Looking at it from the other side

The other day, I and a group of others were asked to try and see things from the other political side's perspective. I saw these two comments below a Smerconish article:

0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 9:26 AM, 11/17/2013

If this summary below from a law professor is true, are you sure you want to encourage more and more people who are dependent on the government welfare voting for more and more politicians who support more and more taxpayer funded welfare? Also encouraging college students to vote is always a bad idea since they mostly are uninformed, irrational, lead astray by professors and have not paid taxes yet.

Food Stamps for Thought!

"In aggregate, the map of the territory Romney won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income areas and living off various forms of government welfare..."

If we want fair elections, have party affiliation removed from all candidates names and ballots and force the voters to vote for the candidate's beliefs and not for any party.

— GAC

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0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:05 AM, 11/17/2013

A Republic ceases to exist when the people realize they can vote themselves benefits. Shame on the Obama/Smerconish line of thinking.

— Thoughtful&concernedvoter

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20131117_The_Pulse__Why_so_many_roadblocks_on_the_way_to_casting_a_ballot_.html#8lmi576l3C6PU6xu.99

Posted 9:26 AM, 11/17/2013

If this summary below from a law professor is true, are you sure you want to encourage more and more people who are dependent on the government welfare voting for more and more politicians who support more and more taxpayer funded welfare? Also encouraging college students to vote is always a bad idea since they mostly are uninformed, irrational, lead astray by professors and have not paid taxes yet.

Food Stamps for Thought!

"In aggregate, the map of the territory Romney won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income areas and living off various forms of government welfare..."

If we want fair elections, have party affiliation removed from all candidates names and ballots and force the voters to vote for the candidate's beliefs and not for any party.

— GAC

Posted 11:05 AM, 11/17/2013

A Republic ceases to exist when the people realize they can vote themselves benefits. Shame on the Obama/Smerconish line of thinking.

— Thoughtful&concernedvoter

 GAC doesn't give us the link to the fellow who makes this observation, but I have no reason to doubt that the observation is entirely true. Problem is, it's incomplete. If we look at Alexander Cockburn's description in The Nation:

On March 23, 1983, a friend of mine watched as a naval officer and a defense contractor in the Fort Myer Officers' Club in Virginia listened impatiently as Reagan churned his way through a longish overture to his excited launch of Star Wars. Then, as Reagan began to token forth the billion-dollar feeding trough of SDI, they screamed to each other in incredulous delight, "He's going to do it...he's doing it...he's done it! We're rich, we're rich!" With these words, they both made a rush to the telephones.

 What's that you say? That, somehow, what motivates the already-wealthy and the not-so-wealthy are in some strange way distinct from each other? That's obvious nonsense. Out of the $3.8 trillion in the 2014 budget in total spending, the Farm Bill, which contains the Food Stamps/SNAP program, is 4% of the total budget, keep in mind that the bill also contains farm price supports. Defense is 17%, Veteran's benefits are 4% and transportation, housing, education and energy are 4%, 2%, 2% and 1% respectively. Medicare and Social Security make up around 58% of all spending.

If we look at total Federal spending by county, we can see that rural, i.e., Republican-heavy counties, are pretty flush with Federal cash. So what GAC and TCV are going along with is called "cherry-picking of the data," choosing to look at very small slices of highly select and chosen data to reach really broad conclusions.