“Hey big spender, spend a little a little time with me.”

Some of you will recall Peggy Lee singing this song written by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields and was a song in the musical Sweet Charity.

Mitt Romney seems to be singing his version of the song about President Obama saying, “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.” There are a whole lot of people out there that believe this is absolutely true. After all, the Republicans have called the Democrats the “tax and spend” party for countless years. Where’s there smoke there must be fire right? Wrong!

On May 22, 2012, Rex Nutting, international commentary editor for the financial website MarketWatch wrote this just never happened. In fact, federal spending has risen “slower than any time in nearly 60’s years.” That is since the Eisenhower years. That is with even adding $140 billion in stimulus to Obama rather than Bush where it began.

Adjusted for inflation this is what it looks like.

President	Fiscal year baseline	Last fiscal year	Average percentage increase per year
Johnson	1964	1969	6.3
George W. Bush	2001	2009	5.9
Kennedy	1961	1964	4.7
Carter	1977	1981	4.2
Nixon	1969	1975	3.0
Reagan	1981	1989	2.7
George H.W. Bush	1989	1993	1.8
Clinton	1993	2001	1.5
Obama	2009	2013	-0.1
Eisenhower	1953	1961	-0.5

Adjusted for inflation Obama is the second lowest. Or, Nutting pretty much nailed it. You also have to note that congress kept Obama spending rate lower than he wanted.

In my opinion, we should be doing more New Deal spending to get the economy rolling.

Many of you have seen the following on Facebook.

FCC Votes for Disclosure Rules for Political Ads

That sounds great does it not? Finally, at long last it will be revealed who is buying all the ads that run incessantly on TV. The PACs will be identified and the public will who is doing what and in what amounts. This is what ProPublica wrote May 29, 2012. A time for rejoicing yes?

Well perhaps not. Of course, the broadcasters are not exactly thrilled with the ruling causing them to name their great cash cows. So, they have sued to stop the rule. And even if their lawsuits fails the earliest the broadcasters would have to give out the data would be in three months – July. And then it could be delayed even further into the summer or the fall or longer yet.

Why will it take so long? There is a law called the Paper Reduction Act. There is a lot to deal with in describing what this act does but I won’t go into here. You can look it up if you are interested.

What we do know is that the lobbyists for the National Association of Broadcasters argued that the proposed FCC rule would run afoul the Paper Reduction Act. The upshot of all this is those with big money can slow down a process that is clearly in the public interest. This is not exactly something new but more than irksome at best. Information that would be helpful to voters may be blocked until it is of no use to them.

[The FCC is the Federal Communications Commission.]

Does Fact Checking Help?

I just wrote a three page article on things that were true, untrue, half true and blatant lies based on information primarily from PolitiFact.org and a bit from truthout.org. Then I tossed it.

Now I definitely believe that when we hear all the garbage spewed forth on TV and elsewhere in political ads, we do need to check out whether they are true or not. That is why we have website like those I mentioned above. But I wonder how much affect they have. How many people read them? How many folk they are just another form of bias?

Perhaps we should all just listen to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert each evening to get at what is going on. They seem to me to be the least biased reporters on the air and they are comedians.

In spite of fact checkers and regular Newspapers and TV which give some news along with hype and entertainment, none of this seems to affect the ad producers at all.

The lobbyists and the PAC machines blithely go ahead spreading misinformation and negativism potent enough for the populace to think of mass suicide. They know they control most of government and they want to keep the common person addled, so they don’t have a clue as to how to stop these huge political machines.

But for some odd reason there are those of us who regularly go to the fact checking sites and seek out as much first hand information and truth we can find. Some of us write blogs about it thinking we might have a tiny influence by debunking or supporting those that seem to tell the truth the most.

However, every now and then you run into somebody that seems trustworthy, thinks clearly, and speaks truth with eloquence. I’m thinking Elizabeth Warren. I hope she wins her election we need her and a bunch like her.

Auction Politics

I recently saw this exercise on the Psychology Today blog. You get a group of people and auction off a $20 bill. The opening bid is $1 and climbs at one dollar increments. It’s a winner take all scenario. But here is the catch. Both the winner and the runner up (the loser) have to pay.

