Friday, August 31, 2012

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact grades Callista Gingrich by the wrong measure

Words matter -- We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?
--Principles of PolitiFact and the "Truth-O-Meter"
It's a testament to PolitiFact's warped self-image that it continues churning out journalistic offal even while enduring a wave of substantive criticism.

Our latest example comes again from the Republican National Convention, where Callista Gingrich claimed that the Obama administration's foreign policy has led to decreased respect for the United States.

A legitimate fact checking enterprise immediately suspects that Gingrich referred to respect from foreign governments in terms of recognizing the U.S. as a power to which deferral yields the most beneficial results.  In other words, other nations fear the United States depending on the degree to which they operate contrary to our policy designs.  Based on that premise, the legitimate fact checker asks Gingrich to clarify the intent and tries to find a verifiable statistic that measures her accuracy.

That's not PolitiFact:
While surveys are currently being undertaken in 20 nations, only 14 of those have been done for long enough to shed light on Callista Gingrich’s claim.

The question asked is, "Please tell me if you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion of ... the United States." While favorability isn’t exactly identical to respect, we think it’s very close and a good approximation.
Seriously?

No doubt PolitiFact used the opinions of foreign policy experts to determine that the Pew data were an appropriate measure.

Or maybe not:


Seriously?  No expert sources?  Not one?

That's not a responsible fact check.  The global standing of the United States does not depend on popular view among the world's peoples.  It comes directly from the way the world's leaders view the United States and whether they believe they can flaunt their power contrary to U.S. interests.

PolitiFact chose the wrong measure.

Why does anyone take PolitiFact seriously?

Democratic candidate Lois Frankel being frank

Here's yet another campaign email statement from Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives Lois Frankel for PolitiFact Florida to ignore:
If you want to take away a woman's right to choose, make our seniors pay $6,000 more a year for their health care, and give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy at the expense of working families, then Adam Hasner and his shady Super PAC allies are for you.
No, wait.  Just focus on the GOP convention, PolitiFact.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact Wisconsin, the Obama promise and the Janesville GM plant (Updated)

PolitiFact has earned its status as the least-dependable of the stable of left-leaning fact check organizations.  PolitiFact Wisconsin gives us one more sparkling example supporting that judgment with a fact check of Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Ryan said President Obama broke a campaign promise to keep the Janesville (Wisc.) plant open.   PolitiFact Wisconsin detected no such promise from Mr. Obama.

 Here's what then-candidate Obama said in February 2008 (bold emphasis added) during a speech in Janesville:
This can be America’s future. I know that General Motors received some bad news yesterday, and I know how hard your Governor has fought to keep jobs in this plant. But I also know how much progress you’ve made – how many hybrids and fuel-efficient vehicles you’re churning out. And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years. The question is not whether a clean energy economy is in our future, it’s where it will thrive. I want it to thrive right here in the United States of America; right here in Wisconsin; and that’s the future I’ll fight for as your President.
Importantly, Obama opened his speech with references to the plant.  He then sketched his vision of America before mentioning how the Janesville plant could stay open if the government provides support.  In that context, Obama pledged to provide that support.  Does Mr. Obama use the specific term "promise" in his statement?  No, certainly not.  Does he guarantee the plant will remain open?  Again, no.  However, there is little doubt  that every person in Janesville listening to his speech took it as a pledge from the president to work to enact policies to keep the plant open. Mr. Obama did, in fact, pledge to do just that.

PolitiFact Wisconsin located no such pledge.

But it gets worse.  Much worse. PolitiFact builds its conclusion primarily on its claim that the Janesville plant closed before Mr. Obama took office (bold emphasis added):
Ryan said Obama broke his promise to keep a Wisconsin GM plant from closing. But we don't see evidence he explicitly made such a promise -- and more importantly, the Janesville plant shut down before he took office.

We rate Ryan's statement False.
GM announced the likely permanent closure of the Janesville plant in June of 2008, less than four months after Mr. Obama pledged to work toward an agenda that would keep the plant open for "another hundred years."

So, when is the plant closed?  When it closes for the last time?  When it produces its last GM vehicle?  When the company announces its permanent closure on a particular date?

When President Bush left office, he had provided Chrysler and GM loans to keep them going until the automakers could present restructuring plans to the Obama administration in April.

GM announced the final closing of the Janesville plant in April of 2008, and the final Chevy Tahoe came off the line in December 2008, before Obama took office as president.  On the other hand, the plant stayed open so that GM could build trucks for Isuzu:
The company stopped building SUVs at the plant just before Christmas.

That decision left about 1,200 workers unemployed.At the time GM said a crew would remain to complete an order for Isuzu.
But by June of 2009, while the Obama administration was still negotiating GM's fate and after completing the work for Isuzu, Janesville continued to maintain hope that its plant might reopen:
JANESVILLE (WKOW) -- There is a lot of optimism in Janesville today, after receiving word GM could reopen one of its idle plants to produce new fuel efficient cars, according to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce development.
If the GM restructuring deal brokered by the Obama administration resulted in continued production at GM's plant in Janesville, is there any doubt at all that Obama would receive credit for delivering on a promise?  Especially if the work involved hybrid vehicles?  The opportunity was there for the taking.

Why is so much of this information missing from a fact check?


Update 8/30/2012, 4:15 p.m.:

NPR fills in some of the missing information PolitiFact omitted.



Correction 8/31/2012:  Original version had wrong date for Obama's Janesville speech on first reference:  "Here's what President-elect Obama said in December 2008 (bold emphasis added) during a speech in Janesville:"  That sentence has been made accurate.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Sheldon Whitehouse and PolitiFact's PolitiMath

For quite some time I've collected examples of the way numerical inaccuracies affect PolitiFact's application of its "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.  Given enough examples we may construct a PolitiMath theorem of numerical accuracy.

Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse helps give us the latest clear example of a rating based on the accuracy of a number.  PolitiFact's conclusion makes clear that PolitiFact allowed the degree of error to determine the rating (to whatever extent the ratings are not subjective, of course):
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said, "For Social Security, which is projected to remain solvent through 2033, Whitehouse has cosponsored [a bill that] . . . would extend the life of the program by an additional 75 years."

In fact, removing the income cap for collecting tax money to pay for the program would extend the viability of Social Security for 75 years from now, not from 2033.

Whitehouse's office quickly acknowledged the error.

In this case, we're talking about a difference of 21 years, between 2087 and 2108.

We rate his statement Mostly True.

Whitehouse received a "Mostly True" rating for a figure inflated by about 27 percent.

If PolitiFact cuts Whitehouse a break for misspeaking then it ought to mention that.

Friday, August 24, 2012

The perplexing ways of PolitiFact

Yesterday PolitiFact published new version of one of its recent fact checks, changing its "Truth-O-Meter" rating from "Mostly True" to "Half True."

PolitiFact's action solidifies the charge that it rules arbitrarily and subjectively.

The original ruling on a description by the Obama campaign of Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare probably already downplayed a key misleading aspect of the original ad.  How does one make an accurate charge about "the" Ryan plan while talking about a version of his plan that has been updated?  If the relevant features of the plan changed (they did), then the statement misleads in the absence of qualifying language.  And it misleads in a way that may give the audience a picture that is the opposite of the accurate picture--that's approximately how PolitiFact defines its "Half True" rating.

PolitiFact does usually follow a good policy when it revises a story:  It keeps an archived version of the old story.  Since I have researched PolitiFact's process of justifying its "False" and "Pants on Fire" ratings, I was curious as to how PolitiFact changed the wording of its concluding paragraph to support the altered ruling.

