This NY Times article and this WaPo article are reporting that Houston Congressman and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will announce today that he is leaving Congress and pulling out of his ongoing re-election bid. Earlier posts on DeLay’s mounting troubles over the past couple of years are here. Although DeLay won the Republican primary last month in his re-election bid, he still faced a tough re-election race against former Rep. Nick Lampson in November.
Once one of the most powerful politicians in Washington, DeLay was indicted in Travis County (Austin) last year for his role in allegedly routing illegal campaign contributions into Texas during the 2002 elections that followed a controversial redistricting effort in Texas that cemented Republican dominance of the Texas Congressional delegation. DeLay is also at the center of an increasingly broad Justice Department corruption probe of former Republican lobbyist and top DeLay fundraiser Jack Abramoff and former DeLay aides. Two of DeLay’s former aides have pleaded guilty in the investigation and Abramoff was sentenced last week to over five years in prison after copping a plea deal earlier. DeLay has not yet been accused of a crime in the probe, but he appears to be a target of the ongoing investigation.
However, even if DeLay is not charged, he clearly displayed poor judgment in his personnel decisions. As this Wall Street Journal ($) editorial observed today:

What caused this outbreak of greed is impossible to know for sure. Clearly a sense of entitlement set in among some Republicans, who forgot why they were elected and began to believe that power was its own reward. We can recall when Republicans, back in the early 1990s, proposed to reduce the size of their Capitol Hill staffs in order to reduce the scope of Congressional mischief. That idea went away pretty fast once they became a majority.

Could this be the reason?

Reagan Administration Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger died Monday at the age of 88 after a short illness. Weinberger is best remembered for a combative style that likely had something to do with his indictment in the Iran-contra affair (for which he was later pardoned), but his impact on the American armed services is his far more important legacy.
At the time that Weinberger took over the Defense Department in 1980, the Pentagon was still in its post-Vietnam War funk that was exacerbated by the malaise of the Carter Administration. Although the Pentagon is a notoriously tradition-bound institution where new ideas that do not come through the normal chain of command are viewed by top Pentagon brass with skepticism, Weinberger developed a culture at the Defense Deparment that increasingly embraced intellectual ideas from non-conventional sources.
For example, Andrew Marshall in the late 1970’s and early 80’s argued from an obscure Pentagon office that wars could be revolutionized by precision bombs, unmanned planes and wireless communications that would allow the American military to destroy enemies from a distance. Similarly, the work of the late Pentagon iconoclast John Boyd and his acolytes in revolutioning the way in which the American military approaches war in the late 20th and early 21st century has been well-chronicled in Robert Coram’s book, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Little, Brown 2002).
The Pentagon brass often fought tooth and nail against the innovative ideas of people such as Boyd and Marshall — and continues to do so today with regard to Donald Rumsfeld’s ongoing reorganization of the Defense Department — primarily because those new ideas often ran contrary to the sacred cow military appropriations that the Pentagon brass traditionally protect. However, Weinberger was instrumental in instituting the cultural changes at the Pentagon that altered that institutional mentality, and leaders such as Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell over the past two decades opened up and accepted recommendations from non-traditional Pentagon sources that have revolutionized and dramatically improved America’s ability to conduct war in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
But for Cap Weinberger’s leadership, the traditional Pentagon brass would have likely squelched those innovative ideas before they would have ever seen the light of day. That is not what you will read about in the traditional obituaries of Weinberger, but it may be his most important contribution as a governmental servant.

First, outspoken actor Alec Baldwin goes on a radio talk show.
Then, Fox News pundit Sean Hannity calls in.
The result?
A quintessential example of the state of political discourse on talk radio.
Demogoguery continues to sell well in America.
Hat tip to TigerHawk for the link to the story.

Clear Thinkers favorite James Hamilton points out in this post the seemingly non-partisan point that it is hypocritical for politicians in Washington to vote, on one hand, for spending and tax measures that generate the federal deficit while voting, on the other hand, against an increase in the debt ceiling necessary to service the deficit.
Then, commentators to Professor Hamilton’s post promptly take his non-partisan point and turn it into a partisan issue.
Hilarity ensues.

In this intriguing WSJ Opinion Journal op-ed, American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray — author of the new book, In Our Hands (AEI Press 2006) — takes dead aim at the American welfare state:

This much is certain: The welfare state as we know it cannot survive. No serious student of entitlements thinks that we can let federal spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid rise from its current 9% of GDP to the 28% of GDP that it will consume in 2050 if past growth rates continue. The problems facing transfer programs for the poor are less dramatic but, in the long term, no less daunting; the falling value of a strong back and the rising value of brains will eventually create a class society making a mockery of America’s ideals unless we come up with something more creative than anything that the current welfare system has to offer.
So major change is inevitable — and Congress seems utterly unwilling to face up to it. Witness the Social Security debate of last year, a case study in political timidity. Like it or not, we have several years to think before Congress can no longer postpone action. Let’s use it to start thinking outside the narrow proposals for benefit cuts and tax increases that will be Congress’s path of least resistance.

Murray goes on to lay out his proposal, which he dubs as “the plan”:

[The federal government] makes a $10,000 annual grant to all American citizens who are not incarcerated, beginning at age 21, of which $3,000 a year must be used for health care. Everyone gets a monthly check, deposited electronically to a bank account. If we implemented the Plan tomorrow, it would cost about $355 billion more than the current system. The projected costs of the Plan cross the projected costs of the current system in 2011. By 2020, the Plan would cost about half a trillion dollars less per year than conservative projections of the cost of the current system. By 2028, that difference would be a trillion dollars per year.

Murray concedes that there are many technical issues that need to be sorted out before implementing such a system, but addressing those is not the purpose of his piece. Rather, he addresses why such an alternative to the current system of federal entitlements is preferable from a policy standpoint:

[D]o we want a system in which the government divests itself of responsibility for the human needs that gave rise to the welfare state in the first place? I think the reasons for answering “yes” go far beyond the Plan’s effects on poverty, retirement and health care. Those issues affect comparatively small minorities of the population. The more profound problem facing the world’s most advanced societies is how their peoples are to live meaningful lives in an age of plenty and security. . .
If you believe . . . that the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, . . . then it is reasonable to think that the purpose of government should be to enable people to do so with as little effort as possible. But if you agree with me that to live a human life can have transcendental meaning, then we need to think about how human existence acquires weight and consequence.
. . . Aristotle was right. Virtue is a habit. Virtue does not flourish in the next generation because we tell our children to be honest, compassionate and generous in the abstract. It flourishes because our children practice honesty, compassion and generosity in the same way that they practice a musical instrument or a sport. That happens best when children grow up in a society in which human needs are not consigned to bureaucracies downtown but are part of life around us, met by people around us.

Read the entire piece. Regardless of whether you agree with Murray’s plan, his ideas on the underlying individual and societal qualities that American governmental policies should promote is the type of clear thinking that we need in addressing the inevitable reorganization of the American welfare state.

Malcolm Gladwell, he of Tipping Point fame, has authored this fascinating New Yorker article on homelessness, which includes a particularly interesting discussion of the health care costs for the chronically homeless. One example that Gladwell uses is the story of a Reno, Nevada homeless man nicknamed “Million Dollar Murray,” who — when all his health care and substance-abuse treatment costs were calculated for the ten years that he had been on the streets — probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state of Nevada. As one sage Reno cop observed: ìIt cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray.î
The entire article is a must read, and here is a snippet to give you a flavor for it:

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It’s never pretty for the Republicans when George Will lays the wood to them, this time over the Abramoff scandal:

