WaC Files: Light Bulbs Re-Charged

(WaC means "What a Crock" which more quickly summarizes the object of these critiques.)

Well I’m glad to see I haven’t scared off my former coworker Rich Peasel when I decided to start reviewing and replying to letters he had published by the Flint Journal, which seemed to occur roughly once a month. This time it took six months, so he caught me a bit off guard.

When I recently posted a piece on PolitiFact’s doing too many statements about light bulbs, recommending that they “turn off that light”, I assumed I’d be doing it too. Unfortunately, Rich has bought into the light bulb myths and decided to expound on them this time, along with his usual petty grievances about Democrats who waste pennies while he ignores pounds wasted by Republicans.

Anyway, let’s get started with his latest ode to outlandishness:

I just read in the Flint Journal Sunday paper of July 10 that Sen. Stabenow is planning another pie-in-the-sky investment of taxpayer dollars. Yep, the good senator is going to spend $2 billion to develop a car battery that will run 500 miles on one single charge, like the Volt. Wow! Just think, this electric car will last forever.

If it takes eight hours to charge the Chevy Volt at home for 30 miles of driving time, why, it would only take a mere three weeks to charge your car for 500 miles. This 500-mile-per-charge vehicle should last between 30 and 50 years. How could such a vehicle ever wear out sitting your garage and eating electricity for three weeks a month in order to have enough energy to carry you out on the open road for 10 hours driving time?

Okay, where does it say that it would take three weeks to charge a car and where does it say it will last between 30 and 50 years? I’ve carefully read the Journal article and found more details at Stabenow’s senate website, and I can’t find anything or anyone who makes these claims. So unless Peasel can prove this by citing sources, I’m thinking there is no proof, and this is merely hyperbole: “A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect” although most readers, especially those afflicted with right-wing insanity like him, would take it literally. I’m sure that’s his intent.

Sen. Stabenow’s $2 billion investment equates to just over $100,000 per job creation, but this is better than the quarter of million dollars per job the president has spent just to save jobs. In fact, Sen. Stabenow should be complimented since she is spending slightly less than what a typical banana republic spends to create jobs (when Americans gives a banana republic foreign aid to spend).

Well he may not have to go far if his Tea Party extortionist buddies have their way, as we will be a banana republic. Yes, the stimulus wasn’t sufficient because Obama foolishly appeased the Republicans by making a large part of it a tax cut, which did absolutely no good as stimulus. Just like it did absolutely no good under Bush.

You have to appreciate the generosity of Sen. Stabenow spending hundreds of thousands to create a job with our money. When the greedy, stingy automobile industry uses their own money, they only spend a few thousand for every job they create. Or for example, Apple’s introduction of the I-pad created more jobs in China than President Obama created during his Summer of Recovery at less than a fraction of a fraction of a trillion dollars.

Yep, in China….any idea why they don’t make them here, Rich? Is that the Democrats’ fault too? The problem with Rich’s statement about companies only spending “a few thousand for every job they create” is that the research and development often does cost billions, so often that they rely on government research. And this $2 billion is exactly for that, grants for research and development. Or something developed by the government is then transferred to use by industry.  Good example is the Arpa-net, a government communication system that eventually became the internet. You know, Al Gore’s invention (ha ha, I'm just kidding!).

Sidebar: Shrimp on a Treadmill

Always thinking about new ways to grind fact-check data, while reviewing the Washington Post's Fact Checker feature, I came across this interesting (and amusing) commentary that just shouted out for a post. It had ruled 4 Pinnochios (sort of like PolitiFact’s Pants on Fire) on AARP for its “Medi-scare” ads where elderly were complaining about programs in the Federal Budget such as grants to study shrimp on a treadmill while “cuts” were being made to Medicare. It turns out there’s serious reasons scientists study shrimp on a treadmill, although I still have some misgivings about the significance, and wonder why those Bubba Gump Shrimp companies can’t just do (or make the grant for) the research themselves if it's so vitally important.

The Fact Checker did not take a position on whether these programs were worthwhile or not, only that they were so small that they could not help balance the budget. A number of readers, in fact, have wondered whether the research mentioned in the AARP advertisement might be beneficial and thus should receive federal funds. We received the following interesting comment from Barry Toiv, vice president for public affairs at the Association of American Universities, defending the shrimp on the treadmill (see video below [at this link]).

"A shrimp running on a treadmill is a funny sight indeed. But this is part of a serious, peer-reviewed research project supported by the National Science Foundation.

"The scientists are studying the impact on shrimp and other crustaceans of hypoxia, or reduced oxygen, caused by the responses of their immune systems to pollution associated with coastal development and pollution. This research, which is taking place at the College of Charleston, is very important not only for its environmental benefits but also for the state and local economies that depend on the multi-billion-dollar shellfish industries.

"The treadmill is actually an ingenious contraption that permits researchers to simulate shrimps’ natural movements in a laboratory setting, which is essential to the research. It is also worth noting, at a time when we are trying to encourage students to consider careers in the sciences and engineering, that undergraduates are participating fully in this research, and that part of the educational mission of this grant is to involve Upward Bound high school students, whose parents did not attend college but who have the potential to do so themselves, in communicating with the public about the research findings.

"So, funny videos aside, there is serious science and education going on here, and it’s disappointing to see the AARP make fun of it."

Postscript:  There is some "pork" I support, however.

Staying with Politi-Score: Mostly False

This morning I watched MSNBC's Chuck Todd's "The Daily Rundown" and  what appears to be its regular weekly feature PolitiFact (PF) fact-checks with Bill Adair.  Adair announced the change from Barely True to Mostly False, something I had recommended in May....and because of the polling of PolitiFact followers on Facebook and elsewhere.

