Dave's Droppings

The current state of fiscal discussions in Washington is akin to burning wads of hundred dollar bills to illuminate the dark recesses of a room to try and find a penny that rolled away.

Sequestration will force $1.2 Trillion in Budget cuts. So friggin what.
Remember the huge blowout Budgets everyone (especially the Left) complained about during the Bush Admin? Well guess what. The Budget in 2005 was $2.4 Trillion. The Budget this year? $3.7 Trillion. Now use some grade school math and subtract $2.4 Trillion from $3.7 Trillion. Surprised? That equals to $1.3 Trillion.
Sequestration is $100 Billion less than rolling back the clock to a blow out Budget from the Middle of Bush’s term.

That $1.2 Trillion does not cut that amount in one year it is to cut it across a decade.

Sequestration is meaningless. Even for De fence spending. Consider that in 2005 the DOD budget was $401 Billion and for this fiscal year it is at $671 billion. Sequestration PLUS the already agreed on cuts could result in cutting about 10% from the DOD budget which would reduce it to still over $603 Billion. In 2005 we were heavy in Iraq. Now we are not and we are drawing down from Af/Pak. Surely we can “reduce” the DOD budget to an amount that is only $200 billion more than we were spending during the war in Iraq?”

I wanted to take some time to look at that “poll” claiming to show that Obama leads Romney among Small Business Owners as it just did not smell right.

Well… The odor is indeed strong and as I always say about polls I need to see the cross-tabs.

Be interesting to see if there is some push back on the data of this poll since it is such and outlier compared to a similar polls of this same segment over the past few months.

First lets look at polling from Gallup that showed Republicans (and leaners) at 49% to Democrats (and leaners) of 42%, it is reasonable to assume that the Democratic advantage by party affiliation in 2012 will be somewhere around non-existent for the general population.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

Scott Rasmussen, has also noted. “Over the last 20 years, the number of people who in a presidential election have considered themselves Republicans has been between 32 percent and 37 percent. The number of people who have been Democrats has stayed between 35 and 39 percent in that time frame. Yes, there are changes, but there are not massive swings.”

The poll being touted on the left surveyed 6,145 small business owners and was conducted by George Washington University School of Political Management and Thumbtack.com. Their sample of likely voters claims,

Rep = 29%
Dem = 32%
Ind = 39%

http://www.thumbtack.com/resources/politics-2012/GWU-Thumbtack-Political-Sentiment-Survey.pdf

Looking at a survey by a Small Business Association of members and non-members you can see the cause for my questioning the validity of this GWU Poll

http://www.nsba.biz/vote/docs/NSBA-Politics-2012.pdf

Here is the breakdown of Party Registration of Small Business Owners for the following years.

2007
Rep = 54%
Dem = 30%
Ind = 16%

2008
Rep = 48%
Dem = 33%
Ind = 20%

2011
Rep = 54%
Dem = 16%
Ind = 19%

They also asked the question of how “Regularly” they Vote:
Rep = 95%
Dem = 86%

For Comparison they also included Fortune Mag/Zogby Poll from a 2007 Survey and they indicate that Zogby has not followed up that poll with new data.

Zogby
Rep = 37%
Dem = 35%
Ind = 26%

So…

Given the Party Affiliation reported from Prior polls of this demographic and the results of others Polls of this same group (I have not looked at the cross tabs of those other polls) does it seem reasonable that the Obama who could fill a stadium in 2008 and can’t fill one at his own convention in 2012 has engendered the kind of enthusiasm among Small Business Owners to get them to change their party affiliation by double from 2011?  Or better yet if looking at 2008 which showed Dems at a similar ratio of 33% to the GWU survey of 32% that ALL of the swing has been from Rep to Ind?

What would be the result of the GWU Poll if the weighting based on Party Affiliation was more in line with other samples of this same demographic and did not so heavily discount the affiliation of Republicans?

First let me say I like the Electoral College System. We are a Constitutional Federal Republic. We are NOT a Democracy. I don’t want to live in a Mob Rule Democracy.  Mob rule is exactly what the force of “evil” want when then call for either eliminating the Electoral College and going to a Nation-wide Popular vote scheme.

The Democrats keep saying that they want a nationwide “popular” vote election in place of the Electoral College. They say this would force Candidates to pay attention to the “smaller” states.  Well that is a lie.  It would just focus yet more attention on the bigger population centers in the bigger states. There would be no need to pay the slightest bit of attention to the smaller population centers and smaller states in “fly over country”  since their smaller voices would be inundated by the tsunamis from the coasts.

Want to really force the Parties and the Presidential campaigns to pay attention to the folks out in the hinterlands (and watch the Dems crap their pants?) express your support for assigning Electoral votes not on a winner take all solution like the Dems propose (which would mean that even if Candidate Y won your state that your state is still forced to give its vote to Candidate X simply because people in other states voted for X and not Y) but rather like how Electoral votes are assigned via the “Congressional District Method” like Maine and Nebraska do.

This type of system does not require a Constitutional Amendment either as each State can simply pass legislation deciding how to assign their own Electors per Article 2 Section 1 of the Constitution

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electoral College System assigns votes equal to the number of Congressional Districts plus two. The winner of the popular vote of the State is awarded the Electoral votes not assigned to the Congressional District.

So… The Popular vote winner of each District awards it Electoral vote to that winner.  The remaining two Electoral votes are then awarded to the winner of the Popular vote for the entire state.

Why would this cause the Dems to crap their pants you ask?  Consider California and it’s monster 55 electoral votes (it takes 270 votes to win the Presidency).  The winner of California has a HUGE advantage going into the contest and Candidates don’t even need to campaign there since the outcome is not in doubt.  In 2008 Obama won all 55 of those Delegates by winning the State.  However, McCain won 11 of the 20 “Republican” Districts.  This would have meant that California instead of awarding 55 Electoral Delegates to Obama that he would have won 42 for the Congressional Districts plus another 2 for the overall State win and McCain would have picked up another 11 votes for his tally.

Obama would still have won in 2008 with 303 Electors rather than the 365 he obtained via the Winner take all. McCain would have increased his tally from 173 to 237.

Battleground states like Pennsylvania (21 votes to Obama would have been split 11 to Obama and 10 to McCain) and Ohio (20 to Obama would have been split 10/10) and Florida (27 to Obama would have seen McCain take more Electors with just 12 going to Obama and McCain taking 15)

Finding results for 2000 has not been as clean.  Very odd considering the “controversy” of that Election.  Therefore the numbers int he following table are not exact. The data for 2000 that I did find was using the Congressional districts from 2006 and since districts changed following 2000…

It was interesting looking around for this data to discover that even the Mob rule advocates for the “National Popular Vote” deal with this. Quite dishonestly too I might add..

If the congressional-district approach were applied to the results of the 2000 presidential election, then Bush would have received 288 electoral votes (53.3% of the total number of electoral votes), and Gore would have received 250 electoral votes (46.5% of the total). That is, the congressional-district approach would have given Bush a 6.8% lead in electoral votes over Gore in 2000. Gore received 50,992,335 popular votes (50.2% of the two-party popular vote), whereas Bush received 50,455,156 (49.7% of the two-party popular vote). Under the existing system, Bush received 271 electoral votes in 2000 (50.4% of the total number of electoral votes)—a 0.8% lead in electoral votes over Gore. In summary, the congressional-district approach would have been even less accurate than the existing statewide winner-take-all system in terms of mirroring the nationwide popular vote in 2000.

The idea of a National Popular vote would mean that…

Popular vote seems like a logical way to determine who should be President of the United States. The New York Times has advocated such a system. Majority rule is a major problem for this system. Founded as a Constitutional Republic, the United States values a balance between those in the majority and those in the minority. Being such a vast, heavily populated landscape, we need to realize that a variety of viewpoints must be considered when we elect our President. Today, if we were in a popular vote system, whatever New York and California wanted, New York and California would get. All candidates would represent the same values because there do not exist enough votes in the rest of the country to override the shear numbers of people that are found in these states. Popular election for President would effectively eviscerate the minority voice in United States’ politics. In 2000, Vice-President Al Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 votes while winning both California and New York.

As this interesting site I stumbled over looking for data makes clear. Which he had published the Congressional District data for 2000

Obama does not believe Gay Marriage is a right. I try to point this simple truth out to the kool-aide drinkers all the time. The adage about leading Horses to water applies in spades to them.

Obama is a Lawyer right? Yes
Supposedly Obama was a lecturer (not an actual Prof) teaching some ConLaw right? Yes.
Does Obama understand the point of Brown v. Board of Education in overturning Plessy? I hope so.

Brown v. Board declared that “Separate but Equal” was unconstitutional and that therefore a Right trumped the ability of a State to legislate otherwise under the protections of the 14th Amendment.

According to our Declaration of Independence who gives us rights? The Government? Nope.
We are endowed with them by our Creator. They are unalienable Rights. They are not allowances or privileges.

So… Does Obama believe that the matter should still reside with the individual States in determining the issue of Marriage? Yes

So… What can we deduce his position is in re: Gay Marriage being a “Right”

It is funny seeing people point to a Politifact post and then make the claim that it disputes Romney’s statement saying that $716 Billion was taken from Medicare. Politifact DOES NOT dispute that number nor that it was taken away from Medicare funding.

Reducing spending by $716 Billion does not cut Costs. If it costs me $600 a month to pay for Electricity in my house during the summer months I can’t just tell the Utility Company that I’m going to reduce my costs and therefore here is a check for $400 to cover my bill. Doing that will result in the Utility company cutting me as a customer.

If I want to reduce my costs to bring my bill down to $400 I have to cut the amount of the services I’m using.

That is what ObamaCare calls for. They are reducing the amount of money they are going to pay to Docs, etc… that accept Medicare patients. Doctors, etc… have their own overhead to pay for. If the payment rates being offered don’t cover that overhead then they won’t be seeing those patients.

Politfact does not dispute the $716 dollar number. They just take exception to the word Robbed and then fall headfirst into a Tu Quoque logical fallacy

“Our ruling

Romney said, “There’s only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare.”

The only element of truth here is that the health care law seeks to reduce future Medicare spending, and the tally of those cost reductions over the next 10 years is $716 billion. The money wasn’t “robbed,” however, and other presidents have made similar reductions to the Medicare program.”