Dumb Ron Johnson Trashes Senate Ethics Code by Trashing Opponents on his Official Government Website.

It looks like Dumb Ron Johnson is not an ethical guy. Of course we always knew that, and that he wasn't very smart either, so showcasing his conspiratorial rants on his official Senate website only confirms all that. 

Now Johnson might be...nope, scratch that, should be in trouble:

Blog posts on Sen. Ron Johnson's official Senate website, including one that a watchdog group complains violated ethics rules, have mysteriously been taken down. Johnson violated the Senate Ethics Manual’s Internet policy, which says senators and staff members cannot use Senate Internet “for personal, promotional, commercial, or partisan political purposes.”

And that's what he did, as the Huffington Post article pointed out below:

One of three blog posts that have disappeared recently was Johnson’s response to a Huffington Post story about him arguing that “The Lego Movie” is part of an “insidious” anti-capitalism propaganda campaign. Johnson's post calls out HuffPost’s Ryan Grim, or “some liberal writer at The Huffington Post,” saying he “can’t seem to figure out why I or anyone else would say this about ‘The Lego Movie,’ and he insinuates some kind of conspiracy. The strange thing isn’t that a kids’ movie was anti-business, it is that someone claiming to be a journalist never encountered the idea before.”

Funny thing, my 16 year old son quickly pointed out how Lego is the ultimate capitalist; stores everywhere, movies, TV shows, overpriced products, and early indoctrination in their robot building Lego League competitions. You get the idea.

But Dummy wasn't done breaking the Senates ethics code yet:

A different blog post ... arguing that “Senator Johnson blatantly used his Senate website to attack a political opponent” when his staff responded to a fact-check article by PolitiFact Wisconsin. Former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold (D) (said) that Johnson is “opposed to all government-assisted student loans.” The organization rated Feingold’s statement as “mostly true,” citing numerous interviews and news reports in which Johnson takes a firm stance....

The complaint alleges that much of Johnson's blog post responding to the article was directly aimed at Feingold ... Johnson’s Democratic opponent in 2016 ... “Had Senator Feingold said that Senator Johnson has consistently pointed out that Washington policy on college assistance has serious negative unintended consequences, then he would have been right,” reads the deleted post.

I wish PolitiFact had been more precise, because as we all know, Republican defunding at the state level raised tuition, not access to student loans. 

But the vilification and marginalization of Democratic liberal thinking by our right wing authoritarian dictators knows no bounds:

PolitiFact ... “seems to have a hard time being honest about what words mean.” It tries to tie PolitiFact to Feingold, concluding that it "apparently sees the world in exactly the way a left-wing Democrat who spent 18 years in Washington would.”

Remember, you don't want to question authority in our one party system of government.

The third post that has been removed also took aim at a PolitiFact report, this one on Johnson claiming that Feingold was “the deciding vote” when the Senate approved the Affordable Care Act in 2010. PolitiFact deemed Johnson's assertion “mostly false.” Johnson’s post mocked PolitiFact’s fact-checking and rating system by giving his own “ruling” on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which runs PolitiFact Wisconsin.

An archived version of Johnson’s blog shows that the posts were removed sometime within the last month.

Walker's lie about out-of-state protesters finally put to rest. "False."

Scott Walker continues to say point blank that out of state union thugs came to Wisconsin to intimidate and agitate the locals to protest. But he's "Pants on Fire" lying really:

PolitiFact had this to say back in 2011 and now:

In late February 2011, during the heat of the daily protests inside and around the Capitol, Walker said "almost all" of the protesters were from outside of Wisconsin. He made the statement in a phone conversation with a Buffalo, N.Y., blogger who was posing as industrialist and conservative political donor David Koch.

We rated Walker’s statement False.

Fast forward to today: We asked Walker’s campaign for evidence that 100,000 protesters were brought into Wisconsin. The campaign cited isolated reports of demonstrators being bused in from Illinois and New York, but nothing more comprehensive.

For the record, it’s clear tens of thousands of protesters participated in some of the daily demonstrations, but less clear whether the crowds ever reached 100,000. But there is no evidence to indicate that all or nearly all were from outside of Wisconsin.

We rate Walker’s statement False.

Walker's record makes him the "False to Mostly False" presidential candidate.

One of the biggest remaining Scott Walker campaign talking points (his now climbing unemployment numbers may become a real problem), has been the rising income levels in Wisconsin. That's a lie based on more deception, which we're finding out now is a useful tool used to buildup the GOP voter roles.

PolitiFact reveals what the news media failed to research themselves:

Census Bureau officials say that while the Current Population Survey is fine for the national picture, a separate survey with a larger sample size -- the American Community Survey -- provides the best picture of what is happening at the state level. Walker and the New York Post article are both citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, He pointed to data from the Current Population Survey. But the data considered more accurate -- from the American Community Survey -- showed the opposite

We rate statements that contain some element of truth but ignore critical facts that would give a different impression as Mostly False.

It's another tool for our "some element of truth" presidential wannabe Scott Walker. See Walker's current "False" and "Mostly False" ratings pictured here.

Speaking of tools, former news talking head Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch is also getting into the act, trying to muddy up Walker's disastrous jobs numbers. :

Kleefisch said she takes issue with that reporting (on jobs) … (which) focused on Wisconsin ranking 35th nationally and 10th of 10 Midwestern states in private-sector job growth rate in ... Walker's first four-year term.

"It's based on the speed with which jobs are created in comparison to neighbors as opposed to the actual number of jobs created," she said. "So I think you're going to see the governor trying to explain that … in order for people to understand that a ranking and a rate are two separate things and help people to get why Wisconsin has fully recovered from the recession. 

I wonder how that convoluted and intentional muddying of the facts works for states like Minnesota or Illinois? There's a reason why Walker is focusing in on Michigan. PolitiFact might want to check before they get too much mileage out of it.  

Walker's condescending tale of those "Ordinary People" we call our Founding Fathers!

Thinking back on my elementary school days, I hate the way I was lied too about the pilgrims and thanksgiving. It was sugar coated history at its worst.

Now we have Scott Walker's amazing sugar coated account of the founding fathers. PolitiFact:

Were the founding fathers 'ordinary people'? In closing a June 20, 2015 speech to the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C, Walker repeated the story, describing how, as a boy, he viewed the founding fathers "like superheroes."

He was awed when, in 2011, he stepped into the building where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were debated and signed.

"And I looked at the chairs and I looked at the desks and it dawned on me. These were ordinary people. These were ordinary people who did something extraordinary. You see, they didn’t just risk their political careers. They didn’t just risk their business ventures. These were patriots who risked their lives -- their lives -- for the freedoms we hold dear today."

Walker has many times called the founding fathers ordinary people. And while campaigning, he has emphasized that he himself doesn’t come from wealth or prominence, even bragging that he bought a sweater for a dollar. We thought we’d offer a little history lesson on who the major founding fathers were, and where they came from.

"They weren't ordinary," said Brown University emeritus history professor Gordon Wood, author of "Creation of the American Republic," "Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different" and other books. "They were the elite of the day, involved in highest levels of the society."

Scott Walker's most clicked PolitiFact Review 2014!!!

If you look at all of Scott Walker's PolitiFact "False" and "Mostly True" ratings, it's obvious this guy needed to unapologetically lie and spin the facts the get reelected. Sadly, "stand with Walker" voters didn't care. He's a Republican, what's new:

Top most-clicked Walker claims of the year.

1. In the heat of the campaign, Walker portrayed Burke as an outsourcer extraordinaire because she was an executive at Trek Bicycles, the Burke family company. We rated that Mostly True, calling it Burke’s company was a stretch because she left a decade earlier.

2. In June, Walker said the secret John Doe criminal investigation of his campaign finances has been "resolved" and two judges have said it is "over." We rated that False, 

3. On cable TV’s MSNBC, Walker said "Jobs that involve the minimum wage are overwhelmingly jobs for young people starting out in the workforce." False, we said. 

4.  In a debate with Burke, Walker said, "The next state budget will begin with a surplus of over half a billion dollars -- $535 million to be exact." We rated that False. 

5. In February, the governor was under fire for rejecting the federal Medicaid expansion. He said he didn’t trust that the money would come. We rated that False.

6. Walker claimed that a poll taken "a few months ago" found "70 percent approval or higher" of Act 10. We rated that False. No known poll asked Wisconsinites about Act 10 

7. We rated Mostly True the governor’s claim that Act 10 "saved the taxpayers some $3 billion." Those costs haven’t simply been eliminated, however. They’ve been taken on by public employees, who are also taxpayers.

8. "Walker sticks to claim on Midwest jobs growth." The ranking was outdated, we found in rating the claim False.

9. Walker earned a True when he claimed: "Wisconsin is #1 in the Midwest for personal income growth over the year."

PolitiFact says Walker's jobs performance improved, moving Wisconsin out of last place. Pants on Fire!

We know Scott Walker broke his outrageous campaign promise to create 250,000 jobs, THE big lie that won him an election, because of the state's last place position in job creation in the Midwest.

But PolitiFact decided to split hairs with a big “Untrue” rating for Burke, who insisted Walker was still last.

For the first three years of Walker’s term, Wisconsin did rank last in the Midwest -- both for the three years as a whole, and in each of the individual years. That’s a true statement, and we have rated it as such … this claim from Burke has remained stuck in the past … ignores the most recent 12-month performance -- a common yardstick for economists -- that says Wisconsin’s performance improved and was better than two other Midwest states. We rate the claim False.

But if we want to be completely accurate about Walker’s “performance improvement,” is would be helpful to include the fact that Walker’s performance DIDN’T improve after all:

The state's job-creation pace was virtually unchanged from the previous quarter, when Wisconsin added jobs at a rate of 1.27%. Its rate during the latest period surpassed neighboring Illinois and Minnesota, however, because job creation in those two states slowed.

Which in turn helped raise its Midwest ranking. I rate Walker's improved performance .................

Walker Campaign not running on empty. They've got a full tank of high mileage Lies.

I've criticized Democrats for stretching the truth when they really didn't have to. But get a load out of the Walker campaign. Wow. See here, here and here for own coverage.

In rapid succession, the only criticism they could come up with for Mary Burke were two whoppers:

Walker campaign desperate, resorts to lying in ads. So little to brag about?

It looks like Mr. "Unintimidated,"  Scott Walker, needs to lie about his opponent? Could it be those soaring CEO approval ratings aren't impressing the average middle class voter? 

Our rating: In a campaign ad, Walker says that "when Jim Doyle was governor and Mary Burke was commerce secretary," Wisconsin saw "billions in middle-class tax hikes on nursing home beds, gas, phones and garbage."

As a cabinet secretary, Burke would have had some impact on one of Doyle’s budgets. And it did contain increases on those four items. But the ad misfires badly on the math and the blame game.

Proposed new taxes and fees in that one budget totalled $366 million on nursing homes, gas, garbage and phones, not "billions." And the tally was far less in the final version of the budget Doyle signed.

Beyond that, Burke was gone when Doyle’s subsequent budget sought up to $1.35 billion more for those items in 2009.

We rate Walker’s claim False.

Citizen Action Demolishes PolitiFact over Walker Claim of increasing Health Care Coverage.

This was hard to edit, since every fact presented by Citizen Action, who has been a strong advocate for expanding health care coverage, was misquoted and seriously edited to the benefit of Scott Walker. Funny how that happens all the time. Like the poll that shows Walker and Mary Burke tied at 47%. To this day, no one mentions it. 

