Wisconsin legal observers were “surprised last week when Madison-based judge Maryann Sumi issued a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of Gov. Scott Walker’s bill to limit public-sector collective bargaining.” A law professor was “astonished” by the legally-baseless ruling, which didn’t even bother to “address the relevant laws and rules that demonstrate that what the legislature did was proper.”
The judge’s decision made no legal or logical sense, but did make political sense: the judge has to run for reelection in a liberal area, and her own son was a union organizer. Her son is a liberal political operative who also happens to be a former lead field manager with the AFL-CIO and data manager for the SEIU State Council. Moreover, the judge’s husband is a campaign donor to three of the Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to block the passage of the collective bargaining law, as well as a donor to Gov. Walker’s opponent.
Judges in Wisconsin have to run for reelection, and this judge is elected in liberal Dane County, where the new collective bargaining law was resoundingly unpopular, and the new governor lost by a wide margin even while winning easily statewide.
There was little legal basis for the judge’s ruling. The Senate Chief Clerk and non-partisan legislative attorneys signed off on the legislation being consistent with the open-meetings law.
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In the latest example of big government run amok, several politicians think they ought to be in charge of which applications you should be able to install on your smartphone.
On March 22, four U.S. Senators sent a letter to Apple, Google, and Research in Motion urging the companies to disable access to mobile device applications that enable users to locate DUI checkpoints in real time. Unsurprisingly, in their zeal to score political points, the Senators — Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Frank Lautenberg, and Tom Udall — got it dead wrong.
Had the Senators done some basic fact-checking before firing off their missive, they would have realized that these apps actually enhance the effectiveness of DUI checkpoints while reducing their intrusiveness. And had the Senators glanced at the Constitution — you know, that document they swore an oath to support and defend — they would have seen that sobriety checkpoint apps are almost certainly protected by the First Amendment.
While Apple has stayed mum on the issue so far, Research in Motion quickly yanked the apps in question. This is understandable; perhaps RIM doesn’t wish to incur the wrath of powerful politicians who are notorious for making a public spectacle of going after companies that have the temerity to stand up for what is right.
Google has refused to pull the DUI checkpoint finder apps from the Android app store, reports Digital Trends. Google’s steadfastness on this matter reflects well on its stated commitment to free expression and openness. Not that Google’s track record is perfect on this front — like all firms, it’s made mistakes from time to time — but it’s certainly a cut above several of its competitors in the defending Internet freedom.
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The Congressional Budget Office reported last week that the Obama administration understated budget deficits “by more than $2.3 trillion over the upcoming decade,” and that “if Obama’s February budget submission is enacted into law it would produce deficits totaling $9.5 trillion over 10 years — an average of almost $1 trillion a year.” President Obama objects to even a tiny two percent cut in the federal budget, submitting a self-indulgent, smoke-and-mirrors budget that would actually increase spending even faster than previously proposed for 2012.
Obama’s record deficit spending is based on the notion — contrary to all evidence — that if the government increases spending, that spending will more than pay for itself through increased economic growth. (Never mind that Canada’s economy boomed after it slashed government spending in the 1990’s, and America experienced an “economic boom” after our government slashed spending in 1946.)
For example, even though “federal education spending has gone through the roof” in recent years, Obama has called for big increases in education spending, saying that “the best economic policy is one that produces more college graduates.” But dumping more money on colleges won’t spur economic growth.
Jacking up college attendance rates further just results in the presence of bored, unmotivated students who are not interested in learning, and only go to college to get a diploma, while spawning an economically-destructive “arms race” over who can acquire the most unnecessary credentials. Already, “36%” of “the nation’s undergraduates” learn “little” or nothing after four years of college, according to a study cited by USA Today. Many of their professors didn’t even try to teach them much: “32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”
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CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.
