Right-wing blogs distort Frank's comments to suggest he "admitted" Dems seek to "increase" government control "on every front"
Numerous right-wing websites, including the Fox Nation and the Drudge Report, have parroted a misleading headline posted on October 26 by Real Clear Politics and NewsBusters asserting that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) stated, "We are trying on every front to increase the role of government." In fact, while specifically discussing financial regulation, Frank actually said, "[W]e are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area" [emphasis added].
Please upgrade your flash player. The video for this item requires a newer version of Flash Player. If you are unable to install flash you can download a QuickTime version of the video.
Headlines on RCP and right-wing blogs claimed Frank said, "We are trying on every front to increase the role of government"
Real Clear Politics: "Frank: 'We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government.' " On October 26, Real Clear Politics posted a video of Frank's comments from the October 26 edition of MSNBC's The Ed Show with the headline, "Frank: 'We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government' ":
NewsBusters headline: " 'We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government.' " On October 26, NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein posted the video and stated, "Give Ed Schultz credit for something: on his MSNBC show this evening, he hosted an amusing smackdown between Barney Frank and Ralph Nader." Finkelstein added, "Frank was finally so provoked that he claimed/admitted that when it comes to regulation, Democrats are 'trying on every front to increase the role of government.' " The headline of the post read, " 'We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government.' "
Gateway Pundit: "Frank admitted" that Dems are "trying on every front to increase the role of government." On October 27, Jim Hoft posted the video clip of the exchange and wrote, "Barney Frank admitted in a recent interview with Ralph Nader that democrats are, 'trying on every front to increase the role of government.' No kidding." The headline of the post stated, "Barney Frank: 'We Are Trying On Every Front to Increase the Role of Government.' "
Drudge Report linked to Real Clear Politics video: The headline, "Barney Frank: 'We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government' ..." was posted on the Drudge Report by 8:30 a.m. on October 27:
Fox Nation linked to NewsBusters post with same headline. On October 27, the Fox Nation posted the video clip with the headline, " 'We Are Trying on Every Front to Increase the Role of Government,' " and quoted Finkelstein's assertion that "Frank was finally so provoked that he claimed/admitted that when it comes to regulation, Democrats are 'trying on every front to increase the role of government.' " From the Fox Nation on October 27:
Free Republic linked to Real Clear Politics with same headline. On October 27, Free Republic featured the headline, "Frank: 'We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government,' " and linked to the Real Clear Politics video:
In fact, Frank said, "[W]e are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area" during discussion of financial regulation
Frank's comments on The Ed Show were part of a conversation about financial regulation. The video and transcript of the exchange show that Frank was referring to financial regulation when discussing increasing the government's role. Following Ralph Nader's statement that "[derivative regulation] is where I think Barney is the weakest," Frank responded, "We are establishing a great framework for the regulation of derivatives. We are moving forward in that. And I -- we've done as much as we can politically." Frank added: "I'll tell you, here's the real irony of this, Ed. The right wing took control of government and ruined it. They gave it a bad reputation. Now that we are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area, we run into this public opinion that says, 'Hey, those are the guys who screwed up Katrina.' So, the frustration is they're benefiting from their own incompetence."
Transcript
From the October 26 edition of MSNBC's The Ed Show:
NADER: But the important thing is -- and this is where I think Barney is the weakest. In 2000, he voted for a bill that continued the deregulation of the burgeoning derivative racket. And now he's supporting a bill that has a huge loophole in terms of exempting trillions of dollars of certain categories of derivatives.
ED SCHULTZ (host): All right.
FRANK: Let me respond to you. Look, Ralph --
[crosstalk]
SCHULTZ: All right, Mr. Nader. Let him respond to that.
NADER: And the other is he didn't -- he didn't support a categorical ban on abuse of derivatives.
SCHULTZ: All right. Quickly respond to that, Barney.
FRANK: Well, first of all, I think, you know, Ralph gets to luxuriate in the purity of his irrelevance. We're in there fighting these things. I had overwhelming Republican opposition to any regulation derivatives, and some Democrats. And we fought hard for it. We are establishing a great framework for the regulation of derivatives. We are moving forward in that. And I -- we've done as much as we can politically.
But the fact is that we have a political situation. And I'll tell you, here's the real irony of this, Ed. The right wing took control of government and ruined it. They gave it a bad reputation. Now that we are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area, we run into this public opinion that says, "Hey, those are the guys who screwed up Katrina." So, the frustration is they're benefiting from their own incompetence.
Now, why couldn't they have run THAT headline? Too honest, I suppose.
"[W]e are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area"
And he means exactly that: On EVERY front: Financial, healthcare, cap-and-trade and on and on. His reference to Katrina which MM cropped out is telling.
But, hey, what would a right-wing argument be without mistating facts, right?
Do I have to explain EVERYTHING to you??
So Frank was speaking of every front if I believe your context expanding statement about a gov't that can't be trusted.
You're not allowed to use judgment and critical thinking when you evaluate the comments of politicians.
