The Weekly Standard calls PolitiFact on another faulty entry

Working at this blog part time as I do, I allow plenty of opportunities for commentary to slide.

A recent PolitiFact entry about the economic impact of the cap and trade carbon tax raised red flags for me, but I realized that my incomplete grasp of the economics involved would make it hard for me to evaluate the PolitiFact analysis without a disproportionate time investment.

So the biggest of hat tips to the good folks at The Weekly Standard, who kept after the expert source used by PolitiFact and undermined the foundation for their Truth-O-Meter rating ("Pants on Fire").

The explanation is sufficiently technical so that I suggest reading the account at the Standard. But the response from representatives of PolitiFact is worth quoting and noting.

After corresponding with Reilly, I contacted Politifact's reporter Alexander Lane and editor Bill Adair to ask if they would correct their report that the GOP's estimate of cap and trade's cost is a "pants on fire" falsehood.

Lane wrote in an email: "The detail of my piece that you think needs correcting seems to be in flux...". The "detail" to which he referred was Reilly's admission that the real cost per household would be $800--not $215 per household as Politifact originally reported.

The story goes on to recount other instances of apparent carelessness in the PolitiFact entry, then reports another exchange with PolitiFact:

When I asked Bill Adair over the phone last week if Politifact would correct its report, he didn't answer the question and ended our conversation by saying: "You're getting me at a really bad time. I would love to talk about this any time tomorrow." Adair did not reply to further inquiries.

Of course not. He was probably busy editing more shoddy fact-checking and preparing for the Pulitzer Prize party.

Grading PolitiFact: Limbaugh and the Hyperbole Police

clipped from www.politifact.com

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

"You can't read a speech by George Washington . . . without hearing him reference God, the Almighty."

Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 in a radio broadcast

When I first offered my general critique of PolitiFact, the fact-checking operation run by The St. Petersburg Times with Congressional Quarterly, I lambasted them along non-partisan lines for rating Barack Obama (not president at the time) "False" regarding a fairly obvious case of hyperbole.

PolitiFact has resumed its role as the Hyperbole Police by attacking a recent statement by Rush Limbaugh as "False."

Here's what Limbaugh said:

Now, you've got people who want to conform and not cause any ripples, "Oh, yeah, yeah, we're not a Christian nation, Judeo-Christian ethic, we are a lot of different religions here. We're bound by our common values." You can't read a speech by George Washington, you can't read his inaugural address, you cannot read them without hearing him reference God, the Almighty, and how this nation owes its existence to God and our thanks to God for the vision in founding this nation with people treated as he made them, the yearning spirit to be free and so forth. There has been a constant attack since to disabuse people of the notion that this nation has a religious founding and from that religion springs morality and our basic understanding of where freedom comes from. It's got religious roots and people are threatened by religious roots because they're threatened by religious people.

Now let's look at the Hyperbole Police Report:

To see whether you indeed "can't read a speech by George Washington" without seeing a reference to God, we checked Washington's most noteworthy speeches, starting with his two inaugural addresses, since Limbaugh mentioned those specifically.

This is simply unworthy of being called fact-checking.

First, Limbaugh's statement was obvious hyperbole. Second, he did not limit his statement to references to God. Third, Washington's second inaugural address was only "noteworthy" for its extreme brevity (check the afterword at the end of this post). Fourth, Limbaugh did not mention a plurality of inaugural addresses. In the latter case, charitable reading suggests that the more relevant inaugural address be taken as the speaker's subject.

So clearly Limbaugh was wrong that you can't read a Washington speech without seeing a reference to God.

Right, just like Barack Obama was "wrong" that law enforcement against employers who hire illegals was less likely than a lightning strike. Sheesh.

This piece by Alexander Lane (edited by Bill Adair) continues the PolitiFact tradition of flip-flopping the emphasis on a statement's wooden-literal meaning as opposed to its intended meaning in context. Fact-checking worthy of the name takes the author's intent to heart as well as the message the audience is likely to receive.

Lane did not stop with grading hyperbole false, however. He blathered on to the point of finding another straw man to topple:

It's also worth noting, given Limbaugh's larger point that Washington's religious views support the idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation, that Washington was hardly a devout Christian.

Don't let the above fool you. Lane isn't interested in Limbaugh's underlying argument, which dealt with the relationship between religion and indvidual rights. Whether Washington was devout or not doesn't touch Limbaugh's real point. Lane takes PolitiFact readers for a ride, trying to sell the notion that Washington was a Deist. As one of his key evidences, Lane quotes retired professor John Ferling on the founding fathers:

"They thought in terms of there being a Supreme Creator who created life and the universe but then didn't intrude in things from that point on."

Ferling's words hint at a blind spot in his knowledge of religion, or at least logic. The statements of the supposedly deistic founding fathers, including those of Washington, often appeal to the Creator for continued protection. Does that make any sense to ask of a hands-off deity? Ferling appears to be one of those who project a modern flavor of deism back on the founding fathers. Yes, they emphasized morality, and they often sustained doubts about the divinity of Christ. But the point, from Limbaugh's point of view, was on the agreed basis for the individual rights: the hand of the Creator.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
(Declaration of Independence)

Instead of seeing Limbaugh's point about the role of government in protecting individual rights on the basis of religious presuppositions, Lane takes the moon-gravity leap to the idea that Limbaugh was claiming that Washington was quite the Christian. No kidding.

