Life In These United States – No. 6

Here’s a new one, clocking in at 14:35. Sorry I missed last week, just had no time to prepare anything. As always, this is meant as a rebuttal to BBC reporting on US issues.

Life In These United States – No. 6

(Audio hosted by EyeTube)

SOURCES:

 Weak US job figures for May hit markets

Katty Kay’s tweet

More Sub-Par Employment Numbers

Politifact: Voter fraud means GOP candidates in Wisconsin “need to do a point or two better” to win, GOP chairman Reince Priebus says

Why are Walker allies so rattled by early voting?

Wisconsin Voter Fraud Has Already Happened

Wisconsin voter fraud proves need for ID laws

Wisconsin, 2004

BBC US Election section (click on the map for Wisconsin page)

Wisconsin’s balanced budget comes at political cost

MI Report Chronicles Success of Wisconsin Budget Reforms

On wrong side of issues, Obama avoids Wisc.

Crowd for Clinton-Barrett rally in Milwaukee 10 minutes before scheduled start: 400 people?

Wisconsin Unions See Ranks Drop Ahead of Recall Vote

BBC Changes The Story From Wisconsin, But Censors Even More

More BBC Dishonesty About Wisconsin

BBC Bias And Wisconsin – Again

Greater Wisconsin Political Fund

Letter telling people their neighbors will be told if they vote or not

Letter informing people of their neighbors’ political donations

Escape From New York? High-Taxing Empire State Loses 3.4 Million Residents in 10 Years

Taxrates.com: Florida

State Sales, Gasoline, Cigarette, and Alcohol Tax Rates by State, 2000-2010

Jewish Population of the United States, by State

Obama’s ‘To-Do’ List Finds Few Takers

BBC: Indiana Senator Lugar loses Republican primary fight

Mark Mardell: Lugar defeat shows the Tea Party is alive and well

House votes to approve FDA funding bill

House Vote 247 – House Approves $310 Billion in Cuts

House Vote 177 – Passes Business Tax Cut

Senate Vote 96 – Approves Extension of Export-Import Bank

 

BBC Bias And Wisconsin – Again

So the Union-led petition to force a recall election against Republican Gov. Scott Walker has gathered 1 million signatures. That’s nearly twice what’s required to force the recall. Of course, that’s only if the signatures are valid. If you get your information on this story from the BBC, you’d have no idea there’s even a hint of impropriety. The BBC news brief sanitizes the whole thing, spins it to make Walker look bad, and even misleads the reader about the result of the recall elections from last summer.

Let’s start with how the BBC spins it to make Walker look bad.

The governor has become a conservative hero and put the Midwest state at the centre of the US labour rights debate.

The BBC News Online sub-editor decided to leave it as an anti-Unions thing, and censor the news that Walker balanced the state budget for the first time in ages. That’s actually what has earned Walker respect from conservatives. Curbing public sector union powers helped him do that, sure. But it’s about fixing the state economy, not just attacking unions. The BBC leaves out how this is about fixing the economy, leaving Walker looking like a villain. They do it again a couple sentences later:

The governor’s opponents are also angry at the $800m (£521m) in budget cuts to schools passed under him.

 But they leave out the fact that this actually improved things. Of course, the BBC has form on censoring news about this issue in Wisconsin. What the BBC didn’t want you to know at the time is that schools have saved well over $100 million since Walker cut down union power and passed his budget. In fact, one school district went from a major deficit to a budget surplus thanks to Walker’s plan. Instead, the BBC spins it so you think he hurt the schools. Does that sound familiar?
The BBC says this about the previous round of recalls:

Two Republican state senators were recalled in earlier elections.

What the BBC censors because it hurts the Narrative is that the other five Republicans kept their seats, and the Republicans kept their majority – albeit just barely – in the legislature. But that fact won’t help lead you to think that this new petition means the people of Wisconsin want the Republicans out, so the BBC leaves it out.

