ABCNews tells half the truth on school funding cut
Tuesday February 25, 2003 at 8:48 pm
ABCNews ran a story on World News Tonight Monday, February 24. The story even made it to their web site. Like the liberal spin doctors they’ve sadly become, ABCNews saw fit to include only half of the details in order to make the story anti-Bush. Pitiful…
The Bush plan, as proposed, does indeed intend to cut Federal funding of schools who are currently receiving special dispensation (extra funding) for military families.
At first glance, I was quite upset by the whole idea — “pissed” would be an excellent way to put it. Pardon me, but these are the folks serving their country and protecting our freedoms.
Before going off on a tangent, however, I decided to investigate the plan so I would have all of the facts. Note that this is the step ABCNews missed, since their report only covered half of the facts and showed no signs of investigative reporting. On the contrary, their entire story, as expected, reeked of pungent liberal BS spun around a grain of truth. That is the best way to get a political message across, since starting with a grain of truth keeps people from wondering about the rest of the crap you feed them as part of that truth, but it’s not the way to report the news.
As with most of the media (including CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC), the liberal media told the story like this (I’m paraphrasing, of course).
While the men and women of our armed forces are marching off to possible war with Iraq, President Bush is trying to cut the Federal funding to the schools their children attend.
That was the lead-in. The rest of the story went downhill from there, since ABCNews spun the funding cut into a standalone idea. They also felt it necessary to share just that piece of the story with everyone they encountered, thereby engendering fierce opposition and anger.
Well, I’m here to set the story straight with the proposal that’s actually in the budget, not a grain of truth surrounded by all the lies I can possibly come up with (politically motivated lies, of course).
The proposed budget does indeed seek to cut extra Federal funding given to schools in order to offset the costs incurred by teaching children of military families. The extra funding was designed to ensure that these schools were compensated for the costs of teaching children of military families who live on base and therefore do not pay any property or other taxes that would normally fund education.
So far it seems like a really bad idea, right? Indeed, were I to stop there and call that the entire explanation, I would completely understand how people could be upset. But (and you knew that was coming), the story does not stop there.
The funding to be cut is the compensation for military families who do not live on base and would therefore be paying property and other taxes — thereby funding their local education system the way the rest of us do.
So, were ABCNews to be honest, they would have explained that the plan is to cut the “double-dip” payments that these schools are currently getting. The double payments are that Federal tax dollars are being spent to offset the on-base families who aren’t living on the base at all. The Federal tax payments cover the property and other taxes that these families would not be paying if they were living on their local base — but remember the important fact here is that these families are not living on the base.
In our zealous pursuit to reduce the deficit, we should be looking for ways to cut spending where possible. Unlike the liberal agenda, which is to tax more and spend more, Bush has found a place where these schools are being paid for the same thing twice. Cutting the Federal funding makes sense.
It’s shameful that ABCNews decided to only tell enough of the truth to stir up anti-Bush sentiment, but it’s not surprising at all. Had they told the entire truth, people would have been less likely to be upset and more likely to understand and appreciate the frugal approach to what is obviously a double payment for services rendered.
In the future, I would suggest that ABCNews try hard to tell the whole truth instead of portraying half-truths as the whole story. The practice is repulsive and offensive, and it is a disservice to the viewers who trust ABCNews to provide an objective report rather than a blatantly political spin.
As for the school districts who are crying foul and wondering how they could possibly cover their costs without this money, I would suggest a more responsible approach to the budgetary process. If everyone were to budget based on double payments, we?d all have more money to spend, but the funds would soon dry up when we all realized we were paying for everything twice.
jason
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