Once it's in it's forever. It is hidden, buried unaccountable. It's a gift to politicians because it becomes a fact, like the weather. I want my taxes out where I can see them and vote on them. How about a tax on bank reserves? Lend them or lose them. Also a usury tax on excess bank profits.
Obama publicly commented that 'Unless we enforce the rules in existing agreements, folks will not support new free trade agreements'. That was last year. So we got a lawsuit against Chinese steel dumping under WTO rules. Big deal. This is one of a thousand forms of abuse by China, Mexico and others.
When will all WTO rules ever be enforced? Never by the Chinese or other mercantalist economies, and Korea is one of the worst.
Apply this test to all Free Trade Agreements: why are FTA always struck with nations having lower per capita incomes, lax labor, saftety and evironmental law? KFTA and Columbia are stiking examples of using trade to unwind a Century of reforms.
Has anyone proposed an FTA with Germany or Japan? They will not, because the agenda is to unwind the US standard of living.
Society loses no economic value by taxing speculation.Tobin taxes can only help budgets. The only possible counter argument is that all the computer trades create a more 'rational' pricing of markets. Pure BS. If wrong, more Flash-Crashes are the wave of the future, and create value.
If Europe ties its hands with balanced budget amendments, ask WTF are they trying to go? Do they want expansion or the Tea Party race to the River Styx, Nepenthe, Oblivion and Despair (all Hades Rivers).
Sorry, but I do not get what a VAT does for me? Why tax production? Tobin Tax is the opposite of VAT. Do you think we overproduce and need a speed governor or domestic production and value added?
the idea of paying a tax on stock, options, futures, trades of any sort hits Wall Street where it hurts.
Frankly from credit default swaps to HFTs to speculative futures on commodities I am thrilled to see a major push back.
This is a major problem, wealth is being created by the great gambling casino, acquisitions, LBOs and all of these exotic financial instruments instead of economic activity that creates jobs, middle classes, i.e. a production economy.
Something's gotta give and this is one very bold move in the right direction.
Not so much on balanced budget amendments at the current moment, although the reality is as an exercise, I balanced the U.S. budget in 5 minutes by rolling back all of the Bush tax cuts, enacting a VAT, and then a Tobin or transaction tax. Didn't do one single budget cut.
Bottom line, expect the markets to not exactly tank, but assuredly not be happy about this proposal.
Among the 50 States, Texas is dead last in high school graduation.
38th in payroll earnings
50th in worker’s comp
Second in birth rate
Seventh in teen birth rate
First in uninsured children
Fourth in children living in poverty
First in uninsured population
49th in low income covered by Medicaid
47th in both household net worth and retirement plan participation.
First in CO2 emissions, VOC emissions, toxic chemicals in the water, and air-born carcinogens
First in executions
45th in voting rate
Today he claimed Bernanke is a traitor, no doubt more than a few readers on this site will cheer, but someone send to my inbox this post, Perry's outrageous views on medical malpractice.
Remarkable correlation in Calculated Risk's graph inversely relating unemployment rate to housing starts! There's something "normal" about that, something to be expected.
Residential "starts" can mean almost anything. Starts at any stage, of course, can sit unfinished for years, although there is always a tendency to keep the ball rolling and finish up -- but that's because of the financing and the terms of the financing. Also income tax and UI considerations.
Permits cost money and so they mean something, but how much they cost can be critical. The rate of change for permits has been influenced by reactions of local jurisdictions to the economy -- offering greatly reduced impact fees and then back the other way as the public reacts negatively to the implied loss of revenue, amounting to a subsidy of builders by home-owners. Investors may sit on low-cost permits just for their spec value, hedging against prospect of a return to increased fees. Meanwhile, inspectors may be sitting around at zoning and building departments, nothing to do, best to keep their heads down.
Building supply prices are a significant factor to be considered. Builders are not exactly confident about the economy. Here's an excerpt from Random Length current summary for framing lumber (week ending August 12, 2011) -
Buyers taking the tack that jobs under way needed to be finished -- no matter what the situation on Wall Street -- found their best deals and moved ahead.
Here's excerpts from Random Lengths' "Through a Knothole" --
Even before last week’s S&P downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, which could have negative effects on the industry, buyers and sellers have been dealing with tough credit challenges for the past several years.
Housing Indicators: trends scraping along a bottom.
If Kucinich and Michaud are successful in rallying fellow Democrats and if the Tea Party shows that it is other than the same old bought-out GOP by getting square with the American people about trade issues, maybe another disastrous 'free' trade deal can be halted in the current Congress.
If that happens, we will be able to upgrade our estimate of the IQ (Integrity Quotient) of the Tea Party faction of the GOP significantly. We will also be able to do the same for progressive Democrats in the House.
Forget the labels, we need to track our congress critturs individually and vote accordingly in November 2012! Call now and let them know. Write your local opinion section. Congress thinks that nobody is watching them, now they've put on their great show over the budget. Are they Americans, or are they mice?
“As the U.S. continues to struggle and recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it is unconscionable that we would consider passing an FTA that puts the rights of investors and multinational corporations over the rights of American workers,” the lawmakers wrote Monday in a letter to House colleagues.
According to the Economic Policy Institute’s estimates, in the first seven years of the agreement, it could cost as many as 159,000 American jobs and increase the trade deficit by $16.7 billion.
The trade deal, much like previous bilateral trade deals signed by the U.S., will also slowly sap American sovereignty.
The IPI is a monthly series that measures output in manufacturing, mining, and electric and gas utilities: Federal Reserve Statistical Release G17. Individual indexes of industrial production are constructed from two types of source data: (1) output measured in physical units and (2) inputs used in the production process (e.g., production-worker hours). GDP is a quarterly series that measures the market value of the goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States. The aggregate GDP measure that corresponds most closely to the IPI is a GDP for goods measure that consists of durable and nondurable goods within personal consumption expenditures, fixed investment, change in private inventories, and net exports (Table 1.1.5). GDP values production in terms of purchasers’ prices, the final prices paid by consumers and by other final-demand sectors. The IPI values production in terms of producers’ prices paid to manufacturers by wholesalers, by retailers, and, in the case of direct sales, by consumers. These differences may explain some of the discrepancies between the growth in the IPI versus the growth in GDP goods because, for recent periods, much of the growth in GDP goods has been in the retail trade and wholesale trade industries rather than in the goods-producing industries. For example, in 2003, the real value added of retail trade industries grew 3.6 percent, whereas, the real value added of goods-producing industries (measured in producers’ prices) grew 1.2 percent (GDP by Industry).
So, with that, while business inventories and trade implied significant downward revisions to Q2 GDP, this revision, basically a doubling of IP for June, implies a slight upward one.
For the quarter, IP was revised up 0.3 percentage points. Assuredly that will reflect an upward revision in GDP.
How much, I haven't gotten to that level of relationships (and I think I'd be paid a hell of a lot more money if I had my own 100% thorough GDP estimation algorithm!), but I don't think it will be 0.7% revision like I earlier implied, maybe more hovering around 1%. (which is good).
No doubt more articles on various state economies is in order for the housing collapse hurt some states much worse than others. But in doing the above quick calculations, it does appear the oil/gas industries are helping Texas.
Crappy jobs are nation wide, which I linked to one overview of a researcher's paper on that and can also look into one nation wide since the "end of the recession".
I don't want to discount tax codes and incentives for job creation, yet, at the same time, Florida has no income tax and extremely favorable business taxes, so why wouldn't companies do a mass exodus to Florida if it's just the tax code?
Bottom line, Texas is not this great miracle, for each regional economy is different, different industries, Texas is a border state, so lots of NAFTA traffic (as well as other ;0) coming up through Texas.
