Campaign ads mask truth

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Everyone with a television or radio knows when campaign season is in full swing. Commercial breaks contain smiling politicians, promises they can’t keep, and — of course — mudslinging. Yet the well-trained mind must endeavor to transcend these persuasive images and clichés to elect the best leaders — not the ones that sound best on TV.

While political advertisements can give busy voters a glimpse of their options, they should not be the end of voters’ political research, but rather the beginning until a voter is confident in her choice. For the perspectives in political commercials can mislead at best, and bamboozle at worst.

Consider, for example, an advertisement by Ending Spending against Democrat Gary Peters, who won Michigan’s contested Senate seat. The ad mimics “Sharknado,” depicting a cartoon Peters dancing across the screen, chased by an animated tornado and sharks. The commercial condemns Peters for accepting funding from convicted loan sharks. However, it conveniently ignores the fact that Peters accepted funds from convicted felon Tomo Duhanaj because Duhanaj donated to Peters’ campaign before his 2012 conviction. Federal Campaign Contribution records indicate that Peters returned Duhanaj’s campaign contributions immediately after Duhanaj’s conviction.

Though not as creative, commercials in Ohio condemned Democratic Secretary of State hopeful Nina Turner for not paying taxes as a landlord. The ads focus little on Turner’s fitness for office, instead attacking her character for events she admits occurred, but long before she became an elected official. She argued that she has grown from her past experiences and that there are far more important issues.

Apparently the Michigan National Republican Conventions thinks nursing home bed taxes are Michigan’s biggest concern, since it devoted an entire commercial to blasting Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer for raising taxes on Nursing Care Beds. Schauer did vote for the Medicaid Quality Assurance Program, which increases a nursing home bed fee that the state used to increase nursing home reimbursements. But incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, Schauer’s opponent, also supports the program, recently extending it until October 2015.

More incredible yet is the National Republican Congressional Committee’s commercial opposing Democratic candidate for Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, Brad Ashford, which argued that a vote for Ashford is a vote for convicted murderer Nikko Jenkins. It condemns Ashford for opposing reforms to the Good Time law that would make it more difficult for prisoners, especially murder convicts like Jenkins, to receive time away from prison. The ad does not reveal, however, that Ashford opposed reforms to the law because it is not being enforced. He explained that prison overcrowding and expensive incarceration compelled the early release of Jenkins and other killers. But you won’t hear that in the ad.

By far the most misleading political commercial this season is the Agenda Project Action Fund’s “Republican Cuts Kill,” featuring sound bites from dozens of influential Republicans saying the words “spending cuts,” and even just the word “cuts” while images of dying health workers in Hazmat suits and Ebola victims flash across the screen. The point? Republican spending cuts to the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caused the Ebola epidemic.

These supposed “cuts” to NIH and CDC budgets actually refer to reduced increases in spending. This year’s CDC budget increased from last year’s, but not by as much as it had expected. The CDC called this increased funding a cut. Actual funding to the CDC has increased since 2011, growing from $5.7 billion in 2011 to $5.8 billion in 2014. Some cuts.

Perhaps its perceived need for more funding to fight Ebola has something to do with its budget priorities. According to the CDC fiscal year 2015 president’s budget request, the CDC requested $564 million for “Monitoring Health and Ensuring Laboratory Excellence,” and $1.3 billion to “Protect Americans from Natural and Bioterrorism Threats.” However, it spent only $464 million to “Ensure Global Disease Protection.” That means the CDC spends far more updating its laboratories than on global disease prevention, and even more yet on bioterrorism prevention, though I could not find one threat that the CDC stopped. Perhaps rather than blaming Republican cuts for Ebola outbreaks, voters should reevaluate the CDC.

Every election season, citizens must make decisions about their leaders. Well-informed voters should ignore political clichés and ad hominem attacks, focusing on candidates’ actual positions on significant issues to make the best leadership decisions.