• McCain claimed the liberal group ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” In fact, a Republican prosecutor said of the first and biggest ACORN fraud case: “[T]his scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting.” He said $8-an-hour workers turned in made-up voter registration forms rather than doing what ACORN paid them to do.

• McCain said “Joe the plumber” faced “much higher taxes” under Obama’s tax plan and would pay a fine under Obama’s health care plan if he failed to provide coverage for his workers. But Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher would pay higher taxes only if the business he says he wants to buy puts his income over $200,000 a year, and his small business would be exempt from Obama’s requirement to provide coverage for workers.

• Obama repeated a dubious claim that his health care plan will cut the average family’s premiums by $2,500 a year. Experts have found that figure to be overly optimistic.

• McCain claimed that Obama’s real “object” is a government-run, single-payer health insurance system like those in Canada or England. The McCain campaign points to a quote from five years ago, when Obama told a labor gathering that he was “a proponent of a single-payer health care program.” But Obama has since qualified his enthusiasm for Canadian-style health care, and his current proposal is nothing like that.

• Obama incorrectly claimed all of McCain’s ads had been “negative.” That was true for one recent week, but not over the entire campaign. And at times Obama has run a higher percentage of attack ads than McCain.

• McCain described Colombia as the "largest agricultural importer of our products." Actually, Canada imports the most U.S. farm products, and Colombia is far down the list.

• Obama strained to portray himself as willing to break ranks with fellow Democrats. His prime example was his vote for a bill that was supported by 18 Democrats and opposed by 26. Congressional Quarterly rates him as voting with his party 97 percent of the time since becoming a U.S. senator.

Analysis

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama met for their final debate Oct. 15. The face-to-face was held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., and was moderated by CBS News' Bob Schieffer.

ACORN and Vote Fraud

McCain made some dire claims about a liberal group he said was out to steal the election:

McCain: We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

It's true that the voter registration wing of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now has run into trouble in several states. ACORN employees have been investigated and in some cases indicted for voter registration fraud. Most recently, more than 2,000 registrations in Lake County, Ind., have turned out to be falsified.

But does this constitute "destroying the fabric of democracy"? More like destroying the fabric of work ethic. There's been no evidence that the ACORN employees who submitted fraudulent forms have been paving the way for illegal voting. Rather, they're trying to get paid for doing no work.

Dan Satterberg, the Republican prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., where the first ACORN case was prosecuted, said:

Satterberg: [A] joint federal and state investigation has determined that this

scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting.

Instead, the defendants cheated their employer. ... It was hardly a sophisticated plan: The defendants simply realized that making up names was easier than actually canvassing the streets looking for unregistered voters. ...

[It] appears that the employees of ACORN were not performing the work that they were being paid for, and to some extent, ACORN is a victim of employee theft.

The $8-an-hour employees were charged with providing false information on a voter registration, and in one case with making a false statement to a public official. ACORN was fined for showing insufficient oversight, but it was not charged with masterminding any kind of fraud.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, Obama wasn't entirely forthcoming about his relationship with ACORN:

Obama: The only involvement I've had with ACORN is, I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.

He did, but that wasn't his only involvement. He also worked closely with ACORN's Chicago office when he ran a Project Vote registration drive after law school, and Obama did some leadership training for Chicago ACORN. The Woods Fund, where Obama served as a board member, gave grants to ACORN's Chicago branch; both organizations are concerned with disadvantaged populations in that city. And during the primaries of this election, Obama's campaign paid upwards of $800,000 to the ACORN-affiliated Campaign Services Inc. for get-out-the-vote efforts (not voter registration). Those services were initially misrepresented on the campaign's Federal Election Commission reports, an error that some find suspicious and others say is par for the course. ACORN's Chicago office and CSI have not been under investigation.

For more on investigations of ACORN and registration fraud, and Obama's involvement with the group, keep an eye on our home page. A longer article on ACORN is in the works.

Joe the Plumber

Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher got a lot of airtime.

McCain first mentioned Joe by saying:

McCain: Joe wants to buy the business that he has been in for all of these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day. And he wanted to buy the business but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes.

Joe’s newfound fame stems from an impromptu encounter Oct. 12, during which Wurzelbacher questioned Obama’s tax plans. Joe has since become a conservative folk hero after telling both Fox News and the conservative Web site Family Security Matters that he thought Obama’s plans sounded “socialist.”

At their encounter, Wurzelbacher told Obama that “I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year,” before asking whether or not Obama would raise his taxes.

If the company is actually that profitable, and depending on how the business is organized legally, Obama’s plan would indeed raise his federal income taxes, and Obama conceded as much during the exchange. As we’ve written before, small businesses commonly are organized in such a way that their owners file business taxes as individuals. So if Joe’s plumbing business earns more than $200,000 per year (or $250,000 if Joe is married and files tax returns jointly) then his taxes would indeed be higher under Obama's plan than under McCain's.

It’s worth noting that while Wurzelbacher told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that he lives “in a simple, middle class home” and portrayed himself as an ordinary working guy, Wurzelbacher’s $250,000 to $280,000 is a bit higher than "ordinary." In 2007, the last year for which the Census Bureau has figures, the median income for a family in Toledo, Ohio, was $43,553.

But Joe the Plumber wasn’t through yet. He made an encore appearance when McCain recycled a bogus claim that Obama would "fine" small business owners who fail to provide health care coverage for their workers:

McCain: Now, my old buddy, Joe, Joe the plumber, is out there. Now, Joe, Sen. Obama's plan, if you're a small business and . . . you've got employees, and you've got kids, if you don't get – adopt the health care plan that Sen. Obama mandates, he's going to fine you . . . I don't think that Joe right now wants to pay a fine when he is seeing such difficult times in America's economy.

McCain raised a similar charge at the last debate. It's still false. Obama’s plan, which is posted on his Web site, specifically says, “Small businesses will be exempt from this requirement.”

Obama hasn't defined exactly what he means by "small" but he seems to think Joe would qualify; he repeatedly referred to Joe’s “small business” during their exchange.

Obama's health plan does mandate that children have health coverage. If Joe doesn't provide insurance for his kids, he would face some unspecified penalty.

Health care hype

Obama and McCain traded boasts and accusations on each other’s health care plan. They ran afoul of the facts a few times.

Obama: And we estimate we can cut the average family's premium by about $2,500 per year.

The Obama camp does estimate that. But experts we talked to found that optimistic figure hard to believe.

Then, McCain said:

McCain: Sen. Obama wants to set up health care bureaucracies, take over the health care of America through — as he said, his object is a single payer system. If you like that, you'll love Canada and England.

Obama’s plan is not a single-payer system, which would be one in which everyone has health care provided and paid for by the government. Under Obama’s health care plan, Americans can keep the insurance they have, choose from federally-approved private plans or buy into a new public plan similar to the health care federal employees and members of Congress have.

McCain was referring to comments Obama made at a town hall meeting in Albuquerque in August. But Obama did not say that "his object is a single payer system." He said it would "probably" be his first choice "if" he were starting with a clean slate, which he isn't. He said his object is to "build up the system we got." According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama said:

Obama (as quoted by the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 19): If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system. ... [M]y attitude is let’s build up the system we got, let’s make it more efficient, we may be over time — as we make the system more efficient and everybody’s covered — decide that there are other ways for us to provide care more effectively.

Back in 2003, Obama was much more explicit. At an AFL-CIO forum, he said he was “a proponent of a single-payer health care program,” adding, “that’s what I’d like to see. And as all of you know, we may not get there immediately.”

That was five years ago, however, and recently, Obama has said he’d favor single-payer only if “starting from scratch.” He told The New Yorker in May 2007: “If you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system ... would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition ... would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive.”

Obama exaggerated a weakness in McCain's health care plan:

Obama: Now, under Sen. McCain's plan there is a strong risk that people would lose their employer-based health care.

Experts see a risk that some would lose their employer-based care, but Obama’s reference to "people" makes it sound as though nearly everyone would. Two independent studies both found that McCain’s plan would lead to a net decline in the number of people with health care through their jobs. (They said Obama’s would result in a net increase.) Both reports show, however, that there’s not a “strong risk” for all, or even a majority, of workers to lose their health care.

Currently, 159 million Americans have health care through their jobs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A study by the Lewin Group shows a net decline in the number with job-provided benefits of 9.4 million people in 2010 for McCain's plan. The Tax Policy Center projected that the net decrease would be 7.7 million in 2010 and 20.3 million people by 2018.

McCain and Obama both said much more that may have confused viewers. For a spin-free look at both of the candidates’ health care plans, see our recent article on this issue.

100 percent negative?

Obama falsely claimed all of McCain's ads had been "negative."

Obama: And 100 percent, John, of your ads – 100 percent of them have been negative.

McCain: It's not true.

Obama: It absolutely is true.

It was almost true, for one recent week. Obama was referring to a report by the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin that concluded that “nearly 100 percent of the McCain campaign’s advertisements were negative” during the week of Sept. 28 through Oct. 4. During the same week, 34 percent of the Obama campaign’s ads were negative. The Obama campaign was found to have outspent the McCain campaign in nearly all of the competitive states, in some cases by a margin of more than 3-to-1.

McCain’s ads, however, have not been deemed 100 percent negative in other weeks. In fact, in the week after the Republican National Convention, 77 percent of Obama’s ads were negative, according to the advertising project, while 56 percent of McCain’s were negative.

Wrong on exports to Colombia

McCain was way off when he said that Colombia is "our largest agricultural importer of our products." To be sure, Colombia is an important trade partner. According to statistics from the Department of Agriculture, Colombia imported slightly more than $1.4 million worth of U.S. agricultural products in 2007. But that's not even close to the nearly $1.9 billion worth of agricultural products exported to Canada. And there are dozens of other countries that import more U.S. farm products than Colombia does.

Obama no maverick

Obama exaggerated his willingness to defy his own party. When McCain asked for an example, Obama offered this:

Obama: First of all, in terms of standing up to the leaders of my party, the first major bill that I voted on in the Senate was in support of tort reform, which wasn't very popular with trial lawyers, a major constituency in the Democratic Party.

That 2005 bill was S.5, which dealt with class-action lawsuits. Obama was one of 18 Democrats voting for it, while 26 opposed. It's a stretch for Obama to claim that he bolted his party when nearly 41 percent of Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

And as we pointed out before, Obama has a pretty consistent record of voting in stride with his party. According to Congressional Quarterly, in Obama's three years in the Senate, he has voted with his party almost 97 percent of the time.

Budget ballyhoo

Both candidates got ahead of themselves when it came to balancing the budget and eliminating the deficit. Obama said every one of his spending increases was paid for.

Obama: Now, what I've done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut. ... Every dollar that I've proposed, I've proposed an additional cut so that it matches.

McCain said he could balance the budget within one term.

Schieffer: Do either of you think you can balance the budget in four years? You have said previously you thought you could, Sen. McCain.

McCain: Sure I do. And let me tell you...

Schieffer: You can still do that?

McCain: Yes.

These are pie-in-the-sky predictions. We've looked at McCain's balanced-budget promise before – it's out of reach unless he cuts spending to an unrealistic degree. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that by 2013, at the end of his first term, McCain's tax plan would have him facing a $662 billion deficit. That could come to more than half of that year's discretionary spending, which the Office of Management and Budget projects to be $1.1 trillion. And we've previously disputed Obama's claim that "every dime" of his proposed spending is covered. The Tax Policy Center estimated that Obama’s plan – and McCain's, too – "would substantially increase the national debt over the next ten years" unless the candidates come up with "substantial cuts in government spending" that they haven't yet specified. More recently, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget also estimated that in 2013, Obama’s major budget proposals – including spending cuts – would increase the deficit for that year by $281 billion.

The $42,000, again

McCain was on the wrong side of this exchange:

McCain: Sen. Obama talks about voting for budgets. He voted twice for a budget resolution that increases the taxes on individuals making $42,000 a year ...

Obama: [T]he notion that I voted for a tax increase for people making $42,000 a year has been disputed by everybody who has looked at this claim.

McCain was wrong to say Obama's March 2008 vote for a budget resolution "increases" anything. Budget resolutions set targets for taxes and spending; actually raising or lowering them requires separate legislation.

The $42,000 figure also would only apply to single taxpayers, not to couples or families. As we’ve reported, a single taxpayer making more than $41,500 would have seen a tax increase, but a couple filing jointly would have seen no increase unless they made at least $83,000, and for a couple with two children the cut-off would have been $90,000. Regardless, the increase that Obama once supported as part of a Democratic budget bill is not part of his own current tax plan. And Obama was right when he said "even FOX News disputes" McCain's $42,000 claim. Chris Wallace of Fox News agreed that it was misleading.

