PolitiFlub: Bachmann blames Obama for Iraq War?

During an Oct. 28 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Min.) attacked President Obama for his failed foreign policy, using the complete withdrawal from Iraq as her concrete example.

Today PolitiFact published a fact check based on the idea that Bachmann pinned the full cost in terms of lives and money on Obama.

PolitiFact reproduces a healthy chunk of the CNN transcript, which includes the following:

BACHMANN: Well, my main challenger right now is Barack Obama. That's who I'm focused on.

His economic policies are a disaster and his foreign policy is even worse. Under Barack Obama's watch, we have expended $805 billion to liberate the people of Iraq and, more importantly, 4,400 American lives.

President Obama just had his hat handed to him by the Iraqis, who have essentially kicked him out and our people out of Iraq while Iran is waiting in the wings. So Iraq is essentially kowtowing to Iran. Iran is seeking to have a nuclear weapon.

It sure looks like Bachmann is blaming the whole cost of the war on Obama, doesn't it?

But Bachmann almost certainly is not making the argument PolitiFact rates "Pants on Fire" on its vaunted-yet-lame Truth-O-Meter.

And here's why:  People speaking on live television often do not deliver well-organized communications, and their words often challenge a would-be transcriptionist in terms of appropriate punctuation.

This is where the interpretive principle of "charitable interpretation" comes in.  Where a statement is ridiculous on its face, the reader/listener ought to consider alternative means of understanding the communication.

It is a stock argument that a hasty withdrawal can turn the expense of war into a waste.  Many conservatives made that argument in defending President Bush's decision to execute the "surge" strategy in Iraq.  And that is the most likely interpretation of Bachmann's words.

But a word of caution, here.  A video or audio version of the exchange between Blitzer and Bachmann ought to make clear whether the alternative suggestion is the obvious solution or not.  Perhaps Bachmann misspoke so badly that it was natural to take her meaning other than the way she intended.

On the other hand, Bachmann did offer a certain amount of clarification later in the interview (this portion also quoted in the PolitiFact story):

BACHMANN:
What President Obama has failed to do is secure the gains that America paid for with an extremely dear cost -- 4,400 American lives, nearly a trillion dollars in expenditures, and we have nothing to show for it. And we may look at a Maliki government which has admitted they cannot secure the peace.

One may legitimately criticize Bachmann for muddying her talking point (and Herman Cain shares that vulnerability), but where Bachmann's words in context leave this much doubt about her intent it is incumbent on the journalist to obtain clarity.  To his credit, CNN's Wolf Blitzer tried to do that and Bachmann did little to help.  And while that failure on Bachmann's part can add up to another legitimate criticism of her candidacy, it does not excuse third party journalists like those at PolitiFact from their duty to inquire about Bachmann's intent.

PolitiFact's conclusion:

Bachmann’s numbers are essentially on target, but she errs badly in blaming Obama for all $805 billion spent and 4,400 American lives lost in Iraq "on his watch." Most of the money spent and lives lost in Iraq came during George W. Bush’s presidency. The idea that Obama -- who wasn’t even in the Senate until two years into the war -- is responsible for all the costs and casualties in Iraq is ridiculous. We rate her statement Pants on Fire.

Again, Bachmann almost certainly was not saying what PolitiFact took her to say, and the PolitiFact story offers no evidence that PolitiFact attempted to obtain a clarification from the Bachmann campaign.

As a result, this effort from PolitiFact warrants the tag "journalists reporting badly."

Grading PolitiFact: Michele Bachmann and taxing the top 1 percent

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

Remember the good old days when it was easy to tell what type of taxes a politician was talking about?  When Marcia Fudge said many large corporations pay no taxes at all, a journalist could simply assume that she was talking about income taxes and do a fact check based on that assumption.

Things are more complicated these days with evil Republicans in office.

Michele Bachmann appeared on NBC's "Today" show with Matt Lauer and stated that the top 1 percent of income earners pay 40 percent of all taxes.  That calls for the reverse assumption of the one made with respect to Fudge, the benevolent non-Republican.

PolitiFact:

"If that's on the table, then why shouldn't the burden be equally shared?" Lauer asked. "Why shouldn't we put some of that burden on the wealthy and corporations?"

Bachmann responded, "Well, remember, again, already the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all taxes into the federal government. So if you want to talk about fairness, the top 1 percent are paying 40 percent of all of the income."

We wondered whether she was right that "the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all taxes into the federal government."

In the bygone days of yore, that would be "40 percent of all income taxes into the federal government," or at least the interpretation would amount to the same thing.

Bachmann on video, for what it's worth:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

PolitiFact:

So -- using 2007 numbers at least -- Bachmann is off by quite a bit. She’s even further off if you use an estimate for 2010 by the centrist to liberal Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which pegs the share of all federal taxes for the top 1 percent at 22.7 percent.

If PolitiFact judges Bachmann by the cited 2007 numbers then Bachmann inflated the figure by just over 42 percent.

If PolitiFact judges Bachmann by the Brookings estimate for 2010, then Bachmann inflated the figure by just over 76 percent.

We can thus continue to build our picture of the PolitiMath theorem by noting that PolitiFact takes a range of error from 42 to 76 percent as a "False" numbers claim, setting aside for the moment the fact that the most important thing about a numbers claim is the underlying message.  If Bachmann's underlying message was that the top 1 percent pay much more than 1 percent of the total tax income for the U.S. then she's out of luck this time.  She's likewise out of luck if she misspoke.

PolitiFact:

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.

Likewise, Fudge would have been right if she'd said "There are corporations in this nation, some of the biggest corporations in this nation, who do not pay income taxes when they fail to show a profit after claiming their deductions."  Oh, wait.  PolitiFact rated Fudge "True" for her inaccurate statement and Bachmann "False" for hers.  That's some pretty impressive inconsistency.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

If, as PolitiFact's chief editor Bill Adair claims, the underlying message is the most important thing about a numbers claim, then I can flunk Jacobson and Hamilton for not making any noticeable effort to tease out Bachmann's underlying message.  Or maybe Jacobson and Hamilton did a purely brilliant job and I should criticize Adair for blowing hot air.

I'll stick with the former until either Adair relinquishes his post or posts changes in his edicts regarding numbers claims.

Grading PolitiFact: Michele Bachmann and the promise

It was "dumb" for President Obama and his aides to promise that unemployment would not surpass 8 percent if the stimulus act passed, a top House Democrat said Tuesday.
--The Hill

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Robert Farley:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

Recently PolitiFact has deliberately drawn attention to the fact that Michele Bachmann (R-Min.) was the only political figure with an appreciate number of ratings who had failed to have one other than "False" or "Pants on Fire."  This claim rates "Barely True" according to PolitiFact, so that record evidently falls by the wayside.

The claim, of course, surrounds the Obama administration's sales job on the stimulus package.  That bill was the first major legislation to pass after Obama took office.

First, the Bachmann version:

Politico cranks up myth machine for Michele Bachmann

One my monster pet peeves concerns the penchant of the news media to invent a fact and then reinforce it regularly until it turns into conventional wisdom.

One pernicious myth concerning Michele Bachmann had its genesis on "Hardball with Chris Matthews." Bachmann questioned Barack Obama's past associations and questioned whether he might hold anti-american views like those of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.

Matthews turned the interview into an argument, attempting at every turn to reduce the issue of Obama's views to an absurdity. I recommend watching the video or reading the entire transcript to get the full flavor, but the important part occurs at the end:

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, he's a United States senator from Illinois. He's one of the people you suspect as being anti-American. How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti- American? You've already suspected Barack Obama. Is he alone, or are there others? How many do you suspect of your colleagues as being anti-American?

REP. BACHMANN: What I would say -- what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that.

Matthews spent much of the interview equivocating, and at this stage of the interview has transformed Bachmann's statement that she thinks Obama may hold anti-American views into the notion that Obama is anti-American on the whole or at least on balance. Rather than answering a question containing a false premise, Bachmann returned to her point that Americans should be informed of the views of their representatives. And she called on the media to make that contribution to democracy.

Maybe it's just me, but I had the impression that Matthews throughout held the attitude that questioning whether others hold anti-American views is anti-American or something. And this is how Bachmann's appearance was played up:

New McCarthyism: Bachmann calls for investigation of ‘anti-American’ Congress

Bachmann Calls For McCarthyite Investigation Into Anti-American Activities Of Liberals

Michelle Bachmann gives voice to the right's darkest impulses

Realistically, it just does not make any sense to see something bad in wanting the media to inform the public about the views of elected representatives. Yet after more than a year, the lies about Bachmann come close enough to conventional wisdom to sneak past the desk of at least one editor at Politico.com:

They would like to capitalize on the fervor of the tea party foot soldiers, who have been quick to adopt Bachmann as an icon of their movement. But they’re wary of the movement’s fringe elements and, at times, of Bachmann, who made a name for herself last year when she called for an investigation into “anti-America” members of Congress and more recently when she referred to the Democrats’ health care plan as the “crown jewel of socialism.”

The words chosen by authors Jonathan Allen and Meredith Shiner feed directly into the notion that Bachmann did something significantly similar to what Joe McCarthy did.

That is simply false. But media outlets pull stunts like this every single day of the week.


*****

The video:


11/7/09: Edited to patch a few holes in my prose

Grading PolitiFact: Michele Bachmann and Dr. Emanuel's health care policy

PolitiFact took another shot at Michele Bachmann recently. Two, actually, but I'll deal with the older one first.


The issue:


PolitiFact and I are getting better at spelling Bachmann's name (see update, below).


The fact checkers:

Writer, researcher: Robert Farley
Editor: Bill Adair


Analysis:

Barack Obama's top adviser, Rahm Emanuel, has a brother who is also a medical doctor. Coincidentally, that brother is also a health policy advisor at the Office of Management and Budget. Small world, eh?

Why would they need a health policy advisor at the OMB? Keep that question in mind as we evaluate this PolitiFact item.

After writer Robert Farley acquaints the reader with Bachmann's statement about Emanuel, we get a little more background on the man:

Emanuel is a well-known oncologist and bioethicist, which means he ponders such moral questions as "You have three people who need a liver, but you've got just one liver, who gets it?"

Hmmm. Sounds like a handy guy to have around at the OMB if the government needs to decide who gets the highest priority in receiving limited government health care.

Like other academics (see our article on claims about science czar John Holdren ), Emanuel has found that highbrow articles for academic journals make great fodder for opponents trying to score political points. Academics often write theoretically about ideas that are being kicked around. And they repeat and explore those ideas, without necessarily endorsing them.

Wow. Looks like Farley's solved this one before we even get acquainted with the facts. Emanuel's statement, whatever it was, is simply being used to score political points. And Emanuel didn't necessarily endorse whatever it was he may have written.

Farley gives us some additional background concerning other criticism of Emanuel's scholarly work. The key quotations start with Farley's ninth paragraph.

"Emanuel, however, believes that 'communitarianism' should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled, not given to those 'who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.' (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

"Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy."

The above is Farley's quotation of a New York Post op-ed by Betsy McCaughey. McCaughey attaches her use of the term "disabled" to a couple of passages in Emanuel's article. I find that important because it is not the standard use of the term, and Bachmann later uses the same word when she comments on Emanuel's views.

Farley continues:

Bachmann quoted heavily from McCaughey's op-ed in her floor statement, and sprinkled in her own two cents.

Here's what Bachmann said:

"The president's adviser, Dr. Emanuel, believes communitarianism should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled."

If Bachmann had failed to distinguish her use of the term "disabled" from its everyday use, and I would count that against her. Fortunately for Bachmann, that is merely the impression left by Farley. In context, Bachmann's use of the term is sandwiched between quotations of McCaughey. That, I think, provides sufficient context to understand Bachmann in the same manner set forth by McCaughey. Farley's story is misleading on this point, for his sketch of the context lacks critical detail.

So does the article say what Bachmann claims it says?

The quote in question comes from an essay Emanuel wrote for the Hastings Center Report in the November-December 1996 issue. It ran under the title, "Where Civic Republicanism and Deliberative Democracy Meet." The title alone should give you an idea of the kind of academic, philosophical discussion that will ensue.

Academic and philosophical. That's nice.

In the article, he addresses the idea of what's good for society at large when it comes to allocating health care resources, and that it "suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be guaranteed." Under that philosophy, he writes, health services would be guaranteed to ensure the health of future generations as well as for "full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations."

I read the article. Farley appears to bend over backward to minimize Emanuel's role in advocating a position. More on that later after Farley completes his exposition.

That's the lead-in to the part that contains the stuff McCaughey cited:

"Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason."

I think some of the nuance of Emanuel's piece is lost with Farley's edits. But I can appreciate the challenge of providing a fair yet edited account of the article. That "Conversely" at start of the Emanuel quotation serves a critical role in contrasting services guaranteed for one class of people and not guaranteed for a different class.

So the question is, is Emanuel saying that he thinks health services ought not to be guaranteed to patients with dementia?

The question is actually whether he thinks the guarantee should be withheld from those "irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens." But Farley's version of the question is serviceable, since Emanuel says the example is an "obvious" one.

No, said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for the White House Office of Budget and Management. "He just unequivocally doesn't believe that."

If anybody would know, it would be Kenneth Baer.

In fact, he said, one need look only as far as the next paragraph:

"Clearly more needs to be done to elucidate what specific health care services are basic; however, the overlap between liberalism and communitarianism points to a way of introducing the good back into medical ethics and devising a principled way of distinguishing basic from discretionary health care services."

Yeah, we sorta got lost there too.

What it means, Baer said, is that Emanuel was exploring different views of political theory as they apply to health care decisions and following one school of thought through to the point where he notes that it would lead to "potentially disturbing types of policy ramifications."

And if anybody would know, it's Kenneth Baer.

Furthermore, he said, you need to balance McCaughey's claim against Emanuel's 25-year record of caring for very sick people, and specifically providing quality care to very ill patients at the end of their life.

Emanuel's record is irrelevant compared to the text he wrote. It is one thing to receive payment for services rendered and another thing to determine wise government spending. Amazingly, Farley only gives us analysis courtesy of the spokesperson for the OMB. And we find that analysis well represented in Farley's conclusion:

(T)o make the sensational claim that Emanuel says health care should not be extended to the disabled is a gross distortion of his position, lifted out of context from an academic paper in which he poses philosophical ideas but doesn't necessary (sic) endorse them. Emanuel's hefty medical record also counts for something, as well his unequivocal public position against euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. We rule Bachmann's statement False.

Hook, line, sinker.

First, Bachmann's claim is not a gross distortion of Emanuel's position. She provided context from McCaughey's op-ed that explained the specialized meaning of "disabled."

Second, Emanuel's statements were not taken out of context. McCaughey and Bachmann both provided accurate background information and sufficient context to understand Emanuel's meaning.

Third, while Emanuel did not necessarily endorse the described view--I'm repeating those weasel-words for effect--he did use language that strongly suggests he did, in fact, endorse them.

Here's what Farley left out:

Emanuel does start out academically, asking what it is that explains the difficulty in advancing health care reform. He offers two competing models and rejects the first of them as "dangerous." Then he talks about a second explanation:

The second explanation holds that the problem with defining basic health services is not a general lapse of ethics, but a specific lapse of liberal political philosophy that informs our political discourse, including the allocation of health care resources.

Emanuel advocates the second explanation. That is, the neutrality of liberal political philosophy must give way to the determination of "the good" as in communalism.

This is Dan Callahan's view with which I agree:

... there can be no full discussion of equality in health care without an equally full discussion of the substantive goods and goals that medicine and health care should pursue ... [U]nless there can be a discussion of the goals of medi- cine in the future as rich as that of justice and health has been, the latter problem will simply not admit of any meaningful solution.

Could Emanuel simply have agreed that an appeal to "the good" is required to achieve a "meaningful solution." Perhaps, but it would be a stretch. Calling one solution meaningful while implying that the other ("dangerous") path is not a meaningful solution strongly implies advocacy. And Emanuel cinches it with his next sentence:

Fortunately, many, including many liberals, have come to view as mistaken a liberalism with such a strong principle of neutrality and avoidance of public discussion of the good.

No matter how "academic" or "scholarly" a work, even a journalist should be able to figure out that "fortunately" represents a value judgment. Emanuel's journal article was plainly advocacy if one bothered to read it--even with a limited understanding of philosophy and ethics. When Emanuel later describes an "obvious" example of the distribution of services according to the system he advocates, it is reasonable to conclude that he believes in the validity of that example.

It should have been impossible to rate Bachmann any worse than "Partially True." And her statement might be simply "True" and Emanuel's denial a lie. Farley doesn't do enough work to justify his conclusion. PolitiFact simply likes giving Bachmann poor grades, it seems.


The grades:

Robert Farley: F
Bill Adair: F

I find it particularly disturbing that Farley proved so inept at engaging the journal article, and that he apparently took the OMB spokesperson's account as some sort of gospel. As with some past entries from PolitiFact, this seemed more like an effort at rehabilitation rather than fact-checking.


Additional notes:

I found one positive aspect of failing to review this PolitiFact entry until it had hung on the vine for a time. PolitiFact added a link to Emanuel's response.

Most of the ABC interview deals with semi-related allegations. But some of it was close enough to warrant commentary:

Is he saying, as Palin and others have suggested, that those who aren’t “participating citizens” should have no guarantee to health care?

“No,” Emanuel says, “and I think I made it pretty clear I wasn’t endorsing that view, I was analyzing that perspective and what it might mean in practical terms. The rest of the text around that quote made it made it pretty clear I was trying to analyze it and understand it, not endorse it.”

Emanuel acknowledges that philosophical treatises can be difficult to consume and might lend themselves to this kind of misinterpretation.

Emanuel's explanation, matching as it does Baer's right down to the understanding journal articles is hard bit, fails the smell test. It is not clear when you call the increased acceptance of one of two views "fortunate" that you are not endorsing that view. And it is ridiculous to say that the increased acceptance of that view is "fortunate" if you can't even affirm the validity of an "obvious" application of said view.

My opinion? The White House knew it was caught by the short hairs. The strategy developed to put out the fire involved denial, the claim that writing it didn't mean he endorsed it, and discouraging investigation into the obvious falsehood of the former by reminding the public that journal articles are too hard to understand. Then hope the press buys it, because that will help immensely.

Farley's your man.

Update (11-6): Expanded on a couple of points and made minor modifications a few sentences. Also expanded the quotation of the ABC News interview to make the accuracy of my evaluation more clear. Lastly, fixed my misspelling of Bachmann's first name in the title.

Grading PolitiFact: Michele Bachmann on ACORN being "in charge"

PolitiFact claims it isn't picking on Michele Bachmann. But why, if that's the case, do we never see PolitiFact grade her statements such as the one to the effect that ACORN is under investigation for voter fraud in a number of states? Instead we get, as of this past weekend, our fourth and fifth evaluations of Bachmann where PolitiFact rates her "False" or worse.


Fact-checking the fact checkers

The issue:





The fact checkers:

Robert Farley: writer, researcher
Bill Adair: editor


Analysis:

As with other entries on Michele Bachmann, we receive an initial tip-off that objective journalism has been set aside:

Rep. Michele Bachmann sparked a new controversy recently when she declared she would provide the bare minimum to census takers because she was concerned about the Census Bureau's partnership with ACORN, a left-leaning group that has become a popular villain for Republicans.

The spin from Farley tends to suggest that ACORN is apparently a "villain" for Republicans merely because it leans to the left. A more complete picture emerges if one is aware of ACORN's history in helping to pressure banks into providing high risk loans. Or the aforementioned connection to voter fraud investigations. Or the sharing of donor lists with the Obama campaign.
So the dim view of ACORN is mere partisanship. Farley helps make that clear by echoing ACORN's defense of its voter fraud problems:

(You remember ACORN: Formally known as the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, it was lambasted in 2008 by many Republicans because its voter registration efforts included some fraudulent names such as Mickey Mouse. ACORN leaders said they discovered the fake names, notified authorities and fired some workers who cut corners. But Republican leaders still say it was a willful effort to manipulate the election to help the group's liberal agenda.)

Poor ACORN! It is just a few bad apple employees who have caused those problems! Yet those wascally Wepublicans keep right on attacking them!

Farley does eventually get to the fact-checking phase. I'll skip past the portion of the Bachmann statement that PolitiFact addresses separately and narrow the focus to Farley's eventual subject. Farley quotes Bachmann, in part:

"Now ACORN has been named one of the national partners, which will be a recipient again of federal money," Bachmann said. "And they will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public."