The end of the feature was mentioning the "closing" score of the PolitiFact Truth Index, which brings me to my own announcement:  although I like my method better, it probably would behoove me to change my scoring to that of the PF Truth Index, and retiring the Politi-Score, which I've already done to some extent.  I'm getting used to the "Half True as zero baseline" approach.  I'm not sure about treating the Truth Index as some sort of "Dow Jones Industrial Average" but that was something I was sort of doing as well earlier in the year, when I noted following the 2010 elections that the Politi-Score fell during that time, indicating the trend for false political rhetoric to increase during a campaign.  I think Adair felt it needed to be more "ongoing" especially if it was being put into a mobile app.

So, in the days to follow, the Politi-Score explanation will be modified (on the "About This Blog" page) and the tag for those posts featuring the Politi-Score will be changed to "Truth Index."  Since the Politi-Score is basically very similar in structure, only "half" (it begins at 100 for True, like the Truth Index, but has 25-point increments between rulings, whereas the Truth Index has 50-point increments), I'm going to rate it Mostly False, since this is pretty much the only "element of truth" that the Politi-Score contains in relation to the Truth Index.  This was not meant to be a factual statement!  Other than that, the Politi-Score is now offically retired.

Politi-Score: PF Ohio and the Truth Index

PolitiFact (PF) Ohio (Stephen Koff) recently did a sort of self-congratulatory one-year anniversary article on the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s foray into doing Truth-O-Meter rulings in partnership with PolitiFact. This was one of the first times I saw more “raw” numbers come out for Democrats and Republicans, as well as the defending of the selection of more Republican statements, Koff’s reason being the same as that I had stated previously: there’s just more Republicans in office since the elections of late 2010, especially in Ohio.

My numbers did not correlate precisely with PF Ohio because of how I had compiled them in 2010, which was by person/entity since the beginning of PF in 2007, not ruling by ruling to differentiate the state. I started doing it ruling by ruling in 2011. So, for example, I had seven more rulings for Dennis Kucinich and three more for Sherrod Brown, because PF National was doing rulings on them prior to PF Ohio’s existence. In addition, there were a few people and groups who, as I just noted in a previous post on light bulbs, do not have an affiliation indicated by PF, when they should. When PF doesn’t show an affiliation, I will do some research to determine one, and if the connection to one party is crystal clear, I will assign it as such.

So, I will just go with PF Ohio’s numbers. Here’s Democrats and Republicans, this time in the mobile app format with the Truth Index ("Score") calculated.

My conservative counterpart (Bryan White) just published an exchange he had with Robert Higgs, who appears to be the lead journalist for PF Ohio, and who responded to some of the commenters to the PF Ohio article. Higgs published this reply concerning PolitiFact bias, which he thereupon immediately published in his blog:

What I can tell you about PolitiFact Ohio is that in our first year we did 81 Truth-O-Meter rulings on statements from Democrats and 103 from Republicans (more on the GOP side principally because Kasich is governor and there's twice as many Republicans in power as Democrats).

The average grade for Democrats: Half True

The average grade for Republicans: Half True

Some say the Texas Rangers have a better team batting average than the Seattle Mariners.

What I can tell you about it is that right now both teams are in the American League.

The Seattle Mariners are batting roughly .250.

The Texas Rangers are batting roughly .250

Bryan White responded in a post through his blog the way I might have, except I would not have used the Rangers-Mariners analogy…I would have used the Truth Index, the actual measure, to show Higgs that there was a statistically significant variance even though they’re both “roughly Half True.”

Higgs isn't saying anything. The "average" when there are only six positions on the scale is a very rough approximation, just like rounding the Rangers' batting average down from .272 and the Mariners' battering average up from .226. Is a difference of .46 statistically significant? You betcha. It's huge.

Sidebar: And the Nominees for PLOTY are...

Well, one nominee.  My educated guess is that PolitiFact (PF) might  just  make this the 2011 Lie of the Year because they can show (1) Democrats can make PolitiFact Lie of the Year as well, (2) its “inverse” relationship with the 2010 Lie of the Year (that “Obamacare” is a government takeover versus the privatization in “Ryancare”), and (3) the similar label (Obamacare versus Ryancare). The $12,500 is incidental; it is the “voted to end Medicare” that is the focus of the lie and makes it a "contender."

The "ending Medicare" part continues to make the rounds among various Democratic politicians as a “talking point”—for example, at PF Rhode Island and PF Wisconsin—and their debunkings by PolitiFact have caused it to face an avalanche of bias charges from both sides—Conservatives on Obamacare and Liberals on Ryancare.

Both deal with that slippery slope of ideological beliefs with regard to where it slides into that abyss of the unknown, a.k.a. the death panel (which was the 2009 Lie of the Year), as Republicans would like you to believe, where a government-appointed panel decides that you’re too old and unstable, or your condition too far gone, to give you care….or is it going to be the death panel of the free market: if you can’t afford healthcare, you die. (That’s really what Democrats need to emphasize: we have death panels today, they are the medical directors at insurance companies who for the sake of profit deny the insured treatments that might save their life, and the 44,000 people estimated to die annually simply because they cannot afford health insurance.  I'd also like to get into the fact that there is no, and never will be, a free market in healthcare, but that's another long post.)

This will be close to or at the heart of the 2012 presidential debate, and part of any local elections that may go on this year; it's already shown to be a major factor on why the Republicans had some come uppance from the Democrats in several special elections in May, particularly one in upstate New York where the voters were predominantly Republican.   It’s why the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for a vote on Paul Ryan’s Budget. So unless something else big happens between now and the end of the year 2011, that’s the one that has my vote….and I think we’ll hear more about it again once this debt ceiling charade is over.

