Ron Paul: Gotta Love Him

From Factcheck.org

Wrong Paul

February 11, 2008

Fantasy, fallacy and factual fumbles from the Republican insurgent.

Summary

Ron Paul doesn’t have much of a chance of winning the Republican nomination, but he persists with his well-funded campaign and even talks of turning it into a permanent “Revolution” that will continue far beyond 2008.

We’ve given his statements little attention until now. But here we look at some of his more outlandish claims:

• Paul claims that a secret conspiracy composed of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and a cabal of foreign companies is behind plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway as the first step toward creating a North American Union. But the NAFTA Superhighway that Paul describes is a myth, and the groups supposedly behind the plans are neither secret nor nefarious.

• Paul says that the U.S. spends $1 trillion per year to maintain a foreign empire and suggests that we could save that amount by cutting foreign spending. Paul gets that figure by including a lot of domestic programs that he isn’t planning to cut, like the U.S. Border Patrol and interest payments on the debt.

• Paul has run television ads touting an endorsement from Ronald Reagan, but he fails to mention that, in 1988, Paul wanted “to totally disassociate” himself from the Reagan administration.
  

Analysis

Ron Paul’s candidacy is something of an enigma. His impressive fundraising and his legions of dedicated volunteers suggest that he could be among the front-runners in contention for the Republican nomination. Yet his national poll numbers hover consistently just above the margin of error, and on Super Tuesday, he finished last in 17 of 21 contests, including California, where he lost to a candidate who had already withdrawn from the race. He admits he has little hope of winning the nomination.

“Ron Paul” is the most searched term on our site, and until recently, those searches revealed only that Paul had participated in a whole lot of Republican debates. We applied our efforts to candidates with odds of becoming the nominee.

Yet Paul says he will not drop out of the race, and indeed talks of a perpetual campaign. In a message to his followers Feb. 8, he said:

Paul: If I may quote Trotsky of all people, this Revolution is permanent. It will not end at the Republican convention. It will not end in November. It will not end until we have won the great battle on which we have embarked.

So, given the ardency of Paul’s supporters and the scores of e-mails requesting that we write about him, we decided to take a look at Paul’s claims. Here’s some of what we found.

Paging Fox Mulder

According to Paul, a secret organization run by unaccountable government figures is in league with foreign corporations who are all bent on usurping American sovereignty. That’s not from the script for a new X-Files movie. (Or not that we know of.) It’s the gist of Paul’s description of a supposed “NAFTA Superhighway.” Paul describes it on his Web site as “a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside.” And that’s not all. According to Paul, the ultimate plan is to form a North American Union with a single currency and unlimited travel within its borders, all headed up by “an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments” that together form the shadowy “quasi-government organization called the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,’ or SPP.”

The problem with Paul’s claim is that there are no plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway. Or a North American Union, for that matter. And while the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America does exist, it’s just a boring bureaucracy.

Like many conspiracy theories, this one is a mixture of fact and fiction. That scary-looking map, with lines that rumor suggested were drawn to scale, is the product of an actual group called North America’s SuperCorridor Organization (NASCO), which is a consortium of public and private entities. But contrary to conspiracy theorists, the map does not show a new highway. Those bright blue lines show only I-35 and I-29 – interstates that already exist. On its Web site, NASCO says it and some of the local governments along I-35 have been referring to that route as the “NAFTA Superhighway” for years. NASCO advocates improvements to existing roads, but is not lobbying for, or planning to build, any new thoroughfares. From the NASCO Web site:

NASCO: “NAFTA Superhighway” – As of late, there has been much media attention given to the “new, proposed NAFTA Superhighway”. NASCO and the cities, counties, states and provinces along our existing Interstate Highways 35/29/94 (the NASCO Corridor) have been referring to I-35 as the ‘NAFTA Superhighway’ for many years, as I-35 already carries a substantial amount of international trade with Mexico, the United States and Canada. There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35.

In terms of new roads, there are, in fact, plans for a Trans-Texas Corridor, a road that would be (in spots) several football fields wide. And the road would be financed by a private company (which is partially Spanish-owned) that would then charge tolls to recoup its investment. But the TTC was approved by the Texas Legislature and the governor of Texas. It is a state initiative, but it is not part of a NAFTA Superhighway, nor is it the product of a shadowy federal conspiracy.

Indeed, Ian Grossman, a spokesman with the Federal Highway Administration told the Los Angeles Times, “There is no such superhighway like the one [Paul is] talking about. It doesn’t exist, in plans or anywhere else.”

The other parts of the conspiracy are much the same. The SPP – that “quasi-government organization” – is really an actual government organization, organized through the White House. According to David Bohigian, an assistant secretary of commerce, the SPP is a bureaucratic dialog staffed by mid-level officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico who work to synchronize customs, security and regulations. “Simple stuff,” Bohigian told The Nation last August, “like, for instance, in the U.S. we sell baby food in several different sizes; in Canada, it’s just two different sizes.” Not exactly cloak-and-dagger stuff.

The SPP has a factsheet on its Web site that attempts to put to rest all the tall tales surrounding it. And if that isn’t enough, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Newsweek and the urban legend site Snopes.com all have previously debunked this particular bit of conspiracy-theorizing.

Of course, maybe they’re all in on it, too.

About That Trillion Dollar Empire

In debates, Paul has claimed the U.S. spends a trillion dollars on a “foreign operation” each year to maintain an “empire”:

Paul (Jan. 30): So, yes, this money should be spent back here at home. We have a $1 trillion foreign operation to operate our empire. That’s where the money is. You can’t keep borrowing from China. You can’t keep printing the money.

One should be suspicious of this number right away. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects total spending for the current fiscal year to be about $2.9 trillion. President Bush’s proposed fiscal 2009 budget would top $3 trillion for the first time. In fiscal 2008, a total of almost $1.8 trillion goes to mandatory spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security and to interest on the debt. That leaves just under $1.1 trillion in total discretionary spending, of which $572 billion goes to defense spending. Even if we called the entire defense budget an overseas cost of maintaining an empire – and then kicked in the entire $50.6 billion budget for the State Department and international programs – Paul is still $378 billion short.

When we asked the Paul campaign for some documentation for the $1 trillion claim, it directed us to an opinion piece by a fellow at the libertarian-leaning Independent Institute. The article argues that in 2006, the U.S. actually spent just under $1 trillion on defense. To arrive at that figure, the study included a number of items that one might generally not think of as defense spending, including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, one-third of the funding for the FBI and half of NASA’s funding. The numbers also include medical and retirement pay for veterans and a large portion of interest on the debt.

So it turns out that what Paul says is a trillion dollars for a “foreign operation” includes a lot of things that seem pretty domestic to us. For example:

• The entire U.S. Border Patrol
• Every military base in the United States and all the 1.4 million full-time military personnel (not just those serving overseas)
  
• Background checks for new immigrants
• Inspections of incoming cargo
• All airport security programs
• The issuing of U.S. passports
• The FBI’s counter-terrorism unit
• 92 percent of the interest payments on the national debt
  

Obviously Paul isn’t advocating defaulting on U.S. Savings Bonds or doing away with border security, or even closing all U.S. embassies overseas. But that makes it all the more misleading for him to suggest that cutting out this “foreign operation” could save $1 trillion per year.

A Flipper on the Gipper

Ron Paul Ad
“The Only One”

Narrator: Who among these men has never supported a tax increase? Never supported an unbalanced budget? Never supported wasteful government spending?

