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.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Showing posts with label Republican. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican. Show all posts
Friday, September 19, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Greenspan: Don’t use Fed as a ‘magical piggy bank’
Greenspan: Don’t use Fed as a ‘magical piggy bank’
WASHINGTON–Troubled by the Bear Stearns debacle, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is advocating a new way of dealing with government bailouts of companies whose sudden collapse could wreak havoc on the country's economic and financial stability. Greenspan says Congress needs to give the government new powers to handle troubled companies to minimize any potential losses to American taxpayers.
A self-described libertarian Republican, Greenspan has a reputation for being wary of giving the government extra powers. However, in crisis situations, there needs to be a clear process for handling bailouts, rather than depending on the Fed to do so, he reckons.
A high-level panel of financial officials should be given broad authority to quickly determine whether a failing company poses a sufficient threat to the entire U.S. economy, he recommends. If so, the company would be shut down.
“We need laws that specify and limit the conditions for bailouts–laws that authorize the Treasury to use taxpayer money to counter systemic financial breakdowns transparently and directly rather than circuitously through the central bank as was done during the blowup of Bear Stearns,” Greenspan wrote in a new epilogue to the paperback edition of his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.
Greenspan envisions the formation of a group akin to the Resolution Trust Corp. to step in, take a troubled company into conservatorship, wipe out the equity, impose some charge or “haircut” on its debts before guaranteeing them and then selling its assets. The RTC was created in 1989 to deal with the aftermath of the savings and loan crisis. It disposed of the assets of failed savings and loans and then went out of business.
Costs to taxpayers would still be a concern, he acknowledges. As with the RTC, however, the public cost could be minimized, he says. Critics in Congress, in academia and elsewhere worry that the Fed’s unprecedented actions - including financial backing in March for JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s takeover of Bear Stearns Cos.–are putting taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars of potential losses.
They also say it encourages “moral hazard,” that is, allowing financial companies to gamble more recklessly in the future. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who took the helm after Greenspan, has repeatedly defended the Fed’s actions, saying they were necessary to avert a meltdown of the entire financial system, which would have devastated the U.S. economy. Bernanke’s Fed also has taken a number of unconventional–and some controversial - actions to shore up the shaky financial system and to get credit, the economy’s lifeblood, flowing more freely.
It agreed in March to let investment houses draw emergency loans directly from the central bank. And, in July, the Fed said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also could tap the program. For years, such lending privileges were extended only to commercial banks, which are subject to stricter regulatory supervision.
Greenspan, 82, who ran the Fed for 18 1/2 years and was the second-longest serving chief, says he is concerned that Capitol Hill will look to the Fed’s actions “as a wondrous new font of seemingly costless federal funding –a magical piggy bank.” The United States has long “abandoned the notion that we should leave crises to be resolved solely by the marketplace,” Greenspan says in making the case for new powers in this area.
The ex-Fed chief says he is skeptical of a sweeping plan, put forward by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, that would turn the Fed into a uber cop of sorts - responsible for policing financial market stability. “Much as we might wish otherwise, policymakers cannot reliably anticipate financial or economic shocks or the consequences of economic imbalances,” Greenspan says.
Greenspan calls the current crisis “one of those rare, once in a century or half-century events.” The full closure on this crisis is “a way off,” he says. The U.S. economy, he observes, appears to be “on the brink of recession.” And, worldwide inflation, he warns, is creeping, which will pose a challenge to central bankers, he says.
Looking back, Greenspan says governments and central banks probably could not have altered the course of the once high-flying housing market and broken through investors' fevered euphoria. He believes that the government should have gone after fraudulent mortgage practices, however. “Bank regulators, who are expert in accounting, banking law and risk management, are not equipped for this job,” he says.
“It requires law-enforcement professionals.” Greenspan has taken much criticism for failing to crack down on dubious lending practices that eventually came to roost with the subprime meltdown and for failing to act as a forceful banking regulator. He also has been blamed for keeping interest rates too low for too long, feeding the housing bubble.
AP
www.ruffcommunications.com
Clintons instigating a fight where all Dems will lose
Clintons instigating a fight where all Dems will lose
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.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Black Republicans, Obama, JC Watts, Armstrong Williams, African-American Republican Leadership Council in Texas,
Why black Republicans support Obama
Posted: July 05, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
© 2008
Posted: July 05, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
© 2008
I don't necessarily like his policies; but … history thrusts me to really seriously think about it [voting for Obama]. … Black conservatives tell me privately it would be very hard to vote against him in November.– Armstrong Williams, talk show host
Recent comments by well-known black Republicans J.C. Watts and Armstrong Williams that they're conflicted about the upcoming presidential elections and are contemplating voting for Barack Obama have sent shock waves through the Republican Party.
I'm hearing many black Republicans echoing similar sentiments. They say that because of the historical significance of casting a vote for the first legitimate black presidential candidate, they may cross party lines.
These statements don't surprise me.
