PolitiFact Ohio, the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s left-wing “fact checking” operation, has been invaluable to leftist Sherrod Brown for its writers’ attacks on his U.S. Senate challenger, conservative Josh Mandel. PolitiFact Ohio’s biased work has been the foundation for multiple Brown ads on TV and online, and Brown even referenced the outlet in Ohio’s second Senate debate.
Although Ohio reporters are happy to cite liberal PolitiFact Ohio as the standard for objective truth, PolitiFact Ohio staffers have been too busy slamming Mandel to raise an eyebrow at the nonsense Brown throws around. Let’s debunk the top ten pants-on-fire Sherrod Brown claims the “fact checkers” missed, shall we?
- “It’s extending unemployment benefits that creates economic activity that creates jobs, not giving a millionaire an extra 10 or 20 or $30,000 in tax cuts that they likely won’t spend.” Late-2010 MSNBC appearance. Sherrod’s reasoning, popularized by Nancy Pelosi, is a textbook example of the broken window fallacy: give money to the unemployed, and when they spend it… jobs! Unfortunately, government spending has to first be taken from someone else, and extending unemployment benefits encourages further unemployment.
- “Everybody knows that government creates jobs. […] During the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the United States had great infrastructure programs. We were the envy of the world.” June 2012 WaPo interview. Again, Sherrod pretends money spent by the government appears from thin air. Sherrod never mentions that American factories had less competition from Europe & Japan for decades after WWII, and he ignores the high costs imposed by labor unions.
- “But for generations, conservatives have appealed to fear to protect the privileged and preserve the status quo — fear of immigrants, fear of diversity, fear of big government.” October 3, 2010 USA Today editorial. Sherrod’s unsupported ad hominem ignores the Democratic Party’s historic ties to eugenics and the KKK, in an attempt to build up the fantasy that Progressive policies aren’t the same Socialist nonsense that’s failed throughout history.
- “We saved the U.S. auto industry in the face of naysayers’ exhortation to ‘let the market work,’ and our efforts preserved hundreds of thousands of jobs.” October 3, 2010 USA Today editorial. Whatever Sherrod insists, GM’s recent performance suggests the market will eventually work despite Democrats’ best efforts. As with (1) and (2), Sherrod overlooks the opportunity cost of spending billions in taxpayer dollars. As with (3), he never admits that his true goal is to subsidize Big Labor.
- “The Tea Party vision of 21st century America would gut Medicare and Social Security, ignore the minimum wage, and scale back consumer protections and regulations that keep Wall Street honest and our food supply safe.” October 3, 2010 USA Today editorial. Medicare and Social Security won’t have much in the way of guts when both programs go bankrupt — which is fast approaching, despite the insistence of demagogues like Sherrod Brown.
- “The same people that oppose the health care bill this time are against Medicare: the John Birch Society, which sort of morphed into the Tea Party […]” Speech at the 2011 Ohio Education Association spring representative assembly. Like other leftists desperate to pigeon-hole the conservative movement and silence opposition, Sherrod often grasps at this straw but never provides compelling evidence for it.
- “The privatization of Medicare is going to mean worse service, more seniors’ out-of-pocket costs, but a whole lot more money for the insurance industry.” Speech at the 2011 Ohio Education Association spring representative assembly. Sherrod assumes government programs are inherently superior to the free market, in the face of common sense and absent any proof.
- “The reason we have a prosperous middle class in this country, more than anything, is in the 1930s Congress passed — with Franklin Roosevelt signing — collective bargaining rights.” Speech at the 2011 Ohio Education Association spring representative assembly. Sherrod frequently credits FDR and private industry unions with the results of freedom, competition, and ingenuity — in speeches to government unions, which now account for a majority of America’s unionized workers and which even FDR believed should never exist.
- “Your voices really matter on choice, on women’s rights, on worker rights, on voting rights, on human rights, on civil rights, it’s all the same.” Speech to Cleveland Planned Parenthood workers after an April 7, 2011 rally in D.C. Sherrod’s claim that abortion on demand, unhampered government unions, lax voting regulations, and civil rights are morally or materially equal is self-evidently idiotic.
- “Today people live 30 years longer than that, and it’s because of government doing the right thing when you push government to do the right thing.” Speech to Cleveland Planned Parenthood workers after an April 7, 2011 rally in D.C. Even the Congressional Research Service identifies scientific advances as the main driver of increased life expectancy — but once again, Sherrod doesn’t need evidence to insist bureaucracy reigns supreme.
As a footnote, Sherrod Brown’s wife Connie Schultz was a columnist for the Plain Dealer until she resigned after being caught filming Mandel at a 2011 Tea Party event.
The Plain Dealer‘s editorial board has endorsed Brown’s reelection, shrugging off Sherrod’s fringe-left record to focus on the false PolitiFact Ohio narrative that Mandel lies more than most politicians.
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