good search term, but “legislation about drugs” is not.  You don’t need to enter commas, or the word “and” or “or”.  Just words.  We ignore punctuation and simple small words, so it doesn’t hurt anything to have in your search, but you might as well skip them.

Finally, phrases need to be in quotes, if you are searching for the whole phrase, such as “controlled substances” in the example above.  If you don’t have the quote then we consider the words individually, by the rules described below.

Contains all of: means all words or phrases you enter in this box must appear in the bill. In our example above only bills with the word “marijuana” will be included, regardless of how many of the other words the bill contains.  If there were two words in this box, both words would need to be in the bill for it to be included in the results.

Contains any of: if any of the words or phrases you enter in this box are in the bill, that’s good enough.  You can enter synonyms here, or expand on word(s) you put in the ‘all of’ box (as in our example).  Or you can define a group of bills that are more loosely related — or not at all related.

Contains none of: if a bill contains the words or phrases you enter in this box, it will not be included in your results. Use this box to exclude whole groups of bills.  If your topic overlaps another topic, excluding words can be a good way to sort out the bills you want from the bills you don’t want.  You can also remove any individual bill from your results using the “x” in the first column of the resulting bill sheet.  But the ‘none of’ box can be a good way to exclude a bunch of bills at once.

Wildcards

Our wildcard character is an asterisk: *.  You can only use a wildcard at the end of a word.  So to find cannabis, cannabinoid, or some variant, you can enter “cannab*”, as in the example above.  You must enter at least four letters before the asterisk.  We have this limit to keep results to a reasonable size.  You also must put quotes around the word or phrase using a wildcard. You can use the wild card in any of the boxes.

Bill Numbers

You can also use the search boxes to search by bill number.  You can add bill numbers using the  Include Bill by State Bill Number tool at the bottom of the search screen: click on the plus, add the two letter state abbreviation and a space, then pause to let the drop down populate.  This will show you the format for bill numbers in that state.  Then you can keep typing and the drop down will continue to narrow.  You can add as many individual bill numbers as you like this way.

However, you can also enter bill numbers into the search boxes.  You still need to have a rough idea of how the bill numbers are formatted for your target state, however.  So try using the find bill number drop down as a cheat sheet if you aren’t getting the results you expect.  If you are entering more than one bill number be sure to use the ‘any of’ box.

If you want a bill sheet with just a specific list of bills, building it is a two step process.  First, build the bill sheet using any old word as your search term. After you’ve built the bill sheet, go to the query tab and add your bill numbers.  Then you can remove the fake search term you entered to build the sheet.  Note that this bill sheet will not have any new bills added automatically – it will always be just the bill numbers you asked for.

All Bills in a State

We require you to fill in at least one of the criteria on the screen to narrow your query before you run the search.  This requirement is to keep the results from being too large.  However, if you are in a state that doesn’t have too many bills (a few thousand or less), you might reasonably want to get all the bills back for that state.  Or set up alerts to be emailed new bills as they are introduced.  The easiest way to do this is simply search on the full state name (eg Wyoming) in the all of box.

Keywords

If you are making a bill sheet that explores a topic new to you, start by entering the most obvious words.  Run your search, and look at the results to find inspiration for more words to include in the ‘any of ‘box.  You can also turn on the keyword column for suggestions of words commonly found in the bills you are considering.  To see keywords you need to turn on the keyword column: open the bill sheet settings panel (the little gear icon at the bottom of the bill sheet), and check the box to show the keywords column.  Keywords can also suggest terms you might want to exclude using the ‘none of’ box.

Other Search Tools

The other search items, such as the state list, legislator, or passed flag, all continue to narrow your query.  So if you enter some search terms, and pick a legislator, you will see bills that have those terms AND are sponsored by that legislator.  The exception is the bill number, which adds those bills regardless of your other search terms.

You can always reach out to us in email, on our contact form, or give us a call if you’d like some help or are have suggestions for how to make the search tools more useful.  You can also find some more hints in this quick video tutorial.

by Derek Smith

Citizens and legislators in thoroughly red states have been engaging in a exaggerated form of sabre-rattling towards the federal government since Obama’s re-election, implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) suggesting the will of the majority of voters at the 2012 polls does not really reflect the will of the “real” American people.

The recently signed Second Amendment Protection Act in Kansas makes it a felony for U.S. officials or employees to enforce federal gun regulations with respect to any firearm manufactured and remaining in Kansas; over a dozen other states have less strident but similar bills, in spite of polls showing strong majorities of Americans favoring increased gun control measures. Dozens of measures to partially or fully block implementation of Obamacare have been introduced. One of these that has received particular attention recently is South Carolina’s H3101, the Freedom of Heath Care Protection Act, perhaps partly due to South Carolina’s longstanding love affair with the nullification doctrine (which has had its highs and lows for the state, to say the least).

Nullification and Interposition

While “nullification” has been used to describe many of these attempts, it is a misnomer with respect to the final version of H3101. The bill itself never mentions the nullification, and refers instead to the alternative concept of interposition. True nullification means both declaring a federal law unconstitutional, and declaring it therefore unenforceable within the state. H3101 does the former quite explicitly and indeed repeatedly—the most colorful characterization is found in the preamble of the bill, which declares, in part:

. . . [T]he “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” interferes with the right of the people of the State of South Carolina to regulate health care as they see fit and makes a mockery of James Madison’s assurance in Federalist #45 that the “powers delegated” to the federal government are “few and defined”, while those of the states are “numerous and indefinite” (emphasis added).

The General Assembly’s Declaration of Authority within the legislation (Section 1) delineates the following grounds:

(1)    The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the United States federal government is authorized to exercise only those powers delegated to it in the Constitution.

(2)    Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States provides that laws of the United States are the supreme law of the land provided that they are made in pursuance of the powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution.

(3)    It is the stated policy of the South Carolina General Assembly that provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 grossly exceed the powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution.

(4)    The provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 which exceed the limited powers granted to the Congress pursuant to the Constitution, cannot and should not be considered the supreme law of the land.

This is a pretty clear declaration of unconstitutionality. But the bill does not actually declare the PPACA unenforcable—i.e., it is actually illegal for anybody to enforce (early drafts of the bill did this). The substantive part of the law primarily focuses on prohibiting state and local governments from directly acting to implement the “unconstitutional” provisions of the PPACA, and specifically health insurance exchanges, and from purchasing insurance from a non-profit insurance exchange. Even if all of the PPACA was unconstitutional, this wouldn’t change much. Under the PPACA, the states are not required to establish exchanges; if they fail to do so, the federal government will implement one for them. South Carolina’s governor and legislature had already made perfectly clear they would not establish a state-run exchange, but they are not preventing their citizens or businesses from purchasing insurance through a federal exchange. So instead of declaring “the law is unenforceable,” South Carolina makes the much weaker assertion “we’re not going to help implement the law.” In fact, the next line of the Declaration of Authority is: “(5) The General Assembly of South Carolina has the absolute and sovereign authority to interpose and refuse to enforce the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 that exceed the authority of the Congress.”

Characterizing H3101 as interposition is more accurate, but more ambiguous at the same time. Interposition does not have a precise mechanism of action, but includes a variety of options: a state may communicate with its citizens or other states to foster public opposition to the unconstitutional law, using the democratic process to repeal the law or oust over-reaching legislators, slow the implementation of the law, challenge the law in federal court, or initiate the process of amending the constitution. Since a legal challenge to Obamacare has already failed, and in a sense, so has the prospect of ousting those responsible since the 2012 election, South Carolina attempts to interpose primarily by refusing to assist in implementation. However, there are two other provisions of H3101 that could possibly be viewed through the wide lens of interposition.

Other Provisions of H3101

Section 3 of H3101 creates a tax deduction for its citizens who are subject to the individual mandate penalty, equal to the amount of the penalty. This doesn’t truly “interpose” with respect to the federal law, just attempts to offset one of its consequences. Earlier versions of the bill would have made it a felony for the IRS, or any other agent of the federal government, to attempt to enforce the PPACA—an example of true nullification. While backing down from such an extreme approach is sensible, offering to pick up the tab for its citizens’ penalties feels more like a feeble than defiant gesture.

The one section of H3101 that fosters a more activist style of imposition creates a cause of action for the state attorney general:

Whenever the Attorney General has reasonable cause to believe that a person or business is being harmed by implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and that proceedings would be in the public interest, the Attorney General may bring an action in the name of the State against such person or entity causing the harm to restrain by temporary restraining order, temporary injunction, or permanent injunction the use of such method, act, or practice (emphasis added).

In spite of the breadth and ambiguity of this power—with vague standards of “reasonable cause,” “being harmed,” and “in the public interest”—it is likely to have only a minor effect in practice. It only allows the Attorney General to seek an injunctive relief—not prosecution, not damages—and since the federal judiciary has already found the PPACA to be constitutionally enforceable, lower courts will have to abide by this ruling. The most such actions could do is to somewhat slow the implementation of Obamacare through drawn-out court proceedings, at South Carolina’s expense— the state also has to be willing (and able) to pay the attendant costs of litigation in exchange for a slight delay in the inevitable.

Why Not Real Nullification?

Some on the right take issue with H3101 precisely because it is not a real attempt at nullification, and would have preferred the original language of the bill. Yet never in the history of the United States’ jurisprudence has nullification (or interposition, for that matter) been considered a constitutionally valid response of the states to federal overreach. Therefore, those who argue for nullification must by necessity also seek a reversal of two centuries of case law running back to Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the federal judiciary’s role as the final arbiter of constitutional interpretation. Not only is this extremely unlikely to happen as a practical matter, this argument has a rather dubious constitutional basis.

Admittedly, Marbury v. Madison has some dubious aspects as well (particularly the idea of a self-selected power), but its holding is still more reasonable than the alternative. If individual states’ were the arbiters of constitutionality, we could effectively have 51 different versions of the U.S. Constitution in play across the country—the interpretation of each state plus that of the federal government. If two states reach different results in assessing the constitutionality of federal law, there are no longer any truly “federal” laws. And as discussed in Marbury v. Madison, it makes more sense to leave constitutional interpretation to the apolitical (i.e., not elected) branch of government—we wouldn’t want the arbiters to be swayed by the mercurial opinions of the public and reelection prospects. As much as conservatives decry judicial activism—despite of the judiciary’s comparable stability and reluctance to change course—they should imagine how much more quickly constitutional law would change if interpretation were left to, say, state legislators.

Furthermore, even if we eschew the Supreme Court’s interpretations and attempt to divine the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution ourselves, we find little support for nullification, and only marginally more for interposition. There were of course numerous Framers of the Federalist persuasion (such as Hamilton and John Adams) who were consistently and unarguably opposed to the theory of nullification. A central tenet of their perspective was the notion that the Constitution was a product of the people—as in, “We, the people”—not just a contract between states. But rather than engage in confirmation-biased selection of original intentions, this discussion will ignore the Federalists’ arguments, since modern proponents of nullification don’t seem to consider them to be “true American” Founding Fathers anyway.

Nullification advocates typically seek justification in 1798’s Virginia Resolution and Kentucky Resolutions, which were secretly drafted by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, respectively, and adopted by the state legislatures in response to the truly over-reaching Alien and Sedition Acts. Madison’s Virginia Resolution first presents the idea of interposition, declaring:

…[T]hat it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

However, in the follow-up Report of 1799, in which Madison sought to clarify some of the controversial provisions of the resolution, he suggests a fairly narrow interpretation of this interposition duty:

It does not follow, however, that because the states, as sovereign parties to their constitutional compact, must ultimately decide whether it has been violated, that such a decision ought to be interposed, either in a hasty manner, or on doubtful and inferior occasions… [I]n the case of an intimate and constitutional union, like that of the United States, it is evident that the interposition of the parties, in their sovereign capacity, can be called for by occasions only, deeply and essentially affecting the vital principles of their political system.

In fact, during the 1832 tariff-nullification crisis in South Carolina, which also cited Madison’s earlier work as justification, Madison wrote several vehement objections to its employment. In a letter to an acquaintance Madison noted that “a free Government… is founded in compact, the parties to which are mutually and equally bound by it. Neither of them therefore can have a greater right to break off from the bargain, than the other or others have to hold them to it.” In other writings he asserts that states may not individually engage in nullification, and suggests it would require something approaching a majority of states to join in the effort: “These startling consequences from the nullifying doctrine have driven its partizans to the extravagant presumption that no State would ever be so unreasonable, unjust & impolitic as to avail itself of its right in any case not so palpably just and fair as to ensure a concurrence of the others, or at least the requisite proportion of them.”

Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions were more strongly worded in favor of the states, and the document uses the word “nullify” twice, albeit loosely. Due to the controversy they caused, these also received a borderline groveling update by the Kentucky legislature a year later, although its authorship is uncertain. It partly echoes Madison’s implied requirement of a majority of states, professing that Kentucky would “cheerfully…surrender its opinion to a majority of its sister states in matters of ordinary or doubtful policy;” the state also acknowledges federal supremacy, and “as a party to the federal compact, will bow to the laws of the Union.” It concludes by labeling the resolution a “solemn protest”—essentially admitting they had no authority to do anything other than register a formal complaint.

The View from the Right

by Gregory Conterio

There are few issues which really test the United States Constitution like Nullification.  Conversely there are few issues whose study can yield a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the deliberate tension between the federal and state governments our founders designed.  One must necessarily recall that the original 13 colonies which rebelled against England were independent, sovereign states, whose citizenry regarded themselves as such.  The notion of being a citizen of some greater union was alien to the average person, and but a dream (or nightmare) to most of the founders.  This attitude prevailed throughout Antebellum America.  When Abraham Lincoln offered Robert E. Lee command of the Union Armies, he refused, despite being personally opposed to slavery, and holding generally pro-Union views, because the possibility of making war upon fellow-Virginians was utterly repugnant to him.  Such was the personal identification with one’s state through most of America’s first century.  The Framers of our Constitution had a well-founded distrust of government generally, and if the current revelations of abuse of power are any indication, little has changed which should assuage such concerns.

Derek has done a good job summarizing South Carolina H3101 above, but needless to say I don’t agree with some of his conclusions.  The theories of Nullification and Interposition indeed have their roots in the so-called Principles of 98, which was the slogan used to collectively refer to the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798.  The two resolutions were a response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which as Derek points out were a clear overreach of federal, and especially executive branch power, but were they really the wrong idea?  Certainly they were derided by many prominent figures of the time, including George Washington himself, who found the resolutions “appalling,” but what often is lacking is the reason they were found so.  Washington, and every other critic of the Principles of 98 feared it would eventually lead to the sundering of the Union itself, which was a very fragile thing at this time.  Indeed, many thought it was busy tearing itself apart without the Principles of 98.  The Shays’ Rebellion of 1786, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, and the Fries Rebellion of 1799 were all serious threats to the new government.  Then there was the 1798  Quasi-War, an undeclared war between the United States and the post-revolutionary Republic of France, characterized by a series of naval skirmishes.  France had been instrumental in winning American independence, and the events leading up to the Quasi-War inflamed intense acrimony between Federalists, and Democratic Republicans, many of whom supported France.    It was against this backdrop the Alien and Sedition Acts were signed, and the Principles of 98 were a direct reaction.  The Union was already on very shaky ground.  The common culture of America was to place patriotism to one’s state above that of the country, and both internal and external forces were conspiring to break the Union apart.  The principle, overriding goal of the Federalists, including Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and others was to preserve it at all costs.  It is little wonder they opposed Jefferson and Madison’s resolutions promoting Nullification and Interposition.  The Federalists consistently opposed anything that threatened the Union, even if it meant tossing aside some of their own principles, as with the Alien and Sedition Acts.  One can in fact make a strong argument that this was the eventual undoing of their party, but that is another story.

At its core the question of nullification is simply this: Are there principles so important that their violation requires an act of defiance?  While I certainly agree with Derek, and the greater part of jurisprudential history that the Supreme Court is the sole authority on final interpretation of the constitution, what happens when the Supreme Court gets it wrong?  There certainly have been many instances where the SCOTUS has rendered decisions that were more about expedience and contemporary politics than constitutional foundation.  The Dred Scott ruling comes immediately to mind.  More contemporarily there is Kelo vs. City of New London, in which it was held that it’s perfectly OK for a municipality to invoke eminent domain to take real property away from one private entity and give it to another for private use.  (You really should read Justice O’Connor’s scathing dissent!)  The Supreme Court certainly can get things terribly wrong, sometimes at the cost of life and property.

A Supreme Court decision with a more direct bearing on the question of Nullification had to do with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which spurred several Nullification attempts.  The SCOTUS upheld the Act in the case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania.  While Prigg effectively shot-down Pennsylvania’s attempts to nullify federal law pertaining to runaway slaves, it also opened the door to an effective Interposition policy subsequently applied by a number of anti-slave states through so-called Personal Liberty Laws, which were a series of state laws forbidding any officer or representative of the state from assisting in the recovery or arrest of runaway slaves in any way.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was especially onerous, and the anger and resentment over its implementation was probably every bit as responsible for fomenting the Civil War as the question of slavery in the territories.  In 1859, Wisconsin tested the Nullification theory in Ableman v. Booth, in which the Wisconsin court, borrowing language from the Kentucky Resolution of 1798, declared the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional and void.  It further declared the SCOTUS had no authority to review the decision, and the Wisconsin legislature passed a resolution to the effect that the Supreme Court had no authority in the matter, but review it they did.  In the most detailed examination of Nullification theory to date, the Supreme Court again ruled that the state had no authority to overrule federal statutes, and in so doing enabled another moral abomination.

South Carolina is undoubtedly wise to take the Interposition road as opposed to actual Nullification, at least when one notes the track record left by the latter theory in the courts.  But I disagree with Derek’s assessment on the likely impact or success of the tools they have at hand.  I believe the “breadth and ambiguity” of the powers this bill gives the Attorney General work to his favor.  I believe Derek also misinterprets the so-far existing Supreme Court record on Obama Care in that they have not yet ruled on its enforceability.  While the individual mandate has been ruled constitutional by virtue of recasting it as a tax, there are many parts of the act yet to be challenged which could readily bring about its downfall, and unpopular as it has always been, the political winds are starting to blow even more vigorously against it as its implementation seems to grow ever more troublesome and expensive by the day.  But what of Nullification?  I think Madison gave us a roadmap when he wrote in 1834 that no single state could embark upon a policy of Nullification on its own, but that a “majority” might do so.  Twenty six states sued to overturn Obama Care.  Hmmmm.

Written by Alan deLevie:

Today the White House released its Open Data Policy. Excerpt:

Pursuant to the Executive Order of May 9, 2013, Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information, this Memorandum establishes a framework to help institutionalize the principles of effective information management at each stage of the information’s life cycle to promote interoperability and openness. Whether or not particular information can be made public, agencies can apply this framework to all information resources to promote efficiency and produce value.

By requiring agencies to publicly list all their data that could be made public, the President is not just reaffirming that decisions about disclosure should be based on the public interest, he’s also giving the public (and Congress) tools to enforce them. When open data procedures are incorporated into agency processes from the start, we’ll start to see more systems designed for bulk access from the start, and we’ll be better able to recoup all the missed opportunities in legacy datasets that are still closed. We’ll be able to evaluate agencies’ transparency against what they’ve defined as their candidates for release, and clearly identify areas where agencies avoid disclosure altogether.

TL:DR: The new E.O. and memorandum are good for transparency and lock in almost all of the generally accepted notions of open government data. But it misses the mark on the requirement of “open licenses.”

Mosaic Effect: The Mosaic Effect occurs when the information in an individual dataset, in isolation, may not pose a risk of identifying an individual (or threatening some other important interest such as security), but when combined with other available information, could pose such risk. Before disclosing potential PII or other potentially sensitive information, agencies must consider other publicly available data – in any medium and from any source – to determine whether some combination of existing data and the data intended to be publicly released could allow for the identification of an individual or pose another security concern. [source]

The View from the Right

By Gregory Conterio

The school year is winding-down, and parents or not, the minds of many of us are beginning to turn to the summer. But that does not mean legislatures have been idle!  Bills of greater and lesser import continue to be introduced at the state and federal level. Some  are meaningless and self-serving, such as Indiana SCR0030, a resolution congratulating Cathedral High School for winning the “We the People” state competition, or California’s AR5, commemorating Rosa Parks’ 100^th birthday.  Others may have little or no impact upon our lives, but reflect trends in public policy which I believe are worth discussing.  Such a bill is Virginia HB1981 – which deals with installing electronic tracking devices without consent.

HB1981 was introduced and passed this year, being signed by Governor McDonnell in March.  On the whole, it is a very uncontroversial bill, essentially making it a Class 3 misdemeanor to place an electronic tracking device onto another person’s vehicle “through intentionally deceptive means and without consent.”  This means offenders will face a penalty of up to 30 days in jail, and a fine of up to $500.  There are exceptions for fleet vehicles, parents and guardians, private investigators, and of course, law enforcement.  In other words, average citizens like me can’t secretly put a tracking device on our neighbor’s car to see where he’s going.  It all sounds perfectly reasonable.  My big question is, what’s the point?

If this law seeks to protect people like you and I from having our vehicles tracked, it protects us only from the least likely people to ever want to track us, and not very well at that.  Private investigators (and thus, by extension, jealous spouses), your boss (if you drive a company car) and the police can all still legally keep tabs on your comings and goings without telling you about it.  The only people who can’t are other average citizens.  “But Greg, this law protects you from criminals!”  Does it really?  If someone is really determined to track my movement because they wish to do me or my family harm, or because they want to know when I’m away from home so they can rob the place, does anyone really believe they are going to be deterred by a misdemeanor charge?  For that matter, if someone is really determined to know where you’re going, they can simply follow you.  If I were to become suspicious of my neighbor, and decide to follow him and see what he’s up to, doing so carefully so he doesn’t discover me, let’s say I track him to a convenience store which he then proceeds to rob.  I then call the police, who by a wild stroke of luck happen to have a car close by, and they catch him in the act.  But under HB1981, if I have those same suspicions, and decide to place a GPS tracking device on his care, then let the police know that he was at the convenience store at the exact time it was being robbed, I am the one who gets arrested and punished.  Same scenario, same information relayed to the police, same criminal act by my neighbor, but because I violated the law, he goes free.  So if HB1981 doesn’t really protect me from criminals, and doesn’t prevent anyone else on the exception list from tracking my car without my knowledge, I ask again, what’s the point?

Laws like HB1981 arise from concerns over privacy, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but as with so many legislative attempts, I think it misses the mark.  The average person is unlikely to violate my privacy by trying to track my car, and the determined criminal is going to do it anyway despite the law, one is not a likely threat, and the other will remain a threat despite the law, but there is a class of people who do have an interest in tracking citizens that are exempted by HB1981: law enforcement.  The very first exception listed in this bill reads:

The provisions of this section shall not apply to the installation, placement, or use of an electronic tracking device by:

A law-enforcement officer, judicial officer, probation or parole officer, or employee of the Department of Corrections when any such person is engaged in the lawful performance of official duties and in accordance with other state or federal law;

So under HB1981, as long as law enforcement is working under their normal rules and procedures, they can track your vehicle.  The big question is, what are those rules and procedures, and are they reasonable?  Interestingly enough, the U.S. Supreme Court recently dealt with just such a case in United States vs. Jones, decided just last year.  In U.S. vs. Jones, the Supremes ruled that placing the tracking device on the vehicle of one Antoine Jones, and subsequently monitoring his movement for 28 days constituted a search under the 4^th Amendment, but unfortunately they punted on the larger question of its potential privacy violation, although the import of this question was not lost upon Justice Breyer, who remarked during arguments:

“If you [Attorney for the government] win this case, there is nothing to prevent you from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movements of every citizen in the United States.”

Even more interestingly, the court decided Jones’ conviction would not stand, because the police trespassed onto his property in order to place the tracking device.  So no help there.  And suppose Jones’ conviction had hinged upon additional evidence judged critical to the case, but only tangentially related to the GPS monitoring of his vehicle?  Virginia had such a case in Foltz vs. Commonwealth of Virginia.  This was a particularly interesting matter in which police used GPS monitoring essentially to confirm their suspicions that Foltz was a person of interest in a series of sexual assault cases, and eventually caught him in the act and arrested him.  Foltz appealed his conviction on 4^th Amendment grounds, but the conviction was upheld, and the appellate court also held that the employment of GPS monitoring without a warrant.  By the time Foltz reached Virginia’s Supreme Court, the Jones ruling by the SCOTUS had been made, but Foltz’s conviction was upheld nevertheless, largely due to the preponderance of evidence considered not to be directly the product of GPS surveillance.

So as best I can tell, we still have a great deal of uncertainty about law enforcement’s permissible employment of GPS tracking technology.  GPS monitoring is essentially a form of surveillance, which does not require a warrant when performed by police.  At the same time, the Supreme Court has held that placing a GPS tracking device on a vehicle and then monitoring its movement constitutes a “search,” at least when it’s done on the suspect’s property, and constitutes trespass if not validated by an accompanying warrant.  And just as not all searches by police require a warrant, might there not be circumstances under which law enforcement use of GPS monitoring is held not to require one either?  The Probable Cause threshold of the 4^th Amendment has roughly 200 years of case law defining its application—how does it apply to an emerging technology which combines some elements of surveillance, and some of a search?  Privacy advocates were hoping for more clarity in U.S. vs. Jones, but the court elected to leave the question unresolved for now.

While I don’t have a particular objection to Virginia HB1981, I don’t believe it accomplishes very much.  The law seeks to protect us against the unlikely event of GPS monitoring by other private citizens, fails to deter such monitoring for criminal purposes by being too weak, and ignores the one party most likely and most motivated to abuse it, the same party from whom the 4^th Amendment was specifically intended to protect us: the state.

 The View from the Left

Derek Smith

It’s true that Virginia House Bill 1981 does not accomplish much—it won’t limit law enforcement beyond the evanescent protections of 4^th Amendment case law, nor will it provide a substantial additional deterrent to criminals from using electronic tracking devices. It could, perhaps, help secure the convictions of some criminals through plea deals, as additional, lesser offenses are extra bargaining chips for prosecutors, but this probably applies to such a small class of cases as to be a negligible effect of the law.

It does, however, appear to accomplish its apparent primary goal of restricting the activities of private investigators. The recently enacted bill was resurrected from proposal that died in the Virginia Senate in 2012, which sponsor Del. Joe May reportedly introduced in response to a complaint from a constituent. The constituent’s estranged wife hired a private investigator, who placed a GPS tracking device on the constituent’s car, apparently legally. So the law fits the stereotype of “reactive legislating” that we see all too often, especially in the realm of criminal law: something bad happened once, so let’s enact an overly-broad law to try to keep it from happening again.

Although the possibility of private investigators electronically tracking our movements is probably not a ubiquitous fear, nor a high priority for our attention, HB1981 at least does a decent job of addressing this small problem narrowly. The exemption in the law for private investigators still requires them to have the consent of the owner of the property they are tracking, and this limited exemption does not apply if the investigator is working for someone subject to any of a variety of protection orders. The law presumably would apply to situations like the aforementioned constituent’s, and prevent P.I.s from tracking people on behalf of stalkers or jealous exes. All of the other exceptions carved out in the law—for police, parents, vehicle fleet owners—keep the law as it is, and with a reasonable basis for doing so.

Most of the other states that have looked at this issue have taken a largely similar approach, but some have (more sensibly) more focused on the law enforcement side. New York and Illinois each have bills to subject electronic tracking to their states’ warrant requirements. They are laudable for setting a more explicit standard than the U.S. Supreme Court has, as this level of intrusion by the police should require a warrant. From a general  expectation of privacy standpoint, GPS monitoring feels much more invasive than old-fashioned stakeout surveillance; from a legal standpoint, installing a tracking device is similar to a search (which requires a warrant) because it entails a physical trespass onto someone’s property or person. These two reasons engender some confidence that the federal and state judiciaries will impose a 4^th Amendment (or state equivalent) warrant requirement on electronic tracking by police, even where it’s not specified by statute. Although the Department of Justice is still trying to exploit the ambiguity of U.S. v. Jones, the trend in the lower courts seems to be toward applying a stricter interpretation.

I hope you are getting ready for Hack4Colorado on May 31st – Just wanted to give you some more information to make sure your hacking experience is the best it can be. If you are following @Hack4CO on twitter, then you know they have counted our pennies to award the winning team in each track $2,000. You get the warm fuzzy feeling from making a difference AND a heavier wallet!

Make sure to register as soon as possible as space is limited. Then set up your profile on Hackerleague (https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hack4colorado) to take a gander at available APIs and data sets, and start conversations around project ideas, keep ‘em going #hack4colorado. No experience or team necessary, there will be plenty of cool cats to work with.

SAVE THE DATE – May 17th at noon we will be hosting a google hangout to provide an event overview so you know what to expect, and then a question and answer session directly with API providers.

Can’t wait to see you there!

The Progressive View

by Derek Smith

In his most recent State of the Union address, President Obama called for raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 per hour by 2015, and Congress has taken up the issue with the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013. This proposal is considerably behind Obama’s 2008 campaign platform, which suggested a minimum of $9.50 by 2011, and so has met with some criticism from both sides. Those on the left are mostly happy with it, save the more hardcore labor activists who believe it is too low—they particularly like to mention that the real value of the minimum wage is significantly below its 1968 peak, which, adjusted for inflation, would be the equivalent of $10.55 per hour today. But considering that the increase represents a nearly 25% raise, coupled with the fact that a minimum wage increase to $10.10 was already defeated by House Republicans, most liberals will take what they can get.

Much more opposition has come from the pro-business right, arguing that a minimum wage hike is a job-killer and counterproductive to economic recovery. But although that notion is often presented as an economic truism, the evidence is as usual a bit murkier.

Does a Higher Minimum Wage = Fewer Jobs?

Perhaps the most commonly argued objection to minimum wage laws is derived from basic economic principles of supply and demand—an increase in the cost of labor will cause businesses to hire fewer employees, reducing the number of minimum wage jobs available and ultimately harming low-income workers. While sound in theory, not all economic theories work as predicted in reality. Empirical evidence about the relationship between minimum wage increases and unemployment  is somewhat conflicting, although a survey of recent studies mostly points to little or no correlation.

Making definitive claims about a causal relationship (or lack thereof) is tricky due to the huge variety of economic factors that affect jobless rates, but in an example of using the states as “laboratories of democracy,” we can examine states with different minimum wage laws to test the hypothesis. A regression analysis across the states shows essentially no correlation between states with higher minimum wages and unemployment; another regression looking exclusively at the unemployment rate for the 16 to 24 age range actually shows a very slightly negative correlation between higher minimum wages and youth unemployment. Since additional regional differences are not accounted for by these regression analyses, other studies have examined the changes in unemployment rates within individual states after minimum wage increases, and found no effect.

Why does practice diverge from theory in this case? The most common answer from economists who support minimum wage laws is that businesses may have many different ways to absorb increased labor costs that are preferable to reducing staff. These range from reducing costs in other areas, demanding higher productivity from workers, reducing employees’ hours, accepting a slight reduction in profit margin, passing increased prices to consumers, or slowing pay increases for middle- and upper-level employees. While some of these responses have a negative or undesirable component, no particular group suffers much, because most businesses will offset the increased cost through some combination of a little bit of each. Plus there are the positive effects of increasing workers’ productivity and improving business efficiency, as well as the positive effect of reduced turnover—if minimum wage employees get a raise, they’re less likely to quit, reducing recruitment and training costs for businesses.

Demographics of Minimum Wage Earners

The next most frequently raised objection to increasing the minimum wage is that it wouldn’t help poor households, but rather middle-class teenagers who are not financially dependent on their employment. This objection relies on the oft-cited statistic that of the nearly four million Americans earning minimum wage or less, more than half are between the ages of 16 and 24, and this group’s average family income is around $65,000. Yet only about 28% all of minimum-wage earners have not finished high school, and presumably some portion of these are high-school dropouts over the age of 18. Focusing on the higher average family income fails to take into account college students who are still part of their parents’ “financial household” but are nonetheless accumulating significant amounts of personal debt for their educations (on average, $27,000 for a bachelors degree). An additional estimated 284,000 minimum wage-earners (8% of them) are college graduates. So although the general discourse usually frames the minimum wage as a “poor issue,” there is an argument to be made that an increase could also help strenghten the middle-class’s dwindling ability to save for, pay their way through, or pay off debts for further education, and thus improve future job prospects.

