Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: No "Set" for Navratilova

But another "point" perhaps!

Martina Navratilova's recent statement (published May 7) rated by PolitiFact as a Half True resulted in a big brouhaha review from MSNBC'S popular pundit and gay-rights promoter, Rachel Maddow. Navratilova stated on the TV show "Face the Nation" that "in 29 states in this country, you can still get fired for not just being gay but if your employer thinks that you`re gay, you could still get fired.”

On the face of it, it is true that 29 states do not ban discrimination against gays. But PolitiFact's ruling took into account that in those 29 states there existed similar protections for some employees by means of federal and local laws as well as private company policies.

I had some problems, however, with how PolitiFact came to concluding this Half True...I would want to ask writer Louis Jacobson a couple questions: Did he ask Navratilova or any representative of Navratilova how she framed it? Could it be that she was not aware of such exceptions? It was not indicated in the sources. Did he "count" in terms of those who were in the "exception" category, approximating what percentage of people would be covered in those states not having such protections? It could have been estimated, but it would have taken some time. For example, there's Virginia, which has a high percentage of people working for the government but as a state does not prohibit such discrimination. But in other states, even with other protections, the percent of those having them might be very small--so small that it would not be that relevant.

 

I was a bit disappointed in how Rachel Maddow did the segment on how PolitiFact handled the ruling. Her very curtailed explanation of the exceptions was as follows:

They fact checked a statement about state law, found it to be true, decided it didn’t seem seemly or whatever to actually just call it true, then they searched other unrelated information about how there are other kind of things, besides states, like some companies, they don’t want to discriminate, and doesn’t that count for something?

I vehemently disagree with Maddow. It IS related, and they're actually the same types of laws (which she conveniently left out), not just "some companies" that "don't want to discriminate." It was a four- point bullet list (which some like to call "concrete examples").

Erik Wemple of the Washington Post describes Maddow's approach to fact-checking as "strict constructionist" which means "don't look at the context." Well, to take a term from tennis (used in another way), I'd love, LOVE to see what Maddow would do if PolitiFact did the same with, say, the 2012 PolitiFact Lie of the Year from Mitt Romney about Chrysler moving  vehicle production to China. Perhaps then she'd understand why it is important.

 

Wemple noted that it was not Navratilova's intent to mislead. But the Half True is not a ruling given for misleading statements; it is for those "missing important information." This is where I diverge further however, because the statement on its face was fully accurate, not partially, the criteria for a Half True. As it was fully accurate, but needed the additional information for the other ways in which discrimination was banned, it really qualifies for the Mostly True.

 

Because it would be difficult to account for the number of those who would benefit from those other laws banning discrimination, and because context was not verified by speaking with her, it would have been entirely acceptable to give Navratilova a Mostly True instead of Half True. The exceptions put a large shadow on a True ruling, and PolitiFact was correct in not awarding it. Half True, however, may have been too severe.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: The Egg-ception

I expected PolitiFact's ruling on a twittered statement by Obama's campaign about Republican vice presidential Paul Ryan regarding abortion to be a fairly straightforward, simple one:

Make sure the women in your life know: Paul Ryan supports banning all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest.

PolitiFact's Dave Umhoefer agreed with the statement in principle, except for an implicit "except for" for which he made it unduly complicated--where the life of the mother is at stake. But for that it is ruled as a Half True? According to the website Reproductive Health Reality Check, the reality is that Ryan wants it both ways:

Abortion rights supporters say that his previous vote on a "no exceptions" late abortion ban, the so-called "partial birth" abortion ban, means that he does not believe in exceptions ever. Ryan apologists claim that he has never stated he would ban abortion in all cases, and his support of "personhood" bills is simply an affirmation that the issue of whether abortion should be legal or not should be returned to the states.

Can Ryan have it both ways?

Polifact tries to give him cover. At the same time that they report that both the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the National Right to Life Committee agree that the only exception Ryan supports is in the case of the "life of the mother" being at risk, they also point out that the "Sanctity of Human Life" bill that Ryan supported in 2011 doesn't actually do any banning of abortion.

That's true. More likely to actually ban abortion would have been another bill sponsored that year, called the "Life At Conception" Act. It too declared "life" began at fertilization, but that there was a right to life from that point on.

It goes on to note that Ryan received the ready vice-presidential endorsement of the Catholic pro-life group CatholicVote which stated that Ryan understood Catholic "social teaching" which in the case of CatholicVote included no exceptions, even for rape.

 

Umhoefer failed to take note of Ryan's avoidance of taking a stand on that exception by making it implicit--or I should say, hiding it beneath the language of personhood at conception: (emphasis mine)

And while right wing pundits helpfully point out that Paul Ryan doesn't want to make abortion illegal (which: hahahahahahah), he just wants to give states the right to make abortion illegal, Mother Jones' Kevin Drum notes that Ryan's Sanctity of Human Life Act states,

(B) the life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood; and

(2) the Congress affirms that the Congress, each State, the District of Columbia, and all United States territories have the authority to protect the lives of all human beings residing in its respective jurisdictions.

Which actually means that states would have the right to ban all abortions with no exception for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Further, in those states, if a woman was raped and wanted to have an abortion in another state, her rapist could theoretically sue her to stop the abortion, and Drum suspects that he'd probably win.

Further, yesterday another Mother Jones columnist pointed out that if the Sanctity of Human Life Act had become law, it likely would have made many forms of IVF illegal, and since Mitt Romney's two newest adorable grandbabies are the product of IVF and a surrogate mother, Ryan's big idea would turn Romney's kids into criminals. Most awkward political bromance ever.

The Republican Party Platform states under the sub-heading "The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life"-- "We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children." This has been the pro-lifer legal loophole: “Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" with that person being the newly fertilized egg.

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:

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.

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?

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Crash on Delivery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Yes, Scott Walker is #1 "Liar"

A PolitiFact (PF) New Jersey fact-check on Loretta Weinberg, the state senate majority leader, done on June 7, seems to have slipped through my conservative counterpart’s bias-searching fingers, because I’m sure if he had read it he would be quoting it (besides having a major cow!) liberally throughout both his anti-PolitiFact blogs. For Bill Adair, the head of PolitiFact, came right out and directly addressed his biggest complaint of why he despises the Truth-o-Meter concept and what he believes is the reason for its alleged “bias.”

Weinberg said that Scott Walker of Wisconsin topped a list of the  five “Lie - en Governors" according to PolitiFact, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was also part of the “top five.” PolitiFact rated this statement “False” and included an interview with PolitiFact Manager Bill Adair, who made this very interesting comment:

"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."

But did Uppity Wisconsin, the source of Weinberg’s information, have it right? Here’s how PolitiFact explains what they did:

So what is Weinberg talking about?

The state senator’s statement was based on a list posted on the liberal blog Uppity Wisconsin.

The list ranked governors fact-checked at least five times by PolitiFact by the percentage of True and Mostly True ratings they received.

Walker had the lowest combined percentage of those two rulings, according to the June 1 blog post. The post concluded that "Walker is the #1 most dishonest governor in America."

Christie took fourth place among the "top five most dishonest governors in America" with 38 percent of his PolitiFact rulings earning True or Mostly True.

Uppity Wisconsin simply added the percentages of Trues and Mostly Trues, and came up with Scott Walker of Wisconsin at Number One with a combined percentage of 22 percent, followed by Rick Perry of Texas and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island both at 25%, Chris Christie of New Jersey at 38%, and lastly Bob McDonnell of Virginia at 44%. Uppity Wisconsin ignored a lot of things in coming up with these numbers. Adair has a point that this does not accurately show “who told the most lies.” For example, in 2012, Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chaffee had only two rulings from PolitiFact. He’s only had eight fact-checks ever from PolitiFact. This is not a good measure of “truthiness” for someone with this few fact-checks.

