The military-media-industrial complex

[NNN0LHI]

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200904100031?f=h_column

Fri, Apr 10, 2009 7:37pm ET

by Jamison Foser

Given the news media's obsession with the federal budget deficit, it is a little strange that they freak out so quickly whenever anyone raises the possibility of higher taxes or lower defense spending. But what is really strange is that they can't stop worrying about tax hikes and defense cuts even when faced with proposals to cut taxes for most Americans and to increase defense spending.

Last month, we saw the media rush to portray President Obama's tax proposals as tax increases, even though the proposals would cut taxes for the vast majority of Americans. The media's focus on the higher taxes that people making more than $200,000 a year would pay was absurd, but it wasn't new: The elite media have long behaved as though the only part of tax policy that matters is the part that affects the wealthy.

This week, the media brought a similar lack of perspective to their coverage of the defense budget proposed by the Obama administration. The plan, outlined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday, would increase defense spending from $513 billion to $534 billion.

I better go ahead and repeat that, because it probably isn't something you've heard much this week: The proposed budget would increase defense spending from $513 billion to $534 billion.

And yet, just about everywhere you turned this week, news reports suggested that the Obama administration proposed a drastic reduction in defense spending -- cuts so severe, the Army would soon consist of a small band of volunteers using slingshots and sharpened sticks to keep us safe.

[Democracyinkind]

1. " Why Jimmy, stop mentioning the damn elephant in the room, Mr. Lloyd is uncomfortable with it "