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Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Gutenberg
Date: June 12, 2012 07:00AM
First, his claim about government spending stretches the truth like taffy. Second, he then tacks on an outrageous claim that the Affordable Care Act would mean the end of America as a free-enterprise economy. And though experts have pointed out repeatedly that the claims are false, he keeps making them.

[www.washingtonpost.com]
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: swampy
Date: June 12, 2012 08:14AM
Obama's Pinocchio for the week....

"The private sector is just fine..."




If you don't stand for something, you'll probably fall for anything.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Pam
Date: June 12, 2012 08:47AM
Quote
swampy
Obama's Pinocchio for the week....

"The private sector is just fine..."

Except in the context in which it was spoken was true.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 12, 2012 09:34AM
Quote
Gutenberg
FAffordable Care Act would mean the end of America as a free-enterprise economy

It may not do that but it did nothing to "bend the cost curve", remember that? And how come nobody talks about the 50 million uninsured anymore? Where did they go?
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: john dough
Date: June 12, 2012 10:26AM
Obama's statement, however interpreted, does nothing to make what Romney is saying true. Mitt is/has been a consistent liar about the condition of things and will say ANYTHING, regardless of veracity, to be elected.

It is always interesting that when Mitt gets caught spreading a lie, somehow it becomes a problem with Obama.






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2012 10:29AM by john dough.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: cbelt3
Date: June 12, 2012 11:04AM
I'm afraid that this 'fact checking' organization is not as clear about what are 'facts' and what are 'opion'. I prefer "Polifact".

This is an OPINION. Of course Mr. Romney's assertions are also Opinions. As we should all know from our introduction to the scientific method in 3rd grade Science class, theories of what the future will look like cannot be 'fact' until the future period has been reached.

Sorry.. you cannot call ONE forecast "a Lie" and call another Forecast "The Truth". They are both forecasts. Neither true nor false until the future is reached.

My personal opinions and experiences with 'models' are well known. I should not have to refer you to Samuel Clemens' assertion at this juncture.

You may now enjoy the existential exercise of disagreeing with my statement.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: swampy
Date: June 12, 2012 11:11AM
Quote
Avenger

It may not do that but it did nothing to "bend the cost curve", remember that? And how come nobody talks about the 50 million uninsured anymore? Where did they go?

The "50M" uninsured would pick up coverage under Obamacare, but then all the people with jobs that are getting insurance through their employer will become the new uninsured when their employers drop coverage in leiu of paying the lower penalty. (Except of course all the people who work for entities that have been given expemption)




If you don't stand for something, you'll probably fall for anything.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 12, 2012 11:50AM
Quote
swampy


The "50M" uninsured would pick up coverage under Obamacare,

Not at all clear how. I bet they think they'll get free healthcare. I wouldn't be surprised if they remain uninsured. The press just won't talk about them anymore. Remember the homeless?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2012 11:50AM by Avenger.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: swampy
Date: June 12, 2012 12:01PM
Yeah, and if they aren't paying now, what made Obama think they would pay under Obamacare? And the liberals will get so upset if the IRS goes looking under bridges for them to collect the penalty. LOL




If you don't stand for something, you'll probably fall for anything.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: mattkime
Date: June 12, 2012 12:07PM
>>what made Obama think they would pay under Obamacare?

uh, the "incentives"?


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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: john dough
Date: June 12, 2012 12:11PM
Still has nothing to do with the lies that Romney is spreading. Both of you are a broken record.


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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: hal
Date: June 12, 2012 02:23PM
Obama's 'fine' did not rate any pinocchios (see the link below). Saying 'fine' is one thing - producing numbers out of thin air to back a bogus claim is different - it's a lie, not a generalization.

[www.washingtonpost.com]
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 12, 2012 03:53PM
You can create any chart or graph to prove your point but there is a simpler measure that can't be faked; net jobs, and that is over half a million in the negative territory since his inauguration. So next time you hear 4.7 million new jobs created remember that he is not telling you how many were lost.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: john dough
Date: June 12, 2012 04:25PM
What proof have you to offer? Anything? Unless you back it up, it is only your opinion.

At least when others bring up a point, they are showing that they did their homework; you are just showing to be the same troll as before you were thrown out of here.


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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 12, 2012 06:53PM
You don't have to dig deep to figure out something ain't right. There are 350,000 new unemployed every week. That is 1.4 million a month. Explain that.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: mattkime
Date: June 12, 2012 08:18PM
please dig deep to stay on topic.

Quote
Avenger
You don't have to dig deep to figure out something ain't right. There are 350,000 new unemployed every week. That is 1.4 million a month. Explain that.


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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: hal
Date: June 12, 2012 09:01PM
Quote
Avenger
You don't have to dig deep to figure out something ain't right. There are 350,000 new unemployed every week. That is 1.4 million a month. Explain that.

easy - your numbers are wrong!
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: john dough
Date: June 12, 2012 09:56PM
Anyone can make things up, like "Bush is the most unpopular living president" (oh wait, that's true).

Avenger, either back up what you are talking about or...




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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: $tevie
Date: June 12, 2012 10:24PM
Quote
Avenger
You don't have to dig deep to figure out something ain't right. There are 350,000 new unemployed every week. That is 1.4 million a month. Explain that.


It's so easy to find real numbers instead of made up ones.
[www.bls.gov]


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: $tevie
Date: June 12, 2012 10:41PM
Quote
cbelt3
I'm afraid that this 'fact checking' organization is not as clear about what are 'facts' and what are 'opion'. I prefer "Polifact".

Politifact gave Romney a "Mostly True" with the 37% number, although with a ton of caveats which makes me wonder why they went with "Mostly True":
[www.politifact.com]
Quote

So how would taking this into account change the equation? If you subtract the share for federal transfer payments from figures above, it turns out that government spending as a percentage of GDP actually declined between 1963 and 2010, from 22.5 percent to 19.3 percent.

And this trend is confirmed if you use a different data set. The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes statistics that break down the components of national GDP. If you take the category "government consumption expenditures and gross investment" for all levels of government -- a figure that doesn’t include transfer payments -- and divide it by GDP, government accounted for 22.0 percent of GDP in 1963 and 20.7 percent of GDP in 2010.

So Romney’s numbers are nearly correct, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Yes, government spending has risen as a share of GDP, but the actual control on spending exerted by government has not risen by anywhere near that amount, because the bulk of the growth has come in transfer payments that individual Americans ultimately control (and, in many cases, under programs which they had paid into to begin with). On balance, we rate Romney’s statement Mostly True.

On the other hand, they gave him "Pants on Fire" for his dire projections:
[www.politifact.com]
Quote

Eugene Steuerle, an economist with the Urban Institute, a think tank that does economic and social policy research, said Romney’s comparison is imperfect because over the past century, there really hasn’t been a golden age in which the economy was genuinely unfettered, so the U.S. really couldn't be inching away from such an age.

"We’ve been a mixed economy for a long time," Steuerle said. "The ‘free market’ is a somewhat vague term. Technically, a Federal Reserve system and an antitrust division of the Justice Department interfere with a totally free market economy, yet they may promote a competitive economy."


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 12, 2012 10:43PM
Quote
hal
Quote
Avenger
You don't have to dig deep to figure out something ain't right. There are 350,000 new unemployed every week. That is 1.4 million a month. Explain that.

easy - your numbers are wrong!

You either have to reject government figures or multiplication tables.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 12, 2012 10:47PM
Quote
$tevie
Quote
Avenger
You don't have to dig deep to figure out something ain't right. There are 350,000 new unemployed every week. That is 1.4 million a month. Explain that.


It's so easy to find real numbers instead of made up ones.
[www.bls.gov]

This gibberish of a link is designed to hide and obfuscate. I gave you two numbers that obviously don't add up to what you hope is going on in the economy.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: $tevie
Date: June 12, 2012 11:49PM
Where did those numbers of yours come from? Did you make them up?

The link is a series of simple declarative sentences. I am sorry that you can't understand them.


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Lux Interior
Date: June 13, 2012 06:48AM
Must we start posting at the third grade level again?
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 13, 2012 07:05AM
Quote
$tevie
Where did those numbers of yours come from? Did you make them up?

It is called news on the radio, every Thursday. As for multiplication tables, I can't help you with that.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: john dough
Date: June 13, 2012 07:38AM
Sorry that the points that others make (and that are backed up with proof) are not to your liking. Sometimes facts are tough to handle, but facts are facts.

Unless you have some proof of what you are saying, do us all a favor and @#$%&.


