Our budget is broken: Clinton

And what's the deficit done during Obama's reign? Increasing exponentially. If you hand out enough $$$ to people you'll see something positive somewhere that you can claim as a victory. Reality is that the US economy is deteriorating each day. Facts - deal with them.

 

Yes

By: Kevin Drum


REPUBLICANS vs. DEMOCRATS ON THE ECONOMY....Did you know that Democratic presidents are better for the economy than Republicans? Sure you did. I pointed this out two years ago, back when my readership numbered in the dozens, and more recently Michael Kinsley ran the numbers in the LA Times and came to the same conclusion.

The results are simple: Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There's just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations.

Skeptics offer two arguments: first, that presidents don't control the economy; second, that there are too few data points to draw any firm conclusions. Neither argument is convincing. It's true that presidents don't control the economy, but they do influence it — as everyone tacitly acknowledges by fighting like crazed banshees over every facet of fiscal policy ever offered up by a president.

The second argument doesn't hold water either. The dataset that delivers these results now covers more than 50 years, 10 administrations, and half a dozen different measures. That's a fair amount of data, and the results are awesomely consistent: Democrats do better no matter what you measure, how you measure it, or how you fiddle with the data.

But it turns out there's more to this. Via Brendan Nyhan, I recently read a paper by Princeton's Larry Bartels that adds some fascinating details to this picture.

The first thing Bartels did was break down economic performance by income class. The unsurprising result is shown in the chart on the right.

Under Democratic presidents, every income class did well but the poorest did best. The bottom 20% had average pretax income growth of 2.63% per year while the top 5% showed pretax income growth of 2.11% per year.

Republicans were polar opposites. Not only was their overall performance worse than Democrats, but it was wildly tilted toward the well off. The bottom 20% saw pretax income growth of only .6% per year while the top 5% enjoyed pretax income growth of 2.09% per year. (What's more, the trendline is pretty clear: if the chart were extended to show the really rich — the top 1% and the top .1% — the Republican growth numbers for them would be higher than the Democratic numbers.)

In other words, Republican presidents produce poor economic performance because they're obsessed with helping the well off. Their focus is on the wealthiest 5%, and the numbers show it. At least 95% of the country does better under Democrats.

But this raises an interesting question: if 95% of the country does better under Democrats, and if economic performance is the most important factor in most presidential elections, then how do Republicans ever get elected? The most common hypothesis — spelled out in detail in last year's What's The Matter With Kansas? — is that cultural issues often override economic considerations. But Bartels proposes a surprising alternative explanation illustrated in the two charts below. The top chart shows income growth during non-election years, and it displays the usual characteristics: under Democrats, income growth is strong overall and the poor do a bit better than the well off. Under Republicans, income growth is weak overall and is tilted heavily in favor of the already prosperous.

But now look at the bottom chart. It shows economic performance during election years and it's a mirror image of the top chart: Republicans produce better overall performance, and they produce especially stupendous performance for the well off. Democrats not only produce poor overall performance, they produce disastrous performance for the well off, who actually have negative income growth.

In other words, voters aren't necessarily ignoring economic issues in favor of cultural issues. Rather, Republicans produce great economic growth for all income classes in election years, and that's all that voters remember. They really are voting their pocketbooks.

Bartels doesn't essay an explanation for this. Do Republican presidents deliberately try to time economic growth spurts — and are Democratic presidents too lame to do the same? Is it just luck? Or is the difference somehow inherent in the different ways that Democrats and Republicans approach the economy (with Democrats typically focusing on employment and Republicans on inflation)? At this point, your guess is as good as anyone's.

Bottom line: if you're well off, vote for Republicans. But if you make less than $150,000 a year, Republicans are your friends only one year in four. Caveat emptor.

 

Not true

Obama won big cities like Houston and Dallas

-------


Poll: Perry, White Tied In Governor's Race


By Ryan Korsgard
POSTED: Wednesday, June 23, 2010
UPDATED: 9:04 am CDT June 23, 2010


HOUSTON -- A new poll shows Gov. Rick Perry and the man who wants the job, former Houston Mayor Bill White, are tied, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday.



Public Policy Polling shows the two are in a 43-43 tie. Pollsters said White, the Democratic candidate, has improved his numbers by winning independents.


White said he has gained momentum by meeting people across the state and gaining name recognition along the way.


"I think, frankly, our own numbers are a little bit behind that," White said. "There's a lot of people who don't know who I am. I've always done great in polls where people knew something about both of us."
Perry, who is the Republican incumbent, is in China.


"We tend not to look too much into polling information," Perry campaign Press Secretary Alejandro Garcia said. " A perfect example would be the Rasmussen poll. It was ahead. Now this one is tied. The only one that matters to us is on Election Day."
The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 4.4 percent.






--------------



http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7050170.html



Within a dozen years, Latinos could be electing Democrats “because Democrats have the right message and Republicans have the wrong message,” Sosa said. “I don't think it will happen. If it happens, then Texas will turn into a Democratic state and once Texas turns Democratic … We'll never elect a Republican president again.”

Hispanics will make up 78 percent of Texas' population growth over the next 30 years, compared with only 4 percent for whites, according to demographic projections. Minority children already make up 66 percent of the state's 4.8 million public school enrollment — and Hispanics could surpass whites in the state's overall population by 2015, estimates show.



Not one of the state's 181 legislators is a Hispanic Republican.




“If Republicans don't do better among Hispanic voters, we are not going to be talking about how we get Florida back in a presidential election,” said Ayres, of Alexandria, Va. “We're going to be talking about how we keep from losing Texas.”

 

^this x 98321490238490823904823904802394

 

Damn, Bill looks like hell.

 

dem supporters really do not understand history.

1. Carter--- sucked for the economy. It took a seriously raising of interest rates by Volker to control inflation expectations.

2. LBJ started the great society spending debacle.

3. Kennedy was an old style democrat. He would have left the party - the way Reagan did.