Winners and Losers: Boehner's Retirement

John Boehner, Speaker of the House and third in line for the Presidency, just announced he would be retiring at the end of October.  This surprising decision will have repercussion that may seriously affect the 2016 Presidential election.  There are still a lot of moving parts but here is my early take on the winners and losers of Boehner’s announcement.

John Boehner – Winner

There is something to be said about going out on top.  Perhaps Boehner took a cue from another famous John, Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway.  In his 14^th season in the NFL and his 4^th Super Bowl appearance Elway finally got his ring, he came back for one more Super Bowl championship then retired on top.  By leaving office now, Boehner avoids the potential embarrassment of losing his speakership to another Republican.  Boehner held on to the top spot in the House after the last election by the smallest margin in speakership history, he has been vilified by the ideologues in his party and there is no guarantee he could have held the post through another election.  As it stands, however, Boehner cannot be called anything but a great success.  His announcement comes at the heels of an accomplishment two decades in the making, a Papal address to a joint session of Congress.  As a proud Catholic, this must feel like one of Boehner’s greatest achievements.  More importantly, though, Boehner leaves office with the strongest Republican majority in the House of Representatives during the modern era.  He now has the option to go make buckets of money as a lobbyist or to retire comfortably to his recently purchased Florida property.  I don’t know if he has any intention of running for office in the future, but the inevitable GOP inter-party train wreck might make Boehner an appealing Presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024.

President Obama – Loser

Obama and Boehner have had a rocky relationship to say the least.  But there is little doubt that Boehner’s replacement will be more conservative and principled than he was.  The conservative faction of the GOP has been itching to replace the pragmatic institutionalist and they are now likely to get their way.  There is still a great question as to who will replace Boehner, but in all likelihood his replacement will be more combative towards the President.  My guess is that we will see another government shutdown before the end of Obama’s term.  During the last fight Obama spent a lot of time using his bully pulpit to argue against this tactic and he is likely going to have to do that again.  This means less time to work on the rest of Obama’s lame duck agenda.

Conservative Republicans – Winners

Boehner’s announcement coincided with the Value Voter Summit in Washington D.C., a conservative conference that attracted many GOP Presidential hopefuls.  Marco Rubio was the speaker who got to break the news to the crowd who enthusiastically cheered for the departure of the highest-ranking Republican.  While Rubio was tempered with his remarks, saying only that it was time for “a new generation of leadership in this country,” others were not so tepid.  Ted Cruz claimed Boehner had joined the “Democrats to implement all of President Obama’s priorities” and that this is “not the behavior one would expect of a Republican speaker of the House.”  The GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump, said, “We want to see… people that are going to get it done,” indicating he did not approve of the job Boehner had done.  This is all coming just two months after North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows offered a motion to vacate the chair, a move that would have stripped Boehner of his speakership had it prevailed.  Now that Boehner has decided to retire, it is quite likely that the GOP will elect a candidate that is less pragmatic and more conservative.  The ‘just say no’ caucus will finally have their chance to lead.

Conservative Republicans – Losers

Having a chance to lead is about the worst thing that can happen to this caucus.  They function best as outsiders causing a ruckus and complaining about leadership in Washington.  I don’t know that any of the truly conservative members will actually want to be in Boehner’s position.  They are relatively safe in their conservative districts.  They have been safe to vote no on everything knowing that the moderate Republicans will fall on their swords by working with Democrats to keep the government running.  If the conservative caucus really does win the speakership they are either going to have to capitulate now and then, an unforgivable sin within their group, or they are going to cause irreparable damage to the Republican party and potentially be viewed in the future as the cause of the second President Clinton.  This is a lose-lose situation for any member of the conservative caucus looking to take over the speakership.

Hillary Clinton – Winner

This is assuming that she holds onto her lead and wins the Democratic nomination for President in 2016.  I think it is quite likely that the conservatives will push through a less pragmatic Republican as next speaker of the House (even if not the most conservative) and s/he will have to repay that favor by letting them have their government shutdown.  This is good for the conservative Representative drawn into safe districts, but it is also good for Clinton.  Government shutdowns are not popular and Republicans will be the ones to take the blame.  This gives Hillary the chance to make the election a referendum on Congress, a much better option than a referendum on Obama.  If the House GOP goes wild, Hillary’s chances just went up.