The more fact-checks on someone, the more it should bolster the claim of measuring honesty. But it’s even hard to say what that “more” number is. I put together a list of those sitting governors with 20 or more fact-checks, and decided "the top five" should be those with 40 or more: governors Chris Christie (NJ), Rick Scott (FL), Rick Perry (TX), John Kasich (OH) and Scott Walker (WI). I threw out Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia (with 22) and Bob McDonnell of Virginia (with 23), simply because I wanted to measure those with the highest number of fact-checks who had been rated recently. Not a lot of politicians meet the “40” criteria, but it’s a better measure than basing it on fewer than 10 fact-checks.

The other problem with Uppity Wisconsin’s measure is it does not take into account the Half Trues, Mostly Falses, Falses and Pants on Fire categories in making its "honesty" measure. The Truth Index as calculated by PolitiFact places heavier weight on the Falses and Pants on Fire categories: the Pants on Fire is weighted 50% higher than a True, because (I’m guessing) it was felt emphasis should be put on the false statements.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Skirting the Wage Gap



At PF Wisconsin wage disparity for doing the same job merits a False; elsewhere, not so.

This post is a combination Grading PolitiFact Review and Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style, because it's turned out to fit both. It focuses on four PolitiFact (PF) rulings on the same subject. Grading PolitiFact’s Bryan White wants them all to be False or Pants on Fire, while to me they're a tentative Half True. The statement is that women earn, on average, 77 cents (or 79 cents or 81 cents, depending on the ruling) for what a man makes…and the addition of “doing the same job” (except for one) which was what brought them down in their rating for the ruling. Four fact-checks on this were done this quarter by PolitiFacts National (a Mostly False for Obama) and Rhode Island (a Mostly False for Congressman David Cicilline) and for the less specific (but supposedly “correct”) statement from senate candidate Tim Caine that it’s not for the same job, which merited a Mostly True from PolitiFact Virginia.

The fourth was from PolitiFact Wisconsin: it was women on average earned 81 cents on the dollar for the same job coming from  Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Falk, for which she received a False.  So White got his False on one of the statements; however, the PolitiFact Wisconsin review committed the same type of error he lamented in determining the real wage differential among all the occupations, because (according to most of the writers) it couldn’t really be done.

Looking at this chart (see below) from Wikipedia, I don’t know how one couldn’t conclude that women earn less than men. Maybe the gap is closer for the same work in certain categories, but there’s still a gap. Women earn less in almost every occupation ( only more in 4 out of 111, according to PolitiFact Wisconsin). But since we know women generally earn less overall, that gender bias exists (and studies show we’re not sure why) and it’s difficult to find evidence to show that women earn less for the same work across the board, the Mostly Falses (and the False) should have been more like inconclusive Half Trues.

Click to enlarge:  Women's median usual weekly earnings as percentage of men's, for full-time workers, by industry, 2009.

The ruling on Tim Caine of Mostly True where he didn’t add the “for the same job” came with the subtitle “There are many ways to look at pay gap.” This should have been how the “Mostly False” finders should have looked at this to conclude a Half True. Indeed there are many ways to look at it, but there’s still a gap.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Hokey 'bout the Pokey

This PolitiFact (Georgia) ruling brings to mind all the stories I’ve heard about North Korea: how there are no birds (because they’ve all been captured and eaten) and how the South Koreans “look down” on the North Koreans, not just figuratively, but literally, due to poor nutrition:

If you look at older Koreans, we now see a situation where the average South Korean woman is approaching the height of the average North Korean man.

This is to my knowledge a unique situation, where women become taller than men.

