Democratic Whopper: Obama’s Dying Mother
We also discovered in 2011 that one of President Barack Obama’s favorite personal anecdotes — which he had told any number of times to sell his health-care legislation to the public — was not true.
The president told the story often during the 2008 presidential campaign and the many months before he signed the health care law. He said his mother, as she was dying, nearly was denied health insurance coverage due to the fact that her ovarian cancer was considered a preexisting condition. But in 2011, author Janny Scott published a biography,
A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother by Janny Scott. And in it she wrote that Stanley Ann Dunham’s health insurance provider did, in fact, cover most of the medical expenses.
The author had access to Dunham’s letters to her insurance company and reported that her fight was over disability coverage (which is not affected by the new health care law) and not over medical insurance. The White House did not dispute the account.
This is not the first time Obama has been caught using an embellished anecdote to sell the massive new health care law. In 2009 — in a televised health care address to Congress and the nation, no less — he claimed an insurance company delayed covering an Illinois man’s chemotherapy and “he died because of it.” But as reporters later pointed out, the man’s coverage was reinstated. His treatment resumed, and however badly he was treated, he nevertheless survived another four years. In that case, Obama’s speechwriters relied on a mistaken news account and never bothered to check the facts, which had been aired in public hearings before Congress.
Obama’s Untrue Anecdote
July 14
Sweet: Another Stretch By Obama
Sept. 13, 2009
Too Good to Check?
Sept. 19, 2009
Republican Presidential Whoppers: Bachmann & Cain
We could devote an entire article to the false or misleading claims that Republican presidential candidates are making — about each other, about the president or about liberals in general. But two stand out in our minds as truly memorable whoppers:
- Bachmann’s totally groundless claim, based on a story she said a stranger told her, that HPV vaccine somehow causes mental retardation. We found no scientific evidence to support that claim. In fact, 35 million doses of the vaccine have been delivered without a single reported case of mental retardation. Bachmann was taken to task by the American Academy of Pediatrics for her “false statements” about the vaccine.
- Herman Cain’s equally groundless claim — which he repeated on national television — that Planned Parenthood’s founder wanted to prevent “black babies from being born,” and that the organization built 75 percent of its clinics in black communities. In fact, Margaret Sanger’s actual words don’t support the twisted interpretation Cain and others have put on them. Furthermore, only 9 percent of abortion clinics are in predominately black neighborhoods.
An Antidote for Bachmann’s Anecdote
Sept. 14
Cain’s False Attack on Planned Parenthood
Nov. 1
Democratic Whopper: Teachers Pay Higher Tax Rates Than Obama
President Obama went overboard arguing for higher tax rates on high earnings, claiming that he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher making $50,000 a year. That’s not true.
A single taxpayer with $50,000 of income would have paid less than half the effective rate paid by the Obamas in 2008, 2009 or 2010. And if the $50,000-a-year teacher was supporting a spouse and two children — like Obama — he or she would have paid no federal income taxes at all.
Obama’s Teacher Tax Whopper
Sept. 28
Assorted Absurdities
Don’t see your favorite tall tale here? You can mine our archives for rich deposits of political spin from 2011. There you’ll find (among many other items):
- An exaggerated Democratic National Committee Web video accusing ex-Gov. Mitt Romney of far more flip-flopping than he really committed. It’s a preview of what the general election campaign will see should Romney win the GOP nomination.
- Lots of jobs spin, from all sides. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz wrongly claimed that the U.S. has begun to add “millions of jobs in manufacturing.” And the Senate Republican Policy Committee admitted using a grossly over-inflated number of “potential” jobs that supposedly won’t materialize due to Obama’s oil and gas drilling policies. The Republicans conceded that they had overstated the total by more than half a million.
- Vice President Joe Biden’s multiple whoppers about rapes in Flint, Mich., following police layoffs. He claimed variously that they went up 152 percent, tripled and even “quadrupled.” But FBI data show the number of rapes in Flint went down by 11 percent over two years. Michigan State Police figures, which include male victims, show a 9.8 percent reduction. The city supplied rape statistics to both the state and federal agencies.
- Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Web video claiming the U.S. poverty rate is at an “all-time high,” when it’s actually 7.3 percentage points lower than it was in 1959.
- And what list of whoppers would be complete without Donald Trump? During his presidential fling, Trump forced Obama to release his long-form birth certificate by making a bushelful of whoppers, including these false statements: The president’s grandmother revealed Obama was born in Kenya; the official “Certification of Live Birth” that Obama released in 2008 is “not a birth certificate,” and there’s no signature or certification number on it; “nobody knew” Obama when he was growing up and “nobody ever comes forward” who knew him as a child; and birth announcements that appeared in Hawaii newspapers in 1961 “probably” were put there fraudulently by his now-deceased American grandparents.
And it wasn’t just the politicians spreading false information: Lies spread like viruses through carelessly forwarded email messages that were also copied and pasted on personal blogs and social media. We wrote in 2008: “That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.” And that continued to be true in 2011. Check our “Viral Spiral” page for the most current cyber-whoppers.
Our favorite example from all the delusional nonsense that circulated in 2011 was another claim — circulated by gun fanciers – that liberal billionaire George Soros was behind an investment company that has been buying many companies that make guns and ammunition. In fact, Soros has no connection to the company. Even the National Rifle Association weighed in, calling this e-rumor “completely false and baseless” and adding: “The owners and investors involved are strong supporters of the Second Amendment and are avid hunters and shooters.”
Will 2012 bring more honesty and respect for facts? We certainly hope so. But it is an election year after all — so we’ll be ready for whatever that brings.
– by Brooks Jackson, Fact Check.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels.
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