Sidebar: Christmas in July

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

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

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

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

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

Lil White Lies Extra: Hopelessly De-Voted

Early in June, as I was about to take an intermission from my blog, I received some commentary from my conservative counterpart, lambasting a recent Lil White Lies post on his criticism of a PolitiFact ruling concerning shark attacks and voting fraud in Florida.

I decided not to waste my time with him and deleted his comment; I also felt it was a bit of a threat—basically the sort of argument by intimidation he commonly uses.

Customized for Lil White Lies

He intimated that I had better recant and delete the post called “Jumping the Shark” because it contained such grievous errors...about which, of course, he would elaborate no further. I refused to take the bait….well, until now—and no, I didn’t withdraw the post: it remains intact and unedited. At the time, however, I couldn’t waste time with his never-ending Gish Gallup (thank you, Eric Levine) of why he is the conservative cartel of truth and why anything a liberal says (or I should say, anyone who disagrees with him) doesn’t know what they’re talking about and must be condescended. And if you won’t buy into his bogus quality, he’s then going to resort to quantity. Until he wears you out.

After the threat of whatever error I made ruining my blogging career, he then followed with how "all you liberals have to censor my comments”….an accusation of cowardice (more argument by intimidation), basically. Well, yea, this is my blog and I’m not obligated to publish everyone’s comments….some blogs don’t allow any comments. I didn’t feel like publishing his. He can call me whatever, if I don’t want to publish them, I don’t have to.  Conservatives like to go on and on about freedom, but somehow I don't have the freedom to delete a comment.

So he then posted something to replace those comments at his “Bad Blogs Blood” blog, which I’ve previously described as a poorly formatted, sporadically posted, minutely viewed blog used to supplement his “master blog” for criticism where he wants to give his victim the least web “airtime” possible, to create a class below Slimey Bloviations for blogs that he doesn’t agree with.

But let’s get to the gist of his criticism:

In my original post I pointed to evidence from the Miami Herald that thousands of felons may have voted in the 2000 election. That's the Bush/Gore election. It was illegal at that time for felons to vote in Florida. No question about it. As for my follow up post about the television news story, that wasn't about felons at all. It was about non-citizens voting. Non-citizens aren't allowed to vote whether felons or not.

The way in which I do Lil White Lie posts needs to be explained first. I copy/paste the Grading PolitiFact piece to a Word document, along with the link. That way I only have to go to the Slimey Bloviations blogsite one time. That way I can refer to it as much as I want on one page, and can directly, easily copy whatever White has written if a quotation is needed.

So, since White is complaining that his post was not about felons but about non-citizens, I searched the post first for the word felons…it appears six times, here’s where it appears four times, and you can tell this is what the post was about: (italics added)

The fallacy in PolitiFact's reasoning comes easily to light.

For most of Florida's history as part of the United States it has prohibited voting by felons. Every time a felon votes illegally, it constitutes a case of voter fraud--albeit not the phony representation of "case" settled on by the fact checkers.

Most often nothing can be done to prosecute a case of voter fraud against a felon who votes illegally even though it happens with some regularity. The Miami Herald, for example, reported the following in the wake of its investigations of the 2000 presidential election:

At least 445 Florida felons voted illegally on Nov. 7, casting another cloud over a disputed presidential election already mired in legal challenges, a Herald investigation has found.

So how about “illegal immigrants” or “non-citizens”? The word immigrant could not be found. The word “non-citizen”—the word which White says this post was premised on and that through “fallacious impetus” I missed it, only appeared in a very brief addendum as an update to his “concrete examples” listing the types of voter fraud: “A Florida television station airs a story documenting approximately 100 non-citizens registered to vote in Florida, at least some of whom voted in past elections.”

That was it. I never read whatever follow up story he had after this Grading PolitiFact review. Although he may later have added a link, my copy/paste would have brought it over to my Word document, but it didn’t. My review was based on his original review, as well it should have been, not what he decided to add later about non-citizens.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Yes, Scott Walker is #1 "Liar"

A PolitiFact (PF) New Jersey fact-check on Loretta Weinberg, the state senate majority leader, done on June 7, seems to have slipped through my conservative counterpart’s bias-searching fingers, because I’m sure if he had read it he would be quoting it (besides having a major cow!) liberally throughout both his anti-PolitiFact blogs. For Bill Adair, the head of PolitiFact, came right out and directly addressed his biggest complaint of why he despises the Truth-o-Meter concept and what he believes is the reason for its alleged “bias.”

Weinberg said that Scott Walker of Wisconsin topped a list of the  five “Lie - en Governors" according to PolitiFact, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was also part of the “top five.” PolitiFact rated this statement “False” and included an interview with PolitiFact Manager Bill Adair, who made this very interesting comment:

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

But did Uppity Wisconsin, the source of Weinberg’s information, have it right? Here’s how PolitiFact explains what they did:

So what is Weinberg talking about?

The state senator’s statement was based on a list posted on the liberal blog Uppity Wisconsin.

The list ranked governors fact-checked at least five times by PolitiFact by the percentage of True and Mostly True ratings they received.

Walker had the lowest combined percentage of those two rulings, according to the June 1 blog post. The post concluded that "Walker is the #1 most dishonest governor in America."

Christie took fourth place among the "top five most dishonest governors in America" with 38 percent of his PolitiFact rulings earning True or Mostly True.

