Hispanics, Obama, and the Republican Future

A lot is being made over the fact that Hispanics--the fastest-growing demographic in the United States--voted overwhelmingly to re-elect President Barack Obama. Indeed, the data shows that about 71 percent of Hispanics voted in favor of an Obama second term. This percentage is made all the more impressive as the number of voting Hispanics continues to grow (see chart below).

Source: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2353/2012-election-hispanic-vote-latino-voters

But why the big turnout for Obama? A prevailing theory stemming from conservatives, in this case Bill O'Reilly, is that "it's not a traditional America anymore":

The white establishment is now the minority and the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama...People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?

Further, Stuart Varney on Fox Business claimed that "With Obama’s victory, the takers have taken over. The makers are clearly in the minority.”

Might have some Hispanic voters chosen to re-elect Obama due to some Obama phone-like feelings? Possibly. And, probably, so did some whites.

The truth, though, is that Republican view on immigration--in this case highlighted by Mitt Romney's policy ideas--hurt the Republican with Hispanics. To be sure, Romney's "self-deportation" idea, in which illegal immigrants would find conditions in the United States so tough that they would leave the country on their own, turned off the majority of Hispanic voters. In addition, Romney and Republicans were not kind to the idea of making the road to citizenship for illegals easier. This helps explain why Romney received "27 percent Hispanic support, less than any presidential candidate in 16 years."

The oft-mentioned GOP civil war may change this. Senator Marco Rubio and former governor Jeb Bush have been saying for a long time that Republicans must make themselves more attractive to Hispanics if they are ever going to have a chance. But how to do this?

Allowing Puerto Rico to become the 51st state would be an interesting place to start. Second, Republicans could work with Democrats and the Obama administration on making an easier path to citizenship for both legal and illegal immigration. Third, Republicans should end the rhetoric of calling Hispanics "lazy" and willing to take handouts.

All this said, it is important to remember that Hispanics are not one. To be clear, Dominicans do not vote the same as Puerto Ricans who do not vote the same as Cubans. Some lean more conservative and some lean to the left. Thus, a more moderate approach to the Hispanic issue would help the Republicans gain ground in this essential voting demographic.

As GOP strategist Matt Dowd recently said, the GOP is "a ‘Mad Men’ party in a ‘Modern Family’ world." It's time Republicans started acting like it.

The Pain in Spain

"It's worse here now than under Franco," exclaimed my boisterous abuela. As a Spaniard, she is prone--like the rest of us--to exaggeration, but her sentiment is not far removed from the general feeling across the peninsula.

Spanish citizens spent the last two days protesting in Madrid in front of parliament, getting so raucous at some points that the police fired rubber bullets back into the crowd. The people are fighting back against austerity measures, thought to be the only way to fix Spain's economy during the eurozone financial crisis by the center-right government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. However, the austerity program does not seem to be working. For one, Spain's debt-to-GDP ratio recently hit 75.9 percent. Further, Spain's GDP change has slowed down remarkably since the crisis and has yet to really pick up.

And, of course, the unemployment rate in Spain stands at a critically detrimental 25.1 percent, beating the previous high of 24.6 percent back in July.

Despite the lack of progress, Rajoy's government just announced new austerity measures that further imposes austerity on an already impoverished and hungry people. This new budget for 2013 and beyond includes "taxes on shares transactions, 'green taxes' on emissions or eliminating tax breaks, and even possibly ending inflation-linked pensions." In addition, "Madrid has already said that it wants to claw back a total of more than 150bn euros between 2012 and 2014: 62bn euros this year, 39bn euros in 2013, and 50bn euros in 2014."

So what does this mean? Surely more protests will be in order. Further, Rajoy said that if borrowing costs remain high, he would be 100 percent behind a bailout of Spain--the EU's 4th largest economy. While Spain is not Greece, it surely wishes it weren't Spain right now.

Under-reported, though, is the toll on a typical Spanish family. I happen to be a part of one, and they all live in Barcelona. My uncle Orlando, a public high school math teacher, has seen his salary cut by 25 percent due to a government spending freeze, and he fears a further 25 percent cut in this new budget. Orlando has already moved three times to find cheaper housing that allows him to pay child support payments and to pay for his kids when he has them for certain weekends.

My uncle Cesar desperately wants to leave his job, but he cannot afford to due to chronically high unemployment. Instead, he works extra hours just to keep the one he has while simultaneously trying to start a new business. In other words, he's already working extra at the job he hates and working overtime to get a new venture off the ground.

