Voter Hatred of Trump Out Weights a Positive Economy

Ten months ago the Republicans were confident that their give away to the rich tax cuts and a good economy would assure them of electoral success in the 2018 midterm elections. Now, the picture is something far from what was envisioned - Ted Cruz may lose his senate reelection bid to Beto O'Rourke and things at the House level are bleak.  Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan sold out average Americans and have happily assisted in normalizing the reprehensible.  Thankfully, voters for the most part realize this and polls indicate that 60% want a Democrat Congress to restrain Trump.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at how GOP bragging about the economy may do little to save many of them.  Here are highlights: 

The last time American consumers were this confident, September 11 was just a random date on the calendar. And it isn’t hard to see U.S. workers are feeling upbeat. In July, there were 659,000 more job openings than Americans looking for jobs. In August, the U.S. saw its best month of nominal wage growth in nine years. The percentage of Americans involuntarily stuck in part-time employment is smaller than it’s been for a decade. Unemployment is hovering near mid-century lows.

By all appearances, the Gods of the Macroeconomy are doing all they can to save the GOP’s congressional majorities. And they’re failing, miserably.

In recent weeks, as the “Trump economy” was reaching new heights, Donald Trump’s approval rating dipped below 40 percent in FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls for the first time since late February. Eight of the last eight live-interview surveys have found [Trump's] the president’s approval rating to be in decline. Meanwhile, Democrats have opened up a near-double-digit lead in the generic congressional ballot.

Overall, the American people’s assessment of [Trump] their president has been remarkably steady throughout the Trump era. Odds are that the recent decline is a fleeting reaction to John McCain’s funeral, or ephemeral headlines about White House dysfunction, or else, just a bit of statistical noise. 

But that still wouldn’t be good news for Trump or his party. The fact that [Trump's] the president’s approval rating has held steady (which is to say, has held steadily low) — amid improving economic conditions — suggests that the economy won’t save the GOP this November, no matter how good the good times get.

Of course, there’s no reason why this stimulus had to take the form of massive tax cuts for the wealthy and big increases in military spending. In fact, a couple trillion dollars in wage subsidies for the working class would have almost certainly produced bigger macroeconomic returns, as ordinary Americans spend far more of their disposable income than Robert Mercer does. Just because Trump’s policies have produced improvements in short-term economic performance does not mean that they were good policies.

And many voters appreciate this distinction. A CNN/SSRS poll released Monday found that 69 percent of American voters think the economy is “good” — but only 49 percent approve of the way Trump is managing the economy. And even voters who believe the economy is doing well — and credit Trump for that fact — don’t necessarily support the president or his party. Only 36 percent of the poll’s respondents approved of Trump’s overall job performance, down from 42 percent in August. A separate Washington Post-ABC News poll documents the same phenomenon . . . when asked whether they’d rather have a Democratic Congress “as a check on Trump” — or a Republican one that would “support Trump’s agenda” — 60 percent of voters opted for the former.

[C]urrent polling does suggest that there are firm limits on how much support the GOP can derive from improving material conditions. American voters simply hate Donald Trump more than they like the tightening labor market. It’s not the economy, stupid.

Wall Street Begins to Freak Out About Donald Trump

With some polls showing a tightening in the presidential race, Wall Street, which seems to have never believed Trump could be actually elected, is beginning to freak out at the thought of a Trump presidency and the disaster that it would unleash on the financial markets, international trade and a host of other issues.  The irony is that Trump claims incessantly that he is such an amazing businessman, yet by many reports he is being propped up by Russian monies from questionable sources and Wall Street sees him as not being up to the task of the presidency.  A scripted reality TV and running a super power are vastly different, not that the narcissistic Trump seem able to grasp the difference.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the growing angst and fear on Wall Street.  Here are highlights:

The U.S. stock market, seven years into an almost nonstop bull run, went on a wild ride last week: The Dow Jones Industrial Average swung between 100 and 200 points — up one day, down the next — on four separate days. There hasn’t been such a bout of volatility since late June, when the U.K.’s surprise vote to exit the European Union sent markets on a roller-coaster ride. Volatility is not just apparent in the stock market either. Wall Street strategists say it’s also cropping up in the bond and foreign-exchange markets.

Global markets are jittery about many things right now, but one fear seems to override all others: The polls in the presidential race have suddenly tightened, and Donald Trump might actually become president of the United States of America — with unknown, but possibly very negative, implications for everything from trade policy to foreign relations to monetary policy.

In short, a Trump presidency is the very definition of what markets hate: uncertainty. “Trump is widely considered to be reckless and Clinton is widely considered to be a friend to Wall Street,” explains Chris Irons, an analyst with the equity research firm GeoInvesting.

