So there I was doing political blog reading the other day when I came across this posting from Instapundit:
CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE: ObamaCare Repeal Would Save $1.4 Trillion.
This is a very typical type of posting from Professor Reynolds. Short, makes a dramatic point, and linking to further information. It is also an excellent example of how he prevaricates with this short pithy posts. Someone who was justing reading down the numerous posting for that day would read the slug, come away with the impression that repealing Healthcare reform would save us 1.4 trillion dollars, and move on. I followed the link because it seemed at odds with what knew of the situation. Maybe I was wrong and I wouldn’t going to dismiss the concept out of hand.
So, you click on the link and that takes you to a blog posting at at NRO The Corner.
Which has now vanished from the ether of the internet. (Instapundit’s link is now dead and if you follow it you get an access denied message.) Which is shame as I was going to recreated the entire trail that I followed, but I assume the post author Andrew Stiles deleted his post for reasons not made evident.
Anyway the NRO Corner post was a selected quote from the CBO office, scoring the financial effects of H.R. 2, the bill calling for the total repeal of Healthcare reform, Mr. Stiles had bolded a section detailed the reduction in expenditures by repealing the act. However, the text quoted and bolded did NOT say repealing the legislation would ‘save’ money, it spoke of spending less in very particular ways. Luckily, Mr. Stiles had included a link to the original letter to the Speaker of the House. Here is that link.
I urge you to go and read the letter for yourselves, please do not just accept my word for it. That said, on Page 2 of the letter we find the text,
Impact on the Federal Budget in the First Decade…
CBO and JCT estimate that, on balance, the direct spending and revenue
effects of enacting H.R. 2 would cause a net increase in federal budget
deficits of $210 billion over the 2012-2021 period (see Table 1).1
So, repealing healthcare reform would increase the Federal Deficit by more than two hundred billion dollars. What Mr. Stiles and Instapundit did was only look at the spending side of the report, ignore the taxes and other revenue enhancements in the act, and proclaimed that repeal would save money. They even linked to a report that said it would increase the deficit, a report that flatly contracted their assertions.
A plain and bold prevarication to support a political outcome that they supported apparently made confident that few would follow the links and find their deceit.
My statement:I have yet to find much in the way of his opposition Medicare Part D when it was being debated and voted upon
The hit you references and I read was for the 2004 election after Medicare Part D was passed. Where was his passioned and libertarian opposition in 2003 when it was a proposal and a bill?
This is what I found spending 5 minutes on google search.
The search term was, instapundit bush prescription drugs medicare. First hit page, hit #8
“Health Care: In a normal year, I’d look at Bush’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Medicare prescription drug plan, and be tempted to call it a wash. However, John Kerry has managed to scare the bejeesus out of me with his health care plan. Play semantic games all you want; when you’ve got a plan that would qualify half the families in America for Medicaid, that’s what I call a government takeover of the healthcare system. I’m against it. Reallly really really against it. Bush easily gets my vote here.”
Sounds like you didn’t look very hard. Instapundit made his opposition to the Bush Medicare plan known quite early. This is no surprise to me, since as a frequent reader of instapundit, I was familiar with his opposition to Bush in this regard.
I never have claimed instapundit was non-partisan. He has always clearly favored the Republicans over the Democrats. But that is a natural enough position for someone like instanpundit who is a small ‘l’ libertarian, and who also favors a strong national defense.
1) Bob when you accused Instapundit, you didn’t just call him a prevaricator, you called him a pernicious prevaricator. Any fair reading of that combination of words comes out to my paraphrase of “destructive liar”. Destructive yes, Deceptive Yes, Liar no, but here we really are splitting hairs.
3)Your evidence of a willful deception on the part of instapundit comes only from your own creative interpretation of a crumb. Since all Instapundit did was link a story.
Your interpretation seems to the one of innocent and accidental misleading. That seems more far fetched to me. Government spending, debt, and deficit are primary policy concerns for Instapundit. Anyone even with a cursory familiarity the CBO numbers knows what they say and predict if those prediction are good or not is beside the point entirely to this discussion.) Anyone with that familiarity would upon seeing that headline suspect something didn’t add up, or that conditions had changed. (my reaction entirely.) Following the chain of links, as I did took all of three minutes and flushed out the misleading nature of the slug and Stiles’ story. I find it hard to believe that I with only a passing interest in the CBO figures smelt the rat but he, with his passion for our debt crisis, did not. I believe him to be intelligent, informed and therefore deceptive rather than ignorant and inept.
Instapundit is probably the most high profile and most popular small ‘l’ libertarian on the internet. I’m puzzled by your continued hostility towards him. Because he IS so high profile is what makes this prevarication damaging. Because people will trust him and read just the slug and come away with the exact wrong view of what the CBO has reported.
