The Wall Street Journal

www.wsj.com

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Top 1% Pay 35%
December 20, 2006; Page A18

Maybe our liberal friends are onto something. They keep saying the rich should pay more taxes, and it turns out the rich already are! That's one of the valuable lessons from the IRS's annual study of income tax data, just released for 2004.

Americans who earned more than $1 million in adjusted gross income paid $178 billion, or an average of $740,000 per filer, in income taxes in 2004. That's up about one-third from 2002, the year before the Bush tax cuts in marginal income-tax and dividend and capital gains rates. The wealthiest 1% of tax filers paid a remarkable 35% of all individual income-tax payments that year.

Yes, we know: Some will claim that this merely shows that the Bush tax cuts made the rich richer. In fact, the Statistics of Income data reveal that there were more Americans filing taxes in every income category from $50,000 and up in 2004. In other words, Americans across income categories were (and are) making more money thanks to the buoyant economy spurred in part by the tax cut.

Here's a way to think of the distribution of current income-tax payments: Imagine a banquet attended by 100 random Americans. If the bill for the meal is distributed like the income tax, the richest person in the room is required to pay one-third of the tab -- or more than all 50 attendees with a below-average income. The three richest people are charged as much as the other 97. And the 30 or so lowest-income people in the room -- those with a family income of $30,000 or less -- pay nothing and eat for free.

This is by any definition a "progressive" tax system. Make that highly progressive. It's true that lower-income workers are also dunned with payroll taxes, but that still doesn't do much to alter the fact that the current tax code really does soak the rich.

The 2004 tax and income statistics also show that reported taxable income rose from 2002 to 2004 despite the cuts in tax rates. Reported taxable income from those in the highest tax bracket rose by 39%; dividend income was up 42%, and income reported from capital gains nearly doubled (up 98%). As for capital gains tax collections, they were roughly 50% higher in 2004 than before the tax cut. Another chestnut of good news is that small business net income surged 24.4% in 2004 from a year earlier. The financial health of these small and often entrepreneurial companies no doubt helps explain the strong job market.

Meanwhile, a separate report that tracks monthly tax collections shows that revenues keep flowing into the Treasury. In the first two months of Fiscal 2007, through November, tax receipts climbed by 9% despite the slowdown in GDP growth. This is on top of the increase in federal tax receipts of nearly 15% in 2005, and another almost 12% in fiscal 2006, which took the federal budget deficit down to 1.8% of GDP -- lower than the average for the last 25 years.

It's true that if the economy hits the skids in 2007, this revenue tidal wave will break. But that's all the more reason to ignore the pleas from our liberal friends to raise taxes. If House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi wants to keep revenues flowing to pay for her priorities, the best thing she can do is leave the lower Bush tax rates alone to soak the rich some more.

The Wall Street Journal

COMMENTARY: THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW

Michael Gerson

Mr. Compassionate Conservatism

By:  Naomi Schaefer Riley
October 21, 2006

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Amid the cut and thrust of the midterm elections, two questions have frothed up within the recesses of the GOP -- almost as an arcane distraction from the squalid business of holding on to House and Senate: Has compassionate conservatism worked? And should Republicans try it again?

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey has made his position plain. In a recent open letter from his organization, Freedomworks, he assailed some leaders of the religious right, suggesting that if Republicans lose in November it would be because they have abandoned the principle of limited government in favor of embracing government for supposedly conservative ends. Meanwhile, David Kuo, former deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has complained in recent interviews and op-eds that the biggest promises of compassionate conservatism, especially the support of faith-based initiatives, have been broken.

Perhaps the best person to sort out this business is Michael Gerson, George W. Bush's chief speechwriter from the beginning of his presidential campaign through the end of his first term, and then White House senior policy adviser until June. Now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Gerson is plotting a book about the future of conservatism. He has been giving a lot of thought to its history.

Known around the White House as "Mr. Compassionate Conservatism," Mr. Gerson tells me: "I think it's a political truth that one reason we won the 2000 election was that Republicans finally had a message on education and welfare. In 2008, they will have to have something other than a simplistic antigovernment message." In Mr. Gerson's view, "compassionate conservatism is the theory that the government should encourage the effective provision of social services without providing the service itself." It was, in effect, a conservative twofer: limiting the scope of government and empowering faith-based institutions by entrusting to the latter services that had traditionally been performed by the former. Or so the thinking went.

*             *             *

We're in the sparsely decorated living room of Mr. Gerson's modest Alexandria home.  An unassuming man who sits on the edge of his seat and nervously shakes his legs, he is regarded by people on both sides of the aisle as on of the most influential modern speechwriters.  His rhetoric, they say, didn't just describe the president's policies, it helped shape them.

Mr. Gerson acknowledges that the antigovernment impulse "has a lot of intellectual energy" and has produced some "very healthy institutions and smart people with important policy prescriptions." But he is more interested in the strain of conservatism that is drawn from Catholic social thought, which stresses that human beings are responsible for others' welfare, and that the functions of society ought to be performed by the most local authority possible.

Yet Mr. Gerson is an evangelical, not a Catholic. And before being hired by the president, he worked for two other prominent evangelicals, both of whom he counts among the pioneers of compassionate conservatism: Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson and Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana.  Mr. Colson plucked Mr. Gerson from Wheaton College (Billy Graham's alma mater) in 1986, where he studies theology.  Wheaton has no Catholics on its faculty, but has led and intellectual charge to get evangelicals to think more about Catholic teachings.  "It's almosst a shame to say, "Mr. Gerson laments, "but evangelicalism doesn't have that rich a tradition, so you look for other sources that represent an authentic Christian witness in society."

Mr. Gerson's debt to Catholic teachings is also apparent on issues such as immigration. I asked him why, when most religious groups lined up this year to support the president's immigration proposals, evangelicals were noticeably absent. "There has been a significant history of Catholic reflection on immigration," Mr. Gerson says. He believes that a more "conspicuously global church" like the Catholic one is more likely to realize "that human beings in every culture and across every border have a radical equality before God." He also believes that evangelicals (and many secular Republicans) have succumbed "to one of the traditional temptations of conservatism": defining our national identity in terms of culture instead of ideals.

Mr. Gerson sees this temptation "reflected in our argument about democracy in the Middle East." Must there be a "democratic culture" before one can have a democracy? Mr. Gerson says that democracy took hold despite Confucianism in Asia, Catholicism in southern Europe and Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe. "All of these," Mr. Gerson notes, "were regarded as cultural impediments to democratic progress. In fact our ideals, the ideals of freedom, turned out to be more appealing than we thought." Mr. Gerson is confident that the same will prove true in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I have a deep belief that liberty improves human life. . . . People eventually find that to be true, but that doesn't mean they immediately find it to be true."