So Washington wasn't nearly the devout Christian that Limbaugh suggested he was and he did not refer to God in all his speeches as the talk show host claimed. We find Limbaugh's claim is False.

What a blinkin' waste of time. Limbaugh did not at all sugggest that Washington was a devout Christian.

Lane's grade: F
Adair's grade: F


Afterword:

Better late than never with the afterword.

Was Washington's second inaugural speech "noteworthy"? Was it significant that he neglected to mention God or related issues in that speech? As noted in the preceding reply to PolitiFact, the speech was notable primarily for shortness. And that is easy to prove by simply including the entire speech in the afterword:

FELLOW-CITIZENS: I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.

Previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (beside incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.

(History.org)

Beyond simply proving that the speech was spectacularly short, I wanted to emphasize the apparent reason why Washington kept it brief. In his own words, from the above:

When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.

Washington had apparently decided that his inauguration was not the right time for a self-indulgent speech. I would hazard a guess that Washington's words here prefigure his farewell address, as it is well known that he served with reluctance while also realizing that he was the right man for the job.

It is worth noting that the farewell address contains much of the material that Rush Limbaugh suggested was commonplace in Washington's speeches.

April 21, 2009: Updated with complete title and afterword
April 22, 2009: Supplied a previously omitted "the"

Grading PolitiFact: Does Warren Buffett support Obama?

Fact-checking the Fact-checkers

The issue:

A statement made by President Obama to Steve Croft during a "60 Minutes" interview:

"Your plan really for solving the banking crisis was met with very, very, very tepid response," Kroft said to Obama. "A lot of people said they didn't understand it. A lot of people said it didn't have any, enough details to solve the problem. I know you're coming out with something next week on this. But these criticisms were coming from people like Warren Buffett, people who had supported you, and you had counted as being your..."

"And Warren still does support me," Obama interjected. "But I think that, understand, Warren's also a big player in the financial markets who's a major owner of Wells Fargo. And so he's got a perspective from the perspective of somebody who is part owner of a bank.
(PolitiFact)

Does Warren Buffet still support Obama?

The fact checkers:

• Alexander Lane (writer, researcher)
• Bill Adair (editor)
  

Analysis:

Alexander Lane seems to have put very little effort into this entry. For Lane, perhaps, it was an open-and-shut case so there was little to be gained by giving the facts any close examination. After noting what President Obama said during his interview with Steve Croft, Lane moves immediately toward resolution:

Buffett, who endorsed Obama during the campaign, did explicitly say during a three-hour interview March 9 with CNBC that he still supports Obama.

OK, break.

Identification of the intended sense of a term stands as the key to evaluating the accuracy of claims. What was the original context? Kroft introduces the root word:

But these criticisms were coming from people like Warren Buffett, people who had supported you, and you had counted as being your--

Kroft, it seems, uses the term in its generic sense of broadly supporting a candidate. He uses Buffett's support of Obama as a point of contrast to emphasize the broad based nature of criticisms of Obama on economic policy.

Obama interrupts Kroft:

And-- and-- and-- and Warren still does support me. But I think that understand Warren's also a big player in the financial markets who's a major owner of Wells Fargo. And so he's got a perspective from the perspective of somebody who-- is part owner of a bank.

As with Kroft's use of "supported," I think Obama's is the generic sense of generalized support. Obama's interruption of Kroft, however, produces an impression of defensiveness. Perhaps the president was concerned that viewers would think that Buffett was critical of his economic policies? If that were the case, and I do not know that it is, then Obama may be guilty of throwing up a bit of a smokescreen. And that is the only scenario in which I can conceive of this episode being worthy of the effort of fact-checking.

So let's continue the examination after getting one thing out of the way: Kroft acknowledged Buffett's support of Obama. Obama was right to note Buffett's support in the same generalized sense as Kroft meant it. And Buffett does continue to support Obama in that generalized sense.

PolitiFact researcher Alexander Lane provides adequate proof of the above with the initial quotation he provides:

"I voted for Obama and I strongly support him, and I think he's the right guy," Buffett said early in the interview.

Lane also treats the more convoluted issue that I identified above as he continues to quote Buffett. First, the PolitiFact version:

Buffett did criticize Obama's handling of the banking crisis, saying that "a bank that's going to go broke should be allowed to go broke," as long as the depositors are protected. (Obama's approach has leaned toward giving the banks more bailout money in some form rather than letting them fail and having the government take them over.)

