[Due to the inclusion of several videos, this background section is rather long. To view the petition, scroll to the bottom of the page. Please note that because this background section will be updated periodically, signing the petition will signify endorsement of ONLY the petition itself.]


For the approximately one third of us who are political Independents, the modern trend towards ever greater partisanship in our nation's capital has been extremely disillusioning and frustrating. This is especially true for those who are old enough to remember a bygone era in which it was not uncommon to see Democrats and Republicans working together to forge bipartisan solutions.

This petition has been targeted at one of the few areas in which concerned citizens can help to reverse this trend, and that is in the widespread abandonment of objectivity and impartiality by most of our mainstream news media. And because the well-documented overall liberal bias has created a blatant double standard favoring Democrats, this petition has sought to counterbalance that by taking the side of Republicans against the editorial board of the New York Times.

As things stand now, the increased liberal bias has created a perverse incentive for congressional minorities to become obstructionists -- and this is doubly true when the President is also a member of the other party. When Democrats are in the minority, liberal bias ensures that their obstructionist tactics are rarely reported by most of the mainstream news media. They are therefore free to openly attack and undermine any policies or legislation they disagree with -- while experiencing very little media criticism for their obstructionism and failure to provide alternatives. In fact, such obstructionism has proven to be politically beneficial for them.

This is because it tends to create a "throw the Republican bums out" attitude among Independent and Moderate voters in the next election(s). In fact, opposition to President Bush's Social Security reform effort in 2005 is generally credited with being a major reason for the Democratic takeover of Congress following the 2006 election. And if you have any doubts, consider what current Speaker of the House Pelosi had to say about it during a January, 2009 interview (VIDEO):

"I am Speaker of the House because a number of years ago --- was it 3? --- Harry Reid and I challenged President Bush on his privatization of Social Security. We took our message to the American people. We had a thousand town hall meetings across America to defeat him."

And as can be seen from the following 2005 video, neither she nor current Senate Majority Leader Reid made any secret of their obstructionist tactics at the time:



Former Democratic House Minority Leader Pelosi was probably the most outspoken about their obstructionism. Just imagine how most of our mainstream news media would react now if current Republican House Minority Leader Boehner were to make comments similar to these:

Roll Call“It was important for us to take him down, destroy [Bush’s] brand,” Pelosi said of the Democratic offensive.

Time Magazine " - - Pelosi has embraced hard-knuckle partisanship, even if it means standing still. When Bush announced his Social Security plan last year, Pelosi told House Democrats they could never beat him in a straight-ahead, policy-against-policy debate because he had the megaphone of the presidency and was just coming off re-election. So the Democrats would thunderously attack Bush and argue there was no Social Security crisis and therefore no need for them to put out their own proposal. Some members were leery, concerned that Pelosi would make the Democrats look like the Party of No. As the spring of 2005 wore on, some pestered her every week, asking when they were going to release a rival plan. 'Never. Is never good enough for you?' Pelosi defiantly said to one member. When Florida Democrat Robert Wexler publicly suggested raising Social Security taxes as the solution, Pelosi immediately chewed him out over the phone. Only one other Democrat signed on to his plan."

And it wasn't only the Democratic leaders who seemed proud of their obstructionist approach. Following this paragraph is a video showing many of them interrupting President Bush's 2006 State of the Union Address to applaud their success at blocking his Social Security reform effort in 2005. And as an online search will verify, it attracted very little news media attention or criticism. Now just imagine how most of the mainstream news media will probably howl if health care reform is defeated this year, and Republicans interrupt President Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address in a similar fashion:



And how does this same liberal media bias now encourage the Republican minority to be obstructionist? By doing just the opposite - openly and repeatedly branding them as obstructionists who are intent on "killing" Democratic legislation, even if they have put significant effort into providing alternatives. As this September 10 article from Fox News indicates, that appears to be what has happened regarding health care reform. The numerous bills Republicans have submitted might not be as comprehensive as the Democratic ones, but they represent a far greater effort toward bipartisan cooperation than Democrats exhibited on Social Security reform in 2005.

So when Republican members of Congress got branded early on as obstructionists (VIDEO) by Democrats and the liberal news media -- simply because they voted against some major Democratic legislation -- it tended to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, it's not surprising that some of them would now focus on defeating "Obamacare" -- with the expressed intention of starting over again from scratch on bipartisan health care reform in 2010. It must seem to them that if it weren't for Fox and a relative handful of other center or right-leaning news outlets, they would never receive any favorable coverage at all!




(This footnote to the petition will remain in its original form)
*This was just one of a large number of half-truths and outright falsehoods that have been documented by PolitiFact in its two year coverage of our ongoing national debate about health care. It is only natural that those who are passionately concerned about this issue would tend to exaggerate on occasion, and there is ample evidence of that from advocates of both Democratic and Republican reforms -- including, unfortunately, those who appear to be opposed to any major reforms at all.

And while we the people are fortunate to now have nonpartisan online resources such as FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com to help us separate fact from fiction, they have obviously not proven to be much of a deterrent for the age-old political habit of spreading "misinformation." That's why the author of this petition believes it's more important than ever for concerned citizens (especially political Independents) to speak out whenever major news organizations become as biased as the New York Times apparently has.