The information in this post is important for a few reasons. First, it shows that even trusted news and information sources should be checked for accuracy. It also shows that organizations that we trust for information should be incredibly careful not to use their data to editorialize in a way that is not supported by the data. And finally, it shows the importance of perspective in evaluating any broad statements made by anyone, including those we generally trust.
Skepticism should be your mantra. It is not a bad thing; it is what we on the left have that the gullible right wingers do not. Don't believe anything without checking it first, even if it's something you want to believe.
This all started with a Tweet from Open Secrets. Open Secrets is a phenomenal website run by the usually stellar “non-partisan” organization, The Center for Responsive Politics. The site tracks the money candidates receive as donations and where the money comes from. The fact of the matter is, while they attempt to be, and lebel themselves “non-partisan, they do lean left. Of course they lean left; the right doesn’t think such things should be tracked at all. Besides, facts tend to have a liberal bias, especially in today's political climate.
Now, Open Secrets would be the perfect website if it just posted the data and let people decide what it means. Unfortunately, in the case below, CRP announced a new database, which is very useful, and attempted to “analyze” the data, an. In doing so, the article, which ostensibly should have simply been an announcement of the new database, turned into something of a hit piece against Democrats, drawing conclusions that are somewhat misleading, and which actually have no real meaning when their context is added, as you'll see demonstrated below.
I will refrain from making a conclusion about CRP's motives here, but it does seem to be a common problem among organization that tend to lean left to do analyses to make themselves look “objective.” But here's the deal; only proveable facts are “objective” in the end. You don't make yourself look "more objective" by taking raw data and drawing conclusions from them. In the article they refer to here, they actually take massive amounts of data and attempt to "simplify" it. In the process, they actually come up with a load of crap. It doesn't rise to the Fox News level of crap, but it's crap nonetheless.
The whole thing started with the following Tweet, which appeared in my feed on June 1 (go ahead and click on the link. I'll be referring to this article later on):
OpenSecretsDC OpenSecrets.org
Number of the day...1/20. One of every 20 $s given to Sen. Harry Reid's 2010 campaign came from federal lobbyists:http://bit.ly/k1fkac
As it is wont to do, my bullshit detector went off immediately. I tend to try to look at things the way the average voter might. I'm not a pundit, per se; I'm a regular guy who just happens to know how our politics works. And the first, immediate question is, am I supposed to get excited about 1 out of 20 of anything?
he concept is absurd on so many levels, it’s difficult to know where to start. I responded with the following Tweet:
MiltShook Milt Shook
@OpenSecretsDC um... Okay... So that means 19/20 did NOT. Your point?
After which they responded with the following:
OpenSecretsDC OpenSecrets.org
@MiltShook Point is that a demographic that represents 0.004% of the nation's population accounted for 5% of contributions to Harry Reid.
The person responding was obviously feeling defensive, because the above statement is absolutely FALSE. I don't mean just exaggerated. It's false. In fact, as you'll see in my analysis below, BOTH Tweeted statements turned out to be false. This is troubling on many levels, especially coming from an organization that is so respected.
So, I finished the exchange with the following:
MiltShook Milt Shook
@OpenSecretsDC In other words, no actual point. Accentuating the negative is why libs never win elections.
Like I said; CRP generally does good work. I just wish they’d actually BE objective with the information, and avoid providing such incredibly biased analysis. The information in the Tweet actually has NOTHING to do with the content of the article, and it’s also inaccurate. I’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s start by talking about the concept of context.
Even if we assume the information in the Tweet was accurate (and it’s NOT), it’s completely meaningless without putting it into full context, which neither the Tweet NOR the article do.
When did ALL “federally registered lobbyists” get lumped into the same category and then labeled as if the very concept of lobbying was somehow evil incarnate? I understand that increased lobbyist influence in recent years is a serious problem. But there are a few important questions that have to be answered here to create context for the implications made by both the article and the Tweet:
- Are all lobbyists exactly the same?
- If the worst “offenders” (recipient of lobbyist contributions) only receive 5% (which is an inaccurate figure anyway) of their money from “federal lobbyists,” how bad is the problem, really?
- If the 5% is split among 572 lobbyists (as is the case with Reid’s lobbyist contributions), making the average contribution $1,606, with the largest contribution being $7,200, what does that do to the implication that Harry Reid (and other Democrats) are somehow “bad”?
- How many Congresspersons running for office received MORE than 5% of their contributions from “federal lobbyists”?
