NY Times 'News' Story Hits G.O.P.'s 'Untrue...Misleading' Claims About Drilling, Social Security
Three liberal New York Times reporters teamed up Thursday morning to fact-check the Republican debate (and defend Obama) at the Reagan library.
John Broder, Nicholas Confessore, and Jackie Calmes cowrote “Attacking the Democrats, but Not Always Getting It Right,” which was not labeled or presented as "news analysis" (a label the Times is using less of lately) but as a factual news story. The text box read: “The candidates’ arguments run into factual hurdles.”
During more than an hour and 45 minutes of intense debate on Wednesday night, the Republican presidential candidates did not shy away from exchanging blows with each other. But some of the toughest criticism -- and some of the most factually problematic -- was reserved for the policies, programs, and principles traditionally associated with Democrats, from tackling climate change to broadening access to health care to providing retirement insurance for the elderly.
Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, assailed the federal government and President Obama in particular for what he said were overbearing regulations on oil drilling, coal mining and nuclear energy.
“We are an energy-rich nation and we’re living like an energy-poor nation,” he said, asserting that Mr. Obama had halted offshore drilling, blocked construction of new coal plants, slowed development of nuclear plants and failed to develop natural gas trapped in shale formations.
But those claims are largely untrue. While Mr. Obama declared a moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP spill in 2010, the government began granting permits again earlier this year and activity is approaching pre-spill levels. The administration recently announced a major lease sale in the western Gulf of Mexico and gave provisional approval to a Shell project in the Arctic off the coast of Alaska. And while a number of utilities have canceled plans to build new coal plants, that is largely because demand for electricity has slowed, not because of new federal regulations.
The Heritage Foundation disagreed in a memo on Thursday, faulting a slow permit process that has stalled both onshore and offshore drilling, as well as environmental litigation.
Responding to G.O.P. opposition to the idea that global warming poses a threat that needs to be combated with economy-crippling regulation, the paper assured readers:
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is occurring and that human activity -- chiefly the burning of fossil fuels and cutting down of tropical forests -- is likely to blame.
The reporters even rushed to the defense of Social Security’s viability.
Some of the sharpest language of the night came when Mr. Perry laid into Social Security, saying, “You cannot keep the status quo in place and call it anything other than a Ponzi scheme.” But that metaphor is misleading. Government projections have Social Security exhausting its reserves by 2037, absent any changes, but show that the payroll tax revenues coming in would cover more than three-quarters of benefits to recipients then.
Only deep into the story did the Times evaluate attacks by candidates against their fellow Republicans.
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Comments
The NYT ought to make it officiial
Submitted by c5then on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 9:47am.
And formally announce Debbie Wassermann-Shultz as the new Editor-in-Chief.
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
1. Exxon is fighting this administration...
Submitted by Order270 on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 10:42am.
...over a massive Gulf oil deposit recently discovered.
2. Overwhelming scientific consensus does not rise to the level of being "fact".
3. Social security only covers .75 of benefits by 2037. Even if that is a fact (talking about government money projections 36 years in advance is pure conjecture at any level) it still equates to a Ponzi scheme.
Good job NYT. Now I want to see you fact check the President's speech.
Exactly. Yahoo News spared no
Submitted by rbosque on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 10:56am.
Exactly. Yahoo News spared no time in tearing into the GOP debate for facts. I'm still waiting for them or ANYONE to comb through Obama's BS. And trust me, a person can write a series of books just on his lies, distortions, and nefarious mischeif..
Fact check the President's speech
Submitted by rwnewsnut on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 12:23pm.
I fully agree. Are the job totals correct? Where will the money come from to pay for these new programs? Are there any shovel-ready jobs? The President said recently he was wrong about shovel-ready jobs.
"Where will the money come
Submitted by ThePickle on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 1:26pm.
"Where will the money come from to pay for these new programs?"
If I understand what his actual proposal entails it would be akin to robbing "Peter to pay Paul".
The idea seems for the "super-committee" to "cut spending" on programs that we have already borrowed money to implement and use those "savings" to pay for the new "jobs" program.
Even if Congress can identify cost savings in other programs said cost saving are worthless if they are just going to spend it someplace else.
1.5 million in projected expenditures are currently being proposed.
Super Duper committee trims 450million from that proposed spending
Congress then authorizes Obama's "new" jobs program and they use the 450 million "saved" from "cuts" to fund said program.
Total dollars actually saved by Super Duper committee will be reported as 450 million dollars.
Actual savings will be a big fat 0.00 dollars.
The day the NYT "fact checks"
Submitted by celator on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 10:56am.
The day the NYT "fact checks" the critters currently in the White House, is the day they begin the long road back to a semblance of journalism.
Yeah, right...
Submitted by retrocon on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 1:07pm.
i won't be waiting patiently.
NYT 2011 = Pravda 1960
Facts and the NYT really
Submitted by jessieH on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 11:34am.
Facts and the NYT really don't co-exist, anymore. They have turned into a rag-mag, a Democratic rag-mag. Liberals own it, run it and fill it full of lies.
From Fact Check
Submitted by Bill The Bold on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 1:00pm.
Conflicting, false and misleading statements on oil production and gasoline prices have become the currency of politicians lately, as oil tops $100 per barrel and gasoline hovers near $4 per gallon. Among some of the claims that got our attention:
Top Republicans blame President Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling for rising gasoline prices. The moratorium delayed drilling of some new wells, but did not affect the output of wells already in production. A projected drop in total domestic oil production this year should amount to six-tenths of 1 percent of all U.S. consumption of liquid fuels. A Wall Street oil analyst told us the moratorium has had "zero" effect on prices.
Obama said domestic oil production last year was its highest since 2003. That’s true — but U.S. oil production is projected to drop this year.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy said "under this administration our output has gone down 13 percent." McCarthy is wrong — U.S. oil production was up in 2009 and 2010, and is projected to decline only 2 percent this year.
Sarah Palin said Obama is "allowing America to remain increasingly dependent on imports" from unstable countries. But there has been a decline — not an increase — in total oil imports from Middle Eastern and African countries, as well as countries identified by the State Department as "dangerous or unstable," since Obama took office.
Fact Check
Submitted by retrocon on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 1:25pm.
2003: 2,073,453,000
2004: 1,983,302,000
2005: 1,890,106,000
2006: 1,862,259,000
2007: 1,848,450,000
2008: 1,811,817,000
2009: 1,956,596,000
2010: 2,011,856,000
Production doesn't go up with the push of a button. Bush policies led to the increases we see right now, The Energy Information Administration said we are poised for declines. That will be due to Obama policies.
Is McCarthy wrong? if he said that, yes. Is Sarah wrong? no, Obama's policies will reduce domestic oil production, and since we are not really using much less, we will "remain increasingly dependent on imports."
Remember a permit granted today does not equal oil this year.
The real problem, as Sarah and other conservatives know, is the progressive lefts constant fight against any domestic energy from fossil fuels... no refinery licensing, no anwar drilling, limited other permits, law suits everywhere, closing or limiting coal exploration, etc.
Fact Check? Ok, what did Samuel Langhorne Clemens say about statistics?
retro---
Submitted by matthewdean on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 8:36pm.
Don't know about that longhorned fellow, but Mark Twain said "Figures lie and liars figure."
Or was that Archie Bunker? :o)
MD
Thank you
Submitted by Rukus on Sat, 09/10/2011 - 5:28am.
Good post friend.
And there will be
Submitted by texasborngranny on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 2:12pm.
a NYT team factchecking The Big 0's 'jobs' campaign speech in 3... 2... 1...
hmmmmmm, nothin but crickets.
Fact check NYT
Submitted by Kilroy on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 2:52pm.
Shell isn't trying to drill in the Arctic. Right now they are selling off all their Arctic sites and shares in the MacKenzie Natural Gas pipeline and all that money is being poured into north east BC. My source,at this moment I am sitting in an ambulance as a medic watching lease construction for Shell near Dawson Creek BC and this is what the Shell reps are telling us. I think my sources are alot more reliable than any NYT has on this subject.
By the way I haven't heard of any drop in the demand for electricity.