Sequester Scare Tactics in the Star-Telegram.

In the Thursday, February 27 Star-Telegram, print edition, the Letter to the Editor most prominently displayed was from Joseph F. Cleveland Jr., President of the Fort Worth chapter of the Federal Bar Association. He states that the sequester will require the layoff of 25% of all Federal court personnel and then goes on to recount the horrible things that can come about because of this. What he fails to do is provide any kind of context. Are these employees going to be laid off for a day? An hour? A month?  Years? Do the consequences, go on forever? Or for just an instant?

The context gap in this letter reveals its intent. And that intent is to scare people. Using the same method that a cruel, older child would use to frighten a younger child by telling him that there is a monster in the closet, Mr. Cleveland invokes the prospect of huge and terrible consequences if the sequester is implemented, but like the closet, the magnitude of the problem, like the size of the monster, is left to the victim's imagination.

When encountering budgetary scare tactics like this, remember that the sequester is $85 billion out of a Federal budget $3.62 trillion. And the sequester is a cut, not in spending but in the ANTICIPATED GROWTH of spending. If the Federal budget were $50 the sequester would be equivalent to $.10, in other words, one thin dime.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram should be ashamed of itself to give prominence, and oversize fonts to such an obvious, odious piece of propaganda.

Read the online letter here:
http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/02/27/4648559/cuts-will-hurt-courts.html#storylink=misearch