house

What Are Those Old Cats Smokin’?

Doddering Senators Byrd and Warner are reported to be the architects of the agreement that preserved some of the minority’s power to prevent the Senate from fulfilling its duty to advise and consent in judicial nominees. According to the NY Times "They parsed the language of Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper No. 66 in an effort to divine what the founding fathers intended when they gave the Senate the power to advise and consent on nominees. After trading telephone calls over the weekend, they drafted three crucial paragraphs.

The agreement contends that the word "advice" in the paper "speaks to consultation between the Senate and the president with regard to the use of the president's power to make nominations." It goes on to state, "Such a return to the early practices of our government may well serve to reduce the rancor that unfortunately accompanies the advice and consent process in the Senate."

But, if you actually read Federalist Paper 66, you discover the Warner-Byrd agreement's characterization of Hamilton's conclusion is bullshit.

Federalist Paper 66 says, in relevent part: "It will be the office of the President to NOMINATE, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to APPOINT. There will, of course, be no exertion of CHOICE on the part of the Senate. They may defeat one choice of the Executive, and oblige him to make another; but they cannot themselves CHOOSE, they can only ratify or reject the choice of the President. They might even entertain a preference to some other person, at the very moment they were assenting to the one proposed, because there might be no positive ground of opposition to him; and they could not be sure, if they withheld their assent, that the subsequent nomination would fall upon their own favorite, or upon any other person in their estimation more meritorious than the one rejected."

Hamilton isn't talking about "consultation between the Senate and the president with regard to the use of the president's power to make nominations." Consultation implies that the Senate would be involved in the choice of nominees. But, as Hamilton clearly states: "There will, of course, be no exertion of CHOICE on the part of the Senate."

No, he's talking quite plainly about up or down votes. He identifies only two options for the Senate ". . . they can only ratify or reject the choice of the President" Nowhere does he suggest that the Senate might simply refuse to vote by minority use of a rule. That's not suggested as an option any more than "consultation" is an option.

How dumb do these old cats think we are?

Thug life

We may need to rechristen Grouchey Old Senator Tim as "Senator Aesop" for the fables he's spinning.

In The Hill today Grouchey Old Senator Tim spins a couple of brief but tall tales. Despite Minority Leader Reid's recent comments Tim says: “I’ve never heard Reid say that he would shut down the Senate.” Wow. Tim, did you hear Reid say, as The Hill reported - “The majority should not expect to receive cooperation from the minority in the conduct of Senate business,” adding that Democrats would allow passage of legislation “supporting our troops” and keeping the government running but otherwise would not cooperate even on “routine” issues. Did you hear him say that Tim?

Worse, our Tim betrays his ignorance of South Dakota politics and of the judicial nominating process with this gem: “South Dakotans want to see more bipartisanship” and the president has not consulted with Democrats on his selections for the federal bench. Yikes.

Further, Tim has previously said here that ""But where they are highly controversial, I think a 60-vote margin is the proper approach to take."

Tim, here's how advise and consent works. The President (In this case the choice of 60% of South Dakotans.) has the exclusive constitutional authority to nominate federal judges. The Constitution says "he shall nominate". It doesn't say "he, in consultation with the Democrats or anyone else who's in a funk, shall nominate." It simply says, and means, he shall nominate. Once the President nominates a candidate to be a federal judge then "with the Advice and Consent of the Senate" the President "shall appoint" that judge.

Now, the advice and consent of the Senate means you put the nominee to a vote in committee and on the floor. As judicial nominees do not require a supermajority then a majority, 51 votes, is necessary to consent in a judicial nominee. That vote is the point at which you Senator have a chance to put forth the Democrat view on a nominee. The Constitution provides that very specific opportunity. But, here's the rub, thanks to your old running buddy - Little Senator Tom and his successor, you don't get to vote. Because the Democrats are threatening to filibuster appelate court nominees who won't sign on to Roe v. Wade, the Senate is prevented from advising and consenting in the President's nominees.

You know what South Dakotans want to see much more than they want to see bipartisanship Senator? They want to see democracy. They want to see the process work. They want to see the President they supported, or even the one they didn't, have his nominees voted on. They don't want to see the thuggish antics of your party to hold the process hostage. They don't want to see Harry Reid threatening to shut down the Senate. They don't want to see their Senator be ignorant of or dishonest about the judicial nominating process. They don't want to see "bipartisanship" thrown about as a value on a par with honesty, integrity, or law-abiding.

Not only that Senator, most South Dakotans don't view nominees who oppose Roe v. Wade as "highly controversial". They want to see states rights such as those that were stolen by the Roe v. Wade decision preserved to the states. They want to see far greater restrictions on abortions than are currently allowed. An Argus Leader poll last spring showed 63% of South Dakotans want to see abortion outlawed or restriced to cases of rape an incest. Unfortunately, thanks to Roe v.Wade, South Dakotans don't have the freedom to make their view of abortion law.

South Dakotans want to see their views reflected in law. But, thanks to the work of Grouchey Old Senator Tim and his Democrat cronies who would sacrifice democracy on the altar of "bipartisanship" (ie. minority bullying), that day is a long way off.

Ze plane Boss, ze plane!

Mayor Mike has answered the clarion call and he let those airplane logs gooooooooo.

Now the hard work falls to Judy Olson to sort through the records and figure out if the Mayor is using the plane well. 2,800 logs. Yikes.

Judy, what do you make of these?

"Why I could make a hat, or a brooch, a pterodactyl. . . "

No, maybe not.

Hey, I've got it! They can have the kid who wrote the code for the Herseth Hack figure out how to work with all that data. Yeah. He's probably available.

Did she or didn't she?

Only her hairdresser disaffected, Halo T-shirt wearing, Mountain Dew-swigging computer geek knows for sure.

Great story coming out of AVT on a scheme Steffi is said to have orchestrated to hack Little Senator Tom's database and relabel Thune/Herseth supporters as Daschle/Herseth supporters. Get it? Little Senator Tom would have left those Thune/Herseth folks alone on election day just like he did with the people his campaign identified as Abdnor/(Lars) Herseth voters in 1986. But, per AVT, Steffi's crew "masked" Thune/Herseth voters as Daschle/Herseth voters. So, on election day, Little Senator Tom's gang was unwittingly working hard to get Thune/Herseth voters to the polls.

Muwaahahahahaha! It's diabolical!

Postscript 03/21/05

More from AVT here.

So far Herseth and the lefty bloggers offer no rebuttal and the MSM are silent.

I'm betting the MSM picks this up. What fun!

More Postscript 03/21/05

Finally a defense of Steffi. Clean Cut Kid prattles on with a bunch of boilerplate nonsense about motive, Jesus, and anonymity but then, finally, makes a valid point. He notes, reasonably it seems to me, that the Daschle lists were managed and checked and massaged and fretted over on an almost constant basis. Thus, he argues, a shift of a significant amount of data would have triggered alarms and someone would have noticed and corrected records that had been shifted from Thune/Herseth to Daschle/Herseth. Then he spastically goes off on another anti-Republican, anti-anonymous blogger rant.

These ideologues just don't get it. No one is moved by "The left is always this." Or "The right is always that." And, as to anonymous bloggers, it's a non-issue. I don't know who Clean Cut Kid is. He's anonymous to me. I'm not interested in who he is. His posts speak for themselves. Despite my ignorance of CCK's identity, I'm liking an argument he makes on the merit of his argument. That's how it's supposed to work.

The substantive part of CCK's post makes sense. According to AVT, Herseth was worried about losing a lot of Thune/Herseth votes so we're talking about enough records to be noticed. What CCK doesn't address is a scenario where records were shifted gradually, thus not triggering list generator's suspicions.

It's an open case and I'm digging the intrigue.