That's sacred ground...reserved for the most liberal and least thinking of the democrat party when they try to defend the carefully constructed lingo of those like Barney and mmfa...party first and country second.
I don't expect you to understand that.
But I am having fun laughing at your ignorance!!
I know they don't need to, their policies say it all, still it would be nice to know where you stand.
You talk in such medieval colloquialisms that it's rarely relevant, much less sensible. What exactly is economic tyranny? Because if I am aware of a wage being paid for a certain job that I am seeking and it's not enough, I am not forced to work there, the choice is mine. We all have plenty of economic freedom to accept or reject wages. Nobody is enslaved to work anywhere. Quit.
You do realize that if minimum wage had kept up with worker productivity and corporate profits, it would pay around 25 dollars an hour today? Keeping it all at the top and exploiting people economically; shrinking the middle class for the benefit of the few, that is tyranny, and that level of inequality has never sustained a prosperous society. Ever.
And what great shape most businesses would be in if they were forced to pay that as a minimum wage? They would be out of business and then who pays the $25 an hour?
And don't give me that exploitation crap, nobody can be economically exploited in this country. Unless they are chained to their desks or work stations. And don't tell me their situations force them to stick with some low paying job, because for the most part they made the choices that got them there. Sell it elsewhere, it's liberal baloney.
Government already tells companies that there is a certain level of pay that you will not go below. It's called the minimum wage. And many, many companies abide by the letter of that law and have no quarrel whatsoever with that form of government intervention. God Bless their patriotic hearts! But why not create a maximum wage? Since corporations are little more than a banding together of people, why not tie the top salaries and the bottom salaries to the profitability of the corporation? That way if a top executive wants to give himself a raise, he is obligated, as it should be, to transparently justify his compensation to all persons involved. But I don't see that happening unless the workers are unionized and/or it becomes law. Maybe you have a better way?
I said it yesterday and I'll keep saying it until the cows come home: you think you can pawn off, onto the individual, the responsibility your conservative ideology holds for creating this broken system of low wages for all and sweetheart tax deals for the rich. Once again we see cons taking no responsibility for your failures or considering the consequences of your policies.
See, this is the kind of mind reading that you usually indulge in, right ON. Determining for other people what they mean/really want based on your projection of same rather than any evidence whatsoever.
Liberals do it all the time with political catch words. They say "invest" instead of "spend", they say "spread the wealth" instead of "income redistribution". JUST SAY WHAT YOU MEAN, jeez.
One example, please.
"A liberal politician slips and the truth comes out,"
What truth? The one that you and Cheney2012 are projecting into his words? That Congress is trying to expand government control into every aspect of American life? Because, that's quite clearly not what he said. At all.
I will defend what he actually said, which is the need for more regulation of financial derivatives, which he is fighting for over Republican opposition. Even though these same derivatives are the what nearly crashed our economy.
And now, back to the point of the article, which is that the right-wing blogs have cropped the quote to change it's meaning:
"Now that we are trying on every front to increase the role of government..."
"Now that we are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area, we run into this public opinion that says, 'Hey, those are the guys who screwed up Katrina.'"
Can you see the distinct difference implied by these two quotes, and how the first one, used by the right-wing blogs, gives an entirely different meaning, based solely on what they thought he meant rather than what he was clearly talking about?
I don't know how much government expansion Mr. Frank wants, and neither do you. That is not the point of the article. Further, I see you have skipped the main point of my last post, which was the distinct difference in meaning between the cropped quote the right-wing blogs used, and the complete thought as I demonstrated above. So, I'm guessing you are just conceding that I was right, and they were wrong to change the meaning by cropping it in this fashion, or at the very very least, misleading.
Government regulation is necessary in areas where there is a clear need to protect the American public. Such as the FDA, just as one example. I don't believe in limitless government. A good start to making it smaller would be eliminating the Department of Homeland Security, and the cabinet post that goes with it. That was locking the barn after the horse was stolen.
You can believe whatever you want about what Mr. Frank wants, but you will not make anyone else believe it unless you can prove it. And if you try to prove it by using cropped quotes that alter the meaning in a way that is friendly towards your point of view but less factually accurate, then you will be called out and you should be called out.
Just like if women would have admitted they were witches, then there would have been no need to throw them in the water to see if they would drown.
Another bullseye. But that would also put a crimp in the arsenal of unscrupulous posters who encourage dishonest argument tactics to be used against me no matter what I write in order to "win" an argument.
In the meantime, I'm glad you acknowledge that your logic is the same as those that ran the Salem Witch Trials.
You lack self-awareness, to put it kindly.
What he said was that he ran into opposition from the public because of the perception that government couldn't be trusted based on, for instance, the handling of Katrina. Opposition that was exactly inline with Republican wishes that the entire financial structure of this country be completely de-regulated. Opposition based on the false premise that if they were untrustworthy in this one instance, they were untrustworthy in all instances.
Your mangled interpretation would be stunningly ignorant if it was based on simple lack of understanding, but it's really not. You are being deliberately obtuse, deliberately ignorant.
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person, right ON.