My abuelos are struggling, too. My grandfather was the only one who worked, so both of them survive on his pension. Since the pension comes from the government, and the spending freeze is in place, they survive on very little income. This bleak fact is only made worse when realizing that as they get older, they will need more medical care (not to say they aren't already getting a lot of medical attention for current ills now).

But when my family needs most help from the state now, their autonomous region--Catalonia--doesn't even want to be part of Spain anymore. Currently, 51 percent of Catalonians want to separate from Spain and be its own sovereign state. This is the highest number it has ever been, even with historically high tension between Catalonia and Madrid since the Franco dictatorship. Also, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the rise of Catalonian feelings of exceptionalism and independence have coincided with the great play of that region symbol, FC Barcelona. Of course, Catalonia isn't alone in wanting to separate from Spain--the Basque Country and Galicia come to mind--but it is currently the most vociferous.

Spain is in for long time of pain. It is unavoidable. But during this crisis, Madrid has imposed much-higher VAT taxes, pension cuts, medical cuts, all while denying autonomous regions the right to control their own areas. In other words, Rajoy is trying to wrest control from the seventeen regions during a time of strife. This will only cause more tension and uprisings in Spain, and perhaps lead to the reemergence of regional, separatist terrorist groups like ETA (Basque Country) and Terra Lliure (Catalonia). Especially with many youth unemployed--52.9 percent--they have time to think and need something to do. This is normally one of the fatal recipes that leads to a terrorist group formation.

I hope Spain turns around, for the fate of itself, my family, and Europe. But, based on current trends, the pain in Spain will continue.

Is "America the Undertaxed"?

Andrea Louise Campbell, a professor at MIT, has written an amazing article on the tax policy and history of the United States compared to other industrialized countries. She argues three things: "the United States has very low taxes, little redistribution of income, and an extraordinarily complex tax code."

Source: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137838/andrea-louise-campbell/america-the-undertaxed

To her first point, she claims that "U.S. tax revenue is not only low but also consistently low, having equaled roughly the same share of the economy for 60 years." She also points out that everyone--from the top one percent to the middle class to the bottom bracket--have the lowest effective rates in history. And, interestingly, "Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes."

In terms of income distribution, it is skewed toward the wealthy. "The share of total income going to the top one percent of earners," she claims, "increased from nine percent in 1970 to 23.5 percent in 2007." Further, this wealth share of the top one percent was the highest since 1928. It is also worth mentioning that while the top one percent in this country gained twenty percent of all income received in 2007, that same bracket holds thirty percent of the wealth. Meanwhile, "the bottom and middle have faltered," Campbell argues. "Congressional Budget Office data show that between 1979 and 2007, before-tax incomes increased by 240 percent for the top one percent but by just 20 percent for the middle fifth of earners and by ten percent for the bottom fifth." Perhaps most striking is that "almost one-third of Americans have low-incomes, meaning ones below 200 percent of the poverty line." This means the United States has the highest poverty rate among rich nations.

From: http://billmoyers.com/content/chapter-one-of-winner-take-all-politics/

From: http://billmoyers.com/content/chapter-one-of-winner-take-all-politics/

Finally, the tax code. Yikes. It's out of control. As Campbell alarmingly reminds us, "the Internal Revenue Code is almost 12 times as long as the New Testament." There is no question that this needs to be simplified. However, according to Fox News, tax-preparing firms have been lobbying Congress not to simplify the tax code so that people keep coming to them for help.

So how do we fix these problems? As I've said before, Simpson-Bowles is a good place to start. However, this plan didn't get through Congress (both Obama and Congressional Republicans are to blame). Since I am no tax expert, I'm not really sure how to explain many of these wonky things better. But here's what I do know: we need to debunk the notion that higher taxes mean less growth. Sure, very high rates taxes can bring the economy down; but we don't have very high tax rates. As Campbell has pointed out, they are historically low. According to two prominent economists mentioned in Campbell's article, there is "little correlation across the OECD countries between taxes as a percentage of the economy and the size of the economy itself, as measured by per capita GDP. Nor, according to their research, is there a high connection between taxes as a percentage of GDP and the annual rate of economic growth."

How you accept the data in Campbell's article and my (admittedly) lazy summary of it is up to you, but these are the facts. How we move forward says more about how we want to structure our society than how we want to structure our tax code. 

The Greatest News Story of All Time

I'll just let it speak for itself:

Atheism, Billboards, and the Election

To paraphrase Three-Six Mafia, "it's hard out here for a[n]" atheist, especially for one that wants to run for president. According to the Economist, "over 40% of Americans say they would never vote for an atheist presidential candidate."

