Fact Checking the KUAT Forum

by David Safier

Today's Star article covering last night's debate/forum reports the events accurately. If all you want is a "He said/He said" to tell you what went on, the article pretty much does the job.

But many points raised by the candidates which are discussed in the article can be fact checked. Since the Star didn't see fit to do that, I've listed every checkable fact I could find in the article and looked at whether they can be judged true or false.

My conclusion based on the evidence below: Barber's statements are far more accurate than Kelly's. It creates a false equivalence to simply say they attacked each other during the debate without fact checking the accuracy of their claims.

1. "Barber painted Kelly as a man who has a pattern of telling lies and changing his stance on issues." True.
   Since "lying" is in the eye of the beholder, that's a difficult charge to rate, so that's not really a checkable fact. But it's definitely true Kelly has changed his stance on a number of issues, most specifically his strong stands on privatizing and phasing out Social Security and Medicare, which he recently has tried to soften and/or deny.
2. "Kelly painted Barber as man whom President Obama and the Democrats are trying to buy as another "reliable far-left vote" and who has spent the campaign mischaracterizing Kelly's past comments." False
   The "buying another reliable far-left vote" is in the eye of the beholder, so, like "lying," it is not a checkable fact. However, Barber has used Kelly's own words to characterize his past comments, and the context of the quotes doesn't change the meaning. The one exception is Barber's use of Kelly's "oil is a renewable resource" statement. More on that below.
3. Kelly said Barber "has run his entire campaign based on attempting to scare seniors into voting a certain way." False.
   Kelly's main argument against Barber is that the $500 billion reduction in spending on Medicare will reduce senior's benefits, which has been proven false, so it is Kelly who's using a false allegation to try and scare seniors out of voting for Barber. The accurate use of Kelly's own words to depict how he will deal with Social Security and Medicare is the use of factual information, not a scare tactic.

4. Kelly said Barber mischaracterized Kelly's statement that oil is a renewable resource, which "was a joke and everyone knew it." True
The only instance I found of Kelly making the "oil is a renewable resource" statement was as a punchline to a statement about the world's oil reserves, and it was greeted with friendly laughter, so Barber can't maintain that's something Kelly believes. [Side Note: Kelly vehemently contested the way Barber used this quote but didn't directly contest any other quotes Barber used. That lends credence to the other statements Barber made about Kelly's stands since they went unchallenged.]

5. "Barber then confronted Kelly for saying he wanted to eliminate the minimum wage and for then later calling Barber a liar for repeating the statement." True
Kelly has said, on tape, he wants to eliminate the minimum wage. I don't have direct knowledge of the anecdote about Kelly calling Barber a liar. However, when Kelly was given a chance to respond, he ducked the issue and went into a campaign speech about being an ex-Marine, a father and a small businessman. If he could have denied the allegation, he probably would have.

6. Kelly "said the U.S. is using only a small portion of the oil it could be cultivating." . . . "Barber said Kelly is wrong about the U.S. having more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, wrong about having technology being available to tap into oil shale reserves." True for Barber, partially true, partially false for Kelly.
Kelly's assertion that we have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia is a big lie based on a misleading truth. The oil reserves he's referring to are trapped in shale. We lack the technology to get at most of it, and the rest takes more energy to extract than would be produced from the extracted oil. Kelly can argue that we are only using a small portion of our oil reserves if he separates that from his claim that we have more oil than Saudi Arabia, but since the two are intertwined in his argument, the partially true statement is based on a false premise.

Barber was correct on every checkable statement in the Star article.

Kelly's only correct statement is when he complained about Barber's cheap shot for using his "oil is a renewable resource" quote as something Kelly believes. He only gets partial credit for saying we're only using a small portion of the oil that's under our land, since he mixes that with his "more oil than Saudi Arabia" line — and besides, the same can be said for any country with oil reserves. For a number of reasons, every country with oil leaves much of it under the ground at any given time. The rest of his statements are false.