Don's Tuesday Column

         THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   10/16/2018

Phony figures backing Denney up

The rhetoric, accusations and falsehoods surrounding federal social and health care spending has fascinated me for decades, particularly after finding out that the use of manipulated figures was a bold part of the strategy to advance Democrats’ goals. I’ll never forget the hysteria over school lunch program “cuts” that never, ever amounted to spending actually going down from one year to the next.

The accusations depended on whether the spending was going to equal, exceed or fall short of the never-ending built-in growth of some arbitrary rate of, say, 7 or 8 percent. If Republicans wanted to simply reduce the rate of growth down to 5 percent, that was decried as a cold-hearted, merciless “cut” to the poor, malnourished children’s lunches.

Never mind that, in real dollars, an allocation of $20 billion would grow to $21 billion the next year and grow each succeeding year until reaching $40 billion after about 14 years. To Democrats and their media mouthpieces it was falsely called a reduction in spending—even though the amounts rose; they wanted to use a higher growth rate—even if the inflation rate was much lower. Less spending growth was (falsely) “cutting spending.” They would shamelessly calculate how many billions of dollars would be spent at the higher rate and lyingly call it a “cut” in the school lunch program. Stingy Republicans were stealing lunches from kids.

It was with that history of manipulated, phony “cuts” in mind that I read Ms. Lupe Green’s defense of candidate Audrey Denney’s accusation that Congressman Doug LaMalfa voted to “cut Medicare spending by $356 billion.” Wow! That’s a big, scary number; he should be ashamed, if it’s true. It’s not slightly true. When anyone is merely Internet clicks away from sources of research, Denney and Green don’t fool anyone.

Please bear with some numbers from the actual 2013 budget line for Medicare, from “House Concurrent Resolution 25 (CR 25),” at www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/25/text... Additional data comes from “US Federal Budget FY14 Estimated Spending Breakdown” at www.usgovernmentspending.com... (which showed an increase of $84 billion from 2014 to 2017).

Medicare spending was $511 billion in 2013—and increased from $5 billion to almost $50 billion per year, depending on the year—it never, repeat never, goes down. Over 10 years it goes up to $883 billion budgeted for 2023. It goes up by over $372 billion, which translates to a 73 percent increase. Maybe Democrats thought that hike in the Medicare spending wasn’t enough but the numbers don’t lie: 6 percent growth per year, $372 billion over 10 years, is not, repeat not, a “cut in Medicare spending.”

Ms. Denney and Ms. Green (who, to be fair, was simply providing Democrat spin) should not expect voters to swallow their historically flawed logic and phony numbers. When such a whopper is the first contention in Ms. Green’s letter, readers should discount and dismiss all of the other accusations from both of them, or from any Democrat spewing such fallacious bilge. “False in one thing, false in all.”

Again, please vote for every Republican on the ballot, as well as Steve Poizner for Insurance Commissioner and Marshal Tuck for Supt. Of Public Education. James Gallagher advises voting “No” on Prop 1, “Housing Bonds”; and Yes on Propositions 2, “Amends Mental Health Services,” 4, “Construction Bonds,” 5, “Property Tax Requirement Changes,” and 6, “Repeal the Gas Tax.

Vote “No” on Prop 8, “Regulation of Dialysis Clinics,” Prop 10, “Rent Control,” and Prop 12, “Farm Animal Confinement.” Gallagher recommends “Yes” on Prop 11, “Ambulance Employee Rules,” and has “No recommendation” on Prop 3, “Water Bond,” and Prop 7, “Daylight Savings Time.”

Among the most blatant and egregious of hypocritical revisions of current events and historical facts have been the double—and duplicitous—standards applied to aggressive, even violent, left wing mobs and the Tea Party rallies and protests 8 years ago. It strains credulity but the Democrats and their media adjuncts (i.e. Democrats with bylines) have seized on the idea that the current displays of incivility and boorishness—including violence against property and threats against people—are just the liberal Tea Party.

No, they’re mobs. I hate to dispute such garbage but I was there at all of the local Tea Party rallies in the early years. I can confirm that from personal experience, and from the coverage of rallies in major cities and Washington, DC, we all saw the purest form of “assembly for petitioning the government for the redress of grievances.” We witnessed passionate expressions—peaceful and non-threatening—in opposition to the ramming of Obamacare down the legislative throats of Americans. Opposition to bloated, deficit spending and pork in the budget was another driving force.

When politicians held “town halls” open to the public, that passion showed up in the attendees’ vociferous challenging of their representatives’ disingenuous defense of Obamacare. There was never any sense of threats beyond voting them out of office; in fact, the only threats and physical violence was inflicted on Tea Party folks by union thugs in and out of the halls and on the streets.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Tea Party rallies and gatherings had to be the spotless condition that they left in the outdoor locations; it compares to the liberal-left’s protests that routinely leave tons of trash. When Democrats filed their members (many of them black) through the streets of Washington for an Obamacare vote, they were so sure that conservative, Tea Party protesters would take the bait and use racist taunts, that they didn’t even wait for video recordings to denounce the supposed epithets. It turned out, with hundreds of recordings throughout the event, not one racist word could be heard; that didn’t stop the phony story from gaining traction. It was too good to not be true; “fake but accurate,” to quote Dan Rather.