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.

Confounded by Contextual Complications

It is our policy to make on-the-record email correspondence public where the content affects the context of a story.

Zebra Fact-check, January 7, 2013

 

Fact checkers should emphasize such contextual elements, not bury them.

Sublime Bloviations "Grading PolitiFact", August, 2012

 

(For the second damn time, practice what you preach!)

 

 

Right wingers feel vindicated that Fiat/Chrysler has announced it will be building Jeeps in China, especially at those websites critical of PolitiFact. Instead of beating the same dead horse again and again, I'm going to take another look at this in the terms of the right-wing argument: that if any (even a very small) percentage of production at the Jeep plants in the United States is replaced by production in China, then Mr. Romney's statement (see above graphic) is true in all respects, and needs no further explanation.

 

The right-wing website Zebra Factcheck (ZFC) uses the word "context" in almost every one of its "fact-checks." It seems to feel that it's so important that  they even have a tile symbol for it. For example, in one of its more recent posts on Marco Rubio, it claims that " In effect, PolitiFact takes Rubio’s tweet out of context."

Zebra Factcheck's littered graphics has a white tile symbol for "Out of Context"

 On his review of Romney's "Jeeps to China" comment, anti-PolitiFact website(s) PolitiFact Bias and Zebra Factcheck writer Bryan White duly notes the "context" he feels is crucially important to Romney's claims.

That’s right. PolitiFact takes a preferred Obama campaign claim about its rescue of the auto industry and states it matter-of-factly in a fact check of Romney. No additional context needed, apparently.

The media treatment of the dispute between the campaigns misses the context while focusing on the particulars. Romney is not simply making statements about Obama’s role in the auto bailout. His campaign is answering the Obama campaign’s messaging and pointing out missing parts of its story.

The only context I can see that was missed (according to Zebra Factcheck) appears to be what was presented by one of Romney's spokespeople to the New York Times in response to Romney's ad:

The facts are clear: despite his false and misleading attacks, President Obama took the auto companies into bankruptcy,” said a spokeswoman, Amanda Henneberg. “His mismanagement of the process has exposed taxpayers to a $25 billion loss.”

Romney had proposed "letting Detroit go bankrupt" in opposition to what President George Bush decided to initiate with a bridge loan to GM and Chrysler in 2008. He said the government "should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing." But even Michigan's future (Republican) Governor Rick Snyder and (Republican) Congressman Fred Upton, acknowledged that "there was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government." The respected, not really liberal Economist had this to say:

PolitiFact 2012 Lie of the Year: Factual isn't the same as Honest

Fact checkers should emphasize such contextual elements, not bury them.
-- Sublime Bloviations "Grading PolitiFact"

(Really? Then...practice what you preach!)

When I saw the finalists for the 2012 PolitiFact Lie of the Year, I knew that its focus this year had to be on a fact-check that reflected some sort of "defining moment in the 2012 presidential election". I commented at Facebook, however, that it might not be good to do one on Romney or  Obama from the standpoint it made PolitiFact look ever yet more biased.  PolitiFact very carefully (perhaps deliberately) divided the finalists evenly betweeen Democrats and Republicans, although Romney had more direct statements.  On the other hand, they should not let "objectivity" get in the way of their choice, which is what they supposedly did here when they chose the "Jeeps to China" campaign ad that Mitt Romney ran in a last ditch attempt to convert swing Ohio voters, as the PolitiFact 2012 Lie of the Year.

 

I did feel vindicated that one of my choices discussed last August was selected as a finalist; it also received the most votes in PolitiFact's own poll. But given the newsworthiness of the election, I was not surprised it picked the Jeep ad. And all I hear from the Republican side is that it's "factual." Now, I covered this in a post on this statement when it first came out: it was the implications, the premise of the ad; it was certainly not the "fact" it was superficially "factual."

