Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Some interesting tid-bits

  • Republicans still complain about tax rates being too high -- despite the fact the top tax rate has not been this low since the 1920s. In fact, in 2009, Americans on average paid the lowest tax rate in 30 years due "in part because of tax cuts President Obama sought to combat the Great Recession....The average tax rate paid by all households fell to 17.4 percent, down from 19.9 percent in 2007, according to the CBO. The 2009 rate was significantly lower than the previous low of 19.4 percent in 2003 and well below the 30-year average of 21 percent."

  • Still think the climate isn't changing, or it's cyclical, or it's just Mother Nature (whatever that means)? "[L]ook at the ratio of record high and low temperatures in the U.S. over the last 50 years. In the 1950s, we had about the same number of record high temperatures as record lows. That is, the probability of an extraordinarily cold January day was about as likely as an excessively hot July day. By the 2000s, however, we were twice as likely to see a record high in our weather reports as we were a record low. So far in 2012, that ratio is about 10 to one." How can this be a surprise when the fact remains we now have 35% more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than a century ago?? The first six-months of this year were the hottest ever recorded, by a huge margin. Heck, it was so hot recently that the tarmac at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC actually melted, trapping a plane.

  • And not that I endorse it, but the next time you hear a Republican say Obama is stifling oil production and drilling in this country, give them the following facts. U.S. oil production has increased from 5 million barrels per day in 2008 to 6.3 million barrels per day in 2012. Also, the number of oil rigs has more than quadrupled since 2009.
  • 18 comments:

    John Cooper said...

    I'd add one more - "Best Health Care in the World" Next time you hear a Republican criticize the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") as socialized medicine and the closest thing to treason, with the rationalization that "we have the best health care in the world," challenge them on facts. Is that best by Overall Performance or Affordability? What is their criteria? You can cite the 2000 World Health Organization ranking of #15 in Overall Performance, compared to #1 in Expenditure per Capita ("most expensive health care in the world" does not equal "best health care money can buy"), giving us a ranking of #37.

    Or, given that those results were subsequently debated and challenged, you can cite the more recent Commonwealth Fund study from 2010, highlighted in this article "U.S. Ranks Last Among Seven Countries on Health System Performance Based on Measures of Quality, Efficiency, Access, Equity, and Healthy Lives." This quote is noteworthy: "the U.S. stands out for not getting good value for its health care dollars, ranking last despite spending $7,290 per capita on health care in 2007 compared to the $3,837 spent per capita in the Netherlands, which ranked first overall."

    TreadingWater said...

    You realize, don't you, that facts make no difference whatsoever when you are debating a Teapublican? The problem is, you are coming at the issue from a reality-based perspective, but the opposition lives in a reality tv-based world. The facts in any case are exactly what Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck tell them they are, and nothing else can penetrate the shell.

    Tatertotz said...

    Treading Water is absolutely correct. The Repubs are proud of their ignorance. I recently got into a spirited online debate with a Repub acquaintance who kept spouting off talking points and I would dismantle his arguments with facts, and I would cite the source for the facts. Finally he said, "I don't care FACTS, I care about TRUTH. That's why I watch Fox News."

    Anonymous said...

    Explaining facts to a Republican is like trying to teach a pig to sing.

    It wastes your time, and confuses the pig.

    steeve said...

    Health care is such a debacle that liberals actually skew the data conservatively. With very minor exceptions the US pays literally twice as much, sometimes fully three times as much, as every single country in the world.

    To justify that kind of expenditure, we essentially need to be the only country that finds a cure for death. Even the imaginary claims of better quality don't begin to cover it.

    RockDoc said...

    The comparison to Climate change over the last 50 years compared to now isn't valid. We just came out of a glacial maximum some 8,000 yrs ago. The Great Lakes and Wisconsin were under nearly a mile of ice. We are now in an interglacial period (warm) The world's climate has fluctuated long before the advent of the industrial age. Ask the villages in France and northern Italy in the Little Ice age that ended in the 1650's whose villages were threatened by fast moving glaciers that caused some to be buried. It's in European church parish records. Look up the history of Greenland and Vikings. Viking settlements lost contact with the homeland because of the fact that sea ice spread too far south of the preferred shore hugging viking vessels. Then things warmed up....long before the advent of widespread use of coal We're still in that interglacial period.

    So 50 years isn't anywhere near enough time to look back. Those fluctuations are just blips on global trends.

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