2004 Presidential election

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Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

Point taken. However, I was reading http://www.johnkerry.com/ this morning. I believe I read that the 10 million job milestone was slated to occur in 2009, which gives a slightly more realistic figure of 166,000 jobs per month. Still very aggressive, of course. Probably they're hyping the 10 million figure because it makes for a good sound byte.

Kerry's plan for job creation is to bring capital back into the US by the closing of tax loopholes that encourage corporations to keep the money offshore and encourage job growth through tax incentives.

Later, I will try to dig up the appropriate link.

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Post by Peijen »

oh yeah, I agree with joe. until kerry layout how he plans to create those jobs, and how to improve economy I am not buying a thing he says.

The tax loophole is a good start, but I wonder if he can manage to do what he say he will do. my believe is that anyone in power will kowtow to money.

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Post by quantus »

Dwindlehop wrote:Point taken. However, I was reading http://www.johnkerry.com/ this morning. I believe I read that the 10 million job milestone was slated to occur in 2009, which gives a slightly more realistic figure of 166,000 jobs per month. Still very aggressive, of course. Probably they're hyping the 10 million figure because it makes for a good sound byte.
Ummm... that's probably January of 2009 since that's when his term would end and he said he'd do it in his first term... He gets from Jan 2005 to Jan 2009 to make 10 million jobs which is what I posted earlier
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quantus
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Post by quantus »

Dwindlehop wrote:Kerry's plan for job creation is to bring capital back into the US by the closing of tax loopholes that encourage corporations to keep the money offshore and encourage job growth through tax incentives.
Just fixing tax loopholes won't stop the export of money and jobs. Yes, it'll make it slightly less tempting, but there are many more reasons to do it than just because of taxes. Again, I think this is bullshit that he's saying to kowtow to the people out of work to get their support and maybe even some of their time to help him run his campaign.

If Kerry wants to fix the export of money (and therefore jobs as well) he'll have to revamp the SEC and some of the other watchdogs as well. Right now, they're doing jack. Prosecuting Martha is a vanilla case of trading using insider info. We need to stop the complex swaps that syphon huge chunks of money out of the country.
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Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

Here is Kerry's plan to create 10 million jobs. It does refer to the goal as "in his first term" which I agree is quite high. I can't find the 2009 date I remembered earlier.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/rele ... 0407b.html

Kerry also has his detailed economic plan on his website.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/rele ... _0828.html

On his website, he promises to fight for 3 million jobs in the first 500 days. That's roughly 180,000 jobs per month, which I still agree is quite high, but not out of the question.

However, the conservative websites I read while looking for more info mention that the U.S. population is growing at about 3.2 million people per year. Keeping unemployment constant, that'd mean maybe 9 million people would get new jobs in 4 years? So it's either impossible or really trivial. My guess is it's probably in between the two, a big goal that probably we won't hit unless we have another boom. Biotech, anyone?

Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

Just to add some more specifics:

Taxes:
John Kerry believes that we should keep the middle class tax cuts that Democrats fought for in 2001 and 2003, which increased the child tax credit, reduced the marriage penalty and lowered tax rates. He strongly disagrees with Democrats who want to repeal these tax cuts, which would cost a typical middle-class family with two children an additional $2000.

To restore fiscal discipline and strengthen our economy, Kerry will repeal Bush’s special tax breaks for Americans who make more than $200,000.
Corporate misconduct:
A recent Joint Committee on Taxation report found that Enron claimed a $2.3 billion in profit between 1996 and 1999 in reports to its investors, while reporting a $3 billion tax loss to the IRS. John Kerry believes corporations should have to account these kinds of disparities.

Kerry would tighten the laws that allow corporations to take advantage of tax deductions for performance based executive pay – even when executives do nothing to improve productivity.
Trading fraud:
Kerry will curb late-trading and market-timing abuses by fully prosecuting Wall Street insiders that steal from American investors.

John Kerry will fund strong budgets and assure strong enforcement by the SEC.

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Post by Jonathan »

From http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pi ... o&refer=us
Kerry said he would hold the rate of growth in so-called discretionary spending programs, other than defense and homeland security, to the rate of inflation. Such spending, which are funds under the annual control of Congress, makes up about a third of the $2.4 trillion annual federal budget.

Kerry said he will pay for $225 billion in new tax cuts for health and education, a $200 billion education trust fund and a 10-year, $476 billion health care plan by rolling back tax cuts for families making $200,000 or more a year. That includes taxes on income and dividends and capital gains.

Tax Revenue

An analysis by Brookings Institution economist William Gale calculated that Kerry's plan to raise income, dividend and capital gains taxes for families making over $200,000 a year, phase out some tax exemptions and keep the rest of the Bush tax cuts would raise $223.5 billion from 2005-2014.

Kerry's budget advisers estimate the tax increases would raise $620 billion and combined with other tax changes would be enough to pay for his proposals, said Jason Furman, who was on the staff of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.
Kerry said today that nation has experienced three years of ``massive job losses'' and the jobs being created pay on average $9,000 less those that have been lost.

`Wage Recession'

``George Bush talks about a recovery, but doesn't seem to realize that today we have a wage recession in American,'' Kerry said. The average worker is making $1,200 less a year while paying more in state taxes and higher tuition.
Interesting numbers. If the Brookings Instituation numbers are right and Kerry's numbers are wrong, I wonder how he'll make it come out right in the end. As I see it, he could: raise taxes on the middle class; reduce or eliminate the corporate tax cut he is proposing; or cut spending on his health care and education projects.

