Grading PolitiFact (Ohio): The Wurzelbacher dilemma: Is an Air Force plumber a plumber?

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

 Horse feathers.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Sabrina Eaton:  writer, researcher
Robert Higgs:  editor


Analysis:

As one might anticipate from the epigraph, the context serves as the key to this fact check.

Most (or at least many) people know of "Joe the Plumber," Joe Wurzelbacher, a Toledo man vaulted to modest fame after an unscripted and candid conversation  in 2008 with a campaigning Barack Obama.

Since that initial boost to notoriety, Wurzelbacher entered into a congressional race as the Republican candidate in a redrawn Ohio district against veteran of Congress Marcy Kaptur.  Kaptur squeezed out fellow Democrat and congressional veteran Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primary.

The fact check concerns Wurzelbacher's status as a plumber, the Kaptur campaign's attempts to exploit that status as a campaign issue and Wurzelbacher's response to Kaptur's tactics.  PolitiFact fact checks the latter, and the former two constitute the critical context.

We'll examine all three issues.

Is Wurzelbacher a plumber?

Piquing PolitiFact: What definition of "Half True" is used at PolitiFact Ohio?

It's going to appear shortly.

Allegedly.

(clipped from cleveland.com)

I should have saved the image from the first time I tried to post the nearly identical message.  It's possible that I did something that kept it from posting, but as far as I can tell I followed the exact same procedure this time and received the message that my reply was received and would appear shortly.

Perhaps the idea is to delay the appearance of my comment until the discrepancy can be fixed.

Good luck with that.  I took note of it quite some time ago and I've been posting about it occasionally on the 'Net for weeks.

A number of comments do a nice job of pressing editor Robert Higgs for needed explanations.  One even brought up Eric Ostermeier's study suggesting selection bias at PolitiFact.  Higgs' reply to that one is hilarious:

I don't know enough about how the Minnesota study was done to talk about it. It's (sic) focus was PolitiFact.com, our national counterpart. Feel free to contact them via email. If you send them questions, you'll likely get a response.

What I can tell you about PolitiFact Ohio is that in our first year we did 81 Truth-O-Meter rulings on statements from Democrats and 103 from Republicans (more on the GOP side principally because Kasich is governor and there's twice as many Republicans in power as Democrats).

The average grade for Democrats: Half True

The average grade for Republicans: Half True

Some say the Texas Rangers have a better team batting average than the Seattle Mariners.

What I can tell you about it is that right now both teams are in the American League.

The Seattle Mariners are batting roughly .250.

The Texas Rangers are batting roughly .250

Higgs isn't saying anything.  The "average" when there are only six positions on the scale is a very rough approximation, just like rounding the Rangers' batting average down from .272 and the Mariners' battering average up from .226.  Is a difference of .46 statistically significant?  You betcha.  It's huge.

The question is, does Higgs buy his own explanation or does he really not know any better?  Either option is a bit scary.


***
The reply has appeared.  Now we'll see if it lasts.


Correction 7/25/11:  Used strikethroughs to improve the sense of the final paragraph.

Grading PolitiFact (Ohio): Marcia Fudge gets a break on her factses

• Is the statement leaving a particular impression that may be misleading?

--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

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:

The fact checkers:

Sabrina Eaton:  writer, researcher
Robert Higgs:  editor


Analysis:

Context first:



(transcript mine, yellow highlights indicate portions quoted by PolitiFact)

James:

Good morning.  Um,  I got a couple things I want to talk about.  One in particular, you know, I hear all the time about 50 percent of the people not paying their taxes.  But, you know, 50 percent of the people are pretty much living from day to day and in poverty.  That's, um, one.

The other thing about paying your fair share of taxes, uh, I'm in business for myself.  And I can write off pretty much everything.  And the larger businesses can write off more than I can ever begin to write off.  So they're not paying any taxes, you know, people talk about, uh,  paying your fair, uh, share, uh, or gaming the system.  Uh, these large businesses, they have parties, they write off all their food, they write off everything.  Clothes, and the whole bit.  Now you have people that are poor that can't write off anything.  I would much rather be in the position that I am in than to get welfare.  If you're getting welfare, food stamps, and that, you can' t pay your bills.  You're working from day to day, and you're definitely (?) conservative because if you weren't conservative you wouldn't be able to survive 30 days off of uh welfare and food stamps and anybody that thinks that they can, they need to trade that position with some of these people that are getting food stamps.

