Grading PolitiFact: Missing context doesn't count against Obama's manufacturing jobs claim

 MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Bridget Hall Grumet:  editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact's fact checking on this one is slightly deeper than "President Obama tells the truth, therefore it's true."

PolitiFact doesn't provide much context with this claim.  Real Clear Politics has a transcript, though (bold emphasis added):

We can choose a future where we export more products and outsource fewer jobs. After a decade that was defined by what we bought and borrowed, we're getting back to basics, and doing what America has always done best:  We're making things again.
(APPLAUSE)
I've met workers in Detroit and Toledo who feared they'd never build another American car. And today, they can't build them fast enough, because we reinvented a dying auto industry that's back on top of the world.
(APPLAUSE)
I've worked with business leaders who are bringing jobs back to America, not because our workers make less pay, but because we make better products. Because we work harder and smarter than anyone else.
(APPLAUSE)
I've signed trade agreements that are helping our companies sell more goods to millions of new customers, goods that are stamped with three proud words: Made in America.
(APPLAUSE)
After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years. And now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America. We can help big factories and small businesses double their exports, and if we choose this path, we can create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years. You can make that happen. You can choose that future.

Mr. Obama made his remarks in drawing a supposed contrast between his leadership, past and future, with that of his Republican opponent in the presidential election ("You can choose that future").  Obama therefore takes credit to some extent for the increase in manufacturing jobs.  PolitiFact, contrary to its supposed policy, does not bother to rate the degree to which the president was responsible.

PolitiFact just grades whether the numbers add up:

The rise in manufacturing jobs that Obama is referring to may be modest compared to the prior decade’s decline, but he has described the numbers carefully. We rate his statement True.

PolitiFact's "True" rating, of course, supposedly means "The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing." 

But significant information was missing from Mr. Obama's claim.  A CNN fact check noted:

(A)s with other statistics cited during the three-day Democratic convention, it's not quite the whole picture. Manufacturing sector employment is still down by about 500,000 since Obama took office and by more than 3.7 million since the start of the recession in December 2007.

"Nothing significant missing"?

There is a real growth in manufacturing owing largely to exports.  But a Brookings Institution report offers scant evidence that the reasons Mr. Obama gives provide the explanation for the increase.  Brookings does credit Mr. Obama's free trade agreements with Panama, Columbia and South Korea for helping to stimulate foreign trade.  But Brookings and the president omit mentioning that the negotiation of the free trade agreements preceded Mr. Obama's presidency and also fail to mention the subsequent delay in finalizing the deals.

Politico:

The United States and South Korea had originally signed the FTA back in June 2007. The one with Columbia had been signed in November 2006 while the Panama FTA was signed in July 2007.

Maybe if those agreements had passed through the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2008 it might have lessened the effects of the recession and accelerated the recovery of American manufacturing.

PolitiFact's fact check, consisting of eight short paragraphs and a total of three reference sources, doesn't show much effort at reaching the truth.  It acknowledges parts of the story omitted by Mr. Obama yet fails to figure the lack of context in when making its final ruling.  The ruling claims Mr. Obama "describes the numbers carefully" but shows no evidence that the president mentioned the relevant caveats.

It resembles a rubber stamp more than a fact check.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Bridget Hall Grumet:  F

No "A" for effort.


Afters:

Readers might register surprise at what counts as a manufactured export.

(click image for enlarged view)

Update Sept. 10, 2012:

Sometimes the transcript doesn't do justice to the original.  With the live speech, Mr. Obama apparently ad-libbed on the text of his speech.  Rather than the three proud words "Made in America" he said something a bit different:




Hat tip to Power Line.

The perplexing ways of PolitiFact

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

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

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

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

The original version:

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

The revised version:

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

The summaries differ by one word.  "Mostly True" changes to "Half True" for the updated version of the story.

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

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

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact again ignores data on effective federal tax rates

PolitiFact's latest fact check involving federal taxation sticks with its persistent pattern of ignoring and/or minimizing data on effective federal tax rates, including a study by the otherwise esteemed Congressional Budget Office.

A new ad from President Barack Obama’s campaign continues the drumbeat that Mitt Romney is a privileged rich guy who isn't paying his fair share of taxes.

"You work hard, stretch every penny," a narrator says. "But chances are, you pay a higher tax rate than him: Mitt Romney made $20 million in 2010, but paid only 14 percent in taxes — probably less than you."

Huh.  The Obama campaign didn't specify federal income taxes.  No worries.  Obama isn't Michele Bachmann, so PolitiFact can overlook the campaign's oversight.

PolitiFact then:

Bachmann would have been right if she’d said, "the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all income taxes into the federal government." But she didn’t say that -- and even if she had, her decision to focus on income taxes, rather than looking at the whole federal tax picture, would have presented the numbers in such a way that wealthier Americans would look more heavily taxed than they are.

So we want "the whole federal tax picture"?  Not so.  PolitiFact wants the tax picture minus the effects of corporate and excise taxes.  The thread is consistent and continues through today.

PolitiFact:

If you just look at income taxes, Obama is incorrect.

Bummer.  But since Obama didn't specify "(federal) income taxes" PolitiFact can consider payroll taxes while continuing to ignore corporate and excise taxes.  Or something like that.

PolitiFact:

So what happens when you add payroll taxes to income taxes? Obama's ad is accurate. Here's the breakdown when you include income taxes and both sides of the payroll tax (the parts paid for by employee and employer):

Bottom fifth of earners: 1 percent
Second-to-bottom fifth:  7.8 percent
Middle fifth: 15.5 percent
Second-highest fifth: 18.7 percent
Highest fifth: 24.3 percent

Once again, we can’t know exactly what percentage of Americans paid a higher effective tax rate than Romney's 14 percent, but the top two ranges, plus a significant share of the middle group, most likely did. So probably more than half exceeded Romney’s rate, making the Obama ad accurate.

Yippee!  Obama's ad is accurate!  Average out the true and the false, give the president a "Half True" and nobody really needs to know about that messy corporate and excise tax stuff.

Speaking of that messy corporate and excise tax stuff:

(click image for enlarged view)

The chart comes directly from the CBO report mentioned up above.  There are two important things to note.  First, excise taxes fall more heavily on those in the lower income quintiles.  That's a minor point.  Second, the burden of corporate taxes falls heavily on those with higher incomes.  And the higher you go with income, the higher the corporate tax burden.  That likely means that persons like Romney pay higher portions of the corporate tax burden as a percentage of their federal taxes.

Using "the whole federal tax picture" that PolitiFact once cited as its ideal standard, the middle quintile pays less than half the average federal tax burden of a person in the top 1 percent in 2006 (14.2 percent compared to 31.2 percent).  That means that it is very probably false that most people pay less in federal taxes than Romney.

Luckily for the president, PolitiFact can make it look otherwise by cherry picking.

That's PolitiFact for you.


Afters: 

See also the review of a similar story from Annenberg Fact Check.


After Afters:

Just a little review of what PolitiFact wrote while rating Bachmann "False":

[Bachmann's] decision to focus on income taxes, rather than looking at the whole federal tax picture, would have presented the numbers in such a way that wealthier Americans would look more heavily taxed than they are.

PolitiFact's hypocrisy is pretty overwhelming, isn't it?

Grading PolitiFact: Characterizing Mitt Romney's characterization of Obama

PolitiFact's attempt to use an "In Context" item to soften the negative effects of President Obama's "you didn't build that" moment didn't work out so well.

More was needed to help the president.



The issue.

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis:

Watch how many times PolitiFact uses partial quotations to protect its Obama from having his statement taken out of context.  We have two already in the graphic up above ("is the result of government" "hard-working people").

On with the fact check.

PolitiFact tells us that the Romney campaign and the Obama campaign have been wrangling over whether the latter insulted entrepreneurs.  That issue is somewhat settled when entrepreneurs perceive an insult.  Romney wins that point.  PolitiFact wants to let us know that Obama did not mean to insult entrepreneurs.  And maybe attacking Romney in relation to this issue is the ticket.

PolitiFact:

Romney, in comments at public events and in several ads, has argued that the remarks show a general disdain for business. The Republican National Committee and the National Federation of Independent Business are among the groups have [sic] released their own videos and statements echoing Romney that the president is out of touch.

The above summary is fair but potentially misleading.  We'll watch for those effects as the story progresses.

PolitiFact:

In one fundraising e-mail [sic], Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, decried Obama’s "naïve view that government, and not the hard work, talent, and initiative of people, is the center of society and the economy."

The email from Rhoades helps make it plain that PolitiFact distorts the Romney campaign's argument.  The argument is that Obama credits the government too much, not that he doesn't credit entrepreneurs at all. Yet the latter is what PolitiFact suggests in its graphic.

PolitiFact:

In another campaign e-mail [sic], Amanda Henneberg, a Romney spokeswoman, said Obama had "denigrated Americans who built their own businesses."

Henneberg's statement dovetails with the Romney campaign message that Obama overemphasizes the role of government, but PolitiFact can potentially make it look like she is saying that Obama gives entrepreneurs no credit.

PolitiFact:

The issue has become so big that the Obama campaign felt the need to address the issue head-on in a Web video titled "Tampered" that quoted media accounts saying the quote had been taken out of context.

The current size of the issue could mean that the Romney campaign is right that that Obama is out of touch.  But it would help Obama if it appeared that people were simply misled by Romney about what Obama said.  PolitiFact did the Obama campaign a favor, by the way, by overlooking for the sake of this story the Obama campaign video suggesting Obama did not say what Romney quotes him to say.



Not only was Obama taken out of context, he didn't even say it in the first place.

Or something like that.

PolitiFact settles on the latest Romney campaign video for purposes of its fact check, focusing in particular on the Romney campaign's preface to the video:

President Obama recently said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Clearly, this President doesn't understand how our economy works.

Mitt Romney understands that we have to celebrate people who start enterprises and employ other people rather than devalue them. Success is not the result of government, it is the result of hard-working people who take risks, create dreams, and build lives for themselves and for their families.

PolitiFact:

In this item, we’ll rate the claim that Obama was saying success "is the result of government," not "hard-working people," when he said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

PolitiFact distorts Romney's claim by taking his comments out of context.  Ironic, no?

PolitiFact tries to set the stage by asserting that Romney's quote of Obama distorts the meaning of Obama's claim.  In effect, PolitiFact suggests this is obvious if one reads Obama's statement in context.  But doesn't the entire context of Obama's statement emphasize the role of the government in business creation at the expense of the entrepreneur?  How does PolitiFact miss the obvious?

PolitiFact:

We believe, as do our friends at FactCheck.org and the Washington Post Fact Checker, that Romney has seriously distorted Obama’s comments.

PolitiFact is checking this fact by proclaiming it obvious that the context of Obama's statement puts the lie to Romney's claim.  Other fact checkers supposedly agree.  Hopefully one or both of them actually bothered to check some facts.

There's really nothing like that in this fact check.  It consists of PolitiFact insisting that Obama was taken out of context, and Romney's statements taken out of context make up the bulk of the case against Romney.

PolitiFact's conclusion, part one

In speeches and videos, the Romney campaign has repeatedly distorted Obama's words. By plucking two sentences out of context, Romney twists the president's remarks and ignores their real meaning.

The preceding sentences make clear that Obama was talking about the importance of government-provided infrastructure and education to the success of private businesses.

PolitiFact is partly right.  Obama was extolling the importance of the government role in allowing business to prosper.  He did so in the context of beneficiary businesses "giving back" as if it wasn't the taxes of businesses that helped pay for the infrastructure in the first place.  And the words he used diminish the role of individual effort ("Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there").

Why does PolitiFact simply ignore the material in Obama's speech that diminishes the importance of the entrepreneur?

PolitiFact's conclusion, part two:

Romney also conveniently ignores Obama's clear summary of his message, that "the point is ... that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

By leaving out the "individual initiative" reference, Romney and his supporters have misled viewers and given a false impression. For that, we rate the claim False.

Romney ignores Obama's "clear summary" because the summary is ambiguous.  The summary provides no justification for successful businesses "giving back."  That concept comes out as Obama essentially tells entrepreneurs that they were lucky (others worked just as hard) and owe a big honkin' portion of their success to Our Glorious Government.  And the government, Obama says, is ready to take its rightful cut.

By leaving out the reference to increasing taxes on entrepreneurs, PolitiFact misleads its readers and gives a false impression.

PolitiFact creates what Mr. Obama likes to call a "false choice."  It isn't whether the government gets all the credit or the entrepreneur gets all the credit.  It's which one has the lead role in the economy (bold emphasis added):

Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, decried Obama’s "naïve view that government, and not the hard work, talent, and initiative of people, is the center of society and the economy."

By neglecting the importance of that context, PolitiFact again misleads readers and gives a false impression.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Bill Adair:  F

Once again, the subject of the fact check was arguably more accurate than his would-be fact checkers.

Afters:

The fact checks by Annenberg Fact Check and the Washington Post Fact Checker essentially leap to the same conclusions PolitiFact achieved with its leaps of logic.  But both of the other fact check services did a superior job to PolitiFact in providing context for the issue.


Aug. 4, 2012:  Fixed a handful of minor typos/grammatical errors

Grading PolitiFact: More unprecedented Obama

Words matter -- We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Amy Sherman:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor


Analysis:

One would think that persons paying close attention to the specific wording of a claim would accurately note the difference between "outspent" and "out-raised."

PolitiFact give an accurate enough account of the statement from President Obama and its context in a fundraising letter.

Then comes the odd turn:

We researched whether Obama’s team could be outraised by Romney and concluded that there are too many unknowns to determine if his prediction will come true. (Read our extended analysis of the issue.)

It's okay to research whether Mitt Romney would outraise Mr. Obama so long as one maintains the distinction between raising money and spending it.  Certainly it's far easier to outspend an opponent if one has raised more money.

The fact check proceeds to focus on fundraising and concludes that presidential challengers Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole outraised the incumbent in 1980 and 1996 respectively.

The issue of spending gets somehow misplaced along the way and we end up with the following conclusion (bold emphasis added):

Obama was wrong to suggest that there hadn’t been other presidents in modern history to be outraised in their re-elections. Looking at numbers alone, Carter and Clinton fall into that category. But what we are comparing is  primary races then with total fundraising for the general election now.

We think 1980 and 1996 certainly fall under "modern history," but the campaign finance picture has changed dramatically since then, and there are important caveats to those races. Those earlier races involved public financing -- this time Obama and Romney are forgoing those dollars.

PolitiFact rates the statement "Mostly False," defined as "The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."

Yes, the fundraising letter ignores the critical fact that the modern era for incumbent presidents begins this year with Mr. Obama's campaign.  Both campaigns eschewed public financing for this election.  But what was the element of truth in the statement?  It was false that Mr. Obama would be the first incumbent outspent by his rival.

The fact check doesn't tell you what's true about the statement, if anything.

We are left to guess whether Mr. Obama receives credit for the underlying argument, minus the unprecedented second-place fundraising, that the Romney campaign will outspend the President's campaign.  And the fact check never gets around to checking on spending after looking at fundraising.

In the end, we get another example of PolitiFact applying its standards unequally.  PolitiFact checks the wrong fact--fundraising instead of spending--and after that ignores its own "burden of proof" standard that assumes a claim false if PolitiFact does not discover evidence to support the claim.

The grades:

Amy Sherman:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

The PolitiFact team checked the wrong fact, so readers will not find out from this story whether past incumbent presidents were outspent by their challengers.  The PolitiFact team gave Mr. Obama a "Mostly False" rating without explaining what aspect of the claim it found true.  That rating appears to contradict PolitiFact's statement of principles.

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact math on equal pay for women (Updated)

President Obama's re-election campaign alerts us that women receive only 77 cents on the dollar for performing the same work as men.

No worries.  PolitiFact is on the case:

The 77 cent figure has become a rallying cry for those who seek to eliminate employment discrimination based on gender. And it’s a genuine statistic.

I already know it's a genuine statistic.  It is, for example, the amount of money one should expect as change when using $1 to buy a 33 cent item.  It is probably not at all a genuine statistic in the context of equal pay for equal work, however.

PolitiFact explains, notwithstanding its own muddying of the waters:

In a report released in September 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau wrote that in 2010, the female-to-male earnings ratio of full-time, year-round workers was 0.77." Translated into dollars, that means that in 2010, women working full-time earned 77 cents for every dollar earned by men working full time.

And that's for the same work that men do?  No, of course it isn't.  Consequently, PolitiFact's explanatory paragraph is about as relevant as mine explaining how much change one should expect after using $1 to pay for a 33 cent item.  It's not relevant, and one would hope that a campaign supporting a candidate who presumes to address the problem would know which stats are relevant and which are not.

Probably the campaign knew the stat was misused but did it anyway to improve the impact of the ad.  The error's just too obvious.

Speaking for myself, the right approach to this fact check involves trying to estimate the real difference between pay for men and women doing the same work and confirming whether the Obama campaign landed anywhere near the ballpark.  PolitiFact chose instead to explore the ins and outs of the 77 cent statistic, in the end admitting that it serves as the wrong vehicle for the ad's claim about men and women receiving different pay for the same work.

PolitiFact's approach yielded the following conclusion:

The Obama campaign took a legitimate statistic and described it in a way that makes it sound much more dramatic than it actually is. The 77-cent figure is real, but it does not factor in occupations held, hours worked or length of tenure. Describing that statistic as referring to the pay for women "doing the same work as men" earns it a rating of Mostly False.

That's just PolitiFact spin.

The Obama campaign made a claim about disparate pay for men and women doing the same work and tried to support it with a statistic that doesn't take into account the type of work done.  That's a flatly wrong approach, perhaps even "pants on fire" if one believes in applying subjective judgments to rulings on matters of fact.

PolitiFact's conclusion suggests that the Obama campaign was trying oh-so-hard to simply convey that men and women are paid differently irrespective of the jobs they do and (oopsie!) just happened to get a little mixed up in the delivery.  There's one way to keep the statistic from earning a "False" rating or worse:  Find out the real number and determine whether the 77 cent figure is somewhat close.

Nothing else will do.


Update:

Factcheck.org tried to do the fact check the right way.

The conclusion:

But the president was flatly wrong to say that women are paid 77 percent of the pay of men for the “same work.” And the fact that women’s median annual earnings are 77 percent of men’s isn’t all or even mostly due to discrimination, as the ad implies.

"Mostly False" gives the Obama campaign considerable benefit of the doubt.

A comeuppance for PolitiFact and Rex Nutting (Updated)

The math simultaneously backs up Nutting’s calculations and demolishes Romney’s contention. The only significant shortcoming of the graphic was that it failed to note that some of the restraint in spending was fueled by demands from congressional Republicans.
--Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact

(clipped from PolitiFact.com;
click image for larger view )

The White House, with an assist from PolitiFact, has turned Rex Nutting's analysis of President Obama's spending into a key talking point for Obama's re-election campaign.

While I'm neither an accountant nor an economist, I've put together enough evidence to show that Nutting and PolitiFact are selling falsehoods as the truth.

Cherry picking the metric

As I illustrated in an earlier post (at PolitiFact Bias), the "annual average" increase in spending serves as a very misleading method of measuring increased spending.

Cherry picking the window

Nutting compared presidents according to a four-year window of performance.  But Obama has only spent money over a span of less than three years (not counting FY 2009).  This allows Nutting to hide Obama's spending increases over a four-year average by figuring in the constraints of a Republican House of Representatives and the loss of a filibuster-proof Senate majority.

Failing to adequately contextualize Obama's actual spending

PolitiFact admitted in an update that Obama had an unusually active role in spending during FY 2009.  Obama and Congress passed an expensive economic stimulus package among other spending bills.  Nutting and PolitiFact dropped Bush's spending in FY 2009 by $140 billion to offset that spending, but that fails to account for bailout programs like TARP.  TARP involved great sums of money disbursed in unusual ways, so any fact check failing to nail down the major impacts of bailouts on spending for FY 2009 will not definitively address the issue of spending increases relative to the FY 2009 baseline.  Nutting certainly made no serious attempt, and PolitiFact shamefully overlooked that failure.

Cherry picking the future projections for the cherry-picked window

Cherry picking the window was bad enough, but Nutting and PolitiFact amplified the error by also cherry picking the future projections used to complete the picture of Obama's window.  The Office of Management and Budget made future projections.  Nutting did not use the OMB projections despite his use of OMB data for figuring the spending increases of earlier presidents.  Instead, Nutting (and PolitiFact) used the lower of two CBO projections.  Needless to say, the CBO projections used were less realistic as well as more favorable to Obama than the other two.

Shielding a fact check from scrutiny

PolitiFact obscured the reasoning behind its rating of Nutting's claim by simultaneously ruling on a statement from Mitt Romney.  PolitiFact did not answer a request that it explain how it accounted for $140 billion taken from Bush's 2009 spending baseline and instead supposedly credited to Obama.  Was that amount added to Obama's FY 2009 spending or did Obama obtain the benefit of a spending Twilight Zone in FY 2009?


Fixing the problems

The right metric, the right window

Grading PolitiFact: President Obama and Romney's alleged outsourcing

HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

PolitiFact finds "Half True" the statement from the Obama campaign that "Romney Outsourced call center jobs to India."  According to PolitiFact's statement of principles (see epigraph), the statement is "partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.


The fact checkers:

Molly Moorhead:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis:

I think I was drawn to this story out of a sense of wonder.  How can one obtain a "Half True" for a non-compound proposition?  For "Beavis and Butt-head broke the window with a rock" we have a compound proposition.  Beavis broke the window with a rock.  Butt-head broke the window with a rock.  If one of the two cartoon characters didn't break the window one could still consider the statement half true.  But no direct route to that kind of half truth exists for "Romney outsourced call center jobs to India."

Let's observe the experts at work.

PolitiFact:

The Obama campaign pointed us to news accounts of a budget issue in 2004, the second year of Romney’s term. The Democratic-controlled Massachusetts legislature sent Romney a budget with an amendment that "would prohibit Massachusetts from contracting with companies that ‘outsource’ the state's work to other countries," according to the Boston Globe.

Okay, we can see where this is going.  Romney vetoes the proposed legislation, leaving in place the status quo and allowing a company contracting with the commonwealth of Massachusetts to outsource jobs.

By analogy, Butt-head failed to confiscate from Beavis a rock that Beavis could throw at a window.  Since Beavis subsequently broke the window with the same rock, it is half-true that Butt-head broke the window.

Maybe we're missing something?

PolitiFact:

At the time Massachusetts had a $160,000 a month contract with Citigroup to process debit cards for food stamps. Citigroup outsourced its customer service call center to a facility in India.

A small but important detail: the state didn’t outsource the work -- a state contractor did.

So back to our analogy, somebody definitely broke the window with a rock.  Beavis did it, but Butt-head could have prevented it.  So, when somebody says "Butt-head broke the window with a rock" it is (by analogy) a small but important detail that Beavis was the one who broke the window with the rock.  Which brings us to "Half True," apparently.  Perhaps a larger and even more important detail might have caused the claim to drop as low as "Mostly False," such as Daria breaking the window with a baseball bat instead of Beavis breaking it with a rock.

PolitiFact:

Our ruling

Obama’s ad charges that "Romney outsourced call center jobs to India."

The Obama campaign's wording suggests a broader, more deliberate policy when the state was sending some work overseas. But in choosing to veto the bill, Romney let the arrangement continue. The statement leaves out important information. We rate it Half True.

The barely coherent summary matches the barely coherent logic preceding it.

PolitiFact ends up drawing a very rough sketch of its reasoning, but apparently the writer and editor was misled by placing an improper emphasis on the fact that jobs were outsourced to India.  The point of the ad is not that jobs were outsourced to India.  The ad stresses Romney's responsibility for that outsourcing.  If Romney had outsourced jobs to China rather than India then one could reasonably take the original claim as "Half True" since the point of the ad holds true:  Romney did the outsourcing.

Unfortunately for PolitiFact, the "small but important" detail is big and very important in this case.  It's very misleading to use language depicting Romney as directly responsible for outsourcing jobs when in fact he simply left intact a policy permitting contracting parties to outsource jobs.  The claim of the ad is literally false but with a germ of truth:  Jobs were outsourced and Romney could have prevented it by signing the legislation.  The closely related underlying argument that Romney outsourced jobs is likewise only supported by a germ of truth.

For comparison:

MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.

Even if one thinks of Romney as a butt-head, he didn't break the window.  The greater part of the ad's message is false.


The grades:

Molly Moorhead:  F
Bill Adair:  F

 
June 15, 2012: Thanks to Matthew Hoy for highlighting this story on Twitter and via his Hoystory blog.  Hoy adds to the story with a eye-opening parallel.

Grading PolitiFact: Obama's "Julia" and Medicare

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

I've written quite a bit about PolitiFact's problem with selection bias.  This fact check serves as an excellent example of a related and perhaps even more pernicious form of bias, that arising from the selection of a story's focus.  Two stories dealing with the same topic, such as the Medicare claim in the Obama campaign's "Julia" ad, can turn out very differently.  And the ideology of the writer or editor can easily alter the story focus.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Becky Bowers:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor


Analysis:

As I pointed out in an earlier review of a "Julia" ad fact check, the context of the Obama campaign's claims about Mitt Romney has to do with hypothetical comparisons between her life under Obama's policies and Romney's policies.  Here's a closeup of the relevant part of the ad:

(click image for larger view)

For Obama we see the best-case scenario.  For Romney we get the worst-case scenario.  Medicare "could" end as we know it under either president's policies extrapolated into the future.  In Obama's case Medicare could end through a rationing regime.  In Romney's case it would end by adding expenses for recipients of the benefits to help mitigate the third-party payment dynamic that makes Medicare spending unsustainable.  Obama's argument is cherry-picked.

PolitiFact ignores Obama's point of comparison, narrowing the focus specifically to the claim regarding Romney's plan for Medicare:

We wondered, under Romney’s policies, is it true that, "Medicare could end as we know it, leaving Julia with nothing but a voucher to buy insurance, which means $6,350 extra per year for a similar plan"?

PolitiFact, at least for purposes of this fact check, does not wonder whether it is fair and proper for the Obama campaign to compare the cherry-picked rosy picture of Medicare under Obama with the cherry-picked bleak prospects for Medicare under Romney's supposed plan.  Julia's prospects under Romney could have read "Julia enrolls in Medicare, helping her to afford preventive care and the prescription drugs she needs."

Unfortunately for the Obama campaign, PolitiFact did find a few things wrong with the ad.

1)  It bases its statement of Romney's position on the older Paul Ryan budget proposal.  Romney has said he agrees in principle with the bipartisan Wyden/Ryan plan which is similar in some ways to Ryan's old plan and different in others.  Plus Romney has a plan of his own about which we know few specifics.

2)  Because of the outdated analysis, the ad has no foundation for its claim about the $6,350 voucher figure it cites.

3)  Various features in each of the plans undercut the claim that "Julia" would end up with "nothing but a voucher to buy insurance."

But the news for the Obama campaign wasn't all bad.

PolitiFact originally rated the claim "False," but after "readers" pointed out an error in the story, PolitiFact reconsidered and upgraded the rating to "Mostly False."  Woohoo.

What was the error?

PolitiFact: 

(R)eaders pointed out we had incorrectly said that the Wyden-Ryan and Romney plans for Medicare offered traditional fee-for-service Medicare alongside a premium-support or "voucher" system for purchasing private insurance. Instead, both plans offer traditional Medicare inside of a new premium-support system, as another plan that competes with private insurance.

One might well wonder why that fact makes a difference.  Unfortunately, PolitiFact made the original story unavailable.  That makes finding all the specific changes difficult.  But the summary paragraph likely includes most or all of the justification for the higher rating.

PolitiFact:

The Obama campaign ties Romney to an outdated plan with less generous spending growth and no traditional Medicare option. Romney does support a voucher-like system, but the graphic ignores critical facts that would give a different impression about his plan. We rate the claim Mostly False.

See, the Romney plan is "voucher-like" so saying his plan could only give "Julia" a voucher is true enough to qualify as "Mostly False."

By narrowing the focus to a fine point PolitiFact locates a portion with sufficient truth to avoid a "False" rating.  The problem with the fact check isn't the rating on this narrow point.  The problem comes from PolitiFact failing to provide any mention of the way the particle of truth powers a dynamo of deception.  The ad's argument is a stinker.  PolitiFact's ruling gives it more cover than it deserves.


The grades: 

Becky Bowers: D
Angie Drobnic Holan:  D

I've seen so many fact checks much worse than this one from PolitiFact that perhaps I'm being overly generous.  Bottom line:  A serious fact check takes into account the underlying argument and the context.  The overall argument of the Medicare portion of the "Julia" ad was deceptive and designed to scare voters with its manipulated comparison.  PolitiFact did not allow its focus to fall on the main issue.

PolitiFlub: President Obama's near-sterling record on spending?

MarketWatch's Rex Nutting published a defense of President Obama's spending record on May 22.

Quite a number of conservatives have written to rebut Nutting regarding his point that Obama has not presided over an unusually large increase in federal government spending.  But, strangely, conservative-leaning PolitiFact did not join the chorus of criticism.

Instead, PolitiFact rated a secondhand viral Facebook version of Nutting's argument "Mostly True."

The problem? The flub, that is?

PolitiFact entirely ignores the fundamentally accurate criticism undercutting Nutting's argument in favor of Obama's light-spending ways:  The Bush budget of 2009 provides a very unusual baseline against which to compare Obama's spending.

PolitiFact simply closes its eyes to that context:

Our ruling

The Facebook post says Mitt Romney is wrong to claim that spending under Obama has "accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history," because it's actually risen "slower than at any time in nearly 60 years."

Obama has indeed presided over the slowest growth in spending of any president using raw dollars, and it was the second-slowest if you adjust for inflation. The math simultaneously backs up Nutting’s calculations and demolishes Romney’s contention. The only significant shortcoming of the graphic is that it fails to note that some of the restraint in spending was fueled by demands from congressional Republicans. On balance, we rate the claim Mostly True.

The rest of the fact check is equally blind to the critical context of the claim. 

Grading PolitiFact: Approving a "Julia" misdirection

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to PolitiFact for its ability to tease a grain of truth out of a highly misleading presentation.

On with the evaluation.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Becky Bowers: writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis:

The Obama campaign released a Web-based audiovisual presentation designed to play up the contrast between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Note that Romney threatens Julia's idyllic life story.  That's the context.

PolitiFact:

The cartoon "The Life of Julia," compares the candidates' impact on Julia at a dozen points in her life.  At age 23, she’s shown reading a newspaper with the headline, "Equal pay 4 equal work." She’s starting her career as a Web designer.

"Because of steps like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Julia is one of millions of women across the country who knows she’ll always be able to stand up for her right to equal pay," the graphic says.

The "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act" is very probably widely misunderstood.  It would more accurately go by the name of "The Lilly Ledbetter Exemption From Statute of Limitations Concerns For Fair Compensation Suits."  Admittedly the latter is quite a mouthful.  In a nutshell, the Act doesn't provide for equal pay.  It allows people to sue for existing equal pay rights years after the alleged discrimination took place, shifting a very difficult burden of proof onto an employer.  And in that context, the phrasing from the Obama Campaign is practically Clintonian in its weaselly use of words (take a bow, campaign staff):  Julia "Knows she'll always be able to stand up for her right to equal pay" because the statute of limitations doesn't apply.  Of course the majority of people seeing the ad probably have no idea that's what it means.  And sometimes PolitiFact is concerned about campaign materials that create a distorted view of reality.  But not this day.

PolitiFact notes the intended contrast:

Romney, on the other hand, "has refused to say whether he would have vetoed or signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act," the graphic says.

Horrors.  Seriously, it's a fear-based message.  Women are supposed to fear that Romney would threaten equal work for equal pay.  PolitiFact often brings its most heated criticism to fear-based messaging.  But not this day.

Toward the good, PolitiFact properly starts tracking the key message:

We wondered: Did Romney refuse to say whether he would have vetoed or signed the act? And what would that mean for Julia?

What would it mean for Julia if Romney refused to say whether he would have vetoed or signed the act?  That's the key to the ad.  The ad tries to create worry about rights to equal pay regardless of gender if Romney wins the presidency.  The implication is that Romney represents some type of threat.

For the sake of expediency, let's assume that PolitiFact suitably confirms that Romney "refused" to say whether he would have vetoed or signed the act.  We'll follow the key point of the ad instead of the factoid that supposedly supports the ad's implication.

PolitiFact:

Romney did refuse to say whether he would have signed the bill. But he also said he supported "equal pay for women" and had "no intention of changing that law."

PolitiFact infers, rightly I think, that Romney's reference to "that law" refers specifically to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  He wouldn't change it, he says.  So what is the consequence for Julia if Romney refuses to say whether he would have signed it?

PolitiFact concludes:

The Obama campaign said Romney "has refused to say whether he would have vetoed or signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act." That’s essentially what happened in Romney’s ABC News interview in April, but the claim leaves out some details that matter to Julia.

The relevant point for Julia isn't whether Romney would sign the bill — it's already the law — but his decision not to change it. Romney also said he  "certainly support(s) equal pay for women," and has "no intention of changing that law."

Still, the Obama campaign is correct that he dodged the question, so we rate the claim Mostly True.

Amazing, no?  The main point of the ad was without merit, but since it is trivially true that Romney refused to say whether he would have signed the bill, PolitiFact rules it "Mostly True."

PolitiFact doesn't always use this standard.  Just ask Mitt Romney.

Romney recently released an ad pointing out that unemployment for American youth is double that for the rest of the population.  PolitiFact found it true but irrelevant since the unemployment rate is nearly always approximately double for that demographic.  Apparently it's not supposed to matter even if the unemployment rate for the general population is high.  Romney ended with a "Half True" rating.

Is the Romney ad more misleading than the Obama presentation?  Seriously?


The grades:

Becky Bowers:  F
Bill Adair:  F

PolitiFact discounted the context of the ad where it counted.

I'd love to see a journalist ask Bill Adair to coherently explain why the Romney rating is lower than the Obama rating.  Though I suppose I can ask him myself, since I'm 99 percent certain he drops by for the occasional visit.

How about it, Mr. Adair?  You have my email address.  Drop me a line and explain why Obama receives the "Mostly True" while Romney gets the "Half True."  What's the objective dividing line between the two cases?  I'll publish it in full if granted permission.

