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Every GoDaddy-registered site temporarily knocked offline

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A malicious flood of network traffic temporarily knocked Internet registrar GoDaddy’s servers offline Monday — taking with it the site, its email, and thousands, potentially millions of websites registered through one of the Internet’s most popular services.

A Twitter user quickly claimed credit for the incident. Anup Ghosh, chief scientist with security company Invincea, described it as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

“This is yet another example of how anyone with an agenda can take down large portions of the Internet with really cheap, off-the-shelf tools,” Ghosh told FoxNews.com.

GoDaddy should be protected against such a simple web assault — a DDoS attack involves an overwhelming flood of communication that a server can’t keep up with, but it can be orchestrated with as few as 50 computers.

That an Internet service which hosts more than 5 million websites wasn’t protected reveals a surprising truth: The Internet is still startlingly vulnerable to such an attack.

“Anyone can be hacked, the size of the company has no bearing on it all,” Ghosh said.

Twitter user Anonymous Own3r claimed credit for the attack, and was quick to distance himself from the hacking collective that goes by a similar name.

“It is not Anonymous collective it’s only me. Don’t use Anonymous collective name on it, just my name,” he wrote, shortly after claiming responsibility.

AnonymousOwn3r

In broken English filled with typos, he explained his justification for the attack.

“I’m taking godaddy down bacause well i’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now.”

GoDaddy quickly acknowledged the problem online, writing on Twitter that it was “working feverishly” to resolve the matter in a timely fashion.

“We’re aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We’re working on it,” GoDaddy explained in a simple Tweet Monday afternoon. Within two hours, the company claimed to be making progress.

“Update: Still working on it, but we’re making progress. Some service has already been restored. Stick with us.”

GoDaddy’s own site came back into service late Monday afternoon. But Ghosh and Invincea are particularly sensitive to the problem; as a GoDaddy customer, his site is down.

“Our website is down, any emails sent to Invincea aren’t going to make it.”

By taking down the servers at just a single key service providers, those responsible took down a lot of properties, he noted. And infrastructure needs to be made less vulnerable to these types of attacks.

“The bar is low to implement these types of attacks. It doesn’t take a lot,” he said.

T-Mobile launches campaign to lure iPhone users

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Published September 10, 2012 / Associated Press

Steve JobsNEW YORK – T-Mobile USA, the only “Big 4” phone company that doesn’t sell the iPhone, now wants to snag used ones from AT&T.

Starting Wednesday, when Apple is expected to reveal a new iPhone model, T-Mobile will start advertising that AT&T iPhone owners who are out of contract can switch to T-Mobile.

“We expect that consumers will start trading in older devices,” said Harry Thomas, T-Mobile’s director of marketing. “For every person waiting in line for the next model, a lot of them have to find a secondary market for that older device.”

We expect that consumers will start trading in older devices.
– Harry Thomas, T-Mobile director of marketing

Apple hasn’t said anything about a new iPhone, but it is expected to announce the iPhone 5 at an event it has scheduled in San Francisco on Wednesday. Sales would likely start later this month.

Signing an iPhone up for T-Mobile service has been possible for years, and the company says it has more than a million iPhones on its network. But they suffer a big penalty in data speeds, taking about 50 times longer to download files than on AT&T’s network.

This year, T-Mobile is reshuffling the frequencies on its network, which will let it match or even exceed AT&T’s data speeds on iPhones. For now, that will be evident only in a few spots here and there in such cities as New York, Seattle, Las Vegas and Washington.

Sprint and Verizon iPhones of the “4” model won’t work on T-Mobile’s network at all. The later iPhone 4S will work if it’s been hacked, but that’s not something T-Mobile wants to get into.

AT&T iPhones have to be unlocked using codes that AT&T will supply after the customer’s contract is up.

T-Mobile, the U.S. cellphone business of Deutsche Telekom AG of Germany, has bought 3,000 iPhones and spread them out in its stores, so salespeople can demonstrate the iPhone working.

T-Mobile’s pitch will center on its unlimited data plan, which it reintroduced last week. AT&T stopped signing up new customers to unlimited plans two years ago, and now slows down service drastically for the rest of the billing cycle once those still on old unlimited plans reach a certain level of data usage.

In Atlanta and New York, T-Mobile will be giving away $100 gift cards to customers who sign their iPhones up for two-year contracts.

GM’s Volt: The ugly math of low sales, high costs

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By Bernie Woodall and Paul Lienert and Ben Klayman – Mon Sep 10, 2012 9:47am EDT

(Reuters) – General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August — but that probably isn’t a good thing for the automaker’s bottom line.

Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.

Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.

And while the loss per vehicle will shrink as more are built and sold, GM is still years away from making money on the Volt, which will soon face new competitors from Ford, Honda and others.

GM’s basic problem is that “the Volt is over-engineered and over-priced,” said Dennis Virag, president of the Michigan-based Automotive Consulting Group.

And in a sign that there may be a wider market problem, Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi have been struggling to sell their electric and hybrid vehicles, though Toyota’s Prius models have been in increasing demand.

GM’s quandary is how to increase sales volume so that it can spread its estimated $1.2-billion investment in the Volt over more vehicles while reducing manufacturing and component costs – which will be difficult to bring down until sales increase.

But the Volt’s steep $39,995 base price and its complex technology — the car uses expensive lithium-polymer batteries, sophisticated electronics and an electric motor combined with a gasoline engine — have kept many prospective buyers away from Chevy showrooms.

Some are put off by the technical challenges of ownership, mainly related to charging the battery. Plug-in hybrids such as the Volt still take hours to fully charge the batteries – a process that can be speeded up a bit with the installation of a $2,000 commercial-grade charger in the garage.

PLANT SHUTDOWN

The lack of interest in the car has prevented GM from coming close to its early, optimistic sales projections. Discounted leases as low as $199 a month helped propel Volt sales in August to 2,831, pushing year-to-date sales to 13,500, well below the 40,000 cars that GM originally had hoped to sell in 2012.

Out in the trenches, even the cheap leases haven’t always been effective.

A Chevrolet dealership that is part of an auto dealer group in Toms River, New Jersey, has sold only one Volt in the last year, said its president Adam Kraushaar. The dealership sells 90 to 100 Chevrolets a month.

The weak sales are forcing GM to idle the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant that makes the Chevrolet Volt for four weeks from September 17, according to plant suppliers and union sources. It is the second time GM has had to call a Volt production halt this year.

GM acknowledges the Volt continues to lose money, and suggests it might not reach break even until the next-generation model is launched in about three years.

“It’s true, we’re not making money yet” on the Volt, said Doug Parks, GM’s vice president of global product programs and the former Volt development chief, in an interview. The car “eventually will make money. As the volume comes up and we get into the Gen 2 car, we’re going to turn (the losses) around,” Parks said.

“I don’t see how General Motors will ever get its money back on that vehicle,” countered Sandy Munro, president of Michigan-based Munro & Associates, which performs detailed tear-down analyses of vehicles and components for global manufacturers and the U.S. government.

It currently costs GM “at least” $75,000 to build the Volt, including development costs, Munro said. That’s nearly twice the base price of the Volt before a $7,500 federal tax credit provided as part of President Barack Obama’s green energy policy.

Other estimates range from $76,000 to $88,000, according to four industry consultants contacted by Reuters. The consultants’ companies all have performed work for GM and are familiar with the Volt’s development and production. They requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their auto industry ties.

Parks declined to comment on specific costs related to the Volt.

The independent cost estimates obtained by Reuters factor in GM’s initial investment in development of the Volt and its key components, as well as new tooling for battery, stamping, assembly and supplier plants — a price tag that totals “a little over” $1 billion, Parks said. Independent estimates put it at $1.2 billion, a figure that does not include sales, marketing and related corporate costs.

