The Blue State

Where has the real campaign news gone?

Our economy is in the tank.  Gas prices are at an all-time high.  Some analysts think that gas might reach $10 a gallon in the near future, boosted by a declining dollar and an uncontrollable spike in demand.  Consumer confidence is at a five-year low.  This is the second recession under President Bush, yet all the 43rd president can do is blame Congress.  And this is just on the domestic front.  Don't even get me started on our mess abroad.

With all this happening, we are perhaps in the middle of the most important presidential campaign in a generation.  There are issues to be discussed.  Yet, all the media seems to be focused on now is Reverend Wright.  The Obama Campaign is stuck in a corner.  Today on the campaign trail, Obama promised yet another big press conference on Reverend Wright, following his former pastor's address on Sunday in front of the NAACP.

Why can't all this stop?  The media does a great job of putting candidates into a box.  They have with John McCain as well -- portraying him as an old, angry man.  Or Obama, a fringe liberal who attended an anti-American church.  So the media finds any evidence to back up their preexisting view of a candidate and reports it.  Hardly do they report contradicting stories, as if to tell the American public, "I know you can't handle nuance, so let's make this easy for you by reporting only one side of the story."  Like today, the media is ignoring the fact that Barack Obama called for non-violence in New York City, which angered Reverend Al Sharpton.  Sharpton went on to accuse Obama of trying to "grandstand in front of white people."  But that does not fit the media's perception of the anti-American, pro-Black Panther -- otherwise known as Barack Obama.  So they won't report it.

This campaign is now nothing but a circus, and the media has complete control over it.  No wonder it has lasted this long.  Cable news doesn't want it to end.  It's their soap opera.  It's their excuse for not reporting actual news.  The Clintons love drama.  As long as the media reports on the tactics, which the Clintons are good at, and not real issues, this contest will continue all the way to the convention.

A Randy Post About Bloomberg From a NY'ker

It's been a while since I poked my nose in here, but I just wanted to give my thought's about Bloomberg:

As a Long Island Ny'ker working in NYC, I (as many NY'ker's ) felt Bloomberg was a pompous, arrogant and condescending individual. However, that changed over time and once I (and many others) saw the changes he implemented, our feelings turned. When I look back at why I didn't like him, it was my ignorance which didn't allow meto see the forest through the trees...after all he had banned smoking in the city and that was just wrong because I was a smoker. And let's face it, ifya can't trust The Doctors and Santa, who can ya trust?  In my opinion ya can trust Michael Bloomberg, that's who. While sitting back and letting my thought's flow through my slightly toasted brain cells, it dawned on me "the guy is doing a pretty good job in the city, and he's got a cool few billion, maybe he knows a little more than I do?". Well I have to make a Dr's appt. and start my Christmas list, so until next time kids I bid you farewell.

Well, that's all I have to say about that.

Obama speech on economy

Here is the text.  As the most important part of the speech, Obama unveiled a $30 billion stimulus plan.

Economic Woes Continue

A few quick things to note about the economy:

• Foreign banks are trying to bail out the mortgage industry, which has been hit hard over the last year.  The loan was $250 billion.  Banks in England, Canada, the US Central Bank and in other European countries came up with the loan.  The US economy is now much more globally driven than ever before.
• Oil hit a record high of $111 a barrel on Thursday.  The weak dollar and supply shortages were instrumental in causing the latest rise.

Where is our President on this?

Bush explains how the economy is great.

On Saturday, Bush explained how he understands the financial stress that many Americans are dealing with, attempting to express that he is not living inside a bubble and ignoring the plight of the average American. He got off to a good start:

"Some of you worry about your ability to afford health care coverage for your families," Bush said in his weekly radio address, recorded at his Texas ranch.

"Some of you are concerned about meeting your monthly mortgage payments," Bush said. "Some of you worry about the impact of rising energy costs on fueling your cars and heating your homes. You expect your elected leaders in Washington to address these pressures."

Then of course, he couldn't help himself. He proceeded to paint a favorable picture of the economy and falling back on what he's comfortable with, blamed congress for it's wasteful spending in a futile attempt to link the two issues.

Just another indicator of a presidency in its last throes.

Mortgage Czar proposal

With more Americans being affected by the mortgage crunch, the Democratic majority is asking the President to get moving.  Just hours ago, Senate Democrats called on the President to appoint a czar that would respond much faster than the rest of the federal government to the current crisis:

“We will call on the president to appoint a special adviser to overseeand coordinate the federal government’s response to the subprimemeltdown,” a senior aide said, insisting on anonymity because the planhas not been announced.

The leaders’ participation reflects polls showing the issue couldbecome politically potent as more families are pulled into an undertowof debt. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has said the problem couldbecome as severe as the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s if thegovernment does not intervene more aggressively.

Of course, the usual suspects might accuse Democrats of trying to create even more bureaucracy.  Then again, it's not about big or small government, it's about efficient and good government that does its job when asked.

Obama talks tough with Wall Street

One mark of a true leader is the confidence to give people the straight truth, whether they like to hear it or not.  During a speech this week at the Nasdaq offices in New York City, Obama reminded Wall Street leaders that the middle class is not being protected:

Some workers, he said, “now compete with their teenagers forminimum-wage jobs at Wal-Mart because their factory moved overseas,”and he described this summer’s subprime lending crisis as a case studyof greed among mortgage lenders and the agencies that provideinformation about them.

“Our free market was never meant to be afree license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it,” Mr.Obama said. “And so from time to time, we have put in place certainrules of the road to make competition fair and open and honest.”

“If more Americans werearmed with this kind of information before they purchased riskymortgage loans,” he said, “the current crisis might not have happened.”

Will that one tough speech change the fortunes of a struggling middle class?  Of course not.  However, it is certainly better than posing with these CEO's, as Hillary Clinton did, and acting as if you agree with their country club mentality that shows indifference to working families.

Lastly, Obama is rolling out his economic proposals, which include tax cuts for working families and simplify the tax code so that people can file their returns in under five minutes:

Obama wants to give 150 million working Americans a $500 tax credit,expand relief for homeowners, eliminate income taxes for seniors makingless than $50,000 and simplify tax returns so millions of Americans canfile in less than five minutes, according to a summary documentprovided by his campaign.

Hopefully within the next few weeks he will also elaborate on how he plans to generate a budget surplus.

Greenspan on Bush: Political control trumped policy

A few years removed from his retirement as Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan is speaking his mind about the current Administration.  His new book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, is in stores starting today.  In an interview with the New York Times, Greenspan highlighted his opinion that President Bush is more concerned with power and control than with being a true conservative:

“I’m just very disappointed,” he said glumly, as he sat in hisliving room. “Smaller government, lower spending, lower taxes, lessregulation — they had the resources to do it, they had the knowledge todo it, they had the political majorities to do it. And they didn’t.”

In the end, he said, “political control trumped policy, and they achieved neither political control nor policy.”

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that President Bush did not veto one spending bill when Republicans had control of Congress, helping add at least $2.5 trillion to the national debt.

The White House readily responded to Greenspan yesterday regarding the former Fed Chair's belief that the US went into Iraq for oil.  White House spokesman Tony Fratto called Greenspan's comments a "Georgetown cocktail party analysis."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Alan Greenspan's memoir is really three books in one:

• Book One: Who Greenspan is.
• Book Two: Greenspan's world view.
• Book Three: Greenspan's account of public policy.

Of his failures, Greenspan admits he failed to recognize the importance of the adjustable rate mortgage problem.

Washington Times acknowledges reckless GOP spending

No one really faults newspapers for having an ideology.  Just don't let ideology get in the way of facts.  This morning, the Washington Times may have shocked its conservative readership by pointing out that Republicans, not Democrats, are responsible for today's budget mess:

While we welcome the fiscal restraint now being demonstrated byPresident Bush and congressional Republicans, we regret that theirunrestrained profligacy during the previous six years has contributedso much to the fiscal challenges that now confront the nation. Duringthe last six years alone, federal outlays have increased by 49 percent,rising from $1.863 trillion in fiscal 2001 to a projected $2.779trillion for fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30. Inflation-adjustedfederal outlays have increased nearly 27 percent in six years. (Federalspending in 2001 was less than 10 percent above its 1995 level.) Forthe 2001-07 period, the average annual real increase in federal outlaysexceeded 4 percent. Because the real economy would have increased byonly 2.5 percent per year between fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2007, federalspending as a share of the economy jumped from 18.5 percent in 2001 (arecession) to 20.2 percent in 2007 (the sixth year of an expansion).

It is a fact that the National Debt currently stands at $8.9 trillion.  It is also a fact that no Republican president has balanced the budget since 1969.

Richardson rolls out economic agenda

This week, Democratic candidate Bill Richardson rolled out his economic proposals for if he is elected president.  He became the first candidate in either party to call for a balanced budget amendment.  The Des Moines Register had a general run-down of the proposals:

Richardson’s economic plan also comes in the midst of a massivedownturn in the U.S. stock market, a point the governor noted in theopening lines of his speech.
He proposes four ideas to remedy the country’s economic woes:

• Support a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget.

• Eliminate pork-barrel spending, which, he said, would save $40 billion over the next five years.

• Cut corporate welfare to save $230 billion over the next five years.

• Stop tax cuts for the wealthy, cutting taxes instead to create jobs and help the middle class.

A balanced budget amendment is more necessary now than ever before.  We have so much debt floating around in foreign markets, which we will have to pay interest on years from now.  Also, high amounts of debt can affect the value of currency.  Look at the European Union.  They have a constitutional amendment that requires a balanced budget each fiscal year.  Their currency has been beating ours for most of this decade.  A balanced budget amendment would force our Congress to be careful how it spends money, and make it harder for Senators like Ted Stevens to finance bridges to nowhere.