Why do Republicans lie all the time about everything?

[rubato]

Who else is corrupt enough to claim that we should take health care away from people and expect them to be healthier?

Is there a factory which makes people stupid enough to vote for these idiots?

____________________________________
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/07/r ... -room.html

July 07, 2011
Republican Claims That People Are Better Off Having No Insurance than Having Medicaid: For the Virtual Green Room

Rebutted by Amy Finkelstein et al.:

In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for Medicaid. This lottery provides a unique opportunity to gauge the effects of expanding access to public health insurance on the health care use, financial strain, and health of low-income adults using a randomized controlled design. In the year after random assignment, the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage points more likely to have insurance than the control group that was not selected. We find that in this first year, the treatment group had substantively and statistically significantly higher health care utilization (including primary and preventive care as well as hospitalizations), lower out-of-pocket medical expenditures and medical debt (including fewer bills sent to collection), and better self-reported physical and mental health than the control group.

And Ezra Klein:

Amazing Fact! Science Proves Health Insurance Works: Compared with the uninsured group, those in the Medicaid sample got 30 percent more hospital care, 35 percent more outpatient care and 15 percent more prescription-drug care. There were similar gains for preventive care; mammograms were up 60 percent and cholesterol monitoring rose 20 percent. The Medicaid recipients also had fewer unpaid bills sent to collection, were 25 percent more likely to report themselves in “good” or “excellent” health, and 10 percent less likely to screen positive for depression. The one surprise was that there was no evidence of “crowd-out”: Medicaid coverage didn’t make someone more or less likely to purchase private insurance...

And Austin Frakt:

Compared to the uninsured group, those in the Medicaid group: received 30% more hospital care, received 35% more outpatient care, were 15% more like to use prescription drugs, received 60% more mammograms, received 20% more cholesterol checks, were 15% more likely to have had a blood tested for high blood sugar or diabetes, were 45% more likely to have had a pap test within the last year (for women), had lower out-of-pocket medical expenditures and medical debt, had a 40% lower probability of needing to borrow money or skip payment on other bills because of medical expenses, incurred $778 more in spending on health care in one year, a 25% increase over the uninsured mean spending level, were 25% percent more likely to report themselves in “good” or “excellent” health, were 70% more likely to have a usual source of care, were 55% more likely to see the same doctor over time, reported better physical and mental health, were 10% percent less likely to screen positive for depression...

______________________________________

Wow, we actually had to PROVE that HC is good for you! Just wait for the next round of Republican 'talking points'.



yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

Where, exactly, can I find a quote from the "Republican" spokesperson who says that taking "healthcare*" away from people makes them healthier?

______________
* People who can read and write know that "healthcare" and "health insurance" are two different things. Apparently, rubato has not picked up on this obvious distinction.

[rubato]

Lying all the time, Forbes edition:



____________________________
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/07/f ... -room.html

False Forbes Claims That Per Capita Grain Production Is Rising Because of Warmer Temperatures: For the Virtual Green Room

Rebutted by Peter Gleick:

Forbes, which regularly publishes biased, misleading, and distorted opinion pieces on climate issues, has just published a remarkable one by Patrick Michaels. Michaels is well known for his regular misleading statements about climate. And while his statements are mostly worth ignoring, this one contains a particularly remarkable combination of errors and falsehoods.... In this case, his misstatements are easily checked (though not, apparently, by Forbes fact-checkers) by actually looking up the real data on world food production. Here are Michaels’ most grossly misleading or simply false statements:

False Statement #1. Michaels says: Gillis claims that “[t]he rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed” because of global warming. His own figures show this is wrong. The increasing trend in world crop yields from 1960 to 1980 is exactly the same as from 1980 to 2010. [Emphasis added.]

Did Michaels think no one would actually look at the data? Gillis is right and Michaels is wrong. Crop yields are certainly increasing, on average, as we do better and better with technology. But the trends are in the wrong direction. Very simply, from 1960 to the present, yield increases have been slowing (exactly as Gillis notes), even accounting for year-to-year variation....

False Statement #2. Michaels states: “And per capita grain production is rising, not falling.”

In this case, Michaels does not provide any year. Rising between when and when? In fact, per-capita grain production has been flat for decades as increases in production have been countered by increases in population. Indeed, in 2008, per-capita grain production was around 374 kilograms per person (and it dropped a bit in 2009, the last year for which global data are available). But the peak in per-capita grain production was 1984 and 1985 — more than a quarter century ago....

