2013: First Half "Overlapping Fact-Checks"

Of the 939 fact-checks published between (or among?) PolitiFact, the Washington Post FactChecker and Factcheck.Org in the first six months of 2013, there were 21 instances where two or more of the three fact-checkers did the same fact-check.  There were also cases where it was the same fact-check, but the statement being checked was made by different persons or organizations.  Sometimes a statement would be repeated (a "talking point") so it may have been fact-checked again at a later date (by the same fact-checker, which often occurs in the case of PolitiFact), which occasionally would change the rating.

 

At the end of 2012, with the Sandy Hook tragedy shortly before Christmas, guns and gun control suddenly became the hot topic politically, and the fact-checkers followed as 2013 began.  The most frequently overlapping topic concerned guns, followed by healthcare and the federal budget.  And as one might expect, significant nationally broadcast speeches, such as Obama's State of the Union address, were attractive fact-checking fodder.

 

Three statements had all three fact-checkers, PolitiFact, the Washington Post FactChecker, and FactCheck.Org, making a judgment.  One of them, by Barack Obama, had a differing outcome (the fact-checkers appear to be in disagreement), which I may be taking a better look at in another post.  In fact, in certain respects this was not a "triple" as I will explain.  The other two were by the same person, Michele Bachmann, who seems to be popular with the fact-checkers as far as what they believe are outlandish statements, and they were not disappointed.

 

The following are a selection of nine of those 21 instances, including the two three-peaters from Bachmann as well as those having some conflicts with ratings (my comments in italics).

Statement	"Other Fact-checker"	PolitiFact
Barack Obama: (SOTU on 2/13): "The U.S. has created half million manufacturing jobs in three years."	WaPo Factchecker: (in June when Obama repeated it)  Two Pinnochios:  "It's time to retire this talking point." Factcheck.Org: "The president was correct...but that's not the whole story."	True:  "...he has described the numbers carefully." This was by far the most contro- versial of PolitiFact's rulings, as it was technically correct but according to the other two fact- checkers, lacked context.
Barack Obama: (repeated) "40% of all guns purchased/sold do not require a background check." Repeated by Sen. Ted Cruz (R), Tom Barrett (D), and David Cicilline (D).	The WaPo started with an unrated "Verdict Pending" followed by Two Pinnochios a day later, then two months later Three Pinnochios. Factcheck.Org deemed this one an inconclusive "uncertain."	Half True:  Ted Cruz (R), Tom Barrett (D) and David Cicilline (D) all received the same rating. PolitiFact did not rate Obama on this statement.
Michele Bachmann: (3/19)  "70 percent of the food stamp budget goes to bureaucrats."	WaPo Factchecker:  Four Pinnochios. “There really aren't enough Pinnochios for such a misleading use of statistics." Factcheck.Org:  "...a grossly inaccurate claim."	Pants on Fire:  "That is ridiculously off base."
Michele Bachmann: (5/20):  The IRS is going to be "in charge of" a "huge national database" on healthcare with Americans' personal secrets.	“WaPo Factchecker:  Four Pinnochios.  "There is no evidence to support this assertion, and she is simply scaring people." Factcheck.Org:  "...falsely claimed..."	Pants on Fire: "She has mischaracterized the intent and limitations of the hub.  It's not a database."
Barack Obama: (SOTU on 2/13) The Affordable Care Act is "helping to slow the growth of healthcare costs."	Factcheck.Org:  "It may be helping, but the slower growth of healthcare spending began before the law was enacted."	Half True: "Obama is taking credit for more than he can prove."
Ron Johnson (R) stated that Obamacare has "$1 Trillion in hidden middle class taxes" which was denied as "untrue" at the same time by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D)  on ABC's "This Week"  3/10.	WaPo Factchecker:  Two Pinnochios for both: "Both lawmakers found themselves either a modifier too long or short." Factcheck.Org: "Wasserman- Schultz is wrong...(but) Johnson exaggerates."	PolitiFact did not fact-check either statement.
Barack Obama:  (SOTU on 2/13/)  The U.S. has doubled "the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas."	Factcheck.Org: "The (president's claim)...isn't remotely close to being true right now."	False:  "The statement was misleading and more importantly untrue."
Barack Obama:  (4/17) The NRA "used to support background checks."	WaPo Factchecker:  NO RATING.  "At the same time the NRA worked hard to defeat the proposals advanced by...other Democrats."	True:  "The NRA has acknowledged that it has since changed its position to opposition."  This was also a conflict in ratings as WaPo's "no rating" is much different than True regardless that it is "not" a rating.
Tom Coburn: (5/9 on MSNBC).  "After the national park gun ban was lifted, violent crime fell by 85 percent."	WaPo Factchecker: Three Pinnochios.  "...there is no evidence that crime has declined because guns have been permitted."	False:  "....far from clear."



