Political Myths

POLITICAL pundits dismiss them as low-information voters. Democrats and their fellow travelers cultivate them. Such voters are otherwise intelligent Americans who do not bother paying attention to politics until a few days before an election. They enter the voting booth ill-informed and instead of helping make matters worse by voting for familiar names rather than the best candidate. Later, when the government again fails, they give up on politics -- until just before the next election when they repeat this process blissfully unaware of the damage they do. 

Newspapers should keep people informed so we can avoid enabling politicians to make big mistakes, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, the reporting was poor and helped enable a Democratic Party to run roughshod over Republicans, the American people and common sense. Numbers were fudged and misrepresented to create a crisis where there was none. 

For example, there never were 45.7 million “uninsured” Americans seeking coverage. The Census Bureau conducted a telephone interview in 2007 that asked people if they had been without health insurance for any time in the last year. From that survey, the Census bureaucracy extrapolated the 45.7 million “uninsured” figure. 

Former Sen. Fred Thompson tried to warn America in a “Meet the Press” interview in January 2009, saying: 

· 26 percent were eligible for an existing program but had not signed up.
· 21 percent were the 12 million illegal immigrants.
· 20 percent were in families with incomes of $75,000 a year or more.
· 40 percent were young.

Now due to overlaps -- some illegal immigrants are young, eligible for a government program and doing well -- the actual percentage of actually insurance-less cannot be determined. But time has proven Thompson correct as there is nowhere near 45.7 million people signing up for Obamacare. This program turned everyone’s health insurance upside down for a problem that was overstated and easily addressed in other ways. 

Then there is the political myth that the uninsured are driving health care costs up by overloading the emergency rooms. Patently false.

“A new study of Medicaid beneficiaries in Oregon makes a strong version of this case. The study, published today in the journal Science, finds that adult Medicaid beneficiaries rely on emergency rooms about 40 percent more than similar uninsured adults,” reported Reason magazine in January 2014. 

That makes sense. Uninsured people pay out of pocket so they will seek the best price for the service. Medicaid recipients pay nothing and go by convenience rather than The best way to drop health prices is to eliminate the middle man: health insurance. 

Climate change is another political myth. The predictions by various computer models invariable overstate the problem. The best way to resolve the problem would be to take two greenhouses. Have one at 0.0035 percent carbon dioxide and the other at 0.005 percent. After a year, measure the temperatures. 

But that is too simple. Instead we have a lot of guesswork. One myth is that the Earth’s temperature is rising at an alarming rate. 

“For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero),” Bob Carter wrote in the London Telegraph in April 2006.

At the time, few people believed him. Seven years later, the International Panel on Climate Change’s fifth report confirmed that temperatures had “plateaued” since 1998. Ice covers more of the Arctic today than it did on the same date seven years ago. Antarctica’s ice is in its 13th year of growth. 

Climate changers argue that hurricanes and tornadoes are on the rise. Not true. “Extreme weather snoozer: no hurricanes, and low tornado numbers in 2013,” the Washington Post reported last September. 

Mother Nature has forced climate changers to stop grabbing every hot day as “proof.” Of course, in recent years they backed off their claim. That’s because snow has returned to the Eastern Seaboard in record amounts in recent years. They point to long-term trends. But they continue to call skeptics names with Secretary of State John Kerry insisting they are members of the Flat Earth Society. But such a society also is a myth. 

“There never was a period of 'flat earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology,” wrote Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. 

In fact, Christopher Columbus was wrong. The ancient Greeks estimated the circumference of the Earth at between 22,000 and 25,000 miles (which is true) while Columbus thought the distance between Asia and Europe was smaller. The actual length of his first journey astounded him and he deliberately understating the distance they traveled. If anyone was a Flat Earther, it was him. 

But Columbus triggered western exploration which led to the discovery of the Americas, which were named for Amerigo Vespucci, who first identified that land mass as not being Asia. 

Then there is the 97 percent consensus rubbish. Climate change alarmists keep stating this myth as a fact, but actually less than one third of scientists agree. That 97 percent number comes from a study of 11,944 peer-reviewed articles from 1991 to 2011 by a team led by Professor John Cook of the University of Queensland. 

Cook and company found 7,930 (or 66 percent) of the papers had no conclusion one way or another about man-made global warming. However, Cook reported it as 97 percent because of the papers that had an opinion, 97 percent agreed with him. Thus 32 percent became 97 percent. 

Conservatives know what this is all about: Dismantling the United States economy by driving up the cost of energy. There is one final myth about global warming: that the United States is an out-of control monster that is spewing carbon dioxide without a care. That is just not so, according to the World Bank:

· In 1980, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions per capita were 20.8 tons.
· In 1990, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions per capita were 19.1 tons.
· In 2000, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions per capita were 20.2 tons.
· In 2010, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions per capita were 19.3 tons.
· That was the same as it was in 2007, the last year before the 2008-9 recession.

There are many reasons for the recent decline, including better efficiency in the use of appliances such as stoves, refrigerators and televisions. However, cell phones and other new electronic devices are less energy efficient and have increased demand for electric power. Windmills and burning grass will never meet that demand and as long as government subsidies substitute for profits, neither will solar power.

The gun debate also suffers from hysteria replacing facts.  

