MSNBC Creatively Edits Romney Speech

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Tommy Christopher is a White House correspondent from Lakehurst, NJ? RT loves pulling weirdos out of nowhere, and pretending like they're serious players. I love RT for their insanity (after all, they supported Ron Paul), but they're a propaganda machine funded by the Kremlin, and we should be really cautious about anything they say.

And to the point the Romney quote actually was:

This optometrist wanted to change his billing address. He'd moved his office from one side of town to the other. Same zip code, same post office, but he wanted to change his address. He got a form from the federal government, this is so he can get reimbursement from the federal government for the services he provides for the poor and seniors. The form he gets to change addresses is 33 pages long...33 pages long. He calls someone to ask how to fill it out. He calls someone in government. They tell him what to do. He sends it in. They send it back, wasn't done right. Gotta do it again, another 33 pages. He calls another person. They tell him what to do. Doesn't get it right the second time. Third time's the charm though. This takes several months during which time he's not getting the checks for the work he's doing for people who need his care. That's how government works.

Obviously Mr. Christopher with his vast mental capabilities was able to immediately and precisely know that the form in question was a simple address change form at the USPS and not the substantially longer medicare or medicaid enrollment forms required to be filled out in order to get reimbursements. This little nuance is exactly the point that Romney was alluding to, that simple address changes that are easily done by any citizen for the purposes of getting ones mail become a beuracratic nightmare when having to do special activities to simply comply with the procedures of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Being the good journalist that Mr. Christopher is, I am sure he did his due diligence by following up with the doctor in question to determine what particular form (amongst a choice of a number) was required.

And as if it ever needs repeating, Oerdin is wrong.

[Az]

Not gonna lie, Romney sounds pretty ****ing cool in the video, and if I was an american and was not informed about ****, I would vote for him, easy.

[Dinner]

Ogie, the reporter apparently investigated which form is required for an optometristto change his billing address with medicare and medicaid and the form in question is just two pages long not 33 pages long. You can say the reporter is wrong but without further information I'm inclined to believe he is correct especially since Romney is well known for lying just about every time his mouth opens.

[Dinner]

Let's put it this way: if the optometrist told him that, how is he blatantly lying?

I doubt the guy actually did say that to him. Romney's claims almost always don't check out. In any event it is just factually wrong.

[giblets]

I want to see the 33-page form for changing an address.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I want to see the 33-page form for changing an address.

I agree. I want to know the exact governmental form number as the myriad of choices is a bit confusing. Certainly these medicare forms look applicable and are in the ballpark of 33 pages. I suspect medicaid forms in the same ballpark pagecount wise.


http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/CMS-Form...ds/cms855i.pdf page count = 28

Per page 2 - Applicability is: Currently enrolled in Medicare and need to make changes to your enrollment information (e.g., you have added or changed a practice location)

or perhaps

http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/CMS-Form...ds/cms855b.pdf page count = 49

Per page 2 applicability is: Currently enrolled in Medicare and need to make changes to your enrollment data (e.g., you haveadded or changed a practice location). Changes must be reported in accordance with the timeframes established in 42 C.F.R. § 424.516(d). (IDTF changes of information must be reported in accordance with42 C.F.R. § 410.33.)

Update: Was able to google and read the Christopher story. Link below. First off good lord what trash. Secondly Mr. Christopher apparently does not contact the doctor but immediately jumps to the conclusion that the form in question is a medicaid form and provides a link to a 4 page doument. Thus my point stands that Christopher is a hack without a referenced basis for his claim. Thirdly if one takes Romney's recounts of the practioners words to provide services for the poor and seniors then one would expect address form changes for both medicare and medicaid would be required to be submitted not simply a medicaid form.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/inconveni...a-big-fat-lie/

[The Mad Monk]

I doubt the guy actually did say that to him. Romney's claims almost always don't check out. In any event it is just factually wrong.

Speaking of just factually wrong...

4 Pinocchios for Obama’s newest anti-Romney ad
Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:00 AM ET, 06/21/2012 TheWashingtonPost

The Obama campaign apparently loves to ding former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with the charge of “outsourcing.” On several occasions, we have faulted the campaign for its claims, apparently to little avail.

Now, all of the claims have been combined in one 30-second ad, with the added incendiary charge that Romney was a “corporate raider.” Let’s look anew at this material.


The Facts


The phrase “corporate raider” has a particular meaning in the world of finance. Here’s the definition on Investopedia:


“An investor who buys a large number of shares in a corporation whose assets appear to be undervalued. The large share purchase would give the corporate raider significant voting rights, which could then be used to push changes in the company’s leadership and management. This would increase share value and thus generate a massive return for the raider.”

In other words, this is generally an adversarial stance, in which an investor sees an undervalued asset and forces management to spin off assets, take the company private or break it up.

In a previous life, The Fact Checker covered renowned corporate raiders such as Carl Icahn and his ilk. We also have closely studied Bain Capital and can find no examples that come close to this situation; its deals were done in close association with management. Indeed, Bain generally held onto its investments for four or five years, in contrast to the quick bust-em-ups of real corporate raiders. So calling Romney a “corporate raider” is a real stretch.

So how does the Obama campaign justify this phrase? It cites a single Reuters story from last August, about a campaign stop in New Hampshire, written by a stringer, Jason McLure, who was previously based in Africa. Buried in the article is a reference to Romney as a “former corporate raider.”

“Reuters typically refers to Romney as a ‘former private equity executive’ or something along those lines,” said Ros Krasny, the Boston bureau chief. “Of the hundreds of times we have referenced Romney over the past year or more, honestly, that example from Jason must have just slipped through the net — 10 months ago.”

A better source for Romney’s behavior as an investor might be someone who actually worked on Wall Street, such as former Obama auto czar Steven Rattner. “Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path,” Rattner wrote in Politico this year.

Regarding the outsourcing claims, we have frowned on these before. The Obama campaign rests its case on three examples of Bain-controlled companies sending jobs overseas. But only one of the examples — involving Holson Burns Group — took place when Romney was actively managing Bain Capital.

Regarding the other claims, concerning Canadian electronics maker SMTC Manufacturing and customer service firm Modus Media, the Obama campaign tries to take advantage of a gray area in which Romney had stepped down from Bain — to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics — but had not sold his shares in the firm. We had previously given the Obama campaign Three Pinocchios for such tactics.

The Modus Media case is also not an example of shipping jobs overseas. The company closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah. At the same time, it opened an unrelated plant in Mexico. The Obama campaign once trumpeted the fact that we had dinged a conservative Super PAC for making the same leap in logic.

The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown.

This concerns Romney’s veto of a bill that would have prohibited Massachusetts from contracting with companies that outsourced the state’s work to other countries. Lawmakers were especially concerned about a $160,000-a-month contract with Citigroup to operate a system of electronic food-stamp cards that included a customer phone service center in India.

Both the liberal editorial page of the Boston Globe and conservative editorial page of the Boston Herald urged Romney to veto the amendment, saying it would cost the state money. Romney agreed, saying the measure did not protect state jobs — the call center might have moved from India to another state — but “had the potential of costing our citizens a lot more money.” The Democratic-dominated Massachusetts legislature did not override his veto, even though it overturned 117 others, suggesting that there was little real support for the measure.

When the food-stamp contract expired, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance insisted that those jobs be returned to the United States. But they ended up in a call center based in Utah — just as Romney had predicted.

As we mentioned, we recounted this ancient Massachusetts history before, giving the campaign Two Pinocchios. So we were very surprised that the Obama campaign cited that critical Fact Checker column as a source for the ad in its back-up materials.

The ad also cites as a source a Boston Globe article from last month that merely reports on an earlier ad making similar charges. That’s highly circular reasoning — and is not fair play.

Upon hearing this ad was under consideration for a tough rating, the Obama campaign supplied reams of additional SEC documents regarding Romney’s ownership in Bain after he left for the Olympics, most of which we had examined previously when we first looked at this question. The campaign also supplied SEC documents showing that two of these companies, Modus and SMTC, as well as one called Stream International (a predecessor of Modus), earned money in part by helping other companies subcontract work overseas. Some of this business predated Romney’s departure from Bain, but thus far it seems a slim case for this particular ad.

“Romney can’t run from his record. At Bain and in Massachusetts, he had the chance to keep jobs in America and sent them overseas instead,” said Kara Carscaden, deputy press secretary for the Obama campaign. “Even while he was at the Olympics, Romney owned and profited from Bain, continues to profit from it today and cannot ignore what Bain did during that time. Whether it’s outsourcing public jobs to India or shipping private ones to Mexico and China, Romney’s record is clear.”




The Pinocchio Test


The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of “corporate raider” to its examples of alleged outsourcing. Simply repeating the same debunked claims won’t make them any more correct.


Four Pinocchios

Waaaaaait a minute...those aren't just factually wrong, those are blatant lies!

[DaShi]

So?

[Dr Strangelove]

I agree. I want to know the exact governmental form number as the myriad of choices is a bit confusing. Certainly these medicare forms look applicable and are in the ballpark of 33 pages. I suspect medicaid forms in the same ballpark pagecount wise.


http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/CMS-Form...ds/cms855i.pdf page count = 28

Per page 2 - Applicability is: Currently enrolled in Medicare and need to make changes to your enrollment information (e.g., you have added or changed a practice location)

or perhaps

http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/CMS-Form...ds/cms855b.pdf page count = 49

Per page 2 applicability is: Currently enrolled in Medicare and need to make changes to your enrollment data (e.g., you haveadded or changed a practice location). Changes must be reported in accordance with the timeframes established in 42 C.F.R. § 424.516(d). (IDTF changes of information must be reported in accordance with42 C.F.R. § 410.33.)

If you had read the forms you'd have discovered that neither are applicable to Optometrists. Furthermore the change of address section on the forms is page 2B and that's all. They're universal forms. The Federal government isn't the only organization that uses them. I do physicals for private contractors, they often have one form to cover all their various job titles, the physical requirements may differ but they don't want to keep track of different forms for each. Sometimes the physical is buried within a bunch of other paperwork, or they may have a universal medical form which is used for a variety of purposes, but the practitioner needs to wade through it to find which page applies.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

If you had read the forms you'd have discovered that neither are applicable to Optometrists.

I do not professs to be an expert on the selection of the forms or the filling out thereof, hence my suggestion that the doctor in question be asked the question. However, I do note that there is a list of professions on page 2 that the form is applicable to, namely ALL physicians as well as the non-physician practitioners that meet the descriptions given. I believe the applicability of an optometrist is that he is a physician and is required to fill in the box in section 2.d to indicate so. (Form CMS-855i)

Furthermore the change of address section on the forms is page 2B and that's all. They're universal forms. The Federal government isn't the only organization that uses them. I do physicals for private contractors, they often have one form to cover all their various job titles, the physical requirements may differ but they don't want to keep track of different forms for each. Sometimes the physical is buried within a bunch of other paperwork, or they may have a universal medical form which is used for a variety of purposes, but the practitioner needs to wade through it to find which page applies.

As for the requirement to only fill out the germane portions of the form, that is dictated by the form instuctions themselves, thus having to wade through the form requirements. Given it appears that this form is confusing not only in its applicability but also its instructions (if this form is indeed the one that is referenced by the optometrist), it is very likely that a call to the governement would have been made to understand the proper way to fill out the form. So far the optometrist story seems plausible.