Rep. Fudge
There are corporations in this nation, some of the biggest corporations in this nation, who do not pay taxes.  You are certainly correct.  Um, But it's a matter of tax policy.  Over the last probably 15 years in this nation, tax policy has skewed to the very wealthy.  It's not that they are cheating, it's not that they are doing something wrong, they're, they're, they're using what we have given them.  We have given them tools to keep them from paying taxes. 

Uh, and so the policies need to change.  We need to take a look at tax policy in general.  But we certainly need to take a look at corporate tax policy.  Because when we continue to allow the wealthiest people and the biggest corporations in this nation to not pay taxes that is why we have created this huge gap between rich and poor.  Um, I know that we often talk about middle income people but at some point we have to talk about the gap between rich and poor, which has consistently gotten bigger in this country over the last 10 years.  And now it is larger than anyone ever imagined it could be.  So I think that it is absurd to say that it, that, that taxes should not be increased on the wealthiest people in this nation, who some pay probably less taxes than I pay.  And that we should not do things for the people who are most in need.  I think it's, it's absurd.

The above method of examining the original context can emphasize the degree to which a reporter massaged a quotation into shape. This example has Eaton pushing, if not shredding, the envelope by omitting material in the midst of a quotation without using an ellipsis:

"It is not that they are cheating," Fudge continued. "It is not that they are doing something wrong. We have given them tools."

We thought examining Fudge’s tax claim would be worthwhile, since representatives of some of the nation’s biggest companies, such as Cincinnati’s Procter & Gamble, argue that Congress should be cutting business taxes.

Eaton spelled out something of an agenda with the latter paragraph.  Corporations need their taxes cut?  We'll see about that!

PolitiFact:

Are some large U.S. businesses not paying taxes, as Fudge claims?

To back up her assertion, Fudge’s office cites media reports about particular companies – like General Electric and Bank of America -- that did not pay 2009 taxes as well as a July 2008 report from Congress’ Government Accountability Office that showed it’s relatively common for big companies to pay no taxes.

Remember, Fudge argues that corporations aren't paying taxes because the government gives them the tools to avoid paying taxes.  Let's follow the links:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- General Electric filed more than 7,000 income tax returns in hundreds of global jurisdictions last year, but when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. government a whopping bill of $0.

How'd it pull off that trick? By losing lots of money. 

Thanks for the tools, federal government!

As for Bank of America - after major losses in 2009... it ended the year with a tax benefit of almost $2 billion.

CNN anchor Jack Cafferty offers no clue as to how he calculates a "tax benefit" or what the term actually means.  My investigation suggests that he is misinterpreting and/or misrepresenting its meaning.  It appears to mean that a past write-off was recovered and had to be reported as income for the current tax year--which would increase the income tax if the company had demonstrated a net income.

And how about that GAO report?  Yes, it showed that big companies often pay no (income) taxes.  Because big companies often lose money at the bottom line.  From the report's "Results in Brief":

Corporations can establish the basis for no tax liability at different places on their tax returns. For example, some corporations could have zero income before deducting expenses and others could have zero net income after deducting expenses—both of which could result in no tax liability. In 2005, large FCDCs and USCCs differed little in where on their tax returns they first established no tax liability. Most large FCDCs and USCCs first established no tax liability where they reported their net current income after deducting expenses. A smaller proportion—about 10 percent—reported losses from prior years that eliminated any tax liability.

The final two sentences seem especially relevant, since they suggest that most corporations establish the status of no tax liability by posting an operating loss.  All part of the government's plan to keep the rich from paying taxes, no doubt.

PolitiFact does a good bit of fiddling with the statistics from the GAO report, but the stats ultimately don't mean much.  Businesses that consistently lose money--especially large businesses--don't stay in business for long.  And the businesses that make money pay income taxes on the income.  It is difficult to see how that finding supports Fudge's claim.  How does the fact that businesses don't pay income taxes when they don't have net income have a significant effect on the gap between the rich and the poor?  We could use an explanation.  But we're not going to get one.

