![]() ![]() The failure of the writers to pick Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens was not a surprise given the low vote totals received in the past by Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, other players associated with the use performance-enhancing drugs. Jessie Schwartz for The New York Times Baseball writers elected no one to the Hall of Fame on Wednesday, despite what might have been the deepest ballot in years. A stagnant economy means that everything gets squeezed. A growing economy gives us a lot of good choices: maintaining or expanding government programs, cutting taxes or holding them at a moderate level, reducing or managing the national debt. In the long run, the overall economic health of the country is the most important constraint on fiscal policy. I’ll be looking principally at government spending as a share of the overall economy, specifically as compared to the gross domestic product. My focus will be on how government has been spending its money in the present and the past, rather than evaluating any future budgets or projections. The Web site has an abundance of data on federal, state and local spending at different points in time. There are a few surprises along the way, some of which liberal readers might like and others of which will please conservative readers. It’s one of the most fundamental political questions of our time: What’s driving the growth in government spending? And it has a relatively straightforward answer: first and foremost, spending on health care through Medicare and Medicaid, and other major social insurance and entitlement programs.īut I thought it was worth reviewing the evidence in a bit more detail. Truman in 1949 and Lyndon Johnson in 1965 were serving in their first elected term in those years, but their second term over all.) Read more… There is nothing complicated about this analysis: I have simply averaged together all approval ratings polls conducted in January in the first year of a president’s second term. Connelly’s analysis to cover all second-term presidents since 1949, based on the historical approval ratings as listed by the Roper Center. Obama at the start of their second terms. And Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were more popular than Mr. Bush’s approval ratings in January 2005 were similar to where Mr. Obama’s current approval ratings are not that high as compared with other recent presidents at the start of their second terms. ![]() Obama’s numbers in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll are similar: 51 percent approval and 41 percent disapproval.)Īs my colleague Marjorie Connelly notes, however, Mr. His approval rating is 52 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics average, against 43 percent who disapprove of his performance. Roy Moore, who was removed as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2003 for refusing to remove a two-ton granite Ten Commandments monument in the courthouse rotunda, was once again elected to the position.President Obama will begin his second term more popular than he has been for most of the past three years. Republican lawmakers who championed the amendment argued that it was symbolically important and would help Alabama attract new industry to the state. Others complained that the ballot measure did not remove all of the racist language in the State Constitution. ![]() School segregation and poll taxes have been outlawed nationally for decades.īut many black legislators opposed the amendment, because it would have left in place a provision from 1956 that states that children in Alabama do not have a right to public education. Of course, these revisions to the State Constitution would be purely symbolic. The proposal, Amendment 4, would have removed provisions from the 1901 Alabama Constitution specifying that “separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race.” The amendment would also have eliminated language about poll taxes from the Constitution. But without a closely contested presidential race, perhaps the most significant decision voters in Alabama had to make was whether to strike racist language from the state’s Constitution. In exit polls, most voters said the economy was the most important issue. None of them had faced strong re-election challenges.Īnd the last Democrat in statewide office in Alabama, Lucy Baxley, lost her race to remain president of the Public Service Commission. All seven of the state’s Congressional incumbents - six Republicans and one Democrat - won new terms on Tuesday. Mitt Romney won the presidential race in Alabama, adding the state’s nine electoral votes to his total. As expected, Republicans dominated the major races in the reddest of states on Tuesday. ![]()
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