Lil White Lies: Closing Arguments

His position also contradicts the Republicans’ position of opposing President Obama’s auto rescue.  --Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon

Another politi-flubbed Politi-Flub post from Sublime Bloviations concerns the fact-checking of Paul Ryan’s statement about the Janesville, Wisconsin GM Plant relating to (prior to) his acceptance speech before the RNC in Tampa, Florida. Even though other fact-checkers have weighed in with similar conclusions (except for certain PolitiFact detractors ), writer Bryan White says “PolitiFact has earned its status as the least-dependable of the stable of left-leaning fact check organizations.” He makes his case starting with his interpretation of a speech that Obama made in February, 2008 at the Janesville plant itself. He writes that it means there was, in fact, “a pledge from the president to work to enact policies to keep the plant open.” Here’s the key excerpt from Obama: 

And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years. The question is not whether a clean energy economy is in our future, it’s where it will thrive. I want it to thrive right here in the United States of America; right here in Wisconsin; and that’s the future I’ll fight for as your President.

It should also be noted, and I display a screen-snip at the bottom of this post just in case he fixes it and denies he did it, that the speech was not made by President-elect Obama in December 2008, but by then Senator Obama on February 13, 2008. A Sublimely Bloviating -Flub, perhaps to give an appearance that Obama made these remarks with the knowledge of the plant closing. But to continue, if White had looked at the previous two paragraphs of Obama’s statement, he would find that in context, Obama wasn’t talking about “policies to keep the plant open."  Not just because the closure wasn't even announced until several months later.  He was talking about how energy policy could produce new jobs, best described in an article by Whet Mozer in Chicago Magazine:

In context, Obama wasn't speaking so much about the auto bailout (which was just gearing up) as the idea that clean-energy investment could allow Janesville to remake its industrial sector, as made clear by the two previous paragraphs:

"I believe that we can create millions of those jobs around a clean, renewable energy future. A few hours northeast of here is the city of Manitowoc [MAN-a-ta-WOC]. For over a century, it was the home of Mirro manufacturing – a company that provided thousands of jobs and plenty of business. In 2003, Mirro closed its doors for good after losing thousands of jobs to Mexico.

But in the last few years, something extraordinary has happened. Thanks to the leadership of Governor Doyle and Mayor Kevin Crawford, Manitowoc has re-trained its workers and attracted new businesses and new jobs. Orion Energy Systems works with companies to reduce their electricity use and carbon emissions. And Tower Tech is now making wind turbines that are being sold all over the world. Hundreds of people have found new work, and unemployment has been cut in half."

It wasn't a promise to keep the factory making cars; it was an expressed belief that a sweeping energy policy could give the town the resources to produce something else, like passenger rail cars.

This fits with the fact the plant was still operating at the time Obama was there.  Unless Obama knew the plant was going to close, what's the purpose of promising to keep it open?  So White could only expect PolitiFact Wisconsin to “locate such a pledge” given his construed-without-context, untimely,  biased interpretation.     Which means they wouldn’t find it, since there's no such thing.  

Next up, and in more heated discussion, there’s the question of “when is the plant closed”? If you read Politifact’s ruling, it’s very important to note that Kertscher wrote that the plant was effectively shut down on December 23, 2008, in the planning for many months.  The conservative crowd, of course, says Janesville didn’t shut down in December of 2008, but in April of 2009, when Obama was president. Basically it ceased regular production (see photo above). In the ensuing few months, it had 57 workers completing a contract order from Isuzu for a vehicle called the NPR W series . The conservative websites say it was still producing (what’s termed at GM “medium duty”) “trucks” but they were actually commercial forward cabs, produced at a miniscule rate compared to the regular production (44 jobs per hour versus 2). Nevertheless, in December 2008, the plant was largely idled except for the special order for Isuzu; and it has been on “standby” ever since as again described by Whet Mozer of Chicago Magazine:

Lil White Lies: Return to Sender

It gets a little tiresome seeing “Grading” PolitiFact (PF) repeatedly engage in partial reporting on its reviews of PolitiFact. Or I should say, it accuses them of doing the same thing it does, the reason I’m starting this review with its very words.

In this ruling Obama campaign spokesperson Stephanie Cutter said that Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan included the same cuts as the ones Obama is making. PolitiFact’s Angie Drobnic Holan writes that she is rating Cutter on "whether Cutter is correct that Ryan relies on those same reductions in his budget."

She finds her claim True because in an interview with George Stephanopoulos Ryan agrees: "Well, our budget keeps that money for Medicare to extend its solvency. What Obamacare does is it takes that money from Medicare to spend on Obamacare. ..." So Grading PolitiFact concludes:

Sorry, but that's not a fact check and it's very misleading. PolitiFact is seizing on an ambiguity from Ryan and insisting that it perfectly dovetails with Cutter's claim. A real fact check would verify from the text of Ryan's budget that the savings have the same origin as those projected by the CBO for the health care reform law. This fact check doesn't do that at all. Ryan's budget is neither listed among the sources on the sidebar nor linked in the text of the story.

First off, there’s a lot of other sources confirming Cutter’s remarks indirectly, such as the New York Times:  (emphasis mine)

Mitt Romney’s promise to restore $716 billion that he says President Obama “robbed” from Medicare has some health care experts puzzled, and not just because his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, included the same savings in his House budgets.

Or, FactCheck.Org: (emphasis mine)

The Romney campaign told us that the “Romney-Ryan plan” is Ryan’s latest Medicare plan, except it would not include any of those $716 billion cuts that were in the Affordable Care Act. Ryan’s plan did include the majority of those cuts, and overall, Ryan estimated his plan would lead to greater Medicare cuts/savings than the president’s.

Or ABC News, which stated its information on the Ryan-Obamacare cuts came from the Kaiser Family Foundation: (emphasis mine)

Voters might be left with the impression that Romney and Ryan have both opposed the cuts. The truth is that Ryan himself endorses them in his signature budget plan – the same plan Romney has said he would sign as president if it reached his desk.

