Day: October 19, 2010

I Guess I Didn’t Get That Far

Christine O’Donnell: “…perhaps they didn’t teach you Constitutional law at Yale Divinity School.”
Chris Coons: [Creationism, implicitly “a religious doctrine,” should not be taught in public schools due to the Constitution’s First Amendment.]

Christine O’Donnell: “The First Amendment does? Let me just clarify: You’re telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?”

Chis Coons: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,”

Christine O’Donnell: “That’s in the First Amendment…?”

In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama administration had lowered taxes for most Americans. Half of those polled said they thought that their taxes had stayed the same, a third thought that their taxes had gone up, and about a tenth said they did not know. As Thom Tillis, a Republican state representative, put it as the dinner wound down here, “This was the tax cut that fell in the woods — nobody heard it.”

What if a president cut Americans’ income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?(via southpol)

OR:

This is why they fail.

Source: The New York Times

What They Won’t Tell You

I’ve heard at least a half dozen media reports on the boom in “anonymous” campaign financing, mostly of the “a pox on both houses” variety, e.g. utterly misleading. Then there’s this email that was sent to Glenn Greenwald in reference to a bit of crap logic from David Brooks:

There are 435 House seats, and 37 Senate races being run.

Average Cash on Hand for Democratic House Candidates: $430,153
Average Cash on Hand for Republican House Candidates: $376,720
Average Cash on Hand for Democratic Senate Candidates: $2,937,267
Average Cash on Hand for Republican Senate Candidates: $2,998,816

So, the average House race has less than $1 million cash on hand to spend for advertising in the last month, between both candidates.

The average Senate race has less than $6 million between the two.

So, let’s say that Rove and his $60 million wants to target 30, close house races, and 10 close Senate races.
He could spend $3 million each on the 10 Senate races, DOUBLING the amount candidate spends.
He could also spend $1 million each in the House races, and effectively spend 3 TIMES more than the candidate.

Just $60 million is a HUGE amount targeted at just a few races.

And of course the “chamber of commerce” is spending even more than that.

And, of course, the vast majority of all this class of contribution is going straight into GOP pockets. Not that anyone would ever deign to mention it.

What They Won’t Tell You