The South Carolina House Ethics Committee will start a hearing to determine if Gov. Nikki Haley (R) illegally lobbied for her employers while she was a lawmaker, McClatchy reports.
It is the first time a governor has been investigated by the committee.
It’s a big day (or week) over at Wonk Wire as we wait for the Supreme Court ruling on President Obama’s health care law.
Start off with a crash course on what they’re deciding and look at what the White House plans to do and what Congress must do if the law is overturned.
First Read: “Don’t forget: We’ll also get the court’s decision on Arizona’s
immigration law this week. By the way, if you are a Republican
strategist involved in a competitive election, you are hoping the
Arizona decision gets released WITH health care. If it’s immigration
today and health care on Thursday, then the GOP has to deal with another
three days of the immigration issue in the news, and we’ve yet to see
how any day that has immigration in the news is a good one for
Republicans in November.”
Update: Wonk Wire has a rundown of all of the court’s decisions.
First Read: “Ever since the Obama campaign began its Bain hit, there has been near universal agreement among elites that the hits were either “not working,” or “unfair,” or both. But as we’ve said before and we’ll say again: The Bain attacks aren’t meant to sway folks in NY and DC, but folks in three crucial battleground states: Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The whole point of this campaign by the Obama folks is to paint Romney as an out-of-touch Wall Street CEO…”
“And while the Romney campaign has comforted itself with the criticism of the Obama attacks by other Democrats (Booker, Rendell etc.), the campaign has done little to fix the larger image issue. So far, the Romney campaign has made this argument: Any attack on Bain is an attack on America’s free enterprise system. But how does it explain that Bain and its partners often made money, even if the firms they took over went belly up? And how do they now explain this Milken association? Does it keep using the “free enterprise” line? Or does it need to do something else?”
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Wall Street Journal: “Once again, the Obama high command is making a big bet on their ground operation. The aim is to flood the zone: open up offices in battleground states, call undecided voters, and swarm the shopping malls to register as many people as possible. In this way, Democrats hope to neutralize the Republican super PAC advantage by out-registering and out-working the GOP on the streets.”
A new Deseret News/KSL-TV poll finds Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) leads challenger Dan Liljenquist (R) in the Republican U.S. Senate primary, 60% to 32%.
The primary is on Tuesday.
Paul Begala: “Let’s posit that the point of politics is to get more votes than the other side — so everything a politician does is by definition political. Shocking. But there is, frequently, also an element of principle, a dash of ideology, and maybe even a hint of idealism. To analyze every act in terms of motive, and to reduce every motive to its basest level, is just dumb.”
“You can drive yourself crazy trying to peer into a person’s soul–or you can do the sensible thing: ask not what inner motives drive a politician’s policy choices but instead whether those choices are good for the country. ”
At least 34 members of Congress “took steps to recast their financial portfolios during the financial crisis” after phone calls or meetings with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson; his successor, Timothy Geithner; or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the Washington Post reports.
“The lawmakers, many of whom held leadership positions and committee chairmanships in the House and Senate, changed portions of their portfolios a total of 166 times within two business days of speaking or meeting with the administration officials. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, 19 to 15.”
A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds half of Americans say it won’t matter much whether President Obama or Mitt Romney wins the presidential election “even though the presidential candidates have staked their chances on which would be better at fixing the economic mess.”
“People are especially pessimistic about the future president’s influence over jobs… Asked how much impact the November winner will have on unemployment, 6 in 10 gave answers ranging from slim to none.”
Meanwhile, a majority of those surveyed — 55% — say the winner will have from “just some impact” to “no impact” on the nation’s huge budget deficits.
Just published: Mr. President: How and Why the Founders Created a Chief Executive by Ray Raphael.
A Washington Post review notes the book “provides a rich harvest of insights for reflection during the next five months of political bloodletting.”
The New York Post reports America’s rich are renouncing their citizenship at record levels.
“Startling new data from Uncle Sam show that defections by Americans are expected to double this year, largely to avoid any stiff tax bills resulting from the proposed 55 percent hike on the rich — as well as the likely expiration on Dec. 31 of the Bush era tax cuts. As many as 8,000 US citizens are projected by immigration officials to renounce in 2012, or about 154 a week, versus 3,805 in 2011, or about 73 per week.”
The Boston Globe probes Mitt Romney’s business dealings with “junk bond king” Michael Milken.
“What transpired would become not just one of the most profitable leveraged buyouts of the era, but also one of the most revealing stories of Romney’s Bain Capital career. It showed how he pivoted from being a relatively cautious investor to risking his reputation for a big payoff. It is one that Romney has rarely, if ever, mentioned in his two bids for the presidency, perhaps because the Houston-based department store chain that Bain assembled later went into bankruptcy.”
“But what distinguishes this deal from the nearly 100 others that Romney did over a 15-year period was his close work with Milken’s firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At the time of the deal, it was widely known that Milken and his company were under federal investigation, yet Romney decided to go ahead with the deal because Drexel had a unique ability to sell high-risk, high-yield debt instruments, known as ‘junk bonds.'”
“I don’t want to be vice president.”
— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), quoted by Roll Call.
“Election regulators named Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood the winner of Egypt’s first competitive presidential elections, handing the Islamist group a symbolic triumph and a new weapon in its struggle for power with the ruling military council,” the New York Times reports.
“But Mr. Morsi’s recognition as president does little to resolve the larger standoff between the generals and the Brotherhood over the balance of power over the institutions of government and the future constitution.”
The New York Times reports the Supreme Court’s decision on President Obama’s health care law may not come on Monday as many have assumed.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds most Americans oppose President Obama’s healthcare law, 56% to 44%, even though they strongly support most of its provisions.
“A glaring exception to the popular provisions is the ‘individual mandate,’ which forces all U.S. residents to own health insurance. Sixty-one percent of Americans are against the mandate, the issue at the center of the Republicans’ contention that the law is unconstitutional, while 39% favor it.”
Said pollster Chris Jackson: “That’s really the thing that has come to define the (reform) and is the thing that could potentially allow the Supreme Court to dismantle it if they decide it’s not constitutional.”
“One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules,” a Washington Post analysis has found.
“Almost one in every eight trades — 5,531 — intersected with legislation. The 130 lawmakers traded stocks or bonds in companies as bills passed through their committees or while Congress was still considering the legislation. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 68 to 62.”
A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds one-quarter of American voters are still persuadable on who they’ll vote for in the presidential election.
“Until then, Obama and
Romney will spend huge amounts of time and money trying to win their
votes, especially in the most competitive states that tend to swing
between Republicans and Democrats each presidential election. Obama and
Romney face the same hurdle, winning over wavering voters without
alienating core supporters they need to canvass neighborhoods and staff
telephone banks this fall to help make sure their backers actually vote.”
The Financial Times looks at how Mitt Romney campaign is planning to deploy an army of Mormon supporters from Utah “to states where the presidential race is close, such as neighboring Nevada and Colorado. Such efforts could be crucial in battleground states that will decide the election.”
“The missionary work that is at the heart of the Mormon religion — 1m have left home for two years to convert others to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — could be good preparation for a Romney door-knocking and phone-calling outreach effort, given the long hours and rejection that such endeavours often entail.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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