I think it depends on the case. There are some community organizers who do the work for very selfless reasons, and are selfless in the way they carry it out. There are others that don't do it that way. I guess the job itself doesn't have to be selfless, but it can be.
I work on the data side of community organizing. I can tell you from personal experience, if you added up the hours that an organizer works and divided by their salary, they'll make less than minimum wage. The average organizer for a typical NGO will make maybe $2000 a month. And you're working well beyond 40 hours a week. And some will get far less if they're working for smaller, less funded NGOs. I myself am lucky enough to make a more than that but even I turned down my old job which was paying me more. I do what I do because I want to elect people that will do the right thing for this country. This campaign to dismiss community organizers is so ridiculous. The work that they do is incredibly hard and the monetary rewards for their work dont match up at all.
What? How is Romney behind in both the state he was raised and the state he governed? Of the 4 big EV states, Obama's at +26 in CA, +24 in NY, tied in FL, and -7 in Texas. In the next tier, he is +21 in IL, +6 in PA, +5 in OH, +5 in MI, -3 in NC, and -7 in GA. And to think this map is a Rovian product. I'm betting that Obama wins the popular vote.
AZ a tossup? The two Carolinas tossups? TX only "leaning" towards Romney. I think Rove is playing games with this map.
It does show the problems Romney has, though. Even if Obama loses every tossup state on that map, he wins with 290 votes. Obama could even also lose one big "lean Obama" state like Ohio or PA on this map and he would still win.
Good Call, he would concede nothing without an ulterior purpose. * In Texas, we are getting ads for Railroad Commissioner that are running against Obama. It's like a conserve off, who is absolutely the most conservative?
Nope not shocking at all. Obama is going hard for Arizona. They have a huge operation going on in Arizona right now. They're already blasting the state with ads. They've got a whole set of paid organizers on the ground, and all of the other staff you need for a big time operation. Arizona is this years North Carolina. They made it a point to target a couple of states that Republicans would take for granted and try to win them (North Carolina and Indiana in 2008) Arizona is this years version. Do not be shocked if they make some magic happen there. Its all about voter registration over there. As for the Carolinas, South Carolina is surprising but that is an anomaly. They'll vote Romney by a healthy number in November. North Carolina is like Virginia. Its a red state that is turning blue due to demographic trends. I still think North Carolina will vote Romney by a fairly comfortable margin but it will definitely be close. OFA has a strong team in North Carolina this time around as well and like 2008, it will be focused on turning out the youth vote. And as for Texas, it isnt that surprising. Texas never voted as heavily red as the rest of the south until Bush ran for office and even then that's not really fair considering Bush was a popular governor from Texas. Not to mention Texas's demographic differences from the rest of the deep south and the fact that over 70% of its population growth comes from minorities and you can see why Texas doesn't vote quite the same way as the rest of the South. In fact if you look at 1992 and 1996, Clinton lost by 3 and 5 percentage points respectively. Now Obama has no chance at getting those types of numbers but give it a good 20 years and Texas will be a swing state.
You make an excellent point. People forget that Texas used to be heavily Democratic, and elected a liberal Democratic Senator, Ralph Yarborough, in a special election to fill the seat vacated by Price Daniel in 1957 when he became governor. Yarborough then went on to win two full terms as Senator, serving until he was beaten by moderate conservative Lloyd Bentsen in the primary. I've said it here before, and I'll say it again... the worm will turn.
When I look at those maps, I always look at the red states and think to myself that those are the states I'd never want to live in to begin with.... (except for Texas and maybe Idaho)
He's enough of a consultant that he "respects" polling; back before Republicans owned state government that was probably all he could rely on for success. He also remembers that the biggest Texas cities can't elect GOP mayors.
Polling? There isn't any significant state polling going on yet. It's way too early as people are only beginning to pay attention and figure out who Mitt the Romney is. This is about fundraising plane and simple. If Rove hits the panic button showing a tighter race, he can claim that they need money urgently to help shore up the base and stay competitive.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2012/05/14/poll-romney-leads-over-obama.html Romney leads Obama in one poll: 46 to 43.
