PolitiFact Right About Rachel Maddow

Funny thing about fact-checking: When you really delve into an issue, it’s always possible to be surprised. I was prepared to blast the fact-checking site PolitiFact yet again for a false claim, this time about Rachel Maddow. But PolitiFact is correct, and Maddow wrong. So is the Web site Stinky Journalism (love the name!) which came to Maddow’s defense.

PolitiFact gave a “False” rating to Maddow’s claim that Wisconsin’s budget would not have had an estimated $137 million shortfall were it not for Gov. Scott Walker’s giving $140 million in tax breaks to businesses.

Maddow said:

“The state is not bankrupt. Even though the state had started the year on track to have a budget surplus—now, there is, in fact, a $137 million budget shortfall. Republican Governor Scott Walker, coincidentally, has given away $140 million worth of business tax breaks since he came into office.

“Hey, wait. That‘s about exactly the size of the shortfall.

“What is happening in Wisconsin right now has absolutely nothing to do with public workers. The headline here, the way this keeps getting shorthanded, is workers angry after state is forced by budget crisis to crack down.”

After walking the reader through various facts about the deficit, and how the numbers can change depending on assumptions, PolitiFact said:

“The tax cuts will cost the state a projected $140 million in tax revenue — but not until the next two-year budget, from July 2011 to June 2013. The cuts are not even in effect yet, so they cannot be part of the current problem.”

Oops.

To reiterate, Maddow made a claim about the current budget based on an action by Walker that applies to the next budget.  Nowhere in the Stinky Journalism rebuttal does it try to refute this inconvenient truth. The Stinky Journalism rebuttal even mentioned it in passing, apparently without understanding:

According to PolitiFact, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s “tax cuts will boost the size of the projected deficit in the next budget, but they’re not part of the problem and did not create it.”

But, Maddow’s executive producer, Bill Wolff, countered Politifact’s ruling, saying that Maddow is “well-aware of the Wisconsin budget shortfall,” and that she made that point “just a few sentences after the line [PolitiFact] decided to single out for ‘truthometry.'”

So Stinky Journalism quotes PolitiFact as saying the tax breaks apply to the next budget, and counters with a non sequitur point about the current budget.

I can only conclude that Stinky Journalism doesn’t know the difference between one budget and the next.

Good work, PolitiFact. Bad call, Stinky Journalism.

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(DISCLAIMER: This is my opinion, and not necessarily that of my employer, the North County Times.)