I know you feel that he is non-partisan I do not agree, he is a partisan for the Republicans in my opinion. That doesn’t mean he always carry their waters, but I have searched for hours on multiple occasions and I have yet to find much in the way of his opposition Medicare Part D when it was being debated and voted upon. The ‘small l’ libertarian didn’t speak out against a massive new entitlement without any funding so I doubt his cred on the matter.
Professor Reynolds is a smart, articulate, talented man and he can do better that this sort of low posting. The country needs him to do better.
Bob, I looked these statistics up before I stated them – the CDC states we have the worst infant mortality rate in the developed world, and they address the issue of definition. See link here:
http://www.cdc.gov/omhd/amh/factsheets/infant.htm
and another source, here:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db09.htm
This is one area I am pretty well informed in, though I am open to receiving new information and I deeply wish the information was different. This is a point on which we can only be ashamed as a country and it is a symptom of a system that does not work. Brad and Bear – ideas, please. You do not get to criticize without offering alternatives.
1) Bob when you accused Instapundit, you didn’t just call him a prevaricator, you called him a pernicious prevaricator. Any fair reading of that combination of words comes out to my paraphrase of “destructive liar”.
So far no one agrees with your spin that you did not accuse Instapundit of being a liar. A less charitable description of that spin is sophistry.
3)Your evidence of a willful deception on the part of instapundit comes only from your own creative interpretation of a crumb. Since all Instapundit did was link a story.
You have no evidence that Glenn Reynolds burrowed as deeply into the source material as you did, that he realized Stiles story could be seen in a false light, and still choose to link the Stiles story with no commentary of his own so as to deceive his audience.
Why would he do that? Since there is plenty of legitimate and true evidence with which to beat up on Obamacare? Why would he want to deceive his audience with something he knew was wrong? That’s crazy.
it’s much more plausible to believe that Instapundit saw the Stiles story, believed it was true, and wanted to share the Stiles story with his own audience.
Instapundit is probably the most high profile and most popular small ‘l’ libertarian on the internet. I’m puzzled by your continued hostility towards him.
The subject of the post is not how to fix healthcare. That has been covered in other posts and is far afield from me point.
A definition of lie from Merriam-Webster 3lie verb \ˈlī\
intransitive verb
1
: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
By that definition Mr. Reynolds has not lied, because the statement, as far as it went, was true, but he did deceive with a truthful sentence. That is why I went with the word prevaricate – it has a more precise meaning, Definition of PREVARICATE
intransitive verb
: to deviate from the truth
Melissa: Be wary of comparisons in health outcomes between the US and other countries, because as our chemistry professors have instructed us, watch your units. I know that in the case of infant mortality the comparison is not valid because the very definition of infant mortality varies from country to country. In some countries if a child dies within a day of birth it is not counted as a child death but as still born, while here in the USA death a moment after birth is considered infant mortality. You can see how that twists the numbers, and not from intent to deceive but from people simply assuming that the counting methods are constant when they are not,
Bob, got to call you on this one. I used a Thesaurus:
lie
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: untruth
Synonyms: aspersion, backbiting, calumniation, calumny, deceit, deception, defamation, detraction, dishonesty, disinformation, distortion, evasion, fable, fabrication, falsehood, falseness, falsification, falsity, fib, fiction, forgery, fraudulence, guile, hyperbole, inaccuracy, invention, libel, mendacity, misrepresentation, misstatement, myth, obloquy, perjury, prevarication, revilement, reviling, slander, subterfuge, tale, tall story, vilification, white lie, whopper
Having said that, let me tell you what I object to – pithy simplfications that take a complex issue and distill it down to something simple and hard to counter. (Examples: “No Child Left Behind”, “Marriage Tax”, “Right to Work” etc.) It takes more words to counter these than it does to put them out there and it hurt the country as a whole. You are bickering about what some guy said about a report. This matter but what REALLY matters is solving the damned problem. Bear and Brad – if you are so wise, how SHOULD we fix health care in this counrty? You’ve decided Obama’s solution won’t work before even trying it. We have the worst infant and maternal mortality rate in the developed world. We spend more on health care oer capita than any other country in the world WITHOUT have the best health care in the world and we have thousands of people with either no health care or crushing debt from health care bills. I say that the problem is the profit motive in the insurance industry and that the REAL solution (which no one in our government has the balls to try) is to require all insurance companies to be non-profits and (Bob’s idea) to have them unable to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. WHAT IS YOUR FIX????????
I laid out the logic of my argument in step with links for readers to verify. I feel confident I have proven my case, you have not made any argument as to why the post is not a deceit. If you feel that his post was no deceitful please make your case.
As to your second point, that I feel is using the language too loosely.
General Eisenhower deceived the Axis powers that the D-Day landing would take place at Calle instead of Normandy.
Therefore General Eisenhower is dishonest.
Therefore General Eisenhower is a liar.
I reject using the words are fully interchangable just as I reject hte exampled conclusion.
Only in your opinion is he deceitful. Also, deceitful=dishonest=liar. Check your thesaurus.
Dishonest and prevaricate are not synonyms either, though there are close. If he does not want to be called deceitful he should not be making deceiving posts.
