Republished with Permission of Rasmussen Reports
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/generic_congressional_ballot

Monday, August 16, 2010

Republican candidates have jumped out to a record-setting 12-point lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot for the week ending Sunday, August 15, 2010. This is the biggest lead the GOP has held in over a decade of Rasmussen Reports surveying.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely Voters would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate, while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

Support for Republicans is up two points from the previous week, while support for Democrats dropped three points. Republicans have led on the Generic Congressional Ballot since June of last year, and their lead hasn’t fallen below five points since the beginning of December. Three times this year, they’ve posted a 10-point lead. Prior to this survey, GOP support since June 2009 has ranged from 41% to 47%. Support for Democrats in the same period has run from 35% to 40%.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Republicans back their party’s candidate, while 75% of Democrats support the candidate of their party. Voters not affiliated with either party prefer the GOP candidate by a 52% to 21% margin. Fifty-four percent (54%) of white voters favor the Republican, but 77% of African-Americans prefer the Democrat.

The number of Republicans in the United States slipped a point during July, while the number of unaffiliated voters gained a point. Overall, the numbers signal a high level of stability in the parties as there have been only modest shifts throughout 2010.

The Generic Ballot results were much different during the last two election cycles when Democrats regularly had large leads. When President Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, Democrats enjoyed a seven-point advantage. The two parties were very close through the spring of 2009, but in June, around the time Democrats began their campaign for health care reform, Republicans pulled ahead for good.

Most voters now believe the Democratic congressional agenda is extreme, while a plurality describe the Republican agenda as mainstream.

Most also think Obama and the average Democrat in Congress are more liberal, politically speaking, than they are.

With midterm elections less than three months away, nearly two-out-of-three voters (65%) remain at least somewhat angry at the current policies of the federal government, including 40% who are Very Angry. Only 23% think the government has the consent of the governed.

Support for repeal of the health care reform bill is at 60%, its highest level in over a month, while the number of voters who believe repeal will be good for the economy has reached a new high.

Voters overwhelmingly believe that most members of Congress are for sale, and over half think it’s at least somewhat likely that their own representative has been bought with cash or a campaign contribution.

Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters nationwide believe elections are fair to voters.

Seventy percent (70%) now expect politics in Washington, D.C. to be more partisan over the next year. That’s up four points from last month and the highest finding since Obama took office in January 2009.

Most Americans still oppose granting U.S. citizenship automatically to children born in America to illegal immigrants.

For the second week in a row, 30% of Likely Voters say the country is heading in the right direction.

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion polling information. We poll on a variety of topics in the fields of politics, business and lifestyle, updating our site’s content on a news cycle throughout the day, everyday. Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.

Disclaimer:
The Views and Opinions Expressed by the author are his or her opinions only and do not necessarily reflect those of Crown Equity Holdings Inc. or its agents, affiliates, officers, directors, staff, or contractors. The author at the time of this article did not own any shares or receive any consideration financial or otherwise from any company mentioned or referred to in the article.

A Commentary By Joe Conason

Republished with permission of Rasmussen Reports
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_joe_conason/the_racists_return

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Among the most revealing aspects of life during the Obama presidency is the panoply of responses to a black family in the White House. What made so many of us proud of our country on Jan. 20, 2009, has increasingly provoked expressions of hatred from the far right. That is troubling, but not nearly as troubling as the behavior of conservatives who excuse, embolden or simply pretend to ignore the bigots surrounding them.

Last spring, after unruly tea party protesters on Capitol Hill were accused of spewing racial epithets at civil rights hero John Lewis, an African-American congressman from Georgia, conservatives rose up in furious denial. Where was the proof? How could anyone suggest that racial prejudice lurks behind the festering right-wing hatred of President Obama (and his family)? Anger over that episode still lingers in certain quarters, motivating the deceptively edited video attack on Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP by a website called Big Government, Inc.

