Media Ignore Alarmist Liberal Ad Warning Kids Will Die if Congress Trims EPA Budget

By Alex Fitzsimmons | July 26, 2011 | 15:01

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Broadcast and cable networks have failed to cover a liberal interest group's exploitative TV spot claiming any cuts to the EPA would be equivalent to spoon-feeding toxic particles to infants, even though the proposed cuts would only pare back funding to pre-recession levels.

The video, released in March amid debates in Congress to curtail the EPA's regulatory authority, has since re-emerged as a commercial on MSNBC. While depicting an adult feeding a small child helpings of baby food from jars labeled dioxin, mercury, and arsenic, a narrator frets: "If the EPA wasn't cleaning millions of toxic particles out of the air, they'd be going, well, somewhere else...Protect the EPA. Protect our kids."

Despite the impression left by American Family Voices, the group responsible for the advertisement, that cuts to the EPA would kill children, the numbers tell a different story.

In February, President Barack Obama proposed an FY 2012 budget of $8.9 billion for the EPA. In April, House Republicans passed a budget (the Ryan Plan) that would trim EPA funding to 2008 levels, or approximately $7.5 billion. The EPA's FY 2010 budget, which was already inflated 36 percent above pre-recession levels, was only about $1 billion more than Obama's 2012 proposal.

If baby food wasn't contaminated with dangerous amounts of arsenic in 2008, scaling back EPA funding to those levels in 2012 could hardly be construed as fatal to infants. Yet the media are allowing American Family Voices (AFV) to get away with such hyperbole and MSNBC is pocketing the ad revenue without scrutinizing the spot on any of its news programs.

AFV has a history of advancing liberal causes on a wide range of consumer issues. Shortly after Mike Lux, president of Progressive Strategies, a liberal political consulting firm, founded AFV in 2000, the group started assaulting President George W Bush with allegations of corporate corruption.

"I was outraged at the idea that Bush was going to do a big speech and pound his chest and say he is in favor of corporate responsibility when he is closer to the corporate world than any president since Ronald Reagan," accused Lux, a former aide to President Clinton. AFV ran TV ads in 2002, claiming, "Bush played a key role at Harken Energy – they used Enron-style accounting to hide losses."

Since then, according to AFV's website, the group has focused on torpedoing the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, accusing then-Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) of collaborating with Tom DeLay in a money-laundering scheme, and supporting the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill.

Just like AFV has a history of attacking conservative politicians and promoting liberal policies, the media have a history of ignoring controversial liberal political ads. Back in May, ABC, MSNBC, and CNN, among others, avoided covering – for as long as they could – the Agenda Project's offensive Medicare video showing a Republican politician steering grandma and her wheelchair off a cliff.

--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

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I understand that if you

Submitted by MightyMouth on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 3:19pm.

I understand that if you don't feed infants they will die. That means we need a gooberment bureau to make sure infants get fed. How did infants get fed before the gooberment got involved?

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, unless my friend is more evil than my enemy."

Can SOMEONE TELL ME..........

Submitted by OldJarhead77 on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 3:51pm.

Where are the machines, OWNED by the EPA that are cleaning the air?.... WHAT they don't EXIST.... Then someone Needs to file suit to have this fully FALSE bit of "advertising" taken off the air!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liberals: No Morals, No Standards, NO Problem!

Thanks

Submitted by Wineguy13 on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 4:27pm.

Saved me a post. Unless your definition of 'cleaning' is attending policy workshops, and looking for people to sue for paperwork violations, the EPA ain't in the cleaning business. Sort of like the Ed Dept. or the Energy Dept, ad nauseum

Thank you, EPA!

Submitted by Galvanic on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 3:53pm.

Instead of a jar labeled mercury, the image ought to show the child reaching for a US Government-endorsed, mercury-filled CFL bulb. How does the EPA protect children from the toxins in CFLs when they break, when we can no longer buy incandescent bulbs next year?

You do know

Submitted by mandrake on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 4:06pm.

That in the 50's and 60's you could buy mercury in bottles at the local hardware store. I used to play with it and the science teachers had us do experiments with it..I'm still here and ok..except for the growing gills part.

BTW. mercury is an ELEMENT..it's been here since before God created man.

mandrake

Submitted by well99 on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 4:18pm.

Grow a beard.It works for me.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4B6BR9aWHAk/SH2ILGmbNQI/AAAAAAAAAaQ/NwS1iFsSfC...

We did it too

Submitted by TexasMom0517 on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 4:23pm.