What, conclusion time already?

PolitiFact:

The nation’s big business representatives don’t dispute the (GAO) report’s findings, even as they stress it should not be misconstrued to mean businesses are evading taxes they owe. During her television appearance, Fudge stressed that the businesses who don’t pay taxes aren’t cheating or doing anything wrong.

Our research finds solid ground beneath her claim that some large U.S. companies don’t pay taxes. That’s why we rate her statement as True.

The rating is ridiculous.  Fudge did not mention the fact that when U.S. companies do not pay income taxes it is because they did not make money.  Nor did she distinguish between income taxes and other types of taxes such as property and sales taxes.  Ask Allen West how that can affect your Truth-O-Meter rating if you're a Republican.  The "True" rating is supposed to apply when "there’s nothing significant missing."  It is inconsistent to rate West "Barely True" for a parallel statement lacking that sort of context and then find a similar omission insignificant when rating Fudge.


The grades:

Sabrina Eaton:  F
Robert Higgs:  F


Journalists who fail to apply proper standards are journalists reporting badly.  In this case, the PolitiFacters did not care whether the statement left an impression that was misleading and did not pay close attention to the specific wording of the claim nor the context with its underlying point.

Grading PolitiFact (Ohio): Tom Niehaus and the defecation implication

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.
--Bill Adair

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Reginald Fields:  writer, researcher
Robert Higgs:  editor


Analysis:

What's the scoop on the poop at the Statehouse building in Ohio?

The PolitiFact account tells of of a "raucous" protest outside the Statehouse building by "over 5,000 union workers."

The protesters’ target was Republican Gov. John Kasich and the GOP-controlled Senate that is pushing the bill.

If the protesters end up murdering Kasich and the GOP-controlled Senate then it will be the fault of Fields and Higgs. "Target." Tsk, tsk.

I'm joking about the martial rhetoric. But the use of adjectives and adverbs in this story does represent a concern in terms of journalistic style.

Use sparingly. Inject colour into copy with strong verbs and facts, rather than adjectives. If you use more than two adjectives before a single noun then rewrite the sentence. A reader struggles with The one-eyed poverty-stricken Greek house painter. Avoid adjectives that imply judgment, e.g. a hard-line speech, a glowing tribute, a staunch conservative.

Reuters Handbook of Journalism

The other problem with adjectives is that they can unwittingly transmit a reporter's bias or feelings. 

About.com:  Journalism

The problem is the same for adverbs.  Speaking of which:

Even Republican Senate President Tom Niehaus the next day grudgingly expressed admiration for the groups’ ability to coordinate so well and make themselves part of the lawmaking process.

We've got video of the grudgingly:



I know!  Total grudgefulness, like, for sure.  Practically raucous in his grudgefulness, he was.

Setting style points aside, what about the facts?

PolitiFact:

It is clear that Kasich and Statehouse Republicans are frustrated by being upstaged by protesters over SB 5 (Thousands more were expected to rally at the Statehouse on Tuesday, March 1).

Oops, sorry, that was an opinion. The facts are a little further in:

Did protesters really defecate in the Statehouse?

We asked Niehaus’ staff about the "documented instances" and were told that several were reported to the senator and that he confirmed them with Statehouse management. That management is handled by the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board.

PolitiFact phoned the Capital Square Review and Advisory Board and left an inquiry message of some sort.  The reply from the board was via voicemail, though the text of the story suggests a direct conversation:

We called the CSRAB, the curators of the Statehouse, for an accounting of any incidents in the building during the protest.

"There was defecation in the stairwell to the parking garage," said CSRAB spokesman Gregg Dodd, but not inside the Statehouse. Furthermore, there is no proof it was left by protesters, and Dodd expressed his doubt. He noted that CSRAB has dealt with this issue before when there are no demonstrations taking place at the Statehouse.

"Unfortunately it happens from time to time even when there are no events going on, and we think it is either a homeless person or persons, or someone waiting for the bus stop," Dodd said, explaining that this particular stairwell leads up to the street level where there are stops for the Columbus bus system.

How do I know Dodd communicated through voicemail?  Simple.  I check the source list PolitiFact provides.  It says "Gregg Dodd, Capital Square Review and Advisory Board, voicemail message, Feb. 25, 2011."

The short source list and voicemail communications suggest a slapdash effort to check this set of facts.  But let's give PolitiFact the benefit of the doubt and assume that Dodd was aware of any and all incidents occurring at or near the time of the protest and reported them accurately to PolitiFact.

That makes Niehaus wrong, doesn't it?

Actually, no.  Though Dodd thought that the doodie was done by a homeless person or the like unassociated with the protest, he did not rule out the possibility.  Why, then, does PolitiFact go on to rule Niehaus' claim "Pants on Fire" as a supposedly ridiculous claim?

Possibly the duo of Fields and Higgs relied on PolitiFact's burden of proof criterion.  If Niehaus doesn't prove it was a protestor who dropped the dookie then it wasn't a protester.  That reasoning perfectly fits the form of the appeal to ignorance fallacy, as I have pointed out in previous posts.

More importantly, did PolitiFact miss Niehaus' point?  Was he trying to portray the protesters as slovenly barbarians?

If so, Niehaus could have used some coaching.  He erred in praising the majority of the protesters for their adherence to decorum and for specifically saying that only a small minority marred that adherence to decorum.  Oh, you didn't know that Niehaus said that?  PolitiFact must have neglected to mention it.  Review the embedded video.

Given that Niehaus did such a horrible job of selling the point that the protesters were excrementalists, is it possible that he was making a different point?

Returning to the context, it is plain that Niehaus praised the behavior of the majority of the protestors, grudgingly or not.  And he gave two examples of blemishes on that exemplary behavior.  One, the unauthorized bowel movements.  Two, the writing on the walls.  PolitiFact gave Niehaus a "small nod" for the accuracy of the latter statement.  If Niehaus' purpose was either to admonish those who perpetrated the acts or to encourage even better adherence to decorum by protesters, then his complex statement supports those aims even if the offending offal was not left behind by the protesters.

The conclusion makes clear the hypocrisy of PolitiFact's fact-checking criteria:

As Senate president, Niehaus is one of the most influential people in the state government and when he speaks people listen. Yet this claim is beyond inaccurate. It’s a ridiculous assertion that is unsupported by the people who actually take care of the Statehouse.

Supposedly Niehaus' claim is "beyond inaccurate."  But in terms of the facts of the story, Niehaus' claim was merely unconfirmed, which is notably echoed in the subsequent sentence ("unsupported by the people who actually take care of the Statehouse.")

PolitiFact, then, is stating that the protesters did not evacuate before leaving the building.  But all they've got in evidence is the hypothesis of one man who works for the board.  If we apply PolitiFact's own standard to PolitiFact's claim, then PolitiFact would have about the same amount of evidence in support of its claim that Niehaus has for his.

Just to make clear, I think it probably wasn't the protesters who were responsible.  The point here is that PolitiFact is making an unequivocal judgment based on equivocal evidence.


The grades:

Reginald Fields:  F
Robert Higgs:  F

Hypocrites who need remedial practice in objective reporting.  That's overlooking a skimpy list of sources.  The reporting looks rushed.

I suppose they can blame their hypocrisy on the ludicrous operational standards required by PolitiFact, namely the ill-conceived burden of proof criterion.

Grading PolitiFact (Ohio): Sherrod Brown claims unemployment is insurance, not welfare

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Stephen Koff:  writer, researcher
Robert Higss:  editor


Analysis:

Sherrod Brown appeared on MSNBC back on Nov. 30 and made the claim pictured in the above graphic (see "The issue").

Context is a wonderful thing.  Unfortunately, PolitiFact provides no way to verify the full context of Brown's conversation with Contessa Brewer (though Brown rhapsodized about the same subject on the Rachel Maddow Show back in July).

PolitiFact does provide enough context to make it look like Brown contradicts himself:

Brown says that Congress needs to show some compassion, because so many Americans are struggling to find work.

