As the days tick down to Hawaii’s May 22 special congressional election, Republican Charles Djou is airing an ad falsely accusing former Democratic Rep. Ed Case of voting to raise “taxes that kill 3,000 local jobs a year.”
The ad, which first ran May 14, makes this claim: “Case said he’s against higher taxes, but in Congress he voted to raise taxes. Taxes that kill 3,000 local jobs a year.” It cites a Jan. 5, 2006,
Linda McMahon’s U.S. Senate campaign recently used the social networking site Twitter to misrepresent former Rep. Robert Simmons’ position on tax credits for businesses and the dividend tax. McMahon and Simmons are battling in Connecticut to become the GOP nominee for Chris Dodd’s Senate seat.
Shawn McCoy, deputy communications director for the McMahon campaign, tweeted the following on May 11:
@RobSimmons supports hiking the dividends tax and opposes biz tax credits. No wonder CT lost 15,000 jobs while he was biz advocate
But Simmons does support giving tax credits to businesses and extending the Bush tax cuts including the dividend tax,
The Sunday talk shows contained ample misinformation this week. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was the subject of bogus claims coming from two lawmakers, and a Democratic candidate for Senate fudged the facts about his military record. Also, a Republican former House speaker played loose with the facts, while accusing the president and his party of "anti-religious bias."
Kagan: No Lawbreaker
On ABC’s "This Week," Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions falsely accused Supreme Court nominee Kagan of "violating the law."
Contrary to persistent Internet rumors — which we debunked in "Zero Pay Raise for Congress, Too" on Sept. 25, 2009, and again in "Retribution Fabrication" on Jan. 8 — there was no pay raise for members of Congress this year. Congress voted over a year ago to deny itself the automatic increase that would have gone into effect in January.
And now there will be no pay raise for House or Senate members next year, either.
In the final days of a hotly contested Senate Democratic primary in Arkansas, the Service Employees International Union is running a misleading attack ad against Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
In the ad, titled “Nancy,” an Arkansas resident by the name of Nancy Shaw talks about her daughter, who suffers from Down syndrome. Shaw says she is upset that Lincoln “voted to allow health insurance companies to deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions.” Shaw speculates that Lincoln “sided with the big insurance companies because they could afford big campaign contributions.”
The latest development in the saga of the so-called "birther" challenges to Barack Obama’s presidency comes from Hawaii, Obama’s native state. Yesterday, Gov. Linda Lingle signed a law allowing state agencies to ignore requests for information if they determine the requests duplicate or are substantially similar to earlier ones. The law targets those who contend Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and thus, under the Constitution, can’t be president; they still are sending 10 to 20 e-mails every week asking the state’s Health Department for verification of his birth certificate.
A new National Republican Congressional Committee ad falsely claims that Rep. Bobby Bright, a freshman Democrat from Alabama, "is supporting" President Obama’s health care legislation. He’s not. The fact is, Bright was one of the few Democrats who voted against it, and he favors changing certain aspects that he calls "deeply flawed."
Bright was strongly opposed to the law and said he was "disappointed" and "saddened" by its passage:
Bright, March 22: I voted against the health care reform bill because our country cannot afford its massive cost,
Don Benton, a Republican from Washington state who is running for U.S. Senate against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, is airing a false and misleading ad that says: "Patty Murray voted to use taxpayer money to give Viagra to sex offenders.” The ad goes on to say, “What if I told you your taxpayer dollars are already doing that?”
It ends by urging viewers to “tell Patty Murray that you’re sick of her reckless spending.”
In a graphic on screen,
A union-sponsored ad charges that Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s support of "unfair" trade deals "made it impossible for American workers to compete." But several economic studies say trade deals, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, have had a small impact, or even a positive one, on American jobs.
As we said last week, this ad starts with a true claim about union workers at a Cooper Tire plant making wage concessions to ward off a threatened closure.
In the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary, an ad from Sen. Blanche Lincoln claims that "she saved 1,700 Cooper Tire employees from losing their jobs to Chinese imports." But a labor union supporting her more liberal opponent countered with an ad in which a Cooper Tire worker says: "We saved our own jobs and we had to take big pay cuts to do it." We find the labor claim to be true, and Lincoln’s to be a bit of an exaggeration.