Grading PolitiFact: Illegitimate burn of Coburn? (Updated)

PolitiFact found Sen. Tom Coburn (R, OK) false regarding a statement aired on Fox News.

The PolitiFact analysis continues in keeping with a tradition that needs considerable improvement.

Angie Drobnic Holan wrote this supposed piece of fact-checking. After reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what made this seem like something worth the time investment.

This is the statement under consideration:

Remember, under the Obama plan . . . all the health care in this country is eventually going to be run by the government.

The conventions of AP style call for an ellipsis (". . .") where a portion of the statement has been left out. It is not an indication that Coburn paused while speaking. Journalists want us to trust that we're not really missing anything when they edit quotations. Unfortunately, suspicion is often warranted.

Fortunately, we can check the context from the Fox News video link at the top of this post. Here's what Coburn said:

Remember, under the Obama plan all the government health care eventually is going to be--all the health care in this country is eventually going to be run by the government. Which means, if in fact you receive money from the government you'll be under their tutelage to do what they say needs to be done.

Though PolitiFact does properly set the broader context, that being the change in a policy intended to protect conscientious objection for health care workers, this entry fails to make clear what is quite apparent upon viewing Coburn's statements. That is, Coburn started a sentence, brought himself up short, and started again. Coburn had himself tied in knots with the first attempt since he was headed toward the redundant proclamation that all government health care would be under the control of the government.

Finding himself in that predicament, Coburn cut himself short and made the statement that PolitiFact connected to the first part of the other sentence via ellipsis.

Was that connection by PolitiFact justified?

In one sense it was. It is possible that people hearing Coburn speak might think he was making a judgment about Obama's health care plan that is not accurate.

In another sense it wasn't. I think there's considerable doubt that Coburn was making a statement about the particulars of Obama's stated health care position. I think it is more likely that he was talking about the slippery-slope nature of government involvement in health care. The last sentence from my transcript of Cohen's statement looks like his attempt to clarify what he meant. The PolitiFact entry omits that portion.

As a matter of charitable interpretation, uncertainty about a statement should prompt us to ask the speaker what it is they intended to say. Whether or not she sustained any uncertainty about what Coburn meant, Drobnic attempted that in this case:

We asked Coburn's office about his remarks. "What matters is not just President Obama’s intent, or what his plan states, but the likely effect and consequences of his plan," said spokesman John Hart. "Under Obama’s approach, the only plans left standing will be those controlled by the government."

That fits with my interpretation of Coburn's statements, even if it falls short of specifically stating that Coburn did not mean to state that Obama's plan put all health care under government control. And, as ususal, I wonder what specific query Drobnic used that drew the response she quoted.

The PolitiFact conclusion following that paragraph seems curious. Instead of using it to illuminate Coburn's intent, Drobnic instead seems to treat it as a distraction:

That may be Sen. Coburn's opinion on what could happen, but it's definitely not part of Obama's plan.

Right. So maybe Coburn wasn't saying what he is being presented as having said, in terms of his intent? Drobnic continues:

And Coburn was very specific in saying that "under the Obama plan, all the health care in this country is eventually going to be run by the government." That gives the incorrect impression that Obama is promoting a government-run health care system. He's not. We rate Coburn's statement False.

What a load of baloney. Coburn was not "very specific in saying" that all health care in this country would eventually be run by the government under the Obama plan. Coburn experienced a verbal train wreck during the interview. It is ridiculous to take the errant portion of his remarks, graft a portion of that to his renewed effort to express himself and then proclaim that hybrid "very specific." Adding insult to this injury, Drobnic now produces a quotation of Coburn that flunks AP style by dropping the ellipsis in favor of a comma. And Bill Adair let it pass when he edited the story.

I'd be inclined to grade PolitiFact a D+ for this entry since there is some value in making sure that people are not misled by what Coburn literally said. However, if I were to grade PolitiFact according to the measure it uses on others, I would have to rate this entry False, for it produces the impression that Coburn said something he probably did not mean to say and compounds that impression by falling short of basic journalistic standards for the handling of quotations.


Update:

Prior this posting, I e-mailed Angie Drobnic Holan to ask what had prompted her to write this entry for PolitiFact. I asked because the good folks at PolitiFact have not bothered to comment on any aspect of President Obama's ~SOTU SOTU speech--the speech in which he cheerfully repeated a statement that PolitiFact had graded false in the recent past. It makes me very curious about what standards are used when deciding to pursue a fact-check story.

Here's the message I sent:

Dear Angie Drobnic Holan,

Simple question: What prompted you to examine the statement by Tom Coburn for PolitFact, please?


I'm just looking for the basic facts regarding motivation, such as response to reader inquiries, you just happened to be watching Fox News that day, or Bill Adair made you do it. That sort of thing.

If you choose to respond, please indicate whether or not I have permission to publish the relevant portion of your reply.

Thanks, and have a fabulous weekend.

Sincerely,
Bryan White

Within about 15 minutes of sending the message, I had someone with a St. Petersburg Times Internet number poking around the site. Chances are it was Drobnic herself. Given that I have not yet received any response to what should be an exceptionally easy question to address, we are left to wonder why the question appears destined to remain unanswered.

Suggested possibilities:

1) The survey of my blog was so offensive, given my fairly frequent brickbat treatment of the Times and PolitiFact, that she decided not to waste her time.
2) She has a longstanding policy of not replying to e-mail queries.
3) The true answer would be embarrassing and she didn't want to lie about it.

I look forward to a second update of this entry, in hopes that none of the above are correct.

Mar 9, 2009: Edited to remove a misspelled version of "specifically."

Those wacky Sith

"Always two there are... no more... no less. A master and an apprentice."
-Yoda

OK, so I'm not quite old school when it comes to the Sith Blogroll, where I hope to recognize coherent voices from the other end of the political spectrum. My Sith Blogroll has usually had more than two on the list, though one (Wick of the Bailey) is inactive. Maybe Yoda was on to something.

But back to the matter at hand.

The current #2 on the Sith Blogroll, "Comments From Left Field," featured a post from "Kathy" piggybacking on Jonathan Chait's criticism of an ABC News story referring to the efforts of some high earners to work their way below the $250,000 threshold that attracts taxation attention from President Obama.

Chait criticized the story for making it appear that making that extra penny over $249,999.99 results in exposing all of that taxable income to the >$250,000 rate. And his criticism may be legitimate to at least a degree. I can't say absolutely one way or the other at present since ABC has revised the story in apparent response to observations like Chait's.

It is worth reviewing the nature of that criticism, starting at CFLF under their title "Explaining the U.S. Tax System to Stupid Reporters."

Yesterday, Jonathan Chait wrote a piece about an article at ABCNews.com that alleged a “trend” toward families making $250,000 trying to get their incomes down to just below that figure, so they would fall under the income amount at which Pres. Obama’s proposed budget would increase their taxes. As Jonathan pointed out, the reporter passed along this supposed astute financial strategy without debunking the false premise behind it:

Now, the obvious objection here is that the tax code doesn’t work that way.

As the updated version of the ABC News story helps make clear, the tax code proposed by Obama does make income-decreasing financial strategies plausible--just so long as they aren't based on the misconception Chait identifies. But Chait and the good folks at CFLF seemed oblivious to other aspects of the tax code that justified income reduction. In the comments section I pointed out one, that being the proposed donut hole in Social Security taxation. The updated story points out a bigger potential factor in limits on charitable deductions for high wage earners.

Schatsky said that the incentive to get under $250,000 may be more so if the tax plan outlines that an individual who goes over a prescribed limit would face a reduced value of their itemized deductions.

"If the value of all your itemized deductions goes from a 33 percent level to a 28 percent level than there would be a reason for people to do dramatic things to reduce their incomes," said Schatsky.

Regardless, CFLF offers a pat on the back for complaining bloggers:

Once again, blogtopia teaches the mass media how to do journalism.

Between the critical blog posts the the current state of the ABC News story, the critical point is obscured rather than made clear. A tax system that would literally impose a net loss for additional earnings would definitely discourage working harder to reach the higher income level. One would only implement that type of system if the society decided that earning over a certain wage was immoral or improper. Some on the left do think that way, I believe. Proposing goverernment-imposed caps on CEO pay fits that type of thinking, for example.

Additionally a tax system that merely punishes higher earning with higher taxation also discourages doing work required to boost income, though obviously not quite to the same level as punitive taxation.

The society that takes this path should not be surprised if the number of "rich" on which it depends for tax revenue shrinks as a result. After that, the taxation is adjusted down the income ladder a bit ... and so on.

Progressive taxation represents a slippery slope.

Modern protectionism still alive?

For a time I carried the impression that President Obama had dropped the trade protectionism from the spendulus package.

Apparently my impression was poorly founded.

The Weekly Standard serves up piece by Irwin M. Stelzer titled "The Ghosts of Smoot and Hawley" that reports that trade protectionism remains intact in the bill.

And Stelzer gives us a golden sentence to quote:

(A) man who can one day sign a bill calling for $787 billion in stimulus spending, the next day commit a possible $275 billion to mortgage relief, and then convene a national conference on fiscal responsibility--followed almost instantly by a speech to Congress calling for massive spending on health care, education, and green energy, among other things--is not to be held to any standard of consistency, even the debased one applied to ordinary politicians.

