Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [34]
Acciardo: No—just the opposite. He really enjoyed his census work, and he said people were really good to him.
Maddow: Are folks in this area familiar with the Census and its purpose? … Is there any fear that you’re aware of that the Census might be seen as sort of a government intrusion?
Acciardo: No. I’m not aware.…
The next night, Rachel led with “brand-new details which do not all dampen the worry that Bill Sparkman’s death was what we first worried it appeared to be—violence against a federal employee, because he was a federal employee.”
The “new disturbing details” were that Sparkman’s census ID had been taped to his body. Rachel reminded viewers over and over again that “of course, with the confirmation from the coroner today that the word ‘Fed’ was written across Mr. Sparkman’s chest and then this new information about the ID being taped to his otherwise naked body at the time, this is what’s leading us to worry that he was killed in fact because he was a federal employee.” Again, she reminded viewers, there’s “a strong suspicion of government generally among people who live in that area.”31
Rachel Maddow owned the Bill-Sparkman-was-murdered-by-right-wingers story.
With law enforcement authorities still refusing to say whether they even believed a crime had been committed, Rachel complained that it was taking them too long to rule out suicide or accident. “We’re starting to get to a point,” she said, “where it’s hard to imagine that this could be anything other than a homicide.”32
When investigators announced a month later that Sparkman had committed suicide as an insurance scam, Rachel’s guest host Howard Dean made the brief announcement, sparing Rachel the humiliation.33 From that moment on, the story of the census worker was buried in a lead casket and dropped to the bottom of the ocean, as Maddow returned to regaling her viewers with hilarious stories about conspiracy-theorist right-wingers.
Even after having been taken in by the dummied Bush National Guard documents, the collapse of the Mississippi River bridge, the laughably false intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear program, and the alleged right-wing murder of the census worker, Rachel didn’t pause before issuing the breathless claim, in the middle of Wisconsin’s budget crisis in February 2011: “I’m here to report that there is nothing wrong in the state of Wisconsin.”
Contrary to what everyone else was reporting, Rachel assured her viewers that “Wisconsin is fine. Wisconsin is great, actually. Despite what you may have heard about Wisconsin’s finances, Wisconsin is on track to have a budget surplus this year.”
She continued the breaking news: “I am not kidding. I’m quoting their own version of the Congressional Budget Office, the state’s own nonpartisan ‘assess the state’s finances’ agency. That agency said the month that the new Republican governor of Wisconsin was sworn in, last month, that the state was on track to have a $120 million budget surplus this year.”34
Unfortunately, Rachel hadn’t bothered to read the entire memo. In that same January 31, 2011, memo, Robert Lang of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau went on to describe an additional $258 million in unpaid state expenses, including a $174 million shortfall in Medicaid services and $58.7 million owed the state of Minnesota in a tax reciprocity deal. Those were just two of the debits that had to be set against the $120 million “surplus.”
The result was—as Lang concluded—Wisconsin was facing a $137 million shortfall, which, oddly, was very close to the $137 million shortfall Republican governor Scott Walker had claimed.35
Rachel had confused “0” with “$137 million.” Next up on The Rachel Maddow Show—a story you haven’t heard anywhere else: How Big Foot stole government workers’ pensions!
A promotion for Rachel’s program shows her sitting on the floor surrounded by index cards, with a Magic Marker in her mouth, as she says in a voice-over that news is about “what’s true in the world.” The promotion ends with Rachel at her anchor desk, opening her show with: “Good evening. We begin