Tag Archives: Poll

News

Which political party knows the least about economics?

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Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Health Care BS via ECM)

Excerpt:

Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents’ (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics.

The first question was “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.” The unenlighted answer for that one is “disagree”, since restrictions on development reduce the supply of available housing. Demand stays the same and so there is a shortage, and prices rise. D’uh!

Here are the others:

The other questions were: 1) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree). 2) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree). 3) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree). 4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree). 5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree). 6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree). 7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).

And the results:

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

It’s true, the majority of Democrat voters are people who don’t work at all, or they “work” for government, or they “work” in education, or they hold picket signs while on strike, or they are in prison, or they are chasing ambulances, or they are Hollywood celebrities. No economics knowledge is required for any of that. Republicans work in private industry, and many of us own small businesses. So we actually have to work to earn money, because we have competitors to watch out for and consumers to please.

Remember this post: Who knows more about economics? Obama or people who run businesses?

News

Some examples of some very direct speech from politicians

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A collection of very strange said by normally reticent and taciturn politicians.

Education in New Jersey

New Jersey is the biggest educational debacle in the entire USA.

Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey takes on the teacher unions. (H/T Hot Air)

He then opened the floor to questions. A few were softballs, including the declaration by Clara Nebot of Bergenfield that Christie is “a god” to her relatives in Florida.

But borough teacher Rita Wilson, a Kearny resident, argued that if she were paid $3 an hour for the 30 children in her class, she’d be earning $83,000, and she makes nothing near that.

“You’re getting more than that if you include the cost of your benefits,” Christie interrupted.

When Wilson, who has a master’s degree, said she was not being compensated for her education and experience, Christie said:

“Well, you know then that you don’t have to do it.” Some in the audience applauded…

“Your union said that is the greatest assault on public education in the history of the state,” Christie said. “That’s why the union has no credibility, stupid statements like that.”

Holy snark! Can you even say that? I don’t think politicians can even talk like that. Except he did.

If some of these unionized teachers think they are so highly qualified as to be paid top dollar for producing no results, then why don’t they find a real job in the private sector – where people actually have to produce to turn a profit? Unless parents have a choice, there is no guarantee that public school teachers are worth a dime. No one is choosing to buy their product, they are forced to buy it. Let parents choose schools, then we’ll find out how good some of these unionized public school teachers really are. The good ones should even be paid more.

Alabama campaign advertisements

Now let’s look at some campaign ads running in Alabama. I’ll bet my Canadian and British readers have never seen anything like this before. Better sit down before you watch these – because they are going to seriously rock your world.

National Security

Rick Barber is running in Alabama. (H/T Hot Air)

US marines are very direct.

Tort Reform

Tim James is running for Governor in Alabama. (H/T Hot Air)

Nuisance lawsuits kill businesses and raise unemployment.

Oklahoma state Senate is pro-life

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, the Republicans in the state Senate overrode the veto of pro-life laws by the pro-abortion Democrat Governor.

Oklahoma lawmakers have won yet another face-off with pro-abortion Democratic Gov. Brad Henry, after the state Senate overrode the governor’s veto of an enhanced abortion statistics reporting law on Tuesday.

The stakes were riding high for pro-life advocates. The Oklahoma House of Representatives on late Monday afternoon overwhelmingly overruled Henry’s third veto this year of Oklahoma pro-life legislation, by an 84–13 margin. But while the House had votes to spare to reach its two-thirds veto-proof majority, the Senate could not afford to lose one of the thirty-two members that voted for the bill in the first round, in their override attempt.

…the Senate joined the House and voted 33 – 15 to override the pro-abortion veto, actually gaining pro-life advocates one more vote.

Seriously, I would love to live in northern Texas or northern Alabama. Or Oklahoma as a third choice, because why did they elect a pro-abortion Democrat for Governor? Does anyone know the story there? Was it an April Fool prank gone awry? Was it a dare?

Commentary

What can we learn about media bias from donations made by journalists?

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From the radically extreme leftist MSNBC.

Excerpt:

MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

The donors include CNN’s Guy Raz, now covering the Pentagon for NPR, who gave to Kerry the same month he was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq; New Yorker war correspondent George Packer; a producer for Bill O’Reilly at Fox; MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough; political writers at Vanity Fair; the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition; local TV anchors in Washington, Minneapolis, Memphis and Wichita; the ethics columnist at The New York Times; and even MTV’s former presidential campaign correspondent.

Here’s a little snip about The New Yorker:

The last bulwark against bias’s slipping into The New Yorker is the copy department, whose chief editor, Ann Goldstein, gave $500 in October to MoveOn.org, which campaigns for Democrats and against President Bush. “That’s just me as a private citizen,” she said. As for whether donations are allowed, Goldstein said she hadn’t considered it. “I’ve never thought of myself as working for a news organization.”

Don’t you think that this bias towards the left would affect how they report the news?