Lil White Lies Extra: Less Than Positively Pointless

Recently I discovered that PolitiFact had linked to my blog (Thank you!) in its website, in an article by Bill Adair where he’s now decided to compare Truth-o-Meter rating charts ("report cards"). I don’t know if he’s going to display a computation of the Truth Index, that might be a bit politically dicey. My feeling was he was looking for a nice high “magic” number of rulings before he would start this feature, which was 5,000.

PolitiFact Bias (which some call the “Gish Gallop of anti-PolitiFact Propaganda”) and co-blog Sublime Bloviations caught the link at PolitiFact and immediately posted (my blog was linked at the word "commentary"):

The other link ("commentary") was the sort of pointless statistical exercise that simply elaborates on the results of PolitiFact's fundamentally flawed process (the former link I gave a positive review, the latter author I've given a less-than-positive review).

I guess if I didn’t have a professed liberal bias by disagreeing, and I was someone especially important, I might get more positive reviews.  Because one can be important, but ideological disagreement makes one an idiot.

But the less than positive reviews have nothing whatsoever to do with my Truth Index analysis. Brad’s Terribly Bad Blog, or whatever it’s called, never looked at my Truth Index. It only looked at my Grading PolitiFact Review series at the time I first started it, which were attacked with almost the same intensity as PolitiFact's rulings. So for that, the Politi-Psy Truth-o-Meter on their claim gets a FALSE (I don’t use Pants on Fire, that belongs to PolitiFact). And I know the “selection bias” is just as pointless, as noted by Eric Levine:

They [PolitiFact Bias] just compiled a list of articles on Politifact over the course of a year and came to the conclusion that, since the worst ratings tend to favor republicans more than democrats, they must be biased in their selection in favor of the left. The problem with this is that their conclusion simply does not follow. Their are other possible reasons for this kind of result that have nothing specifically to do with Politifact being biased.

I encourage you to read the rest of Eric Levine’s analysis.

Lil White Lies: $4 Billion in February, Repeat

“The only assurance the taxpayer has is that these companies will be back for more money soon.”
Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), December, 2008

(Translated: They’ll be back for more taxpayer money when it runs out. )

When researching my conservative counterpart’s review of this PolitiFact (PF) ruling on a statement made in a pro-Obama video about the auto company bailout money being all “gone” as Obama took office, I came across what FactCheck.Org had to say about the status of the $13.4 billion: (emphasis added)

It also suggests that Bush gave away $13 billion to auto companies without demanding action on their part, when, in fact, Bush required them to come up with the so-called economic viability plans by March 31, 2009. Obama then used the plans to force the companies into bankruptcy and force the restructuring of the companies.

■The film leaves the false impression that President Bush had “given” away $13 billion to automakers without demanding anything in return. In fact, Bush required the automakers to produce a viable long-term business plan by March 31, 2009, as well as reduce unsecured debt by two-thirds and open their financial records to the government, among other loan conditions.

■The film claims the Bush bailout money was “gone” before Obama could “intervene,” but it was designed to be short-term bridge loans to help automakers pay suppliers and workers and give them — and the incoming Obama administration — time to develop long-term reorganization plans. The decision not to recoup some of the money loaned by the Bush administration was made by the Obama administration as part of the restructuring of the companies.

Writer Molly Moorhead was careful to detail how the $13.4 billion was divided up: of what General Motors received, over half went to GMAC, GM’s financing arm. She then went to the expense side, and noted that “GM was spending $7.5 billion per month on car parts at the time the government bailed it out” which exceeds the $4 billion loan by $3.5 billion.

Grading PolitiFact also makes a big deal out of the $4 billion GM got in February, mentioning it four times in its post. But it never mentions that in December, the loan of that money was contingent on congressional action in the new year. From the Detroit Free Press:

The loans offered by President George W. Bush — $9.4 billion for GM through January with an additional $4 billion contingent on congressional action next year and $4 billion for Chrysler…

Under those terms, GM may seek an additional $4 billion in February if Congress releases the second half of a $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that was originally intended to help financial companies.

As was mentioned by Grading PolitiFact, writer Molly Moorhead narrows the scope of the fact-check to whether the $13.4 billion was gone. As for FactCheck’s summary which says the video “suggests that Bush gave away $13 billion to auto companies without demanding action on their part” this had already been previously found False by PolitiFact, and was cited in the ruling. 

The documents show, and press reports from the time confirm, that the Bush administration put specific requirements on the auto companies that included paying down debt, limits on executive compensation and negotiated reductions in wages and benefits for autoworkers. It also required the companies to submit detailed restructuring plans by Feb. 17, 2009, to show how the companies planned to achieve and sustain "long-term viability, international competitiveness and energy efficiency."

But the fact that, despite the infusions of cash, GM and Chrysler were forced into Chapter 11 re-organization, says that whatever the amount of money it was they received, wasn’t enough. It was a bridge loan until they would have to tell the creditors and the bondholders that they would not be paid (when the re-organization started).

One of my conservative counterpart’s chief complaints seems to be an argument from ignorance—ignorance in that he doesn’t think or understand that the money could have been “spent” that fast:

Apparently the math amounts to $4 billion plus $13.4 billion equals $13 billion. And that $13 billion was gone by Jan. 20 even though $884 million was loaned to GMAC on Jan. 16. It lasted only four days by PolitiFact's account.

Of course the excess $4 billion was loaned in February as described above. You just don't get to learn that from the PolitiFact version of events.

(On that excess $4 billion: doesn’t the fact that GM had to get more money in February tell you the $9.4 Billion they received before was gone?)

The $884 million to GMAC was used to “increase available funding for consumer auto financing and consumer loans” according to a letter from a GMAC Executive Vice President to TARP lawyer Neil Barofsky. In late 2008 it had limited lending because it could not get financing in the global markets. Because of this lack of funds  it severely curtailed leasing, and would only grant car loans to those with credit scores over 700. This resulted in a serious downturn in car sales, which in turn, of course, adversely affected the cash flows of GM the manufacturer. While it could be claimed the money was not “spent” it was, as the letter explained, spent indirectly, to bolster GMAC's capital.

As for the $4 billion draws made by GM, I’d venture to say it was probably used up within a couple days, that’s how dire I know the situation was at GM. It was used to pay off one big promissory note of delayed payments to suppliers and those creditors who would accept a delay. Corporations (and all businesses) have to keep a minimum amount of cash on hand as operational capital , and I know GM was below this minimum amount, which as I recall was $6-7 billion. Unless GM was going to liquidate, which it wasn’t, there was always going to be a certain “minimum” amount of money in reserve.

Truth Index: Point of Reference

Since starting the tracking of the PolitiFact Truth Index, I’ve often wrestled with baseline and relative reference numbers in trying to give it a relative measure. I often use the average PolitiFact Truth Index overall (for PolitiFact’s first 5,000 rulings, it was -13.4). In the charts I create I often point out the Half True indicator, which is zero. And of course, one can compare the truth average of one group against the other.

For 2012, I created something I called an “Insta-Chart” so for certain things I’d instantly have a PolitiFact Truth Index App type chart to which all I had to add was a title. This would also make most of my charts appear consistent. And of course, when you’re doing it by formula you want to test your formula to make sure it works. So I put a 1 in for all the Truth-o-Meter categories, and in doing so the thought occurred to me that this “across-the-board” Truth Index might be THE baseline.

If someone PolitiFact rated all the time had, for whatever reason, an equal number of statements in each of the Truth-o-Meter categories, their Truth Index would be a -25. This reflects the fact that the Truth Index is a weighted average. In that respect, I have made a big mistake in looking at the individual Truth Index in terms of the Truth-o-Meter categories, for example, when I say the Republicans, with a Truth Index of -23, were on average about half way between Half True and Mostly False.

Here is how the table would look (and how the weighting affects the averages) in terms of having 1 in each of the six Truth-o-Meter categories as the baseline “average”.

Truth Index	Means in "Truthfulness"	Equates to in Score
50	George Washington Wannabe	1 in every category except Half True, Mostly False or Pants on Fire)
25	Way above average	1 in every category except Mostly False or Pants on Fire)        .
0 (zero)	Above average	1 in every category except Pants on Fire
-25	AVERAGE	1 in every category
-50	Below average	1 in every category except True.
-75	Way below average	1 in every category except True and Mostly True

Instead the Republican average of -23 should be compared to the generic across the board Truth Index average of -25. This means the Republicans are about evenly divided among all the Truth-o-Meter categories. The Democrats, at a Truth Index average of just above zero, are evenly divided among the True through False categories "without" Pants on Fire.  So we have a measure which incorporates the weighting of the average.

I don’t know if this is how it should be presented, but it does provide a comparison, and I will be using this as a reference point in future postings.

