Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Crash on Delivery

In economic terms, the healthcare industry is somewhat like a utility. It has price inelasticity of demand because of necessity: people will pay whatever price is demanded when they require healthcare. The “supply” (medical professionals) is inelastic as well (due to scarcity). The reason insurance is required is that many times when care is needed, the cost can be so prohibitively expensive it can bankrupt you. To put this in layman’s terms (from another sort of Rude Pundit by the name of Cranky Media Guy): ["inelasticities" added]

Health care is not (and cannot become) a free market for two reasons:

1) Supply is artificially restricted [inelastic] by the government and the AMA. The scarcity of medical care drives up the cost. This is completely artificial. You might say “Well, they have to! You can’t have just anyone practicing medicine!” Fine, I agree, but that means that health care CANNOT EVER be a free market, because of the artificial restriction of supply.

2) Not only is supply artificially low, but buyers are under EXTREME compulsion to buy. [price inelasticity of demand] …What, that thought never occurred to you!?!? If you need lifesaving medical care, you either get it or you die!

This is why almost every other industrialized country in the world has some model of universal healthcare—those countries recognized that the healthcare industry does not (and cannot) operate by free market principles. It takes up more of our GDP than any other country by a wide margin, and continues to take up a higher and higher percentage (in September, 2011, it reached 18%), which is a serious national problem in and of itself:

But if health care spending continues on its same trajectory, the United States will reach the point — probably several decades from now — where every penny of the annual increase in gross domestic product would have to go for health care. There would be less and less money for other things, like education, environmental protection, scientific research and national security, that may be equally or more important to the well-being of society.

That all being said, let’s take a look at some of the reasons that John Boehner’s statement that the U.S. has the “best healthcare delivery system in the world” never reaches its destination, even with the help of PolitiFact.

According to a Harvard Medical School Study (American Journal of Public Health, December 2009), lack of health insurance is associated with as many as 44,789 deaths per year in the United States and people without health insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private health insurance, a result of being unable to obtain necessary medical care. In 2010, the percentage of Americans without health insurance was 16.3%, or 49.9 million uninsured people (source: US Census Bureau). It should be over 50 million by now.

And what are some of our healthcare outcomes? Not too good:

In 2005, the United States ranked 30th in infant mortality. In 2011, we rank #50.

Life expectancy at birth in the United States is an estimated 78.49 years, which ranks 50th in highest total life expectancy compared to other countries ( Source: CIA Factbook [2011]).

We have the highest percentage of obese (30.6%) (And guess where it’s the highest in the U.S.?).

We are #13 for most deaths from heart disease per 100,000 people (average is 102.9 and the U.S. is 106.5).

Tchotchkes: Greatest Freudian Slip of 2012

Truth Index by Subject since 2011

In a previous post on the subject of guns, I had written a huge paragraph on the overlap of subject assignment, which I ended up taking out when I realized that all I have to do at the PolitiFact website is click the label link for the subject to get all the rulings. But it’s still easier to do it on a spreadsheet because it’s all on one page right in front of me.

Anyway, the top ten subjects by order of number of occurrences (i.e., because of that ubiquitous selection bias) are shown in the chart below: They constitute roughly one half (48%) of all the rulings for which I kept track of the subject, for all of 2011 and the first half of 2012, 1,405 rulings out of 2,923 total. The chart shows the subjects highest count to lowest (starting with “Economy” with 234 rulings, working down to “Environment” with 67 rulings). Then it shows the Truth Index for Democrats and Republicans for each subject with the Truth Index score labeling each bar.

Click to enlarge: On the subject "Federal Budget" Republicans calculated to a "zero" Truth Index.

The chart does not show the total breakdown or average for these top ten: of the 1,405 rulings, 843 (60%) were from Republicans and 488 (about 35%) were from Democrats, with the remaining 5% Independent, Non-Partisan or unknown. The Republicans had an overall Truth Index for these top ten subjects of negative 21.5 (compared to negative 24.1 for all 2,935 rulings), while the Democrats had a positive 4.4 for these top ten (compared to a negative 1 for all 2,935 rulings).

The conclusions: while the economy was the most covered subject, in terms of number of rulings and Truth Index divergence between Democrats and Republicans, healthcare was by far the worst and most lied-about subject, especially by Republicans. For the year 2011, healthcare was also Number 1, and I’m sure this continued trend has something to do with their keeping the public turned against that dreaded “Obamacare.”

You can also check my recent post of some of the more repeated statements on the topic of healthcare, as well as PolitiFact rulings for which FactCheck.Org reached the same conclusion.

The Republicans were ahead Truth-Index-wise of the Democrats two subjects, jobs and “candidate bio”. Job creation has been lackluster under Obama, and so there may be a little stretching of the truth on the topic of jobs on the part of Obama and other Democrats to make it seem better than it is. As the political campaigns for 2012 start to take shape, “candidate bio”—something said about the candidate's opponent, his background or history—has been getting more attention for fact-checking verificiation, and here it seems the Republicans are a wee bit more “truthier” than Democrats.

The largest divergence between Truth Indexes without considering count, however, was on the topic of energy. I filtered out three “underlying reasons” just looking at the statements which I labeled Drill (Baby Drill), Gas (prices), and Keystone (Pipeline). When I looked at the “affiliation” list after executing the filter for these three items, I didn’t have to do anything more: there were 25, and they were ALL Republican statements, with a combined Truth Index of very negative 66. One of my favorites was a Pants on Fire for a Florida senatorial candidate by the name of Dave Weldon who said that there was no wildlife in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—sort of sounds like someone saying Ulysses S. Grant isn’t buried in Grants Tomb. Or a False from PolitiFact Ohio for a statement by Representative Mike Dovilla that Obama’s policy on the Keystone Pipeline was thwarting the ability to (immediately!) reduce gas prices.

Other than that, my readers can reach their own conclusions.

Lil White Lies: Double Bain Dead

A post at Sublime Bloviations says this PolitiFact fact-check is ”a joke” and not relevant, and its "inflammatory" partner anti-factchecker blog counterirritant chimes along, adding Limbaugh “didn’t try to make [the] argument” to support PolitiFact’s ruling of Pants on Fire.

Let’s start by taking a look at what Limbaugh initially said, from the PolitiFact ruling:

"This evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there's now a discussion out there as to whether or not this is purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters. It's gonna have a lot of people. This movie, the audience is gonna be huge. A lot of people are gonna see the movie, and it's a lot of brain-dead people, entertainment, the pop culture crowd, and they're gonna hear Bane in the movie and they're gonna associate Bain. The thought is that when they start paying attention to the campaign later in the year, and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, Romney and Bain, that these people will think back to the Batman movie, ‘Oh, yeah, I know who that is.’ There are some people who think it'll work. Others think you're really underestimating the American people to think that will work."

He wrapped up:

"You may think it's ridiculous, I'm just telling you this is the kind of stuff the Obama team is lining up. The kind of people who would draw this comparison are the kind of people that they are campaigning to. These are the kind of people that they are attempting to appeal to."

But wait, there’s more! The implication from Sublime Bloviations' Bryan White was that since Limbaugh could not be taken seriously, it was not worth fact-checking (even though even PolitiFact admitted it was a  “pop culture diversion" ). But it gets seriously expanded the following day, as scripted at the Rush Limbaugh website, and serves to further contradict counterirritant’s claims:

So I'm in the library last night, and I'm doing what I always do. I'm doing show prep. And I get a text message from Kathryn who's in with the dogs in the kitchen. She says, "Are you in this Batman movie and you didn't tell me? Is this Batman movie about you?" I said, "What now?" She says, "I can't go anywhere without reading about you and this Batman movie." And I finally, in that moment, folks, I finally figured out what's going on. I outed them. Forget the creator. I don't care that the creator created the character Bane in the Batman movie back in the '90s. It doesn't matter. The Democrats clearly were going to try to link this villain to Mitt Romney. And I outed 'em. They've even got a couple Democrats admitting they were gonna, Chris Leheinous and Jon Stewart. And they're still trying to do it.

You know, independently of the producers and the actors and all the people associated with the movie, they saw it, they were gonna try to make the linkage, and now I'm out there basically accusing them of that, so they've got their backs up. They're acting like I'm some sort of conspiracy creep. But I outed 'em. I have shined the light of truth, as it were.

Counterirritant says Limbaugh never advanced the idea “ that the villain Bane was named in reference to Bain Capital.” Yes he did—he advanced it by being the first one to say “there was a discussion out there whether or not this was purposeful” and associating Bane to Bain and the Democrats in the next few sentences. In other words, if he didn’t advance the idea, what was it then that Limbaugh was “outing” the Democrats for? What precisely was that “light of truth”? Counterirritant debates like White, in that he tries to ignore the obvious.

So, the next issue becomes whether PolitiFact should rightfully consider Limbaugh's claims "a joke."  In 2008, Limbaugh was thought to have “caused mischief” in the Democratic primaries. According to one article, the Indiana primary “may be the first vote in which his influence [was] measured in qualitative terms.” He called it “Operation Chaos.” And more recently, his calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” was taken so seriously, many of his sponsors dropped him.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Land of Linkin'

“Five hundred billion” seems to be a heavily used number these days, from a national perspective. It’s often, often used by Republicans to describe the Medicare cuts from the Affordable Care Act (although ironically that’s what Paul Ryan’s imaginary budgets call for as well). But when used at a “state”or local level, it’s difficult to surmise what it may be describing, because almost no state budgetary line item would approach 500 billion, except for maybe legacy costs for state workers in California (actuarially-determined liabilities for retirement benefits ). So when Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois used this number to describe a proposed budget increase in property taxes by Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin in a PolitiFact fact-check, it was pretty obvious that it was a typo, that he meant $500 million.

So after admitting such, PolitiFact Wisconsin’s Dave Umhoefer then determines it’s more like $350 MILLION (deduced from $483 million as sourced from the Quinn campaign itself when Umhoefer inquired) , although the actual number later turned out to be much less. So $350 million is 70% of $500 million…not a Mostly True, but a Half True or maybe a Mostly False.

But he gives Quinn a Pants on Fire….why?

Quinn said his Wisconsin counterpart had increased property taxes nearly $500 billion. That was explained as an old-fashioned typo. But even then, the $500 million is way off.

When Walker signed the budget in June 2011, property taxes were estimated to go up $350 million under the most common accounting. That estimate held until the April 16, 2012 report -- and it seems likely Quinn’s email was prepared before Walker’s announcement changed the game.

But he didn’t correct the million/billion typo in a timely way, and is still using the equally wrong $500 million claim. We think that’s ridiculous.

For the few days following the statement made by Quinn, April 18-19, Umhoefer cites/ links three sources which refer to the $500 million/billion. The first one, the Rockford Register Star, was almost published immediately after, on April 17, The second link, NBC-5 Chicago, in a blog by Edward McClelland, was done April 18, fixes the billion typo, and refers to it correctly as a budget item: “Governor Walker’s budget calls for raising local property taxes in Wisconsin by nearly a half-billion dollars ($ 483.8 million).‬”

The last link is to a blogspot website like this one, a self-proclaimed progressive blog called "The Political Environment” by James Rowen, and it’s a copy/paste of the Quinn message, something one would expect from a liberal blog immediately following the statement.

But then Umhoefer cites several articles in June that do not correct the error: one is to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, in a piece titled the “Top Ten Worst Items in Scott Walker’s Radical Budget”  and what appears to be another progressive blog written by a Democratic Wisconsin State Representative.

But both of these are not related to the statement as made by Quinn—they ostensibly get their information from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. In otherwords, it’s not Quinn, the object of the fact-check, who’s “still using the equally wrong $500 million claim.” If Umhoefer had cited a later statement (in June) by Quinn, he would be right, but that’s not what he did. Or if one of these articles referred back to, or quoted Quinn’s statement, Umhoefer’s claim would ring true. OF COURSE the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is going to use the budgetary, much different than actual, $483 million figure as part of their political spin—but it doesn't appear that they got the number from the Governor of Illinois. Umhoefer put the blame on him with these June reports, however, to bridge the Truth-o-Meter gap over to Pantalones en Fuego.

If one doesn’t read the links, one would likely believe that Quinn continued using the number or that his $500 million (or close to it) was cited by others, but it wasn’t. And until Dave Umhoefer can cite a link that says he was, this is more like Mostly False, and it was Pants on Fire ridiculous to make it Pants on Fire.

Truth Index: Have Fact-Check, Will Travel

Note: The original post from July 24 has been deleted and this is a revision. In review I was not happy with my wordy diary of how I tallied the gun rulings. This post skips all that.

