That’s my title.
The following video relates to last summer’s Senate bill 3200, but you can be assured that it reflects at least 90% of current legislation, and may be missing other new or expanded provisions that are just as troubling if not moreso.
Here goes (HT to a supportive e-mailer):
The Associated Press’s timing couldn’t have been better for those who still want to pretend that Social Security is really not in serious trouble. Stephen Ohlemacher’s item (“Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs”) originally appeared on Sunday, in the midst of most of the major college basketball conference tournament championships, then followed by the evening’s announcement of the selections for the NCAA Division I Men’s basketball tournament. (The AP has issued minor revisions several times since its original appearance, up to and including today.)
The wire service’s timing, while convenient for the Washington establishment, as it minimizes the possibility of distractions from its statist health care obsession, couldn’t have been worse for those of us who wish the American people would get a grip on the gravity of the situation — which is why I saved this post for today.
What is about to occur is the event that as little as a year ago, according to the Social Security Trustees’ 2009 Report, wasn’t expected to arrive until 2016. Ohlemacher tells us that it’s right here, right now, and gets it right until his seventh paragraph (bolds are mine):
Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It’s time to start cashing them in.
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.
Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.
Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.
Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. he government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
Social Security’s shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. …
Despite the air of certainty, the last bolded sentence is not provably true. “Benefits will keep flowing” only as long as the government can continue to do what Ohlemacher mentioned in his previous paragraph, i.e., “borrow even more money” to redeem those IOUs. When even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton goes off-message and acknowledges that the nation’s debt load has turned into a national security issue (i.e., we’re hoping against hope that China and others won’t use their leverage as creditors against us), it is clear that government’s ability to keep going to the borrowing well is by no means certain. If it can’t, something will have to give, and one of the “somethings” might have to be the current level of Social Security benefits.
Now the government that gave us a multitrillion-dollar Social Security obligation, an accompanying Medicare obligation that is almost five times higher, while compromising our national security, wants to micromanage all of the nation’s health care. Only in the Beltway wonderland would such an idea even resemble making sense.
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
In his archdiocesan column carried at First Things (HT Catholic News Agency), the Denver archbishop reaches the only available conclusion, while clarifying who gets to speak for Catholics (bolds are mine throughout):
As I write this column on March 14, the Senate bill remains gravely flawed. It does not meet minimum moral standards in at least three important areas: the exclusion of abortion funding and services; adequate conscience protections for health care professionals and institutions; and the inclusion of immigrants.
Groups, trade associations, and publications describing themselves as “Catholic” or “prolife” that endorse the Senate version—whatever their intentions—are doing a serious disservice to the nation and to the Church, undermining the witness of the Catholic community and ensuring the failure of genuine, ethical health care reform. By their public actions, they create confusion at exactly the moment Catholics need to think clearly about the remaining issues in the health care debate. They also provide the illusion of moral cover for an unethical piece of legislation.
Note that “Catholic” and “prolife” are in quotes. The archbishop is telling us that anyone supporting the Senate version of ObamaCare is objectively neither. He is of course correct.
He also lays it all on the line in his final paragraph:
Do not be misled. The Senate version of health care reform currently being pushed ahead by congressional leaders and the White House—despite public resistance and numerous moral concerns—is bad law; and not simply bad, but dangerous. It does not deserve, nor does it have, the support of the Catholic bishops in our country, who speak for the believing Catholic community. In its current content, the Senate version of health care legislation is not “reform.” Catholics and other persons of good will concerned about the foundations of human dignity should oppose it.
It would have been even better if the archbishop had recognized the inevitability of what we have seen in virtually every instance of statist health care, up to and including RomneyCare in Massachusetts: large-scale rationing of care. Ultimately, this leads negatively incentivized bureaucrats and medical officials to make human dignity-compromising decisions as to who can get treated and live, and who can’t and will therefore die (i.e., “death panels”). When such things begin to happen in a statist health care regime, it will be difficult if not impossible to stop.
