TARP: The scam that keeps on giving

I am currently reading through Matt Taibbi's article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone about the lies and deceptions used to sell the bank bailout four years ago to the American people and Congress. Though I haven't finished the article yet, very early on it, Taibbi discusses one of the tactics used by then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to convince Congress to support the bailout. As Taibbi describes it:

Paulson needed at least a film of congressional approval. And much like the Iraq War resolution, which was only secured after George W. Bush ludicrously warned that Saddam was planning to send drones to spray poison over New York City, the bailouts were pushed through Congress with a series of threats and promises that ranged from the merely ridiculous to the outright deceptive. At one meeting to discuss the original bailout bill – at 11 a.m. on September 18th, 2008 – Paulson actually told members of Congress that $5.5 trillion in wealth would disappear by 2 p.m. that day unless the government took immediate action, and that the world economy would collapse "within 24 hours."

The argument presented by Paulson here is a classic example of Scare Tactics or the appeal to fear. The basic idea here is that rather than make a reasoned argument, one just tries to scare people into believing what one is saying. Paulson is trying to get Congress to support the bailout by making them very afraid about what might happen otherwise. Note the sense of urgency Paulson invokes. He is basically saying, "Pass this legislation now or the world will suffer financial Armageddon." Needless to say, history shows that this was a very successful tactic as the legislation was in fact passed very quickly with almost no debate or discussion about it. This was important because there were many alternative voices suggesting other solutions, solutions that would not have been as beneficial to the bottom lines of the banks as TARP was. As just one example, here is Paul Krugman suggesting another plan, one which he thinks is better, but probably not politically feasible. The key point here is that none of these alternatives was even considered (why is a good question, I will hypothesize greed) because the scare tactics employed by Paulson were effective in shutting down debate and getting Congress to support the plan that Paulson had already decided on. Had we had a more robust debate in September of 2008 perhaps we could have avoided some of the worst impacts of the recession, and pursued an economic policy that benefited everyone, not just wealthy financial elites. 

They're coming to cut your throat! And they have Korans!

On the September 18th edition of the Fox News show Your World with Neil Cavuto filmmaker Michael Lynch was interviewed about his new movie about illegal immigration. In the course of this interview Lynch commits a number of fallacies:


The most obvious fallacy is the use of Scare Tactics. Note that the video start with a news report about a prison break on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border. Cavuto and Lynch then imply that all 130 of these prisoners are extremely violent and that they are making a beeline for the US. Note as well that we are told nothing about the prisoners. For all we know they may all have committed the Mexican equivalent of white collar crimes and are non-violent offenders. Even assuming that they are violent offenders, there is no evidence that every single one of them (or any of them) will head to the US. For all we know these escaped prisoners may make an effort to reunite with their families in Mexico. Furthermore, it is even possible that some of the prisoners are US citizens. We have no idea, the report gives us no information, but tries to scare us and make us afraid of all the murderous violent immigrants who are heading are way.

Lynch then almost immediately invokes 9-11, attempting to draw a link between illegal immigrants snaking across the US-Mexico border and terrorism. At this point it is worth noting that none of the 9-11 hijackers entered the US this way. All of them exploited legal means of entry. This is clearly an example of a False Analogy, as it is wildly inappropriate to invoke 9-11 when discussing the status of the US-Mexico border. Lynch doubles-down on this false analogy when he claims that someone is finding Korans and prayer rugs in the middle of the desert. I have no idea if this claim is true, but I find it highly suspicious. If in fact Muslim terrorists were sneaking across the US-Mexico border, I doubt that they would be scattering their holy book across the middle of nowhere.

From this Lynch then employs another Scare Tactic, claiming that not everyone is coming to the US to cut your lawn, some of them are coming to cut your throat. Again, no evidence or statistics are provided for this claim, Lynch just asserts it with the obvious intention of scaring the Fox News viewers into buying his movie.

We then see a nice example of Inconsistency when Cavuto asks Lynch why immigrants are coming to the US and Lynch responds, "Jobs," thereby directly contradicting his earlier assertion that at least some of the immigrants were coming to commit murder.

Lynch then transitions to an Appeal to Authority citing a positive review from some Fox News celebrity as evidence that his movie is worthwhile and important.

Finally he concludes with the classic huckster's pitch claiming that he has secret information that "They" (whoever "they" are) don't want you to see. In this connection Lynch implies that there is some large-scale conspiracy devoted to suppressing the truths that he, as a normal, hard-working American, is trying to expose. In general, when someone cites a conspiracy as the reason why no one will show their movie, we need to seriously consider the possibility that no one will distribute or screen the film because it sucks, not because it reveals some uncomfortable truth.

h/t to Media Matters

Scare Tactics

For this post I want to talk about an interesting article I came across a few years back with the following headline:

Feds release chilling footage of damage Faisal Shahzad could have done if Times Square bomb worked [emphasis mine]

This is an excellent example of the Appeal to Emotion, specifically Scare Tactics. As the name suggests, an Appeal to Emotion is a fallacy in which one tries to convince people to endorse some claim by stirring up the emotions of her audience rather than provide a reasoned justification. There are lots of different kinds of Appeal to Emotion, depending on what emotion is being appealed to. One of the most effective versions of the Appeal to Emotion is Scare Tactics in which the emotion appealed to is fear. As anyone who has been paying attention to post 9-11 US politics will know, Scare Tactics are one of the favored methods politicians use to win elections and gain support for the policies they pursue. This headline and the article that accompanies it are a good example of how central scare tactics are to US policy. As the article notes, a major component of the prosecutions argument for life imprisonment is a video purporting to show what could have happened if Shahzad had succeeded. Shahzad did not succeed, and the article even suggests that Shahzad was incompetent. However, fears about what could have happened were stoked by the prosecution and then amplified by the media in articles such as this one. The point of all this should be obvious: keep the American populace in a state of fear and terror so that they will continue to support politicians, their policies, and the growing police surveillance state.

Whenever I think about this issue, I often think of the following clip from Family Guy. It is always surprising to me when real life is just as absurd as a cartoon.