Endorsements: State Senate Primaries

September 11, 2012 buffalopundit 5 comments

Please note: these are not Artvoice endorsements, nor are they to be cited as such. They have not been approved or made by the Artvoice editors, publisher, or any combination thereof. Any endorsements are mine and mine alone. They are preferences – not predictions.

The primary elections are taking place this Thursday. Please vote, if you can.

State Senate District 60 (Mark Grisanti (R) incumbent)

Democratic Primary: Mike Amodeo

Mike Amodeo is a progressive Democrat who wants Albany term limits, a ban on hydrofracking, reducing the red tape the state imposes to create a business, and you can read the rest of his campaign platform here. It’s solid, smart, and full of things Democrats should be supporting. So, I’m at a loss to explain why it is that we need a “Democrat” like Chuck Swanick to run against him with the express support of homophobic, fundamentally transactional bad actor, Conservative Party boss Ralph Lorigo.

If you’re a registered Democrat in the district, you should be voting for Amodeo. Period.

In what way is Chuck Swanick more progressive on anything than Amodeo? I will grant you, he’s more progressive in terms of, e.g., becoming a Republican, cozying up with Joel Giambra, earning personal perks, privileges, patronage, and pay. I will grant you that he’s more progressive in terms of looking out for #1 above all else, that he is without peer in the business of “protecting Chuck Swanick” and “looking out for Chuck Swanick”. I will also concede that he is unique in that his bad-government bona fides are unparalleled, and that he and his supporters are undeterred by them. If ever there was an advertisement made to highlight “how government and politics in WNY are horrible things populated by horrible people”, Chuck Swanick’s name and image would be plastered all over it. He should be perpetually and serially unelectable – not just unelectable, but the mere suggestion of his election should send average citizens screaming.

Democrats in this region are obsessed with our perpetual, counterproductive, ill-considered factionalism (e.g., Lenihan vs. Pigeon; City Hall vs. everybody). But the net result of that is hatred and failure. Chuck Swanick isn’t a Democrat any more than he is a Republican. He is an opportunist, and a corrupt one, at that. He is a member of the Swanick party, and Christ alone knows why any self-proclaimed Democrat wouldn’t back a perfectly reasonable Democratic Party candidate in Mike Amodeo. No one on Earth has given a single, solitary reason why Swanick is preferable to Amodeo on the merits, or – more to the point – why Amodeo is unacceptable. (Except for factionalism and some bizarre, unproven opinion about Swanick’s “progressive” bona fides). How much easier would it be if we had Democrats united behind the singular Democrat who (a) isn’t a patronage whore; and (b) isn’t a careerist.

Some argue that Swanick’s backing by the execrable homophobes at the National Organization for Marriage is beside the point; marriage equality is settled, they say. But it isn’t. Here you have an opportunity to have a Republican (Grisanti) and a Democrat (Amodeo) run in November, both of whom would be unwavering supporters of marriage equality. Yet instead, some supporters of same sex marriage are backing a Democrat who won support from Vomit (Ralph) Lorigo and NOM, thus putting the issue of marriage equality back in the race. If not for factionalism, and the promise of future hack job, on what merits does anyone select Swanick against Amodeo? In what way is Amodeo unacceptable as a “progressive” Democrat? How, precisely, is someone funded by NOM acceptable to anyone as a “progressive” Democrat. This primary is about Chuck Swanick, money, patronage and factionalism, full stop, end of story.

I’m not a Dem committeeman – not for the county committee, and not for my town committee. I have no say or stake in who becomes ECDC chair. However, I think that once the committee selects a chair, the party faithful should default to supporting the committee’s activities, absent some compelling reason not to. Instead, we have factions who openly and relentlessly challenge the committee, but don’t have the balls or the votes to actually change its makeup. (Who showed up to vote for Sundra Rice?) Now, you’ve successfully deflected the argument away from my question to you, which is – why do you support the Conservative Party’s candidate, Chuck Swanick? Democrats should run screaming from Ralph Lorigo. All Democrats.

Al Coppola is also running. So what?

tl;dr: AFAIC, Democrats should stop backing candidates who seek and obtain the Conservative Party endorsement, full stop.

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A New Way from WNYMedia Services on Vimeo.

Republican Primary: Mark Grisanti

Last year, Mark Grisanti, in a massive and systemically uncharacteristic display of balls, bucked his party to vote in favor of same sex marriage. For that alone, he deserves re-election. His opponent has a track record of questionable campaign tactics, and is running almost exclusively on the “Grisanti said he wasn’t going to vote for same-sex marriage” platform, such as it is.

What that amounts to is, “Grisanti broke his promise to do the wrong thing, and did the right thing instead“.

Grisanti’s vote was a real-life, contemporary profile in courage.

Grisanti’s vote wasn’t influenced by phone calls or internet chatter. Instead, he performed legal research on the matter, finding out that civil unions don’t really work, and that married couples enjoy 1,300+ rights and privileges that unmarried couples don’t. He had to compartmentalize his faith and examine the issue purely on the facts and the law, resulting in a conversion. However, he would not agree to vote in favor of this law without strong religious exemptions and an inseverability clause, which would render the entire law null and void should a future court change so much as one word. Grisanti said that the clergy to whom he’s spoken since his vote appreciate that language.

At the time, traditional media were intensely interested in the “betrayal” angle, and whether Grisanti had committed “political suicide”. Grisanti smiled and replied that he’s new to politics and didn’t make his decision under pressure. He said it was going to pass anyway, but he could not in good conscience refuse to extend basic civil rights to his taxpaying constituents. He said he doesn’t know – or care – whether he committed political suicide with this vote. He didn’t get into politics to be re-elected, but to do good by his constituents. If they decide he should leave Albany, so be it.

I guess in western New York politics, we’ve become so cynical and jaded, expecting our electeds to be dirty, dishonorable deal-makers that when we see true leadership, hard work, and conscientious research and analysis, we really don’t know how to react and assume we’re being played. Grisanti wasn’t playing anyone.

Furthermore, people who may or may not be on Grisanti’s opponent’s payroll have been engaged in an utterly disgusting, obscene campaign against the incumbent – so bad that it serves only to enhance Grisanti’s standing. That Grisanti’s opponent expressly or tacitly permits this to happen reflects poorly on him and should be punished.

If you’d like to know the genesis of that “mailer” emailed around by a conservative “committee” (i.e., by polterpol Matt Ricchiazzi) and the anti-Grisanti animus behind it, it all has to do with a reason and a pretext. The reason is that Grisanti refused to hire Ricchiazzi. The pretext is that Ricchiazzi is somehow insulted by an uncorroborated account of Grisanti’s behavior in that bar fight up in the Falls. Click below to see a series of text messages that Ricchiazzi sent to Senator Grisanti and members of his staff around the time of the bar fight. Note his initial offer to “help” Grisanti sue the Senecas, and quickly degenerated into a demand for a job.