Société Générale analysts call it the “Trump factor.” They argue that the tightening of the polls between Trump and Clinton is a big reason for a sell-off in global bonds in September, which has led to the unease in equity markets, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Rates on both long-term Treasury and Japanese bonds have been rising since the polls started tightening, SocGen says.

A tightening of the race is normal, and might seem inevitable after the huge lead Clinton took following the Democratic National Convention and the Khizr Khan affair. But investors seemed to start selling when Trump took the lead in the crucial swing states of Ohio and Florida. 

In general, markets prefer a Clinton victory. In a new CNBC survey of economists, fund managers, and strategists, 53 percent think Clinton is better for the stock market than Trump — because she’s a known quantity, and a person whose ability to relate to foreign leaders is comforting. Only 26 percent of those surveyed think Trump is better for stocks, down from 32 percent the prior month. Some market prognosticators have suggested a win by Trump could send the stock market down at least 10 percent.

“I don’t know what the U.S. dollar is worth with a Trump victory. I don’t know what it does to foreign flows into the U.S.,” says Josh Brown, CEO of financial adviser Ritzholtz Wealth Management. “Are foreign corporations as desirous of owning US dollars with someone so erratic in the White House?”

[T]he concern on Wall Street is whether or not Trump knows what he is talking about — or even cares. In recent weeks, for example, he has been bashing Fed Chair Janet Yellen, blaming the Fed for creating a “false economy” and an “artificial stock market” in an interview with Reuters, saying the Fed needs to raise rates. But Trump also says the economy is a disaster. “Which is it?” asks Brown, noting that if the economy is truly a disaster, rates would need to stay low. (Trump also changes his mind a lot, which Wall Street doesn’t like. This spring, he said raising rates would be “scary.”)

Wall Street economists have long warned that a Trump presidency could increase the chances for a recession. In an August 25 research note, Citigroup chief economist Willem Buiter wrote that “a Trump victory could prolong and perhaps exacerbate policy uncertainty and deliver a shock (though perhaps short-lived) to financial markets. Tightening financial conditions and further rises in uncertainty could trigger a significant slowdown in U.S., but also global growth.” 

“When you lay out the possibilities of what can happen with Clinton, it’s far more predictable. When you lay out what could happen with Trump, we could be at war with Canada.”

Despite such fears, the ignorance embracing Christofascists, white supremacist and economically challenged white males are putting their hopes in a vulgar carnival barker.   

Hillary Clinton Offers Her Vision of a "Fairness Economy"

As noted in a prior post, while the Republican 2016 presidential clown car occupants preach an economic/tax plan that will aid the wealthy and vulture capitalists while further harming working Americans, Hillary Clinton has announced her vision for a "fairness economy" where wealth disparities would be less shocking and fewer Americans would be kicked to the gutter by the Republicans and their Christofascist party base.   The New York Times looks at Clinton's proposed economic policy and agenda.  Here are story highlights:

In the most comprehensive policy speech of her presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday presented her vision of a “growth and fairness economy,” an economic agenda intended to lift middle-class wages, expand social services, and increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans to combat a widening gap between rich and poor.

Clinton said “the defining economic challenge of our time” is raising incomes for the vast majority of Americans whose wages have remained virtually stagnant for 15 years as the costs of housing, college, child care and health care have soared.

The widespread feeling that the economic recovery has not benefited large parts of the population has helped frame the 2016 presidential race. But crafting an agenda that addressed income inequality without vilifying the wealthy has been a central challenge of Mrs. Clinton’s early candidacy, and for weeks she pored over policy briefings and academic papers and fielded advice from 200 policy experts who often offered divergent opinions.

Clinton decided to criticize by name three of her potential Republican rivals, adding Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin to the speech in addition to Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor. And considerable hand-wringing went into deciding how forcefully to speak about criminalizing financial industry executives before an audience made up largely of her Wall Street donors.

In the end, Mrs. Clinton did forcefully denounce fraud and manipulation of currency in the financial sector and said there could be “no justification or tolerance for this kind of criminal behavior,” language that some of her top Wall Street backers had been told of in advance. But Mrs. Clinton also appealed to the private sector and Wall Street to work with government to help lift middle-class wages through long-term investment in employees rather than short-term focus on quarterly results.

That vision may not appease the restless left of the Democratic Party and it may not assuage concerns among moderates and independents that Mrs. Clinton is a tax-and-spend liberal. But aides said the speech — even with all of the disparate voices that had weighed in to draft it — presented the clearest encapsulation yet of what Mrs. Clinton’s economic doctrine would look like, and the way in which it would be both similar to and distinct from the policies of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and President Obama.

[T]he message she will carry throughout the campaign, rested entirely on what economists refer to as “the great wage slowdown,” a problem that has persisted through recent administrations, both Democratic and Republican. It has only worsened as globalization and new technology put added pressures on middle- and low-income earners, and has been exacerbated by the rising costs of housing, education and retirement.

