No Runny Eggs

The team found Jim Sullivan’s claims about his record so full of it, we’re recommending courtesy flushes. The first load:

“I have worked tirelessly to grow our local economy, bring new jobs and industries to the region, ease our tax burden,”

Fact: in 2007 Jim Sullivan voted for the largest state tax increase in U.S. History when he cast a yes vote for SB40S Vote Sequence 102:, the Senate version of the state budget.

Fact: SB40S included a $15 billion tax increase to fund Healthy Wisconsin, a government run health care program that would have meant an average of $510 in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker.
Wall Street Journal. July 24, 2007

Fact: Healthy Wisconsin would have increased payroll taxes on employers by $1,000 per employee.
Wall Street Journal. July 24, 2007

Fact: Healthy Wisconsin would have put Wisconsin’s budget $4.79 billion further in debt.
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. June, 2008. Vol 21, 4

This is just me talking, but we really need something stronger than “Total Crap” for stuff like this.

I know, I should have put this up when it went up over the weekend, but I was trying to enjoy a fall weekend here in Wisconsin. Aaron Rodridguez of The Hispanic Conservative took on Tom Barrett’s claims that he revitalized the Menomonee River valley:

Overall, what was Mayor Barrett’s role in developing the Menomonee Valley? Well, by the time Barrett came on the scene, most of the modern real estate had already been developed. However, Barrett’s campaign ad touts his role in bringing Ingeteam, Helios USA, Talgo, and Republic Airways Holdings to the Valley. So let’s look at these.

*Ingeteam received $1.66 million in clean-tech manufacturing tax credits from the federal government to build wind turbine generators in Milwaukee. Ingeteam followed the money and Governor Doyle took the credit.

*Helios USA received $1 million from the federal government to invest in green technology in Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Economic Development Corp. (a private firm) supported Helios USA with a $500,000 loan to build a 40,000 square-ft factory. The funding to make it happen did not involve Mayor Barrett.

*Talgo came to Wisconsin because the federal government awarded us $823 million in stimulus funds to build a Milwaukee to Madison high speed rail line, $12 million to improve service between Chicago and Milwaukee, and $1 million on a route between Wisconsin and the Twin Cities. Without a federal subsidy of $835 million, Talgo wouldn’t have considered the move. Antonio Perez, Talgo’s CEO, said the reasons for choosing Milwaukee were based on economic conditions, logistics, cost of living, training facilities in the area, and an available work force – none of which has anything to do with Barrett.

*Republic Airways received a sizable carrot of $27 million in state income and payroll tax credits through 2021. It was a considerable incentive, but the deal-clincher was that Republic Airways already owned hangar space in Milwaukee, which beats renting one in Colorado for $2 million a year.

Author’s notes – I do have to thank Jeremy Shown for twigging onto this ad that has been running in northeast Wisconsin and Jo Egelhoff for including that twigging in Wednesday morning’s FoxPolitics.net roundup. Since I’ve picked up Social Security’s future as sort of a “hobby”, I decided to make that my initial contribution to PolitiCrap.

Also, since this is mine, I will post the entire thing here.

The ad and claim:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZAsDhg9-9M [/youtube]
U.S. Representative Steve Kagen’s (D-8th District) Social Security ad claims that his Republican opponent, Reid Ribble, wants to “…phase out Social Security, forcing Wisconsin’s seniors to fend for themselves”. It goes on to use a partial-sentence quote from Ribble made at a candidate forum: “…(S)omehow we have to establish a phase out of the current Social Security system…”.

The facts:
That partial-sentence quote came from a candidate forum hosted by the Fox Valley Initiative on 11/3/2009, and does not include either the end of that sentence or the preceding sentence. The parts that were omitted by the Kagen campaign prove the lie. The fuller quote, taken from the Appleton Post-Crescent taping of the forum, with Ribble’s answer beginning at the 1:33:00 mark and the question being answered at the 1:30:40 mark, is, “There’s been a promise made and for those of you that are in their retirement years, you lived and planned your life based on a promise by your government. And so somehow we have to establish a phase out of the current Social Security system to a new system, and that will have to happen over time.”

Scott Crevier, who recorded that commercial, also provided a more-recent video of Ribble on Social Security, taken at a candidate forum in Appleton on 9/7/2010. At that forum, Ribble said, “”Well, I never said I would privatize Social Security. I think its okay for them to make their accusations. They’re going to make those accusations anyway because honesty has never been part of the political spectrum in this country. We need to have is to have some people begin to speak honestly. I’ve not come out publicly in support of privatization, but I have come out publicly in support of personalization, and they are quite a bit different. Privatization is where you’re allowed to take some of that money and invest it outside the system. Now that’s okay unless you’re the guy that retires when the stock market crashes 4000 points and now the taxpayers on the hook for it anyway. And so, what I do believe is in personalization, and by allowing your investment in Social Security be yours, and invest it through the current system, we can now protect our seniors, and we can now protect our grandchildren. And that’s at the end of the day, our objective, is that we have to protect both, and there is a way of getting that done.”

FactCheck.org, as part of its look at the nationwide Democrat attack on Republicans on Social Security, said this about the ad, “But it is misleading to say Ribble would force ‘Wisconsin seniors to fend for themselves,’ and to suggest that Ribble would phase out the program without replacing it with a new plan.”

The rating:

Total crap

Revisions/extensions (1:06 pm 9/27/2010) –Two updates: First, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Charlie for making this the on-air PolitiCrap on Friday. I didn’t quite anticipate that.

Next, PolitiFact Wisconsin took a look at this commercial, including an element I hadn’t explored – Kagen’s attempt to call Ribble a “politician”. They came to the same conclusion and lit Kagen’s lying pants on fire.

This one is so quick a hit, I can’t simply excerpt it. While I can’t make you go over to Sykes Writes to see the full take, I can at least make you go there to comment. As a bit of background, Patrick noticed these billboards popping up all around southeast Wisconsin.

Claim: Voting Fraiud is a felony.

Analysis. It is. A felony for voter fraud carries a maximum penalty of up to 3 1/2 years behind bars and a $10,000 fine.

RATING:

WPRI’s Christian Schneider took a look at the northwest part of the state and state Senator and Democrat nominee for the 7th Congressional District seat Julie Lassa’s claim that the state budget deficit (which, BTW, just hit the $3.1 billion mark in biennial structural terms after starting off at $2.1 billion the day Jim Doyle signed it) is the sole fault of the national deficit. The close of a :

Recession or not, Julie Lassa repeatedly voted for budgets that left the state with large deficits – including the budget to which the NRCC ad refers. And her attempt to pull one sentence out of a lengthy report to obfuscate this politically damaging vote makes her claim…

Rating:

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).