State Senate District 58 (Tim Kennedy (D) incumbent)

Democratic Primary: Tim Kennedy

I am a big fan of Betty Jean Grant’s, and I think she would make a fantastic State Senator. She is a tireless advocate for the poor and disadvantaged, and doesn’t cut deals with horrible Republican technocrats for political gain. I am a huge fan of the symbolism of her run. I don’t mean the fact that she’s an African-American or a woman – I mean the fact that Kennedy very deliberately and openly betrayed what should have been a Democratic county legislature majority in 2010 – 2011 and handed the reins of power almost unchecked to the execrable Chris Collins. The so-called “reform coalition” reformed nothing and brought little more than strife and hatred to the county legislature – a body that is about 90% uncontroversial ministerial work, and 10% visceral combat.

However, I won’t be guided by factionalism here any more than I will be in the 60th. As much as I like her, Betty Jean hasn’t articulated specific policy reasons why she would be an improvement over Kennedy, so I’ll reluctantly give it to the incumbent. While Kennedy touted his no-brainer work on cyberbullying and texting-while-driving statutes, I’d like to see him get out front of more controversial issues and stick his neck out for important reasons. So far, his tenure has been adequate, not excellent.

Local Politics

Collins and Medicare: Bad Deal for Seniors, Americans

September 10, 2012 buffalopundit 4 comments

Remember how George W. Bush pushed to privatize Social Security? It failed, because people like Social Security, and because they didn’t want their entire retirement to be subject to the whims of the market. The 2008 quickie depression and the failure of Lehman Brothers was a stark reminder that, sometimes private industry doesn’t have all the answers.

Paul Ryan’s proposed budget famously proposed to cut $716 billion from Medicare and turn it into a voucher system for Americans not yet benefitting from the wildly popular single-payer program for seniors.

When Chris Collins hammers Kathy Hochul for voting for Obamacare, which “takes” $716 billion from Medicare and subsidies for Medicare supplemental insurance, remember that he supported a plan that would have done something even worse; that would have fundamentally changed what Medicare is for future generations.

Hochul’s race against Corwin was about Medicare and how the Ryan budget would change it. Hochul won – and the $716 billion was part of that race. Now, Collins thinks he can fool voters into thinking that Obama and Hochul have weakened Medicare – but nothing could be further from the truth.

That $716 billion from Medicare

The Affordable Care Act did indeed cut Medicare spending by $716 billion.

On July 24, the Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, detailing the budget impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act. If Congress overturned the law, “spending for Medicare would increase by an estimated $716 billion over that 2013–2022 period.”

As to how the Affordable Care Act actually gets to $716 billion in Medicare savings, that’s a bit more complicated. John McDonough did the best job explaining it in his 2011 book, “Inside National Health Reform.” There, he looked at all the various Medicare cuts Democrats made to pay for the Affordable Care Act.

The majority of the cuts, as you can see in this chart below, come from reductions in how much Medicare reimburses hospitals and private health insurance companies.

But what is the effect of these cuts to seniors and their benefits? Zero. Not a single benefit is cut or reduced in any way. There are no vouchers, no privatization – the $716 billion comes from reducing the cost of the program, not reducing its benefits. Quite the contrary – Obamacare takes that savings and actually adds benefits to Medicare, bringing a new emphasis on preventive care by adding a new annual no-copay wellness visit to the program. From the WaPo’s fact check of last week’s Clinton speech:

TRUE: “What the president did was to save money by taking the recommendations of a commission of professionals to cut unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that were not making people healthier and were not necessary to get the providers to provide the service.”

Clinton appears to be referring to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent body that advises Congress on the program and the changes they have recommended for the program. MedPAC has, for example, repeatedly recommended that private Medicare Advantage plans should not be paid more than the traditional fee for service program. That, among other changes, was incorporated into the Affordable Care Act’s changes.

DOUBLE COUNTED: “Instead of raiding Medicare, he used the savings to close the doughnut hole in the Medicare drug program…and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare trust fund so it is solvent till 2024.”

Both of these facts are, independently, true. The health care law did indeed use some of the revenue it generated to pay for seniors who land in the “donut hole,” the gap after normal drug coverage ends and catastrophic coverage kicks in. And it did extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund by eight more years, until 2024, per a report earlier this year.

But this represents some of the least-liked math in Washington, because it uses a sort of “double counting” of Medicare savings. The Medicare Trust Fund counts the health law’s $716 billion in savings as going back into its coffers. The Congressional Budget Office counts them as paying for provisions in the Affordable Care Act, like closing the donut hole. In reality, it would be very, very hard for a Medicare dollar saved to achieve both these purposes. In fact, it would be impossible.

This accounting isn’t unique to the Affordable Care Act. Budget wonks have regularly used this double counting for Medicare savings generated by Congress. There are some defenders of this accounting method. But it is one of the points that the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare savings regularly gets attacked.

TRUE: “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry because that $716 billion is exactly, to the dollar, the same amount of Medicare savings that [Ryan] has in his own budget.”

Rep. Paul Ryan’s most recent budget does indeed include the Affordable Care Act’s $716 billion in Medicare savings. Mitt Romney has, however, disavowed those cuts and promised to restore insurers’ and hospitals’ reimbursement rates as part of his plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The question, then, is – why do Romney and Chris Collins want to roll back Obamacare’s strengthening of Medicare? Is it because they’re both independently wealthy and what happens to Medicare has no affect on them in any palpable way? Medicare isn’t just some freebie entitlement – like Social Security, it’s something you and I pay into throughout our working lives (check your FICA on your next paystub). Romney and Chris Collins want to fundamentally change Medicare into a voucher program, but that’s not the promise that was made to me and others who have been paying into the system. In contract law, we pay in relying on the promise of a future no-hassles program that current seniors enjoy. It’s fundamentally unfair to make it one program for one class of people, and something else for another – frankly, I think it’s violative of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Why do Romney and Chris Collins want to violate the Equal Protection Clause by voucherizing Medicare for one class of Americans, while maintaining it as a single-payer plan for another?

Oh, and in commenting on the proposed voucherization via $716 billion in cuts from Medicare, Chris Collins told the Batavia Daily News that this doesn’t “go far enough”.

Collins said he favors the Tea Party push to reduce the federal government. He praised Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, for ‘starting the conversation’ about reducing entitlement programs. But Collins said Ryan doesn’t go far enough. Ryan believes the budget could be balanced in 30 years, Collins said it needs to be done in 10 years. To delay it longer isn’t fair to young Americans who will have to foot the bill.

