Wednesday's Debate -- A Pre-Fact Check for Bush

Krugman wrote a pretty handy column about misrepresentations that Bush has made on the stump and are likely to be repeated Wednesday. A nice set of facts to keep in mind while he's speaking:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/12/opinion/12krugman.html?oref=login&oref=login

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It's not hard to predict what President Bush, who sounds increasingly desperate, will say tomorrow. Here are eight lies or distortions you'll hear, and the truth about each:

Jobs


Mr. Bush will talk about the 1.7 million jobs created since the summer of 2003, and will say that the economy is "strong and getting stronger." That's like boasting about getting a D on your final exam, when you flunked the midterm and needed at least a C to pass the course.

Mr. Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in payroll employment. That's worse than it sounds because the economy needs around 1.6 million new jobs each year just to keep up with population growth. The past year's job gains, while better news than earlier job losses, barely met this requirement, and they did little to close the huge gap between the number of jobs the country needs and the number actually available.

Unemployment


Mr. Bush will boast about the decline in the unemployment rate from its June 2003 peak. But the employed fraction of the population didn't rise at all; unemployment declined only because some of those without jobs stopped actively looking for work, and therefore dropped out of the unemployment statistics. The labor force participation rate - the fraction of the population either working or actively looking for work - has fallen sharply under Mr. Bush; if it had stayed at its January 2001 level, the official unemployment rate would be 7.4 percent.

The deficit


Mr. Bush will claim that the recession and 9/11 caused record budget deficits. Congressional Budget Office estimates show that tax cuts caused about two-thirds of the 2004 deficit.

The tax cuts


Mr. Bush will claim that Senator John Kerry opposed "middle class" tax cuts. But budget office numbers show that most of Mr. Bush's tax cuts went to the best-off 10 percent of families, and more than a third went to the top 1 percent, whose average income is more than $1 million.

The Kerry tax plan


Mr. Bush will claim, once again, that Mr. Kerry plans to raise taxes on many small businesses. In fact, only a tiny percentage would be affected. Moreover, as Mr. Kerry correctly pointed out last week, the administration's definition of a small-business owner is so broad that in 2001 it included Mr. Bush, who does indeed have a stake in a timber company - a business he's so little involved with that he apparently forgot about it.

Fiscal responsibility


Mr. Bush will claim that Mr. Kerry proposes $2 trillion in new spending. That's a partisan number and is much higher than independent estimates. Meanwhile, as The Washington Post pointed out after the Republican convention, the administration's own numbers show that the cost of the agenda Mr. Bush laid out "is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion" and "far eclipses that of the Kerry plan."

Spending


On Friday, Mr. Bush claimed that he had increased nondefense discretionary spending by only 1 percent per year. The actual number is 8 percent, even after adjusting for inflation. Mr. Bush seems to have confused his budget promises - which he keeps on breaking - with reality.

Health care


Mr. Bush will claim that Mr. Kerry wants to take medical decisions away from individuals. The Kerry plan would expand Medicaid (which works like Medicare), ensuring that children, in particular, have health insurance. It would protect everyone against catastrophic medical expenses, a particular help to the chronically ill. It would do nothing to restrict patients' choices.

By singling out Mr. Bush's lies and misrepresentations, am I saying that Mr. Kerry isn't equally at fault? Yes.

Mr. Kerry sometimes uses verbal shorthand that offers nitpickers things to complain about. He talks of 1.6 million lost jobs; that's the private-sector loss, partly offset by increased government employment. But the job record is indeed awful. He talks of the $200 billion cost of the Iraq war; actual spending is only $120 billion so far. But nobody doubts that the war will cost at least another $80 billion. The point is that Mr. Kerry can, at most, be accused of using loose language; the thrust of his statements is correct.

Mr. Bush's statements, on the other hand, are fundamentally dishonest. He is insisting that black is white, and that failure is success. Journalists who play it safe by spending equal time exposing his lies and parsing Mr. Kerry's choice of words are betraying their readers.

It would be nice if the moderator could have follow-up questions to call Bush on some of these lies.

Edit: I should have said "would have follow-up questions" instead of "could." It was the town hall debate where they weren't allowed follow-ups.

Dennis do you ever post anything that isn't from a liberal source? At least this guy noticed Kerry's lie about 1.6 million jobs being loss. He calls it shorthand...I call it lie because Kerry knows what he's saying and chooses to intentionally try and deceive people. I'd say that is fundamentally dishonest as well. I notice this writer also doesn't tell us the actual figure of job loss which is closer to a little over 1/3 over Kerry's 1.6 million figure and seems to be getting smaller each month.

In the end, it would be nice to see the moderator call out both canididates on thier lies and deceptions. I'd much rather see that than people like this writer play it all off to one side.

I would like to know if Kerry is going to support his VP candidate in confirming that yes, he will indeed make the lame rise up from their wheelchairs and walk.


Since you feel comfortable enough to use Paul Krugman to validate facts I'll feel free to use Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coultre, Pat Robertson and Michael Savage okay? Great.

Hopefully one of the candidates will mention factcheck.org like Cheney attempted to do, but I doubt it. It would be sweet if the moderator called them both out on their lies and exaggerations.

PAD: Krugman = Coulter/Malkin/Hannity/Robertson/Savage/Limbaugh?

Is that what you're trying to say?

Er... Krugman's a professor of economics. He actually *gasp* knows what he's talking about. None of the people you've cited have anywhere remotely near the same qualifications that Krugman does.

But it is good for a laugh. You've got everyone on there from a drug-addled blowhard, to someone who wished the NYT building would have been blown up by Tim McVeigh, to someone who supports race-based internment, to an herbalist who's told someone to get AIDS and die. Nice work!

seppo

Tell you what, you want Krugman, I'll take Walter Williams.

I mean, he's just as qualified right? I mean professor of economics at James Madison counts as qualified.

Oh wait, since we're debating the merits of economists why don't we include the latest Nobel Laureate Edward Prescott. I mean he's only a Nobel prize winner and a supply sider but I guess he doesn't know anything, because he's contrary to your left wing view of the world that Nobel Prize is meaningless.

Walter Williams? This guy?

http://www.city-net.com/~davekle/morality.html

Who believes that taxation is essentially government-mandated theft? Sure. I'd put Krugman up against him any day of the week.

Unfortunately, I know virtually nothing about Edward Prescott, so I can't say.

seppo

Well, I tried to read a couple of Prescott's papers, and I've gotta say, I don't understand any of 'em. Particularly the paper he won the Nobel for - something about business cycles that I couldn't fathom at all.

*shrugs*

seppo

I'll give you points for trying to read Prescott and make sense of it.

I read more economists reports from more sources than I can count (When I worked for Morgan Stanley.) and they aren't all created equal. What's amzing about economists in general, if you want to count an BA econ major an "economist", is how few professional economists there are.

You would think Pittsburgh, being home to PNC, Mellon Bank, more than a handfull of F500 companies, CMU, Pitt, Duquesne etc. would have a few dozen? Nope. Pittsburgh has exactly two privately employed economists. I'm not counting teachers at universities in that number FYI.

Hell, even Morgan Stanley had just 3 full time economists. The rest of the presenters for morning research calls and the like were sector analysts. While several, but not all, were more competent than us on econ issues they didn't have the title.

That being said I'm willing to bet you there are less than 500 people nationwide that are paid professional economists.

[quote name='helava']Walter Williams? This guy?

http://www.city-net.com/~davekle/morality.html

Who believes that taxation is essentially government-mandated theft? Sure. I'd put Krugman up against him any day of the week.

Unfortunately, I know virtually nothing about Edward Prescott, so I can't say.

seppo[/quote]

Did you even read the link you posted? He didn't say taxation is government-mandated theft. He said : "Crop, welfare and business handouts are little more than congressionally imposed obligations on one set of citizens for the benefit of another." In otherwords- Socialism.

I'd like to say that I'm voting for Bush becuase Kerry is a Socialist. Unfortunately, Bush is also. Both of them feel the need to propose handouts to various voting minorities instead of protecting principle, which Williams says is the instrument of our destruction.

Don't you just love Krugman's objective analysis?

"Mr. Kerry sometimes uses verbal shorthand ..."
this is a euphamism for being a liar.

"Mr. Kerry can, at most, be accused of using loose language; the thrust of his statements is correct. "
This is another way of saying Kerry can't handle the truth. However, it's acceptable becuase his "thrust" is in the right, I mean, LEFT direction, so to speak.

So, as long as your intentions are valid and you are a Democrat, lying or the use of hyperbole is acceptable. Republicans, however, wish to destroy america becasue they are evil and therefore do not have a free pass card on exaggeration.

MORE FACTS:
"Congressional Budget Office estimates show that tax cuts caused about two-thirds of the 2004 deficit. "

Actually, rampant congressional spending caused these deficits, along with a host of other natural and unnatural disasters.

"Mr. Bush will claim that Senator John Kerry opposed "middle class" tax cuts. But budget office numbers show that most of Mr. Bush's tax cuts went to the best-off 10 percent of families, and more than a third went to the top 1 percent, whose average income is more than $1 million. "

Yet if Mr. Bush were to have asked everyone in the audience to raise their hands if they received a US Treasury rebate check last tax year and received a larger deduction allowance, 99% of the hands in the room would have been raised.

