J.D. Prose – 7/2/11

This page was last updated on July 4, 2011.

Republicans declare independence from reality; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; July 2, 2011.

As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” 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 part-time 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? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) 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.

Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.

“With America’s birthday upon us, we’re going to take this opportunity to declare our independence from reality. What’s that? The Republican Party already beat us to it?”

[RWC] This column is little more than a list of lefty talking points. As for Mr. Prose saying he (they?) is “going to take this opportunity to declare our independence from reality,” didn’t that happen a long time ago?

“Arrrgh! Is there anything they can’t ruin?!?

“Oh, man, where do we start? In Harrisburg, the GOP ramrodded its awful budget through via secret negotiations that ignored the fact that there’s, you know, a two-party system.”

[RWC] I don’t know if Mr. Prose’s claim is correct, but even if it is I don’t recall him complaining when Democrats in Congress did what he claims regarding Obamacare. Though we currently have two major political parties, we don’t have “a two-party system.”

“Even as school districts across the state raise taxes and make personnel cuts and universities raise tuition, Republicans led by Gov. Tom Corbett have the gall to insist that the state budget is for the middle-class they invoke so much, but never really fight for.”

[RWC] Regarding “universities rais[ing] tuition,” it appears Mr. Prose declared his “independence from reality” a long time ago. Skyrocketing tuition has been going on for at least 40 years. Let’s look at college tuition increases since 1970 using Penn State as an example. The “Report of the Tuition Task Force - April, 2002” determined “When adjusted for inflation, Penn State’s tuition rate for undergraduates at University Park has doubled in constant dollars from 1970-71 to 2001-02.”

For the 1991-1992 school year, University Park undergraduate tuition was $4,332 for in-state students and $9,118 for out-of-state students. If tuition had increased at the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate, those figures for the 2010-2011 school year would have been $6,936 and $14,598, respectively. The actual tuition for 2010-2011? From $14,412 to $18,604 for in-state students and from $26,276 to $31,110 for out-of-state students. For in-state students, the tuition more than doubled (2.1 to 2.7 times) in constant dollars in 20 years. In 11 fewer years, that’s more than the increase (both amount and rate) we saw from 1970-71 to 2001-02.

“Corporate give-aways and tax loopholes? Check. Refuse to use a $700 million or more surplus to lessen the impact on residents? Check. Fight drilling fees on companies siphoning our natural gas and threatening the environment? Check. Demonize welfare recipients by ranting about unspecified ‘waste, fraud and abuse?’ Check. Do the bidding of far right-wing organizations and blowhards such as anti-tax enforcer/Gov.-In-Absentia Grover Norquist? Check.”

[RWC] Regarding Mr. Prose’s use of “give-aways and tax loopholes,” please read this recent critique.

From what I read, the “$700 million or more surplus” is an unexpected surplus from fiscal year July 2010 - June 2011, not from the current fiscal year (July 2011 - June 2012) with a projected pre-budget deficit of about $4.1 billion. I believe the last time we spent “found money” for recurring spending was in 2001 when then-Gov. Tom Ridge (R) and the Republican-majority General Assembly used it to increase state pensions. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’d like to think Gov. Tom Corbett (R) and other Republicans learned from that blunder. Why not use most or the entire surplus to pay down some state debt, thereby reducing ongoing interest expense in the budget?

“[O]ur natural gas?” It’s no more “our natural gas” than Mr. Prose’s car is our car. That’s why drillers must get leases from landowners. Of course, Mr. Prose refers to himself in the plural throughout his work so maybe he thinks it’s his natural gas.

You have to love the old claim the right is for “threatening the environment.” The last I checked, everyone needed clean air, water, et cetera to live. Perhaps Mr. Prose believes those of us on the right are implanted with nanotechnology that scrubs our bodies of contaminants ingested via breathing dirty air and drinking dirty water.

“Demonize?” Does Mr. Prose read his own column?

Mr. Prose wrote of others “ranting about unspecified ‘waste, fraud and abuse’” only two sentences after he himself wrote of unspecified “[c]orporate give-aways and tax loopholes.” Class, how do we spell hypocritical?

“[B]lowhards?” Again, does Mr. Prose read his own column?

In case you’re interested, “Mr. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer advocacy group he founded in 1985 at President Reagan’s request.”

“At least you’ll know who to call when class sizes balloon, programs get cut and tuition skyrockets. Education, smeducation. To quote Ted Baxter in ‘Caddyshack,’ ‘The world needs ditch diggers, too.’”

[RWC] Perhaps Mr. Prose should do some research instead of cutting-and-pasting lefty talking points. After all, wasn’t Mr. Prose a reporter at some time?

As for “class sizes balloon[ing] [and] programs get[ting] cut,” isn’t that up to local school districts and their voters? If local voters don’t want to pay for this stuff out of their own pockets, why should they be able to pass the burden to commonwealth taxpayers? It’s far too easy for far too many of us to spend someone else’s money.

Regarding “tuition skyrockets,” I covered this above.

“Anybody else seething?”

[RWC] Aren’t lefties always seething about one thing or another?

“‘They have ownership of this mess,’ said Democratic state Rep. Jesse White. ‘They can’t blame Rendell. They can’t blame the Democrats. This is their ideological dream come true.’ Thanks, Jesse!”

[RWC] For the sake of argument, let’s assume Mr. White (one of Mr. Prose’s Facebook “friends” as of this writing) said what Mr. Prose claims. At the federal level, Democrats were still blaming Republicans and George W. Bush for everything four years after Democrats took the majority in Congress and two years after Mr. Bush left office. Mr. White’s alleged comment illustrates how hard it is for us to see in ourselves what we so easily see in others.

In any case, as I’ve written before, there’s no doubt PA Republicans bear some of the blame for PA’s spending problems. Most of that is because, as a group, elected PA Republicans aren’t exactly conservative. During the Ridge/Schweiker years, commonwealth spending increased an inflation-adjusted 24.4% with a Republican-majority General Assembly (GA) despite a stagnant population and a state economy significantly underperforming the rest of the country. To be clear, this does NOT include local spending. This is nearly the same as the 25.4% over the previous eight years when we had a Democrat-majority GA and a Democrat governor (Robert Casey, Sr.).

“Is that the same ideology driving the Congressional GOP to save the economy by pursuing anti-abortion bills, fighting gay marriage, protecting the wealthy from tax hikes and defending tax loopholes and subsidies for oil companies (i.e., the most profitable businesses on earth.)?”

[RWC] As much of this piece, this paragraph is a diversionary tactic. Mr. Prose would like us to forget the House GOP produced a budget for the next fiscal year and the House passed it. Mr. Prose’s beloved Democrats, including Mr. Obama, did not offer a budget for the current FY and still haven’t for the next FY that begins October 1st. Dems did that for the current FY because they feared getting clobbered even worse in the 2010 election. Democrats, including Mr. Obama, haven’t presented a budget for the next FY because their strategy is to let Republicans do it and then demonize them with absurd claims, like the commercial showing a Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) lookalike pushing an older woman in a wheelchair over a cliff.

As for “the Congressional GOP … fighting gay marriage,” Politico just published an article entitled “Gay marriage not a hot topic with Congressional Republicans.” Oops.

Regarding “protecting the wealthy from tax hikes,” Congressional Republicans oppose “tax hikes” for everyone. You’ll remember lefties ranted tax-rate cuts for everyone enacted early during the Bush administration were “tax cuts for the rich.” You’ll also remember Democrats backtracked when the rate cuts were about to expire and Democrats, including Mr. Obama, finally admitted letting the existing rates expire would cost the average family $3,000 per year.

Based on 2008 income tax data, the top 1% of filers paid 38% of the total and the top 5% paid 59%. Why does Mr. Prose want to pick on “the wealthy” to have their tax rates raised? Does he believe “the wealthy” deserve what they earn less than the rest of us? I know nothing of his financial status, but could Mr. Prose be jealous of “the wealthy” and believes increasing their tax rates is a good way to get even?

As far as I can tell, “tax loopholes and subsidies for oil companies” are the same tax-code provisions (expense deductions, amortization of capital investments, etc.) available to all businesses. Whether or not “oil companies [are] the most profitable businesses on earth,” why should we single out any business for special treatment, favorable or not? In the interest of disclosure, I worked for an evil oil company for nearly 24 years. Mr. Prose would like us to forget who really pays taxes imposed on businesses. Unfortunately for Mr. Prose, his employer accidentally let the cat out of the bag when it said, “By the way, Texas has an extraction tax on natural gas. It also underwrites its system of higher education through a tax on oil at the wellhead, a tax that is paid by consumers across the country.” Oops again.

“Wait. We thought it was all about the economy in November? Remember, Mr. and Mrs. Teabagger? Hmmm.”

[RWC] “Teabagger?” Last week in response to a question about President Obama’s press conference, Mark Halperin said “I thought he [Mr. Obama] was kind of a dick yesterday.” MSNBC suspended Mr. Halperin indefinitely. Apparently BCT standards are not up to those of MSNBC.

“We guess jobs, jobs, jobs aren’t so important any more. Wait. You don’t think the GOP is so craven that they’d fiddle while the middle class burns just to gain political leverage against President Obama in 2012?”

[RWC] Mr. Prose got this talking point last week from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Mr. Prose appears to want us to forget Democrats were the majority party in both houses of Congress for four years (including a short time with a filibuster-proof Senate) until January 2011 and held the White House for the last two-and-a-half years. If all those whiz-bang lefty “jobs” and “stimulus” programs implemented over two years were so great, why are things worse now than when Mr. Obama took office?

Mr. Prose appears to be a believer in the myth FDR/Democrat/Progressive policies/programs brought us out of the Great Depression. I’ll let the words of Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary during the Great Depression, address this. Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in May 1939, Sec. Morgenthau said, “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … And an enormous debt to boot.” Unemployment never got below 9.9% before the U.S. entered World War II.

“Nah. That’d be crazier than a Michelle Bachmann history lesson. Wouldn’t it?”

[RWC] Oh no, U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) made some early-American history errors! Does Mr. Prose really want to go down this road?

You may recall Mr. Obama at one time indicated we have 57 states. On June 24, 2011, while speaking to the Army’s 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, NY, Mr. Obama said he “had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.” In truth, Sergeant First Class Jared Monti received the medal posthumously from Mr. Obama in 2009. Mr. Obama made a live presentation of the Medal of Honor to Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta in 2010.

Multiple times current Sec. of State Hillary Clinton claimed she and her daughter flew into the Balkans under fire in 1996. Mrs. Clinton stopped telling the lie only when CBS videotapes and interviews with people who traveled with her proved she was lying.

· Mrs. Clinton claimed she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the first known climber to make it to the top of Mt. Everest. The problem is, Mrs. Clinton was born in 1947, nearly six years before Sir Edmund became famous for making this climb (1953). You can find a lot of detail on this at Snopes.com.

· Mrs. Clinton claimed she was responsible for SCHIP. She was not and everyone associated with the program has acknowledged this.

· Mrs. Clinton claimed she was “instrumental” in the Northern Ireland peace process. The former Northern Ireland First Minister, Lord William Trimble, was quoted by the Daily Telegraph (UK) as saying, “I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around … being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.” Lord Trimble should know; he shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

· Mrs. Clinton claimed daughter Chelsea was jogging in the vicinity of the World Trade Center and had just ducked into a coffee shop at the time of the 9/11 attacks. By Chelsea’s own account, she was in her apartment 12 blocks away and learned of the attack when her roommate called from work.