Joe and Barack’s Tax Problems.
I was stunned to see some document showing Joe the Plumbers’ tax problems on my 10pm (CT)newscast on the local NBC affiliate in Chicago on Thursday night. They have very little time for any national news and they actually spent time on Joe the Plumbers’ tax problems. Amazing!
But when an actual candidate — Barack Obama — released his tax returns, which on their face seemed to show an ethics violation of Illinois law, the press couldn’t care less.
Just to remind you, Illinois prohibits state legislators from taking speaking fees, and Barack reported “speaking fees.”
Funny how people in the news business set their priorities in an election year. Lindgren thinks it’s a diversity problem: “I really don’t blame Obama for not addressing this; he released his tax returns after all. The problem is the press, which seems to be having more trouble than usual doing its job this season. As I’ve said before, the best solution to the problem is integrating the newsrooms politically.”
If the fairness doctrine goes through, perhaps it’ll be possible to demand such integration! (Via TaxProf).