"Understand, this is unemployment insurance," Brown told MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer on Nov. 30. "It’s not welfare, as a lot of my Republican colleagues like to suggest it is. You pay into it when you’re working. You get help when you’re not."

First Brown claims that Congress needs to show compassion.  Then Brown says that unemployment payments are a form of unemployment insurance.

Is an insurance company exhibiting "compassion" when it pays a claim?

No.  In most instances insurance companies pay claims because of a contractual obligation to pay the claim.  It's always possible, though not likely, that an insurance company will pay benefits beyond those called for in the terms of the contract.  Benefits in the latter category are conceptually identical to charity.  Brown, then, is arguing for charity (extending long-term unemployment benefits) and justifying it as the rightful payment of an insurance benefit.

It isn't cut and dried in the world of PolitiFact, however:

Brown raises several points that we thought were worth checking. The key point: Do workers pay into the unemployment system and then draw benefits from it if they lose their jobs?

PolitiFact's "key point" completely overlooks the context of Brown's statement.  Yes, prior to emergency extensions done at the discretion of the insurer (the government), unemployment benefits are an insurance benefit.  But there's no controversy in Congress about paying those benefits.  The controversy surrounds the interminable extension of unemployment benefits.

PolitiFact then digresses into the issue of who pays the premium for unemployment benefits.  Making the long story shorter, the employer pays the premium but most or all of the payment is considered part of the price of employment.  Regardless, PolitiFact is missing Brown's underlying argument and his main point as a result.

After that, PolitiFact notes that the federal contribution to unemployment benefits is not part of the insurance arrangement at the state level.  In other words, the federal dollars are not part of the insurance benefit for unemployment insurance.  One of PolitiFact's expert sources called the federal portion "deficit financing." Brown was talking about money appropriated by Congress.  How does he get away with justifying the expense as meeting the obligations of an insurance program?

PolitiFact is hot on the trail, albeit moving in the opposite direction:

One more component of Brown’s claim: that "a lot of my Republican colleagues" like to suggest that unemployment insurance is like welfare. This was an important part of the claim because it explains why he felt the need to clarify how the system is funded -- not by freeloaders but by workers who pay into the system.

Apparently we're supposed to ignore the fact that the federal component is not funded by the insurance premium.  PolitiFact uncovered that fact and has since ignored it.

As for the rabbit-trail itself, PolitiFact finds Brown "Half True" in saying that a good number of his Republican colleagues suggest unemployment insurance is like welfare.  The justification?  A good number of Republicans say that unemployment insurance serves as a disincentive to find work.

Huh?

Isn't that entirely beside the point?  If welfare made it 100 percent certain that a person would find a job it would still be welfare, wouldn't it?  How did we end up defining "welfare" in terms of its supposed disincentive effect?  That conception of "welfare" is apparently assumed in the story.  The author provides no justification (and the editor apparently couldn't care less).

PolitiFact ends up breaking down Brown's claim into three component parts (in spite of their simultaneous effort to grade just one item where possible).

So let’s break down Brown’s claim and our fact-finding.

• "A lot of my Republican colleagues" like to suggest that jobless benefits are like welfare. What he meant was clear enough -- that they equate jobless benefits to the public dole. We can’t quantify "a lot." But Brown’s staff provided numerous examples that show there are Republicans saying they worry that jobless benefits encourage people to stay out of work. This isn’t to suggest it is a majority view. But Brown did not say "most." He said "a lot." This part of the claim, then, warrants at least a Half True.
• "You pay into it when you’re working." Economists from the right and left agreed that this is essentially correct, with some elaboration required. So it is Mostly True.
• "You get help when you’re not." This is True.

No doubt the elephant in the room feels greatly relieved.

The key issue should have been whether unemployment compensation was comparable to welfare according to the context in which Brown was speaking.  PolitiFact rated the first component item "Half True" based on an illogical procedure, since welfare is welfare regardless of incentive effects or the lack thereof.  The second and third items relate tangentially to the key point.  Employees pay for unemployment insurance ("You pay into it when you're working"=>"You get help when you're not"), but Congress doesn't appropriate funds for extended unemployment benefits according to the insurance contract.  Extensions self-evidently go beyond the normal schedule of benefits.

