News Flash: We're Undertaxed
"American tax rates
today are, relatively speaking, low. Repeat, low. About half the top rate in
the rest of the industrialized world. Our sales taxes are equally low. Fact:
the United States is a tax bargain, believe it or not. The difference, of
course, is that in other countries, people see their tax money coming back to
them to make life more agreeable and secure. In Western Europe, health care
for everyone. In Scandinavia, day care centers for mothers and children. In
Japan, modern, efficient cities that work."
- NBC Nightly News anchor Garrick Utley on October 19, Taxpayers
Action Day.
Gun Shots
Dan Rather:
"Richard, is Congress going to do anything to limit these assault
weapons, and if so, what?"
Richard Threlkeld:
"We hope so."
- Exchange on CBS Evening News, October 16.
"The shootings in
Killeen are the latest tragedy highlighting the success of the gun lobby at
fighting gun control."
- Dan Rather, October 23 CBS Evening News.
Deregulation Disaster
"For you, the
American taxpayer and consumer, deregulation has meant fewer airlines and
higher air fares, more unsafe trucks on the highways, and your tax money
diverted to pay for the S&L debacle....The results: There are more rich
people than ever before. There are more poor people than ever before. And the
ranks of those in between are shrinking, their standard of living
falling."
- Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele in
part 5 of America: What Went Wrong, titled "The High Cost of
Deregulation: Joblessness, Bankruptcy, Debt," October 24.
No Headline Plagiarism
"Panel confirms
plagiarism by King at BU"
- Boston Globe, October 11
"Scholars dismiss
plagiarism by King"
- San Francisco Examiner, same day (Thanks to Harry Browne)
We're Just Like Hitler
"[After World War
II] Many of the Germans came to us after the revelations of the horrors of the
concentration camps. They said `We didn't know, we
didn't know' - the tears were rolling down their cheeks. They claimed they
couldn't be held responsible, but they were. They accepted with cheers, and
great enthusiasm, Hitler's clamping down on a free press...Today we're in the
same position."
- Walter Cronkite quoted on Gulf War coverage in the October 22 Philadelphia
Daily News. (Thanks to Jeff Friedberg)
Trickle Down Down
"No one wants to
use that phrase `trickle-down effect' anymore, because it became somewhat out
of vogue during the Reagan years. It was used a lot in the early years in the
Reagan Administration, this trickle-down theory - help the rich and
eventually they will invest more in production and the lower-middle class will
benefit. Most Americans don't really buy that anymore, particularly now that
we're in a recession and we've gone through the Reagan years, the Reagan
revolution."
- NBC White House correspondent John Cochran on C-SPAN, October 17.
Clarence Thomas Confirmation: More Sore Losers
"It's a little late
for Clarence Thomas to be crying racism. Thomas has long been a pal of the
right wingers of the Republican Party, the folks who are least friendly to the
interests of black people. His nomination is strongly supported by the likes
of Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms. He was picked by George Bush, who has
opposed every piece of civil rights legislation to come down the aisle since
the early 1960s. Clarence Thomas has even been endorsed by David Duke, a
Louisiana legislator and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. So it's
pretty cynical now for Thomas to hide behind a charge of racism."
- NBC News reporter Bob Herbert during a Thomas hearings special, October 13.
"I find George
Bush's outrage a little unconvincing. I mean, he has been playing racial
politics for three years and now he's just shocked, shocked that voters might
think they can vote for David Duke on a Republican ticket.....My kudo of the
week goes to all of the women in America who are letting Senators who voted
for Clarence Thomas feel the heat."
- Newsweek Washington reporter Margaret Warner on CNN's Capital
Gang, October 26.
"It wasn't a
high-tech lynching of an uppity black. It also wasn't a concocted charge, and
it wasn't merely one charge. Most of all, the Senate Judiciary Committee's
three-day marathon was anything but an inquisition. The problem is that
Clarence Thomas insisted on making all three preposterous assertions....
everything the judge has done has complicated that dilemma and made his
rejection more justifiable."
- Inside Washington panelist and Boston Globe Washington
columnist Tom Oliphant, October 15 column.
"Bush should also
bear the burden...[for] a Republican team effort not only to nominate Thomas
but to destroy Anita Hill. While Biden bent over backward to be fair to
Thomas' witnesses and to the nominee himself, the Republican team of Senators
called Hill a liar, questioned her sanity for bringing a sexual-harassment
charge, and, by twisting and distorting Hill's statements, concluded she had
committed perjury. This was Willie Horton all over again."
- Robert Healy, former Boston Globe Washington Bureau Chief, October
20.
"Last week, anyway,
the Republicans fought harder and dirtier than the opposition. They
essentially charged that Senate Democrats were McCarthyites and racists. Both
jabs were cynical and hypocritical. McCarthyism, a grossly overused word,
suggests a peddler of innuendo and anonymously sourced slander. Anita Hill was
hardly that. And Thomas claim that he had been victimized for being an 'uppity
black' avoided the inconvenient fact that Hill is black, too. Does the U.S.
Senate really believe that she put herself through this ordeal at the behest
of filthy-minded racists?"
- Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter, October 21.
"How did you like
the moves of the greatest special interest of them all, the Right Wing
Wrecking Crew? Sen. Strom Thurmond, the archenemy of black Americans; the Bush
Leagues, who fight civil rights; and Clarence Thomas, who spent most of his
life running from African-Americans, screaming `racism' when he was up against
the wall. If Anita Hill had been a white woman accusing Thomas of porno-sins,
the charges would have hit like a nuclear bomb."
- USA Today Inquiry Editor Barbara Reynolds, October 18.
Ted's Population Bomb
"We're headed for
an environmental disaster, with the population exploding the way it
is....We're less than 50 years away from a massive die-off of humanity."
- Ted Turner, Talking With David Frost, October 25.
Even Geraldo's Come Around
"My perspective
used to be much more leftist, but as you learn more you realize that some of
the idealistic and simple solutions just aren't workable. You learn that
throwing money at problems is a bankrupt way to go about solving them."
- Geraldo Rivera quoted in The Washington Times, October 18.
Thanks for the Plug
Bryant Gumbel: "The
hypocrites on the Hill are amazing."
Katie Couric: "Oh,
that Brent Bozell. That's going to be in MediaWatch this month."
Gumbel: "Who cares?
Who is he?"
- Exchange about AIDS testing on Today, September 26.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Nicholas Damask, Sally Hood, Marian Kelley, Tim Lamer; Media Analysts
- Jennifer Hardebeck; Circulation Manager