Wrong justice

McCain said that Obama voted against the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and John Roberts:

McCain: Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn't meet his ideological standards.

McCain probably meant to say that Obama voted against the confirmations of Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, the most recent additions to the court. Obama did vote against the confirmation of Roberts, but he wasn’t in the Senate when Breyer was nominated to join the Court. Breyer was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the Senate in 1994. Obama didn’t become a senator until January 2005.

Charter school slip-up

Obama overstated his work on charter schools in Illinois:

Obama: Charter schools, I doubled the number of charter schools in Illinois despite some reservations from teachers unions.

Actually, the bill Obama cosponsored doubled the number of charter schools in Chicago, not in the entire state of Illinois. (And an extra slap on the wrist to Obama for using the personal pronoun in saying that "I doubled the number of charter schools" – as we've pointed out before, it takes a lot more than one politician to get a bill passed.)

Tried but untrue

And we noted that both candidates continued to recycle bunk that we've heard before:

• McCain said once again, "We have to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much." As we've noted several times in the past, $700 billion would have been the cost of all annual U.S. oil imports when the price was $140 per barrel. But it's down to about half that now.

• Obama said oil companies have "68 million acres that they currently have leased that they're not drilling." We've previously criticized him for similar statements, and it's still not true. As we've pointed out, there is exploratory drilling being done on much of these lands, which are not yet producing oil. In 2007 there were more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished that do not count as "productive" holes.

• Listing some of his running mate's achievements, McCain credited Gov. Sarah Palin with “a $40 billion pipeline of natural gas that's going to relieve the energy needs" of the lower 48 states. We'll just note, again, that the pipeline is still in pre-development and is actually projected to cost $26.5 billion.

Sea story

Finally, the ears of nautical buffs may have perked up when McCain said, “we've sailed Navy ships around the world for 60 years with nuclear power plants on them.” His naval history is off by a few years. The first nuclear-powered vessel, the submarine USS Nautilus, was actually launched Jan. 21, 1954.

Sources

Congressional Research Service. Oil and Gas Tax Subsidies: Current Status and Analysis. Washington: GPO, 2007.

Burman, Leonard E., et.al. "An Updated Analysis of the 2008 Presidential Candidates’ Tax Plans: Updated September 12, 2008." Tax Policy Center, 12 Sept. 2008.

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Promises, Promises: A Fiscal Voter Guide to the 2008 Election." U.S. Budget Watch. 15 Sep. 2008.

Satterberg, Dan. "Statement of Interim King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg." 26 Jul. 2007.

U.S. Census Bureau. "Toledo City, Ohio Factsheet." U.S. Census Bureau. American Community Survey, 2006, accessed 16 Oct. 2008.

ACORN Responds to Senator McCain’s Desperate Attack. 15 Oct. 2008

Griffin, Drew and Kathleen Johnston . “Thousands of voter registration forms faked, officials say.” 10 Oct. 2008

Robinson, Mike. Obama got start in civil rights practice. Associated Press, 20 Feb. 2007

Tapper, Jake. Spread the Wealth. ABC New Political Punch Blog. 14 Oct. 2008

Brown, David M. “Obama to amend report on $800,000 in spending.” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 22 Aug. 2008

CQ member Profiles: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill). Congressional Quarterly, 12 June 2008.

Rabinowitz, Steve. “Pres. TV advertising spending continues to grow;

Over $28 million spent from September 28-October 4.” Wisconsin Ad Project. 8 Oct. 2008

Kurtz, Howard. “Recent Obama Ads More Negative Than Rival's, Study Says: Democrat Said to Be Facing Pressure to 'Show Some Spine.'” Washington Post, 18 Sept. 2008

OECD Tax Database. Centre for Tax Policy and Administration.

Hodge, Scott. U.S. States Lead the World in High Corporate Taxes. Tax Foundation, 18 March 2008

{mos_sb_discuss:3}

Many of the articles I’ve written locally relate to the issue of increasing self-sufficiency. Many of our local people have jumped on board the organic and locally-grown foodstuff train but there still hasn’t been much discussion on really transferring our priorities in agriculture to insuring that our community has sufficient food to withstand the pressures of significant interruption in just-in-time delivery. Similarly, there has been relatively little discussion about creating a local energy infrastructure and moving toward some measure of self-sufficiency in this critical area.

In my job I see a reasonable cross-section of the counties unemployed or under-employed workers and I can tell you without hesitation that many of these folks are headed for the precipice with no safety net in place. Most of them have been hardworking people, the majority over 45, who are unwilling or unable to move to another locale to pursue employment opportunities. They expect that the government has somehow prepared for this disaster and that they can expect some sort of relief or help. Sorry —there is no help coming. We’re on our own.

I also attended the 2008 Economic and Demographic Profile Series presented by Economist Dr. David Gallo. The forecast is for zero economic growth locally in the next year. Most of our local industry is not benefiting the county, except for workers wages and buying power, due to the indirect of necessary materials, etc. being purchased out of county. This is particularly true of our wine production industry. Our population growth is expected to come from seniors and retired people and is projected at 2.5 percent over the next six years. That’s about four times our current rate.

One of Dr. Gallo’s biggest bombshells came in his revelation that the “multipliers” often discussed in economic industry projections — i.e., dollars spent that actually create additional dollars — are largely a mythological invention. The actual effect of dollars spent in-county rattling around in our local bucket and increasing is actually very small. Chamber of Commerce figures often tout tourism as producing seven additional dollars for every dollar spent. Dr. Gallo states that the actual figure is closer to 50 cents. Even at the national level the top for multipliers in any industry is about 3 percent. At the state level it’s fewer than 2 percent and locally it’s usually 1 percent or less. For very small rural counties it’s unusual to have a greater than a one-to-one ratio of return.

I postulate that this is due to the distances that rural drivers are used to driving. Urban dwellers who visit here are often shocked by the distances we drive daily to work and to obtain necessities. Local people, used to driving such distances, think nothing of driving to Ukiah or Santa Rosa for cheaper goods and products — at least they did before gas hit the ceiling.

If you think of the economy as a bucket — the state and fed monies coming in are being reduced all the time. Industry has stagnated here and there is little forecast of an economic boom locally. Jobs are typically low paying and are increasing difficult to get. Not much flowing in the top of our bucket! And the bottom is leaking like a sieve with both industries and citizens spending much of their money out-of-county.

But wait, you say, I don’t go out of county to shop much. Every time you shop at a chain market or store for any product or necessity, much of your dollar goes out of county to the corporate headquarters or to out-of-town suppliers or vendors. The tourist who comes to town and spends locally will have some of his money remain here — but only if the hotel doesn’t buy all of its supplies out of the area, and if he doesn’t shop at gas stations, retail outlets and chain stores that send most of their money away to corporate headquarters or who also buy their materials and products out of the area.

In those circumstances — very little of each dollar spent actually remains in-county. The only real money that is guaranteed to stay here and benefit our local economy is money that is spent for products or services that originate here.

Dr Gallo’s point is the only way to stop the money from flowing out the bottom of our bucket is to produce more goods and services locally. More raw materials, more energy, more fuel, more food —everything we consume or utilize on a daily basis. The better we accomplish that, the better our local economy will be and the more resistant we will be to external crisis affecting our standard of living.

So what our leaders need to consider is that much of what they have been given to believe about the industries that supposedly hold up our economy is false — and that our priorities and planning should be more about creating infrastructure and opportunity to locally develop sufficient resources to support our citizens than relying on forecasts or economic projections that are always geared toward the rosiest picture to improve someone’s future bottom line.

Dr. Gallo thought that, with a sound and reliable broadband infrastructure here, opportunities for information and entrepreneurial projects for seniors and people with ideas could be realized. Business incubators is the next step — to encourage people with business ideas to take a chance without the risk of under-capitalization by providing reasonably priced infrastructure through a multi-year proving period where their business could prove itself or fail without undue hardship. There are working models for these types of incubators and it's time we started utilizing them in this area.

If industry and economic growth don’t develop, entrepreneurial ideas are the only way to climb out of the hole. Tourism can’t be relied upon because of its reliance on a stable economy that allows people money and time to come out to play — a circumstance that doesn’t look too good for the foreseeable future — and also because of its less than propagandized profitability in terms of the real multiplier number.

So I come back to my continued push for a commitment to the priority of self-sufficiency in all the areas of necessity that concern our citizens. It’s only prudent.

James BlueWolf lives in Nice.

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My parents told me at an early age that you only live once and time goes by too fast, so make the most it.

I guess that would mean anomaly ... this is my second life. I’m lucky. I screwed up the first one so I’m trying to make up for it the second time around.

You could say I had it all.

I had a wonderful wife (I thought so at the time), I was a successful photojournalist who left the crazy world of the newspaper game to pursue a career operating my own portrait photography business.

That’s where the wheels fell off the truck.

Within a five-year per found out I was diabetic.

At the time of my diabetic diagnosis, I became divorced from that wonderful wife, she took my business and everything in it and told it for cash, my mom passed away from cancer and for a short time, I found myself homeless. You could say the 1990s weren’t a very good decade for me.

When I was diagnosed with diabetes, my doctor said the disease usually takes one of two roads. It is there and it is more of a gnat that drives you crazy. It can also be a raging wildfire that is difficult to contain. Guess which road it took.

For seven years I did all I could to try and beat the unbeatable. Gone were regular drinks with sugar, Oreo cookies, maple syrup and almost anything else that I really enjoyed. I love food. That was probably the reason I became diabetic. Thank God they didn’t take my green beans from me. Then we would have a real problem.

In 1998 after having a severe case of cellulitis in my right leg that kept me in the hospital for two weeks, the doctors noticed my kidney function had dropped dramatically. They said it was from the medicine they had given me to get rid of cellulitis.

We went to see a neurologist with the idea of his being able to work some magic and increase the function of my kidneys.

After waiting for what seemed to be an eternity, the doctor came in and calmly announced that my kidney function was so low that he felt I would need to start dialysis within the next six months.

My wife's (I had just remarried) and my jaws hit the floor. In fact it was one of the only times I ever saw her cry. Of course that made me cry.

After mulling over the situation and seeing my doctor, he referred me to a nephrologist's office in Santa Rosa and my second life was born.

I hope to enlighten you with a world which is very misunderstood, the world of dialysis.

It’s a tough way to live. Just ask the millions on it and the more than 3,000 just in the Bay Area who are waiting and hoping for a kidney transplant.

I welcome your questions, your comments and your experiences with someone you’ve known who happened to be a dialysis patient.

I hope you enjoy my thoughts. They may be tough to swallow and may seem to be graphic at times. But they will be an honest look at an area more and more of the American population may be faced with unless their way of life takes a dramatic change.

Brett Behrens will be writing a regular column for Lake County News. Behrens, 46, is a native of Lake County. He has spent most of his life behind the lens as a photojournalist and the owner of a successful portrait photography studio. He continues his image-making activities as his time and eyesight allows.

{mos_sb_discuss:4}

This letter stated in part:

“The City of Clearlake announced the completion of the Provinsalia Final Environmental Impact Report on April 17, 2008, and held a workshop to discuss it almost immediately thereafter, on April 22. Although public comment was accepted at that workshop, the many agencies, organizations, and individuals who submitted comments on the EIR have not yet been given an opportunity to rebut the detailed PMC responses to those comments now incorporated in the FEIR. Provision of such a response period, appropriately noticed, is required under CEQA, and until it has taken place we believe that formal review by the Commission is inappropriate.

The consultants neglected to address all of the submitted comments during preparation of the FEIR. In particular, Dr. John Parker’s letter of Oct. 18, 2007 was omitted, even though this letter detailing major inadequacies in both the method of evaluating cultural resources and the proposed mitigations was received before the submission deadline and forwarded to PMC for review, as subsequently acknowledged by City staff. It is our understanding that Supervisor Ed Robey and County Community Development Director Richard Coel also submitted comment letters, neither of which was addressed. Under these circumstances it is inevitable to wonder if additional submissions may also have fallen by the wayside, but whether or not this is true, the FEIR cannot be considered complete until all submitted comments have been incorporated, with responses. Again we assert that consideration by the Commission is premature, and contrary to the processes established by CEQA.

Numerous specific inadequacies and omissions in the FEIR will be detailed by commenters during the formal response period mentioned above, but failing to evaluate the impacts of the project on climate change could expose the City to legal action by environmental groups or by the State Attorney General, and therefore deserves special mention. This was exactly what happened to the City of Desert Hot Springs in August 2008, when the Riverside Superior Court invalidated an EIR because of failure to analyze greenhouse gas emissions and other climate change impacts.

A series of legislative actions over the past few years (eg AB 32, 2006, SB 97, 2007) have firmly established that control and reduction of carbon emissions is a stated goal of the state of California. Just a few weeks ago Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 375 into law, requiring California communities to consider climate change impacts of development in regional planning, with an emphasis on reducing car travel.

In June 2008 the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research issued a technical advisory report recommending the establishment of uniform guidelines on CEQA processes in addressing climate change. In the meantime, lead agencies are advised to make a good-faith effort to calculate the carbon emissions associated with a project, including traffic, energy consumption, release of sequestered carbon, construction activities, etc, and to assess their standard of significance. Failure to address these impacts is not acceptable.

Although extensive oak woodland mitigations in the form of restoration have been added to the FEIR in response to Sierra Club comments (Section 2, Response 4-47), no attempt is made to calculate either the amount or the significance of these effects, or to address the project’s broader contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

In any case the ability of small young trees of to sequester carbon is insignificant in comparison to that of mature woodlands, and will not reach equivalence for many years, perhaps for generations, rendering the proposed mitigations disproportionately inadequate in comparison to the immediate impact.

We believe that certification of the Provinsalia FEIR under these circumstances would be in violation of CEQA standards, and liable to reversal by the courts, with possible penalties accruing to the City. To avoid these consequences we recommend that:

• the EIR be returned to the consultants for revision, in order to incorporate a comprehensive quantitative analysis of its impacts on climate change, and that it be subsequently re-circulated for additional public comments related to this subject;

• a revised FEIR be prepared that responds to all comment letters, including those omitted to date and any additional submissions;

• commenters be informed of the availability of a comprehensive FEIR as soon as it has been finalized, and given due notice, including a firm timeline, of the process for responding to the consultants’ evaluation, and their rebuttals then be appended to the FEIR.

It is our contention that the Planning Commission should not commence formal consideration of the FEIR until the three steps listed above have been completed.”

No response to this letter has yet been received.

During the course of the past four or more years the Provinsalia project has raised concerns among many members of the community, who may share the Sierra Club’s belief that the EIR in its present form is not only substantively inadequate, but has the potential to expose the City to legal action. If so, we suggest that you contact City Administrator Dale Neiman immediately at 994-8201 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to express your views.

More information about the project, including numerous comment letters, is available at www.lakelive.info/provinsalia.

Victoria Brandon is chair of the Sierra Club Lake Group.

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There is an almost infinite number of beliefs embraced or created by countless individuals and many cultures throughout the world. Some of these beliefs are conscious, others become part of our conditioning and lay just below conscious awareness, triggering automatic responses in us.

Some of these beliefs are religious, some are spiritual, philosophical, ideological. Even science has its beliefs, or theories … it often seeks to prove its theories rather than attempting to approach reality without bias, as it claims it does.

And what is reality? Is there an absolute truth, an objective reality? Both religion and science, that are very similar in their dogmatism, state that their world views are true, because essentially separate from human consciousness, therefore standing on their own and unassailable. One such absolute truth is “given” by God to prophets or mystics who write it down and make a religion of it, the other “discovered” by scientists in the laboratory, who translate it into a formula or theorem.

Everyone knows the riddle of the tree falling in the forest … if no one is there, does it make a sound? It produces a sound wave, which is an energy pattern, which can only become sound when a physical apparatus such as a human ear catches it and when a brain translates it into what is experienced as sound. Different creatures hear differently, and give sound different meanings according to the experiences of the species.

So what is reality? Can it exist separate from consciousness, from the physical brain and the mind that give it form and meaning? Is there anything that can actually exist apart from consciousness, standing on its own as an absolute, separate truth?

If we agree that consciousness gives form and substance to energy fields that are highly responsive to it and highly malleable, we must also remember that the chosen focuses of consciousness, at the individual as well as the mass level, are pre-determined by chosen beliefs. As we believe, so do we see, feel, experience, and create … as we believe so do we form our lives and our world. If we believe we can walk on hot coals without getting burned, we will do it. And if most of humanity believes that the world must end, the world will end.

Life, it could be said, is a series of experimentations within beliefs systems, from which our human world springs. We embrace existing beliefs or create our own belief systems and use them as long as they serve our individual evolution and the evolution of our species. We then discard them and our world changes as our beliefs change. As this is the nature of human experience, to create illusions and explore and move through them as do actors on a stage, it is quite unavoidable, because the ultimate reality, if there is such a thing and as far as our species is concerned, is a psychic field of infinite potentiality, of endless creativity.

This creativity is what distinguishes us from animals, whose behaviors are mostly pre-determined by what is called instinct, and who live in a state of grace, or harmony and balance with the creation and true to their nature, without having to strive for it.

The Biblical myths of the tree of knowledge and of the fall are meant to symbolically represent this leap in human evolution from a pre-determined life, a purely instinctive life, to a life of conscious choice and creativity, that are the gifts and responsibilities of conscious evolution.

Today, there are reactionary movements in the world, primarily rising from organized religions gone fundamentalist, but also from political ideologies, that would propose a regression towards pre-determined life, not in a natural state of grace as in the animal kingdom, but under coercion and oppression, under harsh laws that would re-establish the authoritarian state. As differences and multiplicity are erroneously perceived to be causes of conflicts, many people are progressively espousing the belief that only the eradication of such differences can lead to global peace.

Even the most progressive and open-minded among us state that, for example, “not seeing skin color” is the proper way to deal with racial differences. The Olympic slogan, “One world one dream,” resonates with these rising fantasies of the unification of the world through uniformity, and of an ultimate outcome of one world government, one world ideology, one world religion, one world culture.

Human creativity, the fulfillment of which is the very condition necessary for consciousness to evolve and even survive, can only be stifled under authoritarianism, that breed conformity and uniformity, the opposites of creativity. Coercive authority is indeed the enemy of creativity (try to force a poet to write, and see what s/he produces under such conditions … all true artists are rebels by nature … all dictatorships silence artists and intellectuals first, then burn books). If we understand that creativity is an intrinsic part of the human psyche, we can imagine what all that opposes creativity does to the human spirit, which explains the degree of violence our world is experiencing on a constant basis. The primal energy of creativity emerges, under oppressive conditions, in destructive forms, like steam under pressure, or like a grizzly bear that escapes captivity.

The enemy of creativity is also fear, that is always at the very root of all aspirations to achieve dominant power, control, and authority. Because fear is unavoidable, to live as a true human being requires great courage. Not just the courage to work, raise a family and do the right thing, but the courage to accept the greater responsibility of being a co-creator of the individual and mass realities we all experience. It requires the courage to acknowledge that consciousness is the root and the ground of the world we know.

The path to peace is not to suppress multiplicity and cause humanity to submit to inflexible dogmas and ideologies, to the unification of the world under globalization and other agendas meant to “homogenize” the world, but to acknowledge differences, and not only respect and honor them, but celebrate them … to see differences in skin colors, in cultures, in belief systems, in languages and religions, in human behaviors, and celebrate them joyfully! To no longer perceive creativity to be a threat, by accepting the facts that there is no absolute truth, only relative truths, there is not one proper way, there are many paths, and there is no objectivity, only subjectivity. There is no reality that can remain separate from the viewer or witness, even at the sub-atomic particle level, there are only individual perceptions, and mass perceptions within species, cultures and historic periods.

The beliefs we choose to call “truths” do not originate from outside of us, they are our creations. Only by understanding this will we stop fighting to invalidate other’s beliefs, or “truths,” or perceptions of reality, and accept the very liberating fact that the only valid power given to us is creative power, not dominant power or coercive authority, whose foundations are fear and that consequently can only generate more fear, and oppose creativity or the very nature of human consciousness.

And all of this, of course, is part of an individual’s belief system, not an ultimate truth, even the “facts” stated as such for the purpose of clarity.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.

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• McCain proposed to write down the amount owed by over-mortgaged homeowners and claimed the idea as his own: “It’s my proposal, it's not Sen. Obama's proposal, it's not President Bush's proposal.” But the idea isn’t new. Obama had endorsed something similar two weeks earlier, and authority for the treasury secretary to grant such relief was included in the recently passed $700 billion financial rescue package.

• Both candidates oversimplified the causes of the financial crisis. McCain blamed it on Democrats who resisted tighter regulation of federal mortgage agencies. Obama blamed it on financial deregulation backed by Republicans. We find both are right, with plenty of blame left over for others, from home buyers to the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

• Obama said his health care plan would lower insurance premiums by up to $2,500 a year. Experts we’ve consulted see little evidence such savings would materialize.

• McCain misstated his own health care plan, saying he’d give a $5,000 tax credit to “every American” His plan actually would provide only $2,500 per individual, or $5,000 for couples and families. He also misstated Obama’s health care plan, claiming it would levy fines on “small businesses” that fail to provide health insurance. Actually, Obama’s plan exempts “small businesses.”

• McCain lamented that the U.S. was forced to “withdraw in humiliation” from Somalia in 1994, but he failed to note that he once proposed to cut off funding for troops to force a faster withdrawal.

• Obama said, “I favor nuclear power.” That’s a stronger statement than we've heard him make before. As recently as last December, he said, “I am not a nuclear energy proponent.”

• McCain claimed “1.3 million people in America make their living off eBay.” Actually, only 724,000 persons in the U.S. have income from eBay, and only some of them rely on it as their primary source.

Analysis

Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain met Oct. 7 for the second of three scheduled presidential debates. It was a town-hall-style debate before an audience of 80 uncommitted voters. Questions were submitted by the audience members, and others who sent them by e-mail, and were screened beforehand by moderator Tom Brokaw of NBC News. The event was held at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., and was broadcast nationally. We caught several misleading statements and falsehoods, many of which the candidates have said before.

"My" mortgage plan?

McCain made what he claimed was a new proposal to rescue over-mortgaged homeowners:

McCain: As president of the United States. ... I would order the secretary of the treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes – at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those – be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

McCain added: "It's my proposal, it's not Sen. Obama's proposal, it's not President Bush's proposal. But I know how to get America working again..."

But in fact, the recently passed $700 billion rescue package already grants the treasury secretary authority to undertake just such a program. It requires the secretary to buy up troubled mortgages while taking into consideration “the need to help families keep their homes and to stabilize communities.” It also says “the Secretary shall consent, where appropriate (to) loss mitigation measures, including term extensions, rate reductions (or) principal write downs."

Obama himself had urged this as the package was being considered. He said on Sept. 23 that "we should consider giving the government the authority to purchase mortgages directly instead of simply purchasing mortgage-backed securities."

McCain said "his" proposal would be expensive, and his campaign quickly issued a news release giving numbers:

McCain press release: The direct cost of this plan would be roughly $300 billion because the purchase of mortgages would relieve homeowners of “negative equity” in some homes. ... It may be necessary for Congress to raise the overall borrowing limit.

Minutes later, McCain was attacking Obama for proposing what he said was $860 billion in new spending.

Oversimplifying the financial crisis. Again.

The finger-pointing was fast and furious during the discussion of the fiscal crisis. McCain blamed lax regulation of the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation:

McCain: But you know, one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [T]hey're the ones that, with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back.

Obama blamed deregulation of the banking industry:

Obama: Now, I've got to correct a little bit of Sen. McCain's history, not surprisingly. Let's, first of all, understand that the biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system.

We’ve been here before. McCain has in fact been in favor of financial deregulation, but President Bill Clinton signed, and a lot of other Democrats supported, much of that same deregulation. And while Democrats really did fight McCain-cosponsored regulations of the FMs, McCain himself signed on to the bill just two months before the housing bubble popped.

In fact, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Experts have blamed everyone from home buyers to mortgage lenders to Alan Greenspan to both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Furthermore, McCain misspoke when he said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back." Actually those organizations did not make "home loans directly with consumers." Rather, they "work[ed] with mortgage bankers, brokers, and other primary mortgage market partners" and supplied them with the funds to lend to home buyers at affordable rates, as described on their Web sites.

Dubious Health Care Savings

Obama said that his health care plan would cut premium costs substantially:

Obama: We're going to work with your employer to lower the cost of your premiums by up to $2,500 a year.

We contacted health experts about this claim before – when Obama was saying the $2,500 would be the savings per family "on average." Some were quite skeptical. M.I.T.’s Jonathan Gruber told us, “I know zero credible evidence to support that conclusion.” Obama has also said on the campaign trail that more than half of the savings would come from the use of electronic health records, a major part of his plan to cut health costs. When we looked into that claim, experts told us it was wishful thinking.

