Governor Ed Rendell and Senator Bob Casey call for a Unified Democratic Party in PA

Dear Fellow Democrat,

As we approach the final stretch of what has been the most exciting nomination process in recent history, one thing is for certain: Each of our stellar candidates will be ready to assume the presidency from the first day in office and promises to perform much better than what we've had in this country for the past eight years.

The failed policies of the Bush Administration will be behind us and either Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama will be in the White House if we make sure everyone is on board this fall as we muster all of our support and enthusiasm behind the Democratic nominee.


















While we worked diligently for our respective candidates this past spring in Pennsylvania, we strongly agree that each of us will support the Democratic nominee and will campaign tirelessly across the Commonwealth for him or her. Make no mistake about it, we care deeply about Pennsylvania and the nation. We are mired in an unpopular war that is costing us $12 billion a month and affecting us dramatically at the gas pumps as Pennsylvanians continue to pay astronomical amounts per gallon. We are also staunchly against further tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while our working families continue to struggle with health care costs or continue to exist without it. And we are ready to begin a new period of economic prosperity in Pennsylvania as Bush and his tired leadership begins to fade.

Unfortunately, a clone of Bush is ready to take his place in Sen. John McCain. We simply cannot afford a third Bush term in McCain. He offers no solutions for Iraq, except to commit to another 100 years, and he flip-flopped on Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest. John McCain is not the straight talker that he projects himself to be. We won't be fooled by his Double Talk express that has rolled into many of our communities. Instead, we promise to work together to ensure that we don't elect "McSame" this fall.

In fact, we promise to work together to ensure we elect a Democrat.

Now, we need your help. As we move forward as a unified Democratic Party, let us agree that as Democrats we have a responsibility to our state and our nation to work tirelessly for our nominee. We have one million more Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania. Apparently, our friends and neighbors feel very strongly about the Democratic Party and have made their voices known by either switching from another party or registering for the first time. That alone should inspire us.

As the top elected officials in Pennsylvania, we promise to lead our troops this fall in a UNIFIED fashion that will bring home another resounding victory for the Keystone State, for our nominee and for our country.

Sincerely,
Governor Edward G. Rendell
Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr.

Follow the Bezos: Sell AMZN, buy used, and save money for gas

What is the real impact of high gas prices on our economy?

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos confirmed my gut feeling from the other day when he sold 2.2 million shares of his company's stock (AMZN) last week. Mr Bezos sees the writing on the wall - as the price of oil goes up, Americans will have less and less money to spend on books, CDs, and other entertainment goods at his store, the wonderful Amazon.com. How do I know this? While I was shopping at a friendly neighborhood used book store last week, I noticed something different in my spending patterns of late. With the cost of gas being so high, $60 to fill up my tank now, I'm looking for ways to curb my expenditures in other areas. One area is reducing the amount of disposable income that I spend on things like books. I am an avid book reader and a self diagnosed Amazon.com junkie. I purchase several books each month, and while I try to avoid spending full retail price on a book at Barnes & Noble or Borders, I occasionally make the spontaneous off line purchase as well, even though I spend way more money on new books at Amazon.com - that is, until recently. That money is now being spent at the used books stores, where I can get an almost-as-good-as-new $30 hardcover book at a fraction of the cost. Just last week, I stumbled upon a used book sale at my public library in Mt Lebanon. I purchased half a dozen books, including a hardcover edition of David McCullough's gem, TRUMAN, for only $12.25.

So, what impact does this have on our economy? While my dollars are no longer going to the bottom line of Amazon or Barnes and Nobles, I am offsetting my increase in spending on gas by saving on my book expenditures. That is good news to me, although, in reality, its a wash. I still spend the same amount of money with the difference being the amount I spend on good A (gas) versus good B (book). Here is the problem with this scenario: instead of sending that to a US based company, my money is basically being transferred up the oil supply chain, from the gas station, to the refinery, and then to the producers, who sell their oil to our refineries through the commodities exchange. With the exception of federal and state gas taxes ($3 and change), and the slivers of margin per gallon taken by each party in the supply chain (retail, refinery, distribution, traders), most of that $60 ($40?) is going to going to the OPEC nations, who can then use my money to purchase US assets, such as US Treasury notes, whose issuance to foreign entities will continue to do two things A). fund our war and our presence in Iraq, which will almost certainly help to keep oil prices high and B). ensure that the US Dollar is weak, which will help to keep oil prices high and rising as our dollars value declines further

If others are doing the same thing I am - buying used or recycled goods and spending less on new goods and more on gasoline, what is the impact on our economy? Does anyone see how this scenario is leading the us to dig a deeper and deeper hole for ourselves as a nation?

