On Tues., Nov. 4 voters will face distinct choices from the top to the bottom
of their ballot. At a time when our country faces serious challenges both home
and abroad, the choices we make in the voting booth could not be more important.
In the race for president of the United States, the choice is clear.
On
the one hand, there is John McCain: a war hero who proudly served his nation, a
candidate who has demonstrated the political courage and independence to stand
up to powerful special interest groups when very few others in Washington would,
and a public servant with a legislative record of reform and stalwart opposition
to wasteful pork-barrel spending.
On the other hand, there is Barack
Obama: a product of the Chicago Machine and a man with few legislative
accomplishments. In fact, it was only two short years ago that Obama, the great
agent of "change," endorsed and urged voters to support both Todd Stroger and
Rod Blagojevich. That's not "change we can believe in" - that's change that
would tax ordinary Americans even more and weaken the already tenuous position
of our nation's economy, not unlike what the Democrats have done here in
Illinois.
Locally, voters will face a similar choice. We can continue
down the path of electing Democrats to Cook County office that has resulted in
giving us the shameful notoriety of having the highest sales tax in the nation,
7.6 percent unemployment, confounding and dramatic increases in property tax
assessments at a time when underlying property values are rapidly declining, and
ever-bloated government payrolls. Or we could choose to change the direction of
Cook County government by electing more reform-minded Republicans like Tony
Peraica for State's Attorney, Diane Shapiro for Clerk of the Court, Greg
Goldstein for Recorder of Deeds, and Paul Chialdikas for Water Reclamation
Commissioner. These candidates have demonstrated a passion for change from the
broken, bloated system that has characterized county politics and they need your
support on Election Day.
Our great country and county both desperately
need real change. Let's take a pass on Chicago-style machine politics. Vote for
John McCain and the county GOP ticket.
AP Poll: McCain & Obama Tied! Join Us this Saturday for a trip to Wisconsin!
The McCain-Palin ticket is finishing strong and needs your help this Saturday for walking at the Kenosha Victory Center in Wisconsin. If you can join us or need more information please call the Cook County GOP Office at (773) 278-2467. We are meeting at 9am on Saturday at the Republican Headquarters at 1549 W. Blackhawk, Chicago.
AP presidential poll: All even in the homestretch By LIZ SIDOTI
WASHINGTON (AP) - The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.
The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.
Three weeks ago, an AP-GfK survey found that Obama had surged to a seven-point lead over McCain, lifted by voters who thought the Democrat was better suited to lead the nation through its sudden economic crisis.
The contest is still volatile, and the split among voters is apparent less than two weeks before Election Day.
"I trust McCain more, and I do feel that he has more experience in government than Obama. I don't think Obama has been around long enough," said Angela Decker, 44, of La Porte, Ind.
But Karen Judd, 58, of Middleton, Wis., said, "Obama certainly has sufficient qualifications." She said any positive feelings about McCain evaporated with "the outright lying" in TV ads and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin, who "doesn't have the correct skills."
The new AP-GfK head-to-head result is a departure from some, but not all, recent national polls.
Obama and McCain were essentially tied among likely voters in the latest George Washington University Battleground Poll, conducted by Republican strategist Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. In other surveys focusing on likely voters, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Obama up by 9 percentage points, while a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center had Obama leading by 14. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, among the broader category of people registered to vote, found Obama ahead by 10 points.
Polls are snapshots of highly fluid campaigns. In this case, there is a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points; that means Obama could be ahead by as many as 8 points or down by as many as 6. There are many reasons why polls differ, including methods of estimating likely voters and the wording of questions. Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political science professor and polling authority, said variation between polls occurs, in part, because pollsters interview random samples of people.
"If they all agree, somebody would be doing something terribly wrong," he said of polls. But he also said that surveys generally fall within a few points of each other, adding, "When you get much beyond that, there's something to explain." The AP-GfK survey included interviews with a large sample of adults including 800 deemed likely to vote. Among all 1,101 adults interviewed, the survey showed Obama ahead 47 percent to 37 percent. He was up by five points among registered voters.
A significant number of the interviews were conducted by dialing a randomly selected sample of cell phone numbers, and thus this poll had a chance to reach voters who were excluded from some other polls.
It was taken over five days from Thursday through Monday, starting the night after the candidates' final debate and ending the day after former Secretary of State Colin Powell broke with the Republican Party to endorse Obama.
McCain's strong showing is partly attributable to his strong debate performance; Thursday was his best night of the survey. Obama's best night was Sunday, hours after the Powell announcement, and the full impact of that endorsement may not have been captured in any surveys yet. Future polling could show whether either of those was merely a support "bounce" or something more lasting.
During their final debate, a feisty McCain repeatedly forced Obama to defend his record, comments and associations. He also used the story of a voter whom the Democrat had met in Ohio, "Joe the plumber," to argue that Obama's tax plan would be bad for working class voters.
"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama told the man with the last name of Wurzelbacher, who had asked Obama whether his plan to increase taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year would impede his ability to buy the plumbing company where he works.
On Wednesday, McCain's campaign unveiled a new TV ad that features that Obama quote, and shows different people saying: "I'm Joe the plumber." A man asks: "Obama wants my sweat to pay for his trillion dollars in new spending?" Since McCain has seized on that line of argument, he has picked up support among white married people and non-college educated whites, the poll shows, while widening his advantage among white men. Black voters still overwhelmingly support Obama.
The Republican also has improved his rating for handling the economy and the financial crisis. Nearly half of likely voters think their taxes will rise under an Obama administration compared with a third who say McCain would raise their taxes. Since the last AP-GfK survey in late September, McCain also has:
_Posted big gains among likely voters earning under $50,000 a year; he now trails Obama by just 4 percentage points compared with 26 earlier. _Surged among rural voters; he has an 18-point advantage, up from 4. _Doubled his advantage among whites who haven't finished college and now leads by 20 points. McCain and Obama are running about even among white college graduates, no change from earlier. _Made modest gains among whites of both genders, now leading by 22 points among white men and by 7 among white women. _Improved slightly among whites who are married, now with a 24-point lead. _Narrowed a gap among unmarried whites, though he still trails by 8 points.
McCain has cut into Obama's advantage on the questions of whom voters trust to handle the economy and the financial crisis. On both, the Democrat now leads by just 6 points, compared with 15 in the previous survey.
Obama still has a larger advantage on other economic measures, with 44 percent saying they think the economy will have improved a year from now if he is elected compared with 34 percent for McCain.
Intensity has increased among McCain's supporters. A month ago, Obama had more strong supporters than McCain did. Now, the number of excited supporters is about even.
Eight of 10 Democrats are supporting Obama, while nine in 10 Republicans are backing McCain. Independents are about evenly split.
Some 24 percent of likely voters were deemed still persuadable, meaning they were either undecided or said they might switch candidates. Those up-for-grabs voters came about equally from the three categories: undecideds, McCain supporters and Obama backers.
Said John Ormesher, 67, of Dandridge, Tenn.: "I've got respect for them but that's the extent of it. I don't have a whole lot of affinity toward either one of them. They're both part of the same political mess."
HEMPSTEAD.
N.Y. -- "We are going to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans," Barack
Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, said in the spin room here at
Hofstra University following the final debate of the 2008 presidential
election.
Plouffe was repeating one of the boldest claims made by the Obama campaign. It's a claim that the Wall Street Journal editorial board dubbed
"Obama's 95% Illusion," noting that more than a third of Americans
don't pay any income taxes, and that what Obama's plan does do is offer
a raft of subsidies and government payments to individuals and families
that he redefines as "tax cuts." His proposal looks more like a
redistribution scheme than an honest effort to reduce taxes -- as he revealed on Monday when he told a now famous Ohio plumber that his plan aimed to "spread the wealth around."
So
when Plouffe reiterated the 95 percent claim, I asked him a simple
question aimed at clarifying whether Obama's tax plan was about cutting
rates, or merely handing out government checks. "What rates would
actually go down"? I asked.
"Middle class people are going to see, systemically, their taxes reduced, and small businesses," Plouffe responded.
"But what rate would go down for lower-income Americans?" I persisted, seeking more information.
"We'll have to get you the exact details on that," Obama's campaign manager told me.
I
followed up, recapping the claim he had just made moments ago: "Well,
you said that there's going to be a tax cut on 95 percent, so what rate
would go down?"
He replied, "I'll have to get you the exact rate differential."
Given that he wasn't clear on the actual rate changes involved, I asked, "but which type of tax would go down?"
He
insisted that under Obama's plan, income taxes would be lower, as well
as capital gains taxes on start up businesses and small entrepreneurs
(though the capital gains tax would otherwise increase).
SHORTLY AFTER my exchange with Plouffe, I was listening to David
Axelrod, Obama's senior strategist, and I decided to put the question
to him slightly differently: "Let's say you're making $50,000 a year,"
I posited. "What taxes would you see go lower under the Obama plan?"
Axelrod replied, "You would get a $500 cut in your taxes. If you're a couple, $1,000."
I
queried as to whether that money would come in the form of a check, or
a lower rate. "You would see a reduction in your taxes, in the taxes
that you pay," he insisted. After further questioning, he added, "The
mechanism for it has to do with deferring part of the withholding
taxes, but you should talk to our budget folks on that."
Later in the evening, Brian Deese, an Obama economics adviser, emailed me the following information, at Plouffe's request:
OVERALL IMPACT OF OBAMA TAX PLAN:
- The Obama plan would reduce income tax rates for a
typical family of four the lowest level in more than 50 years (4.32%).
[Tax Policy Center]
- Obama's plan will cut taxes as a share of
the economy to 18.2% -- below the level that prevailed under Ronald
Reagan. [Tax Policy Center 9/12/08]
I could not find a reference to the first statistic after viewing
the study cited by Deese. In its analysis, the Tax Policy Center (a
venture of the left-leaning Brookings Institution and Urban Institute),
sides with the Obama campaign by categorizing as "tax cuts" government
payments such as the $1,000 to couples, $4,000 for college tuition, and
10% payment to offset mortgage interest expenses. But the study does
not repeat the Obama campaign's 95 percent claim. (In a late night
email, I raised these points with Deese, and also asked him to explain
the criteria under which the campaign arrived at the 95 percent number,
but did not hear back as of this writing.)
In fairness,
politicians long ago began to use the tax code as a tool for crafting
social policy rather than merely as a way to raise revenue. Republicans
and Democrats alike have abused terms such as "tax credit" and "tax
rebate" to make their policy goals more palatable. But Obama is getting
away with defining tax cuts so broadly, that future candidates will
simply claim any form of increased government spending as a tax cut.
Under Obama's logic, higher food stamp allowances and expanded state
funding of the arts could be dubbed "food tax credit" and "arts tax
credit" respectively, and also qualify.
If Barack Obama can
effectively claim that his plan cuts taxes on 95 percent of Americans,
then the term "tax cut" has no meaning.
What’s Cookin’ with the Republicans TV Program Clarification
The Cook County Republican Party would like to clarify the
record regarding an article published in the Chicago Sun-Times on October 6, 2008.Stephanie Izard, winner of the 2008 season
for the television series Top Chef in
no way sponsors, supports, or is otherwise affiliated with Cook County
Republican Party or its cable program What’s
Cookin’ with the Republicans.We
apologize for any confusion.
'Senator Government' - Joe the Plumber cuts to the heart of the Presidential choice
Whether or not last night's much-improved debate performance helps John
McCain rally in the polls, at least voters finally got a clearer sense of the
policy differences. For our money, the best line of the night was Mr. McCain's
Freudian slip of referring to Barack Obama as "Senator Government." Neither
candidate is offering policies that meet the serious economic moment. But Mr.
McCain would let Americans keep more of their own income to ride out the
downturn, while Mr. Obama is revealing that his default agenda is to spend money
and expand the government.
AP
Cribbing from Hillary Clinton's playbook, Mr. Obama called this week for a
"90 day foreclosure moratorium for homeowners that are acting in good faith,"
whatever that last phrase means. When Mrs. Clinton proposed a foreclosure
moratorium during the Democratic primaries, Mr. Obama had said it would lead to
more expensive mortgages going forward. He was right then.
The Treasury's Hope Now program and the Federal Housing Administration are
already helping to refinance homes for millions of homeowners. Anyone who isn't
able to qualify for one of those voluntary programs and who still can't afford
to pay a mortgage isn't likely to be any better fixed in a mere 90 days. Mr.
Obama also overlooks that the banks that service the mortgages don't typically
own them. They're owned by far-flung investors via a mortgage-backed
security.
Mr. Obama apparently wants the feds to unilaterally rewrite contracts based
on something as undefinable as "good faith." At the same time, he is repeating
his proposal to change the bankruptcy code so judges can unilaterally rewrite
mortgage contracts as well. All of this would make credit less available to
working families in the future.
Another Obama idea is to give a $3,000 tax credit to companies that create
new jobs in the U.S. over the next two years. We don't know many employers who
would hire people merely because of a tax credit that barely covers
administrative costs, especially if that tax credit vanishes after two years.
And especially if Mr. Obama is going to hit that same business with a whopping
tax increase. As he told skeptical "Joe the Plumber" -- actually Joe
Wurzelbacher of Toledo -- in his own Freudian slip this week, "When you spread
the wealth around, it's good for everybody." But there won't be any wealth to
spread if no one creates it.
Mr. Obama is also proposing more "stimulus," by which he means more federal
spending. He wants $25 billion in federal aid to states, which would merely
subsidize the most profligate state politicians. He wants $25 billion more for a
"jobs and growth fund" for schools, roads and other union-driven public works.
And he wants $25 billion more in loan guarantees for the Detroit automakers, on
top of the $25 billion they've already received.
These ideas reveal that Mr. Obama thinks economic growth derives mainly from
growing the government. They merely redistribute money taxed or borrowed from
the private sector to favored political constituencies. At least Bill Clinton
sold his tax cut in 1993 as a way to reduce the deficit; Mr. Obama is proposing
to take federal spending to heights not seen since the early 1980s. If this is
his agenda to spur recovery, no wonder the stock market is tanking.
As for Mr. McCain, he is proposing to cut the capital gains tax rate to 7.5%
from 15%. Mr. Obama responded by sneering that no one now has capital gains to
tax, but Mr. McCain is right that lowering the after-tax return on capital could
help even in a down market. He also wants to increase deductible capital losses
to $15,000 from $3,000 for 2008 and 2009, another way to help the investor class
ride out the bear market. While capital gains are taxed whether they are
inflated or not, the $3,000 loss writeoff limit against regular income hasn't
changed in 30 years.
Mr. McCain is also usefully calling for a permanent reduction in taxes on
withdrawals from tax-preferred retirement accounts, which he'd tax at 10%. In
addition, he'd suspend the current rules mandating that investors begin selling
off their IRAs and 401(k)s when they reach age 70 -- an idea Mr. Obama also says
he likes.
As the front-runner in the polls, Mr. Obama probably figures he can afford to
play this kind of small ball and coast into the White House. He merely needs to
disguise and downplay the magnitude of his tax and spending plans. As for Mr.
McCain, we've argued for months that he's needed a larger, more compelling
economic narrative -- and the financial panic gave him an opening to argue for a
far more substantial tax cut to spur growth and avoid a deep recession. He's
preferred to play small ball instead. Mr. McCain's best hope now is that
millions of Americans share the basic economic common sense of Joe the Plumber.
A Cook County Commissioner is raising a stink about
several firms in line to get a hefty chunk of county bond business,
saying one has a questionable background and the other employs the
brother of President Todd Stroger's chief of staff.
Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool was referring
to Calvin Grigsby and Associates and George K. Baum & Co.,
respectively.
News accounts show Grigsby was acquitted in 1999 of
trying to bribe Miami-Dade County Commissioner James Burke in order to
secure a multi-million-dollar bond deal. Burke was convicted.
Claypool said Baum & Co. employs Tony Fratto, the
brother of Stroger's chief of staff Joseph Fratto, which makes the deal
a conflict of interest.
Both the Baum and Grigsby firms and several other
companies are up before the board today to be approved as the firms who
will handle the $260 million bond issuance for the county's
self-insurance fund. That fund is used to pay out legal judgments
against the county.
"I think that the fact that they are proposing to
outsource the bond sale to questionable individuals is just one more
reason to oppose this deal," said Claypool, referring to Grigsby.
Claypool said his larger argument against the deal,
which he aired unsuccessfully last month at a county meeting, is that
the bond deal borrows money to pay off a reoccurring expense. He and
Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley, both Chicago Democrats, compared
it to a homeowner taking out a loan to buy groceries and gas.
Sun Times Letter to the Editor: Another Bad Endorsement
Cook County government is broken and desperately needs change, but the
Sun-Times editorial board continues to give its readers more of the same. I am
disappointed, but hardly surprised, by the Sun-Times endorsement of Anita
Alvarez for Cook County state's attorney. In the endorsement, the Sun-Times
states that Tony Peraica has been ". . . an effective pit bull on the County
Board, sinking his teeth into the excesses of the administration of President
Todd Stroger."
One must wonder why then the Sun-Times endorsed Todd Stroger over Peraica for
president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Did they think Stroger
would reform county government, improve public heath services, provide needed
tax relief, or cut wasteful spending?
In 2006, the Sun-Times rejected change in favor of more of the same. We got
the anti-reformer Todd Stroger. I believe that the Sun-Times has done a
disservice to its readers by making that same mistake twice.
![[Review & Outlook]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-CN169_oj_1de_D_20081016000038.jpg)
AP
