Political Football

Many of us in Muscatine will be spending our summer and fall finding as many independent votes for MMM as we can.  Muscatine County Republicans voted overwhelmingly for MMM (almost 70% of the votes in a 4 candidate race) but Muscatine is almost equaly divided R / I / D – maybe slanted I at this point.

Although there was some talk of a mass voting movement to get D’s to cross over in the primary to vote for BVP, IMO the weaker candidate against Culver – I don’t think that happened much in Muscatine.  I know for a fact that some D’s switched to vote for MMM, but the ones I know about, I’m confident will vote for MMM in the general election.

The State GOP convention June 26, will be less stressful,  now that all of the federal races have been decided in the primary.  No one outside MMM’s team expected her to win with 51% of the vote but she has a very strong “ground game” and has worked extraordinarily hard for the last two years.

One of her opposing candidates insisted that she shouldn’t be nominated because she lost to Loebsack already (in 2008) but that is hogwash.  In 2008 she had very little name recognition, especially in LINN County.  During the Summer of 2008, everyone was more occupied with the eastern Iowa flooding than the election.  As I noted elsewhere – there were frequent times when we wanted her to make calls to raise campaign funds, and we found her helping with sandbags in one of the counties affected instead.

Hopefully this will also be a November election that sends a message to Washington about spending money and leadership.  We have seen NO leadership out of this White House.  Faced with his own “disaster” all this President is doing is calling out the lawyers.  How clear is that message.  This isn’t about coming together to solve a problem this is about pointing fingers.  Plenty of time to do that in the future, Mr. President.  We need to see some leadership. 

When other countries offered to help because they had experience in oil spills, why were they denied access?  My sense is this President’s decision making has been made in the favor of special interest groups (Unions especially) not in the favor of the American People.  Also, let’s look at what all elected people own in stock or have received in campaign contributions.  Campaign contributions typically favor those in power.  We hope to change at least one branch of goverment’s power base in November and send a message to the others.  “We’re mad as H3LL and we’re not going to take it any more!!!”

!!!Vote Miller-Meeks for Congress 2010!!!

(posted on the internet – this is not my original writing)

Your economics lesson of the day……
 
Explanation of Derivative Markets:

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around about Heidi’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit .

By providing her customers’ freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi’s gross sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Heidi’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Heidi’s bar.

Now, do you understand?

Here is the official tally for the CD2 Republican Primary.  and a photo by Wm Dahlsten  (Husband Curt and son Jonathon in the background) while MMM gives her Victory speech.  

The text of her speech is here I have a .wav file of her speech but I need to break it into two parts to post.  check back later for that.  BTW in this picture she’s standing on a “soap box” Senator Hahn built for her during her announcement tour with Mrs. Grassley last fall.  She had people sign the box when she took it with her around the District.

This is a very special candidate.  Starting her Health Care Forums in early 2009 with Rudy, seems like a life time ago but there will be another long slog until November.

The reason she won by such a decisive margin is – the same thing that happened to me happened to hundreds of people across the district.   I got emails from people I haven’t talked to in a year saying, “How’s ‘our gal’ doing – I’ve got new votes for her this election” or “I wish I could vote for her but still have family in Muscatine I will get to vote for her” or “I don’t vote in Primaries but I will for Dr. Miller-Meeks and I’ve been talking about her to friends”… 

After all her time on the campaign trail getting to know CD2 voters, answering emails at 1am, or her Tele Town Halls – at some point she stopped “getting” votes and people started getting them for her.  No other candidate had that strong grass roots support throughout the district.

6/09/10 update – I will write a more lengthy summary later but it looks like MMM lost WAYNE county – I think I have copied some bad data for WAYNE below.

Wayne’s current unofficial #s are  
MMM – 241
REED – 249
Gettemy – 41
Rathje – 26

so the WAYNE #s below are bogus.

and here is another good article.  Sorry for the confusion.

6/08/10

today’s votes for CD2

A lot of people worked hard in CD2 to get MMM the nomination.  Tonight her opponents said they would endorse her candidacy.  Thank you to everyone who helped.  Now for the harder task of unseating Mr. Loebsack!

and some good press HERE from the National Review Online

And a victory speech HERE.

She won all 15 counties, even LINN!

Here is a quick review of the movement of votes from 2008 to 2010.