Last week, I wrote a piece in the American Prospect about how the recent stories trumpeting Deep Throat/Watergate highlighted the contrast between the muckraking journalism of eras past and today’s sad state of media affairs. Interestingly, I got a number of positive responses from journalists who are equally frustrated by the situation.
Thankfully, I am not the only one who has tried to give voice to this tragedy. Check out Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D) courageous comments in the New York Times today.
Abetting the conservative agenda, Clinton said in some of her sharpest language, is a Washington press corps that has become a pale imitation of the Watergate-era reporters who are being celebrated this month amid the identification of the anonymous Washington Post source, Deep Throat. “The press is missing in action, with all due respect,” she said. “Where are the investigative reporters today? Why aren’t they asking the hard questions? It’s shocking when you see how easily they fold in the media today. They don’t stand their ground. If they’re criticized by the White House, they just fall apart. I mean, c’mon, toughen up, guys, it’s only our Constitution and country at stake. Let’s get some spine.”
The reason I said those comments are courageous is because there are very few politicians in Washington willing to give voice to the public’s frustration with the media. Conservatives have made an art form out of intimidating the media — and its time for progressives to fight back by demanding the press do its job, instead of serving as a propaganda machine.
USA Today’s story about states raising their minimum wages begs a question: why aren’t more following? It is terrific that 11 have done so since 2004 — but where are the rest of the states?
Surely they aren’t expecting the feds to raise the minimum wage anytime soon. The Bush administration has refused to consider serious minimum wage legislation, while Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) has tried to eliminate the minimum wage for 7 million people. This, even though economic data shows that corporate profits are rising, while wages are stagnating.
California is a good example of a state that needs to explain why it hasn’t raised its minimum wage recently. The Los Angeles Times reports today that while CEOs at California’s largest 100 public companies saw their compensation rise by almost 20 percent from 2003, the average California worker saw his or her pay rise by less than 3 percent — barely keeping up with inflation. That has at least something to do with the fact that, in 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed minimum wage legislation.
The discussion in Washington about the recent filibuster “deal” seems to center on the perception that Senate “moderates” have reasserted themselves. This is a nice, pleasant storyline - but it doesn’t seem to be a very accurate assessment of how Washington politics really works. In reality, congressional business is ultimately steered by how involved corporate America is in a given debate.
For instance, on the filibuster issue, the Washington Post noted that “one powerful group largely sitting out the fight is corporate America.” Business leaders were “wary of a strife-torn Senate killing pro-business items.” Thus, America gets a compromise.
On tax reform, it is the same dynamic. After the election, the New York Times published a report about social conservatives who were raising questions about President Bush’s proposal to flatten the tax system. Yet, because corporate America backed the idea, Bush is pressing forward.
Read the rest of this entry »
WCAX Vermont reports that “the Vermont Senate has given preliminary approval to a sweeping reform of the state’s health care system.” By a vote of 21 to six, “the Senate approved a new program they call Green Mountain Health” that “will provide primary and preventative care to all uninsured Vermonters beginning in July 2006.”
The bill now needs to be ironed out with Vermont House legislators, who passed their own version earlier. But the big question is whether Republican Gov. Jim Douglas will veto the measure. Douglas has significant ties to the health care industry. But does he want to be the governor whose legacy is preventing Vermont from becoming the first state in America to enact universal health care? Stay tuned.
The New York Times reports, “President Bush on Monday visited a small plant that turns soybeans into a clean-burning form of diesel fuel.” The visit was designed to cast the president “as deeply interested in backing new, environmentally friendly technologies that would eventually increase energy supplies.”
The event made for good pictures - but that’s about it. Earlier, Reuters reported that the assistant secretary of energy told Congress that Bush “plans to oppose efforts to include a national renewable energy requirement for utilities” in the energy bill. The requirements are key to serious renewable energy development - without forcing companies to use alternative energy sources, there will be no real way to guarantee that America starts getting more of its energy from renewable sources. Read the rest of this entry »
Two stories today show just how tenuous more and more Americans’ retirement security is becoming.
USA Today reports that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation - the government’s insurer of corporate pensions - “has moved from about a $10 billion surplus in the late 1990s to a $23 billion deficit in its single-employer insurance program.” The PBGC “estimates underfunding in [America’s overall] pension system has reached a record $450 billion.” In other words, companies are refusing to adequately fund their pension, risking more meltdowns a la. United Airlines.
