Polite Society ?

Political Cartoon is by Nick Anderson in the Houston Chronicle.

Bernie On TPP

Immoral, Unethical & Just Plain Wrong

Clinton Is Doing Well In Three "Swing" States

Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are states with a fairly large population -- and a lot of electoral votes. They are also states that the Republicans must win to put their candidate in the White House in 2016. And frankly, it looks like they've got a lot of work to do to be competitive in those states.

The charts above show the results of a new Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between January 27th and February 1st. In Pennsylvania, 881 registered voters were queried with a margin of error of 3.3 points. In Ohio it was 943 voters with a margin of error of 3.2 points -- and in Florida it was 936 voters with a margin of error of 3.2 points.

On The Leash

Political Cartoon is by Jim Morin in The Miami Herald.

House Republicans Stage A Bit Of Political Theater

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives did something they had already done more than 50 times -- they voted 239 to 186 to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare). This was nothing more than a bit of political theater. They know their bill has no chance of being passed by the Senate, and if it was, it would be vetoed by the president (and they don't have enough votes to override a presidential veto.

So why did they even bother? They did it because they have some new GOP members, and those new Republicans wanted a chance to go on record as voting to repeal Obamacare. It didn't matter that the bill has no chance of success. It only mattered that these new members can point to this vote to keep their teabagger base back home happy.

All the House Democrats voted against the repeal bill, and they were joined by three Republicans, who are evidently tired of playing this same old silly political game (Robert Dold of Illinois, John Katko of New York, and Bruce Poliquin of Maine).

Repeal Potatoes

Political Cartoon is by Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

There Are 17 Democratic States And 15 Republican Ones

Back in 2008, there were a lot more Democratic states than Republican states. That was because of the dismal failure of the Bush administration. Since then, things have returned to a more normal situation -- and currently there are 17 solidly Democratic states and 15 solidly Republican states. The other 18 states are considered competitive.

That's according to the Gallup Poll. Between January 2nd and December 30th of 2014, Gallup surveyed 177,034 adults in all 50 states. They subtracted those saying they were Republican from those saying they were Democratic in each state -- and states that had at least a 5 point average favoring one party was considered to be solidly in that party's sphere. Any state with less than a 5 point difference between the two parties was deemed to be a competitive state.

The states in each party's column are listed in the charts below. When you just look at the number of states considered solid for each party, it may seem it is pretty even. But in presidential politics, it is not at all even. Note that many of the states in the Democratic column are states with large populations, and that means they have a lot of electoral votes. Meanwhile, the Republican states have are far less populated and have fewer electoral votes.

The solid Democratic states, according to this survey, have a total of 224 electoral votes -- while the solid Republican states have a total of only 80 electoral votes. Since 270 electoral votes are needed to elect a president, you can easily see that the Republicans must win a lot more of the 18 competitive states than the Democrats would have to win.

Digital Deniers

Political Cartoon is by Jen Sorensen at jensorensen.com.

Twitter Wars

From the politics page of CNN.

Unnecessary

People Don't Seem To Understand How The Economy Works

Americans like a lot of sensible economic ideas. They support a raising of the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hour. They oppose benefit cuts to Social Security (and most would like to see those benefits enhanced). They oppose abolishing Medicare or repealing Obamacare. They support a small increase in taxes for the rich, and want corporations to be made to pay their share of income taxes. They support a realistic job creation program, and oppose the exporting of good American jobs. And they believe the government should enact policies that would reduce the wealth/income inequality in the United States.

Those are all good things. But every now and then something comes along that makes me think that most Americans don't really understand how our economy (or any capitalist economy) works. And one of those things is the new Rasmussen Poll -- taken on January 27th and 28th of a random national sample of 800 likely voters, with a margin of error of 3.5 points.

In that survey (whose results are in the chart above), about 54% of all adults think an across-the-board cut for all government programs would be a good thing. They seem to have accepted the Republican argument that cutting the budget would be a good thing for the economy -- that "austerity" is the way to get a sluggish economy moving again.

There is one thing wrong with that argument. That's not the way our economy works (or the way any regulated capitalist economy works). Cutting government programs actually shrinks the economy by taking money out of it. Cutting government spending would actually hurt everyone in this country. It would hurt businesses because a huge number of people would have less money to spend in those businesses. It would hurt workers because when sales go down for business, wages are stagnated and those businesses will lay off more workers. And it would hurt consumers, because businesses would have to raise prices to cover the drop in sales.

The truth is that in a recession, or an economy still trying to recover from a recession, shrinking the economy by cutting government programs is the worst thing you can do. The economy needs to be expanded, even if that means more government spending. This would give the masses more money to spend, and that increased spending would create more demand for the goods/services of businesses, which would create more jobs to service that increased demand (and keep prices from rising since business sales are profits are up).

Some of you may be saying at this point -- wouldn't that increase the budget deficit and national debt? Only in the short term. The increase in jobs and profits would actually increase government revenues and, over the long term, would pay down that deficit and debt -- and a small increase in taxes on the rich (and making corporations pay their taxes) would help pay down the deficit and debt even faster. We don't need to make government cuts to decrease the deficit and debt.

Don't accept the Republican lie that budget cuts are needed. They aren't really interested in paying the deficit and debt down. They are the ones that created the current deficit (remember, Bill Clinton left office with a budget surplus -- which the Republicans instantly turned into a huge deficit with tax cuts for the rich and two unnecessary wars). Republicans just want those cuts so they can give the rich even more tax cuts -- and they don't really care what it does to the economy or struggling Americans.

For The Dumb

Political Cartoon is by Steve Sack in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Public Likes Obama's Free Community College Proposal

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama proposed making tuition free for two years of community college. John Boehner has already declared the idea dead, without even discussing it in Congress. It's just more of the GOP's automatic opposition to anything the president proposes. They will try to claim the country can't afford it, but that is just an excuse. They government will get much more back in taxes off the increased income of the graduates than it would spend giving the free tuition.

But there is another aspect the Republicans would do well to consider. They are once again taking a position in opposition to what the American public wants. Nearly half of all Americans (46%) know someone who is capable of doing college work and has the desire to go to college, but cannot do so because they can't afford it. And a whopping 68% of Americans like the president's proposal, and want to see it implemented. They know it would improve the country overall, and would help people to climb the ladder to success.

The Republicans are already on the opposite side of the fence of the American public on raising the minimum wage, protecting Social Security and Medicare, repealing Obamacare, raising taxes for the rich, making corporations pay their share of taxes, letting the rich buy elections, lowering the wealth/income gap, cleaning up the environment, providing funding for alternate energy development, and the exporting of good American jobs. They really don't need another issue to disagree with the public on -- but they can't seem to help themselves.

Another aspect of this that I find interesting is that the public, while they support the president's plan, don't think it goes far enough. About 55% would like the program to be applied not just to community colleges, but also to 4-year colleges. I agree.

These charts reflect the numbers in a recent YouGov Poll -- done between January 10th and 12th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults (with a margin of error of about 4 points).