Grading WaPo Liberal Style: 3+3, Six or Half Dozen

In an initial review of the blog counterirritant it was found that it doesn’t just review PolitiFact rulings, it looks at other fact-checkers. It recently did a review that’s sort of cut short on Glenn Kessler’s Washington Post FactChecker, of Mitt Romney’s statement that a normal economic recovery consists of about 500,000 jobs created per month (i.e., Romney really thinks people will believe that’s what he can do?)

Click to enlarge:  Crucial descriptors ignored by counterirritant (and PF Bias) circled.

Kessler looked at employment stats in the course of Romney’s lifetime, so counterirritant’s first complaint is this is not a “logical” period of measure.  Kessler was most likely using this period in terms of Romney's experience.  Maybe Kessler should have said “post World War 2” when the United States achieved its greatest manufacturing boom--and a period where those types of job creation numbers may most likely be if they were anywhere in the course of America's economic history.  In other words, using this period would be the most advantageous to Romney.

He (or she) then disputed Kessler’s “methodology” of counting every time in Romney’s lifetime the monthly number was near or exceeded 500,000, even counting those numbers as much as 10 percent below it (another very "charitable" accommodation). Since it very rarely exceeded this number, it proved that Romney was greatly exaggerating.

Counterirritant’s methodology consists of determining the median in monthly job creation numbers, that is, the number at which half the monthly job creation numbers are above, and half the numbers are below, for Romney’s lifetime, which he determined to be 146,000 per month. He then quotes liberal economist Paul Krugman who says this number (or even 200,000) is not adequate. But that’s where he stops. In other words, according to counterirritant, since 500,000 is a lot more than 146,000, Romney must be correct, unless there's something I'm misunderstanding.

But counterirritant never says anything about what a normal “recovery” number should be, since that was what Romney was talking about—a recovery. For example, if it was 325,000, then 500,000 is a gross exaggeration. We know it’s likely to be a number like 325,000 or 350,000 just because of the few times it’s approached 500,000.

Another method would be to look at the average for all recovery periods (beyond the period Kessler looked at) and then compare Romney’s 500,000 to that. You could just as well look at the median for all recovery periods, but in counterirritant’s case, this would make Romney probably look more like the liar because those might be lower than the average (so we have another "charitable interpretation" from Kessler).

Tchotchkes: On Those Job Creators

Well, "they" probably do create jobs....in China and southeast Asia.

Lil White Lies: Take These Net Jobs and Shove 'em

Jobs statistics are a sticky, complex topic for PolitiFact: as noted by PolitiFact Ohio writer Mark Naymik in this recent PolitiFact (PF) ruling on Joe Biden: “Politifact also frequently points [out] that when framing job figures, slicing and timing make all the difference.”

And wouldn’t you know, PF even knows quite well what selection bias is. Only it calls it for what it really is: cherry picking: (emphasis added)

Take, for example, some other accurate statistics we can create using the same figures.

If job growth continues on pace in 2010, employment still will have decreased by 1.6 million jobs since Obama took office in 2009.

While Obama is on a pace to add 2.356 million jobs in 2010, Bush created 2.36 million jobs in 2005 (a specific year to year comparison).

And from April 2003 to June 2007, while Bush was president, the U.S. economy added almost 7.9 million jobs.

All true. And all in seeming contradiction to Wasserman Schultz's claim.

Why?

Because we cherry-picked numbers to make our point.

But the ruling that is the subject of this Lil White Lies post is not about Joe Biden or Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  It's about a claim by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell about Texas Governor Rick Perry's "job creation performance" in an op-ed piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

My conservative counterpart is correct in how PolitiFact approaches job numbers claims: “PolitiFact's history of (appropriately) treating job creation claims as dealing with net job creation where the context warrants taking them that way.” So, in that same track, is he also correct when he says that PolitiFact failed to note that Rick Perry “did not mention the term "net" while talking about job gains?

Here is the complete quote from McDonnell:

Look no further than growing and diverse Texas, a state Democrats targeted in 2010, where data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that under Gov. Rick Perry’s leadership the state has created more jobs over the last decade than the rest of the states combined. That’s a record of job creation the Obama administration can only dream about.

There is no mention of this “net” by McDonnell throughout his op-ed piece extolling the great things all the new Republican governors have been doing for their states. For example, he says about his own, Virginia: “Since February 2010, 67,400 new jobs have been created in Virginia and our unemployment rate has fallen to 6% from 7.2%.” He says about Wisconsin: “In six months, 25,000 private-sector jobs have been created.”

Tchotchkes: Evidence Many Boomers are losing their Hearing