Remember the video of the guy in the “pimp costume” who got advice from ACORN employees on how to run his prostitution ring? Turns out the whole story was just a lie, a doctored-video smear job on an important organization. The guy never wore a “pimp costume” and the real, undoctored videos showed that ACORN employees did nothing wrong. But a lie travels around the world before the corporate media bothers to check the facts. The “news” media blasted the story everywhere, and Congress was so outraged they forced ACORN to close its doors. And here we are again.

The corporate media is blasting out the story that the IRS “targeted conservative groups.” Some in the media say there was “IRS harassment of conservative groups.” Some of the media are going so far as claiming that conservative groups were “audited.”

This story that is being repeated and treated as “true” is just not what happened at all. It is one more right-wing victimization fable, repeated endlessly until the public has no choice except to believe it.

Conservative Groups Were Not “Targeted,” “Singled Out” Or Anything Else

You are hearing that conservative groups were “targeted.” What you are not hearing is that progressive groups were also “targeted.” So were groups that are not progressive or conservative.

All that happened here is that groups applying to the IRS for special tax status were checked to see if they were engaged in political activity. They were checked, not targeted. Only one-third of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Once again: Only one-third of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Conservative groups were not “singled out,” were not “targeted” and in the end none were denied special tax status – even though many obviously should have been.

From last week’s House hearings on this:

Rep. Peter Roskam, R-IL: “How come only conservative groups got snagged?”

Outgoing acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller: “They didn’t sir. Organizations of all walks and all persuasions were pulled in. That’s shown by the fact that only 70 of the 300 organizations were tea party organizations, of the ones that were looked at by TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration].”

Bet you didn’t see that blasted all over your TV news that night.

Click here to watch the video clip of this. It’s worth it.

And from Bloomberg reporting: IRS Sent Same Letter to Democrats That Fed Tea Party Row, (emphasis added, for emphasis)

One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected. Progress Texas … faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.

In a statement late yesterday, the tax agency said it had pooled together the politically active nonpartisan applicants — including a “minority” that were identified because of their names. “It is also important to understand that the group of centralized cases included organizations of all political views,” the IRS said in its statement.

Again, for emphasis: “It is also important to understand that the group of centralized cases included organizations of all political views,” the IRS said in its statement.”

But no matter, its conventional wisdom now that “the IRS targeted conservative groups.” And it’s very useful to the right if people believe this. But it just is not true. (If you want to see conventional wisdom at work watch this clip from the most recent Saturday Night Live.)

What Did Happen?

Here’s the story. After the “Citizen’s United” decision allowed unlimited corporate money into elections there was a flood of applications to get special tax status that allowed an organization to hide its donors from the public, and in some cases even be tax-exempt. But the rules say that political groups can’t get this special tax status. The IRS has to check out applications for tax status to see if it is really a political group trying to sneak in to a special tax status.

Because they were flooded and couldn’t check out every applying organization, the IRS group looked for things in the applications that “flagged” an organization as possibly a political group. These flagged applications were then passed along to specialists to look deeper and determine if they were legit or not.

So What Was The “Wrongdoing”?

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has issued a full report: Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review that looked into the accusation that the IRS “targeted” tea party groups that were applying for special tax status for extra scrutiny. The report is not all that long. You should read it. (Apparently most the people you are hearing from in the media haven’t read it.)

According to the report, the swamped IRS group involved in this came up with ways – “criteria” – to identify groups that really needed to be checked further because it was possible they might be engaged in the kind of political activity that would exclude them from getting the special tax status. (The rules for what constitutes political activity that would keep a group for getting special tax status are, to say the least, not clear. See the P.S. below.) Some groups were chosen to receive the required scrutiny because they had “political-sounding” names. Some of the “political-sounding names” included the words “tea party.” Others included “We the People” and “Take Back the Country.” (The inspector general’s report does not disclose if or which other “political sounding names” were also used as criteria.)

And the other problem was that the scrutiny these groups received involved some “unnecessary, burdensome questions.”

That was the extent of the wrongdoing. At a time when they couldn’t give all applying groups the necessary scrutiny they used criteria that included the names of an applying group to decide if it would get the required scrutiny. And they asked “unnecessary, burdensome questions.” That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

Normally all groups applying for special tax status would and should all get looked at to see if they were really political groups. In this case no groups received any extra scrutiny as has been accused, instead many received less than usual. No group was “singled out” or “targeted” for extra scrutiny, instead they were not given the free pass others were getting because of the overload of applicants.

The IG report concluded that it was wrong to use a group’s name as a criteria to help determine if an applicant would be checked out at a time when there were so many applications that every group was not being checked out. (However, the IG report did say that most of the groups forwarded with this criteria in fact should have been forwarded.)

Again, that’s the wrongdoing that has triggered the absolute frenzy of outrage you are hearing from … everyone. They said it was silly to use a group’s name as criteria for deciding if they should be checked out thoroughly at a time when the IRS was too busy to thoroughly check all applications as they usually do. And they said groups filing for a special tax status but suspected of political activity were then asked “unnecessary, burdensome questions.”

And again, that’s it, That’s the whole “scandal.” That’s the whole “IRS harassing conservative groups.” That’s the whole “Obama the dictatorial tyrant going after his enemies” hissy-fit. (Please read Digby’s The Art of the Hissy-Fit)

A Few Facts

Fact: The IRS is required to determine whether organizations applying for special tax status are “social welfare” groups or are instead engaged in political activity. Political groups cannot get the special tax status these groups were applying for.

Fact: Only one-third of the groups that were passed to specialists for a closer look were “conservative.” Lots of other organizations were also checked, including progressive organizations.

Fact: No groups were audited or harassed or “targeted” or “singled out.” This was about applications for special tax status being forwarded to specialists for a closer look to see if they were engaged in political activity that would disqualify them for the special tax status. This closer look is the kind of review all organization should get, but the IRS was swamped because of the flood of groups applying for a status that let them mask their donors, after Citizens United.

Fact: No groups were harmed. There were delays while the groups were checked to see if they should have special tax status. That’s it. But the rules are that they are allowed to operate as if they had that status while they waited for official approval.

Fact: The only groups actually denied special tax status were progressive groups, not conservative groups. In 2011, during the period that “conservative groups were targeted” the New York Times carried the story, 3 Groups Denied Break by I.R.S. Are Named . The three groups? Drum roll … “The I.R.S. denied tax exemption to the groups — Emerge Nevada, Emerge Maine and Emerge Massachusetts — because, the agency wrote in denial letters, they were set up specifically to cultivate Democratic candidates.”

Fact: The IRS commissioner in charge at the IRS at the time this happened was appointed President George W. Bush.

Fact: According to the inspector general’s report (p. 10) in the “majority of cases, we agreed that the applications submitted included indications of significant political campaign intervention.”

Other scandals?

The stage for this story to take off at this time was set by other “scandals” in the news. The scandal frenzy began when ABC News’ Jonathan Karl falsely reported that White House emails had “taken out” “all references to al Queda and all references to CIA warnings before the attack about the terror threat in Benghazi.” He said that these emails “show that many of these changes were directed by Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson …”

Click here to see the video of this report.

But a couple of days later CNN broke the news that the emails Karl used for his ABC report were edited by Republicans to make it appear they said these things. Parts of the edited emails Karl used were “inaccurate” and “invented” to make the administration and State Department look bad. (The word “fabricated” comes to mind.)

Next came a story that the Justice Department had looked at records of AP reporters to see who in the administration had leaked a story. The story was that an informer high up in al Queda in Yemen had delivered a new kind of bomb to target airliners, while the government was still analyzing how to detect it and the informer was still in Yemen. The Justice Department looked at call records – phone numbers only – to see if they could spot who had called AP. This became a “scandal” with accusations that the government was “wiretapping” reporters and “secretly monitoring” or “listening in” on their calls – with the “scandal” gaining traction with its conjunction with the “Benghazi scandal” story promoted by ABC.

Driving Right-Wing Themes Out To Wider Audiences

It is worth noting that Jonathan Karl is a graduate of a conservative-movement “media training” program, the Collegiate Network. The significance of this is explained by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), in A Right-Wing Mole at ABC News: Jonathan Karl and the success of the conservative media movement,

Conservatives don’t just complain loudly, endlessly and inaccurately about liberal media bias. They also train right-leaning journalists to make their way into the supposedly hostile terrain of Beltway media. And one of the most famous alums of a conservative media training program is now a major star at a network news outlet: ABC’s senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Karl came to mainstream journalism via the Collegiate Network, an organization primarily devoted to promoting and supporting right-leaning newspapers on college campuses – such as the Rutgers paper launched by the infamous James O’Keefe. The network, founded in 1979, is one of several projects of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which seeks to strengthen conservative ideology on college campuses. William F. Buckley was the ISI’s first president, and the current board chair is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery. Several leading right-wing pundits came out of Collegiate-affiliated papers, including Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry and Laura Ingraham.

ABC’s Jonathan Karl is also one of the reporters driving the “IRS scandal” story to a wider audience, with on-air reports like “Document Draft Shows IRS Targeted Conservative Groups,” “IRS IG Report: Targeting Conservatives Began In 2010,” “IRS Scandal Spreads Wider Than Cincinnati Officers” and more such stories, usually with inflammatory headlines and sensationalist scandal-hyping story lines.

The Daou Triangle

In 2005 Peter Daou wrote a widely-discussed paper describing how the right’s media machine works to drive false stories and smears out to wide audiences. In THE TRIANGLE: Limits of Blog Power Daou described how “a triangle of blogs, media, and the political establishment” worked together to “generate the critical mass necessary to alter or create conventional wisdom.” “…it’s still the Russerts and Broders and Gergens and Finemans, the WSJ, WaPo and NYT editorial pages, the cable nets, Stewart and Letterman and Leno, and senior elected officials, who play a pivotal role in shaping people’s political views.”

Describing a triangle of “netroots + media + party establishment = CW,” (netroots = “the base” and CW means “conventional wisdom”), Daou explained how they work together,

“…a well-developed echo chamber and superior top-down discipline, the right has a much easier time forming the triangle. Fox News, talk radio, Drudge, a well-trained and highly visible punditocracy, and a lily-livered press corps takes care of the media side of the triangle. Iron-clad party loyalty – with rare exceptions – and a willingness of Republican officials to jump on the Limbaugh-Hannity bandwagon du jour takes care of the party establishment side of the triangle. “

The Daou triangle described how Republican politicians work in concert with the echo chamber to turn false stories into “conventional wisdom.” One the progressive-aligned side? Not so much. Daou again,

Whereas rightwing bloggers can rely on their leadership and the rightwing noise machine to build the triangle, left-leaning bloggers face the challenge of a mass media consumed by the shop-worn narrative of Bush the popular, plain-spoken leader, and a Democratic Party incapacitated (for the most part) by the focus-grouped fear of turning off “swing voters” by attacking Bush. For the progressive netroots, the past half-decade has been a Sisyphean loop of scandal after scandal melting away as the media and party establishment remain disengaged.

