PolitiFact too hard on Walker?
Today I’ll investigate a case where I think that PolitiFact may be a little too harsh in their text. The case in point is this: http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/jan/13/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-wisconsin-property-taxes-percent/
Walker said Wisconsin property taxes, as a percentage of personal income, "are the lowest that they've been since the end of World War II."
It’s worth noting that one change Walker made reduces income tax refunds given to lower-income taxpayers through the state Homestead Credit, which is aimed at softening the impact of property taxes.
But an analysis by the respected Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance shows that on the measure Walker cited, property taxes are the lowest they have been since 1946.
We rate the statement True.
Even though the statement is rated true, the caveat about Walker’s politics makes it seem like PolitiFact still judges the claim as somewhat misleading. And even though that caveat may be of importance to public opinions about Walker and his policies, it is not necessarily relevant to the level of this income tax, in this case.
Of course, relevance is a somewhat vague term, and can be hard to evaluate in a general way. But the truth of the actual proposition, that the income taxes are as low now as they were in 1945, is not changed in any way by the fact Walker hasn’t changed the tax refunds for some citizens. This might be interesting from a political point of view, but not for judging truth, in this case.
The only way this would be relevant is if PolitiFact again assumes that something slightly different than what is said is the “point” of the utterance. In this case, it could be something like “the property taxes are as low as they can possibly be”. It is not absurd to assume that Walker probably wants to invoke a state where people believe something along that line, but it’s not what he’s saying, and it’s not a necessary, calculable implication from his utterance. So even though this could be contained in the utterance in some way, it would be too weak to let that affect the judgement of it. Perhaps this could be analysed as a class of weak, probably intention-based meanings from an utterance, but I’m not sure it would be strong or calculable enough for that to be fruitful.
So “true” seems to be the most appropriate rating here. Since nothing contextually relevant that would change the claim is missing.