So, how did black Republicans get to a point where they're willing to abandon their own "values" to vote for a socialist?
To get an understanding of this phenomenon, I recently interviewed several black Republican leaders on my radio program.
Calvin Stephens, chairman of the African-American Republican Leadership Council in Texas, said that he's voting for Obama because this is a "black pride moment!"
Can you imagine if a white person in a similar position even hinted at voting for a candidate because it was a "white pride moment"? That person would be castigated, labeled a "racist" and fired.
Other black Republicans came on my program and repeated the Obama mantra of "change" without defining what that change meant.
I understand now that there's a major difference between a black conservative and a black Republican. A black conservative votes Republican because the party agrees with his values: pro-life, lower taxes, strong defense and strong families, etc.
A real black conservative could never vote for Obama. On the other hand, a black Republican could vote for Obama because he identifies more with color than character.
Because black Americans have long been catered to by liberal Democrats, most still feel like they're owed something. Even the staunchest black Republican believes that his party owes him.
A new breed of black Republican has infiltrated the GOP with the intent to wield black influence over both the parties. They may agree with the Republican Party on taxes and other economic issues, but that's it! At their core they're dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats.
Until some 20 years ago, I used to be a liberal Democrat too. I followed Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and the NAACP. In my anger I believed what these so-called "black leaders" told me: that white racism was keeping me down.
I became a conservative after a deeply profound spiritual awakening at which point I repented of my anger, and God allowed me to see reality. I was then able to recognize that these liberal black leaders were no friends of decent black Americans. I could no longer identify with the liberal Democrat platform or their Godless "values."
I identified with conservative values and I joined the Republican Party to promote those values. I didn't join seeking to find what the party could do for me.
Understandably, white conservatives are bewildered and upset about the prospect of black Republicans voting for candidates based on race rather than values.
The Hispanic community already outnumbers blacks, and they're competing for representation within the GOP. Black Republicans' support of Obama will no doubt create a bigger rift between Republican leadership and blacks, and serve to close the window of opportunity blacks have had open to them to gain leadership in the party.
But what about "history"?
Let's examine the "history" argument. Is it right to vote for Barack Obama to make "history" while ignoring his record? Consider that Sen. Obama:
- believes in abortion on demand, and has told Planned Parenthood that sex-ed for kindergartners is "the right thing to do" (as long as it's "age appropriate");
- has announced his intention to gut our defenses including our nuclear arsenal and strategic missile defense programs;
- has said he would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran and others without preconditions;
- wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, which would lead to chaos in the region and endanger Israel;
- seeks to raise taxes across the board including on oil company profits, yet opposes drilling domestically.
It would be nice to have a black president. But shouldn't it be someone who believes in the values that made this country great and is ready to protect and serve the American people?
I hear many blacks say that an Obama presidency will be the dawn of a new day for black America. Really?
Americans have elected black members of Congress as far back as the late 1800s.
We've had two black Supreme Court justices. We have blacks represented in the highest stratosphere of private and government sectors. Trust me, if all these accomplishments haven't persuaded and uplifted the masses, electing the first black president won't do it either.
Barack Obama is not black America's messiah. But the only way for black Americans (including those who identify themselves as Republicans) to see that reality is to drop their un-American identification with race and be willing to hear the truth about the issues from any American, regardless of color.
The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and author of "The Seven Guaranteed Steps To Spiritual, Family, and Financial Success" guide. He's also host of "The Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show." For more information, visit www.bondinfo.org.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Monday, September 1, 2008
Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama
September 01, 2008
Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama
By Gerard BakerDemocrats, 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.
The Case for Palin
August 29, 2008 - americanthinker.com The Case for Palin
C. Edmund Wright writes:
Is it Sarah Palin for Vice President? It is beginning to look like the Alaskan Governor has re-emerged as a serious candidate to be John McCain's running mate. If this is the case, there are some risks involved of course, but there is a big upside to this pick.
Update: Chicago Tribune says it is Palin, accord to a Republican source.
cartoon by Brett Noel
B: Hillary: At the risk of being condescending to women voters, you have to think that the disaffected Hillary Clinton vote would be very interested in the pick of Palin. At least some of the Hillary vote is the "sisterhood of the travelling pant-suit" mindset, and this is a group that will focus on the gender of the candidate.
www.ruffcommunications.com
The Case for Palin
C. Edmund Wright writes:
Is it Sarah Palin for Vice President? It is beginning to look like the Alaskan Governor has re-emerged as a serious candidate to be John McCain's running mate. If this is the case, there are some risks involved of course, but there is a big upside to this pick.
Update: Chicago Tribune says it is Palin, accord to a Republican source.
A: Energy: Sarah Palin is right on the energy issues. When you are the governor of Alaska, that's a big deal. She is way ahead of Obama, Biden and in fact McCain on this issue. She also wants to take McCain to ANWR and show him how ugly the area is that would be set aside for drilling. That's a bold stance.
cartoon by Brett Noel
B: Hillary: At the risk of being condescending to women voters, you have to think that the disaffected Hillary Clinton vote would be very interested in the pick of Palin. At least some of the Hillary vote is the "sisterhood of the travelling pant-suit" mindset, and this is a group that will focus on the gender of the candidate.
