Grading PolitiFact (Virginia): Bob McDonnell and job creation in Texas

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:

Jacob Geiger:  writer, researcher
Warren Fiske:  editor


Analysis:

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) of Virginia wouldn't mind if his state could emulate the jobs record of Texas.  McDonnell, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, made a recent statement praising Texas on that point.

"Under Gov. Rick Perry’s leadership [Texas] has created more jobs over the last decade than the rest of the states combined," McDonnell wrote.

And PolitiFact was there:

We wondered if Perry’s record on creating jobs matched McDonnell’s claim.

With the fact check identified, it is research time. PolitiFact contacted McDonnell's office for backing information before launching its own survey:

Our research took us down a road traveled by PolitiFact Texas in examining various claims from Perry that most of the jobs created in the U.S. are in the Lone Star State.

PolitiFact Texas has debunked several of these eye-popping claims, noting that they are based on statistics from a minority of states that have had overall job gains in recent years.

Though PolitiFact Virginia mentions "several" claims debunked by PolitiFact Texas, we have but one represented in the list of references.  PolitiFact Texas debunked Governor Perry to the tune of "Half True" in that case, and that story contained a link to another story featuring a claim similar to the current subject where the claim received a "False" rating.

PolitiFact, you see, pays special attention to the words politicians use.  If they say "we created x jobs" it does not necessarily mean net jobs.  And that's misleading.

Unless you're Rick Perry:

"Gov. Rick Perry says Texas has created more than 850,000 jobs, more than the other states combined" ("True")

Or Joe Biden:

"Vice President Joe Biden says more jobs were created in the last year than in all eight years under George Bush" ("MostlyTrue")

Or Mitt Romney:

"Mitt Romney tells CPAC that Canada created more jobs in January than the U.S. did" ("True")

Or Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

"Debbie Wasserman Schultz says job creation in 2010 on pace to eclipse growth during George W. Bush's entire administration" ("Half True)

You get the idea, after noting that Wasserman Schultz's "Half True" had nothing at all to do with gross job creation as opposed to net job creation.  The fact is that "job creation" is a statistic that we normally take to mean net job creation.  Yet PolitiFact applies an uncharitable interpretation to job creation statements from governors McDonnell and Perry with no apparent justification from the context.

PolitiFact Texas:

Veronica Sanchez Downey, who analyzes data for the commission, said she'd feel comfortable summarizing the commission's conclusion about Texas job gains this way: "Of all the states that gained jobs in the U.S. including the District of Columbia, Texas accounted for" 67.2 percent of the added jobs from November 2007 to November 2008. The 67.2-percent figure reflects adjustments of the data since the initial research.

Perry, of course, didn't say it that way.

Right.  Perry did not mention the term "net" while talking about job gains.  He just talked about job gains, which people tend to understand as net job gains.  That interpretation is so ubiquitous that PolitiFact typically favors it without discussion, as shown by the preceding examples.  So Perry gets "debunked" by making an exception to the normal conventions of English interpretation.

You might get more consistent results using the "Magic 8 Ball" instead of PolitiFact.

Let's get this over with:

Let’s review. 

McDonnell wrote that under Gov. Perry, Texas "has created more jobs over the last decade than the rest of the states combined."

But the Virginia governor used net job numbers. Those are different from job creation figures, which are not compiled by the BLS or other national authority. So using net job numbers and calling them job creation figures is a case of comparing apples to oranges.

We rate McDonnell’s claim Barely True.

It's just too bad for McDonnell that PolitiFact Virginia failed to take note of the several PolitiFact items that treated job creation claims in terms of net jobs, with ratings ranging from as low as "Half True" to as high as "True."

Reply hazy.  Try again.

The grades:

Jacob Geiger:  F
Warren Fiske:  F

Fiske and Geiger had the opportunity to notice PolitiFact's disgraceful inconsistency in its treatment of job creation claims.  The team somehow failed to notice PolitiFact's history of (appropriately) treating job creation claims as dealing with net job creation where the context warrants taking them that way.  The PolitiFact Virginia team instead zeroed in on a handful of bizarre cases where the obvious intent was ignored.