Sidebar: PolitiFact's Light Bulb Mania

How Many PF Writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: Too many, but generally once a month by either Robert Farley or W. Gardner Selby.

While it can’t really be proven PolitiFact (PF) is liberally biased (although some people are convinced of it), there are some things they do which don’t help them. It may be easy to do the rulings on this subject because it is fairly straight forward, cut and dry, or that is to say, the light is on or it’s off. PolitiFact has done nine rulings (as far as I can determine) since November on the subject of light bulbs, about the phasing out of incandescents beginning in 2012 due to a law congress enacted in 2007.

What’s more is that all nine rulings were on Republicans/Conservatives, and if you scored them with the PolitiFact Truth Index, the result is a negative 83.33, which puts light bulbs well above the top-rated “least truthful” subject on the Truth Index, which is Republicans on healthcare/Medicare at a negative 47.22. Light bulbs did not make it to the list because they were classified under the subject Energy, which was actually in 11th place based on the number of rulings and so just missed my list as I only did the top ten subjects. A light bulb Truth Index would look like this:

No Trues or Mostly Trues puts light bulbs way down the dark side.

Two of the rulings were just too much alike, almost looking like duplicates, done the same day by the same writer (Robert Farley). One ruling was a chain e-mail from the conservative AmeriPAC: (emphasis added)

The letter, circulated by AmeriPAC, a political action committee that largely supports conservative Republican candidates, claims President Barack Obama is "banning" incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent lighting.

The other was AmeriPAC itself: (emphasis added)

"The Democrats have already voted to BAN our conventional lights bulbs (that you and I use even today!) in favor of DANGEROUS fluorescent light bulbs," writes Alan Gottlieb, chairman of AmeriPAC, a political action committee that largely supports conservative Republican candidates.

If you ask me, there was no need to repeat the obvious: yes, the conservative AmeriPAC likes to use the light bulb analogy to illustrate government over reach. While Farley does make some distinctions, these two rulings are really too closely related to be separated.

Tchotchkes: On Those Job Creators

Well, "they" probably do create jobs....in China and southeast Asia.

Lil White Lies: Pardon Me, Your Underlying is Showing (Again)

In this PolitiFact (PF) New Jersey ruling on a statement by a Republican state senator by the name of Michael Doherty, my conservative counterpart claims “the underlying argument” is  Doherty’s preface that Planned Parenthood does not provide much in the way of prenatal services (so, therefore, the ruling should be better than a "False."). The underlying argument which makes more sense is the ideological one, and that’s the reason Doherty does not want to reinstate $7.5 million funding: because part of it would go to Planned Parenthood. If a small part of what they do is pre-natal care, the rest of what they do is…well, by him, abortion. Didn’t Jon Kyl say that over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion? Oh, I’m sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a factual statement…but it’s what many diehard right-wing Republicans believe, and it’s NOT hyperbole.

Bury it?  He said it THREE times.

It should be noted that writer Bill Wichert wrote several times he was not disputing Doherty’s preceding statement that Planned Parenthood did not provide much prenatal care. He wasn’t exactly “burying” it as Bryan accuses in his headline; he says it three times in his review: “Doherty… was right about prenatal care representing a small part of the services offered by Planned Parenthood”…. “But for his overall argument that Planned Parenthood sees few prenatal patients, Doherty is right”… “Figures provided by Planned Parenthood confirm that prenatal care represents a small part of the services offered…” Wichert made it very clear that not only was Doherty correct, but that this was not what he was fact-checking. It’s specific in the heading, it’s where he did his research.

Bryan White is again substituting something mild, innocent and innocuous for what the “underlying argument” is and then doing his “I am the Final Authority on Truth” take on it in order to mask his social conservative ideology. His reasoning takes the same turn as on a PolitiFact ruling on a statement by Ann Coulter that radiation is good for you. He claimed she said it was healthful because she was “making a point about media coverage of Japanese radiation leaks” when in fact it was evident she was only promoting the nuclear power energy agenda of the Republicans.

But if he can’t replace the argument with his own, he can always say that this time it doesn’t count, as he does with Sarah and Todd Palin's Slim Jims.

Lil White Lies: Slim Jim Spin

Yes, there’s inflation at the grocery store—I’ve been there enough to see that. But in this review of a PolitiFact ruling on Sarah Palin’s statement about the cost of Slim Jims, for my conservative counterpart to claim increases in the cost of Slim Jims should be the sole basis of the ruling is not quite on the mark. Palin’s argument is that there’s recent, substantial inflation (and most importantly, Obama is to blame, of course): not just the Slim Jim scenario, but “every time I walk into that grocery store, a couple of pennies more.” What PolitiFact is pointing out is that the inflation isn’t as bad as she purports it to be.

Most people I know go to the grocery store about once a week, sometimes more. For the purpose of this example, let’s just use once a week. If a loaf of house brand whole wheat bread is $2.35 and it goes up 3 cents per week, that means in a year it should be just under $4.00. Is that the kind of inflation we’re presently experiencing? Because that’s what Palin is saying, and that is not true.

This is also an excellent case for comparative purposes of how my conservative counterpart wants it both ways. According to him:

I count it as a misinterpretation to think Palin was suggesting the high price Mr. Palin paid for his Slim Jim snack was representative of food inflation.

…if the Palins paid what they claimed for a Slim Jim it wasn't entirely because of a rise in the suggested retail price. It is likely that ConAgra has increased the price during the past year…

PolitiFact sees an argument implied in Palin's anecdote. PolitiFact ignores alternate interpretations such as the one I've suggested that make the implied argument irrelevant to Palin's point.

State by State: New Feature in Guide to PF Detractors

The last part of my Guide to PolitiFact Detractors page includes links to other fact-checking websites.  I've decided to add something to that, although it doesn't exactly "detract" from PolitiFact.  After noting there are many regional fact-checking websites, I thought it might be a good idea to list them alphabetically by state, and include those of PolitiFact.  As I find out about others, I will add them, and if and when the list gets really long, there will probably be a new page.

Googling "[name of state] followed by fact checking or fact checker" (or vice versa) didn't yield a whole lot, just links to FactCheck.org or PolitiFact...but I did find a few new ones, of particular interest, San Diego Fact Check.  California and any one of its many newpapers  would be a good partnership for PolitiFact.

FactCheck versus PolitiFact Part 2, 2011

Recently when PolitiFact decided to carry other fact-checkers on its website with “Beyond the Truth-O-Meter” (on its front page, lower right), it of course asked for comments at Facebook. I decided to add my two cents that this might be a good time to “eliminate redundancies” with the fact-checks, by not doing a fact-check if another fact-checker is doing it as well. Coming from my business background, I’ve heard “eliminate redundancies” over and over, because it makes the firm more efficient—although (well, because!) it often results in the elimination of jobs. Naturally, my conservative counterpart asked me “why” PolitiFact would want to do that. Well, in the case of the huge sea of political commentary, “eliminating redundancies” only means that more statements can be fact-checked (as opposed to the “same” statements)…and the more comments fact-checked, the less likelihood of certain people complaining that the fact-checkers check Republicans more than Democrats or neglect statements that should be checked…yea, when pigs fly.

On the other hand, when you have several fact-checkers coming to similar conclusions on the same statement, that means something too. As I think about “future projects” at this website, one would be to look at one individual in terms of the fact-checkers and compare all the statements that have been evaluated between (or among) them. I’ve tried that before in a more general sense. I think looking at one individual through several fact checkers might help readers make a more informed decision about whether the individual is more or less truthful, since it isn’t based on one source. For example, Obama has an 11.15 on PolitiFact’s Truth Index as of June 30, which places him at Number 8 out of 25 for those who have received 15 or more rulings from PolitiFact, which is not too bad given he’s had over 300 rulings. FactCheck has stated he’s been fairly truthful so far. So between the two, we have a pretty good reading on Obama’s truthiness.

A post from February, where I compared a number of PolitiFact and FactCheck.org rulings, is one of my most popular pages, according to Statcounter.com, my website stat tracker. So, “back by popular demand” I am doing it again with PolitiFact rulings published since that time.  This time, I am including a cross-reference to the Washington Post's (WaPo) The Fact-Checker where one has been done.  It will be an additional link in the PolitiFact column.

Yes, I’ve exercised my own selection bias, as Republicans are emphasized in this selection of statements, only to show that FactCheck is often in agreement with PolitiFact. I’ve posted before that FactCheck also appears to check Republicans more than Democrats. 

Topic	FactCheck	PolitiFact
Michele Bachmann, June 26: "Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's never received a penny from family farm that got federal crop subsidies."	"Bachmann falsely claimed that 'she and her husband never got a penny from the farm.'  She also left the wrong impression that she has nothing to do with the farm."	False:  "Unless or until Bachmann steps forward to explain the discrepancy...we have to rely [on her financial disclosures]which say she received at least $32,501 in income..."
Michele Bachmann, June 13:  "The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office has said that Obamacare will kill 800,000 jobs."	"Bachmann repeated a false Republican talking point...[also as noted by WaPo]. The CBO never said that."	Barely True: "Bachmann's statement leaves out so many qualifiers that it becomes misleading." WaPo's The Fact Checker covered her statement which was a rehashed Republican talking point, awarding it Three Pinnochios.
Rick Santorum, June 6: "Barack Obama has raised a 'stop sign' on oil exploration."	“Santorum was wrong when he said the Obama administration is 'against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska.'  The administration has approved 296 new permits...”	False:  "Just because the pace isn't as fast as some would like doesn't mean that Obama 'has put (up) a stop sign.'"
Newt Gingrich, May 13:  Did he flip flop on supporting Paul Ryan's budget?	“Newt Gingrich is engaging in some revisionist history by claiming he was not referring to Rep. Paul Ryan during his now infamous 'Meet The Press" interview.  That's absurd."	Full Flop on the Flip-o-Meter:  "...He certainly made clear he thought a key provision of the plant--the changes to Medicare--were 'too big a jump' for him to support...And by saying on Van Susteren's show that 'made a mistake in his 'Meet the Press' comments...seems like a tacit admission of a flip-flop."
Sarah Palin, June 5:  In American history, part of Paul Revere's ride was to warn the British.	Palin's statement was "badly twisted...he was riding to warn two fellow rebels that the British were coming to arrest them, not to warn them."	Barely True:  "Palin's comment clearly suggests that one of Revere's aims that night was to warn the British.  It was not." The WaPo's The Fact Checker's take on it:  "Sarah's Midnight Ride Twice over."
Marco Rubio, May 1:  "The Ryan Plan doesn't cut Medicare.  Actually, it increases funding in it.  And the only people in this town that have voted to cut Medicare are the people that supported Obamacare..."	“Sen. Marco Rubio offered a wildly inconsistent view of what constitutes a 'cut' from Medicare...Ryan's plan leaves in place many of the Medicare 'cuts' in the health care law."	Barely True: "Both parties have voted -- at different times and on different proposals -- to reduce future spending on Medicare."
Donald Trump (April 7) says President Obama's "grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya."	If Donald Trump worked for us, we'd have to say: 'Donald, you're fired...' ...In fact, the recording to which he refers shows Sarah Obama repeatedly saying through a translator: 'He was born in America.'	False:  "Trump is serving up re-heated leftovers that have long ago been debunked."
Rachel Maddow (February 17), said that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's tax-cut bills approved in January are responsible for the $137 million deficit. (This was a secondary PolitiFact fact-check to her statement that there's actually a budget surplus in Wisconsin, if not for these tax cuts.)	It's not true that Gov. Scott Walker's tax cuts are the cause of Wisconsin's current budget deficit--a false claim widely spread by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.	False:  "The cuts are not even in effect yet, so they cannot be part of the current problem."
The DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, April 18) in an ad   "The Republicans voted to end Medicare."  In the same vein, The Agenda Project (a liberal advocacy group, on May 17): The Paul Ryan Budget proposal would end Medicare.	"Democrats are claiming this is...doing away with Medicare --  but that's far from the truth."	Pants on Fire for the DCCC:  " to say the Republicans voted to end Medicare...is a major exaggeration." False for the Agenda Project: “We concluded that, while the Ryan plan represents a dramatic change in Medicare, it was not a proposal to 'end' Medicare."



