The Sept. 23rd Ironic News Report

With Julianna Forlano, who asks "Are they [WalMart] crushing faith in humanity on purpose?"

Sidebar: Don't Take New Hampshire for Granite

As I started accumulating ruling statistics for the next quarterly review of the PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index, a new fact-checking management style appears to have emerged at PolitiFact with the addition of PolitiFact 2012 New Hampshire. It might be something called a “matrix” or “cross-functional” style of managing PolitiFact’s proliferating journalistic efforts (when I was working, we would be told this was a way to maximize efficiency, so I guess it can be applied to everything). 

PF New Hampshire is much more than just a PF "State".



It hasn't so far been its own local candidate fact-checker as the other PolitiFact state fact-checkers are, though that doesn't appear to be the intent for it. As stated in PolitiFact's initial press release:  "Reporters from NHPR and the newpapers are fact-checking the presidential candidates, political parties and other groups that make claims during the New Hampshire campaign."  For example, if you look at the PolitiFact website’s drop down menu under States, New Hampshire is not in the drop-down; it currently has its own drop-down at “2012 Presidential”. If you click to the New Hampshire page, there are not just rulings from PF New Hampshire and National, there are rulings from other states, for example, PF Texas has a ruling on the page for Rick Perry, and if you link to that, the PF New Hampshire logo is displayed. When you look at the subjects under “About This Statement” it always includes “New Hampshire 2012” even though it’s not really part of the topic being ruled on.

The other item of note on PF New Hampshire is its many, many writers, so far, I’ve counted nine.

1. Jake Berry
2. Maryalice Gill
3. Jeffrey Good
4. John Gregg
5. Josh Rogers
6. Jon Greenberg
7. Dan Gorenstein
8. Gregory Trotter
9. Kevin Landrigan 

So, what’s going on here? What does Bill Adair have up his sleeve? I recall he said in a recent interview that the polling he’s gotten from PolitiFact fans via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter indicate that what they’d really like is some sort of immediate feedback (like a pop-up factoid) as to the truth of a statement just uttered by a politico, which would be virtually impossible to do because of the investigation required. Maybe this is something along those lines for the 2012 presidential campaign, something that necessitates a lot of newly trained, energized, youthful and ambitious journalists to put a plethora of fact-checks out there for almost immediate review on the web.

And it certainly rebuts the arguments of my conservative counterpart who’s been betting on the sudden demise of the PolitiFact brand for quite a while. If anything this shows that PolitiFact is planning for expansion. It should keep us both busy, ha ha.

Of the 26 rulings I’ve added so far from PolitiFact New Hampshire, 73% of them cover Republicans, mostly statements of the presidential candidates made at the several debates they’ve had so far. Most of the Democrat fact-checks (I’ve counted seven so far) have been the New Hampshire Democratic Party, however, which is the only thing that relates to New Hampshire as far as rulings. And by the way, through around September 21, the Truth Index for Republicans is a negative 13.16, and for the seven Democrat rulings we are at a perfect zero. Overall it’s a negative 9.62.

I will not be posting much (if at all) until early October, because my permanent move to Florida will be keeping me extremely busy. I will be concentrating on compiling the third quarter PolitiFact ruling data as I have time. Over and out (for now).

Postscript:  On the other hand, there's another question since the New Hampshire banner has "2012" displayed:  What happens on January 1, 2013?  Will it be changed to "2014"?  Or is New Hampshire trying PF on for size?  Ah, well, the makings of another post.

Sidebar: Are Republicans Pro-Life or Pro-Death?

While I am in occasional disagreement with Liberal Viewer on YouTube, this video about the outward exhilaration some Republicans have for those who have been executed by the death penalty or those who must die because they lack health insurance is a disturbingly intriguing one.

Mock the Dummies: Growing Up Paul

Sidebar: Tax 'Em All...but Rich

Some time ago I posted about what our new Republican Michigan governor and predominately Republican Michigan legislature were doing with pensions, by ending their exemption from Michigan income tax. In calculating whether it was economically feasible for me to retire, that was one of my considerations. Having my pension exempt from the Michigan income tax increased the incentive to retire as it freed up more of my fixed pension income. The Michigan tax is a flat rate on Federal AGI (after a few exemptions) of a little over 4 percent. So it’s not a small sum.