Adoption of electronic medical records has been slow among doctors and hospitals. Obama could do much to speed it up, but it's not clear that he could bring about widespread adoption or reap such large savings from it. One of his advisers previously told us that the $2,500 figure included savings that would go to government and employers and that could, theoretically, result in lower taxes or higher wages for Americans. It remains to be seen whether savings could trickle down like that, even if Obama could gain the optimistic overall health care savings he touts.

More health care misleads

McCain misstated his own health care plan and Obama’s in one sentence:

McCain: I am in favor of . . . giving every American a $5,000 refundable tax credit and go out and get the health insurance you want rather than mandates and fines for small businesses, as Sen. Obama's plan calls for.

McCain's plan does not call for giving a $5,000 tax credit for "every American." It calls for a tax credit of $2,500. The $5,000 figure would apply to couples or families. And Obama’s plan requires large businesses to provide coverage for their employees or pay into a national plan, not "small businesses," as McCain said. Obama's health care proposal, posted on his Web site, says: “Small businesses will be exempt from this requirement.” McCain previously used this charge in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, and he repeated the claim in the debate, saying, "If you're a small business person and you don't insure your employees, Sen. Obama will fine you. Will fine you." As we said, that's false. Obama countered that he had proposed a refundable tax credit for small businesses of up to 50 percent of the cost of premiums, which is indeed part of his plan. We've noted before that neither man defines what he means by "small business."

Black Hawk down

McCain lamented having to “withdraw in humiliation” from Somalia in 1993, but failed to mention his own role:

McCain: We went in to Somalia as a peacemaking organization, we ended up trying to be – excuse me, as a peacekeeping organization, we ended up trying to be peacemakers and we ended up having to withdraw in humiliation.

What McCain isn’t saying is that he led an attempt to force the Clintonmccain administration to withdraw more quickly. After the First Battle of Mogadishu (immortalized in the book and film “Black Hawk Down”), Clinton proposed a six-month plan for withdrawing combat troops. Then-Sen. Phil Gramm complained that the plan was an attempt to “save face,” and McCain introduced an amendment to cut off funding for combat in Somalia and force an immediate withdrawal. The amendment was tabled and the Senate backed Clinton’s plan. In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” McCain called his amendment “hasty” and wrote that he “regretted” what he came to see as “a retreat in the face of aggression from an inferior foe.”

Nuclear warming

Obama flatly said he favored nuclear energy – embracing it more warmly than in the past:

Obama: Contrary to what Sen. McCain keeps on saying, I favor nuclear power as one component of our overall energy mix.

Previously Obama has been more hesitant. He said at a town hall meeting in Newton, Iowa, on Dec. 30, 2007, when asked if he was "truly comfortable" with the safety of nuclear power:

Obama (Dec. 30, 2007:) I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal. ... I am not a nuclear energy proponent.

He then went on to say later in the same response that he has "not ruled out nuclear ... but only so far as it is clean and safe." The energy plan Obama released in October 2007 only grudgingly conceded that more nuclear power is probably needed to reduce carbon emissions: "It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table."

eBay error

McCain said that "1.3 million people in America make their living off eBay." He's way off. That's the number of people worldwide who have eBay earnings as their primary or secondary income. The online auction site says that of these, 724,000 people are in the U.S. – but it still doesn't say how many of the 724,000 use eBay as their primary source of income.

McCain was touting the founder of the popular Internet auction site, Meg Whitman, as a possible secretary of the treasury in a McCain administration.

Counting errors

McCain exaggerated Obama's votes to increase taxes.

McCain: Sen. Obama has voted 94 times to either increase your taxes or against tax cuts. That's his record.

He’s getting warmer — the first time we dinged him for this one, he said Obama voted 94 times to increase taxes, which is way off. He's now saying it's 94 votes either for increased taxes or against tax cuts. But that's still misleading. Seven of the votes were for lowering taxes for most people while increasing them on a few, and 11 votes were for increasing taxes only on those making more than $1 million a year (not "your taxes" except for a very few.)

Obama had his own misleading claim about vote counts:

Obama: And during that time, he voted 23 times against alternative fuels, 23 times.

We found that only 11 of those votes would have reduced or eliminated subsidies or tax incentives for alternative energy. The rest were votes McCain cast against the mandatory use of alternative energy, or votes in favor of allowing exemptions from such mandates.

More on that $860 billion

McCain said that Obama has proposed more than $800 billion in new spending.

McCain: Do you know that Sen. Obama has voted for – is proposing $860

billion of new spending now? New spending.

That’s based on a McCain campaign estimate of how much Obama’s new proposals will cost, without figuring in any savings or reductions in spending. Any increase in funding and any created program counts as "new spending" in this estimate, whether or not it is offset by decreases in spending elsewhere.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has found that both Obama and McCain are proposing combinations of tax and spending policies that would increase the federal deficit. It found that in 2013, Obama’s proposals would produce a net deficit increase of $286 billion, while McCain's major policies would produce a net deficit increase of between $167 billion and $259 billion. In talking to CNN, CRFB President Maya MacGuineas estimated that McCain's deficit increase would fall midway between the extremes of that range, at $211 billion.

Iraqi surplus

Obama repeated a stale talking point when he said, "We're spending $10 billion a month in Iraq at a time when the Iraqis have a $79 billion surplus, $79 billion."

As we’ve pointed out when Obama said it on the campaign trail, when he repeated it at the last debate, and even when Biden mentioned the figure in the vice presidential debate, that number is wrong. The Iraqis actually “have” $29.4 billion in the bank. The Government Accountability Office projected in August that Iraq’s 2008 budget surplus could range anywhere from $38.2 billion to $50.3 billion, depending on oil revenue, price and volume. Then, in early August, the Iraqi legislature passed a $21 billion supplemental spending bill. The supplemental will be completely funded by this year’s surplus, and that means that the Iraqi’s will not have $79 billion in the bank. They could have about $59 billion.

$6.8 billion boast

McCain repeated a questionable boast when he said, “I've taken on some of the defense contractors. I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion in a deal for an Air Force tanker that was done in a corrupt fashion."

As we mentioned in our analysis of the first debate, there is more to the story. McCain certainly did lead a fight to kill the contract, and the effort ended in prison sentences for defense contractors. The contract is still up in the air, however, and questions have been raised about the role McCain played in helping a Boeing rival secure the new contract.