Six years later Doau wrote an update, How the Democratic establishment shunned the left, spawned the Tea Party and moved America right. From Daou’s follow-up piece,

At the root of the problem is this: the GOP benefits from a superior communications mechanism with which to shape and reshape conventional wisdom. Faced with a public that holds opposing views, politicians can either change their positions to match the public’s views or change the public’s views to match their positions — Republicans almost always choose the latter, bolstered by a highly sophisticated framing and messaging infrastructure crafted and funded over decades.

… On the other side you have the Democratic establishment, political leaders, pollsters and strategists who, by and large, are poll addicts, chronically incapable of taking principled stands, obsessed with appealing to independent voters, hostile to progressive advocates, often just as captive to moneyed interests as their Republican counterparts. …

[. . .] So the brashest, loudest, most confident-sounding voices end up filling the knowledge void, voices that sound authoritative and principled. Rush Limbaugh, for instance. Or Sarah Palin. Sean Hannity. Ann Coulter. Bill O’Reilly.

Echoing these blaring ‘voices of authority’ are Republican politicians and the right’s online denizens. Conservative pundits and columnists then lend it all an air of seriousness. And the media, desperately seeking to appear “fair,” give an uncritical national platform to those voices. Not to mention Fox News, which pipes a steady stream of propaganda into millions of American homes. The triangle of establishment, media, and Internet comes together on the right and conventional wisdom is created. Pollsters then dutifully register that shift in sentiment and the media regurgitate it. A virtuous loop for the right.

There’s simply nothing comparable on the Democratic side.

If anything, in the debt debate, President Obama and leading Democrats were part of the Republican triangle, reinforcing GOP talking points and running roughshod over a country that didn’t even agree with the conservative position.

But The President “Admitted It”

Daou’s last point is key. While Republican politicians work with the conservative movement’s propaganda outlets, often Democratic politicians also echo Republican messages. In the case of the “IRS scandal” the President did just that, saying that what happened was “intolerable” and firing the acting IRS commissioner. This validated and propelled the false message that the IRS had “targeted” conservative outlets for “harassment” instead of refuting the accusations with facts. And this admission served to validate by proxy the other false right-wing scandal accusations about Benghazi and “wiretapping reporters.”

This is not the first time the Obama administration was taken in by false stories originating at right-wing propaganda outlets before the real facts were known. Van Jones had to leave the Obama administration after Glenn Beck accused him of being a “communist” and other right-wing sites accused him of being a “9/11 Truther.” Shirley Sherrod was fired from the Department of Agriculture after Breitbart (the same person who posted the doctored ACORN videos) posted doctored video that made it appear she had made racist remarks — even though the full video later showed the opposite to be true.

The great Brad Blog tells these stories, in IRS ‘Scandal’ Appears Nearly as Phony as Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, ACORN ‘Scandals’,

… if you listened only to the corporate media, you — like the Obama Administration — also probably thought that the phony, trumped-up “scandals” that led to the inappropriate firing of USDA official Shirley Sherrod, the cowardly firing of White House green jobs adviser Van Jones and the outrageous federal defunding of ACORN were also the unhappy result of an endemic culture of corruption by the Obama Administration, the Democratic Party and its insidious political apparatchiks.

Those fake scandals, however, all three of them, were shams. They were eventually identified as such, though only after a great deal of harm to Sherrod, Jones and ACORN had already been done by the Democrats who fell for them and acted out of knee-jerk and cowardly fear to try and contain the perception of “scandal” which was, naturally, helped along by the very loud misreporting of “the nightly news”.

A Teachable Moment

This is a teachable moment — to us — to recognize how the right’s machine operates, to see how the corporate media and Washington Democrats react, and to learn not to get taken in by it. This is what they do. We shouldn’t fall for it — again and again. Remember, it was Washington Democrats who were taken in by right-wing smear operations, responding by defunding ACORN and censuring MoveOn.

These “scandals” are intended to distract us from the important stories that are unfolding around us, and obstruct the Obama administration from being able to accomplish anything more. For example, one unfolding story is how Senate Republicans are obstructing all attempts to get the government functioning and the economy recovering. By obstructing the National Labor Relations Board and Labor Department nominations, they are preventing the government from being able to enforce laws and rules that enable people to organize and bargain for better wages and benefits. By filibustering laws like last year’s Bring Jobs Home Act and The American Jobs Act, they are keeping us from growing the economy and rebuilding our infrastructure, and from preventing the offshoring of jobs. By using hostage-taking tactics with the debt ceiling they are forcing cuts in programs that help people and grow the economy.

This is where our attention should be focused.