That makes attempting prevention, and contacting Senators and Congresspersons with the objective of doing that, a moral imperative.
The full text of the archbishop’s column follows. Click on “more” if you are on the home page.
(more…)
The Labor Department’s March 5 report was worse than it appeared; the latest health care wrinkle would damage things further.
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Note: This column originally appeared at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Saturday.
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Remember when our president was telling us that his number one focus would be Joe Biden’s favorite three-letter word (“J-O-B-S, jobs!”)? It’s hard to believe, but it was only six weeks ago (“Obama to recast agenda to focus on jobs, deficit”) at the State of the Union address.
True to his word (not), it’s been virtually all health care, all the time since, including a new wrinkle that would seriously cripple the employment market.
The president’s reaction to more bad employment-related news on March 5 was to resort to happy talk, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid instead chose crazy talk:
Today was a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.
In addition to falsely characterizing the nature of the result, Reid betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of what Uncle Sam’s monthly Employment Situation Report really tells us. It is a knowledge gap apparently shared by the press, most politicians, and a large percentage of the country’s population. It’s something I also explained here 18 months ago, apparently to little avail.
The following charts illustrate the problem:
The first chart — Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) — shows us how many net jobs the economy actually picked up or lost each month going back to January 2004. It tells us that 473,000 more people were working during February than were working during January.
The second chart — Seasonally Adjusted (SA) — reframes the actual results by adjusting them for seasonal trends like Christmas hiring and summer jobs. In this case, those machinations resulted in 36,000 jobs lost. There’s nothing wrong with this exercise; it’s a legitimate form of statistical smoothing designed to make month-to-month results more readily comparable. But it does not — repeat, does not — tell us what actually happened in America’s factories, job sites, and offices in any given month, as the vast majority of media reports and political announcements would lead one to believe.
Harry Reid could have tried to tell us how great February’s NSA 473,000-job pickup was. But, in context, it wasn’t that great at all. In fact, as you can see above, it came in lower than February 2008, when the people at the National Bureau of Economic Research say we were in the third month of an economic recession as they define it (as normal people define it, the recession didn’t begin until the third quarter of 2008). Moreover, it was 241,000 jobs lower than the February 2004-2008 average. If the employment situation were really in recovery in February, that difference would have been almost zero. Beyond that, February’s actual result using this metric was far worse than January’s, when the result only trailed the January 2004-2008 average by 72,000.
This isn’t an improvement; it’s a serious deterioration.
The only reason the February’s SA number of -36,000 came in as low as it did (but still worse than January’s) is that the SA calculation took 2009′s free-fall result into account, making it one of those statistically correct results that serves to confuse more than enlighten. Further evidence supporting that point is that the SA result for February 2010 is actually better than February 2008, which as already shown based on what really happened, is simply not correct.
If Obama and Reid really wanted to do something to seriously improve the employment situation, they would immediately call off their post-State of the Union obsession with imposing statist health care on a nation that doesn’t want it, and is fiercely resisting it. Besides the federal government itself, the health care industry has been one of the few areas where employment has risen in the otherwise dismal POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy America has endured since about June of 2008. Since then, the sector has actually added 313,000 jobs (386,000 after seasonal adjustment). Once statist health care’s inevitable rationing and cost controls kick in, health care employment would at best stagnate, and more than likely shrink.
A press report earlier this week about a possible new wrinkle in ObamaCare demonstrates that the Democratic Party’s alleged interest in job creation is feigned at best and hostile at worst. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that a new iteration of the bill pushed by House Democrats “would require businesses to count part-time workers when calculating penalties for failing to provide health coverage for employees. Smaller businesses would be exempt. The Senate bill would count only full-time workers in applying the penalties, but under the change, described by a Democratic aide, two part-time workers would count as one full-time worker.”
