No Runny Eggs

The second edition PolitiCrap is now up. This time, George Mitchell looks at a story that appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel a few days ago that characterized Feingold’s voting record as breaking to both the left and the right. Here’s the close of the analysis and the rating:

In radio promos for Journal Sentinel political coverage, Gilbert says the paper wants to give readers the information they need to evaluate statements by candidates. But in this case, the paper effectively has recast one candidate’s main claim. To Feingold’s advantage, Gilbert’s story reframes the major concern Johnson has with the maverick label.

Rating
Blended.

WTMJ-AM’s Charlie Sykes and several of Wisconsin’s best right-of-center bloggers have launched a new fact-checking feature called PolitiCrap after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel showed typical liberal bias in the first several runs of its PolitiFact Wisconsin feature (done in conjunction with the St. Petersburg Times, which is consistently liberal in its “fact-checks”). In keeping with the theme from the (Almost-Somewhat-Not-Quite-Deep-Enough) Deep Tunnel Awards Charlie does every Friday just after the bottom of the 11 o’clock hour (or just past the middle of Part 3 of the podcast for those of you who can’t listen live), there are 4 classifications possible:

All graphics courtesy David Lunde of Lundesigns

Things are starting off with a bang, with a look at Tom Barrett’s pension comparo commercial suggested by Patrick from Badger Blogger. The cold-hard facts (emphasis in the original):

In the spring of 2009, Milwaukee County issued $400 million in Pension Obligation Bonds (POB’s). Before the bonds were issued, Milwaukee County had been paying off its pension liability over a 30-year period of time with an 8% interest rate.

In contrast the new pension bonds will be paid over a 25-year period of time with a 6.2% interest rate. This switch saved taxpayers $237 million. (Which may be why the plan was embraced not only by Walker, but also by many of Barrett’s own buddies on the County Board.)

Don’t just take our word (or Walker’s) for it: Moody’s, the bond ratings agency said that without the issuance of the pension bonds, the county’s unfunded liability could approach $1 billion, in just four years.

This will be a daily feature because there is so much material out there, not just from the campaigns, but from the media (some of whom act as though they’re part of certain campaigns).