The Republican Party – Loser

With or without John Boehner the GOP was likely to lose seats in both houses of Congress in 2016.  In the House, Democrats always do better during Presidential elections rather than Midterms; this advantage was likely to earn them a few seats, though far from a majority.  In the Senate, Republicans have a lot more vulnerable seats than the Democrats; this is because this is the first re-election campaign for Republican Senators who took over traditional Democratic seats during the GOP wave of 2010.  Whether the Democrats win enough seats to take over the Senate is still up in the air, but it is likely they will increase their numbers.  Now, say what you will about John Boehner, but he helped the Republican Party win more seats than anyone would have predicted in 2008.  I think it is inevitable that the next Speaker will have to appease the conservative caucus, and this will hurt the Republican Party in the 2016 election.

Government Workers - Winners (for now)

John Boehner’s resignation effectively ends the imminent threat of a government shutdown.  Without fear of political backlash, Boehner can now push through a funding bill that will keep the government opening at least until December.  Boehner will have to rely on Democrats to pass the bill, but there is no way he wants his last action as Speaker to be a government shutdown.  This means that all the ‘non-essential’ government employees who would otherwise stop working andstop getting paid will continue to work.  The question now, is for how long?

Fixing the Primary Debate

The second Republican presidential primary debate is tonight and it is going to be terrible.  I’m comfortable making that claim even without consideration of the candidates themselves, the moderators, the questions, or the fact that Trump will be there.  My criticism is with the format itself.  It does not serve our democracy well, it does not serve the candidates well and it is always a bore.  I’d like to propose a different format that would go a long way towards fixing the primary debate process, but first lets take a look at what exactly is wrong with the status quo.

1)   It is undemocratic

The GOP has allowed the networks that are hosting the debates to determine the format and so far both the first two debates decided to cut down on the extraordinarily large field.  There are 17 legitimate and (arguably) qualified candidates running for the GOP nomination, that is, if we continue to count Rick Perry.  Yet the first debate only invited 10 candidates and the second had to (arbitrarily) change the rules to allow 11 so that Carly Fiorina could join the other 10 men onstage.  It should be noted that, even though they are doing poorly in the polls, these are legitimate candidates with bona fide resumes.  Even if we exclude the longest serving Governor of the largest red state (Rick Perry) the first GOP debate excluded the three-term former Governor of blue state New York (George Pataki), the former Governor of swing state Virginia (Jim Gilmore), the sitting Governor of Louisiana (Bobby Jindal), the senior South Carolina Senator and U.S. Air Force Colonel (Lindsey Graham), the former head of Hewlett Packard and the only women in the field (Carly Fiorina) and the former Pennsylvania Senator and man who came in second in the 2012 GOP primary (Rick Santorum).  For everyone but Carly Fiorina this has largely meant the beginning of the end for these presidential candidates.  This has, rightly, been criticized for usurping the power of the voters many months before the first primary voter has cast their first ballot.  The networks have used National poll numbers to eliminate about 1/3 of the GOP field at a time when national poll numbers mean virtually nothing.

2)   It is useless

Debates are supposed to be the chance for the public to finally get to hear the candidate’s vision for the future of America.  After months (sometimes years) of being stuck in the sound byte world, the people who want to lead the most powerful nation on earth finally have a chance to provide details about their plans for our country.  Anybody who has ever watched a primary debate knows that that is not even close to reality.  Primary debates are not a break from sound byte politics; they are relatively uninterrupted sound byte politics, live.  Let’s take a look at the first debate for the stats.  Trump led the field with 11 minutes and 14 seconds of airtime… I’m going to let that sink in.  The most anyone had to make their case for why they should be President of the United States was less than 12 minutes, that’s how long you get for group discussion the week your teacher didn’t really put a lot into lesson planning.  From there it gets worse.  Only Trump and Bush had over 7 minutes of airtime and two candidates (Walker and Paul) never had a single response that lasted even one minute.  If you are looking for substantive policy debates, don’t look to the debates.

3)   It is unhelpful

Perhaps I should take a step back.  I have been under the assumption that the debates were supposed to be for the people to see the candidates vying for president.  Maybe I am wrong, maybe it is a chance for the party to weed out bad candidates and to prepare the candidate that emerges for the general election.  At this stage in the game the party is not beholden to the general public, maybe it is not in their best interest to have their candidates going into detail about their plans, especially while trying to appeal to the GOP primary constituency.  Okay I suppose that is fair, but is this really the format you would choose.  It seems awfully risky to let network moderators ask “gotcha” questions having your candidates look uninformed out there.  Wouldn’t it be better to have the candidates go out there making prepared statements on pre-determined topics?  And if the goal is to prepare your candidates for the general election debates, doesn’t it make more sense to have them go one on one against each other, like they will against the eventual Democratic nominee?  If this is really about showcasing the GOP options and preparing them for the general election, are you sure this debate format is helpful?

4)   It is boring

Seriously, if not for Donald Trump only political junkies would watch the early primary debates.  The people who are going to tune in are the ones who are forwarding e-mails, putting up yard signs, making calls, and registering people to vote.  These debates have no appeal beyond those who are already intimately tied to politics.  If your goal is to reach new voters you need an approach that is even mildly entertaining.  Why are they boring?  For starters, they are all the same.  There are a bunch of men (and a woman) standing around a semi-circle at lecterns answering questions under (sort-of) strict time constraints.  That’s pretty much it, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen all 12.  There is also no audience participation, would American Idol have been as popular if there were just a bunch of people who got to go on stage once a week and nobody was ever kicked off and there was no voting and there were no challenges and we eventually just decided who won based on lifetime record sales?  Of course not, that would be a terrible show.  Which brings me to the final reason nobody cares about the primary debates, nobody wins or loses.  If you want to know who won the first GOP debate too bad, there is literally no way to know.  If you want people to care you have to let them crush people’s dreams, that’s the American way.

By now I hope we can all agree that the current primary debate format is terrible.  This is true for the candidates, the party, the public and our democracy.  Fortunately, there is a better way.  Because of the GOP’s uniquely large field they could, for the first time ever, host the: 2016 GOP Presidential Primary Tournament of Champions.  Think about it, nobody cares about college basketball… until March Madness.  The GOP could steal their playbook and completely change the way primary debates work, and it would be so much better.  Nobody would have to be excluded, the candidates would be given enough and equal time to lay out their plans for the future of our country, the candidates would have practice in a head to head debate format, and people who would never watch a normal primary debate would tune in to see how their bracket was holding up.  It is a win, win, win-win situation.  

            Here is how it works.  You use poll numbers (or favorability ratings) to seed the candidates one through 16 (or 17 if Perry still want to play).  Then you have them compete in Lincoln-Douglass style debates once a week.  The entire field would compete the same night and the whole process would take 4 hours each week.  The first week there would be eight 30-minute debates, the first candidate would speak for 10 minutes, the second would speak for 15 minutes and then the first would have 5 minutes of rebuttal.  Over the course of the week registered voters would have a chance to “vote” for their favorite candidates and those who received the most votes would move on to the next round.  Ideally there would be some kind of results show with telegenic host.  Each week the candidate advances would be monumental because it would add a significant amount of airtime they would receive.  The second round of debates would have half the field and so the debate times would be doubled.  Each week there could be a new topic so the candidates would need to be well versed on the economy, foreign policy, national security, etc.  The final debate would be a true Lincoln-Douglass debate with the candidates splitting 3 hours of airtime, a unique opportunity to present their case for the future of this great nation. 

Since you are still reading I’m going to assume that you think this sounds as awesome as I do, so lets get down to brass tax.  If we want to convince the GOP this is a good idea we need to start generating excitement for it.  I think the best way to do that is to start a #GOPBracket trend.  There are two different ways to the candidates for this tournament.  We could use either poll numbers or net-favorability ratings.  I think both are important predictors and have devised a means to incorporate both into my seeding mechanism.  I have used the Public Policy Polling poll released September 1^st as a guide for my seeding.  The numbers may have changed since then but the details don’t particularly matter since no one is being unfairly excluded.  To figure out the seeding I ranked the candidates from 1-17 based on poll numbers and again based on net-favorability.  I then added the numbers of the place they got in each category and seeded them based on who got the lowest number.  For example, Ben Carson came in second in the polling and first in net-favorability so he had the lowest score with three (2+1=3).  Jeb Bush came in third in the poll but 11^th in net-favorability so his combined score of 14 (11+3) earned him the number 6 seed.  Here is how the whole bracket worked out:

