FACT CHECK: There has been an ongoing debate in the letters to the editor about Medicare and Congressional Representive John Garamendi’s support for the Affordable Care Act.
A letter writer starts out arguing, “I heard many Democrats trying to scare seniors into thinking that Republicans would destroy these programs. As a senior, frankly, I find this tactic by the president and John Garamendi to be offensive.”
ANALYSIS: Climate Scientists Disagree on Impact of Climate Change – A week before a seminal presidential election, a powerful storm has already crippled a huge section of the east coast, bringing the nation’s financial markets to a halt, shutting down federal offices in DC along with public transportation across the east coast, and threatening the unthinkable if the storm damage is bad enough – altering the course of the nation’s elections.Just how powerful is this storm? Well, the hurricane portion of it is *just* a category one storm, with sustained winds at 85 mph. But forecasters are alarmed, first by the record low pressure and also by the convergence of a strong midlatitude storm along with a blast of arctic air which, along with the moisture from Hurricane Sandy, figures to bring blizzards and five feet of snow to inland areas.
He attempted to play it safe, and present himself as a competent, level-headed and plausible alternative to President Obama as the Commander in Chief. However, in the process he seemed to cede a number of positions to the President – positions that he seemed to change on the fly.
The remarkable thing about the second debate, is a recognition of just how far to the right the Democrats have moved to counter the lurch to the right by the Republicans.
It is true that when asked how he would differ from President George W. Bush, Mitt Romney largely fumbled the ball by responding, “President Bush and I are different people, and these are different times. And that’s why my five-point plan is so different than what he would have done.”
Rising was the concern about his age – 73 when he would have been re-elected. But he flipped on his opponent as the age issue arose: “I want you to know also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
It is perhaps ironic that, in recent years, the firefighters have become more influential outside of their own city political circles than inside them. After dominating Davis politics for the better part of the last decade and parlaying that influence into 3% at 50, four firefighters on an engine, and a massive 36% pay increase from 2005 to 2009, the firefighters could not give away their endorsement in the last two elections, let alone buy an election within the city of Davis.
Vice President Joe Biden appears to have done what he needed to do against Paul Ryan. He was never going to get, nor did he really to do to Congressman Ryan, what Mitt Romney did to Obama. What he needed to do was be fiery, combative, call out what the Obama campaign is calling lies and deception, and fight for their record.
On Thursday night, for the most part, he did just that. The two most widely available polls largely reflect that. A CNN poll of debate-watchers gave Mr. Ryan a slight edge of 48 to 44, basically a tie. A CBS poll of undecided voters found it was 50 to 31 for the Vice President with another 19 percent calling it a tie.
A month out from the November election, the last place you expect to find a former President is in the middle of blue territory in a reliably blue state. But former President Bill Clinton’s visit to UC Davis was more about four Congressional races than about the Presidency.
A huge crowd estimated loosely by officials to be 8,000 to 12,000 and, given the gaps in the configuration, the lower estimate is likely more accurate, packed in to watch the former President who last appeared at the ARC in 2008 – a venue that ended up with 5000 angry people on the outside looking in.
by Jan Woods – GUEST COMMENTARY – People want the right to know what is in their food. But powerful interests with long histories of deceiving the public, endangering human health, and polluting our planet are trying to deny us this basic right. How? The usual way–by throwing huge amounts of money, to the tune of $38 million, to be used to fog up television airtime, radio waves and voters’ cognitive abilities with deceptive T.V. and radio commercials.
Led by Monsanto ($7.1 million and counting), DuPont (4.9 million), PepsiCo, Nestle, Hershey, and Kellogg, a host of chemical and junk food manufacturers have donated huge sums of money to defeat the YES on 37 campaign, hoping voters will go into the booths on November 6 thoroughly confused about the true nature of Proposition 37, the California Right to Know /Label GMO Proposition.