Tchotchkes: The Least Interesting Man in the World

...at around 7:10

Lil White Lies: The Thief Shouting Robber

Eric Levine of the blog Content in Reality correctly analyzed the “professed bias” of Bryan White and Jeff Dyberg’s blog PolitiFact Bias with a story about two dogs he named Rex and Dex:

One could theoretically argue that one political party has made a disproportionately higher number of false claims than the other, and that this is subsequently reflected in the distribution of ratings on the PolitiFact site. However, there is no evidence offered by PolitiFact that this is their calculus in decision-making." Yet they don't look for evidence that their [PolitiFact Bias’] explanation is the better one. To show the fallacy in this kind of thinking, let me present an analogy: Let's say i have two dogs that roam free in my house all day, Rex and Dex. I come home one day to find my couch clawed to pieces. I cannot find evidence that Rex did it, so I assume Dex did it (even though I found no evidence specifically pointing to Dex). This is exactly the same fallacy they employ. They don't specifically have evidence of a Republican tendency towards falsehoods so they assume it must be a Politifact tendency towards liberal bias. Like I noted earlier, the article did not randomly chose articles.

So to extend Levine’s canine example of Rex and Dex, it can be applied likewise to the logic that Grading PolitiFact employs when poster Bryan White says that Pat Boone’s statement about Medicare “rationing care to pay for wasteful spending” cannot possibly be Pants on Fire false as determined by PolitiFact, but “somewhat accurate when considered objectively.”

Republican "Death Panel"

Let’s say one of my older kids brings home two dogs, one named Rex from Red’s Pets and one named Dex from Blue’s Pets. I find that both dogs have fleas, but Rex has fleas and a bit of mange. I can see they both have had the infestations for a while. I go visit Red’s Pets and before telling him the problems with Rex I admit I’ve been to Blue’s Pets. The owner of Red’s Pets (Red) proclaims,” you don’t want to buy a dog at Blue’s Pets, they all have fleas.”

In this statatement from Red, the implication is that his dogs don’t have them. Yet Rex is actually in worse shape than Dex. Yes, Blue’s pets have fleas, but is Red’s statement a credible one?

In this case, Pat Boone is the owner of Red’s Pets. ALL the dogs have fleas—and his dogs have not just fleas but mange, but he’s telling you only his competitors’ dogs have fleas as if his dogs didn't.

Taken in context, it’s clear Pat Boone was fear mongering seniors about their Medicare, and not only that, misleading them about the alternative (to both Medicare and "wasteful spending"), which was worse….much worse.

Grading PolitiFact author Bryan White’s problem is that he does not (or refuses to) recognize that rationing exists systemically for any scarce resource, and that America’s method of rationing healthcare is very poor given what we spend as a percentage of GDP. ACA is meant to ration….more rationally, but not in the context Pat Boone was conveying.

The healthcare market is NOT a free market. It is similar to a utility: the supply is severely constricted (as one of my economics professors told my class, the most powerful union in the world is the AMA) and everyone is compelled to use it, especially in an emergency. While American healthcare in general is rationed by employment and cost, Medicare is rationed by age and price (and employment through retirement benefits): Simply put, Medicare Part A is major medical, which pays 80%, and is “free” once one reaches the age of 65, Part B is for outpatient services, for which a monthly premium is required (now about $100 monthly). Medicare pays 80% over a deductible; which means, for most people, a “Medi-Gap” insurance policy must be purchased (or is provided as an employer benefit) to cover the other 20%.

The issue with Pat Boone’s stating that a board will ration care is not just the context in which it was used, but the “pot calling the kettle black” (the Thief shouting Robber) implications of it. Unfortunately, the IPAB  provides the Republicans an easy target at which it can shoot criticisms. The systemic rationing of healthcare is often also referred to as “covert” which makes it easy to pretend that it didn’t exist until a board of experts was created with ACA to recommend cost containment measures.

Recall what happened last year when Paul Ryan came up with a plan “to end Medicare as we know it” (PolitiFact’s 2011 Lie of the Year). It basically turned Medicare over to the insurance companies and gave people what amounted to insurance discount coupons (“premium support”). Systemically, there is no doubt that this would be a much more drastic rationing method (some estimate as many as 1 million additional people would be removed from the Medicare rolls, i.e., denied treatment), and obviously people caught on as complaints mounted, and Ryan quietly re-drew the plan to “include” Medicare as we have it today.

Lil White Lies Extra: Subjectively Objective

Every few days I check the PolitiFact Bias "Research" page for that totally objective, non-biased, scientific proof to end all proofs of PolitiFact's (PF) liberal bias. PolitiFact Bias’ founder Bryan White must have noticed at his StatCounter page, so he served me up this little clue:

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.

In other words, it sounds like he’s going to make his own ruling determination on a group (probably all Pants on Fire statements uttered by Republicans) of PF Pants on Fire rulings as to whether or not they are really a “ridiculous claim”. But just reading Bryan’s example leads me only to conclude that he is making his own subjective judgment (“suggest that all ‘Pants on Fire’ ratings are unfair”) under a false moniker of objectivity.

Pants on Fire is PolitiFact’s “signature”, the “flagship” of its brand. Sinking the Pants on Fire flagship could do it pretty heavy damage although it’s likely not to destroy the fleet. But unless Bryan can present his findings in a truly scientific manner , maybe even get them peer reviewed neutrally, he won’t even be rocking the boat.

If he cherry picks the rulings or does only Republicans, then he will be open to charges of bias as well (I can’t wait until he starts reviewing Democrat Pants on Fire rulings…if he does!).

In the meantime, as I’ve pointed out before, switching all those Pants on Fire rulings to False for both Democrats and Republicans would change the Truth Index some, but not a lot, and Democrats would still have a higher average. Here is the before and after when moving all Pants on Fire to False for all PolitiFact rulings through the end of 2011 (4,707):

(1) All PolitiFact rulings (4,707) through the end of 2011 by Truth-o-Meter and Affiliation.

(2) Same as above, only with Pants on Fire moved to False (the "gray" turns red, and the Truth Index is re-computed).

As can be seen in the above charts, by "removing" Pants on Fire the overall Truth Index is moved up 4 points from -13 to -9.  The Democrats move up 2 points (from 1 to 3) and the Republicans go from -23 to -18.  You could look at it this way:  with Pants on Fire, the Republican Truth Index was about 77% less "truthier" than the overall Truth Index.  Without Pants on Fire, it's about 100% less truthier.  The flattening effect on the Truth Index overall average still makes the Republicans appear relatively less truthful even though their Truth Index has improved.

But there might be a more beneficial effect when Bryan determines that all Republican Pants on Fire should be True or Mostly True and all Democrat Pants on Fire should remain Pants on Fire through his objective, scientific analysis. As I'm being cynical, I might say NOT (!) here except for the first part. Because, like what he already hinted at with the Pat Boone claim, there’s a strong possibility that will be the outcome of his so-called research.  I will be "staying tuned" on that.

Tchotchkes: Did we really Spring Forward?

The Forlano Factor

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Silence is Golden like Fine Wisconsin Cheddar

Most of the PolitiFact rulings reviewed for the purposes of Grading PolitiFact (PF) Liberal Style are not that far off on how PolitiFact actually ruled on them; they are usually argued a notch or two apart from the Truth-o-Meter ranking (unfavorably to Liberals). Rarely do I come across rulings that are way off the mark. And rarely do I encounter a ruling where it appears the “rulee” is being penalized by several Truth-o-Meter grades.

When I looked at this ruling in PolitiFact’s banner listing, on the State Democrat Party of Wisconsin who said (here is the youtube video of one of the times it made this claim, graphically depicted below)  that they had collected “over 1 million” signatures for the Governor Scott Walker recall, and the by-line under the “False” Truth-o-Meter of “Short by 70,000,” I recoiled as my brain computed the percentage, and I immediately went to a Politi-Psy post on 13 PolitiFact rulings from the first quarter of 2011 where I was attempting to ascertain just how far off statements fact-checked with “numbers” could be to qualify for a Mostly True. Mostly True because, as I recalled, the range to be “off”  was from 7 to as much as 15%. And yes, my Mostly True review indicated 7% off qualified for Mostly True. So here was one, I thought, that should be closer to the Mostly True side. Seventy Thousand by itself looks like a big number, but everything is relative--70,000 is 7 percent of 1 million. Seven percent off. So…why were they given a False?

According to PolitiFact Wisconsin’s Tom Kertscher:

On March 12, 2012, the Government Accountability Board announced that 931,042 signatures had been submitted to recall Walker.

That’s a lot of signatures, but not 1 million.

On the day the GAB announced its official figure, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter asked state Democratic Party spokesman Graeme Zielinski in an email why there was a difference of nearly 69,000 between the number of signatures the party announced and the number counted by the elections board.

Zielinski replied he didn’t know, then backtracked, calling the "over 1 million" claim an estimate.

Said Zielinski: "Nobody knows how many signatures were submitted because of the sheer volume and the way the signatures were counted in the closing days. That's why we estimated our total."

But the number was never presented as an estimate….

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin claimed it submitted to the state elections board "over 1 million signatures" to recall Walker -- a claim that has been repeated and repeated. The board said just over 931,000 signatures were submitted
.
We rate the party’s statement False.