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Post by skanks »

On the rare occasions when the White House actually holds a press conference, Bush never fails to demonstrate why it is that they hold those conferences so rarely. After he presented his prepared speech in his typically impaired english, Bush had to face reporters for what might have been 8 minutes. He uses the same algorithm for every question.

1) if necessary he issues a flatout denial of any charges.
2) He says "First, let me say a few things about that... "
3) He launches into a tangent and relays the ready-made talking points that Karl Rove has prepared for him.
4) He pretends that he's addressed the issue

Step 3 is painfully obvious. You can identify all the talking points flawlessly because whenever Bush gets to one he loudly and deliberately enunciates all the phrases Karl has prepared for him. Its also obvious because you could significantly swap around which answer content correspond to which questions without significantly altering the effectiveness of Bush's Q&A. You can even hear Bush struggling to recall the precise phraseology.

"The decision [pause] to take the country to war is uh [pause] is uh [pause] uh... that is a tough decision."

The best part was when this tactic was completely exposed. A reporter asked Bush why he and Cheney were testifying before the 9/11 comission together. Bush dived shamelessly into spin mode saying something like "We believe its vitally important to appear before the commission and answer the questions they have. The commision is doing an important job and we have to be there to answer those questions."'

But before he called on another, that reporter chimed in "The question was: why do you insist on appearing before the commision together instead of seperately like the comission has requested."

All Bush could do was reiterate his asinine comment about the importance of cooperating with the commission and then aburptly took a question from somebody else.

What a great reporter. Too bad he's going to have his white house priviledges revoked.

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Post by Dave »

he just oozes stupidity. I dont even see how people could have voted him in the 1st place. at least less than half the population isnt stupid
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Post by Alan »

Dave wrote:he just oozes stupidity. I dont even see how people could have voted him in the 1st place. at least less than half the population isnt stupid
Actually technically more than half weren't stupid. It's just that his equally stupid and corrupt brother happened to run the state that swung the electoral vote over to him.
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Dave
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Post by Dave »

that's what i meant by at least less than half! double negatives + a positive is still negative! unless....
It takes 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile, but it doesn't take any to just sit there with a dumb look on your face.

quantus
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Post by quantus »

Since we were already talking about fuzzy math in this thread, I figured this link should go here instead of just in links.

http://www.thebots.net/FuzzyMath.htm
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Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS ... index.html

Bush slips in the polls, but it's still pretty even. I think this election will be decided by how many hardcore wackos each side can mobilize to vote for their candidate in key swing states, which is just sad. My high school civics teacher taught us that the electoral college system makes it so that one person's vote has a much better chance of swinging the election, so every vote matters. It was not until the past year, after Bush won the 2000 election, that I ever bothered to think, "Why would I want that?" It's not a desireable feature of democratic elections.

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Post by quantus »

It's because, no matter how much we say we live in a democracy, it's not a true democracy. We were never meant to live in a true democracy. The aristorcrats always wanted to maintain some control, and electoral college system was one of those controls.
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Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

A website I found actually said that a strength of the electoral college system is that it perpetuates the two party system. Unbelievable.

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Post by quantus »

I think we're a victim of our own education system. We're told early and often that our system is the best and near perfect. Everyone else should be like us. Rinse. Repeat. Welcome to modern day politics.
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Post by Jonathan »

http://www.electionreform.org/ERMain/editorials/ec.htm

Doing away with the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment and is not likely in my opinion. However, there is nothing in the Constitution that says states must allocate their electoral college votes in an all-or-nothing manner. In fact, Maine and Nebraska already do this. Each state can decide for its own how to award its electoral college votes.

Interestingly, Bush would have won by a wider margin if you awarded electoral college votes by Congressional district.

http://www.electionreform.org/ERMain/pr ... Method.htm

Gore would have won if you awarded electoral college votes proportional to the popular vote in each state.

http://www.electionreform.org/ERMain/pr ... Method.htm

I want 0.158 of an electoral college vote cast for me.

Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

Apparently, a few weeks ago Bush had a sizable electoral college lead over Kerry.
Bush Expands Electoral College Lead to 321-217

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Post by quantus »

http://news.google.com/url?ntc=0M2B1&q= ... 1REIC.html
Interesting way to look at things. Kerry's hurting himself?
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Post by Jonathan »

http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo05172004.html

Interesting wild speculation: Kerry-McCain 2004? For my part, I think John McCain is a good guy and much less of an asshat than Joe Leiberman, to pick a name out of hat. However, for every issue that I agree with him on, like campaign finance reform and torture investigation, McCain champions several that I don't. I believe he's anti-abortion and a social conservative in a lot of other things, too, like the drug policies mentioned in the article.
As Gore Vidal tells us, there is but one party in Washington and it is the Property Party. In other words, all property worth owning shall remain in the possession of big honking corporations. Dem-Repub partisanship is merely a squabble over formula.
This is what Nader has been saying all along, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. However, there are important differences between Democrats and Republicans. They lie mostly in the agenda of the religious right, which has a tight-ass grip on the Republican party because they can deliver the votes.

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