On the surface it looked like the revised Michigan income tax would apply to all pension income, and I had to laugh at my conservative co-pensioners who were just thrilled to have so many Republicans in power in Michigan. The Republicans were basically rewarding their vote by slapping this new tax on them (and giving it to corporations in tax cuts), that would probably have not been enacted under Democrats. Unfortunately (or fortunately for them) most of them came up smelling like a rose on this one. Because the tax is on early retirees for the most part. One in particular, crazy-letter-to-the-editor writing Richard Peasel, staunch Republican, escaped it, because he was born in 1945 (as I recall). 

Residents born before 1946 will continue to get the same tax breaks they have now. Public pensions will not be taxed. Income from private pensions, 401(k)s and IRAs will not be taxed on amounts up to $45,120 for single filers and $90,240 for joint filers.

The tax for me would actually affect roughly half my pension income. So I decided, well, I don’t have to live in Michigan anymore. I put my Michigan home up for sale, and right now, I have an offer and am waiting for bank approval. Starting in 2012, when the income tax goes into effect, I (should) be a permanent Florida resident, where there is NO state income tax.  So there, Rick Snyder.  You lost two Michigan consumers and their multiplier effect, and I hope a lot of other early retirees do the same thing.

When Paul Ryan put out his “Medicare Discount voucher” Budget Plan earlier this year, he had people like Peasel in mind….he let the many boomers who generally vote Republican off the hook so they could get the best of both worlds—not having to pay, yet getting full benefits, then phasing those benefits out some time in the future so future generations are really made to pay for them (that's the implicit or imputed "tax"), starting with me. In other words, he taxed ‘em all (TEA) except those who would most likely vote Republican.

Tchotchkes: Socialism versus Capitalism Explained

...in a easy-to-understand diagram.

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.

Politi-Score: Three Debates, Part 3

As my previous post was about the most covered topics at the three recent Republican presidential debates, let's see how the candidates fared truth-wise by the three biggest ones:  healthcare/Medicare, jobs and social security.  I'm looking at the most frequently reviewed statements in those categories.

Healthcare if you dare. On the most covered topic of healthcare, there were  some statements which the fact-checkers noted had been checked long before these debates.

The group of fact-checked statements that  caused quite a stir in the media, however, all related to the same healthcare topic: Rick Perry’s defense of his executive order to require young girls to get a HPV vaccine called Gardasil, which prevents cervical cancer. Michele Bachmann decided to tie it into political contributions Perry received from the company that makes the vaccine, Merck. FactCheck.org verified that Perry had indeed received thousands in contributions, but his response to Bachmann’s accusation gave pause even to Rush Limbaugh, as he commented that his first thought when Perry said he couldn’t be bought for $5,000 was-- what IS his price then? (Yes, I heard Rush say that on his radio show on September 12, and yes, I do occasionally listen to Rush Limbaugh.) FactCheck.org also confirmed two other untruths of Bachmann’s: that Merck made millions of dollars off the drug (False) and that it was potentially dangerous (False). They also confirmed as true that Perry’s former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck.

Her controversial anecdote following the debate, about the drug causing retardation, did not make my review list, because not only was it after the debates, but the fact-checkers have no way to verify it as some woman who told Bachmann personally. But no worry—a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist has decided to try to validate it the only way possible: by offering “… to donate $10,000 to the charity of Bachmann’s choice if she can produce such a patient” because as they say, money talks and bullsh*t walks. So far, as usual, her campaign hasn’t responded (where have I heard that before?). So I guess Bachmann’s walking.

“Romney says his health care bill affected far smaller percentage of people than Obama's”—which was a statement he first made in a presidential candidate forum in South Carolina, presumably to differentiate as much as possible the two very similar healthcare systems--as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler put it “… an inconvenient fact that Romney tries hard to run away from.” He continued to make the claim into the Reagan Library Debate, where all three fact checkers concluded that Romney was making a faulty comparison. Here’s FactCheck.org’s explanation:

The main goal of both is to cover more of the uninsured, and to do so while preserving the primarily employer-based insurance structure. In 2004, before the Massachusetts law was passed, 7.4 percent of Massachusetts residents were uninsured, according to the state Division of Health Care Finance and Policy (see page 12). Romney said 8 percent, but that statistic can vary, depending on how being uninsured is measured. Under the Massachusetts plan, that figure went down to 1.9 percent in 2010. Nationally, 16.7 percent of the population is uninsured, as of 2009, according to the Census Bureau. And, like the Massachusetts endeavor, the federal overhaul is aimed at reducing that figure.

PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson felt the “wildly divergent” percentages deserved a Pants on Fire, even soliciting an agreement from the Cato Institute:

Politi-Score: Three Debates, Part 2

Before a review of some of the rulings made on statements in the recent three Republican debates, I thought it might be a good idea to present a topic breakdown.

Click to enlarge:  Healthcare/Medicare, jobs, social security and the debt ceiling made up 66% of the fact-checked topics in the debates.

The Number One Topic of fact-checking interest was Healthcare/Medicare, followed by Jobs and then Social Security. Most reviewed Topic Number 4, the Debt Ceiling, was a one-man, or I should say, one-woman topic, as all the rulings were on Michele Bachmann, centered on her determined-to-be-false “Obama blank check” claims, mostly made during the first debate in Ames. She also Politi-Scored a hefty negative on this topic at -88. Including Bachmann’s topic of the debt ceiling, these four topics made up two-thirds of those fact-checked from the debates.

Healthcare/Medicare, besides being the most fact-checked, had one of the most negative Politi-Scores at a slightly-worse-than-Mostly-False -61. Healthcare/Medicare was also a topic dominated by Michele Bachmann, with her making 11 of the 16 statements fact-checked and the rest divided between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney (oh, and a single one by Tim Pawlenty).

There were a few miscellaneous topics that were specialties of certain debaters. A good example is the Federal Budget, which consisted of a statement by Newt Gingrich (his contention that he balanced it four years in a row, determined to be a misleading claim by the fact-checkers). Another one was Border Security and Rick Perry’s challenging claims that Obama made about it at El Paso, Texas, which PolitiFact found to be Half True and the other fact-checkers, misleading.

So now we have a pretty good over-view of the fact-checking side of the three debates. For a heads up on the next item of interest, I’ll note that there were 51 fact-checks representing 21 statements where the fact-check was re-covered, or duplicated. So please stay tuned as I sort through them.

Politi-Score: Three Debates, Three Debaters

Politi-Score in parentheses; *Ames score revised slightly due to categorization error.

Most media sources agree that when Rick Perry entered the Republican presidential race, it took a lot of wind out of Michele Bachmann’s sails. When Perry appeared for the second Republican debate, the fact-check counts sort of confirmed it. Bachmann got precedence in fact-checks at Ames, where she was covered for about 1/3 of the total, but in the second debate, she only received five or 1/6 of the total. It’s also significant to note that her Politi-Score greatly improved as well. It seems the more she fades into the background, at least in this case, the more “honest” she is.

However, in the third debate, the CNN-Tea Party, she appeared to maker her “voice of the Tea Party” loud and strong again. This time she came close to getting a third of the fact checks as she did in Ames, while the truthiness dropped accordingly, although not quite as bad. Bachmann’s had more fact-checks in these three debates than any of the other candidates. On the other hand, had Rick Perry participated in the first debate in Ames, he would likely have exceeded her. He averaged ten fact checks in each of the last two debates, so by extrapolation he might have had close to 30 for the three.

All in all, Romney, Perry and Bachmann received just over 70% of the fact-checks by FactCheck.org, the Washington Post Fact Checker and PolitiFact. Here’s a closer look at the Politi-Score in PolitiFact Truth Index format as to how they did.

Politi-Score in parentheses next to each candidate's name.

Here's how Bachmann, Perry and Romney scored for each debate in attaining the overall average (Politi-Score)  shown above:

So, how did Romney suddenly score so much higher and "truthful" in the third debate on CNN? It was in the tit-for-tat book-quoting between Romney and Perry. The “Trues” that brought up Romney’s scores was his calling out Perry for stating that  Social Security was unconstitutional in his recent book “Fed Up” which both PolitiFact and the WaPo Fact Checker confirmed were true. These Trues and Mostly Trues made up over half the fact-checks on him for the CNN debates. Perry, however, only had one fact-check attributed to him regarding book quotes, while all three fact-checkers took him to task on stating that the Stimulus created zero jobs, with PolitiFact giving him a Pants on Fire.

Next, a discussion of one re-recovered ruling on a Rick Perry statement about social security as Ponzi, and a few other items of interest.

Tchotchkes: Uncle Jay Explains the News

This week's word is transformed!

