(Already a member? Click here to login and donate.)
The Club for Growth is a national network of thousands of Americans from all walks of life, who believe that prosperity and opportunity come through economic freedom. Click here to learn more. Click here to join today for FREE!
David Keating
Sen. Saxby Chambliss won his runoff election tonight by a 59% to 41% margin, which ensures that Democrats can not reach 60 Senate seats for the next Congress.
Thank you to all the Club for Growth members who donated to Saxby's runoff campaign through the Club for Growth PAC. Club members donated over $270,000 in just over two weeks!
Posted at 10:14 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | 
| #
Andrew Roth
Extreme Mortman has the list.
Posted at 5:39 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
The quote of the day comes from Senator Harry Reid during his remarks on the new U.S. Capitol Visitor Center:
"My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway," said Reid in his remarks. "In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true."
HT: Ben Cunningham
Posted at 4:54 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
I'm a big fan of CNBC. Not only because I have a background in the financial services industry, but because I can relate to their anchors both politically and economically.
Oh, and because they post interviews like this one on their website.
Posted at 4:40 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
David Keating
Despite favoring Al Franken, stat geek Norm Silver of Five Thirty Eight.com crunched the numbers on the recount and finds only one scenario out of 8 where Franken might win, using various assumptions.
Now before you get too excited, this does NOT mean Coleman has a 7 in 8 chance of prevailing. Far from it.
First, all the models necessarily use assumptions, reasonable ones, but still the data still is subject to large errors compared to the Coleman lead.
As Silver notes, "Given the high degrees of uncertainty and ambiguity implied by the models, they would suggest that Franken has roughly speaking somewhere between a 25% chance and a 50% chance of overtaking Coleman depending on which model is selected."
Second, the model makes no assumption about the eventual outcome of the fight over absentee ballots. Silver writes that "If Franken is able to get such ballots counted -- and there is a strong chance that he will -- they will likely be worth a net of somewhere between 25 and 100 votes to him. In this eventuality, the race should probably be considered a toss-up."
Finally, this model does not project what the US Senate might do, as the final judge of elections. On this front, the news is not good as Franken's lawyer has been making a lot of noises about eventually going to the Senate. The Hill newspaper today reported that "Franken attorney Marc Elias made the case to reporters Monday that as many as 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified and that the Senate or the courts may need to step in to resolve the issue."
Personally, I don't think the Senate would reverse a final decision in Minnesota, though I admit it could attempt to do so. I think a more likely result, should Franken attempt such a maneuver, is that Barack Obama would say he thinks the Senate should respect the final decision of the State of Minnesota. It would avoid a bitter partisan dispute that would detract from his efforts to govern.
A footnote: As Sam Wang points out in his post "Ties, damned ties and statistics," the election was effectively tied. He takes two scenarios where a tie is assumed in his statistical model of running an election with about the same number of voters as the Minnesota Senate race, and crunches the numbers. In both cases, the model with a tie "assumed" would produce a larger margin of victory than any recounted number we've yet seen from Minnesota.
Posted at 4:07 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
Apparently, Alan Colmes is leaving the "Hannity and Colmes" show on Fox News. Here's a survey asking people which liberal pundit they'd like to see replace him.
Posted at 3:02 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
Want a federal bailout? Via Craig Newmark, please fill out this form.
Posted at 2:25 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
This will make your blood boil. From the Seattle Times:
A sports-team owner, a financial-firm executive and residents of Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia were among 2,702 millionaire recipients of farm payments from 2003 to 2006 — and it's not even clear they were legitimate farmers, congressional investigators reported Monday.
They probably were ineligible, but the Agriculture Department can't confirm that, since officials never checked their incomes, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said.
[...]The investigators said the problem will only get worse, because the payments they cited covered only the 2002 farm-bill subsidies. The 2008 farm legislation has provisions that could allow even more people to receive improper payments without effective checks, they said.
HT: Mark Perry
Posted at 2:17 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
Here's a description of the new U.S. Capitol Visitor Center:
At 580,000 square feet, it’s the largest project in the Capitol’s 215-year history. It was originally scheduled to open almost four years ago, and the $621 million price tag is double the initial estimate.
As Cato's David Boaz sarcastically puts it, "What a perfect introduction to Congress and its activities!"
Posted at 2:11 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
From John Fund in today's WSJ Political Diary ($):
Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who won the Iowa presidential caucuses and became a mini-media sensation earlier this year, has a popular new book out (it's ranked No. 5 on next week's New York Times bestseller list) laying out his philosophy and settling some scores from the campaign.
As for philosophy, Mr. Huckabee was clearly stung by attacks on him as being insufficiently conservative during his ten years running the Arkansas state government from 1996 to 2006. He declares he was the genuine conservative in this year's presidential race and warns about coming economic hard times. He bitterly recalls "getting laughed at by the Wall Street Journal and pilloried by the National Review. They were just dicin' and slicin' me for not following the company line."
Mr. Huckabee thinks the "company line" is a combination of rigid fiscal conservatism and a refusal to use government to help people in times of distress. His book includes a chapter called "Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism" In it, he says the "real threat" to the Republican Party is a hidden "libertarianism masked as conservatism....[I]t threatens to not only split the Republican Party, but render it as irrelevant as the Whig Party."
