Obama’s tax returns have violations of Illinois law but the media is too focused on the Plumber’s taxes

I was stunned to see some document showing Joe the Plumbers’ tax problems on my 10pm CTnewscast on the local NBC affiliate in Chicago on Thursday night. They have very little time for any national news and they actually spent time on Joe the Plumbers’ tax problems. Amazing

But when an actual candidate — Barack Obama — released his tax returns, which on their face seemed to show an ethics violation of Illinois law, the press couldn’t care less.

Just to remind you, Illinois prohibits state legislators from taking speaking fees, and Barack reported “speaking fees.”

via Joe and Barack’s Tax Problems.

CNN’s brazen “fact check” bias against Joe the Plumber quote

Obama’s tax plan involves increasing taxes on the well off and in part redistributing that wealth to the ~35% of those who don’t pay income tax at all.  This is nothing other than wealth redistribution and yet CNN claims that such a reading ignores other remarks that Obama made.  Ridiculous!

In an earlier interview, Charles Gibson made the point to Obama that raising capital gains tax would result in a decrease in government revenue and Obama’s reply was, “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

So in the face of two perfect examples of Obama’s desire to redistribute wealth, CNN’s “fact check” verdict to the contrary is absolutely brazen media bias.

The Verdict:

Misleading. McCain’s remark was an oversimplification of a five-minute-long conversation. Obama replied in great detail about his tax plan, and the “spread the wealth” remark was one small part of the conversation.

via CNN Political Ticker:  Fact check: Obama said he would ’spread his wealth around’?