Marcus and Michele Bachmann Explain Marriage

How Dummies Release A Blockbuster

Tchotchkes: It's NOT Debt Negotiation

Sidebar: It's Gettin' Uglier Down Under

I’ve hardly said anything about a recent “holiday” (vacation) I took with a friend to merry old England and the rest of the British Isles—that is, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It was one of the top items on my “Bucket List.” Recent events, however, bring to mind something that happened when we were a bus load of people from all over the world stuck together, sharing a common bond for almost two weeks traveling the British/Irish countryside.

The national makeup of our group was mostly Australian, with a few Americans and Canadians thrown in. My friend and I got to calling them the Ugly Australians, like the Ugly Americans. It started with my friend who had an experience where a very large Australian fellow traveler physically pushed then clumsily pulled her out of a lift (elevator) along with her luggage because he wanted to accompany his wife who was already in it. He didn’t ask her, he just did it. He totally ignored her, unapologetic, as she fell over her luggage. For the frequent times he saw us later during the trip, he acted like it never happened. It briefly paralyzed my friend’s enjoyment of the trip in her angst and anger toward this man; as we experienced some other questionable conduct we came to appreciate the appropriateness of that nasty epithet about arrogant American tourists, only this time it wasn’t us. It surprised me because before I retired I worked with Australians in my position and found them to be warm, friendly and self-effacing.

Suddenly now more meaning has been brought to that expression the Ugly Australian with the exposure of the corrupt business practices of Rupert “Fox News” Murdoch:

Reporters at a Murdoch-owned newspaper in Britain hacked into a 13-year-old kidnapping victim's voicemail to get tabloid gossip, even deleting messages to make room for new messages. Their actions led her parents and police to believe she was alive. But she wasn't—she'd been murdered.

It appears Murdoch's reporters regularly hacked into the cell phone accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities, and crime victims. And news just broke that they may have even hacked the phones of 9/11 victims.  (from an e-mail by Daniel Mintz of Moveon.org)

Our experience with the Australian tourists may have just been something anecdotal that could be chalked up to that occasional bad traveling episode. But Rupert? In a way, we see what greed can do through him—and I don’t care what those Ayn-Randian Gordon Gekko disciples say about the “good” of greed—in the greater scheme of things, it’s not just ultimately nasty, sleazy, corrupting and destructive….it’s ugly.

Lil White Lies: Take These Net Jobs and Shove 'em

Jobs statistics are a sticky, complex topic for PolitiFact: as noted by PolitiFact Ohio writer Mark Naymik in this recent PolitiFact (PF) ruling on Joe Biden: “Politifact also frequently points [out] that when framing job figures, slicing and timing make all the difference.”

And wouldn’t you know, PF even knows quite well what selection bias is. Only it calls it for what it really is: cherry picking: (emphasis added)

Take, for example, some other accurate statistics we can create using the same figures.

If job growth continues on pace in 2010, employment still will have decreased by 1.6 million jobs since Obama took office in 2009.

While Obama is on a pace to add 2.356 million jobs in 2010, Bush created 2.36 million jobs in 2005 (a specific year to year comparison).

And from April 2003 to June 2007, while Bush was president, the U.S. economy added almost 7.9 million jobs.

All true. And all in seeming contradiction to Wasserman Schultz's claim.

Why?

Because we cherry-picked numbers to make our point.

But the ruling that is the subject of this Lil White Lies post is not about Joe Biden or Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  It's about a claim by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell about Texas Governor Rick Perry's "job creation performance" in an op-ed piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

My conservative counterpart is correct in how PolitiFact approaches job numbers claims: “PolitiFact's history of (appropriately) treating job creation claims as dealing with net job creation where the context warrants taking them that way.” So, in that same track, is he also correct when he says that PolitiFact failed to note that Rick Perry “did not mention the term "net" while talking about job gains?

Here is the complete quote from McDonnell:

Look no further than growing and diverse Texas, a state Democrats targeted in 2010, where data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that under Gov. Rick Perry’s leadership the state has created more jobs over the last decade than the rest of the states combined. That’s a record of job creation the Obama administration can only dream about.

There is no mention of this “net” by McDonnell throughout his op-ed piece extolling the great things all the new Republican governors have been doing for their states. For example, he says about his own, Virginia: “Since February 2010, 67,400 new jobs have been created in Virginia and our unemployment rate has fallen to 6% from 7.2%.” He says about Wisconsin: “In six months, 25,000 private-sector jobs have been created.”

PolitiFact Truth Index Rankings

It’s finally time to look at individual Truth Index ratings and do something that I don’t know is available on PolitiFact’s mobile app: ranking them in order of high to low for the Truth Index scores. A few qualifications are in order, however.