Farley takes the above as an unambiguous claim that ACORN will be paid to serve as a national partner. And while it is natural to take Bachmann's statement that way, the statement is slightly ambiguous. And it is probably true that committed ACORN workers will end up as census workers, so Bachmann would be correct in at least a loose sense that ACORN will benefit from federal dollars.

But let's hear Farley tell it:

She is wildly wrong with her chraracterization of the Census Bureau's partnership program. Yes, the bureau does partner with organizations to help recruit workers. To date, it has 30,000 such partners.

ACORN is one.

ACORN is one of about 300 national partners. By using the number of local partners instead of the number of national partners, Farley is able to make ACORN look like one drop in an immense ocean. ACORN may at the same time be the most partisan group on the list, as well as possibly the one best able, in terms of numbers, to steer committed members toward employment with the Census Bureau. If Farley is aware of any of that then he apparently does not want his readers to know about it.

Back to Farley:

According to Census Bureau information provided to Congress on June 1, 2009, "ACORN and other partner organizations simply promote the availability of temporary census jobs, but have no role in the terms or conditions of employment beyond promotion of the availability of temporary jobs. Applicants that are hired by the Census Bureau to work on the 2010 Census are required to go through a background check that includes an FBI name check and fingerprint check so that felons are not hired to work on the 2010 Census."

Partners are also encouraged to donate testing space for the millions of people who will apply for the temporary census jobs. No payments are made for that. And lastly, partners are asked to promote full participation in the census among their members, through newsletters, e-mails, local meetings etc. Again, there's no payment for that.

Rather than being in administrative control of portions of the Census, then, ACORN could only have substantial numbers of its committed workers collecting Census data. While not overwhelmingly reassuring, that information serves as an appropriate antidote to the most natural interpretation of Bachmann's statement.

So let's count the ways Bachmann is wrong:

ACORN will not be "in charge" of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public, as Bachmann said. The U.S. Census will be in charge of that. Some of the 1.4 million people who get Census-taking jobs may learn about the job through ACORN. Workers who apply to the Census through ACORN have no better shot at the job than those who apply through any of the 30,000 other partners. That's it.

To the extent Bachmann suggested that the partnership arrangement places ACORN in administrative control of data collection, yes she was apparently wrong. Again, that idea is the most natural interpretation of her words if not the most charitable. As for ACORN workers haing no better shot at employment than anyone else, it seems obvious that if ACORN is able to get more of its members to apply then ACORN may well have more influence on the Census than other national or regional partners.

And despite Bachmann's claim, ACORN gets no money for signing on as a partner.

Bachmann did not specifically say that ACORN received money for signing on as a partner, of course. Most natural interpretation of her words? Yes, I would say so. But if one thought of Bachmann as "artful," as PolitiFact sometimes describes President Obama, then perhaps one might tend toward a different interpretation.

Once again, she is making a scaremongering claim about ACORN with facts that are ridiculuusly (sic) wrong. So we have to set the meter on fire once again. She earns another Pants on Fire.

Ridiculously wrong? It is not clear how PolitiFact draws the line between "wrong" and "ridiculously wrong" in this case.

FALSE – The statement is not accurate.

PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.

(About PolitiFact)

Apparently the statement in this case is "ridiculously wrong" simply because it is not accurate. If a statement is "ridiculous" merely because somebody at PolitiFact chooses to subject it to ridicule, then the category appears to serve as a subjective judgment.

Maybe they just wanted to give Bachmann that particular grade again?

Interpreted charitably, Bachmann could have rated a "Barely True." And it is difficult to see how PolitiFact objectively justifies using the "Pants on Fire" rating instead of merely "False" even taking Bachmann less than charitably.


The grades:

Robert Farley: F
Bill Adair: F

Farley and Adair could have earned passing grades if the assessment of Bachmann had not stooped to spin on more than one occasion. A national partner obviously will have more influence on the Census than a local or regional partner.


Afterword:

This entry provides a timely opportunity to point out againt that PolitiFact's aggregate ratings for a given political figure are pretty much useless. Taking the case of Bachmann again, she has received attention from PolitiFact on five occasions. So one could look at those collected results and think, "Man, that Bachmann has a real problem telling the truth!"

But the individual ratings do not come from a scientific sample at all. They come from what PolitiFact staffers think is newsworthy, and that in turn likely gets influenced by liberal blogs or entities like JournoList.

Those who direct PolitiFact apparently haven't yet realized that by failing to admit how their collected ratings may be misapplied they end up hiding an important fact.

MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.

Final note:

It is worth pointing out that, during the radio segment that produced her two most recent PolitiFact entries, Bachmann did repeat her claim about ACORN's access to billions in federal stimulus money in a way that should count as misleading.

Not a good day on the radio for Bachmann, however poor the job done by PolitiFact at fact-checking.

Grading PolitiFact: Michele Bachmann, the Constitution and the census

Where we see yet more evidence of axe-grinding at PolitiFact.


Fact-checking the fact checkers

The issue:




The fact checkers:

Robert Farley: writer, researcher
Bill Adair: editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact entries often push the boundaries of the objective reporting style. Entries on Michele Bachmann typify the excess of that tendency. Note how Robert Farley opens this one:

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is no stranger to the Truth-O-Meter. So far, her comments have decidedly bent the needle to the left and, on one occasion, set the meter on fire.

President Obama is no stranger to the Truth-O-Meter either, having had far more of his statements evaluated than Bachmann's. But we probably will never see PolitiFact open an evaluation of an Obama statement with "President Obama is no stranger to the Truth-O-Meter." Obviously, the statement is not about how many times Bachmann has had her statements rated. It is simply the set up for the rest of the paragraph. Her comments supposedly have "decidedly" bent the needle to the left.

So how big is the sample used to establish this tendency? The sample has reached five statements as of today, with two freshly added to the previous three.

I'll go out on a limb and surmise that Bachmann has made more than five political statements. And, sure, some percentage of the thousands of statements she has made probably err in some way or other. But it certainly isn't fair to pick and choose a handful and then judge a person according to that skewed sample. Yet PolitiFact does exactly that, which doesn't even address the fact that the past PolitiFact ratings were extremely questionable.

PolitiFact has it out for Bachmann, and they can't even be honest about it:

We swear we're not trying to pick on her, but we just couldn't let this latest one go.

And I could forgive picking out a mere five statements that end up with ratings skewed to the left if the analysis was conducted professionally. Let's just say that Farley is off on the wrong foot when he spends a bit more than the first paragraph attacking Bachmann instead of getting straight to fact checking.

Recently, Bachmann went on record to declare that because of ACORN's involvement in the census and other privacy concerns, she would only tell 2010 census takers how many people are in her household -- and nothing more.

Here's how she explained it in a Washington Times interview (which you can listen to here):

"Now ACORN has been named one of the national partners, which will be a recipient again of federal money," Bachmann said. "And they will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public. This is very concerning because the motherload (sic) of all data information will be from the census. And, of course, we think of the census as just counting how many people live in your home. Unfortunately, the census data has become very intricate, very personal (with) a lot of the questions that are asked.

