Monday, August 15, 2011

Obama’s Approval Rating Hits Record Low

President Obama’s job approval rating for the first 10 days of August was 4 percentage points lower than it was in the first week of July, significantly less of a drop than the 19-point decline in Gallup's Economic Confidence Index over the same period.

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Last week’s 42% average was the lowest of his administration. In terms of the Gallup Daily tracking three-day average that Gallup routinely reports, Obama hit a new low of 40% last week, but by Tuesday of last week the three day rolling average was back up to 42 percent.

However, by Sunday August 14, Obama's three day average approval of the president's job performance had dropped to 39 percent, while 54 percent disapprove.

Both figures are the worst numbers of his presidency.

Austin Chronicle: The Perry Trap

Governor Rick Perry may be new on the national stage, but he's old news in Austin. Over the two decades of his political career, The Austin Chronicle has charted his rise to power.

The Chronicle collected their most insightful stories about Perry's political career – and it hasn't all been secession talk and laser-sighted pistols. The Chronicle's writers have examined his links to big business and big donors, his indiscriminate use of the death penalty, how he's flirted (or bedded down) with every conservative movement from the Religious Right to the Tea Party, and loads more.

Read about Gov. Perry's accomplishments in The Austin Chronicle.

Krugman: The Texas Unmiracle

By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: August 11, 2011 @ The NYTimes

If [Perry] wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it’s often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.

So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.

It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008.

Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict [state government] regulation of mortgage lending. (emphasis added) Link

Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.

In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act.

So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.

Read the rest of the Krugman's OpEd @ The NYTimes