The Rachel Maddow Show verses Politifact:

The Battle for Truth, Journalism, and Fairness

I was extremely distraught when I heard that two of my favorite sources for news were engaged in a heated argument. The trouble began when Politifact Wisconsin ranked one of Rachel Maddow’s claims about the Wisconsin Deficit false. She responded tonight (February 24^th 2011) by saying that Politifact was wrong and in no uncertain terms attacked to validity of the entire organization. I decided to determine who was right and who was wrong.

The original claims in question were presented in the first 3 minutes of the first segment of Rachel’s February 17^th show.  That is where she said the following:

            I‘m quoting their own version of the Congressional Budget Office, the state‘s own nonpartisan “assess the state‘s finances” agency.  That agency said the month that the new Republican governor of Wisconsin was sworn in, last month, that the state was on track to have a $120 million budget surplus this year.

She also said:

            The state is not bankrupt.  Even though the state had started the year on track to have a budget surplus—now, there is, in fact, a $137 million budget shortfall.  Republican Governor Scott Walker, coincidentally, has given away $140 million worth of business tax breaks since he came into office. Hey, wait.  That‘s about exactly the size of the shortfall.

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Her show’s blog also included a post titled, “Wisconsin Governor made his own problem,” which blames the budget deficit on Walker’s tax breaks.

Politifact Wisconsin wrote an article that rated Rachel's statements false because the tax cuts that Walker signed into law don’t take effect until the next fiscal year and that the deficit for the current year is actually the result of expected shortfalls in Medicaid, the public defender’s office, and the office of corrections. Those shortfalls weren't included in the Legislative Fiscal Bureau's report (Wisconsin's CBO) because the non-partisan agency is uncomfortable with assuming budget fixes will be passed when creating a fiscal forcast.

The Rachel Maddow Show replied with two letters taking issue with the Politifact article that fact-checked Maddow. The letters correctly state that both the headline and summery of Politifact’s article gave the false impression that Rachel failed to acknowledge that there was a budget deficit in Wisconsin. Politifact Wisconsin also failed to contact The Rachel Maddow Show for explanation and comment before posting the article, a clear failure in fairness and journalistic ethics.

However, the letters also assert that Rachel never claimed that Walker’s tax cuts were the source of the budget deficit. That was certainly the impression that I came away with after watching the segment when it first aired. TRMS claims that Rachel was merely trying to show that Walker doesn’t care about fiscal responsibility and merely wants to break public sector unions. Nevertheless, the show’s blog clearly named Walker’s tax cuts as the culprit behind Wisconsin’s deficit. It even included an excerpt from the Madison Capital Times to prove it.

The Rachel Maddow Show also gave an on air response to the Politifact article. The video attacks Politifact for falsely claiming that she claimed that Wisconsin doesn't currently face a budget deficit, but completely ignores the controversy over what caused the deficit in the first place.

Both Politifact Wisconsin and The Rachel Maddow Show have acted irresponsibly in this dispute. Politifact failed to contact TRMS for an explanation before posting the article and created a poorly written and misleading headline and summery. The Rachel Maddow Show failed to admit that she implied that the Walker tax cuts were responsible for the budget shortfall, failed to debunk or even mention that misperception in their piece on the controversy, and failed to admit that their blog clearly stated the false claim.  Both sources need to offer corrections and apologies. This conflict is a disgrace for all involved.

Debt and Social Security:

The Venn diagram with no center

Today, Friday, February 18, 2011, Morning Joe spent most of its time discussing the protests over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan to require public sector union members to pay a higher percentage of their salaries toward health care and pensions. His plan also eliminates the ability of public sector unions to negotiate with the state, a truly undemocratic thing to do. The discussion was balanced, but it became heated at times.

One of the show’s great strengths is that its guests come from across the ideological spectrum. It is a guarantee that on any given day Morning Joe will have both conservative and liberal guests. That is something that few other cable news shows can boast.

One of their guests today was former National Republican Committee Senior Advisor Terry Holt. The panel’s discussion shifted temporarily from the fiscal situation in Wisconsin to the fiscal situation in Washington. Holt stated, “If you look at what we promised to do in Social Security, over time, it is a mushroom cloud of debt.” He then went on to suggest that Congress make small reductions in the Social Security benefit scheme and for politicians to stop using Social Security fear-mongering to get elected.

