The Big Think

I mean, really. Really?

Look at this photo:

Take a second look. How many people would you estimate are there? I routinely see 2200 people in a single room (the main theater in Waco Hall on the Baylor campus), so I have a fairly good idea of what that many people look like. I’m not good at estimating really big numbers, but even I can see that this crowd is somewhere between, oh, 10,000 and 15,000 people. Possibly more, but I’d lowball it to be on the safe side. I’ll be extremely safe and call it 8,000. But there’s lowballing, then there’s lowballing.

How many were reported being here by CNN?

Dozens. Yup. Dozens. They also said “hundreds”. In fact, CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield’s language was a bit weird as she specifically said “Hundreds of people, at least dozens of people – we haven’t gotten a count of how many people turned out there.”

huh?

Look, I can understand someone saying a thousand people. After all, it’s hard to estimate when you don’t have the God’s eye blimp-cam view. But dozens? Hundreds? As my friend says: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I’m not ready to go all conspiracy theory on this one, It may have been a slip of the tongue (although the error was never corrected), but I will say that whoever confused this rally with a Bach family reunion needs a new pair of glasses and some tutoring by a certain Muppet.

Just so I’m clear, I’m not getting all righteously-indignant about this one. I think it’s more a case of misspeaking. Still, it’s funny, and it fits the meme of the media downplaying the importance of the massive public rallies that have been taking place (witness the fact that Time magazine didn’t include a single picture of the Tea Parties in their “2009 in Review” issue). I think miss Whitfield is a bit embarrassed tonight. There are plenty of other things to get exercised about than a badly estimated number. Of course, its very possible that the she wasn’t looking at the video as she improvised on the story. It just kind of makes me laugh in a duuuuuuhhhh sort of way.

By the way, the official number was 20,000.

The federal government collects about $2.5 trillion in total revenues a year. That is from all sources of taxes and fees. Think of that as an individual’s annual gross salary. The debt owed by the government can be looked at as a great big mortgage. Thus, we have a family that has a mortgage 44.8 times greater than gross salary. That would be the equivalent of a man earning $50,000 gross salary having a mortgage of $2,240,000! An interest-only mortgage at 6% would require the family to pay annual interest of $134,000 per year. A conventional mortgage would be much higher. The example becomes even more ludicrous when one recognizes that taxes, food, clothing, savings, etc. all have to be subtracted from gross pay to determine what is left for debt service.

When we shift back to the federal government, the family analogy becomes even more absurd. The federal government has nothing left from their “gross pay.” Their “living expenses” actually exceeded their gross pay by $1.2 trillion last fiscal year. That is, they spent almost 50% more than they made. Comparable behavior is budgeted for the next ten years.

Meanwhile our leaders continue to fiddle by in the nice pretty flickering light. Read the whole thing. Depressing.

GOP members propose an amendment to the health care bill. Specifically, it is

“an amendment that would require the president, vice-president, members of Congress, political appointees and congressional staff to get their federal health benefits through the soon-to-be-created health insurance exchanges.”

(link) The specifics of the bill contain language that exempt our leaders from the new legislation.

“President Obama has publicly advertised that his reforms would give members of the public the same coverage available to Members of Congress,” reads a GOP summary of the Grassley measure. “This amendment would ensure that he, his successors, and all his appointed political officials would also have the same coverage members of the public enrolled in the Exchange receive.”

Democratic leaders are expected to vote no on the proposed amendment.

Yes, it is political theater on the part of the GOP, but even granting that, I can’t imagine any American disagreeing with the principal of the amendment. Put aside the odd diplomatic immunity law and park-where-you-want quirks, I am trying to understand why it is in any way acceptable for our leaders to be exempt from the laws that they write for the citizens.