Texas economy is much worse if you factor out the increases in oil prices from manufacturing in the last 4 years. Without a quadrupling of oil prices, Texas would be nearly flat. Next take a look at Information jobs - hardly any crated in a state with TI, IBM, Samsung and Dell. Possible only when you look at Huawei
and the offshoring of Tech manufacturing.
So much offshoring that in 1980, all consumer IT was made here, now all consumer IT is imported.
The jobs actually created in Texas are not mysterious when you understand where the population increase originates: the border. Texas increased its number of minimum wage jobs by 50% in the last five years. IT jobs
hardly budged.
Will Perry also brag about the second worse student performance on standarized tests? Or having the highest percentage of medically uninsured. If he wants to hold out his record, he will be proven the red-neck con-man
many have figured out already. But we are forced to pay attention to this bozo because there is big money behind him and because the handicappers give him good odds.
Facts, we don't need no stinkin facts. Corporate controlled media and plutocrat controlled Evangelicals feed the sheeple all the $h!T they need to know. The Chamber of Commerce controls both political parties and the Supreme Court...it's checkmate.
Chuck Grassley has done many things out of the box and is one of the few who stands up for U.S. STEM workers routinely. Harkin seems to be nowhere in terms of addressing clearly, obvious, practical economic issues, like many Democrats.
I'm not a Ron Paul fan. It's great he confronts the Fed and he has a lot of outside the box perspectives, but the reality is he's another "oh free markets" yet when it comes to social issues, magically his libertarian philosophy flies out the window. The realty America really cannot afford to be the globe's military police is clear, but when those cuts come, they too, will throw hundreds of thousands, if not millions out of a job.
More what this post is about is letting absolutely inane, crazy, nonsensical economic agendas being presented as truth. These are not truths! I've literally heard the major news networks claim "Obama needs to introduce a deficit reduction plan to create jobs".
Deficits, budget cuts especially right now, and especially because they only focus on the poor, middle class, discretionary spending, (although cutting SS, Health will decimate most Americas if benefits are cut), will reduce GDP, reduce jobs, not create jobs. We are nowhere near the types of deficits that could tip and negatively impact a national economy.
Worse, if they paid attention to facts, the details, we could have so many jobs this entire discussion wouldn't be here. If this government did the things necessary, including passing tax increases, we wouldn't even be talking about deficits at all, because there wouldn't be any.
The entire political field claims to be worried about China trade deficit, yet they do nothing, nothing at all, about it.
Lest we not forget campaign promises are just to win, think Obama claiming to reform NAFTA and other trade deals. They had no intention and it was obvious at the time, to deal with this never ending tradable workforce, cheap labor, race to the bottom effects of these bad trade deals, or even the nonsensical tariffs of China against the U.S.
These people have somehow tried to claim that deficit reduction will create jobs. There is zero evidence to that, in fact the opposite. Instead of jobs, economic growth and all of the policy bonehead moves that are killing the U.S. economy, such as bad trade deals, offshore outsourcing, the entire discourse, that is pure fiction, is being parlayed everyday in the MSM and by these people.
It's strange. Chuck Grassley tends to be a populist and a pragmatist, not a dogmatic anything. The other U.S. senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin, is known more-or-less as a progressive Democrat.
So those are the guys Iowans actually have elected in one election after another for several decades now.
And, on 4 November 2008, Obama won Iowa with a 9.5% margin of victory.
What is this Ames Straw Poll anyway? Of what significance is it, if any?
Maybe it'd be a good idea to have these things at every county fair across the country, standard, like the hog show. There's a little money in it -- the TV crews have to eat and drink somewhere and maybe even stay at a motel. Yeah, let's have these things rotate around in each state! It's like an industry. Fifty of them every summer in all the off-election years.
From what little I have heard, the real news, if any, coming out of Iowa is that Ron Paul darn near won the straw poll. Effectively, it was a tie. But is that the news?
My impression is ... no, Ron Paul, NOT news.
Since I don't get any TV news, I googled around and found that the news on like CBS was that Bachman won, Romney was jeered by a bunch of hayseed Iowans, and MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, the whole thing in Ames was "overshadowed" by a guy who did not bother to come to the party!
