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Monday, April 11, 2016

Dishonesty as The Story Of The Day

It's amazing to me just how much dishonesty there is in today's news.  Let's start with media dishonesty.

The news broke in the last few days the United Healthcare is pulling out of Obamacare.  The nation's biggest health insurer let it be known that it would no longer offer policies on the exchanges in Arkansas and Georgia and that more states would follow.  That is really bad news for Obamacare's future.  If United Healthcare can't make money with these policies, it is unlikely that any other company can.  So how does the media portray the news?  They tell us that "experts" see this withdrawal as no big deal.  United Healthcare only has about 5% of the market in the two states from which it has announced its withdrawal, so nothing much should change there.  Are they kidding?  The company that could offer the most competition and thereby keep premiums lower is pulling out because it cannot make a profit.  That leaves fewer competitors and higher premiums.  And there are many more states to come.  It is a big deal.  For the media, however, it is impossible to admit that Obamacare is failing particularly since we are in the middle of an election year and that failure would be bad for the Democrats.

Then there's coverage of the Colorado Republican state convention which elected a slate of delegates to the national convention that support Ted Cruz.  Donald Trump and the Trumpsters are angry that he got no delegates.  They portray the result as dishonest and a "theft" of delegates that are rightfully theirs.  The Drudge Report even linked to a story describing how the Colorado establishment decided to have no primary or caucus choice for president but to let the state convention pick the delegates.  The problem is that the story to which Drudge linked is about a year old.  In other words, the Colorado Republican Party made the changes before anyone ever perceived that Trump had a chance for the nomination and long before anyone in Colorado was supporting Ted Cruz.  More important, however, is the actual news from Colorado.  Trump did not try to win delegates there while Cruz did.  Here's all you need to know.  There were hundreds of people running to be delegates to the national convention.  There were only 16 elected.  Ted Cruz's forces had a slate of endorsed delegates and they distributed the names of their slate to the voters at the convention.  Trump had no endorsed slate.  (Neither did Kasich.)  Simply put, there was no way for the average convention voter who supported Trump to know for whom to vote.  The inevitable result was that the Cruz slate won.  Trump's complaint that the delegates were stolen from him are ridiculous.  Trump lost because he could not negotiate the process of delegate selection.  To use Trump language:  Trump was stupid.  Trump's a loser who just doesn't win anymore. 

Did you read the details of the Colorado convention anywhere?  The media covered Trump's tantrum and the results in Colorado.  The media did not cover the reason for the result.  It's just more dishonesty.

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