 

As I reviewed the Facebook comments and read PolitiFact's review of e-mail feedback, it looked to be a far greater right-wing deluge of faux outrage this year ("#Benghazi" the most oft-repeated comment, as if somehow PolitiFact could turn back the clock); of course, this shouldn't have been the case last year since the 2011 Lie of the Year was one from the Democrats.. But even though all these commenters were basically "hating on" PolitiFact, I'm watching its "like" count continue to grow past 75,000, when you'd think it would lose fans with all the "hate". Of course, having commenters like "TheFamily BackEast" and "NoLonger Proud" plus several with the middle name of Benghazi, takes a bit away from whatever that count means, and also makes it look like a few people may have been multiplying their Facebook identities to make the "hate" look more popular than what it really was.

 

My conservative counterpart added a comment at the Politico website trying to debate another commenter (his usual modus operandi) who stated that this was "Mitt Romney's last-ditch advertisement asserting that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China." He asked "What part of the ad made that assertion?" as if this was not was what was implicitly meant if Romney didn't say it. Someone by the name of Jack Brockway replied:

The ad was dishonest... even Jeep thought so. Are you asserting otherwise? Careful here - factual isn't the same as honest.

(It appears no response was made as of December 14). While I pointed out a lot of other factors concerning car manufacture (which I am deeply familiar with) that show it's not the case that anyone in the U.S. is going to lose their job if the Chinese exports were built in China, expansion had already been planned beyond current production in the United States. What is likely being planned for both China and Italy is expansion as well: the models are entirely different from what we have here, designed specifically for those consumers. We will never see those models here. What we export there isn't enough to justify building a plant there in lieu of exporting...it's just not economically feasible.

 

And even if for the sake of argument I went along with the contention that the Jeep SUVs now exported to China would be built in China, it still does not refute the implication of Romney's ad as well as his remarks. The ad gave the impression that all Jeep production was being moved to China by the concluding statement, for which there is also little evidence ("Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.") It was such a strong impression that the union local was receiving phone calls from workers at the Jeep plant who thought their jobs were in jeopardy. The ad was fear-based and boiled down to: if you vote for Obama, you will lose your job. And as noted by the PolitiFact ruling " it presents the manufacture of Jeeps in China as a threat, rather than an opportunity to sell cars made in China to Chinese consumers." To say the statements were correct and Romney didn't mean anything else (so why would he need to fight for those jobs?) and that there is no premise, no implication, no "underlying argument," is sheer intellectual dishonesty.

Grading ZFC: More Republican Math!

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) writer Bryan White, via his conservatively skewed website Zebra Factcheck (ZFC), has committed a very similar error it pointed out in a recent PolitiFact Georgia fact-check on Cato Institute's Michael Cannon's statement concerning Obamacare "exchanges" being outlawed in Georgia. And I have to admit they both had a point: Cannon was talking about Obamacare exchanges in Georgia and in context he said--right at the beginning--that "by default" the feds would do their own exchanges in response. PolitiFact seemed to ignore this part of Cannon's claim and conflated it into something that should not have been called false. Yes, score one for PFB and Michael Cannon.

 

The error in this case is one which ZFC's writer Bryan White might call, if I had done the same thing, a logical "Red herring" or "Straw man." He does this in his fact-check of a statement by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)--that "Across the board tax rate cuts are regressive because a 20 percent tax cut for a millionaire – even as a share of income – amounts to a far greater benefit than a 20 percent cut for a hardworking low income American.” Instead of examining the premise of the statement he goes into a multifaceted dissertation on "effective tax rates" complete with pretty graphs, on how the overall rates were truly progressive up until seven years ago, and why poor Mitt Romney pays a lot more than Joe the Plumber.

 

He did not even try to actually calculate in numerical terms  whether there was a disproportional benefit to the rich of the across the board tax cut in and of itself. He even had something in his fact-check on how to "get there", quoting the IRS: “A tax that takes a larger percentage of income from low-income groups than from high-income groups.” So I will "get there", using two hypothetical progressive tax rates very close to what we have today, utilizing the 20% across the board factor.

 

Click to enlarge:  The 3rd thru 7th columns only needed formulas.

In the example above, we are using a 10% rate for a person with taxable income of $25,000 and a 25% rate for someone with income of $250,000, the current taxes paid using those rates, then re-calculated for a uniform across the board tax rate reduction of 20 percent. All other factors--excise taxes, corporate taxes--would be ignored because we are only concerned with the income tax cut itself and its effect on after-tax income (as that is the premise of the CPC statement). As shown in the last, highlighted bright yellow column, as a percent of after-tax income, the $250K earner has three times the additional income than that of the $25K earner. Now, you might say that it's because of the difference in tax rates, but even if you factor that in, the $250K earner still has 20% more after-tax income. THAT is the "far greater benefit" the CPC is talking about. The (yes, liberal) Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explains this "concept" as well in a website article. They chart the "regression" by income category.

Tchotchkes: Mr. Burns Explains the Fiscal Cliff

Truth Index+: The PolitiFact Saga on Obamacare

In the history of PolitiFact rulings, from its beginnings in 2007 to the election of 2012, the most covered subject was healthcare. PolitiFact currently has 42 pages of rulings related to healthcare. While there's a lot of overlap with other subjects (particularly fiscal ones) as designated in every ruling, my counts for 6,535 PolitiFact rulings show healthcare and Medicare were the "main" subject(s) for over 10 percent of them.

 

In 2007, the very first characterization of a Democrat national healthcare reform plan as "socialized medicine" which earned a False was from budding 2008 presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. PolitiFact called it "pure hyperbole."   In early 2008, eventual 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney was the first person fact-checked for what would become the PolitiFact 2010 Lie of the Year--that "Obamacare" (the meme not yet invented for healthcare reform) was a "government take over" of the healthcare system.

Click to enlarge:  Low number of Democrat rulings caused larger swings

There were very few fact-checks (12) evenly divided between party on healthcare reform as it related to Obama's proposals in 2007 and 2008, compared to what happened after he became president. So the Truth Index+ at that time did not tell us much. Indeed, as I noted in a previous post on what caused the big increase in Pants on Fire assignments to Republicans, the year 2009 was a very big ruling year when it came to healthcare reform and Obamacare. In that year, over 1/4 of PolitiFact rulings related to that topic.

Obamacare, however, was the leading PolitiFact ruling topic in 2009: healthcare was the subject of over 30% of the rulings with about 27% relating to healthcare reform, and made up over 1/3 of the Pants on Fire. With the majority coming from Republicans, this was for the most part what drove up the Pants on Fire factor against them.

The year 2010 was not as important in terms of PolitiFact's concentration on Obamacare; it was a pivotal year, however, in terms of the Republicans doubling down on attacking it. Republicans dominated on dubious healthcare claims as 64 fact-checks brought their Obamacare Truth Index+ down to under 34. It continued into 2011 and worsened in 2012. The number of Obamacare-related rulings doubled from 2011 to 2012, when it seemed as if the Republicans thought the public dislike of it would get them the same type of election results as in 2010.

Giving ZFC a KO on CKDs

This first check of Zebra Fact-Check (ZFC) is also a postscript on something just posted as a response to PolitiFact Bias--on the misleading information in a late Mitt Romney campaign ad being used to rile autoworkers in Ohio.

ZFC writer Bryan White offers us this "these-are-jobs-in-China-from-the-U.S." citation from the Toledo Blade to back up the veracity of Romney's literal statement that Fiat/Chrysler is going to build Jeeps in China.

Jeep currently exports U.S.-made vehicles to China, which is Jeep’s largest market outside of North America. Last year, Jeep sold 22,294 vehicles in China. The company is expected to exceed that this year.

He then asks "If a Chinese Jeep plant takes over production of some or all of the more than 20,000 vehicles Jeeps sells in China then how does this not affect workers in the United States?"

Let's first start with the 22,294 vehicles from a relative perspective. One Detroit Jeep plant produces about 950 vehicles per day in 2 shifts. That means if the plant was working a normal 5-day work week, this would be roughly one month's production. Not very much, less than 10% of total annual production, and would be even less if the plant was at maximum production (3 shifts) or was working overtime. The Chinese production is what is called low volume. Even the 33,463 vehicles cited from the Business Standard fit the same definition: not enough for full production, not enough for a plant.

ZFC might counter that this could still be 10 percent of the workers being replaced....but that's not quite so black and white. If ZFC had been thorough in its fact-checking like it claims it is, it should have noted the paragraph at the bottom of the Toledo Blade article:

That commitment means Chrysler will not fully build and assemble Wranglers outside America. The automaker does currently ship low volumes of what the industry calls “knock-down kits” for final assembly in Egypt. Mr. Bragman said that's fairly common in the automotive industry, and the kits are not equitable to full-scale production plants. Parts would still have to be made and partially assembled elsewhere.

Knock-down kits (CKD = Complete Knock Down) contain "the parts needed to assemble a product" and are used when there is a low volume for export as "a method of supplying parts to a market, particularly in shipping to foreign nations, and serves as a way of counting or pricing." That is how Jeeps were produced in China up until 2009. The kits are assembled in the United States...and guess who does the assembly of the parts in those kits here for shipment to China? Now, if ZFC or counterirritant want to call Chrysler to find out if fewer workers are needed for CKD kit assembly than for full-scale assembly, they're more than welcome to find out. And, it is possible the kit assembly could be outsourced to a local supplier--but then, additional jobs would be created there to replace any auto plant jobs. 

So when Aaron Bragman, a senior automotive analyst at IHS Automotive, was quoted to say that the Chinese production "doesn't take any jobs away from anyone else" he was correct. Romney is not correct, and neither is ZFC nor counterirritant.

Finally, the original Bloomberg article said that Fiat was in "detailed conversations" about making Jeeps in China. It wasn't definite nor confirmed. So, what happens if the deal with Guangzhou Automobile Group doesn't materialize? I didn't mention this in my original criticism, but it is another large gray area on the Zebra. Because while Romney himself said the Italians ( I could do another post on that one as well) were "thinking" of moving the production to China, the ad (which was aired much more) said it was a sure thing...which it wasn't. That alone makes Romney's literal statement false.

But what else would one expect from right-wing fact-checkers.

Lil White Lies: Read It and Jeep

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) gleefully joins with the anti-PolitiFact blog counterirritant in misrepresenting a blatant misrepresentation by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as we enter the last 100 hours of the 2012 presidential campaign.

PolitiFact awarded a Pants on Fire (and WaPo FactChecker and Factcheck.org agree in line with it) when the Romney campaign released an ad which said:

Who will do more for the auto industry? Not Barack Obama. Fact checkers confirm that his attacks on Mitt Romney are false. The truth? Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry. He is supported by Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News. Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.

It basically was "piggy-backed" (Glenn Kessler's words) from a very similar statement Romney had made during an Ohio campaign stop: " “I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America."

 

That's pretty much everything....so PFB and counterirritant decide that "building Jeeps in China" is technically true as parsed waaaaaaaay out of context, and the fact-checkers need to fact-check more, as the loud and clear, self-evident implication isn't enough. They need to actually verify that the Chinese production is replacing (at least some of) the American production. Counterirritant thinks he knows the fact of the matter, and he condescendingly tells us: "For those slow on the uptake: Jeep vehicles that will be produced in China by Chinese workers are currently produced in the U.S by U.S. workers."

 

Nope, not quite. Because when Chrysler or Fiat talk about this Chinese production, it's added production, not replacement. Chrysler built Jeeps in China--for the Chinese market--before Fiat acquired it in 2009. And Romney's fearmongering came on the heels of this report from the Detroit Free Press:

In fact, Chrysler is investing $500 million at its Toledo North Assembly Plant and plans to add 1,105 new workers by the third quarter of 2013 to build an all-new SUV that will replace the Jeep Liberty.

Production of the new SUV will begin next summer and the hiring process for the new workers, who are scheduled to start by the next fall, has begun, said Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson.

In other words, as noted succinctly by the New York Times: "Jeep is discussing increasing production in China for sales within China; it is not moving jobs out of Ohio or the United States, or building cars in China for export to the United States."

Truth Index+: Obama-Romney FIVE MORE DAYS

Five more days...unless of course, something happens due to Super-Storm Sandy and voting gets delayed somewhere in New Jersey or New York City or New England....or Romney wins the vote but loses the Electoral College and sues...you never know.  The only "poll" I really pay attention to is one and even though it's now almost 80% favorable to Obama, that still means, because the fellow who calculates it used to do odds in Vegas, that, like any table in Vegas, the 20% can still come in.  And I'm very superstitious when it comes to being overly hopeful when gambling or making predictions.

