What has happened to journalism? Am I overly idealistic? Has it always been this bad, and I just didn't realize it. Have most Americans already accepted the truth of journalism?
Imagine this hypothetical: Corrupt law enforcement agents break the law to punish people of the opposition party. They fail in their endeavor, the cases are dropped, and the targets are exonerated. Then the media pronounces that the government who freed them is corrupt and ignores the problematic process.
This situation does not occur with an independent and legitimate press. This is sensationalist, activist press, the kind you'd expect in dystopian fiction or countries where a dictatorship controls the media.
This was a hypothetical case, but it could be true, and many Americans believe that the FBI agents behind the Flynn case and the Carter Page FISA warrant let their politics override their faith to justice. Maybe those Americans are wrong; maybe the FBI agents were acting in good faith. The facts are, however, that they bent and broke many laws to get what they wanted. With the FISA application and then with the Flynn case.
There are three possibilities:
1. The FBI agents involved were extremely biased and believed punishing their enemies was more important than rule of law, and Bill Barr righted those wrongs.
2. The FBI agents involved were slightly biased and bent the rules a bit too far in pursuit of legitimate investigations, and Bill Barr undid the damage.
3. The FBI agents involved were completely professional, did everything by the book, got a bad guy, and Bill Barr let him off because he's Trump's lackey.
Do we have enough information to know for sure which is true? Does any journalist?
A responsible journalist has an obligation to report these facts. A responsible journalist should recognize that this is a complicated situation and doesn't have an easy answer. An irresponsible journalist jumps to possibility 1 or possibility 3 and tosses around over-generalizations like "Barr is corrupt and he doesn't that you know it." or "The attorney general is turning the Justice Department into a political weapon for the president."
The second quote is written by the editorial board of The New York Times, and is deeply, deeply irresponsible. They are taking a complicated situation, one that's clearly in the gray where there's not enough information to make a real determination as to everyone's motives and deeds, and deciding that William Barr, the attorney general is corrupt. The left's opinion writers are expert at taking many stories, over-interpreting them, and then putting them together to create the illusion of a strong case. This opinion piece is a terrific example.
The thesis is that Bill Barr is a political actor and has politicized the Justice Department. They start with a piece of a statement Barr made in response to a question, that without the full Barr statement makes him sound like he's be happy as long as he wins. Then they talk about Watergate and the reforms that followed it. "To Mr. Barr, these reforms were obstacles to a vision of a virtually unbound executive." This is followed by a statement Barr made about the power of the executive. Instead of arguing against that statement, they simply compare him to England's King George III. Barr said "the president 'alone is the Executive branch', in whom 'the Constitution vests all Federal law enforcement power, and hence prosecutorial discretion." Is that wrong? Isn't this a question for constitutional scholars to debate? Maybe it is wrong. Is it clearly wrong? If Obama's attorney general had said it, would The New York Times proclaim it as indisputable?
Whether it's right or wrong, it's a reasonable interpretation, and Bill Barr is not the only person who thinks so. Many, many legal scholars, who believe in civil rights and want an independent justice system, believe this is true. But, The New York Times throws it in, interprets it as "Bill Barr believes the president is king" and then moves to its next point.
"Bill Barr's America...is a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen." These are the words of Donald Ayer, that the Times goes on to agree with. This is such an egregious exaggeration of the facts, it has no place in The New York Times. The United States is not a "banana republic" and the actions of Bill Barr do not come close to being "whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen." Donald Ayer was likely playing up his opinion to get press coverage and headlines. This is not a statement that was meant to accurately portray the state of the country. It is another irresponsible statement that sensationalizes instead of informs.
