Why Today’s Politicians Make Tomorrow’s Perfect Lobbyists

“Let’s look at Cantor’s résumé. Let’s look at all his investment-banking experience. Let’s look at his capital-markets experience. He has none. He has no experience or skills that would qualify him to be even an intern at a fifth-tier firm in the financial industry. I mean, come on! I love the spin. They’re pushing back this morning. They’re saying, 'This is really different! This isn’t like everybody else' ...

“They’re guaranteeing him $3.8 million. You don’t guarantee someone $3.8 million because you’re training him to be an investment banker.

“Wall Street is after what it’s always buying in Washington: access, influence, and unfair advantage. And Cantor is a big catch for anybody who wants access. Look, if you’re in congressional leadership for X number of years, you know plenty that’s worth a lot of money. If you’re the majority leader, who’s in charge of the agenda and vote counting? One of your jobs is to make sure you’re doling out favors to people. There are dozens and dozens of House members indebted to Eric Cantor for the things he’s done for them. You’re worth a lot.

“In addition, Eric Cantor knows why some things got done and other things didn’t get done. He knows why someone voted for or against a bill or amendment. He knows how to strategically target everybody in the House on the issues that anybody cares about in a way that’s close to unique. He’s not going to crudely do it in a way that puts the scarlet-L lobbyist on his lapel. He and the rest of the influence peddlers at the highest level of government work the shadows and do indirectly what the law prohibits them from doing directly.

—Dennis Kelleher

What if Men Could Get Pregnant?

1. “If men got pregnant, you could get an abortion at the ATM. Let’s state the obvious.” —Selina Meyer on Veep

2. “If men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would be like a Starbucks. There would be two on every block and four in every airport. And the morning-after pill would come in different flavors like sea salt and cool ranch.” —Nasim Pedrad playing Arianna Huffington on SNL

3. “I flat-out guarantee you that if men were biologically responsible for procreation, there’d be paid family leave in every Fortune 500.” —Sam Seaborn on the West Wing

Addendum (1/21/2017): “If penises could do what pussies could do, they’d be on postage stamps.” —Jane Fonda

The Cato Institute Is Libertarian, Not Conservative

WSJ:

A recent correction that we published should be kept in mind: the Cato Institute successfully argued that we were wrong in calling it a conservative think tank. They make the case that we should describe it as a libertarian think tank.

Why We Should Relax Regulatory Requirements for Startups

“You don’t have to be accredited to gamble, which on net balance, loses money. But for some odd reason you have to be accredited to make private investments, which on net balance make money.”

—Naval Ravikan, co-founder of AngelList

Would Jesus Be a Liberal?

“You know, whenever I listen to Republicans offer up prayers, I’m struck by a profound disconnect. A disconnect between what you profess you feel for an impoverished, unemployed Jewish carpenter, and how you treat people who are just like him.

“What if Jesus were alive today? Would you cut his unemployment benefits? What about his food stamps? Would you insist that he get a photo ID in order to be allowed to vote? Would you tap his phone? Would you pass his sandals through the X ray machine? Racially profile him based on his Middle Eastern appearance? Would you stop and frisk him? ‘Legally’ shoot him if he raised his hand, as Jesus did in the temple?

—Cynthia Nixon in the “Prayer Brunch” episode of Alpha House

This Is What the United States Senate Has Come To

“Republicans, furious that Democrats last month stripped away most of their power to filibuster presidential nominations, are using every procedural barricade available to them in the Senate’s two-century-old rule book, forcing it to run the clock as long as possible while they vote on a series of President Obama’s nominees.

“Democrats, hoping to make the situation so unpleasant for their colleagues across the aisle that they eventually break, are scheduling votes at all hours of the day and night. Mr. Reid is threatening to refuse to let anyone go home until a backlog of dozens of nominees is gone—even if that means spending Christmas Eve in the Capitol.

Tempers Flare As New Rules Strain Senate

Priceless

Time:

Liz Cheney, the daughter of Iraq-war architect Dick Cheney, has said on the campaign trail in Wyoming that she opposes a strike to punish the Assad government's use of weapons of mass destruction. Her reason: the president has failed to develop a plan for intervention with defined goals.

Isn’t This How All Votes Should Work?

