Hearst Corporation controlls the local newspapers in my area. These dailies play up any local aspect they can find. They are also loyal, if somewhat marginal, members of the mainstream media. Accordingly, the big headline from this morning in the Greenwich Time was "Sequester Could Cut Superstorm Sandy Funds". The story says that three local Democrats said yesterday that sequestration could take a "big bite" out of the $60.4 billion approved in January "to help victims of last year's Superstorm Sandy." Oh, the horror. These poor people went through so much and now the evil of sequestration is to be visited upon them.....or so you would think.
If you wade through ten paragraphs or so of outrage, you finally come to the facts that the paper evidently felt they had to include. These are the following:
1) "Sandy relief money was protected by Congress. These appropriations were specifically exempted from sequestration under the Budget Control Act."
2) "FEMA Director Craig Fugate said the impact from sequestration isn't as bad as some think.
'I think from the standpoint of the immediate response of the things we were doing at Hurricane Sandy, people aren't going to see any impacts,' Fugate recently told CBS News."
3) "Although totaling more than $60 billion, the relief bill includes just under $23 billion for direct Sandy relief. The remaining money would help all three states harden and improve infrastructure so residents are better protected during future storms."
So there you have it. Sandy relief was exempted from the sequester, FEMA says that there will be no visible impact from sequestration, and the bulk of the funds are not to help victims of the storm. Probably no more than one in five readers of the paper will ever find those facts since they are hidden at the end of a repetative, alarmist propaganda piece. But hey, that's the mainstream media!
If you wade through ten paragraphs or so of outrage, you finally come to the facts that the paper evidently felt they had to include. These are the following:
1) "Sandy relief money was protected by Congress. These appropriations were specifically exempted from sequestration under the Budget Control Act."
2) "FEMA Director Craig Fugate said the impact from sequestration isn't as bad as some think.
'I think from the standpoint of the immediate response of the things we were doing at Hurricane Sandy, people aren't going to see any impacts,' Fugate recently told CBS News."
3) "Although totaling more than $60 billion, the relief bill includes just under $23 billion for direct Sandy relief. The remaining money would help all three states harden and improve infrastructure so residents are better protected during future storms."
So there you have it. Sandy relief was exempted from the sequester, FEMA says that there will be no visible impact from sequestration, and the bulk of the funds are not to help victims of the storm. Probably no more than one in five readers of the paper will ever find those facts since they are hidden at the end of a repetative, alarmist propaganda piece. But hey, that's the mainstream media!
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