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Viral Spiral
FactCheck Mailbag
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of May 7-13.
See letters from previous weeks“ Why is that worth noting? Does it change the facts? ” -
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2012 Players Guide
Author Archives: Brooks Jackson
A Puffed-up Appeal to Job Fears
A TV ad opposing the Senate immigration bill uses inflated numbers in an oversimplified, one-sided appeal to fears about job security. The ad claims that Congress is considering “adding 33 million foreign job seekers” when 20 million Americans can’t find a job. Both those numbers are inflated and misleading. Furthermore, …
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Obama’s Judicial Juggling
President Obama incorrectly claims that the Senate has taken three times longer to confirm his court nominees than those of his predecessor, George W. Bush. The president made the claim recently as he announced that he would nominate three judges to fill vacancies on the federal Circuit Court of Appeals …
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Distortions in the Medicaid Battle
Conservative critics of the Affordable Care Act are misrepresenting a study examining the health benefits of expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income people. In Arizona, a group calling itself American Commitment has launched a series of 30-second Web ads claiming that “a recent study shows that Medicaid doesn’t even improve …
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Ted’s Twisted History
In Sen. Ted Cruz’s twisted vision of economic history, Ronald Reagan cured double-digit unemployment by cutting spending and reducing the federal debt, and Jimmy Carter was guilty of “out-of-control regulation.” In the real world: Total federal spending soared during Reagan’s deficit-plagued first term, and the national debt nearly doubled. His …
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Reid Twice Wrong on $2.6 Trillion ‘Cuts’
Sen. Harry Reid was doubly wrong when he claimed that Congress already has cut $2.6 trillion from projected future deficits by reducing “non-defense programs” alone. In fact, legislation he refers to applied to both security and non-security spending. Furthermore, a good chunk of the deficit reduction came from tax increases, …
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Firefighters, Fact-Checking and American Journalism
When I came to Annenberg and launched FactCheck.org in December 2003, I had a single research assistant and practically no competition. Now, nine years later, FactCheck.org has an excellent staff, and so many other journalists are fact-checking politicians that one media critic calls it “the ever-growing factchecking industry.” So I think …
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Chained Explained
Using a more accurate cost-of-living adjustment for federal benefit payments and tax brackets would cut the federal deficit by perhaps $300 billion over the next 10 years. But it faces opposition from both right and left. Economists generally agree …
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Tagged budget (27), CPI, debt (28), deficit (24), inflation, Social Security (57), taxes (135)
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