The title to this post is the title of an article published in today's Washington Post by Steve Pearlstein on Republican lying about healthcare reform. I'm not sure why they used "propogating falsehoods in attacks" instead of "lying," but his points are well made. They are lying.
Joe H.
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2 comments:
I read the guy's article and have come to the conclusion that his opinions are at least half-biased, based on the two features that you had mentioned in a previous post.
First feature, "plausible identification of the influence(s) that are interfering with the person's analysis." In 1982, Steve Pearlstein launched the Boston Observer, which was a monthly liberal opinion journal that closed in 1986. He has also worked as a press secretary for US Senator John Durkin, and as an administrative assistant for US Representative Michael J. Harrington (not to be confused with Michael Harrington, the communist political activist), both Democrats .
Reference: http://www.trincoll.edu/AboutTrinity/News_Events/trinity_news/102208_Pearlstein.htm
Second feature, "plausible explanation demonstrating that the allegedly biased person misanalysed the facts and/or arguments". I can't really prove this test, but I can offer more perspective on Pearlstein's arguments.
A lot of the arguments surrounding the health care debate (on both sides) are based on assumptions, but only because no one really knows how much a universal health care plan will increase government spending and/or produce cost savings over current health insurance methods.
He says that Republicans are lying because they state that the Health Care plan will cost One Trillion dollars (which he agrees is true), and that "most" people mistakenly believe that this means "One Trillion dollars per year". Does that really make someone a liar if they make a true statement (based on assumptions as I've mentioned), but "most" don't read the fine print and end up misinterpreting it? I honestly believe that this is supposition on his part that "most" people are misinterpreting this in the first place.
Secondly, he somehow equates the One Trillion over ten years, to 140 Billion dollars per year. I don't know how 1 Trillion divided by 10 equates to 140 billion, but I'll take it (perhaps a freudian slip?). Anyway, he then goes on to qualify this number by stating that with the assumed cost savings, this will actually come out to 100 billion per year, which represents only 1% of national income, which as he states, increases by 2.5% every year.
This throws up many B.S. (almost bordering on J.D. =) flags for me. First of all, national income (measured as GDP) does not equate to actual tax receipts that the government brings in on an annual basis. In 2008, the federal government brought in approximately $2.66 Trillion, which would make the annual cost for this health plan equate to 3.75% of the annual tax receipts for 2008 (5.25% if you use the 140 billion per year cost estimate). Based on the federal government's penchant for cost overruns (reference recent trips by members of congress, which is actually more of the norm in terms of government travel) it is likely that Obama is grossly underestimating the total cost of this plan. In fact, if you look at the budget numbers for 2008, you will see that other entitlement programs made up more than 50% of the total budget (1.527 trillion dollars to be exact), which equates to 57% of the federal government's income.
Oh and the 2.5% growth in national income, where has this guy been the last three quarters? Isn't that the basic definition of a recession, a decline in growth of GDP?
Anyway, I think my comment is long in the tooth, but I was hoping to make the point that this dude is probably biased, and seems to be fudging the numbers a bit to boost the legitimacy of his world view.
Cheers from Germany!!!
Hey Justin.
If you know that what you say is going to be misinterpreted, and if you want it to be misinterpreted, you are lying.
If I were writing the article, I would have focused on the forced 'euthanasia" accusations by people like Sarah Palin. Those are truly over the top.
How's your new baby doing?
Joe
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