Fivethirtyeight.com: Introducing Partisan Propensity Index (PPI)

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com introduces us to his new Partisan Propensity Index (PPI) to predict which way an open House seat will fall in a midterm election.

At least that's what I think it predicts. I'm always amazed at Silver's ability to crunch numbers and I generally digest them pretty well but this new index makes me wish I did better than a B+ in College Statistics.

Blue Jersey has a pretty good explanation of Nate Silver's new metric and how it impacts Congressional races specifically in New Jersey.

Why do I feel like Glenn Beck is secretly proud of this guy?

The clock is ticking, and this is starting to get out of hand...

"It takes a thief to catch a thief."

This article on CNBC.com reminds me of FDR's reasoning for naming Joe Kennedy, Sr. as the first head of the SEC:

"It takes a thief to catch a thief."

Corporate Profits = Jobs? No, not really (but CEO's want you to think that's true.)

In a column on his website, RobertReich.org, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration and current professor at UC-Berkeley Robert Reich writes about why corporate profits have nothing to do with job growth. The one point he made that jumped out at me was the following:

“Corporations are using their pile of money to pay dividends to their shareholders and buy back their own stock - thereby pushing up share prices.”

This is something I have noticed for years. I always wondered why companies that reported consistent quarterly profits from 2004-2007 always tended to have more downsizing periods than hiring periods. They're boosting the income of their higher end shareholders at the expense of their much lower-end employees that have to scrape by to make ends meet in this job market of exploited employees.

This has always been my personal argument against the Bush Tax Cuts as well. I have no problem with wealthy individuals getting a tax break so long as they’re creating jobs with those tax breaks. If a job is being created, let them get the tax credit for it. I still don’t get the argument that tax cuts spur job growth and tax revenue through the actions of that multi-millionaire takes the extra $50,000 or $60,000 in his pocket each year and buys his 2nd or 3rd yacht with it rather than hire a new employee for $30,000 a year.

President Wyclef Jean?

Stranger things have happened!

Update on the Indian-Americans Running in 2010

If you read my blog post from July 7th, I mentioned a handful of Indian-Americans running for major elected offices across the United States. Just to give you an update, all but one of the candidates that I named in my post have either won their party's primary election or is running uncontested in an upcoming primary election. The only exception is Reshma Saujani, who is facing the nine-term incumbant Carolyn Maloney in the Democratic primary on September 14th for New York's 14th Congressional District.

Also, Politico recently ran an article about the Indian American Leadership Initiative. It wasn't a very long or detailed article about the IALI but I'm sure the publicity from a major Washington publication can't hurt!

Some good-natured fun at the expense of Democrats and Republicans

Ben Schott's blog at The New York Times, Schott's Vocab, offers some good-natured fun from celebrities and readers poking fun at both Democrats and Republicans. An example from conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke: “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.”

E N J O Y ! ! !

News and Political Highlights of the Week

Since I haven't had a chance to blog in the past few days, here are some key highlights of the week (except Shirley Sherrod, who should just be left alone by everyone that threw her under the bus this week):

- President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Bill, enacting one of the largest regulatory reforms of the financial sector since the Great Depression. This post on New York Times' Dealbook blog has a great breakdown of the Dodd-Frank Act. If you want an interactive explanation, this interactive at the Washington Post is fun, easy to understand, and the pictures are too cute to ignore. (My favorites are the Derivatives panic people and the Regulators raising their hands to be picked.) Also on financial reform, Zach Carter writes in The Huffington Post about "Wall Street Reform: Five Key Fights After the Bill Is Signed"

- Elana Kagan passed the Senate Judiciary vote this week, with only one Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, voting for her confirmation. The Hill has the text of Sen. Graham's statement. What's more telling though are the hateful comments from the readers at the bottom of the page. If you want an idea of how extreme our politics have gotten, read Graham's gracious statement and the venomous replies to them from readers.

- Some fantastic opinion pieces worth reading this week:
In Politico this week, Robert Borosage had an excellent opinion piece about the lack of leaders in DC, from the perspective of leadership as a personality trait rather than a formal position of authority. Here is an especially poignant excerpt:
"This country must build a new economic foundation — revive cutting-edge manufacturing, modernize infrastructure, revitalize education and training, invest in research and development, find ways to shackle speculation and drive private investment into longer-term horizons and empower workers to gain a fair share of the productivity they help generate."

Anne Applebaum of The Washington Post wrote about how people's words and actions can be in direct conflict with each other in a column titled, "A government of the people's every wish?"

Hopefully I can blog during the week. Otherwise, I'll check in next weekend! Have a great week!!!

The "New" Indian Rupee

If you saw this blog post from March 2009, The Rachel Maddow Show did a story on how the Indian Rupee has no international symbol like the dollar, pound sterling, or yen. There was a contest to create a new Rupee symbol and the winner and symbol were announced today.

Congratulations Indian Rupee! And welcome to the international community of depressed currencies!

NYTimes: The Class War We Need by Ross Douthat

Okay, so I'm not in the habit of complimenting conservatives so this is a bit new to me. Ross Douthat makes some good points in his column in today's New York Times. Though I rarely, if ever, agree with Mr. Douthat, one positive thing I can say about him is he's not your typical over-the-top flame-throwing conservative. He actually "disagrees without being disagreeable", as President Obama would say.

