U.S. President

Not to long ago the government came out with a report talking about the solvency of the Medicare and Social Security Funds.  It is not surprising with the economy doing poorly that these funds are not doing as well as expected.  The social security fund will be exhausted in 2041 and Medicare will be exhausted in 2020.

That is a little alarming but really that still is a few years away we can sit on this awhile longer right?  Wrong!

What they don’t tell you is that the tooth fairy has sold you a bill of goods.

Welcome to reality folks.  That SS “trust fund” is a figment our imaginations.  Where exactly does the government put this money it is saving?  In US Treasury bonds.   Hmmmmm so in the year 2017 when our income in SS tax is less then our anticipated expense the government will be able to cover it with what????  Who actually pays back these bonds with interest?

That’s right they can print more money or increase our taxes….. yea problem solved.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690358175013837.html

Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president's performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.

All of this is not just a subject for pollsters and analysts to debate. It shows fundamentally that public confidence in government remains low and is slipping. We face the possibility of substantial gridlock along with an absolute absence of public confidence that could come to mirror the lack of confidence in the American economy that the Dow and the S&P are currently showing.

Discuss.

Interesting idea:

To send a strong message to President Obama and Congress, we propose a nationwide mortgage strike in April 2009.  By witholding their April mortgage payments, homeowners across the country will demonstrate the absurdity of rewarding those who do not meet their financial obligations.

I've had a number of people ask me why they should bother paying their mortgage given President Obama's plan. 

I don't understand why the Federal government seems committed to the idea of artificially inflating housing prices when that was such a large part of the economic disruption that started last year.

I can only quote Russell Roberts of Cafe Hayek:  "This is a bad idea...But if you think it's a good idea, fine. Just don't bury it in a bill that's supposed to save the economy. Put it out in the daylight and let people debate it."

The bill in question is the spending bill slouching towards the President's desk for his eventual signature.  Taken along with the previous entry, the entire idea scares the living crap out of me.  Which apparently is one of Tom Daschle's goals...(H/T to Reason's Hit & Run blog)

HG

Barack Obama's stimulus plan is getting panned mostly for its enormous price tag, which is nearing $900 billion, not including interest payments.  But what is perhaps as striking is its low bar for job creation.  Obama says that his program will create 3 million jobs in "a few years".    If all those jobs are "created" and no jobs are lost, that would be a 2.2% increase in employment.

Now take a look at Ronald Reagan's plan of tax cuts in 1981.  According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, Reagan's plan created over 5 million jobs in four years, an increase of 5.5%.

How low is the 3 million jobs bar?  Well, in 9 of the last 28 years, the economy created 3 million jobs in a single year.  Obama wants the most massive government debt and spending program in the nation's history to create the same number of jobs that were created in nine single years in the past three decades.

Maintenance just isn't a whole lot of fun.  Sometimes you get done with it, and you hardly know you did it.  And because it doesn't come with a plaque or ribbon cutting, it's usually pretty low on the list of items for government to do.

Two years ago (November 26, 2006) the NG ran an article about the City of Champaign's $43 million backlog in road funds for arterials alone.

Champaign has a whopping $43 million backlog of arterial road projects that are needed but not yet scheduled in the city 's 10-year capital improvement plan, most of them on the city 's southern, western and northern fringe areas.

But most of these road projects didn't make the list that was submitted  to the Regional Planning Commission.  However, $14 million for the "Second Street reach" .  No doubt, the Second Street project will feature a ribbon cutting, but fixing potholes on Mattis Avenue wouldn't do that.

Ralph Langenheim in my previous post said that the projects submitted were those that were so called "shovel ready".  What he's missing is that maintenance projects are the easiest ones to get off the ground, the most "shovel ready.".  Doing the engineering on widening a road, installing a new interchange, or building a new bridge can be complicated.  No one can expect the community to get Olympian Drive up and going in two months.

But are we really to believe that putting out bids to put new concrete down on Mattis Avenue would be that complicated?  It's the maintenance projects that are easiest to get going.

Likewise with some of the energy projects.  Replacing 30 year old windows in a building isn't a great engineering task.  The payoffs are great though.

This has been an ongoing problem with County goverment.  John Jay had to fight to get the County to finally paint the exterior of Brookens, even as rust was forming on the side panels.  But somehow we were able to get $15,000 worth of flower pots to protect our entrances from insane car drivers and a cute foot bridge will take the three or four visitors a year from the Main Street sidewalk up to the new County Highway building.

Hopefully, before this is all done, we can use a little more wisdom in deciding where we are looking to put the federal dollars that appear to be on their way to our community.

