Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Karl Rove Is Riding The Gallup


Karl Rove has a sharp political mind. I don't doubt that. But he is also sharply partisan, to the point of being blind. I don't doubt that either. When in the mood he also looks at Republican National Committee surveys.

Rove: Sifting the Numbers for a Winner
For example, in 2004 President George W. Bush had 49% in the final Gallup likely-voter track; he received 50.7% on Election Day. In 1996, President Clinton was at 48% in the last Gallup; he got 49.2% at the polls. And in 1992, President George H.W. Bush was at 37% in the closing Gallup; he collected 37.5% in the balloting. ...... On Friday last week, Gallup hinted at the partisan makeup of the 2012 electorate with a small chart buried at the end of its daily tracking report. Based on all its October polling, Gallup suggested that this year's turnout might be 36% Republican to 35% Democratic, compared with 39% Democratic and 29% Republican in 2008, and 39% Republican and 37% Democratic in 2004. ..... Gallup delivered some additional bad news to Mr. Obama on early voting. Through Sunday, 15% of those surveyed said they had already cast a ballot either in person or absentee. They broke for Mr. Romney, 52% to 46%. The 63% who said they planned to vote on Election Day similarly supported Mr. Romney, 51% to 45%. ........ Furthermore, in battleground states, the edge in early and absentee vote turnout that propelled Democrats to victory in 2008 has clearly been eroded, cut in half according to a Republican National Committee summary. ...... My prediction: Sometime after the cock crows on the morning of Nov. 7, Mitt Romney will be declared America's 45th president. Let's call it 51%-48%, with Mr. Romney carrying at least 279 Electoral College votes, probably more.
Gallup vs. the World
The Gallup national tracking poll now shows a very strong lead for Mitt Romney.......... its results are deeply inconsistent with the results that other polling firms are showing in the presidential race, and the Gallup poll has a history of performing very poorly when that is the case. ....... Other national polls show a race that is roughly tied on average, while state polls continue to indicate a narrow advantage of about two points for President Obama in tipping-point states like Ohio. The forecast has Mr. Obama as a narrow favorite in the election largely on the basis of the state polls. ...... the Gallup national tracking poll constitutes a relatively small part of the polling landscape. ....... there are quite a few interviews conducted by a tracking poll over the course of a week — about 3,000 per week in the Gallup national tracking poll, for instance. ...... But Gallup is not the only national tracking poll. There are six published on most days ....... even though the Gallup national tracking poll is more influential than any other individual poll series in the FiveThirtyEight trend-line calculation, it still accounts for only about 12 percent of it. It can very easily be outweighed by the other polls if they are in disagreement with it. ....... Our research suggests, for instance, that state polls, rather than national polls, often provide a better estimate of the national popular vote, in addition to the Electoral College. ....... the Gallup daily tracking poll accounts for only about 3 percent of the weight in this stage of the calculation. The national tracking polls collectively, including Gallup, account for only about 10 percent of it. Most of the weight, instead, is given to the state polls. ...... Perhaps the Gallup poll accounts for 5 or 10 percent of the information that an election analyst should evaluate on a given day. ....... The Gallup poll’s influence on the subjective perception about where the presidential race stands seems to be proportionately much greater than that, however — especially when the poll seems to diverge from the consensus. ........ Usually, when a poll is an outlier relative to the consensus, its results turn out badly. ...... You do not need to look any further than Gallup’s track record over the past two election cycles to find a demonstration of this....... In 2008, the Gallup poll put Mr. Obama 11 points ahead of John McCain on the eve of that November’s election. ... That was tied for Mr. Obama’s largest projected margin of victory among any of the 15 or so national polls that were released just in advance of the election. The average of polls put Mr. Obama up by about seven points. ..... The average did a good job; Mr. Obama won the popular vote by seven points. The Gallup poll had a four-point miss, however. .... In 2010, Gallup put Republicans ahead by 15 points on the national Congressional ballot, higher than other polling firms, which put Republicans an average of eight or nine points ahead instead. ..... In fact, Republicans won the popular vote for the United States House by about seven percentage points — fairly close to the average of polls, but representing another big miss for Gallup............ Apart from Gallup’s final poll not having been especially accurate in recent years, it has often been a wild ride to get there. Their polls, for whatever reason, have often found implausibly large swings in the race. ....... In 2000, for example, Gallup had George W. Bush 16 points ahead among likely voters in polling it conducted in early August. By Sept. 20, about six weeks later, they had Al Gore up by 10 points instead: a 26-point swing toward Mr. Gore over the course of a month and a half. No other polling firm showed a swing remotely that large. ...... Then in October 2000, Gallup showed a 14-point swing toward Mr. Bush over the course of a few days, and had him ahead by 13 points on Oct. 27 — just 10 days before an election that ended in a virtual tie. ...... In 1996, Gallup had Bill Clinton’s margin over Bob Dole increasing to 25 points from nine points over the course of four days. ..... After the Republican convention in 2008, Gallup had John McCain leading Mr. Obama by as many as 10 points among likely voters. Although some other polls also had Mr. McCain pulling ahead in the race, no other polling firm ever gave him larger than a four-point lead. ......... The context is that its most recent results differ substantially from the dozens of other state and national polls about the campaign. It’s much more likely that Gallup is wrong and everyone else is right than the other way around.
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Monday, October 22, 2012

