Myths vs Facts

Below is an excellent list of myths about President Obama that far too many people believe are true. For this you can thank the congenital liars in the Republican Party, a captured media, as well as an unfortunately large, pervasive swath of voter ignorance. The White House's inability to get its message out, especially in the face of the incessant right-wing noise machine, ain't helping.

The list, along with the links, was originally compiled by Dave Johnson at Campaign for America's Future. Many thanks to Dave for his excellent work.

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There are a number things the public "knows" as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.

Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.

2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the "stimulus" was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the "stimulus" with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be "non-reviewable by any court or any agency.") The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.

4) The stimulus didn't work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.

7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is "going broke," people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on "welfare" and "foreign aid" when that is only a small part of the government's budget.

Federal Deficit is Down

You know the script; Obama's reckless spending will doom us all. Rein in the deficit, slash spending while we can, stop the federal government takeover. The perception of an ever-increasing deficit, abetted endlessly by Republican operatives, is what fuels teabaggers' visceral fear, of which they have many.

So it is interesting to see that the federal deficit is actually declining. OK, color me surprised, too. According to Bloomberg, the deficit was down 13% because of rising tax receipts. Does it need explaining that tax receipts go up when there is economic growth? And no, don't start that shit about how Obama raised taxes, because he didn't.

Bloomberg goes on to say that the still-large gap is "...down 13 percent from $103.6 billion in August 2009, according to a Treasury Department report issued today in Washington. The gap for the fiscal year that started in October was $1.26 trillion compared with $1.37 trillion last year at the same time."

At issue here is not just the decline, as welcome as that may be. I am not a deficit hawk, so I understand that the federal stimulus was always intended to be temporary and that Obama had no viable alternatives. Some want us to forget the magnitude of the steaming pile Bush handed Obama in January, 2009.

The primary take away on this story is that the right wing harangue against federal spending has been upended by the facts. Will this even register with teabaggers? It will be interesting to see how they respond, assuming they even hear it, as we head into the November elections.

And that is what makes this story doubly interesting. The mainstream news does not seem interested in covering it. Bloomberg, yes. But at other major sites, it is still crickets chirping. We'll see if that picks up in the next few days. Perhaps Republicans need more time to spin this one.

Djou Learning His Lines

It is not my intent for this blog to focus solely on local Hawaii politics. All the same, elections are coming up, and we have a huge amount at stake. That is obvious for the US as a whole, but for Hawaii the stakes are higher than usual. We are not called America's bluest state for nothing. Democrats have dominated both congressional districts for many years. And two of the US Senate's most senior members, both democrats, hail from Hawaii. So there is often relatively little drama, at least as far as who we send to Washington.

But now we have Republican Charles Djou, winner of a special election in May, looking to cement that victory by winning outright in November. As is usually the case with Republican newbies, Djou has all of Boehner's talking points down (a little party discipline is a good thing, right?).

I see Djou is harping about what he calls out of control spending. On Fox News (where else?) he makes the claim that the stimulus has failed. This is quite a remarkable statement. Even a cursory media review shows that the people who insist the stimulus has failed almost always have three things in common: One) Merely saying the stimulus has failed is an unproven assertion. They offer no real evidence or suggestion as to how they so easily arrive at what in reality is a complex issue; Two) There is a complete failure to consider, even with what the Great Depression has already shown, how the economy would have fared without the stimulus; and Three) The claimant is almost always a Republican politician or political operative, arguably the most biased view on a Democratic stimulus package, that one can possibly find. So consider the source's motives.

This doesn't prove the anti-stimulus critics, including Djou, are wrong, but merely asserting the stimulus failed is pretty weak. There is a host of economists, including those who have won that little thingie, what is it now? Oh yeah, the Nobel Prize, who say the stimulus was absolutely needed, and it needed to be larger.

Unfortunately, President Obama, and many Democrats in Congress, have failed to respond with sufficient vigor. Remember that for many members of our beloved electorate, you must not merely state your case-- you must repeat it incessantly. Too many democrats still figure that if an opponent's charge is wrong, it is best to ignore it. Republicans understand that repeated assertions, given enough time, become accepted truth. Remember how Senator Kerry refused to dignify the idiotic smears of the swift boaters? The accepted wisdom was that he would only call attention to the issue, and possibly look petty, if he complained about it. Good advice for daily life, but Republicans interpret it as weakness, and it only serves to embolden them.

Democrats have not learned their lessons. Djou is learning his; get your party's talking points and repeat them endlessly.