Too many tabs: time to clear the queue!
"Digital is no longer part of the campaign; it is the campaign." Politico reports that Team Obama is marshaling a huge advantage in data resources over what it did in 2008. Team Romney is making some online efforts but still relying on more traditional big media buys. The article notes that Obama beats Romney in Facebook followers 27 million to 1.8 million and Twitter followers 16 million to half a million.
Applying FaceTwit metrics to the biggest South Dakota race, Kristi Noem is beating Matt Varilek on Facebook 15,085 to 832 and on Twitter, 7590 to 270. Of course, Matt also doesn't spend more time purring talking points on Fox/Greta than making South Dakota's voice heard in House Ag.
Gas prices have fallen for the tenth week in a row. The nation's average pump price is $3.59 a gallon, down 17 cents from the same week last year. I'm still waiting for Dan Lederman and other grouchy conservatives to start sticking thank-you's to President Obama on local gas pumps... or just to abandon the disproven thesis that domestic oil production is tied to local gas prices.
Kristi Noem continues to favor redistributing wealth... toward the top. Rep. Paul Ryan's budget, which our Congresswoman loves, would raise taxes on families making less than $200,000 a year but cut millionaire households' tax burden by $300,000 each. Ryan and Noem also believe that folks making less than $30,000 a year aren't paying enough in taxes and thus would hike their tax burden.
Tax cuts don't produce greater wealth. The logical way to get poor people to pay more taxes is to get them jobs with better wages, but I still have not seen the jobs bill Noem promised us two years ago, have you? The Bush-Obama tax cuts haven't done the job, either. Tea Party, take note: last year we all paid 26% less in income taxes than we did in 2000... but that's because we have less income now than we did during the Clinton administration.