The Elizabeth Warren-Scott Brown debate series had volume 3 last night, in Western Massachusetts. I watched it, and although I am a partisan Dem I thought both candidates were better than in the two prior debates, with sharper focus on their core message(s). The moderator, in my opinion, did a superb job, and the debate focused on issues rather than on some of the nonsense that we had seen in the prior two. Obviously I am a Warren supporter, but I think on whole neither side scored a knockout, or even a knock down. This race will be won in the field. The full debate is below.
As a former Mayor I can tell you that information requests under the state Open Records Law can be time consuming to fill, and on occasion require some serious staff time to complete. With that having been said the law requires public officials to respond in a timely fashion to such requests, and you cannot have a system of open government without giving citizens the right to freely access documents generated by government that they pay for.
In Lawrence Valley Patriot owner Tom Duggan has filed a request for a multitude of documents from the City of Lawrence. Duggan has been a major critic of the Mayor of Lawrence, William Lantigua, and the request is likely being viewed by City officials from that vantage point. Duggan has been writing and talking about this for some time, as the request has essentially been ignored by the City of Lawrence for months. He is in court today in an attempt to force compliance under the State Open Records Law.
As much as it pains me to admit it Duggan has it right. It does not matter who files the request, friend or foe, the law must be followed. There is a larger issue than this in Lawrence but that is a story for another day. For today I can say that I am not all that familiar with the penalty portion of the law, but it appears that it should be strengthened, especially for instances of willful disregard. Changes to the law should provide teeth to the enforcement section, especially for cases like this. The law should also provide for the awarding of court costs to the winning party. Citizens, and yes even Tom Duggan, should be able to secure documents covered by the State Open Records Law without having to go to Court.
The key battleground state of Nevada has new polling from Suffolk University in both the Presidential race and a key Senate race. David Paleologos will remain at the very top of the news cycle again with this key survey. The numbers please!
In the Presidential race President Obama clings to a narrow lead over Mitt Romney by a 47% to 45% margin, with a margin of error of 4.4%. Two independent candidates (Virgil Goode and Gary Johnson) are polling at 1%, making them a factor in this race. Paleologos has focused on geography, which shows Nevada with distinct pockets of strength for each candidate. From the Suffolk press release.
“After a strong debate performance, Mitt Romney is within striking distance of President Obama in Nevada,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. “However, Obama’s big lead in Clark County – the state’s largest – has enabled his campaign to run up the score. In Washoe County, the results closely align with the statewide numbers.”
Obama led 50-42 in Clark County and 47-43 in Washoe County. However, in the remaining Nevada counties, Romney led 63 percent to 30 percent.
The geography is indeed critical, and in a race this close the respective ground games of the candidates will, in my opinion, decide the Nevada outcome. The President and his team will be driving turnout heavily where he has strength, and Mitt Romney will be trying to do the same. Whichever side wants it more will win Nevada.
President Obama has a favorable rating of 50% (45% unfavorable), while Mitt Romney has a 46% favorable (45% unfavorable). The President’s job approval rating is at 48% approval (48% disapprove).
The survey also asked for views on “ObamaCare”, and like many surveys the support for the program is on the upswing. When asked if this law was “good for Nevada” 45% said no, 44% said yes, and 11% were undecided. The issue is beginning to lose steam for Republicans, and if Democrats can accentuate the positive and popular aspects of the law they will be able to, in my opinion, drive support to it, especially with the elderly.
In the important Nevada U.S. Senate race Republican Dean Heller leads Democrat Shelley Berkeley by a 40% to 37% margin. That race features independent candidate David Lory VanderBeek, who has 7% of the vote, with 14% undecided. VanderBeek is a Ron Paul Libertarian, and he could tip this race to the Democrat. This is still wide open.
The poll asked about the Presidential debate, and 79% of the respondents had watched. Of those a whopping 74% thought Mitt Romney had won that debate, with only 19% thinking Barack Obama won, and 7% undecided.
As a final note Harry Reid was deeply underwater, with 49% having an unfavorable view of the Majority Leader, and 37% viewing him favorably. All I can say in response to that is thank God for Sharron Angle.
Suffolk University, and pollster David Paleologos, are in the news after an appearance with Bill O’Reilly on Fox. That clip is below.
