Two More Debt Ceiling Facepalms

1.  If one didn't know any better, one might conclude that our elected officials don't care whatsoever about the American people.  I know it may sound shocking, but I have this sneaking suspicion.  As evidence, I give you this Washington Post-ABC poll which asked people, among other things, if they would oppose or support certain items in an effort to reduce the national debt.  Here's a summary:

Cut spending on Medicaid:  26% support, 72% oppose

Cut military spending:  43% support, 56% oppose

Raising taxes on Americans earning over $250,000 a year:  72% support, 27% oppose

Gradually raising Medicare age from 65 to 67:  46% support, 54% oppose

Changing the way SS benefits are calculated so they increase slower:  42% support, 53% oppose

Raising taxes on oil and gas companies:  59% support, 39% oppose

Means testing Medicare:  61% support, 36% oppose

Removing SS tax income cap currently at $107,000:  66% support, 33% oppose

Raising taxes on hedge fund managers (essentially changing capital gains taxes to income taxes):  64% support, 25% oppose

Progressive Taxation

A recent poll showed that over 60 percent of Americans think that the government should tax the rich in an effort to reduce the budget deficit.  Polls also consistently found that a majority of Americans wanted the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy to expire.  Conservatives, inexplicably, won that battle in their larger war against progressive taxation.

So with all the recent talk about taxes, I wanted to try to explain why liberals, and a majority of Americans generally, support a progressive tax scheme.  A progressive tax is one where the tax rate increases with taxable income.  So a person making a smaller salary pays a smaller percentage in taxes than a person making a larger salary.  Currently in the US, we have a progressive federal income tax that ranges from 10% for the lowest income earners to 35% for the highest marginal rates.

Mainstream conservatives typically oppose a progressive tax for moral reasons.  They argue that it is unfair to tax the wealthy at higher rates just because they have a lot of money, that it is a form of class welfare, that the poor are getting off easy, and that it disincentivizes hard work.  These arguments miss the point.

The State of the President Part 1: The Polls

As President Obama gets ready to deliver his State of the Union address (which, thankfully, will not conflict with the season premier of Lost, which would have been a deal-breaker for me, and not just for watching the speech but for supporting the president at all), I thought I'd give my own little state of the president.

Let's start with the polls in this post and then get to specific issues and opinions in the next post.

Americans like Pres. Obama. You may disagree with his policies, but you can't disagree with the polls that show his popularity remains fairly high. Take a look at his favorability ratings here. Remember to scroll down and look through all the polls. After the mean-spirited contention of the health care debate and the attacks on the president from the right, I was expecting some dismal numbers. It turns out, however, that he is sitting around +15 across the board, which is a big number.

Favorability measures how much we like Pres. Obama, which is a lot, but job approval might be a little more substantive. Yet even here we see that the president is holding his own after a difficult first year in office. Take a look at some polls here and here and the Gallup daily tracking here. He has a stable number since around last August or September fluctuating between +3 and +10. Again, this was a brutal year to be a politician, and president in particular, and he came out with the support of the majority of Americans.

Now for the more sobering polls. When it breaks down to specific issues there are some major areas of concern. See the polls here. On domestic issues Pres. Obama typically gets poor marks. On the economy he's about -10, on healthcare he is about -15, on taxes he's about even, on jobs he's about -10. Those aren't good, but I will say a couple things about them. The economy has, by all indicators, hit its nadir and is on the rise. This year should see solid growth, so I expect improved numbers on the economy, taxes, and jobs. If the economy continues to dawdle along, though, those numbers could get even worse.

As for health care, many polls are showing (example here) that more people disapprove of the bill for not going far enough than for going too far. So it is not the case that a strong majority disapproves of the direction of health insurance reform, a strong majority actually wants the reform. So I expect that once the bill is passed and the hysteria has died down these numbers will improve some because the large portion of the president's base which is showing dissatisfaction will come back around. That is the nature of bases.

On the international front, the president is getting much better marks from the American people. On foreign affairs he's around +5 (and with such efficient response to the Haiti earthquake, government aid is already on the ground there, that could go up), on Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism he is anywhere from even to about +8 or so.

So a strong majority of Americans have a favorable opinion of the president and a solid majority approve of the job he is doing. This after one of the most contentious partisan years America has endured in quite some time.

Liberals, I sense, are starting to feel defeated, but this is qualified good news I think. We gave away a public option, Copenhagen essentially failed, and Democrats are facing losses in the midterm elections. But it has only been one year of a four-year first term for the president and progress is being made and a majority of America still supports our president. Once the health insurance bill is passed and the government moves on to focusing on the economy, jobs, and energy reform things should start to look better, but there is no question that right now Democrats are hurting, and liberals are hurting even more.

This coming year, though, may be crucial, which is where we'll pick up next week.

Utah Loves Obama

The Deseret News has come out with another poll showing Pres. Obama's favorability in Utah that it downplays to an almost criminal degree. In this latest poll it shows the president with an amazing +10 favorability among Utahns, 53-43%.

There are some pretty striking features of this poll. First, 100% of Democrats polled in Utah approved of his job performance. I've never seen that in a poll. Not suprising, though, is that Republicans disapprove 64-34. But independents, the real gem of the electorate, and typically reliably conservative in Utah, support the president +24, 59-35.

