Click for pdf.
From a Hart Research Associates strategy memo posted by Politico.
The competing visions of how to win in 2012 grew sharper over the Thanksgiving holiday. For an example of the first, outgoing Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour dropped this wisdom last night on the Republican Party of Sarasota County, Florida:
"This election is about policy, it's about jobs and the economy and how they are affected by taxes, and spending, deficits, debt. Are you for or against Obama's health care bill? Do you think his energy policy of driving up the cost of energy is good policy? If the election is decided on those grounds, we'll have a Republican president."
In other words, that's statement A from the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (pdf) extracted above in a Democratic strategy memo posted by Politico (pdf). Governor Barbour is arguing that Republican can win in 2012 by continuing to argue that government is too big, spends too much, etc. FWIW, he also cautioned the party against turning the nomination into a contest over who's more conservative.
The second vision, the Democratic one, centers on income inequality and how voters understand what's going on around them. That's statement B, above. From a New York Times interview with Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York):
"Jobs and income inequality are going to be the No. 1 issue" in 2012, he said. "Simply cutting government isn't going to work."
That's where Occupy Wall Street wins, or part of it: Shifting the debate to income inequality. One side is saying, with factual facts, that our country is experiencing a yawning gap between rich and poor, and they're out in the streets over it. The second, as we saw with Senator Jon Kyle (R-Arizona), says Congress should cut taxes for the rich and raise them for families. Watch this week for Democrats to begin forcing their Republican colleagues to vote on that idea.
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We need to reduce our budgets, get fiscally leaner and spend more to make the economy grow. This actually makes sense to some people! :-0
You know that reducing funds for education increases crime by 95%, don't you?
That is why education up to a bachelors degree is funded by governments that include Sweden, Scotland, Norway, Spain, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Brazil, and Argentina, all of which have a lower crime rate than the US.
Getting "fiscally leaner" by cutting education using No Child Left Behind gave the US the largest prison population in the world.
Any you want more of that?
On the other hand, warfare does not improve the economy significantly and does nothing to reduce crime, but that kind of "getting lean" does not seem to be happening.
Sayblade, some people will believe that manure is caviar if they are told that by the right people. Evidently you are one of those people.
So Sayblade where should we start? How about that sacred cow defense. How about bringing our soldiers home and putting them to work rebuilding our own country. Leave programs for the children and the poor alone.
SayBlade, are you being sarcastic? Because that's how it read to me, but you're getting slammed as if you believe your first statement...Because, well, you can't reduce a budget and increase spending, and it does "make sense" to some people, but they are the ones who have their thinking done for them by preachers and politicians.
Seems my sarcasm didn't come across clearly. I thought the open mouth emoticon would communicate that. There is a dualism that seems to be increasingly prevalent in the heads of people where two opposite ideas can comfortably coexist in people's heads. While it is found around the world, it is particularly stark in America due to its strong idealisation of freedom. On the one hand there is the idea that freedom, success and prosperity can only be achieved through following rules, deference to authority and very hard work. On the other hand, finding shortcuts, breaking rules and challenging authority are the way to freedom, success and prosperity.
Can someone provide some enlightenment to how this dualism happens? Is it the bipolar political system that causes Americans to seek black or white answers with no grey options in between?
lol: Sex Sells.
Sex is dirty and nasty and we shouldn't even think about it, let alone talk about it or educate our children about it. That might make them want to DO it, and it's bad and wrong and we can't let that happen!
Look at the pretty, sexy (plug in your product here). Don't you want to buy it? It will make you pretty and sexy, too!
Dualism is inculcated in us from birth. It's the war between Capitalism and Puritanism. We're a country full of deeply religious people who now worship the almighty dollar.
Or at least that's one way I've decided it can be looked at...
religion doesn't allow for much grey area when the punishment for wearing polyester is death. Although I kinda see the point of that one! :P
Sarcasm aye.
Hard about.
Full steam ahead.
SayBlade, those of use around here who have experienced multiple sarcasm fails have started clearly labeling sarcastic comments as such. When we remember to.
Zum Beispiel: "George W. Bush was the greatest President ever (sarcasm)."
Inelegant, but it gets the job done.
My apologies Sayblade. I've hear the same comment made with no irony too many times.
