DARK HORSE WIN: Grassroots-supported E.W. Jackson won the GOP lieutenant governor nomination after four voting rounds on Saturday.

By Carten Cordell and Kathryn Watson | Watchdog.org, Virginia Bureau

RICHMOND—One look at the Richmond Coliseum on Saturday provided the portrait of a divided Virginia GOP.

After nine hours and four ballot-narrowing voting cycles, the camps of 10 different candidates vying for state office trekked out of the coliseum with a clear picture of the ballot, but an uncertain picture of party unity.

Ken Cuccinelli, the only gubernatorial candidate on Saturday’s ballot, automatically won that nomination, while dark horse E.W. Jackson won the lieutenant governor nomination, and Mark Obenshain took the attorney general nomination. More than 8,000 convention delegates representing every county in the state traveled to the capital to vote.

“Our goal would be to make sure that however we settle our differences here, we come out 8,000 strong, 100 percent behind our nominees,” State Delegate Rob Bell, who publicly conceded a narrow race to Obenshain for attorney general, told Watchdog.org. “And that’s certainly my intention in the race, and I assume everyone will do likewise. Everybody’s fired up. We just need everybody to be going in the same direction.”

And Republicans will have to go in the same direction if they hope to defeat Democratic candidate for governor Terry McAuliffe and the rest of the Democratic ticket come November. McAuliffe and Cuccinelli are somewhat neck-and-neck in recent polls.

But the race for lieutenant governor was the real split-ballot with seven candidates at the start, taking four ballot cycles for Jackson to finally receive the more than 50 percent of the vote needed to win.

Jackson supporters alleged dirty politics heading into the fourth ballot, featuring Jackson and Pete Snyder. They cited reports of fliers announcing that Obenshain had endorsed Snyder. Obenshain refuted the endorsement claims on Twitter.

Jackson’s nomination, made possible by strong tea party and grassroots support, promises to prove controversial for the ballot — a ballot Democrats are already doing their best to portray as extreme-right.

Even some Republican skeptics say Jackson — despite his rhetorical skill — is an anemic fundraiser. The pastor of the non-denominational Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake came in last in Virginia’s 2012 GOP primary for the U.S. Senate race.

Jackson raised only about $140,000 in 2012 and the first quarter of 2013. Snyder, by comparison, raised well over $700,000 in the same period.

But Jackson supporters say the pastor’s supposed weakness is, in fact, his strength.

“He doesn’t have experience taking bribes from lobbyists,” said convention delegate Keith Ellenberger of Matthews County. “He doesn’t have experience kicking the can down the road.”

Ellenberger said Jackson is a “straight-up, honorable man” who brings a “breath of fresh air” to the Republican Party.

“He is a leader,” added Cheryl Hugo, another delegate from Matthews County. “He’s a leader of the people.”

The Democratic Party of Virginia issued a statement as soon as Obenshain won the Republican attorney general nomination.

“It’s no surprise that Virginia Republicans nominated none other than Cuccinelli-clone Mark Obenshain as their candidate for Attorney General,” said DPVA Chair Charniele Herring in a news release. “From his support for the same anti-birth control ‘personhood’ legislation that Ken Cuccinelli introduced, to his efforts to force Virginia women who suffer miscarriages to report to the police, Mark Obenshain’s extreme record is a perfect fit for Cuccinelli, but it would be a disaster for Virginia families.”

Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Aneesh Chopra, tweeted this about Jackson on Saturday:

“E.W. Jackson is far more extreme than Ken Cuccinelli — which is quite a feat.”

Democrats will hold their primary on June 11.

Carten and Kathryn are reporters for the Virginia Bureau of Watchdog.org. Contact them at carten@watchdogvirginia.org, and katie@watchdogvirginia.org.

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WAITING: Republicans got a little restless on Saturday waiting for ballots to be cast, and began flying paper airplanes to cure the boredom.

ALEXANDRIA—Republicans in Richmond got a little restless on Saturday as they waited more than three hours for the first round of ballots to be cast and counted.

