Thinking About Campaign Coverage

Television media in particular spend an inordinate amount of time chasing down every little slip of the tongue of each of the candidates. This creates stories that go on for a week: “Candidate A said so-and-so”, What do you think of that statement? Will it disaffect the white vote? The Black vote? And now, the green vote? The Sunday talk shows mull over the meaning. The pundits representing each candidate or party stroke their beards and behave as if this was an important distinction.

Has there ever been a time when such fine parsing of words dominated the airwaves and even print media? In the words of former Presidential candidate Walter Mondale: “Where’s the beef?” We have watched TV presentations of candidate speeches with long discussions on the one slip or the one provocative comment. But less than one minute spent on the content of the candidates’ proposals. The American people must get energetic about reading the content of these proposals on the candidates’ web sites. They must look at some non-affiliated websites to get solid information. Since south central Pennsylvania is so tax averse, I thought I would list some tax watch dog organizations that explore the issues of fair taxation and monitor government spending.

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/ It has links to these other organizations and more.
http://www.cbpp.org/
http://www.fairtaxes4all.org/
http://www.ombwatch.org/