Pangloss

I agree.

We don't actually have to stop all illegal immigration in order to take control of the situation and manage it fully.

Unsupported doesn't mean it was thrown away, it just means it wasn't accounted for properly. For example the article says that in 2006 $258 billion was improperly accounted. That's more than half of the defense budget for that year. Given that the budget is approximated in general terms (we know roughly what things cost), it's unlikely that that much money is actually thrown out the window. But in order to realize a savings of "hundreds of billions", it would have to be literally going out the window. There's no evidence of that here.

My main interest here is actually what this says (or doesn't say) about journalism, fact-checking, and the use of information by special interest groups. I appreciate all the replies thus far. Several interesting points have been made already. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedHey check it out! Last night I sent FactCheck an email asking them to look into this, and look what appeared on their web site today: Counting Mexico's Guns They've probably been working on it for a while, so I don't think Sean Hannity will be calling me for an interview any time soon (though it would be fun if he did; I could feign conservative leanings long enough to get on the air and then suddenly start talking about centrism and compromise, scientific inquiry and the value of non-religious governance). Some relevant quotes from the piece: The report also levies some criticism for Fox News: And then, best of all, FactCheck takes a shot at trying to come up with an accurate number. Good for them.

Not to mention the $17 billion Texas is presently receiving from the stimulus act. The governor tried to turn down some of the money but the state legislature overrode him. http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2009/04/16/2693631-texas-senate-oks-stimulus-money-for-unemployment

Wow. That's an interesting interpretation of "I've no problem with speculating that increased efficiency will help." My point was not that it won't save some money, but that it won't save enough money to allow us to keep the stimulus package's social spending, instead of returning to the normal budget as Obama wants to do (he said hundreds of billions of dollars, iNow). I see no source for that kind of speculation, either, which is why I asked for one. All government programs should be constantly and rigorously analyzed for ways to improve efficiency. Anything less is a waste of MY MONEY. Are you following my criticism now?

In terms of where else they come from, as I understand it all the major gun types have knock-off factories in Latin American nations. The tracing process presumably determines whether the gun in question comes from a knock-off factory or the actual American gun manufacturer. I agree that the subject is a distraction, but it's being used by both sides to further an agenda, so it has to be exposed. In terms of the analysis above, the potential sample bias in the above quote is pretty obvious. Mexican authorities submitted guns to American authorities to determine whether they were made in America. Well that's kind of a no-brainer -- you look at the gun, you see if it has a serial number, you check your FBI-connected computer system, you see that it came from America, and you toss it into the "ship to the Americanos to show them a thing or two" pile. On the way out the door you grab a few from the "undetermined" pile and toss them in just to make it look random. The motivation being to shift some guilt north of the border for funding purposes. Not saying that happened, of course, just speculating.

