John Podhoretz: An Exercise In Deception

By Joe Cereola
You can always count on Facebook for reliable links to misinformation. That's how I found John Podhoretz and his shockingly misleading opinion piece in today’s New York Post. Podhoretz doesn't like the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and he's been busy misinterpreting the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report in an attempt to condemn the ACA. Saying that he misinterpreted the CBO report implies he attempted to be fair in his analysis, when in fact he quoted sections of the report out of context and neglected to mentions portions of the report that contradicted his opinion.

Inequality Eventually Ends

“Every growing civilization is a scene of multiplying inequalities; the natural differences of human endowment unite with differences of opportunity produce artificial differences of wealth and power; and where no laws or despots suppress these artificial inequalities they reach at last a bursting point where the poor have nothing to lose by violence, and the chaos of revolution levels men again into a community of destitution….Periodically the land gets itself redistributed, legally or not…periodically wealth is redistributed, whether by the violent confiscation of property, or by confiscatory taxation of income and bequest. Then the race for wealth, goods and power begins again, and the pyramid of ability takes form once more; under whatever laws may be enacted the abler man manages somehow to get the richer soil, the better place, the lion’s share; soon he is strong enough to dominate the state and rewrite or interpret the laws; and in time the inequality is as great as before.”  – Will Durant

Don't Like The Minimum Wage?

By Joe Cereola

Social media gives everyone with something say a to a place to say it. But some ideas are not worth sharing, especially when they are untrue and their sole purpose is to obfuscate. I stumbled across the image below on Facebook. I refrained from commenting because the dialog that often follows such unsupported statements is often irrational and uncivil, and those who advance unfounded claims are frequently immune to the logic and facts that prove their beliefs false.