Hoystories on the Half-Shell

Incomprehensible and Mind-Boggling, if you’re a Republican.

Matt Hoy of Hoystory’s method of looking at PolitiFact (PF) is to point out seeming contradictions, and it seems like he has hit on one here again. A comparison of rulings on statements by Mitt Romney and Adam Hasner, on basically the same subject has come down to, as Hoy headlines, the “same idea, (with) different results.”



What to do, what to do when they're both Republicans!

The writers for these two PF pieces were Amy Sherman of PolitiFact Florida for the first one on Hasner, written in late May, and Lou Jacobson for PF National for the one on Romney in mid-June. Both seem to be covering the same subject: the rate of job recovery and/or job creation under Obama—is it the worst since Hoover and/or the Great Depression? Amy Sherman found a statement by Adam Hasner, a former Florida state legislator (in his criticism of its Senator Bill Nelson and Obama), to be Mostly True, who was talking about job creation, while Jacobson determined Romney’s statement to be False, who was talking about job recovery. Or, was it thus: while it’s Mostly True (Hasner) that this is one of the weakest post-recession job creation periods since the Great Depression, it’s False (Romney) that it’s been the slowest job recovery since Hoover during the Great Depression.

Let’s first look at their words:

Adam Hasner (tweeting): “Obama-Nelson economic record. Job creation ... at slowest post-recession rate since Great Depression” (Mostly True)

Mitt Romney (on the campaign trail): “It's taken longer to get Americans back to work than it took during the Great Depression. This is the slowest job recovery since Hoover. It breaks my heart. I want to get us back to work.” (False)

Both Jacobson and Sherman use the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as a source of data. As stated by Amy Sherman in her ruling on Hasner:

According to NBER, there have been 13 recessions since the one that started August 1929 and lasted for 43 months, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has month-by-month jobs data for 12 of them.

This was the basis for Sherman’s awarding a ruling to Hasner of Mostly True: “Hasner's off by only one recession out of 12.”

Jacobson not only cross-linked Sherman’s piece on Hasner, he picked up her “one recession out of 12” as “…Measured by jobs created, it has been exceeded on a percentage basis by 10 out of the 12 recessions we looked at.” In other words, looking at the same table, he justified the Mostly True for Hasner, while pointing in a different direction, using it for “back to work” stats for Romney. In other words, although they rely on the same BLS statistics,  one looked at job creation (creation of new jobs) and one at job recovery or retention (as those who are layed off returning to similar work). Jacobson purely looked at labor statistics (four sources) for duration of unemployment, while Sherman also sought the advice of experts (with ten sources), with one table in particular that was the difference between them.

The other matter is timing, which for Hasner was “post Great Depression” and for Romney was “Hoover.” The Great Depression started in 1929 (when Hoover was president) and essentially lasted up until World War 2 began. Hoover left office in 1932, a good two years into it. So for Hasner, Sherman should look at data from about 1940 forward; Jacobson should look at information starting from the Great Depression. And of course, even now, the Great Depression trumps all in terms of unemployment.

It appears, however, Jacobson didn’t even consider the Great Depression. In his conclusion, he just considered stats from World War II forward: “it’s inaccurate to say that ‘it’s the slowest job recovery since Hoover.’ Depending on what yardstick you use, it’s either the third worst or the fifth worst recovery since World War II. The BLS Table he used was Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-12 "Unemployed persons by duration of unemployment, seasonally adjusted," accessed June 16, 2011, which seems to me would be the best “job recovery” data source.

There’s another take on it from Factcheck.org (on a similar statement by Romney during a Fox GOP “presidential debate”) which confirms Jacobson’s findings; there’s also a statement that it checked on job creation made by Nancy Pelosi which it termed "spin".

The situation was by all accounts much worse during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Kennedy states in his book "Freedom From Fear" that when Franklin Roosevelt took office, more than 13 million Americans had lost their jobs and that "62% found themselves out of work for longer than a year; 44% longer than two years; 24% longer than three years; and 11% longer than four years."…

Sherman, however, did not use the BLS data in the way Jacobson did, again, because she was interested in job growth as opposed to “duration of employment” (which did not include the Great Depression). 

Did it really necessitate Jacobson cross-link to Sherman’s analysis? I mean, this is how I’m sure Hoy’s so-called “eagle eye” came across this seeming conflict of “same ideas and different results”. Why would Jacobson point to it if it was? PolitiFact often cross references “earlier PolitiFact items”, and if I were to guess, the first step for a PF writer in evaluating someone’s statement would be to look at the rulings on similar statements. Often, some rulings are worded conspicuously alike when they are similar. Since they didn’t neglect to take that step this time, since we have a cross-reference, there must be some reason for the seemingly disparate rulings. In this case, it would appear to be that Table A-12.

On top of all that, Hoy links to a Half True ruling on Steny Hoyer, Democratic House Minority Whip, protesting that PolitiFact gave him “the benefit of doubt” it would not accord to Romney, on a subject that had no relationship whatsoever to job recovery or creation: it was about the amount of the deficit when G. W. Bush left office. So, only a Half True for a Democrat and a Mostly True for a Republican? Hoy just had to toy around with Hoyer. Just me waxing poetic.

Of course my conservative counterpart had the first comments at Matt Hoy’s website, where he used the most flagrant and accusatory words he could muster: (emphasis added)

…. PolitiFact treated both statements as referring to the rate of job growth after the recession had ended. They simply fail to use the measure from the chart (rate at which the lost jobs are recovered rather than the rate of job growth), and failed to grade Romney by the same measure they graded Hasner.

If they do a correction, bet on Hasner dropping to “False.”

PolitiFact failed….failed they did! Better yet, he calls it a “mind-boggling inconsistency” on his PolitiFact Bias blog. He claims that the two rulings are not reconcilable. Bryan, whose rhetoric most of us can’t “wrap our head around” in both his blog and his Facebook debates, can’t—or won’t—wrap his own head around this. As does Deff Jeff Dyberg who adds that the inconsistency is “incomprehensible”.

Actually, I think PolitiFact needs to issue a correction and award a Mostly True to Mitt Romney. Because “job recovery” and “job creation” can easily be conflated, it would not be that difficult to do. Lou Jacobson could say that he did not consider the multiple sources which Sherman used….and it would make them look non-partisan. However, a July 4 PolitiFact “Mailbag” issue, which starts with a reader response to Mitt’s False ruling, indicates that there’s no plans to review or otherwise change it. Although the only reason I’d “wish” it that way is that it would certainly confound Deff Jeff and especially Bryan, who would be a Mister Predictor one more time.  Don't make any more bets, Bryan.