Category Archives: 2012 Election

Republicans reap the fruits of redistricting – The Maddow Blog

  By Cyrus | October 2, 2013 - 12:58 pm | 2012 Election, Elections, Voting, and Campaign Finance
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Republicans reap the fruits of redistricting – The Maddow Blog. This is fantastic analysis showing the raw 2012 vote results for the House in key states vs. the vote outcome in terms of the number of seats that went to each party in that state.  The key takeaway is that even in states where Democratic House candidates received a majority of votes, Republicans actually won a majority of House seats due to redistricting that gerrymanders safe Republican districts. For example, in Michigan, Democrats garnered 2,327,985 votes to Republicans 2,086,804, but thanks to gerrymandered districts, that resulted in Republicans winning 9 … Continue reading this post →

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Obama’s Opportunity – possibilities and pitfalls of the next 2 months

  By Cyrus | November 9, 2012 - 12:04 pm | 2012 Election, Taxes & Tax Policy
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Within hours of Obama’s reelection on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) interpreted the Obama win and Democratic victory in the Senate by declaring that the election is not a mandate for Obama’s policies and that Obama’s job now is to propose something that will pass the GOP controlled House. The next day, House Speaker John Boehner (R) declared, in conciliatory tones, that the high-income tax increases on which Obama ran and was reelected was a non-starter. Meanwhile, the “fiscal cliff” looms around the corner.  On January 1, 2013, the U.S. economy will be jolted by the convergence of the expiration … Continue reading this post →

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512 Paths to the White House (Interactive Tool)

  By Cyrus | November 6, 2012 - 10:49 am | 2012 Election
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The NYTimes has an incredible interactive tool that graphically shows the paths to victory as you enter election results into the tool.  To start with, Obama has 431 paths to victory while Romney has 76 paths.  But as you select the winner/loser in each election, you see the remaining paths dwindle until a winner is certain. I’ll be using this live while watching election results.  I had put my own post together along these sames lines here, though it did not benefit from this high-graphics, interactive approach that the NYTimes has put together. Very cool!  

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Make Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan Work

  By Cyrus | October 31, 2012 - 11:11 am | 2012 Election, Taxes & Tax Policy
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Check out this excellent tool that lets you try to make Romney’s tax plan work by selecting the cuts and deductions you would need to add up to pay for Romney’s tax cuts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/31/interactive-make-mitt-romneys-tax-plan-add-up/

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Current economic recovery faster than most post-financial crisis recessions

  By Cyrus | October 28, 2012 - 1:04 pm | 2012 Election, Economics 101
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Critics of President Obama claim that the current economic recovery is far slower than other post-recession recoveries and blame Obama’s policies for what they say could be more rapid growth.  Putting aside for a moment the fact that much of Obama’s policies are laying in a heap of blocked policies in the Republican House and record number of filibusters by Republicans in the Senate, the fact is that post-financial crisis recessions are very different than normal economic recessions, and the current economic recovery is outperforming historic recoveries after recessions caused by financial crises. In a January 2008 article written 1 … Continue reading this post →

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Romney’s “Apology Tour” lie debunked for years by fact checkers

  By Cyrus | October 23, 2012 - 9:49 am | 2012 Election
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In the third and final Presidential debate, Romney repeated a lie that has been debunked repeatedly for years by a range of media sources.  Romney repeated the lie in the 2nd Presidential debate and was called on it.  He repeated the lie during the GOP convention and was called on it.  See below for a sampling of the many, many times this lie has been debunked, dating back to the early days of Obama’s Presidency, some in direct response to Romney’s own lying months before the final debate: Oct 23, 2012 – CNN debunks apology tour lie Oct 23, 2012 – … Continue reading this post →

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Bad Arithmetic: Top Romney Economist Admits Jobs Plan Number Don’t Compute

  By Cyrus | October 18, 2012 - 2:51 pm | 2012 Election
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Bad Arithmetic: Top Romney Economist Admits Jobs Plan Number Don’t Compute (this article was originally posted at www.creators.com at the above link) When innocent citizens asked about unemployment last night at the town hall presidential debate on Long Island, would Mitt Romney again tout his plan to create 12 million jobs? Unable to Etch-a-Sketch away that often repeated claim — one that he has hired several conservative economists to endorse — the Republican candidate had little choice. It’s up on his campaign website, it’s there in his own well-advertised words, and it is the central appeal of his candidacy for … Continue reading this post →

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Obama has reduced the deficit. Period.

  By Cyrus | October 16, 2012 - 8:28 am | 2012 Election
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We often hear (and will continue to hear) an incorrect assertion that President Obama has increased the deficit.  Mitt Romney’s own campaign website states, “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.” This is a lie and based largely on counting Bush spending as Obama spending.  It has been fact checked thoroughly, but Romney and other Republican critics of Obama continue to use repeat this lie including in the first Presidential debate.  In fact, the deficit is lower in 2012 than it was when Obama took office, and once … Continue reading this post →

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