Even if the alleged assault on Lewis and other black congressmen did occur, argued prominent commentators on the right, it somehow only proved that there is no racism in America worthy of concern. A writer for National Review (the conservative magazine that historically opposed civil rights legislation) confided that the whole subject made him yawn:

“That these things are even remotely newsworthy leads me to one conclusion: Racism in America is dead. We had slavery, then we had Jim Crow-and now we have the occasional public utterance of a bad word. Real racism has been reduced to de minimis levels, while charges of racism seem to increase.”

But this summer has seen several loud and ugly outbursts of very real racism — including threats of violence against the president of the United States — that go well beyond the utterance of any single word. As if suffering from a facial tic, leading figures on the right cannot seem to suppress their inner Klansman these days.

Is there any other way to explain Glenn Beck’s crazed rant comparing the Obama administration to an old movie about a society where apes and chimpanzees dominate humans? What did the Fox News host mean, exactly, when he shrieked: “It’s like the damned Planet of the Apes. Nothing makes sense!” Is there any other way to explain the grotesque new best-seller by radio host Laura Ingraham, “The Obama Diaries,” where, among other things, she depicts first lady Michelle Obama eating ribs at every meal? Why would she feel the need to describe the president as “uppity” by putting the word in the mouth of his mother-in-law? No wonder Stephen Colbert taunted Ms. Ingraham to her face for “hideous and hackneyed racial stereotyping.”

Of course, these are only two of the more egregious instances in recent weeks of social poisoning that dates back well over a year. Symptoms can be seen across the country now, even in amusement parks and church carnivals, where small children are exposed to this spiritual sickness.

At the Big Time fair held by Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Roseto, Pa., last week, a game called “Alien Attack” featured “an image of a suited black man holding a health care bill and wearing a belt buckle with a presidential seal,” at which players were encouraged to aim their popguns. Anybody who hit the cardboard figure in the head or the heart could win a prize. Irvin L. Good Jr., owner of Goodtime Amusements, who is responsible for this disgusting garbage, denied that the figure represents Mr. Obama. “We’re not interpreting it as Obama,” the inaptly named huckster told a local newspaper. “The name of the game is Alien Leader. If you’re offended, that’s fine, we duly note that.”

Meanwhile on the New Jersey shore, patrons of the Seaside Heights boardwalk could hurl baseballs at a black, jug-eared Obama figurine, winning a prize if they managed to smash it. As seen in a video posted on the Gawker website, this object closely resembles the grinning “lawn jockey” statuettes that used to festoon suburban lawns in a less decent era.

Most conservatives were late in taking responsibility for their movement’s immoral opposition to civil rights. It is time for them to step up and denounce the racism that is again disfiguring our country in their name.

Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports.

The Views and Opinions Expressed by the author are his or her opinions only and do not necessarily reflect those of this Web-Site or its agents, affiliates, officers, directors, staff, or contractors. The author at the time of this article did not own any shares or receive any consideration financial or otherwise from any company or person mentioned or referred to in the article.

A Commentary By Debra J. Saunders

Republished with permission of Rasmussen Reports
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_debra_j_saunders/blood_diamonds_meet_u_n_swells

Friday, August 13, 2010

Prosecutors at the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague interrupted the trial of former Liberian leader Charles Taylor last week with some comic relief. They put supermodel Naomi Campbell on the stand to tie Taylor to the trade of “blood diamonds.”

Note to prosecutors: If your case hinges on a supermodel — one who says she never heard of “a country called Liberia” until she met Taylor at a 1997 charity dinner hosted by then-South African President Nelson Mandela — you probably are in over your head.

It also can’t help when she denies receiving any rocks from Taylor, and then coverage of the trial focuses on a celebrity catfight with Mia Farrow.

Aren’t you glad, American taxpayer, to know that you helped bankroll this exercise?

I don’t mean to trivialize the import of what prosecutors are trying to do. Taylor is accused of war crimes — murder, amputation, sexual slavery — committed by militias under his control. As many as 200,000 people died in Sierra Leone’s civil wars, which prosecutors contend were fueled by Taylor, his thugs and his money. Witnesses have told of savage murders, rapes, mutilations, decapitations, even cannibalism. Taylor has dismissed the charges as lies.

