In the Nation (the left wing political rag whose editor does not know who represents her in Congress), David Corn writes:
September is back-to-school time, and Bush hit the road to promote his education policies. During a speech at a Nashville elementary school, he hailed his education record by noting that “the budget for next year boosts funding for elementary and secondary education to $53.1 billion. That’s a 26-percent increase since I took office. In other words, we understand that resources need to flow to help solve the problems.” A few things were untrue in these remarks. Bush’s proposed elementary and secondary education budget for next year is $34.9 billion, not $53.1 billion, according to his own Department of Education. It’s his total proposed education budget that is $53.1 billion. More importantly, there is no next-year “boost” in this budget. Elementary and secondary education received $35.8 billion in 2003. Bush’s 2004 budget cuts that back nearly a billion dollars, and the overall education spending in his budget is the same as the 2003 level.
Sounds damning, and some on the left rushed to link approvingly to this newest bit of evidence to add to the “Bush is a Liar” meme.
The problem is that Justin Katz and Steve Verdon have run the numbers- and Bush wasn’t lying. Corn was:
In summary, it is only through a combination of selective data and careful parsing of words that David Corn is able to exploit the habitual budgetary tricks of the federal government to call the President of the United States a liar. And his faulty conclusion has probably already caught on sufficiently that careful analysis of boring numbers will not prevent it from becoming “common knowledge.”
This is the Democrat strategery, and it started with the fabricated yellowcake ‘scandal.’ Simply make charge after charge about Bush being a liar, and don’t waste a second checking the facts. The idea is to just throw things up and hope they stick. When you are corrected, merely ignore the corrections, and wait a couple of weeks to re-surface the charge. By then it will be, as Justin pointed out, ‘common knowledge.’ The Democrats will know it is a lie, but they will keep saying it over and over again, because it might lead them to the only thing they care about- winning the White House.
Steve
Oh this one is really penny-ante stuff too. The 26% increase is true when you look at total discretionary education spending by the feds.
If you look at just elementary spending by the feds, spending increased 24.7% since 2001.
Only by looking at what was appropriated this year vs. what Bush proposed for 2004 do you get the decrease. It is not uncommmon for the appropriations process to add anywhere from 1 to 3 billion bucks. Also, the two numbers are from two different sources.
Further, Corn is obviously a lying partisan hack when you look at 1998 and 1999. In 1998 Clinton proposed over $23 billion and in ’99 he proposed over $20 billion. Yet, it would have been quite valid for Clinton to argue that educational spending had increased dramaticall since he became President. Hell, the increase was almost 50%. Bush is over half way there in only his first term. If we look at the first 4 years of Clinton’s tenure the increase is a meager 10.3%.
Corn is a jackass.
Gary Farber
Accepting for argument’s sake that your indictment is 100% accurate, the problem with it is that it merely suggests that, since what you outline is the 2000 successful Republican campaign against Al Gore, the Democrats will succeed.
Of course, they won’t have the Supreme Court on their side, so perhaps not.
Gary Farber
Actually, let me make one additional point: “…because it might lead them to the only thing they care about- winning the White House.”
Yes, quite true. No ethics, no morals, no brains. That’s one half of the country for you. Fortunately, the other half is moral, just, and wise. Thank goodness for the good guys! Down with the stupid bad guys!
John, this sort of rhetoric is useless for anything accept pointless venting, and making people who agree with it feel comfortably superior to Those Stupid Other Bad People.
You can, and often do, do better. Much better.
John Cole
Gary- I dont think that sums up all Democrats at all- but it most certainly does some up my estimation of the people who have done nothing but contort every word Bush utters and try to distort it into some sort of lie.
If I thought the only thing ALL Democrats cared about was winning the White House, I would pay no attention to them and make no effort to even argue with them- what is the point. Clearly (well- maybe not clearly at all, as it appears), I was talking about the people who are engaging in the game I discussed- throw up a charge, any charge, and hope it sticks.
Gary Farber
There are such people, of course. And I spend plenty of time and energy condemning them. (And, for my thanks, I am, of course, considered by many of my lefty friends to be a vile traitor and Republican dupe. In Avedon Carol’s words of a couple of days ago I’ve “not yet come to my senses.”)
But you specifically said “this is the Democrat strategery.” Not “this is the strategy of some particularly unscrupulous Democrats” or some such variant. And your category is “Democrat stupidity” not “stupidity of some Democrats.” If you don’t want to use such generalizations, and have some people find them irritating and overly strong, the cure is simple: don’t.
(Also, you engage in that traditionally weird Republican usage of refusing to use the proper adjective of “Democratic,” but instead use the ungrammatical — and I’ve never, ever, understood the logic of this, or what it’s supposed to mean, except that — somehow — it seems to be derogatorily intended in some inexplicable way — usage of “Democrat” as an adjective, rather than the noun that it is. Why do Republicans — should that be “Republics”? — use this bizarre usage?)
Incidentally, I’ve only just gotten back from checking your link to Virginia Postrel, and I’m quite puzzled. I’m no fan of van Heuvel’s, mind — I disagree with her more than I agree with her, and hold her in little respect, and thus don’t at all identify as a defender of hers, but while her statement in the transcript is on the incoherent side — as most people’s statements on debate tv shows, full of interruptions, tend to be — she seems, as Virginia, and James Taranto, said, to have said that her Representative is, correctly, Jerrold Nadler.
