Lie of the Year

Politifact, the moderate to slightly right of center fact checking service, has come out with its lie of the year.  Donald Trump!  Not the person, really, although that would make sense, because everything about the man is a lie: he claims to be smart and self made.  Neither is true, although he's a pretty good salesman.  Politifact lists a large number of the near constant lies that Trump is making during his campaign.

This only the second time that Politifact has had an actual lie as their lie of a year two years in a row:

2015: Trump's lies
2014: The Ebola Scare.
2013: If you like your health care you can keep it.  (Had this been expressed "If you like your qualifying health care, you can keep it" it would have been true: the plans that were closed by ACA were fraudulent in some way.   In 2008, they had rated this same statement as true)
2012: Romney/Ryan completely false claims that Jeep was moving its factory to China
2011: Democrat's completely true statement that Republicans voted to end medicare as we know it.
2010: Republican's absurdly false claims that the ACA is a government takeover of healthcare.
2009: Republican's dangerously false claims about death panels.

Politifact has a problem.  90% of the lies told in the political sphere come out of republican mouths or pens.  Democrats and progressives lie sometimes too, but it's mostly hyperbole or simple mistakes.   If you examine the statements from left leaning sources that politifact rates as "Pants on Fire" or "False", you'll find that a lot of them are actually more like half true or figures of speech.

If politifact were to report this honestly, they would be pilloried by the right wing media.  So instead, they give the right a major pass.  They still end up showing that right lies far more than the left, but it comes out looking a lot more like balance, even though it's not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/campaign-stops/all-politicians-lie-some-lie-more-than-others.html

As an example, here are the 9 statements by Obama and his campaign that are rated pants on fire. 
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/statements/byruling/pants-fire/

1: if you like your plan, you can keep it.  slight misstatement, basically true.
2: The FISA court is transparent.  Mostly false but politically necessary
3: claims Romney plans to fire Big Bird.  hyperbole, but essentially true.
4: claims Romney backed a bill that would block all abortions, including rape and incest.  sort of true.  Romney's support was more tacit than full-throated.
5: an Obama ad claims Gingrich, Perry and Romney would eliminate aid to Israel.  the only actual Pants on Fire I found.
6: claims that asking gov't departments to examine laws and consider getting rid of them if they don't make sense is unprecedented.  The essential claim is true, the unprecedentedness is Hyperbole.
7: claims the US is one of the biggest muslim countries in the world.  Half true.  US has between 2 and 6 million muslims.  that's not big compared to Indonesia or Pakistan, but it is compared to Abu Dhabi or Quatar. 
8: claims that 100% of McCains ads have been negative.   Politifact claims the number was closer to 75%.  Hyperbole.
9: claims McCain supported Limbaugh's comments about immigration.  McCain only partly supported them.  again, hyperbole about a claim with only a slight ring of truth in it.

Conversely, a lot of the statements rated true made by Republicans are trivial things.  Cruz says there are more words in the IRS code than in the bible.  Fiorina points out that Trump has changed his mind on abortion. Santorum says that 70% of Americans don't have a college degree.  All true, but do they of any consequence to the Republican message?

Australian Crime Wave

Gun rights advocates are fond of pointing out that despite or perhaps because of the gun ban in Australia, crime rates have gone up there.

In fact, neither of these things is true.  After several mass killings, culminating with the Port Arthur Massacre of 1996, the National Firearms Agreement brought the many contradictory regional gun laws into alignment, and required that all gun owners be licensed and store their guns safely.  There is no ban, although it's distinctly harder for a criminal or crazy person to get a gun.  There was a major buyback, which removed about 1/3rd of the guns in legal circulation, but there remain millions of legal gun owners in Australia.

Crime did go up briefly, but it's now substantially lower than before the Agreement.    In fact, the spike began before the Port Arthur Massacre and had returned to previous levels by 2004.  I've transcribed Robberies (both armed and not, which are the vast majorities of violent crimes) but other violent crimes show a nearly identical spike during this period, except for sexual assault, which has showed a rise that's fairly consistent with population.  I've been trying to figure out if anybody knows what the cause was, but I haven't found it yet.

Gun deaths seem to have roughly halved according to this, but it's pretty fuzzy and I haven't found a precise numerical source yet. (the same graph shows a saving of about 12,000 lives a year due to the brady bill)

      Population   Robberies  Per 100000
1993   17494     12765           73
1994   17667     13967           79
1995   17854     14564           82
1996   18071     16372           91
1997   18310     21305          116
1998   18517     23801          129
1999   18711     22606          121
2000   18925     23336          123
2001   19153     26591          139
2002   19413     20989          108
2003   19651     19709          100
2004   19895     16513           83
2005   20127     17176           85
2006   20394     17375           85
2007   20697     17996           87
2008   21015     16508           79
2009   21262     15238           72
2010   22183     14631           66
2011   22340     13653           61
2012   22723     13155           58


Population of Australia

Victims of Violent Crime