Powell endorses Obama as 'transformational'

Mike Allen, Jonathan Martin Mike Allen, Jonathan Martin Sun Oct 19, 9:55 am ET

Retired General Colin L. Powell, one of the country's most respected Republicans, stunned both parties on Sunday by strongly endorsing Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president on NBC's "Meet the Press" and laying out a blistering, detailed critique of the modern GOP.

Powell said the election of Obama would "electrify the world."

"I think he is a transformational figure," Powell said. "He is a new generation coming ... onto the world stage and on the American stage. And for that reason, I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama."

As a key reason, Powell said: "I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that's what we'd be looking at in a McCain administration."

Powell, once considered likely to be the nation's first African-American presidential nominee, said his decision was not about race.

Moderator Tom Brokaw said: "There will be some ... who will say this is an African-American, distinguished American supporting another African-American because of race."

Powell, who last year gave Republican John McCain's campaign the maximum $2,300, replied: "If I had only had that in mind, I could have done this six, eight, 10 months ago. I really have been going back and forth between somebody I have the highest respect and regard for, John McCain and somebody I was getting to know, Barack Obama. And it was only in the last couple of months that I settled on this."

"I can't deny that it will be a historic event when an African-American becomes president," Powell continued, speaking live in the studio. "And should that happen, all Americans should be proud — not just African-American, but all Americans — that we have reached this point in our national history where such a thing could happen. It would also not only electrify the country, but electrify the world."

Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said the two men spoke for 10 minutes at 10 a.m., and that the candidate thanked Powell for his endorsement and said "he looked forward to taking advantage of his advice in the next two weeks and hopefully over the next four years."

Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the campaign had not been told of the endorsement: "We didn’t know until General Powell spoke on 'Meet The Press' ."

Powell, making his 30th appearance on "Meet the Press," said he does not plan to campaign for Obama. He led into his endorsement by saying: "We've got two individuals — either one of them could be a good president. But which is the president that we need now — which is the individual that serves the needs of the nation for the next period of time.

"And I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities — and you have to take that into account — as well as his substance — he has both style and substance, he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president."

Powell said that he is "troubled" by the direction of the Republican Party, and said he began to doubt McCain when he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

"Not just small towns have values," he said, responding to one of Palin's signature lines.

"She's a very distinguished woman, and she's to be admired," he said. "But at the same, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made."

The endorsement is likely to help the Illinois senator convince skeptical centrists that he is ready to handle the challenges of commander in chief, and undercuts McCain argument that he is better qualified on national-security issues.

The Arizona senator, appearing on "Fox News Sunday," sought to minimize the endorsement by noting his support from other former secretaries of state and retired military flag officers.

"This doesn’t come as a surprise," McCain said. "But I'm also very pleased to have the endorsement of four former secretaries of state ... and I'm proud to have the endorsement of well over 200 retired generals and admirals. I respect and continue to respect and admire Secretary Powell."

While McCain only reiterated his respect for Powell when asked about the move, others in the GOP were more candid.

One prominent conservative who knows both McCain and Powell said that for all the secretary of state's criticism of McCain and his praise of Obama, the move had less to do with the two candidates for president than the current occupant of the Oval Office.

"Powell cares a lot about his reputation with Washington elites and he thinks he was badly damaged by his relationship with the Bush administration," said this Republican. "So this is a way to make up for what he regarded as not being treated well by the Bush administration, not being given the due deferenece he thinks he deserves."

And that Powell would make his decision known in the closing weeks of the election, as it becomes increasingly clear that Obama is the favorite, reflects a calculated political move, says this source.

"Let's be honest – do we think Powell would be doing this if Obama had been trailing six or seven points in the polls?" the source asked, deeming Powell's endorsement "a Profile in Conventional Wisdom."

A friend of the former secretary of state sharply dismissed the idea that Powell's move had anything to do with making up for his service in the Bush years.

"Anybody who is making the argument about 'rehabiliation' was not listening to what he had say today," said the friend, suggesting Powell clear that he was unhappy with the state of the party. "It's absolute horseshit."

Rush Limbaugh suggested Powell's move was very much related to Obama's status as the first African-American with a chance to become president.

"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race," Limbaugh wrote in an email. "OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with.

"I was also unaware of his dislike for John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia. I guess he also regrets Reagan and Bush making HIM a 4-star and Secretary of State AND appointing his son to head the FCC. Yes, let's hear it for transformational figures."

But others in the party were less dismissive, acknowledging the heft of the respected retired four-star general and the popularity he enjoys across the country.

"The Powell endorsement is a big deal," said Scott Reed, Bob Dole's campaign manager in 1996 and a close friend of McCain campaign manager Rick Davis. "It has been bantered about since August, and shows both Powell and Obama know how to make an impact in the closing days of a tight campaign."

"What that just did in one sound bite -- and I assume that sound bite will end up in an ad -- is it eliminated the experience factor," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, in an appearance on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. "How are you going to say the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the former National Security Adviser, former Secretary of State was taken in?"

Powell, 71, also used his Meet the Press appearance to criticize McCain and his campaign for invoking the former domestic terrorist William Ayers.

"Sen. McCain says he a washed-up old terrorist—then why does he keep talking about him?" Powell asked.

"They're trying to connect [Obama] to some kind of terrorist feelings, and I think that's inappropriate," Powell said. "Now I understand what politics is all about — I know how you can go after one another. And that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift."

Powell said he has "heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion [that Obama's] a Muslim and might be associated with terrorists."

"This is not the way we should be doing it in America. I feel strongly about this particular point," Powell said. "We have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way. And John McCain is as non-discriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that within the party, we have these kinds of expressions."

Powell, a four-star Army general, was national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when George H.W. Bush was president; and was President George W. Bush’s first secretary of State.

Powell has consulted with both Obama and McCain, and the general’s camp had indicated in the past that he would not endorse.

Powell said that as he watched McCain, the Republican “was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems that we were having, and almost every day, there was a different approach to the problem, and that concerned me, sensing that he didn't have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had."

Powell said a big job of the new president will be “conveying a new image of American leadership, a new image of America’s role in the world.”

“I think what the president has to do is to start using the power of the Oval Office and the power of his personality to convince the American people and to convince the world that America is solid, America is going to move forward … restoring a sense of purpose,” he said.

"This Powell endorsement is the nail in the coffin," said one Republican official, speaking anonymously to offer candid thoughts about the party's nominee. "Not just because of him, but the indictment he laid out of the McCain campaign."

How to Cure This Sick System

Fact and Comment

How to Cure This Sick System

Steve Forbes 10.06.08, 12:00 AM ET


Not even during the Great Depression did we witness what is now unfolding--a sizable number of big financial institutions going under. What enabled their taking on so much debt and so many questionable assets was, primarily, the easy-money policy of the Federal Reserve. Chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke created massive amounts of excess liquidity. If the dollar had been kept stable relative to gold, as it was between the end of WWII and the late 1960s, the scale of the bingeing in recent years would have been impossible.

The first prescription for a cure is to formally strengthen the dollar and announce it publicly. A year ago August the price of gold was more than $650 per ounce. In late 2003 it had breached $400. The Fed should declare that its goal for gold is around $500 to $550. That would stabilize the buck--and stability is essential if animal spirits and risk taking are to revive.

Also of immediate urgency is for regulators to suspend any mark-to-market rules for long-term assets. Short-term assets should not be given arbitrary values unless there are actual losses. The mark-to-market mania of regulators and accountants is utterly destructive. It is like fighting a fire with gasoline.

Think of the mark-to-market madness this way: You buy a house for $350,000 and take out a $250,000 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. Your income is more than adequate to make the monthly payments. But under mark-to-market rules the bank could call up and say that if your house had to be sold immediately, it would fetch maybe $200,000 in such a distressed sale. The bank would then tell you that you owe $250,000 on a house worth only $200,000 and to please fork over the $50,000 immediately or else lose the house.

Absurd? Obviously. But that's what, in effect, is happening today. Thus institutions with long-term assets are having to drastically reprice them downward. And so the crisis feeds on itself.
The SEC should immediately reverse its foolish decision to get rid of the so-called uptick rule in short-selling. That would provide a small road bump to the short-selling that's helping to destroy financial institutions.

