What are your important issues? (1 Viewer)

[wardorican]

Forget the current headlines. Forget the manufactured talking points. What are the big issues you care about? Or the small ones that don't get enough attention?

I'm just going to rattle off a few. I may dig into these more later. In no special order...

1. Infrastructure investment. The major categories being road transportation, flood protection / drainage, electrical grid resiliency, and better mass transit, especially rail. Our rail systems, outside of a few areas like Chicago, NYC, DC.. are just awful. They don't serve enough of the areas. They aren't tying the Suburbs, and towns nearby to the major city centers and major concentrations of Industry.
   1. A - I'd have much preferred no tax cut for the wealthy, and use that money towards Infrastructure. I don't mind some of the corporate tax cuts (not a fan of profitable companies finding ways to pay $0 in taxes.. that's unfair), but take a little back to go towards infrastructure and mass transit, which will boost productivity and lower congestion in major cities.
2. Wage growth. Not just min wage, all wages. Not sure what the government policy could be to drive this, but it's a huge pet issue for me.
3. Technology. Finding the balance between a company being large enough to have stability/security (think Apple, Microsoft, Samsung) to have things work well, but no so large as to stifle all competition and drive up prices. Also, who controls/owns our data. If my data is so valuable, why can't I be compensated for it?
4. Education funding. It's ridiculous how much the States cut from Colleges and how little they controlled their growth since the 1990's. That's why tuition is out of control. So, it's not just the funding issue, but also the lack of forcing public Universities to cap operating budget increases. In college, tuition increases was probably one of the biggest things I tried to fight against when in Student Government. We usually failed, but I did get one win on that topic, when I realized the committee that year was being somewhat dishonest about the increases, and called them out in public about it.

I care about a lot of other things, but I'm going to stop with these four.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

And for the record, I have read articles that stated that most abortions are not related to health issues. But that isn't what you cited, and I probably should have put this as one of my important issues that I care about b/c apparently I care a lot about this - misusing statistics and innumeracy are big issues in today's society and cause lots of problems.

 

[Lazybones]

You said the article claimed that 80% of abortions that Planned Parenthood performed were for convenience. The article didn't say that. It said that 80% of the services provided were to prevent pregnancies. That is not abortion related.

Ok last time. Based on the article above (since you obviously haven’t found conflicting evidence) using basic statistics, how many of the 324k abortions were for

1. rape and incest
2. Health of the mother
3. Any other reason other than not wanting a baby

The only info is that 80% of that they do is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Well if you terminate the pregnancy, you have successfully prevented it.

please other than speculation, point me to evidence that says I’m wrong in my analysis.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

Ok last time. Based on the article above (since you obviously haven’t found conflicting evidence) using basic statistics, how many of the 324k abortions were for

1. rape and incest
2. Health of the mother
3. Any other reason other than not wanting a baby

The only info is that 80% of that they do is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Well if you terminate the pregnancy, you have successfully prevented it.

please other than speculation, point me to evidence that says I’m wrong in my analysis.

How about the fact that the article you are pulling all of this from actually has a section, completely separate from the abortion numbers, that gives the numbers for pregnancy prevention.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Ok last time. Based on the article above (since you obviously haven’t found conflicting evidence) using basic statistics, how many of the 324k abortions were for

1. rape and incest
2. Health of the mother
3. Any other reason other than not wanting a baby

The only info is that 80% of that they do is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Well if you terminate the pregnancy, you have successfully prevented it.

please other than speculation, point me to evidence that says I’m wrong in my analysis.

No, the article doesn't make any claims about why those abortions were performed. That 80% figure you keep citing was for services OTHER than abortions. If you terminate a pregnancy you didn't prevent it.

 

[Lazybones]

How about the fact that the article you are pulling all of this from actually has a section, completely separate from the abortion numbers, that gives the numbers for pregnancy prevention.

mate you reading something different then me? I copied and pasted the info above. It’s all together.

 

[Lazybones]

And for the record, I have read articles that stated that most abortions are not related to health issues. But that isn't what you cited, and I probably should have put this as one of my important issues that I care about b/c apparently I care a lot about this - misusing statistics and innumeracy are big issues in today's society and cause lots of problems.

so if all the evidence supports what I’m saying and I’m quoting the same statistics in this article as the rest of the articles on the web, why the push back?

Arguing for the sake of arguing?

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

mate you reading something different then me? I copied and pasted the info above. It’s all together.

Yes, and now add them all up and you'll see that the 80% figure is for contraception, sex education and other methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and not abortion.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

so if all the evidence supports what I’m saying and I’m quoting the same statistics in this article as the rest of the articles on the web, why the push back?

