Friday, January 30, 2009

Shit Journalism: Is this guy malevolent or just dumb & lazy?

So this boston Globe staff writer, Michael Kranish, sees a pie chart on Moody's Economy.com. It's titled "Economic Stimulus: House Package" and one slice of pie is labeled "highway/rail/mass transit $42b."
Q.  What would another good name for that slice be?
A.  Transportation.
WRONG! according to Kranish. He calls it "infrastructure," and proceeds to spin out a very deceptive article, "Only 5 percent of $819b plan would go toward infrastructure" (The Boston Globe, 1/28/09).

Michael Kranish’s article is very misleading, if not deceptive. The author only counts highway, mass transit, and rail projects as infrastructure. He ignores all housing and military construction, rural development works, water projects, and other elements of infrastructure. He goes so far as to specifically exclude electricity distribution systems from infrastructure, in his reference to "smart electricity grids."
I went through H.R.1 – The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan of 2009, line by line, and determined that about 25% of the money goes for infrastructure. That’s not a precise number. It could be about 10% less or it could be considerably more: I wasn’t able to precisely disaggregate the construction component of some programs from other program elements. Nevertheless, there’s no way it’s only 5%. My total came to $195,799,000,000, which is 24% of the total $819b. Here’s how it breaks down, showing the approximate amount allocated for infrastructure, by sector.


TITLE II—AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT 13,391,000,000

TITLE V—ENERGY AND WATER 15,175,000,000

TITLE VI—FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT 7,300,000,000

TITLE VII—HOMELAND SECURITY 300,000,000

TITLE VIII—INTERIOR AND ENVIRONMENT 13,525,000,000

TITLE IX—LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION 80,654,000,000

TITLE X—MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS 7,554,000,000

TITLE XII—TRANSPORTATION AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT 57,900,000,000

TOTAL $195,799,000,000


In addition to the direct investments in infrastructure, there are various types of loans as well as tax incentives in the plan, that would support infrastructure projects. The Boston Globe article is very misleading, to say the least.