Those who cite these demographic characteristics also mention the fact that only 23% of minimum wage earners are at or below the povery line, whereas 65% make an income of 150% or more of the poverty threshold. But “at or above 150% of the poverty line” does not translate into “financially secure”—that would represent an annual income of $16,755 for a single-person household, or $34,575 for a family of four. There is also a remaining 12% in between these levels. So even if we consider everyone above the 150% line as doing alright, there are still almost a million-and-a-half struggling Americans who need higher wages, and would be likely to spend any increased income.

State-Level Minimum Wage Regimes

Although the federal minimum wage increase has decent popular support, it is likely to meet resistance from House Republicans, who in March unanimously rejected a proposed increase to $10.10 per hour. Even if a federal raise does not happen, many states have active bills to raise their minimum wages above the federal level.

Some of the more interesting bills seek to address potential concerns about youth unemployment or the impact on small businesses. A Minnesota bill would raise the minimum wage requirement for large employers (defined as having an annual gross volume of business of $625,000 or more) to $7.75 by 2015 while leaving the lower minimum wage for small employers at its current $5.25.

Other proposals, such as the bill “To Raise The Arkansas State Minimum Wage For Employees Other Than Part-time Student Employees” would allow employers to continue to pay younger part-time workers less, indexing their minimum rate to 65% of the standard minimum wage. This would help alleviate concerns about the potential negative youth-employment effects, and partially addresses objections toward minimum wage earners who are not primary bread-winners. Many states also have a lower “training rate” minimum that employers may pay a new employee for the first 90 days; some of these are specifically limited to employees less than 20 years old.

Regardless of what happens to the federal proposal, there will no doubt be a few states that set rates higher than the national standard, so we’ll be able to continue studying the broader economic consequences of minimum wage policies and come to a more informed conclusion. At the very least, minimum wage laws should be indexed to inflation. Hopefully enough states will try higher minimum wages, and perhaps with enough variations in exclusions for certain employees, that a better framework for federal policy will emerge.

The View from the Right

by Gregory Conterio

Minimum wage has remained a contentious topic in American politics from the very beginning, and continues as such today.  First established nationally in 1938 by the FDR administration, the principle of a minimum wage has also always lent itself to sloganeering by both sides, and this continues today in the very name of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, with its direct implication that it seeks to remedy something that is fundamentally unfair.  On the right, there has always been the mantra that the minimum wage kills jobs, and while there is evidence in support of this, it is not always clear or easy to discern.  It may be easier to rally the masses with a simple slogan, but as with so many things, finding the truth requires a little deeper reading.

A perfect case in point is the survey of recent studies Derek linked to above, titled Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment? by John Schmitt, published this past February.  Judging by his own conclusions, Schmitt may have misnamed his own paper, which after reading I would say is mostly fair, although it is a little dismissive of Neumark and Wascher, two of the more prominent economists whose work demonstrates a consistent destructive effect on employment by minimum wage increases.  Schmitt’s paper is a reasonable primer on the burgeoning topic of minimum wage research, but he restricts his review to only work done since 2000.  His conclusion is that modest increases in the minimum wage do not appear to have a consistent, detrimental effect on employment, and hypothesizes this to be due to a number of mitigating factors:

• Reduction in hours worked per employee
• Reduction in non-wage benefits
• Reduction in training
• “Upgrading” to fewer, but more highly skilled employees
• Raising prices
• Improving efficiency
• Improved motivation for low skill workers (who are so happy at their new, higher pay, they work harder)
• Reducing pay of higher-skilled workers
• Accepting reduced profits
• Increase in demand (minimum wage increase as “stimulus”)

Several of Schmitt’s hypothetical factors are highly conjectural to say the least.  Schmitt acknowledges for example that there is little or no supporting evidence for his contention that increasing minimum wage raises a workers motivation to work harder and more efficiently, or that it reduces turnover.  But the most striking thing to me about most of these “channels of adjustment” as Schmitt calls them, is they are not positive outcomes.  So apparently the good news is, after we raise the minimum wage, unemployment may not necessarily go up.  Unfortunately, your hours and benefits will be reduced, we can’t afford to properly train you, and prices are going to go up, so you will have to tighten your household budget.

Another important point about Schmitt’s study is his emphasis on modest minimum wage increases.  In the table he provides recounting all the increases in minimum wage from 1989 to present, the greatest increase by percentage was 13.6% in 2007.  In 2008 and 2009, minimum wage increased again, by 12 and 10.7% respectively, representing a percentage increase of 29% since 2006.  Now certainly a lot of other economic factors have contributed to the dramatic increase in unemployment since 2006, which persists through this day, but raising the cost of unskilled labor by nearly 1/3 during that same period has just as certainly been a factor.  And the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 proposes to raise it again by 20%.  That is not a modest increase.  And even if we assume for a moment that Schmitt is totally correct, and his channels of adjustment work to offset some of the potential job losses, the effects of those factors are uniformly harmful to the very low-skill workers who are supposedly being helped.

State to State Comparisons

The obvious problem with measuring unemployment rates between states with different minimum wage levels is that it is an apples to oranges comparison.  Let’s take fast food restaurants for example, as this has been a common type of establishment focused on by economic researchers over the years.  If you compare say, two Burger Kings, one in Southern California, and one in South Florida, where California has a higher, state-imposed minimum wage, directly comparing the unemployment levels in both states fails to take into account the different of the same products, the different taxation rates, differences in local seasonal sales patterns, the different state-mandated benefits, the dramatically different workplace cultures, and the local cost of living, among many other factors.  Unless you take into account all the local factors affecting each store, a simple comparison of minimum wage and employment rates has virtually no meaning.  This highlights perhaps the most challenging aspect of researching the overall effects of minimum wage increases, that being the need to capture a large amount of very granular data that varies considerably from one location to the next.  Scientifically speaking, the only correct way to measure the surmised effect of a particular variable (minimum wage) is to isolate it from the effects of others, and this is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do in a case like this.  This problem forms part of the basis for criticism of the Card and Krueger minimum wage study of 1992, cited by Derek above.  State to state comparisons offer a seductive “laboratory” through which to try to measure the effect of minimum wage changes on employment, but the inability to capture and account for all the local variables which bear upon employment levels has presented a so-far insurmountable obstacle, which calls the conclusions of such studies into question.

Demographics

Without getting into too much parsing, the standard, accepted figures for minimum wage workers in America remain roughly what Derek cites above, about four million, and indeed half or more are young people just entering the work force.  While Derek points out that a certain number of these are college students, no doubt accumulating student loans to pay off, the reality is those loans don’t come due until after the student leaves school, so any minimum wage jobs worked by such students are unlikely to go toward offsetting that debt.  But let’s look for a moment at the “poor,” who are the real target of minimum wage increases.  At current levels, a full-time minimum wage employee earns about $15,000 per year.  At this level, they also qualify for a whole bucket-full of means-tested government benefits, including food stamps, housing vouchers, the earned income tax credit, Medicaid, and more.  Should the minimum be bumped up to $9.00 per hour, their annual earnings increase by nearly $4,000, bumping them out of qualification for most of those benefits, effectively acting as a 100% tax upon the difference, leaving them exactly where they started.  One might honestly ask, what’s fair about that?

The purpose of raising the minimum wage is ostensibly to help the poor, and the idea of simply giving them more money has a certain emotional appeal that is irresistible.  That is exactly why Congress incorporated the word “fair” into the title of the bill, to heighten the emotional appeal.  Certainly there are circumstances where basing your choices and decisions on emotion works out well, like running away in fear from man-eating predators, but for the most part, decisions based on emotion rather than reason tend to go badly.  Based on the questionable benefits, and the inevitable harm, I think this is clearly true of this bill.

But how do they look over time?  I took a look at new bills getting introduced, actions (bills being read on the floor, moved to committee, scheduled to be heard, etc), and votes each week.  Notice actions is against the second access – there’s a lot of them!  You can see bills get introduced mostly all in a rush.  Actions similarly peak and drop off, but remain steady at an impressive 60,000 a week, give or take.  And votes don’t get started until a little later, which makes sense, and follow their own pattern.  I showed the end of last year so you can see the level of activity when almost everyone is out, and then prefiling starting, as a harbinger of the sessions to come.

Line Graph of Bills, Actions, Votes introduced weekly Nov 2012 - Apr 2013

The View from the Right

By Gregory Conterio

The Rowan County Defense of Religion Act of 2013 does not appear to have much of a future.  According to local reporting, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis has said the bill will never be brought up for a vote.  Yet even though the bill likely will not be voted upon, let alone implemented, it has raised a good deal of controversy, and raises several legitimate constitutional issues of contemporary interest.

The bill comes in response to an ACLU lawsuit against the use of sectarian prayer (specifically, praying in Jesus’ name) at the start of government meetings in Rowan County, NC.

The entire text of the bill can be found on BillTrack50, but the operative part is contained in only three short sections that read as follows:

 SECTION 1.

The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

 SECTION 2.

The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

 SECTION 3.

This resolution is effective upon ratification.

Section 1 is certainly the most contentious, and has generated a certain amount of consternation among left-leaning news outlets.  The Huffington Post, for example, frets that North Carolina wants to declare its own state religion.  An Examiner editorial declares that North Carolina thinks “ . . . that the U.S. Constitution is for other people.”  But is that what is really happening here, or are the authors of this legislation simply trying to establish a brighter line between state sovereignty and the power of the federal government?

In the opening text of NC H494, the bill actually recounts the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment, which together read:

 “Congress shall make no law respecting an Establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

The bill then goes on to state that

 this prohibition does not apply to states, municipalities, or schools;

This assertion is, as so many constitutional issues are, highly contentious. In its defense, it must be noted that the wording of this clause of the First Amendment is explicitly clear: the lawmaking branch (Congress) of the federal government is prohibited from making any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting its free exercise.  The clause is silent on the question of whether any branch, organ, or representative of government at the state or local level is prohibited from doing these things.  Had they meant to say that, the clause would no doubt have been worded appropriately to do exactly that.  The fact is the Founders singled out one of the three branches of the federal government for this prohibition.  (The latter is arguably an academic point, being as only the Congress has the power to write law.) In any event, the clause, being part of the federal Constitution, is conspicuously and explicitly creating a prohibition that applies to the federal government.

Over time, however, the Establishment Clause has been applied in law to the states as well, by means of a series of Supreme Court decisions such as Everson v. Board of Education. These decisions were justified using what is known as the Incorporation Doctrine, through which the Court has held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment compels most (but not all) of the Bill of Rights to be “incorporated” by the states, as well as the federal government.  Without delving into a detailed history of the doctrine, I will simply summarize by saying that in a fairly arbitrary way, the Supreme Court rather haphazardly concluded that certain freedoms were so fundamental, explicit prohibitions against the federal government violating these rights were assumed to control state and local law as well, despite there being no such language in the Constitution.  Thus began a very subtle yet fundamental change in how liberty and the source-authority of our natural rights were regarded by the judicial branch of our government.  Rather than being considered unalienable and endowed by our Creator, by appointing the federal government the guarantor and champion of some rights, but not others, the Court has implicitly placed the federal government as the source of our rights, displacing the ideal established by our Founders.

Perhaps the worst abuse came at the hands of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who gave us the Endorsement Test.  In Lynch v. Donnelly in 1984, O’Connor arbitrarily substituted the term endorse for the word establish in the First Amendment.  Even a casual familiarity with the Founders and Framers reveals that as a group, they most emphatically endorsed religion.  When I was a young child, I started hearing the phrase separation of church and state as a fundamental principle of the American system of government; however, such words appear nowhere in our Constitution.  While our Founders were clear that the specific manner of religious belief or practice should never be used to measure men or ideas, the presence and practice of faith and worship was highly respected, and preferred.

So what of the contention that through H494, North Carolina desires to establish its own religion?  In order for such a thing to be true, North Carolinians would first have to either violate or rather radically amend their own state constitution.  As it happens, Section 13 of North Carolina’s Declaration of Rights states:

“All persons have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences, and no human authority shall, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience.”

When taken in context, it is clear North Carolina’s H494 expresses no intent or desire to “establish a religion,” but rather make clear that judicial activism notwithstanding, the federal government has nothing to say about it one way or the other.  Judicial activism—and current reigning constitutional interpretation—again notwithstanding, they are probably on very solid ground is so saying, despite the fact that it may be politically incorrect to do so.

Section 2 may be less contentious, but only by a little.  In addition to rejecting the rulings of the Supreme Court that contradict the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as being applicable to the federal government only, H494 also asserts its sovereignty under the 10^th Amendment:

Whereas, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”; and

Whereas, the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States prohibits the federal government and prohibits the federal courts from expanding the powers of the federal government beyond those powers which are explicitly enumerated;

At the time of its proposal, the 10^th Amendment was considered by many to be superfluous and redundant.  After all, by implication, the Constitution was clearly a document meant to strictly curtail the powers of the federal government, to codify the Declaration’s recognition of the supremacy of natural rights, and to place the several states in the primary role of governing the people and the communities in which they lived.  What need was there to spell this out explicitly?  James Madison, the author of the 10^th Amendment, explains:

“I find, from looking into the amendments proposed by the State conventions, that several are particularly anxious that it should be declared in the Constitution, that the powers not therein delegated should be reserved to the several States. Perhaps words which may define this more precisely than the whole of the instrument now does, may be considered as superfluous. I admit they may be deemed unnecessary: but there can be no harm in making such a declaration, if gentlemen will allow that the fact is as stated. I am sure I understand it so, and do therefore propose it.”

Madison, in Federalist 45, also seeks to assure states nervous about federal overreach that the Constitution is explicitly designed to prevent such overreach, and to set up a scenario whereby the federal government’s primary role is foreign affairs, leaving the states to govern day-to-day domestic matters:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The purpose of the 10^th is to make clear the limited nature of the enumerated powers granted the federal government, and that the document is a contract whereby the people voluntarily and conditionally surrender certain liberties and freedoms they inherit at birth in exchange for the power necessary to govern.

The popular term today for North Carolina’s position in this bill is nullification, but in reality this is nothing new.  The concept of nullification has become a hot topic from time to time  throughout our nation’s history.  It is the recognition that, should the federal government overreach, and claim unto itself powers beyond those enumerated by the Constitution, the states and the people retain the right to take back such powers unto themselves.  What I find terribly ironic is that an amendment Madison conceded might appear superfluous is often interpreted today by the courts as to have effectively no meaning.  This alone should be regarded as a sign that something is seriously amiss.

In a time when certain political cohorts like to speak glowingly of penumbras, and to wax eloquent on other novel legal interpretations granting the federal government ever-greater supremacy over our day-to-day lives, a supremacy it was never intended to exercise or possess, I find North Carolina’s H494 unsurprising.  I am not personally comfortable with the idea of states establishing their own religions, but I don’t think that is really what H494 is about.  Rather, I see the bill primarily as a state’s attempt to reassert the sovereignty and plenary power that it was intended to have by the Framers of the Constitution. The federal government was meant to have a limited set of powers, primarily focused on foreign matters, and yet today, it exercises control over minute details of every American’s life, with the states increasingly taking a back seat. Observers may obsess over the religious aspects of this bill, but the state-sovereignty issue is where its heart lies. Thus, I think the real question here is, How did we come to a place where some Americans believed a bill like this to be necessary?

The Progressive View

By Derek Smith

Do We Need Laws “Defending” Religion?

If the North Carolina legislators behind the Rowan County Defense of Religion Act (RCDRA) were more interested in making a point about federalism than about religion, they made a strangely specific choice by including “Religion” in the name of the resolution. And then to devoting the entirety of the resolution to asserting their state’s right to “mak[e] laws respecting an establishment of religion,” and no other particular rights. So it is not quite the broad federalism statement that Missouri’s SJR 45 is, which presumes to nullify almost everything Republicans don’t like: Obamacare, environmental regulations, gun control, potential future decisions about gay marriage, abortion rights, hate crime legislation, and apparently even Marbury v. Madison.

To be fair, the claims that the RCDRA was intended to establish a state religion are hyperbolic.  What the legislators more plainly intended was to exempt North Carolina from Supreme Court decisions limiting prayer at public meetings (and to thumb their noses at the ACLU). The question of whether publicly-endorsed prayer is on principle a good or bad thing for society is highly debatable but not likely resolvable; for most people, the answer is a function of two factors: one’s intensity of religious devotion, and whether one belongs to the dominant religious affiliation.

A quick survey of recent “religious freedom”-themed legislation reveals some general trends that raise red flags—they originate in areas with overwhelmingly Christian majorities, and they tend to come in reaction to a perceived threat to the expression of Christian beliefs. They often refer to a generic freedom of religion, but their supporters rarely even try to hide the fact that they really mean freedom to be a Christian. When Rep. Michele Presnell, one of the sponsors of the RCDRA, was asked if she would be comfortable with a Muslim prayer at a public meeting, her bigoted response—“No, I do not condone terrorism.”

Even without such obvious discriminatory intent, laws claiming to protect the interests of a majority group deserve some extra scrutiny, as “defending the majority” is usually just a polite way of phrasing “persecuting the minority.” Most charges of anti-Christian fall into the I’m-facing-discrimination-based-on-my-desire-to-discriminate-against-others category. The notion that religion could be seriously threatened in a democratic society in which 77% of the population self-identify as Christian (and only 16% as not religiously affiliated) is laughably absurd, particularly considering how underrepresented non-believers are within public office. Among all the elected federal officials in our nation’s history, there are only two who have openly claimed no religious affiliation: Pete Stark, who served in the House for more than 30 years before “outing” his atheism in 2007; and Krysten Sinema, new U.S. Rep. from AZ, although she eschews the labels of “atheist” or “non-believer.” Furthermore, recent polling shows 43% of Americans would not vote for an atheist presidential candidate nominated by their own party, irrespective of qualifications. Non-believers are less popularly supported for elected office than almost every other historically disfavored demographic, falling well behind blacks, Jews, women, and Mormons, and even slightly trailing Muslims and homosexuals.

So for better or for worse, Christianity is sure to remain a significant fixture in American political discourse for the foreseeable future. Trying to protect Christianity legislatively is not a particularly good idea P.R.-wise or strategically for Christians, as it puts both secularists and religious minorities on the defensive. Combining religion and politics is inherently polarizing, as most religious systems have built-in guarantees of absolute, divine correctness of beliefs, necessitating the view that conflicting religious beliefs are absolutely incorrect. But since bad ideas are not per se unconstitutional, and legislators seem to enact (or at least propose) them with alacrity, the question turns to: “Which bad ideas do they have the right to enact?”

Modern Constitutional Jurisprudence

Through the doctrine of selective incorporation as discussed above, nearly all of the rights of the First Amendment should definitively apply against the states. I agree that selective incorporation has spurious legal rationale, and would personally prefer full incorporation of the Bill of Rights. But even if one is uncomfortable with the doctrinal positioning of any type of incorporation, it should still seem like good policy sense not to want to grant states permission to violate their citizens’ truly “fundamental” rights.

While the “fundamentality” of some rights is difficult to assess, those contained in the First Amendment should be uncontentious. It is hard to imagine rights that are much more fundamental in nature for sentient beings than those relating to freedom of thought, consciousness, and expression—concepts of individual free will that should be sacrosanct to conservatives. The Supreme Court has held the two religious clauses of the First Amendment to be fundamental rights since the 1940’s, and a reversal of this is incredibly unlikely in light of recent trends. In 2010 the Court found the Second Amendment right fundamental enough to justify selective incorporation through the Due Process Clause, and accordingly proclaimed Chicago’s handgun ban unconstitutional; it would require a position of stunning audacity to assert that the right to own a man-made invention dating from only the last seven centuries or so is a more “natural” right than those relating to one’s individual mental processes.

Original Intent

Even if the Supreme Court has said that the First Amendment applies to the states, are they correctly interpreting the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution by doing so?

One way to answer that question is with another (rhetorical) question: who cares? There are many reasons not to take an original-intent approach to the Constitution. One is the arcane task of divining the will of the dead, further confounded by the propensity everyone has to project their own intentions. It also seems overly dogmatic to be ever-constrained by the intentions of a few dozen men from the 18^th century who could have never imagined modern society. And this may strike some ears as haeresis americana, but the Constitution was not forged of the purest ideals, smelted from hope and dreams, on an anvil of righteousness. It was an ugly process of haggling and compromises, and it seems natural that the optimal positioning of those compromises might change over time.

Assuming we do care, however, even an originalist examination of the Constitution can support the conclusion that the First Amendment applies to the states. Rather than focusing solely on the Fourteenth Amendment, for which there truly is conflicting information in the historical record about both the intentions of the drafters of the amendment and about the intentions of law-makers voting for the final version of the amendment (hence, a good example of why not to rely on originalism), one can also turn to the often overlooked Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The original purpose of this amendment was to alleviate fears of possible application of the maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius (“the express mention of one thing excludes all others;” i.e., if a right is not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, then that right does not exist). So although the first eight amendments were originally drafted as applicable to the federal government only, the Ninth Amendment implies that people have additional rights, and nothing in the constitution suggests that any rights may only be asserted as against the federal government. In fact, when you look at the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments together, this analysis become stronger: there are some rights (voting) that the Fourteenth Amendment very clearly does intend to apply to the states, and if some there are at least some rights that are constitutionally enforceable against the states, then the Ninth Amendment opens the door for any of the first eight amendment rights—the fact that the Bill of Rights asserts a right applicable against the federal government does not imply that the right cannot exist with respect to state governments.

An objection that may still exist under this analysis is that nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government the affirmative authority to intervene as a sort of “guarantor of rights,” and some would cite the numerous constitutional constraints on federal power as evidence that it should not have this power. One problem with this objection is that the constraints on the federal government are mostly oriented toward prevention of a dictatorial executive branch or an over-reaching Congress, whereas it is primarily the federal judiciary that acts as the guarantor of individual Constitutional rights. While the Constitution does not explicitly provide for this, it is also much less strongly cautionary about the judicial branch. There is also a very pragmatic response to this objection—if the federal government cannot act as a guarantor of its citizens’ rights, then what potential check is there on a dictatorial state government? Must the residents of the state decide between violent revolt and exodus? Or perhaps we would want neighboring states to intervene on behalf of the rights of fellow Americans? As most of these states with nullification movements are in the South, one would think they should have already learned that lesson.

So in the context of the Rowan County Defense of Religion Act, the issue really is not whether the federal government can tell the states what to do with respect to religion, but rather whether the federal government can step in to protect the rights of American citizens within the jurisdiction of an oppressive state. If not the federal government, then who?

This summer, instead of looking at one topic widely across the states, we will be taking a deep look at one bill of interest.  Each week we’ll choose from the most read bills on BillTrack50 that week, and offer you an analysis of the issues at hand.  Instead of doing so neutrally, we’ll offer you both sides of the argument, via our Contrarians:  Derek will generally be presenting a progressive viewpoint, and Greg will generally take a more conservative stance.

We hope you’ll join us for a fun and informative weekly foray into state politics.

Derek Smith grew up in Illinois and attended University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, earning his B.A. in political science. He then attended University of Colorado School of Law, graduating in 2009. Derek has worked in political campaigning, writing & editing, criminal defense law, and as an educator. In his free time, Derek enjoys playing music, hiking, snowboarding, and chess.  His summer of controversy posts can be found here.

Gregory Conterio is a business technology expert and writer with a keen interest in history, politics and current events. Born in a small Illinois farming community, he realized immediately there must have been some terrible mistake, and became intent on leaving his life in the sticks for the Big City at the earliest opportunity.  During the intervening years, he did however have a classic, farm-community upbringing, the like of which has mostly disappeared from America today.  This included hunting & fishing, milking the family’s dairy cows by hand twice a day, operating tractors & combines, baling hay, showing cattle at the county fair, raising & training hunting dogs, as well as a heavy schedule of 4H and Boy Scout meetings.  Immediately after finishing school at Eastern Illinois University, Mr. Conterio moved as far as he could reasonably get from farm country, relocating to the mythical city of Los Angeles, which like the lost city of Atlantis, nobody from his home town had ever actually seen or been-to.  In the years that followed, Mr. Conterio put his education in zoology and English literature to staggeringly good use in the growing business technology industry, working for a number of different organizations, eventually gravitating toward consulting work.  Ironically, Mr. Conterio has returned to his “roots,” and presently resides in the Homestead area of Florida where in between writing, cooking, parenting and chasing dogs off the sofa, he schemes to raise all the necessary birds, vegetables and herbs necessary for Christmas Turducken in his own back-yard.

See this view http://youtu.be/IkuH5ZjEdBw and check out this page for more information: http://www.saveyourprivacypolicy.org/

The internet is ours. Defend it.

Ted Talk: http://on.ted.com/aVGd

While much of the national crime policy debate of this year has focused on gun control, the ever-present fear for our children’s safety has also ensured that state legislatures continue to churn out bills to get tougher on sex offenders [“SOs”]. Bill O’Reilly has been squawking about championing states’ incorporation of the federal version of Jessica’s Law lately, namely by decrying the five states that have not adopted it as villainous pedophile-havens. As with most sex offender legislation, the reasons for not getting “tougher” on SOs in these states are much more nuanced than those posited by pundits.

But the adoption (or not) of Jessica’s Law actually presents relatively uncomplicated issues. In a spectacular collision of two areas that legislators love to want to regulate but don’t really know how, many states have begun trying to limit SOs’ use of the internet. A few such laws have already been rightly ruled unconstitutional by federal courts, some others are severely misguided, and a handful are probably good ideas.

Complete Bans Infringe First Amendment Rights

The most restrictive laws have sought to ban SOs outright from using social networking sites, chat rooms, or instant messaging services that allow access to minors. This past January, the federal 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that such a law from Indiana was unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds, and a U.S. District Court invalidated a similar Louisiana law in February 2012. Several other states such as New Jersey have introduced similar social media bans, but they are languishing or have been abandoned following the 7th Circuit decision.

According to the principles American constitutional jurisprudence, any law restricting a fundamental right (which includes First Amendment rights) must both serve a compelling state interest and be narrowly tailored to meeting that interest. Of course, nobody argues whether the state has a compelling interest in preventing sexual abuse of children; it is in the narrowly-tailoring where these laws have failed. By banning SOs from using social networking sites at all, they prohibit a wide range of speech- and expression-related conduct that has nothing to do with the exploitation of children. Lawyers for Indiana argued that the complete bans were necessary because although the state already had a law prohibiting internet solicitation of a minor, police needed something to catch SOs with before solicitation could even occur. This may be a worthy goal, but is not enough to justify the inclusion of non-targeted conduct within the ban. The court also seemed concerned about the practical efficacy of this preemptive enforcement, which weakens the idea of the law actually serving a compelling interest.

More Limited Social Networking Restrictions

Many commenters and elected officials in Indiana and Louisiana have criticized the decisions, despite the fact that they practically invite the legislatures to try again with some modifications to narrow the scope of the bans. It will be interesting to see how states attempt to nuance these laws to survive constitutional review; perhaps the best example of one that likely would survive is New Mexico’s HB 48.

Instead of banning SOs from social networking or chat sites completely, New this bill would make it a crime to “knowingly and intentionally communicat[e] with a person that the sex offender knows is under sixteen.” This minimizes the scope of the non-targeted infringement of speech, while still providing law enforcement a tool for catching potential re-offenders—it gives them a crime to charge a SO with before rising to the level of solicitation. The law could be used to catch offenders who are fishing for or “grooming” their potential victims before any sexual conduct or talk takes place, by criminalizing communications that otherwise appear facially innocent. It also wouldn’t raise as many enforceability questions as the Indiana law, due to the fact that it requires a the offender to make specific action towards a minor.

In addition, New Mexico’s proposed law would only apply to SOs whose victims were under the age of sixteen and whose initial crimes were facilitated via the internet. Interestingly, the 7th Circuit’s decision notes in the legislative background that Indiana’s law “did not differentiate based on age of victim, the manner in which the crime was committed, or the time since the predicate offense,” and then never returns to these ideas again, but we can probably presume that making such differentiations would help a law pass constitutional muster.  The New Mexico bill also contains a clause exempting communications with one’s own children (people often forget that many SOs have children who were not the victims of their crimes) and a so-called “Romeo and Juliet clause,” exempting those considered SOs for having a relationship with someone only a couple years younger than them. Although I have not yet come across substantially similar proposals in other states, if passed, it should probably become the model sex-offender-internet-restriction law.

Other Regulatory Approaches to SOs Online

Add Social Networking Info to Sex Offender Registries

Rather than trying to regulate the conduct of SOs on the internet, more states are trying to increase awareness and tracking of SOs’ internet use. The first general category of these laws is fairly uncontroversial–requirements for SOs to provide SO registries with their various internet handles, usernames, e-mail addresses, etc. Rather than discussing the merits of the registries themselves (which I do here), let’s assume for this argument that they are generally good ideas, and we want to know who and where our SOs are. The registries already require the names, aliases, phone numbers, and places of residence and employment of offenders to be recorded and updated frequently; it makes sense that our registries would be modernized to include new types of electronic “aliases” and “places.” Many states already require this kind of information, but seek to make the laws more current with technological trends and developments. For example, Florida’s S. 1114 broadens its requirement for SOs to provide their “Instant Message Name” to all “internet identifiers,” which are defined as “all electronic mail, chat, instant messenger, social networking, or similar name [sic] used for internet communication;” Alabama would add disclosure of internet service providers.

In a surprising show of judgment and restraint, none of these laws or proposed bills require SOs’ “internet identifiers” to be displayed on the registry that is available to the public. In fact, many such as New Mexico specify that this information is for law enforcement use only, and a Missouri bill takes a middle approach somewhat reminiscent of Colorado’s medical marijuana registry—online identifiers would not be available in the SO’s general registry profile, but “shall only be available to a member of the public by a search using the specific online identifier to determine if a match exists with a registered offender.” This theoretically could assist people in protecting themselves or their children if they are contacted by an unknown person online; given that over ninety percent of sex offenses against minor are committed by family members or already-trusted friends, the actual protectoral value is probably quite low. However, since these laws do not really implicate any serious constitutional rights questions, they are probably here to stay, and will probably do little good or harm either way.

Add Sex Offender Info to Social Networking Profiles

In perhaps the least sensible approach—although more constitutional than the complete bans—some states want to require SOs to advertise their SO statues on social networking profiles. Louisiana has already adopted such a law in response to their complete ban being overturned, and Arizona, New Jersey, and Texas are currently considering this requirement. Generally, these laws cover all internet sites that facilitate communication between users and allow users to create profiles displaying personal information, with three exemptions as constitutionality safeguards: news websites, governmental entities’ sites, and sites that primarily facilitate commercial transactions. So a SO would not have to disclose his status on his FoxNews.com account or eBay profile, for example, but would have to post it on any Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn account.

This presents a wide array of problems. First, any SOs displaying their status on these profiles will undoubtedly be subject to a flurry of harassment and threats. If the level of harassment is severe enough to compel SOs away from these sites, there could be some argument that the disclosure requirement is effectively a ban for practical purposes. Three of the four laws, excepting Arizona’s, require listing not just one’s SO designation, but the specific crime, convicting jurisdiction, a physical description, and residential address, which could lead to increased in-person harassment or episodes of vigilante justice (see my previous piece for some examples of this gone horribly wrong). And over-notification can have unintended consequences for others; one SO who testified before the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence noted that his children had been kicked out of their karate class when someone discovered their father on the SO registry. Any family members or friends of an SO might feel they have to sever any social-network connections to the SO to avoid being ostracized by association. The result is either unintended victims of the notification, or even more alienation and isolation of SOs.

These disclosure requirements also undermine the reintegration process by limiting employment opportunities for SOs. Many websites for job-seekers, such as LinkedIn, Jobster, and Monster.com, would be covered by these laws, not to mention the fact that many employers also screen the social networking profiles of potential employees (various surveys indicate from 37% to 56% of employers). It can certainly be argued that this would a useful tool for employers who wish to screen out SOs, but criminal background checks already exist for that very reason, and would remain much more reliable because they are not dependent on the SO’s compliance with the law. If an employer is concerned about the cost of an official background check—which, depending on the state, usually costs $10-20 and is often passed on to the applicant—it is just as easy to search for a name on the online sex offender registry as it is on Facebook (and probably actually easier to screen out false matches). Furthermore, nearly all positions working with children require an official background check anyway, and thus the law is the most superfluous in the area it is primarily seeks to address.

Legislatures will undoubtedly continue to tinker with laws to protect children on the internet, and as soon as another internet predator makes national media, there will once again be a flurry of “get tough” bills. But even in the aftermath of tragedies, legislators (and citizens) need to remember that stricter, one-size-fits-all laws are not always better, especially when it comes to constitutionally protected conduct such as speech. If they want to restrict the conduct of sex offenders on the internet, they should consider at least one of two limitations: (1) the class of sex offenders to which it applies, such as those who used the internet in a prior crime, with minor victims; or (2) the type of conduct restricted, by specifically prohibiting interacting with minors via the internet rather than complete bans from certain sites. This way they can still target the conduct they seek to prevent, while preventing undue infringements of First Amendment rights, in a narrowly-tailored fashion.

Here’s a map of states with social media related bills (I used the search terms “social media” “social network” “blog” “microblogging” “tweet” “twitter“ “facebook” “linkedin”)

As you can see, well over half the states are considering bills this year.

Bills with a focus on social media come in three basic flavors:

• Encouraging (or requiring) it’s use as a new communication channel, such as requiring public meetings to be shared on social media channels, or protecting people’s right to use it
• Defining ways in which it can’t be used (or limits on who can use it)
• Expanding the definitions of existing laws, like laws about identity theft or what’s admissible in court, to include social media

There’s a natural tension in the above themes.  Social media is good, no it’s bad, or it’s here to stay let’s deal with it.  So what point of view is winning out?  Let’s take a look at the types of bills introduced this session:

A few trends have definitely emerged.  Last year California passed two bills prohibiting employers and schools from asking employees or students for their log in info.  Both of these bills passed easily.  They were also the only such bills to pass last year – although Pennsylvania and Minnesota had both introduced such bills.  This year, as you can see above, lots of states have taken up the subject.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see many more next year.

Several cyber bullying laws also passed last year, including this bill from Louisiana, including social media explicitly as a potential stage for bullying.  This bill was a little more controversial in the Senate, though it passed easily out of the House.  Again, several more states have introduced bills involving social media and cyber bullying for this year, such as this fairly typical example from Oklahoma.

There are several bills regarding people on sex offender lists this year.  These bills either limit what social media offenders can use, or require them to disclose their sex offender status.  Only one such bill was passed last year, out of a handful introduced, but we’ll probably be seeing more of these kinds of bills in the next few years.  Given the controversial nature of sex offender lists, I find this particular trend a bit troubling.

Finally, the other big piece of the pie is transparency, but I lumped a wide variety of things into this category.  I’d like to highlight some as good examples, and some just as interesting.  First is the government trying to use social media to do a better job informing people about meetings and other government business.  I particularly like “MA H2908 - To enhance technology in civic engagement”.  Another theme is using social media to help get emergency information out, such as this Washington bill adding social media to the ways in which a missing children alert is sent out, which seems to be making good progress.  Finally there are some interesting bills requiring certain professionals to publish certain information on their social media channels.  I’d love to see more of the government transparency bills in the coming years.  Certainly the old practice of publishing meeting notices in newspapers needs updating.

A complete list of all current bills involving social media can be seen on this stakeholder page.  Note you can use the magnifying glass tool in the footer of the grid to open up a filter pane, allowing you to narrow bills down to a specific state.  You can click on a column header to sort the bills, which is particularly useful for the action date column to see what has happened lately, or sort on the category column to see where different types of bills have been introduced.  And you can click on the bill icon in the first column to read the complete bill text, history, and so on.  Save this link to keep informed about legislation on this topic.  Or consider our subscription options if you’d like to be alerted about new legislation or share these bills on your own website (or feel free to share the stakeholder page).

Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting chemically treated water, usually along with sand, into oil and gas wells under high pressure. The goal is to cause the oil and gas bearing rock to fracture, increasing the drainage radius (and therefore production rate) of the well.  Typically the target layer of rock is thousands, or tens of thousands, of feet below the surface.

There are significant questions in the public mind about the safety of these techniques, the potential for contamination of groundwater, and various other concerns.  The story has been told in documentaries and other media, trying to explain and document the issues involved.

On the other hand, these techniques have given us access to enormous new resources within our national borders that were previously inaccessible.  Our natural gas reserves have expanded, as Obama famously said in his State of the Union address, to support 100 years of use.  Clearly developing our own reserves has national security implications, as well as creating new economic opportunities in many areas of the country.  The oil industry argues vigorously that these techniques are safe, and indeed have been used successfully for over 60 years.  Limiting or banning hydraulic fracturing would have an immediate, significant impact on oil and gas production in the affected states.

These competing interests have certainly caught the attention of state legislatures.  Some looking to ensure hydraulic fracturing can continue unabated, such as this bill passed in  North Dakota last year and also this bill in Utah, two oil producing states.  There are bills for states that currently don’t have any wells looking to create a mechanism for wells to be permitted, such as these 2013 bills in North Carolina and Hawaii.  Several current bills call for a moratorium on fracturing, until more information can be gathered, such as these current bills in New York and Maryland.  And there have been bills banning hydraulic fracturing outright, such as this bill passed in Vermont last year (Vermont has never had any commercial wells); another 15 bills this session call for a ban.

About 300 bills have been introduced in the last three years relating to hydraulic fracturing; there are around 100 so far this year.  These bills have been in both producing and non producing states.  Here is the national landscape for 2013 to date:

And in 2011 and 2012:

The trend has been towards additional disclosure of the particulars of a treatment, including where and when, as well as the chemical make up of frac fluid.  Texas and Indiana both passed disclosure bills last year, and there are 37 bills with a disclosure component introduced so far this year.  As discused above, there have also been a number of bills calling for a ban, or at least a moratorium pending further study.  Here’s the breakdown of the types of bills introduced so far this year:

Another battle shaping up is determining what level of government will be making regulations.  Last year Utah passed a bill stating the states should have regulatory authority, not the federal government.  And this year this New York bill calls for the state to have authority, and not counties or municipalities (see section 4).  And this West Virginia bill specifically gives authority to counties and municipalities to make their own regulations.  How this issue, along with transparency initiatives, and the calls for bans or at least moratoriums play have the potential to have a large impact on all of us.

To learn more

View a recording of our webinar on 3/28/2013 or download the slides from the presentation.

A complete list of all current bills regarding hydraulic fracturing can be seen on this stakeholder page.  Note you can use the magnifying glass tool in the footer of the grid to open up a filter pane, allowing you to narrow bills down to a specific state (or to producing or non producing states).  You can click on a column header to sort the bills, which is particularly useful for the action date column to see what has happened lately, or sort on the category column to see where different types of bills have been introduced.  And you can click on the bill icon in the first column to read the complete bill text, history, and so on.  Save this link to keep informed about legislation on this topic.  Or consider our subscription options if you’d like to be alerted about new legislation or share these bills on your own website (or feel free to share the stakeholder page).

Please share your opinion and experiences in the comment section if you believe hydraulic fracturing should be encouraged, forbidden, and/or if additional transparency or regulations should be put in place.

Bookmark this page as we’ll be adding additional sessions and links.  We will also eventually add links to the recorded webinars, and links to the stakeholder pages.  Also please feel free to suggest topics you would like to see us cover.

The current schedule (and links to register or links to the stakeholder page, depending on if the date has passed):

*New* Hydraulic Fracturing, back by popular demand: Thurs March 28, 11:00 am EST

Bills: http://www.billtrack50.com/PublicStakeholder/05kVTGGyckGDybdG9njrxA

Slide show: http://www.slideshare.net/ksuhaka/hydraulic-fracturing-16949940

Webinar recording: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/4931870750813646080

Charter Schools: Thu, Mar 7, 2013 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM EST

Bills: http://billtrack50.com/PublicStakeholder/Kj6v4uXAzEO5tYDC-9YOpw

Slide show: http://app.sliderocket.com/app/fullplayer.aspx?id=EA3144A8-9011-C548-6B26-8AB2717B9992

Webinar Recording: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/6109170627241344256

Health Insurance Exchange Legislation: Fri March 8, 2013 4:30-5:00 EST
Bills: http://billtrack50.com/PublicStakeholder/Ky-zJdGlnEy6qmQvzZ59BQ

Slide show:  http://www.slideshare.net/ksuhaka/health-care-legislation

Social Media: Tues Mar 124, 11:00 am EST
Bills: http://www.billtrack50.com/PublicStakeholder/VmSxMH7n9kCgyaPMoqbBtw

Slide Show: http://www.slideshare.net/ksuhaka/social-media-legislative-roundup-2013

Webinar recording:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/8249540434646059008

Non-Agricultural Pesticide and Fertilizer: Thu, Mar 14, 2013 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM EST
Bills: http://billtrack50.com/PublicStakeholder/rZ9xLS5Vi0KXh7zR5Qy7EQ

Slide show: http://app.sliderocket.com/app/fullplayer.aspx?id=217E34F1-4E0B-9D82-9FBB-8ADE8BE94653

Webinar Recording: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/6802110342856513536

Gun Control Legislation: Friday March 22, 2013 4:30-5 EST
Bills: http://billtrack50.com/PublicStakeholder/mwTUMeZELE-3iOOzhRLOMA

Slide show:  http://www.slideshare.net/ksuhaka/gun-control-17517101

Webinar recording: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/4836198945457497600

I previously wrote a post about what percent of bills pass, pointing out that Congress passed fewer bills then every single state last session.  But let’s do a deeper dive, and look at more than the count of bills passed.   Most bills never come up for a vote.  But of those that do, we can look at what percent of those get passed.  In other words, what percent of votes are “yes”?

Even though only about 2% of federal bills pass these days, about 23% of bills that come up for a vote get passed.  Which casts things is in a slightly different vote.  Across the country (where I have individual roll call information – blank states are missing data, not missing politicians),

As you can see there’s quite a contrast, again, between how votes go at the federal level and how they go at the state level.  For the most part, once a bill comes to a full vote, legislators are in agreement.  Of course there might be lots of reasons for these numbers, but in any case, there’s a distinct contrast in how business is done, between states, and even more markedly, between the states and Congress.

But are these bills passing narrowly?  Below these huge pass rates is there actually seething conflict?  At the federal level, overall, 54% of votes counted are yes votes.  And across the country here is what percent of individual votes cast are yes votes over the last couple  years:

That’s lots of yeses!  (over 8 million yes votes are represented above).  We aren’t such a disagreeable country after all.

One more thing.  A quick look at how many votes are missed (other, absent, abstain, etc).  That’s a *really* small number at the federal level, about half of one percent. Which, for a change, makes Congress typical. Across the nation:

Tons of variation, with the lowest and the highest numbers being two orders of magnitude apart. Perhaps fodder for another post sometime…

Link:

http://io9.com/5979818/nfl-fans-by-us-county-according-to-facebook

Seems that mental health/illness, guns and firearms control have been searched for the most.  Along with various health related searches, which have been predominant since I first started making these word clouds.  So, a little window into what’s on people’s minds:

We’re averaging around 10,000 bills read on the site a day, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.  The words that are actually in the bills that have been read, well, that’s much more … dry.

As you are likely well aware, the sessions have started (or at least are pre-filing) nearly everywhere.  We are processing about 3,000 new bills a day.  To help you see the sessions unfold we’ve made a couple changes to our home page.  First, we have a running count of 2013 bills introduced front and center, and a link to a map showing the count for each state for 2013 (if you pull it up from the home page you can hover over states to get the current counts; we update the map every evening).

We’ve also added a trending bills widget to our home page so you can see the bills the most people have clicked on our site over the last seven days.

In addition to the new quick instructional video  we released a couple of weeks ago to help people get started searching for bills for free, we have added a tour of our subscription tools which gives a longer overview of our paid features.

New Features

Inside the site we’ve added an option to search by passed (on bill sheets) and now display that information on bill sheets and on the bill detail pages.

Finally there are several improvements to our stakeholder pages, to make the new public stakeholder functionality even more friendly.  We’ve removed the newsletter and sign in links from the top, to keep from confusing your readers.  We’ve also given you the ability hide (and add back) any threads or comments that you need to.  And the stakeholder page now acts more like the bill sheet, expanding a row to allow you to read all the text in it when you click on it.

Examples from Customers

Speaking of stakeholder pages, our customers have come up with some nice ideas for how to use the stakeholder pages and widgets to share information.  You can see an example of a widget on our home page,  but another nice example is how The Rio Grande Foundation implemented their widgets with dynamic sizing, to make them very mobile friendly.

I also like how The City of Missoula added a stakeholder page using a frame on their site, sharing with citizens their position on bills, and inviting them to click through and read the full bill text if they are so inclined.

One last example is the Colorado Republican Business Coalition who has added a widget to their page for a quick look at bills, and also a link to their full stakeholder page for their members who would like to see more information.  This is also a nice example of using the privacy settings cleverly, their legislative committee to use discussion threads, but the public can only see the basic information about their position on the various bills.

I also recently made a page of legislation about social media, which I find to be pretty interesting.  And one about medical marijuana by popular demand.  And one about fracking, because it interests me.  Perhaps you’ll find them interesting too.

Good luck this session!  I hope you find some of our tools useful, or at least fun.

I took this map straight from google analytics.  Of course our home base of Denver sticks out like a sore thumb.  But you can easily see Boston, New York, and DC down the right coast, Minneapolis/St Paul, Chicago, Atlanta down the middle, and San Francisco, Sacramento and LA on the left coast.  Plus everyone in between.

I also did a quick breakdown of the kinds of people actually registering for accounts on our site.  Turns out even our government wants to know about our government.  At least a little.

And finally a look at how many bills have been viewed on our site, daily, over the last few months.  Apparently reviewing legislation isn’t a very festive activity, as there was a drop over the holidays (understandably, perhaps).  I’ll probably run this graph again at the end of the year to take a look at what a whole cycle looks like.

Happy New Year everyone, I hope the session(s) treat you well!

1) It’s old news now, but federal bills are available and return in your results, with a state code of “US”.  When chosing a state(s) to search from the list, you can include or exclude federal by scrolling down to “US” and turning it on or off.  Many and continuing thanks to GovTrack!

2) Speaking of new bills, pre-file data is starting to come in.  Before the session(s) officially start you’ll see the most recent session, plus any pre-file bills, both appear in your default results.  After the session officially begins in each state the default will be to show you the current session only.  You can always view older bills (2010 forward) by checking “include historical sessions” on the query tab.

3) Once you get a bill sheet just how you want it – the right columns visible, set to the right size and order, and any custom columns added – you can save it as a template on the manage tab.  From then on your bill sheets will be created using those settings, which of course you can still tweak at any time.  You can also apply a new template to old bill sheets; after saving a template, go to the bill sheet you want to update, go to the manage tab, and apply the template.  Templates make it quick and easy to make your bills sheets all look the same, which is important for our next new feature:

4) You can now roll up several bills sheets into a “combined bill sheet” view. On your home screen go to the Bill Sheets tab and notice there is now a checkbox next to each bill sheet.  Check however many bill sheets you want to combine, and then push the “combine selected” button. If all of the bill sheets are identical, either because they use the same template or because you otherwise made them the same, then your custom columns will appear in the rolled up sheet.  If any of the sheets you are combining doesn’t match the others, then your combined bill sheet view will only include our default settings.  (See above in item 3 for how to easily make all your bill sheets match).  The combined bill sheet also includes your bill sheet name as the first column, to remind you where a particular bill came from.  You can use this combined view to sort and filter (for example, to find all of your priority 1 bills across different bill sheets), and you can also export the combined view like any other bill sheet.

5) You have always been able to share a simple bill feed with the public, using our friendly, lightweight widgets.  Now we’ve added the ability to share full bill details, and your comments about them, using our new Public Stakeholder Pages.   When creating a Stakeholder Page you now have the option of setting the page to be public.  For each page you can choose whether or not the public should be able to read the associated discussion forum.  Only users you have explicitly invited to the stakeholder page will be able to leave comments in the discussion forum (assuming you’ve granted them permission to do so).  When you set a stakeholder page to be public you’ll be given a special URL to use to share the page on your website, facebook, twitter, blog; really wherever you need to.

6) Another exciting new way to share information with the public is our Legislative Score Cards, which we’ve developed in partnership with Visible Government Online. Rate bills as good or bad, and we’ll rank legislators based on their votes, and give you some sweet interactive tools you can drop onto your website to inform and engage your readers.  To see the tools in action you can watch this video, or try it for yourself at http://vgdevsite.com/ (username legi password score) and navigate around using the menu choices at the top.  You can also read more details on our press release or in this recent blog post.

7) We have also been hard at work on some ways to help you better understand and use our various features.  See this overview video for a quick tutorial, and this product comparison grid to answer all your questions about the difference between our different levels of membership.

Don’t forget our fun Session Starting Promotions!  And follow this blog, sign up for our newsletter, like our facebook page, follow us on twitter, and subscribe to our new YouTube channel, to be the first to hear about the next new exciting data or feature we announce!

Happy Holidays, and Merry Session everyone!

As a first comment, the average word length across the country of words in bills is 6.16 letters, vs about 5 letters in common writing. Given the technical language, one would certainly expect words to be longer on average, and 20% longer seems reasonable.  But really I wanted to compare how long bills were, in word count, not in letter count.  To start with,  let’s simply look at the average length length of bills (in words) by state. I was quite surprised by the variation between states.  Ohio bills are, on average, longer then bills in Tennessee, by almost 500 words!

Then I thought it would be interesting to look at the length of bills that passed, and bills that failed, and see if there were significant differences.  First, the average length of bills that passed:

Ohio stands out even more!  Whew.  In general, the average of bills that pass seem to be a little longer.  Big huge too long to read budget bills probably help drag the average up, but in some places the differences is a longer then can really can be explained by the occasional behemoth bill.  In some states, longer bills seem to have a better chance of passing.

Here’s the difference between the overall average, and the average just of bills that passed in map form:

In some states the difference in minuscule, but in some states there is a pronounced preference for longer bills.  And in Kansas, it would appear brevity is appreciated.

UPDATE

Thanks David for the suggestion of looking at median length.  I had it in my head that each state would have a few much longer bills, particularly the omnibus budget bills.  What I didn’t realize is just how long these bills could be.  I mean seriously.  Who has time to write some of these bills, much less read them?  I started to do a histogram to see how many really long bills there are, and deciding on my segments, I decided that order of magnitude was a fair way to categorize bill length.  Which is pretty crazy just on it’s own.  So here’s bill length distribution over the whole country (notice this graph is semilog):

That’s over 100 bills that are over 100k words long.  The head spins a bit at the prospect.

And here’s a map showing how long the longest bill is in each state.

Yes, that’s right Oregon has a bill tipping the scales at … lots … of words.  If you are suffering from being awake, here’s the bill: http://www.billtrack50.com/BillDetail/90530  but you’ll have to be patient as you give it time to load.  It’s interesting to me to compare this map to the states that pass the highest percentage of their bills from this first eye candy post.  Pretty much the states with the lowest max size line up with the states that pass the highest percentage of bills.  Coincidence?

So back to the question of median length.  The average, or mean, bill length above is simply the total number of words in all the bills in a state, divided by the number of bills in that state. The median, on the other hand, is the what you get when you put all the bills in order of length and then pick out the one right in the middle.  For example if you have a group of people who are 5’2″, 5’5″, 5’8″,  5’9″, and 8′ tall, they are an average of 6′ tall, but that gives wrong impression, since the group is actually pretty short.  Just like with our bills.  145 are super long, and pull the average over.  It’s useful information, but it’s helpful to look at the data by considering the median too.  If we line up all our people in our group above their median hight is 5’8″.  In some sense, that’s a better picture of our group.  So here’s a map of the median bill length:

So forgive me Ohio.  I spoke too soon.  Looking at median length the difference between states isn’t nearly so large – more like 1000 words instead of 5000 when looking at the average.

Choose the item that suits you best:

• Two hour consultation (can be one two-hour session, or two one-hour sessions) with professional government affairs staff to help set up your search and tools or provide insight on the upcoming legislative sessions or the Federal, state and local political outlook.

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• Your choice of any of the gorgeous legislative wall maps from State Political Maps

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• A large (24”x 40”) and very fun poster from xkcd of a Partisan History of Congress that traces the composition of the US congress through the ages based both on party membership and published statistical analysis of individual voting habits.

Contact us to arrange a demo, free trial, or to discuss what subscription is most appropriate for you needs.

What are the most powerful scorecards? My guess is the scorecards that party leadership keep on their own members. Party leaders need to know how their members will vote on important votes. When the party is whipping votes, knowing a member can be counted on can mean the difference between a good committee chair or moving up the ranks in party leadership or life with the dreaded “RINO” or “DINO” tag.

It wasn’t long before issue advocates learned the value of whipping votes and the true legislative score card was born.  One of the first things I learned as an issue advocate is that the most powerful words I could say to an elected official were, “My organization is scoring this vote.”  It tells a Member of Congress or a state legislator that this issue is important and they had better pay attention.

Scorecards are great for political action committee (PAC) managers as well.  Scorecards give you an easy way to justify your political contributions or demonstrate why it is important for potential donors to support the PAC.

Everyone knows the famous ones – the National Rifle Association, the League of Conservation Voters, Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Democratic Action.

There are now scorecards for every issue and on every level from Congress to your City Council.  They have become so popular, that Project Vote Smart has a section just listing political scorecards.  Just a few that I found that were fun or interesting…

Circus Reform Yes – rating the Minneapolis City Council

Cascade Bicycle Club – rating Washington State legislators

Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council – rating the 112th U.S. Congress

So whether you are an issue advocate or run a political action committee, the legislative score card should be one of the tools in your advocacy tool box.  And it has never been easier for your organization to put together your own score card.

BillTrack50 and Visible Government Online have teamed up to create Legiscore, an interactive scorecard tool that makes it easy for your organization to create a scorecard for your website.  Check out LegiScore and start creating your scorecard today!

The ITU would literally give dictators like Syria’s Assad (who was trending yesterday for–it seems–cutting Syria off from the Internet) a role in crucial decisions about the Internet’s future.

You can learn more here: http://internetcoup.org/ (scroll down for a video and background reading).

Here’s a link to a bunch of versions, or check out IDV Solutions’ blog for more discussion.

Of course we didn’t gather enough data to be statistically significant, but we did get a lot of interesting comments.  There will be more on that later. None the less, I’ve taken a quick look to draw some initial conclusions (to be taken with a grain of salt).

The distribution of the data looks a little like the electoral map, with maybe a little extra hometown Colorado and Massachusetts thrown in.

The top cities reporting, and their total review counts, were:

Washington DC 62
Brooklyn NY 61
New York NY 51
SOMERVILLE MA 42
BOSTON MA 38
CAMBRIDGE MA 36
Chicago IL 29
Arlington VA 19
ANN ARBOR MI 18
PHILADELPHIA PA 16
San Francisco CA 16

We asked people to rate their experience 1 to 5 stars, and overall people were pretty satisfied:

and a look at total total count of reviews across the country:

So fully 4 out of 5 people were at least OK with their experience.  Of course the biggest complaint was long lines, and wait times did vary quite a bit, both over the span of the day, and across the country:

Our participation fell off later in the day, so I’m not sure the later averages are valid. But the spike in the morning hours was very real, and no surprise.

Interestingly, the wait time did not necessarily correlate to the star rating.  What seemed to matter most to people’s satisfaction was whether they felt the polling place was operating efficiently.  If the line was moving smoothly, but was long because there was good turnout, people were ok with that.  If lines were long because the lines were poorly arranged or managed, there weren’t enough machines or the machines were broken, or other avoidable delays, well, that drove people crazy.  That was also the number one reason people gave for not being able to vote after going to their polling places (about 1.5% people reported that they attempted to, but weren’t ultimately able to).

Once I get a chance to go all the way through all the reviews, I’ll breakdown the nature of the complaints in one and two star ratings.  I’ll also highlight some of the happiest, funniest, and most terrifying reviews.  In the meantime, here’s a word cloud of all of the reviews.

Thanks again to everyone who helped, especially David, Curtis, Archon, and Hollie.  I hope you’re as proud as I am of how it turned out.

The top 10 bills which have been read the most times on our site, starting with the most popular, are:

CA SB1002    Public records: electronic format.
CA SB1265    School districts: cafeteria fund.
NH HB310    Relative to the use of open data formats and the adoption of a statewide policy regarding open government data standards.
CA SB397    Online voter registration.
CO HB1048    End CBI Instacheck Duty For Firearm Transfers
NY S06779    Provides that a web site administrator shall remove any comments posted upon request unless the poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.
MI HB5768    Military affairs; other; restriction of activities by Michigan national guard and state and local employees; provide for under certain circumstances.
NE LB22        Adopt the Mandate Opt-Out and Insurance Coverage Clarification Act
MS HB289    Fair Pay Act of 2012; create to require equivalent pay for equivalent jobs.
SC H3003    Relating to Voter ID cards

I looked at the topics of the top 100 bills read on our site, to see what general areas have been most interesting, and you’ll clearly see the same themes as those represented in the bills listed above:

For fun I also looked at the top 10 states that have generated the most interesting bills:

We also provide information on legislators, and those pages get a lot of traffic too.  Here are the people who have gotten the most attention, starting with the most popular:

Juan C. Vargas  -  (D) California
Fran J. Pavley  -  (D) California
Ben Hueso  -  (D) California
Mimi Walters  -  (R) California
Richard Pan  -  (D) California
Steven C. Bradford  -  (D) California
Michael Gatto  -  (D) California
William J. Emmerson  -  (R) California
Loni Hancock  -  (D) California
Robert D. Dutton  -  (R) California

Maybe you notice something all of these legislators have in common.  The first non California legislator on the list is David Sessions  -  (R) Alabama in position 49.

What do you think it all means?

Since it was on my mind, I decided to take a quick look at how many bills contain the word “disaster” over 2011-2012.  Not surprisingly Wyoming has the least, with only 6.  Wyoming historically has suffered the fewest natural disasters of any state.  Hawaii and Mississippi have the most, unless you count Congress, with 421.

Here’s the map:

Click for bigger view, and schedule some time to look, and think, and learn.  If this doesn’t wow you, then your eyes just aren’t interested in candy, I guess.

Huge kudos to xkcd for this amazing graphic.  I feel good that I just bought the first book.  It’s nice to find out I’m supporting stunning work like this piece.

If you’d like a tag all you need to do is tweet a bill, making sure to mention @BillTrack50 in your tweet, and follow @BillTrack50 so we can DM you to find out where you’d like us to send your tags. You can use our tweet button, or just copy and paste the bill URL into your tweet.

Now let me tell you about how the tags work.

Tag it.

After you receive your tag from us in the mail, you can attach it to your keys, luggage, purse; anything you don’t want to lose.  Then hop online and register the tag for free at www.TAGster.com.  You will enter a message to show the finder and choose who should be contacted when your item is found.

Lose it.

Then, for example, let’s say your keys fall out of their pocket while you are on a jog and they are found by someone later that day.  The finder is able to call the ID into an automated toll free system, enter the ID at TAGster.com or scan the QR code – whatever is easiest for them.  The system provides the finder with the your message and a simple way to notify you.

Get it back.

The finder enters their name and phone and within seconds, you and any other contacts you assigned are notified by email and/or text message.  You can then easily contact the finder and be reunited with your keys.

These tags are very fun, and look great on my luggage.  You’ll love them too. So tweet away!

Wall maps have always been useful for lobbyists, legislators, legislative staff, reporters, and issue advocates, but with new districts taking effect across the country with the 2012 election, new maps will be even more important for keeping track of where each district is, who represents each of those districts, and what towns and cities fall within which boundaries.

We’re excited to partner with BillTrack50 to provide valuable services and products for anyone who works for or with state legislatures around the country. In fact, we’re offering an early bird discount to all of BillTrack50′s customers: pre-order your maps by October 31 and you’ll save 20%, you’ll get gorgeous maps to hang on your wall or use at the conference table, and we’ll ship it to your door right after the November 6 election (so we can include the names of all the newly-elected and newly-reelected legislators).

Check out our entire catalog of state political maps.

We also track news about redistricting battles from across the country. Many states are contemplating (or even voting on) changes to the redistricting and reapportionment processes, there is plenty of discussion about the implications of redistricting for both parties and for other groups, and there are still ongoing lawsuits challenging the new districts themselves. Tune in to our Twitter feed (@districtmaps) to catch the latest headlines, breaking news, and commentary.

To take advantage of your special 20% BillTrack50 discount, use the discount code 7T4SFX at  www.state-political-maps.com

http://myfairelection.com/

On election day, November 6, MyFairElection will enable voters across America to use their smart phones, laptops, or desktops to rate the quality of their voting experience: five stars for a pleasant and fulfilling experience at the ballot box or one star for very long lines, broken machines, or intimidation. Users will also be able to record wait times, comment, report problems, and upload photos. MyFairElection will also provide voters with the location of their polling place, voter id requirements, and other election-day information such as current average wait times.

MyFairElection will aggregate voter provided data into heatmaps and other data rich displays to identify and display the quality of the electoral access across America. MyFairElection will allow users to identify and locate problems as they emerge in real time, compare and rank states and localities according to the quality of access to the vote they provide, and share the experience of exercising that most fundamental right of modern democracies — the right and ability to vote.

The beautiful, mobile friendly website enables users to easily rate and describe their voting experience. The results will democratize the assessment of the quality of our nation’s electoral institutions. By giving completely open access to an anonymized data set after the election, the platform will provide —free of charge— election monitoring data to government agencies, journalists, voter protection groups, and ordinary citizens alike. By being open to participation by all voters, be their poll experience positive or negative, the participation level and resulting data set could far exceed more tightly controlled efforts that rely on physically present poll monitors or voting problem hotlines.  The metrics provided will help drive our electoral process to be more efficient for everyone.

For more information, please contact MyFairElection at Info@MyFairElection.com

Last year, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that California reduce its state prison population by 30,000 within two years.  The court argued that the current overcrowding in prisons violated the prisoners’ eighth amendment right to no cruel and unusual punishment.  With 161,000 prisoners in state prison at the time of the ruling, the penal system was running at 165% of its capacity.  As a result California implemented AB 117 that redistricted the placement of some prisoners from state penitentiaries to county jails.  The shift has alleviated the state prisons of 12% of its occupants, bringing the total current population down to 141,000.

By handling the influx of inmates that are sent to federal prison pre-trial for a variety reasons, notably not being able to afford bail, prisons took on a substantial number of people that they would like to have otherwise avoided.  The bill is designed to prevent prisons from taking on inmates that have not as of yet been convicted.  It

“enhances the authorization granted to the correctional administrator to offer a voluntary home detention program to include all inmates and additionally subject those inmates to involuntary participation in a home detention program. The bill would provide that the board of supervisors of any county may authorize the correctional administrator to offer a program under which inmates being held in lieu of bail may be placed in an electronic monitoring program”

Of course, the other effect of the bill is that local and county jails that are taking on long-term inmates are ill-equipped to accommodate the criminals on an extended basis.  Those sentenced after the realignment policy that committed non-serious, non-violent, and non- sexual crimes are sent to the county jails.  With that the local jails are quickly becoming cluttered and growing at a rate that would increase the number of inhabitants by 40% by 2015.   The jails were originally designed to house prisoners for sentences of less than one year, so the methods of recreation permitted in federal prisons are severely limited in local jails.

So if California is plagued with overcrowding in prisons and it is not alone in that ailment, the question then lies in what makes the prisons so overcrowded?  The research is divisive as are the politics about easing the penalties on crimes, without even taking into effect the circumstances that bring about criminal tendencies starting at infancy.  Since a full-scale reform of the system is not likely to be seen in our lifetime, it is then best to examine the deficiencies that may be most readily addressed.

At the forefront of a reform movement is the petition to remove mandatory sentencing for crimes.  In these instances, judges are left without any discretion as to what punishment is appropriate given the circumstances.   For example, California’s legislature and voters approved a change in the state’s criminal sentencing law, referred to as the “Three Strikes and You’re Out” policy, which sets a minimum punishment for repeat offenders.  Now,  if a person has two or more previous serious or violent felony convictions, the sentence for any new felony conviction (not just a serious or violent felony) is life imprisonment with the minimum term being 25 years. Bills in Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina all set minimum punishments for repeat offenders, with each subsequent punishment escalating exponentially in severity.