Then there are guns. Liberal mythology on guns is surreal. Consider this statement from Mark Shields on PBS on December 21, 2012: “You know, Judy, the reality is -- and it's a terrible reality -- since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history, from the Revolutionary through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, in those 43 years. ... I mean, guns are a problem. And I think they still have to be confronted.” 

By “gunfire” he means guns. His statement is misleading in that it makes it seem as if nothing was done in the intervening years. But the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Kennedy led to the Gun Control Act of 1968. So we could say that since passage of historic federal gun legislation in 1968, more people have died from guns than in all the wars combined. Indeed, homicides soared after passage of the legislation, growing from 6.2 homicides per 100,000 people in 1967 (the last full year before the law) to 6.9 in 1968, to 7.3 in 1969, to 7.9 in 1970, 8.6 in 1971, 9.0 in 1972, 9.4 in 1973 and 9.8 in 1974 -- a 58 percent increase in just seven years. 

Homicides remained about the 1967 rate from 1968 to 1998 -- nearly one-third of a century -- peaking at 10.2 homicides per 100,000 people in 1980. 

But for a variety of reasons, homicides fell to 5.7 per 100,000 people in 1999 down to 4.7 in 2011 (and again in 2012) -- a 45-year low. This came even as gun laws loosened and states (beginning with Arizona) began issuing concealed weapons permits to every qualified person not just celebrities and the politically connected. 

In 2000, the National Center for Policy Analysis looked at the effects of a 1995 Texas law that allowed people to bear arms again. Citing engineering statistician William Sturdevant, the center reported (quoting directly): 

· Licensees were 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public -- 127 per 100,000 population versus 730 per 100,000.
· Licensees were 14 times less likely to be arrested for nonviolent offenses than the general public -- 386 per 100,000 population versus 5,212 per 100,000.
· Further, the general public is 1.4 times more likely to be arrested for murder than licensees, and no licensee had been arrested for negligent manslaughter.

The reason for this is gun licensees are screened. Felons and crazy people need not apply. The Center also cited “More Guns, Less Crime” by the University of Chicago's John Lott, who found (in the center’s words): 

· Concealed handgun laws reduce murder by 8.5 percent, rape by 5 percent and severe assault by 7 percent.
· Had right-to-carry prevailed throughout the country, there would have been 1,600 fewer murders, 4,200 fewer rapes and 60,000 fewer severe assaults.

Similarly, Dean Weingarten looked at Florida, which has issued more than 2 million concealed weapons permits -- the most in the nation.

“The Violence Policy Center (VPC) says that Florida tops the nation in killings by people with concealed carry permits. VPC has complete years in their data base for 2008 - 2011 for Florida. There are 27 total killings that are unjustified homicides by CCW permit holders, and 14 of those are domestic homicides. The rate of domestic homicides per 100,000 per year is 0.583 per 100,000 for CCW holders,” Weingarten reported on October 7, 2013. 

“The homicide rate nationally dropped from 5.4 to 4.7 per 100,000 during this period, and the Florida homicide rate dropped from 6.4 to 5.2 per 100,000. Since we are only looking at CCW holders in Florida, we would expect those rates to be a bit higher than the national rate for this period. 

“When we look at the numbers for sworn officers, I found 52 domestic homicides committed by sworn police officers from 2008-2011. For the police, nationally from 2008 through 2011, the rate is 52/2,818,924 or 1.854/100,000 domestic homicides per 100,000 police per year. For the data that we have, police appear to be three times as likely to commit murder as a concealed carry permit holder.” 

In defense of the police, they are far more likely to encounter a football player high on dope and suspended from high school for a third time than a neighborhood watch captain is. Always be careful when second guessing someone who will take a bullet for you. 

Right to carry is sweeping the nation, which helps account for the end of the homicide madness. To be sure, the 4.7 per 100,000 rate is higher than most Western nations and Japan, but when adjusted for race we discover the problem is ethnic, not gun ownership, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

“From 2002 to 2011, the homicide rate for blacks was 6.3 times higher than the rate for whites. Over this 10-year period, the homicide rate among whites decreased by 17%, from 3.3 homicides per 100,000 in 2002 to 2.8 in 2011. Similarly, the homicide rate among blacks declined by 19%, from 21.2 per 100,000 in 2002 to 17.3 in 2011. The homicide rate for persons of other races — persons identified as American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian, or other Pacific Islander — experienced the greatest decline (down 33%), from 2.7 homicides per 100,000 persons in 2002 to 1.8 in 2011,” the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported. 

So what is the liberal solution? Disarm rural white people. 

Gun control advocates have targeted rifles in recent years. This makes no sense. Less than 5 percent of homicides in the United States involve rifles. In 2011, rifles were used to murder 323 people, while murders used clubs or hammers in to kill 496 people, according to FBI statistics. 

The murder rate has fallen so low that liberals have taken to conflating gun deaths as gun murders. But two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides. If you believe a person has control over her body, you should have no trouble with suicide. But liberals believe in nothing but power. In fact, abortion is the only choice they would give you.

The Flat Earth Society died in 300 BC -- slain by Aristotle. Likewise the Earth as the center of the universe died in the 17th century, even though 97 percent of the scientists said it was. The truth shall set you free.

Which is why politicians favor low-information voters.