Sidebar: Oh The Strawmanity!

In the course of my YouTube experience, I ran across a lot of people who used logical fallacies, particularly in the debates concerning religion.  Since my conservative counterpart focuses on them in his fact-check project, blog, and in commentary on Facebook, I also realized that this may have been the same place where he honed his skill on spotting/using them, besides that which he received in his education.

 

A straw man is an argument based on misrepresentation of the opponents' position.  The trouble with straw man is they are often thrown around like so many straws.  They are a logical-fallacy way of saying in your opinion the opponent is lying.   Some people will use them if they don't have anything else to argue with, like an accusation that bears a slight relation to the claim, so it's often difficult to distinguish whether it's really a straw man.  In other words, like everything else, logic can be abused.

 

My main defense (more than once) of PolitiFact's choice of the 2012 Lie of the Year--Mitt Romney's attack ad in the electoral-college crucial state of Ohio where there were several Chrysler plants, that its Jeep division was going to build cars in China--was its cruel inference that those Ohio plants would close.  If I had written that defense today, I would have stated it differently:  Romney's statement (and the ad) were straw men.  He misrepresented the position of Fiat-Chrysler and he misrepresented what Obama did at the time.

In a statement from Fiat-Chrysler management, it refuted that very misrepresentation.  In Obama's case, that was pretty much left to the fact-checkers.

But that is not really the point of this post.  The point is as I wrote it in the way I did, my counterpart attacked me by saying my arguments were straw men--as he stated, "an impressive array."  In other words, he was defending Romney's straw man by claiming those who said it was not true were using a straw man (not just PolitiFact, but Factcheck.Org and the Washington Post). He was doing the very thing that I had seen done in YouTube and Facebook commentary:  when all else fails, bring out the straw man.  Now I understand.

A Note About My Absence

As some friends, acquaintances and readers may have noticed, I haven't been doing a whole lot so far this year at this blog.  I haven't been doing too much commenting on the PolitiFact Facebook page, either, or surveying my nemesis' work as is my usual custom.  After the election I had grown a little weary of politics in general and decided to take a brief sabbatical.  At the same time, PolitiFact was pretty much doing the same, particularly at National level, where they did very few rulings.  But January came and went, and I was having trouble getting my butt back in gear.

In February at the encouragement of a YouTube acquaintance, I decided to give a try at making a "non-personal" video--that is, instead of another video about my cats or my travels, as I had already uploaded to YouTube, I made one about an even more controversial subject than politics.  I first revved up my Windows 7 Movie Maker skills by doing an "amusing and double-entendred" religous sign video, followed by a lengthier video responding to another YouTuber.  That video concerned Biblical slavery.

 

Many videos on YouTube are what can best be described as "Vlogs"--the video blog, the next step up from the blog, where the YouTuber videotapes herself or himself speaking at various lengths on certain subjects.  That's also the easiest way to do it: a camera, webcam or smartphone can easily record and upload a video in just a few easy steps. (Although I consider it difficult in respect to keeping on topic and communicating well.)  My "YouTube Style" is a bit more sophisticated.  I generally splice other videos together as a response to another video:  I research for other videos which may answer the "question" or "opinion" of the video I've targeted for response, especially if it comes from experts who are known in that field.  I try to match one expression to its opposing expression for some congruity.  So I have to use the Movie Maker to clip each video, as well as adding an intro and a closing, where I have to list any credits in case I use music or a some other copyrighted material in making my point.  Occasionally I may add some audio I've recorded where I provide any needed explanation(s).

