Seems like Cain is backing off his 9-9-9 plan a little. I wonder if these “empowerment zones” are all in Black communities or are there empowerment zones in poor White communities, also? Poor White communities are mostly in rural areas so….

I agree the chances of 999 passing in a first term are very low.  Still, I do not see it as a hole, but an opportunity.  It is a good idea, as a starting point of discussion.  But I want to see him now focus on the big issue, which is cutting spending.  Because that has to happen. 

I think it is an interesting concept…rather than just give out welfare…try an economic zone…this is done in Europe and Asia to an extent.

I’m sure, naturally, this sort of thing would be targeted toward urban areas, and if proven successful, rotated (not expanded) to other areas.

Chasing “Urban Renewal” has been and is a fools errand. Every two or three decades we spend billions building housing for the poor. Then two or three decades later we demolish those buildings because They’ve become hell holes worse than hell holes they replace. This does no good if there is no work nearby. Tax incentives and subsidies are ineffective. Urban renewal is a local problem needing local solutions and will never materialize, Without business friendly local government.

It would seem that they should have bought a gag for Perry first. He is truly a poor debater on the national scene. Maybe he can recover with a good (as in acceptable) executive record, interview formatted sessions, and countless attack ads, but it’ll be a tough slog.

A white knight he is not. To be fair, no one is. The set expectations were way too high for Perry even though critics warned the greater public about this beforehand.

Maybe she is into bull riding, but Romney and Christie are more like oxen riding. 

I don’t know about digging a hole but I agree, let’s move on to more immediate possibilities and leave the lofty goals shelved for now.

Bingo. Every place that is an urban hell hole is owned by Democrat city governments. Let them deal with the hell they’ve created. This is a good reason why Democrats take the black vote for granted.

I agree. We’ve had one generation of failed “urban renewal” movements after another, encompassing untold numbers of failed public/subsidized housing projects, but many other programs, projects, initiatives as well.

The reality is that we simply do not know how to “fix” urban centers in the manner understood by good progressive urbanists (i.e., via socioeconomic policy fixes). I don’t believe that there are “local [policy] solutions” to the problem of urban decentralization anymore than there are state or federal [policy] solutions.

That doesn’t mean that urban core areas will necessarily continue to decline in relative importance (like they have for the last 7+ decades), only that we’ll never be able to reverse this supposed problem via socioeconomic policy fixes.

The reason Bush wasn’t killed in debates with Gore is because Gore is almost as poor a public speaker as Bush.

Obama can sound smart while saying the dumbest things imaginable, so Perry has to do better, or be laughed off the stage.

They did in my estimation (her conservative bonafides) her whole argument for pushing Christie was that if he didn’t run Romney would get the nomination and the Republicans would lose, then her boy turned and around and endorsed defeat.

Spot on. No top-down solution will ever work. Reform can only evolve from the ground up. The subsidies enable and perpetuate a model the locals didn’t believe in themselves; consequently, they won’t ever escape paternalism.

I think she’s just scared to death that nobody but a RINO can beat Obama and she’s that desperate to get rid of him. She’s brought into that establishment mindset. It’s also possible she’s contracted tertiary syphilis of the brain. She did used to date Bill Maher.

I think a lot of conservatives will sahre my attitude: we love you Ann, keep on giving it to the Bolshes, but we won’t forget your very bad judgment.

I’d enjoy that too, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a candidate.

Well you can only get away with that if the truth is on your side. And by truth I don’t just mean righteous or ideological truth, although that is certainly the most important component, but it has to be backed up by cold, hard, irrefutable facts. For example, what would have been wrong with some of our public officials every now and then reminding the public that Ted Kennedy was a drunken bum, womanizer, and killer, and even arguably a potential cold blooded murderer. I mean, come on, its not like we didn’t already know it. While they were at it they could have also tossed in there the son-of-a-bitch was a traitor who colluded with the Soviets to derail Reagan’s weapons programs and his foreign policy positions. There are times when it pays to be cordial, and there are times when you have a perfect right to act like an ass. When you’re right, and/or can prove you’re right, the people will support you. You just have to know when the time is right. Different strokes for different folks.

Looking at the donation chart linked, I don’t understand the big story.  Sure, Perry’s fundraising dropped after the first three weeks he was in the race, when he had obviously been lining up donations for months and collected them in three weeks.

But he’s still well ahead of everyone but Romney in the next four weeks shown, and the only candidate competitive with Romney at all – and in the last week of September he is back on top of Mitt, too.  And that is AFTER his weakest debate performances.

So the authors don’t appear to have a clue what they are talking about.

Adobe I don’t mean to say our candidate should come out clinching their fists in a constant perpetual rage, cursing like an enraged drunken sailor with spit shooting out of his mouth with every word and calling his or her opponent every name in the book while stomping the ground and pounding the podium with his fists.

I’m just talking about not being shy about telling the truth about what the opponent is, and what he stands for, and not being afraid to relay what known and provable facts can back that up.

As opposed to that idiot John McCain, for just one example, talking about how he’s sure Obama is a good man who loves his country just as much as he does, and how Ted Kennedy was his “beloved friend”.

I think the point the author is making is that Perry’s money is slowing up.  As his numbers showed, Perry’s money is coming from bundlers (only 4% of his donations came from common folk that are funding Herman Cain’s campaign).

Losing those bundlers is a big deal since they have so much political clout.

It will be interesting to see how his Perry’s fundraising looks in January, after he gets blown out by Herman Cain and Mitt Romney! in Iowa.

Linked at SIGIS!