Good news, everyone: the FCC votes to ban TV stations from owning other TV stations in the same market by "recruit(ing) or creat(ing) a separate corporate entity to own the station" in order to evade media consolidation rules. TV owners (some of whom, like Sinclair and Gannett, are actually very big) complain they need loopholes like these to "compete with pay TV giants," which -- since they do not actually address any of our complaints about the slashed newsroom staffs and cookie-cutter news reports -- translates roughly as "we deserve more money for not doing any useful work."
The Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) puts out a report enticingly entitled "The Disappearing Corporate Tax Base," which shows us how we could get corporations (which just enjoyed another year of record profits in the middle of Our Ongoing Economic Armageddon) to pay more of their share. Hopefully you'll recognize the good ideas -- a financial transaction or "Robin Hood" tax, taxing investment income the same as almost every other kind of income, ending deferral of offshore profits. Also, hopefully, you'll be able to answer the inevitable BUT HOW WILLZ THA CORPORASHUNZ CREATEZ TEH JOBZ!!!! line with "well, look at what a terrible job they've been doing at that for the last dozen years when we haven't been treating them like the wayward brats they are."
Ho hum, another year, another Paul Ryan budget proposal that makes massive cuts to programs people need, gives millionaires yet more tax cuts they won't use to spur the economy, thinks repealing the Affordable Care Act will save money, and assumes that all the deficit-cutting will spur economic growth, when we all know by now that you have to spend money to make money. I'll admit the Washington Post, in its article, doesn't fawn over him like it used to, but where is the investigative reporting from our "liberal" media that will expose this new budget for the fecal blast it is?
The incomparable Alex Pareene writes about "The great Tea Party swindle: How to make lots of money off the naive." Long story short: "They just raise money and spend it on themselves and their friends." Long story somewhat longer: "they are all spending quite a bit on overhead and 'office expenses' and travel and not that much on actual candidates." Ever hear right-wingers complain that liberal policy initiatives are little more than handouts for liberal cronies? Nice to see the Tea Party is so much different than all of that.
Finally, Duncan Black, who's written a lot about the Iraq war, reminds us why we opposed it, and why we still oppose it. To wit: "Those of us who were against it were against it, in part, because it didn't make any fucking sense at all...The stated reasons were bullshit, the implicit reasons were gibberish." The historians will do little better.
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