On her campaign Web site, www.sheaporter.com, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter makes this sweeping statement: “The high cost of Education is forcing many Americans into a permanent underclass.”
Really?
Actually, as the liberal Pew Trusts found in a study of income mobility released earlier this year, “The vast majority of individuals, 71 percent, whose parents were in the bottom half of the income distribution actually improved their rankings relative to their parents.”
The No. 1 factor associated with upward mobility? Test scores. Both white and minority children from low-income families tended to make significant gains in economic mobility, provided they had high test scores.
The real test of access to higher education is not the cost of college, which does hurt, but whether students actually get educated in high school. As Jay Green of the Manhattan Institute found, “Only 70% of all students in public high schools graduate, and only 32% of all students leave high school qualified to attend four-year colleges.”
He found that “there is not a large population of college-ready graduates who are prevented from actually attending college.”
Rather, too many kids are so poorly educated in their public schools that they cannot even consider college as an option. They simply don’t qualify for admittance.
In sum, Shea-Porter is completely wrong. The great majority of people who grow up in the bottom half of the income distribution move up the economic ladder. And poor-quality primary and secondary education, not college costs, keep the remainder behind.
Obama’s Unity hug-fest with Hillary Clinton was nothing but symbolism. I’m told it looked fabulous on TV. As Ben Smith notes, it got a ton of coverage without providing any real news. But live, it was a dreadful event.
Because Unity is such a small town, there was no place for everyone to park. The campaign set up off-site parking in Newport and Claremont, and attendees had to ride buses in. People arrived from as far as Massachusetts, as early as 6 a.m. to get good seats to the 1 p.m. event. When I caught the bus from Claremont at close to 10, there was a huge line of people waiting to be carted over to Unity, and when we got there, the security checkpoint bottlenecked everyone, creating more long, slow lines.
Despite the heat (it was close to 90 degrees), the only water available to the crowd had to be purchased. I saw a child who had to be carried out during the event, and a few elderly women who had to leave and find shade as the SIX speeches droned on and on.
Though everyone came to see Obama and Clinton, the campaign let Carol Shea-Porter, Paul Hodes and Jeanne Shaheen give speeches while the crowd baked. Gov. John Lynch spoke briefly, which was appropriate, and the “honorary mayor of Unity,” a Republican, spoke. With so many speeches, someone should have vetted them to make sure each speaker was making different points. But no, we got essentially the same speech five times, with the guy from Unity giving the only one that sounded any different.
When Obama and Clinton finally came on stage 15 minutes late, the crowd was thrilled. Clinton gave a good performance, flashing her smile a great deal, laughing, and acting chummy. But there was no real chemistry between the two, and the hugs and back-pats looked a little too awkward. It was as if we were watching an insufficiently rehearsed community theater play on opening night. Obama was pretty good. If he’d been anyone else, I think a lot of people would’ve said it was a well-delivered speech. But we know how high he can go, and for him it was a solid but not a spectacular performance. And the people came to see spectacular.
Still, the crowd enjoyed the message (even if the speeches could’ve been written by a computer program designed to pump out Democratic Party speeches for any random candidate) and the mesengers, and it seemed to end on a high note — until the rain started.
The rain began about 10 minutes after Obama and Clinton left the stage, and this is where the poor planning really showed. There was nowhere for the thousands of people to go. They were all in line waiting for the shuttle buses, and the campaign had provided no tents for people to dodge the sun and rain. So thousands of people stood in a thunderstorm while the shuttle buses slowly and methodically took maybe 50 at a time the 15 minutes back to the parking lots.
I happened to get out on the first media bus. I got a report from the scene a few hours later: Elderly people cursing Obama staffers, infants and children exhausted, soaked and overheated, and hundreds still waiting for a bus ride back to their cars. The campaign finally handed out free water to impatient, upset attendees who had been waiting more than an hour to catch the bus back to their cars.
