Is the LA Times and the Media Spinning Arnold's Budget Nightmare?

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Here's an interesting cross-post from Calitics about a weekend article in the LA Times that shows how the press typically covers California's budget inequities:

California's Shock Doctrine: How the Media Spins Arnold's Budget Crisis
by Robert in Monterey, Calitics

The projected deficit for the state budget in 2008 is $10 billion and growing quickly. As the scope of the crisis becomes clearer, the state's media is beginning to take notice and, as always, trying to spin the situation according to their own preconceived notions.
 
In that vein comes today's article by Evan Halper in the LA Times. While the article would seem to boost us by laying the blame at Arnold's feet, its primary argument is actually that the budget crisis is due to "voter-imposed budget constraints" that limit the legislature's ability to slash spending when needed, and limiting the effectiveness of government.

It's not a new claim, of course, and the article quotes Don Perata's complaint about this that he made earlier in the year. But the politics of the budget crisis are shaped by the media coverage of it, and in that sense it's not just significant how much the LA Times is playing up the locked-in spending, but how much they're downplaying the lack of tax revenue.

If we're going to prevent this budget crisis from seeing the death blow to the liberal state that Pat Brown helped build in the 1960s as well as from crippling our ability to respond to our own ecological and urban crises, we need to aggressively push back against the idea that spending cuts are the answer. California's budget is in crisis not because we spend too much, but because we tax too little.

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