Publictakeover's Weblog

Dust Cloud

50-mile wide cloud engulfs phoenix, az

If newspapers, radio and television cannot inform the public accurately about the issues we’re facing, then it becomes impossible for us to figure out what to do to solve our problems.

We just sit here and get inundated into blind helplessness by the misleading rhetorical cloud of media’s corporate sponsors and the politicians they fund to blow their hot air for them.

We’re so engulfed in the nebula of distortion discourse, we think it’s our normal atmosphere–that the picture we’re getting from the politicians and pundits corresponds to the world we inherited and live in now.

Robert Scheer makes a great example of this in his current post at Truthdig:

Social Security and Medicare have been funded by a regressive tax that falls disproportionately on working middle-class income earners, while caps in the system leave the wealthy—most notably the hedge fund hustlers who helped cause today’s economic crisis—largely untaxed.

He’s talking about the so-called, “Entitlements:” the successful, self-funded public programs that lift the population out of poverty and disease.

These are the programs the Republicans want to “cut” in order to “balance the budget.”

What our intrepid corporate media don’t tell us is that none of the proposed cuts (and/or tax increases) by either party are going to balance the budget within a decade.

By the time I get to Phoenix ... She'll be risin'...

Even right wing news outlet CNS says the same thing:

Neither House Democrats nor House Republicans plan on balancing the budget in the next decade.

What nobody tells you is that 80 Congress members sponsored a bill to balance the budget in 10 years without cutting Social Security and Medicare:

The People’s Budget eliminates the deficit in 10 years, puts Americans back to work and restores our economic competitiveness. The People’s Budget recognizes that in order to compete, our nation needs every American to be productive, and in order to be productive we need to raise our skills to meet modern needs.

Somehow in all the soundbites and on camera posturing, the voices of reason, cooperation and hope aren’t getting through the maelstrom.