Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Right story; Wrong page

It's time to play "You be the editor" again.

Where would you put a story bearing the headline "'05 Incomes, on Average, Still Below 2000 peak"?

If you were the editors of the New York Times, you put it on the front page of today's business page, on the left, in a single column one-third of the way down the page.

Hardly prime journalism real estate.

But isn't this story of general interest? Isn't it worthy of the front page? Isn't it, at the very least, a political story? Note the politically pivotal year 2000, the year the Supreme Court elected George Bush.

Delve into the story and it becomes all the more newsworthy.

Remember the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which are still in effect?

Their unfairness is all right here. "People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003.... 28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433 (My note: That's roughly the population of Hillsdale and Bridlemile neighborhoods) of the 134 million taxpayers, those who made $10 million or more, saving them almost $1.9 million each. Over all this small number of wealthy Americans saved $21.7 billion in taxes on their investment incomes as a result of the tax-cut law.... the nearly 90 percent of Americans who made less than $100,000 a year saved on average $318 each on their investments."

As you ponder these numbers, guess who is going to be paying for the war in Iraq for years to come.

The article, by the way, is written by David Cay Johnston, author of "Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else," a book guaranteed to make your blood boil.

In short, we've been ripped off in every which way by this plutocratic, power-mad administration.

Folks, it's time to get serious about impeachment, if only to air out the White House closets before the next resident arrives.

P.S. The good news is that the story was in the Times. Let's see whether The Oregonian considers it worthy of publication.

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