 

The Biblical slavery video was noticed by a "hub" YouTube site which "mirrored" it and it's  received almost 1,000 views.  While that's not 1.4 billion like Psy of "Gangnam Style"  it's given me some confidence in my ability to produce an interesting, quality video.  I've done a few more using Corel Video Studio, an "upgrade" to  Windows 7 Movie Maker.  More learning pains and time lost to this blog.

 

So that's become a sort of hobby of mine, and of course, it's apparent I can do that with PolitiFact's rulings as well.   So I've finally gotten back to compiling the rulings for the first quarter of 2013, and when I am finished I really want to attempt to do a "PolitiFact Rulings and Truth Index" video for YouTube to be shared with this blog.

 

 In the course of my foray into video editing (which is really what I do) I've also learned from some YouTube Christian apologists and counter-apologists (YouTube has a large loud atheist community) much more about logical fallacies, where they are often employed, and are probably used to some excess by my conservative counterpart.  So, I may be renewing PolitiFact Bias and Zebra Factcheck criticisms from this perspective, although this will be more occasional as I want to concentrate on my efforts on the database of PolitiFact rulings, now approaching 7,000 in count. 

 

So, I'm not done here, and I will be back in a different, hopefully more interesting way.  Thanks for your support! 

Another Peek at Ponzi

When I first started this blog in 2010, I did a lengthy review of why I thought the social security system was not a Ponzi scheme.

 

It may boil down to an historical argument: that is, which came first, paygo or Ponzi, as well as, from whence did Charles Ponzi get his idea to begin with? I did not cover that part of it at the time, but since then I have come across some new information, and I felt an update was needed.

The history of pensions, particularly public sector pensions, cannot be easily separated from the history of pension finance. The creation of a pension plan coincides with the simultaneous creation of pension liabilities, and the parameters of the plan establish the size and the timing of those liabilities. U.S. Army pensions have always been funded on a "pay-as-you-go" basis from the general revenues of the U.S. Treasury. Thus army pensions have always been simply one more liability of the federal government.

In the United States, pensions have been around since the civil war; in fact, from a world-wide historical perspective, they go all the way back to the Romans, where they started in terms of funding out of the "general treasury"--in other words, they were pay-go from the start. The Ponzi scheme came along in response to Charles Ponzi who glorified it in the 1920's, and he got his idea for his scheme not from working for a pension system, but from a bank:  

In 1907, Ponzi moved to Montreal and became an assistant teller in the newly opened Banco Zarossi, a bank started by Luigi "Louis" Zarossi to service the influx of Italian immigrants arriving in the city. Zarossi paid 6% interest on bank deposits – double the going rate at the time – and was growing rapidly as a result. Ponzi eventually rose to bank manager. However, he found out that the bank was in serious financial trouble because of bad real estate loans, and that Zarossi was funding the interest payments not through profit on investments, but by using money deposited in newly opened accounts. The bank eventually failed and Zarossi fled to Mexico with a large portion of the bank's money.

It may be okay to refer to social security as a Ponzi in the same way many refer to the stock market as a casino; a pejorative: defined as "having a disparaging, belittling or derogatory effect or force." Certainly a Ponzi scheme, being an illegal swindle, is a negative, disparaging way to describe the part of social security that works as "pay-go." Or the stock market "casino", with even television announcers and internet articles regularly referring to investments as "bets." But we know realistically that the stock market is not a casino as much as we know that social security is not a Ponzi scheme. They just seem that way because certain aspects mimic fraudulent activities  (as we might even call insurance a "protection racket").

And of course, Ponzi can be re-applied as a pejorative in the same way towards those things "celebrated" by the right to those things "celebrated" by the left, such as climate change. Things go better with tu quoque?

Fox News Fake War on Xmas 2012?

2012 PolitiFact Wacky Awards

PolitiFact has its Lie of the Year, but I don't think anyone's considered all the ones that were....just maybe too plain weird, wacky, dumb, or silly for a Truth-o-Meter ruling from PolitiFact.  So here are the Politi-Psychotic Awards for PolitiFact's Wackiest Fact-checks of the Year. (BTW, here's my prediction for 2012 PolitiFact Lie of the Year, posted in August.)

