Week #2, Blog #1

At 11:20am on 9/11/08 Fox News is of course covering the 7th anniversary of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks, the Congress Charles Rangel's tax evasion scheme, and Congress' moving money to shore up the Highway Trust Fund.

After 9/11/01 the American people came together in a unique way to show the world that you can harm our citizens, destroy our buildings, but you will never kill the resolve of the American people. Since seven years has past the resolve that we showed immediately after 9/11 has begun to fade. The ideas that were promoted when President Bush addressed Congress shortly after that fateful day are no longer what we are concerned about in this country. The big news is changing daily and although some feel that the passage of time has made 9/11 seem like a distant memory and the people behind it a distant threat, we as Americans must never forget the brave men and women who lost their lives that day while conducting America's business. Not only the citizens on those planes but the fire fighters, policemen, and first responders who put their own safety on the back-burner so that they could save others, we should never forget. Fox News has portrayed this as President Bush, Donald Rumsfield, Robert Gates, Dick Cheney, and mostly a Republican Congress worked immediately to secure our borders, our homeland, and our citizens.

This issue has been placed not just on the back-burner but off the stove entirely. We do not think about this issue as one of the biggest issues that we face as a country today. We are looking at the economy, energy, health care, and education. Terrorism is no longer as important as it was in the 2004 election or even the 2002 mid-term Congressional elections. Due to the fact that today is the 7th anniversary that is why this is a front line issue in today's news.

Another major news item is that Congressmen Charles Rangel (D-NY) did not pay federal income tax on the money that he received from renting property. Fox News has shown clips of the House Republican leader urging him to resign his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee which is responsible for writing tax law and oversight of the IRS. The Republican leadership has issued a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that you can not have someone under investigation by the same people that as a chairmen of a standing committee of Congress he is entitled to conduct oversight upon. This issue has been unfolding for several days and last night Congressmen Rangel and Congress Boehnar exchanged words on the House floor over this issue. Rangel insists that he has down nothing wrong but I believe that he should resign his chairmanship at least while the House Ethics Committee looks into this issue and makes a judgement on whether he has violated any House Ethics rules. Fox News is covering this item often because Rangel is a big figurehead for Democrats and this is a scandal.

Another issue that is in the news is that the Highway Trust Fund is broke and needs $8 billion in order for current projects that are underway in all 50 states to continue and not be shut down which means a loss of thousands upon thousands of construction jobs nationwide. Fox News is promoting that the Senate Republicans want to help this fund but they just want a way to pay for it instead of taking it out of the general fund/general revenue stream. They argue that they whole point of this trust fund is to pay for highway construction through gasoline taxes so that money does not have to come out of the general fund which can be used on discretionary spending. The media is portraying this as another example of Republicans watching what we spend and Democrats just throwing more money at the problem. This issue has just been briefly mentioned and is not forefront because if you polled Americans I am sure that this is something that they have little background knowledge about.