Ron Paul? Nah, not news.
I'm not about to break down and cry crocodile tears, but I can't help but laugh ... not at Rep. Paul ... but, I think, with him.
News? That's a good one!
BTW: Thanks for analysis of the 'Texas Miracle' ,,, largest growth industry in 2010 ... government. Another good one!
Billionaire Warren Buffett urged U.S. lawmakers to raise taxes on the country's super-rich to help cut the budget deficit, saying such a move will not hurt investments.
"My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice," The 80-year-old "Oracle of Omaha" wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times.
Buffett, one of the world's richest men and chairman of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc , said his federal tax bill last year was $6,938,744.
"That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income - and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office.
Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent," he said.
I understand the gist of the comment, and I approve. if you're not angry, you gotta be brain-dead. And that's the trick -- to remain conscious and non-brain-dead, you need to keep expressing yourself in ways that tend to wake up the sleeping sheeple. Even in the bottom 1%. Never abandon your sense of humor!
When a Federal Reserve Governor speaks, Bloomberg listens. Shame that's what it takes for the financial press to cover the middle class implosion that is going on in this country.
Federal Reserve Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin said the financial inequality resulting from stagnating incomes for most Americans and rapid growth in wealth for the richest 1 percent is hindering the U.S. economic recovery.
The ... talk by Raskin was part of a seminar at New America Foundation, Rebuilding the Road to Financial Stability.
Even if you live within that privileged 10%, you may be interested in a recovery leading to financial and social stability in your country ... assuming of course that the U.S.A. is your country -- where you have lived and plan on living.
The choice even for the fortunate 10% may be between a restoration of democracy, including an educated middle-class with primary loyalty to the country, or, a corrupt military dictatorship. Concentration of power in a military dictatorship too often knows no bounds and ultimately means concentration of wealth through confiscation of assets -- and that means confiscation of those assets that lie within the 93% owned by the fortunate 10%.
the bottom 90% of the population can go to hell, but the top 10%, controlling 93% of the wealth, will keep the gross aggregate numbers rising all by themselves...the rest of us are just economic baggage; we are no longer needed or wanted as consumers....
Wall Street is better at intrigue than the CIA ... Wall Street might complain about down-gradings, but that is just to disguise that Wall Street is calling the shots.
The enormous sums represented by financial instruments are many times larger than the real economy on which they are based. When financial claims dwarf the size of the underlying real economy, massive instability is present.
The struggle between the military/security complex and the financial sector comes down to a struggle over patronage. The military/security complex's patronage network is built upon armaments factories and workforces, military bases and military families, military contractors, private security firms, intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, federalized state and local police, and journalists who cover the defense sector.
Wall Street's network includes investors, speculators, people with mortgages, car, student, and business loans, credit cards, real estate, insurance companies, pension funds, money managers and their clients, and financial journalists.
As the financial sector has over-extended and must shrink, Wall Street is determined to have access to public funds to manage the process and determined to maintain its relative power by forcing shrinkage in its competitor's network. That means closing down the expensive wars in order to free up funds for entitlement privatization and to keep the dollar's role as reserve currency. Wall Street realizes that if the dollar goes, its power goes with it.
Wall Street opened the game with a debt downgrade, implying more are to come unless action is taken. The new Pentagon chief replied that any cuts to the military budget would be a "doomsday mechanism" that "would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families and our military's ability to protect the nation."
This analysis by Paul Craig Roberts is an extraordinary application of Clausewitzian principles.
And here are the remarkable questions Roberts asks:
Will Americans be so afraid of terrorists that they will give up their entitlements? Will false flag terrorist events be perpetrated in order to elevate this fear? Will Wall Street provoke crises that are perceived as a greater threat?
From whom do we need greater protection than from Wall Street and the military/security complex and from our government, which is the tool of both?
Once it's in it's forever. It is hidden, buried unaccountable. It's a gift to politicians because it becomes a fact, like the weather. I want my taxes out where I can see them and vote on them. How about a tax on bank reserves? Lend them or lose them. Also a usury tax on excess bank profits.
Obama publicly commented that 'Unless we enforce the rules in existing agreements, folks will not support new free trade agreements'. That was last year. So we got a lawsuit against Chinese steel dumping under WTO rules. Big deal. This is one of a thousand forms of abuse by China, Mexico and others.
When will all WTO rules ever be enforced? Never by the Chinese or other mercantalist economies, and Korea is one of the worst.
Apply this test to all Free Trade Agreements: why are FTA always struck with nations having lower per capita incomes, lax labor, saftety and evironmental law? KFTA and Columbia are stiking examples of using trade to unwind a Century of reforms.
Has anyone proposed an FTA with Germany or Japan? They will not, because the agenda is to unwind the US standard of living.
Society loses no economic value by taxing speculation.Tobin taxes can only help budgets. The only possible counter argument is that all the computer trades create a more 'rational' pricing of markets. Pure BS. If wrong, more Flash-Crashes are the wave of the future, and create value.
If Europe ties its hands with balanced budget amendments, ask WTF are they trying to go? Do they want expansion or the Tea Party race to the River Styx, Nepenthe, Oblivion and Despair (all Hades Rivers).
Sorry, but I do not get what a VAT does for me? Why tax production? Tobin Tax is the opposite of VAT. Do you think we overproduce and need a speed governor or domestic production and value added?
You're forgetting gas industry. Fracking.
Sure Texas sucks but people should pull up California, IL, NY and FL to be fair.
the idea of paying a tax on stock, options, futures, trades of any sort hits Wall Street where it hurts.
Frankly from credit default swaps to HFTs to speculative futures on commodities I am thrilled to see a major push back.
This is a major problem, wealth is being created by the great gambling casino, acquisitions, LBOs and all of these exotic financial instruments instead of economic activity that creates jobs, middle classes, i.e. a production economy.
Something's gotta give and this is one very bold move in the right direction.
Not so much on balanced budget amendments at the current moment, although the reality is as an exercise, I balanced the U.S. budget in 5 minutes by rolling back all of the Bush tax cuts, enacting a VAT, and then a Tobin or transaction tax. Didn't do one single budget cut.
Bottom line, expect the markets to not exactly tank, but assuredly not be happy about this proposal.
Looking over the EP side bar, I see two current Angry Bear links on Perry and Texas 'miracle' --
Challenging Perry on his numbers used in praise of Texas tort reform law
and
from Angry Bear on the Texas 'miracle' --
And comment there by 'jazzbumpa' cites to a Texas Legislature PDF saying that
Today he claimed Bernanke is a traitor, no doubt more than a few readers on this site will cheer, but someone send to my inbox this post, Perry's outrageous views on medical malpractice.
Remarkable correlation in Calculated Risk's graph inversely relating unemployment rate to housing starts! There's something "normal" about that, something to be expected.
Residential "starts" can mean almost anything. Starts at any stage, of course, can sit unfinished for years, although there is always a tendency to keep the ball rolling and finish up -- but that's because of the financing and the terms of the financing. Also income tax and UI considerations.
Permits cost money and so they mean something, but how much they cost can be critical. The rate of change for permits has been influenced by reactions of local jurisdictions to the economy -- offering greatly reduced impact fees and then back the other way as the public reacts negatively to the implied loss of revenue, amounting to a subsidy of builders by home-owners. Investors may sit on low-cost permits just for their spec value, hedging against prospect of a return to increased fees. Meanwhile, inspectors may be sitting around at zoning and building departments, nothing to do, best to keep their heads down.
Building supply prices are a significant factor to be considered. Builders are not exactly confident about the economy. Here's an excerpt from Random Length current summary for framing lumber (week ending August 12, 2011) -
Here's excerpts from Random Lengths' "Through a Knothole" --
Test for the Tea Party!
