Bullet Points: Chuck Rangel Is Old, Obama Is a Muslim, and Meg Whitman Is a Liar
I'm gonna discuss a few issues relating to politics and I'll organize them by bullet points.
I was listening to the Giants game on the radio last week when I hear a Meg Whitman campaign ad. In the ad, she promised that if elected, she would fix our state's budget problems by impaneling a Grand Jury to investigate "waste, fraud and abuse." She cites a few examples of such waste and fraud (including twice blaming welfare recipients. Stay classy, Meg), but gives very little in the way of actual figures to support her claims. She mentions a situation in which Caltrans spent $3.4 million on one rest stop on I-80, and claimed that "there are billions of dollars of fraud in Medi-Cal, In-Home Supportive Services and welfare alone." While her claims about IHSS are dubious at best*, there are likely legitimate, significant fraud and waste issues with the other two programs mentioned. Medi-Cal and welfare are enormous, essential, state and federally funded programs that have yearly operating budgets of many billions of dollars. It is unfortunate, but unsurprising that these programs are affected by fraud and waste. And due to their size, it would not surprise me that the total cost of this fraud and waste could reach billions of dollars, though I couldn't find any evidence to support this allegation (Whitman's website promises links to studies that substantiate her claims, but the links don't seem to exist). Her promise to eliminate these issues that unneccessarily and illegally siphon money from the state is admirable, but it is also disingenuous.
Whitman states in her ad that "everybody talks about waste, fraud and abuse in state government, but [she has] a plan to actually do something about it." In actuality, she's not the only person with a plan to "do something about it." In fact, much-maligned former Governor Gray Davis actually tried to "do something about it":
This would seem to be a very serious attempt to try to eliminate fraud in Medi-Cal. There are also ways to contact state and county officials in order to report welfare and Medi-Cal fraud. So Whitman clearly isn't the first person to offer a plan to combat fraud and waste in these programs. Perhaps the argument she's making is that her plan will be more effective in combatting fraud and waste than these programs.
The centerpiece of her plan is establishing "the first California Statewide Grand Jury on Waste, Fraud and Abuse" that would be based on the existing civil grand juries that exist in every county throughout the state. These grand juries are staffed by volunteers, appointed on a yearly basis, and are merely required "to be at least 18 years old, in possession of their natural faculties and have sufficient knowledge of the English language." Whitman, after consulting with something called The California Grand Jurors' Association, decided that these part-time volunteers would be better served to eliminate waste and fraud in welfare and Medi-Cal than any of the existing means used to investigate and eliminate these problems. If a multi-agency unit involving both state and federal agencies hasn't been able to fix the issue of government waste and fraud, I somehow doubt that a volunteer grand jury will actually "do something" about the problem.
Both in the primary against Steve Poizner and in the general election against Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman presents herself as an outsider candidate. She touts her qualifications due to her experience as a businesswoman, while denouncing Poizner and Brown (and almost everyone in Sacramento) as self-centered, out-of-touch career politicians. Inherent in this message is the idea that she, as an outsider, is able to provide a different, more effective perspective on the state's problems and is able to offer the types of solutions that the career politicians, past and present, either can't or won't offer. However, claiming to help solve the enormous issue of the budget deficit by combatting waste and fraud is not a different or effective solution. She admits at the beginning of her own radio ad on the subject that she is not unique in claiming to want to eliminate these issues from the state government. This admission places the entire validity of her claim on the effectiveness of her solution. But a volunteer-staffed grand jury system as endorsed by a little-known advocacy group doesn't seem like the type of solution that will eliminate billions of dollars of government waste.
