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Romney’s lies don't work, but more Americans do; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; October 5, 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.
“Last week began with Mitt Romney’s campaign in serious free fall. Polls were bad, internecine GOP sniping was bad, a video of him writing off nearly half of America was bad.”
[RWC] Sure. As for the video, I covered it in a previous critique. If the video were what Mr. Prose claimed it to be, you can bet President Obama would have brought it up during the first debate. The video works OK in ads, but not in a face-to-face situation where the false claims about it can be refuted. Mr. Obama knew that.
“And, then came the first debate and he ... hit it out of park! Well, Romney seemed to have homered, but it was hard to tell with a somnolent President Barack Obama practically nodding off at the podium.”
[RWC] It’s well known Mr. Obama doesn’t do well when he’s not reading prepared remarks, speeches, and teleprompters. Remember Mr. Obama’s “the Cambridge police acted stupidly” comment? Thinking on his feet in these situations is not a forte of Mr. Obama. While you can get away with this in front of a friendly crowd, like at a campaign rally, it’s more difficult when you’re challenged face to face.
“When a player steals in baseball and the other team doesn’t make a play, it’s called ‘defensive indifference,’ so we’ll call this presidential indifference. While still lying (Obamacare does not cut $716 billion for Medicare recipients) and refusing to explain how his tax plan, you know, works, Romney was aggressive and seemed presidential, his supporters crowed. So, he won!”
[RWC] I covered this in a previous critique of a Prose piece. If Mr. Romney lied about Obamacare and Medicare, so did Mr. Obama. 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.
As far as Mr. Romney “refusing to explain how his tax plan, you know, works,” apparently it’s been explained enough for there to be analyses of it and for Mr. Obama to “misrepresent” the conclusions of at least three of those studies.
The first study is one done by the Tax Policy Center (TPC). The TPC, a left-leaning group (surprise!), “is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution” and, where they felt there were missing details, they filled in the perceived gaps with their own partisan assumptions. Even so, Donald Marron (TPC Director) said, “I don’t interpret this as evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich, as an Obama campaign ad claimed. Instead, I view it as showing that his plan can’t accomplish all his stated objectives.” My work experience is it’s not unusual for the first draft of a plan not to meet all the goals. That’s why the first version of a plan rarely gets implemented as is and there are multiple revisions before the final plan gets the go-ahead.
According to The Weekly Standard, an Obama campaign press release stated, “‘Even the studies that Romney has cited to claim his plan adds up still show he would need to raise middle-class taxes. In fact, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein and Princeton economist Harvey Rosen both concede that paying for Romney’s tax cuts would require large tax increases on families making between $100,000 and $200,000.’” Both Messrs. Rosen and Feldstein claim the Obama campaign’s assertions about their studies are false.
Responding to The Weekly Standard, Mr. Rosen wrote, “I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work.” Having read Mr. Rosen’s paper I can understand how the average Joe doing a quick read of the paper could come up with the Obama campaign’s claim, but the Obama campaign is not the average Joe. Here’s the thrust of the Rosen report. The combination of lower tax rates and fewer deductions for families making $100,000 or more increases economic activity, thereby increasing revenue over current tax law because there’s a bigger pie to tax. Since there is a tax revenue increase for this group, there’s no need to increase tax revenue from families making less than $100,000. I found no connection between Mr. Rosen and the Romney campaign.
Though by a different route, Mr. Feldstein comes to the same conclusion as Mr. Rosen. Mr. Feldstein is an adviser for the Romney campaign.
As far as who won, Mr. Prose’s fellow lefties also said Mr. Romney won. That said, I’m not sure how much winning these debates means, at least for Mr. Obama. I don’t believe Mr. Romney can win the election by good debate performances, but he can lose with poor performances. I expect Mr. Obama to do better in the two remaining debates.
“It was a game changer, as political pundits say; it was a turning point. Fireworks exploded, the skies opened and the polls barely changed, and Obama is still leading in battleground states and blah, blah, blah.
“Then came Friday and the news that unemployment is lower now than when Obama took office. Of course, Republicans celebrated because more Americans are working, right? Ha, ha. Gotcha!
