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Not Everyone In The Media Missed The Defense Spending Story
You may have noticed some variations on a theme here this week, and we hope you liked it, because we'll surely have more for you next week and the week after and so on all the way until the fight over defense budget has finally ended.
Along the way, we'd like to think that we're having something of an impact. Or, less self-congratulatorily, that not everyone in the media is misportraying the story or letting the misportrayers get a pass.
So, herewith, a montage of the reporters and anchors who got it right:
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Josh
Matt
Eric
The good news is that there are more in the media calling "bullshit" than there were last year. The bad news is that they are all affiliated with just two networks, one of which does comedy, not news.
Okay, three networks but that CNN thing was a fluke and I'm sure he was read the riot act by Wolf Blitzer afterwards...
April 10, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
And 2 are, until recently, Air America radio hosts.
(Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz)
April 10, 2009 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ed Schultz has never been an Air America Radio host.
April 10, 2009 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well they must have cleared the air because he is playing every afternoon on my local Air America station.
April 11, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
He is syndicated and numerous Air America stations picked him up, but he was and is not directly employed by Air America as a radio host. Never has been.
April 11, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ahh...ok let me rephrase.
2 are progressive radio hosts.
April 11, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is plenty of military spending that is called something else - be sure to include it at least in a mental note-to-self.
Department of Energy : formerly the Atomic Energy Commission - a lot of what they do is rather military.
NASA : yes it wonderful to go into orbit - also rather military. Long ago it was decided that rocket launches would be impossible to keep secret. Thus NASA was marketed as adventures undertaken by heros. All worthy stuff, but still with military purposes.
Off-budget budget : billions and billions spent on cryptography, quantum computing etc etc ... NSA ( No Such Agency ) or whatever the name of the organization doing the research ... and a lot more the public is not to know about - it may upset them, you see.
April 10, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
You mean quantum cryptography. Quantum computing is barely even theoretically possible at this point :-D
Also, a lot of research done by the NSA is public, particularly cryptography and things like Security Enhanced Linux. (If they do have research under wraps, it's more likely in the related field of cryptanalysis, not cryptography per se. Unless it's something radical like quantum cryptography.)
(I know, I know. I'm defending the NSA. Well, they're the biggest employer of mathematicians in the country, so I have a soft spot. Which, Fourth Amendment fan that I am, does put me in an odd place.)
April 10, 2009 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to split hairs, but the agency formerly known as the Atomic Energy Commission is now called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Dept. of Energy was created as a cabinet post in 1980 by President Carter.
April 13, 2009 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Arkedis said it right on that CNN clip: Senator Inhofe's comments are "ridiculous." Thank you, sir, for finally saying what so many of us have been thinking.
April 10, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
What about the supplementals?
http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2009/04/blog-post.html
"So is this defense budget a cut or an increase? I have been calling it a "cut" because I have been including the two FY2008 supplemental budgets in with the FY2008 budget. And I understand those supplemental budgets are going away in FY2009 (to the greatest degree possible). But angry readers are writing in claiming this is an increase in defense spending and that I am part of some right-wing conspiracy for not admitting this. So who is right? Someone please put me out of my misery. Because I know that if I just go by the annual budget figures, it's an increase. But! If one includes the supplemental budgets ..."
I'd prefer a cut -a real one- but that's not the issue here.
April 10, 2009 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even with the supplemental it is a total increase in spending.
2008 DoD budget outlays $545B
2008 GWOT, OMB scoring, supplementals, etc. $62B
2009 Total $607B
2009 DoD budget outlays $551B
2009 GWOT, OMB scoring, supplementals, etc. $123B
2009 Total $675B
Source Defenselink National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2009
April 11, 2009 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Opps, that first total should have read 2008 total.
Mea culpa
April 11, 2009 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Aren't those Bush era figures? Your source is Sept. 2008. And the CNN story mentions 515 and 533, so it's really unclear which numbers to pay attention to (as if paying attention mattered).
But it is correct to note the role of supplementals etc. which make real "defense" spending be more than "budgeted" spending. Someone else also pointed out that other foreign aid and spending might overlap. But nothing I've seen yet begins to justify "gutting" overall, even if some programs are being gutted relative to old planned spending.
April 11, 2009 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Getting the facts right...who woulda thunk it? And nobody from Fox News is included in this montage...shocking.
What's sad is that Jon Stewart, a satirist (though he probably would do actual news quite well) was included in this. I love more and more how the Comedy Central "fake" news shows have been calling out the real networks.
April 10, 2009 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
But that's what satire does, though. And I think people forget the early years of the daily show that were a complete mock of the overdramatic, overserious format for puff topics on nightly news programs.
April 10, 2009 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I saw both Rachel's show and Ed Schult's new show. Both of them denounced what the GOP have been saying at the funny farm!! More media should pick this up.
April 10, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
"...and so on all the way until the fight over defense budget has finally ended..."
The fight over everything & anything President Obama attempts to do has only begun. And we thought getting past the primordial Repub crap to elect a Dem president was hard.
Fight on, on & on. The wingnut media will. Fox Rupert be damned.
April 10, 2009 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
And why aren't we actually cutting the defense budget?
April 10, 2009 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
If one wants to be accurate about the size of military budget, you should also include the massive foreign aid given to countries around the globe, and that the U.S. government allows to spend only in the U.S. defense industries. Substantial part of the defense budgets of South Korea, Germany, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Poland and other countries is in fact U.S. government spending on defense that just goes through the hands on foreign countries on its way to be spent on the weapon industry back at home.
April 11, 2009 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
but what about inflation?
April 11, 2009 3:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
There isn't any - a better question is, how will DEflation make the increase even larger?
April 11, 2009 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
we actually spend over a TRILLION dollars on the military in this country.
obama should be cutting the budget.
since we spend MORE then the rest of the world COMBINED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the military should be downsized to function on a budget of no more then 100 billion dollars in TOTAL>
of course this wont happen and of course this country will very shortly become broke and a banana republic.
its happening right in front of your eyes.
unless you can afford private guards with machine guns you all will be fighting for food a year from now.
inflation will rise at least 50% by this time next year.
stay tuned
April 11, 2009 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, I see what you're saying.
What do you predict for those people who are private guards with machine guns?
I'm asking for a friend.
April 11, 2009 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
TPM, keep this type of stuff coming.
The truth is always welcome.
April 11, 2009 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is just more of the standard Republican's 'ask for twice what you want, and get what you really want' tactic.
What concerns me more is Obama's willingness to negotiate in general. That being said, one can't just slash the military budget wholesale. Unless its done properly, our troops end up with antiquated, poorly maintained equipment, and our readiness is impacted substantially. The right way to do it is to kill the fat, which it seems Obama is doing. For example, there were sensible reductions made in cold-war technologies like the F22 fighter
April 11, 2009 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Remember, although Republicans spent so much money on the military, this President inherits a huge bunch of armored vehicles that are useless because they are burned out. Huge amounts of our military equipment was run into the ground by G.W.'s endless wars and expending of our military assets. It will take us years of judicious expenditures to restock all the old worn out equipment that was decimated in the bush silly wars. It is impossible to assess the full costs of the Bush adventures. I think Afghanistan was something we needed to do but G.W. cut and ran from Afghanistan and has left us with years and years to fight there. He also made us look like a paper tiger with his eratic planning.
April 11, 2009 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Diane Rehm got it wrong. One of her guests corrected her. They don't all have it wrong, just most of them.
April 11, 2009 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
The leftish media (Rachel Maddow for sure and David Shuster I think) have been a little disingenuous, imho, about the $82+ billion supplemental request from the Obama administration. They did not mention that this was a leftover loose end from the Bush administration, which neglected to provide funding for the wars for the remainder of FY09. The Obama administration included funding for the wars in their budget request but that is for FY10 which does not start until September or October/09. There's overlap between administrations and Pres. Obama kind of has to put up with Bush leftovers for the rest of this fiscal year.
The only way of avoiding this supplemental request (apart from using a time machine) would have been to have re-opened the $410 billion budget leftover from the Bush administration. (Leftover because Bush said he'd veto it.) Given the sturm und drang over the earmarks in that bill, how long do you think it would have taken to include an extra $82+ billion?
April 11, 2009 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Inhofe is a genius. He's backed the media left into sounding supportive of the increase simply so they can point out that he was wrong in his statement.
Are we so mired in the sludge that it's now all about being distracted by petty bickering while the point of an increased defense budget goes by largely unnoticed? This is outrageous!
The media should get back to reporting on the facts of issues and leave the "he said, she said" to the gossip columns where it belongs. Isn't this one of the reasons we're in this mess in the first place? Grow up media!
April 11, 2009 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Naw, he's more than a little delusional. Getting out front like this, he's kinda shot himself in the foot, a little.
Being this distant from reality will begin to call into question his stances on anthropogenic climate change. And rest assured, many of us will be raising questions.
April 11, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like the video, but keeping track of this with a table would be more meaningful. You could also add columns for how long the organization/person has perpetuated this meme, and whether they've finally flipped into to telling the truth.
April 11, 2009 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
With the big change in the administration I feel like more people are becoming conscious of bias in the corporate media. Thanks for compiling this, it's good to know where the different newsmakers stand. This is a great new podcast of The Joan Kenley Show: The Media: What’s True, What’s Not that challenges the information we get from the newsmedia and offers up an alternative. Normon Solomon – the founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy – is a guest on the show.
April 12, 2009 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"There had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it." [George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four]
April 12, 2009 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink