Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 870 -- Do Primary Votes Translate Into General Election Energy?

Spend, Spend, Spend-

In the 2008 election, we heard again and again that the Democrats' robust turnout in the primaries and caucuses would translate into higher turnout in the general election.

The 2010 story is nearly the inverse:

Virtually every leading political indicator points to a midterm election this November that could range anywhere from difficult to disastrous for Democrats.

The nation’s high unemployment rate, the declining approval ratings for President Barack Obama, and the Democrats’ lingering deficit in the generic congressional ballot all paint a dark picture for the ruling party.

And now, it appears, the Republicans have another indicator going in their favor – the “battle of the primary ballots.” Two years ago, the Democrats had a big edge in presidential primary turnout, a reflection of the “enthusiasm gap” that benefited them from the start of the year to the end. This time, however, it is the Republicans who have the most energy. This is evident not only in polling data but also in the GOP’s lead of more than 3 million votes over the Democrats when comparing the number of ballots cast in each party’s primaries through the end of August.

I am not completely sold on being able to universalize the "more primary voters means more general election voters" effect, since some primaries are just more competitive than others, but there could be something to it. Here are a few reasons:

1. Campaigns have to gear up for a tough primary fight, so they figure "it" out sooner than campaigns that coast through easy primary battles. This goes for mechanical campaign activities such as distributing campaign paraphernalia, signs, etc., but it also goes for messaging, staffing, and a variety of other internal campaign things.

2. If you have a heavily contested primary, and the other side doesn't, you simply have more extremely likely voters you can target for the general election. Ever wonder why you started getting mail from certain candidates or organizations all of the sudden? It's probably because you voted in enough consecutive primary elections. Your vote is private, but the fact that you voted in a certain primary is public information.

3. Even in highly negative primary campaigns, you may gain a sort of inoculation advantage. You become vaccinated against attacks. If your primary is truly contested, your opponent will use up most/all of the attacks and desensitize voters to them when they pop back up in the general election.

4. Ultimately, hotly contested primaries can energize brand-new voters. Some of the TEA party folks are infrequent voters, typically, but the satisfaction of winning a primary over the establishment RINO candidate could very well turn that infrequent voter into a dedicated, consistent, reliable activist, for years to come. Your new voters, although far more rare than the media typically portray, are going to be among your most evangelical (in the non-religious sense-- more "marked by militant or crusading zeal"). They will fight your fights. They will recruit others. They will get in the trenches and go to work, because they are true believers who aren't yet jaded.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Winning The Recession.

Posted by Will Franklin · 14 September 2010 06:41 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 869 -- America's Recession.

Job Loss Visual-

The recession is not created equal:

So, who will lead the recovery? Texas:

The debate between Richard Florida and Joel Kotkin on the future of the U.S. economy proves yet again that experts usually have trouble agreeing on anything. But when it comes to predicting what place will lead the country to a solid economic recovery, forecasters are all on the same page: Nobody's messing with Texas.

Although the economy has slowed in recent months, the prospects for a robust recovery are still looking up for the Lone Star State. Texas gained 14,000 jobs in June even as employment fell in 27 other states, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That brought Texas's total for the first half of 2010 to 178,700 -- more than twice that of any other state.

....

High-tech centers in Austin and Dallas have created an economy ranging "from cow chips to computer chips," as the Fed's Phillips put it. A tech-heavy index of the best-performing cities in the country last year by the Milken Institute, an economic think tank, ranked Austin first and placed three other Texas locales -- Killeen and environs, McAllen, and Houston -- in the top five.

Obama could learn something from Texas.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Congress Doesn't Get It.

Posted by Will Franklin · 10 September 2010 01:17 PM · Comments (0)

iPhone 4.1: HDR Photos.

Yesterday, I downloaded the new iPhone iOS 4.1 software/firmware for the iPhone 4, and today I got to try out one of the new features, the automatic HDR (High Dynamic Range) feature built right into the camera. Apple explains it this way:

Take great photos that capture a wider range of light intensity using the new high dynamic range (HDR) setting on iPhone 4, which automatically combines multiple exposures into a single HDR image.

