[Edit--I'll be very surprised if the general public doesn't fall for it hook, line, and sinker, unfortunately]
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I heard a snippet that sounded like Obama said that raising the capital gains tax to 28% wouldn't affect most Americans because their stocks are mostly in IRAs and 401ks, so are not subject to capital gains. Has anyone seen this quote anywhere?
Assuming he said that, I'd like to ask the same question about this statement: cynical political manipulation or bad understanding of economics?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I found a source having him saying that, although it had his proposal as to 20% and him saying that the 28% came from him saying he wouldn't raise it higher than it was under Reagan.
I also found him saying that he was suggesting an exemption to this raise for people making under a certain amount or less a year.
It's hard to say. I really wish campaigns were mainly about real issues like this. I'd be interested in hearing him talk about this and many other proposals in a neutral environment, but that is just never going to happen.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Standard political rhetoric, I think. None of the candidates in this election has shown a willingness to address policy proposals substantively. Of course, no one who did would get very far, and even if one did, actual policy implementations are rarely much related to campaign policy promises.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: I heard a snippet that sounded like Obama said that raising the capital gains tax to 28% wouldn't affect most Americans because their stocks are mostly in IRAs and 401ks, so are not subject to capital gains. Has anyone seen this quote anywhere?
Assuming he said that, I'd like to ask the same question about this statement: cynical political manipulation or bad understanding of economics?
Obama's a bright guy, and does a good job of surrounding himself with very, very capable people. Given that, I can't imagine that this could be attributable to a bad understanding of economics.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I tend to make differentiations between what candidates say in unprepared and prepared situations, especially in the latter stages of a campaign. It's possible that this really was just a stupid/ill informed mistake. I'm willing to grant that candidates are going to say things like that and I think there is far too much jumping on them for stuff like that.
For example, I would have given John McCain a pass on the Iran-al Queda "mistake" if he didn't repeat it several times after being corrected.
If Barack Obama included this as something official or if it seemed reinforced by his official statements, I'd give him much less leeway.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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To clarify: I don't think advocating increasing the capital gains tax necessarily demonstrates a bad understanding of economics (even though I'm against it). But the idea that a 33% to 80+% increase in that tax will only affect those trading outside tax-sheltered accounts or those who make over a certain amount does represent a fundamental misunderstanding.
One can - and should - debate whether that effect is worth the benefits of his proposal, but not that the effect will be significant to anyone with stock.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
From what I could tell from several places, he seems to be treating capital gains as being all about the stock market, which does actually seem to speak of ignorance to me. At the very least, given the housing situation, you'd figure that there would something about the capital gains involved in selling a house, although maybe you could pass that off as most of them being destined to be capital losses.
edit:
quote:One can - and should - debate whether that effect is worth the benefits of his proposal, but not that the effect will be significant to anyone with stock.
That's certainly true. Such a move would have very real indirect effects on people.
Honestly, at some point, it would be great if the candidates sat down and just gave us their understanding of how things work. Not pushing any specific proposal, but just explain how they see things like aspects of the economy or foreign affairs or domestic issues or whatever worked. I think that would be good for everyone, except for people who have no business running for the office.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I just saw a headline on Yahoo, which I didn't stop to read, that Northwestern had withdrawn Wright's honorary degree. Unfortunately, I think such actions are just going to prolong the media focus on this problem.
Looks like it's going to be a Clinton/Obama ticket. Unless not.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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This was not a degree he already had, it was one they were about to award him:
"May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Northwestern University withdrew an invitation for the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to receive an honorary degree at this year's commencement."
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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"Earlier this academic year, acting on the recommendation of faculty committees, Northwestern University extended an invitation to the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, former senior minister of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, to receive an honorary degree at Northwestern's Commencement in June. Commencement at Northwestern is a time of celebration of the accomplishments of Northwestern's graduating students and their families. In light of the controversy around Dr. Wright and to ensure that the celebratory character of Commencement not be affected, the University has withdrawn its invitation to Dr. Wright."
That he was to receive an honorary degree adds fuel to my suspicion that this is a story of a once impressive man who is losing it. It is unfortunate that the media and his own actions are making this so very public.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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So much for "Vote for a Woman for a Change." Wouldna mattered much 'ceptin' the NorthCarolina governor and several other Clinton endorsers made the same*point this past week or so. I guess now it's "For More of the Same Ol' Same Ol'."
Speaking of same ol' same ol', McCain is already repeating the Dubya mantra that the President ain't responsible for nothin'. Which makes the prospect of his presidency sound real excitin'.
* How they found out, I ain't eeeven gonna guess.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I'm not sure if it is cynical, but it is almost certainly wrong.
Even if there is some small effect of likely nominee on stock prices (and I suspect that such an effect would be infinitesimal), that effect would not be detectable in any small period of observations.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Speaking of same ol' same ol', McCain is already repeating the Dubya mantra that the President ain't responsible for nothin'. Which makes the prospect of his presidency sound real excitin'.
Wow. You take a story in which McCain says that Bush should be blamed for the early course of the war before the banner and for exaggerating "the prospects for success in Iraq in contradiction to the facts on the ground" and turn that into "the President ain't responsible for nothin'."
I can't tell if that's the conclusion you actually drew from the article or if you were trying to deceive your readers. I also can't figure out which would be more scary.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Why doesn't the media mention much about Hillary's unsavory connections to cocaine smugglers (Jorge Cabrera) and crime lords (Ng Lap Seng) through fundraising events?
