Elections Based On Lies Bring Policies That Hurt Us — See Update With Astonishing Lie

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Dave Johnson

Note — see the update at end of post, in which the Romney campaign uses astonishingly doctored audio, to make it seem as if Obama said something he never said.
Early in this campaign the Romney team put out an ad with a doctored Obama quote. Now Romney is again claiming Obama said things he never said. The billionaire-corporate-funded right-wing media machine drives the lie to millions. This might well work, which brings up a question: If someone gets into office based on lies, what kind of policies result? Those policies help the people pushing the lies, but do those policies help or hurt us in the real world in the long run?

The Lie The First Time

In November the Romney campaign was caught editing a quote in an ad to make it sound like Obama had said something he never said. The ad portrayed Obama as saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose,” when Obama had really said (four years previously), “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”
The Romney campaign defended this use of lies, saying they are just showing they are willing to do what it takes to win. The Boston Globe reported, “Romney aides even said they were proud of the reaction and suggested that the ad was deliberately misleading to garner attention.”
At the time Thomas B Edsall wrote in the NY Times,

“…the spot’s direct duplicity is also the latest step in the transgression by political operatives of formerly agreed-upon ethical boundaries. What was once considered sleazy becomes the norm.”
And so the sleazy became the norm for the Romney campaign.

The Lie This Time

The sleazy became the norm, so they’re cranking it up. This time, the lie machine is telling people that President Obama said that business owners didn’t build their businesses, government did. What President Obama actually said was that businesses did not build the roads and bridges that help them get their products to markets:

Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.

The billionaire-corporate lie machine version? Heritage Foundation: Obama Tells Entrepreneurs “You Didn’t Build” Your Business.
Watch the beginning of this FOX News segment, note how the editing actually shows Obama’s mouth moving, before they bring the sound up partway through what he is saying, then listen to the commentators as they pretend this is what Obama actually said. (Of course they know this is not what he actually said, which makes the performance so shocking.)

The lie is propelled through the right-wing media: FOX News, Wall Street Journal and other Murdoch-owned papers, Limbaugh and the rest of talk radio, Washington Times, Weekly Standard, NewsMax, WorldNet Daily, hundreds of right-wing blogs, etc., and then posted by paid operatives as “reader comments” at local news sites, hundreds of sports and auto and other discussion forums, and many, many other places until it “becomes truth.”
Watch the kind of crap that much of the public is hearing from almost every media source many of them are exposed to. Seriously, make yourself watch the whole thing, and then think about how many people watch FOX News or listen to talk radio or read the Wall Street Journal or one of the other newspapers that pushes this stuff, or read right-wing blogs — and even CNN. There is a huge corporate-billionaire-funded media machine pushing this stuff, and it seems it is almost everywhere now.

And then, once it “becomes truth” the Presidential candidate repeats it. WaPo: Romney Hits ‘Didn’t Build That’ Obama Remark
Romney: “I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success … [but] I don’t want government to take credit for what individuals accomplish” …
FOX News dedicated 2 hours, 42 segments, to pushing the lie. CNN even helped push the lie.
So, once again, the lie machine is working to “kinda catapult the propaganda.”

Policies Resulting From Lies

What is the result when policies are made, based on lies?
If you believe that Iraq is refusing to turn over their chemical and biological weapons, and that invading that country will be a “cakewalk,” then you want Iraq invaded. We all know how that one worked out.
If you believe that cutting taxes increases government revenue, then you want taxes cut. The real-world result, of course, is huge budget deficits — and dramatically increased income inequality.
If you believe that President Obama’s policies made the jobs emergency worse, then you support the anti-government policies that fired teachers and police officers and cut off unemployment benefits for desperate people. (The last month of Bush’s Presidency the economy lost 815,000 jobs. Now it is gaining jobs.)
If you believe that we shouldn’t be trying to win a share of the new green industries (lies about Solyndra and saying the Chevy Volt is flammable) then you vote for oil-company-backed policies that leave us dependent on oil and coal and refuse to combat climate change.
Basically, look at the results of most of the policies the country has followed since Reagan, and you get the picture.
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost — In Charts
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Is Crumbling
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Drowning In Debt
Finance, Mine, Oil & Debt Disasters: THIS Is Deregulation
The Reagan Ruins
Revisiting the Reagan Nightmare
Reagan’s Mean-Spirited Legacy of Economic Disaster
The Real Effect Of ‘Reaganomics’
Third World America: Reagan Revolution Drags Us Down

You Aint Seen Nothin Yet

And this latest lie is just a warm-up. The corporate-billionaire-funded machine will seriously be in operation in October, just before the election. The lies will be all over the place, and democracy doesn’t have an advertising budget.