About 140 improperly marked ballots slowed the tallying of about 8,000 ballots, according to reports. Some of the thousands of bored delegates, staff, volunteers and other observers responded with a flurry of paper airplanes descending upon unsuspecting individuals around the room.

Here’s what audience members had to say on Twitter, which turned into a thread of paper airplane comments with the official event hashtag, “RPV2013.”

— Kathryn Watson

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor blasted the Obama administration and the IRS scandal at the state convention in Richmond on Saturday.

RICHMOND, Va.—House Majority Leader Eric Cantor couldn’t pass up the chance to blast the Obama administration’s recent scandals Saturday morning in a ballroom full of breakfasting Republicans at the Virginia GOP convention in Richmond.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” Cantor said of the IRS’ targeting of tea party-like groups with extra scrutiny. “…There is no excuse that I can even ever fathom that we have individuals in that agency doing what they’re doing.”

Cantor is among those leading the charge in the House of Representatives to find out who is responsible for singling out right-leaning groups, why they did so, and how it wasn’t stopped sooner.

The House majority leader is just one of the big-name Republicans making an appearance at the convention, where more than 13,000 citizen delegates from around Virginia are selecting the nominees for lieutenant governor and attorney general in what promises to be a nationally watched 2013 election.

Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s current and controversial attorney general, is the automatic Republican nominee for governor. Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who dropped out of the gubernatorial race largely because he didn’t think he could best Cuccinelli in a convention that favors the most conservative candidates, refused to attend.

Other big names filling the Richmond Coliseum include Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, and of course, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who only came for Friday’s festivities.

Republicans are picking their candidates by convention for the first time. Democrats will hold their primary on June 11.

— Kathryn Watson

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Autofill this: Two U.S. congressmen from Illinois wants the IRS to do your taxes for you.

By Mark Lisheron | Watchdog.org

Former acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Steven Miller was rolling along pretty good on Friday, bravely facing down his inquisitors from the House Ways and Means Committee.

And then he had to go and admit it.

Time and time again when asked Miller insisted there was nothing politically maniacal about IRS agents singling out ideologically conservative groups for tax harassment. President Barack Obama’s favorite independent agency wasn’t doing its favorite chief executive’s bidding, he said.

But during a grueling four hours, Miller spilled it.

“We provided horrible customer service here,” Miller testified. “I will admit that.”

That breaks it, I thought, turning off the television. Now Americans will never get the opportunity to have their beloved tax collection agency do their taxes for them.

The plan is all right there in a bill jammed up since April 12 in this very House and Ways Committee. House Resolution 1532, or as its authors call it, the Autofill Act of 2013.

The legislation, to judge from a March 26 adver…news story by Pro Publica, is nothing short of a miracle.

“Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free,” the story begins. “You’d open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.”

Tax collectors figuring out what you owe them is all the rage in Denmark, Spain and Sweden, the investigative website said.

All that convenience and $2 billion in taxpayers savings, according to the bill’s authors, Democratic Congressmen Bill Foster and Mike Quigley of Illinois, a state that to date has authored a $44 billion deficit.

And all of this done for you by the most trusted name in government service.

Expanding IRS authority in this small way has an honorable pedigree. Then Sen. Barack Obama himself in 2007 told an audience at the Tax Policy Institute, “The government already collects wage and bank account information, so there’s no reason the IRS can’t send Americans pre-filled tax forms to verify,” according to a Daily Caller story.

In 2011, Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper, another Democrat hopefully called his Simple Return Act “a bill that would get the IRS to do your taxes for you.”

Foster followed by filing his Autofill Act. He said he was smitten with a program pioneered in California, the nation’s leader in big government innovation.

Foster, however, did not study California’s Ready Return program very carefully. It isn’t very popular. About 9 percent of the 1 million taxpayers with the simplest forms eligible for the program chose the IRS as their tax preparer of choice in 2012, Forbes said.

The federal legislation is even less popular. Cooper and Foster’s bills failed. Bill tracking website Govtrack.us gives the latest Autofill Act a 1 percent chance to make it out of committee. Its chance of becoming law, Govtrack says, is zero.