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I strongly agree with Terry Holt’s positions on Social Security. In fact, if you add raising the cap on income that is subject to the Social Security payroll tax, than that is my position. Unfortunately, his claim that in the long run Social Security will become, “a mushroom cloud of debt” isn’t true.

Social Security currently has a surplus. In fact, it has a 2.5 Trillion dollar surplus (NPR). That’s trillion with a “t”. In layman’s terms it has a two and a half million million dollar surplus. That’s a lot of money. Social Security taxes will continue to be larger than Social Security payments for a few more years. After that, the surplus Social Security has accumulated will be used to make up the difference between costs and revenue. The non-partisan, non-ideological Congressional Budget Office projects that the Social Security trust funds [the surplus] will last until  2039 (CBO p 15). If Social Security isn’t tinkered with before then, Social Security benefits would be cut by about 20 percent to match the yearly revenues (CBO p11). In short, Social Security doesn’t have the legal authority to go into debt. Therefore, it cannot, in the short or long term, add to the deficit. Social Security and the debt are two completely separate topics. To say otherwise is intellectually irresponsible.

But that’s not quite the end of the story. The Social Security trust fund is invested in government treasuries (NPR). Essentially the government borrowed it, just as it borrows money from China. Like all borrowed money, it was spent. The rest of the government used that money to pay for everything in our discretionary budget: the Department of Health and Human Services, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the EPA, and so on. There appears to be some uncertainty whether that money will be paid back. It is horrific to even think that it wouldn’t be, because Congress could easily borrow money from China to pay back the loan if it couldn’t pay it back any other way. But that borrowing won’t be due to Social Security, but to the other things that were initially paid for using borrowed Social Security money. Blaming this part of the deficit on Social Security is like trying to blame our debt on China, it blames the lender for the money it allowed us to spend.

So no matter how you slice it, Social Security will not contribute to the national debt. There is no doubt that we ought to try to fix social security. But let’s not confuse the issue. There is the debt crisis and then there is Social Security. The former will never be the result of the latter.

Sources

CBO. "Social Security Policy Options." Congressional Budget Office, July 2010. Web. 18 Feb 2011. <http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11580/07-01-SSOptions_forWeb.pdf>.      

NPR. The Friday Podcast: In Search of the Social Security Trust Funds. Planet Money. National Public Radio, 12 Nov 2010. Web. 18 Feb 2011. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/11/12/131281247/the-friday-podcast-in-search-of-the-social-security-trust-funds>.




CORRECTION: It sucks to do a correction on a factcheck. This article used to describe Social Security as a, "0 interest credit card." In fact the tresuries in the Social Security trust fund do collect interest. (Politifact)

The Muslim Brotherhood:

Democratic Actor or Threat to the United States?

On Tuesday February 1^st , 2011 Sean Hannity and many of his guests spent most of the hour criticizing an organization called the Muslim Brotherhood that Sean fears may come to power in Egypt as a result of the current democratic uprising there. I decided to check the accuracy of his claims. I was truly surprised by what I found.

Unfortunately, fox news doesn’t post a complete transcript or video for previous shows, so my analysis will come from my admittedly fallible memory.   

Hannity began by claiming that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood supports Sharia law. That is true (bbc). Sharia law is a cruel and outdated Muslim religious code of law which requires women to be veiled in public, makes blasphemy a crime, and prescribes stoning as the punishment for a woman who commits adultery (Duhaime). However, supporting Sharia law is not too different from conservatives in the United States who wish to make laws based on the bible, which calls for the stoning of disobedient children (Bible Gateway). However, most politicians who wish to legislate based on the bible are doing so based on the more accepting and reasonable passages, while Islamists accept the whole of their religious text, not just the humane parts. Our longtime ally Saudi Arabia employs a strict adherence to Sharia (Council on Foreign Relations).

Hannity’s second claim was that The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood supports Hamas. That is also true (Yahoo News). Hamas has launched rocket attacks on Israel in the past, which has landed it on the US government’s list of terrorist organizations. Such attacks are morally abhorrent and contemptible. But Hamas won the election in Gaza and is seen by many Muslims as freedom fighters who are in a valiant struggle against their occupiers and oppressors. Negotiations haven’t worked out well for the Palestinians in the past, so it is understandable why some of them would support violent means even if others rightfully condem it.  

Hannity also claimed that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is violent. This one is false. While the Brotherhood has supported violence in the past, the Brotherhood disavowed violence in the 1970s and condemned a recent bombing in Cairo (CFR).