- Are there OTHER funding sources that constitute a greater danger to the system overall?
- And if the criteria used is lobbyists who are federally registered, I would point out that the registered ones are pretty significantly regulated. What other entities might constitute a problem just as big or bigger? (Think Koch Brothers)
It is absolutely impossible for their (ultimately inaccurate) statement that $1 of every $20 Reid received came from “federal lobbyists” to have any significance without answering all of the above questions. I know context isn’t important to right wingers’ simple-mindedness, but it’s absolutely essential for the left, if we’re to make it politically. They can be as right as they want; we have to be correct. If we exaggerate the negative as much as they do, we lose.
By the way, these same peopleTweeted me later to suggest that I read the article (I had already done so, and completed about half of this post), and suggested that the article provides context to their original Tweet. It doesn't. In fact, the article shows the Tweet to be absolutely irresponsible. The article isn't even about Harry Reid. The article they point to is to publicize a new feature at the site pointing to where lobbyists’ money goes. The title of the post to which the link leads is:
Follow Lobbyists' Money With New Features on OpenSecrets.org
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw that was, why couldn’t that have been their Tweet? It’s certainly more pertinent to the subject of the article. .
Like I said, it’s not a factually accurate Tweet in the first place. Harry Reid raised $1,014,000 from “federal lobbyists,” out of $25 million, which is only $1 out of every $25, not every $20, anyway. That means even their out-of-context contention was way off. The converse is, $24 out of every $25 did NOT come from “federal lobbyists.” More accurately, roughly 4% of Reid’s contributions came from “federal lobbyists.” Meaning 96% did NOT.
But it gets worse. The largest of Reid’s “federal lobbyist” donors was John Ashford, who gave a whopping $7,600 (if you include his family) That’s $7,600 out of $25,000,000. John represents a steel manufacturer, Evraz, Inc., that has been described by the United Steelworkers Union as a company in which its workers are “treated fairly and (have) strong union representation.” Not exactly a boatload of money, and certainly not an “evil corporation.” His second largest “federal lobbyist” contributor is Kate Moss, who gave a whopping $5,600. Her lobbying firm represents a number of entities, including organizations that advocate for human rights.
Yes, folks, even human rights lobbyists, like Human Rights Watch, have to register, and would fall under the umbrella of “federally-registered lobbyists.” I used to work for a couple of large DC law firms, and our clients ran the gamut, from huge multinational conglomerates, to those representing torture and mine victims. If one of our lobbyists did work for a large multinational corporation and torture victims at the same time, and gave $7,600 to Harry Reid, other than "he likes Harry Reid," what conclusion would you draw from it?
If you're being honest, there is no conclusion to be drawn. Such proclamations as “Harry Reid gets a lot of money from lobbyists” are absolutely meaningless as analysis. In order for such analysis to be pertinent to anything, we have to know WHICH lobbyists are donating, on behalf of which clients.
Such articles/posts/blogs do NOT contribute to the political conversation in this country. My advice would be to collect the data and make it available, but let the people who read it draw their own conclusions. When you post a Tweet that implies Harry Reid is somehow tainted because “federal lobbyists” donated to his campaign, you’d better have the support to back it up, or you’re part of the problem.
I’m not going to go through every lobbyist and determine “good” or “bad,” because you can all read, and you are all capable of making up your own minds. All I ask is that liberals examine the FACTS and make an assessment based on ALL of them. Facts already have a liberal bias; there’s no need to make up new facts in order to fit a preconceived notion; that’s what the right wing does. Hell; it's the reason we hate Fox News. I am getting so sick of people on the left taking the most simplistic negative positions they can, and pretending that somehow you’ve “revealed” something useful, when you haven’t. The far left does the same thing when they rail against "big corporations." There really are some good large corporations out there. And even the bad ones do some good things. It's not helpful to rail against them, without being more specific. Also, keep in mind that the political capital from such a broad declaration is bound to be limited, given that many, if not most voters work for large corporations, including a whole bunch of liberals.
The lobbyist information from Open Secrets is too sketchy to come to any sort of conclusion about the nature of the “federal lobbyists” who give to candidates. As I said, many “federal lobbyists” represent a wide variety of clients, from oil and mining companies to unions, environmentalists, green energy companies and civic groups. Can you really equate the NRA with the AARP or the WWF, or Exxon with the Teamsters Union or a small startup trying to develop water systems for the Congo, when evaluating the effect of campaign contributions? In any case, how much “influence” could a lobbyist for a worker-friendly steel company expect to “buy” with $7,200 out of $25 million? Lumping everyone into a single category of “federally-registered lobbyists” does no one any good, and to use that as a basis for making insinuations about politicians is just plain wrong.
