Matthew Vadum Responds!

A few days ago, I took Scaife's braintrust to task for filtering out some important information in its smear against Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers Union.  (Note to Matthew Vadum: I am the only author of the blog post.  This is an easy enough fact to check.  It's written right at the top of the blog post.)

As part of the deconstruction, I stumbled across another similar filter piece from the keyboard of Matthew Vadum.

Well, Mr Vadum's responded in a comment:

This is a dishonest post. I didn't lie about anything. See: http://matthewvadum.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-mildly-dismaying-tale-of-lying.html

It's only fair to go see what he has to say.  But before we do, let's review the definition of a "Lie of Omission."  Roughly speaking there are two types of lies; lies by commission and lies by omission.  A "lie of commission" easy: it's a statement that's untrue presented as true.  A lie of omission is a bit trickier: it's a partially true statement presented as the complete truth.

For example, when President George W. Bush said "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." in his State of the Union address in 2003, he told a lie of omission.  Why?   Because while it's true that while British Intelligence was asserting that Iraq was looking to buy that uranium, American Intelligence was casting serious doubts on it.

See how that works?  Had Bush included that bit of information, it would have changed the entire meaning of  the passage.  So even though none of the statements he made as untrue, he was still lying - by omission.

And now we turn to Matthew Vadum.  Vadum admits that I accurately from his Front Page article when I quoted this:

To Gerard, it is not radical leftist agitation that leads to violence but capitalism itself. Economic “inequality,” he says, “leads to instability and violence.”

He then goes on to agree with basically everything I wrote - that Gerard was quoting and agreeing with that Vatican Report and that he, Vadum, omitted it from his piece because he "didn't deem it necessary" when he wrote the article.  Later on he writes:

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out what the "lie" was.

I can only point to the above discussion about lies of omission and then rhetorically ask how different Vadum's charge that Gerard was attacking capitalism would be if Vadum were to include the fact that Gerard was agreeing with a Vatican report when he did so?

See Matt?  That's the filer and that's the lie.  I can explain it to you again, but I can't understand it for you.

Oh, and by the way, you might need to check again on your definitions of "quoting" and "paraphrasing."  You wrote about Gerard's use of the phrase "inequality leads to stability and violence" and how I was wrong to say that he was quoting the Vatican report - you assert that he was only paraphrasing it.

But if you were to read, carefully this time, my blog post you'd see this sentence from the Vatican report:

If basic morality fails as a reason to reverse these trends, then the Pontifical Council suggested another. Such inequality leads to instability and violence.

I know I'm only an amateur blogger and not a real live writer like yourself but that looks to me like a quotation and not a paraphrase.  Perhaps you can explain how using an exact set of words in exactly the same context with exactly the same meaning constitutes something that isn't a quotation.

And anyway, I find it interesting that you filtered out that exact set of words part in your blog post to your readers.  I guess old habits die hard, huh?

Now let me respond to onto your attacks on me:

• I was not high when I wrote the blog piece.
• I was not having a bad day when I wrote the blog piece.
• I have never received any sort of compensation from George Soros when I wrote the blog piece.

If you have any evidence that I am, in fact, lying about any of the above, I suggest you present it now.  If not, I think it's safe to assume that you didn't do much to help your defense of your journalistic honesty.

The Right Wing Echo Chamber/Filter

Let's do a little wingnut deconstruction.  Think of it as an exercise to strengthen your blogger chops.

From today's "Sunday Pops":

United Steelworkers union boss Leo Gerard, on MSNBC, warned that those who compromise are not “real Democrats.” And a while back, FrontPage Magazine reported that Mr. Gerard considers capitalism to be economic “inequality ... that leads to instability and violence.” This, from the same fella who once advocated street violence to promote Barack Obama’s socialist vision. Ahem. [Bold text in original.]

Wow. Pretty damning, isn't it?  This Gerard guy must be a nasty piece of work, huh?

Not so much when you track down all the sources that the Braintrust cites then compare them to how filtered them for your consumption.  Let's take them one at a time.