Update – We Hadn’t Seen Nothin Yet

The Romney campaign has released an ad with astonishingly doctored audio — even more doctored than the FOX video above.
The Plum Line: The Morning Plum: Romney video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound anti-business,

So here’s where this is going. The Romney campaign is out with a new Web video hitting Obama over the “don’t build that” quote. It features a business owner who is angry at Obama for supposedly insulting his hard work. “My hands didn’t build this company?” the man asks. “Through hard work and a little bit of luck, we built this business. Why are you demonizing us for it?”
But the video deceptively edits Obama’s remarks to seamlessly link up two different parts of the speech, removing a chunk in order to make Obama’s remarks seem far worse than they are.

What Did He Really Say?

Here is what the President actually said: (from Monday’s post, The Latest Lie: “You Didn’t Build That”:
President Obama pointed out that businesses did not build the roads and bridges that help them get their products to markets. He said that in the United States we succeed together. Here is the full quote:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Romney/Bain/Accounts – Where Is Our Country’s News Media?

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Dave Johnson

Back when Bill Clinton was President there was a huge media-swarm controversy because a decade before her husband was elected Hillary Clinton had made $100,000 over ten months by investing in cattle futures. Now, skip forward to 2012. Report after report circulates about a candidate for President who owns a secret company in Bermuda, Swiss and Cayman Islands bank accounts and an IRA containing as much as $100 million — and who may have filed SEC documents containing false information (a felony). Huge media swarm this time? Not so much.

Cattle Futures?

In the 1970s Hillary Clinton made some speculative investments. Over a period of 10 months she made investments in cattle futures that did well, earning $100,000. Later when her husband was President, the media wanted to find out how she was able to make such a large, huge, ginormous sum from speculative investments.
Take a look at the 350,000-or-so web references to cattle futures trades made by Hillary Clinton way back in the 1970s. This might give you an idea of how big a deal it was back in the mid-90′s that Hillary Clinton had made $100,000 (!!!) on speculative investments back in the 1970s. (The number of stories located online is possibly reduced by the fact that the media swarm happened in the mid-1990s — largely before the Internet.)
Look at the outlets that assigned teams of reporters to investigate: All the TV networks, the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, and all of the rest of the jouranilmalism crowd were all over what was considered to be a major story.
This story was investigated, written about, investigated, written about, and investigated. No evidence of any wrongdoing was ever found — which many in the media took as clear proof that there had been a massive cover-up.

Continue reading →

Crucial That You Watch This

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Dave Johnson

Murdoch’s Scandal | FRONTLINE | PBS shows how FOX corrupted UK government. This is a criminal organization, and the response here shows they are intimidating and corrupting media and government. MUST SEE.
They have obviously broken US laws against a US company bribing officials, why will Obama Justice Dept not prosecute for this? Why won’t Dems in Senate launch investigations?

More Indicators A Nasty, Say-Anything Republican Campaign Is Coming – And See Updates

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Dave Johnson

There is a news report that yet another right-wing billionaire is going to spend even more millions to run even more poisonous, divisive, racist, degrading, insulting, lying, character-assassination ads designed to turn people against government and democracy. And an added bonus (for Republicans) will be turning people away from even voting. They’re going to do this because it works — for them and the billionaires who back them.
NY Times: G.O.P. ‘Super PAC’ Weighs Hard-Line Attack on Obama,

A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the “super PAC” era and attack President Obama in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from.
… The $10 million plan … includes preparations for how to respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr. Obama’s former ties to Mr. Wright…
The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an “extremely literate conservative African-American” who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.”

Obama is black, black, black, black, black. And in case you miss it, here is Republican Strategist Lee Atwater explaining the Republican strategy:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

It Works

Just lying — making stuff up and blasting it out there — works. In 2010 Republicans spent millions and millions on ads saying “Democrats cut half a trillion from Medicare” and captured the senior vote for the first time, throwing the House over to them. It worked, they spent millions broadcasting lies, they took the House — and then voted to turn Medicare into a voucher program.
From the post, “Half A Trillion In Cuts To Medicare”

In the 2010 election campaign Republican groups ran millions and millions of dollars of ads promising not to cut Medicare, and to increase Social Security. They campaigned against Democrats for “cutting $500 billion from Medicare” and not increasing Social Security cost-of-living. As a result, for the first time the senior vote went to Republicans.
Here are just a few of the ads that saturated the airwaves, saying that Democrats should be thrown out for cutting Medicare:

And voters were sent flyers like this: (click for larger)

The Obstruct-And-Lie Strategy

Republicans have a huge “noise machine” and they know how to use it. And they really, really don’t care if they are telling the truth or not, they say what they need to say to win.
After years of blocking President Obama’s efforts to try to create more jobs, Repubicans are campaigning saying Obama didn’t create more jobs.
After running up huge deficits — Clinton left behind a surplus, Bush left behind a $1.4 trillion deficit — Republicans are campaigning that Obama has run up huge deficits.
This summer when student loan rates double because Republicans blocked efforts to keep them from doubling, Republicans will blast out that Obama doubled student loan rates.