With the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, PolitiFact has looked at its database on the now news worthy subject of guns and gun control. PolitiFact's Bill Adair writes in a recent article that they’ve “checked 74 claims on the subject of guns.”

His write-up looked at it in terms of the less positive rulings over the history of PolitiFact. Here’s a different look at it: more recent claims, both sides, and the full Truth Index for that period.

I came up with 40 “gun” rulings since 2011. That’s roughly the “second half” of PolitiFact’s “guns” database . Here is the Truth Index and breakdown for those 40:

Click to enlarge:  More recently "rulings on guns" have improved slightly, with only 30%  less than Half True.

As can be seen overall, however, 45% (compared to Adair’s 42%) of the rulings were True and Mostly True, and the overall Truth Index was an almost zero, but still in positive territory, 1.25. A Truth Index close to zero is the equivalent of an equal number of rulings in all categories except Pants on Fire. Accounting for the heavier weight of the negative rulings, it’s “above average.”

Democrats can be attributed for 18 of the rulings and had a Truth Index of +19.4 while Republicans made up 21 of the rulings with a Truth Index of -14.3 (the remaining ruling was a statement by the Police Chief of Milwaukee found Half True, for whom I could not find an affiliation). The divergence between Democrats and Republicans is comparable to the average divergence for the top ten most popular subjects, and is similar to that for rulings on the economy, elections issues, and the deficit (post forthcoming).

PolitiFact (Bill Adair) reported on the worst of the worst, most of the PolitiFact rulings which signified “Falsehoods and Half Truths” as in the title, along with the ubiquitous Pants on Fire. But it seems to me this inadvertently makes the National Rifle Association (NRA) look bad by emphasizing its negative rulings. The other problem here is that, of the 12 rulings mentioned in the article, two were by Democrats (Obama and Biden) and the rest were by people/groups for which most were not assigned a particular affiliation, although one would know by the statement what their affiliation most likely is. While Ted Nugent is shown as “Republican from Texas” (sure glad it isn’t Michigan), the National Rifle Association is only described as “An advocacy group that fights restrictions on the right to bear arms.”   For obvious reasons, it was assigned a Republican affiliation for the purpose of this Truth Index calculation, as was its executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

From the aspect that some people who may be pro-gun will likely accuse PolitiFact of liberal bias on reading this article, it needs to be pointed out that there have been some truthful claims made with regard to guns that PolitiFact has checked out. For example, PolitiFact Texas ruled True a statement by (Republican) state senator Jeff Wentworth in February, 2011, that only 2 percent of Texas' 25 million residents has a concealed handgun license. PolitiFact New Jersey ruled True a statement by (Democrat) Senator Frank Lautenberg in April that a “loophole allows individuals convicted of domestic violence to purchase guns.”

The National Rifle Association isn’t always fibbing: recently PolitiFact found True a statement about Obama “trying to slash funding for the Armed Pilots Program designed to prevent terror attacks." It was awarded a Mostly True by PolitiFact Wisconsin for an alert it published that said “Wisconsin’s concealed-carry permit rules require more proof than other states.”

So, Adair gets Mostly True on this one. His article “is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.” The Republican nature of the NRA was not clarified in their file; and while discussions about gun control may be filled with half truths and falsehoods, there’s also a large portion of mostly true and truthhoods that should be recognized as well.

Why America is Not the Greatest Country in the World

PolitiFact Detractors: Virginia Night Cap

It seems my conservative counterpart was forced to reference my analysis of the recent mega-paper protest by the Virginia Republican Party to PolitiFact (PF) Virginia, basically presenting an overly voluminous case of why it was biased toward Democrats. Bryan White called me a person with “semi-daily clock-work accuracy” as far as my being “correct” in terms of the ruling “statistics” used in the paper. Gee, I was hoping for a battle of wits, but I guess he’s apparently unarmed.

But White did bring out one point with regard to “the Weekend Dump.” This was the Republicans’ contention that more positive Republican PolitiFact rulings were “buried” in the weekend editions of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, while negative ones were saved for during the week, on the premise there were more readers during the week. He felt that the Sunday or weekend news may have more readers, not less, which contradicts their “bury” allegations.

Dumping stories over the weekend can put them in the Sunday newspaper, which is often the most widely read portion of a major newspaper. No case is made for the significance of a weekend dump for either a daily paper or an Internet news site. If the Richmond Times-Dispatch literally publishes the most positive Republican stories in its least popular editions then the Virginia GOP may have a legitimate gripe, but that evidence does not appear in this document.

Where readership demographics are reported on the internet, four major markets (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco) separate weekday and Sunday readership, and it appears Sunday is always higher for all adults. This backs up White’s assertion.

On the other hand, let’s consider the growing group of people who get their news on line. For example, (it appears to me that) many more comments are made on line at the PolitiFact Facebook page during the week, as the rulings are generated. Less commenting is posted on weekends, although some rulings are published late Friday. This may not mean anything, but this would seem to infer that the rulings are read by the majority of on line news fans during the week. Of course, the only way to verify that is for PolitiFact to look at its website “statcounter.”

Click to enlarge:  You can
barely make out Virginia since both
parties are so close to zero.
Compare to Wisc. and Nat'l.

In reviewing the Republican Party numerical data, I computed the Truth Index for ALL rulings ever done by PolitiFact Virginia to evaluate against the Republican’s anecdotal contention that the rulings “on average” favored the Democrats. Warren Fiske reported a very similar result to mine using a different scoring method which gave equal weight to the Truth-o-Meter categories. I used the scoring method delineated by Bill Adair for the Truth Index about a year ago, which more heavily weighted the negative rulings. But the result was approximately the same: the Republicans and Democrats were in a dead heat at PF Virginia. As an update, however, I started running overall stats for 2011 to current, as I have more detail for those records to make more interesting analyses. In charting PolitiFact by state, it was found that for 166 rulings done by PF Virginia since the start of 2011, there was still a dead heat, but the Republicans were trending to a very slight advantage over the Democrats. In other words, the very slight advantage the Democrats have in their overall score was accomplished in 2010, when PolitiFact Virginia first kicked off, and then it reversed to the Republicans' favor since that time. But it’s more of a “margin of error” variance, so it does not mean much.