I've been following this for a couple of weeks now hoping to see if the truth leaps out from one sector or another, but so far it hasn't so I thought maybe it might be fun to bat it around here and see what we can come up with when we add a lot more smart people to ponder search parameters and overheard stories. Let's have a look, shall we? The presumed fact is as follows: "90% of all guns used by the Mexican drug lords are acquired in the United States." That factoid has been widely reported since mid-march, and spiked again in the last couple of days after it was again repeated by Mexican President Calderón during President Obama's trip to Mexico: http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/04/16/obama-talks-guns-immigration-in-mexico/ That 16,000 figure is important, as you will see in a moment. Back in March that number was being reported as 12,000 -- I guess Mexican law enforcement officials have been busy. Now, hang on to your hats, because this is where it gets interesting. On March 26th CNN published this op-ed piece by NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/03/26/lapierre.guns.mexico/ In the piece LaPierre states that the 90% figure is wrong. And his source for this claim seems to be a pretty good one: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the very people charged with tracking exactly this sort of information. According to his opinion piece, BATF assistant director William Hoover, in answer to Senator Diane Feinstein's direct inquiry about this figure, answered: "The investigations we have, that we see, for firearms flowing across the border don't show us individuals taking thousands of guns a day or at a time flowing into Mexico." Apparently Feinstein chose not to believe him, because she's one of the people who's been quoting the 90% figure since that hearing. Why? What evidence has she had to the contrary? I have no idea. Apparently neither does anyone else. After LaPierre's op-ed piece was run, Fox News decided to chime in, running this piece on April 2nd, entitled "The Myth of 90%": http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/04/02/myth-percent-guns-mexico-fraction-number-claimed/ Now at first blush that sounds like a simple reprint of the LaPierre (not to mention another case of bias by FNC). But apparently someone at Fox decided to at least try and do some actual reporting on this: That's cute, I love it when Fox correspondents act like real reporters. Unfortunately there's no follow-through at all. The information is just baldly stated, with no effort to get any sort of confirmation from another source, response from Federal officials, response from Mexican officials -- nothing (or should I say "nada"). Frankly it reads like a freaking press-release, hot off the fax machine. However, the New York Times, to its credit, did pick up and run with the same angle in this story on April 14th, just a couple of days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/us/15guns.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&hp In any case, the BATF states this to be true, so let's see what the other side can come up with in response. Well, it just so happens that a group called the Violence Policy Center released a study stating that the 90% figure is accurate. (Warning: It's a PDF.) http://www.vpc.org/studies/indicted.pdf This "study" has already been cited in numerous news stories as if it debunks the BATF's statements. The problem with this study is that it actually offers absolutely nothing to support that 90% figure. In fact the study only looks at 21 cases, citing only 1700 actual guns delivered into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. No evidence of more widespread trafficking is offered. Even worse, the Violence Policy Center is a special interest group devoted to the cause of banning all gun possession of any kind in the US. They're known for making misleading statements about guns, and in fact most of this "study" is actually a rant about the behavior of the NRA and gun manufacturers. 1700 is not 90% of anything less than ~1900, right? But we already have seen several much larger figures cited in the stories listed above. The smallest figure cited for the total seized weaponry is 12,000, and I believe the largest is 16,000 (I read one story that said 39,000, and I may have linked it above, but I'm getting tired now and I think you get the point). ¡Ay, caramba! Ok, so to summarize, there does not appear to be a factual basis for the 90% figure, and it appears to be uncertain what the actual figure might be. In my opinion that is not sufficient reason for ANYBODY to be quoting the 90% figure -- they need to stop doing that. And some reporter needs to get off their duff and find out what the actual truth is. I've written to several, including the editors of Annenberg FactCheck. I'm curious what you all think. Can your googling skills produce better leads than what I've been able to dig up so far? Is this another example of our media failing in its duty a public investigator and defender of the truth? Why can't anybody seem to find out the real story here?

I wonder what ol' Ben would think of airport screenings. Probably not a whole lot, especially in their current state. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedAccording to this article Obama is declining to prosecute CIA torturers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8003537.stm

It'll save money, but not "hundreds of billions". I've never seen any hard data to support that kind of figuring. But by all means please pass it along if you find some. And I've no problem with speculating that increased efficiency will help.

Oh, it's certainly there. But I don't think anyone's trying to argue that those rallies didn't come largely at the behest of members of the Democratic Party. Well I guess that's possible. It didn't really seem that way to me at the time, though -- I thought it was a grassroots movement that just had a significant amount of support and investment from SIGs like MoveOn. Which is exactly what I think happened here with these tea parties. But it's just my humble opinion, of course. You say "Nobel Prize winning economist" as if that actually gives him objective coin when he talks about social issues and ideological motivations. But I guess that's common practice these days. George Stephanopoulos does it every other Sunday. (On the alternating weeks he asks Arianna Huffington what she thinks about the economy. Go figure.) Aren't you the one normally saying stuff like "two wrongs don't make a right" when people make comments like this? No, I think both were grassroots movements. <bonk> I guess you didn't think my dissenting reply was interesting enough to notice. I understand. It was only my humble opinion. I'll go sit in the garden now and eat worms. You know, I really hate it when you cast everything as Democrats versus Republicans!!! (Let's see how good your memory is today.)

I didn't say that you made fun of me personally' date=' I said that appeals to ridicule and emotion do not persuade me. You've used appeals to ridicule and emotion several times in this thread. Here are some examples: Is this not a thread for the question as to whether or not abortion is morally acceptable or not? An appeal to ridicule is not questioning whether abortion is morally acceptable. It is merely a logical fallacy in which success is based on whether you can render your opponent embarrassed and mute. If you've modified your approach since, I'm glad to hear it. But you asked me a question, and I've answered it, and I've already moved on from this thread. Feel free to storm the castle with some of these other folks if you like.

Good points. And thanks for the link.

Well the reason why this is going to be difficult is because there's nothing wrong with your point. It's one I happen to share -- educational spending has not been where it needed to be. Education is a relatively small portion of the budget (only $50 billion!), but there's nothing anywhere in the budget that doesn't enjoy a wide range of popular support. Otherwise it wouldn't be in there in the first place.

