Grading PolitiFact (Wisconsin): Al Sharpton and the draconian milk cuts (Updated x2)

We always try to get the original statement in its full context rather than an edited form that appeared in news stories.
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The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Tom Kertscher:  writer, researcher
Greg Borowski:  editor


Analysis:

MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton made his comments on MSNBC's "Politics Nation," aptly enough.  The transcript (yellow highlights indicate the portion quoted in the PolitiFact story):

SHARPTON: Republican politicians throw around budget numbers like  it`s all some abstract game. But they seem to forget their policies have a devastating impact on real people across the country. In Michigan,  Governor Rick Snyder has signed the law that puts a four-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits. That means next month, nearly 41,000 Michigan residents will stop getting welfare aid including nearly 30,000 children. Thousands of innocent impoverished kids, abandoned by the state. In Arizona, a new republican law punishes the families of prison inmates. To help deal with the state`s deficit, the state has begun charging $25 to visit someone in prison. It`s called a quote, "background check fee." But actually goes for maintenance and repairs.

And in Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker`s budget cuts means, some kids are going without. One school district is so worried about losing state funding, that has stopped giving milk to elementary school kids during snack time. These are the real government of GOP priorities.

 Aside from some journalistic impropriety, the quotation presents Sharpton's statement reasonably well.

I'll take a moment to pan the journalists for the presentation of the quotation.  PolitiFact lists the MSNBC transcript as the source.  The transcript differs from the version of Sharpton's words used by the writer, Tom Kertscher, and passed on to the reader by the editor, Greg Borowski.    The PolitiFact Wisconsin version cleans up some faulty grammar, including a missing "it," in the MSNBC transcript.  Sharpton may or may not have made his statement the way PolitiFact presented it, but the transcript isn't the source of the quotation if the two differ unless PolitiFact Wisconsin relaxed its stance on the normal journalistic standard for handling quotations.

On with the fact check: