A Primer on Political Fact Checking: Index

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"Politifact Bias" Still Making The Same Mistakes

The anti-fact-checker website "Politifact Bias" has attempted to prove that the popular fact checking website, Politifact.com, has a liberal slant. Previously, I examined a 2011 review article to check their complaints and found the criticisms lacking. However, that article was not a good representation of what the site considers evidence of bias. I previously started a post examining one of their articles that claims Politifact has been inconsistent and unfair to Republicans when using employment statistics to evaluate claims. I plan on finishing the article soon. In the meantime I was notified by Karen Street of the blog Poly Psychotics about a study from one of Politifact Bias' authors Bryan White that claimed to find clear evidence of bias in how Politifact assigns "False" verses "Pants on Fire" ratings. On his website, Bryan describes this study as the "highest priority on the research list" and argues the study tells a "story of a strong anti-GOP bias at PolitiFact's national operation." I was intrigued. He describes the study as follows:

"Early last year I realized that PolitiFact's own rating system created a natural opinion poll for PolitiFact journalists. PolitiFact distinguishes between its "False" and "Pants on Fire" claims according to a single criterion:

FALSE – The statement is not accurate.

PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.

"False" and "Pants on Fire" claims are not accurate. "Pants on Fire" claims are, in addition, ridiculous. Ridiculous means subject to ridicule. Ridicule is, of course, the specialty of objective journalists."

"Republicans are about 74 percent more likely than Democrats to receive a "Pants on Fire" rating--74 percent more likely to speak not just the false but the ridiculous in the eyes of PolitiFact's national operation. It's not an easy statistic to explain without liberal bias."

Eric Ostermeier attempted a study similar to this back in 2011, although it was much more subtle in its attempt to poison the PolitiFact well. In a previous post, I pointed out the flaws in concluding bias from his data. Bryan's attempt was a bit more focused, and he was much more forward about his conclusion. Yet the study fails to provide the evidence needed to support his claim of liberal bias.

The study sets up a false dichotomy of two possibilities to explain the data. Either Republicans lie more often or Politifact is biased. Yet other options are ignored. Politifact does not grade a large sample of Republican politicians, which means that any conclusion about these politicians cannot be applied to Republicans as a whole without large uncertainty. PolitiFact has also stated "We are journalists who choose our fact-checks based on what is newsworthy. We are not social scientists and are not using any kind of random sample to select statements to check." As a result, you can only apply conclusions to the the few "newsworthy" statements PolitiFact has encountered. Republicans telling more ridiculous lies than Democrats could explain the data, but it is a fallacy to say it therefore must be THE explanation.

Other explanations could also explain the data. For instance, it could be the case that the loudest and most media-covered Republicans are more likely to not only lie, but tell ridiculous lies, than the loudest and most media-covered Democrats (sensationalism, my friend). And there are many reasons why this would be expected. During the short time PolitiFact has existed, popular Republican thought has been practically hijacked by TEA Party ideas (Something that has caused a stir even among Republicans). And you wouldn't expect as much accuracy from a group with a tendency toward anti-intellectualism. Conversely, the Tea-Party’s liberal counterpart, OCCUPY Wall Street, failed to take nearly as much of a hold over Democratic politicians. The Republican Party has also been in the minority in government and underwent a particularly nasty primary fight in 2011. Just like the liberal anti-war protestors during the years of the Republican majority, minority parties may be more prone to extremism in protest of the other party's agenda. All these factors could suggest that a small group of loud media-covered Republicans are likely to blame for the discrepancy. However as with the former explanation, the data alone does not necessarily suggest this is the correct explanation. Further research outside the grade of PolitiFact would need to be performed.

