Republican Lies Get Caught by Truth

From a Bloomberg Story this a.m. by Michael Bender

"Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to tone down his statements heralding improvements in the state’s economy because they clash with the presumptive Republican nominee’s message that the nation is suffering under President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Scott, a Republican, was asked to say that the state’s jobless rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency, according to the people, who asked not to be named.

What’s unfolding in Florida highlights a dilemma for the Romney campaign: how to allow Republican governors to take credit for economic improvements in their states while faulting Obama’s stewardship of the national economy. Republican governors inOhio, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin also have highlighted improving economies.

Scott should follow the advice of the Romney campaign and it won’t undermine his own message, said Mac Stipanovich, a political strategist and lobbyist in Florida."

End of quote

We wouldn't want anyone to know that fiscal stimulus actually works, but what do you bet that if Romney wins he will continue to follow the same policies that President Bush is attempting to pursue but the GOP in the Congress will not let him.

Saturday Musings in mid-June

I am basically bored and ready to vote and get on with this, but a few things were worthy of comment today.

1st, unless I get a job I am officially in poverty as I will have no taxable income due to the combination of tax sheltered savings, high property taxes, paying for my medical insurance myself with deductibles and long term care contributions, low yields on fixed income investments, low tax rates on dividend income and boat loads of capital loss carry forwards.  Please oh economy recovery so interest rates rise and I get some income and capital gains to offset those capital loss carry forwards and can pay some taxes.

2nd, the Greek Mayor of Thessaloniki is trying to do the right thing.  Worth reading to see how far Greece at least has to go before it even remotely look like the U.S.  The U.S. is not going to be Greece as no workers have protections like they do.

Thessaloniki Mayor

3rd, Gail Collins highlights the difference between hard core Democrats and hard core Tea Party Republicans and why we do not understand each other regardless of what ever similarities we might have economically.  After reading this, it is easy to understand why compromise is so hard to find and why we will have grid lock until either one party dominates politically or we reach a precipice which must be turned back from or it run the economy into the ground and the moneyed side of the GOP will be scared to sh*t like they were in the fall of 2008 along with the Democrats.

Gail Collins

4th, it is amazing to see some of these young baseball players in the majors.  They love to play the game and do it very well for a being barely out of high school.  If you can catch any games with the Nationals or the Angels and watch Bryce Harper or Mike Trout, you will see what I mean.  I only wish Pedro Alvarez of the Pirates, who my son regularly played against for 5 years, could figure out how to hit for a higher average than 200 after hitting over 300 in the minors and college.  Although my son did strike Pedro out the one time he pitched to him and that is one of Pedro's big problems.  He cannot hit slow pitches that move.

5th, does anybody over 40 care about the NBA playoffs?

6th, I am glad that no one invites me to play courses that the U.S. Open is competed on.

Modern Media Doesn't Replace Political Discussion

Thomas Friedman writes today about the disappointment of Egyptian activists in their choice to vote for their next leader:  Either the Brotherhood or a Mubarek official.  They are disappointed that Facebook and Twitter did not allow them to find someone who is in the middle.

Well, you cannot replace organization and face-to-face meetings with a mechanism that "readers" are free to ignore.  While I try to convince readers of this blog, I have no way of knowing what explicit success I have as I have no way of knowing how open minded my readers are.  You can only get that feedback from a face-to-face meeting.

There are two take-aways from this for the U.S. campaign.  The first is the campaign must focus on meeting people, social media is only good for communicating with supporters and raising money from them.  The second is that once you are in the government, if the other side has a blocking minority and you want to accomplish something, you have meet with them and find a compromise in the middle.

The Tea Party does not view compromise as acceptable but Simpson-Bowles is the path forward and President Obama should start supporting it with all his efforts to force such discussion.

But I digress from the main point of the value of face-to-face discussion.  Anyone who reads my blog and RedStateVT's blog know that in the current environment we are like oil and water politically.  But when we are socializing we enjoy each other's company and have a good time.  What are the commonalities that allow that.  Well, certainly sense of humor plays an important role in that but so does a common sense of values centered on the need for individuals to be responsible for their own lot in life and to make the best of it living within their means.  It is probably at that point we diverge because where do you draw the line on what the government should do for the individual and reasonable people can differ on that.  But only if you are having a discussion with someone who opposes that point of view can you have a debate about the specifics of where you end up drawing the line.

RedStateVT does not want people dying in the streets uncared for but he does not want the government  socializing medical care.  Well we have what we have today and we know we need to get somewhere else and how do we get there?  Only by discussing that face-to-face can you find a middle ground and get something done.  Thus, the name of this blog.

