What Assembly Republicans should have said

In fact, as Charlie Sykes points out, one Republican, Rep. Leah Vukmir (R–Wauwatosa), did:

Much has been said about how the national economy brought about our budget woes. In some ways — that statement is true. However, the real problems with the state budget are entirely of our own doing.

Economic downturns happen, often without warning — it is our job to be prepared for them. We were not, never have been and at this rate, we never will be prepared or capable of dealing with economic challenges. This body cannot even control its spending in the good times — let alone the bad times.

The Senate Joint Finance Co-Chair offered his budget strategy in this morning’s paper. He said legislators should “cross our fingers” and “hope there is no new economic downturn.”

That’s exactly what happened last October when this house passed a budget compromise. We saw the telltale signs that our economy was slowing and we knew our revenue projections were unrealistically optimistic, yet this body passed a budget without any spending adjustments with their fingers crossed, while hoping for the best.

Members proclaimed that we had “passed a budget the taxpayers could afford.” That laughable claim hasn’t been true for a decade — but this time the claim was proven wrong within two months. I guess the taxpayers just aren’t working hard enough to meet the spending priorities the legislature set, because it is quite clear they cannot afford them.

We warned you then. We told you we would not meet our revenue projections and we told you we would be back here with a repair bill. And we may very well be back again very soon because we have repaired precisely — nothing. This compromise leaves us in a precarious fiscal position and it is clear that the only strategy being offered today is — crossed fingers.

What we need to do is exactly what taxpayers are doing right now — adjust our spending priorities. If we cannot find the resolve to actually cut spending during an economic slowdown, we never will.

Wisconsin’s families are feeling the burden of higher prices and they are adjusting their household budgets, reprioritizing their spending and cutting back. They expect the same from us as stewards of their tax dollars.

Businesses all over Wisconsin are trimming expenses and working to run more efficiently and more lean. They are in a struggle for survival. In the end, as the economy improves, their business will be more competitive and more effective.

This is exactly what the State of Wisconsin must do and now is the time to do it. We need to cut spending, trim waste and become more efficient — government needs to become lean. Instead, this budget repair compromise just borrows more, delays payments, raises taxes, and amazingly, manages to spend even more money. This isn’t a repair, this is a sham.

We are quickly running out of tricks and one-time funding sources — the day of reckoning is coming soon. But that’s okay, we have it under control, and we have our fingers crossed.

This compromise represents the abandonment of fiscal responsibility for the purpose of political expediency. Rather than starting the long process of addressing our real budget problems, we defer, delay and deny — just to get through another election cycle. When we come back for the next budget, we will again defer, delay and deny — fingers crossed and singularly focused on political expediency.

The repair bill also gives us tax increases. Of course, because no one wants to admit that they are tax increases, we claim we are merely closing tax loopholes. Some of you may believe it, but the taxpayers know better. This bill eliminates a tax deduction that’s valid for federal tax purposes. Make no mistake, this is a tax increase.

This tax is being pushed by the Senate’s myopic hatred of big-box stores, particularly Wal–Mart. Wal–Mart of course is guilty of the crime of being non-union and apparently needs to be punished.

Unfortunately, this new tax on interest and rental income will impact far more than a few big-box retailers. The tax is far more expansive than the talking points or LFB [Legislative Fiscal Bureau] have indicated. These tax policy changes also mark a new era for businesses in Wisconsin. A business will now be required to demonstrate that their “primary motivation” for a particular business practice was not simply to reduce their state tax burden. But, what if the businesses primary motivation for reducing their tax burden is to expand their business and create jobs? Well, we don’t know, this will be up to the bureaucrats at the Department of Revenue.

This provision is outrageous and sets an awful precedent that is sure to have serious consequences on our economy. These are the kinds of tax policies one would find in Venezuela, not Wisconsin. I would have said the former Soviet Union, however these changes are retroactive to the beginning of this year and the Soviet Constitution prohibited retroactive taxation.

If this tax increase isn’t bad enough, the compromise also contains a non-fiscal policy change that will result in the elimination of a 30-year-old property tax exemption for senior living facilities.

I have been fortunate to have bipartisan allies standing with me as we defeated effort after effort to go after our seniors over the past several years. I would also like to thank the many members from the Democratic side of the aisle who joined me to prevent similar legislation from making it to the floor in the final days of this session.

