Wednesday, October 26, 2011
A Primer On Economics
1. How much of the money supply exists as physical currency?
3%
BTW, Banks only need to keep 5% in cash reserves under the fractional reserve system. Thus the inability to repay account holders if there is a run on the bank.
2. How exactly does Quantitative Easing work (hint--printing money is a failing answer)
A central bank buys financial assets to inject a pre-determined quantity of money into the economy. This is distinguished from the more usual policy of buying or selling government bonds to keep market interest rates at a specified target value.3. What are the two types of government debt?
A central bank implements quantitative easing by purchasing financial assets from banks and other private sector businesses with new electronically created money. This action increases the excess reserves of the banks, and also raises the prices of the financial assets bought, which lowers their yield.
In simple words, the government buys back the bonds it issued, instead of printing money.
Government debt can be categorized as internal debt (owed to lenders within the country) and external debt (owed to foreign lenders).4. What is a budget deficit?
the amount by which some measure of government revenues falls short of some measure of government spending.5. What is the difference between government deficit and government debt?
Debt is the difference between all the money that a government6. Define in relation to each other:
has ever spent and all the revenue that it has ever collected. (is the net accumulated indebtedness by a government.)
Deficit is the difference between what the government expenditures and
the revenue it receives during a particular year.
So each year's deficit is added to the existing debt. When revenue exceeds spending,it's called a surplus, which subtracts from the debt.
Primary deficit,
total deficit
debt
The primary deficit is defined as the difference between current government spending on goods and services and total current revenue from all types of taxes net of transfer payments. The total deficit (which is often called the fiscal deficit or just the 'deficit') is the primary deficit plus interest payments on the debt.7. What is a Structural deficit?
Structural deficit issues can only be addressed by explicit and direct government policies: reducing spending, increasing the tax base, and/or increasing tax rates. It can be described as more "chronic" or long-term in nature hence needing government action to remove it.8. What are the forms of Government Indebtedness?
Governments usually borrow by issuing securities, government bonds and bills.9. What is fractional reserve banking?
Public loans, the characteristic form of government debts in modern times, may be in the form of short-term instruments, e.g., tax warrants, treasury certificates, treasury notes, and other notes such as those of the Federal Reserve System; of long-term government bonds; and of various notes that promise yearly payment of interest but do not specify a date for payment of principal. Although governments in times of stress have often converted bonds to issues carrying lower interest rates, have depreciated the value of currency, or have defaulted entirely on their obligations, with disastrous results for the bondholders, the number of those holding government obligations has increased in recent history. Default on obligations held by foreigners has been a reason offered for past intervention by major powers in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere.
Less creditworthy countries sometimes borrow directly from supranational institutions.
A banking system in which only a fraction of bank deposits are backed by actual cash-on-hand and are available for withdrawal.
10. What is full reserve banking?
100% of deposits are kept in reserve. It would be like a chequing account, there must be enough money present to pay obligations.
11. What are some of the potential policy solutions for budget deficits and critiques of each?
- Increase Taxes--while increasing prices works in the private sector, people get upset if they have to pay more in taxes.
- Reduce Government Spending--cuts in services can upset various segments of the population.
- Increase Taxes and Reduce Government Spending: the best solution if you are inclined this way, but also has the two problems above.
- Changes in Tax Code--anything to do with taxes will have one segment or another of the population upset.
- Reduce Debt Service Liability: paying down the debt, or reducing the debt payments requires income.
I forgot to ask what are the sources of government "income", or revenue: Taxes of various kinds, Fees for services, and issuance of debt (bonds). The amount of the US government revenue which comes from taxes is 96%. Unfortunately, that was an important question. Government revenue is an important part of fiscal policy. Oh well!
Government revenue may also include reserve bank currency which is printed. This is recorded as an advance to the retail bank together with a corresponding currency in circulation expense entry. The income derives from the Official Cash rate payable by the retail banks for instruments such as 90 day bills.There is a question as to whether using generic business based accounting standards can give a fair and accurate picture of government accounts in that with a monetary policy statement to the reserve bank directing a positive inflation rate. The expense provision for the return of currency to the reserve bank is largely symbolic in that to totally cancel the currency in circulation provision all currency would have to be returned to the reserve bank and cancelled.
Some countries and other jurisdictions with government owned industries can include profits from those as revenue.The problem is that the relationship of revenue to spending was sort of the point of this quiz. US Government revenue is pretty much limited to taxes and fees. How can one provide the the same amount of services (or who pays for the services) is one of the points I was trying to make.
- Increase the tax base: this is the best solution in my opinion, but it requires getting more people working and being productive citizens. While some conservatives have mentioned this, they neglect the most important part--getting more people to work and who creates the jobs.
In private industry, the seller can raise prices (or decrease the quality of the products or service). The public sector is limited in its ability to increase revenue without sacrificing services.
12. What is the difference between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP)?Gross domestic product (GDP) refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living.13. How much national debt is too much?
Gross National Product (GNP) is the market value of all products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the residents of a country. Unlike Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which defines production based on the geographical location of production, GNP allocates production based on ownership.
GNP does not distinguish between qualitative improvements in the state of the technical arts (e.g., increasing computer processing speeds), and quantitative increases in goods (e.g., number of computers produced), and considers both to be forms of "economic growth".Trick question--some economists say there is no such thing as too much national debt. The real answer is that it is what the public will accept.
14. Is inflation a bad thing for an economy?Another trick question, while it has adverse effects on an economy, some inflation is considered the sign of a healthy economy.15. What is a commodity based monetary system?It is one where the money is a certain amount of a commodity--e.g gold or silver.16. What is a share of stock?
Where the money is represented by a commodity, the currency is called representative. That is the monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of a commodity. But that can still suffer from inflation.
The difference between the two is that one is the actual commodity, the other the money is based on the commodity: hence representative.
In the early 1930s, the Federal Reserve defended the fixed price of dollars in respect to the gold standard by raising interest rates, trying to increase the demand for dollars. Its commitment and adherence to the gold standard explain why the U.S. did not engage in expansionary monetary policy. To compete in the international economy, the U.S. maintained high interest rates. This helped attract international investors who bought foreign assets with gold. Higher interest rates intensified the deflationary pressure on the dollar and reduced investment in U.S. banks. Commercial banks also converted Federal Reserve Notes to gold in 1931, reducing the Federal Reserve's gold reserves, and forcing a corresponding reduction in the amount of Federal Reserve Notes in circulation. This speculative attack on the dollar created a panic in the U.S. banking system. Fearing imminent devaluation of the dollar, many foreign and domestic depositors withdrew funds from U.S. banks to convert them into gold or other assets.
Some economic historians, such as American professor Barry Eichengreen, blame the gold standard of the 1920s for prolonging the Great Depression. Others including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman place some blame at the feet of the Federal Reserve. The gold standard limited the flexibility of central banks' monetary policy by limiting their ability to expand the money supply, and thus their ability to lower interest rates. In the US, the Federal Reserve was required by law to have 40% gold backing of its Federal Reserve demand notes, and thus, could not expand the money supply beyond what was allowed by the gold reserves held in their vaults.
A return to the Gold Standard would increase government regulation of the economy. With no Fed, inexpert Congress will bear the onus of alleviating economic suffering. With deeper, longer recessions, Congressmen will inevitably succumb to pressure for more spending and regulation of the economy--as they did during the Great Depression.
Indeed, Fed management of the money supply was originally meant to stave off calls for socialism by rendering free-market capitalism more resilient, flexible, and humane. Switching back to gold would breathe new life into anti-capitalist politics.
It would increase our reliance on foreign credit and ship yet more jobs overseas. Adopting the gold standard would actually exacerbate the problem of reliance on foreign credit, not alleviate it.
Assuming we're not in a recession, economic growth would then continually cause deflation, making domestically-produced products more expensive and foreign imports cheaper--increasing consumption of imports. The trade deficit would continue to balloon at the expense of American jobs. In a recession, this would be catastrophic.
Insofar as it helps anybody, the gold standard would favour Wall Street bankers over entrepreneurs, businesses, and workers. The major economic gains would be made by such big gold producers as Russia and South Africa.
The inflexibility of the gold standard during the 1890s spawned the anti-Washington Populist movement, led by William Jennings Bryan (read his eloquent attack on the gold standard here).It is debt. While it is defined as a fractional share of ownership in a business--it still represents an obligation to pay for money granted as part of investment in the business.Extra Credit--Why does Ron Paul dislike the Federal Reserve Bank?Among other reasons. The Bretton Woods system officially ended and the dollar became fully "fiat currency," backed by nothing but the promise of the federal government: he favours the gold standard. Additionally, he dislikes the fractional reserve system of banking for creating money from nothing.Sort of economically related: In the the Westminster, or Parliamentary, system, the defeat of an appropriations bill (a bill that solely concerns taxation or government spending) has what result? Why does this not have the same effect under the US Constitution?
BTW, The Nixon Shock of 1971 ended the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold. Since then all reserve currencies have been fiat currencies, including the dollar and the euro.It results in the resignation of the government and/or dissolution of Parliament, much like a non-confidence vote, since a government that cannot spend money is hamstrung. This is called loss of supply. Since the executive is not the head of government, the government does not collapse.
The points I was trying to make with this quiz were:
- Not much money physcially exists--in fact, most people are surprised by the limited amount of currency that is REALLY out there.
- Most of the Capitalist system runs on debt: things would grind to a halt if everyone got out of debt.
- The difference between government revenue and spending.
- the difference between who addresses economic issues: government or private industry.
- that the New Deal Programmes which are being dismantled were intended to PREVENT Socialism.
- That a lot of the things economists say are mumbo-jumbo.
Perry's Ridiculous Tax Giveaway To The Rich
It's pretty obvious that most people would choose to use the old system. Most workers do not make enough money to be in the 20% tax bracket, even many in the middle class, so it just makes sense to stay with the tax system they are currently using. So who will use the new system Perry is proposing? The rich -- the only people who will benefit from the new system. For them it's a giant government giveaway.
The rich will make out like bandits with the new plan. First it reduces the tax on earned income in the top tax bracket from 35% to 20% (a 43% tax cut). Then it eliminates completely any taxes on capital gains income (which is where most of the income for the rich comes from, and is currently taxed at 15%). He also would eliminate the inheritance tax completely (which only affects those inheriting at least $5 million). And finally, he would let the rich bring home the money they've been hiding overseas to avoid paying taxes, and tax that money at only 5.25%.
I've been saying for years now that Rick Perry was long ago bought and paid for by the corporations and the rich. After seeing this tax plan, can there be any remaining doubt of that. With hundreds of millions of people being hurt by this "trickle-down" recession, it's simply amazing that Perry would come up with a plan that helps no one but the rich.
The one thing he didn't explain was how he's going to keep the deficit and debt from ballooning under this new system. With the huge giveaways to the rich, and most everyone else staying the same, there is no way his new plan will bring in anywhere near the current revenues for government (which are already insufficient). How's he going to balance the budget (and yes, he wants a balanced budget amendment)?
You know how he's going to do it. He's going to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, the unemployed, the children, and the elderly. He will do just what he did in Texas -- slash all social programs (except giveaways to his rich buddies). And he will abolish Medicare and privatize Social Security (two things he couldn't do as governor of Texas, but would love to do).
This guy was a disaster as governor, and he would be even worse as president.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Occupy Wall Street And Public Sentiment
First it was other large American cities, then it spread to smaller cities all over the country and eventually it even spread beyond the borders of this country. A couple of weekends ago there were "Occupy" demonstrations in over 1500 cities around the world. This makes sense because the economic inequality and injustice that is evident in America also exists in many other countries -- and the giant Wall Street Banks and international corporations don't let puny things like national borders interfere with their greedy endeavors.
But the politicians and power brokers really perked up their ears when they learned that a large segment of the United States population was supporting the Occupy Wall Street protesters. One early poll showed that of the people who were familiar with the demonstrations, more than twice as many approved of them than disapproved. Then Time Magazine commissioned a poll (done on October 9th and 10th of 1,001 randomly chosen adults), and that poll showed that 54% of the public approved of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations while only 23% disapproved (and another 23% said they didn't know enough to have an opinion).
Those are some pretty nice numbers -- numbers that the two political parties can only dream about these days. Obviously the protesters had struck a chord with a lot of angry and unhappy Americans. Why was this happening? Why had the people stopped believing the broken promises of both political parties? Well, some clues can be gleaned from the answers to some other questions the Time Poll asked. One of those questions was:
DO YOU BELIEVE THE GAP BETWEEN THE RICH & POOR HAS GROWN TOO LARGE?
Yes...............79%
No...............17%
Don't know...............3%
That means about four out of every five Americans believes the distribution of wealth and income in this country is not just unequal, but unfair. This kind of inequality has not been seen since just before the Great Depression (and it then resulted in a massive economic disaster -- just like today). As the chart pictured above shows:
Top 1% controls 38.1% of the country's wealth.
Top 5% controls 59.4% of the country's wealth.
Top 10% controls 70.9% of the country's wealth.
Top 20% controls 83.4% of the country's wealth.
Top 40% controls 95.3% of the country's wealth.
While:
Bottom 60% control only 4.7% of the country's wealth.
Bottom 40% control only 0.2% of the country's wealth.
Those are some pretty incredible numbers. How can it be that 40% of the people in this country (over 132 million people) don't even control 1% of the country's wealth (or even one-half of 1%)? Or that 60% of the population (over 198 million people) don't control even 5% of the nation's wealth? In what universe can that be considered fair and equitable? Another question the poll asked was:
DOES WALL STREET AND ITS LOBBYISTS HAVE TOO MUCH INFLUENCE IN WASHINGTON?
Yes...............86%
No...............11%
Don't know...............4%
It doesn't take a genius to know that today our government is "of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations". Since the Supreme Court gave corporations the same rights as real humans and declared that money was speech and could not be limited, there has been little the ordinary citizen can do to have a voice in government. In the Bush administration, the corporate lobbyists were even allowed to write their own laws. And the Obama administration has not been much better, since all of the administration's economic advisors were plucked from Wall Street.
This won't be remedied until the money is taken out of politics through the public funding of all federal elections and lobbying is outlawed. It won't be easy to do with the huge donations the politicians get through PACs and superPACs (and the high-paying lobbying jobs waiting for them when they retire), but it must be done. The Occupy Wall Street movement must continue to grow until the politicians are too afraid not to do it -- or a constitutional amendment must be passed. A third question asked in the poll was:
SHOULD THE EXECUTIVES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN IN 2008 HAVE BEEN PROSECUTED?
Yes...............71%
No...............21%
Don't know...............6%
This should be no surprise. The greedy and illegal actions of these executives on Wall Street kicked off the recession and cost many millions of people their jobs. And what happened? They were rewarded with a $700 billion bail-out of taxpayer money. Then they went right back to doing what they had been doing before, including giving themselves millions of dollars in bonuses. Meanwhile, many millions of Americans are out of work and more people slip into poverty every month -- and the corporate-bought politicians want to slash the social programs that help them to keep their heads above water.
It's no wonder that the people support Occupy Wall Street. They are angry, and they have a right to be angry. But anger alone is not enough. That anger must be turned into action. We must make sure the movement continues to grow - and grows large enough that change must happen.
Most Americans Want To Elect The President By A Direct Popular Vote
There are many, including myself, who believe the system is unfair to the nation's voters, since it can, and has, resulted in a situation where a candidate has the most votes overall but loses because his opponent has the most electoral votes (and this happened in 1876, 1888, and 2000). When this happens, it thwarts the will of the nation's majority of voters. It also makes the voters in a state's minority (however large that minority) worthless -- for example, if a state votes 51% for one candidate and 49% for the other, the votes of the 49% are disregarded and the candidate with 51% gets all of the state's electoral votes.
This is an archaic system which no longer makes sense in this modern world where votes are quickly tabulated. The candidate preferred by the most voters should be elected. And most Americans agree with that. The Gallup Poll has once again done its yearly survey on American opinions of the electoral college, and once again the majority would like to elect their president by a direct popular vote. That has been the opinion of the American public since Gallup started asking the question in 1967 (when 58% said that). Here's how it came out this year:
Popular vote...............62%
Electoral college...............35%
Generally Republicans have favored the electoral college system. After all, it allowed them to capture the presidency in 2000 even though their candidate (George Bush) did not get as many votes as his opponent (Al Gore). But even that has now changed. This year a majority of Republicans joined Democrats and Independents in favoring the election of a president by a direct popular vote. Here are the numbers:
Democrats...............71%
Independents...............61%
Republicans...............53%
It is time to listen to the will of the people and change the way we elect our presidents. The electoral college may have made some sense in the distant past, but it no longer does. It just makes this country a laughing-stock on the world stage when we inaugurate a president who did not get the most votes.
Occupy Wall Street - The New Hooverville
During the death throes of Herbert Hoover's presidency in June 1932, desperate bands of men traveled to Washington and set up camp within view of the Capitol. The first contingent journeyed all the way from Portland, Oregon, but others soon converged from all over--alone, in groups, with families--until their main Hooverville on the Anacostia River's fetid mudflats swelled to a population as high as 20,000. The men, World War I veterans who could not find jobs, became known as the Bonus Army--for the modest government bonus they were owed for their service. Under a law passed in 1924, they had been awarded roughly $1,000 each, to be collected in 1945 or at death, whichever came first. But they didn't want to wait any longer for their pre-New Deal entitlement--especially given that Congress had bailed out big business with the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation earlier in its session. Father Charles Coughlin, the populist "Radio Priest" who became a phenomenon for railing against "greedy bankers and financiers," framed Washington's double standard this way: "If the government can pay $2 billion to the bankers and the railroads, why cannot it pay the $2 billion to the soldiers?"
The echoes of our own Great Recession do not end there. Both parties were alarmed by this motley assemblage and its political rallies; the Secret Service infiltrated its ranks to root out radicals. But a good Communist was hard to find. The men were mostly middle-class, patriotic Americans. They kept their improvised hovels clean and maintained small gardens. Even so, good behavior by the Bonus Army did not prevent the U.S. Army's hotheaded chief of staff, General Douglas MacArthur, from summoning an overwhelming force to evict it from Pennsylvania Avenue late that July. After assaulting the veterans and thousands of onlookers with tear gas, MacArthur's troops crossed the bridge and burned down the encampment. The general had acted against Hoover's wishes, but the president expressed satisfaction afterward that the government had dispatched "a mob"--albeit at the cost of killing two of the demonstrators. The public had another take. When graphic newsreels of the riotous mêlée fanned out to the nation's movie theaters, audiences booed MacArthur and his troops, not the men down on their luck. Even the mining heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, the owner of the Hope diamond and wife of the proprietor of the Washington Post, professed solidarity with the "mob" that had occupied the nation's capital.
The Great Depression was then nearly three years old, with FDR still in the wings and some of the worst deprivation and unrest yet to come. Three years after our own crash, we do not have the benefit of historical omniscience to know where 2011 is on the time line of America's deepest bout of economic distress since that era. (The White House, you may recall, rolled out "recovery summer" sixteen months ago.) We don't know if our current president will end up being viewed more like Hoover or FDR. We don't know whether Occupy Wall Street and its proliferating satellites will spiral into larger and more violent confrontations, disperse in cold weather, prove a footnote to our narrative, or be the seeds of something big.
What's as intriguing as Occupy Wall Street itself is that once again our Establishment, left, right, and center, did not see the wave coming or understand what it meant as it broke. Maybe it's just human nature and the power of denial, or maybe it's a stubborn strain of all-American optimism, but at each aftershock since the fall of Lehman Brothers, those at the top have preferred not to see what they didn't want to see. And so for the first three weeks, the protests were alternately ignored, patronized, dismissed, and insulted by politicians and the mainstream news media as a neo-Woodstock for wannabe collegiate rebels without a cause--and not just in Fox-land. CNN's new prime-time hopeful, Erin Burnett, ridiculed the protesters as bongo-playing know-nothings; a dispatch in The New Republic called them "an unfocused rabble of ragtag discontents." Those who did express sympathy for Occupy Wall Street tended to pat it on the head before going on to fault it for being leaderless, disorganized, and inchoate in its agenda.
Despite such dismissals, the movement, abetted by made-for-YouTube confrontations with police, started to connect with the mass public much as the Bonus Army did with a newsreel audience. The week after a Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that "no one seems to care very much" about the "collection of ne'er-do-wells" congregating in Zuccotti Park, the paper released its own poll, in collaboration with NBC News, finding that 37 percent of Americans supported the protesters, 25 percent had no opinion, and just 18 percent opposed them. The approval numbers for Occupy Wall Street published in Time and Reuters were even higher--hitting 54 percent in Time. Apparently some of those dopey kids, staggering under student loans and bereft of job prospects, have lots of parents and friends of all ages who understand exactly what they're talking about. . .
Elections are supposed to resolve conflicts in a great democracy, but our next one will not. The elites will face off against the elites to a standoff, and the issues animating the class war in both parties won't even be on the table. The structural crises in our economy, our government, and our culture defy any of the glib solutions proposed by current Democrats or Republicans; the quixotic third-party movements being hatched by well-heeled do-gooders are vanity productions. The two powerful forces that extricated America from the Great Depression--the courageous leadership and reformist zeal of Roosevelt, the mobilization for World War II--are not on offer this time. Our class war will rage on without winners indefinitely, with all sides stewing in their own juices, until--when? No one knows. The reckoning with capitalism's failures over the past three decades, both in America and the globe beyond, may well be on hold until the top one percent becomes persuaded that its own economic fate is tied to the other 99 percent's. Which is to say things may have to get worse before they get better.
Over the short term, meanwhile, the Democratic Establishment is no doubt wishing that Occupy Wall Street will melt away with the winter snows, much as its Republican counterpart hopes that the leaderless tea party will wither if Romney nails down the nomination. But even in the unlikely event that these wishes come true, it is not likely to be the end of the story. Though the Bonus Army was driven out of Washington in the similarly fraught election year of 1932, the newsreels they left behind turned out to be previews of coming attractions for the long decade still to come.
Perry Becomes A Birther
Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?I have no reason to think otherwise.
That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.
But you’ve seen his.I don’t know. Have I?
You don’t believe what’s been released?I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.
And?That came up.
And he said?He doesn’t think it’s real.
And you said?I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.
Now all the media wants to talk about is Perry becoming a "birther". I don't believe it. Perry's not very bright, but he's not Tait/Trump stupid. He's just trolling for votes among the intellectually-challenged.
You have to understand what a disaster his presidential bid has been. He started out with a lead over everyone else, including Romney. But after the public found out about his views on Social Security and Medicare, and then watched his flailing around in the Republican debates, they started to have serious doubts about him. Since then, he fallen like a rock in the polls.
Perry knows he's not going to get establishment Republicans to vote for him -- Romney has that vote sowed up. But its not the establishment Republicans who will be picking the candidate this year -- its the teabaggers, the idiot wing of the party. Right now the flavor of the month for the teabaggers is Herman Cain, but no one really expects him to get the nomination. And if he doesn't, who will the teabaggers back? Currently that vote is being split by Cain, Perry, Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul, but in the next few months they'll have to settle on someone.
Perry's "birther" statement was just the opening volley in the war for the teabagger vote. He knows they won't vote for mainstream ideas or candidates, so he's going back out to the lunatic fringe (where he's pretty comfortable anyway). He tried to mitigate the idea by calling it a distraction (just in case he makes it to the general election), but there is no doubt he was aiming his remarks at the teabaggers. Will it work? Maybe, he does have $17 million to try and rehabilitate his candidacy. We'll just have to wait and see.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Texas - Political Piggy Bank
Texas does not lead the nation in political donations, at least not yet. California has that honor, but Texas is not far behind. So far, in this political season, California donors have coughed up about $16.9 million for presidential candidates. Texas is close behind, having donated about $16.2 million. And we haven't even gotten into the election year of 2012 yet. Here are the top five states in donations:
California...............$16.9 million
Texas...............$16.2 million
New York...............$10.4 million
Florida...............$6.5 million
Massachusetts...............$5 million
There hasn't been a lot of presidential campaigning in Texas for quite a while. That's because primary-wise Texas is not an early voting state, and most of the time the races have been decided when the voting in Texas takes place. However, the Texas primary was moved up to March a few years ago and this years Republican primary might actually go that long without being decided. So there might be a few visits to Texas by some of the Republicans looking for votes anywhere they can get them.
As for the general election, Texas will probably be ignored again. Texas is a solidly Republican state, and almost no one expects President Obama to carry Texas. That means it's unlikely for the candidate of either party to waste their time coming to Texas -- especially when there are so many other states that could actually be in play.
But even though the candidates won't spend much time in Texas, they know there is lots of money to be had here, especially for Republicans, and their campaigns will be working as hard as they can to get their share of that money. As Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says, "Texas is consistently one of our four or five greatest sources of political cash. Texas is full of big givers and every candidate knows it."
Here are the candidates who have received money from donors in Texas:
Rick Perry...............$9.7 million
Barack Obama...............$2.4 million
Mitt Romney...............$2.1 million
Ron Paul...............$662,099
Herman Cain...............$254,002
Michele Bachmann...............$200,000
Jon Huntsman...............$134,750
Newt Gingrich...............$122,740
Rick Santorum...............$47,525
Gary Johnson...............$36,400
Jared Blankenship...............$33,800
John Thune...............$19,550
Randall Terry...............$7,300
Mike Pence...............$5,200
Thaddeus McCotter...............$3,250
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)