2/1 Brendan: Daniels and Waxman battle for spin supremacy
It's a spin battle royale in Washington as Bush budget director Mitch Daniels and Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman square off.
In a January 23 op-ed in the Washington Post, Waxman called on the administration to disclose its contacts and dealings with Enron more fully. But in the course of his argument, he made at least two questionable claims.
First, he claimed that "Enron was the administration's biggest campaign contributor." This is not true. According to this Center on Responsive Politics (CRP) table of top Bush contributors, Enron employee and PAC contributions to Bush's presidential campaign totaled $113,800, ranking the company 12th.
Waxman's dissembling may be based on the Center for Public Integrity's ranking of the company as #1 on its list of Bush's "Top 25 Career Patrons" (total contributions: $572,350 - note that CRP has calculated an apparently more current total of $736,800.) However, that's no excuse for misstating the specifics.
In addition, Waxman made this claim about Enron CEO Kenneth Lay's October 11 phone call to Daniels:
Lay also called Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels to lobby for the repeal of the corporate minimum tax. The administration subsequently endorsed the House-passed stimulus bill, which repealed the tax and gave Enron a $254 million windfall.
Daniels responded in a letter to the Washington Post today, saying the call "was solely about the legislative prospects, not the content, of an economic stimulus bill." (His letter also cites January 18 reporting in the Post describing the call in similar terms.)
Barring alternative evidence (which is unlikely given that only Daniels and Lay have first-hand knowledge of the call), it appears that Waxman distorted the original Post account.
However, Daniels goes on to make a further, highly tenuous claim:
In fact, the provision to make the corporate alternative minimum tax relief retroactive had not even surfaced then, and neither I nor anyone else to my knowledge had even heard of the idea.
Remember, Daniels is discussing an October 11 phone call. Let's look at the record. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 3 that industry lobbyists were arguing that the corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT) should be repealed and companies should be allowed "in effect to get cash for credits they have amassed under the obscure tax regimen". Refunding amassed credits under the minimum tax is precisely "the idea" that Daniels claims no one had heard of.
In addition, according to the Associated Press, the House Ways and Means Committee passed a bill on October 12 that included "repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax, retroactive to Jan. 1 of this year." So Daniels's claim that the provision had not surfaced is highly questionable given that his staff was likely kept updated on stimulus legislation being developed at the time of the phone call in an important House committee.
Daniels could claim that he is referring specifically to the provision of the stimulus bill that Waxman cites. That provision, which retroactively repealed the corporate AMT, was included in the bill passed by the House on October 24. But this is at best disingenuous given his ambiguous wording.
We can only wait to see what Waxman will come up with in response.
Update (2/11/02 3:31 PM EST): Wait no longer - Waxman has responded in a February 5 letter to Daniels (256K PDF). The Congressman points out that the claim that no one had heard of retroactive AMT repeal is false for the reasons detailed above and also makes a point that I neglected - namely, that Enron was lobbying for AMT repeal and therefore a call from Lay to Daniels about the stimulus bill can be fairly described as lobbying.
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Related links:
-Mitch Daniels spins the Medicare Trust Fund (Bryan Keefer, 7/16/01)
2/1/2002 11:13:20 AM EST |
1/31 Ben: Kemp joins chorus distorting facts on the budget
In the introduction to his syndicated column yesterday, Jack Kemp claims to want to make his criticisms "on substantive grounds, so as to avoid ad hominem attacks." While the former vice-presidential candidate does avoid ad hominem attacks, he strays off of substantive grounds to distort the reasons for reduced surplus estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) through tricky time shifts and blurring the difference between on- and off-budget surpluses.
After correctly pointing out that CBO is now predicting deficits in the total federal budget for the next two years, Kemp attacks Democrats Tom Daschle and Debbie Stabenow for claiming the President's tax cut puts Social Security "at risk." While he legitimately calls the two to task for attempting to irrationally link the issue with Enron, he then claims to refute it substantively with the phrase, "Here are the facts, dear reader. You decide."
Kemp chooses facts, however, that count surpluses from by the Social Security system as general revenue. Thus, when he states, accurately, that CBO is projecting a $1.6 trillion surplus over the next ten years, he ignores the fact that, when Social Security surpluses are excluded, CBO is projecting a deficit of $242 billion over the next ten years. This puts Daschle's and Stabenow's statements in a very different light, especially since they and many other politicians, Republicans and Democrats, had called for projected Social Security surpluses to be used to pay off debt and and strengthen Social Security's balance sheet.
Kemp's distortions of fiscal reality don't stop there. He calls the tax cut signed by President Bush in June a $1.2 trillion cut even though its proponents at the time said it was worth $1.35 trillion and CBO projects that, counting increased interest costs, it totals $1.7 trillion.
Finally, and perhaps most misleadingly, Kemp uses a bogus comparison to claim that "None of the reduction in the projected surplus since last year is attributable to the tax cuts. None. Nada. Zip." He does this by analyzing CBO's reduction in 10-year surplus estimates from August to January. Since the tax cut was signed into law in June, however, it could not possibly be responsible for changes in budget estimates between August and January. Comparing projections made in May 2001 to those made in January of 2002, however, the tax cut actually lowered CBO's ten-year budget forecast by $1.275 trillion or 31.8 percent of the total reduction; counting increased interest costs, the total is actually 40 percent. Because he doesn't compare the budget outlook before and after the tax cut passed, Kemp is able to disingenuously claim that the tax cut had no effect on reduced surplus estimates. Washington Times contributor Bruce Bartlett pulled a similar trick a few weeks ago.
As Bryan showed on Monday, this type of distortion of budget forecasts has become increasingly common. Kemp's column is an excellent illustration that it can take place in the context of an otherwise calm and rational argument.