Narrator: Congressman Ron Paul: The taxpayer’s best friend.

Narrator: We need to keep him fighting for our country.

Ron Paul: I’m Ron Paul and I approve this message.

In a recent television ad titled “The Only One,” Paul claims to be the only candidate never to vote for a tax increase, pass an unbalanced budget or support wasteful government spending. The ad closes with the narrator saying, “We need to keep him fighting for our country.” The words are attributed to Ronald Reagan. Paul uses a longer version of the quotation on his Web page:

From Ron Paul Web site: “Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first.” – Ronald Reagan

Paul’s embrace of Reagan’s legacy represents a significant change of heart. Actually, it’s the second time that Paul has changed his mind about Reagan. After endorsing Reagan for president in 1976 and again in 1980, Paul became disenchanted, leaving the Republican party in 1987. The following year, he told the Los Angeles Times:

Paul (May 10, 1988): The American people have never reached this point of disgust with politicians before. I want to totally disassociate myself from the Reagan Administration.

Paul’s disaffection started early in Reagan’s presidency. “Ronald Reagan has given us a deficit 10 times greater than what we had with the Democrats,” Paul told the Christian Science Monitor in 1987. “It didn’t take more than a month after 1981, to realize there would be no changes.”

Sometime between 1988 (during Paul’s run for the presidency on the Libertarian Party ticket) and 1996 (when Paul, running as a Republican once more, successfully ousted an incumbent House member in a GOP primary), Paul once again embraced Reagan’s legacy. The New York Times reported then that Paul had used the longer version of the Reagan quote in a videotape sent to 30,000 households. According to the Times, Reagan’s former attorney general, Edwin Meese III, flew to Texas “to insist that Mr. Reagan had offered no recent endorsements.”

We were unable to document Reagan’s endorsement of Paul. When we asked the Paul campaign for documentation, a spokesperson told us that the campaign was “a little more focused on positive things.” The Paul campaign did not provide the Times with a date for the quotation in 1996, either.

Introduction to Logic

We close with a final point, though this one is directed at Ron Paul supporters. Recently, we’ve received a barrage of e-mail containing variations on this theme: “Am I to assume that by making no mention of Rep. Ron Paul in your synopses of GOP candidates, you found his statements meritorious?” The similarities between the messages led to a bit of searching, and we found what we suspect is the cause: A post at DailyPaul.com alleges that because the author found no instances where we called out Paul for misstatements, “FactCheck.org shows that Ron Paul is truthful.”

We realize that DailyPaul.com is not officially affiliated with Paul’s campaign. But the error is egregious enough that it merits discussion. Here’s the basic argument from DailyPaul:

1. If FactCheck.org writes about a candidate, then that candidate makes some inaccurate claims.
2. FactCheck.org has not written about Ron Paul.
3. Therefore Ron Paul does not make inaccurate claims.

That argument might sound appealing, but, in fact, it is a logical fallacy (philosophers call this one “denying the antecedent”). Consider a different argument that has exactly the same logical structure:

1. If it is Thursday, then I have to go to work.
2. It is not Thursday.
3. Therefore I do not have to go to work.

We wouldn’t recommend trying that argument out on your boss – unless, of course, you have a job that requires you to work only on Thursdays. And that’s the problem with the DailyPaul.com argument. It works only to the extent that you assume that we write about every single inaccurate claim uttered by every single political candidate. We don’t. We just hadn’t gotten around to mentioning many Ron Paul flubs.

We’ve corrected that oversight now.

-by Joe Miller

Sources

Braun, Stephen. “Paul Believes in Threat of North American Superhighway.” Los Angeles Times, 30 Nov. 2007.

Clymer, Adam. “The Race for Congress: Texas’ 14th District; Under Fire, a G.O.P. Convert Wins Party’s Fierce Loyalty.” New York Times, 8 April 1996.

CNN. “Election Center 2008: Primaries and Caucuses, Florida Results.” CNN Politics. 30 Jan. 2008. 4 Feb. 2008.

Congressional Budget Office. “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2008 – 2012.” January 2008. Congressional Budget Office. 31 Jan. 2008.

Dobbs, Michael. “A ‘Superhighway’ to Nowhere.” 3 Dec. 2007. Washington Post: The Fact Checker. 30 Jan. 2008.

“FactCheck.org Shows Ron Paul is Truthful.” 27 Jan. 2008. DailyPaul.com. 4 Feb. 2008.

Hayes, Christopher. “The NAFTA Superhighway.” 9 Aug. 2007. The Nation. 11 Feb. 2008.

Higgs, Robert. “The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here.” 15 March 2007. The Independent Institute. 31 Jan. 2008.

“H.B. 3588.” 2 June 2003. Texas Legislature Online. 11 Feb. 2008.

Kennedy, J. Michael. “Politics 88; Hopeless Presidential Race; Libertarian Plods on — Alone and Unheard.” Los Angeles Times, 10 May 1988.

Kovach, Gretel C. “Highway to Hell?” 10 Dec. 2007. Newsweek. 30 Jan. 2008.

LaFranchi, Howard. “Ron Paul; In Former Congressman, Libertarians Think Party Has Best Candidate Ever.” The Christian Science Monitor 29 Sept. 1987.

North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc. “NASCO Speaks Out.” NASCOcorridor.com. 11 Feb. 2008.

“North American Union.” 8 Jan. 2008. Snopes.com. 30 Jan. 2008.

Office of Management and Budget. “Department of State and Other International Programs.” Jan. 2007. Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2008. 4 Feb. 2008.

Office of Management and Budget. “Table 27–1. Budget Authority and Outlays by Function, Category, and Program.” 4 Feb. 2008. Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2009. 5 Feb. 2008.

Office of Management and Budget. “Table S–1. Budget Totals.” 5 Feb. 2008. Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2009. 11 Feb. 2008.

Paul, Ron. “The NAFTA Superhighway.” 31 Oct. 2006. Ron Paul 2008. 30 Jan. 2008.

“Republican Presidential Nomination.” 3 Feb. 2008. Real Clear Politics. 5 Feb.y 2008.

“SPP Myths vs Facts.” January 2008. Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. 30 Jan. 2008.

McCain’s Misleading Mailer

From Factcheck.org:

January 15, 2008

He faults Romney for “providing” state funding for abortions that Romney didn’t seek, and courts ordered.

Summary

McCain is sending out a postcard mailing in South Carolina that is misleading on more than one point.

• It says that “Romney provided taxpayer-funded abortions,” a distortion. Romney’s Massachusetts health-care plan faced a court order requiring abortions to be covered.

• It says Romney “refused to endorse Bush Tax Cut Plan,” but fails to note that McCain himself voted against it.

• It says, “Hillary tried to spend $1 million for a Woodstock museum” until “John McCain said NO.” In fact, McCain wasn’t present for the most important votes on the project.

Analysis

A copy of the mailer was provided to us by the Mitt Romney campaign at our request, after news accounts about it surfaced over the weekend.

It shows a smiling John McCain promising to “fight for lower taxes” and to “veto every single pork-barrel bill that crosses my desk.” Fair enough. Those pledges sound very similar to promises Romney himself has been making. But the mailer goes on to draw a picture of Romney’s record as governor of Massachusetts that is so distorted as to discredit McCain’s claim to be the candidate of “straight talk.”

Taxpayer-Funded Abortions?