One nice piece of criticism he levies on Republicans is the following:
"...conservatives need to recognize that the most pernicious sort of redistribution isn’t from the successful to the poor. It’s from savers to speculators, from outsiders to insiders, and from the industrious middle class to the reckless, unproductive rich."

Happy reading!

Appeal to take firm action on those who perpetrated senseless and brutal murder of Dr. Divyendu Sinha Petition

Appeal to take firm action on those who perpetrated senseless and brutal murder of Dr. Divyendu Sinha Petition

Can we ever develop a culture of responsibility?

Was John Edwards on to something? Regardless of what you think of John Edwards the person or John Edwards the trial lawyer, John Edwards the politician may have been on to something with his focus on The Two Americas, one America for the wealthy and one America for everyone else. Reuters’ Chrystia Freeland (formerly of The Financial Times and a frequent guest on all of the cable news outlets) pens a blog post titled America’s two-speed economy, quite similar to Edwards’ concept of the Two Americas.

The quote from this piece that stands out is the one that essentially sums up our problem in a nutshell:
Yet [CEO of Applied Materials Michael] Splinter’s critique contained its own contradictions: on one hand, he called on the government to spend more on R&D and education, but his chief complaint was that “frankly, our tax rate is not competitive” and that it was likely to increase.

Unless we change our culture from one of entitlement to one of responsibility, the fear of America turning into Brazil, which was raised in the article, will become a reality. It was harsh to use Brazil as an example, considering Brazil has a booming economy and Brazilian companies are buying American companies very aggressively. That said, there is known to be a wide income gap between rich and poor in Brazil (as I’ve witnessed firsthand in India, the other country mentioned in the Slate article.) I’m not knowledgeable enough about it to discuss the culture of responsibility in Brazil but I know whenever there is any talk of communal responsibility versus individual liberties in the United States, we hear misplaced screams of socialism and communism from the right. I’m all for individualism but we have to develop a mindset that we hold our individual pursuits in check if they come at the expense of the society in which we live.

This requires ethical standards, that cannot be applied by a government policy, to become the social norm. Unfortunately ethics are usually not profitable and therein lies the rub. Thoughts?

I'm on my high-speed rail bandwagon again...

To be more accurate, rather than climb onto a bandwagon, I'd rather be on high-speed rail without having to leave the United States. A couple of great posts recently on Huffington Post about this topic:

• Chris Matthews writes about how high-speed rail construction can help improve our crumbling infrastructure and provide vital construction jobs at the same time.
• John Robbins writes about how we Americans tend to thumb our noses at public transportation, which is a phenomenon created by automakers and oil companies conspiring to drive people from the rails to publicly subsidized and built roads and highways.

Indian-Americans on the 2010 American Political Scene

By now, even the most apolitical person has seen the Indian-American Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. And many people have also heard the name of Nikki Haley, the Republican candidate for Governor of South Carolina, who jumped from last to first in the Republican field after an endorsement from a certain former Governor of Alaska. In a recent opinion piece in The Daily Beast, Tunku Varadarajan writes that Jindal and Haley are "exploding racial attitudes-and why the Dems don't get it."

I guess when Varadarajan wasn't paying attention, the Boston Globe and Christian Science Monitor were both paying attention. The Boston Globe ran this article titled Record number of Indian-Americans seeking office, while the Christian Science Monitor ran The rise of the Indian-American candidate, as Nikki Haley and others run. Contradicting Varadarajan's claim of how the Democrats "don't get it", the articles point out that there are actually SIX Democratic candidates for the United States House of Representatives and an organizations like the Indian American Leadership Initiative and US India Political Action Committee are actively promoting Indian-Americans on the political scene.

The Indian-Americans running for Congress are:
Dr. Manan Trivedi (PA - 6th District)
Reshma Saujani (NY - 14th)
Raj Goyle (KS -4th)
Dr. Ami Bera (CA - 3rd)
Ravi Sangisetty (LA - 3rd)
Surya Yalamanchili (OH - 2nd)

Also, one of the rising stars in the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris, is considered the favorite to win as California's Attorney General. Harris is the daughter of a Black father and Indian mother and has often been spoken of as a future presidential candidate in Democratic circles.

So even though the two most prominent Indian-American politicians are Republicans, they are clearly outnumbered by the Democrats this year. And regardless of your political affiliation, it is important to see Americans of all shapes and stripes making their own impact on our great American democratic experiment that has existed for 234 years and counting!

Jeb Bush and Robert D. Putnam: A better welcome for our immigrants

Dare I say it? I wholeheartedly agree with Jeb Bush?

Alaska Republican Congressman: Time to get moving on high-speed rail

Alaksa's House Representative, Don Young, wrote this great piece in Politico recently about the need for the United States to build a new high-speed rail infrastructure. What's interesting is Congressman Young is a Republican, so this isn't what the political right would typically call a left-wing tax-and-spend/government works scheme. The Congressman clearly lays out the needs in terms of reducing energy usage (specifically fossil fuels) and improving transportation capabilities by easing congestion on roads and airlines. Please read it and tell me what you think.Thanks!

Stephen Colbert's "Tryout" with the New York Knicks - Part Deux

Here is the continuation of Stephen Colbert's Knicks tryout, where he "beats" Allan Houston in a game of one-on-one.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Basketcase - Stephie's Knicks Hoop-De-Doo Pt. 2
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News