Been There, Done That.

I first saw this Internet meme on the Liberal Logic 101 Facebook page.  The typo made me smile, but then right away I felt badly about that, because I know from experience how easily typos can occur.  Myself, I especially have trouble with homophones.  My brain says 'their' and my fingers type 'there' before I have a chance to intervene.  So "interprit" is no big deal since the meaning was understood, right?

What IS a big deal, however, is the misrepresentation of the truth.

New York city is about as "liberal" as anyplace in the country and there are a lot of taxi cabs here.  As you might expect in such a "socialist" stronghold, there are many, many regulations imposed on taxi and limousine services.

Fares are standardized and regulated, for example. And there is a rule that requires drivers to accept any fare to any destination within the five boroughs of the city. To see all the rules and regulations, you can visit the NYC TLC (New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission) website.

Of course, the fact that there is a rule does not mean every taxi driver follows it. It is not unheard of, for example, for a potential passenger to be left standing on the curb if the driver discovers that the destination is so remote that there is small chance of picking up a return fare. And though I've not experienced it myself, I suppose Muslim drivers have chosen not to pick up fares with service dogs.

But taxis and limousines have markings which identify them, which means that rule breakers, when reported, can be disciplined.

Here is the most recent memo on service animals:

Industry Notice #09-23 December 24, 2009
For Immediate Release
REMINDER TO TLC DRIVER LICENSEES:
SERVICE ANIMALS MUST BE WELCOMED
IN ALL TLC-LICENSED VEHICLES
TLC-licensed drivers are reminded that service
animals are required to be welcomed in all taxicabs and
For-Hire Vehicles (FHVs).
If a passengers states that an accompanying animal
is a service animal, the driver must, regardless of whether
the animal is or is not secured, allow them in the taxicab or
FHV.
Refusal to transport a passenger with a service
animal is classified as a service refusal and carries
penalties, upon conviction, up to and including TLC
license suspension or revocation.

Clearly it is unfair to suggest, as this meme does, that an individual Muslim driver's decision to refuse service to a passenger with a seeing-eye dog is authorized by the liberal lawmakers of New York City.

The second half of the meme references a lawsuit in the state of Washington.  The Attorney General filed a suit against a florist who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding ceremony.  The customer who placed the order had been a long-term customer but the proprietor would not provide flowers for his wedding because of her "relationship to Jesus Christ".

Washington has a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation. The law requires that a florist who routinely provides wedding flowers for heterosexual weddings also provide them for same-sex couples.

Strangely, the two examples presented in this meme are exactly the same while being entirely different.

Both the Muslim taxi driver and the Christian florist are acting in accordance with the tenets of their respective religions.  Each clearly believes that it is more important to abide by those tenets than to comply with civil law. Both behaviors are examples of Civil Disobedience:  protest by peaceful non-compliance.

However, in the first case, the Muslim taxi driver who refuses to carry a service animal would be in violation of regulation and punished accordingly if reported and found guilty of the violation.  Therefore it cannot be said that liberals condone his behavior.

In the second case, the florist is breaking the law by refusing to provide equal service to all customers. Liberals, therefore, are correct in expecting the law to be upheld.

The thing about Civil Disobedience is that you have to be willing to pay the price for the disobedience.  If the taxi driver is caught he faces fines and eventually can lose his licence to drive a taxi.  The florist will have to decide if she's willing to forgo all her wedding flower business in order to avoid having to sell flowers for same sex weddings.

There is another possible recourse, however:  the taxi driver and the florist could work together to get such laws repealed, allowing each service provider in our society to decide which customers will be served and which will be turned away.

Here are some images to help us imagine what such a society might look like:

Public Service Announcement

This Internet meme is offensive on more than one level.  

First, the young men it shows are white, when "sagging" is a predominately black fashion statement.  I feel as if the creator of the meme has done this in a flimsy attempt to disguise its blatant racism.

Secondly, I found the meme shared on the Facebook page of Heterosexual Pride, which leads me to believe that they are making fun of two groups at once:  blacks and gays.

Thirdly, the meme invites us all to share the image if we want "a better dressed and more educated world" even as they are circulating information that is false and demeaning.

