Different but Equal: PolitiFact Jumps on the "Ryan cuts Medicare" Bandwagon

This week's liberal talking point fact-checking effort from PolitiFact comes in the form of giving Stephanie Cutter a "True" for her claim regarding Paul Ryan's budget. Once again, in lieu of an actual investigation of the facts, PolitiFact settles for good old fashion electioneering. First up, the issue:

Image from PolitiFact.com

PolitiFact tells us exactly what they're checking (emphasis added):

For this check, we’re looking specifically at what Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said on Face the Nation when debating Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.

"You know, I heard Mitt Romney deride the $700 billion cuts in Medicare that the president achieved through health care reform," Cutter said. "You know what those cuts are? It’s taking subsidies away from insurance companies, taking rebates away from prescription drug company. Is that what Mitt Romney wants to protect? And interestingly enough Paul Ryan protected those cuts in his budget." 

[We] focus on the question of whether Cutter is correct that Ryan relies on those same reductions in his budget.

PFB editor Bryan White joined the chorus of critics early, and in a single line exposed how amateurish PolitiFact's effort was:

Ryan's budget is neither listed among the sources on the sidebar nor linked in the text of the story.

That's right. In a "fact-check" of Paul Ryan's budget, PolitiFact doesn't actually cite Paul Ryan's budget. Unfortunately, it goes downhill from there. Bryan continues (Bold emphasis added):

PolitiFact's source, a CBO report, communicates the nature of the [ACA's Medicare] reduction a bit more clearly than does PolitiFact (yellow highlights added):

Changes to Payment Rates in Medicare
In February 2011, CBO estimated that the permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians’ services) and the new mechanism for setting payment rates in the Medicare Advantage program will reduce Medicare outlays by $507 billion during the 2012–2021 period. That figure excludes interactions between those provisions and others—namely, the effects of the changes in the fee-for-service portion of Medicare on payments to Medicare Advantage plans and the effects of changes in both the fee-for-service portion of the program and in the Medicare Advantage program on collections of premiums for Part B (Supplementary Medical Insurance).

The bulk of the reduction, then, occurs as the result of the two reductions the CBO identifies.  Therefore, we should expect to see both of those features in the Ryan budget plan at minimum to rate Cutter's statement true.

This is a subtle yet critical point, and one that PolitiFact completely dodged. The issue isn't whether or not the Ryan plan reduces Medicare spending growth as much as ObamaCare does, the issue they claim to be fact-checking is if both plans rely on the same reductions. The bulk of the $716 billion in Medicare reductions comes from "the permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector" along with "the new mechanism for setting payment rates in the Medicare Advantage program."

PolitiFact seems to think they've found their smoking gun (bold emphasis added):

Here’s what Ryan said in an interview with George Stephanopolous of ABC News in June, before his selection as Romney’s running mate:

Stephanopoulos: "You know, several independent fact-checkers have taken a look at that claim, the $500 billion in Medicare cuts, and said that it's misleading. And in fact, by that accounting, your budget, your own budget, which Gov. Romney has endorsed, would also have $500 billion in Medicare cuts.

Ryan: "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. ..." (Read the full exchange.)

So Ryan has confirmed his budget includes the Medicare savings.

See what PolitiFact did? Bryan spots the bait and switch:

"The" Medicare savings?  The same exact ones from the ACA and not just the future rate of growth pegged at the same percentage?  How do we know that?  Where is the fact check?

There isn't one. PolitiFact conjures up a June interview, ignores Ryan's actual budget, calls it close enough and pats themselves on the back for being "wonks." You'd think if you have enough hubris to call yourself a wonk, you'd actually refer to the budget you're wonking. PolitiFact doesn't do that, and an article by Yuval Levin at NRO cites the part of Ryan's budget that directly refutes PolitiFacts claim:

This budget ends the raid on the Medicare trust fund that began with passage of the new health care law last year. It ensures that any potential savings in current law would go to shore up Medicare, not to pay for new entitlements. In addition to repealing the health care law’s new rationing board and its unfunded long-term care entitlement, this budget stabilizes plan choices for current seniors.

Levin nails the point. There is simply no way for PolitiFact to accurately claim that Paul Ryan's reductions are the same as the Medicare reductions in ObamaCare. Levin continues:

The “Ryan did it too” defense is perhaps the most amusing of the three, as it succeeds in being simultaneously untrue, irrelevant, and an admission of the basic charge against the Democrats. Even as they call Paul Ryan a cruel and merciless budget cutter who cares not for the weather service and would gladly see children exposed to E. coli, the Democrats justify their taking $710 billion out of Medicare and spending it on Obamacare over the next decade by pointing out that Paul Ryan didn’t put that money back into Medicare in his budget. So if he had, would that have made their cuts unjustifiable? Well it so happens that he did. By repealing all of Obamacare’s spending, the Republican budget does not spend the money Obamacare took out of Medicare and thus those funds are used to extend the Medicare trust fund. And this point is hardly hidden in the Ryan budget.

It may be the case that both Ryan's budget and the ACA reduce the growth of Medicare the same amount. But PolitiFact's suggestion that those figures are arrived at through the same methods is a 3-alarm howler. How can these people call themselves fact-checkers when this rating doesn't actually check any facts? At best, this effort between two of PolitiFact's top dogs, Angie-Drobnic Holan and Bill Adair, is little more than a wordy defense of a weak Democratic talking point.

Make sure to head over to Bryan's post detailing even more evidence of how badly they flubbed this rating, and check out Levin's full article showing the flimsiness of this entire line of attack on Ryan's Medicare plan.

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact again ignores data on effective federal tax rates

 Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


PolitiFact's latest fact check involving federal taxation sticks with its persistent pattern of ignoring and/or minimizing data on effective federal tax rates, including a study by the otherwise esteemed Congressional Budget Office.

A new ad from President Barack Obama’s campaign continues the drumbeat that Mitt Romney is a privileged rich guy who isn't paying his fair share of taxes.

"You work hard, stretch every penny," a narrator says. "But chances are, you pay a higher tax rate than him: Mitt Romney made $20 million in 2010, but paid only 14 percent in taxes — probably less than you."

Huh.  The Obama campaign didn't specify federal income taxes.  No worries.  Obama isn't Michele Bachmann, so PolitiFact can overlook the campaign's oversight.

PolitiFact then:

Bachmann would have been right if she’d said, "the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all income taxes into the federal government." But she didn’t say that -- and even if she had, her decision to focus on income taxes, rather than looking at the whole federal tax picture, would have presented the numbers in such a way that wealthier Americans would look more heavily taxed than they are.

So we want "the whole federal tax picture"?  Not so.  PolitiFact wants the tax picture minus the effects of corporate and excise taxes.  The thread is consistent and continues through today.

PolitiFact:

If you just look at income taxes, Obama is incorrect.

Bummer.  But since Obama didn't specify "(federal) income taxes" PolitiFact can consider payroll taxes while continuing to ignore corporate and excise taxes.  Or something like that.

PolitiFact:

So what happens when you add payroll taxes to income taxes? Obama's ad is accurate. Here's the breakdown when you include income taxes and both sides of the payroll tax (the parts paid for by employee and employer):

Bottom fifth of earners: 1 percent
Second-to-bottom fifth:  7.8 percent
Middle fifth: 15.5 percent
Second-highest fifth: 18.7 percent
Highest fifth: 24.3 percent

Once again, we can’t know exactly what percentage of Americans paid a higher effective tax rate than Romney's 14 percent, but the top two ranges, plus a significant share of the middle group, most likely did. So probably more than half exceeded Romney’s rate, making the Obama ad accurate.

Yippee!  Obama's ad is accurate!  Average out the true and the false, give the president a "Half True" and nobody really needs to know about that messy corporate and excise tax stuff.

Speaking of that messy corporate and excise tax stuff:

(click image for enlarged view)

The chart comes directly from the CBO report mentioned up above.  There are two important things to note.  First, excise taxes fall more heavily on those in the lower income quintiles.  That's a minor point.  Second, the burden of corporate taxes falls heavily on those with higher incomes.  And the higher you go with income, the higher the corporate tax burden.  That likely means that persons like Romney pay higher portions of the corporate tax burden as a percentage of their federal taxes.

Using "the whole federal tax picture" that PolitiFact once cited as its ideal standard, the middle quintile pays less than half the average federal tax burden of a person in the top 1 percent in 2006 (14.2 percent compared to 31.2 percent).  That means that it is very probably false that most people pay less more in federal taxes than Romney.

Luckily for the president, PolitiFact can make it look otherwise by cherry picking.

That's PolitiFact for you.


Afters: 

See also the review of a similar story from Annenberg Fact Check.


After Afters:

Just a little review of what PolitiFact wrote while rating Bachmann "False":

[Bachmann's] decision to focus on income taxes, rather than looking at the whole federal tax picture, would have presented the numbers in such a way that wealthier Americans would look more heavily taxed than they are.

PolitiFact's hypocrisy is pretty overwhelming, isn't it?


Correction Aug. 13 2012:
Less is more, after the correction.

Grading PolitiFact: Characterizing Mitt Romney's characterization of Obama

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


PolitiFact's attempt to use an "In Context" item to soften the negative effects of President Obama's "you didn't build that" moment didn't work out so well.

More was needed to help the president.


The issue.

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis:

Watch how many times PolitiFact uses partial quotations to protect its Obama from having his statement taken out of context.  We have two already in the graphic up above ("is the result of government" "hard-working people").

On with the fact check.

PolitiFact tells us that the Romney campaign and the Obama campaign have been wrangling over whether the latter insulted entrepreneurs.  That issue is somewhat settled when entrepreneurs perceive an insult.  Romney wins that point.  PolitiFact wants to let us know that Obama did not mean to insult entrepreneurs.  And maybe attacking Romney in relation to this issue is the ticket.

PolitiFact:

Romney, in comments at public events and in several ads, has argued that the remarks show a general disdain for business. The Republican National Committee and the National Federation of Independent Business are among the groups have [sic] released their own videos and statements echoing Romney that the president is out of touch.

The above summary is fair but potentially misleading.  We'll watch for those effects as the story progresses.

PolitiFact:

In one fundraising e-mail [sic], Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, decried Obama’s "naïve view that government, and not the hard work, talent, and initiative of people, is the center of society and the economy."

The email from Rhoades helps make it plain that PolitiFact distorts the Romney campaign's argument.  The argument is that Obama credits the government too much, not that he doesn't credit entrepreneurs at all. Yet the latter is what PolitiFact suggests in its graphic.

PolitiFact:

In another campaign e-mail [sic], Amanda Henneberg, a Romney spokeswoman, said Obama had "denigrated Americans who built their own businesses."

Henneberg's statement dovetails with the Romney campaign message that Obama overemphasizes the role of government, but PolitiFact can potentially make it look like she is saying that Obama gives entrepreneurs no credit.

PolitiFact:

The issue has become so big that the Obama campaign felt the need to address the issue head-on in a Web video titled "Tampered" that quoted media accounts saying the quote had been taken out of context.

The current size of the issue could mean that the Romney campaign is right that Obama is out of touch.  But it would help Obama if it appeared that people were simply misled by Romney about what Obama said.  PolitiFact did the Obama campaign a favor, by the way, by overlooking for the sake of this story the Obama campaign video suggesting Obama did not say what Romney quotes him to say.



Not only was Obama taken out of context, he didn't even say it in the first place.

Or something like that.

PolitiFact settles on the latest Romney campaign video for purposes of its fact check, focusing in particular on the Romney campaign's preface to the video:

President Obama recently said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Clearly, this President doesn't understand how our economy works.

Mitt Romney understands that we have to celebrate people who start enterprises and employ other people rather than devalue them. Success is not the result of government, it is the result of hard-working people who take risks, create dreams, and build lives for themselves and for their families.

PolitiFact:

In this item, we’ll rate the claim that Obama was saying success "is the result of government," not "hard-working people," when he said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

PolitiFact distorts Romney's claim by taking his comments out of context.  Ironic, no?

PolitiFact tries to set the stage by asserting that Romney's quote of Obama distorts the meaning of Obama's claim.  In effect, PolitiFact suggests this is obvious if one reads Obama's statement in context.  But doesn't the entire context of Obama's statement emphasize the role of the government in business creation at the expense of the entrepreneur?  How does PolitiFact miss the obvious?

PolitiFact:

We believe, as do our friends at FactCheck.org and the Washington Post Fact Checker, that Romney has seriously distorted Obama’s comments.

PolitiFact is checking this fact by proclaiming it obvious that the context of Obama's statement puts the lie to Romney's claim.  Other fact checkers supposedly agree.  Hopefully one or both of them actually bothered to check some facts.

There's really nothing like that in this fact check.  It consists of PolitiFact insisting that Obama was taken out of context, and Romney's statements taken out of context make up the bulk of the case against Romney.

PolitiFact's conclusion, part one

In speeches and videos, the Romney campaign has repeatedly distorted Obama's words. By plucking two sentences out of context, Romney twists the president's remarks and ignores their real meaning.

The preceding sentences make clear that Obama was talking about the importance of government-provided infrastructure and education to the success of private businesses.

PolitiFact is partly right.  Obama was extolling the importance of the government role in allowing business to prosper.  He did so in the context of beneficiary businesses "giving back" as if it wasn't the taxes of businesses that helped pay for the infrastructure in the first place.  And the words he used diminish the role of individual effort ("Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there").

