All Opinions Are Not Equal

What's up with news stories with totally inaccurate attention grabbing headlines? 

For the past couple of days, headlines have proclaimed some variation of the following headline, Obamacare Will Cost 2.5M Workers by 2024. However, if you read the articles, it becomes clear that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did not conclude that the ACA was a causative factor in the decrease of workers. The CBO concluded the reduction in worker hours was almost entirely because of workers choosing to work less. According to the CBO report, “The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in business’ demand for labor."

The problem is straightforward. A lot of people never read past a story's headline so their conclusions are based on a misleading headline. Some of those who read the article have poor reading comprehension skills and come away still believing that the ACA will cause 2.5 million people to lose their jobs. All of these misinformed people like to share their invalid information and the chain of people firmly believing information that is false grows by leaps and bounds. Couple that with the American belief in individualism and that all opinions are equally valid, and ill-informed opinion becomes fact for millions.

I think one of the dumbest statements that I see far too often is, "I'm entitled to my opinion." When people declare, "I'm entitled to my opinion," what they really mean is my opinion is of equal value to all other opinions.

There's no entitlement to be ignorant. If my opinion is that a giant turtle carries the world on his back around the sun, then my opinion has no value; it's worthless. Stating that I'm entitled to have it doesn't make it have merit. It's still worthless and of no value. 

All opinions are not equal. We do ourselves a disservice when we pretend that they are. All we need do is examine how many publicly funded schools in multiple states are allowed to teach creationism under state science education standards as an alternative to evolution. Additional states are poised to pass legislation this year to expand the science curriculum to include creationism.

Replacing intellectual analysis with personal opinion undermines our ability to make decisions based on facts and knowledge rather than belief. Ethics play second fiddle to a mish-mash of personal beliefs and emotions about groups of which we are not a member. A key tenet of our constitution's Bill of Rights is that the government shall not establish or govern religion, yet hot button issues such as abortion and gay marriage that divide us at present, center around the attempt of some Christians to impose their belief system on our system of secular law.

We have many issues confronting us that we must address as a nation and as a part of the world. Climate change is a reality, not an abstract theory. Access to clean water, clean energy, and clean air are essential to the survival of all of this planet's inhabitants. Working together is necessary, but to do so we have to develop diplomatic strategies and policies for resolving our differences and not fall back on wars and police actions as problem solvers. We need to work collectively on solutions to these issues, not cling to opinions shaped by misinformation and narrow belief systems that we have elevated to the level of absolute fact.

A quick note to George Will

The following was sent this morning to George Will's email address at the Washington Post, without pictures, and with the web pages supplied as footnotes instead of links (which might have redirected this to his spam folder).

Dear Mr Will,

I realize that Fox News is now paying your paycheck, so perhaps you're no longer allowed to look at any other news outlets, but, despite your conservative views, I've always felt that you were reasonably intelligent. If nothing else, you seem capable of forming coherent sentences and spelling things correctly, and these days, that counts for a lot.

However, you might be surprised to learn that you've entered some sort of information bubble. I saw your appearance on Monday's Special Report with Bret Baier, and it appears that there are some facts that you seem to be entirely unaware of.

When you said that the IRS targeting of conservative groups was one of the three biggest political scandals in the last 40 years, this lack of data became openly apparent. And while I hate to argue with a journalist of your extensive experience, I found humor in your statement that "this is not being perused and the president knows that. Hence his sense of weariness and boredom as he discussed this with Bill O'Reilly."

No, Mr Will, he was bored by it because it was a manufactured non-scandal. You see, the simple fact is, this is an example of the IRS actually doing its job, and investigating whether these groups were breaking the law; the simple fact of the matter is that political organizations do not qualify for the tax-exempt status that these groups had applied for.

Let's start from the beginning. The tax code gives us a number of different classifications based on what we do. One of them, a tax-exempt status, is designated 501(c)(4), and it's defined as "Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, ...the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes."

