Karen Cyphers - page 18

Southern Strategy Group entered the Twittersphere on August 12 and has piled on followers to the tune of 206 this week. But more impressive than the mega-lobby firm’s quick start is the candor of its posts.   It’s all up there: who SSG folks are meeting with, where they’ve been, how budget hearings make them want a drink. Mixed in are some political ‘insights’, a keen observation on the ratio of Cafe Risque’-to-Charlie billboards on I-75, and a few well…

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The chicken and egg of media consumption: do Americans pay too much attention to celebrity news because that’s what they are being fed? Or do Americans demand gossip from our outlets? Who knows. But regardless it appears that Americans have a self-loathing relationship with tabloid news. In a Rasmussen poll released this week, 81% of Americans adults think their fellow Americans pay too much attention to celebrity news and not enough attention to news that has real impact on their…

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Florida is among the US states with the greatest geographical concentration of science and engineering (S&E) employment, according to a report just released by the National Science Foundation using data from the US Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey. Predictably, California, Texas and New York together accounted for more than one-fourth of all S&E employment in the US; and Florida, along with Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts and Ohio together accounted for nearly another one-fourth of S&E employment nationwide. That sounds…

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Welfare benefits continue to outpace the income that most recipients could expect to earn from entry-level jobs, according to a study released Monday by the Cato Institute. In 1995, Cato published a widely circulated study, The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off, which estimated the value of the full package of welfare benefits available to the average recipient in each state and DC, and which found that the value of welfare benefits greatly exceeded the poverty level. Further, Cato found that because…

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Advocates of medical marijuana are pushing for a constitutional amendment on Florida’s 2014 ballot to legalize medicinal weed.  Meanwhile, public opinion polls and top medical experts are showing increased support for such measures.  Which got me thinking: how much are Floridians really thinking about weed? And what, if anything, can we learn from other states that have passed medical marijuana laws in terms of any impact on illegal cultivation? One underlying question is whether medicinal use of marijuana leads to…

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Democratic voters feel more closely aligned with their party’s Congressional representation than do Republicans, at least according to results from a Rasmussen poll released Wednesday. Specifically, 38% of Republican voters surveyed feel that the average congressional Republican shares their views, while 45% of Democrats believe the average Democrat in Congress feels about the same as they do.  About 25% of likely Republican voters feel that the average Republican in Congress is more conservative than the average Republican voter, while 30%…

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In 1958, just 4% of parents approved of interracial marriage for their children — a figure that has thankfully climbed to at least 86% of respondents today. Yet when it comes to one’s child marrying someone who identifies with a different political party, the trend is exactly reverse. In 1960, about 5% of Americans expressed a negative reaction to “interparty” marriage. In 2010, about 40% did. While Republicans have somewhat greater angst about this today, a steep rise was witnessed…

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