Via Occupy Democrats on Facebook:
Conservatives still believe the debunked nonsense promoted by Art Laffer -- who is currently the personal architect of the failed government tax policy in Kansas. Tax cuts do not increase revenue, increase job growth or increase growth of GDP.
From Fact and Myth:
Do Tax Cuts Increase Revenues? No, Tax cuts do not Increase Revenue
“The Bush tax cuts led to 50 consecutive months of job growth…It’s demonstrably proven that tax cuts increase revenues” – Rush Limbaugh
The argument that tax cuts create or increase revenue is an old myth that simply refuses to go away. The logic behind this argument is that cutting taxes will stimulate spending (since investors now are now encouraged through reduced tax rates) that will result in GDP growth. This growth in GDP will result in increased tax revenues so significant that they will more than offset the drop in tax revenues that result from a lowered tax rate. The inverse to this is that increased taxes lower tax revenue by discouraging investment, which in turn lowers tax revenues so drastically, that they offset the added increase coming from the tax rate increase. One of the reasons Republicans and other self-ascribed fiscal conservatives are able to get away with this is, is the superficially plausible argument that the Reagan and/or Bush tax cuts grew the economy and created revenue. To understand the fallacy of these arguments, it is necessary to understand economic growth during business cycles and over a long period of time, and how this affects tax revenues.
Correlating Tax Increases and Decreases with Revenue
By conveniently pointing to places where tax cuts were enacted at or around the time of a recovery or boom, tax cut advocates argue that tax cuts increase revenue. The problem with this is that the revenue increases following the Bush and Reagan tax cuts are dwarfed by the revenue increase following Bill Clinton’s tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. In fact, as a percentage of GDP, post-Reagan & Bush tax cut revenue falls below the 1965-2005 average. In other words, revenue increased because the economy was recovering/growing, and the tax cuts have little (probably nothing) to do with growth in GDP. if anything, these tax cuts actually lowered revenue increased from what they would have been otherwise. So the real question to ask is this: how much revenue did these tax cuts cost us? See Historical Tax Rates.
Half of the right wing are evangelicals. From CBS news earlier this year:
White Evangelicals are half of GOP primary voters
(CBS News) NEW YORK -- With nominating contests completed in 27 states and nearly 40 percent of Republican National Convention delegates allocated, Republican primary voters are showing a record-breaking religious bent.
So far, 50 percent of Republican primary and caucus voters have been white evangelical, or born again, Christians, based on CBS News polling of voters entering or exiting their polling places since the first contest in January.
The data comes from entrance polls in two caucus states, Iowa and Nevada, and exit polls in 14 primary states - Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.
"Conservative people of faith are playing a larger role in shaping the contours and affecting the trajectory of the Republican presidential nomination contest than at any time since they began pouring out of the pews and into the precincts in the late 1970's," said Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who called our attention to the numbers today.
Reed said conservative Christian turnout among Republicans exceeds its rate from four years ago, when 44 percent of white Republican primary voters described themselves as evangelical. They're not only a factor in the South but also in general election battleground states like Ohio, where 47 percent of Republican primary voters subscribed to the label this year.
Reed estimated that through the primaries in Alabama and Mississippi this past Tuesday, more than 4 million evangelical Christian voters had participated in those 16 primaries and caucuses where entrance or exit polls were conducted by CBS and other news organizations.
"They are indispensable to any winning strategy for the eventual Republican presidential nominee in both the primaries and the general election. Any candidate who ignores these voters and the values that motivate them does so at their own peril," Reed said.
As a general thing, participation in democracy is a good thing. But because conservatives have engaged in wholesale voter suppression of any demographic that doesn't vote for their candidates and causes, it actually results in the hijacking of representative government, and the inevitable resulting epic failures of fanatics in control.
Evangelicals specifically, and conservatives generally, appear to struggle with the basic concepts of cause and effect. They engage in what amounts to magical thinking as a preference to rational thought, and to embrace religious superstitious insanity in the face of overwhelming logic and data.
It is no accident that American secular democracy arose in the era of the highly secular, pro-science Age of Enlightenment. And yet we still see stupidity like this, which has no place in government and which is the last thing our founding fathers and mothers wanted to see empowered or respected.
It doesn't matter if the willful ignorance is the economic policies of Art Laffer and his stupid curve, or the religious right superstitious insistence on controlling everyone's sex choices because they are a bunch of sexuality hating prudes. They are bad for America, They have to GO.
From the Huff Po :
State Rep Suggests Abortion Is To Blame For California Drought
Scientists are still exploring the causes of California's historic drought, but one local lawmaker thinks it might all come down to one thing: God's wrath over abortion.
While speaking at the California ProLife Legislative Banquet last week, California Assemblywoman Shannon Grove (R) suggested a theory that the state's worst drought in 1,200 years may be divine retribution for California providing women with access to abortions, RH Reality Check reported.
“Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she told the audience. “It rained that night. Now God has his hold on California.”
Grove was likely referring to House Bill 2, RH Reality Check noted, a Texas abortion bill banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, four weeks earlier than the standard set by Roe v. Wade.
Grove did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation that she made the statement at the event, but she elaborated on her theory in a Facebook comment.
"I believe --and most Americans believe --that God’s hand is in the affairs of man, and certainly was in the formation of this country," she wrote. "Is this drought caused by God? Nobody knows. But biblical history shows a consequence to man’s actions."
Dumb bunny and blond bimbo Shannon Grove is wrong. The correct understanding of cause and effect is the scientifically established and totally secular anthropogenic global warming from fossil fuels and other human activity, OTHER THAN ABORTION OR GAY MARRIAGE AND GAY SEX. These crazies control the right; the only need we have to take back America is from the ridiculous radical right wing nuts who have demonstrated that they are out of touch with REALITY --- and dangerously so.