In his Christian education, though, apparently Reed never learned
that it's a sin to tell a lie. His voter guide contains three big ones,
in its characterizations of President Barack Obama's positions on
Medicare, environmental regulation and abortion.
Reed's voter guides resemble the handbills distributed by the
Christian Coalition in the 1990s, at that time delivered by that quaint
operation known as the U.S. Postal Service, when Reed ran the
organization for the Rev. Pat Robertson.
While the Faith and Freedom Coalition says it will mail 2 million
of the hard-copy version to churches and social conservative voters,
it's also invested in high-tech methods of delivery, services
provided by a subsidiary of Reed's own for-profit consulting firm ,
Century Strategies. (When I reported on the relationship between Reed's
non-profit Faith and Freedom Coalition and Century Strategies, Reed did
not return my phone calls requesting information on whether or not he
was personally profiting from the arrangement.)
For example, the guide is available in
PDF form
for individuals or churches to download and print out -- and it also
contains a nifty little bar code for scanning into one's smart phone
that prompts a video to play, offering more spin on the candidates'
positions. There are also
order forms for churches to request thousands of the hard-copy guide, free of charge.
But it doesn't end there. As AlterNet
reported in July, the Faith and Freedom Coalition also intends to send out text messages with
links to the voter guide
embedded in the message, and claims to have on file the cell phone
numbers of 13 million social conservatives. As David Brody of the
Christian Broadcasting Network
notes,
the Obama campaign, known for its social-media and high-tech prowess,
had only 8 million cell phone numbers in the 2008 campaign.
But the biggest difference between the Reed operation and the Obama
campaign is the sheer mendacity of several of the claims in the Faith
and Freedom Coalition voter guide. Here's our own little guide to the
three big lies being pushed by the holier than thou.
1. The "Medicare cut" lie. We thought we had dispensed with this one when AlterNet's Joshua Holland so
thoroughly debunked it ,
but that didn't stop both Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney
and running mate Paul Ryan from repeating it often. And now Reed is
serving it up as gospel in his voter guide.
The guide features two columns, one under a photo of each
candidate, with an angry-looking Obama occupying the left-hand column,
and a benign-looking, smiling Romney on the right. A center column lists
a highly spun set of 10 issues, with the word "Yes" or "No" under the
photo of the respective candidates.
Issue #5 reads "Cut Medicare $716 billion." Under Romney's name, it reads "No;" under Obama's it reads "Yes."
The truth is that, in the Affordable Care Act, some $716 billion in
cost savings were made to Medicare, with no reduction in benefits to
those who receive it. There is no "cut."
But the irony is that Paul Ryan offered up a Medicare plan that
also cut Medicare costs by the same amount, and applied them to the
budget deficit.
2. The "cap-and-tax" lie. It it was up to
right-wing leaders such as Reed and Americans For Prosperity President
Tim Phillips (who happens to be Reed's former business partner in
Century Strategies), there would be no environmental regulation at all.
Why? Because their billionaire bankrollers, such as David Koch and
Foster Freiss, don't want it. So, they're trying to convince everyday
Americans that regulations that limit the amount of toxins a polluting
entity can emit into the air and water amounts to a "tax."
Listed on line #6 of the Faith and Freedom Coalition voter guide is
"Cap and Trade Carbon Tax," which bears a "Yes" in the Obama column and
a "No" in Romney's. At issue is a proposed program known as "cap and
trade" that would regulate pollutants by issuing permits to polluting
businesses allowing for prescribed amounts of emissions of certain
toxins. Businesses, however, would be able to buy and sell units of
these pollution permits to one another, meaning that if a power plant
did not have the capacity to reduce its emissions, it could buy
additional permits from a business that wasn't using its own allowable
units of emissions. That's
not a tax . In fact, it's not so unlike passing a regulation and then fining an entity that violates the regulation.
But don't get those billionaires started on regulations...
3. The government-funded abortion lie. Right-wing
leaders obviously know they can't win their
no-abortion-under-any-circumstances with a majority of Americans; why
else would they need to promote lies about abortion? So, on line #7 of
the Faith and Freedom Coalition guide, we find the words "Taxpayer
Funded Abortion," with, predictably, a "Yes" under Obama's name and a
"No" under Romney's.
One assumes this stems from the trope peddled by right-wingers to
this day that the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., Obamacare), contains
government funding for abortion. It does not. What it does is allow
women to purchase, at their own expense, supplemental women's health
coverage that may include coverage for abortion -- in states that permit
the purchase of such coverage through government-managed exchanges.
That's right -- states are permitted to restrict the use of their
own health-care exchanges for the purchase of such private coverage.
(And when you think about it, from a women's rights point of view,
that's pretty horrible, considering the fact that women have a legal
right to abortion. But that's what it took to get the bill passed.) In
fact, an
article by Timothy Stoltzfus Jost in the Catholic magazine,
Commonweal, states that the Affordable Care Act "may be the single most prolife piece of legislation ever adopted by Congress."
Right-wingers also claim that the Democratic Party platform
endorses taxpayer-funded abortion because it affirms a woman's right to
choose "regardless of ability to pay." But less than a week ago on
60 Minutes , Mitt Romney
endorsed
the idea of making hospitals treat critically ill uninsured people,
regardless of ability to pay, but no one assumed he was telling
government to pick up the tab.
* * *
Just as these so-called voter guides hit the Sunday bulletins in
evangelical churches in those all-important swing states, voter
registration forms will be hitting the sanctuaries -- at least if Gary
Marx, Reed's right-hand man at the Faith and Freedom Coalition, has his
way. At a training session conducted at the Values Voter Summit in
Washington, D.C. earlier this month, Marx suggested to activists that
they lay those registration forms right in the pews, and collect them
from congregants before they leave the church, leaving as little as
possible to chance.
h/t Peter Montgomery
