While in Florida I needed to go to the emergency room. Not wanting to sit there for 4 hours, I put on my Magic Green Hat. When I went into the E.R. I noticed that 3/4 of the people got up and left. I guess they decided that they weren't that sick after all. Cut at least 3 hours off my waiting time. Here's the hat It also works at Dept. of Motor Vehicles. It saved me 5 hours. At the Laundromat, three minutes after entering, I had my choice of any machine, most still running. If you live in Texas , it might cut your wait time at the grocery store. But, DON'T try it at McDonald's. The whole crew ran out the back door and I never did get my order!
You've made my point beautifully. Because George Soros has contibuted to the the non-profit investigative reporter organization known as Propublica, and you disagree with Soros's politics, you now look at Propublica with an ideological slant. You seem to have lost the capacity to let facts speak for themselves. This is a serious problem with you Jem! It would pay you to base your opinion on Propublica, on ProPublica itself, rather than your opinion of Soros who is one of many many contributors. Have I made my point clear? ___________ By the way I don't know who has contributed to ProPublica, and it doesn't interest me. I take your word that Soros is one of their contributors. It's a good cause as far as I'm concerned. I respect ProPublica for the high quality reporting they do, their use of neutral language and their avoidance of injecting opinion into their reporting. They were founded to counter the drift toward shallow, non-objective reporting in the mainstream media.
gwb, I just replied to Jem's post re Propublica, which see, and that inspired this response of mine regarding the reporting in the Fox news report of Immigrant Households on Welfare. The report, uses a headline which I have no reason to think is incorrect. The story source, however, is a faulty CIS report that compares immigrant households with the rate of welfare use among the American-born-population. It is shoddy and shallow reporting for Fox to use the CIS report at all, let alone together with the headline that they chose. The CIS report compares Immigrant households against American born population! Population is much larger than households!. More importantly, the relevant comparison would be, say, immigrant households with income at or below a given level with U.S. citizen Household at the same income level. If you made the comparison between households of similar income, my guess is that there would be no significant difference in the rate of welfare use. But it is only a guess, because sadly the report doesn't give us the relevant information. On the other hand, many are disturbed by immigrants qualifying for welfare at all. And most likely that is because when they read "immigrant" they read it as "illegal immigrant." But again the report doesn't distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal. Most likely it's because those would be difficult numbers to come by, since the number of illegal households can only be roughly guessed at. Because of our media's shoddy reporting, and too recent political haranguing, we are becoming conditioned, like Dr. Pavlov's dog's, to read "immigrant" as "illegal immigrant" just as we have become conditioned to read "Climate Change" as "AGW". So, When I read the Fox Headline I immediately thought, how absurd that we should be wasting all these resources on "illegal" immigrants, just as millions of Fox News readers will read and interpret the Headline. But then I thought more about it and said to myself, I need to read they entire story, there is something not quite right here. This kind of journalism makes logic among the populace hard to come by; yet everyone votes. This is not good for the sake of our Country's future. To the credit of Fox News, they point out the holes in their source, but then go right ahead and use that defective CIS report anyway.. How many will stop reading after the headlines? Is there no honor in Journalism these days. Is there nothing but hack reporters left? Fortunately we still have a few first rate outfits around. Sadly, compared to Fox News' readership, not many read these more reliable sources.
your logic fails but is a perfect example of bubble bias. you are in a far left echo chamber and you do not realize how left and almost pre fascists your views are. Which is a shame because you a very good writer. pro publica was incredibly slanted when defending the IRS's tactics against conservatives. It is not surprising considering how they are funded. You may not see the bias because like many other leftists you think you are in the middle although only a small percentage of the country is as far left as you. here is more background on the founders... (note I only knew this upon doing the search a few days ago and this was not supposed to be some sort of assassination... but you seem to act like soros and his money or not leftist whereas I have learned never trust anything soros says or funds. He is as untrustworthy as bill clinton on nekid island.) "Meanwhile, Sandler is Chairman of the board of ProPublica, a non-profit organization producing original, investigative content to be shared with some of the grandest media platforms in the business. Since its founding in 2007, Sandler marked his support by pledging an initial donation of $10 million with similar continuing annual contributions to the organization. The issue, many argue, is that Sandler also happens to be a key supporter and financial donor to several George Soros-initiatives, including Media Matters — a group that has consistently come under fire for seeking to silence the very free-press ProPublica claims to stand for. Needless to say, since its inception, many moderate and conservative voices have expressed skepticism over ProPublica in light of the ideological bend of its founding-father. An editorial in Investor’s Business Daily asked if “a couple of left-wing billionaires” could “really be sincere about creating a ‘nonpartisan,’ ‘non-ideological’ center for investigative reporting.” The article went on to ask if the pair was just “paying more to drive the media agenda further left” given the Sandlers’ penchant for funding “leftist causes and the Democratic Party.” The couple have garnered their place in the top tier of donors, giving MoveOn.org $2.5 million in 2004 alone. That was reportedly as much money as their “philanthropic ally” George Soros contributed to the organization personally. Through their charity, the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation, it has also been reported the couple gave at least $5,723,222 to the ACORN network — the disgraced and now defunct community organizing group made infamous for registering the deceased to “vote Democrat” in the 2008 election. The Sandler’s charity gave $4,498,222 to the American Institute for Social Justice since 2003, $700,000 to Project Vote in 2005 and $525,000 to ACORN 2000–2001 according to Activist Cash. This of course excludes any personal contributions made by either Marion or Herbert. The Sandlers have also made substantial contributions to the Center for Responsible Lending, an ACORNally that champions the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The Sandler foundation has given the Center at least $11,200,000 since 2005. Activist Cash describes the Center for Responsible Lending as a: “‘consumer advocacy’ front-group that lobbied for expanded subprime lending while promoting its funders’ business interests.” The Blaze also obtained copies of The Sandler Foundation’s 990 tax returns dating back to 2005 and the list of liberal organizations and leftist causes to which the foundation contributes are vast. From the Center for American Progress to the ACLU, far-left J-Street to Soros’ Tides Foundation and Media Matters, below are a mere fraction of the Sandler Foundation’s contributions in 2009 alone: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...outfit-propublica-funded-by-soros-affiliates/ you can read more about one of its clear biases at the link above.
I thought this was quite funny. "ProPublica" is a Latin-sounding coinage intended to mean "for the public," but scholars note that the "a" ending makes it a feminine noun, literally meaning "for the public woman." http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...st-muckraker-you-never-heard-of/article/40675
Propublica never once defended "IRS tactics". They took no position at all. Simply reported facts as they were able to obtain them. I challenge you to go to any story on political groups filing for status as social welfare agencies where Propublica did anything other than to report facts as they were known at the time. I'm waiting. . Read your own post. You are attacking the founders of propublica, the donors, and god knows what else. This is childish. Why don't you base your opinion of Propublica on Propublica? Just a friendly suggestion.
Piezoe - thank you for the very complete response and commentary. I certainly agree that most news sources lean left or right - this is a sad commentary on the world we live in today. This is primarily due to that nobody will fund a "neutral" news source -- while funding for "left" or "right" news sources both on the web and mainstream are much easier to acquire by political funding backers. Of course this monetary backing leaves to news source beholden to the desires of their backers - thereby impugning the integrity of the news source. I have followed the thread on Propublica. I will give Propublica credit for their in-depth and detailed reporting - in a world where people thrive on 140 character tweets and bullet points. However I must agree with others that Propublica is tainted by the source of its funding. In the case of Propublica this mainly impacts the selection of the stories they cover - their home page looks likes a list of stories on CNN. Let's take a look at their home page today - currently at near the top: Activists Pursue Private Abortion Details Using Public Records Laws Small Group Goes to Great Lengths to Block Homeschooling Regulation The Human Reasons Why Athletes Who Dope Get Away With It Where are the "conservative" topics? I will fully admit that FOX, MSNBC, CNN, and many other media sources are biased. I keep this in mind when reading these sources and look for the hard information which backs up their assertions. I would urge others to read all sources (to get a well-rounded perspective even if you disagree with some material) and to keep the obvious biases in mind about all sources while focusing on facts - then use your cognitive skills to arrive at your own conclusions not the pundit assertions they want you to believe.
This all makes sense to me. And perhaps Propublica does exhibit a slant based on what they decide to cover, I'm uncertain where I stand on that. I'm going to have to, when I get time, look at a selection of the stories they have covered this past year and see if I can detect a pattern in what the decide to cover.