All day long Tuesday, my tweets will appear, in real-time, in the window below. So will Becky‘s, Nate Silver‘s, Drudge_Siren‘s, and, just for fun, the Big Ben Clock‘s.
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I’ve voted.
#PANIC!!!
🙂
@brendanloy Re: expectations-setting, from a GOP perspective, stepping back, a Reid loss is worth at least 5 normal Senate seats. So yeah, even if we can’t knock off Boxer, and even if we pissed away Delaware, it’ll all have been worth it if we take out the Senate Majority Leader. That’s two in a row (remember Daschle? Coincidentally, his name also sounds like douche)….
Sestak has lead in two polls out of dozens over the past several months. If he wins, I’m going to call BS on that.
IMO, of greater significance than the fact Dems are almost totally relegated to big cities, is the nature of many of those big city districts. A congressional district has about 450,000 people, but an average Republican district has upwards of 200,000 registered voters, while Dem districts oftentimes are closer to 100,000 registered voters. In some midterm elections, when Dem turnout is especially depressed, Dems can often win a Congressional seat in a Dem-leaning district with 25,000 votes, whereas Republican districts typically require 75,000 votes to secure victory. Admittedly this is more drastic in the Southwest where you have large populations of illegal immigrants, but this same effect occurs in black-dominated districts throughout the country as well. Right, wrong, or indifferent, the fact that the barrier to office for most Dems is tens of thousands less votes than Republicans surely has an effect on national political and election dynamics.
Of course, the glass-half-full perspective on this is, if the GOP could somehow find a way to revitalize urban Republicanism and field quality urban Republican candidates, the Dems potentially could be relegated to permanent minority party status in the House.
The glass-half-empty scenario (i.e. the John Judis hypothesis) is, as the suburbs continue to become more diverse, and/or the Dems are successful in getting an amnesty through, Republicans will struggle to gain majorities in the House and will be at a disadvantage in statewide and POTUS elections.
What will probably happen is something in between: the GOP will find a minority, urban Republican voice that strengthens over time, but not enough to totally neuter the Dems’ strong advantage with urban and minority voters, so neither party will retain a clearly dominant status.
Great. The boilerplate Senate disclaimer box is going to be a mile long.
“The Senate includes…one independent who caucuses with Republicans because she lost her primary, one independent who caucuses with Democrats because he lost his primary, and one independent who caucuses with the Democrats but refuses to give up his lucrative contract with NBC for football games.”
So far, only five states outside of New England with more than one House seat didn’t see any change: IA, NE, OK, UT, OR. As results stand right now, KY will join them, but CA has two switches in progress. If we expand back to looking at all 50 and assume that KY/CA split, only 15 states didn’t have a seat switch parties.
(Per NYT’s map)
AML, there are lots of urban Democrats that are beatable. They only seem unbeatable because the Republicans insist on going against them with hard line conservatives–people guaranteed to get their asses handed to them at the ballot box.
As an example, I don’t know of many people in Jim Moran’s district that particularly like the guy. He won last night with 116,000 votes. (I question your math on a Dem only needs 25K votes to win. (Even in NYC, quite the urban center, it looks like the lowest winning vote count was about 50K, most in the 80 – 125+ K you were talking about for most races, actually looking at the national map most races were won with between 75K and 175K votes. a few were 200K+ but those are the state is district races, so there is a different dynamic in play.) So I think you are kind of talking out your ass there.)
Moran is not primary beatable, he has a strong enough base and enough money to fight of a primary challenge. But lets face it, Arlington is not going to elect a Tea Party whack job (Who is so stupid he is calling for a line item veto even though the Supreme Court held that to be unconstitutional already).
An outspoken moderate Republican could actually challenge Moran and give him a run for his money because most of his base, I think, wants a viable alternative. But when conservatives keep going more conservative in the urban districts, no they are no going to win.
The really sad part about last night is not that the Republicans took over the house. The sad part is that any last vestiges of bipartisanship and moderate Representatives and Senators were basically wiped off the map.