CEI Weekly
March 25, 2011
>>Featured Story
In the tragic aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the American media outlets has focused almost exclusively on what’s happening to Japanese nuclear power plants. On Fox Business this week, Chris Horner argued that while the Japanese crisis certainly demands immediate attention, the global community should be careful not to let their current fears about nuclear disaster dictate future energy policy. Watch the interview here.
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Tech:
Google Holds Honeycomb Tight:
“Open-source purists often contend that projects should be developed from the ground up, in front of the public, with people free to pick and choose the code they want, when they want it. This is the model Intel (INTC) has backed with its open-source rival to Android, called MeeGo.”
Nortel, in bankruptcy, sells IPv4 address block for $7.5 million:
“Wake up call for our friends in the Regional Internet Registries. Nortel, the Canadian telecommunications equipment manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009, has succeeded in making its legacy IPv4 address block an asset that can be sold to generate money for its creditors. The March 23 edition of the Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Report has reported that Nortel’s block of 666,624 IPv4′s was sold for $7.5 million – a price of $11.25 per IP address. The buyer of the addresses was Microsoft. More information is in its filing in a Delware bankruptcy court. Now the interesting question becomes, does the price of IPv4s go up or down from here? As the realities of dual stack sink in, I’m betting…up.”
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The topic of bullying is in vogue, and President Obama is taking advantage of that: “President Barack Obama has acknowledged he was taunted as a child over his big ears and unusual name, as he opened a White House summit on preventing bullying” a few days ago. Meanwhile, administration officials are trying to stretch the federal law against sex discrimination, Title IX, to outlaw bullying aimed at gay and lesbian youth, although the Administration has no statutory basis for doing so.
In essence, as I explain over at Minding the Campus, they have invented a federal law against the bullying of gay youth, although Congress has yet to pass a ban on either homophobia or bullying. To do this, they have so stretched the definition of sexual harassment as to create a serious conflict with the First Amendment and federal court rulings, as I explain in greater detail at this link.
Federal law doesn’t ban bullying as such — that is a matter addressed by state law. All states ban assault and battery, and some states have laws specifically aimed at bullying in the schools.
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Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin could not have foreseen how his Budget Reform Bill may backfire and contribute to larger pension liabilities. A structural issue that causes increased pension liabilities and deficits for states is early retirement of state and local employees. The Wall Street Journal article published today, “Public Employees Rush to Retire,” plays it off as government savings and only a loss of expertise in state employees. This is not the case.
A significant reform of Gov. Walker’s budget bill was an increase in employee contribution toward their pension and benefits. The notable increase in state employees applying for retirement in Wisconsin negates a primary cost-saving measure of the bill. From “Public Employees Rush to Retire”:
3,362 people have applied to retire this year, a 73% jump from last year. And 10,975 people since the beginning of the year have taken the first step toward retirement—flooding the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds with requests for estimates of their potential benefits. That’s up 134%.
According to a Pew study, “The Trillion Dollar Gap,” states normally are ill prepared for this kind of increase in retirement and have not invested sufficient funds to pay for the unexpected pension obligations.
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Last month I penned an article for BigGovernment.com in which I asserted that some large alcohol producers were in favor of the nutritional label mandate that TTB, the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, has been considering. As a follow-up, I interviewed Guy Smith, the executive vice president of Diageo, perhaps the leading producer of alcoholic drinks throughout the world (they make beverages such as Guinness, Smirnoff, Jose Cuervo, and many others) to get their perspective on the prospective mandate. The article, “Voluntary Nutritional Labeling on Alcohol Is the Best Recipe,” appeared on BigGovernment earlier this week.
While Diageo and other alcohol beverage manufacturers strongly support the idea of allowing nutritional data to appear on bottles, they currently support doing so on a voluntary basis. “Let the marketplace decide. If companies don’t think their consumers want labels then don’t have labels, but don’t prevent us from telling our consumers what’s in our products,” said Diageo Executive Vice President Guy Smith.
Smith explained to me that Diageo has actually been petitioning TTB for many years to allow them to have labels which include nutritional data about their drinks — but TTB has refused their requests.
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