This is the kind of stuff we've seen over and over again with Republican politicians. Why they're given the benefit of the doubt or given a pass over the most damaging things is unexplainable and surreal. Like a report on the near bankruptcy of Milwaukee County under Scott Walker. It was kept from the press because the authors didn't want it to become campaign fodder. I still can't get over that one. Here's Citizen Action's response to PolitiFact:

On a May 7th article by PolitiFact, Scott Walker was challenged on a recent campaign ad he ran declaring that…"more are going to sleep knowing they have access to health care."

Knowing our work advocating for health reform, Citizen Action of Wisconsin was asked to weigh in. We pointed out that the Governor was trying to take credit for the coverage expansion in the Affordable Care Act, which he worked so long to block. That the only numbers the state had any right to talk about were the BadgerCare enrollment figures. Here's where Politifact didn't do their job: Politifact quoted us as saying..."estimated 83,000 more people became eligible for Medicaid, while 77,000 were removed from Medicaid -- a net gain, of sorts, of 6,000 people, according to the liberal Citizen Action of Wisconsin"

But here's the thing, we didn't say there was a net gain under Walker's tenure. In email correspondence with reporters at Politifact, we pointed out that Walker had worked long and hard to reduce, not add, people to BadgerCare. Cutting people off of BadgerCare, changing eligibility rules and more. The Walker Administration was even sued for not adding people that were legally eligible for BadgerCare.

Here's what we told Politifact: "The State [BadgerCare] enrollment as of March 2014 was 738,758, the state BC+ enrollment in Jan 2011 was 775,586. Even accounting for the 6,000 more eligible it means that between now and when Walker first became governor,there are 30,828 fewer people in BadgerCare". (Email, May 1st)

When it comes to relying our position, Politifact quoted Citizen Action as saying there was a net gain of 6,000 to BadgerCare; when actually we said that there are over 30,000 fewer people in BadgerCare during Walker's tenure, and tens of thousands more could have been covered had Wisconsin accepted the federal funds for BadgerCare.

Romney Campaign discounts Facts, blames the messengers, Fact Checkers for Bias.

Greg Sargent wrote a great piece about what can only be described as an actual alternative reality found inside the Republican Party’s ideology. You don't have to look hard.

WP: Fact checking for thee, but not for me. Get this: The Romney campaign’s position is now that the Obama camp should pull its ads when fact checkers call them out as false — but that Romney and his advisers should feel no such constraint. This is not an exaggeration. This is really the Romney campaign’s position.

“Our most effective ad is our welfare ad,” a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O’Connor, said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. “Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” he said.

Kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it. The Romney campaign will not be dictated to or controlled by facts. Look I don’t like the fact checkers either, because they never consider ideological intent, but they do uncover the FACTS.

But we were warned, and because the media at the time didn’t push back over the following ironic comments from Mitt Romney, the Republicans ran with it:

Romney’s own remarks about fact-checking and political advertising “You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad,” Romney said on the radio. “They were embarrassed. Today, they just blast ahead. You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them.”

Greg Sargent, like me, is expecting something from the media:

In this sense, the Romney campaign continues to pose a test to the news media and our political system. What happens when one campaign has decided there is literally no set of boundaries that it needs to follow when it comes to the veracity of its assertions? The Romney campaign is betting that the press simply won’t be able to keep voters informed about the disputes that are central to the campaign, in the face of the sheer scope and volume of dishonesty it uncorks daily.

Politifact takes Arrogance to New Level, Believes its Own Lie

I’ve been a critic of Politifact since it began, for removing political motives from their “balanced” equations. Just the facts, as Joe Friday used to say. I felt the same about Factcheck. But a party’s political platform should be a fact worth considering.

Poltifact couldn’t leave well enough alone. Instead of taking the heat, by critics who seem to have a better grasp of the facts, they offered up an uncharacteristically condescending statement of defiance. It seems we’re all in some kind of echo chamber out here in America, and they have the almighty facts that cannot be questioned. Check out this snotty defense;

At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news. "I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends.

This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies.

But the funny thing is we’re not talking about opinion. We’re talking about facts…Politicfacts? Below is a screenshot from Campaign for America's Future:

As Eskow explains:

What a shame that Adair took the low road instead. His response is called "Fact-Checking in the Echo Chamber Nation," and it leads off with a contemptuous dismissal of both left and right -- the right for listening to Rush and Fox, and the left for "the Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow, and DailyKos."

"To make sure they get a balanced view," Adair sneers, "they click Facebook links -- from their liberal friends." The false equivalence of Adair's left/right language is exactly what he's being attacked for on the Medicare issue. By opening with it, he's affirming the criticism that Politifact values equivalence over facts.

Many liberal blogs and news sites first offer up proof, followed by opinion. We don’t make things up to fit our belief system like our political opposites. That’s why we’re different, why this whole discussion is so frustrating.

   

Standing by their bad decision, and why Politifact has made themselves irrelevant except for a few well researched facts, they continued:

…many of us retreat into comfy parlors where everyone agrees and the other side is always wrong. Each side can manufacture its truths and get the chorus to sing along. PolitiFact had its latest brush with the Echo Chamber Nation this week.

We gave our Lie of the Year to the Democrats' claim that the Republicans "voted to end Medicare."

Some of the response has been substantive and thoughtful. The critics said we ignored the long-term effects of Rep. Paul Ryan's plan and that we were wrong to consider his privatized approach to be Medicare. In their view, that is an end to Medicare. We've read the critiques and see nothing that changes our findings. We stand by our story and our conclusion that the claim was the most significant falsehood of 2011. 

Fine, and many of us will stand by our conclusion. Although I have touted some decisions they’ve made as right on the money, that doesn’t mean they’re perfect or right most of the time.

Should We End Politifact “as we know it?” We could call it Factcheck.org!

Politifact came out of nowhere to usurp Factcheck .org as the go to arbiter of the truth. But why?

“How’d they come to that conclusion?” or “are they crazy?” is my usual response.

Take their latest blunder:

TPM: If Democrats proposed to turn Medicare into a system that only provided free veterinary services to seniors, would Republicans be lying to say Dems wanted to "end Medicare," without including the caveat "as we know it"?

Of course not. But that's more or less the charge PolitiFact is leveling at Democrats over a new DCCC ad (below) which flatly charges Republicans with proposing to "end Medicare."

PolitiFact calls the caveat "as we know it" -- as in "end Medicare as we know it" -- an important qualifier. And they conclude that because the DCCC eschewed this qualifier, and because the House vote on a non-binding budget resolution doesn't have the force of law, Democrats have told a "Pants on Fire" lie by stating "Republicans voted to end Medicare."

Bottom line; It's all in our minds. The GOP didn't say one way or another what they want to do with Medicare. It was all non-binding.

Politifact removes from its formulation history and political platforms, choosing instead to parse the “facts” using every semantically devised trick used by the fear mongering right wing spinmeisters.

Ironically, their research makes their conclusions seem strangely removed from reality, leaving the reader more confused than satisfied.

My own reaction to a favorable rating is more like, “wow, we got lucky with this challenge.”

That’s not a confidence builder.

Politifact treats focus group tested cheap semantics and parlor tricks like a slam dunk Perry Mason argument. 

Even Factcheck.org makes the same clueless argument about Medicare not changing: "...continue the present system indefinitely for those now age 55 and older, and subsidize the purchase of private insurance for those who go on Medicare after 2022."

Again, the present retirees getting Medicare are not part of the argument, future retirees are. If it wasn't a devastating change, and an end to the current Medicare program, than how could it possibly save the government massive amounts of money? The cost difference doesn't magically go away...or does it?