Debunking Almost Every Republican Lie Against President Obama. States Vary Widely in Number of Tax Filers with No Income Tax Liability. Note: Updated data for 2010 is available here.
Fiscal Fact No. 229 Southern States Have Highest Percentages of "Nonpayers" One of the most reported topics during the latest tax filing season was the record number of Americans who filed an income tax return but had no income tax liability after taking their credits and deductions. According to the latest IRS figures for 2008, a record 52 million filers—36 percent of the 143 million who filed a tax return—had no tax liability because their credits and deductions reduced their liability to zero. Indeed, tax credits such as the child tax credit and earned income tax credit have become so generous that a family of four earning up to about $52,000 can expect to have their income tax liability erased entirely.1 There are millions of other Americans who have some income but not enough to be required to file a tax return. New data from the IRS allow us to calculate the number of nonpayers in each state who filed a tax return. Notes 1 Scott A. 2.
The Backfire Effect. THE BACKFIRE EFFECT....What happens when you tell people that someone has made a false claim?
Shankar Vedantam reports: Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003.
Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse. Italics mine. Why? For more, here is Reifler's online Q&A at the Washington Post this morning. UPDATE: I should add that these weren't the only two questions Nyhan and Reifler asked. Congress Matters. Woman Rights & Feminism. Legislation & Records Home > Votes > Roll Call Vote. Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. In the House, some of the remaining centrist and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats have been targeted for extinction by redistricting, while even ardent tea party Republicans, such as freshman Rep.
Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), have faced primary challenges from the right for being too accommodationist. And Mitt Romney ’s rhetoric and positions offer no indication that he would govern differently if his party captures the White House and both chambers of Congress. We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public. Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views.
Framing Primer: The Backfire Effect - The Winning Words Project. I used to play the game "telephone" with my friends when I was younger.
We'd sit in a circle and one girl would whisper something in the ear of the girl next to her, who would then pass it on to the next girl, and so on and so on. By the time it got to the last girl in the circle, it barely resembled the original whispered message. Yet when the original message was revealed, some of the girls did a head-smack and some dug their heels in and insisted the message they passed on was accurate. Sometimes I was even one of those girls. It's okay; you can admit it, once in a while you were, too. Those of us who believe the wrong message is the right message even when the right message is clarified, are experiencing what's known as "The Boomerang Effect. " The Boomerang Effect is a social psychology term that holds that when you attempt to change someone's mind about something using a fact to dispute a current belief, that current belief will actually become stronger.
I know! OUCH! Political analysis by and beyond the numbers since 2006. Would Obama's War on Speculators Really Reduce the Price of Oil? - Jordan Weissmann - Business. Banks and hedge funds have bet billions of dollars on oil in the last decade, but it's not clear whether they're driving up the cost of crude Reuters With gas averaging around $4 a gallon nationally, President Obama wants voters to know he feels their pain at the pump.
And so, in a brief policy speech yesterday, he turned to the Democrats' favorite folk medicine for dealing with rising oil and fuel costs -- clamping down on speculators. "We can't afford a situation where speculators artificially manipulate markets by buying up oil, creating the perception of a shortage, and driving prices higher -- only to flip the oil for a quick profit," the president said. Alternative Media.