One section says in bold letters: “Romney provided taxpayer-funded abortions.” That’s unfair and misleading at best and certainly leaves a false impression. Romney never pushed for taxpayer funding for abortions. The state law he signed provided greatly expanded state-subsidized health insurance for low-income residents, but it left decisions about what should be covered to an independent body, the Commonwealth Connector. It was that body, not Romney, that ruled that abortions would be covered.

In truth, the state had little choice but to cover abortions. The state Supreme Court had ruled in 1980 that the Massachusetts Constitution confers on Massachusetts women an even broader right to abortion than does the U.S. Constitution. It restated in a 1997 decision that the state must pay for medically necessary abortions if it pays for all other medically necessary procedures including services in connection with childbirth.

It is possible to argue (and some have done so) that Romney might have put up a public fight to narrow the abortion coverage had he chosen to do so, or that the Commonwealth Connector decided to cover more than is “medically necessary.” But it is simply false for McCain to claim that “Romney provided taxpayer funded abortions” when taxpayers had been ordered by the courts to pay for them long before Romney took office.

Stoning a Glass House

The mailer further says that Romney “refused to endorse Bush Tax Cut Plan,” and there is more than a grain of truth to that. As we’ve reported before, Romney was quoted in 2003 as telling his state’s congressional delegation that he “won’t be a cheerleader” for cuts that he doesn’t agree with and that he wouldn’t oppose the cuts in public because he “has to keep a solid relationship with the White House.”

What makes the McCain mailer misleading is that McCain himself went way beyond quietly refusing to endorse the 2003 tax cut plan. He was one of only three Senate Republicans to vote against it. The day after Bush proposed the cuts he criticized them as too generous to the rich. “It is middle-income Americans that have kept our economy afloat by buying houses and automobiles,” McCain said on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “I believe that they deserve the majority of the break, not the higher-income level of Americans.”

By attacking Romney for not supporting the 2003 cuts, McCain invites readers to believe that he himself must have supported them, which isn’t true. Furthermore, McCain also voted against Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, before Romney took office as governor.

Were You at Woodstock?

McCain’s mailer somewhat inflates his role in killing a proposal that would have allotted $1 million to New York state’s Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the proposed site of a museum celebrating the 1969 Woodstock music festival and its effect on American culture. It was, as the McCain mailing says, supported by Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, as well as other members of the New York delegation. And strictly speaking, it’s true that “John McCain said NO” to the proposal, in that he was one of three who cosponsored a proposed amendment to strip the project out of the appropriations bill.

But McCain wasn’t present for the key vote or the floor debate on his measure. He was on the campaign trail.

$700 Million in Tax Increases?

We also have a small quibble with the mailer’s claim that “Romney raised taxes by $700 million” in Massachusetts. That’s not strictly true. Most of the added state revenue for which Romney was responsible came in the form of fees, not taxes. And not everybody agrees on the total.

According to an estimate by the Massachusetts Department of Administration and Finance produced by the Romney campaign, increases in fees amounted to $260 million a year, and elimination of corporate tax “loopholes” brought in another $174 million a year. But the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation puts the total of increased fees and corporate taxes at $740 million to $750 million per year.

McCain Comments

McCain denied that his mailer constitutes the sort of “negative campaigning” that he has complained about when aimed at him. On the campaign trail in Michigan, he told reporters that he was just responding to earlier attacks by Romney. As quoted by MSNBC, he said:

McCain: It’s not negative campaigning. I think it’s what his record is. … [W]e will point out those matters of record. It’s a tough business. I said it in the debate the other night. It’s a tough business for all the candidates that are running. When millions of dollars are spent attacking us, we are going to have to respond.

Our judgment, however, is that McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” took a wrong turn with this mailer.

-by Brooks Jackson

N.H. Debate: The GOP Field

From Factcheck.org.

Republican candidates swing hard, tally some factual strikeouts

Summary

Republican and Democratic candidates participated in double-header debates in New Hampshire Jan. 5 in advance of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary. Republicans were up first, and they got a little wild with their swings:

• Romney claimed that the 47 million Americans who lack health care are not covered because they say “I’m not going to play. I’m just going to get free care paid for by everybody else.” Experts say that very few who are offered insurance turn it down and that the uninsured get worse care.

• Giuliani falsely blamed President Clinton for cuts in the military that occurred in large part under President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. He said that “the Army had been at 725,000; it’s down to 500,000.” That’s true, but it was down to 572,423 by the time Clinton took office.

• McCain recalled that he “strongly disagreed” with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and had “no confidence” in his Iraq strategy “at the time.” But he didn’t say publicly that he had no confidence in Rumsfeld until December 2004, after Bush was reelected and well after the war began.
  .
• Romney falsely denied that an attack ad called McCain’s immigration bill “amnesty,” though it does. One of his Web ads also attacks McCain for supporting “amnesty.” He conceded during the debate that McCain’s bill “technically” isn’t amnesty.

• Giuliani claimed that “economists” say health insurance rates would fall by up to 50 percent if millions more shopped for policies individually. Once again, his campaign was unable to produce a single economist who supports that figure.

• Romney claimed his Massachusetts state insurance program had reduced the number of uninsured in Massachusetts by 300,000. That’s the number who have gained coverage under the system, but many were covered previously through other means.

There were other false and misleading statements, which we note in the body of this article. We will turn to misstatements by the Democratic candidates in a second article.

Analysis

The (slightly) narrowed Republican field debated at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. John McCain, Rep. Ron Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson took part. Charles Gibson of ABC and Scott Spradling of WMUR-TV moderated.

Romney’s Freeloaders

Romney offered a theory for the number of uninsured that is simply false:

Romney: And the reason health care isn’t working like a market right now is you have 47 million people that are saying, “I’m not going to play. I’m just going to get free care paid for by everybody else.” That doesn’t work.

This idea – that most uninsured Americans simply don’t feel like having health insurance – has been heard before from this year’s GOP field. We addressed it here, after Huckabee claimed at a Dec. 10 debate that a third of the uninsured "think they’re healthy and invincible." Experts say this is simply not the case: Most people who are offered insurance do not turn it down, neither because of perceived invincibility nor from an unwillingness to "play" the insurance game.

The National Academies report that "only 4 percent of all workers ages 18 to 44 (roughly 3 million people) are uninsured because they decline available workplace health insurance, and many do so because they cannot afford the cost." A 2007 study published in Health Affairs found that 56 percent of the uninsured were neither eligible for public coverage nor able to afford insurance without assistance.  This study also found that 20 percent of the uninsured could have afforded coverage, but even leaving aside other factors like being turned down for insurance, that’s hardly 47 million people refusing to “play.”

Romney is also misleading when he implies that the uninsured are simply choosing between toeing the line and freeloading as two roughly equal ways of obtaining health care. While uninsured individuals can get a certain amount of free emergency care, it is by no means comparable to the care given to those with insurance. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that the uninsured have less access to care, are more likely to be hospitalized, are often financially unable to follow treatment plans, get less preventive care and are in general poorer health than the insured. Poorer health among the uninsured could also affect their ability to purchase private coverage, since insurance companies often reject individuals with preexisting conditions.

Rudy’s Historic Rewrite

Giuliani falsely blamed President Clinton for cuts in the military that happened mostly under a Republican administration:

Giuliani: Bill Clinton cut the military drastically. It’s called the peace dividend, one of those nice-sounding phrases, very devastating. It was a 25, 30 percent cut in the military. President Bush has never made up for that. We – our Army had been at 725,000; it’s down to 500,000.

Actually, most of the cutting to which Giuliani refers occurred during the administration of George H.W. Bush. At the end of fiscal year 1993 (which was Bush’s last one in office), the Army had 572,423 active-duty soldiers – a far cry from 725,000. In fact, to get to that number, one has to go back to 1990, during the first gulf war. Moreover, Clinton’s cuts in the military, while large, were nowhere close to 25 percent to 30 percent. Between 1993 and 2001, the Army went from 572,423 to 480,801, which is a decline of 16 percent. The entire military went from 1,705,103 to 1,385,116, a decrease of 18.8 percent.

Compare that with the far larger cuts made during the first Bush administration: In 1989, the military stood at 2,130,229 and the Army had 769,741 soldiers. By 1993, those numbers had declined by 19.9 percent and 25.6 percent, respectively.

And as we’ve pointed out before, it was the first Bush administration – specifically then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney – that began bragging openly of the peace dividend.

McCain’s Questionable Timeline

In his rush to criticize Donald Rumsfeld’s defense strategy, Sen. John McCain did some rewriting of his personal history:

McCain: Now, I strongly disagree with the strategy employed by Secretary Rumsfeld, and by the way, I’m the only one here that disagreed at the time. And I’m the only one at the time that said we’ve got to employ a new strategy and outlined what it was, which is the Petraeus strategy. And I said at the time I had no confidence in the then-secretary of defense.

It’s true that McCain was an early critic of Rumsfeld’s strategy in Iraq. In a November 2003 interview with PBS’ Jim Lehrer, McCain said:

McCain: I respect the opinions of Secretary Rumsfeld and our military commanders but. … All of the trends are in the wrong direction. … And so in my view we need more special forces, more Marines, more counter intelligence, more MPs, more of the kinds of forces that do counter insurgency work.

And it’s also true that McCain refused to offer Rumsfeld a vote of confidence. When President Bush reappointed Rumsfeld as secretary of defense following his 2004 reelection, McCain responded, “The president of the United States was reelected by a majority of the American people, and I respect his right. And I will work with the president obviously and with the secretary of defense.” But when specifically asked whether his comment was a vote of confidence, McCain replied, “No, it is not.”

But McCain’s expression of no confidence came in December 2004 – well into the Iraq war. Rumsfeld’s decision to invade with a much smaller force than the one suggested by his more traditional generals – the famous “shock and awe” strategy – was implemented in March 2003.

Hollow Denials on “Amnesty”

Romney was wrong when he denied that his attack ads described McCain’s immigration bill as “amnesty” for illegal aliens:

McCain: [T]he fact is it’s it [sic] not amnesty. And for you to describe
it as you do in the attack ads, my friend, you can spend your whole
fortune on these attack ads, but it still won’t be true.

Romney: No, no, no, no. I get a chance to respond to this. I’m
sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t describe your plan as amnesty in my ad. I
don’t call it amnesty. What I say is – and you just described what
most people would say is a form of amnesty.

In fact Romney has been running an ad since Dec. 28 that says “McCain pushed to let every illegal immigrant stay here permanently” while Romney “opposes amnesty for illegals,” adding: “Mitt Romney, John McCain, there is a difference.” That’s pretty clearly accusing McCain of supporting “amnesty.” Otherwise there would be no “difference” on that issue. (The ad also falsely accuses McCain of supporting payment of Social Security benefits to illegal aliens. See our Dec. 28 article for more on the ad.)

Romney also released a Web ad called “Twists” on Jan. 4 that says “McCain supported this year’s amnesty bill.” And even as the debate was in progress, the Romney campaign sent out an e-mail saying, “Sen. McCain Still Won’t Admit He Supported Amnesty.”

We give credit to Romney for conceding during the debate that the McCain immigration bill “technically” would not have granted amnesty, which dictionaries define as a pardon. The bill would have required payment of thousands of dollars in fines and fees by any illegal alien applying for legal status. But Romney’s denial that his advertising accuses McCain of supporting “amnesty” rings hollow.

For McCain’s part, he denied ever favoring amnesty.

McCain: Let me just say I’ve never supported amnesty.

McCain is right when he says that his bill required penalties to be paid by illegals trying to adjust their status. But he himself has in the past used the “a” word to describe what he had in mind – for instance, in an interview with the Tucson Citizen on May 29, 2003.

McCain: “Amnesty has to be an important part because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens.

And going back farther, McCain used the term in a 2000 press release to describe his support for a bill that would allow more Latino immigrants in this country to gain citizenship without having to return to their home countries. The release is still posted on his Web site.

Rudy’s Fluctuating Fantasy Number

Giuliani repeated his unsupported claim that health insurance premiums would fall by 30 percent or more if millions more bought them individually:

Giuliani: Only 17 million Americans right now buy their own health insurance. If 50 million Americans were buying their own health insurance – because it would be just as tax-advantageous to do it that way – and we had a health savings account, people – economists believe there’d be a 30 [percent] to 50 percent
reduction in the cost of health insurance, and quality would come up.

That's a change from last October, when Giuliani claimed that the reduction would be "more than 50 percent." When we challenged the figure then, the campaign could produce no studies or statistics to support the mayor's statement. We concluded that "the only backup we could find is Giuliani’s own faith in the virtue of free markets."

This time Giuliani is saying that unnamed "economists" predict a somewhat smaller reduction of "30 to 50 percent," but once again his campaign cannot back up his claim. When we asked for the name of a single economist who had produced such a figure, in a peer-reviewed journal or elsewhere, it furnished us with a quote from a campaign adviser, Scott W. Atlas, M.D. He is a professor of radiology and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical School, but he is not an economist. And Dr. Atlas did not directly support the claim of a 30 percent to 50 percent reduction, though he did express a belief that insurance rates would fall "drastically":

Atlas: If we greatly expand the number of people who purchase
health insurance in the private market, we will be able to drastically bring down costs. As we expand the private market with value conscious consumers – as Mayor Giuliani wants to do – health care will not be immune to the laws of economics. It is a simple fact that with a more open and robust market with more consumers shopping for insurance they want instead of what government mandates impose upon them, and with more suppliers competing to attract that money, prices will come down, choice of insurance products will increase, and quality will go up.

We have no quarrel with anyone voicing personal faith in free markets. But Giuliani is wrong to say that "economists" have produced a precise estimate of savings. He implies scholarly support that – so far as we can tell and his campaign has been able to show – doesn't exist. 

RomneyCare Rewritten

Romney went a step or two too far in his claims about the Massachusetts health insurance reform he signed into law.

Romney: And since we’ve put our plan in place last April, we’ve now had 300,000 people who were uninsured sign up for this insurance. Private insurance.

We looked into this boast previously, when Romney said the figure was 200,000, and we found that it was not known how many truly had been uninsured versus how many had dropped other policies in favor of the state's offerings. Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Commonwealth Connector, the agency charged with implementing the health plan, told us that "certainly there are people who didn’t have insurance and people who did." 

