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05.07 YouthWorks Campaign Needs Support for Summer Jobs
05.13 New Buchanan Book: Anglo-American Ascendancy Lost in Unnecessary Wars
04.30 A Litany of Horrors
04.17 Peter Hallward's "Damming the Flood" (Part II)
Ref. : Letters to the editor
05.12 The World above 350 ppm CO2
04.28 Green Scare State Terrorism
04.21 Hunger Plagues Haiti and the World
04.16 WORLD FACING HUGE NEW CHALLENGE ON FOOD FRONT
Ref. : Single-Payer FAQ
Ref. : Environmental Health News
Ref. : Sundance Channel's THE GREEN
Ref. : What is Global Warming, and what can citizens do about it?
Ref. : Global Warming Links
Ref. : Health & Nutrition Links
05.06 US Media Trivializes Campaign 2008
05.06 Death's Factotum: Michael Gordon and the Times Pour Pentagon Poison into Nation's Ear
05.05 TV News Blackout on Pentagon Pundits
05.05 Color-Coded: Jeremiah Wright and the Real Deal on Race
05.02 The Right's America-Hating Preacher
04.23 Pentagon Pundits
04.22 US News Media's Latest Disgrace
04.18 ABC's Debate Debacle
04.16 Reprising the Genocidal Fury of Thomas Friedman
05.13 Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the "Stupid" Vote
05.13 McCain and the 'Unitary Executive'
05.09 The Democratic Presidential Race: A View from Pennsylvania
05.08 Serving the System: Corporate Control of U.S. Would Continue Under Obama
05.06 A Republican for Barack
05.05 Thinking About Voter Registrations
05.05 'Beware the Terrible Simplifiers'
05.01 U.S. Military Coordinated Day Of Prayer Events With Christian Right Group
04.30 John McCain Won’t Be Looking for the Union Label
04.30 Put Him Out With the Pastor!
04.25 Clinton Courted Racists in the Pennsylvania Primary
04.24 Groundbreaking Book Documents Widespread Election Fraud; Warns Elections Vulnerable to Theft
04.24 Triviamongering in the U.S. presidential race
04.24 Campaign 1988 Lives!
04.23 Hillary Clinton's Monstrous Threat
04.21 Brilliant Disguise: Bush Torture, Obama and The Boss
04.19 The Clintons, Triangulating with China
04.18 American Hegemony Is Not Guaranteed
04.18 Are the Clintons Playing Joe McCarthy?
04.17 The Weather Underground 'Theme'
05.12 Armed Truce: Surging Into Slaughter on Sadr City's Jerusalem Street
05.10 Lost E-Mails Obscure 'Plame-gate'
05.09 Fallujah Revisited: Bush, Petraeus Prepare 'Cleansing' of Sadr City
05.09 Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe
05.07 Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia
05.05 The Terror Master: Bush Orders Covert 'Surge' Against Iran, with Dem Support
05.01 American and Israeli War Crimes: Same Atrocities, Different Responses
04.30 Halliburton Bribe Case Haunts Cheney
04.29 Getting Over Scalia
04.29 The Iraq War Morphs Into The Iranian War
04.28 The Torture Election
04.28 The Clock is Ticking for A US Attack on Iran
04.28 The Bush Team's Geneva Hypocrisy
04.25 New Terror War Atrocity: Beheading the Innocent for Bush in Somalia
04.23 Glorious Fruits of the War for Civilization
04.22 VA Tried to Conceal Extent of Attempted Veteran Suicides, Email Shows
04.21 What About the War, Benedict?
04.18 Updating Sami Al-Arian - His Ordeal Continues
04.16 Would Obama Hold Bush Accountable?
05.12 Thinking About Strategies
05.08 Portrait of an Oil-Addicted Former Superpower
04.28 Thinking About Subtleties
04.23 The Oil Vice
04.22 The US Economy and the Costs of War
04.21 Thinking About Shakiness
05.12 Disturbing Stirrings - Ratcheting Up For War on Iran
05.05 Sixty Years of Palestinian Displacement, Occupation and Suffering
05.02 Feeding Moloch: Last Barriers to War on Iran Come Down
05.01 The Iranian Chessboard
05.01 Blood Diamonds, Blood Oil and Blood Food
05.01 Denying Palestinians Free Movement in the West Bank
04.30 The Ignored Lessons on the Stupidity of War
04.24 Breaking the Silence - Israeli Soldiers Speak
04.23 What the Iraq War is about
MEDIA REVULSION ALERT:
ABC's Debate Debacle
Trivia and biased questions dominate Democrats’ debate
During the first half of the debate, ABC moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson avoided any mention of policy issues. As the Los Angeles Times noted (4/17/08), "With the moderators and Clinton raising assorted questions about Obama's past for the first half of the debate, issues received relatively short shrift. Not until 50 minutes in was a policy issue-- Iraq--asked about by the moderators."
Perhaps the most irrelevant line of questioning came when Stephanopoulos asked about Obama's contacts with University of Illinois at Chicago professor William Ayers, who was once a member of the radical Weather Underground group. Obama's "ties" to Ayers have been an obsession of Fox News host Sean Hannity, who reportedly pressed Stephanopoulos to ask about Ayers at the debate (Salon.com, 4/17/08; MSNBC 4/16/08).
Framing the question as a "follow up" on "the general theme of patriotism," Stephanopoulos challenged Obama to "explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem," given that Ayers had never apologized for the bombings the group carried out in the 1970s. "In fact," said Stephanopoulos, "on 9/11 he was quoted in the New York Times saying, 'I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough.'" (Actually, that quote appeared in the Times on September 11, 2001; it was not, as Stephanopoulos seemed to imply, made on the day of the attacks.)
But even when the questions turned to issues of actual substance, things hardly improved. It was not until a full three quarters of an hour into the debate that the candidates were asked the question about what Stephanopoulos
acknowledged was "the No. 1 issue on Americans' minds"-- the
economy.
Stephanopoulos' first question to Clinton, though, was clearly pitched from the right:
"Can you make an absolute, read-my-lips pledge that there will be no tax increases of any kind for anyone earning under $200,000 a year? And if the economy is as weak a year from now as it is today, will you persist in your plans to roll back President Bush's tax cuts for wealthier Americans?"The assumption would seem to be that there's something economically or politically dangerous about raising taxes, particularly on the wealthy. Charles Gibson picked up on that theme, pressing Obama about his plan to raise capital gains tax rates to levels of the early 1990s—a position that struck Gibson as bizarre, since lowering these taxes increases government revenue:
"In each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"This question rests on two false assumptions. The capital gains tax is paid by a small percentage of the population. As Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out (3/16/06), "The wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers enjoyed 90 percent of the capital gains eligible for this special tax break." Gibson's reference to the 100 million Americans who own stock is irrelevant, since this tax is applied to the sales of stocks and real estate—not the act of having a retirement account.
Gibson's other point--"History shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up"--might be popular in certain conservative circles, but the evidence to support it is thin. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out (7/12/07), there is little causal relationship between the capital gains tax cuts and increased federal tax revenue. Economist Jason Furman of the Brookings Institute pointed out the the "Joint Committee on Taxation and Treasury both score raising capital gains taxes as raising revenues" (New Republic, 4/16/08).
In addition, both candidates were pressed by Stephanopoulos about whether they would "treat an Iranian attack on Israel as if it were an attack on the United States." Stephanopoulos opened this question with a flagrantly misleading statement, saying to Obama: "Iran continues to pursue a nuclear option. Those weapons, if they got them, would probably pose the greatest threat to Israel." According to the latest National Intelligence Estimate, Iran discontinued its alleged nuclear weapons program in 2003.
Pundits often justify their decision to exclude "second-tier" candidates from debates on the grounds that they distract attention away from the real issues. If presenting a distraction from the real issues is really the problem, perhaps moderators such as Stephanopoulos and Gibson should seriously think of excusing themselves from future debates.
ACTION:
Ask ABC why debate moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson so often derailed the debate away from issues of concern to voters and, in a debate that was supposed to help Democratic voters choose their party's candidate, framed so many questions from a right wing perspective.
CONTACT:
ABC News
Email: netaudr@abc.com
212-456-7777
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This story was published on April 18, 2008.