Those Medicare savings -achieved through reduced provider reimbursements and curbed waste, fraud and abuse, not benefit cuts – appear in the House Republicans’ FY 2013 budget, which Ryan authored.

His plan would in part repeal the entirety of the Affordable Care Act — except the reductions in Medicare spending now at the center of debate, according to analysts with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

Or NBC News, linked in the ruling’s source list:  (emphasis mine)

The Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – does cut the growth of Medicare by $700 billion over 10 years. But benefits to seniors actually increase under Obamacare, which reduces payments to providers in exchange for more people covered by insurance. What’s more, the Ryan plan – approved by the House – cuts Medicare spending every bit as much as Obamacare does. In fact, it incorporates the very same budget projections, even as it repeals Obamacare. That’s what you call having it both ways.

Faced with questions about Ryan's support for these cuts, the Romney campaign clarified its position Monday evening and disagreed with those cuts.

White cites an article by Dave Weigel of Slate, which he says belies PolitiFact’s argument as to how the "cuts" are to be achieved:

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: And The Thieves Just Keep Shouting Robber

Turd Blossom Karl Rove stinks up the television air waves with his PAC’s recent anti-Obama ad:

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Over three years with crushing unemployment. American manufacturing shrinking again. President (Barack) Obama’s plan: Spend more. He’s added $4 billion in debt every day. The economy is slowing but our debt keeps growing. Tell him for real job growth cut the debt.

I had a comment submitted on this blog recently (about my antagonists) which sums this statement up: This is like a child who’s killed his parents asking for the court to give him mercy because he is an orphan.  This is also another case of pot, meet kettle. PolitiFact Florida rated this claim Half True:

Crossroads GPS has its math correct what it says that Obama has "added $4 billion in debt every day." But the ad suggests that Obama is solely to blame. That’s not true, because other factors -- including the struggling economy he inherited and decisions made before he took office -- contributed to that debt. We rate this claim Half True.

PolitiFact Florida’s Amy Sherman bases her conclusion on interviews with “three experts on the federal budget” who are diversified In their political leanings.

Burtless said that most of the debt added under Obama would have happened even if he followed the tax and spending policies in effect when he took office. But Obama embraced policies that increased the public debt -- including signing the stimulus package and agreeing to other measures that held down taxes and increased unemployment benefits.

First, it needs to be said that austerity (cutting debt) will not result in job growth; this is almost an economy 101 axiom, and is being borne out in Europe today. And the empirical evidence of Bush’s tenure shows that cutting taxes does not create jobs either. Even with cuts, taxes must be raised to (try to) balance the budget. And the Republican congress, if it continues in power, and it likely will following the elections, are not going to allow this to happen.

This is not an either/or proposition: debt must be cut and revenue must be raised. For those reasons, for Obama to do what Karl Rove demands is mathematically impossible. It’s even more mathematically impossible in the hazily worded budgets proposed by Mitt Romney.

Nevertheless, PolitiFact puts the onus squarely on presidential policies. The New York Times published this graphical depiction of what makes up the debt due to presidential policies, and Obama got assigned his share:

Click to enlarge:  Even adjusting for "TARP paybacks" Obama's way below $4B per day.

As Jon Perr of Perrspectives so aptly interprets this chart for the Bush side:

Tchotchkes: Mitt Romney The Musical

Mock the Dummies is back!

PolitiFact Detractors: Prediction Fulfilled (Part 1?)

About 1:21 p.m. yesterday, PolitiFact Bias published the same photo of Bill Adair in his office from the Nieman Journalism Lab article as written by Andrew Phelps, and yes, he did just as predicted in my last post (posted 10:32 a.m., or about 3 hours earlier) although patting himself on the back not in the way I had thought (although he left the door open to do so).

PolitiFact Bias’ Bryan White felt the insufficient exchange Phelps included between Amy Hollyfield, Bill Adair and Lou Jacobson was enough evidence to prove the “lack of objectivity” in deciding a Pants on Fire, as “hypothesized” in his “initial research study.” A highly limited conversation, with no other context, on ONE SINGLE ruling, to conclude an institutionalized dynamic liberal bias was afoot.

In terms of “objectivity” the review by Lou Jacobson which suggested a methodical, objective approach to determining the final ruling was totally ignored by White: 

• Is the claim literally true?
• Is the claim open to interpretation? Is there another way to read the claim?
• Does the speaker prove the claim to be true?
• Did we check to see how we handled similar claims in the past?

More than that, for all we know, the PolitiFact crew may have other objective point-by-point lists to guide them as to how to classify a ruling—and it could be when the claim does not meet all points, a meeting is called to decide; otherwise, it’s a no-brainer. And it’s more than possible Phelps didn’t get into that detail because it was “too much information” for his article.

That’s why I said in my first post on this that Bill Adair was setting White up. He thought it would be amusing to feed White’s false narrative, and White ate it all up:

Andrew Phelps of the Nieman Journalism Lab recently sat in on PolitiFact's formerly private deliberations and produces much the picture I have come to expect (pun not intended) during my years of increasing skepticism….The fact checkers doubtless assure themselves of their neutrality as nearby two-dimensional cardboard Obamas smile approvingly at their work….All credit to Jeff for spotting the President Obama cardboard figure in Adair's office that turns the statement about staffers' voting history into an absolute howler….But don't get the idea that Adair is biased or anything. 

White is also implying that, by saying “Obamas” (plural), all the PolitiFact crew have his image smiling at their work as part of his spin. I’m assuming this one was in Adair’s Washington office. So, does he know if Angie Drobnic-Holan has one down in Miami, or Lou and Amy have one in Tampa?

One of the concluding paragraphs of the Neiman article is very telling:

Unlike The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who awards Pinocchios for lies, or PolitiFact, which rates claims on a Truth-O-Meter, Jackson’s FactCheck.org doesn’t reduce its findings to a simple measurement. “I think you are telling people we can tell the difference between something that is 45 percent true and 57 percent true — and some negative number,” he said, referring to Pants on Fire. “There isn’t any scientific objective way to measure the degree of mendacity to any particular statement.”

