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It’s just a few weeks until the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary and the Republican nomination fight is, once again, going through some changes. But, one thing that has remained constant through the past few months is that Mitt Romney has been at or near the top. One reason, however, the former Governor of Massachusetts may not have quite sealed the deal with voters yet is that, even after running for Republican nomination in 2008, people may not yet be sure who he is.

Among all Americans, two in five like Mitt Romney as a person (40%), over one-third (36%) say they like his track record as governor and one-third (33%) like his political opinions. But over one-third of U.S. adults also say they are not sure about Mitt Romney as a person (34%), not sure about his track record as governor (38%) and not sure about his political opinions (34%).

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 2,499 adults surveyed online between November 7 and 14, 2011 by Harris Interactive.

Among Republicans almost three in five (58%) like Mitt Romney as a person, half (49%) like his track record as governor and 57% like his political opinions. Among Conservatives, these numbers drop a little. Just half of Conservatives like Mitt Romney as a person (49%) and like his political opinions (48%) while just two in five Conservatives like his track record as governor (39%).

When given some statements about Mitt Romney, again there is a little bit of the unknown. Just over half of Americans (54%) say Mitt Romney is an intelligent person with one-third (32%) saying they are not sure and while half (49%) believe his business experience would be an asset, again one-third (32%) are not sure.  Romney has also been charged with “flip-flopping” and 44% of Americans agree that his stance on issues depends on who he is talking to, not his core convictions, with over one-third (36%) not sure about this.

However, just 20% of Americans say Mitt Romney lacks experience and is not qualified to be president with half (48%) disagreeing with that statement but, again, one-third (32%) are not sure. The issue of religion has also been raised and while 52% of Americans say Mitt Romney being Mormon is not an issue, one-quarter say it is (23%) and the same number are not sure (25%). The one thing that evenly divides Americans is if he inspires confidence personally. One third of Americans think Mitt Romney does (35%), one third says he does not (33%), and one-third are not sure (32%).

Among Republicans, two-thirds believe Mitt Romney is intelligent (69%) and that his business experience would be an asset (67%), while over half (53%) say he inspires confidence personally. Just over one-quarter (27%) say his being Mormon is an issue but two in five Republicans (41%) say his stance on issues depends on who he is talking to and not his core convictions. His numbers are a little weaker among Conservatives as just three in five say he is an intelligent person (61%) and that his business experience is an asset (61%) with less than half (46%) agreeing he inspires confidence personally. Slightly over two in five (43%) agree his stance on issues depends on who he is talking to and not his core convictions while one-quarter (26%) say his being Mormon is an issue.

Looking at Mitt Romney’s political ideology, one in ten Americans (8%) say he is too liberal, compared to 15% of Republicans and one in five Conservatives (20%). On the flip side, 16% of U.S. adults say Mitt Romney is too conservative. One-third of Americans (32%) say he is neither too liberal nor too conservative but almost half (45%) are not sure, including one-third of Republicans (34%) and two in five Conservatives (39%).

If Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee, one-third of Americans (33%) would vote for him, 38% would not and 25% are not sure. Two-thirds of Republicans (65%) would vote for him, but just over half of Conservatives (57%) say the same. Two in five Independents (40%) would vote for Mitt Romney while one-third would not (34%) but among Moderates two in five would not vote for him (39%) while 27% would.

So What?
With the Republican primary this year, much can change in a week, let alone three weeks, so it’s still anyone’s guess what will actually happen in Iowa and New Hampshire. But, one thing is certain. For someone who in his second run for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney has not done a great job of defining who he is and what he stands for. Others have defined him and that may be one of the main reasons he has not been able to run away with the nomination, even though he’s been the “front-runner” for almost the whole of 2011.

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding; 2012 Swing States are Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia; 5% states in 2008 are Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina and Ohio

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding; 2012 Swing States are Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia; 5% states in 2008 are Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina and Ohio

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding; 2012 Swing States are Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia; 5% states in 2008 are Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina and Ohio; * indicates less than 1%

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding; 2012 Swing States are Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia; 5% states in 2008 are Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina and Ohio

Methodology
This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States between November 7 and 14, 2011 among 2,499 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words “margin of error” as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

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Better Choices for Connecticut, a coalition dedicated to creating a more sustainable and fair revenue system for the state, lauds two positive steps this week: Comptroller Kevin Lembo’s call for more transparency and accountability to measure the success of business tax breaks, and a new tax structure in New York State that will generate $1.9 billion — enough to nearly halve the budget gap that lawmakers expect to confront in January — by preserving the millionaire’s tax on the highest income earners while lowering the tax rate for millions of New Yorkers.

“This proves it’s possible to raise revenue in a sound, fair and sustainable way,” said Renae Reese, Executive Director of the Connecticut Center for a New Economy. “Connecticut should follow New York’s lead, and take further steps to reduce income inequality through our tax structure. This is right in line with Governor Malloy’s statement that we should benchmark our own income tax against that of neighboring states. Even when the New York legislature approves this change, Connecticut’s highest tax rate will be significantly lower than New York’s.”

“We welcome Comptroller Lembo’s efforts towards ensuring our public investments provide the highest return on the taxpayer dollar,” added Jamey Bell, Executive Director of Connecticut Voices for Children and co-chair of Better Choices. “At the very least, we should be analyzing and reporting on whether tax breaks and incentives are creating jobs and stimulating the economy. Citizens and policy makers need this basic information to make informed choices.”

The Coalition also lauded Lembo’s request that the statutory committee charged with evaluating the effectiveness of existing tax expenditures be fully reconstituted with experts in taxation.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders reached an agreement, approved Thursday, to overhaul New York State’s income tax. The plan preserves higher taxes on incomes of $2 million or more, creating a higher tax bracket for the highest-income residents while allowing initially-scheduled tax reductions to go into effect for millions of middle-class residents. The income ranges will be indexed to inflation. The new rates take effect in January.

Additionally, a new 13-member state Tax Reform and Fairness Commission will examine long-term changes to the tax structure, including income, sales and corporate.

Better Choices also called for Connecticut to create a similar tax reform commission, and for the Office of Fiscal Analysis to conduct tax incidence studies periodically, at least every three years to determine which corporations pay taxes, and how much.

Better Choices for Connecticut is a community coalition working to help Connecticut make better choices on ways to improve the state’s imbalanced revenue system so that it advances opportunity for shared prosperity for all Connecticut residents; preserves services for children, families and the elderly; creates and sustains good jobs; and reinvests in the middle class and our communities.

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From Robert Reich:

Newt Gingrich has done it again. With his new tax plan he has raised the bar from irresponsibility to recklessness.

Every dollar estimate I’m about to share with you comes from the independent, non-partisan Tax Policy Center – a group whose estimates are used by almost everyone in Washington regardless of political persuasion.

First off, Newt’s plan increases the federal budget deficit by about $850 billion – in a single year!

To put this in perspective, most forecasts of the budget deficit cover ten years. The elusive goal of the White House and many on both sides of the aisle in Congress is to reduce that ten-year deficit by 3 to 4 trillion dollars.

Newt goes in the other direction, with gusto. Increasing the deficit by $850 billion in a single year is beyond the wildest imaginings of the least responsible budget mavens within a radius of three thousand miles from Washington.

Imagine what Standard & Poor’s or Moody’s or Fitch would do if it became law. We’d go directly from a triple-A credit rating to triple X – the veritable porn star of fiscal mayhem. Interest on our debt would become larger than most of the rest of the budget.

Most of this explosion of debt in Newt’s plan occurs because he slashes taxes. But not just anyone’s taxes. The lion’s share of Newt’s tax cuts benefit the very, very rich.

That’s because he lowers their marginal income tax rate to 15 percent – down from the current 35 percent, which was Bush’s temporary tax cut; down from 39 percent under Bill Clinton; down from at least 70 percent in the first three decades after World War II. Newt also gets rid of taxes on unearned income – the kind of income that the super-rich thrive on – capital-gains, dividends, and interest.

Under Newt’s plan, each of the roughly 130,000 taxpayers in the top .1 percent – the richest one-tenth of one percent – reaps an average tax cut of $1.9 million per year. Add what they’d otherwise have to pay if the Bush tax cut expired on schedule, and each of them saves $2.3 million a year.

To put it another way, under Newt’s plan, the total tax bill of the top one-tenth of one percent drops from around 38 percent of their income to around 10 percent.

What about low-income households? They get an average tax cut of $63 per year.

Oh, I almost forgot: Newt also slashes corporate taxes.

Reich goes on to point out that the more recklessand irresponsible Newt is, the more he rises in the Republican polls.

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Obviously, I’m no conservative, and don’t agree with everything in this video, but still it is an awful lot of fun to watch:

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By Elsa Peterson Obuchowski

To be delivered to: The Connecticut State House, The Connecticut State Senate and Governor Dan Malloy:

Keep Bridgeport in the 4th Congressional District. Urge the Reapportionment Commission to preserve historical precedent — not to carve Bridgeport out and put it with New Haven.

Connecticut’s Reapportionment Commission has until December 21 to agree on redistricting for U.S. Congressional districts. Republicans on the Commission want to gerrymander Bridgeport out of the 4th District (currently represented by Jim Himes) and lump it together with New Haven (currently represented by Rosa DeLauro). This politically motivated plan would quarantine southwestern Fairfield County into a non-competitive “safe” Republican district and silence the voices of Democratic and minority voters in cities like Norwalk, Stamford, and Danbury.

Sign the petition here!

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Wow! This is really, really important with potentially huge consequences in Connecticut.

Read the whole CTNewsJunkie article here.

Colorado School Finance Decision: A Wake-Up Call for Connecticut?

by Dianne Kaplan deVries | Dec 11, 2011 10:51pm

A stunning victory for Colorado plaintiffs in a school finance lawsuit not all that different from the CCJEF v. Rell case surely ought to result in heightened legal angst here in Connecticut, just as it should further raise the hopes of public schools, parents, and schoolchildren across the Nutmeg State. The decision, in which Colorado’s school finance system was found to be unconstitutional, was handed down by the Denver District Court on Friday, Dec. 9….

The Court found that Colorado’s public schools are so underfunded that children throughout the state are being denied an adequate education in violation of the state’s constitutional mandate of a “thorough and uniform” system of public education, and that the Colorado public school finance system “fails to provide the financial resources necessary for local boards of education to exercise control of instruction in their schools.” (p. 1)

Here are a few special gems contained in the Court’s 183-page decision, which is sending shockwaves across Colorado:

• “Many witnesses, for both Plaintiffs and Defendants testified that more money makes a difference in public education. Even Defendants’ lead expert witness, Dr. Eric Hanushek, acknowledges that, ‘money certainly matters’; he testified that if a school district in Colorado efficiently spends its money, additional funds for education could lead to higher student achievement.” (p.49)

• Citing earlier Court decisions, “Colorado has one of the widest achievement gaps in the United States…. There is roughly a thirty percent gap in Colorado between white and minority students and high-income and low-income students with respect to achievement on [the state’s] standardized tests…. Colorado has among the largest achievement gaps on NAEP across all the states….” (p.56)

• • Citing testimony by Dr. Steven Barnett (an internationally prominent expert in early childhood education and Co-Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research), “The roots of disparities in achievement and graduation are to a considerable extent evident when children enter kindergarten.” (p.57) And here’s another quote from Barnett testimony recounted in the decision that is particularly salient for Connecticut in light of the Attorney General’s recent motion to exclude preschool and early childhood education from the CCJEF lawsuit CCJEF lawsuit: “High quality preschool programs have been found to close as much as seventy percent of the achievement gaps between higher- and lower-income students and between majority and minority students at kindergarten entry and one quarter to one third of the gaps in the long term.” (p.67)

• “The APA Report [the adequacy cost study conducted by Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, the same Denver consulting firm that conducted the 2005 Connecticut adequacy cost study establishes both that (1) school funding can be analyzed and quantified by rational methods and that (2) the existing finance system is so profoundly underfunded that it cannot be considered rational or adequate.” (p.177) The Court goes on to cite APA’s research finding of underfunding in the amount of $1.35 billion to $1.94 billion per year using its successful schools model, and $3.58 billion to $4.15 billion per year using the professional judgment model, which the Court viewed as a more accurate method of estimating costs. While noting that it is “not this Court’s function to determine at this time the amount necessary to provide adequate funding for public education,” the decision goes on to say “However, the Court does find that public education is very significantly underfunded and that any legislative response of necessity must address the level of funding necessary to meet the Education Clause and the standards-based system and should provide funding consistent with that standard.” (p.177)

“All of the evidence demonstrates a systemic failure to provide all students with the knowledge and skills mandated by the Education Clause and standards-based education. This failure is directly correlated to inadequate and irrational funding.” (p.179)

• “Insufficient funding prevents the School Districts from accomplishing the ambitious goals of educational accountability. Present school district funding levels bear no intentional relationship to the costs of meeting state imposed performance goals. Failure to accomplish these goals leads to regulatory consequences of the most profound concern to local boards of education, including state administered ‘major restructuring’ impacting at least local curriculum, school staffing, school schedules, and student assessment and training, but also school closure, privatization, or conversion to charter status.” (p.180)

• “Current economic conditions, however, are not the source of the school finance crisis. They have made an unworkable situation unconscionable. But Colorado’s history of irrational and inadequate school funding goes back for over two decades…” (p.182)