last night the house passed an entitlement reduction bill that will reduce the deficit by $40 billion over the next five years. this bill cuts assistance to welfare programs, medicaid and medicaire recipients, student lenders and thereby students, and child support.
$40 billion will reduce the $14.3 trillion deficit by less than one-half of one percent. the house and senate are negotiating extending expiring tax cuts and adding new cuts (to whom, i wonder?) that would cost $60 billion, in maybe a month or so.
"deficit reduction" that actually increases the deficit, while pathetic, is not surprising. consider that the "healthy skies initiative" relaxed regulations on fossil fuel emissions, the "no child left behind" act placed extra burdens on teachers, "liberating" iraq required that we kill tens of thousands of iraqis, and the "healthy forests" initiative made it easier for companies to clear land for development.
i truly wish i was more susceptible to doublethink, as the rest of the country seems to be. maybe i wouldn't be so ired all the time that our leaders are allowed to say one thing while doing the opposite.
more than likely the populous at large is completely unaware of what goes on. even those who try to be diligent by watching the "news" get a completely inaccurate view of what is and is not relevant.
runaway bride: supremely important. osama bin laden alive, well, and plotting: meh.
the substance of sammy alito's judicial purview: bleh. his wife crying: fuck yeah!
the american citizenry is like a child (in more ways than one), and the media like a parent. what we are fed is what we'll eat, i.e. what they tell us is what we believe. i don't give a free pass to the public for not actively seeking information and just blindly accepting what the television gods tell us, but the press should know better.
true journalism has gone by the wayside it seems, with "journalists" serving as stenographers (judith miller), lazy reporting, irrelevant interviews, pandering and the lofting of softball questions, bowing to ratings before truth and an obsession with being inoffensive. noone gets in anyone's face anymore.
isn't the media supposed to be the fourth branch of government? i heard that somewhere. no more balances, no more checks. unless they're being written to pay for bridges to nowhere.
1 comment:
God, that pisses me off!
And yes, the media is the fourth branch of government. Considering how every other branch has become so emasculated toward the executive branch, it's no real surprise that they suck too.
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