Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sparred with Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards during a high-profile hearing on Sept. 29.
One of their face-offs originated with a chart Chaffetz flashed, indicating that Planned Parenthood performed more abortions than “life-saving procedures” in 2013, a complete reversal from just seven years ago. “This is a slide that has never been shown to me before,” Richards responded. “Excuse me, my lawyer is informing me that the source of this is actually Americans United for Life, which is an anti-abortion group. So, I would check your source.”
The chart gives a misleading impression. The numbers listed on the chart are based on actual statistics, but they are small and were hard to read during the televised hearings. The chart’s most prominent feature – the much larger crossed arrows – suggests a conclusion that’s flat wrong. A spokesperson for Americans United for Life told PolitiFact that the graphic is accurate and honest.
Experts, however, begged to differ. “That graphic is a damn lie,” said Alberto Cairo, who researches visual communication at the University of Miami. “Regardless of whatever people think of this issue, this distortion is ethically wrong.” Chaffetz’s chart falls into a category known as a dual-axis chart. The most egregious decision was to not label the axes. On the left side, cancer screenings and prevention services are plotted in the millions. On the right side, abortions are plotted in the hundreds of thousands. Experts told us that, given this decision, they cannot rule out purposeful deception.»By claiming to combine these two lines into one graph and then omitting the y-axis, we are being misled into to making a false comparison of two non-equivalent contexts,» said Noah Iliinsky, a visualization and information designer based in Seattle. «The graph is absolutely misleading, and intentionally so.» Politifact rates the chart “Pants on Fire.”
During the Sept. 28, 2015, media event, Trump described an unemployment rate in the range of 5 percent as “such a phony number.” “The number isn’t reflective,” he said. “I’ve seen numbers of 24 percent – I actually saw a number of 42 percent unemployment. Forty-two percent.” He continued, “5.3 percent unemployment – that is the biggest joke there is in this country. … The unemployment rate is probably 20 percent, but I will tell you, you have some great economists that will tell you it’s a 30, 32. And the highest I’ve heard so far is 42 percent.”
It’s within the economic mainstream to believe that the traditional method that produces 5.1 percent is too limiting, even if a far more permissive calculation that produces 42 percent is vastly overstated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics itself offers a more expansive alternative measurement of labor “underutilization” called the U-6 rate. The U-6 rate includes both those who are officially “unemployed” and those who are working part time for economic reasons and those who are «marginally attached» to the work force, meaning they want to work but have not looked for work recently enough to count as being actively in the labor force. Currently the U-6 rate is 10.3 percent, about double the official unemployment rate. The highest alternative unemployment-rate measure Politifact could come up with that had any credibility was 14.8 percent, and even that exaggerated figure is only about one-third of the way to Trump’s 42 percent. Politifact rates his claim “Pants on Fire.”
Chip Tuthill is a longtime Mancos resident. Website used for this column: