SMRs and AMRs

Saturday, August 07, 2010

Palin vs. PolitiFact

Ben Smith
Politico.com

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is duking it out with PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times, over her claim that “Democrats are poised to allow [the] largest tax increase in U.S. history” by letting the Bush tax cuts to expire.

Palin’s original statement — which suggested Democrats are planning to levy $3.8 trillion dollars over 10 years in new taxes on Americans — drew a spate of criticism from the left. PolitiFact weighed in with a post rating her assertion as “Pants on Fire,” arguing that the question to which Palin was responding, asked by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, was about reinstating taxes on only the wealthiest 2 percent of households. In that scenario, PolitiFact cited $678 billion over 10 years as a “reasonable” estimate.

Palin responded yesterday in a post on her Facebook page, standing by the $3.8 trillion number and arguing a need to “fact-check the fact checkers” for doing “such a bad job.”

Palin’s main defense was the absence of any clear proposal from President Barack Obama or congressional Democrats stating an intention to limit the increase to wealthy taxpayers. But PolitiFact noted in a rebuttal posted today, “Obama has indeed published his proposals in some detail — at least twice, in the annual budget documents that the White House releases.”

(More here.)

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