Truth in Political Advertising

Here it is, plain and simple.  We are fed up with politicians, political organizations, and news media lying, distorting facts, and misleading the public.  Think about recent claims of communists in Congress, abortion statistics about Planned Parenthood, or clearly disproven claims about government growth.  The list goes on and on.  And the truth is that such statements are not protected by the 1st Amendment.  The Federal Trade Commission requires truth in consumer advertising, including clear disclaimers to distinguish facts from opinions when discussing medical issues or making claims about legal or financial outcomes.  The same standard must be held to people using the print, airwaves or internet media to educate or influence you, the public.

We propose the following Truth in Political Statements federal law.

Politicians (including their employees and representatives), political organizations (as defined by the FEC and/or IRS) and media outlets (whether for- or not-for-profit) that provide content intended to educate, inform or influence the public, must provide proof of and links to credible and verifiable sources for all claims and statements that are not clearly and explicitly stated to be the opinion of the speaker or organization. Failure to provide such factual bases and support shall result in a public retraction and/or admonition of use of unsubstantiated statements or opinion presented as fact. Claims or statements made as fact that are shown to be false will be publicly retracted and corrected. All such corrections, retractions, clarifications and admonitions will be made by the speaker or organization who made them, at their exclusive expense, and in all media outlets, forms and markets in which those statements were made.  

Imagine if, during the black and white images and ominous music of super-pac smear advertisements, there were a clear message at the bottom of the screen that says "This is the opinion of Citizens United" or gave a URL to the viewer so you could see their facts.  Imagine if a candidate trying to score cheap points by smearing their opponent knew that they would have to pay double to correct every false statement they made.  Certainly, some groups would try to find sneaky ways to work around the system, but it sure would go a long way to cleaning up the (mis)information flying around and bring genuine accountability to the very people who should be most accountable.  Put another way, it worked for Pinocchio...

Many states using $2.5 billion mortgage settlement to solve budget woes.

Today the NY Times reported that "more than a dozen states...want to help close gaping [budget] shortfalls using money paid by the nation's biggest banks and earmarked for foreclosure prevention, investigations of financial fraud and blunting the ill effects of the housing crisis."  In other words, these states are not using the money to help homeowners, but instead to balance their budgets or pay down state debt.

According to a report by Enterprise Community Partners, 6 states are not using their funds for housing, an additional 9 states are only using part of their funds for housing, and 9 are still deciding. Who are the culprits?

Alaska, Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, South Dakota and Virginia have designated or proposed to use about 98% of their combined $243 million for non-housing spending.  Georgia will use all $99 million for economic development, Missouri has has designated $40 million to "soften planned cuts to higher education," South Carolina has designated all $31 million to encourage businesses to move to the state, and Virginia has proposed all but $1 million to offset cuts to state and local government and give state employees a 3% raise.

Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Nebraska, Utah, Wisconsin and West Virginia have designated at least $126 million (over 60%) of their total $203 million for state general funds.  Today, the Times reported that Texas sent $125 million into its state coffers, and that California will use the bulk of its $400 million to pay state debts.

Not to put a political spin on it, but of these 17 states, only 2 are designated "blue" by the last five presidential votes, with the other 15 either red or "purple."  We leave it up to you to decide whether this is typical of conservative government, but we submit that money sent to a state for a particular purpose should be used only for that purpose, and that states who fail to do so should have to pay all the money back.

Don't Forget to Thank North Carolina

North Carolina's recently passed "Amendment One" may have upset about half the country but we should take a second to applaud the authors for enacting a law that attempts to punish everyone equally.  One of our main pushes on this blog has been to require legislation that takes away the rights of one group to be balanced by measures that equally take away the rights of everyone else. Tit for tat, if you will.  In banning gay marriage, the North Carolina senate also banned all other forms of civil union and domestic partnership, which affects all citizens (straight or gay) who wish to benefit from the legal protections of marriage without entering into the religious institution.  Granted, a more reasonable ballot measure would have been to outlaw all marriage, but this is certainly a noble first step.

There is little doubt that many groups will bring suit against this state's amendment on a variety of arguments.  It certainly reads to us that this restriction violates the 13th Amendment.  In the meantime, take a few minutes to congratulate North Carolinians on screwing over everyone, rather than just the targets of their narrow-minded bigotry.

Remember the unintended mothers.

Mother's Day is an important celebration of the immeasurable value of our mothers.  They are the sparkling gems in all our lives.  To moms everywhere, we love you.

But just as during great feasts, we remember the hungry, so too should we remember the mothers in our own country who didn't want to be.  

There are teenage mothers who were exclusively taught "abstinence only" by their parents, churches and schools and found themselves with the surprise of a lifetime.  There are mothers whose partners abandoned them.  There are mothers who sought abortions but were either too shamed or legally barred by their state's anti-choice statutes.  There are mothers too poor for adequate health care for themselves and their baby.  There are mothers who steal and go hungry just to feed their children.  

We have abandoned all these mothers, through restrictive laws, economic strangleholds, and freedom-slashing "social values."  If you truly love all mothers, then you need to remind your lawmakers that there are very real and very tragic victims of today's conservative agenda.

Reprimand Liars: Pay for Truth

On May 3, Stephanie Cutter (Deputy Campaign Manager for Obama 2012) put out a short video responding to a new $6.1 million ad campaign financed by the Koch Brothers.  You can see it here.  The essence of the video was to tell the truth about a number of lies that were made in the Koch Bros' ads.    The problem is that Ms. Cutter's response relies on the viral nature of internet clips and will mostly be only seen by people who do not already need convincing, while the Koch et al. campaign will blitz everyone. This is just an example, and this post is not to raise up one party or put down the other.  It is about truth.

Defamation* is is illegal but the legal fees and time needed to sue in court are so excessive that in politics, there simply isn't time to let the justice system provide adequate protection.  In effect, I can essentially say anything I want about my opponents and leave them to clean up the mess.  They are forced to waste their money and time to set the record straight, are derailed from their message, and may lose an election not because they were bad candidates but because they were the covered with the most muck.

Right now, the FTC "truth in advertising" law requires that all advertising be truthful, fair and substantiated but this is limited to protecting consumers, i.e., advertisements for something that you buy or pay for.  So politicians can use the same "telecommunications and electricity" governed by the FTC to say just about anything that want, under the legal protection of the First Amendment and the practical protection of our legal red tape.  

Now imagine if we changed our laws slightly.  First, broaden the definition of "consumer" in federal truth-in-advertising laws to anyone paying attention to the advertisement.  Second, amend our defamation laws to include a simple reprimand that anyone issuing falsifiable statements as facts has to retract and correct their statements in the exact same way in which their original claims were made.  

Knowing that you have to stand back up on that podium and retract your claim about 80 communists in the Senate, or that you have to pay another $6.4 billion to correct all your malicious claims in prime-time TV might just be the kick-in-the-pants needed to make our leaders, and their wealthy supporters, think twice before opening their mouths.  Maybe elections would become a little more about the best candidate winning versus the last one standing.  

The protection of free speech is a cornerstone to our society, but we have to weigh this against (1) the rampant abuses that are being made now that anyone with enough money can have a microphone with nationwide reach, and (2) the ethical requirement that people who are or aspire to be our leaders should do so truthfully and without deception.  It would be interesting to see lawyers argue before the Supreme Court that the First Amendment protects the rights of people in positions of enormous public influence to lie to us.  

If you agree, please write your Congressional and Senate representatives and tell them to Reprimand the liars and bring facts back to the public discourse.


*Cribbed from wikipedia: Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on."

-Winston Churchill

Over the last few years, the liberal "blogosphere" has become increasingly infested with reports of lies, deception, fear mongering and general dishonesty coming out of the conservative-leaning blogosphere, and to be fair, I've read plenty of liberal blogs that do their own share of distortion and selective reporting for partisan gain.  One of my favorites was when the liberal blogs reported that an audience at a GOP Presidental-candidate debate booed a gay soldier, when in fact they were booing a man who heckled the soldier.  It happens all the time and is to be expected when the public gets an unedited voice to report the news.  In general, I do not share in the outrage that even the more popular liberal blogs display over the stupid statements made by their conservative counterparts.

What I cannot accept, and I hope you agree, is when partisan politics mixes with those with the reach and influence blatantly spit on their ethical responsibility to report honestly.  I am thinking about national news media, like Fox News, or syndicated programming hosts, like Rush Limbaugh, and yes, even many of our nationally-elected officials and candidates.  They all know that ratings, attention, popularity and votes come from (a) telling people what they want to hear, and (b) making themselves look better than everyone else.  Following Mr. Churchill's very wise observation, once the misinformation is out, it is essentially impossible to combat, and anyone trying to score political gain relies on this sad but very true fact of communication and human nature.