“It’s not the kind of vote where you go up to somebody and say, ‘I really need you to vote for this.’ This is a vote where you just present the information, the facts, the intelligence, the judgment that you have about what happens if you don’t do something, as well as what happens if you do.”

—Nancy Pelosi

5 Reasons Why Obama Is More Standoffish Than George W. Bush and Ruder Than Bill Clinton

Extracted from Todd Purdum's article in this month's Vanity Fair:

1. It’s hard to imagine that Obama did not do himself at least some real harm in September by abruptly canceling the annual congressional picnic at the White House—which had already been postponed from June—on the grounds that members would be too busy considering the president’s request for authority to use force in Syria. The rain check was delivered in a terse, graceless, 53-word e-mail to Capitol Hill offices, announcing that “The President and Mrs. Obama look forward to welcoming Members of Congress and their immediate families at the Congressional Holiday Ball in December.” Immediate families. Such a friendly, legalistic ring.

2. In late September, Obama attended a “dinner” fund-raiser for high donors to the Democratic National Committee at the super-luxe Jefferson Hotel a few blocks from the White House. Each of the two dozen-odd guests had contributed $32,400, the maximum allowed by law. The president’s motorcade left the White House for the hotel at 4:19 p.m. and was back at the White House by 5:25. The price of the encounter: about $540 per donor for each minute of the president’s time—at an hour when the only other people eating dinner in Washington were doing so in nursing homes. How much fun could that be—for anyone?

3. On Syria, Obama clearly did not run the congressional traps. Having announced—on his own—that the use of chemical weapons would constitute a red line requiring an American response, he suddenly decided in September to seek congressional approval without any real count of the Democratic caucus. And he made up his mind not in deliberations with his secretaries of state or defense but after a walk around the White House lawn with his chief of staff Denis McDonough—an adviser since his Senate days—before informing a handful of other senior aides of his decision.

4. And then there is golf. Every president since William Howard Taft has played the game, with varying degrees of skill and pleasure. Johnson hated it, and played only so he could talk shop and twist arms with those who did. Woodrow Wilson played only with a close, carefully chosen circle, forbade any talk of business, and never played a second round with anybody who broke that rule. Obama has taken a page out of Wilson’s book, invariably competing in a foursome with the same retinue of junior aides and old friends—most of whom are better than he is and whose seemingly sole mission is to sharpen the president’s own game.

When he was White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel tried in vain to get Obama to play golf with a business titan or two. A match with John Boehner was finally arranged only in 2011, with all the buildup and anticipation of a diplomatic summit—a show exercise, a shadow play. It never had a chance of producing any kind of meaningful connection, in the way that repeated, casual, low-stakes outings might do.

5. And speaking of summits, Obama has no relationship with any foreign leader that is remotely akin to Ronald Reagan’s with Margaret Thatcher, or Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s with Tony Blair. The scandalous phone-tapping imbroglio—even if the fault of the Bush administration—now makes it unlikely that he ever will.

What Happens When the Government Makes Venture-Capital Investments Without Demanding Venture-Capital Compensation

Scott Woolley:

When the government’s negotiators started hammering out the details of the Tesla investment in mid-2009, it was obvious to both sides that the feds were in a position to name their terms. Tesla’s management knew that if they couldn’t get the government’s money at 3 or 4% interest, their next cheapest source of capital would cost 10 times more, a whopping 30 to 40% annually. . . .

Personal loans made in 2008 by Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and CEO, provide a telling contrast. Musk received a much higher interest rate (10%) from Tesla and, more importantly, the option to convert his $38 million of debt into shares of Tesla stock. That’s exactly what he ended up doing, and the resulting shares are now worth a whopping $1.4 billion—a 3,500% return on his investment. By contrast, the Department of Energy earned only $12 million in interest on its $465 million loan—a 2.6% return.

The government had huge leeway to demand similar terms as part of its loan, given the yawning gap between its interest rate and the cost of Tesla’s next-best source of capital. The government was ponying up more capital than all of Tesla’s previous investors combined. At a bare minimum, the Department of Energy could have demanded a share of the company equal to the 11% Musk received for his $38 million loan the year before. Such an 11% share would be worth $1.4 billion to taxpayers today.

Why do we let the Librarian of Congress decide which uses of technology are legal?

Derek Khanna:

The last major revision to copyright law was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in 1998. That was three years before the iPod, six years before Google Books and nine years before the Kindle. Thanks to heavy lobbying from established industries, the DMCA restricts entire classes of technology and hampers innovative products and services from being offered to the public. . . .

The DMCA empowers the Library of Congress to grant exemptions, which must be renewed every three years. Unfortunately, the Library’s decisions have been all over the map. In the last six years, cellphone unlocking was legal. In the current cycle, which lasts until 2015, unlocking will be banned. Last year, jail-breaking your iOS device in order to run software not authorized by Apple was illegal. Now it’s legal—but only for iPhones, not iPads, and only until 2015. Why do we let the Librarian of Congress decide which uses of technology are legal?

Tax Avoidance vs. Tax Evasion

The New York Times:

No taxpayer is obliged to pay the government a penny more than the law requires, the Supreme Court said in 1935. But the court also said no corporation was permitted to use “elaborate and devious” means—known nowadays as “gimmicks”—for the express purpose of evading taxes. That ancient tension between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion, and between a corporation’s self-interest and the fundamental requirements of a government and its citizens, remains at the heart of the American system.

Or, more memorably, Avery Tolar to Mitch McDeere in John Grisham's Class Action:

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is:

a. whatever the IRS says
b. a smart lawyer
c. 10 years in prison
d. all the above

Maxine Waters Wants You to Lobby Her

The congresswoman recently suggested that bankers hire new lobbyists to better represent them. “Influence us,” she purred, reminding them of her new role as the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. “Help us understand the intricacies of your business.”

The Mellowing of Maxine Waters

If the IRS Isn’t “Good at Math,” What Is It Good For?

In Washington, a “gaffe” takes place when someone accidentally tells the truth. Last week, a senior Internal Revenue Service official breathed new life into this axiom. “I’m not good at math,” confessed Lois Lerner as she tried to summon a statistic on a conference call with reporters.

Seriously? The woman who oversees tax-exempt organizations at the IRS has a fuzzy relationship with basic arithmetic?! No wonder so many small businesses operate in fear of the taxman.

Pair this news with the revelation that the agency has been applying special scrutiny to groups that oppose the administration, and it’s hard not to wonder, If the IRS isn’t good at math, what good is the IRS for?

Does House of Cards Contain a Libertarian Leitmotif?

It does indeed, as viewed through the prism of public choice theory. David Carr explains:

“People in government like to think they answer to greater gods and journalists like to think that they are on a mission from god, while nonprofits act as if they were always on the side of angels, when in fact, all are capable of moral mis- and malfeasance when it serves their ends. If you think about it, only Remy Danton, Mr. Underwood’s former staffer who has gone over to the lobbying side, is really consistent in terms of who he is and what he represents. As a lobbyist and a fixer, he understands that brute force and large sums of cash, strategically applied, can melt away the pretense of civic-mindedness and reveal the self-interest that lurks around every corner in the capital.”

Seriously? This Is the Best Argument You Can Muster?

“If same-sex marriage becomes a cultural norm, Mr. Brown warns, heterosexual couples will no longer have preference over gay men and lesbians in adoptions, schoolchildren will be taught that same-sex parenting is normal, and those who oppose it will be labeled bigots.”

Well, yes—that’s the point!

The Deficit We Have vs. the Deficit We Imagine

“Eventually, the country will have to confront the deficit we have, rather than the deficit we imagine. The one we imagine is a deficit caused by waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, oil-industry subsidies and vague out-of-control spending. The one we have is caused by the world’s highest health costs (by far), the world’s largest military (by far), a Social Security program built when most people died by age 70—and, to pay for it all, the lowest tax rates in decades.”

—David Leonhardt

Are You a Libertarian, or an Objectivist?

“Libertarianism is a philosophy of governing, and only of governing. Ayn Rand’s politics were also her personal creed and ethos. Her political beliefs dictated her taste in art, friends, music, food, and men. I find all of that rather horrifying. One of the main reasons I’m a libertarian is that I loathe politics, and I want politics to play as diminished a role in my day-to-day life as possible. Letting politics dictate my friends, loves, and interests to me sounds like a pretty miserable existence.”

—Radley Balko

Quote of the Day

“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

—Neil Newhouse, Romney’s pollster