“The Vice President is not reinventing the federal government, he is reinvigorating the federal government. And Americans will feel this influence in our own lives. We’ll have to work through a maze of bureaucracy to get health care, or tax relief [italics Chatterbox’s]. … How many of you own a rooftop photovoltaic system? Let’s see the hands. Not too many. You’re beginning to get the drift of ‘targeted.’ “
–Candidate George W. Bush at a Nov. 1 campaign rally in Minneapolis.
“On a third front, theHouse Waysand Means Committee may late this week approve tax breaks for purchase of photovoltaic solar systems in homes and for buying ultra-fuel efficient hybrid cars–both urged by the administration [italics Chatterbox’s].”
– July 17 Associated Press report by H. Josef Hebert.
(Thanks to Democratic strategist Harrison Hickman.)
Got a whopper? Send it to chatterbox@slate.com. To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.
Whopper Archive:
July 13, 2001: George W. Bush
July 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
June 29, 2001: David Brock
June 22, 2001: Edmund Morris
June 15, 2001: George W. Bush
June 8, 2001: Nepali Prince Regent (subsequently, King) Gyanendra
June 1, 2001: Mary McGrory
May 25, 2001: Ari Fleischer
May 18, 2001: York, Pa., Mayor Charles Robertson
May 11, 2001: Ted Olson
May 4, 2001: Rear Admiral Craig Quigley
April 27, 2001: Ben Affleck
April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O’Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan. 26, 2001: Denise Rich