The Stimulus Was Too Small

Description: Front side (obverse) of one of th...
Description: Front side (obverse) of one of the Nobel Prize medals in Physiology or Medicine awarded in 1950 to researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I agree with Paul Krugman, my favorite political columnist. How many political columnists have a Nobel Prize? But I liked him plenty before he won the prize. Actually I was in disbelief he did. Columnists are not supposed to win Nobel Prizes, I remember thinking.

The Secret of Our Non-Success
the stimulus was both too small and too short-lived, partly because of administration errors but mainly because of scorched-earth Republican obstruction
And I argued the stimulus was too small back in 2009. Paul was going on deep knowledge, I was going on instinct.

The faster way to reduce the debt would be for this country to do another stimulus, this time a full trillion. But I don't see it happening. Such common sense would be too much to ask of the political system.
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Thursday, July 26, 2012

Seeking Strategic Consulting Gigs

Image representing Eric Friedman as depicted i...
Image via CrunchBase
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 12:11 PM
Subject: Courtney, seeking a Strategic Consulting gig
To: Courtney Bolton

Please help find some gigs. Thanks.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 10:26 AM
Subject: Timo, seeking a Strategic Consulting gig
To: Timo Ewalds

Please help out if you can. Thanks.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 10:25 AM
Subject: Shane, seeking a Strategic Consulting gig
To: Shane Snow

Hi Shane. Can you please help me land a gig? Thanks.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:54 PM
Subject: Hi Eric, seeking a Strategic Consulting gig
To: eric@foursquare.com

Hi Eric.

I seek a short term strategic consulting gig with FourSquare. Can you
please help out?

Thanks.

Paramendra.

(I hope I got your email address right. I guessed it.)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:16 PM
Subject: Hi Albert, requesting help
To: Albert Wenger

Hello Albert.

Can you please help me land a few strategic consulting gigs?

Thanks.

Paramendra.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Fred, need a small help
To: Fred Wilson

Hi Fred.

If I manage to get through your inbox impossibilities and you do end
up reading this email....... Can you please help me land a few
strategic consulting gigs with some of your portfolio companies? Would
be a big help.

Thanks.

Paramendra.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paramendra Bhagat
Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:10 PM
Subject: Seeking A Strategic Consulting Role
To: Dina Kaplan , Mike Hudack

Hi Dina. Hello Mike.

I was at your guys' Holiday party in 2010.
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/12/bliptv-how-do-they-ever-get-anything.html

I seek a strategic consulting role with Blip.TV along these lines:
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-politician-in-redmond.html More
about me here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/paramendra I was Barack
Obama's first full time volunteer in NYC, and the campaign in Chicago
picked up specific advice from me three times, each documented at my
Barackface blog.

I am someone working to launch a tech startup in the microfinance
space down the line. But I do consulting gigs right now.

I hope my services will be worth it to you.

Thanks.

Paramendra.

--
http://gutkhaconsulting.com
http://www.paramendra.com
917 512 5445

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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Meeting Arianna Huffington


I still don't know how I got invited to this event, but there I was. I was the first person to show. The second two people to show asked me, "How do you know Reid?" Reid, as in Reid Hoffman.

"I don't know Reid," I said.

And then Reid Hoffman was the fourth person to show and he stood next to me and waxed eloquent for a full 10 minutes or so. To the person who asked how I knew Reid. Apparently they knew each other.


Mayor Bloomberg showed up not long after. He walked a step towards me and shook my hand. I was about to say, Mr. Mayor, I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in all of New York City. But with Bloomberg you don't know if you are talking to an entrepreneur or a politician or a soon to be full time philanthropist.

