It’s tough enough to sell a house with home sales in the Twin Cities undergoing the biggest decline in the country, down 42 percent in July year to year. Yet some local governments make it even tougher for homeowners by imposing some of the country’s most onerous before-sale residential inspection ordinances, adding to the cost and red tape of buying and selling a house at the worst possible time.

Currently, fourteen metro-area municipalities have so-called “point-of-sale” ordinances in place, requiring home sellers to pay for a city inspection prior to selling their property. (In some cases, the ordinances are referred to as “time-of-sale” and “truth in housing” inspections.) In fact, in many cases, sellers are required to pay for the inspection before being permitted to put their home up for sale. These inspections are in addition to, not in lieu of, the private inspections for which home buyers routinely pay $300 or more.

That’s because, as several cities readily admit, these ordinances are not intended to help the buyer or seller. They are intended to help the city.

On its website, the City of Richfield states “inspections are not for the benefit of buyer or seller, but are a community effort to maintain the quality of Richfield’s houses and neighborhoods.” Common code violations cited by Richfield inspectors include bare wood, peeling paint, missing or deteriorated window glazing, and clogged gutters.

The laws require sellers to undergo a comprehensive city inspection for potential code violations at an initial cost that varies from $50 to $200, often before allowing the property to go on the market.

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Public schools aren’t exactly the bastions of spending efficiency.  That’s not a new headline.

But when it’s pointed out that in one month – that included Christmas break – Indianapolis Public Schools spent nearly $25,000 on cell phone bills, the monopolistic district fights back.

But sadly, not against wasteful spending.  No, instead, it lashes out at the sunlight and scrutiny.

Education Action Group published its findings about the cell phone bills in its Indiana newsletter. The news was subsequently picked up by talk radio and local TV. That’s when administrators with the school district started attacking the watchdog group.

But the problem was that the facts were not on their side, as EAG pointed out in a subsequent release.

The school district has emblazoned across the top of its website: “Children Come First!”  That’s great rhetoric – I’m sure it makes the casual observer feel warm and fuzzy – but the district doesn’t come close to walking the walk.

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Shocking story from the Poughkeepsie Journal:

State institutions for the developmentally disabled generate so much federal Medicaid money that New York’s other programs for people with intellectual disabilities would be threatened without them, state officials acknowledge in an internal document obtained by the Poughkeepsie Journal.

The document, labeled “Confidential — Policy Advice,” raises questions about the state’s decision to keep 1,100 institutional beds at eight centers that were once slated to close. The goal of the five-page paper, an undated PowerPoint presentation with recent statistical data, was to “preserve [the] status quo” by heading off potential regulatory reforms such as the federal government’s 2008 attempt to curb Medicaid payments.

“Without continuation of this system,” the presentation states, “roughly $1.4 billion in annual federal funding that is currently used to support vital community and other services … would be lost.”

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The battle between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) started coming to a close at several northern California Kaiser Permanente offices and hospitals Monday. Tens of thousands of workers will vote between now and October 4 on which union, if any, will represent them. At stake are 44,000 members and an estimated $40 million in annual dues. The choices are SEIU, NUHW, and “no union.” The votes will be tallied starting on October 6.

In January, 2,000 health care workers in Los Angeles voted to quit SEIU and join NUHW by a margin of six to one. SEIU currently represents 150,000 health care workers in California.

Union power plays are nothing new, but this is about more than that. At the heart of the dispute between SEIU and NUHW is a conflict of visions over the future of unionism in the private sector. The North Bay Business Journal reports:

The contentious battle has reached new heights, with NUHW proponents saying their rival puts organizational power over individual workers while SEIU advocates claim NUHW and its supporters ultimately undermine organized labor and jeopardize workers’ collective bargaining power and the existing contract.

NUHW was formed in January 2009 by the former leaders of SEIU’s Oakland-based affiliate, after a bitter dispute with the SEIU national leadership. The breakup occurred after SEIU put its affiliate United Healthcare West (UHW) under trusteeship, throwing out 80 locally elected officers, accusing them of misuse of union funds.

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White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs spent much of his day yesterday tripping over his shorts about a NY Times hit piece on John Boehner.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took such a liking to this weekend’s NY Times story on House Minority Leader John Boehner and his lobbyist friends that Gibbs has posted about it on Twitter four times, beginning with one saying, “Headline says it all…A G.O.P. Leader Tightly Bound to Lobbyists.”