The ruling also noted that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had reviewed “ a random sampling of 500 Walker recall signatures found that 15 percent of them could not be verified.” But as noted, 15% falls at the outer bounds of Mostly True as well.

So PF says it wasn't presented as an estimate...why doesn't it say 1,000,321 then?

With the Mostly True post in hand with its links to the rulings I had reviewed with the 7-15% variance, I posted a comment at the PolitiFact Wisconsin Facebook page with those that could be easily compared to this ruling, in particular one on Florida Governor Rick Scott, who had stated that his budget had cut $2 billion in taxes, when in fact PolitiFact Florida could only find $1.7 billion, a 15% difference, and yet handed Rick Scott a Mostly True. I imagine that Scott repeated this "accomplishment" as well. So why did he not get a False like the State Democrat Party of Wisconsin, who were not as far off as Scott? As I noted in my Facebook comment, even if for the sake of argument there was a claim of 1.05 million signatures, which is OVER one million, the official count is still about 7% off what the State Democrat Party said it was.

Sidebar: Those Dirty Red States

In March and May of last year I did two posts about what is now being called “Red State Socialism”—showing undeniable evidence that “in essence, the blue states subsidize the red states.” (This was also confirmed as "Mostly True" by PolitiFact) In addition, they have the highest percentage using food stamps, and are statistically less healthy, which could be correlated to being more under-insured than the blue states: they have higher rates of obesity,  diabetes,  heart disease and cancer mortality. They also have the highest rates of smoking.

It seems there’s an inverse correlation between support for Democrats and receiving government largess, as this article in the New York Times reported: (italics added)

But Dean P. Lacy, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation.

Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

Conversely, states that pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits tend to support Democratic candidates. And Professor Lacy found that the pattern could not be explained by demographics or social issues.

In 2010, Ezra Klein at the Washington Post sums it up this way:

There is a very strong correlation, then, between a state voting for Republicans and receiving more in federal spending than its residents pay to the federal government in taxes (the rust belt and Texas being notable exceptions). In essence, those in blue states are subsidizing those in red states. Both red and blue states appear to be acting politically in opposition to their economic interests. Blue states are voting for candidates who are likely to continue the policies of red state subsidization while red states are voting for candidates who profess a desire to reduce federal spending (and presumably red state subsidization).

The “Rude Pundit” Lee Pappas explains, in his wonderfully acerbic style,  this “phenomena” as follows (February 13):

Find THIS PolitiFact Ruling: Michele Bachmann

In my last post I promised that I'd follow with ten excellent statements by Michele Bachmann never covered by PolitiFact.  Because, like the blog PolitiFact Bias, here at Politi-Psychotics, we "anticipate a pattern of ignored stories that puts PolitiFact in the role of serving the interests of the" RIGHT.  Unlike those who promise objective research proving PolitiFact liberal bias, I keep my promise.

So let’s get started on a Republican who should have been taken to task by fact-checkers for some things, but true to being in the role of serving the political interests of the right, PolitiFact didn’t select these items for fact-checks. Our subject speaker today is Mrs. “PolitiFact said everything I said was True” Michele Bachmann, and all that snarkiness Bryan White complains about that could have gone along with it. 

1. On the payroll tax cut extension:

And remember, the reason why President Obama proposed it in the first place was to create jobs. There isn’t one shred of evidence that that created jobs. So it defeated its purpose. 

Great one for economic specialist and Grading PolitiFact's favorite PolitiFact journalist Lou Jacobson. Except…except….he didn’t select this one! Why not?!!! It’s a no-brainer!

2. On the Keystone XL pipeline:

The delayed Keystone XL pipeline "would have brought at least 20,000 jobs,"

Another good one for “counts.” PolitiFact never addressed the “jobs” part of it at all, gross or net.

3. On solving the deficit and national debt crisis:

We need to simply tell people the facts, like Glenn Beck, with that chalkboard, that man can explain anything. I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this.

So, can Glenn Beck solve the debt crisis with a chalkboard, like Bachmann says?

4. On marriage equality:

Because the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.

Will K-12 children be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal as a result of same sex marriage?

5. On global warming:

But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. There isn’t one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful. It is part of Earth’s life cycle.

Lil White Lies Extra: Nothing to See WHERE?

In December, my conservative counterpart  told Eric Levine of Content in Reality (in the comments section) the following:

…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

As I posted in early February, I’m still waiting! It’s going on three months now, and PolitiFact Bias’(PFB) “Research” page still has “nothing to see here” (all it says is “Coming Soon.”) This was supposed to be THE objective, definitive proof of PolitiFact’s left-wing ideological bias, so you’d think Bryan White would be very anxious to publish his findings for all to see! Now all we have is another futile attempt to prove selection bias by PolitiFact: noting claims with a cynical “Nothing to See Here” that it thinks PolitiFact is not selecting because of its bias.

