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The New Yorker has a great piece on how Washington works. They think it is just the story of how auto dealers pulled the teeth from the financial regulatory bill. Unfortunately the magazine doesn’t have the sense to understand this is how everything works in DC.
… The dealers’ victory wasn’t an anomaly: associations of small businesses and producers are often surprisingly influential. A classic example is the wool-and-mohair subsidy, which was first put in place after the Second World War, to subsidize the production of material for soldiers’ uniforms. But the subsidy stayed in place long after its military purpose disappeared, because there were wool producers in nearly every state, and they all cared a lot about keeping the subsidy intact. Similarly, among the most vociferous opponents of tougher regulations in the financial-reform bill were small banks and credit unions (which will also be exempt from the new agency’s jurisdiction). This time around, at least, the fact that small and community banks opposed a provision may well have mattered more than what a behemoth like Citigroup thought.
One could say, of course, that this is just the way interest-group democracy is supposed to work—enabling little guys to band together into effective lobbies. The problem is that the system does nothing for the littlest guy of all—the consumer. In giving the dealers their exemption, Congress may have said that it was helping Main Street over Wall Street. But what it was actually doing was putting the dealers’ interest in no oversight ahead of the public’s interest in a fair marketplace. The result is a consumer financial-protection agency that’s prevented from overseeing one of the most common, and most important, financial products that consumers buy. It’s like creating the F.D.A. and then denying it authority over pain relievers.
In the Telegraph, UK, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reviews current statistics on the economy.
…Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high. …
…The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost.
The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s. …
Abby Thernstrom writes that the civil rights issue to watch is the Justice Department’s racial redistricting guidelines.
…Every state must draw new lines every ten years when the new census figures reveal demographic changes; the old districting maps seldom meet the “one person, one vote” standard.
Redistricting is always a delicate, politically charged process in which much is at stake. The DOJ under Holder will undoubtedly insist that states draw the maximum possible number of majority-minority districts — a reversion to old legal standards that were suspended after a 2000 Supreme Court decision. Those standards rest on a core conviction of the civil-rights community: In a nonracist society, minorities would be elected to political office in numbers proportional to the black and Hispanic populations.
…The revised guidelines increase the authority of largely invisible and unaccountable career attorneys in the voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. The Voting Rights Act robs states of one of their most important constitutional prerogatives: setting the rules that govern elections. Southern black disfranchisement once justified a drastic change in the balance of power between the federal government and the states, but blacks throughout the nation are now important political players. Decisions to overrule districting and other policies made by democratically elected officials should not rest with low-level attorneys whose work is barely scrutinized and rarely challenged.
…Three suits are currently challenging the continuing constitutionality of preclearance. Arguably, the proposed new regulations, if instituted, will increase the odds that the Supreme Court will soon rule section 5 unconstitutional. And then perhaps Congress will fashion a Voting Rights Act that recognizes the political revolution in the South since 1965, one which responds to contemporary voting problems (the definition of which will need to be hammered out in the legislative process). …
In the LA Times, David Savage looks at the inevitable battle between defending the Constitution and the government intrusion on states’ rights and individuals’ freedoms.
…Many legal experts foresee a clash between Obama’s progressive agenda and the conservative court. …
…Already, the healthcare overhaul law, Obama’s signal achievement, is under attack in the courts. Republican attorneys general from 20 states have sued, insisting the law and its mandate to buy health insurance exceed Congress’ power and trample on states’ rights.
Two weeks ago, a federal judge in New Orleans ruled Obama had overstepped his authority by ordering a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
On another front, the administration says it will soon go to court in Phoenix seeking to block Arizona’s controversial immigration law, which is due to take effect July 29. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer said Arizona would go to the Supreme Court, if necessary, to preserve the law. …
In the Washington Examiner, Byron York discusses the sheer lunacy of the new NASA direction (pun intended).
…”When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things,” NASA head Charles Bolden said in a recent interview with the Middle Eastern news network al-Jazeera. “One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” …
…Last month, Bolden himself traveled to Cairo to mark the first anniversary of Obama’s speech. … Beginning with a hearty “Assalaamu alaykum,” Bolden explained that in the past, NASA worked with countries that were capable of space exploration, but now Obama has “asked NASA to change … by reaching out to ‘nontraditional’ partners and strengthening our cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and in particular in Muslim-majority nations.”
“NASA is not only a space exploration agency,” Bolden concluded, “but also an Earth improvement agency.” …
Marty Peretz comments on the Earth Improvement Agency mission.
…So what are the prospects of the sciences in the Muslim world, especially in its Arab sector? Five volumes, written by a team of mostly apologetic intellectuals, “presents a rather bleak diagnosis of the state of the Arab world.” “This lamentable situation,” depicted in the Arab Human Development Report, “thrown into relief by (its) insistence on mere facts and figures, has evoked again, with unrestrained urgency, the question of modernity and secularization.” …
Speaking of that Muslim world, Mary Katherine Ham, in the Weekly Standard Blog, posts on one woman’s impending execution in Iran.
Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, a 42-year-old mother of two, confessed to the crime of adultery in 2006 after being subjected to 99 lashes. She later recanted her statement, but was found guilty despite the fact that there were no witnesses to her adultery, as is supposed to be required in the Iranian justice system. Her conviction was upheld through all levels of the courts, which value a woman’s testimony at only a fraction of a man’s. Ashtiani will be put to death by stoning. She will be buried to her chest in the ground, at which point stones “large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately” will be hurled at her head. The public will not be allowed to see the execution for fear of a backlash against leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was named to a four-year seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women in April. In its capacity there, Iran will be part of the “principal global policy-making body” on women’s rights. According to the UN, “the Commission also makes recommendations to the Council on urgent problems requiring immediate attention in the field of women’s rights.”
Ashtiani’s stoning is imminent. Might be a good time to recommend an urgent problem requiring immediate attention.