This property tax provision has no place in this budget compromise. It will not have a positive state revenue impact. In reality, putting thousands of seniors on the tax rolls will make them eligible for the Homestead Tax Credit. It will also have the very unfortunate consequence of driving hundreds of seniors onto Title 19 which will increase our MA costs.

The property tax provision will expand the exemption for low-income for-profit corporations, but it will also effectively eliminate the exemption for not-for-profit, benevolent senior housing. How does this even begin to make sense?

These facilities support under-reimbursed nursing homes that offer a continuum of care for our seniors. Many of them will be unable to afford the increased rent. These seniors have chosen to invest their life-savings, typically the proceeds from selling their homes, into their long-term care. They chose to be self-reliant rather than divesting of their assets and becoming dependent on government for their care. And for this, we are going to punish them by removing a thirty-year-old property tax exemption. This is wrong!

What a great message for this legislature. We protected for-profit corporations at the expense of non-profit religious homes for seniors.

I am ashamed that this provision is in this budget repair and I am ashamed at the tactics that were used. This is little more than a sop for a single lobbyist.

When I look around these chambers and recall the sanctimony of those who were going-on-and on about how we need to protect SeniorCare, I am amazed that any of you could vote for this today.

SeniorCare could have been reformed. In fact, moving most of the enrollees to Medicare Part D would have cost the seniors less money; actually it would cost them no money at all, and it would have saved the state money. But that is an issue for a different day.

The effect that this provision will have on our seniors is far more reaching.

This budget repair is no repair at all. For these reasons, I will be voting no, and I won’t have to cross my fingers, but I will rely on hope. I am hopeful that the Governor will veto this tax exemption provision. In fact, I am hopeful that he vetoes the entire bill. We need to start over, we need to get serious and we need to address our fiscal problems right now.

This blogger gives those who voted for this train wreck an F.

McCain–Huckabee? Obama–Hillary?

With the presidential primaries wrapping up, the new pundit game is guessing who the presidential candidates’ running mates will be.

U.S. News & World Report reports that John McCain’s list of VP candidates is topped by Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. McCain’s former rival is said to be an attractive choice because he “He is a great campaigner and communicator who could both shore up support in the South among social conservatives (Huckabee is a former Baptist minister) and appeal to working-class voters in the critical ‘Big 10’ states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio,” and is seen to care more for “people like me” (their quote, not mine) than, say, Mitt Romney. The supposition is also that “Economic conservatives and supply-siders may balk, but the threat of four years of Obamanomics and higher investment, income, and corporate taxes might be enough to keep them on board.”

Really? McCain and Huckabee are not the same person, but it seems to me that McCain’s negatives to conservatives would only be worsened with Huckabee as his VP choice, thanks to, for instance, Huckabee’s positions against free trade and in favor of more government involvement in health care and education. How one would reconcile the tax positions of the governor known as “Tax Hike Mike,” who favors the “Fair Tax” national sales tax, and McCain, who favors making the Bush administration tax cuts permanent, would be interesting to watch. Paradoxically, Huckabee’s appeal to moderate and independent voters would disappear as well in choosing a vice presidential candidate who doesn’t believe in evolution at all. (Not to get into a religious argument, but belief in God and belief in evolution is not as incompatible as some people believe.) If it is possible for someone to be simultaneously too conservative and insufficiently conservative at the same time, that’s Huckabee.

A much better choice is just down the road — U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R–Janesville). The Capital Times’ liberal columnist John Nichols, of all people, sees Ryan as being able to counter the complaints about McCain: “Ryan is so fresh-faced, upbeat and energetic that he sometimes seems a good deal younger than his 38 years. … Yet Ryan is, by most reasonable measures, more experienced than McCain when it comes to dealing with domestic economic, tax and budget issues. While the presumptive presidential nominee has freely admitted that he has little knowledge of — or interest in — fiscal affairs, Ryan knows his way around the balance sheets better than just about any Republican in the Capitol. As a key player for the better part of a decade in budget debates, he was a heavy-lifting member of the House Ways and Means Committee when Republicans were in charge of the chamber. And the congressman is still taken seriously now that the Democrats are in charge.”

Ryan’s not the only good choice for vice president (Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal would be had he not been in office for just one year, although his political experience is far more vast than that), but conservatives would certainly be happy with Ryan, and Ryan also would be a plus, I would think, in trying to win swing Midwest states.

