These are my links for October 1st through October 2nd:

• Althouse: "Lots of photos of Perry having nothing whatsoever to do with this story, and not a single one of the rock. Well done, WP!" – Does this have anything to do with Rick Perry (who, asked about the rock, said the word is an "offensive name that has no place in the modern world")? Well, yes, if you're inclined to think that Perry's rural Texas background has bred something nasty into him:

  Perry has spoken often about how his upbringing in this sparsely populated farming community influenced his conservatism. He has rarely, if ever, discussed what it was like growing up amid segregation in an area where blacks were a tiny fraction of the population.

  So what's he hiding, eh?

  Reading on, we see that — according to Perry — Perry's father leased the property in 1983, and the first thing he did was paint over the word on the rock. And every time Perry saw the rock, it was painted over. But WaPo found 7 individuals who say they remember seeing the name on the rock during the time when Perry's father's name was on the lease. And:

  Longtime hunters, cowboys and ranchers said this particular place was known by that name as long as they could remember, and still is.

  “The cowboys, when they were gathering cattle, they’d say they’re going to the Matthews or Niggerhead or the Nail” pastures, said Bill Reed, a distributor for Coors beer in nearby Abilene who used to lease a hunting parcel adjacent to the Perrys’. “Those were all names. Nobody thought anything about it.”…

  “You know, Texas is a little different — you go where it’s comfortable,” Reed said. “. . . It would have been one thing if [the Perrys] had named it, but they didn’t. So, it’s basically a figure of speech as far as most people are concerned. No one thought anything about it.”

  No one thought anything about it. Those who are looking for a racial issue to play know how to jump on a phrase like that. Okay, then, let him who is without sin cast the first rock.

• Reverend Wright is off limits, but a painted-over rock is page 1 at WaPo – There is no story behind the headline.

  The article itself reveals that the offensive name of the camp, painted on a rock near the entrance, was painted over by Perry’s father soon after they started hunting at the camp in the early 1980s.

  But WaPo made sure to put the offensive word near the top of the article, so that the charge would stick in readers’ memories. It’s not until later in the article that they state the facts. And even then, WaPo cites anonymous sources discounting the precise years in which it was painted over, but never the fact that it was painted over.

  A statement issued by the Perry campaign denies that his family ever owned the property, confirms that the rock was painted over in the early 1980s, and that the name officially was changed by the State of Texas in 1991.

  I have warned people about the upcoming election, and not to take much comfort in the current polling.

• Economic protesters remain camped out at L.A. City Hall – After a daylong protest against what they view as inequities in economic policies, more than 100 protesters remained on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall on Saturday night, drumming, singing and discoursing on fiscal policy.

  The Occupy LA protest, which drew hundreds of people in peaceful waves all day Saturday, is modeled after a similar movement in New York that has been staging a sit-in on Wall Street for almost two weeks. Most participants said they hope to change or expose economic polices that benefit the richest 1% of Americans.

  Like their Manhattan counterparts, the Los Angeles protesters said they plan to camp out by City Hall indefinitely or until they draw enough attention to their cause. Other protests have been springing up around the world, including in Cleveland and Australia.

  Andrew Roberts, a 33-year-old father from Long Beach, said he was protesting to try to ensure a better future for his children. "The system that's in place clearly isn't working anymore." Roberts said. "If this carries on my children aren't going to have the same standard of living as I do, and that's sorry."

