“The Avenue in the Rain,” oil on canvas, by the American painter Childe Hassam. 42 in. x 22.25 in. Courtesy of The White House Collection, The White House, Washington, D. C. Image courtesy of The Athenaeum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
People in some states complain that the liquor stores and bars won’t open on election day. So, try the next best thing, or the better thing, and read some poetry.
What works of poetry, or literature, or visual arts, strike you as appropriate for the U.S. election day? Which works would be most useful in school classrooms, to teach our young people about voting, how to vote, and why it’s important?
U.S. Flag Code urges the flag be flown at every polling place on any election day. Be sure to compliment your poll judges if the flag is up. You may fly your flag at home, too.
District 15 for the Texas State Board of Education covers 77 counties in Texas’s northern Panhandle. It’s oil (Midland), cotton, Texas prairie and small towns, and lots of schools, and some surprisingly good colleges and universities.
Texas State Board of Education District 15, TFN image – “District Overview District 15 is huge, covering all of northwestern Texas. It is also arguably the most Republican SBOE district, giving more than 74 percent of the vote to Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election and more than 70 percent to Gov. Rick Perry in the 2010 gubernatorial race.”
It’s a district where science plays a big role, and should play a bigger one. The 15th includes those lands in Texas where the Dust Bowl got started, where unwise plowing based on inaccurate readings of climate contributed to one of the greatest man-made natural resources disasters in all of history. It’s the home of Texas Tech University, where members of the chemistry faculty created a wine industry based on the chemistry of grape selection and fermentation, and where geologists learn how to find oil.
This area leads Texas in wind power generation, a considerable factor in the state that leads the nation in wind power generation.
In short, science, engineering and other technical disciplines keep this area economically alive, and vital at times.
Of the two candidates, Democrat Steve Schafersman is a scientist, and a long-time, staunch defender of science education (what we now cutely call “STEM” subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). If the race were decided by a test in STEM subjects, Schafersman would be the winner. Schafersman lives in Midland.
The GOP candidate in the race is religiously anti-science, Marty Rowley of Amarillo. As a good-ol’-boy, former pastor, he’s got a lot of support from the usual suspects. Rowley’s views on science, technology, engineering and mathematics run contrary to the business and farming interests of his entire district. Do his supporters look to the future?
Do you vote in Midland, Lubbock, Amarillo, Dalhart, Abilene, San Angelo, Dallam County, Tom Greene County, Cooke County or Montague County? You need to vote for Steve Shafersman. Do your children a favor, do your schools a favor, and do your region of Texas a favor, and vote for the guy who works to make education good.
Shafersman is the better-qualified candidate, and probably among the top two or three people with experience making the SBOE work well, in the nation. He deserves the seat, and Texas needs him.
“The Avenue in the Rain,” oil on canvas, by the American painter Childe Hassam. 42 in. x 22.25 in. Courtesy of The White House Collection, The White House, Washington, D. C. Image courtesy of The Athenaeum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
People in some states complain that the liquor stores and bars won’t open on election day. So, try the next best thing, or the better thing, and read some poetry.
What works of poetry, or literature, or visual arts, strike you as appropriate for the U.S. election day? Which works would be most useful in school classrooms, to teach our young people about voting, how to vote, and why it’s important?
Another great episode of “Mr. Deity.” (Yeah, I’m several episodes behind. Don’t even get me started on catching up on “The Wire.”)
Every parent will empathize with the problem here, letting the kids do things on their own so they can grow up, and then seeing again just what it is they actually want to do . . .
Watch all the way through. The best stuff is in the fund raising plea at the end.
Former National Review Publisher Wick Allison; and
From what I can see, former National Review columnist Chris Buckley has not issued an official 2012 endorsement but has said he has seen no reason to change his 2008 endorsement of Obama.
I don’t know if former Bush spokesman Scott McClellan will repeat his Obama endorsement. The only prominent Republican I know of who endorsed Obama in 2008 and has publicly switched his position is former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld. Former Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker has also re-endorsed the President. Now, Weicker, Crist and Chaffee officially left the GOP over its extreme rightward drift, but they have not become Democrats.
I added links. Interesting. Dear Reader, do you know of others?
Use this calculator to see what Mitt Romney’s tax reform plan would mean for you, according to the details available at the campaign. Go to this site and follow the instructions.
I do love these interactive sites — especially that one, which offers a chance to see what’s really going on.
Out of context? GOP candidates complain they’ve had remarks “taken out of context,” when the GOP spent the past 16 years perfecting the art of political smear by out-of-context quoting?
Well!
Out of Context? (collage by Devona Wyant)
A Political Primer on Quoting Out of Context or
The Bachmann Diaries A found Poem using quotes from Bachmann speeches and interviews
Take this into consideration.
During the last 100 days we have seen an orgy.
I have to warn you, this is not a pretty sight.
It would make any local smorgasbord embarrassed
The message is: I’m better at what I do, because I’m gay.
I love homosexuals.
…and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body.
So if there’s anyone who needs sanctification, it is me.
It will be an awesome day.
I am reminded of Ms. Wyant’s poem by Gov. Mitt Romney’s complaints that his “47% remarks” were taken out of context, and by this video response to his complaint:
Comes the news from Minnesota that her constituents have wearied of Bachmann, and she’s in a tough fight for reelection. Awesome day, indeed.
Now, can we get that Romney guy into an appropriate context?
Former President Bill Clinton campaigned in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District for Christie Vilsack a few days ago — this ad puts his tour in 30 seconds.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
It’s extraordinary to consider with just three weeks until Election Day, but Mitt Romney’s central argument to voters has been exposed as a total fraud.
Greg Sargent added, “Let’s recap what Kessler has discovered here. The plan that is central to Romney’s candidacy on the most important issue of this election — jobs — is a complete sham. This is every bit as bad — or worse — than Romney’s claim to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain, or his vow to cut spending by eliminating whole agencies without saying which ones, or his refusal to say how he’ll pay for his tax cuts.”
Obama’s budget NOW creates 12 million jobs in the next four years, according to projections. Romney? He stretches it out to ten years, but reduces the job creation, so it’s 2.5 times as long to get the same number of jobs. Say what? Romney’s plan reduces the number of jobs created by cutting the rate at which they are created.
Mitt thinks he’d have a better chance of become president if he was Latino. In the first video of the Actually… series Rosie Perez explains why it will take more than being Latino for Mitt to win the election.
When lies go unchecked, we all lose. Actually.org spreads the truth, because the truth matters—even in politics. Our team calls ’em like they see ’em, and we hope you’ll support the truth by sharing Actually.org videos before Election Day.
Actually… is a partnership between American Bridge and JCER. Schlep Labs is a project of JCER. Actually… was produced by Amy Rubin at Barnacle Studios http://blog.barnacle.is
I didn’t see the whole debate, but from what I saw, it was different this week. Obama’s problem was that he didn’t expect to have to nail Jello to a tree, and didn’t; tonight, Biden nailed the Jello, made it stick on the tree, and made it bleed.
I posted a short excerpt from a recent column by economist Paul Krugman, explaining why GOP reliance on magic to fix the economy probably won’t work. Commenter David Xavier took issue with Krugman’s analysis. David’s comment brought home to me just how badly many self-described conservatives misunderstand basic economics, especially the keystone free enterprise principles of supply and demand.
My explanation of why supply side economics can’t work came out for the 21st time at least. Let’s make a post of it, in hope that more people may read it and view it, and understanding may increase.
David Xavier said:
Krugman wants the government to spend as this will drive demand. But “demand is constituted by supply”. To buy something you must first produce and sell something. The selling is what gets you the money, but the production of value adding output is what first allows you to sell. Without value adding activity, there is nothing to sell and therefore there is no basis for demand.
I replied:
Well, there’s the problem. You don’t understand either the law of supply, nor the law of demand. You’re talking “supply side” economics, which we discovered didn’t work way back in 1982 through 1988.
Supply does not stimulate demand, ceteris paribus. It’s the other way around. Henry Ford’s Model A didn’t created demand for transportation; the demand for transportation, coupled with a demand for transportation that didn’t involve horses and their natural effluents, created a demand for a horseless carriage. Ford created a machine that met that demand, and could manufacture it in enough quantity to matter.
Demand is not “constituted from supply.” Demand comes from needs, and wants. If supply can be created to meet that demand, demand can be met from supply.
But demand comes first, as Krugman, a Nobel-winning economist, well understands.
If consumers have no money to buy, the quantity supplied cannot matter in the least. If there were no demand for transportation at all, Henry Ford is sunk.
The law of supply explains how producers go about meeting demands — if prices are higher, they are happier to supply more. Again, if consumers have no money to purchase the good or service offered, the amount of supply is completely irrelevant.
Before Henry Ford’s mass production of automobiles created a demand for gasoline, gasoline was cast off from oil refining as a waste product from the production of kerosene for lanterns. Refineries from Standard Oil dumped millions of gallons of gasoline into rivers — no demand, the massive supply simply did not matter.
And as we can see from that example, demand not only creates the market, it can make a product considered to be waste, into the economic equivalent of gold.
Without demand, supply is simply excess manure, or gasoline by-product from the production of kerosene, to be dumped into a river (and thereby pollute the hell out of the river).
You’re right to say that without value-added activity, there is no economic activity. But tell that to Mitt Romney, who thinks finance is the magic, and not production.
A key problem with all of Republican economics is the ignoring of consumers, and ignoring the reality that consumers need money to stimulate demand. Tax cuts can’t help the hungry, who cannot eat tax cuts, nor the unemployed, who cannot take to the bank tax cuts on non-existent income.
