The Trib And The AEI

From today's Sunday Pops:

University of Michigan economics professor Mark J. Perry, writing for the American Enterprise Institute, says the share of middle-class families dropped from 61.8 percent in 1969 to 43.2 percent in 2009, a drop of 18.6 percentage points. And the share of lower-income families fell from 22 percent of all families in 1967 to 17.8 percent in 2009. So, where did they go? Mr. Perry says they joined the upper-income club, which increased from 16.2 percent of all families in 1967 to 39.1 percent in 2009. Thus, the contention that the middle class “has been in decline since the 1970s ... is incredibly and verifiably wrong,” he says. It's another stat for the “economic fairness” crowd.[Bolding in original.]

Pretty compelling stuff, doncha think?  Until you look at some of the details.

You'll note that nowhere in the Braintrust's paragraph is there a definition of the terms "middle-class" or "lower-income" or "upper-income."  Wonder why?

For that we need to take a look at where the braintrust gets it's info.  Notably Mark J Perry of the Scaife supported AEI.  Take a look at the chart he's constructed.

Notice anything?  He's defining "Upper-income" as anything above $75,000.  That's "the upper-income club" to the braintrust is talking about.

Second thing you'll notice is that this is Family income.  Not personal income.

Isn't it possible that between 1967 and 2009 there's been a change in family demographics?  I mean, wouldn't the move from single income to dual income shift the data just a tad?

Yea, I think that's possible.

Anything to cloud the issue of income inequality, I guess.  Especially from Scaife's braintrust and the Scaife supported AEI.

On That Carbon Tax: The Trib, The AEI And The Truth

From today's op-ed page at the Tribune-Review:

A new federal carbon tax being advocated by leftists and environmentalists would not curb man-made emissions enough to possibly affect climate. But it would hinder commerce and America’s drive for energy independence enough to drag down the economy.

Steve Milloy, the publisher of JunkScience.com , writing for Investor’s Business Daily, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Christopher C. Horner, writing in California’s Orange County Register, point out that a carbon tax...

Before we go any further, we should look at what Milloy and Horner actually wrote about this.  From Horner we learn a little more:

Recently, a leaked agenda laid bare a strategy session among a virtual Who's Who of left-leaning big-government activist groups, hosted by a generally conservative policy group, the American Enterprise Institute. By the agenda's title, this fifth in a series was part of a "Lame Duck Initiative" to strategize enactment of a "carbon" tax, or federal energy tax on oil, coal and gas, in the post-election session of Congress that began this week.

AEI thereby joined former Republican politicians and advisers seeking to rebrand, as a conservative idea, the latest incarnation of what the political Left has long pined for, only to be told it was a dead letter given the political debacle of the Clinton administration's 1993 "BTU tax."

It's from the American Enterprise Institute?  Funny how that part (you know about how it's coming from the Scaife-Funded AEI) never made it into Scaife's paper.  Not sure how they can ignore $8.7 million dollars ($7.8 from Sarah Scaife and $900K from Carthage) worth of support over the last few decades.

That's kinda embarrassing, isn't it?

The Trib Misleads. Again.

Take a look at this:

The Federal Salary Council ciphers that federal employees earn 34 percent less than their private-sector counterparts and that the “pay gap” jumped 8 percentage points since last year. But two Junes ago, the private American Enterprise Institute concluded federal employees earn 14 percent more than their private counterparts. See what happens when you let government types study reality?

See that?  It's a clear cut indictment of yet another flawed guv'ment study.  The study's invalidated, of course, by an American Enterprise Institute report that purports to look at the same thing.

Of course the $7.8 million dollars (unadjusted for inflation) in financial support that Trib owner Richard Mellon Scaife has given to AEI has nothing to do with any of this.

But there's a deeper question: Is there an actual reason (besides the one Scaife's paid for) the percentages are different?

Turns out there is.  In this GAO study from this past June there's an explanation, though you can see a hint of it in the title:

Results of Studies on Federal Pay Varied Due to Differing Methodologies

Huh.  You don't say.  And what are these differing methodologies?

First here's the list of the different studies (I've highlighted the studies that concern us here):

• Comparing Federal and Private Sector Compensation, Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, June 2011. (Co-author Richwine is from The Heritage Foundation.)
• Federal Pay Continues Rapid Ascent, Chris Edwards, The Cato Institute, August 2009.
• Report on Locality-Based Comparability Payments for the General Schedule, Annual Report of the President’s Pay Agent 2010, The President’s Pay Agent, March 2011.
• Bad Business: Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on Hiring Contractors, The Project On Government Oversight, September 2011.
• Inflated Federal Pay: How Americans Are Overtaxed to Overpay the Civil Service, James Sherk, The Heritage Foundation, July 2010.

Hey, did you know that the co-author of the AEI study is a Heritage Foundation guy?  I didn't.  I guess we can add the $24 million Scaife's funnelled to Heritage (again, unadjusted for inflation) as another reason why his braintrust would be supporting the AEI analysis over the Fed's.

But back to the GAO study.  Here's what they say initially about the differing methodologies:

All of the selected studies except for the President’s Pay Agent compared federal to private sector pay and total compensation. The President’s Pay Agent compared federal to nonfederal pay (not benefits) and defined nonfederal as private sector, state government, and local government.

Do I need to tell you that the "President's Pay Agent" is the Federal Study Council?

So do you think that maybe just maybe that might explain the difference so easily dismissed by Scaife's braintrust?

