J.D. Prose – 2/27/10

This page was last updated on March 1, 2010.

At Veon trial, Tesla’s name keeps popping up; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; February 27, 2010.

As you read this opinion column, keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the Times. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

In the “Right-sided” portion of his column, Mr. Prose continues his and the Times efforts to portray U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire (D-4) - and other lefties - as non-lefties. A year ago, Mr. Prose entitled one of his similar attempts “The middle ground.” If Mr. Prose continues his naming trend, I expect him to entitle next year’s effort “Altmire, right-wing extremist” or “Altmire, Ronald Reagan disciple.” <g> As a reminder, the Times also tried this recently with Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN).

Mr. Altmire’s ACU rating dropped to 20% in 2009 from 24% in 2008 and 28% in 2007. That’s hardly the voting record of a centrist and the trend is more lefty. The ADA hasn’t yet issued its ratings for 2009, so all we have are Mr. Altmire’s Liberal Quotients of 95% in 2007 and 80% in 2008.

There’s also something I failed to note last year when Mr. Prose tried this and I apologize for not picking this up until this year. The National Journal (NJ) grades on the curve and this likely explains the NJ disparity with the ACU and ADA ratings. For those of you not familiar with this concept, here’s what I mean. The ACU and ADA ratings indicate what percent of the time a person voted the organizations’ preferred position on a number of bills. For example, if you voted the organization’s preference 15 out of 20 votes, your rating is 75% and it doesn’t depend on how someone else voted.

The NJ methodology is completely different from the ACU and ADA approach because it rates representatives and senators relative to other representatives and senators. For example, an NJ conservative/liberal rating of 50% means a person is allegedly more conservative/liberal than 50% of the House or Senate. If Congress were heavily conservative or leftist, a strongly conservative or lefty person could still receive an NJ rating of only 50% using the NJ approach. This means in a Congress that leans to the left, an NJ rating can make a lefty appear to be less leftist than his voting record. Using the NJ approach, someone must be in the middle, regardless of how much they lean to the left or right. I believe this is how a person with high ADA and low ACU ratings (like Mr. Altmire) gets NJ ratings that bounce around 50%.

Why would Mr. Prose and the Times try to understate Mr. Altmire’s “leftiness” and risk Mr. Altmire losing a primary and risk losing a Democrat seat? I’m guessing that it’s because while Democrats hold a voter registration advantage over Republicans in Mr. Altmire’s district, the Democrats who vote in general elections are not “Pelosi Democrats” and would not look favorably on anyone who they knew to vote very “liberal,” “progressive,” et cetera. Remember, despite Democrats holding a 2-to-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans, John McCain beat Barack Obama in Beaver County in 2008. Further, in 2002 and 2006, the Republican candidates for governor lost by much smaller margins (52% to 45% in 2002 and 55% to 45% in 2006) in BC than would be expected (67% to 33%) given the Democrat registration advantage. The same was true in 2004 when George W. Bush lost to John Kerry in BC by only 51% to 48%. I didn’t mention the recent switch from Democrat to Republican state reps/sens because I believe that had more to do with an anti-incumbent feeling resulting from corruption and the 2005 payjacking.

Don’t get me wrong; Mr. Altmire has voted correctly so far regarding cap-and-tax and the left’s proposed takeover of the U.S. healthcare system. To claim, however, these votes in the context of his overall voting record make Mr. Altmire a “centrist” is ridiculous. Though I applaud Mr. Altmire opposing cap-and-tax and the left’s idea of “healthcare reform” so far, I have no illusions his idea of reform in these areas is anything like mine and ultimately I expect him to vote for bills that would be both a huge lurch to the left and unconstitutional. At the end of the day, Mr. Altmire is a lefty and I’m a conservative.