After the original Boeing contract to supply refueling airliners was nixed in 2003, the bidding process was reopened. And in early 2007, Boeing rival EADS/Airbus won the bid the second time around. But Boeing filed a protest about the way the bids were processed, and the Government Accountability Office released a report that found “significant errors” with the bid process.

Further, the New York Times reported that “McCain’s top advisers, including a cochairman of his presidential campaign, were lobbyists for EADS. And Mr. McCain had written to the Defense Department, urging it to ignore a trade dispute between the United States and Europe over whether Airbus received improper subsidies.”

68 million acres

Obama was off the mark when he said that oil companies “currently have 68 million acres that they're not using.”

As we’ve pointed out previously, those 68 million leased acres are not producing oil, but they are not necessarily untouched. In fact, in 2006, the last year for which figures are available, there were a total of more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished, according to the Bureau of Land Management. These acres of land that these holes sit on are not counted as being “producing,” but they are certainly far from untouched.

The return of the oil slick

McCain recycled a misleading claim from Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign, charging Obama with voting to give “billions” to oil companies:

McCain: By the way, my friends, I know you grow a little weary with this back-and-forth. It was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies, and it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney. You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me.

McCain is referring to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which Obama did in fact vote for. Clinton raised this same charge against Obama during the Democratic primaries. It was misleading then and it’s equally misleading now.

In fact, according to a Congressional Research Service report, more tax breaks were taken away from oil companies than were given. Overall, the act resulted in a small net tax increase on the oil industry:

Congressional Research Service: The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT05, P.L. 109-58) included several oil and gas tax incentives, providing about $2.6 billion of tax cuts for the oil and gas industry. In addition, EPACT05 provided for $2.9 billion of tax increases on the oil and gas industry, for a net tax increase on the industry of nearly $300 million over 11 years.

As we said last year, the bill did contain $14.3 billion in tax breaks, but most of those went to electric utilities, and nuclear, and also to alternative fuels research

and subsidies for energy-efficient cars, homes and buildings – not to the oil industry.

Computer error

Obama moved the invention of the computer up by more than a century:

Obama: The same way the computer was originally invented by a bunch of government scientists who were trying to figure out, for defense purposes, how to communicate, we've got to understand that this is a national security issue, as well.

It’s true that the first electronic computer, ENIAC, or the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was developed at the University of Pennsylvania with funding from the War Department.

But ENIAC was not actually the first computer. That distinction belongs to the difference engine, a mechanical computer invented in 1822 by the British mathematician Charles Babbage. And even Babbage was drawing on earlier work, such as the calculating machine built in 1671 by the German philosopher Gottfried Liebniz.

Other quibbles

• Obama said: "When George Bush came into office, our debt – national debt was around $5 trillion. It's now over $10 trillion." Actually, it was closer to $6 trillion when Bush took office. On Jan. 22, 2001 (two days after Bush was sworn in) the debt stood at $5.728 trillion. On Sept. 30, 2008, it was $10.025 trillion.

• McCain said it again: "We've got to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't want us very – like us very much" (He actually used the figure three times in the debate.) He's talking about what we spend importing oil, and he's said the same thing at the last debate and numerous other times. At current oil prices, the correct figure is about $493 billion. About a third of that goes to Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom, which were still on the friendly side of the ledger last time we looked.

• Obama was right about the amount of earmarks, when he said they "account for about $18 billion of our budget." According to the budget watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, earmarks totaled just $18.3 billion in 2008. Citizens Against Government Waste came in with a slightly smaller number of $17.2 billion, and the Office of Management and Budget smaller still at $16.9 billion.

• McCain repeated an error he made in the last debate when he said, "In Lebanon, I stood up to President Reagan, my hero, and said, if we send Marines in there, how can we possibly beneficially affect this situation? And said we shouldn't. Unfortunately, almost 300 brave young Marines were killed." In fact, as we noted previously, McCain wasn't elected until three months after the Marines had been deployed. He did vote against the post-hoc War Powers Act authorization of the deployment; Reagan signed it into law in October 1983, 11 days before a suicide bomber set off a blast that killed 241 servicemembers in their barracks.

Sources

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Promises, Promises: A Fiscal Voter Guide to the 2008 Election." U.S. Budget Watch. 15 Sep. 2008.

CNN Political Ticker. "Fact Check: Is Obama proposing $860 billion+ in new spending?" 29 Sep. 2008.

JohnMcCain.com. "Straight Talk on Health System Reform." accessed 8 Oct. 2008.

Transcript, “Barack Obama Sept. 23 press conference,” Lynn Sweet's blog, Chicago Sun Times 24 Sept 2008.

Obama, Barack. "Plan for a Healthy America." BarackObama.com, accessed 8 Oct. 2008.

"U.S. Imports by Country of Origin." U.S. Energy Information Administration, accessed 8 Oct. 2008.

"Spot Prices, Crude Oil in Dollars per Barrel." U.S. Energy Information Administration, accessed 8 Oct. 2008.

"Statement Regarding the Bid Protest Decision Resolving the Aerial Refueling Tanker Protest by The Boeing Company" Government Accountability Office. 18 June 2008.

Isikoff, Michael, "McCain’s Boeing Battle Boomerangs," Newsweek. 30 June 2008.

Laurent, Lionel, "Boeing Boomerangs on McCain," Forbers Magazine. 4 March 2008.

Wayne, Leslie, "Audit Says Tanker Deal Is Flawed," New York Times. 19 June 2008.

Majority Staff, "The Truth About America’s Energy:Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits," House Committe on Natural Resources. June 2008.

"Total Producing and Non-Producing Leases: Fiscal Year 2007," Mineral Management Service. Accessed 2 July 2008.

Van Wagener, Dana, "Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf," Energy Information Administration. Accessed 2 July 2008.

"Inventory of Onshore Federal Oil and Natural Gas Resources and Restrictions to Their Development," U.S. Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and Energy. 2008.

Krauss, Clifford. "Backing Clinton, Senate Rejects Bid to Speed Somalia

Pullout," New York Times, 15 October 1993.

Winegrad, Dilys and Atsushi Akera. "A Short History of the Second American Revolution," University of Pennsylvania Almanac, 30 January 1996.

The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It is a nonpartisan, nonprofit "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. Politics, and increase public knowledge and understanding. Visit them at www.factcheck.org.

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