Sinema & the Star Tribune sign on

Senator Kyrsten Sinema has signed on to a slightly tweaked version of the Schumer/Manchin Bummer Beyond Belief bill that is to be passed via the reconciliation process. Politico reports on Sinema’s approval here. Judging by the ecstasy of the Star Tribune editorial board about the bill — they buy it “price controls” hook, “climate control” line, and “inflation reduction” sinker — it is a destructive mess. The editors get extra credit for treating Amy Klobuchar as some kind of an authority. Classic.

I turn to one of our readers who writes with comments on the idiotic Star Tribune editorial that go to the merits of the Schumer/Manchin bill.

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I’m a Nebraska resident who started following your site a few years ago. I’ve had a particular interest in media bias over the years and the impact it has on forming public opinion. I even worked for Newsbusters for a time before other commitments came calling.

I remember learning through research that the State of Minnesota has historically one of the highest percentages of residents in the U.S. who get their news via newspapers. So I always read intently anything you write about the Star Tribune and got in the habit of checking out their website regularly to see what they’re up to, a habit that begun with their frothing coverage of the Covington “controversy.”

I have to say that if the people of Minnesota truly do place so much emphasis on what they read in that newspaper it certainly explains why Republicans have so much difficulty winning elections in the state. For example, their latest editorial is the purest piece of straight-up propaganda I’ve seen in quite some time:

Just look at some of the things they write here:

It is also fiscally responsible. The bill pays for expenditures by closing existing tax loopholes that for too long have allowed the largest corporations and wealthiest individuals to escape paying their fair share of taxes. Among the revenue raisers: a modest 15% minimum tax on the largest corporations — those with more than $1 billion in profit. No one who makes less than $400,000 will see an increase in their tax rates.

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“This is a landmark bill,” [Minnesota Senator Amy] Klobuchar said. “Americans, Minnesotans, are struggling so much with costs right now. What this bill does is, after getting through pandemic, put us on a path forward to reduce costs for families. This is not just a baby step, but a big step to bringing down inflation, and taking on climate change and the pharmaceutical industry — two things deemed impossible for years.”

Of course, the Penn-Wharton study has been much discussed this past week and it concluded that the bill would increase inflation. As did over 230 economists from the University of Chicago, Notre Dame, Virginia, Princeton, Columbia, Duke, et al.

And as Marc Thiessen succinctly sums up here, the Joint Committee on Taxation found that the bill would “raise taxes on Americans earning less than $200,000 to the tune of $16.7 billion in 2023 and would generate $14.1 billion from those making between $200,000 and $500,000 a year.”

But those inconvenient facts did not mesh with the Star Tribune’s narrative and interfered with their ability to tell us how awesome the bill is. So they simply excluded any mention of those findings and used quotes from Clinton/Obama treasury flack Larry Summers and prominent Democrat donor and Moody’s analyst, Mark Zandi, instead.

The editorial makes no mention that the bill more than doubles the size of the IRS (which we all know the real reason for Democrats wanting) and ends in an attack against Republicans for not supporting a bill that “does much for the constituents in their states and the country as a whole.”

This is the very definition of propaganda. And ironically, it comes from an outlet seemingly obsessed with “misinformation. [Citations omitted.]. I have actually taken a screenshot of this editorial being how I’ve noticed that the Star Tribune has been scrubbing their archives and making inaccessible a lot of their past embarrassing articles (e.g., “Russian collusion” articles, Trump’s border crisis, etc.), and I imagine it will be a mere months before it disappears from existence when crow du jour starts being served.

Thus, if you ever find yourselves entertaining the possibility that you might be a bit hard and repetitive in calling out the Star Tribune, you’re clearly not. If anything, you’re not being tough enough on them. They may have officially crossed that threshold from being unethical and annoying to being a legitimate danger to the people of your great state.

Have a good weekend.

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