This page was last updated on September 4, 2012.
No hurricane, but Tampa’s buried by blizzard of lies; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; September 1, 2012.
According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. 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.
“Hurricane Isaac might have spared the Republican National Convention in Tampa last week, but it still got slammed by a blizzard of lies and misrepresentations coming from the GOP’s own speakers.”
[RWC] Well, if anyone should know about “a blizzard of lies and misrepresentations,” it’s Mr. Prose. Yes, I know that was a cheap shot and too easy.
I can’t wait to read how Mr. Prose informs us about the “blizzard of lies and misrepresentations” that will come out of the Democrat convention in Charlotte. Yes, that also was a cheap shot.
“Surprisingly, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan surpassed his running mate Mitt Romney in the fabrication department, earning him the hashtag of #LyinRyan from the liberal horde on Twitter ... where @jdprose has 830 followers and counting ... Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
“The Blue-Eyed Cheesehead took President Barack Obama to task for, among other things, allowing a General Motors plant in Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin to close, slashing money from Medicare and ignoring a debt commission’s findings.
“Fact-checking by CBS News and many, many other outlets exposed Ryan’s whoppers and omissions. Speaking of omissions, did everyone see Clint Eastwood’s old-man-yells-at-cloud routine with the empty chair? We think he stole that act from Homer Simpson’s dad.
“As for the GM plant in Janesville, Wis., CBS reported that its last shift was Dec. 28, 2008, BEFORE OBAMA EVEN TOOK OFFICE. We realize that if you’re living in Wisconsin it probably feels like time stands still, but this is ridiculous.”
[RWC] For reference, here’s what Messrs. Obama and Ryan said.
Sen. Obama, February 13, 2008: “I know that General Motors received some bad news yesterday, and I know how hard your Governor has fought to keep jobs in this plant. But I also know how much progress you’ve made – how many hybrids and fuel-efficient vehicles you’re churning out. And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years.”
Sen. Obama, October 2008: “Reports that the GM plant I visited in Janesville may shut down sooner than expected are a painful reminder of the tough economic times facing working families across this country. This news is also a reminder that Washington needs to finally live up to its promise to help our automakers compete in our global economy. As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America.”
Rep. Ryan, August 30, 2012: “When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.” The only error appears to be when Mr. Ryan said “that plant didn’t last another year.” As you’ll read below, the plant lasted one year and two months.
According to the Washington Post, on April 21, 2009, “The Janesville plant builds its last medium-duty truck and shuts down its last assembly line, completing the shutdown process started in June 2008.” Is April 21, 2009, “BEFORE OBAMA EVEN TOOK OFFICE” on January 20, 2009? Oops.
“Ryan’s Medicare truth-fail came when we claimed Obama ‘funneled’ $716 billion from the program. Oh, Paulie.”
[RWC] Is “we” supposed to be “he?” Oh, Johnny.
“ABC News, citing PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org, reported that ‘the $716 billion reduction in Medicare spending comes from reductions in future growth in the program that are mainly aimed at insurance companies and hospitals, not beneficiaries.’ Hmmm. Wonder why Ryan just didn’t say that. Weird.”
[RWC] President Obama conceded this point in at least two interviews prior to the passage of Obamacare.
Interviewer: “One of the concerns about health care and how you pay for it — one third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare.”
Mr. Obama: “Right.”
Interviewer: “The CBO has said specifically that the $500 billion that you say that you’re going to save from Medicare is not being spent in Medicare. That this bill spends it elsewhere outside of Medicare. So you can’t have both.”
Mr. Obama: “Right.”
The CBO updated the $500 billion figure to $716 billion in July 2012.
So, Mr. Prose thinks “insurance companies and hospitals” and other healthcare providers will eat the $716 billion? Cutting how much Medicare will reimburse healthcare providers will cut available services. As you’ll read below, this is also the position of the Medicare chief actuary. It’s simply a backdoor way to cut benefits and dump the blame on healthcare providers. Claiming otherwise exposes a person as ignorant or a liar.
“Factcheck.org notes that Ryan himself proposed keeping most of these same spending cuts in his own budget proposal,” ABC reported. Ah. That’s it. Not only is he a liar, but he’s a hypocrite as well. Make him vice president!”
[RWC] Since Mr. Obama himself conceded Obamacare raids Medicare, it appears Mr. Prose is accusing him of being a liar. Doesn’t that make Mr. Prose a racist?
PolitiFact.com (Tampa Bay Times) and FactCheck.org (Annenberg Public Policy Center) are showing themselves to be unreliable. In its piece on this topic, FactCheck.org says the Medicare chief actuary asserts “[Obama’s] Affordable Care Act makes important changes to the Medicare program and substantially improves its financial outlook.” While an accurate excerpt, it misrepresents the actuary’s report. Here’s what the Medicare actuary wrote before and after this cherry-picked excerpt (pages 277 & 278):
“In past reports, and again this year, the Board of Trustees has emphasized the strong likelihood that actual Part B expenditures will exceed the projections under current law due to further legislative action to avoid substantial reductions in the Medicare physician fee schedule. While the Part B projections in this report are reasonable in their portrayal of future costs under current law, they are not reasonable as an indication of actual future costs. Current law would require a physician fee reduction of an estimated 30.9 percent on January 1, 2013—an implausible expectation.
“Further, while the Affordable Care Act makes important changes to the Medicare program and substantially improves its financial outlook, there is a strong likelihood that certain of these changes will not be viable in the long range. Specifically, the annual price updates for most categories of non-physician health services will be adjusted downward each year by the growth in economy-wide productivity. The best available evidence indicates that most health care providers cannot improve their productivity to this degree—or even approach such a level—as a result of the labor-intensive nature of these services.
“Without unprecedented changes in health care delivery systems and payment mechanisms, the prices paid by Medicare for health services are very likely to fall increasingly short of the costs of providing these services. By the end of the long-range projection period, Medicare prices for hospital, skilled nursing facility, home health, hospice, ambulatory surgical center, diagnostic laboratory, and many other services would be less than half of their level under the prior law. Medicare prices would be considerably below the current relative level of Medicaid prices, which have already led to access problems for Medicaid enrollees, and far below the levels paid by private health insurance. Well before that point, Congress would have to intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result. Overriding the productivity adjustments, as Congress has done repeatedly in the case of physician payment rates, would lead to substantially higher costs for Medicare in the long range than those projected under current law.
“For these reasons, the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range (as a result of the unsustainable reductions in physician payment rates) or the long range (because of the strong likelihood that the statutory reductions in price updates for most categories of Medicare provider services will not be viable).”
Translation: The Obamacare projections are nice, but they don’t represent the real world.
I don’t know if the Obama and Ryan proposed Medicare spending cuts are the same, but how they get to their goals is different. Obamacare implements price controls determined by the federal government. The Ryan plan depends on competition among healthcare providers to reduce Medicare spending.
Finally, what did Erskine Bowles (Democrat co-chair of the commission and President Clinton’s Chief of Staff) think of Mr. Ryan? According to the Huffington Post, in 2011 Mr. Bowles said, “I always thought that I was okay with arithmetic. [Paul] can run circles around me, and he is honest, he is straightforward, he is sincere. And the budget that he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did, by $4 trillion … The President came out with his own plan and the President, as you remember, came out with a budget, and I don’t think anybody took that budget very seriously. The Senate voted against it 97 to nothing.” Obviously Mr. Bowles didn’t support Mr. Ryan’s proposal, but it’s clear he respected Mr. Ryan. As recently as August 2012, Mr. Bowles again indicated his respect for Mr. Ryan. According to The Daily Caller, Mr. Bowles said, “I like him. I think he’s smart. I think he’s intellectually curious. I think he is honest, straightforward and sincere. And I think he does have a serious budget out there — it doesn’t mean I agree with it by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m not going to act like I don’t like him or that I don’t have some real respect for him.”
“For his ‘lie de resistance’ about Obama, Ryan said, ‘He created a new bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanks them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.’”
[RWC] Though most of the article tries to bail him out a bit by claiming his budget proposals contained some ideas from the commission, The New York Times reported (2/27/12) Mr. Obama’s attack on Mr. Ryan “came just a few months after the president had opted not to endorse the recommendations of a deficit commission he had created in hopes of brokering a bold, bipartisan deficit deal.” I guess the NYT lied too.
“Ryan, though, left out the pesky little detail that he was on that commission and VOTED AGAINST ITS RECOMMENDATIONS. So, in essence, it was Ryan who did nothing, not the president.”
[RWC] Mr. Ryan’s “no” vote didn’t kill the proposal, approved 11-7 by the commission. To force Congress to vote on the proposal required at least 14 “yes” votes, but Mr. Obama could still have endorsed and presented it to Congress. Four of the “no” votes were by lefties, including Andy Stern (appointed by Mr. Obama and former president of the Service Employees International Union). Politifact.com reported “The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, established by presidential order in February 2010, included 18 members, split between Democratic and Republican appointees.” This is untrue. After appointing the co-chairs, three of Mr. Obama’s four appointees were clear leftists and the fourth was a Republican who had been pretty chummy with Mr. Obama and his administration. The remaining 12 seats were evenly distributed among Democrat and Republican members of Congress. The non-voting executive director, also appointed by Mr. Obama, was also a Democrat. In the final vote, congressional members of the commission were split 6-6 but not along party lines. The three Republican senators voted “yes” along with three Democrats while the three Republican representatives voted “no” along with three Democrats.
Politifact.com also quoted a rep. of Taxpayers for Common Sense as saying “The House Republicans voted as a bloc -- they were the only ones to vote as a bloc, and I think that was its undoing.” As noted above, the three Republican senators on the commission “voted as a bloc” in favor.
According to Roll Call, Mr. Ryan teamed with fellow member Alice Rivlin (President Clinton’s budget director) to propose a solution for healthcare spending reform. To claim someone “did nothing” because they voted “no” is wrong.
Should Mr. Ryan have reminded us of his membership on the commission? Sure, along with explaining the legitimate reasons for his vote as he did in 2010. To claim, however, Mr. Ryan scuttled the proposal is false. If Mr. Obama liked the proposal, there was nothing to stop him from endorsing it. That’s far more control than Mr. Ryan had.
“Other than being riddled with lies and distortions, it was a beautiful speech. On, Wisconsin!”
[RWC] Even if it were true, how does it differ from a Prose article? I wonder how much Mr. Prose pays to cool and heat that glass house of his.
12TH MEN
“Television ads have started running in the NEW 12th Congressional District race, which means we’re all in for a long, long two months of TV watching. Man, we hope they leave ESPN alone.
“GOPer Keith Rothfus, who recently emigrated from Edgeworth to Sewickley so he can actually live in the 12th CD, has an ad running that we call ‘The Regular Guy,’ which shows Rothfus doing, well, regular stuff. We’re very creative, aren’t we?
“‘He mows his lawn. He takes his kids to school. He fixes things,’ the booming cartoonish announcer voice tells us. ‘He’s a regular guy, and he’s running for Congress.’ It ends with Rothfus, an attorney, holding a spatula in front of his grill, something we do all the time much to our wife’s chagrin.”
[RWC] Here’s the Rothfus commercial Mr. Prose mentioned.
“Troops for Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Critz, of course, weren’t impressed. ‘If you have to tell people you’re a regular guy, you’re not a regular guy,’ quipped a Critz Insider.”
[RWC] Hmm, could the ad have anything to do with the fact Democrat ads (See below.) using an ominous tone portray Mr. Rothfus as a “millionaire Wall Street lawyer?”
“Rothfus Faithful, though, said the ad was meant to be lighthearted and geared to, above all else, getting Keith’s name out to voters, a goal we endorse as an amateur political consultant.
“Keith’s ad also punches back against the ‘millionaire’ tag attached to his name by Team Critz and a House Majority PAC ad labeling him a ‘millionaire Wall Street lawyer.’”
[RWC] Here’s the Critz commercial Mr. Prose mentioned.
“While he didn’t deny the ‘millionaire’ description, Rothfus said he grew up middle class and worked his way through college, and his parents are on Medicare. Whatev, as the kids say, but is he a dreaded ‘Wall Street lawyer?’”
[RWC] Have you noticed being a millionaire is only an issue for Democrats when the millionaire is a Republican? If the person is a Democrat like Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), President Obama (D), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), any of the Kennedys (D), and so on, being wealthy is never an issue. The same holds true for “Wall Street lawyers.”
One last thing. Do you know where Mr. Obama is scheduled to give his nomination acceptance speech? At Bank of America Stadium. I have no problem with the venue, but aren’t Democrats constantly bashing banks like BoA?
“Rothfus said he was last on Wall Street in 1980 as a tourist and only did some software licensing work for the Bank of New York-Mellon. ‘By what definition am I a Wall Street lawyer?’ Rothfus asked.
“Why, the political definition, Keith. Everybody knows that.”
© 2004-2012 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.