Pearl River      Darned, it must be tough being rich these days.  All the charts indicate that the top tenth of one-percent, the top one percent, and even the top ten percent are making out like bandits in the current economy, especially in the US, thanks to Trump and his various tax breaks and reallocations of support away from the 90%.  In the abandonment of the federal government’s responsibilities to all of the people, rather than just the rich, more of the financial burden has been shifted to the states to carry the weight for their people.  Not surprisingly, many at the state level, facing the cutbacks, start to look seriously at where they can make up these deficits, unfunded mandates, and cutbacks.  To many it seems like if the rich are the big beneficiaries, they should pay more of the share of the burden.  Fair is fair, right?

Well, maybe, but you wouldn’t know it reading any of the major newspapers.  The editorial and even the news sections of the papers seem to think the rich need their help in this policy dispute.  They are providing it, despite the huge sums they report the rich are raising to try to convince the public that they shouldn’t have to pay more in taxes, by providing them coverage as free advertising.

There are a ton of examples of how news outlets are putting their fingers on the scale for the rich.  One of the most egregious was recently in the New York Times.  In a story entitled “California’s Billionaire Tax Battle” headlined over a picture of one of the superrich Google co-founders who has thrown $20 million into the war chest to oppose the emerging initiative vote on a 5% assessment on billionaires, the reporter talks to various opponents of the tax, covers the fact that some are looking for moving vans, includes a chart that vividly demonstrates how well those more well off are doing now, among other items.

How about the proponents?  In this long article there’s a slight mention in the seventh paragraph talking about California Governor Newsom’s opposition to the tax, saying,

Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, has clashed with the major health care union that proposed the initiative, saying such a tax could drive out the business people who are responsible for much of the state’s wealth.

Oh, it’s being pushed by a “major health care union,” so what do they have to say?  What’s their argument here?  It’s a mystery to left to puzzle the readers.  The reporter quotes a professor saying it might be a good idea, but was unsure how the IRS would step up.  There’s mention of Washington state trying to pass a millionaire’s tax, as well as New York’s mayor and Senator Bernie Sanders all trying to see if they could push some kind of wealth tax in local or federal legislation.  Talking to the union, why would they do that, except to find out the other side.

Readers know more about how Iranian leaders and citizens on the other side of the current battle with the US and Israel are feeling and thinking they know about why SEIU Health Care West, led by Dave Regan, are putting their resources and members into this battle.  How hard is it to reach out to the communications people or leaders of a local with 100,000 members to get their side of the story here, especially when the reporter admits that polls indicate a majority of Californians support the measure?

I’m not naïve.  The papers, especially the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are owned by superrich billionaires, the Murdochs and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. The Times’ ownership family are nowhere near the welfare line, even if they aren’t among the 1000 US billionaires, 200 of which have a home address in California.  Certainly, it’s fair game for the editorial policy of these papers to hammer the proposal for their owners, but what happened to the reporters tasked with filling the news hole in the papers?  Don’t many of them still claim to abide by journalistic ethics to at least pretend to be objective?  I guess not, when it comes to lining up to protect 200 billionaires, rather over 39 million other people living in the state.

Regan and SEIU might not win this fight, but they aren’t wrong to do the best for their members and to try and keep them working by advancing a funding proposal that would offset some of the coming cuts in healthcare and education that Trump and Congress have mandated. There’s no Fairness Doctrine in journalism, and we need to all fight to protect the First Amendment’s freedom of speech provisions, but is it too much for us to ask that the news not demonstrate class bias and toadying to the rich so blatantly?  Letting the union speak about their side of this battle shouldn’t be too much to ask.