C: Can't hit the girl: Joe Biden's debate style could be described as offensive under any circumstances, but he would be thrown off stride by having to go head to head with Palin. Even Hillary Clinton, in no way as "girlish" as Palin is, gained traction on this very issue with her debates in New York while running for Senate.
D: Andrea Mitchell: The prospect of McCain's naming of Palin was extremely upsetting to this worn-out NBC liberal. That's a good thing. When Republicans start to make a smart move, it is always upsetting to folks like Mitchell. Mitchell tried to make the case that naming Palin brings the ethical problems of Alaskan politics into the fray and thus a bad move for McCain. Uh Andrea, Palin was elected precisely because she is not part of that. She is not Ted Stevens or Frank Murkowski. That's the point.
E: Conservative Base: Palin will thrill the base. She is a conservative reformer. She is pro-life and with five kids, has cred on this issue. She is pro energy production. She is not a big government type. She is the one pick who can excite the base with no collateral damage to other potential voters.
F: Central Casting: Quite frankly, Palin is very attractive. A liberal pundit a few weeks ago even referred to her as "naughty school teacher hot." It was meant as a compliment. Few women politicians in the Democrat Party have ever been accused of that by the way. But in addition to that, she is a hunter, likes to fish and has a bit of the tough outdoorsy Alaskan independence to her. For crying out loud, shows about Alaska are all the rage now on cable.
The names are bouncing around like crazy today. They run the spectrum from Lieberman to Palin. And of course, it could be a name not discussed. But if it is Palin, there is a classic risk-reward equation in play. The potential rewards are very interesting.G: Life issue: Palin recently had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome baby. She chose to have the baby anyway. Here we have a woman with a fantastic career, four healthy children already delivered and every reason in the world to not have this fifth. Unless, that is, you really really believe in life in the womb and are willing to live that way. This makes her maybe the most profoundly capable pro-life advocate in the GOP today. This is in very stark contrast to where Obama and Biden are on this issue and will mutliply the cold calculation of the Obama stance on this issue.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Thursday, January 17, 2008
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.
www.ruffcommunications.com
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.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Political HaySurge Protection
Political HaySurge Protection
By Jennifer Rubin
Published 1/10/2008 12:08:49 AM
Six months ago, pundits were predicting that congressional Republicans' patience with the Iraq war had run out. Led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, they were going to storm the Oval Office, deliver the news that no more funding would be forthcoming and thereby save their skins in the 2008 elections. Things have a funny way of working out.
General Petraeus did not just win the rhetorical argument in September because MoveOn.org overplayed its hand. He won because facts on the ground had shifted, Democrats who returned reported significant progress and commentators not known for their support of the war concurred that the surge was working. President Bush got his breathing room.
Fast forward a few months. Now the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are in agreement. The Democrats' unseemly denial of reality and refusal to recognize the surge has indeed worked has become painfully obvious. Popular opinion on the war has turned and continued funding seems assured. While the future of Iraq's political stability remains in doubt, those who supported the surge are no longer the ones with egg on their faces.
The political ramifications of the last six months are now being played out in the presidential primaries. On the Democratic side Barack Obama's claim to fame -- opposing the war from the get-go -- and determination to withdraw troops immediately may, to some segment of the Democratic electorate, seem oddly out of sync. His anti-war credentials, while still overwhelmingly lauded by the Democratic base, pack a less powerful punch now that the Iraq war has disappeared from the front pages.
ON THE REPUBLICAN side the results are starker. John McCain has revived his political fortunes based in large part on his role in criticizing Donald Rumsfeld and supporting a revision of the Iraq strategy when other Republicans were "looking at their shoes." This offers more than "I told you so" brownie points for him. It clearly places his commander-in-chief credentials above all rivals and cements his image as the "straight talker" who does not trim his views to popular opinion. He has been able to utilize his support of the surge to advance the notion that despite his lifetime in Washington he is indeed the most effect "agent of change" in the race.
The success of the surge has also complicated the plans of McCain's opponents. While Romney tried to leave wiggle room if the surge did not work as planned (it only was "apparently" succeeding he told a debate audience in New Hampshire in September), his less-than-full-throated support looks less wise in retrospect. Coupled with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the surge and McCain's support for it has arguably made Romney's CEO experience looks less relevant than McCain's. McCain can credibly argue that it is not simply enough for a president to collect information and assemble advisers (who often disagree).
To look ahead to the general election, the surge may also have changed the landscape for the Republicans as a whole. If progress continues, the GOP will not face searing headlines and escalating body counts. The traditional image of the GOP as the more responsible and less skittish party in national security may be restored somewhat and the Democrats' willingness to "cut and run" again becomes a viable campaign issue.
