Obama for America: Hi, Tumblr.

barackobama:

It’s nice to meet you.

There are lots of reasons we’re excited to be launching the Obama 2012 campaign’s new Tumblr today. But mostly it’s because we’re looking at this as an opportunity to create something that’s not just ours, but yours, too.

We’d like this Tumblr to be a huge…

New State Rules Raising Hurdles at Voting Booth

From the New York Times:

Since Republicans won control of many statehouses last November, more than a dozen states have passed laws requiring voters to show photo identification at polls, cutting back early voting periods or imposing new restrictions on voter registration drives.

With a presidential campaign swinging into high gear, the question being asked is how much of an impact all of these new laws will have on the 2012 race.

State officials, political parties and voting experts have all said that the impact could be sizable. Now, a new study to be released Monday by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law has tried to tally just how many voters stand to be affected.

The center, which has studied the new laws and opposed some of them in court and other venues, analyzed 19 laws that passed and 2 executive orders that were issued in 14 states this year, and concluded that they “could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.”

Super PAC Plans Major Primary Campaign for Perry

From The New York Times:

A new Super PAC with close ties to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is laying plans to spend as much as $55 million to help him win the Republican presidential nomination, a sign that outside groups are likely to play a pivotal role in the party’s selection of its candidate.

The group, Make Us Great Again, was formed in late July by a group of Texas political operatives and major Perry donors. Unlike Mr. Perry’s own campaign — which did not officially begin until two weeks later — Make Us Great Again is permitted to accept contributions of unlimited amounts to spend in support of Mr. Perry’s presidential ambitions, so long as the group does not coordinate its expenditures with Mr. Perry’s campaign.

According to a planning document distributed in recent days to some supporters, Make Us Great Again is preparing for what amounts to a full-service primary campaign, with television advertisements, direct mail and social media outreach.

The Texas Unmiracle

From The New York Times:

So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.

It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending.

Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.

In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act.

So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.

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