The problem has led to widespread frustration; two-thirds of Americans said they thought the distribution of money and wealth in this country should be more even, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in late May.

In her speech, Mrs. Clinton blamed Republicans, pointing to Mr. Walker, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rubio, specifically, for “trickle down” policies that “give more wealth to those at the top, by cutting their taxes and letting big corporations write their own rules.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics who has written extensively about inequality and is now an adviser to Mrs. Clinton, said “the speech showed a clear understanding that our economy is not working for most Americans” and that “we need to fundamentally rewrite the rules.”

To that end, Mrs. Clinton called for closing corporate loopholes, eliminating the “carried interest” loophole that allows some financiers to avoid paying millions in income taxes, and expanding the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill.

[S]he stopped short of endorsing policies championed by Mr. Sanders and others in the liberal wing of the party, including breaking up the big banks and a financial transaction tax, or a government fee on the sale or purchase of certain financial assets. 

Clinton did express her concerns about the emergence of a potentially bigger problem, so-called shadow banking, the system of hedge funds and algorithmic traders that has thrived in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis with little to no government regulation. “Too many of our major financial institutions are still too complex and too risky,” Mrs. Clinton said. 

[T]he economic vision Mrs. Clinton presented on Monday placed a strong emphasis on the issues she has long advocated, including helping women in the work force by advancing “fair scheduling, paid leave and earned sick days,” providing better access to early childhood education and addressing rising health care costs.

Hillary's Campaign Launch Plan

While Republican extremists continue to engage in spittle flecked rants about Benghazi and now claims that Hillary Clinton "wiped her server" of e-mails in order to stoke the hysteria among the Tea Party crowd (who are the real parasites in America as a coming post will layout), Clinton is said to be putting in place her campaign launch to "reintroduce her to Real America."  Obviously, no matter what Clinton does, Kool-Aid drinkers will not be won over.  But for the less extreme demographic, the plan is to show Hillary as more "down to earth" and the opposite of what her detractors would have her seem.  An article in Politico looks at the coming campaign launch.  Here are excerpts:

The time and location of Hillary Clinton’s long-anticipated campaign kickoff are closely guarded secrets among her scattered staff — but what she’ll do immediately after her announcement is coming into clearer focus.

Clinton, according to several people familiar with the still-in-flux planning process, will embark on a short tour that will almost certainly include Iowa — and perhaps other states — to interact with voters in a series of events, most of them in low-key settings.

“They know that they need to reintroduce Hillary to America,” said one Democratic insider familiar with the Clinton team’s thinking. “They know it makes no sense to think of this as, ‘Let’s start where she left off on the national stage.’ This is not a continuation of the Hillary we knew as secretary of state. That’s the focus of their energy.”

Clinton aides want to reintroduce her with “humility,” the source added. “They are making sure she understands there are no guarantees, and I think we’re going to see that in her posture and her words. I don’t think people are expecting that.”

Clinton staffers say the kickoff announcement is likely to be made during the first few weeks in April but stressed that no firm date has been chosen yet. Most expect that Clinton’s initial announcement will come via social media or by mass email, followed by events. The location of her first in-person event has yet to be chosen, they say.

The consensus among most Democrats POLITICO spoke to is that Clinton’s two most likely kickoff locations are New Hampshire, site of her stunning come-from-behind victory in 2008, or Iowa, a state Obama won handily, setting the stage for his nomination and presidency. New Hampshire would be a more comfortable choice for the Clintons, who view the state as a friendly bulwark for their brand of establishment Democratic politics. But Clinton’s team wants to convince voters in Iowa — — the nation’s first to vote in 2016 — that she values the battleground state, despite trashing its quirky caucus system eight years ago.

Another source of disagreement among Clinton supporters is what role Bill Clinton should play on announcement day.

“On the biggest day of your campaign, you have your family there and they’re there to support you like any spouse would,” said former Obama adviser Tommy Vietor, dismissing the idea that the former president should be treated any differently.

But other longtime Clinton supporters said Bill Clinton’s presence would confuse Hillary’s message.

“It should just be her. It should be her moment and Bill could overshadow her announcement and remind people of unnecessary baggage.”

Beyond the optics and the strategy for how to reintroduce Clinton, she still has to answer the most basic question of all: why run?

“We still don’t know why she wants to run,” said the operative. “That’s what she has to explain to the American people in her announcement. It’s not that it will establish whether Hillary Clinton is running for president, but why she is running for president.”

The key to Clinton’s success, strategists said, is charging out of the gate with the right populist economic message.

“She needs to explain why she is going to be the one to fight for the middle class and against income inequality, the one who can keep the healing of our economy going, which the other guys are going to unwind,” said Vietor, who also worked on Clinton’s book rollout last summer.