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
Amusingly, two of the adjacent headlines in my RSS feed from the 'Drudge Retort' are: Pastor Row Sees Obama Losing Ground McCain's Pastor: God's Curse is Upon America
posted
I wonder if the sad extension of this mess is going to be future politicians flocking to the most neutered, unctuous parishes they can find.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Our pastor was joking the other night about being very careful about what he says from now on. Several prominent politicians attend mass at my church.
edit to add: and I pity the poor reporter who tries to argue with Father Phleger.
posted
A national lead for Clinton is looking fairly imminent.
My observation about the stock market is that it has tracked a variety of political events such as Super Tuesday and the Florida Primary. It has typically not liked upsets.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Did Senator McCain just say that the reason we send our troops to fight in the middle east is oil?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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That is almost certainly confirmation bias. The stock market has been down a large majority of days for months, now. It is virtually certain that many of the days there are political events that catch your notice, the stock market is reported as down. The idea that some of these downs are in any way caused by political results has been investigated for past elections. No meaningful effect has ever been found.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote: “And I just want to promise you this: My friends, I will have an energy policy, that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East,” McCain said. “That will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”
First link I came to. He backtracked. I didn't think that Republicans were supposed to admit such things (not that they are news to some of us).
Who was it that said that a political gaffe is a politician saying what he thinks?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Knight 2004. He found that the the victory of a particular candidate would have significant stock market effects (this is known), but if you take a look at his discussion and his table of effects due to daily probability swings, the effect of any particular political event was both insignificant and tiny -- far less than the amount the stock market swings daily in the normal course of events.
On a side note, his analysis didn't control for effects that might have caused both behaviors, such as swings in economic prospects of various industries.
A more classic paper is Herron 1999, which found individual candidates have significant effects on various sectors of the market, but that these effects are small for minor fluctuations in elective probability, and that they are mixed, such that the effects on market indexes are much smaller.
Btw, as you search, you will see a number of people finding significant daily effects, and a number of people finding large effects in the event of a win by a particular candidate over the other. No paper I am aware of, however, has found large (significant or otherwise) daily effects; they're always tiny in comparison to typical daily swings.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:All this actually tells us something about the Democratic candidates, which has nothing to do with fuel prices. Obama believes voters want a sensible, less-divisive political dialogue, that the whole process can become more honorable if the right candidate leads the way. Hillary really doesn’t buy that. She has principles, but she doesn’t believe in principled stands. She thinks that if she can get elected, she can do great things. And to get there, she’s prepared to do whatever. That certainly includes endorsing any number of meaningless-to-ridiculous ideas. (See: her bill to make it illegal to desecrate an American flag.)
On Tuesday, root for the Democrat whose vision of the political process comes closest to matching your own. And I do not want you to be swayed by the fact that Hillary and Barack are finally having a policy debate, and it’s about the dumbest idea in the campaign.
Editorial in the NYTimes by Gail Collins. All I have to say to the thing is, Amen.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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What, no one's watching the Guam results? CNN currently has it 53.3% to 46.7% for Obama, with 15 of 19 villages reporting.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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"I wonder if the sad extension of this mess is going to be future politicians flocking to the most neutered, unctuous parishes they can find."
I really don't feel I should touch this, but...
If by "neutered, unctuous" you mean "not led by pastors so retarded that it's a minor miracle they put their shoes on the correct feet", then I hope so.
Seriously, when you start saying that the government engineered AIDS, you need help, like "here's your meds"-type help. We couldn't genetically engineer anything until the early 80s, and AIDS has been in the US since at least the late 70s, and probably 20 years earlier in Africa. Wright is a moron. Where would the government have gotten genetic engineering tech in the early 70s or before? The Martians? Young geniuses that they kidnapped? Just like smallpox was originally a bovine disease and bird flu and swine were originally from those animals, AIDS comes from chimps. This is an extremely common method by which viruses infect humans, by first infecting animals and then mutating and jumping to humans. That is a far, far more plausible story than being invented by the US goverment. Whether Wright believes this himself, or he's just pandering to some very scientifically ignorant people, nobody with common sense would connect themselves to him publicly.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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The snort is part of what makes me read it that way. He considers the idea ridiculous (which it would be, in any other election year).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Ah, I thought you meant dismay that Obama was ahead, not dismay that CNN was reporting on the Guam results.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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steven, I agree that the idea that the government invented AIDS is pretty much of a stretch. But bearing in mind the incredibly callous indifference with which we viewed the AIDS crisis during the early days - a disease that mostly affected homosexuals and drug users, the indifference with which we still view the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and bearing in mind that Trinity UCC had and still has a mission to care for HIV/AIDS victims so that Rev. Wright sees the results of that indifference up close and personal, and you might understand that, for him, it isn't such an outrageous stretch to believe that the government could care less if black people die of this disease and is even culpable in those deaths.
Also remember that for the Reverend Wright, the Tuskegee experiments is not ancient history.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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I thought you were probably joking about CNN reporting on Guam election results. I still can't believe they actually are. Granted, a lot of people really care about this election, and we'll probably have a bigger turnout for this one than for any in long time, but...it's Guam.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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"steven, I agree that the idea that the government invented AIDS is pretty much of a stretch. But bearing in mind the incredibly callous indifference with which we viewed the AIDS crisis during the early days - a disease that mostly affected homosexuals and drug users, the indifference with which we still view the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and bearing in mind that Trinity UCC had and still has a mission to care for HIV/AIDS victims so that Rev. Wright sees the results of that indifference up close and personal, and you might understand that, for him, it isn't such an outrageous stretch to believe that the government could care less if black people die of this disease and is even culpable in those deaths.
Also remember that for the Reverend Wright, the Tuskegee experiments is not ancient history."
Are you really preaching at me? Wright is almost as bad as the David Dukes and Louis Farrakhans of the world. Talk about being a divider instead of a uniter.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I'm suggesting that you look a little bit into the context and try to understand what the world might look like to someone who isn't you.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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