How does one begin to have a reasoned, adult conversation about important issues of the day when one side of the discussion is completely divorced from reality? Romney’s Budget Fairy Tale In the real world, the following things are true: The budget deficit was projected to top $1 trillion even before President Obama took office, and that was when forecasters were still radically underestimating the depth of the 2008 crash. Obama did propose temporary deficit-increasing measures, an economic approach endorsed in its general contours, if not its particulars, by Romney’s economists. These measures contributed a relatively small proportion to the deficit, and their effect is short-lived. Obama instead focused on longer-term measures to reduce the deficit, including comprehensive health-care reform projected to reduce deficits by a trillion dollars in its second decade. Obama put forward a budget plan that would stabilize the debt as a percentage of the economy. Obama has hoped to achieve deeper long-term deficit reduction by striking bipartisan deals with Congress, and he has tried to achieve this goal by openly endorsing a bipartisan deficit plan in the Senate and privately agreeing to a more conservative plan with John Boehner, both of which were killed by Republican opposition to any higher revenue. The story told by Romney is one in which all of these things are either untrue or could not possibly be true.
It's too bad the news media doesn't ask Romney the question... Why do you this austerity will work here when it's been disastrous for Europe?
Mitt Romney Debt Speech Ignores Key Facts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ch-inferno_n_1519253.html?igoogle=1?igoogle=1 WASHINGTON (AP) — When Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney decried the "prairie fire" of U.S. debt Tuesday, he ignored some of the sparks that set it ablaze. One was the Great Recession that took hold before Barack Obama became president. That landmark event went unmentioned in Romney's speech. Another was a series of Bush-era tax cuts that Romney wants to follow with even lower rates. Instead he laid the blame on Obama, a president who has certainly increased the nation's eye-popping debt — but not, as Romney claimed, by nearly as much as all other presidents combined. A look at some of Romney's assertions and how they compare with the facts: ___ ROMNEY: "America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs. Instead, he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of your dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined." THE FACTS. Hardly. Presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush ran the national debt up to $10.62 trillion, the amount it was on the day Obama took office. Today, it is $15.67 trillion, according to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt. So it has gone up by $5.05 trillion under Obama. That's roughly half of the amount amassed by all the other presidents combined. In short, the debt has gone up by about half under Obama. Under Ronald Reagan, it tripled. ___ ROMNEY: "I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno. We will stop borrowing unfathomable sums of money we can't even imagine, from foreign countries we'll never even visit. I will bring us together to put out the fire." THE FACTS: Romney's tax and spending plans don't support his vow to dampen the debt fire. He proposes to cut taxes and expand the armed forces, putting yet more stress on the budget, and his promise to slash domestic spending isn't backed by the big specifics. Romney's tax plan would cut the top income tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent and other rates by 20 percent each. He says he'd broaden the tax base and eliminate many deductions in the process, but details are missing. A study by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded earlier this year that Romney's plans would not make a dent in deficits, and could worsen them considerably. That study was done before Romney upped his tax cuts, inviting even deeper debt. That's not to say he can't at some point lay out the spending cuts necessary to achieve his aims. But he would have to slash domestic programs by more than 20 percent — far more than the 5 percent in immediate cuts he has proposed. It is nearly unthinkable that Congress would approve the evisceration of basic federal functions such as food inspection, air traffic control, the Border Patrol, FBI, grants to local governments, health research, housing and heating aid for the poor, food aid for pregnant women, national parks and much more. Nowhere in Tuesday's speech was there a new idea of how Romney would accomplish the promised deficit reduction. He spoke generally of reforming Social Security and Medicare, eliminating duplicative government programs, and transferring some functions to the states or the private sector, adding that he would "streamline everything that's left." The closest he has come to laying out a specific spending plan has been in his endorsement of the budget blueprint passed this year by House Republicans, which also fails to produce his promised deficit reductions. ___ ROMNEY: "The people of Iowa and America have watched President Obama for nearly four years, much of that time with Congress controlled by his own party. And rather than put out the spending fire, he has fed the fire. He has spent more and borrowed more. ... When you add up his policies, this president has increased the national debt by $5 trillion." THE FACTS: Much of the increase in the debt is due to lower tax revenues from depressed corporate and individual incomes and high joblessness in the worst recession since the Great Depression. The recession officially began in December 2007, when George W. Bush was president and the national debt stood at just over $9 trillion. Financial bailouts, stimulus programs and auto rescue spending that started under Bush and continued under Obama contributed to the run-up of the debt. But so did the Bush-era tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. With bipartisan support, Congress has extended the tax cuts until the end of this year, and Romney's proposals for big cuts of his own would risk another squeeze on revenue. To be sure, Obama as a presidential candidate in 2008 was just as eager as Romney is now to pin blame for mounting debt on a president from the other party. Ignoring economic circumstances and the role of both parties in Congress, Obama accused President George W. Bush in that campaign of driving up debt by $4 trillion "by his lonesome" and taking out "a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children."
