Haters Gonna Hate

I've got a bit of a bone to pick with Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's "Fact" "Checker".

See, as a blogger who's wearing an agenda on my sleeve, it pains me to see other bloggers (yes, Kessler is a blogger, NOT a journalist) who are hiding obvious bias behind a subterfuge of honest journalism.  Here, we at least have the decency to express biased opinions for what they are: biased opinions.

Let's take a comparative look at Kessler's treatment of Barack Obama and Ron Paul, respectively:

In this article, Kessler fact-checks one of Obama's claims made on January 30, 2012 during a Google+ Hangout:  

"There's a huge demand around this country for engineers. . . . Where you’re seeing a lot of specialized demand is in engineering that’s related to the high-tech industries.”
 
To his credit, Kessler gives a reasonably pseudo-accurate report detailing some of the falsehoods and half-truths surrounding this claim:

While the unemployment rate for "architecture and engineering occupations" in 2011 was 5.1%, as compared to the 8.9% national average, Obama failed to mention that "Architecture and engineering unemployment stood at a lowly 1.7 percent in 2006".  That's exactly triple the unemployment in six years, a very drastic change for the worse.

The H1-B Work Visa allows U.S. employers to hire a limited number of temporary foreign workers each year.  In 2005, the cap on such visas was raised to 85,000, with many of these jobs filling the (alleged) talent-gaps in the high-tech industry.  There is also a great amount of effort in the industry to see this cap raised. Economist Jared Bernstein, who has first-hand experience and has seen such lobbying efforts within the Obama Administration, noted: “They want all the engineers they can get at the lowest price . . . They say they can’t find enough talent, but what they really mean is that they can’t find enough people at the rate they want to pay.”  So if the demand is as high as alleged, with young engineers able to sell their talents with ease across the country, why does this seem to describe a buyers' market?

As a (luckily employed) member of the high-tech industry, I myself can attest to the fact that prospects have been bleak for recently graduated engineers since the 2008 recession.  Many of my engineer friends from college are bartending or working construction today.  Obama was wrong when he said this, plain and simple, and Kessler seemed to understand this in the article.

Until the closing paragraphs:

"Demand for engineers remains relatively high compared with most other professions, but it’s not what it was before the recession. We don’t expect Obama to have enough detailed information to know that electrical engineers . . . fared worse than computer-hardware engineers in recent years, but he probably should have known that unemployment has risen for such high-tech fields on the whole.
Job prospects within the semiconductor industry look bleak heading into 2020, and the president should have known that as well."
 
Kessler's verdict?  One Pinocchio (on a four Pinocchio scale).  One Pinocchio represents "Some shading of the facts. Selective telling of the truth. Some omissions and exaggerations, but no outright falsehoods."

Okay.

Now, let's take a look at Mr. Kessler's treatment of Ron Paul, specifically his "strange claim about bases and troops overseas".  For those of you keeping score at home, here is the claim, as Paul has said, in so many words, countless times this election cycle:  

“We don't need to pay all this money to keep troops all over the country, 130 countries, 900 bases. But also, just think, bringing all the troops home rather rapidly, they would be spending their money here at home and not in Germany and Japan and South Korea, tremendous boost to the economy.”

Here's what Kessler had to say on the matter:

"First of all, Paul needs to update his rhetoric. He is still using the same numbers now that he used in September, but since then, the United States pulled out of Iraq, closing scores, if not hundreds, of facilities. So one would have to scratch Iraq off the “occupy” list. (A Paul spokesman did not respond to a query.)" 

Hostile overtones aside, if a "fact checker" is going to dispute a specific number, shouldn't he bother to look into the actual number, rather than calling them "scores, if not hundreds, of facilities"?  He goes on to correct Dr. Paul with the official numbers:

"As of Sept. 30, 2010, the DOD list shows a list of 611 military facilities around the world (not counting war zones), though only 20 are listed as “large sites,” which means a replacement value of more than $1.74 billion." 
 
Not counting war zones?  You know, those places where military bases tend to be fairly plentiful?  And let's not exaggerate, my dear fact checker.  The conflict in Iraq has indeed been officially called off, but there is still a U.S. military presence there.  Not to mention the fact that, as a Congressman, Dr. Paul may or may not have knowledge of military bases of a more confidential nature.  Knowledge not immediately available to a blogger from the Washington Post, I mean.

As for the "large sites", if you're going to nit-pick semantics, you might bother to notice that Paul makes no claim as to the size of these 900 military facilities.

"Not only that, but we count 153 countries with U.S. military personnel, actually higher than the 130 cited by Paul.  What’s going on here? The answer is that the list essentially tracks places where the United States has a substantial diplomatic presence. (The United States has diplomatic relations with about 190 countries.) In other words, Paul is counting Marine guards and military attaches as part of a vast expanse of U.S. military power around the globe."

Yes, that is exactly what Paul is counting.  He is counting the size and cost of the "vast expanse of U.S. military power around the globe" as you put it, to include troops stationed in countries as part of diplomatic attachments.

 So what is Glenn Kessler's verdict?  Three Pinocchios:

 "As evidence of the United States occupying “so many countries” or the “all this money” spent on the military, Paul’s statistics barely pass the laugh test. He has managed to turn small contingents of Marine guards into occupying armies and waste dumps into military bases. A more accurate way to treat this data would be to say that the United States has 20 major bases around the world, not counting the war in Afghanistan, with major concentrations of troops in 11 countries."
 
Barely pass the laugh test?  You would think that Dr. Paul had just insulted his mother. 
 
So why does Obama get a gentle, apologist treatment while Paul is thrown to the wolves?  I couldn't tell you.  But here's another article on Obama's choice to consolidate the Small Business Administration with the Commerce Department, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and three other agencies.  Two Pinocchios, complete with apologism: 
 
"To some extent, these are issues of symbolism and process. Perhaps the president also has so much on his plate that he should not be expected to keep straight the details of his own reorganization." 
 
And here's another article fact-checking Ron Paul's claims about Medicaid and Medicare.  Again, three Pinocchios.  Why?  Among other reasons,

"We can’t disprove Paul’s assertion that people weren’t “laying in the street with no medical care” before 1965, but the argument seems like a red herring, anyway." 
 
Once more, I would like to insert the following disclaimer:  I am biased.  This is opinion.  I will be voting for Ron Paul in the coming primaries, and (hopefully) will vote for him in the Presidential elections as well.

But it still seems fishy to me, despite my most earnest efforts at objectivity.  Check out the articles for yourself.  Let me know what you think.