Saturday, March 19, 2011

Fact check on Koch-whore ads finds they are LYYYIIIIINNG!!!

The Koch-whore group FreedomWorks says it's spending $5.6 million on ads to smear unions. We took a little time to figure out just how they're lying. It didn't take long. 

The first thing they lie about is the palm trees. As ThinkProgress points out,
The advertisement tries to paint union protesters in Ohio as violent thugs. One problem: the ad uses footage from an old union protest in California.
How do we know? This is the same footage from California, which features palm trees, that was used by Bill O’Reilly just days ago. He used it to argue that the protesters in Wisconsin were violent thugs.
Here's the second thing: The ad starts out with the statement, "How do government unions plan to get Ohio out of debt?" Then it shows an angry man yelling "every once in a while you need to get out in the street and get a little bloody." Who is that man? An Ohio union member? Hardly. It's a Massachusetts congressman, Rep. Michael Capuano.

And remember this -- their statement that the ad campaign was to target
“the rampant abuse of power that organized labor has engaged at the state and federal level to impact elections and the public policymaking process”????

Check out this list of the top 20 spenders on lobbying the U.S. government between 1998-2010. Not a union in the list. All multinational corporations that spend billions bending the federal government to their own needs. (That money, by the way, came out of your phone bill, health care bill, utility bill, gas money and federal income taxes.)

(NOTE: All lobbying expenditures on this page come from the Senate Office of Public Records. Data for the most recent year was downloaded on January 31, 2010.)

Top Spenders (1998-2010)

US Chamber of Commerce  $738,825,680
American Medical Assn  $243,277,500
General Electric  $236,580,000
AARP  $197,752,064
Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America  $195,143,920
American Hospital Assn   $194,316,789
AT&T Inc  $161,557,725
Blue Cross/Blue Shield  $159,178,718
Northrop Grumman  $159,175,253
National Assn of Realtors  $155,997,380
Exxon Mobil  $151,336,942
Verizon Communications  $148,974,841
Edison Electric Institute  $147,075,999
Business Roundtable  $142,824,000
Boeing Co   $139,424,310
Lockheed Martin  $135,124,293
Southern Co  $117,840,694
PG&E Corp  $117,680,000
General Motors   $116,379,170
Pfizer Inc  $107,267,268

Just makes you sick, doesn't it?