Bryan fails to explore either of these explanations. Instead, he merely dismisses the former explanation by suggesting that Republicans lying more often would result only in more combined “False” and “Pants on Fire” ratings. He claims it would not account for the discrepancy between the two. But, as can be seen from PolitiFact’s definitions of the "False" and "Pants on Fire" ratings, lying comes nowhere into the equation, only the accuracy and absurdity of the claim. Not all false claims are lies. Most false claims can probably be explained by ignorance. However, a repeatedly debunked claim could spark a shift for some claims from “False” to “Pants on Fire.” The more likely you are to repeat an already debunked claim, the more likely your refusal to accept the debunking may constitute ridiculous lying. As can be seen, Bryan's justification fails to dismiss the possibility that Republicans lie more often.² However, there are many possible explanations for the discrepancy in the data. And it could be the case that more than one explanation is needed. If Bryan wants us to accept  his bias explanation by process of elimination, he needs to actually eliminate all other possible explanations first (within reason, of course).

His study further attempts to prove that PolitiFact's justifications for assigning "False" verses "Pants on Fire" ratings are completely subjective. While I will admit there can be some subjectivity in what should be considered ridiculous, there are other claims where the possibility of subjectivity is trivial. If practically everyone who knows a claim is false finds it ridiculous, does subjectivity even matter? However, none of this matters if PolitiFact is actually using some kind of objective criteria to justify which statements get a "False" or "Pants on Fire" rating. Bryan claimed he attempted to find such criteria:

No consistent pattern of justification emerged from the data, though justifications for “Pants on Fire” ratings, when they occurred, did vary somewhat from those typically used to justify a “False” rating. For example, the perceived use of fear to increase the impact of a political claim, as PolitiFact said Sarah Palin did with her infamous “death panel” comment, occurred about 15% of the time in the “Pants on Fire” group but not at all in the “False” group. On the other hand, more than half of the “Pants on Fire” sample carried no particular justifying rationale for the rating, instead using language along the lines of “This claim was so false we rate it Pants on Fire!”(emphasis mine)

However, nowhere in Politifact's justification of Sarah Palin's "Death Panel" claim did the word "fear" come up. In fact, nowhere can I find the word "fear" in any definition of the word "ridiculous." I'm not sure why he used that as a criteria. And nowhere does he explain why he chose it. Likely, this means that Bryan merely guessed at possible random criteria and, when he could not find one, he assumed none existed. Is he guilty of an argument from ignorance? Possibly. It depends on whether or not he  seriously tried to find an objective criteria (given the motivation for the study, i doubt he did), or whether or not he is even capable of finding objective criteria (a concept as complex as the idea of "ridiculousness" cannot be easily diagnosed with just one unconditional justification). Can we trust he did all he reasonably could to seriously attempt to find objective criteria? Given the name of his site and his apparent lack of impartial peer review, I seriously doubt it. It may be that his approach to finding objective criteria is misguided from the start. For instance, look at some of the Farlex examples of what people mean when they say "ridiculous":

""the absurd excuse that the dog ate his homework"; "that's a cockeyed idea"; "ask a nonsensical question and get a nonsensical answer"; "a contribution so small as to be laughable"; "it is ludicrous to call a cottage a mansion"; "a preposterous attempt to turn back the pages of history"; "her conceited assumption of universal interest in her rather dull children was ridiculous""

Can you find any objective criteria for what makes the subject matter of these quotes ridiculous, as opposed to just false? Probably not. But I highly doubt almost anyone would fail to recognize the subject matter of these quotes as being ridiculous, even if they do not have a clear idea of what objective criteria makes them ridiculous. For example, if I were to say that Martin Luther King Jr. hated black people, or that Hitler loved the Jews, you would have no trouble finding my claim ridiculous.Yet the attempt to find a super-dictionary use of the word ridiculous is likely pointless. What matters is how people use the word. And there is little doubt there are numerous examples of false statements in which nearly everyone would find ridiculous (so long as they realized it was false, obviously). No doubt there are also grey areas. But there is no indication Bryan ever attempted to differentiate between obvious and grey areas in his examination. Is this an easy task? Probably not. Determining whether or not Politifact is justified in finding every PoF-rated claim ridiculous may be tough, given the nature of what constitutes ridicule, but there is little doubt you would need much more than Bryan's sole conservative opinion.

