Commentary Update for May 20, 2003: Tax Avoidance, Labor Site, Corruption Update, Gannett Loves Nurses, Feingold, Iraq and our Energy Future, Print Embed, Outrage, FCC Outrage

This week's Commentary features a rerun of a September, 2002 interview we did with Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance President Todd Berry. We think this is one of the better Commentary episodes.

In Other News:

*Speaking of Tax Avoidance: Mike Ivey of the Madison Capital Times produced a wonderful series of articles recently on the issue of corporate tax avoidance. One particularly appalling avoidance scheme is the "royalty loophole." Next time you hear about our deficit, consider this: "So how much income is being shielded in Wisconsin by the royalty loophole? According to estimates from the Department of Revenue, one state corporation last year deducted $2.6 billion in royalty expenses. Nine corporations alone deducted $6.8 billion in royalty expenses on their Wisconsin tax returns in 2001."

*What about federal taxes?: Will Durst wrote a very funny piece on the "winners" in the latest round of Washington tax cuts.

*Labor Site Up and Running: The Winnebago County Labor Council recently debuted a website. It includes a Wal-Mart Watch and Local Events.

*Corruption Update: The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has filed 43 complaints against fat cat donors and ex-governor McCallum. Meanwhile, Common Cause has revealed that top legislators continue to raise campaign money while they are working on the state budget. State Senator Alberta Darling, whose "birthday party" fundraiser coincided with the Joint Finance Committee budget deliberations, defended herself by saying, "You can look at my records. I have never had an allegation of illegality or paying to play or twisting people's arms - period." Well, I suppose that's better than "I'm not a crook." It's no surprise, then, that the Appleton Post-Crescent recently came out strongly for returning Wisconsin's legislature to part-time status. I still don't support that position completely, but every day I come closer to it, especially when I look at the performance of Fox Valley area legislators (although I have to give Gregg Underheim credit for being on the side of consumer groups today).

*Gannett Loves Nurses: The Oshkosh Northwestern recently came out against alleged cuts at the UW Oshkosh College of Nursing. At other times in the recent past the paper has lamented nursing shortages. Whenever I can't figure out why the editorial brigade takes a certain position, my first inclination is to find out if the Gannett Corporation (the Northwestern's owner) somehow plays a part. Turns out that Gannett owns The Nursing Spectrum, periodicals specializing in advertising for nursing employment. According to the website, "Nursing Spectrum is also the official media sponsor of Nurses for a Healthier Tomorrow, a consortium of 41 major nursing associations addressing the nursing shortage with an innovative communications campaign to draw young people into nursing. Through the Gannett Foundation, Nursing Spectrum regularly donates funds to nursing-related associations and causes." Perhaps the Gannett connection is just a coincidence; I'm sure the editorial brigade spend many hours lamenting nursing shortages. Still, in the interest of full disclosure it would behoove the paper to acknowledge the Nursing Spectrum Connection in an editorial.

*Maybe they'll cover the next listening session?: The brigade just loves Russ Feingold. Maybe next time they can send a reporter to cover his Winnebago County listening sessions?

*Iraq and our Energy Future: Students in a UW Eau Claire Geography course, under the direction of professor Zoltan Grossman, produced a website for their course called "Iraq and our Energy Future." What a great educational activity for the students. Thumbs up to professor Grossman.

*Notes from a print embed: Ron Martz, a former marine, writes about military affairs for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He was embedded with the Task Force 1-64 of the 3rd Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team during Iraqi Freedom. In this article, he discusses how the television war was not the war he observed:

"I saw and wrote about a war that was confusing and chaotic, as are all wars. It was a war in which plans and missions changed almost daily - and on one occasion changed three times in an hour. It was a war in which civilians died and were horribly wounded. It was a war in which soldiers questioned the intelligence they received, the logistics lines that had trouble supplying them with water and spare parts, and the reasons they were fighting the war.

"Apparently that is not the war the TV-viewing and occasional newspaper-reading public wanted to see or thought it saw. But, according to a recent study by the Readership Institute, a large percentage of Americans preferred to get their war news from TV and not from newspapers. The war they saw, or thought they saw, on TV was meticulously planned, flawlessly executed - and not a single member of the armed forces had a complaint or problem. Few civilians died in that war."

*Outrage: Radical MIT linguist Noam Chomsky was recently interviewed by David Barsamian about the war. In the interview, Chomsky urges antiwar protesters to realize that movements for justice are always long-term, such as the abolitionist movement. Here's a poster demonstrating how abolitionists were thought of in the pre-war South.

*More Outrage: My next Media Rant will be about the Federal Communication Commission's impending move to relax media ownership rules. John Nichols and Bob McChesney lay out the case against relaxation in The Nation.

All the best,

-Tony