Moving to the left, there are those who want Barack Obama to name Hillary Clinton as his running mate, a supposed Democratic dream ticket (or nightmare, depending on your perspective). There are at least two reasons this will not happen.

First, as Bill Clinton’s former advisor Dick Morris points out, Hillary Clinton would be a bad choice for Obama. (Morris describes it as “terminal insanity.”) Those who have voted for Clinton are either “true believers,” who will vote for Obama if he ends up being the nominee anyway, or those who “worry that he might be a closet black radical,” and are not likely to vote for Obama in November. Adding Hillary to the ticket isn’t going to add any swing votes. Moreover, the negatives Clinton would bring to the ticket — the Clintons’ complete lack of ethical grounding, for one thing — would be compounded by the negatives of Obama that having Hillary as his running mate would show off, namely Obama’s complete lack of legislative accomplishment in his political career and his lack of appeal to the white blue-collar voters who have supported Clinton. (As it is, for your supposed nominee-in-waiting to get hammered in primary elections this late in the campaign isn’t a good sign.) And then there’s the reality of having Hillary Clinton in government, which means having the uncontrollable Bill Clinton in government. (The Clintons in government is an entire ship full of loose cannons.)

It is also impossible to imagine that Hillary Clinton would accept being vice president. Her entire campaign has been about poking holes in Obama, which is the gift that keeps on giving to McCain and Republicans. This post wondering if Hillary Clinton would have been more successful had she done 10 things differently includes a somewhat jaw-dropping conclusion:

... in the end the success or failure of any electoral venture rests mainly on the candidate herself. For Clinton, this will undoubtedly be the hardest truth to grasp. But if she hopes to do better next time—and trust me, there will be a next time—grasping it fully will be essential.

Do the math. Clinton is 61, which means she’ll be 65 during the 2012 presidential campaign, and 69 during the 2016 presidential campaign, the campaign she’d be in if Obama was elected this year and reelected in 2012. Not even the Clintons are so self-centered to run against a Democratic incumbent (are they?), and they saw what happened when Ted Kennedy’s 1980 primary challenge helped torpedo Jimmy Carter’s reelection effort in 1980, not to mention Pat Buchanan’s 1992 primary challenge that helped Bill Clinton beat George Bush. This is, however, one of a growing list of suggestions (here’s the first, written before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries) I’ve seen that Hillary Clinton may be positioning herself for a presidential run in 2012, which also is the last year of her current Senate term.

The Clintons have demonstrated during this campaign that you can’t really even call them Democrats — they are Clintons, a party unto themselves, totally self-absorbed and self-obsessed, willing to do and say anything, including playing the race card and doing a complete flip on positions taken only a decade ago (for instance, free trade), to return to the White House. Neither Clinton worked very hard for 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, and I doubt either Clinton will work very hard for Obama, at least if Hillary isn’t on the ticket. I would suggest that the one good thing an Obama victory in November would do is to end the Clintons as a political force, except that, as this primary campaign demonstrates, the Clintons are also vampires, practically impossible to make go away.

If I had to pick right now, I would predict that Obama’s vice presidential choice will be New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations. (To use the words “irony” and “politics” in the same sentence is increasingly redundant.) Richardson is Hispanic, which plays well to those who play identity politics, the official position of the Democratic Party. Unlike Obama, he also has an actual record, as governor of New Mexico (incredibly, he cut taxes, something his gubernatorial colleague James Doyle is incapable of doing) and at the federal level as UN ambassador, secretary of energy and congressman. Richardson is also believed to be more centrist than Obama, which theoretically should help with those swing voters.

The fix that fixes nothing, part II

To go with the 17 profiles in non-courage who voted to support the insupportable budget repair bill, add, from the Assembly, Reps. Joan Ballweg (R–Markesan, my state representative, who will be hearing from me about this), Garey Bies (R–Sister Bay), J.A. Hines (R–Oxford), Steve Kestell (R–Elkhart Lake), Phil Montgomery (R–Green Bay), Jeffrey Mursau (R–Crivitz), Al Ott (R–Forest Junction), Gary Tauchen (R–Bonduel), John Townsend (R–Fond du Lac), Karl Van Roy (R–Green Bay), and Steve Wieckert (R–Appleton), who helped make up the 51–46 (wrong-headed) majority.

