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It’s a pun off of the word stagflation which was short for stagnant inflation. Stagpression is short for stagnant depression. It is the most accurate indicator of our economic situation today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…
We seem to be in a Depression. but we aren’t. The Housing market is recouping, jobs are consistently growing, energy costs have dropped, corporate profits are now at record, higher than just before the 1929 crash, and an all time record high stock market.. We should be booming. But we aren’t. We still have too high of an unemployment both on and off the books, we still have depressed low wages, we have lost massive wealth within the middle class over this century so far, we have record high student loan debt, we have low consumer confidence, Hence, one class of America is booming. The other class is still in Depression mode. Hence we are in Stagpression….
It is easy to see why.
Here is a chart showing the free cash flow of businesses……
Record highs. See? Record highs. We should be growing faster than China, we have so much investment money at our fingertips. But no.
Here is our investment track record…
Ironically as we gave our businesses more and more money with lower taxes, less regulation, tax funded price supports, hand-tied their unions, and made free new technology at our taxpayers expense, despite all these perks and incentives, they invested less. So what are they doing with their money? Pick up any financial publication and read the headlines. They all will let you know.
None of which help our economy. It is as if we work hard, buy their products, and they put that money into a mattress. Soon, we are going to run out of money. Fortunately the Fed has filled the gap by printing more and giving it to banks for free. It too, filters though the system, and when it gets to the top, it goes into the mattress.
Instead of recycling money, we are letting the tap flow from our printing presses to the top echelon of our society… Now do you get it?
What is missing is a system that recycles the materials back into our economy so we have less money we need to print. If we were talking about paper, we would be saying we need to recycle paper to keep from cutting down more and more trees simply to fill up our landfills….
We need a system to return that money to the bottom so it can rise again and again and again.
Here are the options that have been tried.
- Price and pay freezes.
- Government set and regulated prices.
- Lower tax rates.
- Cash incentives from taxpayers to reinvest.
- Pleas and entreaties from the Oval Office.
- Higher marginal tax rates.
Only one of these has worked. Can you guess which one? If you guessed higher tax rates spur reinvestment you are absolutely correct.
Notice the rates of reinvestment climbing in each of these presidencies: Eisenhower, Kennedy-Johnson, Carter, Clinton each time Congress legislated higher marginal tax rates. Also notice the drops under Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush as Republicans cut the taxes… The Bush Tax Cuts held through Obama’s first term, and account for today’s sluggish reinvestment. More precisely, the reinvestment turned upwards under Obama until 2010 when Republicans took over Congress, and has fallen since. I can’t wait to see 2013’s numbers, for I expect to see real investment increase there as well. However those higher tax rates on the top half percent implemented at 2013’s beginning, sent financiers scurrying and bargain empty homes were bought up by investors with lots of cash which brought up the floor of the housing market (perhaps to our future peril). It also accounts for stocks becoming an area of liquidity to hold cash,..explaining the record highs ….
So we have an opposite relationship: cutting taxes increases corporate profits which go elsewhere other than reinvestment back into the ecnomy.
Increasing taxes, cuts into the Free Cash Flow, and funnels some of that flow over to reinvestment projects.
Ever wonder how Delaware’s 3 banks lasted for decades and then all disappeared very close to each other? Bank of Delaware, Delaware Trust, and Wilmington Trust. are now owned by other entities. (Wilmington Trust had some hand in cutting off its own foot). Commerce Bank, which was New Jersey based had the same fate.
They lasted for years because big banks never had enough free money to buy them out. Just think. In Delaware there are now 3 less bank presidents. 18 less bank officers, and who knows how many clerical workers are missing because the work goes to the owners headquarters, not located here…. One still wonders if our state could be better off, had MNBA not been bought up by an outside conglomerate.
So giving more money to businesses and corporations in this case, cost us jobs… and destroyed 3 long termed Delawarean corporations…
That was one example. Across this nation, in every city, every county, every state are millions more….
Raising the tax rates drives re-investment. It is the only thing we know of so far that consistently works to drive re-investment. Everyone who insists on cuts and de-regulation, no matter how they spin it, is pursuing a policy that has been completely disproven by reality and fact and of course, recent history..
