OPPS... Clinton telling big fibs!!

[Stephanie]

More Unbelievable Propaganda in Katrina's Wake

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

By Bill O'Reilly



More unbelievable propaganda in the wake of Katrina: that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo".

You know, I'm in a rather uncomfortable position of having to defend President Bush, who's being battered by partisan propaganda over Katrina. As we've stated, the president was late reacting to the storm and his hand-picked leaders did not do the job in FEMA and Homeland Security.

But, I just can't sit here and let rank propaganda go unchallenged as most of the elite media does all day long. Now yesterday, President Bill Clinton appeared with George Stephanopoulos on ABC and said this about the poor and Katrina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.: This is a matter of public policy. And whether it's race based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made.

That's what they did in the '80's. That's what they've done in this decade. In the middle, we had a different policy. We concentrated tax cuts on lower income working people, and benefits to low income people to help them move from welfare to work. And we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty. We know what works. And we had a program that was drastically reducing poverty. And they got rid of it. So -- and they don't believe in it...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Believe in what?! What is Mr. Clinton talking about? What program did Mr. Bush get rid of?

We called Mr. Clinton's office all day, looking for an answer to that very simple question. We didn't get one. Stephanopoulos sat there like a mummy, challenging nothing. The whole thing's absurd.

Again, here are the facts. Black homeownership is up 2 percent under President Bush. Poverty spending is significantly higher under Bush than it was under Clinton. Educational spending for poor school districts is higher under Bush. And the poverty rate stood at 13.7 percent halfway through Clinton's tenure. It is 12.7 percent halfway through Bush's two terms.

This "tax cuts for the rich" business is also blatantly dishonest. It's a ruse for the secular left to institute their income redistribution scheme. Under President Clinton, the tax rate climbed higher than at any time in history except in World War II. President Bush then came in and cut taxes for everyone. And guess what? Federal tax revenues will be more this year than at any time during the Clinton administration!

Why? Because business is booming. That's why. Capitalism is working. And the more money corporations and workers make, the more taxes roll in, even at the reduced rate.

So let's recap. Black homeownership up under Bush. Poverty entitlements up under Bush. Educational spending for the poor, up under Bush. Federal tax revenues, up under Bush. Are you taking this down, George Stephanopoulos?

As for President Bush, he owes me big. I want a pen.

And that's "The Memo."

 

[CSM]

awww, cmon...Clinton would never lie!

 

[manu1959]

clinton: "We concentrated tax cuts on lower income working people, and benefits to low income people to help them move from welfare to work."

ok....this statement says that he cut taxes on working people so they could move from welfare checks to a pay check and a job....this means that their welfare checks were bigger than any potential pay check they could have been getting because taxes were too high?..... so he cut taxes on pay checks and increased welfare benifits.....so when people moved from welfare to a paycheck they would make the same amount or more?

he may sound smart but ...... damn if he is too dumb to know it

 

[MissileMan]

The Clinton Memorial Naval Vessel...

 

[no1tovote4]

clinton: "We concentrated tax cuts on lower income working people, and benefits to low income people to help them move from welfare to work."

LOL. He vetoed almost every budget that the Republican Congress passed, stopped the government, they would resubmit the same budget twice more, he would veto it one more time then sign it claiming victory for "his" programs that were all 100% part of the Contract With America. Almost all of Clintons success is because he was good at making things look like they were his ideas...

 

[Adam's Apple]

As this article says, Bubba the politician never disappoints.

George and Bubba, Just Like Old Times
By Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times
September 20, 2005

You can't blame an old yeller hound for chasing the occasional pickup, and you can't blame Bubba for chasing his tail.

George Stephanopoulos invited Bubba on to his ABC-TV interview show the other day, and naturally he was eager for him to unload on George W. Bush. Bubba never disappoints.

Rarely has the nation -- the people, not the politicians -- so come together to help neighbors in desperate need. From Skowhegan to San Diego, in supermarkets, mom-and-pop stores, back-road diners and chic uptown shops, the contribution can for Katrina relief has become the ubiquitous accessory to interstate commerce. Hundreds of Americans have streamed toward the Gulf coast to help. Fellow Baptists from Bubba's own home state are cooking 20,000 hot meals every day, for just one example, in refugee shelters in Mississippi and Louisiana. This is in addition to Americans of all faiths and no faith giving a billion dollars, or close to it, through the Salvation Army, church agencies, the American Red Cross and other charities. It's enough to make a Marine gunny sergeant choke on honest sentiment.

