Some believe we should eliminate gun free zones because someone clearly insane has sense enough to only attack people in gun free zones. Some believe if everyone was armed, crime would be deterred, yet gun violence is highest among gangs where nearly everyone is armed. Some believe the 53% of Americans who don't own guns are afraid of guns versus accepting many of the 47% own guns only because they are afraid. Some believe the constitution affords them the right to own guns to protect themselves, yet the constitution doesn't protect them from those guns. Some take comfort hiding behind the mantra "Guns don't kill people, people kill people". I suggest things will begin to improve when we all live by the mantra "Guns don't protect people, people protect people".
There is no right or left to the issue of gun violence, there is only life or death and it touches everyone. We can align ourselves with one side or the other and take comfort from those who side with us. We know from experience that if we look the other way long enough the pain, anger and sorrow will subside at least until we're shocked again by a horrific tragedy. Or we can decide it is time "people begin protecting people" by coming together to create solutions to lessen these horrific tragedies.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
Where is my Romney yard sign?
Living in a swing state I am subjected to a constant stream of shock and disbelief from conservatives every time some fresh air seeps into their bubble. For about the past week it has been bewilderment over why Obama ads have dominated the airways, how the liberal media is in the tank for Obama and how the only poll that matters is Nov 6th which is often countered with the polls are skewed by the liberal media. This of course is all mixed in with the normal rhetoric of The President being a Muslim, a socialist hell bent on destroying America, etc. The one that got me thinking though was a simple post on a message board by a person wondering why they hadn't received their Romney yard sign yet.
If the Romney campaign isn't spending their money on advertising and yard signs, where are they spending it? It was time to do a little digging on the FEC's website (http://www.fec.gov/) and in the course I discovered what might be the greatest lie the liberally biased media has ever told. Conservatives know the media loves the left and nothing ever reported should be trusted, but for some reason when it is something that they desperately want to be true they swallow it hook, line and sinker. So what is this grand media lie that has now been exposed? Candidate Mitt Romney is getting absolutely crushed when it comes to fund raising! You see, when the media is reporting on the money advantage the Republicans have they are looking at TOTAL Republican dollars versus TOTAL Democratic dollars. When you look at just the money the campaigns have raised it shows a vastly different story and probably goes a long way toward explaining why Romney is rapidly losing ground.
Let's take a look at the math... to aid in the process I am going to refer to the Washington Post's site on campaign fundraising and spending (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/campaign-finance/). YES I know they are a liberal rag, but they do a nice job of summarizing the data from the FEC filings. From their site you'll see The Democrats (The President) have raised $779M and Republicans (Mitt Romney) have raised $784M through September 21st, which is pretty consistent to what you here throughout the media regarding Romney's fundraising prowles. However when you look at just Barack versus Mitt, the numbers tell a dramatically different story. The President has raised $441M (56% of the Democrats total) versus Mitt Romney who has only raised $284M (36% of the Republican total). Yes, The President has raised 50% more money than Mitt who also had the misfortune of having to spend a lot of his money during the primary season. Before you fire off the email, YES you do need to include the RNC fund raising in the mix because during a contested primary season many people will give to the party instead of an individual candidate because winning the election is more important than the individual candidate. That does close The President's fundraising advantage, but not by much. The difference is in the money donated to the Super Pacs and their respective affiliations where the Republicans claim a $100M advantage.
So if the total dollars are near equal why does it matter where they come from? Well I am glad you asked. Let's start with the easy math. According to the WP site, $40M of the $100M super pac advantage came from Sheldon Adelson. If you recall he was basically the sole financier of Newt's Presidential bid, so the bulk of that "Republican money" was spent AGAINST Mitt Romney. You see, donations to various different groups provide the money to get THEIR message out which may or may not be supportive of the candidates message. This is why the Romney campaign seems to be all over the board when it comes to a message, because they do not directly control the bulk of the messages being put out.
