Framing Versus Message Crafting

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4170

For example, the Tax Fairness Act of 2005 as suggested by Atrios would be an example of message crafting. The underlying frame would be the notion of "fairness" which is probably dicey, but may well work on this topic. The "Baby Tax" would be another example of crafting a message, but it would work on the notion of "fairness" and appeal to emotional frames as regards babies.

R. I. P.: Irony

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15404-2004Nov26.html

Democratic Party strategizing

This was a really interesting read:

http://dailykos.com/story/2004/11/21/15564/896

It does lead one to wonder why it is (relatively speaking) easy for Republicans to see the value in a top-down everyone-follow-the-rulebook plan whereas the author seems to feel that the Democrats cannot feel that way. It seems to me that is a belief, and it is not clear to me that it needs to persist.

A question is how does one present a methodology that can be carried out at all levels that Democrats all over the country will do unhesistatingly? If there is an issue with the current global mindset (is there such a thing?) of the Democrats, then what needs to be done to alter that mindset?

Abortion Rights

It appears that the GOP is trying to push through forms of anti-abortion legislation by sneaking it onto bills. A recent example is an attempt that would permit hospitals to deny women counseling on abortion. This got me to thinking three things.

1. If it is OK to permit hospitals to deny women such counseling, shouldn't that position be approved through public discourse, rather than sneaking it in on a bill? Doesn't it speak volumes about the will of the American people that the GOP feels it cannot make its case based on merit?

2. How many other things is the GOP pushing on us that are going unnoticed?

And then there is political future:

3. What would happen if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade?

I would think that the backlash would be deafening. I think that at some point, we are going to hit a critical mass of people who knew people who came home in body bags from Iraq such that those who supported the war are going to be revisiting their position in a very serious way. In a similar way, I think that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, we would hit a critical mass of people who knew women who went through some form of hell because abortion were not an option.

More to the point, I don't think the GOP can afford that to happen if it wants to remain politically viable. I think that there is a very good chance that two things would happen. First, a lot of people who have been spending their time fighting Roe v. Wade would have a lot of time on their hands and get complacent. Name a form of competition where that does not happen. Second, a lot of people who have enjoyed the rights afforded by Roe v. Wade will get really pissed and politically active.

To quote a song from the musical, "Tick Tick BOOM", "Why does it take catastrophe to start a revolution?" Hopefully, it won't take a catastrophe. Hopefully, the GOP will see that it needs Roe v. Wade in place to remain in power. Hopefully, the Democrats will get their sorry act together and fight like hell to keep Roe v. Wade in place. Hopefully.

A Frame Ingrained...

...is plainly all in vain.

Here is a recent email back-and-forth between a friend of mine--I'll call him Ben to protect his identity--and me. Ben is a great guy, but it is very hard to discuss foreign policy with him. He has three members of family in Iraq now, so it is not hard to imagine that, from his point of view, the war *must* make sense. Still, I thought it was worth reproducing the discussion here because of how hard it can be to get someone to attend to facts when those facts are not what they want to be reading/seeing/hearing.

First, I sent this to a bunch of former colleagues; the usual feathers were ruffled and I got a reply from someone I shall call "Ben" to keep the identity protected.

--- begin email discussion ---

Me:

Folks--

Well, one has to decide whether to give up the fight or keep on keeping on. Since I am tired of opinion and falsehoods trumping facts and truths, I'm going to keep on pointing out facts and truths as best I can for as long as I can and hope that people actually care about their country.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20041114/ts_nm/iraq_falluja_scene_dc

Let's remember that one man's "Den of Thieves" is another man's city the size of Cincinnati.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxingspending.html

Wow. In 2003, Virginia got back $1.58 on each dollar it sent to the feds. California got back $0.78.

I guess that you have to be intellectually superior to move to Virginia from California, so why dignify the facts with opinions? Not only do you get to call California socialist, but you get to take their tax dollars and make them yours. Exactly where are the welfare queens and socialists in this picture?

This not a one-time thing, either. While 2003 represents a peak on Virginia draining the federal tax base, it has been on the receiving end for ten consecutive years. California has been giving for ten consecutive years. In fact California has been in a steady decline in terms of money returned to it by the federal government.

The next time someone wants to tout the glory of capitalism and the pitfalls of socialism, it can be illuminating to see what state they live in.

Why does Mississippi need $1.83 back on every dollar it puts into federal taxes? That might be a really good question to answer. And why is it that the biggest feeders on the system are almost uniformly red states and the biggest donors are almost uniformly blue states?

