Upside Down Media Coverage

Of all the poor journalism exposed by the current novel coronavirus (the initial "Nothing to worry about stories", then the reactionary "Trump denies Governors' Requests for Ventilators Stories" which National Review's Rich Lowry reviewed), the current Media implications that Democratic governors who toe the line on shelter-in-place orders are the heroes of the pandemic while science-hating Republican governors (and those protesting) who want to move toward opening are evil are among the most bizarre.

The Guardian's Josh Wood published a story praising Kentucky's Democratic governor for acting so quickly, compared to Tennessee's Republican governor, and suggesting that the former's Beshear saved lives with his quick action.

"Combined with his quick pandemic response, his calm, empathetic daily briefings have seen his popularity explode in recent weeks." This is an example of mood-affiliated praise that the media piles on Democrats and never Republicans, even though these assessments of "calm and empathetic" might be considered subjective.

The story purports that Kentucky has fared much better as the number of cases in Kentucky didn't rise as quickly as in Tennessee, but the story doesn't really take into consideration a number of factors that may explain that. Other important factors to consider are the populations of the two states (Tennessee has about fifty percent more people than Kentucky), the population density (Tennessee's is approximately 50% higher), and the urban environment (Tennessee has two sizable cities). All of these would help explain, in part, why Tennessee's numbers are higher than Kentucky's even had they reacted at the same speed.

Secondly, the reliance on total cases may be misleading. As of yesterday, Tennessee had nearly twice as many cases as Kentucky, but as the story points out, this could potentially be because of disparities in testing capacity. The better number to look at is deaths.

Again, as of yesterday, there were 166 deaths in Tennessee and 171 deaths in Kentucky. So, even though Kentucky's governor reacted more quickly, and has the smaller population and population density, there are more reported deaths in Kentucky! In fact, when comparing the number of deaths per population to the population density, Tennessee ranks 10th for fewest deaths. Kentucky ranks 19th. So who's actually doing better?

Who's doing the worst? New York. Democrats and the Media are currently working on a Draft Cuomo movement so he can be the Democratic Presidential nominee because of how well he's handled the Coronavirus, which defies common sense. Most of the criticisms lobbied at Trump for poor performance can also be applied to Cuomo. Neither of them took January and February to prepare, to stockpile medical equipment, testing necessities, to prepare their populations for a coming pandemic. They actually performed very similarly to each other, and to most elected officials. Neither really expected the pandemic to have a large effect. Both were wrong. But Cuomo was more wrong, given the especially gruesome impact it has had on his state.

The fact that he receives as much praise for his handling, in fact, that all Democrats do, while Republicans receive only scorn despite the fact that their responses weren't all that different from each other and the data suggest that the outcomes are worse in Democrat-led areas shows how upside-down the coverage is.

Finding the Lead Lining

This morning, prior to the announcement of last week's initial unemployment claims, I was curious whether they'd be higher or lower than last week. Lower would be good news, obviously, and higher bad news. So, when I saw they were slightly lower, I thought, well that's good, at least things have stopped getting drastically worse.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the headline "22 Million Workers File for Unemployment Benefits in Just 4 Weeks". I thought, 'That's a negative way to put it.'

Then, I did a quick survey of other outlets, and they all report the four week total! It seems quite odd to me that every outlet reports the monthly total over the weekly total, and not a single one of them notes that this is down from last week's peak.

CNBC

CNN

Fox Business

New York Times

Wall Street Journal

Democrats have no Idea What to do with Strong Economy

The debate in South Carolina last week has received a healthy dose of criticism from media pundits because the moderators let the inmates run the asylum for a large portion of it. However, those criticisms elide some good questions from the moderators.

It's no secret that the economy has been doing extremely well since President Trump took office, and while the two sides like to debate how much responsibility Trump has for that success, serious people can't deny that the overwhelming majority of people are doing better economically than they were four years ago. The Democratic candidates, however, don't know how to handle this fact. Up to now, most just deny it. Democrats who aren't in the White House sweepstakes sometimes admit that the economy is doing well but it's only because President Obama set that train in motion and not even Trump could derail it.

