Congressional pay raise update

Thanks to PolitiFact Georgia, we have another piece of evidence that PolitiFact prefers Democrats.

Partisan.

We pointed out in October 2012 that PolitiFact found it true that Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) had raised his own pay a number of times while in Congress.  In contrast, PolitiFact Ohio found it false that Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had raised his own pay a number of times while in Congress.  Their circumstances were similar.  The rulings contradict each other.

PolitiFact Georgia sees things mostly PolitiFact Ohio's way.  It's "Mostly False" that Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) raised his own pay.  Hey!  A Republican got the benefit of the doubt this time!  But it's not that simple.  Blame for the "Mostly False" claim goes to Kingston's Republican primary challenger, David Perdue.

So, on essentially the same claim, PolitiFact has put a "False" and a "Mostly False" on Republican report cards, and a "True" on the report card for the Florida Democratic Party (the latter claim was a compound claim where both halves were found true).

If Kingston wins the primary, it will be interesting to see if any Democrats pick up this line of attack.  First, will PolitiFact Georgia notice?  Second, what rating will result?

PolitiFact makes its set of gender wage gap stories even less coherent

In a 2013 article, "PolitiFact and the 77-cent solution," we pointed out PolitiFact's inconsistency on gender gap claims.  There's a wage gap between men and women, primarily created by different job choices, and that gap is acceptably represented by the $.77 figure.  The Department of Justice estimates that about 40 percent of the $.23 shortfall, about $.09, occurs as a result of discrimination.

For claims about a gender wage gap in the range of $.77 on the dollar, PolitiFact's seven ratings at the time ranged  from "Half True" to "True."  In addition, Mitt Romney accurately claimed men make more than women in Obama's White House and received a "Half True" rating.

For claims where that gap was said to apply to the same work, PolitiFact gave two "Mostly False" ratings, including one to President Obama.

President Obama used the 77-cent figure during his State of the Union address.  And PolitiFact was on it, giving the president a "Mostly True" rating.

What did Obama say?  PolitiFact reports:

During his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama made a claim about pay for women in today’s economy.

"You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns," Obama said. "That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work."

We think when Obama says the 23-cent gap is "wrong" and "an embarrassment" leading to a call for equal pay for equal work, it strongly implies the president is claiming the 23-cent gap occurs as a result of gender discrimination.

We don't see any other reasonable way to interpret the statement.

PolitiFact doesn't see it that way:

We struggled a bit with how to classify the claim Obama made in the State of the Union, since his phrasing was somewhat ambiguous. He used the more accurate formulation, but he then followed up two sentences later by saying, "Women deserve equal pay for equal work." Did Obama’s "equal pay for equal work" line suggest that he believes the 77-cent pay differential refers to statistical comparisons of "equal work"? Or was this sentence simply a philosophical statement that was distinct from the statistical claim?

Ultimately, we decided that Obama’s statement that "women deserve equal pay for equal work" was aspirational rather than a part of his statistical claim, so we’re judging him on his claim that women "make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns."

What purpose does the 77-cent figure serve in the president's speech other than to show the relevance of his call for equal pay for equal work?

Why would a 23-cent gap be wrong if it occurs on the basis of the free-market choices of employees and not gender discrimination?

It's obvious President Obama was making a sly version of the claim he made that PolitiFact rated "Mostly False":  He implied that the gap exists based on gender discrimination.

PolitiFact didn't want to see it.

PolitiFact and the 77-cent solution (Updated)

Is there gender discrimination in wages?

PolitiFact, a project of the Tampa Bay Times supposedly designed to help you find the truth in politics, has the answer.  In fact, PolitiFact does even better than giving us an answer.  It gives us two different answers to the same question.

Is it true that "women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man"?

It's "Mostly True," says PolitiFact.  It's "Half True," says PolitiFact.

You'd think they might be able to settle on "Mostly Half True."