PolitiFact Georgia rated this statement by Hank Johnson about the United States being Number One in locking up people as “Half True” because Cuba and North Korea “may jail more.” Cuba…North Korea? How many there are political prisoners? Is it appropriate or fair to include these outlying nations who criminalize dissent, and where the actual rate is undocumented? The context of Johnson’s speech referred to the United States as the greatest country in the world—i.e., it's because we are a FREE country—shouldn’t we be compared to other other FREE countries in terms of incarceration (as contradictory as that sounds)?

For example, there are people in North Korea that are imprisoned for reasons they never would be in the United States:  

In North Korea, entire families are jailed in large political prison camps if one family member is suspected of anti-government sentiments

And in America’s Caribbean neighbor Cuba you can be imprisoned for being a journalist and connecting to the internet, which means the whole PolitiFact Havana crew would be in jail ("lol") among other things:

The Cuban government has been accused of numerous human rights abuses including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials, and extrajudicial executions (also known as "El Paredón").[94][95] The Human Rights Watch alleges the government "represses nearly all forms of political dissent" and that "Cubans are systematically denied basic rights to free expression, association, assembly, privacy, movement, and due process of law".[96]

Cuba had the second-highest number of imprisoned journalists of any nation in 2008 (the People's Republic of China had the highest) according to various sources, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international NGO, and Human Rights Watch.[97][98] As a result of ownership restrictions, computer ownership rates are among the world's lowest.[99] The right to use the Internet is granted only to selected locations and they may be monitored.[99][100] Connecting to the Internet illegally can lead to a five-year prison sentence.[citation needed]

Let’s say we could estimate what kind of rates Cuba and North Korea would have if they did not criminalize dissent, who could we compare them to? If North Korea was a democracy it would probably have incarceration rates similar to South Korea. South Korea’s rate of incarceration is Number 151 out of 218 countries, at 94 prisoners per 100,000 population (compared to 730 per 100,000 in the United States). Cuba could be considered the “Caribbean.” Almost half of the countries in the top twenty in the world for incarceration rates are Caribbean, the top country being Caribbean islands St. Kitts and Nevis which rank just below the United States at 649, going all the way down to Haiti at 55. Puerto Rico might be the fairest comparison to Cuba because of its size, and it is Number 35 at 303 per 100,000. It appears from the rates, however, in terms of the Caribbean nations, that they sort of follow the United States as far as incarceration….which would mean that Cuba would probably have a rate similar to the United States or other Caribbean countries. It would be high, but not as high as it is with the criminalization of dissent.

In general discussions of incarceration, the countries of North Korea and Cuba are not included since their rates cannot be documented (and they are not democracies).  In a May 23 prison expose on the costs of the California  system and alternatives to incarceration by Jennifer Granholm on her Current TV political talk show “The War Room” she began with the same statistic as Johnson about the United States being Numero Uno in rate of “lock up.”

So, I could contest this with insisting on a knee-jerk Rachel Maddow “True” , but it would seem to me that on balance, Mostly True was more in line considering North Korea and Cuba. Hank Johnson did not say “documented” but it’s reasonable to assume he was going by that type of measure for incarceration rates. His statement was accurate but needed additional clarification or information.

 

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Boomers Going Bust

 

PolitiFact Florida gets kind of close , but doesn’t close the deal, in justifying its overly-generous Mostly True ruling on a statement by Governor Rick Scott who thinks that fewer people collecting unemployment is a good thing: 

Scott said Florida’s economy is getting better in a lot of ways.

"We’re doing well. We’re at a three-year low on our unemployment in this state... We generated around 100,000 net jobs so far, if you look at the federal numbers," he said in the April 18, 2012, interview with Orlando-based station WDBO. "But if you look at the state numbers, about 230,000 people that were on unemployment when I took office are not on unemployment now.

The “boomer years” started in 1946, which means that the first boomers turned 62 in 2008, when they qualified for receiving reduced Social Security. Now they are turning 66, which is the age at which they receive the full amount (and of course, also have become eligible for Medicare). According to CBS News, a “ full 70 percent of recipients sign up for Social Security between age 62 and the normal full retirement age, which is between 65 and 67, depending on the year you were born.”

So, assuming 70% of boomers signed up, what we have is a lot of people dropping out of the workforce permanently, or those who have done so not of their own preference (there was no work and they ran out of unemployment benefits). I believe this phenomenon is what is making the unemployment rate drop even though so few jobs are being created, not enough jobs to keep pace with population growth. Sorry, Obama, but he (and Scott) know that's true.

In Florida this translates to about 79,000 retirement-age people (by my own calculation, based on population) who could have dropped out of the workforce in the last year, assuming half those eligible to retire at 62 continued working.

PolitiFact Florida adds “about 15,000 Floridians age 16 and up dropped out of the labor pool last month.” This certainly begs the question: how many dropped out the month before that, or for the year? If an annual number was provided, it might include the 79,000 estimate above.  I can't seem to find such month-to-month numbers on line, so it makes this 230,000 all the more elusively difficult to verify.

Coupled with the denial of “131,115 applicants for failing to comply with the new law” it seems to me Rick Scott has nothing to brag about, and in view of the many caveats to his 230,000 number, it’s more of a “partially accurate but leaves out important details.” The reason 230,000 people are not on unemployment is because the majority gave up, were rejected by Florida’s new unemployment system, or those who were eligible started collecting social security.  It had little to do with any “turn-around.” More like a Half True.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Walmart Welfare 2012

Earlier this year, my former wingnut carpoolian buddy boasted in a comment section of my blog how he had annuitized his 401K through an insurance company: he expressed a seeming anger that if he had the opportunity to invest himself, he could have done much better over what he received from Social Security, to which he had contributed heavily over the years. Although I am highly dubious of the value of such annuities, he may be correct about “doing better” himself than through “forced” contributions to social security; however, the point is that in either case Social Security is an insurance annuity option for retirement income.

All this (and a little more) is part and partial to a statement by Rick Santorum which PolitiFact (PF) rated Mostly True, that “a little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them." An excerpt from PolitiFact’s finding:

The Census Bureau found that a little over 147 million Americans received payments from at least one of these programs at a time when the U.S. population was just over 303 million. This meant that 48.5 percent of Americans received federal cash or cash-like benefits -- and it means that Santorum’s number is well-supported. In fact, counting such items as amounts refunded from the Earned Income Tax Credit or agricultural subsidies -- neither of which are included in these figures -- would push that number higher.

I believe Santorum’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details (Half True by PolitiFact): many of the entitlements are actually a form of insurance that have already been contributed toward through payroll taxes. Then there’s the point made by the Washington Post that “the usefulness of these numbers is weakened because they count everyone in a household as benefiting from a particular federal payment even if that payment is made in the name of only one person.”

Then, there’s the statement following which, taken in context, was a patently absurd one: that “After Obamacare….it will be 100%.”

Then there’s a problem I have with the states that Santorum won in the primaries: the “bite the hand that feeds them” states, in particular, Mississippi and Alabama, where we already know there are a higher percentage of food stamp recipients relative to other states, and where they receive more assistance than what they pay in taxes. As noted by Lee Pappas, the Rude Pundit:

Some conservatives see the social safety net as a calculated plot by liberals to make people dependent on the federal government, a way of controlling them. Of course, since the states where people receive more in government assistance than they pay in taxes vote Republican, that's pretty much demonstrably false.

Let’s get back to the first point, Social Security as insurance. Over 37 million people age 65 or higher receive Social Security. Almost 8 million people under 65 receive social security because of a disability. I would imagine the vast majority of the total 45 million contributed to the Social Security system. Even my conservative counterpart admits it’s a form of insurance. If that’s what it is, how can Santorum say those who receive it depend on it, when they planned to get it because they contributed to it in the first place?

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.

