FactCheck.org

New Round of Sotomayor Ads Begins

July 14, 2009

Independent groups are taking to the airwaves to weigh in on the debate over Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whose confirmation hearings began July 13 in the Senate. The liberal Change Campaign Committee and Hispanic group Presente.org are airing a Spanish-language radio ad in Florida. The groups also posted the ad, with a translation and some video, on YouTube:

Two versions of the ad take Republican Reps. John Mica and Adam Putnam to task for not denouncing the words of radio host Rush Limbaugh,

FactCheck.org Cited in Ad

July 13, 2009

From time to time, we find that our work is cited by politicians or political groups. Last week, the League of Conservation Voters ran an ad in Virginia referencing our articles on the cap-and-trade energy bill:

The LCV ad says that Republicans are attacking Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia for "supporting a new clean energy jobs plan," but that we said the "Republican ad was wrong" and figures used by Republican Whip Eric Cantor were a "misrepresentation."

Ads Energetically Thank Democrats

July 10, 2009

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."

Boehner v. Ohio (Reprise)

July 9, 2009

House Minority Leader John Boehner has again attacked the way his home state is spending its stimulus funds. And again, he’s wrong.
At his weekly news conference, Boehner criticized the Ohio Department of Transportation for using millions of dollars in American Recovery and Reconstruction Act money for a project study, rather than for construction:

Boehner, July 9: As a matter of fact, [ODOT] took $20 million of stimulus funds to — to do a study of a proposed project in southwest Ohio that —

Boehner Wrong on Stimulus Spending

July 8, 2009

John Boehner, phone home. Or at least check the Ohio Department of Transportation’s highly informative Web site before talking about state road projects on TV.
Last week, Rep. Boehner, the House Republican leader who hails from the Buckeye State, released a video featuring a bloodhound purporting to sniff out jobs created by the $787 billion stimulus package that took effect in February – and finding none. Boehner followed that up with a July 5 interview on “Fox News Sunday,”

Same Inaccurate Claim on Oil Imports

July 7, 2009

In a July 6 interview with Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, President Obama repeated his false claim that the U.S. “import[s] more oil today than ever before.” When Obama first said this in February during an address to a joint-session of Congress, we wrote that the president had gotten his facts wrong. We said then that oil imports peaked in 2005 and have “substantially” declined since.

That’s still the case. This chart from the U.S. Energy Information Administration,

What’s in a Number?

July 2, 2009

The National Republican Congressional Committee has released a new ad attacking Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia for voting with "(Barack) Obama and Nancy Pelosi" for the Waxman-Markey energy bill. It’s part of a broader effort to target several Democratic members.

The ad says the bill will result in lost jobs and cost "middle class families" $1,870 a year. That sounds pretty dire, until you consider that this week we posted an item about the Office of the Republican Whip Eric Cantor’s claim that the same bill would "impose a national energy tax of up to $3,100."

More Unemployment Blues

July 2, 2009

If you’re the glass-half-full type, you might think it’s good news that the nation’s unemployment rate was largely unchanged from May to June. It crept up just 0.1 percentage points to 9.5 percent. But that also means that the original projections from President Obama’s economic advisers on what would happen with and without the stimulus plan are still off — and significantly so.
In mid-June, we wrote about the large discrepancy between the jobs that actually have been lost and what administration economists had predicted in January.

The Long-Term View

July 1, 2009

As part of his ongoing health-care-overhaul tour, President Barack Obama held a town hall event July 1 in Annandale, Va. Among the president’s messages: Medicare and Medicaid spending are getting out of control. And he’s right.
Obama said: “And for those who rightly worry about deficits, the amount our government spends on Medicare and Medicaid will eventually grow larger than what our government spends today on everything else combined,” adding that a recent Congressional Budget Office study showed that “when you look at the rising costs of entitlement,

Cantor Sticking with $3,100 Cost Estimate

June 30, 2009

In a post announcing the launch of a video news release questioning the priorities of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Office of the Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia says that the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which Pelosi helped usher through the House of Representatives, “will impose a national energy tax of up to $3,100 on all Americans and slam small businesses with higher energy bills, causing the loss of millions of jobs.”

The video,