So, um: what?
Did you not read the clarification Virginia and James Taranto wrote, two years ago, or what? I is confuzzled.
John Cole
Gary- This is the Democrat strategy from the DNC. That does not mean every Democrat across the country is engaging in this sort of attack- but every prominent elected Democrat sure is- with the exception of Lieberman. It does not take much to read the Sunday transcripts and interviews, starting with the yellowcake, and figure out what McAuliffe’s talking points for the week are.
I admit, my use of the word Democrat rather than Democratic started recently- when the Democrats started with this ‘Republicans don’t believe in democracy’ crap. It is petulant and childish on my part, but at least I admit it.
Finally, I saw Katrina on that Hardball episode- in fact, I watched it twice. I saw it at 7, and I was so amused at her performance that I watched again at 11 or 12 or 1 (the re-run times have changed so much in the lastyear). If you saw the actual interview, and not the transcript, it is clear she had no idea who her Rep. was- and she couple her ignorance with an arrogant sneer- “How dare you ask me a question like that,” as if knowing your representative was something the little people should do.
Kimmitt
It’s so strange to me that someone would take a fib like this out of proportion when there are so very many outright lies coming out of the Administration to seize upon, such as the non-fabricated decision by the President to include information believed to be false by the CIA in the State of the Union address, then use a carefully parsed set of words to create plausible deniability.
That said, the President said the Dept. of Education budget for elementary and secondary schools was bigger than it was. If he doesn’t say it again, it was a simple error (which the White House Press Office should take some pains to correct, for the record). If he does, it was a deliberate distortion of the type for which the President has become so famous.
John Cole
This education nonsense is about as stupid as the Clinton Hair Cut non-story, the Gore Internet story, and the Bush 1 grocery scanner story.
Stentor
And your category is “Democrat stupidity” not “stupidity of some Democrats.”
That’s an awful little nitpick, for a category name that seems to simply indicate “stupidity that is Democrat[ic].”
John: You’d better watch it with the ungrammatical “Democrat,” or frequent usage will make it standard (it’s already working in my brain — I wouldn’t have even noticed if Gary hadn’t pointed it out, despite my being a Dem voter). Then you’d have to resort to something like “Democratical” when you wanted to mock that party.
Andrew Lazarus
The Republicans got a lot of mileage from the Clinton Haircut (not to mention the Clinton Vince Foster Love Triangle Murder) and from the Gore Internet story.
I hope our exaggerations do so well! Tit for tat, as the game theorists know, is a very effective strategy.
John Cole
Andrew- I think the Democrats got some pretty good m9leage out of the grocery incident- they used it as the center piece of their “It’s the Economy, Stupid” campaign to show, GASP!, Bush is show out of touch with the middle class and the economy that he doesn’t know how a grocery scanner works, let alone how much a gallon of milk imight cost.
Robin Roberts
Hmmm, Kimmit fabricates a “non-fabricated” decision. Oh, the irony.
David Perron
Hmmm…I’m not sure if I could tell you within 15% how much a gallon of milk costs. Can I run for President? Wonder if I’m destined to figurehead an elitist fundamentalist oligarchy?
Stentor
A gallon of milk costs $2.99 (at Oliver’s Corner Store in Worcester, MA). Let’s all memorize that fact, just in case.
David Perron
See, I woulda guessed $2.50. I’m definitely Presidential material! And if I’d only known I was this wealthy, I’d have bought that new Ferrari quite a while back.
Kimmit
Same gallon costs six bucks here in Hawai’i. Stupid price supports.
Dean
Kimmitt:
Please, please, please tell me that you’re joking.
That you DO know that prices in Hawai’i are quite a bit higher than elsewhere in the US, since just about all the food is imported.
That you DO know that US government salaries include a 25% adjustment for cost-of-living, for the Hawai’i area.
That the $6/gal. for milk there is NOT the result of price supports.
Kimmitt
link
Not. Fricking. Kidding. Milk price controls; it’s like it’s 1934 or something out here.
David Perron
Oh, gawd. You poor frick’n Islanders.
Can I conclude that you don’t subscribe to Ag subsidies? I’m wondering if there’s anyone who does. I certainly don’t know anyone, but I don’t know many farmers.
Kimmitt
Heh. I had more patience for agricultural subsidies when my grandfather was receiving them. :)
More seriously, I’m more of a “require corporate farmers to follow the same kinds of environmental standards which family farmers follow as a matter of course” guy than a subsidies guy. I kind of like the ethanol subsidy on national security grounds (and because the technology may well improve in the near future).
David Perron
I don’t care for the ethanol subsidy because it actually takes more energy to make the ethanol than you get out of it. So in effect it’s causing us to consume more petroleum in the name of national security, which I think is just silly. We’d be better off just stockpiling oil.
Sounds as if we have some overlap, but not total agreement.
My personal views on ag subsidies is we shouldn’t be in the business of propping up large agribusinesses while pretending to be helping out the family farmer. I don’t know if propping up the family farmer is needed, but propping up the large combines is definitely not needed.
Kimmitt
My understanding is that we use locally-produced coal to produce ethanol, by and large.
But yeah, we’re pretty damn close.
Grub
David Corn looks like a monkey.