PS – A Note About The Law vs. The Rules For Groups Applying For Special Tax Status

While researching this post I came across something interesting about the kind of special-tax-status organization that is allowed to do political work while masking its donors. This is called a 501(c)(4) organization, often just called a “C4.” According to the IRS,

The statute: IRC 501(c)(4) provides, in part, for the exemption from federal income taxation of civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.

The IRS regulation, or “interpretation” of the law: Section 1.501(c)(4)-1(a)(2)(i) of the Income Tax Regulations states that an organization will be considered to be operated exclusively for social welfare purposes if it is primarily engaged in promoting in some way the common good and general welfare of the people of the community, i.e. primarily for the purpose of bringing about civic betterments and social improvements.

Note the shift from “exclusively” to “primarily.” These words have VERY different meanings. While the law says these “social welfare” organizations cannot engage in what is called political intervention, the IRS “interprets” this to mean that up to 49 percent of their activity can.

Recently the New York Times explained some of the ambiguity this difference creates, in Uneven I.R.S. Scrutiny Seen in Political Spending by Big Tax-Exempt Groups,

The tax code states that 501(c)(4)’s must operate “exclusively” to promote social welfare, a category that excludes political spending. Some court decisions have interpreted that language to mean that a minimal amount of political spending would be permissible. But the I.R.S. has for years maintained that groups meet that rule as long as they are not “primarily engaged” in election work, a substantially different threshold.

Nowhere do the rules specify what “primarily engaged” means, though there are indications that the agency has begun to re-examine the question. In March, the I.R.S. began sending out questionnaires to roughly 1,300 tax-exempt organizations, including some 501(c)(4)s, regarding their political lobbying and other activities. The agency has said it is merely seeking a clearer picture of how tax-exempt groups operate to ensure better compliance.

So all of those smear ads you see at election time, and no one knows who is paying for them? THAT is the difference between the law and this “interpretation” of the law. This “interpretation” of a law that requires groups with special tax status to operate “exclusively” for the social welfare is used to mask the corporate and billionaire donors and enable the smear ads that are destroying our civility and democracy.

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The research discrediting the Reinhart-Rogoff study is upending the economic policy discussion everywhere. Everywhere, apparently, except for HBO’s new series “Vice,” which recently featured Kenneth Rogoff as an expert on austerity.

Episode 4 of “Vice” on HBO, “Love and Rockets,” included a segment on austerity in Europe and the protest movements it has sparked. Most of the segment was “Vice” at its best: highly accessible narration, on-the-ground reporting of events as they take place and interviews with citizen-stakeholders that other shows might shy away from.

But one major flaw undermined the entire segment: “Vice” featured discredited Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff as an expert commentator. “Vice” correspondent and founder Shane Smith introduced Rogoff as the former “chief economist of the International Monetary Fund…who’s now a Harvard Professor.” Nowhere does the show inform viewers that Rogoff is the author of a discredited study that is more responsible than any other academic paper for the austerity policies being protested in the segment. It does not even mention that his views are controversial.

For those who don’t know why this is so outrageous — why featuring Rogoff as an expert on the consequences of austerity is like presenting Thomas Friedman as an expert on the negative fallout from the Iraq War — let me explain. In 2010, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart authored, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” arguing, based on an examination of dozens of countries over decades, that debt becomes a drag on growth when it reaches 90 percent of GDP. The study itself did not assert that high debt necessarily caused economic stagnation, but Rogoff and Reinhart claimed as much in subsequent statements.

Rogoff and Reinhart now say that the study did not intend to prescribe certain policies. Instead, they say, politicians, especially in Europe, have mistakenly used the study to justify drastic austerity.

But time and again, the duo encouraged political leaders to interpret the study as an admonition to reduce debt. Both Rogoff and Reinhart testified about the urgency of addressing the national debt in Congress and the press on multiple occasions–and touted citations of their study by members of Congress on their site. When Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) asked Rogoff if reducing spending should begin that year, Rogoff said: “Absolutely. Not acting moves the risk closer. You have very few levers at this point.” A wide array of figures and institutions from Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) to the Washington Post editorial board cited Reinhart-Rogoff to argue that austerity was a necessity, not an option.

There have been serious doubts about the meaning of Rogoff and Reinhart’s findings since they came out. For instance, Josh Bivens and John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute argued that high debt was the effect of economic stagnation, not a cause, as Rogoff and Reinhart claimed.

Then, in mid-April 2013, a new paper eviscerated the Reinhart-Rogoff study’s actual results. Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst finally replicated Reinhart-Rogoff and identified three major mistakes in the paper, including a now-infamous Excel spreadsheet error. Had the study been performed properly, Herndon-Ash-Pollin concludes that the average real GDP growth rate in countries with public debt-to-GDP ratios of 90 percent over the period measured would be 2.2 percent rather than the -0.1 percent Reinhart-Rogoff estimated. In other words, there is not even a correlation between 90% debt-to-GDP and slow economic growth.

In light of this revelation, featuring Rogoff as an expert on austerity shows poor judgment. It bolsters Rogoff’s authority on a topic where his intellectual standards and judgment are in serious doubt.

You may be wondering: Rogoff’s background notwithstanding, did he actually say anything inaccurate or misleading in the “Vice” segment?

