2010 Pundit Rating--From Beckel To Jay Cost

With the political climate heating up, we can expect to hear the so-called experts weighing on, telling us just what we should expect.  That's fair enough--that's what they're paid big buck to do, to either attempt to get it right or to if they happen to be party hacks, to spin with a straight face.

However, equally as fair is that we hold these "pundits" accountable, and the only way to do that is to look at their past track record.  How many of us ever wonder, as we hear someone like Democrat hack Bob Beckel express with absolute certitude just how well Democrats will do in the upcoming election, just what kind of track record these soothsayers have?

I wonder and back last October for my tv show (More Politically Alert--I had not yet begun this blog or I would have posted it here as well), I created a graphic listing the predictions of a series of pundits regarding how many seats Republicans would pick up in Congress.  One does not create such a graphic unless one plans to revisit it at a later time.

Now is the time.

Keep in mind this was in the final weeks prior to the election.  Most pundits spent most of the year predicting much lower gains for Republicans.  Only when Gallup came out with a poll in the final month showing Republicans up by double digits in the all-important generic Congressional ballot did many of these pundits up their totals.  Charlie Cook, Larry Sabato, and Stu Rothenbert are considered the demi-gods of punditry, so I list them first. 

Note that for my prediction, I didn't have the resources of the three gentleman noted here to look at every contested race in the country in detail, so I simply decided that an eight point victory margin was likely nationwide (54-46) and that it would result in Republicans gaining not merely the 39 seats necessary to take control, but someting north of 60--I settled on 61-- (54% times 435 would equal a Republican advantage in the range of 235-200).  The gambit worked very well as we'll note here.  Real Clear Politic's Jay Cost and I came closest to hitting the 63 number; we both had 61 while Bob Beckel was worst; the Democrat hack was at 48 but did equivocate suggesting it might reach 50.

I'm not big on equivocation, so for people like Dick Morris who picked a 60-80 range, I guess we shoud force them into an average of their two number.

Let's look at the numbers.  For those who don't trust me, I will show the graphic on More Politically Alert, but I'm not so good at scanning things in, so I'll simply retype it here.

Headline--"Experts" Agree GOP Will Take House

Subhead--(39 Seat Pick-Up Needed To Take Control)

Charlie Cook +52 ("substantially more" possible)

Larry Sabato +47 (will update to 50+ the Thusday prior to the election)

Stu Rothenbert +45-55

Dick Morris +60-80--right but (closer to 80--wrong!)

Steve Lombardo +65 (in one Huffington Post column)

David Brooks +52 (New York Times)

Jay Cost +61

Steve Vaillancourt +61 (More Politically Alert and soon-to-be nhinsider.com)

Bob Beckel +48 (or into the 50s)

538.com (New York Times)  +51

There were undoubtedly other pundits, but that's what I came up with in scoruing the media, both TV and the Internet.

On another graphic, I noted that The Real Clear Poliics Average was +60 which (they had 220 leaning Republican, 178 leaning Democratic, and 38 Toss-Ups).  That's a pretty reason to --when in doubt--trust averaging.

538.com noted that the GOP chances of taking control were 80% (right) but with only a 30% chance of picking up 60 seats (wrong).  The blog noted a 12 % chance the GOP would pick p 70 seats and only a three percent chance it would get to Dick Morris territory--80 seats.

My point is that while some "experts" work hard to provide us with legitimate insight, people like Beckel (a Democrat hack) and Morris (a Republican hack these days but mostly just a hack for whomever will pay to subsidize his foot fetish--ouch!) simply cannot be trusted.  Their predictions are more spin--what they'd like to see--than reality (what we can expect to see).

This is the kind of report pundits don't like to read, but accountability should count for something.

Ah yes, you might say, but I'm being selective.  Not at all.  That's why I reviewed my 11 for 2011 picks just a few weeks ago.  I must admit I missed two Senate races (Nevada and Colorado).  I hope it was not because I loathe Harry Reid so much that I simply could not pick against him--in fact, most polls had Sharon Engle up a few points going into that fina weekend.

I still loathe Whorehouse Harry Reid (talk show host Jerry Doyle's name for him based on actual audio of Reid explaining how he learned how to swim in a Las Vegas whore house), but alas, he won, and I was wrong on that one.

New Hampshire Is 12th Most Republican State

Based on election results from 2006 and 2008, pundits were lining up not merely to move New Hamphsire from the column of red states to purple ones (that is to say, swing states), but to assert that the swing had gone all the way into blue territory.

