Texas Public Policy Foundation: "Putting Politifact’s “truth-o-meter” to the test"

David Guenthner of the Texas Public Policy Foundation seems to have the goods on yet another example of specious reasoning from PolitiFact:

On Monday, Talmadge Heflin issued a statement in response to the Comptroller’s biennial revenue estimate. Later in the day, Heflin wrote a “Speaking Freely” post on “the myth of the $27 billion shortfall,” which contained a thorough refutation of the dollar figure cited in some media accounts.

This morning, a project called Politifact – which in Texas operates under the umbrella of the Austin American-Statesman – applied its “truth-o-meter” to the closing statement of Heflin’s blog post, in which he concluded that claims of a $27 billion budget shortfall “are flat-out false.”

Somehow, Politifact concluded that Heflin’s statement was “false”. For real?

(read on)

Compare Guenthner's analysis with the take from PolitiFact and it seems the former has much the better argument.