The Connector's Web site, which does say it expected 300,000-plus to be enrolled by Jan. 1, 2008, estimates that that number includes "over half" of those who didn't have insurance before the state plan was implemented (an estimate that would put the previously uninsured at about 200,000). But we couldn't find a concrete number of how many of the uninsured have gained coverage under the state's health plan. The state agency that annually determines the number without health insurance doesn't have such up-to-date figures. The Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance Policy found that 395,000 people in the state didn't have insurance between January and July 2006 (pre-reform), and it credited the state's health care plan for a drop of 40,000 of the uninsured by the same time period in 2007. It's likely that many more have signed up since then, as the deadline for getting insurance under the state mandate was Dec. 31, 2007.

Romney was also incorrect to say all of the 300,000 had signed up for "private insurance." Actually, most of them gained state-subsidized coverage. The Connector reports that "some 100,000 will be added to private commercial insurance and over 200,000 will enroll in subsidized or partially-subsidized state programs," including the state Medicaid and SCHIP programs. 

U.S. “Best” Health Care System?

Giuliani said the U.S. has "the best health care system in the world" because it is private:

Giuliani: The reality is that, with all of its infirmities and difficulties, we have the best health care system in the world. And it may be because we have a system that still is, if not wholly, at least in large part still private.

Fred Thompson and others at the debate agree with the "best health care system" assessment, which is an article of faith for many Americans. We won't quibble about which "system" is best, but we do note that the U.S. decidedly does not have the best health care outcomes.

The U.S. scores poorly on a number of crucial indicators. The World Health Organization ranked it 37th in health care performance in its 2000 World Health Report, just below Costa Rica. The CIA World Factbook rates the U.S. lower than France, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union average, among others, for both life expectancy and infant mortality (note that most of those countries use a form of the GOP-dreaded "socialized medicine.") A 2006 study of infant mortality rates by the charitable group Save the Children found that the U.S. was tied for second-to-last place among industrialized nations.

Warring Words

Former governors Huckabee and Romney sparred over what each of them had said previously about the war in Iraq. Both, as it turns out, denied views that they had, in fact, expressed. Last night, Huckabee said he supported the surge before Romney did:

Huckabee: I supported the president and the war before you did. I supported the surge when you didn’t.

Wrong. Romney first came out in support of a surge on Jan. 10, 2007, just before President Bush spoke to the nation on the topic. Romney said in a statement that "I believe securing Iraqi civilians requires additional troops." 

Huckabee, speaking on MSNBC two weeks later, on Jan. 24, wasn't so enthusiastic:

Huckabee (MSNBC, Jan. 24) : I’m not sure that I support the troop surge, if that surge has to come from our Guard and Reserve troops, which have really been overly stretched.

Huckabee had other opportunities in January 2007 to express an opinion on the surge, but he gave vague answers, often saying that the president was bold to make the decision without expressing his own opinion on the plan. E.J Dionne of The Washington Post called it "loyal distance" in a Jan. 16 column. This stance was illustrated on Fox & Friends on Jan. 11:

Huckabee (Fox & Friends, Jan. 11): Well, it’s a pretty gutsy thing for the president to do, first of all, to say that there have been mistakes. And then to say we’re going to put more troops in – I mean, he’s putting a lot of things on the line.

Later in the exchange, Romney countered Huckabee's charge that he had supported a timed withdrawal:

Romney: I do not – I do not support and have never support a timed withdrawal. So that’s wrong, Governor. You know, it’s – it’s really helpful if you talk about your policies and the things you believe and let me talk about my policies. And my policy is I’ve never talked about a time withdrawal with a date certain for us to leave.

Huckabee wins this one. It's true that Romney has never cited a date certain for pulling out the troops. But he has said that "there's no question" there would have to be a timetable, it would just be kept hush-hush. Here's what he told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an April 2007 interview:

Robin Roberts, ABC News: Do you believe that there should be a, a timetable in withdrawing the troops?

Romney: Well, there’s no question but that the president and Prime Minister al Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re gonna be gone.

Also, in September at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, Romney described a three-step plan for withdrawing the troops, saying that U.S. forces could move to a “support role” in 2008 and that ultimately “our troops are out of Iraq and are available if absolutely needed.“

Maybe in the Afterlife

In trying to lecture Ron Paul about the history of Islamic terrorism, Romney gets a demerit for saying:

Romney: I’d read their writings. I’d read what they write to one another, and that’s why when someone like Sayyid Qutb lays out the philosophy of radical jihadism and says we want to kill Anwar Sadat – when there’s the assassination of Anwar Sadat, it has nothing to do with us.

Qutb was a prominent Islamic writer and intellectual whose ideas, including the concept of jihad, are cited as an early influence on modern Islamic extremism. But his main antagonist was the government of Gamal Abdul Nasser, Sadat’s predecessor. Qutb was executed in 1966, four years before Sadat became president and 15 years before his assassination. Huckabee correctly noted this fact later in the exchange.

And That’s Not All…

We have other quibbles, some of them old. For instance, when Giuliani said yet again that New York “was not a sanctuary city” when he was mayor, we reminisced about our article from less than a month ago, in which we said that in a Congressional Research Service report, New York’s policies were found to be similar to those of other sanctuary cities, including those that used that very term.

Finally, we were curious about Romney’s statement that he’d be “honest” with the American people and tell them that “we can’t become energy independent in 10 years.” He’s right, of course. In fact, the Energy Information Administration projects that even in 2030 the net imported share of energy used in the U.S. will be about 29 percent, just 1 percentage point lower than the share in 2006. But we just wonder what’s led Romney down the path of realism here, when just last week he was telling us in an ad that “in the next 10 years, we’ll see more progress, more change than the world has seen in the last 10 centuries.” Not in the energy area, evidently.

– by Viveca Novak, with Brooks Jackson, Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Emi Kolawole, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson

Sources

Massachusetts Commonwealth Connector. “About the Connector: Overview.” www.MAHealthConnector.org, 6 Dec. 2007.

Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services. “HCFP Survey Finds 40,000 Decrease in State’s Uninsured.” 27 Aug. 2007

World Health Organization. “World Health Report 2000.” 21 Jun. 2000.

CIA World Factbook. “Rank Order – infant mortality rate.” 13 Dec. 2007.

CIA World Factbook. “Rank Order – life expectancy at birth.” 13 Dec. 2007.

Save the Children. “State of the World’s Mothers 2006.” 9 May 2006.

Kaiser Family Foundation. “The Uninsured: A Primer.”

Snyder, Lynn Page. “The Uninsured: Myths and Realities.” Issues in Science and Technology, Winter 2001.

Dubay, Lisa, John Holahan and Allison Cook. “The Uninsured and the
Affordability of Health Insurance Coverage.” Health Affairs. Nov. 2006.

Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by
Regional Area and by Country,” September 30, 1989. January 6, 2007.

Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by
Regional Area and by Country,” September 30, 1993. January 6, 2007.

Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by
Regional Area and by Country,” September 30, 2001. January 6, 2007.

Fred Kaplan, “The Flaw in Shock and Awe,” Slate.com. March 26, 2003.

NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, “Newsmaker: John McCain.” November 6, 2003.

Fox News Sunday, “Transcript, Sen. John McCain on Fox News Sunday,”
December 6, 2004.

Martin, Jonathan. “Romney concedes Iraq ‘a mess,’ describes three-step plan.” Politico.com, 3 Sept. 2007.

“Good Morning America.” ABC News, transcript, 3 Apr. 2007.

