respublica

Political pandering week by week

It's a campaign year and thus far each week or two has seen the Obama campaign harping on one thing or other.

It's been the War on Women, Racisim, and this week it's back to the Buffet Rule for solving the federal budget crisis. The Buffet Rule's main focus is that the rich should pay more in taxes. Funny how this works since Warren Buffet's company owes and has owed, over 1 billion dollars in back taxes. This is just not information coming from strictly conservative Buffet haters, even the Huffington Post took note.

But as I mentioned, this "make the rich pay more" is merely this week's DNC campaign meme. One CBS reporter wrote that by his count, the most recent Buffet Rule push is the 20th time Obama has used this in speeches since the State of the Union. Watch for all the spokemen heading for cable news shows pushing this once again. It's gotten so there are a handful of things in the regular rotation.

Sad closings

Several well known stores and restaurants announced their closings this week. The one which most surprised us was Casa Gallardo, the first Mexican restaurant in the St. Louis area and a fixture in Fairview Heights for decades. We went there many times although not in recent years.

Then the Monarch, a fine dining restaurant in Maplewood and one which consistently drew praise from St Louis food writers. Seems the Monarch's inside space was too large for the number of diners. They pay for square footage and the customers were no longer fillilng it it due, the owners say, to competition from the Groupon and other coupon deals other restaurants were offering.

Then there's Sears. The granddaddy of big retail stores is closing the Crestwood location. Looks like the Sears in Fairview Heights is safe for now. 

My favorite tweet from yesterday

@keder: Why does Obama get to take credit for this month's decent jobs report when he blamed last month's crappy one on Bush? 

and this:

 

Success is all in how you look at things politically

When the Super Committee quit with nothing to show for their assigned goal of helping us out of this economic mess, many called them a failure.  Yet, some are saying just the opposite which was they succeeded at their real goal which was to get us to Thanksgiving and provide cover for another increase in the debt ceiling.

This argument has some merit because the committee did not even meet this month.  "As the deadline of Thanksgiving rapidly approached, the supercommittee members couldn’t be bothered to sit in the same room together.

A committee who's main purpose was the very definition of "kicking the can down the road."

Frankly I don't know who benefits politically from this, maybe the president who can point his finger at the congress.  But this group couldn't even agree to cut one trillion?  My gosh, we're racking up 1 trillion in deficit every month.  

Better to live in a red state than a blue

Most of the “poor states” states, as the American Legislative Exchange Council calls them, have the highest personal income tax rates and the largest unfunded state pension liabilities.  But instead of taking the red-state approach by lowering taxes and/or cutting spending, the blue states tend to want to raise taxes even higher, just like their White House mentor.

The result of their overpromising and overspending, and their knee-jerk response to solving their fiscal problems by raising taxes, is that people are increasingly fleeing the blue states. 

 

The Broken Window theory

Suddenly last night the internet was lit up with talk about the Broken Window theory of economics.  I confess I'd never heard of this and the more I came across it the more interested I was to know just what people were talking about. 

In essence, the theory goes like this:  A shop keeper's front window is broken by a rock thrown into it by a vandal.  As awful as this is for the shopkeeper, it will help the local economy by creating a job for the window repairman. 

This all came up because of Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman's comments or supposed comments on yesterday's earthquake.  "People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage."

Whether he said them or not, he did say similar things about the economic benefits of WWII and the destruction after 9-11.

The theory has been refuted by others who see other economic negatives which balance out the window repairman. 

@Melissa Tweets tweeted :  I wonder how Krugman would feel if the economy was stimulated by his house being razed to the ground.

All in all, it's been a good day for learning something new.

It looks like...

Rush was right this past Thursday when he theorized that Obama and the rest of the campaign advisors are going to trot out a huge second stimulus knowing full well it will be opposed.  They're counting on running against this opposition. 

You can wave off Limbaugh if you want, but folks, it's already started and the plan has not even been announced yet.  David Axelrod was on CNN's State of the Union Sunday show today dropping the first volley in the' blame republicans' for opposing the not yet made public jobs plan. 

Amanda Carpenter Tweeted this morning:  "Sounds like Obama is planning to unveil an econ plan they want the GOP to reject."

"They'll unveil another big spending plan, knowing they can use the GOP press releases against it to cry "obstruction."

And so goes the 2012 campaign for president.  We'll see if this works, a lot will depend on how many friends the president still has in the journalism world. 

 

The blame game

With the S and P downgrade, the debt ceiling crisis, the stock market fall, all we're hearing is debates on who is at fault for all this. 

Maybe it's time to direct our thinking to how to get out of it, not raging against who or what got us into it.  Bringing congress back will just be more of the same.

Another drop in home value

The biggest drop in the value of homes since 2008.

Some cable pundits are saying the housing market isn't a true indicator of the health of the economy (re: Morning Joe), but this may be debatable.

If this keeps up it won't be long before home sellers will be trading their homes for 3 goats and 5 chickens.

13 things that cost more, or will

13 items which make up just about everything.