Tuesday, August 18, 2009

This just in... gravity is 9.8 m/s ^2

The other day waiting in line for the health care forum the debate between myself and about 5 people standing in line with me turned to taxes.
 
I stated that Ronald Reagan had a higher top income tax bracket than Obama's increase...
 
They scoffed and said I was "nuts."  Go look it up for yourself...
 
Yesterday I was speaking with someone who passionately thought the health care reform bill was a bad idea I asked them why and they had no answer--in fact they went on to say that they don't know much about politics and don't watch the news.
 
Lets keep in mind that lots of opinions about health care reform are just that opinions... and many of those opinions are not based around facts.
 
I'll pass this over to Bill Maher who is being quite flippant on this important point:

And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.

Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."

People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.

It is sad but true.
 
Economist Brad Delong tells us to take heart, "James Madison assures us that,"

The science of politics... has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles... either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients... distinct departments... legislative balances and checks... courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people... by deputies of their own election... are wholly new discoveries... means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided...

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Posted via email from Jim Nichols

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