So even if calling a claim ridiculous is at least somewhat subjective, you may be wondering
how he comes to the conclusion that Politifact does in fact have a liberal bias.

"If no such criteria exist then the results reflect bias in the PolitiFact organization."

If you don't think the conclusion follows from the premise, you are right.¹ As I noted before, there are obvious examples of things that are ridiculous. It could be the case that "the loudest and most media-covered Republicans" are saying more of these obviously ridiculous falsehoods than "the loudest and most media-covered Democrats". This would explain the discrepancy without the need for bias. But Bryan thinks more can be explained with his bias theory:

"A liberal ideological bias by PolitiFact, for example, helps explain a number of features in the data, for example the close correlation between the percentage of “Pants on Fire” ratings for party politicians and bureaucrats compared to the ratings for other partisan figures (the group featuring media figures such as Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh)."

What?! If you are also left scratching your head, i empathize with you. Bryan does not really elaborate on why this phenomenon fits his theory. Nor does he reference any papers that explain this either.

The rest of his article attempts to explain the phenomena with all kinds of speculative conspiracy-sounding explanations. He believes that Politifact's debunking of Democrat statements is actually some nefarious plot to make themselves look non-partisan (If this is the case, they could have chosen much less damning claims to debunk). Overall, it wreaks of conspiracy theory style rationalization.

If this constitutes  "The best evidences showing PolitiFact's liberal slant," one has to wonder if there is any good evidence of "PolitiFact's liberal slant" at all. I've looked and I have yet to find any. But when one is dedicated to poisoning the well of any non-partisan source that debunks their favorite political party claims, any turd is gold.

Note: Karen Street also has a great review of Bryan's study. It is worth reading.

Update 8/15/2010: Links Added
¹ Update 8/16/12: This was originally worded incorrectly. The wording has been rephrased.  
²Karen Street at Politi-Psychotics has found a few examples of these. She has also taken a look at individual writers within PolitiFact and compared their "False" verses "Pants on Fire" ratings for Democrats and Republicans. 

Update 8/19/2010: Links Added

The Roundup

Fact Checker Edition

Fact Check: Tax Facts: Lowest Rates in 30 Years

Glenn Kessler lectures the National Capital Area Skeptics about fact ckecking the Presidential Candidates. As I have said, Fact Checking is just another form of Skepticism.

PolitiFact: 'Obamanomics Explained' is not a PolitiFact chart 
Conservatives, after long decrying fact checking contain liberal bias, are suddenly obsessed with cherry picking their stats.

PolitiFact: Rush Limbaugh claims link between Batman’s Bane and Romney’s Bain

‘Crony capitalism:’ the RNC’s look at the case of Steve Westly 

"In the end, the case the RNC video makes does not add up, yelling “fire” when it may, at this point, only be fog. Still, the case it makes —and the questions it raises — hold together a bit better than many other claims of “crony capitalism.""

FactCheck: Romney and the Tax Return Precedent

"Again, Romney isn’t wrong about McCain releasing just two years of returns. And Romney may decide to stick to that “precedent.” But his comments imply that the two years released by McCain is standard, and that he has been unfairly asked t o release more than others have in the past. In fact, with the lone exception of McCain, all candidates over the last 30 years each have released more than two years of tax returns."

WP Fact Checker: Obama uses out-of-date data to criticize Romney’s Medicare plan 
Ryan's NEW 2012 plan preserves the option of traditional medicare for everyone. You can certainly argue this may be abandoned if the GoP gets full control of the government, but at this point it seems to be nothing but speculation. There is plenty to complain about with the Ryan plan, but his Medicare plan doesn't seem to be one of them.

Politifact: Will Barack Obama be outraised by Mitt Romney?

"In looking at the evidence, we see things that both support and contradict the Democrats’ predictions of being outspent. How much money outside spending groups on Romney’s side will actually raise is the biggest unknown.

But the Obama campaign isn’t without its arsenal of cash, either. A particular point of strength is that the Obama campaign itself controls its money, a strategic advantage.

For fundraising totals through May, "Romney is still badly outgunned by Obama when it comes to the total amount of money he's raised, fundraising appeals by Democrats to the contrary," Allison said in an email.

It’s too soon to determine if the Democrats’ predictions will come true. For now, the rhetoric is a tactic to portray the Democrats as the underdog."

FactCheck: Romney’s ‘Racist’ Reference to Palestinian Culture

"It’s true that he did not directly speak of the Palestinian culture. But he did indirectly address it by citing Israel’s culture as a reason for the “dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality” between Israel and the areas under Pales tinian Authority. He also did not mention Israeli economic sanctions — which, as the New York Times points out, the Palestinians have long blamed for their economic problems."

FactCheck: Senator Mangles Facts on Drilling Moratorium

"The independent Energy Information Administration estimated the moratorium would reduce oil production by 31,000 barrels a day in the fourth quarter of 2010 and 82,000 barrels a day in 2011 — a year that saw the Gulf of Mexico produce 1.3 million barrels a day."

Get A Job!? Where Have You Been The Last 4 Years!?

"Get A Job!" says Rep C.W Bill Young (R-FL) to a constituent named Pepe, after he already informed Mr. Young that he does in fact have a job. The buzz about this seems to be how ridiculous Rep Young looks in this case, giving an absurd response to a question having little to do with the question asked. It almost sounds like Rep. Young just blurted out the pre-programmed GOP response to any kind of Occupy-sounding remark. Tea Party favorite Paul Ryan even suggested college graduates should work three jobs just to pay off student loans.

But let us stop for a minute and assume Pepe did in fact NOT have a job. All of this begs the question; could he even get one? According to the most recent BLS  Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, there were 3.4 million job openings on the last business day in April. Sounds pretty good, right?  Well, the problem is he will have to compete with 12.7 million other unemployed persons. That means an average of 3 to 4 people competing for every job! And even if every job were filled, 9.3 million people would still be unemployed. Those chances do not look like promising.
But hey, competing against 2 to 3 other people doesn't sound ALL THAT BAD right? Except Pepe will also be competing with people who already have a job as well. Most notably, he will probably have to compete with internal applicants. Furthermore, many of those jobs require qualifications he probably would not have:

"Gardner Carrick of the Manufacturing Institute says 600,000 jobs are vacant because employers can't find qualified workers"

However, Pepe's greatest challenge could exist if he has been unemployed for more than 6 months. In fact, if he were unemployed, he would have a 4 in 10 chance of being in this situation, opening him up to discrimination in hiring.

Pepe was not in fact unemployed. However, Rep. Young's "Get A Job" comment should come as an insult to all the unemployed in this country who now face appalling odds in their search for a job. "Easier said than done" hardly does justice here. Just how divorced from reality can the leaders of a major political party become? In addition, you just have to admire the hypocrisy here:

Strangely enough Presidential candidate "Flip" Romney seems to be the most consistent Republican about this. I have not found any reference of him telling protesters to "get a job."

The Roundup

Content in Reality: A Scientific Look At The Problem With Third Parties
If we ever hope to establish a clear third party in this country, we need to seriously re-examine our system of voting before throwing our vote away at the expense of the American people.

Updated 7/12/12: Post ObamaCare Ruling Roundup
Some good reads on the recent decision by SCOTUS to uphold almost all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: 

Pundits Urge President Obama To Back President Obama’s Proposals

A number of pundits are turning up the volume on demands that the White House offer a jobs plan based on new infrastructure spending, a long-term deficit plan that includes taxes and entitlement cuts and a market-based health care plan, among other requests. Obama will have a hard time taking their advice, however, given that he’s already proposed those very ideas.(emphasis mine)

Politifact: Former R.I. gubernatorial candidate John Robitaille says unemployment dropped in every state that elected a Republican governor in 2010

John Robitaille’s Tweet that the unemployment rate had dropped in every state that elected a Republican governor is true as far as it goes.

