Tchotchkes: The Muppets "Attack" Fox News

WaC Files: Red Herring Rich

When my fellow car-poolian from the 1990’s Richard Peasel began to spew right-wing talking points at me during our drives to and from work, he’d often do it with silly distractions. It looks like he hasn’t changed in all that time. There’s facts and there’s background; but he was good at distorting facts and dismissing background by using the distractions. In this case, where Peasel “anonymously” commented on my Grading PolitiFact Liberal-Style “Bureaucratic Bungling” review of a statement by Mitt Romney, there was a lot of the same. He actually sent me four comments like this. This time, however, he can’t get away with it.

It appears as if he never read my post or read the link to PolitiFact’s ruling. He just jumped out there with a bunch of bullet points of what he thinks is the difference between private sector and governmental productivity, presenting me with a false dilemma (“bureaucrats and freedom”) and making the absurd claim that “this” is Accounting 101. Then there were the implicit personal attacks on my education, which have nothing to do with the ruling.

The first bullet points, on the definitions of private sector productivity, are okay for the most part. I have no disagreement with them, except for “This process in turns creates profits enjoyed by both labor and owners.” Yea right, by the labor. Who is he trying to kid. Tell some 99 per centers that. Or people laboring for FoxConn in China. He also does something which is just plain silliness: although a lot of right-wingers suffer from this woefully wrong assumption. That is that liberals hate profits and wealth (“(ugh) profits, or (yeck) wealth”). I recall from our travels that he actually believed that liberals can’t be rich. I wonder what Warren Buffet (#3) or Bill Gates (#1) would say about that.

The second set of bullet points, on governmental productivity, is restricted to differing definitions only of bureaucrats; in other words, he makes the erroneous, typically right wing false equivalency that government worker = bureaucrat. The point of my criticism of this PolitiFact ruling on Romney was that most of these people hired were, as noted, part of the VA and military, tending to the needs of wounded soldiers returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was PolitiFact’s point as well for rating the claim Half True (emphasis added):

But Romney referred to those government workers as bureaucrats. This is a loaded term that obscures what most of the new employees actually do. Merriam-Webster lists as one of its definitions of bureaucracy: "a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation." That may not bring to mind doctors and nurses caring for wounded veterans or border patrol agents. When we examine the largest areas of growth, we find it is in national defense, veteran care, anti-terrorism and border security.

Finally, while Romney makes it sound as if this is solely Obama's doing, congressional Republicans and Democrats have approved increases in those areas. If President Obama is responsible for this growth, he had a lot of help from members of Romney’s own party.

Are doctors, nurses and healthcare aids doing the same thing in the government as they do in the private sector? Are they “writing laws, regulations, ordnances, and rules to define a conduct, action, or control by a bureaucratic authority”? No, they’re doing the same in the government sector as they did in the private sector: their jobs, to give medical assistance, administer drugs or therapy…to save lives.

The VA (Tri-Care) is the only real “government takeover” of healthcare in that the doctors are directly hired by the government. While for some strange reason (by Peasel) Tri-Care is very popular, let’s say the government did away with it and hired an outside contractor to administer medical assistance to wounded vets. The doctors, nurses and practitioners would be doing the same thing they did before, only they would be privately employed. In other words, their productivity would be there regardless of who employed them. Or if they hired private security as border patrols: are not the private security guards and those employed by Homeland Security doing the same thing?

Truth Index: Smart Politics Revisited

Early last year I did a pretty detailed analysis on Eric Ostermeier’s study of about a years’ worth of PolitiFact (PF) National rulings. I compared my larger numbers to his at that time; to be specific, Ostermeier evaluated 511 PolitiFact statements while my sample was 1,784. My number actually included everything that was in his 511.

This time I am again looking at the entire population of PolitiFact rulings to compare to Eric Ostermeier’s. The most notable and most cited by various conservative pundits in terms of its possible bias is the 76/22 one: that is, 76% of all False and Pants on Fire rulings are attributable to Republicans while only 22% are attributable to Democrats. Mark Hemingway of the conservative Weekly Standard cited it in a recent NPR radio piece with Washington Post Fact-Checker author Glenn Kessler.  Here's Eric's finding:

Republican statements were graded in the dreaded "false" and "pants on fire" categories 39 percent of the time, compared to just 12 percent for statements made by Democrats.