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Related links:
-The New Math: Fudging the Numbers in the Economic Blame Game (Bryan Keefer, 1/28/02)
-Blurring lines in the surplus debate(Brendan Nyhan, 1/11/02)
1/31/2002 11:56:55 AM EST |
1/30 Bryan: Malkin erases some/all distinction in attack on protestors
Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin's latest piece attempts to discredit protestors at this week's World Economic Forum in New York by blending away differences between groups and making a string of inflammatory assertions and comparisons.
Malkin opens by attacking activists with a string of inflammatory labels: "As if New Yorkers don't already have enough to deal with, they must now brace for the arrival of pie-throwing, critter-liberating, bomb-building, arson-setting, spell-casting, utensil-stealing cop-haters wearing giant puppet heads." A paragraph later she refers to the protestors as "self-proclaimed 'intergalactic anarchists'" (she provides no source for this proclamation).
Aside from the rather crass strategy of simple name-calling, Malkin is doing something else: erasing the differences between activists in order to condemn them all. "From petty theft and vandalism to arson, assault and murder, this motley crew of carpers justifies its reprehensible actions as harmless strikes against 'tyranny' and 'terror,'" Malkin informs us later in the piece. This lumps together generally peaceful groups such as labor unions and Public Citizen (founded by Ralph Nader) with more disruptive activists from organizations like the Anti-Capitalist Convergence. Malkin builds a straw-man caricature of the protestors based on the actions of a few extremists, then attacks that straw man as if it represented them all, as when she asserts that one organizer's call to steal forks and spoons "pretty much sums up the twisted psyche of the American anarchist."
Malkin concludes with a disturbing tactic that has become all too common since September 11: comparing political opponents to terrorists. She informs us that "[t]oday's hollow-headed, rock-throwing, anti-capitalist puppeteers are tomorrow's John Walker Lindhs." Invoking Lindh's name is a cheap way of transferring negative, unpatriotic associations onto the protestors.
This subrational rhetoric echoes a disturbing trend in several New York area newspapers. As the left-leaning group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has noted, the New York Daily News explicitly compared protestors to terrorists, and a New York Times columnist claimed "some would say that New York needs this [protest] about as much as it needs another airplane attack." Whether one agrees with the protestors or not, it is extremely irresponsible to blithely compare them to terrorists, especially when that comparison is based on a straw man. Such attacks chill open debate on globalization, one of the most important issues of the twenty-first century.
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Related links:
-Malkin's frontal assault on anti-war dissent (Bryan Keefer, 10/27/01)
-Opinion Journal spins Genoa protests (Bryan Keefer, 7/25/01)
1/30/2002 12:25:21 PM EST |
1/29 Brendan: Bad logic is no secret
In a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed yesterday, editorial writer Ruth Rosen offers a case study in how pundits suggest corruption and impropriety without substantiating their assertions.
In a January 7 column, Rosen criticized an October 12 memo from Attorney General John Ashcroft stating that the Department of Justice will support most decisions made by federal agencies to deny requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
Now she's largely recycling her argument in the context of controversy around Enron. In her new column, Rosen argues that "no one will ever fully grasp the extent of Enron's corrupting influence over government officials and policies."
To do this, though, she needs to show corruption. Her first piece of evidence is that Enron auditor Arthur Andersen shredded "crucial accounting records". How does this relate to Enron's influence on government? Rosen doesn't tell us. Instead, she goes on to state that "[t]he Bush administration, moreover, clearly intends to distance itself from the Enron scandal" and Vice President Dick Cheney "won't reveal who attended his secret energy policy task force meetings". These facts are set up as comparable to document shredding and thus somehow revealing of corruption.
After a detour into assertions of "widespread" corruption due to Enron's political contributions, Rosen turns to government secrecy as the key to "[unraveling] this sordid story" - a subtle shift in focus from Enron's "corrupting influence" on government:
So is the Rise and Fall of the Enron Empire likely to remain a secret? Quite probably. In the name of national security, the Bush administration has stripped us of our right to scrutinize the public records that could unravel this sordid story.
Here is where she imports her existing argument, condemning the Ashcroft memo and a recent executive order amending procedures governing the release of White House records. "[T]he Bush administration is now using the war on terrorism as a pretext for preventing disclosure of all public records." As a result, in 2025, "historians will have to rely on whatever documents have survived shredding or will have escaped the clutches of the Bush administration. Enron's secrets are safe."
What evidence do we have that disclosure of public records is the key into understanding "the Rise and Fall of the Enron Empire"? Rosen never provides any. While some Clinton and Bush administration documents certainly may be relevant, the focus right now is on Enron's collapse, and there is no evidence so far that the Bush administration played any role in that. Moreover, Rosen is non-rationally blurring lines here between the collapse of Enron and its influence on government to imply impropriety - hence the reiteration of shredding at Arthur Anderson as comparable to Bush administration actions.
It's certainly true that documents related to Enron's political influence are less likely to be made public now or in the future as a result of the administration's actions. But the legitimacy of this point does not excuse the way that Rosen casts aspersions.
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Related links:
-Enron association game continues unabated (Bryan Keefer, 1/16/02)
1/29/2002 11:16:37 AM EST |
By Bryan Keefer
The current debate over economic policy has provided rich opportunities to engage in one of the most disingenuous and confusing aspects of spin: abusing statistics. From misstating facts to spinning half-truths into an allegedly complete story, politicians and pundits of all ideological stripes are making deceptive and inaccurate claims based on numerical data. A close examination of several such claims from political actors and pundits ranging from Bush economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey to the Democratic National Committee shows just how cavalierly statistics are used in efforts to score political points. (read the whole column)
1/27/2002 08:30:41 PM EST |
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