Finally, the heart of Michaels’ Forbes piece seems to be that climate change will be good for food production, not bad. In his op-ed, under the title “Facts,” Michaels says the following:

Facts: Global surface temperature rose about three-fourths of a degree Celsius in the 20th century. U.S. corn yields quintupled. Life expectancy doubled. People got fat. Global warming didn’t cause all of this, but increased atmospheric carbon dioxide directly stimulated plant growth. Further, greenhouse warming takes place more in the winter, which lengthens growing seasons. With adequate water, plants then fix and yield more carbohydrate. [Emphasis added.]

Here, Michaels is saying that the warming of the past century was largely responsible (even if it “didn’t cause all”) for increases in U.S. corn yields, life expectancy, and people’s well-being (which is presumably what he means when he says “People got fat.”). This isn’t “fact.” It is... in contradiction to actual science on food and agriculture....

Truthful statement, but not in the way Michaels means it: “I continue to be amazed at how little the facts are checked on global warming, even when writing for the so-called newspapers of record.”

Well, this statement is certainly true. Alas, it applies to Michaels and Forbes.
_____________________________________


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Lying all the time, economics edition part 1:


_____________________________
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/07/v ... green.html

Veronique de Rugy's Claim That Taxes Cannot Rise Above 19% of GDP No Matter What Happens to Tax Rates: For the Virtual Green Room

Lying Chart Of The Day Classic Edition | The New Republic

Lying Chart Of The Day Classic Edition | The New Republic 1Rebutted by Jonathan Chait:

Ubiquitous libertarian anti-tax pundit Veronique de Rugy pulls out the old hackneyed Republican line that tax revenues can't go above 19 percent.... I've seen versions of this dating back two decades. Part of the scam is a simply visual trick familiar to anybody who read "How To Lie With Statistics" -- you scale the chart to make a major change appear tiny.... Here's a chart showing the range of revenue within a reasonable scale... the swings are fairly dramatic. De Rugy's chart purports to show that reducing the top marginal tax rate produced no real change in revenue. But of course the first Reagan tax cuts in 1981 caused revenue to plummet. The top marginal tax rate was also reduced in 1986, but that was accompanied by equally large reductions in tax expenditures, and the whole reform was not designed to reduce revenue.

Meanwhile, the tax hikes by George W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- which supply-siders claimed would not increase revenue -- were followed by a massive spike in revenue. And then the tax cuts by George W. Bush -- which supply-siders claimed would not reduced revenue by very much -- were followed by a massive, 5% of GDP drop in revenue, which receded to 2% of revenue at the peak of the 2000s economic cycle.

Rebuttals to talking-points misinformation that I want to have at the forefront of my brain--for when I am surprised, as I will be, by an unexpected question from an unexpected direction while talking to reporters, phone callers, passers-by, radio interviewers, cable TV interviewers, etc....

___________________________________



yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

They are traitors who will go to any length and cause any amount of harm just to get in power. Causing the worst calamity in 80 is not enough for them. They want breadlines and 25% unemployment.


Lying to the people of your own country does not help you to 'win' ideological arguments it makes your own country weaker and more incompetent by mentally crippling the people who need to understand the truth, the electorate.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

Honestly, do you think he actually reads anything that he posts?

[Lord Jim]

Honestly, do you think he actually reads anything that he posts?

If he doesn't, then he's showing better judgment then I've given him credit for...

I stopped reading his hate filled know-nothing garbage over a year ago....over ten years of that misanthropic swill was more than enough for me...

And I can easily see by the subject lines of the threads he starts and things he says that get quoted from time to time, (though I have noticed that rube doesn't seem to get quoted all that often...his blather doesn't seem to draw much in the way of response any more) that I ain't been missing much..it doesn't appear that he's experienced a great burst of personal growth since I stopped reading his posts, to say the least....

[Grim Reaper]

Simple. It's easier to lie, then apologize, which gives the lie time to grow legs and keep going.

[rubato]

Republicans lie about the cause of the housing meltdown. The blame it on the CRA and on Fannie and Freddie, theories easy to disprove. And then refuse to regulate the financial markets who caused it; due to inept regulation.

LJ and dgs demonstrate their usual method of denying reality.




yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Republicans continue to lie about global climate change.

"The jury is still out on smoking global warming."


Lies are evil.

yrs,
rubato