That means a supermajority of falsehoods documented by PolitiFact over the last year - 76 percent - were attributed to Republicans, with just 22 percent of such statements coming from Democrats.

So, how does it look now? I could never get close to Ostermeier’s numbers, although Republican False and Pants on Fire always outnumbered the Democrats. I did it in several ways to compare to Ostermeier: one with everything, which would include the PF states, one with everything including the non-office holders, and one just on National. I actually achieved the 22% for the Democrats by using the top 60 in terms of those with 10 or more rulings as posted previously on individual Truth Index average; but that is not a representative sample. The Republicans in this case were just over 70%, not 76%. But in all the other more inclusive measures, as shown in the graph below, the Republicans varied from around 60% (all False and Pants on Fire rulings) to 69% (PF National only). The Democrats were anywhere from 26% to almost 30% for all False and Pants on Fire rulings. Here’s a graphic of all my “permutations,” including one which included everyone and everything: for the 4,707 rulings PF did from the day it was “born” through the end of 2011, the False and Pants on Fire categories were roughly 60% attributable to Republicans, 30% to Democrats, with the remaining 10% for Independents, non-partisans and unknowns. While it’s still a 2 to 1 ratio in favor of the Democrats, it’s clearly better than the 3.5 to 1 as found by Ostermeier.

Click to enlarge:  Smart Politics' percentages for Republican "Falsehoods" exceeded all five ways I did it with the entire PF database. (NH is New Hampshire, which appears to only do national rulings related to the 2012 Elections.)

The other Truth-o-Meter categories were reviewed by Ostermeier as well, and so I obliged with my own, calculating not only just the percent of total rulings compared, but the rulings as a percent of all those in the Truth-o-meter rating. Again, this was for elected officials and those holding office. According to Ostermeier, "....… Democrats have therefore been presented as much more truthful - with over 75 percent of statements receiving the top three grades of True (16 percent), Mostly True (27 percent), or Half True (33 percent)."

The numbers indicate that Ostermeier’s sample appeared to be skewed more in favor of Democrats, no matter how I tried to shake the numbers. I had 10 fewer points for the Democrats and 5 more for the Republicans, and there was even one stat in favor of the Republicans: that was the percent True, Mostly True and Half True as a percent of the total True, Mostly True, and Half True: Of the 2,033 rulings in those Truth-o-Meter categories, 50% were attributable to Republicans, while 47% were attributable to Democrats. Part of the reason may be, of course, that there were more Republican rulings. While at the time Ostermeier found that PF National had roughly the same number of rulings for each party in his sample, they began to become more heavily Republican with the 2010 Elections putting more Republicans in office, and the 2011 Republican presidential campaigns and debates requiring frequent fact-checks. As a result, Republican rulings increased about 10 percent while Democrat rulings dropped almost 14 percent from Ostermeier’s more even percentages.

Next, and last but not least, a few fact-ettes and fact-oids shared from my database of PolitiFact rulings.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Pink Slipping PolitiFact

Last night (January 25) MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow did a small segment on PolitiFact (PF) wherein she “fired them.” It was because of its correction of a ruling on Obama. During his state of the union address, he said “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005."

Maddow noted that while PF found both statements to be true using BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) data, it initially rated it Half True, and she displayed the text of its reasoning: 

Obama is correct on both counts when using private-sector job numbers. But he went too far when he implicitly credited his administration policies. So we rate the statement Half True.

Maddow took issue with the fact that Obama credited businesses, saying “businesses have created more than 3 million jobs” not “I, Barack Obama” or “my administration” or “the Stimulus” or “my policies.” She jokingly said something to the effect that “Obama didn’t wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and say ‘good morning, businesses!’”

From the Huffington Post

She noted that PolitiFact reviewed it again and then issued an update, upgrading the ruling from Half True to Mostly True. Based on what I’ve seen in cases like this, it appears PolitiFact will not move the Truth-o-Meter needle too far, thereby admitting something it investigated and ruled on turned out to be almost the opposite. Loath to admit to such gross errors, it will try to stand by its ruling come hell or high water, and if it moves it, it will be a one notch, which is what it did here.