Maybe Mr. Gibbs should think twice before he makes that argument. He should at least look at how his party fares in a discussion of lobbyist influence.

If you look at the top Members of Congress who receive the most money from lobbyists this campaign season, 15 out of the 20 are Democrats. None of the 20 were named John Boehner.

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It is less than two months to the midterm Congressional elections and for the Republicans all current signs point to something between significant successes at worst, and taking control of Congress if everything breaks their way.  To be sure, the GOP shouldn’t count the elephants stampeding toward the two Chambers until the voters render their verdict.  At this time, Republican leaders are split as to what to do between now and election day.  Some favor a strategy of saying as little as possible so as not to make any gaffe, which slows the momentum flowing their way or the alternative of putting forth a comprehensive plan of action.

It is not our purpose to offer advice on which short-term political strategy they should adopt.  However, Republicans should be mindful that even major electoral shifts can be very short lived if they are not followed by positive action.  Currently, the American people, in poll after poll, have revealed an almost loathsome view of both parties, who they hold, to paraphrase the words of the late Speaker John McCormick “in minimum high regard.”  Perhaps Republicans can coast to victory simply by not being Democrats, although they should keep in mind their electoral success in 1994 when they put forward the now famous “Contract With America.”  In that election, after several decades of being a semi-permanent minority party, they didn’t content themselves with offering candidates viewed as “Democrat light.”  Instead, they put forward a comprehensive alternative set of ideas so as to present to the voters a coherent alternative plan of action for the country.  But once they achieved electoral success and the country finally had a working two party system, the voting public since 1994 has shown a propensity to fire either party if it fails to deliver results.

Of course, all political junkies, we among them, love the “sport” of following pre-election polls and speculating on various possible outcomes.  It is the political equivalent of reading the sports page.  But just as with baseball managers and football coaches, “losing seasons” end with the managers or coaches (or in this case, the party) being given the heave-ho.

Less than two years ago, President Obama came into office riding a wave of popularity.  He ran a smart campaign and he promised to be an inclusive leader and end the partisan rancor, which had long befouled the American political air.  Now his party faces the possibility of an historic Congressional drubbing.  What happened?  Many Republicans, energized by the Tea Party movement, will attribute the change in the political winds solely to public opposition to the health care legislation and other programs that the President and Congress pushed from the liberal left agenda, and no doubt that part of the story is true, as is the public’s new found attention to deficit spending and the nation’s debt load.  We would suggest, however, another overarching reason: the voters demand for political accountability.

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Today, voters in 7 states, and the District of Columbia, go to the polls to set their party’s nominees for the November elections. The outcome of several November races hang in the balance.

The big news of the day is that President Obama’s proposal to target the energy industry for particular tax punishment will kill 150,000 jobs. As Ed Morrissey notes, that’s high-paying union jobs. American jobs. Uh oh.

For years, groups like the BlueGreen Alliance have been working to do a delicate dance that falsely shelters union jobs while punishing traditional energy sources. While their legislative victories have been rather quiet (see: amending The Lacey Act), they are still holding out hope for their greatest hits, which include cap and trade, green energy jobs, carbon tariffs.

Could the recent trend toward collusion by Blues (blue-collar union members, mis-represented by labor officials) and Greens (granola-crunching hippies or their politer PR counterparts) be facing a rocky time? Well, there is a split between over “black liquor” tax credits (the Steelworkers were fine with American protectionism but decidedly less so for similar Chinese policies). But while that’s an interesting hiccup, the political alliance is still generally intact and meaning trouble for America. And already, the UAW is signing up to do for “green jobs” what it did for Detroit jobs — so watch out!

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With the FDA preparing to initiate cost-based rationing of late stage cancer drugs, the intellectual giants at the New York Times have decided to lay down a gauntlet to defend rationing of medical care. Welcome to the Brave New World of ObamaCare.

To the Times, it is an outrage that drugs are approved with “no consideration of cost,” begging the question, which bureaucrat will determine what is the value of life?  We have already seen evidence that $8,000 for an average six months of more life for breast cancer patients is too much for some bureaucrats to bear.

The opinion writers at the Times show sympathy for the sick by suggesting in that they don’t want to “bar patients from getting the treatment they need. But without curtailing the use of unnecessary, overly costly and even dangerous new technologies and surgical procedures, there is little hope of restraining the relentless rise in health care costs. That is a truth that American politicians and taxpayers cannot afford to ignore for much longer.”

There you have it.  In one subjective packed paragraph, the proponents of rationing within the administration have called in air support from the New York Times.

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Each summer, Wall Street strategist Byron Wien convenes a meeting of high rollers to discuss the outlook for investment. This year’s meeting brought together fifty individuals, including more than ten billionaires.

Their expectations, as reported by CNBC, are gloomy:

“They saw the United States in a long-term slow growth environment with the near-term risk of recession quite real,” said Wien, in a commentary to Blackstone clients. “The Obama administration was viewed as hostile to business and that discouraged both hiring and investment. Companies and entrepreneurs were reluctant to add workers because they didn’t know what their healthcare costs or taxes were going to be.”

Add this report to the many similar ones to which my colleagues and I have called attention over the past two years.

Of course, for mainstream macroeconomists, such evidence means nothing. In fact, they hold it in complete contempt because (1) their formal mathematical models do not have a variable called “regime uncertainty,” and (2) even if they could be persuaded to take this factor into account, the canned data on which they rely—the product of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, for the most part—do not supply them with an “official” data set for their analysis. What you can’t measure, according to their “scientific” credo, does not exist. Their de facto motto (of which I have more than once been on the receiving end) is: you’ve got no formal model; you’ve got nothing.

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So with the news today reflecting the recycling-mania of the very same peoples’ republic I voted against with my feet just a few years ago — installing “tracking chips” in recycling bins (now in Cool Ranch flavor!) to assist the Green Police — I see another, written example of the environmentalist’s fetish. (Of course, when I lived in Alexandria, I had Greenpeace tracking my garbage already, removing it every Sunday night. Think of the possibilities with this scheme had I not moved.)

Anyway, coincidentally the Washington Post runs this cute item in the center of its opinion page by environmental scold Bill McKibben. Its on-line title is something less risible than in my print edition, tossed at the gym earlier, which was “Solar’s Shining Moment at the White House” or something very close to that. Fittingly, it is accompanied by a photo of Jimmy Carter.

Noting that the solar panels that Carter had installed during his one term (Obama, you might better hurry), McKibben tells a whopper when he says that the contraption provided cheap power. That must be why that industry wouldn’t exist without federal subsidies more than 100 times those granted oil and gas, per unit of energy produced. And now demands a law mandating that people buy their stuff (McKibben does implicitly admit all of this with his citation of failed climate legislation being the hurdle to our miracle power becoming reality…). Such are the perils of prosperity, we are to believe. Or, possibly, be distracted from.

Regardless, the underlying argument, that now is the time for symbolic gestures (and mandates and more subsidies) because solar can be the miracle breakthrough technology solving our energy needs shows a deep commitment to recycling.

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Illinois, like many states, is broke. Its credit is even worse than that of California and its highly publicized financial quagmire.  In such a fiscal environment, taxpayers are rightfully demanding that governments tighten up and are increasingly zealous about ensuring that money is spent productively. One way in which they may be surprised to find that local Illinois governments, along with those all over the country, collectively waste millions of dollars is by lobbying other governments for handouts.

Thanks to a recent report conducted by Diana Lopez of Sunshine Review, we know that local governments in Illinois have spent at least $6.2 million since 2005 on the lobbying of other governments. I say “at least” because local officials don’t like to disclose this information in a systematic and open way. The report, furthermore, only looked at the state’s 10 most populous counties, and also didn’t capture state government expenditures. So you can bet the actually numbers are much, much higher.

Individually it might be hard to blame these governments. They shouldn’t ever be spending taxpayer money lobbying for specific policies at higher levels of government, as many are, but in the case of begging for state and federal funds, they might be bringing in more money to the district than they are spending. They are therefore acting in their interests, as would be expected.  The problem is the offering of these funds in the first place, because it’s unequivocally bad for taxpayers and serves as a barrier to good governance.

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On September 12, 2010 in Washington, D.C.,  FreedomWorks sponsored its second annual 9/12 rally, based on the theme of “Remember in November.” Among the speakers were FreedomWorks’ Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe (go here for Reason.tv’s interview with them about their best-selling Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto); former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (go here for an interview about his Our America initiative); “Tito the Builder,” a Colombian immigrant and contractor who is an outspoken defender of free enterprise; Deneen Borelli of Project 21 and Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Project; and new media impresario Andrew Breitbart of Big Government.

This year’s event drew a smaller but arguably more intense crowd than last year’s demonstration. Attendees’ attitudes toward President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress were sharply negative and sometimes strayed from the Tea Party’s traditionally narrow focus on curbing federal spending to issues such as illegal immigration and race relations. Yet there was no mistaking the main thrust of the day’s event, which was, as Matt Kibbe stressed, that “November 3 is even more important than November 2.” As Andrew Breitbart put it, “The beauty of the Tea Party movement is watching it hold Republicans accountable…These people are not going to stop holding their government and elected officials accountable, especially those that claim to represent their values.”

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Conservative author Dinesh D’Souza recently published an insightful, much-discussed article in Forbes, “How Obama Thinks.”

Drawing upon Obama’s writings and history, D’Souza concludes that his policy agenda—so at odds with traditional American values and principles—is rooted chiefly in the anti-colonialist intellectual influence of his Kenyan-born father:

What then is Obama’s dream? We don’t have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father’s dream. . . .

[T]o his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. . . . Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America . . . .

Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called “Problems Facing Our Socialism.” Obama Sr. . . saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa . . . . As he put it, “We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now.” The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that “theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.”

Like father, like son, says D’Souza:

It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America’s military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father’s position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America’s power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe’s resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

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In the six days that followed the attacks on September 11^th, the New York Stock Exchange was closed for the first and longest time ever since the Great Depression and World War I.  The markets would reopen on September 17^th, but to quite a rocky start.  During the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the heartbeat of our nation’s economy stopped, suspended in time.  And a forgotten class of Wall Street workers faced the difficult decision of whether or not to return to work. Those who did would return to a completely different world, one that had already changed them forever.  And today, nine years later, many of them are still there.  In a polarized political environment where the bad behavior of a few has unfairly demonized all of Wall Street’s workers, their contributions to our post-9/11 recovery have been largely ignored.  But had these workers made the choice back in 2001 never to return again, what might have happened?  This is one story, out of many, of the courage, determination and dignity of an entire class of forgotten patriots who stood by their country in the aftermath of September 11^th, 2001 when it would have been so easy to simply walk away.

Nine years ago, my brother Will was working for a Wall Street brokerage firm just steps away from what is now known as Ground Zero.  His office building overlooked Trinity Church on one side and the World Trade Center on the other.  Just on the other side of the river, near his home in Hoboken, NJ, he boarded the PATH train every day, bound for the bustling station at the World Trade Center.  Like so many others, he went to work on September 11^th thinking that day would be just like any other.

Just before 8:46 am as Will was settling into his day with his co-workers, a loud, screeching sound of shearing metal boomed just outside their building.  He looked up at the trading desk manager, and both were stunned.  Will thought it might be a high rise construction accident; the desk manager suspected an explosion.

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As we celebrate Constitution Day this week, a simple question suggests itself: What exactly does the Constitution constitute?  Or, with respect to the Framers: What were these men trying to do?

The Constitution cannot have constituted the American people.  The Preamble begins, famously, “We the People…”  The American people already existed.  They didn’t need a constitution to call them into existence.  On the contrary, they called it into existence.

Although clearly labeled “The Constitution of the United States,” the Constitution didn’t constitute the United States, either.  Eleven years earlier, the Declaration of Independence had already described itself as “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America”.  We the People (the People tell us) ordain and establish “this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Constitution constitutes not the people, not the states, and not the union of the states, but the federal government of these United States.   With characteristic bluntness, the Framers identify their constitution as a framework for ruling.  Each of the three sentences introducing what we call the “branches” of the new government forthrightly speak of “powers”: “all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States”; “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States”; “the judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress shall from time to time ordain and establish.”  The American people “grant” their government some of their powers—amendable, even revocable at pleasure by a sizeable majority following lawful procedures, to be sure—but ruling powers nonetheless.

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Today, in 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the “Star Spangled Banner.”