She needs to set up as her foil the Republicans “who want to get rid of Obamacare and go back to a time when they gave big tax cuts to rich people,” Vietor added. “Soon after, it’s going to turn into a slugfest and the announcement is often your best shot.”

Another challenge for Clinton: balancing how she talks about the historic nature of her campaign to be the first woman president with a strong economic message.  

Why Hillary Doesn't Want to Be Seen As Obama's Third Term

As the GOP presidential candidate clown car lurches along and Jeb Bush feels he need not discuss the disasters his idiot brother brought to the country, presumed Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton, is doing a rapid tap dance to avoid being seen as a vehicle for a third Obama term.  True, given her skin color, in the eyes of the most vociferous racists in the GOP base, in some ways she can't usher in a third Obama term, but the insane, spittle flecked reaction of the GOP base to anything tied to Obama cannot help bust cause Hillary concern with such a label.  A piece in Slate looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

A third Obama term. The vice president isn’t the only one who feels this way. This, of course, is what Republicans have been saying Hillary Clinton’s presidency would be for months. Biden didn’t introduce this idea, but it’s one thing for Republicans to say it, it’s another thing for the vice president to bolt it onto the eventual Democratic nominee.  

This is a standard attack. Indeed, Democrats are raising money today playing on the idea that Jeb Bush is a third George W. Bush term. The big obvious difference in 2016 is that Obama is much more popular right now than George Bush was at the end of his presidency. Bush’s approval rating was 28 percent in the 2008 election night exit poll. Right now Barack Obama’s approval rating is 47 percent in the Gallup poll, almost 20 points higher. If the economy continues to improve, that number could climb higher still and you could imagine Hillary Clinton saying, If by third term you mean another 59 months of continuous job growth and falling unemployment, then yes I’ll be a third term.

He [David Axlerod] wrote to Sen. Obama in 2008: “When incumbents step down, voters rarely opt for a replica of what they have, even when that outgoing leader is popular. They almost always choose change over the status quo.” This is a different formulation of what President Obama was talking about recently when he said voters wanted “that new car smell.” Clinton is associated with the status quo even more because she has the Obama years and the Clinton years attached to her.

Given this view, simple distinctions between Obama and Clinton on policy or positioning won’t be enough to break the third-term lock. . . .  She is probably, for example, a better deal-maker and would work harder at connecting with Republicans, but that’s hardly a vast distinction that makes voter sit up. Gender is an obvious distinction, but that’s not the basis for a presidential platform.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons Clinton is working so hard to come up with a message that is so unique and powerful it looks new. Amy Chozick of the New York Times reports that Clinton has consulted more than 200 experts in her effort to craft an economic message. She’s not just trying to come up with a policy that creates distance, but one that achieves escape velocity.

If the public doesn’t think there’s any big difference between what she’s offering and what President Obama would offer in a third term, Clinton’s efforts will look like Third Term Monte, a sleight of hand confidence game.

The Republican Case Against Republican Voodoo Economics

One of the main economic mantras of the Republican Party is that cutting taxes somehow miraculously boosts the economy.  The approach hasn't worked for years now and, worse yet, it ignores the need to rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure and the increased need for revenue to fund the needs of America's exploding number of senior citizens.  Sadly, being in touch with objective reality is not a trait of today's GOP which seems obsessed with doing nothing but prostituting itself to the Christofacists and unwashed masses of the Tea Party.  A column in the New York Times looks at the revolt among some conservative thinkers that are realizing the the GOP's economics is nothing less than voodoo economics and that change is needed.  Here are some column highlights:

After the 2012 presidential election, key Republicans began to criticize their party’s opposition to immigration reform and gay rights. But now party reformers are questioning something much more central: free-market orthodoxy.

In an article in the May 26 edition of The Week — “What conservatives don’t understand about the modern U.S. economy” — James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute has issued an economic challenge to the right from the right.

Pethokoukis’s piece is an assault on the economic manifesto that was put out on May 16 by a conservative group that included three icons of the right: Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, Senators from Texas and Utah, respectively, and Ed Meese, who served as Attorney General under Ronald Reagan.

“This tired GOP sequel stumbles in its macroeconomic analysis,” Pethokoukis writes, noting that the manifesto contains “no suggestion the economy faces longer-term problems that predate Obamanomics.” Pethokoukis argues that the manifesto’s anti-tax rhetoric fails to grasp that “coping with America’s rising elderly population will require a higher national tax burden in coming decades even with a reformed entitlement system.”

Pethokoukis is one of a number of conservative analysts who over the past three years have undergone something of an intellectual conversion. Michael Gerson, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and now a Washington Post columnist, and Peter J. Wehner, also a Bush speechwriter and now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, published “A Conservative Vision of Government” in the winter 2014 edition of the journal National Affairs. Their essay is an attack on the idea cherished by many Tea Party activists that all (or nearly all) government action and intervention is bad.

Gerson and Wehner criticize the domination of Republican economic policy by “rhetorical zeal and indiscipline in which virtually every reference to government is negative, disparaging, and denigrating.

Conservative reformers have sparked interest on the left, but some liberal commentators remain distrustful of the willingness of intraparty insurgents to seriously challenge Tea Party commitments.

E.J. Dionne Jr., writing in the most recent issue of Democracy, contends that conservative reformers on the right “are far too timid in their approaches to economic injustice and to the structural problems in the economic system.” Jonathan Chait takes a harder line in New York magazine: “The reformers are massively understating the obstacles before them. There are reasons Republicans have fought so hard to claw back subsidies for the least fortunate. Active philosophical opposition to redistribution is one. A general detachment from the poor is another. The unforgiving zero-sum math of budgets, which means a dollar spent on helping a Walmart mom is a dollar in higher taxes or lower defense or politically painful cuts in retirement benefits, is a third. I do think the Republican reformers can nudge their party to a better, or at least less terrible, place.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote that “the differences between white working-class independents and the GOP’s conservative base are becoming too substantial to ignore. The GOP base voter believes the deficit is as large a problem as the economy; the white working-class independent does not. The GOP base voter believes cutting entitlements is necessary to cut the deficit and that taxes on the rich should not be raised; the white working-class independent disagrees.”

Conservatism, as currently construed, faces the risk of irrelevance if it fails to address the consequences of globalization and automation, two of the most powerful forces driving the hollowing out of the middle class job market.

David Frum, still another former speechwriter for George W. Bush, was fired by A.E.I. in 2010 after sharply attacking Republican refusals to negotiate with Democrats on Obamacare in March of 2010. “We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat,” Frum declared. 

A major obstacle facing conservative reformers is the continued support for the Tea Party within Republican ranks. An April survey by the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Republicans, and those who lean Republican, who agree with the Tea Party is three times larger than the percentage who disagree, 33 to 11, with 55 percent saying they have no opinion.

These hurdles leave reformers in a difficult position: to prove their case, they need their party to fail. A Democratic victory in 2016 would open the door for Republican insurgents and provide the kind of credibility essential in politics. But conservative mutineers cannot afford to be seen or heard rooting for defeat, even if that’s where their hearts lie.

I agree that only repeated failure at the polls may - and I stressed the word may - bring the GOP around.  Given the insanity and worship of ignorance which are the hallmarks of both the Christofascist and Tea Party, even losing repeatedly at the polls may not force them to accept objective reality.

Homophobia Costs India An Estimated $31 Billion Annually

I regularly state that homophobia carries an economic cost, especially when the homophobia is government sponsored.  It is a reality that the Republican Party of Virginia refuses to want to hear and it does cost jobs and lost business relocations and/or expansions.  Just ask Arizona Governor Jan Brewer about the economic shit storm that SB1062 brought down on her state.  But the costs apply to entire nations as well.  Some of these anti-gay countries seem to reveal in their ignorance and backwardness - Uganda and Nigeria are two such examples.  But India is another matter as it seeks to become a world economic power.  Yet, a new World Bank study has found that India's homophobia which is back in the forefront is costing the nation $31 billion - yes, billion with a "B."  BuzzFeed has details.  Here are some excerpts:

Homophobia has an annual cost to India of $31 billion or more, according to a draft report presented Wednesday at a forum at the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

This number is just a rough estimate, since economists lack the data to make a firm calculation. But the fact that the question is being asked by an institution like the World Bank is more significant than the number itself. If development institutions decide to make LGBT rights a priority — and could shape the billions of dollars that flow through them every year — LGBT rights advocates could have far more powerful allies than those they’ve won in institutions devoted to human rights.

The World Bank isn’t the first such institution at the table: The United States Agency for International Development (US AID), the United Nations Development Program, and the development agencies of several European governments already have been working on LGBT rights. But the World Bank’s size and reach mean it has the power to shift the global development agenda — it lends more than $35 billion annually, and serves as an important research hub for the development community.

Having a discussion about LGBT inclusion at the World Bank “may have a huge impact … for mainstreaming the issue,” said Luiz Loures, assistant secretary general of the United Nations and deputy executive director of UNAIDS, who traveled from India to participate in the panel discussion, which was moderated by BuzzFeed. Organizations like his only get so far by making the human rights and public health case; people like Loures believe framing the issue in terms of dollars could tip the balance. 

[T]he Indian economy lost the equivalent of anywhere between 0.1 and 1.7 percent of its GDP. This is likely a “conservative” figure, Badgett said, and it is significant even in this range. “You reduce GDP by that much and you call it a recession,” she remarked.

Badgett factored in several ways that homophobia costs a society. The most visible may be increased health costs: If stigma keeps LGBT people from accessing health services, there may have higher rates of HIV and AIDS. But stigma also can contribute to a greater burden of depression and other mental illness, which can make LGBT workers even less productive. And if discrimination keeps LGBT people from working or forces them into lower-paying jobs, the economy loses the full value of their labor.
 

