Obama's TV ad against Romney lacks facts

I've seen this ad twice already after just turning on the TV 30 min ago...

A new ad from the Obama campaign takes aim at Mitt Romney’s performance as governor of Massachusetts, claiming he had “one of the worst economic records in the country.” But the ad overreaches with several of its claims.

■The ad states that job creation in Massachusetts “fell” to 47th under Romney. That’s a bit misleading. Massachusetts’ state ranking for job growth went from 50th the year before he took office, to 28th in his final year. It was 47th for the whole of his four-year tenure, but it was improving, not declining, when he left.

■The ad’s claim that Romney “cut taxes for millionaires” isn’t as black-and-white as billed. Romney opposed a plan to impose a capital gains tax retroactively, insisting on delaying the hike eight months. That’s different than pushing for a tax cut.

■The ad claims that Romney raised taxes on the middle class. It’s true that Romney imposed a number of fees, but none of them targeted middle-income persons. Also, Romney proposed cutting the state income tax three times — a measure that would have resulted in tax cuts for all taxpayers — but he was rebuffed every time by the state’s Democratic Legislature.

■The ad claims Romney “left the state $2.6 billion deeper in debt.” It’s true that long-term bond debt — used for capital improvements — rose under Romney, as it had in the years before he took office. But Romney wasn’t piling up yearly deficits to support operating expenses the way the federal government is, because Massachusetts requires balanced budgets.

■The ad claims that when Romney was governor, “Massachusetts lost 40,000 manufacturing jobs, a rate twice the national average.” That’s close to true, but the state lost a greater number of manufacturing jobs in the four years before Romney took office, and more in the four years after he left. In fact, the rate of job loss in manufacturing slowed during Romney’s time as governor.

■The ad claims Romney “outsourced call center jobs to India.” Not exactly. What he did was veto a measure that would have prevented the state from doing business with a state contractor that was locating state customer-service calls in India. Democrats who controlled the Legislature could have overridden the veto, but didn’t. The veto was supported by leading newspapers as a savings to taxpayers.

http://factcheck.org/2012/06/obama-twists-romneys-economic-record/

If you plan to fact check political ads...will you be posting Romney's too?

Well, it seems that all of that is "kind of true", "not exactly", "isn't black and white"...

Sort of like:

Factcheck: Romney Wrong on Economy
Posted: 05 Jun 2011 07:12 AM PDT

An AP fact-checking story claims that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was wrong when he said about President Obama, "When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer." AP reporters Calvin Woodward and Jim Kuhnhenn write, "The gross domestic product, the prime measure of economic strength, shrank by a severe 6.8 percent annual rate before Obama became president. The declines eased after he took office and economic growth, however modest, resumed."

Disclaimer: "No rich people were hurt in the making of this ad."

...and....

Obama spending binge never happened
Commentary: Government outlays rising at slowest pace since 1950s

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

http://secure.marketwatch.com/story/oba ... 2012-05-22

Guess you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Democracy4Sale wrote: Well, it seems that all of that is "kind of true", "not exactly", "isn't black and white"...

Sort of like:

Factcheck: Romney Wrong on Economy
Posted: 05 Jun 2011 07:12 AM PDT

An AP fact-checking story claims that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was wrong when he said about President Obama, "When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer." AP reporters Calvin Woodward and Jim Kuhnhenn write, "The gross domestic product, the prime measure of economic strength, shrank by a severe 6.8 percent annual rate before Obama became president. The declines eased after he took office and economic growth, however modest, resumed."

Disclaimer: "No rich people were hurt in the making of this ad."

...and....

Obama spending binge never happened
Commentary: Government outlays rising at slowest pace since 1950s

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

http://secure.marketwatch.com/story/oba ... 2012-05-22

Guess you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

I was commenting on a national Obama campaign ad attacking Romney that I saw twice in 30 minutes. And it wasn't my comments, it came from factcheck.org.

I don't recall having seen a national Romney campaign ad attacking Obama yet (I assume they exist, I just don't recall seeing one), and what you posted does't even appear to be an ad of any kind. So what's it doing in this topic?

We need technology device to skip all these ads.

Maybe show a clip of naked supermodels with some music during the ad?

Health Care Law ‘Killing Jobs’?

We do, however, find a more serious problem with the ad. Romney is shown saying that “Obamacare” is “killing jobs.” But, as we’ve written before, independent experts say the law will have a “small” or “minimal” impact on labor, and much of the effect will come from persons deciding to work less or retire earlier because their insurance is more secure and they receive subsidies to buy it. This Republican talking point is greatly exaggerated.

This isn’t the first time Romney has made the claim. Other politicians who have made “job-killing” assertions — including House Speaker John Boehner and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann — have pointed to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, but they have badly distorted what the CBO actually said.

The CBO said the law would “reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by a small amount—roughly half a percent—primarily by reducing the amount of labor that workers choose to supply.” CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told Congress in February that “half a percent” would be equivalent to about 800,000 workers by the end of the decade. Republicans, such as Bachmann, seized on this as evidence that the CBO said the law would “kill 800,000 jobs,” but basic reading comprehension skills show that’s not the case.