EP link today to 'Economy In Crisis' article (Dustin Ensinger, 16 August 2011) cites to The Hill about that Reps. Dennis Kucinich (OH) and Mike Michaud (ME) are trying to make sure lawmakers know that the proposed South Korea trade deal - notoriously supported both by Obama and by GOP's John Boehner - will result in the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs.
If Kucinich and Michaud are successful in rallying fellow Democrats and if the Tea Party shows that it is other than the same old bought-out GOP by getting square with the American people about trade issues, maybe another disastrous 'free' trade deal can be halted in the current Congress.
If that happens, we will be able to upgrade our estimate of the IQ (Integrity Quotient) of the Tea Party faction of the GOP significantly. We will also be able to do the same for progressive Democrats in the House.
Forget the labels, we need to track our congress critturs individually and vote accordingly in November 2012! Call now and let them know. Write your local opinion section. Congress thinks that nobody is watching them, now they've put on their great show over the budget. Are they Americans, or are they mice?
Greed vs. Ignorance, methinks you know who's who.
The BEA defines the relationship between GDP and the Industrial Production index:
So, with that, while business inventories and trade implied significant downward revisions to Q2 GDP, this revision, basically a doubling of IP for June, implies a slight upward one.
For the quarter, IP was revised up 0.3 percentage points. Assuredly that will reflect an upward revision in GDP.
How much, I haven't gotten to that level of relationships (and I think I'd be paid a hell of a lot more money if I had my own 100% thorough GDP estimation algorithm!), but I don't think it will be 0.7% revision like I earlier implied, maybe more hovering around 1%. (which is good).
No doubt more articles on various state economies is in order for the housing collapse hurt some states much worse than others. But in doing the above quick calculations, it does appear the oil/gas industries are helping Texas.
Crappy jobs are nation wide, which I linked to one overview of a researcher's paper on that and can also look into one nation wide since the "end of the recession".
I don't want to discount tax codes and incentives for job creation, yet, at the same time, Florida has no income tax and extremely favorable business taxes, so why wouldn't companies do a mass exodus to Florida if it's just the tax code?
Bottom line, Texas is not this great miracle, for each regional economy is different, different industries, Texas is a border state, so lots of NAFTA traffic (as well as other ;0) coming up through Texas.
Texas economy is much worse if you factor out the increases in oil prices from manufacturing in the last 4 years. Without a quadrupling of oil prices, Texas would be nearly flat. Next take a look at Information jobs - hardly any crated in a state with TI, IBM, Samsung and Dell. Possible only when you look at Huawei
and the offshoring of Tech manufacturing.
So much offshoring that in 1980, all consumer IT was made here, now all consumer IT is imported.
The jobs actually created in Texas are not mysterious when you understand where the population increase originates: the border. Texas increased its number of minimum wage jobs by 50% in the last five years. IT jobs
hardly budged.
Will Perry also brag about the second worse student performance on standarized tests? Or having the highest percentage of medically uninsured. If he wants to hold out his record, he will be proven the red-neck con-man
many have figured out already. But we are forced to pay attention to this bozo because there is big money behind him and because the handicappers give him good odds.
Facts, we don't need no stinkin facts. Corporate controlled media and plutocrat controlled Evangelicals feed the sheeple all the $h!T they need to know. The Chamber of Commerce controls both political parties and the Supreme Court...it's checkmate.
Chuck Grassley has done many things out of the box and is one of the few who stands up for U.S. STEM workers routinely. Harkin seems to be nowhere in terms of addressing clearly, obvious, practical economic issues, like many Democrats.
I'm not a Ron Paul fan. It's great he confronts the Fed and he has a lot of outside the box perspectives, but the reality is he's another "oh free markets" yet when it comes to social issues, magically his libertarian philosophy flies out the window. The realty America really cannot afford to be the globe's military police is clear, but when those cuts come, they too, will throw hundreds of thousands, if not millions out of a job.