So the lessons of the surge are familiar ones, but ones repeatedly forgotten by politicians anxious to seek safer ground in any controversy. Short-term political gain does not always translate into long-term electoral success. The public in the end will reward political courage -- in part because it is so rare.
And once again, political prognostication is a fool's game given the inability to foresee events weeks, let alone months, down the road. When in doubt and when all else fails, Republicans might be advised to do the right thing -- be resolute against American foes, trust reliable advice from our military, and ignore the howls from the media and liberal establishment.
In the end, it just might pay off.Jennifer Rubin writes from northern Virginia.
www.ruffcommunications.com
By Jennifer Rubin
Published 1/10/2008 12:08:49 AM
Six months ago, pundits were predicting that congressional Republicans' patience with the Iraq war had run out. Led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, they were going to storm the Oval Office, deliver the news that no more funding would be forthcoming and thereby save their skins in the 2008 elections. Things have a funny way of working out.
General Petraeus did not just win the rhetorical argument in September because MoveOn.org overplayed its hand. He won because facts on the ground had shifted, Democrats who returned reported significant progress and commentators not known for their support of the war concurred that the surge was working. President Bush got his breathing room.
Fast forward a few months. Now the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are in agreement. The Democrats' unseemly denial of reality and refusal to recognize the surge has indeed worked has become painfully obvious. Popular opinion on the war has turned and continued funding seems assured. While the future of Iraq's political stability remains in doubt, those who supported the surge are no longer the ones with egg on their faces.
The political ramifications of the last six months are now being played out in the presidential primaries. On the Democratic side Barack Obama's claim to fame -- opposing the war from the get-go -- and determination to withdraw troops immediately may, to some segment of the Democratic electorate, seem oddly out of sync. His anti-war credentials, while still overwhelmingly lauded by the Democratic base, pack a less powerful punch now that the Iraq war has disappeared from the front pages.
ON THE REPUBLICAN side the results are starker. John McCain has revived his political fortunes based in large part on his role in criticizing Donald Rumsfeld and supporting a revision of the Iraq strategy when other Republicans were "looking at their shoes." This offers more than "I told you so" brownie points for him. It clearly places his commander-in-chief credentials above all rivals and cements his image as the "straight talker" who does not trim his views to popular opinion. He has been able to utilize his support of the surge to advance the notion that despite his lifetime in Washington he is indeed the most effect "agent of change" in the race.
The success of the surge has also complicated the plans of McCain's opponents. While Romney tried to leave wiggle room if the surge did not work as planned (it only was "apparently" succeeding he told a debate audience in New Hampshire in September), his less-than-full-throated support looks less wise in retrospect. Coupled with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the surge and McCain's support for it has arguably made Romney's CEO experience looks less relevant than McCain's. McCain can credibly argue that it is not simply enough for a president to collect information and assemble advisers (who often disagree).
To look ahead to the general election, the surge may also have changed the landscape for the Republicans as a whole. If progress continues, the GOP will not face searing headlines and escalating body counts. The traditional image of the GOP as the more responsible and less skittish party in national security may be restored somewhat and the Democrats' willingness to "cut and run" again becomes a viable campaign issue.
So the lessons of the surge are familiar ones, but ones repeatedly forgotten by politicians anxious to seek safer ground in any controversy. Short-term political gain does not always translate into long-term electoral success. The public in the end will reward political courage -- in part because it is so rare.
And once again, political prognostication is a fool's game given the inability to foresee events weeks, let alone months, down the road. When in doubt and when all else fails, Republicans might be advised to do the right thing -- be resolute against American foes, trust reliable advice from our military, and ignore the howls from the media and liberal establishment.
In the end, it just might pay off.Jennifer Rubin writes from northern Virginia.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Friday, January 4, 2008
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
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.
www.ruffcommunications.com
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.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Saturday, December 22, 2007
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.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Monday, December 3, 2007
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Monday, December 03, 2007
If the current round of Huck-a-mania is nothing more than Mike Huckabee’s fifteen minutes of fame, the former Arkansas Governor is certainly making the most of it. Today, in the first full round of national polling completed since last week’s “debate” among Republican Presidential hopefuls, Huckabee has pulled to within three points of the frontrunning Rudy Giuliani. Heading into the debate, Giuliani led Huckabee by twelve.
Not only that, new polling data released today shows that Huckabee has pulled to within a single percentage point of Hillary Clinton in a general election match-up. Huckabee is also a frontrunner in Iowa and essentially tied for second in New Hampshire. Some pundits believe Huckabee’s numbers will surely go down as fast as they’ve gone up while others are beginning to consider the possibility that the bass-guitar playing Governor may become a serious contender for the Republican nomination.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Giuliani with 20% support nationwide while Huckabee attracts 17%. Fred Thompson is at 14%, John McCain at 13% and Mitt Romney at 11%. Ron Paul attracts 7% of Likely Republican Primary voters nationwide and no other Republican candidate reaches 2% (see recent daily numbers). During the past week, three events—a debate, an endorsement, and Huck-a-mania—have created new challenges and uncertainties for the GOP frontrunners.