To Chris Collins, everything is an entitlement program – even programs you pay for. And he has the nerve to blame Hochul for harming Medicare through a cost-savings that actually expands its benefits.

Even Kathy Hochul is trying to hedge on Medicare Advantage, saying she doesn’t like the cuts to that program. But why? Reductions in Medicare reimbursement rates to Medicare Advantage plans and hospitals were negotiated with those entities. Hospitals know that with universal coverage, they’ll get more patients whose bills are paid. The Advantage Plans’ reimbursement rates are reduced to eliminate waste that does nothing to enhance patient care. In reference to the chart shown above,

The blue section represents reductions in how much Medicare reimburses private, Medicare Advantage plans. That program allows seniors to join a private health insurance, with the federal government footing the bill. The whole idea of Medicare Advantage was to drive down the cost of health insurance for the elderly as private insurance companies competing for seniors’ business.

That’s not what happened. By 2010, the average Medicare Advantage per-patient cost was 117 percent of regular fee-for-service. The Affordable Care Act gives those private plans a haircut and tethers reimbursement levels to the quality of care administered, and patient satisfaction.

The Medicare Advantage cut gets the most attention, but it only accounts for about a third of the Affordable Care Act’s spending reduction. Another big chunk comes from the hospitals. The health law changed how Medicare calculates what they get reimbursed for various services, slightly lowering their rates over time. Hospitals agreed to these cuts because they knew, at the same time, they would likely see an influx of paying patients with the Affordable Care Act’s insurance expansion.

The rest of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts are a lot smaller. Reductions to Medicare’s Disproportionate Share Payments — extra funds doled out the hospitals that see more uninsured patients — account for 5 percent in savings. Lower payments to home health providers make up another 8.8 percent. About a dozen cuts of this magnitude make up the green section above.

It’s worth noting that there’s one area these cuts don’t touch: Medicare benefits. The Affordable Care Act rolls back payment rates for hospitals and insurers. It does not, however, change the basket of benefits that patients have access to. And, as Ezra pointed out earlier today, the Ryan budget would keep these cuts in place.

By the way – if Chris Collins gets his wish and repeals Obamacare, Medicare Part A will be insolvent by 2016 unless something else is done. As we know, that “something else” is turning it into a complicated voucher program, fundamentally changing the very nature of Medicare.

When officials talk of Medicare insolvency, they’re talking specifically about the trust fund for Medicare’s hospital insurance, or Medicare Part A, which covers inpatient hospital stays, care at a nursing facility, hospice care and some home health care. The other parts of Medicare, though costs are rising, are “adequately financed” for now, the program’s trustees say.

The Part A fund’s overseers — the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds — said back in 2009, before the Affordable Care Act passed, that the banked money used to make up the difference between income (such as taxes) and expenses for Part A would be depleted in 2017.

But then the Affordable Care Act passed. The trustees reported that the act’s lower expenditures (cutting rates to providers) and increased revenues (a payroll tax hike for wealthier people in 2013) “improves the financial outlook for Medicare substantially.”

The trustees reported in 2010 that health care reform would delay the Part A trust fund’s insolvency until 2029. By 2011, the trustees moved that insolvency estimate back to 2024.

So, to sum up:

Chris Collins supported the Ryan budget, which also assumed a $716 billion reduction in Medicare expenses. When he attacks Kathy Hochul for this, it flies right back in his face, because he says $716 billion doesn’t go far enough, and would like to voucherize Medicare and reduce other “entitlement” programs. Hochul needs to go on the offensive on this point – the Obama/Hochul cuts expand Medicare benefits and ensure the program’s continued solvency, while Collins’ cuts turn Medicare into something resembling the awful system we have today for most Americans, and threatens the solvency of Part A going past 2016.

Chris Collins, therefore, is a disaster for seniors in NY-27.

Local Politics

Collins to Voters: 25 Pages Is Too Much For You to Absorb

August 17, 2012 buffalopundit 16 comments

The Buffalo News really needs to have a chat with its headline writers. The headline accompanying Jerry Zremski’s August 16th piece concerning Chris Collins‘ taxes bore the headline, “Collins discloses three years’ tax returns”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Collins showed his form 1040s for three tax years to Zremski, and no one else in the world. While Hochul has posted three years’ worth of tax returns online for anyone to see – along with the schedules and worksheets to go with it, Collins has repeatedly refused to do the same. Zremski wrote,

Those returns did not include any schedules or attachments that would have detailed Collins’ business investments, but they do show the finances of a wealthy businessman-turned-politician and how Collins’ income compares to that of his opponent, Rep. Kathleen C. Hochul, D-Hamburg.

Did Collins show Zremski his 1040s to show off the fact that he’s wealthy? We know he’s wealthy – that’s hardly the issue. The best Collins can do is to claim that Hochul isn’t being transparent because she refuses to release the details of a blind trust her parents set up for her. A blind trust, the contents of which by definition she isn’t allowed to know.

The reasons why Collins won’t release his tax returns to the public have changed over time, from the notion it will reveal confidential material about other people to something really quite telling:

[Hochul spokesman Frank] Thomas said it’s important that Collins do the same so that voters can see in detail his business interests – including those of Ingenious Inc., a Collins company that has contracted with a Chinese manufacturer to make the Balance Buddy, a tool aimed at helping kids learn how to ride their bikes.

Collins says, though, that he can’t release those full tax details without revealing his business partners’ income and without jeopardizing the competitive position of his companies.

“My federal return is probably 25 pages long,” Collins added. “It’s too much for the public to absorb.”

Boom.

Got that, dummy? By not being “Chris Collins” you’re clearly cursed with diminished cognitive abilities, such that it’s a miracle you have the brain power to put your pants and shirt on in the morning. You know how you stopped reading Harry Potter after the twenty-fourth page, just giving up because your brain couldn’t absorb anymore? You cretins would look at Collins’ tax returns and the ink with which it was printed would run from your drool getting all over it.

I don’t know whether calling the electorate a bunch of illiterate, innumerate morons is a winning strategy, but I’m willing to see it play out some more. Perhaps the inability or unwillingness to release tax returns should disqualify “run government like a business” types from running (see, Romney, Willard Mitt).

Collins is also attacking Hochul for her (mostly inherited) wealth. If I recall correctly, Collins bristles when people bring up his wealth, calling it “class warfare”.

This same Chris Collins – the one who doesn’t like it when people point out that he’s a rich, arrogant, person who is completely, fundamentally, and deliberately out of touch with the issues facing average middle class people – attacks his current opponent for her inherited wealth, calling her a “public sector millionaire”, and suggesting that she made her money in government, and attacked his primary opponent for his lack of wealth. So, in Collins’ deranged world, it’s “class warfare” to bring up his wealth, but everyone else’s is fair game.