Next, the Times says Barr "misrepresented the contents" of the Mueller report. A "federal judge called Mr. Barr's characterization of the report 'distorted' and 'misleading.' Both of those come complete with links to back up their take. If you follow the "misrepresented the contents" link, and you read the whole story, you find that what they mean by "misrepresented the contents" was "didn't include all of the context with your accurate summary." There is no argument that Barr said anything untrue or misleading. The complaint is that Barr's summary didn't include context. How ironic that The New York Times calls it "misleading" when the full context is excluded. By that standard what should we call this editorial that doesn't mention a single one of the rationales given by the Justice Department in dropping the Flynn case?
The link to the second quote does more of the same. Claiming Barr misled the public by omitting context. The judge found it "misleading" that while Barr's statements were true, they were too narrow and left out many findings that would've cast doubt. Again, if this is a definition of "misleading" then The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and every news outlet is misleading. It is not that they leave out any context, because providing all context would be impossible. They leave out necessary context. For Flynn, they leave out the fact that the edits went on longer and involved more people than was standard; for Ukraine, they always called Jonathan Turley, the "Republican scholar" because Republicans called him, but they always omitted the fact that he was a long-standing Democrat who disagreed with them; when they discuss Trump's Charlottesville comments, they ignore that he explicitly condemned neo-Nazis and White Nationalists'. Name the story, Kavanaugh, Ukraine, FISA warrant, Russia, and the media are always telling you one side and leaving out inconvenient facts for their narrative.
The next paragraph is a litany of decisions that Barr made and liberals disagree with. Each decision Barr made was a reasonable decision. Maybe the decisions were wrong, but enough fair-minded people agree with them, that it's unfair to paint them as evidence that he's corrupt. He believes that the Russia investigation was improperly started. Is that evidence of corruption? Is the attorney general disagreeing with an inspector general so nefarious? How hard would it be to find previous attorney generals disagreeing with inspectors general? Obama and Democratic representatives disagree with court decisions, does that make them corrupt, too?
He called the investigation "spying." In other words, he said that confidential informants who were reporting the actions of Trump affiliates spies to law enforcement and intelligence agencies "spying."
He reduced the DoJ's recommended sentence for Roger Stone. Every knowledgeable person who looked at that case thought the recommendation was too high. Even so, the recommendation was merely a recommendation, it was the judge's ultimate decision. And the recommendation, even amended, included several years of jail time. By any metric you consider this, it was not a perversion of power, and yet, The New York Times is heaping onto a pile of other flimsy arguments hoping the volume of criticisms amounts to a real case.
It doesn't, and it shouldn't. The New York Times is using their history and the reputation they've earned to peddle a house of cards. Each thin and flimsy, but arranged in such a way that projects an illusion of a substantial argument. It is not; and every American needs to realize that these opinions collapse with the gentlest of breaths.
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Journalistic Malpractice - Coronavirus Edition
This NY Times report is receiving a lot of publicity. Without even searching, I've seen/heard about this story 4 times already today:
WaPo: Draft report predicts covid-19 cases will reach 200,000 a day by June 1
NPR Fact Check: Trump Administration Document And Its 3,000 Deaths A Day Scenario
CNN: Trump downplays models projecting Covid-19 death increases
This whole episode demonstrates how much is wrong with the journalism today and how it has evolved into a machine that doesn't appropriately inform the public but pushes the sentiments of journalists, ratchets up the hysteria, and divides the country. Should responsible media really use the word "carnage" to describe the model results, or is that geared towards making it more dramatic?
Many questions arise for me when reading the story:
Why didn't the NPR fact-check actually provide context for the prediction?
WaPo: Draft report predicts covid-19 cases will reach 200,000 a day by June 1
NPR Fact Check: Trump Administration Document And Its 3,000 Deaths A Day Scenario
CNN: Trump downplays models projecting Covid-19 death increases
This whole episode demonstrates how much is wrong with the journalism today and how it has evolved into a machine that doesn't appropriately inform the public but pushes the sentiments of journalists, ratchets up the hysteria, and divides the country. Should responsible media really use the word "carnage" to describe the model results, or is that geared towards making it more dramatic?
Many questions arise for me when reading the story:
Why didn't the NPR fact-check actually provide context for the prediction?
