I don’t find that a very compelling argument. When did disease control? When did roads? When did snow plows? When did education?
UHC has the benefit of improving the health of the citizenry, which leads to more people being able to work and be active members of the community for a longer time. In addition, UHC reduces costs and improves medical outcomes, particularly for chronic diseases.
Additionally, insurance has proven over the past 30-odd years that they exist solely to make money, and spend a lot of money and time in trying to avoid paying for treatment, and millions in government lobbyists. That money could be better used to care for people.
And as noted before, a pamphlet that was not for the whole school nor directed to students as the tabloid report wanted to pass it as. The point I made that stands there is that it may had been a slippery slope all right, but not even on a mole hill.
**Bricker **et al, my apologies; did not realize and should have done that someone else had gotten in the point about various things the government pays for. Been busy with work and lost track of time.
In some ways you bring up good points, in your first two paragraphs. And if it were a matter of students being judged for not making eye contact as being racist, you would have a very good point in the latter ones as well.
But, as you acknowledge that it is hard to tell whether not making eye contact is due to racism or other factors, the entire point of the pamphlet was advice to staff on how to make students feel more comfortable, as the student may take your aloofness the wrong way, and feel as though the staff is not treating them with respect.
That the sources listed are not “mainstream”? The Post and the Times are the nation’s largest newspapers, and ABC and CNN are among the largest news networks. Breitbart is the biggest right-wing news source when it comes to online shares and page views, FOX is the country’s largest cable network, Rush has fairly extreme influence over the party and voters, and the WSJ is, again, one of the largest newspapers.
That most of the liberal sources I listed at least try to have even-handed, non-partisan journalism? Look at their reporting on Clinton, and how many stories each of them dedicated to Clinton’s email server and foundation; this is pretty trivially true. Again, it’s not “they’re perfectly balanced”, it’s “they’re trying to be non-partisan”.
That most of the republican sources I listed do not, and explicitly target an almost exclusively right-wing perspective? Dude. FOX News, Breitbart, and Rush Limbaugh. That really shouldn’t take any explaining.
So, you are saying that nearly 12% of the people who read this pamphlet will benefit from the instruction found in there?
That’s a pretty good pamphlet. You probably don’t get nearly that good a return on a dentists pamphlet explaining the benefits of flossing.
Possibly, but to be honest, I would rather err on the side of assuming racism where none exists, and work to alleviate the discomfort that people feel when they perceive they are being discriminated against due to racial bias than to ignore racism that does exist, and is being used to discriminate.
I accept that was your intent. I don’t think that was entirely communicated by your post.
So, per this cite, there’s about a 2-3% chance that someone might read, “Not making eye contact could be interpreted as racist,” and thinking, “I should be sure I’m making eye contact with people?” That’s a pretty specific percentage. How did you arrive at it?
Well, perhaps - but how does this pamphlet demonstrate that? It says not making eye contact might be construed as racist. Are you saying that it’s impossible for that to be racist? Or that it might be racist, but nobody should care if it is? If the university deals with a lot of complaints from minority students that “racist administrators won’t look me in the eye,” would it be a proper response from the university to tell their employees to make more eye contact, if only to cut down on the number of baseless complaints they have to deal with?
Yeah, Budgie! If you are going to suggest that rabidly tighty righty “news” outlets are slanted against liberals and progressives, you’re going to have to prove it!
Good catch there, Hurr! Gotta get up pretty early in the afternoon to put one over on you!
As I’ve said before, left-wing bias in the MSM tends to be more subtle than the right-wing bias in FOX, but it is still present. It often makes itself manifest in 1) Crowding of articles/news stories meant to push a certain viewpoint, and/or 2) Use of adjectives in headlines, etc. to push a certain emotional “feel.”
Examples: A month or two ago, CNN’s Facebook page was a series of one “Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ would deny help to people in need” article after the other, along with mention of a 2-year old who would be denied medical care because of not being able to enter the US, or something. It was clearly meant to tug at heartstrings.
And then there were digital CNN headlines 1-2 months ago along the lines of, “Undocumented immigrant gives powerful speech, watch it here.”
A neutral headline would be: “Undocumented immigrant gave a speech.” Simple, factual, objective.
