Category Archives: Media

Where’s the T word?

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I’ve read and re-read the April 23, 2012 Post-Dispatch lead article, “I-70 toll proposal hits Senate roadblock,” but I can’t find a single occurrence of the word “taxes.”

The article focuses on a bill in the Missouri Senate that would have authorized tolls as part of a public-private partnership to rebuild a 200-mile stretch of I-70 across the middle of the state. The proposal, it appears, is dead for 2012—killed by the trucking industry, gas station owners, and operators of convenience stores. [I don't blame them, by the way. But that's another post.]

The problem is that just about everyone—even the proposal’s strongest opponents—agree that something needs to be done to keep Missouri’s highway infrastructure up to par. But everyone dances around the real solution: increasing state revenue by taxing everyone a little bit more, perhaps, even via a higher tax on every gallon of gas.

But no one even utters the word “tax.” Not even the press. Here are some examples, from the P-D article:

…something needs to be done to shore up funding for Missouri’s transportation needs, and [he] predicted that a solution will emerge in the upcoming years.

Something. Not taxes. Just something, plus a solution that dare not speak its name.

This summer and fall, Missouri lawmakers will convene interim hearings on transportation needs and funding.

Could “funding” mean taxes? In reality, it probably should. But you can’t say that in America today.

One goal…is to increase public awareness of the transportation funding need and ways to pay for them.

What might those “ways to pay for them” be, I wonder? Certainly, not increased taxes, right?

Without a new funding source…the state will not be able to reconstruct I-70—a project that many believe is needed.

A new funding source? I guess that means that the old funding source—taxes that everyone chips in to—is not on the table. Whatever happened to everyone pitching in their fair share, for the general public good? We all use the roads and derive economic and social benefits from them.

I find the absence of the “t” word very disturbing. Our political dialogue has been hijacked by anti-tax conservatives. We live in a tax-free-discussion zone, and the media—as exemplified by this P-D article—are complicit, un-indicted co-conspirators.

I suspect that every politician in America—including the anti-tax ideologues—knows that he or she—and the lobbyists they work for—benefit every day from the services that are funded by taxes, and that they all know that, in the end, fair taxation is essential to maintaining the quality of American life that they hold so dear. [Even St. Ronald Reagan raised taxes.]  But until we all get real about these conversations—and until the media stops parroting conservative anti-tax themes—we’re going nowhere fast.

 

Bill Maher brings the f word to St. Charles Family Arena

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Bill Maher at the St. Charles Family Arena is about as oxymoronic as it gets. As a member of the audience [April 15, 2012], I dug his irreverent, cynical, no-holds-barred take on American life and politics. But I must say that I was puzzled by the choice of venue. I didn’t know they allowed anyone to use the “f” word in the Family Arena even once—let alone the dozens of times Maher said it and graphically described the act itself. I guess the booking fee and the prospect of a profitable show [tickets started at about $40 and went way up from there] can help one get over one’s objections to objectionable material, eh?

And there was plenty to object to, if you’re a churchgoer, or any kind of Republican —which obviously I’m not–or even someone who can find no fault with President Obama.

In his trademark, drippingly sarcastic tone, Maher took on Mitt Romney [“He wants to run government like a business? Does he know that most businesses fail in the first four years?”], Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and the entire spectrum of Republican candidates and voters [“know-nothings, many of whom think Darwin was the husband on Bewitched”]. His well-known anti-religion views were on full display, too. He savaged the Catholic church, the Pope and the Bishops [“men who go to work in dunce caps and dresses] and religion in general. [“My main question to believers is, ‘How do you know?’Christians believe that when you die, you’ll go to Heaven, and Jesus will be sitting on the right side of God. Of course, we know this because we have the seating chart, right? And about those 72 virgins for Islamic suicide bombers: why not 73 or 71? How do you know?’”]

I wasn’t surprised by Maher’s style, or his topics, or his views. What surprised me was that about 2,500 Maher sympathizers came to the show. Obviously, Maher’s management team knows its market, and they had already figured out that there would be an audience. But I’m sure that a lot of the audience must have come from zip codes other than those in the St. Charles area [although the biggest cheer of the evening came in response to Maher’s comments about meth labs—a generally exurban pursuit.] And I must say that I was pleasantly surprised that leftie-type Maher enthusiasts—many of whom reside in zip codes closer to St. Louis’ “divine spine”—were actually willing to venture not just west of Lindbergh Blvd., but also west of I-270 and across the Missouri River. I guess, in a not-funny-at-all, Fox News-dominated world, we’re so starved for comedic balance that we’ll drive right out of our comfort zones to find it.

KMOV’s Larry Conners’ gratuitous attack on President Obama

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Granted a brief interview with President Obama earlier this week, KMOV’s Larry Conners used the opportunity to attack the President on…what?…His family vacations?  I’m an unashamed supporter of the President, but even I have a few questions about his policies. So, if I had a few minutes in which to sit face-to-face with the man, I certainly wouldn’t use them to question the cost and frequency of the vacations he takes with his family. And neither should Conners. His out-of-right-field sneak attack seemed more like an attempt to create a sensational lead-in headline for his news show and to score points with Obama-hating viewers than a serious journalistic effort.

The President was clearly taken aback by Conners’ inappropriate and gratuitous attack focused on a non-issue. Conners actually implied that the President was inappropriately using taxpayers’ money for his personal entertainment. Here’s what he said:

“…viewers are complaining … they get frustrated and even angered when they see the First Family jetting around different vacations and so forth, sometimes maybe they think under the color of state business and that you’re out of touch, you really don’t know what they’re experiencing right now.”

And in his follow-up commentary, Conners pounced on the President for “dodging the question.”  Of course he dodged it: the question didn’t deserve an answer, as it’s based on a false premise and flies in the face of the facts. Ask a serious question, and you’ll get a serious answer. This question didn’t qualify.

Don’t get me wrong: I want to see journalists asking tough questions and challenging politicians when they make false claims. They don’t do enough of that, and they let too many politicians get away with statements that are unfounded in reality. But Conners wasn’t acting as a journalist here: He was serving as a right-wing attack dog–portraying President Obama as out of touch with “real” Americans, perhaps as a way of deflecting attention from Mitt Romney’s own detachment from the day-to-day concerns of people with far less money than he has. It’s the 2012 version of swiftboating. Maybe Conners was taking this talking point on a test flight, to see if it would fly as a Republican campaign issue for the November election. Whatever he was doing,  Conners’ employers at KMOV should be embarrassed.