Since the vast majority of companies do not make health coverage available to part-timers, this proposal is best seen as a direct payroll tax on companies who rely heavily on them. In the fantasy world of Washington, this appears to be an attempt to force companies to hire more people to work full-time or to extend coverage to part-timers on their own. If it ever arrives in the real world, what it will really do is raise prices, increase unemployment, impede economic growth, and put thousands of companies out of business. It will also virtually destroy the part-time employment market, shutting the door on students, homemakers, and others who can’t possibly commit to working full-time, and shouldn’t be required to.
But that’s how it goes with this out-of-touch bunch. They think they’re so smart, when 75 years of their “brilliant” ideas have led us to the verge of national bankruptcy.
Once again, one is forced to wonder if they’re trashing things accidentally or deliberately.
Mar 13, 2010 / 01:52 pm
On March 27, local participants will be riding for homeless families in Memphis, Tennessee for the Dorothy Day Family Fun Ride. The Dorothy Day House of Hospitality, a transitional housing ministry that allows homeless families to stay together as a family while they rebuild their lives, is hosting this first annual fundraising event.
“The Dorothy Day Family Fun Ride is a chance for families to have fun together, riding their bikes with other families and/or individual participants at Overton Park, while raising money for this important ministry” said Michael Synk, ride director.
The event will be held on March 27, and will begin at the Levitt Shell, with check in from 9-10 a.m. Riders who register by March 20 will receive a t-shirt and gift bag commemorating the event.
The Peddler Bike Shop will be conducting free safety inspections of bikes and Little Caesars will be providing pizza for the lunch. Other sponsors include Knowledge Tree, Senior Risk, @ Home Computers, Blue Sky Couriers, Fulmer Companies, Strategic Resource Management, master-IT, Boyle Insurance, Corporate IQ, and Mangiante Photography.
“The goal of the bike ride is to raise funds and awareness for this important ministry” said Sister Maureen Griner O.S.U., co-director of the Dorothy Day House of Hospitality. “We’ve been able to help 13 families stay together and get back on their feet in the past few years. The money raised in this event helps us serve families and keep the lights on.” …
Go here for the rest of the story.
The Associated Press’s 10:33 p.m. rendition of its coverage of the ongoing James Sikes “Runaway Prius” saga begins with the following headline and opening pair of paragraphs:
The problem is that the AP report’s complete content, in combination with properly understood English and the relevant definitions at the always-handy dictionary.com, make it clear that Sikes’s lawyer hasn’t “rebutted” anything.
Here are the alternative definitions of “rebuttal” found at the web site:
The definitions and verbal treatments at Merriam-Webster.com are consistent.
But using “rebut,” the AP’s headline writer clearly wants readers, particularly those who only see the headline, to believe that Sikes’s lawyer has put the matter to bed and that his client has been vindicated. The problem is that the very first sentence of Elliot Spagat’s and Ken Thomas’s story, by using the word “dismissed,” actually, uh, “rebuts” the headline writer. Also, note that because “rebut” has an object in the headline (“doubts”), the wire service’s headline writer can’t lean on the weakest definition of the three above, because that meaning can be inferred only when there is no object.
Sikes’s lawyer John Gomez can “dismiss” the evidence disputing his client’s account all he wants, but he doesn’t have the final say, and the article presents no new evidence in Sikes’s favor that bears any semblance to a “rebuttal.” In fact, Gomez wants us to believe that investigators’ failure to replicate the problem doesn’t matter:
A Toyota official who was at the inspection explained that an electric motor would “completely seize” if a system to shut off the gas when the brake is pressed fails, and there was no evidence to support that happened, according to the (congressional investigators’) memo.
“In this case, knowing that we are able to push the car around the shop, it does not appear to be feasibly possible, both electronically and mechanically that his gas pedal was stuck to the floor and he was slamming on the brake at the same time,” according to the report for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for the committee’s top Republican, Darrell Issa of California, said Sunday that the findings “certainly raise new questions surrounding the veracity of the sequence of events” reported by Sikes.
John Gomez, Sikes’ attorney, said the findings fail to undermine his client’s story.
… “It’s not surprising they couldn’t replicate it. They have never been able to replicate an incident of sudden acceleration. Mr. Sikes never had a problem in the three years he owned this vehicle.”
Brian Pennings, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, said his agency’s view that there is no evidence of a hoax is unchanged. The CHP does not plan to investigate the incident because there were no injuries or property damage.
“Unless they can completely disprove Mr. Sikes, we’re done,” Pennings said. “It doesn’t sound like they can do that.”
Though CHP’s claim that there is “no evidence” is highly dubious, its stance that it won’t go further actually makes sense. Their concern would be whether or not a crime was committed. For a district attorney to prosecute such a matter, he or she would have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Sikes committed a hoax. That would seem to be a tough standard to meet in the circumstances.
If Sikes were to pursue a civil suit, his standard of proof would be a less stringent showing that a preponderance of the evidence supports his claim. His stated intent not to sue would seem to indicate that he and Gomez can’t get there, or anywhere near it.
Yesterday, I noted (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) that Michael Fumento, in a column at Forbes, raised huge doubts about the Sikes’s rendition of events, including this one:
His claim that he’d tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute.
… I tried to imitate Sikes’ alleged effort in a 2008 Prius.
… it required squashing my face against the radio and completely removing my eyes from the road. (this is something Sikes says he never did — Ed.)
Further, in terms of the California man’s claim that he tried to stop the car by pressing the brake pedal with all his might, Spagat’s and Thomas’s AP report tells us that “the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that the wear was not consistent with the brakes being applied at full force for a long period, citing three people familiar with the probe, whom it did not name.”
In other words: Rebuttal, reschmuttal — no matter what the AP’s headline writer wants us to believe.
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
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UPDATE, 8:10 a.m., March 15: Interesting — In its 7:40 a.m. version, AP has comprehensively reworked the story, even though it seems unlikely that any new developments occurred in the wee hours of a Monday morning:
No one can prove it and they would probably never admit it even if true, but one has to wonder if the AP’s rewrite was in response to this post’s critique.
Also note that the title of the wire service’s related video still asserts the existence of the non-existent “rebuttal.”
The Associated Press seems to have two unwritten rules on how and when to write stories about leftist controversies and setbacks:
Rule Number 1. Do little or nothing with the story until you can figure out a way to make center-right critics or victors look like the bad guys.
Rule Number 2. If you’re thinking about covering the story any other way, refer to Rule Number 1.
On Thursday, the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law in Columbus, Ohio, which describes itself as “an independent legal center dedicated to protecting the constitutional rights of Ohioans from government abuse,” announced a significant legal victory for Buckeye State residents interested in clean elections:
The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law achieved victory in its state RICO action against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACORN has agreed to settle the case and will cease all Ohio activity as a result. In its settlement with the 1851 Center, ACORN agreed to surrender all of its Ohio business licenses by June 1, 2010. Further, the organization cannot support or enable any individual or organization that seeks to engage in the same type of activity.
That seems like a pretty clear-cut result, doesn’t it? Not if you’re the Associated Press’s JoAnne Viviano, whose brief item on Saturday followed the rules above, fabricated a supposed loophole in the settlement, and gave an unnamed spokesman an open mic to despicably play the race card:
Isn’t that nifty? The news isn’t that ACORN agreed to leave and not come back in any current or alternative form. No-no-no. The real news to Ms. Viviano is that racist meanies like those at the 1851 Center would fight ACORN or any of its successors if the far-left activists and accused racketeers reneged on their agreement.
This isn’t journalism; it’s character assassination by anonymous attribution.
Though far from perfect, the coverage by the Columbus Dispatch’s James Nash was more measured — and accurate:
ACORN is out of Ohio’s elections
In legal settlement, group agrees not to return to state
ACORN, the liberal group notorious for allegedly trying to inflate voter rolls through fraudulent practices, has seen its last election in Ohio.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now will permanently surrender its Ohio business license by June1 as part of a legal settlement with the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, both sides said yesterday.