Rudy Giuliani is still seen as the most electable Republican. McCain, Romney, and Huckabee are essentially tied for second in this category.
Results for the Presidential Tracking Poll are obtained through nightly telephone interviews and reported on a four-day rolling average basis. Today is the first update for which all of the interviews were conducted following Wednesday’s Republican debate.
In the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Clinton now attracts 37% of the vote while Barack Obama earns 24%. John Edwards remains in third place among the Democratic hopefuls at 15%, Bill Richardson is the top choice for 6%, and no other Democratic candidate tops 3% (see recent daily numbers).
Seventy-three percent (73%) of Democrats believe that Clinton is at least somewhat likely to win the White House if nominated. That’s down from 81% a month ago. Sixty-six percent (66%) believe Obama is at least somewhat likely to win it all and 58% say the same about Edwards.
New polling on general election match-ups released over the weekend shows Obama tied with McCain, in a toss-up with Giuliani, and leading both Thompson and Romney.
Other polling released yesterday shows that just 23% believe the United States is heading in the right direction. Women are more pessimistic than men.
Also, during the month of November, 37.3% of Americans identified themselves as Democrats while 32.6% considered themselves Republicans. Those figures are virtually unchanged from October, are a bit better for the GOP than November 2006, but represent a significant decline in the number of Republicans since President Bush’s re-election.
See Rasmussen Reports general election match-ups and other key stats for all Republican and Democratic candidates.
The Rasmussen Reports Election 2008 Presidential Tracking Poll is updated daily. Today is the first day of regular weekend updates.
Daily tracking results are from survey interviews conducted over four days ending last night. Each update includes approximately 750 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Rasmussen Reports provides a weekly analysis of both the Republican and Democratic race each Monday.
Each Monday, full week results are released based upon a seven-day rolling average. While the daily tracking result are useful for measuring quick reaction to events in the news, the full week results provide an effective means for evaluating longer-term trends.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.
The Rasmussen Reports ElectionEdge™ Premium Service for Election 2008 offers the most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a Presidential election.
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.
This survey includes approximately 750-800 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600-650 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Monday, December 03, 2007
If the current round of Huck-a-mania is nothing more than Mike Huckabee’s fifteen minutes of fame, the former Arkansas Governor is certainly making the most of it. Today, in the first full round of national polling completed since last week’s “debate” among Republican Presidential hopefuls, Huckabee has pulled to within three points of the frontrunning Rudy Giuliani. Heading into the debate, Giuliani led Huckabee by twelve.
Not only that, new polling data released today shows that Huckabee has pulled to within a single percentage point of Hillary Clinton in a general election match-up. Huckabee is also a frontrunner in Iowa and essentially tied for second in New Hampshire. Some pundits believe Huckabee’s numbers will surely go down as fast as they’ve gone up while others are beginning to consider the possibility that the bass-guitar playing Governor may become a serious contender for the Republican nomination.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Giuliani with 20% support nationwide while Huckabee attracts 17%. Fred Thompson is at 14%, John McCain at 13% and Mitt Romney at 11%. Ron Paul attracts 7% of Likely Republican Primary voters nationwide and no other Republican candidate reaches 2% (see recent daily numbers). During the past week, three events—a debate, an endorsement, and Huck-a-mania—have created new challenges and uncertainties for the GOP frontrunners.
Rudy Giuliani is still seen as the most electable Republican. McCain, Romney, and Huckabee are essentially tied for second in this category.
Results for the Presidential Tracking Poll are obtained through nightly telephone interviews and reported on a four-day rolling average basis. Today is the first update for which all of the interviews were conducted following Wednesday’s Republican debate.
In the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Clinton now attracts 37% of the vote while Barack Obama earns 24%. John Edwards remains in third place among the Democratic hopefuls at 15%, Bill Richardson is the top choice for 6%, and no other Democratic candidate tops 3% (see recent daily numbers).
Seventy-three percent (73%) of Democrats believe that Clinton is at least somewhat likely to win the White House if nominated. That’s down from 81% a month ago. Sixty-six percent (66%) believe Obama is at least somewhat likely to win it all and 58% say the same about Edwards.
New polling on general election match-ups released over the weekend shows Obama tied with McCain, in a toss-up with Giuliani, and leading both Thompson and Romney.
Other polling released yesterday shows that just 23% believe the United States is heading in the right direction. Women are more pessimistic than men.
Also, during the month of November, 37.3% of Americans identified themselves as Democrats while 32.6% considered themselves Republicans. Those figures are virtually unchanged from October, are a bit better for the GOP than November 2006, but represent a significant decline in the number of Republicans since President Bush’s re-election.
See Rasmussen Reports general election match-ups and other key stats for all Republican and Democratic candidates.
The Rasmussen Reports Election 2008 Presidential Tracking Poll is updated daily. Today is the first day of regular weekend updates.
