What the GOP and Corporate Media Are Hiding: The Public Debt Is Putting More Cash in Your Pocket

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AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

What the GOP and Corporate Media Are Hiding: The Public Debt Is Putting More Cash in Your Pocket
The media is hoodwinking us into buying the Right's deficit hysteria -- they're not telling us the real story.

May 26, 2011 |


Americans are increasingly confused about what the national debt is, and how it effects the economy, but that's no accident; we're being hoodwinked by politicians with a massive assist from the corporate media. Even worse, they're waving the deficit around like a shiny object to distract us from the really pressing issues facing our economy.

Here's some reality: according to the Congressional Budget Office, projected “budget deficits will drop markedly over the next few years” — falling by around two-thirds by 2014 (less so if the “Bush tax cuts” aren't allowed to expire as scheduled). This fact is not all over the news.

In fact, while the deficit is on a relatively steep downward slope, just this week the Washington Post told its readers in a front-page news story that Democrats and Republicans have been “lambasted as being far too timid in dealing with the nation’s swelling deficit," and the New York Times reported that Congress is trying “to cut spending to deal with America’s own ballooning deficit (emphasis added).” These weren't editorials or opinion pieces; they purported to offer factual news.

That just scratches the surface. In 2009, the Post came under fire for running an article – also in its news section – written by the Fiscal Times, which the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting described as “a propaganda outlet created and funded by Peter G. Peterson, a Wall Street billionaire and Nixon administration cabinet member who has long used his wealth to promote cuts in Social Security and other entitlement programs.” (It was Peterson Foundation employees, among those from other outside groups, who staffed Obama's “bipartisan deficit commission.”) ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/151115/what_the_gop_and_corporate_media_are_hiding%3A_the_public_debt_is_putting_more_cash_in_your_pocket/