The national pastime is no longer baseball, it is rent-seeking — bending public power for private advantage. There are two reasons why rent-seeking has become so lurid, but those reasons for today’s dystopian politics are reasons why most suggested cures seem utopian.
The first reason is big government — the regulatory state. This year Washington will disperse $2.6 trillion, which is a small portion of Washington’s economic consequences, considering the costs and benefits distributed by incessant fiddling with the tax code, and by government’s regulatory fidgets.
Second, House Republicans, after 40 years in the minority, have, since 1994, wallowed in the pleasures of power. They have practiced DeLayism, or “K Street conservatism.” This involves exuberantly serving rent-seekers, who hire K Street lobbyists as helpers. For House Republicans the aim of the game is to build political support. But Republicans shed their conservatism in the process of securing their seats in the service, they say, of conservatism.
. . . “K Street conservatism” compounds unseemliness with hypocrisy. Until the Bush administration, with its incontinent spending, unleashed an especially conscienceless Republican control of both political branches, conservatives pretended to believe in limited government. The last five years, during which the number of registered lobbyists more than doubled, have proved that, for some Republicans, conservative virtue was merely the absence of opportunity for vice.

Read the entire piece.

Ted Frank asks that salient question in regard to the New York City transit workers strike.
Or does such an action not meet Spitzer’s lofty standards?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Update: On second thought, maybe Spitzer isn’t needed, after all.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review the controversial 2003 redrawing of Texas congressional districts that Democratic Party officials claim was unconstitutional because it disenfranchised Democratic voters and was improperly designed primarily to ensure the Republican Party’s control of Congress. In so doing, the high court took on four cases that could have considerable impact on the next year’s House and Senate elections.
The Texas districts were redrawn in 2003 under the direction of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is currently fighting state criminal charges that were the result largely from the Republicans’ financing of the redistricting initiative. The Texas redistricting that was in effect during 2004 election had a considerable impact, as four incumbent Democratic members of the Texas congressional delegation lost re-election, one switched parties, and one open Democratic seat went Republican. The Texas net gain of six seats was enough to offset other Republican congressional losses, and prevented the Democratic Party from strengthening its minority by three seats. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Texas redistricting plan, then the decision could give the Democrat Party a considerable boost during next year’s elections by giving Democratic candidates a Supreme Court decision on which to base charges of cronyism and abuse of power against the GOP.

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Michael Schaub posts this interesting interview with Texas author, songwriter (The Ballad of Charles Whitman, They Ainít Makiní Jews Like Jesus Anymore and Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed), musician and independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, which includes the following pearls of wisdom from the self-styled original Texas Jewboy:

Q: Do you think youíd be able to work with the Democrats and the Republicans in the state legislature?
Absolutely. I will charm their pants off. Invite ëem over, weíll have some barbecue, smoke some cigars together, and weíll get this thing rolling. And a lot of things can be done without the legislature, . . . Iíd like to rename four state highways after Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Bob Wills, and Buddy Holly. Not toll roads, by the way.
Q: (State) Senator Jeff Wentworth objected to naming a road after Willie Nelson this year.
Thatís right! (Laughs.) But it was a toll road! Willie said heís worked hard his whole life, and doesnít want a toll road named after him, and that maybe the electric chair would be good.
Q: Who do you think was the last great governor that Texas had?
Great? Probably Sam Houston. Itís been downhill from there. I always like to quote Henry Kissinger, who said that 90 percent of politicians give the other 10 percent a bad name.
Q: Youíve talked about your ìanti-wussificationî campaign for Texas. What does that involve?
Making it okay to say ìMerry Christmas.î Making it okay to smoke where you want to. Bringing back the Ten Commandments. I may have to change their name to the Ten Suggestions. I want to bring them back to the public schools. They were taken out not because of church and state, but because of political correctness. Some atheist came up and said he didnít like the Ten Commandments. We all know what happens when an atheist dies. His tombstone reads ìAll dressed up and no place to go.î By the way, Iíve written my own epitaph, Mike, which is: ìIf you can read this, youíre standing on my head.î Itís a good one, ainít it?

Read the entire interview. If Friedman stays in the race, then the television ratings for the upcoming Texas gubernatorial debates in 2006 may set records. ;^)