Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (2082)	12/9/2003 4:11:16 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 90947

Theres a guy on SI from Raleigh and he doesn't like Bush. Yup, you're right, that must mean that NC is going to vote for the Democrats for President. Of course, I'm from Illinois and I think Bush has done a good job. Does that mean that Illinois is going to vote for Bush? Not likely. You can pretend that the old maps can be tossed out, and that the Carolinas and a whole bunch of other states will suddenly embrace Democrats. But history suggests otherwise. The Carolinas don't seem to ever vote for Democrats anymore for President. Republicans have won both North and South Carolina, and Virginia too, in the past six straight elections. Democrats haven't won Texas since 1976 either. Or North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana, or Alaska. Most of those the Democrats haven't won since 1964. That's 15 states that haven't voted for a Democrat for President since I was old enough to vote. I posted to you the Ohio poll which suggests Bush is stronger there than the Democrat candidates. It's hard to see Bush losing Georgia either, and Tennessee has been moving steadily to the Republican camp as well. Polls in both states have shown strong support for Bush. I think at a minimum there are more than 20 states that Bush has locked up. Unemployment has gone up since World War II about a half dozen times. Under Bush the peak was in the mid six percent range, and now it is down to 5.9%. That would be the lowest peak for unemployment of any of the postwar business cycles. The percentage of adult Americans who are participating in the job market, according the Labor Department, is at roughly the same level as it has been for the past several years, so it is not a matter of large numbers of people giving up looking for work. You can rebut that by saying that you "know" several people who have given up, but in the aggregate the facts say otherwise. The fact that a number of your friends and acquaintances are lacking for work is not the basis for broad statements about the economy as a whole any more than the fact that you know people who don't like Bush in RTP is a sign that Bush is about to become the first Republican to lose North Carolina in well over a generation. I could just as easily say that my local shopping mall and car dealership have been very crowded the last several times I have gone there; ergo, the economy is booming. It sounds like I have supported my statement, but it's really meaningless to extrapolate from your own "experience" in that fashion. Employment strength, by the way, always has lagged economic growth during recoveries. Always. You can deny that is true, as you did in a recent post, or you can go look it up and see that it is, in fact, what happens. Logically, that's exactly what you would expect to happen: Businesses cut back during periods of slack demand, then wait until recoveries begin to sustain themselves before rehiring in large numbers. The economy began strengthening over the past several months, and now hiring is picking up as businesses see that the recovery is real. Textbook economics. A strengthening economy and large portions of the country which virtually never support Democrats for President leaves Bush in a position where victory in a very few states, such as Ohio and Florida, would pretty much wrap it up for him. He might still lose, but your analysis (insisting that everyone shares your "sentiment" when in fact a majority of the population nationwide approves of the job the President is doing) is shrill, simplistic, and unpersuasive.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (2082)	12/9/2003 6:24:07 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

"Bush has redefined himself* as a far right, warstarting, super spender"* According to what set of facts? And I don't mean what other liberal ideologues have asserted either. What factual information from Bush himself makes this assertion factual?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (2082)	12/9/2003 8:25:23 PM
From: DavesM	Respond to of 90947

Lizzie, Its interesting how perceptions are different. My feeling, is that Bush has not redefined himself as far right", but has moved to the left enough, that he has taken Democratic core concerns and now owns them - much the way Clinton moved to the right, sucking all the air out of the Republican balloon. Clinton's policy governed from the center, while saying the words that kept liberals happy (and giving them small bones like kicking the Boy Scouts off Military bases). Bush is doing much the same thing, rejecting Kyoto, even as U.S. greenhouse gas emissions decreased two years running - while at the same time EU greenhouse gas emissions are increasing (no their economy is no better than ours - Germany has a 10% unemployment rate and Mercedes Benz and BMW's newest assembly plants, I believe are in the USA). BTW, Corporate tax rates in the US is higher than the corporate tax rates now in many EU Countries. Even the Keynesian fiscal stimulation - straight out of the Democratic handbook. p.s. People have short memories... "Plenty of Jobs - But Not Many Good Ones (June 1999)- Greg Tarpinian, Executive Director, Labor Research Association" "Low unemployment in the United States is certainly a welcome trend. But the downside is that many of these new jobs do not pay enough to raise a family or save for a comfortable retirement..." laborresearch.org "Jobs Were Plentiful in 1999, but Manufacturing Still Saw Big Losses (Jan. 10, 2000) Rounding out a year of record-low unemployment, December brought more generally upbeat news on the job front, according to the latest employment figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). But while the overall job numbers are being celebrated as signs of the U.S. economy's remarkable strength, workers in the heavily unionized U.S. manufacturing sector took it on the chin in 1999..." laborresearch.org "It’s no secret that the manufacturing sector has been losing jobs – 2.6 million between 1979 and 1999, and another 130,000 in the first nine months of 2000.... ...More Bad Manufacturing Jobs A growing proportion of the manufacturing workforce is trapped in what are, to put it bluntly, bad jobs. Not only have average earnings lagged behind inflation, there has also been an alarming increase in jobs at the very bottom of the manufacturing spectrum – jobs that pay poverty-level wages... " November, 2000 uaw.org