Apparently, the way it works is that it takes three photos in rapid succession (almost instantly) to create one HDR photo. HDR is really only useful when there are varying levels of light in one shot. Some of the best real HDR photography out there can be found at the Austin-based Stuck In Customs blog.

Having been a frequent visitor at Stuck In Customs for a while now, I was skeptical about the new iPhone HDR feature, but it seems to work pretty well so far.

You can select whether or not to have the HDR turned on:

Just tap that button that says "HDR On" if you want to turn "HDR Off." Easy.

When in HDR mode, the output in your iPhone camera reel folder is two photos. One "normal mode" and an HDR photo.

So this morning, I took some photos at an outdoor endorsement press conference in downtown Austin. The "normal" photo is on the left, and the HDR version is on the right (you can click on each image to see larger files):

This one is a .gif. I should also note that for the sake of bandwidth, I downsized this in Photoshop from more than 5000 pixels wide to 1500 pixels wide. I further downsized it into a clickable thumbnail. Keep that in mind. Notice how the sky becomes much less washed out. The clouds become far more defined. The colors become more vivid and bright.

Another angle. This one, I saved as a .jpg. Both the sky and the truck become more vivid, but if you look closely there is a little distortion in the tree branches and so forth. I think I could have possibly done a better job holding still, but I didn't really know it actually took three photos in rapid succession. As Gizmodo put it:

In HDR mode, the iPhone 4 captures three exposures to combine into an HDR photo: underexposed, normal, and overexposed. Even though it's shooting those sequence of pictures pretty fast, it's not instant. So, if you move the phone, or if your subject is on the run, you're going to wind up with some mutant friends with three arms or whispy ghosts when the phone tries to mix all the photos together.

I should also note that sometimes I like to focus on the sky or background when I take photos for a cool effect, but the HDR feature seems to work best when you just focus in on the foreground subject.

I also snapped these two of Governor Perry with some of the leadership of the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters:

See the difference?

In this one, I am pretty sure I never focused the shot on anything in particular:

The people look mostly the same, but in the HDR version, Governor Perry actually blends in more with the podium than in the non-HDR version. The HDR is a huge improvement, though, in terms of the washed out sky and bright, concentrated sun pouring over the building.

In this one, from roughly the same position and angle, I tap-focused on the sky, and here's what resulted:

Clearly, an improvement.

Finally, if your subject is moving and gesturing, as Governor Perry tends to do when he speaks, you may get something like this:

The HDR version looks much better, but the main subject looks like a hologram or someone from The Matrix.

Generally, I am a fan of the HDR feature on the iPhone 4.1 firmware. I like that it keeps the "normal" version if you are inclined to go in with Photoshop and do a more manual fix, but I also like that it does tend to help photos. You can either choose it or not. Not locked in either way. This is a feature that, with practice, can probably produce some cool shots.

Overall, the camera on the iPhone 4 is one of the most important upgrades over my old iPhone 3G. I shot this picture on my iPhone 4 before the HDR feature and messed around in Photoshop with the Dodge tool on the buildings and the water paper filter on the sky to create this effect:

This shot is not HDR, but I am digging the capabilities on the iPhone 4 camera, and the new HDR feature is a definite plus.

Read More »

Posted by Will Franklin · 10 September 2010 12:15 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 868 -- Congress Doesn't Get It.

Spend, Spend, Spend-

The National Taxpayers Union has scored bills for August, and it's not pretty. By an overwhelming margin, Congress is increasing spending, not trimming it:

House-

The 184 House bills scored during the month of August would increase spending by approximately $99.5 billion annually if all bills were enacted.

Senate-

The 96 Senate bills scored within the month of August would increase spending by approximately $62.9 billion on an annual basis if all bills were enacted.

Pelosi and Reid just don't get it.

Also worthy of note. NTU has analyzed past sessions of Congress, and Democrats really do introduce more spending bills than Republicans, although the post-1994 session of Congress (1995) was one of the very best, and Republicans did lose their way slightly and gradually over the next several sessions.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Exports.

Posted by Will Franklin · 9 September 2010 01:09 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 867 -- Exporting, Manufacturing.

Texas Exports Number One In America-

Another one from Texanomics. A look at Texas exports:

A couple of tidbits about Texas exports:

Texas is the number one exporting state in America, now 8 years in a row. Texas is one of only a handful of states to add manufacturing jobs every single month so far in 2010.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Unions.

Posted by Will Franklin · 8 September 2010 05:51 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 866 -- The New Face Of Unions.

Government Bureaucrats-

Quick. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "union"?

For me, I think of All Along The Waterfront with Marlon Brando, or Jimmy Hoffa being buried under that stadium, or the big union dude who assaulted me outside of the Norm Coleman - Walter Mondale debate in October of 2002 in Minnesota.

For many, the first thing that pops into their heads is blue collar, salt-of-the-earth folks in an auto factory somewhere in Detroit, welding metal together with sparks flying everywhere-- and Bob Seger playing in the background.

But for the first time in generations, the majority of union members work for the government:

Even as unions have fallen out of favor in the private sector, they dominate the public sector. The U.S. Postal Service employs three times more union members than the entire U.S. auto industry.

When someone says, "union member," you shouldn't think of Rosie the Riveter. You should think of bureaucrats who work for the government. That is the new face of the union movement in America.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Obama's Supporters Turning Away Because He is So Awful.

Posted by Will Franklin · 7 September 2010 04:34 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 865 -- Economy Opening Young Obama Supporters' Eyes.

No, He Can't-

Eventually this:

Friday's labor report is the latest confirmation that our economy is sputtering. A loss of 54,000 jobs and a 9.6 percent unemployment rate are bad enough. But a deeper look, at the little-known civilian employment-population ratio, presents what may be a more revealing and troublesome picture.

In contrast to the better-known unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of adult Americans who are actively seeking jobs but do not have one, the civilian employment-population ratio could be called the employment rate, measuring the percentage of adult Americans who have a job.

The August report, released Friday, pegged the employment rate at 58.5 percent, the same as June and only a tad higher than July's rate of 58.4. These numbers are approaching the dismal employment rates of the early 1980s, when the rate bottomed out at 57.1. Since the start of this summer, nearly 400,000 Americans have entered the labor force, but only 130,000 have found jobs according to the BLS release.

Will cause more of this:

The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama.

Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties: far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now identify themselves as Democrats compared with 2008.

Right?

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: States With Income Taxes Have More Budget Crises Than States Without Income Taxes.

Posted by Will Franklin · 3 September 2010 12:15 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 864 -- States With Income Taxes Have More Budget Crises Than States Without Income Taxes.

Income Taxes Not The Answer-

I keep promoting this Texanomics blog, and I've had people ask if it's me doing it. It's not, but so far so good:

Go check out the Texanomics blog to see a larger version (just click the graph). The green line is Texas. The orange line is other states without a state personal income tax. The blue line is the United States, and the red line is states with personal income taxes.

I've written about this plenty in the past. States without income taxes perform better economically than states with income taxes.

One of the arguments in favor of income taxes is that they help smooth things out and prevent budget crises when the economy turns downward. This is simply incorrect. States with income taxes have plenty of budget woes. Indeed, states with personal income taxes have more budget crises than states without personal income taxes. Far from smoothing things out and providing a "third leg of the stool" of stable revenue, states with income taxes have more volatility in their revenue collection than states without income taxes:

Just say no to an income tax in Texas.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Obama's Dropping Popularity.

Posted by Will Franklin · 2 September 2010 01:01 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 863 -- How Badly Will Obama Hurt Democrats In 2010?

Obama's Down-

Rasmussen:

The number of voters who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s performance held steady at 43% in August. At the same time, the number who Strongly Approve inched up a point to 27%.

Those figures generate a full month Presidential Approval Index rating of -16, a slight improvement from last month. From December 2009 to March 2010, the president’s approval index bounced back-and-forth between -14 and -15. In April, the index jumped four points to -11, the highest level of optimism measured since October 2009. That number, however, has steadily declined in the following months.

It's bad, but it has sort of stabilized.

How much will Obama's unpopularity harm the chances of Democrats in November?

How much will Democrats turn on Obama after the devastation?

Does Obama secretly want Democrats to fail in 2010, so he will have a better chance to succeed when he is on the ballot again in 2012?

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Obama's Jobs Deficit.

Posted by Will Franklin · 1 September 2010 02:19 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 862 -- Obama's Jobs Deficit.

Stimulus Has Failed-

The stimulus has failed:

Time for America to cut its losses on this disastrous regime.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: The Emerging Pension Crisis.

Posted by Will Franklin · 31 August 2010 06:07 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 861 -- The Emerging Pension Crisis.

Defined-Benefit Retirement Plans Unsustainable-

One day, some of us will be saying "we told you so." Pensions, just like federal entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are just not solvent. They overpromise, and one day, the reckoning will be very, very ugly:

Much bigger increases in employee costs are on the horizon. Thanks to huge unfunded pension and retirement health-care promises granted by past governments, and also to deceptive pension-fund accounting that understated liabilities and overstated future investment returns, California is now saddled with $550 billion of retirement debt.

The cost of servicing that debt has grown at a rate of more than 15% annually over the last decade. This year, retirement benefits—more than $6 billion—will exceed what the state is spending on higher education. Next year, retirement costs will rise another 15%. In fact, they are destined to grow so much faster than state revenues that they threaten to suck up the money for every other program in the state budget.

Nearly every governmental entity faces something similar, from local school districts and governments up through the federal government. It's not pretty.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Has America's Recovery Blueprint.

Posted by Will Franklin · 30 August 2010 05:37 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 860 -- Texas, Germany, America, And Economic Experiments.

Which Model Works Best?-

A WILLisms.com reader Neville, from Oregon, writes in with a link to this David Brooks column which evaluates the divergent German and American responses to the economic/financial crisis:

According to Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, the Americans borrowed an amount equal to 6 percent of G.D.P. in an attempt to stimulate growth. The Germans spent about 1.5 percent of G.D.P. on their stimulus.

This divergence created a natural experiment. Who was right?

The early returns suggest the Germans were. The American stimulus package was supposed to create a “summer of recovery,” according to Obama administration officials. Job growth was supposed to be surging at up to 500,000 a month. Instead, the U.S. economy is scuffling along.

The German economy, on the other hand, is growing at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.

Neville also echoes the point Glenn Reynolds made this morning, which is that this is a "surprising indictment of everything the Obama administration has done since Inauguration Day."

As Professor Reynolds would say, "indeed."

In his email, Neville also brought up the point that Texas is in many ways America's "Germany" in this divergent set of examples.

Texas rejected huge portions of the federal stimulus-- the hundreds of millions of unemployment insurance dollars with strings attached. Texas has received the second lowest number of stimulus dollars per capita. Texas has one of the freest economies in the country, with one of the lowest debt loads per capita in the entire nation. Texas necessarily limits government by virtue of the legislature meeting for only 140 days every two years. Texas has relatively low taxes, keeps state government spending growth basically in line with population and inflation growth, and Texas has enacted among the most sweeping tort reform packages in the nation.

The result is that Texas' foreclosure rate is far below the national average and its bankruptcy rate is near the bottom. Texas has added far more jobs than all other states combined over the past few years, and income growth in Texas is far ahead of all other states.

Indeed, individual Texas cities (Austin, for example) have outpaced every other state in private-sector job growth over the past few years:

That green bar is the Austin metro area. The other bars are Utah, Delaware, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington, Nebraska, and Montana.

You could do the same graph for Houston and Dallas, and San Antonio would rank second if it were its own state.

Texas, just like Germany, is not completely out of the woods yet. Nor are Texas or Germany without their own shortfalls. Texas' economy was as turbulent as any in the 1980s, with bank booms and busts, oil booms and busts, and real estate booms and busts. While Brooks notes that "Germans have recently reduced labor market regulation, increased wage flexibility and taken strong measures to balance budgets," some serious long term structural issues remain in that country, in terms of over-promising on pensions and entitlements.

Still, the recent relative success of Texas and Germany, compared to the backsliding United States economic picture, offers strong evidence that Keynesian stimulus is a failed policy prescription, and market forces can best provide the kind of economic growth that political leaders covet.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Republicans Lead On Every Single Issue.

Posted by Will Franklin · 27 August 2010 03:02 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 859 -- Republicans Lead On Every Single Issue.

Top Issue = Jobs, Jobs, Jobs-

New numbers from Rasmussen:

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 of the important issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports.

The GOP has consistently been trusted on most issues for months now, but in July they held the lead on only nine of the key issues.

Republicans lead Democrats 47% to 39% on the economy, which remains the most important issue to voters. Those numbers are nearly identical to those found in June. Republicans have held the advantage on the economy since May of last year.

But for the first time in months, Republicans now hold a slight edge on the issues of government ethics and corruption, 40% to 38%. Voters have been mostly undecided for the past several months on which party to trust more on this issue, but Democrats have held small leads since February. Still, more than one-in-five voters (22%) are still not sure which party to trust more on ethics issues.

Government ethics and corruption have been second only to the economy in terms of importance to voters over the past year.

It is imperative that Democrats be sent a profound message this November that Americans will not tolerate the breathtakingly abuse of power and accelerated expansion of government we have seen over the past couple of years.

Americans voted Republicans out because they got too big government on us all. Then Democrats went and did the big government thing strung out on meth. Obama likes analogies about car keys and driving off cliffs-- and D and R standing for drive and reverse.

When Republicans turned the keys over to Democrats in late 2006, unemployment was 4.5%, GDP growth was robust, federal budget deficits were on track to become surpluses, and things were cranking along just fine, economically. It is Democrats who created market uncertainty. It is top-down Democrat housing micromanagement that created the foreclosure crisis. It is Democrats who canceled pending free trade agreements which were expanding markets for American goods and services and providing higher quality products to American consumers and lower prices. It is Democrats who twisted the throttle on the insolvency of entitlement programs like Social Security. It is Democrats who drove this country off a cliff, economically.

It certainly will not be Democrats to get us out of this mess.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Only State Among Largest Twenty To Gain Jobs Since 2006.

Posted by Will Franklin · 26 August 2010 01:16 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 858 -- Texas Only State Among Largest Twenty To Gain Jobs Since 2006.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs-

Compared to 2006, nearly every state in America has fewer jobs. Texas is one of the few (and the only large state) that has added jobs over that time:

Why is it that Texas has been more resilient in the face of the economic challenges our nation faces?

Could be the economic freedom.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Economic Freedom, And Why It Matters.

Posted by Will Franklin · 25 August 2010 11:49 AM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 857 -- Texas Among Best In Economic Freedom.

Again, Texas Among The Very Best-

The Fraser Institute released new rankings of economic freedom for all 50 state in the U.S., as well as provinces in Canada, and Texas is again among the best:

Reinforcing the notion that economic freedom leads to greater prosperity, this year's report shows that Delaware, Texas, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Utah, Louisiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Tennessee—the top 10 most economically free states—had an average per-capita GDP of $40,183 in 2007, compared to $37,397 for the 40 lowest-ranked states.

Among states with the lowest levels of economic freedom, Michigan, Hawaii, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, New Mexico, Montana, Maine, Mississippi, and West Virginia had an average per-capita GDP of $32,170 in 2007, compared to $39,791 for the rest of the US.