When a thermometer broke, we played with the mercury. Also, those maze toys had mercury in them, as I recall.

"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." Barbara Jordan

Arsenic and lead are also

Submitted by Ken Shepherd on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 5:37pm.

Arsenic and lead are also elements and they are pretty harmful to humans in significant quantities. Just like how mercury is.

True, the occasional exposure to mercury from a broken thermometer is probably not cause for alarm, however small amounts over time really add up.

The less mercury you come into contact with, the better.

Indeed!

Submitted by Unsane on Wed, 07/27/2011 - 10:18am.

Ask Иван Грозний about mercury sometime. (Otherwise known as Ivan IV, the Terrible.)

"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)

Just saw it at work

Submitted by jon_torlin on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 4:12pm.

I just saw this at work, wasn't being played by Fox News, just was on the channel. I was just absolutely aghast at this whole nonsense and my co-workers were too. Our reaction was: "Did they just really go there??"

Disgusting!!! One more among many reasons to get rid of the EPA.

-Jon

Not ENOUGH microbes, bacteria and fungus for our kids!

Submitted by TexasMom0517 on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 4:20pm.

If your child suffers with allergies and asthma, your family probably lives in a city, not on a farm. It’s not the city pollution that’s to blame either, in fact it’s the cleanliness

A 2011 report documents the results of two European studies that looked at the differences between city kids and farm kids when it comes to developing allergies and childhood asthma. The studies indicated that youngsters who live on farms are 30 to 50 percent less likely than their city cousins to develop asthma or allergies.

Germ-filled Mattresses

One study focused on children’s bed mattresses. Researchers found that the mattresses of kids who lived on farms were chocked full of a wide assortment of bacteria. City kids’ mattresses contained far fewer bacteria in comparison.
But when it came to asthma and allergies, the opposite was true. City kids had way more allergies and were much more likely to be asthmatic compared to those who lived on farms.

Microbe-Laced Bedrooms

The other study zeroed in on dust found in children’s’ rooms. Dust from farm kids’ rooms contained plenty of bacteria and fungus. Meanwhile, city kids’ rooms contained a lot fewer microbes in comparisons.
But, once again, the city kids experienced allergies and suffered asthma attacks to a much greater degree than those who lived on farms.

Based on these studies, researchers conclude that it’s beneficial to live in an environment that contains an assortment of “good germs,” microorganisms that help a child’s body develop resistance to allergies and asthma.

I think that's true

Submitted by MidAmerica on Wed, 07/27/2011 - 3:35pm.

I've got that rural background and none of the kids I knew ever had allergies. We ate with dirty hands unwashed berries and fruit right off vines and trees and played in dirty haymows that filled with a really fine dust from our play. Sometimes if we were eating something we liked and we dropped it we just brushed off the obvious dirt and ate it. We swam in dirty ponds and rivers. We drank from hand pumped shallow wells. A real Tom Sawyer life. No kid ever got sick from this.

The good news

Submitted by TexasMom0517 on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 4:24pm.

Is that the Left has really jumped the shark during the Obama reign of terror. Even the most lackadaisical are seeing it.

South Park 'Underpants Gnomes' strike again!

Submitted by Slyrr on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 4:42pm.

Remember the SP epsiode 'The Underpants Gnomes'? In it, a local coffee shop owner was threatened by the arrival of Starbucks. So he gathered the local kids and used them in a media campaign, forcing them to read prepared lines on TV appearances, like, 'Big businesses are BAD!' Complete with a menacing voice at the end of his anti-starbucks infomercial that boomed, 'Starbucks KILLS children! You don't hate children.... DO YOU????' Then it depicts the kids faces bursting into flames and leaving behind nothing but charred skulls.

As much as that totally nails liberal media, the episode also nails liberal politicians and their horrible ideas about how businesses work. The underpants gnomes are stealing the underwear of everyone in town. 'To get rich.' they say. When the kids ask how they'll get rich that way, the gnomes reveal a flowchart that reads:

1) Gather underpants
2) ???????????????
3) Profit!!

Which is pretty much how Obama and the Democrats have been running things their entire misbegotten lives.

Liberal plan:
1) Raise Taxes
2) Turn America Communist
3) ????????????????????
4) Paradise!

If a Liberal/Democrat politician/media figure wants to put their arms around you, or pat you on the back, all they're doing is looking for a good place to stick a knife.

NOW THAT

Submitted by OldJarhead77 on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 5:34pm.

IS BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!