WaC Files: Red Herring Rich

When my fellow car-poolian from the 1990’s Richard Peasel began to spew right-wing talking points at me during our drives to and from work, he’d often do it with silly distractions. It looks like he hasn’t changed in all that time. There’s facts and there’s background; but he was good at distorting facts and dismissing background by using the distractions. In this case, where Peasel “anonymously” commented on my Grading PolitiFact Liberal-Style “Bureaucratic Bungling” review of a statement by Mitt Romney, there was a lot of the same. He actually sent me four comments like this. This time, however, he can’t get away with it.

It appears as if he never read my post or read the link to PolitiFact’s ruling. He just jumped out there with a bunch of bullet points of what he thinks is the difference between private sector and governmental productivity, presenting me with a false dilemma (“bureaucrats and freedom”) and making the absurd claim that “this” is Accounting 101. Then there were the implicit personal attacks on my education, which have nothing to do with the ruling.

The first bullet points, on the definitions of private sector productivity, are okay for the most part. I have no disagreement with them, except for “This process in turns creates profits enjoyed by both labor and owners.” Yea right, by the labor. Who is he trying to kid. Tell some 99 per centers that. Or people laboring for FoxConn in China. He also does something which is just plain silliness: although a lot of right-wingers suffer from this woefully wrong assumption. That is that liberals hate profits and wealth (“(ugh) profits, or (yeck) wealth”). I recall from our travels that he actually believed that liberals can’t be rich. I wonder what Warren Buffet (#3) or Bill Gates (#1) would say about that.

The second set of bullet points, on governmental productivity, is restricted to differing definitions only of bureaucrats; in other words, he makes the erroneous, typically right wing false equivalency that government worker = bureaucrat. The point of my criticism of this PolitiFact ruling on Romney was that most of these people hired were, as noted, part of the VA and military, tending to the needs of wounded soldiers returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was PolitiFact’s point as well for rating the claim Half True (emphasis added):

But Romney referred to those government workers as bureaucrats. This is a loaded term that obscures what most of the new employees actually do. Merriam-Webster lists as one of its definitions of bureaucracy: "a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation." That may not bring to mind doctors and nurses caring for wounded veterans or border patrol agents. When we examine the largest areas of growth, we find it is in national defense, veteran care, anti-terrorism and border security.

Finally, while Romney makes it sound as if this is solely Obama's doing, congressional Republicans and Democrats have approved increases in those areas. If President Obama is responsible for this growth, he had a lot of help from members of Romney’s own party.

Are doctors, nurses and healthcare aids doing the same thing in the government as they do in the private sector? Are they “writing laws, regulations, ordnances, and rules to define a conduct, action, or control by a bureaucratic authority”? No, they’re doing the same in the government sector as they did in the private sector: their jobs, to give medical assistance, administer drugs or therapy…to save lives.

The VA (Tri-Care) is the only real “government takeover” of healthcare in that the doctors are directly hired by the government. While for some strange reason (by Peasel) Tri-Care is very popular, let’s say the government did away with it and hired an outside contractor to administer medical assistance to wounded vets. The doctors, nurses and practitioners would be doing the same thing they did before, only they would be privately employed. In other words, their productivity would be there regardless of who employed them. Or if they hired private security as border patrols: are not the private security guards and those employed by Homeland Security doing the same thing?

That is my point: in this particular case, the type of hiring that was done was almost all not in the realm of “bureaucrats”—it was mostly medical practitioners and security guards, what in the private sector would be deemed indirect expense, and is indirect as well in the government. Now if the government had hired 135,000 auditors and regulation writers/reviewers, both Romney (and Peasel) would have a point, and I would not have made this argument. But Romney was incorrect as to the function of the great majority of these new government employees.  In my opinion what he said was highly misleading and deserved less than the Half True granted by PolitiFact.

So for Peasel to say that he would “appreciate [it] if Karen would go back through her blog to show us the how DOE , FEA, DOE, SS, Treasury (which is printing trillions in paper creating a insidious inflationary tax), Medicare, and Obamacare are productive agencies of government, which are contributing to even greater freedom for Americans” is utter non sequitor nonsense. I’ve made no claim with regard to these governmental departments. I’m NOT making any attempts to “to describe how productive bureaucrats can be.” I don’t buy into Peasel’s Red Herring. All I’ve said was that in this particular case, Romney was wrong: these people had to be hired due to Republican policies, and what they are doing is NOT defined as “bureaucratic”—and I am disappointed that Peasel would be so derisive of our troops that he would not want them to get the proper care after serving our country, fighting to protect his "freedom." I guess he forgot his right-wing rule about being the “better” patriot.

And when I hear these glittering generalities of “greater freedom” I say, cut the crap, Peasel. When the insurance company that suckered you into the annuity goes belly up and can’t pay your monthly draw or refund your contributions while your Republican congressperson voted down its bailout, and you find out that discount coupon for RyanCare isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and your SS is not enough to pay your sky-rocketing medical expenses, tell me about your freedom then. (But then, you could always double down on foolish investments and get a reversible mortgage.)  By the way, Suze Orman hates annuities, with a passion.

As for Peasel’s founding father quotes, I’ll just say that in 1798, John Adams signed the very first health care mandate into law. The law required sailors to pay a tax to the United States government which in turn would provide medical care to them. The next President, Thomas Jefferson, apparently approved of this program as well, since he never challenged it, nor did he ever try to repeal it. So according to Republican logic, Adams and Jefferson are a couple big government liberals.