If her promise is to be taken at face value, Whitman thinks that one of the primary ways to reduce our budget deficit is through this grand jury solution to the issue of waste and fraud. However, our budget deficit is something like $19 billion for this year alone, and was over $60 billion last year. I doubt that Whitman herself would even claim that waste, fraud, and government abuse total $19 billion in losses each year. At worst it's a few billion dollars a year, and at best, much less than that (though I wish I could see those studies that she promises on her website). In order for the elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse to significantly help to reduce the budget deficit, it would have almost completely eradicate those issues. If Whitman is being honest with us, she is saying that she thinks her solution will do just that. Of course, she could very well know that her solution won't actually do much to significantly help our budget issues. Instead, she may be offering this 'solution' as a means to manipulate voters' emotions and inflame their already palpable distrust of the goverment. By saying that eliminating government waste is the key to fixing the budget, she is shifting the focus away from difficult but necessary solutions like changing the tax structure, making difficult spending cuts, and rearranging significant aspects of the state government. Rather than being honest with the electorate in discussing the drastic, unsettling measures that may be necessary to fix this crisis, Whitman is instead displacing blame onto the bogeymen of corrupt goverment officials, inept bureaucracy, and cheating welfare recipients. It's a disgusting, dishonest, and wholly unproductive way of confronting (or failing to confront) what is perhaps the most siginificant problem that our state currently faces. However shameful this tactic may be, it is also seemingly effective, as Meg Whitman currently leads Jerry Brown in the polls. I hope that the voters of this state are able to see through these sorts of dishonest tactics and not allow Meg Whitman to manipulate them.
*Compared to welfare and Medi-Cal, IHSS is a relatively small program that was almost eliminated entirely in May. Also in May, the state Senate Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services blocked a program designed to eliminate fraud in IHSS because its $41.6 million cost was not shown to be cost effective. $41.6 million is well short of "billions of dollars."
- Congressman Charles Rangel, he of the alleged ethics violations and the apparently enormous ego has directed his cranky-old-man fury at President Obama. After Obama had stated that he felt the Representative should "retire with dignity", Rangel offered a retort during a candidates forum in Harlem, stating that the President "has not been around long enough to determine what my dignity is." Rangel is 80 and Obama is 49. Now I could care less about some old guy from New York desperately clinging to his last moments of public attention, but something about Rangel using his age as a defense against the President's criticism bothers me. I support respecting our elders (well,not always), but having lived a long life shouldn't automatically absolve a person's mistakes or make him immune to criticism. Rangel's behavior legitimizes comments like Obama's, while his age does not protect him against it. And it's not as if the younger person criticising Rangel is some unaccomplished nobody with no authority whatsoever (like me, for example). Obama is the President of the United States of America, and that fact on its own should give him some authority on the subject of dignity (on second thought, that maynot necessarily be true). If Rangel is innocent, and he may be for all I know, then he can object to statement's like Obama's on that basis. But he shouldn't be immune to criticism just because he's old.
- A much-discussed new poll shows that 18% of Americans (or at least, 18% of respondants to the poll) think that President Obama is a Muslim. This is a situation in which it's very easy to complain about the stupidity of the general public or the duplicitousness of politicians and the media or even to wonder about the statistical reliability of these sorts of polls. And while all of these criticisms are legitimate, they don't really address how weird these results actually are. It's astounding to me that in an age during which we are constantly, technologically bombarded by information that so many people can believe something that is so clearly false about such an important, public figure. Of course, information technology is partly to blame for the wide, rapid spread of this sort of disinformation, as well. But for something that has been so often and so easily refuted, it's bewildering as to how this poorly-supported falsehood has endured and spread. I suppose I could understand people being confused as to what the President's religion is, as they are exposed to both the truth and the lie, but why so many people would choose to believe that the President is a Muslim when it has been so easily and conclusively shown that this is false is just... weird.
I was listening to the Giants game on the radio last week when I hear a Meg Whitman campaign ad. In the ad, she promised that if elected, she would fix our state's budget problems by impaneling a Grand Jury to investigate "waste, fraud and abuse." She cites a few examples of such waste and fraud (including twice blaming welfare recipients. Stay classy, Meg), but gives very little in the way of actual figures to support her claims. She mentions a situation in which Caltrans spent $3.4 million on one rest stop on I-80, and claimed that "there are billions of dollars of fraud in Medi-Cal, In-Home Supportive Services and welfare alone." While her claims about IHSS are dubious at best*, there are likely legitimate, significant fraud and waste issues with the other two programs mentioned. Medi-Cal and welfare are enormous, essential, state and federally funded programs that have yearly operating budgets of many billions of dollars. It is unfortunate, but unsurprising that these programs are affected by fraud and waste. And due to their size, it would not surprise me that the total cost of this fraud and waste could reach billions of dollars, though I couldn't find any evidence to support this allegation (Whitman's website promises links to studies that substantiate her claims, but the links don't seem to exist). Her promise to eliminate these issues that unneccessarily and illegally siphon money from the state is admirable, but it is also disingenuous.