[I]t is still an open question of how far the Bank is ready to go in embracing this agenda. On February 27, the Bank suspended a $90 million health care loan to Uganda just after it enacted a bill imposing up to a life sentence for homosexuality and criminalizing LGBT advocacy. The Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, also published an op-ed in The Washington Post declaring that discrimination against LGBT people — like other forms of discrimination — are “bad for people and societies” and “bad for economies.”  

 “Whether you want it or not, the World Bank … has an impact on the lives of sexual minorities” in the countries in which it invests. “Working with the World Bank does not mean adopting everything that the World Bank is doing. But it means taking basically the share [that] belongs to you within the World Bank[’s work].”

New Washington Post Poll: Obama 51% and Romney 47%

While polls on where Virginia voters fall are all over the place many believe that Virginia's electoral votes will be decided by Northern Virginia ("NORVA") which has a disproportionate number of of, one of my brother-in-laws  government employees.  Indeed one over paid. of my brothers-in-law is such an employee and here's what many government employees are hearing from the Romney/Ryan campaign: (a) there are too may federal government employees and (b) that they are overpaid.  In contrast, Obama has been supportive of government employees even as he has admitted that smart, cost effective spending cuts need to be made.  Guess who these voters will for for.  Hint, it's not Mitt Romney.    Here a re highlights on a piece in the Washington Post that suggest that Barack Obama is again expanding his lead in Virginia:

President Obama is clinging to a slender four-point lead over Republican Mitt Romney in Virginia as both sides ramp up already aggressive campaigns in the crucial battleground state, according to a new Washington Post poll.

Obama outpolled Romney, 51 to 47 percent, among likely Virginia voters, although he lost the clearer 52-to-44 percent advantage he held in mid-September.
 
Unlike in the Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll, Obama still has an edge when Virginia voters are asked who better understands people’s financial problems, and he has not fallen behind a surging Romney on the question of who would better handle the national economy. Nor has Obama lost significant ground among self-identified independents in Virginia, as he has nationally.

Virginia, like Ohio and Florida, is particularly critical for Romney, whose path to the White House would be difficult without the state’s electoral votes.  Both candidates see a route to victory in Virginia. Obama is counting heavily on his advantages among African American, Latino and female voters as well as on his support in Washington’s inner suburbs and the urban centers of Richmond and Hampton Roads.

[I]n Virginia, unlike in national polls, Romney does not have a clear lead on the economy, and he continues to trail on other issues. Romney trails by 10 points on the question of who would better manage the future of Medicare; by 13 points on who better understands Americans’ economic problems; and by 12 points on who is better equipped to manage international affairs.

Romney has taken a 13-point lead on the issue in Washington’s outer suburbs, including Loudoun, Fauquier and Prince William counties. In the inner suburbs, Obama continues to hold a wide lead.

In Virginia, contrary to the most recent national numbers, Obama has an edge on enthusiasm: Among his backers, 70 percent are “very enthusiastic” about his candidacy, compared with 56 percent of those who back Romney. But Obama’s supporters appear to need more of a nudge than Romney’s do. Ninety percent of Democrats contacted by Obama said they are “absolutely certain” they’ll vote, compared with 82 percent who had not been contacted; among Republicans, more than nine in 10 said they are certain to vote regardless of whether they had been contacted.

I hope this polling is accurate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it would confirm that Virginians as a whole are not as stupid and gullible as Roimney believes them to be.

Romney's Sham Plan for Prosperity

Let's be honest.  Over the last 18+ months, Mitt Romney has shown himself to be a constant flip flopper - or shape shifter as some have begun to describe him.   And his plan for the future of the country? Vague statements that seem to support all kinds of spending yet a tax plan that would have to create a new form of math to make the numbers remotely balance.  All of this will supposedly lead the nation to renewed "prosperity."  Perhaps for some, but not for most of us.  Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has a column in today's New York Times that looks at the sham Romeny/Ryan economic plan.  Here are excerpts:

Mitt Romney has been barnstorming the country, telling voters that he has a five-point plan to restore prosperity. And some voters, alas, seem to believe what he’s saying. So President Obama has now responded with his own plan, a little blue booklet containing 27 policy proposals. How do these two plans stack up?

Well, as I’ve said before, Mr. Romney’s “plan” is a sham. It’s a list of things he claims will happen, with no description of the policies he would follow to make those things happen. “We will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget,” he declares, but he refuses to specify which tax loopholes he would close to offset his $5 trillion in tax cuts

Mr. Romney is faking it. His real plan seems to be to foster economic recovery through magic, inspiring business confidence through his personal awesomeness. But what about the man he wants to kick out of the White House? 