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.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: The Unadmitted Majority

NOTE:  About a week after this "Mostly True" ruling was published, PolitiFact revised it to Half True:  "After it appeared, we heard from many readers who argued that our rating of Mostly True was the wrong call....Upon further discussion, and bolstered by more reporting, we have decided to change this ruling to Half True."

The last time I ran with a PolitiFact ruling that Rachel Maddow had “graded” as perhaps conservatively biased for purposes of Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style, I caught a bit of flack. It had to do with the context of the statement and perhaps the implied intentions of the statement-maker (in that case, Obama). I thought I had better check such statements a bit more carefully in the future instead of trusting Maddow; however, we now have another Maddow fact-check of the fact checkers with a lot more to it than just the statement.

I often try to note when my conservative counterpart covers these, whether in one of his blogs or in Facebook commentary, because when the bias goes the other way he tends to ignore them. In this case, however, he was all over on this one, and it gave me a fine way to showcase his dishonesty, particularly in the area of “selection bias.”

Republican Florida senator Marco Rubio made the fact-checked statement in a speech he gave at the 2012 CPAC conference. He actually said it twice, that “this” is a movement of conservatives, or what I call the majority of Americans…” and then after a few words about “how he knew” because “liberals” never admit they’re liberals and instead using the term “progressives” he said “The majority of Americans are conservatives — they believe in things like the Constitution. I know that’s weird to some people…”

PolitiFact (PF) Florida obviously concentrated on the first statement. If they had concentrated on the re-affirmation, they would have had to deal with the caveat that it’s (only) conservatives who believe in things like the Constitution, which would make that statement blatantly false, or a lot less than Mostly True.

PolitiFact Florida used a twenty-year Gallup Poll to “support” Rubio’s claim:

For 2011, Gallup found that the largest group of Americans identify as conservative, at 40 percent. Another 35 percent identify as moderate, while 21 percent identify as liberal.

That means a plurality of Americans identify as conservative, not a majority. Then PF writer Angie Drobnic-Holan compares this to the Democrat/Republican/Independent labels, where an equal 40 percent plurality are self-indentified as Independent. Ultimately she finds that no matter how you shake it, no matter how charitable she is with the statistics, the majority is not conservative. But because conservatives and those who “lean Republican” are higher than everyone else, this justifies a ruling of Mostly True.

My conservative counterpart does his usual routine of reading into the statement and authoritatively reaching his own conclusions:

So, was Rubio correct that the majority of Americans are conservative? That depends on his argument. Rubio didn't cite surveys about self-identification. He used a method concerned with attitudes toward the respective labels. One can argue with the method or the application of the method, but using an inappropriate benchmark doesn't cut it.

Just because Rubio “used a method concerned with attitudes” doesn’t mean he was correct. In fact, Rubio’s explanation that liberals never admit they’re liberals doesn’t cut it either. If a person won’t admit they are liberal, they are still NOT conservative. There is no way to measure whether the majority of Americans are conservative by basically backing it with an anecdotal observation that liberals won’t admit they’re liberal—some other method must be employed. Bryan White uses this “attitudes” measure as a way to excuse Rubio’s point and find fault with PolitiFact’s efforts to determine whether the majority of Americans are conservative.

As usual, this provides a way for Bryan White to assert his superiority to those who disagree with him, a calculated way to set up an argument from authority:

Maddow is supposed to be ultra smart. So how come she can't figure out that Rubio's statement isn't properly measured against self-identification numbers?

(Translated: Bryan White is even more than ultra smart?). We never find out what the proper measurement is, because there is no quantifying method when “attitudes” is used.  There is no way to verify such "context." The most accurate and reasonable would be self-identification polls. Again, Rubio made the statement twice, the second time, without the “how come” that Bryan latched onto. In other words, Bryan’s complaint is sheer over-reach along with a bit of equivocation.