Now does that sound like politics or what? Of course, there is more than a $20 involved.

U.S.A. Not Dependent on MidEastern Oil: Good or ?

The new hot spots for oil deposits now seem to be in the Americas, both North and South. As a result we are less dependent upon foreign oil, particular that from the Mideast; so this is a good thing right? The Washington Post just did a article on it as well as other news agencies.

I’m not at all sure about all that. First there is the problem that a good deal of the oil in the U.S. is oil available by fracking; a process whose impact on the environment is unproven and may prove to be very dangerous. Even the dictionary in my word processor does not even know the word. The oil in South America is more traditional, so that I see as a good thing in a sense.

But the real danger of the so-called good news in that it gives us a false sense of danger past. Ah, we’ve got new oil at hand which we can even export so we don’t have to worry about developing alternative energy sources. That, I believe could be disastrous thinking. All fossil fuels are limited and those who supply it have less than stellar records of economic and ecological responsibility. So, I worry that with more available oil research and development of alternative clean energy work will be delayed even though it is obvious needed and a better source for the future.

Every silver lining has a cloud.

U.S. Companies Broke Records Last Year – Wow! ???

For those who follow the economy we know, in spite of all the news of recessions and the like, the economy has grown at a steady rate for a long time. So, we all are a lot richer than we used to be right? Wrong, but some are making out like bandits and that may be an appropriate term.

The head of your run of the mill public company make $9.6 million in 2011, according to Equilar, an executive pay research firm. That’s a lot of moola; up 6% from the year before.

Now to be fair companies have reduced the cash bonuses for these CEOs but they gave them more in stock. They good part of that is that stock price levels are to reflect the health of the company so it rewards good CEOs unlike the past.

Before you get too excited about all this if you are a shareholder in one of these companies you dividends only went up by 2%.

Now if you work for one of these companies in an ordinary position you would have to work 244 years to make that type of money. Your pay went up 1% last year but of course that is less than the inflation rate you actually you lost money.

I found it of particular interest that CEOs running health-care companies made on average $10.8 million. So let’s blame Obamacare for rising health costs???

To be fair not every CEO got a raise last year. Of the 3,000 companies that voted in 2011 43 rejected pay increases for the CEOs. Remember good on CEO Vikram Pandit of Citigroup only took $1.00 for his work in 2010. They wanted to give him $15 million, however shareholders did note that while the company returned to profitability they saw their stock plunge 44%. They weren’t happy.

Ah the trials and tribulations of the 1%.

Here are the companies that gave the top pay to their CEOs: 10 Alan Mulally Ford 29.5 million up 11% ; 9 John P. Daane,Altera $29.6 million up 278%; 8 Clarence P. Cazalot Jr., Marathon Oil $29.9 million up 239%; 7 Robert A. Iger, Walt Disney $31.4 million up 12%; 6 David M. Cote, Honeywell International $35.7 million up 135%; 5 Philppe P. Dauman, Viacom $43.1 million up 49%; 4. Sanjay K. Jha, Motorola Mobility $47.2 million up 262%; 3 David M. Zaslav, Discovery Communications$52.4 million up 23%; 2 Leslie Moonves, CBS $68.4 million up 20%; 1. David Simon, Simon Property Group $137.2 million up 458%.

By my calculations those top ten made $508.4 million dollars last year.

Stealing Voting Rights/History

This story is blood boiling. It comes from Bev Harris on the Brad Blog.

In Shelby County ( Memphis) some election workers decided to purge the voting list of 488 names. Practically all were Democrats and black. So, what the big deal? The big deal is that when voters don’t vote for 2 federal general elections they purge your history and you are therefore not a registered voter.

Derrick “D” Harris discovered his voting record had gone away and contacted the author of the story, who have found many irregularities in the area over the years. It seems that altering party choice records have also been changed from time to time which may explain the 4 white and the 4 Republican names deleted. Also a letter is supposed to be sent to folk if their names are going to be deleted; that never happened.

Each of the deleted records come from Congressional District 09 which is U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen’s district. Was he the target?

Of course all of this is blatantly illegal as well as immoral.

Makes you wonder how much of this type of thing is going on and is not caught.