Daily tracking results are from survey interviews conducted over four days ending last night. Each update includes approximately 750 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Rasmussen Reports provides a weekly analysis of both the Republican and Democratic race each Monday.
Each Monday, full week results are released based upon a seven-day rolling average. While the daily tracking result are useful for measuring quick reaction to events in the news, the full week results provide an effective means for evaluating longer-term trends.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.
The Rasmussen Reports ElectionEdge™ Premium Service for Election 2008 offers the most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a Presidential election.
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.
This survey includes approximately 750-800 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600-650 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Friday, November 9, 2007
America's Mayor is on a Roll November 9, 2007
November 09, 2007
America's Mayor Is on a Roll
By Lawrence Kudlow
While Hillary Clinton is slipping in the polls, Rudy Giuliani is on a roll. This is a big swing of momentum. Even the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll puts the two frontrunners in a dead heat.
Sen. Clinton was hurt badly by her flip-flopping performance in last month's Democratic debate. America's mayor, on the other hand, just got a hugely important endorsement from the Rev. Pat Robertson. The message to social conservatives is clear: It's now OK to vote for Rudy.
Why Rudy? Robertson named out-of-control federal spending, appointing conservative judges, reducing crime and, perhaps most importantly, "the overriding issue (of) defending against (the) bloodlust of Islamic terrorists," as issues that strongly favor Giuliani. On the other hand, he called abortion -- something of a sticky subject for Giuliani -- "only one issue" of importance.
The endorsement also suggests that evangelicals are divided on 2008. Indeed, there's no monolithic movement in favor of any major candidate. This is critical. It means no third-party candidacy from the Christian right.
Recall that Bill and Hillary Clinton benefited enormously in 1992 when Ross Perot swiped 19 percent of the vote (most of those Republican) in the race against Papa Bush. And when Perot ran again in '96, he undoubtedly drained votes from Sen. Bob Dole. (I note that Bill Clinton didn't garner 50 percent of the vote in either of these elections.) But Robertson has very likely removed this dynamic. No third-party gifts for Hillary in 2008.
Robertson is a big score for Giuliani, right when he's gaining ground on Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. That said, Romney is still up 15 points in New Hampshire, according to Scott Rasmussen's poll, and 9.5 points, as per the RealClearPolitics average. So you know what? Good for Romney.
To be very clear, I am not picking sides here. I do think Romney is running a strong campaign. And he's gaining strength as a candidate. I also think John McCain is finding his sea legs on the campaign trail. Romney, McCain and Giuliani are all strengthening what they say and how they say it. But at this writing, Giuliani appears to be at the top of his game.
When I interviewed him last week on CNBC, it marked the fourth time we had sat down together this year. But something was different. Giuliani was more in command of a wide breadth of issues, while there was a lot less talk about his considerable accomplishments as mayor of New York City.
For example, when I asked him what a President Giuliani would do to prop up the sagging dollar, he immediately reeled off a series of proposals: Cut spending, and stop the earmarks. Deregulate wherever possible. Curb the stranglehold of Sarbanes-Oxley on the securities market. Make sure there's no new Sarbox for home-loan mortgage credits. Keep the trial lawyers from launching class-action lawsuits against mortgage-security investors, which would only cripple housing credit in the future. Restore confidence in the economy by stopping Charlie Rangel's mother-of-all-tax-hikes proposal.
That was some list. He also came out for cutting the corporate income tax -- both as a pro-growth job creator and as a way to boost the sagging fortunes of the dollar. He's right on both counts. In particular, he was emphatic about reducing the corporate tax so we can better compete with Europe (read the euro).
Grow the economy. Create more jobs. Strengthen worker wages. Giuliani was on fire. In fact, at the end of the interview, as we were walking off the set, he confided in me that he would suggest an immediate corporate-tax-cut proposal to President Bush. Giuliani wants results. And he knows he can win.
"I can beat her," Giuliani said. "I can run in key states other Republicans can't run in. That's why Democrats are attacking me."
I still believe that it's a strong Republican field. And I still believe Hillary Clinton's message of heavy spending, middle-class entitlements and higher taxes is a Mondale-era loser. But there's no doubt about it, America's mayor is on a roll.
Lawrence Kudlow is a former Reagan economic advisor, a syndicated columnist, and the host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.
www.ruffcommunications.com
America's Mayor Is on a Roll
By Lawrence Kudlow
While Hillary Clinton is slipping in the polls, Rudy Giuliani is on a roll. This is a big swing of momentum. Even the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll puts the two frontrunners in a dead heat.
Sen. Clinton was hurt badly by her flip-flopping performance in last month's Democratic debate. America's mayor, on the other hand, just got a hugely important endorsement from the Rev. Pat Robertson. The message to social conservatives is clear: It's now OK to vote for Rudy.
Why Rudy? Robertson named out-of-control federal spending, appointing conservative judges, reducing crime and, perhaps most importantly, "the overriding issue (of) defending against (the) bloodlust of Islamic terrorists," as issues that strongly favor Giuliani. On the other hand, he called abortion -- something of a sticky subject for Giuliani -- "only one issue" of importance.