Oh really?

Gallup, probably the most respected of all polling outfits, has just released its rankngs of all 50 states.  Based on interviews with 170,000 U.S. adults (quite an impressive number) Gallup assigns a number to each state (+ if it leans Democrat, - if it leans Republican) based on how people define themselves.  Nationwide, Gallup has it at +4, meaning a four point Democrat advantage, so you can use that as a baseline comparison for each state.

I know I'm burying the headline about New Hampshire, but just to give you a feel for this excercise, Hawaii with a +24 rating is viewed as the most Demcoratic state in the country (the District of Columbia gets +68 but that's another story) while--you probably guessed it--Utah ranks as the most Republican at -32.

I expected to see New Hampshire in the purple range, but we're actually the 12th most Republican state in the country according to Gallup (we we actually slightly more Republican than that, in the top ten, last year). The -7 rating comes from subtracting 38% who lean Democratic from the 45% who lean Republican.

Only Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Alabama, Montana, South Dakota, and South Carolina--in that order--are deemed more Republican.

Following DC and Hawaii in the Democrat column are Maryland, Connecticut, New York, Massashusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Illinois, Delaware,  and California.

You can find all the numbers by googling gallup.com.

Let me try to copy it here.    The N refers to the number of people contacted in each state, an impressive sample indeed.  Keep in mind, this is not based on registered voters but on how people actually identify themselves when contacted, probably a more valid indicator than registered voters.

Media Watch--It's NOT A Special Session

            Even after we corrected Union Leader reporter Tom Fahey’s reference to a “special session” for the New Hampshire House, the paper went right ahead and allowed him to use the same misinformation in his Sunday column.

            The House Clerk will tell you; the Secretary of State will tell you; everyone except misreporter Fahey and the folks on William Loeb Drive will tell you that these are not “special sessions” coming up.

            Speaker William O’Brien, often the target of Fahey’s bile, was kind not to name names when he attempted to correct Fahey’s error in an email to all Representatives this week.  “Due to erroneous media reports,” the Speaker wrote, “there is some confusion regarding dates of our upcoming sessions.  The House will meet on September 14 and October 12.  (The Senate has scheduled its next session for September 7).  Contrary to what has also been reported by the media, these will not be Special Session days, but will be part of the 2011 Session.  I hope this clarifies any uncertainty you might have had.”

            If that clears things up, rest assured that Fahey will try to muddy the waters again with his incompetent reporting.  As I said last week, one might expect such a mistake from a novice reporter, but this guy’s been covering the State House ever since John Toole moved back to Manchester to be city editor, at least a dozen years ago.  (Toole, by the way, now works for the Lawrence Eagle Tribune).

            Union Leader editors must bear some of the blame.  While they may not have known of Fahey’s error when he first hit them with it, they certainly knew before the Sunday paper went to bed.  As I’ve noted before, Mssrs. McQuaid, Cline and many others at William Loeb Drive are privy to everything that appears in this blog.  They knew of the error when they ran it—AGAIN.

             More Misinformation from kathythes—The Union Leader continues to provide Democrat hack Kathy Sullivan with precious space and a banner headline to spew forth her venom and misinformation on a regular basis.  This week, not only did she enter into an unfounded attack on the Speaker, she also delved into an area she obviously knows nothing about, revenue estimates.

            Again, folks on William Loeb Drive should have been able to correct their favorite hack since I reported at the start of the month in this blog that you really couldn’t get a fair picture of cigarette tax revenue by looking at July numbers.  We don’t tax each pack of cigarettes as they’re sold.  Rather, companies buy stamps which they affix to each pack.  There’s really no way of knowing how many stamps companies had on hand and didn’t need to buy in July, but ignorance didn’t stop Kathy the Hack from going ahead and misreporting that the ten cent per pack decrease in the cigarette tax cost the state $6 million in July.

            Is ignorance the real excuse or did kathythes know the truth and simply choose to ignore it?   If the latter is true, then she’s an out and out liar and deceiver.   McQuaid and Cline and Company need to explore the answer to that question before they continue to print her blather every other week, but don’t expect them to.  As we’ll explore in a lengthy blog soon here, why does the Union Leader continue to provide space for this wart on the New Hampshire body politic?  “Only Joe McQuaid’s shrink knows for sure.”

            William Loeb undoubtedly continues to roll over in his grave.

