How the press aids and abets the GOP attack on the middle class

COMMENTARY | May 02, 2011

Henry Banta writes that the media pay excessive attention and give excessive credibility to the constant drumbeat of propaganda on the budget and debt streaming from those who have the most to lose if the middle class tries to get back some of what has been taken from it.

By Henry Banta
henrybanta@aol.com

One positive thing to come out of our current budget squabble is that we can now more clearly see what each of the parties really cares about – or at least what the Republicans really care about. In the end it was not Planned Parenthood, abortion, or EPA regulations. It was all about money. Lower taxes for the rich and fewer resources for the poor and middle class were at the core of what they would fight for until the bitter end. Unfortunately, this clarity has escaped the major media, most of which are, once again, totally absorbed by the political games.

By now the Republican obsession should surprise no one, as the single most important fact about the American economy for the last three decades has been, by far, the massive shift in wealth and income to the top of the economic ladder.