Ok guys and gals, lets get back to what gets a President elected. It is always the economy, so lets talk about that. The stock market (dow jones average) dropped below 10,000 yesterday, this is important, what it means is that the market has no confidence in the current administration. They stock market does not lie, so the economy is confirmed to be bad by investors themselves. The Nasdaq at its high was over 5,000, now it is under 2,000, the Nasdaq is the "tech stock" marketplace. Maybe Google will delay it's IPO until after the election since they want anyone other than Bush elected, this could be a factor in the election, believe it or not. Low wages, exporting of jobs to China and India, the war, all of these things are hurting the economy in this country. If we continue to export Billions of Dollars when we have a record deficit it can only put us all deeper in debt. So the trend is down in the economy, this does not look good for Mr. Bush.
Did anyone read the article about the economy in Forbes magazine today? http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/feeds/ap/2004/08/01/ap1483955.html I hate to admit it but Anthony just may be right. Apparently George's tax cut for the wealth just don't seem to be working. Funny how you can't trust those rich guys and girls to pump all their money back into the economy. You don't think any of them could be squirreling it away in off shore tax shelters do you?
Great post Anthony. The 'trickel down effect' doesn't work - best way is to lift the middle class income so it takes pressure off families where both parents work, this results in one member of the family working less or not working... opening more jobs for the lower class. The social impact (which in turn impacts on the economy) is best measured by levels of employment. BTW - I went and saw MM's 9/11 movie the other day - wow, no matter which way you vote (yes I know the film has it's critics) it is worth seeing. The thing that shocked me is the protesters actually pelted eggs at his motorcade on the way to inaguration... and the African American members of the house protested the acceptance of the election result because of all the African Americans taken off the voting register... and how Bush family business is tied up with Saudi investors including the Bin Ladens... and... and... go and see it!
I have been self employed since I was 18 years old, this is the worst economy I have seen in that span of time. I am 45 now so figure out how long the span is. This reminds me of 1974 when Nixon and the Arabs first rigged the oil market, prices shot up from .25 cents a gallon to $1.50 overnight, they called it OPEC then, they still call it that today, high oil prices will ruin this country, it is the biggest rip off of all, ask our UK friends what they think of this international scam, they will tell you all about it. We can not export 500 Billion dollars to IRAQ and expect to have money here at home, we are running a 450 Billion deficit at this time, what that means is that this debt must be financed (the government must borrow money so this means interest rates go up in addition to the dollar being devalued), the government must compete with businesses for loans. With the dollar being devalued because of lack of confidence in the US economy and the government, overseas investors pull money out of the USA. China is the largest purchaser of mortgage bonds in the world now, they own the debt on your house since they have the money (we import everything from China), not a good thing for us American slaves. Many of our largest companies are now investing in China, Intel is investing Billions in manufacturing plants in China along with about every other company in the world, they all go where the action is and it is not in the good old USA. We need to make change before we are all working for and owe money to China.
If I voted I'd probably waste my vote on Nader. Why not? I'm not pleased with either candidate. 1.Puppet of the rich 2. A flip Flopper 3. or a complete waste of a vote I want clinton back
Do you want 4 more years of recession leading to a possible depression in the economy that our generation has never experienced? If that is what you want, $ 5.00 gas prices, just leave things as they are, if you want change, vote for change. We could not do any worse than what we have now Plus your vote on DP won't cost you a dime.
GWB makes fun of John Kerry for changing positions all the time, but the following article shows that W flip flops just as much or more on issues. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19800/ Want a job, move to China
I still don't see how people can say that Bush caused the downfall in jobs - that is what you call sheer stupidity. Get a reality check and look at everything involved. The same people blame Bush for the 9/11 attacks and I suppose you think Bush is part of Al Quesadia (he he)
Debunked, lets hear your side of the story as to why the economy is not coming back anytime soon? Maybe you can fill us all in -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was just published last Friday, the text is below 9/10/2004 The cuts would be part of a program by the Plano, Texas-based technology services company (EDS: news, chart, profile) to shave $3 billion in costs, Chief Executive Michael Jordan said Thursday. The information-technology company's shares added 59 cents, or 3 percent, to $20.10. "I think we mentioned that 15,000 to 20,000 incremental people will go out," Jordan said Thursday during an investment conference in New York. "We said we are going to take 20 percent of our cost structure -- which is $3 billion -- out, and that's the way you do it," he said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Microsoft and Intel are also sending jobs overseas (this is called outsourcing) so getting a good IT job in America will be almost as likely as finding a pot of gold on the sidewalk during rush hour. Google is using part time folks to run the company also, low wage positions are the future if you want to work. Programmers are taking half the pay just to get back into the trade from what they made 5 years ago.
