Taxes

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared on all three major morning shows, on Wednesday, and was pressed by ABC, CBS and NBC's anchors about whether or not the President would fold and compromise with the Republicans on keeping the Bush era tax cuts in place - but it was the Today show's Meredith Vieira that hit him the strongest question from the left as she asked Gibbs what kind of "…

Covering President Barack Obama’s White House meeting with congressional leaders, ABC and CBS portrayed incoming House Republicans as the ones obstinate about tax rates, refusing to compromise – meaning agreeing to Obama’s wish to raise income tax rates on many – or match Obama’s conciliatory tone, though NBC’s Chuck Todd pointed out how Obama “seemed unwilling” to even agree with a Democratic…

Playing the role of negotiator for the Democrats, Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday pressed Senator John McCain to "move the President's way" on extending the Bush tax cuts. He also oddly spun such a continuation as a "tax cut" for millionaires. The ABC anchor lobbied McCain, asserting, "[Obama] moved your way on this freeze of all pay for federal workers. Are you…

At a time when the American mood has turned against excessive government spending, Christiane Amanpour devoted Sunday’s This Week to four liberal Democratic billionaires, though she failed to identify their political orientation, who want higher income tax rates on the wealthy. Unmentioned during the pre-taped interviews with Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, Ted Turner and Tom Steyer…

There are times when one has to think the Manhattan building that is the home of the New York Times doesn't have any windows, doesn't have any television sets, and doesn't have any doors that allow employees to venture out and actually see what's happening in America beyond the walls of 620 Eighth Avenue. Consider that after the impact the Tea Party has had on our nation's politics the past…

In separate reports for the Associated Press during the past week, Christopher Rugaber and Jeannine Aversa, economics writers for the wire service, each dealt with estimates for next year's average unemployment rate. They came back with significantly different predictions for 2011 without recognizing how widely those estimates varied. On Tuesday, Rugaber dealt with the Federal Reserve's…

With all but one of the House races now resolved, Republicans have picked up at least 63 seats, the most in a midterm election since 1938. So, it might be fun on this Thanksgiving Day to recall how, just 18 months ago, Time's Michael Grunwald was arguing in a big cover story that demography and its "extremely conservative" philosophy meant the Republican Party could be on the verge of…

Isn't Rachel Maddow supposed to be the smart one at MSNBC? You'd never know it when she talks taxes. Either that or she's engaged in a pattern of deception that would bring a blush to Bernie Madoff.  Here's Maddow on her show Thursday (first part of embedded video, below page break) --

I owe Ottmar Edenhofer thanks for two things. First, I am grateful that Edenhofer, a German economist who is "co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change," has a last name on which searching is easy. I quickly determined that his name last name doesn't currently come up in searches at the Associated Press's main web…

San Francisco and Los Angeles must be having a competition to see which California city is most committed to passing inane liberal legislation. Given the move by Los Angeles County today to ban plastic bags and impose a paper bag tax, I'm going to have to go with L.A. The Los Angeles Times' L.A. Now blog has the story:

For the second time in two days, Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday lobbied for tax increases, wondering why it's "okay" for the "wealthiest Americans" to continue to receive a tax cut. The GMA host pushed Congresswoman Michele Bachmann to accept a deal in exchange for extending the Bush tax cuts. After the conservative leader expressed skepticism about extending…

During Monday's12PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Contessa Brewer helped promote the network's "Green is Progress" week by demanding greater government intervention to force people to follow an environmentalist agenda: "Until government says these are the standards that everyone has to aspire to, we're not really making progress." Brewer made the comments while interviewing Practically Green CEO…

Every week, we receive more bad news about the American economy. Last week was no exception. The Fed began monetizing the national debt, while China's gross domestic product for the third quarter expanded 8.9 percent from the previous quarter, Dagong (the Chinese quasi-government ratings agency) downgraded the credit rating of the United States, and billionaire George Soros expanded his…

Former top Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos on Monday pestered his old White House colleague Erskine Bowles on the need to let the Bush tax cuts expire. The Good Morning America co-host also touted the critique of liberal columnist Paul Krugman in opposition to a panel calling for deficit reduction. Stephanopoulos pushed Bowles, the co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal…