A few interesting statistical facts about this newspaper insert being put out by Mitt Romney:
Research from Scarborough Research found that ‘old-fashioned newspapers represent an undervalued political advertising opportunity’ because ‘newspaper readers are more likely to vote than users of other media.’
The annual survey of over 200,000 adults nationally found those who watch television most regularly in addition to those who read newspapers most regularly are more likely to vote, consume news and information about politics and tend to be older.
On the other hand, the heaviest internet users are likely to be younger and therefore less likely to vote, the study found.
The research also found ‘the partisan profile of national newspaper readers is slightly left of center, making it an effective vehicle to reach disaffected 2008 Obama voters and the older Reagan/Clinton ticket-splitter.’
They also included a crossword puzzle. It is only a cryptic crossword if you base your news on The New York Times or The Age:
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will create 12 million more ____
Since Obamacare, insurance rates ___ very fast
First name of the teenage girl whose life was saved by Mitt Romney
Obama’s message to small business (goes with 24 across)
Mitt Romney can __ the country out of the economic mess
Hmmm. A two word clue on “Obama’s message to small business”. Many possibilities come to mind, but I suspect they’re not the ones the Romney campaign included.
“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will create 12 million more [jobs]”
I always thought this was an odd thing to say. According to Romney, government doesn’t create jobs. He said so emphatically in the second debate.
Also, 12 million jobs created by 2016 is the figure predicted by two analyses regardless of who is president. So Romney’s promising to hit a target than is likely to happen anyway.
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 10:08 am
“I always thought this was an odd thing to say. According to Romney, government doesn’t create jobs. He said so emphatically in the second debate.”
So you missed the entire discussion of taxes in the debates then Jarrah?
Either you do you not realise that lowering taxes on business means they make more money, they grow along with the economy and employ more people, or you’re just trolling…
BTW – no answer to 24 across?
ugh
29 Oct 12 at 11:16 am
Jarrah
Ill type slowly so you can understand me.
Removing taxes/legislation will have the opposite effect as increasing taxes and legislation.
Its that simple.
It applies to all levels of government not just federal, and is the same in every country on earth.
Every time the government whacks on a tax, it costs jobs.
Every time the govenment adds a regulatory burden, it increases compliance costs, thus jobs.
Im not an absolutist who wants no regulation/taxes, but I think the optimum level of both was reached some decades ago.
thefrollickingmole
29 Oct 12 at 11:29 am
“Im not an absolutist who wants no regulation/taxes, but I think the optimum level of both was reached some decades ago.”
We are 100% in agreement on this. So don’t be a patronising.
“Its that simple.”
Why didn’t he say so? Instead, he says in one breath that government doesn’t create jobs, and in the next he says that government does create jobs. I know that flip-flopping is his MO, but that seems a little extreme even for Romney.
Plus, it’s hardly a great promise if Moody’s thinks it will happen under Obama as well.
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 11:43 am
Not so.
Everytime the government whacks a tax on wealth or on income it costs jobs.
Driftforge
29 Oct 12 at 12:16 pm
Jarrah
Im struggling to recall a position where you have called for less govenment spendiing. I may be being unfair, but I cant recall you calling for less regulation of any sector either.
Romney probably should have made it simpler, but if he was to do that the Democrats would go “the full Newman” in demonising him as a tool of plutocrats and hating starving children.
thefrollickingmole
29 Oct 12 at 12:19 pm
Jarrah. Do you remember Zandi’s boosting of the original stimulus package? We’re at the point where the choice is either continual stimulus or you start paying things back.
Drift.
An LVT of 30% would probably finish off our economy. It’s the least worst tax but you can stuff it up as well.
.
29 Oct 12 at 12:26 pm
“Im struggling to recall a position where you have called for less govenment spendiing. I may be being unfair, but I cant recall you calling for less regulation of any sector either.”
Possibly because on this blog it isn’t necessary to make the case. The few lefties that do visit here don’t give me much of a chance to argue for less spending and regulation. A few days ago I was able to, when someone brought up the NBN, for example. I’ve done the same for multiple subjects. While I don’t expect you to know that, I do hope you can refrain from baseless assumptions and engage my arguments on a case-by-case basis. I certainly try to do the same for others.
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 12:30 pm
30% of what?
I don’t think you can just go and impose an LVT – well you can, but that is just theft.
If you are going to undertake the conversion of something that is treated as a capital good currently, and change it (even paritally) to a licensing arrangement, the resultant capital loss has to be paid out.
We are dealing with changes to local rating schemes at the moment down here – the bureaucrats down south are proposing to screw things up for another generation by moving from AAV to CV – simply because that change is the ‘least disruptive’.
