FactCheck.org did an in-depth analysis of the commercials being run in the U.S. Senate race between Pete Ricketts and Ben Nelson.
Fake News, Nebraska Style - Senate candidates from both parties stretch credibility in their latest ads. - FactCheck.org
I encourage everyone to read the article. It’s well-written and researched, and if you read the article, you’ll see most of the worst offenses are made by the Ricketts campaign.
Here is a summary from the website:
In his most recent ad, we find that Republican challenger Pete Ricketts inaccurately uses citations from news reports to draw his own, more incendiary conclusions. The words displayed are not in the articles, are not representative of the articles as a whole, and are more inflammatory than any words in the actual articles.
In an earlier ad, the campaign used images of newspaper clippings to splice its own conclusions among ten-year-old news reports for “creative reasons,” according to a spokesperson.
Democratic incumbent Ben Nelson’s campaign responds with a somewhat more accurate ad, but it is also stuck in the past, using a decade-old media report about long vanquished opponents.
The state’s Democratic Party joins the fray with an ad attacking Ricketts for trying to lower the property value of his home for tax purposes. Ricketts did try to lower his house valuation, but so have many Nebraskans — including Ben Nelson.
Maybe Ricketts next commercial will cite Wikipedia as his source for all the facts and quotes that appear in his commercials.
Political commercials are for the least informed and involved of voters. Most of them deal in half truths and occasionally outright lies. (Ben Nelson’s claim that Ricketts favors the Fair Tax (national sales tax) is just false. )Until there is a commission of judges to regulate slander and unsupported statements in political commercials, as Mexico has, it’s voter beware. Do your own research , such as on Project Votesmart and newspapers.
Ricketts has my vote.
I saw the ad where the voiceover boasted of Rickett’s ability to spawn.
I want a senator whose dick works.
Petey boy is now hiding behind skirts!!!!
Having an emplyee boast of the wonders of Pete.
Heh!!! As if an employee would dare say anything negative about the hair-challanged one and as if Petey would allow anything negative to be mentioned.
Using an employee to babble, worshiping at the “altar of Ricketts,” is such a lame tactic. Sadly, it may be effective considering the lack of critical thinking found in the typical American sheeplet/citizen.
http://www.petericketts.com/media/farmer_nelson.wmv
I am not sure if any of who have seen this, but this type of commerical would be more appropriate for the Daily Show. However, good ole Pete decided to air it for his campaign. This has actually aired on TV, and I was literally lying on the floor laughing at the absurdness of this add.
Anyways enjoy
This whole “who didn’t pay their tax” thing is just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Even for US politics, it’s really quite asinine. I mean, it’s completely rational to want to have the least amount of money stolen - err, “taxed,” I seem to keep forgetting that when the government steals it somehow magically becomes “taxation…” - from you as possible.
The reason tax is such a huge issue is because Mr. Ricketts is trying to tie himself to what ‘Republican’ means to my parents and grandparents. Our parents & grandparents think of ‘Republican’ as financial conservatism, Reganomics, cutting taxes for the regular working man, et cetera, et cetera. What they don’t realize is that that description of ‘Republican’ is no longer accurate. Dubya’s tax cuts have put us so far in the hole, we’ll be prostituting ourselves to pay it off soon enough. And, Nelson’s doing the same thing.
You know who votes in Nebraska? Our parents and grandparents. You know what they care about? Where their tax dollars are going and who’s going to take the least of them. You know who Nelson & Ricketts pay attention to? Our parents & grandparents.
So, whether stretching the truth or flat out LIES, that’s what they’re going to focus on.
“Dubya’s tax cuts have put us so far in the hole, we’ll be prostituting ourselves to pay it off soon enough.”
WRONG. It’s spending that’s gotten out of control; tax revenues increased shortly after the W tax cuts, google the “Law of Diminishing Returns” or “Laffer Curve” for more on why this is the case. It’s a huge oversimplification to say “Bush’s tax cuts put us in the red” or “raising taxes would put the government back in the black;” hell, I’ve written 15+ page papers on this issue and still felt like I was just scratching the surface due to how considering time and economic growth drastically complicate things.
I’m all for paying down the debt, but the national debt is just a symptom of the real problem - massive spending. Further, raising taxes now as the over-capitalized housing market is in the middle of being liquidated and energy costs are still fairly high would likely bring about a recession. As you might be able to tell, I also have a small moral problem with taxation, but that’s another issue.
It is true that the thing that’s really out of control in Washington is the spending. If we weren’t spending $2 billion a week for a bloody mistake, or building $250 million bridges to nowhere, the tax cuts may not have been so disasterous for the national debt. But because they cut taxes and increased spending, they put us in a huge hole.
But revenue is not down, Dave. Prior to last year, tax revenue was at it’s highest in 2000, at around $2.2 Trillion. Revenues fell slightly in 2001, and then significantly in 2002, reaching their lowest point in 2003 at the depth of the recession. Revenues climbed 6% in 2004, and again in 2005; in ‘05, reciepts increased 15%, the largest single-year increase in 24 years. Again, the problem is spending, which has gotten entirely out of control.
Source:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/browse.html
Also, the general public debt you hear being reported is miniscule compared to what is actually owed, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 Trillion. Basically, the government uses a cash accounting system (as opposed to an accrual system used by businesses), so what is promised in the future is not taken into consideration. I’m not trying to be an alarmist (although that implies this is a bad thing), but the Federal government is rapidly approaching insolvency. Of course, the conservatives won’t touch this because it would make Bush look like an even bigger failure, liberals won’t make it an issue because it would unmask their sacred Social Security and Medicare schemes as sheer fraud, and it’s too byzantine for the media to report.
Source:
http://www.fms.treas.gov/fr/index.html