Figures Don't Lie...

My son apparently developed an interest in the world around him, and has started watching CNN Headline News in the morning before school. That’s certainly not something I want to discourage…but it has the unfortunate side effect of forcing me to face the world before I’m fully awake. Ah, well, we all make sacrifices for our children, right?

Today, CNN was telling us about Congress’ recent approval to continue the Bush tax cuts, as they were modified last year. They posted a graphic showing the average savings for the cuts in various income brackets – taxpayers making $1,000,000 a year and up will save an average of over $42,000, while taxpayers making less than $25,000 a year will save only $9. There were two other brackets shown, but I was unable to locate them on CNN.com – at any rate, they clearly indicated that the rich would be getting richer, while the poor gained almost nothing.

On further reflection, though, I’m pretty sure that’s misleading. After all, how much taxes are those poor people paying? Looking at the 2005 Form 1040A, I see that for a married couple with two kids making $25,000 a year, $22,800 of that is exempt from taxes. That’s the standard exemption plus the deduction for four dependents. The tax bill on that $2,200 remaining is $279. Then, of course, they get the Child Tax Credit of $2,000 to apply against that $279 – that credit doesn’t allow for negative numbers to be paid to the taxpayer, but it does kill that $279. In fact, for our family of four to actually come up with a positive tax bill, they have to make at least $41,000 – and then they’ll have to pay $4.00. Yes, that’s four dollars. Anything less than that, and they get back every penny that was withheld from them. And that’s not with any fancy tax strategies… that’s just the basics.

Note that I didn’t include Earned Income Credit or the Additional Child Credit – those programs actually pay the taxpayer above and beyond what they put into withholding, so any changes in the tax plan that let them keep more of that money count, for me, as a savings. But as far as I know, this plan didn't make changes to those programs.

Of course, not everyone is in a family of four. For a family of three, you have to make $29,600 (for a married couple with one child) or $33,700 (for a single parent with two children) to pay a single penny in taxes. Even a single parent with one child has to make $23,700 to pay any taxes at all. No wonder the average savings for incomes under $25,000 is so low…you can’t cut the price below zero!

I don’t want to play around with the other end of the spectrum, the folks pulling down a million or more a year. The top bracket is 35%, so they should be paying somewhere near $350,000 on that million (a little less – they get deductions and exemptions, too)…but we all know that various stupid tax tricks can reduce that number considerably, and I’m not familiar enough with tax law to make a reasonable guess on those numbers. But when you start looking at averages at the top of the scale, you run into the skewing that results from people at the extremes. The average savings in that bracket is $42,000 a year…but if nine multi-millionaires are saving $1000 a year (that’s a third of a percent of their tax bill), while one Bill Gates is saving $411,000 a year (on his billion dollar tax bill, so that’s one-twentieth of a percent), then that works out to that average of $42,000 a year, while still being an insignificant savings for all of them! (Yes, I made up the numbers for Bill Gates – I couldn’t find any numbers on what he makes from investments and capital gains, and I couldn’t properly account for his incredibly huge charitable donations. Replace his name with the multi-billionaire of your choice. Or do your own math, and tell me what you came up with.)

I didn’t check out the Fox News version of the tax story. Somehow, I suspect that they focused on the percentage savings for various tax brackets, showing how much greater a savings it was for lower- and middle-income people…while still being just as misleading. I think all news organizations that display statistics of any sort should be required to provide a full disclosure of where they got their numbers and how they did their calculations – they could post it on their web site, or whatever. I expect we’d see a lot less statistics. But since most people can't or won't do simple math anymore, the press can get away with whatever spin they want to put on the numbers.

Freedom of the Press Release

I hate having to defend someone I don’t like.

I don’t particularly like Vice-President Cheney. In my opinion, the modern-day purpose of a Vice-Presidential candidate is to look good, shore up support for the Presidential candidate in a different home region, and, in the case of a former challenger for his party’s nomination, provide some extra electoral votes for the big guy. Dick Cheney doesn’t look good. He’s from Wyoming, a state tied with six others for the least electoral votes – even the CITY of Washington, D.C. has the same number! To make it worse, Mr. Cheney is from the same general region as Mr. Bush – the West. And certainly, Mr. Cheney was never even vaguely a contender for the Presidential nomination.

For Mr. Bush to select Mr. Cheney as a running mate required that he give up all these potential advantages that another person might provide. There has to be some compensating advantage or reason – and when I think about that, the words “kingmaker” or worse, “puppeteer” leap to mind. I am very uncomfortable with the thought that my President, my Commander-in-Chief, might be little more than a mouthpiece for his Vice-President. Still worse when that Vice-President gives the appearance of being deeply beholden to various special and corporate interests, especially the oil and defense industries.

With all that in mind, you can imagine how much it bugs me to be forced to defend Mr. Cheney. But the press has the wrong end of the stick this week, and I don’t see many people stepping up to say so. Dick Cheney went out this past weekend on a hunting trip with a friend. The trip held no particular political importance, wasn’t an official function, and wasn’t related to his duties. It turns out that he made a tragic mistake in the course of the day that has hospitalized that friend. This is news – not because it is politically important, but because the Vice-President is an inherently newsworthy figure, so anything he does is news, especially something unusual and tragic. (All the more so that it includes so many comedic elements – political humorists are having a field day.) I don’t see any problem with the media reporting the incident, or with the satirists poking fun at it – that’s part of the deal when you accept the office, or even when you hang around with the VP.

The press corps, however, seems to believe that they were entitled to full details provided directly from the White House as soon as the incident occurred. There’s been a few editorials on the subject batting about the terms “cover-up” and “withholding information.” Alan Dershowitz hints that Cheney may have been drunk at the time. But worse than the editorials have been the so-called “balanced” news stories that take their pot shots by publicizing the “media’s reaction.” For example:

“Amid criticism of the White House for waiting to announce the shooting accident…”

“US media slams Dick Cheney” and “The Vice President seems to be avoiding the press, however, that hasn't stopped the media from taking pot shots at him.”

“The accident raised questions about …the White House's failure to disclose the accident in a timely way.”

I read editorials frequently, but I prefer that they be labeled correctly. Constant mentions of “press reaction” by the press itself strike me as a way to cover opinion with a patina of honest reporting.

But why is the press so upset in the first place? Because they weren’t given the full story right away. The reporters seem to have forgotten a basic truth – the freedom of the press is a freedom for them to publish and for them to go find out, not a guarantee that they’ll be handed every story on silver platter. A government cover-up of official actions is one thing, but this incident was a private matter. It could later become a civil or criminal matter, if Mr. Whittington should decide to sue or press charges, but right now it is purely private. Mr. Cheney and the White House were under no obligation to say anything.

In fact, it might be better for us all if the media stopped depending on press conferences, releases, and handouts for our news, and went out there and looked and told us what they found.