Phillip Cook, a Public Policy Professor at Duke University, sees an assortment of other solutions to the incarceration rate, but his most resounding plea is for sentencing to revert back to 1984 levels.  He estimats that the change would reduce current prison population by about 400,000 and cut prison spending by $12 billion or 17% of today’s spending.  The mid-1980s are crucial to the discussion of current rates as it signifies the beginning of two significant changes in policing and sentencing.

Starting with Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign in 1984 and culminating with President Reagan signing the Anti-Drug Abuse act in 1986, a movement to combat the prevalence been started.  The 1986 act appropriated $1.7 billion to fight the drug war, as well as created mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses.  Notoriously, the act also included of drugs had different sentencing requirements for crack and powder cocaine.  Then-Senator Joe Biden proposed a 100-1 discrepancy in sentencing between possession of crack cocaine, a cheaper and ultimately more dangerous drug than its powder cocaine counterpart.  As a result, low-income neighborhoods became increasingly decimated by the crack cocaine insurgence and the increased sentencing of its inhabitants.

Without a doubt, the racial consequences of the act perpetuated significantly different arrest rates by race.  An ACLU report found that African Americans make up 15 percent of the country’s drug users but make up 37 percent of the drug arrests, 59 percent of the convictions, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison.  Prior to the act, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 11 percent higher than for whites, but four years later it was 49 percent higher.  In 2011, the US Sentencing Commission passed an amendment to raise the minimum possession for a five-year sentence from 5 grams to 28, and for a ten-year sentence from 50 to 280 grams. Nevertheless, the surge in the prison population can be increasingly tied to the stricter sentencing originating from the 1986 act.

The other substantial change from the mid 80’s was the origin of the private prison system.  In 1987 about 3000 out of 3.5 million convicts were in private corrections facilities.   By 2001, the convicted population had risen to 6.5 million and 123,000 of those were in privately owned facilities.  Now, approximately 7.2 million people are serving sentences, of which 1.6 million are in state and federal prisons, and 256,000 of them in private facilities.  The proportion is projected to grow. As NPR reports, no state has allocated money to build new state-run prisons in the last year because of budget crises. So some state governments are turning to the private sector to house their prisoners.

The cynical nature of corporations having monetary investments in the number of persons incarcerated has led to some gross miscarriages of justice.  In Louisiana and Mississippi, reports have circulated surrounding the incentives from increased arrests and poorer treatment.  The Walton Grove Youth Facility in Mississippi, is a privately run juvenile center that houses 1,200 boys and young men from the ages of 13-22.   The Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU National Prison Project have filed a class-action lawsuit against the GEO group citing the various illegitimate actions inside, most notoriously the inadequate number of qualified guards.   The Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators insists on a 1 office to 10 or 12 juvenile inmates.   Inside Walton Grove the ratio was 1 guard to 60 inmates.

In Louisiana it is no better as prison overcrowding in the 1970’s forced the expansion of jails despite budget constraints.  As a result, Louisiana adopted policies similar to what California has recently adopted, meaning more inmates sent to either county jails or private complexes.  The state has shifted 52% of their state prison population to these facilities and has astonishingly poorly compensated those facilities per prisoner.  As The Economist writes, the $24.39 provided per day for each inmate is less than half of what the state spends on prisoners in state jails.  Thus, the private jails sacrifice privileges at the expense of the incarcerated while still seeking more prisoners in search of more funding.

The United States Justice Department has taken notice of the conditions and twice admonished the Orleans Parish Prison for its gross failings.  The second letter from the department demanded changes from the warden and claimed that he had “failed to take basic steps to correct the systemic issues” addressed in the first letter.  Not only that, but the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office has had to be in front of the Supreme Court 3 times in 16 years for prosecutorial misconduct.   Louisiana has had to compensate for the inadequate police work and in HB 1, the budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, had to disburse over $1.4 million to 16 plaintiffs that were wrongly imprisoned.

The problems with the current system are blatant;  especially with the current political atmosphere pervasive across the country.  To recall the infamous 1988 ad against presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, being perceived as soft on crime has doomed many candidates and seems likely to continue doing so.  In order to create fundamental changes in the system, it would require bipartisan support and an astounding amount of patience to really see systemic shifts away from criminal behavior worthy of imprisonment.  Improvements in education, poverty, family structure and the other assortment of precursors for criminal behavior unfortunately require a devotion of resources and time to see substantial improvement.  Until then, it may be wise to reevaluate what can be done in the intermediary to bring down the rate of crime that leads to the current rates.

Every American who cares about the free and open Internet needs to be ready to vote this November. If you want to have your voice heard this election, you need to register by Tuesday in most states. To do so, please go InternetVotes.org and register yourself. If you’re already registered, you can help spread the word to your network before the deadline passes by making sure they know aboutInternetVotes.org.

The free and open internet has connected all of us – let’s make sure we grow these connections and our conversations worldwide. That’s why we’re joining websites, internet users, and tech companies for “Internet Voter Registration Day”.

(thanks  www.personaldemocracy.com)

Word Cloud of All Bills

Let’s compare that to bills passed:

Word Cloud of Passed Bills

Pretty similar, with Health and Education slightly larger, and “physician” entering the mix.  Now, drawing from Colbert for inspiration, I did a cloud of what bills have been pulled up and read on www.BillTrack50.com.  This gives quite an interesting variation:

Word Cloud of Bills Our Users Have Read

Not surprisingly health is enormously dominant, and school is very important.  But now we get abortion, charter schools, voter identification, natural gas, collective bargaining.  Issues in the news, issues people care about, issues people are seeking to understand.  So the people and their representation are aligned on the which are the biggest issues, but maybe not on everything.

For fun, a list of the top 5 most read bills on our site to date, an interesting collection of state legislation, I think you’ll agree:

CA SB1002 - Public records: electronic format.  http://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/172391

NH HB310 - Relative to the use of open data formats http://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/132475

CA SB397 - An act relating to online voter registration. http://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/7751

CO HB1048 - End CBI Instacheck Duty For Firearm Transfers http://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/140292

NY S06779 - Provides that a web site administrator shall remove any comments posted upon request unless the poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post. http://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/198453

Let’s start with the distribution of legislators.  You might expect the count of legislators to be somewhat related to the population of the state, much like the electoral college:

But in fact that is not the case.  Here is a heat map of the number of legislators by state:

Legislators by State

It’s hard not to notice New England has a whole lot of legislators.  New Hampshire tips the scales at 424 (remember the entire US Congress has 535).  It’s less surprising that Nebraska has the least, as they are also the only unicameral state legislative body.

So now let’s look at how the states break down, comparing the number of Republicans to Democrats, in shades of purple:

Legislator Distribution by Party

A value of -1 would represent all Republicans, and +1 would represent all Democrats. In Nebraska all legislators are considered non-partisan, so they get a perfect 0.   No huge surprises here, really, although the swing states are perhaps not all as purple as you might expect.

However, compare the legislator breakdown to this map looking at what kind of bills are passed in each state.  I’m defining a partisan bill as one sponsored and cosponsored by only one party.  Again -1 would be all Republican bills, +1 all Democratic bills.

Sponsorship of Bills Passed

Personally I find this map, compared to the last one, fascinating.  Some states have a much more even bill distribution then the legislator breakdown would lead you to expect, like Kansas and New York.  Others are dominated by the majority party out of proportion to the legislator representation, like California and Missouri.  Which would imply to me that in some places the parties work more cooperatively then others.

So let’s take a different look at that same idea, and see where the most bipartisan bills are passed (bipartisan bills being bills with sponsors or cosponsors from both parties):

Percentage of Bills Passed that are Bipartisan

This map is colored by what percentage of passed bills are bipartisan.  Note: Nebraska is at 100% (and was perfectly balanced in the last map) because all legislators are non-partisan. And Idaho is a bit suspect because a large proportion of bills are sponsored by a committee, which I classified as bipartisan.  Otherwise, we do see that the states with the most bipartisan bills also have the most balance in partisan bills being passed (based on the previous map.)  The Great Plains stand out as exceptionally cooperative.

The last point I’d like to make is that, as in my last post, it’s really amazing how wildly different all of the states can be.  Undoubtedly lots of the differences highlighted in this post stem from the extreme procedural differences in the different legislatures.  And, as theorized in my last post, probably from cultural differences too.

Let me finish with a quick summary looking at the whole country, adding up numbers across all states:

For dissenters of the ruling, the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case has proven to be ominous in terms of how money gets dispersed.  While money in political speech has been an issue for many years especially after the Buckley v. Valeo ruling in 1976 that allowed unlimited funds to be spent on a campaign, the effect has been exaggerated after the 2008 ruling.  Not to say that the ruling is inherently flawed or unjustified, but that the mitigating result has been that corporations have been more active in using their newfound status as legal donors to Political Action Committees to permeate messages supporting their beliefs.

Hence it has become more important to find the motivations behind the advertisements.  Of course, ads bought and paid for by the candidates’ campaigns have to be designed to correspond with the ever increasing digital landscape.  To do so, they have used the vast amounts of personal information collected online to surpass hurdles that pertain to effectively reaching the desired demographics. As the Atlantic reports, “Microsoft and Yahoo are selling political campaigns the ability to target voters online with tailored ads using names, Zip codes and other registration information that users provide when they sign up for free email and other services.”  The advantages that this access offers to the campaigns are innumerable, especially given how browsers track users’ data.  While Microsoft and Yahoo insist that the data collected is sent anonymously and only figured into what advertisements users see.

Targeting more effectively may be able to help smaller campaigns, reducing the wasteful mass mailings and TV buys that can cripple ad budgets.  Yet, the bigger campaigns have taken greater advantage and have personalized their outreach via the users’ habits.   With the ads being designed for precise voters in mind, the intent of the message can become harder to distinguish.  The PAC financed ads do little in the way of disclosing the basis for the funds and thus leave it to the viewer to distinguish what the group is about.  With names like Democracy for America and Restore our Future, the ill-informed voter has little guidance on the origin of the message.

To protect the voter and enforce stricter disclosure protocols, several states have introduced legislature designed to reduce the cloud of anonymity behind the campaign commercial process.  In Wisconsin SB 281 was introduced but failed to pass as a measure to enforce stricter regulations.  The bill would have required the committee, group, or individual paying for the advertisement to

• Assume responsibility for a radio communication, disclosing it at the beginning and end of the communication.
• Require that the name of the group responsible appear on the screen during the full length of any television communication over the full width of the screen, and is readable to viewers of the communication on television.
• State whom the ad was paid for on the bottom of written advertisements, whether it be a billboard or an online copy

Georgia HB 417 was designed with same intentions in mind.  The Democratic sponsored bill would require any ads that “expressly advocate the election or defeat of a clearly defined candidate” to explicitly state the provider of the advertisement and whether it is approved by the candidate.  On top of that, the bill also forbids the creation of campaigns designed to mimic existing ones.  Meaning websites or mailings that are designed to mislead the voter into donating to an unintended cause is also forbidden; an occurrence that is happening frequently on the national stage.

Websites that mimic the official campaign websites of key congressional races as well as the national presidential election have reportedly collected over $500,000; a significant amount to be siphoned away from competitive re-election campaigns; stressing the importance and inconvenience of determining the beneficiary from the ad.  The aura of secrecy behind the funding for many of these projects has siphoned into the mainstream discussion of campaign relations.

Colorado recently has brought a case against the funders of several state amendments and referendums.  Amendments 60 and 61 were registered by three men who refused to disclose who was funding the campaigns.  As the case proceeded to court, the judge ruled against the defendants writing “their testimony that they were unaware of and did not care who their benefactor was is not believable and demonstrates intent to hide the identity of that benefactor from public disclosure.”  The intent of the amendments was to lower taxes significantly, and opponents emphatically declared that it disproportionately favored the upper class.    As some other state legislators grow wearier of the impending flood of donations to PACs that come anonymously, they attempt to legislate within their own boundaries.

New Jersey has been adamant as a state in attempting to control the accountability of paid political discourse from campaigns and their supporters.  New Jersey Republican Representative Amy Handlin  introduced a bill that that is designed to

“prohibit corporations of any kind and labor organizations from making campaign contributions to any candidate, candidate committee or joint candidates committee, political committee, continuing political committee, legislative leadership committee or political party committee, or the treasurer or deputy treasurer thereof. In addition, the bill bans expenditures by corporations and unions for the passage or defeat of a public question or for certain political communications.”

A bill that is in line with a Democrat sponsored proposal in the state senate that would “impose disclosure and disclaimer requirements on issue advocacy organizations that raise funds or make expenditures to influence the electoral process in this State.”

The overarching theme regarding disclosure in campaign advertising and funding strays to a response to the Citizens United case.  Without getting too heavy-handed into the legality or morality of the decision, it is vital to point out how the complications of a country that prides itself on free elections and free speech can make regulations quickly arcane.

In preserving a functioning democracy in accordance with the Supreme Court decisions have in large promoted the concept of free speech.  Of course, there are notorious exceptions that anyone with an interest in organized labor history will be quick to note, but the right to express political speech individually has been deemed as one of the more protected liberties.  The battle over the Citizens United decision then largely lies in a discussion of how free speech is to be protected.

The issue with the monetary expenditures is that as critics point out, it can silence the voice of the under-funded by being able to afford the advertisements needed to publicize a campaign.  In this situation, proponents of the current system debate whether even that assessment is accurate.  John Staples and Patrick Basham, bot h fellows at the Cato Institute, argue that the monetary levels are appropriate for campaigns with as immense of consequences as they have.  Current levels of spending are significantly higher per ad.  With an average of $528 per ad spot for the general election, the proportions are increasing.  Television stations are reaping the benefits of increased spending and all the happier to air the ads as permitted by law.  As there is an “equal time rule” radio and television stations are obligated to give legally qualified candidates access to the same amount of airtime to the same size audience.  A law that to the chagrin of local businesses has them struggling to afford airtime during the prime of the campaign season.

Still the question looms as to how the campaigns can afford the increased rates to advertise as they would be inclined to without the donations now allowed under Citizens United.  The key in the Citizens United case is that the defining of a corporations “personhood” gives it the freedom of speech rights protected by the first amendment.  The issue plagues scholars and both sides have remained adamant on what does or does not justify a corporation the status of personhood as to be protected fully by the constitution.

Garrett Epps at the American Prospect argues that  corporations are not people and do not deserve the free speech rights reserved for residents of the United States.  Since a corporation unlike a person does need never die. Therefore Corporations are meant to be more resilient and more dynamic than any individual can be. The “law of free speech, to be anything other than a mockery of democracy, needs to take that imbalance of power into consideration.”  That by permitting those with access to greater funds to have a greater voice, the court’s decision undermines the protection that individuals are entitled under the first amendment.  His case is that the court has been gradually leaning towards this decision, noting their previous hints at this inclination when in the court’s opinion on Buckley v. Valeo they wrote ““the concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment.”

Ilya Shapiro, senior editor of the CATO Supreme Court review, vehemently disagrees with putting limitations on speech regardless of the source.  He finds that by allowing corporations to donate unlimited funds toward political causes it is the fairest way for the citizenry to keep a check on the government.  He writes that “a world without corporate speech rights necessarily implies a world where government is empowered to shut down speech because it does not like criticism of its policies.” Since, corporations ultimately are a collection of individuals, the money pooled together from their assortment of resources is dedicated to advocate the causes of the business and the people the business represents.  After all, the differentiation between a cable news opinion show and a paid advertisement can be seen as semantics between what is and is not free speech provided by a corporation.

Looking at the issue from this light, we can deduce that speech is to be protected regardless of the source.  With that view of the method in which speech can be distributed, it can only exaggerate the current conditions of political ads.  To navigate around the principles of free speech in order to protect the civility of political discourse would relate to what James Madison warned about when he wrote “there are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests” in The Federalist No. 10.

Nevertheless, the constant bombardment of either negative or nauseatingly positive ads provided for by money from undisclosed sources can safely be considered as contributing to what amounts as a toxic discussion of current political discussion.

Barely waiting for the ink of the president’s signature to dry, several states sued the Federal government in an effort to block implementation of the law, citing unconstitutional individual mandate and Federal overreach on Medicaid. The Supreme Court recently upheld the individual mandate as a tax but did say that the federal government could not force the states to increase their Medicaid spending by threatening to cut-off their share of the Federal match.

So, in essence, states have been up in the air for the last two years, as they waited to see what the healthcare law of the land would be. As usual, nearly every state has handled this purgatory differently. Some, like Maryland, and Vermont, have moved forward on health care exchanges and are preparing to accept the increase in Medicaid roles as they will expand to take advantage of the temporary increase in Federal funding. Others, like Texas and South Carolina have done little to implement the law and have already announced they will not change their Medicaid eligibility rules, which would eventually lead to an increase in state budgets.

Most states are somewhere in the middle, waiting to see the outcomes of the November elections, which could mean changes not only in the White House and Congress, but state houses and state executive houses as well. With all 50 state legislatures set to meet in 2013 and governors and state agencies preparing to implement PPACA, many stakeholders should expect to be very busy over the next 16 – 18 months.

We at BillTrack50 realize that implementation of the PPACA is important for states and for stakeholders. Whether you are a healthcare service or insurance provider, a nonprofit advocacy group, a corporation trying to determine how the law and its implementation will impact your business or just an ordinary citizen just trying to follow what is going on, the amount of information can be both frustrating and overwhelming. Frustrating, in that there are so many places to look for information, and overwhelming in the sheer volume of information out there.

We want to help. Just as we help these same stake holders find and track the over 200,000 state and federal bills introduced each session, BillTrack50 can help you track what states are doing to implement PPACA.

BillTrack50 is proud to introduce our PPACA Tracker. Every night we check the state websites looking for new documents and updates to existing documents. These documents are then linked to dummy bills so they can be listed on our website. In the table below, click the document tracking link, and then check out the ‘Associated Documents’ tab to see a list of documents for any given state. If you choose to subscribe to the tracker, you can set alerts to be emailed whenever there are changes or new documents available.

This idea was first formulated by a Texas based non-profit, non-partisan corporation, RestoringFreedom.Org. The NDRA has been thoroughly researched and strongly endorsed by the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. They have publicly stated that the NDRA is the most powerful Amendment proposal they have seen The NDRA is a non-partisan proposal for the simple reason that the federal debt crisis is not a partisan issue and the amendment does not dictate policy. The federal debt has increased under the control of both political parties. People from all parts of the political spectrum are rightly concerned about the federal debt.

The US federal debt at the time of this writing stood at $15.7 trillion, which translates to over $50,000 per person and over $138,000 per taxpayer. Our debt to GDP ratio is at 104%. We will soon be borrowing 50% of the money we “need” to fund our insatiable appetite for spending. This is clearly an unsustainable course that threatens the security of our country.

The NDRA has been approved in North Dakota and Louisiana and passed by wide margins in both chambers of both states with bi-partisan support. The Louisiana House passed the NDRA on a unanimous vote. The NDRA currently has prime sponsors in 23 additional states.  It is clear that Congress will not act to restrain itself. The only option we have left is for the states to exercise their Constitutional role in the Republic under Article V. For more information, please visit our website at www.restoringfreedom.org

Which is interesting.  Hawaii for example, has a surprisingly high number of bills.  As does Texas, when you factor in that they only meet every other year, as opposed to the full time legislature of California.  The next obvious question is, how many of these bills get passed?  You might expect that to be related to how many bills get introduced, and for the two maps to be similar.  But no:

First of all, there is a lot more color on this map, meaning the states are more similar in the number of bills they pass.  Bills introduced ranges from a low of 652 in Wyoming, to a high of 18,397 in New York.  Quite a range.  Bills passed range from a low of 142 in Ohio (if you don’t count the abysmal 120 of the US Congress) to a high of 1582 in Texas.   Indeed most states fall between 200 and 800 bills passed.

So if there is a wide disparity in how many bills get introduced, but a much narrower range in bills passed, the percentage passed would be interesting to look at:

What’s particularly interesting is that the highest areas are all grouped together in the Rocky Mountain West, excepting a couple states.    NY, PA, NJ, MA all come in at well under 10%  ND, ID, NV, CO are around 50% and UT, WY, MT about 40%.  Why?  Is it a cultural difference?  Something else?  What do you think?

Superfund, properly known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, came as a reaction to the first formal findings in the United States of toxic waste dump in Love Canal and Times Beach.   To qualify for Superfund cleanup, a site has to be sufficiently toxic, and the requirements are quite scrutinous.  The EPA calculates a hazard score, on a scale of 0 to 100, to determine whether to add a site to the National Priority List (NPL). To qualify for an NPL listing, a site must have a score of 28.5 or higher.   Once an area is determined to be toxic enough for the program, the site then gets placed on a National Priorities list; a list on which many toxic dumps have remained for upwards of thirty years.  Of course, a list that has shifted through tens of thousands of sites would require some ranking mechanism to ensure any sort of order.  

The reasons for the dedication of such government resources are multi-tiered, however they are not infallible.   The concentration of civilians around these sites poses an elaborate challenge for the EPA to protect large population centers.  According to the EPA between 205,349 and 803,100 people live within a mile of 50 of the most hazardous sites.  Prolonged exposure to the toxins incubated within those areas is alleged to cause among other things brain cancer and birth defects.  However, many of the toxins released into the air and water supply are odorless and invisible, leading many to be unaware of their harmful surroundings.  It threatens public health across the country. One in four Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site, and approximately three to four million children live within one mile of a site.

The goal of the program is to ultimately return the sites to their natural state, a goal that requires intensive investment.  That investment may often not make sense in terms of fiscal policy.    The Brookings Institute researched housing patterns among areas within close proximity of designated Superfund sites.  They found that if consumers truly valued the clean-up projects, it would be reflected in the housing market.  The market should, in theory, see more new house construction and increasing house prices, as well as a large migration to the area.  owe However, for reasons beyond the scope of the study found that none of these occurred.  Assuredly, it is not the goal of the EPA to make a profit off of this cleanup but to allocate such funds to a project that does not reinvigorate the area may seem counter-intuitive.   After all, just up to 2005 more than $35 billion has been spent on cleanups across the country.  Not to mention how much of private funds has been spent.

Moreover, the benefits are not intuitively felt.  Even after successful clean-up “decisive evidence of substantial health benefits” has not been seen. Frankly, a stunning accusation if proven true, since the difference in expenses between containing sites that are not on the NPL and those that are amounts to millions of dollars per site.  Sites that are not on the NPL are remedied in the most basic of ways, namely limiting exposure by restricting access to the area.

So why allocate federal funds at all if it does not improve the value of its surrounding, and has not been sufficiently proven as a cause for diseases?  For one, the toxins found at some of these sites have been linked to cancer thus leaving it would prove a danger to the public.  Second, is that it seeks to punish those that are responsible for the damage.  Unfortunately for the EPA, the process has been troublesome as regulations and budgetary cuts have seen the portion of private investment into cleanup shrink.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-business think-tank, dismisses the notion that Superfund can be seen as anything besides a negative.  They look at it from a cost-analysis perspective and comment on the lack of rewards it produces in the immediate future, going so far as to say that “if the federal government truly desired to help people in poorer communities, it would abandon the pretense and stop wasting money on the cleanup projects.”

Steve Cohen of the Earth Institute (link) partially agrees.  He remains a proponent of the program, but does agree with some of the systemic failures.  His concern is not with the program itself, rather it is that the technology has not caught up to the level that congress required when it passed the program over thirty years ago.  He says “detoxification of sediment may be beyond our capacity now,” he said, “but someday it won’t be.”

The New York Times looked at the largest project in the state, the Possaic region, where all 17 miles are polluted and examined possible solutions and the hiccups encompassed with any strategy.  Typically, the river is damned up and then it is dredged for chemicals.  In the best possible scenario, no chemicals escape while it is transported to a treatment plant.  There the solids and liquids are separated, with the solids being carted out to landfills in the west and the water is squeezed out and treated.  However for 17 miles to be treated in that manner would generate 11 million cubic yards of waste.  To put that in perspective, they scale it as enough to fill the Empire State Building eight times over.  Thus impossible to adequately dispose of, even in secluded landfills out west.

States like Utah, have taken advantage of their abundant open spaces to charge substantial disposal fees.  UT HB0348 – otherwise known as the Hazardous Waste Amendments “establishes a fee for hazardous waste that contains both demilitarization waste and another hazardous waste component subject to treatment standards” charging $28 for each ton.  Considering, just how much waste comes from each clean-up project, the state can generate millions just by providing a dumping ground for waste from thousands of miles away.

The other end of the program is the requirement that the polluter pays.  This was designed so that there would be a semblance of balance in who is to pay for the clean-up.  After the 1994, Republican takeover of the house, the taxes that were levied against corporations began to expire.  Coinciding with the decline in corporate payments, the federal government has also begun to lower their own expenditures towards the program.  President Obama for the third consecutive year has proposed cutting funding toward the EPA precisely from the Superfund program.  In 2012, the $33 million cut the President has proposed will likely eliminate at least one full cleanup this year, but likely more.  Since, not only does the funding go toward cleanup, it is also delegated toward prosecution of those that do not contribute their allocated share.

The question of who is responsible has consistently plagued the program.  Under the current legislation past or present owners or operators of a site, the producers of potentially hazardous chemicals, and even the transporters of the waste are potentially responsible under Superfund.  The program casts a wide umbrella as to responsibility.  Unfortunately, with so many corporations being targeted, the question  of fairness poses a conundrum even for environmental advocates.  As regulation in the past reflected the stunted views of environmental welfare, corporations did not have the disincentives to change their practices.  As such, much of the pollution accumulated in these sites came before the passing of the act in 1980.  In that time a substantial portion of responsible parties no longer exist, especially the companies that operated on a smaller scale.  

Currently 30% of Superfund sites are “orphan” sites, where the company responsible no longer exists.   As such the lost income has to be compensated for, meaning either the citizens’ tax dollars have to be allocated, or the corporations have to bare a larger share. As Cal Dooley, the CEO of the American Chemistry Council notes that in 2004,  the EPA collected a record $1.7 billion in cleanup funds from responsible parties. However, that number is what the act called for to be collected annually.

Both national political parties have proposed legislation on how to handle the issue.  A significant portion of Republicans in the House have put forth a bill that would reduce the scope of the program.  US h2997 would eliminate manure from being considered a “hazardous substance or pollutant or contaminant.”  This legislation would mean that the after affects of manure would also not fall under the act, therefore the water included in the process or the bedding, compost or raw materials that were mixed in the manure process would not be eligible for cleanup via funding from the Superfund.

The Democrats in the Senate have countered with another proposal, that like the Republicans’ bill has been stalled in committee since 2011, would extend the tax rates from 1986 on the polluters until 2021.  The .12% tax on taxable income enacted in 1986 under the re-authorization act after the initial five year trial of the program.  Also, included in that proposal would be a stipulation to recover income from 1986 to 1996, since the income from taxes begin to dwindle after the Superfund tax expired at the end of 1995.  

The deprioritizing of the program may come as a result of just what sectors of the population are affected.  The concentration of disenfranchised groups around the affected areas, notably large sectors of young, urban, poor minorities likely leads to a political question for many congressmen.  Splitting an already tight fiscal budget to alleviate the concerns of neglected communities will likely not score the political points or get the recognition that many worthy causes deserve.

The NDRA is a very simple 18-word amendment that is very easy to understand. As I travel the
country and visit with citizens and state legislators, I have found that our challenge lies not with
convincing people to like the amendment. The challenge is to overcome the fact that a majority
of state legislators are unfamiliar with the amendment process. That unfamiliarity prompts
concerns that are founded in fear of the unknown, and not in fact. Once people understand the
state-initiated amendment process, their concerns are resolved and their fears are allayed.

Under Article V, there are two methods by which an amendment can be proposed for state
ratification: either Congress can propose an amendment by a 2/3rds vote of both chambers, or
2/3rds of the state legislatures (currently 34) can join together in making “application” to Congress
to issue a call for a time and a place for a convention of the states. Once Congress has specified
a time and a place for the convention, Congress plays no further role in the process until such
time as the convention agrees on an amendment or amendments. If the convention comes to an
agreement (and they have no obligation to do so), Congress must specify that ratification be
decided either directly by the state legislatures or by popular conventions within each state as
regulated by state law. (All of the amendments added to date except one have been ratified by
the state legislatures). Whether amendments are proposed by Congress or by an amendments
convention, 3/4ths of the states must ratify the proposed amendment(s) before it can become part
of our Constitution.

Other than the limited powers given to Congress to issue a call for a place and a date for a
convention of the states and to choose one of two ratification methods, the states control the
process and decide the outcome. The Supreme Court, the president, and state governors play
no role in the application process or in convention deliberations. Thus, the only authority in our
Republic that has the power to both propose and ratify amendments is the several states. The
Founding Fathers did not give that power to Congress, the Supreme Court, or to governors. They
intended that the amendments conventions process would provide a check and balance whenever
federal power was misused.

I believe that our Founding Fathers intended that we, as state legislators, would not only
understand that we have the right to use Article V, but moreover, we have a duty to do so when
we see serious challenges facing our nation that are not being solved by our federal government.

The most common concern that legislators have is that the convention will “run away”—and
in the most extreme scenario, actually re-write the entire Constitution. This concern has been
repeated so many times over several decades that it has achieved “urban legend” status and
has become accepted as being true, even though it has no basis in fact or historical perspective.
Constitutional scholars such as Rob Natelson of the Independence Institute and Nick Dranias
of the Goldwater Institute, who have studied the process thoroughly, have published research
that convincingly debunks these myths. Some of their work on Article V can be found on our
website at www.restoringfreedom.org and on many other sites.

There are multiple layers of protection in the Article V process which make it politically
impossible for a convention to “run away” or to propose extreme or radical amendments. Those
who preach fear about the process pose what they claim are “unanswerable questions,” all
of which can readily be answered. The best example is their question of who will choose the
convention delegates. The answer is that delegates are chosen in the manner the state legislatures
direct—not by Congress, not by the president, and not by nefarious boogeymen the scare-
mongers conjure up to paralyze legislators into inaction.

The ultimate protection built into the Article V process is the high hurdle for ratification. Unless
and until 38 states ratify a proposed amendment, the Constitution is untouched and
nothing changes.

If our Founding Fathers could stand before state legislators today, I believe they would demand
to know why we are not using the tool they provided for us to correct serious challenges facing
our nation that are not being solved in Washington, DC. The NDRA is by no means the only
good idea that could be advanced using Article V. There are others. Winston Churchill said
“I never worry about action, but only inaction.”  The time for action is now. A runaway
amendments convention is a myth. A runaway 16-trillion dollar federal debt is a reality.

Last year the United States Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) agreed.   The United States is going through an obesity epidemic.  Contemporary culture, habits, and education has strongly contributed to the current health conditions in the United States.  The question is whether the country’s cumulative physical health has reached a juncture where stricter government regulations need to take place.

Typically epidemics would necessitate government intervention, especially in matters of public health.   But a disease that is as multifaceted as obesity does not come with a simple antidote, despite what late night infomercials may try to tell you.  Bills and initiatives have come from some in the government, but are generally rebutted with critiques surrounding their economic unfairness, their inconvenience, and mostly about how it’s none of the governments business.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg grabbed national headlines with his proposal to ban soft drinks greater than 16 ounces.  The outcry over the proposal came from various directions, but centered on the resentment of an authority figure seeking to legislate what is generally considered a private issue.  The libertarian may agree with the thought that drinking a soda in excess of 16 ounces may not be healthy, but not in the perceived overreach of power.  Hence, the dilemma of whether a mayor should act paternally in the heath interest of the city’s citizens or to let the people decide on their own.  In a city where “34 percent of adult New Yorkers are overweight and 22 percent are obese” it may have been time for a drastic measure

Bloomberg is not alone in attempting to legislate over his constituents’ consumption habits.  Richmond, CA is attempting to pass similarly controversial legislation.  In this instance, they are seeking to implement a tax of $.01 for every ounce of a sugary carbonated beverage.  Likewise, Hawaii is attempting pass legislation to tax the distributor for every gallon of it sold.  All these proposals come from a view that it is the duty of the government to drive consumer behavior.