So, White has his answer right there. Maybe the real problem is he knows there’s no scientific, objective way to measure it—that’s why he pretends to demand it. Just as he pretends to demand that PolitiFact find a way to control for selection bias, knowing there’s no way for professional journalists in an environment where the demand is for “newsworthiness” can do it. He even demands they publish their bias as a disclaimer, as if they were begging for the cardboard Obama's approval. He demands the impossible so he can falsely claim failure on the part of PolitiFact.

The only part of my prophecy “fulfilled” was that PolitiFact Bias would make a lot of hay from the cut-out of Obama; as PolitiFact Bias “mines” this article as it says it’s going to, I expect some of my other points will be repeated. More to come.

PolitiFact Detractors: So Simply Irresistably Predictable!

When PolitiFact posted an article from the Neiman Journalism Lab, a report on a sort of PolitiFact 2-Day Reality Show, it included the photo below, I couldn’t help but see what my conservative counterpart might do with it. Here’s my prediction: Bryan White now “thinks” he has some new evidence on which to base his claim that Bill Adair, the head of PolitiFact, must be liberally biased. Here’s my educated guess:

Yep, Adair's liberally biased!

That photo of Adair (right ) has an Obama cardboard likeness behind him, so Adair must therefore support Obama. Plus it appears Adair has given him a swag PolitiFact baseball cap. Not slung over Obama's head misshapenly, but to represent a "gift" from PolitiFact.

In the interview Adair says part of his inspiration to create PolitiFact came from when former Senator (formerly Democratic) Zell Miller “turned on” John Kerry at the Republican National Convention in 2004 and presented a highly misleading message of Kerry’s Viet Nam service—“...I didn't do anything about it,” said Adair. So, he wants to help the Democrats, then!

And this entire matter of  "adding more structure" to discerning a Pants on Fire in response to criticisms—it must be that Adair either read White's pseudo-research paper…or it relates to that PolitiFact Virginia debacle. Either way, White’s blog must surely be making Adair nervous.

To which I say—I think Adair is setting White up. (LOL)

The reality is that cardboard cutout tells us nothing about Adair’s political affiliation or “voting history.”  This is reasoning akin to saying those journalists who attend the annual Whitehouse Correspondence Dinner are Democrats because Obama is there--many of the same people were in attendance when Bush was president, does that mean they were Republicans back then?  Obama has been president almost four years,  so I’m guessing someone gave the cut-out to him as a joke. The cap slung over it shows the humor of it.

Note:  I composed the above on Tuesday, August 21. Unfortunately, I did not post it in time to prove my prediction correct, because White had this post on Facebook the morning of August 22:

Really?  Fellow conspiracy theorist Dyberg had to point that out?  Yea, right.  We'll wait and see what he does on one of this blogs.

Lil White (Un)Lies: Ineffective Tax Rates Part 2

Actually this could be called Part Three of a Lil White Lies post on a Sublime Bloviations/PolitiFact Bias cross-post of two critiques, on the way PolitiFact makes use of “effective tax rates” in its rulings. The first part, however, had to do with one fact-check to another, so I made that a separate post. Both of these have to deal with those effective tax rates.

Author Bryan White claims that PolitiFact has shown a “persistent pattern of ignoring and/or minimizing data on effective federal tax rates, including a study by the otherwise esteemed Congressional Budget Office.” So, do they? Well, it depends.

Carried Away with Carried Interest. Let's first take a look at the payroll tax, where one half is paid by the employee and the other is paid by the employer, for herein lies the "rub." For effective tax rate purposes, the half paid by the employer is usually shown as part of the employee’s tax burden, because supposedly their income would be increased if they did not have this tax. I realize there’s currently a payroll tax holiday of 2 percent, but we know that’s going to have to end sooner or later. The total tax for Social Security and Medicare is 15.3 percent, and that is taxed on all income from the get-go. The carried interest rate is the capital gains rate of 15 percent on taxable income—that’s income after deductions. So it could be said that if you’re not an investor, you’re saddled with pay roll taxes at a slightly higher rate than the carried interest. But there’s more-- the carried interest person is “done” at this point—they owe no more. You still have to pay federal income taxes. That’s why Warren Buffett calls payroll taxes "heavy."

So with that in mind, when Buffett talked about his secretary and Sherrod Brown talked about sheet metal workers and teachers in Cleveland (although I have a few misgivings about that one, explained below), they were comparing capital gains/carried interest tax rates versus middle class straight compensation tax rates. For the middle class (in 2011) it’s 10 percent up to $8,500, 15 percent up to 34,500, then 25 percent (single--double that for married filing joint). When it gets to the top rate of 35 percent it’s not “middle class” anymore. But compare that 25 percent to the 15 percent flat rate for capital gains and carried interest, and then think about the payroll taxes already paid. It should be obvious the investors pay far less in income taxes.

Where a statement used “hedge fund managers” or implied carried interest/capital gains (as Buffett did when he said “investors”) PolitiFact writers seemed to keep that in mind, awarding Buffett and Sherrod a “True.”

Historically Taxing.  White’s beloved overall effective tax rate which includes corporate tax rates was used in comparing taxes paid historically, as in two rulings about rates in the 1950’s compared to now, from Obama and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. It was also used (the CBO reports to which he refers) in a ruling on a statement by Timothy Geitner. He was ruled Half True because his statement was a combined one: he said “For people in the top 1% of income, ‘your effective tax burden is in the low 20's, the lowest it's been in decades’ (effective tax rates = True) ...’lower than somebody who might make substantially less money’ “ (effective tax rates = False, because he’s NOT talking about carried interest/capital gains).

Click to enlarge:  This graph from the Piketty/Saez tax rate report shows how rates have changed at the top over the years.

