Sen. Orrin Hatch thinks it's OK to lie by omission

Why do Republican politicians boldly tell lies that could easily be refuted by the mainstream media? Easy answer — the media’s “he said, she said” approach to reporting encourages the pols to keep lying.

One of the GOP’s most frequently uttered lies is that corporations in the U.S. are taxed at an outrageously high rate. Here’s Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah: “This isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke; as of April 1, the United States of America will have reached the inauspicious position of having the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.”

In fact, most Republican pols tell the same lie, which they use to help support the even bigger lie that high taxes discourage corporations from engaging in more “job creation.” And the big media outlets — New York Times, Washington Post, TV network news departments, and so on — rarely call them on their lies.

To read the truth, you have to ignore the media dinosaurs and use an internet site such as ThinkProgress:

…. As we’ve noted time and time again, while the U.S. has a high statutory corporate tax rate (meaning the rate on paper), U.S. corporations actually pay incredibly low taxes due to the ever-proliferating loopholes, credits, and deductions in the tax code and the use of overseas tax havens.

U.S. corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40 year low of 12.1 percent in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights. The U.S. both taxes its corporations less and raises less in revenue from corporate taxes than its foreign competitors…

The ThinkProgress article isn’t left-wing spin, it’s fact. Unfortunately, fact often carries no more weight in mainstream reportage than lies. It’s easier to report Orrin’s statement than to explain that effective rates of taxation — Verizon’s is 2.7 percent! — so that’s how the MSM plays it. If media outlets do explain the difference between statutory and effective rates, the explanation is usually buried deep in the story instead of at the top, where it belongs.