Top 20 PAC Contributors to Federal Candidates

From Opensecrets.org

Top 20 PAC Contributors to Federal Candidates, 2007-2008*
DEMS | REPUBS | ALL

PAC Name Total Amount Dem Pct Repub Pct Operating Engineers Union $1,417,675 86% 14% Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $1,097,950 98% 2% American Bankers Assn $1,039,370 40% 60% Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union $1,017,000 97% 3% AT&T Inc $1,010,550 39% 61% National Beer Wholesalers Assn $1,003,500 52% 48% Laborers Union $974,000 91% 9% American Fedn of St/Cnty/Munic Employees $896,636 99% 1% Credit Union National Assn $874,849 59% 41% American Assn for Justice $833,000 96% 4% National Air Traffic Controllers Assn $823,900 77% 23% Air Line Pilots Assn $821,000 86% 14% General Electric $793,500 49% 51% United Parcel Service $787,787 42% 58% National Assn of Realtors $780,000 53% 47% National Assn of Home Builders $763,000 44% 56% Plumbers/Pipefitters Union $706,800 93% 7% American Hospital Assn $706,080 62% 38% International Assn of Fire Fighters $704,800 75% 25% American Crystal Sugar $689,000 66% 34%

Totals include subsidiaries and affiliated PACs, if any.

*For ease of identification, the names used in this section are those of the organization connected with the PAC, rather than the official PAC name. For example, the “Coca-Cola Company Nonpartisan Committee for Good Government” is simply listed as “Coca-Cola Co.”

Based on data released by the FEC on Monday, October 29, 2007.

Republican Debate

From FactCheck.org

More exaggerations and misstatements in the final GOP debate before the Iowa caucuses.

Summary

In the Dec. 12 Republican presidential debate in Des Moines:

• Arizona Sen. John McCain promised to make the U.S. “oil independent” within five years, a goal experts say can’t be achieved.

• Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney claimed American students score in the bottom quarter among industrial nations, but they score about average in the most recent tests.

• Romney also claimed that federal programs to prevent teen pregnancy are “obviously not working,” while in fact births are dramatically below what they were in 1991 despite a relatively small increase last year.

• Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said a big federal tax cut would produce “a major boost in revenues for the government,” a notion that nearly all economists say is a fantasy.

• Former Gov. Mike Huckabee claimed he had the most impressive record on education of any GOP candidate, even though Arkansas children scored below the national average while those in Romney’s Massachusetts were No. 1.

• Rep. Duncan Hunter claimed the cost of administering and complying with the federal income tax is $250 billion a year, far higher than the figure given by a recent presidential advisory commission.

YouTube Debate

This report, along with other unbiased election analysis, is available at FactCheck.org.

GOP YouTube Debate Flubs

November 29, 2007

Updated: November 30, 2007

Falsehoods, exaggerations and stumbles

Summary

The CNN/YouTube debate among Republicans lacked any talking snowmen, but we did note a few false and misleading statements by the candidates.

• Romney claimed New York called itself a “sanctuary city” for illegal aliens. It didn’t.
• Giuliani denied New York actually was a “sanctuary city.” But the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has classified it as such, based on immigrant-friendly policies Giuliani still defends.
• Huckabee claimed he would “abolish the IRS.” He failed to mention that he’d replace it with another big tax bureaucracy.
• Huckabee said he had proposed to make children of illegal aliens eligible for Arkansas scholarships if they “had been in our schools their entire school life.” Actually, the proposal required only three years in Arkansas schools.
• Giuliani was correct on two points: While he was mayor, New York snowfall went down and the Yankees won four World Series titles. He was joking, but his gag should remind citizens that it’s a mistake in logic to give mayors, or governors or presidents, all credit or blame for what happens just because they’re in office at the time.
• Romney, claiming to be a “true suffering” fan of the Red Sox, said the team waited 87 years to win a World Series. They actually waited 86.
  

 

 

 

 

 

Analysis

The Nov. 28 debate, which took place in St. Petersburg, Florida, was hosted by CNN and YouTube.com and moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. The candidates participating were former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; Sen. John McCain of Arizona; and Reps. Duncan Hunter of California, Ron Paul of Texas and Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

“Sanctuary” Semantics

Romney and Giuliani accused each other of willfully providing “sanctuary” to immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. Both men exaggerated, though we find their denials are more strained than their accusations.

Cooper: Governor Romney, was New York a sanctuary city?
Romney: Absolutely. Called itself a sanctuary city, and as a matter of fact, when the Welfare Reform Act that President Clinton brought forward said that they were going to end the sanctuary policy of New York City, the mayor brought a suit to maintain its sanctuary city status.

Romney is simply wrong on one point: New York never called itself a “sanctuary city.” We find no instance where it did, and the Romney campaign has been unable to provide one.

However, a 2005 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (updated in 2006) lists NYC under the general heading of “Sanctuary States and Cities” and says it is among those that follow “sanctuary policies.” It lists the city among 32 that “utilized various mechanisms to ensure that unauthorized aliens who may be present in their jurisdiction illegally are not turned in to federal authorities.” But unlike some other cities on the CRS list, New York has never “called itself a sanctuary city,” and Romney was wrong to say that it did.

Giuliani also strained the facts when he flatly stated during the debate that New York “was not a sanctuary city.” Obviously, the CRS disagrees. New York indeed had a policy, which Giuliani defended during the debate, that forbade city employees from giving federal immigration officials the names of illegal aliens unless the immigrant was suspected of other criminal activity or turning the person over was required by law. That protection was granted by a previous mayor through executive order 124 in 1989 and renewed by Giuliani. However the city chooses to characterize its policies, they fit the description of “sanctuary” applied by neutral experts.

Giuliani stretched the facts when he accused Romney of employing illegal aliens at his home, which the mayor called “a sanctuary mansion.” And so did Romney when he said “I did not” have illegals working at his home.

Giuliani: At his own home illegal immigrants were being employed – (laughter, cheers, applause) – not – not – not being turned in to anybody or by anyone. … So I would say he had sanctuary mansion, not just sanctuary city. …

Romney: Mayor, you know better than that. …

Giuliani: You did – you did – you did have illegal immigrants working at your mansion, didn’t you?

Romney: No, I did not.

The fact is, as reported by the Boston Globe in 2006, several illegals worked at Romney’s home in Belmont, Mass., off and on over a period of eight years, sometimes working 11-hour days. They were, however, employed by a contractor, Community Lawn Service with a Heart, and not directly by Romney.

So, Giuliani was technically correct to say that “illegal immigrants were being employed,” since he used the passive voice and didn’t specify who did the employing. Romney could also argue that he was technically correct to say “I did not” have illegals working, since he didn’t employ them directly. The Globe, however, quoted a Guatemalan man as saying that during the years he worked at Romney’s home he occasionally got a “buenos días” from Romney or a drink of water from his wife, Ann.

Overall, the record reflects that both Romney and Giuliani have been more tolerant of illegal immigrants in the past than they now profess to be.

Huckabee’s IRS Sleight-of-Hand

Huckabee again claimed he would get rid of the IRS, a disappearing act that isn’t so easy as he makes it sound.

Huckabee: Anderson, the first thing that I would get rid of would be the Internal Revenue Service. We’d have a complete getting rid of a $10-billion-a-year industry. I’m not being facetious. If we enacted the Fair Tax, one of the most researched ways to revive our economic future. We will get rid of the IRS.

It is true that the Fair Tax would get rid of the agency that we now call the IRS. But, according to the bill Huckabee supports: “There shall be in the Department of the Treasury a Sales Tax Bureau to administer the national sales tax in those States where it is required.” So, Huckabee would “eliminate” the IRS by replacing it with a Sales Tax Bureau.

Furthermore, the new Sales Tax Bureau wouldn’t necessarily be much smaller than the existing IRS. According to the bipartisan Advisory Panel on Tax Reform, which studied the Fair Tax proposal extensively and rejected it: “The federal administrative burden for a retail sales tax may be similar to the burden under the current system” in order to ensure that the various states collected the tax in a systematic way. The panel went on to point out that the Fair Tax, which includes a cash grant to each taxpayer to compensate for its regressive nature, would also  require an entirely new type of bureaucracy to “keep track of the personal information that would be necessary to determine the size of the taxpayer’s cash grant.”

It’s true that the Fair Tax has been heavily researched, as Huckabee said. But most of the research that supports it was paid for by Americans for Fair Taxation – a group that advocates the idea.

Huckabee Scholars

Huckabee ran afoul of the facts when defending his failed proposal to make children of illegal immigrants eligible for state college scholarships:

Huckabee: I supported a bill that would have allowed those children who had been in our schools their entire school life the opportunity to have the same scholarship that their peers had who had also gone to high school with them and sat in the same classrooms. They couldn’t just move in in their senior year and go to college. … [It] said that if you’d sat in our schools from the time you’re 5 or 6 years old and you had become an A-plus student, you completed the core curriculum, you were an exceptional student, and you also had to be drug and alcohol free, and the other provision, you had to be applying for citizenship.

Actually, the bill Huckabee pushed for in his 2005 State of the Union address did not apply only to “those children who had been in our schools their entire school life.” It required only three years in an Arkansas high school to be eligible. And students did not have to be “applying for citizenship,” but rather they had to sign an affidavit stating their intent to do so in the future. All students who apply for state scholarships must “certify that they are drug-free” and “pledge to refrain from alcohol” if they are under 21, just as Huckabee said. But they certainly don’t have to be “an A-plus student.” The state requires a solid “B” average (a 3.0 average on a 4.0 scale). And the state may reduce that to a 2.5 average if sticking with the higher requirement “would unduly reduce the number of low-income or disadvantaged students who would otherwise be eligible for the program.” That’s a C-plus average.

The bill passed the Arkansas House but failed in the Senate. Later, a pared down version that would grant illegals in-state tuition breaks, but not scholarship rights, failed two votes short of passage.

Post Hoc Hooey

The debate included a couple of lighter moments, when Giuliani jokingly claimed credit for reducing annual snowfall “dramatically” and for four World Series victories by the Yankees during his term as mayor of New York.

In a gag video, his campaign joked that King Kong roamed city streets before Giuliani became mayor, adding:

Giuliani Video: Rudy prevailed: crime down by half, taxes cut and annual snowfall dramatically reduced.

Later, Giuliani said:

Giuliani: [When] I was mayor of New York City, the Yankees won four world championships. … I wanted to put this in our reel, but they cut it out, so I’m going to get it in – and since I’ve left being mayor of New York City, the Yankees have won none.

It’s true that snowfall was less than average under Giuliani, though it’s a matter of opinion whether the difference is a dramatic one or not. According to the National Weather Service, between 1869 and 1993, the average snowfall in New York City’s Central Park was 28.2 inches per year. During Giuliani’s term (from January 1994 through December 2001), average snowfall was just 26.7 inches.

And the Yankees did indeed win the World Series in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000 – but have failed to do so since.

Giuliani is clearly joking here, but he illustrates a serious point that we think voters should keep in mind: Politicians don’t automatically deserve credit or blame for what happens while they are in office. Sometimes it’s just luck. It’s a logical fallacy to conclude a leader’s actions are the cause of what happens afterward. Logicians have named this the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy (literally, “after the fact, therefore because of the fact.”)

The fallacy is easy enough to see when Giuliani takes credit for a reduction in snowfall during his term. It’s more subtle when he takes credit for halving crime during his term – especially when he fails to mention that crime rates were already falling before he took office and that they dropped nationally as well. And we could say the same thing about, for example, attributing the longest economic boom in U.S. history to the fact that Bill Clinton was in office during most of it.

Curse of the Bambino Prolonged

 

Romney claimed to be a “true suffering Red Sox” fan but got a basic fan statistic wrong:

Romney: Eighty-seven – 87 long years – we waited 87 long years. And true suffering Red Sox fans that my family and I are, we could not have been more happy than to see the Red Sox win the World Series.

Actually, the team won the World Series in 1918, and not again until 2004. That’s 86 years, not 87. Romney has lived much of his adult life in Massachusetts but was born in Michigan and graduated from college in Utah.

– by Brooks Jackson, with Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson

Clarification, Nov. 30: Our original story may have left some with the impression that New York, and other jurisdictions, prohibited police from turning over the names of illegal immigrants to federal authorities under any circumstances. Rather, New York’s policy prohibited “a city officer or employee” from sharing such information unless disclosure was required by law or the immigrant was suspected of criminal activity, including trying to get public assistance with fraudulent documents. The executive order instructed law enforcement officers to “continue to cooperate with federal authorities in investigating and apprehending aliens suspected of criminal activity. However, such agencies shall not transmit to federal authorities information respecting any alien who is the victim of a crime.”

 

 

 

 

Sources

Congressional Research Service. “Enforcing Immigration Law: The Role of State and Local Law Enforcement.” Updated 14 Aug. 2006.

Saltzman, Jonathan. “Illegal immigrants toiled for governor.” Boston Globe. 1 Dec. 2006.

Linder, John. “H.R. 25 [109th]: Fair Tax Act of 2005.” GovTrack.us. 29 Nov. 2007.

National Weather Service. Monthly & Seasonal Snowfall at Central Park. 1 Nov. 2007. 29 Nov. 2007.

President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform. “Final Report Chapter 9: National Retail Sales Tax.” 1 Nov. 2005. TaxReformPanel.gov.

Huckabee, Mike, “State of the State of Arkansas Address, 2005.” 11 Jan. 2005.

Arkansas 85th General Assembly, Session 1. “HB1525: Access to PostSecondary Education Act of 2005.“

Red Sox, Boston. “Postseason Results.”

 

 

 

 

 

Related Articles

The Not-Quite Truth About NYC

Giuliani twists facts about crime and liberalism in the Big Apple.

Huckabee’s Fiscal Record

Under fire from conservatives, the former Arkansas governor misrepresents his tax hikes, and cuts.

Clinton vs. Obama

Who’s right on health care, Social Security?

Tough Guy on Immigration?

Romney puffs up his record.

The Immigration Showdown

Romney’s and Giuliani’s chest-thumping on immigration leaves behind context and, in some cases, the facts.

John McCain’s “‘Outrageous’ Exaggerations”

Read the full article at FactCheck.org

McCain’s ad revisits some oft-mentioned examples of pork, but is he really the one who rooted them out?

Summary

Republican presidential candidate John McCain cites three absurd-sounding examples of pork-barrel spending in a recent ad: a “bridge to nowhere,” a study of the DNA of bears and a Woodstock museum.

McCain is known for fighting against earmarks, the other term lawmakers use for funding of pet projects back home. But he appears to have chosen these three because they’re easy to mock, not because he had significant involvement in removing them from the budget.

