Sequestration looms - but when will the pain feel real?
What will happen if the sequester takes place?
Tomorrow, barring a last-minute Washington miracle, President Obama will officially order the highly-anticipated, much-dreaded "sequestration" - an across-the-board set of budget cuts totaling $1.2 trillion from defense and non-defense spending over the course of the next ten years. The administration has been vehement in its calls for Congress to find a way to avert the legally-mandated package: The cuts, Mr. Obama says, will result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, crippling losses for the nation's public education system, defense cuts that would leave the country unprepared for future military engagements, and a number of day-to-day inconveniences, like long lines at the airport and the shuttering of some public parks.
As sequestration officially becomes law of the land, however, its impacts won't immediately be clear: Despite warnings of an economic turndown, cuts for 2013 will be rolled out over the next several months, triggering a government slowdown that will hit different agencies with various degrees of speed and impact as time goes on. And its toll, whatever it ends up being, will likely be drawn out and murky, with sources nearly unidentifiable to the average voter.
"It will be like a rolling ball," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, of the manner in which the cuts will impact the economy, in remarks to reporters this week. "It will keep growing."
What will happen on March 1?
According to the Budget Control Act of 2011, sequestration will cut $85 billion from the federal budget in the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year, slashing about $1.1 trillion more over the next decade. The White House has recently released a slew of memos detailing what they believe those cuts would look like on both a state and program level:
"The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) now calculates that sequestration will require an annual reduction of roughly 5 percent for nondefense programs and roughly 8 percent for defense programs," according to one fact sheet. "However, given that these cuts must be achieved over only seven months instead of 12, the effective percentage reductions will be approximately 9 percent for nondefense programs and 13 percent for defense programs. These large and arbitrary cuts will have severe impacts across the government."
- Full coverage: The Sequester
- When does the sequester start? Don't ask Washington
- Obama to meet with congressional leaders at sequester deadline
According to the White House, that means "10,000 teacher jobs would be put at risk, and funding for up to 7,200 special education teachers, aides, and staff could be cut"; loans to small businesses would be reduced by up to $540 million; research and development would be stalled as thousands of researchers and scientists would be at risk of losing their jobs; and "up to 373,000 seriously mentally ill adults and seriously emotionally disturbed children could go untreated," among other impacts.
Those calculations, however, assess the impacts of sequestration over the course of the fiscal year. But assigning and implementing those reductions will take time, and agencies will presumably do their best to blunt or delay the impacts of the reductions, moving money around, reassigning carry-over funds, delaying the announcement of new contracts and grants, and taking advantage of whatever flexibility they have.
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The prospectus was utterly false: America's leading cable news network has become a megaphone for rightwing propaganda
Matthew Butler
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 October 2011 13.00
In January of 1996, at a press conference announcing the formation of Fox News, Roger Ailes told assembled reporters, "We just expect to do fine, balanced journalism."
Nine months later on 6 October 1996, the network went on air.
From the start, the channel was not your standard cable news network, and it certainly didn't live up to the promise of "balance". Former Fox News President Joe Peyronnin recounted, "There was a litmus test. Ailes was going to figure out who was liberal or conservative when he came in, and try to get rid of the liberals."
As he had done with Rush Limbaugh earlier in the decade, Roger Ailes's strategy at Fox was to bring conservative talk radio to television.
Along the way, the network has built up an incredible track record of smears, bigotry and lies.
Fox's bias was clear early on, but the 2000 election was where its true colors began to show.
Its polling arm would reportedly ask questions such as "Who would be the most likely to cheat at cards - Bill Clinton or Al Gore?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/07/fox-news-15-years
The Fox News channel that transmits news in English, was blocked this Sunday for subscribers of the Sky chain in Mexico, apparently for having violate the Mexican electoral law.
http://floppingaces.net/2006/06/27/fox-news-banned-in-mexico/
Harper, often referred to as "George W. Bush's Mini Me," is known for having mounted a Bush like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.
http://www.politicalforum.com/current-events/174824-fox-news-banned-canada.html
http://www.skepticmoney.com/fox-news-banned-from-canada-law-forbids-lying-on-broadcast-news/
Canadians already have access to the main Fox network, but not the right-leaning, 24-hour news channel, with its trademarked slogan of "fair and balanced."
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) opposed the application, saying it would discourage foreign broadcasters from partnering with Canadian broadcasters.
via Reader Supported News.
Maybe I will need to move to Canada!
America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News, fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of the Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canadian regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right-wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.
They would have to change the law to let FOX news be broadcast. Sounds like a good law. Hey Congress, here is a law you can pass!
http://www.skepticmoney.com/fox-news-banned-from-canada-law-forbids-lying-on-broadcast-news/
People frequently refer to a court case that Fox won, which essentially gives the media the right to lie. This came from an appellate court decision that states that the FCC's news distortion policy does not qualify as a rule, law, or regulation.
Appellate Court Rules Media Can Legally Lie.
By Mike Gaddy. Published Feb. 28, 2003
The court did not dispute the heart of Akre's claim, that Fox pressured her to broadcast a false story to protect the broadcaster from having to defend the truth in court, as well as suffer the ire of irate advertisers. Fox argued from the first, and failed on three separate occasions, in front of three different judges, to have the case tossed out on the grounds there is no hard, fast, and written rule against deliberate distortion of the news.
The attorneys for Fox, owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves.
In its six-page written decision, the Court of Appeals held that the Federal Communications Commission position against news distortion is only a "policy," not a promulgated law, rule, or regulation. Fox aired a report after the ruling saying it was "totally vindicated" by the verdict.
http://foxnewsboycott.com/resources/fox-can-lie-lawsuit/