Arguing for the sake of arguing?

No, I'm arguing for accurate information. And misusing statistics is an important issue for me. You were using those statistics incorrectly, and since most of my positions are data driven, statistics and the appropriate use of them are important.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

mate you reading something different then me? I copied and pasted the info above. It’s all together.

With a focus on prevention, Planned Parenthood said that 80% of its patients receive services to prevent unintended pregnancy.
What services does Planned Parenthood offer?
This is how its services break down:
Abortion

• Planned Parenthood says 3% of the services it provides are abortions.
• 323,999 abortions were performed in 2014, according to the organization.

Sexual education

• Planned Parenthood says it provides sex education to 1.5 million young people and adults each year.

Pregnancy prevention and birth control

• Planned Parenthood says it prevents an estimated 579,000 unintended pregnancies per year.
• Contraception accounted for 34% of the services it provided, according to the 2015 GAO report.

I went ahead and bolded the heading to show you that they are, in fact, two separate figures.

 

[Lazybones]

I went ahead and bolded the heading to show you that they are, in fact, two separate figures.

i don’t think you are purposely being insincere. It goes on to list all service and a break down of all services provided by planned parenthood.

Jim knows there are hundreds of thousands of abortions performed every year for a matter of birth control, not rape or health of the mother. (Though these things do represent about 20% of the cases).

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

i don’t think you are purposely being insincere. It goes on to list all service and a break down of all services provided by planned parenthood.

Jim knows there are hundreds of thousands of abortions performed every year for a matter of birth control, not rape or health of the mother. (Though these things do represent about 20% of the cases).

Maybe, but the article you cited does not address that issue at all.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

So, I'm going to help you out here and give you an article that supports your claim, while simultaneously showing why understanding statistics is important.

U.S. Abortion Statistics

Facts and figures relating to the frequency of abortion in the United States.

abort73.com

Based on a survey cited here, only about 7% of abortions are related to health issues, 93% were related to things you'd probably label as convenience.

There are other surveys which show similar statistics. Using the data correctly would help you out in this instance.

 

[Intensesaint]

Maybe, but the article you cited does not address that issue at all.

Maybe is not an accurate word. I would say most definitely that hundreds of thousands of abortions are performed each year as a means of birth control.

Don't you agree that saying maybe isn't very credible based on the numbers we know?

 

[cuddlemonkey]

i don’t think you are purposely being insincere. It goes on to list all service and a break down of all services provided by planned parenthood.

Jim knows there are hundreds of thousands of abortions performed every year for a matter of birth control, not rape or health of the mother. (Though these things do represent about 20% of the cases).

The statistics in the article said that, for the year in question, PP performed 323,999 abortions. The article also said that PP estimates that they prevent 579,000 pregnancies per year.

Do you think that the 579,000 figure includes the 323,999 abortions?

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Maybe is not an accurate word. I would say most definitely that hundreds of thousands of abortions are performed each year as a means of birth control.

Don't you agree that saying maybe isn't very credible based on the numbers we know?

Well, I just looked it up and it's more than what Lazybones was citing. It took 2 seconds.

And no, I wasn't arguing for the sake of arguing. I see this all the time where people either misread the article, or misunderstand the statistics, and I think it's very important to correct that.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

Maybe is not an accurate word. I would say most definitely that hundreds of thousands of abortions are performed each year as a means of birth control.

Don't you agree that saying maybe isn't very credible based on the numbers we know?

If you want to get technical, all abortions are a form of birth control. That doesn't shed any light on the reasons that women seek abortions.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Well, I just looked it up and it's more than what Lazybones was citing. It took 2 seconds.

And no, I wasn't arguing for the sake of arguing. I see this all the time where people either misread the article, or misunderstand the statistics, and I think it's very important to correct that.

And here's another study...

Understanding why women seek abortions in the US

The current political climate with regards to abortion in the US, along with the economic recession may be affecting women’s reasons for seeking abortion, warranting a new investigation into the reasons why women seek abortion.Data for this study ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Intensesaint]

Well, I just looked it up and it's more than what Lazybones was citing. It took 2 seconds.

And no, I wasn't arguing for the sake of arguing. I see this all the time where people either misread the article, or misunderstand the statistics, and I think it's very important to correct that.

I get that, but what he was citing was actually quite accurate and it seemed like you were trying to say it wasn't until he(or you) found a source saying so. I know we should not have to pull sources for others, especially if they prove our opponents right. But isn't it disingenuous to attempt to make another think they are wrong in their assertions when they were actually quite correct?