As for Fox Noise, Shircliffe neglected to mention that according to the Fairleigh Dickenson University poll, Fox viewers know less about the news than people who watch no TV news at all.
He provides no source for his claim about health insurance premiums, but a) even if they did rise, how do we know that they wouldn't have risen even more had McCain won? b) in any case, the vast portion of Obama's health plan doesn't take effect until 2014.
He makes a point about rises in food stamp expenditures. This is to be expected after the Bush recession had its chance to ripple through the economy. The increase in federal expenditures during the Obama administration is primarily because of the increase in safety net spending due to the Bush recession, and not because of any new federal government program expenditures.
If Shircliffe wants to make a point about future federal debt, he should study the chart below. Debt is surely increasing due to the lingering effects of the Bush recession, but the idea that the Republicans are the fiscally responsible party and can control the deficit is shown to be historically false. Notice how debt as a % of GDP rises dramatically under Reagan and Bush I, falls under Clinton, and rises again under Bush II. The US does have a debt problem, but in the past 30 years nearly all of its growth has occurred under Republican presidencies.
I hope the points above help to correct some of the misinformation in Shircliffe's letter. He throws up a lot of mud hoping something will stick, but it doesn't. Perhaps others can find additional misleading data in his letter.
-- Richard McIntyre
Thank you, I agree with everything you said, Richard. Here is a little background on Evan Shircliffe. Evan is a classmate of Anthony Wagner's at Bedford High School.(Anthony is our youngest member, and chairman of the Correspondence Committee), Anthony & Evan have had many debates at BedfordHS on political issues. I agree 100% that Evan doesn't have his facts correct in his letter, but since he relies on Fox News and Rush L. for his facts, he probably is accurately stating what he's learned from their "reporting" and "analysis". Evan's reply to Frank Miller's letter can give us a good example of what difficulty our group is going to continually face when we try to tell the actual facts concerning these issues. I do have to say that it's good to see some more young people taking an interest in important issues. We just need to keep trying to better inform them.
ReplyDeleteThanks Robert. I don't think we should leave his letter unanswered. He at least has put numbers forward, something that Mr. Murphy fails to do consistently. Let's refute his numbers with the real numbers.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Frank Miller would like to respond to Shircliffe's letter to the editor, since it was about Frank's letter. But, the more the merrier.
You can be assured that I am already working on a response. I hope to email it to the Gazette Sunday. Believe me when I tell you I have source data for all the information that I included in my letter and most of it is from the Bureau of Labor Statics.
DeleteThe problem with putting links to the verifying web site pages in a news paper column is that some of the addresses are so long they can wrap into several rows and of course the Gazette, which apparently does no proof reading prior to publishing, will have typing errors.
Responding to Shircliff is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Frank Miller