A couple of days ago I posed a question, via twitter, for Paleologos, asking what views he had about the Presidential debate moving the needle in swing states. Here is our exchange.
@davidpaleologos When will we see some post debate swing state polling? Did the debate move the needle?
@billmanzi It has moved the needle in NC, VA, & FL from blue to red. Not comfortable with color changes beyond those 3 states at this point
So I beat Bill O’Reilly to the punch, getting David Paleologos to say that North Carolina, Virginia, and FLA have moved red on twitter. Now David is under attack, with the Daily Kos and others expressing indignation that he would appear to make the call on those three states a month before the election.
We have seen attacks on pollsters from the right, and now the left. Suffolk and Paleologos have a great record, and I think that giving Paleologos an opportunity to talk about those three states in more detail is in order before blanket condemnations are issued. Looking forward to some big Suffolk polling as we come down the stretch, and I hope to be able to talk to David about this and other issues right here on the blog at some point.
A new WBUR/Mass Inc. survey has Scott Brown edging ahead of Elizabeth Warren by a 47% to 43% margin. With “leaners” included the margin is 48% to 45%, with 5% undecided.
The poll also measured the Presidential race with Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney by a 52% to 36% margin. While that may appear to be a substantial lead it is down substantially from the pre-debate Suffolk poll that had Barack Obama with a 27% lead. We had discussed the “Romney drag” on Scott Brown in an earlier post, but the Romney debate victory looks like it may be having a positive impact on Brown’s candidacy. What the good Lord giveth, the good Lord taketh away.
So what are the numbers under the hood? I have focused, in this race, on two key numbers. The independent vote, in this survey, has Brown ahead by 22% in this demographic. He needs a little bit more to be comfortable. With all the discussion of the impact of Obama in this race the vote by Party is critical to Elizabeth Warren. In this survey Warren is only getting 72% of the Democratic vote, which is the key to the Brown lead here. Brown is getting 21% of Democrats here, while commanding 94% of Republicans. Warren needs to drive her number up with Democrats, which has been a key focus of her campaign. The Obama slippage may be having some impact on her.
The race remains tight, and fluid. You can expect Warren to continue her effort to pry Democratic voters away from Scott Brown. That means a wee bit more negativity coming in the days to come. Great race.
House Speaker Bob Deleo, faced with a transportation system that is in financial shambles and some slowing of state tax collections against the benchmarks this year, is refusing to rule out tax hikes for the coming year. From the State House News Service:
DeLeo said he wants “to see where the numbers fall on next year’s budget” and with transportation financing before making a decision on whether to rule tax hikes in or out, a line the Winthrop Democrat has drawn the past several years, and which Democrats have followed, prior to the release of the House budget in April.
“That’s never been a desire of mine to increase taxes. But on the other hand . . . I’m smart enough to know that until you see the figures of what you’re working with, you don’t make any pledges.” DeLeo, the former House budget chief, said after a meeting Tuesday afternoon with UMass officials and local entrepreneurs.
There would probably not be a big story here, except that Deleo had been adamantly against any tax increases since becoming Speaker. The Legislature is faced with a post-election review of transportation financing, and that is the elephant in the room. The political debate during the campaigns has only dealt with this issue on the margins, with the real extent of the problem not truly being discussed. It will be discussed post election, and if it is an honest evaluation then some pretty hard decisions are going to have to be made. The Speaker knows this, and is leaving his options open. But that leaves a tough question for those running for office. Will the Speaker’s hesitation become an issue? How can it not?
Most everyone is sick of the topic, but lots of post debate debate about the “five trillion dollar Romney tax cut.” I have heard from many of my Republican friends that this is not true, and even Ted Panos on WCAP pointed to some “fact checking” that debunks the claim of a Romney $5 trillion dollar tax plan. Both campaigns have dueling ads on the subject. So what is the truth?
There, as always, is some gaming going on, so let us look at the plan, and point to where the confusion has been deliberately created.
So what did Mitt Romney propose for tax cuts? Lets look at what EVERYONE agrees on, and go from there. Romney proposes the following:
1) A reduction in ALL marginal tax rates of 20%
2) The elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax
3) The elimination of the estate tax.
4) Making permanent the Bush tax cuts for all brackets.
To be clear the Romney tax cut of 20% would be on top of the Bush tax cuts. Now everyone agrees that is what has been proposed, even Mitt Romney. So there is no argument there.