In the Facebook PolitiFact page comments, a poster by the name of Brian Varley made the best case as to Rubio’s statement being far less than Mostly True, by many, many different measures, in this case, widespread support for public programs and social issues which conservatives are by policy against:

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Pink Slipping PolitiFact

Last night (January 25) MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow did a small segment on PolitiFact (PF) wherein she “fired them.” It was because of its correction of a ruling on Obama. During his state of the union address, he said “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005."

Maddow noted that while PF found both statements to be true using BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) data, it initially rated it Half True, and she displayed the text of its reasoning: 

Obama is correct on both counts when using private-sector job numbers. But he went too far when he implicitly credited his administration policies. So we rate the statement Half True.

Maddow took issue with the fact that Obama credited businesses, saying “businesses have created more than 3 million jobs” not “I, Barack Obama” or “my administration” or “the Stimulus” or “my policies.” She jokingly said something to the effect that “Obama didn’t wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and say ‘good morning, businesses!’”

From the Huffington Post

She noted that PolitiFact reviewed it again and then issued an update, upgrading the ruling from Half True to Mostly True. Based on what I’ve seen in cases like this, it appears PolitiFact will not move the Truth-o-Meter needle too far, thereby admitting something it investigated and ruled on turned out to be almost the opposite. Loath to admit to such gross errors, it will try to stand by its ruling come hell or high water, and if it moves it, it will be a one notch, which is what it did here.

Maddow then concluded that she had had it with PolitiFact and then “terminated their position” in the inimitable Grand Vulgarian Donald Trump fashion along with a few other choice criticisms.

"PolitiFact, you are fired. You are a mess! You are fired! You are undermining the definition of the word fact in the English language by pretending to it in your name. The English language wants its word back. You are an embarrassment. You sully the reputation of anyone who cites you as an authority on fact-ishness, let alone fact. You are fired."

But in the long thread of angry Facebook comments (for which most liberal-media-bashers would chomp at the bit to deride), the publicized correction and Maddow’s televised dismantling of PF’s ruling, there wasn’t a whisper from my conservative counterpart and his partner in crime over on the “red” side of politifact detractors. Nope, while they were both busy on Facebook at the same time, Bryan White going completely non sequitor over another Obama SOTU remark on spilled milk, and Jeff Dyberg beating the dead horse called Solyndra one more time, they somehow failed to notice this one.

In fact, the corrected Obama ruling was right next to the spilled milk ruling. It had a great deal more comments—more than double that of the spilled milk ruling--and being as it was a straight sort of “numbers” claim, it should have attracted Bryan’s or Jeff’s attention. Here’s the snipped screen print showing their side-by-side placement on PolitiFact's Facebook page:

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Bureaucratic Bungling

Mitt Romney, who so far has done the best of the presidential contenders, even though he ominously failed to win South Carolina, is the subject of 2012’s first Grading PolitiFact (PF) Liberal Style review.

Early in January, Romney told a crowd in New Hampshire that President Obama’s approach to improving unemployment was not to rely on the private sector, but to “hire lots of bureaucrats” and that “he’s added 135,000 to the government workforce.”

Sometimes I ask a very simple question when analyzing  such a fact-check as this: that would be “whose fault is that?”—whose fault is it that 135,000 employees were hired? Was it actually Obama’s doing? Besides the usual “why” which was covered in the ruling by PF New Hampshire’s Jon Greenberg by reviewing statistics from the Office of Personnel Management:

The Office of Personnel Management tallies are done every quarter, not every month, so the numbers don’t exactly match what you find on the BLS web site, but the trends line up. In round figures, from September 2009 to September 2011, the federal workforce grew about 100,000. Counting permanent civilian employees, the departments of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Defense grew by 53,000 -- more than half of the total. Veterans Affairs provides another 24,000, or about a quarter of the overall increase. Homeland Security contributes 12,000 -- call that another 10%. All told, national defense, assisting veterans, and protecting the national borders account for close to 90% of all federal civilian employee growth.

The numbers fall off quickly after that. The departments of Justice and Health and Human Services are tied at roughly 4,000 each.