The snippet to the left shows the Democrats in blue and the Republicans in red.  I will be publishing the complete chart in a later post.  The baseline is "zero" on the PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter, a rating of Half True.  Each line is 10 points on the Truth Index.  The Truth Index score was rounded for easier reading; in Virginia the Democrats were at a positive .78 while the Republicans were at a positive 1.56.  It should be noted that PolitiFacts Virginia and Wisconsin are the only two PolitiFact states to appear to favor the Republicans; all others have higher scores for the Democrats, as can be seen in the overall score at the right, where for 2,935 rulings, the Democrats are at a negative .81 and the Republicans are at negative 24.07.  (Perhaps the Virginia Republicans are looking in the wrong place for "bias" and this is something the Republican party should do on a national level.)

Nevertheless, White makes a brief admittance at the end of his post that the Virginia Republican Party’s paper was similar to his PolitiFact Bias blog: “… the report scores with the anecdotes and not much else.” He notes the last 32 pages of the 86-page opus were fluff, a simple listing of all the Republican rulings by PolitiFact Virginia. In other words, it’s right there in the same league as Eric Levine so aptly described: the Republican Party of Virginia report on PolitiFact is just one more Gish Gallop of anti-PolitiFact propaganda.

Postscript 7/24/2012:  I should also note that this puts a previous post on the weekday/weekend publishing of PolitiFact National in a different light.  It makes them look good from the aspect of the newpaper, but not so good from the aspect of on-line readers, in terms of a alleged "bias."

Tchotchkes: Sham Wow Healthcare

Brought to you by Mildly Relevant News from Cleveland, Ohio

(Plus help on tax cut addiction!)

Truth Index: Don't Rush Me

After publishing the first half PolitiFact (PF) ruling results, it’s come time for more breakdown of the detail, and as I accomplished that I came across an “amusing” error I had made: I accidentally classified Rush Limbaugh as a Democrat! Oh woes me! So that’s been fixed. He only had one Pants on Fire ruling for the first half of 2012, but it did slightly affect the Truth Index.

Here’s how it breaks down by “source”—starting with the President/VP, the congress, the governors, the states and local governments, as well as advocacy groups, PACs and the media, and includes the overall Truth Index (here's the one for first quarter of 2012). “Others” includes former officials, blogs, chain e-mails and websites. A new category has been added called “Candidates (other than President)” as we have more and more of them due to the beginning of the 2012 election campaign. All officials I’ve categorized are “sitting”: in the case of presidential (I’d say ex-presidential but I don’t want to incur the wrath of Ron Paul fans) candidates like Ron Paul and Rick Perry, they are included in the categories of their “sitting” positions, congressman and governor.

Click to enlarge:  Groups (PACs etc) have a far lower Truth Index (-43) than individuals (-12) .

The following is a further breakdown of the pie chart, showing Democrats and Republicans. As can be seen the “local” category is now almost exactly even between Democrats and Republicans, whereas for the first quarter I showed a Republican advantage. The difference in the “local” Truth Index you’ve seen in earlier posts (as far as number of rulings) is that the chart indicates local politicians only, but there are also local issues covered by almost every source category which was what my earlier posts were about.

Click to enlarge:  FIRST HALF 2012: Only 3 rulings on Democrat governors made for the lowest Truth Index.

The senators and governors having more positive rulings than the other positions seems to be holding. The senators’ longer terms and their proverbial meaning of being “the eldest and wisest” (although let’s remember the word senator is from the same root as “senile” ha ha!) may have something to do with their being more “truthier” when subjected to the Truth-o-Meter. I posted something earlier on the predominantly Republican governors as far as who was the lowest on the Truth Index (Scott Walker of Wisconsin) but relatively speaking as a group they are much more “truthier” than their political counterparts.  

Next up, PolitiFact states or maybe PolitiFact writers?

PolitiFact vs. FactCheck.Org: Healthcare

I don’t know if the Supreme Court upholding “Obamneycare” is going to make it any less worthy of fact-checking by PolitiFact (PF), but it’s apparent that although the law has not been that popular at the polls, the topic is a very popular one for fact-checking. In a way, I might not predict a Lie of the Year in as much as a Topic of the Year, which would be all the untruths and various exaggerations (or as fellow blogger Jon Perr calls them, killer lies) surrounding the ACA , its associated Medicare and Medicaid, as well as its overlap to other topics such as the economy, jobs, taxes, the deficit and even education (student loans).  I’ve sorted out a little over 70 PolitiFact rulings relating to it since the beginning of the year.

Here are a few things “ObamaScare” is allegedly going to do (according to Republicans):

• Kill jobs, 800,000 (actually predicted in 2011), or “across America”  including 1,000 medical device jobs in the Tennessee area

• Cause up to 20 to 30 million people to lose their health insurance, including seniors

• Raise taxes (raises 19 taxes and is largest tax increase in history of world)

• Slap Americans and/or small businesses with $500 billion in new taxes and penalties

• Cut $500 billion from Medicare to pay for it (or heck, just end Medicare)

• Cut student loan programs (or over-charge students) to help pay for it

• Add trillions to our national debt, or if repealed, save $95 billion (a year)

• And the usual, ever more claims about death panels and a government take-over;

• And the wackiest, a claim about an "Obamacare slush fund” for neutering pets? (by who else but Allen West [R-FL]).

A few (maybe one?) of the above were ruled Half True, the rest less, much less, most False or Pants on Fire. Click the link(s) to find out and read the details.  Some of these are covered below, which link to the findings of both PolitiFact and FactCheck.

And a pox on those who all somehow cast the “critical vote” on “Obamacare” or to supposedly cut $500 billion from Medicare for it:

• Florida Senator Bill Nelson (by U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 60-Plus Association and superPAC American Commitment)
• Ohio Congressional candidate Betty Sutton (by opponent Jim Renacci).   In all fairness, she accused him of something similar.
• Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown ( by the National Republican Senatorial Committee)
• Virginia Senatorial candidate Tim Kaine (by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and superPAC American Crossroads)

One of my most popular posts has been comparing PolitiFact rulings to fact-checks on the same topic by FactCheck.Org. So, back by popular demand, here is a compilation of 2012 fact-checks relating to “Obamneycare”—some of the repetitions included as well.

Statement	FactCheck	PolitiFact
Rush Limbaugh: "Obamacare is the largest tax increase in the history of the world."  (Also similarly stated by superPAC American Commitment)	"Despite all these uncertainties, one thing is abundantly clear.  There's no way the ACA's tax and other revenue increases come close to being the largest in U.S. history."	Pants on Fire:  "Limbaugh's inflated rhetoric takes a wrong claim and puts it into the realm of the ridiculous."
U.S. Chamber of Commerce:  "Obamacare will kill jobs and limit further job creation."	"At the end of last year we listed this overblown claim as one of the 'Whoppers of 2011' right up there with the Democratic counter-claim that Republicans were out to 'end' Medicare."	False:  The Chamber of Commerce has failed to prove that it will, and the best projections we've seen, based on how the law is actually written, do not suggest that the law will 'kill' jobs.
Tom Price (R-GA) House Republican Policy Committee Chairman:  "CBO projection estimates that the law [Obamacare] will cost $1.76 trillion over 10 years."	“The notion that the new CBO report shows costs doubling is wrong."	False:  "When you do the math correctly, the gross cost projection increased by less than 9 percent." MPR PoliGraph also found a similar claim by Kurt Bills (R-MN) Misleading.
Mitt Romney:  "Obamacare takes $500 billion out of Medicare and funds Obamacare." (or "steals it" according to Michele Bachmann in 2011).	“But that's not a slashing of the current Medicare budget, as viewers may be led to believe." (Here's FactCheck.Org's other review of the same.)	Half True:  "So while the health care law reduces the amount of future spending growth in Medicare, the law doesn't cut Medicare."
Crossroads GPS:  "Obamacare raises 18 different taxes."	"But that's dishonest nonsense.  Only a few of the tax changes in the new health care law will fall on families making under $250,000 a year..."	Mostly False:  "The Crossroads ad wrongly implies that people of modest means are getting hit with 18 tax increases because of the health care law."
Mitt Romney:  "Up to 20 million will lose insurance they like and want to keep."	“This is another exaggerated claim that we have written about before, most recently last month....The 20 million figure comes from a March 2012 CBO report, but critics of the health care law have misused it."	False:  "That number is cherry-picked, and he's wrong to describe it as only including people who 'like' their coverage, since many of those 20 million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options."
Rick Santorum / Paul Krugman:  "RomneyCare" was the blueprint for "ObamaCare."	"There are a number of similarities between the state and national plans, and there are several differences."	Mostly True:  "So it seems that there's broad agreement that, despite some operational differences, the broad structure of the Massachusetts health care plan is quite similar to that in the U.S. Senate bill."
Mitt Romney:  "Repealing Obamacare saves $95 billion a year."	"But that only accounts for spending in the law, not spending cuts and revenue-raising provisions that potentially save even more...That makes Romney's claim misleading and, at best, inflated.	False:  "Because of the revenue sources that the law established, repealing it actually adds significantly to the deficit over the long haul, according to the CBO."
Rick Santorum: "Americans 'over-whelmingly' oppose healthcare mandate." Mitt Romney: "Most Americans want to get rid of Obamacare.”	"So, Romney and others would be correct to say that some polls show most Americans -- or at least most voters -- favor repeal.  But not all polls."	Mostly True: Opinion on the health care law is more unfavorable than favorable, but not over-whelmingly...Objection to the individual mandate, however, is resounding."



Lil White Lies Extra: SIX Months--Where's the Beef?

Last February 8, with a follow up on May 17, I posted about a comment added at a blog called "Content In Reality" by my conservative counterpart with regard to a study he was working on:

…I've been busy conducting a study that objectively verifies PolitiFact's ideological bias. I've got all the information for the national operation collected and sorted, and I'm in the process of readying it for publication.

In March, a post at his Sublime Bloviations blogsite suggests this is what it was supposed to be about:

The first PolitiFact Bias research project will suggest that all "Pants on Fire" ratings are unfair and the result of a subjective determination by the responsible PolitiFact teams. [For example,] Pat Boone's statement was neither false nor ridiculously false in any non-subjective sense. It was at least somewhat accurate when considered objectively.

So, I’m still keeping track. It’s still not there. Not at either of his anti-PolitiFact propaganda blogs, not publicized to his "fans" at his PolitiFact Bias Facebook page. I know from my “stat counter” that he very likely has something worked up on Google docs. If he’s done it, he certainly hasn’t made it public.

Here’s a screenprint of the empty page of his blog where I would anticipate such a study would most likely be published. It’s not dated, so to prove the time of the screen snip, I included the blog archive which shows it’s at the seventh post for July (see yellow highlight arrow).

Lil White Lies Extra: Do The Hustle!

Well, around we go again. Let me start with the usual explanation. My conservative counterpart (based on this recent post) doesn’t appear to have heard/listened to/understood Eric Levine at his blog Content In Reality with whom he had a lengthy comment exchange early this year (although it certainly does not surprise me). As Levine carefully explained in regard to the allegation of selection bias by PolitiFact, PolitiFact Bias creates a straw man (note: the “article” referred to in the quote is from a PolitiFact Bias’ page where selection bias is the first issue noted warning readers not to trust PolitiFact):  (emphasis added)

To give them the most credit, it is possible there may be some liberal selection bias at work here, but not in the way they think. Politifact often gets ideas for statements to check from their readers. It is possible most of their readers are liberal, which sounds quite plausible given the fact that conservatives seem so ready to accuse Politifact of bias. This is no fault of Politifact, nor does it show any bias on their part. The fault lies squarely with Republicans who chose not to submit statements to Politifact and instead waste their time complaining about perceived bias (a vicious cycle). It should also be noted that the definition of Selection Bias is "A type of bias caused by choosing non-random data for statistical analysis." Well duh! The article itself mentions that Politifact Bill Adair noted "We choose to check things we are curious about. If we look at something and we think that an elected official or talk show host is wrong, then we will fact-check it." That right there should show that there is selection bias, though not liberal selection bias. However, the article intends to show that the bias is toward the left, instead of toward important statements. If the article was intended to merely accuse Politifact of selection bias, they would basically be attacking a straw man since the main goal of Politifact is not to tally true and false statements to figure out which candidates are more honest…

Levine also refers to the selection bias that writer Bryan White accuses PolitiFact of as “party-related” selection bias, while White makes no distinction. This is very important because Levine notes that in order to prove party-related selection bias, it would have to be shown that the entire crew of PolitiFact, including the three editors who “vote” in agreement on the Truth-o-Meter ruling, are liberal. On top of that, other fact-checkers, such as Washington Post’s FactChecker and FactCheck.Org, who may have made the same fact-checks and reached the same conclusions, would have to be liberal in the same way as well. So we have a good reason why White prefers to use the generic “selection bias” without informing his readers that there are different types, and what evidence is required to prove the type (party-related) he contends PolitiFact has. 

