I often say that the biggest problem with the media is not their left-wing bias, although that is certainly a problem. The biggest problem is that they’re dumb. I suppose lazy goes hand-in-hand with dumb, so feel free to attribute any of the above to what they’re doing at the moment with respect to the sequester.
If you saw Good Morning America today (it was on at the Y; I saw it out the corner of my eye; I wasn’t trying to watch!), you saw that they darkly teased a story as follows: “Gloomy countdown to massive budget cuts.” This follows yesterday’s Los Angeles Times proclaiming:
Seeking to shift blame onto President Obama’s party for the looming budget cuts, House Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday it was about time the Senate “gets off their #” and develop a way around the enormous automatic reductions.
Massive? Enormous?
I seriously wonder if these people have any sense of embarrassment whatsoever. Delving again into broken record territory: The “massive, enormous” sequester cuts 2.3 percent of the projected increase in the budget. Understand that? The budget is projected to increase automatically. This means the government will spend 2.3 percent less than what they would have spent according to the automatic increase. They are not spending one penny less than they have been spending up to this point.
So let’s review: A. It is not really a cut. B. It is 2.3 percent, which is not massive and not enormous.
So why do the media throw these terms around? Take your pick:
They are Obama propagandists?
They keep hearing that the cuts are massive and enormous so they figure that must be true?
They are too lazy to actually look into the real impact of the sequester?
They are so dumb that they think 2.3 percent actually is massive?
What they are certainly not doing, as we discussed yesterday, is questioning Obama about his priorities in choosing to release illegal immigrants and furlough border patrol officers instead of finding less damaging ways to cut a mere 2.3 percent from the projected increase in federal spending.
Maybe they figure that since the cuts are so “massive” and “enormous,” there’s no way around the decimation of the country as a result. I’d say they are inflicting far more decimation on the country by perpetuating the kind of ignorance that has people believing we’re facing “massive” and “enormous” cuts on Friday, when in fact we are facing nothing of the sort.