But it's politics as usual with the pols, and particularly the pol who invented "feeling your pain" as the centerpiece of the permanent campaign. George Stephanopoulos, playing the dutiful straight man, threw out the race card and invited Bubba to play it: "Excuse me -- the problems of race that were tied to poverty [in New Orleans]. And I know you don't think there's any conscious racism at play in the response ... [Pause. Here's the windup.] But we saw one more time, blacks and whites looked at this event through very different eyes. What can President Bush do about that? [Here comes the spitball.] And looking back, do you think there's anything more you could have done as president?"

for full article:
http://washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm

 

[The ClayTaurus]

And the poverty rate stood at 13.7 percent halfway through Clinton's tenure. It is 12.7 percent halfway through Bush's two terms.

Bill O'Reilly isn't exactly being totally honest either.

If you look at the poverty rates, they declined every year of Clinton's presidency, and have risen every year of Bush's presidency.

Bill O'Reilly didn't outright lie, the 13.7% for Clinton vs. 12.7% for Bush statistic is true. But what's dishonest is not reporting the trend associated with it.

Year - Poverty Rate
CLINTON YEARS
1993 - 15.1%
1994 - 14.5%
1995 - 13.8%
1996 - 13.7%
1997 - 13.3%
1998 - 12.7%
1999 - 11.9%
2000 - 11.3%
BUSH YEARS
2001 - 11.7%
2002 - 12.1%
2003 - 12.5%
2004 - 12.7%

Source:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html

 

[no1tovote4]

That's what happens when we divert our priorities from the Conservative to the "compassionate" conservative.

 

[The ClayTaurus]

I'm not versed enough to discern between what's because of compassionate conservatism and what's not. What I do know is that Reagan managed to turn the poverty rate around and bring it down his last 5 or 6 years. Bush I raised it all four of his years, Clinton lowered it, and Bush II is raising it again.

My point was that to claim that Bush is somehow better than Clinton on poverty because of the numbers at an arbitrary time in each's presidency is dishonest. It makes it appear as though Bush has lowered poverty since when Clinton was in office, and that's not true.

 

[Avatar4321]

Is this really news anymore? Oh wow, Clinton told a lie. Thats never happened before.

 

[no1tovote4]

I'm not versed enough to discern between what's because of compassionate conservatism and what's not. What I do know is that Reagan managed to turn the poverty rate around and bring it down his last 5 or 6 years. Bush I raised it all four of his years, Clinton lowered it, and Bush II is raising it again.

Raising taxes usually will raise the poverty rate, corporations are less willing to hire people if they have less money to pay them.

My point was that to claim that Bush is somehow better than Clinton on poverty because of the numbers at an arbitrary time in each's presidency is dishonest. It makes it appear as though Bush has lowered poverty since when Clinton was in office, and that's not true.

That's fair enough, however Clinton did not preside over a Recession, the Recession had past by the time he gained office. One can expect an economic downturn to create less jobs and thus more poverty.

However all other signs of actual poverty are lower. More people own houses, the jobless rate is much the same as with Clinton, and it is on the turnaround still from a recession. To equate the two off of one simple distinction is ridiculous on its base, we agree on that, but to say it was Clinton's policy is still ridiculous.

The large portion of the economic growth happened when Congress was lost to the Republicans and they had an actual Conservative Plan in the Contract With America. You can note that the Welfare Reform was proposed in that Contract, the Congress had to submit it three times to get it passed, but Clinton signed it unchanged from its original form then claimed credit for this "victory" and proudly declared he had done a great step toward lowering poverty. He had done nothing other than claim credit for another idea.

I am simply pointing out in the post you have objection to that the ideas that Clinton claims to have "victory" in were all portions of the Contract With America and all were passed unchanged after a couple vetoes and a claim of "victory" by Clinton. It is masterful the way he convinced people that the Contract With America was his idea by first distancing the Bill from the Contract with vetoes, but it was not his policy that lowered poverty.