One last bit of anti-Walker spin is where the article mentions that he’s raised over $5 million for the fight, taking care to point out that half of it is from out of state. What the BBC doesn’t want you to know is that out-of-state Unions and other partisan PACs are pouring money into it for the Democrat cause. In last summer’s recall elections, Democrat-supporting groups from out of state even outspent Republican groups from out of state, to the tune of $23.4 million to $20.5 million. Does anyone think this time will be any different? So it’s grossly dishonest for the BBC to mention only Walker’s out-of-state money. But that helps the Narrative of “the hard-working innocent lambs against nasty Republicans and their moneymen”.

Now let’s look at the worst part of all this: the 1 million signatures. What the BBC doesn’t want you to know is that there’s most likely a massive amount of fraud going on.  The state board overseeing the whole thing has already admitted there’s going to be a problem with duplicate signatures. It sure doesn’t help matters that the far-Left group, One Wisconsin Now, actually encouraged people to sign multiple petitions, knowing that they won’t all be caught. One guy has even proudly claimed to have signed 80 times. Not a word about this from the BBC.

Then there’s the fact that the Government Accountability Board (GAB) is admitting they won’t be trying to dismiss all those Adolf Hitler and Mickey Mouse signatures if they have Wisconsin addresses and are dated properly. So there’s voter fraud built into the system, to help Democrats. But remember, kids, according to the BBC, only Republicans engage in voter fraud.  In fact, things are so bad that the GAB is hiring a bunch of temporary staff to sort through all this crap. The GAB, however, is an independent group. So when the BBC reports this:

Supporters of the governor are being trained to spot any duplicate or falsified signatures.

You have to say they’re lying. Only supporters of the governor are being trained? No, BBC, it’s the staff of the independent GAB. This is meant to create the suspicion in your mind that it’s only a Republican plot to disenfranchise honest Democrats, nothing to do with massive Democrat fraud. There isn’t even a hint of suspicion raised here, not a single eyebrow raised. Why do you think it’s going to take 60 days to sort this out?

Sure, it’s only an unsigned news brief, no time to mention all the details, right? So why are the details the piece does mention so dishonest? You can read about previous examples of BBC censorship and dishonesty about the goings on in Wisconsin here, here, and here. Don’t trust the BBC on US issues.

WISCONSIN

This is an update to earlier blogposts by David Preiser about BBC coverage of the troubled passage of deficit reduction legislation in Wisconsin (see here, here, here).

Media double-standards over Wisconsin have become so blatant that even a left-leaning blogger on Huffington Post, Lee Stranahan, has expressed his distaste:

Why isn’t the mainstream media talking about the death threats against Republican politicians in Wisconsin?

…Ignoring the story of these threats is deeply, fundamentally wrong. It’s bad, biased journalism that will lead to no possible good outcome and progressives should be leading the charge against it.

Just before writing this article, I did a Google search and it’s stunning to find out that the right wing media really isn’t exaggerating — proven death threats against politicians are being ignored by the supposedly honest media. If you’ve never agreed with a single thing that Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly et al have said about anything, you can’t in any good conscience say that they don’t have a point here. Death threats are wrong and if a story like Wisconsin is national news for days, then so are death threats.

Quite so. If Tea Party followers had made death threats against Democrat politicians, and had gone to their homes to terrify their children, we can be sure that the BBC would’ve been all over it, ramping up the coverage with every fresh act of intimidation. I know this, readers of this blog know it, and BBC journalists, if they’re honest with themselves, must know it too. And we’re talking actual death threats here, not some vague perceived potential for violence of the sort imagined by BBC correspondents when reporting on the Tea Party movement.

The reason for this is simple enough. “It’s bad, biased journalism”, as Stranahan says. The BBC’s highly partisan coverage of American politics reflects the political leanings of its staff. As such, negative stories about Democrats and their supporters are either ignored or downplayed. This is in sharp contrast to the eager reporting of similar or less significant events which are used to bash the American right.

If any BBC journos disagree with my conclusion I’d be happy to read an alternative explanation for their news blackout over the Wisconsin death threats. Comment, email, blog, tweet. Anything.