5 Biggest Bombs: Fact Checking State Of The Union Address

We heard some real whoppers tonight, so I thought it was pretty important to release the “5 Biggest Bombs: Fact Checking State Of The Union Address” as soon as possible. From climate change to ObamaCare, little from the president’s speech was substantive, or even true.

1. “The debate over climate change is settled. Climate change is a fact.”

President Obama was referring to a September UN climate change report that concluded humans are responsible for most of the rise in global temperatures, which immediately came under fire from observers who questioned the report’s scientific credibility.

It is “extremely likely” that humans are the primary cause of global warming, the report states. That wording is stronger than the “very likely” assessment from the IPCC’s last comprehensive climate change report, released in 2007. The U.N., however, also acknowledges another possibility; maybe it was wrong. ”There may also be … an overestimate of the response to increasing greenhouse gas and other anthropogenic forcing,” the new report admits.

The report’s contradictory statements show an “embarrassing lack of internal inconsistency,” according to an analysis by Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger of the Cato Institute.

Michaels and Knappenberger argue that the IPCC declined to account for deviations between climate impacts predicted by IPCC models and actual temperature increases. They said the IPCC report fails to consider “the discrepancy between the observed effectiveness of greenhouse gases in warming the earth and this effectiveness calculated by the climate models that the IPCC uses to project future climate change.”

IPCC models have also come under fire for their failure to explain an ongoing pause in the rise of global temperatures, which in reality, have remained flat for approximately 15 years.

The fact is that money directed at the study of climate change is unequivocally steered toward those who will conclude what the progressive bureaucracy at the UN wants them to conclude.

On public opinion, the issue is far from settled. When given a choice, 67 percent of likely U.S. voters say creating jobs is more important than taking steps to stop global warming, while just 24 percent say taking action on global warming is more important.

2. Iran is dismantling their nuclear program.

Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed that the program to enrich uranium to 20 percent had been halted by disconnecting the centrifuges at Natanz. But they can easily be connected and reengaged, because the dilution of all fissile material — which is used to convert its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium to nuclear fuel — has not been verified.

Further, according to Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran is only 2 to 3 weeks away from producing enough highly enriched uranium to assemble a nuclear weapon if they reattached the centrifuges. The capability has not been dismantled, at all.

3. Raising the minimum wage will help the economy.

A clear consensus among economic experts holds all data show raising the minimum wage costs the economy more jobs, a fact even echoed by the Department of Labor.

A study conducted by the Department of Labor concluded that the first minimum wage, 25 cents per hour in 1938, cost the jobs of 30,000 to 50,000 of the 300,000 workers who were covered and had previously earned below the minimum. And a 2007 review of 102 studies that were conducted beginning in the 1990s by David Neumark and William Wascher found, “Indeed, the preponderance of the evidence points to disemployment effects.”

Even Bill Gates, on MSNBC no less, told commentators that the minimum wage increase would “destroy jobs.”

4. Income inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled. And workforce inequality for women is severe.

Under the Obama administration, poverty and dependence have both skyrocketed, even as the top wealthy 1 percent have accumulated 95 percent of the wealth. But as a whole, a team of economists led by Harvard’s Raj Chetty released a study last week that found the United States isn’t any less socially mobile than it was in the 1970s.

When examining children born between 1971 and 1993, the economists found that the odds of a child born in the poorest 20 percent of families making it into the top 20 percent hasn’t changed, at all.

“We find that children entering the labor market today have the same chances of moving up in the income distribution (relative to their parents) as children born in the 1970s,” the economists concluded.

As far as women, the studies concluding income inequality are misleading, at best. When comparing doctors, for instance, male doctors on average work 600 hours more per year than women, which is how they compute that data. Women have specific needs that keep them out of the workforce for a longer period annually, but do not earn less on an hour for hour basis.

5. Americans do not want to revisit old debates, or return to a pre-health care reform system without ObamaCare. So, stop voting to repeal it in the House.

Never mind Obama again lied about the number of people who have signed up for health coverage that could be attributed to ObamaCare. We at PPD, far before Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post and Sean Trende at RCP, have exploded this fraud time and time again. For now, let’s just stick to the claim that ObamaCare should be kept because the American people are unwilling to go back.

ObamaCare has never received majority support among the American people, but it is only getting worse. Democrats used to have the fallback argument that claimed some aspects to the bill were popular, such as pre-existing conditions and keeping dependents on a plan until they are in their latter 20s.

But more and more polling is showing that Americans want choice, and only 8 percent said they had a good experience with the marketplace. As of today, only about a third of Americans want to keep ObamaCare and approve of the law, while the vast majority of Americans want the bill gone.

If you had any degree of common sense and followed politics even slightly, then you would know the Republican Party owes their majority to those who oppose ObamaCare. It would be wise to keep taking those votes fellas, despite what Obama claims.

Richard D. Baris is the creator/editor of People’s Pundit Daily and author of “Our Virtuous Republic: The Forgotten Clause in the American Social Contract”