I was also pointing out the differences in spending that you get with "compassionate" conservatism (Bush's term to describe himself, very little is conservative about the way he spends) and actual Conservatism. We have a larger debt, due largely to the cost of the Pill Bill and other unpaid for programs. Had he limited it to tax cuts the fact that we are actually collecting more revenue than ever before would have made it so that there was an actual surplus rather than the "projected" surplus that Clinton keeps claiming was an actual surplus.

In the post I was actually, tongue in cheek stating that Bush's form of "compassionate" conservatism is the likely cause of the slight rise in the poverty rate, and most certainly the cause of the increase in the deficit.

 

[The ClayTaurus]

Raising taxes usually will raise the poverty rate, corporations are less willing to hire people if they have less money to pay them.

Agreed.

To equate the two off of one simple distinction is ridiculous on its base, we agree on that, but to say it was Clinton's policy is still ridiculous.

Agreed again. The point I was trying to make was that O'Reilly manipulated statistics to make his arguement stronger, which makes me wonder about the validity of it in the first place. If you're arguement is strong enough, there's no need to Michael Moore statistics.

The large portion of the economic growth happened when Congress was lost to the Republicans and they had an actual Conservative Plan in the Contract With America. You can note that the Welfare Reform was proposed in that Contract, the Congress had to submit it three times to get it passed, but Clinton signed it unchanged from its original form then claimed credit for this "victory" and proudly declared he had done a great step toward lowering poverty. He had done nothing other than claim credit for another idea.

I am simply pointing out in the post you have objection to that the ideas that Clinton claims to have "victory" in were all portions of the Contract With America and all were passed unchanged after a couple vetoes and a claim of "victory" by Clinton. It is masterful the way he convinced people that the Contract With America was his idea by first distancing the Bill from the Contract with vetoes, but it was not his policy that lowered poverty.

I have no idea about any of this, haven't researched into it. Sounds about right, although I wouldn't just say it's a Clinton thing. The "best" politicians are always the ones who can spin things the best. This administration is no different than Clinton's in that regard.

I was also pointing out the differences in spending that you get with "compassionate" conservatism (Bush's term to describe himself, very little is conservative about the way he spends) and actual Conservatism. We have a larger debt, due largely to the cost of the Pill Bill and other unpaid for programs. Had he limited it to tax cuts the fact that we are actually collecting more revenue than ever before would have made it so that there was an actual surplus rather than the "projected" surplus that Clinton keeps claiming was an actual surplus.

This isn't quite clear to me. Could you expand on this paragraph a little more for me?

In the post I was actually, tongue in cheek stating that Bush's form of "compassionate" conservatism is the likely cause of the slight rise in the poverty rate, and most certainly the cause of the increase in the deficit.

This I picked up on.

 

[no1tovote4]

This isn't quite clear to me. Could you expand on this paragraph a little more for me?

I can. Bush has enacted a "peculiar" form of "Conservatism" which he calls "Compassionate Conservative" which really dwells on the Religious Right form of Conservative Social values, but pretty much completely ignores Conservative fiscal policy, other than tax cuts.

The Pill Bill was the Prescription Drugs bill giving away Federal Dollars to pay for the prescription drugs of Seniors in order to garner votes. The Bill was sold at an expensive 300 Billion or thereabouts but really costs about 700 Billion when all is said and done. Our current deficit for this year (actually down from last year because of the increase in revenue from the tax cut) is about 350 billion, much of the cost could be covered by not enacting such socialist-leaning programs as the Pill Bill.

 

[ThomasPaine]

Bill O'Reilly isn't exactly being totally honest either.

If you look at the poverty rates, they declined every year of Clinton's presidency, and have risen every year of Bush's presidency.

Bill O'Reilly didn't outright lie, the 13.7% for Clinton vs. 12.7% for Bush statistic is true. But what's dishonest is not reporting the trend associated with it.

Year - Poverty Rate
CLINTON YEARS
1993 - 15.1%
1994 - 14.5%
1995 - 13.8%
1996 - 13.7%
1997 - 13.3%
1998 - 12.7%
1999 - 11.9%
2000 - 11.3%
BUSH YEARS
2001 - 11.7%
2002 - 12.1%
2003 - 12.5%
2004 - 12.7%

Source:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html

whatsoever on poverty rates? Aren't those more related to how individuals themselves act and the economy as a whole? Oh yeah republicans want more people in poverty. Absolute drivel. Poverty is mostly caused by personal choices, either those made by the individual or those of their parents that may have resulted in being born into poverty. And I wonder how many of those in poverty are single mothers living off the dole?

