Gannett News Service reported that McCain's ad "characterized the Democrats as proposing to tax the country out of its economic woes," but not that that is false
SUMMARY: A Gannett News Service analysis reported on Sen. John McCain's response to television ads by Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign that criticized McCain "for being AWOL on the nation's economic challenges," stating: "McCain immediately fired back in videos ... that characterized the Democrats as proposing to tax the country out of its economic woes." However, the piece did not mention that the key assertion in McCain's ad is false.
In an April 7 Gannett News Service analysis, political editor Chuck Raasch wrote that "[c]ampaigns increasingly have begun posting responses to opponents' paid advertisements online within hours, if not sooner," and asserted that Sen. John McCain "did that twice last week when [Sen. Hillary] Clinton launched TV ads in Pennsylvania criticizing the Arizona senator for being AWOL on the nation's economic challenges." Raasch continued: "McCain immediately fired back in videos sent to supporters, journalists and launched onto viral highways like You Tube that characterized the Democrats as proposing to tax the country out of its economic woes." But Raasch did not note that the "characteriz[ation]" made in McCain's ad is false; neither Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama has asserted that, as the ad claims, she or he would respond to "home foreclosures mounting" by raising taxes, nor do Clinton's and Obama's economic proposals include tax increases for all Americans, as McCain's ad implies.
According to the ad, in response to "home foreclosures mounting, markets teetering," "Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama just said they'd solve the problem by raising your taxes -- more money out of your pocket":
ANNOUNCER: It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone ringing in the White House, and this time the crisis is economic. Home foreclosures mounting, markets teetering.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama just said they'd solve the problem by raising your taxes -- more money out of your pocket.
John McCain has a better plan. Grow jobs, grow our economy -- not grow Washington.
It's 3 a.m. Time for a president who's ready.
In a "fact-check" of McCain's ad during the April 3 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, media critic Howard Kurtz aired the ad and responded: "Sorry, wrong number. Clinton and Obama have not proposed raising taxes to deal with the mortgage mess, although their rescue plans would obviously use taxpayer dollars. They have proposed rolling back the Bush tax cuts -- cuts that McCain originally opposed -- but only on the most affluent Americans."
From the Gannett News Service analysis:
One of the latest communications trends is a variation of the "rapid response" concept honed by Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Campaigns increasingly have begun posting responses to opponents' paid advertisements online within hours, if not sooner. McCain did that twice last week when Clinton launched TV ads in Pennsylvania criticizing the Arizona senator for being AWOL on the nation's economic challenges.
McCain immediately fired back in videos sent to supporters, journalists and launched onto viral highways like You Tube that characterized the Democrats as proposing to tax the country out of its economic woes.
From the April 3 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:
[begin video clip]
KURTZ: The McCain campaign quickly responded to the Clinton ad with a spot that's airing only online.
ANNOUNCER: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama just said they'd solve the problem by raising your taxes -- more money out of your pocket. John McCain has a better plan. Grow jobs, grow our economy -- not grow Washington.
KURTZ: Sorry, wrong number. Clinton and Obama have not proposed raising taxes to deal with the mortgage mess, although their rescue plans would obviously use taxpayer dollars. They have proposed rolling back the Bush tax cuts -- cuts that McCain originally opposed -- but only on the most affluent Americans.
[end video clip]
KURTZ: The former first lady is trying to play the experience card with these red phone ads. That may be less effective against a Senate veteran like McCain -- unless Clinton can convince voters that the economy is not his strong suit.
It's FALSE BECAUSE HERE"S WHAT KURTZ FOUND:
"...Clinton and Obama have not proposed raising taxes to deal with the mortgage mess, although their rescue plans would obviously use taxpayer dollars. They have proposed rolling back the Bush tax cuts -- cuts that McCain originally opposed -- but only on the most affluent Americans"
Rick,
Here's what I'm afraid of, it'll likely start with the most affluent then trickle down to the middle class when more $$ is needed.
Let's get some of that Iraq oil money or let the Iraqs start paying their own way, & use that money we get, or save to help fix the mortgage mess.
A little bit more tax always leads to a little bit more & more & more.
Cut wasteful spending first. Then get some of that Iraq oil money, or stop throwing our money into Iraq. That to me is a better solution.
It seems to me the slippery slope is on the tax-cut side. It's very easy to sell tax-cuts, even reckless ones like the Bush cuts that have put us trillions more in debt. And even still the GOP sells tax cuts as a cure for all the ails everything. Remember first we had to cut taxes because we had a surplus, then we had to cut taxes because we had a deficit and slow economy.
It seems that tax increases have a very slippery slope to crawl up, not fall down.
"rolling back the Bush tax cuts" is a tax increase, you can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.
And using that money to bail out those who bought homes they couldn't afford is not the role of government, nor is the money we pay in taxes.
But Tommy, I'd argue (and I think you'd agree) that firms that practice predatory lending don't deserve to be bailed out either.
I mean, yeah, a lot of those people knew they couldn't afford it, but there were some who were actually tricked into those sub-prime mortgages. I've heard that firms even taught their mortgage lenders how to manipulate the computer programs to make it say those people who couldn't afford the mortgages say they could afford those mortgages.
Those that acted illegally should be prosecuted and those affected by that dealt with accordingly. That is a different issue than being "tricked" into buying something you know you can't afford based on what you think might happen in the future.
It isn't fair to those who were prudent and waited it out. If I get behind on my credit card because I fell for some 0% plan interest knowing it would go up in the future, are you going to pay my bills? If I buy a big screen TV with no payments for two years, and then can't afford it when the payments are due, are you going to pay for it so I can watch my shows in HiDef?
No.
Why? Because the CEO of that insurance company has a mansion to maintain, a chauffeur to pay, payments to make on his house in Hawaii, and gold faucets in the executive washroom that are scratched and need to be replaced.
Gotta keep your eye on what's really important, Rick.
Your HDTV is a luxury item. Housing is a basic necessity of the commons. I highly doubt that any Dem in their right mind would ever propose a sweeping bailing out for those who can't control their credit card usage.
Also,
Do landlords not use loans to purchase their properties?
I would suppose, unless they don't need too???
No, I am not for bailing them out either, sorry.
So, who determines the importance of who gets bailed out for what and who doesn't?
Congress and the president, as part of a representative democracy elected by the people.
I could go into more detail on the legislative process of our government, like sponsoring a bill, getting it passed committees, floor debates and votes, presidential signing and vetoing, but I'll let you look that up for yourself.
I'm not a teacher and I won't pretend to be one, but if there's any other basic concepts on American government I can introduce you to, don't hesitate to ask.
Your condescending attitude aside, then we as citizens should defer to the leaders in Congress and the WH, and have no place questioning their judgement on these things?
OK.
It was a pretty dumb question, so I thought some "needling" was in order.
Anyway, as far as "our say"...
I clearly said "as a part of a representative democracy."
We, the people, are also part of the representative democracy and have every place questioning their judgment.
The U.S. government and the First Amendment provide you with a variety of means to legally make your voice heard by your representatives. These include letters, e-mail, telephone, letters to publication editors, lobby visits, and peaceful public assembly. Although not as expeditious, the most important means to express our disapproval is, of course, the ballot box.
Well, the only reason, in my opinion, that this bailout idea is being floated at all for irresponsible homeowners who played with their own finances and now want the rest of us to prop them up, is because this is an election year, and pandering politicians love feely good issues like this to get votes.
It is disrespectful and unfair to those who played by the rules, yet those in favor of these bailouts never seem to care about them. Or they keep dismissing it altogether.
Go take their money and then explain to them why you're doing it.
The cost to do nothing is that the overinflated housing prices that have crippled many away financially from owning their own homes will now level itself out and bring those prices where they should be, so those that waited and were fiscally responsible will be able to own their own home.
I am sorry for anyone who loses their homes, but we are not in the business of rewarding irresponsibility for financial failures, where do you draw the line?
I am against government bailouts.
i agree that too many people foolishly took on too much debt, and too many refinanced to use their equity as a piggybank. what needs to be addressed is some limits on doing that. meanwhile, if we can help people stay in their homes, using a minimum of government funds that can be paid back, that is much cheaper than defaulting. that costs banks a huge amount of money. some defaults you cannot stop, and probably shouldn't. one thing i am definitely opposed to is the nationwide catastrophe fund, mostly backed by democrats. if you insist on building on the beach, or building shoddy construction in an earthquake zone, then the taxpayers should not bail you out.
Get a color set first and see if you like it. They seem to have gotten the bugs out and they work pretty well.
