Kiwiblog

Very amusing to watch the students do fact checking on Agenda. They found:

• Lockwood Smith was only half right in claiming 80,000 Kiwis had left last year, as did not take account of returning Kiwis
• David Parker was only half right in claiming they have doubled the compensation to forestry owners as in fact has only increased by 50% on original offer
• Most amusingly of all they found Nick Smith’s comment that the first policy released by Labour in this campaign was a National policy was 100% correct. They checked both the Beehive website and the Labour Party website and could not find a single 2008 election policy listed.

McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin certainly has suceeded in catching the headlines. It has dominated the cable news netwroks for two days now. Before I blog in more depth on her, a quick reference back to the Obama speech.

Factcheck.org fisks Obama’s speech and finds seven inaccuracies, half-truths, exaggerations etc. Now to be fair, I am sure when McCain does his speech, they wll find a similiar number. But I think it is a wonderful resource to have a neutral well funded site that checks facts and claims from both sides. We badly need one of those in New Zealand. That would be a project worth getting a few million donated towards!

Now back to Sarah Palin. Power Line looks at how much of an outsider she is:

So Palin was an upstart in every possible way when she challenged Frank Murkowski, the former Senator and entrenched Republican Governor who, among other things, appointed his daughter Lisa to succeed him in the Senate. Palin was opposed by the entire Republican establishment in Alaska, including Senator Ted Stevens–after whom the Anchorage airport is named–and Congressman Don Young. Notwithstanding the hostility of her party’s elder statesmen, Palin defeated Murkowski in the primary. She then faced the popular former Democratic Governor Tony Knowles in the general election. In what would have been considered an extraordinary upset just a few months earlier, Palin trounced Knowles, despite reported efforts by her own party’s leaders to defeat her. As Governor, she has enjoyed approval ratings in the 80s.

So it is hard to imagine a more complete outsider, in terms of national politics, than Sarah Palin. She ran and was elected as a reformer, has governed successfully as such, and owes nothing whatever to anyone in Washington. Personally, I’m not as anti-Washington as many conservatives, but it would be just about unAmerican not to root for a rebel and outsider like Palin.

This is what I like about Palin. She is the genuine deal, as much as anyone can be in politics.

But criticism of her experience is valid, if overly dramatised.

Could I say she is ready to become President on January the 21st 2009 should John McCain drop dead on the day of his inauguration? Not really. She does not have the experience in national politics. However she is standing for VP, not President, and people do overplay the McCain age issue. It is worth remembering that John McCain’s mother is still alive!! Given time, Palin as Vice-President will gain the experience so she could step up if necessary. So there is a risk should something happen very early in a McCain presidency, and that will be a factor in voting – not a huge factor though I suspect.

Some people have claimed Palin is more experienced than Obama to be President, as she has had two years of executive experience as Chief Executive of Alaska. It is true that Obama has no executive experience, and limited federal legislative experience. But 18 months on the campaign trail has exposed him to almost every issue domestic and foreign and Palin has not had that. Of course Obama is standing for President, not VP.

Palin is somewhat of a risk. If she does a massive blunder, or a series of minor ones, in her early days, she will be painted as a Dan Quayle (who was in fact somewhat unfairly treated) lightweight. But if she does not stuff up, she could develop a lot of popular support. Both Palin and McCain are genuinely independent of their party machines, and may appeal to those independents.

I still think Obama is favourite to win, as his get out the vote organisation will be so massive, that he will win on turnout. But there is still a long way to go.

I’ll finish with some quotes on Palin from the Palin for VP blog, which had been quietly pushing her for many months:

I have been working to draft Gov. Palin as Vice President since February of 2007, and I can recount first hand how she has united divergent views among Republicans and is now even gaining Democratic support. The key is that she offers a combination of qualities that make her a hero to many, many different groups. For instance, two of our strongest bases of support have been social conservatives and libertarian republicans, who are normally at each other’s throats.

However, she offered both groups something that they desperately wanted without compromising any appeal to the other. The SoCons loved her pro-life, pro-family, and pro-gun positions, while the libertarians and fiscal conservatives cheered her on as she vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful government spending. Getting those two groups to sing kum-ba-ya was enough of an accomplishment, but now it appears that a third group has found what it wants in Gov. Palin: McCainocrats.

If anyone can unite those bases, she does it to a reasonable degree.

By upending Alaska’s corrupt political class, Palin has actually produced the type of change that Barack Obama can only talk about; and her collar is far bluer than Joe Biden’s ever was. Furthermore, she is arguably the only candidate who has the necessary expertise to address the single most pressing issue in this election: gas prices. As Governor of Alaska, Chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (America’s largest interstate organization), and a former Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Sarah Palin can run rings around almost anyone when it comes to oil.

That’s a good point. She may be inexperienced on some issues, but if they position her as a VP who will lead the Administration’s energy policy, that could appeal.

Keith Ng focuses his fact checker on the Greens claims about the cost of milk increasing 60% and that it is all Fonterra”s fault and the greedy supermarkets. Some key points Keith makes:

• Milk has only increased 28% in the last year, and is only 2% higher than two years ago, 3% higher than three years ago and only 8% higher than four years ago. In other words the cost of milk dipped last year and is now at much the same level as it has been for the last four years.
• Dairy products make up only 1.2% of household expenditure or $11.60 a week. Capping Fonterra’s prices would save less than $2 a week per household.