 

□  The "Really Bad Economic Indicator" Award.  If Rick Scott wanted to overplay the Florida economy with this one, he should have waited just a month more for Fat Tuesday and counted pazckis.  How many donuts you say you sold in one morning pretending to work at a donut shop is SUCH  a profoundly brilliant way to preface your state-of-the-state address and I can't wait to see the "donut sales indicator" in all econ books.  But seriously....

I bet PolitiFact enjoyed investigating this one.

□  The "Excuse To Go To Vegas" Award.  A PolitiFact ruling onTampa being the strip club capital of the world (uttered by Florida State senator Ellyn Bogdanoff) was written by Angie Drobnic Holan, who had to call around to find out for sure, besides, perhaps, I'm curious...did Bill Adair, Lou Jacobson and Alan Sharockman go on any field trips to determine that "evidence [was] lacking" to help Angie?

□  The "Who was Buried in Grants Tomb" Award.  Dave Weldon, a Florida senate candidate, said there was no wildlife in ANWR, which stands for Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.  PolitiFact's writer Katie Sanders quotes an interviewee: " With regard to the lack of animals, he appears to be very uninformed."   Well, DUH.

□   The "Best of the Birthers" Award.  So, the governor of Hawaii actually went to Kinko's in person to forge Obama's birth certificate?  Gee, he could have  had someone in his office do it instead of getting his picture taken while there.  I mean, I've got the Onion to read stuff like this, I don't know what it's doing in PolitiFact.

□   The "Terribly Twisted Taxonomy Award".  So a Congress is a bunch of baboons, or vice versa?  I still see this "fact" come up on Facebook shared by well-meaning friends.  It's another joke, and I don't know why PolitiFact wasted its time rating it.  While there's a lot of groupings of like animals I haven't heard of, I just don't think congress of baboons is one that merits a fact-check.  Leave it for Snopes, instead of being so monkey see, monkey do.

□   The "Flinging Poo Award."  Conservative firebrand Michele Malkin got a True for saying Gloria Steinem called Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison a "female impersonator" back in 1993.  While Steinem's characterization seems ill-formed to me, it's not a sufficient "tu quoque" argument by Malkin to defend Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a "slut" as "slut" carries a lot more baggage than a (female as a) female impersonator.  Other than that, if anyone's a female impersonator, it's Ann "Adams Apple" Coulter...

□   The "Too Much Information Award." Wisconsin state senator Joel Kleefisch got into trouble for voting on behalf of two state senators who were in the bathroom, on his (found Mostly True) claim that the bathroom is considered part of the chamber.  PolitiFact Wisonsin's James Nelson tries to answer the question we all want answered " Are Assembly members really considered in the chambers when they are, um, on the chamber pot?"   Um, I was expecting PolitiFact to tell me the two state senators Kleefisch voted on behalf of had constipation which was why they couldn't make it back on time to vote.  Well, maybe (not) the next time.

PFB Unskewed: Slipping Up on the Wage Gap

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) posted what it deemed to be an "outstanding" contradiction in PolitiFact rulings having to do with the gender wage gap in the United States. They declared they had received a post from an anonymous source which pointed out a "glaring" inconsistency between a ruling on Mitt Romney and one on Colorado Democrat Diana DeGette on just that subject.  Apparently they rushed to publish it in their partisan glee, while neglecting to see what they already had done.

Click to enlarge: This might be Grading PF Liberal Style's comparative ruling to prove
right-wing partisan leanings from PolitiFact, by same logic as PFB.

So let's see what PolitiFact has done before on these types of rulings. PolitiFact has awarded Mostly False to Obama and Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline for saying (back in June) that women earned 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same job.

 

On the other hand, Diana DeGette and Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine both get Mostly True because they make the distinction that it's 77 cents (or 79 cents in Virginia) on average or overall. So in four rulings on wage disparity, PolitiFact has shown itself to be consistent. The Romney statement, however, is not the same as any of the four cited above.

