Who the Hell Can You Trust???

Recently a few of my friends expressed frustration about how they want to be more informed about current events, but they just don’t know who to trust.  As a person who invests a lot of time researching and staying current on politics and the economy, I’ve compiled the following list of people, organizations, and tips for people who want to get informed about politics. I’m willing to bet there are a lot of people out there in this same predicament. They want to understand what’s going on in the world, but they have no idea where to start.

1. Turn off CNN!!!!

I’ll bet you expected me to say Fox News. You’re right about Fox, of course, but the truth is, sometimes it’s difficult for me to tell the difference between Fox and CNN. In some ways CNN is more dangerous because it’s more subtle. It’s obvious that you shouldn’t pay attention to Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity, for example, but did you know that Wolf Blitzer and Sanjay Gupta should also be avoided? That said, Anderson Cooper is okay, but he’s not someone I would turn to for the hard hitting news of the day. Fareed Zakaria also has some good commentary, but you can pick up on it through other news outlets without having to watch his show all the time.

2. Basically turn off the TV altogether

Okay, this will come as no surprise, but there’s basically no way to be really informed about the world if all you do is watch television. MSNBC has some good people like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, but you just can’t watch hours of news on the same network and expect to get a well rounded view of current events. To be clear, I’m not saying that I don’t like The Ed Show (Ed’s a decent dude and totally down with working America). Also, I think Lawrence O’Donnell has some good commentary from time to time even if I think he’s a pompous egomaniac who makes me cringe about 85% of the time. Overall, however, I’d skip the two of them in favor of doing some independent reading on the interwebs. Rachel Maddow is the only program on MSNBC that I regularly tune into. Chris Hayes’s program is on at the most ridiculous time slot in history, so unless you’re seriously awake at 7am on Saturdays, you’re better off checking out his writing or catching clips online. (If you are awake that early, you might need to do some more research about how to have more fun on Friday nights—this may not be the blog for you.)

3. Customize Your RSS Feed

Personally, I like using a customized iGoogle page with headlines and snippets from my favorite news/blog sources. I have several different pages customized for various things like Alternative Energy and local SF stuff, but the page I look at the most contains the following:

ThinkProgress: All around good journalism. I find myself posting a lot of links to this site on FB. Highly recommended that people follow this.

TruthDig: TruthDig is home to some great writers such as Chris Hedges who I very much recommend paying attention to. Also, they cross post good articles from other media outlets and have funny political cartoons.

DailyKos: I don’t care all that much for Markos Koulitsas (“Kos”) in terms of his personality for some reason, but there are a lot of great writers on this site that are worth paying attention to. Plus, the weekly “Hate-Mail-a-Palooza” can be amusing.

Crooks & Liars: Another all around good blog that posts links to funny and/or poignant political videos, as well as commentary and snippets of news from a variety of sources, so you don’t miss anything important.

Salon.com: Lots of good writers on this site like Glenn Greenwald. I especially respect Glenn Greenwald’s defense of Wikileaks, which was not all that popular with a lot of people for some reason. IMHO, if you want to know what’s going on in the world, but you don’t defend an open exchange of information, then why bother to inform yourself at all? Keep drinking the Kool-Aid!

DemocracyNow!: Amy Goodman is excellent. I don’t watch her all the time because the videos tend to be longer than I have time for, but you should definitely pay attention to her. Also, she interviews Noam Chomsky sometimes. In case you haven’t noticed, Noam Chomsky has essentially been blacklisted from all major news outlets. If this doesn’t convince you that you should turn off your television then what will?

Media Matters: I don’t read Media Matters all the time, but they provide exhaustive research to debunk idiotic claims made by Fox News pundits. They do a fantastic job—I just don’t have time to read the whole thing usually. Instead, I browse their articles to see what outrageous claims Fox News (or whoever) has made in the past 24 hours and browse through enough evidence to convince myself that it’s garbage.

The Huffington Post: I don’t look at the Huffington Post all that often because it seems to have a lot of news about celebrities and other things I could care less about, but they do have some good articles from time to time (as well as some dumb ones).

I wish I could follow The Nation more closely, but the sad truth is that they have a terrible iGoogle app, so I can never get their RSS feed to work the way I want it. The Nation is definitely a news source that I would encourage people to read though. Chris Hayes is an editor-at-large for The Nation, which is how I first heard of him before I started seeing him on MSNBC.

4. Get Familiar With A Starter List of Names You Can Trust

Paul Krugman, Economist/New York Times/Nobel Prize Recipient

Robert Reich, Economist/Public Policy Professor at UC Berkeley/Former Labor Secretary under Clinton

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post

Keith Olbermann, Current TV

Rachel Maddow, MSNBC

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Chris Hedges, TruthDig

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, DemocracyNow!

Cenk Uygar, The Young Turks (I don’t watch enough of this guy for sure)

Noam Chomsky, Linguist/MIT Professor

Melissa Harris-Perry, The Nation/Political Science Professor at Tulane University

Naomi Klein, The Nation (if you haven't read The Shock Doctrine pick up a copy ASAP)

Bernie Sanders, Independent Senator from Vermont (self-proclaimed democratic socialist!)

5. Do Some Independent Research

This is by no means an exhaustive list. These are just the people that I personally trust and recommend as a jumping off point. Plus, I’m sure there are lots of people that I’m just not remembering as I’m writing this that are perfectly excellent sources of information and commentary.