Whitman states in her ad that "everybody talks about waste, fraud and abuse in state government, but [she has] a plan to actually do something about it." In actuality, she's not the only person with a plan to "do something about it." In fact, much-maligned former Governor Gray Davis actually tried to "do something about it":
"In direct response to an astounding increase in Medi-Cal fraud, Governor Gray Davis established the Governor’s Medi-Cal Fraud Task Force in 1999. This multi-agency unit is comprised of ten state agencies which include the California Department of Health Care Services, the State Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. This task force is committed to combating Medi-Cal fraud."
This would seem to be a very serious attempt to try to eliminate fraud in Medi-Cal. There are also ways to contact state and county officials in order to report welfare and Medi-Cal fraud. So Whitman clearly isn't the first person to offer a plan to combat fraud and waste in these programs. Perhaps the argument she's making is that her plan will be more effective in combatting fraud and waste than these programs.
The centerpiece of her plan is establishing "the first California Statewide Grand Jury on Waste, Fraud and Abuse" that would be based on the existing civil grand juries that exist in every county throughout the state. These grand juries are staffed by volunteers, appointed on a yearly basis, and are merely required "to be at least 18 years old, in possession of their natural faculties and have sufficient knowledge of the English language." Whitman, after consulting with something called The California Grand Jurors' Association, decided that these part-time volunteers would be better served to eliminate waste and fraud in welfare and Medi-Cal than any of the existing means used to investigate and eliminate these problems. If a multi-agency unit involving both state and federal agencies hasn't been able to fix the issue of government waste and fraud, I somehow doubt that a volunteer grand jury will actually "do something" about the problem.
Both in the primary against Steve Poizner and in the general election against Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman presents herself as an outsider candidate. She touts her qualifications due to her experience as a businesswoman, while denouncing Poizner and Brown (and almost everyone in Sacramento) as self-centered, out-of-touch career politicians. Inherent in this message is the idea that she, as an outsider, is able to provide a different, more effective perspective on the state's problems and is able to offer the types of solutions that the career politicians, past and present, either can't or won't offer. However, claiming to help solve the enormous issue of the budget deficit by combatting waste and fraud is not a different or effective solution. She admits at the beginning of her own radio ad on the subject that she is not unique in claiming to want to eliminate these issues from the state government. This admission places the entire validity of her claim on the effectiveness of her solution. But a volunteer-staffed grand jury system as endorsed by a little-known advocacy group doesn't seem like the type of solution that will eliminate billions of dollars of government waste.
If her promise is to be taken at face value, Whitman thinks that one of the primary ways to reduce our budget deficit is through this grand jury solution to the issue of waste and fraud. However, our budget deficit is something like $19 billion for this year alone, and was over $60 billion last year. I doubt that Whitman herself would even claim that waste, fraud, and government abuse total $19 billion in losses each year. At worst it's a few billion dollars a year, and at best, much less than that (though I wish I could see those studies that she promises on her website). In order for the elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse to significantly help to reduce the budget deficit, it would have almost completely eradicate those issues. If Whitman is being honest with us, she is saying that she thinks her solution will do just that. Of course, she could very well know that her solution won't actually do much to significantly help our budget issues. Instead, she may be offering this 'solution' as a means to manipulate voters' emotions and inflame their already palpable distrust of the goverment. By saying that eliminating government waste is the key to fixing the budget, she is shifting the focus away from difficult but necessary solutions like changing the tax structure, making difficult spending cuts, and rearranging significant aspects of the state government. Rather than being honest with the electorate in discussing the drastic, unsettling measures that may be necessary to fix this crisis, Whitman is instead displacing blame onto the bogeymen of corrupt goverment officials, inept bureaucracy, and cheating welfare recipients. It's a disgusting, dishonest, and wholly unproductive way of confronting (or failing to confront) what is perhaps the most siginificant problem that our state currently faces. However shameful this tactic may be, it is also seemingly effective, as Meg Whitman currently leads Jerry Brown in the polls. I hope that the voters of this state are able to see through these sorts of dishonest tactics and not allow Meg Whitman to manipulate them.
*Compared to welfare and Medi-Cal, IHSS is a relatively small program that was almost eliminated entirely in May. Also in May, the state Senate Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services blocked a program designed to eliminate fraud in IHSS because its $41.6 million cost was not shown to be cost effective. $41.6 million is well short of "billions of dollars."
Labels: Meg Whitman, Obama, politics
posted by Carlos Animals at 5:04 PM
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