Losing the plot
Political media coverage too often settles for misleading updates over deeper truths. A sharp piece critiques how that process played out in coverage of the GOP's tax and Medicaid cutting bill.
I like to think about the phrase, “Keeping your eye on the ball,” when thinking about news coverage, and how well it is — or isn’t — covering politics in DC.
Is the macro-story of what is happening and where it is originating from shining through the onslaught of daily news? Or do the deeper truths get obscured or forgotten in the crush to cover every new development. Bad actors know how to take advantage of this: feed the media a piece of juicy news today and hope people will forget whatever happened two weeks ago. Or next month.
The New Republic’s Greg Sargent looked at a perfect example of that this week with a sharp critique of the coverage of the GOP’s proposal to cut taxes and programs like Medicaid. For weeks, we have been treated to a lot of noise about ways that Republicans want to raise taxes on the wealthy — by eliminating the carried interest loophole, and supposedly raising taxes on people making more than $2.5 million a year.
This is because they are putting the interests of working class people first, we are told. And because, we have also been reminded, they are serious about doing something about the deficit, despite recent history.
But Sargent and some tax experts he spoke with found the real story hiding in the text of the tax bill. For starters, it does not end the carried interest loophole, delivering what would be “a big victory to hedge fund managers, private equity executives and their lobbyists,” as Punchbowl notes.
On top of that, the bill creates a new tax break that would largely benefit wealthy investors, Sargent writes — expanding deductions for “pass-through” entities and extending it to vehicles like “Business Development Companies…[which] facilitate passive investments.”
“This change will forgo an estimated $10 billion in [federal] revenues,” Sargent writes. “That might seem small in the larger scheme of a multitrillion-dollar bill. But it’s precisely through these incremental, largely invisible gamings of the tax code that the wealthy keep skewing it in their favor. And it’s a sizable tax break for them.”
What about deficit reduction? The new bill, as it is currently conceived, stands to add some $2.5 trillion to the deficit, according to nonpartisan estimates.
Last week, the NYT ran a surprising piece with a bold headline, saying that Trump wanted to roll back a provision of his 2017 tax cut to institute a higher tax on people who make more than $2.5 million. “Trump Revives Push for Higher Taxes on the Rich,” the headline read. But the NYT’s piece on the GOP’s bill this week notes that it would extend the 2017 tax cut. That whole tax the wealthy thing? Not even noted in the story.
Sargent concludes: “The GOP ‘identity crisis’ doesn’t appear to be much of a crisis at all. Most Republicans appear to know exactly what they truly believe—and who they really represent.”
Here’s what else we’re reading this week:
In that very same bill, Republicans introduced language to ban the regulation of AI platforms for 10 years, according to 404 Media. “...no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10 year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act,” the bill read earlier this week.
The Lever has a complicated but interesting look at how this may affect attempts to regulate or ban algorithmic price-setting by landlords and real estate companies.
Uber drivers are making less money than they used to, according to this detailed story in the NYT. They situate the piece in the rideshare lot at LAX, which for anyone who has used it, sounds like as much or more of a nightmare for drivers as it is for airport commuters. Uber says its take rate has “not increased in Los Angeles,” — the amount it removes from the fee charged to riders — but that the amount that goes to liability insurance costs has. Drivers say they are struggling to get by financially.
Pretty gruesome details about Biden’s decline, in this New Yorker excerpt of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book looking at Biden’s disastrous decision to run again. The piece focuses on a glitzy fundraiser that was held in Los Angeles with people like Obama, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and others, in the weeks before the infamous June debate. According to this detailed account, Biden didn’t seem to recognize Clooney backstage, which set off alarm bells from people who witnessed the encounter. After the debate, Clooney wrote a New York Times op-ed that urged Biden to drop out, ignoring counsel from folks like Obama who tried to warn him away from it — a key moment that looks downright courageous in this account.
The nonprofit Public Citizen and a group of labor unions are suing the Trump administration for dismantling the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health, which we wrote about a few weeks ago. “The chaos of dismantling, temporarily recalling and piecemeal reinstatements of staff has wreaked havoc on workers’ lives, discontinuing services and programs altogether and creating total disruption in the benefits and protections that workers and the public depend on,” they write. Some 300 of the approximately 1,000 laid off workers from the agency were reinstated recently, it came out this week, after outcry from labor unions, workplace safety advocates, workers in hazardous professions like mining, and even some Republicans.
Lefty streamer Hasan Piker was detained by CBP officers at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago for two hours upon arriving from Paris this week, he said. Piker says he was questioned about his job, political affiliation, opinion of Trump, and whether he had any connections to terrorist groups: “They knew who I was and they were ready to receive me.”
Former DOL secretary Seth Harris, who served under Obama, hosted lawyers from the AFGE and NTEU in a pod/videocast to discuss the lawsuits against the Trump administration’s attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from most federal workers.
More than 1,000 Starbucks workers across the country were on strike, as of Wednesday midday, over a new, more restrictive company dress code. Restaurant Dive has more details. “Customers don’t care what color our clothes are when they’re waiting 30 minutes for a latte,” one worker said in a release. “Starbucks is making us buy entirely new dress-code-compliant clothing. Many of us can’t afford a new wardrobe.”
See you all next week.