Monday, September 13, 2010

Today's Installment

Today's Yahoo tease of an AP story [headline/link followed by the pop-up snip]:

Senate Republicans say they'll block tax increase (AP)

AP - President Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on wealthier people while preserving cuts for everyone else appears increasingly likely to founder before Election Day.


And if you click through to the whole story it's just as bad...

Of course there's the unsurprising bit about old friends Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson and Holy Joe joining the GOP in rhetoric as well as deed, but the rest is just more of the same bullshit non-analysis we read yesterday.

The story wraps with a couple talking points from each side, which of course ends with a misleading statistic presented by the editors to back up a bogus GOP claim, and then last word goes to the Republicans.

"We could get (tax cuts) done this week, but we're still in this wrestling match with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell about the last 2 to 3 percent" of upper-income taxpayers, Obama said Monday during a backyard town hall in a Northern Virginia suburb. [NOTE: this is optimistic, to say the least, in terms of timetable, but essentially true.]

Gibbs said the middle class should not be used as a political football by Republicans maneuvering to give tax cuts to wealthy taxpayers, who he said don't need the reductions. [NOTE: Also true.] Republicans say paring taxes for the wealthy would encourage them and the businesses they operate to create jobs. [NOTE: Demonstrably false until someone produces actual evidence of successful trickle-down economics.]

Republicans, for their part, say that it's not just the rich who would be hit by Obama's tax hike on upper-income people. Many small businesses — that earn about half of all small business income — would also face the tax hike. [NOTE: There's the whopper.]


That makes it sound as if "many" equals "about half" of small businesses. Wrong. It's a deliberate attempt to conflate the income (dollars) with number of businesses. The truth is the vast majority of small business owners earn far below the threshold, and their personal income is impacted (or not) in any case, NOT the business.’

Just as the top 3% of individuals account for 20% of the nation's wealth, the "many" small business owners that account for "about half" of the small business income is actually a tiny share of the number of businesses. Like two percent tiny.

Thanks, AP!

P.S. Of course, that's skipping past the assertion that Obama is actively raising ANYONE'S taxes. He's not. This is the expiration of the GOP con game from the first Bush term.

1 comment:

Noah said...

I promise I am punching the next person directly in their fat face who says there's no evidence of media bias.