IP: Ms. Molly Bites the Media That Feeds Her

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 12:24:11 -0800
> From: "Janos G." <janos451 () earthlink net>
>
> http://www.prod.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/columnists/molly_ivins/2481659
> .htm
>
> Star Telegram
> Molly Ivins
> Jan. 17, 2002
>
> AUSTIN - In New York City last year, about 3,000 people died in the
> attack on the World Trade Center. In New York City last year, 30,000
> people came to the new federal limits on welfare. Another 19,000 will
> lose assistance this year. New York has lost 95,000 jobs since Sept.
> 11. It lost 75,000 jobs in the year before that. There are now 30,000
> people in the city shelters.
>
> Now find the numbers for your town. In Austin, the only organization
> that provides help to women with breast cancer and no health
> insurance has just cut its staff from 30 to six, with an equal impact
> on the help that can be offered. Homelessness is up; shelter
> populations are up; food distribution centers and soup kitchens are
> overwhelmed.
>
> And all this is happening in a cruel synergy of inattention,
> indifference and the final fraying of the social safety net.
> Charities are overwhelmed and suddenly vastly underfunded, in large
> part as a consequence of the complete focus on the victims of Sept.
> 11.
>
> The federal government, largely under Republican control, is dealing
> with war, terrorism and recession.  State governments, with far less
> attention, are out of money, running into deficits and cutting
> services across the board. Texas, with another year to go before the
> biennial budget battle, is declaring that it can no longer afford its
> small share of the federal CHIP - Children's Health Insurance Program.
>
> At the beginning of the 1990s, the states raised their taxes, and
> toward the end of the '90s, they cut their taxes. But, as the Center
> on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, they didn't cut the same
> taxes they had raised.
>
> Commenting on the report, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
> writes: "Increases in regressive taxes - that is, taxes like the
> sales tax, which bear most heavily on lower- and moderate-income
> families - by and large were never reversed. Instead, states cut
> taxes that bear most heavily on upper-income families. The end result
> was a redistribution of the tax burden away from the haves toward the
> have-nots. A family earning, say, $30,000 per year pays considerably
> more in state taxes than a family with the same constant-dollar
> income did in 1990, while a family earning $600,000 per year pays
> considerably less."
>
> But attention is not being paid. The media, with their One Big Story
> obsession, just got off the war in Afghanistan long enough to start
> reporting Enron. Networks still devote daily remembrance to the
> traumas of Sept. 11, effectively obliterating other needs.
>
> And there is something else happening as well. Thirty-eight percent
> of the tax cut of last April went to benefit the wealthiest 1 percent
> of taxpayers. We are at a curious point in our political debate where
> anyone who points that out is accused of "fomenting class warfare."
>
> Actually, reporting that the wealthiest 1 percent got 38 percent of
> the benefits is not fomenting class warfare; passing a tax cut that
> gives 38 percent to the wealthiest 1 percent is fomenting class
> warfare. Likewise, proposing an "economic stimulus package" of which
> 92 percent of the benefits are tax cuts for huge corporations is
> fomenting class warfare.
>
> And this is a country that needs to be a little nervous about class
> warfare as economic pain bites in. There have been some stories
> pointing out that this recession is an oddity in that, unlike a
> normal recession, it is hitting all classes - largely because of the
> dot.com bust. Bright college graduates lose jobs and have to move
> back in with Mom and Dad. But that's not the same as the working poor
> losing their jobs, is it?
>
> Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, is in fiscal
> crisis. According to The New York Times, overall Medicaid spending
> went up by 11 percent last year, just as the states face huge
> deficits.
>
> We live in a society in which the bad stuff flows downhill, and the
> people on the bottom are drowning in it.  This is not a story to
> which the corporate media pay attention. Bad demographics don't
> attract advertisers - not upbeat, no patriotism, too busy with
> Russell Crowe's love life.
>
> After six years as governor of Texas, George W. Bush was infuriated
> by a federal report ranking Texas No.1 in hunger. "You'd think the
> governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas,"
> he said. Well, Texas had been No. 1 in hunger since the feds started
> keeping count in the 1960s. It's a permanent condition here, but the
> governor had never seen it.
>
> We better stop, hey, what's that sound
>
> Everybody look what's going down.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Janos Gereben/SF
> janos451 () earthlink net
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Janos Gereben/SF
> janos451 () earthlink net

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