“Inventing A Failure”: Republican Lies, Damned Lies And In This Case, Bogus Statistics
Last week, House Republicans released a deliberately misleading report on the status of health reform, crudely rigging the numbers to sustain the illusion of failure in the face of unexpected success. Are you shocked?
You aren’t, but you should be. Mainstream politicians didn’t always try to advance their agenda through lies, damned lies and — in this case — bogus statistics. And the fact that this has become standard operating procedure for a major party bodes ill for America’s future.
About that report: The really big policy news of 2014, at least so far, is the spectacular recovery of the Affordable Care Act from its stumbling start, thanks to an extraordinary late surge that took enrollment beyond early projections. The age mix of enrollees has improved; insurance companies are broadly satisfied with the risk pool. Multiple independent surveys confirm that the percentage of Americans without health insurance has already declined substantially, and there’s every reason to believe that over the next two years the act will meet its overall goals, except in states that refuse to expand Medicaid.
This is a problem for Republicans, who have bet the ranch on the proposition that health reform is an unfixable failure. “Nobody can make Obamacare work,” declared Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, a couple of weeks ago (when it was already obvious that it was working pretty well). How can they respond to good news?
Well, they could graciously admit that they were wrong, and offer constructive suggestions about how to make the law work even better. Oh, sorry — I forgot that I wasn’t writing jokes for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
No, they have in fact continued to do what they’ve been doing ever since the news on Obamacare started turning positive: sling as much mud as possible at health reform, in the hope that some of it sticks. Premiums were soaring, they declared, when they have actually come in below projections. Millions of people were losing coverage, they insisted, when the great bulk of those whose policies were canceled simply replaced them with new policies. The Obama administration was cooking the books, they cried (projection, anyone?). And, of course, they keep peddling horror stories about people suffering terribly from Obamacare, not one of which has actually withstood scrutiny.
Now comes the latest claim — that many of the people who signed up for insurance aren’t actually paying their premiums. Obviously this claim is part of a continuing pattern. It also, however, involves a change in tactics. Previous attacks on Obamacare were pretty much fact-free; this time the claim was backed by an actual survey purporting to show that a third of enrollees hadn’t paid their first premium.
But the survey was rigged. (Are you surprised?) It asked insurers how many enrollees had paid their first premium; it ignored the fact that the first premium wasn’t even due for the millions of people who signed up for insurance after March 15.
And the fact that the survey was so transparently rigged is a smoking gun, proving that the attacks on Obamacare aren’t just bogus; they’re deliberately bogus. The staffers who set up that survey knew enough about the numbers to skew them, which meant that they have to have known that Obamacare is actually doing O.K.
So why are Republicans doing this? Sad to say, there’s method in their fraudulence.
First of all, it fires up the base. After this latest exercise in deception, we can be fairly sure that Republican leaders know perfectly well that Obamacare has failed to fail. But the party faithful don’t. Like anyone who writes about these issues, I get vast amounts of mail from people who know, just know, that insurance premiums are skyrocketing, that far more people have lost insurance because of Obummercare than have gained it, that all the horror stories are real, and that anyone who says otherwise is just a liberal shill.
Beyond that, the constant harping on alleged failure works as innuendo even if each individual claim collapses in the face of evidence. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of Americans know that more than eight million people enrolled in health exchanges; but it also found a majority of respondents believing that this was below expectations, and that the law was working badly.
So Republicans are spreading disinformation about health reform because it works, and because they can — there is no sign that they pay any political price when their accusations are proved false.
And that observation should scare you. What happens to the Congressional Budget Office if a party that has learned that lying about numbers works takes full control of Congress? What happens if it regains the White House, too? Nothing good, that’s for sure.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 4, 2014
“The Four Biggest Right-Wing Lies About Inequality”: Don’t Listen To All Those Right-Wing Lies
Even though French economist Thomas Piketty has made an air-tight case that we’re heading toward levels of inequality not seen since the days of the nineteenth-century robber barons, right-wing conservatives haven’t stopped lying about what’s happening and what to do about it.
Herewith, the four biggest right-wing lies about inequality, followed by the truth.
Lie number one: The rich and CEOs are America’s job creators. So we dare not tax them.
The truth is the middle class and poor are the job-creators through their purchases of goods and services. If they don’t have enough purchasing power because they’re not paid enough, companies won’t create more jobs and economy won’t grow.
We’ve endured the most anemic recovery on record because most Americans don’t have enough money to get the economy out of first gear. The economy is barely growing and real wages continue to drop.
We keep having false dawns. An average of 200,000 jobs were created in the United States over the last three months, but huge numbers of Americans continue to drop out of the labor force.
