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John R. Carroll[_3_]

wrote:
On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:35:47 -0700, "SteveB"
wrote:

"John" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:26:50 -0600, "David R.Birch"
wrote:

Hawke wrote:
Thanks to the Daily show another fast one attempted by Fox News
has been busted. Michelle Bachman, a representative from
Minnesota, tried to get people to come to Washington to pressure
congressmen not to vote for health care reform. On Fox News they
showed shots of the crowd, and in the attempt to make it look
much bigger than it really was, they spliced in pictures from
another crowd on another day that was much larger. It was clear
deception intended to make Bachman's turn out look much larger
than it really was. Unfortunately for them John Stewart noticed
the actual crowd scene was not the one that happened several
months ago. Trees and the weather were different. So once again
more proof that Fox News has a conservative agenda it's
aggressively pushing has come to light. Fox News...Busted! Quit
calling it news.

Hawke

So you're saying Fox is no more trustworthy than the other
networks?

Is this news to you?

Do you look at ABC, NBC And CBS as critically as you do Fox?

David

Actually, there was a study, published in the 31 September 2008
issue of Scientific American, which showed that between 25 - 50% of
the American public were misinformed regarding current events and
that those who got their information from Fox News were far and
away the most poorly informed.

Cheers,

John B.
(johnbslocomatgmaildotcom)

That is a damn outright lie. How can 50% of the populace be
misinformed when less than ten percent follow current events enough
to pass an eighth grade civics test? Or many times answer questions
like: Who is Joe Biden? What are the two sections of Congress? Who
is Speaker of the House?

You just answer your own question. If 10% follow current events then
obviously the remaining 90%, who don't follow it, must be uninformed.
If we accept your numbers then the numbers of uninformed/misinformed
is far larger then S.A. reported. Perhaps you should contact them to
correct their data.

Fifty percent of people read enough to be misinformed? Please!

Read enough ? Isn't FOX a TV news thingie?

use the excuse that it's MEDICAL marijuana, so it's okay. Your
brain is missing. More than half the population doesn't give a ****
one way or the other, and of the other fifty percent, only about ten
percent of those really keep up to speed on current events.

Friday, Nov 13, 2009 16:14 PST
The real deficit hawks
By David Sirota

Let's say you're a congressperson or "tea party" leader looking to champion
deficit reduction -- a cause 38 percent of Americans tell pollsters they
support. And let's say you're deciding whether to back two pieces of
imminent legislation.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the first bill's
spending provisions cost $100 billion annually and its tax and
budget-cutting provisions recoup $111 billion annually, thus reducing total
federal expenditures by $11 billion each year. The second bill proposes $636
billion in annual spending and recoups nothing. Over 10 years, the first
bill would spend $1 trillion and recover $1.11 trillion -- a fantastic
return on taxpayer investment. Meanwhile, the second bill puts us on a path
to spend $6.3 trillion in the same time.

Save $110 billion, or spend $6.3 trillion? If you're explicitly claiming the
mantle of fiscal prudence, this should be a no-brainer: You support the
first bill and oppose the second one.
Yet, in recent months, the opposite happened.

When the House considered a healthcare expansion proposal that the CBO says
will reduce the deficit by $11 billion a year, tea party protesters and
Congress' self-described "fiscal conservatives" opposed it on cost grounds.
At the same time, almost none of them objected when Congress passed a White
House-backed bill to spend $636 billion on defense in 2010.

The hypocrisy is stunning -- lots of "budget hawk" complaints about health
legislation reducing the deficit and few "budget hawk" complaints about
defense initiatives that, according to Government Executive magazine, "puts
the president on track to spend more on defense, in real dollars, than any
other president has in one term of office since World War II." And that
estimate doesn't even count additional spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars.

So, as Bob Dole might ask, where's the public outrage at the contradiction?
It's nowhere. Well, why not?
One clear answer is values -- or lack thereof. In our militaristic culture,
we are taught to prioritize Pentagon spending over everything else.

Another less obvious answer is ignorance sown by skewed reporting.
The health bill's expenditures are typically described by reporters in
10-year, $1 trillion terms while defense spending is described -- if at
all -- as a one-year, $636 billion outlay. That can lead citizens to think
the healthcare bill will cost more than defense -- when, in fact, the
10-year comparison pits a $1 trillion healthcare bill against $6.3 trillion
in projected defense spending.

But even that's not apples to apples. Political headlines of late have all
been some version of Dow Jones newswire's recent screamer: "CBO Puts Health
Bill Cost At $1 Trillion." That's as true as an Enron press release touting
only one side of the company's ledger. Though the bill's expenditures do
total $1 trillion, the CBO confirms its other provisions recover more than
that, meaning headlines should read "CBO Says Health Bill Saves $110
Billion."

Not surprisingly, the media distortions are being trumpeted by the same
congressional hypocrites simultaneously backing bigger Pentagon budgets and
opposing health reform. Their dishonest arguments were summed up by Sen. Joe
Lieberman in a Fox News interview last week. Ignoring CBO data about the
health bill and the deficit, the Connecticut lawmaker (who voted for the
bloated defense bill) insisted health legislation must be stopped because it
will rack up "debt (that) can break America."

Only professional liars could cite concern about debt as reason to oppose a
healthcare bill reducing the debt -- and then vote for debt-expanding
defense budgets. Unfortunately, professional liars are the norm in today's
politics, not the exception -- and they're leading America off the fiscal
cliff.

http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare.../deficit_hawks

--
John R. Carroll