Paul Krugman: Budgets, Bad Faith and ‘Balance’ [feedly]

Paul Krugman: Budgets, Bad Faith and 'Balance'
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2018/02/paul-krugman-budgets-bad-faith-and-balance.html

"our job, whether we're policy analysts or journalists, isn't to be "balanced"; it's to tell the truth":

Budgets, Bad Faith and 'Balance', by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Over the past couple of months Republicans have passed or proposed three big budget initiatives. First, they enacted a springtime-for-plutocrats tax cut that will shower huge benefits on the wealthy while offering a few crumbs for ordinary families — crumbs that will be snatched away after a few years, so that it ends up becoming a middle-class tax hike. Then they signed on to a what-me-worry budget deal that will blow up the budget deficit to levels never before seen except during wars or severe recessions. Finally, the Trump administration released a surpassingly vicious budget proposal that would punish not just the vulnerable but also most working families.

Looking at all of this should make you very angry... But my anger isn't mostly directed at Republicans; it's directed at their enablers, the professional centrists, both-sides pundits, and news organizations that spent years refusing to acknowledge that the modern G.O.P. is what it so clearly is.

Which is not to say that Republicans should be let off the hook. ...I can't think of a previous example of a party that so consistently acted in bad faith — pretending to care about things it didn't, pretending to serve goals that were the opposite of its actual intentions. ... The ... party's true agenda, dictated by the interests of a handful of super-wealthy donors, would be very unpopular if the public understood it. So the party must consistently lie...

Meanwhile, many news organizations ... treat recent G.O.P. actions as if they are some kind of ... departure from previous principles. They aren't. Republicans are what they always were: They never cared about deficits; they always wanted to dismantle Medicare, not defend it. They just happen not to be who they pretended to be.

Now, there's no mystery about why many people won't face up to the reality of Republican bad faith. Washington is full of professional centrists, whose public personas are built around a carefully cultivated image of standing above the partisan fray, which means that they can't admit that while there are dishonest politicians everywhere, one party basically lies about everything. News organizations are intimidated by accusations of liberal bias, which means that they try desperately to show "balance" by blaming both parties equally for all problems.

But our job, whether we're policy analysts or journalists, isn't to be "balanced"; it's to tell the truth. And while Democrats are hardly angels, at this point in American history, the truth has a well-known liberal bias.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed