CBS Frames Lead Around "Mounting Criticism" of Bush from GOP --6/13/2005

1. CBS Frames Lead Around "Mounting Criticism" of Bush from GOP
Based upon one Republican Senator advocating the closure of the Guantanamo prison camp, another Republican Senator warning of declining public support for U.S. troops in Iraq, and one Republican U.S. Representative, Walter Jones, best-known for the silliness of re-naming french fries as "freedom fries," calling for the setting of a date to withdraw troops from Iraq, CBS Evening News anchor John Roberts on Sunday night led with "mounting criticism" of Bush from "members of his own Republican Party." Roberts insisted: "In what appears to be a significant shift in the political landscape of Washington, the President is losing support from some key Republicans on some very major issues." Plus, CBS devoted Face the Nation to, "Should the Guantanamo Bay prison camp be closed?" and NBC's Jim Miklaszewski rebuked CBS's Schieffer on comparing Guantanamo to North Vietnamese treatment of U.S. POWs.

2. ABC's Roberts Hits Gonzales with How Carter Wants Guantanamo Shut
After asking Attorney General Alberto Gonzales just one question about the renewal of the Patriot Act, the reason for his appearance on the Friday morning shows, ABC's Robin Roberts turned to how "there are many prominent people who are calling for the prison at Guantanamo to be closed, to be shut down. The terror suspects being held there, allegedly, some of them have been mistreated." She noted how "former President Jimmy Carter spoke out about this" and asked Gonzales, before playing a long soundbite from Carter, to "respond to what he said."

3. Schieffer: Opponents Like Those "Who Urged Columbus to Stay Home"
Attributing "fear" of the unknown to those who oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research -- though he distorted the debate by mentioning neither "embryonic" or federal funding -- CBS's Bob Schieffer, on Sunday's Face the Nation, equated opponents with those "who urged Columbus to stay home, the ones who refused to look into Galileo's telescope, claiming they already knew what was there." Schieffer decried how "while the rest of the world moves at warp speed in every area of research, our national debate has somehow veered away from how to blaze new scientific trails to arguments over how to best limit research." Schieffer contended: "Government serves the public interest when it regulates the products of science. Putting limits on research before we know what the product is can only be counterproductive."

4. "Extremely," "Dramatically" & "Quite Overwhelmingly Conservative"
In less than a minute on Inside Washington over the weekend, NPR reporter Nina Totenberg issued the "conservative" label six times, or once every ten seconds. Referring to Bush's judges, Totenberg tagged them as "extremely conservative" and his recent successes as the "most conservative of the conservative group." And as for the ideological skew of the appeals courts they are joining, Totenberg described them as "dramatically conservative" and "quite overwhelmingly conservative." Just as Totenberg is "quite overwhelmingly liberal"?

5. Moyers Claims Liberal Reasoning "Too Complex" for "Red Meat"
PBS's Bill Moyers, in a taped interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews aired Friday night, declared that those who watch FNC and listen to Rush Limbaugh "like red meat," but he contended, "by nature, it's very hard for a liberal to throw red meat simply because the issues are more complex than you can reduce down to a soundbite." He cited Time magazine as some sort of conservative voice as he asserted that Time "says we now have a government of the few at the expense of the many. I'm not making that up. That is not Bill Moyers. That's the heart of the Time-Warner imperium." Denouncing CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson, who has dared to suggest that PBS has a liberal tilt, Moyers charged: "The one thing they don't want is reporting from the ground up that defies the party line."
with audio and video

CBS Frames Lead Around "Mounting Criticism"
of Bush from GOP

Based upon one Republican Senator advocating the closure of the Guantanamo prison camp, another Republican Senator warning of declining public support for U.S. troops in Iraq, and one Republican U.S. Representative, Walter Jones, best-known for the silliness of re-naming french fries as "freedom fries," calling for the setting of a date to withdraw troops from Iraq, CBS Evening News anchor John Roberts on Sunday night led with "mounting criticism" of Bush from "members of his own Republican Party." Roberts insisted: "In what appears to be a significant shift in the political landscape of Washington, the President is losing support from some key Republicans on some very major issues." Plus, CBS devoted Face the Nation to, "Should the Guantanamo Bay prison camp be closed?" and NBC's Jim Miklaszewski rebuked CBS's Schieffer on comparing Guantanamo to North Vietnamese treatment of U.S. POWs.

(ABC's George Stephanopoulos was so excited by the change of heart by Congressman Walter Jones that he traveled to North Carolina to tape an interview with him that was featured on Sunday's This Week.)

Roberts teased at the top of the June 12 CBS Evening News:
"Political storm warnings at the White House. President Bush is hit by mounting criticism from members of his own Republican Party."

Roberts opened the newscast: "It's beginning to look like this may be a long summer of discontent for President Bush. In what appears to be a significant shift in the political landscape of Washington, the President is losing support from some key Republicans on some very major issues. Once steadfast supporters have now taken on the role of critic. Bill Plante has more on the political shock waves battering the White House, and what's behind them."

Plante began: "Most of the criticism of the President's policies is focused on fallout from the war in Iraq. On Saturday, Republican Senator Mel Martinez of Florida urged the White House to close the terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He called it 'an icon for bad stories.' This followed reports of very aggressive interrogation techniques being used on prisoners at Guantanamo, and government confirmation that the Koran was mishandled a number of times by American guards. Today, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said the administration is not providing enough support for American troops in Iraq, and unless things turn around said Graham, public support 'is going to keep slipping away.'"
Senator Graham on Face the Nation: "The insurgency is alive and well. We underestimated the viability of the insurgency."
Plante: "And North Carolina Republican Congressman Walter Jones, the man who coined the term 'freedom fries,' is calling for a timetable now for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. Jones says the reason for invading -- weapons of mass destruction -- proved to be untrue."
From the White House lawn, Plante concluded: "And today, more about British concerns that the President was heading toward war long before the invasion: Another briefing paper from the summer of 2002, in which British intelligence warns that re-building Iraq after a war will be very difficult, and notes that U.S. war plans said almost nothing on the subject."
Graham's soundbite came from Face the Nation, which CBS devoted to the topic of closing Guantanamo. Host Bob Schieffer touted up top: "Today on Face the Nation, should the Guantanamo Bay prison camp be closed? And where are we on Iraq? The U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has become an anti-American rallying symbol overseas. Should it be closed and what should be put in its place?"

Schieffer has made quite clear his personal feelings about Guantanamo, as recounted in two recent CyberAlerts:

-- June 10 CyberAlert: CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer reiterated Thursday morning, on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, that he thinks Guantanamo should be closed, comparing it with how the North Vietnamese treated U.S. POWs. Schieffer asserted that the A&E film about John McCain's suffering in a North Vietnamese prison "made me rethink this whole thing about how we treat these prisoners in Guantanamo. And people keep making this point, this is so bad for us in the Arab world, this is giving us such a bad name. My problem with it is what's it doing to us? Do we want our kids to think we're that kind of people, that we participate in things like this? And if you see this film that John McCain, about John McCain and what he went through, it's putting it in reverse." See: www.mediaresearch.org [1]

-- May 31 CyberAlert: Recalling how John McCain's "code of honor" is what "separated him from his captors" in communist North Vietnam, on Sunday's Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer casually referred to how he "thought about that as yet another tale of torture and abuse came out about the POW camp we are running at Guantanamo Bay." Schieffer then proceeded to endorse New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's recommendation that "the prison ought to be shut down because the stories about it are so inflaming the Arab world." Schieffer presumed the worst about the uncorroborated charges related to detainee treatment, most of which fall far short of qualifying as "torture." Schieffer asked: "I wondered if the greater danger is the impact Guantanamo is having on us. Do we want our children to believe this is how we are?" Characterizing the U.S. as no better than our enemies, Schieffer concluded: "As we reflect on the meaning of Memorial Day, let us remember first what it is that separates us from those who would take away our freedom," the code "John McCain's dad taught his kid."

