AP Spin Meter flunks logic, spins story

The Associated Press (unwittingly?) turned "Spin Meter" into a pun with today's story on a supposed inconsistency by the GOP.

The AP story, carrying Donna Cassata's byline, charges that Republicans regard defense spending as a job creator while also claiming that government spending does not create jobs.

Cassata's story contains four main problems.

First, Cassata produces very little quoted material to support her claims about what GOP politicians supposedly say.

Second, the quotations she uses fail to support the story's claim of a reversal, inconsistency or contradiction (however one wishes to interpret her claim):

Running for re-election, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., said in February 2010 that the stimulus package did not create new jobs. In a statement about the economy and jobs now on his website, McKeon says "congressional Democrats and the administration continue to insist that we can spend our way out of this recession and create jobs, but the numbers just don't add up."

But at a hearing last week, McKeon, now the committee chairman, argued against cuts to the military, saying, "We don't spend money on defense to create jobs. But defense cuts are certainly a path to job loss, especially among our high-skilled workforces. There is no private sector alternative to compensate for the government's investment."

He later added, "While cuts to the military might reduce federal spending, they harm national security and they definitely don't lead to job growth."

There simply isn't any contradiction in McKeon's statements.

Cassata appears to simply assume the presence of a contradiction, and tries to sustain the impression for the reader's sake with stuff like this:

Asked about the competing statements, a spokesman for McKeon, Claude Chafin, said they were "not inconsistent" because the defense industry is a unique recipient of federal dollars.

Note how it is taken for granted that the statements compete with one another.  Pulling the two word snippet ("not inconsistent") from Chafin makes his response look like a thin denial if not a case of the fallacy of special pleading.

One should note that special pleading is not a fallacy where special circumstances obtain, not that McKeon ultimately needs to argue that point.

Third, and stemming from the second failure, Cassata fails to make any type of logical case for McKeon (or the GOP) offering an inconsistent view of government spending.  As McKeon made very clear in his statement, concerns over jobs lost from government cuts are separate from concerns over net job creation.

Fourth, Cassata enters the dreaded realm of liberal media bias.  By the time her story concludes it could pass for an op-ed extolling the virtues of government spending as a means of producing jobs, with that thesis reliant on the writings of a Keynesian economist with a strong record of giving money to liberal politicians.

I will emphasize that my point is not that Robert Pollin's work should not be trusted because of his partisanship.  The point is that a fact check should not arbitrarily take sides in a controversy and call it a fact check.  The truth is that Pollin's opinion has no real relevance to McKeon's consistency.  It may have relevance to McKeon's position that stimulus spending did not work, but if that's the case then Pollin should have to explain the apparently dismal results of the stimulus bill.

Conclusion:  The Spin Meter is spinning.