Eugene Kiely, Author at FactCheck.org

Axelrod’s Hazy Memory of 2008

March 7, 2012

David Axelrod’s zeal to help President Obama win reelection has clouded his memory. In depicting the 2012 GOP primary as unusually nasty and harmful to the party’s eventual nominee, Obama’s senior campaign adviser falsely claimed “we mentioned Hillary Clinton twice in our advertising” during the 2008 campaign. With little effort, we found 10 such ads — five times what Axelrod claimed.
In a March 6 interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, Axelrod expressed shock at this year’s GOP primary nastiness and recalled with fondness (and fallacy) the gentleness of the 2008 Democratic nominating process.

Obama’s ‘Smidgen’ of Truth on Energy Efficiency

March 3, 2012

President Obama criticized “the other side” for failing to provide “a smidgen of an idea” for energy efficiency. But it turns out, there is only a smidgen of truth to the president’s criticism.
The president was speaking in New York at a March 1 fundraising event when he brought up his energy policies — which have come under attack by Republicans of late because of rising gasoline prices. Obama said: “You don’t hear just a smidgen of an idea from the other side about how we might want to enhance energy efficiency,

March 2: JFK, Wall Street, Contraception Mandate

March 2, 2012

Obama White House ‘Full of Wall Street Executives’?

February 29, 2012

A conservative group exaggerates the number of “Wall Street executives” in the Obama White House. In a major TV ad buy, the American Future Fund lists 27 people it claims are part of “Obama’s Wall Street Inner Circle.” But the ad is either flat wrong or greatly exaggerated in more than half of those cases. Among the most laughable examples we found of “Wall Street executives” in Obama’s “inner circle”:

A “White House fellow,” class of 2009-2010,

Feb. 24: Euthanasia, Gingrich, Olympics

February 24, 2012

Santorum Exaggerates Dropout Rate

February 21, 2012

Rick Santorum incorrectly claimed that “one of three children drop out of school” in the United States. The 2009 dropout rate was 8.1 percent — slightly higher than it was in 2008, but down significantly from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and even early 2000s, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
It’s true that a higher percentage of students in the U.S. fail to graduate on time — about 23 percent in the 2009-10 school year.

Did Obama ‘Approve’ Bridge Work for Chinese Firms?

February 17, 2012

Q: Is President Obama responsible for Chinese companies building U.S. bridges with stimulus money, as reported by ABC News?
A: No. A viral email distorts an ABC News report. California officials hired a Chinese contractor and rejected federal money to avoid federal “Buy American” laws.

Feb. 17: Super PACs, Bush Tax Cuts, Santorum

February 17, 2012

Obama’s Trillion-Dollar Exaggeration

February 15, 2012

President Obama has repeatedly and falsely claimed that “right now, we’re scheduled to spend nearly $1 trillion more” in tax cuts for the “wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.” That’s simply not true. The Bush tax cuts — which Obama and Congress extended for two years — expire at the end of this year, so any plans to “spend” beyond Dec. 31, 2012, would require Congress to act again.
The White House told us that the president is referring to the $968 billion that “we save”

Hoekstra’s Baseless Jobs Claim

February 10, 2012

Pete Hoekstra, a former Michigan congressman running for Senate, falsely claims in a TV ad that President Obama’s stimulus “lost 2.6 million more jobs.” Since the stimulus became law on Feb. 17, 2009, the U.S. has lost about 428,000 jobs, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says job losses would have been more severe during the recession without the stimulus.
Hoekstra left Congress in 2011 after running unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan in 2010. Now, he hopes to capture the Republican nomination for Senate and run against Democratic Sen.