Spread out over the 21,500 Volts that GM has sold since the car’s introduction in December 2010, the development and tooling costs average just under $56,000 per car. That figure will, of course, come down as more Volts are sold.

The actual cost to build the Volt is estimated to be an additional $20,000 to $32,000 per vehicle, according to Munro and the other industry consultants.

The production cost estimates are considerably higher than those for the Chevrolet Cruze, the Volt’s conventional gasoline-engine sister car, which Munro estimates at $12,000 to $15,000 per vehicle.

Production costs typically include such items as parts, material, labor and the cost to run the factory, according to manufacturing expert Ron Harbour, who heads the North American Automotive Practice at Michigan-based consultant Oliver Wyman.

COST PENALTIES

The Volt costs more to build for several reasons, mostly related to the car’s richer content, complex technology and still-low sales and production volumes.

The basic model has a higher level of equipment and features than the Cruze, which is assembled in Lordstown, Ohio, and has a starting sales price of $17,925. The Volt also has a number of unique parts, including the battery pack, the electric motor and the power electronics.

Some of GM’s suppliers also impose cost penalties on the automaker because the Volt’s production volume remains well below projections.

Still, as the company wrestles with how to drive down costs and increase showroom traffic, Parks said the Volt is an important car for GM in other respects.

“It wasn’t conceived as a way to make tons of money,” he said. “It was a big dip in the technology pool for GM. We’ve learned a boatload of stuff that we’re deploying on other models,” Parks said. Those include the Cruze and such future cars as the 2014 Cadillac ELR hybrid.

Democrats Said to End Convention $15 Million Short

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By Hans Nichols – Sep 7, 2012 5:44 PM ET
15 Million Dollars ShortDemocrats ended their convention in Charlotte $5 million short of their budget even after being forced to draw down a $10 million line of credit from Duke Energy Corp. (DUK), according to a Democratic Party fundraiser.

That will leave a $15 million bill that eventually will have to be paid by President Barack Obama’s campaign or the Democratic National Committee, according to the fundraiser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Charlotte Host Committee ended the convention with more than $5 million in immediate obligations and may require a direct cash infusion from the Obama campaign to pay vendors, said the fundraiser.

The $10 million line of credit to Duke Energy will need to be repaid next year, said a second person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. Duke Energy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jim Rogers is co-chairman of the host committee.

Those debts could siphon off advertising money in the campaign’s final months, as Democrats face a cash disadvantage.

Bank Balances

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the Republican National Committee and two allied super-political action committees reported a combined bank account balance of $169 million on July 31. That compared with $107 million for President Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the pro-Obama super-PAC Priorities USA Action, according to disclosures filed Aug. 20 with the Federal Election Commission.

“It is always easier to raise corporate dollars in advance of a convention because of the visibility and profile that corporate sponsorship can offer,” said Tony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, who specializes in campaign finance. “After a convention, once the signs are down and the politicians have left, raising money is a much more difficult task.”

The host committee failed to reach its $36.7 million fundraising goal because the DNC banned direct cash contributions from corporations, which have traditionally underwritten presidential nominating conventions. Republicans didn’t have a similar prohibition for their convention last month in Tampa.

Dealing With Restrictions

“If they got within 5 million, considering that they used the line of credit, I think that’s awesome, given the restrictions they had to deal with, ” said Mike Dino, who served as executive director for the host committee in Denver, where Democrats held their nomination convention in 2008. “They should be relieved to be in that range.”

The Denver convention accepted direct corporate contributions and raised enough money to pay all its bills, though immediately after the convention, the committee had “in the range of 8 to 10 million dollars that was outstanding,” Dino said.

Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke, referred questions to the host committee.