The endorsement also suggests that evangelicals are divided on 2008. Indeed, there's no monolithic movement in favor of any major candidate. This is critical. It means no third-party candidacy from the Christian right.
Recall that Bill and Hillary Clinton benefited enormously in 1992 when Ross Perot swiped 19 percent of the vote (most of those Republican) in the race against Papa Bush. And when Perot ran again in '96, he undoubtedly drained votes from Sen. Bob Dole. (I note that Bill Clinton didn't garner 50 percent of the vote in either of these elections.) But Robertson has very likely removed this dynamic. No third-party gifts for Hillary in 2008.
Robertson is a big score for Giuliani, right when he's gaining ground on Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. That said, Romney is still up 15 points in New Hampshire, according to Scott Rasmussen's poll, and 9.5 points, as per the RealClearPolitics average. So you know what? Good for Romney.
To be very clear, I am not picking sides here. I do think Romney is running a strong campaign. And he's gaining strength as a candidate. I also think John McCain is finding his sea legs on the campaign trail. Romney, McCain and Giuliani are all strengthening what they say and how they say it. But at this writing, Giuliani appears to be at the top of his game.
When I interviewed him last week on CNBC, it marked the fourth time we had sat down together this year. But something was different. Giuliani was more in command of a wide breadth of issues, while there was a lot less talk about his considerable accomplishments as mayor of New York City.
For example, when I asked him what a President Giuliani would do to prop up the sagging dollar, he immediately reeled off a series of proposals: Cut spending, and stop the earmarks. Deregulate wherever possible. Curb the stranglehold of Sarbanes-Oxley on the securities market. Make sure there's no new Sarbox for home-loan mortgage credits. Keep the trial lawyers from launching class-action lawsuits against mortgage-security investors, which would only cripple housing credit in the future. Restore confidence in the economy by stopping Charlie Rangel's mother-of-all-tax-hikes proposal.
That was some list. He also came out for cutting the corporate income tax -- both as a pro-growth job creator and as a way to boost the sagging fortunes of the dollar. He's right on both counts. In particular, he was emphatic about reducing the corporate tax so we can better compete with Europe (read the euro).
Grow the economy. Create more jobs. Strengthen worker wages. Giuliani was on fire. In fact, at the end of the interview, as we were walking off the set, he confided in me that he would suggest an immediate corporate-tax-cut proposal to President Bush. Giuliani wants results. And he knows he can win.
"I can beat her," Giuliani said. "I can run in key states other Republicans can't run in. That's why Democrats are attacking me."
I still believe that it's a strong Republican field. And I still believe Hillary Clinton's message of heavy spending, middle-class entitlements and higher taxes is a Mondale-era loser. But there's no doubt about it, America's mayor is on a roll.
Lawrence Kudlow is a former Reagan economic advisor, a syndicated columnist, and the host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Yepsen: Positive, Reagan-like spirit spurs Huckabee's rise October 30, 2007
Yepsen: Positive, Reagan-like spirit spurs Huckabee's rise
David Yepsen
October 30, 2007
DesMoines Regigister
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's been the hot candidate in the Republican race since he finished second in the Iowa GOP's straw poll back in August.Oh, there was a little time out for some chatter about Fred Thompson, but as he has fallen flat, the talk about Huckabee has resumed.In recent days, that talk has escalated to a new level of buzz: Huckabee's doing so well in Iowa, he just might be able to win the Iowa Republican caucuses.Wow. Conventional wisdom dictates former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's going to win Iowa. Ever since that straw poll, the buzzmeisters have slotted Huckabee to take second or third. To suggest he's going to win Iowa is taking it to a new level.It makes Huckabee people wince. Romney's had a juggernaut in Iowa for months. He's spent millions, runs lots of TV commercials, has made a couple of hundred appearances in the state and has staff all over it, including those in a sprawling suburban office park.Huckabee's low-budget campaign is, well, the difference between Beacon Hill and a trailer park. He's got only eight full-time staffers and runs his operation out of a low-rent storefront in downtown Des Moines. If homeless people went to caucuses, they'd have great access to Huckabee's campaign.Like Huckabee, Romney is fond of telling people he ran and won in a Democratic state. It's also true Romney ran as a liberal on social issues such as gay rights and abortion. Had he taken the positions on those issues that he proclaims now, he never would have been elected in Massachusetts.Huckabee, on the other hand, has been consistent, and GOP stalwarts are noticing that difference between the two men. Huckabee's rallied enough social conservatives to force Sam Brownback out of the race.While first place is a bit of a stretch, Huckabee's in a good position to win second. His fundraising is improving, and he's going to add staff.After Thompson's late start, he's lighting no fires in Iowa. His speech at the big Reagan Dinner Saturday night was a boilerplate thing he could have given anywhere. Romney didn't show. Huckabee got the only standing ovation.Huckabee's success has attracted attacks from conservative groups and news organizations who criticize him for implementing a tax increase the voters also supported. Huckabee said in an interview that some of these attacks are coming from "elitist" conservatives and "ideologues."He said "you always ought to be governing by your basic principles, but you also have to understand that government has to work." He says the attacks are evidence of his success."I'm a hunter," he notes. "You never point the gun at a dead carcass."But let's not get ahead of ourselves. As we chart Huckabee's success in the 2008 contest, it is most useful now to concentrate on his message. It is a positive, inclusive, good-humored one. As Republicans seek to rebuild from their defeat of 2006 and try to stave off a similar loss in 2008, they might study the Book of Huckabee."I'm a conservative, but I'm not mean about it," he tells audiences. He shows up at events with minority groups. His pro-life message also encompasses health care for poor women and a concern for children. His talk about education reform includes developing creative skills through art and music.He had fun playing the bass guitar in his band at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake - an event that attracted more than 600 people on Friday. A former Baptist pastor, Huckabee peppers his speeches with Scripture and rock-music lyrics.Unlike some Republican presidential candidates, who grew up in well-to-do families, Huckabee tells audiences his mother grew up in a house with dirt floors, and on his father's side, he is the first male to graduate from high school. That seems to give him a populist bent - and an understanding for poor people - that isn't seen in the Ivy League conservatives.At a time when GOP candidates are falling all over themselves to rekindle the spirit of Ronald Reagan in their party, Huckabee's coming as close as anyone.
