Yet another Congressman who doesn't accept the theory of evolution

He should sit on the "Say something stupid for Christ" committee.--Percy

It's not so much that we all think the same way but more that we all accept the same facts, and our opinions are constrained by those facts. Those who reject facts do tend to have a wider variety of opinion. Let the record show that when you begin complaining about abuse that it started here.--Percy

Well, I wasn't actually talking about facts. The thread is about yet another congressman who rejects the theory of evolution, and in essence my point was that what he has in common with you and ForEverYoung is a proclivity for picking and choosing among facts, leaving aside those inconvenient for your beliefs. You've just referred to your two questions as both facts and hypotheses. I sense some confusion.--Percy

Hi ForEverYoung,I'm afraid we all do pretty much accept the same facts (excluding the scientific frontiers, of course). This is because we accept the scientific method as the best way of establishing facts, so that when we see evidence that has been gathered and replicated and interpreted using the scientific method we all tend to accept it as fact.You are seeking cultural and social reasons for the consensus, but those who accept evolution come from all cultures, religions and countries. It is scientifically established facts are the significant common denominator.--Percy

It was Abraham Lincoln who said, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."Or was it Mark Twain?Or Samuel Johnson?Or George Eliot?Or Groucho Marx?Or Albert Einstein?The reality: it's an old proverb, origin unknown. Examples of misattributions of quotes abound.--Percy

I hope people don't spoil this by quibbling over the details in the rest of the message. How are they taking this at home? College has corrupted you?--Percy

Isn't this pretty much the same as your argument for why we all believe the Earth is billions of years old, something you now accept? Are you sure you're not in midst of a progression, your eyes gradually being opened to what is real and what is not, and more importantly, how one tells the difference?Nothing is black and white. The liberals are no more completely correct than the conservatives.--Percy

Hi ForEverYoung,This message has already received a lot of responses, but I thought I'd reply anyway because I'm somewhat sympathetic to some of the things you say. On this particular point I agree with most others in that I don't think Obama has much influence on gas prices. This table of domestic oil production is from Politifact.com: Notice that the figures went up and down during the Bush administration, but up every year during the Obama administration except 2011, which are down because of the Deepwater Horizon accident and the subsequent moratorium on many offshore oil-drilling activities. The figures for 2012 are likely to be down, too, for the same reason, and because there were subsequent changes in regulation.But I don't think you can give Obama much if any credit for the increases in oil production. There were no significant changes in regulation until recently, and it's primarily a commercial activity.Regarding taxes on gas, Obama has been in favor of keeping them at current levels. There has been pressure to reduce the tax, but its revenues are being used to fund transportation projects which provide jobs. Given the increases in domestic oil production that are projected to increase right into the 2020's, there seems no rational basis for this fear. In fact, America is poised to become a net oil exporter. Strange given all our worry about oil sustainability, America suddenly finds itself on the threshold of energy independence, primary because of fracking technology. One side effect of fracking is the increased production of natural gas which is gradually displacing both oil and coal in electricity production and the powering of large car and bus fleets.I don't think you have to worry about getting a job in the petroleum industry. Forbes had a good article about this (Will The Health Care Law Help Or Hurt Small Businesses?).The new health care law is staged. Some of law is already in place, and the rest of it comes on line in 2014. To keep this simple I'll focus on what the law will require in 2014.First, you're wrong to say Obamacare will be forced upon all small businesses. Companies with fewer than 50 employees will not have to provide healthcare, though incentives are provided for those that do. 96% of small businesses have fewer than 50 employees, so the impact on small businesses should be nearly negligible.But you go on to raise a very good and important point: This does make sense. It should cost insurance companies more when they have to provide more coverage, so to fund that additional coverage they must resort to some combination of increased rates, lowered services, cost reductions, increased efficiency and reduced profits. The question is, what has actually happened in the insurance industry with the introduction of Obamacare? Have costs risen and services declined? It's probably too soon to tell.But what Obabacare is actually trying to achieve is a more even distribution of health benefits, an important goal to those who like me believe that one's health shouldn't be a function of one's wealth. Health problems that can strike anyone, including those who take their health seriously but who become seriously ill through no fault of their own, should not cause bankruptcy or ruin.Our approach to providing health insurance to the majority of the population is rather odd because it is done primarily through employers. Little of the rest of the world follows our lead in this. Though on the one hand America provides the best health care in the world, on the other hand it also provides the most expensive, and analysis indicates that the benefits don't justify the additional costs. Keeping costs down while providing affordable healthcare to an increasing proportion of the population will be difficult and take a long time. There will be debates about health care for the foreseeable future. It does seem like food prices have risen dramatically over the past year or two, but blaming the Federal Reserve seems beyond odd, plus Obama has no control over it. By explicit intent the Federal Reserve is independent. And if the dollars they're putting into circulation to stimulate the economy were inflationary then it would affect far more than just food. Since inflation remains very low the Federal Reserve has got to be one of the most unlikely candidates for blame for high food prices.So how much have food prices risen over the past few years. These figures are weekly food costs for a family of 4 with 2 children for the month of September taken from the USDA's cost of food webpage: Different regions of the country will of course vary, but what we see is that there was a big increase in the last year of the Bush administration, and there was a big increase in 2011, but other than that food cost increases have been rather moderate. Over the 4 years of the Obama administration the average annual increase in food prices has been .91%. This may seem like an incredibly low rate, but of course it includes the 2009 year where prices declined due to the impact of the financial crisis.So it looks like the only valid reason one could have for voting against Obama among those you listed is if you're against government attempts to provide health care for everyone. I can't see any specific reason to vote against Romney, unless one finds his lack of specificity and his duplicitous chameleon like nature to be a reason. I live the next state over from the very liberal state of Massachusetts, and I work in the state, so I got to watch him up close while he was governor. It is actually true that Romney tried to introduce universal health care to Massachusetts. I thought he was a pretty good governor. But what's he's had to do in order to obtain the nomination of a very conservative Republican party has revealed that he desires the office much more than he values his integrity.--Percy