At the same time the SEC should promulgate an emergency rule (which we thought was already the rule): No naked short-selling. That is, you have to own or borrow shares in a company before you can short it. The rules should make clear that short-sellers must have ample documentation proving they truly possess the shares at the time of the short sale. Otherwise, each violation will result in heavy fines. That wouldn't be a road bump but a wall of Everest-like proportions.

Regulators should also be told to instruct banks to keep their solvent customers solvent. The last thing the economy needs right now is for the banking system to seize up.
The federal government should also consider setting up a new Resolution Trust Corp., which was devised during the savings and loan crisis nearly 20 years ago as a dumping ground for bad S&L assets. Today's bad assets could then be liquidated in an orderly way. And, finally, the financial industry should be encouraged to create new exchanges for exotic instruments. This would result in the standardization of these things, which would mean more transparency.

These steps would quickly revive financial markets. Already mortgage rates are coming down. It won't be long before American homeowners start an avalanche of refinancings, which would be an enormous boon to confidence and the economy.

What Makes Our Ever Changing 400 List Possible

Prophet of Innovation--by Thomas K. McCraw (Harvard University Press, $35). An excellent, thorough and smoothly written biography of Joseph Schumpeter, the greatest economist of the 20th century. Too bad most politicos--and economists--don't fully grasp his insights.

Born in 1883 in a province of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire that is now part of the Czech Republic, Schumpeter recognized at a young age that the critical factor in economic progress was the entrepreneur, the innovator. To him it was the risk taker who brought about new products and services and more efficient ways of making and doing things. A free-market, capitalist economy, he emphasized, meant constant change, often disruptive and disorienting to traditional ways of doing things. Competition wasn't just the jousting of existing firms that had similar products but also encompassed the threat that came from a truly new product, new technology or new type of organization.

Schumpeter made the distinction between an inventor and an innovator: The innovator takes an idea or product and figures out how to produce it efficiently and profitably. His term describing one process, "creative destruction," has become a catchphrase of our own era.

Schumpeter's perceptions here were profound, although most of his time's economists--and politicians--downplayed or ignored them. Today, though, things seem different. Even Demo-crats occasionally pay lip service to the risk takers' and entrepreneurs' importance to economic growth. Yet Democratic policies, such as raising the cost of capital and reducing its availability, would devastate them. Similarly, while economists doff their caps to Schumpeter, their professional research downplays innovation because it is impossible to quantify and not conducive to mathematical models. So the appreciation of this genius is still superficial.

One drawback is that Schumpeter was not a "feel-good" economist like Keynes, whose apostles believed that properly manipulating government fiscal and monetary tools would generate perpetual prosperity, with nary a bust or a bout of irrational exuberance. Innovation, however, is not a smooth process but comes in fits and starts. That's why, Schumpeter pointed out, a healthy economy is subject to cycles of boom and bust.

In the early 1980s, for example, personal computers became the hot new product. Then came the inevitable shakeout. Many companies, such as Atari, Commodore and Osborne, bit the dust.

But PCs became more powerful. Innovators learned to network PCs, enabling them to easily replace expensive mainframe computers with the significantly cheaper and more versatile PCs.

In the early 20th century the automobile went through similar booms and busts: Before World War I there were more than 300 auto manufacturers in the U.S. Another vivid testimony to innovation's disruption and destruction is today's fast-shrinking newspaper industry, a victim of the Internet.

Schumpeter recognized that a dynamic economy creates wide inequality. A successful entrepreneur, his investors and even some of his employees (think Microsoft) will get rich.

However, this is not the kind of static inequality one sees in semifeudalistic, oligarchic economies that exist in South America and elsewhere, where the same handful of people are wealthy and everyone else struggles. A truly capitalist economy will see the players change repeatedly. Facts back up Schumpeter's insight. IRS data show that 75% of the very top income earners in the mid-1990s are no longer in that category.

Growing up in a turbulent part of Europe made Schumpeter realize that life did not follow a smooth-running, gentle path. In contrast, Britons such as John Maynard Keynes tended to see the economy in more static terms. Even American economists tended toward a rather static view of the world. Harvard's late, once renowned John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a book in the 1960s whose thesis was that major corporations such as Ford Motor Co. were the epitome of economic development and lived by their own laws rather than those of the marketplace. Today once formidable giants, such as Ford and General Motors, are struggling just to stay alive financially.

Schumpeter was a genius at dissecting the ideologies and prejudices of other economists. Karl Marx, for example, also observed the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial capitalism. But he mistakenly concluded that this kind of change would inevitably, inexorably impoverish the workers. Instead--as Schumpeter laid out time and time again--an entrepreneurial economy means more people earning more and enjoying a higher standard of living. Adam Smith celebrated the importance of free trade, low taxes, property rights, the enforcement of contracts in enabling people to get richer. But he had very little appreciation of the crucial role individual entrepreneurs and innovators play in the process.

Schumpeter acknowledged that governments would have to play a role--one hopes a constructive one--in creating conditions in which creative destruction could play out. In the U.S., for instance, farm subsidies helped ameliorate the political backlash when technology and manufacturing sharply reduced employment in the agricultural sector. A century ago one in 4
Americans made his or her living in agriculture; today it's fewer than one in 75.

What made Schumpeter especially insightful was that he was truly a multidisciplinary individual. He was well versed in politics, sociology and history. By the time he finished his secondary education he had mastered six languages. He would look upon the bulk of today's economists, with their obsession with numbers and regression analysis, as hideously narrow-minded and suffering from academic constipation.

As he grew older, Schumpeter became pessimistic about democratic capitalism. He observed that the sons and daughters of successful entrepreneurs often became leftists or outright socialists. His own varied life undoubtedly added to his gloomy outlook. He had moved numerous times and seen convulsions aplenty. World War I broke up the Austro-Hungarian Empire, creating, among other things, the state of Austria--what wags dubbed "a bureaucracy without an empire." After the war Schumpeter served briefly as its finance minister. It was a disastrous experience. Knowing the right things to do does not automatically make them politically possible.

He lasted less than a year in the job. Only when inflationary conditions worsened did subsequent ministers adopt some of his policies. The rise of Nazism in Germany--Schumpeter taught there until the early 1930s, at which time he accepted an offer from Harvard--was a personally vivid example of how a great nation can self-destruct and threaten civilization itself.

Schumpeter would certainly take a dim view of what many politicians in America are offering up these days. But the actual history of Britain and the U.S., after his death in 1950, might have lightened the darkness of his long-term outlook. As long as a society remains free, entrepreneurs can prevent ossification. The U.S.' great comeback under President Ronald Reagan is one vivid example, as is Britain's under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Once taxes were cut and structural reforms made, Britain morphed from the sick man of Europe into Europe's most dynamic large economy. Schumpeter would also have been astonished by the fall of the Soviet Union.

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Battleground Update: The Red States Get Redder, The Blue States Get Purpler

Andrew Romano

The current Real Clear Politics electoral map reflects the latest polls; it is not a prediction of the outcome

One week ago today, I launched Stumper's general-election coverage with an in-depth look at where the "Race for the White House" stood in the wake of the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions. While the national polls had swung about 9 points in John McCain's direction since the Democrats left Denver, the Real Clear Politics electoral map still tilted every so slightly toward Barack Obama, 273 to 265. But the Illinois senator's slim lead was hardly set in stone--as I noted at the time. "No battleground state polls have been released since the second day of the Republican Convention," I wrote. "If the national surveys are right and McCain has in fact received a 5-point post-St. Paul bounce, that enthusiasm will almost certainly trickle down." I promised to revisit the map once the dust had settled.

Well, now it has. And what it shows is ... drumroll, please ... more of the same. According to Real Clear Politics, this week's map, posted above, is identical to last week's. Obama is still leading 273 electoral votes to 265.

Does that mean that Obama has emerged unscathed? Hardly. The Democratic nominee may have managed to maintain his razor-thin eight-vote margin--but he's done it by the skin of his teeth. Even if McCain has yet to flip a state, a closer look at the latest battleground polling reveals that the Arizonan's gains have, in fact, trickled down. They've had two effects. First, a handful of red states that Obama once hoped to win now seem either out of reach or more favorable to McCain, whether temporarily or permanently. And second, McCain is suddenly within striking distance in a group of Blue States where Obama until recently enjoyed a comfortable lead. The result: a campaign that once boasted about redrawing the electoral map by targeting an unprecedented 18 battlegrounds has been forced to focus on a more familiar swath of states--and even play defense in places it had hoped to win easily. In the last week, the Red States have gotten redder--and the Blue States have gotten purpler.

Take Montana and Georgia. In 2004, George W. Bush won the former by 20.5 percent and the later by 16.6 percent. But after clinching the Democratic nomination in early June, Obama put both states on his target list and deployed hundreds of volunteers and staffers to Atlanta and Helena to open field offices and register voters. He had reason for optimism. In early July, Rasmussen showed Obama ahead in Montana by 5 points; at the same time, an Insider Advantage poll put him a mere 2 points behind McCain in Georgia. But the latest surveys from those same firms tell a different story. According to an Insider Advantage sounding released last Thursday, McCain now leads 56-38 in the Peach State--an 18-point gulf. Meanwhile, the first postconvention poll by Rasmussen gives the Republican an 11-point advantage in the Treasure State, 53-42. Real Clear Politics has McCain ahead by an average of 13.4 percent in the former and 9.0 percent in the latter. Which means they may be out of reach.

The news for Obama in the key Bush states of Ohio and Florida isn't any better. In late July, the battle for the Sunshine State was tied at about 45 percent on average, and after Denver, Obama trailed by as little as 2.6 percent. But in the post-St. Paul period, McCain's Florida numbers have skyrocketed. Since last Monday, four surveys have hit the wires, with PPP (McCain +5), Quinnipiac (+7) and Insider Advantage (+8) all showing a growing lead for McCain; only FOX News still puts Obama within striking distance. According to the RCP average, McCain now boasts his largest edge (5 percent) since late June. The McCainward shift in the Buckeye State looks much the same. Of the six polls released since St. Paul, five show the Arizonan ahead--boosting him to his biggest RCP lead in this crucial, close-run battleground (2.5 percent) since mid-May. Even Virginia, a Bush state where Obama had held McCain to a tie for much of the cycle, seems to have drifted right. There, McCain now leads by 2.6 percent, 49.3 to 46.7--the largest margin for either candidate since May. The Republican nominee has also edged ahead in the latest polls out of New Mexico and Nevada--both Red in 2004, both leaning toward Obama before St. Paul.

But the most troubling developments for the Dems are probably in two states Kerry won in 2004: Pennsylvania and Minnesota. At the end of July, Obama led in the Keystone State by a whopping nine points, 51.7 percent to 41.7 percent; at the start of September he was ahead by a healthy five, 47.4 to 42.4. The three polls released since St. Paul, however, show McCain closing fast. In the Quinnipiac survey, McCain trails by a measly three points after lagging by seven in mid-August; Strategic Vision and Rasmussen put him within two. Overall, Obama's average lead in Pennsylvania--2.3 percent--is his smallest since capturing the nomination. And while a CNN/Gallup poll released between the conventions gave Obama a 12-point lead in Minnesota, the two soundings out since the GOP left the state earlier this month suggest that McCain is either tied with Obama at 45 percent (Star Tribune) or trailing by a statistically insignificant 2-percent margin (Survey USA). Couple that with the surprising 46 Obama-43 McCain result in the latest Wisconsin survey, and the Rust Belt and upper Midwest are starting to look too close for Chicago's comfort.

It's not all doom and gloom for Obama. So far this month, he's seems to have solidified his narrow margin in Michigan and New Hampshire (states McCain is hoping to flip) while expanding his edges in the Bush states of Iowa and Colorado, where he now leads by 9.7 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively. If he wins these states in November--along with Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Mexico--he wins the White House. New Democratic registrations and Chicago's sophisticated field operation will surely help. But what the last week of polling has shown beyond any doubt is that McCain's successful convention and shocking choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate have shifted the map ever so slightly to the right, transforming a landscape that favored Obama into a landscape that favors, well, no one. For the next six weeks, then, expect Obama and Joe Biden to play defense (Pennsylvania, Michigan) as well as offense (Colorado, Virginia, Nevada) while focusing much of their attention on the king of all swing states: Ohio. But don't expect the final map to look all that different from 2004.

UPDATE, Sept. 16: Prof. Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin agrees with our analysis:

Among the strong Republican states, McCain has gained more than 8 points over Obama since shortly before the conventions, turning a 14 point lead into a 22.5 point margin, a huge gain. Among the strong Democratic states, the effect of the conventions is a tiny 2 point move in McCain's direction, from an Obama lead of 12 points before to 10 points now. But the rest of the states, rated lean or toss up, have also shown movement. These swing states had a 1.5 point Obama lead before the conventions, and that has now turned into a 3 point McCain lead, a 4.5 point shift.

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If You Like Michigan's Economy, You'll Love Obama's

OPINION

If You Like Michigan's Economy, You'll Love Obama's
By PHIL GRAMM and MIKE SOLONSeptember 13, 2008; Page A13

Despite the federal government's growing economic dominance, individual states still exercise substantial freedom in pursuing their own economic fortune -- or misfortune. As a result, the states provide a laboratory for testing various policies.

In this election year, the experience of the states gives us some ability to look at the economic policies of the two presidential candidates in action. If a program is not playing in Peoria, it probably won't work elsewhere. Americans have voted with their feet by moving to states with greater opportunities, but federal adoption of failed state programs would take away our ability to walk away from bad government.

Growth in jobs, income and population are proof that a state is prospering. But figuring out why one state does well while another struggles requires in-depth analysis. In an effort to explain differences in performance, think tanks have generated state-based economic freedom indices modeled on the World Economic Freedom Index published by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation.

A TAX TO GRIND

Personal-income growth suffers when states adopt a tax-and-spend approach to fiscal policy. (Read more.)

The Competitiveness Index created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) identifies "16 policy variables that have a proven impact on the migration of capital -- both investment capital and human capital -- into and out of states." Its analysis shows that "generally speaking, states that spend less, especially on income transfer programs, and states that tax less, particularly on productive activities such as working or investing, experience higher growth rates than states that tax and spend more."

Ranking states by domestic migration, per-capita income growth and employment growth, ALEC found that from 1996 through 2006, Texas, Florida and Arizona were the three most successful states. Illinois, Ohio and Michigan were the three least successful.

The rewards for success were huge. Texas gained 1.7 million net new jobs, Florida gained 1.4 million and Arizona gained 600,000. While the U.S. average job growth percentage was 9.9%, Texas, Florida and Arizona had job growth of 18.5%, 21.4% and 28.9%, respectively.

Remarkably, a third of all the jobs in the U.S. in the last 10 years were created in these three states. While the population of the three highest-performing states grew twice as fast as the national average, per-capita real income still grew by $6,563 or 21.4% in Texas, Florida and Arizona. That's a $26,252 increase for a typical family of four.

By comparison, Illinois gained only 122,000 jobs, Ohio lost 62,900 and Michigan lost 318,000.

Population growth in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois was only 4.2%, a third the national average, and real income per capita rose by only $3,466, just 58% of the national average. Workers in the three least successful states had to contend with a quarter-million fewer jobs rather than taking their pick of the 3.7 million new jobs that were available in the three fastest-growing states.

In Michigan, the average family of four had to make ends meet without an extra $8,672 had their state matched the real income growth of the three most successful states. Families in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois struggled not because they didn't work hard enough, long enough or smart enough. They struggled because too many of their elected leaders represented special interests rather than their interests.

What explains this relative performance over the last 10 years? The simple answer is that governance, taxes and regulatory policy matter. The playing field among the states was not flat.

Business conditions were better in the successful states than in the lagging ones. Capital and labor gravitated to where the burdens were smaller and the opportunities greater.

It costs state taxpayers far less to succeed than to fail. In the three most successful states, state spending averaged $5,519 per capita. In the three least successful states, state spending averaged $6,484 per capita. Per capita taxes were $7,063 versus $8,342.

There also appears to be a clear difference between union interests and the worker interests. Texas, Florida and Arizona are right-to-work states, while Michigan, Ohio and Illinois are not.

Michigan, Ohio and Illinois impose significantly higher minimum wages than Texas, Florida and Arizona. Yet with all the proclaimed benefits of unionism and higher minimum wages, Texas, Florida and Arizona workers saw their real income grow more than twice as fast as workers in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

Incredibly, the business climate in Michigan is now so unfavorable that it has overwhelmed the considerable comparative advantage in auto production that Michigan spent a century building up. No one should let Michigan politicians blame their problems solely on the decline of the U.S. auto industry. Yes, Michigan lost 83,000 auto manufacturing jobs during the past decade and a half, but more than 91,000 new auto manufacturing jobs sprung up in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.