The problem we face in America is not that there aren’t enough hard liners of party X in the government, the problem is there are no more moderates. And we have districts geared towards eliminating them.
We need moderates or we are screwed. The only way anything really happens is through compromise. The Constitution wouldn’t exist without compromise. The Union wouldn’t exist without compromise. Etc. We can’t actually do anything worth doing without it. But now we have even more people in office who have run on the “No Compromise Ever!!”platform. A nation so conceived, cannot endure.
JD, If I’m Lisa Murkowski I don’t know that I necessarily caucus with the Reps this go around. The Dems still have the Senate, and the Reps tried to cannibal my seat. So if I’m her, I’m planning to run again in 6 years as an independent not as a Republican, it is absolutely the smart thing to do. So if caucusing with the Dems for the next two years gets me a committee chair then it might be worth doing. Granted if the Reps take the Senate in two years (If I recall, it is a friendlier map for them in 2012) there becomes a seniority flip flop problem if you decide to caucus with the Reps then.
I think it is actually a tough call for her, she should certainly be able to leverage something out of the Republicans to caucus with them. It’s not a forgone conclusion that she must. Perhaps the 3 independents will caucus together. With the Senate as tight as it is, a caucus that small would actually mean something, which could mean more leverage and it doesn’t completely burn the bridge to caucus with the Reps in 2 years. Besides a legit ind. caucus in the Senate would be kind of cool.
The Dems still have the Senate, and the Reps tried to cannibal my seat.
Now you are talking out of your ass. The Republican Party leadership did everything they could to support Murkowski, and then failed to punish her when she refused to abide by the primary results.
dcl, I didn’t say every Dem district was characterized by smaller numbers of registered voters, I was referring directly to big city districts, and even then, I wasn’t necessarily saying all of them can be won with such low vote totals. I understand Northern Arlington residents suffer from a sort of myopia, but by no means is Arlington “urban”. Moran’s district is suburban, plain and simple.
If you want some examples of what I am talking about, here are some winning vote samples (some of these are even more absurd when you look at the total votes cast in the district):
CA-47 Sanchez: 31,558 votes
CA-43 Baca: 29,770
CA-34 Robal-Allard: 58,502
CA-18 Cardoza: 53,490
AZ-04 Pastor: 42,070
NY-16 Serrano: 51,731
NY-09 Weiner: 47,004
NY-07 Crowley: 63,364
NY-06 Meeks: 48,968
NY-05 Ackerman: 64,568
TX-15 Hinojosa: 53,373
TX-16 Reyes: 49,242
TX-20 Gonzalez: 58,551
TX-27 Undecided, each candidate has roughly 50,000 votes
TX-28 Cuellar, 62,055
TX-29 Green: 43,185
TX-30 Johnson: 86,195
IL-04 Gutierrez: 61,003
I could scour for more, but you get the point. And yes, something stinks about these vote totals, and no, it ain’t coming out of my ass. In many of these races, there is a token GOP candidate, while others have serious opposition, but the bottom line is the GOP has invested virtually nothing monetarily or philosophically in some of these low-vote districts.
I agree with you that the problem is not enough districts are competitive. Part of that is demographic, but yes, part of it is deliberate gerrymandering. California exhibits the worst case of this, and as a result, that state is completely beyond hope. I thought Californians would have had to be high to vote back in Boxer and Brown, but the marijuana initiative failed dramatically, so they really are out of their minds sober.
AML, fair, but look at the numbers a Dem Senator needs to get versus a Rep Senator. In extreme cases we are talking almost 4 million votes versus less than 100K. So the issue cuts back the other way too. And a Senator has a lot more power than a Rep.
I think we can both agree, that more genuinely competitive congressional districts would help the process. And more genuinely moderate candidates would also help the process.
I don’t then CA was out of it’s mind, look at the alternatives they had.
