THINK ABOUT IT!

Our nation sometimes seems to have resigned itself to having the Republican myth making machine have its way with us.  Critical thinking citizens usually recognize B.S. like the recent cry from Arizona scaremongers about freedom to exercise religion of choice being in grave danger if a law isn’t passed by the legislature that allows businesses to refuse goods and service to LGBT folks.  It’s not likely to pass because the governor is getting a clear message from a significant number of business owners that such a law would cost the state and business a whole lot of money.

When the myth makers create a story that sounds like a good old Ronald Reagan movie, even critical thinking citizens sometimes assume some of it must be true.  

For example, most people have heard about the death tax and assume that out there in the population there must be people being left gobs of money by rich uncles only to have Uncle Sam snatch it away.  I just learned today from Paul Krugman: “Remember the “death tax”? The estate tax is quite literally a millionaire’s tax — a tax that affects only a tiny minority of the population, and is mostly paid by a handful of very wealthy heirs. Nonetheless, right-wingers have successfully convinced many voters that the tax is a cruel burden on ordinary Americans — that all across the nation small businesses and family farms are being broken up to pay crushing estate tax liabilities.  You might think that such heart-wrenching cases are actually quite rare, but you’d be wrong: they aren’t rare; they’re nonexistent. In particular, nobody has ever come up with a real modern example of a family farm sold to meet estate taxes. The whole “death tax” campaign has rested on eliciting human sympathy for purely imaginary victims.”

Other fictions that many people seem ready to believe are described as the plights of ordinary Americans who are being driven into bankruptcy by the Affordable Health Care Act.  Read the whole story… HEALTH CARE HORROR HOOEY.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/opinion/krugman-health-care-horror-hooey.html?_r=0