It isn’t so much that the laws aren’t perfectly well written. It’s just that they don’t particularly appeal to people who have long believed it isn’t only horrible customer service taxpayers have been getting from the IRS.

In 2005, right around the time big government fanciers began talking about new and expanded duties for the Big Tax House, Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform first told the Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform what a bad idea return free filing was.

Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, told the Daily Caller return free filing was “brilliantly Machiavellian.”

“There is a fundamental conflict of interest if the tax collectors also become the tax preparer,” Black said. “If you don’t trust the fox to guard your hen house, why trust the IRS to do your taxes. It’s the same exact thing. They make it sound so convenient, but it’s really just a convenient way to kiss your deductions and tax credits goodbye.”

For every free filing bill filed there were bills filed barring the Treasury Department from doing any such thing. Those blocking bills were every bit as unsuccessful as the filing bills.

A sort-of taxican standoff, if you will.

And now every bit of the high stakes gamesmanship to nurture and grow one lousy government agency is being undone by a few zealous agents a little too curious about just what goes on at those fancy tea parties.

Well, one taxpayer can’t do much. But after the Ways and Means hearings are over, I expect former commissioner Miller will have some extra time on his hands.

I plan to invite him over to my house to do my taxes. For free. I’ll be serving tea.

Contact: Mark@Watchdog.org

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MADISON – Gov. Scott Walker on Friday met with the new Council on Workforce Investments to discuss his initative to fill Wisconsin’s so-called skills gap.

“We are pursuing an aggressive agenda to help job creators expand and fill good, family-supporting jobs,” Walker said in a statement. “A skilled and well-trained workforce is key to helping employers expand and workers to follow their individual paths to prosperity and independence

Gov. Scott Walker talking job creation during his State of the State address earlier this year. Walker on Friday met with the Council on Workforce Investments to discuss initiative to meet the Badger State’s ‘skills gap.’

Walker discussed his $100 million proposal to develop the state’s workforce, including the $15 million in worker training grants the Legislature recently passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support as the Wisconsin Fast Forward initiative. The plan calls for a real-time labor market information system and a host of workforce development activities at various agencies. The state Department of Workforce Development, the Wisconsin Technical College System, the Department of Health Services’ FoodShare Employment and Training program, K – 12 education, the University of Wisconsin system, and Wisconsin’s medical schools would all be included in the partnership.

The Council on Workforce Investments oversees coordination of workforce development activities under the federal Workforce Investment Act, which includes the annual allocation of federal workforce development funding. Other duties include the review of plans submitted by Wisconsin’s 11 autonomous workforce investment boards and development of metrics to assess the effectiveness of workforce development activities in Wisconsin.

Council members include:

• Mary Isbister, president of General Metalworks Corp. in Mequon, chair.

• Mike Laszkiewicz, vice president and general manager of Power Controls at Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee vice chair.

Both Isbister and Laszkiewicz serve on the Manufacturing Council, a federal entity that advises the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce on issues related to manufacturing in the United States.

Contact Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com

The post Walker talks WI skills gap initiative appeared first on Watchdog.org.

By Calvin Thompson | Colorado Watchdog

DENVER — In the wake of the Internal Revenue Service profiling scandal, a Colorado tea party chapter now says it was given extra scrutiny by the tax-collecting agency after it applied for non-profit status.

TEA PARTY SCANDAL: The IRS apologized for ‘mistakes’ it made in flagging tax-exempt applications from organizations marked ‘tea party’ and ‘patriot.’

La Plata County’s 4 Corners Liberty filed for 501(c)(4) status in 2011. Wendy Cox, one of its organizers, told Colorado Watchdog that soon after she sent in the application, she got the “the letter,” the now infamous questionnaire that tea party groups across the country have reported receiving.

“We got a bunch of questions,” she said. “All the questions were just so wrong. They asked for silly things that you could never possibly give them.”

The IRS letter asked 4 Corners Liberty for information on its website and social networking pages, the names of politicians the group maintained a relationship with, and a vague request for “all identified communications.”