PolitiFact bought Sherrod Brown's red herring and ended up pursuing rabbit-trails.

Oh, and the "caveat":

This entire discussion needs a caveat. MSNBC put Brown on the air because of the ongoing debate over extending federal jobless benefits. The reason for debate is the fact that the federal government has to pick up the tab and it will have to borrow more to do so, at least in the short term. To put matters clearly: You pay into the unemployment compensation through your employer, and that pool of money pays for your state benefits -- but not your federal benefits -- if you lose your job.

So, apart from the fact that Brown was misleading the audience, what he said was Mostly True.  Or something like that.  Supposedly.

The grades:

Stephen Koff:  F
Robert Higgs:  F

I've applied the "journalists reporting badly" tag.

Afters:

Sherrod Brown made a remarkably similar set of claims in July on the Rachel Maddow Show:

MADDOW:  One of the things that was proven not only to be the right thing to do with people that are down on their luck but also a big economic stimulus is extending unemployment benefits.  That is something you and the Senate have been dealing with over and over and over again as republicans continue to block it.  Do you think the Senate will be able to get an extension next week?
 
BROWN:  I think we are, because Senator Byrd‘s replacement will be appointed by Governor Mansion of West Virginia.  We need one more vote, but that is the hypocrisy.  They insist we—they give tax cuts to the rich, they start wars, they do a drug and insurance company bailout giveaway.  Charge that to our grandchildren.
 
All of a sudden now, we have to pay for unemployment benefits for working people who have been in the job market for 20 or 30 years, working.  They lose their jobs.  They‘ve paid into this.  Republicans seem to think, republican senators, 41 of them vote no on unemployment time after time after time.  They seem to think that unemployment is welfare.  It‘s insurance.  You pay in when you‘re working, you get help when you‘re not. 

The problem, of course, is that the repeated votes where Republicans express opposition to extending unemployment benefits all involve extensions of unemployment benefits.  Brown's words are very misleading, and PolitiFact finds it impossible to notice.

That same Rachel Maddow segment was the subject of an earlier PolitiFact fact check.  Koff and Higgs received the "journalists reporting badly" tag on that one, also.



Dec. 11, 2010:  A URL in the final paragraph led to the wrong destination, though not by much.  Fixed it.

Of informal speech in objective (?) reporting (Updated)

While skimming the latest PolitiFact entries for grading projects, the opening lines from a story on a Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) raised my eyebrows:

Congressional Democrats found a lot of ways to pay for the country’s health insurance overhaul, some more popular than others. But one in particular has small lawn services, work-at-home parents and the nation’s smallest businesses mighty concerned.

"Mighty concerned," eh?  Dern-tootin' they're concerned, 'cuz all them high-falutin' city folk up in Washington are a bunch of Commies.

No, seriously, I got the impression from "mighty concerned" that PolitiFact was trying to give some kind of down home flavor to the opinion of those who operate lawn services and the like.

From Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, page 634:

The use of mighty as an adverbial intensifier has been looked at askance since at least 1829, when the sentence "That is a mighty big dog" was given in Joseph Hervey Hull's Grammar as an "incorrect phrase" to be corrected.

Not exactly an auspicious beginning.  The book confirmed my reading of the connotations attached to its use as an "adverbial intensifier":

In current American English, it usually conveys a folksy, down-home feeling or a rural atmosphere ...

The entry concludes by saying that the usage is grammatically correct, and a writer should not refrain from using it if it serves a purpose.

I wonder what purpose it was to serve in the PolitiFact story?  Maybe dropping lawn service workers, work-at-home parents and small business owners a notch closer to yokel status?  It can't be the way writer Stephen Koff and editor Robert Higgs of PolitiFact Ohio normally write, can it?


Update:

About the adverb, from Reuters' Handbook of Journalism:

Like adjectives they should be used sparingly. Avoid adverbs that imply judgment, e.g. generously, harshly, and sternly.

Grading PolitFact (Ohio): Sherrod Brown and presidential job creation

One of the most common manifestations of liberal media bias occurs when a liberal presupposition goes unchallenged in the context of either an objective news story or in news analysis.  Though PolitiFact apparently continues to present itself as objective news, it is better categorized as news analysis if not editorial opinion.

