The Imperial Press

I've always thought we had a more or less free press, until I saw the MSM treatment of: Bradley Manning--and taxes!

Let's start with taxes. In the alarmist rhetoric of the "fiscal cliff" commentators, taxes on dividends are treated as if everyone earns them; if their tax rates go up to the same rates as earned income(!), then the bottom will fall out of the stock market; middle class people with 401K's will suffer along with billionaires. After all, they'll have to pay those higher taxes too.

But owners of 401Ks don't pay taxes on dividends their funds earn, although the funds do, so their investments might earn slightly less. But, the big losers, if taxes on dividends went up, would be the people paying the restored 39% rate. They'd pay it on their dividends, too, which is why, if capital gains were treated the same way, their tax rates would go up not from 35 to 39%, but from an effective tax rate of 15% or less, to one more comparable to what 'ordinary' people pay.

That's the idea. It not only would help pay off the deficits; it would lower income inequality. But the Media doesn't want ordinary Joe Blow to know that. Commentators want you to think these higher taxes will hit you 'ordinary' people especially hard.

The fiscal cliff was really an invention of the Tea Party Republicans to force government to shrink, favoring the wealthy. Obama, that 'poor' negotiator, locked them into a closet: to get out, they'll have to concede on higher taxes for the wealthy to avoid being tarred with raising taxes for everyone.

If Republicans want to protect their favorite charity--the military--they could be pressured to give up even more, like those favored tax-rates on dividends and capital gains, even Romney's carried interest.

Are there enough progressive Democrats to push that far, especially given the MSM's conservative corporatist bias on tax issues?

Another media bias is harder to see: it often is carried out by an absence of coverage, as in Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, et al. Here is a whistleblower with global impact, and he's treated like a terrorist and held incommunicado for almost two years, before he's allowed to speak. And then the media hardly covers him, or Assange, or Wikileaks, which revealed more embarrassing state secrets, and gave newspapers more issues to write/pontificate about for months than any other source. It showed how petty and conniving most governments are--especially the United States.

That's not terrorism. Was the boy who yelled: "The Emperor has no clothes!" a terrorist, or a truth teller?

A free press? We have a press dedicated to maintaining the American Empire and its prime supporters--and beneficiaries--the very wealthy. In Fifth Century Rome, the Emperor and Roman Senators had panegyrists, too.