Prophecy Fulfilled...Ha ha!

Well, I guess they did it, as I predicted about a month ago.  I watched Angie Drobnic-Holan talk about it on Jake Tapper's Show on CNN (above pic is a snippet).  Now, I must say, if she's going to say previous rulings on Obama saying the same thing should  "both be Pants on Fire" I suppose she could go back and change the previous Half True to Pants on Fire so my conservative counterpart doesn't have a cow?  She explained it as a progression from an inconclusive to a verifiable, just as I did in my post. 

 

Anyway, this year it seemed pretty obvious and now I kind of see how they pick them:  notoriety associated with the claim seems to hold more importance than prevalence of fact-checking the claim; that is, even if it's repeated quite a bit (as well as fact-checked), if there's a lot of publicity surrounding it, or I suppose you might call it, getting a lot of Lexis-Nexis results may matter more.

 

But Obama's had a bad year in 2013, and perhaps PolitiFact wanted to give it some credence.

PolitiFact 2013 Lie of the Year?

As the end of the year approaches, I've started thinking about PolitiFact's 2013 Lie of the Year. Are they even going to do it again this year? Was it Bill Adair's "thing" and not Angie Drobnic-Holan's? Well, if they do, it seems to me there's one very, very strong candidate. That's Obama's repeated statement that under Obamacare, "if you like your current insurance plan, you can keep it"....conveniently changed to... "you can keep (your plan) if it hasn’t changed since the law passed." Making it Pants on Fire.

Let's look at the history of how PolitiFact rated the "if you like your current insurance plan, you can keep it" statement from Obama:

During Obama's campaign in 2008, he was actually given a True: but at that time, his vision of that which came to be known as Obamacare was much different than what it turned out to be. Things were a bit different at the fledgling PolitiFact as well, as this True ruling was a brief 267 words. The important paragraph which shows how things had changed was this one:

Obama has said he would like his plan to be universal, in that everyone has health care coverage. But currently it includes a mandate only for children. Obama has said that he did not include a mandate for adults so as not to penalize people with modest incomes.

This was a far cry from what it developed into after he was elected president.  "The mandate for adults" was practically the heart of the healthcare proposal which survived to the law itself, meaning that, at the time,"keeping your healthcare plan" was more likely than not. 

In 2009, before the ACA was even passed, and oops, Obama said it again. But now there was a mandate for adults  This was when there was a lot of debate in congress over adding a "public option", a sort of Medicare for those under age 65, and the details had still not been finalized.  This time the Truth-o-Meter throttled down half way on Obama:

Until the legislation gets closer to a final stage, it's difficult to say how many employers will likely opt to change coverage. But clearly some change is coming. It's not realistic for Obama to make blanket statements that "you" will be able to "keep your health care plan." It seems like rhetoric intended to soothe people that health care reform will not be overly disruptive. But one of the points of reform is to change the way health care works right now. So we rate Obama's statement Half True.

Fast forwarding to 2013, as the reality of Obamacare rolled out, he was prudently advised he had better "tweak" it and put some caveats on it...like, if your insurance has the coverages the ACA requires, you can keep it.  If your insurance company won't upgrade it, then you might get cancelled...or your rates adjusted accordingly. Obama chose to back peddle, however: "What we said was, you can keep (your plan) if it hasn't changed since the law passed."

So it went from let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt (True), to we don't have enough information (Half True) to "oh no you don't!" (Pants on Fire).

The qualifiers having made it a Pants on Fire lie, and with PolitiFact in a special report including a compilation of 37 recorded occasions where Obama said it without the qualifier, what we now have is a pretty humongous lie. Along with the start-up failures of the healthcare.gov website we have quite a Lie of the Year combustible combination.

Last year, a Republican got the honor, and it was for something that was capturing the public's attention at the height of the presidential campaign. But this year, the Democrats are over due, and it might be okay to go back to the subject of healthcare, since that's dominated the Lie of the Year position since PolitiFact created the award. 

 

The announcement is right around the corner, and the timing could not be better. So it's my prediction. We'll see in a few weeks.

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."



2013: First Six Months' Fact-checking for the Big Three

PolitiFact has definitely "downsized" in the U.S. even with its recent international presence in Australia.  At least for the time being.

 

Since 2011, I've generally expected 475 to 500 rulings from PolitiFact for each quarter.  When 360 were produced for the first quarter of 2013, I attributed that to the writers taking a break after the 2012 elections.  But the second quarter was pretty much a mirror of the first, going from 361 to an almost equal number of 363 rulings.   The dropping of PolitiFact Tennessee and no rulings from PolitiFact New Hampshire would not be enough to make up the difference.  Basically PolitiFact has cut back 20 to 25 percent.

 

With fewer rulings to record, I thought I might try something different:  back in 2010 I took a look at FactCheck.Org in and of itself.  I've compared rulings on the same statements many times, and on an individual basis, I've looked at various politicos in terms of Politifact, Factcheck.Org (FCO) and the Washington Post FactChecker.

 

This time I decided to record all three of the most prominent political fact-checkers (PolitiFact, WaPo FactChecker and FactCheck.Org) for the first six months of 2013.  I also tried to make a comparison in terms of the Truth Index.  Between PolitiFact's Truth-o-Meter categories and the Gepetto Checkmark to Four Pinnochios (a "whopper") used at the Washington Post, it wasn't too difficult there.    Factcheck.Org (FCO), however, does not rate fact-checks  with Truth-o-Meters or Pinnochios like the other two.

 

Just like it did when I reviewed it in 2010, I found that FCO generally did not fact-check "truthful" statements, as the great majority of its findings are negative: either misleading or false (It appears the Washington Post FactChecker leans that way as well, although not nearly as much).   It was a very subjective exercise for me to attempt to "rate" them as well, so the "Truth Index" I obtained, in my opinion, should not be construed as entirely accurate.

 

For the most part I based my FCO "ruling" on the same criteria as PolitiFact.  "Misleading" statements which contained an element of truth "but ignore[d] facts which would give a different impression" were categorized as "Mostly False" while statements which were "inaccurate," or incorrect (or when the FCO article called the statement a "false claim," which occurred fairly often) were categorized as False.    There were no "Pants on Fire" or "Whoppers" for FCO.

 

The results I obtained can be shown in the chart below.

The two "smaller" fact-checkers tend to concentrate on facts likely false based on the "Truth Index."

Even with PolitiFact's downsizing, it is still the dominant fact-checker of the "Big Three" with over 3/4 of all rulings for the first six months of 2013.    As noted, it checks a lot more statements which, as can be seen are (1) "True" and, due to its state operations, (2) statements by people with no political affiliation.

PolitiFact had a 57 percent higher overall Truth Index than the Washington Post FactChecker, and it was 82 percent higher than Factcheck.Org.

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.

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.

Truth Index+: Buh-Bye, Bachmann

What can I say.

Michele Bachmann was someone I termed a statistical "outlier" when it came to the PolitiFact Truth Index+, because she was so far off everyone else in terms of it, as well as in terms of its category Pants on Fire. When she announced she would not run for her congressional seat in 2014, PolitiFact "honored" her by describing the reasons for such a feat:

She had a remarkable streak: Her first 13 ratings were False or Pants on Fire.

Bachmann went on to compete in the 2012 Republican primary for president. She earned her first True rating for a statement she made during a 2011 debate that then-Sen. Obama "refused to raise the debt ceiling because he said President Bush had failed in leadership."

When a question was raised about her veracity, Bachmann cited our work during one of the many Republican presidential debates. "After the debate that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything I said was true," she said at a debate in Sioux City, Iowa, on Dec. 15, 2011.

Alas, she was totally wrong. In fact, the week before we had rated her statement that Mitt Romney instituted "socialized medicine" in Massachusetts as Pants on Fire.