“Nope, the GOP’s Lunatic Fringe launched into full conspiracy mode. The Bureau of Labor Statistics manipulated the numbers! They’re all from Kenya! Find their birth certificates! Seriously, that wasn’t far off.
“Fox News ‘journalists’ and the rest got into the new ‘truther’ game just when you thought they couldn’t become more ridiculous. We’ve got to stop underestimating the ‘lunatic’ part in Lunatic Fringe.”
[RWC] You don’t need to be in “the GOP’s Lunatic Fringe” to acknowledge the data is pretty convenient for Mr. Obama and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data doesn’t seem to make sense, at least on the surface. Here’s what I mean.
First, just about every other piece of data, including pitiful GDP growth, shows a very sick economy, and the unemployment rate drops by 0.3%? Employment increases trail in an improving economy because employers don’t want to hire until they’re confident their market is improving and will continue to improve. Those signals don’t exist right now.
Second, according to BLS data, we’ve added only 514,000 jobs since Mr. Obama took office. That’s less than 12,000 jobs per month. According to lefty Robert Reich, “At least 125,000 are needed per month just to keep up with population growth.” (The final three paragraphs of the Reich piece are leftist hooey.) If we needed to add about 5.5 million jobs (125,000 jobs/month x 44 months) “just to keep up with population growth” for February 2009 through September 2012, how can unemployment today be “lower now than when Obama took office” when we added only 514,000 jobs?
Third, though employers reported adding only about 114,000 employees to their payrolls, total employment allegedly rose by 873,000. How does that happen?
Despite this, I don’t get into conspiracies and I’m not an expert on BLS data. I suspect we just got one of those situations where several data anomalies occurred at the same time to give a wrong overall view, like happens when a machine’s parts are all within tolerances but stack in such a way the machine can’t function.
Even if it’s correct, 7.8% is still a high unemployment rate. You may recall when the unemployment rate was 5.6% and falling toward its low of 4.4% (March and May 2007) during the Bush administration, lefties – including those in the press – were telling us it was the worst employment situation since Hoover/FDR.
I understand Mr. Prose used to be a news reporter. Perhaps Mr. Prose can explain the BLS data and identify the Obama actions/policies/programs responsible for the rate reduction. While he’s at it, perhaps Mr. Prose can identify the Obama actions/policies/programs responsible for Mr. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.
“NO ID NEEDED
“In case there’s any confusion, a Commonwealth Court judge halted the rushed implementation of Voter ID for next month’s election so voters WILL NOT be required to show ID to vote. WILL NOT.”
[RWC] This paragraph is false and, given all the coverage, it’s hard to believe Mr. Prose and his editors don’t know it’s false. The ruling applied only to the photo ID portion of Act 18 (House Bill 934 of the 2011-2012 session). As per the Pennsylvania Department of State, voters still must meet previous ID requirements. Below is the relevant excerpt.
“With the November 2012 General Election, voters will be asked, but not required, to show an acceptable photo ID to vote at the polls. Voters without an acceptable photo ID will still be allowed to vote, provided the voter otherwise meets the identification requirements for first-time voters.
“Preexisting first-time voter identification requirements are still in effect for the November 2012 General Election.”
As for a “rushed implementation,” voters without acceptable photo ID had nearly eight months to get their photo ID.
As per The New York Times, Act 18 “is backed by 62 percent of likely voters, including about 9 in 10 Republicans and two-thirds of independents. Most Democrats are opposed. There are 10 other states with voter ID requirements.” One of those other states with a photo ID requirement (passed in 2011) is Rhode Island. RI voters reliably vote Democrat and Democrats hold overwhelming majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. The governor is an independent, a former U.S. Senate RINO with high ADA Liberal Quotients.
“You still need to be registered to vote, though, and the deadline is Tuesday. Since Monday’s a county holiday (and what day isn’t?) you really only have one day to get registered. Remember, no matter how you register, you can still vote for Barack Obama for president. Obama. Nice Irish fellow.”
[RWC] I’m still waiting for Mr. Prose to tell us why to vote for Mr. Obama. All Mr. Prose does is call Mr. Obama’s opponents liars, racists, et cetera.
© 2004-2012 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.