I was sad to see 19 go down… But that’s what happens when the Giant’s win the World Series the night before, everyone that would vote for it was stoned…
On the up side, looks like 25 passed, which should help the state tremendously in getting shit done. 20 is an interesting idea. Not sure how that’s going to work out in practice.
Population density wise, Arlington is a city not a suburb. It happens to be right next to a denser city, but compared to most cities in the mid-west etc. It’s actually larger. The Tyson’s area is actually, by density and population, a very large city, quite a bit larger and more dense than most other “cities” in the country. So suburbs next to major cities are quite a bit different than suburbs next to minor cities (many / most minor cities are are smaller than most major city suburbs.) Which is a problem for your calculation.
There’s no need to speculate about what Murkowski might do, because she’s said herself repeatedly and explicitly, reiterating it today, that she’ll caucus with the GOP if elected.
“one independent who caucuses with the Democrats but refuses to give up his lucrative contract with NBC for football games”
LOL!!
dcl, Arlington is a suburb. Get over it.
Senate races are a whole ‘nother animal. They are statewide and necessarily reflect urban, suburban, and urban voting patterns. I was specifically referring to how urban districts often have smaller number of registered voters that need to be mobilized to win, and that makes them potential targets if the GOP can ever figure out urban Republicanism. State elections aren’t about urban vs. suburban, and the ratio of registered voters to the population is closer to what you see in most suburban and rural congressional districts, so the comparison is almost completely moot.
If you don’t think a state run by Jerry Brown redux (following two terms from an action movie star) is out of its mind, I don’t know what else to tell you except, have you seen how effed up their political process is? Between the gerrymandered legislature, the initiative process, and the public employee unions’ domination of Sacramento, it’s no wonder California is so far in the tank economically and budget-wise. And now that they’ve eliminated the 2/3 rule for budgets, there’s literally nothing left to stop the Democrats from completely driving the state over the cliff.
So is LA…
As to getting rid of the 2/3 rule. Or, you know, fixing the problem and getting the state out of trouble. In my experience it has been the Republicans that run the budget and the economy into the tank and the Democrats left trying to figure out some way to get it out of the mud while the Republicans stand around and point fingers and and cut tow ropes at random for shits and giggles.
So is LA…
You can’t look at this from a housing density POV, you have to look at it from a metropolis perspective. Arlington has transitioned from a suburb that houses professional / gov’t class people who work in DC, to a suburb that not just houses the professional / gov’t class, but has a good chunk of those jobs in its own boundaries now, as well, with people commuting in from suburbs further out. But here’s the thing: that doesn’t change anything — it’s still a suburb. Sure you’ve got some Salvadoreans in South Arlington that can be considered — for lack of a better term — “ghetto”, but they don’t even come close to constituting a large enough demographic to influence a state or congressional district.
As for California, for the past twenty years, the California legislature has been run by super-liberal San Francisco-style Democrats with just under 2/3 majority, and Idaho-style Republicans holding onto just more than a third of the seats — just enough to keep the state from swinging wildly liberal but not nearly enough to get any of their agenda taken seriously by the dominant party. So, please tell me the last time the Republicans controlled the budget in that state and rammed through their fiscal agenda. Hmmm, what’s that you say? They only had bare majorities briefly after the 1994 election, and lost those by 1996, and the economy was booming the whole time? So much for your theory of the GOP running the California budget and economy into the ground!
In any case, I don’t know why you’re still peddling the lame Obama car-in-the-ditch metaphor; it’s clear from yesterday’s results the voters weren’t buying that shtick whatsoever.
Self-correction: Most state congressional districts are in the 650,000 to 700,000 range, not 450,000. Most districts have 400,000 to 450,000 registered voters and see upwards of 200,000 votes cast in a typical midterm election. This is compared to Democratic-dominant urban congressional districts, which typically have fewer registered voters and can see winning vote totals in midterms as low as 30,000 or so (a third of what a Republican can expect to need in a suburban district).