Digging a little deeper, you also see another troubling fact for the Romney Campaign... Republicans really don't like him enough to donate to his campaign. Sorry, but this is one of those "hard truths" Chris Cristy promised to tell you. Obama has raised nearly as much from contributors donating $200 or less than what Mitt has raised in total! The President has nearly 4 times the number of individuals willing to donate to his campaign than Mr. Romney does. That's right, roughly 60% of The President's $441M has come from people donating $200 or less versus Mitt getting over 50% of his $284M from those donating $2000 or more. You can make a pretty strong argument just from this data that "rich people" really prefer Mitt Romney to Barack Obama.
Now we have a better understanding where the money is coming from, but I still haven't figured out why that poor person hasn't received their yard sign yet! It might be as simple as Facebook is the new yard sign, but last time I mentioned Facebook I got absolutely buried by the right dismissing it much like they have the skewed poll data. I won't bother getting into the math that shows Obama has the same advantage in "likes" as he does in under $200 contribution. Accepting Facebook isn't "the new yard sign", its time to dig into how the candidates are spending their money to see if we can figure out where this person's yard sign is at.
Time to head back to the FEC site to look at September's detailed spending for each candidate. Unfortunately their is no category called "yard signs" so this isn't going to be as easy as I thought. Wait, there is one called "Printing and Design Services" and Mitt spent a whopping $1.6M in September alone. Let's see how that compares with August... WOW it is more than 10 times what he spent on the same category in August. GREAT NEWS! Your yard signs are on the way... Ut oh, I see Mitt spent $4.7M in August on "Direct Mail Consulting" which makes me suspicious that Mitt's printing spend in September went toward junk mail instead of yard signs! Maybe we're just going to have to look at things from a higher level to see where those yard signs are.
The WP site tells me both "parties" spend roughly 47% of their money on advertising (I wonder if that is the 47% Mitt was referring too). Yard signs are a form of advertising right? Before we start breaking down the math, I should mention that all though the parties have raised near equal amounts the Democrats have spent roughly 15% more of their money than the Republicans. (You'll have to ask Karl Rove why he is hanging onto your dollars instead of spending them.) Let's see, of the $290m Dem's have spent of advertising 67% went a company called GMMB (http://www.gmmb.com/) a professional communication firm responsible for helping to create The President's message and another 20% spent with a company called The Bully Pulpit, who handles all of the online message creation and placement. Wow, 87% of the Dem's message being created by just 2 companies. Let's take a look at how the Republicans have spent their $249M. They spent 38% with a company called American Rambler Productions (https://arp.mediasilo.com/) and another 30% with a company called Mentzer Media. Oh, wait a minute, Mentzer media is the company the RNC uses to promote down ticket candidates, Mitt really doesn't spend too much with them. Let's see if this ARP is in the yard sign printing business. Not much info about ARP out there except they are in the media ad buying business and they are run by Eric Ferhnstrom and Stewart Stevens who are also Mitt's senior advisers. Let me get this straight, Mitt has outsourced his media buying to a company run by his staff? That sounds like an article in itself and might explain why they are getting crushed by GMMB in messaging, but it does little to explain what happened to the yard signs.
Let me try another angle... Time to look at the campaign websites for this key swing state to see if they can tell me what happened to the yard signs. Wow, Mitt has 36 campaign offices in a state with 88 counties. That should be enough to keep up with yard sign demand shouldn't it? The Republicans learned in 2010 that it is all about the ground game so they must be crushing the Democrats in terms of offices right? Ah... I guess not. It seems the Dem's just celebrated the opening of their 100th office in this key battleground state, but maybe it points to Romney's offices just being too overwhelmed to handle all the requests for yard signs.
There you have it... After HOURS of digging, I have NO idea why this person hasn't gotten their yard sign yet! But, I did find out some of the reasons why Mitt is slipping in the polls and why a victory in November is becoming increasingly less likely. Unfortunately for Mitt when it comes to the money, the numbers don't lie.