You can argue that the economy is indirectly caused by the president. Jobs, people's spending habits, the stock market, and many other things related to the economy really is not based on anything concrete. What it IS based on when it comes down to it is the citizen's (as a whole) perception of everything. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. if people think the economy will get better, then it will, because their actions (spending habits for example) will cause it to get better. If they don't think it will get better, people stop spending their money and start saving for "hard times". Basically if everyone truly believed the economy would be better, then it will be. Tax cuts and every other "trick" to stimulate the economy are really just to make people believe it will get better. When it comes down to it, the president is a leader of the country. If he can make people truly believe the economy will be better, then guess what? It will be.
No one even thinks that it is getting better, the stock market tells no lies. The Nasdaq is only a fraction of what it was at its high, the Dow has been cut in half. Wages and benefits are being cut, some jobs like the one I just got do not even offer workmans comp. if you get hurt on the job. The President has the press fooled, thus the people are fooled also about the future. Read the article below for some light on the way the President can spoon feed half truths to the public through the press. Long live bloggers. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19770/
Shawn's statement is very accurate. People are told by the press the bad news in the economy and believe it and don't spend. So if the press is 'fooled' then I don't understand your point of view. The press has been saying the economy is bad ever since Bush came into the office. If you look up old papers I would bet some 'predicted' a fall in the economy from the 1st day he took office. Since people are stupid enough to believe anything or everything in a newspaper, they believe that the economy is bad and spend less. Shawn - you need to get out in that southern cali weather and quite posting so much. Or come up here to southern Oregon and go on some rapids or buy yourself that hummer and break it in on some of the mountains.
Debunked, the press does not have to tell anyone anything, a man or woman knows when things are bad by not having a job, not being able to pay their mortgage, not able to buy energy for their homes and cars or not being able to pay for their kids education. Ask Shawn about the State of California, did they not recall their Governor because of the sorry state of the economy? Who's fault was that (Enron), could it be some Houston Oil Men behind that scam? Do you remember the Savings and Loan scam when GB's dad was in office? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=savings+loan+scandal&spell=1 Did the Enron scam put a lot of folks out of work, did companies go out of business in California because of high natural gas costs? Maybe you missed all of that?
Yep, same old liars, believing all those official U.S. government figures on employment, income, and all that other stuff that has nothing to do with "the economy". But, for those interested in what started this thread, who is likely to win in November, I will mention (if no one has elsewhere) the highly useful and interesting site-- http://electoral-vote.com --which offers daily-updated current status plus projections of the Electoral College vote based on polls as they are released. The guy is obviously knowledgeable about the sort of detail that goes into statistical analysis (which is more than some big-name polling companies seem to be), and, though he makes his own preferences clear, is working very hard to do a completely unbiased, dispassionate analysis of the actual data. If there is any defect, it is that he uses all polls on a more or less equal-status basis, though his annotations make it clear that some are more reliable and plausible than others. But I guess he didn't want to get into selective weighting or selective use. Today's (September 11th's) current snapshot shows Kerry 273 to Bush 233 (270 or more wins), with 32 so close as to be uncallable. (Yes, Florida is much of that.) The projections, which are mathematically calculated (not simply averaged) state by state from the various poll data points, show Kerry 255 to Bush 263, with 20 too close to call, even from the projections. But, as the site owner says, the projections should not be taken too seriously till at least October. The various Senate races are also now shown, and it currently looks like a 50-50 Senate (counting the independent, Jeffords, as a Democrat, since he normally votes with them). But, as the site maker points out, polls or no, Louisiana has never, ever elected a Republican Senator, so it might end up 51-49 Democratic, taking away the Vice President's tie-breaking-vote significance. I took a glance at the 20 "too close to call" projections; half were Wisconsin's 10 votes. Wisconsin is today listed "weak for Kerry". A look at the graph and the projection lines suggests the fallibility of the purely-mathematical projection method, though, again, I suppose it beats subjective eyeballing. But, speaking as one who has spent many years eyeballing trend graphs for significance (though not in politics), I'd be inclined to say Wisconsin will stay Kerry. (That doesn't settle anything nationally, because one would have to manually review all 50 states for trends, and by then the cumulative subjectivity can lead to significant error). For one thing, in my opinion, more recent data ought to be weighted more than older data, but that's just my opinion. My own take on the election is simple: it seems utterly unimaginable that anyone who voted for Gore in 2000 would vote for Bush in 2004, but far from unlikely that some who voted for Bush in 2000 will vote Kerry in 2004.
That's an interesting conclusion. The individual state polls typically have margins of error in the 3% range. You can read a very great deal of good sense about polling methodology here: http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/polling.html I would be interested in the mathematics you used to derive your conclusion.
Owlcraft, the point is they say the economy is good up to the day Bush came into office, then bam, somehow everything changed overnight. ya right.... I guess pot smoking would improve my senses like it did for Clinton. Turn off CNN and take a look deeper into the facts. Sure the economy is bad at the moment, seems some forgot what happened 3 years ago that also shook up our little world. Also for some (not naming anyone) they didn't have a job the prior 4 years anyways, so what has changed for them?? They can't blame their job loss of 8 yrs ago on the current president?!! Point of views - Vietnam some guys went and their friends and family supported them even if they didn't support the war, they came back heros. Seems that the hippy crowd that if someone did go, their friends rejected them and then condemned them when they came back, some of those people who I have met over the years are still without many friends and are bitter and angry about everything and believe that the whole world hates them. (exagerated some to give the point)
The economy would not be in the shape it is in if it were not for the rich stealing and lying to the citizens. Enron, Halliburton and all the rest of the Oil/Military theives running us all in to the ground. http://la.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/99614.php
Owlcroft. It's sort of annoying to have to respond to people who absolutely, positively will not look facts in the face. I have just made a temporary directory, at-- http://owlcroft.com/temp/--in which you can find four graphics. Perhaps simple colored pictures will demonstrate what it seems numbers and words cannot communicate to you. But I suspect that, as Simon and Garfunkel sang it, Still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest. Boy, there's a trenchant piece of political analysis. It does wonders for your street cred, too. And it seems that others have no grasp of what happened even prior to 9/11, and of the relatively minor effect it had on the economy, whatever else it may have done. (Of course, its non-related but associated follow-up, a trillion-dollar war against a country that had as little to do with 9/11 as Rwanda, hasn't helped anything--though usually wars boost an economy.) If you are, as it seems, deep into rationalizing and excusing, I suggest you cast about for something less likely to produce giggles in those who can read without moving their lips (as opposed to the Bush constituency). Unemployment started rising from pretty much literally the day Bush took office, and the data make that awfully clear. What does your remark have to do with the price of butter in Chicago? Look at those graphs. Exaggerated a lot to make the point that it has no point. Can we get clear on something? A President is a hired hand. He is an employee--and the American people are his employer. It is our responsibility to evaluate his and other job candidates' resumes against the requirements of the job. And if the current employee is botching his job, he needs to be fired. What is the job of a president? In fact, it comprises only a few major tasks. First, as the commander in chief and chief executive, it is his job to assure that the nation is as secure as reasonably possible. When the Clinton administration was transferring out, they tried as hard as possible to make sure that the incoming administration understood that Al Quida was the pre-eminent threat to US security: Clinton expressed that emphatically to Bush in a face-to-face meeting. So, of course, the administration largely ignored Al Quida, since they "knew" that the chief threat was still those nasty old Russians and their missles. Read the 9/11 Commission report if you want to see what was done prior to 9/11. OK, then came 9/11. Al Quida was known to be headquartered in the Afghan mountains (where it remains, virtually unscathed, to this hour). It was known that Iraq, which was, for all its bluster, running scared from the US and especially from the UN sanctions, which were strangling it, was having absolutely zero to do with Al Quida, having enough problems as was. And it certainly wasn't running any terrorist nets of its own. But finding Al Quida and its chiefs is hard--the cheatful buggers insist on moving around, whereas a country is