Daily Clips: October 27th, 2015

October 27, 2015 Nick Cassella

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2016

John Boehner says we have a budget agreement! This could be one of the last times we see John of Orange, so tune into this press conference announcing a (tentative) budget deal. According to Dylan Matthews , it sounds like “spending will increase by $112 billion over two years.” Think we can’t stabilize the climate while fostering growth? Think again: Head’s up to Marco Rubio, the US can make long term-investments in clean energy and create millions of jobs around the globe, says Robert Pollin. His article essentially calls bulls*** on the claim that “there must be large, painful tradeoffs between climate stabilization and economic growth.” Lucky or not, the economy does better under Democrats: Hey Jeb! You know how much you want 4 percent growth? Well, if that’s really your goal for America then maybe you should sit this election out. Because according to Market Watch, “economic growth in real terms…averaged 2.54 per year under Republican presidents, but 4.35 percent under Democratic ones.” Seattle’s home prices continue to grow: The Seattle Times reports that the average price of single-family homes in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties increased by nearly a percent…in just the month of August!

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The NFL should launch a “Voting Awareness Month,” but here’s why they won’t

October 26, 2015 Nick Cassella

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2016, Pop Culture

Like 49 percent of Americans , I consider myself a pro football fan. I wake up every Sunday, have a cup of coffee, set my Fantasy Football roster(s), and tune into the best sporting experience the world has to offer. In 2014, NFL games reached 202.3 million unique viewers , “representing 80 percent of all television homes and 68 percent of potential viewers in the US.” If you think that’s impressive, think about this: 45 of the top 50 TV shows last year were NFL games. And all of the top 20 programs were football games. 2014’s most-watched matchup, featuring the Eagles vs. Cowboys, had 32 million viewers alone. The NFL uses its TV superiority to promote worthwhile causes, too. They relentlessly advertise their PLAY 60 initiative, “a campaign to encourage kids to be active for 60 minutes a day in order to help reverse the trend of childhood obesity.” And every fan of the NFL knows about the controversial “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” and the nationalistic “ Salute to Service .” Both of these programs are promoted in order to, essentially, create awareness and solemnity around their respective topics. Oh, and they also happen to sell copious amounts of pink and camouflage merchandise! But why should the NFL only assist these causes? As the #1 de facto TV program in America, the NFL has the unique opportunity to push other deeply patriotic and non-partisan initiatives. In fact, I’d argue the NFL still has the chance to embrace another extremely important cause: The NFL should promote voting awareness in order to address our nation’s exceptionally low voter turnout . They could call it something like, “Vote for America,” and label it as a program which sought to create awareness around the most sacred and noble right given to US citizens: voting. You can almost hear Al Michaels saying, “And as a part of the NFL’s campaign, Vote for America, we urge all American citizens, domestic and abroad, to participate in our
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Daily Clips: October 26th, 2015

October 26, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Rubio gives up on the Senate: Does anyone else think its highly convenient that Rubio has all of a sudden found a deep hatred for the Senate? It’s almost like he’s seen that his party’s base hates anyone that’s a politician. But are they dumb enough to fall for this 180 turn? Can Senator Rubio convince them that he’s not a politician? The GOP has a new speaker, but he’s stuck with the same doomed strategy: Matthew Yglesias has a great piece at Vox which highlights the difficulties which (most probably) await the next (probable) Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Yglesias argues: The core problem that afflicted John Boehner during his tenure in office remains in place — a band of hard-line conservatives routinely insists that the GOP use routine but critical pieces of must-pass legislation (debt ceiling bills, government funding bills, etc.) as “leverage” to secure ideological concessions from the White House. The plan fundamentally doesn’t make sense and can’t work, which most Republicans know but aren’t willing to say. It’s a recipe for disaster, and it hasn’t changed one bit. And in some ways, things may be worse than ever under Ryan, who isn’t really a practitioner of the kind of crass transactional politics that Boehner used to make it work. The concealed carry fantasy: The New York Times editorial board used their platform to discuss the delusion surrounding carrying guns and keeping yourself “safe.” Read what they have to say on the matter: This foolhardy notion of quick-draw resistance, however, is dramatically contradicted by a research project showing that, since 2007, at least 763 people have been killed in 579 shootings that did not involve self-defense. Tellingly, the vast majority of these concealed-carry, licensed shooters killed themselves or others rather than taking down a perpetrator. They’re not done. They then turn their anger towards the gun lobby: More complete research, unimpeded by the gun lobby, would undoubtedly uncover a higher death toll. But this
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Daily Clips: October 23rd, 2015