But Buffett's primary concern was that Obama wasn't communicating clearly with the public about struggling banks. "The right answer for me (to the banking crisis) is the president to clarify things as only he can, because you have heard so many different things," he said. "He is the commander in chief on this, and it has to be clarified...because if people aren't clear, they're going to be confused. And if they're going to be confused, they are going to be scared stiff. And that has to end."
(bold emphasis added)

Lane opens up a big can of worms with this quotation. Take a look at a more complete version of that interview exchange:

BECKY: There was the idea that maybe they should just be buying shares outright. There's the idea of nationalization out there. What's the right answer?

BUFFETT: The right answer--the right answer for me is the president to clarify things as only he can, because you have heard so many different things. And, you know, they're doing their best to communicate, but the person that the people of the United States gave their trust to not that long ago was Barack Obama. He speaks very well. He has--he is the commander in chief on this, and it has to be clarified. Like I say, the head of the New York Fed gave a talk, explained a lot of it, but nobody's going to pay that much attention to what he says. You need the president of the United States to make it very clear. Because if people aren't clear, they're going to be confused. And if they're going to be confused, they are going to be scared stiff. And that has to end.

BECKY: Does that--you make it sound almost like it doesn't matter what he says, as long as he picks one of those.

BUFFETT: Well, it matters...

BECKY: That's--you've got to--you've got to be leaning one direction.

(CNBC)

The key graph, of course, is Becky Quick's excellent follow up to Buffett's answer, "you make it sound almost like it doesn't matter what he says, as long as he picks one of those."

Rather than putting to rest Buffett's criticisms of Obama's economic policy, this exchange makes clear that Buffett had two principal criticisms of Obama. One, that his practical emphasis was misguided. Two, that the president's handling of the crisis in terms of public relations was a failure. The second stands as an important point because public attitude toward the economy holds a strong influence over the economy.

Buffett was saying, in effect, that Obama was blundering in two ways, and Buffett, in effect, was willing to forgive the first if Obama would correct the second.

Lane's treatment of the quotation is adequate to communicate what Buffett was saying if one is relatively in tune with the backstory, but could easily mislead people who were less familiar with Buffett's opinions on the economic crisis. Nothing quoted by Lane diminishes in any respect Buffett's two fundamental criticisms of Obama's economic policy.

1) Buffett does not support bailing out the failing financial institutions*
2) Buffett does not support bad presidential communications on economic issues*

*things Obama is/was doing

The way Lane tells the story perpetuates confusion about different types of support. To whatever extent Obama was trying to substitute generalized support for specific support of economic policies, the president was guilty of deceitful communication.

Given Obama's interruption of Kroft, there is sufficient evidence to see beyond what is suggested by the plain meaning and infer that Obama had a dubious argument implicit in his response to Kroft. PolitiFact should have graded Obama "Mostly True" and emphasized the distinction between general support and specific support for the handling of the current economic situation.

Lane failed in that:

Toward the end of the three-hour interview, Buffett reiterated his support for Obama. "He is the right president," Buffett said. "He's very, very smart. He's got, I think, exactly the right goals. He's articulate and I -- you know, he will be the right person to be the commander in chief in this economic crisis."

So clearly Obama was on solid ground touting Buffett's continued support. We find this claim to be True.

Though Lane's eventual determination is not far removed from the one I would have reached, his methods were unacceptably careless. This PolitiFact entry is more rehabilitation than fact-checking, as when Lane parrots Obama's psychologizing of Buffett (not a facet I spent time on in my analysis, but it's there).

The Grade:

The grade for Lane and Adair: F+


Mar 24, 2009: corrected spelling of "principal"

Grading PolitiFact: Jesmer apparently not as artful as Obama?

I've railed in the past about the way fact checkers at PolitiFact display a disgraceful inconsistency in deciding whether the issue is the literal meaning of a politician's statement or the underlying argument.

On Friday, Mar. 20, PolitiFact published a piece about the following statement from Rob Jesmer, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee:

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, placed an
amendment in the "stimulus" bill that allowed for banks bailed out with taxpayer money - including A.I.G. - to hand out huge bonuses without any government oversight or regulation, as long as those bonuses were issued before February 11.

The entry, by writer/researcher Alexander Lane and editor Scott Montgomery, ruled the statement "Half True" despite the fact that the statement is literally true:

The Republicans’ charge is true in a limited sense — Dodd’s amendment did address the bonus issue while falling short of disallowing the recent AIG bonuses.

The sense in which the claim is true was actually the main point of Jesmer's message, which starts by calling attention to Dodd's inconsistency in the press). The sense that Lane found false was a minor implicit argument brought to the fore with a subsequent comment from Jesmer:

It is no wonder that Senator Dodd received more campaign contributions from A.I.G. than any other politician during the 2008 cycle, including President Obama. As FOX News put it yesterday, "A.I.G. must be feeling very grateful to Chris Dodd this morning."

Assuming that Jesmer is right about the level of contributions Dodd received from A.I.G., this statement is also literally true, but it may exaggerate the degree to which Dodd was the friend of A.I.G.

The problem with the PolitiFact evaluation?

Lane and Montgomery took a claim that was literally true but carried a dubious implicit argument and ruled it "Half True."

The previous day, editor Montgomery and writer/researcher Angie Drobnic Holan took a claim that might be literally true (Drobnic never got to the bottom of the literal truth) but which also carried a plainly false implicit argument.

The PolitiFact judgment: Mostly True.

The politician in question for the latter judgment? President Obama.

Obama was careful in the way he phrased his statement ...

So was Jesmer, by all indications.

The key to evaluating the truth of a political claim should always be the point the communication. In Jesmer's case, his point was that Dodd had dropped the ball. His claim was literally true and reasonably supported his main idea. Jesmer should have been judged no worse than "Mostly True."

In contrast, Obama made a claim that may well be false and used it to support a plainly false main idea, that the auto makers have been ignoring needed innovation. On the contrary, the differences between the Model T and the modern SUV show an emphasis by the manufacterers on needed innovations in terms of safety, power and energy efficiency. Obama's claim should have rated no better than "Barely True."

Grade for Lane and Montgomery: D-

Angie Drobnic Holan and Montgomery received an "F."

Grading PolitiFact: Christina Romer and "almost all of them"

It is almost uncanny how poorly PolitiFact plays the fact-checking game.

The latest rating from PolitiFact, penned by Alexander Lane, concerns a economic prediction from economic adviser Christina Romer. Romer backed her prediction by appealing to a survey of private forecasters:

"We know that this last week the Blue Chip Economic Indicators came out that surveys lots of private forecasters. Almost all of them are predicting a turnaround in the third quarter and positive growth in the fourth quarter."

Sounds pretty easy to check, doesn't it? Watch Lane turn it into an adventure.

The consensus, or average prediction of the panelists, was that the economy as measured by the gross domestic product would grow 0.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009 and 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter. That was not quite enough information to gauge the accuracy of Romer’s claim,

Correct so far, with the caveat that "consensus" is not nearly the same thing as an average prediction. Consensus indicates general agreement, but one can take an average from a set of numbers that do not generally agree. Lane's sentence tends to suggest otherwise.

so we asked editor Randell Moore for more detail. He said 50 economists were surveyed, with 30 predicting positive growth in the third quarter of 2009 and 45 predicting positive growth in the fourth quarter.

Those are some useful numbers. Obviously with only 50 surveyed we'll find some overlap between panelists predicting third quarter growth and those predicting fourth quarter growth.

But let's review Romer's claim:

We know that this last week the Blue Chip Economic Indicators came out that surveys lots of private forecasters. Almost all of them are predicting a turnaround in the third quarter and positive growth in the fourth quarter.

It appears that Romer is saying that "Almost all of them" are predicting two things, linked with the connector "and." First, "Almost all of them" predict a turnaround in the third quarter. If "turnaround" is equal to positive growth then we have a problem, since 30 of 50, also known as 60 percent, seems perhaps less than "almost all of them."

On the second part of the statement Romer is on better footing, since 45 of 50 predicted fourth quarter growth. It's fair to count 90 percent as "almost all of them."

Now, if Romer has said "Almost all of them are predicting a turnaround in the third quarter or positive growth in the fourth quarter" then we'd have enough information to reasonably rate her statement "True." But that is not what she said.

Somehow, Lane sees it differently:

That does indeed support Romer’s claim, since 45 out of 50 constitutes "almost all" the forecasters.

Apparently we're supposed to forget about approximately half of Romer's statement. And Lane never bothers to deal with it. After sifting through more of the panel's findings and noting that the picture isn't exactly rosy, he offers us the final conclusion:

But Romer is entitled to highlight optimistic forecasts. And it's true that almost all the panelists surveyed in Blue Chip Economic Indicators predicted a rebound by the fourth quarter of 2009. We find Romer's claim to be True.

See? Third quarter prediction all but forgotten.

With half of the statement pretty clearly false, how can a rating of "True" be justified?

That answer is easy. It cannot be justified. And that is the mystery that is PolitiFact. The project is supposedly made up of capable professional journalists. And PolitiFact stresses that its ratings are subject to peer review among other PolitiFact staffers.

So how can the results be this bad?

Grade: D

Note: One potential saving grace for Romer is that there might have been more information in the survey to support the notion of a "turnaround" as opposed to literal economic growth. That offers no help to PolitiFact, however, as we have no indication that Lane explored that avenue at all.

Grading PolitiFact: Obama invokes Teddy Roosevelt on health care reform (Updated)

PolitiFact writer Alexander Lane evaluated a reference from President Barack Obama to past Republican president Theodore Roosevelt. It will take some probing to pin down what claim Lane thinks he's evaluating.

Here is the article title:

"Teddy Roosevelt first called for (health care) reform nearly a century ago."

The title offers us two potential areas of focus. Did Roosevelt "first" call for health care reform nearly a century ago? And was it the first time Roosevelt called for such reform or was he the first to call for it? Or did Roosevelt merely call for health care reform nearly a century ago, without so much emphasis on "first"?

