The power of Fox News?
 

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02...y6201911.shtml

How did perceptions among some people get skewed so far from reality?

I dont know lets ask some small buisness owners shall we?

You mean the ones he cut taxes for?

Cognitive dissonance. When confronted with facts that run counter to their beliefs, people will ignore them or try to disprove them. I think it's a mental illness.

And they make up 95% of the populace?

Not exactly, Cognitive dissonance is where you have cognitions (thoughts/ideas) that run contrary to each other, which triggers to anxiety. The theory is that people will try to eliminate the anxiety by altering their cognitions to remove the dissonance. (oh and this is normal behavior)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

What I think you are thinking of is confirmation bias (also considered normal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

And another thing that is probably going on is cognitive bias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

Now stuff like denial and distortion are more in the area of mental illness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_defense


But mostly I would chalk the results up to good ol' ignorance and apathy. Being informed and staying informed takes effort and action, and many people are just too lazy to bother, so they rely on the popular media (a junk source of information) to feed them their opinions and thoughts.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...taxed+to+death

how about the power of the heritage foundation?

http://www.askheritage.org/Answer.aspx?ID=741

That is from the article

Thats funny.
So in relation to a simple A+B=C question and peoples perception of that answer the response is X+elephant-helicopter+saxophone= sort of Cish.

BTW your link to the earlier topic turned out to not be a very reliable one about tax did it, but a very good one about perceptions of tax, which kinda proves the point you are trying to disprove:up:

Of course, my response would be: "Uh, is the Heritage Foundation biased?"

And the response to that would probably be: "No more than CBS/The New York Times!!!!"

Then let's say I responded: "Well, let's ask an objective third party, say, a foreigner"

The response to that might be: "Foreigners are all libs!!!!"

And around and around we go..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnbsvUpUsdw
Language warning

Lets examine the facts shall we?

This is political spin on washington doing creative bookkeeping. What really happens is that there is a $500 per worker tax credit, at a cost of about $150 billion. The government will just borrow $150 billion from the private economy to give away in these tax credits, so there will be no net gain to the economy. Its not a tax CUT - because the tax RATE was not changed. It is however a feel good spin job to make people think someone is doing something, when in essence they are not. What this is - is he borrowed money from the American people and "gave" it right back - while saying ok I am giving you this - but you have to pay for it later. Note I don't blame Obama only - as this is an old washington trick that he isnt' the first to play. But its still not a truthful statement.

But it goes further. Roughly 40% of workers ultimately do not pay taxes on their net income. So giving them a "credit" of $500 does not reduce their taxes - but it does increase the SHARE of the tax burden on those who do pay. And we still are not done. The "Earned Income Credit" amounts were increased. Now for those that don't know - this is a program where if you make below a certain amount, you are not only charged no taxes, but given a "rebate" (often a sizable one) from the government. As an example, a single person with one qualifying dependant makes $35,463 and chooses not to pay in a dime to income taxes over the year. When they file taxes, they would owe a total of approximately $1,553 in taxes. But they qualify for the EIC - so instead of paying a DIME in - they instead get a REBATE check (even though they havent paid anything in) of the EIC amount ($3,043) minus the tax liability. In the end - the person above gets a check for $1409.00 from "taxes" - that they never paid. And Obama raised the EIC numbers - which as shown above is not reducing taxes on TAXPAYERS - but rather increasing yet another "welfare" style program under the guise of a "tax cut". It is out and out disgusting to call this a "tax cut" for taxpayers.

Again with the spin. What Obama did was push a one year, $3000 tax CREDIT to small businesses for each person they hire. However, what he doesn't talk about is that this is a very small expansion of a Congressional move adopted when it was proposed by Dan Quayle in the 80s. It was called the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC). Over the years this has been changed into the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC), which provides $2,400 for each new adult worker hired, $4,800 for hiring a disabled veteran, and $9,600 for hiring welfare recipients, high risk youths, and qualified ex-felons. Every study of the program has indicated that has done nothing to create jobs or lessen the tax burden in any meaningful way on business owners. A 20% increase in something that doesn't work isn't a meaningful tax move in any way, no matter how he tries to twist it. Especially when this covers only a very small portion of the businesses he is claiming he is helping.

Again we have the confusion between a tax CUT and a tax CREDIT. A cut is a reduction in tax rates - a credit is a "give back" that is borrowed against the taxpayers (all of us) and ultimately must be paid. The $8000 tax credit for first time home buyers is exactly that - a credit. Its robbing peter to pay paul as the saying goes, and ultimately peter, paul and the rest of us end up paying it - though taxes. So once more, its not a tax cut in any form, just spin attempts to say "see how great we are?" while they quietly insure we will end up paying for it regardless.

No - you INCREASED a tax CREDIT by up to $1100. Nice for those that can use it, but ultimately that has to come from somewhere now doesn't it - and so the people recieving this additional credt are those that are either in the 40% that don't pay taxes anyway (as we have already discussed) - or they are the rest of America that works and pays taxes, that now must also cover this credit.

