Mitt Romney's truthiness problem

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:



To kick off the big pre-voting weekend in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation Republican primary contest, Mitt Romney held a rally in the gym of Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, early Saturday morning. Before a crowd of several hundred people—dozens of whom seemed genuinely excited to be in the vicinity of the GOP front-runner—Romney blasted President Barack Obama, charging that the president does "big things, bad things, expensive things." (He repeated a version of this clumsy formulation several times, making it seem that Obama was a big, bad wolf.) Romney falsely claimed that Obama had promised that the $787 billion stimulus would bring unemployment below 8 percent. He falsely asserted that Obama's Wall Street reform was crushing community banks. He declared that the president doesn't understand "the nature of America"—meaning the values of freedom and opportunity. And he noted that the 2012 election is about the "soul of America":

What kind of America (are we) going to have... Are we going to remain a merit society?... Some people don't like free enterprise and capitalism... There are those who say let's not go down this path. Let's instead take a course to become a European-style welfare society where the role of government is to take from some and give to others. It sounds good. It creates greater equality. But it also creates poverty. Look at the history of the world. Even in Europe—which is not as free enterprise-oriented as we are—the income per person in Europe is 50 percent less than in this country. I do not want America to follow the path of Europe.

He then recited the words to "America the Beautiful" (a Romney campaign staple of late).

European-style welfare societies lead to poverty? That's what Romney said, neglecting the recent news that the poverty rate in the United States increased to 15.1 percent in 2010, up from 14.3 percent the previous year, due to the recession that exploded at the end of the Bush-Cheney administration. Romney also appeared ignorant of the general view that there is more poverty in the United States than the nations of western Europe. It can be tough to compare poverty rates among different societies, but according to an Organization for Economic and Cooperation Development report issued last year, the level of poverty in the United States was more than twice that of the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Slovenia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland. It was also greater than that of Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Poland, Britain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain. One recent study found that the poverty rate for single mothers in the United States was 49 percent, compared to a 26 percent average for 15 "high-income" European nations. (Denmark: 8 percent; Sweden: 10 percent; and Finland: 11 percent.) ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/mitt-romney-lied-new-hampshire-europe-poverty