The statement in context:

The problems we face today are a direct consequence of actions that we failed to take yesterday. Since Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform nearly a century ago, we have talked and we have tinkered. We have tried and fallen short, we've stalled for time, and again we have failed to act because of Washington politics or industry lobbying.
(Whitehouse.gov)

Does it even matter what type of reform Roosevelt envisioned? We check back with Lane:

Not content to emulate Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, Republican icons for whom President Obama has expressed admiration in the past, Obama has aligned himself with a third GOP hero on the issue of health care.

For Lane, the issue seems to be how Obama and Roosevelt align on health care. That is not how I would have initially approached Obama's statement. As such it says nothing about consonance between the views of the two men respecting health care. Roosevelt's failed attempt to recapture the presidency was through his alignment with a "Progressive Party" that was a faction of the Republican Party. So T. Roosevelt probably counts as the first major candidate to have health care reform included as part of his political platform, even if his speeches from around that time provide no evidence for it according to the results of my limited survey.

Back to Lane:

We wondered whether Roosevelt really proposed reform on the scale of the near-universal health care Obama advocates, or if the new president was pushing the whole bipartisan-appeal thing a bit far.

Aside from the presumptive fundamental accuracy of seeing Roosevelt as the first prominent political voice to advocate health care reform, Lane perhaps has a legitimate point of inquiry, here. Given Obama's past invocation of revered Republican figures, he may have subtly intended for his reference to Roosevelt to burnish whatever health care reform he would propose. The text of Obama's speech provides relatively little purchase for that notion, but let's at least see where Lane goes with the idea.

Lane reviews the relevant provisions in the Progressive Party platform. I'll reproduce only they key paragraph here, but encourage examination of the context using the link provided.

The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use;

At first blush, the above seems like a thin foundation on which to build the picture of Teddy Roosevelt as an advocate of health care reform. On the contrary, this provision of the platform looks like it is intended to provide support for a family experiencing economic difficulty owing to sickness, not as a provision for the payment of health care benefits ("The protection of home life" being the key phrase).

Lane found two experts willing to say that Roosevelt was talking about health care benefits, apparently. W. M. Brands was one:

"What this envisioned was pretty much what FDR accomplished with Social Security, but with health insurance added," said Brand (sic), author of TR: The Last Romantic (1998).

Kathleen Dalton, a big liberal, was the other:

"We don’t know the specifics of the plan," said Dalton, author of Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (2002). "The roots were probably British, though he knew about German health insurance."

Dalton said unequivocally Obama was on solid ground evoking Roosevelt.

British roots, eh?

In 1911 there was one more piece of social legislation, and a very important one: the National Insurance Act. The general plan had been outlined by the Government in 1909. This act provided for insurance against sickness and disability for workers between the ages of sixteen and seventy, under formal contract of service, whose annual incomes were £160 or less, and for nearly all manual workers regardless of income. It was a contributory scheme (the chief variation from German practice which served as something of a model), with the employer to contribute threepence per week, the employee fourpence (female, threepence), and the government twopence. The most important benefits were ten shillings a week for sickness and five shillings a week for disability.
(Havighurst, "Britain in Transition," 1985, p. 104)

By the measure of the British system described above, Theodore Roosevelt would seem to have found The New Deal more than adequate to fulfil his vision of social insurance.

The Social Security Act did not quite achieve all the aspirations its supporters had hoped by way of providing a "comprehensive package of protection" against the "hazards and vicissitudes of life." Certain features of that package, notably disability coverage and medical benefits, would have to await future developments. But it did provide a wide range of programs to meet the nation's needs. In addition to the program we know think of as Social Security, it included unemployment insurance, old-age assistance, aid to dependent children and grants to the states to provide various forms of medical care.
(socialsecurity.gov)

If we ignore the impact of the state grants, we see that Brands' distinction between Social Security and the Progressive Party's plan was probably explained by the latter's practice of providing payments during periods of illness. While that is a common feature of modern health insurance, it is not the way we think of health care reform. We think about medical services.

Brands was good to draw attention to the distinction, and the author Lane earns credit by including the quotation:

Brands more or less agreed, though he cautioned that health care was "not the priority that trust-busting or conservation was" for Roosevelt. "It's worth remembering that health care was a far smaller concern in those days," Brands said. "Doctors had few medicines, and most people died or got better on their own. The biggest issues were public health — eradicating malaria, cleaning up water supplies, and so on."

After a couple of historical tidbits, Lane gives the conclusion:

Clearly, Obama is on solid ground tracing the push for national health care back to Theodore Roosevelt. We find this claim to be True.

Lane put himself in the position of defending a minor argument loosely implicit in Obama's statement.

Contrary to Lane's conclusion, it is ridiculous to trace the push for national health care as we understand it today back to Theodore Roosevelt. To whatever extent Obama attempted to convey that impression, he misled.

It seems that Lane took information that would have supported the plain meaning of Obama's statement--that Theodore Roosevelt had been the first major political figure in the U.S. to call for "(health care)" reform and wrongly turned it into support for the far more dubious proposition Lane identified.

The grade: D-

Editor Bill Adair shares this grade.


