Tag Archives: politics

Via VOX comes this noteworthy WH official attempt to propogandize: Press secretary Sarah Sanders shared an altered video (italics mine) on Wednesday evening that appears to have originated with far-right conspiracy site Infowars to justify banning CNN reporter Jim Acosta from the White House after a tense exchange with President Donald Trump. … When Trump insulted Acosta at the press conference, a White House intern approached him and tried to physically...

Final thoughts on the 2018 midterms Here are six takeaways from last night’s results: 1. It *was* a wave election in the popular vote, but it was blunted by gerrymandering: Here’s a tweet by Sam Wang: Even though Democrats won the popular vote by 9.2%, they only eked out 12 seats over a majority, and came about 4 seats short of Nate Silver’s median projection: By contrast, in 2010, a smaller vote advantage led to a 63 seat gain for the GOP....

Trump’s final pre-midterm job approval As promised, following up on yesterday’s post, here is Gallup’s final Trump job approval rating, as of the last weekend before Election Day: At very least, it sure looks like his fear-mongering about immigrants hasn’t helped, and it may have backfired. I will blog on the election results tomorrow night. Regular economist blogging should resume Wednesday. ...

(Dan here…better a bit late than ….) by Barkley Rosser Monday Before The Midterms And WaPo Is At It Again It is Robert J. Samuelson doing his usual schtick, albeit with some recognition of other issues, such as global warming and immigration.  But these are not what has his prime attention on the day before midterm elections in the US.  Moaning that “Everyone” will lose this election, his main focus is on the budget deficit, without a single mention of...

A message with beauty. Listen to Mama Cass and John Denver talk about the need to register and vote in  August of 1972.  Gee, what was happening then? Maybe this vote will be the one that sets us on a path to not repeat history. Maybe. Enjoy the song.[embedded content]

From an interview on NPR’s Here and Now comes: “The official actuaries of the Social Security system say in order to get our Social Security and retirement funds in balance, they’d have to cut benefits by 25 percent indefinitely into the future,” he says. “Do I think it’s going to happen? Well I don’t know, but this is one of the reasons why inflation is the major problem out there. So long as you don’t do it, you’re going to cause the debt overall — the...

As predicted, a deeply unpopular Trump stomped on the GOP message; early races I’ll be watching Tuesday night As I wrote a few weeks ago, whatever message Congressional GOPers might have wanted to put out (like, “our tax cuts helped spur the best economy in years!”) got stomped on by Donald Trump. As it turns out, (please be sitting down for this) he was being truthful when he talked about momentum having been going his way. Here’s Gallup’s weekly...

by Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics) Economists Agree: Democratic Presidents are Better at Making Us Rich. Eight Reasons Why. In 2013, economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson — no wild-eyed liberals, they — asked a very important question: Why has the U.S. economy performed better under Democratic than Republican presidents, “almost regardless of how one measures performance”? Start with their “performed better” assertion: it’s uncontestable....

PENSACOLA, FLORIDA (The Borowitz Report)—Backtracking from his earlier suggestion that the military should fire upon migrants if they throw rocks, Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he was ordering the military to respond to rocks with either paper or scissors. Speaking at a rally in Pensacola, Florida, Trump said that the decision about whether to use paper or scissors to retaliate against rocks would ultimately be left up to military commanders at...

Trump Says Dems Support Venezuelan “High Taxes And Open Borders” The  average tax rate in Venezuela is 25%. The average tax rate in the US is 26%.  Sorry, Trump, this is yet another lie by Trump, but what else is new on this? I do not know the details of Venezuelan of immigration policies, but at this point in time the issue  in Venezuela is not immigrants freely arriving and causing economic problems, but just the opposite: people leaving in massive...