We saw more aggressive fact-checking by journalists in this election than ever before. Unfortunately, as a post-election Annenberg Public Policy Center poll confirms, millions of voters were bamboozled anyway. More than half of U.S. adults (52 percent) said the claim that Sen. Barack Obama’s tax plan would raise taxes on most small businesses is truthful, when in fact only a small percentage would see any increase. More than two in five (42.3 percent) found truth in the claim that Sen. John... Click to Read the Full Post
The Obama-Biden campaign has released an ad as part of its “closing argument” to the American people. But we have a few factual objections to raise. The ad is called “Rearview Mirror” and says that if you “wonder where John McCain would take the economy” just “look behind you,” alluding to the Bush administration. The ad even pictures President Bush’s face in the rearview mirror of a car. But it touts some misleading claims Obama has dropped... Click to Read the Full Post
The McCain-Palin campaign announced today that it will release “its latest television ad” called “Tiny.” But it’s not the campaign’s newest ad - not by a long shot. The ad was announced and aired in August when it was also described as the campaign’s “latest television ad.” In a press release, the campaign claims the ad was released in light of comments reportedly made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy describing Sen. Barack Obama’s position... Click to Read the Full Post
The Obama-Biden campaign has released a radio ad in Indiana featuring favorite native son John Mellencamp. In the ad, Mellencamp says, “John McCain will keep giving tax breaks to companies shipping American jobs overseas.” Mellencamp is referring to an aspect of the tax code that allows companies to skirt paying U.S. corporate taxes on profits they make overseas and leave overseas. But economists have consistently said this tax provision isn’t a major reason jobs are being sent... Click to Read the Full Post
The Obama-Biden campaign has a new, unannounced ad that says McCain has been “erratic” in his response to the financial crisis: The ad includes various critical quotes from editorials in the Washington Post, USA Today and Politico. We looked up the original articles, and all the quotes are in context. But the ad also cites the August 15 Tax Policy Center report, with text on screen saying “nothing for the middle class.” Within the ad, the words do not appear in quotes, but... Click to Read the Full Post
Looking for some weekend reading material? Well, the past week has been busy at FactCheck.org. If you haven’t checked out the main site recently, here are several new articles that we hadn’t yet told our Wire readers about: Right Change Is Wrong October 24, 2008 A conservative group misleads voters mightily on Obama’s tax plans for small businesses. The Rifle Association’s ‘True Story’ October 23, 2008 A misleading NRA ad claims Obama voted “to deny citizens... Click to Read the Full Post
Planned Parenthood is distributing a mailer in Ohio that criticizes Sen. John McCain’s health care plan. But it uses a bogus figure on what McCain’s plan would do to Ohioans’ taxes. The mailer says, “I see struggling patients every day. That’s why I was so horrified when I read about John McCain’s proposed health care tax. Maybe he can afford a $2,800 tax, but his plan will really hurt a lot of people.” Under McCain’s plan, workers with employer-provided... Click to Read the Full Post
Yesterday we wrote about a robo-call attack from the McCain campaign making much of Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers. Today, we’ll look at another robo-call (posted by Talking Points Memo late last week) that’s covering well-trodden ground. The subject is Obama’s record on born-alive legislation, which we’ve written about twice before. The audio posted at TPM says that “Barack Obama and his Democrat allies in the Illinois Senate opposed a bill requiring doctors... Click to Read the Full Post
Late last week Huffington Post broke the news that a massive robo-call campaign linking Obama and former Weather Underground activist Bill Ayers was targeting voters in numerous states, including Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Maine. Paid for by the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee, the call tells listeners that “Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home, and... Click to Read the Full Post
In what is becoming a bit of a pattern, a group that backs Sen. Barack Obama is trying to convince senior citizens that Sen. John McCain would be their worst nightmare. The AFL-CIO is distributing a mailer that claims McCain is “turning his back on retirees,” by “privatizing Social Security, taxing health care benefits” and “cutting $1 trillion from Medicare.” Talking Points Memo reports that the AFL-CIO is sending this flyer to retirees in Indiana, North Carolina... Click to Read the Full Post