"Mr. Bush will claim, once again, that Mr. Kerry plans to raise taxes on many small businesses. In fact, only a tiny percentage would be affected. Moreover, as Mr. Kerry correctly pointed out last week, the administration's definition of a small-business owner is so broad that in 2001 it included Mr. Bush, who does indeed have a stake in a timber company"

Irregardless, raising taxes on ANY business will create a ripple in the economy as a whole. Small business SHOULD be broadly defined so as to include as many business as possible to be eligible for a tax cut of some kind. Lower overhead and operating costs of doing business will enable ANY business, large or small, to hire more people - CREATING JOBS !! God forbid we should actually want to do this and succeed.

Spending issues are another matter entirely. Both Bush AND Kerry are reckless. Bush is too afraid to sign REAL spending cuts for fear of alienating minority swing voters, while Kerry is fundamentally opposed to making cuts at all and has no plans or promises to do so, and has never done so in his lengthy lackluster senate carreer. His fairy tale land where medicaid grows on trees is a perfect example.

Given how popular the first fact-check I posted was, I'm adding on another of the last debate. It compares Bush's and Kerry's misstatements and lies and weights them based on their importance to the nation and how blatant they are. Pretty interesting reading.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_10/004897.php

BUSH LIES MORE THAN KERRY....FILM AT 11....Here's a poser: do both candidates rely on deceit and distortion equally? Debate fact checking articles don't usually take sides on this question, but ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin does, telling his reporters in an internal memo last week that "the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done."

Halperin's message to his troops was plain: report what's really happening. If one side lies more than the other, feel free to report that instead of creating a fake balance that doesn't exist.

But is Halperin right? I decided to score last Friday's debate and find out. Who distorted more? And how big were the distortions?

Here's what I did. I read five fact checking articles (New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, and Factcheck.org) and copied down each error they reported. Then I scored each one on three different measures:


Technical inaccuracy. Was the statement factually inaccurate? Was a number incorrect or a position misstated? And was it wrong by a little bit or by a lot?

This was scored from 0-3.


Intent to Deceive. Regardless of technical accuracy, was there an intent to mislead? Was the statement just an exaggeration of something that's basically true, or was it flatly designed to project the opposite of the truth? Could the same point even have been made at all if it were stated correctly?

This was scored from 0-3.


Importance. Some subjects are more important than others. Wetlands protection is just not a major campaign issue, while the conduct of the war in Iraq is.

This was scored from 1-3.


To get the final score, I added the first two scores together and then multiplied by importance. The lowest possible score is 1, the highest possible score is 18. (UPDATE: Anything with a score of 0 is a true statement — i.e., it was neither technically inaccurate nor meant to deceive. That's why the minimum score is 1. If something scores a 0, it's not on this list.)

Now, before anyone goes rushing off to leave a comment about this, let me say that I know this formula is sort of dumb and simpleminded and I know there's no way to truly quantify deception. But this is a way to force yourself to give some thought to how serious each individual deception was, and anyway, if you can't do something dumb and simpleminded in a blog, where can you do it?

The details are all below the fold, but here are the results:


Bush: 18 lies, total score of 118.


Kerry: 10 lies, total score of 51.


Perhaps more important than the total score, though, is the number of serious lies. Bush had 7 serious lies (those with a score of 9 or above) while Kerry had none.

In other words, Bush rather clearly lied more than Kerry and lied more seriously than Kerry. I did my best to apply the same rigor to both candidates, but even with a different formula and different scoring, it's hard to see how Bush wouldn't come out as seriously more deceptive than Kerry. As Halperin said, deception seems to be central to George Bush's campaign while it's basically peripheral to John Kerry's.

Actually, rampant congressional spending caused these deficits, along with a host of other natural and unnatural disasters.

Click to expand...

So the Republican dominated congress is responsible? Its not like he has a veto or anything either. This war he lied us into seems to be costing us a little money, too. His medicare program is costing a ton more than he said it would, too. And he knew it would, because he pressured the Medicare Actuary not to tell Congress the real estimate, which was 100 billion higher.

Have you seen Bush's 2005 budget for after the election? Massive cuts to a lot of programs, including education. He won't give two shits about voters then, because he can't run again.

[quote name='dennis_t']Given how popular the first fact-check I posted was, I'm adding on another of the last debate. It compares Bush's and Kerry's misstatements and lies and weights them based on their importance to the nation and how blatant they are. Pretty interesting reading.[/quote]

That is extremely interesting. Its a pretty good plan to try to compare the misrepresentations of each campaign. I would agree with a number of posters there who suggested that 'Intent to Deceive' should be rated as significantly more important than 'Technical inaccuracy' (merely making mistakes is human, but deliberately misrepresenting the truth is a whole different story.) Still, though, the decent beginning of a system.

And, of course, who here is surprised that Bush wins? (or loses, as the case may be.)