Cox said she decided not to comply, and instead contacted attorney Jay Sekulow with the American Center for Law and Justice. The ACLJ has represented more than 30 tea party groups across the country on this issue. After ACLJ contacted the IRS, 4 Corners Liberty was granted 501(c)(4) nonprofit status, but Cox said other groups still faced hurdles.

Some Colorado tea party organizers told Colorado Watchdog they knew various branches were having trouble with IRS paperwork. Kyle Stults, director of communications for the Evergreen Tea Party, said the IRS snafu was a concern of the founding members. Group founder Kurt Bierkan highlighted those concerns in a statement to Watchdog.

“We were very aware of the rumors of IRS intimidation when we filed for 501(c)(4) status with the CO Secretary of State, but went ahead anyway as we had no choice if we were to continue,” Bierkan wrote. “There was no indication we were specifically targeted; nonetheless the atmosphere was toxic and required a determined, defiant attitude in order to persevere.”

According to Cox, at least a couple of nearby tea party groups were so discouraged so by IRS demands that they did not follow up on their 501(c)(4) applications, including the Durango Tea Party.

Organizers of the Durango Tea Party group were unavailable for comment.

At least one conservative organization didn’t see the point in applying for nonprofit status after hearing of the stonewalling practices of the IRS. Four Corners 9-12 Project, the Colorado branch of the national 9-12 project created by conservative media personality Glenn Beck, decided the application process was not an efficient use of its time.

“We had a member who advised against it,” said organizer Bud Garner.

Since 2010, when the IRS is first known to have targeted conservative organizations, many branches of Colorado’s movement have become defunct. But the tea party organizers are still bitter about the treatment.

“We did feel persecuted,” Bierkan wrote in his statement. “We were angry about that and defiant.”

Contact Calvin Thompson at calvin@coloradowatchdog.org. Follow him on Twitter @watchdogco.

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MIAMI — Former Gov. Jeb Bush has a clear goal for 2016 — get the Republican Party back in power at the national level.

Bush, brother of former President George W. Bush and son of former President George H.W. Bush, says he wants to inspire unity in the GOP by supporting immigration reform.

Earlier this month, Bush joined U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., at a gathering of the Hispanic Leadership Network, an organization that works to engage the Hispanic community on center-right issues. The organization announced it would launch a $300,000 television advertising campaign, “End de facto amnesty“.

Bush said that immigration is just one issue, but the GOP’s stand on education, jobs and health-care reform also should be of interest to everyone in the immigrant community, not just Hispanics.

Bush said he wants fellow Republicans to view immigrants as a whole as a voting population worthy of their time and attention, and he wants the party to recognize the payoff in pushing their agendas.

Bush criticized Republicans for being “reactionary,” saying “If you’re against them (immigrants) all the time and you don’t have any other alternative, people will get tired of it.”

“Solving the immigration problem, beyond politics, is a hugely important part of the strategy to restore hope, opportunity, and a belief in our future again,” he said.

GUITIERREZ: Former U.S Secretary of Commerce says “You have to be more logical and pragmatic, and less ideological.”

Bush, author of the book “Immigration Wars”, supports a pathway to residency over citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“History shows that most people don’t take advantage of (citizenship),” he said.

Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, a member of the Hispanic Leadership Network, told Florida Watchdog that the immigration issue is a matter of practicality.

“The important thing is to give them the legalization no matter how long you have to wait,” he said.

Gutierrez also said he agreed with U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on the issue of background checks for gun sales.

“I agree with the Second Amendment (that states) everyone has the right to bear arms, but I think it’s logical that they would want to check the background of a person who wants to buy weapons at the gun show,” Gutierrez said. “You have to be more logical and pragmatic, and less ideological.”

Despite being weighed down with baggage of his name, Bush seems to be growing in popularity among Republicans who are revving up their efforts to take win the presidency in 2016.

So far, though, he’s hasn’t made his intentions clear.

DÍAZ-BALART: has been recognized by its party and the democrats for his work in the bipartisan immigration reform.