             Welcome Back Megyn—Usually when a reporter leaves, we tend not to notice, but last month, I began to wonder where Fox’s mid-day anchor, Megyn Kelly, had gone.  Yes, I missed her assertive style.  She was back this week, back from a three week maternity leave, and I never thought I’d be so glad to see any single reporter back. 

She possesses an uncanny ability to move seamlessly from one topic to another, all the while adding special insight and zest.  Her questions certainly are argumentative at time but phrased so as to elicit more in depth answers, kind of like a devil’s advocate approach.

            I haven’t yet decided if the new hair style is my cup of tea (it might just be), but no matter how she looks, Megyn Kelly is a welcome addition back at the 1-3 p.m. slot.

             An Hour With a Disgraced One—Lest you think I like everything Fox News does, I can’t for the life of me figure out that at the very hour with Standard and Poors was downgrading America’s bond rating—for the first time in U.S. history—Fox chose to run a full hour of Sean Hannity interviewing former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, remember the one who was supposed to be out hiking the Appalachian Trail when in fact he was romping with his mistress in South America.

            Even if there had been no breaking news, did we really need a full hour with this disgraced politician?  All I can think of is that Hannity wanted to get away early for a long weekend and had this interview in the can.  That’s not good enough.  We know Fox has heard of the concept of guest host.  Next time Hannity wants to cut out early, may I suggest they have John Stossel or Judge Andrew Napolitano (my two favorites) stop by so we don’t need to be treated to silly Sean pablum.

             Beckel Knows Nothing—Speaking of annoying, Bob Beckel is simply the worst on Fox, but they can’t seem to get rid of him since they need the Democratic perspective on The Five at five show.  Beckel revels in rolling his eyes and making funny faces (he kind of looks like Ray Buckley who’s been denied him popcorn for two days) and defending outrageous positions.

            This week, he’s insisting that if Congress comes back from vacation, tea party members stay home.  He’s taken to calling Tea Partiers “anarchists” when in fact, as the Keynsians socialists rioting in London all week have proved, it’s the left wing which provide us with a taste of anarchy.  Kind of like the left wingers protesting in Wisconsin last week or Mark McKenzie’s band of bullies at the New Hampshire State House in March.  Tea Partiers are the farthest thing from anarchists one could find, but that doesn’t stop Beckel from continuing the slur nor does in stop Fox from giving him five hours a week (plus guest shots on Hannity and Red Eye) to spew his venom.

            If a Democrat who can speak the King’s English is needed, how about using Doug Schoen more or even go back to Jimmy Carter’s assistants.  With most Democrats like Beckel spouting socialist claptrap, the Carter guys seem refreshing these days, and after all, Carter did in fact win.  As Beckel never tires of telling us, he managed a campaign (Mondale in 84) which lost 49 of 50 states.

            Beckel also cannot be trusted when he makes predictions.  Any good pundit should predict what he thinks will happen, not what he hopes will happen.  When Beckel claimed he’s always right, I went back to a tally sheet I’d kept from last fall.  Jay Cost and I came closest in predicting Republican gains in the House (61 vs. an actual 63).  Beckel was stuck in the less than 50 range, worse than any other pundit I could find.

            Give us a break Fox, give Beckel back to some Democrat running for office.  Maybe Bernie Sanders could use him to mount a campaign against the Anointed One.

             Newsweek And Bachmann—I may be the only person who thinks so (even some left wingers had joined the chorus of complaints against Tina Brown and Newsweek), but I did not think that cover photo of Michelle Bachmann with the tag line “Queen of Rage” was at all outrageous. To me, Bachmann looked more intense than crazed.  In fact, she didn’t look nearly as crazed as Bob Beckel looks on Fox every day.

            Me thinks though doth protest, ye on the left who are ready to throw Newsweek to the hounds.  I gave up reading the rag long ago, but the treatment of Bachmann doesn’t seem especially egregious.

A Property Revaluation Primer

            While this data pertains specifically to Manchester, the basic concept should be of use to any community undergoing property reassessment ("property valuation update" is the phrase being used in notices to Queen City residents) which every city and town must do on a regular basis, at least every five years.

            With real estate prices tanking at the national level, it should come as no surprise that the average Manchester property has lost a great deal of value since the last valuation. 