How is it that PolitiFact can reach two different conclusions about the same claim, know that it has reached two different conclusions regarding the same claim and yet fail to resolve the discrepancy?

This is supposed to be fact checking, not "Wheel of Fortune."

We've said for years that PolitiFact's rating system by its nature forces reporters and editors into making subjective judgment calls.  This case serves as yet another example supporting that claim.

Could some difference in the claims or the context of the claims justify a different rating?  PolitiFact mentions no such differences.  Yet PolitiFact has terrific motivation for explaining the different ratings.  In its recent fact check of Rep. Marcia Fudge's "77 cent" claim, PolitiFact Ohio cited other PolitiFact ratings of similar statements:

PolitiFact has made several examinations of the claim that women earn 76 to 77 percent as much as men, and found that they lacked context because they failed to account for factors like education, type of job, age of employee and experience level.

The hotlink associated with "several examinations" leads to a "Half True" rating from PolitiFact Georgia for a claim effectively identical to Fudge's.  Fudge received a "Mostly True" rating.

The writers and editors at PolitiFact apparently don't realize that linking to a closely parallel fact check with a different rating exposes a problem of inconsistency.

Inconsistency isn't bias!

By itself, inconsistency is not bias.  But patterns of inconsistency may provide evidence of bias.  We have that sort of pattern in PolitiFact's ratings of differences in pay by gender.

We can measure by tracking the frequency with which stories either favor one political party over another or cause harm to one party more often than to another.  My co-editor at PFB, Jeff D, points out that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a claim about differences in pay by gender during the 2012 election.  Romney noted that the equal pay candidate, President Obama, was paying male White House employees more than the female employees.  PolitiFact found that Romney was right.  And rated the claim "Half True":

In the broadest sense, the Romney campaign is on solid ground when it says that "women in Barack Obama's White House are earning less than men." But the closer you look at the data, the less striking this conclusion becomes.
 
...The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Half True.

"The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information," so PolitiFact rates it "Half True."  There's just one problem.  That's the definition PolitiFact gives for "Mostly True":

MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

Even aside from that PolitiFact blunder that somehow escaped the notice of layers of editors, we see a pattern of partisan inconsistency.

Romney's statement, as Jeff points out, avoids false precision.  Romney simply says men get paid more than the women at the White House.  It's very hard to argue that Romney's statement is in any way more misleading than any of the "77 cent" claims.  Indeed, it's hard to argue that Romney misled any more than did the National Women's Law Center with its claim that every state has a gender wage gap.  PolitiFact Georgia rated that claim "True."  PolitiFact simply doesn't provide reasoning that would distinguish one rating from another in this similar set of claims.

Whether the correct rating is "Mostly True" or "Half True," the Republicans draw the short straw with PolitiFact in comparison to Democrats.



Afters

Here's the list of similar gender gap stories, followed by two stories where claimants used the 77 cent figure claiming it's the difference where men and women do the same work.

Diana DeGette says women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man
"Mostly True"

R.I. Treasurer Gina Raimondo repeats oft-quoted, but misleading, statistic in equal pay debate
"Half True"

Rep. Marcia Fudge cites wage gap between Ohio women and men
"Mostly True"

Gender wage gap claim needs more context
"Half True"

Tim Kaine says Virginia women earn 79 cents to every $1 made by men
"Mostly True"

[National Women's Law Center] Is there a gender wage gap in every state?
"True"

Mitt Romney says women White House employees earn less than men under Barack Obama
"Half True"

Same job, same work

U.S. Rep. David Cicilline says women earn only 77 percent of what men earn in the same job
"Mostly False"

Barack Obama ad says women are paid "77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men"
"Mostly False"

Update July 10, 2013

A reader alerted us to another PolitiFact rating that fits with this group.  Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter lowers the bar for "Mostly False" by making the same job, same work claim while naming the wrong percentage.  Carter said the wage gap for the same job and same work averaged 70 cents on the dollar.  "Mostly False," said PolitiFact Georgia.

