ABC Exploits Japanese Tragedy to Undermine Minor GOP-Proposed Domestic U.S. Budget Reduction
ABC’s Bill Weir inaccurately lectured Friday night: “Consider Japan's state of the art undersea sensors and tsunami gates, protecting key ports, while just last month, our House of Representatives voted to slash funding for the Hawaiian tsunami warning center that issued last night's alarm.”
Then on Saturday’s World News, reporter Clayton Sandell found it newsworthy to highlight how “Democrats accuse Republicans of being irresponsible for proposing budget cuts to NOAA, the federal agency that provides forecasts and early warnings of natural disasters.”
Sandell cued up a California Democrat with a loaded question: “NOAA's budget gets cut, are people's lives more at risk?” The Congressman, who represents the state’s northern coast, naturally, agreed: “Absolutely.”
In fact, the funding “slash,” which is only proposed and is far from implementation since it hasn’t even passed in the House, is not for any specific program inside NOAA and is for a reduction of just 7 percent, which hardly means all of NOAA’s programs must be shut down since NOAA would still be able to spend 93 percent of what they spent in the previous fiscal year.
From the Saturday, March 12 ABC World News with David Muir:
CLAYTON SANDELL: The quake has also triggered a tsunami of political bickering in Congress. Democrats accuse Republicans of being irresponsible for proposing budget cuts to NOAA, the federal agency that provides forecasts and early warnings of natural disasters.
SANDELL TO THOMPSON: If NOAA's budget gets cut, are people's lives more at risk?
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE MIKE THOMPSON (D-CA): Absolutely. This is important stuff. It's public safety. It's an investment in our everyday lives.
SANDELL: Republicans counter that it's up to NOAA how it spends its budget, as residents along the coast wonder how bad the next tsunami might be. Clayton Sandell, ABC News, Crescent City, California.
From the Friday, March 11 ABC World News with Diane Sawyer:
BILL WEIR: And consider Japan's state of the art undersea sensors and tsunami gates, protecting key ports, while just last month, our House of Representatives voted to slash funding for the Hawaiian tsunami warning center that issued last night's alarm. One more reason to look out for yourself....
DIANE SAWYER: And you were telling us they cut the funding for that kind of alert system. Thank you, Bill.
— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
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Comments
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Submitted by motherbelt on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 10:36am.
Well, that's what counts, isn't it? Use it for political purposes. But even if it's a partisan attack on Republicans, at least it's somewhat relevant: tsunami, early warning, lives saved.
It's definitely a lot less offensive than Chris Matthews' observation that it's an opportunity for Obama to "remind" people that he was born in Hawaii. Thousands dead, and that's Chris Matthews' first thought.
He gives "deplorable" a whole new dimension.
Lives at risk.
Submitted by GregE on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:00am.
.....NOAA's budget gets cut, are people's lives more at risk?....”Yes, due to waste and the federal government trying to be the focal point and redistributor of all wealth. Due to all that won't get cut, NOAA's budget gets cut.
Debt piling up by the second
Submitted by Blonde on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 12:17pm.
Last night, Paul Ryan was on Huckabee. One of the things he said is that all of the CBO's computers cannot model the economy after about 2031, because in every possible model, the economy implodes due to federal spending. Every single model!
The other thing he said, about the level of debt we're passing on to future generations:
Baby born today ~ owes $29,000
Baby born in 2050 (39 years) ~ owes $279,000
No one wants to have their federal funding cut for local projects....here in Broward County Debbie Wasserman Shultz is wailing about the potential cut of $1.5 million from special security grants for Port Everglades. Allen West is for them. Guess what, charge the snowbirds and extra $2 each to get on the big boat (cruise ships) and quit yer bitchin', Debs! It's up to the local communities to decide what's the most importance and prioritize.
I really wish they'd let me take a whack at the budget. I'd cut $500 billion the first year.
Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)
No, No, No!
