Special Deconstruction - 20 Misleading Questions for the Obama "Regime"

It’s midterm season here in the United States, where in the middle of a particular President’s administration, he has the chance of having the party in power in the Legislature change on him, from an at least nominally supportive party to a hostile party. Usually, when such changeovers happen, the quality of legislation nosedives and the legislative process stalls heavily, as the legislature will either pass bills the President doesn’t like and will send back or the legislature will stall on proposals the President likes because they hate them.

In terms of political discourse here in the United States, things usually draw up to be more partisan, more accusatory, and more attack-based than they normally are. Over the course of the last ten years, however, I don’t think we ever shifted off of the attack drive into the more cooperative mode. The contested election of 02000 and its end brought bitter feelings forward, which the 11 September 02001 attacks alternately erased and then exacerbated, with the passage of USAPATRIOT, the revenge strike against Afghanistan, and then the decision to invade Iraq in 02003. There was no rest period from there, as 02004 was a presidential election year, and the re-election of the Republican in that race meant Afghanistan, Iraq, and USAPATRIOT/The Department of Homeland (In)Security, would stay wedge issues. Add on top of that one major hurricane disaster in 02005, complete with footage caught of police shooting unarmed civilians and planting evidence and what looked to be a disastrous result to the disaster, and we were pretty well set up for high rhetoric for the midterms of 02006. Then the housing and economic crash started showing its teeth in 02007 and 02008, and historic candidacies gave a dark undertone to the electoral process, raising the spectre of generations before and their race relations, and the rise of a faction that feeds upon radicalism and outrageous statements. Then the new government of 02008 sprang into action, with stimulus, and promises, and timetables, and major domestic reforms, continuing through 02009 and leaving us where we are here in 02010, after yet another Gulf coast disaster. We’ve had a decade of sharp words because we’ve had a decade of major actions, some which still continue, others which have knock-on effects that we’re still seeing.

That’s the prologue for the following article, and I go back all the way to 02000 because I suspect questions of this same style and baiting quality were asked about the previous administration at each of the electoral junctions they faced by their opposition party. I have probably been asking similar bait questions in my relatively short career as a provider of opinion. So it is in that context that I link the following article and then will do my best to point out flaws and answer questions. We Are Not Unbiased, so fact-checking Us is also a very, very good idea. (We appareciate corrections, so if we’re wrong, tell us.)

Mr. Senik offers 20 questions for the administration mid-term that he thinks are worthwhile in determining the efficacy of their policies and legislative accomplishments. Because an ordered list like that is a sucker for retaliation, we’ll do our best to point out where the questions go wrong and provide answers to those that stay near target.

1. The stimulus program was sold to the American people partially on the promise that it would keep the national unemployment rate below 8%. Yet in each of the 17 months since the bill was passed, unemployment has been over 8%. If such basic empirical claims are repeatedly disproved, how can they provide a basis for national economic policy?
To assume that the stimulus package is the sole influencing factor on the unemployment rate, as this question does, only serves to politicize the point, and it discounts the volumes of columns and statements written and spoken by other conservatives that lay the blame at the feet of other policies or their combinations thereof. Economics is tricky - one can predict, but inevitably, one will be wrong at some point. Furthermore, government policies can only be carrots or sticks to employers, who would have to to do the bulk of job creating to lower the rate back to something acceptable.


2. At $877 billion, the stimulus was the largest spending bill in U.S. history. The administration claims that the package was a success because every dollar the federal government pumps into the economy generates more than a dollar of economic activity. If that is true, why place any limit on government spending? Why not appropriate 50% of GDP if the net result is always a return greater than 100%?
Assuming your opponents are stupid makes you look stupid a lot of the time, and results in fighting straw men rather than real men. Because the slope of the line tangent to the curve at this point is positive does not mean that it will always be so (a derivative conclusion if there ever was one), and you know it. Furthermore, even if the multiplier holds true, at some point, the government runs out of income or some of that money moves out of the economy to elsewhere. If it were a truly closed circuit, then they could just spend and spend and spend and multiply themselves many times over. Since it’s not, though, gains escape the circuit and eventually the multiplier is less than one.


3. The administration claims that (A) the stimulus was a success and (B) more stimulus is required. How are these two propositions reconcilable?
Fueling an internal combustion engine successfully makes it work for a while. To continue making it work, you have to provide more fuel. Stimulus succeeds at starting up the engine of the economy, but to keep it going, you need more stimulus. You got 50% and you want 100%, so you need more.

These questions had better start getting smarter. Fantasy economics in the first two and a failure of basic logic in the third does not bode well.


4. Prior to becoming the chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer wrote in a scholarly paper that a tax increase of 1% of GDP would reduce overall GDP by 3%. With President Obama seemingly prepared to let at least some of the Bush tax cuts expire – and to entertain the notion of a national value-added tax – is it Romer’s scholarly credentials or Obama’s understanding of economics that is deficient?
Misdirection. The correct question is “Is it Romer’s conclusion or Obama’s plan that is deficient?” Whether Romer or Obama is right or wrong has no bearing on her scholarly credentials - only The Magnificent Karnak can predict the future accurately - or Obama’s understanding of economics - only Seldonesque psychohistorians can accurately understand the actions of large groups of people and their money. Both of them may turn out to be right - there is a decrease in GDP, but revenues gathered from that close the defecit - or wrong - tax increase results in more GDP, which may or may not be able to close the defecit gap, but it is their plans that must be compared, not their brains.


5. Attorney General Eric Holder has pointedly refused to cite radical Islam as the proximate cause for terrorism aimed at the United States. What does he believe Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan meant when he shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”) as he killed or wounded 43 at the Texas military installation?
Exactly what he said. What did Dr. George Tiller’s critics mean when they said that the doctor would burn in hell for his work? What did Matthew Shepard’s killers mean when they killed him for being gay. What does every God Hates Fags preacher, sign holder, or legislator in Africa mean when they talk about how Leviticus means that LGBTQ people should be killed for being abominations unto G-d? What does any insane person mean when they say that G-d told them to do what they did? If we want to talk about terrorism, surely radical Christians and their anti-life stances are the causes for more incidents than radical Islam.


6. During his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, President Obama said, “we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.” What meaning does a phrase like “human nature” have if it refers to a condition that can be transcended?
The basic condition of human, coded into him and he by the DNA and biology that says “must eat sustaining food, must drink sustaining water, must eliminate waste safely, must reproduce the species”. Past that point, really, is all human construction. Tools, society, “the human condition”, war, violence, protection - all of these things come about because of our ability, or lack thereof, to satisfy our nature’s requirements. It confirms Hobbes - natural life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, and thus could stand some perfecting.


7. During the 2009 uprising against the Iranian government, the president refused to even rhetorically intervene, lest the United States be seen as “meddling.” Today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still the President of Iran and the country is closer than ever before to a nuclear weapon. What worse scenario did the president’s forbearance prevent?
Misdirection. The statement that the United States would be seen as “meddling” does not imply there was a worse scenario that would be avoided by staying out of it, just that there would be no rhetorical firepower given to those looking for an excuse to crack down on the uprising from the United States. Now, governments like Ahmadinejad’s can manufacture “meddling” from whomever they need to at the drop of a hat so as to try and whip up their crowds into crushing their opposition. If there was a “worse” scenario avoided, it might have been a wholesale crushing of the Green movement brought about by being successfully painted as a U.S.-backed group come in to destablize Iran. Or, if you really want to get paranoid, it might have been an acceleration of the nuclear programme toward weapons as the newly installed Greens feel that they needs something to swing around to cememnt their legitimacy in their own region, or at least buy enough time for legitimacy.


8. At an April 28 speech in Quincy, Illinois, President Obama said, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” What is the maximum amount of money an American citizen should be allowed to earn?
Misdirection. “Enough” money does not say there is a maximum cap, only a minimum threshold. “Enough” money is the amount of money you need to sustain your lifestyle. Anything past that point is extra. And even in the context implied, at some point, you have more extra money than you will ever need to have. At that point, it’s just numbers. Why not put those extra numbers to work helping other people make it to enough, instead of using those numbers to make bigger numbers?


9. In a May discussion about human rights violations, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reportedly used Arizona’s new immigration law to illustrate to Chinese officials that the U.S. is also derelict in its protection of individual freedoms. Which provision of the law does he believe most closely approximates the murder of 3,000 protesters in Tiananmen Square?
Misdirection. The lack of protection on individual freedoms can result in 3,000 people killed by the army, or several thousand arrested for doing something outside their designated Free Speech Zone, in prosecuting someone who revealed evidence of government wrongdoing, outing a CIA agent in political revenge against a columnist, or in allowing for a blatant violation of the judicial philosophy that persons are innocent until proven guilty and the equal protection of the law by allowing police to decide whether or not the person they’ve stopped looks like an illegal immigrant and should have their documentation checked. If Papers Please said “everyone stopped must prove they are a citizen”, it would still be mocked heavily, but it would at least be tougher to challenge in court because it applied to everyone.


10. President Obama repeatedly promoted his plans for health care reform by promising that Americans who liked their health insurance could keep it. Since 62% of Americans receive their health care coverage through an employer – meaning it is the employer who will decide the relative merits of ObamaCare’s costs and benefits – how can this promise be effectuated?
“Hey, employers. I’m going to pass a law requiring insurance companies to only charge you so much for your insurance plans, so that you can keep the plans you have and not bankrupt yourselves or your employees. And I’m going to open up a government-run insurance exchange program that you can switch into at any point that will offer comparable coverage for the same price if your private insurer decides they want to fuck you and your employees over by denying coverage to you, them, or any of your or their families.” Everything but the price controls happened in the insurance part of the bill, I think.

Halfway through, and I count... one question that is not misdirection, straw-men related or otherwise deficient in construction and thus can get a straight answer on its merits. Batting .100 will get you sent back to the minors, thoguh, so hopefully this next set of 10 is better.


11. During his Oval Office address on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama said of the Minerals Management Service, “Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility - a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves.” Which public officials have voiced support for this philosophy?
Well, most recently, John Boehner suggested a moratorium on new federal regulations. So there’s at least one politician willing to say it.


12. Amidst the fractious disunity of the President’s team in Afghanistan, he has replaced General Stanley McChrystal with General David Petraeus – a man whose view of war policy is little different from McChrystal’s. How does the president propose to achieve the “unity of effort” he has spoken of while keeping in place a heterogeneous group of principals?
By using his authority as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, while consulting with his generals for their opinions, then decidieng, getting the top brass in line, and then letting the top brass bring everyone else into the fold. It’s not particularly hard.


13. If programs like “Cash for Clunkers” and the homebuyers tax credit provided durable economic growth for the automobile and housing industries, why weren’t they made permanent?
See above, bit about diminishing returns, also note that such programs require people with sufficient income and/or financing ability to purchase the products. After a certain point, all those who could buy homes/cars will have done so, giving the bump, and then everyone else would be doing it in such small fashions that the impact wouldn’t be as great.


14. The expansion of entitlements and spending that the Obama Administration is pursuing in the United States closely mirrors the policies of social democracies of Europe. Which European nations does the president believe boast superior economic performance when compared to the United States?
I’m sorry, we cannot answer your question due to a lack of data. Which indicators would you like to use in measuring economic performance? Raw GDP? Stock indexes? Tax base? Average worker wage? Productivity? And are you controlling for differing populations between the two countries and using other normalizing data to get a more accurate picture, or are you going to just compare the raw numbers and say the United States is superior in all ways?


15. Obama agreed to remove missile defense from Poland and the Czech Republic to soothe Russian anxieties. Why would a peaceful nation fear a purely defensive weapons system?
This thing you call a defensive weapons system, it does not exist. You can say that it would only be fired in retaliation or to stop missile launches, and you might be believed, at least in the sense of “We’re reasonably confident you won’t suddenly get aggressive with us.”, but it only takes one idiot in charge to change from defense to offense and point those suckers in a more hostile way. Or even fire them. I mean, we got pretty paranoid about missile defenses in Cuba being pointed at us. Why shouldn’t they get nervous about American missiles pointed at them?