One of Hannity’s guest claimed that the symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood included a phrase which specifically used the word “terrorism,” and supported it. This claim is absurd on its face. No group would refer to themselves as terrorist-supporters. They would use a euphemism like “freedom-fighter” or “Martyr.” The phrase on their symbol actually translates as, “prepare yourselves” (Der Spiegal). That’s not the most conciliatory or peaceful message, but it is a far cry from an outright endorsement of terrorism.

Hannity went on to say that there is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. That is true (Washington Post). He also went on to say that the group is a threat to the United States and Israel. The validity of that statement is mixed. The Brotherhood’s ties to Hamas means that it is a credible threat to Israel. However, the Muslim Brotherhood does not support terrorist attacks against the United States the way Al Qaeda does. Organizationally, the Muslim Brotherhood poses no threat to the United States. However, Individual members of the Brotherhood have gone on to join groups which do pose a threat to the US. The planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was formerly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait (Washington Post).

Hannity’s final mistake was to characterize Jihad as “holy war.” This is a common mistake in the United States. To Muslims the term means something else entirely. It refers to a process of self-betterment towards being a better person. It also means trying to make the world a better place, much akin to the informal use of “crusade,” as in ‘the crusade against hunger.’ The term can also refer to the use of violence in an attempt to cure injustice, but the term refers to much more than violence alone (Quranic Studies).

Hannity’s concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood stem from an understandable concern for the safety of the United States and Israel, not from an attempt to deceive. He has a history of welcoming those who disagree with him to his show, an act which I applaud. It was truly amusing to watch him ask each of his guests if they have been following the events in Egypt, including Larry the Cable Guy.

On the bigger issue, I believe that the Brotherhood must play a part in a future democratic Egypt. The overwhelming majority of Brotherhood members are non-violent. Throughout the world the Brotherhood brings Muslims together to form friendships and community bonds. In Egypt the Brotherhood also provides social services such as health care and education (The Real News). It is unlikely that the Brotherhood would come to power in Egypt as CNN security analyst Peter Bergen estimates that if a free and fair election were held, they would only receive a third of the vote (CNN). Nevertheless, they form a significant portion of the Egyptian population and can’t be excluded from the political process if Egypt is to become a true democracy. Democracy is what Egypt yearns for, and after 30 years of dictatorial rule they are ready to seize it for themselves.

Decide for yourself what you think of the Brotherhood. Here is a link to their English-language website. The Doha Debates did a wonderful show on whether Political Islam is a threat to the West, I highly recommend it.

The Deficit:

A History Lesson

On Friday, January 21^st, 2011, Chris Matthews had John Feehery and Steve McMahon on Hardball to discuss a variety of political issues during the segment, “The Strategists.” Towards the end of the discussion, (at 5 minutes 20 seconds) Matthews asks Feehery if the Republicans would oppose a project similar to Kennedy's space program should Obama propose one. Feehery replied, “Eisenhower gave Kennedy a surplus to work with so he could say, 'let's go to the moon.' That's a great message, no doubt about it, but Kennedy had the money to do it.” Matthews replied, “What surpluses are you talking about? Eisenhower didn't have any surpluses.” Matthews later said, “Truman had surpluses, Eisenhower didn't.” Feehery answered, “Look at his last budget actually Chris, look it up.” So I decided to see who was right, Matthews or Feehery.

Truman was president from 1945- 1953. Eisenhower was president from 1953-1961. (Source: McGraw-Hill Presidential Timeline) The website usgovernmentspending.com has compiled information on the US federal budget for all years since the beginning of George Washington's second term in 1792. Here is the graph from that website that shows the US budget deficit as a percent of GDP (the size of the economy) from 1945-1961.

As you can see, both Truman and Eisenhower had surpluses. Specifically, Eisenhower had surpluses in 1956, 1957, and 1960. So that begs the question, were Truman and Eisenhower the only post World War Two presidents to have surpluses? Here is the usgovernmentspending.com graph showing deficit spending a a percentage of GDP from 1945 to 2010.

As you can see, the only other president to run a notable surplus was Bill Clinton. There was a surplus for Fiscal Year 1969, but it is completely overwhelmed by the deficits surrounding it.

Here is what deficit spending as a percentage of GDP looks like over all of American History.