always in the same place. So, Iraq having lots of oil, let's invade Iraq. Won't all the oil we get pay for the whole deal? The US Secretary of Energy said it would. In the end, he was off by a little, just a few hundreds of billions, but these little mistakes will happen. But at least we can sleep well at night knowing that the administration is looking out for our defense. Why, just look at the numbers: What National The Realistic Cost, What the Administration Protection: Estimated by Experts Has Budgeted ================================================================================= Basic security upgrades for subways & commuter trains $6 Billion $100 Million (1.6%) in our larger cities Equip all US airports with explosive-detection machines $3 Billion $400 Million (13%) Security upgrades at US shipping ports $1.1 Billion $210 Million (19%) Radiation portals for US ports to detect "dirty bombs" in cargo and containers $290 Million $43 Million (15%) Help local firefighters to be prepared for terrorist attacks $36.8 Billion $500 Million (1.3%) Get local medical crews ready for terrorist attacks $1.4 Billion $50 Million (3.6%) * * Emergency medical training grants now eliminated from budget altogether. Sources of data: American Public Transportation Association Fiscal Year 2005 Budget Government Accountability Office U.S. Coast Guard House Apropriations Committee Code (markup): That is not disgusting or pathetic--it is frightening. [Aside: How does one achieve monospacing in these forums?] The simple fact is that we are now far, far less secure as a nation than we were before Bush took office, and even than we were on 9/12--largely owing to the Administrations's serious lack of foresight, a lack they continue to make horribly plain, as those budget numbers show. This nation's behavior, at home and abroad, has been the answer to Al Quida's prayers. We couldn't have done worse if we had asked them for advice. (Well, through Armand Chalabi, we did ask Iran for advice, even if the administration "foreign-policy experts" were too bleeping stupid to know a con man and Irani secret agent when they met one (despite everyone else in the world knowing the first and suspecting the second). OK, that's the evaluation for job #1. Now job #2 a president is hired to do is to keep the economy strong and fair. The current president promised, on taking ofice, to create six million jobs; so far, he is about seven million behind on that promise. When Clinton took office, he inherited a staggering unemployment rate of over 7% from Bush I; over 8 years, he brought it down, on pretty much a straight-line basis, till he handed a historically low under-4% rate to Bush II--who has now run it back up to around 6%. And that ignores two critical data: the very large number of jobless who are no longer counted as "unemployed" because they are considered to have given up actively seeking employment, and the fact that a much larger percentage of the employed than in previous years is making the minimum wage or something not far over it. But we're doing so well, according to this administration, that despite a trillion-dollar ongoing (and it will be ongoing for years) war/occupation in Iraq (we "won the war" but have no effective military, much less civil, control over a large fraction of Iraq), despite massive cutbacks in funding to everything from schools to Medicare, why, we're so rich we can afford big tax cuts. Of course, there are a few who are very rich, and--what a coincidence--they're the ones who got the breaks of tax cutting. President George W. Bush's tax cuts have transferred the federal tax burden from the richest Americans to middle-class families, with one-third of the cuts benefiting people with the top 1 percent of income, according to a recently released government report. The report said the top 1 percent, with incomes averaging $1.2 million per year, will receive an average $78,460 tax cut this year, and have seen their share of the total tax burden fall roughly 2 percentage points to 20.1 percent. The third job of our hired hand is to see that domestic tranquillity is preserved in accord with the just principles of the US Constitution. I am getting tired of trotting out the facts here for those too wilfully blind to look them up, so do your own homework here (but a hint to the student: try looking into the treatment by the New York Police of persons peaceably assembled to speak their minds). While "miserable failure" may have been an amusing Google bomb, it is also a perfectly accurate description of the current employee's job performance. It's pink-slip time.