Monthly Archives: October 2008

Obama Continues Fox News Pushback

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Follow this link to the Huffington Post story where I first saw the above video

My initial comment on this story was:

I have come to the conclusion that charging Fox News with bias and using sarcasm may be warranted, but it is not the best strategy.

A better strategy might be to pretend Fox News’ (and Florida TV reporter’s) questions were serious questions and address them.

Burton let slide her factoid that the top 25% pay 67% of the taxes. He should have countered that Fox news could instead quote the percentage of income the top 25% get instead of just mentioning that they are the top 25%. In order to judge whether or not they are paying a fair amount of taxes, you have to know how much income they are making. To hide the size of their income is to mislead the public.

It would also be interesting to look at the details of the Rasmussen poll. If you ask the viewers of a network whether or not their channel is biased, this is a measure of how rabid the viewers are. It is not a measure of how biased the network actually is. The viewers of other networks show a reasonable degree of skepticism unlike the viewers of FOX.

I have edited the above quote to get the exact percentages mentioned in the video. A previous post on this blog, United States Income Distribution 1967-2003, shows income distribution, but does not answer the question of taxes versus income. The Tax Foundation has published the tax versus income data for 2002. Back then the top 25% paid 83.6% of income taxes and earned 64.7% of the income. Of course income taxes are not the full measure of taxes.  The lower income groups pay a larger percentage of their income in Social Security, Medicare, and other federal taxes than do the wealthy.  In the really low income groups people pay more for Social Security and Medicare taxes than they pay income taxes. (I know, Social Security is not a tax by some people’s standards depending on what argument you are trying to make.)

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has an article, Recent Tax And Income Trends Among High-income Taxpayers, that discusses the total tax picture as of 2003.

The Treasury analysis shows that the one percent of taxpayers with the highest incomes paid 34.3 percent of federal individual income taxes in 2003.  However, an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office shows that this group paid a substantially smaller proportion — 22.6 percent — of total federal taxes, including payroll, excise, and other taxes.[2]

Even this report does not take into account that higher income groups have more money left over after meeting their basic needs than do lower income people.  I think it only fair that higher income people pay a larger share of the taxes than is represented by their share of income.  The question is, how much?  Given the recent cut in income tax rates for higher income groups and yet they still pay a larger fraction of the total income taxes than they used to shows just how much of the economic pie the top earners are getting.  They must be getting more than 100% of each dollar added to the pie.

Another comment on the Huffington Post found the link to the Rasmussen Poll mentioned in the video.

I found the following statement in the Rasmussen report to be most supportive of my bias:

Other data showed that voters tended to select news sources based upon their political preferences.

It gets better.  The Rasmussen report on selection of news sources has this gem:

Given this polarized environment, we are especially pleased with the bi-partisan audience that visits RasmussenReports.com. Forty-three percent (43%) of our visitors are Republicans while 38% are Democrats.

I don’t think those numbers were typical of the American electorate in 2004 when this report was written.

In my online discussions on the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, I find that most readers find the newspaper biased to the left, whereas I find it biased toward the right. Read this letter to the editor and the ensuing comments. I see more published letters to the editor complaining about left bias than right bias.  Of course the letters that get published are not random representations of the letters received by the newspaper.  Nevertheless, when I see some of the specific complaints about leftward bias, I see some of them have merit.  Maybe the newspaper is just careless in its news analysis pieces.

Talk about Greenberg’s Law of the Media, all these numbers are perfect examples, even the ones that I write.

Liberal Media Tosses Softball Questions to Joe Biden 1

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The interviewer is Florida WFTV anchor Barbara West.  Follow this link to the Huffington Post article where I first saw this interview.

Friends tell me that there are people who don’t get my sarcasm, so I guess I will have to state that the title to this post was intended to be a somewhat sarcastic joke.  But don’t stop reading here.

In an odd way, these really are softball questions and the anchor is doing Biden a favor by asking them.  There are a lot of people in Florida who actually believe what this anchor is saying, perhaps due to the fact that this anchor keeps saying this stuff.  It is better to talk about these things out in the open than it is to let them fester just below the surface.  If Biden just tried to repeat his talking points whithout realizing the raft of misinformation that is preventing people from hearing a word he says, then he has no chance of getting through to people.

I think Obama knows that you have to talk to people about what is bothering them rather than stick to topics which are of no concern to them.  How are you going to know what is really bothering people if you don’t make them feel like they can ask you these things?   I hope Biden gets to have the same understanding that Obama has.

The Economy Looking Forward 1

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Follow this link to Charlie Rose’s interview with David Smick.