We wonder how low one could go with the percentage and still rate higher than "False"?

PolitiFact's defense spending shenanigans

Remember when PolitiFact believed that the best way to measure defense spending was as a percentage of GDP among OECD nations or world powers?

No worries. PolitiFact doesn't remember it either.

Today PolitiFact New Jersey ruled "True" a claim from Newark's Mayor Cory Booker that U.S. defense spending exceeds defense spending for "the next 10, 11, 12 countries combined."

Back in July of 2010, PolitiFact ruled "Mostly False" a claim from conservative Sarah Palin that in terms of defense spending as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. ranks No. 25 in the world.

The two rulings make up yet another classic comparison illustrating PolitiFact's liberal bias.

In Booker's case, the facts are simple.  If the U.S. spends more like Booker said, then his statement is true.  It doesn't even matter if nobody really knows what China and Russia spend on defense, and it doesn't matter that the various nations use no standard method of defining defense spending.  We might spend more on salaries and veterans' benefits than Canada spends on guns, tanks, ships and planes.  Can we defend ourselves effectively with veterans' benefits?  Probably not.  But none of that matters to PolitiFact New Jersey.  Booker is right, so just deal with it.

In Palin's case, facts are complex.  Palin is technically right about U.S. defense spending as a percentage of GDP.

We quickly tracked down the chart from which we suspect she pulled her factoid. (Her staff didn't return our e-mail query.) It's a credible source -- the CIA World Factbook -- and, as Palin said, the U.S. does rank 25th in the world, spending an estimated 4.06 percent of GDP on defense in 2005.

Case closed? Not really.

Palin was mostly wrong because it's not fair to compare the U.S. to tiny non-industrialized nations.  In Booker's case, of course, it's fair to compare our defense spending to that of nations that deliberately under-report their defense spending.

Stepping back from agenda journalism toward reality, both Booker and Palin have a legitimate point, with Palin probably better grounded in the facts since her claim uses a figure for the U.S. that is inflated relative to nations that do not fully reveal their defense spending.  In effect the failure of certain nations to fully report their defense spending understates Palin's point while overstating Booker's.

There's no objective justification for this disparity in ratings about defense spending.  PolitiFact New Jersey liked the point Booker was making and subjected it to less scrutiny than Palin received for her claim.  That's how mainstream media fact checking works.  It's not objective.  And PolitiFact is the worst of the lot when it comes to this type of thing.

Note:
I fisked the whole of the Palin ruling way back when at Sublime Bloviations.

PolitiFact consistent on congressional pay raises: prefers Democrats

Monday's ruling by PolitiFact Ohio on a claim from the Josh Mandel senate campaign brought back some memories.

Mandel accused incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown of voting himself six pay raises.  PolitiFact Ohio was all over it.  PolitiFact Ohio dove into the weeds to discover that since 1989 congressional pay raises occur automatically without a vote.

PolitiFact's Tom Feran:

Because the pay raises are essentially automatic, the only thing Congress can do is vote to stop them. There are roll call votes on whether members of Congress were willing to hear amendments to suspend their pay increases. And it is those procedural votes that the Mandel ad relies on for support.

PolitiFact notes that in two of the six cases Mandel cites, Brown was against the pay raise after he was for it.  I believe that one's called a "reverse Kerry."

PolitiFact Ohio says the point is that members of Congress cannot raise their own pay because the pay raises only take effect when the next Congress takes office.  PolitiFact Ohio rates the Mandel claim "False."

Now, why did this pay raise thing bring back memories?

The Florida Democratic Party tried much the same tactic on Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum.  The FDP said McCollum voted four times to raise his own pay, along with naming the amount of McCollum's congressional pension.  The ruling from PolitiFact Florida?  "True."

Ace PolitiFact journalist Louis Jacobson bought it hook, line and sinker:

Both claims are supported by the evidence, so we're assigning it a rating of True.

There are a few differences between the claims, to be sure, but two things are equally sure:  If the PolitiFact Ohio rating is accurate then the PolitiFact Florida rating is wrong.  And if the PolitiFact Florida rating is accurate then the PolitiFact Ohio rating is wrong.

Welcome to the wonderful world of PolitiFact fact checking.

The Weekly Standard: PolitiFact Can’t Get Its Story Straight on Romneycare and Abortion

Does the truth have a shelf-life?

Jeffrey H. Anderson, writing at the Weekly Standard, takes the fact-finding DeLorean all the way back to 2007 to highlight PolitiFact's conflicting ratings on RomneyCare's coverage of abortions. Before you read Anderson's article, check out the graphics for the remarkably dissimilar PolitiFact articles:

In 2007, PolitiFact says RomneyCare covers abortions:

Image clipped from PolitiFact.com

In 2012, the issue isn't so clear:

Image clipped from PolitiFact.com

Anderson notes:

[The Gingrich rating] sounds reasonable enough — except that the 2007 PolitiFact verdict directly refutes it. 

At first glance the statements have just enough wiggle room between them to possibly have different ratings. But Anderson's article explains there's not enough to justify different ratings..

Also observe how PolitiFact presented Newt's statement. Newt claimed "Romney signed government-mandated health care with taxpayer-funded abortions." Notice PolitiFact's first question: "Did Mitt Romney make taxpayer funded abortion the law of the land?" The difference is that abortion's status as a covered procedure prior to Romney enacting the legislation is independent of Gingrich's claim. The context of Gingrich's ad was that Romney was sympathetic to abortion rights issues. Whether or not abortion was covered by taxpayers under existing Massachusetts law is irrelevant to Gingrich's point. The fact that Romney helped perpetuate the taxpayer funding is enough to make Gingrich's underlying argument accurate.

We'd also like to point out that for a Republican plan, RomneyCare has been the subject of several favorable articles, and even a ridiculous push poll, at PolitiFact. The cynical reader might surmise the kid glove treatment has something to do with RomneyCare's similarity to ObamaCare. Nah, that couldn't be it.




(1/31/2012) Corrected quote of Gingrich's PF statement. No change in context-Jeff

Sublime Bloviations: "PolitiFlub: Udderly confused by EPA milk regs"

 Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations.


This.
just.
doesn't.
look.
very.
easy.
to.
reconcile:

(link to story at PolitiFact.com)

That's President Obama from yesterday's State of the Union Address.

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The latter rating came from PolitiFact Virginia almost a full year ago.

On the face of it, one can imagine a reconciliation of the two rulings.  But it's doubtful if you've looked at the one for Obama after evaluating the one for Griffith.

The best part of it is that PolitiFact may have flubbed both rulings.  The EPA was leaning toward an exemption for homogenized milk.  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.  A raw milk spill would still be treated just like an oil spill even after President Obama supposedly eliminated the rule that required a milk spill to be treated like an oil spill.

Welcome to the wonderful world of PolitiFact fact checking.


Update:  Looks like the EPA did get around to exempting all milk products from the rule. Griffith was still partially correct at worst, and President Obama did not eliminate an EPA rule.  Rather, Obama's EPA exempted milk from a rule that remains in effect.  And Obama's statement obscures the administration's vacillating actions on the issue:

"The Obama Administration pulled back the rule in January of 2009, then reissued it in November, and to large degree it was the same rule," Schlegel said.

Jeff adds (1/26/2012): This is more accurately a "Bryan adds" because I simply wanted to highlight something Bryan wrote on PolitiFact's Facebook page regarding this ruling. I think it exemplifies the "gimme" True's that PolitiFact grants to Obama:

"[T]he Bush administration had created an exemption for milk as it was leaving office. That exemption was one of those that Obama pulled back for re-examination when he took office. So the only reason he had the chance to save us from the EPA's application of oil spill rules to milk was by preventing Bush from fixing it first."