My friends of the Republican persuasion like to razz Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin for declining to answer a simple question with an obvious answer (assuming Pelosi wins re-election, assuming Blue Dogs don't stage some insurrection to install a nice moderate South Dakota gal as the new face of the Demoratic Party).
Funny that my Republican friends' gal Kristi Noem plays cute on the very same question:
The interviewer asks Noem for whom she'd vote for Speaker of the House. Noem asks someone next to her, "Can I answer that on tape?" She then avoids the question and any mention of the GOP man who would be speaker, Rep. John Boehner from Ohio, who by some measures is less popular than Nancy Pelosi.
Make of all this what you will. Is Noem incapable of forming her own answers? Is she just as dodgy as Republicans like to accuse Herseth Sandlin of being? Is she following Sarah Palin's example of giving nothing but smart-alecky answers? Might she actually not know which big Republicans are likely candidates for the job? Or is Noem just winking at Eric Cantor?
Pick your spin, but remember: Noem didn't answer the question. Par for the course in Noem-land.
Note that the interviewer is from TellDC.com, a purportedly non-partisan group. The video is posted by the Speaker Education Project, which appears to have the goal of getting Congress to elect a non-partisan non-member as Speaker. (Congress can do that: check the Constitution, Article I, Section 2—no requirements!) The Speaker Education Project is a project of Americans for Limited Government, who sound like Kristi's people.
The voice asking that second question brought a little smirk of recognition believing it had faded into history sometime last century.
ReplyDeleteGood to know that the Force is still with us.
Here's a question for you, Cory. You had several posts discounting the possibility that jobs would be lost with credit card and banking reform, yet Citibank, Premier Bankcard and Wells Fargo have all announced layoffs, jobs lost, not created, due to the reforms bill.
ReplyDeleteAnswer that question, as you review your previous posts about Obama's economic reforms. Those jobs are leaving South Dakota. More people are out of work, not less people and our economy continues to falter. That's the question to answer. Not some hypothetic Speaker of the House question. Let's talk about reality during this campaign.
Let me just say, GoldPerson, that losing a string of pawn shops build by Bill Janklow doesn't seem that bad. With a little luck, video loottery will be closing right behind them.
ReplyDeleteisn't that quaint...well golly gee i can sure tell ya who i'm not gonna vote for
ReplyDeleteclassic kristi
How many jobs have been lost from the financial sector in South Dakota? Certainly not the thousands predicted by Rounds, Thune, and even Herseth Sandlin. And how many of those usury jobs did we really need? Father Tim thinks we don't need any.
ReplyDeleteYesterday's Argus Leader shows a decline of 6.7% of financial sector jobs, declining to 15,400 jobs in the Sioux Falls area. Remember, the CCARD Act only went into effect in February. Citibank is dumping its student loan division, but the article also says the bottom still lies ahead. It also states, "In Sioux Falls, the federal government's decision earlier this year to take over the responsibility of making student loans has the potential to affect more than 1200 jobs in that industry." Wells Fargo also has 775 people at its student loan center. I'm not disagreeing that some reforms needed to happen, but Obama's Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act is costing jobs here in South Dakota, something you predicted would not happen in your earlier posts. The hens have come to roost. When government gets into the nickers of business, jobs are lost.
ReplyDeleteRod, I don't think I predicted job losses wouldn't happen. I took the Janklow position that we wouldn't see major job losses, and that the fairness created by the rules was worth the kind of losses at the edges, mostly through attrition, that we're seeing. We certainly have not seen the doomsday hemorrhaging of thousands of jobs predicted by our governor and Congressional delegation when they were lobbying against responsible reform.
ReplyDeleteNow here's the kicker: no one has yet shown that the job losses really are a product of the reforms, have they? The only people I hear saying "Blame Washington" are the bankers doing the firing. If several hundred jobs have been lost, how many are because of the new laws, and how many are because of the economic forces that have hammered many other industries? The economy goes south, people cut back spending and work to pay off debt: that right there should kill a bunch of credit card jobs. Might we have seen these job losses regardless of Washington action?
Student loan reform is a separate issue. That wasn't free market: that was the government outsourcing a government function to banks that were depending on Uncle Sam for subsidy. The student loan reform simply brought the function back under government control to save everyone money.
Here are some industry job losses (and gains!) from July 2008 to July 2010, according to SD Dept. Labor:
ReplyDelete--Total Private Sector: -3%
--Goods Producing: -11%
--Private Service Producing: -1%
--Manufacturing: -12%
--Information: -3%
--Financial: -8%
--Professional Business Services: +1%
--Education/Health: +3%
--Leisure/Hospitality: -1%
--Federal Gov't: +10%
--State Gov't: +2%
--Local Gov't: +4%