PolitiFact Bias, through its companion site Sublime Bloviations, has previously posted on the disparity in the case of Obama's statement. They appear to be saying that they believe Obama deserved a worse rating than Mostly False:

The Obama campaign made a claim about disparate pay for men and women doing the same work and tried to support it with a statistic that doesn't take into account the type of work done. That's a flatly wrong approach, perhaps even "pants on fire" if one believes in applying subjective judgments to rulings on matters of fact.

PolitiFact's conclusion suggests that the Obama campaign was trying oh-so-hard to simply convey that men and women are paid differently irrespective of the jobs they do and (oopsie!) just happened to get a little mixed up in the delivery. There's one way to keep the statistic from earning a "False" rating or worse: Find out the real number and determine whether the 77 cent figure is somewhat close.

So in this ruling on Mitt Romney that's precisely what PolitiFact did--find out the real number. The four rulings above were quite generic, but this one was about the wage gender gap working in the White House, so they could actually find out with some precision. And this access to precise data enabled them to do exactly what PFB lamented: breaking it down respectively by job and title.

 

So let's try and answer the question posed by PFB: " What was the difference that allowed DeGette to earn a Mostly True versus Romney's Half True?" In the two claims PFB tries to equate, PolitiFact matched the (general statistical) data on DeGette, and found it close to correct, while it found the (specific White House) data on Romney wasn't as close, so found him Half True.

Sidebar: Official Errors

Currently (as I've posted about before) I am doing a very tedious, time consuming task with regard to past PolitiFact rulings (about 4,000 of them from 2007 through 2011):  I am refining my "rough" database to include specific dates, statement descriptions and claimant's (current) position.  When done, the database will be much more accurate than before with regard to these details, and hopefully will provide some greater insight into statistics regarding PolitiFact's Truth Index, as well as more reference material for general posts.

 

My biggest errors thus far have not been with the Truth-o-Meter rulings themselves, it has been with the "claimant position."  This was added when the scholarly Eric Ostermeier study of 500 rulings in early 2011 came out:  he had separated those in an official position with those who were not.  To some "not an elected official" might mean the party boosters, the media pundits, the organizations.  This was basically how I quickly classified them when I thought I'd try to replicate Ostermeier's results.  But there are many individuals who were not elected officials when they sought office, or were in a different office.  For example, before running for governor of Florida, Rick Scott was a businessman. Senator Marco Rubio was not in any official position when he ran for senator, although he had been prominent in state government.  The way these two should be recorded, up until they assume office, is not as an official.  In other words, a PolitiFact "rulee's" position should be recorded as the one they were in at the time they made the statement.   In the Scott/Rubio examples, I had them recorded (mistakenly) as officials up through 2010.  While most strictly Democrat-Republican Truth Index comparisons would hold, anything with regard to official/non-official would be suspect, because Scott and Rubio comprised a large number of rulings (as well as others).

 

Other than that, when complete, there should be new, very accurate chart data to report.   I am also considering a new statistically "relative" approach other than PolitiFact's own Truth Index and the Politi-Score, which I will be testing with the new "cleaned up" database.  In the mean time, thank you for your patience!

Sidebar: Does Ze Bra Hold Up?

I knew it might be too good to be true when my conservative counterpart appeared to stop posting his criticisms of PolitiFact at both of his sites...as well as stop posting at the PolitiFact Facebook page.  I also thought he might be up to something.  In my last contact on the PolitiFact Facebook page, he said he was going to do the same Pants on Fire analysis of the state PolitiFacts, and it seemed likely to me he was going through the process of collecting the state data which was taking up his time.

 

It also seemed he was getting heard at a higher level in the right-wing media where he was cited and featured with an interview; he had also "un-blogspotted" his PolitiFact Bias site, making it a real website, in order to give it more "cred" I suppose.  There's most likely money to be made in connections to Big Government or Weekly Standard especially when you're regularly trashing an "independent fact-checker" as being liberally biased.  Now that he was being cited by the bigger names, it seemed that would be a natural progression.

 

As it turns out, author Bryan White has decided to launch a new website where he does his own fact-checks with a conservative bent.  Of course, he's not rating them like PolitiFact or the Washington Post Factchecker, and he's given the site the name of Zebra FactCheck, which I think reflects his ideology very neatly--for most conservatives don't see the world in shades of grey, they see it in black and white.  This also is very indicative of  the false dichotomies he often presents.  But in terms of the right-wing websites, he may have segued into something that might get him a real job.

