You Do Trust Us, Don’t You?

 

Here is President Barack Obama holding forth in an ad released in September: “Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he’d double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.”

That is the core message of the Obama-Biden campaign. Mr. Obama has repeated the claim often, and Vice President Joe Biden took it for a ride around the block in his recent debate with Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Unfortunately, the theory recently collided with fact checker for the Washington Post Glenn Kessler, not a conservative or a member in good standing of the much abused and misunderstood Tea Party movement, who awarded the claim three out of four “Pinocchios,” which places the statement alongside such whoppers as “the earth is flat” and “Vice President Joe Biden is a gentleman.”

Citations to support the claim are missing, and the veracity of the proposition rests upon a single column written by Ezra Klein, the paper’s liberal blogger who told Mr. Kessler, “I am absolutely not saying the Bush tax cuts led to the financial crisis. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of that.”

In an attempt to bury the lie, Mr. Kessler wrote, “It is time for the Obama campaign to retire this talking point, no matter how much it seems to resonate with voters.”

Good luck with that. It was British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who said there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. One suspects the Obama-Biden trope falls into the category of damned lies that cannot be withdrawn without causing a campaign to collapse upon itself. Inconvenient lies are easily thrown overboard, but a convenient lie that forms the main joist of a political campaign must be defended to the death. And didn’t some politician or other point out that if a lie is large and audacious enough, it would survive the attacks upon it  of angels, science and fact checkers?    

If former President George Bush did not slay the economy with tax cuts, who killed Cock Robin? What was the precipitating cause of crisis so often lamented by Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden?

It was, many non-partisan writers are coming to believe, the mortgage crisis. This writer said months ago that if Mr. Obama had from the beginning of his first term in office addressed himself to settling the mortgage crisis, he would today be undefeatable. A healthy housing market drives the entire U.S. economy, and an effective solution to the mortgage crisis would have been very painful indeed. The housing bubble was caused by politicians in Washington who degraded mortgage banking standards so that those who could not afford mortgages might never-the-less own houses. In Canada, where banking standards remained rational, the housing industry remained solvent.

Instead of addressing himself to restoring the lending integrity of banks, Mr. Obama reached for the same brass ring that tempted progressives a hundred years ago during the election of 1912 and pushed through a Congress dominated by Democrats the holy grail of progressivism – universal health care, Obamacare being a giant step in the direction of universal health care. That attempt is now crashing on the rocks of reality. The U.S. economy simply is not healthy enough to sustain the cost of Mr. Obama’s unaffordable “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” a poorly conceived half-way measure designed to move the nation towards a government run health care system.

Other government controlled and administered systems – Social Security, than which there is nothing less secure, Medicare and Medicaid -- are heading towards collapse if nothing is done to make them solvent for future generations. Solutions that might make these systems solvent put forward by Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, among others, have been laughed to scorn by the easily amused Mr. Biden, who continues to disown problems he and the president should have accepted as their own long ago. The very first step in problem solving is to own the problem before it owns you.

We are living in a time when problems put the saddle on men and ride them until they drop. In Europe, politicians are already hagridden. Excessive spending and unaffordable entitlements have bankrupted first Greece, then Spain, then Italy, and the governments of impecunious countries, former democracies, have now been delivered into the unforgiving hands of technocrats and international bankers. All this is happening in real time, right under our noses. And yet here, just as in Europe, we are following the path of least resistance towards a fatal fall dramatically pictured in our media and on our television screens.

It ought to be a cause of great concern that our politicians cannot see the problems so apparent to the enemies of our country.  The response of the United States to the murder of an ambassador and the destruction of a consulate in Benghazi is a near triumph of rhetoric over reality.

At first, the attack on the embassy was attributed to a spontaneous protest occasioned by a film that insulted the prophet Mohammed, a tissue of lies. On the second day following the organized attack on the embassy by a terrorist network supposedly disabled by the killing of Osama bin Ladin, intelligence officials knew there was no protest rally at the embassy -- none. Nice try. At a vice presidential debate with the excessively polite Mr. Ryan, the vastly amused Mr. Biden, three corpses sitting on his chest, pointed to faulty intelligence as the culprit that prevented him and the president from reinforcing an embassy under constant threat from terrorists for months, a four Pinocchios stretcher. Pity Mr. Biden couldn’t put the blame on former President George Bush. But in Mr. Bush’s absence, intelligence services would serve the same purpose.

Trust my rhetoric over the reality that seeps through your senses into your brain, Mr. Biden implored an audience that saw him interrupt Mr. Ryan about eighty times, a calculated filibuster designed to blunt the force of Mr. Ryan’s assertions. You do trust us, Mr. Biden asked the voting public, don’t you?

Well, don’t you?

Actuarial Doubts

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” – Benjamin Disraeli

Actuarial figures supporting claimed budget savings in Plan A2 -- son of Plan A, a slightly revised budget that Governor Dannel Malloy months ago submitted to the General Assembly for approval -- have been called into doubt for some time.

The Malloy budget approved by the Democratic controlled General Assembly early in May, for instance, contained a savings line that could not be actuarially verified. The Malloy budget simply assumes a savings of $270 million arising from a commitment from state workers to devise ways of saving money.

When Republican leaders -- who have been successfully cut out of the budget negotiation process by Mr. Malloy and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly – questioned the assumptions that underpinned the projected savings, Malloy communications director Colleen Flanagan intemperately responded that the figures had been verified by their actuaries and they were accurate – “period!”

But there are few periods in politics, and one budget exile, House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, has now bravely questioned what Mr. Disraeli most certainly would call a damned lie.

Period? Seems more like a question mark, Mr. Cafero mused after a letter written by Malloy budget chief Ben Barnes began to circulate through the political grapevine.

Mr. Cafero noted  that “Office of Policy and Management (OPM) Secretary Ben Barnes contradicted claims that savings included in the $1.6 billion state employee union concessions package had all been verified by actuaries” in a letter Mr. Barns sent to State Senator Andrew Roraback.”

In his letter to Mr. Roraback, Mr. Barnes sought to “correct what must be a misunderstanding about Ms. Flanagan's statement.”

The review conducted by Mr. Malloy’s actuaries, Mr. Barnes wrote, centered upon “the health benefit plan design changes, and the changes to plan design and eligibility for the State Employee Retirement System (SERS)… Other savings in the agreement reflect commitments between SEBAC and the State to identify operational, contractual, and efficiency‐related savings in the areas of technology, healthcare contracting (under the terms of the existing plan of benefits), and other operational savings. These particular commitments to achieve savings were not actuarially determined, because they are not savings of an actuarial nature [Italics mine]. Nevertheless, they reflect a commitment between the State and our employees, and more importantly between the Governor and the people of Connecticut, to reduce the cost of government this year and into the future.”

Noting that Mr. Barnes “rather clearly states only two areas of the plan were verified" by Malloy hired actuaries, Mr. Cafero offers a “period” of his own: “This means two things, and they are both important: First, the governor's office has been less than factual in their wholesale assurances of actuarial reviews. Second, the question still persists - how will we achieve these projected savings, and what will we do if they can't be realized?”

The Democratic controlled General Assembly last May approved over the protestations of Republicans a budget that was dependent upon an affirmation from SEBAC, the union coalition authorized to negotiate contracts with the Malloy administration, that never materialized. State union worker rejected Plan A. Leaders of SEBAC, yielding to strong suggestions made by the Malloy administration, then unilaterally changed union by-laws to insure that a future vote would not incommode Mr. Malloy, his administration or supportive Democratic leaders in the General Assembly – principally Senate President Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, who recently announced he is running for the U.S. House in the 5th District.

And now, on the eve of what some consider a fixed vote, rank and file union members are poised to affirm a budget that relies on savings that cannot be verified by the General Assembly’s own Office of Fiscal Analysis.

Responding to Mr. Cafero’s concerns, Malloy senior advisor Roy Occhiogrosso was every bit as terse as Ms. Flanagan. None of Mr. Malloy’s agents can rightly be accused script deficiencies; they are always on the same page.

“Let's be honest,” Mr. Occhiogrosso retorted, “What's bothering Rep. Cafero and his Republican colleagues is that if all this comes to pass it'll be a Democratic Governor who achieves this historic restructuring of the relationship between the state and its workforce, not a Republican. It's sour grapes on their part - nothing more, nothing less.”