But here's where Obama and Romney stand with regard to what was in the PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter count for them as of October 30, 2012:

 

 

Obama is about 22.8% more "truthful" based on PolitiFact rulings than Romney.  PolitiFact is 3.6 times more likely to elevate a False ruling for Romney to Pants on Fire than they are for Obama.

 

For the trend line, I'm going to add a period-to-period average (in the dotted line) along with the accumulated average (shown in the solid line).  This is so you can see where the Truth Index+ made any significant movements:

Click to enlarge:  Romney's 2011 28.6 Truth Index was from his presidential announcement (see below)

And what did Romney say that got his Truth Index down so low in early 2011?  Well, a few of the things he said then he continued to repeat, and stated during the October, 2012, debates.  He also re-stated one of PolitiFact's Lies of the Year:  that "Obamacare" was a government take-over.  He also made the comment about Obama's worldwide "Apology Tour" and that the United States was inches from being a free economy.

 

But it looks like--for the last 4 months, at least--that even here Romney has narrowed the gap on the Truth Index+.  Since June Obama rates only 12% more "truthier" than Romney with the PolitiFact rulings.  Of course, there are some that say this is all for naught because PolitiFact has a left-leaning bias.  But so what...because there are also some that say that's malarkey, and back it up.

Three Pants on Fires in a row didn't help Romney's Truth Index in 2011.

 

 

 

Truth Index: Obama-Romney One Month Out

Dreaming of a Michele anniversary gift

Recently I posted about Mitt Romney's 47% remarks, saying it might be the game changer and even though it was rated "True" by PolitiFact, it might be considered a candidate for Lie of the Year...unless, as I said "...Obama could make his own big gaffe" which would reverse Romney's course following that statement. Well did he ever. I got up Thursday morning hoping the first debate had just been a bad dream. But I did enjoy SNL's take on it, which was just about the whole show.

 

But life must go on and it's time again to look at the Truth Index trend line for Romney and Obama. It hasn't changed much (unlike the polls), so I thought I might add something to show what appears to be the "Truth Index trend" for presidential candidates during their campaigns, i.e., the Truth Index of 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain. We see how all three candidates had slipping Truth Indexes as their campaigns went on. In my last post on this, and as can be seen in the chart below, Romney had a higher Truth Index than Obama until after he announced his candidacy in 2011, after which it deteriorated substantially.

Click to enlarge: All 3 candidates' Truth Index fell off during the campaign period

This chart represents 427 rulings for Obama (which may explain why his Truth Index has not fallen as much in 2012), 183 for Romney, and 169 for McCain, from about June of 2007 to present. Today Obama's Truth Index has bumped down a bit to a positive 11.48, and Romney is at a negative 16.12. John McCain's Truth Index, most of his rulings from the 2007-8 period, is a negative 8.88, roughly half that of Romney based on a similar quantity of rulings. For what it's worth, looking at the infamous "Pants on Fire" factor on an individual basis, Pants on Fire were assigned nearly three times as much to Romney than Obama (PoF 3.86), and twice as much to McCain than Obama (PoF 1.97).

Tchotchkes: Obama Needs an "Anger Translator"

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. 

Truth Index: Obama-Romney 6 Weeks To Go

And a Peak at the Congressional Quarterly

For reasons to follow in this post, I thought it might be a good idea in this update on Obama and Romney's running PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index, to get a better look at what happened before 2010. So I haven't been posting as much, because it meant I had to go through 272 rulings for Obama and 44 rulings for Romney to date all the rulings...and do a few other things. 

