Author Archives: Viveca Novak

Obama’s Work Claim

Posted on July 2, 2008 , Updated on July 25, 2008

Summary Obama’s latest ad repeats an often-stated claim, saying he "worked his way through college and Harvard Law.” We know Obama took out loans to get himself through school. But the campaign at first provided information on just two jobs Obama had in those years, and they were both in …
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McCain’s Power Outage

Posted on June 20, 2008 , Updated on June 24, 2008

Summary McCain has spent the week focusing on energy policy, making some surprising, and inaccurate, statements. Among them: He said that ending a moratorium on offshore oil drilling "would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis." But according to a government report, offshore oil wouldn’t …
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Farm Bill Funds Distribution

Posted on May 23, 2008

Q: In the farm bill, how much money goes to direct subsidies for farmers, what percentage goes to higher income farmers and how much is allotted for feeding the poor? A: About $26 billion will be spent on direct payments to farmers over the next five years. We can't give …
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The Budget According to McCain: Part I

Posted on May 13, 2008 , Updated on May 16, 2008

McCain’s big promise is that he can balance the budget while extending Bush’s tax cuts and adding a few of his own. He likes to leave the impression that this can be done painlessly, for example, by eliminating “wasteful” spending in the form of “earmarks” that lawmakers like to tuck into spending bills to finance home-state projects. We found that not only is this theory full of holes, it’s not even McCain’s actual plan. In this story we examine the spending-cut side of McCain’s budget program. In Part II, we’ll look at what McCain has said about taxes.
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Gunning for Obama

Posted on May 6, 2008

A mailer sent from Clinton’s campaign to the homes of selected Indiana voters just before the Democratic primary goes after Obama for allegedly shifting his position on guns to suit his audience. The mailer’s not outright wrong in any of its statements. But the facts muddy the picture.
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Running on Fumes

Posted on May 5, 2008

Summary Late-inning ads by both Clinton and Obama in the run-up to the Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina focus on Clinton’s gas tax holiday proposal. But the ads are also misleading. Clinton’s ad claims motorists would save $8 billion during her summer "holiday," not mentioning that no economists …
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Impact of Capital Gains Tax on the Middle Class

Posted on April 30, 2008

Q: Would raising the capital gains tax rate hit the middle class? A: More than 80 percent of all capital gains income went to those making more than $200,000 a year in 2006. Very few making under $50,000 would be affected by any increase in the top capital gains rate.

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DNC vs. McCain

Posted on April 29, 2008

Summary The Democratic National Committee has produced two TV ads against McCain, hoping to soften him up while the party figures out who its own presidential nominee will be. One ad shows selected portions of McCain’s comments that a 100-year U.S. presence in Iraq would be "fine with me." The …
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Winning Ugly in Wisconsin

Posted on April 4, 2008

Summary In a Wisconsin throwdown, incumbent Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler narrowly lost his reelection bid after being hit with a barrage of deceptive attack ads. We’ve written about some of them in recent weeks.   Attack ads targeting the incumbent heavily outnumbered attacks aimed at the business-backed winner, Circuit …
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Obama’s Oil Spill

Posted on March 31, 2008

In a new ad, Obama says, “I don’t take money from oil companies.” Technically, that’s true, since a law that has been on the books for more than a century prohibits corporations from giving money directly to any federal candidate. But that doesn’t distinguish Obama from his rivals in the race.
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