Even in that sort of redistribution, there is an argument for paying out variance; as soon as you do, any dissention is a matter of haggling, not a matter of coercion.
Driftforge
29 Oct 12 at 12:35 pm
Jarrah, the libertarian position is that economies prosper, and jobs multiply, in a low-taxing, low-regulatory and low-intervention environment.
Unfortunately the simple way to explain this is that ‘our policies create jobs.’ This is easily confused with the social-dem model, which is to use the government to create jobs by employing people directly.
Both sides promise more jobs, in a sense, but they are completely different strategies. So. Do you actually believe that Romney/Ryan are advocating ‘govenrment jobs’, or are you just dinging them for poorly articulating their worldview and policies?
dd
29 Oct 12 at 12:39 pm
“Jarrah, the libertarian position is that economies prosper, and jobs multiply, in a low-taxing, low-regulatory and low-intervention environment.”
Yes. Government action definitely has an impact on jobs, no question.
“Unfortunately the simple way to explain this is that ‘our policies create jobs.’”
But that’s not what Romney said, either time. First it was “governments don’t create jobs”, and then he promises to create jobs!
“Do you actually believe that Romney/Ryan are advocating ‘govenrment jobs’, or are you just dinging them for poorly articulating their worldview and policies?”
Neither. I suspect they want to appeal to small-government types like us by saying government doesn’t create jobs, and also appeal to those who think the federal government has control of the economy by promising to create jobs. It’s classic Romney – say anything to anyone. So far, it’s been reasonably effective. Whoever you are, you can point to a Romney statement that you like, and hope that he doesn’t really mean it when he says the opposite. Or believe he’s changed his mind to your preference, and that he won’t change his mind again.
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 1:10 pm
Another thing – barring any big or unexpected changes, 12 million jobs is the projected growth for the US on business-as-usual. So if Romney really believes his policies are so different to Obama’s, are so important and needed, are so beneficial to jobs growth, why on earth hasn’t he nominated a bigger number?
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 1:12 pm
Despite the dishonesty Romney’s plan is quite simple.
1 lower the base rates to the extent the reductions in deductions allow. This is good as it helps efficiency.
2. Eliminate Kenyancare and replace it with vouchers and block grants to the states.
3. Remove great swathes of Dodd Frank regulatory bullshit on the banks whle also eliminating the too big to fail bullshit.
4. Get rid of sarbanes oxley which inhibits start ups.. a large engine of jobs growth
5 remove impediments to energy production .
6 defang the EPA
Anyone who thinks Romney is lying about these growth supporting policies is a dishonest fucking iidiot. Romney believes in all these policies to hi core.
JC
29 Oct 12 at 1:35 pm
Another thing – barring any big or unexpected changes, 12 million jobs is the projected growth for the US on business-as-usual.
You keep repeating this, Jarrah, but I can’t imagine why you’d think that after four years in office and almost no new net jobs created*, suddenly Obama would turn around and create 12 million in his next term.
If he knows how to do this thing, why hasn’t he done it yet?
*Yes, he did try to tell us that he had created 4 million new jobs, but that wasn’t exactly true. Even CNN admits that.
sdog
29 Oct 12 at 1:51 pm
Crapology emanates from Jarrah the same way diarrhoea exploded from cholera victims.
Those suffering people succumbed from cholera or recovered but our eye-rolling as a result Jarrah’ tosh is seemingly never-ending
JamesK
29 Oct 12 at 2:19 pm
“he says in one breath that government doesn’t create jobs, and in the next he says that government does create jobs.”
He didn’t say that at all Jarrah. Government doesn’t create jobs – however, government can stand in the way of jobs being created through higher taxes and large amounts of red tape.
Romney was suggesting he’d get government out of the way of the job creation by reducing taxes and regulation.
Simple enough for you to understand now Jarrah?
ugh
29 Oct 12 at 2:21 pm
“I can’t imagine why you’d think that after four years in office and almost no new net jobs created*, suddenly Obama would turn around and create 12 million in his next term.”
It’s not me thinking that. I would be surprised if that eventuates.
“If he knows how to do this thing, why hasn’t he done it yet? ”
It’s like amnesia with you guys. Have you forgotten the freakin’ GFC already?
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 2:34 pm
“Romney was suggesting he’d get government out of the way of the job creation by reducing taxes and regulation.”
Yet time and time again, he says HE’S going to create jobs. This is having your cake and eating it too, as I allude to above.
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 2:35 pm
There have been a large number of private sector jobs created during the Obama period, but they have been offset by reductions in public sector employment at the state (not federal) level due to austerity measures.
