What’s new Today
Story #1 has Romney’s advantage as Obama moves further to the
left. #2 shows the latest Rasmussen Poll
with Romney up by 7%. #3 has a
heartwarming story for the book The Real Romney. #4 is an interesting article on government
regulations. #5 looks at left wing
nationalization of industries in Argentina.
#6 looks at the improvements in Wisconsin before the recall. #7 looks at unionism and reality.
Today’s thoughts
Wisconsin
to the general election may be analogous to the Spanish Civil War to World War II
that is a preview of what is to come.
Bill Clinton
thought so little of President Obama — mocking
him as an “amateur” — that he pressed his wife last summer to quit her job
as secretary of state and challenge him in the primaries, a new book claims. It’s worth reading about here.
The polls are starting to turn significantly against the Democrats. Rasmussen has Obama down by 7% and Scott
Walker up by 5% in Wisconsin. This
shouldn’t be a surprise. Unemployment is
above 8% even the way the government figures it and more and more Americans are
dropping out of the labor force.
1. Romney’s advantage and Obama’s
dilemma
…Romney in this process has one
advantage: Obama had to move left on
policies and turn up the left-friendly rhetoric to get back his base, thereby
potentially turning off critical moderate voters in swing states. Romney
essentially (and ironically) has been able to keep his tone and positions
consistent. He remains the “can fix it” businessman who is conservative in
temperament but not ideologically driven. In other words, Romney hasn’t sacrificed his appeal to moderates while getting back his
base, in large part because between Hilary Rosen and Obama’s “evolution” on gay
marriage, his base came to him.
When you see a Web ad or hear an
interview with one of the candidates, you should imagine how, for example, an
under-employed worker in Ohio, a mother in Florida, a financial adviser in the
Philly suburbs or a Hispanic small businessman in New Mexico would react. Those
may be the voters in the sorts of places who haven’t already lined up with a
candidate. They are influenced not only by the economy, but also by intangibles
(Is this guy responsible? Could I stand hearing that one for four years?)
Given that those are the people in play, Romney has the advantage for now in
focusing on the issues those particular voters care about. He also has an
effective argument that on the issue they care most about, the economy, the president isn’t up to the job. Obama’s
problem with these voters — who are indifferent to or slightly hostile to the
idea of gay marriage, don’t much like a lot of name-calling and have been
hobbled by the anemic recovery — remains: What
is he going to say to them?
At some point, if Romney clears the bar that Republican
challengers usually face (He’s not a nut, right?) Obama may find it difficult
to devise an effective appeal to the most critical voters of all. If you think
about it, just about everything Obama has done over the last year has been
designed to corral the left. Now, what’s
he going to do to win the voters who matter most?
The
personal endorsement of gay marriage is not a winning move by Obama and the way
he couched it, it appears he knows it.
It’s his personal opinion and it’s really a state’s issue so what it
turns out to be is an attempt to satisfy the left that expected much more from
him when he was elected in 2008. He’s
trying to goose up their voting numbers, but as this article points out, in
doing so he is alienating the critical part of the voting public.
2.
Romney reaches
50% in Rasmussen Poll
Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll has Mitt Romney holding a seven-point lead over
President Obama, with a 3 percent margin of error.
This is the first time Romney has reached the 50% level of support and is his largest lead ever over the president. It comes a week after a disappointing jobs report that raised new questions about the state of the economy.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/299692/rasmussen-romney-50-percent-obama-43-percent-noah-glyn
We are still six months away, but this doesn’t surprise me. IF we were electing most popular, Obama might win. But President requires more than being a nice guy.
3. The Real Mitt Romney
It was shaping up to be a hard Christmas for Mark and Sheryl
Nixon. They had recently moved their family to the Boston area. . .and didn’t
know many people. And then. . .they got the kind of phone call every parent
dreads. [Their sons] Rob and Reed had been driving back from a youth gathering
at the Mormon meeting house. . .Shortly after leaving the parking lot, Reed
lost control of the red Oldsmobile minivan. The car sideswiped a utility pole,
struck two trees, and. . .flipped over. . . .In a flash, the two Nixon boys, standouts on the high school cross-country team,
became quadriplegics. . . .
The family suddenly needed a major addition to their house.
They needed a special van to transport their sons. Their financial and
emotional burdens were vast. Shortly before the holidays. . .Mark Nixon, a professor of accounting at
Bentley University outside Boston, got a call at his office. It was Mitt
Romney. He said he wanted to help. Would they be home on Christmas eve?
That morning. . .the Nixons opened their door to find not
just Mitt but Ann Romney and their sons. They held large boxes. Inside were a
massive stereo system for Rob. . .and a VCR for Reed. They’d also brought Reed
a check, not knowing what else to get him. The Romneys stayed for a while.
Their sons helped set up Rob’s new stereo. “What a Christmas surprise for the
boys,” Sheryl wrote in her journal at the time.
The Nixons were floored. They shared a faith with Romney but didn’t really know him – they
weren’t strangers, but neither were they friends. At that point, Romney
held no formal leadership position in the Mormon church. He bore no direct
ecclesiastical obligation to help. . . .What impressed the Nixons more than
anything was that Mitt and Ann, despite their own packed holiday calendars,
made a point of delivering the gifts themselves, spending time with family,
and, by bringing their children with them, leading
by example. . . .
That wasn’t all. Romney
had also told Mark not to worry about Rob’s or Reed’s college education; he
would pay for it. The Nixons, in the end, didn’t need to help. But Romney
continued to quietly lend his hand. He participated in a 5K road race and
fund-raiser for Rob and Reed at Bentley the next spring. He contributed
substantial financial gifts toward golf tournament fund-raisers in subsequent
years.
