You’ve got to love comments like this, from a Washington Post Article headlined: Intelligence Specialist’s Shooting Stirs Speculation : No Motive Known as Comments on Putin are Debated
Law enforcement sources have said it is unclear whether the gunmen were trying to rob Joyal.
Well, yes, I suppose it is unclear in the same sense that it is unclear whether space aliens were trying to abduct Paul Joyal. Either way, not one iota of evidence was provided to suggest that’s what was going on.
An aide to Mrs. Pelosi, who asked not to be named, confirmed yesterday that discussions are ongoing with the administration. “It would be done for security reasons,” said the aide, adding that the speaker has used military aircraft for at least one trip back to San Francisco.
The aide asserted that the administration was using a Washington Times reporter, in effect, to negotiate with the speaker’s office by leaking information about Mrs. Pelosi’s request. Asked if the speaker was seeking increased access to military planes, the aide took the question, but did not call back.
Back in 1995, Newt Gingrich was skinned alive when he complained about the seat he was assigned on a Clinton plane. Â Here is CNN’s spin on it:
Gingrich and Dole had complained earlier about their lack of discussions with Clinton during the 25 hours of flying time. But Gingrich went a step further Wednesday by saying the incident contributed to the government shutdown.
“This is petty,” said Gingrich, indicating his displeasure at the way the two were treated. “You’ve been on the plane for 25 hours and nobody has talked to you and they ask you to get off the plane by the back ramp. … You just wonder, where is their sense of manners? Where is their sense of courtesy?”
I wonder if Nancy will fare as well as Newt did.
LANSING, Mich. — After 15 years of tax cuts, including drops in property and income tax rates, Michigan families have seen their state tax bills decrease by as much as a fourth, according to an Associated Press computer analysis.
The above is from an AP article that seems to have appeared in a lot of newspapers today. I first saw it in today’s Kalamazoo Gazette. It’s the lead article on page 1. Here is a link to the Chicago Tribune version.
The information as to how this “analysis” was performed is pretty scanty. The best I could find was this from something called Michigan Wire.
It’s curious that the AP is now doing analyses like these instead of reporting on other people doing such analyses. Usually the AP is able to achieve a high level of partisanship just by the way it reports on other peoples’ agendas. Apparently that wasn’t enough this time. And it’s suspicious that such an analysis comes out just before the Governor’s State of the State address. Producing a study to serve a political timetable is hardly the way to get objective results.
There are so many things wrong with this, and so many unanswered questions.
Hiding behind the fig leaf “computer analysis” is one of the oldest dodges in the book. There is apparently no web site where one can go to check the data, the assumptions, and the calculations. Just because a computer was used doesn’t mean this piece of work wasn’t ideologically biased.
The article purports to tell how families’ tax bills have dropped over the past 15 years. But in a sidebar that lists tax changes since 1991, there is a list of tax increases (3 of them) followed by a long list of tax cuts. But the latter list includes a cut to the Single Business tax! So how did they calculate the effect of that one in reducing the typical family tax bill?
The article states that “the biggest savings have come through the lower property-tax bills that homeowners have paid since Proposal A passed in 1994.” But I thought the revenues were supposed to be off-set by sales tax receipts. Has that not happened? Are we now spending less per pupil in inflation-adjusted dollars? If so, that would be the story to report on. (Not that it would necessarily be a bad thing, or a good thing. But either way, it would be worth knowing about.)
And if they did somehow make that calculation, where is the information about the indirect effects of changes in the tax rates on economic activity, e.g. on attracting businesses to come to Michigan or leave the state?
And what about the non-school property taxes that are being collected locally? How come those weren’t included in the analysis. Has the reduction in school property taxes made it easier for local governments to raise property taxes for other purposes, as some people predicted would happen? That should have been part of the story, too.
But most of all, I want to know what part of the state GDP is being taken in taxes. Is the government’s percentage of the state’s economy growing or decreasing? Not a word was said about that.
Tom Clay, fo the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council, says policymakers will need to address that question if Michigan is to deal with falling revenues caused in part by lower tax rates.
Note those words, “in part.” But which part? 10 percent? 90 percent? What is the other part that’s not caused by lower tax rates. And what will happen to that other part if tax rates are increased?
I think what’s needed is for some news agency that is a real news agency to do some reporting on this. Find out how the AP really did this study. Find out what motivated it and who the players are behind the scenes. Find out who decided that now was the time for such a study to come out. Find out what the critics have to say about it. Because whatever this story is, it is not a matter of the AP reporting the news. It is a matter of the AP inventing news. And for that kind of work, it should be held to account.
The media campaign to use the Ted Haggard scandal against Bush gives the impression that the National Association of Evangelicals is such an influential organization. But the NAE didn’t even make the Top Ten list of right-wing theocrat organizations at publiceye.org
And from this article at The Christian Post, it sounds like the NAE’S 30 million members don’t contribute enough money for it to have its own staff. Ted Haggard was running the organization out of his own church’s collection plate.
While trying to find out about this organization, I did learn that several years ago the National Council of Churches had a budget in the range of $70 million. But although it’s questionable whether there is another religious body as engaged in partisan politics as the NCC, I haven’t seen it on anyone’s list of theocrat organizations, either. Funny how that works.
Reuters, the political activist organization, put out an article with the headline:
“Evangelical America hit by gay sex scandal.”
The lead paragraph went like this:
“America’s evangelical movement grappled on Friday with a high-profile gay sex scandal that evoked torrid affairs of the past and embarrassed the politically active cause days before nationwide elections.”
One wonders how Reuters could possibly have known this. Did they do a poll of American evangelicals? For that matter, did they even research the question of whether American evangelicals had even heard of Ted Haggard before the current media frenzy began? Continue reading »