This allows groups to be formed to construct basketball courts for inner-city kids, build a gym for a high school, set up after-school reading programs, operate food banks, or any other activity that can be defined as "social welfare." And it goes further: to prevent people from arguing that defeating a politician would qualify as "social welfare," the IRS specifically excludes political organizations from this particular tax-exempt status.

(ii) Political or social activities. The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.

Now, here's where the story gets a little weird, Mr Will. You see, the reason that the IRS appeared to be targeting conservative groups was because of a slick little piece of misdirection. You only saw that the IRS investigated conservative groups, because the Congress only looked into the IRS actions when they involved conservative groups, and actively ignored any investigations of liberal or progressive groups.

The Treasury inspector general (IG) whose report helped drive the IRS targeting controversy says it limited its examination to conservative groups because of a request from House Republicans.

A spokesman for Russell George, Treasury's inspector general for tax administration, said they were asked by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) "to narrowly focus on Tea Party organizations."

See how that works? I mean, you're a classy guy, Mr Will - you were rocking that bow tie for years after most people had abandoned it, because you felt it gave you a certain old-fashioned gravitas, I guess. So I feel certain that you would disapprove of me referring to a sitting member of Congress as a "lying bag of fuck." That, however, is the immediate reaction I get from this little revelation.

(Now, to be fair, a full listing of the groups under investigation could, at first glance, possibly have given someone the impression that conservative groups were being targeted: after all, since two-thirds of the groups approved for tax-exempt status since 2010 were conservative, you'd expect a larger percentage of them to fall under scrutiny. However, that is very different from the blatant spin that Darrel Issa put on things, isn't it?)

But after all, once even Mitch McConnell abandons a smear campaign, it's pretty clear that the whole thing has just collapsed.

Perhaps, to avoid making yourself look like a hack or a paid shill for Fox "News," you should try to restrict your comments to that nebulous realm we call "facts," instead of just repeating the latest talking points being handed out by liars and partisans? And maybe by doing that, you can come out of this with at least a small shred of the dignity you've been clinging to for years.

Don't you think that would be a good idea?

Sincerely,

Bill Minnich (Albuquerque, NM)

Rightwing America: Crown Thy Good in Brotherhood No More

Perhaps readers may recall this advertisement:



Originally known as the Hilltop ad commissioned by Coca-Cola and performed by the New Seekers, this one-minute spot become so popular it was re-recorded and released as a full-length single in 1971. The song became an immediate hit - reaching #1 in the U.K. and #7 in the U.S. respectively.  The song offered a thoughtful message for a more introspective time.

Yesterday - on Super Bowl Sunday - Coca Cola aired a new one-minute spot to invoke the successful “feel good” message of the original Hilltop song. It showcased the patriotic hymn, America the Beautiful performed in several languages – English, Arabic, and Spanish. How times have changed!

In 2014 - unlike 1971 - no good deed remains unpunished. These days, any message that appeals to our higher angels brings out the hate brigade. Here is the rightwing reaction to Coca Cola's latest ad:

"A truly disturbing commercial" (Allen West);

“[The ad] features gay people” (Michael Patrick Leahy of Breitbart);

“Coca Cola is the official soft drink of illegals crossing

the border” (Todd Starnes of Fox News).

Virtually overnight, irredentist outrage inspired a Subway-style boycott designed to bully and dissuade Coca Cola, or any corporation, from promoting the moral message of "crown thy good in brotherhood:"

Finally, these latest YouTube comments reveal the truly repugnant side of today’s rightwing movement:

Jose Blanco (5 hours ago) “Multiculturalism is a code word for White genocide.”

Sonny Bagwell (6 hours ago) “See, the jews who run all ad agencies have been brainwashing Americans for DECADES now. This is why we have no morality left."

In a sense, the rabid reaction reveals the unholy alliances between disparate factions within today’s GOP - mainstream conservatives, libertarians, nullification Tea Partiers, Dominionist theocrats, neo-Confederates, and their chorus of bigots, racists, and anti-Semites.

For the moment, I will withhold any reference to gratuitous and unpleasant stereotypes. However, I will not refrain from offering this advice to our conservative and libertarian friends: Beware the company you keep lest you be judged accordingly!