The largest spikes in the graph are the civil war (1861-1865), World War I (1917-1918), World War II (1939-1945) and the Great Recession (2007-Present).

Ironically, the example Feehery uses to show Eisenhower's ability to balance the budget was a deficit year. Kennedy's first year, FY 1961, was determined by Eisenhower's final budget. It was a small deficit, 3.5 billion dollars, but a deficit nonetheless.

But on the larger question of whether Eisenhower had any surpluses, Feehery is correct and Matthews is wrong. Both Truman and Eisenhower had surplus years. The United States was undoubtedly in better fiscal shape in 1961, when Kennedy announced the goal of going to the moon, than we are today. That being said, it is totally understandable why both Matthews and Feehery would fumble the budget numbers of an administration that took place 50 years ago. Neither man had the numbers in front of him as neither thought they would need them. However, I am going to send this analysis to Chris Matthews and ask for a correction.  

Balancing the Budget:

A Primer

Everyone politician loves to say that they will balance the budget. However, this is a very difficult task. If our revenues are to ever equal our spending, everyone will have to part with some program or tax rate they support. Many economists believe that we should run deficits during a recession, but everyone agrees that we will eventually have to get our fiscal house in order. (A deficit is how much we add to the national debt each year.) I have tried to find enough spending to cut and taxes to raise to balance our annual federal budget, and I have failed. However, we all must begin providing ideas on how to deal with our debt crisis. Here are a few of my ideas.

Modifying Farm Subsidies                                                           $0.1044 Billion/Year   ($104.4 Million/Year)

Farming is a perilous endeavor. A storm could completely wipe away this year’s crops; food prices could drop unexpectedly and cause farmers to go out of business, or the cost of fuel could skyrocket. Given these realities I believe that farm subsidies are an appropriate use of federal funds. However, some farm subsidies go to major agribusiness companies that are so profitable that they don’t need any help from Uncle Sam. Even worse than that, these subsidies help them overwhelm farmers in Mexico, Africa, and other developing countries who can never match the crop prices of subsidized multinational corporations.

In 2008 Congress passed a bill regarding agricultural policy. The bush administration’s original proposal (found under the subtitle USDA’s AGI proposal) would have denied farm subsidy payments to households with more than $200,000 of Adjusted Gross Income. It also would have eliminated the exemption when over 75% of AGI comes from non-farm income, among other more complicated things. This bill would have saved $1.5 Billion over 10 years. The bill that was passed was based on the senate bill which saved $456 Million over 10 years. Subtracting the savings of the senate bill from the administration’s bill and divided by 10 equals $104.4 Million a year. This information was obtained from a CRS Report for Congress.  

 The amount of savings that these changes would bring is next to non-existent when compared to an annual deficit, so this fight is a labor of love, not one of fiscal responsibility.

Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes                             $2.2 Billion/Year

Several corporations have used tax loopholes to avoid paying corporate taxes. Exxon Mobil doesn’t pay federal taxes on profits it makes in the United States. GE and Bank of America haven’t paid taxes on any of their profits. I couldn’t find the numbers for Exxon or GE, but Bank of America made $6.3 Billion in profits in 2009. The corporate tax rate is 35%. That means Bank of America makes $2.2 Billion a year by manipulating tax loopholes.

Eliminate the V-22 Osprey program                        $2.8 Billion/Year

The V-22 Osprey is a cross between a helicopter and an airplane. This real life transformer is costly, it is one of the military’s most expensive weapons program. The operations carried out by Ospreys could very easily be done with far less expensive helicopters. This is just one example of the many other weapons programs that the military could swap out for less expensive ones.

Eliminate Subsidies for Oil Companies                  $4.5 Billion/Year

Fortune Magazine ranks Mining and Crude Oil Production as the 7^th most profitable industry in the world. Nevertheless, we continue to provide subsidies to oil companies. This hand out is one of the most alarming I have found. In the midst of global climate change we have no business giving fossil fuels a leg up over renewable forms of energy.

Let the Bush tax cuts expire for the top two percent of income earners                                $68.1 Billion/Year

Due to the recent tax compromise, this will become an issue again in 2012. Extending the tax cuts for income made over $250,000 is one of the least economically stimulative things that congress could do. Those who have more ought to pay more in taxes. Income inequality has skyrocketed in our country since the 1980s, so the rich can afford to pay a slightly higher rate on income over $250,000 a year.