Sorry Sayblade. I didn't catch the face at the end and like Don Quixokie, I hear that kind of thing all the time and they are serious.
When the Bush tax cuts were made, it was based on the idea that there would be a surplus in the budget for long into the future. Instead, as we found out, that was an illusion. The proper thing to do would have been to immediately repeal those cuts as to continue them the government had to borrow money. Now repealing them is considered "raising taxes" when they never should have been lowered in the first place. What a screwy country!
The Bush tax cuts, from the get-go, destroyed the budget deficit. That ANYONE believed that the same action that made the budget surplus disappear would also make it re-appear strains credulity. Worse, tax cuts to stimulate the economy to pay for wars? Really? When had that EVER worked?
And the really scary part? There's not a prospective Republican candidate, except Ron Paul, who not running on a platform of tax cuts and war with Iran. It will take just one more Republican president to knock the final nail in the coffin of our nation.
How can we get fiscally leaner with out the money in the pot first? We can cut all kinds of things, but with out the tax money we should be getting from the 1% and their corporations; we'll never get close to being caught up. And with that we'll never get ahead.
Trickle down economics is a massive failure. Dems seem unable to effectively communicate this idea as well as other ideas. Calling it voodoo economics is not enough. The income inequality needs to be linked to trickle down economics. The Dems need to put a stake through the heart of Republican economics which leaves the Republican party devoid of any ideas. When Dems can do that we will no longer hear about job creators, job killing legislation, etc., and Frank Luntz will be out of a job.
So, what's the Dems plan? Trickle up economics? Tax the rich? More Gov't spending?
Taxing the rich and making them pay their fair share as well more government spending in those areas necessary to carry the country for the next century is inevitable. If not now, it will cost us more money in the future to remedy the neglect of infrastructure, education and energy. We cannot continue to go from crisis to crisis when developing public policy; long term planning and spending are needed. There is no point in continuing failed economic policies. What is the conservative new economic ideas? More of the same trickle down economics repackaged under a different name?
Talking about trickle down economics is like having a serious discussion about Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy, which are much more credible.
Almost all income above about $250,000/year goes into investments that produce no consumer demand.
Investments do not trickle down.
One example is colchicine, which was discovered well over 100 years ago, so the patent ran out a long time ago. It used to treat gout, and it used to sell for pennies a pill.
A group of people got some investors, ran some clinical trials, re-patented it, and now colchicine costs almost $1 per pill. That almost qualifies as robbery.
Other investments go into purchasing gold that reduces the value of the dollar.
How do these things trickle down?
"Trickle up," Eric?! It's a torrent! and it's reducing the size of the nation's "pie."
Conservatives cling to trickle down economics much like the Church and scholars did to the idea that the earth was flat even after it was proven wrong. Faith supplants facts no matter what the truth of the facts may be. And to demonstrate that faith, the Church admitted Galileo was correct in 1992.
I have long maintained that raising income taxes on the 1% will not accomplish much, unless the law is changed so Capital Gains are treated like Ordinary Income. That along with a small transaction tax on investments (akin to the sales tax on goods and services) will make a significant dent in the problem.
Raising taxes on capital gains is not the right idea. It discourages investing and hurts the middle class as much as the rich. Every person, regardless of income, would be hit by the higher taxes. That affects the middle class with higher taxes on their investments and sale of their homes. The rates for capital gains are alright. We just need to take the fund managers personal income out of the capital gains tax and make it ordinary income. This was a special provision passed by the Republicans when they controlled Congress and it affects about 50 people in the whole country.
Taxes on financial transactions would take money away from the middle class as well and affect everyone's investments including retirement funds. The income tax is the fairest way to impose taxes, but not by flat taxes on everyone. You cannot treat income for billionaires the same as every person in the US. A graduated flat tax would have to be structured much like our current system, but without deductions. It will have to be attractive enough to mollify the middle class that would lose the mortgage deduction. The moment you start writing exemptions of income and deductions, it is no longer a flat tax.
Corporations and business would have to be taxed on all earning home and abroad with income defined as cost of goods sold and no special rules and exemptions added to this formula. The problem will then be how to fix all the special deductions designed to help business invest in workers in the US. You run into the same issue as individual taxes when you start writing in deductions and exemptions.