I have now spent a few hours reading several articles about the origins of sagging, written by a variety of  people, each with an individual motivation for researching.  Many of them agree that the trend originated in prisons, where uniform pants may be too big and belts removed for safety reasons, but some are skeptical even of that.  

Consider this excerpt from a particularly comprehensive article which appeared last year in AlterNet magazine:

Ivory Toldson, associate professor at Howard University School of Education, senior research analyst for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education, disagrees with Judge Mathis’ analysis and questions the widely believed origins of the sagging trend. “I have a little skepticism about whether or not it originated in prison,” says Toldson. “I’ve worked in prisons and, at least in the ones where I’ve worked, there were prison uniforms with elastic waistbands. It would be a violation to wear pants that low, so I can never say definitely that it comes from prison culture. As a researcher, I’ve also never seen any ethnographic studies. It seems like it hits home for adults, not kids, who don't like that kind of look.”

So where did it originate, if not in prison?

“I’m 39 years old and boys sagged when I was in high school,” Toldson says. “Drug dealers were the most popular people at my public school in the ‘80s and your attire easily made you a ‘mark.’ We all know that ‘nerds’ are known for wearing their pants high, even above the waist, so the counter of that would be to wear pants as low as you can.”

Toldson went on to say that there are varying degrees of the sag look, which he himself is accustomed to wearing. “As a college professor now, my sag will not be that far below my waist,” Toldson says. “I know college kids who sag a little further down than me. Then you have the fringes who wear it almost to the ground. These are the young men with the ‘give a f*ck attitude.’ They don't care about us anyway, because they don't think we care. They have issues with their families, in their communities and it's the middle finger to us all.”

In 2007, the New York Times reported on the fashion trend and the opposition to it, so this conversation is long ongoing. The article points out that fashions ". . .tend to be decried when they “challenge the conservative morality of a society.” And goes on to remind us of a similar example from our history: 

Not since the zoot suit has a style been greeted with such strong disapproval. The exaggerated boxy long coat and tight-cuffed pants, started in the 1930s, was the emblematic style of a subculture of young urban minorities. It was viewed as unpatriotic and flouted a fabric conservation order during World War II. The clothing was at the center of what were called Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles, racially motivated beatings of Hispanic youths by sailors. The youths were stripped of their garments, which were burned in the street.

Following a pattern of past fashion bans, the sagging prohibitions are seen by some as racially motivated because the wearers are young, predominantly African-American men.

No credible source that I found suggested that sagging has anything to do with inviting anal sex.

Clearly the style is controversial, even within the black community.

The AlterNet article concludes with this paragraph:

And although the sagging trend has definitely been co-opted on a superficial level by a mirror hip-hop white culture, just as wealthy U.S. corporations reap major profits from foreign sweatshop workers living in inhumane conditions, the negative connotations that stem from the trend are still outsourced to black communities. Regardless of pop status, if sagging began in prisons when belts were prohibited to minimize violence and inmates hanging themselves, due to disparities in prison sentences, it will always be inextricably tied to black culture. And through its revered place in hip-hop, it has become, for many, the symbol of a generation hanging itself.

Whenever someone dresses to capture attention, a message is being sent. When we look at these young men sagging, what do we see? Why would someone voluntarily hobble himself?

At Heterosexual Pride there were some comments posted in response to this meme, more than one of which commented on how ridiculous this young men look when they try to run or to go up a flight of stairs. And that's true...

But I see plenty of women -- young and old, of all races, creeds and colors -- voluntarily subjecting themselves to the miseries of wearing high heels, which has much the same effect of limiting a person's ability to walk quickly, never mind run. And might not wearing high heels be seen as offering an invitation --- if sex is the lens through which one views the world in general and fashion in particular? 

One last excerpt from the AlterNet article:

What we mostly see, is that “give a f*ck attitude,” with young black boys wearing their pants well below the waist as some misguided symbol of strength and power -- despite the constant need to pull them up. Sagging has become a complex iconography for a generation struggling to regain its footing in a society designed for them to fail.