Why does PolitiFact simply ignore the material in Obama's speech that diminishes the importance of the entrepreneur?

PolitiFact's conclusion, part two:

Romney also conveniently ignores Obama's clear summary of his message, that "the point is ... that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

By leaving out the "individual initiative" reference, Romney and his supporters have misled viewers and given a false impression. For that, we rate the claim False.

Romney ignores Obama's "clear summary" because the summary is ambiguous.  The summary provides no justification for successful businesses "giving back."  That concept comes out as Obama essentially tells entrepreneurs that they were lucky (others worked just as hard) and owe a big honkin' portion of their success to Our Glorious Government.  And the government, Obama says, is ready to take its rightful cut.

By leaving out the reference to increasing taxes on entrepreneurs, PolitiFact has misleads readers and gives a false impression.

PolitiFact creates what Mr. Obama likes to call a "false choice."  It isn't whether the government gets all the credit or the entrepreneur gets all the credit.  It's which one has the lead role in the economy (bold emphasis added):

Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, decried Obama’s "naïve view that government, and not the hard work, talent, and initiative of people, is the center of society and the economy."

By neglecting the importance of that context, PolitiFact again misleads readers and gives a false impression.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Bill Adair:  F

Once again, the subject of the fact check was arguably more accurate than his would-be fact checkers.

Afters:

The fact checks by Annenberg Fact Check and the Washington Post Fact Checker essentially leap to the same conclusions PolitiFact achieved with its leaps of logic.  But both of the other fact check services did a superior job to PolitiFact in providing context for the issue.


Jeff adds: 
It's worth noting that anytime PolitiFact starts determining whether or not something is "in context", by definition the exercise is one fraught with subjective impressions as opposed to concrete facts. What context is relevant? What objective standard is used to measure what portions should be included, or what element of the speech is unnecessary?

One wonders what exactly Romney could have done to satisfy PolitiFact's  ambiguous contextual standards. As Twitter user @CuffeMeh suggested, should Romney have hired the fast talking Fed Ex guy to repeat Obama's entire speech in a 30 second ad? For my money, Romney's ad didn't change, distort, or flub Obama's context at all. But there it is, right next to a big gimmicky False graphic. Romney's a liar and I'm a dim bulb because I'm not picking up on the subtle nuance of Obama's delicate context.

Another question worth asking is whether and when PolitiFact will rate Obama's ad that says Romney is taking Obama out of context by taking Romney out of context? PolitiFact would have been served well by reading this Conn Carroll piece in the Washington Examiner that shows how the context game is played. PolitiFact could have just as easily conjured up a different angle, and using their own standards for context, could have come up with the same headline Carroll used:

"Obama video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound pro-business"

The bottom line is Romney's ad didn't remove or change anything. This isn't a fact check. It's damage control from a partisan media group attempting to sugarcoat Obama's clear, unambiguous message declaring his attitude towards individual achievement.

PolitiFact exaggerates its reluctance to grade hyperbole

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


Sometimes PolitiFact just can't bring itself to rate a statement on its cheesy "Truth-O-Meter."  Last week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of Mitt Romney "He not only couldn’t be confirmed as a Cabinet secretary, he couldn’t be confirmed as a dog catcher, because a dog catcher — you’re at least going to want to look at his income tax returns."

PolitiFact couldn't flip the switch on the "Truth-O-Meter."  Sure, PolitiFact published an article stating that Reid was wrong, but no "Truth-O-Meter" rating came with the story.

So what's going on?

PolitiFact:

We recognize Reid was using hyperbole, so we won't put his claim to the Truth-O-Meter. But we thought it was worthwhile to examine if many government officials and candidates have to file their tax returns to qualify for their jobs.

Our conclusion: Reid was barking up the wrong tree.

PolitiFact has called three different statements from Republicans "hyperbole" just since January, rating each of them "Pants on Fire."  The case involving Reid stands as the only one where PolitiFact explicitly refrained from grading a hyperbolic statement.

Naturally I was confused upon reading the following from PolitiFact at its Facebook page:

Mark FitzSimmons ‎"We recognize Reid was using hyperbole, so we won't put his claim to the Truth-O-Meter. "

What? Wasn't the first pants on fire Biden referring to Bush as brain-dead? How is that not recognized as hyperbole?

PolitiFact Mark, you have a very good memory! It was after that check (and partly because of that check) that we decided on a policy against it.

It was after the Biden "brain-dead" fact check from 2007 that PolitiFact decided on a policy against grading hyperbole.

Here we are in 2012 and PolitiFact has graded about 20 claims it recognized as hyperbole.  All occurred subsequent to the Biden claim.  The most recent occurred on June 29, 2012.

Now I'm stuck trying to figure out a charitable interpretation for "It was after that check (and partly because of that check) that we decided on a policy against it."

Progress is slow.

PolitiFact uses "In Context" feature to vanish Bill Clinton's clearest statement on tax hikes

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations

I was intrigued to see the latest "In Context" article at PolitiFact minutes ago.  I was intrigued initially because it claimed to provide the context surrounding Bill Clinton's remarks that Republicans have construed as opposed to President Obama's policy stance on the future of the Bush tax cuts.  Those cuts are set to expire after this year.

I was intrigued even more because I had referenced Clinton's statement in a discussion on PolitiFact's Facebook page about the wisdom of raising taxes to the levels existing during Clinton's presidency.

And I was especially intrigued when the "In Context" story did not include the quotation of Clinton I used, which was from September of last year.

Here's what I referenced from Politico:

“I personally don’t believe we ought to be raising taxes or cutting spending, either one, until we get this economy off the ground,” Clinton told Newsmax in an interview Tuesday. “This has been a dead flat economy.”

This "In Context" feature seems designed to let Clinton make us believe the economy has taken off.  It leaves out the context of Clinton's clearer statements on tax increases.

(for Glenn Kessler and PolitiFact) How to fact check the job recovery numbers

Originally posted on May 14, 2012 at Sublime Bloviations

A valuable media watchdog watchdog post at the new blog "counterirritant" pointed out a problem with Glenn Kessler's fact check of a claim from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Kessler writes the fact checker feature for the Washington Post.  Romney claimed that in a normal recovery from recession the country should be adding something like 500,000 jobs per month.

counterirritant:

Kessler decided that the best way to “check” this was determine how frequently 500,000 jobs were created in a month in the last 65 year.

The post goes on to very effectively criticize Kessler's methodology throughout.

By a funny coincidence (general leftward lean of the mainstream media, maybe?), PolitiFact used very similar reasoning on the same claim:

Is 500,000 jobs created per month normal for a recovery?

The short answer is "no."