Lil White Lies: De-Ranged

Lawyer’s question at deposition: What is your date of birth?
Response: July 15.
Lawyer’s question: What year?
Response: Every year.

There’s been one major theory on this blog about how my conservative counterpart (Bryan White) often works his blog’s “Grading PolitiFact” series: his leading modus operandi is to mischaracterize PolitiFact’s underlying argument in the case of Republicans, to something other than what their ideological agenda might be, something that “sounds good” and then assert in the most outrageous way he can that PolitiFact deliberately missed it, most likely due to PolitiFact’s bias. This ruling on Robert Reich is a classic case on the Liberal side. In his PBS piece, Robert Reich defined a period of time, set the bounds of it, using Commerce Department statistics. He could just as well have used “since 1929” as he could have “just before the Great Depression.” But my conservative counterpart thinks it’s all about the Great Depression, when the article suggests otherwise. The article was about American workers “whose jobs and wages are under assault” getting “the worst deal they’ve had since before Labor Day was invented” because, after all, he was writing this around Labor Day weekend.

Let’s talk about his “just before the Great Depression” assertions, anyway. Wikipedia, and most “lay people”, consider the Great Depression to have started in October of 1929 when the stock market crashed. But the stock market, as I just noted in a recent post, is a leading economic indicator. The actual downturn of the economy does not follow for two to three quarters. In the spring of 1930 the stock market actually turned up again briefly before the economy fell. So to say there was no data for the period before the Great Depression is actually a misnomer. Reich probably knew this as well when he made his comparison, as a political economist, and because there was actually a bit of data available for before the Great Depression. This, along with the Commerce Department data, explains why Reich used the word “just” as in “just before the Great Depression.”

Bryan White also argued it out with another commenter at the PolitiFact Facebook page, and the rival commenter, Aaron Speca, pointed out the same issue with Bryan’s criticism:

Tchotchkes: Cheney Advises Gadaffi

...or Khadaffi...

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Politi-Fishing with PETA

Some people would call a PolitiFact ruling like the above “fluff” or “filler”—after all, this was something that was said late last year, being looked at only now by PolitiFact Georgia.   It's like somebody at PolitiFact said "We need more organizations viewed as liberal whose claims we can look at, folks!" That was how I regarded it when I initially read it. Then I read the article of PolitiFact reader responses on it, so for me it called for more research and reading.  Then I realized this was an excellent candidate for Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style.

My first observation is that no one defined what type of vegan/vegetarian Bill Clinton was, because there are all sorts of vegans and vegetarians. Because if Clinton was a pesca-vegetarian (also called a pescatarian), this ruling should be False or Mostly False. Because it means Clinton eats fish (pesca-) and by all counts the 200 animals he spared by turning this type of vegetarian doesn’t come close when you exclude fish and shellfish. So, what kind of vegan is he?

In a CNN interview with Sanjay Gupta, Clinton says at about Second Number 15 that he doesn’t eat “dairy or meat or fish”—so he’s a straight vegan. So now the number 200 includes fish, shrimp, scallops, etc. and the question becomes are these considered “animals”—PolitiFact Georgia writer M.B. Pell’s conclusion is that PETA implied that all 200 animals were farm animals.

If you visit the PETA website, there’s a lot about not eating fish, including some animated banners, two of which I’m displaying in this post. For example, here’s a recent article with the “Top Five Reasons Fishing Hurts”:

5) Eating fish is hazardous to your health. According to The New England Journal of Medicine, fish "are the main if not the only source of methyl mercury," a substance that has been linked to cardiovascular disease, fetal brain damage, blindness, deafness, and problems with motor skills, language, and attention span.

4) Suffocation isn't fun. When fish are yanked from the water, they begin to suffocate. Their gills often collapse, and their swim bladders can rupture because of the sudden change in pressure. Gross, eh?

3) Fishing kills more than fish. One out of every five manatee rescues conducted in the 1980s and 1990s was related to fishing-line entanglement, and during a four-year span, at least 35 dolphins died from injuries that they sustained as a result of being tangled in fishing line.

2) Fishing hurts the environment. Many commercial fishing vessels practice bottom-trawling in order to catch sea animals who live near, on, or under the sea floor, such as flounder, cod, grouper, shrimp, and scallops. Scientists say that the destruction caused by bottom-trawling is similar to that caused by clear-cutting old forests, only on a far greater scale.