• He never specifically went after the “bridge to nowhere,” and he was absent for key votes on its funding.
• While he tried to cut money for several other projects in the same bill, he never proposed cutting the bear study and voted for the final bill containing it.
• He wasn’t present for the most important votes on the Woodstock museum, including one on an amendment he co-sponsored to kill the earmark and divert some of the funds.

Analysis

John McCain’s ad, “Outrageous,” which began running November 12, touts the Arizona senator’s long-standing fight against pork-barrel spending. The ad includes three examples of projects that McCain deems unnecessary and claims that “one man” has “the guts to stand up to wasteful government spending.”

It is indisputable that McCain has been a vocal opponent of earmarks, and indeed of all government spending that he considers wasteful (he has said that Congress spends money “like a drunken sailor”). He has been recognized for his efforts both by the media and by taxpayer advocacy groups.

But the three examples of spending highlighted in the ad – a “bridge to nowhere,” a study of bear DNA and a museum dedicated to Woodstock – seem chosen more for their impact than for any direct involvement McCain had in attacking them. In fact, he voted in favor of the bill that included the bear study funding; he was absent for key votes on the Woodstock museum (including one on an amendment he co-sponsored); and he never specifically tried to eliminate the bridge earmark and missed some crucial votes on that one, as well.

For what it’s worth, we’ll note that the three projects together cost a little under $300 million, which is a tiny fraction of yearly earmark activity. The Office of Management and Budget reports that the fiscal 2005 budget included 13,492 earmarks totaling $18.9 billion dollars. The taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste gives a higher estimate for that year – 13,997 projects for a total of $27.3 billion – and estimates that 2006 earmark activity cost $29 billion. That would make earmarks account for about 0.2 percent of the gross domestic product.

Huckabee’s Fiscal Record

See the whole report at FactCheck.org

Under fire from conservatives, the former Arkansas governor misrepresents his tax hikes, and cuts.

Summary

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has been hit with criticism over his record on taxes as governor of Arkansas. The faultfinders have been members of his own party, who take issue with tax increases he enacted. In recent interviews on Fox News, Huckabee responded to some of these questions, but we found him to be misleading and incorrect on several points:

• Huckabee claimed that a speech in which he implored the state Legislature to raise taxes was in response to a state Supreme Court order to increase education funding. But he specifically said in that speech that he would address the education matter at a later date.
• He said a tax on beds filled in nursing homes was a “fee” not a tax, despite the fact that he himself has called it the “bed tax.”
• Huckabee claimed a gasoline tax was only passed after 80 percent of voters approved it. Not true. The tax was enacted before a referendum vote on highway repairs.
• He frequently says he cut taxes “almost 94 times” but leaves out the 21 taxes raised during his tenure. In the end, he presided over a net tax increase.

Also, we find that former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson stretched the truth in claiming that Arkansas’ spending had doubled under Huckabee. It didn’t increase that much, and Huckabee left a sizable surplus.

Fundraising by Party

At Opensecrets.org, there’s a great interactive map detailing top fundraisers in every state.  In my state, Rudolph Giuliani has raised the most money.  Fascinating.

Biggest Donors Are Digging Deeper

From OpenSecrets.org:

Biggest Donors Are Digging Deeper for ‘08

__________________

Top industries and interest groups have increased their giving over 2004 by 46 percent, Center finds. As money shifts to Democrats, giving from Republican strongholds is mostly flat. 

____________________

WASHINGTON—The industries and interest groups that contribute the most money toward federal elections have substantially increased their giving since the 2004 election, according to an exclusive analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

On average, top-giving industries and interests have increased their total contributions to candidates for Congress and president, as well as to national party committees, by 46 percent since the same point in time four years ago. Compared with the first three quarters of the 2006 cycle, when there was no election for president, contributions from the top 50 most active industries are up 54 percent.

“A power shift in Congress and a wide-open race for the White House add up to record-breaking contributions from the nation’s biggest givers,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s executive director. “There is an intensity to the fundraising for 2008 that we’ve never seen before, which means the candidates and parties will be all the more beholden to their biggest donors.”

As interest groups and industries contribute substantially more money, they are also shifting their giving to Democrats, both to members of Congress now that the party is in control and to Democratic presidential candidates. The typical big-giving industry is now giving 57 percent of its contributions to Democrats, a shift of 14 percentage points from both 2006 and 2004, when the party and its candidates collected only 43 percent of the money.

Looking at specific industries and their contributions toward the 2008 election, individuals and PACs associated with the securities and investment industry, which includes hedge funds and private-equity firms, have increased their giving 91 percent since 2004. Lawyers and law firms—the top industry based on total contributions of $76.4 million—are up 52 percent. The real estate industry has increased contributions 51 percent, and the entertainment industry has boosted its giving 68 percent. Health professionals and the insurance industry have both increased their giving 23 percent.

The Center examined the 50 industries and interest groups that have contributed the most money toward the 2008 federal elections. Researchers analyzed more than $581 million in individual and political action committee contributions that flowed from those industries and interests in January 2007 through September, and made comparisons to the same periods in 2003 and 2005. (CRP is the only organization that attempts to classify all individual donors to federal politics by industry.) The analysis includes only contributions itemized with the Federal Election Commission, or those exceeding $200.

The sharpest increases since 2004 tend to be in the ideological sector. Democratic/liberal interests have increased their giving 396 percent since 2004, fueled particularly by Internet fundraising organizations such as ActBlue. Candidates have been donating money to each other at a greater rate, too. Contributions from candidate committees are up 164 percent compared with four years ago, and contributions from leadership PACs—political action committees formed by politicians to support other candidates—are up 88 percent over the ‘04 cycle.

The industries with the smallest increases, and even decreases in several cases, tend to have Republican-leaning track records. The automotive industry, which has contributed 75 percent of its money to the GOP since the 1990 cycle, has decreased its contributions by 20 percent since 2004. Food processing and sales, which includes grocery stores and manufacturers of food, is down 10 percent. Contributions from telephone utilities are down 4 percent over ‘04. Single-digit increases have registered among general contractors, defense aerospace and building materials and equipment—all industries that have leaned Republican for years. And the oil and gas industry has increased contributions just 15 percent over the ‘04 cycle, well below the average for big industries.

“Democratic donors seem unusually mobilized for this election,” Krumholz said, “but those industries who’ve traditionally given to Republicans seem to be either nursing their wounds from ‘06 or sitting this election out. That’s a challenge for Republicans—how to mobilize their fundraising base to compete with the momentum on the other side.”

The following chart shows the industries and interest groups that have increased their contributions by the greatest percentage compared to the 2004 cycle. The chart shows how each industry’s 2008-cycle contributions from individuals and PACs are split between Democrats and Republicans.

Largest Increases in Contributions from Top-Giving Industries & Interest Groups, 2008 cycle vs. 2004

Industry or Interest Group

08 Total

Increase vs. 04

08 Dem %

08 Repub %

(Analysis includes contributions greater than $200 to federal candidates and parties from individuals working in the industry and from associated PACs, as reported to the Federal Election Commission. Contributions were generally made during the first nine months of 2007 and 2003.) 

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The Center’s website, OpenSecrets.org, tallies contributions from top industries and interest groups in the site’s 2008 Election Overview: http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/industries.asp?cycle=2008.

 

About the Center for Responsive Politics

The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Founded in 1983, the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government. CRP’s award-winning Web site, OpenSecrets.org, is the most comprehensive resource for campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. CRP relies on support from a combination of foundation grants and individual contributions. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses, labor unions or trade associations.