Period.

Ads

In 1835, Benjamin Disraeli, then a young man on the cusp of a promising political career, achieved anonymity. Under cover of a pseudonym, Disraeli began to belabor his political opponents in a series of columns written for The Morning Post, a political journal of the day.

Something of a dandy – Disraeli’s manner of dressing easily might have brought a blush to the cheek of Lady Gaga – the future prime minister of Britain and accomplished novelist had a way with words. He was, without question, one of the most captivating rhetoricians of his time.

John Campbell, later to become the first Baron Campbell, was, Disraeli wrote, “a base-born Scotchman, a son of the manse, that course Pict,” a “booing, fawning, jobbing progeny of haggis and cockaleekie.” Daniel O’Connell, a Member of Parliament for Dublin, one of Disraeli’s most persistent critics, was “an incendiary and a traitor.” Not to be bested, O’Connell replied in kind that Disraeli was “a living liar,” a “miscreant” who possessed “all the necessary requisites of perfidy, selfishness, depravity, want of principle etc. which would qualify him for the change from Radical to Conservative. His name shows that he is of Jewish origin. I do not use it as a term of reproach; there are many most respectable Jews. But here are, as in every other people, some of the lowest and most disgusting grade of moral turpitude; and of those I look upon Mr. Disraeli as the worst.”

Having once killed a man in a duel, Campbell had taken a vow not to fight again on the field of honor. Unable to challenge to a duel a man who had foresworn dueling, Disraeli sought satisfaction from Campbell’s son: “I beg that you, or someone of his [father’s] blood, may attempt to avenge the inextinguishable hatred with which I shall pursue his existence.”

Young Campbell politely declined the offer.

The 19th century was a rough and tumble time for ambitious politicians on their way up the greasy pole.

Put the mask of anonymity on a politician, give him a hiding place in the underground, and he will be puffed up with a superfluity of courage and vitriol. Abraham Lincoln narrowly avoided a duel challenge that arose as a result of a pseudonymous piece attributed to him by an aggrieved politician.

Few of the quarrelsome politicians of the 19th century would be surprised by some of the 21st century’s highly misleading and suggestive political ads. Most modern ads are endorsed by the politicians who benefit by them. Some are produced by groups that support this or that political saint of the moment. As always in these matters, haste goeth before what Mark Twain might have called “a stretcher.” Fortunately, there are among us some conscientious journalists not yet poisoned by partisanship, who track the stretchers, half truths, glittering generalities and outright fabrications.

The latest Blumenthal anti-McMahon ad is a piece of fiction that five minutes careful attention by a conscientious journalist would have exploded. The centerpiece of the ad rests on the false notion that McMahon said she would favor a reduction in the minimum wage.

That was never said. McMahon simply noted that the minimum wage set by congress, like any wage, may be pegged too high. When it is pegged too high, the cost of labor is driven up and low wage jobs begin to disappear. The price of labor, like the price of any product, will remain unpurchased if it is too expensive. In fact, that is precisely what is happening with increasing frequency in many cities. Those who suffer from an inflated minimum wage are primarily young people acquiring their first jobs, many of them young African Americans in search of a little extra cash and a job fetching line in their resumes.

McMahon’s remark that the level at which the minimum wage is set should concern congress was quickly “translated” by her political opponents and quick as a wink a revised version appeared in newspaper headlines and political ads in which McMahon was said to have favored a reduction in the minimum wage. Blumenthal hastily put out an ad pumping the false claim at the end of which the attorney general, who appears not to know how jobs are created, pointedly did not assert that he approved the false message.

An anti-Blumenthal ad put out by the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce is rather bracing, but it falls far short of being false.

This one begins with a distressed lady sitting at a table, possibly filing out a job application for a position that may not be available. Written on the floor in red letters are the words “Rising Unemployment,” followed by a voice over, “Rising unemployment means families are suffering. And after 40 years in politics, can Richard Blumenthal handle the truth about his record… He’s been crushing small businesses for years with thousands of frivolous lawsuits, forcing some to close. His sue first and ask questions later stampede has earned him the worst attorney general in the nation in 2007”

A little chastening, but nothing to fight a duel over.