Early polling by the New England College shows that voters are divided in their support for Rubio and Bush. Sixteen percent of those polled liked Rubio, while 15 percent sided with Bush. That was a tie with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.,(running mate of 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney) each took 12 percent. The same polling showed Hillary Clinton leading Democrats with 65 percent support from those surveyed.

Despite which direction the early polls are pointing, the most important predictor may end up being the legacies of their forefathers. Obama’s less-than-favorable job approval ratings and unpopular policies could reflect badly for Clinton’. And Bush will no doubt need to put a lot of distance between him and his president brother if he enters the race.

Republican political strategist Ana Carbonell told Florida Watchdog that “both candidates are well qualified to represent the (Republican) party. The decision is in your hands.”

The message of unity

Florida U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz Balart, R-Fla., one of the leaders and strategists of immigration reform, said he pleased with the bipartisan agreement from the U.S. Senate and praised U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.

“The important thing is to work in a bipartisan fashion because it is a broken system,” Diaz Balart told Florida Watchdog.

Contact Marianela Toledo at Marianela.Toledo@FloridaWatchdog.org

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SPENDING BATTLE: A New Mexico Watchdog investigation raises questions about whether universities are spending more money running their institutions than educating students.

By Rob Nikolewski | New Mexico Watchdog

Do universities in New Mexico spend too much money on what’s called “institutional support” compared to academic support and instruction?

A New Mexico Watchdog investigation into the state’s schools of higher education shows that during an 11-year period, spending for services associated with running a university has almost uniformly risen much faster than spending on education and academics in general.

Here’s what we found after looking at spending at New Mexico’s six public universities, using figures given to the U.S. Department of Education through its data system (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System), that goes back to the 2000-2001 academic year:

 Institutional support includes such expenses as administrative services and legal and fiscal operations, while academic support is commonly associated with classrooms and libraries. Instruction refers to activities directly related to instruction, including faculty salaries and benefits, office supplies and administration of academic departments.

Excluding Western New Mexico University and Eastern New Mexico University, institutional support grew the most in the last decade, the greatest discrepancy taking place at  New Mexico Tech, where institutional support rose 107.8 percent as academic support shrunk slightly.

Academic spending and institutional spending at the two largest state universities (the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State) were nearly identical in 2000-01, but in the ensuing decade institutional spending rose much faster than academic spending.

The figures don’t come as a surprise to Jonathan Robe, a research fellow at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which takes a critical look at what the Washington,D.C.-based organization calls “the rising costs and stagnant efficiency in higher education.”

“Some of these numbers are in line with national numbers,” Robe said, citing a recent paper showing that for every dollar public research universities in the United States spend on what’s called involuntary spending, they spend $2 on voluntary spending.

“A lot of this is going to support administrative staff and salaries rather than education, and that may give the public pause,” Robe said.

New Mexico Watchdog e-mailed all six universities for comment and received responses only from officials at UNM and NMSU.

Angela Throneberry, senior vice president for administration and finance at NMSU, said the IPEDS finance survey changed between 2001 and 2011 so “making any direct comparison between the two periods (is) inaccurate” and that NMSU’s “allocation of Instruction and General expenditures by function has actually remained fairly consistent over the last 10 years.”

A spokesperson for UNM pointed to the New Mexico Council of University Presidents’ “Performance Effectiveness Plan” showing that UNM is below peers on administrative costs — 5.8 percent of its budget compared to an average of 8.1 percent.

UNM Regent Bradley Hosmer said in an e-mail that “the three categories used in IPEDS are not carefully defined” and that “significant sums can be moved from one category to another inadvertently.”

Shifting numbers

New Mexico Watchdog originally tried to simply look at whether there had been a significant increase in the number of administrators at state universities, but the numbers within individual schools fluctuated — sometimes wildly — from year to year.

Robe conducted a quick search for New Mexico Watchdog at UNM, NMSU and New Mexico Highlands since 1993 and came back with numbers that varied so much from year to year that the whole dataset for judging who is defined as a full-time executive was called into question:

“The problem with tracking administrators,” Robe said, “is that their positions are defined by what the institutions want to say it is.”