The answer is no. Rogoff did not say anything wrong per se. But his criticism of the European governments for being too tight-fisted was hypocritical. Take this gem:

They’re treading this very cautious path that involves a lot of belt-tightening. This idea: If we just wait, in a decade it may be better. I think they have been overly cautious, thinking they can just throw the weight of the adjustment on the unemployed, particularly on young people year after year after year, but it certainly provides the seeds of these more extreme views, these more extreme parties.

The same guy who told Congress that the longer the US waits to enact austerity, the worse off we’ll be, is lecturing the Europeans for engaging in “belt-tightening” too soon, and delaying stimulus too long? It is possible in theory to believe in long-term belt-tightening and short-term stimulus, but in practice, emphasis is everything. Rogoff leveraged his prestige and media presence to push for austerity and give intellectual cover for right-wing politicians. Now that both on-the-ground austerity policies and the intellectual foundations of Rogoff’s paper have blown up, he is rushing to disown his old deficit zeal and switch to the winning team. But having played such a significant role in the global push to cut spending, Rogoff’s born-again Keynesianism is just not credible.

Even if “Vice” was intent on featuring Rogoff, they should not have allowed the show to become an accessory in his plan to rehabilitate his reputation. At the very least, viewers watching the episode deserved to know that they were hearing from someone whose discredited paper was indirectly responsible for the austerity policies inspiring so much anger on screen. Although the segment was undoubtedly filmed and produced before Herndon-Ash-Pollin tore Reinhart-Rogoff to shreds, they could have added a disclaimer to the show before it aired–or provided one retroactively. In any event, Rogoff’s work was controversial enough before Herndon-Ash-Pollin that his background was worth noting then too.

Upon watching the episode, I tweeted “Vice” founder Shane Smith challenging the decision to feature Rogoff as an expert. Two weeks later, after receiving no response on Twitter, I e-mailed Vice.com’s editorial office with the same message. That was Tuesday. I still haven’t heard from them.

Although there is no evidence to suggest that HBO’s corporate brass influences “Vice”‘s editorial and production decisions, HBO executives’ professional and ideological ties to Kenneth Rogoff are worth noting, however remote they are. Richard Plepler, Co-President of HBO, serves on the advisory board of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the foundation of private equity billionaire Pete Peterson. Through organs like the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Peterson has spent over $500 million promoting deficit reduction that is centered on cutting Social Security and Medicare and regressive tax reform. Plepler is apparently good friends with Peterson, and shares Peterson’s obsession with a looming debt crisis. A 2011 New York Times profile of Peterson includes this quote:

“Pete was right about the debt before it was popular,” Mr. Plepler said. “Now, he’s right when it is popular.”

Plepler may have little influence on “Vice”. But the inclusion of Rogoff, whose work has complemented Peterson’s cause, does raise the question as to how far Plepler’s–and in turn, Peterson’s–influence reaches.

“There’s this feeling that something happened and no one was punished,” Rogoff says in “Vice”, Episode 4, “Love and Rockets.” Rogoff is describing popular anger toward the big banks for their role in the financial crisis. But his words could just as easily apply to economists like himself, who provided the intellectual justification for austerity, and now pretend they were on our side all along.

If influential academics like Rogoff are not held accountable for the failure of the policies they have promoted, then they will produce shoddy, ideology-driven “studies” that cause suffering again and again with impunity. The lack of accountability for prominent intellectuals whose findings influence policy decisions is a major reason why our political system continues to fail ordinary people. Consider the ongoing credibility enjoyed by many of the same people who led us into the Iraq War based on claims that Iraq had WMDs, or economists who insisted that deregulating the financial sector would never endanger our financial system.

If “Vice” considers itself a responsible news outfit, it should not let itself become a platform for discredited economists to restore their reputations. “Vice” should correct its mistake. “Vice” must inform viewers that it omitted key information about Rogoff’s background and share the information that it left out the first time. That would be a lot more like the “Vice” I know and respect.

I explained the flaws in the Reinhart-Rogoff paper in greater detail on “Take Action News with David Shuster” a few weeks ago.

Why Reinhart-Rogoff is Incorrect, Part 1

Why Reinhart-Rogoff is Wrong, Part 2

Republicans are now claiming President Obama is for big spending cuts that gut government and the things we do to make our lives better, and that Republicans are not for gutting spending. This one is almost funny, if it weren’t for the damage that will be done to people if the Republicans cause the “sequester” budget cuts to go into effect next week.

Yes, next week huge budget cuts will occur unless Republicans do something to stop it. But Republican understand that:

1. Cutting the things government does to make our lives better is hugely unpopular;
2. Cutting government spending when the economy is weak will threaten to return us into recession;
3. Cutting essential services will hurt a lot of people.

So they are trying to deflect the blame, and are actually trying to tell the public that it is Obama who has been for these big cuts all along, not them.

This latest lie is so preposterous you might think I am making this up. So watch this ad that the Republican Party has put out:

Buzzfeed has the story, in RNC’s New Ad Takes Obama Wildly Out Of Context,

The short clip makes it appear as if Obama is pledging his support for the sequester rather calling on Congress to come up with a broad approach to avoid it, using his veto as part of a threat to force a plan.

My post this week, Coming Sequester Cuts Will Hurt Jobs, Growth And People – And People Are Mobilizing, details some of the terrible consequences of the “sequester” should it occur.

Three things you can do:

1) Contribute to our Stop the Cuts campaign today

2) Tell your member of Congress: Disarm the Austerity Bomb. Stop the Sequester

3) Starting today, real people started pushing back through a series of more than 100 events that were scheduled in 23 states around the country. They are sponsored by a coalition that includes national labor groups, Americans for Tax Fairness and Health Care for America Now. (You can see a list of events at AmericaWantsToWork.org or 99Uniting.org.)

One more thing: As for who is for cutting essential service that make people’s lives better, and who is for keeping them, never forget that it was the Republicans who campaigned in 2010 and again in 2012 saying Democrats were cutting Medicare and they would never do that. In 2010 it worked and they gained a majority in the House of Representatives, but by 2012 people had started figuring it out.

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The election is over, but right-wingers are back at it with another big, out-of-context lie. This time they are claiming that Hillary Clinton said something that she did not say. There’s an immediate context and a bigger context, both wildly distorted. As the right-wing cult plunges ever-farther into their own delusional worldview their language, interpretations and claims just get stranger and stranger.

The Immediate Context

At a hearing today Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the following when asked about the timing of the release of details about the Benghazi attack,

“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” she said. “Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator. Now, honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this. The fact is that people were trying, in real time, to get to the best information.”

The right’s media machine is now out there claiming that Hillary Clinton said the attack doesn’t matter. Specifically they are claiming she said “‘What difference does it make’ why 4 Americans are dead?” See examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and that is just a hint of what they are likely to get going after Limbaugh tomorrow. (Warning, avoid reading the comments at these sites unless you have a very strong stomach.)

That’s how they do it. That’s how they did it with “You didn’t build that,” and managed to build an entire political convention around the lie that Obama had said that, when he hadn’t said it.

The Larger Context

This whole thing is about what the administration said to the public right after the Benghazi attack. After the attacks no one knew who had attacked the compound and killed our ambassador, so they said they didn’t know who had done it. Later, when they knew, they told us who they thought had done it. Republicans are furious about this.

Remember how so few of us could understand what the whole Republican Behghazi frenzy was about? Remember Romney’s accusation during that debate, that Obama had not used the word “terrorist,” when in fact he had? And they have kept themselves in this frenzy all the way up until Wednesday’s hearing. It’s weird to us, but it goes to the core of their cult belief system.

Why does it matter so much to Republicans whether the government announced immediately that “terrorists” had attacked us, instead of waiting until we knew who had attacked us?

Here is what is going on: The Republican cult believes that the Obama administration said they did not know who had done it as a pre-election attempt to keep public support from swinging to Romney. (?????)

They believe that if the administration had immediately said we were attacked by terrorists the public would have rallied around Republicans, and Romney would have won the election by a landslide. Seriously.

The larger context here is that Republicans believe that Americans rally around Republicans and not around America’s leaders when our country comes under attack. The cult believes they are the only legitimate leaders of the country, and that the public believes this, too.

To understand just why they so firmly believe that the public would have rallied around Republicans in response to a terrorist attack you have to remember how this worked for them when Bush was in the White House. Remember how Republicans were all “noun, verb, 9/11″ during post-9/11 elections. Remember how they would raise the terror-alert level at convenient times. How they would accuse opponents of being insufficiently anti-Muslim to win arguments? And for so long, it worked.

Because of the effectiveness of their use of terrorism scares during the Bush years Republicans are convinced that the public responds to terrorist attacks by … supporting Republicans.

They just don’t get it that the American public rallies around our leaders at such times.

They don’t get it that if the Obama administration had immediately announced that our ambassador had been attacked by terrorists, the public would have supported Obama even more than they already did, because he was our President. Just like they did when Bush was President.

But the Obama administration didn’t use a terrorist scare to influence the election, the way Republicans did.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Candidate Mitt Romney is trying to “get the job done” of winning, doing anything and saying anything to accomplish that, no matter the hard done in his wake. After doubling down and scaring Ohio’s auto workers with his “Jeep moving all its jobs to China” lie, now he has revived his “Obama gutted the work requirements in welfare” lie. The problem is that too many people are too busy to pay close attention, so they only see the lies and don’t have a chance to dig for the truth. And many other people are watching FOX or listening to Limbaugh, so they will never hear that these ads are just lies. It just might work.

How Many Lies?

How many lies and tricks can you count in just this one ad?

“If you want to know President Obama’s second term agenda, look at his first: gutted the work requirement for welfare,” the script goes. “Doubled the number of able-bodied adults without children on food stamps. Record unemployment. More women in poverty than ever before. Borrowed from China and increased the debt to over $16 trillion, passing the burden onto the next generation. We may have made it through President Obama’s first term – it’s our children who can’t afford a second.”

Obama doubled the number of people on food stamps? Maybe the fact that 815,000 people lost their jobs just in the last month of Bush’s presidency had something to do with people needing food stamps? Here is the actual record:

When Romney talks about jobs lost under Obama, he is talking about the left side of that chart, when the country was still suffering from the Bush crash! And just look at the tremendous difference the stimulus made, just completely turning things around!

The Worst Lie (In This Ad)

But the worst lie in this ad (can there be a “worst” lie?) is the one about “gutted the work requirement for welfare,” The reason this is the worst lie (in this ad) is that we’ve been over this and over it, and every single non-Romney fact checker that has looked at it has called it a blatant, outright, flat-out, bald-faced lie. And here he is retelling it, betting that it will fool a few more voters.

Sam Stein at Huffington Post, Romney Revives Obama Welfare Reform Attack In Unannounced Ad,

As newsworthy as the ad’s script is the way in which the Romney campaign released the new spot. There was no public pronouncement, at least not via email (the campaign did post the spot to its YouTube page). And it seems to fit a pattern. The campaign is throwing what it can against the wall in the election’s closing days. Any movement it creates among voters outweighs howls it may cause from the press corps, the campaign believes.

Benjy Sarlin at TPM, in Romney Camp Going Off The Fact Checking Rails In Ohio writes,

In a blast from the past, the Romney campaign is also reviving ads (unannounced, yet again) that feature a debunked claim that Obama “gutted” welfare work requirements. Romney’s original welfare attack in the summer was savaged in the press as inaccurate, prompting Romney’s pollster Neil Newhouse to respond that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

Does Romney Get Away With It?

Does Romney get away with it? Simple answers to simple questions: so far, yes.

P.S. this might be a good time to refer readers to yesterday’s post, What Does Romney’s Campaign Of Lies Say About Our Country?

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The things Mitt Romney says can just astonish you. Romney shows a wondrous perfection of the ability to smile and just say whatever needs to be said at the moment to make the sale.

This time he tries to scare Ohioans by saying Jeep is leaving the country and taking all its jobs with it (when it is really expanding into other countries) and then promises to “fight for every American job.” He says this even as Bain Capital’s Sensata is closing their factory here and sending all its jobs to China — adding even more money to Romney’s huge fortune.

The Detroit News reports that “Romney picks up incorrect story about Jeep production moving to China”:

“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China,” Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. “I will fight for every good job in America. I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair America will win.”

Romney was apparently responding to reports Thursday on right-leaning blogs that misinterpreted a recent Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said Chrysler, owned by Italian automaker Fiat SpA, is thinking of building Jeeps in China for sale in the Chinese market.

Jed Lewison writes at Daily Kos, in New Romney lie: Scare Ohioans by falsely claiming Chrysler may move all Jeep production to China,

Only Mitt Romney could take a story about how Chrysler is expanding into the Chinese market … and turn it into a story about how if he doesn’t get elected, Chrysler might send all of its Jeep production there.

… I know there’s a risk of sounding holier-than-thou because in campaigns there’s always going to be some exaggerations or stretching of the truth, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But that’s not what Romney does. He lies. When he speaks, he doesn’t care about the accuracy of what he says—he only cares about whether his words help him achieve his personal goals. That is the essence of dishonesty and it’s a fundamental character flaw.

Sensata

Meanwhile, right now even as Mitt Romney promises “I will fight for every good job in America,” Bain Capital is closing Sensata and sending all the jobs to China, the workers are asking Romney for his help, Romney refuses to help, and Romney will make a fortune from that.

See Why Voters Need To Know About #Sensata.

And click here to see the collection of stories about what is happening at Sensata.

Say Just Anything

By the way, here is what fellow Republicans say about Romney’s ability to just say anything:

It is astonishing and wondrous, in its own way. It is a spectacle to behold. But not in a good way.

Click here to see my collection of “Latest Lie” posts.
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Mitt Romney told a lie Friday, scaring Ohio’s Jeep workers with a claim that Jeep is shutting down US manufacturing and moving it to China. Now he is doubling down on this lie with a new ad. He is calculating that the lies will scare enough poorly-informed people to vote his way, never mind the truth. And we could see a president elected based on just lying.

The Original Lie

In Friday’s post, The Latest Lie: “Jeep Moving All Production To China” (Plus #Sensata),

The things Mitt Romney says can just astonish you. Romney shows a wondrous perfection of the ability to smile and just say whatever needs to be said at the moment to make the sale.

This time he tries to scare Ohioans by saying Jeep is leaving the country and taking all its jobs with it (when it is really expanding into other countries) and then promises to “fight for every American job.” He says this even as Bain Capital’s Sensata is closing their factory here and sending all its jobs to China — adding even more money to Romney’s huge fortune.

The New Romney Ad

Here is the new Romney ad:

Here are a few responses:

Sam Stein at Huffington Post, Mitt Romney Releases Auto Ad That Misleads On Facts,

Where the ad goes from misleading to something more nefarious is in the text it shows. At one point, it displays a line from a Bloomberg story stating that Chrysler “plans to return Jeep output to China,” the implication being that the company is moving operations there as opposed to expanding operations that are already there. Romney has cited this report on several occasions while campaigning and has been summarily criticized for doing so. Chrysler has denied the report, and multiple news outlets have called out the Romney campaign for using it in on the stump.

UAW: UAW: Romney doubles down on Jeep lie,

Even after Chrysler Corp.’s Gualberto Ranieri, vice president of communications, said Friday, “Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China,” the Romney campaign put out a false and misleading ad basically repeating his bogus statement made Thursday in Ohio that Chrysler was moving all Jeep production to China.

Travis Waldron at Think Progress, Romney Auto Bailout Ad Tells Four Myths In 30 Seconds,

As Mitt Romney continues to struggle to explain his various positions on the auto rescue that saved General Motors and Chrysler, his presidential campaign has released an ad about the bailout that is littered with falsehoods and misdirections.

