"Has the state's tax burden on homeowners become great enough to start looking at taxing 'intangible' property as well?"
That's how Larry Lange opened his May 22 article for the Seattle P-I website.
While Lange did note conservatives are not keen on the idea and Republicans have alternative ideas for Washington State tax reform, Lange failed to consider how taxing stocks, bonds, loans, trademarks and the like could discourage investment and economic growth.
It seems that every year, American pop culture continues to push the envelope of what is acceptable in society, and 2010 was no different. From Cee-Lo Green’s hit “F**k You” to Enrique Iglesias’ new song set to release next year titled, “I’m F**king You” the “F” word is going mainstream. One has to wonder if the media will ask the question: Is there anything attention-seekers won’t include in a song?
Iglesias is an internationally recognized artist famous for his fairly tame, catchy romantic pop tunes, such as the smashing single “Hero” which topped the UK charts in 2001. But just ten years later, Iglesias has decided to seek more fame with a raunchy new song, set to debut in 2011 called “Tonight (I’m F**king You).” The boundary-pushing lyrics include:
In August 2009, much to the chagrin of leftist environmental activists, the generally liberal electorate of the city of Seattle rejected a 20-cent tax on plastic shopping bags.
In fact, 58 percent of voters voted to reject the proposal, although the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sought to portray the vote as the result of the plastic industry plunking down $1.4 million in advertising opposing the ban.
"Environmental interests, by comparison, only raised about $80,000," the P-I lamented.
Now nearly a year later, the P-I's Amy Rolph seems to think Seattle residents may be "jealous" that Portland, Oregon politicians are looking towards an outright ban of the dreaded plastic scourge!:
News outlets across the country have latched on to a survey that suggests TEA party supporters tend to be resentful toward minorities. Newsweek published two different pieces on the same item, while a handful of newspapers also gleefully relayed the findings.
There are just a few problems. First, the survey was conducted by a University of Washington professor bent on proving racism exists against President Obama. Second, his entire sample of white TEA party supporters comprised exactly 117 people. Finally, many of the questions had nothing to do with racial resentment.
But we can't have facts getting in the way of a media narrative.
As soon as the survey was released April 7, news outlets were all over it pushing the survey results as empirical evidence, and many not even pretending to sound neutral on the subject. The leader of the study, Political Science professor Christopher Parker, was not asked about his own political leanings or his apparent pre-occupation with finding racism afoot.
First up to bat was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, whose blog writer Scott Sunde promoted the survey without question on April 8:
Headlines can be an excellent window into the biases, albeit sometimes subtle, of editors. An AP story about a gun rights case, McDonald v. Chicago, challenging the Windy City's handgun ban before the Supreme Court today is one such example.
"High court looks at reach of Second Amendment" reads the headline the Associated Press assigned its story by Mark Sherman.
The AP's headline is pretty straightforward and unbiased. As Sherman reported in his story, the controversy in question is whether the ruling in Heller extends to the states or if the ruling only forbids the federal and D.C. governments from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms.
Yet at least two media outlets picking up on Sherman's story opted for more loaded headlines.
Watching the media's inability to find relevant investigative news during the Obama era is like watching a bald-headed fellow named Fudd hunting for ‘wabbit'.
Such is the case of the main stream media's complete and utter ignorance involving the administration recently steering a $25 million no-bid contract to a Democratic campaign contributor.
While Fox News reporter James Rosen did an in-depth investigative report (and follow up) on the deal with Checchi & Company - despite working for what the administration considers a non-news network - the entire media establishment had ignored a significant reneging of campaign promises, right up until that deal was canceled.
Doing his best impersonation of a crystal ball, NewsBuster Tom Blumer correctly foretold the future when he questioned the media response to the story:
"Will the rest of the establishment press risk the tattered remnants of its credibility, follow the White House's suggestion, and ignore the story because it's coming from Fox?"
The answer...
Some in the liberal media continue to insist that James O'Keefe and his three cohorts were trying to "bug" or "tap" Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone lines when law enforcement officials have clearly said that they were not. Since the left doesn't like O'Keefe, the liberal media seems to think standard practices of journalistic integrity don't apply here.
According to MSNBC, one law enforcement official, who was not named, said "the four men arrested for attempting to tamper with the phones in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) were not trying to intercept or wiretap the calls." This statement comports with the affidavit filed in court after O'Keefe and company were arrested, which did not mention wiretapping or bugging, and only referred to the "tampering" of phone lines (h/t Patterico).
But the Boston Globe parroted this false accusation this morning in a gossip blog post about one of the alleged perpetrators, Joe Basel. The Globe--the same Globe that complained about ACORN's "trial-by-video"--called him a "political dirty trickster who was busted in a Watergate-style bugging operation earlier this week," and said again a couple paragraphs later that Basel was "bagged by the feds allegedly trying to bug the phones" in Landrieu's office. At least the Globe writers said "allegedly" the second time.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which since mid-March has been published solely online, greeted visitors to its Web page today with links to opinion pieces or cartoons critical of the April 15 Tea Parties (see screencap at right).
In the upper right-hand corner, under a picture of Seattleites at a tea party protest, were links to
No ostensibly objective news stories by P-I staffers covering the protests were teased.
Ironically, yesterday afternoon P-I "Big Blog" editor Monica Guzman gave her readers a look at how a new study shows "Political news browsing is getting more partisan.":
Unable to find a buyer for its print operation, Hearst Newspapers has opted to convert the Seattle Post-Intelligencer into an online-only operation.:
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will roll off the presses for the last time Tuesday, ending a 146-year run.
The Hearst Corp. announced Monday that it would stop publishing the newspaper, Seattle's oldest business, and cease delivery to more than 117,600 weekday readers.
The company, however, said it will maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation's largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.
"Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time," Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby told a silent newsroom Monday morning. "But the bloodline will live on."
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which first rolled off the presses during the Lincoln administration, is up for sale.
Personally, I think a better investment is letting out a D.C. apartment for the inauguration:
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which first rolled off the presses in 1863 and has been the state's longest-publishing newspaper, is up for sale.
"Garbage piles up, even after snow has melted," reads a December 29 Seattle Post-Intelligencer story posted to the Web site Sunday evening. Yet nowhere in the story by staffers Brad Wong or Eric Nalder was any blame for the garbage glut laid at the doorstep of the city's Democratic chief executive.
Mayor Greg Nickels may be partly to blame for the trash backlog because of his stubborn refusal to salt the roads during the Emerald City's latest snowstorms. Indeed, as the Seattle Times reported, the city's streets were left snow-packed "by design" (h/t Fausta):
To hear the city's spin, Seattle's road crews are making "great progress" in clearing the ice-caked streets.
But it turns out "plowed streets" in Seattle actually means "snow-packed," as in there's snow and ice left on major arterials by design.
With just nine days until Thanksgiving, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer saw fit to find a way to rain on the holiday that pretty much any American can and does celebrate regardless of religious background or ethnicity. Yet on the hunt for unbridled leftist anger in her November 18 article -- "Making peace with Thanksgiving; Holiday still hurts for some Native Americans" -- the best the paper's Kery Murakami came up with was some local Indians who have "forged their own memories and their own meaning for Thanksgiving -- and none of it has to do with Pilgrims."Unfortunately for her readers, Murakami's reporting only furthered the myth that Thanksgiving celebrations today have any real historical continuity with the 1621 celebration. In point of fact, Thanksgiving traces back to President Abraham Lincoln's declaration of a such a holiday in 1863, which subsequent presidents followed and Congress enacted into law in 1941. From the History Channel's Web site: