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Another Bogus ‘New Taxes’ Claim

Another Bogus ‘New Taxes’ Claim

It didn’t take long after President Obama released his latest budget for the oil lobby to pick up the misleading cry that it’s being targeted for “new taxes.” That’s mostly not true. Energy Tomorrow, a project of the American Petroleum Institute, ran a print ad in Washington, D.C.’s Politico Feb. 14 asking, “Guess who’ll pay for new energy taxes?”
The problem with that rhetorical question is that most of the “new taxes” are actually a proposed end to some old tax breaks —

The State of Obama’s Facts

The State of Obama’s Facts

Summary
The president’s State of the Union address got the facts right — mostly.

Obama said “the Taliban’s momentum has been broken” in Afghanistan. But targeted assassinations continue, and at least one independent foreign policy expert says the enemy may just be waiting until the U.S. leaves.
The president said a get-tough tariff on tire imports from China has saved more than 1,000 U.S. jobs. But tire industry officials say Chinese imports have simply been replaced by imports from other countries.

GOP’s Phantom Job Losses

GOP’s Phantom Job Losses

Ooops!
Republicans — eager to show that President Obama’s oil and gas drilling policies “cost jobs” — have been using a number they now admit was more than three times too high. Even after they corrected their error (after we pointed it out), they started using a figure that is based on industry-sponsored studies, uses dubious assumptions and doesn’t apply to any jobs that currently exist.
It’s just the latest example of how both sides tend to use grossly exaggerated claims about jobs when debating their pet policies.

Palin Whoppers on Debt, Oil Imports

Sarah Palin made two wildly inaccurate claims on the debt accumulated under President Obama and oil imports. She wrongly said that the debt had grown more under Obama than "all those other presidents combined." She also was way off when she claimed that the U.S. is going to spend "$8 billion a day" on oil imports this year and next year to make up for declining oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. The actual amount is less than $20 million a day.

Sunday Shows and TARP Claims

In episode 10 of FactCheck Radio, we puncture claims from the Sunday shows about immigration and BP’s regulatory receptiveness, and talk about some misleading allegations involving TARP.
(Click the play button below to listen to the podcast. Or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.)
 
For more on the stories discussed in this episode, see:
Sunday Replay May 3
General Motors’ Debt May 3
Over the Top on TARP April 30
A Big Webby Win for FactCheck May 4

Sunday Replay

Immigration and the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico crowded out most other subjects on the May 2 Sunday talk shows, and we found trampled facts in both areas.
 Immigration Face-Off on ‘Face the Nation’
Arizona’s tough new immigration law sparked a heated exchange between Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth on CBS’ "Face the Nation." Hayworth, who is hoping to defeat Sen. John McCain in Arizona’s GOP Senate primary,

Bogus Brazilian Oil Claims

Q: Did Obama loan $2 billion to Brazil’s oil company to benefit China and George Soros?
A: The president had nothing to do with the loan, which the Export-Import Bank approved for Brazil to buy U.S.-made equipment and services.

Ads Energetically Thank Democrats

Recently, we have seen several ads from liberal advocacy groups thanking various Democratic representatives for voting in favor of the Waxman-Markey energy bill. Some, like those from the group Americans United for Change, benignly mix images of nature with kind words of thanks. Others pour on the superlatives, but could use some further explanation.
For instance, an ad from VoteVets says that because the bill was passed, "now America is poised to import less oil, 300,000 barrels less every day."

U.S. Oil Reserves

Q: Are anti-drilling forces blocking access to the world’s largest oil reserve in the western U.S.?
A: The Bakken Formation touted in a chain e-mail isn’t the world’s largest oil reserve. The amount of oil it contains, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is less than one one-hundredth of the estimate cited in the e-mail.

Obama 68 Million Acre Boast

Obama was off the mark when he said that oil companies have “68 million acres that they’re not using.”
As we’ve pointed out previously, those 68 million acres of land are not producing oil, but they are not necessarily untouched. In fact, in 2006, the last year for which figures are available, there were a total of more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished. These acres of land that these holes sit on are not counted as being “producing,”