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Josephine Anderson - District 2

Small Business

October 28, 2004 Given our country's sluggish economy, both presidential candidates say they will help spur small business growth over the next four years. Their strategies are very different, however. President Bush, in a speech to aviation workers in Wisconsin, elaborated on his tax relief plan, which emphasizes the reduction of personal tax rates. He claims that cutting the personal tax rates has a positive effect on small businesses, because most of them are subchapter S corporations or sole proprietorships, which means they pay tax on corporate profits on their personal returns. "If 70 percent of the new jobs in America are created by small business, and by reducing all tax rates puts money into small business' pockets, it seems to make sense that people ought to be supporting the tax cuts all across America," Bush says.

Tort Reform

October 28, 2004 "Tort reform"—which, in the past few years, has primarily meant capping non-economic damages in medical- and product-liability lawsuits—has been a major political football in Mississippi over the past few years, including a huge driver in election-year fundraising and a serious component of our recent race for the governor's mansion. Early this summer, in a special session, tort-reform interests won a $500,000 cap on pain and suffering damages in all medical liability cases, along with in any general business liability case. The Bush administration believes that tort reform should happen at the federal level, and it has introduced a federal cap of $250,000 of non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. But it hasn't passed Congress. Instead, tort-reform supporters have focused on individual states, where they've had success placing caps in more than 23 states in the past 15 years.

Gay Marriage

October 28, 2004 With countries such as Spain and many others making gay marriage legal, is it time that America takes the same step? That question has made gay marriage and civil unions the hot-button wedge issue of the 2004 election. Some analysts say Sen. John Kerry's reference in the last debate to Mary Cheney—the vice president's openly lesbian daughter—hurt him in the polls. Kerry's exact words were: "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as. If you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people in a marriage and they struggled with it. I've met wives supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them. We have to respect that." Kerry proponents, and many homosexuals, point out that the only way one can view his answer as bad or offensive is if the person finds homosexuality to be bad or offensive.

The Economy and Taxation

October 28, 2004 "It's the Economy, Stupid," is the famous line posted on the Clinton campaign's war room wall during the 1992 campaign. The conventional wisdom is that in most election years, people vote with their pocketbooks—if the economy has been good under an incumbent, he'll often be re-elected; if it's been bad, then the incumbent faces an uphill battle. The situation faced by the Bush administration has been anything but typical. There has indeed been a recession, and there's been wartime spending. The economy was declared to have been in recovery as early as 2001 by many academics, although there was fighting over that until mid-2003. In the past year, about 1.7 million private -sector jobs have been created; while this is good news, job growth seems to have slowed in the summer of 2004. Economists say about 1.6 million jobs must be created per year to keep up with population growth, meaning unemployment levels remain flat or, when adjusted for "discouraged" workers, actually continue to rise somewhat. The Bush administration will face the election with a net job loss—the first administration to do so since the Hoover administration in 1933.

Malcolm White

One might think you'd get to know someone after living for 40 nights in a five-by-seven-foot tent, a 15-foot canoe by day, bathing in the river, fending off crawling critters, heat, cold, solid sheets of rain for just under 500 miles through the heart of a state that runs right through the middle of my heart. However, it's just not that simple.

Eminem's October Surprise

His new video.

Bush breaks with GOP on same-sex unions

Washington Times reports:

ABC Poll: Voters say U.S. on ‘Wrong Track'; Kerry Ahead

ABC News is reporting: "Skepticism about the nation's direction is boosting John Kerry's campaign for president: Fifty-five percent of likely voters say the country is on the wrong track, and their discontent is fueling Kerry to an even race against President Bush. Overall, 49 percent of likely voters now support Kerry, 48 percent Bush, 1 percent Ralph Nader. Given polling tolerances that's essentially a tie, but it is the first time since Aug. 1 that Kerry's held a numerical advantage, however slight, in ABC News polls. A weekend advance did it: Saturday and Sunday were two of Kerry's three best individual days since this daily tracking poll began Oct. 1. Today's results are based on Thursday-Sunday interviews. Discontent is the necessary element in removing an incumbent from office, and Kerry clearly has harnessed much of it: Among likely voters who say the country's on the wrong track, 84 percent support him."

