By now, many of you have heard about the launch of a new educational campaign discussing the 2011-12 state budget. The project is a joint venture between the Civitas Institute and Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina called NC Real Solutions, and includes a television advertising campaign set to hit airwaves soon. To learn more about it, click here.
It didn’t take long to get a response. The NC Democratic Party responds here.
Perhaps they should have taken a little more time crafting a response. Some predictably contrived and false shrieks of the ads being filled with “lies” and demands that it should be taken off the air are included.
So, what “lies” did they uncover? Well, that would be none. For as many accusations of the ad being filled with “outright lies” you’d think they could come up with at least one.
Their fake indignation centers around two claims. First is regarding teachers. The Real Solutions ad clearly cites data on state-funded teaching positions, but the NCDP ignores this and plows ahead with the assertion that on net there was a net loss of 4,500 total education positions. So not only do they switch from discussing teaching positions (that was discussed in the ad) to total education positions, they also switch the argument from state-funded positions to overall positions (local, state and federally funded). And the net loss of overall education positions was something that Civitas pointed out nearly two months ago.
Their second claim is even more pitiful. Their “fact check” on the ad’s assertion that the 2011-12 budget lowered taxes doesn’t even discuss taxes. Instead, they change the subject to fees.
For an ad that is “a despicable distortion of the truth” that should be “removed from the airwaves immediately”, you’d think they could actually come up with something that wasn’t true.
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