Here is how the candidates were seeded:

1)   Ben Carson

2)   Donald Trump

3)   Carly Fiorina

4)   Marco Rubio

5)   Ted Cruz

6)   Jeb Bush

7)   Scott Walker

8)   Mike Huckabee

9)   John Kasich

10) Rick Santorum

11) Rick Perry

12) Bobby Jindal

13)  Jim Gilmore

14)  Chris Christie

15) Rand Paul

16) George Pataki

17) Lindsey Graham

For the record, here is how I’d fill out my #GOPBracket

Actually Yes, Your Vote Does Matter

It seems like you only have to defend voting from the pernicious attacks of statistical improbability in early democratizing countries like America.  Ask anyone in a new democracy if voting matters and you won't find the same apathetic disinterest that you find here.  On the eve of a midterm election here in America, where voting is usually dismal even when compared to the relatively modest turnout levels of Presidential elections, it seems especially important to defend the most fundamental component of our democracy.

There is a well known paradox within the Political Science literature that questions the efficacy of voting.  I thought I was going to have to explain this argument in my post but, as it turns out, I woke up and found an article by Steven E. Landsburg of Slate.com that perfectly summarizes its main point.  This argument comes from the rational choice school of thought that seeks to scrutinize every individual's decision with a personal cost-benefit analysis.  In this particular case the cost (that is, the time and energy needed to go to the polls to vote and to educate yourself so you make an informed decision) is always outweighed by the benefit (that is the likelihood that your individual vote will be the decisive one).  Since very few, if any, major elections are decided by a single vote, your vote doesn't matter and you might as well stay home (or go to work) on election day.  As Landburg puts it, "Instead of waiting in line to vote, you could wait in line to buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win $100 million and use it to advance your causes - and all with an almost indescribably greater chance of success than you'd have in the voting booth."

Is he right? Is voting obsolete?  Not even this argument would make such a bold statement.  He points to the 2000 election in Florida where the official count gave Bush a 537 vote win and, in turn, a victory in the Electoral College and the Presidency.  This argument is not that voting itself is irrelevant, it is that a single vote is irrelevant.  If one more person showed up in this election (an managed to vote properly and have it counted properly, a big if indeed) then the total would have been either 536 or 538 vote margin for Bush, which would not have changed the outcome.  So why vote?  There is something sinister going on with this argument.

Any high school dropout could tell you that the odds that a single vote would be decisive in a critical election with a large voting population is slim to nil.  When someone presents me with this argument I always respond by asking them to imagine a hypothetical scenario, let me lay it out for you now.  Imagine that you live in a state where electoral law forbids candidates from identifying themselves by party on the ballot.  Imagine further that they only use the first letter of the first name plus the last name of the candidate so that you are't biased by gender preferences (something we might like to consider).  Now lets assume that you have no information heading into the polling booth and you are presented with two candidates, J. Anderson and K. Anderson, and the only information you are given is that they are both small business owners.  You have no information to decide which candidate shares your interests and no criteria to decide who you should vote for.  Should you vote?  Many people would say that you should abstain but I believe that the answer is a definite yes.  You absolutely should vote and the reason why goes a long way toward explaining why you should also vote even knowing that a single vote never matters.

Are you a woman? Are you a young  voter? Are you middle class? Do you believe in God? If so, do you attend church regularly, which congregation? Do you have a college degree? Are you or were you ever in the military? Do you have any kids? Are you married, divorced, single, widowed? Do you have a car or do you use public transportation? Did you go to public school or private school?  There are a million questions I can ask you here and to each of them you have a definite response.  All of these questions and more define who you are, and many of them are shared with others like you.  There is nobody exactly like you but there are many people who share some of these characteristics.  When the polls close on election night the real magic happens.  Statisticians begin to work out the answer to a very critical question, who votes?  They break the answer down along all of these dimensions and they figure out who helped get candidate "X" elected.  If your group, people who share certain parts of your identity, votes in large numbers it is more likely that the politician will prioritize issues that are important to that group.  Far more likely is that your group does not vote and you will be ignored on the legislative agenda.  If you ask why insurance providers cover Viagra but not birth control the answer is that old people vote and young people don't.  Your vote doesn't matter, but your identity does.  Even in the hypothetical example I detailed above you should vote, its 50-50 that you will actually vote for the candidate that actually supports your interests better, but its 100% certain that they will recognize that a young, single, African American woman, with a child and no college degree showed up to vote.