Mr. Gerson looks back on the last few years of trying to spread freedom as "a time of exhausting international engagement on a variety of fronts." And he doesn't see it ending any time soon. But if the war on terror is really going to occupy our focus for the foreseeable future, why should Republicans run on improving education and ending poverty? Did 9/11 spell the end of compassionate conservatism?

Mr. Gerson believes the answer is no; the administration's foreign policy, he says, represents an expansion of the philosophy of compassionate conservatism. Bringing freedom and democracy to other parts of the globe has required military action, but Mr. Gerson is annoyed by Mr. Bush's critics on the left who say the president only uses force to solve global problems. "The administration's increases in foreign assistance have percentage-wise been the largest since the Marshall Plan," he notes.

He is more defensive, though, when it comes to domestic spending. Mr. Gerson justifies the ballooning federal budget in two ways. First, he notes that a lot of the spending has been on security: "I think it's largely and unfairly ignored that much of the spending increases that have occurred took place in the first term as a reaction to 9/11."

But Mr. Gerson also acknowledges that "there is a genuine argument about the role of government that is going on." And he asserts that the president has been nothing if not honest about where he comes down in that argument. "It should not have surprised anyone that President Bush was going to sign on to the Medicare prescription-drug benefit because he campaigned on it in 1999. And it should not have surprised anyone that he was going to define a federal role in education to raise standards because it was one of his main promises as a candidate."

Other proposals, though, like Social Security reform, which would have appeased the party's more libertarian wing, have fallen by the wayside. He suggests that the country's polarization is a significant part of the problem. The war has contributed to this embittered atmosphere, but Mr. Gerson believes that religious divisions in this country are also a factor. "I think religion raises the temperature of a lot of debates, and it becomes a cultural clash." He blames the religious right for "taking Republican policy prescriptions and baptizing them -- making them into requirements of conscience."

Of course, this "baptizing" has helped Republicans, not least the president, to garner votes. But he also observes "an abdication on the part of the Democratic Party, [which has] an almost active hostility to people of faith and religiously informed reasoning in public debate."

           As a young man -- I picture a slightly more awkward and more agitated version of the one sitting before me -- Mr. Gerson was a fan of Jimmy Carter, but he broke ranks over abortion. Still, he believes that Democrats could win back religious folks some day. "There was a time in American history not too long ago where the most prominent evangelical was also the leading Democrat in the country. [William Jennings Bryan] didn't see any inconsistency in those things and I don't, to some extent."

Whatever its benefits for the Republicans, Mr. Gerson believes it is "unhealthy" that one party is secular and one party is religious. "My view" he tells me, "is summarized by Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that the church should not be the master of the state, or the servant of the state. It should be the conscience of the state."

He believes that conscience is especially needed for bioethical questions. He compares the utilitarian arguments of the president's critics -- "they believe that medical research should proceed with very few limits because it will benefit many people" -- with the supporters of popular sovereignty during Lincoln's time.  "Yes we're a democracy," he acknowledges, "but we're a democracy that believes all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights." 

Mr. Gerson punctuates his speech, the way he punctuated the president's speeches, with biblical references, and he has been accused of making the president speak in a kind of religious code -- indeed, Mr. Kuo recently suggested this. But Mr. Gerson says he isn't trying to hide anything and there are "tens of millions of people" for whom references to the Bible are "very familiar."

*             *             *

But the president's rhetoric has come under fire from the right as well. After the second inaugural, this newspaper's Peggy Noonan criticized what she saw as the president's utopianism: "Tyranny," she wrote, "is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth." Mr. Gerson again has little patience for this argument: "There is always tension between the ideals of rhetoric and the messy circumstances of the world." But he argues, as our conversation reaches crescendo, "I have no idea why that would argue that you give up on setting out the ideals."

And here is where you see Mr. Gerson's gift. The president's critics, he knows, decry America's use of power as hypocritical -- that this country claims to look out for the oppressed when really we're the oppressor. In reply, Mr. Gerson picks the Founder many now think of as the biggest hypocrite of all: Thomas Jefferson. "Even though he was inconsistent in his own life, he set out an ideal that improved and motivated and guided American history from that day to this." That, he says, "is the best role of political rhetoric."

Ms. Riley is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's Taste page.

The Wall Street Journal

Review & Outlook

Back to the Congressional Future

With a little more than two months to go before midterm elections, the polls show Democrats well positioned by win the House after 12 years out of power.  So it’s not too soon to consider who these Democrats are and how they will govern.

            All the more so because we’ve seen most of these faces and their agenda before.  While Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi would be a new Speaker of the House, the 19 primary committee chairmen who would dominate hearings, issue subpoenas and write legislation are agents of change only in the sense of going back to the future.  They represent the same liberal priorities that bedeviled Bill Clinton’s attempt to govern as a New Democrat from 1993-94, and before that Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.  To pick one example, 13 of the 19 voted against the welfare reform that Mr. Clinton signed in 1996 and hailed this month as a triumph of “bipartisanship.” 

            Republicans have done little to deserve reelection, and so perhaps voters will ignore Democratic priorities.  But one of the ironies of current politics is that a swing in only 15 House seats would result in a huge ideological shift in the legislative agenda.  Most of the House seats in play are “swing” districts held by political moderates.  The most liberal seats also tend to be the safest and thus are held by Members who can stay around for the decades needed to become chairmen.  Their agenda is not the one those “swing” voters would be endorsing. 

*                      *                      *

            Consider the men likely to run the Judiciary Committee, Michigan’s John Conyers, from the Congressional class of 1964.  He recently made his plans clear in a 370-page report, “The Constitution in Crisis:  The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Coverup in the Iraq, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance.”  The report accuses the Administration of violating no fewer than 26 laws and regulations, and is a road map of Mr. Conyers’s explicit intention to investigate grounds for impeaching President Bush.

            If you think Republicans have been spendthrift, don’t expect much change from Wisconsin’s David Obey (class of 1969) at Appropriations.  Mr. Obey was one of those Democrats who ripped Mr. Clinton from endorsing a balanced budget in 1995.  Rather than cut spending, his goal would be to spend less on defense and more on domestic programs and entitlements.

            Ways and Means, the chief economic policy panel, would go to New York’s Charlie Rangel (1970), who opposed the Bush tax cuts and recently voted against free trade with tiny Oman.  His committee’s crucial health care subcommittee would be run by California’s Pete Stark (1972), who in 1993 criticized Hilary Clinton’s health care proposal because the government wasn’t’ dominant enough.  Over at Financial Services, the ascension of Barney Frank (1980) would mean a reprieve for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite $16 billion in accounting scandals.  His main reform priority has been to carve out a new affordable housing fund from the two companies’ profits.  And forget about any major review  of Sarbanes-Oxley.

            Energy and Commerce would return to the untender mercies of John Dingell, the longest-serving Member first elected in 1995, who was a selective scourge of business when he ran the committee before 1994.  The Michigan Congressman would do his best to provide taxpayer help to GM and Ford.  But telecom companies would probably get more regulation in the form of Net neutrality rules, and a windfall profits tax on oil would be a real possibility. 

            Remember organized labor?  Their champion would be George Miller (1974), who as the man in line to run the education and labor committee is the chief sponsor of the “Employee Free Choice Act,” which would make it much easier for unions to organize by largely banning secret elections.  Instead, union operatives would be allowed to publicly hound workers into signing “cards” that are counted as votes toward unionization.  The Californian also wants to raise the minimum wage and fulfill the National Education Association wish to spend more federal dollars on local school construction.

            We also can’t forget California’s Henry Waxman (1974), among the most partisan liberals and who at Government Reform would compete with Mr. Conyers to see who could issue the most subpoenas to the Bush Administation.  And then there’s Alcee Hastings, who, should Ms. Pelosi succeed in pushing aside current ranking Member Jane Harman, would take over the House Intelligence Committee.  Before he won his Florida seat in 1992, Mr. Hastings had been a federal judge who was impeached and convicted by a Democratic Congress for lying to beat a bribery rap.  He would handle America’s most vital national secrets. 

            There would certainly be exceptions to this left-wing revival.  Missouri’s Ike Skelton (1976) supports a larger military and wouldn’t mean much of a change at Armed Services.  Colin Peterson (1990) of Minnesota wouldn’t change the pro-subsidy bent of the GOP at Agriculture, and Minnesota’s James Oberstar (1974) couldn’t possibly be worse at Transportation than Alaska Republican Don Young.

*                      *                      *

            The House is only one half of Capitol Hill, and Republicans stand a better chance of holding the Senate, albeit with some losses there too.  Mr. Bush will also retain his veto power, and he would finally have to use it.  So the amount of liberal legislation that actually became law might not be all that extensive.  But the national debate would nonetheless shift notably left.  Voters looking to send a message to Republicans this fall may be surprised at their return mail from Washington.

Khordorkovsky was destroyed so the Kremlin could build an energy empire

The Wall Street Journal

COMMENTARY

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

By ROBERT R. AMSTERDAM
February 9, 2007; Page A10

The Kremlin this week showed that democracy, human rights and the rule of law are dead in Vladimir Putin's Russia. With extraordinarily cynical timing, new charges -- this time, money-laundering -- were brought against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who once ran Russia's largest oil company, Yukos. These charges have nothing to do with upholding Russia's laws. They have everything to do with the fact that Mr. Khodorkovsky would have been eligible for parole later this year, having served half his eight-year sentence on a politically motivated tax evasion conviction handed down in 2005. Another show trial will surely propel the machinery of so-called justice toward another preordained guilty verdict.

The fresh case means that Mr. Khodorkovsky will be unable to support democratic opposition parties in December's Duma elections or the 2008 "presidential coronation." And it means that the Kremlin will continue to wield pervasive control over the energy sector in which he had done so much to promote market-based competition and growth.

Before his arrest in 2003, Mr. Khodorkovsky set out his vision for Russia. He encouraged the development of civil society and the growth of alternative political parties. He worked to provide schools across with access to the Internet and supported charitable and cultural programs. He publicly confronted the president about the need to stamp out corruption in Russia.

When it became clear that the state did not share his vision and was not going to tolerate dissent, Mr. Khodorkovsky did not flee. He cooperated with the justice system -- convinced of his innocence, and convinced, also, that he could challenge what seemed to be an attempt by corrupt officials to intimidate him. He did not foresee how ruthlessly the law would be disregarded in the Kremlin's drive to crush him. Nor did anyone quite foresee the blatant theft of Yukos assets.

By jailing Mr. Khodorkovsky and stealing Yukos, the Putin regime cleared the energy sector of any competitors. It enabled the Kremlin to use energy as a political weapon against Russia's immediate neighbors and the whole of Europe.  Mr. Khodorkovsky and his company, in other words, had to be destroyed for Mr. Putin's non-market, state corporatism and energy imperialsim to thrive.  So now, no one will build competing pipelines; no one will advocate the breakup of state monopolies; no one will promote the corporate governance and transparency that are anathemas to the state-owned  enterprises.  The new charges against Mr. Khodorkovsky are, in fact, intended to provide a smokescreen for the Russian government's illegal sale, later this year, of the remaining assets of Yukos, valued at $33 billion, to those very companies.  

The Russian regime has lost the moral authority to dispense justice. Its exploitation of prosecutorial and regulatory powers, though shielded by state immunity, has become criminal. Selective enforcement of tax and environmental laws is the favored means of stealing assets from both domestic and foreign owners. Extortion is entrenched as a method of acquisition by the state.

The Yukos saga was followed late last year by the shakedown of Royal Dutch Shell at its Sakhalin-2 project. With each such case, the Kremlin is less concerned about even keeping up pretenses. Moscow calculates it has space to maneuver around legal and moral obligations, whether with respect to existing treaties, or negotiations over developing the giant Shtokman gas field, or its committments to supply gas and oil dependably without political interference.  

When Mr. Khodorkovsky was interrogated about the new charges, he declared that he had no faith in Russian justice, and that he will refuse to cooperate with the prosecutors in another politically driven farce of a trial. This week he appealed to the world not for himself but for all Russians: "Their only chance is the timely voluntary transfer of power in Russia by the means of honest, fair and transparent elections. . . . [The new president] should have nothing in common with the giant corruption machine that has paralyzed Russia."

Even in a Siberian gulag, Mr. Khodorkovsky has the courage to say: Enough! His fate is far more important than most people in the West realize. Some Western leaders such as Angela Merkel of Germany and José Manuel Barroso of the European Commission have raised his case with the Russian president. The dictatorial feathers were not ruffled and both were summarily brushed off. And so, another Khodorkovsky trial will soon be upon us. Let's be sure that this time we all recognize that Mikhail Khodorkovsky's fight is for the future of Russia and its relationship with the rest of the world.

Mr. Amsterdam is international defense counsel for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and is based in London after being deported from Russia.

The political campaign to shut up a U.S. think tank

The Wall Street Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Global Warming Smear
February 9, 2007; Page A10

Mark Twain once complained that a lie can make it half way around the world before the truth gets its boots on. That's been the case of late in the climate change debate, as political and media activists attempt to stigmatize anyone who doesn't pay homage to their "scientific consensus."

Last week the London Guardian published a story headlined, "Scientists Offer Cash to Dispute Climate Study." The story alleges that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, collected contributions from ExxonMobil and then offered climate scholars $10,000 so they could lobby against global warming legislation.

Another newspaper, the British Independent, picked up on the story and claimed: "It has come to light that one of the world's largest oil companies, ExxonMobil, is attempting to bribe scientists to pick holes in the IPCC's assessment." (The IPCC is the United Nations climate-change panel.)

It would be easy to dismiss all this as propaganda from British tabloids, except that a few days ago the "news" crossed the Atlantic where more respectable media outlets, including the Washington Post, are reporting the story in what has become all too typical pack fashion. A CNNMoney.com report offered that, "A think tank partly funded by ExxonMobil sent letters to scientists offering them up to $10,000 to critique findings in a major global warming study released Friday which found that global warming was real and likely caused by burning fossil fuels."

Here are the facts as we've been able to collect them. AEI doesn't lobby, didn't offer money to scientists to question global warming, and the money it did pay for climate research didn't come from Exxon.

What AEI did was send a letter to several leading climate scientists asking them to participate in a symposium that would present a "range of policy prescriptions that should be considered for climate change of uncertain dimension." Some of the scholars asked to participate, including Steve Schroeder of Texas A& M, are climatologists who believe that global warming is a major problem.

AEI President Chris DeMuth says, "What the Guardian essentially characterizes as a bribe is the conventional practice of AEI -- and Brookings, Harvard and the University of Manchester -- to pay individuals" for commissioned work. He says that Exxon has contributed less than 1% of AEI's budget over the last decade.

As for Exxon, Lauren Kerr, director of its Washington office, says that "none of us here had ever heard of this AEI climate change project until we read about it in the London newspapers." By the way, commissioning such research is also standard practice at NASA and other government agencies and at liberal groups such as the Pew Charitable Trusts, which have among them spent billions of dollars attempting to link fossil fuels to global warming.

We don't know where the Brits first got this "news," but the leading suspects are the reliable sources at Greenpeace. They have been peddling these allegations for months, and the London newspaper sleuths seem to have swallowed them like pints on a Fleet Street lunch hour.  

           So, apparently, have several members of the U.S. Senate. Yesterday Senators Bernard Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein and John Kerry sent a letter to Mr. DeMuth complaining that "should these reports be accurate," then "it would highlight the extent to which moneyed interests distort honest scientific and public policy discussions. . . . Does your donors' self-interest trump an honest discussion over the well-being of the planet?"

Every member of AEI's board of directors was graciously copied on the missive. We're told the Senators never bothered to contact AEI about the veracity of the reports, and by repeating the distortions, these four Democratic senators, wittingly or not, gave credence to falsehood.

For its part, Exxon appears unwilling to take this smear campaign lying down. Bribery can be a crime, and falsely accusing someone of a crime may well be defamation. A company spokesman says Exxon has written a letter to the Independent demanding a retraction.

One can only conclude from this episode that the environmental left and their political and media supporters now believe it is legitimate to quash debate on climate change and its consequences. This is known as orthodoxy, and, until now, science accepted the legitimacy of challenging it.

The Wall Street Journal

www.wsj.com

COMMENTARY

The Media Is in Need of Some Mending

By PETER R. KANN

December 11, 2006; Page A18

Thomas Jefferson, a better president than we've had in a very long time, penned a line back in 1787: "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I would not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." By 1807, in his seventh year as president and after seven years of being subjected to severe press criticism, he wrote: "I deplore the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity and the mendacious spirit of those who write them."

You'll be relieved to know that Jefferson did remain true to his primary principle: "The press," he concluded, "is an evil for which there is no remedy. Liberty depends upon freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost." He was right then, and we are right now, to prefer a free press, however flawed, to any controlled alternative. Still, as we watched CNN flashing its pre-election logos each day -- "Broken Borders," "Broken Government," "Broken Politics," Broken Everything -- I can't help thinking the media, too, is in need of some mending.

At its best news informs and enlightens the citizens of a free society and thereby safeguards and strengthens our democracy. At its worst -- dishonest, unfair, irresponsible -- the media has potential to erode the public trust on which its own success depends and to corrode the democratic system of which it is so indispensably a part. So, let me touch on 10 current trends in the mass media that ought to disturb us.

The blurring of the lines between journalism and entertainment. Journalism that puts too high a priority on entertaining is almost destined to distort and mislead. Compounding this confusion is a diffusing definition of "journalist." When political operatives moonlight at moderating news shows, when people alternate between being political editors and political consultants, when celebrity newspeople pocket $20,000 fees speaking at corporate conventions while criticizing congressman for conflicts of interest -- we jumble public perceptions of newspeople as well as news.

The blurring of lines between news and opinion. Newspapers have a format that helps maintain the distinction. The Internet, TV and most magazines have neither that format nor that tradition. The result is a blending of news and views. The two are not ingredients to mix together for a tastier meal, they are different courses. Part of the problem here lies in fashionable new philosophies that argue there are no basic values of right and wrong, that news is merely a matter of views. It's a dangerous philosophy for our society and a dagger at the heart of genuine journalism.

The blending of news and advertising, sponsorships or other commercial relationships. The resulting porridges may be called "advertorials" or "infomercials"; they may be special sections masquerading as news, news pages driven by commercial interests, or Web pages where everything somehow is selling something. Without clear distinctions between news and advertising, readers or viewers lose confidence in the veracity of a news medium. And advertisers lose the business benefit of an environment of trust.

The problems and pitfalls inherent in pack journalism. Individually, most reporters are decent, dedicated, fair-minded people. But the press, en masse, tends to lose its common sense and its sense of fairness and independence and what we see all too often is the spectacle of a pack of hounds in pursuit of a quarry. We frequently see this phenomenon in political reporting, where the faintest whiff of scandal, or even of weakness, can send the pack in pursuit. At its worst, the pack, not finding a real problem, proclaims the "perception" of one and this perception becomes self-fulfilling.

The issue of conflict and context. On most issues most Americans are not on polar extremes. On abortion, for example, most seek a sensible center. Where is that center reflected in media coverage that mainly portrays rabid feminists or irate pro-life activists? Balance is not achieved by the talk show format of two extremists yelling at each other. And how many of us recognize our own communities from their depiction on local TV news shows -- a nonstop montage of mayhem, murder, rape, arson, child molestation and more?