The numbers are so mushy that the new president of the University of Minnesota made headlines six months ago when, after pledging to cut administrative overhead, he learned his own staff couldn’t tell him how much money it takes to run the school.

“The more questions I asked, the less happy I was,” Eric Kaler told the Wall Street Journal, which discovered through its own investigation that the University of Minnesota system had added more than 1,000 administrators since 2001.

UNM’s Hosmer echoed the sentiments about the shifting numbers in a brief interview during a recent Board of Regents meeting about the NM Watchdog investigation.

“You gotta get down below those labels,” Hosmer said, adding that “we don’t know how carefully (the IPEDS numbers) are monitored.”

Last month, another New Mexico Watchdog investigation showed IPEDS data revealing that tuition had increased between 87.8 percent to 169 percent at the state’s six public universities since the 1999-2000 school year.

Some have criticized what they say is unnecessarily luxurious facilities on college campuses. This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported the median salary of public university presidents rose 4.7 percent in 2011-12 to more than $440,000 a year.

“More people from different political perspectives — anywhere from the tea parties to Occupy Wall Street — are talking about colleges and universities,” Robe said. “Colleges get revenue for federal aid but who gets stuck? … The spending increases may be justifiable but I think the public would like to see leaders make the case more transparently, rather than vague explanations that ‘education is important.’ ”

Hosmer cautions against making comparisons between one New Mexico university and another. “NM Tech competes with a somewhat different peer group (than UNM),” he said in an e-mail, “as does NMSU and others.”

But after going over some of the numbers with New Mexico Watchdog at the UNM Board of Regents meeting, Hosmer said, “You’re asking very good questions.”

Click here to see the year-by-year breakdowns at all six universities in the New Mexico Watchdog investigation.

Reach Rob Nikolewski at rnikolewski@gmail.com

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GOV. RICK SCOTT: Florida’s chief executive, along with Lee County officials, offer Hertz corp. $85 million to bring the company’s headquarters to Florida.

By William Patrick | Florida Watchdog

TALLAHASSEE — When Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Lee County officials announced in early May that rental-car giant Hertz Corp. was moving to Florida, it was heralded as a major economic victory by those involved.

To celebrate, media interviews were scheduled and the press releases flowed. A news conference was even held at the Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers to reveal the narrative — a Fortune 300 company was moving its corporate headquarters to Florida and bringing with it 700 jobs.

Lee County residents said they have high-hopes, and how could they not? The area suffered through 13.3 percent unemployment just three years ago, though unemployment today stands at 6.7 percent.

“Again, I’ll bring this down to a combination of things: One is quality of life, one is the industry is travel and tourism and that was a big draw for Florida,” said Hertz CEO Mark Frissora, according to the Fort Myers News Press.

But it isn’t that simple. In exchange for moving to a state with a far better tax structure than its home in New Jersey, and a state with the highest car-rental market per capita in the nation, Hertz gets $85 million in taxpayer incentives, including $19 million up front.

TAD DEHAVEN: Budget expert calls government tax incentives for jobs, “press release economics.”

”It’s called using tax payer money to buy favorable press,” said Tad DeHaven, a former budget analyst for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Cato Institute scholar. “It’s just politics, Florida already has a good tax environment.”

In an email exchange questioning the incentives package, Hertz vice president for corporate affairs and communications, Richard Broome, told Florida Watchdog the incentives were necessary to offset the costs of moving.

Last year Hertz Global Holdings Inc. reported a record year in revenue and income before taxes, according to the company’s annual investor report. Hertz also acquired Dollar Thrifty for $2.3 billion, giving it vast market share and a combined total revenue of $10.2 billion.

“When most businesses come looking for incentives, they already know where they want to go,” DeHaven said.

Florida Watchdog asked Hertz what other states the company was considering, but was told that information would not be disclosed.

Florida Watchdog contacted the chambers of commerce in Park Ridge, N.J., home of Hertz’s current headquarters, and Tulsa, Okla., site of Dollar Thrifty’s corporate office, to ask about competing tax incentives. No one responded.