Meanwhile, the LA Times reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission “has found that many pension and 401(k) consultants receive large hidden payments from the investment firms they recommend to retirement-plan clients.” That creates massive conflicts of interest, whereby consultants may be urging pension administrators to put workers’ retirement money in investments the consultant has a financial stake in. Read the rest of this entry »
Land use - and conservation - is a big issue in the Rocky Mountain region, and a provision in the Bush energy bill is touching a raw nerve in the region. The Casper Star Tribune reports that legislative language “which slipped largely under the radar during the recent energy bill debate” may “undermine public involvement on public lands if it is not changed.” Specifically, a section of the 1,000-plus-page energy bill would limit required environmental reviews and solicitation of public comment under the existing National Environmental Policy Act.
In practice, that means oil companies may be able to evade review when moving onto potential drilling sites, and “wastewater discharge from things such as coal-bed methane drilling would not be subject” to current reviews. One local expert said the bill, if passed by the Senate, “would have devastating effects on ranchers and farmers in the Powder River Basin.”
Much of this stems from the so-called “Peterson amendment” — named for Congressman John Petersen (R-PA), who introduced the language that seeks “to exclude the public from the decision-making process.” Big surprise - oil and gas interests are among Petersen’s top campaign contributors.
It’s just another example of how conservatives’ close ties to corporations are increasingly putting them at odds with their base constituencies in rural America. And it’s not just limited to Wyoming. In Colorado, for instance, a controversy is brewing over the death of a bill to force oil and gas companies to pay more for harming land, and over a proposal to allow drilling on the sacred Rocky Mountain front.
For years, corporations have fought controversial battles to gain the same legal rights as citizens. But now, having been largely successful, they want to evade the responsibilities that come with those rights. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Corporate America is fighting a proposal to force CEOs to officially certify their companies’ tax returns. It’s a commonsense measure: if citizens can be held liable for falsifying their tax returns, so should corporations and their executives. That kind of responsibility might force companies to be more honest, and stop ripping off America by evading taxes.
John Ashcroft is cashing in his government exeprience and opening a corporate lobbying firm. Send in your nominations for what Ashcroft should call his new firm.
The Great Falls Tribune today shows exactly how far to the right the conservative movement has moved. Right-wing legislators in Montana have come down on the side of abusive tax shelters, voting against commonsense legislation to close these loopholes bening taken advantage of by tax evaders.
As the Tribune notes, the bill they are opposing “goes after illegitimate income-tax shelters by requiring businesses and individuals to file additional information on transactions that may be taxable. It says those who fail to provide such information shall pay a $10,000 fine for an individual and $50,000 for a business. It also attempts to crack down on those avoiding capital-gains taxes on real estate sales. [And] it targets Montana people or businesses who establish residency in a state without income taxes for the purpose of selling property, so they don’t have to pay Montana income taxes.”
So basically, if you are against this, as the right-wingers are, you are actually FOR abusive tax shelters that rip off regular taxpayers and rob state government of revenues it needs for basic services. How much farther right can these people go before they want to officially turn the government over to special interests and the wealthy?
In today’s New York Times story about how America loses more than a quarter trillion dollars in tax revenue each year to cheating, the paper claimed, “The I.R.S. said that 80 percent of taxes owed but not paid by individuals were a result of underreporting of income, often by people working in the service sector.”
It was hard for me to believe that 80 percent of about $200 billion was being stolen mostly “by people working in the service sector” (waiters underreporting tips, fast food workers underreporting income, etc.), as the Times suggests. If that were the case, I would think service sector workers in America would be far more well-off than they are today.
So I went to the primary source, the IRS’s new report, and found that yes, it is true that “noncompliance from underreporting account for more than 80%” of the missing tax revenue. However, page 10 of the report breaks down that statistic a bit more. It shows specifically that the underreporting of “business income” accounts for about $100 billion of the tax gap, and underreporting of “wages, salaries, tips, etc.” account for just $18 billion. “Business income,” remember, is defined as money made by sole proprietorships, S corporations, etc. The category includes wealthy lobbyists, sports agents and high-paid political consultants — not exactly what you think of when you hear the phrase “working in the service sector.” In fact, I can find absolutely no data in the IRS report which justifies the New York Times suggesting that the problem “often” emanates from those “working in the service sector.”
What’s my point? Simple: the media often reinforces dishonest stereotypes designed by conservatives to help the right-wing pursue its ideological agenda. The New York Times’s error plays into the right-wing’s “persecuted rich” myth, reinforcing the idea that the rich are overtaxed, and it is working class people who are ripping off the system.