Bev Harris is the founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, a non-partisan elections watchdog organization. Her work and investigations at BBV have been featured by dozens of national media outlets, and she is featured prominently in HBO's 2006 Emmy-nominated documentary Hacking Democracy.

How to Manipulate Data: A Primer

I am beginning to wonder if there is a secret school for politicians where they hone their skills in telling skewed data to potential voters. There is data and then there data that is used to misrepresent rather than tell the truth. “When did you quit beating your wife?” Or the old Russian joke where the was a race with an American and a Russian which was reported in the Russian news, “Russians take second and Americans came in next to last in race.” Is this type of reporting becoming the norm? Following are examples from Politifact.

“Lt. Gov. Rebecca Keefisch says challenger Mahon Mitchell urged boycotts of more than 100 companies.” A letter was sent to M&I Bank saying if the bank didn’t oppose Walker’s reform law the letter signers would boycott M&I Bank. M&I bank has 100 branches. So, it is true but misleading. A similar case was with KwikTrip, which also has 100 stores.

More famous, “Tom Barrett say GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker ‘caused’ top job losses in the U.S.” Of course Walker did promised he’s create 250,000 jobs in his first term which was just grandiose thinking and untrue. In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal a federal report showed Wisc. Lost 23,900 jobs from March 3011 to March 2012 which included 17,800 gov. jobs and 6,100 private jobs. That was true. The implication is that Walkers actions directed caused job losses ignoring all other factors. There is a lot more stuff going on in the country that Walker’s stuff, odious as it is. Another half truth; as PolitiFact states it, “Barrett said Walker ‘has caused Wisconsin to lose more jobs than any other state in the country.’ He is accurate of the job losses over overstates Walker’s role in causing them. Rated half truth.

In April of this year Kathleen Falk says under her leadership Dane County topped other areas in job growth. Similar to the above, the data is true, but her role is exaggerated. Rated half-True.

Feb 17 Gov. Walker says $247,000 per job CAPCO program was approved by former Gov. Jim Doyle. Conclusion is that Walker tried to blame his predecessor Jim Dole, but he was off by 5 years and two governors Thompson and Scott McCallum, Dole had nothing to do with the bill. Conclusion a flat lie; pants on fire.

Well I could go on and on with other individuals, but it is clear that both parties don’t give us clear facts but skewed information that misleads the electorate.

When the debate takes place will the governor candidates take each other on concerning this issues or just continue to tell half truths and even lies?

Here some I took of the PoliticFact blog on Obama’s role in the recession: (sorry the fancy little truth-o-meters don't show up. You can click on each item for the full story.)

·         April 12, 2012 Mitt Romney: "What president has the worst record on female labor force participation? Barack Obama." — Mostly False

·         April 6, 2012 Mitt Romney: Says Obama has failed to pass a budget. — Mostly False

·         February 6, 2012Does Obama 'demonize,' 'denigrate' almost every sector of our economy?

·         January 8, 2012 Mitt Romney: "We're only inches away from no longer being a free economy." — Pants on Fire!

·         January 7, 2012Fact-checking the New Hampshire debates

·         November 11, 2011 State Tea Party Express: "In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has created a manufacturing-led jobs recovery. 30,000 new jobs were created this year, with 15,000 created in the struggling manufacturing sector." — Half-True

·         October 31, 2011PolitiFact Georgia recounts Mitt Romney's Greatest Hits

·         October 11, 2011 Mitt Romney: In the early 1960s, all levels of government were "consuming about 27 percent of the U.S. economy," a number that has risen to 37 percent today. With that trendline, "we cease at some point to be a free economy." — Mostly False

·         September 8, 2011 National Republican Senatorial Committee: Sherrod Brown "has stood side by side" with President Barack Obama, presiding "over the most rapid increase in the debt over the last 2.5 years" and hurtling toward " the worst jobs record in the modern era." — Half-True

·         August 12, 2011 Mitt Romney: "We're inches away from no longer having a free economy." — Pants on Fire!

·         August 5, 2011Fact-checking claims on jobs from across the nation

·         July 29, 2011 Bill O'Reilly: Since 1965, the United States has spent "untold trillions" yet the poverty rate hasn’t budged. — False

·         July 28, 2011 Leonard Lance: "Recently we have seen our government debt grow by $3.4 trillion during the first 29 months of the Obama administration -- the equivalent of about $4 billion per day." — Half-True

·         July 7, 2011 Barack Obama: Says that when President Bill Clinton raised the top tax rates to levels now proposed by Obama, the country experienced significant job growth. — Half-True

·         July 5, 2011 National Republican Congressional Committee: U.S. Reps. John Barrow and Sanford Bishop and their fellow Democrats "went on a spending spree and now their credit card is maxed out." — False

·         June 27, 2011 Harry Reid: "Hispanic unemployment has been ticking down from an all-time high of 13.9 percent because of the policies we’ve implemented." — Mostly False

·         June 22, 2011 National Republican Congressional Committee: "As the Democrats finally maxed out their government spending credit card Monday, Kurt Schrader continued to stand with his party leaders in failing to offer any viable long-term solution." — False

·         June 2, 2011Testing Mitt Romney on the Truth-O-Meter

·         June 2, 2011 Mitt Romney: "We are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy." — Pants on Fire!

·         June 2, 2011 National Republican Congressional Committee: "Gerry Connolly and his fellow Democrats went on a spending spree and now their credit card is maxed out." — Mostly False

• June 1, 2011 National Republican Congressional Committee: Says that PolitiFact Ohio confirms that Betty Sutton "maxed out federal debt" — Pants on Fire!
• May 31, 2011 National Republican Congressional Committee: "Betty Sutton and her fellow Democrats went on a spending spree and now their credit card is maxed out." — Mostly False
• October 28, 2010 Barack Obama: Stabilizing the recent financial crisis "will cost less than 1 percent of GDP," which is less than the 2.5 percent to fix the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. — Half-True
• October 16, 2010 Lee Fisher: "If you want to see the jobs that I've saved and created in this storm he helped create, go anywhere in Ohio." — Mostly True
• September 30, 2010 Barack Obama: The Republican election platform "was actually written with the help of a former lobbyist for AIG and a former lobbyist for Exxon-Mobil." — Half-True
• June 2, 2010 Mark Critz: "The Democratic Congress has already taken significant steps to create jobs and jump-start the economy, resulting in the lowest tax rates in over 50 years and the creation of over 500,000 new jobs so far this year." — Half-True
• January 29, 2010 Jeb Hensarling: "What were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats." — False
• January 25, 2010 Carolyn Maloney: Democratic presidents "have been considerably more effective at creating private-sector jobs." — True
• November 2, 2009 Tom McClintock: Three presidents in the last century — Harding, Kennedy and Reagan — all cut taxes during recessions and produced "rapid and dramatic economic recoveries," while two, Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama, did "the opposite." — False
• September 8, 2009 Glenn Beck: Van Jones "is an avowed, self-avowed radical revolutionary communist." — Mostly False
• August 13, 2009Health care reform: A simple explanation
• June 23, 2009 Lynn Westmoreland: The war spending bill "actually spends more money on the International Monetary Fund than on the war." — Mostly False
• September 17, 2008 Barack Obama: McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm is "the architect of some of the deregulation in Washington that helped cause the mess on Wall Street." — Half-True

Preaching Types/Political Types

Pastors know there are three basic approaches to preaching. First the expository sermon, which means you take a biblical text or story, you reflect on it a bit to see what it says to you. Next you do research and study what other folk, hopefully good theologians, and said about it. You may want to take in a few word studies of how it read in the original languages and how it can be interpreted from those languages. You pray about it asking the God who inspired the original writer of the passage to also inspire you to understand it as well. You also want to study and figure out the context in which the passage was written; to whom and what for. All of this to get at what the main meaning of that text is; what is God trying to tell us in that passage. Next you picture who that teaching might apply to today’s world and be of help to people in living out their faith. Then you write it down and preach it, talk to the folk who are also praying to understand and be inspired by God’s word to and for them. In my humble opinion at least 95% of all preaching should be this type. The emphasis is on what God is trying to say and you are to interpret it as best you can.

Then the “proof texters. These are the preachers that take a word or a sentence from scripture and then build an entire sermon around that word or sentence and often ignore all that is going on in the above method, though they may take parts of it. There are a number of preachers like this who basically make it up as they go and think their doing something. Only by the grace of God does God’s message get through. More likely it is their message that gets preached. Ideas are often taken completely out of context.

Finally there are topical preachers. They think of something they want to talk about. Then they search the scriptures to find words, sentences or passages that support their theme. They may use theological tools in the process of building the sermons but the key is how they start the process. There are times when this type of sermon is appropriate. If a congregation has a particular event or problem they are dealing with, it is appropriate to use appropriate scriptures to deal with the issues the face. I find they are the hardest sermons to prepare and are dangerous in that you may end up preaching your own gospel as “proof texters” are prone to do rather than the gospel message itself. Yet, they are important and skilled preachers can do them but hopefully rarely.

Now that may be all too much information for you as to what how we preachers prepare, but the reason I bring them up is the correlations I see between preaching and political campaigning. I see the same options at hand for politicians.

Unfortunately, today’s politicians use the later two types of preparations and very little of the former, and as their “congregations” we are the poorer for it.

There are legitimate political positions, ideologies, positions, problems and the like that need to be dealt with in political debate or dialogue. There are issues where politicians should make their positions clear and they should be able to explain how they came to those positions. A good statesman should have a political platform that is clear to the voting republic and he or she should be able to defend that position constitutionally, economically, reasonable within the limits of democracy. And it should not cost several fortunes to make one’s position clear. However, I find that type of clarity lacking in today’s political climate.

Political polling is one of the worst things to happen to politics as it encourages politicians to just try to placate and appeal to the most voters by saying words the will please the most. That lacks integrity. If a pastor did that we would say he or she sold his soul to the institutional church, and is an ineffective ambassador of Christ preaching their own gospel.

John F. Kennedy in his book Profiles in Courage is the best example of how a statesman should operate. It is series of political figures of integrity and character who stood for certain beliefs, make the clear to the Republic and then let the voters vote them in or out as they saw fit.

I am also sympathetic with those who would be statesmen. Like preachers they may start out with clear eyes and a clear vision of what they see God calling them to do. But then as the congregation (party) begins to own them they start selling of bits of their integrity in order to be popular, keep their job, or gain fame. But that is not what politicians or preachers are called to do. They should be standard bearers and leaders with high integrity based upon their beliefs. And, if they are not supported, so be it; at least they were faithful and that is what all of us are supposed to be.

Sound a little preachy? Good.

Now This Is Free Speech Envisioned in the First Ammendment

Robert Reich is rapidly become a favorite speaker of mine. See his latest video

http://youtu.be/ltxMtS1Frpk

Tax and Spend or Take the Money and Run (the country)

Tax Mageddon is the terms Tax.com calls spending cuts and tax increases which may put the country in dire straits by year’s end. Of course things could be fixed with rational action but that asking a bit much to today’s political practitioners. They break the disaster dilemma into 9 parts: five are tax breaks scheduled to expire at the end of the year and followed by tax increases scheduled for 2013… here they come.

1.    Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and the 2009 stimulus tax cuts.

2.   Expiration of the alternative minimum tax patch.

3.   Expiration of the payroll tax holiday.

4.   Expiration of extenders.

5.   Scheduled tax increases under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

6.   Sequestration.

7.   Expiration of expanded unemployment compensation.

8.   Expiration of the “doc fix”

9.   Debt limit.

Now I realize these may be meaningless terms for most of us. For details just go to http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8UHLM9?OpenDocument

To me this all boils down to 35 years of colossal screw-up’s began under the Reagan administration and the whacky economic concept of supply side economics. It couldn’t work, it didn’t work and despite folk saying it will work if we keep doing it, it won’t work.

People are always arguing the economy with, “are you better off today than you were last year?” Think bigger, think if you are relatively better off 35 years ago than you are today?  Unless you’re very rich the clear answer is no. And it is a big no in fact. That is a plutocracy in action.

If we don’t figure out how to get the voice of the people back into being the major influence in congress we will end up being where the birthplace of democracy, Greece is, and that is not pretty.

When I originally began this article I was going to go to the common accusation against the Democratic party, the “tax and spend” party. This simple answer is do that. Remember the New Deal, it worked. What we are doing now isn’t. What we have now is “take the money and run” and they have, the ultra rich that is.