DeHaven said the Hertz deal is just one of an explosion of tax-incentives in recent years.

A New York Times investigation identified thousands of local incentives throughout the country and found that states, counties and cities gave more than $80 billion each year to companies to entice them to relocate or build anew.

“All states do it. Everyone is playing the game. Why wouldn’t companies go looking for something?” DeHaven said.

In truth, corporate executives are accountable to shareholders and, as the reasoning goes, management is responsible for obtaining the best deals for their companies.

In a worst case scenario, taxpayers lose everything. In 2009, former Gov. Charlie Crist directed a $20-million tax incentive package to Digital Domain. In 2012, the company shut down its Port St. Lucie office.

But Hertz is a different story. Unlike Crist’s failure and the federally funded taxpayer debacles like Solyndra and Fisker automotive, Hertz has a proven business model. It’s been in the car-rental business since the 1920s.

Still, if the jobs and economic impact figures used to justify the $85-million package never fully materialize, many of the public officials accepting praise could be long gone.

DeHaven said taxpayer-incentive deals are like picking winners and losers in the scratch my back tradition.

Scott said that in five years the deal would yield a five-fold return on the taxpayer investment. Scott’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Contact William Patrick at William@FloridaWatchdog.org

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MADISON — You are probably a criminal.

You just may not know it.

With some 4,500 federal crimes on the books and, by conservative estimates, more than 300,000 regulations that carry a criminal penalty, law experts say the chances of an average American unwittingly committing a federal crime in his lifetime are pretty good.

Harvey Silverglate, author, lawyer and civil liberties advocate, asserts in his bombshell book, “Three Felonies a Day,” that average citizens routinely break federal law without any knowledge they are committing a crime.

“Given the enormity of the code, it is no wonder that the Ninth Circuit’s Chief Judge, Alex Kozinski, believes ‘You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal,’” notes the Federalist Society in a policy study titled, “The Explosion of the Criminal Law and Its Cost to Individuals, Economic Opportunity, and Society.”

If you haven’t unknowingly committed a crime yet, give it time. A law-hungry Congress continues to criminalize at an average rate of one new crime for every week of every year — including when its members are not in session, according to a 2011 report by the conservative Heritage Foundation titled, “Overcriminalization: An Explosion of Federal Criminal Law.”

“We are a far more heavily regulated society than we ever have been. Regulations are popping up like weeds,” said John Malcolm, Rule of Law Programs policy director and senior legal fellow at Heritage.

LOCKED UP: The federal government’s massive criminal code and its plethora of regulations have turned the Land of the Free into an overcriminalized nation, say reformers.

While Malcolm and other criminal code reform advocates don’t dispute the necessity of upholding the U.S. standard of being a nation of laws, the Founding Fathers, they say, would have been floored by the voluminous stack of federal code created in the 226 years since the drafting of the Constitution.

With so many laws and regulations, many of which are vague and widely open to interpretation, perhaps it’s no wonder that nearly 1.6 million Americans were locked up in state and federal prisons in 2011, or about 492 inmates per 100,000 residents, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Admissions to federal prisons increased 12 percent.

“You have average people, perfectly fine people, now being branded as criminals,” Malcolm said.

There are no good estimates on the cost of administering the federal criminal code, mainly because enforcement of those laws are spread out over so many agencies.

The cost to liberty is inestimable, reform advocates insist.

Scrubbing the code clean

A House Judiciary Committee task force aims to take on the Herculean task of reviewing Title 18 – the federal government’s big book of criminal and penal code – and coming up with recommendations to modernize criminal code.

U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, will serve as co-chair of the Over-Criminalization Task Force.

“We will examine the extent of the problem, eliminate some of the most egregious examples from the code and establish guiding principles for future Congresses to foster better uniformity and consistency in criminalization,” the Menomonee Falls Republican wrote in his weekly column.

It has been more than 50 years since the criminal code was last reviewed. There’s a lot of duplication between federal and state laws in there. But more so, Sensenbrenner said, there are too many laws lacking adequate mens rea — the intent to commit a crime.

