Saturday, June 18, 2011

Where people are a priority

"In the United States, we paid the equivalent of 8.2 percent of our economy more in social spending out of our own pockets than the people in other rich countries did that year. So the savings we enjoyed on our tax bills were more than offset by what we paid for those things our counterparts bought with their taxes."
9 Countries that Do It Better - AlterNet

The war over reality

"[T]he parties are increasingly divided over reality itself: over what is actually true, not only about hard science but also social science and simple policy facts such as the contents of the health-care bill."
Reality Bites - The American Prospect

Monday, June 13, 2011

When facts are just a means to an end

"Intellectualism, science, and knowledge itself is only valuable [for conservatives] to the extent to which it can shore up the ideological beliefs of the speaker or the listener. Facts that might subvert those assertions are simply dismissed."
The Conservative War on Facts - Daily Kos

The problem for conservatives is that they're wrong

"Low tax rates. Profits for so-called 'job creators.' Spending cuts. The three things that conservatives say are most necessary for achieving a healthy economy are all occurring at historic levels. If conservatives were right, there could be no way that the economic situation could be this bad on either side of the pond. But it is, and that leads to one inescapable logical conclusion: conservative economic policies are not good for job creation or the overall economy."
If Conservatives Were Right - Daily Kos

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Government spending does not diminish freedom

"If freedom, as the conservatives seem to insist, comes down primarily to the quantity of government spending, then a country such as Sweden, where government spends quite a lot, would be less 'free' than a right-wing dictatorship that had no welfare state and no public schools — but also didn’t allow its people to speak, pray, write or organize as they wish."
Romney’s Flawed View of Freedom - Washington Post

America, the learning impaired

"But we’re special. We’re Americans. We’re exceptional. If we want to learn how to keep healthcare costs from devouring the economy, we don’t need to study the methods used by comparable countries -- because no other countries are comparable to us, in our virtue, our wisdom, and our divinely inspired founding. No, instead of sending fact-finding commissions to other nations to meet with their medical experts, we’ll turn to the Federalist Papers, and try to deduce what Hamilton, Madison and Jay might have said about physician reimbursement rates."
The Case Against "American Exceptionalism" - Salon

Free markets don't exist

"Free-market economists may want you to believe that the correct boundaries of the market can be scientifically determined, but this is incorrect. If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science.... Their ideological cloak is to pretend that their politics is not really political, but rather is an objective economic truth, while other people’s politics is political. However, they are as politically motivated as their opponents."
There Is No Such Thing as a Free Market - Truthout