We arrived at this conclusion by looking at the net monthly change in jobs all the way back to 1970. Since Romney was referring to total jobs, rather than private-sector jobs only, we used total jobs as our measurement. And since Romney was talking about job creation patterns during a recovery, we looked only at job creation figures for non-recessionary periods, as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Finally, we excluded the current recovery.

The Kessler/PolitiFact method is entirely wrongheaded.

Romney didn't claim that 500,000 jobs created per month was a normal figure during a recovery.  I can imagine the furrowed brows of Kessler, Louis Jacobson and other mainstream media fact checkers.  Aren't they the experts?  What am I talking about?

It's actually pretty simple.

The size of the economy changes.  If country A enters a recession losing 1 million jobs  then it takes two months to regain the lost jobs at a rate of 500,000 per month.  If country B experiences a recession losing 10 million jobs then it takes 20 months to regain them at a rate of 500,000 per month.

Not only does the size of the economy vary, but so does the depth of the recession.  The rate of recovery for lost jobs needs  to account for both factors.  Neither Kessler nor PolitiFact gave any apparent consideration to those critical criteria.  It's like comparing prices between now and the 1950s without adjusting for inflation.

The Romney campaign has made a number of statements like the 500,000 jobs claim, and they probably relate to the following chart or one like it from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Clipped from nytimes.com

Romney's claim almost certainly derives from the fact that post-war recoveries usually replace lost jobs much faster than the present recovery. 

So how does one check that claim?  It's not that hard.  Take the bottom point of employment, then count the number of months that it takes to get employment back up to the peak level.  Divide the number of jobs lost by the number of months it took to return to return to the employment peak at the start of the recession.  Do the same for each of the post-war recessions, then average the numbers to obtain the average job recovery time.  After all of that, divide the number of jobs lost from the 2007 recession by the averaged job recovery time.

Why didn't the Washington Post or PolitiFact do anything remotely resembling the fact check I just described?  It could be gross incompetence.  It could be ideological bias.  Or it could be both.


Update 6/7/2012:  Added post title

Nutting doing: PolitiFact's inadequate excuse

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


This week many liberals jumped on the meme that President Obama has the lowest spending record of any recent president.

Fortunately for all of us, PolitiFact was there to help us find out the truth in politics.

Actually, PolitiFact completely flubbed the related fact check.  And that's not particularly unusual.  Instead, it was the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler and an Associated Press fact check that helped people find the truth in politics.

PolitiFact isn't backing down so far, however.  On Friday PolitiFact offered the following response to the initial wave of criticism (bold emphasis added):

(O)ur item was not actually a fact-check of Nutting's entire column. Instead, we rated two elements of the Facebook post together -- one statement drawn from Nutting’s column, and the quote from Romney.

We haven't seen anything that justifies changing our rating of the Facebook post. But people can have legitimate differences about how to assign the spending, so we wanted to pass along some of the comments.

PolitiFact also made the distinction on Twitter:

(Image captured by Jeff Dyberg;
 click image for enlarged view)

There's a big problem with the attempt to distinguish between checking Nutting's claims and those from the Facebook post:  The Facebook post argues implicitly solely on the basis of Nutting's work.  PolitiFact likewise based its eventual ruling squarely on its rating of the Nutting graphic.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added): 

The Facebook post says Mitt Romney is wrong to claim that spending under Obama has "accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history," because it's actually risen "slower than at any time in nearly 60 years."

Obama has indeed presided over the slowest growth in spending of any president using raw dollars, and it was the second-slowest if you adjust for inflation. The math simultaneously backs up Nutting’s calculations and demolishes Romney’s contention.

Credit PolitiFact with accurately representing the logic of the implicit argument.  Without the fact check on Nutting's work there is no fact check of Romney's claim.  Making matters worse, PolitiFact emphasized the claim that Obama "has the lowest spending record" right next to its "Mostly True" Truth-O-Meter graphic.  The excuse that PolitiFact was fact checking the Facebook post completely fails to address that point.  Andrew Stiles is probably still laughing.

Criticisms of Nutting make clear that the accounting of bailout loans substantially skews the numbers in Obama's favor. Using the AP's estimates of 9.7 percent for 2009 (substantially attributable to Obama) and 7.8 percent in 2010, Obama's record while working with a cooperative Democrat-controlled Congress looks like it would challenge the high spending of any of his recent predecessors.  The leader from the Facebook graphic, President Reagan, tops out at 8.7 percent without any adjustment for inflation.  PolitiFact's fact check was utterly superficial and did not properly address the issue.

There is a silver lining.  The Obama administration has so aggressively seized on this issue that PolitiFact will certainly feel pressure to fact check different permutations of Nutting's claims.

I can't wait to see the contortions as PolitiFact tries to reconcile this rating with subsequent attempts.



*Many thanks to Mickey Kaus of the Daily Caller for linking this story.

Sublime Bloviations: Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Is U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Bill Nelson ad accurate?

PFB editor Bryan White takes an in-depth look at a recent PolitiFact rating that is a good example of the Pulitzer winners' habit of inventing a claim to check. It's a tad too lengthy to crosspost here, but Bryan's post is well worth the read.

The issue is a U.S. Chamber of Commerce ad critical of Democratic Senator Bill Nelson. The ad highlights Nelsons support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and reminds viewers of the CBO estimate that 20 million people could lose their current coverage:

PolitiFact focuses on a would-be broader context where the ad supposedly implies that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their current insurance:

Here, we’re checking whether "20 million people could lose their current coverage," and whether those people are older Americans on Medicare as the ad strongly suggests.

Don't hold your breath waiting for PolitiFact to substantiate its claim that the ad "strongly suggests" that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their current coverage. It never happens.

Bryan goes on to list four "shenanigans" PolitiFact employs in order to end up with the rating they want. Here's my favorite:

Shenanigan C:

Second, some portion of that (20 million) number are people voluntarily switching to other, better coverage -- not being forced out of coverage against their will.

Ah, the old "conjecture as evidence" ploy. "Are" suggests a fact in evidence. But the consequences of the law foretold in the CBO report are not yet in evidence. As chronicled in an earlier "Grading PolitiFact" entry, PolitiFact invented its evidence on this point. Is it possible that a person will voluntarily leave employer-provided coverage for coverage under an exchange? Sure, barely. But subsidized exchange coverage under the health care reform act is not available to those forsaking employer-offered coverage.

Bryan also highlights yet another example of PolitiFact asking leading questions to its sources. That's a problem we've pointed out before. 

Bryan spares little in his critique. It's difficult to believe PolitiFact is this inept at following basic journalistic guidelines. The more likely excuse for their failures is a political bias that goes unchecked by the editors. Bryan lays out his case in detail, and this short review does not give readers the full depth of PolitiFact's flaws. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

NPR and truth-hustler guests Adair and Nyhan

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations.