Maddow then concluded that she had had it with PolitiFact and then “terminated their position” in the inimitable Grand Vulgarian Donald Trump fashion along with a few other choice criticisms.

"PolitiFact, you are fired. You are a mess! You are fired! You are undermining the definition of the word fact in the English language by pretending to it in your name. The English language wants its word back. You are an embarrassment. You sully the reputation of anyone who cites you as an authority on fact-ishness, let alone fact. You are fired."

But in the long thread of angry Facebook comments (for which most liberal-media-bashers would chomp at the bit to deride), the publicized correction and Maddow’s televised dismantling of PF’s ruling, there wasn’t a whisper from my conservative counterpart and his partner in crime over on the “red” side of politifact detractors. Nope, while they were both busy on Facebook at the same time, Bryan White going completely non sequitor over another Obama SOTU remark on spilled milk, and Jeff Dyberg beating the dead horse called Solyndra one more time, they somehow failed to notice this one.

In fact, the corrected Obama ruling was right next to the spilled milk ruling. It had a great deal more comments—more than double that of the spilled milk ruling--and being as it was a straight sort of “numbers” claim, it should have attracted Bryan’s or Jeff’s attention. Here’s the snipped screen print showing their side-by-side placement on PolitiFact's Facebook page:

Lil White Lies: Something in the Way He Moos

My conservative counterpart had not published anything nor had been commenting on Facebook since the beginning of this year, and I was enjoying the quiet time. I know he has been working on a “special PolitiFact project” which was supposedly the be-all and end-all of proving PolitiFact’s liberal bias, but he had said he was working on something last year about this time, so I didn’t think too much of it (maybe it was his joint effort initiating the PolitiFact Bias blog with Jeff Dyberg). When I first saw some comments by him leading to this Lil White Lies post, I had added a comment of “Hey LOOK who’s crawled out from under his rock.” But on second thought I retracted it, and just “liked” some comments in response to his, whereby he added “Discounting KS's pablum before she even starts, there's no way to reconcile these two rulings without employing a fallacy of equivocation.” So, that “KS” is probably me, but I have to say: why even predict it if you think it’s pablum? Maybe I should have left the “under the rock” comment in.

So....I’ll begin this post mimicking how Bryan started his:

Yes.
This.
IS.
Easy.
To.
Reconcile.
Unless.
You’re.
Just a.
Bitter.
Conservative.

Let me translate/simplify:

Morgan Griffith says: There’s a NEW rule (read: more job-killing regulation!) that milk spills will be treated like oil spills!

Griffith misinterpreted and misled by stating this was a "new" ruling, as well as the fact it was up for elimination.

PolitiFact (PF) says: No it’s not new, it’s been around 38 years, and there’s a proposal to eliminate it, so it’s just the opposite of what Griffith says.

Obama says in his SOTU: I removed this rule.

PF says: Yes, he removed this rule.

So, why is Bryan White having a cow?

Try it this way:

Morgan Griffith says: There’s a NEW rule (read: job-killing regulations!) that milk spills will be treated like oil spills!

PF says: No it’s not new, it’s been around 38 years, and it’s under study for being removed, so it’s just the opposite of what Griffith says.

Bryan White says: Yes it’s been around 38 years, if it was there when Griffith said it was a new rule (even though he called it “new” and it wasn’t) then what he said is at least Half True. “But the exemption would not have covered raw milk, which should have left Griffith's claim at least partly true. And if raw milk received no exemption from the EPA then Obama's claim is approximately half true as well.”  ( I'm crossing this out ironically since Bryan goes on to correct his original “this sound like a good excuse” post—this just points up how he was looking for something to fit his argument.)

Obama says in his SOTU: I removed this rule.

PF says: Yes, he removed this rule.

Bryan White says: It was originally proposed for removal under the Bush Administration, but Obama recalled it for further study, so it can’t be (all) true because it wasn’t Obama’s idea.