Arianna must have showed up fashionably late. Because I only spotted her when I thought I might leave soon, and the room was by then two thirds empty. She has the cutest accent.


This woman has enough money to bail out Greece.

I had teamed with Mike who I met at the event for the first time. Let's go say hello to as many people as possible, I said. One person we said hello to was president of MTV, or so he said.

When I spotted Arianna across the room, I dragged Mike along.


"Hi. We just wanted to say hello," I said. The guy who had been talking to her for the prior 15 minutes or so disappeared within a second. And Arianna engaged me, Mike and three, four other people who quickly gathered around her for a comfortable 15 minutes or so.

I am going to say Arianna was the most interesting person I met at the party.

I want to write for The Huffington Post. And I don't want to get paid. I think I could make more money through the publicity and exposure writing for The Huffington Post could give me than the Post could pay me.

The top blog in the world. Arianna turned it into a powerhouse right before my eyes, it feels like. I remember watching her debate The Terminator. I mean, the guy is an action hero, and Arianna couldn't have cared less. Next thing you know she had launched the Post. Next thing you know she had sold it to AOL for hundreds of millions. That is an entrepreneur.

Wikipedia: Arianna Huffington
Huffington Post: Arianna Huffington
Twitter: Arianna Huffington
Facebook: Arianna Huffington

HuffPost + AOL: The First Year in Numbers
My Favorite Black Dress: Love Story or Cautionary Tale?

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Google? Pirate?



So Barack Obama thinks SOPA is not worth the paper it is printed on, and Rupert Murdoch, @therealshitmydadsays, thinks Google is a pirate.

That's interesting thinking. Obviously Murdoch wants his newspapers to be online but behind paywalls and not accessible through search engines. If you are paying, you obviously know the name and the domain name. Show up and read. You found me when you paid for the subscription.

I don't know where to begin. I mean, a search engine is a good thing, right? Or am I missing something here? Do we want to go back to the good old days of the Yahoo directory?

Murdoch seems to think the internet was designed to save him the costs on paper. ("Why can't you just read the paper on your computer?") Everything else should remain the same.

Friday, January 06, 2012

A Rising Economy?

English: Okun's law: the relationship between ...Image via WikipediaThe recovery is slow but sure. I would have liked something more dramatic, but good news is good news. I don't think it's fragile. I don't think next month we will be like, oops, we are going down again. The rise I think will be steady, although not a smooth steady. Much of it is about growth in jobs. People need work. And the economy simply has to come up with those jobs.

There has been some good news especially on the jobs front today.

A dramatic realignment that I was expecting did not happen. The stimulus bill of 2009 was not dramatic enough as far as I was concerned. But the president perhaps did what he could under the given political alignments.

How long before the unemployment rate hits 6% again, you think?

Monday, July 18, 2011

"It Was A Nigger!"



Entertainment Weekly: Rosewood (1997)
In 1923, the residents of Rosewood, a tranquil all-black agrarian village in central Florida, bask in their hard-toiling prosperity. Several generations removed from slavery, they have farms, businesses, a community. They have freedom — or, at least, a hermetic approximation of it. For it's a freedom they can share only with one another. In the adjacent, comparatively poor all-white town of Sumner, the citizens look at Rosewood with suspicion and envy. The very power of American upward mobility has shaken the firmament of Dixie — its racial-social hierarchy. ...... When one of the whites gets beaten up by her extramarital lover, she's so flooded with rage and guilt that her hysteria explodes like shrapnel at the most convenient available target. ''It was a nigger!'' she wails. There are rumors of a recently escaped black convict, and with this mythical culprit in mind, the men of Sumner form a lynch mob. They never do locate the suspect, but in a sense they start to see him everywhere — in the face of any innocent black man who knows nothing of the crime. Out for ''justice,'' the mob consumes its own purpose, becoming an end in itself, a jamboree of lynching, shooting, burning, slaughter.
Little Flickers Of Racism
Tim Berners-Lee: The Internet Is Not A Country
Race, Gender, Tech
Caro, Get Off The Summit,That's A Volcano
Caroline McCarthy On Gender
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Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Using Political Contacts To Beat The Immigration Beast

Official presidential portrait of Barack Obama...Image via WikipediaMy friend Jiwan who I am crashing with for now in Sunnyside convinced me yesterday that I need to go the political route to get sorted my immigration mess.

"If the most powerful person on earth can take your help, why can't you take the help of that most powerful person?"

Seeking 10 Minutes Of The Senator's Time For Personal Reasons
(To: Linda at Senator Bill Perkins' office)

Hi Bill.

I have been in an immigration mess since late 2005. A no name State Senator in New Jersey just helped another Nepali get a green card in a month, and the story circulated and a close friend of mine has been urging me to approach you to get the same done for me. If you are in a position to help, I'd much appreciate. I'd remember till the last dog dies, like Bill Clinton said in 1992.

I came to America in the fall of 1996 on a student visa to the top
liberal arts college in the South where I got myself elected student
body president within six months of landing. I finished school in May
2001. After a year I was on OPT, Optional Practical Training. .....
a green card...... Believe it or not I did not renew the card. My
lawyer says I had the option to. I was working days, nights and weekends
for the democracy movement in Nepal at the time, the only Nepali in
America doing full time work to that end. I was not much thinking about me.

I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in NYC like you were
the first elected official in the city to endorse him. That was good
work. The day the national primary ended in 2008 they had me
disappear, machine politics at its most effective! They had me inside
for six months. Obama won. I was out a few days later. My first
immigration court date after that was in Chicago. There were two court
dates in 2009. The last one was in June, last month, that got
postponed indefinitely. This political asylum thing has been dragging
on like a bad dream. The three court dates have been about giving me a
new court date, that's it.

I am under the impression you have the option to use some political
levers at your disposal to get my original green card renewed,
backdated to the fall of 2005 when it should have been renewed. If
that can happen enough time will have lapsed that I would by now
qualify for a citizenship.

Once I have the paperwork I can start functioning at full capacity. I
am a tech entrepreneur who wants to go into microfinance in a big way.
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2011/02/googlefacebook-of-microfinance.html
I can do for the Arab world what I did for Nepal in 2006. This wave of
democracy, done right, could hit all of the Arab world, all of Africa,
maybe Russia, maybe China. But right now I feel like my hands and feet
have been tied and I have been thrown into a corner. Such waste. And
there is the no small matter of Obama 2012. In many ways 2012 is more
important than 2008.

My alien number is ___________.

For now I request to meet you in person for 10 minutes.

Thanks.
Paramendra.
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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Bill Clinton Making Sense On Jobs


Bill Clinton: Newsweek: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid
Harry Hopkins had nowhere near the rules and regulations we have now. (In 1933, Hopkins’s Civil Works Administration put 4 million to work in a month.) ...... President Obama came in with a really good energy policy, including an idea to provide both a tax credit for new green jobs and for startup companies, to allow the conversion of the tax credit into its cash equivalent for every employee hired. ....... the obvious candidate for that role today is changing the way we produce and use energy ...... Before the financial meltdown, the four countries that will meet their Kyoto greenhouse-gas emission targets were outperforming America with lower unemployment, more new business formation, and less income inequality. ...... We could put a million people to work retrofitting buildings all over America. ...... You get 7,000 jobs for every billion dollars in retrofitting. Let’s start with the schools and colleges and hospitals, and state, county, and local government buildings. That would keep the construction industry busy for a couple of years, creating a million jobs that would ripple through the whole economy, spurring even more growth. ....... One of the reasons Harry Reid won in Nevada is that, right before the election, two big Chinese companies announced they were moving factories there to make LED lightbulbs and turbines for the big wind farms down in Texas. ........ They said, “We’re coming here because Nevada has the best state incentives to go with the federal incentives.” They were very clinical. They said labor costs in China are still cheaper, but these turbines are big and heavy, and higher transportation costs to the U.S. market would offset the labor gains—and there was a tax credit from the federal government for green-energy manufacturing, and extra credits in Nevada. ........ Banks still have more than $2 trillion in cash uncommitted to loans. ....... I suggested that the federal government set aside—not spend—$15 billion of the TARP money and create a loan-guarantee program that would work exactly the way the Small Business Administration does. Basically, the bank lends money to a business after the federal government guarantees 75 percent of it. Let’s say that the SBA fund has about a 20-to-1 loan-to-capital ratio, and it’s never come anywhere near bankruptcy. If we capitalized this more conservatively at 10-to-1, we could guarantee $150 billion in loans and create more than a million jobs. ........ Look at the tar roofs covering millions of American buildings. They absorb huge amounts of heat when it’s hot. And they require more air conditioning to cool the rooms. Mayor Bloomberg started a program to hire and train young people to paint New York’s roofs white. ........ In most of these places you could recover the cost of the paint and the labor in a week. ...... Every analysis shows that TARP and the stimulus saved us from a second Great Depression. After the GM and Chrysler bailouts, we have something like 75,000 more jobs in the industry. Closure of the factories and the suppliers with them would have cost a million jobs. The stimulus should have been more vigorously defended in the last election. It did work, but it didn’t “fix the economy” because it was an $800 billion stimulus trying to fix a $3 trillion hole. ........ If we cut a lot of government spending while our economy still has so little private investment, we risk weakening the economy even more and increasing the deficit because tax revenues can fall more than spending is cut. ...... When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton said, “Because that’s where the money is.” We have to unlock that money and take steps to get U.S. corporations to invest some of the $2 trillion they have accumulated. ....... The real thing that has killed us in the last 10 years is that too much of our dealmaking creativity has been devoted to expanding the financial sector in ways that don’t create new businesses and more jobs and to persuading people to take on excessive debt loads to make up for the fact that their incomes are stagnant. ...... In the seven years and eight months that preceded the meltdown, our economy produced a meager 4 million new jobs, far too few to cope with millions coming into the workforce, and virtually all those jobs were created in housing, finance, and consumer spending. ........ the former labor commissioner in Georgia, Michael Thurmond. After job vacancies go unfilled for a certain period of time, the state offers businesses the money to train potential employees themselves. During the training period, the companies don’t become employers, so they don’t have to start paying Social Security taxes or employer benefits. They train people their way, then hire those who succeed as regular employees, reducing the time lag between when a job is advertised and when it is filled. With unemployment at 9 percent and the real rate of those without full-time work higher, there are 3 million posted job vacancies. Filling them faster could make a big difference. ........ Lower the rates to be competitive, but reduce the loopholes that cause unfair disparities. We all need to contribute something to help meet our shared challenges and responsibilities, including solving the debt problem. ...... we abandoned the path of balanced budgets 10 years ago, choosing instead large tax cuts especially for higher-income people like me, along with two wars and the senior citizens’ drug benefit. In the history of our republic, it’s the first time we ever cut taxes while going to war. ...... There must be opportunities to be tapped, given all the cash in banks and corporate treasuries. ........ There’s been a remarkable lack of attention to “microeconomics,” the untapped growth potential of American corporations, entrepreneurs, and workers.
Now we know, the banks are sitting on two trillion dollars of cash, and the corporations are sitting on two trillion dollars of cash. There is no shortage of cash. There is no shortage of people with skills. There are huge unmet demands. So what's amiss?

Bill Clinton is well qualified to be talking on this topic. He sat on an economy that did well. The economy did so well he deserved a third term.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Bloomberg On Immigration

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opening ...Image via WikipediaI am a living martyr to the cause. The immigration laws in this country are so fucked up, it's not even funny. We might as well bring back Jim Crow to take race relations to new Tea Party heights.

Ugh, Immigration (4)

I understand racism. I understand the need to keep people away from your dinner table. But that is not what is going on. The current immigration laws in this country are designed to keep food away from the American tables.

Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Me, BBC

For the past few years I have been flapping my wings on the beach like one of those birds that became victims to some oil spill while lesser tech entrepreneurs have swam into the ocean depths, flown into the sky. How much window shopping can you do? I wear the glorious title of tech consultant.

Independent For Bloomberg

The immigration bureaucracy in this country moves at Third World speeds. They had me disappear the precise day the national primary ended in 2008. They feared I might miss the message. Fuck the machine. We are the machine now. My guy is in the White House. When they released me six months later, they gave me a court date in Chicago. They still feared I might miss the message. A change of venue for something like that is automatic, but they would not grant me that. In June 2009 they gave me a court date for June 2011. That too has been postponed. If they give me a new court date for 2013, I am going to think there is a Tea Party conspiracy going on.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Pick Up That Bag


Barackface

Barack Obama said to Charlie Rose in 2007: "Only a few years back people were throwing keys at me in the parking lot."

So I am at this event Wednesday afternoon. And I don't even drink wine.

A Few More Events?

When it was time to get started, and people started to sit down, I saw an empty spot and took the seat. A little later one woman, then another came to get their bags. I was too busy tweeting away to give much attention. But my first thought was, oh no, did I just take someone else's seat?

"Was this your seat? You can have it," I said each time. And went right back to tweeting when the response was, "No, that's okay."