Crushing Those Animal Spirits By Michael Barone
"Animal spirits," said John Maynard Keynes, are the essential spring of capitalism. We depend on the animal spirits of investors, high earners and entrepreneurs for a growing economy.
"Animal spirits," said John Maynard Keynes, are the essential spring of capitalism. We depend on the animal spirits of investors, high earners and entrepreneurs for a growing economy.
Daylight Savings Time begins again on Sunday, March 8, and 9% of adults correctly identified this Sunday as the day to change their clocks, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Edward C. Johnson III, chairman of Fidelity Investments, said recently of government efforts to jump-start the economy, “We can only hope that the government’s cure doesn’t further sicken the patient.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty may not have ruled out running for president in 2012, but most Minnesota voters already have.
Forty-one percent (41%) of voters nationwide have a favorable opinion of the $3.6-trillion budget proposed by President Obama in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
In an ideal world, gay marriage would be won at the ballot box. Voters would recognize that they have absolutely nothing to lose by allowing their fellow citizens the same rights to marry that heterosexual men and women now enjoy. Even many prominent conservatives (say, Sarah Palin) have come to recognize that it is wrong, heartless even, to deny gay couples the right to sign up for health benefits or to make critical medical decisions for their partners.
Voters don’t like what they’ve seen so far as Congress works to lift the troubled U.S. economy.
Nearly half (49%) the nation’s voters say politics in Washington, D.C. will be more partisan over the next year. That’s up nine points from a month ago.
George Lakoff, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, recently stated that “the moral mission of government is simple: no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government.”
Forty-seven percent (47%) of Minnesota voters now believe Democrat Al Franken has been elected to the U.S. Senate in a race so close that it’s been working its way through the state’s court system for the last four months.
Seventy-five percent (75%) of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Fifty-two percent (52%) of Americans say they go online and use the Internet every day or nearly every day, and most of those adults now find online reporting comparable to that in their local newspaper.
Twenty-five years after 1984, Doublespeak lives. Last week, President Obama released "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise" -- a 10-year, $3.55 trillion spending plan that represented anything but fiscal maturity.
Amid pleas to spare the rich, the right is accusing the Obama administration of waging vile class warfare. They envision wooden carts carrying the wealthiest 2 percent to the guillotine. Are the critics right? Only in the tumbrels of their mind.
Just four years ago, voters said national security was the most important political issue facing the nation. During Election 2008, the economy became their top priority, and national security was a distant second.
The plurality of Texas voters (47%) support Governor Rick Perry’s opposition to accepting the state’s $17 billion share of the national economic stimulus package.
Despite the country's persistent economic problems, 30% of voters now believe America is moving in the right direction, the highest level in several years.
Just 30% of Americans say they read a print version of their local newspaper every day or nearly every day, but under the age of 40, only half as many (15%) say the same.
Despite efforts by the Obama political team and its surrogates to link Rush Limbaugh to the Republican Party, just 11% of GOP voters say the conservative radio commentator is the party’s leader.
I am trying to capture the spirit of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democratic Party over the past eight years. Thus, I have chosen as my lead this proposition: Obama lied; the economy died. Obviously, I am borrowing this from the Democratic theme of 2003-08: "Bush lied, people died." There are, of course, two differences between the slogans.