Bachmann has been extensively covered on this blog--in fact, my very last post--and has been subjected to the Politi-Score, that is, taking into account all the fact-checks done on her by every source. In her case, she had four (4) sources because of the Minnesota Public Radio Fact-Checker in her home state. And she required more work than the others I've measured using the Politi-Score, as I ended up with a 5-part series when I covered her in August of 2011. It is still worth checking out, as it goes over many of the statements she made which were checked multiple times: (at that time) of the 50 statements from the 4 fact-checkers, a third of them were duplicated, and two statements were checked by all four fact-checkers (and for the most part rated quite consistently, which says something about the integrity of the fact-checkers' processes).

 

61% of Bachmann's statements
were rated False, of which
42% were Pants on Fire

Her Truth Index+ alone, however, should be reviewed in proper context. PolitiFact provided her last ratings by percentage for 59 rulings (see chart at right), but that was all (the same they would do for anyone else). Here is how she looks (below) when you calculate Bachmann's Truth Index+ and compare it to the overall Truth Index+ (through 3/31/2013), as well as that for Republicans overall, for Democrats overall, and compared to her fellow Republicans in Congress, and as an added individual comparison, to the next best female Democrat in congress who probably gets closest to her in terms of making those occasional outrageous statements, Nancy Pelosi, although she's only been subjected to the Truth-o-Meter 22 times, I'm assuming because she relinquished her Speaker of the House position following the Republican mid-term election rout in early 2011(and didn't attempt a run for president as Bachmann did).

 

As can be seen, the Truth Index+ for all the other measures goes from 84% higher for the Democrats overall down to 54% higher for her fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives. I'd also venture to say that for those who've had 50 or more rulings, which puts her in a very special Truth Index+ category especially for females, she probably ranks dead last as far as the Truth Index+ (males AND females).  And the more rulings, the more tell-tale "for truthiness" is the Truth Index+.

 

Today, PolitiFact published an article re-iterating its "principles" with regard to doing rulings. Bill Adair, PolitiFact's creator and outgoing manager, stated under the heading "Choosing Claims to Check" that "we select the most newsworthy and significant ones" and in a bulleted list of "questions they ask themselves" in selecting a statement asked "Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?" And Bachmann certainly met that criteria in many of her statements.  

 

In some ways, hard-line conservativism and Tea Party associations made her a colorful character.  But I can't really say she will be missed. Well, we still have 19 months to go, and anything can happen...so I'll keep my mouth shut.

Grading ZFC: Bachmann is Full of Care, and BS

In reviewing this meta-factcheck of PolitiFact (PF) by Zebra Fact-Check (ZFC), I carefully listened to the entire 17 minutes of Michele Bachmann's speech at the annual CPAC on YouTube. I must have heard the word "care" between 40 and 60 times in the course of the speech, along with something to the effect of "our movement loves people." It was a pure--in terms of logical fallacies-- "appeal to emotion."

PolitiFact fact-checked the following part of her speech:

We wondered if it was accurate for Bachmann to say that "scientists tell us that we could have a cure in 10 years for Alzheimer's" were it not for "overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators." So we checked with a variety of Alzheimer’s researchers and policy experts. (Bachmann’s office did not respond to an inquiry for this article.)

(I guess if you're excluded from the CPAC Movement of Love you don't deserve a response!)

My conservative counterpart claimed that in analyzing Bachmann's statement, PolitiFact "commit(ted) a core blunder in its fact check analysis." He added that it "fail[ed] to pay basic attention to Bachmann’s statement and severely misrepresent[ed] it in the fact check."

Oh my, do we like to use exaggerative words, like "core blunder" and "severely" misrepresent. So....was that really what it was, or was it something less?