Call Me Maybe. When the context of the statement isn’t clear—where it may be referring to investors as well as those compensated ( both types in one income group), PolitiFact generally equivocates to Half True. Obama’s statement about Mitt Romney's 14% tax rate being lower than most other Americans , or when he stated that a construction worker who made $50,000 shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than someone making $50 million a year, were both rated Half True. However, in a similar comment made a few days before the one about the construction worker, Obama said “somebody who's making $50 million a year in the financial markets should be paying 15 percent on their taxes when a teacher making $50,000 a year is paying a higher rate” which is clearly about carried interest/capital gains, and probably would have garnered Obama a higher ruling. But Obama was not that specific in the statement PolitiFact decided to rate.

Lil White Lies: Ineffective Tax Rates Part 1

Trying to determine a link gone bad at PolitiFact, I came across an interesting article in defense of Mitt Romney’s 13.9% tax rate from the Tax Foundation, one of PolitiFact’s oft-used sources. An article by William McBride is headlined “At least 90 Percent of Americans Have a Lower Income Tax Rate than Romney” complete with a large pie chart depicting by slice the range of rates Americans pay. Between this and another article disputing it from a website called “Just Facts” it would seem PolitiFact might rethink its position on a ruling of “Half True” for Obama stating that most people pay more taxes than Mitt Romney.

But there’s a lot of argument about what rate is being talked about, because it would appear that the Tax Foundation article concerns itself with federal income taxes only. And for that part, PolitiFact’s ruling was in agreement. However, it wasn’t in agreement when the payroll taxes were included. An article at Factcheck.org essentially said the same thing: “it depends.”

My conservative counterpart (in two posts) argues that if payroll taxes are included, so should corporate and excise taxes, as part of an overall effective rate. The corporate tax rate appears to be something, however, that all the fact-checkers seem to avoid, for a lot of good reasons. As noted in one PolitiFact tax-related ruling:

The burden for some taxes, including corporate taxes, excise taxes and estate taxes, are hard to attribute to individual returns, so we’ll set those aside. But one federal tax is straightforward to throw into our calculations: payroll taxes.

And since the fact-check is on Romney’s individual return, corporate taxes were not included. It’s not a direct, out of pocket tax like the payroll tax. It’s what’s known as an “imputed” tax, and it’s very difficult to measure:

We will assume that the corporate income tax falls entirely on capital income and that all financial assets (and not only corporate stock) bear the tax equally. Auerbach (2006) summarizes the literature on the incidence of the corporate income tax and points out that there is still considerable uncertainty on the question because of the inherent difficulty in measuring empirically the economy-wide incidence of the corporate tax.

“Just Facts” (which I like to call “Just Cherry-Picked Facts” because they appear to be only about “facts” right-wingers love) insists that the corporate tax be “incorporated” into Romney’s effective income tax rate, but proposes three scenarios in how it might be computed, resulting in an “effective rate” of anywhere from 18 to 26 percent. In other words, it’s not very accurate, because we don’t know how to apply it.

Not only that, they may have determined the rate based on too much of Romney’s income.  According to an article in Daily Finance on Romney:  (emphasis mine)

Two Years and Counting

The last two years I've availed myself of my own self-appointed "job"--doing various analyses of the fact-checking website PolitiFact and sparring with one of its nastiest detractors.  It's been a lot of fun --my only "pay" is the sheer enjoyment.  Many many sincere thanks to those who have decided to follow me and those who have read some of my posts, even those who have decided to deride me--though they have been few.

I was not trained in journalism and my only most recent writing experience when I was working  was doing instructional presentations for a financial cost estimation system.  That's a far cry from this, but at least it's given me some mastery (I hope!) of putting together thoughts and information in a coherent fashion. 

Looking forward to even better Politi-Psy ahead!

Lil White Lies: Panic A Tax

Say we were three ambitious little kids who agree to contribute one third of our lemonade stand take to start the Big Lemonade Corporation. I had a really great traffic spot and made $900, but each of my buddies collected $300 each. So we had $500 total from the one third rate of contribution , $300 from me and $100 from each of my buddies. Of that $500, 60 percent was from me ($300) and theirs was 20 percent each ($100)…. In other words, I paid the same rate (one third) but it was a greater share (60%).

I don’t know how else to more simply explain this recent complaint at a cross-posted item at PolitiFact Bias and Sublime Bloviations, comparing a statement by Obama about tax rates with a statement last year by Michele Bachmann about tax share (as well as an insistence that PolitiFact is bound to use the "effective tax rate" he prefers).

Instead of reaching back to 2011 for apples to oranges, he needed only go to a recent PolitiFact Ohio ruling in March of Republican congressional candidate Jim Renacci, a ruling he may have dismissed since PolitiFact judged it to be True. Renacci said "The top 1 percent (of income earners) paid 36.7 percent (of the taxes). ... The top 50 percent pay 97.7 percent." We also need to put this in proper context, because he was talking about income taxes: as noted by the PolitiFact ruling “he was attempting to shoot down ‘a misconception on wage earners and income taxes paid,’ citing the percentage of the nation’s taxes paid in 2009 based on income levels.”

Previous to Renacci’s statement, PolitiFact had found four statements of the same order—income tax share—all True by Republicans Ron Cornilles, a congressional candidate, Texas Senator John Cornyn, Virginia congressman Eric Cantor and Georgia congressman Tom Graves.  Why didn't PolitFact Bias' Bryan White cite one of these (even though it was still apples to oranges)?  Perhaps because, Bachmann was found False, or as stated in the Cornyn ruling "...scoring points on tax policy depends on how you frame the issue."

And  Bachmann framed it incorrectly.  She was asked in an interview “shouldn’t the tax burden be equally shared.” To which she responded similarly to the others, only she (very clearly) said all taxes, not just income taxes, as was used in the rulings above.  Her ruling cross-referenced a claim made in 2009 by Nancy Pelosi—found False by PolitiFact-- that Bush's tax cuts for high earners "have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit."

This seems to be the difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to debating our tax policy: Republicans stress share while Democrats stress rates. By the way, Democrat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was called out False by PolitiFact for telling Wolf Blitzer on CNN that what he may have heard from one of these congressmen about the income tax share wasn’t true .

