Where are Arizona’s Stephen Sandstroms?
May 7, 2012
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by David Safier This is a "There's hope" story out of the Salt Lake City Trib. Stephen Sandstrom, one of Utah's biggest anti-immigration legislators, a good buddy of Russell Pearce, changed his tune and became what was called during the Bush era a "compassionate conservative." He still supports Romney, but unlike Mitt, he thinks illegal … Read more
200+ seniors at Barber press conference
May 7, 2012
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by David Safier Last week the Star reported about a Jesse Kelly press conference with 30 seniors in attendance supporting their candidate. Today I did a carefully approximate count of the people at the Barber presser. About 150 seniors stood behind him (they keep on wrapping around the wall beyond what I show in the … Read more
Legislatively-referred constitutional amendments on the 2012 ballot
May 7, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Remember all those wild-eyed radical ballot measures that Tea-Publicans tried to push through the 50th Arizona legislature over the past two years? Even with a super-majority in both chambers of the Arizona legislature, it appears that only four legislatively-referred constitutional amendments will be on the ballot this November. Prop. 114 – The Arizona … Read more
MAS Lit note
May 7, 2012
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by David Safier Went to see Ana Castillo talk and read Friday. Enjoyable and edifying. Bought her novel, "So Far From God." I'm about halfway through. It's a good, enjoyable, lighthearted-yet-serious read. It's part of my personal, too-late-started, never-too-late-to-begin Mexican-American Studies education.
My comments on Carpe Diem make the Indianapolis Star
May 7, 2012
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by David Safier Carpe Diem, the "blended learning" charter school in Yuma, will be opening as many as six schools in Indiana. The first is being built in Indianapolis. When a friend emailed me the news (h/t to this ever-helpful source who prefers to remain unnamed), I immediately contacted the Indianapolis Star's education reporter, letting … Read more
Another GOP myth debunked: higher taxes on the wealthy does not discourage work
May 7, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty argue that higher taxes will not discourage the wealthy from working harder or slow the economy. Higher Taxes Won’t Discourage Wealthy From Working Harder – Bloomberg:
“Top 1 percent earners now make 20 times the average, while they made only 10 times the average in the 1970s,” Saez, winner of the John Bates Clark young economist award in 2009, said in an e-mail. “If they worked hard then, they should continue working hard today, even if they are taxed at 50 percent.” The top federal tax rate is now 35 percent.
The two economists’ work is of more than just academic interest. President Barack Obama’s former budget director, Peter Orszag, has said their research on income inequality “helped to point the way for the administration in its pledge to rebalance the tax code.”
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“The idea that we need to pay people many millions of euros per year to get them to work harder is just crazy,” Piketty said in a telephone interview.
He and Saez, a professor of economics at the University of California-Berkeley, agreed in a November 2011 paper that the rich do behave differently when their taxes are raised. They pursue financial strategies to reduce their taxable incomes and bargain for higher compensation, instead of cutting back on how much they work and save or becoming less entrepreneurial.
Peter Diamond, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in economics, also sees little evidence that raising rates on the top 1 percent of income earners — households making about $350,000 or more a year in 2010 — would restrict growth.
“The overwhelming likelihood is that the revenue- maximizing federal tax rate is somewhere in the 50 to 70 percent range,” said Diamond, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “If you are reluctant to overshoot, well okay, you can only go up to 50 percent, which I like to refer to as the Reagan tax rate." (Ronald Reagan championed an across-the-board tax cut soon after he became president in 1981 that lowered the top rate to 50 percent from 70 percent.)
The economy actually grew faster in the 30 years before that tax cut than it did during the following three decades, according to Diamond and Saez. Gross domestic product per capita advanced at an average annual 2.2 percent rate between 1950 and 1980, compared with 1.7 percent between 1980 and 2010, their calculations show.
A suggestion for Connie Cass of the AP
May 7, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Arizona Daily Star today has this report from Connie Cass of the AP, Who's who? Obama, Romney are projecting mirror images. Ms. Cass says "For all their liberal-vs.-conservative differences, when the two presidential contenders describe each other, they sound like they're ragging on the same flawed guy. Or mirror images of that guy."
Ms. Cass misdiagnoses what she observes. Numerous other reporters have been reporting on Willard "Mittens" Romney's campaign of psychological projection, the "I'm rubber, you're glue" or "I know you are, but what what am I" phenomenon for several weeks now, which I posted about over a month ago.
So to help Ms. Cass get caught up to where every other reporter in the country is already well out ahead of her on, I will repost it here.
Repost: Willard 'Mittens' Romney: 'I'm Rubber, You're Glue'
It has been incontrovertibly established that Willard 'Mittens' Romney is a pathological liar.
But Mittens suffers from another disorder frequently associated with pathological lying, psychological projection, a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which he then ascribes to another person. This is the old schoolyard taunt, "I'm rubber, you're glue – whatever you say (about me) bounces off of me and sticks to you."
Mitten's psychological projection disorder is receiving a lot of media attention this week. Here is just a quick sampling. Paul Werdel writes at TalkingPointsMemo I’m Rubber, You’re Glue or "I know you are, but what am I?":
Call it the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” election.
Running President Bush’s campaigns, Karl Rove became famous for taking his opponent’s single biggest strength and turning it into his biggest weakness. Mitt Romney is laying out another approach: taking his own top vulnerabilities and projecting them onto his opponent.
As Romney begins to settle into the role of presumptive nominee, he is deploying the strategy more and more.
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The “I know you are, but what am I?” dynamic is clear, if contradictory. Obama says I won’t lay out my real plans for Medicare cuts? Obama won’t lay out his plan. Obama says I want to end Medicare? Obama wants to end Medicare.
Even in his choice of stock phrases, Romney has raised eyebrows in recent days for using his opponent’s favorite lines. Twice in his Tuesday night victory speech in Wisconsin, he referred to Obama as “out of touch,” re-appropriating what is easily Democrats’ favorite descriptor for Romney in myriad press releases accusing him of being too wealthy and removed from average Americans to understand their problems.
The question now is whether Romney’s ju jitsu will insulate him from future hits on his well-established reputation for political opportunism — or merely serve to highlight his problems further.
Join Ron Barber today (Monday), 11:30am
May 7, 2012
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by David Safier Ron Barber will hold an event where he will emphasize his commitment to protecting Social Security and Medicare today (Monday), 11:30am, at the Lighthouse/City YMCA, 2900 North Columbus Boulevard (north of Glenn, south of McCormick Park). And he wants you there. This is part of Barber's response to Jesse Kelly's "I campaigned … Read more
