Meaning: something has gone really wrong in Washington D.C. with our politics. The GOP has decided to just lie and lie and lie, regardless of the truth, regardless of the facts. We see it in the national GOP and we see it up close in Texas in the guise of Dan Patrick, currently in a run-off with the incumbent David Dewhurst for the Republican nomination for Texas Lieutenant Governor.
What can we do about one political party that just does not care about the truth, but lies blatantly to influence their uneducated and intellectually lazy base?
Paul Krugman sees it and wrote about it recently.
Inventing a Failure
by Paul Krugman, New York Times
Last week, House Republicans released a deliberately misleading report on the status of health reform, crudely rigging the numbers to sustain the illusion of failure in the face of unexpected success. Are you shocked?
You aren’t, but you should be. Mainstream politicians didn’t always try to advance their agenda through lies, damned lies and — in this case — bogus statistics. And the fact that this has become standard operating procedure for a major party bodes ill for America’s future.
About that report: The really big policy news of 2014, at least so far, is the spectacular recovery of the Affordable Care Act from its stumbling start, thanks to an extraordinary late surge that took enrollment beyond early projections. The age mix of enrollees has improved; insurance companies are broadly satisfied with the risk pool. Multiple independent surveys confirmt hat the percentage of Americans without health insurance has already declined substantially, and there’s every reason to believe that over the next two years the act will meet its overall goals, except in states that refuse to expand Medicaid.
This is a problem for Republicans, who have bet the ranch on the proposition that health reform is an unfixable failure. “Nobody can make Obamacare work,” declared Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, a couple of weeks ago (when it was already obvious that it was working pretty well). How can they respond to good news?
Well, they could graciously admit that they were wrong, and offer constructive suggestions about how to make the law work even better. Oh, sorry — I forgot that I wasn’t writing jokes for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
No, they have in fact continued to do what they’ve been doing ever since the news on Obamacare started turning positive: sling as much mud as possible at health reform, in the hope that some of it sticks. Premiums were soaring, they declared, when they have actually come in below projections. Millions of people were losing coverage, they insisted, when the great bulk of those whose policies were canceled simply replaced them with new policies. The Obama administration was cooking the books, they cried (projection, anyone?). And, of course, they keep peddling horror stories about people suffering terribly from Obamacare, not one of which has actually withstood scrutiny.
Now comes the latest claim — that many of the people who signed up for insurance aren’t actually paying their premiums. Obviously this claim is part of a continuing pattern. It also, however, involves a change in tactics. Previous attacks on Obamacare were pretty much fact-free; this time the claim was backed by an actual survey purporting to show that a third of enrollees hadn’t paid their first premium.
But the survey was rigged. (Are you surprised?) It asked insurers how many enrollees had paid their first premium; it ignored the fact that the first premium wasn’t even due for the millions of people who signed up for insurance after March 15.
And the fact that the survey was so transparently rigged is a smoking gun, proving that the attacks on Obamacare aren’t just bogus; they’re deliberately bogus. The staffers who set up that survey knew enough about the numbers to skew them, which meant that they have to have known that Obamacare is actually doing O.K.
So why are Republicans doing this? Sad to say, there’s method in their fraudulence.
First of all, it fires up the base. After this latest exercise in deception, we can be fairly sure that Republican leaders know perfectly well that Obamacare has failed to fail. But the party faithful don’t. Like anyone who writes about these issues, I get vast amounts of mail from people who know, just know, that insurance premiums are skyrocketing, that far more people have lost insurance because of Obummercare than have gained it, that all the horror stories are real, and that anyone who says otherwise is just a liberal shill.
Beyond that, the constant harping on alleged failure works as innuendo even if each individual claim collapses in the face of evidence. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of Americans know that more than eight million people enrolled in health exchanges; but it also found a majority of respondents believing that this was below expectations, and that the law was working badly.
So Republicans are spreading disinformation about health reform because it works, and because they can — there is no sign that they pay any political price when their accusations are proved false.
And that observation should scare you. What happens to the Congressional Budget Office if a party that has learned that lying about numbers works takes full control of Congress? What happens if it regains the White House, too? Nothing good, that’s for sure.
And then we have Dan Patrick in Texas...
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| Dan Patrick. Does this man look trustworthy to you? |
Texas GOP candidate: It’s a ‘myth’ that Planned Parenthood does ‘anything’ for women’s health
Dan Patrick, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Texas, argued this week that the reason Planned Parenthood clinics were being forced to close throughout the state was because they did not have “anything” to do with women’s health.
During a Republican runoff debate between Patrick and current Lt. Governor David Dewhurst on Wednesday, WFAA moderators pointed out that only about six abortion clinics were able to remain open after the legislature passed strict new laws last year.
Patrick noted that, as a state senator, he had worked with Dewhurst to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.
“This is a myth that Planned Parenthood has anything to do with women’s health,” he opined. “Why are they closing clinics if they’re making money on providing women’s health? They’re closing clinics because they make all their money taking the lives of babies.”
Patrick said that his goal was for Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, to be “gone.”
“One day, this nation is going to look back as this nation looks back on slavery from the 1800s and says, ‘What were they thinking then?’” he said. “I’m going to do everything I can do, and the more we can move the envelope to save more lives, you bet.”
“We’re born in the image of God, let’s not make any mistakes that these are babies,” the senator added.
In a statement obtained by Politicus USA, Texas Democratic Party Deputy Communications Director Lisa Paul observed that thousands of Texas women had been provided with health services by Planned Parenthood.
“Texas women are appalled by Dan Patrick’s deplorable statements on women’s health care providers,” Paul said. “158,345 Texans received preventative health care at Planned Parenthood in 2013. Republicans still don’t get it: just trust Texas women. Republicans need to trust us to make our own choices, to consult with our families and our doctors. Dan Patrick doesn’t trust Texas women, so Texas women can’t trust Dan Patrick as Lt. Governor.”
The statement, "This is a myth that Planned Parenthood has anything to do with women's health" is manifestly false and has been disproven time and time again by anyone searching for the truth about the activities of Planned Parenthood in Texas. PP provides not only preventive healthcare to Texas women and their infants - that the Republican-controlled State of Texas does not fund - it also provides assistance in helping women to conceive.
Does Dan Patrick really not know the truth about PP in Texas? He claims he is a well-educated Texan, and he's running for the 2nd highest statewide office in the state. If he really does not know the truth, he either does not want to know the truth or he is pretty damn ignorant.
Much more likely is that Dan Patrick does know the truth about PP in Texas, but he chooses to lie about it to fire up his base of ignorant "good Christians" who insist on sticking their noses in other peoples business and punishing those who allegedly go against their Bible. What happened to "get government off of our backs?"
Texas cannot afford to elect a scumbag like Dan Patrick.
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