Click to enlarge:  Until Romney veered way right, he had an admirable Truth Index

This latest chart shows the accumulated Truth Index for Obama and Romney quarter to quarter starting at the end of the third quarter of 2007, when the PolitiFact operation was really gearing up, since at that time as Obama fought for the Democratic presidential nomination, Romney also tried unsuccessfully to do likewise as a Republican. A note on the chart (brackets indicating the flat trend line) indicates the result at PolitiFact once John McCain became the presumptive 2008 Republican presidential nominee: from the end of the first quarter of 2008 until early in 2010, Romney was not subjected to the Truth-o-Meter at all. In early 2010, he was interviewed as the Affordable Care Act was being signed into law by Obama (perhaps because of his "Massachusetts" knowledge), which instigated a few rulings, and here it was that Romney perhaps hinted at one his future campaign talking points when he stated that he thought Obama was too soft (full of "apologies") in his foreign policy. He disappeared from PolitiFact's prying Truth-o-Meter until early 2011, and from then on he was a fairly regular PolitiFact fact-check target until his nomination put the fact-checks on (maybe temporary) steroids. He now has 174 rulings, which I believe is the second highest for PolitiFact.

 

But the trend shows, just as my last post with monthly trends showed, that Romney's Truth Index fell off considerably once he announced his candidacy for the second time in 2011. Of seven Falses awarded Romney between April and September, six of them were bad enough to be made Pants on Fire. He had only one True ruling during that time. By 2012, his average leveled off somewhat around negative 15.

 

Obama's Truth Index has been pretty steady in the positive 12 area (with 416 rulings as of this post), although the pre-2010 trend indicates he got off to a rocky start. He started with a very respectable 30 and then plummeted in the very next quarter to a negative 11. His Truth Index for that quarter only was a negative 62.5, with four Falses, with not one True nor one Mostly True. Must have been that the PF honeymoon with Obama was over.

 

The CQ Connection: A theory set forth in a PolitiFact Pants on Fire analysis by my conservative counterpart was that the Congressional Quarterly had influenced a less biased approach to the rulings, that PolitiFact had gone wild with Pants on Fire once the CQ partnership "was dissolved" at the end of 2008:

When PolitiFact first launched, it existed as a joint venture between the St. Petersburg Times newspaper and the Congressional Quarterly magazine, both owned at the time by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. The numbers for 2007 and to a lesser extent for 2008 demonstrate tendencies not present in later years. Some of the differences may stem from the vigorous Democratic primary season or from the removal of input from CQ staff when the partnership was dissolved after the 2008 presidential election. Simply put, PolitiFact’s bias against Republicans as measured by its use of the “Pants on Fire” rating has intensified since the separation from CQ. Republicans during the more recent era receive a “Pants on Fire” rating 143% more often than Democrats (see Fig. 2).

Part of my effort is not just in dating the PolitiFact rulings, but determining which ones were written by a Congressional Quarterly writer. My interest was to see how the writers treated Democrats and Republicans in terms of the Truth Index, to see if there's any correlation to support PF Bias writer Bryan White's claims. But to do so is an enormously tedious exercise, because PolitiFact National has roughly 1,780 rulings to go through for almost a four year period.

 

So to start I did Obama and Romney (for purposes of this post), with John McCain in my sites to next do a "presidential candidate trend" comparison; but at this point I've only done less than 20 percent of the rulings, so it will be a while. That being said, a few points about the Congressional Quarterly (CQ): between Obama and Romney CQ writers wrote about 15 percent of the rulings: 39 for Obama and 9 for Romney. The Truth Index as computed for only the Congressional Quarterly writers was within half a point: a positive 5.1 for Obama and a positive 5.6 for Romney. The Pants on Fires seem to defy White's contentions, however: Romney received only one from a CQ writer, while the three Pants on Fires Obama received were all from PolitiFact writers.

Tchotchkes: Homer Votes 2012

Lil White Lies Extra: One Context for You, TWO for Me

Fact checkers should emphasize such contextual elements, not bury them.
-- Sublime Bloviations/PolitiFact Bias

And fact-checkers of fact-checkers should bring out those elements as well. Of course, if you're a biased fact-checker like PolitiFact Bias' Bryan White, you'd do it for the side you ideologically prefer and not the other. Here's a most excellent example.