Update:

Commenter "ildi" stopped by to give me a heads up about a "Marketplace" radio story called "A history lesson in health care reform."  Marketplace provides business news which typically airs on public radio stations (the NPRish style is evident from the audio clips).

The idea, I suppose, was intended to inform me of readily available evidence of Roosevelt's direct support for a social medicine program.  But that's not what I found when I looked into the story:

So this is a story I heard from a doctor that I met one time.

Warner: Can you introduce yourself to me?

Dubin: I'm William Dubin, I'm professor and interim chair at Temple University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.

Bill Dubin is not only a psychiatrist, but an amateur historian, he's got a book in his lap...

Dubin: Called "The Transformation of American Medicine" by Paul Starr.

...Which is where he read the following story.

  At least PolitiFact contacted professional historians rather referencing "a story I heard froma  doctor that I met one time."  And can it be too much trouble to accurately provide the name of Paul Starr's book?  I noticed a discrepancy between the print and audio right away.

But back to the evidence of Roosevelt's support for a medical benefit:

And Roosevelt came out 100 percent behind compulsory health care insurance. And his actual quote was "No country can be strong if its people are sick and poor."

Archival tape of Teddy Roosevelt's speech

Of course, Roosevelt lost the election.

The source of the quotation in this story isn't clear, oddly enough.  The archival tape doesn't match the quotation.   The portion I quoted is not attributed to Dr. Dubin.  The narrator (Gregory Warner) apparently heard something from Dubin that made him think the Roosevelt had made the statement.  But it may have originated from Paul Starr's characterization of the reason for Roosevelt's support of a health benefit (yellow highlights added):

In the end, we have no solid lead in this story.  We'd be taking Gregory Warner's word on it.

Perhaps more interesting than the dubious attempt to fill in the missing Roosevelt factoid, the story references a health care proposal written up after Roosevelt lost his Progressive Party bid for the presidency.

I may follow up on that one at a later time.


March 21, 2009: Deleted a redundant "the."
Nov. 11, 2009: Added missing "l" to "health."

Grading PolitiFact: Did Obama warn about the subprime mortgage crisis?

I've written two different blog entries about the claims stemming from the Obama campaign about Obama's warnings about the subprime mortage crisis.

In the first one, part of my Legends of the Left series, I attacked the suggestion that Obama's written warnings about a subprime lending problem did not reasonably constitute any sort of prediction born of notable economic wisdom.

In the second one, I grant that it is fair to say that Obama warned about a subprime lending crisis, but I argue that it is not reasonable to see in the warning any concrete hint of the current scope of the problem. With all due respect to Andrew Sullivan, taking Obama's letter to Bernanke and Paulson as prescient is akin to thinking a Rhorschach inkblot represents a detailed diagram of the brain of a Beluga whale. Labeled.

Alexander Lane, writing for PolitiFact, disagrees.

"I wrote to (Treasury) Secretary (Henry) Paulson, I wrote to Federal Reserve Chairman (Ben) Bernanke, and told them this is something we have to deal with, and nobody did anything about it."

The last sentence appeared to refer to this letter that Obama sent to Paulson and Bernanke on March 22, 2007.

Obama's comments in the debate suggest the letter warned about the then-looming subprime lending crisis and its potential impact on the wider economy.

That's a fair summary; Lane's analysis on that point essentially agrees with mine. However, my post noted that the subprime problem was already extant. Lane's phrasing permits the reader to see the crisis as imminent rather than already present. A recent St. Petersburg Times story by fellow PolitiFact writers Robert Farley and Angie Drobnic Holan makes the point effectively:

Obama did send a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the new Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, in March 2007, advising a meeting on the subprime mortgage mess. "We cannot sit on the sidelines while increasing numbers of American families face the risk of losing their homes," Obama wrote.

But economists agree that it was too late by that point, a point that economists Baker and Calomiris agree on. In separate interviews, they both used the same analogy: The horse was already out of the barn.

The horse was out of the barn, and in any case Obama's warning carried no readily discernable hint of the scope of the ensuing crisis. That is, unless you are one Alexander Lane:

So yes, Obama characterized the letter accurately. In it, he not only called for action to head off the unraveling of the subprime mortgage market, but also warned about its impact on the nation's economy. He sent the letter about 18 months ago, a time frame for which "two years" is a fair estimate. We find his claim to be True.

Lane simply offers no support for his claim regarding "impact on the nation's economy" remotely sufficient to connect the warning to the "potential impact on the wider economy," namely freezing credit markets and plunging market values. A letter warning of that type of consequence would have placed far greater emphasis on the dire nature of that outcome. It is reasonable to conclude that Obama was concerned about Americans with low incomes losing their homes and on the relatively modest harm to the economy that would result.

It was not reasonable to conclude based on the letter that Obama saw anything akin to the present economic conditions as a result of problems in the subprime lending market.

Alexander Lane, PolitiFact: F. You didn't do your homework and you flunked the final.

Grading PolitiFact: Iranian women at risk for want of proper hijab?

Our stalwart bunglers at PolitiFact remain busy--far too busy for me to keep up, unfortunately.