Uppity Wisconsin simply added the percentages of Trues and Mostly Trues, and came up with Scott Walker of Wisconsin at Number One with a combined percentage of 22 percent, followed by Rick Perry of Texas and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island both at 25%, Chris Christie of New Jersey at 38%, and lastly Bob McDonnell of Virginia at 44%. Uppity Wisconsin ignored a lot of things in coming up with these numbers. Adair has a point that this does not accurately show “who told the most lies.” For example, in 2012, Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chaffee had only two rulings from PolitiFact. He’s only had eight fact-checks ever from PolitiFact. This is not a good measure of “truthiness” for someone with this few fact-checks.

The more fact-checks on someone, the more it should bolster the claim of measuring honesty. But it’s even hard to say what that “more” number is. I put together a list of those sitting governors with 20 or more fact-checks, and decided "the top five" should be those with 40 or more: governors Chris Christie (NJ), Rick Scott (FL), Rick Perry (TX), John Kasich (OH) and Scott Walker (WI). I threw out Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia (with 22) and Bob McDonnell of Virginia (with 23), simply because I wanted to measure those with the highest number of fact-checks who had been rated recently. Not a lot of politicians meet the “40” criteria, but it’s a better measure than basing it on fewer than 10 fact-checks.

The other problem with Uppity Wisconsin’s measure is it does not take into account the Half Trues, Mostly Falses, Falses and Pants on Fire categories in making its "honesty" measure. The Truth Index as calculated by PolitiFact places heavier weight on the Falses and Pants on Fire categories: the Pants on Fire is weighted 50% higher than a True, because (I’m guessing) it was felt emphasis should be put on the false statements.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Skirting the Wage Gap



At PF Wisconsin wage disparity for doing the same job merits a False; elsewhere, not so.

This post is a combination Grading PolitiFact Review and Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style, because it's turned out to fit both. It focuses on four PolitiFact (PF) rulings on the same subject. Grading PolitiFact’s Bryan White wants them all to be False or Pants on Fire, while to me they're a tentative Half True. The statement is that women earn, on average, 77 cents (or 79 cents or 81 cents, depending on the ruling) for what a man makes…and the addition of “doing the same job” (except for one) which was what brought them down in their rating for the ruling. Four fact-checks on this were done this quarter by PolitiFacts National (a Mostly False for Obama) and Rhode Island (a Mostly False for Congressman David Cicilline) and for the less specific (but supposedly “correct”) statement from senate candidate Tim Caine that it’s not for the same job, which merited a Mostly True from PolitiFact Virginia.

The fourth was from PolitiFact Wisconsin: it was women on average earned 81 cents on the dollar for the same job coming from  Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Falk, for which she received a False.  So White got his False on one of the statements; however, the PolitiFact Wisconsin review committed the same type of error he lamented in determining the real wage differential among all the occupations, because (according to most of the writers) it couldn’t really be done.

Looking at this chart (see below) from Wikipedia, I don’t know how one couldn’t conclude that women earn less than men. Maybe the gap is closer for the same work in certain categories, but there’s still a gap. Women earn less in almost every occupation ( only more in 4 out of 111, according to PolitiFact Wisconsin). But since we know women generally earn less overall, that gender bias exists (and studies show we’re not sure why) and it’s difficult to find evidence to show that women earn less for the same work across the board, the Mostly Falses (and the False) should have been more like inconclusive Half Trues.

Click to enlarge:  Women's median usual weekly earnings as percentage of men's, for full-time workers, by industry, 2009.

The ruling on Tim Caine of Mostly True where he didn’t add the “for the same job” came with the subtitle “There are many ways to look at pay gap.” This should have been how the “Mostly False” finders should have looked at this to conclude a Half True. Indeed there are many ways to look at it, but there’s still a gap.

Truth Index: 2012 First Half

The second quarter of 2012 saw a decrease in Republican rulings by PolitiFact with the wind-down of the Republican primaries and Mitt Romney emerging as the presidential candidate. There was a slight decrease in the number of rulings, with 500 rulings published in total compared to 516 in the first quarter of 2012. The Republicans dominated in the first quarter with over 60% but for the second quarter dipped to just over 54% while rulings on the Democrats went from 34.3% to almost 39%.

A two-week segmented line graph shows that the trend disparity between the Republicans and Democrats also narrowed following the primaries. While the Republicans were for the most part less “truthful” than the Democrats, they did not vacillate as much as the Democrats did, and it was more the case that more statements of Democrats were found less truthful while the Republicans stayed about the same. While it was speculated after the first quarter that PolitiFact was doing “catch up” at month-end to even out party ruling outcomes, there does not appear to be any evidence of it now.

Click to enlarge:  the gap grew closer in the second quarter as the Republican primaries drew to a close.

One of the reasons there are more Republican statements being fact-checked is that they are simply more newsworthy Republicans in the states PolitiFact represents: Republicans dominate governorships and legislatures in Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, whose PolitiFact branches as a group publish much more in the way of rulings than New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.

Here are the overall charts comparing the Republicans and Democrats for the first half of 2012 in the PolitiFact app format.  It supports the comments above that while the Republican Truth Index stayed about the same at negative 26.1 (for the first quarter they were at a negative 23.8) the Democrat Truth Index fell off from a positive 5.4 to a negative 2.4.   I will be delving into (at least one of) the reasons for that drop soon.

Click to enlarge: Almost equal in percent of Half Trues and Falses, tho the Repubs have more than double Pants on Fire.

These Days They call It "Vay-Kay"

I will be taking a break from Politi-Psychotics for the next few weeks for some travel and to take care of some personal/business matters.  Next month I will be reporting the 2012 First Half PolitiFact Truth Index results....so.....stay tuned!

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