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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Pam
Date: June 13, 2012 07:44AM
Ignore user is a great feature smiling smiley
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: davester
Date: June 13, 2012 01:35PM
Quote
Pam
Ignore user is a great feature smiling smiley
Ditto. It should be called "Ignore Nonsense".



"So be proud to be a decent American instead of just a w'anker whipping up fear!" - Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: $tevie
Date: June 13, 2012 02:14PM
Quote
Avenger
Quote
$tevie
Where did those numbers of yours come from? Did you make them up?

It is called news on the radio, every Thursday. As for multiplication tables, I can't help you with that.

Well, I can't help that somebody has lied to you:
[www.tradingeconomics.com]


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 13, 2012 03:22PM
Listen tomorrow at 8:30 for how many NEW unemployed joined the ranks last week. If it is less than 350, 000, the White House celebrates. This is the new normal, just like $3.50 gasoline an d8.2% unemployment.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: $tevie
Date: June 13, 2012 04:17PM
Okay, I just spent some time Googling and I am going to concede on the "350,000 applications a week" figure.

The figure was correct, so as Politifacts would say, it's a True on the Truth-o-meter.

As long as we understand that these people are not perpetually collecting unemployment from that day forward into infinity -- so you can't total the weekly figures up and get any kind of accurate figure of how many people are out of work based on that number. It's a stand-alone number indicating job loss in any given week, but not total job losses.


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: $tevie
Date: June 13, 2012 04:23PM
Quote

United States Initial Jobless Claims
In the week ending June 2, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 377,000, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 389,000. Historically, from 1967 until 2012, the United States Initial Jobless Claims averaged 363.3800 Thousand reaching an all time high of 695.0000 Thousand in October of 1982 and a record low of 162.0000 Thousand in November of 1968. Initial jobless claims have a big impact in financial markets because unlike continued claims data which measures the number of persons claiming unemployment benefits, Initial jobless claims measures new and emerging unemployment. This page includes a chart with historical data for the United States Initial Jobless Claims.

[www.tradingeconomics.com]


"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Avenger
Date: June 13, 2012 08:59PM
Thanks for the graph. I appreciate the point that I can't carry jobless figures from one week to the next because some may get off that list, but how many do? I suspect 90% remain on that list for months. So there is accumulation but perhaps not 100%.
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: August West
Date: June 14, 2012 09:52AM
Quote

Ignore user is a great feature

+1
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Re: Four Pinocchios for Romney's claim about government spending and Obamacare
Posted by: Ted King
Date: June 14, 2012 10:24AM
Quote
cbelt3
I'm afraid that this 'fact checking' organization is not as clear about what are 'facts' and what are 'opion'. I prefer "Polifact".

This is an OPINION. Of course Mr. Romney's assertions are also Opinions. As we should all know from our introduction to the scientific method in 3rd grade Science class, theories of what the future will look like cannot be 'fact' until the future period has been reached.

Sorry.. you cannot call ONE forecast "a Lie" and call another Forecast "The Truth". They are both forecasts. Neither true nor false until the future is reached.

My personal opinions and experiences with 'models' are well known. I should not have to refer you to Samuel Clemens' assertion at this juncture.

You may now enjoy the existential exercise of disagreeing with my statement.

If you burrow down through the article linked in the OP, I think you'll find that they were basing their rating on the questionableness of the premises that were used to come to the prediction that Romney made:

Quote

But Romney goes way too far when he adds private health-care expenditures to this total and claims that it shows the “reach” of government. Mitchell — no fan of the health-care law — politely called the concept “novel.” As he put it, “I agree that private health-care outlays are heavily influenced by government policy, but that was already the case before Obamacare. Yes, Obamacare will make it worse, but I don’t think it is justifiable to count that 10.03 pct of GDP as private before Obamacare and government after Obamacare.”

“What Governor Romney said is that government will reach half the economy,” Fehrnstrom said. “Obamacare requires everyone in the country to have insurance coverage that will pay for their health care, allows Washington to define what that coverage must consist of and how it will be priced, creates a new board to preference some treatments over others, and even levies new taxes to pay for it all.”

Using the word “reach” appears to be a stretch. Under Romney’s definition, a wide variety of industries, such as banking or housing, should also be counted as part of this government-controlled economy.

The Pinocchio Test

In essence, Romney has taken a debatable assertion — that government “consumes” 37 percent of the economy — and then hyped it with a nonsensical non sequitur — that the health-care law extends the “reach” of government to 50 percent of the economy.
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