So it seems sagging will only fade away when the culture which fostered it fades away -- when black youth feels less disenfranchised. 

Judging by the quality of the propaganda and rhetoric on display at Heterosexual Pride, that day seems far, far away.

The Doctrine of Love

There is nothing in this meme to debunk:  this analogy attributed to Henry Ward Beecher is most likely his.  This quote appears in a book called Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, first published in 1887, a collection bits of wisdom culled from his numerous sermons, speeches, pamphlets, lectures and letters.  

What astounds me -- and makes this meme worth discussing --  is the context in which I found it.  If you look closely t the bottom of the meme, you can see the name of its creator:  Heterosexuals Inspiring Pride.  I found the meme on the Facebook page of a group called Heterosexual Pride.  

Henry Ward Beecher was a prominent 19th century clergyman, one of the most gifted, sensational orators in American history.  He was exceptionally charismatic. In his day there was perhaps no man in America more famous than he -- and certainly there was no one more liberal in his social views. He took a radical view of Christianity which shocked many Americans, describing his theology as "The Doctrine of Love", and portraying God as a loving parent rather than an exacting judge.  

He was an ardent and extremely outspoken abolitionist, as well as a supporter of women's suffrage and the temperance movement.  He spoke out loudly against all forms of bigotry and advocated for the rights of Chinese immigrants.  In the years leading up to the Civil War, he raised money to send firearms to Kansas and Nebraska to fight against slavery. Those firearms were known as "Beecher's Bibles".  His sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.  

In 1875, Beecher became embroiled in an adultery scandal which resulted in one of the most notorious trials of the 19th century.  The outcome seems a lot like many of our modern day morality scandals:  he was not found guilty in court, but neither was he found innocent.  The jury was unable to reach a verdict, despite a preponderance of evidence -- not because the jurors or the public were deceived, but because it was too demoralizing to admit that a man as virtuous as Beecher had such feet of clay. 

Despite Beecher's high-flown words from the pulpit, I am not sure that he is as good an example of "morality" as the members of Heterosexual Pride would like him to be.  Since they are quite vocal about denying gays the right to marry on the grounds that marriage means one man and one woman, I presume their ideology also includes the precept that adultery is immoral.   

I must confess that Henry Ward Beecher is a man I admire.  To me, he's right up there with the likes of John Brown, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln in terms of 19th century American heroes.  When it comes to matters of intellectual enlightenment and civil rights, I consider him a giant in the American landscape.  He was human and certainly not without flaw, but his influence on our society cannot be denied, and in my opinion, it was a positive influence. 

Besides this well-known morality scandal and trial  (as well-publicized in its day as the O.J.Simpson trial), there is another reason that I was shocked to find Beecher being quoted by Heterosexual Pride:  the greatest and most enduring love of his life (excepting of course his love for God) was a man named Constantine Fondolaik.

Consider these words Beecher wrote about his friend:

"He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  He was like a Greek god.  When we boys used to go swimming together, I would climb out on the bank to watch Constantine swim, he was so powerful, so beautiful." 

At one point, young Henry changed his middle name to Constantine, and after three years of friendship, the two of them formalized their romantic relationship in writing.  

". . . As formerly we were connected by nothing save voluntary friendship, which could be broken off, so now are we connected by a love which cannot be broken; and we have pledged ourselves before God and his angels to be as written above. . . . we have not done this thoughtlessly, but being convinced by three years' friendship that we mutually love one another; and from this time are now assumed new duties and obligations . . . and now may God bless us in this our covenant and in all our future ways, and receive us both at last in heaven." 

Don't the words of this lovely compact sounds much like the words of traditional wedding vows?  And isn't it clear that the couple was looking for a way to solemnize and celebrate the depth of their love and devotion? And isn't that marriage? 

It is interesting that this same-sex relationship -- unlike his later affair with the wife of a friend -- seems not to have caused any scandal, though Beecher seems not to have taken pains to hide it.