If you're talking about the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, I remember it, too. If your tax bill doubled it wasn't because of this bill. It isn't that hard to criticize Reagan for things he actually did do, there's no need to make stuff up.--Percy

Well, I guess if you want to be picky, sure. I don't understand how this race could be so close. Even for someone who happens to agree with Romney philosophically, how could they vote for a candidate who so obviously just says whatever he thinks an audience wants to hear with no specifics. His stump speech now is "Big Change" and "More Jobs", but he never says how he's going to do this. He says he's going to cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget as if nobody can do math. I guess this is more a comment about the electorate.--Percy

But no tax bracket came anywhere close to doubling, not with the 1981 tax act, and not with the 1986 tax act - how do you explain the doubling of your tax bill?Since you say it wasn't the 1981 tax act it must be the 1986 tax act.Here's a link to the 1985 1040A, the tax tables are about 70% of the way through: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/i1040--1985.pdfHere's a link to the 1986 1040A: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/i1040--1986.pdfLook up your tax bracket for each year and see if the rate really doubled. Just for example, for $20,000 in taxable income for a single person the tax bill would have been $3124.10 in 1985, $3047.40 in 1986 and $3344 in 1987. Personally I think the 10% increase from 1986 to 1987 is very steep, but it's nowhere near 100%, but the standard deductions may have gone up, too, and I didn't check that.--Percy

Yes, of course, but Dwise1 said nothing had changed in his Message 151: His claim is that his tax bill doubled because of Reagan tax policies, not because of some odd circumstance involving expenses or deductions. Anyone who paid taxes in the Reagan years knows taxes didn't double.Naturally there are certain circumstances where this could happen to someone whose income, expenses and deductions are otherwise unexceptional. For example, if one was on the threshold of the lowest tax bracket then certainly one's tax bill could easily have gone from $100 to $200, but that's not due in any meaningful way to a change in the tax codes.Keep in mind what DWise1 is arguing. He isn't arguing that he was an unusual casualty of Reagan tax policies. He's using himself as an example of Reagan doubling people's taxes to argue that victimizing the poor and middle class to benefit the rich is what Republicans do to the country. Read it again: While his point is correct since the Republicans aren't even trying to hide the special treatment they want to bestow upon the rich, his argument is wrong. Reagan didn't double taxes. I'm not arguing with the position or the criticism - I'm arguing with the facts behind them. One doesn't have to make things up to compose effective arguments against Republican economic policies.--Percy

The point of my example was that percentage changes from a low base can be wildly out of whack as a means of telling you anything informative. For another example, if you double your annual income from $100 to $200 its a negligible change, but if you double it from $100,000 to $200,000, now that's a really significant change.I think a very low income must have been DWise1's situation. Minimum wage in 1986 was $3.35/hour, which is roughly $7,000 annually, and a single exemption would have brought it to $5920 for 1986 ($1080 for a single exemption) and $5100 for 1987 ($1900 for a single exemption). So his tax bill for 1986 would have been $423.30 and for 1987 would have been $693, a 63.7% increase.But percentage changes from a low base can be misleadingly high. Here are figures for other salary levels. Again, these are for a single person with a single exemption, and the exemption went from $1080 in 1986 to $1900 in 1987. I deducted the appropriate standard exemption from the salary before making the calculation:A $5,000 taxable income yields tax bills of $160.90 for 1986 and $393 for 1987, an increase of 144%.A $10,000 taxable income yields tax bills of $1033.70 for 1986 and $1143 for 1987, an increase of 38%.A $20,000 taxable income yields tax bills of $2788.20 for 1986 and $2812 for 1987, an increase of 0.8%.A $30,000 taxable income yields tax bills of $5509.00 for 1986 and $5689 for 1987, an increase of 3.3%.A $40,000 taxable income yields tax bills of $8907.40 for 1986 and $9189 for 1987, an increase of 3.2%.A $50,000 taxable income yields tax bills of $12,873.00 for 1986 and $12,689 for 1987, an increase of -1.4%.A $60,000 taxable income yields tax bills of $17,073.00 for 1986 and $17,064 for 1987, an increase of -.1%.Here are links to the information I used: We can see from this that the tax acts of the 1980's were unfair, but not in the way DWise1 said. Those at the lowest income levels saw their taxes increase, while those at middle income levels saw negligible change, and those at the highest levels saw significant decreases (I didn't provide any examples for high wage earners).But to repeat my bottom line point: One doesn't have to make things up to compose effective arguments against Republican economic policies. Implying that Reagan doubled tax rates for typical wage earners simply isn't true.--Percy

Could we not turn this into yet another thread about ForEverYoung? Maybe open another Coffee House thread? Maybe use PM - the To and Cc accept as many names as you like?--Percy

I've opened a thread for discussing issues like how you feel about everyone else and how everyone else feels about you: Foreveryoung Discussions--Percy