NPR: PolitiFact: Tax Chain E-Mail is Not Correct

PolitiFact: Tax Chain E-Mail is Not Correct

One of the fastest ways to spread political information ... or disinformation ... these days is to stick it in an e-mail and spam it to as many people as you can in the hope that they will spam it to all their friends and so on. For instance, take the false message sent to many people that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim "bend on destroying the United States." The Obama campaign has had to fight that chain e-mail for months.

PolitiFact, a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, is one of the many good Web sites that now exists to check candidate statements and media reports about them for truthfulness. One of the services that PolitiFact provides is The Chain E-mail Files, which checks out the veracity of the chain e-mails that float around the Internet.

Recently the site looked at an e-mail that said Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to "raise capital gains taxes and dividends taxes, as well as raise tax rates for all income levels" while John McCain wants to make all of President Bush's tax cuts permanent. So PolitiFact checked out the e-mail's claims.

"Clinton has said the tax cuts should stay in place for people making less than $250,000, while Obama has said the tax cuts should be repealed for the top 1 percent. (According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1 percent of taxpayers in 2005 were those with an average pretax income of $1.6-million. The minimum income for the top 1 percent is $307,500.) So the e-mail is wrong about what Clinton and Obama have actually proposed. It's correct that McCain supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent for all income levels....

"We find this chain e-mail gets facts both large and small wrong. It doesn't list the higher tax brackets that actually would go up if Clinton or Obama implemented their plans, and it accuses them of wanting to raise rates on lower incomes that they've said should stay the same. So we rate the chain e-mail's claim False."

So the next time you get a chain e-mail that makes a claim that you're not too sure about, check out the PolitiFact site. It'll make you a better informed voter.

1:24 PM ET | 03-31-2008 | permalink

Comments

I really don't care what income levels someone is. When anyone whatsoever gets a tax cut it's a good thing. When anyone whatsoever gets a tax increase it's a bad thing. All income levels should be treated exactly the same; that is the essence of fairness.

Unfortuneately, the politics of envy rules the day.

Sent by deek | 1:39 PM ET | 03-31-2008

I don't know about clinton, but as for obama, he only advocated higher taxes for corporations, which seems to me, very reasonable.

I know the tax thing is one of those reactionary issues for people, but if you really wanted lower taxes, why didn't you support Ron Paul?

Sent by Jody Sol | 1:45 PM ET | 03-31-2008

I've noticed that another good way to spread disinformation is through commenting on news blogs.

Sent by Karen | 3:03 PM ET | 03-31-2008

No, deek, the essence of fairness is to tax people within their means. And in a democratic republic, raising taxes if used for the common good and not to wage an war for the sake of oil rights is also essential. The government must participate, and not by illicitly making signing statements that overrule legislation, but by providing for the common welfare.

Sent by Darryll | 3:21 PM ET | 03-31-2008

Well-spotted, Karen. I've been reading a fair bit of commentary this election cycle. Some of the more stridently partisan and prolific contributors to the NPR Newsblog comments, for example, seem not to have an identity that extends beyond this one blog -- nothing appears elsewhere online under the same name. It makes me wonder if there aren't campaign-driven sock puppets in our midst.

Sent by c | 3:30 PM ET | 03-31-2008

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