It’s also worth noting that I don’t agree with everything that anyone has to say 100% of the time. The bottom line is that there's a difference between disagreeing with someone's opinion from time to time and not being able to trust what a person has to say. The people and organizations listed above are trustworthy and are generally concerned about the same things we’re all concerned about:

Rising social and financial inequality

How to fix the economy (unlike some of the right’s economic advisors, Paul Krugman actually has a Nobel Prize)

Honesty in journalism

How money affects our politics

Healthcare access

Etc

6. Always Watch Bill Maher’s “New Rules” Segment

Politics can be dreary, depressing stuff in light of idiotic things like “Super Committees” and “Austerity Measures.” That’s why it’s so important to keep up on Bill Maher’s “New Rules” segment. Some random person typically uploads the latest clips to YouTube by Sunday evening, so if you don’t have HBO (I don’t), then there’s no excuse not to type “Bill Maher New Rules November 2011” into the YouTube machine. Happy viewing!

Everything you ever wanted to know about progressive tax rates (but were afraid to ask)...

Okay, I know I'm not the nation's foremost authority on tax rates or really any kind of authority at all, but there are a few misconceptions about progressive tax rates that hopefully I can clear up.

First of all, what do I mean by a "progressive tax"?

A progressive tax is a system of taxation in which taxes are assessed at a higher rate as an individual's ability to pay taxes increases (i.e., the wealthier you are, the more you pay).

Sounds simple, right?

Well, yeah, it kind of is, but a common misconception is that it's applied based on a percentage of your total income. In other words, if you make $30,000 you pay 10% and if you make $100,000 you pay 50%, etc. Obviously, this would be stupid. Let's say you taxed people at 30% of their income if they made under $50,000, but you increased their rate to 50% if they made over $50,000. A person who made $50,000 would end up with $35,000 after taxes, and a person who made $60,000 would end up with $30,000. This would be totally retarded, and no one is advocating this.

In contrast, if we applied a real progressive tax rate, your income would be taxed at different rates according to how much of your income falls into certain tax brackets. For example, if you made $30,000, you would be taxed at 10% on $30,000. If you made $50,000, you would be taxed at 10% on $30,000 and 15% on the remaining $20,000. If you made $100,000, you would be taxed at 10% on $30,000, 15% on $20,000, and 20% on the remaining $50,000. Your effective tax rate (and by that I mean the percentage of your income that you pay in taxes) would gradually increase, but it wouldn't be based on your total income.

An alternative to the progressive tax--one that conservatives often advocate--is to tax everyone at the same percentage rate. For example, we could tax everyone at 30% so that if you made $30,000 then you would pay $9,000, and if you made $100,000 then you would pay $30,000, etc. Although this sounds fair at first, the problem is that $9,000 means a lot more to someone making $30,000 than $30,000 means to someone making $100,000. For example, if you made $30,000 then you'd have only $21,000 after taxes, which isn't a lot of money when you add up rent, food, electricity, etc. That extra $9,000 could make the difference between having medical coverage for your children or worrying about whether you can afford to eat by the end of the week. In contrast, if you made $100,000, you'd have $70,000 after taxes. You probably wouldn't be happy to have to pay so much (I know, I wouldn't), but in general, you could afford all of the basic necessities, plus put some extra money in the bank, buy a car, save up for a house, and send your offspring to a decent college.

So here's the problem:

A lot of people in our country right now think that the scenario I just mentioned is fair. The only difference is that they recognize that because 30% is excessive for someone making $30,000, they think we should lower everyone's percentage rate so that instead of paying 30% of your income, we make it 20% or even 10% or whatever we feel is "fair" for everyone. At first, this might seem like a good idea. Hell, if I don't think about it too much, I'm all for it! Pay 10% of my total income? That would be awesome! The problem is, at a certain point it turns out we can't afford things like, oh, I don't know, making sure our bridges don't collapse, our grandmothers aren't begging in the streets, and our houses don't burn to the ground. (Not to mention, we really can't afford to bomb other countries into oblivion, but I suppose that's another issue...)

In the end, if we care about making life tolerable for everyone (and for the sake of our humanity, I hope we do), a progressive tax rate would ensure that the people at the bottom of the pyramid can survive and the people at the top of the pyramid pay enough so that our roads don't fall into disrepair and our water isn't toxic. I mean, hey, maybe I'm alone here, but wouldn't it be nice to maintain clean air standards and oh, I don't know, make sure there's some kind of oversight for things like pipeline safety?

In the end, at the risk of sounding preachy, the fact is that not everyone goes to college and lands a high paying job--and nor should they. It takes all kinds of people to form a society, so why should we begrudge people for choosing different paths? We need people to make things and provide services to keep our society afloat, and these services should be valued. Not all services necessitate huge wages (there's a trade off, after all), but it doesn't mean we should spit on people because they don't make a bazillion dollars. I hope we can all agree that everyone deserves dignity, no matter what they do. The sooner we quit demonizing people who rely on social services and start progressively taxing the very, very wealthy people who can afford to pay for this stuff, the sooner we'll ALL enjoy a better quality of life.

And oh yeah, if you think your own fate isn't wrapped up in the fate of all of the other people in our society, then sorry, but think again. Poverty and desperation breed higher crime rates and larger slums, and these things affect EVERYONE...unless you can afford to live in a gated community. Can you?