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door

Something (O)CT(O)PUS wrote in his tribute to Pete Seeger about going to Newport Folk Festival and hearing all those wonderful artists brought up this memory.

It's Saturday night.  If I had some, I'd smoke one, then sit back and enjoy this, and I hope you all will too:

Net Neutrality

I thought this might be a worthwhile topic for a TGIF post.  As an online community, we are the ones who benefit most from free and open access to the World Wide Web; yet this topic has received scant attention on our discussion boards.  Briefly, here are the issues that will impact our future:

High speed Internet access is provided by only a handful of service providers - Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Cox, as examples - which transfer our data from one end of the network to another.  We expect full transparency, meaning we do not want these firms to analyze, manipulate, package, or prejudice our communications in any way. 

Earlier this month, however, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned two rules on a technicality:  One that barred broadband providers from charging extra for data access, and one that prevented them from blocking access to lawful content.

The implications of this decision are troublesome.  Without these rules, Internet providers may screen everything we send across Cyberspace – our web log posts and comments, our emails, videos, broadband telephone calls, and social media conversations.  An unregulated Internet means any provider may censor our content, or prejudice delivery of our content by speeding up or slowing down transmission, or charge extra.

These are by no means straw man concerns.  In the past, there have been several abuses by Internet providers that have censored content for self-serving purposes, most noteworthy:

AT&T – Jammed censored a performance of the rock group Pearl Jam in 2007 because the company disapproved of the group’s anti-Iraq War message;

Comcast – Blocked video-trading applications ostensibly for the purpose of easing Internet traffic – except for the fact that Comcast discriminated against an entire class of users during non-peak hours – because Comcast is in the business of selling online video;

Verizon – Cut off the text-messaging system of NARAL Pro-Choice America, stating that Verizon would not service any group “"that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users;"

Telus – Blocked Internet subscribers from accessing a website run by a union that was on strike against Telus.

These abuses can happen to you.  If you care about this issue, here is what you can do:  Petition the FCC here.

Update: How you will pay for Internet services once net neutrality is gone:

Scientist Files ‘ET Lawsuit’ Against NASA

The Mars exploration rover, Opportunity, captured an image of a rock, dubbed "Pinnacle Island," on Martian Calendar date sol 3540 (Jan. 8). However, when researchers compared this image with another on the same terrain - captured 12 days earlier (sol 3528) - the rock was nowhere to be seen.

Now you see it …

Now you don’t …

OMG, THERE’S LIFE ON MARS! … claims astrobiologist Dr. Rhawn Joseph in a lawsuit filed earlier this week. He is suing NASA to compel the space agency to take a closer look. Specifically, the petition calls on NASA to "closely photograph and thoroughly scientifically examine and investigate a putative biological organism."

I can think of other rocks that should be examined too … like this one:

OMG, DID YOU SEE THAT!  The rock made a left turn …

A herd of grazing rocks …

How sweet!  For the love of lava ...

You riled 'em up, GOP. Now you have to deal with 'em.

Last night, the President gave his State of the Union speech for 2014. The thing is, there wasn't just one response to it. There was the "official" Republican response from Cathy McMorris Rodgers (I'm not clear if she's Fred Rogers' evil twin, or if that lady from the Harry Potter books doesn't just wear pink any more), and then there was the Tea Party response (because, as my momma always said, "stupid is as stupid does"), and then, only on Youtube, Rand Paul gave his own "Tea Party Response," speaking for the Batshit Insane caucus.

Let's all take a moment to enjoy the current dynamics playing out within the Republican Party. They've split into a bunch of tiny, warring factions, each out to stab all the others in the back. They're trying their best to hide it, but they really aren't doing a good job, as last night proved.

The problem, you see, is that in 2008 the Republicans felt that, in order to defeat Obama, instead of taking up a more reasonable stance on a few key issues, they needed to mobilize the morons and the low information voters. Unfortunately, some of the newly-active mouth-breathers refused to retreat to their sofas and soap operas after the election, and kept right on chanting, picketing, and writing increasingly incoherent diatribes and tweets.