If the Romney campaign isn't spending their money on advertising and yard signs, where are they spending it? It was time to do a little digging on the FEC's website (http://www.fec.gov/) and in the course I discovered what might be the greatest lie the liberally biased media has ever told. Conservatives know the media loves the left and nothing ever reported should be trusted, but for some reason when it is something that they desperately want to be true they swallow it hook, line and sinker. So what is this grand media lie that has now been exposed? Candidate Mitt Romney is getting absolutely crushed when it comes to fund raising! You see, when the media is reporting on the money advantage the Republicans have they are looking at TOTAL Republican dollars versus TOTAL Democratic dollars. When you look at just the money the campaigns have raised it shows a vastly different story and probably goes a long way toward explaining why Romney is rapidly losing ground.
Let's take a look at the math... to aid in the process I am going to refer to the Washington Post's site on campaign fundraising and spending (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/campaign-finance/). YES I know they are a liberal rag, but they do a nice job of summarizing the data from the FEC filings. From their site you'll see The Democrats (The President) have raised $779M and Republicans (Mitt Romney) have raised $784M through September 21st, which is pretty consistent to what you here throughout the media regarding Romney's fundraising prowles. However when you look at just Barack versus Mitt, the numbers tell a dramatically different story. The President has raised $441M (56% of the Democrats total) versus Mitt Romney who has only raised $284M (36% of the Republican total). Yes, The President has raised 50% more money than Mitt who also had the misfortune of having to spend a lot of his money during the primary season. Before you fire off the email, YES you do need to include the RNC fund raising in the mix because during a contested primary season many people will give to the party instead of an individual candidate because winning the election is more important than the individual candidate. That does close The President's fundraising advantage, but not by much. The difference is in the money donated to the Super Pacs and their respective affiliations where the Republicans claim a $100M advantage.
So if the total dollars are near equal why does it matter where they come from? Well I am glad you asked. Let's start with the easy math. According to the WP site, $40M of the $100M super pac advantage came from Sheldon Adelson. If you recall he was basically the sole financier of Newt's Presidential bid, so the bulk of that "Republican money" was spent AGAINST Mitt Romney. You see, donations to various different groups provide the money to get THEIR message out which may or may not be supportive of the candidates message. This is why the Romney campaign seems to be all over the board when it comes to a message, because they do not directly control the bulk of the messages being put out.
Digging a little deeper, you also see another troubling fact for the Romney Campaign... Republicans really don't like him enough to donate to his campaign. Sorry, but this is one of those "hard truths" Chris Cristy promised to tell you. Obama has raised nearly as much from contributors donating $200 or less than what Mitt has raised in total! The President has nearly 4 times the number of individuals willing to donate to his campaign than Mr. Romney does. That's right, roughly 60% of The President's $441M has come from people donating $200 or less versus Mitt getting over 50% of his $284M from those donating $2000 or more. You can make a pretty strong argument just from this data that "rich people" really prefer Mitt Romney to Barack Obama.
Now we have a better understanding where the money is coming from, but I still haven't figured out why that poor person hasn't received their yard sign yet! It might be as simple as Facebook is the new yard sign, but last time I mentioned Facebook I got absolutely buried by the right dismissing it much like they have the skewed poll data. I won't bother getting into the math that shows Obama has the same advantage in "likes" as he does in under $200 contribution. Accepting Facebook isn't "the new yard sign", its time to dig into how the candidates are spending their money to see if we can figure out where this person's yard sign is at.
Time to head back to the FEC site to look at September's detailed spending for each candidate. Unfortunately their is no category called "yard signs" so this isn't going to be as easy as I thought. Wait, there is one called "Printing and Design Services" and Mitt spent a whopping $1.6M in September alone. Let's see how that compares with August... WOW it is more than 10 times what he spent on the same category in August. GREAT NEWS! Your yard signs are on the way... Ut oh, I see Mitt spent $4.7M in August on "Direct Mail Consulting" which makes me suspicious that Mitt's printing spend in September went toward junk mail instead of yard signs! Maybe we're just going to have to look at things from a higher level to see where those yard signs are.
