Category: 2010 Election

Political mantra: Never let facts get in the way of a good story

Posted by dcrim – March 4, 2011

It seems being loose with the truth is becoming contagious. In its never-ending quest to separate fact from fiction, Politifact offers these nuggets:

• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, now a commentator on Fox News and a potential Republican presidential candidate for 2012, said earlier this week while hawking his new book that President Barack Obama grew up in Kenya. Check the facts here.

• Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, locked in a budget battle with unions and Democratic senators, said the state is broke. Check the facts here.

• Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, no stranger to wild and unsubstantiated comments, said Michelle Obama has 43 people on her staff, compared to just three for Nancy Reagan. Check the facts here.

Fact-checking the prank call and other Wisconsin claims

Posted by dcrim – February 26, 2011

It seems both sides of the Wisconsin budget debate are being a little loose with the truth. Check the validity of some claims here.

House health care repeal is easy; replacing it is the hard part

Posted by dcrim – January 19, 2011

Republicans spent most of 2010 campaigning on the promise to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act signed into law last year. The “repeal” part could come as early today with what is viewed as a largely symbolic vote in the GOP-controlled House. No one expects any potential overhaul to advance beyond the House without a plan to replace it, and so far Republicans have offered few specifics on that part of their campaign pledge.

Polls find the public divided over the law and whether it should be repealed. A recent Associated Press-GfK survey found a 43 percent plurality wants the law changed so that it does more to re-engineer the health care system. About one in four said it should be repealed completely. Fewer than one in five in the AP poll said the law should be left as it is and 10 percent want to change it to do less. So the common theme underneath the rhetoric seems to be to keep the good parts and replace the bad ones — if Democrats and Republicans can agree to do that.

Andrew Leonard of Salon has this take:

But here are a couple of things we do know right now, and which Republican legislators, in particular, we should be paying close attention to. Popular opposition to reform seems to be weakening, insurers are backing away from their opposition, and the healthcare industry itself, right now, is one of the major sources of job growth in the U.S. economy, 10 months after the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land. The longer such trends continue, the harder it will be for Republicans to sustain their campaign to throttle reform.

Freshman Rep, Bobby Schilling, R-17, favors portions of the Affordable Care Act, such as allowing adult children to remain on their parents’ health care plan until age 26 and the provision making it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to someone with a pre-existing condition. That falls in line with a growing number of Americans who agree with those provisions, along with the mandate for insurance companies to spend at least 80 to 85 percent of premiums on medical services, rather than on administrative costs. There are a lot of provisions for businesses that most people think should be retooled or eliminated entirely.

Salon’s list of 10 things people should know about the Affordable Care Act.

Opinions vary on the ultimate success of this Congress

Posted by dcrim – January 5, 2011

The 112th Congress will be sworn in an noon Washington time today, and opinions differ on the impact of Republicans regaining control of the House after being out of power for four years.

From the Washington Post:

Much of what Republicans do will be symbolic, given that Democrats still control the Senate and the White House. But the quick action will allow Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the incoming speaker, and House Republicans to follow through on campaign pledges and to try to establish their party as a bulwark against what they see as an out-of-control government.

From RealClearPolitics:

After all, the proposal to cut legislators’ budgets by 5 percent will make only a tiny dent in the federal budget, the vote to repeal the health care reform law is widely expected to be dead on arrival when it makes it to the Senate, and detractors dismiss the planned reading of the Constitution on the House floor as a publicity stunt.

But according to incoming Republican House freshmen and the small-government adherents who fueled their rise to power, these first steps that the new Congress plans on taking have real and potentially far-reaching implications.

An editorial by the New York Times:

Those who had hoped to see a glimpse of the much-advertised Republican plan to revive the economy and put Americans back to work will have to wait at least until party leaders finish their Beltway insider ritual of self-glorification. Then, they may find time for governing.

An editorial from the Wall Street Journal:

John Boehner takes the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi today, and the transfer represents much more than a change in partisan control. It marks perhaps the sharpest ideological shift in the House in 80 years, and it could set the stage for a meaningful two-year debate over the role of government and the real sources of economic prosperity.

We say “could” because much depends on which Republican Party chooses to show up. Will it be the incumbent-protection and business interest-group machine that prevailed under the final years of Tom DeLay? Or will it remember that the real sources of it power and legitimacy are the tea party activists and independents who voted for Republicans in November? So far the signs suggest the latter, but the forces of Beltway inertia are formidable and will weigh on the drive to change the politics of K Street perks and payoffs.

2010 Lie of the Year: ‘Government takeover of health care’

Posted by dcrim – December 20, 2010

The phrase “government takeover of health care” has been the biggest political punchline of 2010. It was the brainchild of consultant Frank Luntz, who urged Republican leaders to use it to attack President Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul the country’s health insurance system, and it stuck.

PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times’ independent fact-checking website that serves as a watchdog for what politicians of all stripes say and do, has chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. While not debating the merits of the legislation, the authors say the phrase was uttered so often that it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections.

Unfortunately, they found it simply wasn’t true.

Study: Slants on television news creating misinformed voters

Posted by dcrim – December 18, 2010

Saturday morning musings while wondering if the Big Ten Conference kept its receipt from the consultants who came up with the Legends and Leaders division idea:

• A study conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project that is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, shows that television news programming has created a lot of misinformed voters. All networks receive low marks on some issues, including MSNBC (at left, pun intended), but heading the list is Fox News Channel viewers, which the study concludes are significantly more likely to believe untruths about the Democratic health care overhaul, climate change and other subjects.

“Almost daily” viewers of Fox News, the authors said, were 31 points more likely to mistakenly believe that “most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit;” were 30 points more likely to believe that “most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring;” and were 14 points more likely to believe that “the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.”

They were also 13 points more likely to mistakenly believe “the auto bailout only occurred under Obama;” 12 points more likely to believe that “when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it;” and 31 points more likely to believe that “it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States.”

The study’s authors continued, “These effects increased incrementally with increasing levels of exposure and all were statistically significant. The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it — though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican.”

The study suggests voters who supplement their television viewing habits by reading about issues are more likely to make informed decisions. The study apparently didn’t poll viewers who prefer ESPN.

• In terms of playing the role of “Comeback Kid,” conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer writes that Obama has left Bill Clinton in his dust.

If Barack Obama wins re-election in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010. Obama had a bad November. … Now, with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, deal maker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama.

• The top two candidates to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention reportedly are St. Louis and Charlotte, N.C. St. Louis has hosted five national conventions, but none since Democrats renominated President Woodrow Wilson for his successful re-election bid in 1916. Missouri has a Democratic governor and Sen. Claire McCaskill will be up for re-election in 2012, but the biggest boosters may be Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

Presidential re-election campaign cash projection: $1 billion

Posted by dcrim – December 13, 2010

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post offers this question: Will President Obama be the first billion-dollar man?

He raised and spent $750 million in the 2008 campaign, and there is already speculation that the cash-collection operation for his 2012 reelection bid will crest the once-unimaginable sum of $1 billion raised. (That’s a one and nine zeros. Nine!)

Does anyone else think the amount of money being spent for elective office has gotten way out of hand? An estimated $3.98 billion was spent during the most recent two-year federal election cycle. U.S. News and World Report put that into perspective:

• 10,000 times President Obama’s annual salary of $400,000, and over 100 times the annual salary of his entire White House staff combined.

• Nearly 80 percent more than the amount the United States has pledged and spent on reconstruction efforts after the January 2010 Haiti earthquake (includes $1.1 billion spent immediately post-quake, plus an additional $1.15 billion pledged).

• Slightly more than the $3.7 billion that the Department of Defense plans to spend in FY 2011 on the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

• Roughly equal to the amount that the Department of State has requested for assistance to Afghanistan in FY 2011.

On doctor discipline, the week that was and bloated public pensions

Posted by dcrim – December 12, 2010

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reveals how often leniency and secrecy shroud doctor discipline with some harrowing examples.

Ezra Klein of Newsweek tries to shine some light on the strange week that was in Washington.

Out-of-control public pensions aren’t just a problem in Illinois. The state of New York, and New York City, are drowning in red ink because pension obligations are rising so fast. The city’s fire department spends more on pensions and benefits than it does salaries. The New York Daily News offers a solution.

The Rothenberg Political Report offers is 2010 awards.

About those campaign promises to ban earmarks: Uh, never mind

Posted by dcrim – December 9, 2010

In the immortal words of “Saturday Night Live” character Rosanna Rosanna Danna: “Never mind.”

It seems some conservative Republican lawmakers are having some second thoughts about the idea of banning earmarks after campaigning extensively on the issue and being elected to change the way things are done in Washington. Campaign rhetoric, meet reality.

Indeed, many Republicans are now worried that the bridges in their districts won’t be fixed, the tariff relief to the local chemical company isn’t coming and the water systems might not be built without a little direction from Congress.

So some Republicans are discussing exemptions to the earmark ban, allowing transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and water projects. While transportation earmarks are probably the most notorious — think “Bridge to Nowhere” — there is talk about tweaking the very definition of “earmark.”

That about-face didn’t take long, did it? Sorta like telling the American people that reducing the federal deficit was the No. 1 issue and then insisting on adding $700 billion to the deficit by extending tax cuts.

Republicans also have granted a congressman known as the “Prince of Pork” the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, which certainly would appear to be a contradiction if reducing earmarks was a true goal.

Keeping up with current events doesn’t appear to be Americans’ forte

Posted by dcrim – November 19, 2010

Despite the many advances in technology that have created a 24/7 news cycle, it appears a lot of people aren’t paying attention.

Meredith Shiner of Politico points out that fewer than half of all Americans know that Republicans will have a majority in the House next year, but not the Senate, according to a new poll.

Only 46 percent of respondents in a Pew Research poll released Thursday knew that the GOP had taken over only the House, while a mere 38 percent can identify Ohio Republican John Boehner (at left) as the incoming speaker. Three times as many young people, aged under 30, could properly identify Google’s new phone software, Android (at right), as could identify Boehner.

Additionally, 27 percent of Americans do not know if the Republicans won either chamber of Congress while 5 percent believe the Democrats kept both chambers. Fourteen percent said the Republicans won both chambers. Most respondents said Republicans generically did better than Democrats this cycle. Seventy-five percent of all respondents regarded the GOP as “doing the best” in the 2010 elections.

What’s scary is that some of these people who have no grasp on the issues are voting. Others are commentators on cable TV.