Keeping that in mind, it appears White may be using selection bias as a way to influence his readers to believe there’s a false choice (i.e., selection bias equates to only party-related selection bias for which PF is at fault for having no solution) because there is no way, as far as I know, for PolitiFact to “control” for such selection bias. As PolitiFact Editor in Chief Bill Adair has stated:  

It's fine if people want to use our report cards to compare the records of people we fact-check. But it's important to be accurate about what those report cards say and what they don't," Adair said. "The report cards provide a tally of the claims we chose to check. But it's not accurate to say the report cards indicate who ‘told the most lies.’ We are journalists who choose our fact-checks based on what is newsworthy. We are not social scientists and are not using any kind of random sample to select statements to check.

So, it’s been again re-hashed here as an intro for a post in response to White’s allegations of “truth hustling” by Chris Mooney, who wrote an article in something called the Desmogblog called “More Evidence that Republicans are more factually challenged” in which he re-verified an analysis of every fact-check by Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post Fact Checker, with a conclusion (somewhat similar to what I’ve done with the Truth Index) that based on the fact checks, Republicans tell more lies than Democrats, and he concludes with a query—“there has to be an explanation”(so, what is it?):

In my opinion, what they're telling us is that Republicans today are simply more untruthful than Democrats—and the difference is dramatic enough that even a centrist-leaning fact checker, who strives to be non-partisan, cannot fail to pick it up.

My conservative counterpart, of course, would have none of it; he presents his false dichotomy thusly:

If Kessler and the PolitiFact folks thought of themselves as partisan, maybe it would increase the chances they would institute controls on selection bias. Mooney's self-confessed reassurance is misplaced. In truth, the self-perception of bias is irrelevant. A properly done study controls for bias so that the point of view of the researcher is irrelevant. But Kessler and PolitiFact apparently do absolutely nothing to control for selection bias.

Bill Adair states above that he’s not a social scientist. White knows that “controls on selection bias” is an impossibility. But because he infers that the only selection bias “that exists” is party-related, the only conclusion that can be reached is that both Kessler and PolitiFact (and my reviews of FactCheck.Org indicate the same), until they institute such controls, are all suffering from liberal (party-related) selection bias, and therefore should not be trusted.

White’s conclusion, however, dances around with distortion and catches his pants on fire, to Mooney’s original query of why there has to be an explanation of why Democrats score as more truthful, emphasis added, link mine.

The answer to the question isn't that tough. The data are not designed to give us a dependable differential breakdown for the claims of Democrats against those of Republicans. No serious researcher would try to answer that question while relying on left-leaning journalists with no control for selection bias. But the data do have an obvious use. The data directly measure how fact checkers choose subject matter. Kessler and PolitiFact give us an excellent tool measuring their selection bias. Add to that the ratings each fact checker provides and we end up with data that can help us measure media bias.

I didn’t know he knew that everyone who worked at PolitiFact National, as well as Glenn Kessler, were “left-leaning journalists”. Where’s his evidence? Does he have copies of their voting records and political donations? Did any one of them work for Bernie Sanders or write for Current TV or even one of the MSNBC evening talk shows? If he thinks his targeting (mostly) Lou Jacobson through his “Grading PolitiFact” reviews is sufficient evidence of “left leaning”, he better think again. Weak, anecdotal write-ups by someone who’s admitted their own bias do almost nothing to prove PolitiFact journalists are liberal-leaning.

Tchotchkes: You're SO Bain

...You think that you can buy the Whitehouse!

Truth Index: Friday is Fact-Check Day!

In my last review of PolitiFact Detractors, I published a response to a very one-sided, gigantic opus of talking points put together by the Virginia Republican Party, about the various ways they thought PolitiFact (PF) Virginia was biased in the way it did its Truth-o-Meter rulings. One of their complaints was called the “Weekend Dump” where they wrote that “PolitiFact [was] More Likely To Dump Positive Republican Rulings Late On A Friday, Or Over The Course Of The Weekend, As Well As Save Negative Republican Rulings For Publication During The Week (Monday Through Thursday).” (Don’t Know Why They Have To Start Every Sentence With A Capital Letter But That's How I Copied It!)

All that was needed  was to add a new field for the day of the week in my data. I already had the publish date so it was a easy task. I found that yes, using PolitiFact's Truth Index as a measure, for PF Virginia, there were more positive rulings for Republicans on weekends, and they were more negative during the week, but it was essentially a similar theme for the Democrats, contrary to the anecdotal rulings the Virginia Republican Party pointed out, at least for the first six months of 2012.

Then I thought I’d take a look at PolitiFact National, because it occurred to me when the Virginia Republican Party said there were rulings "buried" in the Saturday Richmond Times-Dispatch, I thought they could be those of PolitiFact National, since very few rulings are ever published on Saturday (most are by PF Oregon).

It should be mentioned that when I did the final filter, I found that PolitiFact National did not publish rulings on Saturday or Sunday (at least thus far in 2012). So I had to assume everything “over the weekend” as what was published on Friday.

Click to enlarge:  Certainly looks like more negative Republican rulings during the week at PF National.

PolitiFact National did 191 rulings in the first half of 2012, 130 Republican and 61 Democrat. From Monday through Thursday it published 154 rulings, 105 on Republicans and 49 on Democrats, and the rest (37) on Friday (25 Republican and 12 Democrat). During the week the Democrats had rulings which averaged a positive Truth Index of 1.02, whereas the Republicans were much lower, at a Truth Index average NEGATIVE 47.6, with 17 Pants on Fire rulings (the Democrats had only 2). With the Friday rulings over the weekend, however, the Democrats dipped to a Truth Index of negative 8.3 and suddenly got very close to the Republicans Truth Index, which made a marked improvement from negative 47.6 to negative 10.

PolitiFact Detractors: Virginia Whine Drunk Deeply

Recently I did a post on what I believed to be right-wing bias by PolitiFact (PF) Wisconsin by looking at the timing—PolitiFact Wisconsin published very negative rulings on Democrats, and positive rulings (or nothing) on Republicans, in the period just before the June 5 recall election.

Well, PolitiFact (PF) Virginia’s detractors, in this case, the Republican Party of Virginia, published a massive tome in what they called an “Open letter to the Commonwealth of Virginia.” It can only be described as an 86-page collection of “sound bites/talking points” claiming something similar against PolitiFact Virginia as published by the Richmond Times Dispatch. I should say, it claimed A LOT of things.

