Mistruths of politics | Letters To Editor

“The mistruths of politics” is packed full of mistruths and false equivalences. Purcell started with the “L” of President Biden in the State of the Union speech “when the President said Republicans wanted to end Social Security and Medicare”. What President Biden said was “some Republicans wanted to end Social Security and Medicare” and he made it very clear that it was only some.” Purcell goes on to say that the inflation Reduction Act which the President claimed would tame inflation “does nothing to tame inflation, according to CBS News”. CBS NEWS reporting was based on a statistical study which found that the effect of the ACT on inflation is not statistically significant. Statistically significant often requires a 3% or 5% difference; a 1% change in inflation is significant. The President never claimed the ACT would tame inflation; what he did claim is that there would be an over $700 billion increase in revenue annually and less than $400 billion in expenditures- most money spent to reduce global warming- and over $300 billion toward reducing the budget deficit. The Congressional Budget Office agreed with the analysis. Global warming will drive up insurance costs and agricultural costs; a reduction in global warming will reduce both.

The article truthfully discusses the lies of President George W. Bush. Bush took the U.S. to war based on lies and he lied about torture; President Trump lied about “everything everywhere”. The article equates these lies with the above specified “lies” of President Biden, lies about health care by President Obama (which Purcell fails to specify) and lies about having sex by President Clinton. Similarly, the article equates the Democratic disappointment with the 2016 election with Trump’s loss in 2020. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than three million votes but lost the electoral vote count. If electoral votes were assigned in each state proportional to the vote count, Hillary Clinton would have won. Furthermore, the Democrats did not incite an insurrection and strive to prevent the transfer of power. Hardly equivalent.