Grading PolitiFact: Obama and unlisted loopholes

Words matter -- We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan: writer, researcher
Martha M. Hamilton:  editor

Analysis:

PolitiFact, we are told, pays close attention to the specific wording of political claims.

We'll see.  Already in the clipped image above one can note semantic drifts between "refuse" and "won't" along with "willing to close" and "want to repeal."

To be sure, the paraphrases can work if one keeps context carefully in mind.  Let's fix the context carefully in mind:

Now, the proponents of this budget will tell us we have to make all these draconian cuts because our deficit is so large; this is an existential crisis, we have to think about future generations, so on and so on.  And that argument might have a shred of credibility were it not for their proposal to also spend $4.6 trillion over the next decade on lower tax rates.

We’re told that these tax cuts will supposedly be paid for by closing loopholes and eliminating wasteful deductions.  But the Republicans in Congress refuse to list a single tax loophole they are willing to close.  Not one.  And by the way, there is no way to get even close to $4.6 trillion in savings without dramatically reducing all kinds of tax breaks that go to middle-class families -- tax breaks for health care, tax breaks for retirement, tax breaks for homeownership.

President Obama is saying that the Ryan budget "spends" $4.6 trillion on lower tax rates, and the way the lower tax rates will "supposedly be paid for" is via closing tax loopholes and eliminating deductions to the tune of $4.6 trillion.

Obama is engaging in doublespeak.  If the budget pays for the $4.6 trillion by increasing taxes by closing loopholes and eliminating deductions then it isn't "spending" $4.6 trillion on lower tax rates. There are honest and forthright ways to express skepticism that the Ryan proposal remains neutral on income tax revenue.  Obama did not use one of them.

PolitiFact for its part glosses over the doublespeak to focus on the claim that "Republicans in Congress refuse to list a single tax loophole they are willing to close."

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

In principle, it’s certainly possible to eliminate exemptions and lower tax rates while keeping tax revenues the same. It’s usually called "broadening the base", and it was part of the 2010 Simpson Bowles budget commission that Obama has praised, though he’s stopped short of endorsing the bipartisan commission’s recommendations.

The point Obama made, though, was that the House Republicans haven’t said which exemptions they would end. Some of the largest exemptions are the most popular, such as tax exemptions on employer-provided health insurance, home mortgage interest and charitable donations, as well as special lower tax rates for income from investments, such as capital gains and dividends.

Note the portion receiving bold emphasis.  Once again, PolitiFact has applied semantic distortion.  Obama did not simply say that House Republicans haven't said which exemptions they would end.  He said they refused to name so much as one exemption they were even willing to cut.

We're supposed to believe that PolitiFact pays close attention to the wording of a claim.

PolitiFact's semantic presto chango in this case potentially makes the difference between "True" and "False."

The new Ryan budget does not list any single example of a tax loophole it would close ("True").  On the other hand, the budget's plan to close tax loopholes logically implies that it would close no less than one tax loophole.  Amplifying that point, one could say of the Ryan budget that it does not name a single loophole it would leave intact.

PolitiFact:

Committee staff pointed us to this statement on the House Budget Committee website:

"This budget calls for lowering tax rates and broadening the tax base. All corners of the tax code should be on the table. The House Ways and Means Committee, led by Chairman Dave Camp of Michigan, has held dozens of hearings over the past year examining how best to simplify the tax code while maximizing economic growth."

That doesn't entirely let House Republicans off the hook, though.

If it lets Republicans off the hook at all in any way then why does PolitiFact give Obama a "True" rating?

Alternatively, do Republicans refuse to name a single tax loophole they're willing to cut?


PolitiFact quoted part of a Fox News Sunday interview of Ryan.  Interviewer Chris Wallace asked Ryan for specifics.  Ryan deferred to the Ways and Means Committee, but Wallace pressed further:

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

Wallace: "All right. I understand, this is not your committee, it's the Ways and Means Committee. Can you tell me any (tax exemptions) that you're willing to say, do away with it?"

Ryan: "What I would say on doing away with it, is who would we do away with it for. And what we're saying is the people who disproportionately use those, it's the top two tax rate payers use almost of those tax expenditures. We would limit these things to those higher income earners."

Wallace: "Even things like the deduction for health insurance and pensions and home mortgage?"

Ryan: "Yes, right. Instead of giving these write-offs to the people in the top tax bracket, take those tax shelters away. For every dollar that's parked in the tax shelter is taxed at zero. Take away the tax shelter, subject all of their income to taxation, you get more revenue, and we can lower everybody's tax rate in return. So, we're saying let's limit these kinds of deductions to the higher-income earners so that everybody can enjoy lower, flatter tax rates in return.

Ryan affirmed that the plan targets specific items like the deduction for health insurance and pensions along with the home mortgage deduction.

PolitiFact apparently doesn't interpret Ryan as effectively naming three separate loopholes or tax shelters.  The fact check offers no additional comment on Ryan's response and moves straight to its conclusion:

Obama said, "Republicans in Congress refuse to list a single tax loophole they are willing to close." House Republicans have said they want to handle tax changes through the Ways and Means Committee, and the plan’s top proponent, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, said he would limit deductions and exemptions for people who report higher incomes.

But without more details on eliminating exemptions, it’s impossible to know if the tax plan will substantially reduce tax revenues or not. It’s also not possible to know what all the implications are for taxpayers. We rate Obama’s statement True.

PolitiFact's conclusion ignores the facts and focuses on an irrelevancy.

The fact is that the Ryan plan intentionally allows the House Ways and Means Committee to exercise its discretion in achieving the budgetary goals.  PolitiFact says it doesn't get Republicans off the hook entirely, apparently meaning it doesn't get them off the hook at all.  Ryan affirms three specific loopholes and deductions he's willing to see eliminated.  But those don't count and PolitiFact does not explain why.  Then we're supposed to believe it is relevant to Obama's claim that the lack of detail makes it hard to tell whether the plan would substantially reduce revenues or not.  PolitiFact should have noticed the ease with which Obama scored the loss of revenue:  $4.6 trillion using the assumption that Republicans would cut no loopholes or deductions at all.

Obama claimed Republicans refused to name any tax deductions or loopholes they are willing to make.  PolitiFact quoted Ryan offering three exceptions but somehow failed to notice.

PolitiFact twisted Obama's claim into something like "Republicans haven't made a concrete proposal about what deductions and loopholes they would eliminate."  That's true, but it isn't what Obama said.  And what Obama said leaves out gobs of critical context even aside from its literal falsehood,.


The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  F
Martha M. Hamilton:  F

I'm amazed that a team effort can produce results this horrifyingly awful.  Obama's literal claim was simply false if Ryan is counted as naming three specific examples by answering the interview question.  PolitiFact offered no reason for dismissing the legitimacy of the examples. 

Obama's underlying argument is effectively irrelevant if PolitiFact identified it correctly via the creative paraphrase.

The fact check consists mainly of semantic games and incoherent reasoning. 

These are journalists reporting badly.