Are you better off than you were under Clinton? Your income level will probably determine your answer….. Because yes, some people are indeed, a lot better off. John Carney. Tom Carper. Chris Coons, Jack Markell, to name 4 off the top of my head…. Better off too, are those who these four represent… the 1%. Much better off!
If you find someone willing to raise taxes, stick to them like glue. They are the ones who will lead us back to prosperity…..
Until then, economic stagpression will continue…. continuing through tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow….(at a) petty pace that creeps from day to day….
Remember Super PAC’s? The fear that Republicans would flood the market with money, so really bad Republican candidates would win over really good Democratic ones? Well. that hasn’t happened, and the reason why, is rather obvious after 2012. Why would one throw money away on a candidate who has zero chance of winning?
The key word is “zero”.
The Federal Election Commission has published the top 10 contributors of 2013. 8 lean Democratic, 2 lean Republican and one of those died this past year.
When money does not flow towards ones campaign because of one’s ideology, one’s ideology will remain just that: ideology. And that is what is happening. For those already tied to the losing side, conservatism, being shrill is the only method left in their bag of tricks to shake up campaign donations… For example if as a candidate I wade into a group of ten people and champion “We really have got to get rid of this president who is black” and one person says “here, here”, I know which of the ten to press for money. Hence we will hear the Tea Party get crazier, and crazier, and crazier, in their attempt to isolate those donars who will only donate if one meets the high bar set by a certain litmus crazy test…
But it will cost in the long run as this chart well shows…. Donors for 2013.
Compiled by Center for Public Integrity from FEC information. (Click image to show party affiliation)
The fears over Citizens United still remain. Just because no Republicans are on this list today, does not mean they lack the potential to donate next year. (Adelson and his wife donated $90 million in 2012). but what is telling is that many of the deep-pocketed GOP donors who ranked among the most generous givers during the 2012 election cycle, have yet to open their checkbooks for super PACs during this election cycle. Furthermore, the only 2 Republicans on this list, Bob Perry at number 6 who died, leaving a giant hole in Republican future finances, and the number 10 spot was only to funnel money in to Massachusetts GOP Senatorial candidate Gabriel Gomez, have since… disbanded….
Republicans are waiting for a more moderate, sensible, and decent human being to step up to the plate before they will think twice of donating any money. Currently there is only one, Rand Paul, who stands a chance.
In a recent debate: What would get you to change your mind?
- Republican: “Nothing, I’m a Christian.”
- Democrat: “Evidence.”
Think about the campaigns of 2012, 2010, 2008, 2006, 2004, 2002, 2000….. Doesn’t that snippet above ring true? Evidence based decisions versus wishful thinking….
In a recent piece I did on Biden, as I read over his biography I was reminded of his plagiarism incident in 1988. He dropped out of running for the presidency because he forgot to attribute an Irish speaker before quoting him on one of his hundreds of stops that day… The “uproar” caused him to drop out of the race.
He dropped out for that little thing?
Today we have Ron Paul plagiarizing every line said this past legislative session. As if to reward that, he is now considered a top contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Today we have Fox News blatantly lie through careful edits, and no one cares. We have CBS create a fake story about Benghazi, and no one cares…. We are fed daily lies in the House of Representatives; no one calls them out anymore… Our own News Journal publishes gross misstatements by our Secretary of Education, and only bloggers call them out.
But Biden was ridiculed and totally forced out of the race for forgetting one time to mention Kinnock before he borrowed a line from him…
The big difference is the uproar… It started deteriorating after 1994.
I remember Newt Gingrich throwing irrational after irrational accusations out against Clinton. I asked an old politico what he was doing… ” Sounds like he is just throwing mud to see what will stick.”
It hasn’t stopped sense. Ridiculous claims get emailed to the press. The press puts them up, and others talk about how ridiculous such accusations are. Then someone finds a similarity to something that may have really happened and suddenly a scandal is born. The crime is solely in the similarity, not the actual action… Next the press is talking about how much damage these items will cause the person being accused. The person himself gets asked, and we all will then judge his guilt by his demeanor in giving back his rebuttal… If his eyes shift, we discuss his guilt. If he misses a point, we discuss how he missed his point….and whether or not both show weakness in their leadership…
Yet it was all over something absolutely ridiculous originally said by someone making things up out of thin air and throwing mud…
Today, when I hear news from any of the main media, my first response is not to believe it…. “yeah, right I say”.
Isn’t that terrible? I’m just like those Soviets reading the Pravda. The assumption being made by me is that the story is reported only after being edited by the propaganda officer of the news corporation. No matter whether that media is grounded from the right or left, if it comes from any commercial media, it can’t be believed. I’m not sure how your mind works today but to borrow from computer technology, I tend to put all main media stories into a nebulous cloud, a purgatory of thought so to speak. As more nuggets get offered, I let them settle them into either columns of pros or cons supporting or denying the original nugget, and then have to use my guessing powers to determined which story of the pro or con is the more truthful….
It’s a lot of work.
The point is, our society has moved past telling the truth....
Truth is not what is important anymore.. Making you believe what they want, is the sole purpose of messaging… It is not about telling you that such and such happened… Absolutely almost all of our messaging system is set up to tell us that such and such a thing happened … because of this reason….
Hate Liberals! Because this thing happened.
Hate Conservatives! Because this thing happened.
Hate Communists and Socialists! Because this thing happened.
Hate Corporate America! Because this thing happened….
And the erosion of telling truth is huge…. Our courts for the most part have determined political discourse does not have to be factual, certainly not the ads. A new industry has developed to test the truth of political statements, because the press fell down on the job. Our courts have determined for the most part, that lying shall not to be punished. Whenever our government speaks today, it is not believed.
“We have nor will ever have any means or desire to collect American’s metadata and store it so we can go back and look through it” said May 2013 by the head of the NSA; Snowden released the truth just over a month later.
Truth no longer relates to the science of what happens; truth has become the art of stretching belief up to the edge of the envelope without going too far.
Our real lives are always fret with uncertainty, of intrigue, of mistrust. Which is why it was reassuring to have laws on the books regarding the truth being told by our media. We could trust it as being true to the best of their knowledge, because they would be incarcerated if it were not so….
It freed our minds considerably.
So in a proper frame of mind, in a world of truth, Obamacare would be framed as thus:
Obama had a mandate through the electoral process to improve the health insurance system for everyday citizens, but Republicans sought to represent the Large Insurance Companies all who would make less profit if they had to fairly pay out claims… Every little fight was then laid out in that context.
What is sad, is that our children as were those children once of Communist China, Soviet Russia, East Germany, Albania, and Bulgaria, are growing skeptical of all official pronouncements.
Slogans saying “capitalism is corrupt” ring hollow when you have to stand in line for a daily loaf of bread, and you see Americans shopping in supermarkets lined with products. Our news media is now in the same boat.
When was the last time you saw a major media state we seriously need to raise taxes on the top one percent if we are ever going to have a strong America again?
Never?
When you do, stick close to that source. They are close to telling the truth….
What if McDonald’s, Wal*mart, Papa John’s, and other companies whose wealth is made off the backs of sub-standard wages, had to pay for each one of their employee’s food stamps and Medicaid costs?
It would be similar to our Unemployment tax… Essentially we ( the State of Delaware’s Employment Services) would state that you had “x” amount of employees on Medicaid and Food Stamps and therefore you must pay this higher premium so we can care for them…. To someone like Costco, they would say since you had very few employees on Medicaid and Food Stamps you get to pay a much lower rate into the pool…
As with unemployment, companies who cost the state more by firing with impunity, pay a higher rate into the fund than companies whose employees very rarely ever have to file for unemployment benefits…
Apply the same to Medicaid and Food Stamps….. it is simply putting the cost to society into the right account. Something accountants have to do all the time when going through a companies books….
Quite often we get carried away telling you about this newest thing, or that newest thing which could or could not elicit your outrage minute of the moment. Since the news feed coming into us in non-stop, there is no shortage of things that will shock or make you feel abused.
I want to turn that on its ear in this post, and talk about the broader perspective, particularly in regards to how it deals with education.
There is an old saying often attributed to Roosevelt, and Delaware’s own Paul Baumbach echoed it very well in a comment back when SB51 was shoved through the House. Paul said he tried, but there was no outrage over this bill until too late; people have to react sooner. In doing so, he mirrored Roosevelt’s statement: that if you want a certain direction to be taken, force them (those in power) to take it!
Here is how it gets done. Pick an issue. Gun Control, Gay Marriage, Reasonable Taxes, Global Warming, War in Iraq, the 99%, Common Core, Discrimination, Poverty, Street Violence, Help Stray Kitty Cats,
Then create a “buzz”. Letters to the editor; Letters to Politicians; door-door neighborhood campaigns; visit schools, visit pastors; visit Union Halls; visit bars; visit honky-tonks; attend Firemen’s fund-raisers, Always mention that the change you seek is needed.
Encourage others who you convert, to do likewise. Spread the news. Let people know the issues, the facts, and the consequences.
Force a vote. In a representative democracy, everyone can talk out of both sides of their mouths. It is the usual stall-tactic for keeping things as the status quo. Politicians who are good at it (Mike Castle was the best) can make both opposing sides believe he has each of their interests at heart. But….. as soon as that vote is forced… he has alienated the one half, all the while appeasing the other half. So the vote is the measuring device necessary to determine if impact is making a difference. (Here is an example: one nice factor of the repeated “for show” House votes to repeal Obamacare, is that over time one can see movement towards implementing Obamacare, not removing it. If the opponents were growing instead of shrinking, we should be worried… But they’re not).
Get those supporters of your position, to engage their politicians. Bring up the topic; thank or castigate them for their vote. Make these politicians aware of how much this topic means to a lot of citizenry. Those in politics are essentially just like everyone else. They too,… don’t have enough time. They have to choose where they spend every minute, because there is just so much out there, they can’t do it all. Your engaging them, is taking those minutes away from something else; you are by the very process, making your cause important to them. Even if they are on the opposing team, they, by listening to you, are apprising the numbers of support for the cause you proclaim…
Finally. Exercise your vote. Your vote is the final arbiter. If a politician does not believe you, and loses his political bout because of it,, the new politician will be much more receptive. Often politics gets muddled and distorted over charges of character. In a representative government, that is really less important than having someone who supports policies that help you. If you are a minority; don’t give up. Things can swing back your way.
But if you don’t do all these things, you are really the biggest part of the problem. Remember, while you were doing nothing, the other side was doing all of the above. And if things are royally screwed up, it is because no one made any adjustments when the wrong people attained positions of power. The reason they are there in the first place, is because you weren’t paying attention, or too lazy to act, or just didn’t care.
It all comes down to you. You are the problem; you didn’t do everything you could have done!
Which means: you are also then: the solution.
It probably hit mass culture with Star Wars. Where, when in a pickle, one made some adjustments to a computer, pushed a button, and one was suddenly in another part of the universe.
Then came the TV show Quantum Leap in the 80’s, where after a certain feat had been changed, one jumped through space and time into a new body, to begin a new episode the following week. Remember Ziggy?
I was reading one of my earlier pieces that for some random reason yesterday had caught a flicker of interest, and back then I had used that concept, that of “jumping”, to explain why America was finally settling on Obama as their candidate of choice….
America had been milling around in stagnation and needed a “jump” to move us forward. Clinton and McCain could not engineer that, I proposed and that is why we needed someone new, to “make the jump” forward.
That was written during the campaign of 2008. This summer will be 5 years hence.
America still needs to make that jump.
But just as we almost get there, Republicans sabotage it by pulling the computer’s plug…
Now you reading this may be a Republican but please don’t take offense. You are actually a big part of the solution which you will see, if you read through to the end.
Let’s look at a few things.
- Starting in the 80’s the Middle Class has consistently been losing ground against the top 1%. Now the Middle Class has spent their retirement savings just to pay normal expenses , and we are still heading downward.
- Immigration reform was supposed to be completed and done in Reagan’s time. Thirty years ago. We are just getting serious now.
- Our interstate system is 50 years old. We haven’t reinvested adequately. 11,000 bridges are held up by paint, and could drop out from under us at any moment.