Indeed, American states generally are freer than Canadian provinces, but there are a couple of exceptions:

Economic freedom is a good value on its own, but it also has serious social implications that liberals, conservatives, and everyone else should agree on. Over time, freer states produce more jobs, more prosperity, and higher standards of living:

Higher standards of living ultimately mean longer, healthier lives, and if you're one of those who glorifies the state, it ultimately means more tax revenue.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Income Growth.

Posted by Will Franklin · 24 August 2010 12:08 PM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 856 -- Income Growth.

Again, Texas The Very Best-

In his stump speeches and television ads, liberal trial lawyer turned career politician Bill White has now essentially acknowledged that Texas is the best state for economic and job growth in the country, but he has turned his attacks on our state toward the erroneous notion that the jobs being created aren't good enough.

The facts, from Texanomics (one of my favorite new blogs), don't lie:

It's kind of small and hard to read, but click on the graph for a bigger version over at Texanomics. That green bar is Texas private-sector wage growth from 2006-2009. Those blue bars are other states.

Another example of Texas domination.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Bankruptcy.

Read More »

Posted by Will Franklin · 23 August 2010 10:34 AM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 855 -- Bankruptcy Rates.

Again, Texas Among Best-

Bankruptcies are way up in the United States this year, at a 5-year high, but Texas ranks 48th:

Of the ten states with the largest populations, Texas has the lowest bankruptcy rate by far.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: WNBA.

Posted by Will Franklin · 20 August 2010 08:00 AM · Comments (1)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 854 -- The WNBA.

Disproportionately High Coverage Relative To Actual Attendance-

The WNBA is subsidized and loses money:

...the NBA owns and subsidizes 6 of the 13 WNBA franchises, and the WNBA teams lose between $1.5 million and $2 million per year.

And yet, some argue that there is anti-female gender discrimination in terms of televised coverage of the WNBA. The numbers, however, speak for themselves.

The WNBA is the butt of so many late night talk show jokes for a reason. Meanwhile, there are women's sports very much worth watching, but they are still a bit niche for general audiences in mass media markets. Maybe icons of female-friendly mass media could throw a little love toward these sports.

Christina Hoff Sommers makes just this point:

The latest USC report is silent about the near-total absence of sports in women’s media. The limited coverage consists mainly of human-interest stories about women athletes. By the logic of the USC authors, shows such as “The View” and “Oprah” should be offering sports highlights and scrolling tickers with scores. Magazines such as Vogue, Allure, Cosmopolitan, and Better Homes and Gardens should be bursting with stories about draft picks, photographs of awesome plays, and up-to-date information about fantasy teams and brackets.

Indeed.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: The Ring Of Fire.

Posted by Will Franklin · 19 August 2010 09:44 AM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 853 -- The Ring Of Fire.

Wither American Exceptionalism?-

America could end up like Greece if we're not careful:

Sadly, "The Ring of Fire" chart is highly suggestive of lackluster economic growth performance in the industrialized countries in the years ahead. Since one has to expect that, over the course of the economic cycle, high budget deficit levels will be associated with higher interest rates as industrialized country governments compete with their private sectors for a limited pool of available financing. One would also expect that high public debt levels will undermine private sector confidence as both households and companies will come to fear the prospect of future distortive taxes to deal with compromised public finances.

America needs to get back to what got us to greatness in the first place. Limited government. Limited federal intervention in the economy. Limited federal intrusion into state and local matters. Limited taxation. Pro-growth, pro-commerce laws. Freedom.

The only way to truly "drain the swamp" of corruption, mitigate the influence of lobbyists, and clean up Washington is to shrink and limit government.

It's the only way for America to succeed into the next century.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Obama Versus Small Business.

Posted by Will Franklin · 18 August 2010 11:07 AM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 852 -- Small Businesses Facing Major Tax Hikes Under Obama.

Tax Increases On The Way, Joy-

Small businesses are in for a world of hurt:

Thanks, Democrats.

