Sunday, October 28, 2012
Debunking Debt Duplicity
Instead of taking the word of political hacks producing YouTube propaganda clips and email messages designed to scare you into voting for a spate of right-wing ideologues, click the link under the graph below, read the article, then decide for yourself if you should be scared to the point of voting to cut essential social programs based on a myth about the nation's debt.
Remember this:
Data is data; interpretation of data is spin.
Scare tactics work on folks who are too damned lazy to do the work of thinking critically about complex issues. They also work on folks who see the glass of the American dream as being half empty and the amount of liquid as shrinking.
I prefer to associate with folks who see the glass/liquid dream scenario as a dynamic system in which the level in the glass fluctuates as working Americans both consume the liquid and replace what they've taken with even more, which can then be shared with others.
Those in the "half empty" group work very hard at preventing others from drinking from what they consider to be their private watering hole.
Those in the "dynamic system" group know that the watering hole is on public land. They work to secure drinking rights for all who are thirsty.
If you're one of the people who has bought into the GOP's sudden epiphany that the deficit - and in particular the interest on the deficit - is the biggest problem facing America today, look at the graph below. Pay particular attention to these two facts from the article from which the graph was taken (link below):
50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph
Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time?
The graphic below answers these questions. It shows the major components of federal spending 50 years ago, 25 years ago, and last year.
Remember this:
Data is data; interpretation of data is spin.
Scare tactics work on folks who are too damned lazy to do the work of thinking critically about complex issues. They also work on folks who see the glass of the American dream as being half empty and the amount of liquid as shrinking.
I prefer to associate with folks who see the glass/liquid dream scenario as a dynamic system in which the level in the glass fluctuates as working Americans both consume the liquid and replace what they've taken with even more, which can then be shared with others.
Those in the "half empty" group work very hard at preventing others from drinking from what they consider to be their private watering hole.
Those in the "dynamic system" group know that the watering hole is on public land. They work to secure drinking rights for all who are thirsty.
If you're one of the people who has bought into the GOP's sudden epiphany that the deficit - and in particular the interest on the deficit - is the biggest problem facing America today, look at the graph below. Pay particular attention to these two facts from the article from which the graph was taken (link below):
Interest refers to interest the government pays on the national debt. In 1987, the interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds was around 9 percent, driving up the share of government spending that went to interest. Today, the rate on 10-year Treasuries is roughly 2 percent.
Bonus Numbers! Federal spending has grown roughly as fast as the overall economy over the past 50 years. In 1962, federal spending was $707 billion and accounted for 18 percent of U.S. GDP. In 2011, federal spending was $3.1 trillion and accounted for 24 percent of GDP. (The dollar figures are adjusted for inflation.)Finally, remember it was the Bush administration which cut taxes while prosecuting two unfunded wars with no concern for what effect those policies would have on the deficit.
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50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph
Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time?
Link to full article:
Race To The Finish #2
You say you don't believe the GOP is using race baiting in its attempt to defeat President Obama?
Watch Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on The Ed Show, Oct. 26, 2012. What he had to say about the Republican party of which he is a member might change your mind.
Race To The Finish #1
Unless you've been asleep for the past year or have spent that time drinking the FOX "News" Kool-Aid, you know by now that the GOP has gone all-in on a race-baiting strategy to unseat President Obama.
The strategy is as simple as it is insidious. To hell with women, youth, minorities, gays and lesbians or any voting block save one. If R-MONEY can get a big enough majority of angry, White males to vote for him, he can win.
In the eyes if those who see only the color of Mr. Obama's skin, R-MONEY came off as a White man who was publicly disrespected by a Black man. And not just any Black man, but one who doesn't buy the White man's dismissal of 47% of Americans of whom he said, "I'll never convince them that they should take personalresponsibility and care for their lives."
In my blog introduction I state that "To Kill A Mockingbird" is my favorite novel. So it is fitting that I offer a passage from that book to remind my readers of the true nature of the mindset which underlies racial bigotry.
It is part of Atticus Finch's final summation to the jury at the end of the trial of Tom Robinson, and it ends with an indictment which I believe applies to those who have devised the strategy the GOP has chosen to pursue.
The strategy is as simple as it is insidious. To hell with women, youth, minorities, gays and lesbians or any voting block save one. If R-MONEY can get a big enough majority of angry, White males to vote for him, he can win.
After the second debate I suggested that President Obama was able "to transcend and eliminate the 'Angry Black Man Factor'." However, polls showing R-MONEY gaining in swing states, have led me to question that assessment.
I'm beginning to think that those gains are precisely because the GOP standard bearer was so badly beaten in the debate.
In the eyes if those who see only the color of Mr. Obama's skin, R-MONEY came off as a White man who was publicly disrespected by a Black man. And not just any Black man, but one who doesn't buy the White man's dismissal of 47% of Americans of whom he said, "I'll never convince them that they should take personalresponsibility and care for their lives."
In my blog introduction I state that "To Kill A Mockingbird" is my favorite novel. So it is fitting that I offer a passage from that book to remind my readers of the true nature of the mindset which underlies racial bigotry.
It is part of Atticus Finch's final summation to the jury at the end of the trial of Tom Robinson, and it ends with an indictment which I believe applies to those who have devised the strategy the GOP has chosen to pursue.
“And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to ‘feel sorry’ for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people’s. I need not remind you of their appearance and conduct on the stand—you saw them for yourselves. The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
The President vs. The Pretender
This New Yorker article by John Cassidy (link below) is a must read, especially after Tuesday's debate.
By suggesting that Mr. Obama and others in his administration were playing politics with the events in Libya that resulted in the death of four Americans, the clueless GOP presidential hopeful handed Mr. Obama an opportunity to be angry, not as an "angry Black man" but as the President of The United States of America.
Mr. Obama embraced that opportunity and used it to transcend and eliminate the "Angry Black Man Factor."
Mr. Obama embraced that opportunity and used it to transcend and eliminate the "Angry Black Man Factor."
Two words from the last paragraph describe Mr. Obama's withering response to the accusation, and they show precisely why Mr. Obama is the now and future President while Mittens is little more than a hollow pretender. Those words are "controlled anger."
Paul Ryan's Last Supper
Given the alternate reality in which the GOP lives and operates, this picture from today's Columbus Dispatch appears to be a carefully staged perversion of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper.
Paul Ryan is Jesus holding forth with the gospel of GOP orthodoxy, which requires sacrifice by all but the super-rich.
A man, Clarence Mingo, sits at Ryan's right hand ready to do his bidding without question. A woman, Anne Gonzales sits to his left (sinister) side, the side for subservience and submissiveness.
The man is Black; the woman sports an Hispanic surname. Surprise! Surprise!
The only element missing is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as Judas clutching the bag of coins the Citizens United decision gave to the GOP to undermine the election process which put Barack Obama in the White House.
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