- Our tax system is still after 30 years, in disarray. The wealthy get breaks, the poor get pissed on.
- Our Social Security and Medicare Programs are going bankrupt. They were also supposedly permanently fixed in Reagan’s term, again 30 years ago.
- We have been at the mercy of oil speculators for the past 13 years. We still are. What did you pay today?
- Capital investment in America is at an all time low, yet the wealthy have parked $13 trillion in savings. Why no investment?
So America, why are we still stuck in the 1980’s?
Republicans. That is why. Conservatives.
That sounds so simple that one must wonder why we haven’t moved them out of the way?
And that answer, is because for some crazy reason, we keep changing the rules to let them play longer. Citizen’s versus United is just one case in point. Allowing one person to fund a candidacy opposing the people’s true choice, obfuscates the entire playing field, and in the fog, makes the minority appear to have far more clout than is endowed to it by the American people.
Voting tallies prove that we have had over the past 24 years, 5 popular vote victories for Democrat presidents, and just 1 for Republicans, and to be fair, that was to a wartime president who barely got re-elected into office. Voting totals are the only non-spin, the only unobfuscated time we ever get to see how America truly feels.
The majority of America want us to jump forward. They are tired after thirty years of nothing.
Right now, Republicans have killed the America dream. College grads do not see them using their knowledge in their future jobs. Retirees see their golden year’s savings swallowed up by profits of gigantic medical corporations. Everyone is making tremendous amount of money, except 99% of the American people.
The majority want to jump forward. Yet it is always Republicans holding us back.
Holding us back on Immigration Reform. Holding us back on higher revenue. Holding us back on budget cuts. Holding us back on health care reform. Holding us back on Chuck Hagel’s nomination….
It is just stupid.. It is done simply to achieve drama, and is only done for dramatic effect; it still is just a stupid waste of time and your money. It is as if Republican behavior was patterned after that of a six year old child who drags his feet before going to school. That child knows he has to go there eventually, but he whines, supines, and acts recalcitrant, just to get attention…. maybe make someone feel “sorry’ for them… Boo hoo.
America is playing the role of the parent to these recalcitrant Republicans and is damn tired of it.
One simply has to look at today’s looming sequestration, which is strictly a problem Republicans created and brought down upon all of us, and across this great nation, Americans shake their heads in unison, remembering that if a Republicans had never been elected President in the year 2000, by 2008 and Obama’s election, our national debt was on track to have hit zero… Yes, Democrats would have paid off the entire National Debt by 2008, if we had never had George W. Bush slip into office.
And now, we preparing to slash $86 billion over the next 9 months. Then do the same over the next 12 years…
Under the Budget Control Act by 2021 discretionary spending will be at 5.5% of GDP which is its lowest level of GDP since 1931. (We all know what happened in 1932!) And we propose to cut it lower?
Yet we have $13 trillion in savings owned by the top 1%. $86 billion of $13 Trillion is…. 0.7th of one single percent. If you increased taxes on the wealthy by only one penny per every dollar over $1 million, we would have yearly budget surplus... just like that. One penny per dollar over $1 million. That one penny would even give us an additional 0.3 of one percent extra which could be applied to lowering the deficit… Unbelievably easy…. If you own trillions, who is going to miss a penny?
But we can’t do it for one single roadblock. Republicans won’t raise taxes.
America needs to “make a jump”…… and we need to make that jump now.
If this were Hollywood or a television drama, Captain America would pull out his sidearm, kill the insubordinate (spy) officer, and ask his attache to step into his position. We would then, finally be able to save our ship.
Americans could then dream again about prosperity. There is only one reason we don’t still have it today.
We’ve been there. We know. For us it was during Reagan’s 2nd term. We had the same arguments you have now… Our Romney was Walter Mondale. After losing we began looking at what a Democrat really was… We shunned the title Liberal.
The mantra that in class struggle it was the working man who carried the elections, was busted for us. We had the same arguments you did. Our radicals said we lost because we didn’t have a true liberal.. our mainstream said look at the obvious, true liberals can’t win.