Certainly it is a little of each. The ratio is anyone guess. Heres the thing. History shows that when the big corporations AND individual citizens are both irresponsible the big corporations are bailed out by taxpayer dollars and the little guy takes it in the shorts. Kind of like the Savings and loan scandal.
""rolling back the Bush tax cuts" is a tax increase, you can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig."
And if your local furniture store has a sale, and marks down some of their goods...then after the sale is over they mark them back up to the REGULAR price...is that a price increase too? No, it isn't.
Setting taxes back to their original levels is not an INCREASE in taxes, it is just the END OF THE SALE PRICES
So, low taxes are like a government "sale" for all of us?
Ah, ok.......
Good ol' obtuse Tommy.
You know damn well what he was getting at. Just be glad he eviscerated your specious argument before I got a chance to.
I wouldn't have been so polite.
"So, low taxes are like a government "sale" for all of us?"
They are when the law that lowered them is a time-limited law that expires if not renewed. Allowing it to expire is the same as a business allowing their sale prices to expire and revert to their original, normal amount.
Are you REALLY too dumb to see that?
To make your analogy even more apt...
That furniture store is part of a chain that's been borrowing money like crazy for expansion and is now starting to feel the heat from creditors. The sale prices were part of an effort to lure more business volume, bring in more revenue, and get back into the black. But the effort failed because overhead has skyrocketed due to the unabated expansion, which has not produced the returns that were originally envisioned.
Your analogy fails to put the furniture store's expansion plans beyond their means, i.e."borrowing money like crazy" into perspective, in other words they overspent and overborrowed. They need to cut back, scale back, and get their financial house in order.
Because if a furniture store continues to operate like that they will go bankrupt, they don't have an unending well of tax increases they can impose on their customers like the goverment does.
And your entire premise is that tax increases produces more revenues to the government, which I wholeheartedly reject. Tax cuts puts more money in people's hands to spend, which fuels the economy and produces jobs, which increases revenues to the government.
What do you think this whole tax rebate check we are about to get is for? Exactly that.
No hangups, just a demand that government live within its means, and not reward it for being reckless.
"Tax cuts puts more money in people's hands to spend, which fuels the economy and produces jobs, which increases revenues to the government"
You've got to be kidding me! Tax cuts just raise the deficit. Try to look back on Bush's last eight years and argue that they have "fuelled the economy and produced jobs". What little economic expansion we have had over the last eight years has been funded more by people borrowing money against inflated housing prices than the money given to the rich "trickling down". And let's not forget that this wonderful economy Bush's tax-cuts have given us also left us with Billions more in debt. But I suppose we should just cut taxes again and the debt will go away through the magic of supply-side economics. Get real. Supply-side economics is a joke. No serious economist believes in it, except the ones who think that tax-cuts will restrain spending, which they clearly have not in the past.
Wrong, and wrong. The reason for the debt is due to runaway spending.
And it isn't tax cuts that cut spending, it's fiscally responsible politicians who we elect to be competent stewards of our money, as they would with their own.
So then you will stand with people like me against the multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq, then?
I am well aware that there is a balance between spending and earning. I do, in fact, have a job and pay bills, so you don't need to be condescending. But since you are so smart, perhaps you can balance the budget without raising taxes. Washington is waiting to hear from you.
And the rebate the working people will be getting will be demand side economics, increasing demand by putting disposable income into lower-income people's pockets so they can spend it, not into higher-income people's pockets so they can invest it, which is the ideology behind supply-side economics. So go back to economics class.
Or, shall I say, "Wrong, Wrong."
I know the spending has outpaced the tax cuts, but did the Bush tax cuts pay for themselves???
At least two of Bush's own economists, people who lived and breathed economics under Bush, have conceded that they didn't. But you're here with unknown credentials jumping up and down and insisting that they did.
"the overall premise that tax cuts increase revenue is undeniable. I fail to understand why you won't believe that."
I don't believe it because I prefer to believe what the CBO says:
"if lawmakers continued to provide relief from the AMT (as they have done on a short-term basis for the past several years) and if the provisions of EGTRRA and JGTRRA that are scheduled to expire were instead extended, total revenues would be almost $3 trillion lower over the next 10 years than CBO now projects.
[...]
Revenues are projected to increase sharply after 2010 given the assumption that various tax provisions expire
as scheduled."
