Distortions R Us

That’s what the Republican Party of Florida is all about.

They have two ads running attacking Alex Sink that are totally bogus.

First off “the pension ad” – Politifact rating “Barely true”

Now let’s return to the key claim, that state pension fund staffers “lost billions. Then Sink gave them bonuses.” This ad accurately highlights Sink’s oversight role of the state’s pension fund but after that, this ad stretches the facts and misleads the viewer. The $24 billion is not gone. Sink did not personally make the risky investments or give bonuses to staffers, and the staff bonuses preceded the fund’s loss in value. We rate the RPOF ad Barely True.

That’s entirely too generous. The Chief Financial Officer is one of three people on the pension oversight board, and the other two, the majority, were Republicans during this period.

The Republicans fail to mention that they blocked Ms Sink’s attempt to reform the board by adding an investment professional and a representative of the government employees.

The second ad is even worse. They had to troll back to 1997 for the half-truths in their “Sink raised taxes” ad Rick Outzen covered that:

To support the attack, Scott had to dig up a 1997 article in the St. Pete Times–written the same year Scott was forced to resign from Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America over a medicare tax fraud investigation. Columbia/HCA later agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines and penalties – the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history. At that time Sink was serving on the Governor’s 60-member Commission on Education which included Richard Nunis, chairman of Walt Disney Attractions; Stewart Turley, chairman of Eckerd Corp. and Alvin R. Carpenter, president of CSX Transportation. Sink was president of Florida Banking Group for NationsBank. The Commission recommended a 2.5 percent surcharge on utility bills to pay for school construction.

At one point in the ad they claim that Ms Sink raised “?payroll taxes?” Sorry, but Florida is rather famous for not having an income tax, or any other “payroll tax”. The closest the state comes is the unemployment tax that employers pay. In any case, taxes are raised and lowered by the legislature and the governor, not the Chief Financial Officer, nor blue-ribbon advisory groups.