Of those 51 Yes votes, 31 came from Republicans. If you wonder what the difference between Republicans and Democrats is in those 31 cases, well, you're not alone. In fact, instead of Republicans and Democrats, this is an example of the Majority Party and the Minority Party — the Majority Party being made up of Senate Democrats, all but one of whom voted for approval, and Assembly Republicans, 31 of whom voted for approval.

Those 31 Republicans had better not say one word of complaint should they lose their reelection bids this fall, because they just demonstrated that, in their cases, if voters are looking for fiscal restraint and responsibility, they're looking in the wrong place. Then again, as I had to note before, cutting taxes and spending is nearly culturally impossible in the People's Republic of Wisconsin.

The motto of this state is "Forward." When has that been less appropriate than now?

NOTE: The first version of this post incorrectly identified Rep. John Nygren (R–Marinette) as voting for the budget repair bill, when he voted against it. My apologies to Rep. Nygren.

The fix that fixes nothing

Here is the easiest headline that can be written for an opinion about the state budget repair deal created by legislative leaders Monday, approved 17–16 by the Senate Tuesday, and scheduled to be voted on by the Assembly Wednesday:

Deal or no deal?
No deal

I would opine that the agreement to fix the estimated $652 million state budget shortfall is an example of state government’s financial chickens finally coming home to roost, except that this appears to be a yearly occurrence in this state. In fact, this has been an annual occurrence since 1997, the year after the last time a budget that included no commitments to future budgets, or “structural deficit.”

How awful is this “deal”? Let us count the ways (thanks to Boots and Sabers):

1. The cuts in this budget total less than one-half percent of the budget. That’s the budget equivalent of cutting the last cup of coffee from your daily consumption, if that.
   
2. But it includes a $15 million tax increase by eliminating deductions for “certain rental and interest payments by businesses to related entities.”
   
3. It includes yet another raid on the transportation fund, $50 million, creating a transportation fund deficit of $28 million, which in turn will obligate taxpayers to pay back the bonds (with interest) that are covering that transportation fund deficit.
   
4. Delaying $125 million in school aids into the 2009–11 budget cycle creates an instant $125 million addition to the state’s structural deficit (more about that later). That’s on top of the $125.4 million in debt payments being pushed out of this budget cycle into the ’09–11 budget cycle, so now a $250 million budget crisis next year is under way.
5. And speaking of schools, it requires that any school district that operates a four-year-old kindergarten program offer it to all students instead of, for instance, students who go to schools in low-income areas or students deemed to need four-year-old kindergarten. The name for that is “unfunded mandate.”
   
6. It also delays until 2009–11 the implementation of the federal Real ID act. Which might seem insignificant except that vehicle registration fees increased a year ago to pay for the Real ID act, which means our increased registration fees are also now part of the budget fix.
   
7. A state that already has insufficient reserves (according to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, states average almost $1 billion in budget reserves, but Wisconsin’s are estimated at $65 million at the end of the 2008–09 fiscal year) now will have just $26.26 million in reserve funds as of June 30, 2009 — $1.26 million more than the legally required $25 million balance. (That $25 million requirement is reduced from the previous $65 million balance requirement, which apparently was needed to fix this budget hole.)
   

Apparently Republican-leaners are supposed to be happy because the budget doesn’t include the proposed hospital tax, which would be a tax increase, of course, on those paying for health care — the readers of this magazine and Web site. It also doesn't include combined reporting, in which businesses would be required to pay taxes on all their income, not just income generated in Wisconsin. (Don't assume either of those ideas is dead, though.) From here, those are the only good thing about this entire mess.

You can’t disagree with Rep. Stephen Nass (R–Whitewater), who says, “Any legislator that supports this kind of budgeting malfeasance is guilty of political fraud on the taxpayers of this state.” Which, as of Tuesday night, includes 17 state senators, including, in Marketplace's circulation area, Sens. Roger Breske (D–Eland), Dave Hansen (D–Green Bay) and Julie Lassa (D–Stevens Point).

None of this does a thing to deal with the state’s real budget deficit, either — the deficit based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, upon which most states, but not Wisconsin, base their budget calculations — and that deficit is estimated at $2.15 billion. Pushing spending into another budget cycle also worsens the state’s structural deficit, which now sits at $1.7 billion.

The temptation is to just throw up your hands and assume that state government is not only broken, but can’t be fixed at all. I see no state legislators with the courage to propose $652 million in budget cuts, which would total less than 5 percent of state General Purpose Revenue spending. (And to all those who claim that, well, yes, we have high taxes, but we have a high quality of life: Our quality of life has absolutely, positively NOTHING to do with government. And to all those who claim that, well, yes, we have high taxes, but we have high-quality government services: Prove it.)

Yet, “What is not readily understood is that the cost of operating state governments accounts for only 17 percent of general fund expenditures,” says Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance President Todd A. Berry. “The public and press often presume that cutting state agency budgets can solve a budget problem, yet the uncomfortable truth is that more than four of every five dollars in the state budget are spent elsewhere.”

As much as I’d love to see, say, the State Patrol eliminated (the state would be financially better off sending the money it spends on the State Patrol directly to sheriff’s departments), or cutting, say, 16 percent of state employees or the state payroll (see the next paragraph), Berry’s observation shows why fixing state finances can’t stop at state finances. In Wisconsin’s federal-like system, with as much money the state gives to municipalities, counties and school districts, the state has the right to decide how much gets spent, and on what. (The late Gov. Lee Dreyfus had his own version of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”) A Taxpayer Bill of Rights that sets spending limits on every level of government in Wisconsin, not just state government, and limits that are almost impossible to circumvent, is long overdue. The fact that, for instance, Wisconsin teachers get 50 percent more employee benefits than the national average helps explain why our taxes are out of sight, and yet the state lives in a perpetual state of budget crisis.

Given the impact of lower tax revenues from a slowed-down economy (the Legislative Reference Bureau estimates tax revenue growth at only 2 percent, less than half of the average of 5.5 percent), it’s unlikely that the state’s long-term budget impacts can be addressed at all until the economy picks up again. And if state legislators are unwilling to suggest cutting the state budget by 5 percent to cover the cash deficit, how likely are they to suggest cutting state spending by 16 percent to cover the GAAP deficit?

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute wrote this:

The current budget shortfall will require the Governor and the Legislature to make deep cuts that will affect nearly every citizen. One would never have imagined a problem of this magnitude a few short years ago, when the economy was robust and state government seemed able to attack nearly every problem with a new spending initiative. The feast-or-famine nature of Wisconsin’s budgeting practices is extraordinary and stands to disrupt the lives of millions of citizens.

I forgot to add something to the first sentence of this paragraph: The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute wrote this ... in 2003. What has changed since then?

The WPRI’s 2003 study had several recommendations:

• Create a long-range plan to determine “how much state government (or state and local government) can spend and tax its citizens over an extended period of time,” preferably included in the state Constitution and including provisions that prohibit governors or legislatures from exceeding the limits.
• Create an Economic Council, made up of the directors of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau and the Legislative Audit Bureau, the state budget director and the secretary of revenue (both of who are appointed by the governor), plus “three financial experts from the university and business communities,” which would provide the state’s official economic forecast and create spending parameters for each budget based on the spending plan. (I would support this if I didn’t suspect it would be an excuse to add another 100 state employees.)
• Require a 2 percent reserve in each budget. (In contrast, the budget fix would leave a budget reserve of 0.19 percent.)
• Use one-time revenues (for instance, the tobacco settlement) to fund the budget reserve, not new spending.
• Reduce the aforementioned GAAP deficit with the goal of eventually changing the state budget from cash accounting to accrual accounting.

Those are all long-term goals. The first thing to do is for either the Legislature to kill, or Gov. James Doyle to completely veto, this non-fix budget fix, which only makes the state’s financial fix worse, and to go back and create a real budget repair that doesn’t use accounting tricks, doesn’t raid from funds that are not supposed to support general spending, and doesn’t make things worse.

To quote the Wisconsin State Journal, “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.”

Something to sneeze at

Originally printed in Marketplace May 13, 2008

Hello. My name is Steve, and I’m a user of a controlled substance.

As I age, I’ve discovered that I am prone to getting sinus infections from the bug du jour or from wherever else, thanks probably to my amazing luck in inheriting bad sinuses from both of my parents. (The latest such case arrived my first day at Marketplace.) I rarely go to my doctor for treatment, because I don’t believe in running to doctors every time I get a malady, and I certainly don’t believe in taking antibiotics to fix every cold I have.

The only thing that provides real relief for my sinus maladies is pseudoephedrine, found in such products as Sudafed, Mucinex D and Claritin. I’ve tried several alternatives, but products with pseudoephedrine are the only thing that allows me to breathe without causing excessive drying (a problem for those of us who wear contact lenses), or the other effects of antihistamines. Pseudoephedrine has been used for years for those who suffer from allergies and prefer not to take medications that induce drowsiness.

But pseudoephedrine is one of the ingredients of methamphetamine, thus requiring, in the mind of legislators continually running for reelection, bold and decisive action to prevent the ill among us from getting relief without running to the doctor … I mean, to protect us citizens from the scourge of meth-heads invading Wal–Mart for ingredients for their next fix.

2005 Wisconsin Act 14 requires that pseudoephedrine be sold only by pharmacists or employees working under registered pharmacists, and that no one can purchase more than 7.5 grams within a 30-day period without the approval of a physician, dentist, or veterinarian. The pharmacy is required to get photo ID from the buyer, and must record the buyer’s name and address and how much he or she purchased; those records must be kept by the pharmacy for two years. Similar legislation was passed by Congress as part of the renewal of the Patriot Act in 2006.

This law — unanimously passed in the Senate and passed 92–6 in the Assembly — is an inconvenience, to say the least, to the ill, in addition to being a burden on business. In the week that I started getting this, I (1) was barred from purchasing the correct medication because the pharmacy was closed even though the store was open; (2) had to have my wife get it with the usual legal third degree, and (3) stood in line at another pharmacy with other sick people so that I could buy a medication that does not require a prescription. Can’t sleep because you can’t breathe? To quote a former coworker of mine, then it sucks to be you.

I suppose I should be grateful that I can still get pseudoephedrine, since Oregon, where this began, makes pseudoephedrine available only by prescription. As it is, cold medications with pseudoephedrine are now not available in any store that doesn’t have a pharmacy, which includes most grocery stores and convenience stores — a case of government telling businesses what they can and cannot sell to their customers. Some countries are phasing out pseudoephedrine. Drug manufacturers have also removed pseudoephedrine from some cold medications or replacing it with phenylephrine, which does not work.

This is all because meth is the current popular target in the “war on drugs”: “With the help of the press, they're once again frightening the public with tales of a drug so seductive it instantly turns masses of upstanding citizens into addicts who ruin their health, their lives and their families,” wrote the New York Times’ John Tierney in 2005, when state legislatures were falling over each other trying to regulate pseudoephedrine. This is the same non-thinking that has helped turn flying into such a drill-holes-into-your-skull experience, when grandmothers and babies are subject to random searches because they could be terrorists. A 42-year-old man who can barely breathe apparently is a potential meth-head, so let’s inconvenience everyone and invade the privacy of the ill for this supposed wave of the use of the popular drug of the day.

The rationale, as always, is that, to quote Hillary Clinton, “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” Or, to quote U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh (D–Indiana), who sponsored the Senate bill, “Your ordinary, law-abiding citizen isn’t going to object.” Evidently Bayh feels no need to be bothered by constitutional rights.

Or whether pseudoephedrine overregulation will actually work. Just one-fifth of the meth in this country is domestically produced, which means this law will do almost nothing to combat meth use. There is always a way for the motivated druggie to get more drugs — in the case of meth, from Mexico (whose organized crime has gotten quite a shot in the arm, so to speak, from efforts to curb domestic production, according to the New York Times), or by purchasing the ingredients on the Internet.

This, as usual, does nothing to curb the demand for illegal drugs. And, as always, the Law of Unintended Consequences applies: Burglaries in one Iowa county “skyrocketed,” according to the New York Times, after a state crackdown on large meth labs, since what cost $50 to make on a stovetop ended up costing $800 to $1,500 on the street.

Using the same logic, the state should ban alcoholic beverages, since alcohol leads to drunk driving. Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t have written that, since a Missouri legislator in 2007 proposed similarly heavily regulating a key ingredient in crack cocaine … baking soda.

OCYKTMW! part II

An example of Florida’s tax dollars at work:

A county health department employee has accused director Jason Newsom of being a danger to doughnuts.

In an e-mail complaint sent to the media and Florida Surgeon General Ana Viamonte Ros, the anonymous staff member wrote that Newsom is so “obsessed” with nutrition that he has alienated much of his staff by constantly harping on unhealthy foods.

Among the litany of complaints: He recently banned junk food from staff meetings and the department’s vending machine, routinely throws out doughnuts he finds in the employee lounge, and even reprimanded an employee who brought doughnuts to work.

The story reports that Newsom focused on smoking and unhealthy food, and since smoking is decreasing, he’s focusing on his secondary target. (Others have noted that America’s weight gain rate has been increasing as its smoking rate has been decreasing.)

If this were a private workplace belonging to Newsom, it would be a simple issue — if you don’t like the rules, leave. This, however, is a government workplace, which means Newsom is using Floridians’ tax money to be his office’s Culinary Censor. I certainly would not want to work for a boss who has so little confidence in my judgment that he would say something like this: “You can eat whatever you want as an individual, but you cannot promote unhealthy food to your co-workers. That creates a decision that all your co-workers would rather not have to make.”

There is no such thing as “unhealthy food.” There are unhealthy amounts of food, and there are unhealthy eating habits (habit: something you do more than once in a while), but an occasional doughnut will not kill you. I would suggest that having someone with as much time on his hands as Newsom to play the office nutritional nanny is a good example of too much government in Florida.

So what does this have to do with Bill Clinton? (Glad you asked!) One of the pop psychology attempts to explain Clinton’s White House philandering suggested that, instead of being a character flaw of Bill’s, it was Hillary’s fault, in that, upon their arrival in Washington, Hillary decided to play diet cop, eliminating his favorite snacks and hiring a cook who would cook “healthy food.” The analysis suggested that Bill, not satisfied with what he was eating, decided to, shall we say, seek satisfaction in other areas.

The most unfortunate part of the story (and it’s not clear if Newsom or the reporter is responsible for this reference): “He acknowledged he has taken steps against junk food at the health department, but he dismissed the complaint Thursday by saying he believes he is like Richard Nixon, supported by the silent majority.” I seem to remember Nixon’s political career ending badly …

The important part of “drunk driver” is “driver”

Thursday’s post on how voters feel about lengthy prison sentences was written in part due to efforts to stiffen the state’s drunk driving laws in the wake of three charges of homicide by intoxicated driving faced by a former doctor.

Two efforts are under way — one would stiffen penalties for drunk driving, and the other would make it easier to impound the vehicles of chronic drunken drivers. You've heard the phrase "Good cases make bad law," and I wonder if that isn't about to happen now with this compelling argument for much stiffer drunk driving sentences.

These efforts also come in the wake of published reports that Wisconsin has the highest rate of people who admit to driving under the influence in the U.S. (This interactive map shows Wisconsin in comparison with other states.) "Driving under the influence" is not necessarily the same thing as drunk driving, of course; otherwise, more than 26 percent of Wisconsin adults would already have drunk driving convictions on our driving records. Those who believe drunk driving is the number one scourge of society tend to forget that distinction.

There is a difference between criminal penalties that actually work and penalties that are enacted by politicians looking for votes. An example of the latter was the reduction of the legal definition of drunk driving from 0.10 to 0.08, which the National Motorists Association calls "the DWI equivalent of the 55 mph speed limit."

I make that claim based on my experience in covering courts and police for a county-seat weekly newspaper, where one of my weekly duties was going to the courthouse and collecting information for news items on, among other things, drunk driving convictions. I would say that the average BAL of a convicted drunk driver was between 0.15 and 0.20, up to twice the legal intoxication level, and I doubt that’s changed very much. Given that police aren’t allowed to stop people without probable cause, and given that Wisconsin doesn’t have sobriety checkpoints, the conclusion one draws is that some people are able to drive at a legally intoxicated level without appearing to be driving drunk (as in driving too fast or too slow for conditions, inability to stay in your lane, etc.). That is also why reasonable-sounding proposals to reduce allowable BAL for those who have already been convicted of drunk driving won’t work (unless one plans to suggest random BAL checks for convicted drunk drivers, which would seem to constitute unconstitutional and unreasonable search and seizure).

Under section 346.63 of the Wisconsin statutes, first- or second-offense drunk driving charges in Wisconsin are civil offenses if no one was hurt, with mandatory jail time on the second through fourth offenses, and felonies if someone was hurt or killed, or for fifth and later offenses. Winnebago County has a special provision where second- and third-offense drunk drivers can have their sentences reduced upon completion of “a period of probation that includes alcohol and other drug treatment.” Fines are multiplied for blood alcohol levels beyond twice the 0.08 limit, and for BALs above 0.20 and 0.25. And none of this, of course, includes what happens to the auto insurance of the convicted intoxicated driver.

It is interesting to note in this case that the defendant in this case is not accused of drunk driving; he was allegedly driving after having taken “five pills of the anti-anxiety medication Xanax, five Ambien pills (a sleep aid), and one oxycodone pill (a painkiller)” earlier that day. Obviously the lower BAL law didn’t affect him at all, and one wonders if, had he not allegedly rear-ended the car where the people died, police would have noticed his impaired driving either.

Only five other states treat first-offense drunk driving as a traffic ticket; most assess drunk driving charges as misdemeanors for the first couple or few charges, and felonies after that. The significant drunk driving problem, however, is repeat offenders, of whom the defendant is one. Gov. James Doyle, a former district attorney and attorney general, is right when he says that “The only way to protect the public from multiple offenders is to keep them off the streets.”

Four state legislators, including Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer (D–Manitowoc), are introducing a bill to revoke driving privileges, confiscate vehicles, and impose jail time on third-offense drunk drivers. “Immediate, permanent confiscation of the vehicle, any vehicle driven after a revocation by multiple DUI offenders will be the kind of game changer we need,” Ziegelbauer told the Journal Sentinel.

The crimes Operating After Revocation and Operating After Suspension and an entire chapter of statutes (Chapter 351, for the curious) on Habitual Traffic Offenders already imply that many people don’t let losing their driver’s license stop them from driving. Judges already have the option to impound vehicles for third and subsequent offenses. But to take away the violator’s vehicles, either through impoundment or even confiscation, would prevent such violators only from driving that vehicle. It certainly wouldn’t prevent them from driving, and, as Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, impounding vehicles creates other problems:

Generally, the vehicles have very little value; they are expensive to seize since there is a civil process that must be abided by; the justice system would have to pay any lien on the vehicle and when it has been done, the offender just gets another car, he said.

Schimel told the Journal Sentinel he believes “the focus should be on prevention and treatment,” as shown in Winnebago County and in Waukesha County, which has an alcohol treatment court with similar provisions as Winnebago County. The problem is that alcohol assessments are already required for all drunk driving convictions, and that evidently doesn’t work in many cases, such as the two people sentenced to three and 1½ years respectively for their 10th drunk driving convictions.

Other states require ignition interlocks for the vehicles of chronic drunk drivers, or special license plates or license plate stickers. Such measures are worth considering, but only if they're proven to work; in the latter case, some states that created drunk-driver license plates shelved those programs after they were not proven to work.

At some point during this debate, I suspect the subject of sobriety checkpoints, which are used in some states, will come up. Sobriety checkpoints, besides being a blatant violation of the rights of the non-drunk driver and a way to prevent police from being able to respond to actual crimes, are an excellent way to make sure that people who suspect they might be intoxicated will work to avoid the checkpoints; do you really want to encourage intoxicated drivers to run through back streets and side roads to avoid the cops? (Mothers Against Drunk Driving favors “highly publicized” sobriety checkpoints, which would seem to defeat their purpose.

If taking away the chronic intoxicated driver’s vehicles won’t work, and other proposed measures are either ineffective or unconstitutional or both, what’s left? Prison, and that’s where legislators’ efforts should focus. Taking away the vehicle of the drunk driver won’t work nearly as well as taking away the freedom of the drunk driver, by sending that criminal to prison for a long time. Jail time beyond what someone might endure to get bailed out after an arrest, of a length sufficient to get the message across (say, 48 hours), is an appropriate response for first-offense drunk driving. Those who get more than two drunk driving arrests clearly don't care about the danger they represent to the driving public, and should be sentenced correspondingly.

There is a danger, however, that oversentencing creates another unintended consequence -- encouraging such additional crimes as hit-and-run and evading police. It is for the same reason that proposals to extend the death penalty to non-murders may not be a good idea -- if, say, kidnapping becomes a capital crime, does not that encourage the criminal to kill the victim so that the victim can't testify? In the same way, if, say, a year in prison awaits someone already nailed twice for drunk driving who now is floating down the road with an 0.20 BAL, that would seem to be powerful incentive for that person to do what it takes to avoid being arrested.

As someone who once was the victim in a drunk driving crash, I do not want drunk drivers on the road any more than anyone else does. No one, however, should favor either unconstitutional measures, or ineffective measures, to get drunk drivers off the road.