From Boston Globe, 11/4/12
Did you see the Globe’s Sunday Metro-front box, on the key positions of Senate candidates Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren? Did you catch the huge mistake, in the very first line?
Under the issue topic “deficit” (which is shorthand for how do we reduce the federal budget deficit), Brown lists “repeal Obama’s health care law” as the first entry.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Obama’s health care law reduces the deficit – substantially. Repeal would increase the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office is the official, non-partisan, expert scorekeeper on deficit impact of federal legislation. They reported in late July that repeal of the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”) would increase the federal budget deficit by $109 billion from 2013-2022. Just click here to read the official letter to Speaker Boehner (pdf), with all the numbers.
The article leaves the mistaken impression that repeal of the ACA would help the deficit, when the opposite is undeniably true. I’ve asked the Globe to publish a correction. You should too.
Apparently the Globe is so unaccustomed to covering actual substance that it cannot do so without making egregious errors. While I commend the Globe for placing this substantive piece above the fold on the front page of Sunday’s Metro section (I suppose the front page of the A section is asking too much), I am disappointed to find flagrant errors in both the editing and writing of this piece.
I call your attention to the last section, titled “Jobs”. In the online version linked to above, the Scott Brown summary opens with “Supports tax increases on businesses and individuals.” This is woefully wrong on TWO counts. First, Scott Brown opposes, not “supports”, tax increases. Curiously, this error (typo?) only appears in the online version — the hard-copy version reads “Opposes…”.
Even with the correct language, however, Scott Brown’s opposition to tax increases has nothing whatsoever to do with jobs, except in GOP campaign dogma. Has Stephanie Ebbert or the Boston Globe implicitly embraced this element of the GOP creed and confused it with fact?
The “small businesses” in question are “flow through” entities — chapter S corporations, LLCs, and LLPs. These entities owe their very existence to reducing taxes to small business owners; corporate revenue, after deductions for business expenses, flow through to the owners and are then taxed at the substantially LOWER individual rate. I note, in passing, that for many small businesses, these entities provide significant tax advantages in comparison to filing as independent proprietors (schedule C on individual taxes) or as conventional chapter C corporations.
Under current tax code, payroll expenses are already deductible. That means that ANY owner of a pass-through entity that creates new jobs ALREADY reduces his or her tax obligation. Any owner who doesn’t want to pay increased tax rates (on income in excess of a quarter million dollars!) necessary to restore our economic health can accomplish that right now by creating new jobs and then deducting the increased payroll expenses of those new jobs.
Scott Brown is surely opposed to new taxes (he signed the pledge, after all). Characterizing this opposition as somehow creating jobs is at best a delusion and at worst a lie — this piece compounds that error.
So much negative material out there… keep in mind though that the people who are voting for Brown and most of those voting for Warren don’t read newspapers, they get their news from rumors and from tv and from Facebook. Here is my contribution to myths about the debt and deficit, with a few more to boot:
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2012/11/ralph-reed-group-distorting-obamas-economic-record-my-response/
I just noticed another huge difference between the online and hard-copy version of this piece — the lead itself is totally different. I invite you to compare this (the online version):
with this (the hardcopy version):
Note the welcome succinctness of the hard-copy version (also pictured in the thumbnail above!), and the dark-and-stormy-night blubbering of the online version. “Personality contest”? Yeah, the Globe worked as hard as anyone to accomplish that. “Stirring”? More like vapid sentimental pap. “Looming”? Oh my. The errors in the content of the piece are bad enough. The commentary by Ms. Ebbert compounds the shortcomings of this piece.
I remind those of us who rely on the online version of the Boston Globe (as well as others) that there are significant differences between the two — in spite of the Globe’s claims to the contrary.