There’s a nuance in Romney’s statement that bears some scrutiny. He talked about hiring lots of bureaucrats which raises the question, is everyone on the federal payroll a paper-pushing practitioner of the dark arts of red tape? Not in the opinion of Palguta.

"The sad fact is that the VA has had to increase staff at the hospitals to care for the wounded warriors coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan," Palguta says.

So, whose fault was it that staffs had to be increased to care for wounded warriors? If most of the hirings are VA-medically-related, who started the wars? If Obama had started troop withdrawals early in his presidency, it sounds like the VA would still have had to hire medical care for those returning. So, whose fault is it then? Or, let's say Republican John McCain had won the presidency in 2008--McCain, the renown former Viet Nam POW--would he have not just permitted, but embraced the hiring of additional VA medical care for returning soldiers?    If there were no wars we can assume there’d be far less than 135,000 “bureaucratic hirings.” One can also consider Obama’s continuing Bush’s “surge” but that’s only a little over ten percent of the peak number of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

PolitiFact made this more palatable for a Half True by portraying it as being two parts (one true, one false): the number 135,000, and whether or not they were bureaucrats. But there’s a third one: Romney said “You can hire lots of bureaucrats…That’s what the president’s done.” He’s saying it’s Obama that did this. Aside from the fact that it wasn’t literally Obama that hired 135,000, the VA needed to hire additional medical personnel to care for the returning troops who fought a war started (for nefarious reasons and at HUGE expense) by his predecessor, George W. Bush. The Department of Homeland Security was part of the fact-checked number, which was created under Bush. And it’s the GOP that’s generally more interested in protecting our borders than the Democrats.

Finally there’s the word “bureaucrat.” PF’s Greenberg gives the word “bureaucracy” (instead of individual bureaucrat) a definition of “a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation." But to Republicans and conservatives, a “bureaucrat” is someone (who must be from the government) who does nothing productive (even though I know from personal experience you can have bureaucrats in the private sector). And almost all of those 135,000 definitely had productive things to do.  It's hard to argue otherwise unless you're making a generalizing and  misleading statement like Romney did.

The only “element of truth” in Romney’s statement was the number. The rest of it ignored critical facts specifically in order to give a different impression. In other words, this should have been a deceptive, misleading Mostly False.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Raise Malaise

Do an internet search on “will not take pay raise” and you will get a lot of results. One of my first search results on this phrase came right close to my home state of Michigan: it was something on the newly elected Michigan governor Rick Snyder:

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder today pledged to take a $1 salary this year as the state wrestles with a budget deficit.

The promise was reminiscent of former Flint Mayor Don Williamson, who also had pledged to take $1 a year when he took office.

Snyder is unveiling his proposed budget to the Legislature this morning.

He listed "shared sacrifice" as one of the budget's guiding principles, which is when he announced his salary plan.

Scott Walker, the incoming governor of Wisconsin in 2010, wasn’t a self-made millionaire like Snyder, so he didn’t have the financial resources to do the same. But does the automatic pay raise which went to his position when he started merit a “False” ruling from PolitiFact Wisconsin because he technically didn’t give it to himself?

The question should be is it true that there was a pay raise for the governor’s position—regardless of whether it’s a Democrat or Republican taking that position. The answer is yes, it’s true.

And can the governor through the majority Republican state congress, re-set his pay? YES. Can the governor return the $7,300 as a symbol that he is sharing the burden with state employees? YES. Can he give $7,300 to charity as a symbol of shared sacrifice? Yes. And, if he was a millionaire like Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, could he give himself a $1 annual salary until he brought Wisconsin out of its financial doldrums? I’m sure he could.

It’s not true that he rewarded himself, or that he “gave himself” a raise. But technically, he received a state-approved increase to his salary over the person who held it previously. I don’t know how that can be deemed a false. Even the ruling says: (emphasis added)