Given the severity of the 11 counts, you want the prosecutors to be righteous, the four judges to be focused and the defendant to be fearful of a guilty verdict.
But this is a U.N. trial, so forget all that. Think slow, costly and self-laudatory. Since the trial began in January 2008, Taylor has enjoyed a full life. He fathered a daughter, born in February. He converted to Judaism.

While prosecutors charge Taylor with having squirreled away millions, the court declared Taylor “partially indigent.” So in 2007, the court agreed to pay $100,000 per month for Taylor’s defense costs and related expenses.

As the International Enforcement Law Reporter noted, the then-prosecutor supported the move, noting, “It is important that justice be done and be seen to be done.”

I got the runaround from the State Department to the simple question: How much of the trial’s $20 million tab will be paid for by U.S. taxpayers?

As Doreen Carvajal reported in The New York Times in June, even France and Italy have complained about the cushy treatment of Taylor and other defendants. The court paid $16,000 for a family visit for one accused warlord’s wife and five children — including “air fare from Kinshasa, two hotel rooms for 15 nights, temporary medical insurance, passport and visa fees and a daily ‘dignity allowance’ of $24 for adults and $12 for children.”

The court granted another defendant $26,180 for “the entitlement of his children to visit their father” this year.

The court’s administrative registrar explained, “Yes, they have committed atrocities, but is the goal to reintegrate them back into society or is the goal to cut them off from society?”

Think about it. These men have been accused of massacring villages, yet Our Betters in Europe already are thinking about reintegrating them back into society.

And what happens if this trial ever ends and he’s convicted? The Times reports, “He faces an unspecified sentence in a British prison if convicted.” Taylor no doubt thinks about convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi’s release to Libya, and quakes in his slippers.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports.

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion polling information. We poll on a variety of topics in the fields of politics, business and lifestyle, updating our site’s content on a news cycle throughout the day, everyday. Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.

The Views and Opinions Expressed by the author are his or her opinions only and do not necessarily reflect those of this Web-Site or its agents, affiliates, officers, directors, staff, or contractors. The author at the time of this article did not own any shares or receive any consideration financial or otherwise from any company or person mentioned or referred to in the article.

A Commentary By Howard Rich

Republished with Permission of Rasmussen Reports
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_howard_rich/obama_s_transparency_charade_continues

Friday, August 13, 2010

The more things “change,” the more they stay the same in Barack Obama’s Washington, D.C. - especially when it comes to government transparency.

After decrying his predecessor as the “most secretive” President in American history, then-candidate Obama promised in 2008 to usher in a new era of transparency in our nation’s capital. Two years later however, this campaign rhetoric has proven every bit as hollow and hypocritical as Obama’s pledge to refrain from raising taxes on the middle class (which he violated at least a dozen times upon signing his new socialized medicine legislation).

Obama has talked a good game on transparency, but he has done far worse than fail to keep his promise and deliver a more open government - he has actually moved our country in the wrong direction.

On his first full day in office, Obama sent out a widely-publicized memo to government agencies regarding his views on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a collection of laws that exist to ensure public access to public documents.

“All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government,” Obama wrote.

While Obama’s words were praised by both the legacy media and open government advocates, the truth is his administration’s actions have made it more difficult for citizens to access public documents.

In fact, according to a March 2010 Associated Press analysis of FOIA responses at 17 major agencies, 466,872 FOIA denials were issued during the Obama administration’s first year in office - a 50 percent increase over the previous year. Also, a March 2010 study by George Washington University’s National Security Archive found that two-thirds of federal agencies ignored Obama’s memo and made no changes whatsoever to their FOIA policy.

In addition to denying more FOIA requests, Obama has refused to call for an audit of the secret Federal Reserve Bank and rescinded Bush-era disclosure requirements for labor union leaders - the same union bosses who provided over $100 million (and nearly half a million volunteers) for Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates in 2008.

