So much for the more loving, more caring president "we've been waiting for." So, wouldn't you think the Old Media would be braying at the hypocrisy here? Wouldn't you rather think that the Old Media would be up in arms about this one? Isn't this typically the type of story that would get them motivated to get their high dudgeon on? Guess not because it is nearly invisible in the media today.
Of the very few reporting on this, the Associated Press reported on May 7 that the president's proposed budget calls for cuts in the Public Safety Officer's Death Benefits Program. Obama wants to cut $50 million from the program, the budget to fall from $110 million to $60 million.
Apparently Obama imagines that his ascension to the White House will heal the tortured minds those criminal miscreants and cop-killers that might be lurking around out there because according to the reasoning offered to cut program funds, Obama claims that the number of on-the-job police killings is supposed to drop.
Justice Department budget documents say the reduction is being made because "claims are anticipated to decrease" because the number of officers killed in the line of duty has been decreasing.
The director of a police survivors group begs to differ, however. They have found that police officers killed on duty have gone up 21 percent over last year's numbers already.
But, let's consider how this story would be reported if it were Bush proposing to cut survivor's benefits like this. Who cannot imagine that the media would be falling all over itself to scold Bush if he should have been the one to propose such steep cuts to benefits for the families of our fallen police officers?
It would have been ginned up into a firestorm of outrage against a president Bush, wouldn't it?
Yet, for Obama, mums the word.
Imagine that?