A few years ago I was listening to NPR (I am a bleeding-heart liberal, after all) coverage of some GOP event where a Senator had been making unsubstantiated claims against the Democrats.  The reporter asked a Senator if his statements were true and he said (I'm paraphrasing here) that it was the news media's job to verify the facts of his statements, not his.  I do wish I could remember who and when this was, but it wasn't just him.  This happens almost daily, because politicians know that their sound bytes will get front-page headlines and free airtime, and the correction will be hidden on page 7 of every paper.

Just this week, Mitt Romney made the unsubstantiated claim that "of all jobs lost during the Obama years, 92.% of them are women."  Fact checking website Politifact has labeled this claim Mostly False.  Does this matter?  The claim is out there, and the lion's share of the people who heard it are not trying to see if it is true or false.  If it won points for Mr. Romney, then he and his campaign are done caring about it.  Another lie spun, unable to be undone.

I expect that most of the people who make these kinds of statements are relying on their 1st Amendment right to free speech, and their knowledge that it is far too complicated, costly and ineffective to sue in court for damages that came from the lies.  In other word, our whole justice system is laid out to help the lie travel and keep the truth looking for its belt.  In the short term there may not be a practical solution other than blasting the blogosphere with fact finding and hoping that some of these make their ways into the consciousnesses of the people who blindly believe whatever they hear.

In the longer term, wouldn't it be better to pass federal legislation that requires political statements made on national stages to be vetted before they come out of the candidate's mouth?  There is precedent for this: candidates have to endorse paid political advertisements, which was intended to hold them to some measure of accountability.  Why not widen the accountability?  Why not actively promote truth as well as justice.  Will it be complicated?  Certainly.  Will it be contentious?  Without a doubt.  Does it stand for what American values ought to be?  Absolutely.  And as a bonus, if you oppose it, you are advocating the freedom to lie on a national scale with a free microphone.

Please consider writing your lawmakers and encourage them to draft legislation that requires a standard of factual evidence and truth to statements made on political issues.  It is time for lies to wear a few chains on their legs so the truth has its fair shake.

Stand Your Ground or License to Murder?

One of our readers works for the IRS, catching people for cheating on their taxes.  Certainly this is a job where you can make enemies very quickly.  We were thinking, what could happen to such a person in a Stand-Your-Ground state?  One very pissed-off individual could follow you until you go into some dark, isolated place, shoot you point blank, hit themselves a few times in the face, and claim that the shooting was self defense for you attacking them.  Yes, this sounds a bit like a plot for Law & Order.  Ten states already have, or are considering enacting, stand-your-ground laws.  If there are no witnesses and one person is dead, it is very challenging for the police to distinguish between legally-justified homicide and cold-blooded murder?  At least in most states, you need to at least try to run away, and it is very difficult to carry a gun on your person.  When the law clearly states that you are immune from prosecution for killing a person in self-defense without first trying to run away, very few obstacles remain from turning that gun into a license to kill.

Concealed weapon permits and stand-your-ground laws may provide personal security and liberty to the gun holder, but as we have seen from the Trayvon Martin case, they steal those same rights away from the victim.  

The Second Amendment does not give the right to any person to weaponize in public.  Although it is ambiguously written, it should be clear enough that "a well-regulated militia" is not a random group of unsupervised armed citizens.  Conservatives might counter that it takes considerable time, money and training to secure a concealed-carry permit, but is this any guarantee that the person will not mow down someone with that pistol in a moment of haste, stupidity, hatred or bigotry?  

Is it time to take control of gun laws by returning to the text of the 2nd Amendment and not the lobbying efforts of the NRA and their gun-loving associates?  Mr. Martin is just the notable case of the day, but how many innocent people are killed by gunfire per day?  According to wikipedia, in 2000 there were 75,000 non-fatal injuries and 31,000 deaths from firearms.  Whether homicide or suicide, intentional or accidental, over 100,000 people were hurt or killed with guns.   It shouldn't require a boy who could have been the President's son to turn our attention to this issue, but now that we are facing it, let's really do something.

Write your lawmakers and tell them that the 2nd Amendment clearly limits gun ownership to "a well-ordered militia" meaning a supervised group of trained and accountable citizens, not a random collection of people who can afford a pistol and few weeks of training.