WaPo demolishes NC Budget and Tax Center analysis
Published May 15, 2014
by Terry Stoops, John Locke Foundation, May 14, 2014.
Did the N.C. General Assembly’s 2013 tax reform package raise taxes on 80% of North Carolinians?
In a television ad attacking U.S. Senate candidate and N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis, pro-Democratic group Senate Majority PAC said yes. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Postexamined the claims and awarded it “Three Pinocchios,” which is an ad featuring significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.
The ad cites a report from the left-leaning Budget and Tax Center, which is affiliated with the North Carolina Justice Center. [Emphasis added.] But the data in the report comes from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Meg Wiehe, ITEP’s state tax policy director, actually works out of North Carolina and has seen the ad. “We have not said that 80 percent of taxpayers will pay more under this plan,” she said in an interview.In fact, when the plan is fully phased in, Wiehe says that ITEP’s analysis of the income tax portion of the law shows that 49 percent of taxpayers will get a tax cut and 39 percent will get a tax increase. (This analysis includes the impact of lawmakers deciding to allow the expiration of the state’s earned income tax credit, which benefits low-income workers. Some analysts might argue the EITC is not a tax cut, but that’s another story. ITEP also calculated the results without the impact of the EITC. )
How could Senate Majority PAC get this so wrong? It has to do with the tyranny of averages–and a misreading of the data.
[snip]
On its face, it is pretty absurd to think that a tax reform bill that cut rates and eliminated tax loopholes ended up raising taxes on 80 percent of the people in the state. Broadly speaking, the wealthy do appear to gain more from the 2013 tax overhaul, but they also pay the lion’s share of income taxes. And 39 percent of the people appear to face a tax increase, including some of the wealthiest people in the state–not 80 percent, all at the bottom.
Our old adage applies: If a factoid sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Senate Majority PAC should have checked the facts before rushing on the air with this ad.
Don’t quote me on this, but I think the Left is using Common Core math.
May 15, 2014 at 10:48 am
Norm Kellly says:
The closing statement 'Senate Majority PAC should have checked the facts before rushing on the air with this ad'. What's wrong with this statement?
That's a trick question. Intended to trip up any lib that might stumble across my response.
The WaPo used the word 'facts' when referring to a socialist organization. I mean lib organization. I mean Harry Reid's organization. Either way you define this group, they are first, last, every way a lib/socialist organization. What is the one thing libs are genetically incapable of recognizing? (I know, there's too many to pick just one, but there is one that overrides all others!)
It's their inability to recognize facts. They have no idea what these things are. In the dictionary used by libs, the word 'fact' does not appear, so they can't even be expected to look it up. And if it's a group of Reid's, there is even less expectation of any level of truth. Libs play to what is commonly referred to as 'low information voters'. People who pay attention very little to what's going on, tune in occasionally to non-reality programs, and see an ad from Harry. They don't know anything else, so they accept the lie/distortion/misinformation from the socialists because it couldn't be on tv if it weren't true. The web is allowed to lie, but TV isn't.
Once again, libs prove that they can be counted on to lie, obfuscate, distort. And they expect their supporters to simply suck it down. Why? Because they so often do. When a government agency says something, lib supporters have been conditioned to believe it. When a socialist Senator says something, lib supporters are conditioned to accept it as truth. Some lib voters/supporters/illegal aliens are waking up to the truth. Stats like falling numbers for CNN reflect this. Stats that show most believe MSNBC lies most of the time reflect this. But there are still too many lib supporters who will simply accept what Senate Majority PAC say, without question. And editorials in the N&D, and other media outlets, will repeat this lie without question, sighting no source but actually using the SM Pac info verbatim.
Yes, I know, Republican pols also lie. Republican pols also distort the truth. But it's the norm for libs, not an exception. And when a Republican lies, every media type, especially the N&D, will make sure the story lasts for months and is repeated every day during every regular program. So, the difference is that Republicans are called out; libs are ignored. Libs are forgiven if they 'misspeak', while Republicans are roasted even if it can be proven that their words were taken out of context.