AP:

He said Wednesday, without details, that his initial budget proposal will include "some very specific outlines" of how he plans to tackle spending. That extends to the ballooning and so-far unsolvable fiscal problem presented by the Social Security and Medicare programs, which Obama promised would be "a central part" of his deficit-reduction plan.

"Ballooning and unsolvable fiscal problem presented by Social Security"?!?

When Bush proposed Social Security reform, there was an awful lot of pushback from Democrats that "there is no crisis," that SS was perfectly solvent and that the GOP was just fabricating stories about deficits to scare people into supporting privatization. Its was "politics of fear," we were told.  I even remember the "There Is No Crisis" blogads, because they were absolutely everywhere. 

Now, just three years later, it's a "ballooning and unsolvable fiscal problem?"

The NG wants readers to share their stories from Barack Obama's inauguration:

As the nation prepares for Barack Obama to become president, we want to hear from you.

We're going to Washington, D.C., for Obama's inauguration. If you're going, please let us know, so we can catch up with you in Washington.

We're also interested in what hopes you have for Obama's presidency, and we would like to hear from you about that as well.

You can do either by following this link.

If you look back at the timeline surrounding the resignation of Denny Hastert you can get a sense of how things need to work out in the Rahm Emanuel vacancy.  The short of it is that if Emanuel wants to avoid socking the taxpayers with a multimillion dollar special election bill, he ought to submit his resignation very soon.

Denny Hastert resigned on November 26, 2007.  7 days later Blagojevich issued a writ of election for a February 5th primary and March 8 general.  Blagojevich wanted the special on a Saturday and apparently didn't want to do it the weekend of Palm Sunday.

State statute then kicked in

(10 ILCS 5/7-12) (from Ch. 46, par. 7-12)
    Sec. 7-12. All petitions for nomination shall be filed by mail or in person as follows:
    (1) in the case of petitions for nomination to fill a vacancy by special election in the office of representative in Congress from this State, such petition for nomination shall be filed in the principal office of the State Board of Elections not more than 57 days and not less than 50 days prior to the date of the primary.

This meant that the first day for filing of the petitions was December 10 and the last day was December 17, providing just one to two weeks to circulate and file petitions.  If Blagojevich had decided immediately (and there was no reason since the Hastert appointment was known weeks before), he would have given candidates an extra week to circulate.

So how can the Emanuel seat fit into the current election schedule?  If the primary for Emanuel is to be held on the same day as the February 24th primary, then filing for the seat would have to begin on December 29th and end on January 5th.  To fit into the same schedule that was implemented for the Hastert vacancy, Blagojevich would have to issue a writ of election on Monday, December 22nd, making today a good day for Emanuel to submit his resignation.

Emanuel could quit later and Blagojevich could still issue a writ of election that includes the February primary.  If Blagojevich does that after January 5th, then it would prevent candidates from filing.  This type of scenario has played out in the past with other vacancies and caused people to be nominated with write in campaigns.  But a new state law requires write ins to file 61 days prior to the election, which would be December 26th.  So that option appears to not be viable.

While it's never been done before, the Governor could adopt my idea and just issue a writ for the general election and create a vacancy in nomination that would be filled by the Congressional Committees of the three established parties.  Judging by the response I've received so far, I don't think it's likely he'd adopt that method.

That leaves us with two possibilities.  The first is that Emanuel resigns in the next few days and the Governor, who's got his mind on other things at the moment, issues a writ of election for the February 24th primary by December 29th, hopefully sooner.

The second possibility is that Emanuel resigns after the window closes for a February 24th primary and thus forces a special election to be called outside of the current election schedule.  If it's just one election outside the current schedule, you can anticipate the cost to Cook County taxpayers of $2 million.  If it's two elections outside the window, double it.

The 2009 election calendar made it prudent for Emanuel to hold off his resignation.  But the same calendar makes it prudent for him to announce that resignation in the very near future.

For a little Champaign County history you can see the writ of election that was issued by Jim Edgar when Ed Madigan was appointed in 1991 to be Secretary of Agriculture.  And the election results are available at the Champaign County Clerk website.  Primary results (1% turnout) and general results (13% turnout).

A Mahomet man was on a short list of pardons handed down by Bush today.

Richard Micheal Culpepper of Mahomet, Ill., who was convicted of making false statements to the federal government.

Anyone have any recollection of this case?

Even after it's over, the Obama campaign continues to be the best run I've ever seen:

Gift of office equipment from the Obama campaign thrills Sto-Rox schools.

So, what's next?

What are your thoughts on President-Elect Obama's first 100 days:  what are his most probable achievements, defeats, headaches, and reliefs?  Who's the leading candidate for his open Senate seat?  What's the import of the various local races?  Any thoughts on various high-profile ballot initiatives from other states?

