The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Tom Barrett has fixed false claims on his campaign website, the ones that earned him a "Pants on Fire" rating from PolitiFact Wisconsin.
Yes, Barrett doused his pants after he was exposed.
But Barrett's explanation for the lies on his site is an absolute joke. And the way the Journal Sentinel tells it, "errors" were fixed as if they were typos.
A day after PolitiFact Wisconsin found fault with his crime fighting claims, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett fixed errors Thursday on his gubernatorial campaign website.
"If I had read it I would have caught it," Barrett said Thursday.
Yeah, right!
Unbelievable!
"If I had read it I would have caught it."
Yeah, that's the ticket. What a load!
First, the buck stops with Barrett. His pants were flaming. No excuses. He has to take responsibility for the claims made on his campaign website.
Second, there's a problem with the way the Journal Sentinel glosses over the lies, calling them "errors." Oopsie!
Barrett's website had claimed:
"Under Tom Barrett's leadership, violent crime in Milwaukee has decreased by over 20% - to its lowest levels in more than 20 years. He has worked with law enforcement, community groups and residents to develop proactive strategies, and empowered the city's police department with strong leadership and the tools it needs to get the job done."
PolitiFact Wisconsin found violent crime actually is up 36% - not down 20% as Barrett claimed - when you compare 2004, the first year of Barrett's term, to 2009. Additionally, the campaign had used homicides as a stand-in for violent crime. The 20-year high mark for violent crime actually occurred during Barrett's tenure.
On Thursday, the website was changed to read:
"Tom has worked with law enforcement, community groups and residents to develop proactive strategies, and he has empowered the city's police department with the resources and strong leadership it needs to get the job done. As a result, violent crime in Milwaukee has decreased by 20% over the past two years, and homicides are at the lowest levels in more than 20 years."
The Barrett campaign did make the appropriate changes, altering the statement so the claims were no longer total BS.
But what's left out of this article is that the day before, in response to the PolitiFact Wisconsin analysis of the statement, Barrett's communications director, Phil Walzak, was standing by the claims, contorting and distorting to justify the clearly false information. In short, Barrett's campaign argued that the original statement/lie was, in fact, true.
In other words, this was no "error" by the campaign. It was a calculated, completely intentional attempt to manipulate numbers and play with the facts.
When we asked the Barrett campaign to back up the claim, campaign spokesman Phil Walzak cited a Journal Sentinel story from Jan. 21, 2010, "Crime in Milwaukee continues to decline." The article compared 2009 figures to those from 2007.
Of course, Barrett was elected mayor and took office in April 2004, so the clock on his leadership started ticking three years earlier.
So, why start with 2007?
In an e-mail, Walzak said the campaign started there "because those are the figures that most closely measure the work of Chief Flynn, whose appointment as MPD Chief Tom supported and who Tom has worked closely with to implement new crime-fighting tactics."
The campaign goes even further back -- all the way to the tenure of Police Chief Robert Ziarnik -- for its claim that violent crime hasn’t been lower in more than 20 years.
For its index of violent crime, the FBI looks at four specific types of crimes: Homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. It is part of the Uniform Crime Reporting program, which includes a separate measure of nonviolent crimes. These are the statistics Flynn and Barrett cite each quarter when they tout the improvement in the city’s violent crime numbers.
Walzak, though, says for the 20-year measure they are looking strictly at homicides.
So, we’re already off on a bad track -- the campaign cherry-picked two years of data, not all the years of Barrett’s tenure. And it used homicides as a stand-in for all violent crime.
...The campaign defines its bragging about what has happened "under Tom Barrett’s leadership." But it cherry-picks the best two years to highlight, ignoring the full picture for his time in office.
Then the campaign goes beyond Barrett’s time in office to say violent crime is at a 20-year low. This time it picks the pit out of the cherry, using the homicide rate as a stand-in for all violent crimes. In truth, the 20-year high point for violent crime was in 2006, two years into Barrett’s term.
All that cherry-picking leaves voters with a false impression -- and leaves us with a sour taste. We rate the statement Pants on Fire.
Barrett's response, "If I had read it I would have caught it," makes it seem as if it was all an innocent and honest mistake.
It wasn't.
Barrett's campaign didn't back away from the claim when asked to comment. It backed it up.
Walzak gave reasons why the statement was accurate and fair in their view. There's no mention of that when it's reported that "Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett fixed errors Thursday on his gubernatorial campaign website."
The use of the term "errors" kills me. It's way too soft. The campaign worked the statistics in order to deceive. I call that lying.
Bottom line: This Journal Sentinel article about the Barrett fix is very misleading.
Barrett's "If I had read it I would have caught it" is an insult to the people of Wisconsin.
I give the JS reporting of the correction and Barrett's lame excuse a rating of worse than "Pants on Fire." Both deserve a "Towering Inferno Pants."
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