Some good stuff is starting to pop up around the ‘net regarding Bush’s State of the Union address last night.
I’m referring, of course, to the claim — repeated yet again in the president’s speech — that his tax cut plan offers an “average” tax break of over \$1000. “Ninety-two million Americans,” Bush told us with a straight face, “will keep this year an average of almost \$1,100 more of their own money.”
This average is a convenient fiction; it’s a statistic that exists only because the enormous benefits accruing to the dividend-owning super-rich skew the “average” — and camouflage the fact that the cuts most middle class taxpayers will receive under Bush’s proposal are piddling. The few rich taxpayers with mega-breaks are statistical “outliers”; if you used a median rather than an average you’d end up with a far lower number — one much closer to what most of us would actually get under Bush’s plan.
I guess I shouldn’t be shocked at this late date that Bush and his administration would continue to use blatantly misleading “facts” to sell their policies; it’s been their economic approach from day one. Still, it’s appalling. And the very consistency of Bush’s willingness to twist simple facts in demonstrably manipulative and sometimes outright deceitful ways has a more pernicious effect than simply discrediting his policies: It leaves us with the sense that the man is deeply untrustworthy.
— Scott Rosenberg, You do the math (Via Robert Scoble)
What Bush said of Saddam’s disarmament record could equally be said of Bush’s domestic record. He has given no evidence of progress. He must have much to hide.
— William Saletan, A reveille, not a record (Via Tom Negrino)
President Bush did his best to scare the bejesus out of his audience Tuesday to make his case for war. And afterward, he was probably the only person to get a good night’s sleep.
— Salon’s wrapup: State of the Union: Frightened
My favorite so far: Microsoft Word’s automatic summary of the State of the Union address: “”Many hospitals tell people, ‘You’ve got AIDS America and the world will not be blackmailed if Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities.”” (Via d kitty)
What the White House thinks about you: You are simple. Parsing the speech reveals that in his 5,366-word speech, the average sentence was 18 words in length. Some might make the case that perhaps Bush isn’t good with long sentences, and we’ll admit the possibility. So you and the President are very simple people with limited attention spans.
— The Raven, Simple Minds (Via Scott Rosenberg)
Shelley Powers (Burningbird) also has a very good breakdown of the key issues, and touches on some of the issues I didn’t have much background information on, such as Bush’s health care plans:
Rather than extend Medicare and Medicaid with a prescription drug plan, the President instead wants to give seniors who need help with prescription drugs the opportunities to go into HMOs. I would suggest you find a senior and you ask them why they would prefer not to go into an HMO.
HMOs operate at a profit. To make this profit, they control costs in many ways, including restricting access to physicians and rewarding physicians for keeping costs down. These plans discourage long-term treatments, and categorize many procedures as ‘experimental’ and therefore not covered. In addition, its more cost effective to treat as many patients as possible with nurse practitioners rather than with doctors directly. NPs aren’t paid as much.
This works contrary to the needs of the elderly, who prefer and need to go to their own physicians, rather than being seen by a nurse practitioner or a different doctor on every visit. In addition, the elderly can require long-term expensive care as well as medical procedures that may be fairly new, or still undergoing research. Alzheimer’s treatments come to mind when I say the latter. HMOs work best with younger, relatively healthy families who suffer from the usual bumps and bruises, flus, and maybe an occasional heart attack or broken bone. HMOs do not work well with the elderly.
— Shelley Powers, Thoughts on the State of the Union