Let's get back on track here.  Landburg is talking about single votes not whether whole groups decide to show up on election day or not.  The problem is that his argument is more convincing for certain groups, even if they haven't heard it laid out so starkly.  Young people, poor people, and minorities are far more likely to buy into this argument.  This fact systematically biases the electoral outcome because whole demographics are purposefully abstaining from voting.  Let me offer one last example to help prove my point.  Hispanics are far less partisan than African Americans who overwhelmingly vote Democratic.  Hispanics lean Democratic but not to the same extent as African Americans.  Let us imagine a Senatorial election in Texas where Hispanics split 50-50 between the Democrats and the Republicans.  If this is the case then it would make no difference whether 10% or 90% of Hispanics turned out right?  Wrong.  Hispanics might be split between the two parties because each voter is pressed with a variety of issues that they deem important and some give more weight to one over another.  Here you can be sure that if 90% of Hispanics showed up to vote in Texas that whoever was elected, Democrat of Republican, would prioritize any issue that united the Hispanic voting bloc and might influence future elections.  This incumbent, from either party, would be far more likely to push for and support comprehensive immigration reform because they know that their future electoral success would be dependent on the support of the Hispanic community.  Votes have consequences that extend far beyond the specific election in which the ballot is cast.  They help set the agenda, they influence voting behavior, and they tell politicians that you are paying attention and are willing to hold them accountable if they don't press your interests when they are in power.  So yes, your vote does matter, even though you will never cast the deciding vote.

Defending the Electoral College?!?

Let's face it, the Electoral College is ridiculous.  For those who don't know what I'm talking about (i.e. foreign readers) it is the actual election that determines the President of the United States.  Every four years Americans across the country show up in mediocre numbers to cast a meaningless ballot for one of two pre-selected candidates (technically there are usually more than two people on the ballot).  Each of the 50 states in the union get to determine the specific rules for how and when and (to an unreasonably large extent) who gets to vote.  Then they count the ballots and whoever gets the most votes receives all of the Electoral College votes from that state (with two exceptions).  This winner-take-all system means that a candidate who wins by even a single vote or even a few hundred (out of potentially millions) gets all of the votes from that state.  

Votes from that state? This might seem odd to anyone not already familiar with this archaic system.  Instead of counting all the votes across the country and giving the election to whomever receives the most, we allocate a certain amount of Electoral College votes to each state who then select delegates to vote on behalf of the citizens of their state.  The worst part is that it isn't really proportional to the number of people in each state, it is determined by the number of representatives from each state in both the House of Representatives (lower chamber) and Senate (upper chamber).  The members of the House are roughly proportional to the population but this number is skewed since each state (regardless of population) receives 2 representatives in the Senate.  This means that the distribution of political power is skewed towards the least populous states and away from the most populous.  For example, Wyoming receives 3 Electoral College votes for their roughly 582,000 residents while California receives 55 votes for a population of 38.33 million.  That means that it takes less than 200,000 people to received an electoral vote in Wyoming but almost 700,000 voters in California to receive an electoral vote.  Clearly, the power of the Wyoming voter is enhanced related to that of California.

Anyone unfamiliar with this system will find what I just wrote surprising and confusing.  To be honest, I had a hard time even trying to explain the system in words.  I'm not sure I would really defend this system if given the opportunity to change it.  Nevertheless I tried to make just such a case in a response paper I wrote on Sanford Levinson's Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It).  I have attached the brief portion of the paper where I discuss the Electoral College system.  I have developed the idea further elsewhere, (and I am not the only one who has made a similar argument) but this brief snippet can clearly express the gist of the argument.  Are you convinced?

