CalvinBall wrote:also the place REEKED of pot. some stoners lit up right next to us. on the other side of them was a family with a little baby. i thought it was pretty disrespectful.

CalvinBall wrote:also the place REEKED of pot. some stoners lit up right next to us. on the other side of them was a family with a little baby. i thought it was pretty disrespectful.

jerseyhoya wrote:To think, when I wrote that I'd have been happy with only picking up 40 seats in the House.

The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past five quarters.

Most voters don’t believe it.

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 24-26 finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won’t be recovered.
...
The Obama administration has cut taxes -- largely for the middle class -- by $240 billion since taking office on Jan. 20, 2009. A program aimed at families earning less than $150,000 that was contained in the stimulus package lowered the burden for 95 percent of working Americans by $116 billion, or about $400 per year for individuals and $800 for married couples. Other measures include breaks for college education, moderate- income families and the unemployed and incentives to promote renewable energy.

...

Still, the poll shows the message hasn’t gotten through to Americans, especially middle-income voters. By 52 percent to 19 percent, likely voters say federal income taxes have gone up for the middle class in the past two years.

“He’s all about raising taxes,” says poll respondent Jeanette Bagley, 74, a retired home health aide in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. “He’s all about big government and big spending.”
...
The heart of Obama’s voting base and the group he’s tailored most of his policies to, middle-income earners -- or those who make $25,000 to $49,999 -- feel more pinched by taxes, are gloomier about economic growth and more pessimistic the tax dollars lent to Wall Street banks will ever be repaid than their higher-income-earning counterparts.

In an October report to Congress, released as TARP turned two years old, the Treasury said it had recovered most of the $245 billion spent on the Wall Street bank part of the rescue, and expects to turn a $16 billion profit. In the Bloomberg poll, 60 percent of respondents say they believe most of the TARP money to the banks is lost and only 33 percent say most of the funds will be recovered.

“Anything that ever needs to be paid back it’s ‘let’s go after the middle class,’” says poll respondent Judith Ann Micone, a 55-year-old cosmetologist and Republican from Kalispell, Montana.

WASHINGTON—Conceding almost certain Republican gains in next month's crucial midterm elections, Democratic lawmakers vowed Tuesday not to give up without making one final push to ensure their party runs away from every major legislative victory of the past two years.

Party leaders told reporters that regardless of the ultimate outcome, they would do everything in their power from now until the polls closed to distance themselves from their hard-won passage of a historic health care overhaul, the toughest financial regulations since the 1930s, and a stimulus package most economists now credit with preventing a second Great Depression.

"There's a great deal on the line, and we know it isn't going to be easy for us," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), speaking from the steps of the Capitol. "But if we suffer defeat, we will do so knowing we cowered away from absolutely anything we produced that was even remotely progressive or valuable in any way."
...
According to party leaders, the Democrats are putting their sweeping new health care law at the top of the list of accomplishments to back away from, mainly by allowing its most popular provisions—federal subsidies to make health care more affordable; allowing children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26; and rules that prevent sick people from being denied coverage—to be summarily dismissed as "Obamacare."

"Thanks to our efforts, a lot of people don't even realize they may already be benefiting from these reforms," Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) said. "They certainly don't realize they might be one of the 30 million currently uninsured people who will be provided coverage by the time the law is fully enacted."

"You can be certain we'll keep that information a deep, dark secret until we're thrown out of power," Bean added.

Political consultant James Carville praised the strategy, saying it was gratifying to see the party dissociate itself from what he described as some of the most useful and principled laws passed in nearly half a century.

"It's the ninth inning now, and Democrats are finally getting serious about hiding in the weeds at the slightest mention of last year's credit-card legislation, which put an end to predatory lending schemes that are universally considered repugnant," Carville said. "Now that's smart politics, right there. The chips may be down, but they're still finding a way to curl up like a bunch of pathetic little hedgehogs and piss all over themselves the moment any sort of challenge is mounted."

cshort wrote:I can see Obama taking credit for the tax cuts, but implementation ofTARP didn't really fall under his watch. In fairness, though, I think he has given credit to Bush for the TARP program in the past.

jerseyhoya wrote:Decent in-depth look at how Boehner/Cantor/McCarthy are looking to run the House. Takeaways include Boehner looking to give his committee chairman more room to write legislation, seniority will choose chairmen (except when it won't due to PR, money or possible term limit reasons), the top three appear to be singing from different sections of the hymnal at least in where they are focused and Democrats looking for a reason to worry about gov't shutdown will be disappointed to read that not shutting down gov't appears to be one of the only things all three agree on.