Capitalism, my ass. Politics is more like it.

---

Ben:

And how sure are we that Reuters has remained neutral in the news over the past 10 years??? And are we sure there the situation is the same thru all of that city, when this reporter was just in one place??

---

Me:

> And how sure are we that Reuters has remained neutral in the news over the
> past 10 years???

Facts are facts. Reuters could be the most biased, corrupt, evil, nasty bunch of people on the planet. But that would not change facts. I mean, you are a warmonger, but not everything you say is stuff that is spun by the GOP. Since you often cite stuff that is spun by the GOP, should I assume that all things you say are therefore tainted?

Do facts not count if we merely do not like them? Do they bounce off us because we are no longer able to be receptive to them because of our biases?

> And are we sure there the situation is the same thru all of that city, when
> this reporter was just in one place??

How do you know that the reporter was just in one place? For that matter, how do you know that the reporter was even on site? I have read more than a few articles that have described how problematic it is to leave the Green Zone. How do we know that the reporter was even present as opposed to receiving photos and quotes from, say, native Iraqis?

I think we have enough news accounts to suggest that maybe life in Fallujah would be pretty FUBAR at the moment. Do you want to suggest it is peaches and cream anywhere in Fallujah? I'm open to facts to that end.

Present evidence, Ben. As I said before, I want facts, not opinions. Particularly opinions that are formed without facts.

Show me that the reports are inaccurate. Show me that the problems described there do not apply also to places such as Mosul (police stations burned down while the army attended to Fallujah) or Baqubah or Samarra or Baiji or Tuz or myriad other places.

(It has gotten bad when I find myself getting more familiar with Iraqi geography than I am with Illinois geography.)

What about the picture of the little kid who was shot up? Was that a Hollywood production? How do we know it is not all fabricated? Maybe it's all straight out of Orwell's 1984.

---

Ben:

Facts are ok, But the press needs to give the facts from more than ones mans opinion, O am not a warmonger, I am a defender of freedom,

---

Me:

Facts are "ok?"

Facts come from someone's opinion?

I'd like to do you the courtesy of having an actual discussion on the merits of the war, but it is clear this is impossible. Any kind of serious thinking must be based on facts.

As for finding more than one reporter's take, go to http://news.google.com. There, you can get thousands of matches for the conflict in Fallujah. Since you seem to like short and sweet, those reporters who quote the DoD or Rumsfeld or Bush often make things look lovely. Those reporters who are working independently of the DoD (like a free press is supposed to do, methinks) are talking about inability to get humanitarian aid to Fallujah and problems all over Iraq in terms of violence.

Last, and I am serious about this, whose freedom do you claim to be defending? And exactly how do you claim to be defending it?

---

Ben:

I am defending our Countries freedom by supporting our president and our troops.

---

Ben:

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing and be nothing. - Elbert Hubbard

--- end email discussion (as of now) ---

How do I respond to that? To Ben, his last line is completely serious. To me, it is a parody.

It is clear that Ben equates defending freedom with supporting the President (though I do wonder whether that would be true if the President were a Democrat) and the troops. I am unclear on what "supporting the troops" means to Ben.

Missing from this discussion is that I have read a load of GOP-spun tripe from Ben in prior emails, so I have a pretty fair idea of his way of "fact-finding." This is why I came out with both barrels firing; this is perhaps a mistake on my part.

So, if this were you, how would you try to communicate with Ben? Is there any way to produce a frame through which he might try to see things differently, or is he past the point of absorbing new evidence which conflicts with his beliefs?

And, in a sickening thought, does it take a family member coming home from Iraq in a body bag to get someone to see the war in a new light? Would it even matter? Here's hoping that Ben never has to deal with it...

Do Petitions Matter?

A petition came through my emailbox yesterday. It was in regards to W. David Hager, Bush's appointee to head the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. The petition was to be sent to President Bush, requesting that he reconsider this choice. Since I concurred that Dr. Hager was an inappropriate choice for the position, I sent it along, both to President Bush's email address and to various friends whom I also thought would want to put their names on it.

One friend replied by saying not to bother as Dr. Hager had been on the committee since 2002. I very much doubt that President Bush cares one iota about an email petition. However, I have been trained since my youth to think that speaking out, even if in the form of a petition, is an important part of the democratic process.

Given how polarized things have become in this country, it makes me wonder whether this seemingly naive belief holds much value. At the end of the day, it seems to me that being passive is definitely not the correct way to go. Protestors do not seem to be as effective now as they did 30+ years ago. There is a combination of anger, frustration, and helplessness right now that makes one wonder what options there are, if any.

Is the United States condemned to being a theocracy with the kind of draconian rule that its founders tried to escape?

Welfare Queen Red States

I screwed up. There is a more recent version of the state give and receive tax table from The Tax Foundation.

In 2003, California only got back $0.78 on the dollar it put into the country; Virginia got back $1.58.

My friend who shall remain nameless in Virginia would do well to explain why the capitalistic nature of the welfare queen state Virginia is much, MUCH less productive than those damned socialists in California.

And then there is Alaska. Alaska gets $1.89 back on the dollar. What's more, they give tax rebates to their citizens annually. Since when should, say, Illinois which gets $0.73 and New Jersey which gets *shudder* $0.57 back subsidize that? I mean, there may be legitimate reasons for it, but it would be good to know what they are.

To be fair, Mississippi's take has dropped from $1.84 on the dollar to $1.83 from 2002 to 2003, so they are clearly righting the ship. Still, what exactly is the New York taxpayer getting in return for the 20 cents out of each dollar that is not being returned to New York? I mean, it isn't as if New York is in need of any massive reconstruction projects, is it?

Why is California in debt?

Think about this. If the 2002 numbers on California are right, then if the federal government merely returned $1 to California for every $1 its citizens put in to the federal tax system, it could eradicate its state debt and deficit in a few short years. Think about it.

Using Census Bureau data, we can conservatively say that there are at least 15,000,000 people employed in California. (This is a gross underestimate.) Using a really boring understanding of the world, we can pretend that they only pay $1000 per year per person in taxes. (This is another really gross underestimate.) That comes out to $15 billion. (It would be a lot more than $15 billion. But let us be ultra-conservative in our estimates.)

Given that California gets back roughly $0.81 on the dollar in federal taxes, that means it would add roughly $3 billion to its coffers if it got all of that dollar back. One year of that, and people will start praising Governor Schwarzenegger for his genius. Two years of that and the state would have a huge surplus and all this talk of California being incompetent with its economics would cease. Schwarzenegger would probably be the next President of the United States.

This is easy math, and it makes one wonder why California has to put up with all those socialist, red state, welfare queens.

[Note: This article was fixed after someone pointed out a typo in one of the numbers. My apologies; it is fixed now.]

Birth of a blog (let's visit taxes)

http://www.taxfoundation.org/ff/taxingspendingupdate.html

I present this link as an initial talking point. It was inspired by Atrios who pointed out that there are real problems with redistributing federal tax dollars in the manner discussed below.

I posted the below information over at DailyKos but it was buried in comments which is not The Idea.

---

Think about it. Do you like the term "welfare queen?" I don't think anyone does. How do you think that the people of the US will react when it sees that the biggest welfare queen states are as of 2002, the last year for which the Tax Foundation seems to have had data to do such a report:

1. North Dakota ($2.03 returned on every dollar put in)
2. New Mexico ($1.89)
3. Mississippi ($1.84)
4. Alaska ($1.82)
5. West Virginia ($1.74)
6. Montana ($1.64)
7. Alabama ($1.61)
8. South Dakota ($1.59)
9. Arkansas ($1.53)
10. Hawaii ($1.52)
11. Virginia ($1.47)
...
41. California ($0.81)
...
45. Illinois ($0.77)

I included Virginia because a friend of mine moved there from California and likes to yammer about how California is a demonstration of how socialism fails and how great it is to be in Virginia. I have no grudge against Virginia, but maybe my friend would like to stop the socialist practice of taking money from California.

I included Illinois because it is where I grew up, and it appears that Illinois is getting the shaft.

DC, which is not a state, gets $6.17 back on every dollar it puts in. It is peculiar in a lot of ways. You could argue that it is a blue state, but it would be an extremely tiny blue state. I wonder how the numbers will change if the Expos move there.

You have to get to #10 before you find a real blue state. It's not even a large blue state. And this is according to the Tax Foundation, hardly a bastion of liberalism. In fact, if you look at their chart on this, you will find that, with the exception of Nevada (which has a pretty good revenue stream from gambling) and Colorado at #43, the states at the bottom of the list are all blue.

We have entered a battle of frames, as they are called by George Lakoff or contexts as they are called by Frank Luntz. The notion of State Welfare Queen is a way of framing what may or may not be a problem in a manner that I would think could attract a lot of attention.

I offer it up to the Democrats who, I hope, will start using it.