Bolling and Luntz Spin Cash for Clunkers Success as "Failure"
Reported by Guest Blogger - August 23, 2009 -
Reported by Hula
On Tuesday’s (8/18/09) Glenn Beck show, guest host Eric ("Pelosi as a catcher? She'll get hurt") Bolling used flair and falsehoods, and discredited “pollster” Frank Luntz, to paint the Cash for Clunkers program as a failure. With video. Updated with photo
Bolling’s guests, Matt Luzio, general manager of James Toyota Scion, and John Pugliese, president of Sansone Auto Group, are two very successful businessmen who have numerous car dealerships in New Jersey. The chyron exclaimed that auto dealers were "irate" due to delays in being paid for the claims they submitted.
The delay in processing for auto dealers who have participated in the Cash for Clunkers program is well known, but contrary to what Bolling and the boys would have you believe, it’s not entirely the fault of the government. The Huffington Post states :
Hungry for sales, dealers made Cash for Clunkers deals weeks in advance even though they were advised against it. This created a big backlog the moment the program officially began. And many are still filing bad paperwork that is holding up their claims, despite repeated government attempts to clear up the confusion.
Despite the common knowledge that the program is so successful - in three weeks, demand for new cars reached its highest level since the recession started, causing car manufacturers to rehire laid-off workers, add shifts and increase production - Bolling asked his guests, "Do you think you will get a check?" Bolling then made a leap of wingnut logic by using theatrics to make an impossible comparison: He gave a penny to each dealer and then dumped over a box of pennies on the counter, saying "this is the health care proposal".
In spite of their "ire" on Tuesday at the delay in processing their claims, it is interesting to note that as of today, Sunday, August 23rd, both Matt Luzio’s James Toyota and John Pugliese’s Sansone Auto Network still featured very large banners on their homepages linking to the Cash for Clunkers website. Irate, but not too irate not to pull in a few more deals before the program ends tomorrow, eh? Maybe waiting for all those government checks (to say nothing of having your dealership names plastered all over the media – not only Fox) doesn’t hurt quite so much as they’re telling us?
Despite the huge popularity of the Cash for Clunkers program Bolling then brought on discredited pollster Frank Luntz, who presented some startling conclusions, supposedly based on the responses of his hand picked crowd in his staged “town hall”.
Over 300 million people in this country and Luntz draws conclusions based on his small, secretive, distorted sample. It is no wonder he was kicked out of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR):
Wednesday, April 23, 1997 -- The Executive Council of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) announced Wednesday that a 14 month investigation found pollster Frank Luntz violated the Association's Code of Professional Ethics and Practices… AAPOR's President, Diane Colasanto, [said], "When researchers make public arguments based on their research data, then refuse to say how their research was conducted, that harms the public debate on issues and reduces the credibility of all survey and public opinion research."
Luntz makes a mockery of statistics (watch Penn and Teller make a mockery of Luntz here ). He is unprofessional and politically skewed in every aspect of his work. He makes the claim here that it is Obama's fault that the Cash for Clunkers program is "not" working. He claims the people will hold President Obama responsible for the alleged failure. The sole person who spoke up for the CFC program was shouted down and berated on Luntz's clip; he even had to tell his own hecklers to stop. Fair and balanced? Unbiased? Fair and representative sampling? Professional ethics?
The success of the Cash for Clunkers program has been an ongoing thorn in the side of Fox news, which turns all good news about this country into bad news in order to undermine trust in, and the credibility of, President Obama.