To provide some contrast to the selection process PolitiFact uses to choose its subject matter, PFB introduces a new feature: Nothing To See Here.

Posts in this series will feature claims a non-liberal might find interesting enough to fact check. While we won't be surprised if PolitiFact checks some or perhaps even many of the issues we highlight, we still anticipate a pattern of ignored stories that puts PolitiFact in the role of serving the political interests of the left.

OK, well, Politi-Psychotics can do that liberal style too. I’m still trying to find a humorous double-entendre to title the categorization: it could be something innocuous like a “Where’s THIS Fact-Check PFB?” all the way to something riské like “I’ll Show PFB Just Where It Can Stick This Fact-Check.”

Nevertheless, posts in this series will feature claims a non-conservative “might find interesting enough to fact check.” After all, as I’ve pointed out 26 times already (the list shows 25 but I haven't added the most recent one yet), there’s plenty in the “vast ocean" of PolitiFact's 5,000-plus statements that could be construed as showing a conservative bias, so that it could as easily be said (although I feel paranoid doing so), that “these put PolitiFact in the role of serving the political interests” of the right.

But I must commend the PolitiFact Bias page on Facebook. The page has almost 50 fans, including Ann Coulter wannabe Michele Malkin. Which brings me back to my initial thoughts about Bryan White: WHY? Why such a vendetta against PolitiFact? What did they ever do to him that put him on such a mission?  I mean, maybe 200 or more mostly lengthy, detailed (although often incoherent) and very scathing critiques of PolitiFact rulings in a blog called Sublime Bloviations; an additional  "PolitiFact Bias" blog single-sourced to bring together only conservative critics of PolitiFact, a Facebook page for the PolitiFact Bias blog (indicating his eliciting support from other PolitiFact detractors), his partnership with PolitiFact disparager Deff Jeff Dyberg, along with a steady practice of attacking liberal commenters on PolitiFact's Facebook page with what seems to be the goal of pushing them away from posting comments.  This is a pretty serious indictment. 

Someday we may know. In the meantime, I will shortly follow with a post of ten excellent statements by Michele Bachmann that PolitiFact never bothered to fact-check that will most likely not be part of "Nothing to See Here" for very obvious reasons.

Tchotchkes: Women For Santorum

From The Partisans at The Second City Network on YouTube

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Please Relief Me

One of my biggest complaints about the evening shows on MSNBC (Rachel Maddow followed by Lawrence O’Donnell) or Fox News (Bill O’Reilly followed by Sean Hannity) is that they tend to repeat a lot of the same partisan news, criticisms and talking points. In fact, MSNBC might be worse than Fox News, because of those very liberally partisan “Lean Forward” promotional spots it features all day long by the same evening pundits ( my favorite being Al Sharpton’s “Blueberry Pie” )….and last month PolitiFact Texas took one of the claims in those spots by Lawrence O’Donnell to task: that there were critics of the ultimately very successful G.I. Bill who called it welfare (youtube video below).

At the time (end of World War II), the few critics of it called it “relief” and “dole.” Those two words can be found all over the net as synonyms for present day welfare. The underlying argument, however, is that this laid the groundwork for one of the foundational principles of the future Conservative/Republican party: the concept that any type of welfare is meant to breed dependency on government, which Republicans want you to think is how the Democrats keep their constituencies. The aversion to this dependency was epitomized by Ronald Reagan in his claims about “welfare queens” and glittering generalities about “rugged individualism.” It was also about, as the traditionally southern Democrats turned Republican in the wake of Civil Rights, a veiled type of racism. In other words, Republicans have made the word welfare a derisive one.

(Sidebar: I remember in my carpool days when my favorite right-wing loon Rich Peasel told me that he himself had seen black people driving Cadillacs and dressed in diamonds and fur coats at the grocery store paying with food stamps [they were buying steaks, too]. While I don’t believe this is what he actually saw [he was fibbing big time], this is the personification of that principle.)

The term welfare came into common usage about the time of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society/War on Poverty.” In 1944, it was a word that may have been viewed positively, as reported in one linguist’s blog who was reviewing PolitiFact’s ruling strictly from a “historical sentiment” view: “In 1944, "welfare" didn't appear to have a pejorative sentiment.” Well, knowing how that pejorative sentiment came to be, however, it may support the terms “relief” and “dole” which at that time may have been pejorative.

The critic to whom Lawrence O’Donnell refers for the most part is a Mississippi Democrat who PolitiFact quotes as being “an ardent white supremacist” named John Rankin—who I guarantee would have jumped to the Republicans had he been around in the mid 60’s—and who could just come out and say it back in 1944 before the advent of dog-whistle politics.

Lil White Lies Extra: The Unbearable Rightness of Bryan

My conservative counterpart recently offered up a 1,500-word tome essentially doing a finger-pointing “shame on you” to PolitiFact for “caving to the pressure” of its left-wing readers in its “flim-flam” ruling on Marco Rubio who stated that the majority of Americans are conservatives (from Mostly True to Half True).

He went into a diatribe on what appeared to be PolitiFact’s reliance on further polling numbers which he translated into this:

PolitiFact repented of its original ruling in advance of and regardless of new reporting, refused to admit any error in reaching the original conclusion and subsequently used the new reporting as a deliberate pretense to unveil a new ruling motivated by criticism from the left.

This is one of the best examples of the paranoid, conspiratorial thinking of conservatives I have ever encountered. PolitiFact’s change of the rulings is in and of itself admitting an error. On the top of that, if it was in fact motivated by criticism from the left to “cave” why did they not do it on the “2011 Lie of the Year” which created an outcry from the left of Biblical proportions? Maybe that would be too much to back down from, but there are many other rulings that PolitiFact has re-examined and left the same,  like here and here (and there have been Democrats downgraded as well).  What PolitiFact did here was realize—and admit--that with polls, the answer was not certain. As noted by Jonathan Bernstein of Washington Monthly:

One could look at it another way, which is to get beyond self-identification to go to whether people believe in conservative concepts or not. But then it gets very tricky, as can be seen easily in from the speech Politifact was fact-checking

This may be the best fit for Rubio's statement.

The Minnesota MPR PoliGraph is done by a former PolitiFact writer, Catherine Richert. It employs a category called “Inconclusive” which seems to correlate to the Half True rating.

PolitiFact might want to add something to its definitions which allude to the “inconclusive” nature of the Half True designation. It often uses the expression “on balance” in its “Our Ruling” finale. This would be a case of “on balance” we are at a “zero”—the negatives equal the positives. It’s sort of like something I’ve seen in legal responses that “PolitiFact can neither confirm nor deny the truth of this claim based on the 'facts.' "

But caving into liberal readers? PolitiFact occasionally caves to both sides. Sometimes it won’t cave. It’s the nature of the beast. Nobody’s perfect (unlike Bryan). But to accuse it of caving as some sort of proof of its left-wing bias is beyond the pale, and is not supported by the evidence of its corrections and updates.

And as I noted in my original "Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style" post on this ruling, this was more than about Rubio’s statement about conservatives: it was about the context of his remark. It was about all the other statements (most blatantly false) included with this that PolitiFact could have fact-checked, but chose not to, which my conservative counterpart chose to cherry-pickingly ignore as well—or I should say, as “nothing to see here” featured in his new blog series.  Except you won't see it in his series since it's  unseen fact-checks found false for a Republican.

Truth Index: No Mas Pantalones....

Of the first 5,000 PolitiFact rulings, it was established that 8.7% of them (435) were Pants on Fire.  I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the affiliation breakdown in that category:

Click to enlarge:  Compare this graph to previous post which shows Republican/Democrat/Other total distribution of rulings.

If everything was perfectly proportional, that is, Democrats and Republicans had Pants on Fire in the same proportion as the number of rulings, the Democrats would have had 170 Pants on Fire (versus 106), the Republicans would have had 226 (versus 271) and "other" would have been at 39 (versus 58).  In  other words, while the Republicans had about 2.5 times as many Pants on Fire rulings as the Democrats, they are about 17% higher than what they would have had proportionately (62% Pants on Fire versus their making up 53% of all rulings), and the Democrats are about 37% lower, while those of neither party are about 50% higher in the Pants on Fire category.  Of course we cannot expect it to be perfectly proportional to the population of rulings, but what this shows is that the Republicans Pants on Fire are not that severe, as people like Eric Ostermeier would have you believe.

Truth Index: 5,000 Rulings Continued

The various permutations I show on the 5,000 PolitiFact (PF) rulings are very similar to my series on the 4,707 rulings analyzed through the end of 2011, so I will not repeat them here. The 293 rulings which took it up to 5,000 represent about six percent of all the rulings, so the stats should be very close to what they were then. I do want to show, however, that there are some trends which seem to continue that I didn’t emphasize in my end of 2011 analysis.