The WP site tells me both "parties" spend roughly 47% of their money on advertising (I wonder if that is the 47% Mitt was referring too). Yard signs are a form of advertising right? Before we start breaking down the math, I should mention that all though the parties have raised near equal amounts the Democrats have spent roughly 15% more of their money than the Republicans. (You'll have to ask Karl Rove why he is hanging onto your dollars instead of spending them.) Let's see, of the $290m Dem's have spent of advertising 67% went a company called GMMB (http://www.gmmb.com/) a professional communication firm responsible for helping to create The President's message and another 20% spent with a company called The Bully Pulpit, who handles all of the online message creation and placement. Wow, 87% of the Dem's message being created by just 2 companies. Let's take a look at how the Republicans have spent their $249M. They spent 38% with a company called American Rambler Productions (https://arp.mediasilo.com/) and another 30% with a company called Mentzer Media. Oh, wait a minute, Mentzer media is the company the RNC uses to promote down ticket candidates, Mitt really doesn't spend too much with them. Let's see if this ARP is in the yard sign printing business. Not much info about ARP out there except they are in the media ad buying business and they are run by Eric Ferhnstrom and Stewart Stevens who are also Mitt's senior advisers. Let me get this straight, Mitt has outsourced his media buying to a company run by his staff? That sounds like an article in itself and might explain why they are getting crushed by GMMB in messaging, but it does little to explain what happened to the yard signs.
Let me try another angle... Time to look at the campaign websites for this key swing state to see if they can tell me what happened to the yard signs. Wow, Mitt has 36 campaign offices in a state with 88 counties. That should be enough to keep up with yard sign demand shouldn't it? The Republicans learned in 2010 that it is all about the ground game so they must be crushing the Democrats in terms of offices right? Ah... I guess not. It seems the Dem's just celebrated the opening of their 100th office in this key battleground state, but maybe it points to Romney's offices just being too overwhelmed to handle all the requests for yard signs.
There you have it... After HOURS of digging, I have NO idea why this person hasn't gotten their yard sign yet! But, I did find out some of the reasons why Mitt is slipping in the polls and why a victory in November is becoming increasingly less likely. Unfortunately for Mitt when it comes to the money, the numbers don't lie.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Mitt Romney gets Democrats to admit he pays too much in taxes
Like most everyone else, I got my first look at Mitt Romney's 2011 Tax Return today and a bullet point style letter prepared by PWC summarizing 20 years of returns (http://www.mittromney.com/disclosure/letter-from-pwc). Given PWC's history of being accused of signing fraudulent tax documents and agreeing to pay large sums of money to settle those charges I have no doubt that they would not jeopardize their integrity by writing a summary letter stating what a Presidential candidate asked them to state. I also won't get into the fact that capital gains taxes were much higher during the first 10 years of period than the last 10 years so the fact he paid an average tax over 20% isn't all that surprising or relevant. Instead, I want to focus on his generous charitable contributions.
The $4,020,772 he gave to charity last year is impressive and undoubtedly provided great benefits to those who received them. I would even venture to say it provided more benefit than it would have if he paid taxes on it as income instead of donating it. Much of it probably went to the 47% of Americans who pay no federal taxes. Honestly, I am not sure why he isn't praising these people instead of demonizing them. He himself proudly stated earlier this year "I pay all of the taxes I am legally required to pay and not a dollar more". Why can't the 47% be equally as proud of paying all the taxes they are legally required to pay? But I digress... I want to stay focused on his generous charitable contributions.
The piece I want to focus on is the additional roughly $250k Mitt was generous enough to donate to the Federal government! Yes, you read that correctly, Mitt only claimed $2.25M of his $4M of charitable donations which in turn amounted to him giving the Federal government a $250k donation. I'll show my work for those who want to follow the math... $4M - $2.25M = $1.75M * 14.1% effective tax rate = $250k (yes, I am rounding for convenience and effect). Now the cynical side wants to say Mitt did this so Democrats would scream "Mitt paid too much in taxes" which many have already started championing. These are going to make for great commercials this fall.