The hypocrisy on transparency doesn’t end there, though.

As part of the draconian new financial regulations Obama and his Congressional allies are imposing on the private sector, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now virtually exempt from FOIA law. Under a little-known provision of the new law, the SEC would not have to release any information derived from “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities” - a purposefully broad definition that encompasses virtually everything the SEC does.

“It allows the SEC to block the public’s access to virtually all SEC records,” former agency attorney turned whistleblower Gary Aguirre told FOX News. “It permits the SEC to promulgate its own rules and regulations regarding the disclosure of records without getting the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, which typically applies to all federal agencies.”

In fact, within days of the new law being signed, the SEC was already turning down FOIA requests from media outlets citing the new exemption.

While Obama permits yet another government agency to hide its dealings from public view, he has repeatedly touted the “increased transparency” that the new legislation provides with respect to private sector financial transactions. Once again, he is perpetuating a double standard by empowering a growing Washington bureaucracy that remains hell bent on assuming more influence over our individual freedoms and the free market economy.

While private sector firms face new fees and regulations, government agencies are given unlimited streams of taxpayer revenue and Orwellian power to play with - even though government lending policies (and a failure to reform government-backed mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) contributed mightily to the recent collapse of the sub-prime market.

If our free market and individual freedoms are to survive, we must reverse our current course - limiting regulation and demanding absolute transparency with respect to the few core functions government ought to provide.

Howard Rich is Chairman of Americans for Limited Government .

Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports.

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion polling information. We poll on a variety of topics in the fields of politics, business and lifestyle, updating our site’s content on a news cycle throughout the day, everyday. Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.

The Views and Opinions Expressed by the author are his or her opinions only and do not necessarily reflect those of this Web-Site or its agents, affiliates, officers, directors, staff, or contractors. The author at the time of this article did not own any shares or receive any consideration financial or otherwise from any company or person mentioned or referred to in the article.

Reported By Mike Zaman

Republished with permission of Rasmussen Reports
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/jobs_employment/august_2010/the_working_poor_16_of_all_workers

Saturday, August 14, 2010

One-out-of-six working Americans (16%) consider themselves to be among the working poor.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of employed adults finds that 65% of employed adults still consider themselves part of the socio-economic “middle class.” Another 15% consider themselves part of the upper middle class and four percent (4%) consider themselves wealthy.

Showing a hint of optimism, 34% expect their earnings to be higher in a year than they are today and just 14% expect their income to decline. Overall, 44% expect little change and eight percent (8%) are not sure.

The Rasmussen Employment Index shows that confidence in the labor market is the lowest since January. Following last week’s government report on unemployment, consumer and investor confidence fell to 2010 lows.

Forty-six percent (46%) of all adults believe the job market is worse than one year ago. Thirty-eight percent (38%) feel it is the same, and just 14% believe it has improved.

The survey of 427 Employed Adults was conducted on August 6-7, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is 5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Americans are evenly divided over whether anyone who wants to work can find a job in the United States.

The latest survey results show little change from November of 2009.
Most who earn between $40,000 and $75,000 fittingly classify themselves as middle class. So do a majority of those who earn more than $75,000 a year.

Among those who make more than $100,000 annually, 30% say they are upper middle class, and just 9% consider themselves wealthy.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of adults believe those in the middle class pay a larger share of their income in taxes than wealthy Americans do.

More than one in four employed adults (27%) now say they are looking for a job outside their current company.

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion polling information. We poll on a variety of topics in the fields of politics, business and lifestyle, updating our site’s content on a news cycle throughout the day, everyday. Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.

The Views and Opinions Expressed by the author are his or her opinions only and do not necessarily reflect those of this Web-Site or its agents, affiliates, officers, directors, staff, or contractors. The author at the time of this article did not own any shares or receive any consideration financial or otherwise from any company or person mentioned or referred to in the article.