            When I got my own new assessment, I wondered how it compares, percentage-wise, with the city as a whole, so I checked with the head of assessors and learned that the average Manchester property has lost approximately 16.5 percent of its value.  In other words, the average property is worth approximately 83.5 percent what it was when we last underwent citywide reassessment.

            Don’t be fooled by this.  It doesn’t mean that your property tax will go down 16.5 percent.  In fact, if your property value went down 10 or 12 percent or anything less than 16.5 percent, your property tax will most likely go up.  If you value went down anything more than 16.5 percent (mine went down 19 percent), your property tax should go down.

None of these numbers include the three percent increase required to fund spending as approved last month by the board of Mayor and Aldermen.

            Here’s how it works in Manchester, and you can use this in other communities as well.

            Let’s say the average home was valued at $225,000.  With the tax rate at $17.80 per thousand, your tax bill (prior to any exemptions or credits you might deserve) would be $4005 ($17.80 times $225,000).

            If your property decreased 16.5 percent in value, it would be worth $187,875 today ($225,000 times 83.5 %).  Don’t expect to pay $17.80 on the $187,875 figure—that would lower your tax bill to $3344, but it doesn’t work that way.

            The city still needs to raise the same amount of money (again, I’m not even factoring the three percent increase for this year) regardless of what each property is valued at.

            Thus, the tax rate will not stay at $17.80.  In fact, it will automatically go up to something in the range of $21.32.  Multiply that by your new value of $187,875, and voila!  Your tax bill remains at $4005.

            If your property value went down only 10 percent, to $202,500, your tax will go up to $4317 ($202,500 times $21.32).  Only the other hand, if the value of your property went down 25 percent to $168,750, your tax will go down to $3588 ($168,750 times $21.32).

            That’s why it’s important to look not at how much your property declined in property, but to compare it to that 16.5 percent average.

            Some people get their new assessment, see that it’s down 10 percent, and think that’s a good thing.  It most decidedly is not a good thing.

            A little simply math should give you an idea of where you stand.

            Let’s use me as an example.  My house was valued at $216,600 so my tax bill was $3856 ($216,600 times $17.80).  Its value went down 19 percent to $175,900, so—again prior to the three percent increase kicking in!—my bill should be $3750 ($175,900 times the new rate of $21.32).

            Of course, the new rate will not be $21.32 but approximately three percent more than that or nearly $22, so I expect my new tax bill will be in the range of $3870.

            That’s good for me, but for everybody whose tax bill goes down slightly, someone else’s will go up.  The assessor tells me that industrial property has not fallen as much in value as residential, so rates for industrial property will go up.

            I’ve run scenarios for houses priced at different levels and are showing them on More Politically Alert this week, Thursday at 9 p.m., Sunday at noon, and next Tuesday at 11 p.m. (always available at vimeo.com/channels/mpa), but hopefully you get the gist here.

            A $300,000 property, for example, will be down to $250,500 if it declines 16.5 percent in value.  A $150,000 property would be at $125,250 if it lost 16.5 percent of its value.

            When it comes to selling your house, you want the highest price you can get.  When it comes to paying taxes on your house, less is always better.  That's the way life is, giving with one hand and taking with the other.   

Holy Conflict of Interest Batman! Guess Who Owns 12 % of Moodys' Stock?

Conflict of Interest?  For Sure!

In surfacing Monday to mouth tired and partisan comments, which even Democrats and their fellow travelers in the lame stream media acknowledged were lame, uninspiring and self-serving, President Barack Obama (aka The Anointed One) began his teleprompted speech by noting that high powered investor Warren Buffet disagrees with the Standard and Poors downgrade of America's debt rating--for the first time in American history--from AAA to AA+.

Buffet is on record as stating that rather than a AAA rating, he would give the U.S. AAAA (there is, of course, no such thing, but it suited his search for hyperbole).

One would think that members of the lame stream media would be running into themselves to point out the inherent conflict of interest the Sage of Omaha carries as a burden, but of course, the media is virtually ignoring a simple fact.

Moodys is one of Standard and Poors rivals, and guess whose company owns 12 percent of Moodys' stock? 

Bingo!

That would be Berkshire Hathaway, Sage Buffet's very own company.

Truly, you can't make this stuff up.

Of course, Buffet will do anything he can to disparage Standard and Poors.  He has financial interrest in one of its rivals.

It must have been Fox News that informed us of that.  You can be sure it wasn't the socialist Keynesian folks like the Mad Cow or The Leg Tingler on MSNBC. 

They couldn't handle us knowing the truth!