CJR's Campaign Desk praises AP's Scott Lindlaw for this:
Posted by DeLong at September 10, 2004 10:41 AM | TrackBackCNN.com - Bush talks of economic progress, warns of Kerry taxes - Sep 9, 2004: COLMAR, Pennsylvania (AP) -- President Bush on Thursday blamed the Clinton administration for the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and warned against backing the Democratic ticket in November because of a "hidden Kerry tax plan."
"In the last six months of the prior administration, more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. We're turning that around," said Bush, who cited the addition of 107,000 manufacturing jobs this year.
According to the Labor Department, the number of payroll jobs has grown by 1.7 million in the past 12 months, but the economy still has lost 913,000 positions since Bush took office in January 2001.
Democratic Sen. John Kerry has criticized Bush's economic record, including the job losses, a projected budget deficit of $422 billion for the year, increasing health care costs and poverty rates. Bush responded that Kerry will try to increase taxes.
"Raising taxes will be bad for our economy," the president told supporters near Philadelphia.
In fact, Kerry has proposed raising taxes on only the top 2 percent of wage earners while leaving cuts for the middle-class in place.
Bush campaigned in a state he lost in 2000 but is determined to win four years later. The battleground state offers 21 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win the presidency, and Bush has visited 36 times since taking office, more trips than to any other state.
The Republican incumbent argued that Kerry would dramatically increase government spending, but Bush did not mention that on his own watch, federal spending has mushroomed at the fastest pace in a decade, fueled by war and a surge in non-defense spending....
These folks beg to differ with GWB:
http://www.keystoneresearch.org/news/news.html
Posted by: praktike at September 10, 2004 11:23 AMI am so tired of reading bylines from one of only a few swing states while the rest of the country is ignored. I expect Bush and Kerry will have traversed every square mile of Pennsylvania and Ohio by the time this election is over. Don't the rest of us even exist? Even if you accept the twenty or so count of the swing states, that still leaves out thirty - a full 3/5 of them - that are unlikely to be visited or pandered to by a candidate.
The electoral college has to go. In addition to its other well-known flaws, it leads inevitably to huge distortions in national campaigns and our whole domestic policy (steel tariffs anyone?).
Posted by: LIsa at September 10, 2004 12:35 PMIf, as I've often read, 150,000 new jobs are needed each month to keep up with growth in the labor pool, doesn't that imply that the US has, in effect, lost 7.35 million jobs instead of 913,000?
(43 months * 150K) jobs that should have been created
+
132.4 million jobs in Jan. 2001
=============
138.85 million jobs that should exist now
131.5 million jobs today
-
138.85 million jobs that should exist
=============
(7.35 million) job deficit.
IANAE, so - are these numbers off the wall? Or is the Kerry campaign just failing to capitalize?
Posted by: curmudgeon at September 10, 2004 12:38 PMmakes since curmudgeon, since so many people are unemployed (9mil)
Has anyone crunched the numbers lately on Bush's own wish list? Of course, he can honestly claim that his proposals won't lead to "hidden" taxes -- since he intends to let the deficit suck it up.
Which is at odds, of course, with Bush's assurances that the deficit will be cut in half.
Posted by: Grumpy at September 10, 2004 02:07 PMThe media source (CNN) "balances" with a Dem spokeperson rather than Kerry, not to mention the photo in case some forget what Bush likes like. There is a 2 sentence caption of some disturbance at the very end of the article which mentioned some woman getting removed from the performance by being pulled by the hair.
Sometimes it IS worth reading these bulletins right to the end.
What - facts? Context??
I didn't know they could DO that!
Posted by: RT at September 10, 2004 05:37 PM