…May be updated as the day goes on…
Alabama Politics
BIRMINGHAM NEWS: Alabama’s state, local tax collections per person second-lowest in U.S. in 2010
State and local governments in Alabama collected fewer tax dollars per state resident to spend on schools, police, roads and other services than governments in any other state but Idaho in the 2010 fiscal year, a Birmingham News study of U.S. Census Bureau reports shows.
“They have less money to work with than virtually everybody else,” said Jim Williams, executive director of the non-partisan Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama.
“Either we’re not going to have the same caliber of state and local services as everybody else or we’ve got to be more efficient than everybody else,” he said.
While liberals hang their heads in shame @ being recognized for low taxes, we conservatives wear it as a badge of honor blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/…
— Mike Hubbard (@SpeakerHubbard) October 1, 2012
Former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis backs Mitt Romney in new Television Ad produced by the Ending Spending Action Fund, a pro-Romney super PAC. According to the Press-Register’s George Talbot, the PAC is bankrolled by billionaire Joe Ricketts, a former chairman of the discount brokerage firm TD Ameritrade.
POLITICAL REPORTER: Obama Rejects Sessions’ Call to Name China as a Currency Manipulator
On Friday U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R) from Alabama called for President Barack Obama to label China a “currency manipulator” in a Treasury Report that is due on October 15th. On Thursday, President Obama responded to the conservative criticism and said that labeling China a currency manipulator would only “embarrass” the Chinese.
President Obama said in an interview with the ‘Cleveland Plain Dealer’ that doing that would embarrass the Chinese and would risk “an all-out trade war.” President Obama said, “‘They’d have to push back, and there’s no automatic trigger that results from it,’ Obama said. ‘So the only thing that happens is we then have to go back and negotiate with them. The key here is just constant pressure, and that’s what we’ve applied in a much more aggressive way than the previous administration.”
Sen. Sessions said, “After nearly four years in office, President Obama still refuses to label China a currency manipulator and confront this illicit trading practice. The President’s announcement that his administration is filing a WTO complaint to challenge Chinese auto subsidies will bring little comfort to the thousands who have lost and continue to lose jobs across our entire manufacturing sector thanks to China’s unfair trade practices, which have undercut U.S. competitiveness and helped decrease median household income by 7 percent in the last decade. China’s devalued currency hurts our not only our automakers, but thousands of American businesses and manufacturers, putting millions of our workers at a huge competitive disadvantage.”
National & International Politics
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR: How Carter Beat Reagan
Dick Morris is right.
Here’s his column on “Why the Polls Understate the Romney Vote.”
Here’s something Dick Morris doesn’t mention. And he’s charitable.
Remember when Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980?
That’s right. Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980.
In a series of nine stories in 1980 on “Crucial States” — battleground states as they are known today — the New York Times repeatedly told readers then-President Carter was in a close and decidedly winnable race with the former California governor. And used polling data from the New York Times/CBS polls to back up its stories.
Four years later, it was the Washington Post that played the polling game — and when called out by Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins a famous Post executive called his paper’s polling an “in-kind contribution to the Mondale campaign.” Mondale, of course, being then-President Reagan’s 1984 opponent and Carter’s vice president.
All of which will doubtless serve as a reminder of just how blatantly polling data is manipulated by liberal media — used essentially as a political weapon to support the liberal of the moment, whether Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984 — or Barack Obama in 2012.
“Absolute Uncertainty,” an 18-minute video analyzing the contentious relationship between President Obama and Israel, has gone viral. It’s narrated by a liberal 23-year old former Obama supporter and has received almost 750k plays in a just a few days. I was in Israel earlier this year & the frustration with the current U.S. administration among civilian Israelis and the government officials we met with was growing rapidly.
THE DAILY CALLER: As college student, Eric Holder participated in ‘armed’ takeover of former Columbia University ROTC office
As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned.
Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.
Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” The change, the group insisted, was to be made “in honor of a man who recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.”
Black radicals from the same group also occupied the office of Dean of Freshman Henry Coleman until their demands were met. Holder has publicly acknowledged being a part of that action.
