Politifact, little-known organization that the mainstream media just adores, made news this week, ( it was even a headline story in the Miami Herald ) when it selected as their 2012 “lie of the year award-winner,” Gov. Romney’s claim that “President Obama sold Chrysler to the Italians, who were going to build Jeeps in China.”
Is Politifact kidding? Have they forgotten that consideration for this dubious award should extend to all deserving politicians, not exclusively to their own favorites.
So, unlike Politifact, we can be fair and balanced, giving everyone an equal chance at winning this prestigious”award. Where have I heard “fair and balanced before? I must be a Fox-watcher and read the Wall Street Journal.
Sorry Dr. David Kahn, but watching Fox and reading the WSJ really seems to irritate the few remaining New York Times readers who still think that their favorite newspaper’s dwindling readership has nothing to do with its biased reporting.
Please consider some of my own nominees. Even though there was so much competition. I hope your readers will add their own favorites.
1 – The pre-election lie that President Obama and United Nations Ambassador Rice promulgated that the Benghazi massacre was a spontaneous reaction to a long-forgotten video, in spite of the many e-mails which clearly showed that Obama’s high level State Department officials were immediately informed that an organized, planned, terrorist attack, aimed at killing our ambassador, was the real story and had nothing to do with the video at all. How would a terrorist attack look when Obama was telling us that his balanced Mideast policy was really working ?
2 – The lie that top Obama officials knew nothing about the “Fast and Furious” program, in which our government sold high-powered guns to Mexican drug cartels in hopes of leading us to their leaders, but instead resulted in the murder of our own officers. The truth was that this program was conceived by some of Obama’s top officials and was not just a “low level” program gone-wrong.
3 – Obama’s lie that under the Ryan plan, “seniors would lose their Medicare coverage” when he clearly knew that everyone over the age of 55 would retain their Medicare coverage and eligibility. In fact, traditional Medicare coverage would always remain as an available option for all retirees. The Obama lie that Gov. Romney’s plan to save Medicare’s financial health would “push Grandma under the bus” was especially ludicrous and factually incorrect in light of the fact that Obama, to this day, has not presented his own Medicare-saving plan.
4 – The president’s continuous lie that Obamacare would only cost the taxpayers $750 billion dollars for the first 10 years when his own CBO stated that the cost is now almost 2 trillion dollars.
It’s never to early to start thinking about our nominations for 2013. Here is one to consider.
Haven’t we always been told by free-spending, big-government liberals that the government-workers’ retiree-healthcare costs were not only affordable but they were a “guaranteed” benefit and couldn’t be touched?
Thanks to Russell Sykes at the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for New York State Policy, the truth about this lie has recently been made public. New York pays for all of these health-care costs out of its present budget. No money is ever set aside for future retires, even for those who retired many years ago. So far, 1.3 million New York State and local government employees receive this benefit. We, the New York State taxpayers, now owe $250 billion.
But, minimizing the costs isn’t the only lie. The one that puts this into consideration for the 2013 award, is that our elected officials (of both political parties ) not only have never even funded this previously negotiated benefit, but after telling us that this contractual obligation is guaranteed, we now find out that healthcare benefits, unlike pensions, are not guaranteed by the New York State Constitution. We never heard that from the Teacher’s Unions or from our state Representatives either.
How this issue will be played out is still uncertain. The financial, and, yes, even the moral considerations have not even been discussed . But one thing is certain, New York State can not continue on this path toward fiscal insolvency. We can no longer kick this can down the road even though, at present time, no New York official has expressed any interest in solving this problem.
The longer we wait, the harder and the more drastic will be the solutions . Let’s bite the bullet now and tackle it immediately. The least we can expect from Albany is not to lie to us anymore. It is unfair to ask our children and our grandchildren to participate in this Ponzi scheme.
“The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.” Daniel Webster.
Dr. Stephen Morris DDS.
North Hills