Negative Ads Suppress Turnout

The point of running negative ads is not to get people to show up and vote for someone. Negative ads are about turning people off from voting. Negative ads tell people they should not have hope, that anyone they think could be a leader is actually a scoundrel, etc. The point of the millions and millions of dollars that will be spent by Republicans on negative ads this year is to try to keep the kind of surge election that brought so many people out to vote in the 2008 election from happening this time.

The Media Enablers

Republican media outlets like FOX News, the Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh will go ahead and repeat the party line (when they aren’t out front creating it). They reach a lot of people, and the rest of the Republican “noise machine”‘ is very skilled at echoing the lies until they become “truthy.” But the rest of the media does not serve as a counterweight, bringing people the facts. As a result almost everyone — consumers of the right’s propaganda and people who think they aren’t — is left misinformed in ways that serve Republicans and their billionaire backers and hurt everyone else.
Greg Sargent wrote the other day in, How Mitt Romney gets away with his lying,

If you scan through all the media attention Romney’s speech received, you are hard-pressed to find any news accounts that tell readers the following rather relevant points:
1) Nonpartisan experts believe Romney’s plans would increase the deficit far more than Obama’s would.
2) George W. Bush’s policies arguably are more responsible for increasing the deficit than Obama’s are.
[. . .] The two bullet points above could not be more central to the debate over the debt that Romney’s big speech set in motion yesterday. Yet the vast majority of news consumers who now know that Romney has accused Obama of lighting a “prairie fire of debt” that threatens to engulf our children and our future haven’t been told about either of them.

Sargent writes about how the “mainstream media” for one reason or another won’t call out the Republican machine for spreading lies. Again, the result is that almost everyone — consumers of the right’s propaganda and people who think they aren’t — is left misinformed in ways that serve Republicans and their billionaire backers and hurt everyone else.
Update: How Citizens United Is Leading To More Racism In TV Campaign Ads
Update 2: Huge headline at The Drudge Report reads: ‘BORN IN KENYA’
Update 3: Rep. Mike Coffman: Obama in his heart ‘not an American’
Update 4: Ben Stein speaking on FOX: Ben Stein: Obama’s not very smart
Update 5: Romney accuses Obama of character assassination: “Character assassination has become the nature of his campaign,” Romney said.
These updates are all from just today, and this is only May.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Speaking Fees And Big-Time Career Journalism

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Dave Johnson

Meet The Press moderator David Gregory is the “Keynote Address” speaker at the upcoming National Federation of Independent Business “Small Business Summit” conference. This is a conservative advocacy group that solidly aligns with Republicans.
Here is a speakers bureau page promoting Gregory for speaking engagements for “$40,001 & up” per appearance.
I have not verified if he is getting paid, but he is doing the “speaking” circuit. A very brief look around finds him at the 2007 American Resort Development Association. The 2006 United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) symposium, at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Orlando. At the 2010 Milken Institute Shaping the Future conference. 2010 Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. The Risk Management Association 2011 annual conference.
A few years ago I looked into Chris Matthews’ speaking engagements with Republican-aligned lobbying groups. Matthews was doing this regularly, and there was an NBC policy against accepting speaking fees.
NBC’s President said Matthews’ fees were going to a charity. So assuming this is true and he really was donating the money to a charity, that is still receiving a thing of value. He was speaking before Republican-aligned groups again and again, and spouting Republican positions on the air.
Back to Gregory. Is it still NBC’s policy to prohibit speaking engagements for pay?
There is a certain tedium involved with speaking at trade association meetings, so one does it for a reason. I assume the reason he does this is not that he really, really loves speaking to trade associations. Why would someone do it continually, if not for compensation – which I would say includes being given money to donate to favored charities? And if someone is getting compensation of “$40,001 & up” for an hour’s work, shouldn’t we assume this just might affect what they are willing to say or not say on the air?
Updates on Gregory speaking engagements:
2011 Palm Beach Civic Association
2007 American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) and the Sales Association of the Paper Industry
2011 Nantucket Atheneum Geschke Lecture Series
2011 Food Safety Summit

Restore The Fairness Doctrine

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Dave Johnson

The Outsourced Party – NYTimes.com,

In 1949, drawing on a long history of court decisions; on public hearings; and on legislation mandating “equal time” for political candidates, the F.C.C. ruled that holders of radio and television broadcast licenses must “devote a reasonable percentage of their broadcast time to the presentation of news and programs devoted to the consideration and discussion of public issues of interest in the community,” and that this must include “different attitudes and viewpoints concerning these vital and often controversial issues.”
The Supreme Court repeatedly upheld the F.C.C.’s power to make such a rule — but never gave it the power of law. In 1986, a pair of Ronald Reagan’s judicial appointees on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia, ruled that the Fairness Doctrine was not “a binding statutory obligation.”
Armed with this verdict, Fowler, who insisted on viewing television, in particular, as not a finite and supremely influential broadcast medium but “just another appliance — it’s a toaster with pictures,” persuaded his fellow commissioners to abolish the Fairness Doctrine. Furious Democrats in Congress passed legislation to codify the doctrine into law in 1987 and 1991, but these attempts were vetoed by Reagan and George Bush, respectively; Democrats have gone on trying to make the Fairness Doctrine law to this day, but have always been stymied by adamant Republican opposition.

Also under Clinton Republicans filibustered.
After that Dems turned into the party they are now, and didn’t even try.

NBC News On Health — Shameful

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Dave Johnson

Watch this shameful NBC Nightly News segment describing studies on the effect of sugary drinks and red meat on heart health. The segment includes statements by soda and meat lobbyists countering what the medical studies have concluded! Shameful!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

False Equivalence Award

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Dave Johnson

Political Animal – False Equivalence Watch, Richard Cohen Version,

And it is here, in a feat of remarkable imagination, that Cohen deploys what I believe to be (and professionals in the field, please correct me if I’m wrong) a never-before-seen version of the genre, one that might be called the If-Not-Now-Then-Later False Equivalence:

So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment—these no longer may matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.

Well played, sir.

Gingrich Blames Elite Media, Crowd Goes Wild

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Dave Johnson

Gingrich plays victim. Blames media for what his ex-wife is saying.
Newt: CNN ‘Despicable’ To Bring Up ‘Trash’ Open Marriage Story | TPM2012
Watch out, people, this snake is the worst of the right. Dangerous, just doesn’t care what he says. He will destroy everything. So far beyond Bush and Rove…
Even if he doesn’t get the nomination, his just being there is whipping the right into a frothing, riotous mass that is going to be very bad for the country and world.

NY Times Gives Romney The Cain Defense

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Dave Johnson

In which the NY Times avoids being a “truth vigilante” — goes to the town of one of the companies in the Romney video, talkes to people who were not affected by what Romney’s company did.
This is the Cain defense: there were actually women he didn’t harass.

My Local Paper – A Typical Day

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Dave Johnson

Reading my local morning paper, I see that it is a typical day…
Front page story about the exponential growth in the crow population since a 1981 measurement, Counting crows: Number of black birds on the rise in Bay Area (‘Eden For Crows’ in the print edition), can’t find an explanation, but doesn’t bring up that the climate here is changing.

An article about the anniversary of the Gabby Giffords shooting, A year after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, doesn’t mention that conservatives put on a gun show to mark the anniversary, doesn’t even mention the word ‘gun.’

The anniversary was marked not only by the traditional rituals of speechmaking and prayers, but also by organized sessions and designated spots for yoga, meditation, hugging, dancing and steel drum playing. There were campaigns promoting civility and community — people gathered at a park Saturday to sign a “Tucsonans Commit to Kindness” contract — that were notable in how they avoided any explicit mention of the events of a year ago.

An editorial cartoon blasting “Government Motors” for having a “Fire Sale” of Chevy Volts, showing the entire dealership burnt out from a car fire, doesn’t mention that there has not been a single car fire in a Volt, except after a special-circumstances crash test, and the cars are being recalled to fix the potential problem. Compare this with the following numbers for cars that run on … gasoline:

In 2002-2005, U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 306,800 vehicle fires per year. These fires caused an average of 520 civilian deaths, 1,640 civilian injuries, and $1.3 billion in direct property damage.

What’s not in the paper? Anything that informs people of the benefits of belonging to a union. Anything that talks about how our government helps us. Anything that goes up against Big Oil and King Coal and informs the public of just how serious the problems of global warming are and the need for immediate solutions, or that informs the public of the need to move away from oil and coal as our energy source.

To sum it up: anything that informs the public of the harm caused by plutocratic, corporatist-captured government and the benefits of democracy and good government.
In other words, you find very little in today’s corporate-owned media that runs up against the agenda of the 1% and helps the 99%.
This is a fully-captured newspaper.

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California.

Politifact Kills Its Credibility

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Dave Johnson

If you take a government program, change everything about it, destroy its core purpose, but keep the same name, is it the same program? Politifact.com says yes, and even goes so far as to say it is “The Lie Of The Year” to say it isn’t — because it still has the same name.
Early this year Republicans voted to privatize Medicare, ending it as a government insurance program, instead giving limited vouchers to people to use to purchase private insurance. Everything about the program would change, and because of the loss of economy-of-scale that government provides the costs to seniors would be much higher while the coverage would be lower. This would effectively end the program.
Americans were outraged by this. People love Medicare, and depend on it. And the cost-shifting these changes would bring mean that the cost to the larger economy would greatly increase. But since government wasn’t paying those costs anymore, the pressure to raise taxes on the 1% would go down.
People took up arms that Republicans were trying to end Medicare. Newspaper editorials expressed shock and outrage. Bloggers were angry. Politicians pledged to run against Republicans who voted for this plan to end Medicare.

Enter Politifact.com

Politifact.com’s About page says, “PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times and its partners to help you find the truth in politics.” The look at statements, research the facts, “then rate the accuracy on our Truth-O-Meter – True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False and False.”
Politifact examined the statements that Republicans voted to “end Medicare” and decided this was a “lie” – because the program would continue to have the same name. This week Politicat doubled down on this absurd conclusion, saying that claiming the program would end is the “Lie Of The Year.”
That’s right, they say it is “The Lie Of The Year” to say that a program ends, as long as there still exists a program with the same name.

The Kicker

HOW did Politifact decide that this is the lie of the year? Digby explains, in Paul Ryan Stuffed The PolitiFact Ballot Box, that Rep. Paul Ryan rigged this by sending people to vote at Politifact. She writes,

Unfortunately, the Villagers will be gleefully using this as proof that their dreamy young idol Paul Ryan is a good guy after all but it’s probably a good idea to demand another source for anyone who cites Politifact on the veracity of any claim going forward. This will make it easier on the Republicans in the beginning, since they actually make a profit at their lying, but in the long run it will be for good. Clearly Politifact can’t tell the difference between a lie and and a fact and is subject to obvious right wing manipulation.

Richard Eskow: PolitiFiction: A ‘Lie Of The Year’ Sends Alice Back To Wonderland, “If you thought that the “aspect of Medicare” that directly pays for hospital coverage was Medicare, then apparently you are a very silly person …”

Others Weigh In

Paul Krugman: Politifact, R.I.P.: “This is really awful. Politifact, which is supposed to police false claims in politics, has announced its Lie of the Year — and it’s a statement that happens to be true, the claim that Republicans have voted to end Medicare.”
Steve Benen: PolitiFact ought to be ashamed of itself: “This is simply indefensible. Claims that are factually true shouldn’t be eligible for a Lie of the Year designation.”
Jason Linkins at Huffington Post: Politifact Has Decided That A Totally True Thing Is The “Lie Of The Year,” For Some Reason
Ben Adler at The Nation: Politifact Peddles Falsehood About Ryan Plan to Privatize Medicare

But Politifact, an independent organization associated with the St. Petersburg Times, chose instead a claim that placed third in their poll, thanks to an effort by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to stuff the ballots. The only problem? The big “lie” is true. “Republicans voted to end Medicare,” by the the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other Democrats, is the winner, despite the fact that Republicans did indeed vote to end Medicare when they voted for Ryan’s budget.

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog: Politifact wins own “lie of the year” after letting Paul Ryan rig the results
Joshua Holland at AlterNet: PolitiFact, Fearing a Right-Wing Backlash, Calls Democrats’ 100% True Claim About the GOP Medicare Plan the “Lie of the Year”,

Conservatives have long excelled at working the refs — the corporate media. And this week they scored a resounding victory, as PolitiFact, the non-partisan fact-checker, dismissed the results of its readers’ poll to declare the entirely truthful statement that House Republicans voted to “end Medicare” as we know it the “lie of the year.”

Politifact.com has ended its credibility.
Full disclosure: Politifact fact-checked the claim in a post of mine that 400 people have as much wealth as half our population, which was picked up by Michael Moore for use in a speech in Wisconsin. In their article they misidentified me, misstated and just got wrong what I sent them, linked to the wrong post, but concluded that the claim is true.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Seeing the Forest

Who is our economy FOR, anyway?

Category Archives: The Media