 

In a recent review of a hotly-contested-by-the-right PolitiFact ruling on a statement by Paul Ryan that Obama promised to keep a GM Plant in his Wisconsin home district open, White formatted in bold the last words of Obama's speech "that's the future I'll fight for as your president" to prove it was a "pledge" as compared to Ryan's word "promise." He then said:

Importantly, Obama opened his speech with references to the plant. He then sketched his vision of America before mentioning how the Janesville plant could stay open if the government provides support. In that context, Obama pledged to provide that support. Does Mr. Obama use the specific term "promise" in his statement? No, certainly not. Does he guarantee the plant will remain open? Again, no. However, there is little doubt that every person in Janesville listening to his speech took it as a pledge from the president to work to enact policies to keep the plant open. Mr. Obama did, in fact, pledge to do just that.

Here's the complete context that preceded Obama's statement at the Janesville Plant in February, 2008, that was available on the internet, but White decided to "bury":

I believe that we can create millions of those jobs around a clean, renewable energy future. A few hours northeast of here is the city of Manitowoc [MAN-a-ta-WOC]. For over a century, it was the home of Mirro manufacturing – a company that provided thousands of jobs and plenty of business. In 2003, Mirro closed its doors for good after losing thousands of jobs to Mexico.

But in the last few years, something extraordinary has happened. Thanks to the leadership of Governor Doyle and Mayor Kevin Crawford, Manitowoc has re-trained its workers and attracted new businesses and new jobs. Orion Energy Systems works with companies to reduce their electricity use and carbon emissions. And Tower Tech is now making wind turbines that are being sold all over the world. Hundreds of people have found new work, and unemployment has been cut in half.

So Obama was talking about how a "sweeping energy policy could give the town the resources to produce something else." Since the plant was still producing (the biggest gas-guzzling) vehicles at the time, with the future unknown, this naturally follows and makes the most sense.

Tchotchkes: WHOSE in the tank for Obama?

Truth Index: Romney and Obama Update

Through the end of August, with about two months plus one week left until the election, Obama and Romney's accrued Truth Index scores have remained about the same since my last report.

Click to enlarge: Romney was "truthier" than Obama until he announced his candidacy for president.

Both Romney and Obama have experienced a slight uptick to their Truth Indexes as the election campaigns rev up; Romney's has stabilized, and he's actually been awarded quite a few "Trues" lately, with the exception of one Pants on Fire, a repeat of his "Obama Worldwide Apology Tour" claim.

Obama just surpassed his 400th ruling (the chart is based on 403 rulings as of August 31); he has been the "most ruled on" person at PolitiFact for obvious reasons.  Mitt Romney is far behind with 162 rulings and he has a few more to go before he surpasses John McCain (at 169) which will then make him Number Two.  That should happen very soon. 

My plan is to update this Truth Index chart again at the end of September, although my feeling is it will look almost the same. 

Oh yes, and lest I forget, PolitiFact is almost four times as likely to make a False "Pants on Fire" for Romney as it is for Obama, according to a certain PolitiFact detractor's dubious measure. 

Lil White Lies: Return to Sender

It gets a little tiresome seeing “Grading” PolitiFact (PF) repeatedly engage in partial reporting on its reviews of PolitiFact. Or I should say, it accuses them of doing the same thing it does, the reason I’m starting this review with its very words.

In this ruling Obama campaign spokesperson Stephanie Cutter said that Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan included the same cuts as the ones Obama is making. PolitiFact’s Angie Drobnic Holan writes that she is rating Cutter on "whether Cutter is correct that Ryan relies on those same reductions in his budget."

She finds her claim True because in an interview with George Stephanopoulos Ryan agrees: "Well, our budget keeps that money for Medicare to extend its solvency. What Obamacare does is it takes that money from Medicare to spend on Obamacare. ..." So Grading PolitiFact concludes:

Sorry, but that's not a fact check and it's very misleading. PolitiFact is seizing on an ambiguity from Ryan and insisting that it perfectly dovetails with Cutter's claim. A real fact check would verify from the text of Ryan's budget that the savings have the same origin as those projected by the CBO for the health care reform law. This fact check doesn't do that at all. Ryan's budget is neither listed among the sources on the sidebar nor linked in the text of the story.

First off, there’s a lot of other sources confirming Cutter’s remarks indirectly, such as the New York Times:  (emphasis mine)

Mitt Romney’s promise to restore $716 billion that he says President Obama “robbed” from Medicare has some health care experts puzzled, and not just because his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, included the same savings in his House budgets.

