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Thoughts and comments from a rational perspective on political, social, and cultural events.
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463 years ago
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12 comments:
Hey - Politico isn't a partisan source! And the facts aren't partisan either! :)
Non-partisan FACTS???
1. The article was written by:
Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association. (Tom Daschle's son, BTW) So there goes your "non-partisan" source.
2. Daschle does not name any of the horrible Republican governors that he is trashing. So we don't know which states he's talking about.
I can only assume that California is one of those states. As we have seen, Gov. Schwartzenegger has had constant, ongoing fights with the liberal-Democratic State Legislature. The legislature produces some 6,000 new bills per session. They are the ones that make laws and spend the money. The Gov. is the Executive. He makes no laws. He can only attempt to veto what he disagrees with, but that can also be over-ridden.
So I'd like more info about which specific states have those awful Republican governors, and the makeup of those states' legislatures. Maybe then we would have actual facts to work with.
Facts may be true, but the use they are put to can definitely skew the interpretation. And reporting some of the facts can be as much propaganda as any other form. Don't believe everything you read, hear, or see. And definitely question the interpretations that are put on those facts.
For example, are those Republican governors the cause or the result of their states' poor economic performances? Or are there other factors involved? You can't tell by looking at the "facts" provided.
Well by using the same standard of ranking the top 5 states with the LOWEST (best) unemployment are all 5 headed by REPUBLICAN Govenors which the article fails to mention.
The top 5 states with the lowest unemployment are:
North Dakota (4.4%)
South Dakota (4.7%)
Nebraska (4.7%)
Oklahoma (6.6%)
Kansas (6.6%)
In fact the next 5 states with the lowest unemployment are ALSO Republican states. So using the same FACTS and the same line of rational presented by Tom Daschle's son, one could conclude that the 10 best-run states in terms of managing jobs and unemployment are all Republican-led states. But then again, that does not draw the same conclusion he was looking for in his article.
The top 5 states with the highest unemployment were:
Michigan (14%)
Nevada (13%)
Rhode Island (12.9%)
South Carolina (12.6%)
California (12.4%)
One thing I thought was interesting is that outside of South Carolina, the above mentioned states are all among the highest in terms of union membership - a corralation could be drawn there too - in fact, the top 10 in both unemployment and union membership share a strong relationship to one another.
I tried finding the Forbes ranking Tom's son references, and it was interesting to read the criteria as well as the results.
The top 5 were in fact:
Virgina (R)
Washington (D)
Utah (R)
Colorado (D)
North Carolina (D)
My guess is that he was counting Virgina as a 'D' state since McDonnell just took office.
He mentions that 'R's are less likely to be on the list, but looking at the list, 4 of the next 5 were all R's!! Those being Georgia (R), Nebraska (R), North Dakota (R), Texas (R) and Oregon (D). A little inconvenient to mention that since it does not play in to the point he is trying to make - better to misrepresent the list (otherwise known as lying) than to include that 'fact'.
Since this is a list that clearly Tom's son puts a lot of faith in as a good measure of how well your state is managed, I think it is worth highlighting the criteria Forbes used as a mechanism for ranking and apply it as a standard.
They considered heavily things like regulatory environment, labor costs/labor environment (i.e. wage and union pressures), and of course taxes to businesses, employees, etc. I actually think it's a pretty good standard to measure states against!!
Now what Tom's son didnt mention was that the 7 out of the 10 WORST states for doing business according to his same ranking were all Democrat led states!?!?!?!?!
Which rankings should I believe????? These ARE the 'undisputed' facts afterall!!
Now personally, I actually agree with the premise of the article (that I took away) by Tom's son, that the GOP represents no meaningful change from what the Democrats offer. When given the opportunity to lead, the Republicans are equally bad at trying to manage the country. Republicans CLAIM to be the party of limited government, but what they really mean is that they only want to limit in the ways they dont like and grow it massively in the ways they do.
I honestly don't understand why anyone still supports the GOP - or the Dems for that matter!!!!
Hi, Heather!
You're absolutely right! Thanks for pointing out my poor choice of a noun. The SOURCE, politico.com, is certainly nonpartisan. They're very good about checking facts and updating stories as needed.
The AUTHOR of the piece might be expected to be of the democratic persuasion. But as you point out, that doesn't mean his facts aren't accurate.
Thanks for your comment!
Six,
Thanks for doing the research and actually listing the facts that were not present in the article by Tom's son ... and by extrapolation, unknown to Citizen Jane.
Amazing that your much clearer list of "facts" seems to make no difference for some people and they still insist on the same old biased beliefs based on manipulated information.
Like the saying goes: You can lead a horse to water .........
For anyone with the time and inclination to sift this information further, here's the link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm
Six,you are clearly a rational person. I was surprised and disappointed, therefore, to see that in your last comment, you resorted to fallacious reasoning--the "straw man" fallacy and guilt by association--in persistently referring to Nathan Daschle as "Tom's son."
Anyone who made assumptions about my politics based on the beliefs of my relatives would be sorely misled. (In my family, actually, libertarianism appears to be a persistent genetic defect!)
I'm willing to take the leap of faith that he (Nathan, Tom's son) is fairly in lock-step with with his dad - the former Senate Majority leader - given that he worked on his campaigns. He also has only had a very limited career outside of politics as a lawyer, with most of his life (he is only 35) being spent either working on political campaigns or for the Dem Gov Association. So considering that he has the majority of his life has been spent hobknobbing with the upper eschelon of the Democratic leadership, and including his current position, I dont think it is a leap whatsoever to believe he is a schill for the Dems agenda.
Nepitism is rampant within the political world - left and right. If this were Mitch McConnell's son who was also happened to be the head of a Republican advocacy organization, would you not presume he shares the positions of his father? What if it were one of the Bush-daughters who headed up a similar organization?
As for my very last comment - are you saying that you DO understand why half of America still shows up to support the GOP?
Six pointed out that "unemployment and union membership share a strong relationship to one another."
There is an excellent article today about private and public unions. In 2009 the number of unionized workers who work for the government surpassed those in the private economy for the first time.
One especially poignant paragraph:
"The problem for democracy is that this creates a self-reinforcing cycle of higher spending and taxes. The unions help elect politicians, who repay the unions with more pay and benefits and dues-paying members, who in turn help to re-elect those politicians." This is a frightening cycle that may ensure the ever growing size of government. Bye, bye democracy, hello socialism!
Those who fear and demonize the "evil business" sector, (i.e. the people who actually create jobs) should really take a little time to consider what government workers actually "produce" and how they come by their paychecks (i.e. by taxing people ... the government does not make money, it only TAKES money.) At what point does it become unsustainable to feed the gigantic government monster with taxpayer money?
It's worth a read.click here.
Great converstation going on. A better analysis is to substitute "conservative" for Rebulican, i.e. consevative legislature, conservative governor and conservative county officals. Schwartzenegger is in not a conservative, he is a RINO. RINOs are an endangered species too.
The people of this country are waking up real fast to the fact that states with truly conservative leadership are a lot better places to live, (I am not saying perfect places just better places, no such thing a perfect) than their liberal led counterparts. Fiscally sound, low taxes, low unemployment, etc. That is why N. Daschle wrote the article and why C. Jane posted it, they both feel the heat and are trying to stave off the inevitable purge. They both must think all Americans are stupid. Oh yea, we already had that debate.
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