National Public Radio brought two of my favorite truth-hustlers on its "All Things Considered" program.   I refer to Bill Adair and Brendan Nyhan.

(clipped from npr.org 4/29/12)

Bill Adair serves as founding editor for Politico PolitiFact, a fact-checking operation started by a left-leaning Florida newspaper.  PolitiFact sacrifices journalistic objectivity in part for the sake of its marketing gimmick, called the "Truth-O-Meter."

Political scientist Brendan Nyhan mangles facts from the realm of academia.  Nyhan has tried to show that partisans don't accept facts that contradict their ideology.  His research often uses facts that beg the question (more on Nyhan), suggesting that Nyhan falls victim to his own research goal.

The relevant radio program segment deals with a column from Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke, who bemoaned the state of truth following Rep. Allen West's statement, using Huppke's paraphrase, that "as many as 81" members of the Democratic Party are members of the Communist Party.

Huppke gets some kind of award for irony.  Journalists took West out of context.  West was jokingly, though to make a seriously point, referring to the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  The context makes that absolutely clear.

Stories like these are to Adair and Nyhan what the Trayvon Martin case is to Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton.  The media want the narrative that the former two spin and so seek them out for commentary when these issues make the news.  Adair and Nyhan are the truth-hustler counterparts to race-hustlers.

Adair shows up to remind us how great it is that Politico PolitiFact is there to save the day, if only we can place sufficient trust in its work.

Adair (transcript mine, from the NPR audio):

"What's funny is sometimes I'll get an email that'll say 'You guys are so biased.'  But I won't know who we're supposed to be biased in favor of, because we get criticized a lot by both sides.  And I think that's just the nature of a very rough-and-tumble political discourse."

Funny is Adair still using the "we get criticized from both sides" dodge to avoid the issue of bias.  Fortunately a journalist asked Adair exactly the right question earlier this year with equally hilarious results.

PolitiFact's system is perfect for filtering the truth according to media ideology.

Academia, unfortunately, carries an ideological slant somewhat akin to that found in the U.S. media.  Nyhan perhaps represents one of academic liberalism's top leaders in the war over political truth. 

NPR brought forth an old example of Nyhan's supposed "backfire" effect, where a correction of a falsehood leads to stronger belief in the falsehood. Though Nyhan's own research  (see descriptions of "Study 2") appears to show that the phenomenon does not occur with clear corrections, that hardly dampens mainstream media enthusiasm for the idea.  They can claim they're doing a great job but the audience is the problem.

There is something of an information crisis, but Adair and Nyhan probably do as much damage as good in addressing the problem.  We're not getting the best information from either journalists or academia.  Journalists typically do not have the expertise to sift through complex issues of truth.  Academics have shifted left ideologically and do an inadequate job of critically reviewing the journals that ought to provide our best sources of trustworthy information.

We don't have a reliable gatekeeper for our pool of information.  And it's hard to come up with good solutions to the problem.

Test everything. Hold on to the good.
--Paul the Apostle, 1 Thess. 5:21

PolitiFact rolls out new feature, continues to ignore selection bias

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


I've belabored the point that PolitiFact pushes its candidate "report cards" without owning up to the selection bias that is overpoweringly likely to skew the grades.

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair has been asked about selection bias.

Bill Adair probably (based on IP address trails) reads commentary here and at PolitiFact Bias [more appropriately "here and at Sublime Bloviations" after crossposting] regarding PolitiFact's problem with selection bias.

Yet minutes ago we get this:

It's spring, which means it's report card time. So we're unveiling a new feature that allows you to compare the PolitiFact report cards for individuals and groups we check.

Our report cards have always been a popular feature and often generate interesting commentary. Now, you'll be able to compare the report cards more easily.

Adair still won't inform his readers that the process leading to the report card grades is rife with selection bias problems.  Yes, Adair at least linked to a New York Times blog ("interesting") that provided the minimum type of disclaimer that PolitiFact should offer.  The other link ("commentary") was the sort of pointless statistical exercise that simply elaborates on the results of PolitiFact's fundamentally flawed process (the former link I gave a positive review, the latter author I've given a less-than-positive review).

Bottom line, PolitiFact continues to publish candidate "report cards" that appear minus critical context.  PolitiFact (allegedly) rules statements missing critical context "Half True."

PolitiFact apparently knows about its selection bias problem and is deliberately downplaying it.  Selection bias is not merely "interesting."  It is critical to an accurate understanding of the meaning of PolitiFact's "report cards."


Updated 3/29/2012:  Added editor's note in third paragraph

Grading PolitiFact: Obama, Bush and the auto bailout

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations.

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

 Apparently context doesn't matter much, depending on the subject.

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Molly Moorhead:  writer, researcher
Martha M. Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

This fact check serves as an outstanding example of narrowing the story focus to fish a grain of truth out of an overall falsehood.

The incompetence is overpowering.  Note that PolitiFact frames the issue by stipulating that the $13 billion "given" by the Bush administration was gone "By the time Obama took office."   That bit of timing isn't mentioned in the film, so far as I can tell, though I was able to note that it used a Dec. 2, 2008 television news clip to emphasize the immediacy of the crisis faced by President Obama.

The film and PolitiFact omit a number of important facts.  First, GM received another $4 billion loan in February under the agreement worked out with the Bush administration.   Part of the agreement required the two automakers to submit plans for achieving financial stability by February.  The report of the Congressional Oversight Panel details the response from the Obama administration:

On February 15, 2009, President Obama announced the formation of an interagency Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry (Task Force), that would assume responsibility for reviewing the Chrysler and GM viability plans.

The timing is far more complicated than either the film or PolitiFact lets on, and the loans from Bush were not necessarily "gone" when Obama took office, particularly in the case of the $4 billion received by GM in February, though that amount is not counted in the $13 billion through the magic of cherry picking the facts.

Let's pick up with PolitiFact's telling (bold emphasis added):

On the subject of Detroit, car company CEOs appear onscreen asking for money in Washington, followed by pictures of empty factories and dire news headlines. The movie talks about the financial pressures on the new president and the unpopularity with the public of more bailouts. But Obama, [narrator Tom] Hanks says, acted anyway to help American workers.

"He decided to intervene, but in exchange for help the president would demand action. The Bush administration had given the car companies $13 billion, and the money was now gone," Hanks says.

Then President Bill Clinton appears onscreen to lend his voice.

"He didn’t just give the car companies the money, and he didn’t give the UAW the money," Clinton says. "He said you guys gotta work together and come up, and everybody’s gotta have some skin in the game here. You gotta modernize the automobile industry."

This segment of the film is not about the history of $13 billion out of a total of $17 billion loaned to automakers by the Bush administration.  It is fully intended to build a contrast between the incoming president and his supposedly irresponsible predecessor.  That point is extremely misleading, as we shall continue to observe.

