A brief rant will ensue. I'm watching John King's show, State of the Union, on CNN today. Two howling examples of media idiocy ensued, after which I had to turn it off. The first was the "taxing health benefits" boogeyman, and the second was a discussion of the public option, without including any advocates of the public option. Detail below.
So I'm watching John King's show, State of the Union, on CNN today. Two howling examples of media idiocy:
- He's interviewing Kathleen Sebelius and asks the inevitable question about taxing employer-provided health benefits and is that going to be in the health reform and how can you do that when Obama trashed McCain? Sebelius merely dodges the question.
The idiocy: How tired I am of hearing this utter stupidity! McCain was going to eliminate the tax benefit completely. So you'd be paying tax on, say $12,000 for a family plan, and that's maybe $2500 more you can't afford out of your middle-class behind. The proposals under consideration, however, contain a range of tax possibilities, such as no tax at all under certain income levels, e.g. $125,000, or no tax at all for plans with value under some value, e.g. $13,000 (which I just hear Grassley propose). Is there a difference between this scenario and McCain's? Then why the hell are they always equating the two? Are we so stupid that we can't handle the distinction? Do they have so little time that they can't explain the distinction? Or are they so stupid that they themselves don't understand the distinction?
- The John King has a discussion on health care reform, with prominent discussion of the public option, with guests Kent Conrad, Susan Collins, and Ben Nelson. Do you see something missing? None of these guests can speak in favor of the public option!! In fact John King at one point asks Kent Conrad to explain why Kennedy favors the public option, and Conrad says, "You'll have to ask him!"
The idiocy: How can you have a discussion of the public option with three guests, not one of whom is in favor of it? It's not like there's a big shortage or it's a fringe proposal (even Fox has Dodd on to support it).
How utterly stupid is the debate on TV and cable! All they do is bat around the same three word sound bites and talking points. Hell, even I was disturbed at talk of taxing those health benefits until I happened on congressional testimony on C-SPAN by some experts and saw they were talking only about modest taxation schemes. But damned if we'll ever hear about that from the talking heads.
Rant over. Thanks.