Almost everything the Hamiltons say on the billboard is wrong, often absurdly so. He has a right to say stupid stuff, but I have a right to correct him.
A few samples:
NO NATION HAS EVER SPENT ITS WAY TO PROSPERITY
In fact, no country has ever done it any other way. A few didn't have to do the spending themselves, lucking into someone or something else who would do it for some reason. But the only way a nation (or a business or any other entity) can become prosperous is to invest.
THERE ARE MORE NRA MEMBERS THAN PEOPLE WITH OBAMACARE
There are about 5 million NRA members. There are between 9 and 17 million people with Obamacare, depending on how you count. For example, lots of people had insurance that didn't cover catastrophic illness, often by cancelling the policy because of some heretofore unnoticed preexisting condition. Now they can't do that. Clearly a PPACA beneficiary, but not part of over 9 million in the exchange.
20 TRILLION IN DEBT? AIN'T YOU EMBARRASSED YET?
It was under 18T at the time and it's still under 19. The debt was run up by the conservatives that Hamilton supports. More importantly, the debt is a meaningless number. The relevant number is the deficit, which Reagan and both Bushes hiked massively and Clinton and Obama reduced.
LIKE HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT, RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE EVEN FURTHER
Lots of conservatives believe this, arguing that by raising the price of labor, demand for it would go down. Reality answers: don't believe in monocausality. Countless real world experiments have been done, and none of them show the effect he's talking about, and a few even show the opposite. There's clearly some other effect at work. Perhaps it's that by raising the wages low-wage workers, demand for goods is increased enough to counter the effect. Perhaps morale is raised enough to increase productivity sufficiently to pay for the extra labor cost. Perhaps it's something else. What is known is that at least for moderate increases, raising the minimum wage does not raise unemployment.
ALMOST 1 TRILLION TO AFRICAN DICTATORS. MARIA CANTWELL SPONSORED THE BILL
I'm not sure what he's talking about here (this is a frequent occurrence). Total foreign aid to all countries is about $50B, about 1/3rd of it military assistance to countries like Egypt and Pakistan (which are indeed run by dictators). Israel is by far the largest beneficiary. Countries in Africa get about $5B of this.
DEMOCRAT MOTTO: VOTE EARLY VOTE OFTEN
There's no evidence of consequential voter fraud and none of it swings Democrat. There is lots of evidence of election fraud and voter suppression and nearly all of it swings Republican
WHERE'S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?
Obama has arranged for the release of both the short and long forms of his birth certificate. Both are easily found on line.
EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE: HOME OF ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORISTS AND HOMOS
I can't find any evidence that Evergreen State is particularly the home of Earth Liberation Front or any other such group, or for that matter of gay folk. It does happen to be the closest 4 year college to the sign.
TOO MANY IN THE BOAT, TOO FEW ROWING
I sort of agree with this one but Hamilton's solution is probably the opposite of mine. There really is a demographic change that has the effect he's talking about. People are having fewer children and living longer, which means more people are collecting benefits relative to the number of people paying. But more significant is growing inequality: more have such low income that they don't pay much in taxes, and those at the top have been effective at getting the tax laws changed to their benefit.
MEXICO DEPORTS MORE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS THAN THE US DOES
I think he's talking about Central American illegals: Mexico deported about 173,000 last year, US 110,000. Of course, Mexico is a lot closer to Central America and catches a lot of people headed for the US en route. The US deported over 400,000 in 2012, nearly half to Mexico.
LET'S KEEP THE CANAL AND GIVE THEM KISSINGER
Totally agree about disposing of Kissinger. He's caused a lot of trouble, notably the pointless lengthening of the VietNam war, including over 20,000 American deaths. I sort of agree about the Canal. The US had bought what became the Canal Zone from Columbia in 1903 in the immediate aftermath of them gaining independence from Columbia after a long, violent struggle. Panama understandably felt they'd been taken advantage of. Territorial dispute continued for much of the 20th century often turning deadly, and Carter was able to make it stop by transferring ownership (after a 20 year delay) to Panama. This is a rare case where appeasement actually worked.
UNDER SHARIA LAW, IT'S ILLEGAL TO BE AN ATHEIST.
For once, I completely agree with Hamilton, but it's not clear why this matters. There is no risk whatever of Sharia Law being adopted in the United States or anywhere else in the western world, but there are a lot of people who would like to see its Christian version imposed here, such as the terrorists who kill abortion doctors and threaten those seeking abortion.
VOTE FOR THE AMERICAN
This was in autumn 2012. Hamilton apparently wanted us to vote for Mitt Romney, which as illustrated here, is exactly the same amount of American as President Obama.
WHY IS OBAMA TRYING TO STOP THE MILITARY VOTE?
He did close to the opposite. Ohio had a law that gave everybody in the state the opportunity to vote early. The Republican-led Ohio state legislature rescinded this law for everybody but overseas military. The Obama justice department sued to point out that this was not equal treatment and to try to restore early voting for everybody, but the Romney campaign distorted this to suggest that they were trying to eliminate early voting for the Military.
addition 26Jun2016
YOU GET TO CHOOSE: MURDERS & BEHEADINGS; OR A PROTECTED BORDER?
Since the murders and beheadings that ISIS is committing are mostly in a faraway country that doesn't border on the US, it isn't clear how toughening up the border could possibly protect against them. Moreover, all the ISIS related killings that have been occurring in western countries so far have been committed by people that were there legitimately; most often born there. Illegal immigrants to the US commit roughly 1/4th the number of crimes per capita as legal US residents.
addition 17Sep2016
SILLY PROGRESSIVES, PAYCHECKS ARE FOR WORKERS
Paychecks are for workers. We should stop giving government subsides to oil companies, giant agribusinesses, and most important of all, taxing financial profits at half the rate of actual work.
A few years back, Pew did a study that found the use of food stamps is strikingly independent of ideology: the likelihood that any individual will use food stamps over the course of their life is nearly identical regardless of ideology: liberal, conservative or moderate. It is, however, the case that Ds are more likely to have used them than Rs and Is: The Ds embrace the poor, while the Rs are hostile to them.
ARE YOU READY TO PAY HILLARY'S 3 TRILLION IN NEW TAXES?
The major part of Hillary's proposal is taxing financial income at roughly the same rates as earned income, which if projections are correct, would add about $1.1T in tax payments over the next ten years and $2.1T in the subsequent 10 years. This is predicated on the GDP more than doubling over that time, so the actual additional tax collected would be well under $100B a year at today's rates. (if the economy were to grow at Since people outside the top 1% generally don't have much financial income, nearly all of these new taxes will be paid by the top 1%.