Only fair that I offer my own thoughts.  Regarding Obama's first 100 days, I would expect a few things.  I would think it's fairly obvious that some economic-related legislation will come across his desk; whether it's another stimulus package (like the checks from earlier this year), something directed to the states for infrastructure repair and maintainence, or some mixture of the two isn't clear to me right now.  Also, I'd be willing to bet some form of new or revised financial services sector regulation will be brought up.

Internationally, the US is awfully close to an agreement with Iraq regarding the future of US forces in that country. (h/t Obsidian Wings).  Unless the current administration gets it's ducks in a row really quickly and signs the agreement before, say, Christmas, this will probably come across Obama's desk.  Beyond that singular foreign affairs matter, I'm not going to hazard a guess as to what Obama will do; events, as they happen, will dictate too much for me to offer a reasonable guess.

I know next to nothing about statewide politics, so leading candidates for the open US Senate seat will have to come from someone else.  Locally, it seemed that incumbents were the winners (somewhat disappointingly, from my perspective) through pretty much all the races.  Third party candidates did reasonably well, such as the Green Party folks up for County Board spots.  The tax-related referendum (referenda?) were all defeated, I believe, with the school sales tax losing by about 300 votes, apparently.  Can't say I'm disappointed with those results...

Hope everyone got a good night's sleep, and didn't celebrate/mourn too much.

HG

I don't normally forward viral emails, but I got this today from Scott Kair (who is not, btw, kentuckyscott), and it was so moving that I think it deserves reading even if it's fake.  (And yes, I'm breaking my own self imposed "silence until the election" for a second time to do so.)  There will obviously be many here who disagree with kentuckyscott's conclusions and his choice, but I think we all have to respect his motives:

I Didn’t Vote For Obama
by kentuckyscott

I’m a middle-class white guy living in Jacksonville, Florida. I’ve got a wife and two kids. Because the kids had no school today, I took a vacation day from work, and took the kids downtown to vote early.

Fifty-nine minutes later, two smiling children and I proudly sported “I Voted” stickers.

But I didn’t vote for Obama.

I voted for my ancestors, who believed in the promise of this country and came with nothing as immigrants.

I voted for my parents, who taught in the public schools for decades.

I voted for Steve, an acquaintance of mine from Kentucky. (Killed by an IED two years ago in Iraq).

I voted for Shawn, another who’s been to Iraq twice, and Afghanistan once, and who’ll be going back to Afghanistan again soon -- and whose family earned eleven bucks a month too much to qualify for food stamps when the war started.

I voted for April, the only African-American girl in my high school -- it was years before it occurred to me how different her experience of our school must have been.

I voted for my college friends who are Christian, Jewish, Mormon, and yes -- Muslim.

I voted for my grandfathers, who worked hard in factories and died too young.

I voted for the plumber who worked on my house, because I want him to get a REAL tax break.

I voted for four little angels from Birmingham.

I voted for a bunch of dead white men who, although personally flawed, were willing to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, and used a time of great crisis to expand freedom rather than suspend it.

I voted for all those people and more, and I voted for all of you, too. But mostly, I voted selfishly. I voted for two little kids, one who has ballet in an hour, and one who has baseball practice at the same time. I voted for a world where they can be confident that their government will represent the best that is in this country, and that will in turn demand the best of them.

I voted for a government that will be respected in the world. I voted for an economy that will reward work above guile.

I voted for everything I believe in.

Sure, I filled in the circle next to the name Obama, but it wasn’t him I was voting for -- it was every single one of us, and those I love most of all.

Who else is there to vote for?

Rich Miller has more Illinois polling, showing Obama leading McCain 56 to 40 percent, and Blagojevich with either a 12 percent or 34 percent approval rating, depending on the poll.  More here.

From Gov. Palin’s VP acceptance speech: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."  Cue the laugh track.  Nor was this her only disparaging remark towards community organizing in the speech.

As someone who works side by side with community organizers on a daily basis, and as a former community organizer myself, I find that I am deeply offended by this remark.  It was obviously intended as a sarcastic joke at Obama’s expense, and she just as obviously thought she was being oh, so clever to make it.  Far from clever, however, it is instead the sort of baseless, gratuitous cheap shot that is frequently the resort of those without any legitimate argument to make, and which ends up saying much more about the speaker than their subject.

She doesn’t try to cloak it much, either.  You don’t have to search for the meta-message here, because she’s right out front with it:  she thinks community organizing is of lesser value, and community organizers are irresponsible, as in lacking “actual responsibilities.”  Idealistic do-gooders.  You know, slackers.

By choosing this remark to attempt a dig at Obama, she has instead deliberately insulted community organizers everywhere, as well as everyone who’s ever been a community organizer, everyone who’s ever been helped by a community organizer, and everything that’s ever been accomplished by community organizing.  That’s a very long list.