PolitiFact:

Bush authorized initial loans to Chrysler and GM (and their respective financing arms) before leaving office, using money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Chrysler initially received $4 billion, and GM got $13.4 billion in bridge loans meant to keep the companies afloat for a little longer.

Apparently the math amounts to $4 billion plus $13.4 billion equals $13 billion.  And that $13 billion was gone by Jan. 20 even though $884 million was loaned to GMAC on Jan. 16.  It lasted only four days by PolitiFact's account.

Of course the excess $4 billion was loaned in February as described above.  You just don't get to learn that from the PolitiFact version of events.

PolitiFact:

Early in 2009 [mid February], Obama convened a task force to study the companies’ viability. Both were required [through the agreement with the Bush administration] to submit plans for getting back to solvency, but both failed, the task force determined. In the meantime, they were running short of money again.

Pardon my editorial counterspin--which shouldn't be necessary for a fact check.  Unfortunately it is necessary.  GM, by the way, received its last Bush loan on Feb. 17, two days after Obama announced his task force.

PolitiFact:

A report from the Congressional Oversight Panel details the chronology of the spending, including an additional $6.36 billion that GM received between March and May 2009.

The $6.36 billion does not include the $4 billion loaned in February under the agreement with the Bush administration.  Nor does it include $8.5 billion sunk into Chrysler by the Obama administration as part of its restructuring.  Neither does it include the $30.1 billion subsequently sunk into GM as part of its eventual restructuring.  Both the latter figures come from the Congressional Oversight Panel's report PolitiFact cited.

PolitiFact interviewed former Obama team member Steve Rattner about the bailout numbers.  PolitiFact presents Rattner as agreeing that the funds from the Bush administration were exhausted "before we really were in the saddle."  Rattner states that the loans from the Bush administration weren't intended to rescue GM and Chrysler but rather to tide them over until the Obama administration could deal with the situation.

PolitiFact does not totally ignore the film's point about Bush:

We also think it’s worth mentioning the implication in the video that the Bush administration did not put enough restrictions on the money. "He decided to intervene, but in exchange for help the president would demand action," narrator Hanks says just before mentioning the Bush loans.

In case PolitiFact isn't the only party who missed it, note that the filmmaker uses the quotation of Bill Clinton to hammer the point all the more.  It was the main point of the segment, and it was untrue.

What's the verdict?

PolitiFact:

The Obama campaign movie says, "the Bush administration had given the car companies $13 billion and the money was now gone."

It's important to note that the $13 billion was provided as loans, not as grants, as the wording might suggest.

Referring to the time Obama took office, January 2009, GM and Chrysler by then had received almost $14 billion in bailout money. News reports also reflect that the money was basically used up. So, that much is correct. But the movie ignores the fact that this was not unexpected. The Bush administration’s loans were always just a temporary lifeline, meant to keep the companies operating so the new president would have time to decide what to do long term.

This is important information left out of the movie’s extensive discussion of the auto bailouts. That the $13 billion was gone when Obama arrived was no surprise. We rate the statement Mostly True.

The film glosses over quite a few facts that PolitiFact fails to note.  The point of the film is the contrast between the president who demands accountability and Bush who simply gives money away to big corporations.  The movie's account of the auto bailout is thorough spin.  Fact checking isolated statements in the fabric of this filmmaker's fiction will never fully reveal the misleading nature of the narrative.

If Obama went against popular sentiment on the bailout then so did Bush.  If Obama demanded accountability then so did Bush, albeit the latter's attempt was hamstrung by the end of his tenure as president.

PolitiFact disgraces itself again by connecting the film's distortion with a "Mostly True" label.


The grades:

Molly Moorhead:  F
Martha M. Hamilton:  F

PolitiFact let the main misleading message of the auto bailout segment slide.  PolitiFact's reporting corrected a fraction of the film's omissions and shades on the truth.  PolitiFact's version is scarcely an improvement on the original.

But President Obama and his campaign might like it.  That's got to count for something.


3/22/12-Added link to original PF article in first paragraph/fixed link to PoP-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."

Hope 'n' change at PolitiFact

Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations


 I keep hoping that criticism will influence positive change at PolitiFact, the fact checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times (soon changing its name to the Tampa Bay Times).

Well, a positive change occurred at PolitiFact recently.

Unfortunately, it was of the "one step forward, two steps back" variety.

For some time I've carped about PolitiFact's inconsistent standards, and in particular its publishing of two different standards for its "Half True" position on the "Truth-O-Meter."

The recent change probably stemmed from a message I sent to an editor at the paper's city desk (sent Nov. 9):

PolitiFact has created a problem for itself through inconsistency.  During the site's earlier years a page called "About PolitiFact" gave information about how the "Flip-O-Meter" and the "Truth-O-Meter" supposedly operate.  The page includes a description of each of the "Truth-O-Meter" rating categories.

More recently, editor Bill Adair posted an item called "Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter."  The problem?  The definition for "Half True" is different than the one PolitiFact posted for well over a year prior.  Compounding the problem, PolitiFact has kept both versions online through now.

1)  The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
2)  The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

I'll be interested to see the eventual remedy.  Which items over PolitiFact's history went by which definition? Was a change made in Feb. 2011 or before without any announcement?  How can PolitiFact legitimately offer report cards and "Truth Index" ratings if the grading system isn't consistent?  Those are questions I'd imagine readers would have if they realized PolitiFact is using two different definitions for the same rating.  I don't expect you to answer them for my sake (not that I would mind if you did). 

Good luck to all sorting this one out.

The eventual remedy is apparently to simply change the longstanding definition at "About PolitiFact" to match the newer one at "Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter" without any fanfare--indeed, without any apparent notice whatsoever.  I detect no admission of error at all and no acknowledgment that PolitiFact changed its standard.

The move seems consistent with the desire of the mainstream press to avoid doing things that "undermine the ability of readers, viewers or listeners to believe what they print or broadcast."

Sadly, I'm not at all surprised.

On the positive side, the definitions are now consistent with one another.

On the negative side, PolitiFact either created a past illusion where Truth-O-Meter ratings used the old system or else created a fresh illusion that past ratings follow the new system.  And went about it in about the least transparent way possible.


Update:

Good luck to PolitiFact retroactively changing the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of places on the Web that republished the original definition of "Half True."

(Clipped from PolitiFact.com; click image for enlarged view)

Contact PolitiFact Wisconsin.  They didn't get the memo yet.  And PolitiFact Texas has the same problem.


It's not the crime, it's the coverup.


Update 2:


It's also worth remembering PolitiFact's agonizing decision to change "Barely True" to "Mostly False."

"It is a change we don't make lightly," wrote Bill Adair.

