Republican Lies

[erpowers]

I have been reading the book "Tell Newt To Shut Up" and in one chapter there is a discussion about how Republicans tried to greatly weaken OSHA. What I found interesting about this chapter and the next chapter which was about Dick Armey was the lies told by Republicans in each chapter. It seems that the media did not disspell the lies soon enough for them not to become major issues.

In the chapter that dealt with the attempt to weaken OSHA the authors mentioned a number of lies/half truths told by Republican candidates in order to further there objective of weakening OSHA. One such lie/half truth was that doctors were put in a position in which they could not give children the teeth that had just been pulled out of their mouths. It seems this story was repeated on a number of occasion with there being only one problem; doctors had stopped giving children their teeth, but not because of OSHA. There was another instance in which a Republican Congressman claimed he had caught the director of OSHA in a lie when the director had claimed OSHA did not prohibit construction works chew gum when doing roof work. The facts were that OSHA did not prohibit chewing gum on roof, but made the suggestion that gum not be chewed in situations in which "the level of asbestos is so high that chewing could result in ingestion of asbestos." Even Dick Armey told a number of lies concerning why he got into politics and the results of the minimum wage.

It seems that the media needs to do a better job with calling out the lies of the Republican Party. Even in recent time like with the buy America provision in the stimulus package the Republican Party and their friends were able to say some inaccurate things with many in the media calling them out. The media needs to start fact checking the stories of Republicans.