Social media had given them new access to vast fields of topics that they knew nothing about, and they felt that it was their duty to prove how little they knew. And the best way to do this was to elect people just as stupid as they were: enter Ted Cruz, Louis Gohmert, and all of their ilk.

While there may have been some dissension in the GOP during Obama's first term, things really started coming to a head during the government shutdown debates back in September, when the nominally intelligent Republicans realized that their new, hyperpartisan friends were not just willing, but actually eager, to see the government collapse - after all, the wet dream of any dedicated small government enthusiast would have to be government disappearing completely.

People like Libertarian Fox Business wonk John Stossel wanted lawmakers to "shut down more," and "I'm hoping the shutdown will wake people up... and say 'hey, maybe we don't need all this stuff.'" (A philosophy that ignores the 24 billion dollars that the 16-day shutdown cost the taxpayers, or the billions lost by businesses across the country that are more difficult to calculate.)

The most prescient (or in this case, conniving) saw it coming months earlier: Karl Rove, in the runup to the upcoming midterm elections, basically told his donors "yes, I wasted $300 million in 2012, and if you don't give me more money, the Democrats will win again!"

That's a venal and dishonest strategy, in that it ignores the fact that most of the money he takes from the gullible rich will be going to fight the new breed of rabid Tea Partiers that he helped create.

Speaker of the House John Boehner has become openly dismissive of the Tea Party fringes. And he isn't the only one. And the Tea Party, on their part, has no love for the establishment Republicans, even the ones who danced to their tune as hard as they could (just not to the point of destroying the economy).

Millions of dollars are being raised, on both sides, as Republicans prepare to square off against other Republicans for the future of the Republican philosophy.

The best result that we can hope for, really, is that nobody learns any lessons from the trouncing they're about to get, and the GOP stays divided through the 2016 elections. In the meantime, though, I'm just going to sit here with my popcorn and watch the fireworks.

Post-SOTU Reflections and the Continuing War of Words

Contrary to the constant sneer and jeer of rightwing rhetoric, President Obama has always been a centrist politician and hardly the “socialist dictator” as alleged by Republicans.

Perhaps Jon Stewart expressed it best last night: “President Obama is apparently now in the 'f*ck it' stage of his presidency" - given six non-stop years of legislative obstruction, filibustering, gridlock, and Godwin-style name-calling

F*ck it, indeed. Consider this ABC News interview of Warren Buffet and his secretary, Debbie Bosanek, who reveal an inconvenient truth about the American tax system:

 

What drives income inequality in America? Debbie Bosanek pays a Federal income tax rate of 35.5%. In contrast, her boss pays 17.5% on income estimated to be 200 times greater!

“Everybody in our office is paying a higher tax rate than Warren,” she says.

“I pay hardly any payroll taxes, Buffet admits. “Gov. Romney hardly pays any payroll taxes. Newt Gingrich hardly pays any payroll taxes. Debbie pays lots of payroll taxes,” he continues.

Repeat this admission across the economic spectrum of American life, and what you have is a massive redistribution of income from the middle class to a special privileged class. Yet, Republicans have lashed out: They dismiss Buffet’s admission as an act of “class warfare.” One has to ask: Which side of this war is hurling the bombs?

Here are more inconvenient facts: Since 1979, the productivity of American workers has risen 80%; yet, the wages of these workers have risen less than 11%:

Please note the precipitous rise in income for the privileged class: Over 240%.  In other words, American workers have put enormous wealth into the pockets of their employers, yet received next to nothing in return.

Since 2001, this trend has turned ever more ominous as shares in the national economic pie have essentially turned upside down. Middle class wage increases have fallen to less than one percent. The überclass now pockets a whopping 99% slice of the national pie but constitutes only 1% of the population.

Meanwhile, US multinational corporations are laying off workers at home and shipping jobs overseas:

Given these data, consider this thought experiment: If you are a Kochroach raking in $1 billion per year, what is the cost benefit ratio of spending $100 million on PACs and stink tanks to avoid a tax hike? The difference between a 17.5% tax rate versus 35.5% (drum roll) is:

$180,000,000 each and every year

for as long as ye shall live (badda boom)!