How do you like that?  A change in the wording of a rating gets a reader survey prior to the change and an article announcing the change.  A change in the definition of a rating--a much more substantial change--gets the swept-under-the-rug treatment.



11/22/11-Added PFB link in update 2-Jeff

Grading PolitiFact: Joe Biden and the Flint crime rate

(crossposted from Sublime Bloviations with minor reformatting)


To assess the truth for a numbers claim, the biggest factor is the underlying message.
--PolitiFact editor Bill Adair

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  writer, researcher
Sue Owen:  researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor

Analysis:

This PolitiFact item very quickly blew up in their faces.  The story was published at about 6 p.m. on Oct. 20.  The CYA was published at about 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 21, after FactCheck.org and the Washington Post published parallel items very critical of Biden.  PolitiFact rated Biden "Mostly True."

First, the context:



(my portion of transcript in italics, portion of transcript used by PolitiFact highlighted in yellow):

BIDEN:

If anyone listening doubts whether there is a direct correlation between the reduction of cops and firefighters and the rise in concerns of public safety, they need look no further than your city, Mr. Mayor.  

In 2008--you know, Pat Moynihan said everyone's entitled to their own opinion, they're not entitled to their own facts.  Let's look at the facts.  In 2008 when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city.  In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes, just to pick two categories, climbed to 229.  In 2011 you now only have 125 shields.  

God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don't rectify it.  And God only knows what the number would have been if we had not been able to get a little bit of help to you.

As we note from the standard Bill Adair epigraph, the most important thing about a numbers claim is the underlying message.  Writer Angie Drobnic Holan apparently has no trouble identifying Biden's underlying message (bold emphasis added):

If Congress doesn’t pass President Barack Obama’s jobs plan, crimes like rape and murder will go up as cops are laid off, says Vice President Joe Biden.

It’s a stark talking point. But Biden hasn’t backed down in the face of challenges during the past week, citing crime statistics and saying, "Look at the facts." In a confrontation with a conservative blogger on Oct. 19, Biden snapped, "Don’t screw around with me."

No doubt the Joe Biden of the good "Truth-O-Meter" rating is very admirable in refusing to back down.  The "conservative blogger" is Jason Mattera, editor of the long-running conservative periodical "Human Events."  You're a blogger, Mattera.  PolitiFact says so.

But back to shooting the bigger fish in this barrel.

PolitiFact:

We looked at Biden’s crime numbers and turned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's uniform crime statistics to confirm them. But the federal numbers aren’t the same as the numbers Biden cited. (Several of our readers did the same thing; we received several requests to check Biden’s numbers.)

When we looked at the FBI’s crime statistics, we found that Flint reported 32 murders in 2008 and 53 murders in 2010. Biden said 35 and 65 -- not exactly the same but in the same ballpark.

Drobnic Holan initially emphasizes a fact check of the numbers.  Compared to the FBI numbers, Biden inflated the murder rate for both 2008 and 2010, and his inflated set of numbers in turn inflates the percentage increase by 45 percent (or 27 percentage points, going from 60 percent to 87 percent).  So it's a decent-sized ballpark.

PolitiFact:

For rapes, though, the numbers seemed seriously off. The FBI showed 103 rapes in 2008 and 92 rapes in 2010 -- a small decline. The numbers Biden cited were 91 rapes in 2008 and 229 in 2010 -- a dramatic increase.

If inflating the percentage increase in murders by 27 percentage points is not a problem for Biden then this at least sounds like a problem.

After going over some other reports on the numbers and a surprising discussion of how not much evidence suggests that Obama's jobs bill would address the number of police officers in Flint, PolitiFact returns to the discrepancy between the numbers:

(W)e found that discrepancies between the FBI and local agencies are not uncommon, and they happen for a number of reasons. Local numbers are usually more current and complete, and local police departments may have crime definitions that are more expansive than those of the FBI.

All this is very nice, but we're talking about the city of Flint, here.  We don't really need current stats for 2008 and 2010 because they're well past.  Perhaps that affects the completeness aspect of crime statistics also; PolitiFact's description is too thin to permit a judgment.  As for "expansive" definitions, well, there's a problem with that.  Biden's number of rapes in 2008 is lower than the number reported in the UCR (FBI) data.  That is a counterintuitive result for a more expansive definition of rape and ought to attract a journalist's attention.

In short, even with these proposed explanations it seems as though something isn't right.

PolitiFact:

Flint provided us with a statement from Police Chief Alvern Lock when we asked about the differences in the crime statistics, particularly the rape statistics.

"The City of Flint stands behind the crime statistics provided to the Office of The Vice President.  These numbers are an actual portrayal of the level of violent crime in our city and are the same numbers we have provided to our own community. This information is the most accurate data and demonstrates the rise in crime associated with the economic crisis and the reduced staffing levels.

"The discrepancies with the FBI and other sources reveal the differences in how crimes can be counted and categorized, based on different criteria." (Read the entire statement)

This is a city that's submitting clerical errors to the FBI, and we still have the odd problem with the rape statistics.  If the city can provide numbers to Joe Biden then why can't PolitiFact have the same set of numbers?   And maybe the city can include stats for crimes other than the ones Biden may have cherry-picked?  Not that PolitiFact cares about cherry-picked stats, of course.

Bottom line, why are we trusting the local Flint data sight unseen?

PolitiFact caps Biden's reward with a statement from criminologist and Obama campaign donor James Alan Fox of Northeastern University to the effect that Biden makes a legitimate point that "few police can translate to more violent crime" (PolitiFact's phrasing).  Fox affirms that point, by PolitiFact's account, though it's worth noting that on the record Biden asserted a "direct correlation" between crime and the size of a police force.  The change in wording seems strange for a fact check outfit that maintains that "words matter."

The conclusion gives us nothing new other than the "Mostly True" rating.  Biden was supposedly "largely in line" with the UCR murder data for Flint.  His claim about rape apparently did not drag down his rating much even though PolitiFact admittedly could not "fully" explain the discrepancies.  PolitiFact apparently gave Biden credit for the underlying argument that reductions in a police force "could result in increases in violent crime" despite Biden's rhetoric about a "direct correlation."

The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  F
Sue Owen: N/A
Martha Hamilton:  F

This fact check was notable for its reliance on sources apparently predisposed toward the Obama administration and its relatively unquestioning acceptance of information from those sources.  The Washington Post version of this fact check, for comparison, contacted three experts to PolitiFact's one and none of the three had an FEC filing indicating a campaign contribution to Obama.

And no investigation of whether Biden cherry-picked Flint?  Seriously?  See the "Afters" section for more on that as well as commentary on PolitiFact's CYA attempt.