Lie number two: People are paid what they’re worth in the market. So we shouldn’t tamper with pay.
The facts contradict this. CEOs who got 30 times the pay of typical workers forty years ago now get 300 times their pay not because they’ve done such a great job but because they control their compensation committees and their stock options have ballooned.
Meanwhile, most American workers earn less today than they did forty years ago, adjusted for inflation, not because they’re working less hard now but because they don’t have strong unions bargaining for them.
More than a third of all workers in the private sector were unionized forty years ago; now, fewer than 7 percent belong to a union.
Lie number three: Anyone can make it in America with enough guts, gumption, and intelligence. So we don’t need to do anything for poor and lower-middle class kids.
The truth is we do less than nothing for poor and lower-middle class kids. Their schools don’t have enough teachers or staff, their textbooks are outdated, they lack science labs, their school buildings are falling apart.
We’re the only rich nation to spend less educating poor kids than we do educating kids from wealthy families.
All told, 42 percent of children born to poor families will still be in poverty as adults – a higher percent than in any other advanced nation.
Lie number four: Increasing the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs. So we shouldn’t raise it.
In fact, studies show that increases in the minimum wage put more money in the pockets of people who will spend it – resulting in more jobs, and counteracting any negative employment effects of an increase in the minimum.
Three of my colleagues here at the University of California at Berkeley — Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich – have compared adjacent counties and communities across the United States, some with higher minimum wages than others but similar in every other way.
They found no loss of jobs in those with the higher minimums.
The truth is, America’s lurch toward widening inequality can be reversed. But doing so will require bold political steps.
At the least, the rich must pay higher taxes in order to pay for better-quality education for kids from poor and middle-class families. Labor unions must be strengthened, especially in lower-wage occupations, in order to give workers the bargaining power they need to get better pay. And the minimum wage must be raised.
Don’t listen to the right-wing lies about inequality. Know the truth, and act on it.
By: Robert Reich, The Robert Reich Blog, May 5, 2014
“Scandal Envy Is An Ugly Thing”: Republicans Have Prioritized Keeping The Far-Right Base In A State Of Perpetual Rage
It’s been a few days since House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced that what Benghazi conspiracy theorists really need is yet another committee to complement the seven other congressional committees that have already investigated the deadly 2012 attack. This time, however, it’ll be special select committee, which will presumably do what’s already repeatedly been done.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a House Intelligence Committee member, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” yesterday to dismiss the Republican obsession and to make a little news. “I don’t think it makes sense, really, for Democrats to participate” in this latest investigation, Schiff said. “I think it’s a tremendous red herring and a waste of taxpayer resources.”
That’s a fair assessment, though this election year, red herrings and wasting taxpayer resources on discredited conspiracy theories appear to be high on the House Republicans’ list of priorities.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., announced that the House will vote on May 7 on whether to ask Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to appoint a special counsel to look into allegations the IRS illegally targeted conservative organizations for extra scrutiny.
The action comes the same day House Republicans announced that Secretary of State John Kerry has been subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify on the 2012 Benghazi attack and Speaker John A. Boehner said he plans to call for a select committee to begin a new probe into how the administration handled the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack.
As a matter of substance, we appear to be quickly approaching a point of genuine partisan madness. As the Benghazi conspiracy theory evaporates, House Republicans create a select committee for no particular reason. As the IRS conspiracy theory unravels, House Republicans demand a special prosecutor for imaginary reasons.
But as a political matter, the fact that GOP lawmakers are going all in – embracing a self-indulgent, all-conspiracy-all-the-time agenda with reckless enthusiasm – tells us something important about how Republicans perceive the state of play against the White House.
For example, the focus on the Affordable Care Act and the economy has obviously shifted. Indeed, the very idea of House Republicans legislating has become something of a punch-line – the GOP-led House won’t pass immigration reform, won’t come up with a health care plan, won’t consider a credible jobs bill, won’t raise the minimum wage, won’t consider background checks, won’t touch pay equity, won’t vote on ENDA, won’t create infrastructure jobs, and won’t extend unemployment benefits, but by golly, they still love their discredited conspiracy theories.
And at first blush, we know why: this election year, Republicans have prioritized keeping the GOP’s far-right base in a state of perpetual rage for the next five-and-a-half months. This is what they’ve come up with. I guess it beats governing.
But taking a step further, it’s important to remember a phenomenon Paul Waldman once labeled “scandal envy.”