16. The president contends that “green jobs” will be good for the environment and the economy. How can the government increase overall economic productivity by subsidizing inefficient forms of energy and taxing efficient ones?
You’ve pretty much got it, actually. You subsidize the inefficient ones so that the research continues on making them more efficient, with the end goal in mind of making them more efficient than the current efficient. Those energy forms that are efficient are, by their efficient nature, cheap to produce and use, discounting environmental damage, so they can afford to have some tax levied on them to spur the research. It’s a very Long Now way of looking at things, but over the course of time, I’m betting the inefficient ones will eventually become superior, and then you’ve increased economic productivity by providing a cheaper source of energy - and all those people you hired to make things better aren’t going away any time soon, nor are the manufacturers of the now-efficient stuff. More jobs, cheaper energy, better environmental impact - economic productivity goes up.


17. President Obama criticized the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case for allowing undue electoral influence by special interests. What example, foreign or domestic, does he cite to prove the virtue of allowing the government to regulate what can be said about the government?
Wow. That misdirection has the subtlety of the average Jaegermonster. Saying “Citizens United allows money to be the determining factor in what kind of speech you hear” is a very long shot away from “We need speech codes and regulation on what kind of speech can be said”. The administration may think that some amount of regulation is the right idea, so as to prevent the drowning of popular voice by corporate voice, but B does not follow automatically from A. There is one positive thing about the citizens United decision, though - it allows corporations to come out into the open about how much money and influence they have and spend on shaping the political messages you hear. If they have to file information with the FEC, then we’re going to soon be able to mine that data and know for a fact which corporations believe the same way you do, which corporations dismiss you, and which ones play both sides so they get benefits no matter who wins.


18. After the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day – an attempt that was only stopped by the vigilance of fellow passengers – Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, “the system worked”. In what instance, where “the system” is defined as “the government,” can that judgment be said to be true?
The system that flagged the Pants on Fire bomber as a terror threat worked in that it produced the correct result. It did so too late to stop him from boarding the plane, but it did work. Plus, if you think about it, all the times the system does work, you don’t hear about it, because whatever terror plot that was supposed to happen failed, and thus there’s no news to speak of, other than a possible small blurb saying “alleged terrorist arrested.” And that same system was implemented mostly by the last administration. Are you willing to go far enough to criticize them for the system not working?


19. The president’s recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick – a self-appointed rationing enthusiast – to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was justified on the grounds that congressional Republicans were “going to stall the nomination as long as they could.” No Republican had any plans to prevent confirmation hearings. Does the President feel that opposition, rather than obstruction, meets the threshold for circumventing the constitutional appointment process? If so, what purpose does the process serve?
Oh, for... [1000Hz tone]. Really? When the President says that the opposition is going to stall, he’s not saying “they’re trying to block confirmation hearings”. Instead he’s saying, “They’re going to fill those confirmation hearings with pointless, off-topic material, digs at my policies, and political bullshit instead of evaluating my candidate on his merits and deciding whether to confirm him, dragging a two day process into two weeks or two months as they try to dig up something to kill his nomination with.” So instead, he turns to the other constitutionally-approved method of filling vacancies - recess appointments. Oh, and by the way, the “rationing enthusiast” is a dog whistle to conservatives. Dr. Berwick, in proper context, said that we can either ration blindly, as we are now, letting insurance companies and their profits determine the amount and quality of care given, or we can ration with our eyes open, trying to ensure that everyone receives sufficient care for the quality of life. Either way, we’re going to ration, and I’m betting the market is far more capricious about it than the bureaucracy.


20. Is America better off than it was two years ago?
Undoubtedly. We’re better at something over the course of the last two years, whether it’s a positive things or negative things we’ve gotten better at. If you mean generally better or worse, it kind of depends on who you talk to. To people who got bailed out or work on Wall Street, things probably are just as good as they were. For others, things have continued to get worse than they were. We’ve done some social reform and some financial reform and health reform, with the effect of those yet to be determined, but we’re at least trying to make things better. I think we’ll succeed soon enough.

*thbbbbpth* That sucked. From conclusions that weren’t logical from their premises, to partisan dickery, a phenomenal amount of misdirection and trickery, and all sorts of other gaps, this article is fodder for those who already have their conclusions made up. For the rest of us, though, it’s instructive in showing how things get remarkably twisted when personal feelings or deep-seated societal lines get touched.