The picking on Palin series received a recent update, so I chose that entry for my latest critique.

Iran ain't Miami Beach, but beatings and killings for immodesty? No

The giveaway deck is accentuated by the trademark "Truth-O-Meter" graphic with needle buried at the "False" end of the scale. On to the rationalization:

In arguing for a hard line against Iran, Gov. Sarah Palin invoked not just that country's uranium-enrichment efforts and attitude toward Israel, but also its treatment of women.

"It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens," Palin wrote in a Sept. 22, 2008, opinion piece in the New York Sun. "By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under (President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad's rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens. If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed."

That New York Sun link may not last long. I understand the paper has suspended operations. PolitiFact provides sufficient context for the quotation, happily.

The issue, as is often the case with PolitiFact, comes down to a judgment. Should Palin's statement be judged as to its truth or in terms of whether it might supply a misleading impression in terms of the underlying argument? PolitiFact vacillates in its judgments. One time the literal meaning is at issue, as when Barack Obama used the odds of a lightning strike as hyperbole. Another time the flacks at PolitiFact try to skewer the underlying argument--however they happen to see it.

Fact-checking ought to be a more systematic pursuit.

In the case of Palin, PolitiFact apparently grants the literal truth of Palin's statement. That's not enough for her statement to be as much as "Barely True," however. The PolitiFact writer, Alexander Lane, emphasizes that the Iranian government does not sanction the beating (at least since a change in hijab law way back in 1988) or killing of hijab outlaws. Beatings, along with any killings that might have occurred, were a by-product of the criminal's resistance.

Palin might have received a contrary impression from stories such as this 1A item from The Los Angeles Times (2005):

There are Muslim countries where women have no choice but to cover their heads. Religious police in Saudi Arabia and Iran hunt and even beat bareheaded women.

Not that you should go around thinking that the stuff you read in the papers is true, mind you.

I have no reason to doubt Lane's finding that the government does not officially sanction the beating or killing of women who fail to properly wear the hijab. However, some of the hard-liners in power apparently wish they held enough sway to enforce that aspect of Sharia law:

"Women who do not respect the hijab and their husbands deserve to die," said Hassani, who leads Friday prayers in the city of Urumieh, in Iranian Azerbaijan.

"I do not understand how these women who do not respect the hijab, 28 years after the birth of the Islamic Republic, are still alive," he said.

"These women and their husbands and their fathers must die," said Hassani, who is the representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in eastern Azerbaijan.
(ADN Kronos)

One might suggest that the argument underlying the underlying argument suggests that the hard-liners in the ruling establishment of Iran would like to have women beaten or killed. But that may be too complicated even for the media professionals at PolitiFact.

I'll give PolitiFact a D for this entry. I dispense credit for researching the current state of hijab law in Iran, but dock 40 points for failing to discern the attitude of Iran's ruling religious elite toward the issue of hijab and for the amazing arrogance displayed in rating a true statement "False."

Grading PolitiFact: Obama right about tire inflation and tune-ups? (Updated)

Just moments after I read the Power Line challenge to Time Magazine's defense of Obama's underinflation blowup I ran across PolitiFact's own attempt to rehabilitate the Obama gaffe.

Alexander Lane produced the entry, with Scott Montgomery serving as editor.

Sen. Barack Obama injected a startling claim into the debate on energy, asserting in a Missouri town hall meeting that the country could save more gas from inflating its tires and tuning up its cars than would be gained from drilling more off its coasts.

"(O)ff its coasts"? I don't remember Obama saying anything about coasts. In fact, here is how PolitiFact reproduced the quotation:

"We could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups."

The folks at PolitiFact sometimes deal with the literal text and sometimes with the underlying argument. Apparently Lane plans to deal with the underlying argument. Obama, in Lane's eyes, meant to refer only to offshore drilling, not ANWR or oil shale deposits similarly under government moratorium.

Fine. Let's allow Lane to run with it and see where he goes.

The best estimate available, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is that at least a quarter of drivers are cruising around on under-inflated tires. In April, the Rubber Manufacturers Association, the Auto Club, the California Highway Patrol and Yokohama Tire Company used those statistics, along with Department of Transportation and Automobile Association of America data, to extrapolate that 2.8-billion gallons of gas are lost every year due to under-inflation of tires.

That’s an estimate, to be sure, and not one from a published, peer-reviewed study. But remember, Obama said we “could” save all the oil available from offshore drilling in the protected areas — not we “would” — so if the claim is merely plausible he’s on solid ground.

Lane makes a quick transition from the NHTSA estimate on tire underinflation--a reasonable estimate with some research data in support--and the supposed group effort extrapolation of the data. The fact that it isn't from a published, peer-reviewed study is the very least of its problems. Lane, if the references provided along with his analysis are any indication, drew the estimate from an automotive message board. I cannot tell how he was able to firmly identify the aforementioned organizations as the source of the estimate.

We may have been misled as to the source of the data. I found the same data here minus the attribution suggested by Lane. And here is the key statistic:

● According to the AAA Gas Watchers Guide, there could be up to a 10 percent loss of gasoline from vehicles with tires underinflated from 7-10 psi.