"And I know for my family the only question that we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that."

PolitiFact apparently can't blame "motherload" on Bachmann or the Washington Times. It's "mother lode." But the main issue, at least for PolitiFact, comes in the final paragraph, where Bachmann claims that the Constitution merely requires a counting of the number of people rather than their race, income and other data.

In this item, we'll address Bachmann's claim that she's only constitutionally obligated to provide the number of people in her household.

Here's what the Constitution actually says:

"Representation and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers...the actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct."

So Bachmann pegged it. Or did she? Farley apparently doesn't think so:

So the Constitution itself does not contain any requirement, as Bachmann claims.

If "the actual enumeration shall be made" is not a requirement, then what is it?

Farley tries to explain:

We draw your attention to the last clause, "in such a manner as they shall by law direct." The "they" in that sentence refers to members of Congress. They write laws about the content of the census and require that people answer the questions.

If "the actual enumeration shall be made" shall be made "in such a manner as they shall by law direct" then it isn't a requirement? So the Congress could comply with the Constitution by counting the number of people in the respective states by counting the orange trees in the respective states?

Have we encountered the mother lode of journalistic doubletalk or what?

Farley goes on:

Subsequent Census Acts expanded the number of questions exponentially.

According to Census spokeswoman Stacy Gimbel, these laws came under the authority of the "Necessary and Proper" clause of the Constitution:

"The Congress shall have the power . . . To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."

A minor point to Farley and Gimbel, here. If the nation has something like the Three-Fifths Compromise, it is necessary and proper to ask whether a person is slave or free in order to fulfil the requirements of the law. One cannot simply use the Elastic Clause to justify any and all questions on the census, however. And since the Three Fifths Compromise is no longer in effect, there is no apparent question beyond "how many people live in your home" that is "necessary and proper" to legal fulfilment of the census.

So, lacking further explanation from Farley, the Constitution apparently includes the requirement that Bachmann supposedly claims it has.

Farley makes no clear attempt to accomplish that explanation, but instead moves on to the generalized government justification for asking plenty of personal questions on Census questionnaires:

Congress' use of the Census to ask questions well beyond just the number of people has been upheld several times by the Supreme Court, Gimbel said, citing several cases.

As previously noted by Gimbel, the justification for the additional questions comes from the Elastic Clause rather than from the census provision in the Constitution. I examined a recent Census case decided in Texas, and in my humble opinion the judge in that case (Melinda Harmon) used dubious reasoning at times*. Nobody, I think, questions the right of the government to collect information to assist in the job of governing. The questions arise because of the threat of penalty for failing to provide that information. Harmon did make use of the straw man objection to the mere collection of the information. The means of collection serve as the context of the complaint.

In all, it is certainly arguable that Judge Harmon showed undue deference to the government's position.

So back to Farley:

What's more, a law passed by Congress requires people to answer "any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census" from the U.S. Census.

Every federal law ever ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court was passed by Congress, so it hardly serves as an infallible defense against the charge of illegitimacy. But perhaps Farley is making a different point. Let us continue to follow along:

Bachmann's claims that the Constitution only requires people to say how many people live in their household is "completely baseless," Gimbel said.

I wish we had the entire quotation from Gimbel, because Farley's account makes her claim seem utterly baseless. The Elastic Clause that provides the justification for virtually all of the questions apart from the number of persons living in the home makes no specific requirements of anyone. Thus, with respect to the Census, the only specific Constitutional requirement is to report how many people are there.

Bachmann is still correct.

After a mild digression into past misuses of information collected by Census workers, Farley drops the conclusion:

Bachmann is not only wrong here, she is engaging in fearmongering that encourages people to break the law. And in doing so, she's falsely telling people that the Constitution would support them. In fact, the Washington Times reporter followed her answer by saying, "Well, I'm going to take your hint then and that'll save me some time." And so we feel it's necessary to rate this one Pants on Fire.

1) Farley, journalistic bluster aside, never makes the case that Bachmann is wrong about the Census provision in the Constitution only supporting the collection of generic population numbers.

2) Bachmann is arguably correct that the Constitution would support a person who objects to answering certain of the Census questions. Whether that justification would ultimately work in court is a separate issue, and I doubt that even Farley holds the courts to be infallible authorities.

Bachmann, I might point out, was a lawyer prior to entering politics. She is likely to know the law better than either Farley or Gimbel. And it should go without saying that her statement about the Census, taken charitably, reflects her own legal opinion of the Census rather than her legal opinion about the wisest way to answer the Census.

Again, Bachmann spoke accurately and PolitiFact only produced evidence of its own bias with its attempt at fact-checking.


The grades:

Robert Farley: F
Bill Adair: F


****

Stacy Gimbel


Do we have a match?

clipped from conference.journalists.org

I think we probably do have a match. See also here. This expert source didn't graduate long ago.

Grading PolitiFact: Michele Bachmann on ACORN (Updated x2)

Fact-checking the fact checkers

Another substitution of ad hominem for fact-checking

The next most recent PolitiFact entry dealing with a Michele Bachmann statement plainly set aside the objective model of journalism in favor of opinion--poorly supported opinion, counting the granting of any benefit of the doubt.

This week found PolitiFact once again grinding a political axe, and accordingly serves as a good evidence of political bias at PolitiFact.


The issue:

I'll end the suspense right away. PolitiFact finds Bachmann's claim "False."


The fact checkers:

Robert Farley (writer, researcher)
Bill Adair (editor)


Analysis:

As with the last Bachmann entry by PolitiFact I checked, this one immediately sets aside the pretense of journalistic objectivity.

U.S. Rep. Michelle (sic) Bachmann's latest outrage focuses on an old nemesis: ACORN.

The first sentence is an attack on Bachmann. The statement implies that she is guilty of serial outrage, though PolitiFact has only previously rated two of her statements. And regardless of how many were rated, the opening statement is an editorial judgment with no place in an objective news story.

In a May 6 press release, Bachmann sounded the alarm:

"At least $53 million in federal funds have gone to ACORN activists since 1994, and the controversial group could get up to $8.5 billion more tax dollars despite being under investigation for voter registration fraud in a dozen states. The economic stimulus bill enacted in February contains $3 billion that the non-profit activist group known more formally as the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now could receive, and 2010 federal budget contains another $5.5 billion that could also find its way into the group's coffers."

Press release? The text linked via PolitiFact ("U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's Web site, Press release: "ACORN got $53 million in federal funds since 94, now eligible for up to $8 billion more," May 6, 2009") consists entirely of a Washington Examiner story. Perhaps things were different when Farley investigated, but currently this "press release" is classified under "Articles," not "Press Releases" at the Bachmann Web site. In other words, the quotation attributed to Bachmann is not even her statement. Farley is primarily fact-checking Kevin Mooney's commentary for the Examiner, not Bachmann.

She has since thrown these numbers out several times in interviews, including ones with Lou Dobbs on CNN and Glenn Beck on Fox.

Bachmann on CNN with Lou Dobbs and Barney Frank:

ACORN has received approximately $53 million since the early 1990s. Now, between the stimulus and the budget that was passed by President Obama, they have access potentially to $8.5 billion.

Bachmann on the Glenn Beck program (May 13, 2009):

No organization has a right to taxpayer funding. And, and, if you look at ACORN, they have been the recipients of about $53 million in direct funding since 1994. Now with the stimulus bill and with the last budget bill, there's a potential that ACORN could have access to--get this--over $8 billion, potentially, in grants. This is serious money.

What problem does Farley detect?

In January, we addressed a piece of this when we fact-checked a claim from House Republican Leader John Boehner, who warned the economic stimulus package "could open billions of taxpayer dollars to left-wing groups like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)." Boehner was referring to $2.2 billion in the stimulus package for "neighborhood stabilization," essentially money doled out to groups to buy up abandoned and foreclosed homes, to rehabilitate them and then sell or rent them out. ACORN said it had no plans to apply for the funding, and if it did, the money would have to be used to buy and fix abandoned houses, not for voter registration efforts. We ruled that claim Barely True.

No doubt the ruling applies to Boehner's claim rather than ACORN's claim. But Bachmann does not appear to mention anything at all about using the money for voter registration and nor does Mooney's story. Is Farley's imagination on overdrive?

This latest claim from Bachmann follows the same tortured logic on an even grander scale.

What "tortured logic"? How do we get from mentioning nothing at all about the specific destination of the funding to "tortured logic" to the effect that the money would be used for voter registration? Couldn't it be enough that ACORN is innately partisan and at the same time under an ethical cloud because of its pattern of voter registration fraud? Is ACORN left wing merely because of its voter registration drives? That hardly seems like the case.

clipped from www.acorn.org

ACORN’s 2006 election campaign, "Raise the Minimum Wage," represented unprecedented victory for working families.

Let us hope for a better explanation from Farley of the supposed problems with Bachmann's claim:

A spokesman from Bachmann's office said the congresswoman got her data from a May 6, 2009, Washington Examiner commentary written by Kevin Mooney, who got the $8.5 billion figure from Matthew Vadum, a senior analyst and editor with Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank.

No kidding. Way to go, Sherlock Farley. Mooney was the one who wrote the statement you attributed to Bachmann. What ever would we do without PolitiFact?

Let's first look at how they arrived at that number. It includes, of course, the same $2.2 billion that Boehner cited from the stimulus package. Vadum also adds in another $1 billion in the stimulus for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds. ACORN could potentially tap into that, he said.

The remaining $5.5 billion comes from the Obama administration's proposed 2010 budget, specifically the budget for Housing and Urban Development. The budget plan includes $1 billion for an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, plus $4.5 billion more for CDBGs.

Comes to about $8.5 billion, then. Has Farley detected more invisible "tortured logic"?

CDBGs have been around since 1974. Obama is seeking to increase the CDBG budget, from about $3.6 billion in 2009 to $4.2 billion next year. And then there's the addition $1 billion for CDBGs in the stimulus. But the point is, this isn't some new pot of money that hasn't been available in years past. To the extent ACORN has been eligible for CDBG money for decades, it is available to ACORN now.

But the fact is, ACORN isn't eligible for CDBG funding. At least not for the controversial voter registration efforts that Republican leaders claim are a willful effort to forward the group's liberal agenda.

Note the second paragraph. Farley says that ACORN is not eligible for CDBG funding with respect to its voter registration drives. What a relief! That would cut out all but one of the aims listed on this ACORN Web page, leaving such things as a campaign for federally mandated paid sick leave--if we take Farley literally.

The problem is that we have no clear assurance that ACORN is limited to non-partisan use of the funds for any of its purposes or services. ACORN is, after all, not a government organization. Who polices their efforts to ensure non partisanship? Farley, perhaps? Is paying for Democrat votes via housing assistance less dubious than fraudulent registration practices? Farley doesn't tread anywhere near that road.

But maybe he should, as this excerpt from a CDBG document might suggest:

“Grantees are responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of grant and subgrant supported activities. Grantees must monitor . . . subgrant supported activities to assure compliance with applicable Federal requirements and that performance goals are being achieved. Grantee monitoring must cover each program, function, or activity.”
(Subpart J of 24 CFR Part 85 “Uniform Administrative Requirements for Grants and Cooperative Agreements to State and Local Governments," from here)

In short, ACORN polices ACORN and its subsidiaries, though the same source implicitly suggests that HUD inspections could occur.

But back to Farley and PolitiFact:

ACORN has a complex corporate structure. It's actually a network of affiliates. The ACORN that Republicans love to hate gets involved in political activity like voter registration. But there are other entities, like the sister company, ACORN Housing Corporation, a non-profit that provides free housing counseling to low and moderate income homebuyers. Some of the ACORN Housing affiliates have also dabbled in affordable housing projects, and have received federal funding. But ACORN Housing doesn't get involved in voter registration activities at all.

There's that "voter registration activities" straw man again. If only AIG could compartmentalize as well as Farley does on behalf of ACORN. Bachmann, Mooney and Vadum do not talk about the money going for voter registration. Yet it supposedly demonstrates Bachmann's "tortured logic."

According to the Washington Examiner's report, ACORN and its affiliates have received $53 million from the federal government since 1994. Most of that federal money went to the ACORN Housing Corporation, which by law could not be used for voter registration.

We checked, and there is no money in the stimulus package or the budget for voter registration programs.

That's great, except it is not really true that the money could not be used for voter registration. Rather, it would simply be illegal for the money to be used for voter registration or other political activities. And ACORN is reponsible for ensuring compliance, with occasional inspections from HUD. My personal experience with government inspections is that they are pretty much a joke. Make the paperwork look pretty, behave yourself while the inspection is underway, and then back to business as usual. Not that Bachmann's veracity rests on ACORN using the funds for voter registration. It is reasonable to see the entire organization as tainted by the voter registration scandals. Unless you happen to be targeting Michele Bachmann.

According to a July 2002 report from the Employment Policies Institute called "Rotten ACORN, America's Bad Seed," tax forms show that since 1997, the ACORN Housing Corporation has paid more than $5 million in fees or grants to other ACORN entities. The report does not claim, however, that federal tax dollars were shifted into ACORN voter registration efforts.

The EPI report does make the following claim, however:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is registered as a non-profit corporation in Arkansas, which does not require public financial disclosure.

Maybe that is why the report does not claim that federal tax dollars were shifted into ACORN voter registration efforts? Because there was not any real way to either confirm it one way or the other given the lack of disclosure? And Farley did not bother to mention it?

Nor this?:

Since 1977, ACORN has accepted federal government grants. That year it was awarded a grant to hire VISTA volunteers, who were supposed to be put to work helping Employment Policies Institute / www.EPIonline.org 21 low-income individuals. ACORN used the volunteers—in violation of federal law—for two of its favorite pastimes: politics and union organizing.

