Head. Bangs. Desk.
Reason #2,348,293,297 why Americans are so tragically misinformed about the issues facing us today. CNN cut away from the Health Care Summit today to give us the oh-so-important musings of former Nixon speechwriter and D-list actor Ben Stein and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. What? We need to cut away to get more unsubstantiated talking points?
But it gets even better. Stein launches into his socio-economic theories of why health care reform is unpopular with the Republican Party, and it's not because they're beholden to corporations and worship at the altar of the "free markets". It's not because their bank accounts are busting from donations by the health care industry. It's not even because they reflexively obstruct and are against anything the Obama administration is for. Oh no, it's because Republicans pay more taxes than Democrats do:
You asked one of the most brilliant questions I have ever heard anyone ask on TV, which is why are so many Republicans against more government interference in the health care system, and so many Democrats in favor of it? And the answer is much higher percentage of Republicans are taxpayers than Democrats and the Republicans are the people paying for it, and the Democrats are the people receiving it. So that has a lot to explain there.
There are a tremendous number of wealthy Democrats and wealthy Republicans, but as a general matter, Republicans as a group pay income tax at a much higher rate than Democrats, and I think that has a lot to do with everything. They also have a much higher rate, and are paying members of the insurance pools, and they realize that the insurance premiums are going up so that people who otherwise would not get insurance are going to get insurance and it has a lot to do with the fact that Republicans are a different group of people than Democrats.
You have to ask yourself why CNN felt that Ben Stein's opinion on anything (let us not forget that he also rejects evolution) is at all informative to the American public.
In fact, feel free to ask them directly: http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