No, only calling him dishonest. Same thing.
Quick replied to your multiple posts, Brad.
1) I never once called Instapundit a liar. You will not find the word lie in that post at all. Undoubtedly you are considering prevaricate a synonym with lie but it is not. Prevaricate means to deceive, to stretch the truth. I stand by my assertion he intended to deceive, but he did not lie. His statement as far as it goes is true, very lawyery.
2)Now it is a reasonable interpretation to assume Reynolds meant ‘reduce the federal debt’ when he said “save”. That is the prevarication, of course you can chose to believe that he had other intentions in why he posted with that precise language. It’s a free country, knock your self out. However with his numerous posts and comments on our debt and deficit dangers, well founded dangers I might add, I think most people familiar with his site would read that post and conclude it was speaking about debt and not taxation levels.
3)All that instapundit did was link the Stiles story, with an almost exact copy of the Stiles headline. Yes, but why did he do that? I think it was to help support the repeal of Healthcare reform and give it the cloak that the even the CBO says that would help the debt. Now, he never says that directly, that would be a lie, but the post gives that impression. Particularly to fast and skimming visitors.
4) My point was not and never has been that the CBO’s number are correct. Economic forecasting ten years out is barely more respectable that astrology. Healthcare reform put the medicine years down the road where it is likely not to be taken. Until we have the hard issues, entitlement and military spending, we will never get out from under our debt. Any plan that kick those problems down the road, or ignores them, as far as debt related matters goes is worthless.
I’ve had a chance to look over the links more thoroughly now.
All that instapundit did was link the Stiles story, with an almost exact copy of the Stiles headline.
It’s impossible to say at this point whether Stiles intended his story to be read as saying the CBO report indicates repeal of Obamacare would save 1.4 trillion from the national debt. But it’s all too easy to read his story as saying exactly that. Odds are that is why the story is no longer available for view. Stiles should have done better, though to his credit he did provide a link to his source material.
As to whether Obamacare hurts or helps the national debt. Oh boy. So many assumptions are made even in the CBO report it’s a real mess to figure out. Indirect effects are not even examined by the report, such as depression of revenues from depressed national economic activity.
Obamacare breaks down into about a trillion dollars of increased spending, about 700 billion from medicare cuts, and 500 billion from increased taxes. And those are only estimates from the middle of the curve created by expert guestimates.
“Uncertainty Surrounding the Estimates
The projections of the bill’s budgetary impact are quite uncertain because
assessing the effects of making broad changes in the nation’s health care
and health insurance systems—or of reversing scheduled changes—
requires assumptions about a broad array of technical, behavioral, and
economic factors. However, CBO and JCT, in consultation with outside
experts, have devoted a great deal of care and effort to the analysis of health
care legislation in the past few years, and the agencies strive to develop
estimates that are in the middle of the distribution of possible outcomes. ”
Gee wasn’t it those same experts who assured us that the stimulus spending would keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8%? I wonder what went wrong with that?
Obamacare was always a just a new welfare program. Attempts to sell it as a pie in the sky program that would have no negative consequences, only positive ones, should have indicated the inherent weakness of the program from both a policy and political perspective.
I just found the google cached version of the stiles post. I will have more to say after looking things over more thoroughly.
“So, repealing healthcare reform would increase the Federal Deficit by more than two hundred billion dollars. What Mr. Stiles and Instapundit did was only look at the spending side of the report, ignore the taxes and other revenue enhancements in the act, and proclaimed that repeal would save money. They even linked to a report that said it would increase the deficit, a report that flatly contracted their assertions.”
Your assumptions are faulty.
According to the CBO report, for the time period analyzed HR 2 would reduce spending by 600 billion and reduce revenues by 800 billion. So if you are right, why didn’t Glenn say “save 600 billion”?
It’s interesting that the combination of 600 billion plus 800 billion equals 1.4 trillion. What did Reynolds say in his link? “Obamacare repeal would save 1.4 trillion”. Hmm.
Reynolds didn’t say the debt would be reduced, or that the deficit would be reduced; he just said save.
Now it is a reasonable interpretation to assume Reynolds meant ‘reduce the federal debt’ when he said “save”. But from a libertarian perspective it is also reasonable that “save” meant reduction of spending and reduction of taxation.
I haven’t yet followed the evidence trail you laid out about the link in question.
However…
Pernicious Prevarication?
And this…
“This is a very typical type of posting from Professor Reynolds. Short, makes a dramatic point, and linking to further information. It is also an excellent example of how he prevaricates with this short pithy posts.”
What bold character assassination! So Glenn Reynolds in giving his many and varied opinions about many and varied subjects is a destructive liar?
Your evidence at worst proves that Reynolds was wrong. It does not prove he is a liar.
I think it would be very interesting if you would email Reynolds your complaint about his link (minus insulting language of course) and challenge him to respond. Even if you get no reply at all, isn’t that the least you should do before attacking his character?