Lying with numbers

The Weekly Standard's John McCormack takes issue with the idea that the Palin family -- with assets in excess of $1 million -- are wealthy.  McCormack writes under the header "The Palins are Middle Class":

In 2006, the Palins reported taxable income of $127,869 -- 3.8 times the poverty line for a family of six in Alaska. For single person living in the lower 48 states, 3.8 times the poverty line was $37,400 that year. Does DeBoer really believe that someone who makes $38,000 is rich?

Click on the word "reported," and you'll go to a Minneapolis Star-Tribune article that indicates that in 2007, the Palins reported taxable income of $166,080 -- and that they failed to report another $17,000 in per diem payments Sarah Palin received, for a total of $183,080 in income.  Now, why would John McCormack use the 2006 income data rather than the 2007 data, when both are available in the source he cites?  Could it be because the 2006 amount is so much lower -- nearly $60,000 less -- and he wanted to mislead readers?  What other possible explanation is there?

Then McCormack jumps through a bunch of hoops to try to make $127,869 look like much less than it is, comparing it to the Alaska poverty threshold, then comparing that to the (lower) threshold for the 48 contiguous states, then translating that into an income level for a single person rather than a household, which is a neat trick, but it ignores the economies of scale that exist in multi-earner households. 

The most recent data available in the very source McCormack used shows that the Palins brought in $183,000 in 2007.  The contortions he goes through to try to make that look like $38,000 say more about McCormack than about anything else.