But it is also true that the unemployment rate dropped in seven of the eight states that elected Democratic governors in 2010.

The fact that the unemployment rate dropped less than one-half of a percentage point more, on average, in those states that elected Republican governors hardly seems to support the Examiner headline of: "New Republican governors rapidly bringing down unemployment in their states." Particularly when experts question whether new governors can have any direct impact on an unemployment rate.

Considering the unemployment rate has fallen in 49 states in the last year, that’s stretching the statistic pretty thin. (emphasis mine)

America's wealth gap -- in 1776

"Jeffrey Williamson: In 1774, the top 1 percent of households got 9.3 percent of income.

Compare that to America today, when the top 1 percent is bringing in about 20 percent of income. Nine percent, versus 20 percent. Wow."

David Frum: Success for Some, Stagnation for Most

"Conard spends a lot of effort severing the causes of the crash of 2008 from the apparent expansion of 2003-2007. This seems an untenable project. The real-estate bust of 2008 was rooted in the real-estate bubble of 2003-2007. Yes, the record of the 2000s looks better if you treat the bust as some kind of exogenous event caused by overbearing government. But in that case, you also have to treat the real-estate bubble as an exogenous event. And without that bubble, the economic record of the 2000s is the worst for any period since World War II."

Edward Conrad can't have it both ways.

Paul Krugman: Taxes at the Top

"Tax rates for the super-elite, the top .01%, have fallen in half since Mitt Romney’s father ran for president; or to put it differently, after tax income for this group has doubled due to policy alone. And bear in mind that the US economy flourished just fine under those 60-70 tax rates …"

And national dept as a %GDP went down during this period.

Politifact: Facebook post compares corporate, individual tax burden in 1950, today

The one thing the Facebook claim gets right is that corporations are carrying less of the burden for taxation now compared to 1950. But the difference is not nearly as dramatic as the Facebook post indicates, and its numbers are wide of the mark. On balance, we rate the claim Mostly False.

House Farm Bill cuts don’t go nearly far enough

“For all of their tea party bluster, the House Republicans have proposed a wasteful, big government program that disrupts the private market, spends billions of taxpayer dollars that we don’t have and harms the environment,” R Street President Eli Lehrer said. “If Republicans are serious about cutting government, they need to start from scratch.”

Shadowy Group Pushing for Tax Chaos in Michigan

On Monday, a mysterious group called Michigan Alliance for Prosperity turned in 613,000 signatures in support of a ballot measure that would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to approve any increase in state taxes.

...

Lenny Goldberg, the head of the nonprofit California Tax Reform Association, was dismayed to hear that Michigan might be following his state's lead. "Two-thirds vote, you've got to be kidding! It's been a disaster for California!" Even loophole-closing and budget-balancing, Goldberg explains, require two-thirds votes in California. Since it only takes a majority vote to add a loophole to the California tax code, once they get in, they never get out—especially because the vast majority of Republican state legislators sign Grover Norquist's pledge to not vote for any tax increase, ever. "It's a recipe for slashing any kind of revenues that you have," Goldberg says."It's a one-way direction for state revenues—and that's down." Even the state's ability to borrow money is affected—since ratings agencies know it will be very hard for California to raise new revenues if it faces a shortfall, it has a lower bond rating than states with comparable debt burdens. (emphasis mine)

The State of Florida is facing its worst TB outbreak in 20 years just as Florida's Tea Party Governor Rick Scott closed the state's best TB hospital. Austerity, ladies and gentlemen!

Recent natural experiments back up a demand-side view of the world.

A Scientific Look At The Problem With Third Parties

As the 2012 election draws near, I am constantly reminded about third parties. What is interesting however, is that, as the election draws nearer, voter interest in third parties seems to be declining. In fact, the existence of third parties on the ticket may actually benefit Obama.