Well, Mr. Obama’s booklet comes a lot closer to being an actual plan. Where Mr. Romney says he’ll achieve energy independence, never mind how, Mr. Obama calls for concrete steps like raising fuel efficiency standards. Mr. Romney says, “We will give our fellow citizens the skills they need,” but says nothing about how he’ll make that happen, pivoting instead to a veiled endorsement of school vouchers; Mr. Obama calls for specific things like a program to recruit math and science teachers and partnerships between businesses and community colleges. 

It’s disappointing, to be sure. But a slow job is better than a snow job. Mr. Obama may not be as bold as we’d like, but he isn’t actively misleading voters the way Mr. Romney is. Furthermore, if we ask what Mr. Romney would probably do in practice, including sharp cuts in programs that aid the less well-off and the imposition of hard-money orthodoxy on the Federal Reserve, it looks like a program that might well derail the recovery and send us back into recession. 

And you should never forget the broader policy context. Mr. Obama may not have an exciting economic plan, but, if he is re-elected, he will get to implement a health reform that is the biggest improvement in America’s safety net since Medicare. Mr. Romney doesn’t have an economic plan at all, but he is determined not just to repeal Obamacare but to impose savage cuts in Medicaid. So never mind all those bullet points. Think instead about the 45 million Americans who either will or won’t receive essential health care, depending on who wins on Nov. 6.

The question remains ultimately whether or not a majority of voters are uninformed enough - or stupid enough - to believe Romney's deliberate lies.

Gold, God and Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan is, in my opinion, many things.  And being an honest person is not one of them.  In addition to his efforts to now lie about his horrific anti-woman record, Ryan holds disturbing economic beliefs that show his feigned religiosity to be a lie as well.  Here's why.  Ryan claims to be a devoted Catholic yet champions a budget pan that kicks the poor and unfortunate to the curb with not even a twinge of remorse or apparently any thought of the Gospel message.  Likewise, he idolizes the writings of Ayn Rand which are in many ways 180 degrees the opposite of what he claims to believe religiously and which deny the existence of God and which uphold abortion rights.  Indeed, one has to wonder whether Ryan is schizophrenic or a dissembling liar.  As for his far right supporters, they are either ignorant morons or ultimately driven by greed and a self centered focus that is disgusting.  Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that looks at Ryan and his warped values.  Here are excerpts:

So far, most of the discussion of Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican nominee for vice president, has focused on his budget proposals. But Mr. Ryan is a man of many ideas, which would ordinarily be a good thing.  In his case, however, most of those ideas appear to come from works of fiction, specifically Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.” 

For those who somehow missed it when growing up, “Atlas Shrugged” is a fantasy in which the world’s productive people — the “job creators,” if you like — withdraw their services from an ungrateful society.  .   .   .   .   True, in recent years, he has tried to downplay his Randism, calling it an “urban legend.” It’s not hard to see why: Rand’s fervent atheism — not to mention her declaration that “abortion is a moral right” — isn’t what the G.O.P. base wants to hear. 

But Mr. Ryan is being disingenuous. In 2005, he told the Atlas Society, which is devoted to promoting Rand’s ideas, that she inspired his political career: “If I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.” He also declared that Rand’s work was required reading for his staff and interns. 

And the Ryan fiscal program clearly reflects Randian notions. As I documented in my last column, Mr. Ryan’s reputation for being serious about the budget deficit is completely undeserved; his policies would actually increase the deficit. But he is deadly serious about cutting taxes on the rich and slashing aid to the poor, very much in line with Rand’s worship of the successful and contempt for “moochers.”

In pushing for draconian cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and other programs that aid the needy, Mr. Ryan isn’t just looking for ways to save money. He’s also, quite explicitly, trying to make life harder for the poor — for their own good. In March, explaining his cuts in aid for the unfortunate, he declared, “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.”  Somehow, I doubt that Americans forced to rely on unemployment benefits and food stamps in a depressed economy feel that they’re living in a comfortable hammock.

But wait, there’s more: “Atlas Shrugged” apparently shaped Mr. Ryan’s views on monetary policy, views that he clings to despite having been repeatedly, completely wrong in his predictions. 

Does any of this matter? Well, if the Republican ticket wins, Mr. Ryan will surely be an influential force in the next administration — and bear in mind, too, that he would, as the cliché goes, be a heartbeat away from the presidency. So it should worry us that Mr. Ryan holds monetary views that would, if put into practice, go a long way toward recreating the Great Depression. 

And, beyond that, consider the fact that Mr. Ryan is considered the modern G.O.P.’s big thinker. What does it say about the party when its intellectual leader evidently gets his ideas largely from deeply unrealistic fantasy novels?

How Romney Plays Neanderthal Conservatives.