The exaggerated tendency toward pessimism. Just look back a few years over much of the media coverage of "American competitiveness." All those news magazine covers on the coming "Japanese Century." And along with it, all the pessimism about the ability of U.S. industry to compete globally. It was nonsense. Similarly, it's one thing -- and an appropriate one -- for the press to probe particular instances of political corruption. It's quite another thing to jump to the cynical conclusion that our political process, and all politicians, are corrupted -- that "they all do it." They don't, and they aren't. Skepticism and criticism are essential to the media's role; reflexive pessimism is not.

The growing media fascination with the bizarre, the perverse and the pathological -- John Mark Karr journalism. Such so-called journalism helps instantly legitimize crackpot ideas, deviant behavior, or alleged victimization in our society. My point is not to argue for "good news" vs. "bad news," but to ask whether much of this amounts to news at all?

Social orthodoxy, or political correctness. These are reflected in a media whose job is not to parrot prevailing fashions, but to question, probe and thereby challenge them. Businessmen are not, by definition, greedy, and environmentalists, by definition, saintly. Third World poverty is not, by definition, a result of overpopulation as opposed to inane economic policies. And so on.

The media's short attention span. As the press hops from Baghdad to Beirut, Natalee Holloway to Valerie Plame, Super Bowls to Super Tuesdays, it justifiably can blame some combination of the nature of the news and the short attention span of the public. The public, meanwhile, bombarded and bewildered can blame a fickle and shallow press. There are too many instant celebrities. Too many two-day crises. Too many "defining moments" from people in search of instant history. In a world where everything is considered critical, nothing needs to be taken very seriously.

The matter of power. The press is at least partially responsible for greater public skepticism toward traditional institutions in America. But the truth, not lost on our public, is that the press is a large and powerful institution, too: "60 Minutes" is more powerful than almost all of the subjects it exposes. This newspaper, arguably, has more influence on national economic policy than do most corporations. Networks are owned by giant industrial corporations, magazines by entertainment conglomerates, and most newspapers by national chains. Given these realties, we cannot plausibly pretend to be a David out there smiting Goliaths and expect the public to believe it.

Mr. Kann, a Pulitzer-winning journalist, is chairman of Dow Jones.

www.rushlimbaugh.com

The REAL Story of Thanksgiving...

Dead White Guys - Or - What Your History Books Never Told You

November 23, 2005

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: From my second bestseller, "See, I Told You So, ""Chapter 6, "Dead White guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving." The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century (that's the 1600s for those of you in Rio Linda, California). The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs.

A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences.

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible.

The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.

But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves.

And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford's own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!

This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.

Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the '60s and '70s out in California – and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way.

Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.

That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation!

But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.

"The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God," Bradford wrote. "For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense...that was thought injustice."

Why should you work for other people when you can't work for yourself? What's the point?

Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?

"This had very good success, "wrote Bradford, "for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would  have been."  "Bradford doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he?  It is possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the the 1980s?  Yes. REad the story of Joseph and Pharoah in Genesis 41:  Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharoah reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the "seven years of plenty" and the "Earth brought forth in heaps."  (Gen. 41:47)

In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.  

Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you're laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school.

So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians.  The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London.  And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the "Great Puritan Migration."

 And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the "Great Puritan Migration."
Now, you probably haven't read this. You might have heard me read it to you over the previous years on this program, but I don't think this lesson is still being taught to children -- and if not, why not? I mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience than this? Thanksgiving, in other words, is not thanks to the Indians, and it's not thanks to William Bradford. It's not thanks to the merchants of London. Thanksgiving is thanks to God, pure and simple. Go read the first Thanksgiving proclamation from George Washington and you'll get the point. The word "God" is mentioned in that first Thanksgiving proclamation more times... If you read it aloud to an ACLU member, you'll get thrown in jail, but that's what the first Thanksgiving was all about. Get it. I'm telling you, read it. Maybe we can find it and link to it: George Washington's first Thanksgiving Proclamation. Folks, if you haven't read that, you need to read it. It will tell you the true story of Thanksgiving. I'm happy to share it with you each and every year as a tradition on this program.

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www.rushlimbaugh.com

George Washington 1789

November 24, 2004

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

The George Washington 1789 Thanksgiving proclamation. I want to start with that. We'll take a break and come back with the Real Story of Thanksgiving. First, here's what George Washington proclaimed in 1789:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor -- and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be -- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks -- for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation -- for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility [sic], union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed -- for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted -- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions -- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually -- to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed -- to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn [sic] kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord -- To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease [sic] of science among them and us -- and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York
the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

George Washington

You want me to count the number of references to God? How about just the first line? "Whereas, it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and to humbly implore His protection and favor." Let's see. One, two, three, four references in just that first clause. What a fanatic, George Washington! Just wanted you to hear that. That's the first Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789. The real story of Thanksgiving -- and by the way, the real story is continuing, what I just read to you. The thanks was given to God, not the Indians.

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www.foxnews.com

Bush Touts Lower Budget Deficit Figures

Tuesday , July 11, 2006

WASHINGTON — The 2006 federal deficit will be lower than expected, thanks to added tax revenue, President Bush said Tuesday.

Additional revenue generated from groups that pay their taxes quarterly — primarily corporations, small businesses and the wealthy — dropped the projected federal deficit for the 2006 budget year to $296 billion, a $127 billion decrease from a February estimate, Bush said.

The president said his pro-growth policies, including tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 and a limit on additional discretionary spending, had enabled the economy to improve tax revenues to the point that his 2004 pledge to cut the deficit in half — to $260 billion by 2009 — will be reached one year early.

"We cut rates for everyone who pays income taxes. We reduced the marriage penalty. We doubled the child tax credit. And we cut the death tax. We cut the tax paid by most small businesses because we understand that most new jobs are created by small businesses. And we encouraged economic expansion by cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains," Bush said.

"Together, these tax cuts left nearly $1.1 trillion in the hands of American workers and families and small-business owners. And they used this money to help fuel an economic resurgence that's now in its 18th straight quarter of growth," he said.

"With the help of the president's successful pro-growth policies, the 2006 deficit is 30 percent lower than originally expected," reads the White House mid-session review.

Economic growth includes a 3.5 percent rate in 2005 and a first-quarter growth rate in 2006 of 5.6 percent. The economy is expected to end the year with 3.5 percent growth. Unemployment stands at 4.6 percent, with 5.4 million new jobs added since August 2003.

The numbers for this year, however, aren't as impressive as last year, when tax collections increased $274 billion, or 14.5 percent. Bush said the Treasury predicts tax revenues for this year will grow by $246 billion or 11 percent. Corporate taxes are rising at a 19-percent rate.

"We've had extraordinarily good profit growth, and when you have better profit growth than wage growth you tend to have windfall tax revenues because taxes on profits are higher than taxes on wages," said Diane Swonk, chief economist for Mesirow Financial, a Chicago-based financial services firm.

So far, revenues are $115 billion higher than expected when the budget was set. Swonk predicted that the unexpected revenue surge would ease around the end of the year as profits peak.

Last budget year, the federal deficit was $318 billion. That number was expected to increase this year as a result of emergency supplemental spending on the Iraq war and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery.

Calling the numbers a "concocted victory lap," House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., released a statement saying the budget deficit "would constitute the fourth largest deficit in American history."

"The increase in revenues to the Treasury is largely attributable to record corporate profits, not a roaring economy that is benefiting American taxpayers who are facing exploding gas price, skyrocketing health care costs and rising college tuition costs," Hoyer said.

Though numerically the budget deficit is among the highest recorded, as a measure of gross domestic product, 2.3 percent, it ranks lower than the deficits in 17 of the past 25 years.

Bush said the short-term deficit has been a challenge, but the real threat of overspending comes from unsustainable growth for entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

"They are important programs, but the spending for these programs is growing faster than inflation, faster than the economy and faster than our ability to pay for them," Bush said, adding that it's time to stop "playing politics."

He said newly-sworn in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to work on these issues.

The president also suggested that the Senate pass the line-item veto bill that has already been approved by the House of Representatives. He said that authority will enable him to "interface effectively with the legislative branch" to strip out wasteful spending from the budget.

"When legislators think they can slip their individual items in the spending bill without notice, they do it. If they think that they're going to try to slip something in and it gets noticed, it means they're less likely to try to do so," Bush said.

Bush has had few opportunities to boast about the deficit over the course of his time in office. He inherited in 2001 a surplus estimated by both White House and congressional forecasters at $5.6 trillion over the subsequent decade, and it quickly dwindled.

Those faulty estimates assumed the late-1990s revenue boom — fueled by the stock market and dot-com booms — would continue. But that bubble burst, and a recession and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks started a flow of red ink. Several rounds of tax cuts, including Bush's signature $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001, had the temporary effect of lowering payments to the Treasury and contributing to deficits four years ago, after four years of budget surpluses.

Even before the release of the figures, critics poked at the White House figures, citing, for example, how they are at odds from Bush's original budget released in 2001, which predicted a $305 billion surplus for the current year, even after accounting for tax cuts.

"The deficit's probably going to be in the range of $300 billion and that still represents a swing of about $600 billion from what was projected in 2001," said Rep. John Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the top democrat on the Budget Committee. "You've still got triple-digit deficits for as far as the eye can see."

Some budget experts say the steep rise in tax receipts looks more impressive than it really is since revenues are bouncing back from a three-year decline during Bush's first term, drops not seen since the Great Depression.

"The current so-called revenue surge is merely restoring revenues to where they were half a decade ago," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank. That's after accounting for inflation and population growth.

Still, the new figures are "a testament" to the American worker and a dynamic U.S. economy, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

"The grit and spine of the American worker, and an indefatigable entrepreneurial spirit, have kept our economy resilient despite corporate scandals, Sept. 11, and hurricanes Katrina and Rita. ... But we cannot rest on the progress made to date," Frist, R-Tenn., said. "As we strive to achieve fiscal balance, more needs to be done to help hardworking families meet the cost of living.”

The Wall Street Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

October 7, 2006; Page A6

We hope that when the Mark Foley story expires, the Washington political community will step back to reflect. It is generally argued that stories such as this gain prominence because the news is slow. But the news cycle is not slow. Russia is imposing trade and travel restrictions on an independent nation. It was possible as we went to press yesterday that North Korea this weekend would carry out an underground nuclear-weapon test; and if it does, how should the U.S. respond? This story was deep inside the major newspapers yesterday, while the Foley flap covered their front pages.

Mr. Foley's activities with congressional pages, described so far as exchanges of sexually explicit emails and instant messages, were vile. The Republicans should have notified the Democrat on the Page Board. Mr. Foley should have been barred from contact with pages. He has resigned. He is being criminally investigated. If, however, the modern media forces in play over the Foley affair can conspire to submerge all other political life, then batten down the hatches for the 2008 presidential election. The 2004 election will look like toy boats on the water. 

Most likely, the Foley fire will burn on. The House Ethics Committee has issued some four dozen subpoenas. They will learn something about who knew what when. This gasoline will be leaked. And given the volatility of the subject, the fire could burn well beyond the Speaker's office.

One useful lesson may be we'll find that the House "system" that should have caught this problem is in fact a bloated bureaucracy of staffs for committees upon subcommittees created to oversee every nook in the federal empire. It is not beyond imagining that the private life of Mark Foley could slip through. Would it be reprehensible if true? Yes. Shocking?

Speaker Hastert should not resign before the election. It would be a disservice to send voters to the polls in five weeks amid tumult over Mark Foley. Those for whom this is a deciding issue should certainly vote on it. Our view is that the country would be better served with a clearer sense of the electorate's sentiment on dealing with the global threat and domestic well-being. Those are fit subjects of a serious national election.

Imprimis

“Is the Mainstream Media Fair and Balanced?”

By:  Fred Barnes
Executive Editor, The Weekly Standard

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard. From 1985 to 1995, he served as senior editor and White House correspondent for The New Republic. He covered the Supreme Court and the White House for the Washington Star before moving on to the Baltimore Sun in 1979. He served as the national political correspondent for the Sun and wrote the Presswatch media column for the American Spectator. He is host, along with Mort Kondracke, of the Beltway Boys on FOX News, where he also appears regularly on Special Report with Brit Hume. Mr. Barnes graduated from the University of Virginia and was a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered in Palm Beach, Florida, on February 22, 2006, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on “The News Media in the Twenty-First Century.”

Let me begin by defining three terms that are thrown around in debates about the media today. The first is objectivity, which means reporting the news with none of your own political views or instincts slanting the story one way or another. Perfect objectivity is pretty hard for anyone to attain, but it can be approximated. Then there's fairness. Fairness concedes that there may be some slant in a news story, but requires that a reporter will be honest and not misleading with regard to those with whom he disagrees. And finally there's balance, which means that both sides on an issue or on politics in general—or more than two sides, when there are more than two—get a hearing.

My topic today is how the mainstream media—meaning nationally influential newspapers like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today; influential regional papers like the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times; the broadcast networks and cable news stations like CNN; and the wire services, which now are pretty much reduced to the Associated Press—stacks up in terms of the latter two journalistic standards, fairness and balance. In my opinion, they don't stack up very well.

Twenty years ago I wrote a piece in The New Republic entitled “Media Realignment,” and the thrust of it was that the mainstream media was shedding some of its liberal slant and moving more to the center. This was in the Reagan years, and I pointed to things like USA Today, which was then about five years old and was a champion of the Reagan economic recovery. CNN was younger then, too, and quite different from the way it is now; Ted Turner owned it, but he wasn't manipulating it the way he did later, which turned it into something quite different. Financial news was suddenly very big in the midst of the 401 (k) revolution, and the stock market boom was getting a lot of coverage. The New Republic, where I worked, had been pro-Stalin in the 1930s, but by the 1980s had become very pro-Reagan and anti-communist on foreign policy. I also cited a rise of new conservative columnists like George Will. But looking back on that piece now, I see that I couldn't have been more wrong. The idea that the mainstream media was moving to the center was a mirage. In fact, I would say that compared to what I was writing about back in the 1980s, the mainstream media today is more liberal, more elitist, more secular, more biased, more hostile to conservatives and Republicans, and more self-righteous.

Liberal and Impenetrable

Liberalism is endemic in the mainstream media today. Evan Thomas—the deputy editor of Newsweek and one of the honest liberals in the media—noted this very thing with regard to coverage of the 2004 presidential race, which I'll discuss later. It was obvious, he said, that the large majority in the media wanted John Kerry to win and that this bias slanted their coverage. And indeed, every poll of the media—and there have been a lot of them—shows that they're liberal, secular and so on. Polls of the Washington press corps, for instance, about who they voted for in 2004 always show that nine-to-one or ten-to-one of them voted Democratic. Peter Brown, a columnist who just recently left the Orlando Sentinel, conducted a poll a few years ago of newspaper staffs all around the country—not just at the big papers, but midsize papers and even some small papers—and found that this disparity existed everywhere.

Nor is this likely to change. Hugh Hewitt, the California lawyer and blogger and talk radio host, spent a few days recently at the Columbia Journalism School, supposedly the premiere journalism school in America. He spoke to a couple of classes there and polled them on who they had voted for. He found only one Bush voter in all the classes he spoke to. Steve Hayes, a fine young writer and reporter at The Weekly Standard, went to Columbia Journalism School and says that during his time there he was one of only two or three conservative students out of hundreds.

This is not to say that there aren't many fine young conservative journalists. But they aren't likely to be hired in the mainstream media. When I was at The New Republic for ten years—and The New Republic was quite liberal, despite its hawkish foreign policy—any young person who joined the staff and wrote stories that were interesting and demonstrated that he or she could write well was grabbed immediately by the New York Times or other big newspapers, Newsweek, Time or the networks. But that doesn't happen at The Weekly Standard, where I work now. Some of our young writers are the most talented I have ever met in my 30-plus years in journalism. But they don't get those phone calls. Why? Because they're with a conservative magazine. Of course there has been one famous exception—David Brooks, who is now the conservative columnist with the New York Times. But he was probably the least conservative person at The Weekly Standard. Conservatives are tokens on most editorial pages, just as they are on the broadcast networks and on cable news stations like CNN and MSNBC. Of course, I have a vested interest, since I work for FOX News; but if you compare the number of liberal commentators on FOX—and there are a lot of them—with the number of conservatives on those other stations, you'll see what I mean.

        The fact is that the mainstream media doesn't want conservatives. It doesn't matter whether they're good reporters or writers. They go out of their way not to hire them. This was true 20 years ago, and it's true today. This impenetrability is why conservatives have had to erect the alternative media—talk radio, the blogs, conservative magazines and FOX News. Together, these form a real infrastructure that's an alternative to the mainstream media. But it's still a lot smaller, it's not as influential and it's largely reactive. It's not the equal of the mainstream media, that's for sure.

Powerful and Unfair

One way to see the unequaled power of the mainstream media is in how it is able to shape and create the stories that we're stuck talking about in America. A good example is Cindy Sheehan last summer. The Sheehan story was a total creation of the mainstream media. And in creating the story, the media shamelessly mischaracterized Sheehan. It portrayed her as simply a poor woman who wanted to see President Bush because her son had been killed in Iraq. Well, in the first place, she had already seen President Bush once. Also, though you would never know it from the dominant coverage, she was in favor of the Iraqi insurgency—the beheaders, the killers of innocent women and children. She was on their side, and she said so. She was also filled with a deep hatred of Israel. Yet the media treated her in a completely sympathetic manner, failing to report the beliefs that she made little attempt to hide. In any case, the Cindy Sheehan story came to dominate the news for the latter part of the summer; only the mainstream media still has the power to make stories big.

To see how distorted the mainstream media's view of the world can be, one need only compare its coverage of the Valerie Plame “leak” story with its coverage of the NSA surveillance leak story. Plame is the CIA agent whose name was written about by reporter Robert Novak in a column, following which the media portrayed her as having been outed as an undercover CIA agent. The simple facts from the beginning were that she was not an undercover agent any more; she was not even overseas. The story had no national security repercussions at all—none. But that didn't stop the media, which built the story up to great heights—apparently in the groundless hope that it would lead to an indictment of Karl Rove—and kept it front page news, at least intermittently, for what seemed like forever. The NSA surveillance story, on the other hand, also created by the media—this time pursuant to a real leak, and one that was clearly in violation of the law—had tremendous national security implications. After all, it revealed a secret and crucial program that was being used to uncover plots to bomb and massacre Americans and probably rendered that program no longer effective. Not only was this important story treated on an equal basis with the non-story of Valerie Plame, but the media was not interested, for the most part, in its national security repercussions. Instead the media mischaracterized the story as a “domestic spying scandal,” suggesting constitutional overreach by the Bush administration. Well, a domestic spying story is exactly what the story was not. Those being spied on were Al-Qaeda members overseas who were using the telephone. If some of those calls were with people in the U.S., they were monitored for that reason only. But the media's stubborn mischaracterization of the story continued to frame the debate.

