One of the joys of the internet is that you are no longer limited to the tastes and bias of a media elite.  One can focus on the stories, issues and perspectives that interest you and not what a selected few decides YOU should know or be exposed to.

As bloggers post and read other bloggers we create an exchange or a market of stories often neglected by any mainstream source.  Sometimes these stories get so much traction that the MSM can no longer neglect them and they become widely disseminated.

But our postings certainly reflect our own (my own) biases.  I am biased against unions- I think they are largely lying thugs concerned with their own power and self interest.  They increasingly unable to sell their value in the private market, and thus they resort to political power to force the public to support their  bloated benefits. Their violent protests to restricting their political  power is the  last gasp of a dying institution.

I am also biased against crony capitalism- businesses and industry that rely more on political favoritism than market effectiveness and creative energy.

I believe that government solutions tend to create additional problems that end up dwarfing the problem they tried to solve. The relationship we often call public private partnerships is similar to the relationship between a pimp and a prostitute although it depends on the situation to determine which party is the pimp.

I find that most thinkers do not fit neatly into a simplistic binary political labeling system.  Partisan hacks defy thinking because they place greater emphasis on who said what than the content itself.

I am a main street capitalist and a global realist.  There is evil that must be confronted.  In politics and particularly in foreign affairs, the perfect is the enemy of the good. We reject good solutions because of their short comings and end up with problems perpetuated by inactions and short term pragmatism.

Yes I have my biases. I believe my biases are justified by extensive reading, thought, perspective and personal experience. I am sure others who disagree with me believe their biases are justified in the same way.

I just think they are wrong.

Take this brief 11 question test at Pew Research on your knowledge of the news:  Pew Research Interactive

I got 10 out of 11 correct. I missed the one about our greatest Federal Expense.

A few observations:

1. I read no newspapers, watch very little news on TV, rarely listen to the news on the radio.  These media sources have become irrelevant to being informed.

2. The fact that 18-29 year olds are the poorest informed is not really shocking,  but it does raise the question of what drives their vote.

3.  Jon Stewart claimed that Fox Viewers were the worst informed but that was based on a very biased poll.  I would be interested to see how Fox Viewers would rate in this poll.

tips to Blond Sagacity.

“Perhaps the most fertile source of misunderstandings about incomes has been the widespread practice of confusing statistical categories with flesh-and-blood human beings. Many statements have been made in the media and in academia, claiming that the rich are gaining not only larger incomes but a growing share of all incomes, widening the income gap between people at the top and those at the bottom. Almost invariably these statements are based on confusing what has been happening over time in statistical categories with what has been happening over time with actual flash-and-blood people.”

” Although such discussions have been phrased in terms of people, the actual empirical evidence cited has been about what has been happening over time to statistical categories- and that turns out to be the direct opposite of what has happened over time to flesh-and-blood human beings, most of whom move from one category to another over time. In terms of statistical categories, it is indeed true that both the amount of income and the proportion of income received by those in the top 20 percent bracket have risen over the years, widening the gap between the top and bottom quintiles. But U.S. Treasury Department data, following specific individuals over time from their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service, show that in terms of people, the incomes of those particular taxpayers who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1996 rose 91 percent by 2005, while the incomes of those particular taxpayers who were in the top 20 percent in 1996 rose by only 10 percent in 2005- and those in the top 5 percent and top one percent actually declined.”

From Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell

Immediately after 9/11 the media estimated a death toll of 40,000.  It came closer to 3,000.

After Katrina hit we heard stories of the National Guard needing 25,000 body bags.  The real need was closer to 1,000.

These were epic tragedies and I do not mean to minimize them, but the media should have some sense of repsonsibility to be realistic in their reporting.

In this thorough article in National Review, Lou Dolinar shows how the media again grossly exaggerated in reporting  the effects of the Gulf oil spill.

Excerpt from Our Real Gulf Disaster:

With the nation and its leaders looking for facts, we got instead a massive plume of apocalyptic mythology and threats of Armageddon. In the Gulf, this misinformation has cost jobs, lowered property values, and devastated tourism, and its effects on national policy could be deep and far-reaching.

Read the whole article.

Mark Constantian writes in the Wall Street Journal Where U.S. Health Care Ranks Number One (1/7/09)

excerpts

The WHO believes that we could have done better because we do not have universal coverage. What apparently does not matter is that our population has universal access because most physicians treat indigent patients without charge and accept Medicare and Medicaid payments, which do not even cover overhead expenses. The WHO does rank the U.S. No. 1 of 191 countries for “responsiveness to the needs and choices of the individual patient.” Isn’t responsiveness what health care is all about?

The Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology have been awarded to more Americans than to researchers in all other countries combined. Eight of the 10 top-selling drugs in the world were developed by U.S. companies. The U.S. has some of the highest breast, colon and prostate cancer survival rates in the world. And our country ranks first or second in the world in kidney transplants, liver transplants, heart transplants, total knee replacements, coronary artery bypass, and percutaneous coronary interventions.

We have the shortest waiting time for nonemergency surgery in the world; England has one of the longest. In Canada, a country of 35 million citizens, 1 million patients now wait for surgery and another million wait to see specialists.

So what does this money buy? Certainly some goes to inefficiencies, corporate profits, and costs that should be lowered by professional liability reform and national, free-market insurance access by allowing for competition across state lines. But the majority goes to a long list of advantages that American citizens now expect: the easiest access, the shortest waiting times the widest choice of physicians and hospitals, and constant availability of health care to elderly Americans. What we need now is insurance and liability reform—not health-care reform.

HKO comment- If I have learned anything over the years it is to get the whole story. Unfortunately  unwarranted criticisms, incomplete and slanted data, and inappropriate statistics are repeated by a compliant media and morons like Michale Moore so much that an unsuspecting public becomes overwhelmed with half truths and misinformation. If our heath care is so bad then why do so many people oppose the reform that is passing through our Congress?