As far as White's complaint about "effective tax rates" ("that messy corporate and excise tax stuff") an extensive review of statements by Democrats on this topic as graded by PolitiFact did reveal some  incongruities and it's going to take another post all its own to reconcile them all, if that can be done. So while I'll say he may have a point, I won't be getting into it until later.

White needs to find a PolitiFact statement by a Republican on rate of taxation used in a similar context, particularly one rated “worse” for a Republican, where rates are compared between high and low income earners, or on an historical basis, not the share of taxes paid. The ruling evidence indicates that on income tax share, Republicans tend to emphasize that lower income earners don’t contribute a lot, which has been consistently rated True by PolitiFact.  Comparing the Obama ruling to  the one he chose of Bachmann didn't prove anything.

And don’t call PolitiFact overwhelmingly hypocritical when a decent apples-to-apples example of how PolitiFact rates Republicans differently than Democrats can’t be cited. Yes, PolitiFact is not perfectly consistent (and neither is White, obviously!), but it doesn’t prove any liberal bias.

Truth Index: The *Sweet* Sixteen

PolitiFact’s adding the percentages to the Truth-o-Meter tally on its website made me realize that when it came to individual rankings, I was wasting my time with my spreadsheets. I could do the individual tally “real time” as long as I knew who had the most rulings…which for the most part isn’t too hard to figure out.

Those who ran and who are running for president, or are an official in a PolitiFact state, got the most rulings. John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are hardly ever subjected to the Truth-o-Meter these days, but they’ve had a bigger share of PolitiFact rulings overall than a lot of people making the news today because of the 2008 election campaigns. I suspect by election day,the newly selected Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan might get up there in number to make the list, especially with PolitiFact Wisconsin’s help, although he has a way to go.

There are sixteen individuals who’ve had at least 40 PolitiFact rulings, and they comprise a bit over 25% of all of them. Here they are in order of the highest Truth Index to the lowest, and congratulations Hillary—appearing more “truthful” doesn’t seem to correlate to “winning” or getting one more votes, does it?

They are more of the representative sample that should be used in any “testing” of the Truth-o-Meter as to “truthfulness” or that supposed bias, but I won’t get into that here.

For those interested, for the top 16, the Democrats comprised 35% of the rulings (yes, for Hillary, Obama and Joe Biden!). The Democrat Truth Index was a positive 15.5, compared with an almost zero (.22) for all Democrat rulings; the Republicans a negative 16.8, compared with a negative 23 overall. (AND for what it's worth, the percent of Pants on Fire measure was 1.92 in favor of the Democrats.)

Truth Index Extra: Who's On First

Since I do the PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index in a variety of ways as permitted by my data, I thought it might be interesting to use my conservative counterpart’s so-called “PoF” (Pants on Fire) bias factor in a way he may not have thought of. It seems to me he should have calculated this bias factor not for PolitiFact National as a whole but for its writers, to see if the results point to a person who may be “liberally biased” with "subjective" judgment more than the others. After all, for him it should not be what but who--PolitiFact National is 74% more likely to make a False ruling Pants on Fire for Republicans, according to him…well, then, who at PolitiFact National is more likely to relegate a Republican False ruling to Pants on Fire?

Since I've kept track of the PF ruling writers since the beginning of 2011, this chart represents 18 months of data up until June 30, 2012, the Falses and Pants on Fires from roughly 3,000 rulings. These totaled 790 rulings for Democrats and Republicans; here is a graph of the top ten writers representing a little over 55% of these 790 rulings, starting at 107 for Lou Jacobson down to 23 for PF Rhode Island’s C. Eugene Emery (on average about 44 False rulings each). They are arranged in order of “PoF Bias” lowest to highest.

Click to enlarge:  Only writers with 20 or more False/Pants on Fire rulings were included.

Aaron Sharockman (PolitiFact Florida) and W. Gardner Selby (PolitiFact Texas) never assigned a Pants on Fire to a Democrat during that period of time. I jury-rigged their scores because Excel doesn’t recognize zero divisors….by adding one to the calculated Republican and Democrat percentages . My suggestion to the PolitiFact Bias blog would be to take a look at their False rulings on Democrats to see if they are “fair” because if the vast majority of them are, he has a problem. Of course, he has a problem with the entire bogus formula he came up with, but that’s another discussion.

PolitiFact Georgia’s Willoughby Mariano should be PolitiFact Bias’ new little friend (or maybe a thorn in their side since she’s doing the opposite of what their formula is supposed to reveal). From 2011 through the end of June she was 78% more likely to assign Pants on Fire to a Democrat—almost the opposite of the percentage calculated for PF National. She also makes PolitiFact Georgia the most Republican friendly (in terms of the “PoF” factor), even though its overall Truth Index favors the Democrats. And to think she was actually a “co-winner of a National Headliner Award in investigative journalism for a 2002 series of stories about exploited workers at theme parks”—sounds like a bleeding heart liberal to me! Second to Mariano was PolitiFact Wisconsin’s Dave Umhoefer, who was 35% more likely to assign Pants on Fires to a Democrat.

Interestingly the chart points to the person who the anti-PolitiFact blog seems to have the most beef with as seen in its Grading PolitiFact critiques—Louis Jacobson. He’s the most frequent assigner of Pants on Fire to Republicans before Republicans-only Sharockman and Selby. I also looked at Angie Drobnic Holan in terms of National versus Florida for the Pants on Fire assignment to Republicans. Unfortunately, there were only 11 done for PF Florida and ALL Pants on Fire went to Republicans at a rate of 36%; in the case of National she was 48% more likely to assign a Pants on Fire to a Republican. For Sharockman, who as noted never assigned a Pants on Fire to a Democrat, he was almost twice as likely to assign a Pants on Fire for National as he was for PF Florida (40% versus 21.1%).

Tchotchkes: Papa John's Doesn't Deliver

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Tricky Mitt

The Merriam-Webster web page for the definition of “trick” includes a “synonym discussion” at the bottom of the page. There it lays out different forms of the word trick as a maneuver which“suggests adroit and skillful avoidance of difficulty < last-minute maneuvers to avert bankruptcy>."

So, let’s replace the “avert bankruptcy” with “avoid paying taxes” and you can see why PolitiFact’s calling a recent claim by Obama describing Romney’s carried interest maneuvers as “tax tricks” isn’t quite as “Mostly False” as its ruling portrays.

Obama never said Romney was doing anything illegal. Tricks may imply deception, but, as described in the definition, they are often to a harmless end. Romney may have avoided millions in taxes, but this is supposed to encourage entrepreneurship.

I would not call itemized deductions for property taxes and mortgage interest “tricks” because they are commonly used, available to everyone who owns a home, and transparent. “Carried interest” however is a complicated strategy, for only the extremely wealthy, that must be explained, often in the “fine print” of management agreements. Its “trickiness” derives from its complexity.

It should also be noted that getting rid of the carried interest “trick” (and taxing carried interest at higher ordinary income rates instead of at the  lower capital gains rate) was on Obama’s promise list, and it is considered “stalled.” There, it is termed a “tax loophole”, which is defined by Wikipedia is a “an ambiguity in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the intent, implied or explicitly stated, of the system.”  Circumvent?  Avoid the intent of the system? Sounds like a "tax trick" to me.

There’s also an underlying argument here with regard to Mitt’s not disclosing previous tax returns (which exacerbate the “trick” because they also imply some deception) and all the money he stashes in  those offshore accounts,  in order, of course, to avoid taxes, which PolitiFact has found to be, in two cases, True. This tends to makes the trickiness factor of Mitt’s tax maneuvers inconclusively Half True—partially accurate but leaving out important details, not really misleading as would be the case of a Mostly False. 

Even the ruling admitted that some of the tax experts they (writers Jon Greenberg and Louis Jacobson) consulted thought that "Obama's use of the word 'trick' is fair."  Fair enough.  "Mostly False" is a little too harsh.

Bain Jobless Saved by RomneyCare?

Mildly Relevant News with Joe Baur

Sidebar: Oops, They Said It Again

A statement about “Obamacare” which appears to have been started by Governor Rick Scott of Florida back in 2011 began to come up as a GOP standard talking point in 2012, re-gaining traction when Rush Limbaugh used it on his radio show (following the Supreme Court’s ruling on its constitutionality)—that the new healthcare law was bringing about the largest tax hike in the world…in the United States…on the middle class.  Or some variation on that theme.

As I worked on this post, which was initially going to be a prediction that this statement would definitely be on the “short list” of finalists for PolitiFact Lie of the Year (PLOTY),  if not the PLOTY, the so-called “Pants on Fire” factor was devised by my conservative counterpart, in a research paper where he was trying to find an “objective” way to determine the "subjectivity” of classifying a False statement (an “inaccurate” claim) Pants on Fire (“ridiculously so”). But he hardly had any theories to put forward (well, ignoring all possibilities so he could claim his usual "PolitiFact liberal bias") while Eric Levine of the blog Content in Reality did, in a post entitled “PolitiFact Bias Still Making the Same Mistakes” after reading the PolitiFact Bias research paper:

Not all false claims are lies. Most false claims can probably be explained by ignorance. However, a repeatedly debunked claim could spark a shift for some claims from “False” to “Pants on Fire.” The more likely you are to repeat an already debunked claim, the more likely your refusal to accept the debunking may constitute ridiculous lying. As can be seen, Bryan's justification fails to dismiss the possibility that Republicans lie more often.

The possibility of repeating “an already debunked claim” obviously raises PolitiFact’s ire for assigning a Pants on Fire. So, all for a very similar statement following Rick Scott in 2011 (by PolitiFact Florida) and then Rush Limbaugh (by PolitiFact National), PolitiFact Wisconsin rated Mark Neuman and Jeff Fitizgerald; PolitiFact Ohio rated Josh Mandel; PolitiFact Florida rated the PAC American Commitment; PolitiFact Georgia rated Phil Gingrey, and PolitiFact Tennessee rated Charlotte Bergmann.

In other words, these are eight good examples of something which brings  confirmation to Levine’s theory about repeatedly debunked statements.

Truth Index: Romney and Obama--90 Days To Go

As of August 1, 2012, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama had 535 Truth-o-Meter rulings between them, which should make for an interesting measure when compared, since together they make up roughly nine percent of all PolitiFact rulings since its inception.

In May I posted the month-to-month accumulated index for Obama and Romney (he was Politi-Scored in April) and noted that he started out at the end of 2010 with a higher Truth Index than Obama, which is an achievement since Obama’s Truth Index has almost always been relatively high and in positive territory. But following PolitiFact’s rating of statements made in his presidential announcement and then what amounted to quite a few not-so-truthful criticisms of Obama as his campaign went on, he has dropped almost 35 points, from a positive 19 to a negative 16 overall. This chart shows the accumulated average since December, 2010.  It is the basically the chart posted in May extended for four months.

Click to enlarge: Romney's anti-Obama campaign statements are what has brought his Truth Index
down the most.

As noted on the chart, the big drop on Romney’s Truth Index appears to have occurred in June, 2011. And, wouldn’t you know, June 2 was the date Mitt Romney announced he was running for president, at a farm in Stratham, New Hampshire. The big dive for Mitt came in the second quarter of 2011 as shown in this chart, which is the non-accumulated Truth Index; that is, for example, in that second quarter, Romney only had 5 rulings which together measured a horrific negative 110 Truth Index.

Click to enlarge:  Romney bounced back after all his presidential announcement Pants on Fires, but
not to where he was before, when he was "truthier" than Obama.

In reviewing the quarter, we find that Romney started off with a ruling of Pants on Fire on May 13, where he had repeated PolitiFact’s 2010 Lie of the Year, that President Obama’s health care law "represents a government takeover of health care.” Yet in that ruling it was said of Romney, in the equivocal way which PolitiFact often speaks of the Truth Index:

Mitt Romney has a relatively even PolitiFact record, with roughly the same number of True and Mostly True statements (35) as Mostly False, False and Pants on Fire (34)

On June 2, Romney made his presidential announcement speech, where PolitiFact took him to task for saying "we are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy" and that Obama “traveled around the globe to apologize for America” which garnered two more Pants on Fire.