Welcome to the world of Bryan White checking the fact-checkers. Or, Bryan White trying to find a way to steal back the milk that Obama said he cleaned up. Or Bryan White finagling around trying to disguise his own bias and find a way to get the credit back for de-regulating under the GOP column. Oh, there’s something in the way he moos.

The best explanation for his defense, however, comes from a New York Times article early in 2011 which shows what really led Morgan Griffith to say what he did:

Tchotchkes: The Ironic News Report

With Julianna Forlano

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Bureaucratic Bungling

Mitt Romney, who so far has done the best of the presidential contenders, even though he ominously failed to win South Carolina, is the subject of 2012’s first Grading PolitiFact (PF) Liberal Style review.

Early in January, Romney told a crowd in New Hampshire that President Obama’s approach to improving unemployment was not to rely on the private sector, but to “hire lots of bureaucrats” and that “he’s added 135,000 to the government workforce.”

Sometimes I ask a very simple question when analyzing  such a fact-check as this: that would be “whose fault is that?”—whose fault is it that 135,000 employees were hired? Was it actually Obama’s doing? Besides the usual “why” which was covered in the ruling by PF New Hampshire’s Jon Greenberg by reviewing statistics from the Office of Personnel Management:

The Office of Personnel Management tallies are done every quarter, not every month, so the numbers don’t exactly match what you find on the BLS web site, but the trends line up. In round figures, from September 2009 to September 2011, the federal workforce grew about 100,000. Counting permanent civilian employees, the departments of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Defense grew by 53,000 -- more than half of the total. Veterans Affairs provides another 24,000, or about a quarter of the overall increase. Homeland Security contributes 12,000 -- call that another 10%. All told, national defense, assisting veterans, and protecting the national borders account for close to 90% of all federal civilian employee growth.

The numbers fall off quickly after that. The departments of Justice and Health and Human Services are tied at roughly 4,000 each.

There’s a nuance in Romney’s statement that bears some scrutiny. He talked about hiring lots of bureaucrats which raises the question, is everyone on the federal payroll a paper-pushing practitioner of the dark arts of red tape? Not in the opinion of Palguta.

"The sad fact is that the VA has had to increase staff at the hospitals to care for the wounded warriors coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan," Palguta says.

So, whose fault was it that staffs had to be increased to care for wounded warriors? If most of the hirings are VA-medically-related, who started the wars? If Obama had started troop withdrawals early in his presidency, it sounds like the VA would still have had to hire medical care for those returning. So, whose fault is it then? Or, let's say Republican John McCain had won the presidency in 2008--McCain, the renown former Viet Nam POW--would he have not just permitted, but embraced the hiring of additional VA medical care for returning soldiers?    If there were no wars we can assume there’d be far less than 135,000 “bureaucratic hirings.” One can also consider Obama’s continuing Bush’s “surge” but that’s only a little over ten percent of the peak number of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

PolitiFact made this more palatable for a Half True by portraying it as being two parts (one true, one false): the number 135,000, and whether or not they were bureaucrats. But there’s a third one: Romney said “You can hire lots of bureaucrats…That’s what the president’s done.” He’s saying it’s Obama that did this. Aside from the fact that it wasn’t literally Obama that hired 135,000, the VA needed to hire additional medical personnel to care for the returning troops who fought a war started (for nefarious reasons and at HUGE expense) by his predecessor, George W. Bush. The Department of Homeland Security was part of the fact-checked number, which was created under Bush. And it’s the GOP that’s generally more interested in protecting our borders than the Democrats.

Finally there’s the word “bureaucrat.” PF’s Greenberg gives the word “bureaucracy” (instead of individual bureaucrat) a definition of “a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation." But to Republicans and conservatives, a “bureaucrat” is someone (who must be from the government) who does nothing productive (even though I know from personal experience you can have bureaucrats in the private sector). And almost all of those 135,000 definitely had productive things to do.  It's hard to argue otherwise unless you're making a generalizing and  misleading statement like Romney did.

The only “element of truth” in Romney’s statement was the number. The rest of it ignored critical facts specifically in order to give a different impression. In other words, this should have been a deceptive, misleading Mostly False.