The original version:
The Obama ad would have been more accurate if it had specified that it was referring to a previous Ryan plan for Medicare rather than the current one. We simply don’t have enough details to know how much extra money seniors might have to pay under the current Ryan plan. Still, the Obama campaign gave itself some wiggle room by saying that the plan "could" raise out-of-pocket costs by more than $6,000. On balance, we rate the statement Mostly True.
The revised version:
The Obama ad would have been more accurate if it had specified that it was referring to a previous Ryan plan for Medicare rather than the current one. We simply don’t have enough details to know how much extra money seniors might have to pay under the current Ryan plan. Still, the Obama campaign gave itself some wiggle room by saying that the plan "could" raise out-of-pocket costs by more than $6,000. On balance, we rate the statement Half True.
The summaries differ by one word.  "Mostly True" changes to "Half True" for the updated version of the story.

For the sake of clarity, is there any part of the story that provides a better opportunity to explain the precise justification for a "Truth-O-Meter" ruling than the summary portion of the story?

It's features like this that make PolitiFact's "Star Chamber" decisions look and smell exactly like subjective opinion.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

"College Insurrection"

William A. Jacobson of Cornell University and the fine Legal Insurrection blog today launched a new blog promoting conservative/libertarian student activism:  College Insurrection.
Jacobson:
Because most campuses are dominated by liberal adminstrators, faculty, and student activists, conservative/libertarian students often feel isolated and alone, and up against seemingly insurmountable forces which wield power over their lives.

For many students, the risk/reward ratio says to shut up and just go along so as not to be singled out and targeted
I have some firsthand knowledge with that experience, though I would emphasize that my liberal instructors almost without exception showed respect for my conservative views--which were assuredly expressed, where appropriate, in class and in my assignments.

I encourage conservative or libertarian students to make use of the support system Jacobson has established.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

New York Times taking sweet time with "napalm girl" correction

Via W. Joseph Cambell's Media Myth Alert (hat tip to Power Line):
The New York Times has ignored written requests by two senior former Associated Press journalists seeking the correction of an unambiguous error published in a Times obituary three months ago.
I can relate, after pointing out a good number of significant problems with PolitiFact stories that have resulted in neither written response nor an appropriate change to the story in question.

Campbell:
In an obituary published in May about Horst Faas — an award-winning AP photographer and editor who helped make sure Ut’s photograph moved across the agency’s wires — the Times described the image as “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes: a group of terror-stricken children fleeing the scene, a girl in the middle of the group screaming and naked, her clothes incinerated by burning napalm.”

But as I pointed out in an email sent to the Times soon after the obituary was published, the aircraft that dropped the napalm wasn’t American; it was South Vietnamese.
Visit the Media Myth Alert for all the details.  It's well worth reading, from the additional facts on the case through the Times' ridiculous excuse for not making any change.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Grading PolitiFact: Stephanie Cutter and the case of the missing fact check

It gets a little tiresome seeing PolitiFact repeatedly engage in partial reporting on its stories.  The following may represent the supreme example.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)


The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis

PolitiFact sets the stage:
The Republican response to attacks on the Ryan plan has been to attack back, saying President Barack Obama has cut "$700 billion" out of Medicare. And the Democratic response to that: Well, Paul Ryan cuts that amount, too!
PolitiFact selects the claim to check:
"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."
PolitiFact avows that it will focus on "whether Cutter is correct that Ryan relies on those same reductions in his budget."

PolitiFact uses the next nine grafs to outline the nature of the $700 billion reduction in Medicare expenditures projected by the CBO.

PolitiFact's source, a CBO report, communicates the nature of the 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.

Having more-or-less identified the nature of the projected Medicare savings, PolitiFact proceeds to the next phase of its fact check:
Now onto [sic] our second question: Does Ryan’s budget keep the reductions in Medicare spending? The short answer is yes.

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.)
Do we know from that exchange that the cost reductions come from the same source?  I don't see how, and I invite any reader who sees it to explain it with a comment below.

Slate's Dave Weigel claimed that Ryan uses the same cap on Medicare spending as Obama.  But his explanation does not appear to help PolitiFact's argument.

