20070806 CyberAlert

CyberAlert

Monday August 6, 2007 (Vol. Twelve; No. 133)

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1. At Debate, GOP 'Dogma Against Taxes' Obstacle to Fixing Bridges

As a questioner, along with George Stephanopoulos, of Republican presidential candidates at the Sunday debate in Iowa carried on ABC's This Week, veteran Des Moines Register political reporter and current columnist David Yepsen pressed the candidates to raise taxes.

For the last question in the first hour of the 90 minute session from Drake University, Yepsen urged Mike Huckabee: "Is it time we raise the federal gas tax to start fixing up our nation's bridges and roads?" After Huckabee answered it was a matter of budget priorities, Yepsen turned to Rudy Giuliani: "In Minnesota, Governor Pawlenty, who vetoed an increase in his state gas tax, said now he may consider one. Is this Republican dogma against taxes now precluding the ability of you and your party to come up with the revenues that the country needs to fix its bridges?"

Giuliani suggested Yepsen's formulation presumed a "Democratic liberal assumption: I need money, I raise taxes."

2. CBS: 'Cash-Starved' Governments Must 'Collect...More Tax Dollars'

A night after CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric presumed taxes must be hiked to pay for infrastructure repair, CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson ludicrously described federal and state governments as "cash-starved" as she relayed the expert view of just one person, a Democratic Congressman, whom she said blames the lack of courage to "collect" more taxes.

A nice euphemism for raising taxes.

Attkisson noted that out "of the $2.7 trillion federal budget, it's estimated only around $50 billion a year goes for infrastructure" while "experts say what's needed is $210 billion a year for five years."

After citing a couple of examples of misguided pork barrel spending for road projects when repair work goes wanting, Attkisson pointed out how "Congress only funds about 25 percent of the nation's infrastructure."

She then absurdly asserted that states and local governments which "pick up the rest of the tab" are "cash-starved too."

For her only expert assessment, Attkisson turned to Democratic Congressman Jim Oberstar, Chairman of the very committee which funnels the pork spending, described as "Congress's leading authority on infrastructure" who "says both Congress and the White House have traditionally had trouble making the tough decision to collect and spend more tax dollars on infrastructure."

3. Regret Lack of 'Will' to Hike Taxes as '$4K/Minute' Spent in Iraq

Time magazine veteran Margaret Carlson, now with Bloomberg News and The Week magazine, used the Minnesota bridge collapse tragedy as a fresh excuse to tout how the public really wants a tax hike while she regretted the lack of political "will" to raise taxes and that the government can't find more money for infrastructure but can afford "$4,000 a minute on the Iraq war."

Citing a poll conducted a decade ago when Democrat Ed Rendell was Mayor of Philadelphia, on Friday's Inside Washington aired on the DC PBS station, WETA-TV channel 26, Carlson claimed that "nearly 70 percent of people polled would pay more in taxes to actually know that they could cross the 14th Street bridge safely," a reference to a bridge between Washington, DC and Virginia.

"But," she fretted, "you can't get the will to do it. I mean, we certainly had the wake-up call in Katrina, everyone knows the situation, but can you really get it done when there's, by the way, very little money left?"

4. Olbermann Hails 'Sane, Reasoned' Discussions About Raising Taxes

On Friday's Countdown, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann charged that the "endless war and endless spending" had "crippled our ability to repair or just check our infrastructure," as he hosted Air America's Rachel Maddow in a discussion blaming the Minneapolis bridge collapse on Iraq war spending and unwillingness by conservatives to raise taxes.

Olbermann quoted Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar's charge of "messed up priorities" and New York Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter's labeling of bridge collapse victims as "almost victims of war" because "perpetual war depletes the funds available to maintain our infrastructure."

Complaining that Republicans have "demonized" taxes, he saw a glimmer of light in how the Governor of Minnesota may agree to raise the gas tax: "Does the Governor's reversal tonight suggest maybe somebody is going to start having sane, reasoned discussions about taxes and when they're needed?" Maddow charged that America is "paying this incredible deadly price for a brand of American conservatism that hates and demeans government."

5. Newsweek Touts 'Gay Love' for Hillary with No Labels, Unlike GOP

Newsweek political reporter Jonathan Darman provided a preview of sorts to the August 9 Democratic debate on the gay Logo cable channel with an article on Democrats seeking votes on the gay left, playfully titled: "Show 'Em Whatcha Got: Conscious of their community's financial clout, gay activists want action on equality issues, not just talk."

Nowhere in Darman's story in this week's new issue is there a single ideological label that would place gay supporters of the Democrats on the left. But a June story on the state of the Republican presidential race after Jerry Falwell's funeral was studded with 12 uses of "conservative" or shifting "rightward" or "religious right."

6. WSJ Decline Blamed on 'Vitriolic Right-Wing Attack Editorials'

The decline of the Wall Street Journal, which allowed Rupert Murdoch's purchase of it, can be blamed in part on how advertisers "perhaps weren't enthralled" with the newspaper's "vitriolic right-wing attack editorials," Washington Post op-ed writer David Ignatius contended in a Thursday column.

In "The Path That Led to Murdoch," Ignatius, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has held a variety of top positions at the Post since 1986, asserted that during the 1990s "the Journal's editorial page increasingly did its own reporting, with equal portions of journalistic hustle and ideological spin, and it often overshadowed the news side. I suspect that helped undermine the franchise. Advertisers, in the end, perhaps weren't enthralled with a newspaper distinguished by vitriolic right-wing attack editorials."

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The 2,460^th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
8:35am EDT, Monday August 6, 2007 (Vol. Twelve; No. 133)

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