By saying, “Undocumented immigrant gives *powerful *speech,” that adjective - like “passionate,” or “moving,” or “eloquent,” or “inspirational,” is clearly meant to push the reader’s mind towards one particular viewpoint.
The bias is there. It’s less obvious than at FOX, but it’s there. CNN and other MSM sources are NOT neutral referees.
You mean, as viewed from a totally objective, non-partisan position? Where is this position, who occupies it? Its not that “the center cannot hold”, to quote the poet. Its the center, for all practical purposes, does not exist. If ever it did.
As someone else pointed out, Wikipedia is perhaps the purest example of unbiased/objective tone today in the way it narrates current events, far better than any mainstream or non-mainstream media group.
But if we go down the ‘***feel ***as though the staff is not treating them with respect’ is racism path, then everything becomes subjective and, at that point, every single complaint is justified even if a) it doesn’t harm the person and b) it isn’t racist.
As far as taking aloofness the wrong way goes, teaching people that it is right and proper to assume the very worst about another person for behavior that is not demonstrably wrong is short-sighted, stupid and will lead to nothing but problems.
I have a general rule that I try and follow. It is hard at times, but it makes life quite a bit nicer. The rule is this: If a person does something I don’t think is right and I don’t know the reason they engaged in that behavior, I try find a rational reason* the person might have acted the way that they did. I try and assume goodwill before going to other options.
The policies like the one Bricker mentioned have the opposite effect. They assume the feelings of the observer matter more than the intent of the actor and, at that point, the intent of the actor does not matter at all.
The Oxford Equality and Diversity newsletter states:
One of those ‘things’ is not making eye contact. Link.
So, according to this, if person A does not make eye contact and person B find it offensive, it doesn’t matter why person A didn’t make eye contact. It is solely what person B felt that matters.
Can you see why that might be jussssst a little problematic?
Slee
*Note, by rational reason, I don’t mean a rational reason for the action but rather a rational reason the person may have acted that way. For example, if I come home and my wife snaps at me as soon as I walk in the door, my first assumption won’t be that my wife is an awful person or that she is trying to hurt me. My first assumption will be that she had a rough day with the twin boys and probably needs a break.
That’s not really much more helpful than telling me to ‘go Google it’. Is there a particular post among the 1400+ posts in that thread that you felt did a particularly good job of laying out the factual evidence that supports your assertion here? If so, which one?
Look, I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to provide evidence supporting your assertions here in this thread, I can’t be bothered to consider them anything more than your opinions. And there’s nothing wrong with having opinions, you just might want to lower your expectations on how persuasive your unsupported assertions are likely to be, at least with this audience.
This is probably a better thread if you want to determine left-wing vs. right-wing bias. Because it establishes the standard for proof - studies, anecdotes, and inside information are sufficient to prove bias.
For FoxNews, of course - no level of evidence is sufficient to prove left-wing bias.
And utterly meaningless. Yes, “powerful” raises certain expectations. But the “sanitized” version says nothing. Okay, so an undocumented immigrant gave a speech. Why should anyone care? Is that such a rare occasion? “Powerful” is subjective. But if the reason anyone cares about the speech in the first place is that people viewed it as powerful, then it’s hardly wrong to include that in the headline. FWIW I can’t find that headline now on google, so maybe it fell afoul of their journalistic standards as well. Or you’re misremembering.
Just as a thought experiment, what would a similarly biased headline look like on Breitbart?
“Free Speech Dead - Coulter Berkeley Speech Called Off!”
Literally the headline on the front page right fucking now.
Of course, that really doesn’t catch the scope of this. The problem is not just “Headline X is biased”. The problem is “The entire slate of news stories is completely slanted”. You will never see a Breitbart article excoriating Trump. You will never see a Breitbart article praising democrats. You will rarely see either on FOX News. What’s the breitbart analogue to, say, this? Or hell, even this?
Really? So why did MSNBC hire a bunch of conservative commentators? Why does CNN go out of its way to bring Trump spokespeople onto its shows?
“There’s a forest here.”
“Huh, all I see are trees. Any particular tree you want to point to?”
FWIW I find this post particularly useful when trying to gauge Fox news, but it should be pretty obvious what the problem is with trying to establish a long-term pattern of bias and abuse via a single cite is, right?