Or, FactCheck.Org: (emphasis mine)

The Romney campaign told us that the “Romney-Ryan plan” is Ryan’s latest Medicare plan, except it would not include any of those $716 billion cuts that were in the Affordable Care Act. Ryan’s plan did include the majority of those cuts, and overall, Ryan estimated his plan would lead to greater Medicare cuts/savings than the president’s.

Or ABC News, which stated its information on the Ryan-Obamacare cuts came from the Kaiser Family Foundation: (emphasis mine)

Voters might be left with the impression that Romney and Ryan have both opposed the cuts. The truth is that Ryan himself endorses them in his signature budget plan – the same plan Romney has said he would sign as president if it reached his desk.

Those Medicare savings -achieved through reduced provider reimbursements and curbed waste, fraud and abuse, not benefit cuts – appear in the House Republicans’ FY 2013 budget, which Ryan authored.

His plan would in part repeal the entirety of the Affordable Care Act — except the reductions in Medicare spending now at the center of debate, according to analysts with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

Or NBC News, linked in the ruling’s source list:  (emphasis mine)

The Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – does cut the growth of Medicare by $700 billion over 10 years. But benefits to seniors actually increase under Obamacare, which reduces payments to providers in exchange for more people covered by insurance. What’s more, the Ryan plan – approved by the House – cuts Medicare spending every bit as much as Obamacare does. In fact, it incorporates the very same budget projections, even as it repeals Obamacare. That’s what you call having it both ways.

Faced with questions about Ryan's support for these cuts, the Romney campaign clarified its position Monday evening and disagreed with those cuts.

White cites an article by Dave Weigel of Slate, which he says belies PolitiFact’s argument as to how the "cuts" are to be achieved:

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: And The Thieves Just Keep Shouting Robber

Turd Blossom Karl Rove stinks up the television air waves with his PAC’s recent anti-Obama ad:

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Over three years with crushing unemployment. American manufacturing shrinking again. President (Barack) Obama’s plan: Spend more. He’s added $4 billion in debt every day. The economy is slowing but our debt keeps growing. Tell him for real job growth cut the debt.

I had a comment submitted on this blog recently (about my antagonists) which sums this statement up: This is like a child who’s killed his parents asking for the court to give him mercy because he is an orphan.  This is also another case of pot, meet kettle. PolitiFact Florida rated this claim Half True:

Crossroads GPS has its math correct what it says that Obama has "added $4 billion in debt every day." But the ad suggests that Obama is solely to blame. That’s not true, because other factors -- including the struggling economy he inherited and decisions made before he took office -- contributed to that debt. We rate this claim Half True.

PolitiFact Florida’s Amy Sherman bases her conclusion on interviews with “three experts on the federal budget” who are diversified In their political leanings.

Burtless said that most of the debt added under Obama would have happened even if he followed the tax and spending policies in effect when he took office. But Obama embraced policies that increased the public debt -- including signing the stimulus package and agreeing to other measures that held down taxes and increased unemployment benefits.

First, it needs to be said that austerity (cutting debt) will not result in job growth; this is almost an economy 101 axiom, and is being borne out in Europe today. And the empirical evidence of Bush’s tenure shows that cutting taxes does not create jobs either. Even with cuts, taxes must be raised to (try to) balance the budget. And the Republican congress, if it continues in power, and it likely will following the elections, are not going to allow this to happen.

This is not an either/or proposition: debt must be cut and revenue must be raised. For those reasons, for Obama to do what Karl Rove demands is mathematically impossible. It’s even more mathematically impossible in the hazily worded budgets proposed by Mitt Romney.

Nevertheless, PolitiFact puts the onus squarely on presidential policies. The New York Times published this graphical depiction of what makes up the debt due to presidential policies, and Obama got assigned his share:

Click to enlarge:  Even adjusting for "TARP paybacks" Obama's way below $4B per day.

As Jon Perr of Perrspectives so aptly interprets this chart for the Bush side:

Tchotchkes: Mitt Romney The Musical

Mock the Dummies is back!