Nice work, press corps!
by David Atkins
Reality:
Americans paid the lowest tax rates in 30 years to the federal government in 2009, in part because of tax cuts President Obama sought to combat the Great Recession, congressional budget analysts said Tuesday.
Fantasy (courtesy Freedomworks in July 2009):
From the East to West Coasts and in the heartland in between, and to the wilds of Alaska, the Tea Party tax protests are enthusiastically continuing. Over the July 4 holiday, TEA (Taxed Enough Already?) Party rallies are already planned in 1,267 cities and towns across the nation, and the list grows longer as more volunteers who feel they have been taxed enough join the effort."
Corporations with record profits, mass unemployment, declining wages, and the lowest tax rates in 30 years, just 8 years after a two-term disaster of a Republican turned a government surplus into significant deficits.
This was the environment in which the "Taxed Enough Already" conservative Republican anti-government protests took place in 2009.
That this was allowed to take place without the full mockery and revulsion of every serious press analyst was the biggest media failure since their failure to catch the housing and derivatives bubble in 2007. But I suppose the press corps could be forgiven for those failures given its success in pursuing the politicization of the justice department mere months after bloggers first uncovered it, its intrepid work in countering the lying Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, its probing queries of government evidence that saved us from the invasion of Iraq, its proud defense of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, its brilliant reporting on the Florida election in 2000, and its laudable success in reducing the number of people who believe that climate change is real despite mounting evidence.
A round of applause for everyone.
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