"The President’s budgetary proposals would result in revenues that were $2.1 trillion below CBO’s baseline projections over the 2009–2018 period, largely because of proposed extensions of various provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA)."
I guess some more clarification of my analogy is necessary...
But the effort failed because overhead has skyrocketed due to the unabated expansion (never ending war), which has not produced the returns that were originally envisioned (iraqi oil revenue).
I asked a few days ago (and couldn't find it later) this question:
Given McCains vote against MLK day, does anyone know which side he fought on during the Civil War?
And, just to keep on topic: Taxes, taxes, taxes . . .
As an Obama supporter, I am glad that MMFA has raised this issue. We in the Democrat Party are going to provide free health care and pay for everyones mortgages with FREE MONEY! Yes, we have a magic "money machine" that prints all we will need to take care of all the people's needs!
Our slogan: From each according to his ability to each according to his need!
go Obama!
Free money? Isn't that the plan we've been on for the past 7 years?
You're not even trying anymore, Notta.
How big is NINE BILLION DOLLARS? Would it fit in a pickup truck? Maybe a railroad car?
1. You yourself and you make up a large constituent of that "Democrat" party.
2. We are the only industrialized nation without a national health care system. We also have subsequently the best health care in the world (for those who can afford it) and the worst health care of any industrialized nation. So it can be done, and it wouldn't be that expensive.
3. So you're a commie now? Someone call McCarthy...
oh, and we do have a magic "money machine." It's called the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. They print thousands of dollars a day while subsequently burning thousands of dollars a day, and $30 million over the course of a year.
What's even funnier about your post, is the official website is www.moneyfactory.gov
"From those to whom much is given, much is expected"
Take your time.
I think that was just written by some guy who calls himself "nerzog"
Why? Is it important or something?
Those red bastards even got to Jesus.
"From those to whom much is given, much is expected"
Nerzog, it's from the new testament, right? Doesn't that fellow philib often quote scripture on here? Hope you're not falling under his wing (kidding)
Everyone knows that Jesus was just a dirty liberal, anyways. Get a haircut, hippie!!
Wealthy Christians have been working feverishly for about 2000 years to prove that you really CAN get a camel through the eye of a needle.
NOA,
I won't call you stupid or a moron or whatever, but really have you ever thought about the position you are taking here. Putting your silly spoofing of the Democratic Parties platform aside, for once I would like to see you step up and speak out against the idiocy of cutting taxes during a time of war or the wreckless spending coinciding with tax cuts, or perhaps even the rationale for spending nearly one trillion dollars fighting two different sides in a civil war 10,000 miles away from our own crumbling bridges and highways. It's o.k. to disagree with the positions of the party of your choice. It's o.k. to be liberal on some things and conservative on others. All things in moderation.....try it.
According to NAC - all that money used to pay for the war was FREE. That explains how we are able to pay less taxes but spend more money, it's the neo-con principle of unlimited funds through borrowing. Screw the children and grandchildren with the bill!
If the Bush tax cuts expire, the people who raised the taxes are George Bush and his Republican Congress and nobody else. They designed all of the tax cuts to expire as an accounting trick to hide their deficit spending and as a political trap which they are now using as a fairly effective weapon. There was no opposition capable of stoppping them from making them permanent at the time they were made, they chose not to. They built in the automatic "tax increase" at the expiration of their legislation. Further, they stalled any real meaningful and permanent reform of the AMT which, because it was not originally written with any sort of scaling mechanism, is hitting more and more upper middle class families. This was also another accounting trick they were using to try and cook the books and another political weapon because they kept trying to tie ATM reform to more upper tier tax cuts.
But go ahead and keep believing that the Republicans are friends of the average wage earner, you may win the lottery someday and then they will be your friends.
The Republicans are always talking about wasteful spending by the congress but none of the candidates will say what programs need to be eliminated. The most you usually hear is that all budgets must be frozen of cut their budgets by a small percentage. Many people actually believe Republicans want to spend less overall money in the budget, instead of realizing that the republicans spend just as much or more , just for different things like weapons and war making.
Tommy says people should rent housing but this difficult due the shortage of affordable rental properties. Getting the tax break on home ownership is just to tempting to many people in a borderline financial situation.
If the mortgage interest was capped , then maybe huge homes would be built less frequently, and the almost logarithmic escalation in tax breaks would not drain our treasury.