At the South Carolina debate, the first question out of the gate was to Sanders. "How will you convince voters that a Democratic Socialist can do better than President Trump with the Economy?" Sanders took the tortuous and disingenuous tack of admitting the economy is doing well, but only for rich people. "Well, you're right. The economy is doing really great for people like Mr. Bloomberg and other billionaires." He then talked about how much money billionaires made, and followed that up with "For the ordinary American, things are not so good."

This is fundamentally untrue. Wages are up; as the question reminded him, unemployment is at historic lows; the labor participation rate has increased during his presidency, despite experts saying that the labor participation rate had entered a permanent trend of decline due to the baby boom swoon during President Obama's terms. By every standard economic metric, the economy is doing extremely well.

What Sanders, and others who further this trick, resort to, are random statistics that aren't publicized and so no context is available. "Half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck." Is that high or low? "87 million Americans have no health insurance or are underinsured." That's not really an economic metric. "45 million people are struggling with student debt." The fact that so many people have student loans doesn't tell you anything about the economy. How many people have mortgages? How many people currently have a credit card balance? How many have a car loan? And finally, as always, "500,000 people tonight are sleeping out on the street."

Now for some context. On "living paycheck to paycheck", a 2015 Nielsen study found that 25% of families earning $150,000 or more live paycheck to paycheck. And one year ago, 78% of US workers were living paycheck to paycheck. Trump has reduced that number by 28% percentage points! Sanders should be cheering.

On the homelessness stat, 0.17% of Americans were homeless in 2018. In Denmark, that number was 0.12% in 2017. If Sanders had claimed 400,000 people (the number of homeless if US had Denmark's rate) as a negative criticism of our economy, would anyone have noticed?

All of that is expected from Sanders, and actually, that should have been one of three standard answers from Democrats (along with it's Obama's economy or it's good but I'd do better). What wasn't expected was the immediate conversion into Russian conspiracies. Bloomberg followed up Sanders's answer by saying he was a Russian puppet. Buttigieg followed that with a comment about Russians wanting chaos (which the Democrats went on to provide in spades that evening). Then Warren talked about progressive objectives generally and how she fought banks and built coalitions. Buttigieg then again said Russians want chaos.

Next, Steyer, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him, answered the original question again with some Democratic bromides: "unchecked capitalism has failed." Do we have unchecked capitalism? Didn't the DOJ block some mergers since Trump was made President? Isn't the Federal Register of regulations still thousands of pages long? Finally, he says Donald Trump is "incompetent as a steward of the American economy." Wasn't the premise of the question that the economy is doing well?

Finally, Biden took us off the rails again, talking about hate crimes, Sanders's previous opposition to both gun control laws and Obama running unopposed in 2012.

The responses to this first question, a good question from the moderators, puts on full display how inflexible these candidates are, and the difficult time they'll have later in the year when Trump will surely exaggerate his own accomplishments.

Democrat Admits Issues with Trump Driven by Economic Policy Difference

Megan Rapinoe is not the first world-class athlete to indicate or refuse an invitation to the White House because of its current occupant, but she is the most revealing. Up to now, the refusers have claimed that they could not meet with a man who is so hateful, bigoted, and who pursues racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-trans policies. Rapinoe, however, has just exposed that these excuses are merely to conceal their true reason: that they are liberals first and don’t believe they have to or should associate with people who have different opinions on policy.



In an interview with Chuck Todd, after buttering her up by comparing her to Muhammad Ali, he asked her a terrific question. It wasn’t a gotcha question, it was a legitimate, thoughtful question.



Todd: What do you tell a Trump supporter who loves watching you? And is like, “I wish she’d go to the White House.”



This is a terrific question at odds with what the media has become. First, it is grounded her own statements: “We have to be better. We have to love more, hate less, We got to listen more and talk less.” The person who believes that should not be refusing a meeting at the White House. She should be going there and making her case. She should be using the opportunity to bring attention to her cause. Secondly, this question is a “moderating” question, in that it forces the ideological extremists to consider the opinions of the people on the other side, the opposite of what the media normally do.



Instead of answering Todd’s question directly, doubling down on her own statements about listening more, she says she would ask the person who wants her to go to the White House “Do you believe that all people are created equal? Do you believe that equal pay should be mandated? Do you believe that everyone should have healthcare? Do you believe we that we should treat everyone with respect?” Perhaps because this is the first time she was being asked a tough question about her hypocrisy she was flummoxed and was actually answering the question of why she wouldn’t go to the White House, but her answer reveals that a big part of the reason is because she has policy differences with Trump. Assuming she’s being honest, this would suggest that she would never go to the White House for any Republican president since they don’t believe “equal pay should be mandated.”



Rapinoe’s answer to Todd’s question demonstrates that this is based on economic policy and has nothing to do with “Trump’s message.” Todd asked what would have to happen for Rapinoe to visit the White House. Rapinoe responded, “There’s like, 50 policy issues.” So, then she’d go if Trump simply changed his policies? I would really like to know which policies she’s thinking about. Tax rates? Single Payer? She might as well have said she’ll visit the White House when and only when its occupant has a (D) by his or her name.

Devising a Terrible Poll to Cover for Socialists

Business Insider wanted to get to the bottom of the public stance on the Amazon HQ2/NYC issue. If you don't know, Amazon chose NYC to host half of their second headquarters. They were set to receive approximately $3 billion dollars in tax incentives to locate there and add 25,000 jobs to Queens. City and state Democrats approved the deal, including the mayor and the governor, but after the announcement, some local Democrats, including the representative of the 14th District in New York, strongly objected.

One of their arguments was that the $3 billion dollars could be better spent elsewhere. "It's fair to ask why we don't invest the capital for public use, + why we don't give working people a tax break." Many jumped on these comments as illustrating ignorance of the mechanism involved. The statement is vague enough that it could be interpreted either way, but she could easily augment it to make it not sound idiotic.

So to determine whether people agreed with the Governor or Mayor or the local socialists, Business Insider conducted a poll. The poll found that a plurality of respondents thought $3 billion dollars would be better spent on tax breaks for residents.

This poll is completely divorced from the situation though, and ironically, it shows that still no one agrees with the socialists, because its result indicates most people want lower taxes. Even so, the poll does not make clear that the $3 billion dollars "given" to Amazon should be compared to the $27 billion dollar increase in tax receipts from Amazon's entry. So NYC made a deal to increase their tax revenues by $24 billion on net. What if the poll asked "Should NYC lower Amazon's tax bill over ten years to guarantee $27 billion dollars in new tax revenue or offer no tax break and receive no new tax revenues?" What if he poll asked "How much should NYC be willing to give up to guarantee $27 billion dollars in new tax revenue?"

The option chosen by the plurality, though I doubt the respondents considered the implication, might arrest the exodus of New Yorkers from the state or incentivize more work, but Democrats and Socialists don't believe that tax cuts improve the economy or that workers respond by increasing their labor, nor do they decry the loss of the people who are fleeing for lower tax states.

Also, it's pretty hard to believe that either of those would offer the nearly 900% return that the tax incentives were offering, which would only grow as time went on.

Fact-Checking an Entertainer's Exaggerations

On Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Rush Limbaugh made some points regarding climate change that he often makes on his radio show and are not far off from arguments other climate skeptics make. Politifact took a look at them and rated them "False."

Given his role as a radio commentator, one should expect exaggeration, and Politifact should have investigated his claims not as whether they were true or false, but rather if there was a grain of truth that he was exaggerating and how much exaggeration there is.

I have zero confidence in the prominent newspapers when it comes to climate change coverage. Despite the fact that the climate is complex and there is variation, their coverage is fifty times stronger of the "up" variations than the "down" variations and they clearly exaggerate climate change.

For example, any time the average temperature increases even the tiniest amount, they provide the same 'sky is falling' coverage as when it goes up substantially. Recently, all the surface measurement entities said the same thing--the average global temperature for 2018 was lower than 2017, however, not a single press story mentioned that. Instead all coverage was that 2018 was one of the hottest years on record. And they would not say there was a two-year downward trend since 2016. 

I'm not arguing that the trend will continue, and I'm not arguing that there hasn't been a trend upward, according to that data, since 2000. A reasonable person can admit both. I don't understand why the media, though, can't acknowledge that the temperature has declined since 2016. They could easily quote a scientist saying it's likely a temporary decline because of El Nino in 2016, but they'd rather just omit the inconvenient truth from their stories because they can't handle or they believe their readers can't handle any amount of nuance or complexity.

Turning back to Rush Limbaugh's comments, he said 

"Climate change is nothing but a bunch of computer models that attempt to tell us what's going to happen in 50 years or 30. Notice the predictions are never for next year or the next 10 years. They're always for way, way, way, way out there, when none of us are going to be around or alive to know whether or not they were true."

 Politifact's rebuttal is three-fold--climate change is happening now, predictions from the past have been borne out, and near-term projections have usually been correct.

Climate Change is Happening Now

Most data bears out that it's hotter now than it was ten or twenty years ago or more. However, the statement by climate scientist Kevin Trenberth that "The Earth is now hotter than it has ever been." Is factually inaccurate. As it was hotter two years ago than it is now. His point was probably the point that I made, not the narrow inference I made, but good science and good journalism (and good  fact checking) should distinguish in the interest of clarity and accuracy. There is really no reason to let a general and technically incorrect statement like that stand on it's own. (As an aside, I doubt that the fact-checker even understands that the statement is not 100% accurate).

Predictions from the Past have Been Borne out

This is where Rush is on his firmest footing. The Politifact article uses one expert who conducted an analysis for a website, then cites a single model which overpredicted the temperature increase by 20%. They also refer to this analysis which shows that the models have been off by varying degrees but claim that they're basically right. After reviewing the models and evidence, the models do not consistently over-estimate like I originally believed, but they also don't seem especially accurate. The difference here might be the reporting, an interesting investigation may be to look at how these are reported. I suspect that the media tend to emphasize the highest estimates and that's what gives the impression that the models are always over-estimating.

Near-Term Projections Are Usually Correct

What terrible evidence. I should hope that they're usually correct. I can get pretty close to a good prediction just by saying the temperature will be exactly the same. There is no difficulty in guessing small changes, and furthermore they are pointless. What is important is the long-term projections. This defense should not be included.

Doubling Down on Bad Programs

Democrats want to fix Social Security. Unfortunately, the way they want to go about it is to double-down on a poorly designed program. To summarize their plan, they want to raise the payroll taxes by almost 20% (from 12.4 to 14.8), increase benefits by 2%, and expand the program to income 400k and up (excluding income between 132.9k - 400k)

Social Security was designed over 75 years ago for a society much different from todays. It redistributes wealth from low income earners with low life expectancy to the affluent. It redistributise wealth from dual-earner couples to single-earner couples. Why do we want a system that does this?

Furthermore, as has been shown, Social Security is a terrible pension plan. Their own research shows that almost everyone would be better off investing their money in an index fund. The only people whose returns might rival an index fund are couples, with only one earner in the lowest income group. Every other income group, every other combination of earners performs relatively poorly.

Let's take an example to show how much better off most would be with an index fund.

A two-earner couple, born in 1985 is in their 30s now. They can expect a return of 2.45% on their Social Security "contributions." The S&P500's average annual return is 9.8% over the past 90 years. If each starts working at 25 with a salary of $30,000 and gets a 3% raise every year until they retire, at retirement, they'd have more than five times the savings from an index fund as from Social Security. (You can play with assumptions by copying this workbook)

This demonstrates how lousy a program Social Security is. I understand that one of the benefits of Social Security is that it can provide some security in case the market crashes. It would be  intolerable to have saved your whole life, and then the market crashes. However, this is an extremely high price to pay to guarantee retirement security. Imagine there was no payroll tax as you worked, but Social Security was funded by taxing your retirement savings right as you turn 65. This example shows that it's an 80% tax of your potential savings.

Surely we can design a system that can guarantee retirement savings (even for single-earner couples) and not mal-distribute so much wealth for a fraction of the price.