You still don’t get it do you. “The Ronald” and the tax revolt in the 70’s ass rapped California’s ability to even remotely balance a budget… Ever… And now CA is paying for being little babies about paying for what they want back in the 70s. Then you had the ludicrous energy policy, also of the Republicans, you know back in that 94-96 range that you think doesn’t mean anything, that Davis was trying to resolve when he was recalled and “The Arnold” tried to deal with also (credit where credit is due). In other words CA’s budget problems go back 30 40 years at this point. To bad childish decision making. Because the citizenry were duped into thinking they could have their cake and eat it too.
The same thing is going to take the US like a 2×4 when Bush’s chickens finish coming home to roost. Who in their right mind thinks you can fight 2 god damn wars at the same time without raising taxes? It is insanely childish. The last entity, that I can recall, that even attempted such a strategy doesn’t exist anymore.
Voters might not buy it, but that doesn’t make it not true. Voters are stupid and have short memories. I know you know better, it just doesn’t suit your argument to be completely intellectually honest about such things.
But I’ll be. The first two years of the Clinton administration economy. Where things really turned around and the engine started up (that collapsed completely, utterly and catastrophically towards the end of the Bush Jr admin) that was Totally Bush Sr. H.W. Bush did what had to be done (and it lost him the election) and the result was an economy that got back on track. Once Clinton figured out what the hell he was doing he managed to keep that going and went on to balance the budget etc.. But H.W. absolutely got the country back on track. He also, pretty expertly, handled the Iraq Kuwait situation, and managed to keep the country out of a quagmire, while dealing with very specific foreign policy obligations and goals. And then he paid for. Literally and figuratively. Hindsight is 20/20, and in hindsight, George H.W. Bush was actually a pretty good President. There, I said it… you happy?
George W. Bush on the other hand? Quite possibly the most disastrous presidency in the history of the country. His actions and decisions could literally destroy the union. Especially if we let the people that pretty much fucked us over back in power. Sorry AML, but Bush jr. was a mess.
In all honesty, Bush Sr. was probably one of the best Presidents in the last 50 years or so. He wasn’t a fierce partisan, he just tried to get shit done. And bravo to him for doing it. He might well be the last of a dying breed for a while. God knows Newt wiped out just about everyone else that wanted to just get stuff done with is contract on America.
California destroyed itself last night, which I loved, even as a lifetime resident. Jerry Brown, who technically could be committed after the victory speech he gave is the governor, a wave of democrats were elected and re-elected across the state (a clear endorsement of the great job Obama has been doing and a rebuke of everything Republican and Shhwwarrzzennegger oriented), giving the democrats a simple majority to institute any and every tax and expense they want without any input or votes from Republicans, and then voting down legalizing and taxing marijuana (a zillion dollar california industry), put the final 12 nails in the coffin (and one in the forehead for good measure) for the state.
California is now gauranteed to be the 35 year old son that never moves out of his parents house for the federal government for the next 1000 years to come, or more likely, until the earth falls into the sun.
AMLTrojan – dcl-“thinking” is why California voters voted as they did … at this point, I am starting to try to put together a prediction of how employment in CA will compare with employment in FL and TX and GOP-run states over the next 2 years …
My pre-prediction guess is that CA continues to lose jobs as companies give up and move out, to TX of FL or even to CO … and the GOP-run states will rebound quicker and higher by an order of magnitude or better …
Time will tell …
Sandy, LOL! I can’t recall us ever being in such violent, hilarious agreement before.
You still don’t get it do you. “The Ronald” and the tax revolt in the 70’s ass rapped California’s ability to even remotely balance a budget… Ever… And now CA is paying for being little babies about paying for what they want back in the 70s.
So, dcl, given that California has the third highest tax burden of any state (only New Jersey and New York are worse), pray tell me how Prop 13 and Ronald Reagan can be blamed for the state’s budget woes 30 years hence. A ~10% income tax and an ~8% sales tax aren’t enough to make up for a cap on increases to property taxes (the same kind you see for senior citizens in states like Arizona and elsewhere?!?)? Maybe you’d like to donate some of the money Virginia doesn’t tax you to help make up the California budget shortfall?