This was followed by a statement on June 16 that “this is the slowest job recovery since Hoover” found False by PolitiFact, and the fifth and last statement rated for the second quarter of 2012, found Half True, that "Obamacare takes $500 billion out of Medicare and funds Obamacare” which was probably deemed Half True because of the way in which he said it (unlike one of the candidates running against him).

For what it’s worth (in the interest of certain anti-PolitiFact blogs), I thought it might be entertaining to look at the “Pants on Fire” factor, a relative measurement of Pants on Fire awarded as a percent of False, under the defective assumption that it proves liberal bias on the part of PolitiFact. And yes, it appears that Romney received the rating Pants on Fire about 2.75 times more than Obama did, for all the False and Pants on Fire rulings between them. That compares to the 1.74 as computed for all of PolitiFact National.

Gabby Douglas gets the Fox News Treatment

Mildly Relevant News with Joe Baur

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Pelosi and the ACA

Nancy Pelosi, according to a Truth Index/Politi-Score review done on her last year, is sort of the Democrat version of Michele Bachmann—she has a penchant for making way-out, almost indefensible statements that often catch her Pants on Fire. In this PolitiFact ruling, she claimed that under the new healthcare law (“Obamacare”) “everybody will have lower rates, better quality care and better access." I thought I’d take a look…and found it was “defensible” enough for Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style.

PolitFact’s writer Jon Greenberg gives two caveats to why the “everybody” isn’t true. One is that there’s a “catch” to using averages: some people would pay more than the average, some less. Yes, but if everyone “on average” pay less, they’re still paying less “overall.”

The second caveat, however, is even more “defensible.”

But in its study, the CBO number crunchers actually predict that a large number of people will want to buy better insurance. They would opt for a lower deductible, lower co-pays and a wider range of benefits. That personal choice would cause their total premiums to rise some 27 to 30 percent. For a policy covering just one person, the difference would be about $600 a year, before accounting for any of the subsidies the law provides; over half the people in the individual market would qualify for those subsidies.

PolitiFact’s Greenberg did not consider the “value” of what the person who chose to buy a more expensive policy was trading up to. For example, if the better policy had lower co-pays and deductibles, and the person buying the upgraded policy made use of them, those co-pays and deductibles could more than make up for the price paid. Or, as explained by one writer to PolitiFact in a recent mailbag issue:

I have a strong objection to one element of your analysis. Your second caveat claims that some people will pay more because the ‘discounted’ rate will entice them to purchase better coverage. I fail to see how this has anything to do with the veracity of Pelosi's statement, or lack thereof. Pelosi used the words ‘lower rates.’ Just because people buy more insurance does not necessarily mean the rate increases, since ‘rate,’ in this case, means level of services divided by cost. If people buy better insurance, they pay more, but their level of services increases as well. When people hear ‘lower rates,’ they assume you're talking apples-to-apples for level of service. It may very well be that in light of your first caveat, Pelosi's statement is still False. But the second half of your argument is bogus.

Finally, there’s the underlying argument of “something’s better than nothing"--even if everybody doesn't use it, it's available to everybody. Access to insurance for pre-existing conditions, encouraging preventative care by eliminating cost sharing, allowing young adults to stay on their parent’s plan until they turn 26 years old, closing the Medicare prescription drug donut hole, these are but a few of the many improvements to our healthcare system with ACA.

Often when PolitiFact is evaluating a statement and finds one part arguable (“average coverage”) and another part having some truth (because “rate” and “value” were not taken into consideration), and finally, deem the underlying argument (it should be better than what we have now!) as having truth, they would rate a statement, at least, an inconclusive Half True. But not Democrat Nancy Pelosi talking about the Affordable Care Act. Conservative bias, anyone?

Yes, Virginia, PolitiFact isn't a Bunch of Social Scientists

Still No Real Proof of PolitiFact Bias from PolitiFact Bias

Well, I guess all the relentless pressure worked (ha ha!). After six months of nothing on PolitiFact Bias’ Research page, we finally have that all-encompassing, definitive, proof-positive, documented study to end all studies, that gives us evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt, and even includes a measure, of PolitiFact’s liberal bias.

That's all just sarcasm, of course,  because after downloading and reading the 6-page report, it reminded me of another “study” which was posted last month, a fact-check by PolitiFact New Jersey, about a liberal blog called Uppity Wisconsin which had added up all the Trues and Mostly Trues of several governors and concluded that that since there were less for Republicans compared to Democrats, Republicans must lie more (which made it all the way to a claim using the data by a New Jersey state representative, which was then picked up by PolitiFact New Jersey).

But PolitiFact Bias’ methodology was a bit more sophisticated, and went the other way on the Truth-o-Meter. It added up all the Falses and Pants on Fire from PolitiFact’s beginning through the end of 2011, then took a percentage of the Pants on Fire of the False + Pants on Fire, then compared that percentage between Democrats and Republicans as a way to show how many more Pants on Fire are given to Republicans. It appears that PolitiFact Bias’ Bryan White may have gotten the idea from Eric Ostermeier’s much lauded study where he also took a look at a similar percentage (and probably Uppity Wisconsin did as well, in terms of True and Mostly True).

Overall results pointed to a marked liberal bias from PolitiFact’s start in 2007 through the end of 2011. The percentages for groups A and B varied only slightly. For group A, Republicans found making false statements received a “Pants on Fire” rating 28.57% of the time and Democrats 16.42 . For group B the percentages were 28.23% and 15.88%, respectively--a very close match. Group C reflected the expected distortion from unreliable chain email claims. Though neutral judgment ought to result in approximately equal proportions of unfair “Pants on Fire” ratings, Republicans drew that designation about 74% more often than Democrats. The numbers show a clear bias against Republicans and conservatives.

For further study and comparison I will use the percentage of one party’s “Pants on Fire” ratings divided by the percentage of the other party’s “Pants on Fire” ratings as the “PoF Bias” number. For Group A from 2007 through the end of 2011 Republicans suffered with a 1.74 PoF Bias number.

I’m not sure how he could place such confidence or reliance in such a number as being “a clear bias against Republicans” or how in the world could he expect that “neutral judgment ought to result in approximately equal proportions of unfair Pants on Fire ratings.”

To repeat PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair’s own words from the PolitiFact New Jersey fact-check:

PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair called suggestions that a governor is "in the top five" for falsehoods "inaccurate -- and meaningless.” ….

"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."

Adair re-iterated his “selection bias”—what is newsworthy—but according to him, tallying up the rulings to make comparisons of truthfulness is “inaccurate – and meaningless.” I would venture Adair would say the same thing even with tallying up claims at a macro level as done by White.

While I’ve taken a lot of guesses—it could be liberal bias, it could be Republicans lie more, it could be the rise of Fox News or the Tea Party, it could be a lot of things—but I don’t think just adding up the Pants on Fire as a percent of all claims found false validates any conclusion of liberal bias.   There's no  PolitiFact "Achilles' Heel" here as White wants his readers to believe.

So, since I had the same database, I decided to see if I could first come close to confirming White’s results….and I did, only my number was a bit higher at 1.79 (his was 1.74). This was for all PolitiFact National claims through the end of 2011. A lot of minor things could have caused the variance, in particular the classification of political affiliation for chain e-mails, many of which were False and Pants on Fire. White also delineated conservatives from Republicans, which could be a very subjective process. I never separated conservatives from Republicans just as I never separated liberals from Democrats. Nevertheless, it was very close.

But the PolitiFact (PF) states, one would surmise, should be pretty close to that of National; after all, they were likely “trained” in the process of fact-check by PF National, they rate national figures (Eric Cantor by PF Virginia and John Boehner by PF Ohio, for example), and PF Florida is basically a clone of PF National (read: Angie Drobnic Holan). They exceed PF National in number, comprising 53% of all rulings. Plus, we have the office holder distinction as used by Eric Ostermeier: it “adjusts” out the “expected distortion of chain email claims” as well as media pundits, advocacy groups, PACs and websites.

Next, I thought I should include the Truth Index for the identical data which created the “PoF bias” factor, which takes into account the other Truth-o-Meter categories, to see if there was any correlation. After all, if there’s more Falses and Pants on Fire, it should follow there are fewer Trues and Mostly Trues, since it’s basically a zero sum game. I did two forms of three scenarios, marked A, B and C.

Lil White Lies: Christmas in August

Consistency of standards seems to be the real subject of a Grading PolitiFact review of a PolitiFact Texas ruling on former Texas state representative Paul Sadler, who stated that the federal debt (nearly) doubled when Bush was president.

The Sublime Bloviations Grading PolitiFact series gave both writer (Sue Owen) and editor (W. Gardner Selby) of this PolitiFact Texas ruling his usual “F” grade, yet agreed (was “okay with”)  the Mostly True ruling. This was a case where the 500-pound Gorilla Christmas Tree was clearly comprehended, and that it was useless to nitpick about the ornaments.

Before reading this and finding that out, however, I was ready to make another Christmas connection of Sublime Bloviations’ Bryan White with the Republican Two Santa Claus theory as put forth by Jude Wanniski, and how very, very well George W. Bush played that game with his tax cuts. If you look at the chart below, Bush initiated two wars and the unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit , yet as a percentage of GDP his spending appears relatively flat until the financial meltdown of 2008.

Instead, White belittled the “way” in which the ruling was written, and inserted his own five “concrete examples” of what was wrong with it.

So, let’s take a look at each of his examples, and see if PolitiFact follows any sort of “standards” and if it deviates from them depending on who it is they’re rating.

1) Evidently none of the figures recognize the temporary nature of the debt resulting from the bailout spending in 2009. That bailout spending accounted for very roughly $441 billion as of June 30, 2009.

Right off the bat, there’s been suggestions that bailout repayments may have been recorded differently, while other PolitiFact rulings appear to indicate otherwise. Assuming it to be $600 billion, that’s a little over 10% of Bush’s deficits. Along with the questionable accounting, we’re still at three fourths of that “nearly double.” But the real question is: does PolitiFact take the bailout pay-backs into account in other fact-checks, or do other fact-checkers figure in the bailouts? A lengthy review by FactCheck.Org indicates it does not take the bank bailouts into account (and in this 2010 review as well). PolitiFact rulings about (statements concerning) Bush’s debt by Obama supporters  Rahm Emmanuel and Dick Durbin do not take this into account. A briefly-lived fact-checker sponsored by NBC News called “Meet The Facts” awarded New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez a “Mostly True”  on a "national debt increasing 72% " statement and does not take the bailout paybacks into account.  Onto Number 2 example:

2) Bush gets about $120 billion in ARRA (stimulus) spending credited to his FY2009 account. ARRA spending and bailouts combined may account for nearly $600 billion in supposed debt. The story omits all of this context.

This is basically a repeat of the first point. Factcheck.Org takes into account the stimulus spending and the auto bailout, but does not address the paybacks. Onto Number 3 Example:

3) Following the above, the inauguration date figures probably provide a better estimate of the debt increase than those from the end of the 2001 and 2009 fiscal years: That estimate comes to a 54 percent increase on the gross debt after adjusting for inflation.

Here, PolitiFact (and other fact-checkers) most often use the inauguration date to measure the increase, but they do not account for inflation. In the Rahm Emmanuel fact-check mentioned above:

When Bush took office, the national debt was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion. That's a difference of $4.97 trillion, almost $1 trillion more than what Emanuel said.

In the Dick Durbin fact-check, the end of year 2000 to the end of year 2008 was used, which is almost as good:

Tchotchkes: The T-1000 Romney-ator

Absurdity Today with Julianna Forlano