• Poverty pervades the suburbs – Sep. 23, 2011 – A record 15.4 million suburban residents lived below the poverty line last year, up 11.5% from the year before, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of Census data released Thursday. That's one-third of the nation's poor.
  And their ranks are swelling fast, as jobs disappear and incomes decline amid the continued weak economy.
  Since 2000, the number of suburban poor has skyrocketed by 53%, battered by the two recessions that wiped out many manufacturing jobs early on, and low-wage construction and retail positions more recently.
  America's cities, meanwhile, had 12.7 million people in poverty last year, up about 5% from the year before and 23% since 2000. The remaining 18 million poor folks in the U.S. are roughly split between smaller metro areas and rural communities.
  "We think of poverty as a really urban or ultra-rural phenomenon, but it's not," said Elizabeth Kneebone, senior research associate at Brookings. "It's increasingly a suburban issue."
  Suburbia's population has boomed among all classes in recent decades as job growth shifted from central cities to their outskirts. Low-wage workers were needed to service this burgeoning number of residents and companies.
  Suburbia became home to the greatest concentration of impoverished residents by 2005, Kneebone said. That stemmed in part from the collapse of the manufacturing industry based outside Midwestern cities. The loss of those jobs contributed to pushing many into poverty.
• Cities with the worst poverty rates – Reading had the highest percentage of residents living in poverty of any of the 555 U.S. cities with a population of 65,000 or more in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The margin of error means Reading's rank as first is not decisive. Also, these statistics are based on the survey, so populations differ from those given in the 2010 Census results. The survey is an estimate and not an exact count.

  Population belowMargin CityPopulationpoverty levelof error

  1. Reading
  Population: 86,087
  Population below poverty level: 35,517 (41.3%)
  Margin of error: +/- 4.9

  2. Flint, Mich.
  Population: 100,277
  Population below poverty level: 41,265 (41.2%)
  Margin of error: +/- 4.5

  3. Bloomington, Ind.
  Population: 67,122
  Population below poverty level: 26,782 (39.9%)
  Margin of error: +/- 4.0

  4. Albany, Ga.
  Population: 74,913
  Population below poverty level: 29,866 (39.9%)
  Margin of error: +/- 5.2

  5. Kalamazoo, Mich.
  Population: 67,452
  Population below poverty level: 26,201 (38.8%)
  Margin of error: +/- 4.9

  6. Brownsville, Texas
  Population: 173,186
  Population below poverty level: 66,844 (38.6%)
  Margin of error: +/- 3.4

  7. Gary, Ind.
  Population: 80,319
  Population below poverty level: 30,778 (38.3%)
  Margin of error: +/- 5.2

  8. Detroit, Mich.
  Population: 702,010
  Population below poverty level: 263,864 (37.6%)
  Margin of error: +/- 1.8

  9. College Station, Texas
  Population: 83,291
  Population below poverty level: 31,025 (37.2%)
  Margin of error: +/- 4.0

  10. Pharr, Texas
  Population: 70,380
  Population below poverty level: 26,140 (37.1%)
  Margin of error: +/- 6.8

• One in Five New York City Residents Living in Poverty – Poverty grew nationwide last year, but the increase was even greater in New York City, the Census Bureau will report on Thursday, suggesting that New York was being particularly hard hit by the aftermath of the recession.
• DEBUNKING OBAMA’S TAX DEMAGOGERY – When President Obama says that the rich don’t pay their share of taxes, he is lying, distorting, and demagoging.

  Here are the facts according to the IRS:

  • Those making more than $1 million pay 24% of income in taxes
  • Those making $200,000 to $300,000 pay 17.5%
  • Those making $100,000 to $125,000 pay 9.9%
  • Those making $50,000 to $60,000 pay 6.3%
  • Those making $20,000 to $30,000 pay 2.5%

  And what of millionaires who pay no taxes?

  There are 1,470 of them. They represent six-tenths of one percent of all those with million dollar incomes in the U.S. If we assume that they make an average income of $2 million a year each, taxing them at the same rate as other millionaires (24.4%) would yield $367 million, which would increase Treasury income tax revenues by 30 one-hundredths of one percent or one-third of one-tenth of one percent!

  Overall, the IRS reports that the revenues from the income tax are sharply skewed toward taxes on the rich:

  • The top 1% pays 39%
  • The top 5% pays 60%
  • The top 10% pays 72%
  • The bottom half pays 3%

  So who does Obama think he is kidding?