October 23, 2015 Nick Cassella

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2016

Lincoln Chafee ends his campaign: Who saw this one coming?! Evidently, some dude grocery shopping in Rhode Island: The Day the GOP Turned Benghazi Into a Farce: Joan Walsh has written a compelling summary on yesterday’s 11 hour fiasco, which was full of mansplaining, heated attacks, and desperation from Republican members of the Benghazi committee. Walsh points out the obvious: Clinton looked presidential and her answers show a growth of character and of coaching since the last Benghazi hearing. Her tough summer is officially over. Jeb! campaign starts cutting salaries and staff: Jeb Bush’s campaign has published a memo which says that it’s payroll costs are “being slashed by 40 percent” and that staff at his Miami HQ are being transferred to early voting states. “We are making changes today to ensure Jeb is best positioned to win the nomination and general election,” the memo said. “It’s no secret that the contours of this race have changed from what was anticipated at the start.” Your delusional article of the day – 20 REASONS WHY IT SHOULD BE DONALD TRUMP IN 2016: During my daily perusal of Breitbart, I came across this gem of an article. The points made by the author are borderline insane; here are some of my favorites: 1. Trump is not your ordinary politician. 4. Trump speaks for us little people. 8. Trump is pro-women. 12. Trump’s policies are spot-on, particularly immigration.

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Daily Clips: October 22nd, 2015

October 22, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

51 percent of all Americans made less than $30,000 last year: The middle class in this country is being squeezed, as our Supreme Troublemaker Nick Hanauer has pointed out in the past . Newly released numbers from the Social Security Administration illustrates the dire situation of the American worker: -38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year. -51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year. -62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year. -71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year. What Scotland learned from making university free: Vox provides an interesting analysis on Scotland’s free university system, highlighting both the positives and negatives which occurred from the policy change. Here’s a big positive: when Scotland eliminated up-front fees in 2001, college applications rose by 24 percent. Compare that to England which saw a 30 percent drop in applications as tuition fees went up. Shocker. People don’t actually want equality: Here is a philosophical & evolutionary take on equality that challenges many of our preconceived notions on what people desire. While I don’t agree with all of the author’s points, his deep-dive into the psychology behind equality is definitely worth a read. 3 in 4 say Benghazi is politically motivated: Nothing to see here, move along.

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Daily Clips: October 21st, 2015

October 21, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

BREAKING – BIDEN NOT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT: Flanked by his wife and the president, Biden told the press corps, “While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent. I intend to speak out clearly and forcefully to influence as much as I can where we stand as a party and where we need to go as a nation.” Bernanke is puzzled by the focus on Glass-Steagall: Former Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, says that he is confused by the Democratic field’s focus on Glass-Steagal, a depression-era act that created separation between commercial and investment banking. Bernanke said: I think that if you look at the actual, what happened a few years ago in the crisis, that Glass-Steagall was pretty irrelevant to it because you had banks like Wachovia or [Washington Mutual] that went bad because they made bad loans, and you had investment banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman that went bad because of their investment banking activities. His language mirrors Hillary Clinton’s , who claimed during the last debate, that the elimination of Glass-Steagall did not cause the 2008 financial crisis. Support for marijuana hits all time high…again: Gallup reports that 58 percent of Americans now support the legalization of the devil’s lettuce. 71 percent of Americans aged 18-34 back pot legalization, a sign that it is only a matter of time until it is legal in all 50 states. Regressive tax systems: Here’s a friendly reminder that Washington state has “the most regressive state tax system” in the US, where the poorest residents are taxed at 16.8 percent while the top 1 percent is taxed “only 2.4 percent.” Florida and Texas come in a close second and third, respectively. We must do all we can to change this grave injustice.

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Daily Clips: October 20th, 2015

October 20, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Jim Webb to drop out of Democratic race: Say it ain’t so, Jim! Your debate performance last week was a tantalizing glimpse into your mind and, frankly, I’m disappointed that you gave up so soon. Yesterday, you were flirting with an independent run and now this? My heart can’t take it. Canada lurches to the left: Why is the Western world’s politics shifting to the left? The author examines this trend: Canada’s election on Monday was something much bigger than a local Canadian story. It’s another indicator of how Bill Clinton/Tony Blair-style liberalism is veering sharply to the left across the English-speaking world. Along with the surge of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary in the United States and the nomination of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in the United Kingdom, must now be reckoned Canada’s election of a Liberal government under Justin Trudeau. The NRA will fall: I’m not a huge fan of calling political trends “inevitable.” However, this piece in the Washington Post does an excellent job of showing how the long-term demographic trends do not favor the NRA’s positions on gun legislation. The decline of “white, rural, less educated Americans is generally well known,” the author contends, but this trend is rarely examined in regards to gun legislation. Polls show that whites tend to favor gun rights over gun control by a significant margin (57 percent to 40 percent). Yet whites, who comprise 63 percent of the population today, won’t be in the majority for long. Racial minorities are soon to be a majority, and they are the nation’s strongest supporters of strict gun laws. That’s not good news for the NRA. The author concludes, “Unless the organization begins to soften its no-compromises stance on gun safety legislation, it’s likely to become increasingly marginalized in a changing America.”