Scapula
29 Oct 12 at 2:37 pm
All I want for Christmas is items 4 through 6.
brc
29 Oct 12 at 2:46 pm
Garbage
JamesK
29 Oct 12 at 2:49 pm
All this argument about who creates jobs, and the fact that Obama has had private sector jobs created.
Well, duh. A barely-functioning economy will still create jobs. It has to, just to keep up with population growth. Every year a new wave of people enter the workforce, and typically this is more than those who fall off at the other end through retirement or death. So an economy that doesn’t create private sector jobs at all is one that is probably already dead.
The point is – if you imagine the economy has a living thing that creates jobs as a normal part of going around – think of a chicken laying eggs – then socialist governments are always trying to stand on the throat of the economy, and control the types of jobs that it creates by threats and coercion. More ‘green jobs’, less energy jobs. More ‘social justice’ less, free enterprise.
A US economy that has the pressure taken off it’s throat for even a small time will start to create jobs like normal. It will probably even return to trend as all the shelved projects get re-started. That is the point. Just let people get on with it, and stop trying to central plan the whole thing. Then the jobs will come.
brc
29 Oct 12 at 2:51 pm
You’ve done nothing but troll this thread, JamesK. Go away.
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 2:51 pm
Thanks for participating on this thread James.
JC
29 Oct 12 at 3:51 pm
Jarrah you are really thumbing your nose at us if you have the hide to point out that politicians don’t create jobs (at best they can let them be created) and at the same time quote mark FUCKING zandi.
.
29 Oct 12 at 3:54 pm
Dot
John Taylor from Stanford brings Romney’s sorta pledge into proper perspective and gives Mark Fucking Zandi a well deserved upper cut to the balls.
Taylor is suggesting Romney’s policies would give the US economy its long awaited average recovery, that’s all that you wont see with the Kenyan.
JC
29 Oct 12 at 4:15 pm
“Yet time and time again, he says HE’S going to create jobs. This is having your cake and eating it too, as I allude to above.”
Rubbish – Romney is saying his policies will create jobs – you are putting words in his mouth to suit your argument.
ugh
29 Oct 12 at 7:53 pm
“you are putting words in his mouth to suit your argument.”
No, true to my analysis, it’s the opposite. His words are plain, but you are willing to make a reasonable re-interpretation because you’re partial to that perspective. And it certainly is reasonable, which is why I think you’re right, he can only mean that his policies are more conducive to job creation. If that were it, I wouldn’t even raise the issue.
However, he’s having a bob each way. In the second debate, he said – twice – that “government doesn’t create jobs”. Which, according to the reasonable interpretation of his 12-million-jobs statement which we both agree on, is wrong. Why would he contradict himself like that? Because it allows people partial to that kind of worldview – that government is hopeless, helpless, and only ever gets in the way – to make their own favourable interpretations of anything he says against that.
What he’s doing is giving disparate anchor statements to which everyone can attach their ideological lines in the face of contrary statements.
It’s flip-flopping elevated to an art form.
Jarrah
29 Oct 12 at 9:09 pm
Instapundit:
http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Boo-Obama-Halloween.jpg
DMS
29 Oct 12 at 11:02 pm
So you can’t be a narcissist and a misanthrope?
Scapula
29 Oct 12 at 11:20 pm
Jarrah, I really think you’re talking nonsense. The statement “governments don’t create jobs” and “my government will create more jobs” are not contradictory because they are not complete. They are summaries. One is of an economic reality, and one is of a policy reality (hoped for, at least).
You could say that one is ideological signalling and the other, policy priority signalling.
This is like pulling someone up because they said (of the weather) “It’s a bit of a shitty day” and later, when asked how their day went said “I had a great day”.
The simple fact is that “jobs” in this context is both appropriate and ambiguous.
Direct government employment can’t create net jobs across the economy: “Governments don’t create jobs”.
The government will pursue policy and legislative settings that set-up incentives (or remove disincentives) for job-seeking and job-creating as a higher priority than certain other functions of government that have been prioritised by the Dems, thus freeing up and/or diverting money flows towards productive employment, resulting in net jobs gained: “We will create jobs.”
wreckage
29 Oct 12 at 11:40 pm
“You could say that one is ideological signalling and the other, policy priority signalling.”
No, you (like many) are ignoring the plain wording because you’re able to interpret the statements through a particular ideological lens. Which is fine, as I’ve said. What’s not fine is that applying the same lens to both statements produces a contradiction.
Jarrah
30 Oct 12 at 12:43 am