If you want to know why the electorate seems so negative toward liberals, it's stuff like this. It's our tendency to over-generalize, and to do so negatively. The far right will always be negative. It’s in their DNA. They thrive on it, and their politicians depend on it to get people to the polls. They also count on that negativity to depress turnout, which is the only way they can win.
We’re not like the right. We’re supposed to be on the side that favors truth and facts. The negativity coming from our side is absolutely killing us with the people who decide the elections. When we get away from truth and facts, and adopt negativity, we are playing into the right wing’s hands. I don’t expect CRP to support the "liberal agenda;" I expect them to post facts and stop drawing incredibly flawed and innacurate conclusions. But what bothers me more than the inaccuracies, per se, is the complete lack of perspective when drawing conclusions. When you look past the veneer, the actual numbers themselves are breathtakingly insignificant, when viewed in perspective.
Let’s take the first 2 paragraphs of the article and put them into perspective:
As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was running for re-election, about $1 out of every $20 he raised for his massive war chest came from a tiny but elite group of Washington insiders: federally registered lobbyists and their immediate family members, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics of campaign finance data and lobbying reports.
In 2009 and 2010 alone, Reid raised about $919,000 from 572 lobbyists who were registered and actively lobbying during either one of those years, the Center found. That's more than any other member of the U.S. Senate, but he's hardly the only member of Congress to post notable numbers.
As noted, it’s $1 out of $25, which is a significant difference from what they said in the Tweet. Though "federal lobbyists" is treated as a monolithic concept, the amount they contributed was split among 572 such "federal lobbyists," which comes to an average contribution of $1,606. As noted, the largest single donation was $7,600 (if you include his family.) Out of $25 million, the largest donation from a "federal lobbyist" represented 0.03% of Reid’s total contributions. If you make $100,000 per year, it would be the equivalent of someone handing you $28. How much influence would someone buy from you for that matter? For that matter, if 572 people gave you an average of $6.42 each, how much would you do for each of them? How much COULD you do for that many people for so little money? I'd certainly thank them, and I might give them a copy of my book, but I'm not going to give them much else.
And what about the “point” they made in their follow up Tweet. “a demographic that represents 0.004% of the nation's population accounted for 5% of contributions to Harry Reid.” That’s not even remotely supportable by anything on the entire Open Secrets site. If one of the lobbyists represented AARP (and it’s not clear whether they do or don’t), AARP claims 40 million members. I’m good at math, and it’s a lot more than 0.004% of the population of 305 million. In fact, that percentage represents 12,000 people. I'd LOVE to see how they can claim these lobbyists only represent the interests of 12,000 people.
In what context does it make sense to insinuate that ALL federal lobbyists are equally bad, and then throw MOSTLY Democrats under the bus, when we all know where most Republican money comes from. Let's face it; if the Koch Brothers had given each Republican candidate a mere $7,600, we’d be living in a completely different political world right now.
Funny how a little perspective changes the debate, isn’t it? It’s dangerous when an organization we trust to provide us with relevant information just makes stuff up, but it happens. For all we know, it was one person or a handful of people who made the decision to write and run the article. It may even be taken down and replaced by something else that is a little more accurate. But that is why you can't just take everything you read from sources you trust at face value without checking. Those, like me, and probably even CRP, who value their integrity and credibility, INVITE you to look closely at every detail and check our facts. It's even more dangerous when anyone is gullible enough to believe anything without question.
This is what’s missing from most of the left side of the debate; perspective. When you listen to and read a lot of liberal media, everything is a disaster. For some reason, many lefties think people are more likely to respond to disaster than if they're presented with reasonable, rational arguments. They think this way, despite the fact that, except for World War II, such a thing has never happened at any other time in our history.
I can’t say this enough; the soft middle of the electorate determines elections. This should be common sense, but apparently it’s not on much of the far left. The people on the far right already know who they’re going to vote for – they’ll vote for anyone with an R after their name. They will vote straight ticket, with no variation, and at least 75-80% of them will turn out. The bulk of the far right lives in warm states, and snow is almost never a factor. Liberals will vote overwhelmingly for Obama, except for a small cadre of white, upper middle class suburbanites with college educations who think they know more about being minority and poor than the minorities and poor do. They will withhold their vote on most Democrats, in order to “send a message.” Never mind that the message hasn’t been received by anyone in damn near a half century and their little pen is running out of ink, goddamn it; they're sending the message anyway.
