J.D. Prose – 3/7/10

This page was last updated on March 8, 2010.

Altmire’s seat targeted by Hopewell underdog; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; March 7, 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.

Mr. Prose wrote, “A poll of Altmire’s district by the women’s anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List (sba-list.org) found that 35 percent of respondents want Congress to scrap health-care reform and ‘start from scratch,’ a favorite right-wing phrase that means, ‘Do nothing.’” “Do nothing?” I guess Mr. Prose missed the Republican ideas published since last year, as well as President Obama’s February 25, 2010, healthcare summit at Blair House. When lefties like Mr. Prose write “do nothing,” they simply mean they disagree with the opposition. When they say the opposition want to “do nothing,” this means they don’t need to debate the issues.

The “thought” continued, “The poll (margin of error: +/- 5.65 percent) also asked about using ‘tax dollars to pay for abortions,’ although that’s been prohibited since 1976. Maybe the margin of error should be 100 percent.” What Mr. Prose neglected to mention is this prohibition (aka, the Hyde Amendment) is not permanent law and must be specifically attached to each new relevant spending bill for it to be in effect. I expect an astute political entertainer/pundit/reporter like Mr. Prose knows this.

Mr. Prose wrapped up his “column” with “We [Who are “we?”] love the hypocrisy of Republicans wringing their hands over a Senate reconciliation (simple majority) vote on health-care reform amendments. Something so important shouldn’t be ‘rammed through’ they whine. Oh, yeah? Where were they when the GOP used reconciliation in 2001 and 2003 to ‘ram through’ Dubya’s tax cuts that ballooned the deficit by $1.7 trillion in the ensuing years? Anyone with half a brain can see the hypocrisy, right? Sorry. We didn’t want to drag Sarah Palin into this.”

Wow, where to begin?

First, you can’t tell me Mr. Prose doesn’t know the difference between tax rate cuts for everyone intended to blunt a recession and a bill that raises taxes and puts us further down the road to a government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare monopoly. Those tax rate cuts also have a built-in expiration date (January 1, 2011). Do the current healthcare bills? Of course not. As a reminder, tax rate cuts are a budget process and the reconciliation process was designed specifically for budget issues. You can argue the budget reconciliation process wasn’t designed for the tax rate cut bills and perhaps should not have been used in those cases (I’m not an expert on this.), but at least they were in the ballpark. Not so the healthcare bills designed to have the government take over 15% to 20% of the economy.

Second, you can’t tell me Mr. Prose doesn’t know the difference between a tax cut and a tax RATE cut.

Third, the idea the tax rate cuts “ballooned the deficit by $1.7 trillion in the ensuing years” is BS and Mr. Prose knows it. Once the rate cuts took effect and the economy rebounded, the federal government enjoyed record high tax revenues. As it always is, our deficit/debt problem isn’t about insufficient tax revenue; it’s about excessive spending, especially on extra-constitutional programs.

Fourth, while Mr. Prose believes he sees “hypocrisy” by Republicans, he seems unable to see it in Democrats. In 2005 when Senate Republicans considered (but eventually decided against) using the reconciliation process to stop the many filibusters of President Bush’s judicial nominees, every senator from Chris Dodd (D-CT) to Barack Obama (D-IL) squealed like stuck pigs that it would be the end of the Senate as we know it. At the time they called it the “nuclear option.” Now we have nice sounding terms like “reconciliation” and “simple majority.” The Times likes to refer to PolitiFact.com, and in this case it gave Mr. Obama a “Full Flop” rating, as in flip-flop.

Finally, I guess we must add Mr. Prose to the list of lefties who fear Sarah Palin for some reason.

For more about the healthcare issue, please read my paper entitled “Healthcare.”