So what do the state laboratories tell us about the potential success of the economic programs presented by Barack Obama and John McCain?

Mr. McCain will lower taxes. Mr. Obama will raise them, especially on small businesses. To understand why, you need to know something about the "infamous" top 1% of income tax filers:

In order to avoid high corporate tax rates and the double taxation of dividends, small business owners have increasingly filed as individuals rather than corporations. When Democrats talk about soaking the rich, it isn't the Rockefellers they're talking about; it's the companies where most Americans work. Three out of four individual income tax filers in the top 1% are, in fact, small businesses.

In the name of taxing the rich, Mr. Obama would raise the marginal tax rates to over 50% on millions of small businesses that provide 75% of all new jobs in America. Investors and corporations will also pay higher taxes under the Obama program, but, as the Michigan-Ohio-Illinois experience painfully demonstrates, workers ultimately pay for higher taxes in lower wages and fewer jobs.

Mr. Obama would spend all the savings from walking out of Iraq to expand the government. Mr. McCain would reserve all the savings from our success in Iraq to shrink the deficit, as part of a credible and internally consistent program to balance the budget by the end of his first term. Mr.
Obama's program offers no hope, or even a promise, of ever achieving a balanced budget.

Mr. Obama would stimulate the economy by increasing federal spending. Mr. McCain would stimulate the economy by cutting the corporate tax rate. Mr. Obama would expand unionism by denying workers the right to a secret ballot on the decision to form a union, and would dramatically increase the minimum wage. Mr. Obama would also expand the role of government in the economy, and stop reforms in areas like tort abuse.

The states have already tested the McCain and Obama programs, and the results are clear. We now face a national choice to determine if everything that has failed the families of Michigan, Ohio and Illinois will be imposed on a grander scale across the nation. In an appropriate twist of fate, Michigan and Ohio, the two states that have suffered the most from the policies that Mr. Obama proposes, have it within their power not only to reverse their own misfortunes but to spare the nation from a similar fate.

Mr. Gramm is a former Republican senator from Texas. Mr. Solon founded the consulting firm Capitol Legistics.

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.

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Community Organizers Applauded as Great Patriots and Great Assets to America

Community Organizers Applauded as Great Patriots and Great Assets to America
THE HUFFINGTON POST

MONROE ANDERSON

Palin, GOP find community challenges a real hoot

At the expense of Barack Obama, community groups and their organizers were a running joke in St. Paul last week at the Republican National Convention.

Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani and much of the rest of the GOP apparently believe that small town mayoring is oh-so-important while community organizing is a real thigh-slapper.


Like much of what goes on among American conservatives, I suspect the marginalizing of the community organizing is just one more coded race reference. And, like much what goes on among the Republicans, George W. Bush and the Palin McCain campaign, it's obvious that this is another topsy-turvy twist on reality.

To assure that the community organizers are removed from the GOP's one-liner lists and moved back into the important things-to-do column, the AfroSpear, a collective of black bloggers across America, has called for a day of blogging in support of community organizing. I'm just one of dozens. This is my contribution.

Small town government, of course, does call for responsibilities. But, like volunteer fire departments, in many small towns, running it is only a part-time job--or should be. Community organizing in Chicago, on the other hand, is a full-time challenge that impacts lives of American citizens by the tens of thousands.

No one knows this to be true more than Phillip Jackson. At one time Jackson was the head of the Chicago Housing Authority. One of the housing projects he was in charge of, Robert Taylor Homes, was where 100,000 of Chicago poorest residents called home. When Jackson left the CHA in the mid-1990s, he founded The Black Star Project, a community group with a daunting task: to improve the quality of life in Black and Latino communities of Chicago and nationwide by eliminating the racial academic achievement gap.

Jackson boasts that The Black Star Project successfully spearheaded the Million Father March 2008 that "took place in 475 cities with about 600.000 men taking children to school--because of communities organizers in these cities."

If Palin, McCain, Giuliani and the gang think Jackson's mission is a laughing matter, then they've got another think coming. Although he's just one of a countless number of dedicated, patriotic citizens trying to improve the lot of the less fortunate in one great American city, his message is worth exploring.

Here's the latest of what Jackson, a community organizer, has had to say in his latest commentary:


Without High School Diplomas,
Young Black Men in America Are Expendable!


By Phillip Jackson, Executive Director of The Black Star Project

Less than fifty percent of young Black men graduated from high school in the United States during the 2005-2006 school year, according to a new report commissioned by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

Dropping out of high school sentences young Black males to menial jobs, street-corner hustling, illicit activities, fathering children out of wedlock, drugs, gangs, crime, prison, violence, death and worse - these young Black men are literally being prepared to destroy the Black communities in which they live.

Inability to achieve becomes hopelessness. Hopelessness becomes despair. Despair becomes destruction.

Dropping out of school annihilates the concept of family in the Black community because young Black men without high school degrees seldom become good providers for their families and strong anchors for their communities. The fabric of the Black community becomes unwoven.

This is an unnatural disaster and a national disgrace with little-to-no effective response from the U.S. government or the Black community where this destruction is taking place.

The media and many foundations ignore this problem. The United States responds to catastrophes in China, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Sudan, Georgia and other parts of the world, but the media and our government will not constructively respond to the genocide of young Black men that is happening here in the United States. Young Black men in America have become expendable!

The poor quality of education for young Black men is an impending national catastrophe for the United States with international ramifications. The rest of the world sees the hypocrisy of the "rhetoric of concern" in the United States verses the lack of difference-making action. Why aren't we outraged? Why won't we do something?

Before information on the educational status of Black males in America was available, the question could have been, "Why don't we know this?" Now that we know, the question becomes "Why don't we care?"

Please see the estimated graduation rates for Black males in the lowest 28 districts in the United States with Black male enrollments of 8,000 or more during the 2005-2006 school year versus White male graduation rates in those cities and the 2003-2004 Black male graduation rates:

Black Male Black White Black Male
District Enrollment Male Male Gap 2003-04
Indianapolis, IN 11,539 19% 19% 0% 21%
Detroit, MI 59,807 20% 17% -3% 31%
Norfolk, VA 12,672 27% 44% 17% 30%
Rochester, NY 11,270 29% 36% 7% 32%
Pinellas County, FL 11,319 30% 50% 20% 21%
Richmond County, GA 12,091 31% 43% 12% 30%
Baltimore City, MD 38,966 31% 37% 6% 31%
Buffalo, NY 10,666 31% 50% 19% 33%
Milwaukee, WI 26,818 32% 46% 14% 34%
New York City, NY 159,555 32% 57% 24% 26%
Chatham County, GA 11,218 32% 42% 10% 25%
Palm Beach County, FL 26,259 33% 0% 26% 29%
Birmingham, AL 14,956 33% 21% -12% 38%
Charleston County, SC 11,489 34% 66% 32% 44%
Dade County, FL 51,188 34% 55% 21% 31%
Atlanta, GA 21,722 34% 58% 24% 35%
Cleveland, OH 20,894 34% 35% 1% 33%
St. Louis, MO 16,705 35% 38% 3% 37%
Memphis, TN 52,720 35% 64% 29% N/A
Clayton County, GA 19,605 36% 26% -10% 33%
Orange County, FL 25,367 37% 58% 21% 27%
Chicago, IL 102,185 37% 62% 25% 35%
Nashville-Davidson, TN 17,792 38% 60% 22% N/A
Broward County, FL 52,537 38% 55% 17% 36%
Jackson City, MS 15,736 38% 42% 4% 44%
Minneapolis, MN 8,044 38% 76% 38% N/A
Cincinnati, OH 12,834 38% 49% 11% 25%
Duval County, FL 28,608 38% 55% 17% 26%

Please consider these simple goals that can lead to solutions for fixing the problems of young Black men:

Short term
1) Teach all Black boys to read at grade level by the third grade and to embrace education.
2) Provide strong, positive Black male role models for Black boys.
3) Create a stable home environment for Black boys that includes contact with their fathers.
4) Ensure that Black boys have a strong spiritual base.
5) Control negative media influences on Black boys.
6) Teach Black boys to respect all girls and women.