What is going to be an issue in this race is the good job Kathy Hochul’s done over the past year, and the fact that Collins is a big supporter of the Republican plot to voucherize Medicare, but he’ll try to deflect by using the lie that Obamacare cuts $716 billion from Medicare. Obama strengthens and streamlines Medicare, while the Republicans plan to privatize it, harming seniors and, just as significantly, future seniors.

Mitt Romney said Obama “robbed Medicare” of $716 billion to pay for “Obamacare.” We found that exaggerated what Obama had done in the health care law.

While the health care law reduces the amount of future spending growth in Medicare, the law doesn’t actually cut Medicare. Savings come from reducing money that goes to private insurers who provide Medicare Advantage programs, among other things. The money wasn’t “robbed.” We rated the statement Mostly False.

Responding to the Romney attack, Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said Ryan’s budget relies on the same $700 billion in savings from Medicare that Mitt Romney and other Republicans have been attacking Democrats about.

Ryan has confirmed that, and we rated it True.

But don’t forget – Collins thinks you’re an idiot who can’t absorb 25 pages of a tax return. What a disgusting thing to say.

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Local Politics

Disrespecting Christina Abt

August 15, 2012 buffalopundit 13 comments

Christina Abt is the Democratic Candidate for the 147th Assembly District. She is also running a primary race for the Independence Party line under our system of electoral fusion. Abt is, incidentally, a member of the Independence Party. She has an opponent for the IP primary, millionaire owner of the Tanning Bed chain, Dan Humiston.

Abt is also a real cheerleader for Buffalo & Western New York. A genuinely good person, with ideas and intentions that are also good. She deserves your support.

A candidates’ forum and debate is scheduled to take place on August 21st at the Historical Society. The debate is being organized under the auspices of the YWCA, City & State, and the Partnership for the Public Good. Abt took to her campaign blog to outline the facts surrounding the organization of this debate, and who is – and isn’t – invited to participate. She started out by republishing an email about the event that she received from the PPG’s Sam Magavern.

Candidate Debate, August 21

There are some hotly contested races this fall – in both the primaries and general elections. Join us for debate night at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, 25 Nottingham Court, starting at 5pm on Tuesday, August 21. Here are some of the confirmed and invited participants:

Assembly District 149

Sean Ryan, Confirmed
Kevin Gaughan, Confirmed

Assembly District 147

David DiPietro, Confirmed
Chris Lane, Confirmed
Dan Hummiston, Confirmed
David Mariacher, Invited

Senate District 63

Betty Jean Grant, Invited
Tim Kennedy, Invited

Congressional District 26

Kathy Hochul, Invited
Chris Collins, Invited

Presented by City and State, PPG, and the YWCA of Western New York. Free and open to the public. RSVP to the YWCA at 852-6120, ext 0,or info@ywca-wny.org.

As “fact two”, Abt notes that she was never informed of, or invited to the debate.

FACT THREE

When I questioned the sponsors of the event (City and State Magazine, Partnership for the Public Good and the YWCA of WNY) as to why ALL of my opponents, both GOP and IP, were invited and I was not, I was told that it was planned as a primary focused event with the Hochul/Collins general election debate serving as a grand finale/audience draw.

FACT FOUR

When I further pointed out that I was in fact in a primary for the Independence line against one of the gentlemen who is also in the GOP battle in the 147th district— and that they were therefore were providing my opponent with a public debate forum that was being denied to me— I received compliements for a good point and an invitation to possibly interview with the editor of City and State and perhaps participate in a debate in the future.

FACT FIVE

When I asked the representative of City and State Magazine (the prime sponsor of the event) if I would be receiving an invitation, his response was that if they invited me it would not be fair to the gentlemen already invited— and also, they might decide not to show up.

FACT SIX

I am a graduate of the YWCA Political Institute School for Women.

Abt doesn’t offer her opinion on the matter, and she doesn’t express any reaction or emotion to what’s happening.

So I will.

This is an outrage.

The YWCA is, in part, organizing this event, and its motto is “eliminating racism, empowering women”. The Partnership for the Public Good is a progressive organization. Yet these two groups and their leadership see fit to exclude a female from this debate. Not just any female – but a female who is currently engaged in a primary campaign against one of the invited men in her race. City and State should have simply offered up an apology and quickly invited Abt to the debate. It did not, and has a poor excuse for it.

The notion that inviting her – late, as an afterthought, and after-the-fact – would dissuade one of the men from attending is also outrageous. I can’t even begin to understand or fathom the rationale behind that statement. Who cares if they don’t show up? In what way would an invitation to Abt be unfair to the four men who are invited? It strains credulity to the point of being an utter falsehood – a cover-your-embarrassed-ass moment by a collection of alleged progressives who should know – and do – better.

Maybe this explains why the PPG’s website’s section on gender inequality is blank.

The YWCA – it hosted a “candidate’s college” earlier this year, which was specifically designed to get women active and involved in the electoral process. It hosts it every year, and as Abt noted, she’s a graduate. Yet she was specifically and deliberately excluded from the coming debate. Every other candidate for the office she seeks – all of them male – were invited without hesitation. When confronted, the PPG, the YWCA, and City & State offer up ridiculous excuses and deflections.

These organizations should add “Factually Unsupported Rank Sexism” to next year’s candidate’s college syllabus. And they should absolutely invite Abt to the debate, and apologize to her for their knowing, deliberate insult.

Visit Abt’s website here.

Follow @abtforassembly

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Local Politics

Hochul vs. Corwin 2.0

August 14, 2012 buffalopundit One comment

The only thing missing so far is a kid dressed like Fonzie shoving a camera in an old man’s face.

Issue: Medicare, Paul Ryan, and what noted Marxist philosopher Newt Gingrich called “right-wing social engineering”.

The Buffalo News’ Jerry Zremski wrote Monday about how Chris Collins refuses to comment on the Ryan Budget, which would fundamentally transform Medicare from the popular single-payer system seniors enjoy – and future seniors pay into throughout their work history – into an expensive voucher-based privatized program.

Of course he’s keeping mum. This issue did tremendous harm to his neighbor, Jane Corwin’s, campaign in 2011.

At the heart of the Republicans’ Medicare Privatization Syndrome Because is to replace a reasonably efficient government bureaucracy with a 97% approval rating from users, and replace it with the fragmented, fundamentally broken, redundant, private (oft for-profit) bureaucracy to take money from the patients through premiums, and nickel-and-dime the physicians on payouts, and futz with what is and isn’t covered. Ungrateful looters & moochers.