"Switching to a popular vote for President would advantage dense urban areas, especially in populous states, over rural low population states.  In a popular vote election for president would any candidate ever fly to campaign in Wyoming or Iowa or would they merely fly from Los Angeles to New York with brief stops in Chicago or Dallas or some other large city?  The real question we should ask about the Electoral College is whether the “important” voters in that system are more representative of the diversity of the country than the “important” voters in a direct election.  In a direct election only urban residents in densely populated cities are “important” while the Electoral College system gives importance to every citizen in swing states.  Even if we hypothesize an election determined solely by the voters of say Ohio, they might be somewhat reasonably representative.  Because so much is riding on every vote in Ohio, every citizen, young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural, male and female of every race and heritage and all religions as well.  So much is riding on so few votes that not even a single vote can be abandoned, but preference will be given to larger groups.  Voters in California and every other state might be abandoned, but rural voters in California might be better represented by this system than even a popular election. "

The argument stresses that the Electoral College encourages presidential candidates  to tend to the concerns of a greater variety of Americans.  It might not be fair, per se, but it might be more representative.  Any thoughts, comment below.

Where to Put the Children?

Niraj Chokshi of the Washington Post ran a story about the position of a variety of State Governors on housing some of the immigrant children flooding into the country.  I'd like to respond to the comments attributed to these Governors, but first a little background is in order.

By now you are probably aware that there is a humanitarian crisis at the border as tens of thousands of Central American children and mothers are entering the United States.  It is estimated that 59,000 children from Central America will cross the border during fiscal year 2014.  The fact that these are children from Central America (Primarily Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador) does matter, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act in 2008 (Both signed by President Bush) makes it so that Mexican children can immediately be turned around and deported but children from elsewhere have to go through immigration proceeding and are not immediately deported.

The political aspect of this sudden surge in child migrants is bitterly caustic.  Democrats are saying this is happening because of the dangers of living in these Central American countries while Republicans are blaming Obama's "amnesty" through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).  Trying to sort out the root cause of this problem is beyond the scope of this article, though I hope to write about that soon.  I should point out, though, that perhaps the most compelling argument about the cause of this crisis comes from Honduran President Juan Hernandez who blames this problem on America's War on Drugs.  Regardless of the cause, however, there is an urgent need to come to some sort of resolution about how to handle the crisis.

Most of these immigrants have been crossing the border in Texas and have overwhelmed the facilities that are intended to handle these migrants.  There have been legitimate concerns about the conditions these children are being housed in and this has led many of them to be led out of Texas to other parts of the country.  This has given anti-immigration activists an opportunity to rally and protests and generally cause problems around the country.  The first story I heard along these lines came out of Murrieta California.  As someone who lives just minutes from that sleepy town you can imagine how this piqued my curiosity.   Two questions immediately came to mind: 1) How can a nation of immigrants act with such disgusting vulgarity towards children, and 2) Where are we going to put these children and who is going to take care of them?

This leads me back to Chokshi's article in the Washington Post.  The article offers little in the way of hope for a compassionate response to this crisis and a great deal of fear that these children will be used as pawns in the political bickering rampant across this country.  Let's look through the comments.

Democratic Governors Peter Shumlin of Vermont and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts both said that they are looking into options for housing some of these children.  Only time will tell if they made an earnest search and were willing to help in this time of great need.

The case in Maryland could be one of the more interesting ones.  Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley (a potential 2016 candidate) warned the Obama administration that sending the children home could have terrible consequences and could be dangerous for the children.  Then resisted a proposed Westminster location for housing some of the migrant children claiming that "it might not be the most inviting environment for the kids."  The experience in Murrieta suggests that he may indeed be right, but it certainly reeks of NIMBYism.  I would suggest that O'Malley is feeling a great deal of pressure to find a more hospitable location ASAP.  If he doesn't accept any of these children he will be seen as feckless and irresponsible.

All the blame can't be cast on O'Malley alone (though I think he sort of brought this on himself).  Democratic Governors in Delaware and Connecticut weren't much help either.  Kack Markell of Delaware claimed the state had no suitable facility while leaving the door open to private organizations to help.  Dan Malloy of Connecticut denied a federal request for a particular site claiming it was too old and decrepit.  Malloy suggested this highlights the need for Congress to act on Comprehensive Immigration Reform and to pass the President's Emergency Supplemental Funding Request.  This sentiment was echoed by John Hickenlooper, Democratic Governor of Colorado, who said there were limited resources for dealing with this problem.