At any rate Clinton is, was, and will continue to be the greatest liar in American history period. The sight or sound of that embarassment makes me want to puke.

 

[The ClayTaurus]

whatsoever on poverty rates? Aren't those more related to how individuals themselves act and the economy as a whole? Oh yeah republicans want more people in poverty. Absolute drivel. Poverty is mostly caused by personal choices, either those made by the individual or those of their parents that may have resulted in being born into poverty. And I wonder how many of those in poverty are single mothers living off the dole?

I can't tell you the exact effect a president has on poverty. But it would seem if you believe that poverty is tied to the economy, then there would be some connection to the president. Unless the president has no effect on the economy, in which case I've been getting the flim-flam from a lot of Reaganites.

At any rate Clinton is, was, and will continue to be the greatest liar in American history period. The sight or sound of that embarassment makes me want to puke.

Then puke, I guess.

What I was trying to say was that Bill O'Reilly was trying to make a point that George Bush was more sympathetic to the impoverished than Bill Clinton. I don't know (or really care) who ultimately is better for the poor, but I dislike when people misuse statistics to prove their point, valid or otherwise, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal. It makes their argument (be it a valid one or not) look weak and suspect.

That portion of his talking point used the same techniques Michael Moore used in his "movie." It's deceitful.

It's incredible that you've been so enflamed by this. I'm trying to state Bill O'Reilly spun a statistic. Please relax. :chillpill

 

[The ClayTaurus]

I can. Bush has enacted a "peculiar" form of "Conservatism" which he calls "Compassionate Conservative" which really dwells on the Religious Right form of Conservative Social values, but pretty much completely ignores Conservative fiscal policy, other than tax cuts.

The Pill Bill was the Prescription Drugs bill giving away Federal Dollars to pay for the prescription drugs of Seniors in order to garner votes. The Bill was sold at an expensive 300 Billion or thereabouts but really costs about 700 Billion when all is said and done. Our current deficit for this year (actually down from last year because of the increase in revenue from the tax cut) is about 350 billion, much of the cost could be covered by not enacting such socialist-leaning programs as the Pill Bill.

Thanks, that makes sense. One last query:

The "projected" surplus that Clinton keeps claiming was an actual surplus.

I'm curious as to what this means.

 

[no1tovote4]

Thanks, that makes sense. One last query:

I'm curious as to what this means.

Clinton's surplus was not a surplus, we borrowed over 200 billion in the last year of his Presidency and never in even one year did we not borrow money to run the government. The surplus was projected to come about if all things remained equal by 2005, but it had nothing in the projection about the recession caused by the burst of the internet companies.

Therefore the pride of "surplus" that Clinton often speaks about in his speaches, was simply taking credit for a future that had not yet come about. There was no surplus, it was simply a guess on numbers that was wildly inaccurate.

 

[The ClayTaurus]

Thanks, appreciate your patience

 

[no1tovote4]

Thanks, appreciate your patience

Not a problem.

I don't remember if I had properly welcomed you to the board.

 

[ThomasPaine]

I can't tell you the exact effect a president has on poverty. But it would seem if you believe that poverty is tied to the economy, then there would be some connection to the president. Unless the president has no effect on the economy, in which case I've been getting the flim-flam from a lot of Reaganites.


Then puke, I guess.

What I was trying to say was that Bill O'Reilly was trying to make a point that George Bush was more sympathetic to the impoverished than Bill Clinton. I don't know (or really care) who ultimately is better for the poor, but I dislike when people misuse statistics to prove their point, valid or otherwise, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal. It makes their argument (be it a valid one or not) look weak and suspect.

That portion of his talking point used the same techniques Michael Moore used in his "movie." It's deceitful.

It's incredible that you've been so enflamed by this. I'm trying to state Bill O'Reilly spun a statistic. Please relax. :chillpill

For the most part goverment is normally a drag on the economy through taxation. Hence when taxes are lowered as during Reagan's administration the economy perks up. The economy now is doing well and at least some of the reason is Bush's tax cuts. Cut taxes; more money in the private sector for investment and spending.