The CBO explained that the Medicaid expansion and subsidies for those with lower incomes would provide those persons with “additional resources” that “will encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from the labor market.” Those close to retirement may retire earlier than normal, because of insurance protections, such as coverage for preexisting conditions, that are part of the federal law.

[url=http://www" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;]http://www[/url].factcheck.org /2011/11/romneys-ad-deceitful-dishonest/

Well, now you have...

Dang... Here's another one...

Unproven Jobs Claim in Pro-Romney Ad

A pro-Romney TV spot running heavily in Iowa touts an unproven claim that the candidate “helped create thousands of jobs” as CEO of an investment firm. When we asked the super PAC sponsoring the ad for proof of its claim, a spokeswoman said: “We aren’t supplying that information.” And so far, neither is the Romney campaign.

The ad from super PAC Restore Our Future also rehashes Mitt Romney’s claim that he didn’t raise taxes in Massachusetts when he was governor, when in fact he raised hundreds of millions in new government “fees.” And it recycles his boast of making 800 vetoes, failing to mention that 700 were overridden.

The ad’s claim that “Mitt Romney turned around dozens of American companies and helped create thousands of jobs” refers to the years Romney spent as CEO of the highly-profitable investment firm Bain Capital, which he co-founded.

We contacted a spokeswoman for Restore Our Future, Brittany Gross, and asked for backup for the claim that Bain created a net of thousands of jobs while Romney was employed there, as the ad claims. Gross emailed back: “We aren’t supplying that information.”

No New ‘Taxes,’ But Lots of Fees

There’s another misleading aspect to Romney’s claim that he closed the deficit without raising taxes. He increased government fees by hundreds of millions of dollars.

As we wrote in 2007 when Romney was making his first presidential bid, Romney in 2003 doubled fees for court filings (which include marriage licensing fees), professional registrations and firearm licenses. Romney also quintupled the per gallon delivery fee for gasoline. All told, the fees raised more than $400 million in their first year. Romney also “closed loopholes” in the corporate tax structure, a move that generated another $150 million in increased revenue.

In addition, Romney cut aid to local cities and counties. In 2004, Romney cut nearly 5 percent, or about $230 million, from the local aid budget. The Massachusetts Municipal Association, representing the state’s cities and towns, said Romney’s cut “forced communities statewide to cut services and raise local taxes and fees.”

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/12/unprov ... romney-ad/

I just LOVE FactCheck, don't you?!

None of those are national TV campaign ads from the Romney campaign. They were web site ads and local ads during the primary campaign. And deflections too. I could dig up plenty on the other side from last year too.

My point is the real national presidential campaign TV ad season has begun. And the ad I just saw today from the Obama campaign twisted most all the facts.

Democracy4Sale wrote: Well, it seems that all of that is "kind of true", "not exactly", "isn't black and white"...

Sort of like:

Factcheck: Romney Wrong on Economy
Posted: 05 Jun 2011 07:12 AM PDT

An AP fact-checking story claims that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was wrong when he said about President Obama, "When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer." AP reporters Calvin Woodward and Jim Kuhnhenn write, "The gross domestic product, the prime measure of economic strength, shrank by a severe 6.8 percent annual rate before Obama became president. The declines eased after he took office and economic growth, however modest, resumed."

Disclaimer: "No rich people were hurt in the making of this ad."

...and....

Obama spending binge never happened
Commentary: Government outlays rising at slowest pace since 1950s

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

http://secure.marketwatch.com/story/oba ... 2012-05-22

Guess you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Nutting writes, “In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion.” This is inaccurate for two reasons: first, as Nutting notes in a separate chart, Obama was responsible for $140 billion in stimulus spending in 2009. Therefore, insinuating that the 2009 deficit was garnered entirely under President Bush’s watch is misleading.

Second, and related, Nutting fails to place blame for a number of other spending items President Obama signed into law on the President, particularly those from the $410 billion H.R. 1105, the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009. This Act, signed into law by President Obama on March 11, 2009, included the following:

Five billion dollars worth of earmarks added by Members of Congress.
A funding increase of $8.5 billion in the Labor-HHS-Education portion of the law, excluding emergency appropriations.
A $31 billion increase in nine bills funding various federal agencies over FY 2008, as totaled by the U.S. Conference of Mayor.
All told, as noted by the Canada Free Press, the omnibus increased total spending in the relevant departments by 8% over the prior year. And while $31 billion is not a large amount of money compared to the federal budget in 2009 (it was less than one percent of spending in that year), it was 22% of the $140 billion in deficit spending Nutting credits to Obama. Nutting should still have put the blame for those increases on Obama’s shoulders – as he eventually, and rightly, did with stimulus spending.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/23/c ... ord-again/

Guess you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Dang... And another one... I guess the Romney ads against Obama don't "lack facts"--they just use lies and twisted ones instead of facts... I can see your confusion...