Your odd myopia — maybe blindness — to the reality of how economics works, is shared by a lot of so-called conservatives. It’s a tragedy; it’s a tragedy I hope voters will put an end to, soon.
Did you ever notice that no supply-side economist has ever won a Nobel? Have you noticed that few supply-side economics articles are available in journals? Has your search for the numbers to back up the Laffer curve been as unproductive as they have been for everyone else — including Arthur Laffer? (Laffer promised to publish an article explaining how supply side economics work, as soon as he got the numbers together. That was in 1982. 40 years later, there is still no real intellectual foundation for GOP claims of tax cuts creating wealth. Those studies that have been done suggest tax rates maximize revenue when taxes hit about 70%, more than three times the rates Laffer proposes. History shows a much different story than Laffer claimed: Tax cuts in the Harding and Coolidge administrations led to bubbles that collectively burst in October 1929, leading to the Great Depression; tax cuts in 2001 led to bubbles in housing and the stock market, which burst in 2008, leading to our Great Recession.)
Right now, businesses are sitting on a pool of about $2 trillion, profits they’ve accumulated since 2008. If supply side economics worked, that money would be invested in manufacturing and service creation, and we should have an unemployment rate in negative numbers. The disproof of supply side economics is our current situation. Employers have plenty of supply of money, but they refuse to hire without demonstration of demand from consumers. Unemployed consumers, lacking money, cannot make that demand up from thin air. Magic does not work, in the real world of supply and demand, in economics.
Nota bene: Videos come from a delightful series on economics created and put up on YouTube by Dr. Mary J. Glasson, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Glasson’s series is available at YouTube and covers almost every topic in an entry-level survey undergraduate economics course. Look for “mjmfoodie” at YouTube.com.
Despite the few details he leaked in the Denver debate — which contradict almost everything he and his campaign had said earlier, not to mention the GOP platform — Mitt Romney offers not much in the realm of a program to do better than President Obama in economics, in pulling the nation out of our economic doldrums. Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman explains:
Winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman – Tavis Smiley Productions image
As many people have noticed, Mr. Romney’s five-point “economic plan” is very nearly substance-free. It vaguely suggests that he will pursue the same goals Republicans always pursue — weaker environmental protection, lower taxes on the wealthy. But it offers neither specifics nor any indication why returning to George W. Bush’s policies would cure a slump that began on Mr. Bush’s watch.
In his Boca Raton meeting with donors, however, Mr. Romney revealed his real plan, which is to rely on magic. “My own view is,” he declared, “if we win on November 6, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back, and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.”
Are you feeling reassured?
In fairness to Mr. Romney, his assertion that electing him would spontaneously spark an economic boom is consistent with his party’s current economic dogma. Republican leaders have long insisted that the main thing holding the economy back is the “uncertainty” created by President Obama’s statements — roughly speaking, that businesspeople aren’t investing because Mr. Obama has hurt their feelings. If you believe that, it makes sense to argue that changing presidents would, all by itself, cause an economic revival.
There is, however, no evidence supporting this dogma. Our protracted economic weakness isn’t a mystery; it’s what normally happens after a major financial crisis. Furthermore, business investment has actually recovered fairly strongly since the official recession ended. What’s holding us back is mainly the continued weakness of housing combined with a vast overhang of household debt, the legacy of the Bush-era housing bubble.
By the way, in saying that our prolonged slump was predictable, I’m not saying that it was necessary. We could and should have greatly reduced the pain by combining aggressive fiscal and monetary policies with effective relief for highly indebted homeowners; the fact that we didn’t reflects a combination of timidity on the part of both the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, and scorched-earth opposition on the part of the G.O.P.
But Mr. Romney, as I said, isn’t offering anything substantive to fight the slump, just a reprise of the usual slogans. And he has denounced the Fed’s belated effort to step up to the plate.
For more than a year Romney’s been pushing tax cuts as a solution to everything. It’s rather late to back out of that now.
Tax cuts can’t stimulate the economy — we tried them for 8 solid years, and they crashed the economy. One can make a great case that the Obama economy is not soaring because he agreed to extend the tax cuts, in return for getting about half of the stimulus we needed. At some point, people hurting in this economy will realize that they can’t benefit from a tax cut if they aren’t paying huge taxes, and they aren’t paying huge taxes if they are unemployed.
Tax cuts cannot be revenue neutral. They hurt deficits. For months Romney’s been talking about defense spending and tax cuts that add between $5 trillion to $7 trillion in to the deficit. If he wishes to argue that deficits hurt, he’s in trouble. If Obama argues that deficits should be used to help people, Romney will be unable to make the math work on his plan if he tries to reply.
Economic theory isn’t with Romney. Can he make that big of a snow job on voters? Even if he does, the economy won’t take it.
Now’s a good time to beef up on the high school economics most of us took, or the college class we took. Can you see any way to make an austere, Spain-style economy work in the U.S. without putting us into a death spiral?
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
Error: Please make sure the Twitter account is public.
Dead Link?
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 