1) Fishing really hurts. Fish slaughter plants in the U.S. make no effort to stun the fish, who are completely conscious when they start down the slaughter line. Their gills are cut, and they are left to bleed to death, convulsing in pain. Large fish, such as salmon, are sometimes bashed on the head with a wooden bat called a "priest," and many are seriously injured but still alive and suffering when they are cut open.

An example of many "fishy" ads published by PETA which allow you to use the code.

Politi-Score: Twinkle Twinkle Lil Lone Star

Read down for fine print of "Texas Miracle."

Rick Perry is one candidate who has a lot of foretelling qualities that make him the person that Obama might not beat. We’ve had a lot of presidents from the state of Texas; in my time, it suddenly started with a Democrat in Lyndon Baines Johnson when I was awakened to the potential tragedies of politics one cold early afternoon in November of 1963, when I was in grade school. Then there was the first centrist Republican George Bush, who was sort of semi-Texan, and then his "Compassionate Conservative" son for two terms, and now the distinctly right-wing Perry. But Perry also bears a resemblance to Ronald Reagan: a rugged, handsome former Democrat with a certain charisma, who’s going to run during a period of time which is much like the late 70’s-early 80’s, against a candidate who reminds me sometimes of Jimmy Carter. And then there’s something I call the “Rick” factor: Perry is not a business man like these two, but having lived in two states where the guy who recently became governor had the name Rick (Snyder in Michigan and Scott in Florida), my intuition says, maybe there’s another Rick on the horizon, in a much bigger way.

Rick Perry is not the “liar” that I’ve shown Michele Bachmann and Nancy Pelosi to be. He scores more toward the center, although I’d say somewhere below center. Thus far in 2011 he’s had 37 rulings, from PolitiFact (23), Washington Post Fact Checker (8) and FactCheck.org (6). His averages for all three are shown below, along with the Politi-Score (which averages all 37 together):

So Perry has a Politi-Score of -35, as compared to a -47 for Michele Bachmann and a -77 for Nancy Pelosi for similar time periods. As noted in the following PolitiFact Truth Index trend chart for Perry, he was getting better this year, until he started considering a run for the presidency, and then his cumulative Truth Index got worse, although not by a lot, because of the cumulative averaging effects of  his many previous rulings.

In July, Perry ranked Number 17 out of 25 individuals/groups (actually, 26 are ranked; chain e-mails are counted twice for affiliation) with 15 or more rulings ranked by the Truth Index, for all PolitiFact rulings through the end of June. He was Number 9 among 15 Republicans who made it to the list.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Lagging Behind

What I like most about this Pants on Fire ruling from PolitiFact is that Michele Malkin’s website promoted it. The Michele Malkin, the not as tightly controlled Michele Bachmann, who proclaimed that PolitiFact was nothing but “opinion journalists who masquerade as neutral arbiters of fact." Apparently that doesn’t apply when their most illustrious and popular ruling is being awarded to Democrats like Harry Reid for his recent statement  in a senate speech that there was a loss of eight million jobs during the Bush years.

The stock market is considered a leading indicator of macro-economic changes, while job losses are a lagging indicator, that is, as described in “A Beginners Guide to Economic Indicators”: (emphasis added)

…A lagged economic indicator is one that does not change direction until a few quarters after the economy does. The unemployment rate is a lagged economic indicator as unemployment tends to increase for 2 or 3 quarters after the economy starts to improve.

If that’s true, the economy started to tank early in 2008, and then unemployment followed. If we are to view this by quarter as a lagging indicator, it would be fair to say that the first quarter of 2009--at a minimum--belonged to Bush. How was employment through just the first quarter, that is, since the loss of employment started in 2008? From CNN Money: (emphasis added)

For the first three months of the year [2009], 2 million jobs have been lost, and 5.1 million jobs have been lost since the start of 2008.

To put the three-month loss in context, if no more jobs are lost over the next nine months, 2009 would still be the fourth worst year for job losses since the government started tracking the number of workers in 1939.

If we use the percent rate we can get a better handle on the increase in unemployment between Bush and Obama. It went from 4.2% in January of 2001 to 7.8% in January of 2009, an increase of 85%, a straight calculation not considering lagging by extending it through the first quarter. That compares to the current unemployment rate at 9.1%, which was a 17% increase since Obama took office in January, 2009.  In other words, the increase in the unemployment rate under Bush was five times that of Obama.