At $120 a barrel of oil we can keep blaming Exxon all we want but quite frankly they only have control of a small amount of the oil that we import each day. The right tells us that we need to start drilling for more oil domestically. We can drill for new oil reserves off our shores or in the national parks all we want - that's not going to change the equation. Supply is limited by how fast the producers can find new reserves and also by the violence that disrupts operations in places like Iran, Iraq, and Nigeria. I used to blame it on our lack of investment in domestic refineries, but our refineries here in the US are at 85% of capacity, which is lower than it was a few years ago. So what is going to give? We need to face it - we have very little control over the price of oil - there are too many moving parts involved in the process - oil refineries, terrorists, OPEC, traders, - somewhere along the line something is going to trip up the process and cause the price of oil go go higher.

As Dr. Lester Lave said in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette this past weekend, the era of cheap energy is over. The only cure to end this toxic cycle is to end our cycle of dependence on foreign oil. We must come up with a plan to stop importing oil - I don't care if that plan costs a trillion dollars. This is something we need to do for our national security, for our economy, and for the health and welfare of our children and the environment that they will inherit. This issue is a prime example of why I believe that change, more than experience, more than anything, is the most important thing for voters to consider when they go to the polls to select their next president this November.


disclaimer: I own individual shares of Amazon but not enough to worry about a downturn in the economy, so I'm staying long baby!

Mayor Rudy Clay - Prophet?

Back in late March, Gary Indiana mayor Rudy Clay said the following to the media:

"We've got this title that Gary people don't vote," Gary Mayor Rudy Clay said to the crowd. "It's going to be eliminated because Gary is going to register more people than have ever registered before."

During Indiana's primary, Gary will be a name on the lips of newscasters on CNN, he said.

"They are going to point at Indiana and say Hillary Clinton is leading by one point but Gary ain't come in yet," Clay said.

It is 12:35am. Hillary Clinton is up by 16,000 + votes, a margin of less than 2%. 5% of the vote in the state of Indiana has yet to report. Absentee ballots from Lake County Indiana have not been counted. There is 46% of the Lake County vote outstanding. Mayor Clay called this back on March 30th. Mayor Clay - you da man!

Hillary Clinton to Paul Krugman and other economists: I don't care for your "elite opinions"

This morning on ABC's This Week, George Stephanopoulos asked Hillary Clinton if she could name a single economist who backs her call for a gas tax holiday this summer, Clinton replied "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists.” She basically went on to say that the government has followed the "elite opinions" of economists like her very own support Paul Krugman for too long and, even though every economist polled was against her gas tax proposal, said that she was going to go forward with her proposal to lift the federal gas tax.

From the great Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at Cal and President Clinton's Secretary of Labor:

In case you’ve missed it, we now have a president who doesn’t care what most economists think. George W. Bush doesn’t even care what scientists think. He rejects all experts who disagree with his politics. This has led to some extraordinarily stupid policies.

I’m not saying HRC is George Bush. And I'm not suggesting economists have all the answers. But when economists tell a president or a presidential candidate that his or her idea is dumb – and when all respectable economists around America agree that it’s a dumb idea – it’s probably wise for the president or presidential candidate to listen. When the president or candidate doesn’t, and proudly defends the policy by saying she's "not going to put my lot in with economists,” we’ve got a problem, folks.


Andrew Sullivan weighs in, asking "Does the dismissal of expert opinion remind you of anyone?"

Here is the clip from This Week.

Bloomberg: McClinton gas tax holiday "the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time."

Earlier today NY Observer's Azi Paybarah asked Bloomberg his thoughts on the gas tax holiday:

“It’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time from an economic point of view. I don’t understand why you think there’s any merit to it whatsoever. We’re trying to discourage people from driving and we’re trying to end our energy dependence. We don’t do that -- oh, and incidentally, we’re trying to have more money to build infrastructure. All three of those things go fly in the face of giving everybody $30 a year. The $30 bucks is not going to change anybody’s lifestyle. The billions of dollars that we would otherwise have in tax revenues can make a big difference as to what kind of a world we leave our children.”

Bloomberg praised officials who opposed the “summer break on gasoline taxes which would help Chavez, Qaddafi and other people like that. I don’t know why anybody would want to do it.” He went on to say critics like Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver were right. "And," he added, "[Barack] Obama was right on this one, and that [John] McCain and [Hillary] Clinton were wrong. The last thing we need to do is encourage people to drive more and to take away the monies we need for infrastructure in this country."

So Obama's the elitist?

"You know what...rich people, god bless us..."

The Democratic Primary in 7 Minutes

The Gas Tax Holiday proposed by McCain and Clinton is a terrible idea

Both Senator McCain and Senator Clinton offered a 3 month federal gas tax holiday as their solution to ease the pain felt by Americans at the pump this summer. Both Senators chastised Barack Obama for his refusal to support this proposal, which in my opinion is nothing more than pandering to the American public. Why is it pandering? Because it does nothing to reduce the price of gasoline and adds very little to the wallets of the average American. Assuming you fill up your tank once per week (16 gallons), 13 weeks of the tax holiday would save you $38.27. Compare that to the estimated $9 or $10 billion in lost tax revenues for the federal government that are used to repair our highways and bridges. Another point to consider - how many jobs does this cost American workers?