I can't find this information in either the 2004 or the 2007 version of the AAA Gas Watcher's Guide, and even if I could the statement is too ambiguous to be of much help. It mentions "tires" plural might lead to that 10 percent loss. How many tires? Two? Three? Four? It's relevant because the bulk of the NHTSA survey's 27 percent of cars with underinflated tires had one tire underinflated (by 8 pounds psi or more). Yet Lane presents this apples-and-oranges guessedimate as though it is not simply a load of hooey. Please note that the 10 percent figure is presented as the ceiling figure ("up to a 10 percent loss"), and then that figure is used as the basis for the extrapolation that gets us to the key estimate of "28 billion gallons of gas" per year (assuming the "per day" version near the end was simply an oversight).

Here is what the AAA Gas Watcher's Guide says in both the 2004 and 2007 versions, by the way:

Inflate tires according to manufacturer recommendations. Under-inflated tires are a safety hazard and can cut fuel economy by as much as 2 percent per pound of pressure below the recommended level.

This figure can easily get us above the 10 percent figure that Lane ends up touting, but once again it remains unclear how many tires would have to be low for the estimate to apply. The federal government figures, fortunately, shed some light on that picture:

You can improve your gas mileage by around 3.3 percent by keeping your tires inflated to the proper pressure. Under-inflated tires can lower gas mileage by 0.4 percent for every 1 psi drop in pressure of all four tires. Properly inflated tires are safer and last longer.
(fueleconomy.gov)

While the government Web site helps make clear that the fuel economy loss estimates are for low pressure in "all four tires" and varies substantially from the AAA estimate, even this information has a flaw that inhibits our ability to use it effectively. What is the baseline? Where does the 3.3 percent figure come from? If we use the government's .4 percent estimate, the figure of 3.3 percent appears to come from assuming all four tires inflated 8 psi below the recommended level (o.4*8=3.2; a close match). But the NHTSA estimate for tire underinflation absolutely will not support the extrapolation that Lane accepts on behalf of PolitiFact. Lane ends up using the government figure in this entry, but omits that it applies to underinflation of all four tires.

Click to enlarge the image below for additional analysis of Lane's poorly chosen source. Added comments have red emphasis.


Let's pick up now with Lane's argument:

So how much oil is available offshore? According to the latest assessment from the Minerals Management Service, the mean estimate of undiscovered technically recoverable crude oil in the Outer Continental Shelf areas that are currently under moratorium is about 18-billion barrels (see here.)

Without ANWR and domestic oil shale, then, in just 18 years tire inflation in our still overly optimistic scenario could save about 18 billion gallons of gas. At 19 gallons of gas per barrel of oil, that sounds pretty much like a drop in the bucket.

But it couldn’t all be extracted immediately. The agency estimates that if the moratorium were lifted production could start by 2017, and by 2030, oil companies could be producing 2.4-million barrels of oil instead of 2.2-million. That’s 200,000 more barrels per day.

After refining, a barrel of oil can produce up to 19.5 gallons of gasoline, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. So that’s 3.9-million more gallons of gasoline per day, or 1.4-billion gallons of gasoline per year.

And remember, an estimated 2.8-billion gallons of gas are lost annually due to under-inflated tires.

As Hinderaker points out, higher oil prices tend to lead to more aggressive extraction of easily accessed resources. The 2.4 million barrels figure is probably low unless oil prices drop way below present levels. And the true comparison is not to 2.8 billion gallons of gas saved but to under 1 billion. Offshore drilling minus ANWR and other sources should top maximal tire inflation saving annually by a long shot.

All of the numbers in this analysis are estimates, we should emphasize. Oil industry experts told us estimates of the amount of oil offshore and how fast it could be extracted vary widely, and the Energy Information Administration’s number is fairly optimistic. Likewise, it’s highly unlikely any public awareness effort could change behavior enough to save 2.8-billion gallons of gasoline per day.

"(P)er day." Did you catch that?

I'd like to see Lane's notes as to what exactly was optimistic about the EIA estimates.

But I'll tell you one thing that was optimistic. PolitiFact's grading of Obama's statement as "True." Lane showed himself inept by accepting the figures he found online. Editor Scott Montgomery should have buttonholed Lane until he located the supposed report that everyone from AAA to Yokohama Tire cooperatively produced. The source report should have accompanied the story, not a link to a message board page. Because the numbers fared so poorly under scrutiny, it seems likely that Lane was fooled into thinking the analysis came from people who know what they're talking about when that almost certainly was not the case.

But it’s clearly within the realm of possibility that tire inflation and tune-ups could save more than offshore drilling could produce. So we find Obama’s claim to be True.

What an embarrassment to journalism.

Correction: Made that 3.2 instead of 3.4 in the equation I used to recreate the thinking process behind the 3.3 percent loss in fuel economy. To paraphrase Xander Harris, to add makes our doing math good.

Update:
PolitiFact updated their entry, and I posted a response.