It must be incredibly frustrating for the right that after five years, the near-constant search for a legitimate White House scandal has produced bupkis. Of all the various incidents that have popped up, the only thing that arguably rises to the level of a real controversy is NSA surveillance, but on this, the program started under Bush/Cheney and most Republicans like the administration’s policies and whine incessantly when the president even talks about scaling back the surveillance state.
Republicans thought they had something with the job offer to Joe Sestak (remember the calls for an FBI special prosecutor?). Then maybe the “Fast & Furious” story. Or maybe Solyndra. Or Benghazi. Or the IRS. The new Watergate will turn up eventually, if only the GOP keeps digging.
As we talked about a couple of years ago, part of the underlying cause for the right’s apoplexy is that they’re absolutely convinced that President Obama is a radical criminal up to no good, which means there must be some kind of scandal somewhere.
And when the “scandals” unravel into nothing and the various investigations point to no actual wrongdoing, two things seem to happen. First, Republicans see the lack of proof as proof – if it appears that Obama is running a scandal-free administration, it necessarily means he’s hiding something awful. Second, some in the GOP make the transition to delusional thinking, convincing themselves that discredited controversies remain viable, evidence be damned.
In other words, the lack of proof to substantiate what Republicans believe appears to have driven some in the party a little crazy.
Nixon had Watergate; Reagan had Iran-Contra; Clinton had Lewinsky; Bush had more scandals than he knew what to do with (Plame, the U.S. Attorney purge, torture, etc.). There’s an expectation that every White House will invariably have to deal with its share of damaging controversies.
In reality, however, Obama just isn’t cooperating in the scandal department. His critics aren’t wearing their desperation well.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 5, 2014
“Benghazi! The Musical”; Dancing, Shouting, Not Much Plot”: It’s Kind Of Like Oklahoma!, Only Rather More Grim
If Republicans in Congress really want to get Americans to pay attention to the Benghazi scandalette, they’re going to have to do some creative thinking. Since hearings and periodic expressions of outrage haven’t worked so far, maybe a musical would do the trick. A soaring ballad or two, some hopping dance numbers, maybe a pair of star-crossed lovers. Naturally, it would be called Benghazi!, kind of like Oklahoma!, only rather more grim.
But in the meantime, they’re going to go with a select committee to investigate the matter, as House Speaker John Boehner announced on Friday. One does wonder whether they think that if they just do some more investigating, they’ll uncover the real crime. No one knows what it is yet, but just you wait.
Or, as is far more likely, they’re just hoping to create a lot of bad news days for the administration, where the whiff of “scandal” surrounds the White House regardless of whether any malfeasance is actually uncovered. And could the fact that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time, the same Hillary Clinton who will probably be running for president starting very soon, have anything to do with it? Perish the thought.
You have to give Republicans this: for all the buffoonery of House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA), they’ve actually been somewhat restrained in their use of hearings to investigate the Obama administration, particularly compared to what they did to the last Democratic president. In the 1990s, Republicans in Congress held hearings to investigate everything short of whether Bill Clinton was flossing before bedtime. To take just one example, they heard 140 hours of sworn testimony on whether Clinton had abused the White House Christmas card list. If you’re too young to remember, that sounds like a joke. And it was a joke, but it also actually happened.
Given that Republicans despise Barack Obama at least as much as they did Bill Clinton, their more limited use of congressional investigations is rather puzzling. So maybe Boehner’s select committee is an attempt to make up for lost time. But there is little doubt that many Republicans sincerely believe that once the American people get a good look at how corrupt this administration is, they’ll be shocked and appalled. These are the same Republicans who believed that once Americans heard about Rev. Jeremiah Wright they’d never vote for Obama, and that once Americans heard about that “you didn’t build that” comment, they’d turn to Mitt Romney in droves.
You’ll be hearing the term “cover-up” a lot as they talk about Benghazi, but when you ask Republicans what exactly was being covered up, you’ll find that the suspected crimes have been downgraded significantly over time. They used to believe that someone high up in the administration—Clinton? Obama himself?—gave a “stand down” order to military units who could have gone into Benghazi and saved Ambassador Chris Stevens and the others at the consulate there, knowingly allowing Americans to die because…well, because something or other, they were never really sure. Now that we know that never happened, they’ll tell you that in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the administration was more concerned with putting a positive spin on the events than in getting to the bottom of it.
Which, depending on exactly whom you’re talking about, is true. Ben Rhodes, for instance, the author of the e-mailed memo released last week about which Republicans have gotten so excited, wanted his colleagues “[t]o underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” (You’ll note that he refers to “protests” in the plural, meaning not just what happened in Libya but also what occurred in Cairo and elsewhere.) So there you have it: an Obama administration official who is trying to make sure no one thinks there was a failure of policy!