 

Speaking of that, this makes my theory seem all the more likely that Bryan White may have been someone rejected for a journalist-type job by the Tampa Bay Times or PolitiFact itself: he states that these fact-checks are what he does best.  So this bolsters my theory that this was his retaliation.  But that's pure speculation.

 

All in all, it makes it easier for me in the sense that it is harder to make a criticism of a criticism of a factcheck than it is just to criticize the factcheck itself.  And that I will do.  In fact, I've discovered that the best way to check his fact-checks may be with PolitiFact's fact-checks.

 

In the meantime, I am having fun trying to find a comical symbol for "Checking Zebra-Factcheck".  I thought of De-Zebtions and the graphic for the title of my post "does Ze-Bra hold up?'  Or there's the black and white angle.  Lil Black and White Lies?  "Gray"-ding Zebra Factchecks" maybe?   Stay tuned.

Truth Index: Yes I know, Get A Life!

It was late in 2010 when I first thought about doing my own database of PolitiFact rulings.  So between Christmas and New Years of that year, when there was a brief stand-still in publishing due to the holidays, I went through PolitiFact's personality page, linking to each person or group on the list and then recording the count.  So each record reflected the name and political affiliation, along with a total by True, Mostly True, etc.

 

In 2011, I started a more detailed analysis.  Each record was one ruling:  I also included the date of the ruling, subject and writer.  Late in 2011, I decided to include a brief description of the ruling.

 

In doing so I realized an historical account of PolitiFact was needed--the "up to 2010" rulings should be recorded in the same way, as one by one rulings instead of by person/group.  Recently my conservative counterpart made allegations with regard to Congressional Quarterly (CQ), which was PolitiFact's partner in 2007 and 2008.  The only way I could test their theory--that CQ mitigated PolitiFact's alleged left wing bias--was to record those rulings in this way, so that a complete timeline could be created, and the CQ rulings could be filtered out for analysis.

 

Luckily, PolitiFact doesn't delete "old" rulings.  So I've been spending a lot of time in a somewhat tedious process, although it's been interesting reading some of the claims made back then, as well as seeing how PolitiFact grew and progressed as a fact-checker, which I will post about soon.

 

Between other things going on in September (personally) and doing this, I've not done a whole lot of posting.  It should be picking up soon, however, as we look at PolitiFact with an historical perspective.

 

Sidebar: PF True Lie of the Year?

Mitt Romney's surreptitiously recorded comments about the 47 percent were quickly checked out by PolitiFact as well as the other fact-checkers.

 

For me, it quickly brought to mind a few posts I had done about red state socialism, and how a New York Times columnist stated that the more the (red) states are given in Federal dollars, the more dependent they become, the more Republican they vote.  It is an irony indeed that Romney is so wrong on these 47 percent, because I'd be willing to venture that more than half of them vote Republican.

 

And even though PolitiFact has pointed out that the statement that 47% pay no tax is on its face True, (and I've posted before about how Republicans are more than fairly rated by PolitiFact when it comes to tax share, which this clearly is) this statement, with its context, is a fantastic candidate for "2012 Lie of the Year." A complimenting statement providing context--that those who supported Obama paid no income tax--was rated False.  Because if it becomes known as the "Romney Cliche", I would bet it may be the point of no return for the Romney campaign--this could be the statement that cost him his election.  That makes it a pretty big lie even without the pants on fire. (Click here to see my other prediction for PLOTY.)

 

Of course I could be completely wrong, and  Romney and his cohorts may spend enough money in PAC and campaign ads to confuse the issue enough to win or find some way to make lemonade out of this lemon.  Or Obama could make his own big gaffe.  But I still think it's a pretty good bet. 

Obama Hates God? (Fox News Politicizes 9/11)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Years and Counting

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

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

Looking forward to even better Politi-Psy ahead!

Sidebar: Oops, They Said It Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still No Real Proof of PolitiFact Bias from PolitiFact Bias

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why America is Not the Greatest Country in the World

A Case for PF Wisconsin Right Wing Bias

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sidebar: Christmas in July

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

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

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

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

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