Can Good Government be Restored?

Three headlines at Real Clear Politics early this morning suggest it will take herculean efforts by a determined Congress to purge political corruption in federal agencies and restore a modicum of good government.

• IRS Lawlessness: 20 Hard Drives, Six Unanswered Questions (IBD) shows how flagrantly the administrative state circumvents accountability.
• The ObamaCare-IRS Nexus (Kim Strassel, WSJ) reveals the depths of political manipulation and corruption to which IRS has already sunk in implementing the Obamacare law.
• Fast-Tracking ObamaCare to the Supreme Court (WSJ) looks at how court packing, judicial jurisdiction manipulation and intimidation may yet be used to rewrite even the most unambiguous texts of the ObamaCare law. 

Congressional investigations uncovering corruption are not enough. Desperately needed is a systemic overhaul of federal laws by Congress to strip federal agencies of the administrative powers that have enabled political corruption to grow into malignancy, as Philip Hamburger argues in Is Administrative Law Unlawful?,  and to restore to the states authority that was originally designed to be theirs, as David Corbin and Matthew Parks argue in Is There Enough Courageous Conservatism: Combating the Arsenal of Progressivism.

Good government can be restored, but only by a reform-minded Congress dedicated to revising existing laws to conform to the principle that the best government is that which governs least.

Women Against Feminism Movement

"A social media movement called 'Women Against Feminism' has been making headlines recently both nationally and internationally, generating a wave of backlash and discussion on the definition of modern feminism," reports Anuhya Bobba @ College.USAToday.com. Bobba is a rising junior at George Washington University.

“Women Against Feminism” has garnered more than 17,000 ‘likes’ and followers on Facebook and Tumblr combined, and this number continues to grow along with the outrage of those who see supporters of the movement to be “grossly misinformed.”

Modern feminists are frustrated with the new movement:

“The perceptions that these women have about feminism is [sic] grossly misinformed. ‘Women Against Feminism’ paints feminists as man-haters who like to play the victim,” [Daniel Greinke, a recent grad who considers himself a feminist] says. “Feminism is not about oppressing men or playing the victim. There are real systemic issues with the way women are treated in our society — the effects of which are well documented in academic literature and which are felt by many women in my life.”

'Women Against Feminism' supporters have a very different perspective:

But Hannah Cowan, a rising freshman at the University of Wyoming, says the modern feminist movement is “full of faults” — adding that it is a fight for “entitlements and supremacy” rather than equality, that it shames men and does not take into account how men also have issues, and that feminists are “manipulative people” playing the role of a victim.

Cowan, who will be pursuing a pre-law track, says she finds “Women Against Feminism” to be a positive movement that sheds the truth about modern feminism, which holds up equality and creates an “unnecessary wall of tension” between the sexes.

“I am an anti-feminist, because feminists have attacked me for my political, personal, and religious views more than the ‘patriarchy’ ever did for my gender,” she says. “I absolutely loath the stigma feminism is placing on women as being ‘weak,’ ‘delicate,’ or ‘oppressed by the patriarchy.’ As a female living in the U.S., I am in no way ‘oppressed’ and I pity the women who are dull enough to believe the feminists lies.” [snip]

... She adds that because Western women already have the same rights as their male counterparts, feminists should shift their energies to issues like sex trafficking in Europe and not concern themselves with “ridiculous crap here like worrying about clothes that boys ‘hate'."

Conservative Women Decry War on Women Tactic

"Some women are getting sick of the Democrats' war on women," writes Valerie Richardson @ Washington Times, and they are fighting back in unique ways.

Take Laura Carno, who became so fed up with the nonstop "war on women" political advertising campaign in Colorado that she put together a radio ad of her own. It's aimed at Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat who's pushing the theme in his re-election bid against Republican Rep. Cory Gardner.

"I have to ask, Sen. Udall, why do you get your underwear all in a bundle about women and birth control?" Ms. Carno, who heads the conservative group I Am Created Equal, says in the spot. "Do you honestly think we need the government to make these choices for us?"   [snip]

"The feedback I'm hearing from women, especially women who aren't involved in politics, is, 'Why do they think I only care about birth control? Don't they realize I'm more complicated than that?'" said Ms. Carno, who lives in Colorado Springs. "Women know how to get their own birth control. We're pretty damn smart."