I withdraw the credit I had offered Obama on this issue, pending news that the trade restrictions have been removed for real.

How the GAO ruled on the Northrop Grumman JLTV protest

The Government Accountability Office released its decision on the Northrop Grumman JLTV award protest this week.

Full version (.pdf).

The document notably contains effusive praise of the Lockheed Martin effort.

So why did Northrop Grumman fail?

Key graph:

(N)ot only was NG’s proposal rated overall only adequate with moderate risk under the ISM subfactor, but each of its JLTV-A, JLTV-B and JLTV-C configurations was rated high risk for reliability and maintainability (as well as moderate risk for design).

What accounted for the high risk for reliability and maintainability? I hope they're not talking about the diesel-electric drive system, because the Pentagon has since specified that it expects its eventual choice to use that system.

For each configuration element, offerors were required to complete a self-assessment of the level of maturity for each of the above four considerations, assigning one of six levels of maturity for each consideration as listed in solicitation attachment 24 (level 1 being the lowest and level 6 the highest). For example, attachment 24 generally defined the maturity levels for system design maturity as follows: level 1, completed concept system analysis; level 2, completed preliminary design analysis; level 3, completed system physical mock-up; level 4, completed detailed design analysis; level 5, fabricated system demonstrator; and level 6, tested system demonstrator. As another example, the maturity levels for system reliability maturity were generally defined as follows: level 1, reliability management program and failure allocation prediction; level 2, reliability prediction; level 3, reliability design analysis, in which the reliability design prediction is supported by identification of the critical components and physics of failure analysis, fault tree analysis, finite element analysis (FEA), and dynamic and/or static design modeling and simulation have been performed on the identified critical components; level 4, component level testing; level 5, systems integration testing of a system demonstrator; and level 6, system level testing of a system demonstrator to validate the system level reliability. As with design and reliability maturity, attachment 24 indicated that, for both system maintainability and C4I maturity, fabrication of a demonstrator was necessary to achieve level 5 and testing of the demonstrator was necessary to achieve level 6.
(bold emphasis added)

I'm admittedly no expert, but this response from the GAO makes it look like the JLTV evaluation process was poorly designed and executed. Suppose that diesel drive is reliable and you can work up a prototype fairly easily. You meet the basic requirements and you get the reliability of a traditional diesel system. Come up with something new and you take the hit for the difficulty of crafting the prototype as well as for the reliability problems of the new system.

But if the system is eventually expected to be of the latter type (such as a diesel-electric drive) then the reliability displayed by the diesel system is effectively irrelevant.

I sure hope I'm missing something, here.

Market gyrations explained?

Thomas Lifson at American Thinker presents a concise snapshot of Doug Ross' take on stock market behavior in the age of Obama.

President Obama, for his part, asks us not to concern ourselves over market "gyrations."

And if he were with us right now, perhaps the president would suggest that we pay no attention to Ross' charts.

Some are wondering what the president is talking about when he states that the market is getting closer to the point where buying stock is a "good deal." I think The New York Times interprets him correctly (emphasis added):

The president did not offer any specific stock tips, but suggested that he believed the market might be close to its low point.

“Profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal,” Mr. Obama said, “if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it.”

I'm not sure what role he thinks profit and earning ratios have in the big picture, admittedly. Some individual companies continue to perform well and might therefore represent a wise investment.

Granted, every stock market drop can be seen as a step closer to the low point. One doesn't need to be a Barack Obama to figure that one out. But the important thing to an investor remains the return on his investment. We don't yet know that the economy remade with hopenchange will offer investors an attractive option. Nor do we know that U.S. companies can turn profits as they once did under the coming set of policies.

Obama's push toward the secularist state

Bradford Wilcox over at RealClearPolitics sounds a clear trumpet call on one of my pet societal issues:

One unremarked and unintended consequence of Barack Obama’s audacious plans for the expansion of government—especially in health care, education, and the environment—is that the nanny state he is seeking to build will likely crowd out religious institutions in America. In other words, if he succeeds in passing his ambitious agenda, the Obama revolution is likely to lead the United States down the secular path already trod by Europe.

I would take issue with Wilcox's suggestion that the consequences of Obama's plans are unremarked. Hugh Hewitt took special note of the limitations on tax deductions for charitable giving last week.

The broader point is spot-on.

The social safety net of government stands in direct competition with religious (and non-religious) charities. Making that safety net an entitlement both robs the the system of much of its free market efficiency and places a strong retarding effect on the support of private charity. Beneficiaries have less reason to contribute back to society in return for the assistance if it constitutes an entitlement. And the American people lose out on personal involvement in rehabilitating their own society. It has become, after all, the government's job.