Finally we get to the end of these claims - and big suprise, its not a cut - its a credit. Up to $4000 dollars worth of one in fact. Now I am all for making college more affordable, but don't claim something is a tax cut when its not. For every person claiming this credit - its again money borrowed (as its spent but never collected) - meaning the rest of America is on the hook for it.

So lets really look at it shall we? Yet according to the NON-PARTISAN Tax Center - nearly half of all tax "units" (filers) will pay NO taxes at all. Source: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publi...cfm?ID=1001289 It is an out an out boldfaced lie because you can't cut taxes below 0.

So when you look at a poll that asks people "Did the president cut taxes?", and then tries to be shocked that people don't know he did - its actually trying to continue the spin that something was done when in reality - it wasn't. If you look at the FACTS - you see that the article takes the position that the President did cut taxes, which is a fallacy. And then the folks at CBS News wonder why their ratings continually drop. Its because people don't care to see propoganda on the news channel known as C .... BS.

And things like that at the very end make us ignore the rest of your message. Do you say the same things about News Corp entities? I doubt it.

Torvald - if pointing out the fallacy purported by a "news" agency makes you ignore a credibly sourced, logical and coherent argument, that says more about you than it does about me, don't you think?

For the record, I personally don't take ANY single "news" organization as gospel - but choose to do the research independantly to find the truth. I have found times where Foxnews has been in error. Just as ABC, CNN and CBS are as well. My comment at the end simply is my way of expressing what is known by many who are like me - that CBS of all the so called "news" organizations is the one most likely to ignore facts while trying to put a political group on display - either for a positive or negative purpose. Note how the article you linked holds up the "Tea Party" supporters as even further "misinformed" - thus holding them up as an object of scorn and nutjobbery (yes, I know thats not likely a real word) even though facts show them to be more in tune with the facts than CBS. Every "news" organization plays the same game, some just do it more blatently than others, but the citizenry should be willing and engaged enough to do the research to find the facts and make their own judgements regardless of who they get the initial info from.

Now if you want to discuss the OP and my response - by all means review my position and respond. I will consider the merits of your views and we can debate it. But the comment you made is one that is reminiscent of a "tribesman" tactic - instead of addressing the merits of the arguement, instead divert the discussion into something else.

So - your response to the points I have made showing that the article is positing a flawed position encouraged by the Obama team? Or will you concede that despite the spin of the administration and CBS, that no real tax CUTS have been made, and thus the "perceptions" of the majority of people are not nearly as far off from the reality as the political spinners would like?

I think "C.... BS" was putting it mildly, although quite apt IMHO. I've thought about turning to the Jim Lehrer report rather than the network Evening news. He just reports what has happened over the course of a day. No talking heads or "experts", no spin, no politics. Just the events. That's what the news used to be. These days it's ratings and pushing agenda.

Well since I am just working on my 2009 taxes, I will have to wait until I am done to be able to determine whether my taxes went up or down.

I wish more people would do that, though I would point out that there is no such thing as the "truth", that changes day to day and person to person.

Haplo's got this one right on.

I'm curious though, Torvald - why do you wish to invalidate Haplo's well thought-out response due to his calling out of a news organization, while in the very title of this thread you do the exact same thing?

"Truth" can be bought. *shrug* Pummel me with rotten poisonous shark if I am wrong. *cower* :timeout:

I have been a news junkie for probably longer than I ever realized, and am reaching the end of that frayed rope.

Nothing in the broadcast news really makes sense to me anymore, except perhaps that I feel manipulated in some way (like having a finger up the butt that don't belong there). I spend more time and energy grappling with "Hrm, I wonder how much truth there is to that beyond a believable kernel?". It's a little bit like reaching the point in severe clinical depression where one begins to separate from reality, only to realize after the fact that they are indeed very ill. Minus, of course, the severe depression bit.

I now consider myself a neophyte of personal information-gathering. For the most part I hardly pay attention to what the news has to say, even the online feeds. I just simply do not care any more, and that is apathy. I truly believe that one should be properly informed as to what the world is up to on a day-to-day basis, but I sure would appreciate it if there wasn't so much horse-kadoodle to shovel through to get to the point of matters. :salute:

I must digress, before I again begin talking out of my http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/pict...pictureid=1159

EDIT: Please pardon the diatribe/rant. Really needed to get that one out of my system... and it is a whole lot better than saying "XYZ News is teh ebil". :oops:

krashkart - have some good info for you. The news - minus agenda - is out there. The trick is not using one source.

For example - the "evil" fox news may carry a story about something. Cnn may cover the same story, but from a different angle. Same with ABC and any other network. What you do is get info from all the available sources, see what they agree on, what they disagree on (which often is spin from both sides) and then go just read the reality. For example - one can say "President Obama in his speech said X,Y,Z" - while another claims he said "Snort, doodle, grapefruit". while the next claims he channeled Professor Dumbledore with "Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!" (I always loved that line).... Now what you do is go pull a copy of the actual text, and read it yourself. What is when you find that what he really said was "X, go snort grapefruit, ya nitwit!".

Sure it takes effort, but that way you can keep from having that manipulated feeling - because you will know better.