For more, and an MP3 audio clip of Schieffer: www.mrc.org [2]

On Friday's Imus in the Morning, the MRC's Jessica Barnes noticed, Don Imus raised with NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski what Schieffer had claimed on the radio show the day before: "Mr. Schieffer said -- Bernard pointed it out to me, and Charles and I were talking about it -- Bob said that there is, seemed to suggest, imply that there is John McCain-like torture occurring. In other words, what's happening with the prisoners there [in Guantanamo] is what happened to McCain when he was in the Hanoi Hilton there in North Vietnam, back during the Vietnam War. Is that true?"
Miklaszewski: "You know, I don't know what Bob was talking about there, but as far as I know, that's not true. I've been down there."
Imus: "Do you think he was drunk?"
Miklaszewski: "No, no, no, no."
Imus: "Oh, okay."
Miklaszewski: "I've been down to Gitmo, and frankly, the treatment that the, the overall treatment that they get is pretty good. They see a doctor more often than you do, Don. The medical facility facilities there...are first rate. It's the first time any of these prisoners have ever seen a dentist, for example. Now, there were some aggressive interrogation techniques to begin with -- sleep deprivation, loud music, bright lights, stress positions for a couple of hours at a time -- but they don't...rise to the level of, quote, 'torture,' at least in the minds of the U.S. military."

ABC's Roberts Hits Gonzales with How
Carter Wants Guantanamo Shut

After asking Attorney General Alberto Gonzales just one question about the renewal of the Patriot Act, the reason for his appearance on the Friday morning shows, ABC's Robin Roberts turned to how "there are many prominent people who are calling for the prison at Guantanamo to be closed, to be shut down. The terror suspects being held there, allegedly, some of them have been mistreated." She noted how "former President Jimmy Carter spoke out about this" and asked Gonzales, before playing a long soundbite from Carter, to "respond to what he said."

In the 7am half hour of the June 10 Good Morning America, Roberts played a clip of President Bush praising the Patriot Act and she asked Gonzales one question about it. Then, the MRC's Jessica Barnes noticed, Roberts switched topics:
"I'd like to discuss other subjects that have been in the news recently. There are many prominent people who are calling for the prison at Guantanamo to be closed, to be shut down. The terror suspects being held there, allegedly, some of them have been mistreated. Former President Jimmy Carter spoke out about this. I would like to you respond to what he said."
Jimmy Carter, at the Carter Center earlier in the week: "They could be sent back home, they could be put on trial, they could be given, all of them a guaranteed right, first of all, that they will not be held incommunicado, that they could stay in touch with their own families, that every one of them will have a right to counsel, that every one of them will be confronted with exact allegations of the crimes of which they are alleged to be guilty."
Roberts: "Is shutting down Guantanamo an option?"
Gonzales' answer boiled down to no.

Schieffer: Opponents Like Those "Who
Urged Columbus to Stay Home"

Attributing "fear" of the unknown to those who oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research -- though he distorted the debate by mentioning neither "embryonic" or federal funding -- CBS's Bob Schieffer, on Sunday's Face the Nation, equated opponents with those "who urged Columbus to stay home, the ones who refused to look into Galileo's telescope, claiming they already knew what was there." Schieffer decried how "while the rest of the world moves at warp speed in every area of research, our national debate has somehow veered away from how to blaze new scientific trails to arguments over how to best limit research." Schieffer contended: "Government serves the public interest when it regulates the products of science. Putting limits on research before we know what the product is can only be counterproductive."

Schieffer's commentary at the end of the June 12 Face the Nation: "Finally today, history has been shaped by three groups of people: those who wondered what was on the other side of the mountain, those who had no interest in what was there, and those who feared what was there. Most human achievement has come from the first group, those who had the courage to go to the other side of the mountain. The second group probably stumbled on a few things by accident. The blind hog does find the occasional acorn. But the third group can't claim much. They were the ones who urged Columbus to stay home, the ones who refused to look into Galileo's telescope, claiming they already knew what was there. Americans are descended from that first group. Our ancestors crossed an ocean to see what the far shore held, and once they got here, they kept going, in covered wagons, no less, with no idea what they would find.
"Which is why I am surprised, as Congress faces the question of stem cell research, at the turn our national dialogue on science has taken. While the rest of the world moves at warp speed in every area of research, our national debate has somehow veered away from how to blaze new scientific trails to arguments over how to best limit research. Government serves the public interest when it regulates the products of science. Putting limits on research before we know what the product is can only be counterproductive. Besides, it seems so out of character for us."

"Extremely," "Dramatically" & "Quite
Overwhelmingly Conservative"

In less than a minute on Inside Washington over the weekend, NPR reporter Nina Totenberg issued the "conservative" label six times, or once every ten seconds. Referring to Bush's judges, Totenberg tagged them as "extremely conservative" and his recent successes as the "most conservative of the conservative group." And as for the ideological skew of the appeals courts they are joining, Totenberg described them as "dramatically conservative" and "quite overwhelmingly conservative." Just as Totenberg is "quite overwhelmingly liberal"?

On Inside Washington, a weekly public affairs panel aired Sunday mornings on Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, WJLA-TV, and Saturday night on cable' NewsChannel 8, Totenberg opined on the the previously filibustered judicial nominees which the Senate approved earlier in the week:
"Look, President Bush has nominated, I think it's two, and gotten confirmed 211 judges so far. They're extremely conservative judges. These are probably the most conservative of the conservative group. So, and they will sit on appeals court. In some instances they'll have more effect than others, because Judge Pryor for example who's had an interim appointment, is on a court that's already dramatically conservative and gets reversed with some regularity by the Supreme Court. Janice Rogers Brown is on a court that's more evenly divided."
Host Gordon Peterson: "This is the 11th circuit court in Atlanta you're talking about with Pryor."
Totenberg: "But Janice Rogers Brown is on a court that is more evenly divided. It's still conservative. Quite overwhelmingly conservative, but it's more divided. So when she sits on a panel of three judges, if she believes as she has said, that laws that regulate safety in the workplace, that those are a descent into socialism, that has consequences."

Moyers Claims Liberal Reasoning "Too
Complex" for "Red Meat"

PBS's Bill Moyers, in a taped interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews aired Friday night, declared that those who watch FNC and listen to Rush Limbaugh "like red meat," but he contended, "by nature, it's very hard for a liberal to throw red meat simply because the issues are more complex than you can reduce down to a soundbite."

Listen to MP3 audio clip [3] Text of clip + audio archive [4]

He cited Time magazine as some sort of conservative voice as he asserted that Time "says we now have a government of the few at the expense of the many. I'm not making that up. That is not Bill Moyers. That's the heart of the Time-Warner imperium." Denouncing CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson, who has dared to suggest that PBS has a liberal tilt, Moyers charged: "The one thing they don't want is reporting from the ground up that defies the party line."

Moyers over the years has certainly offered up quite a bit of "red meat" that didn't sound like "complex." Some examples:
-- November 12, 2004 exchange on PBS's Now:

Bill Moyers: "There have been 37,000 civilians killed in Iraq, or as many perhaps as 100,000. Why is abortion a higher moral issue with many American Christians than the invasion of Iraq and the loss of life there?"
Sister Joan Chittister: "Could I ask you that question? Because that is the moral question that brings me closest to tears. I do not understand that, Bill. You see, I'm absolutely certain that some of the people that we're killing over there are pregnant women. Now what do you do? Now what do you do? That's military abortion."
Moyers: "Somebody said to me -- that's what?"
Chittister: "That's military abortion. Why is that morally acceptable?"
Moyers: "Somebody said to me the other day that Americans don't behead, but we do drop smart bombs that do it for us."

To watch a RealPlayer clip of that, as shown at the MRC's DisHonors Awards of 2005: www.mediaresearch.org [5]

-- Bill Moyers on PBS's Now, February 28, 2003:
"I decided to put on my flag pin tonight -- first time. Until now I haven't thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see....I put it on to take it back. The flag's been hijacked and turned into a logo-- the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On those Sunday morning talk shows official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it is the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and during the State of the Union did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration's patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error.
"When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao's Little Red Book on every official's desk, omnipresent and unread. But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapels while writing books and running Web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American....I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us."

To watch a RealPlayer clip of that, as shown at the MRC's DisHonors Awards of 2004: www.mediaresearch.org [6]

-- Bill Moyers' commentary at the end of his PBS show Now on November 8, the Friday after Republicans won control of the Senate in midterm elections:
"The entire federal government -- the Congress, the executive, the courts -- is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine.
"Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture....
"So it's a heady time in Washington, a heady time for piety, profits and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money. Don't forget the money....Republicans out-raised Democrats by $184 million and they came up with the big prize: monopoly control of the American government and the power of the state to turn their radical ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price."

No "red meat" there.

To watch a video of that, the winner of the "Quote of the Year" in the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2002," go to: www.mediaresearch.org [7]

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning of the Moyers session on the June 10 Hardball against the video and came up with these highlights of the taped interview which was not conducted on the Hardball set, but in what looked to be a fancy hotel room:

# Liberal views "too complex" for "red meat."

Chris Matthews: "Right now, there's a highly successful conservative cable network called Fox. Why isn't there a highly successful liberal network?"
Bill Moyers: "I don't understand it. I think the people who run television think that liberals and progressives don't get worked up about anything. I think that they think that they're too subtle, too complex, too erudite, let's say, to really defame them. And I think they don't want that kind of television anymore. And in once sense also, the people out in the country who listen to Fox News, who listen to Rush Limbaugh, they like red meat. And, you know, by nature, it's very hard for a liberal to throw red meat simply because the issues are more complex than you can reduce down to a soundbite, although I think we have to learn to speak in that new grammar."

# Time magazine as a conservative voice.

Moyers: "And then after the '70s, something happened. I wish I knew what it was, except a lot of Democrats in Washington became more concerned with their cash constituents than they did with their voting constituents."
Matthews: "The money people."
Moyers: "The money people. They started taking their cues-"
Matthews: "From trial lawyers."
Moyers: "-from trial lawyers, corporate, look at, 50 Democrats voted for the bankruptcy bill, which makes it very hard for ordinary people to get a second chance, have a fresh start. That wasn't the trial lawyers. That was the corporate money that was coming. Even Time magazine, I mean, I don't have to quote Marx or Lenin or Nation or The American Prospect, In These Times, The Progressive, I just quote Time magazine, which says we now have a government of the few at the expense of the many. I'm not making that up. That is not Bill Moyers. That's the heart of the Time-Warner imperium. Time magazine says we now have a government of the few at the expense of the many."

# Democrats have abandoned "working people."

Bill Moyers: "But then for those people who had achieved middle class, they had the means now, the luxury now -- I don't mean luxury in living -- but they had the time to think about other things than making a living and making ends meet. That's changing. In fact, what deeply troubles me, and why the Democratic Party is really fumbling this ball is that if you travel the country as I do, and you do often, if you listen to ordinary working people out there, you know that they no longer feel the governing elites understand them or speak for them. Millions of them can hardly pay their bills, and the Democrats are forgetting that those people who were the middle class are slipping and the working class people in this country, the working people in this country can hardly make ends meet."
Matthews: "I watch Sunday television. I never see a really good articulate labor leader on television. What happened to the George Meany and the Walter Ruthers we grew up with? Where are the strong articulate voices of the working person, the working family out there? That voice that you're talking about who worries about trade policy, who worries about tax policy, who worries about being trained for the job, where are those voices on Sunday?"
Moyers: "Or where are they on public broadcasting? I mean, I made a speech recently in which I said you won't hear the losers in the class war even on public broadcasting because we too represent the consensus of the corporate underwriters, the establishment."
Matthews: "No, but they're not, they don't have speakers. I'm telling you I can't think right now of a labor leader that could match wits with a Dick Cheney on television. They don't want to get out there and debate like they used to, the people on the center or on the political left or center left, you tell me who the great spokesmen are for labor right now? Who are the great spokesmen against this administration's trade policies or this administration's tax policies? Who are they?"
Moyers: "There are some wonderful people at the grassroots level, activists taking place, people like Beth Schumann who writes about working people. They're terrific, but they never get on television. We put celebrities on, we put elites on, we put establishment people on, but we never give working people a chance, by the way, to speak for themselves."
Matthews: "Unless you get elected to Congress, then we'll put them on."
Moyers: "You know, you have a better chance of being elected to the legislature in Russia if you're a member of the working class than you do being elected to Congress in this country. Look at what happened in New Jersey this week. Two multimillionaires are going to be running against each other for the Democratic gubernatorial election in November. I mean, you can't do it as a working class person today in this country. It's not just politics, it's a lot of other things. When I went to Washington, Chris, in 1960, the difference between rich and poor was 20 fold. It's 75 fold today. Money has drowned out the conversation of democracy."

