New Jersey never lets me down!

my claim to fame today! I won a contest! Politico Influence, by Dave Levinthal and others - one of the politico franchise of publications (this one an email newsletter about lobbying activity, and you bet the Super Committee is bringing them all out). Anyhow he posted a contest to give your best lobbying pitch for a state, so here is the rap about my winning entry. So excited!

And yesterday, a number of you responded with fantastic answers to our latest PI contest (details here: http://politi.co/ndwFTq), which asked you to make your best lobbying pitch for any U.S. state or territory that might not be feeling much political love these days thanks to Iowa, where just about every presidential candidate from Barack Obama to Michele Bachmann to the ghost of William Henry Harrison made an appearance in the past week.

The bad news: Not a single person lobbied on behalf of several minor jurisdictions, such as the Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll and California. But we received four pitches for the great Garden State - yep, New Jersey - with the most impassioned entry coming from Courtney Brooks, a Jersey expat now residing in Hillsboro, Ore.:

"A state many are from. Everyone proud, in some fashion, to call themselves *from* New Jersey," Brooks wrote PI. "What is it about that state? A multicultural place where there are zillions of factions, before multicultural factions were cool. A place where you learned to survive dense crowds, body to body, like going to home room in high school, with 2500 fellow students in the hallway. The way of the future. The way the planet is going. ... And in the next global warming meltdown, or global ice age (take your pick), we are the ones who will survive."

For this winning entry, Brooks earns a wooden puzzle of the United States of America (http://bit.ly/oREx0F), in which New Jersey may, per the winner's discretion, be hand-painted gold. Congratulations!

The Facts and the Rhetoric, Part 2

And here in bubble Oregon, what is going on?

Fact: Bill Sizemore, splashed on the front page of the Statesman-Journal (the Salem newspaper, for all you lovely out of state people). He took a plea deal of 'guilty' which will require 30 days of jail, paying court attorney costs, and 3 years of probation. And be a convicted felon unless he can stay good for that time.

The alternative was to not plead guilty, but to face 15 years in jail, a fine of $475K. So is it wrong to take a plea deal just to avoid a harsh sentence?

Fact: he failed to submit Form 40, for Oregon income tax, for 3 years. Fact: he paid estimated tax of $51K. Was told by accountants not to file, since if you don't get it exactly right, that is an offense too, false claims or something.

While you might hope that the Constitution guides the actions of our legal institutions, like the court system, and would be valiantly allowing people to express their first amendment rights - you know - things like free speech, freedom to assemble, freedom to petition the government for grievances. Hey, I don't know if I ever read the Constitution before 2002, but you know what - its never too late to jump on that bandwagon!

But, hope is not always reality. Did he get his day in court? Well, he was in court all right, but I would not exactly call it His Day. Not allowed to tell a jury about his situation, or estimated tax filing. Not allowed to bring forth facts such as accountants telling him not to file. Underneath it all is a story so complex you may as well call it NP-complete. Unions filing multi-million dollar lawsuits against him. Saying they had to spend millions (which they wanted recovered!) to fight his nasty ballot measures. Ballot measures that would hurt them.

Well, should the people who actually vote decide these things? Maybe the people who vote aren't smart enough - is that it? I should pay my dues to unions and let them decide for me, what measures I should vote for and which not? Or maybe my political party can just send me a ballot and, like in the old days, just pull a lever for all votes for Their Side.

Rhetoric, enter here: Sizemore was scamming the system to line his pockets, and never had an interest in making these ballot measures successful. This is the kind of stuff you read in every single newspaper, its like they all copy the same text (don't they know that plagerism is not good form?). This is not even rhetoric, it doesn't even have any basis in fact.

At least with the FAA (see previous post - The Facts and the Rhetoric) you have 'positions' that might make sense, at least on a philosophical level. Hostage takers and jobs lost and all that. Here, I suppose you have something along those lines. The mortal enemy of public employee unions, so absolutely evil that he cannot be allowed to roam freely. We are all in danger while he is a free man. So! Must find some trumped up charge and convict him, knock out his kneecaps, and render him unable to perpetrate his nasty ballot measures on free people.

Remember the movie Fantasia where Mickey Mouse cuts the dancing broom, thinking he killed it? Only to have each half continue to dance around. Tries to kill some of the offshoots, only to have them create new sub-brooms that continue to dance around. Do you really think Bill Sizemore is down for the count?

The Facts and the Rhetoric

Fact: While Congress decided they were tired, after all their debt standoff and dealing, and it was time for recess. You know, a pint of milk, some raisins, and a nap on the floor mat. Then maybe ride on the merry-go-round of campaigning a bit, you know, Recess.

Meanwhile, the FAA was in partial shutdown. With 4000 federal workers (tally that into the unemployment stats) furloughed, and 70,000 construction workers sent home, due to lack of FAA funds to pay for continued work on airport construction projects.

Fact: the airlines continued to merrily collect the $10 ticket tax, per ticket, totally about $30 million total over the 2 weeks of the shutdown. Pocket it. For the glory of their shareholders. After all, the mantra for business is not 'raise tax for the government', it is 'work to benefit shareholders'. Well, at least that was the 20st century mantra, not sure what it is today - survive maybe.

Rhetoric: U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said "its not a union issue". Put this in the same category of Obama-isms like "the Stimulus has created jobs!", or "we brokered a compromise for the debt deal!". Just cause you say it, and even if you are the leader of the free world and you say it, over and over and over again, does not make it True.

Fact: the National Mediation Board (there is such a thing) recently broke from decades of prior practice regarding workplace elections for unions. Instead of the usual rule - must have 51% of all workers say yes to forming a union, they changed the rule to -must have 51% of workers who vote and say 'yes' to forming a union. Making it easier since those who don't vote, don't count. You don't even need to 'get out the vote', just gather those who you think will vote your way, and voila, get your union (of course, all the "fair share" people who didn't vote, would probably still be subject to the same dues, conditions negotiated, etc.)

It used to be, that all those people who didn't give a darn basically served as 'no' votes, making it harder to form a union.

More rhetoric: complaints by liberal senators about "hostage taking". Does anyone fall for that anymore? Well - if you say it enough times, maybe people don't realize there are other ways of thinking.. Which still does not make it True.

So the real deal here, as I see it - all the hoopla about Republicans not wanting to extend the small airport subsidies, and willing to shut down the FAA over this. Partially true. The Democratic leaders saying it is crazy and unproductive (expletive deleted) to shut down the FAA over this and throw 74,000 more people onto an unemployment system that is already strained well past the breaking point. Partially true.

But underneath it all, a federal regulation changed. One which made it easier to form a workplace union. And the Republicans, faithful Federal Register readers all, most likely, took notice. And said no. In a very public way. Note to self: Federal Register daily digest, must subscribe...