The Diane Rehm Show, Millionaires, Taxes
And Jobs, 2011.12.12
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whether journalists in Korea like naggomsu
(나꼼수) or not, it should be alarming to them. Naggomsu
is telling them, “Hey, guys, get off your ass, and go meet with people who
might know about something you are interested in covering, as opposed to conveying
press release verbatim or accusing naggomsu of being full of baseless charges.
In this sense, I appreciate her (Keith)
giving a shot in the dark. I also need that spirit.
=============
KEITH
Yes. So I did this story that aired Friday
on "Morning Edition" that got right at this question of what do the
job creators think and who are these job creators who bring in more than $1
million a year. The argument from Republicans and others is that many small
businesses are set up as corps or other types of corporations, where the
profits from the business pass through to the individual and show up on their
individual taxes.
So, in theory, someone who is not
excessively wealthy but who has a very successful small business could have $1
million show up on their annual taxes as income, and, thus, they would be taxed
on that. So I went to the Republicans
in Congress who have been
making this argument most strenuously, and I said, please put me in touch with some of the
people who would be affected.
And this is a pretty standard thing. You'd go to members of Congress or
you'd go to interest groups and you say, you're
making this point, Give me
the human interest story. I
want to talk to these people.
Well, it turns out they couldn't produce
anyone. I called very early last week and said, please help me. The members of
Congress directed me to a group called the Tax Relief Coalition, also the NFIB,
the National Federation of Independent Business, the Chamber of Commerce. So I
went to these groups early in the week and I said, please help me find someone
to talk to. And they couldn't find anyone. All week long they couldn't find
anyone.
For a small business owner or a business
owner earning more than $1 million a year, who would be reporting more than $1
million a year of income on their taxes, basically someone who would be
affected by this millionaire's surtax. And they could not produce anyone. At
one point, the Tax Relief Coalition vice president told me, well, you know,
people just don't want to talk about their very personal taxes on national
radio.
So
I went to the NPR Facebook page and put out a request and said, are
there any millionaires out there who would be willing to talk to me? It was
just kind of a shot in the dark. And I got about 30 responses, which is
remarkable. However, basically everyone who responded said that the surtax
would not affect hiring because what affects hiring is their business
conditions, whether they have enough business to need another employee.
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The Diane Rehm Show Friday News Roundup – International 2011.12.16
=========
The courage of Diane Rehm to raise up an “unpleasant
question” to her colleague would make her a valuable asset in the US media, and,
particularly, contribute to building public confidence in NPR.
On the other hand, the controversy over illegality
of the Iraq war in 2003 was not hard to cover, given the struggle the US had
with other UN Security Council members. Even assuming WMD existed in Iraq, the
US was not authorized to use force, as the US agreed to subject herself to UN regime.
=========
REHM
David, I'm going to ask you an unpleasant
question. Do you think that
journalists were complicit in promoting the idea that war in Iraq was inevitable?
IGNATIUS
Let me speak about my own work rather than
talk about the profession as a whole. As I look back, there are no columns I've
ever written that I'd more like to revise in light of what I know now than the
ones I wrote then. I do think that our profession was so convinced that Bush
was going to go to war that we spent a lot of time getting ready to cover it
and relatively less time writing about whether it made sense, looking to see
what the dissent there was in the military and the State Department.
I think we just figured it was going to
happen and so we were queuing up for the best embed assignments, the best
opportunities to cover it. And I think everybody in our profession looks back
and, I hope, learned lessons from that, to ask more questions, just to insist
on getting the evidence for things that are so consequential for the country.
Nadia BILBASSY
I was actually embedded as well with the
Marines during the beginning of the war and I remember being in Kuwait and
President Bush was giving this ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and his sons to
leave the country within 24 hours, otherwise he cannot avoid the war. And I was
sitting there and thinking how on earth can you avoid the war? You have almost
150,000 troops already deployed.
The drums of war were already, you know,
hitting everywhere so, to me, it was already the decision has been made,
whether it was given a last minute choice for Saddam to leave...
REHM
Isn't
it the responsibility, and I think David put it
well, to question those decisions
rather than simply covering the
operation itself and the decision to move forward? I, for one, feel very disappointed in our profession that we did
not ask the questions that should have been asked.
Robin Harding
So I can speak a bit from my own paper in
that I think we did, by and large at the time, question these things. Our
editorial line was, by and large, certainly very questioning with the Iraq war
and speaking also a little bit for the British media. I remember how much it
was seen through a domestic, political lens. It was seen through the lens of,
do you want to be seen opposing this or do you want to be seen as lining up
behind the U.S.? So there was a sort of a confidence of interests which did
come before the asking of questions and the responsibility of journalists is to
do it the other way around.