However, I think the reason for this donation goes much deeper and even further than his campaign's statement that this was done so Mitt could continue to stand behind his claim that "in the past 10 years I have never paid an effective tax rate below 13%". I will let you do the math on this one, but if Mitt took the entire $4M deduction he was entitled to it would have dropped his effective tax rate below 13%. I believe this donation is part of Mitt's grand plan to balance the budget and cut taxes at the same time. If Mitt is able to convince the other 5.1M millionaires in the US to make this same donation it would generate $1.3 TRILLION in additional revenue. If you are wondering why that $1.3T number sounds familiar to you, it is the same number Hal Mason reports in his budget dilemma video as the budget deficit for 2012.
Let me be the first to say, Mitt Romney has done his part to solve the budget deficit and hopefully he can convince the other 5.1M millionaires to follow his example. If he can do that he will get this Democrats vote!
The $4,020,772 he gave to charity last year is impressive and undoubtedly provided great benefits to those who received them. I would even venture to say it provided more benefit than it would have if he paid taxes on it as income instead of donating it. Much of it probably went to the 47% of Americans who pay no federal taxes. Honestly, I am not sure why he isn't praising these people instead of demonizing them. He himself proudly stated earlier this year "I pay all of the taxes I am legally required to pay and not a dollar more". Why can't the 47% be equally as proud of paying all the taxes they are legally required to pay? But I digress... I want to stay focused on his generous charitable contributions.
The piece I want to focus on is the additional roughly $250k Mitt was generous enough to donate to the Federal government! Yes, you read that correctly, Mitt only claimed $2.25M of his $4M of charitable donations which in turn amounted to him giving the Federal government a $250k donation. I'll show my work for those who want to follow the math... $4M - $2.25M = $1.75M * 14.1% effective tax rate = $250k (yes, I am rounding for convenience and effect). Now the cynical side wants to say Mitt did this so Democrats would scream "Mitt paid too much in taxes" which many have already started championing. These are going to make for great commercials this fall.
However, I think the reason for this donation goes much deeper and even further than his campaign's statement that this was done so Mitt could continue to stand behind his claim that "in the past 10 years I have never paid an effective tax rate below 13%". I will let you do the math on this one, but if Mitt took the entire $4M deduction he was entitled to it would have dropped his effective tax rate below 13%. I believe this donation is part of Mitt's grand plan to balance the budget and cut taxes at the same time. If Mitt is able to convince the other 5.1M millionaires in the US to make this same donation it would generate $1.3 TRILLION in additional revenue. If you are wondering why that $1.3T number sounds familiar to you, it is the same number Hal Mason reports in his budget dilemma video as the budget deficit for 2012.
Let me be the first to say, Mitt Romney has done his part to solve the budget deficit and hopefully he can convince the other 5.1M millionaires to follow his example. If he can do that he will get this Democrats vote!
Monday, September 10, 2012
The sky is blue!
A while back I got into a huge argument with one of my close friends. We went back and forth for quite a while with each of us growing more and more frustrated with the other by the minute. Finally he screamed "I'M DONE, you would disagree with me on anything just to cause an argument!" I responded with "that's not true" which sent him into a further tirade because again I disagreed with him.
Finally he said "The sky is blue" and I replied "you're right". He smiled and said "at least we can agree on the sky being blue, I guess there is hope for us yet". I should have just left it at that but for some reason I let my mouth open and out came... "No, I don't agree with you that the sky is blue, I agree that I would disagree with you if you said "the sky is blue"". After a long series of expletives he stormed off saying he wasn't going to waste anymore time with someone who wouldn't listen to facts and reason. Not to be out done, I yelled back that it was impossible to have a conversation with someone that changes their opinion more often than the weather!