Do you think someone should tell the people at Heterosexual Pride that Henry might not be an appropriate spokesperson for their cause?  If they were told would they listen?  Would they change from holding Beecher up as a quotable figure to casting him down in derision and disdain?  Perhaps a miracle would ensue. Perhaps they would learn about his principles, his work, his words, his theology and his loves and feel moved to reconsider their definition of morality.  Who can say what might happen, right?

Since we're quoting Beecher, though, I think I'll leave you with one of my favorites:

"The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes."

Unbelievable!!! Indeed.

This Internet meme presents an excerpt from this speech President Obama gave at the UN on September 25, 2012, combined with a photograph from that same event.  There's nothing here to disbelieve.  The President did in fact say, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

So why am I writing about it here? 

Because that statement is only part of this paragraph:

"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied."

So why the choice to create such a meme with the word, Unbelievable!!! superimposed at the bottom?  And why today, when the speech was given more than six months ago?  

I found it on a very active Facebook page called Prepare to Take America Back.  Judging from the comments posted in response to it, I can only surmise the purpose behind its creation was to stir up hatred of Muslims - and the President - just after the Christian Holy Week, while religious observance is at a peak. 

One enlightened person commented as follows:

"F*** Islam, f*** Muhammad, and f*** Allah!!! Dirty b****** m*****f****rs!!! Bring it, evil bitches. Praise to God and Jesus Christ" 

-- which I thought was particularly Christ-like. 

There are plenty of similar responses there if you care to learn more about these citizens who are planning to "take America back". 

To be fair I must point out that this meme does not seem to originate with this group but rather was created by The Minority Report. 

Ironically, Prepare to Take America Back specifically invites those who are visiting its page to "Take advantage of the articles and research we do and pass the information on."  

Since it required less than a minute of online searching for me to find the full transcript of the President's speech, I can only conclude that Prepare to Take America Back did no research at all before passing this inflammatory meme on.  

I am sure it was an honest mistake.  To think they were intentionally circulating the President's remarks out of context and presenting them in an inflammatory way . . . 

well, that would be Unbelievable, wouldn't it?

On Limited Terms

I saw this Internet meme on a facebook page called "Conservative Patriots of America".

It appears to be true:   75% of Americans responding to a Gallup poll in January of 2013 say they would vote in favor of term limits. (Although the specifics of the limits are unclear.  Perhaps two terms, the same as the President?)

So 'debunking' the meme is finished quickly; it's accurate. But who are the people pictured behind the words of this meme and why were they particularly chosen as the poster children for the issue of congressional term limits?

The woman is Nancy Pelosi and the man is  Harry Reid, both long standing, high profile members of Congress. It seems the creator of this meme wants us all to promote the idea of term limits so that these two will be forced off Capitol Hill.

A quick perusal of the 113th Congress shows many members way over what anyone might consider being exempt from a measure to limit terms.  Pelosi and Reid are not even the two that have been there the longest, but they both happen to be Democrats, so I suppose the  Conservative Patriots consider them too liberal, too much in support of the Obama administration.

Pelosi is the House Minority Leader and Reid is the House Majority Leader, so between the two, they wield a significant amount of power and influence. It is understandable that frustrated Republicans want them removed from the legislative process.

So does this mean that the Conservative Patriots are proposing terms limits only for Democrats?

Or are they are unaware that there are some Republicans who have been in power as long or longer than these two Democrats?

Are they willing to give up their own entrenched elder statesmen in order to get rid of those on the opposite side of the aisle?


Nancy Pelosi is 72, a Representative from California who has been in the House since 1987.
Harry Reid is 73 years old.  He has been serving as a Senator from Nevada since 1987.

Mitch McConnell is 71 years old, a Republican from Kentucky, currently serving as the Senate Minority Leader. He has been in congress since 1985.

John McCain, also a Republican, is 76 years old and has been serving as a Senator from Arizona since 1987.

John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio and currently the House Majority Leader, has been on Capitol Hill a bit less time, arriving on the scene in 1991. He is only 63 years old, but I imagine he'd be asked to step down if a term limits measure was enacted.

And Orrin Hatch, a powerful Republican from Utah, has been representing his state in the House since 1977. He is 78 years old.

