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Monday, January 10, 2011

THE TOP TEN POLITICAL LIES OF 2010

Steve Cole comments:

Recently, a conservative website posted the "top ten political lies of 2010" and I thought I'd review their list and discuss some of it.

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Lie #1. Ninety-five percent of "working families" received a tax cut.
Website: The bill gave tax cuts to some and tax credits to others.
Comment: Seems a technical issue, not a lie per se.

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Lie #2. The General Motors bailout "worked."
Website: The bondholders got 10% of the stock for their $27 billion while the unions got 40% of the stock for $10 billion in bonds.
Comment: Both true. I don't see this as "lie" per se. The bailout did keep the company (technically) alive. It did reward the unions (an Obama goal). So it did work.

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Lie #3. Obamacare will "bend the cost curve down."
Website: The savings require unlikely cuts in Medicare.
Comment: I don't think it will bend the cost curve because the cost of medical care is what we're willing to pay for it. I think it is a lie but that the website explanation of the lie is not on point. A better lie is "you can keep your doctor/insurance" (which the website also mentioned as a sub-lie) which isn't true if Obamacare convinces your doctor to retire or your insurance plan to shut down.

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Lie #4. The tea party is "racist" because it uses the racially coded rallying cry "take our country back."
Website: Democrats also said "take our country back" (from George Bush).
Comment: Score one big deliberate lie.

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Lie #5. The $800 billion "stimulus" funded millions of "shovel-ready" jobs.
Website: No, it did not.
Comment: Score one big deliberate lie.

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Lie #6. Stimulus "saved or created" 3.5 million jobs of which 90% were in the business sector.
Website: No, it did not. It created 682,370 jobs of which 80% were in the government sector.
Comment: Score one big deliberate lie.

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Lie #7. There is a "consensus," according to the White House website, that the stimulus plan "pulled us back from the brink of economic disaster."
Website: No, there is not. Polls show 65% of Americans think the stimulus did nothing.
Comment: Score one big deliberate lie.

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Lie #8. The 111th Congress was the "most productive" in a long time.
Website: The 111th Congress tripled the deficit and cost the Democrats their majority.
Comment: You can make whatever you want of this one, so I don't think it's a lie.

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Lie #9. Bush-era "deregulation" caused the Gulf oil spill.
Website: The Obama Administration, not Bush, approved the Deepwater Horizon well.
Comment: They forgot to mention that Obama policies forced drilling into deep water.

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Lie #10. Guantanamo Bay will be shut down in 2010.
Website: And it wasn't, and that's a good thing.
Comment: I'm not scoring this as a "big political lie." When everybody knows it's a lie, it's just politics.

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