But just like Jesus (?), atheists are making a comeback. Seven years ago only 1 percent of the American population was atheist, but now it's around 5 percent. Even more striking, "the proportion of Americans who say they are religious has fallen from 73 percent in 2005 to 60 percent in 2011."

So why the dislike of atheists in the United States? A big reason is that the United States is the world's most populous Christian country and atheism is clearly an attack on their faith (or, at least, an affront to multiple faiths); however, sometimes it can be because many atheists act, well, sinfully.

The atheist group American Atheists planned to put up a billboard at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions demonizing (see what I did there?) Christianity and the faith's "sadistic God" et al. President Obama, of course--I repeat, of course--is a Christian and this maneuver is non-partisan, but it is theological in intent. Mitt Romney is a Mormon, a faith even some Christians dislike.

The outcries of many concerned citizens caused the billboards to be removed. The real story here, though, is the rise of atheism and its effect on politics. Thanks to books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, together known as the Four Horsemen of Atheism, the non-prophet organization has grown in political and theological importance.

While atheism is still the most "distrusted" minority in the United States, there is no reason to think that it won't continue to grow. Interestingly, the colonists came to the New World to escape European religion. Now, slowly but surely, Americans are creeping up to the same feelings as Europeans, the most atheistic continent on the planet. In France, for example, declarations of faith are discouraged for presidential candidates, since being religious makes one untrustworthy in the French electorate's eyes.

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I, personally, like the rise of atheism in this country. It allows for more viewpoints in our discourse (full disclosure: I am an atheist, as well). But I do condemn these billboards because atheists--especially the Four Horsemen--usually denounce when someone attacks someone else because of faith. In this case, atheists are attacking our Christian presidential candidates because of their non-belief and, subsequently, the belief of our candidates. Seriously, for an organization that claims to be the banner carriers of reason, they didn't think this one through.

I do hope one day an atheist can run for president and have a fighting chance. This will come from a dovetail prescription of atheists being liked and the waning of Christianity's hold in the country. But if atheists are represented this poorly, then that day won't come any time soon.

Is Finland Leaving the Eurozone?

The Economist has wonderful pieces on Finland's current debate on whether or not to leave the eurozone. After reading it, one must ask: will Finland want to leave the union and cause a "Fixit"?

One would think no, especially considering that Finland's economy thrived once adopting the euro. But the fact that Finland has been so successful, and doesn't really feel as "European" as most EU countries makes it reluctant to help those who have failed (see Greece). Here are some of the striking facts from the Economist:

- "The IMF reckons the combined gross debt of euro-area countries will peak at 91% of GDP next year, when the ratio in Finland will be just 53%, the lowest of any euro-zone country bar Estonia and Luxembourg."
-  "Only 31% of Finnish exports go to other euro-zone countries, a smaller share than is sold by Eurosceptic Britain."
-  "Five of Finland’s seven biggest foreign markets lie outside the euro zone. Its biggest supplier is Russia and its largest single customer is Sweden, whose economy is growing more quickly than Finland’s."

Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/29/fixit_the_hot_new_phrase_that_might_explain_how_the_euro_ends.html

- "Unemployment has come down from a peak of 8.7% in early 2010, to 7.5%."

There is more and more. But public opinion still shows that Finland wants to be in the eurozone, mostly because Finland is more afraid of Russia than the common currency.

Yet, even a renowned economist like Nouriel Roubini is on board the "Fixit" bandwagon. It all hinges upon whether or not the politically center coalition can hold out against the extremely nationalist True Finn party. That coalition, though, may break if eurozone news continues to worsen. By that point, the "Finn red line" may have been crossed.

Ready. Fire. Aim.

I know there are a lot of arguments for more gun control lately. But it's looking like we have to start taking guns away from our cops, too. The worst news item is the last line (italicized):

All nine people wounded during a dramatic confrontation between police and a gunman outside the Empire State Building were struck by bullets fired by the two officers, police said Saturday, citing ballistics evidence.

The veteran patrolmen who opened fire on the suit-wearing gunman, Jeffrey Johnson, had only an instant to react when he whirled and pointed a .45-caliber pistol as they approached him from behind on a busy sidewalk.

Officer Craig Matthews shot seven times. Officer Robert Sinishtaj fired nine times, police said. Neither had ever fired their weapons before on a patrol.

There are a lot of misfires men make in their lives. This shouldn't be among them.