Mitt Romney has now selected the architect of that unfair and likely unconstitutional Medicare voucherization plan to be his running mate, and the fallout is spilling over into the hotly contested NY-27 race.

Incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul released this Monday morning:

“Try as he might, Chris Collins cannot run from the fact that he said a budget that ends Medicare as we know it and forces seniors to pay more for their healthcare to fund tax cuts for his millionaire friends ‘doesn’t go far enough,’” said campaign manager Frank Thomas. “Voters deserve to know how much further Chris Collins would go when he already supports decimating Medicare so he can give tax breaks to the rich. How can voters be expected to trust a candidate who will not be candid about his position on an issue that will crush seniors and the middle class.”

Collins told the Batavia Daily News that the Ryan Budget “doesn’t go far enough.” According to the Batavia Daily News, “Collins said he favors the Tea Party push to reduce the federal government. He praised Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, for ‘starting the conversation’ about reducing entitlement programs. But Collins said Ryan doesn’t go far enough. Ryan believes the budget could be balanced in 30 years, Collins said it needs to be done in 10 years. To delay it longer isn’t fair to young Americans who will have to foot the bill.” [Batavia Daily News, 5/9/12]

Collins said his stance on the Ryan Budget is similar to Jane Corwin’s. In March 2012, Collins has admitted that his position does not differ significantly from Jane Corwin’s position. Corwin supported the Ryan Budget, which “would essentially end Medicare.” [Buffalo News,3/25/12; Wall Street Journal, 4/4/11]

But now Collins refuses to even answer questions on the Ryan budget. According to the Buffalo News,

Asked in a weekend telephone interview for his reaction to Ryan’s selection, Collins, the former Erie County executive, would not – even when asked again and again – endorse or even comment on Ryan’s budget, which would partly remake Medicare into a voucher program for future seniors while drastically cutting most domestic spending. [Buffalo News, 8/13/2012]

Republican Chris Collins released this, in response:

“What we are seeing is a desperate public sector millionaire employ every scare tactic under the sun to distract from the issue that matters most to voters – fixing this economy. Of course, with her record of massive tax increases and job killing regulations, it’s no wonder Kathy Hochul wants to talk about anything other than her failed plan to fix the economy.

With her whole-hearted embrace of ObamaCare, Kathy Hochul has jeopardized the future of Medicare for current seniors. More incredibly, she turned her backs on the seniors she promised to protect when she voted to cut their Medicare and Medicare Advantage by $700 billion.

The only way we will solve our budget problems is by adopting pro-growth, pro-small business policies that cut our debt, protect Medicare from going bankrupt, and let small businesses thrive. Kathy Hochul’s plan is to cling to ObamaCare, gut $700 billion from Medicare and watch our economy go down the drain. That’s not a leader – that’s a politician. Our region simply deserves better.”

A few quick observations: 1. Hochul’s release is more effective because it takes Collins’ own words and uses them against him. 2. Anyone else find it odd that Collins, of all people, is using “millionaire” as a pejorative against Kathy Hochul? I thought that was “class warfare” or something. 3. Collins’ statement is so much unsupported pablum about tax & spend liberals. 4. Collins is particularly vulnerable when it comes to being consistent and transparent. Whereas he merely spouts off talking points recycled from his last re-election campaign, Hochul provided hyperlinks to the things Collins has said in the past, and merely hoists him by the petard he so carefully constructed.

From Zremski’s piece, Collins says,

All I’m saying is that I’ll never support cuts to Medicare for current seniors or anyone close to retirement age, including Medicare Advantage, which my opponent has actually voted to cut.

But if you’re not “close to retirement age”, yet you’ve been paying into Medicare through your FICA for years and years, relying on the promise of hassle-free Medicare coverage when you retire, you can go pound salt.

Now – about that $700 billion claim. Collins has been using that for weeks – you should follow his aide Michael Kracker on Twitter, and watch him do battle with Hochul’s campaign manager, Frank Thomas. This claim comes up a lot.

The claim is that Obamacare rips $700 billion out of Medicare – that it’s a cut, that it steals from Medicare to fund Obamacare, etc. The claim is clumsy, palpably and provably false, and worse – assumes you’re stupid and will accept it as truth.

Does Obamacare cut $700 billion from Medicare? No. Obamacare saves $700 billion in waste while enhancing and improving seniors’ access to healthcare. This savings extends Medicare’s solvency by a full eight years.

A Redditor independently examined the claim and reached the same conclusion – that Chris Collins and other Republicans are criticizing Democrats for saving $700 billion from a socialistic, redistributive, government-run single-payer health care system.

CBO breaks out the $716 billion that Reibus refers to:

Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) = $517 billion

Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) = $247 billion

* Medicare Part D (offset) = ($48 billion)
 = $716 billion 
To make a little more sense of this, I also referred to CBO’s Analysis of the Major Health Care Legislation Enacted in March 2010 – start at page 24 which basically bulleted the reasons, as follows:

Changes to Payment Rates in Medicare: “Permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians’ services) and the new mechanism for setting payment rates in the Medicare Advantage Program will reduce Medicare outlays by $507 billion during the 2012-2021 period” I found this very confusing, so I referred to Politifact which states: “The biggest portion of that savings…will come from reducing annual increases in payments to medical providers….The healthcare law does not cut $500 billion from Medicare. It just reduces future growth.” So in essence, it aims to curtail Medicare spending, not outlays to recipients. Ironic how the GOP is attacking Obama for an initiative to save money.

Disproportionate Share Hospitals: CBO states that “Both Medicare and Medicaid provide additional payments to hospitals that serve a disproportionate number of low income patients. PPACA…modified the formulas use to calculate such payments under Medicare. Projected to reduce direct spending by $57 billion over the 2012-2021 period.” The Urban Institute explains that ” the loss of federal disproportionate share hospital payments and potentially high uncompensated care costs borne by state and local governments on behalf of the uninsured will also motivate states to expand Medicaid under the ACA. On balance, states would experience net budget gains from implementing the Medicaid expansion.” So they are basically phasing out a federal program (disproportionate share hospitals) to expand another (Medicaid) and States would have a net budget gain!

Thus far we have accounted for $650 billion of the $716 billion and NONE of these “steal money from Medicare.” They simply attempt to save money, reprogram funding.

As for the remaining $65 billion, CBO says “many of those provisions will reduce spending, whereas others will increase it. The provisions that will reduce spending make a variety of changes to prior law, including establishing a mechanism to reduce the growth rate of Medicare spending if projected growth exceeds a given target, initiating a number of programs intended to modify the health care delivery system, and adjusting payments for prescription drugs in Medicaid….PPACA and the Reconciliation Act include numerous provisions intended to identify opportunities and create incentives for providers to make changes to the health care delivery system that will reduce costs and improve the quality of care.”

So, there you have it. Chris Collins and the Republicans are lying to you about Obamacare, about how it affects Medicare, and about myriad other things. Collins isn’t talking about the Ryan budget and how it effects Medicare because he saw what it did to Jane Corwin. Instead, he’s trying to pivot the debate (by the way, has he agreed to any debates? Will he be releasing any tax information at all?) to lies about how Obamacare is stealing money from Medicare. Are we going to re-litigate the Corwin vs. Hochul debacle of May 2011? Looks like it, and even with a re-worked district geography and demographic, it’s still got a lot of seniors who don’t appreciate being lied to, and don’t like that Collins supports the partial privatization, decimation, and increased user cost the right wing is proposing for Medicare.

Washington

Reid Gives Republicans A Taste of Their Own Medicine

August 8, 2012 buffalopundit 10 comments

Did you hear how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took to the Senate floor to accuse Mitt Romney of not having paid income taxes in 10 years? He says someone with deep knowledge of Bain Capital finances told him that, but he’s unwilling to reveal his source, and the Republicans and Romney are going absolutely out of their minds about it.

Is the charge true? Is it false? Who knows? Obviously, the easiest way to prove its falsity is to release 10 years’ worth of tax returns – something Romney has repeatedly refused to do. The Romneys say we people have all we’re going to get from them – an incomplete 2010 return and a 2011 estimate. Romney deliberately omitted a document he would have filed with the IRS detailing the holdings he has in foreign banks in Switzerland, the Caymans, Bermuda, and other traditional tax-evasion havens with expanded secrecy laws to help, e.g., absolve Americans of their duty to pay taxes (and more nefarious reasons like money laundering). ABC News pointedly asked Romney whether he’s ever paid less than 13.9% in income taxes, and he said he’d go back and check – that’s not a “no”. He never came back to tell us one way or another.

The Republicans are going nuts, demanding Reid’s taxes, Pelosi’s taxes, Obama’s college transcript – they’re grasping at completely manufactured straws and bringing up remarkable non-sequiturs to avoid one salient fact:

While the rabid right-wingers in Breitbartland demand a “vetting” of Obama that happened in 2008 and they’ve conveniently ignored, they absolutely refuse to vet their own nominee. That refusal to vet – hey, rich white guy, former Governor – is already haunting them. You can’t complain about transparency when you have a candidate who’s hiding something. You can’t complain about job creators and taxes when your ultrawealthy one percenter candidate pays no taxes.

(Why aren’t we demanding to see how much Chris Collins has been paying in taxes?)

But if you read anything about the set of balls on Harry Reid, you should read this piece from the Rude Pundit. His writing is NSFW, but I haven’t yet found anything that more creatively and pointedly explains why this is all fantastic. (Quote after the jump, due to language – those with vapours should avoid). Read more

Presidential Politics

Tax Cuts For Thee, Tax Cuts For Me

August 1, 2012 buffalopundit 9 comments

There is an impasse brewing in Washington over the Bush-era, post-9/11 stimulus made up entirely of income tax cuts.

This is the same stimulus plan that has been in effect throughout the current economic uncertainty, and the recent global economic meltdown that took place, and has done little to make sure wealth trickles down, or to create jobs.

It’s becoming part of the NY-27 race, in particular. Republican Chris Collins paints himself as the small business everyman, and called on Representative Kathy Hochul (D) to vote to extend tax cuts even to the wealthiest Americans. Collins claims millions of small businesses, who aren’t hiring now, would be forced to not hire people (what, like even worser?!) if the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy aren’t extended. Essentially all of the $1 million+ earners in the country are not “small business owners”; only about 2.5% of small businesses would be affected. It would also expend the deficit by another trillion dollars, so it’s what we call “fiscally not particularly conservative”.

In fact, since Reaganomics and trickle down/supply-side economics became de rigeur, wages haven’t stagnated for average Americans – they’e “plummeted”. Wealth hasn’t trickled down to anyone, unless maybe you own a Bentley or yacht dealership.

No, we shouldn’t begrudge the rich their wealth. However they got it, they’re quite entitled to it. By the same token, we need to stop the hagiography about them being “job creators” without whom our civilization would crumble. Ayn Rand isn’t the treasury secretary.

President Obama and the Democrats would like to put an end to the tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. What does that mean?

What it means is that everyone gets to keep the Bush-era tax cut up to the first $250,000 of annual income – even notable job creators like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. Here’s the average annual tax savings if the middle-income cuts are maintained, but the high-income cuts are abolished:

Still a pretty good deal, right? Anyone else getting the idea that Collins’ argument is more about self-interest than policy? The problem is that many genuine small businesses rely on the middle class to buy their goods and services – directly or indirectly. The best way for that to happen is for people to have money in their pockets and the confidence to spend it. Millionaires never, ever have a problem with either of those factors. As we see above, extending the middle-class tax cuts provide a significant benefit across the income spectrum.

National Politics

The Buffalo News in Transition

July 18, 2012 buffalopundit 6 comments

Photo by amstefano988 on Flickr

Margaret Sullivan, the Buffalo News’ editor-in-chief, announced on Monday that she would be leaving the News this summer to become the New York Times’ “public editor” – a position formerly known as “ombudsman”. I wish her well in her new position.

It does, however, raise some questions about the News. The Buffalo News performs a valuable public service, and it’s Buffalo’s only daily newspaper. What does a public editor do, exactly?

“The role of the public editor is to represent readers and respond to their concerns, critique Times journalism and increase transparency and understanding about how the institution operates,” the media group said in a statement.

“With the vast changes in journalism in recent years, the new public editor will seek new avenues for that mission.”

Sullivan will continue to write a print column, “but she will focus on a more active online role: as the initiator, orchestrator and moderator of an ongoing conversation about The Times’s journalism,” the statement said.

That will include a blog and Web page on NYTimes.com, along with an active social media presence.

Given that New York is a three-daily-paper town, the residents of the city get choices in terms of the type of paper, coverage, and editorial voice they want. The Times transcends that, however. It’s the closest thing we have to a national daily paper of record. The Buffalo News is shrinking. It regularly trumpets that it remains “profitable”, but in the past 10 years or so, it’s lost an entire roster of talented writers, and its online efforts are sometimes successful, sometimes bizarre, and inexplicably unintegrated with the more youthful and vibrant Buffalo.com outlet.

To this day, Sullivan misapprehends what the Buffalo News is in this new media environment. The News is poised to erect a paywall because it believes that it is in the newspaper printing business rather than the journalism and information business. It will be charging 99 cents to obtain online something that costs 75 cents to buy in paper form; that’s 99 cents for something that’s free to distribute versus 75 cents for something that involves paper, ink, trucks, and a wide distribution network. That’s fewer eyeballs looking at the content, looking at the ads accompanying that content.

I don’t get it. The paywall, and its regressive, absurd pricing structure, further cleave the paper from the community it serves. No one wins – combat decreasing physical circulation by decreasing online circulation? That’s the job qualification for a public editor? Chats that Sullivan has hosted at the Buffalo News’ website revealed nothing along the lines of a public editor role, merely defense for the alleged impartiality of certain columnists and coverage.

We’re reminded that the News remains profitable; that Papa Buffett remains supportive. Profitability is maintained despite a drop in circulation, because veteran writers would rather take a buy-out than stick around. The News prints lots of things for a fee on their state-of-the-art machinery, including the New York Times.

But Sullivan’s new job – why exactly doesn’t a one-paper town have an ombudsman? Isn’t the News’ duty to its readers somewhat higher, given that there is no print competition? Or is that duty alleviated because of occasional criticism or analysis from online competition like Artvoice, Buffalo Rising, or Investigative Post?

After all, most people buy the News for the coupons. The coupons. Isn’t that a damning indictment? Doesn’t that discourage the talented writers who remain at the News, who have been recently placed in new, high-profile beats, or sent out to report on goings-on in suburban town halls, muscling in on the Bees’ turf? How long did Janice Okun stick around expounding on the relative pros and cons of booth dimensions? How many more times will Bob McCarthy repeat his patent bullshit about Chris Collins being scandal-free and fulfilling all the promises? How many more times will Donn Esmonde – nominally retired – write glowing profiles of the newest and best thing said or done by the Elmwood intelligentsia?

It will be interesting to see how the Buffalo News changes after Sullivan’s departure. Change is inevitable because I don’t think the paywall is going to fix anything. I also believe that the News is in the business of journalism, not in the business of printing a paper. It should be spending money and using resources to create a 21st century newsroom and a product that is less reliant on coupons and gimmickry, and better integrates itself into the networks of people, groups, and neighborhoods that make up WNY.

The internet shook the newspaper business to its core. Very few, if any, papers, have adapted well to that shift to the new media landscape. Sullivan kept the paper afloat under monopolistic market conditions. Buffalo.com is unable to integrate with BuffaloNews.com – banner ads promote each in the other. What is your opinion of the Buffalo News? Do you buy it? Subscribe? What reporters do you appreciate and follow? I enjoy the work of Tim Graham, Matt Spina, Denise Jewell Gee, Andrew Galarneau, Aaron Besecker, and Steve Watson, to name a few.

You go to the Newseum in Washington, and you get the very real sense that it’s a museum honoring the relics of pre-internet news gathering and dissemination. As people shift from paper to computer to tablets, the Buffalo News has been playing catch-up, oftentimes frustratingly so. We criticize the News because it’s the only game in town. Because it’s the only game in town, it has a duty to be better; more responsive, accessible, and transparent to the community it serves.

Email: buffalopundit[at]gmail.com

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Media

Political Soothsaying

July 5, 2012 buffalopundit 13 comments

Chris Collins 2010 Summer Green Series Speaker

Photo by Flickr User KVIS

What I do here is offer my opinion on issues and events. I seldom cover actual news, and on the rare occasion that I do, I still do it from a particular point of view, and will ultimately tell you what I think about it – and what I think you should think about it.

What the Buffalo News does is report the news, except in clearly defined columns, and on the op-ed pages, where the author’s own opinion is proferred.

What nobody does is enter psychic mode and extrapolate what an interviewee actually meant to say, and then offer up an amended version of a quote.

The Batavian is a website that mostly reports the news. It has occasionally delved into opinion writing, but for the most part it reports on goings-on in the courts, sports news, development, entertainment, who got arrested at Darien Lake, and what happens on the scanners. It’s small-town reporting at its purest, and it’s a great resource for Batavians who until recently had only a single local paper. It also covers local, state, and federal political races that are relevant to its readership. It’s a straight news outlet.

Earlier this week, I highlighted an interview that the Batavian’s Howard Owens conducted with congressional candidate Chris Collins, where he made some outrageous statements about the survivability of breast and prostate cancers. The quote was as follows:

The healthcare reforms Collins said he would push would be tort reform and open up competition in insurance by allowing policies across state lines.

Collins also argued that modern healthcare is expensive for a reason.

“People now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things,” Collins said. “The fact of the matter is, our healthcare today is so much better, we’re living so much longer, because of innovations in drug development, surgical procedures, stents, implantable cardiac defibrillators, neural stimulators — they didn’t exist 10 years ago. The increase in cost is not because doctors are making a lot more money. It’s what you can get for healthcare, extending your life and curing diseases.” [Emphasis added].

Later that day, the Erie County Health Commissioner issued a statement challenging Collins’ assertion, and urging people to get tested and to be vigilant for breast and prostate cancers. Almost at the same time, Collins’ opponent, incumbent Congresswoman Kathy Hochul released this:

“Chris Collins has demonstrated a stunning lack of sensitivity by saying, ‘people now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer, and some of the other things.’ Tragically, nearly 70,000 people will die this year from these two types of cancer alone. We can disagree about public policy without making these kinds of outrageous and offensive statements.”

Good statement – concise, pointed, properly angry and scolding. The quotation was verbatim from the Batavian’s piece.

However, The Batavian’s Howard Owens was not happy, and he expressed his displeasure in a novel way. Without differentiating his post from the straight reporting the Batavian otherwise usually engages in, he posted a pure opinion piece which, I think, crossed a line. After printing Hochul’s statement, Owens opines,

That’s the statement, with no reference to the source nor the full quote so people could judge the context for themselves.

The original source is The Batavian (both as a courtesy to The Batavian and as a matter of complete transparency, the Hochul campaign should have included this fact in its release).

I’ll be the first to admit that I get pissy when I don’t get proper credit for something, but is this more a fit of pique than anything else? After all, Collins’ statement about cancer survivability stands on its own, and speaks for itself. If there exists any doubt about the pure meaning of Collins’ words, then it’s up to Collins to explain them and expand upon them, no? But here, Owens goes on to reproduce the entire paragraph in which Collins’ cancer quip is contained, and continues:

On its face, the opening part of the quote from Collins sounds outrageous, but in context, clearly, Collins misspoke. More likely, he meant to say. “Fewer people die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things.” [emphasis added].

First, Owens supposes that Collins simply misspoke. Well, what Collins said seems outrageous because it is outrageous. Context? The context about which Owens is so concerned is open to interpretation, I suppose. But isn’t that conclusion solely within the province of the utterer of the words, or the reader of the article?