Affiliation.  The majority of rulings  (53%) were on Republicans/Conservatives/Libertarians; 39% were Democrats/Liberals, and the rest were non-partisan or unknown (see graphic above).  PolitiFact's own numbers, if they have them, would differ from mine slightly because of more delineation of the affiliation on my part:  for example, their chain e-mails are not broken down by party (although many of them can't be) and there are a few people for whom I determined affiliations for which PolitiFact had assigned a "none."

PF's table adds to 99%

The National percentages. I confirmed my agreement with the National Truth-o-Meter rulings which were displayed in the 5,000 ruling celebration article—that is, that it was very close to what I showed for 5,000 rulings including the states. However, it’s important to match to the National “only” rulings to see how I compared apples to apples, and there I have a slight discrepancy. For National, all percentages match except I am one point higher on the Pants on Fire, at 9 percent instead of 8 percent. Now, I may have more rulings in the National number because of the way I added up the rulings through 2010, which may have caused the over-calculation, but it is also important to note that the numbers as given by PolitiFact add to .99, not to 1.00. Carrying it out to decimals, I have 8.69% for Pants on Fire for PolitiFact National. For greater analysis on PolitiFact regions (by party) through the end of 2011, click here.

Individuals versus Groups and “Entities.” Some of these are fairly intuitive when you think about it. Individuals (85% of the 5,000 rulings) score more truthful on the PolitiFact Truth Index than groups or “entities”(advocacy, party boosters, bloggers, chain e-mails, etc.) They average a -9.06 while groups and entities are -37.55, a pretty substantial difference. For a further breakdown of these groups and how they compared affiliation-wise, click here.

Individuals comprise about 85% of PolitiFact's 5,000 rulings and are more "truthful" as measured by its Truth Index.

Office-holders (current and former) are 74% of the 5,000 with a Truth Index of -8.47 while non-office holders (which would include those groups and entities mentioned above) score a -27.77 on the Truth Index.

And as noted in a previous post, one out of seven (674) of the 5,000 rulings were on females who had a lower aggregate Truth Index (-13.2) than the males (-8.28) although it is a fairly small variation.

All suggestions for further refinements are welcome!

Sidebar: So You Want to Buy an Election?

2012 Campaign Finance Flow Chart from Mother Jones

Truth Index: 5,000 PolitiFact Rulings

On Monday, February 20, Tom Kertscher of PolitiFact Wisconsin published a somewhat crazily titled PolitiFact ruling:  a G.O.P. senate candidate by the name of Mark Neumann stated that " the federal government could save $175,587 by eliminating a study of the 'connection between cocaine and risky sex habits of the Japanese quail.' "    Before I determined the real significance of this ruling, I was considering it for inclusion in my "Top Ten List" of stupidest or most useless PolitiFact rulings.  But it was not quite that useless because, on careful reading,  it was really about some of the seemingly stupid things that government grants--i.e., taxpayer dollars--go for, and Kertscher made the point quite well.

Click to enlarge.

The real significance was that this was, according to my records, PolitiFact Ruling Number 5,000.  PolitiFact's Bill Adair acknowledged the fact he knew that the 5,000 mark had been surpassed that Friday, February 24, in a "celebration" article featuring a few facts and figures from that period of time in which the 5,000 rulings were accumulated.

Adair published a table of the breakdown of rulings for National:  here they are snipped from the article at the left.  Later, I will publish a few things Adair doesn't keep track of (at least I don't think he does) and that's the various Democrat/Republican breakdowns, which is the centerpiece of my blog.  However, I want to confirm his National breakdown was very close to the overall. 

I decided to round to the whole as Adair has and as you can see below, True and Mostly True are the same percentages, while Half True on down is within one percentage point of his calculations.  I have included the overall Truth Index as well, which is a -13.44.  It increased slightly to the negative from the end of 2011, where for 4,707 rulings it was a -13.32.    

Click to enlarge:  I call it my Insta-Chart as this year I decided to do something "real time."

The reason for the decrease in the Truth Index has been due to the pattern emerging at the end of 2011:  increasing coverage of the Republican presidential contenders.  For example, so far this year the Republican rulings have outnumbered the Democrats almost two to one, and the Republican Truth Index so far in 2012 has stood around a -25 while the Democrats have been a +3.6.  The four remaining presidential contenders (Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul) have a collective Truth Index of -29 (and represent about 20% of all the rulings). This is for 332 rulings covering all of January and February (and a couple from March 1 and 2).  More later.