Then you had the ludicrous energy policy, also of the Republicans….
As for energy deregulation, again, your sense of history is rather myopic. Allow me to quote from that notoriously pro-Republican website, Wikipedia:
The California energy deregulation was partial and not well done no matter how you look at it. Other states have deregulated much more successfully, but the California scheme had a number of characteristics that ultimately caused it to implode:
1) It made utility companies like SCE and PG&E sell off their power plants and forbade them from both producing and providing electricity to consumers.
2) It capped utility companies on what they could charge consumers, but did not cap what power providers could charge utilities.
3) It forced utility companies to buy electricity on unregulated, non-transparent markets at spot prices and forbade them from entering into long-term contracts with power providers.
The bottom line is, the partial privatization scheme was poorly structured, the way the market rules were set up allowed for manipulation and deception, and the “cops” who were supposed to enforce the rules were weak and not around to do their job. This was boneheaded policy that was passed in a bipartisan fashion, and is a perfect example of what happens when you try to mix various ideological agendas into a compromise bill rather than getting politics and ideology out of the way and focusing first and foremost on something that will function.
The same thing is going to take the US like a 2×4 when Bush’s chickens finish coming home to roost. Who in their right mind thinks you can fight 2 god damn wars at the same time without raising taxes? It is insanely childish. The last entity, that I can recall, that even attempted such a strategy doesn’t exist anymore.
…George W. Bush…[was] [q]uite possibly the most disastrous presidency in the history of the country. His actions and decisions could literally destroy the union.
Obama just blew more money on the stimulus than the entire Iraq war. Please, Look at this chart based on CBO data, as well as these numbers, and explain to me how the two wars are what is driving the US fisc off the cliff when Obama and the Democrats, in one year alone, increased the national debt more than this amount. If the GOP and Bush were bad with their fiscal management, what do you call it now that the Dems have doubled and quadrupled down on those bad spending habits? Sound fiscal strategy? So pray tell me how Dubya is the one who “destroyed the union”!
As for HW and Clinton, you’re not being intellectually honest or even looking at the data. Yes, the economic recession hit its low point and turned around while HW was still president, but two things happened at this time: he raised taxes; and he cut tons of spending on defense, which sent California and many other areas of the country into a tailspin. That might have been prudent fiscal management, but it also retarded the economic recovery. Then Clinton came along and raised taxes again, in historic amounts, and the recovery was again delayed. It wasn’t until the GOP came into power in Congress (1994) that jobs started coming back and tax revenue started rebounding.
But even then, the GOP can’t take all the credit for holding back spending (before the GOP took power, Clinton said it would take a decade to halve the deficit; after Newt arrived and shut down the government, the deficit disappeared in a couple of years — coincidence?!?), because there were two, one-time, historic factors at play. One I just partially discussed, which was the major cutbacks in defense spending (i.e. the “peace dividend”); the other was the transition to an Information Economy (which saw the creation of an IT sector and major run-ups in equities, driving massive growth in gov’t revenues). Both of these were temporary, lasting plus-or-minus five years, and neither was sustainable. So measuring Clinton’s economic performance based on his benefiting from these two one-time occurrences is a huge fallacy.
God knows Newt wiped out just about everyone else that wanted to just get stuff done with is contract on America.
Another hyperbolic declaration based on zero data or facts! I can’t even respond to this one — it’s worse than trying to prove a negative! If you can even cite two things off the top of your head from the Contract With America that got passed (and remember which president had to sign those into law!), I’d be shocked — let alone see you try to explain how they were bad and represented “wip[ing] out just about everyone else that wanted to just get stuff done”.
Seriously dcl, you’re a stand-up guy, but when you get worked up into your fits of ideological rage, you’re worse than David K when it comes to being immune to facts and reality. Which is really saying something.