 

Something should be added as far as the context, that ZFC ignores or neglects to mention. Bachmann started out with describing how Jonas Salk invented his Polio vaccine and gave it to Eisenhower in the 1950's which was distributed to the general population. She used it to segue into how a cure could be found in the same way for Alzeimer's. But the two diseases are vastly different: one is a virus, and one is a degenerative, progressive brain disease of unknown origins. It's  comparing apples to oranges. On top of that, if a cure for Alzeimer's is found, does she think whoever discovers it is going to give it so easily to the "people" especially in this day and age of our political parties (and I'm not going to say it's just the Republicans) cow-towing to the lobbyists of major corporations? I'd like to see just how far all that "love and care" is going to go to do it.

But that is besides the point. Was Bachmann's statement misrepresented by PolitiFact in a way so it could ultimately set her pants on fire? A friend of mine who calls himself "Deconverted Man" on YouTube--his real name is Daniel--just finished up on some courses on logical fallacies in completing his degree. He also responds to videos on YouTube with his own where he analyzes, explains, and puts on a "counter" those logical fallacies he finds (and he seems to find a lot). He was gracious enough to review PolitiFact's fact-check as well as what ZFC had to say.

PolitiFact: A Truth Index Video!

Adieu to Adair: A Parody

Or:  Getting It Right with the White Knight

Recently it was announced that Bill Adair would be leaving PolitiFact to be a "Knight Professor":

This summer we say goodbye to Bill Adair, founding editor of PolitiFact.

Adair, who helped create the Tampa Bay Times' prize-winning fact-checking site, will join Duke University as the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy, Times Editor Neil Brown announced Thursday. .

A national search for the next PolitiFact editor will begin soon, Brown said. Adair will continue a relationship with PolitiFact as a contributing editor.

I will miss Mr. Adair as he was very nice to me.  He featured my blog once in a PolitiFact article and sent me an e-mail letting me know he actually read it on occasion.  I hope all my data and charts didn't make him too dizzy.  I believe he worked very hard to make PolitiFact an objective fact-checker, even with all the nay-sayers.

 

On the light side, we certainly have a "White Knight" to replace Adair: Who better than my conservative counterpart, Bryan White! He really needs to apply for Adair's job, if he hasn't already done so! He has a journalism background/education, is already doing fact-checks, as well as a multitude of meta-fact-checks. Who better to understand the needs of the PolitiFact brand that someone who has been trolling its fact-checks and its Facebook page since 2008!

In fact, here's the un-cut, unedited list of things he might do as PolitiFact's chief editor:

(1) Have a little "cardboard Obama effigy" fire event to represent starting anew, to emphasize who should have really received ALL the Pants on Fire awards. It will be replaced with a giant framed official portrait of Ronald Reagan. It's like replacing Satan with Jesus!

Burn that Obama cut-out down!
His presidential pants are on fire now!

(2) Fire release Louis Jacobson, so he can move onto better things and blacklist him. After all, he was hired over White, and that's only fair considering that (IMO) no one would want his shoddy work, and his extreme bias must be prevented from infecting other news organizations.

(3) Offer Erick Erickson, one of the most unbiased right-wing journalists of the internet, the opportunity a huge salary increase and bonus to come down to Tampa to replace Jacobson. If he is unavailable, PolitiFact Bias co-founder and brilliant, prolific blogger (of "BewzNewzandVewz") Jeff Dyberg will be offered the position. Also make Tom Kertscher (of PolitiFact Wisconsin) a PolitiFact National Associate editor second to White, since he was the only writer who did truly fair fact-checks favoring Republicans.

 

(4) Eliminate certain PolitiFact states for cost saving/productivity improvements for favoring Democrats. Consolidate Miami (PolitiFact Florida) to Tampa (and demote the very biased Angie Drobnic-Holan to researcher status), plus shut down New Hampshire, Oregon and Rhode Island because their low output is not cost effective they have too many Democrats and are too liberal. Put PolitiFact Ohio on warning that their franchise will be terminated unless they substantially improve their performance Republican Truth Index to exceed the Democrats. Preferable PolitiFact states which should exemplify fairness and truthfulness in reporting would include but are not limited to: Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana and South Carolina.

