Romney’s “Apology Tour” lie debunked for years by fact checkers

  By Cyrus | October 23, 2012 - 9:49 am | 2012 Election
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In the third and final Presidential debate, Romney repeated a lie that has been debunked repeatedly for years by a range of media sources.  Romney repeated the lie in the 2nd Presidential debate and was called on it.  He repeated the lie during the GOP convention and was called on it.  See below for a sampling of the many, many times this lie has been debunked, dating back to the early days of Obama’s Presidency, some in direct response to Romney’s own lying months before the final debate: Oct 23, 2012 – CNN debunks apology tour lie Oct 23, 2012 – … Continue reading this post →

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Bad Arithmetic: Top Romney Economist Admits Jobs Plan Number Don’t Compute

  By Cyrus | October 18, 2012 - 2:51 pm | 2012 Election
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Bad Arithmetic: Top Romney Economist Admits Jobs Plan Number Don’t Compute (this article was originally posted at www.creators.com at the above link) When innocent citizens asked about unemployment last night at the town hall presidential debate on Long Island, would Mitt Romney again tout his plan to create 12 million jobs? Unable to Etch-a-Sketch away that often repeated claim — one that he has hired several conservative economists to endorse — the Republican candidate had little choice. It’s up on his campaign website, it’s there in his own well-advertised words, and it is the central appeal of his candidacy for … Continue reading this post →

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Obama has reduced the deficit. Period.

  By Cyrus | October 16, 2012 - 8:28 am | 2012 Election
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We often hear (and will continue to hear) an incorrect assertion that President Obama has increased the deficit.  Mitt Romney’s own campaign website states, “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.” This is a lie and based largely on counting Bush spending as Obama spending.  It has been fact checked thoroughly, but Romney and other Republican critics of Obama continue to use repeat this lie including in the first Presidential debate.  In fact, the deficit is lower in 2012 than it was when Obama took office, and once … Continue reading this post →

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Obama’s Attempts at Bipartisanship: a Chronological Review

  By Cyrus | October 12, 2012 - 2:50 pm | 2012 Election
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(Author’s note: This is the first in a two part series using a chronological review of media reports.  The second article will detail Republican obstructionism of most of the Obama agenda, particularly his jobs bills, a fact that refutes the criticism that Obama’s agenda – the same agenda that Republicans have blocked – has failed) We have heard the “Obama as radical partisan” canard from Republican critics since the first day of Obama’s first term, and the fog of history and rhetoric makes it difficult to objectively assess Obama’s record on bipartisanship.  Republican dogma says that Obama was the uber-partisan, … Continue reading this post →

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Fossil Fuels & Nuclear Lion’s Share of DOE R&D Subsidies

  By Cyrus | October 11, 2012 - 1:14 pm | Energy Policy & Economics
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Opponents of renewable energy (it’s hard to believe they exist) claim that renewables cannot compete economically with oil, gas, and nuclear power.  I have discussed the fallacy in this argument from an economic theory point of view here, but it is also important to point out that the subsidies for renewables are a tiny fraction of those for coal, oil, and gas.  Many reports on this topic focus on the comparison of overall subsidies to fossils and nuclear vs. oil & gas, but in the context of all the criticism that the Department of Energy (DOE) has gotten after one … Continue reading this post →

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Romney’s “Snake Oil Medicine” Debate Performance

  By Cyrus | October 4, 2012 - 10:46 pm | 2012 Election
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The first Presidential debate was remarkable not only for President Obama’s lackluster and almost detached performance, but also for the impressively dishonest performance by Mitt Romney.  Below I summarize lies told by Romney, mostly based on analysis from a number of fact checking sites.  I was expecting a long list but am surprised to see how long the below list was and just how thoroughly and completely Romney, while giving an impressive performance, lied his way to winning the first Presidential debate: “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut.” Independent economists at the Tax Policy Center have shown that the price tag for … Continue reading this post →

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Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use

  By Cyrus | September 26, 2012 - 6:02 am | Energy Policy & Economics
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This report by the National Academies examining the externalized/societal costs of energy production was originally requested by Congress  in the 2005 Energy Bill.  It offers the most thorough attempt I have seen to try to quantify the costs we incur in addition to the price we pay for energy (I have written extensively on the topic of externalized/socialized  costs in my Framework Series article on the topic of Market Failure. One key takeaway: looking only at the non-global warming costs of electricity production from coal, society pays 3.2 cents per kWh in hidden costs in addition to the price we pay on our … Continue reading this post →

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The Estate Tax and the “Death Tax” Bate and Switch

  By Cyrus | September 26, 2012 - 2:54 am | Taxes & Tax Policy
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The estate tax is similar to the standard gift tax, but is levied when a rich person dies and passes their estate on to their family.  Conservatives call this the “death tax” and have fought it for decades.  Conservatives have characterized the estate tax as an unfair double tax that hits millions of estates and forces families to sell their farms. The fact is that the estate tax hits a very tiny minority of estates.  Yet this fact has never prevented conservatives from misleading everyone from small business owners to small farmers into thinking that it’s an issue that will impact … Continue reading this post →

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US effective corporate tax rates are below global average

  By Cyrus | September 26, 2012 - 2:43 am | Taxes & Tax Policy
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Conservatives consistently make the claim that tax rates in the US are among the highest in the world.  As evidence, they point to the top tax bracket, or “corporate tax rate”, into which high earning businesses fall. As discussed here, only 3% of businesses fall into the top two tax brackets.  This does include most large American corporations.  But even among this group, there is a big difference between corporate tax rates and effective taxes paid. A 2011 study by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service showed that, while the statutory corporate tax rate in the US is higher than the … Continue reading this post →

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