That’s it dcl. All of CA’s problems revolve around the government not being able to tax its citizens enough. What you are basically saying is that on top of having to pay $350K for a 1 bedroom townhouse (unless you live want to live out in some boondock like Lancaster or Rivertucky), Californians should also have to pay $25k for property taxes, on top of a 7.75% sales tax and a 10% income tax. What’s wrong with CA? It’s not that Grey Davis gave a massive pension increase to the unions during the dot com bubble under the assumption that the astronomical stock returns and income tax revenues would continue indefinately. It’s not that the CA pension fund could begin to take up half the CA budget just to pay out benefits. It’s not the onerous regulations that make CA one of the worst places to do business. It’s not that the public schools in many places are so rotten, anybody with money who afford to send their kids to a private school does so. It’s not that wide swaths of urban areas are home to masses of low skilled, non-English speaking, culturally foreign immigrant populations and the economic stagnation, social service pressure, and crime that naturally come with such populations. It’s not that emergency rooms and hospitals are constantly closing because in a shocker, illegal immigrants with grade-school educations and limited English skills generally lack to job skills and productivity to get jobs that justify employer based health insurance. It’s not the massive traffic jams that force people to waste 2-3 hours of their lives commuting each day. It’s not the bureaucrats, unions, and environmental lawyers who cause any public works project designed to alleviate such congestion to come in 100% over budget. It’s not that the state has large amounts of natural resources sitting off its shore and under its land, but unlike AK, LA, or TX, they refuse to allow such development. Nope, it’s none of that. What ails California is Ronald Reagan’s legacy and Prop. 13. You must be effing nuts.
It’s people like you that make some Republicans (especially ex-Californians like myself) see a silver lining in the recent election results. There are no longer any adults running California. People like you will now have a free hand in running things there without having to check with that inconvenient thing called reality. I think in 5-10 years, California will be a North American version of Greece. I see the corporate tax rate being somewhere in the double digits. The top marginal income tax rate will probably be in the mid teens. The public employee pension fund will be so underfunded, the entire state will be effectively mortgaged to retired public employees. Every single business that doesn’t enjoy 50% profit margins like Apple and Google will either have left the state, or will have their boxes packed. If it wasn’t for the great weather, Hollywood, ports, and the Stanford/Berkeley driven tech cluster, I think that CA would already have gone over the edge. CA is slowly sliding towards a tiered society composed of tech geeks who work in cubes and the minimum wage earning service workers that cater to them. Even Silicon Valley is increasingly an anachronism as any process that actually involves the physical silicon is being sent overseas to China, or to more business friendly states like AZ and TX. CA will probably sink $25B into that high speed rail they authorized in 2008, build it just past Ventura, and then cancel the project due to a lack of funds. Maybe I’m wrong and Jerry Brown has grown up since the 70s (I doubt it, but many hippies did mature in their thoughts through the years). But if Brown is still Governor Moonbean, CA is screwed. But don’t worry. Abortion will still be legal, everybody will have (Chinese made) solar cells or (Colorado made) wind turbines in their backyards, and the illegals will have drivers liscenses. And when you get down to it, these are the things that really matter. Rant over.
(unless you live want to live out in some boondock like Lancaster or Rivertucky)
Hey!
I live in San Bernardino……
Gahrie, you have my sincere condolensces. If it makes you feel any better, I live in Philadelphia, the place that the Fresh Prince of Bel Air had to flee from over some pickup basketball game dispute.
:-p
ROFL
Cartman, I’m going to stop responding to this kind of nonsense and just defer to you. You’ve hit the ball outta the park. Like, into McCovey Cove. Nice shot.
AML, I meant the class of Repubicans that came in with Newt, and now we just got even more of them with there is not a fucking A in your name Boehner…. who see compromise as a dirty word. Like I said, if you can’t compromise we are all screwed.
Also, you’ve got your chicken and egg backwards, no two wars without a tax increase and logical regulation of Wall Street means the economy doesn’t implode means no stimulus required.