CNN highly promoted the tea parties as well, for exactly the same reason that they don't want to mention regarding Fox (because it shines a light on the real problem of 24-hour news networks and their motivation to create drama). Amusing. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedEsteemed CNN journalist Anderson Cooper talking about how it's "hard to talk when you're teabagging": I64Ed5iLu4M

I didn't say that you made fun of me personally, I said that appeals to ridicule and emotion do not persuade me. You've used appeals to ridicule and emotion several times in this thread. Here are some examples:

The thing I keep wondering is where was the rush to expose the influence of MoveOn.org and other special interest groups on the peace rallies and anti-Iraq demonstrations during the Bush administration?

And you two have just perfectly demonstrated my point. Yes, we need to cut spending, but oh no, not that spending, why that's just a logical expansion of spending that should have been there in the first place! Which of course is exactly how it will go for the rest of discretionary spending as well. There is no portion of it that doesn't enjoy support in some large segment of the general population. Not one bit of it. That's why it's there in the first place. Like I said, it's probably the toughest fight the administration will face.

Indeed, I've been wondering why Fox News Channel anchors seem to know so much about teabagging. Of course, they say they hire more expert consultants than any other network, so I guess we should give credit where it's due!

I just wanted to acknowledge (and respect) your opinion on this. We may not agree but that seems like a perfectly valid point of view to me. People don't spend nearly enough time listening to one another on this issue, IMO. In my view it's really the process that matters more than the result. How we go about resolving this issue matters quite a lot more to me than which result we end up picking. That's why I'm okay with abortion even though I consider it a taking of life. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Indeed -- an excellent point. That's why moral relativists love the abortion debate. There's no ultimate authority, no good or evil, no right or wrong here, except that which we appoint to the issue ourselves.

Sure, but people also write wills and buy life insurance. We also convict people for murder if they kill a baby still in the womb. Pro-choice should be an acknowledgement that it's termination of life. That's my feeling on it, anyway.

The actual budget shows only minor changes in discretionary spending, but when you factor in the economic recovery bill then some of those departments have had massive increases. The Department of Education, for example, had its budget effectively doubled. Arlen Specter, immediately after the bill was passed, began speaking about the DoE budget as being effectively "at that level" and promising to work to keep it at that level in future budgets. So there is real danger here in the sense that this will be seen as massive growth in discretionary spending rather than one-time emergency expenditure, both by politicians and by the public. I'm just waiting to hear stories about how Jane Doe, a single mother of three, is having trouble making ends meet on her $9/hr hairdresser salary just because the Department of Single Working Moms has had its budget "effectively cut by 50%".

I think it's a huge mistake to dismiss these Tax Day tea parties as Republican misinformation, or people being "duped into siding with Republicans". Did people sleep through the '08 election or something? This isn't a case of the tail wagging the dog. The dog bit the tail right freaking off and told it to go to hell. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123975867505519363.html?mod=googlenews_wsj I've seen this sentiment expressed on so many conservative discussion boards that you just would not believe it unless you've seen it with your own eyes. Sure, some conservative groups have pushed it here and there, but once again it seems that people have failed to comprehend why so many conservatives latch on to those inane talk radio demagogues. This event underscores the fact that this country's support for Obama is not a liberal mandate, but rather a highly conditional, highly skeptical majority (and barely a majority at all), that will not tolerate business as usual in Washington. In my opinion Obama understands this. But most Democratic elected officials in Washington absolutely do not.

I've never been real swayed by the "potential vs real" argument. Is there a chance it will turn into a Vienna Sausage instead of a human being? Not really. So it's kinda moot. It's GOING to turn into a human being regardless of any other action, so that's not at all like the situation prior to fertilization. That having been said, I've never been real swayed by the "life uber alles" argument either. Life is not paramount. Not in my book at any rate. A great many things are quite a lot more important. This is a moral argument, not a strictly logic-based one. One thing is for sure -- appeals to scorn and ridicule won't win this one, Syntho-sis. Making fun of me tends to make me walk out the door, not listen and discuss. And it's usually pretty clear that when people are waving their arms about and emoting that they're not really listening to what I might want to say, so what's the point?

That's not what it says on the graphic. It says it's being debated for October 1st implementation. Could it be old, i.e. from some time last year? If so then I agree that the other analysis is correct as well -- total spending for the "OCOs" was more for the current year, especially once the most recent addition (last week) was factored in. Who made this? I don't know who "wallstats" is, and their site won't load at the root.