Dat's why he's da Mayor!

He's this week's Hometown Hero! Let's give a big saaaa-lute! to Mayor Mike.

Not content to simply refill every state government job that was eliminated by Governor Janklow (Question: Did you notice a fall-off in state services when Janklow reduced the number of state employees? Me either. Are you noticing an improvement in state services now that Mayor Mike is increasing the number of state employees? Neither am I. Weird huh?) our Mayor Mike has put on his shop steward's hat. He's mad as hell and he's not gonna take it any more!

Mayor Mike wants his constituents, er, I mean state employees, to get 3% raises. The legislature wants them to get 2.25%.

The average inflation rate over the last five years is 2.55%. The average salary increase for state employees over the last five years is 2.80%. Salary increases over the past five years have averaged 9.8% greater than inflation. That doesn't include the 2.0% to 2.5% that's budgeted each year to increase salaries for state employees who are below mid-point in the salary range for their job.

What that means is, if you're a state employee and you've been in the same job for the past five years, your earnings have increased ahead of inflation. If you earned $25,000 in 1999 you are now earning $28,700. $25,000 worth of stuff in 1999 now costs $28,352. Is that a huge variance? No? Should it be a big variance? I don't think so.

Remember, the example above is for a person doing exactly the same job they were doing in 1999. It doesn't factor in raises for promotions. It doesn't factor in additional increases that person would receive if their salary was below midpoint.

2005 inflation is projected at 3.4%. Consequently, if the 2.25% increase the legislature wants holds, then that 1999 $25,000 salary will be worth $29,346 and that $25,000 worth of goods will cost $29,316. Sounds right to me.

My point with that tedious bit of analysis is that South Dakota state employees have been treated somewhat better than fair the past five years. Their pay, in 1999 dolars, has increased relative to the work they are performing slightly more than the cost of living. The legislature's proposed cost of living raise will bring state employee pay and cost of living into balance. That sounds like good government - employees are fairly treated, the taxpayer's money is carefully spent.

But that's not Mayor Mike's view - oh no sir! On public radio the other day Mayor Mike was heard to exclaim about the proposed 2.25% increase: "I thought it was a terrible message to send to state employees. I thought it was a terrible message to send to other public employees across South Dakota. I really disagree with what they did."

What? What's so terrible? What is terrible about that message? What is disagreeable about what the legislature did?

State employees don't seem out of sorts about the 2.25% number. Ed Jacobson, the interim director of the South Dakota State Employees Organization, said state employees wanted 3.0%, but appreciate the 2.25% and understand the challenge for the legislature.

According to an AP story in the Rapid City Journal Rounds said "The Legislature could have sent a message to employers about good wages." Well sure they could. But we didn't send our representatives to Pierre to send messages or to create wage inflation, we sent them to govern. (Of course we didn't elect a Governor to be the Mayor of Pierre either. Guess you can't have everything.)

Ironically Mayor Mike is doing pretty much the same thing Steffi was called out on here. On the one hand he whines about the state's "structural deficit" but, on the other hand, he wants to surrender fiscal discipline in favor of sending messages. It doesn't work.

Remember what physics teaches us - you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Even if you're the Mayor of Pierre.

Credit

In today's Argus Dave Kranz picks up the Herseth highway funding story and adds a new perspective. He notes that what Herseth got in special project funding is more than twice what the two (Republican) representatives of nearby geographically large, single district states got for their constituents. Sounds like fair and balanced reporting to me.

Kranz' story also notes that Steffi's press guy combed through Congressional web sites and came up with 144 members who have listed the federal dollar amounts for projects in their districts. That's a lot of work and the resulting comparison is a hell of a lot more rational and puts Steffi in a much better light than her own dumb-assed rant that "I'm better than an empty chair!"

I don't know if blog pressure makes for better reporting but, in this case, it might have resulted in more savvy congressional staff work.

