Grading PolitiFact: Raul Labrador and the effect of tax cuts?

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

Shortly after finishing a "Grading PolitiFact" item about Jennifer Granholm and her recent appearance on "Meet the Press," I discovered a related PolitiFact story stemming from the same edition of "Meet the Press."  The contrast between the two fact checks is illuminating.

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

As with the Granholm story, I have encompassed more of the PolitiFact headline/deck material than usual in the clipped image.  Note that PolitiFact does not quote its subject here, which is somewhat unusual.  Note also the paraphrased presentation of Labrador's supposed claim:  "Raul Labrador says tax hike led to spike in Michigan unemployment."  Finally, note the proximity of the "Mostly False" graphic below the paraphrase.

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor

This is the same PolitiFact team that produced the Granholm story.

Analysis:

The Granholm and Labrador stories share significant similarities beyond having the same writing/editing team.  Both feature a pair of numbers claims and both feature an underlying argument.  And in both cases the PolitiFact team featured the underlying argument next to the "Truth-O-Meter" graphic.  Granholm's graphic reads "Mostly True."  Labrador's reads "Mostly False."

PolitiFact was a tad stingy with the surrounding context for Labrador's claim, substituting narrative description for the dialog between Granhom and Labrador.  The "Meet the Press" transcript tells the story better:

GOV. GRANHOLM: No, I mean, clearly the entitlement question has to be addressed. But I can tell you, David, I cut more as a percentage out of government than any state in the country this past decade. And where is Michigan in terms of its economic growth? Cutting did not result in economic growth. What results in growth is making sure you've got a good business climate for businesses to grow and prosper. And so we've got to cut where we can in order to invest where we must in order to grow the economy. And it's that investment side that I worry that those who are affiliated with the tea party or who are on the far right don't realize that other countries are co-investing with businesses in order to create jobs in their, in their countries. If we do nothing more than just cut, that will continue to accelerate the lack of growth in GDP. So we've got to realize that the strategy here must be very specific. Yes, you've got to reform entitlements, but you've got reform entitlements and invest in order to grow because the quickest way to take down your deficit is through growth.

REP. LABRADOR: But, David, let's talk about the truth about what happened in Michigan. Governor Granholm actually supported the highest tax increases in the history of Michigan, and unemployment went from...

GOV. GRANHOLM: OK. Wait a second.

REP. LABRADOR: ...6.8 percent to 15.3 percent.

GOV. GRANHOLM: When I took over Michigan...

REP. LABRADOR: And...

GOV. GRANHOLM: Let's not get into an argument about Michigan.

REP. LABRADOR: ...that's a reality, that's a reality.

GOV. GRANHOLM: Michigan has the highest unemployment...

MR. GREGORY: Let him finish his point and then you respond to it.

REP. LABRADOR: And that's a reality. At the same time, you have the governor of Texas who actually supported tax decreases and more broadening of the base, and actually we have the fastest growth in Texas than any of the other states.

GOV. GRANHOLM: So this is a great point because Michigan's economy is emblematic of what's going on in the nation, a global shift in manufacturing jobs. Michigan had seven times more automotive manufacturing than other states in the country, and we saw those jobs leave because of this global shift. So the question for America is what can our nation do to make sure we have advanced manufacturing jobs in our country? Yes, Michigan had a huge concentration of them, and that's--you know, we had the biggest bankruptcies in the, in the world inside of Michigan. So clearly our unemployment rate was attached to that. But for the nation, we have to decide how are we going to be competitive globally?

For good measure, a video of the "Meet the Press" episode:




Equipped with the full context, let's follow the reasoning of the PolitiFact team:

After talking to experts, we decided not to check Labrador’s specific claim that the tax increase under Granholm was the biggest in the state’s history. We made this decision for two reasons -- first, there are many conflicting ways to make such a comparison and second, the data to prove or disprove the claim is difficult to obtain.

Instead, we’ll look at two questions. Did the state’s unemployment rate go from 6.8 percent to 15.3 percent? And did the tax increases under Granholm -- whether or not they were historically large -- contribute to the increase in unemployment?

PolitiFact deems one of Labrador's claims pretty much unverifiable, so for purposes of the fact check we scratch off one of the similarities between the claims of Granholm and Labrador.

PolitiFact found that Labrador's claim of a rise in unemployment to 15.3 percent was incorrect.  Labrador was working from widely published reports, but the data were subsequently revised.  The revised unemployment figure came to 14.1 percent.

PolitiFact:

So while Labrador overstated the peak unemployment rate under Granholm, we’ll give him some leeway because the higher number did receive media attention before the revision was made.

How much leeway?  PolitiFact doesn't say in this section.  But regardless of that, we can use past ratings to get a sense of where PolitiFact might rate Labrador regardless of the granting of leeway.  Labrador's figure represents an exaggeration of about 16.5 percent with respect to the change in Michigan's unemployment rate.  For comparison, Ron Paul received a "Mostly True" rating for a claim based on a figure that was exaggerated by 15 percent where PolitiFact found his underlying argument sound.

If PolitiFact grades consistently with its procedure for the Paul rating then Labrador should not fare worse than "Mostly True" if his underlying point holds up.

The underlying message

PolitiFact:

Did the tax increases under Granholm contribute to the increase in Michigan’s unemployment?

The short answer is that they probably did -- but they were hardly the driving force that Labrador implies.

Hold on. To what degree does Labrador imply that the tax increases were a driving force behind the unemployment figures?

I'll try to make the strongest case for the implication PolitiFact alleges.

1) Labrador plainly presents a correlation between increased taxes and an increased unemployment rate, and often people present such correlations to subtly suggest causation. Note, however, that the implication is not a necessary feature of a stated correlation.

2) A parallel exists between Labrador's remarks and Granholm's prior statement. Granholm explicitly stated her underlying argument ("Cutting did not result in economic growth").  One could argue the parallel supports taking Labrador's response as a reply in kind.

3)  Labrador goes on to draw a contrast between Texas and Michigan.  While Michigan raised taxes and unemployment increased, Texas lowered taxes and added jobs.

4)  Labrador drew the Michigan stats from a set of notes, suggesting that hitting Granholm with the stats was part of a preplanned talking point.  One may infer that talking point was the effect of taxes on the economy.

5)  Perhaps Labrador is well known to advocate the idea that tax increases lead directly to spikes in unemployment (I do not know this to be the case, but if true it would contribute to PolitiFact's interpretation).

That's all I'm able to come up with.

Those five points (or less) might serve for some to conclude that Labrador certainly intended to say that the Granholm-supported tax increase led to a spike in Michigan's unemployment rate.

I argue that every subject of a fact check deserves charitable interpretation.

With Granholm we're pretty well stuck with her underlying message.  She announced it in so many words.

With Labrador, by contrast, we have a supposed implication.  There exists a commonly understood type of implication where we understand the meaning of a statement apart from the logic of the statement.  When a mobster tells a business owner that it would be a shame if the front window of his shop was smashed in the middle of the night, the shop owner is reasonable to understand that as a threat against his property.  But if the speaker is not a mobster, the statement may simply represent the observation that such a loss is unfortunate.

I'm a Republican, so I understand how Republicans think.  So bear with me a moment.

I don't know any Republicans who think that raising taxes will solely explain subsequent effects on unemployment numbers.  I don't.  Doubtless I've seen that opinion expressed here or there on the Internet--if so I don't remember.  But my point is this:  If I'm Rep. Labrador then I point out the tax increase and unemployment numbers in Michigan in order to provide part of the picture Granholm skipped in her version of events.  It doesn't make sense to take poor economic performance as a proof that cutting government spending fails to help job growth, as Granholm did, when the government increases its bite on the economy through taxes at the same time.

The charitable interpretation suits the context very well.  Yet PolitiFact never offers it to Labrador.

I might go along with PolitiFact's interpretation if it carried a slightly better justification than I was able to provide.  But at best it looks like something close to a coin flip in deciding what Labrador was saying.  And when there exists a reasonable chance that something different was meant then the alternate interpretation deserves some discussion, at minimum.

It makes a big difference which underlying point we impute to Labrador, and we need only revisit the previous quotation from the story to make the point (blue highlights added):

Did the tax increases under Granholm contribute to the increase in Michigan’s unemployment?

The short answer is that they probably did -- but they were hardly the driving force that Labrador implies.

If the tax hikes probably increased unemployment then the alternate interpretation of Labrador's words--the charitable one--is also probably correct.

Conclusions

Thankfully we can trust the machine-like precision of the "Truth-O-Meter" to provide us the answer.

PolitiFact:

Even though Labrador ignored the revised numbers, we consider his recap of the arc of Michigan unemployment to be fair. However, while higher taxes may have boosted unemployment on the margins, most of the available evidence suggests that Michigan’s rise in unemployment tracked the course of the national recession, simply to a greater degree, given the weakness of the state’s signature manufacturing sector. The experts we spoke to agreed that the impact of tax policy likely played a relatively minor role in the unemployment spike Labrador was referring to in 2008 and 2009. We rate his statement Mostly False.

Again, we have a "Truth-O-Meter" reading that is simply unbelievable.

If, by "fair" PolitiFact does not count Labrador's statistical error against him, then all of the negative from the "Mostly False" rating comes from the underlying argument uncharitably attributed to Labrador by PolitiFact.

But that's not the worst of it.

Remember we have strong parallels between this fact check of Labrador and the fact check of Granholm.  Both the Democrat and the Republican apparently rate okay for the accuracy of their numbers according to PolitiFact.  That means that the bulk of any difference in the "Truth-O-Meter" rating stems from the underlying argument attributed to each.

Even if we accept the uncharitable version of Labrador's argument, it seems impossible to justify using different Truth-O-Meter ratings for the two political figures.  The language Jacobson chose to describe Granholm's underlying point in the Granholm story closely parallels the unfavorable descriptions of Labrador's supposed underlying point:

However, in the Meet the Press interview, Granholm was trying to use her experience as a governor to make a larger point about how cutting government "did not result in economic growth." She's probably correct that government cuts hampered her state's recovery, at least in the short term, but Michigan’s experience over the last decade suggests that the reverse is an even bigger factor -- that is, poor economic growth hurts tax revenues and, in turn, forces government cuts.

"Jennifer Granholm says massive government cuts in Michigan didn't spur growth"

On the underlying arguments PolitiFact gave Granholm a great deal of credit for a partial truth ("Mostly True") while giving Labrador hardly any credit at all ("Mostly False").  In both cases the subjects supposedly advocated an inference that was "probably correct" but swamped in terms of causation by other factors.  Of the two, Granholm placed greater stress on the underlying point.

Bear in mind the same PolitiFact team produced these two stories in roughly the same time frame.

Jacobson and Hamilton certainly succeeded in one respect.  They produced a poster child for media bias in action.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

The journalists performed a sensational job of applying journalistic standards unevenly.  The label "journalists reporting badly" applies.


Afters:
On a lighter and irrelevant note, it was nice to see I'm not the only one struck by David Gregory's resemblance to the Grinch.  And I'd like to emphasize that's not really a bad thing.  It's not that they're twins separated at birth or anything.  The Grinch simply bears some resemblance to a distorted caricature of Gregory.  And appearances aside we should note that the Grinch, despite some questionable actions in his past, has a huge heart.  He carved the roast beast.