- Why didn't the Washington Post, CNN, or even the original New York Times article provide context for the prediction?
- Where's the conjecture as to what might cause such a large increase?
- Who leaked it and did they have an agenda other than to inform?
On the first two questions, high-quality journalists could have and should have dug into the data to compare it to other models, assess the numbers' likelihood considering current conditions, pointed out that the model included in the slides under-counts actual deaths to date. This story did none of those things. The authors also did not consider the third question, even taking the projections as correct, what could cause them? They mention, relaxing the government orders, but did they scrutinize that idea at all by considering which states are relaxing their orders, by what degree, and what would public reaction be? Or did they just rely on their pre-existing pro-quarantine inclinations to conclude relaxation equals "carnage"?
Ask yourself, if the leaked presentation had actually shown an optimistic scenario, where deaths and cases per day plummet, would the authors have asked these questions within the story? Would the follow-up coverage ask them? Would the stories not even be published?
This episode also demonstrates other problems with our current media landscape. First, that the media tend to focus on worst-case scenarios. They emphasize the negative because it gets the most clicks. This is not new. Local news has for decades focused on crime, for example. But now this is occurring on the national level. In addition, in a case like this, it's much easier to be balanced, by questioning the negative projections and also pointing out that this is worse than most other models have projected. The media's incentive to accentuate the negative distorts public perception of reality, even though the media's primary job is to present it accurately.
Another way in which the media coverage leads to a public misperception is when every outlet repeats the original story without providing any additional value. When the 100 left-leaning media outlets see a story that fits with their view of the universe, they repeat it, but with different headlines. This indundates the public with the exact same story, the exact same take on the story, but the perception that these are different stories because they have different headlines. This exaggerates the importance and perceived reality of the story, even though the fact remains that someone in the administration leaked a presentation, one time. When you hear or see, multiple times in the day, different headlines all saying "Deaths are going to go up", you can't read each and every story, so you're not sure if it's based on the same or different information. Not knowing, you split the difference and interpret it, as possibly new, so the story has a larger impact than it should.
This is exactly what happened when BuzzFeed published their story about how the Mueller Report would show that Trump directed his attorney to lie. This also was based on anonymous sources and grew exponentially through media repetition. Like this recent episode, none of the outlets that repeated this "bombshell" provided any additional consideration of the facts but was happy to repeat information that fit their inclinations. Look how that turned out.
Americans deserve a better media industry. As it is constituted, especially in political news, it is geared towards pushing the public in a certain direction instead of strictly informing them and providing context.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Why We Don't Build
Ezra Klein is out with a characteristically one-sided take on 'Why We Don't Build'. A question that Marc Andreesen asked.
Klein's answer can be summed up with:
1. Too much agreement is needed for action
2. Local Interests have too much veto power.
2. Republicans want government to fail so build poorly.
4. Corporations are too short-term oriented.
1. While Klein begins by talking about how the branches of government need to be aligned and then on the filibuster, he eventually comes to the real reason: there is very little compromise between the parties. When one party has power, the other party doesn't deal with them. Both prefer to do nothing rather than let the other side have its way. He points out several, bipartisan examples: privatizing Social Security and funding vouchers for Republicans and the left can't increase the federal minimum wage or pass a climate bill. Neither side can pass immigration reform. (Side note: the closest Congress came was in the second term of George W. Bush. He had a compromise ready that Republicans would sign onto but Democrats poisoned the bill to prevent it). When both sides prefer complete obstruction in hopes that they'll eventually have power, the ability to progress is severely hampered.