And I think not being able to actually pass a budget for the past who knows how long in CA because the Republicans bitch about… well, whatever they want to bitch about, probably has something to do with the problem.
So your argument is that local government budget short falls are made up for by a state income tax and a state pay roll tax? That goes to the… state? Doesn’t help fix the local budget. Want decent schools, help the school districts pay for them.
There is no question that CA is in a heap of trouble. Certainly making local government impotent to raise the funds it needs on its own doesn’t help things actually get done sensibly.
But let me be clear, 8 years of Republican idiocy drove this country off a cliff financially. So I don’t see how it makes any sense to put them back in control of anything, including CA. Its like letting your teenage kid that got busted for drunk driving yesterday hop back in the car to go to a party tonight. Jerry Brown wouldn’t be my first choice for governor either. Actually Governor Action Hero seems to have done a reasonable job given the circumstances. My argument for why: he is a fucking moderate. Yeah, the whack job left and right field ideological nut jobs on both sides are going to screw us all over. We need moderates who will get the job done and do what needs to be done–we need people willing to manage not ideologues. The Ronald was bankrupting the country. H.W. Bush helped get the country back on track so did Clinton. To a degree the Republican congress helped because the Dems. in congress decided they weren’t going to let Clinton do anything unless every American also got a pony, a puppy, and a three tier birthday cake with little pink flowers. Which of course was stupid any myopic and accomplished nothing.
And I think not being able to actually pass a budget for the past who knows how long in CA because the Republicans bitch about… well, whatever they want to bitch about, probably has something to do with the problem.
1) California passed a budget last year.
2) California hasn’t passed a budget this year because the Democrats feel we don’t pay enough taxes, and Republicans feel we spend too much.
3) California government spending and hiring has continued to grow uncontrollably under Arnold, which was a great disappointment.
AML, I meant the class of Repubicans that came in with Newt, and now we just got even more of them with there is not a fucking A in your name Boehner…. who see compromise as a dirty word. Like I said, if you can’t compromise we are all screwed.
The last time we had a Congress that didn’t want to compromise with the president, we had six glorious years of prosperity in the late ’90s. You don’t want that?
Do you realize how much sense you’re not making here?
Also, you’ve got your chicken and egg backwards, no two wars without a tax increase and logical regulation of Wall Street means the economy doesn’t implode means no stimulus required.
Again, do you even attempt to understand some of the underlying issues at play? “Wall Street run amok” might make for good campaign fodder, but drilling down to the actual shenanigans that took place and what perverse incentives existed in the system, “logical regulation” wasn’t the issue. What was the issue was the Fed’s easy money policy, combined with policy incentives to increase lending to minorities and lower income families (encouraging more Alt-A and sub-prime mortgages), and regulation that had fallen behind the sophistication of things like derivatives, securities, and CDOs. Dodd, Schumer, and Frank are as much to blame for the mess as Greenspan and/or the Republicans.
Not to mention, you’re mixing water and oil here. The wars and taxes contribute to the size of the federal budget deficits, but they have very little impact on the actual economy. The economy did not collapse because taxes weren’t high enough to pay for two wars, it collapsed because the financial markets came to a grinding halt as a result of a faltering real estate market and super-confusing securities that made it hard to figure out who exactly was going to be left holding the empty bag when the merry-go-round finally ground to a halt.
And I think not being able to actually pass a budget for the past who knows how long in CA because the Republicans bitch about… well, whatever they want to bitch about, probably has something to do with the problem.
The budget gets passed every year. Late, but it gets passed. Besides, this is retarded, ass-backwards logic. The budgets are hard to pass because of the monstrous deficits and outrageous unfunded spending increases; it’s absurd to argue that the deficits occur because the budgets don’t get passed for an extra month or two!
So your argument is that local government budget short falls are made up for by a state income tax and a state pay roll tax? That goes to the… state? Doesn’t help fix the local budget. Want decent schools, help the school districts pay for them.
