Liberty and Justice for All!

In his most recent Jindal apologia, Jeff Sadow states:

The latter group is represented by the likes of Democrat state Sen. Ben Nevers, who has offered legislation (SB 20) that would prevent elected officials from running from another elective office and another (SB 23) that would prohibit the governor from appointing anybody to anything who contributed to his campaign. The former serves absolutely no ethical purpose and the latter is a deliberate attempt to discourage exercise of free speech rights.

Look at Jindal’s executive council, who donated a lot of money to Jindal’s campaign who got his appointment to a job that will likely pay more than what was donated. Mr. Sadow doesn’t quite understand that while a person does have the right to make campaign contributions, they do not have the right to be appointed to an office by the Governor. And the only people who would be discouraged from making campaign contributions are those who want government employment and feel that the only way to obtain it is to give a campaign donation.

I am also fairly sure, because I am fairly cynical about government reform, that all this will do is prevent individuals who want government appointments from donating from their personal funds. They would probably still be able to make campaign contributions via any corporations they own. Since Bobby Jindal has not pushed to prevent corporate contributions to campaigns, there will still remain that unethical loophole.

Looking towards a global perspective, there are those who want to make sure Jindal politically gains little luster from the session because they want to reduce his power for the future.

Of course, Sadow here poisons the well and presents the logical fallacy that those who dare make the comment against Jindal and his so called attempts at reform are people who want the ethics session to fail. I am sure that such people exist. However, there are many others who are calling Jindal out on his so called “ethics reform” because his attempts at ethics reform do not include certain important items. The lack of those items means that Jindal (and others) can continue to act unethically.

And what is worse, and what everyone needs to be reminded of, is that Jindal and his administration seem to be more worried about fixing the “perception” of ethical problems then actually fixing ethical problems. And, as Elliot Stonecipher correctly pointed out, people will look at any ethics bill passed and will falsely assume that Jindal has passed meaningful ethics reform. However, just because an ethics bill passes does not make it meaningful.

He picked a subject area with widespread popular support as the first opportunity to legislate for many, especially in the House with rookies comprising over half of it, many of whom evoked ethics in their campaigns – and who have not seen the temptations that lax ethics standards could entice them into opposition.

If Sadow really believes this, he is more naive and uninformed than we all thought.

If Jindal can get at least half of the agenda the way he wants and the other half in a semblance of the way he wants, his power will magnify for the next contemplated special session on economics and the regular session, which will feature the slaughtering of a lot of sacred cows for which he’ll need all the power he can get.

WELL, either that or Jindal will have to make so many deals to pass a smokescreen “ethics bill” that allows us to eliminate the perception of ethical problems to the rest of the country (while allowing Jindal to continue his unethical activities) that when it comes time to deal with a special session on economics and the regular session, his hands will be so tied to the deals he made that he will have no power to do anything. I would not expect a Jindal apologist to look at the other side of the coin though.

Otherwise, he may have trouble living up to high expectations that have formed around his governorship.

I believe he already is having those troubles.

Update: Jeff responded to me on his thread. Here is my response to his post.

“A contribution is a form of political speech, so you are arguing that to be appointed to office you must give up your right to speak out about politics in this format which is not substitutable with any other. “

No, I am saying that if your desire is to get a public appointment that you will not be able to buy your way into the governors office. Your argument that a monetary campaign contribution is “not substitutable” with any other form of political speech is illogical. People seeking government employment under a specific candidate would be able to erect signs in their yard, put bumper stickers on their cars, wear other campaign gear, volunteer to make phone calls, hand out fliers, and do many other things that are quite valuable to a campaign.

“If we identify the communication of ideas — i.e., helping to finance a candidate that articulates those ideas — as a bedrock principle of a free, democratic society, your idea violates that.”

While it is true that financing of candidates should be a part of a free and democratic society, this was not “my idea” (though I do support it) and the idea does not violate that principle. It is currently illegal for people who own casinos to make campaign contributions. Such restrictions have not been ruled to violate those individuals free speech rights. Or would you argue that casino owners should be allowed to make campaign contributions as well?

“Further, it relies on the facile assumption, long disproven by hordes of researchers, that money buys influence in politics.”

Who are these researchers? Perhaps you can provide a link to the hordes of researchers that claim “Money does not buy influence in politics”. Is it any wonder that Jimmy Faircloth is Bobby Jindal’s executive council? He contributed the maximum to his campaign (and his law firm also contributed to his campaign as well).

“Just think it through, tens of thousands of people gave to Jindal, for example. A few hundred at most — many not even his contributors — will be appointed by him. So all these other people failed to “buy” an office, in this simplistic formulation? If so many fail, then where is the quid pro quo you so blindly assume?”

Where in my argument did I make the claim that people only contribute to try and buy an office? I did not, so your argument is already flawed.

However, there are many people (at many levels of government) who make contributions for the purpose of either getting a prime appointment, getting a government contract, or getting legislation passed that would be favorable to their businesses. Anyone who would reject that this happens is naive at best.

“Finally, restricting free speech rights that discourages some people’s input into the process only empowers other organizations or people. This would magnify the electability of candidates who rely on their own resoources and disadvantage those that cannot.”

Louisiana law allows corporate campaign contributions. Federal law does not. Many people have been elected to Federal offices who did not rely on their own resources. So again, your argument is flawed.

“And it would do nothing to discourage those who create or take advantage of 527 organizations to go around such a law. Indeed, the organizations’ input would become more substantial at the expense of others, whose motives are far more difficult to uncover than tracking the transparency in reporting of individual contributions.”

Well, then perhaps we need to work of fixing the problems surrounding 527 organizations and not use that as an excuse to allow people to purchase their way into government employment.

“Courts have consistently ruled that political donations are exercises of free speech that can be limited only in amount.”

My casino example proves you wrong.

“Further, they also have sided with the doctrine that there must be a compelling state interest in the curtailing of free speech liberties.”

The elimination of the ability of a person to purchase their way into a government appointment is quite compelling. I am sorry that you do not agree. People should not have the right to bribe elected officials to get what they want. Giving large contributions to a candidate for the purpose of getting a government appointment is clearly a bribe.

“There’s obviously no such interest present in this restriction either in a person’s exercising this right, or, for that matter, a winner’s right to appoint who he pleases subject to constitutional or legal qualifications (thus your false dichotomy).”

Just because you say that there is no such interest does not make it so. Again, i find it quite compelling that we would eliminate the ability of someone to bribe their way into government employment. But hey, if you think that bribes are free speech then go right ahead and keep believing it.

I was bored so I decided to see what new garbage Jeff Sadowhad to say recently. I was not disappointed in the least. It seems that Mr. Sadow believes that standardized tests keeps the success of a student “honest”. His analysis could not have been more flawed.

He believes that current student grades are flawed because the teachers inflate them so they don’t have to hear it from the parents when the kid doesn’t get a TOPS scholarship. Sadow either forgets (or is ignorant of) the fact that with standardized tests and teacher performance tied to success levels on those tests, that teachers will often narrow their focus to the material tested for and not on the broad areas that should be learned in school.

 But one of Sadow’s gems has to be this statement:

Of course, there’s also the oldest fall-back excuse in the book that somebody “doesn’t test well.” Never mind that in the larger real work world tests of one kind or another are always being sprung on you so if you aren’t ready for them in school you won’t go far out of it, but in the smaller academic world my experience has been the students who make this claim, that aspect aside, almost always turn out to be fairly weak students.

I hardly think anyone should trust Sadow’s experience. One of the brightest students in my high school, and the valedictorian of my class, scored less than a 1000 on the SAT. Everyone else in the top 10% of the class scored at least a 1200. If you compared us by our SAT scores alone you would assume that this one student was not as good when in fact he was the best student out of the entire group. He was just not good at taking standardized tests. So this is one major flaw in Mr. Sadow’s logic. He uses his own anecdotal “evidence” instead of backing his claims up with scientific proof of his claims.

And there is also the link that Mr. Sadow seems to try and connect between success in standardized tests vs success in real world work tests that one may face. This is just absurd. No real world test that I have faced is analogous with any standardized test I have ever taken.

Mr. Sadow encourages the continued use of Graduate Exit Exams and other forms of standardized tests because he feels it keeps the system honest. He supports their use to prohibit individual advancement. But when you have students who actually test poorly at these kinds of test who are otherwise brilliant students, it makes absolutely no sense to hold them back. And when you have the case when teachers will teach to the test, it seems to me that you hold everyone back since you are limiting their exposure to knowledge when you restrict class material to items only on the test.

I tend to not like to insult people when discussing what they say. But in Jeff Sadow’s recent apologia for Bobby Jindal, he freely calls someone else a “dummy” and a “moron” so far be it from me to point out when the pot calls the kettle black.

See, Jeff Sadow did not like when someone stated that the Republican Party was “historically a white-only party” and that “Jindal may have cornered the Mother Teresa vote, but Mahatma Gandhi certainly would have opposed him on principle.”

What makes Sadow an idiot is this:

Second, this dummy obviously needs a history lesson. The Republican Party started as an organized abolitionist movement that branched out into electoral politics just prior to the Civil War. In fact, its rise to prominence triggered the Civil War, among other causes, as southern Democrats believed the new party would be able to roll back slavery of blacks. After the Civil War, many blacks were elected as Republicans both at the state and national level – until Democrats began to find ways to prevent them from even participating in politics in the south. Currently dozens of blacks serve as GOP elected officials. If anything, it’s been Democrats who for so long (and maintained this by law) were “historically whites-only.”

So let me get this straight, Jeff Sadow jumps from the Republican Party when it was the “Party of Lincoln” and jumps all the way up to today to point out the “dozens” of black people who serve as elected Republicans?

He must forget that Democrats pushed for civil rights, with the exceptions of the Southern Democrats that became “Dixiecrats” (like Strom Thurmond).

He must forget that those Dixiecrats later found a home within the Republican party, who used their “southern strategy” to get votes from those racist white voters.

He also is trying to make those “dozens” seem like a lot. However, he clearly forgets the hundreds and hundreds of elected Democrats who are Black.

So I find it hard to believe that he would try to give a history lesson to some “dummy” when he leaves out about 100 years of history and ignores the super-majority of elected leaders who are Black. But this is where Jeff Sadow shows is sheer ignorance.

The left retains power in this country only because it can hornswoggle non-whites into thinking it can help them, by a strategy of disinformation and disempowerment of them.

Basically, Sadow is saying that non-whites are too stupid to realize that the mean evil Democrats are taking advantage of them. In reallity, minorities are smart because they see which party pushes for equality and which party fights equality. They see that the Democrats fight discrimination and the Republians seek to get government out of protecting minorities. Basically, they know who their friends are and the Republican party is not the friend of minorities when they would pander to racists.

Many Republicans will respond by saying “but look at Condi, she is black”. Unfortunately, this is pretty much the same thing as those who point out “but some of my friends are black”. Democrats don’t need to elevate individuals to show that they are supportive of minorities.