I guess Farley is technically accurate, since "politics and union organizing" are not voter registration efforts. But most would call them political activities. Though the voter registration aspect remains a straw man, from what I can tell.

And Farley's course takes us yet further along Surreal Boulevard:

Asked what funds ACORN Housing has transferred to other ACORN affiliates, Vadum said ACORN Housing has paid over $1.5 million to Citizens Consulting Inc., which he describes as "the shadowy part of the ACORN network where money seems to disappear into."

That's absurd, said ACORN executive director Steven Kest. Citizens Consulting Inc. is the accounting arm of the ACORN organization. CCI handles bookkeeping, payroll accounting and other financial management services for ACORN and its many affiliates. And ACORN Housing doesn't even use CCI anymore, as it now does its accounting in-house, Kest said.

Did Farley forget to mention that Citizens Consulting Inc. is run by the brother of ACORN's founder and engages in lobbying on behalf of ACORN according to one of his sources?

Apparently so:

ACORN paid Citizens Consulting, Inc.—which is run by Rathke’s brother—$520,000 for lobbying between 1998 and 2004.

The Salvador Dali of fact-checking begins painting his conclusion:

Bottom line, we don't see any evidence that ACORN Housing has transferred money to ACORN for voter registration, so we think it's incorrect for Bachmann to link federal money that ACORN Housing might receive with the more controversial voter registration activities performed by sister organization ACORN.

Bachmann did not link federal money that ACORN Housing might receive with the more controversial voter registration activities performed by ACORN, certainly not in the sense that Farley clearly intends where the current government actions would funnel money specifically to voter registration drives. She did implicitly link the practice of voter fraud to the worthiness of organizations to receive federal funding. And if ACORN Housing really isn't directly connected with ACORN proper then we should doubt that the law Bachmann duped Barney Frank into approving would apply in the first place.

Even more ridiculous is the suggestion that ACORN or any of its affiliates might actually get $8.5 billion in federal tax dollars.

Bachmann, Mooney and Vadum were each very clear that the $8.5 billion was an amount potentially available to ACORN. Farley has constructed another straw man.

clipped from blogs.zdnet.com

Straw men do not belong in the fact-checking business. Not that I'm prejudiced or anything.

(W)hen Bachmann says ACORN could get that amount, it assumes the group would get every single dime in the stimulus for fixing up abandoned homes. And remember, they said they don't even have plans to apply for any of it.

Even if Bachmann says "ACORN could get that amount" it does not, contrary to Farley's assertion, assume anything about how much ACORN would actually get. Could a person who places the worst face on Bachmann's words come to that conclusion? Sure. Farley at least provides us proof of that. But "ACORN could get that amount" is a statement of possibility and Bachmann was considerably more circumspect than Farley suggests.

The quotation Farley misattributes to Bachmann says "could get up to."

Bachmann on television with Lou Dobbs said "access potentially to $8.5 billion."

Bachmann on television with Glenn Beck said "there's a potential that ACORN could have access to ... over $8 billion, potentially, in grants."

Bachmann obviously emphasized that the figure in the $8 billion range was a potential figure. Farley, in addition to falsely attributing Mooney's words to Bachmann, obscures the care she took in making her public statements on the subject.

Between Bachmann and Farley, Bachmann is the more accurate of the two in this case. Farley helps reinforce that distinction by subsequently using ACORN's executive director, Steven Kest, as his go-to expert on accountability standards for government grants:

"These are competitive grants for very specific projects," Kest said."The money can only be used for the project you bid for. It can't go to voter registration. If you've ever had any experience with grant funding from the federal government, they do a good job of making sure the money is used for the purposes it was intended. You can't use the money for any other reason. You can't transfer the money to other vehicles for other purposes."

The Government Accounting Office seems somewhat less impressed than Kest with grant accountability standards. The GAO produced a report in 2007 called "Single Audit Quality" with the subtitle "Actions Needed to Address Persistent Audit Quality Problems."

Note the key finding of that report:

In its June 2007 Report on National Single Audit Sampling Project, the PCIE found that, overall, approximately 49 percent of single audits fell into the acceptable group, with the remaining 51 percent having deficiencies severe enough to classify the audits as limited in reliability or unacceptable. PCIE found a significant difference in results by audit size. Specifically, 63.5 percent of the large audits (with $50 million or more in federal award expenditures) were deemed acceptable compared with only 48.2 percent of the smaller audits (with at least $500,000 but less than $50 million in federal award expenditures). The PCIE report presents compelling evidence that a serious problem with single audit quality continues to exist. GAO is concerned that audits are not being conducted in accordance with professional standards and requirements. These audits may provide a false sense of assurance and could mislead users of the single audit reports.

So, ACORN is responsible for ensuring its own compliance with government standards for audits, and even if an audit occurs roughly half of the reports fall below acceptable standards. Is Kest's assurance of adequate accountability an acceptable standard for fact checking? Did we just receive an assurance from the fox that the hen house is well protected?

Dali applies the finishing strokes:

Bachmann's statement is irresponsibly misleading on several levels. She says the group under indictment for voter registration fraud could tap into billions of federal dollars. In fact, none of the federal money can be used for voter registration activities.

Again, Farley implies that Bachmann is suggesting that the federal grant money would be directed toward voter registration activities even though Bachmann neither says that nor provides more than the very faintest of implications that would be the case. There is a disconnect between what Farley says Bachmann said ("the group under federal indictment for voter registration fraud could tap into billions of federal dollars") and the subsequent accusation that the statement is misleading ("In fact, none of the federal money can be used for voter registration activities").

It should go without saying that the Bachmann statement is correct even if it were true that none of the federal money can be used for voter registration activities. And, as shown above, the assurance that none of that money would be used for political activities is diaphanously thin.

Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that Bachmann's supposed misleading is a product of Farley's faulty inference.

Farley's last word rolls his faulty inferences into a neat conclusion:

An affiliate like ACORN Housing could conceivably apply for a grant to build an affordable housing project, or to buy, fix and sell abandoned homes, but that's exactly what the money would have to be used for. Suggestions that one of the affiliates might funnel money to ACORN for political activity is, so far, unsubstantiated conjecture. And then there's the matter of trying to make a splash by throwing out the massive $8.5 billion number, suggesting ACORN "could get" it, as in all of it. That's absurd. We rule Bachmann's statement False.

1) We have little assurance that ACORN could not use the money other than for its intended purpose. Indeed, it is possible that buying, fixing and selling abandoned homes can be done in a politically partisan manner. Farley fails to consider that possibility, and does a wholly inadequate job of supporting his associated assertions.

2) Neither Bachmann nor her sources suggested that that an ACORN affililiate would funnel the as-yet-unallocated money toward political activity. Farley's own source did, however, provide evidence that ACORN had steered grant money toward political activities in the past. Bachmann's point is simple: ACORN has been indicted for engaging in fraudulent voter registration, and that should disqualify the organization from receiving federal grant money. Bachmann has her facts straight. One might disagree with Bachmann that all branches of the ACORN tree should be barred from receiving federal funding, but that is a political question, not a question of fact.

3) Finally, as noted above, Farley is simply making things up when he suggests that Bachmann is saying that ACORN would get the entire $8.5 billion for the asking. That is not a fair reading of Bachmann's public statements. Farley's inferences suggest a political bias on his part.

The inaccuracy of Farley's attempt at fact checking is positively surreal.


The grades:

Robert Farley: F
Bill Adair: F


Update:

I wanted to belatedly draw attention to the way PolitiFact uses misleading blurbs to advertise its stories. See below for an image clipped from the PolitiFact main "Truth-O-Meter" page.


What jumps out from this graphic? Two things. The image of Michele Bachmann, helpfully labeled, and the "False" Truth-O-Meter rating on the opposite side of the box. And there would not be anything wrong with that if the grade was close to realistic. But observe the text accompanying the graphics.

To the left, we have the statement Farley misattributes to Bachmann. Not a good start.

To the right, we have a brief caption apparently justifying the rating given to Bachmann:

"Access to" and "actually getting" are two very different things.

Yes they are two very different things. But Bachmann only emphasized access to while never suggesting "actually getting." Even comparing "actually getting" with the statement falsely attributed to Bachmann cannot support the charge ("could get up to").

The graphic fairly represents Farley's ridiculous attempt at fact checking, albeit without letting on that it is ridiculous. But it is tremendously unfair to Bachmann.

Shameful.


Update 2:

Megathanks to Matthew Vadum for prominently linking to this post through a story of his at The American Spectator. His story makes this attack on Bachmann the central exhibit of a brief evaluation of the efforts at PolitiFact; a portion of the story delves into the general liberal tilt of PolitiFact's parent, the St. Petersburg Times.

Look under the tag "Grading PolitiFact" for more evaluations of a fact-checking outfit that might as well be taking its cues from Media Matters.


May 24, 2009: Corrected spelling of eight cylinder word "diaphanous"
Minutes later, corrected spelling of "Michele" where applicable.
Finally took out that extra "e" from "judgment"

Grading PolitiFact: Bachmann on swine flu: fact check or editorial sneer?

Ordinarily I can leap to the defense of journalists over the charge of political bias. But Bill Adair Adair makes that difficult with his recent PolitiFact story on Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R, MN). The PolitiFact entry checked a fact that did not particularly need checking and used it as a justification for a generalized attack on Bachmann.

Compounding the problem, Adair provided no evidence that he used due diligence in checking the facts and ends up giving a misleading impression about the statement at issue.

Fact-checking the fact checkers

The issue

Bachmann appeared on an Internet program, the PJTV Daily show, with host Allen Barton. While on the topic of swine flu, Bachmann made the following statement:

I find it interesting it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter, and I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.
(PJTV; the quotation occurs at about the 12 minute mark)

The fact checkers

Bill Adair: writer, researcher

Scott Montgomery: editor


Analysis

Adair's piece oozes with opinion. The contrast between the objective reporting paradigm and Adair's editorial is immediately apparent:

Michele Bachmann, a Republican member of Congress from Minnesota, is known for her controversial remarks. During the fall of 2008, she nearly lost her re-election campaign because she said Barack Obama "may have anti-American views." In a 2009 radio interview, she said incorrectly that six Muslim clerics who were removed from a US Airways flight in 2006 were attending a "victory celebration" for Keith Ellison, a Muslim who was elected to Congress.

Do we need any of this background in order to check the facts on when the swine flu broke out? Of course not. And Adair does not mention Barack Obama's long-time membership at a church from which anti-American sermons were preached with apparent regularity, nor the fact that the six Muslim clerics had been in attendance at an event where Ellison was a featured speaker. Those types of facts might detract from the attack on Bachmann.

So we weren't exactly surprised when we heard her suggest a link between Democratic presidents and the swine flu.

Is Adair's degree of surprise relevant in terms of objectively checking facts? Of course not. It serves as an admission that he checked this set of facts with an existing bias, however.

Adair spends a few paragraphs covering swine flu history such as the 1970s outbreak (starting under President Ford, not Carter) and a fatal case from the 1980s before sweeping to his conclusion:

So Bachmann is wrong about a Democrat being in charge during the 1976 outbreak and she fails to note the swine flu death in 1988. Hmmm. Two swine flu incidents during Republican administrations. By Bachmann's logic, we should find that "interesting."

Yes, Bachmann was wrong about a Democrat being president when the 1970s flu outbreak occurred. And she did not mention the swine flu death in 1988. While that is enough to keep Adair from receiving a flunking grade, the snideness of the latter sentence figures prominently in determining his final grade.

What is this about "Bachmann's logic"? Does a person need logic to find a coincidence interesting, setting aside for the moment the fact that there was no coincidence in the first place? I find antique toasters interesting, but even if I say I find them interesting it does not necessariliy follow that I want others to also find them interesting. A statement of personal interest is not the same as a prescriptive statement. Adair apparently sees the latter, without any evident regard for the principle of favorable interpretation. On the contrary, Adair goes on to turn that principle on its head:

But we don't (find it interesting). It's ridiculous for her to suggest a partisan link with a deadly disease. That's not just a mistake, that's absurdly false. So we'll get out the lighter (after we wash our hands!) and set the Truth-O-Meter ablaze. This one's a Pants on Fire.

Note carefully what Adair does with the above. He found Bachmann's statement appropriately false as to the facts, and then without bothering to make any case for it, whips out Bachmann's grade apparently based on what he sees as Bachmann's underlying argument: that the swine flu coincidence has some basis in partisan politics.

Is his judgment fair, supposing that we forgive his neglect in making a case for his conclusion?

I don't think it can pass as a fair judgment, for the simple reason that Bachmann in the immediate context disavowed placing any blame on President Obama. Adair would have to dismiss what she said in favor of what he supposes her to mean. Adair's missing argument has one thing in its favor, that being the relatively stupid nature of Bachmann's statement even if she happened to be correct. It really isn't interesting if a Democrat was in the White House for two different outbreaks of a similar strain of flu unless there is a partisan tie-in. But that does not grant license for a would-be objective reporter to assume that intent to the contrary of the clear statement of the speaker.


The grades

Bill Adair: D+
Scott Montgomery: D+


Final note

To my knowledge, PolitiFact makes no explicit statement of commitment to traditional "objective" journalism. I have no problem with others doing journalism with a bias, just so long as those reports are not presented as though they are objective. It is not enough, however, for PolitiFact to let its bias in practice announce its lack of objectivity. The tradition of objectivity, strained as it has been for no less than the past 30 years, continues to color public perception of the mainstream press.

If the news outlet is not trying to achieve objectivity then let it state so plainly. I'd suggest "fair and balanced" only that one is already surely copyrighted.

May 4, 2009: Added a missing "n" in Bachmann's name in the midst of a quotation