Op-Ed Columnist - The Government War - NYTimes.com

In these columns I try to give voice to a philosophy you might call progressive conservatism. It starts with the wisdom of Edmund Burke — the belief that the world is more complex than we can know and we should be skeptical of handing too much power to government planners. It layers in a dose of Hamiltonian optimism — the belief that limited but energetic government can nonetheless successfully enhance opportunity and social mobility.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Government War - NYTimes.com

Why we need ACORN

Why we need ACORN

TV Guide Magazine | News | Is TV Starting a New Civil War?

In a U.S. torn by dissent over health care, immigration and Barack Obama, rhetorical rage is the new norm. Just turn on Fox News and MSNBC. Partisan talkers like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity on the conservative-leaning FNC and Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz on their liberal counterpart MSNBC inflame their eager fans with colorful, merciless and sometimes misleading attacks on the opposition.

A generation ago, no matter how divided their politics, Americans got their news from the same source—“the lame stream media,” to quote Fox contributor Sarah Palin. Almost the entire country was watching back in 1968 when CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite declared the Vietnam War not winnable. Four years later, he was deemed the most trusted man in America.

TV Guide Magazine | News | Is TV Starting a New Civil War?

The Evening Sun | Government is us, not them

The number is startling. Only 22 percent of Americans “trust the government in Washington almost always or most of the time,” according to the Pew Research Center. “Trust in government rarely gets this low,” said Andrew Kohut, the center’s director. This is a dangerous trend because it reflects our growing inability to trust one another, to work together to solve common problems. And Lord knows we have them: from warring terrorists and warming temperatures to the demographic car bomb of retiring baby boomers that’s about to explode.

Link for more:

http://www.evesun.com/news/stories/2010-04-23/9469/Government-is-us-not-them/

The Evening Sun | Government is us, not them

Bill Moyers Journal: Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Crocodile Tears on Wall Street

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Crocodile Tears on Wall Street

With all due respect, we can only wish those Tea Party activists who gathered in Washington and other cities this week weren't so single-minded about just who's responsible for all their troubles, real and imagined. They're up in arms, so to speak, against Big Government, especially the Obama administration.

If they thought this through, they'd be joining forces with other grassroots Americans who in the coming weeks will be demonstrating in Washington and other cities against High Finance, taking on Wall Street and the country's biggest banks.

The original Tea Party, remember, wasn't directed just against the British redcoats. Colonial patriots also took aim at the East India Company. That was the joint-stock enterprise originally chartered by the first Queen Elizabeth. Over the years, the government granted them special rights and privileges, which the owners turned into a monopoly over trade, including tea.


Bill Moyers Journal: Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Crocodile Tears on Wall Street

Where Does the Money Go?

Americans paid a lower share of their national income in taxes in 2009 than at any time since 1950. Thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 98 percent of working families got a tax cut this year. The rich, too, have been treated very kindly by the tax code in recent years. The top marginal tax rate on income is fully half of what it was 30 years ago, and the top rate on capital gains is at its lowest point since 1933

Where Does the Money Go?

Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go? - TaxDay 2010 | National Priorities Project

With this publication, taxpayers can take stock of how the federal government spent each 2009 income tax dollar: from 26.5 cents for military-related spending to 13.6 cents for military and non-military interest on the debt to 2 cents for education. The publication also shows, in addition to individual income taxes, where the money came from in 2009 to pay for the federal spending




Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go? - TaxDay 2010 | National Priorities Project

http://blog.cagle.com/2010/04/08/dont-repeat-this-history/

http://blog.cagle.com/2010/04/08/dont-repeat-this-history/

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Looking out from the harbor here, it’s easy to imagine a mortar lighting up the night sky as it hurtled toward Fort Sumter and signaled the start of the Civil War. It’s also easy, standing inside the walls of the island garrison, to view today’s nullification battle over health care less as a frivolous political game and more as a serious threat to the Constitution.

Michael Gerson - Tone down the hatefulness in politics

Michael Gerson - Tone down the hatefulness in politics
What is so wrong about Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declaring April to be Confederate History Month? Can't we respect Robert E. Lee's high-minded sense of honor? The average Confederate soldier's outnumbered stubbornness?

Americans can appreciate these things, and do. But when a public official celebrates Confederate history without mentioning slavery, there is a problem.

The historical context of secession was the defense of slavery

Deficit Fascinates Media—Its Causes, Not So Much

Deficit Fascinates Media—Its Causes, Not So Much

The role of George W. Bush’s tax cuts in the current federal deficit is tremendous. Their role in corporate media’s current round of deficit obsession, however, is tenuous at best. Sometimes acknowledged in editorials or op-eds, the cuts generally only make it into news reports as assertions from the White House or Democrats, rather than established and relevant economic fact.

Republican obstructionism /Consortiumnews.com

Consortiumnews.com

Washington’s conventional wisdom for explaining the intensity of Republican obstructionism toward President Barack Obama breaks down one of two ways: either it’s a philosophical disagreement over the role of government or a desperate need to stay in line with a radicalized right-wing base.