Politi-Express Half True Review

On February 21-22, in a “Statement of Principles” as written by Bill Adair, then followed up by PolitiFacts Texas, Florida and Oregon, Half True is defined in identical articles as: (italics added)

“The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.”

But the “About PolitiFact” link describes Half True as:

 "The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context." 

Snopes Truth-O-Meter for "Urban Myths" and other rumors it checks out.

Hat tip (as he would say) to my conservative counterpart for making that catch. I’m guessing Bill Adair decided to throw in that equivocating “partially” to make a better case for how “Half Trues” are judged. Most of the statements speak for themselves, although in a few instances, PolitiFact (PF) probably would have been better off not rating them at all because of the lack of information on which to accurately fact check.  In other words, something in the way of the Snopes rating key  (see above) would have been more useful because it has an “Undetermined” rating (Yellow bullet: "available evidence is too contradictory or insufficient to establish either True or False") as well as “Multiple Truths" (Multiple red/green bullets: "a mixture of truth and falsehood").  Let’s see how Snopes can be applied to these Half True rulings published by PolitiFact in the first quarter of 2011.  There were about 40% fewer number-related Half-True PF rulings to evaluate, so six examples will be presented here.

Barack-orama. This was one of Obama’s on Tuesday, January 25th, 2011 in his State of the Union address:  "We are living with a legacy of deficit-spending that began almost a decade ago."

Writer Angie Drobnic Holan explains the Half-True ruling this way: (italics added)

You have to go back to the time of President Bill Clinton, working with a Republican Congress, to find budget surpluses. The historical tables show surpluses for the years 1998 to 2001.

But the nation's debt did not begin under President Bush. The historical data show the government ran deficits from at least 1970 to 1998. (The CBO's most recent summary of historical data only goes back to 1970.) So that includes deficits under Republicans Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, as well as Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (for much of his presidency)….

Obama is correct that there was a turning point toward deficit spending a decade ago. But he isn't telling the full story of the nation's deficits, a "legacy" that began long before George W. Bush was president. We rate the claim Half True.

Personally, I’ve been aware of federal deficits since the seventies. One of my “red state” macro economics professors (I had to take it twice because I moved from a “red state” to a “blue” state) said that deficits don’t matter because “who’s going to declare bankruptcy...who's going to foreclose?” My response to Obama’s statement is a “I’m not quite sure about that.” But I suppose since Clinton brought us out of the deficit spending briefly, Obama can be granted a Half True. By Snopes measure, this may be a claim of "Undetermined" because the available evidence is contradictory.

Michele, Do Tell.  Michele Bachmann, in her State of the Union Message Rebuttal on January 27, 2011, stated this half-truther: “While the government grew, we lost more than 2 million jobs."   Apparently, generalizing statements are popular in state of the union speeches and responses.

Writer Louis Jacobson goes to the heart of it: (italics added)

Analyzing this comment is somewhat tricky, because Bachmann’s time frame is open to interpretation (and her office didn’t return our inquiry seeking an explanation)…

When measured in two common ways, Bachmann is wrong about government jobs increasing, but she’s right using a third, less intuitive measurement -- that is, for federal employment not including the U.S. Postal Service.

As for total employment, she’s off by quite a bit if you begin the clock in May 2009, but you only have to move the time frame back by three months in order to meet her 2 million threshold.

So one part of her statement is untrue except by one uncommon measurement, and the other part is incorrect if the starting date is May 2009 but accurate counting from February 2009 and in tune with the general trend since the start of Obama’s term. On balance, we rate her comment Half True.

OK,  what government, Bachmann? Federal, state, and/or local?  If analyzing for fact check purposes is somewhat tricky, then you may as well hang it up for a Half True ruling. But Jacobson’s conclusion for giving her a Half True was very generous. Snopes might also rate this one as "Undetermined" as well because the available evidence is contradictory.

Note: I don’t think the postal workers should be included, because the Post Office has actually been on its own since 1971: (from Wikipedia)

Since its reorganization into an independent organization, the USPS has become self-sufficient and has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters…

Pollheads and Patriots. Bill O’Reilly told Barack Obama in an interview on his show February 8 that the majority of people in polls do "not support Obamacare." Writer Angie Drobnic-Holan found this Half True because “There are many, many polls to choose from when it comes to public opinion on health care.”

This one gives me the impression that because it’s about half the people (who don’t support “Obamacare”), that makes it Half True: (italics added)

When you average polls over the past few months, the result is that the public is evenly split on the health care bill, said Dr. Robert Blendon, a professor at Harvard who was one of the poll's designers. Opinions on it also tend to break down along partisan lines.

"Republicans continue to overwhelmingly dislike this bill, and Democrats favor it and would like to see it expanded in one way or another. Independents are split and tend to move one way or another," Blendon said….

O'Reilly said that a "majority of the people in the polls" do not support the health care law. If we were rating Obama's statement on its own, that the public is evenly divided, we would rate that True. But O'Reilly isn't entirely wrong, in the sense that support for the bill does not hit 50 percent or higher. Taking a broad picture of the polls reveals a divided public, so we rate his statement Half True.

Mark up Number 3 for Yellow ("Undetermined") on the Snopes Meter, since the available evidence (the variety of polls) is contradictory.   Even Angie Drobnic Holan couldn’t seem to make up her mind.

Wel-fare-mart. Robert Hagan, a Democratic Ohio State Representative, stated on December 8, 2010 (published January 12, 2011) that Ohio taxpayers spent more than $67 million "for the year" on food stamps and Medicaid for Wal-Mart workers, as reported by PolitiFact Ohio’s Joe Guillen. This is a sad, disturbing story that needs to be brought out more by Democrats on the true costs of employers not paying livable wages or providing any benefits to employees (regardless of what they do).   Michael Moore reported something similar about pilots-in-training on small “puddle jumper” airlines who were paid a miniscule salary, yet their employers forbade them from applying for food stamps or getting any government help. At least Wal-mart has no shame?

Here’s the problem with this claim as described by Guillen: (italics added)

Even if Ohio taxpayers don’t pay exactly $67 million in Medicaid and food stamps, it is clear they are subsidizing Wal-Mart’s health care costs, Hagan said….

… Hagan’s formulas produced an inexact figure to quantify the annual amount of public assistance Wal-Mart receives…Hagan’s method is something PolitiFact Ohio and The Plain Dealer might try to get a ballpark figure when exact figures aren’t available, but Hagan presented it as a precise figure.

So where does Hagan land on the Truth-O-Meter?

He might have fared better if he had made his point by citing the number of Wal-Mart workers on welfare — an exact number at his fingertips — rather than swing for the fences by throwing out a juicy, and inexact, multimillion-dollar cost to Ohio taxpayers.

While it is clear thousands of Wal-Mart workers and their dependents are on welfare, neither Hagan nor the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services knows the precise cost.

There is an element of truth to his statement, but knowing that his dollar figure is extrapolated from one-month’s totals is an important detail needed to keep the statement in proper context.

On that basis, we rate the statement Half True.

As the number cannot be accurately calculated, this is again a Snopes "Undetermined"--only in this case the evidence is insufficient; it's not literally True as stated although there's a kernel of truth to it.

One Rank or Another: Travis Rowley, Chairman of Rhode Island Young Republicans, stated on March 7: “Last year it was discovered that Rhode Island's public employees ranked 4th in average pay, while the private sector ranked 23rd.”   From the ruling:

Bottom line:

 *  Rowley accurately quoted statistics from a report, but that report cited a source that apparently doesn’t exist.

 *  Data from two federal databases offer two different pictures, with one set of statistics producing rankings much closer to Rowley's claim than the other.

 *  Rowley said the data "was discovered" last year, but the report he cites is from 2009.

Correctly citing bad information -- attributed or not -- doesn’t make a speaker’s statement true. Rowley could have uncovered the problem if he had examined the original source material.

But because the latest numbers from one federal database are somewhat close to Rowley’s assessment, we rate his statement Half True.

The problem with this statement turned out to be that the report Rowley was quoting had numbers from a source that didn’t exist, as noted in the blockquote above. The question then becomes, did he know it or not? Writer C. Eugene Emery finds two sources on his own, but can’t make up his mind like Angie Drobnic Holan, so he split the baby in half. The data from the BLS database that provided the 3rd Public rank and 20th Private rank concern me, however, since they are close enough to give Rowley a Mostly True, even a True, ruling.

If a second source of statistics from the BLS had not been reviewed, I wonder what sort of ruling he would have received. In addition, could it be…could it be that the BLS data was the data in the non-existent report? Another Snopes Undetermined, if you ask me: this is a disputed claim — “factual items which the available evidence is too contradictory or insufficient to establish as either true or false.”

Under-lying. PF Virginia (Jacob Geiger, writer) ruled on this statement by Babur Lateef, Democrat running in Virginia, March 30, 2011: “Since Corey Stewart became chairman in November 2006, unemployment is up 150% and average home price sales are down $150,000.”  From the ruling:  (italics added)

That’s a lot to chew on, but we’ve got the choppers…

Lateef’s raw numbers are mostly correct. Unemployment in Prince William is up 159 percent since November 2006, when Stewart took office. But Lateef campaign video omits the facts that the county’s unemployment rate is well below the Virginia rate and even farther below the national rate. Workers in Prince William are much more likely to have a job than the average American.

Prince William housing sale prices are down during Stewart’s tenure by roughly $150,000. But prices were already dropping when Stewart took office, and he has little control over home sales. Prices also dropped sharply across the Washington, D.C. area.

We rate this claim Half True. Lateef’s figures are fine, but he wrongly uses them to imply Stewart is responsible for financial problems that not only shook Prince William County, but the nation.

This is the epitome of the “charitable interpretation” and actually meets the criteria of the “original” PolitiFact principles on what makes a Half True ruling: The statement is accurate (not just partially)but… takes things out of context. This is the only statement which should probably garner a "Multiple Truth Value" since it is a mixture of truth and falsehood.

Conclusion:  PolitiFact may be better off with a Snopes type of "meter," with the Yellow Undetermined and Red/Green "Multiple Truths/Falsehoods" (and the White bullet of "Unclassifiable Veracity" which means a claim was "essentially unprovable") as the middling between True and False.  It establishes a more undefined measure that may be seen as more fair and reasonable than a "Half True."  It also lessens, in these particular types of rulings, the ability for people like me and others to quantify the rulings. 

Half True rulings are the PolitiFact puzzlers.  I could not look at the numbers for how far off they were from a 100% True, because in many cases, the sources were missing or multiple, and where they were multiple, they were contradictory.  The statements themselves, in cases where they were very general, such as the first ones noted by Barack Obama and Michele Bachmann, did not help much either.  All the more reason for people like Bachmann to respond to PolitiFact with clarification.  Or, we could just "do a John Kyl" and say this was not meant to be a factual statement.  Ha ha.