Peasel Prattle: Practical Examples of Fallacious Reasoning

Here’s the six-step method of argument as promoted by Rich Peasel in commenting on one of my previous posts:

(1) Preview with poisoning the well.

(2) Start with a glaring self-contradicting, circular argument.

(3) Follow by a nice non-sequitor. Make a false, grandiose assertion spiced up with a little false dichotomy.

(4) Throw in another non-sequitor. Declare another “fact” which is not only irrelevant, but isn’t a fact.

(5) Red herring: Then distract by a rant.

(6) Conclude with a sweeping generalization which includes a complete mischaracterization of what the blogger originally said.

So, let us begin with Peasel’s poisoning of the well:

Karen, Karen, Kar-en! Give up for you can never win a argument against famous prattle Peasel – especially without evidence. Again no evidence that the VA, TRICAREVA, OR CHAMPVA is not bureaucratic – no evidence except the moron logic used daily on the ONBC (Obama National Broadcasting Corporation).

Yes, Peasel must have a monopoly on the truth, like all conservatives do. Fox News, Heritage and IBD would never lie, misrepresent or exaggerate. Besides that, anyone who doesn’t agree with him….is a liberal moron. Great way to start.

According to Karen’s logic, the bankrupt Post Office is not bureaucratic since mail carriers are the same whether working for the government or for UPS or FX.

Other than the fact that I never made this statement, it clearly does not follow—it’s a non-sequitor. A non sequitur is an argument where the conclusion is drawn from premises which aren't logically connected with it. Even reversing the negatives does not make this comprehensible: the Post Office IS bureaucratic because mail carriers are NOT the same as those who work for UPS or Fedex. Is Peasel making the claim that because mail carriers receive a pension they are therefore bureaucratic?

The reason the Post Office is bankrupt is because in 2006, the Republican congress gave it a "poison pill" and mandated that it must fully fund (75 years of!) its pension liability; if UPS or Fedex had been required to do this, they would have been forced into bankruptcy as well. Nevertheless, his statement makes no sense at all.

That’s interesting Peasel mentions the Post Office, because I thought he was in love with the constitution and the founding fathers:

The United States Postal Service (also known as USPS, the Post Office or U.S. Mail) is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, where Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general.

The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters.

Peasel follows with false equivalency by virtue of Kaiser Health News: that difficulties in increasing government efficiency is evidence of bureaucracy.

According to Kaiser Health News, we have evidence that the VA is bureaucratic. “Congress also appropriates funds annually for the VA to provide health care services to eligible veterans. Since demand is often greater than available resources, veterans assigned to higher priorities are enrolled first with the possibility that those in lower priorities may not receive care. While funding levels for the VA have increased in each of the President’s budget requests, the proposals assumed that management efficiency initiatives that would save money without compromising access or quality. However, these savings have failed to materialize, resulting in a funding shortfall.”

The “evidence” actually tells a different story: Republicans blocked such efforts prior to Obama. When Bush was president, he stacked the VA with political cronies, such as former RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson, who, as VA Secretary, defended a budget measure that sought major cuts in staffing for health care and at the Board of Veterans Appeals, slashed funding for nursing home care and blocked four legislative measures aimed at streamlining the backlog of veterans' benefits claims.

Obama vowed to reverse that trend. Prior to being sworn in as president, Obama said on his transition web site, Change.gov, that he intended to "Fix the [VA] Benefits Bureaucracy" by hiring "additional claims workers and improve training and accountability so that VA benefit decisions are rated fairly and consistently." Moreover, Obama said he wanted to "transform the paper benefit claims process to an electronic one to reduce errors and improve timeliness."

But those efforts have not yet been fully implemented. Although Obama proposed a dramatic increase in VA's budget, of which Congress approved, implemented a series of new suicide prevention programs and selected retired Vietnam War veteran Gen. Eric Shinseki to lead the VA, the administration has been slow in completing the process.