“[The GOP] has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public … [The GOP] could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses” (Mike Lofgren, Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult).

Mike Lofgren's words explain the stalking point phrases of “class warfare” and “job creators” framed and marketed by PACs and stink tanks to protect the überclass. Now you know why the Kochroach Brothers spend buckets of bucks to convince ignorant country bumpkins to vote Republican - and against their own economic self-interest.

Recently one of those country bumpkins - or perhaps a psy-ops troll employed by the überclass - left this comment under a recent post by Shaw:

"Just compare the "poor" in the US to the rest of the world and you have to come to the conclusion that our system is better for poor people. How much more do you Bleeding Heart Liberals want us to do for these people, most of them ar [sic] lazy slobs anyway who just take, take and take!"  Steve

My reply:

"For your information, most of the impoverished people of this country are the working poor earning subsistence wages - people who mow your damn lawn, pick up your damn garbage, flip your fucking hamburgers, and pick your damn fruits and vegetables under a hot sweltering sun – jobs which shiftless lazy bastards such as yourself consider beneath your contemptible dignity."

In response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, Republicans have responded with:

"Kommandant-In-Chef" - Randy Weber (R-TX);

“6,778 words. 'Benghazi' is not one of them” - Steve Stockman (R-TX);

“Obama speech reads like dictates from a King” - Tim Huelskamp (R-KS);

“The world is literally about to blow up” - Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Words and more words, but nothing of substance. How long will the middle class tolerate this bullshit? Historically, no society has tolerated unchecked economic privilege and injustice for long. It is only a matter of time before the war of words spills into the streets. When that day arrives, my choice of weapon will not be ink.

Speak English

Last year, I was cruising South down the Florida coast, headed for home and minding my own business.  The VHF radio was on, monitoring channel 16 as per custom and the rules and a voice came on, a bit weak, saying something in Spanish to another vessel too far away for me to hear.  They were certainly in international waters along with countless other vessels steaming past the US en route to somewhere else.

"SPEAK ENGLISH!" blasted a nearby voice.

I can't really think of a suitable word to describe that sort of ignorant insolence, nor for the sort of person who thinks, probably in the name of freedom, he can dictate to others what language they can speak or is too caught up in the common Conservative low brow reflex to hearing some language he can't understand.

I have to admit that sometimes I feel the same way when listening to the American news media. It's not so much that I'm forced to learn useless vulgar neologisms like "twerking" but more that I simply and all too often have no idea what they're talking about.  Take HNN's recent discussion of a young woman having been beaten to death in front of witnesses and cameras.  I don't know why, because every reference to the story I can find tells me it was about a "photobomb."   Every one, because the media in their hysterical lust to sound trendy ( in the old sense of the word since trend now means something entirely different) has run off the linguistic rails.  Somehow a very attractive young woman was murdered for having done some insignificant but mysterious thing and I will never know why.

SPEAK ENGLISH!

This Land is Your Land

Despite the continuing efforts of the Republicans

I was never a big Pete Seeger fan, but my college years having coincided with the folk music revival, I certainly heard him a lot. I appreciated that he came from the time and conditions that produced Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck and a lot of skepticism about how well our version of Capitalism served freedom and democracy.  Those folks and many others weren't well received by the same sort of  -- I hesitate to use the word bastards, but it fits -- who are still calling everything and everyone Communists for every spurious reason they can.  Seeger has my respect, for his courage more than for his musicianship. He used his humor and his banjo against the union bashers and skull crackers, stood up to the Joe McCarthy thugs and the war mongers and spawned a generation of musical protest that seems strangely absent at a time when much of what he fought is metastasizing like a cancer. We still need to be reminded just who it is who owns this land, the Koch Brothers, Roger Ailes, the Tea Party or the voters.

Pete Seeger died yesterday at the age of 94 after a very short illness.  4 days before he entered the hospital he was chopping wood, says his grandson. He died in the hospital 4 days before he could collect the Woody Guthrie Prize.  So long Pete, it's been good to know ya but your conscience still sings to us.