Tennessean Aims to Tame CATS
The Tennessean's story today on the CATS budget proposal bemoans a variety of new taxes and tax increases in the CATS budget - but the paper curiously fails to mention that many of those same new or increased taxes are also part of the Naifeh income tax plan which the paper has endlessly promoted. It's understandable why The Tennessean feels it has to trash the CATS plan - the paper has long described the budget debate as a battle between the Income Tax, which is always portrayed as "good," versus the DOGS budget, portrayed as "bad" because it would slash all sorts of programs. The arrival of the middle-ground CATS budget proposal undercuts the paper's us-vs.-them approach and puts its pro-income tax, pro-big-government agenda at risk. Today's coverage of the CATS budget is just one more example of how the paper slants its coverage to push the income tax.