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Originally Posted by RichieLion
Why John Kyle said that?; I can only guess that he is as outraged as me, by the over 320,000 abortions performed by government funded Planned Parenthood last year. THAT'S ONE EVERY 95 SECONDS. I'm being forced against my will to contribute to this abomination.
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Careful - you're going to get into a "who's ox is being gored" debate. I mean, when you go down THAT path, it's too easy to come up with "oh yeah, well *I* don't like (fill in the blank) and my taxes go towards THAT".
A little research indicates that Planned Parenthood gets about 1/3 of it's funding from the government. Their income from clinics was about the same dollar amount and the rest seem to come from donations.
Think for a moment - NINETY SEVEN PERCENT of Planned Parenthood's activities are things I would imagine you agree with. Cancer screenings, affordable contraception (30 years ago it was the only affordable source for birth control pills that my wife took), etc.
In 2009, government grants and contracts provided $360M of Planned Parenthood's income. I don't have handy how much of that is local versus federal. All I can find at the moment was that, in 2004, $100M came from 2 federal programs - Medicaid and Title IX, the rest from local/state sources.
Now. Consider how much in taxes General Electric WOULD have paid on their $14.2B in profits at the corporate rate. (close to $5B)
Consider how little even $300M is compare to the over $3.5T budget. You have to get to $35B to even get to 1%. It's less than 1/100th of 1%.
And remember, it's less than three percent of the services that are 30% funded by less than 0.001% of the federal budget.
And, as a side note, Kyl's office clarified his statements form the other day. I'm not making this up. They said in a statement they released that his comments were "not intended to be a factual statement".
In other words, his comments were intended to be a lie.
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Originally Posted by RichieLion
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Not according to those numbers. If the 42% conservative number is accurate, there are 58% in the other two categories. In addition, it tallies what people describe themselves as 0 and that might not be terribly accurate. People here think I'm a liberal. My liberal friend in western MA thinks I'm hard core conservative.
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Originally Posted by RichieLion
If you were to try to explain the economic realities to the average voter in all it's minutia, their eyes would glaze over and you'd lose them.
What this country needs is a Conservative candidate who can articulate what this country stands for, and what it needs to do to save itself, in the manner of Ronald Reagan. If just one person could do that and has even the slightest bit of charisma he would overwhelm the devolutionist, secularist, socialist, progressive liberals who have their hands around the throat of America.
The proof of what I say is in the public's eagerness to grab onto anyone who has the nerve to stand up and proclaim America's greatness to the world and the desire to bring it back from the edge of the precipice where the current leadership has dragged us.
You need to look at the public's fascination with Trump, Palin, Bachman, etc. and deduce why these figures are garnering so much prestige.
If someone could do as I wish, and avoid being caricatured, he/she would move mountains.
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It's because we, as a whole, are too tired and want simple answers to complex questions. I certainly agree that we need Reagan-like characteristics in someone to get the messages to the people. After all, his nickname WAS The Great Communicator.
I don't agree with all your conclusions, though. I believe there's a middle ground that would make the overwhelming majority of people happy - especially if they didn't have blowhards like Beck on one side and that Ed guy on MSNBC for the other side fanning the flames of hyperpartisanship just to get ratings at the expense of a national dialog.