Issues: How to make sense of it all...
"Facts" About Things Important to You
One thing that is very apparent is that all sorts of people quote all sorts of facts and statistics about issues that are really important to you. But what is hard to understand is what is true and how does it really aplly to you? These are tough questions that may take a little big of looking in to...but then, who has time for that? Well, this page may serve as a great starting point to listening to another point of view. There are no hidden truth's here, only information that is backed up by other sources. Take aquick look through the list and see if you find some information you you have not seen before. What do you think?
The "Dirty Dozen" Things you may not have heard...
1. The Myth: Proponents of government health
programs such as Obamacare often site countries like
The Truth: Health care is never free. Although Democrats don’t talk about it, Canada’s health care system has a serious shortage of doctors and sharply rising costs. These factors are now forcing the Canadian government to implement severe rationing of medical services. In 2009, over half a million people were on waiting lists for surgery and other necessary treatments in Canada and the average wait to see a specialist was over 16 weeks.
Source: Much of this information, and a great deal of additional information pointing out flaws in the new health care law, comes from “The Truth About Obamacare” by Sally Pipes. An excellent article discussing the perils of government health care is “National Health Preview,” Wall Street Journal, p. A14, Tuesday, May 10, 2011.
2. The Myth: Obama claims he can balance the budget by just raising tax rates on “millionaires and billionaires.”
The Truth: According to the Washington Post, using numbers put together by the Tax Policy Institute, if the government were to confiscate – in other words, tax at a rate of 100% - all income above $250,000/year in this country it would generate about $1.4 trillion, still not enough to pay for the nearly $1.7 trillion dollar deficit Obama is currently running.
Source: There are a lot of articles about this online. One is, “There Aren’t Enough Millionares,” from the National Review,
See also, “Where the Tax Money is,”
Click for more
3. The Myth. Democrats frequently claim we need more taxes to adequately fund our schools.
The Truth:
Our schools are in trouble but money isn’t the problem.
Since 1970, adjusted for inflation, we have almost tripled
the amount we spend on each student in our public schools yet
student rankings on international tests of achievement in subjects
like math and science have plummeted.
For example, in a recent test of science knowledge, US 12th
graders scored 16th lowest out of 21 countries – below
nations like
Source: There are many articles on the web discussing America’s declining test scores, however many are written by people who are trying to find excuses for the situation. So, given all the spin, a good source is Wikipedia, which has a fairly balanced article that shows the raw data for math and science:
4: The Myth: Democrats claim economic problems in the US are largely due to a lack of government regulation.
The Truth: Our economy is drowning in regulation. It is estimated that out of a total GDP of about $15 trillion, American business spends almost $2 trillion simply complying with government regulations of one form or another. Regulations are so onerous they are driving businesses to other countries. Jamie Diamond, head of JPMorgan Chase, recently pointed out that in 1990 40 of the 50 largest banks in the world were in the US, now only 6 out of 50 are in the US.
Source: For some of Dimon’s comments on regulation see, “Jamie Diamon Bashes Gov. Regulation,” WSJ, March 30, 2011,
5: The Myth: Democrats claim government unions are necessary to protect the rights of public sector workers.
The Truth: Democrats support public sector
unions because these unions now function primarily as funding
agencies for the Democrat party.
Government employees do not need unions to protect their
rights. In fact, federal
employees are not unionized and still enjoy excellent pay and
benefits. Government workers now make, on average, almost twice as
much as workers in the private sector.
Many state jobs have become ridiculously overpaid.
Some lifeguards in
Source: The article discussing Harvard vs California prison guards is, “California Prison Academy: Better than a Harvard Degree,” Wall Street Journal, p. A13, April 30, 2011. A good discussion of how public sector unions protect themselves rather than the public is in “Scenes From the New York Education Wars,” Wall Street Journal, p. A15, Tuesday, May 10, 2001. This article contains the famous quote from Al Shankar who was president of the United Federation of Teachers and said, “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.”
And
6: The Myth: Democrats do not place a high value on securing our borders partially because they argue illegal aliens contribute to the economy and are not a drain on state budgets.
The Truth.
Illegal aliens are a huge drain on our welfare systems.
To take one example, the Center for Immigration Studies
reports that in 2009, over 70% of families that included children
and were headed by an illegal alien used at least one welfare
program. About.com
reports that in hosting
Source: See “The Case for Voter ID,” WSJ, p. A21, Monday May 23, 2011.
7: The Myth: Democrats argue that the huge deficits Obama is running are not a serious problem because the American dollar is the world’s reserve currency which allows us to borrow more freely than other countries, like Greece, and protects us from the prospect of default.
The Truth:
There is no free ride in the international financial system.
