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Our media is just this dumb: Easily suckered press screws Bernie Sanders again
(snip)
Of course, it’s not just Sanders as an individual candidate they don’t like. Rather, it’s a reflection of deep ideological biases, which the Sanders campaign challenges head on. He is attacking the establishment for decades of mismanagement—on the rigged economy and the corruption of democracy most of all, but also on climate change, reckless foreign wars, and more recently (having actually listened to and learned from Black Lives Matter activists) on racial justice. The establishment media are part of the establishment, and they are attacking Sanders in return—not because he’s wrong, but because he’s right. They just need to find the right terrain on which to attack him—and this is what this latest round has been all about, finding some way to convince the electorate to see Sanders in the same superficially negative terms that they themselves do.
(snip)
There is a very interesting contrast in media coverage of House Speaker Paul Ryan. In Washington policy circles Ryan is treated as a serious budget wonk. How many reporters have written about the fact this serious budget wonk has repeatedly proposed eliminating most of the federal government. This was not an offhand gaffe that Ryan made when caught in a bad moment, this was in his budgets that he pushed through as chair of the House Budget Committee.
This fact can be found in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) analysis of Ryan’s budget (page 16, Table 2). The analysis shows Ryan’s budget shrinking everything other than Social Security and Medicare and other health care programs to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2050. This is roughly the current size of the military budget, which Ryan has indicated he wants to increase. That leaves zero for everything else.
(snip)
In stark contrast, the Congressional Progressive Caucus—which Sanders co-founded when he first entered Congress—has repeatedly put forth its own “People’s Budget” proposals that actually do dramatically reduce the deficit. Their 2012 fiscal year budget, for example, would have eliminated the deficit complete by 2021:
Instead of eroding America’s hard-earned retirement plan and social safety net, our budget targets the true drivers of deficits in the next decade: the Bush Tax Cuts, the wars overseas, and the causes and effects of the recent recession. By implementing a fair tax code, by building a resilient American economy, and by bringing our troops home, we achieve a budget surplus of over $30 billion by 2021 and we end up with a debt that is less than 65% of our GDP. This is what sustainability looks like.
(snip)
All of the above are in line with Bernie Sanders’ politics and all are extremely popular, with support across the political spectrum. For example, the infrastructure jobs program (a key element of Sanders’ platform) had 91% support from Democrats, 61% from independents and even 55% support from Republicans—compared to only 28% who were opposed. Donald Trump can only dream of being that popular among Republicans.
Those are the sorts of popular issues directly or indirectly implicated in the Sanders campaign. A serious substantive campaign focused on them would not only serve the interests and desires of the majority of the American people; it would also provide an excellent framework for evaluating just who is really qualified to be the kind of leader that our nation really needs.
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/17/our_media_is_just_this_dumb_easily_suckered_press_screws_bernie_sanders_again/
This is a good read.
16 replies
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Corporate media is in bed with manipulation, money, and control.
Who pays the bills for corporate media? Corporate advertising.