It includes nearly all of the civil rights movement in this country.  It also includes pretty much the entire labor movement.  It includes a whole lot of church groups, and neighborhood watch groups, and after school programs, and clean up efforts, and condo and home owners’ organizations, and PTAs and PTOs, and just about every form of grassroots collective action you can think of, including the Founding Fathers.  It is the practical application of our freedom of association in action.  In short, the stuff that makes America the envy of the world.

She doesn’t even try to distinguish good or bad, but paints liberals and conservatives and anarchists and God-fearing citizens of the republic all with the same brush.  Every neighborhood organization that ever tried to get rid of an adult bookstore, every group that ever protested at an abortion clinic, every collection of parents concerned about anything, they’re all the same.  They’re community organizers, so she thinks they’re of lesser value.  Objects of derision.  Butts of the joke.  I’m not laughing.

But at least now we finally know who Sarah Palin “really” is.  She thinks it’s funny to make jokes about people who try to work together to make life a little better for their families.  That makes her an arrogant, elitist bureaucrat, committed to top down authoritarian government, dismissive of citizen empowerment, and out of touch with the actual meaning and history of democracy in a free country.  And that’s too bad.

Goodness:

A black Hillary Clinton delegate on Sunday accused state Senate President Emil Jones of calling her an "Uncle Tom."

Jones -- Barack Obama's political mentor -- denied using the racially loaded slur against Chicago political consultant Delmarie Cobb, but two aldermen who said they witnessed the Saturday night exchange back up Cobb's account.

"Last night, I was called an 'Uncle Tom' by Emil Jones in the lobby of the hotel, right in front of [Ald.] Freddrenna Lyle and [Ald.] Leslie Hairston and [Ald.] Latasha Thomas," said Cobb, a member of Clinton's Illinois Steering Committee. "I walked over to him and asked him, 'What did you just call me?' "

The embarrassing flap came on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, which will open tonight with a string of Chicago speakers talking about Obama's life story. Jones is often referred to as Obama's "political godfather.''

Unity.

I'm not sure I want the UI getting in the middle of a Presidential election.  Why would they be unwilling to release records like this?  Isn't that the whole point of having them at a public institution? Is there a harmless explanation I'm missing?

In the process of tracing down the Obama-Ayers connection, I located a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These documents are the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a small foundation, founded and inspired by Bill Ayers, for which Obama served as board chairman (almost surely at Ayers’s behest). Although the library initially promised me access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, top library officials mysteriously intervened at the last minute to bar access. There followed a struggle between myself and library officials over my right to examine the documents....

I need public help to gain access to this critically important repository of information... Please consider contacting the president of the University of Illinois system, B. Joseph White, to ask him to take immediate public steps to insure the safety of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, to release the identity of the collection’s donor, and above all to swiftly make the collection available to me, and to the public at large. You can find an e-mail link for White here. Telephone, fax, and mailing addresses for White’s offices can be found here .

Of course, this is related to a larger problem surrounding Obama:

Just to review, the public cannot get access to paperwork related grants distributed by then-state-legislator Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren't available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm's clients, numbering several hundred each year; he won't release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he's never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor...

The new politics looks an awfully lot like the old politics, doesn't it?

UPDATE:  More here.  This is not the sort of attention I want the UI to get.  Why not just release the documents?

Those who know my track record with regard to predictions will laugh, but my random, clueless pick of who Barack Obama will choose as his running mate is Hillary Clinton.  What's your guess?

The Boston Globe has released an interesting interactive website which allows you to set turnout levels and partisan margin for a number of different demographic groups (based on race, gender and religion) and see the effect on the 2008 Presidential election and the electoral college.

For example, in 2004, blacks turned out nationally at 60 percent and voted 78 percent for the Democratic nominee (based on exit polling).  If you ramp up that turnout to 85 percent, and increase the Democratic share to 90 percent, the website projects that New Mexico will flip from red to blue, but the outcome of no other state will change, so John McCain would still be projected to win with 281 electoral votes.  That's not a likely scenario - nothing else will remain static, of course, and 85 percent turnout among blacks is astronomical - but it's an interesting exercise just the same.

I never saw that coming.  The title is from this article:

They're called the Obamacons -- the conservative thinkers who are disgusted with the Republicans and are rallying to Democrat Barack Obama as the nation's economic and diplomatic savior.

They are joining younger evangelical leaders who see more to their religious mission than slavish devotion to Republican social mores, and fiscal conservatives who reject the war-fueled spending of President George W. Bush.

"The Bush coalition is dissolving," pollster John Zogby told AFP.

"We have polling showing one-fifth of conservatives supporting Obama," he said.