RightON hears: "We are trying on every front to increase the of role government [in order to have complete domination of every aspect of people's lives]"
Because they would lose EVERY election. That's why they claim:
"95 percent of Americans won't have their taxes raised"
"We'll fight the war in Afghanistan"
"We won't grow the deficit like that Bush guy did"
I give Barney credit. He is pretty upfront about his Marxist beliefs.
Also, look up Marxist. You no more understand that term than you do socialism. I know the word itself scares you into wetting your pants, but bring something more substantive when arguing with adults.
But, of course in order to deflect attention away from your errors and your misunderstanding/distortion, you blame the people who point out your distortions, always.
There, I fixed your post for you, RightON.
You are right on the money...and no amount of parsing and word-smithing can explain away.
The backbone of every govt.action is a framework of regulations. Every govt. program or policy contains regulations...regulations that increase the power and intrusion of big govt. into the lives of private citizens.
Barney Frank is a liberal, big govt. advocate that believes more and bigger govt. is always the answer...just as he plainly stated.
Government is shrinking, which is actually a bad thing.
I was just pointing out that, despite wes' fearmongering, government is shrinking. And it's a bad thing because, as economies grow larger, societies more populous, scientific and social knowledge deeper, and interconnections more complex, government grows as well. At least in societies that succeed.
Did you also know that an average of 36 government programs a year have been eliminated from 1971 to 1990. That's 684 outmoded programs discarded in 19 years. Still believe that junk about once a bureaucracy is created it never goes away?
You want to destroy government. Face it. You're basically an anarchist.
It's pretty amusing, too that he's accusing me (and just about everybody else here) of being vague while he speaks in generalities like limited government, big government, socialism and on and on without ever offering a hint of an example what the terms mean to him.
He's just shoveling his personal transgressions on to the rest of us. It's pitiable.
But it doesn't matter, RO will not knock me off point. I don't believe what I believe for selfish reasons. I believe what I believe because I know we are all, 'tied in a single garment of destiny.' I know there is a ton of work to do in order to heal the disastrous results of the last 30 years of prevailing conservative ideology.
You guys screamed socialism every step of the way throughout our history as progressives brought greater rights and protections to citizens, yet we still managed to grow our economy and expand the middle class like no other.
Just keep it up. Doesn't matter to me, you're going to lose anyway because we will not be denied in the effort to bring greater equality and sensibility to the country.
You see, you guys are basing your arguments off the idea that government is inherently bad and doesn't work and thus why we need to have less of it. Yet you guys ignore the repeat of market failures over and over and over again and keep blaming the government for what is basically a regulatory failure.
Watch this video on OTC Derivatives market failure and how calls for regulation were ignored from the government: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/
The other cause for the market crisis was the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall act, a Depression era bill meant to regulate the commercial banking industry from causing another meltdown like that in the 1929 meltdown: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html
I don't know how you managed to miss that. Another thing you fail to address is why the right-wing publications would purposely crop out Barney Franks comments when he said how Democrats are trying to expand government on the regulatory front. Not on every front, the regulatory front. And if you watch the video I posted above, it will become clear to you why this is necessary.
Yep...you bet...less govt. is a real good thing.
But don't take the absurd leap that a belief in less govt. is a belief in no govt.
How'd deregulating the banking/finacial sectors work out? Did you forget we narrowly avoided a recession due to government "interference"?
I am amazed how quickly your memory fails you, to actually believe the electorate is now in favor of less government regulation of Wall Street. That is clearly a losing idea, but feel free to try and sell it. I am sure those people who believe their taxes have already been raised and that Obama is trying to kill their grandma will buy it. But, I do not see "De-regulation for all!" winning any elections anytime soon. Enjoy the wilderness.
Really? You might want to work on your reading comprehension skills a bit. It's mentioned at least twice in the article above.
LOL.
Compliments of David Allen Coe.
Sweet fancy moses...you hit a home run with that...and a rollicking good discussion it was...kinda like the old days when we used to have several hundred comments on a single thread.
It wasn't anywhere close to a home run. It was a foul pop-up just behind the plate that the catcher easily grabbed. It didn't even advance a runner.
It's quite funny that after a shellacing so bad and so complete that your opponents should write home about it, you somehow think you won!
This is not rocket science, but apparently it's beyond your comprehension.
"We are establishing a great framework for the regulation of derivatives. We are moving forward in that. And I -- we've done as much as we can politically." Frank added: "I'll tell you, here's the real irony of this, Ed. The right wing took control of government and ruined it. They gave it a bad reputation. Now that we are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area, we run into this public opinion that says, 'Hey, those are the guys who screwed up Katrina.' So, the frustration is they're benefiting from their own incompetence."
Your attention span is so warped that within a few seconds of the distorted comment, he explained the true subject, but you guys missed it. That's a poor reflection on you, not on Barney Frank, ya know.
It's your side that's putting words in his mouth. It's your side that's croppping his sentence and providing a misleading spin on what he actually said.
All the invalid nonsense has come from your side.
You make baseless accusations all the time.
And you're a generalization troll. That's your newest schtick.