Of course, Mr. Huckabee ignores exit polls from both the 2006 and 2008 elections that show many Republicans stayed home because the party had strayed from its fiscally conservative roots.
He also neglects to mention that the great hero of Republicans, Ronald Reagan, explicitly called for all wings of the Republican Party to stay united and raise "a banner of bold colors, rather than pale pastels." In a famous interview with Reason magazine, the Gipper noted: "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism....The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. . . . I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path."
Mr. Huckabee takes other shots in his book, including one that dismisses a Mitt Romney proposal to encourage more investment in the stock market as a Marie Antoinette approach to the economy: "Let them eat stocks!"
In interviews promoting his book, Mr. Huckabee also admits to some puzzlement about the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running-mate, a job he thought himself in line for. "She's wonderful, but the only difference was she looks better in stilettos than I do, and she has better hair," he told the New Yorker magazine. "It wasn't so much a gender issue, but it was like they suddenly decided that everything they disliked about me was O.K....She was given a pass by some of the very people who said I wasn't prepared."
Perhaps one reason why Mr. Huckabee's critics weren't enthusiastic about him joining the GOP ticket was his attitude. Rather than attack free-market groups like the Club for Growth as "the Club for Greed," Mrs. Palin assembled a broad coalition to win the Alaska governor's race in 2008 and maintained warm relations with both free-marketers and social conservatives. That's a page from the Reagan playbook that Mr. Huckabee seems not to have mastered, and indeed seems intent on ripping up.
Posted at 1:15 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
While talking about the auto bailout, Senator Carl Levin accidentally let it slip that he has no idea what he's talking about.
Posted at 12:03 PM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
Chris Cillizza has the scoop.
Posted at 10:54 AM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
THE DAILY NEWS
Governors Against State Bailouts - Mark Sanford & Rick Perry, WSJ
A Bullish Black Friday - Brian Wesbury & Robert Stein, Forbes.com
Toomey: Specter Faces Tougher Road in 2010 - Ian Swanson, The Hill
U.S. Trade Community Braces for Obama Policy - A. Field, GulfShipper.com
What Is Gold Telling Us? - Rich Karlgaard, Forbes.com
Freedom and the Left - Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com
Rangel takes on The New York Times - John Bresnahan, The Politico
It Must Be More Than Reagan - Union Leader Editorial
The U.S. Economy with Peter Thiel - Peter Robinson, National Review
PODCAST: Communicating Economics in Troubled Times - Russ Roberts, Cato
Posted at 10:30 AM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
Posted at 9:42 AM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
The "Tax Girl" is conducting a 50-part series on state taxes. Yesterday, she reviewed Arizona.
Posted at 9:12 AM,
December 2, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
I love how people searched for Britney Spears and professional wrestling ahead of Barack Obama.
Posted at 5:59 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
Here are some quotes by thankful people in a Kentucky newspaper over 100 years ago:
"Thankful for our increase in business."
"I will be more thankful when the City Council builds a work-house to hold the lawbreakers."
"I'm thankful that it is turning cold. I'm in the coal business, you know."
"I would be more thankful if all the people would come forward and pay their taxes."
"I'm thankful that I have on display the most complete line of miscellaneous holiday goods ever in the city."
"I'm thankful that John Farlee has invited me to dinner."
"Depends upon my old woman has to eat when I go home." (?????)
Posted at 5:16 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
Posted at 5:02 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
From the Rocky Mountain News:
Barry Manilow's "I Write the Songs" may begin with the line, "I've been alive forever,'" but for noise ordinance violators, listening to Manilow may feel like forever.
Fort Lupton Municipal Judge Paul Sacco says his novel punishment of forcing noise violators to listen to music they don't like for one hour has cut down on the number of repeat offenders in this northwestern Colorado prairie town.
About four times a year, those guilty of noise ordinance violations are required to sit in a room and listen to music from the likes of Manilow, Barney the Dinosaur, and The Platters' crooning "Only You."
If I was being too loud, We Built This City on Rock n' Roll by Jefferson Starship would shut me up permanently. But I firmly think playing that song violates the 8th Amendment.
Posted at 4:37 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
It gives me chills just skimming through it.
HT: Ben Cunningham
Posted at 4:29 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
There will be an open Senate seat in Kansas in 2010 (Brownback is retiring). That means an open seat in KS-01 (Jerry Moran is running for Brownback's seat), a possible open seat in KS-04 (if Tiahrt runs against Moran), and now we're hearing that Dennis Moore might retire in KS-03.
Posted at 4:23 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
I love it when outnumbered Republican lawmakers get scrappy.
Posted at 4:15 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
BusinessWeek.com has the list.
Posted at 2:55 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
NEC Chairman-designate Larry Summers is against healthcare mandates on employers and CEA Chairwoman-designate Christina Romer recognizes that tax hikes can reduce the amount of tax revenue taken in by the government.
Posted at 2:47 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Andrew Roth
Economist Mark Perry, owner of the wonderful Carpe Diem blog, gets some nice local media coverage for his success at pushing valuable economic information into the blogosphere.
Posted at 2:33 PM,
December 1, 2008 | Trackback (0)
|
Print | | #
Club for Growth® and Club for Growth® PAC - 2001 L Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036
202-955-5500 - Privacy Policy
Blog posts on this website are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.