Myth Buster

So, this guy wrote an editorial to my local paper, The Newnan Times Herald, making some pretty typical conservatives claims. I took the opportunity to correct him and wrote a letter in response that gave statistics (from the real world) to back up my claims. My rebuttal has not been printed and I don't know that it will be printed at all...and if it is, I don't know that it will be printed in it's entirety. In my response I cited the sources of my stats and also gave this blog address as a place readers could find a link to those stats. Whether or not my blog address can be printed or not (it contains the world "ass") is unknown as well, however, the stats are good ones and below I will give them with a little context, too.

One claim the author of the letter made was that most of the tax money that goes to government programs that provide money and services (welfare) to poor people comes from the middle and working class. This however is not true. According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, the top 10% of income earners paid 68% of all federal taxes and that the top 11-25% paid another 17%. That's the "lion's share" of all federal taxes. http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/charts_T/t4.cfm

The next claim he made, that I addressed, was kind of crazy. Though it was crazy it has a lot of traction with people where I live. He claimed that half the U.S. population works and that this working half supports another half that doesn't work at all. This is way, way, way off the mark, but he wrote it in all sincerity. Right now, the unemployment rate is about 5%. it's been that way for quite a while and has never gotten anywhere near 50% in recent history (the last 60 years).http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/charts_T/t4.cfm

In the same vein as the last point, I went on to show that approximately .65% (a little more than half of one percent) is all that was spent of the entire federal budget on TANF (Temporary Assistants to Needy Families; our "welfare" agency that was formerly AFDC) in 2006. I went on to say that the vast majority of "welfare" goes to the elderly, the disabled, and children, not people not willing to work.http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RS22385.pdf (page 4).

This are all fairly popular myths among conservatives and I don't like to turn down the chance to dispel them, so, I tried!

Interview with Dick Cheney (1994)

Where was this footage before the invasion

We Assumed Things Couldn't Be Worse

Here's an editorial of mine that was printed today in the Newnan Times Herald. If what's said in the piece seems obvious and short it's because it was crafted for an audience that generally takes these truths for granted and I am limited in the amount of words I can use. The vast majority of the editorials my local paper receives praise our president and the war unconditionally....

In 2003, the public was told that Saddam and his regime had ties to Al-Queda, WMD’s, and ominous nuclear ambitions. Saddam had gassed Kurds and ruled Iraq with an iron fist for decades (the gassing occurred while the U.S. was still backing him). It seemed at the time that a U.S. invasion could only produce positive change in the Middle East and a more secure America. We learned shortly after our invasion that all our worst fears were unfounded despite our “best” intelligence. Now, with Iraq in almost total disarray and little hope of democracy taking hold, it’s hard not to look at the situation and ask if we haven’t made things worse.

I know Saddam was a vicious ruler and that most Iraqis suffered horribly under his regime. However, things don’t look “better”. In the gassing of the Kurds in the 80’s, Saddam is alleged to have killed 5,000 civilians. In the last four years, according to sources that only count civilian deaths directly related to U.S. military activity, some 70,000 Iraqis have died. This number does not include sectarian violence that is the byproduct of our inability to secure Iraq. Millions more have fled the country due to the violence and insecurity. There are forces more destructive and tyrannical than authoritarian dictatorship. Chaos due to a lack of security is one of them.

Also, during Saddam’s reign, other authoritarian powers in the region, like Syria and Iran, were held from gaining ground. Now, with a pullout some time in the future likely, we have paved the way for these powers to gain influence and possibly cause a state of total war with other countries in the region.

I am not saying that Saddam’s reign was all rainbows and flowers. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t have assumed that we couldn’t make things worse.

About me and this blog...

To start this thing off I guess I'll give a brief account of who I am and what I'd like to do with the blog. I'm 25 years old and live in Newnan, GA which has been my home for about 11 years. I just married my girlfriend of 7 years, Whitney, in Septmeber. I also just graduated from GA State University with a BA in Political Science (minor in Philosophy). I like to write (thus, the blog!) and am passionate about a variety of subjects and issues which I plan to write about in this blog. Among those subjects I care so much about are vegetarianism and animal rights, politics of all sorts, religion, and a host of others. I hope that this blog will ignite more than negative comments on my views. I hope this blog can be a forum for discussion and facilitate understanding among those who read it and myself. I plan on taking stands on issues that will probably be unpopular and I welcome readers to give honest feedback on the things I write. I plan on responding on the blog to most comments. I hope it is fun and stuff.

My First Blog Entry

Yo, yo, yo. Broadcasting live to no one...This is my first blog entry. Everyone (no one) stay tuned as the drama unfolds!