Let me repeat: the total tax burden on California residents is 3rd in the nation (and soon to become 2nd). What part of that don’t you comprehend?
Furthermore, you are completely ignorant of how the budgets work in California at the state and local levels. Revenue shortfalls at the local level occur because Sacramento raids their budgets. When you look at how much is spent per pupil in California, how much is spent on the bureaucracy, and how much revenue stays in the district vs. what was collected in the district, it becomes blindingly obvious the problem is structural and not because taxes are too low. There’s a reason Prop 22 passed on Tuesday, and it isn’t because local revenues are too low — it’s because the local cities and counties lose all their money to the giant sucking sound up in Sacramento.
Also, it’s damn hard to have decent schools when half the kids are ESL students or come from homes without a father. No amount of money is going to churn out columns of Harvard grads with that kind of starting point. Certainly not in a government monopoly system dominated by teachers unions, anyway.
But I understand: You’ve had a rough week, and you need to vent. I just hope at some point, when you calm down, you will realize just how moronic many of your statements have been.
So your answer then is? Poor people suck and need to go away?
dcl #32 – those are *your* words – AMLTrojan didn’t use at least one of them (even taken out of context) …
AMLTrojan #31 – sadly, it’s not just a sucking *sound* up in Sacramento … they continue to do it, and, for whatever “reason”, Tuesday’s votes just made it even easier for them to continue … SIGH !
Poor people suck and need to go away?
The sad reality is that most poor people do “go away” and enter the middle class.
However, we keep changing the meaning of what it means to be poor, so the poor are always with us. I’d love to see someone do a study comparing the definition of poverty over the years.
They could begin by going back to each year there was a census and compare the definition of poverty every ten years, adjusted for inflation to today’s dollars.
Then go into the census data for each census and compile a description of the average poor person, middle class person and rich person. This should include marital status, family size, possessions and income. Then compare these descriptions across time. I am willing to bet money that the average “poor” person today has a higher quality of life by every measure than the rich and middle class of 100 years ago.
I’d also love to see some “poor” families of 100 years ago tracked over time to see how their status changed.
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“Want decent schools, help the school districts pay for them.”
Yeah, until the State Supreme Court of the 9th Circus (intentional) Federal Appelate court decides that funding schools via property taxes is an unconstitutional denial of a child’s “right” to a good education, and all school funds end up in a huge pot at the state level anyways.
Besides, if we hadn’t passed Prop 13 in the 70s, we probably would have passed it in 2006, considering how property values pretty much doubled everywhere from the late 90s. My condo in Irvine increased over 40% in value over the course of 3 years! Just think of the average middle class CA family who bought some modest house or condo for $150K in 1999. Without the Prop. 13 1% cap, they probably would be paying 2.5% or 3% on that sucker (or $4,500 a year). By 2005 or 2006 that same house would probably have been worth $300K. So now that middle class family would be paying $9,000 in property taxes, on top of sales and income taxes. Half the population probably would have been forced out of their homes after reappraisals. Even gahrie’s double-wide in Rivertucky probably doubled in price! Ha ha ha!. Gahrie, you know I love you, but I just couldn’t resist. I’m sorry. Chalk it up to living in the OC for 3 1/2 years and learning horror stories about the bars and clubs that suddenly got 909’d out. Plus I then lived in Manhattan for 2 years, so it was inevitable that I became an elitist pr*ck.
Cartman – I believe that it remains true that the School District that spends the most per student capita is Washington, DC – and they are not even in the top *half* in terms of scholastic achievements …
And then, when the White House changed hands in 2008, the incoming First Family didn’t want their kids being educated beside riff-raff, so the Dems decided to “discontinue” the voucher system that allowed said riff-raff tobe able to afford to go to the good and *private* school to which the current First Pupils now go …
It has been known for a long time that, WHEN (not IF) you want good schools, you help interested parents to pay for them … just throwing money at a school doesn’t seem to make anywhere near as much of a positive difference …
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