Our next primary was a free for all.. and the one who won, was the most Machiavellian of the bunch. A centrist. A governor. Someone who had results attached to his name. And the race was close for a while, for we were running against a wimpy vice president. But we put our guy into a tank, and that was it… People blame Willie Horton, but it was the tank, that made Americans say unh-unh…. not Presidential enough. And Republicans took the highest office again, but we had found the answer.
Philosophy was a dinosaur. Politics was practical. You outplayed your opponent and you won. We then put up a Southern Governor who was modern enough to capture the old Democrats from the North, and had appeal, that could squeezed votes from the South, and Ross Perot helped a little too….
His second election, was not based on philosophy either. It was practical. The challenger didn’t have a chance really, even with falling off the stage… Someone had rebuilt America from the horrible recession and we were happy with the direction we were headed…
His vice president didn’t do as well as Reagan’s. But it was a little closer, and the other side won. But no one voted on philosophy. His challenger just had more popular appeal, was a little more charismatic, and much less of a jerk on TV than our candidate. It was practical. Leaving no child behind? Taxes back? And especially after having details of blow-jobs spewing across blue dresses, … Family values. We were going to have a Christian in the White House…..
That is where the Republican Party began falling apart. 2004 should have been a landslide. It wasn’t,… because “the philosophy” was touted. Your guy won barely, and by deceit… Then you lost both houses in 2006… That again, was because of your philosophy. You lost really bad in 2008… It was your philosophy, as well as the fact that McCain and wife, were no match for the Democrat and his wife. But as failure after failure piled up from all the decisions Republicans had made during the prior decade, Americans became practical and chose someone who would fix things, irregardless of philosophy. and that is what he did… Obama fixed things.
So, you ran 2010 on philosophy… and won. But, America was hurting too much to pay attention. It was more of a coup, than a mandate. When it came time for America to make their statement, they did. They don’t want any Republican philosophy. Period.
So. here is what you do. You let your people decide. They have been telling you over and over again. First with McCain, then with Romney. They like the liberal Republicans… Those old Conservatives fogeys, ALWAYS LOSE.
And that is about as clear as I can make it. If you want to preserve conservatism, you had better cull out those with similar beliefs, rent a building on top of a hill somewhere, and live in seclusion, writing your ideas down for some future generation…. because the American People want a liberal.
The question for you, is should you always accede that liberal to be a Democrat? Or would you like to put in a Republican Liberal for a change….
Conservatives can’t win. It is totally because of their philosophy….
I’ve commented on a lot of local blogs today. There is a common theme that needs pulled up for discussion.
Can we trust today’s polls?
Chart Courtesy of Michael Brogan, Political Forecaster(right click for full view)
I say no.
First, the numbers being given do not match the 80% support Obama has on the street.
Second, with today’s technology, it is rudely simplistic to assume that polls aren’t being tweaked. Even as simply as choosing who to call, That one factor can throw a poll off the deep end. And don’t think, you’re cookies don’t tell everyone how you vote…
Hmmm, who should we call to represent Delaware… kavips? … or Ms. Evans?… it is that easy.
Third. The average national poll consists of 700 people. That means 7 people can throw a percent; 4 people throw it, if you round up or down. And you tell me you can’t “randomly” find 4 more conservatives than progressives, or vice-versa?
Fourth. The polling organizations are companies that pay out dividends to someone. People buy stock; they want results. Obviously reporting that a race is over in August, does little to generate more polls. More polls equal more revenue. There is considerable pressure to keep a national race appearing closer, than it really is.
Fifth. Who checks the veracity of pollsters? No one. There is no watchdog exacting penalties over fake results. So how do we trust it is real? Exactly. We can’t…
That is enough. Polling is only believable if it fits in with the general scheme of things as we see it.. If 80% of the population is hopeful this recovery is real, and happy about YAY! JUST PAID UNDER $3.50 FOR A GALLON OF GAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, then any poll not showing Obama leading 80 to 20 is simply a fabrication of one’s imagination…..
And in local elections? Forget it. Ask your neighbor who their county commissioner is? Yep. Exactly.
I attack the bastion that Iowa should be the first primary… For one, it is not a primary. For two, it is not indicative of the whole United States, and three, it has been hyperbolated far beyond it’s own net worth.. In essence, both Iowa and New Hampshire, are harmful to the American voting process…. very harmful.
Essentially we allow less than 100,000 campaign volunteers, to determine the front runner. Not even close to the population of one entire state… The Iowa Caucus is not a contest that determines who is the best candidate for our nation. It is a contest of whom can organize the most of their supporters… buy them outright, if need be…..Hitler would win Iowa. Obviously the candidate who states, I will protect the wealthy’s money, has quite an edge….
How many is 100,000……?
And how does that compare to the entire USA?
(right click on picture to display full image)
The stats are as follows…
100,000 / 307,000,000 = 0.00033 or 0.033%….
African Americans make up just 2.8% of Iowa’s population. Worse, when Reagan won, in 1980 they were below 1.4%…
Iowa was ranked number two, behind Wisconsin as the worst place for blacks to live…
Latinos make up 5% of the Iowa’s population.
On a better note, 11.4% of Iowa’s are represented by unions… compared to the national average of 11.4%…
Iowa was estimated to be 56% metropolitan in 2007. Meaning 44% of it’s population is non metropolitan… The national rural/urban split is 21/79%.
In 2008, estimated $51,593,849 was spent by candidates on the 2008 Iowa Caucus. The 16 candidates for the 2008 presidential election raised and spent a grand total of $457,802,866 by the end of 2007, with the winners continuing on to spend in future races.
If there ever was an situation set up perfectly where an election could be bought, Iowa would become the perfect model.
Which could explain the extreme and excessive variables that Iowa has shown this cycle… First it was Michelle Bachmann who was hot… Then she disappeared as Rick Perry waltzed across the stage… Even his jobs record became outshown by the devil’s plan turned upside down, .. 999.… Until a too cocky Cain, resigned.. Gingrich lurched into favoritism… until he too discorporated … Suddenly a surge swept up number 2, Ron Paul.. but now, with the endorsement of a two single preachers, Rick Santorium, who I believe was originally under the 1% threshold at the beginning, is now rumored by ABC News to be able to win it all!!..
This is madness. This is Iowa. This is why we do not get qualified people into office… (from either party.) Are Iowa people dumb? Can Iowa people not make up their mind? Are Iowa people that uninformed? Are Iowa people that crazy? ….
Or,
…. are Iowa people being played by the press, and hoopla, and rest of the nations is stuck with their decisions…..
It is time another state issues a challenge to the prognosis that New Hampshire and Iowa need to be first.
ideally it would be state that was the first to ratify the Constitution. Ideally it would be a state that mirrors the national statistics a little better than some of the others. ideally it would be a state that has no television station. Ideally it would be a state where no one listens to the radio. Ideally it would be a state where one-on-one contact was possible with a large proportion of that state’s population. Ideally it would be a state with 11.9% of its workers represented by unions, equivalent to the national average of 11.9% of its workers represented by unions. Ideally its rural/urban split at 22/78% would mirror the nations rural/urban split at 21/79%… Ideally its African American mix (21.4%) would mirror that of America, 12.4%… Ideally its Hispanic population would do the same…. (8.2%/16.3%) and most particularly, in order to be representative of America as a whole, the non Hispancic white race should mirror that of the nation as a whole… 65.3% to 63.5%
There is a state that is far more similar to any pre campaign state out there.. it is the first state to ratify the Constitution….
It is time for courage to take over the wheel.. Those timid party reps who cow at the the National Political Machines, when it is nothing more than a self bloated paper tiger, need replaced by human beings who deeply care about the country.
Delaware losing representation at a convention, will make little difference in that convention’s outcome.. But sticking to our small state’s guns, and making Delaware the first state to hold a primary, would put a voice of reason, a system of control, and even sanity, back into our electoral process. It would also inspired a national media Maddow conversion, named after her experience in the Deer Park Tavern last cycle, where she was blown away that there existed a state, who’s citizens actually were well informed by sources other than commercials and the main stream media, and actually knew what was happening…. For it was a revelation: like “duh, common people aren’t stupid after all.” Perhaps the sanity that is Delaware, needs to become more mainstream… after all…
Looking at Iowa this year, it sure as hell couldn’t hurt….
kavips 