DAVID YEPSEN can be reached at dyepsen@dmreg.com
www.ruffcommunications.com
David Yepsen
October 30, 2007
DesMoines Regigister
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's been the hot candidate in the Republican race since he finished second in the Iowa GOP's straw poll back in August.Oh, there was a little time out for some chatter about Fred Thompson, but as he has fallen flat, the talk about Huckabee has resumed.In recent days, that talk has escalated to a new level of buzz: Huckabee's doing so well in Iowa, he just might be able to win the Iowa Republican caucuses.Wow. Conventional wisdom dictates former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's going to win Iowa. Ever since that straw poll, the buzzmeisters have slotted Huckabee to take second or third. To suggest he's going to win Iowa is taking it to a new level.It makes Huckabee people wince. Romney's had a juggernaut in Iowa for months. He's spent millions, runs lots of TV commercials, has made a couple of hundred appearances in the state and has staff all over it, including those in a sprawling suburban office park.Huckabee's low-budget campaign is, well, the difference between Beacon Hill and a trailer park. He's got only eight full-time staffers and runs his operation out of a low-rent storefront in downtown Des Moines. If homeless people went to caucuses, they'd have great access to Huckabee's campaign.Like Huckabee, Romney is fond of telling people he ran and won in a Democratic state. It's also true Romney ran as a liberal on social issues such as gay rights and abortion. Had he taken the positions on those issues that he proclaims now, he never would have been elected in Massachusetts.Huckabee, on the other hand, has been consistent, and GOP stalwarts are noticing that difference between the two men. Huckabee's rallied enough social conservatives to force Sam Brownback out of the race.While first place is a bit of a stretch, Huckabee's in a good position to win second. His fundraising is improving, and he's going to add staff.After Thompson's late start, he's lighting no fires in Iowa. His speech at the big Reagan Dinner Saturday night was a boilerplate thing he could have given anywhere. Romney didn't show. Huckabee got the only standing ovation.Huckabee's success has attracted attacks from conservative groups and news organizations who criticize him for implementing a tax increase the voters also supported. Huckabee said in an interview that some of these attacks are coming from "elitist" conservatives and "ideologues."He said "you always ought to be governing by your basic principles, but you also have to understand that government has to work." He says the attacks are evidence of his success."I'm a hunter," he notes. "You never point the gun at a dead carcass."But let's not get ahead of ourselves. As we chart Huckabee's success in the 2008 contest, it is most useful now to concentrate on his message. It is a positive, inclusive, good-humored one. As Republicans seek to rebuild from their defeat of 2006 and try to stave off a similar loss in 2008, they might study the Book of Huckabee."I'm a conservative, but I'm not mean about it," he tells audiences. He shows up at events with minority groups. His pro-life message also encompasses health care for poor women and a concern for children. His talk about education reform includes developing creative skills through art and music.He had fun playing the bass guitar in his band at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake - an event that attracted more than 600 people on Friday. A former Baptist pastor, Huckabee peppers his speeches with Scripture and rock-music lyrics.Unlike some Republican presidential candidates, who grew up in well-to-do families, Huckabee tells audiences his mother grew up in a house with dirt floors, and on his father's side, he is the first male to graduate from high school. That seems to give him a populist bent - and an understanding for poor people - that isn't seen in the Ivy League conservatives.At a time when GOP candidates are falling all over themselves to rekindle the spirit of Ronald Reagan in their party, Huckabee's coming as close as anyone.
DAVID YEPSEN can be reached at dyepsen@dmreg.com
www.ruffcommunications.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