Daily Newspaper Endorsements: Kerry Leads So Far

Click story for a full list, updated as more come in.

Editor & Publisher is keeping track of daily newspapers' presidential endorsements. Through today (Oct. 23): "Sen. John Kerry continues to pile up the newspaper endorsements, but in a reversal of past trends it was President Bush who nabbed the larger papers in today's update of E&P's exclusive tally. While only adding four papers to his total, Bush did win the backing of two big papers. [...] Kerry now leads 48-34 in the number of papers that back him. In our updated chart below, we find that Kerry now leads Bush in the circulation of papers backing him by almost 2-1, but just a few days ago the incumbent trailed 5-1 in that category. Kerry's papers have 8.9 million readers while Bush's clock in at 4.7 million, so far."

Factcheck.org: Would Kerry Throw Us to the Wolves?

A misleading Bush ad criticizes Kerry for proposing to cut intelligence spending — a decade ago, by 4%, when some Republicans also proposed cuts.

Sinclair Opts for 'Fair and Balanced' After All

New York Times reports: "After stirring up protest over its plans to broadcast a documentary critical of Senator John Kerry, the Sinclair Broadcast Group presented a program last night that gave short shrift to that film and offered instead a measured analysis of the debate over Mr. Kerry's Vietnam War record. The hourlong special program, produced by the news department at Sinclair, a major financial supporter of Republican candidates and which regularly features conservative commentary on its newscasts, included as many backers of Mr. Kerry as critics.

No Evidence of Election Terror Plot

CNN is reporting that talk about an election terrorist plot is overblown: "U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials say they have found no direct evidence of plans for an election-related terror attack after a five-week investigation, the Washington Post reported in its Saturday edition. Citing unnamed officials in an article on the newspaper's Web site, the Post said a key CIA source who claimed knowledge of such plans has since been discredited, casting doubt on earlier pieces of evidence pointing to an attack. [...] But even after hundreds of interviews, immigration arrests and other efforts, law enforcement officials said they have been unable to detect signs of a plot in the U.S., nor have they identified specific targets, dates or methods that might be used, the paper reported."

Rapper Eminem Slams Bush in Rolling Stone

First American Conservative, now Eminem. This excerpt is from the issue of Rolling Stone that hits the streets the first week of November:

American Conservative Magazine ‘Endorses' Kerry

Are you sitting down? American Conservative magazine just 'endorsed' John Kerry:"Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation's children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal—Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can't be found to do it—and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail." [...]

Factcheck.org needs your help

[verbatim] We are looking for examples of false or misleading political mail regarding the presidential campaign. If you receive any, please send them to us. We promise not to use your name without your permission, but we won't be able to return the material you send. Please do include your name and a telephone number or email address where we might contact you in case we have questions.

Factcheck.org: $8 Million Worth Of Distortions

Two Bush ads full of misleading and false statements ran more than 9,000 times in 45 cities last week.

Is the White House ‘Scrubbing' Its Web site?

The blogosphere is presenting evidence, or at least arguments, that the White House is throwing potentially damning transcripts, audio and video down the memory hole. Read more here.

[Lott] Iraq: Neither ‘Wrong' Nor ‘Distracting'

It's inconsistent for any songressman or senator to wake up one day and say our troops don't have enough equipment or that the reconstruction of Iraq isn't going well, when they've voted against paying for these things. And it's surely strange to say Saddam Hussein was an evil killer, and in the same breath to say America should have let him go. Yet, these are precisely the positions some are struggling with in the height of this political season, trying to find neutral ground in what should be a not-so-neutral War on Terror. I believe most Americans see through it, as do our military men and women. I hope the terrorists see it that way, too, and are not somehow falsely emboldened by the shallow side of America's internal politics.

Factcheck.org: An Avalanche of Misinformation

With election day approaching the tempo of ads is increasing, but not the level of factual accuracy. Both sides are making false or misleading claims in their ads.

Two More Factchecks re: Kerry

How Liberal is John Kerry?