The timing they claim is that PolitiFact Virginia buried Republican positive fact-checks in the weekend edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch when fewer people viewed the news and saved negative Republican fact-checks for during the week when more people would see them, and vice versa for Democrats.

Let me address each of the claims from the Virginia Republican Party before responding to that timing claim, the third item on this list.

1. PolitiFact Virginia “disproportionately” targets more Republicans. This was also addressed by the response to the Republican Party by PolitiFact Virginia writer Warren Fiske, but let’s review it with more specifics: 

According to Wikipedia page for Virginia “Of the state's 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans hold eight and Democrats hold three.” There are two Democratic U.S. Senators, but a Republican Governor (Bob McDonnell) and a Republican Lieutenant Governor (and Attorney General). And of course, Eric Cantor (R) is the House Majority Leader. The lower house of the Virginia General Assembly is 67% Republican. The upper house of the Virginia General Assembly is split 50/50 for forty Senators.

Counting all seats held, there are currently 98 positions held by Republicans and 57 positions held by Democrats in the state of Virginia. That means the Republicans hold 70 percent more positions.

Based on that percentage, you’d think PF Virginia would likely do more fact-checks on Republicans in a similar proportion. They’ve actually done less, about 50 percent more instead of 70 percent. So it can be argued that maybe PF Virginia doesn’t do enough on Republicans.

2. PolitiFact Virginia gives more negative rulings to Republicans.  In 2010, I posted a finding that PF Virginia actually favored the Republicans in what was then my version of the Truth Index, and tied that into the fact that the Richmond Times-Dispatch endorsed McCain in 2008 and Bush in 2004 (and that Eric Cantor’s wife was on the board of the company that owns it).

PolitiFact Detractors: WatchDog? More Like Watch-Mutt!

The latest in PolitiFact detracting, in this case  PolitiFact Ohio detracting, comes from something called Watchdog.Org which is part of “The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.” Of course, my conservative counterpart starts out his post with the Franklin Center’s honorable-sounding name as the sentence subject to give his post some false stature even though the Watchdog.Org website includes this disclaimer:

The Franklin Center is not responsible for the information that appears on the watchdog sites. The organization serves as a capacity builder and networking agent for independent, state-based journalists and organizations…”

Most of the PolitiFact-is-opinion-parading-as-fact series they’ve done, by two “journalists” Jon Cassidy and Will Swaim, consist of some very narrow interpretations of the ruling along with a lot of condescension toward PolitiFact….about adding numbers, understanding economics, finance, etc., as if the authors were some sort of experts themselves, for which there was pretty scant evidence. Usually only one link, to the PolitiFact ruling, was included in their “article.”

PolitiFact Bias, however, takes no notice of the excessive snark (their own name for it) and does their usual cheer leading routine: “Jon Cassidy blasts PolitiFact Ohio….” in one and “absolutely clobbers” them in another. I guess snark is okay by writers for the “Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity” when talking about PolitiFact, but a slight implication of it from PolitiFact is a seering indictment of bias.

In some of them, Swaim or Cassidy argue the difference between True and Mostly True. Now, to find something categorically false, or to argue the degree of falsity, is one thing, but the True to Mostly True or vice versa is sort of like arguing which horse is the best horse in the glue factory. I’m only going to cover a few of their criticisms here, but will include links to all of them. I liken some of the writing to my own: I consider myself an amateur at “journalism” because I have no education or training in it. In other words, Cassidy and Swaim aren’t very professional….well maybe professional hacks, you never know. They all start with the identical copy and paste intro:

PolitiFact Ohio practices opinion journalism under the guise of fact-checking. They often get things wrong — particularly, we’ve noticed, in their coverage of U.S. senate candidates Sherrod Brown (Democrat) and Josh Mandel (Republican). So we bring you PolitiFact or Fiction, a semi-regular review of pronouncements issued by PolitiFact Ohio, a blog run by staff at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and supported by Politifact.com.

They hit the ground running with their penchant for snark in the very first critique by Jon Cassidy, comparing two statements related to the same subject by Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate (State of Ohio Treasurer) running against Democrat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, with “Does anyone at Cleveland Plain Dealer understand finance?”   It's in the flimsyTrue-or-Mostly-True venue first mentioned.

Tchotchkes: Mildly Relevant News on PF Ohio

A Case for PF Wisconsin Right Wing Bias

While some try as best they can to prove that PolitiFact National has a left wing bias, there are a number of good reasons why it most likely doesn’t exist at national level.

1. The selection bias allegation is assumed to be only a party-related bias, contrary to PolitiFact’s repeated claim that is a newsworthy bias, and that ALL PolitiFact National writers/researchers/editors are liberal (and have dispensed with journalistic training in objectivity), for which one of its most vocal critics has provided NO evidence except for his own opinions of an anecdotal review of its rulings,  tainted with his own admitted conservative bias.

2. That other fact checkers, such as FactCheck.Org and the Washington Post FactChecker, check many of the same claims and (about 99% of the time) make similar findings, so therefore, it would have to be proven they are liberally biased as well in reaching the same conclusions.

3. There appears to be no obvious agenda cited by the critics except the sweeping generalization of selecting only statements favorable to Democrats and not favorable to Republicans.

IN WISCONSIN, however, using the above three points, there’s a very compelling situation which makes a good case for Republican (or right-wing) selection bias: .

1. A limited number of writers (they could be biased—but again, there’s no evidence they are, but it seems it would be less possible where there are more than just a few writers, as at PolitiFact (PF) National).  As to the question "who checks the fact-checkers" PolitiFact Wisconsin Senior Editor Greg Borowski could only say "all of our sources are listed and linked.  So check away."  But is having sources listed sufficient?

2. No one else fact-checking same claims because they are local to Wisconsin. .

3. An obvious agenda (the recall election) reflected by a Pants on Fire on the Democrat contender for governor on the eve of the election, with no claims checked on the Republican, and a few days before, particularly June 1, claims reported rated much more positively for Republicans.

4. And I’ve already noted that Republican-leaning news organizations in the PolitiFact domain tend to have truth indexes which favor the Republicans more. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which sponsors PolitiFact Wisconsin, is a somewhat mixed publication in its endorsements: it endorsed Walker, but also endorsed Obama in 2008 and did not endorse either Bush or Kerry in 2004.