Fans of inscrutability take note: Was Mark Johnston's "not true" a rebuttal of the idea that the state has its own private DC lobbyist or a rebuttal to the notion that the state's private lobbyist is making an end run around Steffi? Hmmmmmm.

Postscript: 03/20/05

Turn's out Johnston's "not true" was a rebuttal to the notion that the state's private lobbyist is making an end run around Steffi. As AVT has subsequently noted, South Dakota does employ a private lobbyist.

Let my airplane logs goooooo . . .

Gotta hand it to the South Dakota Dems. They have a very good point in their demand that Mayor Mike release his our airplane logs. He said back on February 4th that he'd release the logs but since then - nothing.

C'mon Paul Robeson, sing it!!

Go down Judy
Way down in SD land
Tell old Mayor Michael Rounds to
Let those airplane logs go!

 

Senate OKs Drilling In ANWR

Party at my place Saturday. We'll be grillin' caribou and prairie dog. Plus, we have a spotted owl pate that is to die for!

It'll be fun - we can celebrate Bobby Blake's acquittal.

BYOB (And smokes!)

Well of course he's a lobbyist

I just stumbled across a couple of blogs that suggest former Little Senator Tom isn't a lobbyist. Of course he's a lobbyist. He's every bit as much a lobbyist as Thune was.

By law they can't actually lobby for one year after they are done as legislators. They can't pick up the phone or go into a member's office and lobby.

So, for the first year, they help people develop strategy. They help people connect the dots ie. "You need Senator Leghorn on board to kill this bill that would treat you like the lying, thieving rascals you are. Your friend Mr. Wafflebottum is one of the Senator's dearest friends and most generous contributors. You need to have your friend Mr. Wafflebottum explain to Senator Leghorn why this is such a bad bill and why he needs to oppose it." That's what Bob Forehead did between his House stint and his Senate stint. That's what former Little Senator Tom will do.

Then, once the year is out, Little Lobbyist Tom can lobby just like all the other K Street dudes.

The only surprising thing about all of this is that Little Senator Tom said he wouldn't lobby last fall. Usually he's smarter than to close a door prematurely.

Oh NOW she wants to be in the debate

From the "Insert foot (a) into mouth (b)" department -

Our girl Steffi, who recently chose to go on a European junket rather than stay in DC and fight to get South Dakota its share of highway special project dollars, was quoted as follows today in a press release from the Democratic Rural Working Group regarding a budget report they've issued: "Far too often, rural America gets left out of the big debates in Washington - and it’s happening right now with the budget we’re considering this week."

She goes on to whine about how the pork flow to South Dakota would be somewhat curtailed in a Bush budget. Her complaint above might have some validity if she'd bother to go to the big debates to which she is invited rather than operate her press release mill from Europe.

The report is demagoguery at its finest. Just as Steffi refuses to participate in one budget debate as a prelude to whining about her exclusion from another budget debate, the Democratic Rural Working Group gripes about the Republican budget creating trillions of dollars in new deficits as a prelude to their litany of whines about budget cuts to rural programs. Yikes! Am I the only one confused by this self-contradictory reasoning?

Here's a physics lesson for the Democratic Rural Working Group - you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Now, if I was a Congressperson and I was concerned about reducing rising deficits without hurting the family farmer I'd do what Jerry Munson suggested in a letter in today's Rapid City Journal. I'd jump on board Senate Bill 385 which would limit  commodity payments and benefits to $250,000 per year, per farm.

Our own Grouchy Old Senator Tim is on-board as a co-sponsor. Steffi and Bob Forehead should hop aboard as well.

Despite the bill's apparent lack of harm to true family farmers, federal legislators may get some grief over the bill's presumed effect of lowering land values for all if it lowers the earning potential for corporate farmers. Still, it appears to be an idea worth pursuing.

I certainly agree with the Democratic Rural Working Group that we need to cut deficits. But, if we're serious about that we need to look at cutting our pork. SB 385 could be a good start.