It was not so many decades ago that news organizations cared about human beings. The corporate media of today can no way be compared with the press of years gone by.
Last night the United States Senate authorized the detonation of a nuclear bomb in Fresno, California, wiping the city and its inhabitants off the map. The vote came up three times the and party with the majority of seats was unable to stop it. Meanwhile, the press kept the Senate’s debate over the issue so far on the back burner that few Americans even knew about it.
Of course, there was no nuclear explosion. But over a million people, a population equal to Fresno, may as well have been blasted to atoms. The Senate failed to pass the jobs bill, and people who have been out of work in a poor economy for as little as 26 weeks have had their lifelines cut. Many will lose their homes, their cars, their health care, and their sanity. Families with children will not be able to provide for them. Older people will be hit extra hard as the bill makes Medicare payments to doctors smaller.
This was deemed "must pass" legislation, and the failure of the Senate to pass it is heinous. Economists like Paul Krugman have tried to explain the foolishness of being a deficit hawk in respect to this legislation, but it became a political football. It helps Republicans in upcoming elections to be against higher deficits and a bill full of pork. They can attack the Democrats for adding to the deficit. It helps Democrats in upcoming elections to be for unemployment benefits and a bill full of spending. They can attack the Republicans for being against unemployment benefits.
Caught in the middle are over a million unemployed people. And as horrific as the inaction of the Senate has been, even more amazing has been the failure of most news media to even cover it. This was a long and drawn out battle, with compromises attempted and rejected. It was a far more meaningful story than the foreign murder case that dominated what headlines were not about the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. It will affect a million people at once, and more every week. The economic damage that can be wrought from this disaster, both to the economy and the families involved, is great. Many jobless will no longer be able to pay their bills, let alone put food on the table.
It’s a terrific story, fraught with drama and hardship. One would think it newsworthy, but the corporate masters of the news media declined to cover it. I suspect if they had, the good people of this nation might have weighed in with their Senators and forced them to represent individuals over corporate interests. The Press surely would have made this a major story, the media chose not to. Perhaps a few people would have noticed that the Republican Party was being disingenuous in claiming to be deficit hawks when they blocked this vital legislation. This was the party that inherited a surplus from the Clinton Administration. This was the party that promotes tax cuts for the rich. This was the party that keeps tax loopholes open for corporations that send American jobs overseas.
It is a sad day for America. I personally am affected by the failure of this legislation to pass. I was laid off from a great job in November. I looked for work with a vengeance over the past six months, but when you’re 63 there are not a lot of responses to your resumes. Yet forty years ago, the US Government gave me a job, and I accepted it. They sent me to a place called Vietnam, and I put my life on the line as that was my patriotic duty. And I just can’t believe that the country I served would treat me the way it has today. For shame, America. Perhaps if more citizens had been informed, this wouldn’t have happened. I’d like to think we value people above all else.
Unless, of course, we’re Republicans.