Keith Laing at The Hill, Chrysler: Romney is wrong, Jeep not leaving US for China,

Chrysler is not moving Jeep production from Ohio to China despite claims by Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, the auto company said.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, Mitt Romney Gets Desperate in Ohio,

On this scale, Romney’s ad rates about 9 out of 10 on the deceptiveness scale. He’s obviously trying to imply that American jobs will be shipped overseas; stating things accurately would require wholesale revisions; and doing so would completely destroy Romney’s point. But he doesn’t care. He’s got an election to win, and if scaring Ohio autoworkers is what it takes, then that’s what it takes. It’s truly nauseating.

Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic, A Desperate, Deceptive Gambit for Romney in Ohio,

Of course, this kind of deception is emblematic of the campaign Romney and his supporters have waged in the last few days. They insist that Romney never thought government should let Chrysler and GM collapse.

If we elect a president based on a campaign of flat-out lies, deception and misdirection what kind of country will we have as a result?

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Campaigning alongside Pat Robertson today, Mitt Romney implied that President Obama plans to “take God off our coins.”

“That pledge says ‘under God.’ I will not take God out of our platform. I will not take God off our coins. And I will not take God out of my heart.”

According to Sahil Kapur at TPM Livewire, reporting in Romney Implies Obama Will Remove God From Coins, Obama Campaign Fires Back,

Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith called the insinsuation false and an act of desperation.

“It’s disappointing to see Mitt Romney try to throw a Hail Mary by launching extreme and untrue attacks against the President and associating with some of the most strident and divisive voices in the Republican Party, including Rep. Steve King and Pat Robertson,” she said in a statement. “This isn’t a recipe for making America stronger, it’s a recipe for division and taking us backward.”

Romney also said he would “rebuild America’s military might.” President Reagan doubled the military budget. President George ‘W’ Bush doubled the military budget again. The United States currently spends more on military than all other nations combined.

Now Mitt Romney is saying that President Obama gave us “:four straight trillion-dollar deficits.” Since we are in Obama’s third budget year, a different President must have brought us trillion-dollar deficits. Was it Bill Clinton?

The Romney Claim

Mitt Romney is saying in his stump speech, running ads, sending emails, tweeting tweets, and doing everything that hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate/billionaire money can buy, all saying that President Obama has brought us trillion-dollar deficits for four years.

Romney’s campaign website, for example, makes several false deficit and debt claims,

President Obama Is Responsible For The Most Rapid Increase In Debt Of All Presidents … the national debt has now increased $4 trillion on President Obama’s watch …

…President Obama Has Presided Over Four Straight Trillion-Dollar Deficits

“The federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2012 (which ends on September 30) will total $1.1 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates, marking the fourth year in a row with a deficit of more than $1 trillion.”

The Lie

\Romney’s figures are based on claiming the 2009 budget years as President Obama’s first budget. That would make 2012 his fourth budget year.

But we are just now wrapping up President Obama’s third budget year, not his fourth.

The 2009 budget was President Clinton’s Bush’s last budget year, not President Obama’s first. The fiscal year runs from September to September. The $1.4 trillion deficit in the 2009 budget year began before the 2008 election and had nothing to do with President Obama.

The conservative Cato Institute spelled it out, in Who’s To Blame for the Massive Deficit?,

All this borrowing is only necessary, we are told, because Obama ran up $1.4 trillion of debt in his first year. … many critics, either out of ignorance or malice, are blaming Obama for deficits that are not his fault.

… Some Republicans, for instance, complain that Obama tripled the budget deficit in his first year. This assertion is understandable, since the deficit jumped from about $450 billion in 2008 to $1.4 trillion in 2009.

… The 2009 fiscal year began Oct. 1, 2008, nearly four months before Obama took office. The budget for the entire fiscal year was largely set in place while President Bush was in the White House. … Obama is mostly right in claiming that he inherited a mess.

So no, the massive deficits were not brought to us by President Obama, they were brought to us by an earlier president. Was it Clinton?

See also, Ten Years Ago We Were Paying Off The Nation’s Debt. But Then We Elected Obama.

A new Romney ad says President Obama “used his health care plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith.” Apparently the Romney campaign can’t find any criticisms of President Obama that are actually true.

The Ad

A new Romney ad says that the President is “forcing religious institutions to go against their faith” while showing a picture of the Pope, and asks, “When religious freedom is threatened, who do you want to stand with?”

Birth Control Is “War On Religion”

The background behind this Romney ad is that the new “Obamacare” health care law includes a mandate that private insurance policies cover womens’ health care, including birth control. The Catholic Church opposes birth control, and the Romney claim is that by requiring insurance companies to provide birth control for women, therefore the President has “declared war on religion.”

Churches are not required to provide birth control for workers in their insurance policies under the new law.

The Boston Globe reports that in 2005, then-Governor Romney “required all Massachusetts hospitals, including Catholic ones, to provide emergency contraception to rape victims, even though some Catholics view the morning-after pill as a form of abortion.”

Psychiatric Drugs Also “War On Religion?”

While the ad references Catholics, it does not, however, also claim that the President has declared war on Scientology. “Obamacare” also mandates that insurance policies cover standard psychiatric drugs to patients, which violates the tenants of Scientology.

In other election news, FOX News and the Romney campaign claim that the President’s ads contain lies. See Romney says Obama, allies perpetuating lies in ads.