It sounds to me as if David Smick has some ideas on how this economic crisis differs from previous ones. He pays homage to those tactics that have helped us get out of previous economic crises.  More importantly, he proposes new solutions for our new problems.  He takes into account the growth in size of international private companies compared to the size of individual central banks and individual regulatory agencies from single countries.

I don’t think Charlie Rose grasped the significance of one of David Smick’s answers. Smick said that pumping in liquidity to Japanese banks during the lost economic decade in Japan did not encourage those banks to lend money. The interest rate on long term Japanese bonds made buying bonds a safer and more profitable enterprise than lending at short term rates that were near zero.  Yes, the profit incentive in the free market still works.

I particular like the title of Smick’s book The World Is Curved, Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. Thomas Friedman deserves that dig at his book title The World is Flat.

Associated Press the Faux Noise of the Print Media 1

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Follow this link to the Associated Press article in which they attempt to further muddy the picture about their faulty poll methods.

If you cannot detect the application of Greenberg’s Law of the Media, I will clarify by including my letter to the editor of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

Has the Associated Press no shame whatsoever?

On page 3 of today’s paper, you have a substantial article by the Associated Press that goes into great detail as to why polls may have large variations in results.

In this article they mention their own poll which had Obama’s lead at only 1 point.  This poll was a far outside the results of all other polls.

The article even mentions the use of weighting to “correct” raw results.

Nowhere in the article do they mention that their own weighting included weighting evangelical voters at twice the rate that they have voted in the past.

Now that they have been caught doctoring the polls, they have the gall to come out and try to obfuscate what they have done even  further.

Scott McClellan – Former Bush Aide Voting For Obama

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(CNN, 10-23-2008) — Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary who sharply criticized President Bush in his memoir last spring, told CNN Thursday he’s voting for Barack Obama.

“From the very beginning I have said I am going to support the candidate that has the best chance for changing the way Washington works and getting things done and I will be voting for Barack Obama and clapping,” McClellan told new CNN Host D.L. Hughley

McClellan, a onetime Bush loyalist whose scathing critique of the president sent shock waves across Washington last spring, has long hinted he was leaning toward the Illinois senator.

“It’s a message that is very similar to the one that Gov. Bush ran on in 2000,” McClellan said in May about Obama’s campaign.

McClellan isn’t the first member of Bush’s inner circle to express support for Obama. In 2007, former Bush strategist Matt Dowd also said he had become disillusioned with the president and said Obama was the only candidate that appealed to him.

Greenspan – I Was Wrong About the Economy. Sort Of 2

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Follow this link to the article in the UK Guardian about Alan Greenspan‘s testimony before Congress today.

“I have found a flaw,” said Greenspan, referring to his economic philosophy.

…

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” said Greenspan.

I have been telling people for years that reading too much Ayn Rand can lead to these kinds of flaws in one’s philosophy.  I made this discovery when I was a sophomore in college in 1962. For those who do not know, Alan Greenspan is famous for being an acolyte of Ayn Rand.

In Ayn Rand’s universe, industrialists were the heroes who fought to make the world work only to be hindered by lesser mortals who were just interested in taking these heroes’ well gotten gains.

Although it has nothing to do with being poor, I suppose in Greenspan’s universe only poor people commit crimes.  That is why we have police and jails.  It is certainly not for the wealthy industrialists/bankers.  I don’t know if Greenspan was aware of the stream of CEOs that were being tried and heading toward their own stays in the Graybar hotel. Maybe Greenspan managed to hear about Enron.

Greenspan could just not contemplate the possibility that managers who were paid millions of dollars a year, were given stock options, and golden parachutes if they got fired would make as much money, as quickly as possible, by whatever means necessary, and then get the heck out.

Alan Greenspan has years and years of experience yet he is more naive than a college sophomore.  It would be unbelievable had I not already known what a big fan of Ayn Rand that he was. From that fact alone, I knew we were in trouble the moment that I discovered who his favorite author was.

Perhaps we need a President who is not so ideologically driven that he is afraid to hear ideas that contradict his philosophy.  Colin Powell has identified Obama as intellectually rigorous as opposed to McCain, whose judgment he questions.

For the record, let it be known, that I believe almost all purist adherents to a single philosophy suffer from a common problem.  In the ideal universes that they build up in their minds, they make no concession to the range of observed human behavior.  Such purist adherents to single philosophies include both Communists and Capitalists, among others.

Obama’s Loss Traced To Steven Greenberg 1

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I sure don’t want this to happen to me.

November 4th update – I made sure it did not happen to me. Sharon and I voted today around 10:00 AM. There was a big turnout, but no waiting. Paper ballots with optical sensing seems to make so much sense, There were probably two dozen or more “voting booths” at the school gym for the whole town of Sturbridge.