One of their face-offs originated with a chart Chaffetz flashed, indicating that Planned Parenthood performed more abortions than \u201clife-saving procedures\u201d in 2013, a complete reversal from just seven years ago. \u201cThis is a slide that has never been shown to me before,\u201d Richards responded. \u201cExcuse 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s most prominent feature \u2013 the much larger crossed arrows \u2013 suggests a conclusion that\u2019s flat wrong. A spokesperson for Americans United for Life told PolitiFact that the graphic is accurate and honest.<\/p>\n
Experts, however, begged to differ. \u201cThat graphic is a damn lie,\u201d said Alberto Cairo, who researches visual communication at the University of Miami. \u201cRegardless of whatever people think of this issue, this distortion is ethically wrong.\u201d Chaffetz\u2019s 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.\u00bbBy 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,\u00bb said Noah Iliinsky, a visualization and information designer based in Seattle. \u00abThe graph is absolutely misleading, and intentionally so.\u00bb Politifact rates the chart \u201cPants on Fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the Sept. 28, 2015, media event, Trump described an unemployment rate in the range of 5 percent as \u201csuch a phony number.\u201d \u201cThe number isn\u2019t reflective,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen numbers of 24 percent \u2013 I actually saw a number of 42 percent unemployment. Forty-two percent.\u201d He continued, \u201c5.3 percent unemployment \u2013 that is the biggest joke there is in this country. \u2026 The unemployment rate is probably 20 percent, but I will tell you, you have some great economists that will tell you it\u2019s a 30, 32. And the highest I\u2019ve heard so far is 42 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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 \u201cunderutilization\u201d called the U-6 rate. The U-6 rate includes both those who are officially \u201cunemployed\u201d and those who are working part time for economic reasons and those who are \u00abmarginally attached\u00bb 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\u2019s 42 percent. Politifact rates his claim \u201cPants on Fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chip Tuthill is a longtime Mancos resident. Website used for this column:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
of their face-offs originated with a chart Chaffetz flashed, indicating that Planned Parenthood performed more abortions than \u201clife-saving procedures\u201d in 2013, a complete reversal from just seven years ago. \u201cThis is a slide that has never been shown to me before,\u201d Richards responded. \u201cExcuse me, my lawyer is informing me that the source of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758],"tags":[83],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-108999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","tag-mancos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108999"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=108999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}