Reason: "PolitiFact Gets High-Speed Rail Facts in Florida Wrong"

Given the recent news about California's impressive high speed rail cost overruns, it seems like a good time to call attention to Reason.com's pushback against PolitiFact's defense of the high speed rail system proposed for Florida.

The chief evidence of bias comes from PolitiFact's attempt to discredit Reason.com on ideological grounds--an intriguing move for an organization known to uncritically cite Guttmacher Institute studies when fact checking claims by abortion opponents.  The Guttmacher Institute, of course, is ideologically attached to Planned Parenthood.

Most of PolitiFact's criticisms of the study promoted by Reason.com were quite weak, such as pointing out that data from the study showing cost overruns were not exclusively rail studies.  While that's true, the cost overruns were greater for rail projects, so the supposed problem actually made rail look perhaps better than it deserved.

The key point of dispute concerns the responsibility for costs if the project stays in the red.  PolitiFact argued that Florida's project provided adequate protections.  Reason.com argues the reverse:

When Gov. Scott was making his rail decision, he knew that if Florida had taken federal money for the Tampa-to-Orlando high-speed rail system, one of the federal government’s rules clearly says that a state government can’t take the construction money and then stop operating the project it has accepted the money for. Under long-standing federal rules, the state would have to repay the federal grant money—in this case, $2.4 billion. If it didn’t repay the $2.4 billion, Florida’s taxpayers would be forced to keep the train running —at a loss— and be on the hook for the future operating subsidies. The U.S. Department of Transportation did send notice that it would negotiate over its repayment rule, but only after Gov. Scott had already announced his decision to turn down the federal money.

I'll admit I'm not familiar with the cited rule, but it's easy on principle to imagine it exists.  It could have helped Reason.com's case to include more information about it.

On the whole, Reason.com makes a pretty good case that PolitiFact failed to settle the issue.

Matthew Hoy: "You guys screwed up"

Ordinarily we highlight Matthew Hoy's criticisms of PolitiFact via the posts at his blog, Hoystory.  But this time we catch Hoy at his pithy best while blasting PolitiFact over at Facbook for its "Pants on Fire" rating of Herman Cain's supposed claim that China is trying to develop nuclear weapons.  PolitiFact took Cain to mean China was developing nuclear weapons for the first time, you see.

Hoy:

You guys screwed up. Congratulations. Read the whole context (which you provide) and it's ambiguous -- he very well may be referring to nuclear-powered AIRCRAFT CARRIERS -- which they don't have yet. Also, during Vietnam, Cain was working ballistics for the Navy, studying the range and capabilities of China's missiles. He knew they had nukes. It was inartfully said. Not a mistake. According to your own rules, you don't fact check things like this: "Is the statement significant? We avoid minor "gotchas"’ on claims that obviously represent a slip of the tongue."

That about says it all, but I'll just add one helpful informational link.

Given the ambiguity of Cain's statement, it speaks volumes about PolitiFact's ideological predisposition that no attempt was made to interpret Cain charitably.

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.

Hoystory: Your fact check of the day

Welcome Hoystory readers!

Big thanks to Matthew Hoy for the mention on his site.

PolitiFact is currently engaged in full damage control after their recent favorable rating of a Joe Biden statement upon noting the sharp contrast with the conclusions at two other well known fact-checking outfits. We're working on a more detailed review of the issue but for now Hoy has a succinct account of the sophistry.

Highlighting PolitiFact's bias hasn't always been as popular as it is now and Hoy was one of the first to do so. His critiques of PolitiFact have always been spot-on and extremely well written. We're flattered by the shout-out.

You can read our reviews of his work here and you can read Hoy's PolitiFact posts on his site here.

Michael F. Cannon repeats/clarifies: "PolitiFact Just Asked Me to Be a Source, Again. I Declined, Again."

Michael F. Cannon of the CATO Institute, in the past used by PolitiFact as an expert source, started boycotting PolitiFact based on its weighing in on opinion.

Cannon gave us an update on July 8 indicating that PolitiFact had called on him for expertise and he had declined to provide it.

On Oct. 12 Cannon posted a similar message clarifying his statement that he "declined to help" PolitiFact:

The whole purpose of my PolitiFact boycott is to help them.

We try to emphasize the same attitude at PolitiFact Bias.  A PolitiFact aware of and able to check its tendency toward ideological bias can properly serve a useful and essential role in our constitutional republic.

But PolitiFact's failure to address errors such as its flip-flop on the percentage of the payroll tax paid by employees and its blind support of Alan Grayson's ridiculous argument serve to discourage those of us hoping to see PolitiFact rise to a higher standard of fact checking.

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.

Hoystory: "Covering for Obama"

Matthew Hoy of Hoystory has an excellent piece up regarding the same PolitiFact rating we mentioned here yesterday.

Hoy's take:

Like magic, Politifraud sets aside all of the additional taxes that would make Obama’s lie even more obvious and will only concern itself with the one that can bump the lower-income tax rate closer to the upper-income one.
Why?
Because it’s hard.
And they’re lazy.
And dishonest.

 As with all of Hoystory's PolitiFact posts, well said.

Visit Hoystory for the entire article. And see our previous reviews of Hoy here.

And congrats to Bryan for getting a shout out for his piece.



Bryan adds:

CBO reports practically fall into one's lap with a Google search for "effective tax rates."  If that's too hard for the folks at PolitiFact then they're in the wrong line of work.

Also thanks to Mr. Hoy for the kind mention.

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