End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of 2012                                              $120 Billion/Year

Under the current timeline, the US is set to remove all remaining troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. The target year for withdrawal from Afghanistan is 2014. That is far too late. There are next to no Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. They have moved their base of operations to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. We remain in Afghanistan not because we are fighting terrorism, but because we don’t want to leave the place a total mess. But the nation is ridiculously corrupt, has rigged elections, and the Taliban remains in tight control of much of the country. It had previously been my hope that at the very least we could negotiate a cease-fire between the central government and the Taliban to end the endless violence, but even that might be beyond our ability. We negotiated with a fake Taliban operative before he made off with a lot of money. I know that immediate pullout would be a logistical nightmare and disrupt our attempts to train the country’s police and security forces. But when we finally realize that we won’t be able to build a democratic state in Afghanistan, that the Afghan government won’t be able to provide necessary services (like a justice system) to its citizens, and that it will be next to impossible to negotiate an end to the violence there, we can no longer ignore the costs of the war. Not only are we paying for the war in the lives and mental health of our soldiers, war cuts deeply into our nation’s pocketbook. We spend $120 Billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan every year. When the Afghan war is analyzed by the Obama administration this year, I hope that they look very closely at the great costs and slim gains in Afghanistan and agree to an earlier deadline for withdrawal. I would suggest having all troops out of the country by the end of 2012. I hope that the US resists the temptation to ignore the costs, both human and fiscal, the next time we consider entering another war.

Let the Bush tax cuts expire for those making less than $250,000 a year when the unemployment rate drops to 6%                                                                                                                         $270 Billion/Year

I was very hesitant in taking this position, but while the rich got the largest per capita benefits from the Bush tax cuts, the bulk of the cost was in tax cuts for the middle class. Middle class workers spend more of their paycheck to stimulate the economy and times are tough right now. These tax rates should not expire until the recession is over, which is why I chose to tie their expiration to a lagging indicator. But we couldn’t afford the bush tax cuts when they were created, and we can’t afford them now. By letting these cuts expire, tax rates would return to Clinton-era levels, a time known for economic prosperity.

Conclusion

And now for the depressing part. The deficit for 2010 was $1.47 Trillion. Part of the deficit was due to the recession (with higher unemployment there are less people to pay income tax). While sources may differ on how much our current deficits are due to the recession, The New York Times predicts that our annual deficit in 2030 will be $1.355 Trillion. Even with all of these spending cuts and tax increases, we don’t even come close to balancing the budget; but it’s a start.

Harry Reid joins a Republican Filibuster

(2/18/13: This editorial is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Senate rules. Here is my correction. Other than this parenthetical, this post is unaltered.)

 

On Wednesday, December 22, a miracle occurred. After months of impasse, Congress finally passed the bill which covers the health care costs for 9/11 first responders. The endorsement of various liberal pundits helped put pressure on lawmakers to pass the bill which was many years overdue. However, there was one omission which was rather striking.

The final hurdle the bill had to overcome was the senate filibuster. Republicans decided to filibuster everything until they were sure that the Bush tax cuts would be renewed for all income levels. That included blocking the progress of the 9/11 first responders bill. Specifically, the senate held a vote on December 9^th on whether to override the filibuster and proceed to vote on the bill. In order to break the filibuster, they needed 60 votes. They received 57. The vote was almost straight down party lines. All republicans present (Brownback was back home in Kansas preparing to become our state's next governor) voted against overturning the filibuster. They voted to delay health care reimbursements to 9/11 first responders. Every democrat voted for overturning the filibuster, except for one, Harry Reid. That's right, the head of the Democratic party in the Senate broke ranks to vote against overturning a Republican filibuster. I found this fact so shocking that I had to find a second source before I could believe it.

The problem is, no one reported this. Not Jon Stewart, not Rachel Maddow, not The New York Times. In fact, the only news outlet that has mentioned this fact is Media Matters, who said that he changed his vote to a no for procedural reasons. What procedural issue could be so important as providing health care to 9/11 first responders? Moreover, why would the leader of our party join the opposing party's filibuster on anything?

Nevertheless, all of these sources did a better job than fox's opinion programming, which first ignored and then defended the republican filibuster. As always, Shepard Smith bucked the larger talking heads to support the bill that should have been a no-brainer.

What does this episode in the American media teach us? We must be able to do our own research so that we can know what our sources are leaving out.