The big problem, here, is that the government loves no one. Any caring shown by the government is only an extension of the love extended by individuals. Yet this system will systematically train individuals to regard caring for the weakest as a detached responsibility. We pay our taxes. Others worry about the details.

The next step is insidious. The love, albeit detached, can remain in a majority of individuals but once it erodes from those in power the jig is up. The government has been given the power and the alternative providers have closed up shop. Once the government takes down the safety net there won't be much left.

This is bad, folks.

I've been warning my liberal Christian friends about this for years. They want more government involvement to solve social problems, seeing the short term picture without the long term implications.

Jim Geraghty pops the question on the Hugh Hewitt Show (Updated)

"When is it Obama's economy?"

No kidding, I was poised to pose that exact question here yesterday. Jim Geraghty dedicated a portion of Hugh Hewitt's radio show to the issue last night. Unfortunately, I only heard conservatives suggesting that Obama owns the economy right now. I think the answers from liberals and true Obamaniacs would be more interesting. We might see more stuff like a line from this letter sent by Anne Marie Jorgensen to the St. Petersburg Times:

President Obama is in earnest about righting our toppled monument to world power, but he cannot, in just a few months, right all the wrongs that took eight years to establish under the direction of the other political party.

The issue has some depth. After all, it is true that the economy will continue to feature President Bush's handiwork for some time into the following administration--along with features crafted by a Democrat-controlled Congress over the past two years. On the other hand, Obama has a significant influence on the economy even before he takes office based on the things he says and the market's reaction to his words and proposed policies.

One might hedge and refrain from calling this the Obama economy simply because the government hasn't assumed the type of control of the economy that Obama envisions in his plans. And that might take years.

And again on the other hand, making great big plans for change is exactly the sort of thing that makes Wall Street nervous in ways that shrink the value of markets.

That aspect of our picture serves up a harrowing conspiratorialist's view. The pain of going through the reworking of the economy beats down the economy to the point where any kind of stability--even a stability built on a degraded foundation--may result in the appearance of improvement.

Think of it like chemotherapy. The treatment usually degrades the appearance of the patient. Of course, with cancer treatment that effect is understood. In the current case, many are arguing that any difficulties the economy is experiencing are caused by the cancer (Bush).

I think Obama has had economics explained to him to the point that he knows markets abhor uncertainty. If he persists in blaming his predecessor when the markets balk at his policies, then I suggest it fits well with the picture of Obama as the bad type of Wilsonian demagogue. He would, in effect, be deliberately misleading the American people in order to fulfill his vision for the United States.


Update:

The Wall Street Journal had the same question in mind and published a poll on the topic the same day I posted this thread.

I've had trouble locating the full version, but Susan Davis has the skinny.

The poll focuses on the point at which the president is mostly responsible for the state of the economy. That's a slippery definition, in my opinion.

A pretty good sign of media bias

Granted it involves a mere two major newspapers and editorial positions, but Power Line provides the details that end up with this capper:

So the (New York) Times, like the Star Tribune, is in favor of the filibuster when the Democrats are in the minority in the Senate, but opposed to it when the Republicans are in the minority. That's an easily understandable position. It would be nice if these papers, and hundreds of others like them, would come out and say--just one time before they sink beneath the waters of Chapter 11--that they are shills for the Democratic Party, and their editorials are paraphrases of faxes they get from the Democratic National Committee. Would that really be so painful? After all, it's not as though they're fooling anyone.

Indeed, the drift in principle is rather difficult to understand minus a significant ideological bias.

MRAP photos

I stumbled across a nice selection of JLTV and MRAP-related photos. Included:

Force Protection Cougar
General Dynamics RG-31
Navistar FTTS
Lockheed Martin JLTV (actually another FTTS, as "Anon" pointed out in the comments)

Some of the pics are very common on the 'Net, such as one of the Cougar during a blast test and another of an RG-31 after an IED attack. Some of the others were new to me.

Frank Tipler on free market science and global warming dogma

I just read a column by Frank J. Tipler that applies free market dynamics to the practice of science, and gets in a few comments on global warming dogmas at the same time.

Just a taste; click the "read more" link at the bottom to get the whole thing.

The trillion-dollar plus porkapalooza Wreak-America Bill just passed by Congress will throw a huge amount of money into scientific research. This will be a good thing for certain scientists, but a very, very bad thing for science.
(read more at Pajamas Media)

I think perhaps Tipler overstates the case with his expectation that state-run science will only confirm what the state wants to confirm. Even government gets its share of loose cannons.

The parallel between the environment needed for healthy science and that for free speech seems to leap from Tipler's column very convincingly, however.