• Without third parties on the Ballot: Obama 47%, Romney 45% (Gallup 7/1/12 through 7/8/12)
• With third parties on the Ballot: Obama 47%, Romney 40% (Gallup 7/6/12, see "declining" link)

Still the temptation may still be there for just enough voters to swing the election in ways a plurality of Americans do not favor. This is more than just mere speculation. In fact, the evidence for this is actually quite strong. Brian Dunning explains this evidence in his Skeptoid episode entitled "The Science of Voting" (all of the following emphasis is mine):

Democratic voting is only simple if there are just two candidates, or if it's a Yes or No vote. In those cases, any attempt to vote tactically or to create a voting block — casting votes that don't represent your preference — work against you. What we're talking about today are elections where there are three or more candidates. And the idea that all the various systems for running such elections are flawed (subject to results that do not represent the group's preference) is not just a whim or a crazy opinion of mine. It's proven by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, named for the economist Kenneth Arrow, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in economics and the 2004 National Medal of Science. He proved it in 1951 with his Ph.D. thesis at Columbia University.

Arrow's theorem can be simplified into one clear statement: that no fair voting system exists when there are three or more candidates.

...

Arrow's theorem applies to election systems that require voters to rank the candidates. This is the case with most voting systems worldwide. Typically, when you vote, you mark an X in the box for one candidate. That's a ranking; you've ranked that candidate first. Arrow's theorem applies to these simple ranking systems, but its richest mathematical complexities come from systems with three or more candidates and the voters rank all candidates in order of preference.

...

The ideal outcome in any election is to choose what's called the Condorcet winner. A Condorcet winner, named after the French mathematician and political scientist, is the candidate who would beat all other candidates in a simple two-man majority race. There isn't always a Condorcet winner in every election, but there usually is. The most common voting system is plurality voting, where the candidate with the largest number of votes wins. However, there are numerous situations in which the winner of a plurality vote is not the Condorcet winner who should have been elected. This is most often seen in a vote-splitting situation, where there are two similar candidates and one oddball candidate. One of the similar candidates is often the Condorcet winner; but because of their similarity, party votes are often split between them, and the oddball candidate wins. This is the most obvious failure of election systems, and it's exactly what Kenneth Arrows was talking about.

...

A variant of range voting is called approval voting, where you vote either for or against each candidate, but you can vote for as many as you like; even all or none. It's basically range voting with only two choices, 0 or 1. Approval voting also avoids the pitfalls of Arrow's theorem because it does not require ranking. It's simpler than range voting; and in both real-world and simulation examples, it selects the Condorcet winner virtually every time that one exists, in contrast to plurality voting which fails frequently.

This inherent tendency for voting to fail is called the voting paradox, also described by Condorcet. Yet, it's the system that virtually all nations rely upon for most or all of their elections. Something's broken somewhere.

This sounds quite depressing. At this point you may be wondering if third parties work with ANY theoretical voting system. Luckily, Brian Dunning outlines a few voting systems that allow third parties to exist without screwing up the system. Two of them, lottery and range voting, both come with flaws of their own. Perhaps the most intriguing system is saved for last:

A variant of range voting is called approval voting, where you vote either for or against each candidate, but you can vote for as many as you like; even all or none. It's basically range voting with only two choices, 0 or 1. Approval voting also avoids the pitfalls of Arrow's theorem because it does not require ranking. It's simpler than range voting; and in both real-world and simulation examples, it selects the Condorcet winner virtually every time that one exists, in contrast to plurality voting which fails frequently.

This not the full range of possibilities, but it shows that there are alternatives to our rank-based voting system. Third parties have had so little success over the last 150 years. And, given the recent Citizens United decisions, it may be virtually impossible for another Ross Perot to spend the money needed to get the 15% support required to participate in national debates. If we ever hope to establish a clear third party in this country, we need to seriously re-examine our system of voting before throwing our vote away at the expense of the American people.

Post ObamaCare Ruling Roundup

Some good reads on the recent decision by SCOTUS to uphold almost all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

Update 7/12/12

Why Won’t Obama Sell His Health-Care Plan Now That It’s Been Upheld?

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that the legislation is now viewed less negatively than it was before the court ruling, with 47 percent supporting the law and 47 percent opposing it. In April only 39 percent backed the Affordable Care Act while 53 percent opposed it, suggesting that voters are beginning to connect the dots of positive health-care benefits—such as keeping adult children on their policy until age 26—with the new law.(emphasis mine)

I really like the idea for a new ad:

"Simplicity is the key, says Melody Miller, Ted Kennedy’s spokeswoman for much of his long crusade for health-care reform. She proposes an ad with two hands, one that ticks off finger by finger five reasons to support the law; the other a fist that unfolds to reveal “Obamacare, health-care security for all,” written on the palm. “The truth” about Obamacare, says a narrator:

• (1) can’t be denied coverage for preexisting conditions; 

• (2) no cap, you won’t get cut off or lose your home if you have costly medical bills; 

• (3) reduces the deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office; 

• (4) you can keep children on until age 26; 

• (5) you can keep your own doctor and choose your own coverage from a variety of plans, just like members of Congress."

Attempting to explicitly debunk the many many outrageous falsehoods (and outright lies) spread by the GOP about ObamaCare may be too complicated and ultimately put Democrats on the defensive. A simple attractive commercial like this can both introduce people to the benefits of ObamaCare and implicitly debunk some of those GOP-created falsehoods.

Many Americans still don't know what's in new health law

Americans are still highly misinformed about what is in the healthcare law.

WP Fact Checker: "The health law, if it works as the nonpartisan government analysts expect, will provide more tax relief than tax burden for middle-income Americans."

GOP Health Care Plan Is Still a Dud

Again, tort reform will not significantly decrease healthcare costs.

Original Post

Greg Largent: Republicans support Obama’s health reforms — as long as his name isn’t on them

The new Reuters-Ipsos poll finds that Obamacare remains deeply unpopular; 56 percent of Americans oppose the law, versus only 44 percent who favor it. The poll also finds that strong majorities of Americans favor the individual provisions in the law -- the hated individual mandate excepted, of course. What’s particularly interesting about this poll is that solid majorities of Republicans favor most of the law’s main provisions, too.(emphasis mine)

The One-Sided War Against Obamacare

In all, about $235 million has been spent on ads attacking the law since its passage in March 2010...

By contrast, only $69 million has been spent on pro-Obamacare ads, most of it bland public-service spots from HHS. Add to that the fact that most Democrats seem petrified of actually defending the law, and it's no surprise that the Fox News portrayal of Obamacare has been steadily gaining ground. That's what happens when you slink into a corner when the other guys declare war.(emphasis mine)

WP Fact Checker: Sarah Palin, ‘Death Panels’ and ‘Obamacare’

 Palin is seizing on a completely different entity to justify her provocative use of the phrase “death panel” three years ago. But the IPAB in no way resembles the “death panel” that she claims would decide whether her parents or her baby with Down Syndrome are worthy of care. Instead, it is a tool—subject to oversight and approval by Congress—to try to rein in the soaring cost of Medicare.

Did Scalia Scare Off Roberts?

"Any objective legal observer would tell you (and I'm trying to be one here) that the dissent's treatment of the severability issue is detached from 200 years of constitutional law. It's unsupported legally and it's a mess logically. It also includes a citation to a quote that Harry Reid gave to the New York Times in Janauary 2010 concerning the bill --- this from at least two justices (Scalia and Thomas) who routinely say that any use of legislative history is a sham because it's necessarily incomplete. One wonders what a quote not uttered on the floor of Congress but to a journalist would constitute in that case? In any event, rather than holding the mandate costitutional and those portions of the bill inextricably linked with it (guaranteed issue/community rating), four members of the Court were primed to throw the whole bill out. That level of judicial activism, in a context like this one, would be nearly unprecedented."(emphasis mine)

The GOP has once again chosen two mutually exclusive complaints about ObamaCare.