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Stephen Koff:  writer, researcher
Richard Exner:  researcher
Robert Higgs:  editor

Analysis:

The quotation of Sen. Brown came from a segment of the Rachel Maddow Show.  Maddow segued from a caricature of Marco Rubio's plans for improving the economy to her conversation with Brown:

(MADDOW:) Right now our deficit is around $1 trillion, republicans are proposing to add $3.5 trillion more to it.  Thank you very much. 
Now let them all fall down.  Well done.  There we go.  Don‘t let the door hit your fiscal responsibility when you‘re on your way out.  All right.  Joining us now is democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.  Senator Brown, thank you for joining us tonight. 
SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH):  You‘re having too much fun, Rachel. 
MADDOW:  I am having too much fun.  Whenever things fail visibly on television, I enjoy myself. 
BROWN:  You do.  And we do!
MADDOW:  Well, thank you.  Let me ask, though, if there is something that I‘m missing aside from good double-stick tape.  Are republicans essentially campaigning on adding all this tax cut stuff to the deficit? 
BROWN:  Yeah, in some sense, what you‘re missing is you‘re only telling half the story, in this way that not only what they‘re doing provably increases the deficit, and did increase the deficit in the first several years of this decade, this century, we know that.  You proved that and we knew that. 
What else it did is it doesn‘t create jobs.  Just contrast the last two eight-year administrations.  During the eight Bush years, 3 million jobs, net jobs created.  During the eight Clinton years, 22 million net jobs created.  So I care about deficits, absolutely.  But what I care even more about is job creation that people have a chance to join the middle class. 
We saw jobs created, 22 million in the Clinton years.  Because they were responsible about cutting taxes selectively and increasing taxes selectively and they were responsible about what government programs they formed and they dismantled.  22 million jobs created and incomes went up in those eight years for the average American.  And in the next eight years, the eight Bush years, only 3 million jobs created and that wasn‘t even enough to keep up with population growth. 
So in that sense, there was a relative decline in job creation.  And wages were flat or worse for the average American.  So—and coupled with that, what the republicans did in eight years is they cut taxes for the richest Americans and they deregulated Wall Street and deregulated worker safety.

Brown makes a ton of dubious claims in the above set of talking points.  PolitiFact Ohio accordingly applies selection bias:

Politicians can slice and dice monthly job reports expertly, a useful skill for scoring economic talking points. Include a few months’ worth of job losses here, exclude some job gains there, or do it in reverse, and pretty soon it’s all some scoundrel’s fault. (Never mind whom that scoundrel is.)

So U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown caught our attention when he took a broader historical look while appearing July 14 on Rachel Maddow’s program on MSNBC.

This, plain and simple, is a laugh.  It is not a "broader historical look" to assess economic policy by looking at the beginning and end points of presidential terms.  It's simply the aforementioned slicing and dicing intended to direct blame at a scoundrel.  The start and finish of a presidential tenure count as relatively arbitrary points in terms of the implementation of economic policy within the ebb and flow of the business cycle.  PolitiFact's failure to pick up on this raises an immediate red flag.

Hold on to your hat, because PolitFact will end up producing red flags like a Leningrad parade in the old Soviet Union:

The quantitative claims seemed worth checking out, and in doing so we found a surprise: Brown is wrong – but not in a way he’ll likely mind. No fan of President George W. Bush, Brown grossly understated the poor job growth that occurred on Bush’s watch.

The comparison should have been this: Job growth through Clinton two terms was 22.7 million. Through Bush’s two terms, it was 1.1 million.

We might ignore the fact that Clinton inherited a recovering economy from President George H. W. Bush while President George W. Bush inherited an economy poised to enter recession, and the fact that banking crisis at the tail end of the latter Bush presidency had a substantial root in Clinton's policy.  But should we ignore those factors while comparing fiscal and economic policy?  Should we ignore those factors while fact checking?

A chart from Heritage Foundation (click chart for enlarged view) helps fill in some of the blanks:

The two worst periods of job creation during the Bush presidency, as the chart helps highlight, occurred during a recession worsened by the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the banking crisis for which Democrats share considerable blame.  As for Clinton's impressive record of job creation, that was accomplished with the assistance of a Republican-controlled Congress after Clinton inherited an economy on the rebound from recession.