I will admit to being disheartened by the fact that all six Democratic Governors quoted in this article appear to be, at best, completely useless in helping this dire humanitarian crisis.  While I am dismayed by this lack of concerted response, I am outraged by some of the responses from the Republican Governors.  Let's start with the least caustic and work our way down.

Republican Governors Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Scott Walker of Wisconsin make a similar argument, both to each other and to some of their Democratic counterparts.  Essentially, they claim that this is a federal issue and that it shouldn't be up to the states to cover the costs of this problem.  I actually believe this to be a true statement, the terrible irony is that the money that the federal government is looking for to pay for this problem is being blocked by members of their own party.  So we are left with Republican (and Democrat) governors who say that the federal government needs to pay, while republican members of congress balk at appropriating the necessary funding.  This, of course, hurts the Republican state of Texas where Republican Governor Rick Perry ought to be livid.  Instead he took some time to go have a photo shoot with Sean Hannity at the border with a giant gun.  I don't think I'll ever understand these people.  I should note, this isn't a critique of Sandoval or Walker, they are correct in pointing out the federal governments obligations, it is merely a demonstration of a lack of coherency and communication within the Republican party.

Okay, here is where it starts to get bad.  I think I need to stop paraphrasing and move on to direct quotes.  Republican Iowa Governor Terry Branstad is quoted as saying "The first thing we need to do is secure the border" and "I also don't want to send the signal that [you] send your kids to America illegally.  That's not the right message."  First, the children who are coming into this country illegally are not sneaking in across an insecure or porous border.  They are walking across and putting their hands up waving to border agents trying to be flagged down.  They have been told that they will be safe when they get to America and they will be taken care of and allowed to stay.  It is entirely disingenuous to claim that this is happening because of an insecure border.  Besides, how can that be Branstad's "first" priority.  Shouldn't our first priority be to ensure that the children and safe and fed?  Moving on to the messaging bit, we should be clear that we are talking about where we are going to host these children within the United States not where are we going to host them in the world.  It is totally ridiculous to argue that having the children housed in Iowa as opposed to New York or South Dakota or even still in Texas is going to send ANY message to the central american families.  The only way that idea would work is if EVERY state refused to take the migrant children, but that would violate the law passed with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by President Bush.  We have not only a moral obligation but a legal obligation as well.

I feel compelled to point this out as well.  At the protest in Murrieta many of the protesters argued for immediate deportation.  This appears to be the argument that Branstad is making, that the best way to deal with this situation is to violate the law and immediately send the children back.  I just can't help but laugh at the irony that this is exactly the same thing that Republicans are suing the president over right now.  They wanted to delay (and repeal) the Affordable Care Act and after Obama did that, they sued him for failing to follow the letter of the law and essentially for crafting his own laws.  Now they are doing this again, "Please Mr. President ignore the dutifully passed laws of our nation and deport these children immediately so that we don't have to deal with them… Then if you do we'll sue you for overreaching on presidential authority."

Last but certainly not least is Republican Governor of Oklahoma Mary Fallin.  She is quoted as saying "Many of our public schools are already at capacity and need additional funding…Our healthcare system is strained as it is.  Now, instead of allowing us to address those needs for Oklahomans, President Obama is forcing us to add an unspecified number of illegal immigrants to our public education and public health systems."  I already covered the cost aspect of this problem above so I'll ignore that here.  What is amazing about this comment is that there is no plan for what to do about the migrant children.  Does she want to deport them?  Does she want any state but Oklahoma to have to take them?  There is clearly no plan here, it is pure and simple "not my children not my problem."  Even this total disregard for the problem is not the worst part of this statement, it is the idea that Obama has been too focused on the immigration crisis to deal with the problems of "real" Americans.  This coming from the lady who refuses to accept Federal money to insure over 200,000 Oklahoman adults through medicaid expansion.  The gall to claim that a strained healthcare system is the cause to not provide care for children when she is personally responsible for refusing federal funding to insure her most vulnerable constituents is incomprehensible.  This logic is beyond reason and beyond further comment.

Blaming Environmentalists for CA Drought Costs?

I almost let this article slide by without comment, but I just couldn't do it.  This opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal makes an argument that environmentalists are to be blamed for some of the consequences for the ongoing drought in California.  As a Californian myself I can tell you that it is certainly a serious problem.  Not only can I not even remember the last time it rained out here, it has also been blisteringly hot.  Without any water we can't do any farming; this is not just bad for Californians its bad for everyone.