ACORN was active in Ohio in the 2006 and 2008 elections, working to register thousands of low-income people to vote and get them to the polls. The group’s efforts were marred by irregularities, including one case in which ACORN workers allegedly induced a Cleveland man to register to vote 72 times, offering cigarettes as an incentive.
The Buckeye Institute’s 1851 Center for Constitutional Law teamed with two Warren County residents to sue ACORN in Warren County Common Pleas Court just before the 2008 election. The residents alleged that their rights were abridged by thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, each representing “a potential illegal vote that has the capacity to dilute (legitimate) votes.”
The case was moved to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Yesterday’s settlement is mostly confidential, said Maurice A. Thompson, the conservative group’s attorney.
“They will surrender their business license by June 1 and cease to operate in Ohio and cease to support or enable other groups to do what they do,” Thompson said.
… After the 2008 election, in which some credited or blamed ACORN for the election of Barack Obama as president, ACORN has dialed back its political activity across the country.
ACORN continues to deny any wrongdoing in Ohio …
The Occam’s Razor explanation for ACORN’s surrender would seem to be that the 1851 Center’s RICO evidence was strong, and that national exposure of it would do serious damage.
The most obvious weakness in Nash’s report is that he never explained why “ACORN has dialed back its political activity.” We can thank James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com for that.
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
In 2009, according to financial information at nasdaq.com, the New York Times Company’s revenues fell by over 17%. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company’s full-time employee count shrunk by 1,681, or over 18%. Rumor has it that more layoffs are planned for 2010.
Beginning almost a year ago, the company announced corporate salary cuts of 5%, negotiated similar cuts with newspaper guild members in New York, and steeper cuts of 9% in Boston.
The company eked out full-year pre-tax earnings of roughly $23.7 million (after adding back $3.8 million in taxes to the company’s reported net income of $19.9 million).
In the midst of all of this, the Journal reports that Times Company chairman “Pinch” Sulzberger’s total compensation more than doubled in 2009 to roughly $6 million, and his CEO compadre hauled in a similar amount:
New York Times Co. (NYT) Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and President and Chief Executive Janet L. Robinson received big increases in compensation for 2009–a year when the company suffered layoffs, weakness in advertising markets and from broader worries about the future of print media.
Sulzberger’s overall pay more than doubled to $6 million in 2009 as non-equity incentive-plan compensation quadrupled to $2.4 million and his pension value climbed to $1.2 million from $559,826.
Robinson’s overall compensation rose 32% to $6.3 million, as similarly sharp increases in non-equity incentive-plan compensation and pension value were partially offset by $1.1 million less in stock awards. Times Co. spokeswoman Abbe Serphos declined to comment.
A company deciding how it compensates its executives would ordinarily be something for shareholders to address and would not be any of our business. But it is in this case for three reasons:
When the first cuts were announced nearly a year ago, the Times “said that salaries would be restored to their normal level next year, but they warned that even that ‘depends on the state of our business.’”
Despite the very high likelihood that said cuts will not be restored, and the near certainty that guild members will see no restoration, Mr. Sulzberger’s and Ms. Robinson’s respective wallets seem to be pretty healthy states. You’d think that journalists with supposedly great instincts would recognize that they’re being played for fools. Then again, what can they do? Where is the market for large numbers of people who typically earn north of $90,000 a year and whose only “marketable skills” rest in twisting the news to fit a far-left agenda and in protecting Democratic presidents and other politicians?
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
Mar 11, 2010 / 08:26 am
The Diocese of Marquette is investigating an possible miracle attributed to Servant of God, Bishop Frederic Baraga. The official inquiry will move the cause for Bishop Baraga’s canonization forward, which was opened for the prelate in 1952.
In press conference on Wednesday, the current Bishop of Marquette, Alexander K. Sample, announced the recent development, saying, “Since my first days as a seminarian studying for the priesthood, I have had great devotion to Bishop Baraga.”
“As his eleventh successor, I am thrilled at the prospect of a miracle that will advance his cause. With all the priests, deacons, religious and lay faithful of the diocese, I give thanks to God for his, holy, priestly, example,” he added.
Father Ronald Browne, who has been appointed to lead the work of the canonical tribunal, explained the story behind the alleged miracle. “We have a case involving what was thought to be a tumor on a patient’s liver that showed up on various tests, including a CT scan and an ultrasound. However, when exploratory surgery was done, there was no tumor to be found,” Fr. Browne said.
The Diocese of Marquette reported that while in the Upper Peninsula, the patient and the patient’s family invoked the intercession of Bishop Baraga and placed his stole on the sick person’s abdomen. Following the prayers, the patient said that the pain in the abdominal area went away.
The diocese explained that in order for the event to be considered as a miracle, it needs to be affirmed as something that science cannot explain and be attributable to the intercession of the candidate for sainthood.
Once the tribunal has investigated the event – the process is scheduled to begin on March 12 – two physicians must testify regarding the physical condition of the patient before and after the event. After the alleged miracle has been verified, documentation will be sent to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican, who will then submit the cause to Pope Benedict XVI. The Holy Father will then determine whether or not Bishop Baraga will be beatified.
If the miracle is recognized as authentic, the diocese will need to verify one more miracle in order for the Michigan bishop to be declared a saint. …
Go here for the rest of the story.
Two reports linked by Instapundit earlier today demonstrate at a macro and micro level how weak the claim that Toyota has deliberately jeopardized consumer safety in connection with “sudden acceleration” complaints may ultimately turn out to be.
The macro piece comes from Megan McArdle (pictured at left; “How Real are the Defects in Toyota’s Cars?”) at her blog at the Atlantic. The magazine’s business and economics editor dissected case-by-case detail originally compiled by the Los Angeles Times, which was also analyzed to an extent by Washington Examiner op-ed writer and Overlawyered blogger Ted Frank, to make important points about the likelihood of driver error in many of them.
The micro item comes from Michael Fumento, whose Forbes column takes apart the recent James Sikes “sudden acceleration” incident in California as it rips the establishment media for its total lack of skepticism about the driver’s claims and his credibility.
First, to McArdle, who also has nicely done charts at her post:
One of the great mysteries of the Toyota debacle is why Toyota ignored the complaints for so long.
… (The company’s) behavior becomes a bit more explicable when you consider this argument from Ted Frank, who wrote:
“In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89–and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.”
“… These “electronic defects” apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).”
… I was interested in Frank’s argument, so I took a look at the LA Times article, which is really admirably thorough. Here are the results, categorized into a nifty, though not necessarily particularly useful, spreadsheet. I went one further than Frank, tracking down the ages of all but a couple of the named drivers.
Several things are striking. First, the age distribution really is extremely skewed. The overwhelming majority are over 55.
Here’s what else you notice: a slight majority of the incidents involved someone either parking, pulling out of a parking space, in stop and go traffic, at a light or stop sign . . . in other words, probably starting up from a complete stop.
In many of the other cases, we don’t really know what happened, because there were no witnesses of exactly when the car started to run away.
… At any rate, when you look at these incidents all together, it’s pretty clear why Toyota didn’t investigate this “overwhelming evidence” of a problem: they look a lot like typical cases of driver error. I don’t know that all of them are. But I do know that however advanced Toyota’s electronics are, they’re not yet clever enough to be able to pick on senior citizens.
Fumento’s takedown of the recent James Sikes incident leaves those who want to claim that the incident is legitimate virtually nowhere to hide, and should be read in full to be fully appreciated:
Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax
“On the very day Toyota was making a high-profile defense of its cars, one of them was speeding out of control,” said CBS News–and a vast number of other media outlets worldwide.
It got far more dramatic, though. The California Highway Patrol responded and “To get the runaway car to stop, they actually had to put their patrol car in front of the Prius and step on the brakes.” During over 20 harrowing minutes, according to NBC’s report, Sikes “did everything he could to try to slow down that Prius.” Others said, “Radio traffic indicated the driver was unable to turn off the engine or shift the car into neutral.”
In fact, almost none of this was true. Virtually every aspect of Sikes’s story as told to reporters makes no sense. His claim that he’d tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute. And now we even have an explanation for why he’d pull such a stunt …
… Now here’s the potential smoking gun: Sikes told the reporters that “I was reaching down and trying to pull up on the gas pedal. It didn’t move at all; it was stationary.” That’s awfully daring for somebody who insisted he didn’t even want to take a hand off his steering wheel, notwithstanding that he did so to hold his phone.
… I tried to imitate Sikes’ alleged effort in a 2008 Prius.
… it required squashing my face against the radio and completely removing my eyes from the road.
… So why did he do it? Sleuth work at the Web sites Jalopnik.com and Gawker.com reveals that Sikes and his wife Patty in 2008 filed for bankruptcy and are over $700,000 in debt.
… Sikes also has a history of filing insurance claims for allegedly stolen items that are slowly coming to light.
… (The media) have been as determined to not investigate Sikes’ claims as Sikes was to not stop his car. It’s a Toyota media feeding frenzy and the media aren’t about to let little things like incredible stories and readily-refutable claims get in the way.
Ah, but the establishment media has still been able to find the time to look into the potential legal and financial ramifications for Toyota. On Wednesday, the Associated Press’s Curt Anderson and Greg Bluestein threw up a 1,300-word report estimating how much class-action and other lawsuits could cost the company (answer: supposedly over $3 billion), after “review of cases, legal precedent and interviews with experts.”
Of course it can never be proven, but perhaps the AP pair’s interest in documenting the potential damage had something to do with news from the previous day indicating that what has for weeks appeared to be an orchestrated media and government campaign to discredit the company may not be having the desired effect:
Toyota sales up 50 percent from March 2009
A high-ranking Toyota executive says the auto company’s North American sales spiked around 50 percent the first eight days of March as incentives helped lure customers after a series of embarrassing safety recalls.
It seems that the car-buying public is far less scared of Toyota’s supposed “killer cars” than establishment media journalists are of doing real investigations into the validity of the claims.
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
Yesterday, Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal’s indispensable Best of the Web took note of a report by the Washington Post’s V. Dion Hayes about the state of the employment market in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and summarized its findings thusly:
So what looks to the Post like good news that looks like bad news is actually bad news that looks like good news.
Even that assessment turns out to have been overly charitable. Hayes, like most of the press, betrayed that he doesn’t understand the crucial difference between raw and seasonally adjusted data by mixing the concepts (perhaps without even realizing it), failed to look at data from previous years, and ended up producing an incoherent report with no supportable conclusions.
The following table identifies all relevant changes in the three employment markets between December and January (sources — Bureau of Labor Statistics state and selected areas tables 3, 4, 5, and 6 for January):
With the above data in mind, a detailed breakdown of Hayes’s broken-down report follows:
Rise in Washington area unemployment seen as good sign for economy’s recovery
The District’s jobless rate increased to 12 percent in January from 11.9 percent the previous month, according to data released Wednesday by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Maryland’s rate climbed to 7.5 percent from 7.4 percent, while in Virginia, the jobless rate rose to 6.9 percent from 6.8 percent. That same month, the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 9.7 percent from 10 percent in December. (1)
… “You do have people coming back thinking things are loosening up and they might get something,” said Ann D. Lang, senior economist at the Virginia Employment Commission. She said the state’s labor force grew by 30,000 in January, even though the number of unemployed people rose and the number of employed declined. (2)
… The District experienced the nation’s largest monthly increase — 1 percent — in the number of jobs, according to the federal data. That represents the addition of 6,700 jobs, mainly in the federal government, according to the city’s Department of Employment Services. (3)
Officials at the agency say the city’s labor force grew by 3,300 from January 2009 to January 2010, and they are seeing more job postings and job fairs held by large employers, including Safeway and Pepco. (4)
… Maryland’s labor force grew by 1,400 in January, the first increase since May 2008, state officials said. The number of unemployed people rose by 5,100, but the number of people who lost their jobs totaled 3,700. State officials speculate that the balance of 1,400 were workers reentering the labor force. (5)
Here are the footnote explanations:
(1) — Though Hayes never identified them as such, all percentages presented in this paragraph are seasonally adjusted. The presentation clearly indicates that what Hayes reported is what he believes happened in reality. It’s not; MD’s and VA’s unemployment rates went up significantly. To be clear, such January jumps are not unusual. January is typically a month of steep job losses and unemployment rate increases because those who were hired for Christmas and other seasonal employment are usually released.
