Stormy weather might have a say

With the storms Iselle and Julio barreling in toward Hawaii, the question arises: How will horrendous weather conditions affect the primary election?

Though the wind might not be blowing as polling stations open, power outages are a possible complication.

Nobody can really predict the effects. In the last election, there were national studies indicating that Democrats were somewhat less likely than Republicans to brave the elements. But even that doesn’t help prognosticators here very much. This isn’t a presidential year, and the hottest contests on Saturday will be between Democrats anyway.

So the question becomes: What kind of Democrat is more likely to stay home?

Education earns a high rating

A rising tide lifts all boats, or so the saying goes. Standard & Poor’s challenges that notion in an analysis that blames the extreme gap between rich and poor as a destabilizing force in the U.S. economy.

"A lifeboat carrying a few, surrounded by many treading water, risks capsizing," the report said.

Adjusted for inflation, the top 0.01 percent’s average earnings have jumped by a factor of seven since 1913. For the bottom 90 percent of Americans, average incomes after inflation have grown by a factor of just three since 1917 and have declined for the past 13 years. Widening inequality has made the U.S. more prone to boom-bust cycles and slowed the 5-year-old recovery from the recession, the rating agency said, as it lowered its economic forecast for the country.

S&P advises that the answer is not to alter tax policy, but to boost education.