Sidebar: Perry-noia

"Deff Jeff" Dyberg at PolitiFact Bias has published yet another load of nonsense (I’m using Bryan White’s words for me)  in its devotion to all things detrimental to PolitiFact, legitimate or not. First it was a willfully ignorant reliance on Tim Groseclose’s flawed, illogical methodology in rating media bias (as was described in great detail in a three-part guest post serial). In this case, it’s someone named James Taranto from the ubiquitous Wall Street Journal who’s written a short piece about PolitiFact's ruling on Rick Perry’s claim that the Stimulus created zero jobs, combined with a bit of scorn for Obama’s “Misinformation Response” website called Attackwatch. Dyberg writes:

... And it's not surprising that a talented writer like Taranto so easily destroys PolitiFact's flimsy defense of the stimulus. As we've seen time and again PolitiFact's ratings simply can't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.

The rest of Taranto's piece is well worth reading, so go do that now.

“So go do that now”? Well, yes, I did go and do what Dyberg doo-dooed so well. Taranto’s a “talented writer”? Well, let’s see….maybe not. I don’t think Deff Jeff or Taranto can stand up to much scrutiny either.

Here’s Taranto’s flimsy response (with a somewhat tacit admission that yes, the Stimulus may have saved jobs) to PolitiFact’s ruling of Pants on Fire for Perry’s claim:

Attackwatch counters that PolitiFact "refers to four independent analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and three private assessments of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to determine that anywhere between 1.3 million and 3.6 million jobs were created or saved by the stimulus—'but certainly more than zero.' "

What both sites [Attackwatch and PolitiFact] omit is that, as we noted Sept. 2, the way these estimates are arrived at is not by counting actual jobs--of which, as the Romney chart points out, there are actually fewer than before the stimulus--but by assuming that so-called stimulus spending created jobs. That assumption may be accurate--it is possible that, as Obama and his supporters claim, even more jobs would have been lost absent the stimulus--but these estimates do not demonstrate it.

What Taranto fails to note is that it’s not just PolitiFact saying that Perry’s statement is False, it’s the more-objective-according-to-Bryan-White FactCheck.org saying Perry’s statement is False, and it’s ALSO the Washington Post Fact Checker saying it’s false…without exception. I used a quote from WaPo’s Glenn Kessler because his was the most substantive.

Economists differ on the effectiveness of the stimulus, but most say it has at least some effect (ie, created at least some jobs.) A recent review of nine different studies on the stimulus bill found that six studies concluded the stimulus had “a significant, positive effect on employment and growth,” and three said the effect was “either quite small or impossible to detect.”

So, Taranto is saying that all of these studies only prove that the Stimulus created one job, or "don't demonstrate" that more jobs would have been lost? Actually, it sounds a bit hyperbolic (and mocking, which was the theme of Taranto’s piece), although I don’t think Bryan White would ever make note of it. Taranto failed to check the other fact-checkers because he was only looking at Attackwatch sources. While PolitiFact’s ruling may have been a bit “puffier” (although I don’t know what more Taranto wants beyond citing four different independent analyses) the other fact-checkers provided additional information, such as that shown above from Kessler, which makes it harder to justify joking that the Stimulus created one single job, and makes right-wing shlock blogs like Jeff and Bryan’s PolitiFact Bias look, well, pretty shlocky.

I suppose Bryan White’s response would be akin to a Facebook comment I made where I disclosed my method of looking at all the fact-checkers for agreement on rulings as better evidence of the validity of their fact-checking: he stated that this method was “not logical.” Besides not saying why it was not logical, what his comment implies is that all the fact-checkers are equally biased, or equally engaging in selection bias…..and is like saying the players in a football huddle must be talking about him. Now there’s some real Perry-noia. 

And it isn't just zero jobs (and Perry-Care), it's Perry-Ponzi.