ABC and Comedy Central: Is There a Difference?
The Dallas Morning News published an editorial praising Jon Stewart as a satirist.
"Satire done well uses the comic's tools to drive a larger point, usually about how absurd the bill of goods someone, including Washington someones, is selling us. Satire gone overboard leaves you feeling as if everyone's selling you a bill of goods - so what's the point of voting, campaigning and contributing? After years of honing his style, Mr. Stewart does the best job of finding the satirists' sweet spot."A serious editorial on the oh-so-serious pages of a major metropolitan daily newspaper about ... a comedy show on Comedy Central cable television. Satire has arrived. Political campaigns today are so ripe for satire that the candidates seek to participate in the lampooning. Stephen Colbert managed to book John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on his television show the same night, his last night covering the Pennsylvania primary on location in Philadelphia.
It's not just the candidates themselves who provide the fodder for satire. The supposedly serious news media's coverage of the campaign is sometimes hard to distinguish from the comedians' coverage. Jon Stewart provides the best take on the descent of network news, with his summary of ABC's debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, hosted by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulis:
"The first hour of last night's debate was a sixty minute master class in questions that elevate out-of-context remarks and trivial, insipid, miscues into subjects of national discourse, WHICH IS MY JOB. STOP DOING MY JOB. That's what I'm here for. I'm the silly man."
Someone Is Getting a Property Tax Break, Just Not You
On The Dallas Morning News Metro blog, Steve Blow posts an addendum to his column Sunday on commercial property appraisals in Dallas. He adds the city is in process of buying downtown property for the proposed convention center hotel for $41 million, more than five times its officially appraised value. Some commercial real estate owner has been getting a sweet deal on his property tax bills.
Two years ago, Gov. Rick Perry appointed a task force to study appraisal reform. Lack of disclosure of real estate sales price information, especially commercial, leads to many properties being grossly undervalued like the example above. Average homeowners, for whom it's harder to hide the true value of their own houses, end up having to bear a higher tax rate to compensate. You'd think the governor's task would have highlighted this problem. You'd think the task force's first priority would have been to get accuracy in appraisals. You'd have guessed wrong. The task force buried it under other careabouts, such as capping appraisal increases and putting appraisal boards under partisan political control. The result would have been more room to manipulate the process, more opportunities for setting appraised values far short of market values for favored special interests.
The governor's task force was led by Tom "Let's cap taxes and call it appraisal reform" Pauken, who is owner of Dallas Blog, which this weekend published an article by Will Lutz that begins, "Texans are hopping mad about high property taxes." Lutz uses that premise to renew Pauken's push for partisan political control of appraisal boards. Not a word from Lutz about mandatory sales price disclosure. There's a grossly under-appraised $41 million piece of real estate in downtown Dallas that suggests just how big the prize is in this political battle. Rick Perry, Tom Pauken, and Will Lutz intend to win it.
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