Joe Conason has written an article, A Ruinous Bias Against Helping Detroit, in The New York Observer.

In a scathing rejoinder there was this comment:

Bill08 (not verified) says:

Uh, Joe, I know you wrote your article almost verbatim from a “Media Matters” press release (“Media still wedded to $70+ per hour autoworker falsehood despite GM’s recent statements to the contrary”), which in itself is nothing more than a regurgitation of a bunch of phony UAW claims.

But there is a complete refutation of your entire article, using empirical evidence like SEC filings and how the automakers are required to report costs by the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board). It is extensively referenced with footnotes, unlike your Media Matters screed.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2162.cfm

The fact is that the $73.26 hourly cost as reported by GM includes only CURRENT employees, not retired ones. If you have the intellectual integrity, please read the article and attempt to refute any of its positions.

Noticing the link was to the Heritage Foundation, I could not help taking the bait. Here is what I found.

Their chart http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/images/wm2162_chart1.gif is as phony as a $3 bill.

Their reference at http://chryslerlabortalks07.com/Media_Briefing_Book.pdf

Shows the following
GM Assembler Hourly Rate $26.09
COLA 1.77
Total $27.86

FORD Assembler Hourly Rate $26.10

COLA 1.83
Total $27.93

DAIMLERCHRYSLER Hourly Rate $26.86
Assembler COLA 1.89
Total $28.75

The section labeled

2006 Average Labor Costs — UAW represented (per hour worked)

DaimlerChrysler $75.86
Ford $70.51
General Motors $73.26

Does not specify what other factors go to make up this number until you get to page 41.

In 2006

$29.15 (38%) went to Base wage and COLA
$20.14 (27%) Went to Health Care includes incremental FAS beginning with 1993
$26.57 (35%) All other elements
$75.86 total

I didn’t use a fine toothed comb, but I did not see anywhere “The fact is that the $73.26 hourly cost as reported by GM includes only CURRENT employees, not retired ones.”  I wonder what the commenter thinks he knows is in the 35% of the cost labeled as “All other elements”.  One also has to wonder how Chrysler calculated the 27% that went into health care. With these two pieces we are unsure of how 62% of the costs were calculated.

If you go on to read the rest of the Heritage Foundation’s report, they also mention:

The hourly benefits figure includes payments into defined benefit pension plans to provide future pensions to current workers. It also includes the estimated costs of future retirement health benefits that current workers earn today.

Read the rest of the report yourself and judge for yourself.  Of course I have just cherry picked a few paragraphs from the report.

According to corrolaries of Greenberg’s Law Of The Media, you would have to see comparable calculations for the transplant auto companies to make any judgments about these numbers.  These comparable numbers are never presented.  Instead we are to take Heritage Foundation’s word for what they all mean in the greater scheme of things.

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.

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.

Follow this link to read an article that explains how the Associated Press managed to skew their poll to come up with the unusual result that McCain and Obama are tied.

This is an example of a corollary to Greenberg’s Law of the Media.  Choose your poll sample carefully to give you the results that you want.