In a supposed "fact-checking" article last week, the "liberal" New York Times swallowed whole and regurgitated onto its pages the essence of an outright lie lifted from a Romney press release.
Analyzing Obama statements about public and private job growth, Peter Baker and Michael Cooper of the Times wrote:
Either way, while Mr. Obama has boasted of shrinking the public work force, he has advocated policies to prevent it from shrinking by helping state and local governments avoid laying off employees. In recent days, he has lamented that continuing economic troubles result in part from a decreasing public work force.
Wow! What a rotten, slimy hypocrite that Obama guy is! First he "boasts" about how his policies have shrunk the government work force. Then he has the colossal nerve to promote policies to stop government layoffs!
One problem, Peter and Michael: What you wrote is false. Obama did not "boast" about a shrinking work force. Is it possible that you believe he did because you read a Romney campaign press release, in which Romney spokeswoman Ryan Williams wrote that:
Obama “said the real weakness in the economy was state and local government employment — yet a month earlier, he touted the fact that government employment had fallen on his watch.”
Of course, to prove this, the Romney camp used the Fox-News-tried-and-tested technique of quote truncation (TM). Below are the two quotes the Romney Campaign used.
First, the notorious June 8, 2012 "doing fine" quote, (as we know, also truncated and exploited ad nauseum): (Interestingly, in order to slander Obama as a hypocrite, the Romney camp had to now include the truncated part of the "fine" quote, making clear that "fine" was a comparative word. So we have two slanders -- one using truncation of a single quote, the other, replacing the truncation in that quote, but falsely using truncation in another quote. Brilliant!)*
The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government — oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government.
Second, the earlier "boasting" quote (on May 8, 2012). Added in bold is the part left out by the Romney camp (and ignored by the New York Times):
The only time government employment has gone down during a recession has been under me. So I make that point just so you don’t buy into this whole bloated government argument that you hear. And frankly, if Congress had said yes to helping states put teachers back to work and put the economy before our politics, then tens of thousands more teachers in New York would have a job right now. That is a fact. And that would mean not only a lower unemployment rate, but also more customers for business.
The rest of Obama's quote (below the fold) lays out in great detail Obama's argument that in recessions,
even under Republican Presidents, public jobs have been created to stimulate the economy.
So Obama made a detailed argument that not only itself belies Romney's and the Times' distortions, but shows that (a) the economy is being dragged down by public sector job losses; (b) government employment grew as a recession stimulus under both Bush's and Reagan; (c) the central Tea Party myth that Obama has exploded government growth is false; and (d) Congress is holding back the economy by failing to do what it did under Republican Presidents. And what does he get? Multiple lies, distortions and omissions.
Let me ask you, Peter and Michael. Do you think most people know that in prior recessions under Republican Presidents, Congress has increased aid to help public employment? And this was even when Democrats controlled on or both Houses, and did not, as the current Republicans are doing, starve governments as part of their efforts to insure economic failure?
Maybe the NY Times has said this in editorials (where it really is mostly liberal, despite deficit hawkishness), but in its news pages?
Full Obama May 8 quote:
OBAMA: Just about every time we put these policies up for a vote, the Republicans in Congress got together and they said no. They said no to putting hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job repairing our roads and our bridges and our schools and our transit systems. No to a new tax cut for businesses that hire new workers. No to putting more teachers back in our classrooms, more cops back on the beat, more firefighters back to work. And this is at a time when we know one of the biggest drags on our economy has been layoffs by state and local governments — that’s true all across the country.
Government employment rose under President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush. So each time there was a recession with a Republican President, compensated — we compensated by making sure that government didn’t see a drastic reduction in employment.
The only time government employment has gone down during a recession has been under me. So I make that point just so you don’t buy into this whole bloated government argument that you hear. And frankly, if Congress had said yes to helping states put teachers back to work and put the economy before our politics, then tens of thousands more teachers in New York would have a job right now. That is a fact. And that would mean not only a lower unemployment rate, but also more customers for business.
"Fact-checking" has turned out to be just a tool to support the phony, destructive "both sides do it" media coverage. The "fact-checkers" strain to find "pinocchios" or "pants-on-fire" ratings for Democratic statements, so as not to appear biased against the GOP. The most egregious of these was the "lie of the year" given to the unambiguous truth that the Ryan-Romney plan will end Medicare (as we know it or even as we don't know it). Even last week, the WaPo fact-checker was giving "pinocchios" to
true statements about
Bain's outsourcing.
More on the "phony both sides do it" in the June 20 Times article in a follow-up to this Diary.
*Sometimes, "truncation is just truncation." Not here, though.