-Caveat Lector-

"I pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to
the REPUBLIC for which it stands,  one Nation under God,indivisible,with
liberty and justice for all."

 visit my web site at
http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon My ICQ# is 79071904
for a precise list of the powers of the Federal Government linkto:
http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon/Enumerated.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 02:57:37 -0700
From: Media Research Center <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: MRC Alert: CBS Challenges Don Evans on Tax Cut But Not John Breaux

              ***Media Research Center CyberAlert***
     6:55am EST, Monday January 13, 2003 (Vol. Eight; No. 7)
  The 1,414th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996

CBS Challenges Don Evans on Tax Cut But Not John Breaux; Al Hunt
Equates Bush Tax Cut to Teapot Dome; NY Times Distorts Impact of
Tax Cut on Family; WashPost Showcases Left Wing Group's Class
Warfare Numbers; Tony Snow Suggests Poorer Not Paying Fair Share;
Kennedy Would've "Brought Comfort" to Kopechne "in Her Old Age";
NBC's Senator Sterling: Bush a Bad President

    #### Distributed to more than 11,600 recipients by the Media
Research Center, bringing political balance to the news media
since 1987. The MRC is the leader in documenting, exposing and
neutralizing liberal media bias. Visit the MRC on the Web:
http://www.mediaresearch.org. CyberAlerts from this year are at:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/archive/cyber/welcome.asp For 2002:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/archive/cyber/archive02.asp
    Subscribe/unsubscribe information, as well as a link to the
MRC donations page, are at the end of this message.
    When posted, this CyberAlert will be readable at:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030113.asp ####

1) On Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer and Washington Post reporter
Dan Balz pressed Commerce Secretary Don Evans to justify the tax
cut given how it will hike the deficit and is skewed toward the
rich, but the duo refused to challenge Democratic Senator John
Breaux. Balz lectured Evans: "You're doing an enormous amount for
those at the upper end of the bracket, and for people who pay
payroll and Social Security taxes but no income taxes you're doing
nothing. What's the equity in a plan like that?"

2) On the weekend debate shows the panelists who are journalists
for mainstream outlets condemned Bush's tax cut. Eleanor Clift
charged, "This is class warfare against millions of Americans..."
Al Hunt: "It's crumbs for about 99 million, and then it's caviar
for the very top." Hunt scurrilously claimed Bush and Cheney made
the proposal for personal gain: "You got to go back to Teapot Dome
to find such a fleecing. This time it's legal. Bloomberg reported
that George W. Bush himself, $44,000 tax break here. Dick Cheney,
$327,000 tax break."

3) In offering an example of how a typical family, the father of
whom dismissed the tax cut plan as "unimpressive," would not
benefit much from Bush's tax cut plan, a New York Times story
distorted the impact on the only family cited, a Washington Times
editorial documented on Friday.

4) A Washington Post story on Friday gave prominence to numbers
from a left-wing group. "Who Would Benefit" read the heading over
the only table in the story, with this subhead: "Three-fifths of
President Bush's tax cut would go to the wealthiest 10 percent of
all taxpayers in 2003, according to an analysis by Citizens for
Tax Justice." But buried in the article was how the Bush plan, by
removing more people from the income tax rolls, would shift the
tax burden even more onto the shoulders of the wealthier.

5) A fresh, contrarian take. In his "Parting Thoughts" on Fox News
Sunday, Tony Snow observed how "the poor get the largest
proportional tax breaks, the richest the smallest" and that the
"tax code right now is insanely imbalanced. Half the public pays
nearly 100 percent of the income taxes, which mocks the idea that
citizenship demands that each person pull his or her weight."

6) In a Boston Globe Magazine tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy,
Globe staffer Charles Pierce asserted: "If she had lived, Mary Jo
Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a
legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in
her old age." On Fox News Sunday, Tony Snow dubbed that "the
macabre political observation of the year."

7) NBC's Senator Sterling is an anti-capital gains tax cut liberal
who doesn't think George W. Bush is a good President. He learns
not to trust Wall Street Journal editorials.


    > 1) A classic case of the mainstream media's liberal
hostility to President Bush's tax cut plan. On Sunday's Face the
Nation, Bob Schieffer and Washington Post reporter Dan Balz
repeatedly pressed Commerce Secretary Don Evans to justify the tax
cut given how it will supposedly increase the deficit and is
skewed toward the rich, but Schieffer and Balz refused to
challenge Democratic Senator John Breaux. Instead, they prompted
him to assess the fairness and reasonableness of various aspects
of the Bush plan.

    Schieffer demanded the Evans explain the rationale for raising
the deficit before Balz echoed Tom Daschle: "You're doing an
enormous amount for those at the upper end of the bracket, and for
people who pay payroll and Social Security taxes but no income
taxes you're doing nothing. What's the equity in a plan like
that?"

    But with Breaux, Schieffer just wanted him to assess the
chances of passage. Balz treated Breaux as a wise sage. Noting how
the Democratic plan will cost $130 billion and the Republican one
comes in a $670 billion, Balz wondered: "Do you have a number in
mind as to what you think is both fiscally responsible and good
for the economy?"

    Balz then highlighted what he considered a failure in Bush's
plan: "One of the issues that the President ignored in his plan is
the fiscal plight of the states. There's a tremendous problem in
the states in terms of hemorrhaging money this year. Do you favor
a package that includes significant fiscal help for the states?"

    Finally, Schieffer expresses disappointment in how Breaux had
not raised the liberal mantra of "class warfare." Schieffer wanted
to know: "Do you think this is class warfare that's going on
here?"

    How Schieffer opened the January 12 program foreshadowed the
angle of the questioning: "Today on Face the Nation, President
Bush's tax cut. Can the nation afford it? President Bush says his
$670 billion economic plan will create jobs and help the economy,
but it will also drive up the deficit. Is that a good idea with a
possibility of war with Iraq looming?"

    Now, a more complete rundown of the disparity in the angle of
questions posed to Evans versus Breaux by Schieffer and his co-
host, Dan Balz:

    Questions to Evans:

    -- Schieffer: "This administration had a surplus of $237
billion when you came to office. Now that's turned into a deficit
of over $100 billion, part of that because of tax cuts, but most
of it, I think most people would agree, because of the war on
terrorism, a cost that I think many people would be willing to
support. But I ask you that because now you're coming up with
another plan to cut taxes that is going to drive the deficit even
higher. Why is that a wise thing to do, especially now with the
possibility of a war with Iraq, which can only drive the deficit
higher?"
    Evans: "Well, because it's going to drive the economic growth
of this country higher...."

    -- Schieffer: "But I'm old enough to remember when
conservatives didn't like red-ink spending. You're saying now that
this deficit, and you're talking about a deficit that may go to
$300 billion before we get into a war, and you are saying that is
a manageable number. How high would a deficit have to go to be, in
your view, unmanageable?"

    -- Balz: "Mr. Secretary, there's been a lot of criticism of
this plan in the way that it is seemingly tilted toward the
wealthy. One estimate says that millionaires would get $88,000 or
$89,000 additional income, whereas people at the $40,000 level
would get about a 1 percent increase in their income, net income.
You've said all week, 'Nobody wins unless we all win,' and yet
you're doing an enormous amount for those at the upper end of the
bracket, and for people who pay payroll and Social Security taxes
but no income taxes you're doing nothing. What's the equity in a
plan like that?"
    Evans countered: "The direct benefit is to 92 million
taxpayers an average of about $1,100 a year. Not just this year,
but next year and the year after and the year after. Forty-six
million married couples, they'll receive an average savings of
$1,700 a year this year, next year, the following year....

    -- Balz: "Let us ask you about the political feasibility of
this plan. You had a dozen Democrats support the President's plan
in 2001. Three of those are gone at this point. The other nine
have had not very good things to say or nothing to say about this
plan. There are at least half a dozen Republicans who have
indicated they have serious reservations about one or another
elements of this plan. How are you going to get this passed
through the Senate?"

    -- Schieffer: "Let me just ask you one other thing, when we
talk about the cost of this, as you go up to the Hill. The House
majority leader, Tom DeLay, says these proposals are just the
floor. They're not going to be a ceiling on tax cuts. He said he
may add in a cut on capital gains. Would you be in favor of that?"

    -- Schieffer: "I have to ask you also about the heart of your
plan. Half of it goes to eliminating the tax on stock dividends.
Even the chairman of the Finance Committee, Chuck Grassley, says
he doesn't think that there's the votes to pass that. Would you be
willing to scale back that?"

    To Breaux:

    -- Schieffer: "You heard the Secretary of Commerce lay out the
reasons why he thinks the plan ought to be passed, but my
sense of it is at this point that the administration simply does
not have the votes to pass any component of this plan. What's your
analysis?"
    Breaux: "I would agree with that..."

    -- Schieffer: "You supported the president's tax cut the last
time around. Can you support this one?"
    Long answer short: things were different then.

    -- Balz: "The House Democrats have put forward a package of
about $130 billion in comparison to the president's $670 billion.
Do you have a number in mind as to what you think is both fiscally
responsible and good for the economy?"

    -- Balz: "Do you have a view about the proposed acceleration
of the reduction in the top income brackets? The President wants
to reduce all the brackets and accelerate those changes. What
about the top brackets? Would you slow that down?"

    -- Schieffer: "I want to get back to the cost of this package
because you heard Secretary Evans say this morning that he thinks
these deficits that we used to talk about being enormous -- I
mean, talking about $300 billion deficits -- he's saying that
that's manageable. Do you think that's manageable?"

    -- Balz: "One of the issues that the President ignored in his
plan is the fiscal plight of the states. There's a tremendous
problem in the states in terms of hemorrhaging money this year. Do
you favor a package that includes significant fiscal help for the
states?"

    -- When Breaux expressed concern about bailing out states,
Balz countered: "But if you have a situation in which we are
cutting income taxes and other taxes at the federal level and
states are raising it, won't that wipe out any of the stimulative
effect and many of those states will have to cut education and
health care to people. What's the equity of that approach?"

    -- Schieffer wrapped up the session by asking Breaux "sort of
what's become the Democratic mantra, is this class warfare? Do you
think this is class warfare that's going on here?"



    > 2) It's unanimous: On the three big weekend debate shows,
Inside Washington, McLaughlin Group and CNN's Capital Gang, the
panelists who are also journalists for mainstream outlets all
condemned Bush's tax cut proposal, with Al Hunt scurrilously
claiming Bush and Cheney are making the proposal for personal
gain: "You got to go back to Teapot Dome to find such a fleecing.
This time it's legal. Bloomberg reported that George W. Bush
himself, $44,000 tax break here. Dick Cheney, $327,000 tax break."

    From the shows which aired on January 11:

    -- Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas on Inside
Washington: "It could hurt the economy. I'm actually with the
Democrats on this because I think it could hurt the economy in the
long run by creating higher deficits which would cause higher
interest rates. So I think there's a long term cost about this.
It's also a little unfair. If they want to give a tax break they
probably ought to be doing it at the lower end of the economic
scale."

    -- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on the McLaughlin Group: "This is
a plan heavily skewed to the rich which does nothing to stimulate
the economy in the immediate short term. It's a big bribery of the
right wing, basically....This is class warfare against millions of
Americans who will not get the benefit and on young people who
will have to pay off that tab this President is running up. The
deficits are totally irresponsible."

    -- Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt on
CNN's Capital Gang: "It's crumbs for about 99 million, and then
it's caviar for the very top. This is a, this is a bad proposal.
Kate says it's bold. Well, the Clinton health care plan was bold
too. Bold does not mean good, and this is bad. It won't create
jobs, it's not going to stimulate the economy, it will exacerbate
the income disparity in America....It'll be a bonanza for the
rich....
    "I'll tell you who else is incredibly enthusiastic about this
is the Bush cabinet. You got to go back to Teapot Dome to find
such a fleecing. This time it's legal. Bloomberg reported that
George W. Bush himself, $44,000 tax break here. Dick Cheney,
$327,000 tax break."

    I'd bet the Hunt/Woodruff household is in Bush's league.



    > 3) In offering proof of how a typical family, the father of
whom dismissed the tax cut plan as "unimpressive," would not
benefit much from Bush's tax cut plan, a Wednesday New York Times
story, by ignoring major provisions, distorted the impact on the
only family cited in the story, a Washington Times editorial
documented on Friday.

    An excerpt of the January 10 editorial:

No sooner had President Bush unveiled his bold economic stimulus
and growth proposals Tuesday in Chicago than the New York Times
dispatched a photographer to the President's previous home base of
Austin, Texas. Before sundown, the photographer had located the
Moorheads, a family that would have made Norman Rockwell reach for
the paint.

There they were -- Mr. and Mrs. Moorhead and their three extremely
photogenic children -- splashed across the top of page A17 in a
51-square-inch photo, by far the largest the Times published in
its national section that day. The caption: "Bee and Robert
Moorhead of Austin, Tex., with their children, from left, Owen,
Ethan and Oona, said the president's plan was unimpressive."

Unimpressive? Yes, indeed. And just so the reader got the point,
here's how reporter Edmund L. Andrews described the views of the
only real-life family profiled in the article. "For Robert and Bee
Moorhead of Austin, Tex., who together earn about $88,000, the
Bush plan is not impressive," Mr. Andrews reported. "Though they
both have good jobs -- she as a director of a nonprofit group and
he as a multimedia developer at a textbook publisher -- they have
only about $1,000 in stocks and virtually no dividend income."

Other than the fact that he knew he would not currently benefit
from the President's proposal to eliminate the double taxation of
dividends, Mr. Moorhead clearly had no idea how his family would
be affected by the President's stimulus plan. And, evidently, the
Times had no intention of informing him. Why get in the way of a
great quote? "They're trying to sell this once again as
trickle-down economics," Mr. Moorhead conveniently observed, using
the favorite pejorative of the Democrats and the Times to ridicule
Reaganomics....

As it happens, the Times' poster family would make a killing under
the Bush plan. Effective immediately. No, sooner than that.
Effective Jan. 1. No fewer than four separate tax cuts would shave
more than 30 percent off the Moorheads' federal income-tax bill.
Assuming the Moorheads take the standard deduction....the
Editorial Page of The Washington Times has prepared 1040s for the
Moorheads under current law and under the Bush plan. Their federal
income taxes would plunge nearly $3,000, falling from about $9,600
to about $6,600.

- Rather than incrementally eliminate the marriage penalty from
2005 through 2009, the Bush plan eliminates it immediately. By our
calculations, that would save the Moorheads $1,522.50....

- The Bush plan would increase the per-child tax credit from $600
to $1,000. The Moorheads would receive their $1,200 windfall
(three children at $400 each) in a rebate check.

- The Moorheads would pocket another $154 because their top
marginal tax rate of 27 percent would be reduced to 25 percent.

- The Moorheads would save another $100, as the income limit for
the 10 percent tax bracket was increased from $12,000 to
$14,000....

    END of Excerpt

    For the entirety of the editorial:
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030110-92651721.htm

    For the January 8 New York Times story in question, "Plan
Gives Most Benefits to Wealthy and Families," check:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/politics/08EFFE.html



    > 4) E.J. Dionne appeared Saturday afternoon on FNC's Weekend
Live with Tony Snow to promote his preposterous contention that
conservatives dominate the media and have kowtowed any media
liberals into silence, a premise undermined by the mainstream
media's enthusiastic promotion of how the proposed Bush tax cut
helps the rich and ignores everyone else, a pattern documented in
the items above and illustrated by a particularly slanted story in
Dionne's own paper on Friday.

    (Dionne, a former New York Times and Washington Post political
reporter, is now a columnist syndicated by the Washington Post.
For an excerpt from Dionne's December 6 column in which he cited
the intimidation by the "ever-alert" Media Research Center, go to:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/realitycheck/2002/fax20021206.asp )

    A January 10 Post story, pegged to a speech by President Bush
promoting his plan, was illustrated not by a table conveying
Bush's points or by two tables showing how liberals and
conservatives see the impact of the tax cut, but by just one table
relaying the claims of the left-wing Citizens for Tax Justice.
"Who Would Benefit" read the heading over the table which related
CTJ's Marxist attack: "Three-fifths of President Bush's tax cut
would go to the wealthiest 10 percent of all taxpayers in 2003,
according to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice."

    But buried in the 8th paragraph of the story was how the Bush
plan, by removing more people from the income tax rolls, mainly by
raising the child deduction, would actually shift the tax burden
even more onto the shoulders of the wealthier: "Treasury figures
show the share of the tax burden borne by those earning more than
$100,000 would rise from 72.4 percent to 73.3 percent."

    An excerpt from the Post story, "Bush Defends Tax Cut
Proposal; Plan Draws Ire Of Democrats, GOP Moderates," by Dana
Milbank and Chris Jenkins:

....The president traveled to a company in Alexandria that
manufactures flags for the presidential limousine, where he argued
that his $670 billion tax cut plan would provide substantial
benefits for small businesses and moderate-income families. Bush,
in his remarks, referred to several middle-income families who he
said would pay sharply less in income taxes....

"You hear a lot of talk in Washington, of course, that this
benefits so-and-so or this benefits this, the kind of the class
warfare of politics," he said. "Let me just give you the facts
that, under this plan, a family of four with an income of $40,000
will receive a 96 percent reduction in federal income taxes."...

A calculation of the effect of Bush's proposal done by the
Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute found that the top 1
percent of Americans, those with incomes of $374,000 or more,
would get 28.3 percent of Bush's tax cut, an average benefit of
$24,428, or a 3.5 percent increase in income. The 20 percent of
Americans in the middle, those earning $29,000 to $46,000, would
get 6.1 percent of the benefit of Bush's plan, an average benefit
of $265 or an increase in income of 0.9 percent.

A calculation done by the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice
produced similar results, finding that the top 10 percent of
earners, those above $104,000 in income, would get an average tax
cut of $5,578, or 60 percent of the total benefit, while the
bottom 60 percent, those earning less than $46,000, would receive
an average cut of $131, or 8.5 percent of the total benefit....

A senior Treasury Department official interviewed yesterday said
it is true that wealthier Americans get a larger percentage
increase in their after-tax incomes than those at the lower end of
the scale. But he said they get a smaller percentage decrease in
their taxes. As a result, Treasury figures show, the share of the
tax burden borne by those earning more than $100,000 would rise
from 72.4 percent to 73.3 percent....

    END of Excerpt

    For the Post story in full:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35393-2003Jan9.html



    > 5) You read it here first/great minds think alike. In his
"Parting Thoughts" on Fox News Sunday, moderator/host Tony Snow
observed how "the poor get the largest proportional tax breaks,
the richest the smallest" and that the "tax code right now is
insanely imbalanced. Half the public pays nearly 100 percent of
the income taxes, which mocks the idea that citizenship demands
that each person pull his or her weight."

    That reminded me of how I had discerned in the January 9
CyberAlert how "those much below $40,000 with two kids already
live tax-free, a situation the Bush plan would compound in moving
millions more into a situation of paying little or no income tax,
a trend which should concern conservatives since it means more
people will be able to vote for increased government spending
without fear of having to pay for it -- just the kind of angle a
less liberal media would pursue."

    Snow's closing comments on the January 12 Fox News Sunday:

    "There's a dull sameness to the debate about tax cuts,
especially from the opposition. The President, say his foes, want
to pay off the rich. Here are the numbers they cite in support:
The top one percent gets $30,000 bucks back, on average, the
poorest get a lousy six.
    "This is true, but misleading. Now consider a different take,
this one supplied by the White House. Two key facts emerge: First,
the plan makes the income tax even more progressive. Families
earning more than $100,000 would pay -- get this -- 73.3 percent
of the total income tax burden. Families earning less than
$50,000, only 2.9 percent. Second, the poor get the largest
proportional tax breaks, the richest the smallest.
    "Now, the really troubling part. Our tax code right now is
insanely imbalanced. Half the public pays nearly 100 percent of
the income taxes, which mocks the idea that citizenship demands
that each person pull his or her weight.
    "Two generations ago, as Paul [Gigot] pointed out moments ago,
Americans celebrated success and urged kids to do well and
accumulate wealth. We're now on the verge of a society that
cleaves into two classes: Those who pay taxes and those who get
tax money from Uncle Sam.
    "The allegation that the President is beggaring the poor is
hooey, and proponents know it. The real question is whether the
White House realizes that its own plan is an agent for making envy
not merely respectable, but further establishing it as the law of
the land."

    I'm confident that's not a line of inquiry that would ever
occur to Schieffer or Balz (see item #1 above).

    The January 9 CyberAlert noted how a Tax Foundation report
documented how those in the top one percent, top five percent, top
ten percent, top 25 percent and top 50 percent all pay a greater
share of the income taxes collected in 2000 than they earned as a
share of overall income.

    The MRC's Rich Noyes passed along the complete set of numbers
which support Snow's concern:

-- The top one percent of Americans earn over $313,469. They
account for 20.8 percent of all income earned in the U.S., but pay
37.4 percent of income taxes.

-- The top five percent of Americans earn over $128,336. They
account for 35.3 percent of all income earned in the U.S., but pay
56.5 percent of income taxes.

-- The top 10 percent of Americans earn over $92,114. They account
for 46.0 percent of all income earned in the U.S., but pay 67.3
percent of income taxes.

-- The top 25 percent of Americans earn over $55,225. They account
for 67.2 percent of all income earned in the U.S., but pay 84.0
percent of income taxes.

-- The top 50 percent of Americans earn over $27,682. They account
for 87.0 percent of all income earned in the U.S., but pay 96.1
percent of income taxes.

-- But, the bottom 50 percent of Americans, who earn less than
$27,682, account for 13.0 percent of all income earned in the
U.S., yet pay just 3.9 percent of income taxes collected.