5. Individual Truth Index trends: Prior to the 3 month period before the June 5 Recall, Scott Walker’s Truth Index was a negative 43, while in that three month period it improved modestly to a negative 21. Tom Barrett’s Truth Index up until that three month period was a negative 9. In the three months prior to the Recall, it plummeted to a negative 62. Mind you, this was for only eight fact-checks.

Tchotchkes: Victims of ObamaCare!

Tchotchkes: Supreme Courting! Pun Intended?

Absurdity Today with Julianna Forlano

Sidebar: Christmas in July

I did not read the full SCOTUS Opinion issued June 28 on “Obamacare”; I read most of the dissent to see what the four conservative justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy had to say. Most of it was about the narrow interpretation that the consequence for not getting health insurance was a penalty (in lieu of a tax), and in their view the congress could not compel commerce (to purchase insurance) through this penalty. But I came across a most interesting analogy that provides a fantastic example of how my conservative counterpart operates, both in his critiques of PolitiFact rulings as well as his commenting style on the PolitiFact Facebook page.

 The “Obamacare dissenters” described why the entire healthcare law needed to be struck down: it was because it had lost its heart with their invalidation of the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. They compared it to a Christmas tree: the tree itself was the mandate and the Medicaid expansion, while all the other requirements laid down by the massive ACA bill were merely ornaments on the tree, and that without the tree, the ornaments were now useless.

This perfectly describes the manner in which he argues: he cleverly ignores the tree, the foundation, while arguing incessantly about one of the ornaments. You take that ornament off, yet the tree is still there, but White thinks because he’s successfully (in his mind) reasoned that since the ornament should come off, the tree should be ignored.

He argues that PolitiFact deserves a False because Obama did not describe the wage gap for women correctly, but there’s still a wage gap. He argues that PolitiFact misses specifics of a fantasy Paul Ryan budget proposal but ignores that, as I explained, that budget might as well be made of green cheese. He argues that PolitiFact failed to recognize that Obama’s spending gets a false lift from “negative spending” (later shown to only have been recorded once) though the spending was the result of factors for the most part out of Obama’s control. He argues about felons and non-citizens voting in Florida, when it’s really about those who should be able to vote getting kicked off the voter roll (as one Republican congressperson from Pennsylvania recently proudly admitted).

So, to that end, I have decided to graphically present this (deliberate) error in thinking each time it occurs: with a “White” Christmas ornament. What better way to show that removing that White ornament leaves the tree still standing; the tree White wants you to pretend not to see.

Lil White Lies Extra: Hopelessly De-Voted

Early in June, as I was about to take an intermission from my blog, I received some commentary from my conservative counterpart, lambasting a recent Lil White Lies post on his criticism of a PolitiFact ruling concerning shark attacks and voting fraud in Florida.

I decided not to waste my time with him and deleted his comment; I also felt it was a bit of a threat—basically the sort of argument by intimidation he commonly uses.

Customized for Lil White Lies

He intimated that I had better recant and delete the post called “Jumping the Shark” because it contained such grievous errors...about which, of course, he would elaborate no further. I refused to take the bait….well, until now—and no, I didn’t withdraw the post: it remains intact and unedited. At the time, however, I couldn’t waste time with his never-ending Gish Gallup (thank you, Eric Levine) of why he is the conservative cartel of truth and why anything a liberal says (or I should say, anyone who disagrees with him) doesn’t know what they’re talking about and must be condescended. And if you won’t buy into his bogus quality, he’s then going to resort to quantity. Until he wears you out.

After the threat of whatever error I made ruining my blogging career, he then followed with how "all you liberals have to censor my comments”….an accusation of cowardice (more argument by intimidation), basically. Well, yea, this is my blog and I’m not obligated to publish everyone’s comments….some blogs don’t allow any comments. I didn’t feel like publishing his. He can call me whatever, if I don’t want to publish them, I don’t have to.  Conservatives like to go on and on about freedom, but somehow I don't have the freedom to delete a comment.

So he then posted something to replace those comments at his “Bad Blogs Blood” blog, which I’ve previously described as a poorly formatted, sporadically posted, minutely viewed blog used to supplement his “master blog” for criticism where he wants to give his victim the least web “airtime” possible, to create a class below Slimey Bloviations for blogs that he doesn’t agree with.

But let’s get to the gist of his criticism:

In my original post I pointed to evidence from the Miami Herald that thousands of felons may have voted in the 2000 election. That's the Bush/Gore election. It was illegal at that time for felons to vote in Florida. No question about it. As for my follow up post about the television news story, that wasn't about felons at all. It was about non-citizens voting. Non-citizens aren't allowed to vote whether felons or not.

The way in which I do Lil White Lie posts needs to be explained first. I copy/paste the Grading PolitiFact piece to a Word document, along with the link. That way I only have to go to the Slimey Bloviations blogsite one time. That way I can refer to it as much as I want on one page, and can directly, easily copy whatever White has written if a quotation is needed.

So, since White is complaining that his post was not about felons but about non-citizens, I searched the post first for the word felons…it appears six times, here’s where it appears four times, and you can tell this is what the post was about: (italics added)

The fallacy in PolitiFact's reasoning comes easily to light.

For most of Florida's history as part of the United States it has prohibited voting by felons. Every time a felon votes illegally, it constitutes a case of voter fraud--albeit not the phony representation of "case" settled on by the fact checkers.

Most often nothing can be done to prosecute a case of voter fraud against a felon who votes illegally even though it happens with some regularity. The Miami Herald, for example, reported the following in the wake of its investigations of the 2000 presidential election:

At least 445 Florida felons voted illegally on Nov. 7, casting another cloud over a disputed presidential election already mired in legal challenges, a Herald investigation has found.

So how about “illegal immigrants” or “non-citizens”? The word immigrant could not be found. The word “non-citizen”—the word which White says this post was premised on and that through “fallacious impetus” I missed it, only appeared in a very brief addendum as an update to his “concrete examples” listing the types of voter fraud: “A Florida television station airs a story documenting approximately 100 non-citizens registered to vote in Florida, at least some of whom voted in past elections.”

That was it. I never read whatever follow up story he had after this Grading PolitiFact review. Although he may later have added a link, my copy/paste would have brought it over to my Word document, but it didn’t. My review was based on his original review, as well it should have been, not what he decided to add later about non-citizens.