# Attacks Tomlinson.

Matthews: "Bill Moyers, public television. You personify it to a large extent. You're the face of big-picture, long-headed thinking, long white papers on important subjects. Are you too liberal for public television?"
Moyers: "Well, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting thinks I am, and the, here's the irony: He was watching television one night, according to what he told the Washington Post -- I'm not making this up either -- the Washington Post two weeks ago says he was watching public television, watching my broadcast. I was doing a documentary about what's happening to the working people of a town in Pennsylvania called Tamaqua, about, they've been devastated -- factories moving out, jobs going to China, to Honduras, Central America. And as he was watching, he told the Washington Post, 'It was more than I could take, liberal advocacy journalism.' He was mistaking liberalism for journalism. I was reporting. These were people talking for themselves, the kind of people in our last segment we were discussing. He couldn't take it. You know why he couldn't take it? Because the one thing ideologues don't want -- and this is my complaint about television today -- the one thing they don't want is reporting from the ground up that defies the party line. And the chairman of the CPB, an ally of Karl Rove, a conservative-"
Matthews: "Ken Tomlinson."
Moyers: "Ken Tomlinson. I've never met him. I've tried to meet him. He didn't want to get together last year when I asked him. He couldn't take the fact that this reporting from the ground about these people you and I know so well was at odds with the official view of reality in Washington, which is, 'Everybody's doing well.'"
Matthews: "Well, Ken used to edit and publish some of my stuff at Reader's Digest, so I'm not going to join you in attacking him."
Moyers: "No, I'm not attacking him."
Matthews: "Let me ask you about that kind of reporting-"
Moyers: "Have him sometime, and let's have-"
Matthews: "Edward R. Murrow reporting, Harvest of Shame, Point of Order, the great broadcast of CBS in the old days. Would he consider those to be too liberal?"
Moyers: "You'd have to ask him, and I would be glad to come on your show with Kenneth Tomlinson anytime you can get him, but here's the thing. You said long white papers, etc., but much of my reporting in the 35 years I've been on public broadcasting has been about real people. I've been out there listening to America, that was the title of my first book. The show that got him so upset was about working class people. I spent the whole decade making four films about two families in Milwaukee who are hardly making it in the new golden economy. That's where my reporting has come from. And it's not my interviews with Joseph Campbell that upset the right, it's reporting about people who are barely holding on."

# America becoming a "class-based society."

Moyers: "On the weekend before George W. Bush's second inauguration, The Economist, The Economist -- the pro-business, pro-capitalist publication that looks at us with keen eyes -- The Economist concluded -- and I'm not making this up -- quote, 'The United States is on its way to becoming a European-style class-based society.' The Wall Street Journal last week said that if you were born, a child born in the last few decades in Europe or in Canada has a better chance of getting out of poverty and experiencing prosperity than the child in this country. And the American Political Science Association, one of the best organizations in this country, concluded that inequality is rising so fast in this country that it threatens the quality of democracy. Those are not left-wing Marxist publications. Those are mainstream business publications deeply concerned about what's happening between the coasts of this country where people are truly in misery."

-- Brent Baker