Afters:

What if we were to look at cases where PolitiFact has ruled on jobs claims and where considering the jobs claims in terms of gross jobs rather than net jobs might have affected the ruling?

Grading PolitiFact: Rick Perry and the priority of Houston

To assess the truth for a numbers claim, the biggest factor is the underlying message. In Paul's case, his point was a simple one, that many people have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He overstated the number, but not by all that many. 
--Bill Adair, PolitiFact

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Meghan Ashford-Grooms:  writer, researcher
Brenda Bell:  editor
W. Gardner Selby:  editor


Analysis:

In many ways, this fact check of Texas governor Rick Perry is fine and dandy.  PolitiFact provides a transcript that pretty clearly indicates that "Houston" was not the first word spoken from the moon.  And experts apparently agreed on that point.  Case closed.  The statement is False. 

Or is it?

Hearken back to PolitiFact head honcho Bill Adair's description as to how PolitiFact handles number claims.  The most important thing, Adair says, is the underlying argument.  And Gov. Perry clearly has an underlying argument, that being the central role of the city of Houston in space exploration.

So, either PolitiFact erred by failing to consider Perry's underlying point in its rating or else "first" is somehow not a number claim.

The grades:

Meghan Ashford-Grooms:  I
Brenda Bell: I
W. Gardner Selby: I

Each receives an incomplete grade (I) until I have more information on which to base a grade.

Grading PolitiFact (Texas): Rick Perry and Ponzi schemes

This again?  It's illuminating to find PolitiFact so unrepentant regarding its failures.  PolitiFact has found the comparison between Social Security financing and Ponzi schemes "Barely True," "False" and now "False" again.

Just one problem:  It's true.  A reasonable effort by PolitiFact should find it "Half True" or better.

On with the grading of PolitiFact Texas:


The issue:

The fact checkers:

W. Gardner Selby:  writer, researcher
Brenda Bell:  editor


Analysis:

This fact check is little different than the one I flunked PolitiFact Rhode Island over a few weeks ago.

Perhaps the key difference is PolitiFact Texas' reliance on "Michell Zuckoff."  Earlier PolitiFact efforts used Mitchell Zukoff as a key source instead.

All kidding aside, Michell and Mitchell are evidently the same person.

The key PolitiFact finding is that the "Ponzi scheme" is fraudulent by definition.  And if you can get journalist and non-economist Michell/Mitchell Zuckoff to proclaim that as a fact in his role as expert source then it's mission accomplished, in a manner of speaking.

Michell (sic) Zuckoff, a Boston University journalism professor who has written a book on Ponzi, noted critical dissimilarities between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme, which by definition is both fraudulent and unsustainable.

"First, in the case of Social Security, no one is being misled," Zuckoff's January 2009 article in Fortune magazine says. "...Social Security is exactly what it claims to be: A mandatory transfer payment system under which current workers are taxed on their incomes to pay benefits, with no promises of huge returns."
(bold emphasis added)

The problem for Zuckoff and PolitiFact is that economists don't see it that way:

A Ponzi scheme is a strategy of rolling over a debt forever and thereby never paying it back.

Kevin X. Huang and Jan Werner are not alone:

To Kindelberger and other writers on financial scams, the essential feature of Ponzi's activities was 'misrepresentation or the violation of an implicit or explicit trust' (1978: 79-80).  In economic theory, however, the label 'Ponzi' survives largely stripped of its connotation of fraud.

(The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money & Finance)

What gives Mitchell Zuckoff (and PolitiFact) the right to discount the definition of "Ponzi scheme" as understood by economists?

Nothing.  Nothing at all.

Zuckoff and PolitiFact make the claim of exclusive definition out of apparent ignorance, though I have evidence that staffers at the Providence Journal (source of PolitiFact Rhode Island) took note of the criticism and didn't care enough to change the story.

When three teams of journalists successively flub a similar fact check it starts to resemble a pattern.

The grades:

W. Gardner Selby:  F
Brenda Bell:  F

Perhaps there's a tendency to trust their colleagues at PolitiFact.  Regardless, it's unacceptable and appalling that PolitiFact got this fact check wrong on three consecutive tries.


Afters:

While doing additional research on this item I stumbled across a helpful blog post at scrivener.net, which made me aware of the following bit from economist and lefty darling Paul Krugman:

Social Security is structured from the point of view of the recipients as if it were an ordinary retirement plan: what you get out depends on what you put in. So it does not look like a redistributionist scheme. In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation takes more out than it put in. Well, the Ponzi game will soon be over, thanks to changing demographics, so that the typical recipient henceforth will get only about as much as he or she put in (and today's young may well get less than they put in).

Grading PolitiFact (Texas): Rick Perry and the lightbulb police

The issue:

The fact checkers:

W. Gardner Selby:  writer, researcher
Ciara O'Rourke:  editor

Analysis:

Let's get right to the PolitiFact analysis:

Saying there's "no end to the reach of Washington," Perry writes that Washington is "even telling us what kind of light bulb we can use."

The quotation is pulled from page 37 of Perry's book, "Fed Up":

But the problem goes far deeper than that.  Prohibition on school prayer, the redefinition of marriage, the nationalization of health care, the proliferation of federal criminal laws, interference with local education, the increased regulation of food--even telling us what kind of lightbulb we can use--there is seemingly no end to the reach of Washington.

(Yellow emphasis added)

Perry, then, provides little context for the remark.  It is simply a statement intended to illustrate the broad reach of the federal government.

PolitiFact:

We asked Perry for backup on that claim and didn't hear back. Then we launched a search for "use-this-bulb" regulations.

PolitiFact appropriately looked for and found the obvious bill from 2007 signed by President George W. Bush.  That legislation phases out traditional incandescent bulbs (with apparently some exceptions) starting in 2012.

PolitiFact also noted that President Obama has pledged to "phase out all incandescent light bulbs."

Then PolitiFact followed its custom of presenting expert opinions:

Jen Stutsman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy, told us that conventional incandescent bulbs are not expected to meet the efficiency standards Congress set, though the government expects manufacturers to improve incandescent technologies to meet the higher standards or consumers will move to compact fluorescent light bulbs, LED technologies or halogens. She said new standards for 100-watt bulbs take effect in January 2012. New standards for 75-watt bulbs start in 2013 and standards for 60- and 40-watt bulbs start in 2014.

Stutsman said the expected shifts aren't equivalent to the government telling Americans which light bulbs to use. "Under no circumstances does it say that a consumer must purchase a specific type of light bulb," Stutsman said.

Did it occur to PolitiFact that Stutsman is simply wrong?

When the government prohibits the sale of light bulbs that fail to meet its efficiency standards then it is equivalent to the government determining that those within its jurisdiction must purchase a specific type of light bulb--that is, one that meets the federal efficiency standard.  Stutsman appears to equivocate on Perry's meaning, uncharitably supposing that Perry meant that the government would force consumers to use very specific light bulbs for very specific applications.  Stutsman creates a straw man argument, and PolitiFact proceeds to treat it as the real McCoy:

So, is Washington telling us what kind of bulb to use?

Not yet, though the 2007 law steps up efficiency requirements and that's expected to result in consumers purchasing and using different bulbs. These factors give Perry's statement an element of truth. We rate it Barely True.

Good grief.  Washington told us in 2007 that we would not be able to replace our typical incandescent bulbs with similar bulbs, with the phase-out starting in 2012.  It takes uncharitable interpretation to rate Perry's claim below "Mostly True."  The typical reader knows exactly what Perry was talking about.  Rather than making an attempt to inform readers about surprising government intrusion, Perry was illustrating the intrusion with an example likely present in the reader's knowledge base.

The grades:

W. Gardner Selby:  F
Ciara O'Rourke:  F