Missy Shorey, executive director of the conservative women's group, Maggie's List, told Richardson "it's the Democrats who are waging the real war by moving to knock GOP women out of contested primaries."

Ms. Shorey said one way to disarm the Democratic "war on women" claims is to elect more female conservatives.

"Our main focus is let's get women elected to Congress," said Ms. Shorey. "You can't claim 'war on women' when you have outstanding women elected to the House and Senate who are conservative and Republican in nature. You just can't do it. Especially when it's angry males on the left saying this kind of thing."

Want Jobs? Frack

"Fracking in the state of Colorado during the year 2012 created 111,000 jobs, whereas Barack Obama's entire economy has only generated 110,000 jobs for Millennials since 2007," writes Katie Kieffer @ townhall.com.

Last week, TIME Magazine reported: “Fracking generated $29.5 billion in economic activity in Colorado in 2012, creating 111,000 direct jobs with an average wage of $74,811, according to the Colorado Petroleum Association.” One month earlier, TIME reported: “Since 2007, there’s been a net increase of only 110,000 jobs held by workers between the ages of 22 and 34, making millennial unemployment nearly flat for the past six years.”

In June, 15.2 percent of Millennials were unemployed according to Generation Opportunity. Over a third of Millennials were “homeless” during the Obama years—living at home with their parents or grandparents against their will. Finally, Millennials are struggling under the weight of historic levels of student loan debt and rising healthcare insurance premiums at a time when good jobs are scarce.

We can recover this economy, but it will take individuals demanding free market solutions. Let’s audit the Federal Reserve. Let’s lower the corporate income tax rate to the lowest, not the highest, in the world. Let’s each opt out of Obamacare as I explain how to do in my new book titled, “Let Me Be Clear.” And, above all, lets frack.

Is the War on Women Tactic Working?

"From the Lipstick on the Pig Department, CNN reports that its latest polling shows “no Katrina moment” for Barack Obama," writes Ed Morrissey @ hotair.com. "That, however, is rather cold comfort, as even CNN allows, because the steady level of the President’s job approval rating puts him underwater by double digits."

As late as May 2013, Obama’s approval rating was 53/45 — in a survey taken right before the exposure of both the IRS and NSA scandals. One month later, it flipped to 45/54 and has been underwater outside of the MOE [margin of error] since, with majority disapproval every poll. The trend on leadership has much fewer data points, but exhibits a similar trend. Independents have his job approval at 34/62, and he’s even estranged women at 45/52 and young voters (18-34) narrowly at 45/49.  [snip]

On the question of whether Obama “generally agrees with you on issues you care about,” Obama dropped to 43/56, narrowly the worst rating ever (was 44/56 in the wake of the ObamaCare rollout debacle). In May of last year, it was 51/47. The relentless focus on issue non-sequiturs over the last several months seems to have taken its toll on Obama, and other Democrats still talking about a “war on women” and income inequality should take notice of that trend in particular. For women, that’s now 45/53, and among independents it’s an abysmal 35/63.

How Do Hard Drives Get 'Scratched'?

The latest news on ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's conveniently vanishing email records is that her computer hard drive was only scratched, reports Patrick Howley @ Daily Caller.

Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer hard drive was “scratched” and the data on it was still recoverable. But the IRS did not try to recover the data from Lerner’s hard drive, despite recommendations from in-house IRS IT experts to outsource the recovery project.

The hard drive was then “shredded,” according to a court filing the IRS made to House Ways and Means Committee investigators.

CDs get scratched, but how do computer hard drives cocooned inside hard-cased CPUs and protected from human handling get scratched?

Apparently that question is being pondered by members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, which noted in its July 22 press release:

It is also unknown whether the scratch was accidental or deliberate ...

The Problem with the White House and the Media

Ron Fournier @ National Journal writes a thoughtful piece on the declining popularity of Mr. Obama, and his logic could be applied as well to the declining popularity of national media.

He begins with an earlier conversation he had with an unnamed Democrat:

"Who's the hero in the White House narrative?" the Democrat asked.

I shrugged; "Barack Obama." Aren't all elections about the candidate, and all White Houses about the president?

The Democrat shook his head. "That's the problem with this White House. Barack Obama is the hero of their narrative, but he's not supposed to be," he said. "The hero of every political narrative should be the voters."

Fournier thought about that conversation during his vacation in Michigan, "where the dearth of quality jobs gnaws at everybody" and "where financially desperate families are selling second- and third-generation cottages—a tangible loss of 20th-century middle-class vibrancy."

What do these folks hear from the White House and the rest of Washington? Whining, mostly. Obama and his GOP rivals can't seem to tell the story of America without casting themselves as the protagonists.

He argues: 

Even Democrats are starting to tire of their president sounding less like a leader than a kindergartener—whiny ("They don't do anything except block me and call me names"); petulant ("So sue me"); and self-absorbed ("I ... me … my"). [snip]

Pity the president? No. In fact, White House officials, stop talking about him. And, Mr. President, put a muzzle on "I," "me," and "my."

Obama's slide in popularity will be permanent unless he realizes that the story of his presidency is not about him. It's certainly not about the GOP. It's about the people in Michigan and throughout the rest of the country who face enormous obstacles—and struggle heroically to overcome them.

Applying Mr. Fournier's logic to journalism could also explain the declining respect for national media. While American middle class families struggle, many in national media continue to treat every public policy debate—from immigration to energy to economics—as a scoring game between the players of the two political parties.

Yet for many worried Americans, it is not a game.It's not about the political parties, personalities or players. It's certainly not about which leaders scored the most political points on a given day. It is about accurately and honestly reporting the substance of public policy discussions in the quest for solutions to get America and her economy back on track.

The media's slide in respect will be permanent as Mr. Obama's popularity unless it realizes the story isn't about Washington; it's about Americans who live everywhere else.

Hold Those Sexy Photos!

"Girls who post 'sexy' pictures on social media sites are seen by their female peers as less pretty, less likely to get a job done and not someone they'd want to be friends with, a new study shows," reports the UK Telegraph.

The Oregon State University asked 58 girls aged 13-18, and 60 women aged 17-25, what they thought of a girl when her Facebook profile picture was 'sexy', and when it was 'conservative'.

Researchers found that the less revealing pictures scored the highest in terms of the girl’s perceived physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and task competence.

The biggest difference was found in task competence - those girls with 'sexy' photos were seen as not able to complete a task.

“This is a clear indictment of sexy social media photos,” said researcher Elizabeth Daniels, an assistant professor of psychology who studies the effect of media on girls’ body image.

“There is so much pressure on teen girls and young women to portray themselves as sexy. But sharing those sexy photos online may have more negative consequences than positive.

The study was published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

Making Sense of the Millennial Generation

Millennials' political views don't make any sense is the headline of an Atlantic article about a new Reason-Rube survey of millennials. Senior editor Derek Thompson writes:

Millennial politics is simple, really. Young people support big government, unless it costs any more money. They're for smaller government, unless budget cuts scratch a program they've heard of. They'd like Washington to fix everything, just so long as it doesn't run anything.

That's all from a new Reason Foundation poll surveying 2,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. Millennials' political views are, at best, in a stage of constant metamorphosis and, at worst, "totally incoherent," as Dylan Matthews puts it.

It's not just the Reason Foundation. In March, Pew came out with a similar survey of Millennial attitudes that offered another smorgasbord of paradoxes:

• Millennials hate the political parties more than everyone else, but they have the highest opinion of Congress.
• Young people are the most likely to be single parents and the least likely to approve of single parenthood.
• Young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama when he promised universal health care, but they oppose his universal health care law as much as the rest of the country ... even though they still pledge high support for universal health care. (Like other groups, but more so: They seem allergic to the term Obamacare.)

Thompson has three takeaways from the poll.

1. Millennials are more liberal but they get more economically conservative when they make more money.
   
2. Millennials don't know what they're talking about when it comes to economics. He cites several examples of conflicting, even irreconcilable, ideological positions. Examples: 58% want to cut taxes overall, but 66 % want to raise taxes on the wealthy; 66% say 'when something is funded by government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful', but more than two-thirds think government should guarantee food, shelter and a living wage.
3. Millennials don't know what socialism is, but they think it sounds nice: 42% think socialism is preferable to capitalism, but only 16% could accurately define socialism in the survey. [To their credit, 52% said capitalism is the better system.]

Yet maybe the explanation for millennial ideological schizophrenia is as simple as this: their transition from childhood idealism to adult realism is taking years longer than previous generations.

Twenty-somethings in the 1940s had childhood idealism brutally stripped from them by a world war overseas and rationing of food, gas, and every other material good at home. Forced to face and overcome evil and deprivation, they went on to become "the greatest generation" of achievement and accomplishment.

In contrast, many of today's twenty-somethings reside in the protected economic shelter of family (living at home or subsidized by it) and/or government (subsidized by student loans, food stamps, etc.). They can afford to cling to childhood idealism longer.

The question isn't whether the 86-million-strong millennials will come to grips with adult economic realities (they will have to at some point). It's whether the nation can economically survive the length of time it's taking for them to do so.

The Incredibly Tiny Gay, Bisexual Population

Americans Have No Idea How Few Gay People There Are was the headline of a June 2012 Atlantic magazine article on the percentage of gay and lesbian population in the U.S., real and perceived.

In surveys conducted in 2002 and 2011, pollsters at Gallup found that members of the American public massively overestimated how many people are gay or lesbian. In 2002, a quarter of those surveyed guessed upwards of a quarter of Americans were gay or lesbian (or "homosexual," the third option given).

By 2011, that misperception had only grown, with more than a third of those surveyed now guessing that more than 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian. Women and young adults were most likely to provide high estimates, approximating that 30 percent of the population is gay. Overall, "U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian," Gallup found.

Only 4 percent of all those surveyed in 2011 and about 8 percent of those surveyed in 2002 correctly guessed that fewer than 5 percent of Americans identify as gay or lesbian.

Now it appears even 5 percent was too high an estimate. This week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of "the first large-scale government survey measuring Americans' sexual orientation," reports Sandhya Somashekhar @ Washington Post — a survey that "comprised 33,557 adults between the ages of 18 and 64."

The National Health Interview Survey, which is the government’s premier tool for annually assessing Americans’ health and behaviors, found that 1.6 percent of adults self-identify as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent consider themselves bisexual.

The overwhelming majority of adults, 96.6 percent, labeled themselves as straight in the 2013 survey. An additional 1.1 percent declined to answer, responded “I don’t know the answer” or said they were “something else.”

The figures offered a slightly smaller assessment of the size of the gay, lesbian and bisexual population than other surveys, which have pegged the overall proportion at closer to 3.5 or 4 percent. In particular, the estimate for bisexuals was lower than in some other surveys. 

Hobby Lobby Improved Public Opinion of High Court

YouGov.com reports that the public's overall favorable opinion of the Supreme Court rose after its Hobby Lobby Decision:

The "greatest change in perception" of the Court was among independents:

Health Savings Account Plans Have Soared

"The biggest trend [in health care reform] is the rapid growth in private Health Savings Account plans," write Investor's Business Daily editors.

HSAs let people buy high-deductible insurance and put pretax dollars into savings accounts to cover — tax-free — out-of-pocket costs. Extra funds are rolled over. The accounts are portable.

For years, conservatives championed HSAs as market-based health reform that gives consumers more control of their health care and their spending.

Democrats, naturally, hated the idea, claiming that HSAs would appeal only to the young and healthy, would destabilize the insurance market and wouldn't hold down health costs. Ted Kennedy, for instance, dismissed them as "an untried, untested, expensive system that could provide billions of dollars of benefits to wealthy individuals and insurance companies."

Republicans were finally able to overcome this intense opposition, authorizing HSAs in 2004. They've proved a big hit ever since.

According to America's Health Insurance Plans, nearly 17.4 million people are in HSAs today, up 12% from last year and more than double the number in 2009.

And none of the Democrats' attacks proved true.

Politico: Governors Livid Over Border Crisis

"The surge of Latin American children trying to cross the U.S. border threatens to strain states' resources and is testing their already fragile relationship with Washington, governors from both parties warned Friday," writes Kyle Cheney @ Politico.

As they gathered here for a meeting of the National Governors Association, the state leaders seethed at what they said was a lack of support and information from the federal government.

That's left them groping for solutions to an issue they say combines humanitarian concern for vulnerable children, fears of lax border security and intense election-year politics.

As expected, Obama critics blame his administration for the crisis, and Obama supporters blame the Congress. Yet for all the supposed rage, not one governor had the courage to openly raise the issue with Vice President Biden when given the chance:

The border crisis was on the tip of nearly every governor's tongue in the early part of their meeting here, yet the group passed on the chance to grill Vice President Joe Biden on the subject when he appeared before them Friday.

During a question-and-answer session that followed a keynote address by Biden to the governors, the state executives asked him relatively tame questions about workforce development and jobs. And Biden — who also may run for president in 2016 — didn't refer to the controversial topic, either.

Black State Senator Defends GOP

Black Louisiana Senator Elbert Guillory (R-Opelousas) explains why he switched from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party last year. He does a far better job summarizing the GOP's history on slavery and civil rights in a 4 minute video than most Republicans do in an entire political career: 

Caitlin Alcala: From Internships to Careers

Caitlin Alcala, Legislative Assistant for the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, spoke with college students and DC summer interns on the value of internships in career building during the Institute's annual Intern Seminar last month in Washington DC.

The video below can also be viewed on YouTube.

Gabrielle Jackson: Coaching Millennials

Gabrielle Jackson, president of the Millennial Solution, coaches Millennials on how to optimize their talent and excel in their personal and professional lives. She is the author of Five Millennial Myths: the Handbook for Managing and Motivating Millennials. She offered insight and advice to young women attending the Institute's Intern Seminar in June 2014 in Washington DC.

Below is a video of her remarks:

Pavlich Book: Assault & Flattery

Townhall editor and Fox News's Outnumbered host Katie Pavlich has a new book out this week, and we heartily recommend it.

Assault and Flattery: The Truth About the Left and Their War on Women goes after the sacred cows of the so-called War on Women and exposes the truth about the liberal stance toward women on every major current issue, including abortion, self-defense, and the women's vote.

The timing of the book release couldn't be better.  The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute is today honoring this dynamic conservative thinker and prolific writer with its 2014 Woman of the Year award.  We will have video of Katie's remarks as soon as it is available.

How Contraception Became Proxy for Women's Freedom

"Contra Justice Ginsburg, the Hobby Lobby decision is no cause for alarm," writes Helen Alvaré. She argues that even though Ginsburg's voice doesn't represent many women, "her arguments still have power" (particularly in the marketplace of male-female relationships), and they can't go unchallenged.

For significant and entrenched reasons, birth control has become a proxy for “women’s freedom” in the minds of many women, even if they’re not actually touched by the Hobby Lobby decision.

A significant number of women have good reasons to be anxious about the possibility of becoming pregnant when they are not fully willing and prepared. This is largely due to the situation in the “marketplace” of male-female relationships and the lack of policies helping mothers manage work outside the home.

First, regarding this marketplace, today it fosters non-marital sex, cohabitation, later marriage, abortion, and single parenthood (and thus female poverty). These phenomena are disadvantageous to women, and in the minds of many, can be mitigated or avoided by contraception. The mechanisms by which these results are produced are brilliantly summarized by leading economists.

SE Cupp: Turning Opinion into Careers

Political commentator S.E. Cupp offered tips and tricks of the trade on turning opinion into a variety of public policy careers during the Institute's annual Conservative Leadership Seminar in Washington DC in June. Below is a video of her remarks: