The Fact of My Ignorance

Of all issues in politics, this one is probably most dear to me.  No I’m not talking about healthcare, though that may be a close second, I’m talking about maintaining and improving the quality of our political dialogue.  For those who don’t know, healthcare town hall meetings have been held over the last week all across the country, and small groups of radical protesters have shown up at many of them with the express goal of “shouting down” their elected leaders.

To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with somebody being against the current healthcare bills being developed in congress.  If they’ve researched the issues thoroughly and have cut through the mists of misinformation and still come out thinking its not the best idea for America then more power to them.  I would welcome those people at a healthcare town hall and I would encourage them to go and speak their mind, even forcefully if they feel its appropriate.  But that’s not what this is.  This is just mobs of people screaming slogans and platitudes.  It’s people who are clearly unfamiliar with the content of the healthcare bill chanting things like “read this bill” for half an hour while their elected leader tries in vain to explain to them that they actually have read each and every iteration of the bill.  This news article, after the jump, will give you a picture of what’s going on: Continue reading

Hey look, a timely article for a change!  Finally I’m addressing a phenomenon before it happens and not days/weeks after it has passed.  Anyway, you may or may not have heard about the “tea-party” anti-tax movement that’s developing around the country.  This tea-party movement consists of people gathering in various cities on April 15th holding protests about the “terrible taxes burdening americans”, and what they see as America’s coming descent into socialism.  Here’s a quote from one of the two fawning FoxNews articles that were up about it today.  From one of the organizers of the tea party protests:

“People are getting killed — they’re getting hammered with taxes and it’s not the way this country is supposed to be run. … We want to fight back,”

Are people really getting hammered with taxes?  I don’t challenge their right to gather and protest taxes or whatever they want, but they may want to check a few facts first.  And to make it convenient for them, I’ve gathered the pertinent graphs and information after the jump.  I should also note before I begin that not all tea-party participants are claiming taxes are too high and that some are doing this for other reasons (to protest the stimulus, just to express their anger that McCain lost etc), I’m not addressing those concerns here.  But these tea-parties are being billed as “anti-tax protests” so this is a significant part of what they’re organizing for and this article will address that issue.  Anyway, as best as I can deduce, here’s some relevant historical perspective… Continue reading