With the
crumbling bullying story of a teenage Mitt Romney, here’s a real story related
in the book The Real Romney.
4. Government regulations: Do Barbers really need a license?
DO BARBERS REALLY NEED A LICENSE? Dick
Carpenter and Lisa Knepper of the Institute for Justice discuss their
jaw-dropping licensing report in the Wall Street Journal today. Among
their findings: Cosmetologists
need, on average, 10 times as many days to fulfill their educational and
training requirements (372) than emergency medical technicians (33). In
fact, 66 ...
Whenever
you discuss regulations with liberals they immediately accuse you have wanting
to poison the air and water and kill children.
Perhaps we simply want a chance to get a cheap haircut.
5. Nationalization—so how’s Argentina doing?
…Among the first moves Néstor Kirchner, Ms Fernández’s late
husband, made on becoming president in 2003 was the renationalisation of Correo
Argentino, the country’s postal service. At the time this was seen as a swipe
at Grupo Macri, the concession holder, because the son of its boss had become
an opposition politician. It turned out to be the start of a trend: Kirchner later took over the railways, a
radio-spectrum operator, a shipyard and a water company. Since succeeding
him in 2007, Ms Fernández has netted
bigger fish: before grabbing YPF last month, she had expropriated Argentina’s
private pension funds and its flagship airline.
Under public
control, the financial results of these firms range from mediocre to dismal.
In the past year the government has spent nearly $3 billion to prop them up,
and the official budget suggests that figure will double in 2012. AySA, the
water company, and Aerolíneas Argentinas, the airline, have been particularly
needy: they cost the state $972m and $840m last year. Though the firms lost
money in private hands as well, their former owners say they struggled only
because regulators subjected them to strict price controls.
The
government has tried to downplay the importance of the losses by arguing that
nationalisations were intended to provide public services, not to make money. But the companies have served their customers no better
than they have the treasury. Buenos Aires and its suburbs have only three
waste-water treatment plants for 10m residents, and often suffer flash floods
that drench entire avenues. Just 47% of households in the region have sewerage,
half the share in greater Santiago, Chile’s capital.
Meanwhile, only 56%
of Aerolíneas Argentinas’ flights run on time, and the company sits near
the bottom of most industry rankings. On its website Mariano Recalde, its
boss—a former labour lawyer whose father is a pro-government congressman—vaunts
its change of livery, which now features the national flag’s sky blue. “The
Argentine colours rise with every take-off of an Aerolíneas flight,” he writes….
I
especially liked the quote “The government has tried to downplay the
importance of the losses by arguing that nationalisations were intended to
provide public services, not to make money.”
They’ve certainly succeeded in not making money. Single payer healthcare would provide similar
results.
6. Wisconsin’s back from the brink
Wisconsin has pulled back from the brink of fiscal
insolvency after Governor Scott Walker’s collective bargaining and budget
reforms, despite doomsday warnings of fiscal disaster.
Neighboring Illinois, whose Democratic governor opted for
tax hikes, has not fared as well.
Wisconsin
voters appear happy with Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin’s economic
resurgence. Gov. Walker got 626,538 votes in his
May 8 uncontested recall primary, more than the two main Democratic candidates
combined.
That total
is also more than all the GOP candidates combined in the contested 2010 GOP
primary, as well as the highest voter turnout for a gubernatorial primary in 60
years.
Unemployment
has dropped from 7.7 percent to 6.8 percent since Walker took office. Unemployment in neighboring Illinois, however, only
dropped below 9 percent in March—the first time it has done so in two years.
Wisconsin
property taxes have fallen for the first time in 12 years. The state’s adult debt per capita is roughly $687.
Illinois’ is about $853.
The two states took divergent paths in 2010 in dealing with
looming fiscal insolvency. While Walker pushed spending cuts and public sector
reforms, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and the state legislature floated $7 billion
in new taxes, including a 67 percent individual income tax increase and a 46
percent corporate tax increase….
Things are
looking good for Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election. The latest poll had him up 50-45 percent over
his Democratic challenger.
7. Union Members Better Wake Up - Fast!
Americans need to be reschooled or in the case of young
public school students schooled for the first time on what a business is. It is not a charity but is generally established primarily to make a profit.
If it is successful it will be able to hire and pay good wages to hard workers.
If it isn't it will either have to cut expenses or shut down.
One would think that in this horrible economy, those
employed with a halfway decent job would hold on to it and yet union members are foolishly electing to
strike thinking that union leadership have their best interest at heart.
Last week,
Caterpillar workers went out on strike for better wages and health care after
negotiations fell apart. I would
suggest that they do their homework and look up the case of the Stella D'Oro
factory workers in the Bronx and wake up to reality.
I watched an HBO documentary, "No Contract, No Cookies," which chronicled the 11-month
old strike of workers protesting their unfair wages. The company owners maintained that the hourly wages of $18 to $22 an
hour and nine weeks of paid leave made the factory unprofitable and demanded
significant reductions in wages and benefits.
That's when the union bosses stepped in and organized a hard
fought strike with picket lines throughout the fall, winter and spring as the
recession deepened.
The union
sued the company and won their case in court, winning the right to return to
work. Not one worker broke ranks and the
documentary showed the glee on their faces as they learned the result of their
suit. Happy ending? Not quite.
Soon after
they returned, the owners closed the factory….
To the
more left wing reader, the answer seems clear, the government should force the
owners to keep the factory going even if it is losing money. To anyone with any education that idea only
works for government jobs.
No comments:
Post a Comment