That night I couldn't sleep as I continued to replay the argument over and over in my head. Was he right? Did I not really believe my point of view and just wanted to argue with him? Was I unwilling to change my opinion even after presented with facts and reason? Finally about 3:00 AM I couldn't take it any longer and knew I would never get any sleep if I didn't make things right with him. I dialed his number and asked just one question... "Now what color do you think the sky is?"
Finally he said "The sky is blue" and I replied "you're right". He smiled and said "at least we can agree on the sky being blue, I guess there is hope for us yet". I should have just left it at that but for some reason I let my mouth open and out came... "No, I don't agree with you that the sky is blue, I agree that I would disagree with you if you said "the sky is blue"". After a long series of expletives he stormed off saying he wasn't going to waste anymore time with someone who wouldn't listen to facts and reason. Not to be out done, I yelled back that it was impossible to have a conversation with someone that changes their opinion more often than the weather!
That night I couldn't sleep as I continued to replay the argument over and over in my head. Was he right? Did I not really believe my point of view and just wanted to argue with him? Was I unwilling to change my opinion even after presented with facts and reason? Finally about 3:00 AM I couldn't take it any longer and knew I would never get any sleep if I didn't make things right with him. I dialed his number and asked just one question... "Now what color do you think the sky is?"
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Hal Mason pretends to explain the United States Budget Dilemma
I can't think of a better topic to relaunch this site with than this little nugget from Hal. The video claims to be ALARMING! and at first glance I was even alarmed. I mean wholly crap there is no way for the US to ever balance the budget! However the images of the twin towers exploding seemed a little over the top for any life long accountant I know and when I saw it was being posted on every conservative website the jig was up. Time to do the math (a phrase I often use because it for some reason drives some of my "friends" to near levels of insanity).
I stumbled through the same process Hal laid out in his presentation and arrived at the exact same conclusion! I was truly horrified, but something still didn't seem quite right (actually it seemed to far right to be true). I buy into the concept that "numbers don't lie", but my 25 years of business experience told me that presenters often distort them. Time to dig a little deeper and flip through a couple more pages of the 2013 budget... what a minute, if this is the 2013 budget why is Hal asking us to take a look at the 2012 numbers? Umm, this very first summary table on page 205 of the budget seems interesting. It shows revenue as a % of GDP for 2012 at 15.8% and then growing steadily to slightly over 20% over the next 10 years. That is pretty interesting, I wonder if I looked at 2022 or even 2013 it would show me a budget that was able to be balanced without eliminating the entire federal government? Guess what... Hal picked 2012 because his entire premise falls apart if you use 2013 (from the 2013 budget proposal).
Having spent some time recently sharping my skills with the puppets from the right I knew this wasn't going to be enough. I needed to go deeper and do some more math. Time to see what the historical average was for revenue as a percent of GDP. Let's see, my Google search shows... ooh, something on the Heritage.org website . Tough to dismiss this one as "a liberal rag in the tank for Obama". Even better, it is a chart used to defend extending the Bush tax cuts! I will let you see for yourself what they have to say (http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/current-tax-receipts). So the recession was the cause for the current low revenue and as the growth returns revenue will return to slightly above the historical 18.2% average with all Bush's tax cuts extended. I am guessing the President's budget doesn't reflect all of Bush's cuts being extended and that's why he shows it just over 20% which coincidentally is the same level in 2000, a year before Bush took office, but I'll let you do your own math on it.
Now that we see Hal intentionally mislead us (no such thing as an "honest mistake" for a career accountant posting a youtube video using images of a national tragedy for emphasis), let's get back to the real problem which our debt currently stands at over $16 trillion and will grow to over $25 trillion by 2022 according to the President's budget. Note, even Paul Ryan's plan doesn't produce a balanced budget until 2040. Bottom line, we need to find a fix for our mandatory budget items (medicare, medicaid, social security, etc) so they are self funding, cut our discretionary spending (basically funding for the entire federal government, including defense) and further INCREASE revenues (yeah that means more taxes). A little bit of irony as it is the exact same prescription Hal gave us!
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