I will leave you to explore further and to draw your own conclusions about the motives behind the creation of the meme, but it seems to me that this issue of term limits is truly bipartisan.  Republicans may stand to gain from such a measure, but not without sacrificing a few of their most powerful politicians to the cause.

Perhaps the Conservative Patriots ought to be careful what they wish for.

Tradition!

As Americans, we have such faith in the rightness of the principles established at the beginning of our nation. We are fiercely protective of our traditions and fearful of straying too far from the path envisioned by our founding fathers. Our independence was hard-won, after all, and our democratic republic does indeed offer us a precious freedom.

Since our country's history is not very long --only a few hundred years-- it seems as though we should be able to remember it accurately and easily stay on track, but this is surprisingly not so.  

For instance, people get upset when changes are proposed to the Pledge of Allegiance, especially when it is proposed that the words, "under God" be tampered with, even though there was no such thing as a 'pledge of allegiance' until 1892, that it was not officially recognized by Congress until 1923, and the words 'under God' were not added until 1954. 

And from time to time a furor erupts as to whether the phrase "In God We Trust" on our currency should be removed or altered -- as if the motto was handed down directly from Washington and Jefferson.  In reality our money did not include this phrase until 1864.  So intense is the debate on this subject that The Supreme Court was recently asked to take up the question of whether the motto is a government endorsement of religion, which would be a violation of the separation of Church and State.  (The Court denied review without comment -- wisely, it seems to me.)

These examples came to mind this morning when I found the above Internet meme posted on the facebook page of Being Liberal. Here is a relatively rare example of a liberal group using one of the 'founding fathers' to make a point. Conservative groups --especially The Tea Party -- are far more likely to quote (or misquote) our early statesmen, most often these days in the context of the second amendment and the right to bear arms. 

Many sources report the fact that John Quincy Adams did not take the oath of office using a Bible, that he used a book of  law instead, so the first part of the meme's assertion is correct. But did he make this choice specifically to demonstrate support for the separation of Church and State? 

There doesn't seem to be any evidence to support this claim.  He apparently makes mention of the choice in his diary, indicating that he chose the book of law because he was swearing fealty to those laws, to upholding the Constitution. 

I think the makers of the meme have overstepped, choosing a motivation for his actions because it suits their purpose.

John Quincy Adams was an extremely religious man who held the Bible in highest esteem, as his letters to his son  make abundantly clear.  Here is an excerpt from one letter:

St. Petersburg, Sept., 1811

MY DEAR SON: In your letter of the 18th January to your mother, you mentioned that you read to your aunt a chapter in the Bible or a section of Doddridge’s Annotations every evening. This information gave me real pleasure; for so great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on, it is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise, and happy — that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country, respectable members of society, and a real blessing to their parents. 

It is interesting then, that he, of all Presidents, would choose not to use it in his inauguration.  Perhaps he felt that the Bible was too sacred to be involved in any non-religious ceremony.  

His decision, then, might represent a sort of deliberate separation of church and state, but a different sort than we are accustomed to these days.   Rather than venerating the State as something not to be corrupted by the influence of any one religious power,  it seems Adams could be suggesting the Bible might be too pure and sacred for him to involve with mundane matters.  

Fun Fact # 1,086

I have been away from my desk for a few weeks, visiting distant climes,

 blissfully unplugged from The News.       

 I had a ball, but now it is time to get back to work.    

I ran across the above Internet meme on a conservative group's facebook page, saved it and then forgot to make note of where I'd  found it. Now that I"m ready to write, I can't find it on facebook, but I did find it on the social network site for TeaParty.org, otherwise known as The Tea Party Command Center.

The allegation that the Obamas surrendered their law licenses in order to avoid suspension or prosecution was easy to debunk.  A quick Google search yielded several detailed evaluations of this particular urban legend, but what about the website address shown boldly in red?  How does it back up the meme's claims?

The link provided took me  to the website of the IARDC (Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois).  On the website one can search for a lawyer's status simply by typing in a name.  The information given for each of the Obamas is this:

Full Licensed Name:	Michelle Obama
Full Former name(s):	Michelle Lavaughn Robinson
Date of Admission as Lawyer     by Illinois Supreme Court:	May 12, 1989
Registered Business Address:	Not available online
Registered Business Phone:	Not available online
Illinois Registration Status:	Voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law
Malpractice Insurance: (Current as of date of registration; consult attorney for further information)	No malpractice report required as attorney is on inactive status.

Public Record of Discipline and Pending Proceedings:

None

Full Licensed Name:	Barack Hussein Obama
Full Former name(s):	None
Date of Admission as Lawyer     by Illinois Supreme Court:	December 17, 1991
Registered Business Address:	Not available online
Registered Business Phone:	Not available online
Illinois Registration Status:	Voluntarily retired and not authorized to practice law
Malpractice Insurance: (Current as of date of registration; consult attorney for further information)	In annual registration, attorney reported that he/she does not have malpractice coverage. (Some attorneys, such as judges, government lawyers, and in-house corporate lawyers, may not carry coverage due to the nature of their practice setting.)

Public Record of Discipline and Pending Proceedings:

None

Note that the terminology used in the meme is "voluntarily surrendered" but the terminology used on the IARDC site is "voluntarily inactive" in the case of Michelle Obama and "voluntarily retired" in the case of the President.  The site offers no information which supports the charges levied against either lawyer, so I guess the creator of the meme either didn't check it or didn't care based on the assumption that viewers wouldn't check it.

What interests me most is the facebook discussion which accompanied this meme.  

There were many comments which pointed out that these allegations were old and had been proven untrue, some even providing links to the Snopes.com information.  But those who wanted to believe the meme were unfazed, claiming as common knowledge that Snopes is left-leaning and not to be trusted. 

When another comment pointed that FactCheck also debunked the allegations,  those who still wanted to believe stated that the Obama administration is so powerful that all media sources are under its influence, made or paid to toe the party line.  

On and on the it went, until finally it became clear that the only 'facts' the Obama detractors were willing to accept were those presented in the meme, even though they were undocumented and anonymously reported.

Which only serves to prove the point that for some people, politics is a matter of faith rather than logic.  

Protecting the Sheep from the Wolves

There's nothing much to debunk about this meme, since I will accept the quote as belonging to Ron Paul, without investigation.  He's had a long career and this statement certainly seems to reflect his general views on taxation.  As far as claiming to know the intentions of the Founding Fathers, he is entitled to his opinion.

What I find interesting is the circulation of this Internet meme by conservative groups.  For instance, I saw it shared on the facebook page of this group, called We, the People,Will Be Heard, which seems to be anti-Obama, anti-gun control, anti-liberal. Their tag line is "Sheepdogs educating and protecting the sheep from the wolves." A recent post suggests the group believes that the shootings in Newtown, CT were staged.  

In trying to determine why such a group would choose to share this particular meme, I can only conclude that it has something to do with opposition to President Obama's insistence that spending cuts alone will not fix what ails our economy and his repeated call for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

Ron Paul is a wealthy man. A retired medical doctor and member of congress, most of his income does not come from salaries or even from the sales of books he's written. Most of his money comes from property management groups and investments in gold and silver mining ventures. 

Ours is a capitalistic society -- it's good to be successful and rich -- but I think it's also important to consider how  Ron Paul's proposed tax reforms would benefit him personally, in addition to how they could benefit the nation's economy and the rest of America's working citizens -- because the first is definite and the second is speculative.

"As president, Ron Paul will support a Liberty Amendment to the Constitution to abolish the income and death taxes," his website says. "And he will be proud to be the one who finally turns off the lights at the IRS for good."

He would immediately repeal capital gains taxes, which the candidate says "punish you for success" and "interfere with your efforts to hedge against inflation by purchasing gold and silver coins."

He would repeal the 1993 Social Security tax increase, and work in the long run to exempt Social Security benefits from taxation. Paul would drop the corporate tax rate to 15%.

While he would like to move to a flat tax or fair tax, Paul also suggests something of a back-up plan:

"Restraining federal spending by enforcing the Constitution's strict limits on the federal government's power would help result in a 0% income tax rate for Americans," his website says.

It also might be of interest to the folks at We, the People, Will Be Heard to know Ron Paul's reason for choosing not to endorse Mitt Romney over President Obama in the 2012 election:

“I don’t think there’s enough difference between the two candidates, and I assume the victor today will be the status quo,” the former presidential candidate told CNN on Tuesday. “We’re going to continue with basically the same policies that we’ve had for a long time, so I don’t see the election, as the way its turning out, to be very crucial at all.”

6:400:150,000,000

A group called Being Liberal shared this graphic earlier this week. It's received lots of likes and shares, but not so much discussion.  

I wonder if this mean the information shared is accepted as fact? Or that so-called "Liberals" don't mind it so much that some people are very rich?

It wasn't hard to find the source for this meme, though I'm not an economist or a mathematician, so I'm content to take Robert Reich's word for the numbers, since I believe that's where the creator of this meme got them.  

In this article for the San Francisco Chronicle, from Christmas day, 2011, Reich wrote, 

"So the 400 richest Americans, whose total wealth exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million Americans put together . . . " 

The Internal Revenue Service has a website which provides lots and lots of reports, several of which have to do with the top 400 earners in the United States.  If you care to peruse those reports and dispute Reich's stats, please feel free to do so -- it is beyond my ken.  

Much easier to consider the question posed by the meme:  What do the top 400 American earners do for a living?  (The question of worth, as it relates to money, is fraught with subjectives too complex to address here.  Many people provide valuable services and are not compensated financially at all, perhaps most notably stay-at-home parents and homemakers.)

Forbes Magazine makes it simple to answer the question.

Here's the most recent list of America's top 400 richest individuals, including brief biographical sketches. The list provides the source of each individual's fortune and does indeed make for interesting reading.

Bill Gates is the richest man in America.  Warren Buffet is number 2.  Michael Bloomberg is number 10.  Mark Zuckerberg is 26.  Donald Trump is 128.  Robert Kraft is 206.

So I'll leave you peruse the list and make your own value judgements.

BUT I do feel compelled to share the fact that I counted no fewer than four members of the Walton family in the top 10.  

Here is an interesting article on that subject, if you care to read more.

Consider the Source

This Internet meme appeared January 17th on a facebook page called Tea Party Stand Up, which describes itself as a "NOPC Radio Free Speech Tea Party Republican movement".

Apparently one can listen to the group's program live on Blog Talk Radio Saturdays at 10 pm. EST.

The group's stated mission is "To save America one person at a time!"

Since January 17th, 444 people have 'liked'  this meme and it has been 'shared' 481 times. 

Although I was skeptical of the information presented, I was intimidated by the thought of trying to debunk it.  

The creator of the meme did not feel it necessary to provide an attribution or cite sources for the  statistics, but I would.  It seemed possible that I would invest several hours of research and not be able to offer a credible response, so I moved on.  

But the boldness of this assertion kept niggling at me and I wound up doing the work anyway.

I believe the statement comes from this article by John Fund  which appeared in the National Review Online on December 16, 2012, just two days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The National Review bills itself as offering "Conservative commentary on American politics, news and culture."  It was founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Fund's article is entitled, "The Facts about Mass Shootings" with a tag line of "It's time to address mental health and gun-free zones." 

The main thrust of the article is summarized in this paragraph: 

"Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work." 

In that article, Fund offers statistics collected from various sources to support his assertions. 

For instance, he cites a study by Mother Jones magazine, as having " . . . found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.”  Fund didn't provide a link to the study, or even provide the name the study, which meant I had to locate it myself, but I think he means this one, which offers an interesting interactive map, and does reports a statistic called "Prior Signs of Possible Mental Illness."  

To support his assertion that "gun-free zones" are counter-productive, Fund references a 1999 study by John Lott and William Landes as having found that " . . a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools."  

Apparently John Fund spoke with John Lott after the Newtown shooting.  He quotes Lott as saying, “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

It was a relief to find the source of the statement so quickly.  I was envisioning having to analyze every  word of this rather convoluted sentence to determine whether or not it was factual, beginning with an attempt to determine the definition of the word "public" and continuing on with an investigation into the gun laws of every state in which there was a public shooting where 3 or more people died -- since 1950, no less.

In one respect, then, the debunking of the meme was complete.  The quote should have been presented like this:  

"With just one single exception . . . every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns." -- John Lott 

but otherwise, the meme's message seems to reflect the viewpoints of both John Lott and John Fund -- and apparently also the viewpoint of the folks at Tea Party Stand Up. 

But I became curious about John Lott and this 1999 study -- are they credible sources?   So I kept reading.  

What I learned is that John Lott is a controversial figure who has published several books, articles and studies. He maintains a prominent social media presence, including this blog.  Just yesterday, he appeared on Glenn Beck's radio show. 

The survey John Fund referenced is available in PDF format and makes for interesting reading.  The abstract states that the results of the study find that ". . . the only policy factor to have a consistently significant influence on multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws." and "... explain(s) why public shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to concealed handguns, why the laws reduce the number of shootings and have an even greater effect on their severity."

Wikipedia's entry for John Lott is extensive and its neutrality has been questioned, but there were several legitimate references cited. A few hours' reading reveals that the credibility of Lott's work has often come into question.  It has been alleged that his work was funded by the NRA, that he created a fake persona to offer favorable reviews of his own work and that his statistical studies are "junk science".   

In John Fund's article (from which I believe this meme's quote was culled) he cited Mother Jones' statistical study relating to mass shootings, which I take to mean that he considers Mother Jones to be as reputable a source as John Lott.  Here's a Mother Jones article from 2003 which does a thorough job explaining the controversies surround Lott's credibility.  He's legitimacy as a scholar has long been in question.

Some might say, "where there's smoke there's fire."  Others might say that the reason Lott has so many detractors is that he speaks a truth which others seek to hide.

No wonder people like to form their opinions based on Internet memes and sound bites.  Choosing to investigate is a lot more work and a lot less cut-and-dried.

Lack of Proper Comparative Context

I found this meme on a facebook page called Americans Against the Republican Party.  The group's tagline is "Saving America from the regressive GOP.

The man pictured is Gene Wilder.  He is dressed as he appeared in the 1971 film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, directed by Mel Brooks. 

There is a plethora of Internet memes using this photograph.  It doesn't take much effort to create one.  I've seen it used with all sorts of messages -- some liberal, some conservative, many having nothing at all to do with politics -- so I'm fairly certain that it is Willy Wonka rather than Gene Wilder who is being selected as a spokesman. 

I have no idea who first decided that Roald Dahl's classic character would be a good choice for this application, but I find it interesting.  Perhaps because the reader is never quite certain whether the eccentric, enigmatic chocolate maker is good or bad, whether he's telling the truth or lying.  

What's the point of this meme and is it a point worth making? 

First, let's look to see if Republicans have something to complain about. 

According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which has a wonderfully simple-to-navigate website, the National Debt is defined as: 

". . .  the cumulative amount outstanding that the government has borrowed to finance deficits." 


There is a feature on the website which allows one to look up the National Debt figure of any particular day for the last ten years.  

As of February 14th, just a few days ago, that number was  $16,540,800,290,147.46.

As of Jan 20th, 2009, the day before President Obama took office, the National Debt was recorded as  $10,626,877,048,913.08

So, it would indeed seem that the National Debt has been increased during the Obama administration.  

The text at the bottom of the meme is a bit vague.  We've only had one President Reagan, but we've had two  Presidents Bush and we don't know which one is being referenced.  The first President Bush served immediately following Reagan.  Then came an eight year gap for the Clinton adminstration.  The second President Bush immediately preceded President Obama.    

Fortunately, once again,  Snopes.com came to my rescue, saving me hours of digging, comparing and struggling with mathematical computations involving ridiculously large numbers.

Back in 2011, the chart shown below was apparently circulated by Nancy Pelosi's office. 

A quick perusal tells me that the makers of our Willy Wonka meme could (and probably do?) mean both Presidents Bush.

So what did Snopes.com conclude after its in-depth analysis?

"All in all, this is a case of relatively accurate information which is of marginal value due to lack of proper comparative context." 

So there you have it.