Allysia Finley who wrote the piece claims that half a million acres of farmland have been left fallow, that fruit and vegetable prices will rise by 5-6% and that "the average American family will spend about $500 more on food this year" from the drought in California.  This concern is legitimate, especially since rising food costs hit low-income American's hardest.  Couple that with the economic impact it will have on farming communities and indeed the whole state economy in California and we are certainly going to suffer some real consequences.  These problems don't particularly seem to concern Allysia though, she only seems particularly concerned with the actions of environmentalists.

She is all riled up about the fact that the state "flushed" about 1,250,000 acre-feet of water into the San Francisco Bay since last winter.  This outrage is logical since that amount of water would have been sufficient to irrigate more than all the fallowed farmland this year.  Why would the state dump all this precious water into the bay?  To save the delta Smelt, a three inch fish that humans don't even eat.  Can you believe this outrage! Let's blame the environmentalists for trying to protect this endangered fish!  Nevermind that this fish is a critical component of an ecosystem that needs protecting and which humans benefit.  There is no need to concern ourselves with an endangered fish when there is a shortage of water for agriculture, how dare they save the fish!

I'm only being modestly hyperbolic of her rhetoric, she called the decision "insane water rationing" and said "Californians already pay dearly for their government's green sanctimony… Maybe the feds have decided that the rest of the country should pay their fair share, too."  To be honest, that would actually be pretty nice.  Since environmental degradation is a collective action dilemma we should all have to share in the burden of resolving this very real and very serious problem.  That is, however, beside the point.  The point I wish to make is far simpler than that, you ready?  Okay, here we go.

There are much simpler, more economical, and longer lasting solution than letting this critical fish species become extinct.

Unbelievable right? With just 10 minutes on the internet I found a better solution that, having not been implemented, makes for actual justifiable anger.  Having been raised in Southern California I was taught that this land is actually a desert (or semi-desert).  Yet if you drive around here you would never know it, the cities are green as far as the eye can see.  Admittedly it does make for a more beautiful area, but at what cost?  My ire is particularly profound when I drive around and see the sea of green lawns in front of every house for as far as the eye can see.  This got me thinking, how much water do we waste on watering the most useless plant we could grow?  It turns out that that information is not particularly difficult to infer.

California residents actually use only about 10% of the state's water, most goes to the 29 million acres of agriculture with the remaining 5-10% going to industry.  Let's just focus on that 10% that households use.  Studies indicate that more than half of that water is used for landscaping and other outdoor uses (there isn't a specific breakdown for lawns).  This means that of the 8,700,000 acre-feet of water used for residential property about 4,611,000 acre-feet is used outdoors (53%).  Keep in mind that the total amount of water used to save the endangered fish was 1,245,000 acre-feet.  That means that the amount of water that was "dumped" with the "insane water rationing" was only 27% of what California residents spend on landscaping.  If we cut the amount of water we used in just this one area by 1/3 there would be more than enough for the smelt.

If Allysia felt the need to be mad at someone for the rising food costs she could point the finger at all Californians.  Collectively we have been able to conserve a whopping 5% statewide.  Honestly, if you drive around Southern California you wouldn't even know it was a drought.  The sprinklers still spray daily, often overshooting the lawns and dumping tons of water down the drain, or running during the heat of the day when the water isn't even able to be observed by the ground.  So what can you do?  Well environmentalists have long argued for Xeriscaping (landscaping that doesn't require additional water than what is natural).  Beyond that most Southern California residents can get virtually free artificial turf, just having to pay the taxes while the state covers the cost of the turf.  The best part about these solutions… they are permanent.  Sadly, droughts in our great state are only going to become more common and worse as time goes on.  If only we had listened to the environmentalists sooner, some of this damage could (and should) have been mitigated.

Keep in mind that environmentalists are the one group of people who have actually expressed earnest concern for the environment and for resource conservation.  Forgive me, but blaming environmentalists when there is a shortage of any resource is not a particularly thoughtful argument.  It would be nice if there was a genuine concern for climate change rather than finger pointing at the one group of people actively combating it.  Let's leave the politically motivated opinion pieces by the wayside and get to work.