Weigel (bold emphasis added):
Remember, Obamacare is supposed to save $700 billion by capping the rise in Medicare spending from GDP growth plus 0.5 percent. The Ryan budgets in 2012 and 2013 don’t alter Medicare for anyone entering it before 2022—a buffer that lets current retirees breathe easy. After 2022, it turns all of Medicare into a premium support plan like Medicare Advantage. At that point, “an annual competitive bidding process” is supposed to push providers to provide lower rates. “The per capita cost of this reformed program for seniors reaching eligibility after 2023,” explains Ryan in his budget guide, “could not exceed nominal GDP growth plus 0.5 percent.” So, if it works, it’s got the exact same Medicare cap as the Obama plan.
Weigel is talking about two different means of obtaining the same future rate of growth on Medicare spending.

As for PolitiFact, it's sticking with Paul Ryan's supposed confession:
So Ryan has confirmed his budget includes the Medicare savings.
"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?

PolitiFact:
Still, Ryan himself said his plan did include the reductions in future spending that were part of the federal health care law.
Sorry, but that's not a fact check and it's very misleading.  PolitiFact is seizing on an ambiguity from Ryan and insisting that it perfectly dovetails with Cutter's claim.  A real fact check would verify from the text of Ryan's budget that the savings have the same origin as those projected by the CBO for the health care reform law.  This fact check doesn't do that at all.  Ryan's budget is neither listed among the sources on the sidebar nor linked in the text of the story.

Another of PolitiFact's sources helps confirm that PolitiFact simply blew this fact check. The CBO did attempt to score Ryan's budget proposal. The CBO did a baseline scenario using the assumption that the health care reform bill would remain in effect:
The baseline scenario incorporates policies restraining Medicare spending that are embedded in current law. Such policies include the sustainable growth rate mechanism, which determines the payment rates for physicians; payments to other providers in the fee-for-service portion of Medicare that would grow more slowly over roughly the next two decades than the cost of their inputs; and the  Independent Payment Advisory Board (established by the Affordable Care Act), which is required to make changes to the Medicare program to reduce spending if the growth in such spending is projected to exceed certain targets.
And the CBO created an alternate scenario where Medicare savings were much less:


The alternative fiscal scenario incorporates less restraint on Medicare spending.  Specifically, payments for physicians would not be reduced as they would be under the sustainable growth rate mechanism, and payments to other providers  would grow more rapidly than under the baseline scenario after roughly the next decade. The remaining restraints on Medicare spending could also have the potential consequences noted for the baseline scenario, but presumably to a much lesser extent because the restraints would be much less tight.
If the cost reductions are "protected" in the Ryan budget, then why does the CBO run an alternative scenario where the supposed protected cost reductions do not occur?

By all appearances, the PolitiFact team mailed it in on this fact check.  The evidence strongly suggests that the Ryan budget plan only relies on savings through ObamaCare to the extent that the CBO assumes that existing law will remain in effect--its standard procedure--while projecting the effects of Ryan's budget.

Cutter gets a "True" for that?


The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  F
Bill Adair:  F

Seriously:  Where's the fact check?


Afters:

Here's one of those statements from the CBO that seems to have a tough time finding its way into PolitiFact's fact checks (bold emphasis added):
CBO’s cost estimate for the legislation noted that it will put into effect a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. The combination of those policies, prior law regarding payment rates for physicians’ services in Medicare, and other information has led CBO to project that the growth rate of Medicare spending (per beneficiary, adjusted for overall inflation) will drop from about 4 percent per year, which it has averaged for the past two decades, to about 2 percent per year on average for the next two decades. It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law). Also, the legislation includes a provision that makes it likely that exchange subsidies will grow at a slower rate after 2018, so the shares of income that enrollees have to pay will increase more rapidly at that point, and the shares of the premiums that the subsidies cover will decline.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Turning up the heat on mainstream fact checkers

Dustin Siggins' post at the conservative blog "Hot Air" serves notice that I'm not alone in pointing out the failure of mainstream fact checkers in testing claims about effective tax rates.