2. There's too much resistance from locals to any sort of change and from special interests. Klein packs a lot into this and elides some of the other issues involved here. "This is representative democracy at its worst: A democracy that only represents those who know to show up at meetings most people never hear about, and so ends up handing power to special interests and aggrieved NIMBYs." The problem here is that the powers that be are too focused on making a narrow segment of the population happy. He cites both the Himalayan costs of the California high speed rail project and NYC subways to build. Both are famously outrageous. While he concentrates on their veto power, it isn't just the veto power at play. They also have the power to increase costs. Part of the reason the California rail project was so expensive was that local politicians wanted things to run through their area, which prevented the ideal rail line from being built. This increased costs. Environmental impact studies and preventions. Laws that required union labor at higher costs or American equipment. All of these increase costs without increasing the value of what's being built. Another problem here is that it's public money and everyone views it as an infinite resource that they deserve a piece of.
He's right though that this is fundamentally a product of too much democracy and. He says "government power is now spread so thin that places...cannot get good projects off the ground." It's not that power is spread too thin, it's that political pressure is coming from narrow interests and does not reflect the public interest and the government is too conciliatory to it. Klein speaks of Robert Moses, but the benefit of his style of government is that he could bypass the special interests and ignore them. The special interests are the groups damaging the system and need less stature in the public arena.
3. Unhappy that he has criticized the left as much as he has, he goes on to criticize Republicans in an act of moral equivalency. He claims that Republicans want government to fail so act to sabotage it. He gives one example, so I only need to give one example to counter him. While President Trump has been in office, the IRS has worked to make American's lives easier: they restructured the 1040 form so it would fit on one page and also restructured the Withholding forms. These were not attempts to make government work poorly. In fact, if Republicans really wanted bad governance to make people lose faith in government, there would be myriad examples and studies. Does Texas, the exemplar red state, really have worse governance than other states? Yet millions of people move there anyway? This is a canard that the left loves to throw out with anecdotal examples, of which there are probably examples of Democrats making government worse.
4. Finally, he bemoans capitalism. It is unclear what his point is here. First he points out that private interests don't build things they don't need like masks and ventilators pre-2020. Then, he discusses Obama's "wildly successful" loan program for renewable energy. It "turned a profit to taxpayers" despite its publicized busts. This example seems extraneous so he can talk about the government being a smart lender and Obama being a brilliant person. His point is that the government is too conservative an investor and therefore private industry is too. This is another anecdotal piece of information. Corporate investments fail all the time and are accepted as a part of doing business, while government investments fail and are typically ignored. Again, no study here, just a hand-picked example.
"Short-term shareholder capitalism acts as a kind of vetocracy on public companies." The fact that corporations are too short-term oriented is another canard put out there by the left. On hearing it, it's extremely easy to nod in agreement because it makes sense at a very superficial level, but when you really sit and think about it, there's no way it can be true. He even gives a great counter-example himself, maybe the best--Amazon. Amazon is famous for eschewing short-term profits in hopes of long-term growth. He dismisses this as an "exception that infuriates the rules." Amazon is not an "exception", it's an extreme. Most companies are looking long-term. Look at the Dow Jones Index components. How many of those companies have been there for a decade? Think of a corporation off the top of your head. Think of ten. Do you really believe that they put short-term growth over long-term growth? While you can think of examples of corporations making terrible, costly errors, it's doubtful you can think of examples that they put short-term growth ahead of long-term. Boeing made an enormous error recently. But the error they made was not that "We know this is unsafe and will lead to huge losses in a year, but, hey, we'll make money this quarter!" They made the error of thinking that their plane was safer than it actually was. There's no way they expected that the problematic plane was going to end up costing them billions of dollars. Imagine you could ask a Fortune 500 CEO (and get an honest answer) if they would fire a significant portion of their workforce in charge of developing new products so that they could focus on their current hot-product. I would venture that no CEO would sacrifice their long-term growth capability for the short-term boost. The left loves to believe otherwise.
Underlying these arguments from Klein and Andreesen, though, is the false assumption that America doesn't build anymore. There is no place in the world as innovative as the United States. A lot of that innovation is digital, but not all of it. Even if all of it was digital, though, what would be wrong with that? As far as physical goods, the US is manufacturing more than it ever has before. High quality, US-made clothing has found a large market selling online. While some goods have moved overseas, the argument that the US doesn't build anymore simply isn't true. Look at Tesla, just as one example.
Klein and his ilk think that insofar as the government or private industry don't build or invest in what they think we should, it's a market failure. Klein wants the US to spend more money on infrastructure and green energy. It's important to question whether Klein is unhappy because America doesn't build or because America doesn't build what he wants us to build. He ignores the issue that what he wants is costly. Neither high speed rail nor subway systems are market-driven. Their usage will never pay for their construction, but need to be subsidized even while in operation. Electric cars are subsidized; green energy is subsidized. Even with these subsidies, Klein believes there needs to be more. Where infrastructure makes economic sense--broadband and 5G networks--these things are being built, without government assistance. Klein should consider why this infrastructure gets built while other does not.
Finally Klein ignores one last important detail about infrastructure--the fact that politicians have expanded spending at all levels of government for items other than infrastructure, leaving less money for it. Infrastructure is built both at the federal level and state level. Another question he could ask is why aren't states building more infrastructure? The answer is likely because a growing portion of their budgets is going to Medicaid, and no state wants to raise taxes. At the federal level, more and more money goes to Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. The federal debt increases every year. He has committed the same error that every Democrat commits-calling for increased spending without considering the fact that without calling for tax increases, budgets are finite.
Klein's answer can be summed up with:
1. Too much agreement is needed for action
2. Local Interests have too much veto power.
2. Republicans want government to fail so build poorly.
4. Corporations are too short-term oriented.
1. While Klein begins by talking about how the branches of government need to be aligned and then on the filibuster, he eventually comes to the real reason: there is very little compromise between the parties. When one party has power, the other party doesn't deal with them. Both prefer to do nothing rather than let the other side have its way. He points out several, bipartisan examples: privatizing Social Security and funding vouchers for Republicans and the left can't increase the federal minimum wage or pass a climate bill. Neither side can pass immigration reform. (Side note: the closest Congress came was in the second term of George W. Bush. He had a compromise ready that Republicans would sign onto but Democrats poisoned the bill to prevent it). When both sides prefer complete obstruction in hopes that they'll eventually have power, the ability to progress is severely hampered.
2. There's too much resistance from locals to any sort of change and from special interests. Klein packs a lot into this and elides some of the other issues involved here. "This is representative democracy at its worst: A democracy that only represents those who know to show up at meetings most people never hear about, and so ends up handing power to special interests and aggrieved NIMBYs." The problem here is that the powers that be are too focused on making a narrow segment of the population happy. He cites both the Himalayan costs of the California high speed rail project and NYC subways to build. Both are famously outrageous. While he concentrates on their veto power, it isn't just the veto power at play. They also have the power to increase costs. Part of the reason the California rail project was so expensive was that local politicians wanted things to run through their area, which prevented the ideal rail line from being built. This increased costs. Environmental impact studies and preventions. Laws that required union labor at higher costs or American equipment. All of these increase costs without increasing the value of what's being built. Another problem here is that it's public money and everyone views it as an infinite resource that they deserve a piece of.
He's right though that this is fundamentally a product of too much democracy and. He says "government power is now spread so thin that places...cannot get good projects off the ground." It's not that power is spread too thin, it's that political pressure is coming from narrow interests and does not reflect the public interest and the government is too conciliatory to it. Klein speaks of Robert Moses, but the benefit of his style of government is that he could bypass the special interests and ignore them. The special interests are the groups damaging the system and need less stature in the public arena.
3. Unhappy that he has criticized the left as much as he has, he goes on to criticize Republicans in an act of moral equivalency. He claims that Republicans want government to fail so act to sabotage it. He gives one example, so I only need to give one example to counter him. While President Trump has been in office, the IRS has worked to make American's lives easier: they restructured the 1040 form so it would fit on one page and also restructured the Withholding forms. These were not attempts to make government work poorly. In fact, if Republicans really wanted bad governance to make people lose faith in government, there would be myriad examples and studies. Does Texas, the exemplar red state, really have worse governance than other states? Yet millions of people move there anyway? This is a canard that the left loves to throw out with anecdotal examples, of which there are probably examples of Democrats making government worse.
