In the “Lil White Lies” category, I have been giving structured criticisms of another person’s criticisms of PolitiFact’s ruling write-ups. The assumption is that the purpose of these criticisms (being critiqued), blogged in a very professional style by a conservative, of what he has asserted many times is a liberally biased fact-checking website, helps prove anecdotally its liberal bias.
But perhaps a different approach is warranted. That approach is to use the identical logic to prove what could be conservative bias on the part of PolitiFact. What does that prove? This is what the critiqued critic, Bryan White, might say, coming directly from a comment he posted at the PolitiFact Facebook page very recently (emphasis added):
@ Carol Ahrens, who wrote:
***Politifact is doing a great job! why else would both sides be accusing them of bias?!***
Well, both sides *could* accuse them of bias because they make mistakes--mistakes that sometimes favor one side and sometimes favor the other. But if you throw logic entirely out the window then I guess you can conclude that criticism from both sides simply means that PolitiFact does a great job.(November 28, approx. noon EST)
Of course, Bryan fails to explain or elaborate (which is typical of his commentary) on “throwing logic entirely out of the window” except to take a jab at Carol Ahrens by implying she is not thinking logically.
I chose this particular ruling on a statement by John Boehner about the Republicans not seeking to repeal the Financial Regulatory Reform law because I can apply the same “logic” to achieve the same results that Bryan gets as a basis for giving PolitiFact (PF) writers, researchers and editors his personal flunking grades. This piece reminds me of a twice-written PolitiFact ruling on Jim DeMint in that there’s a lot of numbers in play. So I am going to model it after how he did his.
John Boehner’s statement came out shortly after he became the defacto Speaker of the House following the mid-term elections:
I think when it comes to the financial services bill and the 358 regulatory filings required under that bill, that it’s going to require a significant amount of oversight, so that not only will Congress understand, but the American people will understand, just what this bill will do to our financial services industry.
PolitiFact (PF) ruled Boehner’s statement as True, even though the PolitiFact writer/researcher, Sabrina Eaton of PolitiFact Ohio, admitted using data from the pro-Republican, pro-big-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce which calculated that the number of new “rules” to be issued by regulators was anywhere from 355 to 533. 533 is a long way from 355.
On top of that, some of these rules and regs are TBD—they have not even been determined…so there is no precise number of rules or regs that can be officially given: (emphasis added)
Some important restrictions are not detailed in the bill. Instead, the bill says that officials will study and develop regulations on a particular issue. That creates a lot of unknowns about how effective the bill will be. The rules on credit rating agencies are particularly vague. Lawrence White, a professor of economics at New York University, says he is concerned that the yet-to-be-determined rules could discourage new firms from getting into the credit ratings business. "The grand irony of this approach is that we will end up making the current incumbents more important, not less important," he says.
And some of these rules and regulations replace existing ones—so how would those be “counted”—in absolute or net terms? My feeling is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is most likely counting in absolute terms to make the number of new rules as high as possible. And the fact they have also re-counted to a higher number just adds confusion to the whole issue. (emphasis added)
"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…Consolidates and strengthens consumer protection responsibilities currently handled by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve, National Credit Union Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Federal Trade Commission.” … “…Replaces confusing regulation riddled with dangerous loopholes, with clear lines of responsibility.”
So the question arises was Boehner’s statement intended as an absolute? Is he entitled to a so-called charitable interpretation of the number of potential rules and regs which could occur under the financial reform? Is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce providing a reasonable assessment? These are issues which are never addressed by Sabrina Eaton.
To quote Bryan “Many PolitiFact fact checks grade the literal truth of a statement along with the underlying argument intended by the statement.” In this case the statement is likely not literally true, but was justified by the “underlying point” that “[t]he new law does create a lot of new regulations for the financial services industry.”
But was that really Boehner’s underlying point? He only stated that it was going to require a lot of oversight—was it really because of so many rules and regulations, or because any Democrat-passed bill compells greater oversight and the only reason it’s not in for repeal is because of its polled popularity with the public? Remember, this was pointed out by Sabrina as the reason Boehner backed off from saying it should be repealed. As noted, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, even though it stated it was “dismayed” by the number of regulations it required, felt it did not address the core problem (whatever that was!).
The last part of his statement also tries to convey a sense of worry concerning understanding “just what this bill will do to our financial services industry” basically in consideration of big business and not necessarily relating to the number of rules or regulations.
So, we could say Sabrina engaged in “selection bias” by not looking at the literal truth of the statement (deciding “it was good enough”) and by selecting what she thought was the best “underlying argument.” Quoting Bryan White again from his DeMint write up: “No matter who is right about the best way to present the argument, the literal statement from [Boehner] is [not true].” Thus, doubts can easily be raised about the veracity of Boehner’s statement being ruled True by PolitiFact.
That other favorite PolitiFact (PF) detractor of mine has stated this about PolitiFact in a cynical manner in a post trying to point out PF’s left wing bias : “…I'm speaking of course about our unbiased, non-partisan, objective, help you sort out the truth in Politics friends at Politifact.” But I’m sure he won’t dispute PF’s ruling this statement by John Boehner as an unbiased, non-partisan, objective, sorting out of the truth by PolitiFact only because they rated a leading Republican statement as True.
Note: Actually, I agree with PF’s ruling here. Sabrina made things short and succinct and to the point (which, I might add, is what could be considered a "conservative" approach). But that brevity was also a weakness to be exploited in twisting it a different way, and if this was the same ruling on a Democrat, Bryan would have done just that.
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