Welcome to the political "Fact Free Zone..."

[DeltAlum]

I'm going to turn off my TV set until after November...

Murray: Candidates spin Webs of deception
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If you’re getting bored with the presidential campaign, go to the candidates’ Web sites.

11:48 AM EST March 31, 2004

by Alan Murray
"Some of the most imaginative political campaigning can be found on the presidential candidates’ Web sites.

John Kerry’s Web site links to an “interactive jobs map.” Enter your state and you can find out exactly how many manufacturing jobs have been lost during the Bush presidency, and exactly how many jobs Kerry claims his plan will create. Fast and easy.
E-file your taxes
at H&R Block.

For instance, click the battleground state of Ohio, and the map tells you that 169,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost under President Bush, while 417,000 will be created under Kerry.

And that’s low-tech, compared to the gasoline tax calculator on the Bush-Cheney Web site. Enter the make and model of your car, the average number of miles you drive each week, and find out exactly what “John Kerry’s gas tax increase” will cost you.

Or even better, you can enter a particular trip you plan to take, and find out how much the gas tax will cost you on that trip -– plus get directions, as a side benefit. (A trip to visit my mother in Chattanooga, Tenn., in my Acura MDX, would cost $31.44 in extra taxes, according to the Bush-Cheney campaign.)

A slight problem
Of course, no one has a clue how many jobs Kerry’s plan will create, but any economist will tell you that small tax changes like the ones he has proposed have a minimal effect on the economy.

And the Bush tax calculator isn’t based on any proposal Kerry has ever made; it’s based on a comment he made to a newspaper reporter a decade ago, when gas prices were a fraction of what they are today. Kerry currently says he opposes a gas tax increase.

But facts are rapidly becoming the victims of this year’s presidential campaign. If you ask the Bush campaign how it arrived at the estimate that a President Kerry would raise taxes by $900 billion in his first 100 days, you’ll have to prepare yourself for a fantastical set of assumptions that stray far from anything Kerry ever even hinted.

But then ask Kerry’s top economic adviser, Roger Altman, how much money the candidate’s plan to repeal tax cuts on those making more than $200,000 year would raise, as my colleague Steve Liesman did on “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, and he’ll tell you: “I don’t have a cost on that right now.”

Well, Mr. Altman, the answer is not hard to find. The Treasury Department has published it on its Web site: $477 billion over 10 years. At least, if you are willing to believe the Treasury.

So what should you believe in this ever-escalating war of words between the two presidential candidates? Not much, unfortunately. We’ve entered a fact-free zone."


People who are allegedly intelligent life forms buy into this stuff. Amazing.