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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (210176)	12/8/2006 10:13:09 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

So are your opinions meaningless unless supported by a "professional" poll? My opinions are my opinions. But your question of "how many" pointed to attempting to validate the opinion. Picking me, is not a random sampling technique. I might state an opinion that conservatives are "charitable" for other reasons than altruism and cite this as an example. Message 23076711 I could follow that up with a question...How many conservatives does it take to show that's true? My sample selection was not random. Even if it was random, the sample size has to exceed 1,000 for you to legitimately extrapolate it to a group. Occasionally, I see smaller sample sizes than 1,000 but the margin of error is so high to be unreliable. I like to see a margin of error on the order of +/-3%; +/-10% isn't worthwhile. BTW "independent polling organizations" are marketing businesses and they'll give you the results you want. That's a basic integrity issue that suggests that independent polling organizations have no integrity. That's a rather sweeping statement. Would you also state that professional polling organizations have no religious people in them because religious people have integrity. Further, there's an integrity issue with the client. What is it that you want? Is what you are seeking is ammunition against liberals or conservatives or independents or do you want to know what "values" those groups have? Whether you need a "professional" polling organization? How good are you at knowing the science of selecting a random sample within a given population? What's your skill level in writing questions and ordering them to minimize any unintended bias? You can use that skill to to bias the respondents questions as well..... Do you believe that the US should cut and run from Iraq? That question has a built in bias as cut and run is a negative phrase to begin with that will generate a "no" answer because people don't want to identify themselves as "cut and runners". Other "bias". He writes that households headed by a conservative give roughly 30 percent more to charity each year than households headed by a liberal, despite the fact that the liberal families on average earn slightly more. If you asked me whether I was liberal or conservative, I would say it depends on what we're talking about. In some areas I'm liberal, in other areas conservative, and in other libertarian. I don't think there should be a tax deduction for having unprotected sex that results in children. If we want to be fair, when you have a child there should be a surtax as that little brat is going to generate additional demands on the infrastructure. Why should a household get a deduction for requiring more services from the government, e.g., garbage, schools, hospitals? I don't think that we should pass on large debt to our grandchildren. Is that "conservative" these days? It's either not conservative or the conservatives that passed it aren't conservatives. I would call creating a new mandatory federal program that generates a liability far in excess of SS as "nuts". There were some "nuts" that pushed it, one was Bush, the other was Kennedy. Prohibiting the government from negotiating prescription prices is anti-free market. I tolerated "pork" back when it was $3B/year under the Democrats because it was a small percentage of the Federal budget. Last I heard the Republicans have jacked that up to $40B/year. We're getting into some serious money now. Conservative and liberal are fuzzy terms. Religious and secular are fuzzy terms. If "religious" means the individual identifies themselves as a member of a church, that's not too bad. If "religious" means the individual goes to church x times per year I have some difficulty with that definition. Geez, the WPA was before my time and probably yours. How can we know. Do people have to reach back that far to find government programs that work (allegedly)? That's a lot more current than people calling out Abraham Lincoln as some symbol of their parties association with civil rights. The WPA is a well known program, it's within the realm of modern American history and it's been pretty well written up by historians as successful. I haven't heard very often that Medicare or Medicaid are failures. I do hear of Medicare fraud; doctors submitting fraudulent claims. But I don't consider that a failure of Medicare anymore than I would consider shoplifting an indicator of a failed capitalistic system. There are crooks in the private sector and crooks in the public sector. Hud Housing subsidies. Do you know of any charitable groups that are providing [or subsidizing] housing for large numbers of people? jttmab