Comments on: Are Blogs Evidence? What Is?

By: Rich Anderson

Rich Anderson — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 08:00:54 +0000

Our electorate barely cares about who’s running for president, no where near the amount of people who could vote do. There’s no way they’ll care enough to separate good information from bad when it comes from similar sources.

By: Bob Dole

Bob Dole — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 05:58:57 +0000

A blog asking if a blog is evidence??? So this blog is evidence of what…hilarious…

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 02:08:48 +0000

Wanna run for President?

By: Sharks

Sharks — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:22:50 +0000

The truth is they never planned on paying for the tax cut. They never had a plan to pay for it because they never will pay for it. When have republicans ever paid for anything.

This is the party of tax cuts pay for themselves. Tht is their belief. Bush was told by the CBO that his tax cuts would do everything the opposite of what he was telling the American people. He knew. Romney knows.

Tax cuts pay for themselves.

The only reason they can’t use that line anymore is because Bush proved their entire fiscal policy to be nothing but a fraud.

The fraud continues with Romney.

Economists should stop chasing around these numbers Romney throws out and look at the history of the Republican party.

They don’t pay for anything.

By: Rima Regas

Rima Regas — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:06:59 +0000

Romney, and Bush before him to a lesser extent, brings a high degree of intellectual dishonesty that’s just barely above acceptable levels. This is how he ran his business and it’s how he runs his campaign. It’s no wonder that he would choose to rely on opinion and call it fact.

Where his numbers and Paul Ryan’s come from should be reported on far more widely than they have been in the context of what’s acceptable and what is not, when coming up with a policy.

You’ve mentioned this, Ezra Klein has mentioned it. Paul K has been calling Ryan a fraud for some time now. Someone else, a reporter, needs to tell the story of where these studies come from and how they deviate from serious number crunching at an institution with repute.

So far, they’ve come up with alternative science to refute Roe v. Wade. They’ve invented an alternative science to refute global warming. Now, they’re inventing new economics.

Slowly but surely, they’re managing to delegitimize our institutions.

This is bad.

By: Frank de Libero

Frank de Libero — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 05:03:16 +0000

You want evidence? Here’s evidence
http://www.lettingthedataspeak.com/the-human-cost-of-ideology-ii/
and here
http://www.lettingthedataspeak.com/human-cost-ideology/

By: Adi Venkata

Adi Venkata — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:22:26 +0000

The issue with US taxation is two fold (1) Complex (2) Creates classes of income

I suggest the following:

1. Deductions limited at 25% of gross income or $40,000 – whichever is lower
2. There is no difference between any source of income – salary, dividends, capital gains
3. There are 5 rates: 7.5%, 15%, 20%, 25% and 30%
4. The slabs are at $15,000; $50,000; $75,000; $150,000 and $300,000
5. Estate tax has 2 tabs: $2M – $10M: 10% and $10M+: 15%
6. SS Tax limit is raised from $107K to $300K
7. Non-banking financial transactions are taxed at 0.2% per transaction (shares, swaps, options etc)

My estimate is that remove the classes of taxes; bringing more equality to salary; increasing overall revenue and reducing deficit. i want to ensure that all increase of revenue from this change in income tax code goes towards deficit closure rather than increased govt spending.

By: wkj

wkj — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 01:57:22 +0000

My income is less than $250K/yr.

It is mostly interest & dividends.

Romney says he would reduce my tax rate on that income to 0%.

I should be tempted to vote for him, but I don’t believe a word he says.

By: mitakeet

mitakeet — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 01:03:10 +0000

However, none of this matters if the populous is so credulous that they can’t see the difference between well respected non-partisan research and highly partisan blogs. I am (or perhaps was) a scientist and have a decade or so of experience reading primary literature and know that even there people make mistakes, exaggerate results and have bias. Because I know this and have extensive experience I can tell which bits of primary literature deserve my close attention and which do not. However, ‘ordinary’ people don’t read primary literature (ever), let alone have the skills to tell high from low quality, so there exists a group of people who read primary literature and then translate so interested lay people can get the gist. Sadly, in a rather substantial fraction of the time (10-20% in my experience) the digested report misrepresents the underlying literature, sometimes comically. Since (most) science is without political agenda, yet is still rife with these problems, I can in no way think that stuff like economics, job reports, etc. could ever be comprehended at the primary (peer reviewed) literature level by lay people. Given that most people don’t even have a strong lay interest in the primary data, I find it very difficult to believe that any undecided voter will give a damn about what is ‘real’ and what is blather made up by political hacks.

I wish we had an electorate that cared enough to do some research, but if we did we wouldn’t be in our current idiotic situation.