Here’s why this matters. The campaign easily could have chosen to hold this event in Chicago or Manchester or in any place that could have accommodated a large crowd. But it chose Unity for the symbolism, knowing that the logistics were awful. Then it didn’t limit tickest to a number that could be trucked in and out in a timely manner should anything go wrong. So for the sake of symbolism, the Obama campaign knowingly inconvenienced thousands of people, putting the elderly and children at risk, and didn’t adequately plan for their removal from the site.
This is a campaign that imagines it can achieve an effective, rapid withdrawal from Iraq, but it doesn’t even have a competent exit strategy for Unity, New Hampshire.
Yep, she sure looks happy.
I’ve been here at the Obama/Clinton rally in Unity for two hours now, and I don’t know about anyone else here, but I’m done with the hippie music.
If you had any doubts that Obama’s whole mojo is the ’60’s with reverb, this event will shred those doubts. The band just played Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Really. I can’t wait to get in my car and put in “Give Em Enough Rope” for the ride back.
Rep. Carol Shea-Porter has left no wiggle room for herself this time. She just released a statement on the D.C. v. Heller case in which she says only this:
“The Supreme Court has spoken. While I have always supported individual gun rights, I agreed with the Bush administration that there should be some standards. The Supreme Court, however, sided with Vice President Cheney and others.”
If you believe that she has “always supported individual gun rights,” you will believe anything. Shea-Porter believes government can, as Washington, D.C., did, prohibit individuals from OWNING firearms. That, by definition, violates the 2nd Amendment. Therefore, she cannot possibly support individual gun rights.
Come on, Carol, give us a break. Just admit that you don’t think individuals have a right to keep or bear firearms.
Jeanne Shaheen blasts hedge funds and “speculators” every chance she gets, blaming them for high oil and gas prices. But oil prices are high for a variety of reasons, including higher worldwide demand and the weakened dollar. (Notice that she never attacks Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. He’s not as convenient a scapegoat.)
Oil industry expert Daniel Yergin, testifying before Congress on Wednesday, was asked about the role of speculators and hedge funds. He said they’ve had some impact on prices, but said blaming them would be inaccurate. He also said (pay attention here, Jeanne) that hedge funds have HELPED some companies stay alive amid skyrocketing oil prices.
Southwest Airlines, he said, hedged on oil and was able to avoid the big spike in prices.
“If they can’t hedge, they would be in even worse shape,” he said. “So I think that removing liquidity from the market would not be a good thing to do.”
Hey, that’s what we wrote in a June 1 editorial.
Reps. Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter have voted 98 percent of the time with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership in the U.S. House, the Concord Monitor has found.
Laughably, Paul Hodes responds by calling his voting record “independent.” Independent of what?
Hodes and Shea-Porter knocked their opponents in 2006 — Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley — for being in lock-step with GOP leadership. If I remember correctly, Hodes actually called Bass “Charlie Bush.” And Shea-Porter’s campaign often referred to the “Bush-Bradley” team.
But as the Monitor points out, “Both Hodes and Shea-Porter have voted more consistently with their party’s leadership than the men they ousted in the 2006 election. Hodes’s predecessor, Charlie Bass, voted with Republican leadership 88 percent of the time in his final term in office. Shea-Porter’s predecessor, Jeb Bradley, also voted with the Republican leaders 88 percent of the time. (Bradley is a candidate in this year’s GOP primary for Shea-Porter’s seat.)”
Hodes and Shea-Porter now have to defend themselves against the same charges they leveled at their opponents last time — being leadership lackeys. And that defense is going to be awfully hard when they couldn’t oppose Pelosi more than 2 percent of the time. Suggesting that Nancy Pelosi represents New Hampshire values is going to be a really hard sell.
This is just weird. Some Republicans are criticizing state Republican Party Chairman Fergus Cullen for defending the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Cullen told Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. that he was OK with Sen. John McCain praising Democratic Gov. John Lynch and not mentioning the word “Republican” once during his recent speech in New Hampshire.
