Top Ten Repeated Paul Ryan Lies
“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-
checkers,” says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster.
Paul Ryan Delivers a Great Lie (during convention speech)
Sally Kohn, a contributor to FOX NEWS!!!, said:
**"Ryan's speech was an apparent attempt to set the world
record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresen-
tations slipped into a single political speech.
On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics,
Ryan earned the gold."
Business Insider called it "factually shaky."
Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic used the headline: "The Most
Dishonest Convention Speech ... Ever?"
Mediaite's Tommy Christopher looked at the fact-checking site
PolitiFact's tallies on Aug. 10 and found that:
"Mitt Romney's statements have been judged Mostly False,
False or Pants on Fire 46 % of the time, versus only 29 % for
President Obama.
In the Pants on Fire category alone, Romney is more than four
times as likely to suffer trouser immolation than the president.
Nearly 1 in 10 statements by Romney earned flaming slacks, versus
1 out of every 50 for Obama."
- from The GOP Fact Vacuum by Charles Blow, The New York
Times, September 1, 2012
Who Cares if It's True? It Works:
Romney's Ads Are Based on LIES
"Romney's claim that the Obama administration has dropped
the work requirements for welfare recipients has been thoroughly
debunked, and that debunking has been widely reported....
Why then, do the ads keep running?
Two Romney insiders offered some surprisingly candid insight
into the question at a forum hosted by ABC News and Yahoo! News
this morning."
- Lauren Feeney, Moyers & Co., 8/30/12
Mr. Romney Reinvents History
"The truth, rarely heard this week in Tampa, Fla., is that the
Republicans charted a course of denial and obstruction from the
day Mr. Obama was inaugurated, determined to deny him a second
term by denying him any achievement, no matter the cost to the
economy or American security - even if it meant holding the nation's
credit rating hostage to a narrow partisan agenda..."
- The New York Times | Editorial, 8/31/12
National Debt LIES
As Ryan said in his Convention speech, "more debt than any
other president before him, and more than all the troubled gov-
ernments of Europe combined.”
Romney has made the almost identical claim, that Obama
has amassed more debt “as almost all of the other presidents
combined.”
But their math doesn’t add up: when Obama took office, the
national debt was $10.626 trillion. It has increased to slightly
above $15 trillion (Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, neither
of whom inherited two costly wars and a major recession, increased
the debt by a greater rate than Obama-db).
- 6 Worst Lies in Paul Ryan's Speech, Aviva Shen, 8/30/12
Medicare and Welfare LIES
“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-
checkers,” says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster.
A half dozen fact-checking organizations and websites have
refuted Romney’s claims that Obama removed the work require-
ment from the welfare law and will cut Medicare benefits by $716
billion.
Last Sunday’s New York Times even reported on its front page
that Romney has been “falsely charging” President Obama with
removing the work requirement.
- "How Romney Keeps Lying Through His Big White Teeth,"
Robert Reich, 8/30/12
Dan Butts
September 3, 2012
***
Top Ten Repeated Paul Ryan Lies
By Juan Cole,
Informed Comment
August 30, 2012
This year's Republican campaign may be the most dishonest
in history. A couple of weeks ago I listed 10 major falsehoods
and gaffes of Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan.
He repeated several of them in his Tampa (convention) speech,
and added a few more.
In honest political debate, when a candidate says something that
is not true, he is confronted by journalists and the public, and either
gives evidence that it is true, or backs off.
Ryan continues to insist on repeating known falsehoods, to the
extent that even Fox Cable News lamented his dishonesty.
Voters need to ask who Ryan represents. It is people who make
a million dollars a year or more. Everything he says is intended
to produce policy that benefits them, and which hurts working
people.
Millionaires don't like having to pay for government-provided
infrastructure, or health care for workers, and don't like having
to put up with unions. The rest of us like driving on roads without
potholes, over bridges that don't fall down, and not being bank-
rupted when we need an operation.
Since most Americans would be crazy to vote for policies that
only benefit our three million wealthiest, out of 310 million, Ryan
tries to appeal to workers with religion (banning abortion). He
needs to put together a coalition of millionaires and some religious
workers in order to win. But even that wouldn't be enough.
He has to get people on his side who would be hurt by his policies.
And that requires that he simply lie to them.
So here are some new lies he just retailed, along with a reiteration
of my earlier refutation of points drawn from his stock speeches,
which he put right back in his Convention speech.
1. Ryan blamed the US credit rating downgrade on President
Obama. But it was caused by the Republican Congress's threat
not to raise the debt ceiling. That is, the fault for the credit rating
downgrade from AAA to AA belongs with... Paul Ryan.
2. Ryan continues to claim that President Obama said business
owners did not build their own businesses. Obama said that business
owners benefit from government infrastructure and programs, which
they did not build.
No small business owner has built an inter-state highway or
bridge, but those are the means whereby their goods get to market.
Ryan's (and the GOP's) talking point in this regard is a typical Karl
Rove Big Lie, and among an informed electorate it ought to discredit
them.
3. Ryan depicted Obamacare as virtually a turn to Soviet-style
totalitarianism, as incompatible with liberal freedoms for the individual.
But the logical conclusion is that Ryan's running mate, Mitt Romney,
turned Massachusetts into a Gulag.
4. Ryan slammed President Obama for not implementing the
deficit-cutting measures recommended by the Simpson-Bowles
commission. But he himself voted against Simpson-Bowles.
(**Ryan was on the Simpson-Bowles commission-db)
5. Ryan keeps attacking Prsident Obama's stimulus program
now. But in 2002 when then President George W. Bush proposed
stimulus spending, Ryan supported it. "What we're trying to accom-
plish today with the passage of this third stimulus package is to
create jobs and help the unemployed," Ryan told MSNBC in 2002.
Ryan says that the stimulus had no positive effects, while
economists say it saved or created millions of jobs and pulled
the US out of a near-Depression.
6. Even more embarrassing, in 2010, Ryan asked for $20
million in stimulus money from Obama for companies in his district,
then repeatedly denied requesting stimulus funds. He finally ad-
mitted he had done so, but continues to slam the stimulus program
as a failure (even though the economy pulled out of a Depression
as a result of it).
7. Ryan slammed President Obama for the closure of an auto
plant that closed in late 2008 under George W. Bush. Ryan's run-
ning mate, Mitt Romney, opposed Obama's actual auto bailout,
which was a great success and returned Detroit to profitability.
8. Paul Ryan charges that Barack Obama has 'stolen' $700
billion from medicare for his Obamacare. In fact, these expense
reductions do not cut Medicare benefits, and, moreover, Romney
and Ryan supported these reductions! The difference is that they
would give the savings to the affluent, whereas Obama uses them
to cover the presently uninsured.
9. Ryan continues to push his longstanding plans for a steal-
from-the-elderly-and-give-to-the-rich medicare plan, which Presi-
dent Obama warned would cost ordinary recipients over $6000
a year extra.
Politifact checked and rated Obama's charge as correct, though
they noted that the figures referred to CBO analyses of Ryan's last
plan, not his 'new' one, which hasn't been subjected to similar analy-
sis. Ryan certainly recently put forward a plan that would cost ordin-
ary people that much extra.
10. Ryan neglected to note that under the tax plan he favors,
Gov. Mitt Romney would pay less than 1 % in annual federal taxes,
highlighting Romney's already low rate compared to ordinary
Americans (slightly lower than Ryan's own!) and putting the spot-
light back where Ryan's appointment was supposed to misdirect it.
*****