The New York Times has a fascinating new poll out today (10/26/11); too bad the paper doesn't emphasize the most newsworthy findings. The headline is: New Poll Finds a Deep Distrust of Government That's based on the poll's finding that the public doesn't have much faith in government. But paragraph four offers a more striking finding: With nearly all Americans remaining fearful that the economy is stagnating or deteriorating further, two-thirds of the public said that wealth should be distributed more evenly in the country. Seven in 10 Americans think the policies of congressional Republicans favor the rich. Two-thirds object [...]
Oct
26
2011
A Tax Plan Favoring the Wealthy? That Would Never Fly
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When he's not sharing his thoughts about Barack Obama's birth certificate, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is apparently unveiling a tax plan. It's a flat tax, with a few other details explained by the Washington Post (10/26/11): Perry also would reduce the corporate tax rate from 35percent to 20percent; eliminate taxes on dividends and capital gains; make deep, unspecified cuts in federal spending; and establish individual retirement accounts outside the Social Security system. The article, by Karen Tumulty, gets approving quotes from a Republican adviser and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist. But it also says this, in the reporter's own voice: [...]
Oct
07
2011
Is Glenn Beck Back at Fox News Channel?
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It sounded like it, but it was just Bill O'Reilly channeling Beck's Soros/MoveOn/Big Labor paranoia, minus the chalkboard: On Wednesday in New York City, there was another far-left demonstration as a bunch of people marched on Wall Street. Why? We aren't exactly sure. What we do know is that these folks are zealots who are being organized by some very interesting people. Does the name MoveOn.org mean anything to you? How about George Soros? Well, for the first time, MoveOn, funded in part by Soros, has openly allied itself with the protesters. In addition, we have some unions in the [...]
Oct
03
2011
New CNN Host a Rush Limbaugh Favorite
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A full-page ad in USA Today reminded me that today is the debut of Erin Burnett's CNN show OutFront. Burnett gained a following at CNBC, and came to the attention of many conservatives with a report on the Today show (7/17/07) that managed to touch on almost every conservative myth about the economy, earning praise from Rush Limbaugh in the process. After a clip of Hillary Clinton saying that soaring corporate profits were "like trickle-down economics but without the trickle," Burnett made these claims: But while the rich are getting richer, you may be, too. Here's why: More than half [...]
Sep
26
2011
Obama Plan=Class Warfare? NBC Asks a Billionaire
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At the top of Meet the Press yesterday (9/25/11), NBC anchor David Gregory announced one of the topics to come: Is the president's plan basic fairness or class warfare? As with too many other media debates, an absurd proposition–that returning tax rates for certain wealthy people to levels seen in the 1980s and 1990s is a declaration of war–is treated as one of the two possible answers to a question. Gregory manages to make things worse by getting the only answer on the show from billionaire New York mayor (and media tycoon) Michael Bloomberg: GREGORY: Does that trouble you? BLOOMBERG: [...]
Sep
21
2011
Tax Facts About Millionaires–and Bill O'Reilly's Threat
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Yesterday's AP "factcheck" (9/20/11) of Barack Obama's speech about raising taxes on the super-wealthy cleverly debunked an argument that Obama didn't make. No one is saying that all millionaires pay a lower rate than their secretaries–Warren Buffett drew attention because he said he did, and there are undoubtedly other multi-millionaires in the same boat. As Dean Baker observed at Beat the Press today (9/21/11): President Obama made a simple and true statement in his speech on the budget Monday. He said that there were millionaires and billionaires who pay tax at a lower rate than middle income families. Many news [...]
Sep
16
2011
Protest Seen and Not Heard
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There's a category of media criticism we've often called "Seen and Not Heard." It's usually a protest that's covered via a photo and caption, with no accompanying story to inform readers about what seems like an important issue. I came across this today in the Washington Post (9/16/11)–the caption headline (not pictured here) is "Nurses Rally for a Tax": A little more reporting on what they're talking about would have informed readers about an issue the Post probably doesn't spend much time discussing. (Read this paper by Dean Baker about the $150 billion a speculation tax could raise every year–you'd [...]
Aug
09
2011
Bill O'Reilly and the Imaginary Bush Tax Cut Windfall
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Fox host Bill O'Reilly laughs off any calls for increasing government spending to help create jobs. Last week he derided Paul Krugman for demanding more stimulus spending. And this guy teaches economics at Princeton University? Unbelievable. People like Bill O'Reilly don't pay any mind to the fancy pants Nobel Prize committee that gave Krugman one of their liberal awards. Why should he? He knows how the economy really works, as he explained last night (8/8/11): Raising income taxes is not the way out of this. In 2001 and again in 2003, President Bush cut individual tax rates. And what happened? [...]
Jul
05
2011
NYT's Imaginary GOP Tax Shift
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"2 Republicans Open Door to Increases in Revenue" reads a headline in Monday's New York Times. The suggestion is that a few Republicans are walking away from the the party's no-tax-hike orthodoxy. That much is clear from John Broder's lead: Two senior Republicans said Sunday that they might be open to raising new government revenue as part of a deal to resolve the dispute over the federal debt ceiling, but they warned that there was little time to enact a comprehensive deal. This would be a pretty remarkable development. So who are we talking about? Broder reports: One of the [...]
Jun
09
2011
Connecticut Lurches Left–From the NYT's Center-Right POV
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"Connecticut is closing out its most activist, liberal legislative session in memory," Peter Applebome reports in the New York Times (6/8/11), with "the largest tax increase in Connecticut history" as the centerpiece of his case. "They decided to tear up the antitax, budget-slashing, confront-the-unions script that has characterized state legislative sessions elsewhere," Applebome writes, noting that "Republicans say the last five months of lawmaking have been a liberal joy ride and a capitulation to the state's powerful unions…. 'Their solution is to tax the wealthy in Fairfield County, redistribute income and hope people in Greenwich and Darien donâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t move to [...]