As noted in my Politi-Score description, you can’t do much when politician “Joe Sixpack” has only two rulings from PolitiFact. It means very little. But the ongoing aggregation of rulings is starting to provide a more substantive record for every type of politico. The last time I did this ranking, I set my ruling minimum at 10, because if I set it higher, I would not have had much to list. Now, however, I am pleased to say I can bring that minimum up to 15 rulings or more, and have an end result of a ranked list of 25. (Click here to see a list of those with 10 or more rulings done with accumulated rulings through the end of 2010.)

Certain people were removed with 15 or more rulings, who were those no longer active in politics, such as Charlie Crist and John Edwards. I kept Hillary Clinton, since she is still around as Secretary of State, even though she’s had no rulings in the last six months.

With that said, below is the bar chart which shows the ranking using the Truth Index report card color coding that is on the PolitiFact mobile app. You can see that it’s hard to tell how they compare with the colors, though the ranking gives it more meaning. For example, in terms of the Truth Index, Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich has never said anything that merited a Pants on Fire ruling, yet he is below the zero or Half True marker at Number 13 on the list, below fellow Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott, who hit the Half True on the nose (i.e., he scored exactly zero with the Truth Index—there is an arrow marking there to indicate the “Half True” baseline), and has had three Pants on Fire rulings.

Click to enlarge

This group of 25 individuals/groups ranked represent just over a third of all PolitiFact rulings since they began doing them up through the end of June. The collective Truth Index for this group, FYI, is (9.29).

As in-office politicians go, however, Michele Bachmann bottoms out the list. And yes, according to the Truth Index, Bill Adair is (technically!) correct in saying that she is only exceeded in being the biggest “liar” by chain e-mails. As I’ve noted before the Truth Index is heavily weighted to the False/Pants on Fire side. She needs at least three Trues to offset two Pants on Fire…don’t think that’s going to happen even with continual accusations of selection bias.

Below is the list from which I created the chart, giving the exact numbers.  While not as “pretty to look at” it does give further clarification to the bar chart.

Subjected to the Truth Index

The new PolitiFact (PF) app for mobile devices supposedly has a feature which shows the Truth Index by subject or topic. I started keeping track of the subject or topic in the first quarter of 2011, and published the overall Politi-scores, just to see what subject was being misrepresented the most. I’m assuming that PolitiFact is doing it this way as well; so now I’m going to take it one step further here.

To begin as in my previous post from April, here is the updated breakdown of subjects in a pie chart for the first half of 2011. I decided to do the Top 15, in order to make the chart less confusing.

Instead of showing “The Most Lied-About Subjects by Politicians” as I did before, I’m going to make another division:  “The Most Lied-About Subjects by Political Party.”  I decided to do the Top Ten subjects, since making this division would make it the Top Twenty since I’m reporting by party.  Here they are top "lies" to the most truthful:  Healthcare makes it to the top again, only this time it’s when Republicans are talking about it.  The Democrats made Labor/Unions the second biggest lie, even topping out the Republicans.

The Truth Index base value is zero for Half True, as is No. 16 Education by Democrats.

PolitiFact’s Truth Index by subject on its mobile app may have one important superior feature to mine in that (I’m assuming) the index is calculated as a percent of ALL PolitiFact rulings since they began doing them, which would be 3,774. Mine is only based on 986, the number of rulings so far in 2011. In addition, many of the rulings had multiple subjects (as tags) so it’s possible their numbers are based on the total number of subjects assigned rather than rulings…which would create some overlap if you’re doing a Truth Index, I’d think. It seems to me doing it this way would disconnect it from the rulings.

Next up is an update on individual rulings using the Truth Index.

Visiting More PolitiFact Writers with the Truth Index

About 14 writers do the bulk of PolitiFact’s rulings (roughly 70% of them). Generally there is one “lead” writer at each PolitiFact (PF) state, so I’m assuming the other writers are interns, part time or have other functions. For example, at PF National, Louis Jacobson writes about twice as many rulings as the other two writers, Robert Farley and Angie Drobnic Holan. Holan is the moderator at the Facebook page, so that’s probably one of her other “functions” while Jacobson concentrates on writing rulings. PolitiFact Ohio seems to divide everything somewhat equitably among four writers except for (the fifth) Thomas Feran, who appears to be the lead writer like Jacobson. In Wisconsin, Dave Umhoefer and Tom Kertscher are about in an even partnership with writing rulings, while James Nelson does fewer rulings and handles the Wisconsin Flip-o-meter.

Previously I focused on the three PolitiFact National writers; but here’s a better look at all the writers now that there’s a sufficient number of rulings to do a Politi-Score Truth Index applied to Democrat versus Republican rulings. All of these writers have done 20 rulings or more. The average is 48 rulings: Louis Jacobson of PolitiFact National was at the front with 115; Ryan Kost of PolitiFact Oregon was last with 20. I also wanted to include ALL PolitiFact states which necessitated the minimum of 20 because Kost had the highest number of rulings (20) written for PolitiFact Oregon.

Here are the writers as listed in an Excel spreadsheet from highest variance between Republican and Democrat Truth Index scores, followed by a graphical depiction.

Gene "Jim Morrison" Emery seems to light his fire with Republicans more than Democrats.

In the graph, I’ve placed an arrow to point at the Truth Index scores of James Nelson of PolitiFact Wisconsin: he seems to be the “culprit” as to why I’ve called Wisconsin not just cheesy but sleazy, finding a lot of false statements coming from both parties. He and his co-worker Tom Kertscher also appear to find Republicans more truthful as evidenced by the Truth Index, unlike almost everyone else.

I also notice, until I’m able to get used to it, that’s it’s a bit more difficult to follow/interpret the Truth Index as opposed to my own Politi-Score. To make the graph more understandable, I placed a “Half True” at the zero baseline. It’s kind of two-dimensional with the negatives and the positives….maybe that’s deliberate? I don’t know.

