Tag: Theodore Roosevelt

Domestic Policy, Infrastructure

Building Back Unified

Bob Claude |
Road Sign from the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway

It goes without saying that I appreciate the value of highways. Fundamentally, they are the basis on land of the great network of trade routes which go to make up civilization.

Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in in the Montana Guidebook to the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway, 1921

A nation’s transportation network is among its most important sources of economic and geopolitical strength. Few knew this better than Theodore Roosevelt and so it was fitting that the first transcontinental highway was christened with his name after TR’s death in 1919 (see this guidebook from the Montana portion).  It was the precursor of the numbered US Highway system and eventually the Interstate Highway system. All of those projects were designed to unify America and brought Americans together through the experience of travel.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill recently agreed to between President Biden and the Congress is in the tradition of this drive for national unity.  The new bill addresses the sorry state of many of our roads, ports and other critical infrastructure while leaving more controversial issues for later legislation. It authorizes $550 billion in new money over five years along with another $500 billion in previously authorized expenditures (hence the $1 trillion price tag referenced in some news reports). Specifically, the new money will be spent in the following areas:

Transportation– $284 billion to be spent to repair roads, bridges, ports and railways

Utilities– $243 billion for upgrading electric power infrastructure and replacing old pipe to stop lead from leaching into municipal water systems. It also includes $55 billion to extend broadband Internet service to rural communities, which is desperately needed to spur healthy economic development here in the Western states.

Environmental Cleanup – The Superfund program for cleaning up hazardous waste sites, mines and wells has been moribund due to lack of funding. This bill would re-invigorate the program with $21 billion to begin this process anew.

Coincidentally, the $550 billion is almost the same amount spent to build the Interstate Highway System (in 1950’s and 60’s dollars). 

The President’s original proposal was a whopping $2.6 trillion that tried to force through Congress various human needs and climate change programs under the popular brand of “infrastructure”.  Much of this is necessary, but the attempt to enact it through under a deceptive title was divisive and ultimately futile. Both President Biden and the bipartisan group of senators should be congratulated for opting for a unifying bill instead.

The new compromise also grasps the nettle of insuring this program to strengthen our nation does not  weaken it by adding to the budget deficit. It would be financed by almost 500 billion in revenue transfers and new revenues, such as reinstating the Superfund tax on the chemical industry and tightening tax rules on cryptocurrency trading.   A plan to beef up tax enforcement on the wealthy that could have brought in as much as $100 billion was unfortunately dropped but may be included in a bill on the human needs legislation. 

After excoriating Republicans for being obstructionist, it is ironic to see the Democratic House leadership trying to obstruct this bill to compel the adoption of the more controversial climate change and social welfare spending through the budget reconciliation bill.  Our families and neighborhoods need help, but federal dollars will only paper over the underlying problems.  Immigration reform, reshoring manufacturing and education reform will do more in the long term to solve them.  Many Democrats and Republicans believe this as well.  The House leadership should join them rather than their Democratic Socialist wing and unify around this bill as the Theodore Roosevelt Highway and similar infrastructure programs of the past unified the country. 

Coronavirus, Domestic Policy

Wasting America’s Moment

Bob Claude |

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, I called it “America’s moment” and urged a military-style response.  The American people’s acceptance of the initial lockdown and social distancing measures showed a community spirit that many thought lacking in today’s society. In the end, we met the moment in a uniquely American way – through technological innovation resulting in effective vaccines that would allow us to resume a normal life. Now the resistance to those vaccines risks wasting this moment because of a combination of political pique and selfish independence.

Anti-vaxxers like to seize on the inherent uncertainties of the “fog of war” to quibble with statistics while ignoring the obvious.  It is a fact that COVID cases and hospitalizations are rising significantly among the unvaccinated population for the first time in months due to the new Delta variant.  If you’re above 30 years of age, you have a significantly higher risk of hospitalization or death if unvaccinated.  Moreover, while breakthrough infections are possible, the evidence suggests that persons vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines are less likely not only to acquire the original disease and its variants, but are also less likely to transmit it to others.

Unfortunately, former President Trump and some governors are catering to the anti-vaxxers by opposing or even banning mask and vaccination mandates by local governments and private businesses trying to protect their citizens and continue the return to normal.  A better response would be to encourage vaccinations by enacting a federal worker’s compensation system that would protect workers who have a fear (however much it’s been hyped) of a reaction to the vaccine.  Such a system would also insulate businesses from potential legal liability so they can continue to operate normally.  