That’s what we call “spin,” and whatever you think of it, it isn’t a crime (and it happens to be Ben Rhodes’s job; his title is “deputy national security adviser for strategic communications,” which is what you call someone when “director of foreign policy spin” sounds too crass). Nevertheless, they seem to believe that this new e-mail Changes Everything.
“We now have the smoking gun,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Charles Krauthammer pronounced the e-mail to be the equivalent of the discovery of the Nixon tapes, because it raises the vital question, “is there any involvement here of the White House which makes it obviously a political issue, the reelection of the president overriding the truth?” A White House, acting politically and concerned about the president’s reelection? Truly shocking. Someone must get to the bottom of this.
Keep this in mind as you watch Republicans get worked up into a froth over Benghazi in days to come: the terrible crime they think they’ve uncovered is that in those first few days, when it was unclear exactly what had happened there, the White House sought to portray the events in a way they thought would minimize political damage. That’s it. That’s the thing that was supposedly being covered up.
When you and I think of scandal and cover-up, we think of things like selling arms to terrorists, then diverting the revenues to fund a proxy war in direct violation of the law. Now that’s something you need to cover up! Or perhaps ordering break-ins, paying hush money, using the CIA to obstruct an FBI investigation, and committing so many crimes that dozens of officials, including the attorney general and the White House chief of staff, end up going to prison. That’s prime cover-up material. Or even the president having an affair with an intern half his age, which is something you’d probably want to cover up if you did it.
Watergate gave us the expression, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up,” but it’s really both. Only when it comes to Benghazi, we have neither. There was a bureaucracy that may not have done enough to secure our missions overseas, a consulate that wasn’t prepared for violence that might have been foreseen, and a military without the ability to respond quickly enough when it happened. You can call it an unavoidable tragedy or a monumental screw-up. But if you’re looking for crimes committed at the highest levels of the administration, you’re going to be looking for a long time.
But as far as Republicans are concerned, you don’t need actual malfeasance, or evidence of an actual cover-up. As long as you have lots of subpoenas, and cameras to catch all the pounding of tables and expressions of outrage, you have all you need to put on a show.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 5, 2014
“The Return To The Roaring 20’s”: The Typical Member Of The 1 Percent Is An Old White Man
The rich are not like you and I.
It’s no secret that income inequality has been growing rapidly, with most the gains in earnings accruing to just the top one percent of Americans. But who are they? A new paper from Lisa A. Keister at Duke University looks at this question and finds that “members of the one percent are disproportionately male, white, and married.” The typical one percenter is 55, compared to about 50 for the bottom 90 percent. The one percent is about 91 percent white — just 1.8 percent of these households are Hispanic and merely 0.2 percent are black. More than half are married, versus about 30 percent for the bottom 90 percent. They are also much more likely to have a graduate degree: about 62 percent have one, compared to less than 10 percent of the bottom 90 percent.
Gender is a little harder to tease out, because the data looks at heads of households and classifies a family with a husband and wife where the husband is the head as male, so the fact that the one percent show up as about 98 percent male doesn’t mean that some rich women aren’t included. But it’s clear that few single mothers or female breadwinners are making it into this group. And we can also look at the job characteristics of the top earners to get a better sense of gender. As Mike Konczal has pointed out, the top one percent is mostly made up of executives, people who work on Wall Street, and managers. Women make up less than 15 percent of executives, while they represent 35 percent of investment banking employees and 40 percent of employees in the broader “Securities, Commodity Contracts and Other Financial Investments” category.
The 1 percent are also different in how they get their money. For the bottom 90 percent, 70 percent of our incomes from wages or salaries. But for the top 1 percent, salary accounts for just half. On the other hand, more than 30 percent of their money comes from businesses, while just 6.1 percent of the money for the bottom 90 percent is from the same source. While the 1 percent holds most of its assets in businesses, for the rest of us our houses are the most commonly held asset. The 1 percent also dominates financial assets, owning nearly 44 percent of the total financial pie, while the bottom 90 percent gets 20 percent.
And while we know that the wealthiest have been gobbling up most of the country’s income — the top 5 percent got the biggest share of income ever recorded in 2012, and the top 1 percent saw a 278 percent increase in their incomes over the last three decades while the middle saw less than a 40 percent bump — wealth concentration may be even worse. Keister’s paper finds that the 1 percent in wealth has held more than one-third of total net worth since 2001 and by 2010 had 34 percent. The bottom 90 percent, on the other hand, is left with just over a quarter of wealth. Wealth inequality is now as bad as it was during the roaring 1920s.
By: Bryce Covert, Think Progress, May 2, 2014
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