Politi-Score: Lots in Translation, Part 2: States to Date

In early July, just before the PolitiFact Truth Index made its debut, I had compiled my state by state PolitiFact ruling statistics in total through the end of June so I could get a broader reading—this way, I had a lot of rulings to work with.  Here’s how the aggregate Politi-Score looked for Democrats and Republicans:

This seemed to be a “cleaner” and more graphically understandable way to present it, with the horizontal “combined” bars, sort of like the individual ruling spread PolitiFact has on its mobile app, but with just a red for Republican and blue for Democrats color code.

Now that the conversion from Politi-Score to Truth Index has been established, it threw my horizontal bar chart under the bus. Since the Truth Index has Half True as its zero value baseline, the horizontal bars could not be used because now there were a lot of negative scores, which cannot be handled by that type of chart. So I had to return to a vertical bar format, and here is what that looks like:

The total number of rulings (up to 6/30/2011) is in parentheses next to the state's name.

Politi-Score: Lots in Translation

One of the reasons PolitiFact (PF) may have settled on the scoring method it uses in the Truth Index is that it shows a greater range of variation. This may have prompted me, as well, to switch from a student grade type scoring to what I called for a while the “Wide Measure” Politi-Score, back in 2010 when I first started quantifying the Truth-o-Meter. For PolitiFact, the large total range between True and Pants on Fire of 250 points makes for greater "average" variances, especially when calculating them day to day. Although in general I agree with my conservative counterpart’s view of this daily Truth Index reporting as somewhat “nonsensical” based on the fact PF is using only a select number of statements for review and ruling in calculating it, and  certainly don’t reflect all statements made. So as a measure of daily or weekly “truthiness” it is somewhat questionable.

On a month-to-month basis (which, with more rulings in a more meaningful period of time, may be more telling), here is the Politi-Score since January, compared to the Truth Index. While a monthly comparison really smooths out the scores, it is a little too smooth for the Politi-Score at the top, while the Truth Index at the bottom shows clear ups and downs, although not anywhere nearly like the daily scoring of a weeks’ worth of rulings displayed on the mobile app.



The trend is down for the year 2011, but the "bumps" are more evident on the Truth Index.
NOTE:  The number in parentheses (after the month) is the total number of rulings.

Most of us have learned the formula for changing Fahrenheit to Celsius temperatures and vice versa, and translating the Politi-Score to the Truth Index is very similar. To convert my Politi-Score to its equivalent Truth Index, you double it, then subtract 100. To convert the Truth Index to the Politi-Score, you add 100 to it, then divide the result in half. Although it appears that eventually I’m going to have to retire the Politi-Score in favor of the Truth Index, as it becomes the Truth-o-Meter standard for its mathematical interpretation.

Politi-Score: Deciphering the Truth Index

While some call it style over substance, even entertainment or novelty, PolitiFact’s introduction of its Truth Index was inevitable. Too many pundits out there, myself included, were applying scoring systems to their Truth-o-Meter rankings to see what trends and statistics could be gleaned from it, especially on an individual basis.

For now, it appears that PolitiFact is avoiding the “individual” basis and is using it to show time period trends, such as, what I pointed out earlier using the Politi-Score, how scores fell (got “less truthful”) during the 2010 Election Cycle or this past February in Wisconsin. It also appears to be avoiding that topic which likely interests people the most: macro comparisons of Democrat versus Republican. But the inevitable may occur: I suppose Adair may be looking for a good reason to justify why Democrats score consistently more truthful than Republicans, on the other hand, the weighted to False scoring system he chose will make it far worse, so it’s going to be difficult to “even it up” between now and then, if that is his intent.

Here is Bill Adair’s description of how it is scored:

* Here's the full formula:

(# True x 20) + (# Mostly X 10) + (# Half X 0) + (# Barely X -10) +
(# False X -20) + (# Pants on Fire X -30)
____________________________________________________________ X 100
(Total # Statements) X 20

Let’s reduce the fraction of this formula down to its lowest common denominators, which takes into account the double-down of the “actual truth/ideal truth” (the divisor, [Total # Statements] x 20) in the calculation. While the Politi-Score starts at assigning 100 points for True and then moves down in 25 point increments, PolitiFact’s Truth Index starts at assigning 100 points for True and then moves down in 50 point increments. This makes Half True the “zero” line for the Truth Index (instead of False, which is the “zero” line on the Politi-Score), and “bottoms out” at -150 for a Pants on Fire ruling, as compared to -25 in the Politi-Score (a whopping 600% higher!).

Here is the full comparison in table format:

Ruling	Politi-Score Assignment Points	PolitiFact Truth Index Assignment Points.
True	100	100
Mostly True	75	50
Half True	50	0
Barely True	25	-50
False	0	-100
Pants on Fire!	-25	-150

So the Truth Index is a heavily-weighted-to-false index. This has been a common feature in the other scoring methods I’ve reviewed, particularly that of a recent colorful Daily Beast piece. When I started the Politi-Score, I used a student grading system (100, True or A, 90, Mostly True or B, etc.), as I thought this would be more understandable. When I posted it on a PolitiFact Facebook Discussion Board, I received a recommendation that it might be more intuitive to widen the measure so that 100 would be True, down to zero for False, although there was some disagreement on how punishing the Pants on Fire score should be. That way, Half True would be “half of True” at 50, and it would be easy to discern the scores. It was felt by some that -25 points, which I eventually decided to use, might not be a sufficient enough penalty for Pants on Fire. Apparently, when PolitiFact decided to do this, they felt it wasn’t sufficient enough either, since their scoring method gives Pants on Fire -150 points.

