Party Politics: Beneath the Latest Fox News Poll

The headline on the most recent Fox News poll is that 79% of those surveyed say that "it's possible the economy could collapse".

I haven't been able to locate the underlying data, which Fox has published for other polls in the past, but I have to say that the potential wordings and the misleading manner in which responses could be grouped makes the headline more than a little suspect.

Yes, in theory the economy could collapse, but right now, we have no idea how many people think this to be a likely scenario or a probable outcome and how many just agree that it's possible.

So, once you discount the top line, you're presented with some other data and though it's purely political, one thing that jumped out is that only 16% of those surveyed by Opinion Dynamics think the Republicans in Congress have a plan to "fix the economy" and only 25% of Republicans believe that their party has a solution.

Credit Cards, Chickens & Insurance Reform

The other day, I was participating in a liveblog of the Health Care Summit, when I realized that a good example of the pitfalls the President kept referring to in regards to allowing cross-border insurance purchases was the credit card industry and how it's now concentrated in South Dakota, so I tossed-in a quick comment with a link to one of my older posts about this phenomenon.

After the summit, I took a few minutes to link an article that I had been saving about how the new federal credit card regulations are expected to affect the industry in the least regulated state, but hadn't gotten around to blogging, so I added it to the old post without any comment.

Add to all this another article which has been in my queue, detailing some of the preparations Idaho is considering and Nevada's active courtship of the egg industry, all because tighter regulations will soon take effect in California and they both would like a piece of the pie.

Because every state is different and some may be more willing to bend to satisfy a short-term economic need, it's kind of easy to see why if cross-border insurance purchases are allowed and there's no minimum federal standard, the White House fears a "race to the bottom".

QuickLink: C-SPAN Offers to Televise & Archive Health Care Reform Bill Reconciliation

It doesn't appear embeddable or maybe I'm not finding how to copy and paste in Adobe Reader 9, but here's the link to Brian Lamb's letter.

Snip: All Politics is Local

“A lot of people think the job of a congressman is voting on national issues. I’m one of 435 votes on national issues, but I’m the only vote we have in the U.S. House to fight for jobs and federal economic development that tie into our private sector,” said Edwards, who’s one of 12 subcommittee chairs on the powerful Appropriations Committee.

“My staff and I spend well over half of our time on these jobs and economic development projects for our district.”

Edwards, whose subcommittee oversees spending for military construction and veterans affairs, ticked off a list of projects that have helped the Waco area on the jobs front and helped its veterans.

(Source)

Lede; Congressional Pay Raises

Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Fort Collins, is co-sponsoring a resolution that would block an automatic pay raise for Congress in 2011.

"With unemployment high and so many Colorado families struggling to make ends meet, it is unconscionable to think that Congress is considering giving itself a pay raise," Markey said in a prepared statement. "Our country is in the middle of an economic crisis, and our elected leaders need to do the right thing."

Fort Collins Coloradoan