In my Honesty and Trust report (Aug. 2006), The Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis wrote, “The survey reflects a growing perception of a large gap between the values of corporations and government institutions and the values of the American middle class. Values gaps are always perceived as threatening, and a perceived threat to the middle class inevitably leads to social action as it...

Angelo Mozilo, U.S. Representative Charlie Rangel, Tiger Woods, Quarterback Brett Favre, Governor Mark Sanford are just a few who have been involved in ethics-related scandals. “Why do powerful people with so much to lose push so hard to squeeze out a little more gain for themselves?” That’s the great question posed by Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Zweig recently. (Oct. 16). Zweig...

I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of the current process used to elect public officials. Local, state, national, it makes no difference. The process is far too long, uses questionable “facts,” relies on negative campaigning and wastes too damn much money. How much?  According to the U.K.s Guardian, the Obama presidential campaign, including the transition and...

All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. – Paul Simon, “The Boxer”       When it comes to the political talking heads crowding the media platform, who, if any, do we trust the most and the least? Are the facts important or is it all just entertainment? These are a few of the...

Ann Coulter never met an incongruity or contradiction she didn’t embrace. In her 2002 book Slander, the conservative commentator rails against The New York Times for its misinformation and wanton liberal bias on 198 of the book’s 261 pages. “The Times regularly interprets standard Republican positions as fanatical, religiously based racist hate crimes,” Coulter writes. But take a close look at the top of the...

That’s how Glenn Beck described himself on Fox and Friends (Aug. 29) in his kind-of, sort-of take-back of calling President Obama “a racist,” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people,” on that same program last year. Beck’s trenchant self-analysis comes more than a year later and a day after his evangelistic “Restoring Honor” revival on the steps of the Lincoln...

There’s a signature moment in the 1976 film Network in which a drunk and dispirited Howard Beale who – after losing his news anchor job – abandons his script, looks straight into the camera and, in an astounding bit of prescience, begins his sermon from the mount. “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. …It’s like...

It’s interesting to note that the recent incarnation of the Tea Party bears little similarity to the original activists of 1773 and that supporters who carry the flag, “Don’t Tread on Me,” are using it in an historically, inaccurate context. The original Tea Party was a first response protest by Boston colonists protesting Britain’s Tea Act – a tax levied...

Clearly, the most contentious issue facing the country in the last 18 months has been health care reform.  While a majority of people believe that reform is necessary, the details of that reform have driven most to distraction. PolitiFact.com is a collective of reporters and researchers for the St. Petersburg Times whose purpose is to “find the truth in politics” by examining “statements by members...

Franklin Roosevelt once offered this piece of advice about giving a speech: “Be sincere; be brief; be seated.” Okay, here it goes. Ladies and Gentlemen of Congress, The American people are sick and tired of hearing excuses for your lack of effectively working together. They’re tired of listening to the arrogant sound bites at “impromptu” press conferences. You were not...