Truth versus image-making

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. has a very good article titled How to Have More Police Shootings in the April 24 Wall Street Journal. Double negatives make the subtitle confusing. The main pairings to choose from seem to be:

1. More people resisting arrest with more police misconduct.

2. Fewer people resisting arrest with less police misconduct.

Only 20-25% of the article concerns police conduct and resisting arrest. Most of the rest is about choosing between the truth and promoting one's self image. Promoting one's self-image has much more priority nowadays, especially for newspapers, journalists, politicians and some business people. "Virtue signaling" is another, newer term for promoting one's self-image.

Seeing the whole article online requires a paid subscription (which could be somebody else's), so the following are excerpts from the article.

"[T]he cavalcade of CEOs who denounced Georgia’s election law didn’t know in the slightest what they were talking about. ... Instead a bunch of business leaders simply adopted Democratic talking points not knowing what the law contained. And, more importantly, not caring." 

"If you think The New York Times and Washington Post mind in the least that their coverage is off-putting to a large number of Americans, you misunderstand the business they’re in. Once upon a time, broad reach really was our industry’s goal, to meet the desire of our advertisers for as many customers as possible. In turn, this drove our need to cover the news in a way that we could defend to all comers as “objective” and straight down the middle."

That's no longer the case. The New York Times, Washington Post, and many other media outlets now prioritize promoting and protecting their self-images over truth.

Joe Biden and Maxine Waters make prejudicial comments about a pending jury verdict to promote their self-image. Finally, of course, many people express opinions about politics and much more that prioritize "virtue signaling" over truth.

Bad news bias

 Bad News Bias by David Leonhardt of The New York Times  

Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, and two other researchers built a database of Covid coverage from every major network, CNN, Fox News, Politico, The New York Times and hundreds of other sources, in the U.S. and overseas. The researchers then analyzed it, classifying the coverage as positive, neutral or negative. 

"The coverage by U.S. publications with a national audience has been much more negative than coverage by any other source that the researchers analyzed, including scientific journals, major international publications and regional U.S. media."

"When Covid cases were rising in the U.S., the news coverage emphasized the increase. When cases were falling, the coverage instead focused on those places where cases were rising. And when vaccine research began showing positive results, the coverage downplayed it."

"About 87 percent of Covid coverage in national U.S. media last year was negative. The share was 51 percent in international media, 53 percent in U.S. regional media and 64 percent in scientific journals."

"Sacerdote is careful to emphasize that he does not think journalists usually report falsehoods. The issue is which facts they emphasize."

I credit Leonhardt for reporting on the study. It's still a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Leonhardt himself did some very negative reporting about Covid, President Trump, and the U.S.A. compared to other countries. I wrote about some of his reporting on this blog. 

Coronavirus - sloppy, biased NY Times

Coronavirus -- NY Times biased statistic

Coronavirus -- NY Times biased statistic #2

Coronavirus - sloppy, biased NY Times

I have been receiving daily emails containing briefings from The New York Times. The one that came Monday written by a David Leonhardt says the following. 

"Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have claimed that the rise in confirmed U.S. cases is largely the result of more tests. That’s not true, as The Times explains. The U.S., which once trailed Europe in per capita overall deaths, has now endured many more." 

The last sentence about deaths is irrelevant to what Trump and Pence said about tests.

The Trump-Pence claim was trivial but indubitably true. Neither Leonhardt nor The Times article show it is false. Is he trying to say that more confirmed cases are not a result of more tests? The Times article mentions a higher rate of positive tests. That shows a lower rate of positive tests is false, but Trump-Pence did not claim such lower rate.

The email showed a graph of Covid-19 deaths per million residents for the USA, Europe, and Canada. It showed the USA at about 385, Europe at about 295, and Canada at about 225. Below the graph says: "Source: Johns Hopkins University The New York Times."  Why is it not simply Johns Hopkins University? As this shows, John Hopkins does not show numbers for "Europe" -- whatever that means -- only individual countries. In other words, The New York Times concocted the 295 to slur Trump and Pence. 

When I looked at the numbers a few minutes ago they were as follows per million (10 times the per 100,000 numbers shown by John Hopkins):

Belgium 852, UK 657, Spain 607, Italy 575, France 447, Netherlands 355, Switzerland 230, Portugal 152, Germany 101.

The first 5 are all higher, some much higher, than the USA's 385 and countries 2-5 have large populations. How does one aggregate all of them and get 295? With junk math, cherry-picking, or lying with statistics!

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Mark Twain 

Bernie Sanders' deceptive tax numbers

News stories say some posted on Facebook that Bernie Sanders proposed a 52% tax rate on all income over $29,000. The posts went viral. The assertion is false, so many in the mainstream media pounced. Yet Google News search results for {Bernie Sanders 52% tax $29,000} show significant  media bias. Defending Sanders far outweighs any critical analysis of his proposals. BS proposes to pay for his spending spree here.

The Facebook posters conflated two things. The truth is BS wants a payroll tax of 4% of income over $29,000 and an income tax of 52% of income over $10 million. He also wants to increase the Social Security payroll tax rate 6.2% on income over $250,000 (the smaller maximum wage base more accurately and the rate is now 0%). Adding them makes a tax rate of 62.2% of income over $10 million. None of the media stories I read reported the 62.2% or even 56% (= 52% + 4%).  (For Schedule C income it may be more, 68.4%, since the person must also pay the employer's 6.2% Social Security payroll tax. On the other hand, it may be somewhat less due to the qualified business income deduction.) Most also gloss over the other income tax hikes Sanders proposes on incomes much lower than $10 million, starting at 40% on income over $250,000 (link), which the first Sanders link above even omits.

The marginal income tax rate at $250,000 for married filing jointly is 24%; for a single it is 35%. So BS proposes a 16% tax rate increase for married filing jointly; 5% for single.

Regarding his proposed tax of 4% over $29,000 to pay for Medicare For All, the first link says: "In 2018, the typical working family paid an average of $6,015 in premiums to private health insurance companies.  Under this option, a typical family of four earning $60,000, would pay a 4 percent income-based premium to fund Medicare for All on income above $29,000 – just $1,240 a year – saving that family $4,775 a year.  Families of four making less than $29,000 a year would not pay this premium."

If the current 1.45% payroll tax for Medicare isn't eliminated, then BS sweeps it under the rug. Also, the picture is quite different for an income of $250,000, which is middle class in some places (e.g., Silicon Valley, NYC). 4% * ($250,000 - $29,000) = $8,840. So there is more tax and likely no savings for them! Even for a $200,000 income 4% * ($200,000 - $29,000) = $6,840, which is still more tax and likely no savings.

To fund the Green New Deal he proposes "collecting $2.3 trillion in new income tax revenue from the 20 million new jobs created by the plan." He says nothing about how many jobs his plan would eliminate. The number of unemployed people in the U.S. last month was only 5.89 million! So that implies eliminating several million jobs. The $2.3 trillion, which is very likely for 10 years, looks inflated in two ways -- number of jobs and tax rate. 20 million * $60,000 * 0.20 tax rate * 10 years = $2.4 trillion. For an income of $60,000, the average effective income tax rate is only about 10%. So the $2.3 trillion appears to be several times a realistic number.