Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

On the Hannity and Colmes episode immediately following the last State of the Union address,
Sean Hannity described the President's 2003 tax plan (which contained Bush's third tax
cut) in his confident, unequivocal way: "Ninety-two million Americans will get $1,100 back
in their pocket."
Of course, he was lying. Or was he? Maybe he was just confused. Sean may be evil,
but he's not smart. I don't dispute that ninety-two million Americans were getting an average
tax cut of $1,083. It's not the seventeen bucks I'm quibbling about. It's the average part. Hannity
had left that out. Averages can be tricky. You and Bill Gates probably have an average
net worth of $32 billion. My daughter and I have an average gender of half-male, half-female.
My daughter, my wife, and I have an average gender of female.
In fact, less than twenty-five million Americans would be receiving a tax cut of
$1,100 or more. Sixty-two million taxpayers would be getting tax cuts of less than a thousand
dollars-averaging about $302. And fifty million households would get no tax cut at all.
us."
Colmes's next comment on that show was "Peggy [Noonan], thank you for being with
Personally, I think the President, like most Americans, is smarter than Sean Hannity. So
when Bush, who, after all, is President of the United States, repeatedly says something that
isn't true, it's not confusion. It's a lie.
Take these remarks by the President at a 2001 "Tax Family Event," in which he introduced
America to the Yahngs. Talking about his first tax plan, the President of the United
States said,
It is a plan that significantly reduces taxes for people at the bottom end of the economic
ladder. If you're a family of four making $35,000, you'll receive a one hundred
percent tax cut. It's an average tax relief for families of $1,600. The Yahng
family under the plan I submit will receive actually more than that. They now pay
$2,000 in taxes to the federal government. If this plan is enacted by the United
States Congress, they'll end up paying $150 of taxes.
There are actually four lies crammed into this little paragraph. Lie #1 is the "one hundred
percent tax cut" part of the second sentence. The President could have told the truth by saying,
"one hundred percent income tax cut." You see, a family of four making $35,000 pays,
on average, $5,355 in payroll taxes. Seventy-four percent of Americans pay more in payroll