Is Collins grossly misinformed about cancer survivability, or is he just a clumsy politician who was trying to embellish a point about how Obamacare is horrible and health care is expensive, and should be? That’s my call – not Owens’.

Propriety aside, I don’t see any evidence that Collins “misspoke”. There was no follow-up, and he didn’t correct his statement. Collins didn’t go on to further explain or expand upon what he said about breast and prostate cancers. He just went on to assert that some 40 year-old medical technologies like TENS machines and implanted defibrillators “didn’t exist 10 years ago”.

The whole paragraph is a load of semi-informed nonsense. The whole paragraph is Collins’ politicization of health care to persuade readers to maintain the status quo. Yet Owens argues that it’s important for voters to consider Collins’ BS about cancer within the context of all the other falsehoods and lies he excreted during that portion of the interview.

The real outrage, though, is Owens’ second assertion – suggesting what Collins must have meant to say, and completely re-stating what Collins said, in quotation marks. That’s not how journalism works. What else exists in that paragraph to help reach the conclusion that Collins really meant something different from what he actually said? After that first ridiculous sentence, Collins utters not another word about cancer.

If Owens thought Collins “misspoke”, he could have asked a follow-up; for example, “wait, you just said no one dies from breast cancer or prostate cancer, you didn’t really mean that, did you?” But there was no such follow-up. There was no explanation; there is no relevant context to further explain what Collins meant. Owens is playing psychic and ex-post-facto trying to repair a Collins gaffe. Hey, Howard, what did Collins “mean” when he repeatedly called Shelly Silver the “anti-Christ”? What did Collins “mean” when he invited a female Republican bigwig to give him a “lapdance”?

Allow me to divert from the underlying point by asking, why?

Why do WNY media and their personalities and writers bend over backwards so regularly and consistently for Chris Collins? Is it because Collins demands that kind of treatment in exchange for access? Is it because they’re enamored of his money and success? Is it because of campaign ads? I’m asking seriously. This guy gets away with so many lies, so often, and he gets a routine uncritical pass.

Think I’m kidding? Just this past Sunday, Bob McCarthy wrote the same bunch of brown-nosing BS about Chris Collins that he’s written at least twice before. “[Collins] had done everything he said he would do. His administration was scandal-free. And he lost.” In November 2011, McCarthy wrote, “How did a county executive who fulfilled all his promises with minimal effects on taxes and no scandals manage to lose?” Then again in December 2011, McCarthy wrote, “This time, the defeat seems to genuinely hurt. Collins struggles to grasp how he lost after keeping all his campaign promises of 2007 while running Erie County without a hint of scandal.” I addressed the blatant inaccuracy of the “scandal-free” / “promises kept” assertions here.

That’s a lot of identical puffery of one guy, multiple times in one year. The same reporter did a story on this Collins cancer kerfuffle , and Collins basically said he knows people with cancer. Having politicized cancer by suggesting that, thanks to America’s unsustainably expensive health care system, “no one dies from” certain types of the disease, Collins issued this:

As the brother of a breast cancer survivor, I am grateful for the medical advances that saved my sister’s life, which would not have been possible a generation ago,” he said. “I find it troubling that Kathy Hochul would politicize the seriousness of cancer.

Hey, Chris and Howard – where in that extended Batavian quote did Collins mention a single, solitary medical advance, treatment, or medication that has anything to do with improved breast and prostate cancer survivability over the past generation? I’ll answer for you: nowhere. Perhaps reporters shouldn’t try to play soothsayer and, weeks later, divine what their interviewees “mean” to say, and then create phony “amended” statements, complete with improper quotation marks.

Owens concludes,

That’s not what he said (I taped the interview and the original quote as published is accurate), but the rest of the quote clearly explains the larger point he is trying to make, which is that medical advances have driven up the cost of healthcare.

To rip this quote out of context and try to use it to paint Collins as some sort of insensitive boob is the kind of below-the-belt, negative campaign tactic that keeps people from being engaged in the process and casting intelligent votes. Frankly, I think of Kathy Hochul as somebody who is more dignified than this sort of mudslinging.

Well, actually, it is precisely what he said, isn’t it? I mean, if the original quote as published is accurate, then Collins said exactly what you wrote. Does it “clearly explain” some uninformed point Collins was trying to make about Obamacare-is-bad? Not really.

Is it mudslinging? By whom?

Do I think that Chris Collins really believes that breast and prostate cancers don’t kill people anymore? I don’t really know, but I’m willing to accept that he’s a reasonably intelligent, reasonably well-informed person who would know that these cancers remain quite lethal. So, do I think he “misspoke”? Not really – “misspoke” implies inadvertent error. So, what’s going on?

I disagree with Owens’ crystal ball about what Collins “meant” to say. I think Collins said exactly what he meant to say; that people, generally, don’t die from prostate and breast cancers as much anymore, thanks to innovation and technology. But he never properly expressed his point, and certainly didn’t back it up. He politicized cancer and medical advances in order to make a point that we should maintain the current, unsustainable, unfair, over-expensive and under-performing system of private health insurance we have today, and that Obamacare (and, by extension, Kathy Hochul), are bad. He was doing what politicians do – embellishing facts to score a political point. To suggest otherwise; to suggest that Hochul’s statement was an egregious horror whilst Collins’ was an earnest mistake, is utter nonsense.

Politicians are engaged in a competitive system and have to differentiate themselves through persuasion. Collins made a factual assertion, and his opponent criticized it. If Hochul crossed some arbitrary Owens line of propriety, so did Collins.

Owens suggested on Twitter that I was being hypocritical, because I cheered him when he embarrassed Jane Corwin last year. The facts beg to differ. In 2011, Owens was doing his job as a reporter – asking Corwin pointed questions about the second videotape that would have shown her staffer Michael Mallia harassing Jack Davis. He was committing journalism in the first degree – pretending to be a Lily Dale psychic with respect to Collins’ “meaning” isn’t the same thing.

In 2011, Owens didn’t fire up the Batavian posting machine to specifically fisk a statement that Corwin made, accuse her of a “slur”, and suggest that the verbatim transcription of what someone said wasn’t really what they meant to say, and then create and publish a fictional amended quotation to reflect that “meaning”.

Owens is entitled to his outrage at Hochul’s rather mild reaction to Collins’ politicization of cancer, but to accuse her of a “slur” for repeating what Collins said, and criticizing it, is ridiculous. To create an opinion piece specifically to call her out for it is silliness. To – without any factual evidence – condescend to the reader by explaining Collins’ meaning and amending his statement, and surrounding it in quotation marks, is outrageous.

Maybe what Owens misspoke. What he meant to say was, “Hochul’s statement was quite tame, and I’m genuinely upset that she didn’t cite the Batavian.“

Sucks, doesn’t it?

Media

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