This brings me to the use of unfair and unbalanced labeling by the media. How often, if ever, have you heard or read the term “ultraliberal”? I don't think I've ever heard or read it. You'll hear and see the term “ultraconservative” a lot, but not “ultraliberal”—even though there are plenty of ultraliberals. Another widely used labeling term is “activist.” If people are working to block a shopping center from being built or campaigning against Wal-Mart, they are called “activists.” Of course, what the term “activist” means is liberal. But while conservatives are called conservatives by the media, liberals are “activists.” For years we've seen something similar with regard to debates over judicial nominees. The Federalist Society, with which many conservative judicial nominees tend to be associated, is always referred to as the conservative Federalist Society, as if that's part of its name. But the groups opposing conservative nominees are rarely if ever labeled as liberal—giving the impression that they, unlike the Federalist Society, are somehow objective.

Related to this, I would mention that conservatives are often labeled in a way to suggest they are mean and hateful. Liberals criticize, but conservatives hate. Have you noticed that the media never characterizes individuals or groups as Bush haters? There are Bush critics, but there are no Bush haters—whereas in the Clinton years, critics of the president were often referred to as Clinton haters. I'm not saying that there weren't Clinton haters on the fringes in the 1990s. But far-left groups like MoveOn.org have been treated as acceptable within the mainstream of American politics today by the media, while in truth they are as clearly animated by hatred as the most rabid anti-Clinton voices ever were.

Secular and Partisan Bias

With regard to religion, Christianity in particular—but also religious faith in general—is reflexively treated as something dangerous and pernicious by the mainstream media. Back in the early 1990s when I was still at The New Republic, I was invited to a dinner in Washington with Mario Cuomo. He was then governor of New York, and had invited several reporters to dinner because he was thinking about running for president. At one point that night he mentioned that he sent his children to Catholic schools in New York because he wanted them to be taught about a God-centered universe. This was in the context of expressing his whole-hearted support for public schools. But from the reaction, you would have thought he had said that one day a week he would bring out the snakes in his office and make policy decisions based on where they bit him. He was subsequently pummeled with stories about how improper it was for him, one, to send his kids to religious schools, and two, to talk about it. It was amazing. The most rigid form of secularism passes as the standard in mainstream journalism these days.

President Bush is similarly treated as someone who is obsessive about his religion. And what does he do? Well, he reads a devotional every day; he tries to get through the Bible, I think, once a year; and he prays. Now, I know many, many people who do this. Tens of millions of people do it. And yet the media treats Bush as some religious nut and pursues this story inaccurately. Again, it is clear that partisan bias is involved, too, because in fact, Bush talks publicly about his faith much less than other presidents have. There is a good book about Bush's religion by Paul Kengor, who went back to every word President Clinton spoke and found out that Clinton quoted scripture and mentioned God and Jesus Christ more than President Bush has. You would never get that from the mainstream media.

The partisan bias of the mainstream media has been at no time more evident than during the last presidential election. Presidential candidates used to be savaged equally by the media. No matter who—Republican or Democrat—they both used to take their hits. But that's not true any more. Robert Lichter, at the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, measures the broadcast news for all sorts of things, including how they treat candidates. He's been doing it now for nearly 20 years. And would anyone care to guess what presidential candidate in all those years has gotten the most favorable treatment from the broadcast media? The answer is John Kerry, who got 77 percent favorable coverage in the stories regarding him on the three broadcast news shows. For Bush, it was 34 percent. This was true despite the fact that Kerry made his Vietnam service the motif of the Democratic National Convention, followed weeks later by 64 Swift Boat vets who served with Kerry in Vietnam claiming that he didn't do the things he said he did. It was a huge story, but the mainstream media didn't want to cover it and didn't cover it, for week after week after week.

        There was an amazingly well documented book written by a man named John O'Neill—himself a Swift Boat vet—who went into great detail about why John Kerry didn't deserve his three Purple Hearts, etc. It might have been a right-wing screed, but if you actually read it, it wasn't a screed. It backed up its claims with evidence. Normally in journalism, when somebody makes some serious charges against a well-known person, reporters look into the charges to see if they're true or not. If they aren't, reporters look into the motives behind the false charges—for instance, to find out if someone paid the person making the false charges, and so on. But that's not what the media did in this case. The New York Times responded immediately by investigating the financing of the Swift Boat vets, rather than by trying to determine whether what they were saying was true. Ultimately, grudgingly—after bloggers and FOX News had covered the story sufficiently long that it couldn't be ignored—the mainstream media had to pick up on the story. But its whole effort was aimed at knocking down what the Swift Boat vets were saying.

Compare this with September 8, 2004, when Dan Rather reported on documents that he said showed not only that President Bush used preferential treatment to get into the Texas National Guard, but that he hadn't even done all his service. The very next morning, the whole story—because CBS put one of the documents on its Web site—was knocked down. It was knocked down because a blogger on a Web site called Little Green Footballs made a copy on his computer of the document that was supposedly made on a typewriter 30 years earlier and demonstrated that it was a fraud made on a modern computer. Then, only a few weeks after that embarrassment, CBS came up with a story, subsequently picked up by the New York Times, that an arms cache of 400 tons of ammunition in Iraq had been left unguarded by the American military and that the insurgents had gotten hold of it. Well, it turned out that they didn't know whether the insurgents had gotten that ammunition or not, or whether indeed the American military had possession of it. It was about a week before the election that these major news organizations broke this unsubstantiated story, something that would have been unimaginable in past campaigns. Why would they do that? Why would Dan Rather insist on releasing fraudulent documents when even his own experts recommended against it? Why would CBS and the New York Times come back with an explosive but unsubstantiated arms cache story only weeks later? They did it for one reason: They wanted to defeat President Bush for re-election. There is no other motive that would explain disregarding all the precautions you're taught you should have in journalism.

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       I'll wind up on a positive note, however. Forty years ago, John Kenneth Galbraith—the great liberal Harvard economist—said that he knew conservatism was dead because it was bookless. Conservatives didn't publish books. And to some extent, it was true at the time. But it's no longer true. Conservatives have become such prolific writers and consumers of books that Random House and other publishing companies have started separate conservative imprints. Nowadays it is common to see two or three or four conservative books—some of them kind of trashy, but some of them very good—on the bestseller list. Insofar as books are an indication of how well conservatives are doing—at least in the publishing part of the media world—I would say they're doing quite well. They're not winning, but they're much better off than they were before—something that can't be said about how they are faring in the unfair and unbalanced mainstream media.

Editor, Douglas A. Jeffrey; Deputy Editor, Timothy W. Caspar; Assistant to the Editor, Patricia A. DuBois. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. Copyright © 2006. Permission to reprint in whole or part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used: “Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu.” Subcription free upon request. ISSN 0277-8432. Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. Patent and Trade Office #1563325.