Tag Archives: low information voters

SNL and Bill Maher on The Undecided Voter

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We’re all pretty tired of it…

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“There’s still a lot we don’t know. And we want answers.”

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Bill Maher also tackled undecided voters on Friday night — AND the media who celebrates them:

Huffington Post: With less than two months until the election, Maher advises those who still don’t know who they’re voting for to “stay home” on Nov. 6, because they probably won’t be able to find their polling places. He doesn’t understand why undecideds such as “Octomom” Nadya Suleman are being celebrated or painted as more discerning than the rest of us when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney couldn’t be more different.

“And that, in a nutshell, is America’s celebrated, undecided voter: put on a pedestal by the media as if they were Hamlet in a think-tank, searching out every last bit of information, high-minded arbiters pouring over policy positions and matching them against their own philosophies. Please, they mostly fall into a category political scientists call ‘low information voters,’ otherwise known as ‘dipsh*ts.’”


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There are actually conservatives who say they believe Romney is responsible for Bin Laden

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And those voters are what is wrong with everything. Talk about mental contortions.

The Raw Story: A surprising amount of very conservative voters in Ohio apparently believe that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is more responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden than President Barack Obama. Fifteen percent of those who described themselves as “very conservative” said Romney was more responsible for the demise of the terrorist leader, according to a survey released by Public Policy Polling (PDF). Another 51 percent said they were not sure. Only 34 percent said Obama deserved more credit. [...] Overall, 63 percent of those questioned said that Obama was more responsible for the death of Bin Laden. Only six percent said Romney was more responsible, while 30 percent said they were not sure. — Some Ohio conservatives think Romney responsible for Bin Laden’s death

Dylan Matthews: calls it “psychological trickery.” “[V]oters have trouble crediting politicians they don’t like for policy outcomes they do like,” he explained, citing research. “And killing bin Laden is a policy outcome they do like. And so partisan effects have led some Republicans to argue that Obama was not primarily responsible for killing bin Laden or, even more absurdly, that Romney was responsible.” — Do 15% of Ohio Republicans think Romney killed bin Laden? Probably not.

THIS, even though in 2007 Mitt Romney told the Associated Press “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

If this doesn’t convince you that whatever these people think is laughably ignorant and sadly childlike, what would? But they’ll be the first ones in line at the polls on Nov. 6th — so take that into consideration.

In a Ron Paul America…

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Closing almost 260 USDA offices reminds me of a Ron Paul America:

“In a Ron Paul America, there would be no environmental protection, no Social Security, no Medicaid or Medicare, no help for the poor, no public education, no civil rights laws, no anti-discrimination law, no Americans With Disabilities Act, no laws ensuring the safety of food or drugs or consumer products, no workers’ rights. How far does Paul take his war against Washington? He wants to abolish the Federal Aviation Authority and its pesky air traffic controllers. He has one magic answer to every problem — including how to land an airplane safely: let the market handle it.”

– The Nation: Progressive Man-Crushes On Ron Paul : NPR (via: ryking)

Lookin’ at you, Teaparty (i.e. the low information voters)

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TAX CUTS for the wealthiest Americans are enormous & unaffordable:

image: reagan-was-a-horrible-president

  • If your income is $50,000, your tax cut is $909 (1.82% of income)
  • If your income is over $1,000,000, your tax cut is $103,835 (10.38% of income!)

If this simple math doesn’t clearly illustrate the Republican plan for bottom-to-top income redistribution, I don’t know what does. This is what Warren Buffet was talking about when he compared what he paid in taxes to what his secretary paid in taxes.

If millionaires were receiving the same tax ‘savings‘ as those making $50,000, instead of paying $103,835 less on their income (derived by labor or capital gains, doesn’t matter), their tax savings would be only $18,180. That’s a difference of $85,655 in additional tax revenue that could be going to our depleted treasury. That could be $85,655 worth of spending cuts that wouldn’t have to be made to programs and services that everyone uses and / or depends on.

BILL O’REILLY’S comments on income and taxes:

During an interview with White House press secretary Jay Carney, Bill O’Reilly criticized President Obama for using investor Warren Buffett as an example of the unfairness in the tax code. Obama, in his speech on jobs before a joint session of Congress, said that “Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — an outrage he has asked us to fix.” O’Reilly took exception that remark, suggesting that it was an “apples to oranges” comparison because Buffett pays mostly capital gains taxes while his secretary likely pays mostly income tax.

His criticism is off base. Taxes on “capital gains” are taxes on income derived from capital, as opposed to income derived from labor. Both capital gains taxes and income taxes are taxes on income. O’Reilly is wrong to suggest Buffett and the president are being misleading or unfair.

And why IS income on labor taxed higher than income from capital gains? The majority of us derive income from our labor, and the majority of us are carrying those who derive income from capital gains because our labor is being taxed at a higher rate.

The inequality between the wealthiest and the rest of us isn’t just in how much our incomes are taxed either. Income inequality — what we earn and take home — has been growing for at least 30 years:

Mother Jones:

Productivity has surged, but income and wages have stagnated for most Americans. If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.

Bill Moyers: “Welcome to the Plutocracy!”

“… [T]he economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez… found that from 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to everyone but the rich increased from 64 percent to 65 percent. Because the nation’s economy was growing handsomely, the average income for 9 out of 10 Americans was growing, too – from $17,719 to $30,941. That’s a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.

But then it stopped. Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefited. The line flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years.

That’s wage repression.”

Isn’t it funny how the Republican party is in full-on war mode about two things: 1) more tax cuts for the wealthy / corporations and 2) spending cuts to “entitlement” programs (to help subsidize those tax cuts).

SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR THE TEAPARTY BASE:

Here’s a list of federal entitlement programs and the percentage of people who report they’ve not used a “government social program” –
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Source: Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era (PDF)

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