“All details relevant to the line of credit from Duke Energy will be disclosed in the FEC report,” Suzi Emmerling, a host committee spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net

Senior FAA officials accused of telling workers ‘job security’ at risk if GOP wins

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By Judson Berger – Published September 05, 2012 – FoxNews.com

Two federal agency supervisors allegedly warned employees earlier this year that a Republican takeover in Washington could threaten their jobs — comments that some workers apparently took as guidance on “how to vote” and that one group claims may have violated federal law.

Nonprofit watchdog Cause of Action wrote a letter Wednesday asking the Department of Transportation’s inspector general to launch a probe into the incident, involving senior officials with the Federal Aviation Administration. The incident occurred in May during a meeting at the FAA’s Seattle office, according to the letter.

Emails obtained by FoxNews.com show one FAA employee recalling what John Hickey, deputy associate administrator for aviation safety, said at the meeting.

“I would not be able to quote Mr. Hickey (sic) exact words but what I took out of it was, if the conservative (Republicans) gain control of congress then the FAA could be looking (at) as much as a 15% cut in budget and we (may) be looking at furloughs. If the liberal Democrats take control of congress then we would be looking at a flat budget,” the email said. “In short if the Republicans win office our jobs may be (affected) … if the Democrats win office then our jobs would not be (affected).”

The recipient of that email then relayed the account, and others, to apparent higher-ups at the FAA. He said, “there seems to be some energy within the office as a reaction to Mr. Hickey’s, inappropriate at best, comments and more than a few employees took umbrage that a person in such an elevated position in the agency would make those remarks.

“My understanding is that more than one employee’s perception was that Mr. Hickey was essentially telling them how to vote if they wanted to keep their job,” he wrote.

Cause of Action claims the FAA’s Office of Special Counsel is already investigating, adding that Raymond Towles, deputy director of flight standards field operations, is also being looked at over similar comments at the May meeting.

The Cause of Action letter requesting an IG investigation expressed concern that the comments may have violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from partisan political activity.

An FAA spokesman said in a statement Wednesday that the agency would cooperate with any review.

“The FAA takes Hatch Act violation allegations very seriously and will cooperate fully with any review of the allegations,” the spokesman said.

Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, called the alleged incident an “egregious abuse of power for political gain.”

“These career employees were led to believe their jobs were at risk if their political support did not line up with the agenda of the administration,” he said.

A representative with the FAA has not yet responded to a request for comment on the incident.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/05/senior-faa-officials-accused-telling-workers-job-security-at-risk-if/#ixzz25seJ9xAf

‘Bait and Switch’ Taxes

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We have heard many times from President Barack Obama how he plans to raise taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” but not on the middle class. Apparently, if you don’t happen to be a millionaire or billionaire, you don’t have to worry.

But the numbers say otherwise — and say so big time.

The actual tax increase plans being proposed by Obama do not start with people who have an income of a million dollars a year. They start with people with incomes of $250,000 and up.

That is more than most people make, but it is far short of a million dollars, and miles away from a billion dollars. How many of the people who stand to get hit with Obama’s higher tax rate plan are in fact either millionaires or billionaires?

According to the Internal Revenue Service, there are more than 2,700,000 people who earn $250,000 a year or more — and fewer than one-tenth of them earn a million dollars or more. So more than nine-tenths of the people who would be hit with the higher taxes supposedly aimed at “millionaires and billionaires” are neither.

When businesses advertise one thing and then actually sell something else, that is called “bait and switch” advertising. That is exactly what President Obama is doing with his proposed tax increases on “millionaires and billionaires.”

It gets worse when you look at the potential economic consequences of the tax rate increases being proposed. The small proportion of the people targeted for Obama’s higher tax rates who are in fact millionaires and billionaires have the least likelihood of actually paying the higher tax rates.

People with annual incomes in the millions or billions of dollars can live pretty high on the hog on a fraction of their income, leaving them with plenty of money to invest. And they can invest it in ways that keep it away from the tax collectors. In addition to tax-exempt bonds, they can invest in other countries that have lower tax rates.