The government has altered consumers’ behaviors by either taxing or restricting perceived vices.     Until the Harrison Narcotics act in 1914, cocaine was still a legal remedy for many diseases.  Prohibition of alcohol and its repeal, the 18^th and 21^st amendment respectively, is the most notable example of direct government intervention to a health problem claimed to be plaguing the nation.  Recently, there have been efforts to demonize smoking cigarettes as a way to discourage the behavior, by funding commercials and educational efforts the federal government has targeted the problem.  The issue with food and the looming obesity associated with poor health habits is that as Health Affairs notes, it does not yet have the mass outrage needed to encourage government action.

Prior to 1999, with the release of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, critiques of contemporary food production had not received the attention it deserved.  In it he comments on the ethical failures of the fast food industry, claiming they have “trashed the American country side, widened the gap between rich and poor, reconstructed the entire meat-packing industry, and cynically fed an obesity epidemic. The result is “emotional pain,” “low self-esteem,” and widespread illness and death.  After the release of the gruesome findings, American legislators as well as regular citizens have been more receptive to further critiques.  Notably, the enormous popularity of Super-Size Me and Food Inc. have come through as viable mainstream critiques of current practices.

Criticism of the industry and demonization of unhealthy living are invalid without further examining much of the root issues with an unhealthy lifestyle.  The New York Times breaks down the increase in food production to the increased portions Americans have become accustomed to eating.  M.I.T Professor Carson Chow points to the fact that not only do Americans consume larger portions than ever before, they also waste more food than at any time prior.  Though it may not be the food production that’s the issue behind the weight gains, the abundance of it at retailers and restaurants would sever many of the ties connecting its production to its preparation.   Of course, at a time when many Americans still go hungry, it would seem counterintuitive to restrict farmers from cultivating more products to deliver to markets.

However, the availability of food is highly dependent on location.  A notorious issue with obesity is its propensity to be around lower-income neighborhoods. The so-called food desert problem refers to the absence of grocery stores with adequate selections.  The USDA charts these locations with statistics including the number of children without proper access.  These occur both in desolate urban areas as well as in the rural counties with large distances to the nearest retailer.   Instead of proper grocery stores that are seen routinely in the suburbs and higher-income urban areas, there are either fast-food restaurants that serve as a cheap substitute for sustenance or small convenience stores that do not have the selection of healthy products, if they have any at all, like the common grocery store.  As a result, obesity is much more prevalent in low-income areas.  Overall 7.5% of pre-school age children are obese, but that number doubles to 14% in children of low-income families.

California has taken a measure to attempt to prevent the creation of these deserts, and improve access across the state.  However, market forces do not necessarily dictate change without some legislative incentive.  CA AB581 would create a “California Healthy Food Financing Initiative Council” to work on preventing this issue in the future. 

Illinois is approaching the issue from another perspective.  Instead of finding ways for grocers to come to the people, they would encourage the people to find the grocers or otherwise create a vacuum for healthy food grocers in low-income areas.  HB 1399 is meant to limit what the Food Stamp Program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, can be used for within the state.   As it stands, the assistance can be used to purchase most food products as long as they have not been already prepared.  What HB 1399 was meant to accomplish, had it gotten out of committee, would be to minimize the amount that can be allocated to the pasteurized, sweet, or otherwise non-nutritious  foods or drinks that are common causes for obesity.

Both the Cato Institute and the Heartland Institute however do not buy into the necessity of government intervention for several reasons.  An overlying idea behind the rejection of any government action to encourage healthy behavior or, as some see it, punish unhealthy behavior is that obesity may not be the problem that it has been claimed to be.  Radley Balko, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, comments on how with current medical improvements, obesity no longer holds the public health risk it was once known to have.   Furthermore, he makes his overarching claim regarding government action in that “the freedom to risk, indulge, and “sin” are essential to preserving individual liberty and a free society. Governments of free people aren’t authorized to ensure good health, they’re charged with securing liberty, which most certainly includes the liberty to hold bad habits.”  The Heartland Institute writes that “any number of legal products and services can have negative effects if used in excess, but that doesn’t mean heavy-handed government intervention makes for good tax policy.”

The Brookings Institute offers a significantly different take on the issue.  Ross Hammond, director of the Brookings Center on Social Dynamics and Policy, views the health problems of an individual as a problem for the greater society.  He notes that an individual that “relative medical costs for the obese are estimated to be 36 to 100 percent higher than for Americans of healthy weight.” In his report he notes other key figures:

• Childhood obesity alone is responsible for $14.1 billion in direct medical costs annually
• Nearly 21 percent of all current medical spending in the United States is now obesity related
• Medicaid spending would be almost 12 percent lower in the absence of obesity
• A 5 percent reduction in the prevalence of diabetes and hypertension would save almost $25 billion annually in medium-term health care costs

So, when a city like Richmond, CA makes an effort to punish unhealthy foods it draws the ire of the American Beverage Association who have spent up to $70 million in lobbying fees to kill the proposal.  Mother Jones has had excellent reporting regarding the situation in Richmond.  They note that a town of 105,000 has truly struggled with their collective health.  52% of children in the city are either overweight or obese and 58% of adults are in the shape.

City Councilman Courtland “Corky” Boozé, one of two councilmen who voted against putting it on the ballot, argues that the tax will burden the city’s poor residents, doesn’t deal with more important problems in the city like unemployment and crime, and will only be used to address the city’s budget deficit.  The local teamsters that have come out against it as well based on the idea that it works as a regressive tax, affecting lower income families much more significantly; though that may well be the point, especially if it does significantly alter behavior.  The USDA found that a 20 percent increase in cost of sugared beverages could spur an average loss of 3.8 pounds a year for adults and 4.5 pounds a year for kids.

A policy issue that has been a topic of debate for the nation as a whole is the subsidy policy for corn and its byproducts.  The government subsidies toward corn producers have incentivized food producers to use corn syrup as a sweetener.  Though high fructose corn syrup may be unfairly maligned at least compared with sugar sweeteners, it still possesses many of the poor attributes common amongst artificial sweeteners.  New York has put forth a bill that though is still in committee would ban all high fructose corn syrup products from stores and restaurants.   The federal government has taken notice, as part of an overall reform toward ethanol and the whole agricultural subsidy program House Bill 2307 removes government subsidies from corn producers.  The likely result will be that corn will rise to the price of other crops, and thus remove the incentives toward using high fructose corn syrup.

In order for the local or federal government to promote healthier living, they may have to remove some of the choices from the people.  Federal legislation would be a fairly radical change for a very large industry.  If the American peoples’ beliefs coincide with those of the US Surgeon Generals and do consider the issue as an epidemic, then it may be more conducive for the administration to pass sweeping reforms.  Until then, programs designed to change the peoples’ opinions without regulations may be even more prevalent in the future.

The tragedy of the mass shootings in Aurora has brought out a new cycle of discussion over gun control regulations.  An overarching regulatory measure currently seems unlikely as recently both President Obama and Mitt Romney have not advocated enhanced gun control measures.  Even though both represented and oversaw states with some of the strictest gun control in the nation, they have not publically pursued a nationwide referendum on the accessibility of guns.

To much chagrin, weapons have again reached those that did not use them with good intentions.  The inevitable discussion about gun control then tends to morph into value judgments regarding what is a right and what a privilege.  Even the dubious phrasing of the second amendment leaves uncertainty as to what can be restricted regarding who has access to and to what kind of guns.  To best examine what the status of gun rights is in the country, a look at the trends among states best clarifies the issue.

The vast expanse of the United States provides challenges in how to properly serve different demographics and interests properly solely from a national level.  States determine their policy on the legal accessibility of guns.  In that regard, the states with the large metropolises are keener on ensuring stricter controls.

Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and California all have some of the strictest gun laws in the United States along with Washington D.C.  Each state has issues with the homicide rate in its largest cities.  D.C has perennially been in the top five in homicides over the years.  The Los Angeles metro area is up to 41 homicides via shooting in July alone.  New York has consistently hovered around 1000 murders, though their homicide rates are substantially down from the peak times in the late 70’s and 80’s.  In response to these rates, these states have implemented stricter checks and controls on who access to guns and to what kinds of guns they have access to.

California has passed a ban on .50 caliber weapons in AB 809, a bill that also encompasses stricter reporting procedure on the manufacturing and distribution of the guns.  No longer is it solely the responsibility of the retailer to report the status of the weapon, but that responsibility also falls to the manufacture to track where their weapons are.  Also, the legislature has approved AB 1402 which shifts the regulation of weapons to the state legislature, negating the exceptions in city ordinances.  Along with enhanced registration requirements, California has attempted to limit the legal retailing of guns to educated and qualified individuals.

New York is in the midst of a sharp decline in gun crimes, in light of targeted legislation and policing practices.  Several programs have been credited for the progress, though not without substantial criticism.  The Broken Windows theory gained popularity throughout the 90’s as the thinking became that the nicer their surroundings, the less inclined individuals become to engage in destructive behavior.   Despite the numerous critiques applied to that theory, they pale in comparison to the recently applied Stop and Frisk Policy.   The ACLU points to the racially tinted aspects of the policy as police officers are now encouraged to react to individuals they deem suspicious.  The state appellate court even recently ruled against the policy ruling that “the gradual erosion of this basic liberty can only tatter the constitutional fabric upon which this nation was built, the ramifications go far beyond this single case.”  The legislature continues its pursuit on eradicating gun violence.  NY SB 00086 attempted to pass what the California legislature was able to in banning .50 caliber weapons, however the bill proposed in 2011 has not made it to a vote.

Illinois, in similar fashion attempts to legislate access to guns.  Chicago is having a horribly violent year, with over 250 shootings just this year.  Even New York has over 60 less shootings, despite being three times the size.  As such, the legislature has made proposals to strengthen the qualifications required to legally possess a weapon.  SB 0075, a bill sponsored by a lone Democrat, states that “no person may acquire or possess any firearm, stun gun, or taser within this State without having in his or her possession a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card previously issued in his or her name by the Department of State Police. ”  After months of deliberation the bill has been tabled over a year ago and has not come back.  SB 1611 tries to regulate the opposite end of gun possession; by regulating who can retail guns they felt they can better track the distribution.  Again this bill was also tabled as opponents felt that it put unjust burdens on retailers to distinguish the purpose of the purchase.  The bill stated that retailing

“with the principal objective of livelihood and profit” means that the intent underlying the sale or disposition is predominantly one of obtaining livelihood and pecuniary gain, as opposed to other intents, such as improving or liquidating a personal firearms collection; however, proof of profit shall not be required as to a person who engages in the regular and repetitive purchase and disposition of firearms for criminal purposes or terrorism.”

Washington D.C had for 32 years forbade handguns.  Until the 2008 District of Colombia vs. Heller decision, which deemed that the second amendment provided for a right to self-defense, D.C had an absolute ban on handguns.  Though the court overturned the ban, they did not provide guidance on new legislation.  With that, current regulation mandates that guns must be registered by the city, it limits the number of bullets a gun can hold and the type of firearm residents can guns equipped with, and requires a special identification technology to be included in new firearms.  Even with these restrictions the district still has the highest gun related deaths per 100,000 people, the 16 per 100,000 is substantially greater than the 7.75 rate of the next closest state, Louisiana.

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum are much more liberal regulations in certain states.  Arizona with the passing of HB 2146 allows citizens to obtain a permit to carry concealed weapons.  Governor Jan Brewer has been an adamant supporter of gun rights, and it is a move lauded by supporters and staunchly opposed by gun control advocates.

Texas has debated HB 86 which would allow permit holders to legally carry concealed weapons on college campuses.  A bill that likely comes as a result of the events at the University of Texas, where a lone gunman ran through campus firing off shots before ultimately ending his own life.   The legislature also debated extending the penal code for illicit gun trafficking to include more sophisticated rifles and handguns, but never made it out of committee.

Gun Control is rightfully a hotly debated issue.   The polling numbers regarding changes to current regulation splits the country in ways that few other issues do.  Even tragic events like the one that occurred in Colorado do little to shift the pulse of the country.  According to a Pew poll, the numbers did not change as 45 percent prioritized gun control and 49 percent gun rights, much like the results obtained from a similar poll in April.  Gallup has been asking respondents on whether or not they support a ban on assault rifles since 1997 and for the first time a majority of respondents support it.  Having said that, Gallup also found that gun ownership in households is at the highest rate since 1993.

With a country so divided on the issue, a Brookings Institution report raised an interested argument regarding abandoning the second amendment in favor of delegating the issue to the states.  Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies, writes that since the second amendment is now generally accepted as not just a communal right but an individual right it essentially prohibits most sweeping gun control laws.  His claim is that our needs have changed as some of the most gun ravaged urban centers demand greater controls than more rural communities, yet the meaning of the amendment has not changed and it is incorrect to ignore the meaning of the amendment in a way more suited toward stricter regulation.  With that, he encourages at least the discussion of repeal, though he clearly does not see it forthcoming.

Despite its legality, it is clear that guns are clearly falling into the wrong hands.  An illuminating expose in the New York Times reveals how often guns are falling back into the hands of those with documented mental illnesses.   It is difficult to forecast what would happen to murder rates if guns were prohibited, especially in global marketplace where a black market is near impossible to successfully monitor, whether the law would achieve its desired results.  However, tragedies occur at a rate far too frequent for anyone’s liking and without further changes, it seems unlikely that that will change.

-Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood

In September 2010 President Obama officially announced his plans to improve the transportation infrastructure within the United States, a promise that he had been reiterating since his first campaign in 2008.  Now, the proposals may come to fruition in two desired stretches.  The scope of the administration’s aspirations has been diminished as several state legislatures have refused federal money to build high speed rails within their state.  Nevertheless, the House of Representatives is debating over an additional $4 billion in funding for rail projects.  Yet, without the agreement of all affected states what is left are several plans to build high speed rails across the Northeast Corridor, connecting New York to Washington, DC and in California to ultimately connect Los Angles to San Francisco.  Both these projects require investment on a grand scale in terms of both finance and time.

As population centers continue to grow, an influx of new drivers will continue to congest the prime motorways between large cities.  The taxing effort to keep up with the population increases will lie heaviest on airports and roads that would have to bear the brunt of inter-city transportation as they do now.  Thus the Obama administration is seeking cooperation between the federal government and several states to invest in the development.  The scope of the investment has generated an abundance of resentment to a national investment in funding a project targeting isolated locations on the two coasts.  The Federal Railroad Administration says “implementing these corridor projects and programs will serve as a catalyst to promote economic expansion (including new manufacturing jobs), create new choices for travelers in addition to flying or driving, reduce national dependence on oil, and foster livable urban and rural communities.”  The opposition claims the projects will go overbudget and be inefficient especially in the scarcely populated regions.

Ultimately, the variety of factors involved in determining the value of building a rail network depends on certain assumptions that are consistently subject to change.  As is the case with most projections, the numbers tend to inflate as the details of the project emerge.  In 2008, when voters in California first approved the measure to allocate $9 billion in bonds to fund the train, they were under the presumption that the total cost of the project would amount to $33 billion by its completion in 2040.  Now estimates average out at $68 billion, with some ranging up to $96 billion.   With the federal government contributing upwards of $3.5 billion, the remaining costs have validated many of the concerns.  Nevertheless, the California legislature approved the funding for the project, albeit with only a 21-16 vote in favor.

A key argument in favor that the Brookings Institute points out is that a high speed corridor will reduce the stress on airport traffic that is bound to ensue in the coming years.  In fact, 26 metropoliatan areas account for 75% of all airport traffic, and 94% of all internatinal travel arrives or departs from 20 of those metropolitan areas.  In light of that it is important to note how often short trips, less than 500 miles are made from these hubs.  The report notes that

“corridors of no more than 500 miles constituted half of all flights and carried 30 percent of all passengers in the most recent twelve month period starting April 2008. In fact, the metro Los Angeles/San Francisco corridor, stretching 347 miles, is the second busiest corridor in the country. “

Critics have called the project a “train to nowhere” as the first lines that will be built are across scarcely populated regions.  The Central Valley Line which is the first of the rails to be built will go from Bakersfield to Madera with populations of 350,000 and 62,000 respectively.  If the funding for the project dries out and connections to San Francisco or Los Angeles are not made the end result may be disastrous for a state known for its budget gaffes.  California Republican Congressman Darryl Issa is adamantly opposed, stating “California high-speed rail was sold to voters as a grand vision for tomorrow but in practice appears to be no different than countless other pork-barrel projects — driven more by political interests and consultant spending than valid cost-benefit analysis, before more taxpayer money is sent to the rail authority, questions must be answered about mismanagement, conflicts of interest, route selection, ridership and other risks.”

With this knowledge, voters have turned on the project.  Recent polling indicates that if they had another opportunity, 59% of voters would not be in favor of the project.   Instead, momentum had been gathering for a “Plan B” approach to the impending transportation dilemma.  The plan would improve on current railroads and build immediate connections to Los Angeles and San Francisco and negate the Central Valley line.  The point is essentially moot though with chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority Dan Richard claiming “There are no legal, practical or contractual ways to move the money out of the Central Valley.”

On the opposite end of the country the circumstances differ substantially.   With almost 20% of the population located in one densely populated region of the country, the cost per rider diminishes significantly in the Northeast Corridor.  Amtrak has a plan to create a $151 billion high speed line that will shorten travel time by half.  A trip to Boston from New York will take just over an hour and a half.  Compare that with the over three and a half hour trip it is currently then there is great incentive to complete this project.  Amtrak President Joseph Boardman obviously agrees, he says “The current corridor between Washington and Boston is old and crowded, with highways, airports, and railroads that are unable to handle growing population and demand, without ambitious rail expansion, the region’s economy will be stifled.”

The project does come with its own flaws, most notably the high price tag.  Amtrak is scrambling to find financiers for the project since even by their own report “current Federal, state, and local transportation investment programs are insufficient” and that fare hikes for current service would be one likely option.  To compensate for the distinctions in how much added value the project would provide, Amtrak was found to have smudged the numbers some.  A report by the Amtrak Office of the Inspector General found that they significantly overinflated the added value of adding new rail cars onto the existing routes.  Yet, some states are still inclined to invest in the project in collobaration with the private and federal efforts.  Pennsylvania sought pass a bill that ultimately got voted down that would have appropriated $75 million toward the project.

The situation in Minnesota is commonplace across the United States.  The public clamoring for a sports team to support often forces politicians into difficult decisions balancing fiscal restraint and public outcry.  Texas was recently faced with a similar situation in whether or not to allocate public funding for a race track designed specifically for a Formula 1 Race. The race, known as the “Circuit of the Americas”, will be the first F-1 race in the United States, after dwindling attendance forced its cancellation.  The sum needed to build and sustain this track in the Austin area may cost as “as many as 100,000 teachers in Texas [their jobs] ….  to cope with the state’s budget crisis, according to Moak Casey & Associates, an Austin-based education consultant. For $25 million a year, the state could pay more than 500 teachers an average salary of $48,000.” The circumstances differed drastically between the two plans, but ultimately it was a substantial chunk of money to be distributed toward a stadium whose primary purpose is to house one large event a year.  The $25 million the race organizers asked for was doled out, but not without controversial methods of achieving it.  The procurement of the investment from the state has caused delays for the development, but the November deadline is still on track.

The question of why states, or occasionally counties, allocate such large sums for sporting related events delves deeper into the collective psyche of modern society.  The adoration of sporting teams is predicated on the idea that they accomplish a public service.  Branching, its sphere of influence into reports on daily local newspapers, radio, and television stations, teams take on the identity of the region they represent.  Richard Lipsky in “How We Play the Game” describes sport to be “classless” in its widespread interest. He said that knowledge of sport appears to bring people of all walks of life together and molds them into a “we.” Sport in each community has an emotional affect on its residents. In bonding themselves to a sports franchise, the team becomes “our” team and, in competition, a feeling of “us versus them” arises.

Sporting events offer spectators a unique experience, since each game is different.   With  the advent  of luxury seating there is  an opportunity for people  to  consume  sports  in an  elite  and  rarified  manner visible  to other  consumers.  Mark Rosentraub explores the topic further in how sporting teams take up a rarified spot in public life.  Not only can sports serve as an outlet for fans’ passions, they also serve as economic tools to renovate parts of downtown.  Modern architecture used in the design of new stadiums not provides an arena for the event, but serves in and of itself as a tourist attraction.  In addition, as cities strive to build affluent downtown areas with offices and services, stadiums can be used as a recreation area to complement the working population of the area.

The importance of a sports team to a city’s residents is difficult to overstate.  Christopher Diedrich notes the study of Mark Rosentraub and David Swindell, who in 1996 surveyed Indianapolis residents, asking them to rank the importance of a range of cultural attractions to their city.  The results are endemic of society’s value on professional sports.  The researchers found that

“When asked about civic pride, respondents answered that the NBA’s Indiana Pacers were as important as museums.  Right behind them were the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts, well ahead of the area’s music and shopping.  When asked what defined the area’s reputation, respondents answered auto racing first, followed by the Pacers and Colts, with museums falling to fourth.  Finally, when asked whether the loss of a particular community asset would hurt the reputation of the community, sports won again.  Eighty-five percent of respondents believed that losing the Indianapolis 500 would hurt their reputation, followed by the Pacers at 81% and the Colts at 75%, with only 68% of respondents believing that the loss of their museums would harm the city’s reputation.”

Furthermore, proponents claim keeping teams within the city provide benefits outside the financial realm.  Sarah Wilhelm analyzes each of these claims in her oft-cited study on the value of professional sports to cities.  She notes that a local sports franchise may create benefits for fans who never attend a single game. Fans may follow the franchise in the media and discuss the franchise with friends, family and coworkers.  It also gives off a feeling of civic pride. A local sports franchise will create civic pride, essentially putting the city “on the map.”    It may help draw in a talented workforce that would be willing to settle for reduced benefits in order to be closer to a sports team.  She writes that it can affect recent college graduates as they ponder their next location.

Critics of this are numerous, and though the overall effects of a team are difficult to quantify, the basic economic measurements of job creation and economic stimulus of building new stadiums do not justify public funding.  Decision makers have not necessarily been listening.  Since 2000, 28 new major league stadiums have been built costing over $9 billion dollars. More than half, over $5 billion, of the costs of the new stadiums were funded using public dollars.   Even more, two thirds of teams in the five major sporting leagues are playing in stadiums built or significantly renovated since 1990—with 28% built or significantly renovated since 2000.  So despite the precarious results, the success rate at which owners get subsidized for their requests is astounding.

Further examination of the financial data suggests that while the construction of a stadium provides an influx of jobs in the interim, its lasting effects are substantially overstated.  For example, all the funding diverted to new stadium projects will not be doled out to other deserving causes.  The investment in the stadium can be serving other public goods in the meantime.  While the events at the stadium can be a driving source of business in terms of taxes paid and as a benefit for the surrounding businesses, it diverts the public from other forms of entertainment.  Economists have called this the “substitution effect” in that while the stadium does generate substantial revenue, it detracts from the other options left for consumers on a budget.

The CATO institute debunks the myth of the value a stadium adds in terms of job creation.  In evaluating the plan for the construction of a new baseball stadium for the then-new Washington D.C franchise, they deem the positive numbers to be severely inflated.  For example, a report from the District’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development claims that the team and ballpark will “create 360 jobs earning an annual total of $94 million.”  That amounts to an astounding $261,111 per job. The wonder is that anyone finds such figures credible. Yet decade after decade, cities throughout the country have struggled to attract or keep professional sports teams, and the idea that a team brings with it large economic gains invariably arises.

Yet, in the current professional sports marketplace the conditions are stacked against cities in dealing with the issue.  The barriers to entry for professional teams ensure that there will consistently be new suitors for a team’s service.  In these scenarios, the team always has leverage over its host city since a move after the current agreements end loom heavily over the proceedings.  The Wall Street Journal investigated the imbalance in negotiations in the case of Cincinnati and found alarming statistics.

Not only did the final cost of the football stadium for the Cincinnati Bengals exceed initial projections, it put an unduly burden on the lone county that put forth funds.  While it may have been foolish for a lone county to fund a stadium, considering only one other example of this exists out of the most recent 23 stadiums built with public funding, this deal surpassed even the worst case scenarios for the county.  The proposed budget for this project was $280 million, the team admits costs ran up to $350 million, the county claims it was $454 million, and when Harvard Professor Judith Grant Long dug further total costs ran to $555 million.  The astounding costs involved have long term consequences on the tax-payers in the county.  11.4% of the general fund was dedicated to paying off the stadium in 2008, by 2010 that percentage swelled to 16.4%.

The circumstances in this case should serve as a cautionary tale for other cities, but as current legislation shows this is not the case.  Consistent renovations are often asked for by owners instead of complete overhauls of the stadium.  In Chicago, the infamous Wrigley Field is being haggled over in terms of how renovations will be financed. That is in addition to the recent renovations of the home of the Chicago Bears football team, where precautions were taken in order to ensure that costs were managed.  California has several teams that have leveraged their circumstances into a beneficial compromise with the city.  Santa Clara has promised the 49’ers football team a $878.6 million contract construction of a 68,500-seat stadium.  The Sacramento Kings has threatened relocation in case a new arena is not built, and as it currently stands that may come to fruition.  Likewise, the Golden State Warriors basketball team will move across the bay by 2017 into a brand new arena in San Francisco.

Without delving further into the sociological factors that dictate the place of professional sports in American society, current trends certainly dictate an imbalance in bargaining for private team owners and state legislatures.   To change the course of events would require a fairly major overhaul of the current structure, a change that despite union lockouts in several major sports seems highly unlikely.  Instead, it will require a delicate balancing act in determining the disbursement of funds from tightening state budgets versus the popular sentiment of supporting local professional teams.

(click read more for graphic)

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While levels of teen sexual activity are generally the same in other developed nations, American teens tend to have shorter, inconsistent relationships and are less likely to participate in safe sex.  What appears to separate much of U.S. curriculums from other developed nations is the inclusion of morality-based abstinence education, focusing less on issues like fundamentals of reproduction, contraception, STIs and other sexual concerns.

In Tennessee, lawmakers recently passed a law that prevents educators from promoting gateway sexual activity, or “sexual contact encouraging an individual to engage in a nonabstinent behavior.”  Critics call this the “no holding-hands bill” mostly because lawmakers have been unclear on what constitutes gateway activity.   It’s unknown what lawmakers are attempting to prohibit exactly, but the assumption is that certain intimate activities are inappropriate when promoting abstinence only.  Those in support of abstinence-focused education believe demonstrations involving sex acts and teaching appropriate contraception use will stimulate and encourage teens to have sex.

Some of the highest teen pregnancy rates exist in states that still push for abstinence only education, particularly those that push AOE from a moral standpoint. States like Texas, Tennessee and Florida have all been attempting to legislate more specific abstinence programs, arguing abstinence is the best way to avoid STIs and unplanned pregnancies.

Others argue that teens will have sex regardless and that human biology is difficult to deter.  Opponents claim abstinence only education (AOE) is ethically problematic because it avoids giving teens the appropriate health information to make positive sexual choices.  Health experts say teens have the right to know health information.

Studies have also shown that abstinence education is mostly ineffective. Teens who are taught abstinence only are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, leading to more STIs and unplanned pregnancies.  Shame and fear-based education tactics have been proven ineffective, yet for a number of years the federal government has been funding education that teaches “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.”  This was controversial not only because it pushed a specific morality in schools, but because it ostracized homosexuals who can’t legally marry in most states.

In the past few years, the Obama administration has focused on endorsing comprehensive sex education that are scientifically supported. Most are evidence-based programs that address a wide range of sexual issues, including contraception, reproduction, and social issues. The Department of Health and Human Services recently created a list of curriculums that have been most successful – all, with exception of the most recent endorsement, the Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education program.  The program has been controversial because it pushes a heterosexual marriage agenda, minimizing LGBT youth, and fails to address health basics like puberty, anatomy, reproduction, and contraception.  Instead, the group focuses on teaching students to withhold sex until marriage and teaches outdated views on sex.

AOE supporters claim the drop in teen pregnancy rates in the past few decades are attributable to the billion and a half federal dollars spent on abstinence education since the 1980s, most of which was spent during former president George W. Bush’s time in office.  Since 2010-2011, nearly two-thirds of the federal budget allocated to abstinence education has been cut and redirected to evidence-based curriculums.  While abstinence does appear to have some effectiveness in combination with comprehensive sex education, the most effective programs avoid teaching a morality stance altogether.

Clearly abstinence is the most effective means to avoid teen pregnancy and STIs, but should schools really be in the business of teaching morality?

Tell your government what you think:  Real Education for Healthy Youth Act 2011, Abstinence Education Reallocation Act 2011

Agricultural Producer Organizations

One would generally expect agri-business groups to be opposed to stricter animal welfare laws. What’s unusual about this bill is the fact that those groups that are directly targeted by the legislation, commercial egg producers, largely support the bill, while the bulk of the opposition comes from groups representing producers of other animal products and broad-based agricultural lobbies.

The United Egg Producers (UEP), which claims to represent 88 percent of the commercial egg market, is the main agricultural group supporting the bill, flanked by several state and regional egg producer organizations. The UEP has even created a website to campaign for the bill, www.EggBill.com. While they list the benefits to hens and to consumers (via labeling requirements) among the reasons to support the law, their primary argument is based on the desire for nation-wide uniformity among egg-producer regulations. Currently, states set their own regulations on egg producers, some much more strict than others. And a few states, such as California, require that all eggs sold in the state conform to their standards, regardless of where they were produced. By replacing a patchwork of inconsistent state regulations with a national standard, the UEP argues, the law would streamline compliance, correct market distortions to competition, and reduce barriers to interstate commerce. It is worth noting that the UEP has previously campaigned against stricter state-level caging laws, but it seems their losses have made a uniform compromise more desireable than continuing to fight smaller battles.

The most vocal agricultural opponent of the egg bill is the National Pork Producer’s Council (NPCC), joined by the American Farm Bureau Federation,the National Cattleman’s Beef Association, and other meat and dairy producers. Although the bill would not change regulations for anyone but egg producers, these groups believe the bill would be an unprecidented act of federal intrusion into farming standards that would start a domino effect (the NPCC spells out the metaphor quite clearly in this ad) of regulations throughout the animal industry. As evidence they often cite Wayne Pacelle—president of the Humane Society of the U.S., which partnered with the UEP as the main backers of the egg bill—including in the aforementioned ad his quote, “we have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals.” This is a fairly straw-man-like argument, not to mention the fact that the quote is almost 20 years old and a bit out of context. However, there is some truth to the claim that this is an unprecedented level of federal regulation. There are currently no federal laws requiring a set amount of space per animal for any class of agricultural animals, and it is possible that passage of the law could induce some legislators to introduce similar requirements for pigs or cattle. But since the current egg bill is an amendment to the Egg Products Inspection Act of 1970, federal regulation of eggs is not all that unprecedented.

The other big argument advanced against the egg bill is that the regulations will increase the price of eggs for consumers. Although one study commissioned by the UEP has suggested the price of a carton of eggs will only increase by about two cents, egg bill opponents point to the egg shortages of Europe as evidence of what will happen in the U.S. There, a similar ban on conventional battery cages is blamed for the ten to twenty percent reduction in egg production, as many southern and eastern European egg producers failed to update their cages in time, and a resulting increase in consumer prices ranging from forty to seventy-five percent in different countries. There are a few notable differences, however, between the EU law and the American egg bill that make it difficult to predict how similar the results would be. The scope of the EU law is far broader in that it applies to egg operations of more than three hundred fifty hens, whereas the U.S. bill only covers producers with more than three thousand hens. The U.S. bill would also give producers more time for compliance (eightteen years as opposed to twelve). But given the current economic situation, even an uncertain threat of increased food prices will likely be a significant factor in the argument.

