Bad Journalism I Can Sort of Believe In
Obama-McCain by county, with sizes distorted to reflect county population.
Brad Heath did a USA Today article yesterday headlined “Billions in aid go to areas that backed Obama in ‘08″. 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. As Conor Clarke notes, this is basically nonsense:
And about that factual content: The Heath piece basically says (1) counties that voted for Obama get more money than counties that voted for McCain; (2) pretty much all of this money “has followed a well-worn path … guided by formulas that have been in place for decades and leave little room for manipulation.” There is no theory presented for how the spending could have been manipulated.
The article concludes by noting that “From 2005 through 2007, the counties that later voted for Obama collected about 50% more government aid than those that supported McCain, according to spending reports from the U.S. Census Bureau.” Yikes! Either that completely destroys the premise of the article, or this pro-Obama conspiracy runs far deeper than even USA Today can imagine…
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.
That said, this is the sort of thing that I’m glad people are looking into. Politicians obviously are cognizant of the fact that measures may or may not direct funds to their supporters. But it would be nice to see it done in a less sloppy manner. For one thing, though the press likes to talk a lot about who’s the president and who might be president, when it comes to the details of domestic policy the authority lies almost entirely with congress. Obviously, there’s substantial overlap between the areas that voted for Obama and the areas that elected a Democratic member of congress. But you’d probably get a more enlightening result if you specifically zeroed in on the congressional issue. Or maybe even looked at particular members of congress. Is what was done unusually favorable to David Obey’s constituents relative to other plausible opportunities? What was the impact of the changes forced by centrist senators?
15 Responses to “Bad Journalism I Can Sort of Believe In”
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July 10th, 2009 at 8:42 am
I remember tons of blog posts a few years ago explaining that blue states paid more in federal taxes than they got back in spending, and red states had the reverse. Why is it that, when we switch the analysis to Obama counties versus McCain counties, we get the opposite effect?
July 10th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Because counties are a terrible way to measure these things. Most cities are in heavily Democratic counties surrounded by Republican county suburbs. The city gets the transportation funding so that those Republicans counties can come into the city actually work.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Also, aid to localities is only a tiny part of federal spending. There are other parts of the budget that heavily favor Republican areas. The article should have made that more clear.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:36 am
The problem is with the headline, more so than with the article itself. They can’t find anybody to quote who agrees with the premise as set by the headline. Analogous:
Are Dinosaurs Still Alive?
Many people think dinosaurs are still alive. “There’s no way that dinosaurs are still alive,” says Jim he Paleontologist.
Others aren’t so sure. “Dinosaurs are almost certainly not still alive,” says Joe the Creationist.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:44 am
What, only 50 percent more? Obama got 365 electoral votes to McCain’s 173. That’s 111 percent more. By that measure, blue districts are getting robbed blind.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:10 am
At first glance, “areas that backed Obama” can be more concisely described as “the United States”. The majority of the country backed Obama. That’s why he won.
Getting more specific, though…
The secret to the riddle seems to be that areas that benefit from federal spending formulae tend to support the Democrats.
This is likely, in part, because those areas can also be described as “areas where poor people live”, or “cities”. Suburban commuters don’t vote based on their workplace, or cities would be a lot less Democratic, politically. They also don’t pay taxes based on their workplace, or cities would be a lot less bankrupt.
@4: Jim in your example is wrong. While most dinosaurs are indeed, extinct, some lineages *are* still alive. We call them “birds”.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Wow. Florida looks even more like a dong on this map than usual. Someone’s been taking their enzyte.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Am I missing something? If counties are not weighted for population, why use them as a measure of anything? How about a measure of per capita spending by county. I’ll bet the Republican south would look like it’s being paid off for encouraging Sarah Palin.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Blue counties have more people in them than red ones. People matter, land doesn’t.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:31 am
What the hell is a county? Where did they come from, anyway? We have 3,140 of these things. 62 per state on average. No wonder we have so much government. It’s not a bloated bureaucracy that is the problem, it is the bloated amount of politicians we need to fill all these subdivisions.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Max: You should look at Georgia. I think we have 159 counties. In rural areas almost every 3k town has its own, and then there’s Fulton which is almost the entire Atlanta city limits plus half of the suburbs. It’s a bit ridiculous.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Oh, and the majority of our 8th grade social studies curriculum (Georgia history) was simply rote memorization of all 159 counties and their county seats. Quizzes on them made up most of our grades. And people wonder why we have such low SAT scores.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Adam Says:
July 10th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Max: You should look at Georgia. I think we have 159 counties. In rural areas almost every 3k town has its own, and then there’s Fulton which is almost the entire Atlanta city limits plus half of the suburbs. It’s a bit ridiculous.
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States in the East generally have a large number of small counties, because the criteria was to have the county seat no more than a half-day’s horse-back ride from the farthest part of the county.
In Western states, mostly set up after transportation and communication improvements (railroad, telegraph, etc) have fewer counties. California is almost three times larger in area than Georgia and only has 58 counties.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Adam Says:
July 10th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Oh, and the majority of our 8th grade social studies curriculum (Georgia history) was simply rote memorization of all 159 counties and their county seats. Quizzes on them made up most of our grades. And people wonder why we have such low SAT scores.
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Such a waste of time! I surprised they didn’t have you do something more productive, like memorizing the names of the commanders of the Georgia regiments in the Confederate Army
July 10th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
This story says nothing about taxation.
It is likely that the counties getting more in stimulus spending also pay more in taxes. A rural county with almost no mileage in roads isn’t going to get much money to fix them in the stimulus. It also doesn’t generate much tax revenue. A wealthier county, which generates large tax revenues will have many times the mileage of roads, and will get more money to fix them.