And maybe the next time RedStateVT and I are on the golf course we can have this discussion but not when he is trying to make a 10' putt for a par.

The Things You Don't Know but find out about on the Internet

My home town has traditionally been a place where children get a good education and people enjoy being around each other.  Yes, there were members of both political parties and many church goers, but people kept this to themselves and respected what everybody did without getting in each other's face about anything.

Now, doing an innocent search of what might exist about Sidney, NY I found the following thing that brought them into the news in 2010.  I must emphasize that this is the Town of Sidney, not the Village of Sidney where I grew up.  Since it is rural, there can be some squirrelly people out there in the hills but I didn't expect that one of them would be Head of the Town government.  How wrong I was.

See this link and watch the 1st 4 minutes and you will see what Mr. Bob McCarthy is scared about.

Steven Colbert learns where Sidney is

The Message to the Democrats from Wisconsin

This will sound familiar to my long time readers as the pollsters surveyed the independent voters in Wisconsin and other states and found they think like me.

Independent voters want Simpson-Bowles implemented.  End fiscal stimulus gradually and balance the budget with 2/3's spending cuts and 1/3 revenue increases.  Reform entitlements in a responsible manner without ending them as we know it.  Implement the Affordable Health Care Act and Tort Reform.  If the Democrats ran like this and simply told their liberal base that it's this way or the highway, that the GOP will not reform entitlements in a responsible manner; the democrats will win.

Also, public sector unions need to start thinking like the private sector unions.  Something like 30% of the latter voted for Governor Walker because they understand that the public sector pensions need reform so that there is still money for social services and routine things in the state and local budgets. Property taxes are high enough and cannot be raised at a rate faster than inflation and even that is too fast for retirees.

There was a distressing story on Type 2 diabetes in kids.  I don't know the solution but Diabetes is a crippling expense for the health care system and short of death panels for fat people, the only viable solution is education starting very early on in a comprehensive manner.  I remember being taught health in grade school and it seems like that should be a focus for all ages.

Finally, the NewsHour did a 3 day set on teachers and tests.  They did focus on the High Performing schools that show up on tests are Charter schools that admit high performing kids and went on to say that you still need a way to see how teachers perform when they teach lower performing kids.  There needs to be a focus on improving kids ability to think rather then memorize (which is what the current tests do) and how this changes over the course of a year in measuring the effectiveness of any specific teacher.  When they talked to the teachers, my takeaway was kids are still being passed when they should fail and what happens at home is still the most important thing. I was shocked at the statistic that 30% of High School students drop out before graduating.  Clearly, neither No Child Left Behind or the Race to the Top are addressing that awful reality.

These posts may become infrequent as I thinking about taking a job that will keep me busy much of the time starting very soon.

Mitt Doesn't Understand the Jobs Report

After the jobs report yesterday, Mitt said it was example of how President Obama's policies have failed to work.  I disagree.  The data shows that Mitt's proposed policies will lead to increased unemployment.

Now 1st of all, the policies that Mr. Romney is criticizing were put in place during the last 3 quarters of 2009 and led to all the jobs that were created in 2010 and 2011.

2nd, you need to look at the detail of the jobs report to see that the private sector created 82,000 jobs in May.  The public sector declined 13,000 jobs to generate the disappointing headline number of 69,000 jobs.  This pattern has been consistent for the past year or two as the private sector has created jobs in response to the policy stimulation while the public sector has been cutting employment as revenues at the state and local level have declined.

This is why Mitt's proposed policy will lead to higher unemployment.  Cutting spending at the Federal Level quickly will reduce government staffing leading to more unemployed.  His tax cuts, if they are to result in a balanced budget, will lead to more cuts in employment.  I don't believe trickle down economics works anymore because anyone who receives these tax cuts will save the funds while those who do not have jobs anymore will be consuming less.  Now, Mitt's counter theory is that the rich folks savings will be invested in business and provide jobs.  But before anyone gets hired by those new businesses, there must be demand for the services provided which requires people to have jobs.  This can only work with a serious delay between time of tax cut and increase in employment.  Unemployment will go up as government workers lose their jobs until such time as the private sector develop needs for more workers.

I am also ignoring the difficulty in matching skills between the public and private sector.  In fact, there are many mismatches in skills between those the unemployed possess and those the private sector desires.  Look at the long term unemployed and the early retirees who cannot find a new position despite pounding the pavement of the private sector.

A Wise Man Comments on Syria

I hope Mitt reads this.  We cannot send the military everywhere no matter what the current tragedy is.  There must be a plan for success and exit, as well as a moral justification, for entering a war.

Henry Kissenger's Comments