Long term
1) Invest as much money in educating Black boys as in locking up Black men.
2) Help connect Black boys to a positive vision of them in the future.
3) Create high expectations and help Black boys live into those high expectations.
4) Build a positive peer culture for Black boys.
5) Teach Black boys self-discipline, cultural awareness and racial history.
6) Teach Black boys and the communities in which they live to embrace education and life-long learning.

Let's compare Palin's mayoral goals and accomplishments with Jackson's and then can decide who deserves the last laugh.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com

www.ruffcommunications.com

Barack Obama takes daughters Malia and Sasha to School

Like 600,000 Other Fathers that Participated in the Million Father March 2008, Senator Obama Takes His Children to School

Barack Obama takes daughters Malia and Sasha to School September 8, 2008 FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama held his daughters' hands when he escorted them to their first day of school on Monday. The girls arrived at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in a five-SUV motorcade after a short drive from their South Side home. It was the first day of classes for 10-year-old Malia, a fifth grader, and 7-year-old Sasha, in second grade. They'd spent some of their summer on the campaign trail with their dad. "The fifth grader didn't really want me to go up to the classroom, but I went," Obama said with a smile at an event a few hours later in Flint, Mich. "She's still daddy's girl." Clad in a black track suit, Obama walked his daughters through the side doors of the ivy covered school building just before 8 a.m. before heading to a gym. Copyright 2008 Associated Press. The Million Father March 2008 was sponsored by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. The National PTA and the National Fatherhood Initiative were partners in the Million Father March 2008. Approximately 600,000 men in 475 cities participated in the Million Father March 2008. If Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama can find the time to take his children to school, shouldn't you? We are expecting 800,000 men to take their children to school for the Million Father March 2009. Call The Black Star Project at 773.285.9600 for more information about the Million Father March or the new, year-long Million Father Movement. www.ruffcommunications.com

Clintons instigating a fight where all Dems will lose

by Lou Ransom

Obviously, the Clintons, Bill and Hillary (not George), are harder to get rid of than gum on the bottom of the shoe.

Sen. Barack Obama, on his way to his christening as the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, still has a considerable wad of Clinton under his shoe, and it looks like he’ll have to carry it all the way through the Democratic National Convention and into the general election.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Obama tallied the most delegates, won the most states and raised the most money. For two months now, he has been the “presumptive” nominee. But Clinton supporters, and at least one of the Clintons, believes we presumed too much.

The Clintons bargained hard and threw their considerable Democratic weight around, and finagled not only prime speaking spots during the convention but also got Obama to agree to allow a roll call vote on Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Her supporters, who have lost none of their ardor despite their candidate’s defeat, will get a chance to cast a vote for Clinton at the convention.

The Clintons argue that such a vote will allow her supporters to have their voices heard. Hillary also said that it will be some sort of “catharsis” (releasing strong or repressed emotions) for her supporters.

Frankly, what has been heard loud and clear since the end of the primary season are the voices of Hillary supporters, vowing never to vote for Obama or worse, to switch their Democratic votes to Republican John McCain.

They have burned up the blogs and overpowered the op-eds on their way to expressing:

1. Hillary was done in by a sexist media.

2. Hillary was done in by the sexist Democratic leadership.

3. Hillary was done in by the media’s infatuation with and kid gloves treatment of Obama.

4. All of the above.

But some Clinton supporters, and perhaps the Clintons themselves, are hoping for a do-over. They are poised to make noise at the Democratic Convention, but it is not clear what they want. Do they want the roll call to declare Clinton the winner? That’s not likely, but if it did, it would rip the Democratic Party asunder because it would seem that the nomination was stolen from the “presumptive” nominee, Obama. His supporters would then have a hard time supporting another nominee. Do they want Clinton on the Obama ticket? That isn’t likely either because it would amount to a co-presidency and would set up four years of controversy and competition within the White House. In effect, the Clintons would accomplish what Rev. Jesse Jackson only whispered about.

It is clear that some Clinton supporters will never vote for Obama. They would rather stay home.

And what does Bill Clinton want? He wants his “legacy” rehabilitated. He wants better relations with Black voters, who sharply rebuked him for his behavior during the primaries. He wants to reclaim the moniker of “first Black president” despite his absence of melanin. It may not happen. He may have gone too far. He still hedges when asked if Obama is qualified to be president. This from a man who spent the last two years of his presidency answering charges of a tryst with a female White House intern.

So now we are on the verge of a convention during which a floor fight is promised, and some of the delegates plan to be quite vocal in their support of someone other than the presumptive nominee.

That is hardly the kind of unity Hillary and Barack talked about in Unity, New Hampshire. It is not the kind of unified party that would strike fear into the Republicans. It is not the type of unity that points to a viable future for the Democratic Party. It is far short of the kind of unity that will be necessary to put a Democrat in the White House after eight horrendous years of George Bush.

This is a telling point for Obama. He is being watched to see if he is presidential timbre. His actions at this convention are the first real test of his leadership. He should not falter here.

Obama needs to man-up and reclaim this convention. It is supposed to be “Obama time” not Clinton redux. He should make sure that his voice is the voice of the Democratic Party, and all those disgruntled Clinton supporters should fall in behind him or they can bet the party will simply just fall behind.

Lou Ransom is executive editor of the Chicago Defender. He can be reached via email at lransom@chicagodefender.com.

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Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama

September 01, 2008

Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama

By Gerard Baker

Democrats, between sniggers of derision and snorts of disgust, contend that Sarah Palin, John McCain's vice-presidential pick is ridiculously unqualified to be president.

It's a reasonable objection on its face except for this small objection: it surely needs to be weighed against the Democrats' claim that their own candidate for president is self-evidently ready to assume the role of most powerful person on the planet.

At first blush, here's what we know about the relative experience of the two candidates. Both are in their mid-forties and have held statewide elective office for less than four years. Both have admitted to taking illegal drugs in their youth.

So much for the similarities. How about the differences?

Political experience

Obama: Worked his way to the top by cultivating, pandering to and stroking the most powerful interest groups in the all-pervasive Chicago political machine, ensuring his views were aligned with the power brokers there.

Palin: Worked her way to the top by challenging, attacking and actively undermining the Republican party establishment in her native Alaska. She ran against incumbent Republicans as a candidate willing and able to clean the Augean Stables of her state's government.

Political Biography

Obama: A classic, if unusually talented, greasy-pole climber. Held a succession of jobs that constitute the standard route to the top in his party's internal politics: "community organizer", law professor, state senator.

Palin:A woman with a wide range of interests in a well-variegated life. Held a succession of jobs - sports journalist, commercial fisherwoman, state oil and gas commissioner, before entering local politics. A resume that suggests something other than burning political ambition from the cradle but rather the sort of experience that enables her to understand the concerns of most Americans..

Political history

Obama: Elected to statewide office only after a disastrous first run for a congressional seat and after his Republican opponent was exposed in a sexual scandal. Won seat eventually in contest against a candidate who didn't even live in the state.

Palin: Elected to statewide office by challenging a long-serving Republican incumbent governor despite intense opposition from the party.

Appeal

Obama: A very attractive speaker whose celebrity has been compared to that of Britney Spears and who sends thrills up Chris Matthews' leg

Palin: A very attractive woman, much better-looking than Britney Spears who speaks rather well too. She sends thrills up the leg of Rush Limbaugh (and me).

Executive experience

Obama: Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of his campaign staff and a vast crowd of traveling journalists

Palin:Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of 500,000 people in her state, and that impact crucial issues of national economic interest such as the supply and cost of energy to the United States.

Religious influences

Obama: Regards people who "cling" to religion and guns as "bitter" . Spent 20 years being mentored and led spiritually by a man who proclaimed "God damn America" from his pulpit. Mysteriously, this mentor completely disappeared from public sight about four months ago.

Palin: Head of her high school Fellowship of Christian Athletes and for many years a member of the Assemblies of God congregation whose preachers have never been known to accuse the United States of deliberately spreading the AIDS virus. They remain in full public sight and can be seen every Sunday in churches across Alaska. A proud gun owner who has been known to cling only to the carcasses of dead caribou felled by her own aim.

Record of bipartisan achievement

Obama: Speaks movingly of the bipartisanship needed to end the destructive politics of "Red America" and "Blue America", but votes in the Senate as a down-the-line Democrat, with one of the most liberal voting records in congress.