See what happens when you let an ideologically based editorial board of a newspaper owned by a billionaire who's been funding right wing think tanks for decades study the difference between a guv'ment study and one funded by that same billionaire??

Typical Monday, I guess - a Trib Twofer

This'll have to be short - I was up late watching the unfortunate events play themselves out on my TV.  Pallid as a bust of Pallas right now (look it up if you don't get it) and it's not even bleak December yet.

But onto this morning's less than transparent contribution from the Tribune-Review to our civic discourse.

It references a study by the Heritage Foundation complaining about how public school teachers are overpaid.

At this point, I'd usually just point out the millions (almost $24 million, according to mediamatters) of dollars Richard Mellon Scaife's funneled to the Heritage Foundation over the years.  I might even point out that the publisher of this editorial is actually the vice chairman of the board of trustees (there's a nice picture of him there, of you're still curious as to what he looks like).  I'd then usually point out that none of this information is ever communicated to the Trib's readership while it touts the scholarship its publisher has so consistently and generously supported.

But I said this is a twofer.

Take a look at the authors of the study.  From the bottom of the page:

Jason Richwine, Ph.D. is Senior Policy Analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, and Andrew G. Biggs, Ph.D. is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Another thinktank! With some more Scaife connections!

According to mediamatters, Scaife's foundations have given about $8.4 million to the AEI between 1988 and 2009.  So this doesn't include the:

• $500,000 from Sarah Scaife in 2010

That's the twofer.  I'm thinking there's nearly 33 million reasons why Scaife's braintrust should include Scaife's support of those two think tanks when Scaife's paper cites their research.

Actually, come to think of it, that's probably have 33 million reasons not to.

The circle jerk continues.

My Gawd!

How did this get onto the pages of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review?

It's an essay by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, authors of "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" and it describes how conservative think-tanks seek to undermine science. It begins with:

If some of the attacks on the credibility of climate science feel familiar, there's a reason. With their unattributed claims downplaying the severity of the problem and their vague allegations of scientific impropriety, the assaults are the latest in a long tradition of organized efforts by industry and free-market enthusiasts to undermine the credibility of science they don't like.

Yea, I know - on the pages of Richard Mellon Scaife's "news" paper.

So let's fast forward a little:

The strategy was expanded beyond the cigarette industry in part because of the efforts of physicist Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences who went on to direct R.J. Reynolds' biomedical research program. In 1984, he joined forces with astrophysicist Robert Jastrow and nuclear physicist William Nierenberg to establish the George C. Marshall Institute.

That would be the same George C. Marshall Institute that:

• received $230,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009.
• received $255,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008.
• received $155,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007.
• received $200,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2006.
• received $200,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2005.
• received $155,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2004.

By my count that's $1.165 million.

Mediamatters goes further (and let's be honest, they have more time to plow through this stuff). They're reporting that since 1985, the Scaife controlled Carthage Foundation has given $707,500 to the George C. Marshall institute and the equally Scaife controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation has given $2,785,000 to the institute between 1986 and 2007.

That's about $3.5 million to fund free market/conservative science skepticism.

Then there's this from the essay:

The network of institutions attempting to undermine science (with funding from industry) is vast. The top tier of the network is a set of political think tanks dedicated to promoting free markets and advocating for limited government.

They include the Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, The Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In turn, they are linked to myriad smaller groups. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, for example, organized the Cooler Heads Coalition, which describes itself as "focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific and risk analysis."

I'll just take the numbers from Media Matters, just to expedite things.

• Cato Institute: $2,192,500 since 1985 ($245,000 from Carthage, $1,947,500 from Sarah Scaife)
• Heritage Foundation: $23,894,000 since 1985 ($100,000 from Allegheny, $2,559,000 from Carthage, $21,235,000 from Sarah Scaife)
• American Enterprise Institute: $7,336,000 since 1988 ($900,000 from Carthage, $6,436,000 from Sarah Scaife)
• Heartland Institute: $335,000 since 1986 ($10,000 from Carthage, $325,000 from Sarah Scaife)
• Competitive Enterprise Institute: $2,300,000 since 1985 ($60,000 from Carthage, $2,240,000 from Sarah Scaife)

By my count that's a skosh over $36 million for institutes or foundations dedicated (among other things) to pushing free market/conservative "skepticism" of science.

The piece ends with this:

As science found more and more evidence of the environmental and health effects of industrial activity, which suggested the need for regulation, market fundamentalists increasingly turned against that science. In the name of "freedom," the American public has been deliberately misinformed about important issues of human health and environmental protection.

But it remains difficult to imagine how lies can set us free.

Again this is on Richard Mellon Scaife's editorial page?? Have we shifted into an alternative reality while I was asleep? A backwards universe where Sarah Palin has an engaging intellect? Where Simon Cowell is a nice guy? Where Spock has a beard?

I'm so confused.

Ha! Funny!

Tom Tomorrow brings up an interesting point in his most recent cartoon.

About the conservatives who are criticizing President Obama for not speaking out more forcefully in support of the protesters in Iran, he says that some of the same folks, not too long ago, were advocating mass death in Iran. Remember this?


Or remember how William Kristol said that Bush might bomb Iran if he thought Obama was going to win?

Or when Joshua Muravchik, resident scholar over at the American Enterprise Institute wrote an Op-Ed in the LA Times in November, 2006, that began with these words:

WE MUST bomb Iran.

Who did they think would get hurt when the bombs dropped?

Glenn Greenwald has the story.