Conservatives and Facts

As I have made my posts here and engaged in spirited discussions with people who had opposing opinions I have been struck by one recurring theme of these discussions.

Facts, or the lack there of.

In discussions of global warming I hear opinions. I also here non-factual statements that are not true despite the positive nature of the statement. I got told once that Global Warming was not real because mankind wasn't that powerful. My favorite is that temperature readings more than 50 or so years old are meaningless since older measurements weren't as accurate as they are now. A statement that displays such a basic lack of understanding of science and statistics as to almost disqualify the speaker from being allowed to voice an opinion on any scientific matter.

On evolution I have been told that since the theory of evolution is not perfect and because we haven't found a complete fossil record linking our ancestors to those of the great apes, that creationism is equally as valid as evolution despite the simple fact that creationism makes no scientific attempt to explain the available data.

Talking about Gay Marriage, opponents have all sorts of dire predictions about social consequences if we allow gay marriage but they have no studies or data from those places that do allow gay marriage that supports their beliefs.

One consistent refrain of conservatives and Republicans in the health care debate was that without Tort Reform the reforms would not be able to constrain health care costs. The problem is that every study I have seen shows that medical malpractice awards add something around 1.5% to health care costs and that limiting punative and non-economic damages would change that number very little. They don't mention that Texas placed significant caps on punative awards and then saw malpractice insurance rates go up even faster than before, not down as promised.

The Health Care debate has been one continuous stream of lies in attacks on the various plans, most famously the Death Panels, something the habitually fact challenged Sarah Palin continues to talk about.

I have asked Conservatives/Republicans for some facts that they wanted to brag about and tell me what great things Conservatives/Republicans have done for this country and none of them had any Conservative/Republican accomplishments to brag about.

Republicans/Conservatives advocate constantly for tax cuts as a solution for almost every problem. And they keep claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves and that they spur economic growth despite all the studies that show that tax cuts by themselves have a very small positive short term impact on growth and long term actually retard growth and never never pay for themselves.

20 years ago the same people were claiming that cigaretts weren't addictive.

The amazing thing is that Conservatives and Republicans are consistently wrong about the facts and they just don't seem to care.

Tort Reform

I am looking for help
I have been doing some research on Tort Reform, particularly medical malpractice tort reform and would be very interested in any studies that any of you have seen that show that excessive medical malpractice awards are actually a significant factor in health care inflation.
I have looked and cannot find any studies that make that claim.
Can anybody help?

Thanks

An Activist Supreme Court

Its funny in a twisted way.
An activist Supreme Court overturns a century of laws and previous ruling and screwed all of us.
And conservatives/Republicans seem to love it. Now corporations can spend their money without limit in direct support of the candidates of their choice.
When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, he raised an amazing amount of money. Hundreds of millions of dollars, from millions of individual donors.
And the Supreme Court of the United States just made that into chump change. If the 10 biggest banks can give their employees 10's of Billions of dollars in bonuses, imaging how much they might be willing to spend to ensure that they are allowed to continue to make huge profits while taking ridiculous risks with other people's money.
And that's only the financial industry
Look at how much the Health Insurance industry has spent, all the while trying to hide how much they were spending, to oppose any real reform in the health insurance market.

Needless to say, I think this decision will turn out to be a disaster for this country. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Republicans and conservatives seem to love this ruling. I just wonder if now they will stop whining about activist judges.
I doubt it.

Its not the Profit Motive, its greed

I have watched with growing dismay the whole health care debate.

Single Payer wasn't even on the table. It was impossible to think about taking the profit motive out of health care.

The public option was opposed, frequently by people who had taken huge sums in campaign contributions from medical insurance or pharma companies, because it would be unfair to expect private companies to compete with a government chartered non-profit.

Why is it that some seem soo determined to protect the profits of the insurance companies?

Is it because they are motivated by profit to become more responsive and efficient to their customers? Not even close. Motivated by profit they now spend more than 25% of their income on overhead, including huge salaries for top executives and huge staffs who are devoted, not to providing better care, but to denying care, to canceling insurance, to ensure that they only insure those who are very healthy.

Is it because the Insurance industry is doing ANYTHING to constrain costs?? Not even close. Health Insurance rates continue to go up 10% a year when inflation in the rest of the economy is less than 3%.

I have no objection to the profit margin. I have always worked for companies that wanted to make a profit. I have profited my self because they were able to hire me.

But is that what we have here?

