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Media Matters is asking why a tax cut for 98% of Americans is being attacked as a tax hike. Short answer: because it disproportionately affects those with disproportionate power to control the media.
Last week, President Obama unveiled a budget outline that extends the Bush tax cuts for all but the top two percent of taxpayers and makes permanent a tax credit of up to $800 for low- and middle-income workers that was included in the recent stimulus package, among other tax cuts.
On the other hand, individual taxpayers with taxable income above $200,000 ($250,000 for families) per year would pay more in taxes under Obama's plan, under which the tax rates paid on income in the top brackets would revert to their levels under President Clinton in the 1990s -- from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent. Slate.com's Daniel Gross estimates that for someone with $350,000 in income, this will amount to about $1,500 a year in increased taxes.
But the media, eager to hype their bogus "war on the wealthy" storyline, have portrayed it as a tax increase.
Media Matters gives lots of details substantiating its observation that several major media outlets have been busy spinning the news rather than reporting it.George Will has written an irresponsible article denying climate change (AKA global warming). Here’s the basic problem with George Will’s writing, as stated succinctly by The Wonk Room:
In “Dark Green Doomsayers,” Will attacked Secretary of Energy Steven Chu for discussing a worst-case scenario of California drought caused by the decimation of Sierra snowpack, falsely claiming Chu predicted this will come to pass “no later than 10 years away.” Will also incorrectly claimed that “global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979″ — based on a 45-day-old blog post by Daily Tech’s Michael Asher, one of Marc Morano’s climate denial jokers.
Will’s article is riddled with falsehoods. The radically untrue nature of Will’s article is beyond dispute. Confronted with Will’s cauldron of conservative climate denial propaganda, the Washington Post was faced with a stark choice. It could either A) confess that it failed to do any competent fact-checking or B) compound Will’s lies with its own by claiming that it did real fact-checking. It chose “B.”I don't really want to give "Joe the Plumber" any more publicity, but it's rather amazing to me that a group of conservatives would actually send "Joe" anywhere to report on anything. Especially since so many claims he has made about himself have already been proven to be lies. With…
"They're bombing 1 1/2 million people in a cage," says a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza. The attached video contains pointed commentary by Bill Moyers, who addresses massive media failure and indiscriminate death. So often, the human condition seems to be the same sad story over and over, ever so…