To illustrate the problem, Sensenbrenner recently reintroduced the Criminal Code Modernization and Simplification Act , a 1,200-page bill, massive by the very nature of the subject matter. The bill cuts more than one-third of the existing criminal code and consolidates criminal offenses from other titles so that Title 18 includes all major criminal provisions.

“It’s time to scrub it clean and reduce federal spending by eliminating unnecessary criminal laws,” Sensenbrenner said, telling Wisconsin Reporter that the task force hopes to come up with some cost estimates on the scope of criminal code.

“Criminalization is the bluntest tool Congress wields.  And over-criminalization is a threat to personal liberty and an expensive and inefficient way to deal with a lot of our nation’s problems,” he said.

‘Astonishing proportions’

Sensenbrenner said the federal government’s role must be limited so state and local offenses are not subsumed within an ever-expanding criminal code.

But in recent decades there has been an explosion of criminal offenses.

The U.S. Constitution notes three federal crimes by citizens — treason, piracy and counterfeiting. As the Wall Street Journal noted in a 2011 examination of federal code, the number of criminal statutes numbered in the dozens at the turn of the 20th century.

Others have attempted to count and categorize federal offenses in recent years. They have failed.

The American Bar Association in a 1998 report concluded that the “amount of individual citizen behavior now potentially subject to federal criminal control has increased in astonishing proportions in the last few decades.”

Why? The War on Drugs in large part, say code reform advocates, and knee-jerk reactions by lawmakers to high-profile news stories in the rapidly moving Information Age.

“Drug convictions went from 15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in 1996, an almost tenfold increase,” wrote Fareed Zakaria, in a Time column headlined “Incarceration Nation.”

“More than half of America’s federal inmates today are in prison on drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession,” Zakaria added.

America’s gun war, too, has criminalized law-abiding citizens, said Charles Heller, executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

Heller points to federal law that criminalizes anyone without a concealed-weapons permit who happens to be driving within 1,000 feet of a school, with only a handful of exceptions.

The Second Amendment advocate faced a federal entanglement of his own. He said he was invited on a private tour of the USS Constitution in Boston, even given permission to fire the cannon. When federal officials inspected his car on site, they found he had guns lawfully locked up, Heller said. He was arrested, handcuffed and his guns confiscated, on charges of possessing weapons on a federal site.

Heller argued the law grants exceptions to those who are on federal grounds for a reason, and he contends his personal invitation by Old Ironsides curators was reason enough. He ended up pleading no contest to a petty offense, which remains on his record. Federal officers also took his “gorgeous” 1 1/2-inch pocketknife and his Leatherman tool.

“There’s more danger to liberty in United States from agencies like TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) than ever will be from Al Qaeda,” Heller said.

To save a woodpecker

And then there’s the case of woodpecker justice Fredericksburg, Va.

Skylar Capo saved a baby woodpecker from the family cat.

“She was just going to take care of it for a day or two, make sure it was safe and uninjured, and then she was going to let it go,” Alison Capo, mother of the then 11-year-old girl told WUSA TV in August 2011.

But a chance encounter with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent resulted in a $535 fine for Alison Capo, whose kind-hearted daughter apparently was in violation of the Federal Migratory Bird Act. Turns out the woodpecker was a protected species. The Capos said they had no idea.

The feds eventually canceled the citation, saying the matter was cleared up and that the ticket was mistakenly processed.

Others were not so lucky.

Florida seafood importer Abner Schoenwetter spent years in U.S. federal prison for violating Honduran law, even though the Honduran government said he did nothing wrong. His crime: He imported smaller lobster tails in plastic rather than cardboard, the Heritage Foundation’s John Malcolm said. Heritage has made Schoenwetter the poster-child of its campaign against overcriminalization.

Sensenbrenner said  criminal code reform is arguably the clearest bipartisan issue in a deeply divided Congress today.

“I’ve been on this for three Congresses now,” the Wisconsin congressman said. “This is the time to get it done.”

Contact M.D. Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com

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