9 Days Until Election Day
October 26, 2008
MORNING UPDATE:
SUNDAY MORNING TALK SHOWS…below is a run down of the various talk shows as we go into the final full week of the campaign.
U of M v. MSU…what an exciting game. The tailgate area felt like a political rally, John LaFond and Susan Brown’s troops were out and about. We had plenty of McCain stickers on cars…but not too many in various front lawns in the "Peoples Republic". Congratulations to the Spartans on an impressive victory!
MICHIGAN MATTERS…Mark Brewer and I taped "Michigan Matters" with Carol Cain, which will air this weekend. "Michigan Matters" airs Sunday on CBS Detroit Channel 62 at 11 a.m. They also discussed the ballot proposals with various guests.
JOIN US…DON’T BE FOOLED…IT’S CLOSER THAN THE PRESS IS PITCHING…GRASSROOTS VOLUNTEERS NEEDED…as we reorganize Victory Centers and Call Centers around the state, volunteers continue to make calls, knock on doors, and make contributions to fight for Republican candidates up and down the ticket. Please check this link for a Victory Center near you. We need you now, more than ever.
MICHIGAN YOUTH MAKING A DIFFERENCE!…COLLEGE REPUBLICANS STATEWIDE JOIN "TEAM BRAIN DRAIN"…our Michigan Youth Counts! effort, designed to stop Michigan’s "brain drain" was in Macomb County this weekend helping several key state and local candidates. "Team Brain Drain" made over 2000 calls, knocked over 1,600 doors, and worked 110+ man hours this weekend for our Republican candidates. Next week, "Team Brain Drain" will be in Battle Creek and St. Joe. For more information please contact Program Director Anthony Markwort at: [email protected]
CARD CHECK…Protect the workers’ right to a secret ballot. The vast majority (around 81%) of Americans believe that American workers have a right to have a secret ballot election before they are forced to join a union. Last year the House Democrats passed a bill that would strip American workers of the secret ballot. A new bill should be introduced reaffirming that right, and it should be brought up again and again until marginal Democrats are forced to vote with the American people against the union power structure. This, coming from a Teamster.
For more information go to: http://www.unionfacts.com/cardcheck/whatIsCardcheck.cfm
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FOR THE LATEST NEWS, COMMENTARY & INFORMATION:
Check…out…our…online Articles of Interest………News…you…can…use………
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THE REST OF THE STORY:
SUNDAY TALK SHOWS by AP:
ABC’s ‘This Week’ – Jack Welch, former chief executive of General Electric Co.; Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.
CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ – Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary and adviser to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.; Doug Holtz-Eakin, adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Govs. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., and Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.
NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ – McCain.
CNN’s ‘Late Edition’ – Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.; Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., and Heather Wilson, R-N.M.
‘Fox News Sunday’ – Gov. Tim Kaine, D-Va.; former Gov. Tom Ridge, R-Pa.
TODAY’S TOP STORIES
The following stories and more are available at my Articles of Interest online.
Help U.S. auto sales with a tax break on interest
October 26, 2008
In the realm of ideas to aid the auto industry, Congress ought to consider reinstating a tax deduction for interest paid on consumer loans — but tailor it to boost the sale of domestically built vehicles. This idea was suggested recently by a Free Press reader, and U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who sits on the finance committee that handles tax legislation, said last week she has asked the staff to look into the possibility.
"We want to look at a whole range of possibilities, and this is an interesting suggestion," Stabenow said. Income tax deductions for interest paid on installment loans and even credit cards were phased out from 1986-91 under the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The same law lowered tax rates, increased standard deductions, and made other changes that prompted Congress to scrap the longtime interest deduction for everything except home mortgages.
McCain warns against Democratic takeover
October 26, 2008,
ALBUQUERQUE (Reuters) – Republican presidential nominee John McCain , trailing in the polls, raised the prospect on Saturday of a complete Democratic takeover of Washington as a reason to elect him over Democrat Barack Obama in 10 days.
McCain, struggling to defend New Mexico and other Western states that typically vote Republican from going to Obama on November 4, used the argument to try to change a gloomy election picture.
Obama holds a commanding lead in national opinion polls and is ahead in several key battleground states that McCain needs to win. At a rally in Reno, Nevada, Obama hammered McCain as little different than President George W. Bush
Palin warns Obama would create nanny state if elected
From CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby
October 25, 2008
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (CNN) – Campaigning Saturday in Iowa, a state where polls show Barack Obama enjoying a healthy lead just 10 days before the election, Sarah Palin warned that putting Obama in the White House along with Democrats running both chambers of Congress will turn the country into a nanny state.
Palin cautioned Iowans that under Obama’s "big government agenda," their income, property and investments would be "shared with everybody else." She labeled Obama’s plan to provide tax credits to lower and middle-income wage-earners "the philosophy of government taking more, which is a misuse of the power to tax."
"It leads to government moving into the role of taking care of you, and government and politicians and, kind of moving in as the other half of your family to make decisions for you," she said. "Now they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Government as part of the family, taking care of us, making decisions for us. I don’t know what to think of having in my family Uncle Barney Frank or others to make decisions for me."
Impact of a Democratic Uncle Sam
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Michael Barone
What will an Obama administration and a Congress with increased Democratic majorities do? That’s a relevant question, given the Democrats’ leads in the polls. And it’s a little hard to answer, given the financial crisis that has been raging and the recession that seems to be ahead.
One thing they will certainly do is raise taxes on high earners. The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2010, and congressional Democrats will gleefully allow the top rates to rise. Left-leaning Democrats, like Barack Obama himself, want to "spread the wealth around," as the candidate told Joe the Plumber in October. Blue Dog Democrats want to reduce the budget deficit and will welcome the additional revenue that the Congressional Budget Office’s static-analysis models will promise. Raising taxes when the economy is weakening is not the medicine prescribed by Keynesian economics, and it is probably not what Obama’s economic advisers would prescribe if they were starting from scratch today. It is what Herbert Hoover and Congress did in the early 1930s, and it helped to produce the Great Depression. But it is baked into the pie.
McCain gains as race continues to tighten
UTICA, New York – Republican John McCain continues to gain on Democrat Barack Obama, reducing Obama’s lead to 5.3 points with just over a week to go before Election Day, the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby national daily tracking poll shows. The race now stands at 49.4% to 44.1% in favor of Obama. Obama led McCain by 9.5 points in yesterday’s report.
"There is no question that this race continues to tighten and that McCain is finding his message again," said Pollster John Zogby. "It is after all about the economy and that is how McCain tightened it up the last time. I have said over and over again, when he focuses on extraneous issues, he screws up. In today’s single day of polling, it was 49% to 46% in favor of Obama. McCain has moved his own numbers each of the three days and Obama has gone down from 54% to 50% to 49%. I have alluded before to this strange, magnetic pull that brings Obama down to 48% or 49%, a danger zone for him. McCain’s gains are among white voters, where he now leads by 12 points, and with men, where he again has a healthy lead. There is still a lot of campaign to go. A lot of campaign to go."
Campaign Finance Gets New Scrutiny
Obama’s Take Raises Questions About Web
By Matthew Mosk
Sunday, October 26, 2008; Page A01
Sen. Barack Obama’s record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet.
Lawyers for both the Republican and Democratic parties have asked the Federal Election Commission to examine the issue, pointing to dozens of examples of what they say are lax screening procedures by the presidential campaigns that permitted donors using false names or stolen credit cards to make contributions.
"There is so much money coming in and yet very little ability to say with certainty that you know who is giving it," said Sean Cairncross, the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel.
Obama denies having inaugural address
By MIKE ALLEN
10/25/08 7:37 PM EST
The Obama campaign, anxious to prevent an image of overconfidence, formally and insistently denied a report – seized on by the McCain campaign – that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) already has a draft of an inaugural address. In remarks in New Mexico on Saturday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) accused his opponent of taking a "victory lap."
"Well, my friends, when I pull this thing off I have a request for my opponent," McCain said, according to Reuters. "I want him to save that manuscript of his inaugural address and donate it to the Smithsonian and put it right next to the Chicago paper that said, ‘Dewey Defeats Truman.’"
John Podesta, who is leading Obama’s transition preparations, called McCain’s charge "a complete fabrication." "No one involved in pre-transition work has written one word of any address, inaugural or otherwise," said a statement from Podesta, who was White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and is now president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress.
Wasted?: Bailout bill subsidizes Rum
By MARCUS STERN
10/26/08 7:15 AM EST
As Congress debated the historic financial rescue package on Oct. 3, the world economy was hanging in the balance. The House already had rejected Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s emergency $700 billion banking bailout plan. The Senate, hoping to get the House to relent, added $110 billion in "sweeteners" and sent the bill back.
One of those sweeteners jumped out at Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio. It would permit Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to pocket $192 million in federal excise taxes collected from rum-makers in those territories.
"Madam Speaker, the Senate’s response to the House rejection of the Paulson plan was to add more spending. So we got tax breaks for rum," Kaptur said from the well of the House. "You’ve got it right. R-U-M."
Democrats headed toward big gains in House, Senate
Oct 25, 7:24 AM (ET)
By DAVID ESPO
WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats are on track for sizable gains in both houses of Congress on Nov. 4, according to strategists in both parties, although only improbable Southern victories can produce the 60-vote Senate majority they covet to help them pass priority legislation.
A poor economy, President Bush’s unpopularity, a lopsided advantage in fundraising and Barack Obama’s robust organizational effort in key states are all aiding Democrats in the final days of the congressional campaign.
"I don’t think anybody realized it was going to be this tough" for Republicans, Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the party’s senatorial campaign committee said recently. "We’re dealing with an unpopular president (and) we have a financial crisis," he added.
By Jay Fitzgerald
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The nation’s battered economy needs an old-fashioned "Rooseveltian lift" of regulatory reforms and government spending on the infrastructure, clean energy and other sectors, U.S. Sen. John Kerry said yesterday. Kerry, facing a re-election challenge from Republican Jeff Beatty, rejected GOP calls for more tax rebates to stimulate the economy, as was done last spring.
"I am for a stimulus package. I am not for a stimulus package that just sends out checks," said Kerry at a Boston Herald editorial meeting yesterday. Instead, Kerry said the nation needs to spend more in areas that will both help the economy in the short run and long run – such as on roads and bridges, clean energy initiatives and life sciences.
Calling current financial woes the most "complicated economic time we’ve had since the Great Depression," Kerry said new approaches are needed to reform the current financial system.
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