When tax cuts are proposed the Congressional Budget Office will “score” them, as obviously there is a reduction in revenue when rates are lowered, or taxes eliminated. On that there is also agreement. So Romney’s proposal has been scored by the independent Tax Policy Center, and the “lost revenue” will be $480 billion per year, or $4.8 trillion over ten years. ($5 trillion).
Mitt Romney has also said, quite specifically, that his plan WILL NOT raise the overall tax burden on the middle class (although there is a disagreement on what constitutes the “middle class”), will not reduce
the overall tax burden for the nations wealthiest people, and will not increase the deficit. He has said that the plan will be revenue neutral. Governor Romney says that he will achieve this “revenue neutrality” by closing “tax loopholes” on the wealthiest taxpayers. He is refusing however to say which loopholes will be closed.
Now lets start the arguing. In fact the Romney proposal is a $5 trillion tax cut which needs to be “paid for”. So when someone asks whether Mitt Romney has a proposal for a $5 trillion tax cut my answer is yes. The Romney folks say that it is not a “tax cut” but a change or reform of the tax code that “broadens” the tax base, simplifies the code, and pays for itself. So when you hear the question asked and answered differently, and when you look at both ads attached to this post, that is what the dispute is about.
The denial by Romney might have some merit, but he has a problem. Since he refuses to say exactly how the $5 trillion in lost revenue would be paid for by identifying tax deductions that would be eliminated the non-partisan Tax Policy Center looked at the principles he enunciated, and then began the process of eliminating deductions for upper income folks to see if the $5 trillion could be covered. They found that the cost of $5 trillion could not be covered simply by eliminating deductions for upper earners. If the goal is revenue neutrality then, in lay terms, the Center found that you must eliminate deductions utilized by the “middle class”. From the TPC Report:
We found that a tax reform plan that simultaneously met the first four goals would imply reduced
tax burdens on families with income above $200,000. Meeting the fifth goal – revenue neutrality – would then imply increased tax burdens on other taxpayers, a necessary but perhaps unintended consequence. This was true even though we made the financing of the plan via tax expenditure reductions as progressive as possible by assuming that tax expenditures would be eliminated from the top down: first, we eliminated all available tax expenditures for those with income above $200,000; only if those revenues were insufficient to achieve revenue neutrality (which in fact they were) did we reduce tax expenditures for households with incomes below that
level. The basic logic of our central finding is captured in Figure 2 from our paper (attached here as
well). The graph shows that cutting individual income tax rates by 20 percent from today’s levels
would reduce tax burdens by $251 billion per year (in 2015) among households with income above $200,000. But, if we assume a strict interpretation of the second goal – preserving and enhancing incentives for saving and investment (see footnote 2) – there are only $165 billion of available tax expenditures to close in that group if tax rates are cut). As a result, to achieve revenue neutrality, the resulting $86 billion annual shortfall must be made up by raising taxes on the rest of the population. We showed, in addition, that the same qualitative conclusions arise even when we added in feedback effects of tax changes on economic growth and revenues, using estimates of those effects that were developed by Harvard professor, and economic advisor to the Romney campaign, Greg Mankiw.
Essentially the TPC is saying that the Romney math does not work. Romney is taking pains to deny this, and say that his stated goal of revenue neutrality, along with no additional tax reductions for top earners, can in fact be met as he stated. Romney could end all of this by simply producing a specific list of deductions he would eliminate, but he refuses to do so.
When you put aside the partisan bickering what is the truth? The Romney folks, in a couple of unguarded moments, have said that if the math in fact does not work they might scale back the proposed tax cuts. The campaign, however, refuses to make that statement, and is sticking with the plan. But the reality is two-fold. The first is that if you wiped out all tax preferences for upper earners you cannot make the math work. The second is that how do you expect to wipe out ALL tax preferences from a political standpoint?
The truth is that:
1) Romney has proposed reducing revenues by $4.8 trillion over ten years.
2) He has not specifically said how he would finance that lost revenue
3) The budgetary impact would either be an expansion of the deficit, or a tax hike on the middle class through the loss of tax preferences that would increase total tax liability in that income group. Or Romney can change the tax cut to make the math work.
4) Romney has said that “dynamic scoring” (increased growth through lower marginal rates) would pay for some of the $5 trillion, but so far has refused to say what number he assigns to that category. That is an argument that needs another post, but the Romney argument is the direct descendant of what George H.W. Bush called “voodoo economics”
5) The total impact, to either the deficit, or to middle income taxpayers, would be much less than $5 trillion, since you can pay for “some” of the tax cut through the Romney methodology.
6) Romney says that impact to the budget is “neutral” because he says it is.
The last word on this goes to Romney defender Robert Samuelson, who said this:
The TPC report was widely interpreted as saying Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class. It didn’t, says the TPC’s Howard Gleckman. It simply pointed out that he couldn’t keep all “his ambitious campaign promises.” He’d have to make choices and modifications. So what else is new?
Politicians exaggerate and simplify. They make more promises than can be kept. They take inconsistent positions. Romney is guilty of this, but so is Obama.
Samuelson essentially pleads guilty, but wants mitigation because the other guy is guilty too. They all do it. The one point that Samuelson makes that is correct is the one I made above. The net impact must be less than $5 trillion, because you must give some allowance for recouping some of those dollars through the Romney methodology.
The September jobs report comes out, and about half an hour later former GE CEO Jack Welch, a Romney supporter, posts the following tweet:
Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers
So Welch accuses the President, or the President’s team, of “cooking the books” on the unemployment numbers. Evidence? Much like the right on voter id Jack don’t need no stinkin evidence. No need to get into the weeds of how labor statistics are calculated, but Welch seems, when questioned, to be skeptical of the methodology. Question is did that methodology change for this report? Of course it did not. For a look under the hood go to Ezra Klein over at the wonkblog, where he gets a bit detailed, but thoroughly debunks Welch.
So is Welch just a windbag spouting crackpot theories? I personally don’t think so. Welch has managed to shift the conversation from a somewhat positive jobs report to the President and Democrats having to defend the validity of numbers that have been calculated the same way for decades. The conversation has shifted from a positive one for the President to whether Jack Welch is a nut, and you have plenty of serious crackpots willing to pick up the gauntlet Welch has thrown down. Welch, with one tweet, has managed to throw a good message for the President off course slightly. That is not the work of a crackpot, but rather the work of a campaign with no shame.
From the simply unbelievable album from Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa called “Don’t Explain” this cut is from a song written by Melody Gardot. This version, with Joe Bonamassa playing a beautiful guitar, is simply spectacular. When is Beth Hart going to be touring in this neck of the woods? Hopefully soon.
So Bob Leblanc has gone on MCTV and managed to insult an entire section of the City, and also shown a reckless disregard for the truth. But what else is new?
Boob professes, in the attached video clip, to be concerned about receivership of substandard, abandoned, or foreclosed properties in the City of Methuen. Lets take his quotes, one by one.
He says, in the clip, “I am concerned that Bill Manzi and MAN, Inc, down in the Arlington District, are going to take over those properties”.
If this “attorney” knew anything at all about the receivership program he might understand that receivers do not “take over” properties, but rather bring them up to code under the supervision of a judge. The work is done at the receiver’s expense, and recovery of the money invested to restore blighted properties is the receivers responsibility. But the “attorney” does not wish to deal in facts, only in his sordid little game playing.
How about this doozy:
“I am not interested in proliferating the Arlington District into the rest of the City”
What is it exactly that the “attorney” does not want to “proliferate”? The people? Of course it is the neighborhood in Methuen with the highest concentration of minority citizens.
The “attorney” also came up with this:
“what makes me very nervous is that he attends the meetings on a regular basis”
“He” is a reference to myself, and the “meetings” are of the Building Safety Task Force. These meetings are of course posted, and open to the public. As a member of the public I have attended some meetings, and offered the perspective of the Methuen Arlington Neighborhood. So the “attorney” is “concerned” that I am attending public meetings, and that the Methuen Arlington Neighborhood is taking steps to bring abandoned and out of code buildings into code compliance within the neighborhood. Now why would that be?
In reference to Councilor Sean Fountain:
“He is an agent for Bill Manzi”
The attacks against people he considers to be his political opponents are continuous, ad hominem, and are designed to intimidate folks that he thinks he can push around. His comments are an embarrassment, and normally are best left ignored. But his insulting an entire class of citizens should be brought to the light of day, which this post will do. Clarity is a good thing, and we will have more of it in the days to come.