“I consider that good politics in this environment,” Cullen said. “If the Democrats succeed in framing this election as Bush’s third term or as a referendum on the Republican Party, my party is in big trouble. You remember the scene in the first ‘Star Wars’ when Princess Leia says to Obi-Wan Kenobi, ‘You’re my only hope’? That’s how I feel about John McCain.”
So Cullen acknowledges the obvious fact that voters are in a pro-bipartisan, anti-Republican mood, and he praises McCain for being a good candidate for his party in this particularly tough year for Republicans, and some Republicans criticize him for that?
Hmm, I thought it was the GOP chairman’s job to praise his party’s nominee.
I know, Cullen could have puffed up his party with the “we’re going to win, the Democrats are out of touch” talk. But you know what? Despite the fact that political operatives think this is the way to address the media at all times, it’s often a better strategy to be frank with reporters.
Cullen didn’t spout a bunch of obvious spin that the experienced Dionne would’ve seen through in an instant. By highlighting the potentially broad appeal McCain has, Cullen was playing up his nominee’s strengths. John Lynch has similarly broad appeal, by the way, and if McCain can win votes by rubbing elbows with the very popular Lynch, how is that bad for Republicans, who, let’s face it, don’t have a strong challenger for the governor this year?
Republicans who pretend that their party’s brand isn’t significantly damaged are hurting, not helping, their cause.
And besides, how would the party chairman have helped by attacking the party’s (popular, by the way) nominee? There’s no way to finesse the issue. Had Cullen criticized McCain, the story would’ve been: State GOP chairman hits McCain for being nice to John Lynch. How does that help McCain or the state party? A large reason Republicans in New Hampshire were swept two years ago was because the voters perceived them as being more interested in promoting their party’s interests than the public’s interests.
And who is more likely to bring new voters to the GOP this year: John McCain or Joe Kenney? Any Republican who thinks his party will be helped by tearing down John McCain to build up Joe Kenney is not thinking clearly about this race.
Rep. Carol Shea-Porter is getting her bad ideas on oil drilling from somewhere, and judging by the company she keeps in Washington, it’s pretty clear where.
When she announced that she was cosponsoring the bill to fine oil companies if they didn’t drill on the federal land they had leased (the already are required to start drilling within 10 years — the maximum life of a lease), she listed the bill’s primary sponsors: Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Nick Rahall, D-WV, Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., and Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.
Hinchey, in a press conference this week, said the federal government should nationalize oil refineries.
“We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market,” he said.
We wrote in an editorial this week that fining oil companies for not developing all of their leased federal land was maybe the dumbest idea to come out of Washington in recent memory. Well, Hinchey has now topped that.
I asked Shea-Porter’s office what she thought about Hinchey’s idea. Thankfully, she does not support it.
Three cheers for Boston’s privately funded pro sports teams, that is. Courtesy of the New York Sun.
(HT: Club for Growth.)
If Congress is going to slap a windfall profits tax on “Big Oil,” shouldn’t it be consistent and slap the same tax on the 57 other industries that have higher profit margins than “Big Oil”?
Washington would have to squeeze steel makers, shoe makers, and brewers. And you thought Barack Obama had a hard enough time attracting blue collar votes. On CNBC, Sen. Chris Dodd even suggested he’d be for a windfall tax for all those industries because, you know, we’re about to enter a recession and all.
State Republican Party Chairman Fergus Cullen said to day that the party has a full slate of 24 state Senate candidates and 364 House candidates vying for 324 House seats.
Not bad for a party that was supposed to be decimated.
It’s a shame Craig Benson or another top-tier gubernatorial candidate didn’t emerge to challenge John Lynch. I can understand why. Lynch remains very popular. But he is vulnerable this year, and a strong Republican candidate could have helped the rest of the ticket.
