Move over AttackWatch: Obama wants you for his ‘Truth Team’

posted at 12:14 pm on February 13, 2012 by Howard Portnoy

Is there no effrontery to which Barack Obama will stoop? Foolish question. The man who has assailed whole belief systems with a single slur, bent the facts repeatedly with his bare hands, and invented doublespeak neologisms to justify unpopular acts wants you to join his “Truth Team.” What is the Truth Team? A message at the official website provides an answer:

The Truth Team is a network of supporters of President Obama who are committed to responding to unfounded attacks and defending the President’s record. When you’re faced with someone who misrepresents the truth, you can find all the facts you need right here—along with ways to share the message with whoever needs to hear it.

Every time a baseless attack comes to light, we’ll arm you with the truth so you can spread the word. [Emphases in the original]

Armed with the truth (along presumably with justice and the American way), you can help the Truth Team expose lies like this one, identified at the site: “Romney’s tax plan helps millionaires and hurts the middle class.”

Whoops, sorry, that’s supposed to be the truth. (The site design is a little confusing.) When you click on that statement, you are taken to a page that quotes a campaign pledge by Mitt Romney “to eliminate the tax on interest, dividends and capital gains” on “anyone making under $200,000 a year.” Quoth the Truth Team: “Closer scrutiny of Romney’s actual proposal reveals that it’s very good for the wealthy—and very bad for everyone else.”

But only one of the five bullet points that follow addresses the subject at hand, “tax on interest, dividends and capital gains,” and that one is misleading at best:

Romney would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s 3.8 percent tax on investment income that goes into effect in 2013—saving himself about $800,000 a year.

First of all, this claim makes it sound as though Romney’s sights are fixed on eliminating this wealth-redistributive tax that was massaged into the Affordable Care Act and not the wildly unpopular law as a whole. Second, it is not only millionaires who would benefit from elimination of the 3.8% tax. The penalty applies to individual filers with an adjusted gross over $200,000 or coupled earning $250,000. In other words, taxpayers who conform to Obama’s old definition of the wealthy, which includes many small business owners, would also be penalized.

Writing about the Truth Team, CBS News reminds us that the launch of this latest tattletale site is part of a pattern:

In 2008, more than a million people participated in Mr. Obama’s similar ‘Fight the Smears’ initiative. This year, the campaign hopes to double that number before the Democratic National Convention in the fall.

The ‘truth team’ effort acknowledges the bitter contest expected between Mr. Obama and his 2012 opponent. Social media can be a powerful tool to help combat attacks, but it also carries some risks—when the campaign launched AttackWatch.com last fall, conservatives largely lampooned it.

Hard to imagine why they would do that.

One question unanswered in the CBS News article is whether those who sign up for Truth Team membership get their very own Obama Truth Decoder Ring.

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