Mis-Information Continues-and Continues to Mislead
It is unfortunate that news stories, once released, seem to have a life of their own.
Regular readers will remember that I have had “issues” with the lack of care exercised by my fellow bloggers on the left when it comes to reporting the facts. In the past, I have challenged the blogging from “A Liberal Dose” when the author mis-represented the facts as reported in the stories he cited. What first drew my attention to that blog was his gross mis-representation of desertions as a “flood” following the start of the Iraq war.
Now, I find that another of my favorite liberal friends not only perpetuates the mis-representation that the Bush tax cuts only helped the richest Americans, but uses a nearly 2 1/2 year old news story to support the claim. I wrote at the time that the democrats had failed to actually read the report before launching their scathing media attack. If you visit my blog entry, you will find my analysis not of the news stories that failed to actually get the story straight, but rather my analysis of the actual CBO report. One key point:
Now, that being said, you would think that the total change in share of the tax burden, or as the CBO report puts it, the total share of the “Individual Income Tax LIabilities” would decrease by a greater rate. But we see that is not the case. According to their report, those people in the top 20% of earners (highest quintile) actually show an increase in the share of the liability for most years, and there are only three years (2006-2008) when the tax share decreases at all for those in the top 1%. On the other hand, those in the bottom 60% of earners show a decrease in the total share of income tax burden every year. EVERY year.
The bottom line when one looks at the tax report is that everyone that pays income taxes received the benefits of the tax cuts. If you paid taxes, at the end of the day, you paid less after the Bush tax cuts than before.
Over at Pressing the Flesh “fleshy” writes:
Three things are clear, however: most Americans didn’t receive any real form of tax relief from Bush’s cherished tax cuts to begin with – those cuts only rewarded those with the highest incomes.
Hopefully you, dear students, have now learned that the assertion is false. The cuts rewarded everyone.
As always, I recommend you refer to the original source documents. Don’t trust the media, and don’t trust ax-grinding bloggers. Not even me.
Until next time…