FactCheck.org

Boehner Misrepresents FactCheck.org’s Findings

November 2, 2009

Last week House Republican Leader John Boehner’s office issued a "Leader Alert" titled "10 Facts Every American Should Know About Speaker Pelosi’s 1,990-Page Gov’t Takeover of Health Care."
It’s a partisan document containing misleading characterizations of the bill. But the bullet point that bothers us most is #2, which reads:

MASSIVE CUTS TO MEDICARE BENEFITS FOR SENIORS. Despite grave warnings from CBO, FactCheck.org, and the independent Lewin Group that cuts to Medicare of the magnitude included in Speaker Pelosi’s bill would have a negative impact on seniors’

Fun with Semantics

October 30, 2009

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele takes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to task in an RNC fundraising e-mail for claiming that a tax increase isn’t a tax increase. But Steele adds some spin of his own, falsely charging that the tax in question falls on "middle class families and small businesses."
The RNC mailer accuses Pelosi of using "political doublespeak to mislead the American people" and links to a clip of a CNBC interview in which the speaker is asked whether allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire isn’t a "tax increase."

Creepy Cap-and-Trade Claims are Illusions

October 28, 2009

It’s that spooky time of year, and legislation pending in Congress to curb carbon emissions is really giving the American Energy Alliance the willies.
What’s haunting us is the group’s misuse of statistics in a new ad attacking Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for his support of the cap-and-trade approach that’s central to the major House and Senate bills.

According to the narrator: "This frightening tax will further hurt our economy, costing millions of American jobs,

Corzine, Christie Spar Over Income Taxes

October 28, 2009

With their race coming down to the wire, the candidates in New Jersey’s gubernatorial contest are attacking each other as ferociously as ever.
A TV ad from Republican Chris Christie accuses Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine of not paying state income taxes last year. Corzine’s campaign says the claim is an "outright lie." We find it to be true in a literal sense, but its implications are false.

The Christie ad says: "Last year, millionaire Corzine paid nothing,

Heather Graham Teaches Us About Polls

October 23, 2009

The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org Political Action has released another health care ad featuring a Hollywood celebrity. Last time it was Will Ferrell talking of pygmy horses and executive compensation. This time it’s actress Heather Graham dressing up as a track and field runner (labeled "public option") and challenging health insurance executives to a race.
As part of its argument, the ad says that "over 70 percent of Americans want the public option." We’ve previously caught both liberal and conservative groups misleading the public with polling numbers during this ongoing health care debate,

37th in Health Performance?

October 21, 2009

The Wall Street Journal‘s "Numbers Guy," Carl Bialik, takes a deeper look at a well-worn statistic: that the U.S. ranks 37th in the world in health system performance. His conclusion:

WSJ’s Bialik, Oct. 21: Among all the numbers bandied about in the health-care debate, this ranking stands out as particularly misleading.

The No. 37 figure comes from a 2000 World Health Organization report that attempted to grade nations’ health care according to five factors and assign an overall ranking to each.

Cadillac Plans and the Middle Class

October 20, 2009

The liberal group Health Care for America Now is airing an ad that argues against a tax on high-cost employer-provided health care plans, a revenue-raising aspect of the Senate Finance Committee bill. "Some senators say they want to tax so-called ‘Cadillac’ health care plans, but those proposals will also tax the benefits of millions of middle class workers," the narrator says as an on-screen graphic pops up, claiming "40% tax on health care benefits of middle-class workers."

RGA Not Amused by Daggett

October 16, 2009

Chris Christie, the Republican nominee in New Jersey’s gubernatorial contest, recently called the candidacy of Chris Daggett, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator who’s running on the Independent ticket, an "amusement." But the Republican Governors Association isn’t so amused by Daggett.
With polls showing Daggett cutting into Christie’s lead, the RGA has released both a 15-second TV spot and a 60-second radio ad saying the Independent candidate is like the state’s current governor, Democrat Jon Corzine,

Striking Out on Antitrust

October 15, 2009

The liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change features the national pastime in a new ad that attacks the insurance industry and calls for competition in the field.

The ad says that "baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from antitrust law." But that claim is about as accurate as Randy Johnson’s fastball to John Kruk in the 1993 All-Star game. Antitrust exemptions have been granted to quite a few different industries and groups through legislation and judicial review.

Aftermath of a Court Race

October 15, 2009

Wisconsin ’08 was one of the nastiest state Supreme Court elections in modern history. Incumbent Justice Louis Butler went down to defeat after opponent Mike Gableman and business interests in the state ran slashing, misleading ads portraying him as soft on crime. We criticized the spots in several stories.
Today, Gableman, though sitting on Wisconsin’s highest court, is still fighting a legal battle over whether he lied in one of the ads that helped put him there.