Inaccuracies and Incivility

An Hour with Ed Shultz

Yesterday, December 6^th, I tuned in to The Rachel Maddow Show. I was surprised to find that the calm, cool voice of Rachel Maddow had been replaced by something much more hyperbolic. She couldn't make it to work that day, so Ed Shultz filled in with a second hour of his show, The Ed Show.

I had stopped watching The Ed Show after he held a poll where he asked his viewers, “Are Republicans Heartless?” after Republicans in the Senate blocked unemployment benefits several months ago. Congressional Republicans shouldn't have blocked the extension of unemployment benefits during a time when unemployment is over 9%, but to call all Republicans heartless was too much for me. But I watched the show to see if his rhetoric had changed. It hadn't.

He began by saying that letting the bush tax cuts for the rich expire, “could be used to solve our deficit.” ("Should Dems unite over tax cuts?") However, letting the bush tax cuts expire for the top two percent would bring in just under 70 billion dollars a year (“Vets Target of Deficit Commision?”). Whereas the deficit, the amount of money per year that Congress spends but doesn't pay for in taxes, in 2010 is projected to be 1,400 billion dollars (“Montgomery.”) Letting the bush tax cuts expire on the wealthy would certainly help reduce the deficit, but that action alone could not solve our yearly deficits.

I have tried to find a way to balance the budget, and no one can do so without some difficult spending cuts and tax hikes. You should try the New York Times interactive web feature and try to balance the budget yourself. It doesn't contain all possible tax hikes or spending cuts, but it is greatly informative on how difficult it is to eliminate our yearly deficits.

One of Ed’s many guests on the issue of the president's new compromise with congressional republicans on the bush tax cuts was the recently defeated Alan Grayson, who is serving out the rest of his term before the end of the 111^th Congress. To explain his opposition to letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire for income made over $250,000 Grayson said, “The top 1% of the US population owns over 50% of the wealth of the country” (“Should Dems unite over tax cuts?”). In fact, the top 1% owns 33.8% of our country’s wealth (“Crazy Graphs: Rich Vs Middle Class and Poor.”) In a time where millions of Americans lack health insurance and millions more must go into great debt simply to pay for college, I believe that is still too much. But it is never justified to falsify information to support your opinion. And I do believe that Alan Grayson knows that his statement is untrue; he is infamous for using a deceptively edited video-clip of a speech that was made by his opponent in a 2010 campaign ad, making it seem that his opponent was making a point that was the exact opposite of what he was actually saying ("Daily Show: Indecision 2010 - Taliban Dan & Boo-Gate ")

After multiple guests who agreed with Shultz on tax cuts, Ed had both a Democratic and Republican strategist on his show at the same time, to discuss the issue further (“Winners and losers in tax cut deal.”) The Republican strategist, Ron Christie, attempted to make a supply-side economics argument that raising taxes on the rich would discourage them from making money and result in lower returns for the government. Before he could make his case, however, both the democratic guest and Ed shouted over him to the point he couldn't be heard. Ultimately, I do not agree with Christie's argument (here's why), but I do believe he should have been able to make it.

This level of name-calling, distortion, and incivility is the norm on Ed's show. Ed and others who engage in similar practices could gain much in credibility and respect if they interacted with those they disagree with in a more cordial manner and showed a greater respect for factual accuracy.

Works Cited

"Crazy Graphs: Rich Vs Middle Class and Poor." The Young Turks. 18 June 2010. Radio.7 Dec 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= VnVJAkhGyjQ>.

"Daily Show: Indecision 2010 - Taliban Dan & Boo-Gate ." The Daily Show. Comedy Central : 29 Sept 2010. Television. 7 Dec 2010.<http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed- september-29- 2010/indecision-2010---taliban-dan---boo-gate>.

Montgomery, Lori. "Federal budget deficit to exceed $1.4 trillion in 2010 and 2011." Washington Post 24 July 2010, Print. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072304101.html>

"Should Dems unite over tax cuts?." The Ed Shultz Show. MSNBC: 06 Sept 2010. Television. 7 Dec 2010. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/40541391#40541101>.

"Vet's Target of Deficit Commision?." The Dylan Ratigan Show. MSNBC: 02 Sept 2010. Television. 7 Dec 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj06nIHMF_g>.

"Winners and losers in tax cut deal." The Ed Shultz Show. MSNBC: 06 Sept 2010. Television.7 Dec 2010. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/40541391#40541391>.