    For the November 2002 Tax Foundation report in PDF format:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/SR118.pdf



    > 6) In what Tony Snow all too accurately dubbed, in the
"Below the Fold" segment on Fox News Sunday, as "the macabre
political observation of the year," in a Boston Globe Magazine
tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy, veteran Globe staffer Charles
Pierce asserted: "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62
years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward
Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age."

    Wow. That's some rationalization.

    Kopechne was the woman who drown while trapped in Kennedy's
car on Chappaquiddick Island off Martha's Vineyard in 1969.

    James Taranto first highlighted the quote in the Thursday
edition of his "Best of the Web" column for OpinionJournal.com
(www.opinionjournal.com/best )

    Here's the paragraph in full from the piece in the January 5
Boston Globe Magazine: "And that's the key. That's how you survive
what he's survived. That's how you move forward, one step after
another, even though your name is Edward Moore Kennedy. You work,
always, as though your name were Edward Moore. If she had lived,
Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work
as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her
in her old age."

    "Kennedy Unbound" read the headline over the profile. The
fawning subhead: "After 40 years in the U.S. Senate, Edward M.
Kennedy has transcended the family mythology and become his own
man." See it for yourself online at:
http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2003/0105/coverstory_entire.htm



    > 7) NBC's Senator Sterling is a liberal who doesn't think
George W. Bush is a good President.

    In an interview Friday night on MSNBC's Hardball, which aired
after the EST/CST debut of Mr. Sterling, NBC's new show about an
appointed U.S. Senator from California, Chris Matthews asked the
man who plays Sterling, actor Josh Brolin: "Do you think that
George W. Bush is a good President, Senator Sterling?"
    Brolin, answering for his character, snapped: "N?O."

    During the debut episode the character largely affirmed his
liberalness. Reading a chart with a breakdown of constituent mail,
Brolin as "Sterling" reported: "2,387 in favor of a capital gains
tax cut, 1,949 opposed. And one undecided."
    Press Secretary "Jackie Brock," played by Audra McDonald, was
flummoxed: "You're undecided?"
    Sterling: "Yeah I am after reading the Wall Street Journal's
editorial today, yeah."
    Brock informed him: "Well the Journal's never met a tax cut it
didn't like. See problem number one with this one is it's going to
cost the Treasury at least $12 billion, which means that we have
to cut spending by $12 billion and the first place people always
go for that kind of money is Medicare. So, the real question is
how much do you want to cut spending on health care for the
elderly?"
    Sterling: "I don't."
    Brock: "Then you just moved out of the undecided column on the
capital gains tax cut."
    Sterling: "I guess so."

    That liberal reasoning settles that.

    For more about the show produced by liberal political
commentator/Hill veteran Lawrence O'Donnell, see:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030110.asp#5

    Later, Sterling did express some variance from the liberal
line on oil drilling in Alaska, but I'm way over today and so
don't have space for that.

    The biggest incongruity of the show is how Senator Sterling is
portrayed as an independent "idealist," yet he decides to vote
with the Democratic leadership for control of the Senate because
they give him seats on the Finance and Appropriations Committees
while the Republicans offered only a slot on one of those two
committees.

    But maybe that's what makes you an "idealist" to liberals:
Getting as much taxpayer money for your state as you can.

-- Brent Baker


    >>> Support the MRC, an educational foundation dependent upon
contributions which make CyberAlert possible, by providing a tax-
deductible donation. Be sure to fill in "CyberAlert" in the field
which asks: "What led you to become a member or donate today?" For
the secure donations page:
https://secure.mediaresearch.org/Donation/Order/MediaResearch25-27/mck-cgi/mrcdonate.asp

    To subscribe to CyberAlert, send a blank e-mail to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

    To unsubscribe, use the link at the very bottom of this
message.

    Send problems and comments to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

    You can learn what has been posted each day on the MRC's Web
site by subscribing to the "MRC Web Site News" distributed every
weekday afternoon. To subscribe, go to:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cybersub.asp#webnews <<<

====================================================================
Update your profile here:
http://topica.email-publisher.com/survey/?bUrD57.bWlTIR.d2JhY29u

Unsubscribe here:
http://topica.email-publisher.com/survey/?bUrD57.bWlTIR.d2JhY29u.u

Delivered by Topica Email Publisher, http://topica.email-publisher.com/

<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
 <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>

http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
 <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Om

Reply via email to