Fact-checking should be done on election claims

We are fast approaching the political silly season of candidates trying to convince us to give them our vote and place them at the levers of political power.  

These candidates are always supported by like minded-political operatives and commentators that will try any tactic to cajole or frighten you into supporting their benefactor.

For as long as I have been politically aware, there has been a consistent issue that one partisan group employs to frighten a certain demographic segment of our communities, usually to great success.

This is the Democrats claiming that Social Security and Medicare will disappear if the Republicans are allowed to take office.  

These programs have always continued unabated for many decades, no matter the party in power.

This season is going to be no different as, locally, it is already in full swing. Frankly, it seems that with some commentators it is a yearround nonstop obsession to promote this scare tactic.

This time the people who do this have some influential opponents to their activities. The news media’s three largest and respected fact-checkers have declared that the Democrat’s claim that U.S. Rep Paul Ryan’s budget plan would have been the end of Medicare is the “2011 Lie of the Year.”

These sites are PolitiFact.com, FactCheck.org and The Fact Checker at WasingtonPost.com.

It would behoove us to rid ourselves of this despicable falsehood and the way to do this is to confront and shun the people that are spreading it in our communities.

Those people are truly not interested in the best for our country and its future as they have an uncontrollable lust for power to control our lives.

They are very willing to accomplish their objective by frightening some of the most vulnerable among us.

David Adkisson
Midtown

Editor’s note: We agree  that voters should consider reasoned fact-checking of election claims. That said, and in interest of fairness, we must also point out that FactCheck,org, one of the sites recommended by the above letter writer, also gave Ohio Republican Ryan’s budget plan “two Pinnochios” for lack of truthfulness, contending it “relies on dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures. The ideas may be bold, but the budget presentation falls short of his claim that he is getting rid of budget gimmicks.”