Submitted by JeffWeimer on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:00am.
They do NOT get to increase the deficit by a factor of three and then tell everyone this is the "baseline" we now work from, and any "cuts" means devastation and we "hate" and want to "destroy" something. Money is fungible - the high-priority stuff will still be funded. It's the same thing when budget cuts for education or public safety are proposed - it magically goes straight to teachers and firefighters in the rhetoric. That's BS, as there is plenty of extra positions that don't teach that could be removed or adjusted. It's a deeply cynical ploy to eliminate any cuts by defeating them in detail with anecdotes. "Don't cut this, it's important!" "Oh, you can't cut that either, we need them!" "Cowboy poetry? You hate the arts!"Logic doesn't apply in DC.
Submitted by GregE on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:07am.
The people creating this type of nonsense, i.e. ratcheting up the spending off the charts, then still crapping on any cuts anyone wants to make, are criminals. They know what they're doing. They're not stupid, so they know exactly what they are doing by doing this nonsense. Even "allowing" small cuts means nothing. The first two years of Obama and his super-majority accomplices were to get spending up as high as possible because they knew at some point there would be talk of cuts. At least if they spent thru the roof, they could concede some cuts later and not really be conceding anything. Of course, as "later" arrived, they still have to be good liberals and fight against any cuts (or appear to). They assume Americans are dumb. What makes them assume this? Was the 2008 election of Obama perceived to be the huge clue?If Private Industry
Submitted by Kingfish17 on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:14am.
Liberal media is constantly lecturing us how private industry needs to do the right thing regarding funding projects that "protect the environment" or promote "eco friendly" forms of energy. What about our esteemed institutes of higher learning? Shouldn't they be studying and implementing tsunami and other natural disaster warning systems on their own, for free, without taxpayer funding, just for the good of mankind?
It's kind of heartless that they expect to make money from peoples suffering.
"You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas...on the taxpayer’s dime." Barack Obama
At the same time the Obama
Submitted by Miss_Me_Yet on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:40am.
At the same time the Obama political machine, democrat party and MSM completely black out any and all coverage of the ongoing devastation, death to ( marine life, plants and habitat ) & destruction of ( human lives & livelihood of the coastal population ), overwhelmingly non Obama supporters by the way, along the Southern coast of the United States due to BP spill.
This little non story will be the headline and lead story at every Obama news outlet and subject of major debate and Congressional investigation.
Liberals ... we can't live with them, they couldn't survive without us ...
Tell NOAA that they can have all that they want
Submitted by TheHistorian on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:48am.
out of James Hansen's budget to replace it. Time to cut the global warming quack at the purse strings.Dennis Prager
Some background
Submitted by Kekela Ward on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:50am.
Here is a reply I posted to The Honolulu Star Advertiser (the "SA" in my post), the only "major" newspaper in the State of Hawaii, to a post by one of our regular whacked out liberal posters who commented using union talking points. He then had the gall to ask how his post was union spin. It also gives some background on the story. And yes, the Star Advertiser is highly liberal and slants it's coverage to the left. It also uses the tactic of non reporting to continue feeding the masses the meme that all things progressive are good (which seems to be working, as can be seen by Hawaii's election results this past November). The "Hopeless Twins" cited in the post are our two Congresspersons, Democrats Mazie (Look, I've done nothing, except become a chairperson for the Democratic Socialists of America, since I've been in DC) and Colleen (Look I just gave Hawaii State lawmakers a 36% raise before those idiot voters voted me into the US Congress!) This was posted in the "Letters to the Editor" section of the SA on Friday 03/11/11. " The story you reference from today's SA was cut and pasted by AP "writer" Matthew Daly (without attribution) from a CBS story posted today by Lucy Madison. In turn, Madison basically rewrote (with additional liberal spin and no attribution) a story that was originally posted in the SA on 02/20/11 by Gary Kubota entitled "Cuts could kill, Union says". Here is the fear inducing first sentence