Correction/Clarification 4/10/2012:  "Fact checkers" section had only Angie Drobnic Holan listed with her "F" grade.  Altered that section to its customary appearance with all contributors listed along with their roles. Also on 4/10 eliminated one of two uses of the word "discretion" in the same sentence.
Clarification 4/11/2012:  Changed "Republicans" to "lower tax rates" to make sense of a sentence in the paragraph following the quotation of Obama's remarks.

PolitiFact spins Obama's Supreme Court falsehood

President Obama's astonishing statement to the effect that the Supreme Court doesn't strike down congressional legislation that passed with a strong majority has drawn a good bit of attention.  Over at associated blog PolitiFact Bias the statement was marked early as a good candidate for a fact check.  The Wall Street Journal obliged promptly via editorial.  PolitiFact weighed in yesterday with a "False" rating on its patented and silly "Truth-O-Meter."

So it's all good, right?

Not quite.

The "False" rating was a fairly easy call, and I hesitate to criticize the rating owing to my stance that PolitiFact's definitions make its "Pants on Fire" rating inherently unfair.  Such ratings are subjective.

With the rating off-limits for criticism, the reporting remains fair game.

Pondering ponderous majorities

First, PolitiFact's tale of the passage of the PPACA has a substantial hole in it.  Look for it:

In the case of the health care bill, the House and Senate had each passed different versions in 2009. It was expected the two bills would be integrated in conference committee, then voted on again. But before that could happen, the Democrats lost their 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. (Republican Scott Brown in January 2010 won the seat formerly held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.) Anything that came out of conference committee at that point could have been held up in the Senate, blocked by 40 Republican senators.

Democrats decided to get around this by having the House simply accept the Senate’s version of the bill. Then Democrats in the House and Senate used a different measure -- a reconciliation bill, which requires only a simple majority -- to modify the law they had just passed.

The vote to pass the Senate version of the bill had been 60-39.

The bill passed the House 219-212 on March 21,2010.

Congressional Democrats used a bit of gamesmanship to push the bill through to the presidents desk.

Without reconciliation the bill does not pass.  Therefore, the votes on the reconciliation bills constitute a critical bit of context:

In a fitting finale to the yearlong health care saga, the budget reconciliation measure that included the final changes was approved first by the Senate and then by the House on a tumultuous day at the Capitol, as lawmakers raced to complete their work ahead of a two-week recess.

The final House vote was 220 to 207, and the Senate vote was 56 to 43, with the Republicans unanimously opposed in both chambers.

PolitiFact and The New York Times both omit the fact that the votes opposed exceed the number of Republicans.  The vote wasn't even along strict party lines.  A small number of Democrats crossed over in both houses of Congress to oppose the reconciliation bill.

In the House the main bill passed with a 50.8 percent majority.  The reconciliation measure passed with a 51.5 percent majority, an improvement of almost one percentage point but still a slim majority.

In the Senate the main bill passed with a 60.6 percent majority while the reconciliation bill passed with a 55.6 percent majority--a decline of five percentage points and also a slim majority.

PolitiFact's version of events inflates congressional support slightly.  The Democratic Party's strategy was necessary in particular because support for the bill in both houses of Congress was right around the threshold needed for passage.

PolitiFact's summary of the section repeats both minor points of spin:

Numerically speaking, neither vote reflects a very large margin of victory. In the Senate, 60 votes was actually the exact minimum needed to prevent a filibuster -- not a vote more. And in both chambers, not a single Republican voted for for the bill.

Charitable interpretation to the nth

In addition to spinning the vote totals, PolitiFact bends over backward to give Obama's post-gaffe explanation the benefit of the doubt:

This one, we’ll acknowledge, puzzled us.

The Supreme Court routinely reviews laws passed by Congress and either upholds or overturns them. For Obama to suggest that such an action would be unique in American history is something of a head-scratcher.

It's probably a puzzling head-scratcher because of its ridiculousness (read:  "Pants on Fire") if PolitiFact was not aware that Obama is the smartest person to live in the White House since Hillary Clinton. Since Obama is so smart, there must be a logical explanation.

After reviewing the historical evidence against Obama's literal statement, PolitiFact looked for a logical explanation.

I'll emphasize yet again that I favor charitable interpretation for all.  Charitable interpretations need to be reasonable, however.

PolitiFact:

Obama’s response: "We have not seen a court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue, like health care ... at least since Lochner. Right? So we’re going back to the ’30s, pre-New Deal."

He further explained that, because the court has extraordinary power as the final say on laws, it "has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected Legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this."

Mr. Obama's explanation does not address what he actually said, though it's at least plausible on its face as a version of what Obama meant to say.

Does it pass muster with PolitiFact?

PolitiFact:

So, when given the chance to explain, Obama wasn’t saying it would be unprecedented simply for the Supreme Court to overturn a federal law.

So he wasn't saying what he said?  Did Obama misspeak, then?  And forget to inform his press secretary?

Carney defended that take at a White House press briefing on Wednesday, when asked if the president regretted his initial remarks.

“Not at all,” Carney said. “As I’ve said a number of times now, the president was making the unremarkable observation about 80 years of Supreme Court history.”
When asked if that meant the president was now clarifying his remarks, Carney shot back, “Only because a handful of people didn’t understand what he was referring to.”

No, it seems that the White House insists that Obama spoke quite clearly, or at least clearly enough so that a mere "handful of people" (dolts?) failed to understand what he meant.  Though legal scholar Laurence Tribe might object:

Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor and former mentor to President Barack Obama, said the president “obviously misspoke” earlier this week when he made comments about the Supreme Court possibly overturning the health-care law.

PolitiFact ignores the dissonance between the original statement and the subsequent explanation.  PolitiFact compounds the problem by accepting the explanation at face value.

Obama’s elaboration a day later at least gives us more to think about. He argued that invalidation of the health care law would represent a court action unseen since the Great Depression on an issue that affects every American. [Norman] Ornstein echoed that interpretation, saying that a ruling by the court which overturns a major social policy and challenges prior court rulings would be unprecedented.

Wait a minute.  Did Obama argue that it would be unprecedented for the Court to undo a law "on an issue that affects every American"?

He did not.  The creative paraphrase is apparently PolitiFact's invention on behalf of Mr. Obama.  The paraphrase enables the writer to tie Obama's after-the-fact justification/rationalization to the remarks of an expert liberally quoted in the story, one Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.  The construction of the section featuring Ornstein leads me to suspect that PolitiFact takes Ornstein partially or wholly out of context, manipulating his words to agree with PolitiFact's mutation of Obama's explanation.

Add to this scathing criticisms of Obama's citation of Lochner v. New York by James Taranto and Eugene Volokh.

Conclusions:
PolitiFact:

But we’re taking Obama literally, and that historical perspective was not reflected in his original statement, which is what we're ruling on. He simply said the law passed with a strong majority and overturning it would be unprecedented. Wrong and wrong. We rate the statement False.

Let's give PolitiFact partial credit for "taking Obama literally."  The problem with PolitiFact taking Obama literally, however, is that Obama's statement leaves no discernible room for any interpretation but the literal.  The most charitable interpretation credits Obama with misstating what he meant to say.  Yet the White House rejects that position.

While I think that all "Pants on Fire" ratings are fundamentally unfair because PolitiFact has established no objective means of justifying the rating compared to a rating of "False," it seems highly likely this statement coming from Sarah Palin or a host of other Republicans would receive a "Pants on Fire" rating.  The fact that the statement came from a person lauded for teaching constitutional law makes it worse, not better.


Update 4/13/2012:
Eliminated a redundant use of "majority" in the sentence dealing with votes on the ACA reconciliation bill.

Grading PolitiFact: Obama, Bush and the auto bailout

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

 Apparently context doesn't matter much, depending on the subject.

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Molly Moorhead:  writer, researcher
Martha M. Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

This fact check serves as an outstanding example of narrowing the story focus to fish a grain of truth out of an overall falsehood.

The incompetence is overpowering.  Note that PolitiFact frames the issue by stipulating that the $13 billion "given" by the Bush administration was gone "By the time Obama took office."   That bit of timing isn't mentioned in the film, so far as I can tell, though I was able to note that it used a Dec. 2, 2008 television news clip to emphasize the immediacy of the crisis faced by President Obama.

The film and PolitiFact omit a number of important facts.  First, GM received another $4 billion loan in February under the agreement worked out with the Bush administration.   Part of the agreement required the two automakers to submit plans for achieving financial stability by February.  The report of the Congressional Oversight Panel details the response from the Obama administration:

On February 15, 2009, President Obama announced the formation of an interagency Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry (Task Force), that would assume responsibility for reviewing the Chrysler and GM viability plans.

The timing is far more complicated than either the film or PolitiFact lets on, and the loans from Bush were not necessarily "gone" when Obama took office, particularly in the case of the $4 billion received by GM in February, though that amount is not counted in the $13 billion through the magic of cherry picking the facts.

Let's pick up with PolitiFact's telling (bold emphasis added):

On the subject of Detroit, car company CEOs appear onscreen asking for money in Washington, followed by pictures of empty factories and dire news headlines. The movie talks about the financial pressures on the new president and the unpopularity with the public of more bailouts. But Obama, [narrator Tom] Hanks says, acted anyway to help American workers.

"He decided to intervene, but in exchange for help the president would demand action. The Bush administration had given the car companies $13 billion, and the money was now gone," Hanks says.

Then President Bill Clinton appears onscreen to lend his voice.

"He didn’t just give the car companies the money, and he didn’t give the UAW the money," Clinton says. "He said you guys gotta work together and come up, and everybody’s gotta have some skin in the game here. You gotta modernize the automobile industry."

This segment of the film is not about the history of $13 billion out of a total of $17 billion loaned to automakers by the Bush administration.  It is fully intended to build a contrast between the incoming president and his supposedly irresponsible predecessor.  That point is extremely misleading, as we shall continue to observe.

PolitiFact:

Bush authorized initial loans to Chrysler and GM (and their respective financing arms) before leaving office, using money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Chrysler initially received $4 billion, and GM got $13.4 billion in bridge loans meant to keep the companies afloat for a little longer.

Apparently the math amounts to $4 billion plus $13.4 billion equals $13 billion.  And that $13 billion was gone by Jan. 20 even though $884 million was loaned to GMAC on Jan. 16.  It lasted only four days by PolitiFact's account.

Of course the excess $4 billion was loaned in February as described above.  You just don't get to learn that from the PolitiFact version of events.

PolitiFact:

Early in 2009 [mid February], Obama convened a task force to study the companies’ viability. Both were required [through the agreement with the Bush administration] to submit plans for getting back to solvency, but both failed, the task force determined. In the meantime, they were running short of money again.

Pardon my editorial counterspin--which shouldn't be necessary for a fact check.  Unfortunately it is necessary.  GM, by the way, received its last Bush loan on Feb. 17, two days after Obama announced his task force.

PolitiFact:

A report from the Congressional Oversight Panel details the chronology of the spending, including an additional $6.36 billion that GM received between March and May 2009.

The $6.36 billion does not include the $4 billion loaned in February under the agreement with the Bush administration.  Nor does it include $8.5 billion sunk into Chrysler by the Obama administration as part of its restructuring.  Neither does it include the $30.1 billion subsequently sunk into GM as part of its eventual restructuring.  Both the latter figures come from the Congressional Oversight Panel's report PolitiFact cited.

PolitiFact interviewed former Obama team member Steve Rattner about the bailout numbers.  PolitiFact presents Rattner as agreeing that the funds from the Bush administration were exhausted "before we really were in the saddle."  Rattner states that the loans from the Bush administration weren't intended to rescue GM and Chrysler but rather to tide them over until the Obama administration could deal with the situation.

PolitiFact does not totally ignore the film's point about Bush:

We also think it’s worth mentioning the implication in the video that the Bush administration did not put enough restrictions on the money. "He decided to intervene, but in exchange for help the president would demand action," narrator Hanks says just before mentioning the Bush loans.

In case PolitiFact isn't the only party who missed it, note that the filmmaker uses the quotation of Bill Clinton to hammer the point all the more.  It was the main point of the segment, and it was untrue.

What's the verdict?

PolitiFact:

The Obama campaign movie says, "the Bush administration had given the car companies $13 billion and the money was now gone."

It's important to note that the $13 billion was provided as loans, not as grants, as the wording might suggest.

Referring to the time Obama took office, January 2009, GM and Chrysler by then had received almost $14 billion in bailout money. News reports also reflect that the money was basically used up. So, that much is correct. But the movie ignores the fact that this was not unexpected. The Bush administration’s loans were always just a temporary lifeline, meant to keep the companies operating so the new president would have time to decide what to do long term.

This is important information left out of the movie’s extensive discussion of the auto bailouts. That the $13 billion was gone when Obama arrived was no surprise. We rate the statement Mostly True.

The film glosses over quite a few facts that PolitiFact fails to note.  The point of the film is the contrast between the president who demands accountability and Bush who simply gives money away to big corporations.  The movie's account of the auto bailout is thorough spin.  Fact checking isolated statements in the fabric of this filmmaker's fiction will never fully reveal the misleading nature of the narrative.

If Obama went against popular sentiment on the bailout then so did Bush.  If Obama demanded accountability then so did Bush, albeit the latter's attempt was hamstrung by the end of his tenure as president.

PolitiFact disgraces itself again by connecting the film's distortion with a "Mostly True" label.


The grades:

Molly Moorhead:  F
Martha M. Hamilton:  F

PolitiFact let the main misleading message of the auto bailout segment slide.  PolitiFact's reporting corrected a fraction of the film's omissions and shades on the truth.  PolitiFact's version is scarcely an improvement on the original.

But President Obama and his campaign might like it.  That's got to count for something.


Clarification:  Changed to "the film's distortion" instead of "this distortion" in the final paragraph of the analysis portion.
Update 3/24/2012:  Fixed a couple of bad links.