Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Flood of Damned Lies Coming From the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

It's bad enough that The Chamber of Commerce, led by an ultra-right wing sociopath named Tom Donahue, is brutally anti-American worker, cheering the outsourcing of jobs to Asia and demanding tax breaks for doing it. It's bad enough that the Chamber endorses crushing every protection American workers enjoy. It's bad enough that the Chamber is all for destroying labor unions. It's bad enough that the Chamber endorses every economic position of the Lunatic Right, and that the Chamber is simply the political arm of the Corporatocracy that almost crashed the world economy in 2007-2008.

But now the Chamber is smearing and sliming Democrats with thousands of TV ads. Yes, there is substantial evidence that foreign money is behind this to a degree. But the major issue, as we see in this post here is this:

THE ADS THEMSELVES ARE DAMNED, STINKING LIES.

That's the part that gets overlooked in the foreign money controversy. The sheer dishonesty of the Chamber's ads should be the issue.

Specifically, among MANY lies (as stated in the linked article:)

(1) The Chamber is running or has run a cookie-cutter ad attacking Dems in many districts that contain core claims that have been cleanly debunked. There are versions of this ad targeting Dem Reps. Tom Perriello of Virginia, John Boccieri of Ohio, Earl Pomery of North Dakota, and Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio, as well as candidate Stephene Moore of Kansas.


All these ads claim that the Democrat in question supported "gutting Medicare by $500 billion," a reference to their support for health reform. But Politifact found that in reality, "the law does not take $500 billion out of the current Medicare budget." FactCheck.org thoroughly debunked this claim, too.


(2) All of the above ads hammer the Dem by claiming that seniors in their states face "reduced benefits," thanks to the Dem in question, another reference to health reform. Each ad gives a different number of "reduced benefits," based on which state they're in, and each ad sources the Kaiser Family Foundation for the claim.


But Tricia Neuman, a vice president with Kaiser, flatly denies that her group found what these ads claim it did. The claim is based on this Kaiser chart that only details the state-by state enrollees to Medicare advantage plans -- and does not predict any reduced benefits under health reform. "That statement does not come directly from anything we've written," Neuman tells me. "It may mislead seniors enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans into thinking their benefits will be cut -- which, at this point, is not clear." Indeed, Neuman notes, some benefits could go up.

And it goes on and on. Through the flood of lying, deceptive ads, the right-wing economic RADICALS AND FANATICS who run the Chamber are simply trying to buy the Government. This has been made possible by the corrupt Citizens United decision, made by the corrupt, pro-Republican conservative Supreme Court majority. We need to fight this open sewer of right-wing, Big Business Lies as best we can. What can we do?

A. GIVE TO DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES MAKING LAST-MINUTE PUSHES IN KEY RACES. Sestak in Pennsylvania, Giannoulias in Illinois, Sink in Florida, Reid in Nevada, McAdams in Alaska, Bennet in Colorado, Carnahan in Missouri, and any others you can help.

B. SPREAD THIS POST AROUND TO YOUR E-MAIL LIST.

C. GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE! We're closing in on the Republicans all over the country. Many of the undecideds are Democrats. Get them out to vote!!

D. VOTE DEMOCRATIC, either in Early Voting or on 2 November.

DON'T LET THE CORPORATE RIGHT-WING BUY THIS COUNTRY. IT'S NOT THEIR PROPERTY--IT'S YOURS!!

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