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.

Fox News Distortion of Birth Control Exemption

(To Rich Peasel:  I not only have to explain by practically drawing you a picture, but now you get a youtube video!)

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?

Peasel Prattle: Welfare for Rich

When I began this post, a response to Richard Peasel’s commentary on my  post of January 5, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to how he started it, since it looked like his standard cynical claptrap. I had pretty much easily refuted all his claims, but in review, this statement gave me a bit of pause:

Karen, I see a lot of pretty charts above, are you trying to dazzle me with your bean counter brilliance, or baffle me with your BS….your graph explanations leave a lot to be desired.

It turned into a bewildered pause when I saw the end of his comment, a long stack of monthly dates. Why? Because the purpose of a graph is:

To ILLUSTRATE numerical data, thus making it easier to understand.

To represent the data Graphs give a visual representation of progress (or regress) and they are much quicker and easier to grasp than a boring stack of numbers. 

So…by saying he “sees a lot of pretty charts” and telling me that mine “leave a lot to be desired” then showing me a stack of about 60 months with an “index” as if he thinks it’s much easier to understand is not only disingenuous but oxymoronic. Oxymoronic because he’s essentially saying that HIS jumble of numerical data with off-point commentary is more easily understandable than my focused, easy to understand charts. Not only that, his data was incomplete, because the Misery Index is the combination of inflation and the unemployment rate. Rich only presented the unemployment rate. He probably did not want to mention the inflation rate, because at the end of 2008 it fell precipitously, and was actually negative in 2009, meaning there was no condition of 70’s stagflation (which would have allowed him to draw parallels between Obama and Jimmy Carter).

Nevertheless, here is a graph of Peasel’s data, more complete month-wise, and including the inflation rate:

Note that green line (inflation) dropped with employment.  The black line is where the Dems took Congress in 2006.

Peasel Prattle: Fish, Barrel, Shoot, Repeat

More from the WaC Files

A few months ago, I started the “What a Crock” part of my blog to spotlight a few people whose opinionated commentary compels me to occasionally challenge them. One of them was former co-worker and rabid right-winger Rich Peasel, who has found my blog and wrote me a nice *concise* 400-word diatribe in my comment area about my oh-so-lengthy 1,683 word response to a letter he had published by the Flint Journal back in September.

Rich is getting the royal treatment here, instead of just publishing his comments as comments, I’m going to do another lengthy post to respond, because unfortunately, that’s what it takes to plow through it. But that’s what “What a Crock” is all about. I call ‘em like I see ‘em.

So…let’s get started:

Wow Karen, Sorry I did not run across this blog earlier. It took you 5 pages and 1683 words to refute my 4 paragraphs in the Flint Journal. Maybe you should borrow the president's teleprompter to help in writing a concise blog.

Well, Rich, your stuff is not 100% bullshit, but a rich blend of manure from a wide variety of farm animals. I don’t need a teleprompter, however. Just a lot of Googling and quoting (including you) to make it abundantly clear that manure IS being spread. And I don’t need to be concise on a blog like this…but why don’t you do one yourself and we can see how concise YOU are?

You neglected to mention that the Republicans controlled Congress in the Bush years from 2000 to 2006 before the Democratic took over the Congress with Nancy Pelosi promising PayGo. From 2000 t0 20006 (or 6 years) , the Republican Congress increased the national debt 2.4 trillion. When the 110th Dems took control of the purse strings in 2006, they increase the national debt another 2.6 trillion in only two years. The Bush presidential years totaled 5 trillion in 8 years with two wars and less than 4% unemployment.

It should be noted that Peasel had made a previous comment with regard to a speech given by then-Senator Obama about the deficits being due to a “failure of leadership” by Bush, leading to his contention Obama does not “practice what he preaches.” But he doesn’t realize his contradiction: he blames the previous deficits on the Democratic congress, the current deficits on the Democratic president. His reasoning with regard to “the Republican Congress increase[ing] the national debt [*only*] 2.4 trillion” in six years as compared to the Democrats increasing it 2.6 trillion in two years uses the classic fallacy of “tu quoque” or “you too” argument. He also conveniently ignores the events leading up to the current fiscal crisis that is driving the spending (and no, it wasn’t just the Democrats who caused it). I wonder if a Republican congress would have done any better.

Peasel Prattle: Flint, Fear and Flux Capacity (Updated)

From the What a CROCK Files

This starts the first of my series of reviews of the “Letters to the Editor” (of the Flint Journal) by one Richard Peasel, former co-worker and co-car-pooler, who is also a rabid right-winger.

This particular letter, published October 1, is SO chock full of lies, distortions, and misrepresentations, I just don’t know where to begin! So I’ll take it step by step.  Peasel uses a rhetorical device which would be described by Bryan White as "concrete examples" which is nothing more than a nice bullet list of lies, distortions and misrepresentations.

Has columnist Andrew Heller borrowed the president’s teleprompters to parrot the president’s speech inaccuracies, or does Andy have a shorter memory than the average American (Sept. 10 column regarding people with short memories voting Republican)?

I could not find the Andrew Heller column to which Rich refers, and assume it means people have short memories with regard to George W. Bush’s record the last eight years before Obama was elected. Like all those things that started with Bush that contributed to the deficits: Bush’s tax cuts, his Iraq/Afghanistan wars, his Medicare Part D, his financial crisis, his bailouts…..or did Rich forget? Because they’re definitely not Obama speech inaccuracies, they’re….FACTS. The financial impact of Bush’s activities is enumerated later in this piece.

Peasel Prattle: A Primer

From the What a CROCK Files

My voice in politics got its start back in 1994 when I was in a car pool with a guy named Rich Peasel who seems to have one retirement hobby of writing letters to the Editor at the Flint Journal, which get published, on average, of about once a month. His letters evoke controversy because he is unabashedly very right wing on every talking point conservatives espouse. His writings are so to extremely the right they are almost silly, so I can understand why they are published (often the Flint Journal will publish letters in response to his). He thinks he is a writer; however, he’s admitted to me he’s tried to parlay it to the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, but he hasn’t gotten too far. About the only thing I take exception to is the way he behaves (because, to put it mildly, he’s a tad hypocritical in his actions, which is my biggest complaint about most of the right wing fanatics I have come in contact with in my life.)

He was pretty well versed in his politics back in 1994, and he looked forward to doing the touché on me almost every day. However, with the advent of the internet and its “fricking Google it,” commentary, social networks and blogs, it has leveled the playing field for me a great deal. I did not have a quick wit and the “Jeopardy” type answering ability for person to person verbal exchanges back then, but today I can fairly quickly cite references and write cogent rational responses to right wing rants, such as those he exposed me to back then.