of the story by Kubota: "The union representing National Weather Service workers says budget cuts proposed by the U.S. House of Representatives could jeopardize public safety and increase the severity of disaster losses in Hawaii". In the next sentence additional fearmongering is provided by guess who? A union lackey (whose exact job with NOAANWS/PTWC is never actually specified): "People could die. ... It could be serious," said Barry Hirshorn, Pacific region chairman of the National Weather Service Employees Organization". In Daly's "story" in todays edition, the sentence right after the one you provided in your post states: "A union representing workers at the tsunami center said the proposed cuts could result in furloughs and rolling closures of National Weather Service offices". There's your union spin. It's despicable that progressives (at AP and CBS) would use the horrific events and human suffering occuring in Tokyo for political gain by rehashing a story from last month in a hit piece against the GOP (and to make it look like the GOP came up with this idea immediately after the earthquake and tsunami). But it gets worse for the progressive team.... Senior Hopeless Twin Hirono comes thru quite unintentionally, no doubt, with the truth (from Kubota's story): "U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said the cuts are focused on reducing or eliminating programs that relate to climate and ocean monitoring". She goes on to state her firm belief in junk science: "Those who claim that global warming is a myth find the hard data produced by such monitoring inconvenient," she said". In the next sentence, Junior Hopeless Twin Hanabusa, failing to get together with her compatriot to get their lies straight, tips us off to the progressive plan to shift funds from an actual, proven, real world lifesaving department (PTWC) to a dubious program (CC/GW) to further yet another progressive social experiment and money generator: "Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, D-Hawaii, called the proposed cuts in the Republican spending bill "reckless." "Drastically reducing the ... ability to forecast weather and alert our communities about imminent, dangerous events is irresponsible," Hanabusa said. Nothing in the GOP bill takes any funds from "the ability to forcast weather and alert our communities about imminent, dangerous events". Or at least, that's the way the GOP wrote the bill. We'll see how the dems spin the actual intention of the bill to their advantage".Sorry about te sentence
Submitted by Kekela Ward on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:56am.
Sorry about te sentence structure and paragraph breaks...the "cut and paste" didn't "paste" as I thought it would....Kekela
Submitted by Blonde on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 12:27pm.
Before you post, Switch to Rich Text Editor (orange phrase) under your comment box. That should help.
Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)
Just ran across these
Submitted by ricklail on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 3:03pm.
Just ran across these satellite photos from Japan. Move the slide in the middle back and forth to view the before and after shots.
Hawaii is a group of small
Submitted by LAM SON 719 on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 3:54pm.
Hawaii is a group of small islands in the pacific ocean, should Tsumani of this magnitude occur there you are going to die, there isn't any place to go, sorry but that's the way it is.Japan's government debt is 2X
Submitted by forest on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 4:47pm.
Japan's government debt is 2X their GDP because they've spent way too much in a vain effort to override the business cycle over the last couple of decades. Ya think this is going to impact their ability to recover from this disaster? Taking more loans will cost extra and money is already being sucked out of both the public and private sector to pay off old debt and interest. This is how great countries and empires fall. Irresponsible policies weaken them, and then unforeseen shocks such as wars or natural disasters push them over the edge. I hope it's not the case of Japan, but it could be, and it's all set up by irresponsible spending/borrowing.→ I want to know
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 9:20pm.
If those nuclear reactors had been designed by Halliburton rather than GENERAL ELECTRIC, would we be hearing about the evil George Bush today?
Why is GE silent?
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 9:29pm.
And why is GENERAL ELECTRIC referring questions about the design of their nuclear reactors to the Nuclear Energy Institute?
I'm not saying they're guilty of anything, I'm just asking questions about an incestuous relationship between GENERAL ELECTRIC and President Obama. Who knows? Just like Halliburton, GENERAL ELECTRIC may be pure as the driven snow.