Vaccination refuseniks espouse a warped sense of American independence to justify a response that endangers their fellow Americans. They seek to assert their “independence” by exposing themselves and their fellow Americans to painful and expensive hospitalization and even death.  They also jeopardize the normalization of everyday life they claim to crave. As TR said above, a free people must exercise their freedom responsibly.  I challenge all of the unvaccinated to look into Roosevelt’s eyes and tell him why they should be allowed to so endanger their fellow Americans and the American example to the world.   

Political Reform, Politics

For the People or the Elite? -The Trojan Horse of Internet Contributions

Bob Claude |

Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness.

Theodore Roosevelt

Several years ago, my computer was hacked at the Denver International Airport. Shortly afterwards, I started receiving emails addressed to “Ricot Claude” (not anywhere near my name or nickname) from Democratic party campaigns and affiliated groups hounding me for contributions.  Many of them came through a super-PAC called ActBlue.   The experience exposed a major problem in campaign finance regulation that could be a source of the same kind of “dark money” targeted elsewhere in the For the People Act.

The fundamental flaw of the current system is that it brands the contributors, not politicians, as the culprits who need regulation. At the same time, the Federal Election Commission has almost no resources to chase down and enforce violations by errant contributors.  Campaigns and PACs need only use their “best efforts” to determine whether a contribution is legal, which is defined as only requesting the basic identifying information required by disclosure reporting. See 11 CFR 104.7.  The committee can rely solely on the representations by the contributor and no independent verification of the source of the contribution is required. The only exception is the presidential campaign matching fund program. See 11 CFR 9034.2. Candidates may only receive matching federal funds for contributions evidenced by a “written instrument”.  This is specifically defined as a check, a credit card accompanied by a signed transaction slip or, in the case of an Internet contribution, an electronic record transmitted by the cardholder with a copy of the credit card number and the name of the cardholder. Thus, the candidate automatically has sufficient independent information to verify the identity of the contributor.

In 1995, the FEC ruled in Advisory Opinion 1995-9 that contributions via the Internet were subject to the lax reporting standards applicable to most committees and did not need to be independently verified (see the answer to Question No. 4).  This may explain why so few presidential candidates use matching funds anymore and rely so heavily on Internet contributions instead. This opinion also authorized the use of outside financial contractors to solicit and manage the contribution process.  Since then, a cottage industry of third party vendors unregulated by the FEC has arisen to solicit, raise and manage contributions on behalf of political committees (see this example of Paypal’s service). Only these vendors have the information about the credit card or other source of a contribution.  They have no obligation to cross-reference the name on the credit card or Paypal account or other source against the name reported to the committee or report any discrepancies to the committee.  

Thus, I could have used the system to make illegal contributions under the name “Ricot” with very little likelihood of consequences.  A corporation or foreign national could have done the same.  The potential for abuse was documented in a forensic audit of ActBlue’s contributions by former Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline, who reported that fully 48% of ActBlue’s contributions came from the unemployed while its Republican counterpart WinRed had only 4%.  It also showed how gift cards can be used to game the system. 

This loophole needs to be plugged before it becomes a floodgate of foreign and other dark money into political campaigns.  One way would be to impose on all political committees the documentation and verification rules required under the presidential matching funds program.  In the alternative, the FEC should have the power to regulate outside vendors that manage contributions for committees and impose the same kind of verification rules applicable to the private sector.  A model for such a program can be found in the Federal Trade Commission’s Identity Theft Prevention Rules, which require certain creditors to check transactions against red flags of identity theft.  In the absence of congressional legislation, the FEC should require political committees to use such mechanisms to verify the source of the contribution or require their vendors to have such a system and actively audit the vendor to insure it is enforcing the program.

Internet contributions have been hailed as the average American’s answer to the influence of corporate contributions and dark money.  As Theodore Roosevelt said, we should not let that optimism cause us to repeat the mistakes of the Trojans in the Iliad and unwittingly unleash the same kind of abuses we want to prevent.  The For the People Act or any similar campaign finance reform should be amended to control against this threat.  Otherwise, we may find that the plugging of one dark money loophole will simply cause it to spring up in a more corrosive and damaging form.