Now, I never denied that there’s bureaucracy in government, I just don’t agree with Peasel’s sweeping generalization that it is 100% bureaucracy. For example:

A new report from Medical Care found the health system at the Department of Veterans Affairs regularly outperforms the private sector. The report reviewed 36 studies published over a 19-year period, between 1990 and 2009. Led by Dr. Amai Trivedi, the authors of the report noted a series of reasons for the VA's performance including:

•Its disease management practices
•Its use of health information technology
•Solid performance measures
•An integration of health care settings

Oh those horrid bureaucrats! If Peasel’s trying to say that there’s rationing of care (“possibility that those in lower priorities may not receive care”), what makes him think there’s no rationing of care in the private sector?

Peasel continues his bankrupt thinking using uncited quotations:

“The VA and Department of Defense operate distinct systems that offer differing levels of benefits and often use different standards for assessing severity of illness or injuries. These differences have resulted in some gaps in medical service. For example, there have been some difficulties in sharing information between the two departments in part because the two Departments have differing interpretations of federal privacy provisions governing the sharing of individually identifiable health data. The difficulty experienced by disabled soldiers and the coordination of their care as they transition to civilian life has been a major driver of recent legislative efforts, congressional hearings and federal investigations to improve support services”. (This doesn’t sound bureaucratic to a liberal)

And in keeping with what I originally told Peasel, he is employing the false equivalency (with poor examples) of government = bureaucracy, no exceptions. The problem he describes above exists at the private level, in some respects, it is even worse.

Boston, Mass (June 6, 2011)—A new study finds that the cancer care provided by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for men 65 years and older is at least as good as, and by some measures better than, Medicare-funded fee-for-service care obtained through the private sector. The study, reported in the June 7 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, was led by Nancy Keating, an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School.

Several factors could account for the high quality of VHA care. "Care in the VHA is much better coordinated than most other settings," said Keating, who is also an associate physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "The VHA has a good, integrated medical record. Their doctors all work together and communicate more effectively. There are no incentives for the overuse of cancer treatments because VHA physicians are not rewarded financially for prescribing more drugs or procedures. The VHA also measures quality across a wide range of conditions, so there is a culture of quality improvement."

“Good, integrated medical record…physicians not rewarded financially for prescribing more drugs or procedures”….Oh those horrid bureaucrats!

Again Karen throws out the figure of 135,000 medical practitioners and security guards without evidence. The actual figure as of a year ago was 144,000 Federal Employees. Here’s the evidence that Karen will not show you. In 2004, the USA had about 93,600 family physicians or a ratio of 41.6 doctors per 100,000 people per the AAFP. By 2020, Americans will need 139,531 family physicians or roughly the amount that Karen contends VA hired. If the VA hired 144,000 doctors, that equates to about 41 doctors for every war veteran.

Peasel gets a big fat FAIL on this one. I never “threw out that figure” and never said medical practitioners were ALL doctors. Is Peasel losing his memory in his old age, or does he not recall reading the link to the PolitiFact fact-check ruling I was specifically addressing in my post. It never said 144,000 doctors. Oh yes, that’s how Peasel always wins…he just makes sh*t up and insists it’s true like he did before. Let me refresh his failing memory from the PolitiFact ruling:

The Office of Personnel Management tallies are done every quarter, not every month, so the numbers don’t exactly match what you find on the BLS web site, but the trends line up. In round figures, from September 2009 to September 2011, the federal workforce grew about 100,000. Counting permanent civilian employees, the departments of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Defense grew by 53,000 -- more than half of the total. Veterans Affairs provides another 24,000, or about a quarter of the overall increase. Homeland Security contributes 12,000 -- call that another 10%. All told, national defense, assisting veterans, and protecting the national borders account for close to 90% of all federal civilian employee growth.

"Medical and healthcare practitioners" consist of, but are not limited to:

Chiropractors, Dietitians and Nutritionists, Pharmacists, Anesthesiologists, Physician Assistants, Registered Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Radiation Therapists, Respiratory Therapists, Speech-Language Pathologists, Audiologists, Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technicians, Cardiovascular Technologists and Technicians, Diagnostic Medical Sonographers ; Nuclear Medicine Technologists, Radiologic Technologists and Technicians, Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics, Dietetic Technicians, Pharmacy Technicians, Respiratory Therapy Technicians, Surgical Technologists, Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses, Medical Records and Health Information Technicians, Orthotists and Prosthetists, Health Technologists and Technicians, Occupational Health and Safety Specialists and Technicians.

These are the titles of people who probably work in VA hospitals; they would have the same titles working in a private or public hospital. For example, I imagine there are a lot of physical therapists for soldiers who have debilitating injuries: the job of a physical therapist is to “assess, plan, organize, and participate in rehabilitative programs that improve mobility, relieve pain, increase strength, and improve or correct disabling conditions resulting from disease or injury.” Most of these jobs require a lot of training and education. According to Peasel, however, they don’t do anything but paper-push and make red tape because training and education mean nothing when you’re hired by the government. So why get the skills in the first place?

Then Peasel throws another red herring velcro bag at the wall to see if it it will stick:

But I forgot the security guards which is the liberal term for the much loved TSA.. The TSA is so efficient that it checks everything from the excrements in baby diapers to fondling the crouches of 90 year old men. I have to admit that I know of no security organization in the world more efficient then the TSA at searching for terrorist in citizen’s underwear. Like all bureaucratic agencies the TSA bureaucrats the TSA administration has proposed their efficient expertise into buses, subways, and trains. The Obama administration may say it is impractical to hire tens of thousands of border guards when it is more practical to hire a TSA agents to check the underwear of 300 million Americans.

First, question(s): Who started the TSA (and why)? Did Obama start it?

We need to understand we were only at war, with all that it entailed, under Bush, and that's when we were all supposed to come together, praise our wartime leader, never question him, respect him no matter what. Give up our rights to the Patriot Act, believe blindly whatever they told us, on pain of being called unpatriotic (especially by Republicans).

But now that a Democrat is in, it’s a whole different set of circumstances, with ridiculous charges being made against the still wartime president, his staff, his administration, and even with leftover rules from the old administration.

The same people who didn't care about the Bush administration spying on U.S. citizens without a warrant (like Peasel) are up in arms about being searched by the TSA and openly advocate racial profiling so that they aren't inconvenienced by having to be searched themselves.

Also, if you’ve traveled outside the U.S., and considering this was initiated because the United States was attacked, it would be CRAZY for the U.S. to eliminate the TSA while other countries have something similar, and put the entire world at risk.

If Peasel has an alternative, I think we’d all still hate it.

By the way, that number included border patrol agents. Peasel must hate my graphics, because he doesn’t look at them

Let’s continue with a repeat of that same old false equivalency:

According to Karen’s liberal mind logic, there is no difference from a government bureaucrat health care and private health insurance company health care.

The death panels of private company HMO bureaucrats:  plus 44,000 people dying annually due to lack of healthcare.

Yes, and according to Peasel’s right-wing self-deluded logic, all corporations care about people too (because they ARE people), and they are all efficient and don’t have any bureaucrats. And on top of that, he probably thinks that private health insurance companies don’t have death panels! I can even give Peasel the title of the head of the death panel board of the private health insurance company: he’s called the medical director. He’s the one who denies life-saving treatment because it’s not covered in the policy. He’s the one who denies insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions. Oh, and by the way, he’s the one who wants to provide abortion and contraceptive coverage because it saves money over having babies (an abortion costs about $400 whereas having a baby costs about $7,000). Because he’s just like Peasel, when it comes to money and profits there is no difference between capitalists when it comes to moral issues, they can just shrug it off with “we’d be stupid NOT to” as Peasel would say.

That is why Obamacare is creating over 30 brand new government agencies, offices, commissions, bureaus, divisions, directorates, departments, administrations and services of which many or redundant, overlapping or unnecessary. For example Obamacare’s 2012 budget calls for 15,000 additional federal government jobs of which 4,182 are ObamaCare ‘general practitioner’ IRS agents (utilizing Karen’s liberal logic). With tens of thousands of TSA and IRS agents protecting the free and the brave, the USA will become a Liberal paradise of freedom.

“The free and the brave”—again, Peasel needs to look up “glittering generality.” Yes, “Obamacare” will have some new departments, although Peasel exaggerates them to the extreme by the over-use of synonyms, which he probably took from Karl Rove’s right-wing propaganda that "quantity has a quality all its own." Well, at least Peasel isn’t saying it’s 16,500 agents, like many Republicans have. PolitiFact rated the 16,500 as False, as well as other fact-checkers: “For 2012, the IRS estimate is 1,269, mostly in non-enforcement roles.” So Peasel’s right-wing rag Heritage blog from whence he got this information is still mischaracterizing the 4,182 figure in regard to the functions of these “bureaucrats”:

Here are the areas, as defined by the IRS, where the new 1,269 FTEs will be needed (see pages 21 through 66):

■Improve Taxpayer Service, 150
■Increase Coverage to Address Tax Law Changes and Other Compliance Issues, 363
■Ensure Accurate Delivery of Tax Credits, 504
■Administer New Statutory Reporting Requirements, 187
■Implement Individual Coverage Requirement and Employer Responsibility Payments, 65

So, wow, 615 definite “bureaucrats” (363+187+65), the thought of it must just be killing Peasel! That’s about 12 per state….what a crime, Obama should be impeached for this (but it was okay for Bush to start the TSA, a huge bureacracy that he hates).  It reminds me when he complained about government funding of public radio during our 1990’s car-pooling, which was about .0000000000001 percent of the federal budget….is that all he could come up with? Well, you got to start somewhere, he told me, and then went nowhere since everything else the government did, the other 99.9999999999%, was something that benefited him or one of his fellow Republicans personally. Go figure.

Peasel previously complained about Obama “stealing” (Michele Bachmann’s words) $500 billion from Medicare by phasing out Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is the part of Medicare that Republicans boasted would cost less than Medicare because it was run privately and not by the government.  But even without all that bureaucracy, it now costs 13-14% more per patient than Medicare. 

Cohen, an 86-year-old who lives in Connecticut, says he switched to an advantage plan only after a salesman assured him he would be completely covered while staying in Florida.

But after breaking his leg in that state, Cohen began to believe he had been sold a bill of goods.

"There was something radically wrong," Cohen said. "They wouldn't give me any home therapy, claiming that it wasn't covered."

But that's only part of the problem. With traditional Medicare, there's one plan for everyone, everywhere. Private Medicare Advantage offers as many as 50 different plans, causing untold confusion over coverage, premiums, co-pays, provider networks.

"These insurance benefit packages are very complicated. Almost nobody without really technical sophistication can figure out exactly what they are buying," said Robert Hayes, who runs the Medicare Rights Center.

Hayes said every year his staff fields thousands of calls from seniors scared to death they've made the wrong choice.

Fifty different plans? Untold confusion? Sounds…bureaucratic? Yes, but that’s private companies, so there’s no bureaucracy there, by Peasel!

Later he summarizes another comment with the biggest pants on fire lie of all, using the distortions and misrepresentations he’s already created:

In summary, Billions are NOT being spent on doctors to help the sick and wounded soldiers per my bleeding heart liberal Karen. The fact is that billions are spent by the government bureaucracy trying to figure out how to help the the sick or wounded soldiers and veterans.

By his specious reasoning, people hired by the VA or DoD are not doing what they spent their lives getting educated and trained to do. Their titles mean nothing. They are not caring for those in the hospitals in which they are employed. They are simply “trying to figure out how to help the sick or wounded soldiers or veterans.” Good grief.

I just wonder, if what Peasel says is true, why, in this social network world of immediate communication we haven’t seen or heard someone among these 135,000 complain that they weren’t hired to do their jobs but ONLY hired to figure out ways to help the sick and wounded soldiers and vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be a great expose by Breitbart, wouldn't it? I see complaints at nurses’ sites about red tape at the VA, but that’s along with high nurse-patient ratios and 16-hour shifts, but if all the nurses do is try to figure out how to help, the nurse-patient ratio shouldn’t matter should it?

But let’s take a better look at how Obama is employing bureaucrats for the sole purpose of doing only bureaucratic things, as reported in this PolitiFact “promise kept:”

So how has President Obama fared on his promise to open additional Veterans Centers?

We contacted the Department of Veteran Affairs, which told us that it has authorized 29 new centers since President Obama took office in 2009. Of these, 25 are currently open and operational. The remaining 4 are in contractual negotiations. Although all of these serve rural areas, currently 7 are located in locations classified as rural. This includes new facilities in Flathead County, Mont. and American Samoa. The opening of these facilities correlated with a rise in the number of rural outpatient mental health visits -- from 3.4 million in fiscal year 2009 to 3.9 million in fiscal year 2010.

So, 500,000 rural outpatient mental health visits are just part of the “bureaucracy trying to figure out how to help the the sick or wounded soldiers and veterans”?

Or, at a brand new facility in Flathead County, Montana, how about what happened with this nurse?

Thelma Lofink, a nurse at Fort Harrison VA Medical Center, received special recognition from the Network Director of VA Rocky Mountain Network 19 recently.

Lofink was congratulated for being named the 2009 Hands and Hearts Award recipient by Glen Grippen, VISN 19 Network Director, during his visit to Montana on Dec. 15.

The Hands and Hearts award recognizes VA employees whose dedication to Veterans is marked by the highest standards in patient care.

"(Thelma) assures the Veteran's care is individualized and appropriate and works closely with the provider to create a team approach for care," said Debera Charlton, RN and Nurse Manager for Ambulatory Care, Central Montana, who nominated Lofink for the award. "She sets the 'gold standard' for customer service for our Veterans."

Yep, sounds like she got special recognition for her bureaucratic work…ambulatory care. What exactly is ambulatory care? It's defined as "When a patient needs medical attention without the need for admission."  Sounds real bureaucratic, don't you think?

Without the need for admission….no admission means less bureaucracy….but hey, wait a minute, I thought Peasel said ALL the people hired were doctors, who were bureaucrats.

But let’s go back to something Peasel said at the beginning and analyze it. “Give up for you can never win a argument against famous prattle Peasel.” Give up WHAT? Never win? What does Peasel win? How do I lose? Is he really arrogant enough to think his arguments are that good? I can just keep publishing my criticisms and delete Peasel’s comments and be done with him. He thinks by ad hominen attacking,  making false assertions, distortions and exaggerations, he wins. Only in his alternate universe.

Yes there’s bureaucracy in government, but it’s not 100% as Peasel seems to insist. If the government was actually at the level Peasel complains it is, things would be much, much different than they are now; there would be total chaos. Jets would be crashing not just from terrorist attacks from no TSA but because air traffic controllers would not be doing their jobs in order to be the bureaucrats of Peasel’s dreams, to name an example Peasel seems to like. I would not be able to easily drive I-75 between Michigan and  Florida in about two days as I've done many times in the past, because Peasel's "bureaucrats" would have to neglect it and leave it in disrepair, even though the truth is it's well maintained and is far superior to the state-maintained routes.  And as I initially explained, in this case, most of it was not what would be considered bureaucratic.

Let’s finish off the rest of Peasel’s claptrap from a follow-up comment:

I found it intriguing that Karen, actually believes that the government is hiring thousands of doctors to take care of our returning Vets. I also find it inconceivable that Karen actually believes that government is a benevolent, efficient servant of the people when in reality government by definition is bureaucratic, authoritarian, control, regulator and/or administrator.