Flat taxes sound nice, but there are a lot of issues that need to be resolved before we go to such a system. In addition, we need to provide a way of preventing future Congresses from writing in special deductions and exemptions for anyone and tampering with the rates. Republicans will continue to lower rates and create deficits to force cuts in government programs. That is their policy as discussed by Matt Taibbi in one of his articles. The Republicans intend to continue to run up deficits and force Dems to cut programs.
Mike, psst, Galileo was all about the Earth orbiting the sun. And, actually, the shape of the Earth was never really controversial. Not in the Middle Ages. Nor in Columbus' time. That's all a modern fiction.
Consider the Ptolemaic universe that Galileo dismantled. It consisted of a series of nested spheres with the Earth at the center...and people now suppose that in the middle of a spherical cosmic Russian doll was a flat plate? Seriously? No, the Earth was always imagined to be a sphere. At least by educated people.
As an independent, fiscally conservative voter, I neither subscribe to trickle down nor Keynes as a cure for our current situation. Both were tried to kick start the economy, and both failed. Until we address the structural imbalance in this country, every attempt will continue to fail. This is pointed out in a stud at Ind U
"One explanation for rising income inequality emphasizes that it coincided with advancing globalization, as indicated for example by increasing shares of imports and exports in GDP. This may increase the demand for the labor of high
skill workers in theskilled workersskilled workers, because they now have to compete with abundant low skill
U.S., because they can now sell their skills to a wider market, and high
are scarcer in the rest of the world than in the U.S. Globalization may similarly depress wages for lowe
workers from the rest of the world (Stolper and Samuelson, 1941; Krugman 2008)."
The current mantra of the Democrats is to tax the rich. They blame "Wall St" for our problems. The same study points out that 60% of the top .1% of income is from business salaries. The remainder is from those in occupations such as arts, sports, etc. Higher taxes on these will solve very little. It may make some feel better, but will do nothing to red uce either the deficit or debt.
Eric!-2804575, taxing the rich is a good place to start, then getting rid of the tax loopholes they can use will be another step in the right direction.
You like having paved roads, cops that help you out and a fire department that you don't have to obviously pay out of your pocket for, right? Well dude, that's our tax money in action.
Labor unions produce income equality.
Unions authority has been eroded. Federal employees can be terminated for objecting to the work environment. Reagan fired air traffic controllers after they complained about obsolete WW II radar being used in the 1980s.
Education produces long-term income equality without unionization. Poverty is the #1 cause of crime and increased education reducing this by 95%. Lifetime income expectations are as follows (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
About 20% of extra income goes to federal taxes.
The average time for payback for a bachelors degree just from extra tax revenue is 15 years, which means that using tax revenue to provide free education would produce a profit (more tax revenue coming in than the cost of education going out).
That is why education up to a bachelors degree is funded by governments that include Sweden, Scotland, Norway, Spain, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Brazil, and Argentina, all of which have a lower crime rate than the US.
The decline of unions predates Reagan. It goes back to Nixon when unions deserted the Dems in favor of the Republicans. Reagan cemented the decline when he fired the air traffic controllers and started pushing his trickle down economics. Unions fell asleep while the economy was good and Republicans were not pushing anti-union legislation. The unions forgot the true agenda for the Republicans.
Labor unions gave us 40-hour weeks, weekends, an end to exploitive child labor and a floor (minimum) wage - all things of which non-union workers also take advantage. It might be a good thing to remind some of the righties who are bent on stripping union rights that the very things they get to enjoy about not having to work 7 days a week, etc. are due to collective bargaining.
All of those things were also paid for with blood.
It is heartening to find out so many more Americans are finally understanding Supply Side Economics. The true Compassionate Conservativism - Robbing from the middle class and poor to give to the corporate executives and the wealthy. Also, to fund jobs in other countries at the expense of America and not pay ANY taxes and is given bonuses from my tax dollars to move jobs oversees. Fortyhour work weeks, vacation pay, health care, etc. are from collective bargaining.
Statement C:
Do you generally approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing in handling the economy?
Approve - 40%
Disapprove - 57%
Not Sure - 3%
But how many of the disapprove percent are people who feel Obama has not gone far enough with his legislative agenda? Disapproval is not an indicator of the number of people that are going to vote for a Republican. Stats don't always work the way you want unless you ask the right questions.