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Majority of Americans Support Stricter Gun Laws

October 19, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Guns

A Gallup poll released today shows that 55 percent of Americans now “feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict.” That number is up from 47 percent in 2014, signifying a dramatic increase in support of gun responsibility. It seems that independent voters have changed their minds the most on this issue. 56 percent of independents now favor stricter gun laws, an 11 point jump (45 percent) from the previous year. Unsurprisingly, Democratic support grew by six percent (up to 77 percent), while Republicans continue to hate the idea of stricter gun laws (27 percent). Interestingly, the status quo no longer seems to be an acceptable policy position when it comes to guns. Only 33 percent of Americans think our gun laws should be “kept as they are,” a sign that Republican apathy on gun violence may be unsatisfactory to many American voters – particularly those independents who are becoming more open to stricter gun laws. Even if you add the 11 percent of Americans who think gun laws should be made less strict, stronger gun legislation leads the “do nothing crowd” 55 to 44 percent. Get ready for gun legislation to be a defining topic of the 2016 presidential race. If last week’s Democratic debate was any indication, Republicans better get ready for the eventual Democratic nominee to bring this issue to the forefront of American minds.

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Daily Clips: October 19th, 2015

October 19, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Rubio says people can’t live on a $11 an hour, but opposes a higher minimum wage: Marco Rubio scares me. In this field of buffoons, he is by far the most charismatic, fresh-faced, and interesting leader that the Republicans have in the 2016 election. That is not to say he’s offering anything different in policy prescriptions. He’s not. Case in point: when it comes to the minimum wage, he is once again displaying a cultish devotion to the free market ( something I have written about in the past ). Rubio claims: I have the full confidence that the American private sector, made up of the most innovative and productive people on this planet, won’t just create millions of jobs. They will create millions of jobs that pay more. Because even the jobs that are being created now don’t pay enough. You can’t live on $10 an hour. You can’t live on $11 an hour. I simply don’t know how he can hold those two conflicting opinions in his head. The market has had a long time to raise the minimum wage, yet it hasn’t. In fact, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure it was the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 (a government mandate) which established the concept of a minimum guaranteed wage. How can someone seriously say that we just need to leave America’s poverty wages up to the private sector? It’s a lazy and asinine answer. It’s akin to a primal leader sacrificing a goat in order to stop the spread of a disease. It’s a reassuring fable to tell the people, but it will not do anything about the problem. Biden to announce decision in next 48 hours: We have a little office poll on the odds of Biden dropping out of the race in the next two weeks. Three of us believe that he will bow out by October 26th. I am not one of those three. It seems that Biden is loving the media attention and honestly, who can blame
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Daily Clips: October 16, 2015

October 16, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Trump is racist…again: It’s disappointing that a known racist is leading in the Republican primary. Really marinate on that. A delusional megalomaniac is the preferred candidate for the majority of the Republican base. And lest you think his racism may recede as the spotlight intensifies, read this new story: This week, a seemingly benign Q&A turned into an awkward cultural moment on the presidential campaign trail. Joseph Choe, a Harvard student, stood up to ask Donald Trump a question about South Korea at the No Labels Problem Solver Convention in New Hampshire on Monday… “Harvard?” Trump asked. “You go to Harvard?” He does. There was some silence before Choe got the microphone… “Basically, you said that South Korea takes advantage of the United States in terms of the defense spending on the Korean Peninsula,” [Choe] began. “I just want to get the facts straight.” Before he could finish, Trump interrupted. “Are you from South Korea?” he wondered aloud. “I’m not,” Choe said. “I was born in Texas, raised in Colorado.” Economists see BIG revenues if taxes go up for the rich: A majority of Americans think the wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes. And it turns out that if we actually raised the total tax burden of the richest Americans, the US government would raise a lot of money. Go figure. Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times on how higher taxes on the rich could benefit our nation: The top 1 percent includes about 1.13 million households earning an average income of $2.1 million. Raising their total tax burden to, say, 40 percent would generate about $157 billion in revenue the first year. Increasing it to 45 percent brings in a whopping $267 billion. Even taking account of state and local taxes, the average household in this group would still take home at least $1 million a year. In sum, you cannot simultaneously claim to be worried about
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