In fact, recently Moody’s, which rates the soundness of bond
debt, for the first time in history put some American debt on
“negative watch.”
Similarly, S&P, another important rating agency, put parts of
Source: Many articles – see, for example, from the Oregonian, (hardly liberal)
8: The Myth: Democrats argue that environmental issues such as global warming or storm water pollution in Puget Sound mean we must give ever increasing tax revenues to government bureaucrats so they can protect us from the destruction of our resources.
The Truth: The globe has been steadily warming since the end of the last ice age about 13,000 years ago. No one believes that human activity was an important cause in this long trend, much of which took place when the world’s human population was tiny, and it’s not clear we can stop the trend now. The best current evidence is that the globe is warming somewhat, but not at a rate that will cause any disaster. Moreover, the kinds of solutions Democrats advocate for addressing global warming, such as mass use of solar and wind power, are clearly impractical.
In our own area, Jay Manning, Governor Gregoire’s current chief of staff, went on national television claiming that polluted storm water flowing into Puget Sound is the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every two years. Based largely on the fear this claim generated, the state spent hundreds of millions on environmental studies and has attempted to stop much of the development of Puget Sound shoreline. However, the state recently revealed that Manning’s Exxon Valdez comparison overstated storm water pollution in Puget sound by a factor of more than 100. In Kitsap County, environmentalists constantly claim that shoreline development is a major cause of Hood Canal low oxygen events. But a very thorough 2008 study of Hood Canal sediment core samples dating back hundreds of years revealed that low oxygen events in Hood Canal were actually worse in the 1700s than they are now. See, for example, an article on Jay Manning at
9: The Myth: According to the Obama administration, unemployment is about 9%.
The Truth: Official government unemployment statistics do not include people who want to work but have given up looking for a job. If we include this class of so-called “discouraged job seekers”, the true unemployment rate is estimated to be between 17% and 20%. For some sectors of the population, such as young African Americans, the unemployment rate is over 40%.
10: The Myth: Obama has repeatedly claimed that enhanced interrogation techniques authorized under the Bush administration were illegal and contrary to our values. He also maintains that they should not be used in any event because they do not produce reliable information.
The Truth: When details of how we accomplished the largest foreign policy success of the Obama administration, the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden, came out, it became clear that information gained through enhanced interrogation techniques played a crucial role in helping to locate the terrorist. Although Democrats have tried to deny this fact, it has been attested to by at least 6 primary sources who were directly involved at the highest levels in the hunt for Bin Laden including a past Secretary of Defense (Don Rumsfeld), three former CIA Chiefs (Steven Hadley, Leon Panetta, George Tenet), and a former CIA counter terrorism Chief (Jose Rodriquez).
Source: a good review of this information can be found in “The Waterboarding Trail to bin Laden,” Wall Street Journal, p. a15, Friday, May 6, 2001.
11: The Myth: Obama has claimed that under his new health care system, no one will lose their current insurance provider, arguing that “if you like your health-care plan you can keep your health-care plan.”
The Truth: McKinsey & Company, a highly respected consulting firm, has estimated that up to 78 million Americans will lose their current health insurance as employers stopped offering insurance because of Obamacare. Other studies have confirmed that large numbers of Americans stand to lose their insurance. In May 2010, former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that employers would be likely to drop coverage for 35 million people. In June of 2010, the National Center for Policy Analysis put the number at between 87 and 110 million.
Source: The ObamaCare Bad News Continues, Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2011 – on line at
12: The Myth: The administration claims it gives out exemptions to the Obamacare regulations in a fair and impartial way.
The Truth: Disproportionate numbers of exemptions have been given to core Democrat supporters. For example, about half the exemptions given out so far have been to unions, and 20% of exemptions given out in April of 2011 were to businesses in Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district.
Source: This is all over the internet. See, for example, “Nancy Pelosi’s District Somehow Ends Up with 20% of Obamacare wavers.”
13:
The Myth: Obama claims
current high gas prices are largely due to “speculators.”
The Truth: It is ironic that Obama complains about high prices for gas and oil because until very recently he repeatedly argued that higher prices on hydrocarbon products are a benefit since they make so-called alternative energy more attractive. In fact, the Obama administration has pursued a clear policy of limiting oil exploration and drilling in the United States while heavily subsidizing non-hydrocarbon energy sources. The high prices Americans see at the pump are partially due to a determined effort by the Obama administration to limit development of vast US deposits of natural gas found in shale, oil that could be recovered by offshore drilling, and known petroleum resources in Alaska. Blaming speculators for high prices is clearly just an attempt to confuse the voters and deflect attention from Obama’s anti-hydrocarbon policies.