"Well, the Supreme Court said today that the health care mandate is ok.  I am no constitutional scholar, but from what I can tell from the news reports, the Court's logic is similar to mine in this old blog post." - Greg Mankiw, Advisor to Mitt Romney

Politifact: Limbaugh, GOP have it wrong: Health care law is not the largest tax increase ever

 

 

Politifact: Fact-checking claims about the individual mandate

 

 "The vague claim of cutbacks in Medicare forcing patients off dialysis is not connected to any reported event in Tennessee or anywhere else in the real-world United States."

 

 Scalia shows how conservatives have completely reversed themselves on the concept of judicial restraint.

FactCheck:Romney, Obama Uphold Health Care Falsehoods

What's Wrong with Voter ID Laws?

It sounds like common sense, doesn't it? If you are going to vote, you should show your state issued ID to prove your identity, right? Democrats must want their gangs of ACORN-based cronies to steal the elections from hard working American conservatives! ...well, it turns out the case is actually much more complex than that. Luckily, for anyone interested in a thorough case against these voter restrictions, Mother Jones has you covered!

"Overall, 91 percent of registered Republicans had some form of photo ID, compared to only 83 percent of registered Democrats.

In a country of 300 million you'll find a bit of almost anything. But multiple studies taking different approaches have all come to the same conclusion: The rate of voter fraud in American elections is close to zero.

The best-publicized fraud cases involve either absentee ballots or voter registration fraud (for example, paid signature gatherers filling in "Mary Poppins" on the forms, a form of cheating that's routinely caught by registrars already). But photo ID laws can't stop that: They only affect people actually trying to impersonate someone else at the polling place. And there's virtually no record, either now or in the past, of this happening on a large scale.

What's more, a moment's thought suggests that this is vanishingly unlikely to be a severe problem, since there are few individuals willing to risk a felony charge merely to cast one extra vote and few organizations willing or able to organize large-scale in-person fraud and keep it a secret.

...it's fair to wonder how much impact these laws have in real life. The answer: It's not entirely clear. The Brennan Center generated a lot of headlines for a recent report suggesting that upwards of 5 million voters could be affected just by laws passed in 2011. But a 2009 study published in Politics on the actual impact of voting law changes concluded that "voter-ID laws appear to have little to no main effects on turnout."  

Still, in a close race, a modest effect can make a difference, and the cliff-hangers of 2000 and 2004 demonstrate that even presidential contests can hinge on tiny changes in turnout.

Getting an ID card from the state usually requires you to produce a birth certificate, and Barbara Zia of the South Carolina League of Women Voters recently explained what this means in her state: "Many South Carolinians, especially citizens of color, were born at home and lack birth certificates, and so to obtain those birth certificates is a very costly endeavor and also an administrative nightmare." (emphasis mine)

Even felons who have paid their debt to society are being targeted.

For more, see the statistics Mother Jones has compiled on voter fraud.

GOP Fiasco over Fast and Furious

GOP Votes for Contempt as "Fast and Furious" Blows Up in Its Face

"The "Fast and Furious" imbroglio may have just gone sideways on House Republicans. Just prior to them leading a House vote for contempt against Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday, a far-reaching investigation published by Fortune magazine poked major holes in the conservative storyline about the alleged gun operation. Claims that law enforcement engaged in a deadly plot to let Mexican outlaws smuggle US guns, the magazine reports, are based on allegations by a lone whistleblower who may in fact be the only person who did any illegal gun-smuggling. The real cause of violence and crime south of the border, it reports, is lax gun laws in Arizona and elsewhere pushed by Republicans and their friends at the National Rifle Association."

In addition, it turns out Rep. Issa doesn't even think Holder knew about the supposed Gunwalking! Issa revealed this the day before the contempt vote. It is no wonder Rep. Cummings detailed  "100 errors, omissions and mischaracterizations" in a letter to Rep. Boehner. Sadly, it appears that house Republicans (as well as a few dozen NRA-threatened Democrats), have chosen to hold a sitting Attorney General in contempt, for the first time in history, due to nothing more than partisan politicking.