Glenn Beck's Nine Lies

Lie 1: The health-care bill grants insurance for dogs.

Lie 2: Less than 10 percent of Obama's Cabinet appointees have any experience in the private sector. (Most of them do, to varying degrees.)

Lie 3: Mitt Romney government health care is now bankrupting the state of Massachusetts.

Lie 4: Forty-five percent of doctors say they'll quit if health care reform passes.

Lie 5: U.S. is only country with automatic citizenship upon birth

Lie 6: Labor union president Andy Stern is the most frequent visitor at the White House. (Glenn is using old data.)

Lie 7: John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population.

Lie 8: $1.4 million of stimulus money was used to repair a door at Dyess AFB. Actually, the doors repaired were aircraft hangar doors and the cost was not $1.4 million. The cost was $246,000 out of $1.4 million in repairs funding.

Lie 9: Beck warned people not to go on the "cash for clunker's" government website because there is a privacy act you have to agree to before you get your cash. The agreement is allegedly that the government can access your computer and get any information on you they want. This was a lie. The privacy act that has to be agreed to is on the site for dealers participating in this program, not citizens trading in their clunkers.

Rush Blowing Smoke on Federal Wages

A few weeks ago I yet again forced myself to listen to Rush Limbaugh. One of his rants was about how allegedly useless and over-paid federal workers are. He stated:

"Productivity is a measurement that economists apply to the private sector to measure the efficiency of workers. However, the federal government does not produce anything to measure. They are merely paper-pushers. They don't produce anything that you actually use in your daily life." [Paraphrased]

Anybody who has gotten food poising will be mindful of the important role of federal food inspectors regardless if such "productivity" is measured or not. Perhaps he's upset because the feds keep oxycontin away from him?

The complaint about "paper pushing" and the idea of producing "real" products strikes me as hypocritical coming from proponents of outsourcing and lopsided trade. Our private sector has been making less and less actual product over time, and does more and more "paper pushing" and marketing and less tangible output and results. This is because manufacturing and even white-collar jobs such as software programming is being outsourced and offshored ever more by so-called "free" trade.

As far as his argument that the wages of federal workers are almost double the private sector, I've looked into them from the perspective of an information technology professional, and don't see any evidence that their pay is excessive.

As an intern for the feds once at a geology office, I did notice that the feds do hire a lot of degreed specialists, raising the average wage level. Rush was comparing the average wage of a federal worker to the average wage of the private sector. If you hire more specialists, then the average wages will indeed go up compared to say a private-sector subscription call center where most workers don't require a college degree.

As usual, Rush did NOT give a lot of detailed analysis to figure out what, where, and why. He just spots a lone figure that looks a little odd, and makes a big drama about it. His listeners witness a lot of heat but not a lot of light. For example, if the feds don't need as many specialists, then it would make sense to give some examples of what they can cut.