On the whole, it was not a good week for President Obama. He performed poorly in the first debate, looking weak, timid and disinterested, and appeared to give Governor Mitt Romney the opening he desperately needed to get back into the race.
The bad week was widely expected to get worse as the September jobs report was expected to be worse and to be showing more of the same in terms of a disappointing and lagging recovery.
But, as happens so often, playing it safe inevitably allows the opposition to seize the initiative, and Governor Romney not only seized the initiative, he seized the stage and, with the help of the inept performance by Jim Lehrer who was clearly out of his depths as moderator, at least of this formula, he controlled the night.
It is difficult to have designed, let alone imagined, a worse week for the Mitt Romney campaign. How bad was it? The Romney campaign actually released his tax returns for 2011 to distract from the focus on his statements that came out earlier in the week with regard to 47% of the electorate.
Reading some of the commentary this week from Republicans has been interesting. Peggy Noonan, former speech writer from the Reagan administration, has been particularly eloquent.
The term class warfare has been increasingly used in recent election cycles to denigrate efforts to point out the disparate impact of policies on the rich versus the poor. The truth is that there are legitimate policy implications of tax policies that divide the political landscape in this country.
The comments that Mitt Romney is in hot water for making are not new comments, both in the sense that the video is old and in that the thoughts behind them are even older.
We quickly forget our history in this country and we do so to our own detriment. It was, after all, not that long before my time that states used onerous poll taxes and literacy requirements to deny whole classes of people their franchise – the most fundamental of all rights in a democracy.
The 24th Amendment to the Constitution was only passed in 1962. It granted that the right to vote in any national election “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax” and gave Congress the power to enforce this right.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan was able to rhetorically turn a close election a week before the polls into a comfortable Election Day victory by famously asking, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
While President Obama’s speech last night was generally well received, he did have to backtrack from his soaring rhetoric about change we can believe in. And so, he argued last night, ”Our problems can be solved, our challenges can be met.”
There are three basic trends for conventions. First, the TV networks have been cutting back on their coverage of conventions for years. Now they are just covering about four hours over three nights.
Second, the Republican convention’s audience dropped about 30 percent over the audience from four years ago. Experts suspect there will be a similar drop next year.
Key Question Now: Is President Obama in Trouble?The local picture is bleak. A recent Field Poll has the governor’s tax initiative passing 54-35, but most analysts believe those numbers are not strong enough in a traditionally anti-tax state.
The loss of the tax measure would put more pressure on local voters to step up to avoid a catastrophic $7.5 million shortfall to the local schools. In the meantime, the city faces about $8 million in cuts at the same time it is pushing for at least a $100 million surface water project.
Last year, during the heat of the debate on the budget in the city of Davis, there was a comment by Firefighters Union President Bobby Weist, comparing a proposed budget cut to Wisconsin. There were even signs to that effect. So it is ironic that the two issues come together, Davis and Wisconsin, this week.
The title of the editorial this week in the local paper was “Wisconsin governor wins and unions lose.” Now wouldn’t you think that we have had an historic election in Davis, and that the local paper in their Sunday edition might want something, I don’t know, local?
How much has redistricting and blanket primaries actually changed the dynamics of California politics? It is difficult to know just yet, but the combination is producing some compelling Congressional elections – however, some of that is produced by the one-time phenomenon of redistricting forcing two incumbents – sometimes of the same party – into a single district.
Yolo County has one of the more intriguing congressional races developing. John Garamendi is a name most Californians know – he has spent years building and rebuilding a political career in Sacramento.
The Vanguard has learned that the Davis Democratic Club is being fined for multiple election law reporting and filing violations, from a period that began in 2007 and ended in 2010.
According to the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) website, the Davis Democratic Club stipulated to four counts of violating state election laws. While the initial fines faced by the club as the result of the FPPC’s findings were far greater, they eventually negotiated the settlement down to 9,500 dollars. The settlement has been placed on the FPPC agenda for the Commission to review and approve at their March 15, 2012 meeting.