With using this scoring system, however, the trends will still show very similarly, since they are high-to-low by equal increments. My only caution to PolitiFact is that, as I’ve already noted, it serves to showcase the bias even more of that which already appears to some to be already biased, as it magnifies the effects of Barely True, False and Pants on Fire rulings on the overall scores. So Bill Adair better stick with “daily average” comparisons (which he is doing for now) and leave out political affiliation or individual comparisons unless he just doesn’t really care.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Score 5 in June

On July 4, PolitiFact published a Mailbag issue in which readers took it to task for some of its rulings from the month of June. While I try to critically think on just about everything, especially when it comes to grading PolitiFact in a liberal style, it seems to me that more “thinkers” make for better ideas and insights. And as I haven’t done much lately in the “Grading PolitiFact Liberally” area, this mailbag gave me the opportunity to catch up. Because some of the readers have some compellingly good reasons for either upgrading a Democrat or downgrading a Republican—for a total of FIVE rulings. So let’s get started:

1. Liberals should just revere that Palin-speak!

Several readers charged that we [PolitiFact] were too soft in giving former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a Barely True -- rather than a False or Pants on Fire -- for her comment that "Part of (Paul Revere’s) ride was to warn the British that were already there that, 'Hey, you're not going to succeed.' "

One reader wrote, "Going to your definition of Barely True, the ‘element of truth’ you were referring to was that he ‘warned the British.’ But he did not, in fact or in deed, warn the British. He bluffed the British, since his intention was to gain his freedom, not to give them notice of danger. The statement should be correctly be rated False.

Another reader, tongue half-way in cheek, offered a justification to rate Palin’s comment True.

"Technically, she was right since there was no America yet. All of the citizens in the area were still considered British subjects, and any warning given by Revere would certainly have been heard by British subjects that were still loyal to the King, as well as those that wanted their freedom from the crown," the reader wrote.

Chris Wallace of Fox News got it right on this one: Palin “messed up.” I mean, I’m sure Revere intended to get captured by the British just so he could warn them. As for the “tongue half-way in cheek” excuse most likely offered by some sublimely bloviating type, Wikipedia explains:

Riding through present-day Somerville, Medford, and Arlington, Revere warned patriots along his route, many of whom set out on horseback to deliver warnings of their own. By the end of the night there were probably as many as 40 riders throughout Middlesex County carrying the news of the army's advance. Revere did not shout the phrase later attributed to him ("The British are coming!"): His mission depended on secrecy, the countryside was filled with British army patrols, and the Massachusetts colonists (who were predominantly English in ethnic origin[43]) still considered themselves British.

So, why then the secrecy and how did those who were loyal to the King know the signals? Anyway, Palin could well have merited a False on this one. Score 1.

2. POW! BAM! It's Bachmann!

We also received a number of comments suggesting that we were too lenient on Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann when she said, "The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, has said that Obamacare will kill 800,000 jobs." We rated that statement Barely True.

"Hey guys, you blew it," wrote one reader. "The CBO did not say that 800,000 jobs will disappear -- it said that 800,000 workers might disappear. The jobs that they occupied like would still exist to be filled by other workforce participants. This would reduce the unemployment rate slightly, make the workers seeking the vacated jobs better off and presumably make the disappearing workers better off, since leaving would be their choice."

This one is kind of sad—800,000 people will no longer have to work because they don’t have to just for the insurance. Most of the jobs would still be there. When some of those people leave because they now have health insurance, they will necessarily have to be replaced. In other words, in a sense, it’s creating jobs, not killing them. Bachmann distorts this CBO extrapolation way out of line in a disingenuous way. Not only that, she repeated it. Misleading, says PolitiFact? Your Factcheck.org cohorts are calling it flat out false: (emphasis added)

Uncle Jay Explains the Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal Plans

[I knew I had heard this somewhere before!]

Hoystories on the Half-Shell

Incomprehensible and Mind-Boggling, if you’re a Republican.

Matt Hoy of Hoystory’s method of looking at PolitiFact (PF) is to point out seeming contradictions, and it seems like he has hit on one here again. A comparison of rulings on statements by Mitt Romney and Adam Hasner, on basically the same subject has come down to, as Hoy headlines, the “same idea, (with) different results.”



What to do, what to do when they're both Republicans!

The writers for these two PF pieces were Amy Sherman of PolitiFact Florida for the first one on Hasner, written in late May, and Lou Jacobson for PF National for the one on Romney in mid-June. Both seem to be covering the same subject: the rate of job recovery and/or job creation under Obama—is it the worst since Hoover and/or the Great Depression? Amy Sherman found a statement by Adam Hasner, a former Florida state legislator (in his criticism of its Senator Bill Nelson and Obama), to be Mostly True, who was talking about job creation, while Jacobson determined Romney’s statement to be False, who was talking about job recovery. Or, was it thus: while it’s Mostly True (Hasner) that this is one of the weakest post-recession job creation periods since the Great Depression, it’s False (Romney) that it’s been the slowest job recovery since Hoover during the Great Depression.

Let’s first look at their words:

Adam Hasner (tweeting): “Obama-Nelson economic record. Job creation ... at slowest post-recession rate since Great Depression” (Mostly True)

Mitt Romney (on the campaign trail): “It's taken longer to get Americans back to work than it took during the Great Depression. This is the slowest job recovery since Hoover. It breaks my heart. I want to get us back to work.” (False)

Both Jacobson and Sherman use the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as a source of data. As stated by Amy Sherman in her ruling on Hasner:

According to NBER, there have been 13 recessions since the one that started August 1929 and lasted for 43 months, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has month-by-month jobs data for 12 of them.

This was the basis for Sherman’s awarding a ruling to Hasner of Mostly True: “Hasner's off by only one recession out of 12.”