Bias by Semantics
When is a budget cut not a cut? Sadly, the answer is fast becoming: whenever the news media report it. Skimming the web this afternoon, I saw the headline "JFC Cuts Financial Aid for Low Income UW Students" at Channel3000.com . I thought that headline sounded a bit suspicious, so I dug into the story. Here's the deal:
Governor Doyle's budget proposal increased the money for WHEG grants to $40.5 million. The Republican controlled Joint Finance Committee scaled the grants back to $37 million.
Doyle's increase represents an 8.5% increase. Without the increase, the grants would equal, you guessed it, $37 million. Of course, it's not just the media acting like this is a cut. Governor Doyle, who should know better, joins in:
"The cut of money in financial aid is just one of these thoughtless, almost sort of cruel cuts, you kinda wonder what they're sitting there thinking about."
Too bad there's not actually a cut. Now, it's true that tuition costs are rising, so it would certainly be accurate to say that grants are not increasing as quickly as tuition, but it's entirely inaccurate to say that funding is being "cut". But who cares about accuracy when there's scary Republicans to demonize?
Posted by kris at June 3, 2005 04:49 PM
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Comments
| # June 18th, 2005 7:19 PM retardicans |
| Maybe the only part you are not mentioning is power of exponential growth. Prosperity and wealth bring with it the problem of shortage of supplies or resources as well as with "grants" or whatever. Now you could argue nobody needs a college education til the sun comes up but I doubt you'll find any volunteers that will accept a lesser quality of life. Sure we can cut off the funds and not support the education of people that are broke or without money, we could also call for a massive population reduction through all manner of ways but nobody wants that but extremely wealthy elites and maybe some of their minions. But overall the issues we face in the next 50 years require a educated population otherwise we could destroy ourselves or somebody else just becuase there's too many humans. If we want to live like everywhere is mexico city then I suppose we can continue to drop kids like flies but if people become educated they tend to have less children. Having kids is fine but if we have to live in a place like Mexico City or Los Angeles, I'm not really sure that cutting education grants or not expanding them in conjuntion with population expansion would be such a great idea. I'm not aware of all the population growth statistics in that area and I'm also not aware of other factors including quality of life issues, but if Atlanta is any indication in my state of unfettered steady growth then I don't want any part of it. |
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