WRONG. I never said the government was hiring thousands of doctors, those are Peasel’s words. (I believe I’ve said this before, but it seems this is Peasel’s debating method: he simply makes up the argument for the other side and then refutes it). I’ve already shown that to be categorically false. I also do not believe that the government is a “benevolent, efficient servant” but I also believe (and have proved above) that the government is not 100% bureaucratic.

I have usually too busy to be answering blogs, but as I have been Karen’s mentor for years, I feel it is my duty to research the government bureaucracy for Karen, as the discrepancies in her blog may reflect back on me.

WRONG AGAIN.  Peasel was never a mentor to anyone, let alone me. I didn’t know he was suffering delusions about his employment! In the future, should Peasel decide to add commentary again, it will be deleted, as they are really not worth time responding to. The discrepancies Peasel refers to are his own; he makes his own reputation, I don't (that's called personal responsibility, something he forgot from his Republican lingo dictionary). On the other hand, his comments do make excellent examples of the corrupted thinking of conservatives.

To be honest I never even considered the efficiency at the VA until Karen desperately tried to inefficaciously argue the benevolent nature of government to save lives. Per Steve Vogel of the Washington Post, Veterans must wait as disability claims overwhelm the VA. The number of pending claims before VA stood at 853,831 on Friday, and increase of nearly 100,000 from last year and nearly ½ million from three years ago.

“Nearly 1 million veterans today are stuck in the backlog and more than half wait at least half a year to find out if their claim has been processed,” said Rep Jeff Miller, R-Fla. Although VA has processed nearly a million claims over the past year, another 1.3 million new claims were filed during the same period.

VA Secretary Erick K. Shinselki launched a department-wide effort to break the backlog, according to agency officials. The budget for the Veterans Benefits Administration reached two billion dollars in 2012 or a 20 percent increase over 2011. VA says it will accelerate services, but congressional oversight committees question whether there is much to show for the additional money.

Over the last several years VA has been working on a paperless claim processing system that will help reduce the backlog by several months. VA also renewed its efforts to reform the complex disability rating system, which has not been comprehensively revised since it was created at the end of WWII.

“The fact of the matter is veterans still don’t have a seamless transition or standardize rating system to eliminate confusion. Per Rep Joe Runyan R-NJ, “Veterans are getting stuck in the system between the BUREAUCRACY of DOD and VA.”

In 2009 a systematic and comprehensive review of current medical information with a panel of experts in 15 areas of health is not expected to be completed for at least another four years. However, veterans organizations are urging quicker action. “Vets are dying while for the VA to do this job,” Theodore Javi, past president of the national Organization of Veterans’ Advocates, told a congressional subcommittee.

 I’ve covered this already: Republicans blocked such efforts prior to Obama. When Bush was president, he stacked the VA with political cronies, such as former RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson, who, as VA Secretary, defended a budget measure that sought major cuts in staffing for health care and at the Board of Veterans Appeals, slashed funding for nursing home care and blocked four legislative measures aimed at streamlining the backlog of veterans' benefits claims.

Peasel was forced to put the word bureaucracy in all caps because this was probably one of the few examples he could find as he searched the internet. But as I’ve said, yes there is bureaucracy, but IT IS NOT 100% as Peasel tries to claim. It is not all-inclusive.

And again, he argues that inefficiency equates with bureaucracy. So, let him explain this:

By 2000, the VHA had 10,000 fewer employees than in 1995 and a 104% increase in patients treated since 1995, and had managed to maintain the same cost per patient-day, while all other facilities' costs had risen over 30% to 40% during the same time frame.

I word this ending from something said by Eric Levine about another conservative like Peasel. I feel very sorry for the pathetic Peasel who represents the worst sort of Archie Bunker Republican. He has a few good points, but they are buried in a pile of logic fallacies and shoddy research. It is no surprise that he proudly admits he must win at all costs. Delusions can be a hard thing to escape. It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to pretend that his sources of information, such as Fox News and the WSJ, are the only ones to be trusted. He is so committed to the delusion, he will never shake it, holding onto absurdities just to continue to live it.

We Wepublicans are always wight!  Wah!