Siggins:
The Obama campaign is running an ad claiming that Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than that of the average American.  Following the ad’s release, PolitiFact published an article rating it as “Half-True.”  From the article:
There are two main ways to make this calculation, and they lead to opposite conclusions. While we believe that including payroll taxes in the calculation offers a more accurate picture of what the American public pays the IRS, it’s also true that the Obama ad didn’t specify which measurement it was using, and in fact used a figure for Romney — 14 percent — that was based on income taxes alone. On balance, then, we rate the claim Half True.
Unfortunately for PolitiFact, their analysis completely misses the boat.
Siggins links to an analysis from "Just Facts," a not-for-profit independent fact checker:
Specifically, CBO found that households in the middle 20% of the U.S. income distribution paid an effective federal tax rate of 11.1% in 2009. Using CBO’s new estimate for allocating the burden of corporate income taxes, Just Facts and Ceterus calculate that Romney’s federal tax rate was 23.3% in 2010, which is twice the middle-income tax rate in 2009.
Just Facts published the above the same day I published my critique of Farley's fact check (Aug.7).  Their fact check goes much deeper than mine--I simply noted that Farley had short shrifted an entire body of evidence indicating that Romney almost certainly paid a higher effective tax rate than the average American. 

I criticized PolitiFact along the same lines on Aug. 10, but Siggins takes note of something I missed:
(T)he PolitiFact analysis ignores data cited by its own resource.  The article cites the Tax Policy Center to look at what tax levels are at for all income quintiles.  However, PolitiFact fails to note that the Center’s chart (the same one cited in the article) shows that the top 1% (which Romney definitely falls into) pay 7.7% of their income into the corporate tax structure.
So the PolitiFact researcher, Louis Jacobson, had the information staring him in the face and missed it or ignored it.  That's on top of somehow missing the CBO studies on effective tax rates.

Not good.


Correction Aug. 15, 2012:  Apologies to Dustin Siggins for consistently finding ways to put the vowel "a" in his name where it doesn't belong.

Full speed ahead: PolitiFact continues to ignore selection bias problems


Apparently PolitiFact's "report cards" for candidates serve as a popular feature.

Why else would PolitiFact ignore its founding editor's inability to explain how PolitiFact avoids selection bias in its rankings and continue to push the report cards on its readers?

(clipped from PolitiFact's Facebook page)

Extolling the value of these report cards serves as just one more area where PolitiFact slips over the line from objective news reporting into opinion journalism.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Lois Frankel still not particularly concerned with PolitiFact

Democratic congressional candidate from Florida Lois Frankel apparently didn't get the memo:  PolitiFact helps us find the truth in Politics.

Frankel apparently thinks she can send out fundraising emails like the one excerpted below without PolitiFact Florida rating her distortions on the "Truth-O-Meter."

(click image for enlarged view)

Frankel may have a point.


Friday, August 10, 2012

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact again ignores data on effective federal tax rates

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 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?

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Travis Larson Band: "Dreamcatcher"

I haven't forgotten about the artist of the month feature, lately a non-feature.  I'm just not satisfied with the currently available set of embeds.  Until improvements occur on that front, I will intermittently feature a video or something that gives us something to look at while pleasing the ear.

The Dixie Dregs' instrumental tune "Hereafter" stands as a long-time favorite of mine.  San Luis Obispo's Travis Larson Band has a song with a parallel vibe, even if it lacks the scorching and wonderful Steve Morse outtro guitar solo.  Without further ado, "Dreamcatcher":



I should add that I love Larson's solos on the song.  I distinguish his soloing from Morse's because the "Hereafter" solo is somewhat aggressive for a relatively mellow tune--and because it's also one of my favorite guitar solos of all time.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

PolitiFact leaves misleading fact check of Gerard Robinson mostly intact

Updating a past Grading PolitiFact post, PolitiFact Florida made minor changes to its fact check of Florida's ex-education commissioner, Gerard Robinson.

The major errors inexplicably remain.

What changed

PolitiFact Florida altered its quotation of Robinson, adding a pair of ellipses.  The original version drew quotations from three separate paragraphs and, using no ellipses, stuck three of Robinson's sentences together to give the appearance of a single paragraph.

Here's how the new version reads (bold emphasis added):
Robinson penned a June 15 response, which included these comments: "The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. ... These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year. ... It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."
The changes still do not, so far as I can tell, conform to AP style for quotations.  Statements from separate paragraphs should show as separate paragraphs.

More importantly, what are we missing?


What didn't change

I spoke to PolitiFact editor Aaron Sharockman by phone last week.  I pointed out to him that Robinson had an entire paragraph dedicated to answering the charge that students spend too much time preparing for the FCAT. 

Here's that paragraph (bold emphasis added):
Florida's Next Generation Sunshine State Standards are the foundation for what we expect our students to learn. Subjects covered by Florida standards include English language arts, math, science, social studies, physical and health education, world languages, and fine arts along with other content areas specific to colleges and careers. Contrary to the claim of the FSBA resolution, the FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. In fact, at the middle school level, student enrollment in courses such as dance, drama, and world languages has increased more than student enrollment in the subject areas assessed on the FCAT. At the high school level, enrollment in dance, world languages and the humanities has outpaced the growth in student enrollment.
Robinson obviously stresses the point that it is appropriate for students to spend a great deal of time preparing for the FCAT since the FCAT measures "what we expect our students to learn."

PolitiFact omitted Robinson's point from its story.  No quotation.  No paraphrase.  Nothing.

I spoke to Sharockman again today.  I said I received the impression that he agreed with me that Robinson had stressed that it was appropriate to spend a great deal of time preparing for the FCAT.  I asked whether I had received a false impression.  Sharockman said that he did not recall agreeing about Robinson's point and said he thought I had received a false impression.

How does one miss Robinson's point in the above paragraph and then omit it in a fact check story about that same subject?

How does one miss it even after a critical review?


Beyond incompetence?

The update notice provided with the story after the ellipses were added doesn't quite ring true:
Update: During the editing process, ellipses were inadvertently left out of Robinson's comments of June 15. The ellipses are now included.
I alerted the writer and editor by email about the problem with the quotation before 1 p.m. the day after the story published.  The story published on July 30 at 11:53 a.m.  By Friday, Aug. 3, the problem still stems from an inadvertent omission during the editing process?

Something's broken at PolitiFact.

Former PolitiFact writer Robert Farley still spreading misinformation at Factcheck.org

Writer Robert Farley worked at PolitiFact before catching on with the more respectable Annenberg Fact Check (factcheck.org).

I've hoped that Farley would step up his game.  But the folks at Annenberg are, after all, liberally biased, so it's no surprise that Farley continues to fact check in a style similar to that he used at PolitiFact.

Our case in point:
A new ad from the Obama campaign claims that Mitt Romney “paid only 14 percent in taxes—probably less than you.” That depends. Romney paid a federal income tax rate that is higher than the income tax rate paid by 97 percent of tax filers. But if you include a combination of income taxes and payroll taxes — which make up the bulk of federal taxes for most taxpayers — the ad is accurate.
Liberal fact checkers tend to ignore a key evidence while fact checking claims about comparative income tax rates:  a report from the Congressional Budget Office that estimates effective tax rates while factoring in the effects of corporate taxes.  The tendency to ignore the CBO's report occurs despite the fact that fact checkers tend to believe the CBO almost without reservation, the classic example coming from the CBO's static analyses of the Affordable Care Act.

Google "effective tax rates" and the CBO report is right there (now on the second page of hits after a long time on the first page).  The report reveals that very high income earners pay much higher federal tax rates than liberal fact checkers claim.  Farley actually hints at the truth, perhaps without fully realizing it.

