This page was last updated on November 6, 2015.
IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING; Carl Davidson; Facebook; October 31, 2015.
You can learn more about BCR’s leftster management here. “Leftster” is the combination of leftist and gangster, inspired by the left-originated “bankster.”
The Republican debate of October 28, 2015, conducted by CNBC at the Coors Event Center in Boulder, CO.
For your education and entertainment. Be sure to read the comments as well. The racist and sexist tone of these “analysts” is obvious. If you don’t see the obvious, however, let me know.
Carl Davidson (KD): “IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING about Chris Christie’s rather outrageous assertion in the last GOP debate that your social security funds were ‘stolen,’ here the facts that should get him a Pinocchio award:
“CHRISTIE: The federal government has ‘stolen’ the Social Security taxes paid by workers and spent it on other things. ‘It isn’t their money any more... It got stolen from them. It’s not theirs anymore. The government stole it and spent it a long time ago.’
“THE FACTS: The money is not stolen, it’s borrowed.
“Over the past 30 years, Social Security has collected about $2.7 trillion more in payroll taxes than it has paid in benefits. By law, the Treasury Department has invested the surplus in U.S. Treasury bonds.
“Over that same time period, the federal government has run budget deficits in all but a few years. To finance the deficits, the government has borrowed money, from other government agencies as well as public debt markets.
“The money from Social Security has been spent, but Social Security holds Treasury bonds worth $2.7 trillion, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Saying the money has been stolen assumes that the federal government will not honor the bonds.’”
As always, be sure to check the debate transcript before you accept as fact anything KD – or anyone else – claims the participants said. You’ll read why immediately below.
Here’s the entirety of the question asked of Gov. Christie and his answer as per the debate transcript.
“Moderator” Becky Quick asked,
“Governor Christie, I’d like to (inaudible) a question next. Actually, I have a question for you (inaudible).
“In your tell it like it is campaign, you’ve said a lot of tough things. You’ve said that we need to raise the retirement age for Social Security. You think that we need to cut benefits for people who make over $80,000 and eliminate them entirely for seniors who are making over $200,000.
“Governor Huckabee, who is here on the stage, has said that you and others who think this way are trying to rob seniors of the benefits that they’ve earned. It raises the question: When it is acceptable to break a social compact?”
Mr. Christie responded,
“Well, I wish you would have asked that question years ago when they broke it. I mean, let me be honest with the people who are watching at home. The government has lied to you and they have stolen from you. They told you that your Social Security money is in a trust fund. All that’s in that trust fund is a pile of IOUs for money they spent on something else a long time ago.
“And they’ve stolen from you because now they know they cannot pay these benefits and Social Security is going to be insolvent in seven to eight years. We’re sitting up here talking about all these other things; 71 percent of federal spending today is on entitlements, and debt service. And, that’s with zero percent interest rates.
“Now, I’m the only person that’s put out a detailed plan on how to deal with entitlements. And we’ll save a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. And, here’s the difference between me and Hillary Clinton. What Hillary Clinton’s going to say, and has said before is, she wants to raise Social Security taxes.
“Now, let me ask you a question everybody, and, this is for the guy, you know, who owns a landscaping business out there. If somebody’s already stolen money from you, are you going to give them more? Or, are you going to deal with the problem by saying, I’m going to give people who’ve done well in this country less benefit on the backend. We need to get realistic about this. We’re not — the American people — forget about anything else, they’ve already been lied to and stolen from. And…”
Let’s go back to the alleged quote of Mr. Christie:
“The federal government has ‘stolen’ the Social Security taxes paid by workers and spent it on other things. ‘It isn’t their money any more... It got stolen from them. It’s not theirs anymore. The government stole it and spent it a long time ago.’”
The first thing you probably noticed is the alleged quote of Mr. Christie is nothing of the kind. Before I got into my analysis, I assumed KD cherry-picked Mr. Christie’s comment. It turned out to be far worse, however. Though he did not cite his source, it appears the source of all of KD’s comment after the first paragraph originated with “AP FACT CHECK: The Republican debaters and the facts.”
The AP “fact-checkers” did not cherry-pick Mr. Christie’s comment; they did far worse. The AP took pieces of Mr. Christie’s actual response, added in the “fact-checkers’” words, then assembled them into something they thought they could tear down. Deceptively paraphrasing Mr. Christie’s comment would have been bad enough but the AP took it one step further. The AP put quotation marks around a few sentences to lead us to believe they were Mr. Christie’s comments. This is where the AP went from deception to outright lying.
At first, what the AP did was so egregious I thought I had to be wrong, that somehow I was using a bad transcript or missing something. As a result, I compared the transcript with the OnDemand recording of the debate and the CNBC recording on YouTube. The question posed to Mr. Christie and his response begins about 34:30 into the YouTube recording. All three presentations of the debate were the same.
As for KD, the AP wrote what KD wanted to hear so he did not perform due diligence on the story before he passed it along to his followers. From what I can tell, none of KD’s followers fact-checked his comment.
So, why did the AP lie and why did KD buy it hook, line, and sinker? First, anyone who heard or read what Mr. Christie actually said knew what he meant by “stolen” and recognized it as hyperbole. I tend to avoid hyperbole because it allows people to misrepresent what a person said/meant and redirect the conversation. Second, the AP didn’t want to mention Mr. Christie said, “I’m going to give people who’ve done well in this country less benefit on the backend. We need to get realistic about this.” Penalizing Americans who do well is supposed to be something lefties support, not a Republican presidential candidate. Third, the AP wanted to keep the “trust fund” myth alive.
If anyone deserves “a Pinocchio award,” it’s the AP and KD.
Please read “Socialist Security and Medicare” for more info.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>
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