Animal Welfare Organizations

The primary animal welfare proponent of the egg bill is the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). As a big supporter of state caging regulations, the HSUS was instrumental in negotiating the compromise with the UEP. They are joined by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Mercy for Animals, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, as well as the generally more moderate professional veterinary associations. For them, the winning aspect of the bill is the elimination of the battery cage arrangements that dominate factory farms, containing over ninety percent of all commercial egg-producing hens in the U.S. Confined in this style of cage, with an average of 67 square inches of floorspace per hen, the hens are prevented from engaging in natural behaviors such as perching, wing-stretching, and often even turning around. This can lead to health issues like osteoporosis and external parasites and to the behavioral abnomalities that cause hens to peck at and cannibalize each other. Within fifteen years, all caged operations would have to approximately double the floorspace per hen and include “adequate environmental enrichments” such as perch space and scratching areas. The American Veterinary Medical Association reports that the move to enriched cages would significantly improve the health of hens, and even endorses enriched cages over cage-free arrangements for the prevention of certain diseases and parasites. It is also interesting to note that in the AVMA endorsement, they make a point to comment that voluntary transition to more humane caging is preferable, but cite the market inefficiencies of conflicting state regulations to justify federal intervention.

While it seems like the elimination of battery cages should please all animal advocates, groups like the Humane Farming Association (HFA), Friends of Animals, and United Poultry Concerns don’t like the trade-off involved, and have dubbed their campaign “Stop the Rotten Egg Bill.” To them, the defining piece of the legislation is a clause pre-empting state or local regulations that go beyond the requirements of the federal bill (which is what the UEP gets out of the compromise). The HFA argues that the bill represents an attempt to keep hens in cages forever, and derides the notion of “enriched” cages, saying “a cage is a cage” in this somewhat creepy ad featuring anthropomorphic chickens. There is some merit to this claim. Even though the bill would double the existing average amount of space per hen, the space requirements proposed are all still one square foot or less. The majority of hens would still be confined in factory-style operations on wire floors and would never set foot outside. And we can see from photos put out by enriched-cage proponents—so presumably among the most flattering photos available—that the hens are not exactly living luxurious or natural lifestyles. Interestingly, by opposing the federal egg bill, these groups are rejecting a small or moderate improvement in conditions for the vast majority of hens, in favor of trying to win more significant improvements on smaller scales. Currently, no state other than California—which is given a special section in the federal egg bill with their own requirements—has passed or is considering passing caging requirements that require more space than the federal proposal.

Future of Animal Caging Laws

The future of the egg bill is likely doomed; as the Senate declined to incorporate it as an amendment in their version of the Farm Bill on June 19, supporters have called for redoubled efforts in the House, where it languishes in a committee headed by an opponent of the bill. Yet we may see animal confinement as a nation-wide uniformity issue again as states consider other stricter animal welfare regulations.

For example, pork producers could find themselves in the same situation as the UEP. Nine states, including California, Colorado, and most recently Rhode Island, have already enacted bans on the use of gestational crates for pregnant sows. These crates measure six feet long by two feet wide, which keeps the pigs practically immobilized for periods of up to four months, causing the pigs to endure bone and muscle deterioration, sores from lying in their own waste, and extreme psychological stress. The push against gestational crating has gained traction lately, with several large restaurant and grocery chains—including McDonald’s, Burger King, Kroger, and Safeway—encouraging or requiring suppliers to phase out the crates, and New Jersey is considering (and likely to pass) a law to specifically ban gestational crating of sows.

Some states, like Massachusetts and New York, are making the confinement issue even broader with laws prohibiting confining or tethering an animal in a manner that prevents the animal from turning around, lying down, standing, or stretching its limbs. Both of the laws would make violation a criminal misdemeanor, and would apply to egg producers and pork producers alike, along with every other agricultural animal (although both laws would allow gestational crating of sows for the last week of expected pregnancy, and make exceptions for short-term confinement for routine purposes and for transportation of animals). Most of the existing and proposed animal confinement laws also specifically target veal, consumption of which has been declining for decades following a 1980s public information campaign by animal rights groups depicting the incredibly restricted movement of veal calves. And foie gras has received renewed attention recently, as a California law, passed in 2004 but scheduled to come into effect on July 1, 2012, bans the practice of gavage (force-feeding through a tube) and the sale of foie gras produced in this method. Considering these trends at the state level, it may not be long before other commercial producers of animal products go the way of the United Egg Producers in wanting a uniform national standard.

In 1972, the Supreme Court for a period of time outlawed the use of the death penalty in the case of Furman v. Georgia.  The court ruled that it violated the eighth amendment and was cruel and unusual punishment.  This made states across the country review their statutes and implement a system that made the doling out of the punishment less arbitrary.  By 1976, the court overturned their stance on the issue in Gregg v. Georgia and ruled that “in extreme criminal cases….the careful and judicious use of the death penalty may be appropriate if carefully employed.”

Perhaps, the most prominent death penalty case in recent memory involved the execution of Troy Davis.  The national media reported on and brought to the forefront an issue that garnered attention worldwide.  Davis, convicted of murdering a police officer in 1989 made numerous appeals to no avail and ultimately was denied clemency.  However, prominent figures like former President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu became advocates of his cause and stirred a conversation about the merits of the death penalty.

Views regarding capital punishment vary drastically not only across different countries, but within the United States as well.  The United Nations has pushed to eliminate capital punishment across boundaries, issuing a moratorium in 2007 though it is not legally binding.  So when Connecticut eliminated the death penalty, the UN applauded their decision; however they mention that “even though the imposition of the death penalty fell by around half between 2001 and 2011, the US was still ranked by human rights non-governmental organizations among the top five countries carrying out executions last year. The other four are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.”  Overall, around two out of three countries have entirely banned the death penalty and 141 overall have not used it as a punishment at sentencing.    Even across the United States the use of the death penalty varies drastically.

Though only one in three states officially bans the death penalty, the prevalence of that sentencing is highly dependent on the state.  States in the South accounted for 87% of all state executions in the country last year and for 82% since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas have accounted for 54% of those.   The Northeastern states have accounted for only one percent of all executions since reinstatement.  However, not all the states have completely abolished the practice.  Though states like Colorado, Montana, and New Hampshire have only perpetrated one execution each, they have not abolished and do not have any immediate plans to abolish the death penalty.

An interesting state in this discussion is California.  With 723 inmates currently on death row, the voting on the initiative in November will be of great intrigue to proponents on both sides.  Executive Director of the Death Penalty Research Center Richard Dieter, a center to abolishing the punishment says “repeal in California would be a huge development; just getting it on the ballot is big.”  Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles District Attorney is against the initiative, he says “this would essentially eliminate death penalty for the cop killers, the baby killers and the serial killers that are among us.”  Yet, the state has executed 13 inmates overall, even with over 700 in line to be executed.  If the initiative were to pass, those on death row will have their sentences commuted to life without the possibility of parole.  Cooley’s statement that those in favor of the initiative “want to let these people live out their lives gracefully and expensively, with us taking care of their healthcare bill, fine and dandy, but some of these criminals have forfeited their right to be on the face of the earth” has stirred critics of the death penalty who point out the fallacies in Cooley’s argument.  Namely, that the cost of the death penalty when accounting for all the judicial fees accumulates to over $40 billion since 1978.

In the last decade further investigations into death penalty cases have revealed some disturbing trends in that in numerous cases the sentencing was not justified.   James Liebman, a professor at Columbia University, published a book titled “Los Tocayos Carlos.”  In this book, he discovers not only that the man, Carlos DeLuna, was wrongly sentenced and executed, he also finds the real killer in a 1983 Corpus Christi, TX death.  The accompanying website outlines all the sources and evidence the research team found, truly a harrowing finding in a case where DeLuna was executed in 1989.  Furthermore in Texas, Dallas County alone has uncovered 30 wrongful convictions since 2001, the most of any county in the country.

Legislators in several other states have taken notice in the rise of false convictions in capital punishment convictions.   In Georgia, House Democrats are sponsoring a bill to eliminate the death penalty and note that “the imposition of the death sentence has become increasingly problematic as more persons convicted of serious crimes are being found innocent by new evidence, often years or decades after their sentence was imposed, and it is impossible to believe that such errors are limited to noncapital offenses.”  In Ohio, legislators have also pushed for repealing the death penalty, but the bill has not made it to a vote in seven months.  Kentucky has examined its own protocols on how effective capital punishment is in their state and found their results to be less than satisfactory.  In order to surmount their difficulties with prosecution they address the underlying concerns in a bill that made it up from the house to the senate.   Basing their legislation on the American Bar Association’s Kentucky Death Penalty Assessment Report which

“examined all death sentences imposed in the Commonwealth since 1976 and found that, as of November 2011, 78 people have been sentenced to death, and further, that 52 of these individuals have had a death sentence overturned on appeal by Kentucky or federal courts, or have been granted clemency, which is an error rate of approximately 60 percent. Moreover, the assessment found that capital prosecutions occur in far more cases than result in death sentences. The assessment report concluded that, “This places a significant judicial and financial burden on the Commonwealth’s courts, prosecutors, defenders, and the criminal justice system at large, to treat many cases as death penalty cases, despite the fact that cases often result in acquittal, conviction on a lesser charge, or a last minute agreement to a sentence less than death.”

North Carolina has made waves in handling the conundrum of how to eliminate bias from sentencing.  In 2009, the Racial Justice Act was signed into law.  The act was made to review racial discrimination in jury selection. If the evidence suggested that racial discrimination was a factor in the sentence of a death penalty, the court may overturn that decision and reduce it to life in prison.   The first man whose sentence was reduced was Marcus Robinson, when the judge found the evidence sufficient to take the man off of death row.  Researchers at Michigan State investigated the process behind his incrimination and sentencing and found that “prosecutors were more than twice as likely to strike qualified blacks from serving on a jury as members of other races in North Carolina death penalty cases in the 20-year-period from 1990 to 2010.”  Furthermore, they went back further into the history and “the data reveal[ed] that defendants in cases from 1990 to 2009 were significantly more likely to be charged and sentenced to death if at least one of the victims was white.”

This week the fate of the Act may be in jeopardy as the Republican Controlled North Carolina Senate has passed a bill that would strictly limit the effects of the act.  Governor Beverly Perdue has until July 1^st to decide on whether or not to veto the bill, but with the current makeup of the State House and Senate, the veto may be overridden.   The ACLU is urging supporters of the Act to pressure the five Democratic members of the House that broke rank to not override the veto, if there is one.

As a whole, Americans support the use of the death penalty.  The approval numbers are in a state of decline, but over 60% of all Americans commend its use.  According to a Gallup poll, 66% of Americans believe death penalty is moral and support it.  49% of Americans say the death penalty is not used enough, and only 21% of Americans say it’s used too often.  Every demographic group favor death penalty for a person convicted of murder, with Conservatives being most supportive at 81% and those with a postgraduate degree least supportive at 57%.

The federal government is also in support of using the death penalty in extenuating circumstances.  Conflicts arise between state and federal regulations in dealing with sentencing about crimes that surpass state boundaries.  Currently, the federal government is seeking to extract an inmate from Rhode Island for federal prosecution based on the Interstate Agreement on Detainers.  However, Governor Lincoln Chafee has refused to hand over the inmate and the case is currently being appealed to the US Supreme Court.  Chafee says in a statement that “states have the right to refuse to transfer prisoners in their custody for public policy reasons. As a matter of public policy, Rhode Island opposes the death penalty for any crime.”

The moral complexity on how to sufficiently punish those ruled guilty of unspeakable crimes becomes problematic to navigate.  The fate of the friends and family members of victims has to be taken into account in regards to retribution.  However, the disturbing trends in the allocation of the punishment makes the practice both inefficient and in many cases highly regrettable.

It’s the fastest growing criminal industry in the world and billions of dollars are profited internationally each year.  Statistics are scarce because of the coercive and underground nature of the crime, but within the U.S. it has been estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of victims each year, of which approximately 100,000 are children forced into the sex industry.  Nearly 300,000 children from across the U.S. are trafficked to major metropolitan areas for various kinds of labor, while 20,000 individuals are brought in from outside the United States.

The commercialized sex industry alone contributes to at least 75% of human trafficking cases in the U.S, while the rest is attributed to industries like domestic servitude, farm work, food preparation, and peddling rings or sales crews. All of these industries tend to prey on disadvantaged populations, creating situations where escape is either physically or mentally inaccessible.  The scrupulous, and controlling nature of the crimes often make it frustrating for law enforcement and non-profit agencies to provide assistance to its victims.

The addition of online advertising has played a significant role in the rise of human trafficking within the past decade.  Brothels, massage parlors, escort services, as well as street prostitution have all benefited, gaining yet another avenue to increase their consumer base.  After Craigslist succumbed to pressure to close its erotic section, a majority of adult advertisements have moved to Backpage.com, another website that provides free classified advertisements.

Law enforcement claims that most victims of underage sex trafficking have been found to have had some sort of involvement with Backpage.  As a result, members of congress, law enforcement, celebrities, and activists are pushing the site to discontinue its adult section.   While Backpage.com claims underage sex advertising and trafficking goes against their terms of use and policy, it refuses to close its sex ads despite pressure, claiming that doing so would force traffickers to move offshore and out of reach of U.S. law.

Backpage.com regularly reports suspected child victims and traffickers to law enforcement, but opponents say they still implicitly, if not directly support trafficking by making it an available tool for criminals.   The recent negative media attention has prompted private equity Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. to sell its stake in Village Voice, owner of the website.  Other companies have followed suit and are removing any association on its site due to questionable business ethics.

States have recently caught on to the role online ads play in sex and human trafficking, adding laws that may make it more tricky for websites like Backpage.com to continue their adult section.  The state of Washington recently passed SB 6251, requiring sites to verify the ages of those involved in the adult ads, but on June 4 a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order: Backpage.com is attempting to halt the law, claiming it violates the Communications Decency Act (CDA), as well as the First and Fifth Amendments Amendment rights.  States like New York, and New Jersey, are attempting to legislate in similar ways, specifically addressing online advertisements.

Laws governing online communication are tricky and often controversial, but political alliances may make it a difficult fight for websites to maintain their adult section.  Attorney Generals of 48 states recently sent a letter to the Village Voice, demanding they discontinue profiting off of sex trade on Backpage.com, reportedly earning 23 million dollars a year off of the adult section alone.

Human trafficking is hardly a controversial topic: it’s simply unacceptable. The modern dilemma is, how far should laws go to prevent it?  Will more laws actually deter illegal exploitation, or will criminals just find another way to promote their business?

The Trafficking and Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2011, originally passed in 2000, is likely one of the most all-encompassing federal endeavors that provides everything from prevention, protection and stronger prosecution.  Contact your representative to help reauthorize it.  Human Trafficking legislation is most likely happening in your state as well, so search Billtrack50 to get the latest.

1. http://www.polarisproject.org/index.php

Stances on the legalization of medical marijuana have been transformed by a multitude of reasons, but a preeminent issue in legalization campaigns remains the supposed medical benefits of the drug for those suffering from several crippling diseases.  While even proponents agree it is not necessary the best or only medicine for several diseases, they claim that research shows that it is efficient when other prescriptions do not resolve the effects of debilitating diseases.

There are ulterior motives for the legalization of medical marijuana, with a chief reason being the financial benefits of a regulated industry.  For years, the prohibition of marijuana sales even for suffering patients has stimulated the demand for the product in the black market.  The continuous supply of the drug has essentially made it readily available for purchase without the involvement of licensed retailers.  Unfortunately, the precise size of the market for the drug is imprecise and the stipulations to accurately measure or at least estimate with any assurance the effect of the legalization of medical marijuana on business prove near impossible.  Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, estimates the market is at $14 billion.  He says that full-scale legalization would generate over $20 billion in additional tax revenues and enforcement cost savings.  However, his numbers are on the conservative side and are based on current consumption levels and at current prices.  The numbers skew significantly higher when calculated based on current supply levels.  Dr. Jon Gettman in his 2006 study estimates the market value at around $120 billion.

California has struggled to alleviate its financial troubles even with the financial benefits of taxing medical marijuana sales.  As a state with $19 billion in debts, it has looked to the full-scale legalization of marijuana as a means to compensate for dilapidated incomes.  Proposition 19 failed in 2010 as a ballot measure but not without public outcry of its proponents.  Even so, AB 2312 otherwise known as the Ammiano act for the Representative that sponsored it, goes further to legitimize the presence of marijuana, albeit for medical purposes. It notes that:

 “Despite the passage of the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 and the MMPA, because there is no effective statewide system for regulating and controlling medical marijuana, local law enforcement officials have been confronted with uncertainty about the legality of some medical marijuana cultivation and distribution activities, and many cities and counties have passed local ordinances that in some cases ban the cultivation or distribution of medical marijuana”

AB 2312 would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to profit off of their sales.  It allows collectives, cooperatives, and other business entities to cultivate, acquire, process, possess, transport, test, sell, and distribute marijuana for medical purposes.  The stark departure from federal legislation is what makes this stand out in a state already notorious for the availability of the drug.  The passing of this bill is estimated to generate $1.4 billion in additional revenue.  However, the sharp contrasts between this new proposal and federal legislation has led to and will continue to lead to confusion.  Recent busts on dispensaries in California as well as Colorado have discouraged the creation of new stores in those states.

The federal government has the authority to change its outlook and subsequently its enforcement policies regarding medical marijuana.  Under the Controlled Substances Act, the executive branch has the power to change the classifications of drugs.  As of now marijuana is classified as a schedule 1 drug meaning that it among other things does not serve any medical purpose.  Shifting the drug into a schedule 2 classification, like Synthetic THC, would make medical marijuana legal under federal law.  . Christine Gregoire and Lincoln Chafee, governors of Washington state and Rhode Island, have written letters asking for the classification to be changed.  However, the odds of this happening are slim.  The federal drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, said he believed “the increasing prevalence of medicinal marijuana was a factor in the uptick. These last couple years, the amount of attention that’s been given to medical marijuana has been huge, and when I’ve done focus groups with high school students in states where medical marijuana is legal, they say, ‘Well, if it’s called medicine and it’s given to patients by caregivers, then that’s really the wrong message for us as high school students.”  That is not to say the same prosecution policies will continue.  Recently the Obama administration came out for treating drug addiction as a health and not moral problem.  Kerlikowske said “efforts to arrest our way to a drug-free society are doomed to fail”.

Despite the federal uncertainty, states are moving forward in regulating medical marijuana like a regular business.  California for all its issues with the federal enforcement has taken steps to dissuade discrimination against those licensed to possess the drug.  Currently in committee, SB 129 would “would declare it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against a person in hiring, termination, or any term or condition of employment or otherwise penalize a person, if the discrimination is based upon the persons status as a qualified patient or a positive drug test for marijuana”. California has also looked into mitigating the influence of it on the youth.   AB 1300 prohibits certain entities, including a medical marijuana cooperative or collective, from being located within a 600-foot radius of a school. Also from a safety standpoint, AB 1975 requires the Department of Pesticide Regulation to develop guidelines to enforce state pesticide regulations on medical marijuana cultivation.  Furthermore AB 2465 will ensure proper identification requirements needed to possess marijuana legally.  All these steps are taken with the intention of making the business and distribution of the drug both safer and also more profitable.

It is also vital to gauge the effect of the momentum of medical marijuana on the path toward a less incriminating stance on the illicit possession of it as well.  Recently New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a decree to reduce the charge of possession of marijuana to a maximum fine of $100.  This is meant to alleviate the perceived discriminatory prosecution of young Hispanic and black youths.  Based on the alarming statistics about the discrepancies in prosecution, Cuomo has made a progressive stance in dealing with the drug issue but has also faced harsh criticism for it.

Slowly, the presumptions are being examined in regards to the issue, but support levels on the topic have not changed drastically.  Both sides have taken an aggressive stance on their support or dissent on the topic.  Just examining the effects of the presence of marijuana dispensaries has on neighborhoods has been a point of contention.  The California Police Chiefs Association claimed

“Marijuana dispensaries are commonly large money-making enterprises that will sell marijuana to most anyone. … While the dispensaries will claim to receive only donations, no marijuana will change hands without an exchange of money. These operations have been tied to organized criminal gangs, foster large grow operations, and are often multi-million-dollar profit centers. Because they are repositories of valuable marijuana crops and large amounts of cash, several operators of dispensaries have been attacked and murdered by armed robbers both at their storefronts and homes, and such places have been regularly burglarized.”

However, further examination shows that factors such as unemployment, commercial zoning and a high proportion of young adults were … associated with higher crime rates. But the number of marijuana clinics in a neighborhood had nothing to do with any of it.

As current legislation stands, it will be up to the states to decide on the fate of medical marijuana within their own borders.  Since for the foreseeable future it does not appear that federal laws will change, states are put in a predicament in how they go about dealing with the issue.  If current trends continue it appears that half the country will support medical marijuana, but that may not be enough to warrant an overhaul of federal policy.

While there is growing opposition to GMOs, the benefits are many, including: creation of vaccines for more efficient mass production; creation of renewable and sustainable plant-based products; elimination of toxins and allergens in otherwise inedible foods; increased crop yield in less hospitable environments; and reduction of food prices.   The long-term impact on environmental health is currently unknown, but it has been established that the rise in pest-resistant crops has decreased global pesticide use.  The economic impact GM crops have also resulted in less crop loss and more profitable farming.

Little research has been done to suggest ingestion of new proteins or altered DNA is harmful to human health, but a recent scientific finding (unrelated to GMO research) found the presence of microRNA (from rice) inside the human liver post-digestion.  The micro-RNA altered the cells inside the liver, changing blood cholesterol levels.  This is significant on a number of scientific fronts, particularly given micro-RNA’s association with altering human cells and it’s implication in diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Diabetes.

Although this scientific finding may be unrelated to GMOs, this research does suggest that Monsanto’s position is particularly audacious.  Monsanto, a corporate leader, and often target of GMO opposition states on its website, “There is no need to test the safety of DNA introduced into GM crops. DNA (and resulting RNA) is present in almost all foods. DNA is non-toxic and the presence of DNA, in and of itself, presents no hazard.”  The end result – the final product and its DNA – is the same as non-GMO and therefore non-toxic, despite the addition of new protein that alters the behavior of the product.  Opponents to GM crops find this view particularly problematic, possibly setting up billions of people (and the environment) with disastrous consequences.

One such unintended result of GM crops has been the creation of the new “superweed.”  These new weeds have become resistant to a variety of different pesticides, potentially rendering some GM crops almost useless.  The long-term impact on environmental health is currently unknown, although it has been established that the rise in pest-resistant crops has decreased global pesticide use overall, which is a clear benefit to genetic modification.

Growing health concern and awareness as well as corporate distrust has led many to push for all GMOs or food products containing GMOs to be labeled.  Those who favor labeling want consumers to have the power to make a conscious purchasing decision.  The choice to buy specific foods not only has an impact on human health and the environment, but politically, socially and economically.  Food labels already contain a great deal of information and over 3000 ingredients are already regulated and required to be on a label, so proponents ask, why not identify GMOs?

The answer, according to the opposition, is GMO labeling is a risky economic, political, and scientific move, potentially creating a stigma that GMOs are harmful even if current scientific evidence is generally inconclusive. The expense of labeling could be extensive and extreme, given its inclusion in most foods and animal feed.   Would animals that feed on GMO food be labeled as well?  Establishing what should be labeled could prove very tricky.  Additionally, labeling could have a negative impact on funding and advancement within the biotechnological realm, especially if consumers associate the addition of information on food as a precautionary.  Such decision could affect consumer purchases, putting American staples and companies at risk for great economic loss.

Legislation on GM labeling has been very little, most likely due to the threat of lawsuit by industry leader Monsanto.   Vermont residents overwhelmingly support H0722, but the cost of a lawsuit would be overwhelming and likely a losing battle. New York and Hawaii are also making efforts to add GMO labeling to food products, but it’s unclear whether it will be successful or at risk for expensive legal action. California residents also added a ballot initiative requiring GMO labeling – (possibly) up for a vote in the November 6 election.  If passed, this could add momentum to the GMO opposition.

The debate over genetically modified food labeling is clearly in the beginning stages and few states have had success in attempting to add information to their labels, despite public opinion.  Some opponents to GM claim this is because of the heavy financial and political influence the biotech industry has within the US.   Even so, labeling could have some significant negative consequences.

Many organic food companies already label their products with information to target selected consumers concerned with GMOs.  However, not all communities have access to these products.  GM foods take up a majority of space within the grocery store, and many opponents claim consumers have the right to know.

Is the public’s right to know worth the possible economic and scientific consequences, even if we don’t know for certain that genetically modified foods are indeed harmful?  Benefits to GM crops exist, but are those benefits worth the risk to the environment and public health?

The argument for the merits of right to work states, collective bargaining for public service employees, or even the altogether existence of unions has been a matter for debate for years now and is increasingly nuanced when it comes to measuring purely business interests with the plight of American workers.  Unions as an institution have been around in the United States since the mid 1800’s and have overcome a collection of obstacles.  From a historical perspective, the success of unions has often come at great costs both in terms of money and human life.  Never the less, the public goods that labor unions have provided is impressive and generally seen as a positive in the path to industrialization the U.S has taken over the years.  Yet, at this juncture in the U.S unions have begun to be seen in a diminishing light, especially given the decline in industrial manufacturing produced in America and the subsequent job losses.  Consequently, membership in private-sector unions continues to diminish and the political climate has grown to be riper for the questioning of their future existence.

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has released a report on the rate of Union Membership in the past calendar year, and the results are fairly astonishing.  Private sector union membership has declined by over three million members in the last 20 years.  Several takeaways can be made from this report:

• In 2011, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $938, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $729.
• All states in the Middle Atlantic and Pacific divisions reported union membership rates above the national average, while all states in the East South Central and West South Central divisions had rates below it.
• By age, the union membership rate was highest among workers 55 to 64 years old (15.7 percent). The lowest union membership rate occurred among those ages 16 to 24 (4.4 percent)
• Among occupational groups, education, training, and library occupations (36.8 percent) and protective service occupations (34.5 percent) had the highest unionization rates in 2011.
• Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (37.0 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.9 percent).

The age, geography, and vocational differences amongst union participation further envelop the reasoning behind the efforts to phase out the influence of unions.  The growing demographic shifts are especially reflected in the younger age groups.  The younger age groups are noticing trends that dictate that it in fact pays more to work in a private sector job.  Given, the much lower prevalence of unions in the private sector, workers are perhaps unconsciously gravitating away from the public sector and thus the unions.  In fact, the monetary advantages of employment in the public sector that have recently been ostracized are not as substantial as has been claimed.  Professor Richard Hurd of Cornell University says “if you compare by education level, private sector workers earn about 10 percent more than public sector workers for any given level of education.  And then if you narrow it further and look at the more professional occupations, then public sector workers’ deficit compared to private sector workers on wages is about 25 percent.  ”

These trends continuously put a strain on labor unions as the increasingly global marketplace has diminished their influence.  American Rights at Work, a non-profit pro Labor organization, published their findings on the status of employees and found:

“There are 140.5 million people in the civilian workforce. Our research found that of these employees, 33.5 million, or 23.8%, have no rights under the NLRA or any other labor law: no legally-protected right to join or form a union, no legally-protected right to bargain collectively for their wages and conditions of work, and therefore, effectively no freedom of association in the workplace.”

The idea that the plight of the average worker will in part be alleviated through labor organizations has not fermented in the collective psyche of many voters across the United States.  In fact, a reverberating effect of the recent recall efforts is that the concept of intrusion into the workings of a free market place is not necessarily beneficial to the employee.  Meaning that external forces like unions that can impede on the profits of a company via strikes or other less inflammatory measures are subsequently unnecessary in a system where their employees derives their share from the successes of the free market.  The World Bank put forth a commission to examine the effects of unions on both developed and developing countries and their findings encompass the many positives of union organization but altogether pose another obstacle to the unions’ struggle.

Key findings of the report include:

• Unions can force firms to relinquish some of their profits only if they can monopolize labor supply.  This is because unions wield the strike threat: firms are willing to give up some of their profits to avoid industrial conflict. Competition from a large nonunionized labor market reduces the union’s monopoly command over labor supply; if nonunion workers can readily replace union workers, the union’s bargaining position is substantially weakened.
• The more senior members, who typically have a disproportionate influence on union decisions, may institutionalize a seniority principle in relation to layoffs and other aspects of deployment, such as promotion, recall, and training. This can create insider/outsider dynamics that can lead to persistently high levels of unemployment.
• The union’s role … is to communicate worker preferences directly to the management, as well as to participate in the establishment of work rules and seniority provisions in the internal labor market. This … provid[es] a channel through which they can express their grievances without having to leave the firm. This reduces turnover (voting with the feet), increases the incentive of employers to provide firm specific training, and facilitates long-term working relationships that benefit all parties.
• Safety is desirable from the point of view of workers. Therefore, safety has an opportunity cost, and safer jobs pay a lower wage. In an unregulated labor market, workers may be unable to appreciate the dangers inherent in different jobs. As a consequence, firms would not be required to compensate workers fully for the hidden risks involved in their jobs
• Unions may be keen to promote a compressed wage scale across different groups of workers employed within the unionized sectors of the economy. One reason may be that they have egalitarian wage goals. Egalitarian wage goals can arise if productivity differs among union members and if the median member has low (compared to average) productivity. Under these circumstances, a democratic union tends to enter wage contracts that compress the wage structure.

Though these are just a few observations from the extensively researched report, they are conducive to the argument that unions are designed to intervene, or to some interfere,  with business run at its optimal productivity level.  The report does not however delve as extensively into the reasoning behind public service unions.  As current legislation stands, the status of the unions for all public service employees except police, firemen, and emergency medical technicians is in a state of limbo.  This in and of itself is foretelling of the political inclinations of such legislation.   For example in Alaska, a bill sponsored by Republican Representative Carl J. Gotto calls for severe limitations on collective bargaining for public service employees though it explicitly states that police, firemen, and emergency medical technicians are exempt from the proposal.  That bill and HB 134 also sponsored by Grotto which prohibits collective bargaining contracts [to} require employees to join a labor or employee organization, were ultimately rejected.

Perhaps it may be cynical, but allegations have come about that the exemptions for police and firefighter unions come from their noted support for conservative members of government.  In Ohio, voters repealed the collective bargaining restrictions placed upon public service employees including police and firefighters.  The inclusion of those two groups received immediate backlash and further proposals have carefully tiptoed around the inclusion of those powerful unions. That is not to say the Ohio legislature has given up on the issue and in a largely anti-corruption bill have included measures to remove previous agreements as negotiating tools in new collective bargaining agreements.   In Hawaii, a bill calling for further impositions and restrictions on collective bargaining agreements also mentions the exemptions made specifically for police and firefighters.

States have also sought out other loopholes in order to draw less publicity to their legislation revolving around curbing collective bargaining rights.  In Michigan, SB 0116  relieves the state from enforcing an all-inclusive limitation but rather delegates it to voters at a more localized level.   Though this legislation is in limbo while in committee, the premise behind its intentions is clear.  SB 0116 would allow:

 “A city, county, township, or village may authorize a right-to-work zone within its boundaries by a vote of its governing body or by adoption of a measure initiated by the people. The commission shall not enforce an all-union shop agreement covering employees in a right-to-work zone if the employer entered into or renewed the agreement after the date of adoption of the measure creating the right-to-work zone.”

The results in Wisconsin on Tuesday, and to a lesser extent in California, have illuminated a dreary picture for labor unions regarding future legislation.  Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University said “it will embolden politicians in other states [and] private sector employers to demand greater concessions and will hurt organizing because it will tarnish the reputation of unions as an effective representative.”  Of course, unions have attempted to put a positive spin on what is assuredly a large disappointment.  “Remember that collective bargaining rights were taken from workers in Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio and Puerto Rico — yet they all ultimately won them back,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in a statement.

Regardless, what may be foreboding for unions is not just the anti-union attitude in staunchly conservative states; rather it is the shifting attitudes in moderate to liberal states.  While it is still ominous that states with formerly large industrial bases like Missouri and Indiana have bills like SB 514 and SB 269 respectively that forbid unions to draw dues from unwilling employees.  It is more menacing that in Washington, a state that has voted for a Democrat in the last six and likely seven presidential elections is on the verge of passing SB 5349 which states that

“in tight budget times it is clear that the legislature needs more flexibility to truly prioritize spending, and must take back its authority over state employee compensation choices. Therefore, the legislature intends to repeal the ability of state employees and other nontraditional groups to collectively bargain with the executive branch over compensation.” 

If corporate dollars maintain the influence that they do in upcoming elections, public outcry may not be enough to deter further cuts to unions.  In fact, with only seven percent of private sector employees in unions and falling, it may not be long before unions become a fringe group in influencing public policy.  The upcoming election may turn out to be the most influential on worker’s rights since the days of the robber barons at the turn of the 20^th century.

