Coburn

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn is back in the state scaring his town hall crowds with partisan and extremist claims about the current federal budget deficit.

According to the Tulsa World, Coburn, Oklahoma’s junior Republican Senator, told an audience in Checotah today that the nation is nearing a “tipping point” when it comes to its financial solvency. Coburn, the newspaper reported, argues the nation has two or three years to turn things around and then, if not, well, it’s all over. Spooky stuff, right?

What Coburn won’t mention is that many economists remain unconcerned about the current deficit and that some, most notably Paul Krugman, think the deficit should be even larger to spur job creation. Coburn also doesn’t mention that markets continue to purchase Treasury bonds at low interest rates, a sure indicator that the private sector remains confident in the nation’s long-term financial health.

Economist Jamie Galbreath, in a recent exchange with Krugman, argues:

The so-called long-term deficit is not a real problem. And the capital markets demonstrate every day that they agree with this judgment, by buying long-term Treasury bonds for historically-low interest rates.

Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times who has won a Nobel Prize in economics, noted in February that “fear-mongering” by Republicans is the reason the country is hearing so much more about deficits. According to Krugman:

The main difference between last summer, when we were mostly (and appropriately) taking deficits in stride, and the current sense of panic is that deficit fear-mongering has become a key part of Republican political strategy, doing double duty: it damages President Obama’s image even as it cripples his policy agenda. And if the hypocrisy is breathtaking — politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next — well, what else is new?

Is Coburn employing this fear-mongering strategy? Absolutely, and it’s disingenuous and wrong. It dumbs down the discourse here and works to eliminate critical inquiry. The last thing Coburn or most any other Republican wants this election year is an informed citizenry that uses reason and logic to determine its views.

You may recall that Coburn, who is up for reelection this year, told The Oklahoman editorial board last month that people are “petrified.” Of course, Coburn is one of the reasons people would be petrified since he consistently uses fear and slippery slope arguments to scare people. The newspaper did not note this fact.

Unemployment remains high in the country and the country’s two military occupations continue to drain the budget. State and city governments are cutting services. Teachers are losing their jobs throughout the nation. The federal fiscal stimulus plan did save jobs, but it wasn’t enough.

No one, especially Krugman, is trying to argue all is well with the country’s economy.

But Coburn’s political rhetoric replaces facts and logic with fear and omission. It might well be a winning political strategy here in Oklahoma, but it’s not informative. It’s not the language of leadership; it’s the language of political calculation.

Politico published a recent post about U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, who has apparently turned over emails to federal investigators probing the fallout from U.S. Sen. John Ensign’s extramarital affair.

Here’s the post, the gist of which is that Coburn is now going to fully cooperate with investigators in the scandal. Coburn was a former roommate of Ensign and apparently knew about the affair, according to media reports. The Politico post stated the investigation is apparently focused on whether Ensign helped former staffer Doug Hampton obtain lobbying work. Hampton is the husband of Cynthia Hampton, who was involved in the affair with Ensign.

As you might recall, when the story first broke, Coburn made absurd statements about how he would never never reveal any information about Ensign.

This is what he said about the issue back in July, 2009:

I was counseling him [Ensign] as a physician and as an ordained deacon. ... That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody. Not to the Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody.

As I wrote then in Okie Funk:

But it’s disingenuous for Coburn to claim he was treating Ensign as a patient—Coburn is an obstetrician—and does a church deacon really have privilege rights like an ordained pastor, especially when it involves a roommate and a friend? Many people would consider that an obvious conflict of interest. Under Coburn’s wide definition, anything anyone ever says to him can be considered privileged unless, say, he didn’t want to claim privilege.

So we can only guess that Coburn isn’t going to “claim privilege.” The simply fact is that Coburn is not above the law just because he’s a medical doctor or an ordained deacon, and the corporate media here should have called him out on this issue back in 2009.

As far I can tell, Chris Casteel, the Washington correspondent for The Oklahoman, covered the Politico post with only one sentence. (I guess Casteel’s job is about the easiest gig you can get.) Meanwhile, Casteel promotes Coburn’s political stunts as his chief stenographer.

When will the corporate media here hold Coburn accountable?

Speaking of holding someone accountable, what about U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe and the heat wave in the northeast section of the United States these days? Inhofe leads the fight against the “hoax” of global warming. One of Inhofe’s basic strategies as a supplicant to oil companies is to make a point whenever it gets really cold. (Remember the igloo created by Inhofe’s family last winter that mocked former Vice President Al Gore.) Now that it’s brutally hot in some places not used to such extended heat, we hear nothing from Inhofe or his family.

Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times, puts it this way:

Of course, you can’t infer trends in global temperatures from one year’s experience. But ignoring that fact has long been one of the favorite tricks of climate-change deniers: they point to an unusually warm year in the past, and say “See, the planet has been cooling, not warming, since 1998!” Actually, 2005, not 1998, was the warmest year to date — but the point is that the record-breaking temperatures we’re currently experiencing have made a nonsense argument even more nonsensical; at this point it doesn’t work even on its own terms.

So why doesn’t the corporate media here ask Inhofe what he thinks about the heat wave?

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn has been in Oklahoma recently terrifying what he calls his “petrified” constituents.

This is because, well, among other things, “She (U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan) is scary. She believes precedent trumps original intent. That really scares me. That says our wisdom is so much greater now that we don't have to pay attention to the founders.” These remarks (“Americans are petrified about their future,” July 11, 2010) were given to The Oklahoman editorial board recently. The board serves as a de facto propaganda ministry for Coburn.

So, in essence, Coburn meets with his constituents in town hall meetings, scares them with right-wing anti-Obama hysteria and fear mongering—“that really scares me”—and then tells the media how scared everyone has become. Now that’s a political trick to be scared about.

Coburn told The Oklahoman:

The emotion in the country is really interesting. You hear a lot of people talk about anger. It's not anger. It's absolute fear. People are petrified about the future about everything from health care to judicial nominees.

Are conservative people really “petrified” here about judicial nominees given recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions supporting the Republican agenda from gun laws to allowing corporations more influence in the political system?

Note this be-scared press release about a supposed report issued by Coburn and fellow right-winger U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) on the new health care reform initiative. What the senators claimed is that illegal immigrants will receive free care while citizens pay high premiums or a tax. Scary stuff. Of course, this is a distortion. The new health care law specifically excludes illegal immigrants. Coburn and Barrasso deceptively conflated the new law with current emergency room polices at hospitals. Scary stuff this distortion.

How about the below “get-scared” statement from Coburn about a failed vote to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions without specific legislation passed by Congress? Coburn said:

It’s no wonder the American people have lost faith in government when we take dramatic action to combat phony emergencies while ignoring true emergencies. While welfare systems around the world are collapsing under the weight of crushing debt, a significant bloc of American leaders is more interested in pandering to Hollywood actors and producers.

My gosh, welfare systems—what does he even mean here?—seem to be, well, collapsing, and those Hollywood actors and producers are scary, scary people. Are you scared? Run for your lives. Avoid movie theaters.

Coburn’s current modus operandi is to scare people with distortions and GOP talking points into not voting for Democrats in the 2010 election. It may well be that some people are “petrified” because of the recent downturn in the economy—manufactured by Republican market fundamentalism ideology—but Coburn’s antics are pure political manipulation.

Then we have this statement Coburn gave to The Oklahoman editorial board about “defining success in Iraq”:

If you measure success on taking down a dictator and re-establishing a semblance of democracy if it actually progresses and functions, then from that standpoint, yes. If you measure it from the lives lost and what we accomplished and what we spent, I don't think so.

So Coburn has finally admitted that the Iraq occupation is a bust when measured appropriately, but he wants to bring back into the power the supposed ascendant GOP, which started the failed military action based on lies and deceit in 2003. A new Tea Party-loving GOP back in power in Congress after the 2010 elections? That’s what should make people petrified.