A new RNC ad claims Kerry is "the most liberal man in the Senate." Actually, his lifetime rating is 11th or lower, depending.

GOP-Funded Firm Accused of Destroying Dem Ballots, More

Salon today has a piece about Sproul, the RNC-funded firm under fire for doing all sorts of things to squelch the Democratic vote:

Health Care

October 21, 2004 Of all the issues in this presidential campaign, health care is probably the most confusing. But a few facts are clear: 45 million Americans (including children) do not have health insurance, prescription drug costs are through the roof, and seniors aren't getting what they need. Both Bush and Kerry have extensive plans to reform most every aspect of health care in an attempt to provide more coverage to more Americans. President Bush's first plan, if re-elected, is to "Cover the Kids," which will include a nationwide campaign. Many states, including Mississippi, are participants in CHIP (Child Health Insurance Programs), which allows coverage for children, but numbers of applicants are not as high as the number eligible.

Welfare and Poverty

October 21, 2004 The public hasn't heard the word "welfare" as often as it did in the last three presidential elections, perhaps due to the bipartisan Welfare Act of 1996 signed by President Bill Clinton. However, the topic remains important because it addresses the needs of Americans with lower incomes or no incomes at all. Mississippians should take special interest. The state's poverty level, nearly 20 percent of the population, is the highest in the nation. During the last presidential debate in Tempe, Ariz., moderator Bob Schieffer asked Sen. Kerry if it is time to raise the minimum wage. Kerry replied saying, "It's long overdue time to raise the minimum wage. And, America, this is one of those issues that separates the president and myself. We have fought to try to raise the minimum wage in the last years. But the Republican leadership of the House and Senate won't even let us have a vote on it. We're not allowed to vote on it. They don't want to raise the minimum wage. The minimum wage is the lowest minimum wage value it has been in our nation in 50 years. If we raise the minimum wage, which I will do, to $7 an hour, 9.2 million women who are trying to raise their families would earn another $3,800 a year."

Public Education

Illustration by Ken Patterson In all four presidential/vice presidential debates, the moderators failed to ask a single question about public education and the candidates' views on President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education reform act, passed in January 2001. The candidates themselves tried to insert points about NCLB in answers to other questions—Bush, for instance, said his education plan was an alternative to raising the minimum wage—but no substantive discussion of public education, and how the presidential candidates differ, occurred. Perhaps this means that the candidates either agree on the need for NCLB—after all, Kerry voted for it—or that Kerry does not have substantially different ideas about public education. Not exactly.

Montrel McClenton

Madison Central sophomore Montrel McClenton, 16, looks right at home seated in front of the computer monitor, TV screen and editing equipment at Back Porch Film & Video, at the Mill Street end of Keener Avenue. He should. For the past few years, McClenton has been learning the ropes from his step-dad Ted Davis, owner of Back Porch. On its colorful business card, the company's motto says, "We help you tell your story." That they do.

Kerry Has Wide Support Among Blacks

AP is reporting:

Blacks prefer Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry over President Bush by a nearly 4-to-1 margin, though their support for the Democrat is down slightly from the backing Al Gore received in 2000, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Factcheck.org: Just How Many Bills Has Kerry "Passed?"

Bush said Kerry passed five bills. Kerry said he's passed 56. Who's right? That depends on the definition of "passed" and "bills."

FactCheck.org: New and Recycled Distortions in Debate #3

The debates are over and the results are clear: both candidates are incorrigible fact-twisters.

Bush said most of his tax cuts went to "low- and middle-income Americans" when independent calculations show most went to the richest 10 percent. Kerry claims Bush "cut the Pell Grants" when they've actually increased. Both men repeated misstatements made in earlier debates, and added a few new ones.

Barbour Postpones Medicaid Transition

PR from the Governor's office:

(Jackson, Miss.) -- Saying that a litigation (sic) had confused 50,000 Mississippi Medicaid recipients beyond repair, Governor Haley Barbour said today he would postpone the state's efforts to transition those recipients to Medicare and look to Medicaid reform opponents to come up with the $100 million needed for Mississippi's cash-strapped Medicaid program if the transition does not go into effect.

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