Times are tough, but they are about to get a lot tougher, absent some kind of change of course:

America is suffering its largest drop since World War II. When the economy was at its Bush-era height, in 2007, a little over 63% of adult Americans had jobs. Friday's report shows that only about 58.4% do, a decline of nearly five percentage points. While the unemployment rate remains steady at 9.5%, the employment-population ratio continues to fall each month. In April it was 58.8%, in May 58.7%, and in June 58.5%.

Since America has about 238 million noninstitutionalized civilian adults of working age, this decrease means that we have nearly 12 million fewer jobs today than we would have if the employment-population rate were still at its 2007 level of 63%.

No other recession in the past 60 years saw such rapid job destruction in either absolute or percentage terms. In the 1979-82 recession, unemployment topped out at a higher rate, 10.8%, but the employment-population ratio declined by only three percentage points, to 57% from 60%.

Yeah. Higher taxes will help this. Not.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Economy.

Posted by Will Franklin · 11 August 2010 10:11 AM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 851 -- The Texas Economy.

Not Perfect, But The Best We Have-

Are you reading Texanomics yet?

You should be.

This graph shows private-sector employment changes in the handful of states that added jobs from 2005-2010. This is really a sad picture in so many ways.

We've really got to figure this thing out. Our country can't just not create jobs.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: America's Jobless Recovery.

Posted by Will Franklin · 10 August 2010 10:24 AM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 850 -- Jobless Recovery.

Mixed But Mostly Bad National Numbers-

The new normal:

The July jobs report reveals an economy struggling to add jobs. While private sector jobs have increased by 151,000 over the last three months, this job growth is slower than that of March and April. An average of 50,000 new private jobs a month is disappointing for this stage of a recovery and will not lower the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate remained flat at 9.5 percent in part because 181,000 workers exited the labor force. The labor force participation rate dropped to 64.6 percent, matching its low for the recession that was set in December 2009.

The labor force increased in the first half of the year but has steadily declined since its April peak of 65.2 percent. Both adult men and women have seen their participation rate drop by 0.6 percentage points since April, while teenagers’ participation rate has dropped 1.3 percentage points.

Job gains in the private sector were scattered. Manufacturing (36,000) and health care (27,800) had strong increases. Construction (–11,000), financial services (–17,000), and professional business services (–13,000) were the big losers. Government hiring fell by 202,000, with 143,000 of those losses attributable to temporary census workers. State and local workers (–48,000) had one of the sharpest job declines of this recession. Another signal indicating a weakening labor market is the drop in temporary services (–5,600), which had its first decline since the fall.

The President could learn something from his trip to Texas today.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Supreme Court Polarization.

Posted by Will Franklin · 9 August 2010 09:03 AM · Comments (0)

Obama's Texas Visit.

President Obama is visiting Texas today to raise money for Bill White.

Bill White will gladly take the money, but he won't dare be seen with Obama:

One wonders if Obama knows some of these stats:

* Since 2005, Texas has gained more private-sector jobs than all other states combined, times four. Texas dominates private sector employment gains over the past half decade. From 2005 to 2010, Texas cities rank 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 11th in America for raw private-sector job growth.

* Of America's 100 largest metros, only 16 added private-sector jobs (84 shed) between 2005 and 2010. All 6 in Texas added jobs.

* More than half of all job growth over the past year has been in Texas.

* Texas is one of only 5 states to add manufacturing jobs each month so far in 2010.

* Businessweek- Texas has 3 of top 5 and 4 of top 10 cities for new grads looking for jobs.

* CNNMoney ranked America’s top counties for job growth over past 9 years. Texas has 5 of top 7.
#2 (Williamson)
#3 (Hays)
#5 (Fort Bend)
#6 (Webb)
#7 (Collin)

* Also, Obama has publicly stated a goal of doubling U.S. Exports in five years. Texas is the top exporting state 8 years running now, so maybe he could learn something while he's visiting Texas today.