(2) — As you can see from the table, Virginia’s Lang is clearly referring to the NOT seasonally adjusted 29,700 above. Hayes seems to have no clue.
(3) — That 6,700-job increase is after seasonal adjustment. The government’s best estimate of the reality on the ground is that 5,700 fewer people were working. I defy Mr. Hayes or anyone in DC’s Department of Employment Services to find those 6,700 net new employees — in the federal government or anywhere else.
(4) — Hayes inexplicably uses a seasonally adjusted 12-month change after reporting on single-month changes all along. That the change is the same as the NSA number above is pure coincidence.
(5) — Again, Hayes gives readers the impression that this is what really happened, when it isn’t. The reported “speculation” by the state in relation to seasonally adjusted figures makes no sense.
The fact is that Hayes did not look at how January’s real, not seasonally adjusted changes compare to previous years, especially those earlier than 2009, when the entire economy was in a virtual free-fall. That’s a problem, even moreso than usual, as I noted last week (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), when I wrote that:
2009 was so bad, that it’s distorting the SA calculation — to the point where it’s really not as reliable an indicator of what is going on as it normally would be in a more predictable situation.”
That concern could be even more relevant when looking at state and local data.
Because of that, at least the following contentions by Hayes and those he consulted for quotes have no demonstrated support:
I would modify Jim Taranto’s conclusion noted at the beginning of this post as follows:
So what looks to the Post like good news that looks like bad news may actually bad news that looks like good news — but based on errors in V. Dion Hayes’s presentation and work that the reporter left undone, how can we possibly know?
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Monday morning (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.
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Addendum: Investors Business Daily’s reax to the March 5 employment report was spot-on —
We’re sad to say, the picture is even worse than it appears.
Take that “only 36,000″ figure. The real number is actually 51,000 jobs lost, because the government counts 15,000 temporary workers hired by the Census as new jobs. But these jobs aren’t, in any meaningful sense, real full-time jobs.
Would things have been better without all the snow? Undoubtedly. But we still would have lost jobs.
… In February, the Gallup report shows, some 19.8% of Americans reported that they were underemployed or not employed at all.
That’s one out of five workers — and even more than the 15 million unemployed estimated by the government.
What’s troubling is the obliviousness of Washington to this problem — the utter cluelessness they have about the most basic economic principles that guide our economy.
With businesses struggling and fearful about the future, all the talk in Washington is about more reckless spending and taxing.
They push ahead with a $2.5 trillion plan to take over 17% of the economy, while both Social Security and Medicare run on fumes and hover near bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, Democrats think of the tax bonanza they’ll get from letting President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts expire at the end of this year, but don’t consider that it will devastate the economy.
Add to that cap-and-trade, new “fees” levied on banks, and the Obama administration’s pledge to hammer those with incomes above $200,000 — that is, our entrepreneurial class — with higher taxes, and it’s not hard to see why new jobs aren’t being created. Talk of a business-killing “value-added tax” emerging from President Obama’s deficit commission isn’t helping, either.
Also Related:
- March 9 (at BizzyBlog; at NewsBusters) — AP: House Dems’ ObamaCare Iteration to Penalize Businesses Using Part-Time Workers
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