Do some of the Republican claims you’ve heard about the stimulus bill sound too awful to be true? We find a few that are wildly exaggerated or downright false.
- It’s not true that the bill contains spending for "golf carts." It has $300 million to buy fuel-efficient vehicles, some of which may be electric cart-like utility vehicles like those already in use on military bases and at other government facilities.
- Money claimed to be for "remodeled federal offices" is mostly designated for upgrading buildings to "green" status through such things as thicker insulation and highly efficient lighting, not new drapes or paneling.
- A widely repeated claim that $8 billion is set aside for a "levitating train" to Disneyland is untrue. That total is for unspecified high-speed rail projects, and some of it may or may not end up going to a proposed 300-mph "maglev" train connecting Anaheim, Calif., with Las Vegas.
- There’s no money in the bill specified for butterfly parks, Frisbee golf courses or water slides, despite a GOP congressman’s claim that the bill "will fund" those projects. He culled those silly-sounding items from a list of 18,750 city projects that the U.S. Conference of Mayors cobbled together as examples of "shovel-ready" projects.
Don’t look to us to defend any particular item in the bill, or to criticize it. We will, however, call out politicians for delivering trumped-up descriptions of the bill’s contents. [Fact Check Org]
Really! Fact Check Org continues on with an analysis of the claims of many Republicans. Well worth your time to read. Shows you how partisanship works. Obama has preached over and over that it is time to end partisanship and for both political parties to join together and represent ordinary Americans by pooling ideas.
For some reason the Republican Party can’t bring themselves to do it. Even Nevada’s own Senator John Ensign and Congressman Dean Heller shut their eyes to the plight of the ordinary American and continue representing their own political party, rather than us common folk.
Fact Check even notes that the Republicans are running ads now (I’ve seen some of them) which brings Jesus into the debate. Of course, with the evangelical base of the Republican party they would do that.
The group says its new ad will be running on FOX News, CNN, CNN Headline News, CNBC and FOX Business Network. The ad gets some things right. It’s correct, for example, that the stimulus package totals more than you would get by spending $1 million a day since the birth of Christ (2009 x 365 x 1 million = $733.3 billion).
The Republicans are trying to “raise the hackles” of taxpayers with their claims about spending money on golf carts, fish hatcheries, remodeling federal office buildings, and, of course, the high-speed “sin train” from LA to Las Vegas.
Use the words “Jesus” and “sin” and you’ll get immediate blind agreement from an evangelical.
I have cited many times the Pogo admonition “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I just hope the American voter keeps that in mind and now allow themselves to drug around by their noses and actually believe the Republican propaganda. It is so old now as to be repugnant.
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