4. Finally, he bemoans capitalism. It is unclear what his point is here. First he points out that private interests don't build things they don't need like masks and ventilators pre-2020. Then, he discusses Obama's "wildly successful" loan program for renewable energy. It "turned a profit to taxpayers" despite its publicized busts. This example seems extraneous so he can talk about the government being a smart lender and Obama being a brilliant person. His point is that the government is too conservative an investor and therefore private industry is too. This is another anecdotal piece of information. Corporate investments fail all the time and are accepted as a part of doing business, while government investments fail and are typically ignored. Again, no study here, just a hand-picked example.
"Short-term shareholder capitalism acts as a kind of vetocracy on public companies." The fact that corporations are too short-term oriented is another canard put out there by the left. On hearing it, it's extremely easy to nod in agreement because it makes sense at a very superficial level, but when you really sit and think about it, there's no way it can be true. He even gives a great counter-example himself, maybe the best--Amazon. Amazon is famous for eschewing short-term profits in hopes of long-term growth. He dismisses this as an "exception that infuriates the rules." Amazon is not an "exception", it's an extreme. Most companies are looking long-term. Look at the Dow Jones Index components. How many of those companies have been there for a decade? Think of a corporation off the top of your head. Think of ten. Do you really believe that they put short-term growth over long-term growth? While you can think of examples of corporations making terrible, costly errors, it's doubtful you can think of examples that they put short-term growth ahead of long-term. Boeing made an enormous error recently. But the error they made was not that "We know this is unsafe and will lead to huge losses in a year, but, hey, we'll make money this quarter!" They made the error of thinking that their plane was safer than it actually was. There's no way they expected that the problematic plane was going to end up costing them billions of dollars. Imagine you could ask a Fortune 500 CEO (and get an honest answer) if they would fire a significant portion of their workforce in charge of developing new products so that they could focus on their current hot-product. I would venture that no CEO would sacrifice their long-term growth capability for the short-term boost. The left loves to believe otherwise.
Underlying these arguments from Klein and Andreesen, though, is the false assumption that America doesn't build anymore. There is no place in the world as innovative as the United States. A lot of that innovation is digital, but not all of it. Even if all of it was digital, though, what would be wrong with that? As far as physical goods, the US is manufacturing more than it ever has before. High quality, US-made clothing has found a large market selling online. While some goods have moved overseas, the argument that the US doesn't build anymore simply isn't true. Look at Tesla, just as one example.
Klein and his ilk think that insofar as the government or private industry don't build or invest in what they think we should, it's a market failure. Klein wants the US to spend more money on infrastructure and green energy. It's important to question whether Klein is unhappy because America doesn't build or because America doesn't build what he wants us to build. He ignores the issue that what he wants is costly. Neither high speed rail nor subway systems are market-driven. Their usage will never pay for their construction, but need to be subsidized even while in operation. Electric cars are subsidized; green energy is subsidized. Even with these subsidies, Klein believes there needs to be more. Where infrastructure makes economic sense--broadband and 5G networks--these things are being built, without government assistance. Klein should consider why this infrastructure gets built while other does not.
Finally Klein ignores one last important detail about infrastructure--the fact that politicians have expanded spending at all levels of government for items other than infrastructure, leaving less money for it. Infrastructure is built both at the federal level and state level. Another question he could ask is why aren't states building more infrastructure? The answer is likely because a growing portion of their budgets is going to Medicaid, and no state wants to raise taxes. At the federal level, more and more money goes to Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. The federal debt increases every year. He has committed the same error that every Democrat commits-calling for increased spending without considering the fact that without calling for tax increases, budgets are finite.
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.
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.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
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
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
Sunday, March 1, 2020
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.
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.
Friday, July 19, 2019
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.
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