Do the Numbers

"How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives; how does that stimulate the economy?" House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said after the Obama meeting.

The above is in reference to an item in the current iteration of the economic stimulus plan meant to slow the spread of STD's and provide contraceptives. That Boehner doesn't understand how that helps the economy is mind boggling. Actually, I'm sure he does understand it; he just doesn't want to acknowledge it because that means he'd have to acknowledge that people have sex just for fun and not for the duty of procreation.

Helping people have fewer children and helping them avoid unnecessary health problems definitely helps the economy. Right now, the fewer children people have the less money they need and the more they can invest in the children they do have thereby making the next generation a better one. But social conservatives seem to refuse to see the link between having or not having children and the future of the economy. The more children people have during troubled times, the less can be invested in them. The less we can spend on education, the worse off the next generation should be. Of course, given our society, no one can or should be forced to reduce the number of children they have. But by making family planning support available, individuals can make better, more informed, choices that will benefit the economy. Why is it so horrible to say that? Why is there any outrage at all over a very simple way to improve the future of the economy? I have to think that the only reason there is any controversy over contraceptives at all is because to use contraceptives means someone is have S-E-X which is apparently some huge scary thing to social conservatives (who I have to assume to perform the act but freak out if they have to know whether anyone else is).

In an attempt to balance out my love for Media Matters for America, I started reading News Busters as well. However, the two sites can barely be compared. The time and analysis simply isn't invested in News Busters, and a lot of their exposition of so-called bias is completely made up. For example, regarding the economic stimulus package (which isn't even finalized), they are outraged over the amount being spent on roads and bridges, claiming that the infrastructure spending was overpromised. That would be true, if infrastructure only meant roads and bridges. From this Jeff Poor guy:

In reality, little of the $850 billion American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 proposed by congressional Democrats will actually be spent on actual road and bridge projects - the sort of things most people think of when they hear infrastructure spending, according to the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Both Poor and the office of Sen. Sessions are being deliberately disingenuous, and exposing it in their own statements. If "most people" think only of roads when they think of infrastructure that only means that "most people" are ignorant. What President Obama has been saying throughout his campaign is that the infrastructure initiatives that he's been proposing include roads, bridges, electrical grids, expanding Internet access and upgrading the network systems throughout the country as well as improving rural communities, etc. Now I'm admittedly too lazy to go through the very detailed spreadsheet that the nice folks at Read the Stimulus created to break down the current iteration of the package, but even a quick glance shows how the folks at News Busters are trying to bias their readers against it. What a crystal clear example of skewing the data to fit a conclusion you've already drawn despite the evidence to the contrary (kind of like the intel used to justify invading Iraq). ReadtheStimulus.com is created by Kithbridge, a media solutions company whose founder is an obviously biased conservative (got to Kithbridge.com, click About, and read about the Founder). But if the information in the spreadsheet is correct and kept up to date as the bill progresses, it's incredibly useful. From what I can see of the construction of the site, ReadtheStimulus.com isn't trying to push any agenda other than organizing information for the citizenry, which is wonderful. It's the folks like News Busters who take this information and—by counting on the short attention span of their audience—attempts to skew it in a way to advance their agenda.

I'm prepared for the fact that some people are just going to balk at whatever the President and the Democratically controlled Congress does, no matter what. Issues like rolling back the international gag rule on abortion are going to blind them to anything else. I can even sympathize. I used to be that way on certain issues before I realized that bad decisions will have bad results and good decisions will have good results and to be blinded by ideology or party affiliation will not make a bad decision have a good outcome. Don't believe I can be that pragmatic? See my take on overturning abortion. Everything, big or small, icky or glorious, has an economic impact.

And that includes headlines. News outlets of all kinds have a pretty good sense of what headlines will get their readers/listeners/watchers to sit, read, click, buy. There's this outrage from the ultra-conservatives that certain "news" doesn't get covered. For example, the IMF reimbursements to Geithner. Of course it was covered. I read about it in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC. What it wasn't was front page screaming headlines. That he had tax problems, yes, but not the details. Why? Because it's not interesting to the average person. Which means it won't generate a click, garner $.50, or get you glued to your television screens while you wait through the advertisements to get the story. It's economics, not bias. The news is there for those who are interested, but the headlines and top news is there to get you hooked. Why conservatives, who are all about the free market, expect the media to go bankrupt screaming headlines about something the majority of their customers aren't interested in is beyond me.

On a sad and scary note, apparently the fast food chains are in their equivalent of an airfare war. Supposedly Subway dropped their prices and so did Burger King, McDonald's, and other major fast food chains. This is bad bad bad. With the price of decent food rising and organic skyrocketing, actual food will be priced out of the lower socioeconomic classes forcing them into horrible fast food on a regular basis. This is not good for the future of the organics industry and nor is it good for the next generation. Yet another reason not to have more children than you can invest in. Note I said that you can invest in, not just whether you can afford them. Food, clothing, shelter, and medicine can be paid for and you're still not investing in your kid(s). Education, time spent parenting, offering enriching experiences, and the right kind of food, these are investing. If you can't afford on a regular basis to provide all of this to your kids, then sign up now for the contraceptive economic stimulus package. Please.