More what this post is about is letting absolutely inane, crazy, nonsensical economic agendas being presented as truth. These are not truths! I've literally heard the major news networks claim "Obama needs to introduce a deficit reduction plan to create jobs".
Deficits, budget cuts especially right now, and especially because they only focus on the poor, middle class, discretionary spending, (although cutting SS, Health will decimate most Americas if benefits are cut), will reduce GDP, reduce jobs, not create jobs. We are nowhere near the types of deficits that could tip and negatively impact a national economy.
Worse, if they paid attention to facts, the details, we could have so many jobs this entire discussion wouldn't be here. If this government did the things necessary, including passing tax increases, we wouldn't even be talking about deficits at all, because there wouldn't be any.
The entire political field claims to be worried about China trade deficit, yet they do nothing, nothing at all, about it.
Lest we not forget campaign promises are just to win, think Obama claiming to reform NAFTA and other trade deals. They had no intention and it was obvious at the time, to deal with this never ending tradable workforce, cheap labor, race to the bottom effects of these bad trade deals, or even the nonsensical tariffs of China against the U.S.
These people have somehow tried to claim that deficit reduction will create jobs. There is zero evidence to that, in fact the opposite. Instead of jobs, economic growth and all of the policy bonehead moves that are killing the U.S. economy, such as bad trade deals, offshore outsourcing, the entire discourse, that is pure fiction, is being parlayed everyday in the MSM and by these people.
It's strange. Chuck Grassley tends to be a populist and a pragmatist, not a dogmatic anything. The other U.S. senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin, is known more-or-less as a progressive Democrat.
So those are the guys Iowans actually have elected in one election after another for several decades now.
And, on 4 November 2008, Obama won Iowa with a 9.5% margin of victory.
What is this Ames Straw Poll anyway? Of what significance is it, if any?
Maybe it'd be a good idea to have these things at every county fair across the country, standard, like the hog show. There's a little money in it -- the TV crews have to eat and drink somewhere and maybe even stay at a motel. Yeah, let's have these things rotate around in each state! It's like an industry. Fifty of them every summer in all the off-election years.
From what little I have heard, the real news, if any, coming out of Iowa is that Ron Paul darn near won the straw poll. Effectively, it was a tie. But is that the news?
My impression is ... no, Ron Paul, NOT news.
Since I don't get any TV news, I googled around and found that the news on like CBS was that Bachman won, Romney was jeered by a bunch of hayseed Iowans, and MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, the whole thing in Ames was "overshadowed" by a guy who did not bother to come to the party!
Ron Paul? Nah, not news.
I'm not about to break down and cry crocodile tears, but I can't help but laugh ... not at Rep. Paul ... but, I think, with him.
News? That's a good one!
BTW: Thanks for analysis of the 'Texas Miracle' ,,, largest growth industry in 2010 ... government. Another good one!
I understand the gist of the comment, and I approve. if you're not angry, you gotta be brain-dead. And that's the trick -- to remain conscious and non-brain-dead, you need to keep expressing yourself in ways that tend to wake up the sleeping sheeple. Even in the bottom 1%. Never abandon your sense of humor!
Check out the Friday Movies Night for 1 July 2011
Even if you live within that privileged 10%, you may be interested in a recovery leading to financial and social stability in your country ... assuming of course that the U.S.A. is your country -- where you have lived and plan on living.
The choice even for the fortunate 10% may be between a restoration of democracy, including an educated middle-class with primary loyalty to the country, or, a corrupt military dictatorship. Concentration of power in a military dictatorship too often knows no bounds and ultimately means concentration of wealth through confiscation of assets -- and that means confiscation of those assets that lie within the 93% owned by the fortunate 10%.
the bottom 90% of the population can go to hell, but the top 10%, controlling 93% of the wealth, will keep the gross aggregate numbers rising all by themselves...the rest of us are just economic baggage; we are no longer needed or wanted as consumers....
This analysis by Paul Craig Roberts is an extraordinary application of Clausewitzian principles.
And here are the remarkable questions Roberts asks:
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