Sixty-one and 56 percent of Utahns approve of the job Pres. Obama is doing in foreign policy and health-care reform, respectively. Fifty-five percent, however, disapprove of the stimulus spending.

Since I already threw a fit once about the ugly bias with which the Deseret News reports positive news for Pres. Obama here in Utah, I will pretty much refrain except to show these ridiculous quotes:

While much of America really likes the job President Barack Obama has done in his first 100 days in office — a milestone reached today — Utahns are more reserved, with a bare majority approving his actions.

. . .

Since Republicans outnumber Democrats in Utah two-to-one, it's no surprise that the president doesn't do very well here.

I think the President, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and any person with even just a little bit of sense, would disagree whole-heartedly. Pres. Obama is doing very well here. Have we forgotten that this is Utah? This is easily in the top three of conservatives states in the country (out of fifty!). And he has a plus ten favorability here? He's kicking butt, is what he is doing. And he has been kicking butt since the election. His favorability in Utah has actually increased the more Utahns see the job he is doing. The man is a juggernaut.

And all of this bodes very, very poorly for Republicans. The Republican party has essentially been relegated to the deep South and what is now being called the Mormon Belt. They are chasing off moderates, like Senator Arlen Spector, in an effort to become more and more ideologically pure and far-right conservative. Independents throughout the nation strongly favor Pres. Obama. Congressional Republicans are seeing some of the worst poll numbers across the board in decades.

This is a party in crisis, and the number one piece of evidence could easily be that arch-conservative Utah has a strong preference for the way Pres. Obama and the Democratic party are running the nation. If the Republicans can't even count on good old reliable Utah anymore to be staunchly conservative, then what can the count on?

I would pay close attention to the 2010 and 2012 elections here in Utah, because I think we're going to see a decided shift to the left. If Utah Republicans want to have any chance to preserve their dominance of state politics, they had better start moving swiftly center-ward (think Gov. Huntsman) or they are going to have start learning how to play nice with the opposition.

The Deseret News' Overt Bias

John McCain won Utah 62-34%. This is not good for Democrats, but as noted earlier, it is an improvement. So about one third of Utahns chose Pres. Obama. About four months later, and about two months after he took office, 51% of Utahns now approve of the job Pres. Obama is doing. They are not apples to apples, but that is 17% increase for Obama in Utah.

I would have guessed, in a state that has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, and it has never really been close in that time, that Pres. Obama would be happy with a 34% approval rating in Utah. It would have really seemed greedy to ask for much more than 40%. But here is a poll that shows over half of Utahns approve the job he is doing.

In contrast, Pres. Obama garnered 53% of the popular vote nationwide and has an approval rating hovering around 60%, which is about a 7% increase. So his rise in approval in Utah outpaces the country as a whole, which of course has a lot to do with how low he started in Utah.

So how does the Deseret News report this fairly astonishing news?

Maybe it's the sign of the times, or just greater partisanship today than in 2001, but Democratic President Barack Obama starts his presidency with a much lower job approval rating among Utahns than did Republican George W. Bush eight years ago.

Okay. Comparing the favorability of a conservative president to a liberal president in arguably the most conservative state in the country seems ridiculous, especially the numbers of the conservative president before he became the most unpopular president since Truman (that includes Nixon!) because of his disastrous policies which knee-capped the economy and our foreign policy. But, okay, let's see where they're going with this.

A new poll for the Deseret News and KSL-TV by Dan Jones & Associates finds that only 51 percent of Utahns approve of the job Obama is doing.

Only? A liberal democrat has over 50% approval in ultra-conservative Utah and DNews says only? This is crazy.

And half of all Utahns don't like the Obama/Congress measures to stimulate the economy, Jones found.

But half do! That is amazing, why report it so negatively? And this isn't just some throw-away issue, this is the defining issue of his presidency and by far the most important issue to the nation. After some down-played caveats that can't be that important to the analysis like, Utah is ultra-conservative, Obama did do better than Kerry, and other unimportant things:

Even so, only 60 percent of Salt Lake County residents approve of the job Obama is doing, Jones found in a survey conducted last week of 400 adults statewide.

ONLY?! Salt Lake County barely, just barely, went for Pres. Obama over McCain. The suburbs, which make up the large majority of the county, are still conservative. Pres. Obama's job approval rating in Utah's most populous and influential county are affirmatively extremely impressive, particularly given the dynamics, and the DNews trips all over itself to make sure to down-play it as much as possible. This is not journalism.

Of course, Obama is facing tougher economic times than did Bush eight years ago — a recession the worst since the Great Depression with rising unemployment, business failures and home foreclosures.

But that doesn't really matter, does it?

Obama's 51 percent approval rating in Utah is about 10 percentage points below his approval ratings found in national surveys conducted over the last several weeks, according to pollster.com.

That's more like it. Let's make absolute sure to cast this in the most negative light possible. How about Congress?

And Utah's 34 percent approval rating for Congress also is a lower number than measured nationally. Pollster.com reports a 39 percent congressional approval rating recorded nationally in a March 5 Gallup poll, and a 36 percent approval rating in a National Public Radio survey earlier this month.

Gasp! A full 2% lower number? From the most conservative state in the country? Shouldn't we, instead of touting how low these numbers are, actually show surprise at how high they are? This is bush league reporting that does not reflect the realities of Utah at all. It shows no critically thinking. It is clearly just written to further the DNews' conservative agenda and it is pathetic.