Poor Journalism

This story has been in my que queue for sometime and now, I finally will get it out!!

The problem is that what I read in the Sunday Chicago Tribune may not show up online for about a week so I have no link.

When I first read this story, my “BS-Bias-Detector” pegged out.

Just going to go through a few parts of it to illustrate the clear and obvious bias that this reporter has.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-congress-bush-cuts-20111126,0,4251920.story

“…the Bush tax breaks deadlocked the congressional super-committee in its search for a plan to trim the government’s long term deficit.”

Tax cuts and revenue actually have nothing to do with the long term deficit.  It’s all about the spending.

For 2011:

Revenue         2.27 Trillion

Spending        3.83 Trillion

Deficit              1.56 Trillion

(are you old enough to remember when “BILLION” was an astronomical number???  Now BILLION is being thrown around like nickles.)

Please notice that one of the dirty little secrets is that the “Stimulus” spending is now built into the baseline for spending !!!  (as a side note, the “dip” in spending up to 2015 is only due to the fact that the treasury would be collecting taxes for ObamaCare that would not be spent until 2014.)

You cannot raise enough revenue in the future by taxing to match the increase in spending.

“….from the spending cuts now mandated as a result of the super-committee’s failure to the long term outlook for Medicare and other entitlement programs.”

“Sequestration”.  This is today’s nonsense word !!!!

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=48513&printerfriendlyvers=1

“Automatic, across-the-board spending cuts totaling as much as $1.2 trillion beginning in 2013 will be triggered if the committee cannot agree on a deficit reduction plan and Congress does not approve legislation by Dec. 23. Those cuts would be spread evenly from fiscal 2013 through 2021, and would be divided equally among defense and nondefense spending. The automatic triggering of spending cuts is known as sequestration, a process outlined in the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act.”

$1.2 trillion spread over 8 years in the future????

Spitting in the ocean !!!

Nothing mandated about it either !! Congress can and probably will change that !!

Again, $1.2 trillion over 8 years??? That’s a rounding error in Washington.

“….The tax breaks, approved in 2001, and accelerated in 2003………..”

Simply, why did the author have to mention 2001 and 2003 but failed to mention that President Obama reauthorized the tax code in the “Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010”?

“…Democrats argue that the tax cuts drain too much money from the Treasury………”

Tax cuts do not “cost” the government anything.  That is a myth that Marxists perpetuate and only live on  in Keynesian dogma.  You can only accept that if you believe that all monies are the property of the State.   The “Laffer Curve” is not able to be economically disputed by the Left.

“…Democrats argue that the tax cuts drain too much money from the Treasury, putting important government functions, from defense spending to Social Security, under pressure.”

WOW !!!  Now the Left is concerned about defense?? That is a hoot !!!!

What about Social Security?? There is a specific tax that is used to pay for that !!  What does “income tax cuts” have to do with Social Security ??

“They also say that the low rates are fundamentally unfair at a time when low and middle income Americans are being asked to reduce the federal deficit”

So much nonsense in such a short sentence.

The federal deficit for FY 2011 will be around $1.5 trillion.  Revenue from individual tax returns will be about $1.1 trillion.  The accumulated deficit will be over $15 trillion.

Now, I am not a stupid person, but how does anyone expect to make any reduction in the federal deficit with those numbers especially when considering that the top 1% already pay over 36% of the federal income taxes?

“…we’re asking them to contribute a little bit more.”

Please refer to the above graphic to see that “they” are already paying their fair share !!

Almost 50% of Americans have no skin in the game?

“..Among those upper income earners are many small business owners, a major GOP constituency, that would be hit hard by higher rates.”

The people that work, hire other people and pay income taxes are a major GOP constituency??  Who votes Democrat??!!??

Taking a look at the 2010 federal budget:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/budget-2010/

It’s easy to see that there is more then a 1/2 trillion dollar deficit in spending in just Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. (programs paid with payroll taxes)  Those three programs are about 40% of the budget but consume almost 60% of revenue !!!