FactCheck: Misleading Ads Swamp Ga. Senate Race | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008

Death, Republican Style
Jacob Weisberg 8/29/2009 12:00:00 AM
The republicans charge that Democratic health care reform would, in Sen. Charles Grassley's words, "pull the plug on Grandma." According to Sen. Jon Kyl, the bills before Congress would ration medical treatment by age. Rep. John Boehner says they promote euthanasia. Sarah Palin has raised the specter of "death panels." Such fears are understandable. It's not preposterous to imagine laws that would try to save money by encouraging the inconvenient elderly to make an early exit. After all, that's been the Republican policy for years.
California's Reckoning—and Ours
Robert J. Samuelson 8/3/2009 12:00:00 AM
California's budget debacle holds a lesson for America, but one we will probably ignore. It's easy to attribute the state's protracted budget stalemate, now temporarily resolved with about $26 billion of spending cuts and accounting gimmicks, to the deep recession and California's peculiar politics. Up to a point, that's true. Representing an eighth of the U.S. economy, California has been harder hit than most states. Unemployment, now 11.6 percent (national average: 9.5 percent), could top 13 percent in 2010, says economist Eduardo Martinez of Moody's Economy.com. Meanwhile, the requirement that any tax increase muster a two-thirds vote in the legislature promotes paralysis. Democrats prefer tax hikes to spending cuts, and Republicans can block higher taxes.
Squandered Stimulus
Robert J. Samuelson 7/21/2009 12:00:00 AM
It's not surprising that the much-ballyhooed "economic stimulus" hasn't done much stimulating. President Obama and his aides argue that it's too early to expect startling results. They have a point. A $14 trillion economy won't revive in a nanosecond. But the defects of the $787 billion package go deeper and won't be cured by time. The program crafted by Obama and the Democratic Congress wasn't engineered to maximize its economic impact. It was mostly a political exercise, designed to claim credit for any recovery, shower benefits on favored constituencies and signal support for fashionable causes.
MONEY CULTURE
A War on the Rich?
Daniel Gross 3/6/2009 12:00:00 AM
To hear conservatives tell it, you'd think mobs of shiftless welfare moms were marauding through the streets of Greenwich and Palm Springs, lynching bankers and hedge-fund managers, stringing up shopkeepers, and herding lawyers into internment camps. President Obama and his budgeteers, they say, have declared war on the rich.
FACTCHECK.ORG
Our Disinformed Electorate
12/13/2008 12:00:00 AM
More than half of U.S. adults (52 percent) said the claim that Sen. Barack Obama's tax plan would raise taxes on most small businesses is truthful, when in fact only a small percentage would see any increase.
CAMPAIGN 2008
Battleground Georgia
Suzanne Smalley 11/22/2008 12:00:00 AM
With the final balance of power in the next U.S. Senate still undecided, Democrats and Republicans have called the cavalry into Georgia, where a high-stakes runoff election is scheduled for Dec. 2. The runoff (required by state law when neither candidate garners 50 percent of the vote) has drawn some of the nation's best political operatives and spurred an ugly ground war. Democrats smell a filibusterproof majority of 60 within their grasp, and Republicans are desperate to stop it.