Romney’s Solar Flareout
He misrepresents Obama's green-energy program using false and twisted facts.

Summary

An ad from the Romney campaign strains facts to make its point that federal grants and loans to green-energy companies were improperly steered to Obama’s political backers, and that federal money was wasted on failing companies that are now laying off employees.

* It claims the “inspector general said contracts were steered to ‘friends and family.’ ” But that’s not exactly what the inspector general said. And in the year since he said he was investigating such alleged “schemes,” no public charges have been made, at least not yet.
* The ad highlights the struggles — company losses, nose-diving stock and layoffs — at several companies that received substantial Department of Energy loans and grants. The ad fails to note, however, that most of the layoffs at those companies were overseas, or that the projects backed by DOE are largely moving along as planned. An independent review of the DOE program says its failure rate has been better than anticipated.
* The ad uses an inflated figure from a partisan source to quantify loans and grants that went to Obama donors.

Perhaps one of the ongoing cases will reveal some instances where money was directed to friends and family, but so far, there’s nothing except a year-old statement that the inspector general was looking into it. The ad suggests cases have already been discovered, and that’s not true.

An independent review of the DOE loan program, headed by former Treasury official Herb Allison, also “failed to turn up the waste and incompetence that critics said riddled the programs,” the Los Angeles Times noted, though it did call for better oversight after companies are awarded contracts. The review also concluded the program could lose as much as $2.7 billion on loans to green-energy companies, but that was actually less than the $10 billion anticipated by Congress. The Allison report was criticized by some Republicans as incomplete, particularly since the panel did not evaluate Solyndra as part of its review.

In addition to that investigation, Politico noted that “investigations launched by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee have yet to turn up evidence of political favors to Democrats in the loan program.”

A Dec. 25, 2011, Washington Post analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal emails concluded the green-technology program was “infused with politics at every level.” But the Post story didn’t document any corrupt pay-to-play scheme. Instead, the “politics” described by the Post involved the backing of financially shaky companies to push the administration’s green agenda, not any rewarding of campaign donors. The story said: “The records do not establish that anyone pressured the Energy Department to approve the Solyndra loan to benefit political contributors.”

First Solar

According to Meyer, more than 90 percent of the staff reductions from the April restructuring of the company were outside the U.S. Those layoffs are wholly unrelated to the three projects funded by DOE, Meyer said. Those three solar projects will employ about 1,200 people during the three-year construction phase, Meyer said, and about 12 people per site permanently.

Contrary to a Fox News report that originally ran under the headline “Obama-Funded Solar Firm Lays Off Half Its Workforce” (it was later changed), that’s just one project First Solar is working on. It is unrelated to the company restructuring, Meyer said, and is due to an unresolved code issue with the county. Once that issue is resolved, he said, First Solar plans to expand construction there again.

ECOtality

The ad states that San Francisco-based ECOtality has “received $126 million in taxpayer money. Lost $45 million, and currently under investigation.”

To date, the company has received about $42 million from DOE. So the ad is technically incorrect to say the company has received all of the $126 million. But it will if the project is completed in 2013, as expected. Also, the ad doesn’t mention anything about jobs in relation to ECOtality, but the Recovery Act website reports that the company projected the grant would create 144 jobs.

SunPower

Lastly, the Romney ad targets the solar company SunPower, saying: “More than a billion dollars in loan guarantees. Lost half a billion last year. Laying off workers.”

As for SunPower layoffs, according to a public filing with the SEC last November, the company did announce that it would be laying off 85 employees. But as was the case with First Solar, most of those layoffs were overseas, and represented a small fraction of the company’s global workforce. In its public filing, the company stated that it was consolidating or closing facilities in Europe “in response to reductions in European government incentives, primarily in Italy, which have had a significant impact on the global solar market.” The number of layoffs ended up being less, a company spokeswoman told us, and together with newly created jobs, the net reduction was 41 jobs.

More important, the jobs related to the DOE-backed California Valley Solar Ranch are unaffected. According to SunPower, more than 350 workers are currently constructing the solar power plant. The plant, company officials said, will begin generating 25 megawatts of power by September, and when completed will generate enough electricity to power 100,000 California homes (and is already contracted to do so).

According to Bloomberg News, even with the losses from Solyndra, the default rate for the DOE’s loans to solar, wind and bio-energy projects is less than 3.6 percent, less than a third of what the White House anticipated. So Romney is using the same “lemon-picking” strategies that critics of his Bain years use — choosing a few sour specifics to give a misleading picture of the larger reality. And he’s straining facts and misquoting a leading investigator as well.

http://factcheck.org/2012/06/romneys-solar-flareout/

Well, darn... I guess that one isn't very high in "truthy-ness either...I guess I understand when you talk about "twisting all the facts".... Oh, and this one IS a "national ad", and only 5 days old...

But ya gotta love FactCheck.Org.... Right?