 

(5) Institute a PolitiFact across-the-board policy in which any ruling will go through White for final approval.    In order to eliminate selection bias, White will select all statements as well.  It will totally eliminate selection bias by replacing it with selection bias favoring Republicans.

 

(6) Erick Erickson (or Jeff Dyberg, if he is available) will be responsible for enforcing instilling within PolitiFact the very best journalistic methodology as practiced by both he and Bryan: There may be instances where one party Republicans would have significant underlying arguments that make most of their statements true, or their statement at face value, if true, is to be ruled on at face value. Or that party Democrat might have statements that should have significant underlying arguments that make their statements false (unless the statement at face value is false). Since White and Erickson (and Dyberg) want only Politi-FACTS fact-checks favoring Republicans and denigrating Democrats, not opinion.

 

(7) If Jeff Dyberg is hired, require force on threat of their job that all PolitiFact project employees to read and carry a copy of inspirational readings/expressions to assist in their journalistic efforts Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

 

(8) "Lie of the Year" will be eliminated. Instead a vote will be conducted from the "Most Honest Republican Person of the Month" (see final point Number 11--"Most Honest Republican Person of the Month" replaces Pants on Fire). And instead of the vote being indiscriminately over-ridden by the PolitiFact management for its own choice, our "Most Honest Person of the Year" will be the voters' choice of the 12 "Most Honest Republican Person(s) of the Month", which will be a much more popular, fair option.

 

(9) To further PolitiFact's popularity and its new fair and balanced approach to fact-checking, it will be regularly featured on cable network news shows Fox News and the Blaze.

 

(10) And a message to Bill Adair in his new role: we don't need your stinkin' editorial contributions! Just joking!  We will certainly take a look at them flush them down the toilet.

(11) MOST IMPORTANT: The Truth-o-Meter category Pants on Fire, due to its inherently subjective determination as uncovered in White's impartial, fair-minded and unbiased studies , will be eliminated. An exhaustive review will be performed on the Pants on Fire already awarded to determine their legitimacy so that those claims indiscriminately awarded to Republicans can be removed with Democrat Pants on Fire kept in, since Democrats are much bigger liars than Republicans.

 

Instead, there will be a renewed emphasis on telling the truth which Republicans, like Bryan White, as everyone knows, have a monopoly on, as opposed to egregious lying. So a "Most Honest Republican Person of the Month" (also see Number 8) will be featured for being honest, forthright and adhering to the best of patriotic and conservative principles.

 

This should assure that PolitiFact becomes a much improved, unbiased publication that readers can enjoy without the defects of "Pants on Fire" or the flawed, logical-fallacy riddled and liberally biased fact-checks of some of its former writers. This should greatly balance and increase the readership base. Another Pulitzer prize here we come!

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! 

Absurdity Today: Obama Fantasy Cabinet

With Julianna Forlano

Meta Meta, All That Data

This past fall, my conservative counterpart started his own fact-checking website called Zebra Fact-Check, sort of jumping on that "conservapedia" bandwagon of playing to the right-wing choir. He gave a new term to a categorization of his Zebra fact-checks where he was again publishing criticisms of PolitiFact rulings as he did at his original blog: he called it a meta-factcheck, which by definition is the correct terminology, since he is "fact-checking the fact-check." So I suppose that makes me a META-meta fact-checker, because I am "fact-checking" his fact-check of PolitiFact's fact-check. Wew!

 

But more than that, on his new "non-blogspot" website, he includes a little detail on the "About" page that has me wondering....whether my speculation about his concentrated vindictiveness toward PolitiFact may in fact have some foundation.

I graduated from the journalism program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg in 2008. The university campus is located across the street from the Poynter Institute, which owns both the Tampa Bay Times (then known as the St. Petersburg Times) and PolitiFact.