A better idea that will actually reduce the price of oil and gasoline is to start buying back US Treasuries which have been used to finance the Iraq War. The constant flooding of US dollars on the foreign market throughout the Bush years has led to a steep decline in the US Dollar since 2001. The dollar's steep decline isn't the only thing that has led to the high price of crude oil, increased demand and supply disruptions have played a big part of the spike, but a real effort to strengthen our dollar would lead to lower prices at the pump, since an strong dollar would make it cheaper for us to import oil from abroad.

Another idea that would help if oil prices continue to rise throughout the summer - start pumping out some of the oil in the strategic petroleum reserve. Some politicians have argued that President Bush should have the government stop purchasing oil on the open market, as the federal government adds oil to the reserves every month. However, the government's purchase of oil isn't big enough to have a real impact on the price of oil, however, supplying US refineries with oil from the SPR could have an impact on stabilizing or even lowering gas prices here in the US this summer.

Last point - these are only short term strategies to reduce the price of gasoline. The candidates need to come up with real plans for moving beyond our dependence on foreign oil. Corn ethanol is not the solution - but billions of dollars have already been spent there. Investments in technologies for plug-in hybrid vehicle technologies and cellulosic ethanol are the things our government needs to get behind if we are ever to break our dependence on countries that are threats to our national security.

Below - the US Dollar Index, year 2000 to present


Note: A number of bloggers agree had somethig similar to say on the gax tax holiday proposal. Here are a few:

Friedman: Dumb as We Wanna Be
Fallows: stupidest moment in policy ever?
Wired Magazine: Smart Politics, Stupid Policy
Huff Post: Expert Support for Gas Tax Holiday appear Nonexistent

8.8% <> 10%

I just heard an interview on the Post-Gazette's website where Clinton backer and Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato and Obama supporter Cliff Levine discussed Senator Clinton winning Allegheny County by "ten points." This is crap. The margin of victory is 8.8% with 1 district left to report. Did the members of the Pittsburgh media bother to look up the results for themselves? I can see how Onorato would think that an 8.8 point margin is double digits, but what about the rest of the local media?

40 Philadelphia County Districts have not yet reported

Unofficial Returns
*** 9,212 out of 9,264 Districts (99.44%) Reporting Statewide ***

Philadelphia County
Link to County web site for Election Results
*** 1,641 out of 1,681 Districts (97.62%) Reporting Countywide ***

So 40 districts in Philadelphia have not been counted. Why the delay? Also, why is the Philadelphia County elections results page password protected?

I'm just saying, the race is not a 10 point or double digit victory for Clinton. When 100% of districts have reported will her lead even be over 9 percent? Right now Clinton's margin of victory is 9.2%. 40 Philadelphia County districts could lean very heavily towards Obama, making a slight dent in the final margin of victory for Clinton.

Not a double digit victory

Since when does 9.2 equal 10 points??!!

I just listened to Jon Delano and Marty Griffin discussing Hillary Clinton "cleaning Obama's clock" in yesterday's Pennsylvania primary. My question to them - can we get some perspective here? Yes, Obama outspent Clinton by 3 to 1, but he had a 22 point deficit when he started to campaign here in PA a little over a month ago. Obama ended up losing by LESS than 10% in a state where Clinton had the support of the Governor and his party establishment.

The official results are posted on the state's election website. They show that there are still some districts that have not reported. Worth noting is that those districts are in Chester County, which went for Obama, meaning the finally margin of victory of Clinton could end up less than the current margin of 9.2%.

No free speech in Mt Lebanon today.........

So this afternoon in Mt Lebanon I was out campaigning for Senator Obama and myself, since I am running as one of his convention delegates. I heard President Clinton was going to be making a stop at a polling place close by so I decided to check it out. Well, apparently, holding an Obama sign 15 feet from the former President of the United States is "rude" and it is something, according to one Mt Lebanon woman, that my mother would be ashamed of me for. I had two or three women upset with me for holding an Obama sign. I didn't yell or even say a peep to the President but that didn't stop these women from trying to take my sign away.

"Free speech? No way - you're being rude!" To them I said that they were being ridiculous. It was clear that haven't seen some of the events where people have heckled the President.

Anyways, I did have a chance to meet the President and tell him that we needed a united party come November. "That's my plan" he responded. He noticed my Obama button but didn't seem to mind. One thing I will say is that those who talked up the former Presidents knowledge of policy (I read about it in Bob Rubin's "In an uncertain World") were not exaggerating. Here you will see President Clinton spend a great deal of time answering a Mt Lebanon residents question on Health care reform. He doesn't always stay on topic but he does a great job of having an exchange with the questioner.