Not really

Most insurance markets in this country are dominated by no more than 2 huge companies. And without competition they don't really have to compete. And they don't. So overhead costs to up and executive salaries go up and stock prices go up and the amount of money they actually spends on patient care goes down.

This isn't the profit margin

Its greed, pure and simple.

Its the same level of greed that led major banks to take ridiculous risks with our money. And when they failed horribly and brought the entire country to the brink of disaster, many of them still insisted that they deserved million dollar bonuses.

40 years ago, the average CEO made 40 times as much as their average worker. Now they make 400 times as much.

Wealth and income are now as concentrated in fewer hands than any time since the great depression. Thats not profit motive, thats just greed. When the top 1% of wage earners make more collectively than the bottom 50%, we have left the simple profit motive behind and moved into naked avarice.

The health care reform debate has been an argument between people who want to bring this great country into the company of every other industrialized nation in offering health care to EVERY CITIZEN and those who seem determined to protect the greed, pure naked greed, of the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

Its not about profit, its about greed.

And greed is winning.

Let them all expire

At the end of 2010, the disastorous tax cuts proposed by President George Walker Bush are scheduled to expire.

Let them

All of them

Not just the ones affecting people who make more than $250,000.

All of them

No one likes tax increases and I am sure that there would be a huge outcry from many, mostly conservatives, at any hint of a tax increase. But the simple fact is that we need to raise taxes. Though I expect that President Obama will actually continue work of the type that happened under the Clinton administration where the size of government actually shrank, unlike under the President in between. I take the president at his word that he will only propose new spending if he could also propose ways to pay for that spending. Pay as you go is something Democrats got pretty good at under Clinton and can do again.

A return to the tax rates in place during the strongest and most prolonged expansion since the Great Depression seems like it might even lay the foundation for another period of sustained broadly shared growth, unlike the narrowly focused growth in the Bush years that literally only benefited the rich.

Let them all expire.

Arise Liberals Arise

I am a Liberal
And I want others who feel like me to be proud of being a LIBERAL!!!
I look at what LIBERALS have done for this country and I am proud of LIBERALS accomplishments.
Somehow conservatives have made LIBERAL into almost a curse word
Yet its LIBERALS who have made this country what it is.
If you want to measure us in Red State, Blue State terms then do
Blue States have higher rates of High School Graduation, lower Teen Pregnancy rates, Higher percentages of College Graduates, lower Crime Rates, lower infant mortality rates, and Higher incomes.
LIBERALS live better
The states with the most uninsured - almost all Red States
The states that get more in Federal spending states than they pay in taxes - mostly Red States. The states the get less in Federal Spending than they pay in taxes - mostly Blue States
Since WWII, the economy has consistently performed better under Democratic Administrations than under Republicans
Same for the Stock Market

Arise Liberals

Take on Conservatives

Ask them what Conservatism has done for America

Ask them how Conservatives have made America better. They won't have an answer. They will only have attacks on Liberals and Democrats

Arise Liberals

Proclaim your politics
Be proud of what Liberals have done for this country

Challenge Conservatives. Ask them to show anything they have led on other than opposing things that this country needs

Ask them when was the last time Conservatives were right about anything

Arise Liberals

Be proud of what LIBERALS have done for this country

This country is a better country because of what LIBERALS have done.

Can conservatives say that. Can they tell you about all the great things they have done for this country??? No!!

Arise Liberals

Be Proud of the traditions and heritage you are inheriting

Continue to be those things that have made this country better

ARISE LIBERALS

Intolerance and Bigotry win again

The voters in Maine have spoken.
Gays are just not quite as good as the rest of us.
They don't deserve the things the rest of us can count on.
Not because of what they do, but because of who they love.

Its a shame that people of "faith" see fit to demand that we all accept their world view. Based on their beliefs.

They will tell you, without any basis except their beliefs, that allowing gays to marry will destroy the social or moral fabic of our country. They can't point to any new or accelerated social or moral decay in any of the countryies that have accepted gay marriage, but they believe it so it must be true.

Some, more on the fringe, will try to claim some link between homosexuality and pedophilia, again without a shred of evidence, but that is their belief and we all ahve to live by their beliefs.

This is an issue of civil rights. Pure and Simple. People are being denied access to the civil contract purely and simply because of who they love. And no one who supports this discrimination can come up with one defendable reason for their discrimination. All they have is their beliefs that homosexuality is some how bad or gross or an abomination. And they demand the right to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.

I would be outraged if I wasn't so depressed by it all.