I regarded Poynter’s 2007 foray into fact checking with hope and interest at first, but that changed quickly to horror. I couldn’t believe that the Times would produce a product so deeply inferior to the Annenberg Fact Check model.

My blogging gradually changed its focus to criticism of PolitiFact. I hoped that vigorous criticism would help PolitiFact reach for a higher set of standards.

Here's what I've "speculated" about previously (in October, 2012):

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 [new Zebra] fact-checks are what he does best. So this bolsters my theory that this was his retaliation. But that's pure speculation.

I had written this before I browsed his website and found where he listed his educational achievements. So now I know for a fact that he has the background necessary for such a job, and graduated and (as known) resided in the vicinity of the biggest newspaper in the Tampa/St. Pete area, right at the time the PolitiFact operation was starting. If this was expansion at the paper, there quite possibly could have been openings for, if not full-time journalists, at the very least, interns, for the specific PolitiFact project, because in the course of my recording the writers along with each ruling, it was apparent they had many interns who tried their hand at composing fact-checks. Nowhere did I see anything written, researched or edited by one Bryan W. White.

As of today's date, Robert Farley remains one of Factcheck.Org's lead writers, as can be seen in this screen clip

Then there's the "deeply inferior" comparison of PolitiFact to the Annenberg FactCheck. FactCheck.org, as I've noted in many posts, for the most part agrees with PolitiFact when checking the same item. The only difference is that Annenberg FactCheck doesn't have a Truth-o-Meter, and its fact-checks are often more limited in scope, because they will include several checks in one post at their website. So, in certain respects, its fact-checks are not as complete nor as sourced as PolitiFact's. To top that off, one of its writers, Robert Farley, used to write for PolitiFact (although White seems to have about the same opinion of him as he does Louis Jacobson and the others). While one could say Farley moved "up", there's really no way to verify that Farley went from an inferior fact-checking operation to a superior one...unless White could find out from Farley himself. It would be interesting to see what Farley would have to say about that, and I have a feeling he might not agree with White.

 

Nevertheless, something definitely smells even more rotten in Largo, Florida.

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?

2012 in Review at PolitiFact (Continued)

A few items have been posted already about the year 2012 at PolitiFact (PF).  It was their biggest year because of the presidential election, with 1,961 rulings produced.    Here's how it looked for all Truth-o-Meter categories as a percentage, in 2012:

Click to enlarge

In terms of Republicans versus Democrats, Democrats had a 2012 Truth Index+ of 58.5 (-3.7 PF Truth Index) for 735 rulings, while the Republicans had a 49.8 (-25.6 PF Truth Index) for 1,078 rulings.  That means that for the statements fact-checked by PolitiFact, the Democrats' rulings averaged about 17.5 percent higher (in proportional terms of Truth Index+).

Click to enlarge:  Truth Index+ for party is in parentheses

We've looked at month-to-month already, and took at a better look at Pants on Fire.  Let's take a look at the top ten "rulees"--those who were fact-checked.  This may explain to some degree why more Republicans are checked than Democrats.  While Obama was the person most fact-checked, he was the only Democrat on the top ten list.  Outside of people, only chain e-mails had enough rulings to get to the top ten.  The PolitiFact states showed their contributive power, with Chris Christie (PolitiFact New Jersey), Rick Scott (PolitiFact Florida), and Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson (PolitiFact Wisconsin) making it to the list.  Other than that, there were the expected presidential candidates (Vice president Joe Biden was Number 13 with 14 fact-checks).  The top ten shown reflects about 25 percent of all rulings; it should also be noted that of the 760 individuals/organizations "politi-facted" in 2012, 500 of them only received a single ruling (also about 25 percent of the rulings).  This shows how PolitiFact concentrates its efforts.

Click to enlarge:  Chain e-mails have always had one of the lowest Truth Indexes (highlighted).

In terms of topic, there is some overlap, that is, PolitiFact assigns multiple subjects by the nature of the fact-check, so these aren't quite as straightforward.  Generally, this is the "first" subject assigned in the fact-check, although it can be a subjective selection.  Occasionally it may be changed if I feel it's not correct, but that is rare.  Nevertheless, here are the top ten subjects which cover about 57 percent of all the rulings.  There's actually 11 because Deficits and Abortion tied for tenth place with 56 rulings each.

Click to enlarge:  Healthcare had lowest Truth Index because of high number of False and
Pants on Fire Obamacare claims (highlighted)

As far as separating Democrats from Republicans in other categories, I may be doing that as the year progresses, but more likely in terms of all rulings as PolitiFact quickly approaches 7,000.  Hold that dial.

 

I Brake for Pants on Fire (in 2013)

Since its debut in 2007 through the end of 2012, the PolitiFact team (including its states) decided that 1,915 statements it fact-checked out of the 6,658 total it had done deserved a false.  And of these statements found false, 29.6 percent, or 566, were deserving of its now famous Pants on Fire designation.  While I'm not going to discuss the somewhat subjective exercise of how it's assigned, it may be worth unpacking it and seeing what's inside.

 

If those 566 Pants on Fire rulings, 137 or 24% went to Democrats, 369 or 65% went to Republicans; the rest (60) were non-partisan or unknown as to a party affiliation.  This is what "alarms" to some degree the PolitiFact detractors who are mostly Republican: on a "raw" ruling basis, Republicans (in general) were 2.71 times more likely to be assigned the Pants on Fire than the Democrats.    The Republican theories as to the reason for this have been sampling or selection bias, although there are other compelling ones which I've posted about before:  the loss of the Whitehouse in 2008, and the enacting of "Obamacare."

 

One particular categorizing that was first done by the University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier in a study of 511 PolitiFact rulings in 2010 was "official versus non-official"; it took into account those who were in office.  Only 190, or about one third, of the Pants on Fire rulings were awarded to people who were in office; of the other 376 who were not in office, half were organizations and the on-line media.  If we look at party affiliation of those in office who were assigned the Pants on Fire, we have 60 Democrats (32 percent) and 128 Republicans (67 percent).  This means Republicans in office were 2.1 times more likely to be awarded the Pants on Fire than were Democrats in office, still more than double but about 25 percent less than the 2.71 overall.

 

The media--which includes celebrities, pundits, blogs, websites and chain e-mails--received the largest percentage (24%) of Pants on Fire claims, followed by governors and state government officials (19%).

 

Sixty-eight rulings receiving the Pants on Fire related to Obamacare, the vast majority from Republicans.  Claims on the subject of healthcare generated the most Pants on Fire rulings, with over 80 percent of them about Obamacare, or 14 percent of the Pants on Fire claims.   Obamacare overlapped to the subjects of Medicare, housing and abortion as well.  As a general topic, however, fiscal subjects (deficit, economy, federal/state budgets, stimulus and taxes) took up about 20 percent of the Pants on Fire claims.

 

As the number of fact-checks has grown year to year, however, the percentage of Pants on Fire claims in terms of the total has been gradually dropping year to year since "peaking" in 2009 as shown here.

Click to enlarge:  Number of rulings shown in parentheses after year

Finally, below are the same numbers which show the Republican/Democrat breakdown each year. What this appears to show is that while the percentage of Pants on Fire overall has gone down, the percentage of those Pants on Fire assigned to Republicans has gone up.  Non-official candidates--which include Mitt Romney and the other Republican presidential candidates like Herman Cain and Rick Santorum--comprise the third highest category in terms of candidate occupation for Pants on Fire rulings, which may have contributed to this high percentage in 2011 and 2012.  So, we may see a drop in this high Republican percentage in 2013.  Stay tuned.

Click to enlarge: Years (2010-12) of most Pants on Fire were dominated by Republicans