While I unfortunately believe that Mitt Romney DOES believe some of the ultra-far right bullshit that passes as reasoned policy positions and thoughtful analysis in the Christianist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party, David Frum - no flaming liberal by any means - argues that Romney, in fact, rejects the batshitery but plays the cretins on the GOP base so that they believe he agrees with them.  Some might call what Romney does with these folks lying, but I'm sure he'd describe his gamesmanship as merely being "misinterpreted."  In a column Frum illustrates how Romney is playing the GOP base for fools.  Here are excerpts:

Gov. Romney is getting much better at inviting hard-core conservatives to believe that he agrees with them, even when he obviously does not. For example:

It's an article of faith among U.S. conservatives that the countries of southern Europe are in trouble—not because of the Euro currency—but because of excess public spending. It's an article of faith that the U.S. is in imminent danger of following.

On the other hand, the professional economists from whom Mitt Romney gets his advice believe neither of these things. And it's a fair bet that Romney inwardly agrees with his economists more than his base. 

Now carefully read this extract from Romney's interview yesterday with Jim Geraghty of NRO:

There is also a recognition in this country that what Greece and Italy and Spain are facing could conceivably be brought home to us. The recognition that you reach a point where the world decides that your obligations are perhaps not going to be met, or that they will be inflated away -- in which case people will ask for higher interest rates, and you'll find yourself in a doom loop.

That vivid phrase, "doom loop" gets the headline—and nicely obscures the way in which Romney has otherwise popped open the escape hatches from conservative doctrine.

"There is also a recognition in this country" nicely elides the question whether Romney himself believes in any parallel between America's situation and those of Greece, Spain, and Italy.

Can he keep it up? He may not have to. The conservative base's will to believe is a tenacious thing, and right now Mitt Romney is its primary beneficiary.

Can the USA Learn From Argentina?

Admittedly, since the beginning of the 20th century when it was one of the wealthiest nations on earth Argentina has not exactly been exemplar of sound fiscal and government policies. But over the last decade, Argentina - which is light years ahead of the USA on delivering full legal equality to its LGBT citizens and pushing religion out of the civil laws - seemingly has learned from its past disasters and is moving toward prosperity by employing exactly the opposite policies now championed by the GOP demagogues and the Tea Party/Christianist mental cases. Could the USA learn from a country long considered a basket case? It would seem so - not that America ever seems to want to admit that other nations might have ideas and policies that it might be wise to emulate. An op-ed in the New York Times looks at the last decade in Argentina (Argentine President Kirchner is pictured above) and how the USA seems headed 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Here are some excerpts:

ARGENTINA may seem like one of the last countries on earth to offer lessons for dealing with economic malaise. Once the eighth-largest economy in the world, it steadily slid through the 20th century, thanks to decades of repressive dictatorships and inconsistent market experiments.

That, at least, is the Argentina people know. Since then, it has performed an economic U-turn — an achievement largely unnoticed outside Latin America, but one that President Obama and Congress should look to for inspiration.

Argentina is not without problems, but its recent economic record speaks for itself: the economy has grown by over 6 percent a year for seven of the last eight years, unemployment has been cut to under 8 percent today from over 20 percent in 2002, and the poverty level has fallen by almost half over the last decade.

Argentina has regained its prosperity partly out of dumb luck: a commodity price boom has vastly benefitted this soy, corn and wheat producer. But it has also prospered thanks to smart economic measures. The government intervened to keep the value of its currency low, which boosts local industry by making Argentina’s exports cheaper abroad while keeping foreign imports expensive. It then taxed those imports and exports, using the money to pay for a New Deal-like public works binge, increasing government spending to 25 percent of G.D.P. today from 14 percent in 2003.

It has also strengthened its social safety net: the Universal Child Allowance, started in 2009 with support from both the ruling party and the opposition, gives 1.9 million low-income families a monthly stipend of about $42 per child, which helps increase consumption.

The results have also paid off politically: President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner recently won about 50 percent of the vote in an open primary against nine other presidential candidates.

Why have Argentines embraced bigger government? In part because the preceding era showed how poorly austerity measures — the sort now being pushed by conservatives in the United States — promote growth.

Of course, Argentina is far from perfect: . . . . But Argentina still offers valuable lessons. For one thing, extreme cost-cutting during a stagnant economic period will only inhibit growth. And government spending to promote local industry, pro-job infrastructure programs and unemployment benefits does not turn a country into a kind of Soviet parody. It puts money in the pockets of average citizens, who then spend it and spur the economy.

Argentina is hardly a perfect parallel for the United States. But the stark difference between its austere policies and low growth of the late 1990s and the pro-government, high-growth 2000s offers a test case for how to get an economy moving again. Washington would do well to pay attention.

Will the USA learn anything from Argentina? I doubt it. Just like the USA's military thought it could "win" in Afghanistan even though no power has done so in 2,000 years, I suspect the USA will continue failed policies that will only make the economy worse.