Hard facts show this happening as far back as we have had a federal income tax.

The Constitution of the United States had to be amended in 1913 to permit the federal government to collect income taxes. Almost immediately, very high tax rates on people with very high incomes led to their taking steps to avoid paying those taxes.

In 1920, Secretary of the Treasury David Franklin Houston in the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson pointed out that the taxable income of people with incomes of $300,000 and up had been more than cut in half, just from 1916 to 1918. He did not believe that this was because the rich were becoming poorer but “almost certainly through investment by the richer taxpayers in tax-exempt properties.”

President Woodrow Wilson himself urged Congress to reconsider whether very high tax rates are in fact “productive of revenue” to the government. He said that, beyond some point, “high rates of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprise, encourage extravagant expenditures, and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils.” That sounds a lot like where we are today.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents once warned that high tax rates can reduce economic growth. And Secretaries of the Treasury under both Democratic and Republican administrations once pointed out that higher tax rates do not necessarily bring in more tax revenues than lower tax rates. Yet this lesson from more than 90 years ago has still not been learned by those who advocate higher taxes on “the rich” as the answer to our fiscal problems.

In today’s global economy, it is even easier for genuine millionaires and billionaires to escape high tax rates by investing in other countries. Not so for the other nine-tenths of the people hit with higher tax rates, such as small business owners or independent professionals such as dentists or realtors, whose sources of income are necessarily local.

Those hardest hit by high tax rates that drive jobs overseas are likely to be those who are unemployed and need jobs here. Ironically, millionaires and billionaires may have the least to lose from higher tax rates on “the rich.” But Barack Obama has the most to gain from class warfare rhetoric that wins votes from gullible people.

Copyright 2012, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Love lost: Ad urges Obama ‘break-up’ over golf, Clooney

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September 6, 2012 | 9:25 am

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The GOP has a new message for voters disappointed with the president they fell in love with four years ago: He just hasn’t earned your love.

Like in the 2006 movie “The Break-Up,” featuring marriage seeking Jennifer Aniston and immature Vince Vaughn, the Republican National Committee Thursday unveiled a new ad also called the “Break-Up” that concludes, “I think we should just be friends.”

And the GOP is not alone with the break-up theme. Also on Thursday, a group called Betterdirection.org put out an ad simply titled “Boyfriend” that features a daughter asking her mom “why do I always fall for guys like this?”

In the 30-second GOP ad, a beautiful woman that looks a lot like the 2008 “Obama girl,” is sitting at a restaurant table expressing her frustration that her spend-thrift date is never around, often out golfing or playing with actors George Clooney and Sarah Jessica Parker, has skipped out on his job for months and, well, just isn’t the person she thought he was.

“It’s not me, it’s you,” she says, as the announcer asks Americans to “tell us why you are breaking up with President Obama at breakupwithobama.com.”

The ad, first shown on NBC’s Today show, goes right to the heart of one of the big issues the GOP believes is blocking a breakout by Mitt Romney: voters are having a tough time admitting that the love of their political life just hasn’t cut it as president.

Here’s the dialogue of the new GOP ad

“Listen, this just isn’t working. It’s been four years. You’ve changed. Your spending is out of control. You’re constantly on the golf course and you’re always out with Hollywood celebrities. You think I didn’t see you with Sarah Jessica Parker and George Clooney?

“Your jobs council says you haven’t even show’d up in six months.

“You’re just not the person I thought you were. It’s not me. It’s you.

“I think we should just be friends.”

Ark. lawmaker pleads guilty to election charge

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Updated: 9/05 8:34 pm Published: 9/05 3:36 pm

Hudson HallumLITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – A Democratic state legislator from east Arkansas, his father and two campaign workers pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy to commit election fraud after federal prosecutors said the lawmaker’s campaign bribed absentee voters and destroyed ballots in a special election last year.