Armed with something more akin to a "broader historical outlook," back to the PolitiFact story:

The quantitative claims seemed worth checking out, and in doing so we found a surprise: Brown is wrong – but not in a way he’ll likely mind. No fan of President George W. Bush, Brown grossly understated the poor job growth that occurred on Bush’s watch.

The fact check on the raw numbers proves satisfactory--but isn't Brown doing far more than making a comparison between the net job creation numbers for Clinton and Bush?  He has an underlying argument supposedly girded by those numbers, doesn't he?  So what is it?

Skipping over the justification for the 1.1 million figure, PolitiFact continues:

OK, but what about Brown’s claim that incomes went up under Clinton?

The numbers bear this out, too. BLS data, adjusted for inflation, show that average weekly wages grew by 21 percent from the start of Clinton’s first term to the end of his second term. They grew by only 2 percent under Bush’s two terms.

OK, so what's Brown's argument based on these numbers?

PolitiFact:

Is it fair to compare job growth under these presidents? Just in case we were missing some context – because these numbers seemed to turn conventional wisdom of its head -- we ran this by Dan Mitchell, an economist and fan of fiscal restraint who works as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-oriented think tank. Mitchell said he didn’t find the numbers surprising. Luck and the economic cycle played a role in both presidencies, but the officeholders’ policies played bigger roles, he said. Citing free-trade agreements, welfare reform and deregulation in the telecommunications and agriculture industries, Mitchell said that Clinton’s economic policies were actually geared more to free markets than Bush’s, and the results speak for themselves.

Mitchell, unsurprisingly, makes some of the points to which I alluded above while giving appropriate credit to Clinton for favoring free markets in his economic approach.

But if Clinton's success occurred largely because of a free market approach, besting Bush in terms of conservatism, then might there be consequences for Brown's underlying argument?  And speaking of Brown's underlying argument, does PolitiFact have any insight as to what it might be?

Sorry, folks!  It's conclusion time already:

But that’s for others to argue. Bush, while insisting on tax cuts, faced a national security crisis unparalleled in the last half-century, and his response – including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – had serious economic consequences.  Political values, including those of Sen. Brown, shape the debate on whether the president took the right or wrong approach. As for us, we’re sticking to the factual claims.

Brown’s numbers on Bush were off, but his point was right on target. We rate his statement True.

"(H)is point was right on target."  Apparently PolitiFact takes Brown to mean simply that Clinton's job creation numbers were much better than Bush's measured from the start to the end of their two terms.  But the caveats discussed above make that an effectively meaningless comparison except perhaps, as Cato's Mitchell put it, as a measure of Clinton's free market savvy.  But seriously, doesn't the context demand that Brown's underlying argument is something other than that?

The whole of the Maddow-Brown interchange amounts to an attack on the notion of cutting taxes to grow the economy.  Brown tried to make the  point that cutting taxes does not create jobs, using the Clinton/Bush comparison to prove his point.  Review the transcript:

"What else it did is it doesn‘t create jobs.  Just contrast the last two eight-year administrations.  During the eight Bush years, 3 million jobs, net jobs created.  During the eight Clinton years, 22 million net jobs created."

Without specifically identifying Brown's point, PolitiFact declares his point "right on target."  But given the information above, it should be obvious that Brown's intended point--that tax cuts do not create jobs--cannot find reasonable support in the Clinton/Bush comparison.

PolitiFact again ignored the clear underlying argument of a Democratic Party figure.  The supposed fact check serves to frame, rather than interpret, Brown's statement in the most favorable manner possible.  Any communication deserves charitable interpretation.  Charitable framing, however, should not be the business of a fact checker.  That is the job of public relations workers and partisan spinners.

The grades:

Stephen Koff:  F
Richard Exner: F
Robert Higgs:  F

Exner may have done a fine job, but the research on this story is so thin that he gets an "F" by default.  I like to hope that he made some sort of comment to the writer and editor to the effect that their story was fundamentally flawed.