Sometimes just a couple words makes all the difference. Here’s how the Huffington Post just reported something Romney said recently:
BOSTON (AP) — Mitt Romney is promising to reduce taxes on middle-income Americans.
But how does he define “middle-income”? The Republican presidential nominee defined it as income of $200,000 to $250,000 a year.
Romney commented during an interview broadcast Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
…. The definition of “middle income” or the “middle class” is politically charged. Both presidential candidates are fighting to win over working-class voters.
President Barack Obama has defined “middle class” as income up to $250,000 a year.
Now, let’s look at how it was reported elsewhere:
But how does he define “middle-income”? The Republican presidential nominee defined it Friday as income of $200,000 to $250,000 a year and less.
The definition of “middle income” or the “middle class” is politically charged as Romney and President Barack Obama fight to win over working-class voters. Romney would be among the wealthiest presidents, if elected, and Democrats have repeatedly painted him as out of touch with average people.
Obama also has set his definition for “middle class” as families with income of up to $250,000 a year.
I’ve bolded a few inconvenient words. Observe: the HuffPo reports “$200-$250″; the AP story elsewhere says $200K-$250K and less. Add the “and less” and suddenly Romney is saying the same limits as Obama — and the other bolded words make clear.
By the way, this is first in a series of Romney Rumors; it’s become clear that we need to capture these things just as we did with Palin. If you see anything you think needs to be debunked, pass it along.
– studied in school, work hard now, save and invest wisely, and married someone responsible who did all the same so as to combine enough income to support a little family, then you are earning too much and must be taxed.
My homepage had this as one of the headlining pages (in the first 5 highlights) and the crisis in the middle east not even in the top 15. I think it is time for a new homepage.
It all depends upon what part of the country you live in. It probably is that high if you live in Boston.
Well, part of the point is that Romney said that was the upper limit. In that, he’s setting exactly the same upper limit as Obama.
Good luck with the Romney Rumors series. I just hope you can keep up the flood of disinformation being generated every minute of every hour of every day, seven days a week, by the Left-Lib-Prog-Dems and the media (birm). I’m thinking you may need a staff of 20 or so.
Charlie: Awfully gracious of you to do work which the Romney campaign is either unwilling or unable to do. But you should ask yourself this: Has the Romney campaign spotted it and demanded a correction? This is the AP. You would think that they could task someone to keep an eye open for these things on AP, Reuters and Puffington. It’s not like they should be worried about bias in the media, or something.
Stephen, as I said, this is like the Palin Rumors thing I did four years ago: the Romney Campaign would have to have a dozen people demanding correction and not getting them. Someone in the media should be doing it.
Quite so, Charlie.
Since “A lie can travel around the world three times before truth can get it’s shoes on”, the MiniTru merely has to make the absurd pathological lie a staple to drain the opponents resources.
Sometimes I think some folks on the “right” are as adolescent as most all on the left.
Read the article at my link:
“The mainstream media has no problem whatsoever with exhibiting bias so extreme that if it weren’t so commonplace it too would appear outrageous and kooky if each instance was analyzed in isolation. They achieve immunity through ubiquity.
So yes, truthaganda headlines are like yelling. But unlike propaganda, they’re rooted in reality, not fabrications.”
Charlie: I’m not saying you shouldn’t be doing this; I am saying that Romney’s team should also be doing so without regard to whether or not the correction is made. If you don’t protest…?
Glenn Reynolds has a running meme: Name and shame. You and others like you are doing this. But, every single day Romney is before cameras and reporters. He and his campaign can do it too, and they will get more attention, more quickly, than you. It’s a mistake to think that the media is a monolith: Divide and conquer. It can be used against itself more effectively by the Romney campaign than by you and your collective colleagues. Continue to do what you are doing, but demand that the Romney team get in the game.
Apparently HuffPo has quietly edited the article, as the money line also reads “$200,000 to $250,000 a year and less.”
However, it seems to have escaped your attention that the headline at Daily Finance is a lie: “Romney: ‘Middle Income’ Is Between $200,000 and $250,000″
Absolutely right — I picked it up from a comment link and didn’t read the title. As to HuffPo, I should learn to take a screenshot, clearly.
Mark Steyn has them pegged. “The court eunuchs of the American media.”
Funny, I woke up to this news on my radio, that Romney thinks 200K-250K is middle class.
The problem is, nobody ever sees the correction.
This is currently a huge topic on a video game site I frequent.
Republican politicians need to realize they need to speak as clearly as possible, so they can’t have their quotes chopped off or taken out of context. It’s a tall order, but it’s reality.
You might want to include the question that prompted the answer you quoted — it asked if Romney though 100,000 was middle income, and he said no. 100,000 is definitely middle income and far lower than that too.
Romney was referring to household income, not individual worker income. In a high cost-of-living city such as Boston, the average annual household income (total from all sources, including benefits) for the middle class is likely to exceed $100,000.
You’re WAY overestimating just what middle class makes. Median household income is 50,000….
In my Northern California town, the median income is over $100k. At least it was before the economy turned south. The average home costs somewhere around $600k here.
Companies like Bain Capital routinely, as part of restructuring, rework the pay scales. Salaries are a huge continuing cost, but retention of talent is vital, and the perception of unfairness is destructive to morale. So these companies put a huge emphasis on striking that balance and making the system as objective as possible.
That would have been a big part of his job at Bain, there’s just no way around it. When liberals try to suggest that Romney isn’t familiar with how much people make, it just shows how utterly ignorant they are of how business works.
Fortune magazine Senior Editor and all around moron Dan Primack took the same $200,000-$250,000 number and pitched it as Romney saying middle income was people earning between $200,000 to $250,000 a year. C’mon people, the $200,000 is the limit for singles, $250,000 for marrieds that Obama used as a breakpoint between where he wanted to end the Bush tax cuts. Romney is accepting that shorthand.
If you don’t know that you shouldn’t be even a Junior Editor commenting on politics at Fortune.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/14/romneys-middle-income-math/
If $200,000 a year is ‘middle income’, then why is my father supporting a family of five on $38,000 a year not impoverished enough to receive any gov’t support?
I don’t know. Looking at the 2012 poverty levels document, it looks like he’d qualify for at least some benefits.
http://coverageforall.org/pdf/FHCE_FedPovertyLevel.pdf
In any case, that doesn’t actually have anything to do with whether $250K is the upper bound for middle income.
The Washington Post’s headline said “Romney defines ‘middle-income’ as $200,000 to $250,000 and less in annual income” as if that was some crazy number. But then in the body of the article it says Obama’s definition is up to $250k.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/romney-defines-middle-income-as-250k-and-below/2012/09/14/14b17e52-fe73-11e1-98c6-ec0a0a93f8eb_story.html?tid=obnetwork