Prosecutors said Democratic Rep. Hudson Hallum of Marion, Kent Hallum, Phillip Wayne Carter and Sam Malone acknowledged that they participated in a conspiracy to bribe voters to influence absentee votes in the Arkansas District 54 primary, runoff and general elections in 2011. The four were released pending a sentencing hearing.

“In a nation in which every person’s vote matters, protecting the integrity of the electoral process from those who seek to win office by cheating the system is critical,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Duke said in a statement released by her office. “Voter fraud schemes such as that carried out in the 2011 District 54 race have the devastating effect of eroding public confidence in elected officials and disenfranchising voters.”

A Democratic Party spokeswoman said Hallum indicated he would step down from his seat, but Gov. Mike Beebe had not received a formal resignation by Wednesday afternoon.

Hallum didn’t respond to phone messages from The Associated Press seeking comment, and House Speaker Robert Moore said he has not heard from the lawmaker. But in an email sent to other Democratic legislators, Hallum apologized for his actions.

“I took some bad advice that led to some bad decisions on my part. I am going to stand up and accept full responsibility for my actions,” Hallum wrote. “I am truly sorry because I know this news will have an effect on everyone’s upcoming race.”

Prosecutors said Hallum and his father, Kent, tasked Carter and Malone with obtaining absentee ballot applications for certain voters and assisting voters in filling out the ballots, “actually completing absentee ballots in some instances without regard to the voter’s actual candidate choice.”

The ballots were typically placed in unsealed envelopes before being mailed to local election officials.

“If a ballot contained a vote for Hudson Hallum’s opponent, it was destroyed,” prosecutors said in a bill of information filed with the court.

Prosecutors also accused the four of offering money and food to absentee voters in exchange for their support.

At one point, prosecutors said, Hallum told Carter: “We need to use that black limo and buy a couple cases of some cheap vodka and whiskey to get people to vote.”

Hallum won the east Arkansas seat in a special election last year following the resignation of Rep. Fred Smith, who stepped down after he was found guilty of felony theft of property delivered by mistake. A judge later dismissed the theft case, but Smith was blocked from running in the Democratic primary against Hallum for his old seat because he had a conviction at the time he filed.

Smith is now running as the Green Party nominee for the seat. No Republican is running.

Hallum’s guilty plea comes as Democrats in Arkansas are struggling to keep the Legislature from falling to Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction. Party leaders were quick to condemn Hallum’s actions Wednesday afternoon.

“The sanctity of our elections and the rights of voters to see that every vote is counted fairly and responsibly are some of the basic, fundamental liberties of our democracy. No threat to those liberties can or should be endured,” Party spokeswoman Candace Martin said. “Hudson Hallum is taking responsibility for his actions and we hope that will help resolve things in a way to see that such activities will never be tolerated.”

Republicans said the case pointed to long-running voter fraud problems in the state.

“The voters’ constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair election was stolen by an Arkansas Democrat who was more concerned with winning than upholding the public trust and being a true public servant,” state GOP Chairman Doyle Webb said. “This is corruption that a two party system will end.”

Prosecutors said in the charging documents that the four tried to conceal the absentee voter fraud by using rental cars when collecting ballots and using coded language such as “gold tokens,” ”duct work” and “watermelons” when referring to the absentee ballots.

Sentencing hearings will be held later for the four. The maximum penalty for the conspiracy charge is five years in prison plus a potential fine of $250,000.

Malone resigned his job as a West Memphis police officer, but did not know if he would resign from the Crittenden County Quorum Court or the West Memphis school board, attorney Blake Hendrix said. There was no answer at a number listed for Carter, a West Memphis City Councilman.

Hallum’s name will remain on the ballot, but if he wins in November after resigning, a special election will have to be called for the seat, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office said. A court could order election officials to not count any votes cast for Hallum.

(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Hello everyone,
It is with deep regret that I am sending this message out to each of you today. This afternoon I am going to plead guilty to federal charges stemming from an investigation into my special election. I took some bad advice that led to some bad decisions on my part. I am going to stand up and accept full responsibility for my actions. I am truly sorry because I know this news will have an effect on everyone’s upcoming race. I would give anything to be able to change what happened but unfortunately I can not undo the past. Please accept my apologies and if any needs to contact me my number is [ ]. It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve with each of you and our state is a better place for what you have done
Sincerely,
Hudson

Hudson Hallum
Chief Paramedic, Crittenden EMS
State Representative (D-Marion)

What the Foreclosure Crisis Means for the Election

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By Elizabeth MacDonald – Emac’s Bottom Line – Published September 05, 2012

The country’s foreclosure wave could suppress voter turnout in key battleground states, experts now say.

Pollsters are having trouble finding where these foreclosed voters have gone—and they’re finding that foreclosed voters may not come out to vote at all.

At minimum, the foreclosure crisis is roiling voter polling on this election.

That means more uncertainty about voter polls showing where this election is headed, which means this presidential race may be more nerve wracking than ever.

In the past four years, more than 3.7 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2008, according to market research firm CoreLogic.

And President Barack Obama won three of the eight states with some of the highest foreclosure rates in the country–Florida, Ohio and Nevada–but they are now battlegrounds, more so since each state has since elected Republican governors, says Neil Garfield, a specialist in foreclosures, economist and a consumer advocate who has been tracking the issue.

A new study by the University of California-Riverside found foreclosures depressed voter turnout in California in 2008.

All likely due to anxiety and mistrust, the thinking likely being, “we are already hurting, what is our vote going to change? We’re now just trying to survive.”

Who is most affected? Foreclosure is particularly high among populations already less likely to be politically active: young, minority, moderate-income families, meaning, solidly middle class.
That means the older voter could have more of an impact this election.

Campaign organizers and pollsters have found dozens of vacated homes in key battleground states that contributed strong turnouts in the 2008 election.

Pollsters are having trouble working with voter databases loaded now with old addresses and phone numbers that have been disconnected.

The California study analyzed state foreclosure data as well as voter-turnout records according to ZIP code, adjusting for things such as poverty, ethnicity and proportion of neighborhood residents with a four-year college degree.

To read the study, click here.

Nearly 650,000 homes fell into foreclosure in California between 2008 and the first quarter of 2011.

The study found neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosure were less likely to cast ballots — even neighbors who remained in their homes didn’t come out to vote.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/government/2012/09/05/what-foreclosure-crisis-means-for-election/#ixzz25goB1uYg

Bill Clinton delivers emphatic endorsement of Obama, saying America is better off

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Published September 06, 2012 – FoxNews.com

Charlotte, N.C. – Former President Bill Clinton, employing his charisma and eloquence and command of history to its fullest extent, set out to make the economic case for a second President Obama term Wednesday night — suggesting the country is on the cusp of a ’90s-style jobs boom so long as Obama can finish the job he started.

“If you renew the president’s contract, you will feel it,” Clinton said.

The former president, who presided over that boom, emphatically answered the “are you better off” question Mitt Romney posed at last week’s Republican convention.

“Are we where we want to be today? No. Is the President satisfied? Of course not. But are we better off than we were when he took office?” Clinton asked.

After a resounding “yes” from the crowd, Clinton echoed: “The answer is yes.”

The endorsement was a vital one for Obama, with Clinton still occupying a place in the public’s mind as a moderate and economically prudent Democratic figure — in partisan and economically trying times. Despite Obama’s rocky history with the former president, the speech was unequivocal in its support for the current White House occupant.

The audience at the national convention in Charlotte erupted in applause as Obama joined Clinton onstage at the end of the address, after which the party formally nominated Obama for a second term on the job.

Clinton, speaking off-the-cuff at times, meticulously crafted an argument that Republicans have pushed a false narrative about Obama and that with a little more time and perhaps cooperation from those in Congress, the economy will spring into action. No doubt recognizing that millions of jobless Americans pine for the prosperity of the ’90s, Clinton pointed to a pickup in lending and home prices to hint that the economy was showing the same signs of life he saw two decades ago.

“I had the same thing happen in 1994 and early 1995,” Clinton said.

The ex-president said the only difference this time is in the “circumstances,” and the severity of the problem.

“No president — not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have repaired all the damage that he found in just four years,” Clinton said. “But he has laid the foundation for a new, modern successful economy.”

He urged Americans to “keep President Obama on the job.”

Clinton, through much of his speech, argued that the alternative would be much worse. He echoed the Obama stump-speech message that Republicans want to go back to the policies that “got us in trouble in the first place.” He slammed the Medicare overhaul and tax-cut plans of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, claiming Republicans want to “double-down on trickle down.”
Clinton even invoked his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, saying: “As another president once said, there they go again.”

Clinton also rejected GOP claims that Obama has moved to gut the welfare reform he signed into law, arguing that recent changes made by the Obama administration would strengthen work requirements, and not weaken them as Republicans say.

“In Tampa … the Republican argument against the president’s re-election was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. It went something like this — we left him a total mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him, put us back in,” Clinton said. “I like the argument for President Obama’s re-election a lot better. … He inherited a deeply damaged economy, he put a floor under the crash, he began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a modern, more well-balanced economy.”

The Romney campaign, which claims Obama has failed in his task of restoring the economy, chose not to quibble with the details of Clinton’s speech Wednesday. Instead, spokesman Ryan Williams said it only served to underscore the gap between his leadership and Obama’s.

“President Clinton drew a stark contrast between himself and President Obama tonight. Bill Clinton worked with Republicans, balanced the budget, and after four years he could say you were better off. Barack Obama hasn’t worked across the aisle – he’s barely worked with other Democrats — and has the worst economic record of any president in modern history. President Clinton’s speech brought the disappointment and failure of President Obama’s time in office clearly into focus,” Williams said.

The crowd in Charlotte, though, ate it up as Clinton once again flexed his reputation as among the best in the business.

“It was one of his best speeches,” said Wisconsin delegate Gary Hawley.

Pennsylvania delegate Rosemary Bolland told FoxNews.com she was “thrilled” with the speech, saying the ex-president “has the ability as a communicator to get the facts out and tell the story in a way the American people will listen.”

The lengthy speech Wednesday night marked Clinton’s seventh at a Democratic national convention in the past 25 years.

Just four years ago, Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, was battling Obama for the party nomination, and the former president was among Obama’s toughest critics.

Now, Hillary Clinton is Obama’s secretary of state, and Obama Democrats need the former president’s star power and fundraising prowess as much as Clinton, who clearly still enjoys the spotlight, needs the party.

Bill Clinton on Wednesday pointed to his wife’s current position as proof of Obama’s spirit of cooperation in Washington — as he argued Republicans have not approached him with the same attitude.

“Heck, he even appointed Hillary!” Clinton said.

Ahead of the address, Clinton sent out a fundraising email on Obama’s behalf — saying it’s “absolutely urgent” that the president stay in office.

“We can win this,” he wrote.

Obama will formally accept the nomination on Thursday in his late-night address.

That speech, convention organizers announced Wednesday morning, has been moved from the Bank of America Stadium to the indoor Time Warner Cable Arena due to what Democratic officials said were weather concerns. The arena, where the rest of the convention program was being held, is a considerably smaller venue and the decision to hold the president’s address there means thousands of Obama supporters who had been planning to attend will be left out.

FoxNews.com’s Judson Berger and Cristina Corbin contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/05/bill-clinton-praises-obama-for-putting-america-on-long-road-to-recovery/#ixzz25gmLC4Gj

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