Keith then looks at their call for farmers to move away from areas where we export, into areas where we import so we are self sufficient. Keith sums this up as:

Which, I assume, means that she wants New Zealand farming to diversify — away from the areas where it’s strongest, and into areas where it’s not.

He does a nice analogy:

To cutting down dairy production in favour of wheat etc. is like pouring water down the drain so you have empty vessels to catch rain with.

His summary:

This goes far, far beyond disappointing. Not only has the Greens managed to be wrong and stupid, but they’ve also managed to marry pre-Rod Donald naivety with Winston-like populism.

Did he really compare them to Winston?

It’s the kind of stunt that Winston pulls — making outrageous claims, safe in the knowledge that there will be no repercussions because it’s too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

Oh yes he did.

But even while trying to be populist, they still manage to look like the boogeyman from the ideological fringes.

Indeed.

They are right that Labour has been all talk about climate change, and that National won’t be any better. The only place where leadership on climate change can come from is the Greens. But they need to accept the simple fact that most of the people who support action on climate change are not out to destroy capitalism or globalisation.

This is not about cynical political rebranding, it’s about building a real consensus. The Greens can’t earn the trust of a broader voter base until you give up the radical part of themselves. Every time you push a radical left agenda, you’re pushing supporters of climate change action further away.

I like the implicit assertion that many in the Greens are out to destroy capitalism and globalisation.
Sadly, Keith is correct.

As I said yesterday, there are environmental areas where the Greens could have a positive influence on a National Government. But their “social justice” wing which does want to destroy capitalism is a big turn off for many.

One of the sites I really enjoy is Fact Check in the US.  While not perfect, it does a very good job in fairly scrutinising claims and measuring them against the facts. We could do with a local version. And they defend and criticise all sides.

For example they defend Hillary Clinton’s claims that she helped expand health insurance to cover six million extra children, but they find she has been exaggerating her foreign policy experience.

They also rebut Obama’s attacks on NAFTA.

And a very strong stinging critique of the DNC’s ads against John McCain.  The most notable has been their claims he favours a 100 year war In Iraq, when in fact he said he wouldn’t worry if troops were still there in 100 years if they were *not* being killed or wounded, such as in Japan and Korea.

The Herald has a new column (I think just online but not sure) called “Just the facts” by Keith Ng.

Now I’m very supportive of any attempt by the media to fact check claims by politicians – or even to put them into context. And I think Keith generally has a good track record with checking the facts out.

But there is a danger on having just one person set up as “the fact checker”. Factcheck.org in the US had around a dozen staff.  Because one’s personal political views can influence what facts you find relevant, what story you tell with facts.  There is a reason people refer to “lies, damned lies and statistics”.

As an example, I’ll criticise below one of Keith’s fact checks – not to say I am right and Keith is wrong, but how the use or non use of certain facts can give different impressions:

“Violent youth crime is at an all-time high”.
JOHN KEY (STATE OF THE NATION SPEECH, JAN 29)

That’s true, but

Okay the insignificant little detail that John Key is correct is given just two words.  Wouldn’t it have been useful to provide the actual statistics on violent youth offending. Then people could judge how significant the increase is. Just two words supporting the fact he is correct, and several hundred words on trying to undermine his assertion.

violent old-people crime is at an all-time high, too. Violent crime for every age group over 13 is, technically, “at an all-time high”, and the fastest growing group of violent offenders is in the 51-99 category.

So the defence to the rise in violent youth crime, is that violent crime is up for all age groups. Okay well why not give us offending rates in say 2000 and 2007 for all age groups so people can see the absolute rates and the growth for each age group.

Boot camp for old people, anyone? Young people commit more violent crimes than people over 30, but the increase is happening across the board.

That looks like sarcasm, not facts. One can have an entire separate debate about “boot camps” – something along the lines of better to turn people away from crime when they are younger. And also the overwhelming support for the policy from experts in the youth offending area.  But hey I’m getting away from the facts.

And again why not provide the facts for violent offending of under 30s  and over 30s.

Youth crime as a whole is actually decreasing:

Could have been useful to mention that the overall reported crime figures are generally held to be relatively meaningless as they treat murdering someone the same as having a joint on you. One could do an entire article on why the overall crime rate is such a flawed measure – instead of using it as rebuttal to a true statement about violent youth crime offending.

As an alternative why not point out what areas of youth crime are increasing (violent and sexual I think)  and what areas are decreasing?

2006 saw the lowest number of arrests for youth offending since 1995.

Now the context of the statement is a speech by the National Leader, criticising the current Govt’s policies. Why not compare 2006 to 1999 instead of the previous high of 1995?

When the change in population is taken into account, that’s a 17 per cent decrease over 10 years.

And how much took place from 1995 to 1999, and how much from 2000 to 2006? All facts which would be useful.

I could go through and apply a similar analysis to the other “Just the Facts” articles, but I won’t. The purpose isn’t to attack Keith (who I think is an excellent journalist), but to show that there are dangers in labelling any article as “Just the facts”. It all comes down to what is subjective choices as to which facts to include, whether or not to use absolute or relative data, what time frames to choose etc etc.