Palin: Ridiculed by liberals such as John Kerry as a crazed, barely human, Dick Cheney-type conservative but worked wit Democrats in the state legislature to secure landmark anti-corruption legislation.

Former state Rep. Ethan Berkowitz - a Democrat - said. "Gov. Palin has made her name fighting corruption within her own party, and I was honored when she stepped across party lines and asked me to co-author her ethics white paper."

On Human Life

Obama: Devoutly pro-choice. Voted against a bill in the Illinois state senate that would have required doctors to save the lives of babies who survived abortion procedures. The implication of this position is that babies born prematurely during abortions would be left alone, unnourished and unmedicated, until they died.

Palin: Devoutly pro-life. Exercised the choice proclaimed by liberals to bring to full term a baby that had been diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome.

Now it's true there are other crucial differences. Sen Obama has appeared on Meet The Press every other week for the last four years. He has been the subject of hundreds of adoring articles in papers and newsweeklies and TV shows and has written two Emmy-award winning books.

Gov Palin has never appeared on Meet the Press, never been on the cover of Newsweek. She presumably feels that, as a mother of five children married to a snowmobile champion, who also happens to be the first woman and the youngest person ever to be elected governor of her state, she has not really done enough yet to merit an autobiography.

Then again, I'm willing to bet that if she had authored The Grapes of Wrath, sung like Edith Piaf and composed La Traviata , she still wouldn't have won an Emmy.

Fortunately, it will be up to the American people and not their self-appointed leaders in Hollywood and New York to determine who really has the better experience to be president.

Gerard Baker is US Editor and Assistant Editor of The Times of London

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Voter-Fraud Rethink

Voter-Fraud Rethink

By JOHN FUND
January 17, 2008; Page A16

Both Democrats and Republicans are good at practicing hypocrisy when they need to. But it's still breathtaking to see how some Democrats ignore that it was only last week they argued before the Supreme Court that an Indiana law requiring voters show ID at the polls would reduce voter turnout and disenfranchise minorities. Nevada allies of Hillary Clinton have just sued to shut down several caucus sites inside casinos along the Las Vegas Strip, potentially disenfranchising thousands of Hispanic or black shift workers who couldn't otherwise attend the 11:30 a.m. caucus this coming Saturday.

D. Taylor, the president of the Culinary Workers Union that represents many casino workers, notes that legal complaint was filed just two days after his union endorsed Barack Obama. He says the state teachers union, most of whose leadership backs Mrs. Clinton, realized that the Culinary union would be able to use the casino caucuses to better exercise its clout on behalf of Mr. Obama, and used a law firm with Clinton ties to file the suit.

Mr. Taylor exploded after Bill Clinton came out in favor of the lawsuit on Monday, and Hillary Clinton refused to take a stand. "This is the Clinton campaign," he said.

"They tried to disenfranchise students in Iowa. Now they're trying to disenfranchise people here in Nevada." He later told the Journal's June Kronholz, "You'd think the Democratic Party elite would disavow this, but the silence has been deafening." (Late Tuesday the Democratic National Committee quietly filed a motion supporting the Nevada party's rules.)

However, the lawsuit has created an uproar among voters. It was the No. 1 issue among 30 Nevada Democrats participating in a Fox News focus group on Tuesday night; the anger among rank-and-file voters was palpable. The left-wing Nation magazine has denounced the suit as an attempt to "suppress the vote."

The case goes before a federal judge in Las Vegas this morning. Plaintiffs argue that the caucus sites on the Strip unfairly discriminate against other workers on-duty that day. Lynn Warne, president of the teachers union, insists "our only interest is fairness." But instead of seeking additional at-large locations, they want to close down the casino sites.

Backers of the suit claim they didn't learn of the caucus rules until recently, although they were approved at a party convention nine months ago. Nevada Democrats are free to set their own rules for a caucus, which isn't a government-run election. And as in Iowa, the Nevada caucus is designed to be unfair to many people, including those who are out of town, sick or value a secret ballot (since all voting must be public).

But the time to argue about the rules has passed. As Rob Richie, executive director of the liberal group FairVote, says, "You simply don't want to reduce the number of places to vote or do a last-minute change if you want people to participate."

Meanwhile, Democrats will also be asking for identification at caucus sites. The nine at-large casino sites are meant only for workers who can prove they are employed within 2.5 miles of the Strip, an area that Barack Obama notes includes thousands "working at McDonald's" as well as gas stations and bodegas.

Democratic leaders insist workers need only show an employee badge. If they don't have one, a party spokeswoman lamely says "we'll somehow accommodate them." The Las Vegas Review Journal notes "some Strip workers will have no alternative but to provide photo identification." For a party that compares photo ID requirements to Jim Crow poll taxes, even when state governments distribute the IDs for free, the irony is rich.

And it doesn't stop there. Opponents of the Indiana photo ID law used Faye Buis-Ewing, a 72-year-old retiree who had trouble getting a state-issued ID, as a poster child for how the law would block voters. Then it was learned Ms. Buis-Ewing lives most of the year in Florida, has claimed residency there, and was illegally registered to vote in both states. Confronted with these facts, Ms. Buis-Ewing was unrepentant. "I feel like I'm a victim here," she told the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. "I never intended to do anything wrong. I know a lot of people in Florida in this same situation."

She's right. But "snowbird" registrations in multiple states can swing skintight elections, and are a good reason to tighten both identification and absentee ballot laws. In Florida, where the Bush-Gore presidential election was decided by 537 votes, the New York Daily News found in 2004 that between 400 and 1,000 voters registered in Florida and New York City had voted twice in at least one recent election.
Selective outrage, anyone?

In 1995, Barack Obama sued Illinois over its voter registration rolls on behalf of the radical group ACORN, and he now rails against Clintonista attempts to shut down Nevada caucus sites and photo ID laws. But just last September, Oprah Winfrey held a lavish fundraiser for Mr. Obama at her California estate. None of the 1,500 guests could enter until they presented a government-issued photo ID that could be compared to a guest list. When asked about this, the Obama campaign had no comment.

Republicans can also be hypocrites, pushing photo ID laws while downplaying the larger issue of fraud linked to absentee ballots, which are popular with their suburban voters.

Meanwhile, voters are increasingly concerned about all kinds of ways to undermine ballot-box integrity. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 17% of Americans think large numbers of legitimate voters are prevented from voting -- and 23% believe many illegal votes are cast.

After the 2000 Florida recount debacle, Congress compromised when it passed the Help America Vote Act. Sen. Chris Dodd, its Democratic co-sponsor, hailed it as both "making it easier to vote and harder to cheat." But the law's limited reach needs to be extended at both the federal and state level. Here's hoping both parties are so tired of this year's partisan wrangling that next year Congress can reach for Sen. Dodd's twin goals.

Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com. A revised edition of his book, "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy" is forthcoming from Encounter Books.

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Romney symbolizes GOP's problems

STAR PARKER

Romney symbolizes GOP's problems

December 26, 2007

It's doubtful that anyone needs any more reasons to explain why Americans are fed up with politics as usual. Nevertheless, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has given us one more.

Apparently when Romney said, “I saw my father march with Martin Luther King,” in his much publicized “Faith in America” speech, this was not exactly true.

It appears that not only did Romney not see this, but there is serious doubt whether his father ever indeed did march with Dr. King.

Romney now says that he meant this “figuratively.”

According to the former Massachusetts governor, “If you look at the literature or the dictionary the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I have described. It is a figure of speech. . . .”

We haven't seen a politician parse a sentence like this since Bill Clinton dissected the meaning of the verb “is” and explained that it was Monica who had sex with him and not the other way around.

The next sentence in the speech following the King claim was, “I saw my parents provide compassionate care to others, in personal ways nearby. . . .” Also figuratively?

The Detroit Free Press says it has no record of Romney's father, onetime Michigan Gov. George Romney, ever marching with King. According to the Free Press, when Dr. King marched in Detroit, their archives show that Romney's father did not participate because he said his religion prohibited him from public appearances on Sunday.

How ironic that Romney chose to insert this apparent whopper in his “Faith in America” speech. Perhaps the governor's idea of faith is what Groucho Marx had in mind with his line, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

This kind of casualness with the truth is what has alienated good citizens across the country from the elites who are running our political machinery.

The Pew Research Center reports as its No. 1 public opinion story of 2007 the “sour mood of the public.” A Gallup poll just out puts the number of Americans who “are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S.” at 27 percent.

This dissatisfaction carries over into low approval ratings for the president and even lower ratings for the Congress.

Americans are unhappy with the status quo and hence the surprise showings of candidates such as Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. They're sick of detached, elitist, power-hungry candidates whose personal agenda is something other than genuine concern for people and clear and honest principles.

In a recent Pew survey, only 34 percent agreed with the statement “Most elected officials care what people like me think.” Twenty years ago in 1987, 47 percent agreed with this statement.

The bad news for Republicans is that prevailing disillusionment is disproportionately toward and within their party.

According to Pew, 33 percent of Americans now identify as Democrats, up 2 points from 31 percent five years ago. Twenty five percent now identify as Republicans, down 5 points from five years ago.

In addition to this, 17 percent of independents now lean Democratic, up 6 points from five years ago and 11 percent of independents now lean Republican, down one point from five years ago.

This overall shift in sentiment toward the Democratic Party, however, reflects disillusionment with Republicans rather than enthusiasm for Democrats. The current favorability rating for the Democratic Party is at 54 percent, exactly where it was after President Bush's victory in 2004. However, the current favorability rating for the Republican Party is 41 percent, down 11 points from 52 percent over the same period.

The point is that Americans have not suddenly fallen back in love with the liberals.
They have fallen out of love with a Republican Party that was supposed to be carrying the banner of traditional values and limited government, whom they no longer trust to do so.

When Reagan ran against the entrenched political establishment in 1980, the sentiment toward him was similar to what we hear today about Mike Huckabee. How could this guy – a class B actor, former sportscaster, with a bachelor's degree from Eureka College in Illinois – be running for president of the United States?

But Reagan had been traveling and speaking around the country for years. He knew the country and he knew its people. When he ran against government and the establishment, these folks felt he was representing them.

But now Republicans have become a detached ruling elite like the Democrats that Reagan ran against. And they have alienated a chunk of the grass roots within their own party, and independents that Reagan had wooed in.

Republicans can win back the hearts and minds of Americans. But they have to get real and get honest. Unlike the former governor of Massachusetts.

Parker, a nationally syndicated columnist, is president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (http://www.urbanure.org/) and author of three books. She can be reached at parker@urbancure.org.

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So much to learn from the Huckabee surge

With all the talk about the surprising Huckabee surge in Illinois polls, and the big deal that so many "radical rightwingers" are running as Huckabee delegates, I've got to admit, I'm pretty excited for them all.

At the end of October, when I emailed the Huckabee campaign contact, he didn't know anything about getting delegates on the primary slate. I called for guys like Huckabee and Cox to stop dreaming. The incredible surge means there's real enthusiasm for Huckabee - and what he stands for -- that is translating into impromptu organization right here in blue Illinois.

I got a call last night from Elroy Leach, who's running as a Huckabee delegate in the 2nd Congressional District (that's where Jesse Jackson Jr is Congressman).

Elroy told me about his great admiration for Mike Huckabee, how Huckabee was the only Republican who had the courage and respect for black voters to attend the NAACP's recent presidential debate. Huckabee, he said, was praised by Princeton University professor and commentator Cornell West, who said he agreed with Huckabee's moral values.

Elroy was one of a group of young Cook County African-Americans who ran for state office in 2004, and who was ignored and brushed aside by the House Republicans. I wrote about them two weeks ago in the Southtown Star.

But you've got to admire these guys' tenacity and commitment to breaking through the Republican Party's wall. Elroy is now running for Ward Committeeman and hopes to make a difference in the Cook County GOP.

Elroy and others, such as Matteson's Dr. Eric Wallace who's running as a Fred Thompson delegate in the same congressional district, should be encouraged by Republicans this time around. Hopefully, someone at the IL GOP headquarters is paying attention.

The IL GOP elite and their commitment to the Democrat-lite Giuliani could end up being a very, very big embarrassment. It will show that THEY -- the Old Guard -- are the reason Democrats rule and reign in Illinois. It's time to stop blaming the alive and well energetic conservative Republican base.

There's much to learn from the current Huckabee surge.

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The Republicans Find Their Obama

The Republicans Find Their Obama
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 9, 2007

COULD 2008 actually end up being a showdown between the author of "The Audacity of Hope" and the new Man from Hope, Ark.?

It sounds preposterous, but Washington’s shock over Mike Huckabee’s sudden rise in the polls — he "came from nowhere," Robert Novak huffed last week — makes you wonder. Having failed to anticipate so much else, including the Barack Obama polling surge of days earlier, the press pack has proved an unreliable guide to election 2008. What the Beltway calls unthinkable today keeps turning out to be front-page news tomorrow.

The prevailing Huckabee narrative maintains that he’s benefiting strictly from the loyalty of the religious right. Evangelical Christians are belatedly rallying around one of their own, a Baptist preacher, rather than settling for a Mormon who until recently supported abortion rights or a thrice-married New Yorker who still does. But that doesn’t explain Mr. Huckabee’s abrupt ascent to first place in some polling nationwide, where Christian conservatives account for a far smaller slice of the Republican pie than in Iowa. Indeed, this theory doesn’t entirely explain Mr.
Huckabee’s steep rise in Iowa, where Mitt Romney has outspent him 20 to 1, a financial advantage that Mr. Romney leveraged to crush him in the state’s straw poll just four months ago.

What really may be going on here is a mirror image of the phenomenon that has upended Hillary Clinton’s "inevitability" among Democrats. Like Senator Obama, Mr. Huckabee is the youngest in his party’s field. (At 52, he’s also younger than every Democratic contender except Mr. Obama, who is 46.) Both men have a history of speaking across party and racial lines. Both men possess that rarest of commodities in American public life: wit. Most important, both men aspire (not always successfully) to avoid the hyper-partisanship of the Clinton-Bush era.

Though their views on issues are often antithetical, Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Obama may be united in catching the wave of an emerging zeitgeist that is larger than either party’s ideology.
An exhausted and disillusioned public may be ready for a replay of the New Frontier pitch of 1960. That pitch won’t come from Mr. Romney, a glib salesman who seems a dead ringer for Don Draper, a Madison Avenue ad man of no known core convictions who works on the Nixon campaign in the TV series, "Mad Men." Mr. Romney’s effort to channel J.F.K. last week, in which he mentioned the word Mormon exactly once, was hardly a profile in courage.

The fact to remember about Mr. Huckabee’s polling spike is that it occurred just after the G.O.P. YouTube debate on CNN, where Mr. Romney and Rudy Giuliani vied to spray the most spittle at illegal immigrants. Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado, the fringe candidate whose most recent ads accuse the invading hordes of "pushing drugs, raping kids, destroying lives," accurately accused his opponents of trying to "out-Tancredo Tancredo."
Next to this mean-spiritedness, Mr. Huckabee’s tone leapt off the screen. Attacked by Mr. Romney for supporting an Arkansas program aiding the children of illegal immigrants, he replied, "In all due respect, we’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did." It was a winning moment, politically as well as morally. And a no-brainer at that. Given that Mr. Tancredo polls at 4 percent among Iowan Republicans and zero nationally, it’s hard to see why Rudy-Romney thought it was smart to try to out-Tancredo Tancredo.

Mr. Huckabee’s humane stand wasn’t an election-year flip-flop. As governor, he decried a bill denying health services to illegal immigrants as "race-baiting" even though its legislator sponsor was a fellow Baptist preacher. Mr. Huckabee’s record on race in general (and in attracting African-American votes) is dramatically at odds with much of his party. Only last year Republicans brought us both "macaca" and a television ad portraying the black Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., as a potential despoiler of white women.

Unlike Rudy-Romney, Mr. Huckabee showed up for the PBS presidential debate held at the historically black Morgan State University in September. Afterward, he met Cornel West, an Obama supporter who deeply disagrees with Mr. Huckabee about abortion and much else. I asked Dr. West for his take last week. After effusively praising Mr. Huckabee as unique among the G.O.P. contenders, Dr. West said: "I told him, ‘You are for real.’ Black voters in Arkansas aren’t stupid. They know he’s sincere about fighting racism and poverty."