The people who will decide the 2012 election will be the 20-25% in the center of the electorate. These are people who have to work 3-4 jobs just to keep up their modest lifestyle and pay off their mortgage, credit card bills and student loans, and they don’t have time to study politics. They WANT to vote for someone with a positive message, who gives them the impression that he cares about them and wants to work for them. They don’t vote for negativity, because there’s enough of that in their lives. They want hope, and they want progress. In blue states and swing states, it can be pretty cold on election day; they need a good reason to brave the elements and stand in line to put someone in office.
If the right side is saying “Democrats suck,” the swing voters don’t care. They think Sarah Palin is a joke, and that Donald Trump is a moron. But when they hear the far left chiming in with “Democrats suck,” their motivation to stay home grows exponentially. Seriously, if the only thing you knew about the candidates was “Both parties suck,” and/or “Both parties are the same,” would you bother to vote for anyone? What sucks the most is, it's not even true, if you examine the facts.
When an otherwise admirable group like the Center for Responsive Politics comes up with the unsupportable conclusions and incomplete insinuations that appear in this article and (especially) the Tweet they posted to promote it, chances are, many on the far left will take it and repeat it as if the information was true as stated. This is how we lose elections. Depressed turnout plays right into the far right’s hands, and no amount of anti-Medicare rhetoric can keep them from losing if we convince the most important voters in the election that “both sides are the same.” If Republicans are voting against Medicare, and the meme coming from both sides of the political aisle are screaming, “both parties are the same,” why would you assume swing voters will come out for Democrats? If they're "all the same," didn't Democrats vote to kill Medicare, too? Remember; these people are not "news junkies" like you; they don't read news 24/7 and research every aspect of every candidate.
Both sides are not the same; it’s not even close. Democrats aren’t perfect, and they’re even less so since a number of moderate Republicans had to leave the crazy train their party has become and joined the Democrats. But wake up! We had eight years of Bush and 12 years of Republican Congresses, along with six years of both, and it was an unmitigated disaster. The Republicans broke two countries and a major American city and we suffered the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression on their watch. Regardless of what you think of them, we simply don’t have such disasters when Democrats run things. No Democrat would ever consider ending Medicare, no Democrat would ever hold the entire full faith and credit of the United States hostage in order to cut benefits for the poor and protect subsidies for oil companies. No Democrat would ever refuse an American city funds to rebuild after a natural disaster unless we met his/their conditions.
Here's another perspective to consider. In the Open Secrets article, a hell of a lot more Democrats are mentioned as receiving huge amounts of “federal lobbyist” money than Republicans yet it’s the GOP that is openly trying to funnel as much of our tax money as possible to their contributors. Now, if all of those “federal lobbyists” were so evil, why is it Republicans who seem to be working for the corporations and the rich and against regular people? Obviously, if Democrats are getting most of this tainted “federal lobbyist” money, something else must be at play here, don’t you think?
And I’m not saying we shouldn’t criticize Democrats when they do something stupid or wrong. But we have to make sure that what we complain about is actually real, and that it’s been put into its proper perspective. With the Koch Brothers funneling tens of millions of dollars into Republican coffers, and massive evidence that Republicans are openly doing their bidding, it should be difficult to get excited over Harry Reid getting an average of $1,606 each from 572 lobbyists last year.
We need to get real, and do what we need to do to win elections. We have to stop being so negative, stop worrying about boogeymen around every corner, and start taking a positive, hopeful approach to politics. This incessant "Chicken Little" act got old 30 years ago; now, it’s just pathetic. People want hope, and they want people in there who they think will listen to them when they have a gripe. They don’t give a shit whether everyone in office is pitch-perfect on every issue. They don’t want them to be corrupt, but they’re not going to be excited by a lobbyist for anyone giving a candidate $1,600; it sure beats the hell out of what the Kochs are doing, right?
Negativity is killing us. We have to support Democrats for next 5-6 election cycles, and we have to do our best to stick to facts, and only facts. Do that, and we can win going forward, and do away with the far right. And that’s good for everyone. In the meantime, be skeptical, question everything, including stuff that comes from usually reliable sources and try to put everything into perspective.
