Sensational, false headline about Obama at RCP and Drudge

Real Clear Politics is not a conservative website, but a collection of center-right and center-left opinion. That makes this misleading headline all the more surprising, because it’s the kind of thing you expect to see at a partisan Republican site:

Obama: Corporate Profits “Have To Be Shared By American Workers”

But what Obama actually said, in remarks this morning to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which are quoted at RCP, was:

If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line.

As far as one can tell, Obama is stating in a general sense that workers need to be able to share in the general economic “benefits” of tax reform and increased exports. He is not advocating that workers share profits, or that workers be given stock in the companies they work for, or that business corporations become worker-owned. But that is the range of meanings indicated by the phrase, “profits to be shared by workers.” And that was what, when I saw a link at the Drudge Report with the sensational words, “Obama: Corporate Profits ‘Have To Be Shared By American Workers’…”, sent me rushing over to RCP, only to find out that he hadn’t said that.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 07, 2011 12:57 PM | Send