Though Mr. Romney’s hastily scheduled speech last week has been greeted by Washington as an essential antidote to the religious bigotry that’s supposedly doing him in, this entire issue may be a red herring. Mr. Romney’s Mormonism has hardly been a secret until now, and Mr.
Huckabee’s eagerness to milk his status as a certified "Christian leader" has been equally transparent from the campaign’s start. Was there really a rising tide of anti-Mormon sentiment in Iowa over the past month, or is Mr. Romney just playing victim?

The real reason for Mr. Huckabee’s ascendance may be that his message is simply more uplifting — and, in the ethical rather than theological sense, more Christian — than that of rivals whose main calling cards of fear, torture and nativism have become more strident with every debate. The fresh-faced politics of joy may be trumping the five-o’clock-shadow of Nixonian gloom and paranoia favored by the entire G.O.P. field with the sometime exception of John McCain.

On the same day of Mr. Romney’s speech, two new polls found Mr. Huckabee with a substantial lead over him and Mr. Giuliani in South Carolina, a stunning reversal from a month ago. Don’t be surprised if a desperate Mitt, who has "accidentally" referred to Mr. Obama as "Osama," does desperate things. South Carolina’s 2000 Republican primary was a jamboree of race-baiting that included a whispering campaign branding Senator McCain as the father of an illegitimate black child. The local political operative who worked for George W. Bush in that race and engineered the infamous Bush visit to Bob Jones University is now in Mr. Romney’s employ.

Mr. Huckabee may well be doomed in the long term. He has little money or organization. He’s so ignorant of foreign affairs that he hadn’t heard of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran a day after its release. His sometimes wacky economic populism riles his party’s most important constituency, Wall Street. And who knows how many other Arkansas scandals will be disinterred along with the paroled serial rapist who popped out last week? That Mr. Huckabee has gotten as far as he has shows just how in sync his benign style is with the cultural moment.

To understand why he can’t be completely dismissed, consider last month’s Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll. Peter Hart, the Democratic half of the bipartisan team that conducts the survey, told me in an interview last week that an overwhelming majority of voters of both parties not only want change but also regard "reducing the partisan fighting in government" as high on their agenda. To his surprise, Mr. Hart found that there’s even a majority (59 percent) seeking a president who would help America in "regaining respect around the world."

This climate, of course, favors the Democrats, especially if the Republicans choose a candidate who brands them as the party of rage and fear — and even more especially if their Tancredo-ism drives a large Hispanic turnout for the national Democratic ticket in Florida, Nevada,
Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. But a Democratic victory is not guaranteed. The huge spread in the Journal-NBC poll between an unnamed Democrat and Republican in the presidential race — 50 to 35 percent — shrank to a 1 percent lead when Mrs. Clinton was pitted against Mr. Giuliani.

Mr. Obama’s campaign, though hardly the long shot of Mr. Huckabee’s, could also fall short. But the Clinton camp’s panic over his rise in the Iowa polls shows that he’s on the right tactical track.

The more polarizing and negative a candidate turns in style, the more that candidate risks playing Nixon to Mr. Obama’s Kennedy. That Mrs. Clinton’s minions would attack Mr. Obama for unseemly ambition because he wrote a kindergarten report called "I Want to Become President" — and then snidely belittle the press for falling for "a joke" once this gambit backfired — is Rudy-Romneyesque in its vituperative folly.

Experience, like nastiness, may also prove a dead end in the year ahead. In 1960, the experience card was played by all comers against the young upstart senator from Massachusetts. In Iowa, L.B.J. went so far as to tell voters that they should vote for "a man with a little gray in his hair." But experience, Kennedy would memorably counter, "is like taillights on a boat which illuminate where we have been when we should be focusing on where we should be going."

The most experienced candidate in 2008 is not Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Romney in any case. It’s Mr. McCain, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson who have the longest résumés. Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Obama, meanwhile, are both betting that this is another crossroads, like 1960, when Americans are hungry for a leader who will refocus the nation on the path ahead.

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State GOP making overtures to African-Americans

State GOP making overtures to African-Americans
December 9, 2007
By Fran Eaton, SouthtownStar columnist

A few years ago, a Republican running for state representative in Harvey told me he was "pissed off to the height of pissivity" when the Illinois House Republican organization told him they couldn't financially help his campaign.

Such is a common complaint from so-called Tier 3 candidates running in strong Democratic districts or challenging solid incumbents. Republicans in Illinois learned long ago to pick their battles carefully. But J.R. Jordan really was irritated to discover thousands of those precious GOP funds being funneled to incumbent GOP House members facing no opposition that year.
I really couldn't blame J.R., nor the other black south suburbanites who voluntarily sought petition signatures for the 2002 GOP ballot, for being so angry.

Then in 2004, a black man from Maryland ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. His last-minute entry was a colossal gamble, and no one who supported the scheme for former U.N. Ambassador Alan Keyes to substitute for the abruptly-toppled GOP nominee Jack Ryan had any idea what a disaster it would be. Indeed, Keyes was so awful that he propelled Barack Obama into the national spotlight, and today the former Chicago state senator is a major contender for the Democrats' 2008 presidential nomination.

In 2006, two black Republicans challenged longtime area incumbents, and both struggled to get out their messages of education reform and family values. They also couldn't get any support from the GOP they wanted so badly to represent in Springfield.

So, you might wonder, what's the big surprise? Republicans are white-collar corporate moguls who take advantage of the middle class and abuse the poor, right? Why would they invest in Cook County minority voting blocs, where Democrats rule and reign?

Michael Zak, author of "Back to Basics for the Republican Party," says Republicans haven't always been perceived as so antagonistic toward minorities.

As a matter of fact, Zak writes, 150 years ago, "Radical Republican" U.S. Senator Charles Sumner starkly defined the difference between the newly-founded Republican Party and the Democrats in this way:

"The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man, that his bondage is cruelly wrong and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood, deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage as 'a sacred right of self-government.' "

Republicans led the fight against slavery.

Indeed, every Democrat in Congress voted against the 1863 D.C. Emancipation Act, which freed 3,100 blacks enslaved in the nation's capital.

Throughout the past few years, these hidden Republican roots have cultivated an array of minority conservative political leaders. Nationally-prominent blacks, such as former Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele, as well as renowned football player Lynn Swann, former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts and former Ohio Attorney General Ken Blackwell, encourage others to follow.

The Illinois GOP will be kicking off its new minority outreach council this weekend. Matteson resident Dr. Eric Wallace - on the February primary ballot as 2nd Congressional District delegate for Fred Thompson - has been asked to serve. Others representing Latino- and Asian- Americans will join minority voices in the Illinois GOP.

Like Illinois, Florida is a major Republican state in the upcoming Super Tuesday primaries. Florida GOP spokesperson Erin VanSickle said her state's Republican outreach to minorities is just beginning to flourish.

"We are finding that the Republican message of lower taxes, small business tax incentives, less government interference and more freedom appeals to minority communities," she said.
The Florida GOP recently held its first African-American party convention and was delighted with the enthusiastic response.

One Republican presidential candidate is particularly focused upon nabbing the black community's vote. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, credits black church members in gaining 48 percent of the black vote during his gubernatorial re-election.

While that figure is questioned by many, one political consultant says Huckabee approaches minority voters the right way:

"He breaks the traditional mold of the Republicans in trying to persuade African-Americans to vote for him, and that's what he did in Arkansas," Little Rock-based Stacy Williams told an Arkansas reporter. "African-Americans are pretty much like anybody else; if you advertise to them or target them and solicit their support, you're going to be successful."

While that's not a earth-shattering political revelation, Huckabee now appears to be leading in Iowa polls. His Illinois supporters slid him in as the last choice listed on the Feb. 5 Republican ballot.

The chances of getting the Chicago area's black community to vote for anyone but Barack Obama in the upcoming primary seems remote, and voters will need to ask for either a Republican or a Democratic ballot that day; that's something those coveted independent voters are hesitant to do.

But whether or not the new life among black conservatives will spring forth this election cycle, there's hope minorities will return to their alive-and-well Republican roots. It will be up to the Illinois GOP powers-that-be to nurture those tender roots to fruition once again.

One of the first people the state's GOP should contact in their minority outreach is that aggravated and disappointed Jordan in Harvey.

Last time I talked to J.R., he'd gone back to promoting a Democrat.

Fran Eaton is a south suburban resident, a conservative activist in state and national politics and an online journalist. She can be reached at featon@illinoisreview.com

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