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Posted by Will Franklin · 9 August 2010 06:59 AM · Comments (0)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 849 -- Supreme Court Polarization.

Supreme Court Partisanship-

Traditionally, the Supreme Court was truly removed from politics, and decisions were rarely close:

We have become accustomed to “minimum winning coalitions” in recent decades. But throughout the 19th century, a one-vote majority decided only 1 percent of cases on average. Between 1900 and 1950, that average rose to 4 percent. Since 1951, the average rate is 17 percent.

One-vote majority rulings carry the same legal weight as all majority opinions. Yet they lack the symbolic power of decisions by a more united court. Experts consider these 5-to-4 decisions to be more expressly political than others, representing a threat to the court’s moral authority.

My theory on this is that the scope of action from our legislative and executive branches is advancing rapidly, and therefore the judicial branch is required to weigh in on more gray-area partisan issues rather than the traditionally clear-cut "is it Constitutional?" arguments they once weighed. Any student of Constitutional law will tell you that early Supreme Court rulings generally interpreted the Constitution far more narrowly and overruled Congressional or Presidential action on just about everything remotely questionable.

Moreover, beginning with FDR and escalating throughout the mid-to-late 20th Century, the Supreme Court has expanded its own scope, legislating from the bench, and wading into questions that necessitate weighing further into similar questions when they arise.

Early Congresses would have never dreamed of passing socialized health care bills, even if they wanted to, because they knew early Supreme Courts would unanimously rule such action unconstitutional. These days, not so much.

The antidote for these polarized rulings is to dramatically reduce the size and scope of governmental interference in our lives. If government is limited, what is and what is not Constitutional becomes far more obvious.

Reducing the size and scope of big government interference, unfortunately, will require decades of conservative Congresses, with conservative Presidents, who appoint the kinds of Justices who are willing to return to the Founding Constitutional principles that made America great and unique in the first place.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Transportation.

Posted by Will Franklin · 6 August 2010 10:57 AM · Comments (1)

Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 848 -- Transportation.

Imbalance-

A couple of decades ago, traffic congestion was pretty terrible in every growing, sunny area of the country. Today, it's not that it is especially better anywhere, but it has gotten worse a lot faster in some places, compared to other places.

Take the California solution versus the Texas solution over that time.

The California way led to more congestion. The Texas way worked:

Traffic congestion has gotten much worse, and traffic volumes have increased materially. Our recent article showed that transit market shares had declined.

These results are in stark contrast to Houston, which in 1984 had the worst traffic congestion in the nation. Houston set about to solve the problem by expanding its roadway capacity. Since 1984, Houston's traffic grew twice as fast as that of Los Angeles, and population grew three times as fast (at least in part because many Californians were moving to Texas). Houston also added freeway mileage at double the percentage rate of Los Angeles. The reward was an increase in traffic congestion less than one-third that of Los Angeles (Figure). The most recent INRIX Scorecard shows Los Angeles traffic congestion to be more than 2.5 times as intense as Houston's.

Not so incidentally, the GAO reported recently that Texas had the lowest rate of return on dollars sent to the Federal Highway Trust Fund, from 2005-2008:

Sound familiar? Per capita, donor state Texas ranks in the 40s in terms of pork received, second-to-last in stimulus dollars received, and last place in Highway dollars coming back to the state.

Meanwhile, California is subsidized by Texans for building the equivalent of the Monorail boondoggle on The Simpsons:

It's hard to sustain this kind of imbalance forever, and what works for old, dense, compact urban areas on the East Coast is not necessarily right for growing, modern cities in "Flyover Country." Yet, our national transportation policy is largely designed and "driven" by people who live in high rise condos in Virginia and commute via underground train into the heart of the District of Columbia each day.

UPDATE:
“No Distribution Shall Be Made to the State of Texas”

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Politics Too Integral In Federal Money.

Posted by Will Franklin · 5 August 2010 09:50 AM · Comments (0)