Good Stories Gone Bad
| Fri Jul. 10, 2009 8:03 AM PDT
On Thursday USA Today published a piece saying that February's stimulus money has "gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year's presidential election." Matt Yglesias comments:
The insinuation of the piece is that the stimulus bill’s funding streams are being artfully manipulated or something to disproportionately direct resources toward Obama-loving constituencies....[But] the secret to the riddle seems to be that areas that benefit from federal spending formulae tend to support the Democrats. Not as a result of short-term fluctuations in voting patterns or federal spending levels, but as a structural element of American politics.
Actually, that's not quite right. It's weirder than that. I just got around to reading the piece, and aside from the factual statement in the lead, it doesn't insinuate that the money is being unfairly distributed. In fact, every single paragraph after the lead quotes people saying that there's nothing dubious going on and the money is just being distributed by formula. The piece doesn't quote a single person, not even Sarah Palin, suggesting that there's any monkey business going on here.
But if there's no hanky panky, why bother publishing the story in the first place? My guess: it's the old problem of reporters not being willing to spike a story when it doesn't pan out. Brad Heath spent a bunch of time analyzing stimulus spending, but when everyone he called told him there was nothing amiss he just hated the idea of spending all that time and not getting anything out of it. So he wrote it up anyway, ending up with a nonsensical piece that basically rebuts its own reason for existing. Dumb.
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Continued From Above
Comments
Yglesias: [But] the secret
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 8:29 AM PDT.
Yglesias:
[But] the secret to the riddle seems to be that areas that benefit from federal spending formulae tend to support the Democrats.
Could be. I was wondering (again), though, given this line in the article,
The reports show the 872 counties that supported Obama received about $69 per person, on average. The 2,234 that supported McCain received about $34.
whether it's that areas that benefit from federal spending tend to be more densely populated, and those densely populated areas tend to vote Democratic? I mean, if that's the case, then maybe what the article has found is that federal spending tends to go more toward cities than otherwise. Would that be surprising?
How about this?
Submitted by markg8 (not verified) on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 8:38 AM PDT.
Since Reagan did away with revenue sharing in the 1980s Dem areas of the country have gotten shortshrift from the federal government. I don't know if red rural areas are chock full of shiny new bridges and sewers either but I know cities aren't.
A state capitol columnist
Submitted by markg8 (not verified) on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 8:34 AM PDT.
A state capitol columnist for small newspaper chain here in IL wrote a column criticizing Gov. Quinn for calling out legislators by saying they must act like adults and pass a budget. He started with the proposition that they'd be insulted by that language and then proceeded to quote two Dem house reps saying it didn't bother them at all and a Repub who ignored to question to answer with his standard "taxes are bad" talking points.
I wrote a comment asking why he wrote the story if he couldn't find a single legislator to back up his theory. They deleted my comment.
So what if more money goes to
Submitted by optical weenie on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 8:41 AM PDT.
districts that voted democratic in the majority. If you REMEMBER, not one single
republican voted yes for the stimulus. They didn't want the money then. Why are they now complaining that they haven't got enough?
The explanation is simple:
Submitted by MacGruber on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 8:54 AM PDT.
The explanation is simple: blue areas get more federal dollars because either A) liberals can't take care of themselves or B) they want more and more money for pet expenditures.
I think the interesting
Submitted by coyote (not verified) on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 9:03 AM PDT.
I think the interesting point is that the system has been crafted, with well worn flow channels, such that, in an entirely formulaic manner and requiring no actual human intervention, money tends to flow preferentially (on a ratio as high as 2:1) to Democratic districts. I think there is a story in this, though certainly I agree with Kevin it is not the story the author set out to write.
My sense is that the causality involved would be impossible to discover. Does money flow preferentially to these districts because Democrats are better or more focused on bringing home the taxpayer largess to their districts? Or does our money preferentially flow to these districts based on, say, economic or demographic factors that line up well with Democratic constituencies. Or is it, more likely in my mind, a virtuous circle with both factors involved.
Either way, this is an interesting story and some interesting new data in our endless red state-blue state analyses.
Hypocrisy and lies
Submitted by MarkH on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 9:47 AM PDT.
Instead of studying stimulus money distribution he should have studied recent Republican senate speeches. It would have been much easier to discover lies, deceit and hypocrisy.
Still, the story he missed which would be interesting is that for a lot of the last few years I've heard people say a lot more tax dollars come from Blue states and go to Red states and now the story says dollars are flowing to Dem districts. Well, which is it?
Lastly, I don't think it's the end of the world since Dems WANT gov't monies and Repubs DON'T WANT gov't monies. Seems everyone is getting what they want if that newspaper analysis is right.
Of course, that won't stop Repubs from saying a lot of stupid things -- like Sen. Hatch comparing Pres. Obama to 'someone who kills their parents and then complains about being an orphan'. B.S. Now, if he'd been honest and said it was like Pres. BUSH killing the economy and Pres. Obama complaining about having to clean up the mess....
Weasal Words
Submitted by andy (not verified) on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 12:46 PM PDT.
Notice how they trot out "counties" rather than "states" or "Congressional districts". this is always a sign that the argument is being gamed simply because by shear numbers alone (as opposed to population) there are many many more relatively empty red counties than there are densely populated blue counties (i.e., containing large cities). Remember back in 2000 the Republicans kept trying to make the argument that because Bush had won many more counties than Gore, that therefore it showed that the country was overwhelming for Bush. Nonsense. the population votes - not the number of counties.
Let's assume for a second that $200 million is being divided equally between counties that voted for Obama and counties that voted for McCain (this actually overstates the amount the Republicans get because Obama had many more votes than McCain, but regardless....). There are 872 blue counties sharing $100 million - and there are 2234 red counties sharing $100 million. Of course the per county spending favors the blue counties - there's that much less splitting up the $100 million than the red counties. Each blue county is getting about $115,000. Each red county is getting only $44,762 - it seems so unfair, when you look at it this way, but, in fact, the Republicans are getting the same amount of money to spend in total as the Democrats - yet, even though the Republicans are actually getting more than they deserve (after all, a LOT more people voted for Obama than McCain - yet each group is getting the same amount of money), but even with this scenario which favors the Republicans, when you put things in county terms, of course it looks bad for them.
Because there is such a disparity between the number of empty red counties and the
number of large populous blue counties, and since decisions are generally based upon population rather than "land area" - always be extremely wary when someone tries to make an argument using "counties" rather than population - because you can generally easily tell that they are employing weasal words to make a weasal argument.
I'd say that the reporter is showing more a bias and is more malicious than Kevin is giving him credit for.
Is that it?
Submitted by Trippp on Sat Jul. 11, 2009 8:44 AM PDT.
Is this reporter equating, say, Cook county Illinois with a rural county in Illinois and asking why the spending is not equal?
Is he asking, in essence "Why do we spend more for a baziilion people than we do for one person?"
I've seen a form of that question for years by those who want to limit government spending. People will compare the school budget from when the number of students was X to when it is 2X and then ask why the spending doubled?
Well duh. Then they'll try to claim that means government spending is out of control, when the truth is the population has increased so the government is servicing more people at the same base rate as before.
Tripp