Just hearing the term “sex offender” elicits an almost visceral feeling of disgust in most people, so it’s not surprising that laws regarding sex offenders tend to only get tougher. These laws usually have been passed in reaction to a high-profile sex-related crime, often bearing the names of the victims (e.g., Megan’s Law, the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act). Accordingly, a vote against the law is seen as a vote against the victim. Legislative hearings include highly emotional testimony from victims of sex crimes, but predictably few arguments from the side that could be labeled as sympathetic towards sex offenders. This creates laws that are based on emotional reactions rather than rational arguments about the effectiveness of certain policies. The consequence of this one-way-only approach is draconian sex offender regimes that not only infringe on the constitutional rights of those accused or convicted of sex offenses, but also actually reduce public safety.

Sex Offender Myths

The sensationalist nature of media coverage has spawned many public misconceptions about sex offenders, namely that: (1) sex crimes are becoming more and more prevalent; (2) sex offenders have a high re-offense rate and can’t be rehabilitated; (3) registered sex offenders are mostly violent rapists and pedophiles.

The big stories about sex crimes follow either the apprehension of a particularly reprehensible offender (often detailing the reprehensible acts to satisfy our morbid curiosities), or the unjustifiable early release of a sex offender, such as this story from Indiana about a man who exploited a poorly-worded early release law for inmates who earn college degrees. Rarely do we hear about sex-crime accusations that turn out false, like what happened to photographer Paul Rusconi, who lost his infant daughters for six months before being cleared of allegations (and this likely would not have been a story if there wasn’t a famous person involved). Nor do we hear about the sex offenders who go through treatment and are rehabilitated, because in those cases, no news is good news.

Sex crime rates have declined over the last couple decades. We aren’t any more likely to be the victim of a sex crime, we’re just more likely to hear about it. And studies show reoffense rates for sex offenders are barely over five percent, making sex offenders among the least likely criminals to reoffend. When sex offenders reoffend, it feels like the justice system has failed to protect society and makes for a compelling news story. But it doesn’t reflect the reality that, statistically speaking, you are more likely to be victimized by a someone with no history of sex crimes than by an already registered sex offender. Granted, some sub-classes of sex offenses, such as particularly violent crimes or crimes involving very young children, have significantly higher reoffense rates. But the low average reoffense rate is partly due to the fact that the label “sex offender” is also used for an broad range of non-dangerous offenses, such as public urination or consensual sex between two minors (juveniles comprise about a quarter of registered sex offenders, and commit more than a third of sex crimes against minors).

How Sex Offender Laws Fail to Protect the Public

Information Problems

Sex offender registries are perhaps the best-known aspect of sex offender regimes. Since the passage of the Jacob Wetterling Act in 1994, every state has been required by federal law to maintain a sex offender registry. By making the names and addresses of sex offenders readily available to the public, often with interactive maps, the goal is to empower people with information so they can take appropriate steps to protect themselves and their families.

However, this information does not really prove useful for enhancing safety. If there is a sex offender in your neighborhood, you can tell your kids to stay away from the creepy guy’s house, but that’s about it. Most sex offenders are not under house arrest, so unless you memorize every face pictured in the directory, you’re in the dark when you go to a public place. Furthermore, since most sex offenses are committed by first-time offenders who know their victims, not strangers who have previously been convicted, the registry could not have provided useful information for prevention in the majority of cases. However, this information is useful for community members who wish to engage in violent vigilantism or harassment of sex offenders. While most people don’t have much sympathy for sex offenders subject to harassment, innocent people have also been hurt due to mistakes or misunderstandings of the registry, such as this 78 year-old man who was beaten to death with a baseball bat because his name was similar to a convicted sex offender’s.

Another problem with some states’ registries lies in the overly broad classification of crimes as sex offenses. In at least ten states, you can earn the sex offender designation from fairly innocuous forms of public indecency like streaking, mooning, or urinating in public. None of the registries provide any factual details of the offenses, just the names of the crimes (and sometimes not even that). So if a registry lists the offense of indecent exposure, for example, the public has no way of distinguishing a high school prankster who streaks a football game from a creep who purposely goes to a playground and waves his member at children to achieve sexual gratification. Many registries also contain numerous purely statutory offenders who are often also minors at the time of the offense, such as a 17 year-old who engages in consensual sexual activity with his 15 year-old girlfriend. In many jurisdictions, this would be labeled “sexual assault against a minor,” which makes this person look like a greater threat than the circumstances suggest. By effectively diluting the sex offender registry with people who pose little threat to public safety, it is more difficult to identify and keep track of the high-risk offenders. California, as an extreme example, has the largest registry in the country with over one hundred thousand registered sex offenders. This is an overwhelming amount of information to sift through, and can make it appear a sex offender is lurking around every corner – just look at the map of Los Angeles county. Rather than providing useful information, it just scares and furthers the misconception that the risk of sex offenses is increasing at an alarming rate.

Rehabilition of Sex Offenders

Sex offender laws are also arguably counterproductive to safety due to their publicly punitive nature, which drives many offenders into isolation and despair and increases the likelihood they will reoffend. Instead of reintegrating with society, becoming productive working citizens, and forming healthy social relationships, they may face stigmatizion and harassment, difficulty finding jobs, and emotional alienation.

About half of the states also impose residency restrictions on sex offenders, prohibiting them from within certain distances (ranging from one thousand feet to a half mile) of places children frequent, such as schools, playgrounds, and in some cases libraries. In more densely populated areas, this can leave few options and the result is often either: (1) concentrating them into “sex offender communes” in the few neighborhoods or apartment buildings outside of the restricted areas; (2) vagrancy, which can lead to camps of homeless offenders in parks or under bridges; or (3) driving them to go “underground” by ceasing to notify the registry of addresses. All of these outcomes can increase stress and decrease availability of adequate support, both of which are correlated with higher reoffense rates. And in the event they do reoffend, isolation from the public eye or failure to register can make the new offenses more difficult to detect and solve.

Changes to Sex Offender Laws – Moving in the Right Direction?

The root of the ineffectiveness of the current laws is the tendency to base policies on our cultural disgust and fear of sex offenders rather than on a rational analysis of the best way to protect society. Empirical studies from Colorado and Minnesota show that residency restrictions have no correlation to lower reoffense rates, law enforcement agencies complain that bloated registries drain resources and hamper effective monitoring of more dangerous sex offenders, and countless examples exist of non-dangerous minor offenders whose lives have been deeply impacted or ruined by overly broad classification of sex offenders. However, the political will of the legislature is still being driven by public misconceptions, as several states consider imposing stricter requirements on sex offenders.

Oklahoma recently passed a law that bans convicted sex offenders from living with children. It sounds sensible—sex offenders were already restricted from living near schools—yet Oklahoma requires registration of those who commit indecent exposure (excluding public urination) or who crimes involving producing or distributing “obscene material,” which can include pornography depicting only adults. Pending legislation HB1193 would require an law enforcement agencies to notify the local newspaper of sex offenders designated as “habitual” or “aggravated.”

New York, which currently imposes no residency restrictions on sex offenders, is considering banning sex offenders from living within 1000 feet of a school, daycare or park. Even though 1000 feet is on the lower end of residency restrictions, this could be a difficult requirement in the New York City metropolitan area, especially for homeless offenders. Another proposal, S06073, could also have a disparate impact on homeless or transient offenders by requiring Electronic Home Monitoring (ankle bracelets) on offenders who fail to register two or more times. Homeless offenders are much more likely to have registration issues since they have no address to register, and often have mental health issues or other problems that limit their ability to comply.

A bill in Iowa would require nursing homes and assited living facilities to conduct a sex offender registry check prior to the admission of any new tenants or patients, and then to notify all residents, the emergency contact of all residents, the facilities’ staff, and all visitiors to the facility. While it makes sense to want to protect these more vulnerable populations, the nursing facilites covered by the bill have argued that this will impose an onerous burden on their time and resources.

Louisiana leads the charge in the current race to get tough on sex offenders, as Governor Bobby Jindal has made it one of the top priorities of his administration. He has already having signed legislation mandating longer prison sentences for sex offenders and authorizing chemical castration for rapists, in which hormone-limiting drugs are used to reduce libido and capacity for arousal. Although seemingly effective, chemical castration raises serious ethical questions when not undertaken voluntarily (it is reversible, unlike physical castration, but can pose serious health risks in some cases). And Louisiana isn’t done—SB428  prohibits sex offenders from living within three miles of their victims and prohibits any form of communication with the victims or family members without their prior written consent. The goal of preventing retraumatization of victims is a noble one, but a three mile restirction in addition to the restrictions around schools and parks is going to create even more limited options, and in smaller towns could effectively result in banishment. Another popular proposal, SB442 seeks to ban sex offenders convicted of certain crimes (mostly involving minors) from social networking sites including Facebook. A legal challenge to a similar ban in Indiana has made the argument that this infringes on First Amendment rights by also preventing offenders from engaging in political, religious, or business-oriented activity on these sites, and a ruling is expected within a month.

The ideas behind these proposals are well-intentioned, and some could actually be good ideas within a more sensible overall regime. Yet as long as the registries remain bloated with low-risk offenders and our policies remain focused on punishment and stigmatization rather than prevention and rehabilitation, sex offender laws will continue to do more harm than good.

To compensate for racially divided neighborhoods, states have long strived to provide a method of alleviating imbalances.  For years, enforced bussing served as a method to institute diversity in schools.  The controversial practice forced many kids to attend schools across town even though their preferred school may have been the one in the local area.   The busing regulations have been tampered down over time, starting with the Milliken v. Bradley ruling that allowed for busing only within the same school district.  A partial outcome of the enforced integration of schools, especially after the monumental Coleman Report, was that many white families left the cities and school districts to avoid it.  The “white flight” that ensued essentially negated the positive impact of busing, and during the Reagan administration such polices fell to the wayside.  By 1991, the Supreme Court ruled that schools are no longer obligated to desegregate and can accept kids based on residency without any obligations to diversity.

As a result, current diversity levels have fallen to a rate resembling those of the 1960’s.  Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project, said that “It’s getting to the point of almost absolute segregation in the worst of the segregated cities – within one or two percentage points of what the Old South used to be like.  The biggest metro areas are the epicenters of segregation. It’s getting worse for both blacks and Latinos, and nothing is being done about it.”  The reasons for the lack of progress in diversification are multi-faceted but it is interesting to point out that of the top ten most segregated cities, St. Louis is the southern-most of the list.  Instead, what are left are large metropolitan areas with an established industrial history.  In the make-up of these cities, there are large cases of suburban sprawl that has taken many of the white students away from the city.

Overall, there is an overwhelming shift in public school enrollment.  The number of black and Latino students in the nation’s public schools is up 5.8 million, while the number of white students has declined by 5.6 million in 30 years.  The schools reflect the transformation of the U.S population in an era of low birth rates and massive immigration.  Latino students, a group that was just 2 million in 1968 has grown to 6.9 million in just 30 years.  By 1999, in the Western region of the United States, white students barely made up a majority of public school enrollment with 51.9%.

The method by which states and districts work to combat the problem of segregation has also come under scrutiny.   In the last decade, there have been several cases that revolved around variations of race and education.   Of course, affirmative action for higher education differs drastically as compared to grade level public schooling; they still delve into the overlying premise of the merits of a racially diverse education setting.  Three states have attempted to avoid litigation altogether by adopting a policy that at the surface appears to be race-neutral, but inherently is not.

California, Florida, and Texas all have similar policies into how they can help ensure diversity at the university level without blatantly mandating any quotas.  In California, the top 9% of students at their high school are guaranteed admission to the University of California system.  As the New York Times reports “officials acknowledge that the aim is race-conscious but that the mechanism is race-neutral.”  The link between these three states and their educational policies is that they have high-density Latino populations.  With a flat acceptance policy, state schools have taken into account the mitigating conditions of lower performing schools for the acceptance of students.

Affirmative action policies have not been altogether successful in avoiding litigation.  Within the last few years several landmark cases have made been heard by the Supreme Court involving preferential enrollment policies for minority students.  Recently, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Fisher v.  University of Texas about preferential enrollment policies.  Experts sound ominous about the legal future of such policies after this case.  Lee Bollinger, former president of the University of Michigan who was a defendant in the case surrounding admissions to the university’s law school, said “it threatens to undo several decades of effort within higher education to build a more integrated and just and educationally enriched environment.”

The U.S Department of Education has taken an interest in promoting racial diversity that is still in compliance with the Supreme Court Decisions.  They have published a guide to help dictate admission practices in higher education.  Based on the reasoning that

“Ensuring that our nation’s students are provided with learning environments comprised of students of diverse backgrounds is not just a lofty ideal. As the Supreme Court has recognized, the benefits of participating in diverse learning environments flow to an individual, his or her classmates, and the community as a whole. These benefits greatly contribute to the educational, economic, and civic life of this nation.”

A difference in the case of public grade schools is that it is more complicated because it involves more than just the student, and predicates itself on trends in society that have existed for decades.  Comfort v. Lynn was another striking blow to the future of mandatory desegregation.  In the LSC’s “neighborhood-school-centered paradigm,” students may “attend their local schools as a matter of right.” Students are initially assigned to schools in their neighborhoods, and race becomes a factor only when they (or their parents) request a transfer from the students’ area school. All students are allowed to transfer as they like between racially balanced schools, and they can transfer to and from racially imbalanced or isolated schools when the transfer will have a “desegregative” effect.  However, a transfer is not permitted if it would further segregate the racially imbalanced or isolated schools. Through this method, 6,000 Lynn students are assigned to non-neighborhood schools each year, and the roughly 100 annual appeals that ensue have about a 50% success rate.  Since its implementation, race relations improved, Lynn’s schools performed better academically, and the school district received a significant increase in funding under the state’s Racial Imbalance Act.

The Supreme Court did not agree with the methods by which the results were obtained and went on to restrict the feasibility of changing schools for both minority and white students.  The court used strong language in saying “Government action dividing people by race is inherently suspect because such classifications promote notions of racial inferiority and lead to a politics of racial hostility.  Much like the previous case of Grutter v Bollinger, in cases surrounding affirmative action in education, the court has taken a more nuanced approach to carving out its position on discriminative selection policies.  The court came to the conclusion that “[a]bsent searching judicial inquiry into the justification for such race-based measures, there is simply no way of determining what classifications are in fact motivated by illegitimate notions of racial inferiority or simple racial politics.”  We therefore apply strict scrutiny to all racial classifications to smoke out illegitimate uses of race by assuring that [government] is pursuing a goal important enough to warrant use of a highly suspect tool.

These decisions leave states in highly precarious positions where they lack the enforcement capabilities or political will to ensure a policy of gentrification in neighborhoods.  Even with swift maneuvering to renovate the older and disenfranchised parts of the city, the problems that have affected minorities settling in racially balanced neighborhoods continue to accumulate.  In Ben Austen’s Harpers piece about the harrowing conditions of Chicago’s infamous housing projects, the cyclical nature of problems in some of the nation’s most segregated neighborhoods appear to be insurmountable.   The city of Chicago had a “Plan for Transformation, a $1.5 billion, ten-year venture that would leave the city with just 15,000 new or renovated public-housing family units, plus an additional 10,000 for senior citizens.”  Yet, before any significant improvements in conditions were made, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the city would have to recalibrate its program.

Regardless, efforts are being made with current legislation to alleviate gross discrepancies in education based on race and location.  California has a proposal to mandate that out of the 10 members of the state’s school board, the members altogether must “represent and reside in different geographical regions of the state and (2) Reflect the ethnic and gender diversity of the state’s population.”  Massachusetts is taking a different approach to the endemic segregation of neighborhoods.  The legislature approved a bill to look at the public health effects of different poorer parts of the state and will assess “the progress of the commonwealth toward eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities, using, where possible, quantifiable measures and comparative benchmarks. The report card shall report on progress on a regional basis, based on regions designated by the office. “

Ohio has attempted to further the elimination of prejudices for admission into public school.  A bill proposed by four Democratic State Senators would mandate that “that there will be no discrimination in the admission of students to the school on the basis of race, creed, color, disability, or sex.”  However, this legislation was introduced in May of 2011 and has still not made it out of the education committee; perhaps serving as an indication of the growing sentiment toward less regulations regarding diversity.

As the Brown V. Board decision approaches its 60^th anniversary, the country has assuredly undergone a drastic shake-up in its values, but there remains a prevalence of injustice.  The data suggests that even though federal legislation already exists to prevent prejudice in housing and hiring practices, there is still a correlation between race and housing patterns.  Until the fundamental  predispositions of current conditions are altered, it will remain a challenge to ensure a truly race-neutral educational system.

According to their website, Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) is “the world’s leading conference exploring and analyzing technology’s impact on politics and government”.  The PdF was started back in 2004 by Andrew Rasiej and co-Founder Micah Sifry, and has had quite a history of speakers and ideas.  It was really the first, and now is the premier, conference on this topic.  This year Todd Park, CTO of the USA, is one of the speakers.  I saw him at Transparency Camp this year and he was amazing.  It will be a treat to see him again.

How technology, and the internet in particular, impacts government and politics, is, of course, something we are very interested in at BillTrack50.  As I’ve said on this blog before, I firmly believe that the country is full of smart people with good ideas. Making information about pending legislation freely available, in an easy to search and use way, will help those good ideas find their way to representatives in government who can do something with them.  Thus making bills available to the public to search for free is my way of trying to leverage technology to have a positive impact on politics and government.

All that said, I was still struggling with if I could attend.  It’s not cheap, and it’s just a few days before I head to Vegas for RightOnline. Luckily, I was chosen for a Google Fellowship, which is an amazing opportunity.  On the application page they describe the fellowship as follows:

“Google and Personal Democracy Forum are teaming up to offer registration fellowships that cover the full forum registration costs and a meal with Googlers for fifteen well-qualified, creative political entrepreneurs to attend this year’s conference on June 11-12 at NYU Skirball Center in New York City.

Fellows will be chosen based on evidence of how you’ve turned ideas into action and into new applications of technology in the political or civic arena.”

So thanks Google and PdF!  Of course I can’t miss the opportunity to meet and hang out with 14 other people up to the same sort of thing I am.  It’s also very nice to be recognized as someone trying to make a difference.  So I’m off to New York City in June to learn and network and get inspired.

I can’t wait to be in the same room with so many creative thinkers.  Good things are bound to come of it!

My name is Kevin McNellis and I am a researcher at the National Institute on Money in State Politics—the only organization that tracks campaign contributions to state-level candidates, political parties, and ballot measure campaigns in all 50 states. After running into the Bill Track 50 team at the Sunlight Foundation’s Transparency Camp in Washington, D.C., we thought that many of Bill Track 50’s users would be interested in examining the connections between our campaign finance data and specific pieces of legislation you find on Bill Track 50.

Since 2000, the Institute has been collecting contribution reports for every candidate running for legislative and statewide office. as well as state party committees and supreme court races. Along the way, we have also added ballot measure committees (2004), appellate court candidates (2008), lobbyist registrations (2006), independent spending in 22 states (2006), lobbyist expenditures in 5 states (2011), and special elections data (2011). All of this information is available, for free, from our website FollowTheMoney.org.

In order to make sense of the billions of dollars contributed at the state level, the Institute has developed a number of tools to parse and analyze our data. To better analyze legislative committees, I recommend our Legislative Committee Analysis Tool (L-CAT), which organizes our candidate data by legislative committees.* Once you find out which committee is drafting or voting on a bill, simply select the particular committee on the L-CAT page and it produces a list of that committee’s members. From this list, you can either click on each member individually and see each member’s contributions or you can filter the entire committee’s contributions by economic sector.

If you want to analyze our data on a larger scale, use our state overview pages. From each of these pages you can see all of our data for a particular state for each election. From these pages you’ll be able to quickly see who contributed to the state’s candidates, political parties, and ballot measure committees. If you want to quickly analyze our data across state lines, use our national overview map, which quickly displays all of our data for each election.

We encourage you to use our data. All of it is free and downloadable. If you ever run into problems or have further questions, please call us at 406-449-2480. Our research staff is available from 8-5 mountain standard time to assist your use and understanding of our data.

*The committee rosters, gathered by Project Vote Smart, are current as of January 2011.

States that look to opt out of federally subsidized elective abortion coverage have some bi-partisan support, recognizing the significance of religious freedom and moral opposition.  As a compromise, a few states, like Michigan, are proposing an optional rider, giving women the option to purchase an add-on to their insurance plan that covers non-therapeutic abortions.  Opponents claim the rider still violates their conscience, stating that they want no participation with an insurance company that offers any abortion coverage, even if the additional rider is placed in a separate pool and used only to cover elective abortions.

The concern about federally funded abortions also brought attention to government funding given to organizations and clinics that provide abortion, prompting Arizona, North Carolina, Kansas, Alaska, Ohio (HB 298), and numerous other states to pass laws limiting any and all funds.  Planned Parenthood is an organization under the most scrutiny, however, the organization claims all government funds are allotted to STD testing, cancer screening, and birth control for low-income women.  Like the optional rider, some opponents wish to see all funding cut to these organizations simply because they perform abortion services.

The proposed bills and extent to limiting funding is slightly different from state to state, but the overall message is the same:  Republicans want limited association to abortion, cutting assistance to organizations that provide necessary healthcare to women. Even organizations that do not perform abortions are at risk of scrutiny or possible loss of state funding if there exists a professional association to a clinic that performs them.  It is a more extreme response, but bills like this have been presented in the state of Nebraska, as well as other states.

Women’s organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union view this kind of legislation as discrimination, stating, “…by singling out abortion for exclusion, politicians have attempted to impose their own choices on poor women.”   They also argue that most taxpayers contribute dollars to other issues that sometimes go against religious beliefs – like war or military service.  There is no way for taxpayers to opt out of those contributions, thus the focus on abortion seems to be nothing more than an attempt to force low-income women to carry a pregnancy to term.  Women who will participate in state exchanged healthcare and use organizations like Planned Parenthood are lower income.  To restrict funding for clinics that happen to provide abortion also limits access to birth control and STD testing – a real public health concern, and most likely costly.

Legislation on abortion doesn’t stop there though – Republicans also want to push through bills requiring abortion clinics to provide ultrasounds, waiting periods, and potential side effects on a woman’s health.  What’s so controversial about providing more information to pregnant women?  For one, it assumes that women are somehow uneducated on the topic of abortion and are incapable of coming to their own conclusions on what is best for their personal situation.   Providing medical information is not controversial, but the manner in which it is proposed -including a waiting period and an invasive ultrasound – can be interpreted as a-government-knows-best kind of scenario.  Research also suggests most women who choose abortion do not regret their decision and the need for additional government intervention gives the appearance of being a coercive strategy as opposed to a real public need.

One of the most controversial bills on abortion came up for debate in Kansas.  The House passed a lengthy document that would require a number of changes to abortion laws, including protecting doctors from malpractice if they opt to withhold pertinent medical information from a pregnant woman if such information could result in the decision to abort.  It would also require clinics to provide specific information on fetal development, in addition to preventing residents from performing abortion training in state funded settings.  Obviously this is very controversial, given that abortion is sometimes a medical necessity.  It goes on further to address tax credits and adding a sales tax to abortion– but again, the message is many Republican legislators want to make access to abortion difficult and even prohibit basic medical training.  The bill did not pass the Senate; however, the Governor of Kansas stated he would likely sign the bill if it had.

Abortion is an ongoing political and moral issue, but the current debate seems to be centered on protecting those opposed to abortion from playing an indirect role in its funding.  Freedom of religion is their main argument, but what role should religious views have in government, particularly in the case of abortion?  Should government create laws that coerce women to carry a pregnancy to term, particularly if those laws tend to represent a religious and moral point of view?  Should funding to these organizations that provide necessary health care for poor women be limited simply because they provides a (legal) but controversial family planning option?  Historical evidence suggests making abortion and birth control inaccessible is dangerous.  So how far is too far?

-Barack Obama

In an era where our Twitter profiles and Facebook accounts may be ever more accurate depictions of what we are, we can wind up feeling our physical world almost seems like a caricature.  Petty complaints, mundane descriptions, an unfortunately lackadaisical attitude toward literacy, all can reveal to others a clear picture of what a person cares about at the moment.  We can sometimes thoughtlessly rely a blanket adherence to conventions of society: that news can be spread safely, and thoughts can be echoed easily; but the anonymity of it all can lead to a diffusion of malicious intentions.  The internet, in all of its escapist tangents, allows a person to reveal their inner neurosis with only the slightest acknowledgment that someone else will know about it.  The spent on a shopping website, Google searches, and the willing divulging of personal information on a host of social sites leads to an increasingly complete picture of a person.

That complete picture of a person serves as a goldmine for advertisers and marketers all seeking to gain an edge in reaching their target consumer base.   Industries only recently established have become firmly entrenched to process and predict what all this information means.  Terabytes of data are regularly exchanged with only a hint of acknowledgment that it is not as private as it seems.  The stipulation of receiving so many beneficial services either for free or for a minimal fee is that once content gets published it is processed, analyzed, and scrutinized for all its worth.  An email passing through a Gmail server will be examined by formulas and key words will be analyzed and brought back as a reference for further ads.

In light of the faltering protection of privacy, online groups and companies have worked to provide alternatives to the entrenched firms.   Among online communities like item-specific forums or social media sites, users can quickly access and divulge redeeming content resulting in the relatively modern concept of the viral spreading of material.  As this chart shows, duckduckgo.com was established over a year ago but only in the last several months has been begun spreading exponentially.  Perhaps as a response to growing concerns over the change in Google’s online privacy policy or due to the viral sharing of the site, users have begun to take more control over their security while surfing the web.

Among the current of protests over the evolving infringement over personal privacy, the White House published its Consumer Bill of Rights.  In it they declare that users have the following rights:

• Individual Control: Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it.
• Transparency: Consumers have a right to easily understandable and accessible information about privacy and security practices.
• Respect for Context: Consumers have a right to expect that companies will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
• Security: Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
• Access and Accuracy: Consumers have a right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data is inaccurate
• Focused Collection: Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain
• Accountability: Consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken a larger interest in protecting online privacy.  They recently published a report “urging industry to accelerate the pace of its self-regulatory measures.”  Chairman of the FTC Jon Leibowitz has come out as being against a national “do not track” list.  He points to the relative inefficiency of the “do not call” list and to how business is done in the internet age.  Web users have “enthusiastically” moved more of their lives online over the past decade, Leibowitz said. “As a result, we have had to ask, how can consumers continue to enjoy the riches of a thriving online and mobile marketplace without surrendering their privacy as the price of admission?  Last week, Leibowitz testified in front of congress urging for new legislation to authorize more enforcement powers to the FTC.  In a joint statement with Cameron F. Kerry, general counsel for the Commerce Department he urged congress to grant “direct enforcement authority to the F.T.C. would enable the commission to take action against outliers and bad actors even if their actions do not violate a published privacy policy.”

Instead of a federal imposition on creating mandatory regulations about a blanket “do not track” list, that would completely anonymize online searches, third party groups have grown into developing that sort of technology.  Donottrack.us is offering methods to circumvent the tracking that most major browsers do on the regular.  Leibowitz did say he expects that “by the end of the year there’s going to be meaningful Do Not Track for American consumers so they can opt out of third-party advertisements.”

Europe offers a different approach to the growing encroachment of major internet providers on privacy.  Instead of the current set of conditions that the major browsers provide, European regulators are calling for a default setting that does not track internet search history.  An interesting dichotomy arises between the American and European responses.  The EU has had an adamant online advertising campaign advocating for online privacy.   NPR had an interesting report on this issue and found

“The European approach to privacy is that it’s potentially a very unequal relationship,” says Chris Docksey, director of the European Data Protection Authority. He says Americans regard online privacy as take-it-or-leave-it — if you want Gmail, you just click “I Accept.”

This “I accept” train of thought is ever present especially in social media sharing sites, especially Facebook and Twitter.  Applications give away personal information that users may not be aware of, even though they may willingly agree to the terms and conditions.   Not reading the terms and conditions is presupposed considering the length of a standard set.  The average time required is 250 hours to read the terms and conditions all the way through.  No surprise that users blindly agree.

Employers have begun to take advantage of the dissemination of personal information by job-seekers.  Over 12% of hiring managers have admitted to using social media as a reason to not hire someone.  With over 65% of respondents looking at professional appearance as a guide for whether or not the person fits the company culture.

An inappropriate online presence can affect not only your job search, but also in a criminal case.  Both California and New York have proposed legislation to include information that has been transmitted over the internet as evidence in a trial.  This includes not only public displays, but also emails or direct messages that have been sent without acknowledgement that they would be anything but private.  As a preventative measure, Pennsylvania has passed legislation regarding emails sent at a work computer.  They now require that employers provide evidence to suspect wrongdoing before they can investigate what emails were sent.  Basing it on the theory that e-mail has become a mode of communication just as prevalent as a face to face conversation or phone call.  This goes along with the U.S sixth district court of appeals ruling in U.S. v Warshak that “although an ISP has access to private e-mail, the government must obtain a search warrant before seizing such e-mail.”

The issue of online privacy tends to leave litigators at a sort of a crossroads, between insuring a citizen’s right to privacy and inhibiting businesses from functioning at the level they have become accustomed to.  It may not necessarily be a loophole for businesses, but users do have the option of actually reading through the terms and conditions, but as has been pointed out it is absolutely impractical for the average user.  The European attitude toward online privacy may be a more forward approach to the impositions on privacy by the current online marketplace.  Regardless, governmental efforts may be fruitless as long as average citizens are content with current conditions.

(For an update about the Supreme Court decisions and 2013 legislation, see this new post)

One peculiarity of the marriage equality debate is the fact that the most vocal opponents of laws legalizing same-sex marriage are the people who are arguably the least affected by them. It is easy to understand why some people favor marriage equality – people in same-sex relationships, and their friends and families who support them, have a fairly tangible stake in the outcome. It’s harder to identify what is at stake personally for marriage equality opponents, so their arguments are usually made on behalf of society as a whole. Their main arguments fit into the following categories:

• Same-sex marriage “de-values” traditional marriage;
• God says he doesn’t like it;
• Slippery slope to other non-traditional marriages (i.e., to animals, polygamy);
• It threatens the religious freedom of clergy members.

The first three of these arguments hardly merit discussion—not because they aren’t contentious, but because debate is practically futile. The first two are wholly based on personal values and belief systems that are unlikely to change based on rational arguments, and slippery slope arguments are logically fallacious on their face. Even if these arguments were valid, it is difficult to see how the advocates of these arguments are affected – if your god doesn’t like gay marriages, you won’t get one; and if you don’t like the idea of polygamy, you won’t take multiple spouses.

The potential threat to religious freedom, however, is at least worth examining because it could directly impact people other than those entering same-sex unions. The supposed threat here is that laws allowing same-sex marriage will require religious officials to solemnize marriages to which they object based on religious doctrine, require churches to make facilities equally available for same-sex marriage ceremonies, or at the least expose them to civil lawsuits for discriminating against same-sex marriages.[i] There is something personally at stake for religious officials and clergy in this case. Even most supporters of same-sex marriage would agree that this would be a significant transgression of First Amendment religious freedom as well as bad public policy. However, as one examines the various laws allowing same-sex marriage or other unions, this seems to be a threat in only theory and not in practice.

States Recognizing Same-Sex Relationships

Full civil marriage rights are currently afforded to same-sex couples by six states – Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont – as well as the District of Columbia. Two more states, Washington and Maryland, have passed legislation to allow same-sex marriage, but face the possibility of being overturned at the polls this November. And of course there’s California, where stays in the Prop. 8 appeals process has left marriage equality in limbo.

In addition, there are ten states[ii] that do not offer same-sex “marriage” but allow same-sex couples to enter civil unions or domestic partnerships. These range from civil unions that are legally equivalent to marriage and even require a ceremony (such as in Delaware) to domestic partnerships that confer a more limited set of rights and obligations than marriage (and often stricter requirements, such as proof of cohabitation for a specified time period) and involve no ceremony, just filing registration paperwork with the county clerk.

Religious Freedom Clauses

Of the nineteen aforementioned jurisdictions offering (or about to offer) same-sex couple recognition, fourteen of them have statutes explicitly exempting religious officials from the obligation to offer marriage solemnization to same-sex couples. Many, such as Washington’s, not only exempt clergy from performing ceremonies, but also allow religious organizations to refuse any sort of accommodations, facilities, privileges, or goods relating to a same-sex marriage, and provide immunity from any civil action relating to such a refusal.

The five states that recognize same-sex couples but do not have such statutory religious exemptions are California, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. However, there is still very little danger that religious freedom would be infringed in any of these states.

Wisconsin’s and Maine’s domestic partnership laws are explicitly intended to be much weaker than marriage. The first section of the Wisconsin law provides:  “the legal status of domestic partnership as established in this chapter is not substantially similar to that of marriage. Nothing in this chapter shall be construed as inconsistent with or a violation of article XIII, section 13, of the Wisconsin Constitution” (which limits marriage to one man and one woman and even prohibits the recognition of any status “substantially similar to marriage”). Maine’s domestic partnership status primarily affects issues that arise after the death of one partner, such as inheritance and the right to make decisions regarding the deceased’s remains. Maine’s Dep’t. of Health and Human Services, which administers the partner registry, provides an explicit warning that domestic partnership is not a marriage on the registry’s instruction form. In both states, a domestic partnership can be formed just by filling out a short form and mailing it to a state agency with a small fee. Neither state requires any type of ceremony for their domestic partnerships, nor do they not appear to anticipate such ceremonies. If domestic partnership ceremonies do not exist in practice, there is no need to exempt religions from performing them.

In California, Iowa, and Massachusetts, same-sex marriage was legalized by their state supreme courts rather than through legislation (although California is on hold). Both California and Iowa still have statutes on the books that prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages, so a religious exemption would not make much sense in context of their marriage laws. Massachusetts is the only state that has updated its statutory law to allow same-sex marriage without adding a religious exemption clause. Yet in all three of these states, the courts have provided a religious exemption via judicial case law. California’s 2006 opinion in In re Marriages provides: “no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.” Iowa’s Supreme Court observed: “We, of course, have a constitutional mandate to protect the free exercise of religion in Iowa, which includes the freedom of a religious organization to define marriages it solemnizes as unions between a man and a woman.” And although Massachusetts’ Supreme Court relegates this clarification to a footnote, it nonetheless notes: “Our decision in no way limits the rights of individuals to refuse to marry persons of the same sex for religious or any other reasons. It in no way limits the personal freedom to disapprove of, or to encourage others to disapprove of, same-sex marriage.”

States Considering New Expanding Same-Sex Recognition

If religious organizations and clergy are safe in the states that currently recognize same-sex unions, what about those considering new marriage laws? There has been a small flurry of bills in states that already have civil unions or same-sex marriage that seek to re-affirm religious freedom, but none of these are ground-breaking and are mostly duplicative of current law. Being an election year, most state legislatures are deferring marriage equality questions to ballot initiatives. However, a few states have active bills considering the issue, all of which include religious freedom clauses.

• Minnesota – SF1427 and HF1710would grant full marriage rights to same-sex couples; contains a religious freedom provision very interestingly framed as an argument for allowing same-sex marriages: “The state should not interfere with the religious beliefs of its people. Just as a church or religious denomination that objects to same-sex marriage has the right to refuse to solemnize those marriages, a church or religious denomination that believes in the value of same-sex marriage should have the right to solemnize those marriages.”
  • Note – Minnesota voters will decide on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in November 2012

• Illinois — HB5170 would turn the state’s existing civil union law into full marriage; contains a religious freedom clause.

• West Virginia — HB4569 would create “separate but equal” civil unions; contains a broad religious freedom clause that extends to a religious institution refusing to “recognize a civil union as valid,” and provides immunity from civil action.

She got me pretty excited about her ideas. She argued that the government should work more like the internet — permissionless, open, generative. Government as a platform; a way for people to help themselves, or help each other. I think she is right. She recruited the attendees to participate in the Code for America program with winning enthusiasm.

Code for America is a way to move towards the worthy goal of making the government work better. Several “fellows” are chosen each year. Young technologists volunteer a year of their life, they are assigned to a city and build apps to make that city better. Between SxSW, Transparency Camp, and other events I’ve attended, I’ve met many of the fellows for this year. They are amazing people and I’ve been impressed by them all.

According to the website:

CfA fellows get a crash course in how cities work, mentorship and networking with the top names in tech and government, and a platform to launch companies and careers that will bring long-term innovation to the public sector. They also get a living-wage stipend, travel expenses, and healthcare for the year. Most of all, they get the chance to be heroes.

Applications for the net cycle (Nov 2012 – Nov 2013) are due July 29. If I was younger and was in a situation where it was at all tenable, I would definitely apply. What a great way to spend a year! For people that can’t make that size of committment, they have also set up The Code for America Brigade where you adopt an app from a long list of great things CfA has created, and try to get it deployed.  There is an encouragingly long list of active brigades listed on their website and is undoubtedly have a positive impact in the cities lucky enough to have one.  The Brigade is a genius way to leverage the work of the CfA fellows.

That sounds fun too, but I’ve already committed to BillTrack50 as my way to try to make a difference. I have a deeply held belief that the world is full of smart people with great ideas (and also funny people, but that’s a different post). The better we can inform smart people about what the state legislatures are doing, and hook their great ideas into the process, the better off we all will be.  State level is where the action is, where great ideas can make a big impact.  Leah’s post about familial DNA is a great example how one guy, in this case Joshua Thurmond, is literally saving lives by spreading a smart idea.

To me, getting people more involved in the political process, beyond simply voting every four years, is work that matters.  I’m proud to be doing it. I also feel what I am trying to accomplish is very much in the spirit of CfA, so I’ve applied for the Code for America accelerator. This is a program they have to support civic startups; in their words:

The CfA Accelerator is an outgrowth of our learnings from the fellowship; primarily a realization that while change from the inside of government is necessary, it must come from the outside as well.

I couldn’t agree more.  The program they offer is amazing and would surely help me build something even more valuable to the community.  Applicants are picked in June.  Wish us luck!

A smart grid replaces the traditional method of energy being transferred from the power station to residential homes and businesses.  Instead of a meter on each individual home, the local energy company can track energy usage via a wireless signal broadcast.  The idea being that now the power company can track when each home has its peak energy usage and for what it is directed for.   With this knowledge, energy can then be modified on a pricing plan that allocates different rates for different times.  Prime time energy usage during the day would be priced at a premium, based on the significant user demand at the time.  Energy use at night will be priced at a rate below current levels, based on the scarcity of user demand at the time.

Further, a true smart grid will instill more control to the consumer.  At present, several companies are scrambling to make technology that will be friendly enough to the user so that it will not be a hassle to manually control energy usage.  For example, a family with parents at work and kids at school during the day can virtually shut down energy to the air conditioner while the family is not present.  Based on economic rational choice theory, a consumer will be incentivized to monitor energy expenditure via a computer, smart phone, tablet etc. due to their cost out of pocket.  According to reports, if this technology were to be implemented on a nationwide basis, energy usage can be expected to drop 10% by 2019.  The Washington Post further details the benefits:

“For utilities, they are clear. The meter reader will become extinct. Diagnostics done by trucks will be done from a central office. And if homes and businesses cut energy use in peak demand hours, utilities can avoid building power plants that will operate only a few hours a day for just a few days a year. In California, for example, peak usage can be two-thirds higher than the demand at other times of the day. With climate change, the differential could become even more extreme.”

Energy companies are quick to point out the rapid increases in population where energy is already a costly premium.  Predicating an argument around current consumption rates accompanied by a larger population would simply be unsustainable. Producers of both the energy and of the technology have combined in their efforts to move the issue forward.  In California, a state known for their energy deficiencies, both have been lobbying hard for aggressive legislation to mandate a switch from the old power grid to the new Smart Grid.  After 2009, when the American Investment and Recovery Act was signed into law by President Obama, which allocated $4.5 billion towards smart grid funding, California has worked to pass substantive reforms to the power grid.  Several forms of bills have come out advocating different mandates for smart grids.  Most recently, SB 12 was passed that mandated that by

“January 1, 2016, the (Public Utilities Committee) report to the Legislature assessing whether each electrical corporation can achieve a 33% renewables portfolio standard by December 31, 2020, and maintain that level thereafter, within the cost limitations.”

As part of an effort to emphasize the alternative energy resources at consumers’ disposal, namely solar and wind energy, states have put in place tax relief efforts to encourage the wide-scale installation of solar and wind panels.  The city of Davis, California offered in this bill to offer subsidies to those that installed those panels.

Advocates of a solar panel have pointed out the financial advantages of installing these technologies.  With a smart grid, instead of energy coming in one way from the power company, the homes that generate some of their own power can sell back their energy and have distributed it along the grid.  Proponents in New Hampshire offered the cost benefit argument and included specifications in their energy legislature.

In spite of all the supposed benefits of the smart grid system, a vocal opposition has arisen and has been adamant about all its key flaws.  Among a variety of complaints, groups and individuals are complaining about the presumptiveness of what an ordinary user is.  While, an overwhelming majority of the working population works during the day Monday through Friday, there is a substantial amount of individuals, namely students, seniors, and the unemployed that have different circumstances that require them to use up energy at the peak pricing hours.

The expense of redesigning a system of energy for a city, let alone a state makes for large drawbacks as well.  In a time of austerity at the state level, taking on large investments makes it difficult for legislators to agree.  The CEO of the main energy company in Carolina said “Smart electricity meters aren’t on the way… Duke Energy still has $200 million worth of costs to recoup from installing the current meters for customers in North Carolina.”  With this sort of cost associated with the installation and upkeep, the issue remains tenuous.

Stopsmartmeters.org is an organization outspoken about its desire to remain with analog meters.  They focus on several key issues in regards to the switch.  A common concern amongst the opposition is the safety of the meter both in regards to personal health but also private data.  As a term of service for the meter, the electric company will be able to collect data as to how each home uses electricity.  The energy companies are adamant about the privacy and anonymity of that data. Yet, critics are not assured by the promises of the electric companies.

As with cell phones and other wireless transmitting devices, a smart meter sends off radioactive waves in order to monitor energy usage.  Critics have complained about health risks with this technology and have protested the mandatory implementation of this technology based around this premise.  Recent studies have disproved the claims, but as the Washington Post reports, there remains a vocal minority adamant about the health risks involved.   State legislatures in Virginia have listened and have hastily passed bills nudging the state to adapt the new technology.

Unperturbed, the federal Department of Energy insists on making the switch over.  The alleged outdated Edisonian model of electricity distribution requires substantial costs just for upkeep.  In their brochure directed to end-consumers, they detail all the reasons for the switch over but focus largely on the costs:

“A surprisingly substantial portion of your electric bill – between 33% – 50% – is currently assigned to funding our “infrastructure mortgage,” our current electric infrastructure. This item is non-negotiable because that infrastructure – power plants, transmission lines, and everything else that connects them – must be maintained to keep the grid running as reliably as it does.”

Despite the mounting evidence regarding the switch, advocates have conceded that the priority for this issue is highly dependent on the energy usage of the state.  In states like California where the energy usage is exponentially greater during peak hours, a smart grid is of utmost concern.  During those peaks hours where demand is much greater, power plants have to be utilized that serve no purpose during all the other hours of the day.   With a smart grid, precise knowledge of current energy expenditures will render the extra power plants obsolete.  Considering the cost of upkeep and maintenance this makes fiscal sense for those most affected.

Of course, for states that have more moderate summers and manageable energy costs, the benefits of a full transformation become marginalized.  That is not to mention the fundamental concerns of privacy and safety, as well as the current outcry about government mandates.  Needless to say, the federal government, as with many of its grants, puts the offer on the table for the states to adhere to the strict guidelines and based on how quickly the sum of money allocated for this project was claimed, this project is on its way to completion.  It may only be a matter of time, though with countries like Brazil and China already well on their way to full implementation, it may be crucial the US caught up.

Recently, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) signed WI SB 202 into act, repealing provisions within the state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act of 2009.  The act was designed to work as a deterrent against pay discrimination based on race and gender and to enable victims to plead their cases in a less costly state circuit court.  Walker’s press secretary stated the repeal of provisions within the act “removed a duplicative and unnecessarily costly process related to seeking punitive and compensatory damages in state court,” noting that wage discrimination is still, of course, against the law.  Opponents of the repeal claim this move shifts the cost of the legal battle to the financially disadvantaged, removing another legal avenue with which to pursue equality and perpetuating a higher than national average wage disparity in Wisconsin.

State senator Grothman (R), sponsor of the Wisconsin repeal, has asserted sex-based wage discrimination does not account for pay disparity, a sentiment echoed by some in the national media and by other state and federal legislators.  Grothman and GOP strategists claim the earning disparity between men are women can be attributed to a number of factors including child-rearing, average number of hours worked, and the choice to pursue a career in nonprofit and other lower paying job sectors. Those in opposition to legislation designed to deter discrimination believe disparity is not due to discrimination based on sex and more a matter of career and personal choice, arguing additional legislative measures and punitive damages are unnecessary and potentially too costly to business when federal and state protections currently exist.

Politicians who support addressing gender-based pay discrimination recognize that there are many variables contributing to pay differences, but see discrimination as a real problem in the United States.  Research has shown that a pay gap exists between men and women one year following college graduation, even after all other variables have been removed, supporting the position that disparity is unrelated to a matter of personal choice.  A recent U.S Department of Labor study also found that one-third (11 cents) of the pay gap is attributable to sex discrimination, despite decades after the passage of Equal Pay Act of 1963.  Additionally, two-thirds of women are either primary or co-breadwinners in the U.S., earning $400,000 to $2 million less than men in their lifetime, resulting in a significant economic loss for American households.

Regardless of one’s position on discrimination, wage disparity is a significant economic problem.  With increasing costs of healthcare, education, and unemployment rates, most women no longer have the option to stay at home to raise a family. Women are also more likely to function as a primary provider, given the increasing number of single parent households and higher unemployment rates. Because of the impact wage disparity has on households, Democrats look to address the issue at the state and federal level with legislation including the Paycheck Fairness Act, currently up for debate in the House.  The GOP is working against additional legislation and even repealing some legal avenues to pursue equality, as is the case in Wisconsin.  It has been suggested by a number of Republicans that the focus needs to be more on job creation and less on discrimination.  Despite the opposing views on how to address wage inequality, both sides seem to agree something needs to change.

So what are the solutions?  Should elected officials work to protect the interest of the individual or business and government? What role should the government play in addressing wage disparity and are additional laws necessary to challenge discrimination?  How would job creation change gender wage disparity, particularly if the careers women choose are sometimes motivated by factors like child-rearing?

For more information on current legislation  -

New York (NY S01680, S07057) – Prohibits unfair compensation on the basis of sex when work is of comparable value.

Michigan (SB 0340) – Amends Elliot-Larson Civil Rights Act, adding a provision requiring equal compensation for equal work.

Virginia (HB 1175) – Prohibits employment discrimination.

Tennessee (HJR0635) – Creates a state committee addressing wage discrimination.

Mississippi (HB 289) – Fair pay act requiring equivalent pay for comparable jobs.  Died in committee on 3/6/2012.

Wisconsin (A 219) – Repealed provisions within Equal Pay Enforcement Act allowing discrimination cases to be tried in circuit court.

Oklahoma (SB 1728) – Removes Human Rights Committee, putting discrimination cases into hands of Attorney General.

Following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, “Stand Your Ground” or “No Duty to Retreat” laws have received much scrutiny from the media. While most of the attention has been on Florida, many states have similar Stand Your Ground laws, and a large majority of states have No Duty to Retreat laws for more limited circumstances. Some state legislatures have reacted by introducing bills to limit the application of these laws, while a handful of others are keeping alive bills to expand Stand Your Ground principles.

Overview of Current Law

Castle Doctrine

The Castle Doctrine, named for the dictum “a man’s home is his castle,” asserts that people have a heightened sense of security in their homes and affords them certain legal protections and immunities.

Most states have enacted laws incorporating some version of the “Castle Doctrine,” granting citizens an absolute right to defend their homes from an intruder. This includes the right to use deadly force without imposing any duty to attempt retreat. While details vary between states, with some extending the Castle Doctrine to occupied vehicles and places of employment, they generally all require:

1)      The intruder against whom force is used must have made or be attempting an unlawful or forcible entry and be acting illegally;

2)      The occupant has a legal right to be in the building or vehicle; and

3)      The occupant must reasonably believe the intruder intends to inflict serious bodily harm to the occupant or another person.

A few states, such as Colorado and Texas, broaden the second requirement to allow deadly force against intruders threatening property, not just persons. While there is room to debate the morality of taking a life to protect property without a threat to physical safety, Castle laws are relatively uncontroversial as the principle can be traced through American jurisprudence back to 17^th century English common law, and as far back as the Bible.

Stand Your Ground

The term “Stand Your Ground” refers to laws that extend the “no duty to retreat” language to self-defense situations that arise outside the home (or vehicle or workplace). Stand Your Ground laws have much less historical precedent than Castle laws, and are often referred to as “shoot first” laws by detractors. The principles are largely the same as Castle laws, other than lacking the requirement of the confrontation occurring in a home or other protected place. Stand Your Ground laws generally require that the person asserting the justification had a “reasonable” belief that deadly force was necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily injury to himself or another person, or in states such as Florida and Alabama, to prevent the commission of certain “forcible felonies.”

The controversy around Stand Your Ground laws stems primarily from the difficulty in determining what beliefs are reasonable. Some states’ statutes list presumptively “reasonable” situations to use deadly force, such as when an intruder enters your home or attempts a car-jacking (thereby codifying the Castle doctrine). In these situations a reasonableness determination would be quite straightforward, as most people would likely have a strong fear for their physical safety if they discovered an intruder in their homes. It’s also pretty easy to identify the good guy and the bad guy in that situation, since you can figure out who lives there and who doesn’t.

Confrontations that occur on the street can be much more nuanced, making the reasonableness determination more difficult, as seen in the Trayvon Martin case. Since both parties to the confrontation may have had a legal right to be where they were, eye-witness testimony is necessary to figure out what really happened – and often enough, the only living witness is the shooter.

Another area of controversy in Stand Your Ground legislation surrounds the overly broad class of felonies that some states allow use of deadly force to prevent. Both Florida’s and Alabama’s laws list burglary in this group of felonies, which is by definition the illegal entry of a building with the intent to commit a crime therein. Since this can include crimes that threaten only property and not personal safety, it again invites the moral debate of the value of human life verses the value of personal property.

Pending Legislation

Following is a list of all states with active legislation to amend their Castle Doctrine or Stand Your Ground laws. All of the bills that have been introduced since the Trayvon Martin controversy limit application of “no duty to retreat;” however, there are several active bills that were introduced prior to the case that would expand the Castle Doctrine or Stand Your Ground law. Unsurprisingly, this has become a very partisan issue, as the bills to limit Stand Your Ground  are all co-sponsored entirely by Democrats, and all but one of the co-sponsors of legislation to expand Stand Your Ground are Republicans.

States Limiting Castle Doctrine or Stand Your Ground Laws

• Alabama HB694
  • This bill is seemingly tailored to fit the Trayvon Martin case perfectly – it retains the Stand Your Ground law, but adds to a list of times when use of force is not justified: “he or she initially pursued another person engaged in a lawful activity in a public place and the pursuit resulted in a confrontation and the use of force, including deadly physical force, against the person initially pursued.”
• Georgia HB1308
  • Would eliminate the “no duty to retreat” language from the self-defense statute.
• Kentucky SB218
  • Adds EMTs and paramedics to the list of people (previously “peace officers”) against whom deadly force may not be used when they try to enter a building in pursuance of their official duties.
• South Carolina H5072, S1415(identical)
  • Would remove “no duty to retreat” provision for threats in places other than dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle; leaves Castle Doctrine intact.

States Expanding Castle Doctrine or Stand Your Ground Laws

• Oklahoma
  • HB2988
    • Would extend the Castle Doctrine to “places of worship” currently applies to dwellings, residences, occupied vehicles, and places of business.
  • HB2702, SB1946(identical)
    •  Would expand the Castle Doctrine definition of an intruder to include someone who enters “by deception and with violent intent.”
• Washington
  • HB2382
    • Would create a state Stand Your Ground law by adding “no duty to retreat” when a person is threatened anywhere they have a legal right to be; would also remove the power of the governor to restrict possession of firearms during a state of emergency
  • SB5418
    • Similar to the House bill above, would create a state Stand Your Ground law; would also add a presumption of a reasonable fear of death or bodily harm from an intruder in a dwelling, residence, or vehicle; would also provide criminal and civil immunity for those claiming lawful use of force, including immunity from arrest – meaning, the police must make a probable cause determination that the use of force was not lawful before they can even make an arrest.
• Nebraska LB298
  • Would create a state Stand Your Ground right, expand Castle Doctrine to allow deadly force to protect property in a dwelling or occupied vehicle, and provide civil immunity.
  • Note – this bill was introduced prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, but has been indefinitely postponed as of April 18, 2012.

On July 7, 2010, alleged California serial murderer Lonnie Franklin, Jr., nicknamed the “Grim Sleeper,” was arrested in connection to ten murders and one attempted murder spanning over three decades (1).  DNA evidence found at the crime scenes had failed to turn up a match within California’s DNA profile database, leading investigators to employ a recent technological method called familial DNA analysis – a technique that uses Y-STR (short tandem repeats found in the Y chromosomal centromere) to compare DNA profiles (1).  The Y (male) chromosome carries paternal kinship markers and can effectively identify first order familial relationships, i.e., siblings, parents, children, and possibly more distant related relatives within DNA samples (2).  In the case of the “Grim Sleeper,” the state was able to find a partial match to the DNA evidence found at the crime scenes, linking the sample to his son, who had provided a DNA sample having been convicted on a felony weapons charge.  Analysis with Y-STR kit then assisted in leading investigators to the arrest of Franklin (1), likely the most well known case to date to employ familial searching within the United States. Despite its newer inception within the U.S., partial DNA matching in criminal cases has been most utilized in the United Kingdom, with a number of documented cases where it has been proven successful.

Given the recent introduction of Familial DNA searching as an investigative tool within the U.S., many states have so far been silent on its legislation.  Policies for Familial DNA Analysis currently exist in Virginia, Colorado, California, and Minnesota.  All these states use the same non- CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) software developed in Colorado (3).  It is also up for debate in Tennessee (S.B. 0260) as well as on the federal level, (Utilizing DNA Technology to Solve Cold Cases Act 2011, H.R. 3361) having been referred to the House Committee on Judiciary.

Critics of familial DNA analysis, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), claim it is a potential violation of the Fourth Amendment and that searching a DNA database is an unreasonable search of those without suspicion of wrongdoing, potentially leading to harassment of those unrelated to the crime (4).  Opponents also stress the argument that using the DNA database for familial searches defies the reasoning behind the courts decision in United States v. Kincade, that those on probation provide a DNA sample for reasons of diminished privacy for criminal sanctions and preventing recidivism (4).  Familial searching arguably does neither, but leads one to ponder at what point DNA should be collected and once collected,  if this property search within the state’s database is a violation of privacy given its potential to provide sensitive information about an individual.  In United States v. Pool, the court argued that this type of profile searching is “analogous to a witness looking at a photograph of one persona and stating that the perpetrator has a similar appearance, which leads police to show the witness photos of similar looking individuals…”  Proponents claim this type of genetic analysis is simply another superficial identification tool and not something that could be used to extract genetic information, including medical and physical characteristics.  States that have codified policy appear to aware of possible privacy issues and have regulated it to some degree, limiting its use to cold cases, when other investigative leads have been exhausted, and/or to specific types of violent crimes that are a threat to public safety (3).

Probably the most controversial political argument opposing Familial DNA analysis involves the current racial disparity within national and state DNA databases.  A disproportionate number of African Americans are found in the database, resulting in the likelihood that this group is most often under genetic surveillance (5).  On the other hand, because research has shown that crime clusters in families (6), one could conclude familial searching is merely a matter of statistical probability, unrelated to racial bias. This still leaves a significant number of those within disadvantaged families to be under surveillance, continuing the disparity within the judicial system. In order to prevent racial bias, it could be suggested all persons, and not just those arrested or convicted of felonies, submit a DNA sample.  Although, again, this raises the question of whether or not DNA used for the purpose of familial searching is a violation of privacy .

There is little doubt that familial searching is an effective tool given the number of documented cases used in apprehending criminals and exonerating the innocent.  The question remains, however – can the argument be made that Familial DNA Analysis is a violation of your privacy, despite the state’s ability to legislate in a way that minimizes invasion?  Is the cost to privacy greater than the benefit and is racial bias within the justice system controversial enough to prevent an effective investigative tool from being used, or should public safety trump these concerns?

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_sleeper

2. http://www.forensicdnacenter.com/dna-ystr.html

3.http://www.denverda.org/dna/Familial_DNA_Database_Searches.htm

4.http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2009/03/genetic_surveillance_for_all.3.html

5.http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/07/14/how-far-should-the-dna-dragnet-go/discrimination-and-privacy-concerns-with-familial-dna-searches

6.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20334717 

For More Information

1.http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/Hearings%202012/Risher%2004252012.pdf

The conundrum of how to solve voter identification discrepancies without a blanket exclusion of downtrodden but eligible voters has spread across the United States.   The threat of voter fraud has caused over 30 states to enact new voter identification requirements since 2004.  The requirements vary by state and in strictness, with six states currently and potentially nine states by the end of 2012 mandating a federal or state issued I.D to be presented at the polling location.  The battle at the state level then lies at what each state legislature believes to be free and fair elections.  Both sides have made their arguments abundantly clear about what side of the spectrum they stand on in determining whether it is more vital to shrink the possibility of in-person voter fraud or to shrink the turnout by requiring identification that roughly ten percent of eligible voters do not have readily available.

The passing of federal legislation including the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter) have encouraged more voter turnout by reducing the complications needed to register as a voter and ensure proper procedure at the polling location.  The novel concept for the legislation came as a means to update and adapt federal standards to the changing landscape.  As far as the legislation goes from a national level, states are constitutionally granted certain privileges in how they are to run their elections.  The United States Constitution grants the states the ability to establish time, place, and manner regulations on federal elections.  This power is limited, however, as state voting regulations may not unduly burden or abridge the right to vote.

As states are delegated the right to set voting regulations as their state legislature best sees fit, as long as it is still in compliance with constitutional guidelines, they have actively discussed and at times enacted new legislation regarding voter identification requirements.  Indiana in 2005 passed the first bill to require photo identification at the polls.  The law was challenged and the federal district court, the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court all ruled in favor of its legitimacy.   Justice Stephens (joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy) held, “on the basis of the record made in this litigation, we cannot conclude that the statute imposes excessively burdensome requirements on any class of voters.”  The passing of legislation has been reviewed by the United States Justice Department after it passes the state legislature and courts.

A notable example of the Justice Department intervening after the legislature has occurred with the reversal of a bill in South Carolina that would have mandated a government issued photo I.D to be presented at the polling location.  In House Bill 3003, a bill sponsored by 21 House Republicans, the previous voting standards were amended to “”When a person presents himself to vote, he shall produce a valid and current: (1) South Carolina driver’s license; or (2) other form of identification containing a photograph issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles.”  While for most the United States population, reports indicating upwards of 89 % of eligible voters, have the necessary documentation to vote, it becomes an issue for those who don’t.  Especially in a state like South Carolina where there is a large rural, senior, and minority population mitigating circumstances prevent many of those people from being able to receive the documentation needed from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

As a result, the Justice Department in a letter by Attorney General Thomas Perez, addressed their reasons for repealing the decision by the state.  Perez, points to reasons that many critics of the recent photo id legislation point to.  He says “although the state has a legitimate interest in preventing voter fraud and safeguarding voter confidence,” it didn’t provide “any evidence or instance of either in-person voter impersonation or any other type of fraud that is not already addressed by the state’s existing voter identification requirement. ”  Further, he detailed the discriminatory practice that this law can instill during the elections saying “The voting change must be measured against the benchmark practice to determine whether it would “lead to retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.”  Later in his letter to the South Carolina legislature he points to the numbers that suggest “when dis-segregated by race, the state’s data show that 8.4% of white registered voters lacked any form of DMV issued photo id, as compared to 10% of non-white registered voters.”  The numbers substantiate Mr. Perez’s claims, the Brennan Center of Justice at the NYU Law School report that:

“The impact of ID requirements is even greater for the elderly, students, people with disabilities, low-income individuals, and people of color. Thirty-six percent of Georgians over 75 do not have a driver’s license. Fewer than 3 percent of Wisconsin students have driver’s licenses listing their current address. The same study found that African Americans have driver’s licenses at half the rate of whites, and the disparity increases among younger voters; only 22% of black men aged 18-24 had a valid driver’s license. Not only are minority voters less likely to possess photo ID, but they are also more likely than white voters to be selectively asked for ID at the polls. For example, in New York City, which has no ID requirement, a study showed that poll workers illegally asked one in six Asian Americans for ID at the polls, while white voters were permitted to vote without showing ID.”

Even with the numbers suggesting one course of action a substantial majority of states have some requirements to possess identification at the poll.  Wisconsin still has pending legislation after a District Judge put out an injunction stating “[the law] is unambiguous, and means exactly what it says.  It creates both necessary and sufficient requirements for qualified voters.  Every United States citizen 18 years of age or older who resides in an election district in Wisconsin is a qualified elector in that district.”  Other states are still awaiting affirmation that their legislation does not violate section five of the Voting Rights Act.  Even with the legal challenges to the legislation, the question remains as to what the effect of this legislation will be.

Given how recent the bills have been, evidence of a depressed turnout are still largely insufficient for many of the courts as evidenced in the ruling in Indiana.  However, a Harvard University study found that

“people in photo ID states were 2.9% less likely to have voted than people in states without an ID requirement. A larger negative effect existed for less educated voters (5.1%) and racial minorities (6–10 %).A California Institute of Technology study expanded upon the EAC study by using survey data from four general elections: 2000,2002, 2004, and 2006. The study found a significant negative relationship between more stringent ID laws and voting and a stronger negative effect on less educated and low-income voters.”

Supporters of the new stringent identification laws are clamoring for further investigation into cases of voter identification fraud.   A recent report published by the Republican National Lawyers Association found 311 cases of proven fraud, but this data goes as far back as 1997.  In Minnesota, the organization Minnesota Majority found 113 cases of voter fraud in 2008 alone.   Minnesota Public Radio further investigated that report and found “Minnesota Majority’s estimate that 113 people have been convicted of voter fraud may be in the ballpark, though a precise number is elusive.”  Florida, another state seeking to enact stricter identification laws, has questioned local election supervisors about an alleged 2,600 people registered to vote that are not actually eligible.    In this report, an astounding 53,000 people were still registered even though they are deceased.  However, these numbers are highly questionable and other sites have reported astoundingly different results.  Politifact, a site dedicated to evaluating political statements, reported only a relatively miniscule 49 cases of voter fraud in the last four elections.

Even if the question of suppressed turnout is answered, the overarching presupposition is whether it is just to enhance voter identification requirements in order to provide with greater certainty election results that are comprised of eligible voters.  The comparisons to a poll tax from an assortment of Democratic leaders only enhance what has clearly become a highly partisan issue.

In the graph below, in states that as of 2010 have a Republican legislature outnumber Democratic 18-2 in requiring some form of photo identification to be shown at the polls.

Democratic states have responded in an assortment of ways to combat the stricter voter registration laws.  California has passed a bill to allow online voter registration.  In this way, they are hoping to eliminate the necessity of getting to the DMV, especially for those that do not have or do not need Driver’s Licenses.  Illinois has responded as well by introducing legislation that makes it easier to receive a voter registration card.

The battle will continue in both state legislatures and in the courts as to how to proceed on an issue clearly split along party lines.  The rhetorical devices used in how to best categorize what amounts to fair voting practices will remain a point of contention.  Both sides’ evidence suggests that in some form or another, a clearer and less complicated system for voter registration will have to be established.  Considering how new these laws are, it will definitely be interesting to see their effects in the upcoming elections.

We serve people from the whole political spectrum and take no official position on any issue, except to support government transparency initiatives at both the state and federal level. We strongly believe there are smart people out there with good ideas, and the more people who participate in the process the better.