Sublime Bloviations: "PolitiFlub: The employee contribution to Social Security"

It's not often PolitiFact alters their standards so quickly on the exact same topic, but it happens. 

We spotted it right away and PFB editor Bryan White was on the case with his latest update regarding the recent flurry of tax related campaign flyers factchecks PolitiFact's been writing.

This one is pretty obvious. Let's see if our readers can spot it.

Here's PolitiFact's standard for determining tax contributions for Obama's hypothetical $50,000/year worker that pays a higher tax rate than someone making $50 million (bold added):

We asked two researchers at the [Brookings Institute] ... for their advice on how to factor in payroll taxes. They estimated that combining the workers’ share of the payroll tax with the employer’s share -- the usual practice among economists -- would mean an extra 15 percentage points for our hypothetical middle-class worker, and less than 2 additional percentage points for the high-income taxpayer.  Adding these to the percentages we previously found for the income tax alone produces a new, "final" rate of 22 to 23 percent for the construction worker...

Obama's final rating: Half True.

Here's their standard for determining the facts of Herman Cain's statement that "every worker pays 15.3 percent payroll tax":

What we found is that Cain is counting both worker and employer contributions to payroll taxes to arrive at the 15.3 percent number.

Uh-oh.

Cain said, "Every worker pays 15.3 percent payroll tax." That's not accurate. Workers only pay half that...You can reach that number only by including the half of the tax that employers pay.

If this sound went through your head just now; welcome to our world.

Instead of boring you with the rating they gave Cain, we suggest you head over to Bryan's article and read the whole thing. 

Once there you will find a deeper analysis as well as a handy chart Bryan has created that shows how PolitiFact has used one standard or the other in various tax fact checks.

Extra Credit: Guess which party benefits from the alternating definitions of what constitutes a tax contribution.

And if you haven't done so check out our recent reviews on this tax issue here and here.

Sublime Bloviations: President Obama and the Buffett Fallacy

Daryl Hannah once taught us that mermaids can only survive in the water. In a similar fantastic vein, the "fact" that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary can only exist in the murky world of PolitiFact. 

They've dealt with a few statements relating to Buffett's now infamous op-ed, and you don't need to be Carnac to divine which way the Truth-O-Meter fell. But our fact-famished readers have nothing to fear, as PFB editor Bryan White chronicled the whole sordid affair.

Bryan's most recent post takes on PolitiFact's treatment of President Obama's version of Warren's wobbly whopper:

Image from PolitiFact.com

 Bryan sums up the fact check nicely:

Though the president's statement qualifies as slightly ambiguous, the PolitiFact judgment seems reasonable on its face: Obama is saying that a $50,000 earner is routinely taxed at a higher rate than the $50 million earner. Therefore the president requires more than just a few appropriate individual cases to justify his claim.

PolitiFact:

We found an IRS chart for tax year 2008 that shows a variety of tax information broken down into 18 ranges of adjusted gross income for the filer.

This chart lists three types of tax returns -- filers who have income for a child who earns more than $1,900 (meaning the child’s income is taxed at the parent’s rate); those who have income reported on Schedule D (primarily capital gains); and those without either of these types of income. For the purposes of our calculations, we are combining data for all three types of returns.

It's hard to see why PolitiFact went to all that trouble when the Congressional Budget Office--ordinarily a trusted source--has already done the work for them.

PolitiFact crunched the IRS numbers, after a fashion, and didn't find much to vindicate Obama:

By these calculations, Obama would be incorrect in most cases.

I saw nothing in the calculations, inadequate though they might be, to indicate that Obama would ever be correct.

Bryan makes a great point about PolitiFact avoiding any information from the CBO. In a recent fact check they cited four CBO reports to defend stimulus job creation. Why not use them now?

PolitiFact dusts off the pity piano and plays us a sad song about the rigors of sorting out the truth for its readers:

These figures are for federal income taxes only. There are also a bunch of other federal taxes that could, and probably should, be included in the calculation. The burden for some [sic] some taxes, including corporate taxes, excise taxes and estate taxes, are hard to attribute to individual returns, so we’ll set those aside. But one federal tax is straightforward to throw into our calculations: payroll taxes.

Bryan quickly spots the flaw:

Figuring the burden for corporate taxes, excise taxes and estate taxes way [sic] well provide a stiff test for researchers, but given the of [sic] admitted relevance of those taxes why not make use of the previously-mentioned CBO report that estimates the effective tax rate with corporate and excise tax burden estimates figured in?

Apparently PolitiFact's version of fact checking only involves consideration of the most regressive tax (by far) in the group, payroll taxes. Ironically, payroll taxes are probably the least relevant tax in the group since the Social Security tax is peddled as retirement insurance--a premium paid for a fixed benefit package at retirement. The argument for progressive insurance premiums based on the ability to pay lacks something in terms of moral authority. Shall the rich also pay more per unit for milk, tea and gasoline?

Well, that would be asking PolitiFact to wade into commentary, and we wouldn't want them to do that. Besides, when the CBO isn't non-partisan enough, PolitiFact can always rely on the reliably liberal Brookings Institute to dole out the cold, hard math:

PolitiFact:

We asked two researchers at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institute Tax Policy Center, Roberton Williams and Rachel Johnson, for their advice on how to factor in payroll taxes. They estimated that combining the workers’ share of the payroll tax with the employer’s share -- the usual practice among economists -- would mean an extra 15 percentage points for our hypothetical middle-class worker, and less than 2 additional percentage points for the high-income taxpayer.

Don't you just love the back-of-the-envelope methodology?

Let's take a figure calculated by journalists based on data that ignore a number of relevant taxes such as excise and corporate taxes, then call on the left-leaning Tax Policy Center to give us a modification based on (regressive) payroll taxes. While we're at it, let's ignore the work done by the highly respected CBO touching the issue.

Bryan delves deep into the numbers, and scores some direct hits on PolitiFact's flawed methodology. He also slams them for failing to recognize Obama's implication that capital gains tax rates are somehow a "loophole" (Obama's word). They're not, but PolitiFact is far too enamored with their subject to notice.

There's a lot of information involved in these critiques and I couldn't do justice to Bryan's work here. As always I urge you to go to the source and enjoy his blog in its sublime bloviating. For now though, I'll leave you with Bryan's summary:

 If you fudge the numbers enough in Obama's favor you can make it seem possible that he's possibly correct in some individual cases.

I also suggest you read his other critiques of PolitiFact's recent tax ratings here, here and here.

And please don't miss the most damning update he's written here on PolitiFact's dubious technique of adding the employer's share of the FICA tax to the employee's side of the tax burden.





Edit-10/04/11: Removed errant "s" from Buffet in 1st paragraph. Jeff 
Edit-10/06/11:  Added enough t's to ensure consistently proper spelling of Buffett's last name.  --Bryan