When did Gerard warn Democrats about compromise?  It was on The Ed Show on MSNBC, November 20.  After pointing out that the way out of the current economic mess is to get people back to work and that letting the Bush tax cuts expire is not a tax increase (as they were "designed to expire"), Gerard reminds Ed's viewers how badly the Tea Party did in the last election and how much the voters support the President's agenda.  When Ed asks about Democrats who are "getting nervous" Gerard responds:

The best compromise is that the Republicans ought to start to understand that they are the ones that have caused this mess by trying to hold up the president`s agenda for four years. Democrats don`t need to compromise. The president won on an economic agenda that included rebuilding the manufacturing base, fixing the infrastructure, letting the Bush tax expire not for the bottom 98 percent, but for the top 2 percent. And any Democrat that gets weak knees on that isn't a real Democrat. [Emphasis added.]

See? It's not about compromise in general (which is what Scaife's braintrust wants you to think) it's about compromising on any the stuff the Dems won on in November.  It's on what to compromise on, not that there should be compromise.

By filtering out enough details to present a narrative that doesn't conform to reality, Scaife's braintrust is lying to you.

But that's just the beginning.  Let's take a look at Gerard's views on capitalism.  The reference to Front Page leads to this piece by Matthew Vadum.

We've met Mr Vadum before, haven't we?  He's the guy who's on record as saying:

Registering [the poor] to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

Note that he's not talking about anyone other than poor citizens.  Knowing the source, we can expect a certain amount of, uh, skewing to reality.

And skewing Vadum does.  Here's how he quotes Gerard:

To Gerard, it is not radical leftist agitation that leads to violence but capitalism itself. Economic “inequality,” he says, “leads to instability and violence.”

Knowing that that sentence was written by Matthew "burglary tools" Vadum, I think we can reasonably ask whether Gerard actually said that? And if so what was the context?

With the glorious google we find that he did, in fact, type out those words.  But he was quoting someone else.

Who?  You might ask.

The Vatican.  In a piece for the Huffingtonpost about the dangers of the widening gulf between the few rich and the many poor, Gerard cites this report from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.  He writes:

The result is that the richest 20 percent of households got more money in those 30 years than the entire bottom 80 percent. That is redistribution of wealth -- moving it from the poor and middle class to the richest.

The CBO study cites several factors contributing to the rising inequality, including federal tax policy. The CBO says tax policy fed inequity as the incomes of the wealthiest rose astronomically and their federal tax burden shrank.

This pattern is consistent internationally. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development determined that from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s income inequality increased in three-quarters of the 30 developed countries studied.

If basic morality fails as a reason to reverse these trends, then the Pontifical Council suggested another. Such inequality leads to instability and violence. [Emphasis added.]

And then he quotes the Vatican report:

If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid.

Now take a step back to see what Vadum said.  He chose to lie to his audience and omit the faith-based conclusions that Gerard was quoting and agreeing with.  Scaife's braintrust at best failed and at worst lied to their audience by not checking the source of Vadum's assertion.

Now go take a look at the blurb at the Trib.  How much corresponds to reality?  How much of it looks ridiculous?  How credible is it?  How credible do its readers think it is?

This is how the right wing echo chamber filter works.

Vadum, Voting, And (Of Course) The Trib

From Talkingpointsmemo yesterday we read Matthew Vadum's views on registering welfare recipients to vote:

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "like handing out burglary tools to criminals."

Then there's this from Brian Hasen at Electionlawblog:

Deny the right to vote the poor because they might vote in their self-interest. I don’t know something more “un-American” these days than claiming that wealth should be a valid criterion for deciding who should get the right to vote.

It's all about this piece in the American Thinker.

Before we get any further, let's start with Matthew Vadum's clarification. In responding to Hasen, Vadum writes:

I never made that argument but Hasen is either too stupid to understand this or he is deliberately sliming me. Of course those who are legally qualified to vote should be allowed to vote but our tax dollars shouldn't be used to underwrite the destruction of the republic.

Vadum's first part is, oddly enough, he doesn't explicitly make that particular argument. But what does he say?

Here's Vadum's opening:

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

See? It's not about denying "them" the vote - it's about not registering "them" in the first place!

World of difference there.

But haven't we seen Matthew Vadum before?

Why yes. Yes we have - in the Trib, of course.

• Here's a hit piece on George Soros.
• Here's an editorial that cites Vadum's "work" on ACORN.
• Here's another.

Each time he's tagged as a "Senior Editor" at the Capital Research Center. The center itself is beneficiary of about $4.9 million of Scaife Foundation money over the years.

So Vadum doesn't want the poor to register to vote because he thinks that they'll vote in their own economic self-interest and doing so is, in his words, "un-American".

Does he think it's any different for the rich?