Taxes

NPR's Nina Totenberg on Friday pleaded with Congress to raise taxes in order to balance the budget. When she did so, her fellow "Inside Washington" panelist Mark Shields, as if at a revival meeting, said "Amen" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Friday's Early Show, CBS's Jeff Glor played up West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller's browbeating of an oil company executive during a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee. The Senator interrupted Chevron Corporation CEO John Watson with a sarcastic reply: "Lovely statement, but do you understand how out of touch that is?" Glor first noted during his news brief 12 minutes into that 7…

Chris Matthews Wednesday actually asked Ron Reagan, "Did [your father] really believe if you lowered the tax rates the government made more money?" Frankly, I'm not sure which was more absurd - the question or the answer (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Here's a safe prediction: The "bipartisan" group of congressmen led by Vice President Joe Biden will fail to solve the $14 trillion debt crisis. Here's another prediction: The Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org/) has developed a formula, made possible by a grant from The Peterson Foundation (www.pgpf.org/), that could balance the budget in 10 years, reduce the debt to 30 percent of gross…

Last November, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell admitted on air to being a socialist. In a segment on "The Last Word" Tuesday addressing how Cuba - a country nearing economic ruin - is moving towards capitalism, O'Donnell said, "We are all socialists in this country who support public education, state funded universities, government-run hospitals, Medicare, Social Security, classic socialistic…

According to a USA Today analysis, Americans are paying a lower percentage of income tax rates now than in the 1970s-1990s – and CNN's Jack Cafferty used this fact Monday to ask if raising taxes should be the first priority in Congress's deficit reduction plan. He hinted that the Treasury could use the extra revenue from higher taxes. Then on Tuesday, CNN Anchor Carol Costello continued the…

In an interview with Speaker of the House John Boehner on Tuesday's Today on NBC, co-host Matt Lauer fretted over the upcoming debate on raising the nation's debt limit: "...after the news surfaced that Osama bin Laden had been killed there was this – a good feeling in this country....Are we going to see that unity shattered in the coming weeks when we start to debate things like the debt…

The Washington Examiner reports that it's been 768 days since the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a budget. What's the big deal? It's not like the nation is facing financial difficulties or anything. I realize it's convenient for President Obama to pretend he's a bystander on fiscal matters when it suits him and to pass the buck that never stops with him back to Congress, but how about a…

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse, whose reporting has been somewhat more balanced of late, reverted to old partisan habits in Monday’s story, "Democrats’ Plan Would Offset Deficit by Ending Big Oil’s Tax Breaks." Hulse pushed Democratic enthusiasm over the party's latest talking points attempting to place Republicans on the defensive, this time managing to find Democratic…

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman Monday wrote another in a series of factually dishonest pieces about budget deficits and what he likes to call 'the Great Recession." In his "The Unwisdom of Elites," the unabashed liberal made numerous falsehoods and omissions to blame our current economic and budget woes exclusively on George W. Bush and "small groups of influential people":

First quarter profits for American oil companies are jaw dropping. Exxon earned nearly $11 billion, up 69 percent from a year ago. Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's largest oil company, announced it made $8.78 billion in the first quarter, a 60 percent increase over last year. Much of it, but not all, is due to higher gas prices, over which the companies have very little control due to our heavy…

Yesterday I critiqued Washington Post staffer Michael Laris's reporting on the Montgomery County [Md.] Council passing into law a 5-cent bag tax effective January 1, 2012. Laris omitted the fact that the county bag tax has a glaring exemption for newspaper bags, including the sleeves that protect home-delivered newspapers from the elements. This was despite the fact that his newspaper's…

Today, the news is all about the U.S. military’s successful elimination of Osama bin Laden (go USA!), but for much of the last two weeks the media have preoccupied themselves with demanding higher taxes and scorning proposed Republican budget cuts as mean-spirited attacks on the poor. The worst of these quotes have been documented in this week’s Notable Quotables newsletter, now posted at…

“This week -- budget blowback,” Christiane Amanpour trumpeted in framing her Sunday look, at reaction to Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s proposed budget plan, through those hostile to it, asserting: “As town halls across America erupt in anger over a plan to slash spending, Republicans find themselves under fire.” Amanpour maintained: “Congressman Ryan is at the center of the storm. It's his…