Farley (bold emphasis added):
There are all sorts of ways to slice tax data. According to the administration’s Economic Report of the President, the median effective tax rate for the middle 20 percent of U.S. taxpayers in 2012 is 13.3 percent when you include income, payroll and corporate taxes (Table 3-1). That also puts the ad’s claim in the right ballpark. But in order to get there, you have to compare Romney’s income tax only to the rates others pay in combined income, payroll and corporate taxes.
The second of the two sentences in bold makes false the claim that many people pay a greater effective rate of federal income tax (payroll taxes included) with corporate income taxes included in the mix.  Farley buries the key sentence with the lead-in "That also puts the ad's claim in the right ballpark."  The story ends up with one sentence that strongly upsets the argument about Romney's supposed low income tax rate, set in an arrangement that camouflages it sufficiently so that few are likely to recognize its meaning. 

Take a gander at Table 3-1:

click image for enlarged view
The bottom line across from "Top 1 percent" represents something of a bell curve showing the effective tax rates for the top 1 percent of earners.  It's likely that Romney pays a rate somewhere near the middle, though apparently he also gives a great deal of money to charity, which decreases his tax bill because of the charitable deduction.  One has to hunt on the chart to find effective tax rates higher than the median rate for the top 1 percent (29.6 percent). 

Yet here's the kicker quote/paraphrase Farley uses to wrap up:
No matter how you slice it, Toder said, Romney’s tax rate is very low for someone with his level of income. The average income tax rate for the top 0.1 percent (which is where Romney falls) is 23.6 percent.
Slice us up some of that horse hockey, Farley.

Fact checking is in a sad state.  But a least Annenberg Fact Check is still better than PolitiFact.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Gerard Robinson and the FCAT (Updated x2)

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


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)
Readers should already find themselves wondering whether "FCAT tests" represents the time spent taking the test itself or the time spent preparing for the test.  PolitiFact uses ambiguous wording.  Yet why would we expect the test itself to take more than 1 percent of a year's instructional time?


The fact checkers:

Amy Sherman:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor


Analysis:

Put bluntly, this item isn't fact checking.  It is a disservice to Gerard Robinson and PolitiFact's readers.

PolitiFact:
Reflecting a backlash against testing, more than a dozen individual school boards in the state, including Broward and Palm Beach, have passed a resolution against the FCAT. The Florida School Boards Association passed its own version of a resolution criticizing the FCAT in June.

Robinson penned a June 15 response, which included these comments: "The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year. It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."
If PolitiFact follows AP style for quotations, the above represents a breach of style guidelines.  Here's how the quotation would look according to AP style:
"The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. 

. . . These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year.

. . . It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."
PolitiFact:
There are a few interesting claims in Robinson’s statement, but the one that caught our eye was that tiny figure: The FCAT accounts for "less than 1 percent of instructional time." Heck, we wonder if lunch or recess could add up to more than 1 percent. So we decided to research whether Robinson’s 1 percent claim was correct.
PolitiFact reports that Robinson's office backed up his claim with numbers showing that the amount of time spent taking the test amounts to .26 to .90 of the state-mandated minimum of 900 hours of instructional time.

So Robinson's claim was true?  PolitiFact doesn't see it that way:
But Robinson used the phrase "instructional time" in his claim, which could fairly be interpreted to mean classroom time spent preparing for the test.
Yes, Robinson used the phrase "instructional time" in his claim, but it isn't fair to interpret it to mean classroom time spent preparing for the test.

"Instructional time" has a particular meaning in education.  It means the time students spending doing learning activities under a teacher's direction. 

Robinson addressed three specific points with his press release.  The FCAT program is allegedly too expensive, dominates the curriculum and hinders student success.

Robinson addresses the first point by framing FCAT expense in terms of its percentage of state and local investment in the schools.  He deals with the second point in the next paragraph:
Florida's Next Generation Sunshine State Standards are the foundation for what we expect our students to learn. Subjects covered by Florida standards include English language arts, math, science, social studies, physical and health education, world languages, and fine arts along with other content areas specific to colleges and careers. Contrary to the claim of the FSBA resolution, the FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. In fact, at the middle school level, student enrollment in courses such as dance, drama, and world languages has increased more than student enrollment in the subject areas assessed on the FCAT. At the high school level, enrollment in dance, world languages and the humanities has outpaced the growth in student enrollment.
PolitiFact ignores this context and tries to make it look like Robinson is saying that the schools spend very little time trying to prepare students for the FCAT.  The above paragraph from Robinson unequivocally puts the lie to the journalists' frame.  He addressed the issue by saying that the test measures things that students ought to spend much of their time learning.

Obviously, then, Robinson was not trying to say that students spend less than 1 percent of their instructional time preparing for the FCAT.  That would argue against his preceding paragraph. 

PolitiFact just ignored the context.

In fact, Robinson's 1 percent figure is more accurate the more time students spend preparing for the FCAT, if one insists on suggesting that he used "instructional time" to refer to test preparation.  For review (bold emphasis added):  "These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year."  If students spend as little as half of their instructional time on the FCAT then the estimate for time spent on the assessments rises to a range between .52 and 1.8 percent--still in the neighborhood of 1 percent if we willfully ignore Robinson's clear explanation.

PolitiFact appears to conflate the "assessments" with the "instructional time" somehow.  As one is used as a percentage of the other, that path leads to a spectacularly failed fact check.

PolitiFact devotes considerable space to quotations complaining about the FCAT, but none of it addresses Robinson's claim.  We can skip on to the wondrous conclusion consisting of four short paragraphs plus a "False" rating.

One:
Robinson said that the FCAT tests "account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year." This was a prepared statement, based on research done by his staff, in response to FCAT critics who say that schools devote too much time to the tests.
Right, but Robinson addressed the critics' point in his preceding paragraph.

Two:
Readers could assume that by "instructional time" Robinson was including regular lesson time in the classroom preparing for the FCAT. He wasn’t. His office says that referred to the number of minutes taking the test out of the total minutes of instruction per year. But he didn’t provide that explanation in his statement.
Robinson may have assumed that those reading his statement have the ability to read.  PolitiFact doesn't explain why people would be seriously misled if they believed taking the FCAT test constituted less than 1 percent of the preparation time.  The smaller the percentage the greater the preparation time by proportion.

It is doubtful PolitiFact could make a coherent case that Robinson was minimizing the preparation time for the test, assuming it would even make the attempt.

Three:
In reality, there is no clear way to quantify how much time teachers spend preparing students for the test. Some teachers say they spend practically all their time on the FCAT.
If all of the teachers spend all of their time on the FCAT then Robinson's statement is perfectly accurate and students spend less than 1 percent of their instructional time taking the assessment.  There's nothing here to use against Robinson's accuracy or veracity.

Four:
Robinson’s goal was to deflect criticism that too much time is spent "teaching to the test." He is suggesting that the FCAT eats up only a smidgen of a school year. But for students, parents and teachers who spend months preparing for those tests, Robinson’s words are misleading.
PolitiFact completely missed Robinson's point by ignoring the context.  The fact check doesn't make a lick of sense.  Robinson's words are misleading if one ignores context, grammar, syntax and logic.


The grades:

Amy Sherman:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

This case perhaps makes up PolitiFact's penultimate train-wreck to date.  PolitiFact owes Robinson an apology and a front page correction notice.


Update Aug. 1, 2012:

 Gerard Robinson responds to PolitiFact Florida:

In this article, PolitiFact agreed that evidence provided to them by the Department of Education verified the accuracy of my statement when taken in this context.  However, PolitiFact claims my statement was made to deflect criticism that too much time is spent “teaching to the test.”  If this were true, I would agree with PolitiFact’s conclusion.  However, since PolitiFact misrepresents the context of my statement, I rate their finding as False.


Update 2, August 3, 2012:

A Band-Aid for the severed head:  PolitiFact modifies the quotation with the insertion of two ellipses--and no correction notice (at least as of now).
Robinson penned a June 15 response, which included these comments: "The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. ... These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year. ... It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."
The correction is not quite compliant with AP style by my reading, as the AP Stylebook's example shows a line of space between the sentences prior to the insertion of the ellipse when one pulls sentences from different paragraphs..

That's a minor point, of course.  The story remains incoherent.  The head is still severed and the body is bleeding out through the neck.