Oh, agreed. I'm always amazed how you can hear one stat and think one thing, here another just as valid/accurate stat and do a complete 180 in thinking.
Part of the statement not included above that 60% of all voters agreed to (thus making it appear that the only issue was income inequality) was this:
Who's against transparency and accountability? And the Democrats probably agreed with not giving aid to corporations because they caused the problem, while the Republicans probably agreed because the government should not be picking winners and losers in the private market, etc.
One problem with that question is that the president gets the blame or praise for everything that happens during his administration whether it is his doing or not. So what people perceive as Obama's handling of the economy also embraces deliberate Republican efforts to make him fail in the belief (possibly correct) that the people will reward them for their bad behavior as they rewarded the Republicans' unprecedented use of the fillibuster in the Senate by electing a Republican majority in the house.
David, what did Obama not get passed in his first 2 years that he wanted to pass?
@RobDon
Questions can be unbiased without being very specific but they do not necessarily give a true insight of public opinion. Transparency and accountability mean different things for different people. The whole object of opinion polls is to insure that the questions are unbiased. But if you want to get a true sense of opinion, you have to ask more questions with the biggest and most important follow up question "Why do you think that?" That is when you will find opinions diverge.
Jobs bill? Stimulus without tax cuts? Everything fillibustered to death in Senate? Letting the Bush tax cuts lay in unmarked grave?
@RobDon; 40% approve /60% disapprove looks a lot better for Obama than "What do you think of the republicans?
@RobDon; 40% approve /60% disapprove looks a lot better for Obama than "What do you think of the republicans?
Occupy Wall Street has done a great job in bringing income inequality to the forefront of the discussion. That is where it should be. There are even conservatives admitting that current trends cannot continue.
So what is the next step? If the past is any indication the right wing will use its massive public relations machine to obliterate the idea. They will attack the initiators of the idea to destroy credibility and try to shift the focus onto a scape goat group.
IMO we should follow the concept that the NRA has used to become the most effective single lobbying group ever. They found a single issue to coalesce around and leveraged that into an effective pressure group.
What single issue could return our government back into its original principle- a government that responds to the People? Why doesn't overwhelming popular support for issues result in legislation?
The answer is simple-money. Ask yourself-"What is the reason that the issue most important to you is not being addressed?"
The answer is money. Someone with a lot of money opposes it.
The solution is to get the money out of politics. Support the constitutional amendment to get the money out of politics and your vote will mean something again.
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
Okay, what's going on with newsvine? It vanished from the bottom of my screen, and I'm getting tagged as a new user despite being a member for over a year now?
This might have something to do with cookies or session identification. Sometimes these get corrupted.
Problems like this often go away when you reboot. If not, you should clear your browser cache, reboot, and log back in. If that doesn't work, you should repeat that after deleting cookies associated with MSNBC and Newsvine.
Best of luck.
I'd already rebooted a couple of times, which was why I was whining. It came back on its own.... Yay!
Noticed one of my edits has an 80 hour modification time instead of the customary 5 minutes.
I use a Mac, and sites that use Microsoft IIS (or equivalent) tend to have strangeness.
Your comment makes it look like a Newsvine programmer made a little boo-boo.
$8 Trillion?!?
I have an idea that we can rally around and that will give us equality with Wall St:
Let the voters vote on pending legislation along with their elected representatives.
Here in the state of Oregon we have a--voter initiative process-- that will allow us to gather signatures and put this idea on the ballot in November. When it passes, it becomes the law of the land.
With the people as assistant law-makers Congress will have to listen to the will of the general public. If they don't, we will know immediately, and have the proof to take to the world.
I have an idea that we can rally around and force Congress to stop voting for the will of Wall St:
Let the voter vote on pending legislation along with their elected representative!
As assistant law-makers we will force politicians to pay attention to what the general consensus is saying. And it will give the voters an immediate knowledge if our politicians vote against us...
Oregon is one of a number of state that uses the--voter initiative process. This allows us to gather signatures and put an idea onto the November ballot. When it passes it becomes the law of the land.
Like to see why the blacks feel they've been wronged
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej5_rZof7MA&feature=g-u&context=G27f961cFUAAAAAAAOAA