Why conservatives should favor legalizing marijuana
By Evan Wood, Special to CNNSTORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Evan Wood: Conservatives concerned by spending ignore cost of failed war on drugs
- $2.5 trillion spent on war on drugs; crime, violence, drug use are the result, he says
- Taxation on marijuana could generate $1.4 billion a year in tax revenue, writes Wood
- Americans more likely to report marijuana use than people in Netherlands, he says, where it's legal
Editor's note: Evan Wood is the founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy; the director of the Urban Health Program at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS; and associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.
(CNN) -- If there is one clear emotion emerging before November's U.S. congressional elections, it is that citizens across the political spectrum are worried about government spending and a perceived lack of government accountability regarding where tax dollars are spent.
Oddly, the government's approach to the illegal drug problem -- which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $2.5 trillion since former President Richard Nixon first declared America's "war on drugs" -- has been largely immune from this concern.
CNN iReport: You tell us whether it's time to legalize pot
One dramatic exception is California, where Proposition 19, which proposes to "regulate, control and tax cannabis," will be on the statewide ballot on November 2. In California alone, the illegal market for cannabis, or marijuana, has been estimated to be worth about $14 billion per year, and the legalization initiative aims to redirect the flow of these massive profits from violent drug cartels toward government coffers.
Although the full financial impact of legalization cannot be known, cannabis law enforcement in California is estimated to cost taxpayers anywhere between $200 million and $1.9 billion each year, whereas the State Board of Equalization has estimated that taxation could generate $1.4 billion a year in new tax revenue.
As the vote approaches, a clear division in political support for Proposition 19 has emerged, with a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll showing that 54 percent of Democrats support legalization as Republican support sits at 33 percent. This division is curious, given that cannabis prohibition takes its biggest toll on the traditional conservative wish list of fiscal discipline, low crime rates and strong families.
In fact, as detailed in a report published this month by my organization, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, research funded by none other than the U.S. government clearly demonstrates the failure of marijuna prohibition. For instance, government reports demonstrate that even as federal funding for anti-drug efforts has increased from $1.5 billion in 1981 to more than $20 billion today, surveillance systems show that marijuana's estimated potency has increased by 145 percent and its price has declined by 58 percent since 1990.
At a 1991 lecture titled "The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise," conservative economist Milton Friedman noted: "There are some general features of a socialist enterprise, whether it's the post office, schools or the war on drugs. The enterprise is inefficient, expensive, very advantageous to a small group of people and harmful to a lot of people."
Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for his achievements in the fields of "consumption analysis," had strong views about the certain failure of the war on drugs, which are shared by most economists who stress that costly efforts to remove the drug supply by building prisons and locking up drug dealers have the perverse effect of making it much more profitable for new drug dealers to get into the market.
This explains why surveillance systems funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health concluded that over the last 30 years, cannabis has remained "almost universally available to American 12th-graders," with between 80 percent and 90 percent saying the drug is "very easy" or "fairly easy" to obtain.
Friedman was also vocal about the unintended consequences of the war on drugs, including the enrichment of organized crime and drug market violence. As he wrote in The New York Times: "The young are not dissuaded by the bullets that fly so freely in disputes between competing drug dealers -- bullets that fly only because dealing drugs is illegal. Al Capone epitomizes our earlier attempt at Prohibition; the Crips and Bloods epitomize this one."
In this context, consider that about 28,000 people have died in drug market violence in Mexico since 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared a war on drugs in that country, and that the U.S. government once estimated that Mexican drug trafficking organizations derive 60 percent of their revenue from cannabis exports to the United States.
The war on drugs has also had a devastating impact on families. Primarily as a result of drug law enforcement, one in nine African-American males in the 25-to-29 age group is incarcerated on any given day in the U.S., despite statistics that show ethnic minorities consume illicit drugs at rates comparable to those of other ethnic groups in the U.S.
In California, where the government spends more on prisons than post-secondary education, a recent report estimated that the cannabis possession arrest rate for African-Americans in Los Angeles County is more than 300 percent higher than that for whites. This disparity has emerged despite data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which has consistently shown that young African-Americans are less likely to use cannabis than whites.
In addition to both the racial and budgetary implications of this failed experiment, sociologists and criminologists are decrying the intergenerational effects of these policies on low-income families, as children left behind by incarcerated parents turn to gangs and the cycle continues.
One explanation for the persistently high support for cannabis prohibition is the concern that ending the war on cannabis will result in increased use. Interestingly, comparisons between the U.S. and the Netherlands, where cannabis is de facto legalized, indicate that despite the U.S.'s record rates of anti-drug enforcement expenditures, 42 percent of U.S. adults report that they have used cannabis, which is more than twice as high as that observed in the Netherlands, where only 20 percent report a history of cannabis use.
While some U.S. economists predict that rates of cannabis use could increase in California under legalization, they have generally ignored the potential benefits of the broad range of strict regulatory tools -- including licensing systems for vendors, purchasing controls and sales restrictions -- that have all proved effective at reducing rates of use and related harms of tobacco and alcohol.
As described earlier this month in an article published in the influential British Medical Journal, Robin Room stressed the need for an urgent consideration of the benefits of cannabis regulatory systems, especially given that successful government lobbying by the tobacco and alcohol industries have slowly eroded or eliminated many of these effective regulatory mechanisms in the U.S.
As Friedman said, "If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel." Recent estimates suggest that national regulation of cannabis in the United States would result in savings of more than $44 billion a year on enforcement expenditures alone.
Conservatives should look at the ongoing legacy of the failed war on drugs, in light of their traditional commitment to stronger families, economies and societies, and reconsider supporting drug policies that only serve to weaken American society.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Evan Wood.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Why conservatives should favor legalizing marijuana
BBC News - Virus breakthrough raises hope over ending common cold
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The research could be key in developing new anti-viral drugs
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Monday, November 01, 2010
5 Reasons Democrats Could Beat the Polls and Hold the House - NYTimes.com
— Updated: 8:20 pm -->5 Reasons Democrats Could Beat the Polls and Hold the House
By NATE SILVERIt was hard to pinpoint exactly when in the night things started to go wrong. But at some point, a trash can was knocked over in John Boehner’s office in the Rayburn House Office Building. A half-hour later on the other side of town, a hole was punched in the wall at the Republican National Committee’s headquarters.
Republicans didn’t really have much reason to be upset. They were going to pick up somewhere between 29 and 34 House seats from Democrats, pending the outcome of a recount or two and the receipt of mail ballots in some Western states. They gained five Senate seats from Democrats, and won the governorships in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida, among many other states. It had been a wave election, indeed — but a wave about on the magnitude of 2006, rather than 1994.
For most of the evening, Republicans had still seemed quite likely to pick up the House, perhaps by some margin. Exit polls that (erroneously, it turned out) suggested a nine-point generic ballot win for the party colored the early coverage. So, when Baron Hill, the vulnerable Democrat in Indiana’s 9th district, held onto win his seat by a surprisingly robust 9-point margin, it was mostly ignored. Instead, coverage was focused on the dozen or so Democratic incumbents who lost their races early in the evening — some of them expectedly so (like Alan Grayson and John M. Spratt Jr.), but others of which (like Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Chellie Pingree of Maine) were more surprising.
In states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, however, Democrats held up surprisingly well. Mary Jo Kilroy, who had been all but written off, held her seat in Columbus, as did a trio of Democrats, Christopher Carney, Bryan Lentz and Patrick J. Murphy, in Pennsylvania. Ted Strickland won the gubernatorial race in Ohio, and Joe Manchin III was elected to the Senate in neighboring West Virginia (by double digits, in fact). Joe Sestak appeared to have upset Pat Toomey in the Senate race Pennsylvania, although the Associated Press had yet to call the race because of alleged irregularities in Philadelphia.
New York was another problematic state for Republicans: their gubernatorial nominee, Carl P. Paladino, was defeated by almost 40 points, and of the six or seven House seats they had hoped to win there, they had instead picked up just one, while another — the upstate 20th district — remained too close to call.
Still, the gains came steadily, if not quite steadily enough. Michael Bennet lost his Senate race in Colorado — taking Representatives John Salazar and Betsy Markey with him — even as more vulnerable-seeming Democrats, like Alexi Giannoulias of Illinois and Harry Reid of Nevada, held on. The Dakota Democrats, Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota and Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin of South Dakota, were both defeated, converting 148,000 square miles of territory from blue to red.
But Republican gains not only stalled out but reversed themselves by the time that the West Coast began to report its results. Not only had vulnerable Democrats like Jim Costa and Kurt Schrader held on, but Democrats had defeated two Republican incumbents — Dan Lungren of the California 3rd district and Dave Reichert of the Washington 8th — while also narrowly winning the Arizona 3rd district, where the G.O.P. nominee Ben Quayle had proven too difficult a sell. Overall on the night, Democrats won 8 seats formerly held by Republicans, about twice what most analysts had expected.
The Senate race in Alaska, meanwhile, as some had feared, appeared headed toward a prolonged legal battle concerning Lisa Murkowski’s write-in votes. But the plaintiff would Scott McAdams, a Democrat, and not Joe Miller, a Republican.
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A scenario like this one is possible tomorrow — not particularly likely, but possible, just as a 77-seat Republican gain is possible. It’s probably a somewhat greater possibility than people realize. Here are five reasons Democrats could outperform their polls and beat consensus expectations.
1. The cellphone effect. This one is pretty simple, really: a lot of American adults (now about one-quarter of them) have ditched their landlines and rely exclusively on their mobile phones, and a lot of pollsters don’t call mobile phones. Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white — all Democratic demographics — and a study by Pew Research suggests that the failure to include them might bias the polls by about 4 points against Democrats, even after demographic weighting is applied.
There is also some indirect evidence for the cellphone effect. What follows is a list of each firm’s final generic ballot poll, arranged from the best result for Democrats to the worst. You can see that there is a rather strong relationship between whether a company included cellphones in its sample or not and the sort of result they showed. The polls that were conducted without cellphones showed Republicans ahead by an average of 9.3 points; those with them showed a smaller, 4.8-point advantage. That’s a difference of 4 or 5 points (and one which is statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence threshold), which is about of the same magnitude that Pew identified.
Now, this probably does not mean that Democrats are bound to overperform their polls by four or five points. A fair number of polls do include cellphones, so at best it might be half that. And the effects probably aren’t so uniform from company to company. Still, this is a theory that has a fair amount of evidence behind it.
2. The ‘robopoll’ effect. Unlike in past years, there are significant differences between the results shown by automated surveys and those which use live human interviewers — the ‘robopolls’ being 3 or 4 points more favorable to Republicans over all, although the effects vary a lot from firm to firm.
Automated surveys, while they have performed fairly well in the past (although in the past, importantly, they did not show these systematic differences from regular surveys), have a number of potential problems that essentially boil down to extremely low response rates, which could potentially bias the samples. For instance, it may be that only adults who are extremely engaged by politics (who are more likely to be Republican, especially this year) bother to respond to them.
Most automated surveys also do not call cellphones — although that’s the bad news for Democrats in some sense: the ‘robopoll’ effect, if there is one, may have a lot of overlap with the cellphone effect, or they may even be one and the same thing.
3. Some likely voter models, particularly Gallup’s, may “crowd out” Democratic voters. Gallup’s traditional likely voter model has consistently shown terrible results for Democrats this year, having them down by around 15 points on the generic ballot, which could translate into a loss of 70 to 80 House seats, or maybe even more. The Gallup poll and the Gallup poll alone is probably responsible for much of the sense of impending doom that Democrats feel and the (premature for at least 24 more hours) sense of triumphalism that Republicans are experiencing.
There is quite a bit of room to critique the poll, however. The basic potential issue is that Gallup uses fixed turnout targets. For instance, they estimate that 40 percent of the electorate will vote, and then let their respondents fight it out to see who the 40 percent most likely to vote are.
So, for instance, if you have a lot of Democrats whose likelihood of voting is a 9 on a 10-point scale — people who might ordinarily be quite likely to vote — they’ll be excluded from Gallup’s likely voter sample if too many slots are occupied by perfect 10’s (who in this cycle, no doubt, tend to be Republicans). This is why, when Gallup digs just a little bit deeper into its voter universe — for instance, with its “higher turnout” model, which assumes that turnout is 50 percent rather than 40 percent — its results quickly shift from being something of an outlier to being fairly consistent with the other generic ballot polls. There are a lot of Democratic 9’s just beneath the surface of those Republican 10’s.
I don’t know that this is very realistic portrayal of how voting takes place in the real world. Except, I suppose, in the case of extremely long lines at the polling place, voters are not competing with one another to vote in any real way: the only-somewhat-enthusiastic Democrat is not denied her vote because the Republican in line ahead of her is even more psyched up.
And Gallup’s model can produce some strange effects. Robert Erikson of Columbia University has found, for instance, that the preferences of “unlikely voters” in their sample move in an opposite direction from those of its likely voters, which does not seem sound.
The counterargument would be that midterm election turnout has indeed been extremely stable at about 40 percent of the population, so Gallup is on solid footing in assuming that it will be somewhere in that range again.
But there is some evidence that turnout might be unusually high in this election: there is no doubt that Republican engagement is likely to be extraordinary, but Democratic involvement, also, in fact appears to be about average or slightly above.
Most polls will also have some bias in who they reach and who they don’t. Specifically, they’ll have trouble reaching people who are less likely to vote, who usually won’t have much interest in completing a political survey either. Perhaps it’s the case that 40 percent of the general American population will vote tomorrow — but, because of this response bias, perhaps the rate would instead be something like 60 percent of the adults that Gallup actually got on the phone.
Unless you have a really good idea of exactly what effect this response bias might have (and it would be hard to have a really good idea, because this type of bias is probably increasing as response rates to surveys decrease), using fixed as opposed to fluid turnout targets can be dangerous.
Gallup gets a lot of deference, because it is one of the best polling organizations in the world, and because its likely voter model has done very, very well in predicting the outcome of past midterm elections.
The fact is, though, if you took the various likely voter models, and put them in a lineup without their brand names attached, Gallup’s is probably not the one you’d pick out of that lineup as having the most robust design. And while Gallup’s likely voter model has done very, very well in Congressional elections in midterm years, it has been only about average in Congressional elections in Presidential years, and in other types of elections.
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So the rose-colored glasses scenario for Democrats looks something like this: throw out the generic ballot polls that don’t include cellphones. And then throw out Gallup, because there is something weird about the way its likely voter model is behaving this cycle.
The average of the nine remaining generic ballot polls in the table above is a Republican advantage of 3.9 points.
Democrats could possibly hold the House with a number like that one, although they’d be underdogs to do so. Most likely, they’d need another point or two. Where could they get it?
4. Democrats probably have better turnout operations. This is always what a party says when it’s about to lose an election: our amazing turnout operation will save us!
Still, Democrats probably do have an edge in this department with the voter lists and infrastructure they built up during Barack Obama’s campaign, and which have been perpetuated to some extent by Organizing For America. John McCain, by contrast, eschewed his ground game, devoting almost all of his money to advertising.
Now, Republicans may not need a terrific turnout operation — their voters are charged up enough, and probably don’t need a lot of glossy fliers and door-knocks.
Nevertheless, Democrats might be able to coax an extra percentage point or two of their vote to the polls, especially in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania where they’ve invested a ton of resources over the years. And in the event where Democratic turnout equaled that of Republicans (it won’t; the point is they might be able to get it a bit closer), they would probably hold the House, even with most independents breaking against them.
5. The consensus view of Democratic doom is not on such sound footing as it seems. When a party is likely to sustain fairly significant losses in a midterm election — and Democrats are going to sustain fairly significant losses tomorrow — there are a lot of things you might expect to see.
First, you would expect to see that the party’s generic ballot polls were bad. Some of them might be really bad. A handful of them might be not-quite-as-bad-as-the-others, and might provide some hope to the faithful. Most of them would be pretty bad, though.
Second, that party would get lots of bad results in polls of individual House districts.
Third, that party’s problems are going to manifest themselves among most, and possibly virtually all, demographic groups. So you can write a story about how the party is struggling among women. And among men. And young voters. And old voters. And rich voters. And working-class voters. And Hispanics. And whites.
Fourth, that party’s numbers are going to be especially poor among independent voters. Except in places where party identification is extremely lopsided, the party which is losing in an election — and Democrats are losing this election — will usually be losing by a larger lead among independents. That’s just the way the math works.
Okay, let’s stop there. So, what’s my point?
Each of the indicators that I mentioned above are direct manifestations of polling data. The message in the polls this year is unambiguous: bad things are going to happen to Democrats. The polls are probably going to be right.
It seems like the evidence that Republicans will win the House is very rich, redundant, robust. Look at this generic ballot poll. Look at this other generic ballot poll! Look at how badly Democrats are doing among whites. Look at how they’re doing among independents!
But all of these indicators are, in fact, highly correlated with one another. They’re all rooted in the polling, and they’re all dependent on the polling basically being accurate. There’s not much diversity at all: it’s just different manifestations of the same thing.
Our Congressional forecasting models are based on an intensive study of six political cycles: 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008. In five of those six years, the polls were quite good — they missed a few races, but were very strong overall.
In another year, however –1998 — they were quite poor. Democrats overperformed their polls by about four points in a great number of races around the country. What was supposed to be an echo to the Republican boom year of 1994 basically flopped, eventually costing Newt Gingirch his job as majority leader.
Consensus expectations also considerably underestimated the Republican wave year of 1994, although a few indicators (like Gallup’s generic ballot poll) got it about right.
If we wanted to be generous to Democrats (which is, of course, the purpose of this article), we could say that the consensus basically failed in two out of the last four midterm elections. Of course, that the consensus view could fail does not mean that it will fail in the Democrats’ direction: instead Republican gains could be much larger than expected.
But in my view, it doesn’t make sense to say, for instance — and a lot of people are saying things like this — that Republicans should gain between 50 and 60 seats, and the number could be higher, but it shouldn’t be lower. If that’s what you think, you should project their gains to between 60 and 70 seats (or whatever) instead.
The thing is, the upside case for Republicans is pretty easy to see. Most of the news in this election, after all, is favorable to them. You see the Gallup generic ballot number, you see incumbents like Raul M. Grijalva and Jim Obertstar in trouble, you see the president’s approval rating at 44 percent, you see the big crowds at Tea Party rallies, you see Scott Brown winning in Massachusetts, and it’s easy to connect the dots. It’s an easy case to make, and it’s a pretty good one.
The case that Democrats could do better than expected — not well, by any means, merely better than expected — rests a little more in the realm of what artists call negative space: not what there is, but in what there isn’t. There aren’t 50, or even more than about 25, districts in which Republican candidates are unambiguous favorites. There isn’t agreement among pollsters about how the enthusiasm gap is liable to manifest itself. There isn’t any one poll or one forecasting method that is clairvoyant, or which that hasn’t made some pretty significant errors in the past.
Instead, the case for Democrats is basically: yes, the news is bad, it just isn’t exactly as bad as you think, or at least we can’t be sure that it is. This isn’t a sexy argument to make.
Nor, probably, will it turn out to be the correct one; more likely than not, Republicans will indeed win the House, and will do so by a significant margin. But just as Republicans could beat the consensus, Democrats could too, and nobody should be particularly shocked if they do.
Open Society Foundations » The War on Voters
Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States, and this year’s efforts to disfranchise voters have been unsettling in their coordination and innovation. Reports have surfaced across the nation of groups falsely alleging massive voter fraud. Some are even organizing surveillance teams to monitor polling places and even pursue buses of voters. The real reason for such shadowing is almost certainly to intimidate and deter voters.
Surveillance by Camera and Video
Organizers from the Tea Party and other groups in St. Paul, Minnesota, announced last week that they were offering a $500 reward to vigilantes for turning in people who are successfully prosecuted for voter fraud. The coalition is also organizing “surveillance squads” to photograph and videotape (read: intimidate) people trying to exercise their Constitutional right to vote. Tea Party organizers in Harris County, Texas, are using similar tactics even while conceding they violate local law. In Wake County, North Carolina, voters have complained [1] that observers are “[standing] behind the registration table (where they're not allowed) and tak[ing] pictures of the license plates of voters using curbside voting (also not allowed).” Tea Party [2] members have also begun challenging voter registration applications and announced plans to question individual voters at the polls whom they suspect of being ineligible.
Surveillance by Smartphone
An organization called the American Majority has developed a smartphone application for tracking incidents of so-called voter fraud. [3]When a user launches the application, the phone’s GPS sends a report to a tracking database. Users are encouraged to use the phone’s camera, which the app automatically opens, to collect photographic evidence of the “fraud,” which is clearly an intimidating act and a violation of voters’ privacy.
Trickery to Dilute the Black Vote
In Harris County, Texas, a flyer is being circulated in Black neighborhoods purporting to be from the black Democratic Trust of Texas. The flyer falsely claims that "when you vote straight ticket Democrat, it is actually voting for Republicans and your vote doesn't count" and that a vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White is a vote for the entire Democratic ticket. The flyer is clearly illegal and designed through trickery to deprive black voters of the right to vote.
Intimidation of Minority Voters
In Texas, a citizens group called the King Street Patriots has launched an initiative called True the Vote [4] that has already come under fire for intimidating poll watching practices at early voting sites in predominately black and Latino precincts. Poll watchers are alleged to have followed voters after they checked in, hovered over voters as they cast ballots, looked over voters’ shoulders to see who they voted for, and provided misinformation about voting procedures.
Harassing Latino Voters
A group affiliated with the American Majority, Minnesota Majority, sued Minnesota officials in federal court last week for not allowing Minnesota Majority members to wear "I.D. me" buttons at the polls. The group has made unfounded charges that non citizens have been voting. Minnesota does not require ID at the polls with a couple of exceptions. Not to be outdone by Minnesota actions, last week a mass email [5] sent in the name of Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio urged individuals to join an army of “VOTER FRAUD PREVENTION VOLUNTEERS to STOP ILLEGALS FROM STEALING THE ELECTION!” (capitalization theirs). Both tactics are clearly designed to motivate people to go out and harass minority voters.
Suspicious Fire
In late September, a suspicious fire destroyed nearly all of Harris County’s 10,000 electronic voting machines. [6] Harris County encompasses Houston, the third largest city in the nation. Open Society Foundations grantee Advancement Project [7] is working to mitigate the situation and protect minority voters.
Every American has the right to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Any form of discrimination, intimidation or challenge to voters without adequate basis is illegal and improper. There is just too much at stake for people to be denied their right to choose their leaders.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
It's morning in India
Mon, Nov 01, 2010 | Updated 12.45AM IST
Thomas L Friedman: It's morning in India
Science blogs are good for you
Friday, October 29, 2010
Whoppers of Campaign 2010
Whoppers of Campaign 2010
The biggest falsehoods of the midterm elections.October 26, 2010
Summary
Midterm elections are an embarrassment of riches for fact-checkers — this year more than others. With Democrats fighting desperately to keep control of the House and Senate, and a torrent of money from corporations and other undisclosed, unaccountable sources adding fuel to the Republican attack, the amount of deceit in political advertising is at least as high as we’ve ever seen.
Some candidates slung whatever mud they thought would stick, regardless of the facts. One falsely claimed his opponent had been a Vietnam draft dodger who "doesn’t love his country" — and then compared his opponent to the Taliban.
Republicans accused Democrats of favoring cuts in Medicare benefits, while Democrats claimed their opponents would cut Social Security benefits. Republicans accused Democrats of planning to unleash a huge tax increase on ordinary families and on small-business owners, while many Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to slap a 23 percent national sales tax on everything from groceries to medicine, as though that would come on top of all existing taxes. We found fault with all those claims, on both sides.
For our round-up of the campaign year’s most widely repeated misstatements — and the wildest — read on to the Analysis section.
Analysis
Health Care Retreads
Misrepresentations of the new health care law have been a staple of Republican campaigns. Some ads go so far as to claim (falsely) that the law would cause Medicare patients to lose their doctors, or (also falsely) that Democrats favored giving Viagra to sex offenders, or (false again) that typical families will pay $2,100 more in premiums.
A common theme is that the law contains a $500 billion Medicare "cut" that will translate into less benefits, but that’s misleading. The law calls for reducing the future growth of Medicare spending over the next 10 years by about 7 percent. Plus, the law stipulates that guaranteed Medicare benefits won’t be reduced, and it adds some new benefits, such as improved coverage for pharmaceuticals. Those seniors on Medicare Advantage plans (one out of four beneficiaries), however, will likely see their extra benefits reduced. These private insurance plans currently receive higher payments from the government than traditional Medicare, and the law decreases those payments over time. In addition, the law calls for reducing the future growth in payments to hospitals and other providers. While experts say some hospitals will have trouble coping with the new spending restraints, ads go too far in claiming that the law will "gut Medicare" or "hurt the quality of our care."
Misleading Onslaught by 60 Plus, Sept. 17
Misdirection from Crossroads GPS, Aug. 30
Pataki’s Bogus Health Care Claims, Oct. 6
Angle’s Shocking — and Misleading — Viagra Claim, Oct. 8
Benton’s Bogus Viagra Ad, May 11Social Security Hyperbole
A number of Democratic candidates — in Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky,
Colorado and other states — have claimed that their opponents want to abolish or "privatize" Social Security. In most cases that’s a serious overstatement. At one point, the president himself claimed that Republican leaders were as eager to "privatize" Social Security as they were to repeal his health care law, which isn’t true.
Some Republican candidates and incumbents do favor allowing younger workers to invest some portion of their payroll taxes in the stock market, but few if any have supported replacing the current system entirely with a fully privatized system, like the one in Chile. And even voluntary, partial privatization is far from the top of the GOP agenda. The idea died for lack of GOP support when President Bush tried to push it through a Republican-controlled Congress in 2005.
Obama’s (Latest) Social Security Whopper, Aug. 16
Toss-Ups: Nevada, Sept. 23
Social Security: (Mostly) in Their Own Words, Sept. 21
Democrats Misfire on Social Security — Again, Sept. 2
AFSCME’s Big, Brazen Attack, Sept. 1Taxing the Truth, Part I
Another misleading Republican theme is that Democrats are about to unleash a huge tax increase on the typical family, or on small-business owners. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said "Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history." Similar claims have been spread by Republican TV ads, by widely forwarded chain e-mails, in interviews and even by "tweets" and other social media.
It’s true that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 are set to expire at the end of this year, under
terms set in law by a Republican Congress and President George W. Bush. But Democrats have said all along that they don’t intend to let all of the tax cuts expire, or even most of them. President Obama and most House and Senate Democrats favor keeping all the cuts that apply to taxpayers who earn less than $250,000 as a couple, or $200,000 as single filers. In addition, a number of conservative Democrats (or those nervous about reelection) even say they favor extending the cuts for everybody — including those at the top — at least for another year or two. A lame-duck Congress will decide, after the election.
As for the claim that Democrats favor "a huge tax hike on small business," in the words of one ad, that’s also wrong for the vast majority of small-business owners. Only about 3 percent of those with any business income showing on their personal returns would see a tax increase. Republicans retreated to claiming that half the small-business "income" — as opposed to business owners — would see an increase. But that’s wrong, too. Much of the "small"-business income they are counting comes from businesses with yearly income of $50 million or more — which is big business income in just about anybody’s book.
Toss-Ups: Wayward Ads in Washington State, Oct. 15
2011 Tax Increases, Sept. 3
Thompson Wrong on Tax Cuts, Too, Aug. 5
Sunday Replay, Aug. 2
Mis-Tweets on Twitter, April 28Taxing the Truth, Part II
In dozens of TV ads, Democrats or Democratic-leaning groups accused Republicans of favoring a 23 percent national sales tax, as though such a thing would come in addition to existing taxes. The attacks (which were also made in fancy mail pieces) amounted to a misrepresentation of the "FairTax" proposal. The claims failed to mention that the sales tax would replace — not add to — existing federal income and payroll taxes. Democrats also left out any mention of offsetting rebates designed to mitigate the increased cost of essentials like food and medicine — a main feature of the FairTax proposal.
In the past, we’ve written about the FairTax from the other side: In 2007, we pointed out misleading claims by FairTax proponents. We noted that a bipartisan panel of tax experts — put together by President George W. Bush — had rejected the idea and said the tax would have to amount to at least 34 percent (not 23 percent) of the sales price of goods and services to raise enough revenue to replace other federal taxes. But that’s no excuse for misrepresenting the proposal, so this year our darts are pointed the other way.
Sales Tax Spin, Oct. 20
AFSCME’s Misleading Tax Attack, Aug. 12
Another False Tax Attack (And One That’s Just Deceptive), April 21Stimulus Spin
Ads by Republicans in Connecticut, Florida, Washington, South Dakota, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and elsewhere have claimed that the economic stimulus has failed to create jobs. We heard the same claims on talk shows and in speeches. House Minority Leader John Boehner even said in an address that the stimulus had harmed the job situation, since "America’s employers are afraid to invest in an economy stalled by ‘stimulus’ spending and hamstrung by uncertainty."
In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the stimulus increased employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million people, compared with what employment would have been otherwise. Observers may differ on whether that’s a reasonable return on investment, but it’s not accurate to say that the stimulus harmed employment or that it didn’t help.
Another Black Hole, Oct. 6
Crossroads Jam-Up, Oct. 1
Did the Stimulus Create Jobs?, Sept. 27
Sunday Replay, Sept. 7
Spinning the Stimulus, Aug. 24
Toomey’s Stimulus Charge Doesn’t Add Up, Aug. 13Far Out on Bailout
Everybody took the Wall Street bailout’s name in vain this campaign season. Democratic House incumbents in nine states claimed that they voted against "the bailout" — meaning the Troubled Asset Relief Program — when in fact they weren’t yet in office when it was enacted. (They voted against a later bill to allow release of the second half of TARP funds, a purely symbolic and futile vote. The Senate had already approved release and only disapproval by both houses could freeze the funds under terms set by the original bailout legislation.)
Meanwhile, some Republican ads accused Democratic House members of voting to give huge bonuses to Wall Street employees. That’s a misleading reference to the stimulus bill — its final version contained looser restrictions on bonuses than the version originally passed in the Senate. But the actual funds used by companies for those bonuses came from TARP, not the stimulus, and nothing in the bill the Democrats supported called for or supported bonuses. The enacted bill simply failed to prevent as many of them as the Senate version might have.
Democratic Bailout Baloney, Sept. 3
More Bailout Baloney, Sept. 8
Bailout Bonuses are Back, Sept. 16Assorted Absurdities
Some of the ads we saw stood out for their egregiously false claims:
Whopper: Daniel Webster is un-American. Webster’s opponent for the House seat in Florida’s 8th Congressional District, Democrat Alan Grayson, falsely claimed that Webster was a draft dodger who "doesn’t love his country." In fact, Webster dutifully reported for the draft after finishing his undergraduate degree, but was rejected for medical reasons. Grayson then launched an ad calling his opponent "Taliban Dan" and misrepresenting a quote in which Webster talked about a woman’s role in marriage. The ad’s misleading editing changed "don’t pick the [Bible verses] that say, ‘She should submit to me’ " into "she should submit to me."
- Whopper: Rick Scott loves prisoners. And pornography. An outside group in Florida ran an ad claiming that gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott, a Republican, had a plan to close prisons that would "release tens of thousands of prisoners early." In fact, Scott proposed cutting prison spending per prisoner. That led a state official to speculate that "you would have to close prisons," but that’s not what Scott proposed. Another group accused Scott of "profiting from porn." The weak backup? Scott has an investment in a Latin American social networking site that has partnered with Playboy Mexico to find the Playmate of the Year.
- Whopper: Mark Kirk single-handedly stopped the bridges to nowhere. The Illinois Senate race between Republican Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias has given rise to a number of false accusations, but for our money the most eyebrow-raising was Kirk’s claim on "Meet the Press" that an amendment he wrote put a stop to the "bridges to nowhere," long a symbol of government pork. In fact, one of the bridges is being built even now. The other wasn’t felled by Kirk’s amendment either — the earmark for the bridges had been stripped from a transportation appropriations bill a year earlier. The Kirk amendment never even made it into the final version of the legislation to which it was briefly attached.
Outside Groups
Outside groups have proliferated in Campaign 2010, many raising tens of millions
from undisclosed sources, including business corporations, and funding ads that mostly attack Democrats. These front groups adopt names that — while not exactly whoppers themselves — seldom give any inkling of the groups’ highly partisan missions. In our 2010 Players Guide we report on who’s really behind groups such as the Committee for Truth in Politics, Revere America and American Crossroads. Labor unions are spending heavily, too, defending Democrats. Our guide covers such big union players as the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, which together pledged to spend $100 million.
Ads by outside groups have often been misleading, and we’ve already covered some examples above. In addition, we note some whoppers told about these groups, on both sides.
- Embattled Democrats strained to discredit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with an unproven allegation, claiming that it was "stealing our democracy" by funneling secret, illegal contributions from foreign corporations. The truth is that the chamber gets only a tiny fraction of its money from foreign corporations, and has more than enough from domestic companies to legally fund its planned $75 million election spending.
- Republican strategist Karl Rove, who helped set up one of the largest corporate-funded, Republican-leaning groups, falsely claimed that labor unions aren’t disclosing where they get the millions they are spending. The truth is that their money comes overwhelmingly from dues collected from members, as their annual reports to the U.S. Department of Labor clearly show.
Foreign Money? Really? Oct. 11
Sunday Replay, Oct. 25Viral Favorites
The claims we’re asked about most often don’t always come from the mouths of politicians, or even their TV ads. Maybe because these claims are pure bohonkey. The falsehoods circulate widely by e-mail, forwarded by people who either don’t know or don’t care that they are spreading misinformation the way a virus spreads disease.
- Whopper: The health care law puts a 3.8 percent tax on all home sales. Actually, the new health care law’s tax only applies to the sale of a primary residence in rare cases. For individuals, it falls on profit that exceeds $250,000, if the individual’s income exceeds $200,000. For couples, the tax falls only on profits exceeding $500,000, if joint income is more than $250,000.
- Whopper: Obama plans a 1 percent tax on all bank transactions. That’s based on a single House member’s bill that isn’t supported by the White House, has no cosponsors, and has never even gotten a hearing in committee.
- Whopper: Congress voted itself a pay raise at the expense of the Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment. It’s true that there has been no COLA for 2010 and 2011, but the COLA is calculated automatically based on inflation rates. And Congress voted to freeze its pay for 2010 and 2011.
– by Jess Henig, Viveca Novak and Brooks Jackson
-->Posted by Jess Henig, Brooks Jackson and Viveca Novak on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Filed under Articles, Players Guide · Tagged with 2010 midterm elections, Bailout, FairTax, health care law, Social Security, stimulus, taxes, whoppers
German electric car sets world record - Upi.com
German electric car sets world record
Published: Oct. 26, 2010 at 10:20 AMBy STEFAN NICOLA
UPI Europe Correspondent
BERLIN, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- An electric car developed by a German company Tuesday set what organizers said is a world record when it drove 375 miles without recharging its battery.GALLERY: Nissan launches new Fuga Hybrid
Mirko Hannemann, 27, drove the yellow and purple all-electric Audi A2 in seven hours from Munich to Berlin, where he arrived Tuesday morning.
German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle, who jumped inside for a quick drive in the courtyard of his ministry, called Hannemann's trip a technological quantum leap.
"No other electric car has gone to such a distance," he said.
Japanese scientists drove a 1-person electric car more than 600 miles around a track, but that was at 25 miles per hour and with a vehicle that was basically all battery.
"Today, we have shown what everyday cars can do," said Hannemann, the chief brain behind DBM Energy, a startup from Berlin that developed the powerful battery pack that made the long trip possible.
Consumers have so far been put off by the short driving range of electric cars, usually at between 60 and 100 miles, and by the cost and size of the batteries.
The four-seat Audi A2, funded by German utility lekker Energie and the German Economy Ministry, has all features of a regular car, including a fully usable trunk.
Hannemann drove the 375 miles at 55 miles per hour on average, had the heat on and was able to whisk around a few more miles in the city.
The battery, based on what DBM Energy calls the KOLIBRI AlphaPolymer Technology, comes with 97 percent efficiency and can be charged at virtually every socket. Plugged into a high-voltage direct-current source, the battery can be fully loaded within 6 minutes, Hannemann said.
"This is a great success," said Andreas Goerdeler of the German Economy Ministry. "We are in a fierce global competition and this proves that we're technological leaders."
Eager to reduce the dependency on imported oil and cut carbon dioxide emissions from road traffic, the German government last year said it wants to have 1 million electric cars cruise its highways by 2020.
Germany's powerful car industry has been criticized for being a tad late to the electric car game, with rivals from France and mainly Asia one to two years ahead when it comes to launching serial production.
To speed up this process, the German government has earmarked around $700 million for sustainable mobility research and development, including programs to develop the charging station infrastructure and boost battery technology, an area of expertise that has long belonged to Asia. Berlin supported Hannemann's record project with $380,000.
The young inventor hopes that his battery pack can challenge the Asian dominance. Key will be if it's affordable.
Hannemann couldn't give an exact price for his battery -- he said that was dependent on scaling effects -- but vowed it wouldn't just be more powerful, but in the end also cheaper than conventional lithium ion batteries.
A logistics company has put the DBM Energy battery packs into their forklifts, which are now running 28-hour shifts without recharging.
Hannemann hopes that the world record attracts more industry investors to launch mass-scale production of batteries to be put in future German-made electric cars.
"We are open for talks with the car sector," he said.
Asked when his company would be able to launch large-scale production, Hannemann replied: "Optimistically? Now."
© 2010 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Color Blindness Myths and Misunderstandings | Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design
Blog » Accessibility » Color Blindness Myths and MisunderstandingsColor Blindness Myths and Misunderstandings
Filed under Accessibility on October 25, 2010
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-->I’ve always believed that web site accessibility depends on an understanding of accessibility issues — not on technical issues. Obviously, knowing the technical side of web site construction and how it impacts accessibility is very important. Some decisions are fundamentally technical, but a huge part of web site accessibility is purely visible — and just understanding accessibility issues will make a huge difference.
To that end, here are a few quick comments about color blindness. Color blindness (or color perception deficiency) is an issue for approximately 1 in 12 people, mostly men. However, color perception problems are not always very effectively diagnosed, so these numbers could be low.
Color blindness is an inability to see certain colors.
Color blindness is really a misnomer. People with various types of color blindness are better described as being color vision deficient: it’s an inability to distinguish colors, not an inability to see color. People at the furthest limits of color deficiency, however, may have such an extreme inability to discern colors that this can be a fairly accurate description.
Individuals with color vision deficiencies can’t see red.
Well, no. Assuming we’re discussing Protanopic or Deuteranopic color blindness, in which the individual is missing either the red or green sensitive cones, the actual problem is that they may not be able to distinguish the color red. The color isn’t readily differentiated from other hues of the same shade or tint. Red perception deficiency is certainly the most common type of color vision deficiency, but it’s certainly not true of all individuals with poor color vision.
You have normal color vision
Not really. In fact, color perception is a spectrum for all of us. What’s commonly referred to as color blindness is actually only the portion of that spectrum which is considered anomalous — where the ability to perceive color begins to impinge on normal interactions with the world. Having “normal” color vision simply means that you don’t generally experience problems because of your color vision. You may well still fail an Ishihara test.
Color perception deficiencies are inconvenient, but don’t pose any serious problems
Particularly in our modern, technological society, color perception is a critical part of comprehending the world around you. From LED indicators which blink red, green, or yellow; to weather maps which a spectrum from red to green indicating storm severity; to knowing what color a traffic signal is showing if you’re in a location with a different signal orientation than what you’re familiar with. Outside of technology, color deficiencies can impact recognizing that you’re developing a severe sunburn or knowing whether you’ve actually cooked that hamburger enough to be safe.
People with Color Perception Deficiency have better Night Vision
Actually, I couldn’t definitely verify this one way or the other. There are a number of claims that this is true, but the reasoning is highly variable and not particularly evidence-based. It’s possible that certain types of color perception deficiency may give people better night vision, but it’s also possible that since some types of color perception deficiencies cause people to be photosensitive, those people may feel like their night vision is better, simply because it’s much better than what they’re accustomed to. Regardless, any evidence which is reasonably definitive would be appreciated.
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12 Comments to “Color Blindness Myths and Misunderstandings”
Vivek R (new comment) says:
I am color blind (fail 3 on the test) and my wife is not. We have frequent power outages at night and I am the first to find the lighter / candles. She’d have no clue they were where I picked them up from. I wear glasses too (shortsighted) but she has perfect vision. This is the first time I am reading about others who experience this.
Loren Pechtel (new comment) says:
I will definitely agree with color vision problems and camouflage, although my understanding is that the military has figured out how to make camouflage that works against those with color problems also. I have some red-green weakness and I think I was like 12 or 13 before I understood what camouflage was supposed to be — most every example of it I saw stood out like a sore thumb to me.
Just because it blends in well for someone with normal color vision doesn’t mean it blends in with abnormal color vision.
ColoUr Blind Pete (new comment) says:
I’m colour blind, in the sense that i can’t tell the difference between brown, red and green. i can sometimes make correct intelligent (or so i think!) guesses. However I really do see better at night than my girlfriend for example. It’s little consolation for not fully enjoying the full spectrum of colour nature provides, but at least if i get stuck down a mine it might help!
Hey Joe!
I must say that I’ve never heard about colour blindness and having better night vision. Interesting.
It would also be interesting to see if there’s a correlation between the severity of colour blindness to more effective night vision. Get snopes on the case
I personally fail in only one circle on the Ishihara test (the 6). I do know that my eyes adjust quite quickly to the dark. As well, I’ve never had a problem driving at night time.
Stephani Roberts says:
@Matthew My husband is color blind and he was able to spot deer in the fields last weekend as we drove home at twilight. They were almost invisible to me as they blended into their background but he saw them easily as distinct shapes. He speculated that it was a result of his color blindness. I think so. There are advantages, this could correlate with sharp shooting. He mentioned that color blind men were put at the front of the lines because they were able to spot camouflage. Here’s a short article about the upside of color blindness: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/apr/the-upside-of-color-blindness
marlene frykman says:
@joe: wonderful. that is a fantastic tool. thanks for sharing!
@marlene Thanks for the tip! I’ve fixed the link.
hi joe, just letting you know the link to the vision simulator is broken
@Matthew I’ve read that as well; but again, without any definitive evidence.
@Karl What I wonder about that is whether that perception is because you’re more accustomed to identifying what you can see with reduced color or because you can actually see better. Given that one of the characteristics of low-light conditions is a significant reduction of color definition, I’m wondering whether the real issue is in the ability to understand what you’re seeing, rather than actually having improved perception in low-light conditions. From a subjective perspective, this may give you better understanding of your surroundings in low-light, but not actually mean that you have better vision. Does that make sense?
Karl Groves says:
re: Night Vision. I have no evidence, but I am very color blind (as in usually can’t get any of the items in the Ishihara tests) and I seem to have much better night vision than most people.
Thanks for clearing things out. Very good and interesting read.
Matthew says:
I’ve heard a similar rumor that colorblind individuals are better sharpshooters, with the justification being that your retina packs in more rods, which give you a higher resolution image. I’d like to see the Snopes on that one (although I still like to repeat it
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